History, Theory, and Philosophy of Science (In SMAC + RT) 7th smester -Fall 2005 Institute of Media Technology and Engineering Science Aalborg University Copenhagen 2 nd Module The Paradigm of Modernity Luis E. Bruni

Arthur Peacocke (Chapter 2) What’s there?  ontology “…the stuff of the world, matter, possesses energy, and is located in space at a particular time.” “The concepts of space, time, matter and energy continued to appear to be ‘given’, self-evident features of the world, a priori concepts essential to our thinking”. Are these four concepts constantly the same in different cultures, traditions or historical periods? Ex: what changes to our conceptions of these concepts have been introduce by new theories such as relativity theory and quantum mechanics?

Samir Okasha (2002) Science  usually taught in a ahistorical way. The origin of modern science  the scientific revolution  in Europe between 1500 and Previous foundations  Aristotelianism. Modern Science  paradigm changes  e.g. the Copernican Revolution.

”Mechanical Philosophy” Galileo Galilei ( )  The language of mathematics could be used to describe the behaviour of actual objects in the material world  also the importance of testing hypothesis experimentally  the empirical approach. René Descartes ( )  ”mechanical philosophy”  the physical world consists simply of inert particles of matter interacting and colliding with one another  all observable phenomena can be explained in terms of these inert particles  still the dominant view today. ”Mechanical philosophy”  the final downfall of the Aristotelian world-view?

The climax of the scientific revolution Isaac Newton ( )  “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy”  improved the ”mechanical philosophy” with a powerful dynamical and mechanical theory  three laws of motion plus the principle of universal gravitation. Newton  great mathematical precision and rigour  invented the mathematical technique we now as “calculus”  this gave great success to the Newtonian world-view in the following 200 years  it was believed that anything in nature could be explain from such an epistemology  chemistry, optics, energy, thermodynamics, electromagnetism.

The downfall of Newtonianism? Relativity theory (Einstein)  Newtonian mechanics does not give the right results when applied to very massive objects  or objects moving at very high velocities. Quantum mechanics  the Newtonian theory does not work when applied on a very small scale  to subatomic particles. Both theories  “are very strange and radical theories, making claims about the nature of reality that many people find hard to accept or even understand”  what is going on here in terms of ontology and epistemology?

Physicalism Physics is considered the most fundamental of all scientific disciplines  for the objects of other sciences are themselves made up of physical entitiesE E.g.: botany  plants are ultimately composed of molecules and atoms, which are physical particles. What about cognitive processes?

Life Sciences Charles Darwin  The Origin of Species (1859)  the “discovery” of evolution by natural selection  paradigm shift? Subsequent work has providing striking confirmation of Darwin’s theory  the centrepiece of the modern biological world view. Molecular Biology  a paradigm shift?  from the DNA double-helix to the Human Genome Project.

New scientific disciplines New scientific disciplines  computer science, artificial intelligence, linguistics, neurosciences. Probably the most significant in the last 30 years  cognitive science  the various aspects of human condition  perception, memory, learning and reasoning  the human mind similar to computers. Social and human sciences  ex: economics, sociology, anthropology  have flourished in the 20 th century  considered to lag behind in terms of sophistication and rigour  why? What is your opinion? What would make them sophisticated and rigorous?

Logical Positivism The fundamental feature of a scientific theory is that it should be falsifiable. That a theory is falsifiable  does not mean that is false  it means that the theory makes some definite predictions that are capable of being tested against experience  if the predictions turn out to be wrong  the theory has been falsified or disproved. Karl Popper  theories that are not falsifiable  do not deserve to be called science  pesudo-science.

Science and pseudo-science Example  Freud’s psychoanalytic theory  can be reconciled with any empirical findings whatsoever  the concepts can be made compatible wit any set of clinical data  is unfalsifiable. Example of a falsifiable theory  Einstein’s theory of general relativity  it would predict that light rays from distant starts would be deflected by the gravitational field of the sun  extremilly hard to observe – except during a solar eclipse  this prediction was confirmed by observation  by Arthur Eddington in “There is certainly something fishy about a theory that can be made to fit any empirical data whatsoever”. Does this criteria hold in modern science? How about the theory of evolution? Is it falsifiable? Is it pseudo-science?

The paradigm of Modernity

What is the paradigm of Modernity? Modernity  from ~1450 to ? Scientific Rationalism  1600 Mechanicism  1600 Materialism  1700 Positivism  1800

Scientific Rationalism Decartes  1600 Rationalism  identification of reason with mathematical procedures. The whole of knowledge can be constituted by reasoning  excluding any dogmatic influence  the constitution of the universal science. ”Chains of reasonings”  clear and distinctive  that can be applied to any branch of knowledge  including morality.

Cartesian mechanicism The first product of rationalism in the scientific field  Cartesian mechanicism Mechanicism  the ancient atomistic conceptions of Democritus and Epicurus?  forerunners of materialism? Democritus  the principles of all things are the atoms and the vacuum.

Democritus The necessary movement of atoms gives rise to visible bodies through aggregations and disgregations. Even our knowledge is constituted through material pathways, when the “fluxes” of atoms coming from existing bodies strike our sense organs. The vacuum  not being a possibility of manifestation  could not have a place in the manifested world, leading the atomists to a paradox  not admitting by definition any other positive existence than that of the atoms and their combinations, the atomists are directly led to suppose that between the atoms there exists a vacuum in which the atoms can move.

The mechanicist thesis The mechanicist thesis  everything is explainable based solely on the principles of matter and local movement. Any concept lacks explicative value if such concept cannot be analysed in terms of the dynamical possibilities inherent to the material structures, by reason of the configurations and movements of the component particles.

The way to materialism Decartes  did not feel like proposing his “animal- machine” theory at the human level  dualism  mind and matter  Decartes considered one term and consciously neglect the other  as opposed to his successors who negate the existence of one of the parts altogether  considering only the part that was amenable to the mechanicist conception in order to reduce the entire reality in a way that was naturally going to lead to materialism. Materialism  a later product  became explicit with the revival of mechanicism in the XVII and XVIII centuries.

The net result Positivism  each increment in knowledge produces a correspondent withdrawal of ignorance  the idea of a knowledge that grows as an asymptotic approximation towards an infinite point of view that represents complete knowledge. Reductionism  the principle of analysing complex things into simpler more basic constituents  the view that things and living processes can be explained (only) in terms of the material composition and physicochemical activities of their components.

Asymptotic knowledge grow Total Knowledge

The limits to reductionism The reductionist ideal in relation to the highest hierarchical levels of emergence  the human “mental process”  the most promising strategy? “New neuroanatomical components that one had no idea about are being described simply by looking at where specific proteins are distributed in the brain. My guess is [M. Raffs’] that the reductionist approach, even where it is just a fishing expedition, will lead to real understanding in unpredictable ways, and that the molecular and cellular basis of memory, learning and other higher brain function could well emerge bit by bit, until the mystery gradually disappears, just as has been happening in developmental biology” (M. Raff, in the discussion of a symposium paper by W. G. Quinn, 1998: 124).

Paradigms of complexity In the 1900’s  alternatives to the reductionist-positivistic epistemologies. Technological evolution  produces a perception of increasing complexity and interactive synergies. Frontier disciplines  cognitive sciences, evolutive sciences, systemic thinking, philosophy of science, experimental epistemology, cybernetics, semiotics.

History, Theory, and Philosophy of Science (In SMAC + RT) 7th smester -Fall 2005 Institute of Media Technology and Engineering Science Aalborg University Copenhagen 2 nd Module The Paradigm of Modernity Luis E. Bruni