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.

The Philosophy of Popular Science

Next to the long and noble tradition under the heading ‘the philosophy of science’ - which includes brilliant thinkers from Aristotle to Karl Popper - , there is another question which receives somewhat less attention, and which one might title ‘the philosophy of popular science.’

Under this second heading one might ask about non-scientists and how they understand and interpret science. This would include, but not be limited to, the impact of science on, and the images of science projected by, popular culture, popular literature, and popular news media.

Some scholars note that scientific thought is often popularly perceived as monolithic. Phrases such as “scientists have found …” or “science reveals …” generate the notion, among reading non-scientists, that there is a body of scientists, and a conceptual construct called ‘science,’ which speak uniformly.

The popular notion of science rarely includes serious yet conflicting hypotheses, or attention to truly open questions which are the object of investigation. Liam Scheff writes:

When an official from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) throws out an edict (“Get vaccinated for bird flu!”), or the World Health Organization (WHO) makes one of its famously failed predictions (“One in 5 American citizens will have AIDS by 1990!”), it’s front-page news around the globe. We’re not allowed to think; we’re just supposed to swallow. And when scientific claims do turn out to be false, we don’t get angry. “Better safe than sorry,” we tell ourselves. “Anyway, we all know that a bird-flu pandemic awaits us.”

If science were monolithic, then when a prediction fails, or when one hypothesis is substituted for another, then the public would be left to assume that science has changed its mind, and to assume further that science is to be trusted in these matters. Given the popular understanding of science as univocal, the public does so assume.

On the one hand, there is science as understood both by scientists themselves and by philosophers of science. On the other hand, there is this popular understanding of science. Between them, there is a great gap. Thus when the results of scientific inquiry, or the words of a scientist, are reported to the public, they are misunderstood.

The notion, for example, of competing theories which equally map known data points is not part of the common understanding of science. While the public wishes to know which theory is true, the philosopher sees two theories as two different ways of characterizing a set a data.

The popular press seeks a simple declaration which it can report, and runs roughshod over the process by which a theory is constructed. Liam Scheff, noting how the natural sciences are reduced to the assertion of simple propositions in the popular press, writes:

But what if there was good evidence that these things weren’t true? Would Fox and CNN report it? What if serious, established researchers had strongly disparate views on an issue? Should they be allowed to debate each other on the nightly news?

The popular media do not see the natural sciences as addressing a long list of open questions. They wish to present sciences as a set of “proven” or “accepted” propositions - and even at that, they sidestep any discussion about the meaning of ‘proven’ or ‘accepted.’

Matters which are largely accepted - e.g., that a water molecule contains two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom - are matters which are, in and of themselves, of little interest to science. More interesting are the questions which are truly open - e.g., how a certain molecule, injected into a cell, seems to know where inside the cell it belongs.

Because the popular press wants to reports results and not investigations - assertions and not questions - it furthers the illusion that the natural sciences are monolithic. It is telling that the few questions found about scientific topics in popular reports are either rhetorical questions, or questions about mundane possible future practical applications, and not questions about the matters themselves. Liam Scheff continues:

The major media work hard to create the illusion that science is uniform: a single-minded group of hard-working researchers, joined hand in hand, in a race against the clock, seeking the chemical cures that will save humanity from obesity, cancer, AIDS, death, and all of the other ravages of nature that must be conquered.

Scientists themselves, along with philosophers of science, are more prone to pose questions than those who report about science. Often, the questions which engage researchers are questions which won’t have a clear and simple answer any time soon, if ever. But such questions aren’t satisfying to readers, or writers, of popular news outlets.

Simple and sensational propositions feed the common taste. Understood within most methodologies of science, a prediction is an opportunity to test a hypothesis or a theory. But in the popular media, these predictions are understood not as tests, but as simple assertions. One scholar, Charles St. Onge, writes:

Consider predictions about future events. No one has been to the future, so it cannot be observed scientifically. But based on past events that have been observed, we can apply scientific models to predict what might happen in the future. Such predictions are always tentative. The further into the future we try to predict, the less accurate our predictions can become. This is especially true as we account for a lot of variables, as weather and climate forecasters must do.

Eventually, the effects of the popular reports about science begin to work in the other direction, and affect science itself. Governments, universities, and the foundations which grant funding to scientists begin to have a stake, not in the quality of the questions posed, and not in the quality of the analysis about the data, but rather in the bold assertions which they are able to make in the press.

Having once entered into the business of producing results in the form of simple propositions for the media, instead of reflecting on theory construction, scientists and those who fund them find that they have territory to protect. This shifts the scientists from exploring to defending. Or, as Charles St. Onge phrases it,

Because of this reluctance to give up a model or theory, it is possible for almost everyone in the scientific community to be wrong about a certain idea. The late Michael Crichton, famous doctor and science fiction writer, pointed this out in a lecture at the California Institute of Technology. He reminded his audience that science, unlike politics, is not about consensus; science is about getting things right.

It is bad enough when the popular media distort science for the public; it is even worse when these distortions begin to steer the investigations of science itself.