Paradigm Shifts and Human Nature

September 10th, 2006 Fred McVittie

The periodic large-scale changes in the structure of knowledge which have come to be referred to as ‘paradigm shifts’ undoubtedly make significant changes to the organisation of culture and power, the technical and physical resources available, the philosophies discussed and taught in Universities etc etc. Do such apparently seismic shifts have any appreciable affect on those behaviours, attitudes, and actions that might be attributed to ‘universal human nature’? It seems likely that, since much of human nature is a result of the slow accretion of adaptive behaviour, that this will have a natural damping effect on any such rapid change. It is more likely that whilst large scale ‘paradigm shifts’ in human knowledge will affect the organisation of cultures, they will not affect the overall function of those cultures, which is to provide for the human needs of their members.

Posted in Evolution, History, Paradigm, Universals | No Comments »

Centre of the Universe

April 17th, 2007 Fred McVittie

Those of us who have read about ‘paradigm shifts’ or of the Copernican Revolution in astronomy will be familiar with the legend of how the model of the universe shifted sometime around the early 17th Century. Prior to that time, we are told, people believed that Earth was the centre of the universe and the planets and the Sun swung majestically around the fixed point of Terra. The publication of Galileo’s ‘On the Two World Systems’ and works by Copernicus, Bruno, Brahe etc changed all that and a ’shift’ is supposed to have occurred in our understanding, particularly our understanding of our place in the universe. The images of the universe reflecting this new understanding, the so-called Copernican universe, show the Sun as a fixed point at the centre of the map and the Earth and other bodies swinging endlessly around it. This image of ourselves, as miniscule lifeforms clinging to a flying rock three rocks out from the Sun, is supposed to be a more accurate representation of our position than the previous Earth-centred one. However, it is worth considering for a moment what these images actually mean, what function they serve, and what information they leave out as well as what they provide. Starting with the last point first, it should be noted from the outset that any image, or indeed animation, which shows any object as stationary is inevitably partial. There is no such thing as a fixed point in the universe, everything is in motion relative to everything else and the idea that the Sun (or previously the Earth) is stationary is a convenient convention used to indicate particular ideas. In the case of images of the Sun-centred universe, the point of such images is that give an accurate representation of the gravitational and centrifugal relationships between the various bodies illustrated. These images do not, and cannot, meaningfully suggest that the Sun is ‘central’, particularly since the whole system; planets, asteroids, and the Sun itself, is all hurtling at several thousand miles an hour toward Orion. The Copernican model of the Sun-centred universe is extremely useful for predicting the position of planets and the relative movement of these planets, but it’s ontology does not extend beyond these predictions and certainly does not reduce the status of the Earth as central to human experience. In an infinite (and expanding) universe, as Pascal observed, the centre is (conceptually) everywhere. From the point of view of the subjective human being, there is only one centre however, and that is wherever one happens to be standing.

Posted in Centre, Cosmology, History, Paradigm | No Comments »

The Earth is Flat

August 20th, 2007 Fred McVittie

As Primack and Adams not in ‘View from the Centre of the Universe’, the model by which scientific revolutions proceed by large scale ‘paradigm shifts’ is flawed. Kuhn’s model, postulated that occasionally there are major changes in the way that science understands (all or part of) the world. At these times, and the most commonly-cited example is the Copernican revolution from an Earth-centred solar system (or universe) to one centered on the Sun, the old order of theories, models, diagrams, and mechanisms, is dismissed in favour of the new. In Kuhn, it is a necessary consequence of this revolutionary overturning that what went before it becomes wrong and that apostles of the new, (after moving through a brief period of being heretics) become keepers of the new flame and upholders of the new truth. Old is wrong, new is right.

According to Primack and Adams, a more accurate understanding of what happens during these times is not a replacement of one truth by another, but rather the re-interpretation of the data of the world such that it applies to a wider set of circumstances and covers a larger set of phenomena. So, by this understanding, the Ptolomaic model of the Earth-centered universe is not ‘wrong’, it is instead a special limited case of the Copernican model. It is worth noting in passing that the Copernican model tends to promote an understanding of the universe which is as partial in its own way as the Ptolemaic which preceded it. A casual interpretation of the Sun-centered model seems to indicate a stationary star orbited by moving planets, but of course, in relativity, nothing is stationary in absolute terms and by most accounts the Sun itself is hurtling at several thousand miles an hour in the direction of Andromeda, with the planets around it like the loose reins of a horse. Copernicus put his thumb on the Sun and momentarily arrested its wild flight and, in doing so, revealed a pattern in the relationship of the movement of the planets, but the Copernican map is not of the real solar system, any more than a 2-dimensional map of the Earth is an accurate rendition of the real globe. It is more a graph or schematic showing the pattern of relations he discovered.

In many cases it is preferable to work with the assumption that the Earth is stationary and central rather orbital and peripheral. When we make appointments or set or watches we do not consider this as stating the location of the Earth in its orbit around the Sun, or the number of degrees through which it has rotated. We refer to sunrise not Earthfall and we watch the Sun go down over the ocean, not the Earth turning its face away into the darkening night. For most purposes the Ptolemaic model of the universe in which Earth is the centre of attention is sufficient. This is not to say that when we use such Earth-centered concepts we are using a kind of lazy shorthand, or are being inaccurate. When the application of the Ptolemaic paradigm is limited to specific uses such as these it is as accurate, and more efficient, that the Copernican.

On the even more local scale of vernacular or ‘folk’ experience, we can even extend this notion of overlapping or simultaneous paradigms to include the apparently self-evident wrong-headedness of flat Earth theory. The Earth in its entirety is not usefully considered flat, and any depiction of the Earth which too closely resembles a 2-dimensional map is demonstrably inaccurate. However, in day to day life we routinely work with the assumption that it it indeed flat, and are rarely proved wrong. When we measure a room prior to fitting a carpet, or stake out the foundations of a building, we do not take the spherical nature of the Earth into account. It would be perfectly possible to include the curvature of the Earth in our calculations but since this difference would be insignificant (smaller by far than the variations in the landscape itself) it would be foolish to do so. It is at this level that ‘folk knowledge’, or Naive Physics, and the paradigms which make it up, become available as accurate, relevant theory.

Posted in Knowledge, Naive Physics, Paradigm, Primack, J. & Adams, N., Science, Space | No Comments »

The God Paradigm

October 17th, 2007 Fred McVittie

The ‘God Hypothesis’ which Dawkins puts forward in ‘The God Delusion’ is not, strictly speaking, a hypothesis at all. A hypothesis is a statement from which experiments might be directly derived, the results of which support or nullify that hypothesis. No such experiment can be produced from the general concept of a God. God could, however, be considered a paradigm from which other, more functional hypotheses can be derived. In this, the God Paradigm would be essentially no different from the Big Bang paradigm: both have a certain explanatory power but neither can be tested directly. A significant difference of course, is that the Big Bang paradigm can be used to generate hypotheses which are in turn fully testable and falsifiable. The results of such experiments can never prove or disprove the reality of the paradigm, but they can lend support to its validity as an explanatory structure. The search for the existence of background microwave radiation (COBE) was one such hypothesis which, when found to be valid, supported the Big Bang paradigm. A theist who argued that the presence of such radiation does not prove that the Big Bang happened is completely correct, as paradigms can only be supported, not proven. However, as such supporting evidence increases, as it has in the case of evolutionary theory, then the onus is on the dissenter to provide a better paradigm supported by better, properly supporting hypotheses. The God paradigm does not have a good record in generating functional hypotheses, and to the extent that it has, these have tended to be null and therefore fail to support the overall paradigm of a divine entity.

There are two hallmarks of a really good paradigm particularly a large-scale ‘cosmological’ paradigm that explains pretty much everything. Firstly, it has to provide a satisfying, easily grasped ‘big picture’. Secondly, it should be capable of generating many statements or hypotheses that can be tested. The God Paradigm, depending on which version you look to, has a record of being excellent at fulfulling the first requirement, as evidenced by the millions of people worldwide who not only grasp it but hold onto it in the teeth of quite amazing adversity. The second requirement, that it offers testable hypotheses, is less well covered, and to the extent that it is, has not performed well. The deist God, who lit the blue touch paper of the Cosmos and then stood well back, is completely inaccessible, and makes no moves, mysterious or otherwise, that might leave tracks in the experimental record. (This is the God for cop-outs in my opinion). Some other Gods, that of Roman Catholicism for example, are much more amenable to hypothesising, since He does intervene in the ways of the world. Miracles and intercessionary prayer are perfectly testable hypotheses which, if demonstrated as valid, would lend support to the God Paradigm. Such support would not constitute proof, of course, for the same reason that the results of COBE don’t prove the Big Bang paradigm. You could demonstrate the existence of miraculous cures and crying statues from now until Doomsday, and that would still not prove the existence of God, but would only lend support to the God Paradigm, an explanatory structure that, however well supported, would always be tentative, always open to doubt, always ready to be swallowed up by the next, even more encompassing big picture. The fact that these hypotheses have not been validated means that they do not provide such support, and the GP, for many of us, is just too weak to take seriously. However, lack of support does not mean disproof, and the God Paradigm, whilst it remains devastatingly unsupported, to the point that it is probably a hazard to passers-by, is as valid as it ever was. It just seems such a shame that so many people invest in this catastrophically weak idea of a divine being, an entity incapable of pulling of the simplest testable miracle, when there are so many other paradigms around which have awe-inspiring explanatory power and in their complexity and elegance make Chartes and Canterbury look like Birmingham Bullring (on a bad day).

Posted in Atheism, Dawkins, Richard, Evolution, God, Paradigm, Religion, Science | No Comments »