What Existentialism Might Be: From Kierkegaard to Sartre

The word ‘existentialism’ appears often in writings of the twentieth and twenty-first century. The frequency of its use is one of several reasons for its ambiguity. The word began to be used regularly in the 1920s and 1930s, and its appearances multiplied even more in the postwar decades.

While each author who uses the word seems to be confident about what it means, the kaleidoscope of usages does not allow for a clear meaning. A near-infinite collection of quotations about which authors are, or are not, existentialists would yield a mass of contradictions.

Alasdair MacIntyre writes:

Existentialism is not easily definable. Its protagonists have traced it back to Pascal, to St. Augustine, even to Socrates. It has been alleged in our time to be the doctrine of writers as various as Miguel de Unamuno and Norman Mailer. At first sight, characteristics of the doctrine are almost as various. That two writers both claim to be existentialists does not seem to entail their agreement on any one cardinal point. Consequently, to define existentialism by means of a set of philosophical formulas could be very misleading. Any formula sufficiently broad to embrace all the major existentialist tendencies would necessarily be so general and so vague as to be vacuous, for if we refer to a common emphasis upon, for example, the concreteness of individual human existence, we shall discover that in the case of different philosophers this emphasis is placed in contexts so dissimilar that it is put to quite different and incompatible uses. How then is existentialism to be defined?

Yet MacIntyre bravely ventures forth to attempt some semblance of a definition. Voluntarism is a common theme among those who are frequently labeled as existentialists.

If any single thesis could be said to constitute the doctrine of existentialism, it would be that the possibility of choice is the central fact of human nature. Even the thesis that existence precedes essence often means no more than that people do not have fixed natures that limit or determine their choices, but rather it is their choices that bring whatever nature they have into being. As existentialists develop this thesis, they are involved in at least three separate contentions.

The theme of voluntarism runs through, and loosely connects, the writings of thinkers like Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky, Ibsen, and Dickens. In each, individuals are seen as making choices, or exhorted to make choices, with the awareness that the choices of individuals are significant.

This aspect of existentialism can perhaps be highlighted by contrasting it with those thinkers who oppose it. In the writings of Marx, Freud, Darwin, and sometimes Nietzsche, there is a certain mechanism or determinism which either denies choice to the individual, or minimizes its significance.

Maybe one could attempt to define existentialism by what it opposes. Marx argues that the individual human is the passive object which the grand forces of history and economics toss about like a cork on the ocean’s waves. Freud hypothesized that an individual’s thoughts and emotions were determined by experiences. Darwin constructed a system which saw choices as issuing from being who is the product of the impersonal forces of chemistry and physics.

Existentialism could be seen as a response to, or reaction against, Marx, Freund, Darwin, and similar thinkers. On the other hand, Kierkegaard, often cited as the father of existentialism, largely predated them.

By contrast, the existentialists would argue that human beings make numerous choices. Even when these choices seem to be dictated by a relatively rigid value system, that value system itself was chosen by the individual. These choices are not determined in any calculable way; therefore, any analogy to chemistry or physics is rejected.

This emphasis on choice is accompanied by a fondness, among at least some existentialist writers, for the words “free” and “freedom.”

Alasdair MacIntyre explains:

The first is that choice is ubiquitous. All my actions imply choices. Even when I do not choose explicitly, as I may not do in the majority of cases, my action bears witness to an implicit choice. The second contention is that although in many of my actions my choices are governed by criteria, the criteria which I employ are themselves chosen, and there are no rational grounds for such choices. The third is that no causal explanation of my actions can be given.

These partial hints about what existentialism might be, or about how the word ‘existentialism’ might be defined, notwithstanding, it remains difficult to answer questions like “Is Martin Heidegger an existentialist?” or “What does existentialism say about the afterlife?”

Existentialism is a construct, not a primary source. As such, it is of secondard concern relative to the actual texts of individual thinkers. Jean-Paul Sartre once famously remarked, “Existentialism? I don't know what that is. My philosophy is a philosophy of existence.”

The best and wisest route for scholarship is to treat each thinker as an individual, and to examine each thinker by means of the close reading of that philosopher’s texts.

Logical Positivism: The Influential if Unloved Innovations of the Vienna Circle

During the first half of the twentieth century, several major philosophical trends shaped the era’s significant thought. One of those movements is known by at least three names: Logical Positivism, Logical Empiricism, the Vienna Circle. These three names are almost synonymous, with only slight differences between them.

The Vienna Circle was a group of philosophers and other thinkers who met on a regular basis, discussing and publishing, in the city of Vienna during the 1920s and 1930s. While Vienna was the location of the earliest and most influential developments within this movement, Berlin and other cities were also important locations for the development of Logical Empiricism.

Movements are by nature ambiguous at their boundaries, and Logical Positivism is no exception. It is impossible to identify precise starting and ending points in time for this movement. It is not always clear which philosophers were part of the movement, and which ones were merely similar to, or associated with, the movement. Despite this vagueness, and despite the fact that movements are always constructs and not specific data points, it is nonetheless meaningful and useful to speak of Logical Positivism.

What is Logical Positivism? A definition or description of the movement would include these points: It is heavily empirical; it is anti-metaphysical; it takes physics and mathematics as paradigmatic for knowledge; it seeks to clarify philosophical questions by analysis of the words and propositions used to formulate those questions; its understanding of language is encapsulated in the slogan “The meaning of a word or sentence is the method of its verification.”

Each point in that definition requires considerable expansion.

Writing in 1969, Herbert Feigl explains:

Logical positivism began to form a fairly definite outlook in philosophy about forty years ago. As is well known, it was primarily the influence of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Rudolf Carnap that initiated the early phase of this — then new and radical — departure from the traditional ways of philosophizing. To be sure, some aspects of logical positivism are derived historically from Hume and Comte; but, in contrast, especially to Mill’s positivism, a new conception of logic (having its origins in Leibniz, Frege, and Russell) was united with the empiricism of Hume, Mach, and the early Einstein.

When Logical Positivism is described as heavily empirical, it means that the movement took observation to be the foundation of most knowledge.

As an anti-metaphysical movement, it considered words and sentences which refer to nonobservable things to be not wrong, but nonsensical. Thus the movement would consider a discussion of the mind, as separate from the brain, to be nonsense.

Because it takes physics and mathematics as paradigmatic for knowledge, it tends to favor what is quantifiable and measurable in observation. It looks to mathematics, and mathematical logic, to provide a framework in which observations can be organized.

The group sought to resolve philosophical paradoxes — longstanding questions, riddles, mysteries — by analyzing the words and sentences which formulated them. The Logical Positivists thought that many problems which had puzzled philosophers for years were the result of poorly-phrased propositions.

The method by which the Logical Positivists hoped to clear up philosophical misunderstandings — or what they took to be misunderstandings — was called “verificationism.” This method looked at a sentence — a proposition — and asked: by which procedure would it be determined whether this sentence is true or false? If such a method were found, then the Logical Positivists asserted that the method is the meaning: The meaning of a sentence is the method of its verification.

Herbert Feigl was a member of the Vienna Circle, and recalls:

The Vienna Circle consisted mainly of scientifically trained philosophers and philosophically interested mathematicians and scientists. Most of the members were tough-minded thinkers, Weltzugewandt (as Hans Hahn put it), ‘this-worldly’ rather than ‘other-worldly.’ They were radically opposed to metaphysical speculation, especially of the a priori and transcendent types. Since the development of the Vienna Circle is by now a familiar chapter in the history of recent philosophy, I propose, after dealing with some of the antimetaphysical doctrines of logical positivism, to concentrate on some of the aspects that are not as well known. I shall refer particularly to the work of Moritz Schlick, the founder and leader of the Vienna Circle. Schlick’s early work anticipated a good deal of what in more precise formulations was later developed by Carnap, Reichenbach, and others. In his Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre (first edition, 1918; second edition, 1925) there were also anticipations of some of the central tenets of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. I think it was Schlick’s extremely unassuming character, his great modesty and kindliness, and his deep personal devotion to Wittgenstein that made him forget or suppress the great extent to which his views, independently developed and quite differently stated, already contained very important arguments and conclusions regarding the nature of logical and analytic validity; the semantic explication of the concept of truth; the difference between pure experience (Erleben), acquaintance (Kennen), and genuine knowledge (Erkennen), etc. Indeed, so deeply impressed was Schlick with Wittgenstein’s genius that he attributed to him profound philosophical insights which he had formulated much more lucidly long before he succumbed to Wittgenstein’s almost hypnotic spell.

The methods and assertions of Logical Positivism arose, in part, as reactions against some overly metaphysical trends among other groups of philosophers, like the British Idealists and other neo-Hegelian and post-Hegelian schools of thought. Logical Positivism may have served as a corrective and as a challenge to such idealism.

While there was value in not letting idealism go uninspected, it is also the case that, after the movement’s heyday in the late 1930s, there are few self-proclaimed Logical Positivists among the philosophers of the early twenty-first century.

Categorizing the Pre-Socratics

For a century or two, beginning with the work of Thales, Greek philosophy flourished, and flourished mainly outside of Greece, for philosophy was born primarily in the colonies belonging to Greece, and not in Greece itself. Thales began his work around 600 B.C.; it is impossible to specify a more precise date.

Thales was the first of a large group of pre-Socratic philosophers, scattered across the Mediterranean world and across many decades. This group contained a broad range of methods and views, and influenced nearly all subsequent philosophizing.

It is understandable and predictable that scholars would hope to organize these foundational thinkers into groupings. In the conflict between psychology and philosophy, the human mind naturally tends to look for patterns and categories, even when there might be none.

In the face of any proposed taxonomy of pre-Socratic philosophers, one must ask whether such a classification is valid, and what the evidence for it might be.

Examining what was, at one time, the standard classification of these thinkers, Eduard Zeller explores it and finds it wanting. This accepted classification divided the pre-Socratic philosophers into four groups, the Ionian, the Pythagorean, the Eleatic, and the Sophic. The Ionian and Eleatic groups were named geographically after Ionia and Elea; the Pythagorean group was named after the philosopher Pythagoras; the Sophic group’s name is derived from the Greek word for wisdom.

Man pflegte früher in der vorsokratischen Zeit vier Schulen zu unterscheiden: die ionische, die pythagoreische, die eleatische und die sophistische. Den Charakter und das innere Verhältnis dieser Schulen bestimmte man teils nach dem Umfang, teils nach dem Geist ihrer Untersuchungen.

This commonly-accepted taxonomy of the pre-Socratics grouped them partially with reference to the scope and range of their philosophical topics, and partially with reference to their spirit and way of thinking.

Eduard Zeller argues that identifying certain groups with particular themes — the Ionians with physics, the Pythagoreans with ethics, the Eleatics with dialectics, and the Sophists with the decline of these narrow specialties and rise of a more comprehensive systematic approach — is problematic. It represents a retrojection of the three branches of classical Greek philosophy — ethics, physics, and dialectic — onto an earlier, pre-classical era. An additional anachronism is this interpretation’s reading into the Sophists a desire for a unified systematic philosophy.

Was den Umfang betrifft, so wurde als die unterscheidende Eigentümlichkeit der vorsokratischen Periode die Vereinzelung der drei Zweige bezeichnet, die später in der griechischen Philosophie verknüpft sind: von den Ioniern‚ sagte man, sei die Physik einseitig ausgebildet worden, von den Pythagoreern die Ethik, von den Eleaten die Dialektik, in der Sophistik sehen wir die Entartung und den Untergang dieser einseitigen Richtungen, die mittelbare Vorbereitung einer umfassenderen Wissenschaft.

Although Zeller doesn’t state this explicitly, it is likely that he also discounted the received interpretation of the pre-Socratics into four schools because it relied in part on the accident of geography. To assume that merely being colocated in Ionia meant that the Ionian philosophers together formed a school, or that the same was true of those who happened to be in or near Elea, is a priori questionable. The entire project of organizing groups of philosophers into “schools” smacks rather of the Hellenistic Era, and would therefore constitute a retrojection when applied to the Archaic or Pre-Classical Era.

Zeller further identifies a weakness in the standard taxonomy of the pre-Socratics by noting that not only is the accident of geography taken as the foundation for common approach to philosophy among those who happen to be spatially near each other, but rather also a sort of ethnic identity is given to these schools, inasmuch as the conventional taxonomy termed the Ionian philosophy to be “realistic” and the Dorian philosophy to “idealistic.”

Dieser Unterschied der Richtungen wurde dann weiter mit dem Stammesunterschiede des Ionischen und des Dorischen in Verbindung gebracht; andere legten den letztern ihrer ganzen Betrachtung der älteren Philosophie zugrunde, indem sie aus den Eigentümlichkeiten des ionischen und des dorischen Charakters den philosophischen Gegensatz einer realistischen und einer idealistischen Weltanschauung ableiteten.

In this context, Dorian is taken to refer both to parts of mainland Greece as well as the colonies located in Italy and on the islands near Italy, whereas Ionia refers to the western coast of Turkey (i.e., Asia Minor or Anatolia).

As used here, the words ‘idealistic’ and ‘realistic’ refer to varying emphases. In this sense, ‘idealistic’ philosophy emphasizes thoughts, patterns, and principles, which ‘realistic’ philosophy would emphasize concrete objects and events.

In any case, Zeller is rightly skeptical of a too-tidy pigeonholing of pre-Socratic philosophers into various schools. Such categorizing hides the individual creativity and inventiveness of each of these clever and perceptive thinkers.

Boltzmann on Time: Directionality and Entropic States

The intuitive world of phenomena is generally, if not always, perceived as four-dimensional. The dimension of time differs from the three dimensions of space in that it is directional. One can travel between two spatial points in either order: from A to B, or from B to A.

But between two temporal points, one can, and usually must, travel only in one direction: from earlier to later, and never from later to earlier. How is this distinctive feature of time to be understood?

Ludwig Boltzmann looks to the second law of thermodynamics to understand time’s directionality. He argues that the move from order to disorder does not occur with time, but rather that this move is time, or rather, that it determines the direction of time.

Boltzmann further asks about the implications of time’s directionality. If one can travel through time in only one direction, then is the set of possible events limited or conditioned by this fact? In his words,

Is the apparent irreversibility of all known natural processes consistent with the idea that all natural events are possible without restriction? Is the apparent unidirectionality of time consistent with the infinite extent or cyclic nature of time? He who tries to answer these questions in the affirmative sense must use as a model of the world a system whose temporal variation is determined by equations in which the positive and negative directions of time are equivalent, and by means of which the appearance of irreversibility over long periods of time is explicable by some special assumption. But this is precisely what happens in the atomic view of the world.

The universe, which according Boltzmann is on average in equilibrium, can contain local regions which, apparently spontaneously, move themselves into a state of disequilibrium. His view of the universe is, in part, his gas theories writ large. His conception of the universe could be understood as vaguely analogous to Brownian motion: galaxies vibrating rather randomly and spontaneously.

From this notion of the universe, Boltzmann sees the directionality of time, and perhaps time itself, as arising from pockets of disequilibrium. Time, and its direction, is the flow from a state of more disequilibrium to a state of less disequilibrium.

Boltzmann is, in effect, reversing the priority of the second law of thermodynamics: It is not the case, according to him, that a system moves within time, or through time, from a state of less entropy to a state of more entropy; rather, he seems to be saying that it is the move from one state to another which gives directionality to time, and perhaps even gives rise to time itself.

One can think of the world as a mechanical system of an enormously large number of constituents, and of an immensely long period of time, so that the dimensions of that part containing our own “fixed stars” are minute compared to the extension of the universe; and times that we call eons are likewise minute compared to such a period. Then in the universe, which is in thermal equilibrium throughout and therefore dead, there will occur here and there relatively small regions of the same size as our galaxy (we call them single worlds) which, during the relative short time of eons, fluctuate noticeably from thermal equilibrium, and indeed the state probability in such cases will be equally likely to increase or decrease. For the universe, the two directions of time are indistinguishable, just as in space there is no up or down. However, just as at a particular place on the earth’s surface we call “down” the direction toward the center of the earth, so will a living being in a particular time interval of such a single world distinguish the direction of time toward the less probable state from the opposite direction (the former toward the past, the latter toward the future). By virtue of this terminology, such small isolated regions of the universe will always find themselves “initially” in an improbable state. This method seems to me to be the only way in which one can understand the second law — the heat death of each single world — without a unidirectional change of the entire universe from a definite initial state to a final state.

Boltzmann argues that the direction of time is relative: to call a particular movement through time “forward” is merely a matter of perspective; another observer might call it “backward.” The direction of time is an indexical: to move “toward the future” or “toward the past” is like moving “to the right” or “to the left” — one observer’s “right” is another observer’s “left.”

As Lawrence Sklar has pointed out, Boltzmann even leaves room for the scenario in which different local pockets of disequilibrium might have their own times running in opposite directions. This would be within the larger framework of the universe as a whole, which Boltzmann seems to view as literally timeless, having no time because it is in a state of equilibrium.

Time, then, according to Boltzmann, is secondary, and contingent upon the primary appearance of local pockets of disequilibrium. Boltzmann has some explaining to do: how and why would these local pockets of disequilibrium randomly and spontaneously appear?

Obviously no one would consider such speculations as important discoveries or even — as did the ancient philosophers — as the highest purpose of science. However it is doubtful that one should despise them as completely idle. Who knows whether they may not broaden the horizon of our circle of ideas, and by stimulating thought, advance the understanding of the facts of experience?

On Boltzmann’s account, it could be that a pocket of disequilibrium would appear in the midst of a universe in equilibrium: this would constitute time moving backward, as it were. If that pocket of disequilibrium, in its process of moving toward equilibrium, would halt, that would amount to time standing still. If that process of moving toward equilibrium were subject to occasional relapses in which there was a temporary movement back to disequilibrium, this would amount to time repeatedly changing its direction.

Further, Boltzmann’s view might entail that within the one universe there could be various disparate pockets of disequilibrium, and these sundry pockets could have times which are moving in different directions. Simply put, in one part of the universe, time could move in a direction opposite to the way it’s moving in another part of the universe.

That in nature the transition from a probable to an improbable state does not take place as often as the converse, can be explained by assuming a very improbable initial state of the entire universe surrounding us, in consequence of which an arbitrary system of interacting bodies will in general find itself initially in an improbable state. However, one may object that here and there a transition from a probable to an improbable state must occur and occasionally be observed. To this the cosmological considerations just presented give an answer. From the numerical data on the inconceivably great rareness of transition from a probable to a less probable state in observable dimensions during an observable time, we see that such a process within what we have called an individual world — in particular, our individual world — is so unlikely that its observability is excluded.

Boltzmann’s notion that time is not merely the framework within which the second law of thermodynamics plays out, but rather that the very movement from disequilibrium to equilibrium is itself time, and sets the direction of time, is thought-provoking and worth consideration.

His claim, however, that pockets of disequilibrium might suddenly, spontaneously, and randomly appear within a universe which is in equilibrium is a bold claim, for which he offers no argumentation, the vague analogy to Brownian motion, and other phenomena within physical chemistry notwithstanding.

Metaphysics: What Is It?

What is metaphysics? How do people use the word ‘metaphysics’? Those two questions are closely related. Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy which deals with things, events, and processes which are not physical.

The word ‘metaphysics’ has its origin in the Greek language and is quite old, as Roger Hancock writes:

The word metaphysics derives from the Greek meta ta physika (literally, “after the things of nature”), an expression used by Hellenistic and later commentators to refer to Aristotle’s untitled group of texts that we still call the Metaphysics. Aristotle himself called the subject of these texts first philosophy, theology, or sometimes wisdom; the phrase ta meta ta physika biblia (“the books after the books on nature”) is not used by Aristotle himself and was apparently introduced by the editors (traditionally by Andronicus of Rhodes in the first century B.C.) who classified and cataloged his works.

One aspect of metaphysics is that it deals with things that are not directly known or perceived by the five senses (sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch). By contrast, physics deals with things that can be detected by those five senses. Newtonian physics deals with falling objects, accelerating object, etc., which can be rocks or automobiles or planets, all of which can be discerned by the five senses.

Even relativistics physics, subatomic physics, and quantum physics can be verified by the senses, although not directly. Roger Hancock continues:

Later, classical and medieval philosophers took this title to mean that the subjects discussed in the Metaphysics came “after the things of nature” because they were further removed from sense perception and, therefore, more difficult to understand; they used Aristotle’s frequent contrast of things “prior and better known to us” with things “prior and better known in themselves” to explain why the treatises on first philosophy should come “after the books on physics.” In medieval and modern philosophy “metaphysics” has also been taken to mean the study of things transcending nature — that is, existing separately from nature and having more intrinsic reality and value than the things of nature — giving meta a philosophical meaning it did not have in classical Greek.

Metaphysics is in one way or another dualistic, because it supposes two levels of reality: a physical dimension and a non-physical dimension. Sometimes, metaphysicians are tempted to ascribe more importance, more value, or more reality to one of those levels over the other. Other metaphysicians are content to allow both levels to exist side-by-side as equals.

If metaphysics is the study of things that can’t be perceived by the five senses, then the question arises: How does one learn about those things?

Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804) distinguishes between two types of knowledge: a prior and a posteriori. The phrase a priori means “from before” in Latin, and refers to knowledge that is gained prior to the experiences gained from the five senses. For example, arithmetic is considered an a priori body of knowledge, because without sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch, it is still possible to learn that 7 + 5 = 12. On the other hand, botany would be an a posteriori body of knowledge, because it is necessary to see and touch and smell and taste plants in order to know them.

Especially since Immanuel Kant metaphysics has often meant a priori speculation on questions that cannot be answered by scientific observation and experiment. Popularly, “metaphysics” has meant anything abstruse and highly theoretical — a common eighteenth-century usage illustrated by David Hume’s occasional use of metaphysical to mean “excessively subtle.”

In non-philosophical and non-academic usages, the word ‘metaphysics’ is used to deal with a variety of things, from serious spirituality to the quackery of reading tarot cards. It is necessary to distinguish between such popular usages on the one hand, and other the other hand, usages which are philosophical and academic.

The term has also been popularly associated with the spiritual, the religious, and even the occult. In modern philosophical usage metaphysics refers generally to the field of philosophy dealing with questions about the kinds of things there are and their modes of being.

Within metaphysics, the subdiscipline of ontology deals with questions about different kinds of being, and about which things exist and which ones don’t.

Upon reflection, things which cannot be discerned by the five senses are usually thought to be things which are composed of matter or energy or some mixture of the two. If one were to take the universe as it is, and remove all matter and energy, then whatever would remain would be metaphysical things.

Further analysis of these concepts yields the conclusion that metaphysical things are outside of space and time. Things often thought to be metaphysical are minds, memories, ideas, numbers, and shapes.

To better understand, it can be helpful to examine these things in pairs: A brain is a physical thing; a mind is a metaphysical thing. A numeral, which can be seen or heard, is a physical thing; a number is a metaphysical thing.

Blue paint, blue ink, blue cars, and blue jeans are physical things; the color blue by itself is a metaphysical thing.

The discipline of metaphysics borders on, and overlaps slightly with, some other subdisciplines within philosophy. Epistemology is the study of how, not what, can be known; to ask about how metaphysical things are known is to be on the borderline between metaphysics and epistemology.

Likewise, to ask about the existence of numbers is to be on the borderline between metaphysics and the philosophy of mathematics.

Its subject matter includes the concepts of existence, thing, property, event; the distinctions between particulars and universals, individuals and classes; the nature of relations, change, causation; and the nature of mind, matter, space, and time. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries metaphysics was used broadly to include questions about the reality of the external world, the existence of other minds, the possibility of a priori knowledge, and the nature of sensation, memory, abstraction, and so on. In present usage these questions are included in the study of epistemology.

The field of metaphysics has a long and varied history. Most of those who are routinely listed as significant philosophers engaged in metaphysical thought and left their marks on the field of metaphysics.

Confucius and Aristotle: Not Quite Independent Confirmation, But Close

In observational and experimental sciences, especially natural sciences, replicable and reproducible results are considered to be a part of the justification of a hypothesis or theory. While this is less the case in the social or political philosophy, it is still worth noting when two philosophers, separated by thousands of miles and several centuries, arrive at similar conclusions.

These two philosophers were also not aware of each other’s work.

Confucius was born around 551 B.C., and died in 479 B.C., having spent his entire life in China. Aristotle was born around 384 B.C., and died in 322 B.C., having lived in Greece, or on one its small coastal islands. Both of them investigated a variety of topics, including an analysis of the structures of society.

As a huge number of different chemical compounds can made from a small number of elements — say, oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen — , and as variety of structures and machines can be made from a small number of simple materials like iron, wood, and stone, so also, both Confucius and Aristotle reasoned, the many and varied structures in society might be made up of a few basic relationships.

Aristotle posited that there were three atomic relationships out of which society is constructed: employer and employee, husband and wife, parent and child. A complex relationship like “son-in-law” is built by adding “parent and child” to “husband and wife.” Another complex relationship like “grandparent” would be the product of doubling “parent and child.” He writes:

Seeing then that the state is made up of households, before speaking of the state we must speak of the management of the household. The parts of household management correspond to the persons who compose the household, and a complete household consists of slaves and freemen. Now we should begin by examining everything in its fewest possible elements; and the first and fewest possible parts of a family are master and slave, husband and wife, father and children. We have therefore to consider what each of these three relations is and ought to be.

A century or so before Aristotle, Confucius had come to a similar conclusion. He thought that there were five basic relationships in society: ruler and subject, parent and child, sibling and sibling, husband and wife, friend and friend. A complex relationship like “cousin” would be a combination of “parent and child” and “sibling and sibling.”

Describing Confucius’s thought, Wing-Tsit Chan writes:

Raising the growing humanistic tendency to a greater height than before, he talked about life instead of death and about man rather than spiritual beings. He declared that “it is man that can make the Way great and not the Way that can make man great.” For him the ideal is the harmony of the perfect individual and a well-ordered society based on the mutual moral obligations of the five human relations between ruler and minister, father and son, elder brother and younger brother, husband and wife, and one friend and another, with filial piety and brotherly respect as the two fundamental virtues. Government is to be conducted through the ruler’s moral examples, and religious ceremonies are to fulfill moral duties. Confucius sharply contrasted the superior man, whose standard is moral principle, with the inferior man whose standard is profit. In short, his whole doctrine can be summed up as ethical humanism.

The startling similarities between Aristotle’s and Confucius’s analyses of society merit study. While their independent conclusions do not guarantee their correctness, they do point to some common element in the rational investigation of human social structures.

(The Aristotle text was quoted from his Politics, Book 1, Chapter 3, 1253b1.)

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.