The Rise of Modern Science

We have learned that the word “modern” can be applied to concepts which may be several centuries old - Descartes founded “modern” philosophy around the year 1600 A.D., give or take a few decades. What we call the “modern” natural sciences are likewise the result of activities a few hundred years ago. We can gain insight, and a few surprises, into the essence of such observational sciences by reviewing their inception.

Thomas Aquinas, publishing around 1250 A.D., wrote that the task of the scholar was

to manifest the truth that faith professes and reason investigates, setting forth demonstrative and probable arguments, so that the truth may be confirmed.

Aquinas is offering several foundational principles: reason investigates, reason formulates demonstrative arguments, reason formulates arguments from probability, and reason finally confirms truth. Although these principles are necessary for modern science, they are not sufficient. A few more principles are needed.

From Mumbai (Bombay), India, Dinesh D’Souza writes that, as part of the foundation for modern observational sciences, we also need

the presumption, quite impossible to prove, that the universe is rational. Scientists today take for granted the idea that the universe operates according to laws, and that these laws are comprehensible to the human mind.

These same axiomatic notions are phrased differently by various scientists, but remain effectively the same. Thus James Trefil writes

that the laws of nature we discover here and now in our laboratories are true everywhere in the universe and have been in force for all time.

Steven Weinberg, who earned the Nobel Prize in physics, writes “that there is order in the universe,” because “we have found that the laws, the physical principles, that describe what we learn become simpler and simpler,” and “the rules we have discovered become increasingly coherent and universal.” Weinberg is saying that the further we proceed with rational investigation of reality, the more we uncover a logical structure in the physical universe:

There is a simplicity, a beauty, that we are finding in the rules that govern matter that mirrors something that is built into the logical structure of the universe at a very deep level.

The patterns which reason discovers in physics and chemistry are mathematical. Mathematics, as an extension of logic, is at the core of our notion of science. As D’Souza writes:

The laws that govern the universe seem to be written in the language of mathematics.

Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman noted that “why nature is mathematical is a mystery,” and “the fact that there are rules at all is a kind of miracle.” The universe could have been different: it could be irrational and illogical - it could have been so structured that algebra would be of no use whatsoever in any physical or practical endeavor.

The belief “in the fundamental rationality of the cosmos,” as D’Souza phrases it, and the “belief that rationality of the universe is mirrored in the rationality of our human minds,” are so inculcated into the modern natural science that any hypothesis that calls these principles even partially into question - as we find in some speculations about quantum physics - is regarded as a shocking yet fascinating idea. Those tentative statements about quantum physics cast into high relief the how central the notion of a rational universe is in observational science.

Francis Bacon, author of a translation and commentary on the Psalms, is often cited as the formulator of method for the natural sciences. Inasmuch as empiricism ultimately includes some reference to probability, Bacon echoes the formulation by Aquinas about “demonstrative and probable arguments.” In any case, it is worth realizing that the notion of a rationally structured universe is central, not only to the scientific work of Bacon, but also to each of the following:

Copernicus, Kepler, Brahe, Descartes, Boyle, Newton, Leibniz, Gassendi, Pascal, Mersenne, Cuvier, Harvey, Dalton, Faraday, Herschel, Joule, Lyell, Lavoisier, Priestley, Kelvin, Ohm, Ampere, Steno, Pasteur, Maxwell, Planck, Lemaitre, and Mendel.

The list could be much longer, and by reference include anyone who properly bears the label “scientist.” As Einstein formulated it: “God does not play dice with the universe.”

The Universe is a Giant Brain!

According to G.W.F. Hegel, the universe and all its contents is a sort of mind: Absolute Truth in the process of self-knowledge. Yes, this is kind of spacey. Whether we call it a brain or a mind is a little murky, because for Hegel, the distinction between mental substance and physical substance gets blurred when we realize that all those physical objects out there are projections of the universal mind - projections which that mind in turn examines, hence the concept of self-knowledge. Inasmuch as we humans, who of course are also projections of that cosmic consciousness, exist in time, that self-knowledge is perceived by us as a process, self-discovery. And so the history of the world is a record of the universal mind examining itself, and in turn revealing itself, ever more clearly. There is something optimistic about Hegel’s view of history:

Philosophical history not only apprehends the principle of a nation from its institutions and destinies and develops the events from that principle, but considers especially the universal World-Spirit, how, in an inner context, through the history of nations in their separate appearances and their destinies, it has passed through the various stages of its formation. It exhibits the Universal Spirit in its accidents so that shape or externality is not developed conformably to its essence. Its higher representation is its shaping in a simple spiritual form.

(Every nation does not count in world history. Each has its point, its moment, according to its principle. Then, as it seems, it departs for good. Its turn does not come by chance.)

So each nation takes a turn being the center of world history, at a specific moment, when that culture’s character and nature plays a crucial role in the process of revealing the world-spirit to itself. Thus, nations like Persia, Greece, Egypt, and Rome had their moments of glory, in a precisely logical order, as each represented a step past the previous one and step toward the next one.

Confucius

Without question, the most famous and influential Chinese philosopher is Confucius, who lived from 551 B.C. to 479 B.C., and shaped social and philosophical thought for several centuries. Typifying non-Western thought, he places less emphasis on logical and mathematical topics and methods; his metaphysical thought is driven more by social and ethical concerns than by rationalist or empiricist considerations. Central in his thought is the Chinese word “Tian” which can be translated variously, but names a Supreme Being in the universe. Jeff Richey writes:

Consistent throughout Confucius’ discourses on Tian is his threefold assumption about this extrahuman, absolute power in the universe: (1) its alignment with moral goodness, (2) its dependence on human agents to actualize its will, and (3) the variable, unpredictable nature of its associations with mortal actors.

It is obvious that this cosmology will have ethical implications:

While Confucius believes that people live their lives within parameters firmly established by Heaven — which, often, for him means both a purposeful Supreme Being as well as ‘nature’ and its fixed cycles and patterns — he argues that men are responsible for their actions and especially for their treatment of others. We can do little or nothing to alter our fated span of existence but we determine what we accomplish and what we are remembered for.

Here begin, then, the famous social directives for which Confucius is known. His moral-political propositions are not the inductive products of experience, but rather rationally founded on his ontology, which in turn, however, may possibly be the product of empirical induction. In any case, however, the basis for his ethics is immediately his theodicy, and at most only mediately any a posteriori considerations.

Just War Theory - Then and Now

A series of debates in the Middle Ages gave rise to what we call “Just War Theory”: an attempt answer the question about when, if ever, a nation is morally justified in engaging in warfare. The debate was between the pacific half of Christianity, which claimed that violence was never permissible, even in defense of self or others, and the moderate half of Christianity, which argued that combat would be morally permissible if it were purely defensive. The debates were not abstract: the pressing politics of the day were shaped by the Islamic invasion of Spain in 711 A.D., of France in 732 A.D., and of southern Italy in the early 800’s. (The Crusades, originally envisioned as a defensive counter-attack against the home base of these Muslim armies, would begin around 1095 A.D.)

The debates went into great detail about what might or might not be considered ethical conduct in warlike situations. Jonathan Barnes, at Oxford University, writes that

the question of what part the clergy might play in warfare looms large in medieval discussions; but its interest is purely antiquarian and theological.

The details of what a priest in Europe in the middle ages might be allowed to do in the military could easily appear as an irrelevant discussion to the modern reader, at least until Alfred Freddoso writes that

the medievals generally argued that clerics are forbidden to bear arms or to kill even in a just war. Given the powerful pacifist tendencies in current Christian thought, it would hardly be shocking if someone were to ask why these medieval arguments might not apply to all Christians, nonclerics as wells as clerics, with the result that Christian pacifism could be viewed as a natural development of just-war theory. The topic is thus far from antiquarian.

It seems that medieval debates about pacifism and just war theory will always be relevant to this world; wars will always cause philosophers to pose these questions.

Different Philosophers, Similar Conclusions

Immanuel Kant and Augustine of Hippo were two very different men. Augustine did his writing around 400 A.D.; Kant published his most famous book in 1781. Augustine was a native of Africa’s north coast on the Mediterranean Sea; Kant lived in Germany’s northern coast on the Baltic Sea. Augustine was born a pagan and became a Christian; Kant was a Christian who became a heterodox theist. Augustine expressed himself in Latin and Greek; Kant wrote in German.

Yet both of them became known for similar philosophical viewpoints. They emphasized the limits of human reason.

It is always a temptation to imagine that any philosophical question can be answered by reason. Rarely does it happen that a philosopher has the humility to write that he has come to the limits of human reason, that it is simply beyond the power of human thought to answer the question at hand.

Those philosophers who succumb to this temptation end up going farther in their conclusion than their logic will actually allow.

Kant and Augustine are among the very few who were cautious and sober enough to draw a limit to the powers which they attribute to the human mind. Their conclusions are perhaps less exciting, less adventurous, and less fun than those philosophical books which venture onto intellectually thinner ice. But their writings seem to have a longer shelf-life than some others.

A few of Kant’s immediate followers went beyond the limits he recommended, making daring statements in their philosophies. While they were interesting and popular for a time, these men, e.g., Mr. Fichte and Mr. Schelling, are now less studied.

Augustine and Kant remain philosophical classics, in part because of their moderation: those who walk on thin ice may get the thrills, but those who stand on the more solid ground generally have longer lives.

When the Effect Comes before the Cause?

In everyday life, we generally think of causes existing before their effects. But as along ago as Aristotle, philosophers who thought carefully discerned various definitions of “cause” - including some causes which come after their effects.

Consider: he got his umbrella because it was going to rain. The rain, which had not yet occurred, caused him to fetch his umbrella.

Or again: you are studying so that you will get a good grade at the end of the semester. Getting a good grade (in Aristotle’s terminology, a “final cause”) at some point in the future causes you to study now.

Other philosophers would argue, however, that it is the current expectation of rain which causes him to get his umbrella, and the current desire for grades which causes you to study. On this reading of the events, then, the causes do not at all lie in the future, but rather in the present.

Here we see yet another counter-intuitive understanding of “cause”: a cause which is simultaneous to its effect. Again violating the everyday understanding of causes as temporally prior to their effects, we see here causes which are logically prior but temporally coextensive to their effects. In Aristotle’s terms, these are often “material” or “formal” causes.

One of the most central of such cases is the question of what keeps objects in existence, or what keeps the universe in existence. Martin Heidegger wrote that one of the core questions of metaphysics and of philosophy is this: “Why is there something rather than nothing?”

In this sense, then, when we ask, “what is the cause of the universe?” we are asking not about what came before the universe in time, but rather what is sustaining the existence of the universe over time — what prevents the universe from simply disappearing altogether? This question lies on the boundary between physics and philosophy, and

The English philosopher C.D. Broad once noted that “the nonsense written by philosophers on scientific matters is exceeded only by the nonsense written by scientists on philosophy.”

Edward Feser (University of California, Santa Barbara) goes on to point out that, in this matter of writing about the cause of the universe,

from Aristotle to Aquinas to Leibniz to the present day, most versions of the First Cause argument have not supposed that the universe had a beginning in time.

So it doesn’t matter, when we are asking about the cause of the universe in this way, whether the universe had a specific beginning point in time. Even if the universe were to stretch infinitely back into time, that doesn’t change the question about what keeps it in existence. However, if we ask about what Aristotle calls the “efficient cause,” the universe’s beginning in time, or lack thereof, would make a great deal of difference. The efficient cause would be the last event prior to the effect itself which led inexorably to the effect.

As you can see, keeping track of these various notions of “cause” will be a lot of work. To muddy the waters still further, Feser writes about Aristotle, Aquinas, Leibniz, and others, that

their claim is rather that even if the universe were infinitely old, it is still the sort of thing that might in principle not have existed at all. That it does exist therefore requires explanation, and this explanation cannot lie in some other thing that might in principle have failed to exist, since that would just raise the same problem again. Accordingly, the explanation can be found only in something that could not have failed to exist even in principle — something that not only does not have a cause, but couldn’t have had one, precisely because (unlike the universe) it couldn’t in theory have failed to exist in the first place. In short, any contingent reality, like the universe, must depend upon a necessary being.

Even with four — or more — possible definitions of “cause” floating around, physicists and philosophers tend to agree on at least one principle: nothing can cause itself. But even that relatively obvious conclusion requires some complex argumentation, precisely because of the multiple definitions of causation. It needs to be shown true several times, for each of the several definitions:

The reason is that the very idea of something causing itself is self-contradictory: If a thing were to cause itself, it would have to exist prior to itself, in which case it would already exist and not need to be caused. (“Prior” need not entail “earlier in time”; the same incoherence arises even if we think of a cause and its effect as simultaneous, and interpret “prior to” as meaning “more fundamental than.”)

This skill is necessary for every rational thinker: to be good at distinguishing between what is temporally prior and what is logically prior. If we confuse those two, then we will make ourselves look foolish by means of the nonsense we write.

Where Are You, When You’re Not Inside Time?

Different philosophers have assigned different explanations to what it means to be outside of time. Any of these is very difficult to understand, and even more difficult to imagine. In any case, the idea of not being in time is non-intuitive or even counter-intuitive. Immanuel Kant wrote

It is a common expression, used chiefly in pious language, to speak of a person who is dying as going out of time into eternity.

This statement requires us, in turn, to consider the definition of “eternity” — often conceived as endless time. But this common notion of eternity quickly collapses: if you’re leaving time altogether, then you’re not in endless time, you’re in no time at all.

This expression would in fact say nothing if eternity is understood here to mean a time proceeding to infinity; for then the person would indeed never get outside time but would always progress only from one time into another. Thus what must be meant is an end of all time along with the person’s uninterrupted duration; but this duration (considering its existence as a magnitude) must be meant as a magnitude wholly incomparable with time (duratio noumenon), of which we are obviously able to form no concept (except a merely negative one).

Yet another puzzle arises: if the person’s existence “endures” the fact that he left time, how do we define “endure” — which is itself a temporal concept? We want to say that the person continues to exist after leaving time - but “continue” is a chronological notion! How can we say that the person still exists, when “still” makes no sense without reference to time?

Here we have to do (or are playing) merely with ideas created by reason itself, whose objects (if they have any) lie wholly beyond our field of vision; although they are transcendent for speculative cognition, they are not to be taken as empty, but with a practical intent they are made available to us by law-giving reason itself.

Kant reminds us here that in contemplating existence outside of time, we are at the very limit, or perhaps past the limit, of what human reason can grasp. His famous distinction between pure reason and practical reason comes into play here. On the level of pure reason, we can know little or nothing about the process of leaving time, or about exactly what it even means to leave time or be outside of time. On the level of practical reason, however, Kant informs us that we have license to follow the evidence and form hypotheses about this topic, because such working hypotheses are necessary for practical (which Kant often means moral or ethical) decisions.

A slightly different topic is, rather than an individual person leaving time, the notion that time itself ends. Again we are faced with puzzling imaginations of what this might mean. Grappling with this question in an eschatological context, Kant writes that the end of time would mean

that henceforth there shall be no alteration; for if there were still alteration in the world, then time would also exist, because alteration can take place only in time and is not thinkable without presupposing it.

Outside of time, there can be no change, for example, I cannot stand now and sit then, because there is no “now” and no “then” — presumably, I would always be both standing and sitting. Our difficulty, or inability, to even imagine or conceptually frame such things results, Kant would argue, from the fact that our minds are structured around time, or that time is the structure which our minds use to form concepts. If a man were born blind and had never seen colors, it would be difficult for him to imagine blue or green. Our minds must always structure concepts within the framework of time, and so it is difficult for us to create concepts in any other way, or to create any other kind of concept.

Now here is represented an end of all things as objects of sense - of which we cannot form any concept at all, because we will inevitably entangle ourselves in contradictions as soon as we try to take a single step beyond the sensible world into the intelligible.

Kant writes that it is perhaps for the purposes of practical hypotheses that the concept of eternity (in the sense of an infinite span of time) is used; clearly, being in eternity and being outside of time are two very different things. Eternity is, however, perhaps somewhat easier to imagine, and forms a ready concept which works as well as “being outside of time” for practical purposes. This may be somewhat like our habit of sloppily blurring the distinction between weight and mass in the butcher shop: I might get a pound of pork, or a half kilogram of pork. A rude violation of physics, but for practical purposes an equivalent measure.