More Passages from Burtt's Book

Last post I excerpted selections of E.A. Burtt's Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science on Newton as a metaphysician (in the pejorative sense). In this post I have collected other scintillating selections from the book, and grouped them into a few categories. The divisions are somewhat artificial, because the categories are interrelated, and some passages could arguable appear in more than one category.

On Qualities and the Mind

The moderns, starting with Descartes, distinguished primary from secondary qualities. (Though as far back as Peter Ramus, there was a movement to sever the mind from the real contact with the world we call knowledge.) Primary qualities are predominantly geometrical, while secondary qualities are those that, to put it briefly, give the world its vibrancy, such as colors, tones, tastes, smell, textures. Here are some selections on qualities, quantities and the modern project of divorcing the mind from the natural world of qualities, and draining life from the universe. (The two longer ones are real gems.)

[Kepler:] "Wherever there are qualities, there are likewise quantities, but not always vice versa." (67)

[Galileo:] "Now this tickling is all in us, and not in the feather, and if the animate and sensitive body be removed, it is nothing more than a mere name. Of precisely a similar and not greater existence do I believe these various qualities to be possessed, which are attributed to natural bodies, such as tastes, odours, colours, and others." (86)

Why, now, are we sure that the primary, geometrical qualities inhere in objects as they really are, while the secondary qualities do not? How is it that "all other things we conceive to be compounded out of figure, extension, motion, etc., which we cognize so clearly and distinctly that they cannot be analysed by the mind into others more distinctly known?" Descartes' own justification for this claim is that these qualities are more permanent than the others. In the case of the piece of wax, which he used for illustrative purposes in the second Mediation, no qualities remained constant but those of extension, flexibility, and mobility, which as he observes, is a a fact perceived by the understanding, not by the sense or imagination. Now flexibility is not a property of all bodies, hence extension and mobility alone are left as the constant qualities of all bodies as such; they can by no means be done away with while the bodies remain. But, we might ask, are not colour and resistance equally constant properties of bodies? Objects change in colour, to be sure, and there are varying degrees of resistance, but does one meet bodies totally without colour or resistance? the fact is and this is of central importance for our whole study, Descartes' real criterion is not permanence but the possibility of mathematical handling; in his case, as with Galileo, the whole course of his thought from his adolescent studies on had inured him to the notion that we know objects only in mathematical terms, and the sole type for him of clear and distinct ideas had come to be mathematical ideas, with the addition of certain logical propositions into which he had been led by the need of a firmer metaphysical basis for his achievements, such as the proposition that we exist, that we think, etc. Hence the secondary qualities, when considered as belonging to objects, like the primary, inevitably appear to his mind obscure and confused; they are not a clear field for mathematical operations. (117-118)

All the non-geometrical properties are to be shorn from the res extensa and located in the mind. (122)

Now Hobbes recognizes that he has obligated himself to give an explanatory account, in terms of bodies and motion, of these images [that make up reasoning], inasmuch as they do not obviously present themselves as either bodies, or motions, or located in the brain. This explanation, which appears first in the Treatise of [sic] Human Nature, is of profound significance in the early development of the new doctrine of the human mind, and represents Hobbes' chief importance in the current which leads on to the metaphysics of Newton. (129)

[Isaac Barrow holds that] the attempt to speak of the mathematician as dealing with an ideal or intelligible realm as opposed to the realm of sensible objects is mistaken: it is the sensible realm, so far as it is intelligible, especially as it reveals quantitative continuity, that is the object of all science. Thus physics, so far as it is a science, is wholly mathematical, likewise all of mathematics is applied in physics, hence we may say that the two sciences are co-extensive and equal. (151-2)

Descartes, bold metaphysician that he was, had answer ready as regards space—he seized upon it as the very substance of the material universe, crowding into the immaterial world of thought whatever could not be fully treated geometrically. (160)

[Boyle's general solution to the problem of secondary qualities:] it is that in objects themselves these secondary qualities exist as "a disposition of its constituent corpuscles, that in case it were truly applied to the sensory of an animal there would be no such thing as pain, yet a pin may, upon the account of its figure, be fitted to cause pain in case it were moved against a man's finger..." Inasmuch, however, as there are men and animals in the world, such a "disposition" or "fitness" in things is just as real as the qualities it possesses in itself. (182)

[Descartes sought to avoid] attributing to either ethereal matter or other bodies any qualities not deducible from extension. As we have observed, the mere fact that the ether assumes and maintains the vortical form implies in it qualities that go far beyond extension... (192)

The world of physics is the sensible world, but it is uniquely characterized by the qualities which its reduction to mathematical laws necessarily emphasized. (232)

The gloriously 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 world of qualities as immediately perceived by man became just a curious and quite 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. (238-9)

It was difficult for thinkers really to carry through Descartes' bold suggestion that everything in the world that is not mathematical is to be shoved into human minds as a mode of thought.... (265)

[Are sensible objects distinct from their subjectively sensed qualities?] In practice we correct dubious perceptions by appealing to further perceptions; we never correct them by comparison with something unperceived. (316)

... it does seem like strange perversity in these Newtonian scientists to further their own conquests of external nature by loading on mind everything refractory to exact mathematical handling and thus rendering the latter still more difficult to study scientifically than it had been before. (320)

On Final Causes

The moderns likewise sought to eliminate teleology or purposes from the objective, non-human world. This movement began before Descartes, as for example, in Machiavelli, though Burtt doesn't discuss this line of precedents. Of the major figures in the book, Boyle seemed to me the most sympathetic, and teleology was one issue on which he seemed close to correct.

But Descartes is not much interested in the res cognitans, his descriptions of it are brief, and, as if to make the rejection of teleology in the new movement complete, he does not even appeal to final causes to account for what goes on in the realm of mind. Everything there is a mode of the thinking substance. (119)

Boyle's chief points of disaffection with Descartes were the latter's banishment of final causes on the ground that we cannot know God's purposes, and his main postulates about motion. The English thinker holds it obvious that some of the divine ends are readable by all, such as the symmetry of the world and the marvelous adaptation of living creatures, hence it is foolish to reject teleological proofs of the existence of God. (169)

[Boyle] proposes to use the term form, for example, to mean (instead of the scholastic essential qualities) "those mechanical affections necessary to constitute a body of that determinate kind." Nature, too, he wishes to rescue from the vague and varied uses to which it had been put in ancient and medieval discussions, and define it in terms of the new dualism—it is not a collection of substances not a mysterious wielder of incalculable forces, but a system of mechanical laws, i.e., it is the world of matter and motion distinct from rational souls and immaterial spirits. (177)

Boyle criticized teleological explanations; the validity of final causality, unlike Descartes and Hobbes, he does not at all call into question, but points out that an answer to the ultimate why of anything is no substitute for an answer to the immediate how. "For to explicate a phenomenon, it is not enough to ascribe it to one general efficient, but we must intelligibly show the particular manner, how that general cause produces the proposed effect. He must be a very dull inquirer who, demanding an account of the phenomena of a watch, shall rest satisfied with being told, that it is an engine made by a watchmaker; though nothing be thereby declared of the structure and coaptation of the spring, wheels, balance, and other parts of the engine, and the manner, how they act on one another, so as to co-operate to make the needle point out the true hour of the day." (178)

It is important indeed for the onward march of the new philosophy of science that Boyle's acceptance of teleology as a valid metaphysical principle did not lead him to apply it in physics; here he follows his predecessors in holding that the immediate and secondary cause of any effect is always a prior motion of some sort. (179)

[Boyle:] "But inanimate bodies are utterly incapable of understanding what a law is... and therefore the actions of inanimate bodies, which cannot incite or moderate their own actions, are produced by real power, not by laws." This thought, that inasmuch as the world cannot know what it is doing, its orderly and law-abiding behavior must be accounted for by real, constant, intelligent power, occurs in other passages in Boyle. Nowhere is there any clear attempt to reconcile this with the position that the laws of motion and the phenomena of gravity represent quite self-sufficient mechanical operations. (199)

Now it may well be that science, despite its rejection of final causes, reveals the presence and functioning of values in the fundamental categories it selects and the way it applies them. If so, then an adequate scientific metaphysic will not be able to manage without teleology in some form, and it becomes a question of first-rate importance what that form is to be. (310)

On Space and Time

In a purposeless universe, no place can be any more special than another; bodies move blindly in a featureless void. At Newton's hands, space and time were absolutized, that is, given an existence apart from the rest of the world, as if they were containers waiting for bodies to fill them. According to Burtt, this source of this assumption comes from the theology fashionable at the time.

Just as space had ceased [in the sixteenth century] to appear accidental to objects and relative to magnitudes, and became a vast, infinite substance existing in its own right (except for relation to God) so time ceased to be regarded as merely the measure of motion, and became a mysterious something ultimately of religious significance, but quite independent of motion, in fact measured now by it, flowing on from everlasting to everlasting in its even mathematical course. From being a realm of substances in qualitative and teleological relations the world of nature had definitely become a realm of bodies moving mechanically in space and time. (161)

The ethereal medium, whatever may be said about tangible bodies, was not a mere machine [according to More]. If it were, the universe would rapidly dissipate, by the first law of motion. Qualities and powers were assumed in it which were not mechanical. Therefore it must be spiritual, incorporeal, the active executor of the divine will, holding the frame of the world together in the phenomenon of cohesion, magnetism, gravity. At the same time its effects are regular and orderly, doubtless reducible to exact scientific law. All this complex of ideas was shared by Boyle, and passed from More and Boyle to Newton, in whose philosophy it played a distinctive part. (166-7)

[H]ow does Newton, the experimentalist and ejector of hypotheses, dare to introduce [absolute space, time, and motion] with his definitions of mass an force and his axioms of motion? How, even, we might add, would be he able to tell whether this hypothetical celestial body were really at rest in absolute space, even though it fell under our observations, inasmuch as space by its own nature is infinite and homogeneous, its parts indistinguishable from each other? (249)

But thus far alone we can go with Newton; no farther. For note: absolute space and time as thus understood, by their own nature negate the possibility that sensible bodies can move with reference to them—such bodies can only move in them, with reference to other bodies. Why is this so? Simply because they are infinite and homogeneous entities; one pat of them is quite indistinguishable from any other equal part; any position in them is identical with any position; for wherever that part of position may be it is surrounded by an infinite stretch of similar room in all directions. Taking any body or system of bodies by itself, therefore, it is impossible to say intelligibly that it is either moving or at rest in absolute space or absolute time; such a statement only becomes meaningful when another phrase is added—with reference to such and such another body. things move in absolute space and time, but with reference to other things. A sensible centre of reference must always be definitely or tacitly implied. (256-7)

[T]ime is conceived as a homogeneous mathematical continuum, extending from the infinite past to the infinite future. Being one and entire, its whole extent is somehow present at one; it is necessarily bound together and all subject to knowledge. The laws of motion, together with the doctrine of the constancy of energy, inevitably result in this picture of the whole sweep of time as a realm mathematically determined in terms of an adequate present knowledge. But carry this conception to the limit, and does not time quite disappear as anything ultimately different from space? Once the Platonic year is discovered, everything that can happen is a present event. (263)

[T]he space of perception is too much like the space of real objects to reveal any essential difference from it. All it needs is to be freed from illusions, private images, and other experiences lacking social objectivity, to function quite acceptably as real space. And once this point has been reached there seems no longer any excuse for maintaining the distinction between sensed qualities and the real characters to which they correspond. (317)

On God and His Relationship to the Universe

In the heterodox climate of post-Reformation England, all sort of weird beliefs flourished, and, according to Burtt, this was the unexamined source of many presumptions on which scientific investigations were based. This is not to say that some fundamental Christian beliefs did not manage to shine through.

Barrow's religious interest appears above all in his postulate of the constancy of nature; he goes on to affirm that all demonstration presupposed the existence of God. "I say that all demonstration assumes the truth of hypotheses [postulates, we should say]; the truth of an hypothesis attributes to the thing which is assumed a possible existence; this possibility involves an efficient cause of the thing (otherwise it would be impossible for it to exist); the efficient cause of all things is God." (155, bracketed insert by Burtt)

[Barrow reasoned that] God can create worlds beyond this world, hence God must extend beyond matter, and it is just this superabundance of the divine presence and power that we mean by space. (155)

It is noticeable, however, that Boyle is eager not to overstress the importance of miracles; the main argument for God and providence is the exquisite structure and symmetry of the world—regularity, not irregularity... (201)

From the Protoplast of the whole, God has now descended to become a category among other categories; the facts of continued order, system, and uniformity as observed in the world, are inexplicable apart from him.... [In the scholastic system] God had no purpose; he was the ultimate object of purpose. (297)

How could intelligence grasp an inaccessible world in which there was no answering or controlling intelligence? It was by no means an accident that Hume and Kant, the first pair who really banished God from metaphysical philosophy, likewise destroyed by sceptical critique the current overweening faith in the metaphysical competence of reason. (301)

Miscellaneous

Burtt's book is full of interesting historical facts and insightful observations. Here are a few that don't fit into any of my categories. I particularly appreciate Boyle's rejection of the practice of the time of thinking of spirits as somehow material.

In fact, we know that, by many, astronomy was regarded as closer to the geometrical ideal of pure mathematics than arithmetic. Typical lists of the mathematical sciences offered by Alfarabi and Roger Bacon place them in the order: geometry, astronomy, arithmetic, music. (46)

Galileo himself remarks that Aristotle would change his opinion if he saw our new observations, for his method was essentially empirical. "I do believe for certain that he first procured, by the help of the senses, such experiments and observations as he could, to assure him as much as was possible of the conclusion, and that he afterwards sought out the means how to demonstrate it; for this is the usual course in demonstrative sciences. And the reason thereof is, because when the conclusion is true, by the help of the resolutive method, one may hit upon some proposition before demonstrated, or come to some principle knowns per se; but if the conclusion is false, a man may proceed in infinitum, and never meet with any truth already known." (78)

Further, it is to [William] Gilbert's experiments on magnetism that we owe the first beginnings of the use and conception of the word "mass" as we find it later matured in Newton. According to Gilbert, the strength and reach of a loadstone's magnetism varies with its quantity or mass, that is, if it be of uniform purity and from a specified mine. Galileo and Kepler borrowed the notion of mass from Gilbert in this sense and connexion. (164)

Boyle is eager to affirm, however, in refutation of Hobbes, that this applies only to secondary causes—to assert absolutely that motion is impossible except by a body contiguous and moved, is to involve oneself in an infinite regress and to deny ultimate causality by a spiritual deity. (180)

[Boyle rejects More's doctrine of spirits having extension and holds spirits to be immaterial and immortal.] "When I say that spirit is incorporeal substance... if he should answer, that when he hears the words incorporeal substance, he imagines some aerial or other very thin, subtile, transparent body, I shall reply, that this comes from a vicious custom he has brought himself to, of imagining something whenever he will conceive anything, though of a nature incapable of being truly represented by any image in the fancy." (183-184)

Newton was thus the common heir of the two important and fruitful movements in the preceding development of science, the empirical and experimental as well as the deductive and mathematical. He was the follower of Bacon, Gilbert, Harvey, and Boyle, just as truly the successor of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Descartes; and if it were possible to wholly separate the two aspects of his method, it would have to be said that Newton's ultimate criterion was more empirical than mathematical. (213-4)

[To Newton,] anything that is not immediately deduced from the phenomena is to be called an hypothesis and has no place in science, especially attempts to explain the nature of forces and causes revealed in the phenomena of motion. (226)

(Perhaps I should have included the last passage in the previous post.)

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E.A. Burtt, Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1954). Same pagination as Dover Books edition.

Newton the Metaphysician

I finally got around to reading a book I've had in my library for some years now and am sorry that it took me so long to get to it. E.A. Burtt's Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science is a superb analysis of the sources and content of Isaac Newton's philosophical thought, and thus an incisive critique of the entire enterprise of science and modernity.

The first two thirds of the book explicates the thought of Newton's influential predecessors, and the last third is about the thought of Newton himself. There are many great passages throughout the book, but in this post I will confine myself to excerpting from the parts that most directly deal with Newton as a metaphysician.

[I]n his decisive portrayal of the ultimate postulates of the new science and its successful method as they appeared to him, Newton was constituting himself a philosopher rather than a scientist as we now distinguish them. (33)

[Newton] disliked hypotheses, by which he meant explanatory propositions which were not immediately deduced from phenomena. At the same time, following his illustrious predecessors, he does give or assume definite answers to such fundamental questions as the nature of space, time, and matter; the relations of man with the objects of his knowledge; and it is just such answers that constitute metaphysics.¹ (33)

An interesting question remains however to be asked about [Newton's] method. Do not the very initial experiments and observations, as a result of which the mathematical behavior of phenomena is defined, presuppose something which we can only speak of as an hypothesis, to direct those experiments to a successful issue? (223)

This section, in which Burtt expresses the profound and ultimately insurmountable problems with the positivism Newton left us, is worth quoting at length:

[227] To begin with, there is no escape from metaphysics, that is, from the final implications of any proposition or set of propositions. The only way to avoid becoming a metaphysician is to say nothing. This can be illustrated by analysing any statement you please; suppose we take the central position of positivism itself as an example. This can perhaps be fairly stated in some such form as the following: It is possible to acquire truths about things without presupposing any theory of their ultimate nature; or, more simply, it is possible to have a correct knowledge of the part without knowing the nature of [228]the whole. Let us look at this position closely. That it is in some sense correct would seem to be vouched for by the actual successes of science, particularly mathematical science; we can discover regular relations among certain pieces of matter without knowing anything further about them, The question is not about its truth or falsity, but whether there is metaphysics in it. Well, subject it to a searching analysis, and does it not swarm with metaphysical assumptions? In the first place it bristles with phrases which lack precise definition, such as "ultimate nature", "correct knowledge", "nature of the whole", an assumptions of moment are always lurking in phrases which are thus carelessly used. In the second place, defining these phrases as you will, does not the statement reveal highly interesting and exceedingly important implications about the universe? Taking it in any meaning which would be generally accepted, does it not imply, for example, that the universe is essentially pluralistic (except, of course, for thought and language), that is, that some things happen without any genuine dependence on other happenings; and can therefore be described in universal terms without reference to anything else? Scientific positivists testify in various ways to this pluralistic metaphysic; as when they insist that there are isolable systems in nature, whose behaviour, at least in all prominent respects, can be reduced to law without any fear that the investigation of other happenings will do more than place that knowledge in a larger setting. Doubtless, strictly speaking, we could not say that we knew what would happen to our solar system if the fixed stars were of a sudden to vanish, but we do know that it is possible to reduce the major phenomena of our solar system to mathematical law on principles that do not depend on the presence of fixed stars, and hence with no reason to suppose their disappearance would upset our formulations in the least. Now this is certainly an important presumption about the nature of the universe, suggesting many further considerations. Let us forebear, however, to press our reasoning further at this point; the lesson is that even the attempt to escape metaphysics is no sooner put in the form of a proposition than it is seen to involve highly significant metaphysical postulates.

[229]For this reason there is an exceedingly subtle and insidious danger in positivism. If you cannot avoid metaphysics, what kind of metaphysics are you likely to cherish when you sturdily suppose yourself to be free from the abomination? Of course it goes without saying that in this case your metaphysics will be held uncritically because it is unconscious; moreover, it will be passed on to others far more readily than your other notions inasmuch as it will be propagated by insinuation rather than by direct argument. That a serious student of Newton fails to see his master had a most important metaphysic, is an exceedingly interesting testimony to the prevailing influence, throughout modern thought, of the Newtonian first philosophy.

Now the history of mind reveals pretty clearly that the thinker who decries metaphysics will actually hold metaphysical notions of three main types. For one thing, he will share the ideas of his age on ultimate questions, so far as such ideas do not run counter to his interests or awaken his criticism. No one has yet appeared in human history, not even the most profoundly critical intellect, in whom no important idola theatri can be detected, but the metaphysician will at least be superior to his opponent in this respect, in that he will be constantly on his guard against the surreptitious entrance and unquestioned influence of such notions. In the second place, if he be a man engaged in any important inquiry, he must have a method, and he will be under a strong and constant temptation to make a metaphysics out of his method, that is, to suppose the universe ultimately of such a sort that his method must be appropriate and successful. Some of the consequences of succumbing to such a temptation have been abundantly evident in our discussion of the work of Kepler, Galileo, and Descartes. Finally since human nature demands metaphysics for its full intellectual satisfaction, no great mind can wholly avoid playing with ultimate questions, especially where they are powerfully thrust upon it by considerations arising from its positivistic investigations, or by certain vigorous extra-scientific interests, such as religion. But inasmuch as the positivist mind has failed to school itself in careful metaphysical thinking, its ventures at such points will be apt to appear pitiful, inadequate, or even fantastic. Each of these three types is exempl[230]ified in Newton. His general conception of the physical world and of man's relation to it, including the revolutionary doctrine of causality and the Cartesian dualism in its final ambiguous outcome (which were the two central features of the new ontology) with their somewhat less central corollaries about the nature and process of sensation, primary and secondary qualities, the imprisoned seat and petty powers of the human soul, was taken over without examination as an assured result of the victorious movement whose greatest champion he was destined to become. His views on space and time belong in part to the same category, but were in part given a most interesting turn by convictions of the third sort. To the second type belongs his treatment of mass, that is, it gains its metaphysical importance from a tendency to extend the implications of his method. Of the third type, mainly, are his ideas of the nature and function of the ether, and of God's existence and relation to the world uncovered by science. We can hardy do better than allow this analysis of the three types to furnish us with an outline of the succeeding sections.

Newton's genius brought mankind great success, but at a great cost that we his children are still paying. Our liberation from nature has enslaved us to ill-conceived philosophy.

Magnificent, irrefutable achievements gave Newton authority over the modern world, which, feeling itself to have become free of metaphysics through Newton the positivist, has become shackled and controlled by a very definite metaphysics through Newton the metaphysician. (230)

The book might be characterized as a reflection on the unexamined presuppositions of modern science, and it does highlight some of the odd religious presumptions on which Newton based his thought (e.g., absolute space as the "sensorium" of God). If one is to believe Wikipedia, Burtt was one of the writers of the first Humanist Manifesto, but not a signatory. Nevertheless he is a broad enough thinker (in some ways comparable to Whitehead) that his own views never intrude to cloud his judgment; I spent the first half of the book thinking he was a mild ally of scientism, and the second half thinking he was a moderate Aristotelian! That he was a professor at Cornell may not be his only similarity to Carl Sagan—but I write no more on that now.

Note

1. That Newton assumed a metaphysics (or more properly a philosophical physics, a.k.a. a natural philosophy) rather than drawing it from rational reflection on nature is what sets Newton's work as far less general than Aristotle's, and far inferior in actual knowledge of the world. It is the reason that his mechanics required correction in the 20th century (viz., quantum mechanics and relativity)—and even these corrections are incomplete.

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E.A. Burtt, Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1954). Same pagination as Dover Books edition.

Heisenberg on Nature and Science

Last post, I mentioned how I have been reading Werner Heisenberg's Gifford Lectures (1955-56), and I related an incisive insight of his on peace declarations to Christmas.

Of course, Heisenberg has written much more of interest on science than on peace. His philosophical observations are surprisingly well informed—or at least seem so these days in which prominent scientists seem to have taken it upon themselves to prove the depth of their education in philosophy is inversely proportional to expertise in their own field.

This is not to say that everything Heisenberg says is flawless, but simply that his remarks are surprising in their philosophical sanity. Below I've excerpted several of the better passages.

To begin with, it is important to remember that in natural science we are not interested in the universe as a whole, including ourselves, but we direct our attention to some part of the universe and make that the object of our studies. (52)

In classical physics science started from the belief—or should one say from the illusion?—that we could describe the world or at least parts of the world without any reference to ourselves. This is actually possible to a large extent.... Certainly quantum theory does not contain genuine subjective features, it does not introduce the mind of the physicist as a part of the atomic event. But it starts from the division of the world into the "object" and the rest of the world, and from the fact that at least for the rest of the world we use the classical concepts in our description. This division is arbitrary and historically a direct consequence of our scientific method... (55)

The concept of atom does ... has its origin in ancient Greek philosophy and was in that early period the central concept of materialism taught by Leucippus and Democritus. On the other hand, the modern interpretation of atomic events has very little resemblance to genuine materialistic philosophy; in fact, one may say that atomic physics has turned science away from the materialistic trend it had during the nineteenth century. (59)

In the theory of general relativity the answer is given that geometry is produced by matter or matter by geometry. The answer corresponds more closely to the view held by many philosophers that space is defined by the extension of matter. (66)

It has been pointed our before that in the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory we can indeed proceed without mentioning ourselves as individuals, but we cannot disregard the fact that natural science is formed by men. Natural science does not simply describe and explain nature; it is a part of the interplay between nature and ourselves; it describes nature as exposed to our method of questioning. This was a possibility of which Descartes could not have thought, but it makes the sharp separation between the world and the I impossible. (81)

Our perceptions are not primarily bundles of colors or sounds; what we perceive is already perceived as something, the accent here being on the word "thing," and therefore it is doubtful whether we gain anything by taking the perceptions instead of the things as the ultimate elements of reality. (84)

The limitations of the field [of physics] can generally not be derived from the concepts. The concepts are not sharply defined in their relation to nature, in spite of the sharp definition of their possible connects. The limitations will therefore be found from experience, from the fact that the concepts do not allow a complete description of the observed phenomena. (101)

In order to give a quantitative description of the laws of chemistry one had to formulate a much wider system of concepts for atomic physics. This was finally done in quantum theory, which has its roots just as much in chemistry as in atomic physics. Then it was easy to see that the laws of chemistry could not be reduced to Newtonian mechanics of atomic particles, since the chemical elements displayed in their behavior a degree of stability completely lacking in mechanical systems. But it was not until Bohr's theory of the atom in 1913 that this point has been clearly understood. In the final result, one may say, the concepts of chemistry are in part complementary to the mechanical concepts. If we know that an atom is in its lowest stationary state that determines its chemical properties we cannot at the same time speak about the motion of the electrons in the atom. (101-2)

Just as in the case of chemistry, one learns from simple biological experience that the living organisms display a degree of stability which general complicated structures consisting of many different types of molecules could certainly not have on the basis of the physical and chemical laws alone. Therefore, something has to be added to the laws of physics and chemistry before the biological phenomena can be completely understood. (102-3)

It is very difficult to see how concepts like perception, function of an organ, affection could be a part of the coherent set of the concepts of quantum theory combined with the concept of history. On the other hand, these concepts are necessary for a complete description of life, even if for the moment we exclude mankind as presenting new problems beyond biology. (104)

We would never doubt that the brain acts as a physico-chemical mechanism if treated as such; but for an understanding of psychic phenomena we would start from the fact that the human mind enters as object and subject into the scientific process of psychology. (106)

But the kind of stability that is displayed by the living organism is of a nature somewhat different from the stability of atoms or crystals. It is a stability of process or function rather than a stability of form. (154)

As Bohr has pointed out, it may well be that a description of the living organism that could be called complete from the standpoint of the physicist cannot be given, since it would require experiments that interfere too strongly with the biological functions. (155)

Therefore, we have here actually the final proof for the unity of matter. All the elementary particles are made of the same substance, which we may call energy or universal matter; they are just different forms in which matter can appear. ¶ If we compare this situation with the Aristotelian concepts of matter and form, we can say that the matter of Aristotle, which is mere "potentia," should be compared to our concept of energy, which gets into "actuality" by means of the form, when the elementary particle is created. (160)

The physicist may be satisfied when he has a mathematical scheme and knows how to use it for the interpretation of experiments. But he has to speak about his results also to nonphysicists who will not be satisfied unless some explanation is given in plain language, understandable to everybody. Even for the physicist the description in plain language will be a criterion of the degree of understanding that has been reached. To what extent is such a description at all possible? This is a problem of language as much as of physics.... (168)

Furthermore, one of the most important features of the development and the analysis of modern physics is the experience that the concepts of natural language, vaguely defined as they are, seem to be more stable in the expansion of knowledge than the precise terms of scientific language, derived as an idealization from only limited groups of phenomena. This is in fact not surprising since the concepts of natural language are formed by the immediate connection with reality; they represent reality. It is true that they are not very well defined and may therefore also undergo changes in the course of centuries, just as reality itself did, but they never lose the immediate connection with reality. On the other hand, the scientific concepts are idealizations; they are derived from experience obtained by refined experimental tools and are precisely defined through axioms and definitions. Only through these precise definitions is it possible to connect the concepts with a mathematical scheme and to derive mathematically the infinite variety of possible phenomena in this field. But through this process of idealization and precise definition the immediate connection with reality is lost.(200)

We know that any understanding must be based finally upon the natural language because it is only there that we can be certain to touch reality, and hence we must be skeptical about any skepticism with regard to this natural language and its essential concepts. (201-2)

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Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1958).

Peace on Earth (to Men of Good Will)

Hail the newborn Prince of Peace!

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government will be upon his shoulder, and his name will be called "Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." (Is 9:6)

I recently read Werner Heisenberg's Gifford Lectures (1955-56), on which I'll post later. In the meantime, I thought one particular passage was particularly appropriate to this feast. Here, Heisenberg is talking about the way scientists can advance peace in the world, and in particular how they are often asked to endorse peace resolutions:

Such [solemn] resolutions [in favor of world peace] may seem a welcome proof of goodwill; but anyone who speaks in favor of peace without stating precisely the conditions of this peace must at once be suspected of speaking only about that kind of peace in which he and his group thrive best—which of course would be completely worthless. Any honest declaration for peace must be an enumeration of the sacrifices one is prepared to make for its preservation.

Sacrifice. Peace needs sacrifice. Already in the Nativity we see the sacrifice of the Prince of Peace adumbrated: in the slaughter of the Innocents, in his Circumcision. In traditional icons, the bindings swaddling the Infant foreshadow the binding of the entombed Crucified.

For in him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. (Col 1:19-20)

Our redemption begins with the Incarnation, made manifest in our Lord's birth.

Merry Christmas!

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Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1958), 192-3.

Hawking off the Reservation Again

The media have been aflurry with Hawking's latest pronouncement. The Wall Street Journal features an excerpt of his recently published book The Grand Design, written with Leonard Mlodinow. Here's an excerpt of that excerpt:

Newton believed that our strangely habitable solar system did not "arise out of chaos by the mere laws of nature." Instead, he maintained that the order in the universe was "created by God at first and conserved by him to this Day in the same state and condition." The discovery recently of the extreme fine-tuning of so many laws of nature could lead some back to the idea that this grand design is the work of some grand Designer. Yet the latest advances in cosmology explain why the laws of the universe seem tailor-made for humans, without the need for a benevolent creator.

(But why not a malevolent creator?)

Hawking then reviews the so-called anthropic coincidences—the apparent fine tuning of constants in our mathematical laws of physics—without which the human life, or even the continued existence of the universe itself would be impossible.

Many people would like us to use these [anthropic] coincidences as evidence of the work of God. The idea that the universe was designed to accommodate mankind appears in theologies and mythologies dating from thousands of years ago. In Western culture the Old Testament contains the idea of providential design, but the traditional Christian viewpoint was also greatly influenced by Aristotle, who believed "in an intelligent natural world that functions according to some deliberate design."

[If the universe weren't intelligent in some sense, then how could intelligence discover its rules?]

That is not the answer of modern science. As recent advances in cosmology suggest, the laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously from nothing. Spontaneous creation [!] is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.

Our universe seems to be one of many, each with different laws. That multiverse idea is not a notion invented to account for the miracle of fine tuning. It is a consequence predicted by many theories in modern cosmology. If it is true it reduces the strong anthropic principle to the weak one, putting the fine tunings of physical law on the same footing as the environmental factors, for it means that our cosmic habitat—now the entire observable universe—is just one of many.

Each universe has many possible histories and many possible states. Only a very few would allow creatures like us to exist. Although we are puny and insignificant on the scale of the cosmos, this makes us in a sense the lords of creation.

As soon as Hawking invokes the word "creation," he's departed physics for metaphysics. Physics of any kind can only study things that move. Creation is not a motion: something either exists or it doesn't. There is no motion between the two discrete states of being and non-being. Mathematical physics can't even handle the concept "nothing" (of course zero is not nothing).

How could nothing (really nothing) generate something? Hawking is using "nothing" equivocally. Perhaps this fuzzy mode of thinking descends from Newton's equivocal use of zero in calculus (at once and in the same expression the variable is zero in one instance, while in another it's non-zero). Or perhaps it's just another manifestation of perennial fuzzy thinking inspired by the consequentialism of the hypothetical-deductive model of science.

Hawking might ask himself how the multiverse exists. And on what basis does Hawking presume the laws of physics¹ are self-existent?

"Off the reservation" is a phrase that means "gone rogue." Stephen Hawking hasn't so much gone rogue as shown once again that he is unable to restrict himself to the territory of physics at which he is so adept. He insists on trespassing outside to a subject he shows no evidence of ever having studied seriously: philosophy. Without a serious study of this subject (or at least consulting real experts), Hawking can only pull his ideas from the winds of unreflective (pop) culture: a disappointing performance from a world-class intellect.

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Of course the whole controversy (like so many in the media) is a tempest in a tea-pot. Why should anyone care what Hawking says about any random (i.e., non-physics) subject? Xkcd pegs it in this insightful cartoon.

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Note

1. Hawking was much wiser when he wrote: "Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire in the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?"

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Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, The Grand Design (Bantam, 2010).

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Update (2010-10-05): One can hardly do better than William E. Carroll in addressing the philosophical issues Hawking raises, as in this passage:

Creation is not primarily some distant event. Rather, it is the ongoing, complete causing of the existence of all that is. At this very moment, were God not causing all that is to exist, there would be nothing at all. Creation concerns the origin of the universe, not its temporal beginning. Indeed, it is important to recognize this distinction between origin and beginning. The former affirms the complete, continuing dependence of all that is on God as cause. It may very well be that the universe had a temporal beginning, but there is no contradiction in the notion of an eternal, created universe, for were the universe to be without a beginning it still would have an origin; it still would be created. This is precisely the position of Thomas Aquinas, who accepted as a matter of faith that the universe had a temporal beginning but also defended the intelligibility of a universe simultaneously created and eternal. ("Stephen Hawking’s Creation Confusion")

Fallacious Application of "non-Euclidean" to Physical Space

Physicists sometimes talk about space—by which they of course mean physical space—as Euclidean or non-Euclidean. The problem with this way of speaking is that geometry is timeless. It cannot really apply to physical space.

Notice that if there's one lesson that Einstein's relativity has taught us, it is that space is intrinsically temporal: you can't have one without the other, which is why the combination in the relativistic context is usually called spacetime. Our measurements of length are always in time.

To see this point more clearly (more clearly at least if you are a physicist; I make no guarantees for others), think of the the Minkowski diagram, which plots time on the vertical axis and position on the horizontal (looking at a diagram may be helpful). (It also applies to general relativity with flat spacetimes, that is, regions far from masses.) Light rays are marked at 45-degree angles that divide the plane into four quadrants; the "light cone" consists of the north and south quadrants. There are time-like intervals (points that that lie within the "light cone," that is, that are separated enough in time that they can connect causally) and space-like intervals (points outside the light-cone, that is separated so far in space that they cannot connect causally).

To test whether space is Euclidean, one would have to set out measuring rods in the present, in other words, along the space-like interval parallel to the position (horizontal) axis. (And then test whether parallel lines remain parallel, or else either converge or diverge....)

But relativity has shown us that what one considers the present depends on one's state of motion: the ordering of events is not absolute, there is no unambiguous or absolute "present". On the Minkowski diagram in the frame of a primary, stationary observer, the "present" of a second, moving observer appears as an x' axis tilted obliquely to the x axis.

The assumption of what we usually mean by "length measurement" is that one measures both ends at once (as de Koninck points out, in contradistinction from Maritain, there is no absolute notion of length apart from an observer situated in space and time). Length measurements that are simultaneous in one frame are not simultaneous in another. Because of the relativity of simultaneity, "at once," and thus length measurement, becomes tied to the relative states of motion of the measurer and the object measured.

As we have seen, there is no unambiguous "now"; so the application or denial of the qualifier "Euclidean" to physical space confuses physics for pure mathematics (the error of Descartes). It presumes some sort of a timeless frame for making length measurements and it is precisely the existence of such an absolute frame that relativity denies.

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This argument occurred to me when reading Vincent Smith, and was corroborated by de Koninck writing about Eddington.

Vincent Edward Smith, Philosophical Physics (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950), 355.

Charles de Koninck, The writings of Charles de Koninck, vol 1, ed. & trans. Ralph McInerny (Notre Dame, Ind. : University of Notre Dame Press, 2008), 147-158.

Feminism and the Experimental Exemplar

In response to my last post an anonymous commentator took me to task for my statements about women. With admirable concision, she says, "How dare you attempt to define what it means to be a woman... YOU AREN'T ONE."

On one level, this is pure nonsense, as many of the other commentators who came to my defense (thank you) noted. On the other hand, this woman expresses a common modern view: that it is objectionable to make objective observations about groups of which one is not a member. A friend related to me how he was denounced for implying that South and East Asians tend to be good with mathematics. There are sometimes popular controversies when a white sports commentator praises the talents of Black athletes as such. And let's not forget the "Nappy Hair" controversy in which a white teacher was hounded out of a school for using a book (by an African-American author) about a beautiful Black girl with "nappy" hair.

Now it is very reasonable to see as silly for anyone to object to praise, but on reflection, I came to realize that such objections are inevitable given modern assumptions about what it means to be human.

Take this statement by a prominent American jurist:

At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.

That's the famed "mystery passage" from Justice Kennedy's majority opinion in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey. It's all about self-definition. Only I define myself, I am not to be defined by anyone else.

This belief finds its root in the modern exaltation of the experimental method above all else. This cultural paradigm has two mutually exclusive parts: the experimenter and the experimental subject under investigation: the knower and the known. The experimenter is incorporeal and transcends all rational consideration, but the subject is corporeal and purely passive or receptive. (Notice that the anonymous commentator calls me "a male-bodied person"—as if my masculinity were only a characteristic of my body, not my whole self. This is modern mind-body dualism: I'm not my body but a disembodied intelligence that owns my body.)

It is distinctively human to know: in the visible universe, humans are the only creatures who know intellectually. Modernity takes as the exemplar of humanity the experimenter who can know but cannot be known. On the other hand, the experimental subject cannot know: it is not human, or somehow less than fully human.

So there are two categories: the knower and the known. Modernity cleaves an impassible boundary between these two: there is no overlap at any given time: one is either known or a knower. So that when someone makes an observation about a group, the modern person implicitly interprets this as an assertion of dominance ("I can know you" = "I transcend you") and an assertion that the group being discussed is somehow less than fully human. (This is a large part of the reason "essentialism" is thoughtcrime in the academy today.)

In reality of course, all of us can be known by others. We have objective traits. Even our mode of knowing reveals something about us. The active and the passive are inextricably intertwined in the human person (as in all creatures), not two separable halves. Knowing itself requires not only acting on the universe, but also being acted upon by the universe. How could I see if light did not act on my eyes, or hear if sound did not act on my ears? In touching I act on something, but am also acted upon. Humans as such are not only actors but also receivers of action.

In making positive statements about what it means to be a woman, our commentator think that I am insulting women by observing they have a nature that can be known. But it is really modernity that insults women:

• by ascribing personhood only to the invisible, knowing, core of a human, to whom the body and its traits are only accidental,
• by reconceiving humanity to exclude being known,
• by redefining receptivity (characteristically feminine²) to be less than human.

Of course femininity and masculinity make no sense without each other. They likewise make no sense without recognition of the end of their union: the procreation of new humans. Women in particular are ridiculous without an understanding of their relation to procreation: the womb, the mammary glands make no sense without their purpose: nurturing a baby. Without that, they are wastes of flesh. Women's wide hips are inefficient for running: what would be the point if the enlarged crania of human children didn't need a wide birth canal? But if women did not have these distinctive physiological features, or the hormonal system that supports their activity, what would separate them from men? Nothing.

Masculinity and femininity (pace our commentator) do not stop with the body, but permeate the soul. Men and women approach reality—know it—in distinctive, complementary ways. This is why one can enjoy the company of a person of the other sex without any genital activity or intentions. There is a mutual complementarity of soul, a give and take, that makes it pleasurable for men and women to talk. It is tragic that our society, in its monomaniacal focus on orgasm, is blind to this more gentle, non-genital form of sexual activity ("sexual" understood in its original sense). It is tragic that mind-body dualism, such as expressed by our commentator, has impoverished our culture and our lives.

Feminists like our commentator are victims of this ideology and unwitting agents of its spread. But perhaps ultimately they are not entirely to blame. Blindness to the more subtle, non-corporeal aspects of sexual complementarity may be the result of psychological trauma. Feminists are often deeply wounded women, and almost always it is the men in their lives who have wounded them.

When men fail to take seriously their responsibility to protect women, and abuse their power, women end up trying to take control. The unfortunate result is feminism³

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Notes

1. Clifford R. Goldstein misses the point when he says Kennedy is merely protecting conscience rights (religious and otherwise) in the American tradition. He makes Kennedy's statement equivalent to Justice Felix Frankfurter's "Certainly the affirmative pursuit of one's convictions about the ultimate mystery of the universe and man's relation to it is placed beyond the reach of law." Notice the invocation of "law": the Frankfurter statement is about the limits of the law, while Kennedy is philosophizing about ultimate realities (the hubris!). Further, Frankfurter speaks of "the affirmative pursuit of one's convictions" (a freedom for the good as one perceives it), while Kennedy is declaring a right to "define" one's self, not unlike the "knowing good and evil" (i.e., right to define good and evil) that the serpent offered to Eve—a freedom from all outside influences. Goldstein misconceives conscience in precisely the way that Kennedy does, as a self-defining freedom rather than a power that recognizes God's truth mediated by our nature.

2. As I say in the body of text, it is procreation that defines femininity and masculinity. Without procreation, it would make no sense to have sexes (and indeed contraception's destruction of procreation has brought the effacement of sexual differences). There is nothing distinctively feminine except in light of women's role in procreation (also true of the masculine and men, as well as of men and women who forgo procreation to use their masculinity and femininity in other unselfish life-giving ways). Now as Aristotle says, we call feminine was produces life within itself and masculine what produces life in another (e.g., "Mother Nature", the Sun personified as masculine). Thus the feminine that reproduces in conjunction with the masculine is necessarily receptive: she must receive the masculine element into herself to conceive. Notice that in human courtship, the male plays the more active role of approaching the female who can receive (or reject). In social dancing likewise, the male plays the active role and the female the receptive (in Scholastic terminology, "passive") role. Note: women aren't purely receptive; only primary matter is purely receptive. All substantial beings are a mixture of actuality and receptivity.

3. Likewise when kings fail to care for their subjects and aristocrats lord their privilege over commoners, the result is Revolution.

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Just ran across this ironic invocation of something very like the mystery passage.