Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Center of Excellence Proposal
à
The Taos Institute
(on the possibilities)
[bead thread on curriculum reform]
Communication from
Gary Berg-Cross à [251]
Paul,
You may enjoy this from "The Americanization of unity",
From Daedalus, Winter
1998 by Galison, Peter
The article is on a post-war (WWII) effort to unify sciences. It discusses
the work of Philipp Frank, who had helped usher in the scientific philosophy of
the Vienna Circle and after WWII became
a lecturer at Harvard department of physics. He developed a plan (for Warren Weaver at the Rockefeller
Foundation) entitled "The Institute for the Unity of Science: Its
Background and Purpose." You might enjoy some of its discussion of reality
and classification of reality (the references are omitted but includes
Whitehead, Carnap and Neurath)...
Gary Berg-Cross
EM&I, Crystal City
Basically he proposed a new Institute for the Unity of Science
that emerged in postwar America moving from the scientist-philosophers of the
interwar German-speaking world of modernism and Marburg neo-Kantianism, to the
new roles of physics, chemistry, engineering, psychology, and sociology in the
world. There were 2 parts to the objective: provide a picture of this new unity
that is both the extension of the Vienna Circle and also a new philosophical
outlook that added new scientific concerns e.g. computers and nuclear power.
Here is part of a confidential Rockefeller Foundation report to
the trustees (dated March 1949 and reported in the article) that described the
metaphysical dilemma. "We have physical experiments, chemical experiments,
biological experiments, and other specialized techniques, but it is important
to remember that classification into these categories is man's invention.
Whether it is also nature's, we don't know." One school of scientists, the
report continued, supposed such metaphysical unity did obtain: "a universe
of matter and energy whose interactions under certain conditions produce
motion, radiation, and the other effects which we label physical, and under
different conditions produce the nightingale's singing and other behavior which
we call biological."
From Alfred North Whitehead to George Sarton, this metaphysical
commitment to the unity of nature became an oft repeated creed. Not everyone agreed, as the foundation's 1949
report made clear. Herbert Dingle, for one, argued that this sort of
reductionistic metaphysical unity could not be guaranteed. The Rockefeller
trustees would have read in the report that the metaphysical unity of nature
was not a sure thing, according to Dingle:
We aim at it; we hope we shall achieve it; but we must recognize
the possibility that nature may be essentially dual, or even multiple.... We do
not ignore the organic unity of nature when we consider laws of motion apart
from those of economics, let us say. We simply avail ourselves of the fact that
we can make progress by admitting that, at present, motion and economics are
disconnected subjects of study. We hope that we shall unify them, but to let
our thinking be influenced by the assumption that they are essentially one
seems indefensible.
That said, the report went on to laud Maxwell's unification of electricity
and optics, along with Einstein's of mathematics and physics (through general
relativity). But the list did not stop there. Of crucial import were
biophysics, biochemistry, psychophysics, psycho-physiology, and social
psychology; moreover, the report noted, "other borderland sciences are
fields that seem likely to contribute new data for a unitary picture of
nature." In the process of this joining together of "borderland"
disciplines in pairwise links, concepts that were superfluous would drop by the
wayside. Einstein's geometrical dynamics made "gravitational force" a
dead letter; the quantum theory of the chemical bond rendered "chemical
force" obsolete; and Maxwellian electrodynamics left fundamental optical
hypotheses as nothing but a fifth wheel.
Would this piecewise integration extend all the way from
mathematics to sociology? If it did, would the knowledge pyramid reflect a
"natural" order of things? Steering a midcourse between metaphysical
dualism and metaphysical unity, Herbert Feigl argued for establishing such
connections "without premature attempts at complete unification."
Partial connections (such as that afforded by chemical physics)
would take place through the "master key" of semantics, "the
study of the meaning of words and other symbols." Just as disposing of
"chemical force" was a conceptual advance, so too would be a
clarification of the myriad of often obsolete terms plaguing
biology-"entelechy," "vital force," "mechanism,"
"holism," and "entity"-not to speak of similar vestiges of
an earlier physics, including "absolute space," "absolute
time," "simultaneity." Only a rigorous operationalism could
effect this purge of the superfluous. Quoting Feigl approvingly, the report
continues, "The possibility of a reconstruction of all factual sciences on
the basis of a common set of root terms enables us to speak of the reducibility
of all sciences to a common, unitary, interscientific language."
In an attempt to deliver just such a "basic operational
dictionary," Frank and MIT's Karl W. Deutsch began a composition in the
fall of 1952. Containing nineteen different categories, with three hundred
terms, the sweep of the project is stunning. In all, there would be three
hundred "basic concepts." These would include not only standard physics
notions like mass, matter, energy, space, time, and field but also (picture
Carnap's horror) such hard-to-imagine-operationalized concepts as love (under
psychology) or God, belief (faith), soul, and damnation (under religion). (I
cannot help but wonder here whether salvation is excluded deliberately or
whether it is operationalized under a negative disposition of damnation.)
In those cases where the operational definitions were clear from
usage, they would be drawn from "scientific writing." If not, then
views would be drawn from writers with an appropriate "operational
viewpoint." If both were absent, then experts would provide "paper
and pencil operations"; if even these were not possible, then
"hypothetical operations," analogous to procedures that could be
performed, would be utilized. By example: "real" might refer to that
which is "familiar from repetitive, gross, bodily experience."
Alternatively (Frank wrote), "we mean by 'real' things from which we can
continue to learn, overriding past symbols and traditions."
"Reality" is signaled by "structural coincidence" between
sensations and impersonal records. "Sensations" track back to
"traces" within the nervous system and are therefore impermanent and
not easily verifiable, whereas "instrument records" are external,
more easily verifiable, and forever.
One could study these three hundred greatest hits in the concept
parade almost mechanically, finding here and there the bits and pieces of
prewar Vienna Circle concerns. Starting with "sets, groups, order, and
structure," one could discern the elements of the new formal logic and set
theory of Frege and Russell that so impressed the group back in the 1920s:
class, universals, group, model, order, congruence make their appearance here.
Under "prediction" we could track back many of Reichenbach's or
Carnap's concerns in their extensive writings on probability:
"equipossibility," "limit of relative frequencies,"
"degree of assent," or Frank's own youthful dissection of the
causality notion that had so impressed Einstein. Here, too, we find vestiges of
the old Vienna Circle's fascination with Freudian psychology (the list includes
id and ego) and the frequently discussed gestalt concept that arose in
discussions among Carnap, Neurath, Wittgenstein, and Schlick; we also see
elements of economic theory (utility, market, profit, labor, capital,
efficiency) that engaged many among the left wing of the Circle. Religious
concerns, anathema to Carnap, could no doubt be laid (in part) at Charles
Morris's door, as his "Paths of Life" drew him ever more into
contemplation of the great world religious leaders and their
thought......etc......