Maxwell and Faraday: A Curious Synergy

In a long and noble history, various thinkers have worked to formulate what many textbooks now call “sources of experimental error.” In the ancient world, Augustine, foreshadowing Kant, pointed out that human reason, while powerful, also has limits.

In 1620, Francis Bacon described four common patterns in inductive thought — patterns which lead to errors.

Michael Faraday, whose discoveries in electromagnetism have made possible much of the technology which has shaped the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, based his understanding of experimental error on his engagement with Sandemanian or Glasite thought. Faraday, throughout his scientific career in the 1800s, preached on Wednesday evenings at his Sandemanian church, as historian Alan Hirschfeld notes:

The philosophical and behavioral strictures of the Sandemanians served to channel Faraday’s abundant energy toward his scientific pursuits. In particular, the Sandemanian belief in human fallibility permitted him to fearlessly explore frontiers of science, with full knowledge that some of his conjectures would be overturned. There was no purpose in hitching his ego to the correctness of his conclusions. Faraday noted Job’s admonition in his personal Bible: “If I justify myself, mine own mouth shall condemn me; if I say, I am perfect, it shall also prove me perverse” (Job 9:20).

Among Faraday’s achievements was the framing of various electromagnetic phenomena in the concept of fields. Seeing magnetism as a field, not as a substance, was revolutionary, as Ian Hutchinson writes:

In this abbreviated summary of Faraday’s scientific achievements, one cannot omit his extremely influential, and initially highly unconventional championing of the significance of fields. Physics today sees the field of force rather than the material substance as the underlying reality. Faraday’s theoretical and philosophical intuition, growing over twenty years or more throughout his experimental research, and culminating in his paper “On the physical character of lines of force” (1852), was, in the opinion of many, his most influential legacy. A young James Clerk Maxwell certainly took him seriously. His mathematization of Faraday’s ideas led directly to what we now call Maxwell’s equations of electromagnetism.

Maxwell was Faraday’s intellectual heir. The two complemented each other. Faraday’s work was intuitive or conceptual: his laboratory notebooks contain sketches and drawings, and written descriptions, but not equations. Faraday’s image-oriented way of doing physics was fertile ground for his innovation of seeing electromagnetic forces as fields. Maxwell can be seen as mathematizing Faraday’s work.

Faraday’s work formed a basis for Maxwell’s. But Maxwell was not a Sandemanian. Maxwell was ordained as an Elder in the Church of Scotland, i.e., in the Presbyterian Church.

Faraday was an Englishman; Maxwell a Scotsman. The Sandemanian Church began in Scotland.

Combining, on the one hand, a conceptual and intuitive approach, with, on the other hand, a bold humility which allowed him to question established scientific dogmas which viewing his own hypotheses as equally liable to be overturned, Faraday presented a new way of thinking about electromagnetic forces. Maxwell capitalized on Faraday’s insights, formulating them into mathematically rigorous statements.

Plato and Mathematics: Numbers or Numerals?

In the familiar distinction between numbers and numerals, numerals are detectable by the senses: sight if a person is reading, sound if a person is listening, and touch if a person is using Braille. Numerals are physical phenomena: even a number on an LCD or LED computer screen is a physical manifestation.

Numbers, by contrast, are not physical, and not directly detectable by the senses. Numbers are ideas. Numerals refer to numbers. Numerals are the names for numbers. The English numeral one, the German numeral eins, and the French numeral un all refer to the same number.

So what kind of a thing is a numeral, if it’s not physical? This question has occupied philosophers for more than 2,000 years.

In Greece, Plato began wrestling with this question around 300 B.C., and later philosophers who embraced and refined his ideas asserted that numbers are metaphysical objects. What are metaphysical objects? They’re non-physical objects.

Normally, one thinks of objects, or things, as physical — as detectable by the human senses (sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell).

But those philosophers who argue for the existence of metaphysical objects would point to things like ideas, memories, emotions, and minds as being objects. A person can ask for five pounds of anger, or two gallons of childhood memories — metaphysical objects aren’t measured in the way in which physical objects are.

So, according to the Platonists, numbers can be referred to as ‘things’ or ‘objects.’ But they are a different kind of thing or object than, e.g., a sandwich or a tree.

The Platonic understanding of numbers is called ‘realist’ because the Platonists believe numbers to be as real as any physical object. The Platonic view is also called ‘dualist’ because Platonic philosophers assert that there are two types of reality — the physical and the metaphysical — both of which are different and both of which are real.

The dualist view can be extended from numbers to geometry. The dualists would argue that the circles, triangles, points, and lines in a geometry textbook are merely physical symbols for the idea of circles, triangles, points, and lines.

Opposed to the Platonists are other philosophers, called ‘formalists’ and ‘conventionalists’ — they argue that numerals do not refer or represent numbers. Rather, they argue that numerals are part of a system of symbol manipulation, a system called ‘arithmetic’ or ‘mathematics.’

These anti-Platonists argue that there is no deeper, higher, or mystical reality beyond the symbols called ‘numerals’ — that the numerals are the numbers.

In this debate, each side has its reasoning: The Platonists say that, in order for mathematics to have any meaning, it must be “about” something, that it can’t simply be patterns of ink on paper; the Platonists argue that the anti-Platonist view would reduce mathematics to meaninglessness, and daily experience in practical application shows that mathematics has real meaning.

The anti-Platonists, meanwhile, argue that for practical purposes, mathematics works: it allows people to build bridges or calculate interest or keep score at a game. If it works, the anti-Platonists say, then that’s all that is needed from mathematics: there is no need for any deeper meaning. The anti-Platonists accuse the Platonists of violating a rule of logic called ‘Ockham’s Razor.’

William of Ockham, sometimes spelled Occam, was a logician who worked around 1300 A.D., and was mildly anti-Platonist. He wrote:

Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.

Which is roughly:

Plurality must never be posited without necessity.

With regard to mathematics, this would mean that there is a choice between two systems: one system has both numbers and numerals, while the other system has only numerals. Ockham might advise that, if the simpler system works, it should be chosen.

In another formulation, Ockham wrote:

Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora.

Which can be rendered as:

It is futile to do with more things that which can be done with fewer.

Ockham’s Razor is sometimes phrased this way: “Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.”

In any case, Ockham’s logic is part of the debate about the reality of numbers.

The question of the reality of numbers is a discussion which taps into multiple levels of philosophical questioning. The first question is: Are numbers independently-existing objects? The second question is a broader form of the first question: Are there really any non-physical or metaphysical objects? The third question asks about how the truth of a statement is evaluated, in this case, the truth of a statement about numbers: Is a proposition true if it works in a pragmatic sense, to calculate in real-life situations, or is it true if it represents the way things actually are?

Consent, Free Will, and Thought Control

For centuries, philosophers have pondered questions about the human “free will” and what it might mean. Much has been written about the topic.

During the second half of the twentieth century, psychologists began to explore the phenomenon of mind control, also called “thought control,” behavior change technology, compliance-gaining influence, thought reform, psychosocial manipulation, and a few other other terms.

Whatever words are used to label it, the question is whether the psychological exploration of thought control is relevant to the philosophical debate about free will. Part of that debate is whether, and how, a person’s desires, especially desires leading to actions, are determined.

The techniques of thought control allow the practitioner to shape another individual’s desires and beliefs, without the individual’s being aware of it. On a low level, this can be, e.g., advertising on television. On a higher level, it can be “brainwashing” which changes a person’s foundational beliefs.

The discussion of free will, obviously, enters into the field of ethics at some point. There are those who, e.g., argue that prostitution is permissible if all involved parties are consenting.

But how does one understand the word ‘consent’ in the framework of thought control? A prostitute might say that she or he is voluntarily engaging in this activity, and has freely consented to it. If, however, the beliefs and desires which cause the prostitute to consent were installed into the mind of the prostitute without the prostitute’s knowledge or consent, then can it be said that the prostitute is truly consenting?

Note that, in this scenario, the prostitute is not coerced. The prostitute believes that she or he is freely consenting. But can consent be ‘free’ if it is implanted into the mind from the outside, and implanted without the knowledge or awareness of the individual? The prostitute may believe that she or he is freely consenting, but that belief itself may have been artificially installed into the prostitute’s mind.

In any case, it is plausible to suggest that some aspects of the “free will” debate may need to be revisited in light of psychological research about thought control.

In 1961, Robert J. Lifton published Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism. In 1957, Robert J. West, et al., published Brainwashing, Conditioning, and DDD (Debility, Dependency, and Dread). In 1961, Edgar Schein published Coercive Persuasion: A Socio-Psychological Analysis. Steven Hassan has published several books on the subject.

Philosophers engaged in the topic of “free will” would be well advised to explore these writings.

When beliefs and desires are installed into the mind of an individual without that individual’s awareness or consent, how do those beliefs and desires differ from normal beliefs and desires? How do beliefs and desires normally arise in the mind of an individual? If beliefs and desires are involuntary and ineluctable in normal situations, are they different in any significant way from the beliefs and desires installed by means of thought control?

Contested Kant: Disputing Kant’s Impact on Theism

Immanuel Kant’s Kritik der Reinen Vernunft affected both philosophical thought directly, and more general cultural trends indirectly: about this there is no doubt. But the character of this effect has been debated.

Kant and his writings have been seen variously as champions of theism and as destroyers of faith. Was the net impact of his texts to solidify belief in God as a solidly rational viewpoint, or to undermine any rational foundation for theism?

Norbert Hinske documents both hypotheses. Hinske identifies Moses Mendelssohn as an originator of the view that Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason poses a threat to theism:

Für Mendelssohn, der aufgrund seiner Krankheit Kants Werk freilich nur vom Hörensagen kennt - „aus unzulänglichen Berichten meiner Freunde oder aus gelehrten Anzeigen, die selten viel belehrender sind“ -, ist die Kritik also ein Werk, das alle „vernünfitgie Erkenntniß Gottes“ zu zerstören droht.

Mendelssohn’s view was amplified and transmitted through the writings of Ludwig Ernst Borowski:

Mendelssohns Rede vom „alles zermalmenden Kant“ hat Karriere gemacht. Schon Borowski erwähnt sie 1804 in seiner immer wieder nachgedruckten Kantbiographie. Zum Substantiv verschärft, ist das Wort vom Alleszermalmer dann zu einer der geläfigsten Charakterisierungen Kants avanciert.

This view of Kant seeped from the world of academic philosophy to a broader audience through, e.g., the writings of Heinrich Heine, who echoed the words of Mendelssohn and Borowski, and saw Kant as a destroyer of faith and hope.

On the other hand, Hinske describes the early Kantians at the University of Jena, who saw Kant as the defender of theism. In the Kritik, Kant finds arguments for and against the existence of God to be futile, because reason is based on, or arises from, the forms of perception. God is not a perception, i.e., not a phenomenon, but rather a thing-in-itself: a Ding-an-sich. As a noumenon, God is not subject to the type of reasoning which is based on the forms of phenomena.

The early Kantians at Jena, philosophers and theologians, saw Kant as constructing a defense of theism against any allegedly rational arguments for atheism. If one accepts Kant as he expresses himself in the first Kritik and other writings, then one cannot countenance arguments against the existence of God.

Two centuries later, Kant remains a mixed picture. Perhaps the reason for conflicting readings of the Kritik is that, on the one hand, Kant removes the possibility of rational argumentation from both sides: he will accept no line of reasoning which hopes to establish either atheism or theism. He places the existence of God as a question which is beyond pure reason. It is such points in Kantian thought which later give a starting point to Schopenhauer and postmodernism in the sense of post-rationalism.

On the other hand, Kant famously points to the existence of God as a necessary hypothesis in the second Kritik. But Kant finds his way to God in the Kritik der Praktischen Vernunft in a manner that disappoints both theists and atheists. The atheists are unhappy that Kant has pointed to the necessity of God’s existence, but the theists are also unhappy, because Kant doesn’t leave room to prove that God has the robust collection of metaphysical characteristics of traditional theism.

Kant’s Squabbling Children: Conflicting Thinkers Base Themselves on the Same Texts

Any philosopher — which is to say, any philosophical text — if it is much read at all, will find itself as the real or alleged foundation for conflicting schools of thought. Radical empiricists and Scholastic Thomists both claim Aristotle as their heritage. Triumphant nationalist imperialists and Marxist-Leninists both claim Hegel as their father.

This is certain true of Immanuel Kant, as Norbert Hinske writes:

Selten ist ein Buch so gegensätzlich aufgenommen und verstanden worden wie Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Diese Gegensätze lassen sich bis in die ersten Jahre nach Erscheinen des Werks zurückverfolgen.

Not only do competing philosophical schools claim Kant as their foundations, but separately, there are competing interpretations of Kant — interpretations which are incompatible with each other. Hinske cites how Moses Mendelssohn understood Kant to be one whose influence was primarily destructive: Kant’s analysis was, for Mendelssohn, a skepticism which dismantled nearly everything.

Will man auch nur die äußersten Pole jener schwierigen Rezeptionsgeschichte markieren, so kann man auf der einen Seite Moses Mendelssohn in Berlin nennen. Gleich im „Vorbericht” seiner Morgenstunden oder Vorlesungen über das Daseyn Gottes spricht er 1785 von dem „alles zermalmenden Kant”, und er fügt ein paar Seiten später hinzu, er hoffe nur, daß dieser „mit demselben Geiste wieder aufbauen wird, mit dem er niedergerissen hat”.

Mendelssohn was primarily concerned that Kant’s texts would promote atheism. This would have surprised Kant, who considered himself a theist. But Mendelssohn was not alone in considering Kant as dangerous to faith.

Yet the opposing view — that Kant’s writings were edifying to faith, and supported not only theism, but a robust theism — was embraced by a group of theologians, who saw Kant as a bulwark against materialism. These enthusiastic admirers of Kant were grouped largely in the university in Jena.

They reasoned: if Kant, as they read him, showed that pure reason alone could not demonstrate the existence of God or the immortality of the soul, then it was also true that he showed that reason could not demonstrate the opposite. The early Kantians in Jena saw Kant as removing rational argumentation from the arsenal of the atheists. Kantianly, one could not demonstrate that God doesn’t exist, and one could not demonstrate that there is no immortal soul.

The theologians in Jena argued that, if Kant’s pure reason was undecided on these questions, then practical reason would open the door for a Moraltheologie, in which God would appear as necessary.

It is clear that even during Kant’s lifetime — both Moses Mendelssohn and the early Kantians in Jena were active in the 1780s — Kant was both seen as a dangerous skeptic whose texts fostered atheism and seen as formulating a philosophy which removed reason and rational argumentation from the atheist’s arsenal.

Husserl in Context: British Empiricism or Continental Metaphysics?

Philosophy as it developed in central Europe can perhaps be understood by contrasting it to philosophy as it developed in western France and the British Isles.

The philosophers in the heart of the continent were certainly familiar with skepticism. By the early twentieth century, they were skeptical about, e.g., whether the impressive and highly formalized achievements of mathematical logic offer any substantive content. It would be an oversimplification to categorize England as the home of skepticism and the continent as the home of robust metaphysics.

Britain had its own system-builders, e.g., F.H. Bradley and Bernard Bosanquet. Nonetheless, different trends are discernable between Britain and central Europe, and these trends encourage historians of philosophy to venture generalizations.

Central Europe had its own skeptics, too, but Julian Roberts writes:

This skepticism, however, has been more characteristic of philosophy in the Anglo-American realm and in France than it has of German thinking.

One need only to think of Locke’s reference to ‘essence’ as “something, I know not what,” or to think of Hume’s scrutiny of causation and of the self. Likewise, the reader will recall Descartes resolving to set aside all previous knowledge as dubitable and begin anew from nothing, and recall Voltaire embracing a minimalistic deism and attacking sacred text. Skepticism is clear in these examples.

Further east on the continent, however, even radical views which could have been the outcomes of skepticism were instead embraced as the outcomes of metaphysical reasoning. Examples might be Schopenhauer’s idealism or Heidegger’s alleged atheism.

Even logic, a rather austere region within philosophy, becomes a rich garden of metaphysics in the hands of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, who start with algebraic principles and find them to the source of nearly everything. Julian Roberts writes:

Thinkers in Germany and Austria, where indeed modern mathematical logic largely originated (together with the Vienna Circle’s highly influential nominalism), have remained far more optimistic about the chances for a generalized critical project. The most prominent anti-transcendentalist in Germany was, of course, Heidegger. But Heidegger is not particularly representative. In particular, a rigorous transcendentalism which embraces the challenge of mathematical logic has also produced crucial work. Husserl was the progenitor of this tradition (though ‘phenomenology’ as such was a failure, as we shall see); and its contemporary representatives are to be found, for example, in the so-called Erlangen school. Habermas, though better known than they, is in fact one of their major beneficiaries.

Julian Roberts calls Husserl’s phenomenology a ‘failure’ because Husserl at first hoped to build a system on the foundations of pure logic, but then encountered, as noted above, that despite its technical rigor and despite the strength of its impressive formal structure, logic is ultimately empty, delivering no content in terms a metaphysics, epistemology, or other branches of philosophy.

Husserl engaged extensively with Frege and with Frege’s work, and was willing to populate his ontology with words, their meanings, and their referents as three separate categories. “Husserl represents another side to” Frege’s “developments.”

“But his early attempt to rationalize time and space is comparable,” Julian Roberts asserts, “with what Kant called Leibniz’s ‘intellectualizing of appearances’ and has the same weaknesses.”

The later Husserl (the Husserl of the ‘life-world’) overcompensated by lapsing into what is an almost relativist position, at least as it stands.

The most interesting continuation of the Husserlian project appears in the constructivism of the Erlangen school, and in Habermas’s appropriation of related themes.

Philosophers after Husserl pursued “attempts to rescue transcendentalist aspects of the Husserlian project, and also” seek “to vindicate (against Habermas) the thought that although there may be aspects of human practice that are ‘unprethinkable’, intersubjectivity is, in the end, a rational tribunal.”

The term ‘unprethinkable’ is used by Heidegger (Unvordenkliche) to indicate the unpredictable and dynamic nature of meaning. For Heidegger, it is as if words have an unforeseeable career: their uses, semantic fields, and effects changing over time and in various circumstances.

Yet Husserl falls into broader patterns which link him with patterns of philosophy in France and England. Frederick Copleston writes:

Several philosophers have tried to make philosophy properly scientific by taking as a point of departure an unquestionable datum or proposition. Descartes was one of them, Husserl another. And the transcendental Thomists join the company. Even if however it is allowed that the attempt to develop a presuppositionless philosophy is legitimate, the question arises whether idealism does not result if the subject is taken as the basis of all philosophical reflection.

Copleston argues that Husserl’s famous ‘bracketing’ drove him into some form of idealism:

Husserl’s approach led him eventually into the development of an idealist philosophy.

Copleston cites Sartre’s critique of Husserl. Sartre asserted that Husserl would ultimately end up with solipsism: “In Sartre's opinion Husserl cannot escape solipsism.”

Ultimately, a broad survey of any philosopher’s work runs the danger of degenerating into painting in very broad strokes — in this case, with words like ‘empiricism’ and ‘skepticism’ and ‘phenomenology’ and others. This is the perennial problem of doing the history of philosophy with constructs instead of with the close reading of a given author’s texts. Finally, these broad constructs begin to collapse into one another, and into the temptation to pose questions like ‘isn’t phenomenology simply a form of empiricism?’ and ‘doesn’t idealism necessarily lead to solipsism?’ Such questions, and their answers, have less and less content.

Although this exploration of secondary literature is interesting, the close reading of primary text is the surer and better way: instead of reading about Husserl, the reader will be better served by reading Husserl.

Extinction as the Default Fate: Concerning the Ubiquity of Selective Pressure

Throughout the history and prehistory of our planet, countless species have become extinct. There are many reasons for extinction, but most of them can be lumped together as changing habitats.

Any change in a habit will introduce selective pressure.

As a concrete example, consider the activity of beavers in North America. In a savanna or in a forest, beavers will construct a dam across a small creek or stream, and thereby create a small pond.

The populations in this ecosystem will change almost immediately. The numbers and types of fish, waterfowl, and trees will change.

As the beaver’s pond ages, it can gradually turn into a larger lake, or it an fill in with sediment and become a swamp. In either case, the populations of flora and fauna will change again.

The changes brought about by the beavers will mean that numerous individuals belonging to these various species will die.

This is merely one example of the many different ways in which a habitat can change, and thereby exert selective pressure on the populations in that habitat. But not only can numerous individuals die when habitats change. When changes are large enough and numerous enough, entire species can become extinct.

Aside from beaver activities, there are other ways in which habitat change: solar activity, volcanic activity, changes in the earth’s magnetic field, etc.

These factors, and many others, cause extinction, as David Wallace-Wells writes:

The earth has experienced five mass extinctions before the one we are living through now, each so complete a wiping of the fossil record that it functioned as an evolutionary reset, the planet’s phylogenetic tree first expanding, then collapsing, at intervals, like a lung: 86 percent of all species dead, 450 million years ago; 70 million years later, 75 percent; 125 million years later, 96 percent; 50 million years later, 80 percent; 135 million years after that, 75 percent again.

A small cluster of microbes, which can travel hundreds of miles by clinging to a bird or to a bit of driftwood, can introduce diseases into regions, and quickly wipe out an entire species — or several species.

These forces are non-anthropogenic. The vast majority of extinctions happen without any human influence. The natural forces of selective pressure are much more ruthless than the effects of human activity.

The earth’s atmosphere changes spontaneously, again without any human intervention. Both the climatic temperature and the carbon dioxide levels have demonstrated their ability to vary wildly. Of the mass extinction events which have regularly happened throughout the planet’s history,

all but the one that killed the dinosaurs involved climate change produced by greenhouse gas. The most notorious was 250 million years ago; it began when carbon dioxide warmed the planet by five degrees Celsius, accelerated when that warming triggered the release of methane, another greenhouse gas, and ended with all but a sliver of life on Earth dead.

The direction of causation between extinction events and climate change is not always clear: in some cases, an extinction event may have caused the climate change; in other cases, climate change may have caused the extinction event.

In any event, these events were non-anthropogenic.

The chances of any one species becoming extinct are high; the chances of it surviving over the long run are low. Survival should be seen as an exception; extinction is the norm.

Viewing earth’s past on a geological time scale, it is clear that climate change, CO2 levels, and extinction events happen spontaneously and sometimes independently over the millennia. It is clear that in the past and in the present, they can and often do happen non-anthropogenically.