PING!!! just in case you-all might find this of interest... and possibly have the time to share your insights....
Sounds like someone's putting Descartes before the Force...
No doubt it's all very interesting at one level or the other.
I had this same realization during my freshman year in college. Then the buzz wore off.
This paper is an excellent example of why thousands of years of philosophy produced little, but just a few lifetimes of application of the rules of science created the modern world.
All the philosophical commentaries on the cell to baby issue went nowhere, to use an example from the paper. But some embryology and the advent of DNA research has made possible an answer to such questions.
Mind alone produces only philosophy - a mind using the scientific method is capable of adding to the accreted total of knowledge. That has made the modern world.
Summary: Philosophers talk. Scientists experiment.
But for quantum gravity. "Ah, there's the rub."
ping
Pascal said that there are two ways of thinking: the intuitive mind (esprit de finesse) and the mathematical mind (esprit de geometrie). He thought the intuitive mind was superior to the other and therefore stopped doing math and science and moved on to theology.
I think he got it right. Rather than try to eliminate the difference bewteen these two ways of knowing, let's acknowledge the difference, set them in a hierarchy with theology superior to science, and let people choose which way they want to think. They can even move between the two if they so choose as long as they keep their bearings about which kind of thinking they are doing.
We have already gotten rid of the "Cartesian Split." It's called the American education system. It only creaes the muddled mind. It's been a dismal failure.
I would disagree with this idea. The ensuing Hellenistic age did much more to establish science and the scientific method than the ancients. Russo's book "The Forgotten Revolution" is a good (if a bit pro-Hellenistic) introduction to this era.
"I think not," replied Descartes.
Then he disappeared.
Boy, you do dig up some really deep stuff; for me, a simpler way to put it is that man can't walk past god without pausing.
He missed how Protagoras developed string theory.
12:40 am on Sunday night is not the time to be reading this. Bookmarked for later read.
I have previously stated that you are not to ping me. If it occurs again I will refer the matter to the moderators.
This is all nonsense.
"Science" -- organized thinking,
rigorous thinking --
was born where ever
sailing cultures exchanged goods
with diverse cultures.
China, India
and even Polynesia
(to name just a few)
achieved amazing
things. Focusing on the Greeks
is just a structure
academia
has settled on to present
a view of history
that's "cleaned up," without
loose-ends and turns its focus
to "workable" myths.
Bad theology and philosophy. Descartes' philosophy represented a giant step downward from the common sense philosophies of Aristotle and Aquinas.
This essay leaps over the singular event in the birth of Western science, the promulgation of the doctrine of creation from nothing in the thirteenth century.
...as Whitehead pointed out, it is no coincidence that science sprang, not from Ionian metaphysics, not from the Brahmin-Buddhist-Taoist East, not from the Egyptian-Mayan astrological South, but from the heart of the Christian West, that although Galileo fell out with the Church, he would hardly have taken so much trouble studying Jupiter and dropping objects from towers if the reality and value and order of things had not first been conferred by belief in the Incarnation. (Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos)
To the popular mind, science is completely inimical to religion: science embraces facts and evidence while religion professes blind faith. Like many simplistic popular notions, this view is mistaken. Modern science is not only compatible with Christianity, it in fact finds its origins in Christianity. This is not to say that the Bible is a science textbook that contains raw scientific truths, as some evangelical Christians would have us believe. The Christian faith contains deeper truths-- truths with philosophical consequences that make conceivable the mind's exploration of nature: man's place in God's creation, who God is and how he freely created a cosmos.
In large part, the modern mind thinks little of these notions in much the same way that the last thing on a fish's mind is the water it breathes. It is difficult for those raised in a scientific world to appreciate the plight of the ancient mind trapped within an eternal and arbitrary world. It is difficult for those raised in a post-Christian world to appreciate the radical novelty and liberation Christian ideas presented to the ancient mind.
The following selection summarizes the most notable work of Stanley Jaki, renowned historian of science and Templeton Prize laureate.
How did Christian belief provide a cultural matrix (womb) for the growth of science?
In Christ and Science (p. 23), Jaki gives four reasons for modern science's unique birth in Christian Western Europe:
Jaki notes that before Christ the Jews never formed a very large community (priv. comm.). In later times, the Jews lacked the Christian notion that Jesus was the monogenes or unigenitus, the only-begotten of God. Pantheists like the Greeks tended to identify the monogenes or unigenitus with the universe itself, or with the heavens. Jaki writes:
Herein lies the tremendous difference between Christian monotheism on the one hand and Jewish and Muslim monotheism on the other. This explains also the fact that it is almost natural for a Jewish or Muslim intellectual to become a patheist. About the former Spinoza and Einstein are well-known examples. As to the Muslims, it should be enough to think of the Averroists. With this in mind one can also hope to understand why the Muslims, who for five hundred years had studied Aristotle's works and produced many commentaries on them failed to make a breakthrough. The latter came in medieval Christian context and just about within a hundred years from the availability of Aristotle's works in Latin
As we will see below, the break-through that began science was a Christian commentary on Aristotle's De Caelo (On the Heavens).
So how did it all happen? Or fail to happen?
Fr. Paul Haffner writes:
ReferencesModern experimental science was rendered possible, Jaki has shown, as a result of the Christian philosophical atmosphere of the Middle Ages. Although a talent for science was certainly present in the ancient world (for example in the design and construction of the Egyptian pyramids), nevertheless the philosophical and psychological climate was hostile to a self-sustaining scientific process. Thus science suffered still-births in the cultures of ancient China, India, Egypt and Babylonia. It also failed to come to fruition among the Maya, Incas and Aztecs of the Americas. Even though ancient Greece came closer to achieving a continuous scientific enterprise than any other ancient culture, science was not born there either. Science did not come to birth among the medieval Muslim heirs to Aristotle.
....The psychological climate of such ancient cultures, with their belief that the universe was infinite and time an endless repetition of historical cycles, was often either hopelessness or complacency (hardly what is needed to spur and sustain scientific progress); and in either case there was a failure to arrive at a belief in the existence of God the Creator and of creation itself as therefore rational and intelligible. Thus their inability to produce a self-sustaining scientific enterprise.
If science suffered only stillbirths in ancient cultures, how did it come to its unique viable birth? The beginning of science as a fully fledged enterprise took place in relation to two important definitions of the Magisterium of the Church. The first was the definition at the Fourth Lateran Council in the year 1215, that the universe was created out of nothing at the beginning of time. The second magisterial statement was at the local level, enunciated by Bishop Stephen Tempier of Paris who, on March 7, 1277, condemned 219 Aristotelian propositions, so outlawing the deterministic and necessitarian views of creation.
These statements of the teaching authority of the Church expressed an atmosphere in which faith in God had penetrated the medieval culture and given rise to philosophical consequences. The cosmos was seen as contingent in its existence and thus dependent on a divine choice which called it into being; the universe is also contingent in its nature and so God was free to create this particular form of world among an infinity of other possibilities. Thus the cosmos cannot be a necessary form of existence; and so it has to be approached by a posteriori investigation. The universe is also rational and so a coherent discourse can be made about it. Indeed the contingency and rationality of the cosmos are like two pillars supporting the Christian vision of the cosmos.
The rise of science needed the broad and persistent sharing by the whole population, that is, the entire culture, of a very specific body of doctrines relating the universe to a universal and absolute intelligibility embodied in the tenet about a personal God, the Creator of all. Therefore it was not chance that the first physicist was John Buridan, professor at the Sorbonne around the year 1330, just after the time of the two above-mentioned statements of the Church's teaching office.
Buridan's vision of the universe was steeped in the Christian doctrine of the creation; in particular, he rejected the Aristotelian idea [in De Caelo] of a cosmos existing from all eternity. He developed the idea of impetus in which God was seen as responsible for the initial setting in motion of the heavenly bodies, which then remained in motion without the necessity of a direct action on the part of God. This was different from Aristotle's approach, in which the motion of heavenly bodies had no beginning and would also have no end. Buridan's work was continued by his disciple, Nicholas Oresme, around the year 1370; impetus theory anticipated Newton's first law of motion.
The doctrine that God created the universe out of nothing and that the universe had a beginning was later to be reiterated at the First Vatican Council, against the errors of materialism and pantheism which enjoyed a new vogue at that time. In addition, Vatican I stated the absolute freedom of God to create, and made clear (against fideism) the possibility of arriving at God's existence through a rational reflection upon creation. As Jaki states: ``The Council, in line with a tradition almost two millenia old, could but insist on the very foundation of that relation which is man's ability to see the reasonability of revelation, which in turn is inconceivable if man is not able to infer from the world surrounding him the existence of its Creator.
It is precisely the inability of many scientists to trace the grandeur of the Creator in His works that Jaki opposes with great skill. He challenges the atheistic positions of R. Dawkins in the biological sphere and of Stephen Hawking in physics. He shows that the best way to unmask the thought of non-believing scientists is to show how the basis for their reasoning cannot be proven scientifically. In an unjustified way they leave the realm of their own scientific disciplines and make a priori philosophical deductions against Christian belief. Again, one example of this is the pervasive ``chance'' or ``chaos'' ideology used to ``explain'' the coming into being of the material universe, of life and of the human person. Stanley Jaki has also refuted such approaches to the cosmos and creation in his masterly work, The Purpose of It All, published in 1990.
The originality of Jaki's thought also lies in the link which he describes between the dogmas of the Creation and the Incarnation. He shows how the development of the doctrine of creation out of nothing was ``connected with the conceptual refinements of the doctrine of the Incarnation around which raged the great inner debates of the early Church.'' Jaki then discusses how the Jewish position on creation underwent a change during the first few centuries of Christianity. Philo, a contemporary of Jesus, tried to interpret the first chapter of Genesis, but his view ``showed him closer to Greek eternalism than to Biblical creationism.'' The earliest midrashim ``showed that Jewish theologians were no longer willing to uphold the doctrine of the complete submission of matter to the Maker of all.'' In the Mutazalite tradition of Islam there was also a tendency to slide towards emanationism and pantheism, as a result of endorsing the pantheistic necessitarianism of Aristotle.
Jaki clearly affirms that in Christianity, a slide into pantheism was prevented because the doctrine of the creation was bolstered up by faith in the Incarnation. Pantheism is invariably present when the eternal and cyclic view of the cosmos prevails. The uniqueness of the Incarnation and Redemption dashed to pieces any possibility of the eternal and cyclic view; for if the world were cyclic, the once-and-for-all coming of Christ would be undermined. The uniqueness of Christ secures a linear view of history and makes Christianity more than just one among many historical factors influencing the world. The dogmas of the Creation and Incarnation mean ``an absolute and most revolutionary break with a past steeped in paganism,'' and the enunciation of these dogmas and their historical impact is ``an uphill fight never to be completed.''
...
But the cosmos and all the specific laws which govern it do not form a self-explanatory system; they point beyond science and call for a metaphysical foundation in the Christian doctrine of creation. It is precisely this Christian doctrine of creation which, according to Jaki, was the stimulus for the unique viable birth of science. The Christian doctrine of creation finds its expression within the Church.
Jaki, Stanley. Christ and Science. Royal Oak, Michigan: Real View Books, 2000.
Jaki, Stanley. God and the Cosmologists. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1989.
Jaki, Stanley. The Savior of Science. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1990.
Jaki, Stanley. Science and Creation. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1974. Pertinent References and Links
Science: From the Womb of Religion by Stanley L. Jaki
The Absolute Beneath the Relative by Stanley L. Jaki
Why Catholics like Einstein by Sim Johnston
The Galileo Affair by Sim Johnston
The truth about Galileo's treatment by the Church
`Letter to My Children' by Whittaker Chambers
Science, materialism, Communism, and faith
How are we all victims of science's blindness?
Does God Really Exist? by Fr. Robert A. Connor
The self, atheism, rationalism, empiricism, and God
Pope John Paul II's Statement on Evolution
`Death of Darwinism'
the Catholic Church's position on evolution
If you have trouble finding books by Jaki, try contacting the author:
However, I am a little uncomfortable with some of your statements about relativity and quantum mechanics:
One gets the very strong impression that, today, scientific materialists working in the field of biology, and the Neodarwinists in particular, are extraordinarily resistant to the idea that quantum theory has anything at all to do with their discipline. And yet everything that we observe in our 4-dimensional (S1 + S2 + S3 + T1) reality rests upon, depends on, what is going on in the “microworld” of quantum activity.
Quantum theory — and also relativity theory for that matter — places the observer squarely into the game of reality, in such a way that one is tempted to say that it is the observer himself who “constructs” the reality he observes.
Moreover, the microworld of quantum theory speaks the language of universal fields, of quantum indeterminacy, of non-local action, of superposition (“quantum entanglement”), of superluminal velocities, of the primacy of the observer — that is, of all sorts of “bizarre” phenomena which are not at all observable in the macroworld of four-dimensional reality.
While it is true that relativity and quantum mechanics speak in terms of the "observer", and indeed, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is typically formulated in terms of the "observer", I disagree with your thesis that the observer is essential or even central to either theory.
The "observer" is simply a convenience, a construct used to explain the theories with the proper scientific qualifications. In all our debates, qualifications are often missing.
Consider the case of quantum mechanics. Almost always the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is stated using the Gedanken experiment of measuring the position of, say, an electron with a photon. At the instant of the interaction, the location of the electron is known, but the interaction with the photon means that the momentum has a corresponding uncertainty of delta-X/h-bar.
This is a nice explanation but it is unnecessary. Consider the case of an ordinary atom. The positively nucleus attracts the negatively charged electrons. What keeps the electrons from spiraling into the nucleus and anihilating with the protons positron?? Classically, the answer is that the angular momentum of the electon balances out the attractive forces by the centripital force. However, the problem with the classical explanation is that by electromagnetism, an accelerating charge emits a photon of energy. If the angular velocity is omega, then the energy loss rate is omega-squared h-bar. Then you ask the question: how long does it take the electron to spiral into the nucleus by losing all its energy. The answer is a very small fraction of a second.
Well, this doesn't happen. Indeed, there is no decay at all. It is the HUP that keeps the electron from spiraling into the nucleus, not the angular momentum. Indeed, if you solve the Schroedinger equation, you find that there are S-orbitals that correspond to zero angular momentum states. (These are the lowest energy states of the principal quantum states which correspond to radial quantum numbers and solutions to the SE).
The point is, you don't have to invoke an observer at all.
A similar argument can be made for special relativity. Consider the case of ordinary light or radio waves. These both obey the electromagnetic wave equation which is just the simultaneous solution of Maxwell's equations. Maxwell's equations are a result of relativity. Indeed, the magnetic field is just a Lorenz transformed electric field. Therefore, the wave equation is a direct result of the relativistic transforms. Therefore, you don't need an observer to assert that relativity holds: the fact that I can call my kids on a cell phone proves that.
Good piece. I delayed in responding to give me time to carry it off to the coffee shop for proper reading.
The “Cartesian Split” is between that part of the world that is measurable and that part which is not. The scientist works at the edges of the measurable, chipping away, tugging on loose threads and progressively pushing the line ever outward.
The philosopher's job is to look beyond that, to consider that which is unmeasurable. I don't see them as competitors, I see it as a division of labor. The separation isn't hermetic, a scientist can never go beyond the journeyman if he doesn't have at least a sense of the transcendental context in which he works. And his work is grist for the philosopher's mill.
But any discussion of philosophy and the philosopher’s role gets muddied by the fact that philosophy is not one thing, it is not a specific area of knowledge. “Philosophy” would best be divided into the “pre-scientific” on the one hand, and the search for meaning and values on the other.
The “pre-scientific” is not really separate from science, it is usually related to its underlying discipline, it is what any scientist does at some point, or maybe he does so continually. Any scientist must formulate hypotheses, toward which he directs his efforts. Any scientist must periodically step back and try to make sense of the data he has collected, to try and package it into some kind of theory that makes sense. That theory itself then becomes the focus of further study and experimentation. A scientist would not consider himself a philosopher, because he keeps his flights of imagination focused, but it is his ability to project his findings and to use them to look out beyond the known that distinguishes an Einstein from a lab tech.
When you look out beyond the known, you are engaging in “philosophy”. The people who are best at “pre-scientific philosophy” are probably well grounded in their underlying discipline; one could suppose that the best cosmologist might be an astro-physicist after a couple of beers.
The line between the known and the unknown does not stay put, obviously. What was not measurable yesterday may be measurable later this afternoon. New tools emerge, and new ways of calculating the previously incalculable, and so the limits of the measurable press outward, and territory that was once the philosopher’s is quietly ceded to the scientist, and behind him to the engineer and the bricklayer.
Philosophy of this kind is not really separate from science, it is its precursor. It is a necessary part of the process. Some of what is imagined turns out to be wrong, which is par for the course when you step off the charts into the uncharted. But when you’re right, science is positioned for the next leap and you get a high school named after you.
When you're wrong, you're forgotten right along with everyone else. History is ruthless toward the mediocre philosopher, whose only hope is a book deal and a slot on Oprah.
The “other” philosophy, the search for meaning and values, is something we all engage in. Even people who reject the notion that life has any transcendental meaning find themselves getting up in the morning to go out and build careers, businesses, families, as if it meant something. But this kind of philosophy is really separate from anything that a scientist deals with on the job and isn’t really germane to this discussion.
Beyond that, I notice that most everyone has missed the two other points you made. There is more going on than meets the eye, and the work in quantum physics gives us a hint of that. To carry your point to the next level, it could be that some of what we experience as spiritual may have a physical component at the quantum or field level. The secularist might find that comforting, if the spiritual turned out to be material after all. It wouldn't change anything for us, we would continue to be amazed at the inner workings of the design, in awe of the sheer intelligence of the design, as we already are.
The other point people miss continuously is your point that information, the transmission of signals that keeps cellular machines working, the informational template that directs the cells into their proper place, the storage and transmissions of data that we recognize in our own machinery is a key marker that distinguishes life from non-life. This idea is only barely beginning to dawn, but if I could devote myself to any piece of research it would be this. Is the DNA the software code, it seems insufficient, or does it address other information stored elsewhere, in some other fashion? Figuring out how a cell knows how to organize itself and control itself will tell us a lot about how life itself works. Maybe that is the key thing we need to learn if we ever hope to reverse-engineer life.