Locke, Medicine, and Bacon

Among the unpublished posthumous papers of John Locke is a manuscript titled, variously, either Ars Medica or De Arte Medica, and dated, by Henry Richard Fox Bourne, to approximately 1669.

This text is of interest because it represents a point of contact between Locke’s empirical epistemology and the mundane concerns of utilitarian medicine. It is a point, so to speak, at which the theoretical meets the practical.

Locke points out that medicine, being an applied and concrete craft, was perhaps more susceptible to the natural, cultural, and subconscious influences which can distort reasoning. There might be a parallel here between Locke’s critique of medical thinkers and Francis Bacon’s identification of four sources of error in logic.

Because these earlier thinkers seemed unaware of these error-inducing influences, and took no measures against them, Locke finds most of what has been written about medicine to be, at the least, built on unsteady groundwork:

If, therefore the learned men of former ages employed a great part of their time and thoughts in searching out the hidden causes of distempers, were curious in imagining the secret workmanship of nature and the several imperceptible tools wherewith she wrought, and, putting all these fancies together, fashioned to themselves systems and hypotheses, ‘tis no more to be wondered at or censured that they accommodated themselves to the fashion of their times and countries, and so far complied with their most natural inclinations as to desire to have some basis to rest their thoughts upon, and some grounds to guide them in the practice of their art. Their being busy and subtile in disputing upon allowed principles was but to be employed in the way of fame and reputation and the learning valued in that age; and that their practice extended no farther than the sacred principles they believed in would permit, is no more to be admired than that we find no fair and lasting fabrics left to us by our ancestors upon narrow and unsound foundations.

Locke hastens to add that he respects these earlier writers, despite the flaw in their writings which he is identifying, because they catalogued a significant body of observations, and developed laws based on correlation.

Those writings, however, are saturated with unmerited conjectures which, left uncorrected, will lead readers astray:

I would not be thought here to censure the learned authors of former times, or disown the advantages they have left to posterity. To them we owe a great number of excellent observations and several ingenious discourses, and there is not any one rule of practice founded upon unbiased observation which I do not receive and submit to with veneration and acknowledgment; yet I think I may confidently affirm that the hypothesis which tied the long and elaborate discourses of the ancients, and suffered not their enquiries to extend themselves any farther than how the phenomena of diseases might be explained by those doctrines and the rules of practice accommodated to the received principles, has at last but confined and narrowed men's thoughts, amused their understanding with fine but useless speculations, and diverted their enquiries from the true and advantageous knowledge of things.

Locke seems, then, to be engaged in a Baconian task: freeing an observational empirical science, or the applied form of it, from systematic methodological shortcomings which nudge it toward error, or at least toward unfounded hypotheses.

The reader might further wonder if Locke were directly inspired by Bacon’s texts to this task, or whether he were indirectly inspired as Bacon’s influence came down through other thinkers like Robert Boyle, or whether Locke happened upon the same concerns independently by coincidence. Peter Anstey writes:

There is sufficient evidence to claim that Locke owed a significant debt to Bacon's conception of how natural philosophy should be done.

Concerning the connection, if any, between Locke and Bacon, Anstey notes:

So it would appear that Locke’s comments on method in natural philosophy, whatever their peculiarities, stand in a tradition stretching back to Bacon. Yet surprisingly, John Locke and Francis Bacon are not normally associated with each other. There are few references to Bacon in Locke's writings and the weight of scholarship seems to lean to the view that Bacon had little, if any, influence on Locke.

Anstey goes on to cite an article by John R. Milton about the influence of Bacon on Locke:

It should be pointed out that Milton also claims that the quantity of Bacon’s books owned by Locke is “strong prima facie evidence that Locke was interested in the thought” of Bacon and that parallels in the intellectual content and stylistic expression of Bacon and Locke suggest Bacon as a source of influence on Locke.

That there are points of comparison between Locke and Bacon is clear; there are doubtless points of contrast, as well. It seems that at least some of Bacon’s influence on Locke was direct; we know that Locke was aware of Bacon and had read some of Bacon’s texts.

The flaws which Locke notes can be understood to correlate with Bacon's four sources of experimental error.

There should therefore be no surprise that Locke’s writings about medicine have a Baconian flavor.

Finding the Old Kant in the Young Kant's Texts

Immanuel Kant published his Kritik der Reinen Vernunft in 1781, when he was approximately 57 years old. He was born in 1724. The book, known also by the English translation of its title, The Critique of Pure Reason, took Kant from obscurity to fame, and constitutes a major turning-point in the history of philosophy.

Prior to this publication, the few who knew Kant respected him and regarded him as brilliant. Most of his publications until this point, however, had been less remarkable.

In hindsight, scholars have found indications in some of those early writings which point toward the development of what would become Kant’s trademark thinking. The centrality of space and time, and Kant’s distinctive understanding of them, appear, at least in part, in passages like this:

They who hold this disquisition superfluous are confuted by the concepts of space and time, conditions, as it were, given by their very own selves and primitive, by whose aid, that is to say, without any other principle, it is not only possible but necessary for several actual things to be regarded as reciprocally parts constituting a whole.

Qui hanc disquisitionem insuper habent, frustrantur conceptibus spatii ac temporis, quasi condicionibus per se iam datis atque primitivis, quarum ope, scilicet, absque ullo alio principio, non solum possibile sit, sed et necessarium, ut plura actualia se mutuo respiciant uti compartes et constituant totum.

Kant’s peculiar doctrine that time and space are not only somehow products of the rational mind, but also the instruments by which that mind processes sensations into perceptions and ultimately forms concepts, is not only one of the foundational cornerstones of Kantian metaphysics, but rather also represents a possibility of moving beyond the stalemate which existed between Newton’s view of space and Leibniz’s view of space.

One scholar, J.H.W. Stuckenberg, sees one of Kant’s early publications, titled De Mundi Sensibilis atque Intelligibilis Forma et Principiis, as a turning point both in Kant’s career and in the written expression of Kant’s characteristic thought. Stuckenberg writes:

In order that he might become a professor, it was necessary for him again to present a Latin dissertation. In its subject and treatment the one prepared for this occasion was worthy of the man who was called to teach metaphysics, and it is historically significant from the fact that in it Kant for the first time publicly gave some of the most important principles afterwards developed in the “Kritik.” It was a discussion of the difference between sensation and understanding, with the title, “The Form and Principles of the World of Sense and of the Intellect.”

Kant’s thought took shape over time, as John Henry Wilbrandt Stuckenberg traces it through Kant’s correspondence.

There is some orthographic ambiguity surrounding Stuckenberg. It probably started as Johann Heinrich Wilbrandt, but might also have been Johannes. Wilbrandt also occasionally appears as Wilbrand (without the ‘t’) or even as Wilburn. Sometimes the ‘l’ is doubled to Willbrandt, Willbrand, or Willburn.

Kant understandably saw his Kritik as properly not being metaphysics, but rather as something logically prior to metaphysics, a foundation which would make metaphysics possible and determine its scope, limits, and methods. Stuckenberg writes:

Kant's correspondence also indicates that he frequently changed his plans. When the book was already in press, he wrote to Herz that the “Kritik” “contains the results of all kinds of investigations, which began with the ideas which we discussed under the title of the Mundi Sensibilis and Intelligibilis” referring to his Inaugural Dissertation. At other times he expected to limit the contents much more. It may surprise some that at any time Kant regarded such a “Kritik” as lying outside of the sphere of metaphysics; but this significant passage occurs in a letter written to Herz in the winter of 1774-75: “I shall rejoice when I have finished my transcendental philosophy, which is really a critique of pure reason. I shall then work on metaphysic, which has only two parts, namely, the metaphysic of nature and that of morals, of which I expect to publish the latter first ; and I already rejoice over it in anticipation.” At this time, therefore, he held the view which he also held for years after the “Kritik” appeared, that it was only the preparation for metaphysics; nevertheless he regards it as belonging to transcendental philosophy. His letters and books, together with his last manuscript, show that his view of metaphysic was subject to numerous changes.

Kant’s development, then, demonstrates a number of changes in his views, but also a continuity from his 1770 publication, and perhaps from even earlier writings.

It is, of course, a matter of close textual reading to determine to which extent scholars find forerunners of Kant’s critical philosophy in his pre-critical writings, and to which extent scholars read into those early texts ideas which might not actually be there. But an evenhanded reading of the 1774/1775 letter by Kant to Herz clearly manifests, as Stuckenberg notes, the mature Kantian view.

Unraveling Morality from Religion

There is ever a great gap between the philosopher’s careful use of words and the sensationalistic verbiage of the popular press. The reader will see this clearly when it comes to questions of religion and morality.

At the outset, it may be stipulated that religion and morality are two different and distinct things. A man’s religion underdetermines his morality, and his morality underdetermines his religion: merely because he tells me that he is follows a certain religion, I cannot deduce from that his morality; and because he tells me that he holds to a certain morality, I cannot deduce from that his religion.

Writing about the controversial political questions of our day - abortion, homosexuality, race relations - the popular news media habitually assert an automatic and invariable connection, correlation, and causality between religion and morality. In such narratives, the words “religious” and “Christian” are meant to describe, not spiritual worldviews, but rather specific moral prescriptions or proscriptions.

Put simply: on many, if not all, moral questions, one can find atheists on both sides, Christians on both sides, Jews on both sides, Hindus on both sides, Buddhists on both sides, and Muslims on both sides. The same is true of Sikhs, Jains, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, etc.

Contrary to the impression given by the contemporary newspapers, there are pro-life atheists and pro-abortion Christians. In elections about normalizing homosexual relationships, in various of America’s fifty states, significant numbers of atheists have voted in favor of the standard definition of marriage as one man and one woman, while significant numbers of Christians have voted against it.

In short, the news media assert a relationship between religion and morality which simply does not exist.

The ubiquity of the popular press’s assertion, however, has clouded the logic of ethical reasoning.

Consider, e.g., the writing of Supreme Court Justice Scalia in Lawrence v. Texas, a 2003 case. Note his studious avoidance of any religious vocabulary:

Many Americans do not want persons who openly engage in homosexual conduct as partners in their business, as scoutmasters for their children, as teachers in their children’s schools, or as boarders in their home. They view this as protecting themselves and their families from a lifestyle that they believe to be immoral and destructive. The Court views it as “discrimination” which it is the function of our judgments to deter. So imbued is the Court with the law profession’s anti-anti-homosexual culture, that it is seemingly unaware that the attitudes of that culture are not obviously “mainstream”

A precise use of vocabulary is necessary to properly distinguish, then, between moral questions and religious questions. Definitions of moral or religious concepts should be carefully formulated.

The confusion of these two categories - religion and morality - in ubiquitous in vernacular usage. The borderline between the two is habitually blurred.

It is true, admittedly, that there are certain points of connection between religion and ethical, or meta-ethical, considerations. But that connection is not as determining as is commonly supposed.

This clarification can proceed by conducting moral analyses, as far as possible, without reference to religion. Likewise, religious analyses should be conducted, to the extent possible, without consideration of morality.

If these investigations refer to each other only when necessary, it will become clear how seldom such necessity occurs.

Gender Identity

Two of the many tasks surrounding the topic of gender are the task of definition, and the task of sorting out which aspects of gender are fixed independently of any one person or of any one person’s experience.

These tasks are complicated by the wide, constantly changing, inconsistent, and mutually incompatible usages found in the popular press and in casual conversation in society about this topic.

At the very outset, then, of this task, the philosopher faces a dilemma. He can begin by examining ordinary actual usage of words like ‘gender’ and ‘sex’ and ‘male’ and ‘female’ - and soon find himself in an unwieldy swamp of definition and idiom.

The other option is to largely ignore popular usage, and to begin with a few definitions which are taken as axiomatic.

One example of the contradictions which quickly emerge when studying common usage is that one dictionary defines ‘gender’ as a social and cultural distinction between male and female, while defining ‘sex’ as the biological distinction. Yet a biology textbook may define ‘gender’ as the biological grouping of male or female, and ‘sex’ as activity relating to procreation.

With such rampant inconsistency in usage, sorting out a definition becomes a difficult chore.

Turning to the other task, a philosopher asks, which aspects of such identity are independent of the individual and his experience? This question can be rephrased in slightly different ways: one can ask about the objective versus the subjective distinction between male and female; one can ask about the physiological versus the psychological distinction; or one can ask about whether the various elements of such a distinction are knowable a priori or a posteriori.

Several bits of data form traditional points of departure for such discussion. First, one the level of cellular structure, genetic information codes an individual’s gender, independently of that person’s experiences, prior to that person’s conscious conceptualization of gender, and immutably. No gender reassignment therapy can change an individual’s gender at the level of DNA. (Mitochondrial DNA is a definitive gender differentiator.)

Note here that ‘gender’ has entered the discourse, despite not yet having obtained a working definition. Note also that “experience” includes emotions, intuitions, physical actions and interactions, as well as social and cultural settings.

Second, certain bone structures are determined by, and reveal, gender. Archeologists and paleoanthropologists can determine the gender of human remains given no more than a few bones from a skeleton. A scientist can discover the gender of a long-deceased individual, given a fibula, a tibia, a humerus, a radius, an ulna, and maybe a rib, an anklebone, or a finger.

Third, male brain anatomy and female brain anatomy differ measurably and significantly. Not only is the anatomy quite distinct, but also the physiology is quantitatively and observably divergent. The study of the differences between the male and female amygdala and hippocampus has become an entire academic discipline unto itself.

Both the differences in bone structure and in brain functionality are impervious to any attempted gender reassignment.

By contrast, other aspects of gender are social and cultural artifacts, formed by convention, and susceptible to change. Traditional associations of color - pink for girls, blue for boy - or fashion - girls have long hair, boys have short hair - are neither a priori nor necessary. They are mutable.

One area for investigation is, then, the distinction between those gender and sex differentiators which are necessary and immutable, and those which are merely cultural conventions.

There are those who would make the claim that most, or even all, of what we call ‘gender’ or ‘sex’ is a social construct: that it has no objective basis in physical reality. In the words of a 2015 report issued in Missouri:

This is an element of what is sometimes referred to in gender studies as the “social constructionism” movement in psychological theory.

The notion that gender is a social construct entails that it is thoroughly mutable, and that statements about gender identity are incorrigible. Statements made by individuals who “identify as” one gender or the other would therefore be allowed to stand, and no argument against such statements would be possible.

“Gender” has become a matter of uncertainty. Rather than male or female, many see gender as a relative matter, or even a continuum. They consider gender or sexual identity to be less a reality given at conception than a matter of personal discovery. Reflective of such a theoretical perspective, increasing attention is also given to individuals who are personally uncertain about their own gender or sexual identity — in particular, individuals who are “transsexual” or “transgendered,” as well as those who identify themselves as “bisexual” or are “questioning” their gender and in the process of determining what they perceive to be their true gender identity.

Yet not only does empirical evidence in the physical realm speak of a gender identity which is temporally and logically prior to an individual’s self-identification, but data from the psychological realm also presents a case for gender which is independent of the individual’s “identifying as” one gender or the other.

Across all demographic variables, males more than females are likely to commit violent crime. This probability is by a significant statistical margin.

Separately, learning styles between the genders are markedly different, so much so that one can deliberate organize a presentation such that one gender will learn more than the other from it.

It seems, then, that the mutable aspects of gender identity which are social constructs are few and insignificant: clothing styles, hair length, fashionable colors, etc. We see, e.g., how the Scots wear kilts, which to the rest of the world seem like women’s dresses, but which to them are masculine.

The significant and essential aspect of gender identity, by contrast, seem immutable, and independent of the individual’s self-perception or self-description. First-person gender statements may, after all, be corrigible.

Phases in Sartre's Career

In 1980, a Roman Catholic priest named Marius Perrin published his memoirs of his time in a POW camp with the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. Both Frenchmen, Sartre and Perrin were lodged in Stalag XII-D near the city of Trier. Sartre had been serving as a meteorologist with French army when he had been captured by the Germans.

In the camp, the intellectuals among the prisoners formed a cultural society: artists, priests, and others - including Sartre. They had discussions and even organized lectures. Some of them took careful notes. Others did extensive writing.

Captured in 1940 and released in 1941, Sartre spent a little less than a year in the POW camp. He read extensively during this time. One major point in his intellectual development was his study of Heidegger which he undertook at Stalag 12-D. He also wrote a great deal during these months.

Shortly after Perrin published his book about his time with Sartre, Alfred Desautels wrote a review of it. Desautels begins his analysis of Perrin’s biographical account of Sartre’s war years by examining its reliability.

The veracity of Perrin’s book is relevant, because it is one piece of evidence used to support a particular view of Sartre’s career. One group of Sartre scholars divide his working years into four phases. Briefly, they assert that Sartre’s career began with a phase of despair, followed by a phase of hope, followed by a second phase of despair, and ending with a second phase of hope.

Scholars who embrace this view of Sartre lean on Perrin’s work, because the first ‘hopeful’ phase in Sartre’s career is defined, under this view, as his time in Stalag 12-D. Desautels writes:

At the outset we should assume, I think, that his testimony is accurate for the following reasons: 1) the priest is an unabashed admirer of Sartre, confessing that he is deeply indebted to him for a change of outlook on life; 2) the account is based on extensive notes he took daily during the nine months together; 3) he was encouraged by good friends of Sartre to publish his account of prison life; 4) in his preface, he urges his fellow-prisoners who are still alive to make known their own recollections of their rapport with the philosopher. A Docteur-es-Lettres even at the time of his captivity, Perrin undoubtedly had the academic background to appreciate the value of Sartre’s intellectual stature.

Thus Desautels defends Perrin’s account of Sartre, for with it stands or falls not only Perrin’s book, but also a large school of thought about the progression of Sartre’s career.

Sartre’s months as a POW were highlighted by his intense engagement with Heidegger’s writings, by his authorship of the stage play Bariona, and by his intellectually stimulating conversations with his fellow prisoners, many of whom were Roman Catholic priests from France.

Schopenhauer, Thales, and Socrates

Even the most casual student of Schopenhauer knows, already from the title of his central publication alone, that he asserts and embraces some type of idealism. In repeated and various formulations, he informs the reader that the world is will - the world is constructed by, and is the product of, the will - and that at the same time, the world is representation - that the world consists of, and is a projection of, the mind.

Translators have wrestled to find good English equivalents for these two key elements. The title of the book has been rendered various as The World as Will and Representation, The World as Will and Idea, and The World as Will and Presentation.

Schopenhauer’s concept is of an active self - a self which wills, and which (re)presents or ideates.

The form which this representation assumes, as a prerequisite, as a necessary precondition, he writes, is the relation between subject and object. What might Schopenhauer intend by telling us that representation is relative? Perhaps he intends to deny an absoluteness to representation. To what is representation relative? He seems to be saying that the form of representation is subject and object; in his understanding of this form, each is relative to the other: there is no object without subject, and no subject without object.

This, then, might be one formulation of Schopenhauer’s idealism: that a subject cannot be a subject without an object, and likewise an object cannot be an object without a subject. This leaves no room for an absolute object, a Ding-an-sich which exists independently of any observing subject. It also leaves no room for an absolute subject, a solipsistic knowing consciousness independent of any object.

If this is an accurate assessment of Schopenhauer, then it is a simultaneous swipe at both Descartes and Hume. Schopenhauer would deny the independent existence of the Cartesian mind reflecting on its existence prior to any experience; he would also deny the Humean attempt to posit a bundle of experiences existing with an ego to be the knowing subject for which they are the object.

This form of subject and object gives rise to a number of “subordinate” forms. This form and subforms “express” the principle of sufficient reason. This principle, which states that everything has a cause, is the activity of the human mind. In seeing the human mind as projecting causation onto the raw data of the senses, Schopenhauer parallels Kant, at least to some extent. The principle of sufficient reason is thus similar to time and space, both of which are Kantian projections of the mind onto sensations.

If we remove form from the object, what is left? In answering this question, Schopenhauer parts ways with Kant. The raw material of the object, Schopenhauer writes, is neither sense-data nor a Ding-an-sich. If we extract form from the object, then what remains is the will. If the will is the self, or part of the self, then I am the object which I perceive.

The will, or the self, is the true Ding-an-sich:

Ich beschließe hier den zweiten Haupttheil meiner Darstellung, in der Hoffnung, daß, soweit es bei der allerersten Mitheilung eines noch nie dagewesenen Gedankens, der daher von den Spuren der Individualität, in welcher zuerst er sich erzeugte, nicht ganz frei seyn kann, – möglich ist, es mir gelungen sei, die deutliche Gewißheit mitzutheilen, daß diese Welt, in der wir leben und sind, ihrem ganzen Wesen nach, durch und durch Wille und zugleich durch und durch Vorstellung ist; daß diese Vorstellung schon als solche eine Form voraussetzt, nämlich Objekt und Subjekt, mithin relativ ist; und wenn wir fragen, was nach Aufhebung dieser Form und aller ihr untergeordneten, die der Satz vom Grund ausdrückt, noch übrig bleibt; dieses als ein von der Vorstellung toto genere Verschiedenes, nichts Anderes seyn kann, als Wille, der sonach das eigentliche Ding an sich ist.

The self is therefore the knower and the known, the subject and the object. Consciousness is the necessary supporter of the world. It is necessary to parse Schopenhauer carefully here: the phrase “its necessary supporter” in English is ambiguous when we ask what “it” is. In German, however, the pronoun requires a feminine noun as an antecedent. The only two feminine nouns available as antecedents are Welt and Vorstellung. This parsing allows us to determine what is supporting and what is supported:

Jeder findet sich selbst als diesen Willen, in welchem das innere Wesen der Welt besteht, so wie er sich auch als das erkennende Subjekt findet, dessen Vorstellung die ganze Welt ist, welche insofern nur in Bezug auf sein Bewußtseyn, als ihren nothwendigen Träger, ein Daseyn hat.

What is true of the individual - that he is a coin with two sides, that he is simultaneously object and subject - is true of the universe as a whole. Does Schopenhauer mean to say that the cosmos as a whole is a knowing subject?

Jeder ist also in diesem doppelten Betracht die ganze Welt selbst, der Mikrokosmos, findet beide Seiten derselben ganz und vollständig in sich selbst.

Although Schopenhauer does not say that the universe is a knowing subject, he does say that it is composed of will. The “will” here is singular. The cosmos is not an amalgamation of many wills. It is a will. In some places, Schopenhauer refines this to “my will” instead of simply “will.” What might be effected by this change in formulation is not clear; either term can be construed as leading to paradoxes. If the universe is “my will,” we run the danger of solipsism; if the universe is merely “will,” then I may be a projection of the universe lacking my own will, instead of the other way around.

Und was er so als sein eigenes Wesen erkennt, das Selbe erschöpft auch das Wesen der ganzen Welt, des Makrokosmos: auch sie also ist, wie er selbst, durch und durch Wille, und durch und durch Vorstellung, und nichts bleibt weiter übrig.

Having introduced the words ‘macrocosm’ and ‘microcosm’ into this passage, Schopenhauer then goes on to correlate them to the historical figures Thales and Socrates. This correlation deserves some attention.

While Kant and some German Idealists like Hegel make broad, arm-waving references to historical figures like Plato or Aristotle - references which are not meant to indicate specific texts - , Schopenhauer here seems to mean something precise about Thales and Socrates.

Schopenhauer sets Thales and Socrates against each other, which is easy enough to do: Socrates was concerned with ethical, moral, social, and political philosophy. Thales engaged in metaphysics, ontology, and cosmology.

Interestingly, Schopenhauer pairs Socrates with the “microcosm,” and assigns Thales to the “macrocosm.” His plan is clear enough: to show that the micro and the macro are somehow the same.

What is not clear is why he correlates the two philosophers as he does. What is it about the metaphysics of Thales which makes it, for Schopenhauer, the macrocosm? When we think of cosmology, images of galaxies might pop into our minds: certainly, thinking about billions of stars scattered across billions of miles would seem to qualify as thinking about the macrocosm.

Thales, however, is interested in cosmology in the sense of thinking about the essential nature of matter. Shall we assume that Schopenhauer was aware that the most provocative aspect of Thales was his thesis that everything arises somehow from water? Certainly, Thales did spend some time thinking about earthquakes, about whether the earth was a sphere or a disk, and about how to measure the diameters of the sun and the moon. Those are certainly “macro” topics. But Thales is most famous because of his water hypothesis, and it must be something related to this hypothesis which makes Schopenhauer choose him as a representative of the “macro.”

If we think of matter, we might think of atoms or subatomic particles. Whether or not Thales was an atomist, he might have considered very small objects in his consideration of matter: insects, seeds, etc. This would hardly seem to be “macro.”

We ask also why Schopenhauer chose Socrates to be a representative of the “micro.” The city of Athens at the time of Socrates had, by crude estimates, between 45,000 and 400,000 inhabitants. Choosing even the smaller of these numbers meant that Socrates, formulating social or political philosophy, was dealing with a large body of people. That would seem more macro than micro.

It is true that Socrates sometimes considers the case of an individual, as when he speaks with the Rhapsode Ion about poetic inspiration, but Socrates usually immediately generalizes from the individual’s case to the population at large, emphasizing the macro.

It is not directly obvious what Schopenhauer intends by his pairing of Thales and Socrates with the macro and the micro.

So sehn wir hier die Philosophie des Thales, die den Makrokosmos, und die des Sokrates, die den Mikrokosmos betrachtete, zusammenfallen, indem das Objekt beider sich als das Selbe aufweist. – Größere Vollständigkeit aber und dadurch auch größere Sicherheit wird die gesammte in den zwei ersten Büchern mitgetheilte Erkenntniß gewinnen, durch die noch folgenden zwei Bücher, in denen hoffentlich auch manche Frage, welche bei unserer bisherigen Betrachtung deutlich oder undeutlich sich aufgeworfen haben mag, ihre genügende Antwort finden wird.

Perhaps Schopenhauer sees Socrates as dealing with the microcosm insofar as Socrates deals only with questions which are human. Humans, and topics which relate exclusively to humanity, are a subset of the universe. Thales, by contrast, contemplated matter and its origin, a topic which applies to humans, because they are made at least in part of matter, but which applies also to many things which are not human. Thales devoted thought to the physical structure of the sun and moon: certainly non-human topics.

If Schopenhauer sees Thales as considering universal topics - all matter, everywhere - , then that might be why Schopenhauer uses him as a symbol for the macrocosm. If Schopenhauer sees Socrates as excluding large segments of the universe from his area of interest - excluding everything which is not human - , then perhaps it was for this reason that Schopenhauer chose Socrates as representative for the microcosm.

Socrates focusing on a single moral decision; Thales considerating the universal nature of matter: is this how Schopenhauer categorizes them?

We make here only a few tentative observations and hypotheses. This passage requires more research.

Planck and Quantized Energy

Planck’s discovery, which led to what is now called ‘quantum’ mechanics, includes the notion that energy, measured in any of the standard units like BTUs or joules or ergs or calories or kilowatt-hours, is not available in every quantity represented by an arbitrary or random real number.

This would mean that there is at least one number N such that it is impossible to have N joules of energy. The word ‘quantize’ is used to describe this situation.

This would mean that energy quantities, or amounts, when graphed, e.g., on a cartesian plane, do not correspond to that type of infinity of which it is always true that, for any two points, there is an infinity of points between them.

Energy levels thus depicted would yield a graph of ‘steps’ like a staircase - Planck used the word stufenweise - as energy is available in one quantity, and then another higher or lower quantity, jumping over conceivable quantities in between. In Planck’s immediate context, this referred to the energy released by a single atom - electromagnetic energy - as it moved between higher and lower energy states.

A number of mysteries center around the process whereby energy levels jump the gap between possible energy levels, skipping over other conceivable levels.

Planck began to discover this phenomenon in the context of heat radiation, building on the research and measurements made by Heinrich Rubens and Ferdinand Kurlbaum. Planck developed a mathematical model which accurately predicted future values for the research of Rubens and Kurlbaum (sometimes spelled ‘Curlbaum’). Werner Heisenberg describes this pivotal moment:

Diese Entdeckung bezeichnete aber erst den Anfang der eigentlichen theoretischen Forschungsarbeit für Planck. Wie lautete die korrekte physikalische Interpretation der neuen Formel? Da Plank von seinen früheren Untersuchungen her die Formel leicht in eine Aussage über das strahlende Atom (den sogenannten Oszillator) übersetzen konnte, muß er wohl bald herausgefunden haben, daß seine Formel so aussah, als könnte der Oszillator seine Energie nicht stetig ändern, sondern nur einzelne Energiequanten aufnehmen, als könnte er nur in bestimmte Zuständen oder, wie der Physiker sagt, in diskreten Energiestufen existieren. Dieses Ergebnis war so verschieden von allem, was man aus der klassischen Physik wußte, daß Planck sich sicher am Anfang geweigert hat, es zu glauben. Aber in einer Periode intensivster Arbeit während des Herbstes 1900 rang er sich schließlich zu der Überzeugung durch, daß es keine Möglichkeit gab, diesem Schluß zu entgehen. Von Plancks Sohn soll später erzählt worden sein, daß sein Vater ihm, als er Kind war, auf einem langen Spaziergang durch Grunewald von seinen neuen Ideen gesprochen hätte. Auf diesem Weg hätte er ihm auseinandergesetzt, daß er das Gefühl habe, etweder eine Entdeckung allerersten Ranges gemacht zu haben, vielleicht vergleichbar mit den Entdeckungen Newtons, oder sich völlig zu irren. Planck muß sich also um diese Zeit darüber klargeworden sein, daß seine Formel die Grundlagen der Naturbeschreibung erschütterte; daß diese Fundamente eines Tages in Bewegung geraten und von ihrer gegenwärtigen, durch die Überlieferung bestimmten Stelle aus in eine neue und damals völlig unbekannte neue Gleichgewichtslage übergehen würden. Planck, in seinen ganzen Anschauungen ein konservativer Geist, war keineswegs erfreut über diese Folgerungen; aber er veröffentlichte sein Quantenhypothese im Dezember 1900.

Max Planck’s discovery that energy was, at least in these contexts, quantized proved interesting on several levels. It worked against the intuitive understanding of Newtonian mechanics.

In Newtonian physics, as it had hitherto been conceived, force and work and energy and power were conceptualized as increasing and decreasing along a curve of whose points, each of which represented a level or amount of energy, it was true that there would be an infinity of points between any two of them.

Beyond dismantling the intuitive understanding of Newtonian mechanics, Planck’s quantum mechanics had further implications. The understanding of electromagnetic energy at the atomic and subatomic levels would be shaped significantly by the Planck’s discovery.

The effects of quantum mechanics make themselves felt mostly at the atomic and subatomic levels. Newtonian physics still describe the world at the level of railroads and automobiles measured within the usual practical tolerances.

Planck’s discovery of quantized energy led to a series riddles and paradoxes within physics and philosophy, revolving around the notions of causation and around the role of the human observer in measurement. One result of such reflection is that the definition of ‘cause’ has been rethought and potential new definitions for that word have been proposed. It is safe to say that, a little more than a century after Planck’s breakthrough, the implications of his work have yet to be fully catalogued and understood.

Planck and Radiant Energy

The gradual emergence of quantum mechanics was occasioned by a series of questions revolving around radiation - how energy is emitted by material objects. The energy can be in the form of heat, light, or other electromagnetic waves, or in the form of particles.

Physicists worked to find mathematical models which could predict when and how such energy would be emitted. Roger Stuewer writes:

In 1859–60 Kirchhoff had defined a blackbody as an object that reemits all of the radiant energy incident upon it; i.e., it is a perfect emitter and absorber of radiation. There was, therefore, something absolute about blackbody radiation, and by the 1890s various experimental and theoretical attempts had been made to determine its spectral energy distribution — the curve displaying how much radiant energy is emitted at different frequencies for a given temperature of the blackbody. Planck was particularly attracted to the formula found in 1896 by his colleague Wilhelm Wien at the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt (PTR) in Berlin-Charlottenburg, and he subsequently made a series of attempts to derive “Wien’s law” on the basis of the second law of thermodynamics. By October 1900, however, other colleagues at the PTR, the experimentalists Otto Richard Lummer, Ernst Pringsheim, Heinrich Rubens, and Ferdinand Kurlbaum, had found definite indications that Wien’s law, while valid at high frequencies, broke down completely at low frequencies.

The work of Kurlbaum and Rubens provided the impetus and raw material for Planck’s discovery of a new law. Kurlbaum was born in 1857 and had been working in Berlin since 1891. Rubens was born in 1865, and was working in Berlin by 1888 or possibly earlier.

Kurlbaum died in 1927, and Rubens in 1922. The latter’s death may have been the result of exposure to high levels of radiation from working with radium and other unstable isotopes in a laboratory. The dangers of such radiation to human health had not yet been fully understood at that time.

The work of Kurlbaum and Rubens provided data from which Planck could construct, and then test, a mathematical model of energy emission. Werner Heisenberg describes how Planck came to make a discovery:

Als Planck im Jahre 1895 mit seiner wissenschaftlichen Arbeit in dieses Forschungsgebiet eintrat, versuchte er das Problem von der Strahlung auf das strahlende Atom zu verschieben. Durch diese Verschiebung wurden die tieferen Schwierigkeiten des Problems zwar nicht beseitigt, aber ihre Interpretation und die Deutung der empirischen Tatsachen wurden dadurch einfacher. Eben in jener Zeit, nämlich im Sommer 1900, hatten Curlbaum und Rubens in Berlin sehr genaue Messungen des Spektrums der Wärmestrahlung vorgenommen. Als Planck von diesen Ergebnissen hörte, versuchte er sie durch einfache mathematische Formeln darzustellen, die nach seinen allgemeinen Untersuchungen über den Zusammenhang zwischen Wärme und Strahlungen plausibel aussahen. Eines Tages, so wird berichtet, trafen sich Planck und Rubens in Plancks Hause zum Tee und verglichen Rubens’ neueste Resultate mit einer Formel, die Planck zur Deutung von Rubens’ Messungen vorgeschlagen hatte. Der Vergleich zeigte eine vollständige Übereinstimmung. Damit war das Plancksche Gesetz der Wärmestrahlung entdeckt.

Planck’s discovery was not the end, but rather the beginning of a series of discoveries which would together constitute a major revision of hypotheses about radiant energy. The task of systematizing or predicting the emission of energy from matter, and more specifically from an atom, would prove to be the puzzle which occasioned the emergence of quantum physics and the fabled discoveries made by Heisenberg.

The Riddle of Energy and Matter

The common phenomenon of material which glows when heated offers complex challenges to physics. Although common, it is by no means easy to explain why a certain substance emits light of a certain color when it is heated to a certain temperature.

One commonly sees iron glowing from red to yellow when heated by a blacksmith. But why red or yellow? Why not blue or green? And why precisely this color at this temperature?

One of the physicists who investigated this question is John William Strutt, better known as Baron Rayleigh, and more properly, known as the 3rd Baron Rayleigh, to distinguish him from his father (the 2nd Baron Rayleigh) and from his son. Wrestling with various questions in physics, he wrote:

I have never thought the materialist view possible, and I look to a power beyond what we see, and to a life in which we may at least hope to take part.

His son, Robert Strutt, worked on similar problems, and is known as the 4th Baron Rayleigh. His work showed that the questions about light emitted from heated matter are related to questions about light emitted from matter through which an electric current moves.

Where Rayleigh left off, James Hopwood Jeans began, and formulated the Rayleigh-Jeans law. This formula, based on classical mechanics, approximates the observations of emitted radiation from a body for a certain range of values, but deviates substantially from empirical data for values above and below that range.

The failure of the Rayleigh-Jeans law was one of several impetuses for the development of quantum mechanics. Werner Heisenberg writes:

Der Anfang der Quantentheorie ist mit einem bekannten Phänomen verbunden, das keineswegs zu den zentralen Teilen der Atomphysik gehört. Irgendein Stück Materie, das erhitzt wird, beginnt zu glühen, es wird rot- oder schließlich weißglühend bei hohen Temperaturen. Die Farbe hängt nicht sehr stark von der Oberfläche des Materials ab, und für einen schwarzen Körper hängt sie sogar allein von der Temperatur ab. Daher ist die Strahlung, die durch solch einen schwarzen Körper bei hohen Temperaturen ausgesandt wird, ein geeignetes Objekt für physikalische Untersuchungen. Da es sich um ein einfaches Phänomen handelt, sollte es auch auf Grund der bekannten Gesetze der Strahlung und der Wärme eine einfache Erklärung dafür geben. Der Versuch zu einer solchen Erklärung, der gegen Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts durch Rayleigh and Jeans gemacht wurde, brachte jedoch sehr ernste Schwierigkeiten an den Tag. Es ist leider nicht möglich, diese Schwierigkeiten in einfachen Begriffen zu beschreiben. Es muß genügen festzustellen, daß die folgerichtige Anwendung der damals bekannten Naturgesetze nicht zu sinnvollen Resultaten führte.

The failure of the Rayleigh-Jeans law nudged physicists, including Max Planck, to look at the micro level, to look at the atom, for clues about the mechanisms which predict or determine the amount of energy matter will release, the wavelength and direction of that energy, and how that release of energy is determined by the temperature to which the matter is heated, or by the amount and type of electric current which is sent through it.

Thus the riddle presented by the Rayleigh-Jeans law reaches to the central questions of quantum mechanics, and to the legendary results of Heisenberg.

Concerning the Impossibility of Gender Reassignment

The phrases “gender reassignment” and “sex change” appear increasingly in contemporary discourse. While speakers believe that they have some intuitive meaning for these terms, a rigorous definition is a complex task.

Geneticists, biologists, anatomists, and other empirical and observational scientists work with the distinction between male and female, and need functional decision procedures to determine gender. Likewise, the legal system has the same need to distinguish between the two, but does so in a different way. Finally, the business world has a need to make the gender distinction, but does so in a third way.

An interesting moment occurs when the empirical scientist, the lawyer, and the businessman must find verbal formulations which satisfy all three of them.

An enterprise called the Genographic Project, organized by the National Geographic Society, is such an instance. Offering some form of genetic analysis to the public, the project involves geneticists. Because it is a non-profit commercial enterprise, it includes business leaders who want to make sure that it is financially viable, and they hire lawyers to protect those revenues from potential lawsuits.

Such genetic analysis is gender-dependent. The way the test results are processed and interpreted depends upon the gender of the donor. In this context, then, the question must be posed to the person donating the sample (usually saliva): “what is your gender?”

The answer, for the purposes of genetic analysis, is an answer that cannot be changed by gender reassignment surgery, by various hormone treatments, or by any other form of gender reassignment therapy. A geneticist analyzes a sample from an individual based on an immutable gender identity which that individual received before birth.

Moving from science to law, the legal disclaimers on the materials and genetic sampling kits distributed by the Genographic Project are designed to clearly inform the individual who donates a sample, and designed to avoid lawsuits which could arise from misunderstandings. These disclaimers state:

Because women do not carry a Y chromosome, this test will not reveal direct paternal deep ancestry for female participants. Women will learn other information about their paternal side of the family, however.

In the same document, the following statement reiterates the clear and immutable gender difference:

We will run a comprehensive analysis to identify thousands of genetic markers on your mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down each generation from mother to child, to reveal your direct maternal deep ancestry. For men, we will also examine markers on the Y chromosome, which is passed down from father to son, to reveal your direct paternal deep ancestry.

When a patient, or donor of genetic material, submits a sample to a geneticist, the geneticist has no choice to but to analyze the sample as being given by a person of the gender which the donor had at conception and at birth. No gender reassignment surgery or therapy can change the donor’s gender identity. The laboratory is indifferent to whether the donor “identifies as” a male or female.

Sartre in the POW Camp

Examining a chronology of Sartre’s life, it becomes clear that most of his written works, and most of his significant written works, were composed and published after his stay in the German POW camp Stalag 12D. Prior to his stay there, he published Nausea and The Wall and several other works.

After being released, he went on to write No Exit, The Flies, Being and Nothingness, and many others. He was sent to the camp after being captured in 1940, and was released, due to his ill health, in April 1941.

Did Sartre’s experience in Stalag 12D, sometimes cited as Stalag XII-D, have any effect on the content of his philosophical writings?

In 1980, one of Sartre’s fellow prisoners, Father Marius Perrin, published a memoir of his time with Sartre in Stalag 12-D. Many of the prisoners there were French priests, and Sartre became friends with them, because many of them had thoroughly studied philosophy and literature. Sartre was born and baptised a Roman Catholic, but spent most, if not all, of his adult life as an explicit atheist.

Sartre enjoyed literary and philosophical conversations with the priests. While it seems that he did not change his beliefs, he did write a Christmas play in December 1940, titled Bariona. The work is in tune with New Testament sensibilities.

Reviewing Perrin’s book, Alfred R. Desautels writes:

Sartre has provided little information on his months of captivity in Germany during World War II. Simone de Beauvoir apparently knows little more than we do, judging by the sketchy bits disseminated in her autobiographical books, especially in La Force de l’age. Either Sartre had been laconic with her on this chapter in his life or she chose to imitate his reticence. However, in November 1980 a fellow prisoner of his at the camp near Trier, Father Marius Perrin, published a book that seeks to fill the gaps: Avec Sartre au stalag 12D (Paris: Jean-Pierre Delarge, 1980).

The play, Sartre’s only significant written output from the POW camp, is multilayered. Set in ancient Palestine or Judea, it deals with the theme of Roman occupation - a reference to the German occupation of France. Sartre develops the theme of resistance, and shows that resistance is predicated upon hope. Bariona is a work of hope. The birth of the Messiah is a call to resistance, inasmuch as both the Roman authorities and their puppets, the Herodian dynasty, would oppose the Messiah. The hope found in the Messiah is the hope upon which some resistance would be built.

From the pen of an atheist, the play is surprising.

Desautels surveys Sartre’s career, and casts it into four phases: the earliest phase was one of despair; the second phase, Sartre’s time in Stalag 12-D, was a phase of hope; the third phase, most of Sartre’s productive post-war career, was a relapse into despair; the fourth and final phase was one of hope.

Certainly, other scholars will analyze the chronology of Sartre’s career differently, and perhaps with justification. But Desautels does at least address the question of if, and how, the time at Stalag 12-D effected Sartre’s writing.