QUOTATIONS #8

Helena Sheehan --: It is tempting to acquiesce, so enormous are the problems and complications. But we must not, for the world cannot afford this epistemological paralysis, this ontological despair. If we must renounce the quest for certainty and settle for warranted assertibility, then let us do so. Warranted assertibility is no small thing, and, sadder but wiser, let us go on with it and let us assert. Let us by all means take account of the problems and let us also take care to be clear about what it means to be "warranted". But, in doing so, let us remember that, however theory-laden our observations, past observations have been formative of our theories. Let us be aware that, however impossible it is to encounter such a thing as a "raw datum", our constitutive concepts had not emerged ex nihilo. They are the product of the active coping of our species with a reality irreducible to itself. Our ideas, at least our saner and more successful ones, bear always the impress both of ourselves and something beyond ourselves. [The Unity Of Science]

B.A.G. Fuller --: Naturalism, challenging the cogency of the cosmological, teleological, and moral arguments, holds that the universe requires no supernatural cause and government, but is self-existent, self-explanatory, self-operating, and self-directing, that the world-process is not teleological and anthropocentric, but purposeless, deterministic (except for possible tychistic events), and only incidentally productive of man; that human life, physical, mental, moral and spiritual, is an ordinary natural event attributable in all respects to the ordinary operations of nature; and that man's ethical values, compulsions, activities, and restraints can be justified on natural grounds, without recourse to supernatural sanctions, and his highest good pursued and attained under natural conditions, without expectation of a supernatural destiny. [Runes Dictionary Of Philosophy]

Iredell Jenkins --: [Naturalism is] the general philosophical position which has as its fundamental tenet the proposition that the natural world is the whole of reality. "Nature" and "natural world" are certainly ambiguous terms, but this much is clear in thus restricting reality, naturalism means to assert that there is but one system or level of reality, that this system is the totality of objects and events in space and time; and that the behavior of this system is determined only by its own character and is reducible to a set of causal laws. Nature is thus conceived as self-contained and self-dependent, and from this view spring certain negations that define to a great extent the influence of naturalism. First, it is denied that nature is derived from or dependent upon any transcendent, supernatural entities. From this follows the denial that the order of natural events can be intruded upon. And this in turn entails the denial of freedom, purpose, and transcendent destiny. Within the context of these views there is evidently allowance for divergent doctrines, but certain general tendencies can be noticed. The metaphysics of naturalism is always monistic and if any teleological element is introduced it is emergent. Man is viewed as coordinate with other parts of nature, and naturalistic psychology emphasizes the physical basis of human behavior; ideas and ideals are largely treated as artifacts, though there is disagreement as to the validity to be assigned them. The axiology of naturalism can seek its values only within the context of human character and experience, and must ground these values on individual self-realization or social utility; though again there is disagreement as to both the content and the final validity of the values there discovered. Naturalistic epistemologies have varied between the extremes of rationalism and positivism, but they consistently limit knowledge to natural events and the relationships holding between them, and so direct inquiry to a description and systematization of what happens in nature. The beneficent task that naturalism recurrently performs is that of recalling attention from a blind absorption in theory to a fresh consideration of the facts and values exhibited in nature and life. [Runes Dictionary Of Philosophy]

Sheldon Gottlieb --: Science is an intellectual activity carried on by humans that is designed to discover information about the natural world in which humans live and to discover the ways in which this information can be organized into meaningful patterns. A primary aim of science is to collect facts (data). An ultimate purpose of science is to discern the order that exists between and amongst the various facts. [lecture series at the University of South Alabama]

Steven M. Holland --: We [scientists] wouldn't know truth if it jumped up and bit us in the ass. We're probably fairly good at recognizing what's false, and that's what science does on a day-to-day basis, but we can't claim to identify truth.

Karl R. Popper --: I think that we shall have to get accustomed to the idea that we must not look upon science as a "body of knowledge", but rather as a system of hypotheses, or as a system of guesses or anticiptations that in principle cannot be justified, but with which we work as long as they stand up to tests, and of which we are never justified in saying that we know they are "true". [The Logic of Scientific Discovery]

Helena Sheehan --: The very idea of the unity of science, let us acknowledge it straight out, is grounded in the ontological assumption of the unity of the world. Philosophers here have a role to play in arguing over the legitimacy of such an assumption. For my part, I would argue that, while there are no knock-down, drag-out, non-question-begging proofs for our most fundamental ontological assumptions, we can nevertheless state why and how such assumptions are more warranted than any of the contending alternatives. In fact, all of us, at least those of us who pass as sane, to some extent do inevitably presuppose that reality is somehow one, for the very essence of what we call thinking is making connections, finding patterns, probing for unifying concepts. Certainly in pursuing science, we presuppose a kind of unity of the world, for organising experiments and interpreting results rests on the assumption that the flow of events is structured, ordered, lawful. A random, disconnected, indeterminate universe could not be conceptualised. Indeed, it would not be a universe. However, we proceed, and we assume that what we are dealing with is in fact a universe; that, beneath all the complexity and diversity there is some sort of underlying unity. [The Unity Of Science]

Joe Faith --: The underlying problem is with how we understand cause in the natural world. Dennett, along with Richard Dawkins and the vast majority of other practising scientists, is an empiricist. This means that he ultimately agrees with David Hume's definition of cause as simply being a correlation between events. .....Richard Dawkins is quite explicit in his agreement - at least in how the concept of `cause´ is used in practice: "Philosophers, possibly with justification, make heavy weather of the concept of causation, but to a working biologist causation is a rather simple statistical concept. Operationally we can never demonstrate that a particular observed event C caused a particular result R, although it will often be judged highly likely. What biologists in practice usually do is to establish statistically that events of class R reliably follow events of class C. Statistical methods are designed to help us assess, to any specified level of probabilistic confidence, whether the results we obtain really indicate a causal relationship." Dennett, being a philosopher, is never going to be tied down that simply, but he too basically agrees: `If one finds a predictive pattern of the sort just described one has ipso facto discovered a causal power a difference in the world that makes a subsequent difference testable by standard empirical methods of variable manipulation.´ The problem with this definition of cause is that it doesn't give us a way of looking beneath the surface appearances of events, to their underlying reality. Marx once noted that if the world worked just as it appeared to, then there would be no need for science. .....The empiricist definition of cause raises a correlation between events into a real mechanism, and tends to obscure the complexities and dynamics of real life. You can see why it has always been the favourite philosophy of the British ruling class. The empiricist definition of cause tends to mix up the processes of description and explanation. A description of a series of events just picks out significant regularities in them. An explanation, on the other hand, starts from a description, then relates these regularities to forces and mechanisms that are not present in the data described, but rather go on beneath the surface. We only know a description is correct if we can `ground´ it in an explanation. [Dennett, Materialism, and Empiricism]

Frederick C. Copleston --: The attempt to by-pass or exclude metaphysics will often be found to involve a concealed metaphysical assumption, an unavowed theory of being. In other words, the theory that scientific advance pushes metaphysics out of the picture is mistaken. Metaphysics simply reappears in the form of concealed assumptions. [A History of Philosophy, Vol. VIII, p.120]

Pierre-Simon Laplace --: We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes. [Essai philosophique sur les probabilites]

Rupert Sheldrake --: If we want to stick to the idea of natural laws, we could say that as nature itself evolves, the laws of nature also evolve, just as human laws evolve over time. But then how would natural laws be remembered or enforced? The law metaphor is embarrassingly anthropomorphic. Habits are less human-centred. Many kinds of organisms have habits, but only humans have laws. [World Question Center, 2005]

Lee Smolin --: Physicists I've met who knew Einstein told me they found his thinking slow compared to the stars of the day. While he was competent enough with the basic mathematical tools of physics, many other physicists surrounding him in Berlin and Princeton were better at it. So what accounted for his genius? In retrospect, I believe what allowed Einstein to achieve so much was primarily a moral quality. He simply cared far more than most of his colleagues that the laws of physics have to explain everything in nature coherently and consistently. As a result he was acutely sensitive to flaws and contradictions in the logical structure of physical theories. Einstein's ability to see flaws and his fierce refusal to compromise had real repercussions. His professors did not support him in his search for an academic job and he was unemployed until he found work as a patent inspector. The problem was not just that he skipped classes. He saw right through his elders' complacent acceptance of Newtonian physics. The young Einstein was obsessed with logical flaws that were glaringly obvious, but only to him. While the great English physicist Lord Rayleigh said he saw "only a few clouds on the horizon" remaining to be understood, the 16-year-old Einstein wondered what would happen to his image in a mirror if he traveled faster than the speed of light. [Einstein's Legacy: Where are the Einsteinians?]

Carlo Rovelli --: I think that the notions of space and time will turn out to be useful only within some approximation. They are similar to a notion like "the surface of the water" which looses meaning when we describe the dynamics of the individual atoms forming water and air: if we look at very small scale, there isn't really any actual surface down there. I am convinced space and time are like the surface of the water: convenient macroscopic approximations, flimsy but illusory and insufficient screens that our mind uses to organize reality. In particular, I am convinced that time is an artifact of the approximation in which we disregard the large majority of the degrees of freedom of reality. Thus "time" is just the reflection of our ignorance. I am also convinced, but cannot prove, that there are no objects, but only relations. By this I mean that I am convinced that there is a consistent way of thinking about nature, that refers only to interactions between systems and not to states or changes of individual systems. I am convinced that this way of thinking nature will end up to be the useful and natural one in physics. [World Question Center, 2005]

Alan Kay --: Einstein said "You must learn to distinguish between what is true and what is real". An apt longer quote of his is: "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality". I.e. it is "true" that the three angles of a triangle add up to 180 in Euclidean geometry of the plane, but it is not known how to show that this could hold in our physical universe (if there is any mass or energy in our universe then it doesn't seem to hold, and it is not actually known what our universe would be like without any mass or energy). So, science is a relationship between what we can represent and are able to think about, and "what's out there": it's an extension of good map making, most often using various forms of mathematics as the mapping languages. When we guess in science we are guessing about approximations and mappings to languages, we are not guessing about "the truth" (and we are not in a good state of mind for doing science if we think we are guessing "the truth" or "finding the truth"). This is not at all well understood outside of science, and there are unfortunately a few people with degrees in science who don't seem to understand it either. [World Question Center, 2005]

"The Good Brahmin", related by Will Durant --: The Brahmin said, "I wish I had never been born." "Why so?" said I. "Because," he replied, "I have been studying these forty years, and I find that it has been so much time lost … I believe that I am composed of matter, but I have never been able to satisfy myself what it is that produces thought. I am even ignorant whether my understanding is a simple faculty like that of walking or digesting, or if I think with my head in the same manner as I take hold of a thing with my hands … I talk a great deal and when I have done speaking, I remain confounded and ashamed of what I have said." The same day I had a conversation with an old woman, his neighbor. I asked her if she had ever been unhappy for not understanding how her soul was made? She did not even comprehend my question. She had not, for the briefest moment in her life, had a thought about these subjects with which the good Brahmin had so tormented himself. She believed in the bottom of her heart in the metamorphoses of Vishnu, and provided she could get some sacred water of the Ganges in which to make her ablutions she thought herself the happiest of women. Struck with the happiness of this poor creature, I returned to my philosopher, whom I thus addressed: "Are you not ashamed to be thus miserable when, not fifty yards from you, there is an old automaton who thinks of nothing and lives contented?" "You are right," he replied. "I have said to myself a thousand times That I should be happy if I were but as ignorant as my old neighbor; and yet it is a happiness which I do not desire." This reply of the Brahmin made a greater impression on me than anything that had passed. [The Story of Philosophy]

Philip E. Johnson --: Science is a wonderful thing in its place. Because science is so successful in its own territory, however, scientists and their allied philosophers sometimes get bemused by dreams of world conquest. Paul Feyerabend put it best: "Scientists are not content with running their own playpens in accordance with what they regard as the rules of the scientific method, they want to universalize those rules, they want them to become part of society at large, and they use every means at their disposal--argument, propaganda, pressure tactics, intimidation, lobbying--to achieve their aims." Samuel Johnson gave the best answer to this absurd imperialism. "A cow is a very good animal in the field; but we turn her out of a garden." [review, "Dennett's Dangerous Idea"]

Helena Sheehan --: There is the anglo-american positivist and tradition, which has pursued the ideal of a unified science, intending to leave no unbridgeable gaps, but its unity, whether of the phenomenalist or physicalist variety, has been of a highly reductionist sort, leaving us with a severely constricted framework, with no way of accounting for what is distinctively human. Either it must be left unaccounted for or an account must be sought outside the boundaries of science. As the choice is often posed, we must either leave the sciences to go their separate ways or reduce all the rest to physics. Other intellectual traditions, also part of continental or anglo-american intellectual history, such as marxism or pragmatism / radical empiricism / naturalism / process philosophy, point to more promising possibilities. The choice between separatism or reductionism must be rejected. We can pursue the unity of science without adopting the reductionist model by opting for a philosophy of integrative levels. There is an optimal philosophy for achieving the unity of science. It is an evolutionary, integrative, emergentist form of materialism. It is a philosophy which is oriented to explaining the world in terms of the world itself, without unwarranted appeals to forces outside the world to explain the world. It considers scientific method to be all-encompassing, and leaves no part of reality untouched by science and beyond its boundaries, needing no élan vital or Ground of Being to be brought in to explain it. It takes account of the role of time and developmental process in constituting the world and ourselves as what we are and what we may yet be. It does not succumb to the temptation to think there can be any adequate explanation of a thing without a full realisation of its historicity. It looks to the interrelatedness of things as essential to comprehending what they are and therefore seeks to put an end to the impoverishment of every discipline through its disconnectedness with other disciplines. It recognises the ascending levels of complexity in the organisation of matter and the emergence of novelty in the evolutionary process, such that each level is rooted in the preceding level without being reducible to it. It construes the methodological relationship between the different sciences as parallel to the ontological relationship between the different levels of reality, with the various sciences emergent from each other thus: physics ^ chemistry ^ biology ^ psychology ^ social sciences. It is not a retreat to an undifferentiated unity, recognising always that specialisation has been necessary to the development of the sciences, but that overspecialisation must be transcended in a higher synthesis that gives full scope to both the relatedness and distinctness of the specific areas. [The Unity Of Science]

James Madison --: The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. [Federalist Papers No. 47]

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