How Science Lost its Body

April 13th, 2006 Fred McVittie

This paper will describe how scientific knowledge prior to the late 16th and early 17th centuries was constructed and authenticated primarily by practical experimental means, and that this practice-led knowledge gathering process led to a form of knowledge which was inherently human-centred, sensual, and embodied. In fact it could be said that up to this point in history, the project of science was the organised description of human experience. After this point it will be argued that the object of enquiry shifted away from the human being and toward a depersonalised objectivity, a shift facilitated by an increasing tendency for scientific knowledge production to become mathematised (as noted by Kline 1980). This mathematisation of science proceeding to the point where, in cases where mathematical formulation does not agree with experiment, it is considered most likely that the experimental method is at fault.

Kline, M. (1980). Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty. New York, New York University Press.

Posted in Conference Abstract, Embodiment, History, Kline, Morris, Mathematics, Science | No Comments »

The Human Science Project

May 30th, 2006 Fred McVittie

This presentation marks the launch of an interdisciplinary research project involving institution in the UK, Canada, the USA, and Norway. This research, dubbed The Human Science Project, brings together knowledge production strategies from;

• studies of the innate knowledge possessed by babies and infants
• the various branches of ‘naive’ and ‘folk science’ knowledge acquired by humans prior to empirical research
• subjective and first person accounts
• phenomenology

These knowledge forms have been developed in many cultures prior to the invention of rational scientific procedures (falsification, double blind trials etc), including in the west up to the time of Newton and Descartes, and the Enlightenment more generally. They also continue to exist in a developed form outside of rational science and empirically grounded knowledge within metaphysical, occult, and religious beliefs and practices.

It can be argued that this ‘Human Science’, failing as it does the test of empiricism and rationalism, is unimportant and childish or backward, and the knowledge it claims is therefore bogus. However, it will be argued that these human centred knowledge systems are not so easily wished away. They have their roots in evolutionary history and that history is engraved in the fabric of our psyche. So whilst we may claim the light of reason as the only illumination for our knowing, the million year old light cast by the dawning of human being also shines on our understanding of the world.

Posted in Knowledge, Phenomenology, Science, Subjective, Universals | No Comments »

Science and Chaos (Magic)

June 9th, 2006 Fred McVittie

The techniques of ‘Chaos Magic’ are designed to demonstrate and make evident at a deeply ‘embodied’ level the idea that large areas of reality (the abstract parts) do not consist of a singular objective phenomenon, but rather that this reality is an unformed undivided potential which can be ‘realised’ in many different ways dependent upon which particular perceptual framework is employed to organise that reality. These perceptual frameworks are, in turn, a product of a corresponding ‘belief’ system. In order to develop this sense, chaos magicians typically switch their belief systems on a regular basis, committing whole-heartedly to each in turn, before consciously abandoning each for another. With each change of belief, there is a corresponding change in perception; different connections are made, different patterns observed, different meanings and relevances found. These differences sculpt the serial realities occupied by the chaos magician. (c.f. James: Principles, vol. I, ch. IX, p. 288). This technique results in a mind set which accepts the limits of each perceptual framework and, crucially, intuits the existence of the undivided potential from which these realities emerge.

This system is effectively a kind of ‘model agnosticism’ in which it is tacitly recognised that, at least in the area of abstract conception, reality is the result of a pruning or sculpting process. This is not dissimilar to the approach of the true scientist (even though she would would be loathe to admit themselves a magician). For the true scientist, a ‘theory’, a structured model of the workings of part of the world, whilst it may be deeply felt, possibly even ‘believed’, is nevertheless always contingent, always partial, and may at any moment be replaced by another theory or model.

Posted in Belief, Copenhagen Interpretation, Magic, Science | No Comments »

Axioms for an Imaginary Science of Performance

June 20th, 2006 Fred McVittie

An analysis of a range of techniques for the training of theatre performers reveals a high level of consistency and coherence in terminology. Although these techniques do not overtly claim to describe a world which differs from that of common sense or rational science, the paradigm and ’science’ of the physical world which is implied through this analysis is distinct in a number of ways. The axioms of an imaginary science of Performance might look something like this:

Space

• Space is not empty, but consists of an etheric liquid through which objects move and energy is transferred.
• Space is infinite and extends outward from the body of the performer in all directions.
• The body of the performer is therefore always at the centre of space.
• The central position occupied by the performer is also a fulcrum or axis around which the universe (space) is balanced
• Whilst the space of the universe may move, the centre of the performer is motionless
• Actions of the performer have an effect on the balance and properties of space.
• The form of the performer’s body, e.g. its lateral symmetry and horizontal asymmetry, affect the regions of space extended from these areas of the body. The space to the left of the performer is different from the space to the right for example.
• Part of the skill of optimal performance is the successful management of space.

Energy

• The performer has access to energy resources which are both physical and psychic.
• The energy controlled by the performer can affect the consistency and quality of the spatial ether.
• The energy controlled by the performer can affect objects in space, including other performers or non-performing beings.
• The energy controlled by the performer can be stored in or emitted from different parts of the performer’s body, or from locations outside of the performer’s body.
• The quality of the energy used by the performer can be vary in a number of ways; intensity, mood etc.
• The energy of the performer is a limited resource which can be depleted or replaced.
• The energy of the performer is part of an energy economy which includes other performers, and the audience.
• Part of the skill of optimal performance is the successful management of this energy.

Essence

• The performer has an individual essence, possibly corresponding with a ‘soul’ or ‘purpose’.
• The essence of the performer is the conduit for energy and the source for the application of will or intention.
• The essence of the performer is separate from any internal representation they may have of self, body-image, physical image-schema, etc.
• Part of the skill of optimal performance is the successful management of this essence.

Posted in Essence, Imagination, Metaphor, Performance, Poetics, Science, Theatre, Training | No Comments »

Research, Art, and the Performance of Creativity

July 1st, 2006 Fred McVittie

One of the ways in which performance is routinely talked about is in terms of its distinctions and divisions. Theatrical performance, particularly, is distinguished from ‘cultural performance’, those aspects of interpersonal behaviour which can be spoken of using the theatrical metaphors of role, scene, and script. Also, the use of the term ‘performance’ within a range of other activities, including business, technology, and sport, is strongly distinguished from the theatrical use of the term, the implication being that the shared terminology is only coincidental and does not indicate a shared ontology, (but see Mackenzie 2001). And of course, a conventional distinction that is made when discussing art and theatre, is their oppositional relationship to the sciences.

Philosopher of science Robert Crease in ‘The Play of Nature’ proposes an interesting model which subverts this division. In this model he uses the concept of ‘performance’ to talk about both art and science. Rather than make a distinction between performances which take place in theatres, auditoria etc, and those which happen elsewhere, so-called ‘cultural performance’, or distinguishing between the term performance as it is used in the different domains, he divides the various acts which have been named ‘performance’ into four types; failed, mechanical, standardised, and artistic, and applies these terms to the activities of the studio, the theatre, and the laboratory. The first three terms; failed, mechanical, and standardised, as the words imply, either repeat performances that have gone before or do not ‘perform’ at all. In all of these contexts it is the latter term he regards as the most significant. Artistic performance;

“coaxes into being something which has not previously appeared. It is beyond the standardized program; it is action at the limit of the already controlled and understood; it is risk. The artistry of experimentation involves bringing a phenomenon into material presence in a way which requires more than passive forms of preparation, yet in a way so that one nevertheless has confidence that one recognizes the phenomenon for what it is. Artistic objects ‘impose’ themselves–they announce their presence as being completely or incompletely realized–but this imposition is not independent of the judgments and actions of the artist.”

This identification of performances which are ‘at the limit of the already controlled’ corresponds with terms such as ‘innovation’ and particularly ‘research’, but it is significant that Crease identifies this moment with art. Here art is not (only) the set of cultural institutions and histories which provide certain specific contexts for specific types of looking, but is the performance of creativity.

Posted in Art, Crease, Robert, Creativity, Mackenzie, John, Performance, Science, Sport, Theatre | No Comments »

Universal Physics and Rational Physics

July 22nd, 2006 Fred McVittie

The term Universal Physics here refers to the set of extra-scientific (1) beliefs and theories about the physical world which have claim to universality, particularly those beliefs which concern matter, energy, and their interactions. These beliefs differs in significant ways from Rational Physics. In Universal Physics;

• There is no clear distinction between those aspects of the world which are external to the self, and those which are internal; i.e. there is a significant overlap with what Rational Physics would refer to as psychology.
• Entities and phenomena are proposed which are not acknowledged in Rational Physics, and which would otherwise be referred to as ‘magic’, ’superstition’, or ‘religion’.
• All descriptions are in natural language, no mathematical formulation is used

1. The theories and beliefs of Universal Physics are often held to be temporary and ‘pre-scientific’, to be replaced by the more ‘objective’ knowledge created by rational scientific processes. The term ‘extra-scientific’ is used here in preference to ‘pre-scientific’ to indicate that such beliefs may not be replaced in this way, but are usually held alongside scientifically formulated theories of Rational Physics.

Posted in Fiction, Naive Physics, Physics, Science, Universals | No Comments »

Cognitive Operators and Belief

July 24th, 2006 Fred McVittie

D’Aquili and Laughlin (1979), give a cognitive explanation for the universality of myths, rituals, and ‘religious’ practices, citing three processes which the mind engages in, and which have identifiable cortical correlates. These innate and non-conscious forms of thinking, conceptualisation, abstraction, and binary thinking, are used by all humans to make sense of the world, to ‘organise unexplained external stimuli into some coherent cognitive matrix’ (1979: p.161). This idea is developed further in Newberg and D’Aquili (2002), which names eight of these ‘cognitive operators’ underpinning the organisation of psychological experience. This work further proposes a mechanism for how the functioning of these cognitive operators leads to mystical and religious belief.

This research suggests that all humans are universally determined to find explanations and produce ‘theories’ about the structure and operation of the world in which they are lodged and to invest these theories with belief. There is no evidence, however, of a cognitive operator, or any other cortical or cognitive structure, which corresponds to the protocols of rational sceptical science. This is presumably for good adaptive reasons: humans would be likely to evolve mental processes which organise experience in a way which optimises survival of the body, but the parsimoniousness required by evolution would not allow the kind of objective rigour that scientific process demands. Embodied cognition will tend to produce heuristics rather than laws.

Posted in Belief, Cognitive Operators, D'Aquili, Eugene, Newberg, Andrew, Religion, Science | No Comments »

How Science got it Body Back

July 29th, 2006 Fred McVittie

As has been described by Kline (1980), Davies (2005), and others, the history of scientifically verified truth took a particular turn around the 16th century. The mathematization of science in which validation processes from experimental hypotheses and procedures moved from being ’self-evident’ (i.e. evidenced by the sense of the embodied self), to being validated axiomatically using the language of mathematics. The authority of this mathematical truth is owing to its being underwritten by a transcendent logic, untainted by human frailty. Maths is/was considered a purely abstract structure of thought, separate from the messy subjectivity of the body, and therefore not only exact, but also disembodied. The 20th century, however, through the work of Godel and others, saw this transcendent logic and coherence of mathematics exposed as fundamentally untrue, which discovery resulted in a ‘loss of certainty’ (Kline: 1980) in maths and a corresponding loss of certainty in the sciences which rest rest on this mythic transcendent coherent logic. This could be interpreted as a crisis for maths and science, as these activities are revealed as ultimately groundless; not based on eternal transcendental, possibly God-given laws, but at best on heuristics which are merely ‘useful’ and ‘effective’. However, recent developments in cognitive linguistics and the development of theories of ‘embodied cognition’ offer a different interpretation. These emerging disciplines suggest that our ability to conceptualise and work with even the most abstract ideas of mathematics or science is throught the use of embodied metaphors, and that even the equations of pure maths, when analysed using the tools of cognitive linguistics, reveal the use of concepts and ideas which are mapped metaphorically from simple actions and responses of the somatosensory body, (Lakoff and Nunez 2000). This implies that ultimately, what logic and coherence maths may possess which allows it to be used to validate science, is due to the logic and coherence of the metaphors used to conceptualise that maths. These metaphors, while they may inevitably be partial, contradictory, and incompatible one with another, are themselves built from the experiential realism of embodiment. The ground of thought is not in the sky, but in ourselves, and the loss of certainty in maths is the regaining of the body in science

Davies, B. (2005). “Whither Mathematics?” Notices of the AMS 52(11): 1350 - 1356.

Kline, M. (1980). Mathematics: The Decline of Certainty. New York, Oxford University Press.

Posted in Cognitive Linguistics, Embodiment, History, Kline, Morris, Mathematics, Science | No Comments »

Naïve science and coherent metaphors

August 15th, 2006 Fred McVittie

The principles of a naïve science, otherwise referred to as folk science (folk physics, folk psychology etc) are held coherently by an overlapping set of metaphors. That is, that whilst such ‘sciences’ may not correspond to rational science, and may not be structurally complete, that they nevertheless do find coherence, and a sense of completeness, through the use of metaphor, particularly in the entailments to such metaphors (following Lakoff and Johnson 1987). Metaphorical entities are postulated, such as the ´luminiferous ether´, which bring together in an easily embodied understandable way, elements of the observed reality which otherwise (actually) are only coherent through their connections to a disembodied rational science.

Posted in Lakoff, George, Metaphor, Naive Physics, Science | No Comments »

The boundaries of naivite

August 17th, 2006 Fred McVittie

The folk disciplines carve the world up at different joints than do the scientific disciplines. Rational physics, for example, has a relatively clear border between itself and the discipline of psychology. (In fact there is something of a demilitarized zone between these two, where only such interdisciplinary ephemera as ‘quantum psychology’ are found). Naive or Folk physics draws its (distinctly fussier) boundary differently, including within its remit the presence of consciousness and psychic effects. (Smith and Casati 1994)

Posted in Consciousness, Naive Physics, Physics, Science, Smith, B. & Casati, R. | No Comments »

The Natural History of Conceptual Art

September 3rd, 2006 Fred McVittie

We are neurologically and psychologically adapted to respond to certain features of the sensory environment in ways which have given us a survival or reproductive advantage in evolutionary history. The development of art, it has been argued (Ramachandran, Zeki), has been the organised identification of these responses and their servicing in what we refer to as ‘aesthetics’. (Pinker makes a parallel case for the development of refined foods). Much of the literature making the case for such a development has focussed on the visual arts, and to a lesser extent music (Mithen), and there has also been a tendency within these arguments to focus on traditional or classical art rather than modern or contemporary practice. One of the reasons given why contemporary work is ignored in this type of evolutionary psychological analysis is that whilst modern work (since, say, the end of the 19th century) undoubtedly still continues the aesthetic practices of its predecessors, its production and function is driven more by other determinants. These are; a restless innovation in which the desire for novelty is prioritised over aesthetics, (the ‘make it new’ of Modernism and the pressure of the marketplace); and an increasing move away from the immediately sensorial qualities of a work, its visual appearance, aural effects etc, toward an overt concern with its conceptual content. This is acknowledged in, for example, Ramachandran, who suggests that as little as 10% of the effects of an artwork can be attributed to (evolutionarily adaptive) aesthetics.

This is perhaps most clearly evident is some works of Conceptual Art which may have little or no obvious aesthetic value, and in some cases almost no existence at all. However, I will argue here that this rendering of certain arts practices as operating outside of the reach aesthetic response is inaccurate, and that those elements of artworks noted above, novelty and concept, are also available for these adaptively facilitated responses. the notion that a concept, theory, or idea might elicit an aesthetic response is not particular to the arts of course. Scientists and mathematicians for example commonly refer to their equations, formulae, and theories as ‘elegant’ or even ‘beautiful’, evidently indicating that these conceptual entities have the same evocative power as physical objects of beauty. This despite the fact that the visual or other sensory evidence of such ideas, the symbols on a page or the experimental equipment in a laboratory, rarely has any obvious aesthetic appeal at all.

Posted in Aesthetics, Art, Beauty, Conceptual, Mathematics, Mithen, S.J., Pinker, Stephen, Ramachandran, Vilayanur, Science, Zeki, Semir | No Comments »

Honouring Naivity

September 5th, 2006 Fred McVittie

The tenets of the various ‘naive’ or ‘folk’ sciences; naive physics, naive biology etc, are considered to have, at best, a parasitic relationship to the developed rational sciences. They are the infant to the adult, the primitive to the civilised, the rule of thumb to the rule of law. In this asymmetric relationship the naive sciences are subjects of condescension, they are the unruly designs of nature rather than the manicured gardens of rationality, and like all things of nature, (as Lauren Bacall put it in ‘The African Queen’ ) are there to be risen above . This asymmetry between the rational and the naive is undoubtedly partly caused (and partly justified) by the resounding success of rational science is explaining the world and proving its worth through its application to practical problem solving. ‘Better Living through Science’ is not just a catchphrase.

But what of the worth of the naive sciences? Can a knowledge of Naive Physics, for example, be shown to be add value to existence which could no be added by a singular rational approach to knowledge?

Posted in Knowledge, Naive Physics, Science | No Comments »

Zero Person Singular

October 10th, 2006 Fred McVittie

First and third person accounts are the dominant positions of phenomenological and physical enquiry; phenomenology uses the 1st person ‘I’, objective science uses the 3rd person ‘he’, ’she’, or ‘it’. Science usually uses the passive mode, such as when we say that ‘this measurement was made’, or ‘this experiment was carried out’, the 3rd person making the measurement or carrying out the experiment is implied rather than overtly stated or named.

An ongoing problem in areas of study which draw on the techniques of both phenomenological and physical enquiry, consciousness research for example, is resolving these 1st and 3rd person accounts into one single coherent account, taken from a single viewpoint. To rational science the 1st person is invalid, to phenomenology the 3rd person is irrelevant.

A possible means for establishing a hiatus in this problem is by developing a mode of discourse which is neither 1st nor 3rd person, and one possible candidate for such a discourse would be an enhanced version of the way of speaking known as e-prime, which draws on Korzybski’s General Semantics. In standard e-prime the verb ‘to be’ is suppressed, such that any statement which claims an objective physical fact by saying that some object is some property (such as ‘that elephant is grey), is disallowed, and must be re-articulated to include the viewing position (so that the sentence above becomes ‘that elephant appears grey to me’, or more pedantically ‘the side of the elephant facing me appears grey to me’). Clearly, standard e-prime favours a 1st person account, countering the implied 3rd person objectivity of the is statement. An enhanced version of e-prime would also eliminate this 1st person in favour of a zero person singular account, in which no reference is made, overtly or covertly, to any viewer whatever.

Posted in Elephant, Korzybski, Alfred, Language, Objectivity, Phenomenology, Science | No Comments »

Performance Creativity Consciousness

October 12th, 2006 Fred McVittie

The metaphor of performance, including the various entailments of that metaphor concerning the production and evaluation of performance, provides a structure for understanding a wide range of individual and social processes. This metaphor, whilst not overt, seems to underpin (or at least revealingly correspond to) proposed structures for the workings of;

• individual creativity
• social creative processes
• the scientific experimental method
• the functioning of human consciousness

This understanding of performance presents it as a prototypical phase not only in the production of theatrical events, but also in cycles of creative production which include the individual psychology of creativity, the public processes of creative evaluation and legitimisation, the scientific method, and the emergence of consciousness.

Posted in Conference Abstract, Consciousness, Creativity, Cycle, Performance, Science | No Comments »

Lost Baby

October 27th, 2006 Fred McVittie

We are among the first, and only, cultures in history not to have a shared consistent cosmology; a big picture’ which articulates the relationship between all the parts of our experience. The worldview held by most, if not all, religions may serve some of this totalising function, but they do this at the expense of the intellectual rigour which would force them to accept the inconsistencies and contradiction between dogma and science.

Posted in Cosmology, History, Religion, Science | No Comments »

Sacred and Profane

May 13th, 2007 Fred McVittie

The percentage of the material world that we can access directly with our senses is extremely small. Our eyes detect only those wavelengths of light which correspond to the visual spectrum, our ears only hear a narrow range of sounds, our hands can only discriminate the shape, size, and texture of objects within our reach, and then only within strict limits. In addition to these physical limitations of the senses, we are also out of direct contact with most of the things we think about and talk about. Not only can we not touch or taste atoms and galaxies, but we will also never have direct experience of such concepts as politics, God, justice, evil, and tomorrow. These familiar ideas have no sensory representatives and make no impact on our experiences, even love and the other emotions are outside the reach of our senses, (although their effects may not be.)

Our attitude toward these concepts varies enormously. To many people, scientific theories which posit the existence of entities outside of experience, whether this be superstrings, black holes, or dark energy, are approached with an attitude we might call ‘profane’ in the sense that, whilst these theories may be difficult or counter-intuitive, they are part of an approach to knowledge which is apparently materialistic and ‘of this world’. When extra-experiential concepts are referred to which are not framed scientifically, particularly religious or ’spiritual’ ideas, the attitude taken toward these concepts is not profane but is ’sacred’. These is a sense of reverence or even supplication toward the ideas. A distinction is felt between these two approaches, the sacred and the profane, in which the sacred attitude is reserved for certain concepts which lie outside of experience but not others. This is inconsistent, and in my opinion emerges from a false distinction between those aspects of the world we can access and those we cannot. If there was a clear correspondence between the profane and the accessible, and between the extrasensory and the spiritual this would at least be consistent, but no such correspondence exists. The sacred and profane do not map onto the literal and the metaphorical. In my opinion, both the literal and the metaphorical, the accessible and the inaccessible, are equally worthy of both sacred and profane regard.

Posted in Conference Abstract, Embodiment, Metaphor, Science, Sense, Spirituality | No Comments »

The Mind and the Printing Press

May 13th, 2007 Fred McVittie

David Hubel in ‘Mind, Brain and Vision’ remarks that the brain is a machine “that does tasks in a way that is consonant with the laws of physics, an object that we can understand in the same way that we understand a printing press”. This ambition for the understanding of the brain may be hubristic however. It is likely that the brain functions using processes which require forms of understanding which are radically different than those we use to understand the mechanical objects of the material world. A printing press is, as Dawkins might put it, a ‘medium sized object moving at medium speed’, its workings are entirely explicable in terms of Newtonian physics and basic mechanics (those workings which are significant to its major function at any rate). A brain on the other hand utilises electrochemical and biochemical, and possibly quantum mechanical processes which are completely beyond the reach of Newtonian physics and which can only be approached using very different mathematical and scientific models. This distinction is significant because, as medium sized object ourselves, we can think and talk about processes which operate on the Newtonian scale literally and directly, but when we think and talk about processes which lie outside of that scale we enter a world outside direct experience which we can only address metaphorically (including the ultimately metaphorical constructions of mathematics). This means that, whilst we might one day fully ‘understand’ the brain, we will never understand it in the way that we understand the printing press.

Paradoxically, there is also an implication that, since we have the minds of medium sized objects, built out of the need to solve the problems facing medium sized objects, those minds are themselves, in a sense, medium sized objects. Our minds intuitively understand something approximating Newtonian physics. There is therefore a grain of truth in what Hubel says although it is more appropriately aimed at the mind, not the brain. The mind does tasks in a way which is consonant with the laws of (folk) physics”.

Posted in Embodiment, Knowledge, Metaphor, Science | No Comments »

Calibrating the Instrument

May 15th, 2007 Fred McVittie

Any careful examination of some phenomenal aspect of experience is preceded by the important task of checking and calibrating the instruments with which such examination will be made. Before a measurement of length is taken the ruler is checked against a standard: the telescope is checked before use such that its limits and its accuracy within those limits can be ascertained. When the readout of the instrument is in a different ‘language’ to that of the phenomenon to be measured (as when the pressure of the air is measured using an old-fashioned barometer and the readout is given in inches) the extent to which this translation hold true must be established.

The primary instrument which we use to access the data of the world is our own mind. Functioning through the somatosensory body this instrument, which was probably originally designed to take the measure of only those data sets appropriate to the maintenance of the body, is now the measure of all things. Before we use this instrument, and certainly before we give our complete trust to its readouts, it may be a useful to consider what calibrations may need to be made and what such calibrations imply about the mind and the world it occupies.

Posted in Consciousness, Embodiment, Science | No Comments »

Mechanism and Matter

May 17th, 2007 Fred McVittie

In ‘Man and Machine’ (1928) Joseph Needham wrote that ‘Mechanism and materialism lie at the foundation of scientific thought’. It is usually assumed that by this he meant that all science is ultimately mechanistic and materialistic, an archaic and vaguely quaint notion. However, it is possible that what he meant was that, whilst the phenomena of the universe may be wildly exotic and far beyond the reach of the human senses and of any mechanistic or materialist explanation constructed from the evidence of those senses, there is nevertheless a place for this kind of thinking in even the most esoteric and counter-intuitive of scientific theories. A more positive reading of Needham’s comment may point us toward the recognition that all of our theorisation and conceptualisation is ultimately grounded in thinking which is human scale, and locked into the wonders of the mechanism and of matter.

Posted in Science | No Comments »

Anti-Epiphany

May 30th, 2007 Fred McVittie

The shifting internal landscape of metaphors and representations that we might call ‘imagination’ includes not only the extensive covert metaphors underpinning routine language and thought as described by Lakoff et al, but also the heightened and more recognisable metaphors found in poetic flourishes, scientific theories, political models, and theological beliefs and cosmologies. All of these constructs are beyond literal embodiment so are fabricated in our imaginations from the building materials of embodied experience. Some might argue that such entities as God, Quarks, and the Invisible Hand of the Free Market are objectively verifiable facts about the world, but such claims, however valid, does not alter the status of these entities as ultimately imaginary and metaphorical. Whilst these overt or ‘heightened’ metaphors actually have the same ontological status as the more routine metaphors, we tend regard these abstractions as deserving of special treatment. We treat poetic metaphor with an aesthetic appreciation that is largely absent from our experience of routine embodied metaphor. We approach political metaphor with revolutionary zeal or protectionist paranoia, and we treat theological metaphor with the reverence and awe we call ’spirituality’.

This ’spiritualisation’ of the imagination, in which we associate a particular attitude and mental state with a certain set of abstraction, amongst the sea of abstractions that surrounds us, is slightly odd. The oddness is that we spend most of our lives in the close embrace of one metaphor or another, completely immersed in the spirit world of embodied abstractions and yet we choose this particular subset of metaphors to have a ‘religious’ relationship with. It would perhaps be more consistent to develop this special kind of relationship with those parts of experience which are unlike the others, and which are distinguished by their rarity and ontological distinction. What is exceedingly rare as a category of human conceptualisation, and which in some ways makes more sense as a location for religious experience, is the unalloyed engagement with the material world, a direct experience of physical material, accessed via the senses. Given the human predeliction for metaphorical thought, such moments of engagement with the raw material of metaphor, physical experience itself, are inordinately difficult to sustain. Listening without putting a name or an interpretation on what is heard. Seeing and trusting the evidences of one’s eye. Feeling the texture of the paper under one’s fingertips. These things are not the epiphanies of spiritual experience but the anti-epiphanies of embodiment, which are far less commonplace.

It is perhaps significant that some practical philosophical traditions stress the importance of this kind of concrete experience; these moments of anti-epiphany are islands of holy materialism in an ocean of tumbling tumultuous metaphors, gleaming crystals of divine contact in a volatile and wholly spiritual world.

Posted in Cognition, Enlightenment, Metaphor, Science, Spirituality | No Comments »

Good Science Approaches the Condition of Art

July 1st, 2007 Fred McVittie

The drive to create new knowledge is, presumably, rooted in the human universal desire to acquire that knowledge. Ultimately this is a cognitive imperative reinforced by the sense of pleasure accompanying discovery/creation, and the sense of stress accompanying not knowing. We try to know things because knowing feels good and not knowing feels bad. This equation of knowing and feeling is easily placed within an evolutionary narrative in which such a cognitive imperative would emerge as an adaptive trait. In fact it may be the most significant adaptive trait in the emergence of human being as we understand it. The implication of this relationship between knowing and feeling is that the acquisition of knowledge through research is, at heart, an aesthetic activity in which a satisfactory conclusion, outcome, or insight is arrived at because of the very satisfaction that accompanies it. The individual feelings which accompany research, in the context of scientific discovery for example, are reported by those involved to be a prime motivator in the continuance of that research, and the high points of these research processes in which significant breakthroughs or insights are made are spoken of in glowing experiential terms. This experience, the feeling of what happens during the research process, is indistinguishable from certain experiences in artmaking and other activity considered ‘expressive’, or as Suzanne Langer refers to it, as having ‘vital import’. At its best, research in all fields approaches the condition of art.

This idea is reminiscent of Robert Crease’s observation that scientific discovery and experimentation can be considered a ‘performance’, with the most profound and elegant research in the sciences achieving a standard he refers to as ‘artistic’.

Posted in Art, Crease, Robert, Creativity, Langer, Suzanne, Performance, Science | No Comments »

The Human Moment

August 20th, 2007 Fred McVittie

There was a period of time of several decades in the 17th century which were unique in history. Say between the birth of Galileo and the death of Newton, maybe with a midpoint at around 1650. This time marks a special moment in ontological history, the end of magic and the beginning of science. The certainties and firm foundations offered by scripture were being swept away by observation and method, but this method had not yet been abstracted into mathematics or extended beyond the visible and the otherwise sensory. This brief period was science’s human moment, when it’s subject was the observation, organisation, and understanding of human experience.

Posted in Embodiment, History, Science | 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 »

Substance Metaphors

August 25th, 2007 Fred McVittie

One of the most extensive groups of conceptual metaphors that we use to structure and organise our thoughts about phenomena which would otherwise be incomprehensible and inexpressible is that set of metaphors which use SUBSTANCE as their source. Sometimes the substance used is quite specific, as for example when we talk about the abstract concept of genetic inheritance by using the metaphor of blood. In other instances we use more generic substances to stand for abstract concepts and exploit the general properties of substances to think and talk about concepts about which we would otherwise have to remain mentally and actually silent. A clear example of this latter type of generic substance metaphor is that of the type MIND IS A LIQUID which is explored in detail elsewhere and which shows itself in our use of such terms as flow, absorb, stream of consciousness, oceanic awareness, etc, all of which describe mental states or processes through the application of the one substance metaphor. It is inevitable that our use of such metaphors is based on our vernacular embodied understanding of substances, and not on an understanding of substance which requires specialist, non-embodiable knowledge. There is unlikely to be a metaphor group relating particularly to the halide elements for example, or to substances which form salts in the presence of acids. In other words, the ways in which substances are used as sources for metaphor is not dependent upon technical knowledge, of chemistry for example, but on the experiential knowledge of handling different substances and encountering different substances directly with the sensorimotor system. At this level of analysis, the body is the template for categorisation, not the chromatograph or the tunneling electron microscope. Unsurprising, the primary categories that the body forms are those familiar to all of us from Primary School science class, the categories of solids, liquids, and gases, and it is from this threesome that most of our substance metaphors are drawn. (Please note the inclusion of the caveat ‘most’ in the preceding sentence. I will be arguing that on special occasions we do invent, postulate, or imagine, a fourth state of matter outside of the big three.)

Posted in Liquid, Metaphor, Mind, Science, Sense, Substance | No Comments »

Binding Science and Religion

September 15th, 2007 Fred McVittie

The term ‘religion’ seems to be derived from a term meaning ‘to bind’ or ‘to hold together’, which although in the modern context we might interpret as being somehow ‘bound to God’ or ‘held together in faith’, in the original it seems to be much simpler and less a priori theistic. I don’t know if we have a natural desire to embrace some kind of theistic religion, I suspect not, but the desire to take disparate experience and form some kind of consilient whole does seem to be a human universal. This tendency, or cognitive imperative, seems to operate on a number of levels.

At the level of basic perception we are able to take disparate sensation and compose them into the multimedia event of lived experience. As I look around the room I am not subject to a ‘blooming, buzzing, confusion’ (1) as William James put it, but an impressively singular, coherent, all-embracing totality. I even seem to be able to fill in the gaps in my vision; I don’t feel the area behind my head as a constantly present darkness, but build its invisible contents into my overall picture. Moreover, this totality crosses the various sensory modes; I do not hear the hum of this computer separately from my seeing of the computer, they are completely integrated into a unity. Further, I do not experience this panorama as a set of flashing still images following one another rapidly, but disjointedly as each millisecond brings new rays of light to my eyes. As Husserl noted, my present also contains fragments of my past and fragments of my future; the now, the not-now, and the not-yet-now, as he is often translated (2). We seem to have the capacity to blend the frames of time’s passing into a single extended present, or as T.S. Eliot put it:

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.(3)

The basic act of being alive and awake seems therefore to involve a massive, unconscious, act of creative binding together.

The acts of consciousness also seem to have this tendency in spades, as witnessed by our almost uncanny ability to search out and detect patterns and consistencies. As kids we look for figures in the design of the wallpaper and do dot-to-dot puzzles, finding one picture of one bear where before there was only 35 random dots on the page: a trick we carry on into adult life every time we look up on a clear night, or look at the clouds during the day. This conscious striving for a unified picture where before there was only wildly separated splotches of colour finds its most noble application in our ability to generate towering, visionary edifices of ideas. The awesome regularity of the periodic table, in which every particle of matter so far imagined is brought into a single frame: the phenomenally elegant Darwinian model of descent in which all of life that has ever lived on the planet is brought into the fold of one gigantic thought.

One thing that I find with these routine and extraordinary acts of binding together, is how extremely pleasant and rewarding they are. Looking around the room and seeing it, just as it is, feels good, and it feels even better to stand on a mountain and have a hundred square miles of land and an immensity of sky come together in the unique singularity of my experience at that long moment of Right Here, Right Now. Also, just thinking about ‘the river out of Eden’, as Dawkins so perfectly described it, and holding that fantastic idea in my hand like one perfect rose, gives my goosebumps. If there really is a theory of everything, and if I ever hear about it, I think I might spontaneously combust from sheer awe-struckness. Which brings me, by a circuitous route, to the point of this post. Religion isn’t really about dressing up in funny clothes and praying to half-naked statues, or following a certain dress code and not eating this or that animal. Religion is a logical extension to our natural tendency to make coherent sense out of the chaos of the world, and the more religious we get, that is, the more we are able to include in our singular vision, the better it feels. The big ideas of religion feel great because they are about seeing eternity in a single glance and embracing everything, with nothing left out, and the same is true of the big ideas of science. I think the ambitions of science are exactly the same as those of the practices we traditionally refer to as ‘religions’. As Aleistair Crowley put it:

We put no reliance on virgin or pigeon
Our method is science, our aim is religion (4)

1. James, W. (1981). The Principles of Psychology. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. p.488.

2. Husserl, E. (1964). The phenomenology of internal time-consciousness. Bloomington, Indiana University Press.

3. Eliot, T. S. (1943). Four quartets. New York, Harcourt.

4. This phrase appeared on the masthead of each edition of the O.T.O. publication “The Equinox”.

Posted in Binding, Perception, Religion, Science, Time | No Comments »

Open Source Religion

September 15th, 2007 Fred McVittie

“Any sufficiently advanced Open Source religion will be indistinguishable from science.” - Not Arthur C. Clarke

Posted in Religion, Science | No Comments »

Metaphor and Copenhagen Interpretation

September 16th, 2007 Fred McVittie

The mathematician JBS Haldane famously observed that ‘the universe may not only be queerer than we think but queerer than we can think’. He intended this observation to apply specifically to the more esoteric aspects of the universe encountered mainly by astronomers and particle physicists, whose equations do indeed describe a world which is inconceivable in any literal sense, and which makes no intuitive appeal to the senses of even the most highly trained. As Richard Feynman put it, ‘if you think you understand quantum mechanics, then you don’t understand quantum mechanics.’

Haldane’s comment finds theoretical support and application within the so-called ‘Copenhagen Interpretation’ of quantum theory introduced by Bohr and Heisenberg. Part of the application of this principle requires an attitude towards that application which recognises the distinctly partial ontological status of such theories. As Robert Anton Wilson colloquially put it, ‘the equations of quantum mechanics do not describe what is happening in the quantum world, but what structures of thought we need to create in order to think about that world’. Recent work done in the field of cognitive linguistics and cognate fields suggests that these ’structures of thought’ are largely built out of embodied metaphors, and it is these metaphors, grounded in concrete sensibilities of the body and the sensorimotor system, which give accessible form and order to the queerest aspect of the universe.

The attitude one must bring to the Copenhagen Interpretation has occasionally been referred to as ‘model agnosticism’: an approach to abstract theoretical constructs such as equations, models, structures etc, which recognises their usefulness whilst simultaneously also recognising their status as ‘man-made’ artifacts, rather than as material facts

Posted in Cognitive Linguistics, Copenhagen Interpretation, Embodiment, Haldane, J.B.S., Metaphor, Science, Wilson, Robert Anton | No Comments »

Popeye was Wrong

September 25th, 2007 Fred McVittie

I am not all that I am (whoever says it). I am also what I was through all the periods of material astrogeny, chemical collation, human evolution, personal history, and physical momentum; from the most remote part of my past when I parted company with my fellows in the big bang, to the most recent moment just before my finger typed the letter ‘e’ at the end of this sentence. I am also all that I will be, from whatever shape the world makes my most distant descendents in the most remote of futures, to the shape my hand anticipates just before it makes contact with the cup I will reach for when this sentence is complete and which I am already feeling the pull of.

If I want to have a full life, I have to look after my whole extended family of selves, the people and non-human entities I was then, those I will be, and that which I am now, and now, and now.

Posted in All, Evolution, Science, Self, Time | No Comments »

Evolution, Embodiment, Perennialism

September 25th, 2007 Fred McVittie

1. All humanity has a common evolutionary history, facing largely the same challenges and finding the same opportunities.
2. Our common evolutionary history is expressed in the genome.
3. Our evolutionary history, and the genomic record of this ancestry, is echoed in our common embodiment.
4. Our common embodiment includes all of the mechanisms of sensation and of mind
5. The commonality of our physical and cognitive embodiment is echoed in the wide range of identical features found in all human cultures, the ‘human universals’.
6. The commonality of cultural, embodied, genomic, and evolutionary experience is echoed in the common philosophies and mysticisms of Folk Science and Perennialism.

For example, the universal cognitive process which allows us to conceive of categories, based on the common embodied conceptual metaphor of the container, leads inexorably to the idea of a universal category. The universal category, the conceptual vessel in which everything is contained, is one possible formulation of a monotheistic deity, as is found in Plato and the neo-Platonist philosophers of the early Christian church.

Posted in Category, Embodiment, Evolution, Naive Physics, Perennialism, Science, Universals | 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 »

God of the Gaps (in embodied knowledge)

October 22nd, 2007 Fred McVittie

The ‘God of the Gaps’ argument critiques certain approaches to theism on the grounds that, if we use God as an explanation for all those phenomena that we do not understand, then as our understanding increases, inevitably God decreases. Presumably then, the hypothetical end point to such inevitable progression of knowledge would be an epistemological universe in which no space was left in which God might hide. Even if knowledge is never total, as it surely will never be, this understanding of God is still problematic as it presents an image of a deity which is in a state of progressive decline. Every new article of information, from the most robust and powerful scientific theory to the simplest new fact acquired through routine acts of perception constitutes an amputation of the limb of God. For this reason the ‘God of the Gaps’ description of a deity has been roundly criticised as both a failure of the scientific imagination and an insult to the Almighty.

Having said that, a case could be made for a different kind of God of the Gaps, if we understand these gaps not to be in knowledge, but in our ability to conceptualise this knowledge in a way that was directly embodied.

The extensive work done in the field of Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Embodied Cognition points to the importance of our embodiment in our ability to make sense of ideas and to structure concepts. The outcome of such research suggests that whilst we are easily able to conceptualise concepts which have direct sensory impact (medium sized objects, forces, substances, schema etc), when we wish to think about anything which is beyond the horizon of our bodily experience we have to use indirect methods. Chief among these methods is the systematic and consistent use of metaphor, such that we think of concepts which are abstract in terms of others which are concrete. We commonly think of love for example, as a journey, or of anger as heat in a sealed container. (These examples are from Lakoff and Johnson’s excellent introduction to these ideas ‘Metaphors We Live By’). Outside the relatively narrow domain of direct embodied experience is all the really interesting stuff of science, philosophy, politics, culture, and religion. Most of these practices, it can be demonstrated, are concerned with abstractions, and therefore the currency of their debates is metaphor and imagination.

In terms of science, As Stephen Jones points out in ‘Physics and Metaphor’, many of the most robust and elegant theories of science are understood only through acts of imagination. The concept of the origin of the universe in a Big Bang is one such example of this. Whatever event took place that triggered the subsequent creation of all that we see around us today clearly was not Big and did not go Bang. Yet this image of a kind of explosion is a useful image around which to structure our understanding of something that we simply are not adaptively equipped to understand literally. This does not mean that something that we call the Big Bang didn’t happen, it simply means that we are too stupid to understand it without drawing a picture of it, rather like the scene in Mad Max: Beyond the Thunderdome, where a group of post-apocalyptic children try to recreate television using using only cargo-cult materials of sticks and leaves. The big difference that makes a difference between the children in Mad Max and Georges Lemaître (an early proponent of the Big Bang Theory) is that Lemaitre tested his imaginary explosion against the data of other ideas and theories. As Richard Dawkins might put it, the image of the Big Bang is the beginning of a knowledge-gathering process whereas the TV made of sticks is the end.

This example, of the organised application of imagination to fill a significant gap in embodied knowledge, is typical of the way that science works, and indeed is also typical of the way that non-scientific gaps are filled. When I talk to my children about what they will do in the future, the question of a career often comes up, but if I am honest I have absolutely no idea what a career is. It has no smell, taste, or visible substance, and I can’t hear it or touch it. In fact I have to admit that there is a huge gap in my ability to think literally about their career. This doesn’t seem to stop me thinking about it though, and the way I do it is through the (largely unconscious) use of metaphor. If I look closely at how I am thinking I would say that I imagine their careers as something like the flight of an arrow, launched upwards and curving gently to arrive at a desired target, and I try not to imagine them as careering out of control like a driverless vehicle, a danger to themselves and passers-by alike. Without some kind of image like this I don’t see how I could conceive of something like ‘a career’ at all.

Which brings me, finally, to the God of the Gaps. Given that much of what we say and think is outside embodiable range, and is therefore in this realm of the metaphorical and the imaginary (up to 90% by some estimates), this means that our thoughts are entirely dominated by the imagination and it is not some freaky little playground in the corner of our brains where only fairies and artists hang out. It also means, at noted earlier, that any idea which is even remotely interesting is probably suffused with imagination, if not constructed of it entirely. If I was a theist, which I am not thank Richard, I would definitely want my God to be at least as wild as the Big Bang, if not more so, which would definitely put it in imagination territory.

The bottom line with any conceptual metaphor and any imaginary entity yielded by that metaphor is how well it functions. The Big Bang metaphor works really well to cohere data and observations into a single big picture. The flight path of the arrow that (I hope) traces my kids’ career also helps them organise and plan their actions. I am quite happy to believe in an imaginary God; at least to the extent that I believe in the Big Bang or a Career Plan. I can see some potential value in this kind of God of the Gaps, a complex, coherent anthropomorphic metaphor which helps to give form to certain aspects of the universe that are beyond my embodiment. If someone can show me what the function of this particular imaginary entity is, ideally someone who does not misunderstand science and the imagination to such an extent that they insist that God is real, I’d be happy to consider believing in it, (although I would probably draw the line at worship).

Posted in Embodiment, God, Imagination, Metaphor, Science, Universe | No Comments »

We Are All Scientists

October 23rd, 2007 Fred McVittie

T.H. Huxley, (Darwin’s Bulldog), in an article published in 1863, famously claimed that ‘We are all Scientists’ (1). In it he points out that the normal rational thinking which we use all the time is very similar to the organised processes of rational thought that we associate with professional scientists. In other words, that there is a case to be made that being a scientist is not a job description reserved for those with PhDs, but is anyone who uses rational deduction to make decisions. In a sense the term scientist is a much better description for a person who values modern, humanist, conscious thought over metaphysics or religion than the current term ‘atheist’ which only serves to describe what such persons do not believe. This latter strategy, definition of ‘atheists’ by negative attribute, is the equivalent of replying to the question ‘do you have any hobbies’ with ‘I am a non-stamp collector’. In other words, whilst true, it is almost completely valueless.

1. available at http://www.is.wayne.edu/mnissani/a&s/allsci.htm.

Posted in Atheism, Language, Science | No Comments »

Soul of an Atheist - Overview

November 16th, 2007 Fred McVittie

The ‘Soul of an Atheist’ section of this writing refers to the hypothesis iterated in various places throughout this blog that the desire to understand the relationship between self and world, the universe and the place of human beings within it, is a universal tendency. This desire may be simply a side-effect of the operation of cognition, perhaps an overactive holistic operator (Newberg & D’Aquili), or some version of the HADD or ‘Hyperactive Agency Detecting Device’ suggested by Barrett, or some other pattern recognition system. Such devices, systems, or operators are presumed to provide the function of cohering data from the senses such that prediction and control become possible; we see patterns in the seasons which allow us to plan our harvests, and this same cognitive skill allows (or demands) that we see patterns in the stars, or in the entrails of sacrificed animals. Furthermore, this cohering tendency operates across a range of scales. At one end there is the relatively discreet process which allows us to cohere the partially occluded outline of a tiger in the bushes into a complete image of the entire terrifying animal. At the other end of the scale the tendency urges us to find a single unifying pattern in all creation. It is interesting to note that at both ends of this scale we ourselves are also posited as an element within the unified image; the fearful symmetry of the tiger produced by our cohering cognition is fearful to us, and that fear is part of the image and the rationale for our producing it in the first place. Similarly, our seeking of a unified image of the universe, a cosmology if you will, also inevitably contains ourselves as active participants.

The quest for a satisfying cosmology probably underpins much of the action of scientists in their talk of ‘theories of everything’, and also of seers, prophets, and evangelists who make apparently similar claims for a unifying goal.

For a cosmology to be both useful and satisfying, as well as being resistant to rational dismissal, it must fill certain criteria. These are, that it be coherent, without obvious internal inconsistencies; that it be expressed in concepts which are capable of embodiment (possibly through the use of conceptual metaphor), and that it not be contradicted by the processes of logical deduction and the scientific method.

Posted in Binding, Cognition, Cosmology, Religion, Science, Universals | No Comments »

Einstein on the Comprehensibility of the World

December 4th, 2007 Fred McVittie

The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility…The fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle.

—Albert Einstein
quoted in Calaprice, p. 197 from Ideas and Opinions, p. 272

Calaprice, Alice, The Quotable Einstein (Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1996).

Posted in Einstein, Albert, Science | No Comments »

Problem-finding and the Feeling of Meaning

December 6th, 2007 Fred McVittie

There is some evidence to suggest that there is a universal human need to engage in cognitive behaviour which exceeds the demands of the immediate situation. Rather than simply being limited to responding to the ‘problems’ posed by the environment, humans also engage in active ‘problem finding’, (what Newberg and D’Aquili refer to as the ‘cognitive imperative’). This excessive cognition, which undoubtedly conferred adaptive advantages upon our ancestors, most likely underpins such human traits as; worrying about what might happen at some unspecified point in the future, finding fault with situations and the behaviours of others, and more positively, inventing solutions to potential problems before they arise, and all forms of creativity. The reach or ambition of this tendency does not seem be confined to the realm of potential opportunities and threats to the physical body or the immediate community, but extends to the construction of problems which have no direct impact on the material body at all. These include such worrisome conundrums as ‘why is there something rather than nothing?, ‘What happens after you die?’, and ‘Why is there evil in the world?’. The fact that these and related problems underpin most religious and philosophical practices, and the fact that such practices are found in all cultures throughout all of human history, demonstrates the omnipresence of such superhuman problem-finding tendencies. An interesting facet of this is that possessing the solutions to such problems, if such solutions did exist, (which is unlikely), would confer no survival advantage on individual, group, or species, other than relief from the burden of the problem itself. Having the answer to the question of what happens after a person dies would have almost zero impact on the ability of that person to stay alive, which is, after all, the ultimate goal of adaptive evolution. Such knowledge, were it available, would however provide relief from worrying about the problem, presumably freeing up attentional resources for more pressing concerns. Beyond this circular purpose, the big problems appear to have no function whatsoever. This is not to say that they should not be asked of course; addressing, or at least operating in the presence of, such questions is hugely enjoyable and entertaining, and the feelings associated with their possible solution are some of the most profound and overwhelming available to human beings. It is such feelings that we associate with meaning and purpose, and our attachment to the significance of such felt knowledge is at the heart of the human condition. One might almost say that these feelings and pleasures are addictive, so determinedly do we hang onto their source, the apparent solution to the big problems.

Posted in Evolution, Feeling, Problem, Religion, Science | No Comments »

Practical and Factual Reality

December 8th, 2007 Fred McVittie

In Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society biologist and anthropologist David Sloan Wilson makes a case for the persistence of religious behaviour in post-enlightenment cultures. Framed within a larger theoretical framework which argues for the existence and power of group selection, Sloane-Wilson makes the claim that, in evolutionarily adaptive terms, the ability of humans to construct rational, evidence-based models of reality does not necessarily confer any survival advantage. He makes the distinction between two types of ‘realism’, factual realism which is a product of rational (scientific) enquiry, and practical realism which is a ‘good enough’ interpretation of experience, providing heuristics for behaviour and belief without recourse to evidence or analysis. Citing this distinction in relation to the likely relative survival of groups of organisms, particularly humans, he claims that:

If there is a trade-off between the two forms of realism, such that our
beliefs can become more adaptive only by becoming factually less true, then
factual realism will be the loser every time. … Factual realists detached
from practical reality were not among our ancestors. It is the person who
elevates factual truth above practical truth who must be accused of mental
weakness from an evolutionary perspective. (Wilson 2003, p.228)

This is evidenced in relation to religious belief which, he says, provides examples of just such practical realities. In terms of the survival of a group it may be beneficial if most or all members of that group have, for example, a belief in an afterlife. Such a belief would allow individuals to martyr themselves, confident that their life would not simply end on the battlefield. An army of soldiers imbued with this belief, if faced with an army of atheists who have the rational belief that death marks the absolute end of individual existence, are far more likely to fight to the death, and therefore to enhance the survival potential of their group. Over the eons of human evolution, such selective processes would tend to favour the maintenance of belief in practical reality even when such a reality is found to have no basis in fact.

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Conceptual Metaphor in Science

January 30th, 2008 Fred McVittie

Modern physics teaches us that there is more to truth than meets the eye; or than meets the all too limited human mind, evolved as it was to cope with medium-sized objects moving at medium speeds through medium distances in Africa. (Bridgman, in Dawkins and Menon 2003: p.48)

A Devil’s Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love. Richard Dawkins. viii + 263 pp. Houghton Mifflin, 2003.

The limitations of the human mind indicated by Dawkins in the quotation above are the result of the parsimony of evolution and its demand to contingent solutions to immediate problems. Our adaptive history has not prepared us for conceptual engagement with quarks, neutron stars, or the further reaches of quantum mechanics. Nor are we constitutionally prepared to confront the abstractions of philosophy, religion, and the social sciences. The mystery therefore is that, despite these evident limitations, we do indeed engage with such abstractions to a remarkable degree, and with an equally remarkable degree of success. On the face of it seems that JBS Haldane was wrong when he wrote:

The universe may not only be queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. (1927: p.286).

What needs to be explained is the mechanism through which we carry out such queer supposing. A key idea which punctuates the equilibrium of this writing is that such queerness is rendered comprehensible through the extensive, and largely unconscious, use of metaphor. That rather than metaphor merely being the stuff of poetic fancy it is a mainstay in the construction of our most fundamental and apparently straightforward thinking. (And if evidence of this were needed one would simply need to reread the previous sentence).

The appearance of metaphor in verbal language is seen as symptomatic of its appearance in thought, although it is axiomatic that such metaphorical conceptualizing also reveals itself in gestures, images, behaviours, artworks, signs, symbols, and the anonymous trivia of everyday life.

Posted in Metaphor, Science | No Comments »

An Imagined Universe

April 7th, 2008 Fred McVittie

Primack and Adams begin their book ‘The View from the Centre of the Universe’ with the following line.

“In their hearts, most people are still living in an imagined universe, where space is simply emptiness, stars are scattered randomly, and common sense is a reliable guide. In this imagined universe, we humans have no special place and often feel insignificant.” (Primack 2006, 3)

They then go on to construct a convincing argument that one of the possible causes of the ills which plague contemporary societies is the lack of an imagined universe which does have a special place for humans, and in which we might not feel this insignificance. However, I suspect that hiding in this quotation is a conflict between different ways in which we actually imagine the universe and our place in it, and a possibly ideosyncratic use of the term ‘common sense’.

The universe which they refer to, the one which causes such anomie and existential angst, is, I would argue, not the universe of common sense at all, nor is it the one that lives in our hearts. Rather it is one which has only been brought into existence through the finding of science within the last 400 years. The universe of endless de-centred, inhuman emptiness is not one in which we routinely live, and to the extent that we have ‘internalised’ it at all then it lives as an objective fact in our minds and our libraries, not as felt experience at the core or heart of our being.

Posted in Centre, Cosmology, Imagination, Science, Space, Universe | 3 Comments »