The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science

I started attending the weekly meetings of the Ithaca Friends Meeting in September, 1969. One of the people who made an immediate and lasting impression on me was an older gentlemen, always impeccably dressed, who sometimes spoke in meeting in a quavery, but very determined voice. His "messages" were always very literate, but not necessarily complicated. I was eventually introduced to him, and learned that his name was "Ned" Burtt, and that he was one of the founders of the Ithaca meeting.

After several years we became good friends, but only in the context of the Friends Meeting. I got to know his wife, Marjory, with whom I had many very engaging conversations. She was a retired psychotherapist with an interest in Eastern philosophy, especially Buddhism. I didn't have as many conversations with Ned, not because he wasn't willing, but because he was almost completely deaf. Indeed, after a few years I noticed that Marjory and some of his older friends took turns sitting next to him in meeting, and when someone rose to speak, would write down what they said on a slip of paper and pass it to Ned.

Year later I was co-teaching a course on the history and philosophy of science, for which the teaching staff had chosen as one of the required readings a "classic" in the history of science, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science, by Professor Edwin Arthur Burtt, the Susan Lynn Sage Professor of Philosophy at Cornell University. Translated into dozens of languages and continuously in print since 1924, Burtt's Metaphysical Foundations was often mentioned as the precursor to Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and one of the seminal texts in the history of science.

Imagine my surprise (and chagrin) when I discovered that "Ned" Burtt of the Ithaca Friends Meeting was Prof. Edwin Arthur Burtt himself, author of the Metaphysical Foundations and perhaps the most famous historian of science in the first half of the 20th century. Characteristically, he never mentioned it in any of our conversations (brief and halting as they were), and no one else in meeting seemed to think it important enough to mention either.

Ned died in 1989 at the age of 97, and was memorialized at the Ithaca Meeting in our usual way – a silent meeting, punctuated by a few heart-felt "messages" from his friends. I think of him now as I am re-reading once again his Metaphysical Foundations, and am once again struck by his keen insight and masterful use of language. Here's just one sample:

"The glorious romantic universe of Dante and Milton, that set no bounds to the imagination of man as it played over space and time, had now been swept away. Space was identified with the realm of geometry, time with the continuity of number. The world that people had thought themselves living in – a world rich with colour and sound, redolent with fragrance, filled with gladness, love and beauty, speaking everywhere of purposive harmony and creative ideals – was crowded now into minute corners in the brains of scattered organic beings. The really important world outside was a world hard, cold, colourless, silent, and dead, a world of quantity, a world of mathematically computable motions in mechanical regularity. The word of qualities as immediately perceived by man became just a curious and quaint minor effect of that infinite machine beyond. In Newton the Cartesian metaphysics, ambiguously interpreted and stripped of its distinctive claim for serious philosophical consideration, finally overthrew Aristotelianism and became the predominant world-view of modern times.

*Whew* - talk about a splash of cold water in the face. It is this world-view – the one that forms the basis of all of modern science, including biology – that depresses and terrifies those who cannot live without the "old magic" and motivates those who want to tear down "modern" science and go back to the pre-scientific world-view, what Carl Sagan called "the demon-haunted world." But, just like the magic realm of childhood, there is no going back now, not to the innocent and often terrifying universe of the childhood of our cultures. In the words of Bertrand Russell (one of Ned Burtt's contemporaries):

"That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs, are the outcome of accidental collections of atoms...that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins...only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built." – A Free Man's Worship [1923]

And so tomorrow (it's Memorial Day once again), I will go walking through the little grave yard out behind the Hector Meeting House where Ned and Marjory are buried, and think once again about the old, deaf gentleman whose messages were so eloquent and whose view of reality so unflinching.

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As always, comments, criticisms, and suggestions are warmly welcomed!

--Allen

Is Science True?

In my experience, everyone bases their "arguments on certain metaphysical suppositions, scientists and non-scientists included. As a good friend and student of E. A. Burtt, I have found his Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science to be extraordinarily useful in this regard. In fact, I have begun work on what I hope will be a companion volume: Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Biological Science, in which I will examine the assumptions that underlie the science of biology as it is practiced today.

One of the bedrock assumptions underlying both modern physics and modern biology is non-teleology: the assumption that natural processes do not include any teleological input. I personally think that this is wrong, and base my objection to this idea on Ernst Mayr's monumental book, Toward a New Philosophy of Biology, published in 1988. Mayr argued very persuasively that teleological explanations are entirely appropriate in biology insofar as they refer to the development and maintenance of living organisms. According to Mayr, both of these processes (and indeed all biological processes) are directed by programs (i.e. genomes, etc.) that pre-exist the entities and processes that they specify and regulate. In the jargon of the current debate, genomes and other developmental programs are "designs" for the assembly and operation of living organisms.

However, Mayr also argued very strongly that the origin of biological programs – that is, the various mechanisms of biological evolution – need not (and apparently do not) include any teleological component. Like all physical processes, there is no detectable "grand design" (much less a Grand Designer) which/Who has formulated beforehand the programs that regulate life. In other words, teleology is entirely appropriate when applied to life and the operation of living programs, but not when applied to the origin of life or the origin of living programs.

So, what does this say about the question of whose opinions to trust when considering these issues? My first criterion is skepticism: if someone claims to know the truth about anything at all (including, of course, the contents of their own mind), my immediate reaction is intense skepticism. Science (at least that version of it that has been practiced since the 17th century) isn't about truth. It's about reasonable confidence in explanatory models, all of which are grounded on a metaphysical assumption of the usefulness of methodological naturalism. Notice I wrote "usefulness", not "truth", because as far as I can tell the only "truth" that exists on either side of the evolution/ID divide is a version of Colbert's "truthiness". It feels like "truth", but isn't really. In my opinion, "experts" are people who keep these distinctions in mind at all times, and do not easily (if ever) use absolute statements when talking about nature.

For example, I have an immediate, knee-jerk negative reaction to the title of Jerry Coyne's book, Why Evolution is True, and indeed to much of what he writes for the general public. Consider a similar title, Why Quantum Mechanics is True, or if you prefer Why the Gas Laws are True. How would a physicist react to titles such as these? I hope (and my general experience has been) that they would object to the word "true", and also perhaps to the question "why". Physics isn't about "truth" and doesn't usually ask about "why" things happen. Physics is about "useful" and "consistent" and "empirically testable" models of reality, and it's about "how" things happen, not "why" they happen.

Indeed, in the natural sciences (including biology) the answer to the question "how" is the same as the answer to the question "why". How do birds come to have wings? They inherit a genetic and developmental program that, via interactions with their environment, produces those structures we call "wings". Why do birds come to have wings? Same answer. How have birds acquired these genetic and developmental programs? They evolved by natural selection and other evolutionary mechanisms. Why have birds acquired these genetic and developmental programs? Again, same answer.

Speculating as to whether the biological processes by which the programs that specify and regulate living organisms and processes are somehow externally/supernaturally directed seems to me to be metaphysical arguments, rather than scientific ones. Interesting, compelling even, but not part of science, at least as it has been practiced for a very long time.

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As always, comments, criticisms, and suggestions are warmly welcomed!

--Allen

Memento mori: The Metaphysics of The Game

I just lost the game. And so have you, especially if you know what I'm talking about.

Some background: my eldest son, Conall, attended a highland dance camp this past summer. While he was there, he learned about The Game. Being obsessed with games in general and mind games in particular (like his dad), he came home and told us all about it, and has since reveled in telling us every time he loses the game. Since learning about The Game, I have myself announced the same to several of my classes at Cornell, each time to a chorus of groans.

So, how does The Game work?

The Game has only three rules:

1) Everyone is always playing The Game.

2) Whenever you think of The Game, you lose.

3) Having lost The Game, you must announce this to at least one other person (usually by saying or writing "I just lost The Game").

Some active players of The Game also assert that there are two corollaries:

4) You can lose The Game multiple times.

5) You can only lose The Game once every half hour.

That is, The Game "resets" after half an hour, so that having forgotten that you are playing, you can lose again and again and again...

Having lost The Game many, many times since Conall told me the rules, it has occurred to me that there is a metaphysical dimension to The Game. Thinking about The Game is essentially the same thing as thinking about one's own death. That is, The Game is a kind of memento mori. Most of us go through most of our lives without often thinking about the incontrovertible fact that all of us will, at some point in the indefinite future, cease to exist. We will all, in other words, "lose The Game".

There have been several times in my life when I have become bemused by the thought of my own mortality. The first time it happened I was four years old. We were living in an old farmhouse on Scott Road, east of Homer, New York, and I was walking up the stairs to my bedroom. Between one step and the next, it occurred to me that I would someday die - that I would cease to exist. This realization was very shocking to me, and came back into my mind steadily for some time.

But then, I forgot about it...for a while. Since then, I have gotten caught in the same "becoming aware of mortality loop" several times, and each time it has had the same quality as losing The Game. That is, it comes with a sense of "doubled consciousness", in which I have become conscious of my own stream of consciousness, and its eventual termination.

Many theologians (and some evolutionary biologists) have speculated that the origin of religion is grounded in the realization of personal mortality. From an evolutionary standpoint, the argument is as follows:

1) Individuals who avoid situations in which their lives are threatened survive (and can therefore reproduce) more often than individuals who do not avoid such situations.

2) Individuals who are aware of their own mortality are more likely to avoid situations in which their lives are potentially threatened.

3) Ergo, the cognitive operation in which one becomes conscious of one's mortality has adaptive value; that is, it can increase in frequency among the individuals that make up a population as the result of natural selection.

Some evolutionary psychologists (myself among them) have argued that the capacity for such cognitive operations is the basis for our evolved psychology, and that there is a positive feedback relationship between ideas like "mortality" (and The Game) and the underlying neurological wiring that facilitates the acquisition and transmission of such ideas. This idea, known as "gene-meme coevolution", was first and most rigorously explored by Charles Lumsden and Edward O. Wilson in their 1983 book, Genes, Mind, and Culture: The Coevolutionary Process. The underlying ideas in their work were summarized in non-technical language in Promethean Fire: Reflections on the Origin of Mind.

Having pondered both The Game and mortality, it seems quite plausible to me that our minds are indeed adapted to the kind of mental operation that results in both "losing The Game" and recalling our personal mortality. And so, I expect to go on losing The Game until I lose The Game...and now, having read this, so will you.

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As always, comments, criticisms, and suggestions are warmly welcomed!

--Allen