Dear Steven –
I think we must be living in different realities.
1. The idea of a post-scientific theory has been prevalent since the
developments of the 'new physics' (viz quantum theory and relativity).
The conclusion of Thomas Kuhn's seminal book – The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions – is a call for a post-scientific theory of learning (viz how
advances in knowledge occur).
Kuhn, who I take to be a pragmatist, also pushes for an evolutionary model of
the universe – as did Peirce, James and Dewey (not to mention Whitehead).
2. I am most curious about your second sentence. Certainly materialism from
beginning to end has been a Theory of Everything – ain't nothing but stuff,
laws governing the stuff and the space-time container. The Positivist (Vienna
Circle) view is wholly mechanical and deterministic. Their view was an
extension of Galileo's Pythagorean theme that the book of nature in written in
a mathematical language. The Positivists simply extended this to 'a
logico-mathematical language' (viz since math is based on logic, per hypothesis
(Russell and Whitehead etc)).
So your statement that 'as a positivist...this is not a scientific view' seems
to be using different meanings for both positivist and science.
Perhaps you could clarify.
3. You say – 'This observation affirms the principles of science.' I am
unclear on what 'this' refers to. Could you also clarify what you suppose the
'principles of science' to be?
4. Putting Peirce and Carnap in the same framework is confusing. I know Carnap
talks about an evolutionary model late in his career, but the quintessential
Carnap is very logico-mechanical in a way that was quite the opposite of
Peirce. It was Carnap that started the Positivist program by declaring that all
things Hegelian were simply nonsense. Peirce on the other hand states that the
only reasonable view is 'objective idealism' – close to if not the same as
Hegel. (Dewey split from this full endorsement later – but in a progressive
way.)
5. I agree that the 'shut-up and calculate' culture that 'allowed materialism
to prevail' without any philosophical reflection was unfortunate and
intellectually 'inauthentic' (self-deceiving).
6. Emergence theorists, as you call them, such as Stuart Kaufmann and Nobel
Laureate Murray Gell-Mann – as well as cosmologist John Archibald Wheeler (PhD
supervisor for Richard Feynmann and Kip Thorne) are very close to Peirce's
evolutionary model of reality. Chaitin and Wolfram are distinct in my mind, but
both are still in the logico-mathematical framework.
Philosophy of Language – reborn with Wittgenstein – begins with the rejection
of his earlier mechanistic, logico-mathematical treatise, Tractatus.
Semiotics and all the theories of signs and meanings only begin to make sense
once you accept/embrace the limits on the Mechanical Philosophy and the
entailment that the language of the universe is logico-mathematical. As James
affirms – the core of pragmatism is that we have free-will. That isn't
unscientific, but post-scientific. WHat we are after is a More General Theory
that can account for both mechanics and free will (viz the ability to act in
the world, in such a way as to make the future better).
It is only when you make the problem shift from 'discovering the facts' to 'How
should we live?' that linguistic phenomena gain a primary role (viz not
reducible to logico-math).
Hope soem of this is helpful. Perhaps you could clarify your positions. Do you
take Peirce to be a positivist?
Terry
======================================
On Aug 16, 2011, at 10:05 PM, Steven Ericsson-Zenith wrote:
I am as mystified as Drake concerning the notion of "post-science" and what
this might imply but then I am also mystified as to how simple expressions of
opinion and name calling (materialism is "absurd") helps.
All I said was that the view of late 20th Century materialism is the view that
"our understanding of the physical world is complete in all important
respects." I then observed, as a positivist, that this is not a scientific
view.
This observation affirms the principles of science. And it certainly affirms
those principles conceived by Peirce and Carnap. If it is critical of anything
it is critical of the scientific community of the late 20th Century for
allowing the view of materialism to prevail and for sustaining the
intellectually lazy view of "emergence" theorists.
Emergence theorists appear also to appeal to a "post-science." Perhaps this is
what Terry is referring to. Emergence theory, as popularly espoused by Chaitin,
Wolfram and others, is the necessary logical consequence of materialism and
also not scientific.
With respect,
Steven
--
Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering
http://senses.info
On Aug 16, 2011, at 8:57 PM, Terry Bristol wrote:
> Drake –
>
> This is the tip of a large intellectual iceberg. So simply: the dominant
> logical positivist philosophy of science is largely an exposition of the
> Mechanical Philosophy resurrected by Galileo and Descartes et al. The
> Laplacean version was that Newtonian Mechanics allowed an 'in principle'
> supermind to predict and explain everything (viz as well as retrodict). The
> Modern version has been Einstein's Unified Field Theory research program and
> the later posturing about a Theory of Everything. I recently asked Brian
> Greene (Columbia U, Elegant Universe; Fabric of teh Cosmos) where he though
> that String Theory might be a Fully Deterministic Theory of Everything. He
> said that that was the goal and expectation.
>
> The problem with the opposite 'un-scientific' position is that it is unable
> to account for or make sense of the success – limited as it may be – of the
> mechanical theories (Newton, Maxwell, quantum etc.). A post-scientific theory
> seeks to be able to make sense of the success of science (mechanical theories
> and relationships) while rejecting the Scientific Hypothesis (SH) that all
> phenomena in the universe can be understood as governed by one (time-space
> invariant) order. SH is what links ancient science and modern science – that
> they are both science.
>
> Peirce and the American Pragmatists embraced the Evolutionary Hypothesis –
> linked to Schiller and Hegel and so forth and again linked to ancient
> theories – Plato, Socrates and Aristotle.
> The Socratic Turn (cf Bartlett's brilliant Great Courses exposition) is the
> same as the Pragmatic Turn (IMO) where there is a paradigmatic problem shift
> from the scientific – how does the world work (necessarily fixed over time to
> be 'learnable'? – to the pragmatic – how should we live?
>
> A post-scientific, pragmatic model of reality must still be able to make
> sense of the successes of the scientific enterprise – precluding a shift to
> an un-scientific model.
>
> Enough of the iceberg.
>
> Terry
>
> =========================================
> On Aug 16, 2011, at 8:05 PM, vony wrote:
> Why is “post-scientific” a better characterization than “unscientific” of the
> sentence “our understanding of the physical world is complete in all
> important respects." ? To my mind the proposition "our understanding of the
> physical world is complete in all important respects" is absurd, Not just
> “unscientific” but counter-scientific. It doesn’t seem to be consistent to
> any idea I have of “religion”, either.
> Drake
>
> From: Terry Bristol…………
> 'Post-scientific' is a better characterization than unscientific – methinks.
> What Peirce et al are after is a More General Theory that can account for the
> inherently limited success of various material or mechanical theories as
> special cases.
>
> T
> =================================
> On Aug 16, 2011, at 12:59 PM, Gary Richmond wrote:
>
> Steven, List,
> …………..
>
> While I concur that Peirce would have certainly agreed that the position that
> "our understanding of the physical world is complete in all important
> respects" is unscientific, …..
> ….
>
> Gary
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