I was reading a book called The Herring Gull's World by Niko Tinbergen, a Dutch biologist, and came across a passage that made me think of Nietzsche's critique of Darwin. The passage deals with color sense in birds:
"In all these species, the bright colour-patterns concerned could not have developed without the species having a colour sense. But why do Little Owls have a colour sense? I think the solution is probably that in birds the power of colour-discrimination is a rather old acquisition, of which the species makes use or not. In other words, the colour sense was evolved first, and coloured structures with signal functions have developed as adaptations to various needs. If so, we may reasonably expect most birds to be able to distinguish between colours." (emphasis added).
Darwin and Darwinians have tended to make survival the central force moving evolution. This is what Nietzche critiqued in Darwin. Now if this passage from Tinbergen is correct, it implies that color sense in birds did not originally develop as a survival necessity, but as an extravagance, which only later developed a usefulness for survival, and this only in some of the species that had the trait. And if we get rid of the ideological content of Darwin's theory and look at its basic premise--that chance changes in living beings bring about the evolution of species--then such extravagance is to be expected (I would argue it is absolutely necessary). The changes brought about by chance processes may be harmful, indifferent or useful. Only the harmful ones would be definitively weeded out. The indifferent ones would be extravagances, excesses, things of wonder. Undoubtedly, over time, in new environments, in conjunction with other changes, these extravagances may become useful, but in the meantime, they are signs of the flourishing luxury of life, signs of the fact that the "struggle for survival" is not the norm, but an extremity. Extravagance, exuberance, excess are what provide the basis for the ever-changing interweaving of life.
On a broader level, this same point comes out in Loren Eiseley's beautiful book, The Immense Journey. The book is a poetic look at the marvelous meaninglessness of the evolution of life. Like Tinbergen, Eiseley makes it evident that the evolution of life must operate through extravagance, exuberant squandering, through excess of life. Only in this way can we explain the wide and marvelous variations of traits that allow adaptations to new environments--traits that must have developed before the journey to the new environment (otherwise the creature would not have survived their)--which thus may well have been useless when they were developing. Perhaps if science would detach itself from the utilitarian ideology that dominates our times, and particularly the science of our age, it might be able to see this more clearly, and so embrace the surreal marvel that is life...
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
WHY NOT IN WONDERLAND?
Some Thoughts Upon Reading I Have Landed by Stephen Jay Gould (Harmony Books, 2002)
Once again, I have taken up a book of Stephen Jay Gould's essays. There is no doubt that he was one of the best essayists of our times, writing with humor, intelligence and feeling, But there is one theme that comes up far too often in his later essays to be ignored. This theme is best summarized in his own words: "these two great tools of human understanding [science and religion] operate in a complementary (not contrary) fashion in their totally separate realms: science as an inquiry about the factual state of the natural world, religion as a search for spiritual meaning and ethical values." (p. 214)
I am not interested in going to my critique of science just yet, but I do want to mention one of its central themes, since it has some relevance to my present argument. The early developers of modern science in the West (Copernicus, Bacon, Galileo, Newton, ...) were all christians. They founded their scientific endeavor on a religious basis: the idea that, since the universe was created by god, it must operate on universal natural laws. It would require another long essay to even began to examine all the implications of this assumption that underlies modern science.
What I want to examine right now are the false premises by which Gould's liberal tolerance led him to uphold an institution that has long since proved itself to be a tool ofdomination, oppression and forced ignorance as a source of spiritual and ethical guidance.
First of all, Gould simply accepts compartmentalization, specialization and the division of social life and knowledge into separate spheres as a given. He doesn't show any sign of recognizing the historical nature of this division. If certain social divisions can be traced back to the origins of civilizations, the compartmentalization of knowledge is a modern phenomenon--as mentioned above, at the time modern science arose, religious concepts were integral to its birth. Though Gould doesn't recognize the religious nature of the concept of universal natural laws, he does recognize this concept as the assumed foundation upon which modern science operates. Even starting from this foundation, modern science has undermined the necessity for god. But once god is gone, there is no more basis for assuming that there are universal natural laws. Thus, modern science, by undermining the foundations of religion, has brought its own foundations into question.
From its origins until the beginning of the modern era, religion has not been a separate sphere within social life, but rather the system of beliefs essential for upholding a society and its institutions in the minds of those who make up that society. As such, it has never been a search for spiritual meaning and ethical values, but rather the imposition of a spiritual and moral conception of the world that upholds the values of the rulers of a society. Etymologically, religion refers to a joining back together of things that have been separated. A lot of silly things have been said about this, but I think that it is best understood if we look at the social divisions that occurred at about the time religion arose. This was when society divided into classes, wealth and power getting concentrated into the hands of a few who lorded it over the rest. In such a situation, conflict was inevitable. The task of religion was to create social unity through the imposition of a concept of life that justified existing social relationships and a morality that supported submission to one's social superiors. It reunited society precisely by naturalizing its divisions. Thus, it originated as a tool for justifying domination, exploitation and oppression, and for keeping the exploited classes in ignorance. As an imposed answer, it left no place for searching.
In fact, the association of religion with a search for spiritual meaning is a phenomenon of the modern era. In earlier times, where such a search has arisen, it has been a questioning of or a rebellion against religion--in the form of heresy, philosophy, sorcery, alchemy, poetry... As such, the search was an ongoing process that was able to free ethics from the set rules of morality. But the linking of the search for spiritual meaning to religion that began with the protestant Reformation was not an equation of the two. Rather, protestantism individualized religious conversion, making it a personal, voluntary decision. Thus, religion was not itself a spiritual search, but was rather the answer to be found at the end of one's spiritual search. It brought the search to an end. John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress is a literary description of this process.
Religion was never intended to be a "separate realm" among specializations. It was meant to be a total worldview, encompassing all knowledge. We know that it has failed completely in providing an understanding of "the factual state of the natural world". This is because it is by its nature a closed system of understanding, a final answer. How can we think that it would do any better as a guide in the "search for spiritual meaning and ethical values". Gould should have been able to see that in places where religious thought continues to be strong, a nuanced approach to meaning and an open exploration of ethical questions get suppressed along with the free exploration of the natural world. The acceptance of evolution in Europe has gone hand-in-hand with a decline in religiosity and with an exploration of other sources of meaning and ethical values. Where religion is having a resurgence in Europe, it is generally tied to a resurgence of racism, sexism. national chauvinism and frequently even blatant fascism. Put bluntly, religion has repeatedly proven itself to be as worthless in the search for spiritual meaning and ethical values as it is in inquiries about the ways that the natural world functions. How could it be otherwise when it originated as a tool of the ruling class for suppressing free exploration. I can't help but wonder how someone as erudite as Gould, with a broad knowledge of cultural and creative phenomena, could have failed to notice a delightfully open-ended realm for exploring what he calls "spiritual values".* I am speaking of the realm of poetic wonder.
As far as anyone can tell, human beings have never encountered the world around them in a purely utilitarian way. There is a basic human interaction with "nature" that has been called the marvelous, poetic wonder, etc. Religion and myth spring out of social necessity and are, thus, utilitarian in nature, Poetic wonder is evoked by the encounter of the unique indiviudal with external and internal nature. It is the process of making the world one's own. The origin of poetic wonder in the individual and her specific, unique encounters guarantees its openness . Once it gets transformed into a closed system, the poetry and the wonder wither. But its openness, its basis in the unique individual and its relational quality make it an ideal basis for an ever-changing, expanding, exploratory and experimental source of meaning and values, a true terrain for an ongoing search, always satisfying, but never satisfied.
Unlike religion, poetic wonder is grounded in the material world. It does not push wonder, joy and ecstasy into an invisible realm but rather bases them in concrete relationships that we develop here. Certainly, these relationships can spark imagination, the capacity to see beyond what is here, but this "beyond" is not a separate realm, but rather an expression of possibilities, whether those of the world or of our own minds. William Blake said it well in "Auguries of Innocence":
"To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour."
This relationship has also been describes like this: "We can term a relationship with (external or internal) nature one of 'wonder' if it does not reproduce nature or the individuals who are involved in it". Here we see the non-utilitarian nature of this relationship. The description continues: "By integrating nature as an element of their unique individuality, individuals make another reality appear, one which is not a social reality, but rather their own reality. Constantly hidden behind the former, the latter reality cannot appear when the realistic criteria inherent in every society are in place, but only as a sense of wonder that is more or less poetic." This essentially individual nature of poetic wonder, its opposition to social realism, is of major importance in terms of the question of the creation of meaning and, consequently of ethical values.
There is no evidence that the universe or life have any inherent, universal meaning. Rather it seems that all existence is contingent, an accident. Thus, any meaning that exists is created by accidental beings; it is contingent. Socially created meaning will direct itself toward maintaining the society from which it springs. Thus, it will tend to present itself as universal and constant, as inherent in the structure of nature, rather than as contigent and historical. This is religion, and obviously it tends toward dogma and the perception of ethical values as absolute and universal moral laws. On the other hand, when individuals take the creation of meaning into their own hands, its contigent and relational nature becomes evident. This creation is never completed, but is a continual search, an ongoing journey. It doesn't rest upon belief, upon faith, but rather on exploration, experimentation and questioning.
Social meaning, in the form of religion or, in modern times, ideology, demands absolute acceptance. But it is not capable of satisfying. This is why it must be accepted by faith, as a belief. Its promise will be fulfilled in the future--perhaps of an afterlife, perhaps in a future "realization" of history....
The search for meaning on the individual level, in poetic wonder, makes no promise of ultimate satisfaction, of providing a final answer. Paradoxically, precisely for this reason, it is immediately satisfying, encompassing a fullness of the moment that transforms that moment into an eternity. When I taste the minty iciness of the full moon, drink the warm, golden sweetness of the sun, feel soaring, wild freedom of the hawk running through my veins, in that moment I feel an overflowing fullness, an expansive generosity that needs no tomorrow. And yet, I gladly embrace tomorrow, precisely because it allows me to express my generosity, to empty myself and fill myself back up again...
In saying this though, I don't want to be misunderstood as denying the existence of an objective realm. The relational nature of poetic wonder has its basis in the fact that it is an encounter with an outside.** This outside has traits about which human beings can develop a shared understanding--if they can overcome the social biases that assume "universality" for a specific society. This is the realm of that which Gould calls "the factual state of the natural world"--the realm he grants to science.
As I pointed out above, modern science has its foundations in an essentially religious concept: the idea of universal natural laws. This idea has its origins in the belief that a divine person created the universe and inscribed such laws into it. It was made the basis of modern science, because the early modern scientists of the Renaissance were good christians, and the methods of science had to have some assumed foundation from which to operate if they were going to be able to create a usable understanding of the world. The transformation of god into universal Reason in the Enlightenment was simply a secularization of the christian concept, not its eradication.
Despite the fact that modern science has its foundation in an assumption that originates in the closed system of religion, its method of operation, at least ideally,***--observation and experimentation--is supposed to be open-ended, encouraging ongoing exploration. But its grounding in a basically closed conception of how the universe operates (and its dependence upon funding from the state and corporations) keeps this exploration within specific boundaries, preventing scientists from seeing certain uncomfortable realities.
This leaves me to wonder how one might explore the objective realm, the external reality that we all encounter, developing methods of observation and experimentation that operate from a different basis, an open, poetic and relational basis.
The most essential change this would make is that it would do away with the concept of universal, rational natural laws, and with it the essentially quantified, mechanistic view of the world. This does not throw the universe into a state of absolute contingency, of total randomness, but it does significantly increase the importance of contigency, of the element of chance, in the world we encounter. But as in human relationships, in the relationships that make up the universe in which we live, there are habits, general tendencies, ways things usually go, and there are qualities inherent to certain beings and relationships--qualities that define them. But these are not laws; they are traits, characteristics, relational forms that belong to the beings involved in the particular relationships, not to the universe. We can certainly come to understand such qualities through observation and experimentation, but through a different sort of observation and experimentation: one in which we make no pretense of being objective, of being an external spectator, but rather passionately encounter the beings of this world, immersing ourselves fully into the life of our world, which would then appear to us as a Wonderland.
_______________________________________
* I am not convinced that there is any reason to use the term "spiritual" in any positive sense anymore. It is no longer necessary, if it ever was, to turn to god or a spiritual realm to explain any reality we encounter. If we continue to use to speak of "spirituality" or "spiritual meaning' in any positive sense,it is necessary to create clear, new meanings for these terms that wrench them from their religious significance with its assumption of a separate spiritual realm. I personal prefer to find other words that don't have such implications. Like the marvelous, the poetic, wonder....
** This opens questions relating to the nature of the external and the internal, and of consciousness as the place where the two meet.
***Thomas Kuhn and other recent philosophers of science have shown how science generally operates as a closed system, requiring ruptures to create openings for new ideas and information to get in.
Once again, I have taken up a book of Stephen Jay Gould's essays. There is no doubt that he was one of the best essayists of our times, writing with humor, intelligence and feeling, But there is one theme that comes up far too often in his later essays to be ignored. This theme is best summarized in his own words: "these two great tools of human understanding [science and religion] operate in a complementary (not contrary) fashion in their totally separate realms: science as an inquiry about the factual state of the natural world, religion as a search for spiritual meaning and ethical values." (p. 214)
I am not interested in going to my critique of science just yet, but I do want to mention one of its central themes, since it has some relevance to my present argument. The early developers of modern science in the West (Copernicus, Bacon, Galileo, Newton, ...) were all christians. They founded their scientific endeavor on a religious basis: the idea that, since the universe was created by god, it must operate on universal natural laws. It would require another long essay to even began to examine all the implications of this assumption that underlies modern science.
What I want to examine right now are the false premises by which Gould's liberal tolerance led him to uphold an institution that has long since proved itself to be a tool ofdomination, oppression and forced ignorance as a source of spiritual and ethical guidance.
First of all, Gould simply accepts compartmentalization, specialization and the division of social life and knowledge into separate spheres as a given. He doesn't show any sign of recognizing the historical nature of this division. If certain social divisions can be traced back to the origins of civilizations, the compartmentalization of knowledge is a modern phenomenon--as mentioned above, at the time modern science arose, religious concepts were integral to its birth. Though Gould doesn't recognize the religious nature of the concept of universal natural laws, he does recognize this concept as the assumed foundation upon which modern science operates. Even starting from this foundation, modern science has undermined the necessity for god. But once god is gone, there is no more basis for assuming that there are universal natural laws. Thus, modern science, by undermining the foundations of religion, has brought its own foundations into question.
From its origins until the beginning of the modern era, religion has not been a separate sphere within social life, but rather the system of beliefs essential for upholding a society and its institutions in the minds of those who make up that society. As such, it has never been a search for spiritual meaning and ethical values, but rather the imposition of a spiritual and moral conception of the world that upholds the values of the rulers of a society. Etymologically, religion refers to a joining back together of things that have been separated. A lot of silly things have been said about this, but I think that it is best understood if we look at the social divisions that occurred at about the time religion arose. This was when society divided into classes, wealth and power getting concentrated into the hands of a few who lorded it over the rest. In such a situation, conflict was inevitable. The task of religion was to create social unity through the imposition of a concept of life that justified existing social relationships and a morality that supported submission to one's social superiors. It reunited society precisely by naturalizing its divisions. Thus, it originated as a tool for justifying domination, exploitation and oppression, and for keeping the exploited classes in ignorance. As an imposed answer, it left no place for searching.
In fact, the association of religion with a search for spiritual meaning is a phenomenon of the modern era. In earlier times, where such a search has arisen, it has been a questioning of or a rebellion against religion--in the form of heresy, philosophy, sorcery, alchemy, poetry... As such, the search was an ongoing process that was able to free ethics from the set rules of morality. But the linking of the search for spiritual meaning to religion that began with the protestant Reformation was not an equation of the two. Rather, protestantism individualized religious conversion, making it a personal, voluntary decision. Thus, religion was not itself a spiritual search, but was rather the answer to be found at the end of one's spiritual search. It brought the search to an end. John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress is a literary description of this process.
Religion was never intended to be a "separate realm" among specializations. It was meant to be a total worldview, encompassing all knowledge. We know that it has failed completely in providing an understanding of "the factual state of the natural world". This is because it is by its nature a closed system of understanding, a final answer. How can we think that it would do any better as a guide in the "search for spiritual meaning and ethical values". Gould should have been able to see that in places where religious thought continues to be strong, a nuanced approach to meaning and an open exploration of ethical questions get suppressed along with the free exploration of the natural world. The acceptance of evolution in Europe has gone hand-in-hand with a decline in religiosity and with an exploration of other sources of meaning and ethical values. Where religion is having a resurgence in Europe, it is generally tied to a resurgence of racism, sexism. national chauvinism and frequently even blatant fascism. Put bluntly, religion has repeatedly proven itself to be as worthless in the search for spiritual meaning and ethical values as it is in inquiries about the ways that the natural world functions. How could it be otherwise when it originated as a tool of the ruling class for suppressing free exploration. I can't help but wonder how someone as erudite as Gould, with a broad knowledge of cultural and creative phenomena, could have failed to notice a delightfully open-ended realm for exploring what he calls "spiritual values".* I am speaking of the realm of poetic wonder.
As far as anyone can tell, human beings have never encountered the world around them in a purely utilitarian way. There is a basic human interaction with "nature" that has been called the marvelous, poetic wonder, etc. Religion and myth spring out of social necessity and are, thus, utilitarian in nature, Poetic wonder is evoked by the encounter of the unique indiviudal with external and internal nature. It is the process of making the world one's own. The origin of poetic wonder in the individual and her specific, unique encounters guarantees its openness . Once it gets transformed into a closed system, the poetry and the wonder wither. But its openness, its basis in the unique individual and its relational quality make it an ideal basis for an ever-changing, expanding, exploratory and experimental source of meaning and values, a true terrain for an ongoing search, always satisfying, but never satisfied.
Unlike religion, poetic wonder is grounded in the material world. It does not push wonder, joy and ecstasy into an invisible realm but rather bases them in concrete relationships that we develop here. Certainly, these relationships can spark imagination, the capacity to see beyond what is here, but this "beyond" is not a separate realm, but rather an expression of possibilities, whether those of the world or of our own minds. William Blake said it well in "Auguries of Innocence":
"To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour."
This relationship has also been describes like this: "We can term a relationship with (external or internal) nature one of 'wonder' if it does not reproduce nature or the individuals who are involved in it". Here we see the non-utilitarian nature of this relationship. The description continues: "By integrating nature as an element of their unique individuality, individuals make another reality appear, one which is not a social reality, but rather their own reality. Constantly hidden behind the former, the latter reality cannot appear when the realistic criteria inherent in every society are in place, but only as a sense of wonder that is more or less poetic." This essentially individual nature of poetic wonder, its opposition to social realism, is of major importance in terms of the question of the creation of meaning and, consequently of ethical values.
There is no evidence that the universe or life have any inherent, universal meaning. Rather it seems that all existence is contingent, an accident. Thus, any meaning that exists is created by accidental beings; it is contingent. Socially created meaning will direct itself toward maintaining the society from which it springs. Thus, it will tend to present itself as universal and constant, as inherent in the structure of nature, rather than as contigent and historical. This is religion, and obviously it tends toward dogma and the perception of ethical values as absolute and universal moral laws. On the other hand, when individuals take the creation of meaning into their own hands, its contigent and relational nature becomes evident. This creation is never completed, but is a continual search, an ongoing journey. It doesn't rest upon belief, upon faith, but rather on exploration, experimentation and questioning.
Social meaning, in the form of religion or, in modern times, ideology, demands absolute acceptance. But it is not capable of satisfying. This is why it must be accepted by faith, as a belief. Its promise will be fulfilled in the future--perhaps of an afterlife, perhaps in a future "realization" of history....
The search for meaning on the individual level, in poetic wonder, makes no promise of ultimate satisfaction, of providing a final answer. Paradoxically, precisely for this reason, it is immediately satisfying, encompassing a fullness of the moment that transforms that moment into an eternity. When I taste the minty iciness of the full moon, drink the warm, golden sweetness of the sun, feel soaring, wild freedom of the hawk running through my veins, in that moment I feel an overflowing fullness, an expansive generosity that needs no tomorrow. And yet, I gladly embrace tomorrow, precisely because it allows me to express my generosity, to empty myself and fill myself back up again...
In saying this though, I don't want to be misunderstood as denying the existence of an objective realm. The relational nature of poetic wonder has its basis in the fact that it is an encounter with an outside.** This outside has traits about which human beings can develop a shared understanding--if they can overcome the social biases that assume "universality" for a specific society. This is the realm of that which Gould calls "the factual state of the natural world"--the realm he grants to science.
As I pointed out above, modern science has its foundations in an essentially religious concept: the idea of universal natural laws. This idea has its origins in the belief that a divine person created the universe and inscribed such laws into it. It was made the basis of modern science, because the early modern scientists of the Renaissance were good christians, and the methods of science had to have some assumed foundation from which to operate if they were going to be able to create a usable understanding of the world. The transformation of god into universal Reason in the Enlightenment was simply a secularization of the christian concept, not its eradication.
Despite the fact that modern science has its foundation in an assumption that originates in the closed system of religion, its method of operation, at least ideally,***--observation and experimentation--is supposed to be open-ended, encouraging ongoing exploration. But its grounding in a basically closed conception of how the universe operates (and its dependence upon funding from the state and corporations) keeps this exploration within specific boundaries, preventing scientists from seeing certain uncomfortable realities.
This leaves me to wonder how one might explore the objective realm, the external reality that we all encounter, developing methods of observation and experimentation that operate from a different basis, an open, poetic and relational basis.
The most essential change this would make is that it would do away with the concept of universal, rational natural laws, and with it the essentially quantified, mechanistic view of the world. This does not throw the universe into a state of absolute contingency, of total randomness, but it does significantly increase the importance of contigency, of the element of chance, in the world we encounter. But as in human relationships, in the relationships that make up the universe in which we live, there are habits, general tendencies, ways things usually go, and there are qualities inherent to certain beings and relationships--qualities that define them. But these are not laws; they are traits, characteristics, relational forms that belong to the beings involved in the particular relationships, not to the universe. We can certainly come to understand such qualities through observation and experimentation, but through a different sort of observation and experimentation: one in which we make no pretense of being objective, of being an external spectator, but rather passionately encounter the beings of this world, immersing ourselves fully into the life of our world, which would then appear to us as a Wonderland.
_______________________________________
* I am not convinced that there is any reason to use the term "spiritual" in any positive sense anymore. It is no longer necessary, if it ever was, to turn to god or a spiritual realm to explain any reality we encounter. If we continue to use to speak of "spirituality" or "spiritual meaning' in any positive sense,it is necessary to create clear, new meanings for these terms that wrench them from their religious significance with its assumption of a separate spiritual realm. I personal prefer to find other words that don't have such implications. Like the marvelous, the poetic, wonder....
** This opens questions relating to the nature of the external and the internal, and of consciousness as the place where the two meet.
***Thomas Kuhn and other recent philosophers of science have shown how science generally operates as a closed system, requiring ruptures to create openings for new ideas and information to get in.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
A RATHER BIZARRE MYTHOLOGY
Thoughts After Reading The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene, A Brief History of Time by Stephen W. Hawking and The Future of Spacetime edited by Alan Lightman, with essays by Stephen W. Hawking, Kip Thorne, Igor Novikov, Timothy Ferris and Richard Price
Reading books like this, popularizations of theoretical physics, I feel like I am reading a rather bizarre, abstract mythology, a metaphysical tale with no connection to the concrete world. And apparently this isn't just my ignorance. As Stephen Hawking put it: "I take the positivist viewpoint that physical theory is just a mathematical model and that it is meaningless to ask whether it conforms to reality." (emphases added)
But even in its most abstract form, theoretical physics has very concrete effects on the material world. Without even looking at the technological applications that have already come out of physics where the theory is made concrete enough, one need only consider the technology needed to achieve this level of concreteness. First of all, most of the theoretical work, "observations" and "experiments" in advanced physics take place on computers. This is not surprising in light of Hawkings statement above. But beyond the computer, comparing equations to observations requires technological devices capable of observation on the quantum level, on the one hand, and on the intergalactic level, on the other.
For quantum observations, physicists require particle accelerators and colliders that cover vast areas. In 1999, in The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene was placing his hope in the construction of a gigantic particle accelerator in the Alps to test superstring theory. This monstrosity now exists. It is called the Large Hadron Collider. It lies in a tunnel with a 27 kilometer (17 mile) circumference, dug into the Alps along the French/Swiss border. It is scheduled to begin operation in November 2009.
On the other end, Kip Thorne, in his essay "Spacetime Warps and the Quantum World: Speculations About the Future", in The Future of Spacetime (2003), describes Laser Interferometer technologies for for measuring gravitational waves. At the time he wrote, three of these machines already existed on earth, and one was scheduled to be launched into space in 2010. In describing these technologies, Kip Thorne gives no thought either to their social dimensions (costs that are then not available for other purposes, the role of the military in all such endeavors, the specialization such technologies require, etc.) or their environmental consequences. In fact, Thorne, with the nonchalant arrogance of one who know his real power as scientists in a technocratic society, simply assumes that, of course, these gargantuan technological structures should exist and will exist, because scientific enquiry demands it. He informs us that LIGO (the earth-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory) is likely to exhibit quantum behavior on the macroscopic level, bringing the uncertainty principle, according to which it is impossible to know both a particle's location and its velocity at the same time, onto the human scale. (It is currently believed to operate only on the atomic and sub-atomic levels to any significant degree). But he is confident that new "quantum non-demolition technology" will be able to prevent the "fuzzballs" (areas of quantum uncertainty) from expanding. It is difficult to comprehend precisely what all this might mean on a practical level, but knowing the nonchalance that physicists have shown far too often with regard to the possible consequences of the technological outgrowths of their activities, it is hard for me not ot feel a bit apprehensive.
After all, we have already seen some of the consequences of the practical applications of theoretical physics. Nuclear weapons in all their forms (atom bombs, hydrogen bombs, neutron bombs, and the "conventional" offshoot, the depleted uranium bombs that have contaminated parts of the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.) are the most blatant examples, but Three Mile Island and Chernobyl show that the so-called "peaceful atom" can be just as devastating. But perhaps the ecological devastation of Central Asia and the Great Basin of the American southwest, Caused by military nuclear testing, most clearly illustrates what the practical application of modern physics has to offer us.
While Kip Thorne, Stephen Hawking and their scientific compatriots sit in their ivory towers making wagers about naked singularities, exotic matter and wormholes, they are also, at least indirectly, working for the state's military apparatus. Science does not exist in some pure state free of any social context. It always acts in the service of the existing ruling order, depending on the good will of that order while providing it with the technology it requires to maintain control. Except that sometimes this technology itself gets out of control, resulting in disaster. Or more accurately, at this point , the global technological system is beyond any control, and a series of disaster after disaster isinevitable; it's just a question of when and where the next one will strike.
I have called this essay "A Rather Bizarre Mythology". Although this was specifically in reference to theoretical physics, I would argue that modern science (science as it has been practiced since the time of Francis Bacon) acts as the mythology of the present social order. This description does not reflect on whether specific theories of science are literally true or not, but rather on the social function of science. A mythology is the interwoven fabric of stories by which a particular social order explains reality in such a way as to justify and maintain the roles and relationships that create that social order. The dominant mythology of a given society defines truth for those who make up that society. Surpassed mythologies get defined as superstitions. Heresies may take the form of alternative mythologies or of the rejection of all mythologies.
If we look at western society, we can see that as the Roman Empire aged, pagan mythology and the cult of the empire ceased to be able to provide sufficient social cohesion. They were replaced by christianity. But christianity also ultimately proved unable to keep the empire together. It did, however, create a network of power throughout a fragmented Europe that was able to both exploit the fragmentation to increase its own wealth and to provide a tenuous unity in Europe. As cities began to grow and feudal fiefdoms coalesced into states, trade routes came to dominate as the network for unifying Europe--one that promoted a flow of wealth rather than its accumulation into a single institution. In the late Middle Ages, reform movements within the church and heresies (including millenarian movements of revolt) began to proliferate alongside increasing explorations of alchemy and similar proto-sciences. This culminated in the Renaissance and the Reformation. The intellectual ferment of the former opened the door to the birth of modern science, while the latter shattered the unity of the christian mythology. The nascent capitalist social system needed to move toward a systematic technological development in order to maintain itself, and science as theorized by Francis Bacon provided a conceptual framework that could make this possible.
In its early days, modern science still had to try to justify itself in the eyes of the fading, but still dominant, christian authorities, but this role was eventually reversed. The thoroughness of this reversal is evident in the attempts present-day christians make to use an often deformed sort of scientific evidence to support the alleged truth of their beliefs--whether it takes the form of trying to dig up historical evidence to support the reality of the gospel myth or the development of the "intelligent design" hypothesis. As badly as these christians may use science, they still now feel obliged to justify themselves on its terms rather than vice versa, and that is strong evidence that science is the dominant mythology of the present social order.
In light of this, it is particularly important to develop an analysis of the nature of science as a social tool. Inevitably, such an analysis calls into question the objective nature of science and demands that every one of the claims put forth in the name of science has to be examined in terms of how it serves the ruling order. But this has to be done with care in order to avoid over-simplifying (as in those critiques of Darwinism that base themselves on the ridiculous misuse of his perspective by the so-called social Darwinists). In addition, the social and environmental costs of specific scientific projects have to be exposed. If projects like the Large Hadron Collider and the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory seem like extravagant wastes of money from a certain perspective, obviously the institutions involved in funding them recognize how quickly abstract theoretical physics can turn into concrete technologies for maintaining and increasing institutional power. What seems like harmless speculation about the underlying structure of the universe becomes atom bombs or Chernobyls. Herein lies the real social cost, beyond any waste of money for extravagant laboratories and experimental tools.
There can be little doubt that intelligent observation and experimentation guided by critical thinking are useful and necessary for creating our lives in the freest and most enjoyable way in this world. But this has never been the whole definition of science. Otherwise, it would have remained a mere tool. Rather, for modern science, there is an underlying assumption that is to be the basis for observation, experimentation and critical thinking: the idea that reality operates in a framework of universal, essentially rational natural laws. It is this faith that has allowed science to become the dominant mythology of this social order. But those of us who seek the destruction of the present social order need to use our capacity for critical thinking to shatter this mythological framework as well. Once science as a myth is shattered, its unity destroyed, perhaps there will be pieces we will find useful or enjoyable to play with. And perhaps those metaphysical endeavors that disguise themselves as science under the names of quantum physics, relativity physics, superstring theory, etc. can give a few people pleasure as what they are--metaphysical speculations--which have no need for expensive and environmentally damaging technological structures to test their hypotheses and will not lead to the creation of devastating bombs and disasters. But for now the point is to shatter the myth.
Reading books like this, popularizations of theoretical physics, I feel like I am reading a rather bizarre, abstract mythology, a metaphysical tale with no connection to the concrete world. And apparently this isn't just my ignorance. As Stephen Hawking put it: "I take the positivist viewpoint that physical theory is just a mathematical model and that it is meaningless to ask whether it conforms to reality." (emphases added)
But even in its most abstract form, theoretical physics has very concrete effects on the material world. Without even looking at the technological applications that have already come out of physics where the theory is made concrete enough, one need only consider the technology needed to achieve this level of concreteness. First of all, most of the theoretical work, "observations" and "experiments" in advanced physics take place on computers. This is not surprising in light of Hawkings statement above. But beyond the computer, comparing equations to observations requires technological devices capable of observation on the quantum level, on the one hand, and on the intergalactic level, on the other.
For quantum observations, physicists require particle accelerators and colliders that cover vast areas. In 1999, in The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene was placing his hope in the construction of a gigantic particle accelerator in the Alps to test superstring theory. This monstrosity now exists. It is called the Large Hadron Collider. It lies in a tunnel with a 27 kilometer (17 mile) circumference, dug into the Alps along the French/Swiss border. It is scheduled to begin operation in November 2009.
On the other end, Kip Thorne, in his essay "Spacetime Warps and the Quantum World: Speculations About the Future", in The Future of Spacetime (2003), describes Laser Interferometer technologies for for measuring gravitational waves. At the time he wrote, three of these machines already existed on earth, and one was scheduled to be launched into space in 2010. In describing these technologies, Kip Thorne gives no thought either to their social dimensions (costs that are then not available for other purposes, the role of the military in all such endeavors, the specialization such technologies require, etc.) or their environmental consequences. In fact, Thorne, with the nonchalant arrogance of one who know his real power as scientists in a technocratic society, simply assumes that, of course, these gargantuan technological structures should exist and will exist, because scientific enquiry demands it. He informs us that LIGO (the earth-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory) is likely to exhibit quantum behavior on the macroscopic level, bringing the uncertainty principle, according to which it is impossible to know both a particle's location and its velocity at the same time, onto the human scale. (It is currently believed to operate only on the atomic and sub-atomic levels to any significant degree). But he is confident that new "quantum non-demolition technology" will be able to prevent the "fuzzballs" (areas of quantum uncertainty) from expanding. It is difficult to comprehend precisely what all this might mean on a practical level, but knowing the nonchalance that physicists have shown far too often with regard to the possible consequences of the technological outgrowths of their activities, it is hard for me not ot feel a bit apprehensive.
After all, we have already seen some of the consequences of the practical applications of theoretical physics. Nuclear weapons in all their forms (atom bombs, hydrogen bombs, neutron bombs, and the "conventional" offshoot, the depleted uranium bombs that have contaminated parts of the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.) are the most blatant examples, but Three Mile Island and Chernobyl show that the so-called "peaceful atom" can be just as devastating. But perhaps the ecological devastation of Central Asia and the Great Basin of the American southwest, Caused by military nuclear testing, most clearly illustrates what the practical application of modern physics has to offer us.
While Kip Thorne, Stephen Hawking and their scientific compatriots sit in their ivory towers making wagers about naked singularities, exotic matter and wormholes, they are also, at least indirectly, working for the state's military apparatus. Science does not exist in some pure state free of any social context. It always acts in the service of the existing ruling order, depending on the good will of that order while providing it with the technology it requires to maintain control. Except that sometimes this technology itself gets out of control, resulting in disaster. Or more accurately, at this point , the global technological system is beyond any control, and a series of disaster after disaster isinevitable; it's just a question of when and where the next one will strike.
I have called this essay "A Rather Bizarre Mythology". Although this was specifically in reference to theoretical physics, I would argue that modern science (science as it has been practiced since the time of Francis Bacon) acts as the mythology of the present social order. This description does not reflect on whether specific theories of science are literally true or not, but rather on the social function of science. A mythology is the interwoven fabric of stories by which a particular social order explains reality in such a way as to justify and maintain the roles and relationships that create that social order. The dominant mythology of a given society defines truth for those who make up that society. Surpassed mythologies get defined as superstitions. Heresies may take the form of alternative mythologies or of the rejection of all mythologies.
If we look at western society, we can see that as the Roman Empire aged, pagan mythology and the cult of the empire ceased to be able to provide sufficient social cohesion. They were replaced by christianity. But christianity also ultimately proved unable to keep the empire together. It did, however, create a network of power throughout a fragmented Europe that was able to both exploit the fragmentation to increase its own wealth and to provide a tenuous unity in Europe. As cities began to grow and feudal fiefdoms coalesced into states, trade routes came to dominate as the network for unifying Europe--one that promoted a flow of wealth rather than its accumulation into a single institution. In the late Middle Ages, reform movements within the church and heresies (including millenarian movements of revolt) began to proliferate alongside increasing explorations of alchemy and similar proto-sciences. This culminated in the Renaissance and the Reformation. The intellectual ferment of the former opened the door to the birth of modern science, while the latter shattered the unity of the christian mythology. The nascent capitalist social system needed to move toward a systematic technological development in order to maintain itself, and science as theorized by Francis Bacon provided a conceptual framework that could make this possible.
In its early days, modern science still had to try to justify itself in the eyes of the fading, but still dominant, christian authorities, but this role was eventually reversed. The thoroughness of this reversal is evident in the attempts present-day christians make to use an often deformed sort of scientific evidence to support the alleged truth of their beliefs--whether it takes the form of trying to dig up historical evidence to support the reality of the gospel myth or the development of the "intelligent design" hypothesis. As badly as these christians may use science, they still now feel obliged to justify themselves on its terms rather than vice versa, and that is strong evidence that science is the dominant mythology of the present social order.
In light of this, it is particularly important to develop an analysis of the nature of science as a social tool. Inevitably, such an analysis calls into question the objective nature of science and demands that every one of the claims put forth in the name of science has to be examined in terms of how it serves the ruling order. But this has to be done with care in order to avoid over-simplifying (as in those critiques of Darwinism that base themselves on the ridiculous misuse of his perspective by the so-called social Darwinists). In addition, the social and environmental costs of specific scientific projects have to be exposed. If projects like the Large Hadron Collider and the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory seem like extravagant wastes of money from a certain perspective, obviously the institutions involved in funding them recognize how quickly abstract theoretical physics can turn into concrete technologies for maintaining and increasing institutional power. What seems like harmless speculation about the underlying structure of the universe becomes atom bombs or Chernobyls. Herein lies the real social cost, beyond any waste of money for extravagant laboratories and experimental tools.
There can be little doubt that intelligent observation and experimentation guided by critical thinking are useful and necessary for creating our lives in the freest and most enjoyable way in this world. But this has never been the whole definition of science. Otherwise, it would have remained a mere tool. Rather, for modern science, there is an underlying assumption that is to be the basis for observation, experimentation and critical thinking: the idea that reality operates in a framework of universal, essentially rational natural laws. It is this faith that has allowed science to become the dominant mythology of this social order. But those of us who seek the destruction of the present social order need to use our capacity for critical thinking to shatter this mythological framework as well. Once science as a myth is shattered, its unity destroyed, perhaps there will be pieces we will find useful or enjoyable to play with. And perhaps those metaphysical endeavors that disguise themselves as science under the names of quantum physics, relativity physics, superstring theory, etc. can give a few people pleasure as what they are--metaphysical speculations--which have no need for expensive and environmentally damaging technological structures to test their hypotheses and will not lead to the creation of devastating bombs and disasters. But for now the point is to shatter the myth.
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