Dear Terry,
> Let's set a date since my summer is loaded – family reunion and all. How
> about starting September 6th or thereabouts?
I can do that - send me a note when the date comes by as a reminder. I invite
you to begin by addressing item 1.
> I think we agree that the core of the Scientific Research Program (viz the
> historical sequence of better and better theories) is the Scientific
> Hypothesis: that nature can be understood (at least in principle) in terms of
> one universal (time-space invariant) order.
Maybe. I hesitate around including the question of spacetime invariance and I
will look for a more rigorous definition of "one universal order." But I think
these are nuances, mostly terminological, that can be cleared up quickly.
In my terms, I take what you refer to as "the Scientific Hypothesis" to be an
epistemological statement, and you present it as such, that the universe can
ultimately be rigorously and systematically characterized as a single system.
It is not immediately clear to me that spacetime invariance is a necessary
requirement since I can imagine descriptions in which it is not yet still
adheres to the uniformity of natural laws.
With respect,
Steven
--
Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering
http://senses.info
On Aug 17, 2011, at 3:35 PM, Terry Bristol wrote:
> Steven –
>
> Thank you for your detailed response. I think it might be valuable to the
> list to pursue our differences and thereby hopefully clarify Peirce's shift
> to an evolutionary model of the universe.
>
> Let's both do some background homework on Peirce's reasoning and positions
> and the same on Carnap. I am not a great Carnap fan, but I have read much of
> his work.
>
> I propose the following questions to discuss:
> 1. What was Peirce's evolutionary position? What did he see as
> evidence/reasoning for that?
> 2. What was Carnap's position on the evolution of the universe? What did he
> see as evidence for that?
> 3. I suggest linking Peirce's position to that of James and Dewey.
> Dewey's distinction between the Spectator and Participant representations of
> science (natural inquiry) I think captures the shift I see in Peirce and
> others who have tried to clarify these issues in terms of 'emergence'.
> 4. A core position of the evolutionary and Participant perspectives is that
> we have freewill. James notes that this is the core of pragmatism.
> Fortunately/unfortunately free choice is the basis of all moral systems – so
> there is a track towards religion.
> Dewey, for instance, is looking for a post-traditional religion understanding
> of this implication – as was Whitehead.
> In other words if you choose to include this (4.) track I think it best to
> consider it as the question of moral realism completely independent of any
> traditional religious litany.
>
> Let's set a date since my summer is loaded – family reunion and all. How
> about starting September 6th or thereabouts?
>
> I think this might be fun and mutually edifying.
> (Key is to be respectful and try to understand the other's position
> constructively. On the other hand I make mistakes every day – at least
> according to my wife.)
>
> Terry
>
> P.S. YOU SAY "Incidentally, "positivism" is merely the view that science can
> be universally applied and it has evolved as our understanding of science
> [the universe??] has evolved. Try to avoid giving it baggage that it does not
> carry."
>
> I think we agree that the core of the Scientific Research Program (viz the
> historical sequence of better and better theories) is the Scientific
> Hypothesis: that nature can be understood (at least in principle) in terms of
> one universal (time-space invariant) order.
>
> RIght?
>
> (Time-space invariance can be understood quite colloquially as equivalent to
> 'repeatability' or regularity of types of phenomena and the relations
> between phenomena over changes in time and location. Galileo's Pisa
> experiment can be repeated now in New York. This is basic to the Mechanical
> Philosophy – and I think of positivism – and is a core presupposition of
> mainstream physics et al.)
>
> Terry
>
> ====================================================================
>
> On Aug 17, 2011, at 11:02 AM, Steven Ericsson-Zenith wrote:
>
> Dear Terry,
>
> I am aware that there have been and continue to be many calls for a
> "post-science." Emergence theorists have for the past century made that call.
> From this awareness you should not infer that I am any the less mystified by
> it. It's persistence serves only to demonstrate its religious nature, not its
> merit. Carnap made a similar complaint.
>
> There appear to be numerous misconceptions in what you have written,
> especially about the nature of Peirce and Carnap, Pragmaticism and Logical
> Positivism.
>
> Both Peirce and Carnap were constructivists, though clearly Carnap took this
> constructivism further. Both believed that the world is a construction from
> primitive nature. It's not clear to me what you mean when you say "an
> evolutionary model of the universe." We may be in agreement though I suspect
> you allow the magic of emergence - that neither Peirce nor Carnap (nor I)
> would allow.
>
> The Vienna Circle held a variety of views on the basis of the world. The
> difference between Feigl's "Physicalism" and Carnap's is significant here.
> Feigl's was materialism but Carnap's was not. In response to Feigl Carnap
> wrote:
>
> "This thesis does not refer to the laws known to us at present, but to
> those laws which hold in nature and which our knowledge can only more or less
> approximate. The thesis may therefore be understood as the hypothesis that in
> the future it will become possible to an ever greater extent to derive known
> extra-physical laws from known physical laws." Rudolf Carnap, The Philosophy
> of Rudolf Carnap: The Library of Living Philosophers. 1963. Arthur Edward
> Schlipp
>
> Carnap's "Liberal Physicalism" is not materialism, it is a view that allows
> new discovery in the basis of the world.
>
> Now it is certainly the case that science expects that we are able to
> mathematically characterize nature and to therefore produce a mechanics that
> explains its behaviors (where "explanation" is the identification of causes).
> But the nature of this mechanics must change as the basis changes when we
> discover more. As Carnap would put it in particular: "As we discover more
> abut the nature of perception." Your distain for mechanics and logical
> construction is founded upon a recognition that our current mechanics and
> logical constructions are incomplete. A point of view with which I agree. But
> you are shooting the messenger with your broad and general statements against
> mathematical characterization and mechanics.
>
> There is simply more work to do.
>
> Incidentally, "positivism" is merely the view that science can be universally
> applied and it has evolved as our understanding of science has evolved. Try
> to avoid giving it baggage that it does not carry.
>
> With respect,
> Steven
>
>
> --
> Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
> Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering
> http://senses.info
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Aug 17, 2011, at 12:49 AM, Terry Bristol wrote:
>
>> 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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