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"God does not play dice with the universe."
Albert
Einstein (1901).
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A
seminarian has queried, with regard to Gavin
Ardley’s 1950 book, Aquinas and Kant: The Foundations of the Modern Sciences - a favourite of ours [AMAIC]
on the subject:
“I did read one
review of Ardley's book and the reviewer (who seemed sympathetic to the
philosophia perennis) said that [Ardley] doesn't really answer the question as
to why modern physics is so successful”.
This review, by Ian Rawlins,
can be found on pp. 14-15 below, followed by further comments by the seminarian
on pp. 15-16.
Introduction
That modern science and
technology (centred around physics) have been stupendously successful no alert
human being today would probably deny. And it is due to its stunning success in
our modern world that we humans have tended to elevate “science” to the virtual
status of ‘deity’. We, for all intents and purposes, idolise it.
3
Gavin Ardley, author of the
book under consideration here, Aquinas and Kant, was not critical at all of
the modern sciences as a legitimate human endeavour – a part of God’s invitation to man to “subdue the earth”
(Genesis 1:28). And that perception of his accords with Pope
Francis’s: “It
is right to rejoice in these advances and to be excited by the immense
possibilities which they continue to open up before us, for “science and
technology are wonderful products of a God-given human creativity” ….” (Laudato Si’, # 102). Ardley’s Chapter XI: “The Quest for a Scientific Method” is relevant
to this present article. Speaking of the early efforts to comprehend the
methodology that was leading to such scientific success, Ardley wrote:
The great
success of physical science in the post-Renaissance world led to much
speculation about the secret of its success. It has been the general opinion
that this secret must lie in some way in the method employed in the new
sciences. If we could discover precisely what this method is, and make it
explicit, then, so it was thought, we should be able to use it more
effectively, and, no doubt, extend its employment to even wider fields.
Consequently ever since the 17th century much attention has been paid to the
quest for this scientific method.
We have
already considered Francis Bacon as the ‘politician’ of the new movement to
extend man’s power over Nature (Ch. IV). Francis Bacon was also the author of
one of the first attempted formulations of the method of the new science. He
laid down rules which he believed would, if followed, lead automatically to our
complete mastery over Nature. His method consisted in collecting and recording
all available facts, performing all practicable experiments, and finally, by
means of certain rules, making out connections between all the phenomena so
observed.
However,
this procedure or method, as laid down by Bacon, turns out on closer
acquaintance to be barren. It is much too simple and naïve to meet the
situation. Nature in fact is not nearly as simple and orderly as Bacon had
supposed. The practising scientists went on developing their sciences along
their own lines without reference to Bacon’s supposed automatic method.
[End of
quote]
Nature does not yield herself
easily to rigid mathematical laws.
Whereas the ancient sciences (scientiae) involved a study of actual reality, the more abstract
modern sciences (e.g. theoretical physics), involve, as Immanuel Kant had
rightly discerned, an active imposition of a
priori concepts upon reality. In other words, these ‘sciences’ are largely artificial (or ‘categorial’) - their
purpose being generally utilitarian.
Yet from this lowly standpoint certain scientists
will presume to be philosophers, as well, and may boast of having discovered
‘the theory of everything’, and even adjudicate about God.
Previously (Ch. VI:
Immanuel Kant), Ardley had clearly distinguished between the two orders,
describing Francis ‘Bacon
as the politician of the new régime and Kant as its philosopher’.
And
shortly we shall find that Pope Francis may have, in Laudato Si’, issued something of a challenge to this régime,
without, however, mentioning persons.
But first, Ardley:
Kant’s
great contribution was to point out the revolution in natural science effected
by Galileo and Bacon and their successors. This stands in principle even though
all the rest of his philosophy wither away. Prior to Galileo people had been
concerned with reading laws in Nature. After Galileo they read laws into
Nature. His clear recognition of this fact makes Kant the fundamental
philosopher of the modern world.
It is
the greatest contribution to the philosophia perennis since St. Thomas. But this has to be dug
patiently out of Kant. Kant himself so overlaid and obscured his discovery that
is has ever since gone well nigh unrecognised.
We may, in
fact we must, refrain from following Kant in his doctrine of metaphysics. The
modelling of metaphysics on physics was his great experiment. The experiment is
manifestly a failure, in pursuit of what he mistakenly believed to be the best
interests of metaphysics.
But,
putting the metaphysical experiment aside, the principle on which it was
founded abides, the principle of our categorial activity. Later, in Ch. XVIII,
we will see in more detail how this principle is essential to the modern
development of the philosophia perennis.
Kant was
truly the philosopher of the modern world when we look judiciously at his work.
As a motto
for the Kritik [Critique of Pure
Reason] Kant actually quotes a passage from
Francis Bacon in which is laid down the programme for the pursuit of human utility
and power. [Footnote: The passage is quoted again in this work on [Ardley’s] p.
47.] As we saw in Ch. IV, it was Bacon above all who gave articulate expression
to the spirit behind the new science. Now we see that it was Kant who,
for the first time, divined the nature of the new science. If Bacon
was the politician of the new régime, Kant was its philosopher although a
vastly over-ambitious one.
Now, Pope Francis may be
cautioning against the harmfully excessive aspect of this very sort of Baconian
“régime”. Such is, at least, the estimation of Stephen P.
White, a fellow in the Catholic studies program at the Ethics and Public Policy
Center in Washington, DC. (http://www.vox.com/2015/6/24/8834413/pope-climate-change-encyclical):
While much has been said about the pope’s embrace of the scientific
evidence of climate change and the dangers it poses, the irony is that he
addresses this crisis in a way that calls into question some of the oldest and
most basic assumptions of the scientific paradigm.
Francis Bacon and René Descartes — two fathers of modern science in
particular — would have shuddered at this encyclical. Bacon was a man of many
talents — jurist, philosopher, essayist, lord chancellor of England — but he’s
mostly remembered today as the father of the scientific method. He is also
remembered for suggesting that nature ought to be “bound into service, hounded
in her wanderings and put on the rack and tortured for her secrets.” Descartes,
for his part, hoped that the new science he and men like Bacon were developing
would make us, in his words, “masters and possessors of nature.”
At the very outset of the encyclical, before any mention of climate change
or global warming, Pope Francis issues a challenge to the Baconian and
Cartesian view, which sees the world as so much raw material to be used as we
please. Neither Descartes nor Bacon is mentioned by name, but the reference is
unmistakable. Pope Francis insists that humanity’s “irresponsible use and
abuse” of creation has come about because we “have come to see ourselves as
[the Earth’s] lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will.”
Ardley, who was both
philosopher and scientist, far from reviling the “world of physics”, which he
regarded as “a world of deep and abiding beauty”, was at pains, nonetheless, to
explain just what kind of world it actually is, and - relevant to the question
posed in this article - “why is it so successful?”
Ardley proceeds to give his view
about the apparent success of physical science:
Chapter
III
THE
NATURE OF MODERN PHYSICS
Physics and Nature
The world of modern physics is not the natural world. It is a remote
domain of artifacts more removed from the world of Nature than the worlds in
which Mr Pickwick and Hamlet dwell. The world of physics is austere and
exacting, but withal a world of deep and abiding beauty. It is this aesthetic
quality, perhaps even more than the satisfaction of intellectual curiosity and
the desire for power, which explains its hold on its exponents. The beauty of
pure mathematics has been recognised at least since the days of Plato. Pure
physics has this beauty too, and in addition an intangible quality peculiar to
itself which is well known to those who have entered its inner temples. This,
rather than the exploration of nature, must be the physicist’s apology.
But it may well be asked now: what is the relation between physics and
Nature? If physics dwells apart, how does it come into contact with Nature. And
furthermore, it may be asked, why is it so successful?
In a general way, the solution of the first part of this question lies
in the fact that the process of systematic experiment is selective and
transforming. Hence it is that the transition is made from Nature to the
abstract world, and vice versa. This is the link between the two worlds.
As regards the second question – why, if physics is an abstract and
arbitrary system, is it so successful? – we might ask in return, what is the
standard of success? How much more or less successful physics might have been
had it been developed in different ways from the way it was in fact developed,
we do not know. If the net dragged through the world by the physicists had been
quite different, the outcome might have been very different too. It may have
been much more successful, or much less so. We have no standard of comparison
for success, so the question is scarcely profitable.
In discussing success it may be helpful to compare together two
different branches of physics. The classical mechanics as applied to the solar
system was generally regarded as a dazzling success. But on the other end of
the scale the theory of electromagnetics is regarded today by most students of
the subject as being in a state of well-nigh hopeless confusion, although with
experience it can be made to work moderately well. Evidently some wrong turning
was made early in the development of this latter branch of physics, and with
the root trouble, whatever it is, firmly entrenched, the subject appears to be
growing in disorder and chaos rather than improving. Evidently it would be better
to start afresh from the beginning and drag some quite different net through
the world in this particular realm.
Such considerations as these should give us pause before we speak
lightly of the ‘success’ of physical science. A variant on this question Why if arbitrary then success? is to insist
that if a law or theory enjoys success, then, in the same measure, it is
probable that Nature is really like the situation envisaged by that law or
theory. E.g. if the law of Gravitation is well established in physics, then
there must really be this Gravitation in the world, and so on. In answer to
this objection we cannot do better than quote the words of Wittgenstein in his Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus, where he propounds much the same doctrine concerning
the laws of physics as we have in this chapter. In the course of a most
penetrating discussion of the subject he remarks:
The fact that it can be described by Newtonian mechanics asserts nothing
about the world; but this asserts something, namely, that it can be
described in that particular way in which as matter of fact it is described.
The fact, too, that it can be described more simply by one system of mechanics
than by another says something about the world.
[Tractatus, 6.342.]
If the laws of physics were really found in the world, then the
laws would tell us something about the world. But if the laws of physics are
superimposed on the world, then the laws themselves tell us nothing
about the world. Only the character of the particular description which we
effect in terms of the super-imposed law has any bearing on the world. It is
only in this second order manner that we make contact with the world.
…. Hence there is no foundation for the assertion that in modern physics
a law or theory, if successful, tells us what Nature is like.
This is a most important conclusion.
[End of quote]
REVIEWS
Aquinas and Kant, Gavin Ardley,
Longmans Green & Co., London, 1950.
Pp. x + 256. 18s.
THE author of this book is greatly
perturbed about the ultimate basis of our knowledge of the universe, and the
conflicting character of modern thought in philosophy and physics. And well he
may be. The rise of Neo-Thomism in one form or another is a feature of our
generation. No less marked, however, is the advance of theoretical physics
associated with the names of Poincaré, Eddington, and one or two others of
comparable calibre. Again, as Mr Ardley remarks, St Thomas Aquinas and Kant
seem strange bedfellows indeed, as Aristotle and the Fathers were aforetime. Observing
that the latter pair were eventually 'reconciled,' he believes that a
corresponding state of bliss for the former couple is only a matter of time.
Kant's idea of a physicist was that of an extremely active person, by no means
content to receive laws from nature, but perpetually engaged in the task of
formulating laws of his own which he 'fastened' upon nature, and to which she
was obliged to conform. All that is said about the Procrustean bed and the
chopper is most apt, and indeed on this view, deserved. Nevertheless, according
to Mr Ardley, it is a grave error to imagine that this coercive technique is
intrinsically necessary; it is merely a device to secure power for mankind.
Over against this stands
metaphysics in serene detachment, ready as always to admit the practical
advantages of ‘saving appearances,' whether in classical physics or in modern
metrical technology, but claiming the absolute title to the possession of
philosophical truth. Seldom has the precept 'between us and you there is a
great gulf fixed . . .' been restated in starker form. Why, therefore, it is
asked, are we in fact confronted with physics heaping triumph upon triumph in
almost every department of twentieth-century life? Mr Ardley replies in effect
that had a divergent system of 'categorisation' been set up, things might have
worked out differently. This riposte is very disappointing, being
nothing short of wholly irrelevant, since what we want to know is why physics,
as commonly understood, should be any good at all.
No reasonable person has anything
but reverence for the philosophia perennis, yet this book cannot be said
to have helped to bring the natural sciences of to-day within its broad and
generous frontiers. ….
IAN
RAWLINS
And
these are the same seminarian’s observations on a previous article upon
which this one is based.
Dear Editor,
Thanks for your
reply. I have just read your article. The section from Ardley that
you quote is the one the reviewer had difficulty with.
I think I will
give this matter some deeper attention at some point. There are a couple
of books I'll need to take a look at including Ardley's. From what I have
seen so far I do like Ardley's work but there are some reservations I hold
too. For instance, I think he emphasises too much the gap between
mathematics and reality. …. It is based on a misconception of mathematical
abstraction which in Thomistic terminology is the "second degree of abstraction"
(where the abstraction is from matter). The degree of abstractness can
give the object of mathematics a certain degree of unreality. This can
serve to obscure the fact that our basic mathematical notions come from the
real world; they are not dreamt up from the mind. All our knowledge begins
in sense. This is true of metaphysics which is the most abstract of all
sciences. Its object is still real being though under a different formal
light where we "see" those features of the real that can exist apart
from all consideration of matter. Our mind can do strange things with
mathematical objects in their abstract state that are not possible in the real
world. For instance we may obtain the idea of a line from the edge of a
table. But then conceive a line without beginning or end though real lines
must have beginnings and ends. To the extent that modern physics is
"formally" mathematical it can develop this imaginative aspect and it
can get out of hand.
But why is this
mathematical approach, as applied to the physical world (the "matter"
of this mixed science), so successful? In my view it is because quantity
is an aspect of material reality and the mathematical approach is a very
powerful light in showing up this quantitative aspect "the first accident
of bodies." [Pierre] Duhem likewise saw metaphysics as a separate order of
study that was more religious in origin. I will need to read what he has
to say with more consideration but I think this needs some correction. It
is a study of the same reality but under a different (higher) intellectual
light. But I think there is also much valuable thought and penetrating
observations he made on the philosophy of science.
One of these is
that when a theory is overturned and replaced with a new explanatory apparatus
he noted that rarely was the mathematics chucked out as well. It may be
added to but unlike the mechanical model was never wholly discarded (or
discarded at all). This, I think, is because the mathematical model has
picked up the "quantitative harmonies" that exist in the world even
if the physical theory to support them required major revision.
Duhem wrote about
atoms in his book "The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory."
He reacted against the notion of tiny corpuscular particles. It must
be noted that Duhem died in 1916 while the theory was in its
infancy. Louis de Broglie (of de Broglie wavelength fame) notes this in
his preface to the work. Duhem, however, is right I think, to teach us to
be cautious of the imaginative constructions of a theory. Though, whatever
the true nature of reality on a microscale I think we can at least be confident
that the model we possess captures some part of the reality that previously we
did not know and the model has undergone evolution and increasing complexity
with the passage of time. But ultimately it is about "saving the
appearances" - a notion that goes back to Plato. Mathematical
physics, being materially empirical though formally mathematical, depends upon
empirical verification. St Thomas notes this as well as the methods of
verification that pertain to mathematics (taken purely) and metaphysics. There
are therefore not one but three "scientific methods" as well as a
mixed method for mathematical physics since it "straddles" two levels
of abstraction. If a theory contradicts proven experience or the
"appearances" it will need revision. This lack of certainty and
need to distinguish between reality and "model" at this level of
science is due to the level of abstraction: it is matter that is the root of
darkness. It is no coincidence I think that quantum mechanics is a
statistical theory. The more your drill down the more
"indeterminate" it becomes as matter rather than form becomes
predominant. But this should not mislead us into thinking we are not
studying real being or some order divorced from reality. But rather we
are studying reality under different degrees of intellection i.e. formally
distinct scientific habits whose formal objects are diversely more remote from
matter. ….
[End of quote]
A key issue is, as Ardley
has put it, “what is the standard of success?”
And who has the final say
in this? Here we consider the stark contrast between the testimony of Jesus
Christ as to what is most essential and the quite different ‘worldview’ of Pontius
Pilate.
A Kingdom Based on Truth
In the writings of two
recent popes, Benedict and the present pope, Francis - neither of whom could be
accused of being anti-mathematics or anti-science (see pope Francis’s quote
above, and, below, Benedict’s XVI “the
magnificent mathematics of creation”) - one can
discern the two orders about which Ardley has written, both legitimate, but
with the higher order deserving of the more attention. Josef Ratzinger/Pope
Benedict, writing in
has this to say about the
limitations of modern science, of what he calls “functional truth”, and how the
total pursuit (idolisation) of it can make one blind to ““truth” itself”:
….
Let us say plainly: the unredeemed
state of the world consists precisely in the failure to understand the meaning
of creation, in the failure to recognize truth; as a result, the rule of
pragmatism is imposed, by which the strong arm of the powerful becomes the god
of this world.
At this point, modern man is tempted to
say: Creation has become intelligible to us through science. Indeed, Francis S.
Collins, for example, who led the Human Genome Project, says with joyful
astonishment: "The language of God was revealed" (The Language of
God, p. 122). Indeed, in the magnificent mathematics of creation, which
today we can read in the human genetic code, we recognize the language of God.
But unfortunately not the whole language. The functional truth about man has
been discovered. But the truth about man himself — who he is, where he comes
from, what he should do, what is right, what is wrong — this unfortunately
cannot be read in the same way. Hand in hand with growing knowledge of
functional truth there seems to be an increasing blindness toward
"truth" itself — toward the question of our real identity and
purpose.
[End of quote]
Recently someone on TV remarked that “technology has made everything
possible”. That it “has improved our health, provided us with a far better
lifestyle, and can even bring about peace”. So excited have some scientists
become about their discipline that they will claim it is now becoming possible
to explain ‘everything’. But scientists, generally speaking, are not also
philosophers. Hence their brief is merely to ‘do science’. They, like artists
and musicians, excellent practitioners, can often be the worst ones for making
comment about their own ‘art’.
Gravitational
waves blanket the universe with tremors, as theorized a century ago with Albert
Einstein’s general theory of relativity and detected in 2015 by the Advanced
Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or Advanced LIGO, with
giant lasers in Louisiana and Washington states. “The fleeting burst of waves
arrived on Earth long after two black holes, one about 36 times the mass of the
sun and the other roughly 29, spiraled toward each other and coalesced,” writes
Andrew Grant for Science News.
And elaborate equations are devised to explain God.
Albert Einstein could wax so
bold as to claim: "God does not play dice with the universe."
Pope Francis is rather more measured than this when rightly lauding the
achievements of “science and technology” (Laudato
Si’, # 102):
I.
TECHNOLOGY: CREATIVITY AND POWER
102.
Humanity has entered a new era in which our technical prowess has brought us to
a crossroads. We are the beneficiaries of two centuries of enormous waves of
change: steam engines, railways, the telegraph, electricity, automobiles,
aeroplanes, chemical industries, modern medicine, information technology and,
more recently, the digital revolution, robotics, biotechnologies and
nanotechnologies.
It is
right to rejoice in these advances and to be excited by the immense
possibilities which they continue to open up before us, for “science and
technology are wonderful products of a God-given human creativity”.[81]
The modification of nature for useful purposes has distinguished the human
family from the beginning; technology itself “expresses the inner tension that
impels man gradually to overcome material limitations”.[82]
Technology has remedied countless evils which used to harm and limit human
beings. How can we not feel gratitude and appreciation for this progress,
especially in the fields of medicine, engineering and communications? How could
we not acknowledge the work of many scientists and engineers who have provided
alternatives to make development sustainable?
We must agree that science and technology have brought massive material,
at least, benefits to our world. And, following Ardley (and having to disagree
with his reviewer, Rawlins), one could say that perhaps these could have
provided us with even greater benefits, here and there, if researchers had,
say, ‘dragged some quite different net through the world in this particular
realm’.
But has science and technology actually made our world a happier place
in which to live?
And is there really a technologically-achieved peace?
No, because modern science has not within itself the capacity to bring a
deeper peace. That is apparent from Benedict’s comment above that a full
immersion in the pursuit of “the functional truth about man” must inevitably
lead to “an increasing blindness toward “truth” itself — toward the question of our real identity and purpose”.
Hence, the modern phenomenon of ‘identity crisis’, hence
alienation, often leading to suicide.
Pope Francis has, I believe, come to the rescue with his
blueprint for the modern world, Laudato
Si’, which, by no means decrying the pursuit of genuine scientific
endeavour, warns of excess. Sometimes, less is more.
Pope Francis has put modern ‘progress’ into a real
perspective in his important # 20 section: ”Pollution, waste and the throwaway culture”.
--------------------------
The Roman world of
Pontius Pilate, a world based on might, power and conquest, on utility and
expediency, is the type of world “kingdom” with which we are most familiar.
Compared with the other-worldly kingdom of “truth” that Jesus Christ had
proclaimed before Pilate, the latter’s world is far more easily grasped by us.
Whilst Pilate had no difficulty comprehending the world created by the Caesars,
he was utterly confounded by the concept of a “kingdom of truth”. Benedict XVI sums
it up brilliantly (op. cit.):
With these words Jesus created a
thoroughly new concept of kingship and kingdom, and he held it up to Pilate,
the representative of classical worldly power. What is Pilate to make of
it, and what are we to make of it, this concept of kingdom and kingship? Is
it unreal, is it sheer fantasy, that can be safely ignored? Or does it
somehow affect us?
In addition to the clear delimitation of his concept of kingdom (no fighting,
earthly powerlessness), Jesus had introduced a positive idea, in order to
explain the nature and particular character of the power of this kingship:
namely truth. Pilate brought another idea into play as the dialogue
proceeded, one that came from his own world and was normally connected with
“kingdom”: namely power – authority (exousÃa). Dominion
demands power, it even defines it.
Jesus, however, defines as the
essence of his kingship witness to the truth. Is truth a political category? Or
has Jesus’ “kingdom” nothing to do with politics? To which order does it
belong? If Jesus bases his concept of kingship and kingdom on truth as the
fundamental category, then it is entirely understandable that the pragmatic
Pilate asks him: “What is truth?” (18:38).
Put into this
context, Pilate’s question was not so much a philosophical, but a pragmatic
one. And it is with matters akin to those filling the mind of Pilate that we
tend to occupy ourselves. And does not this fact, in part, explain the success
of a utilitarian-driven science.
It is more immediate to man.
Jesus, not Pilate,
is the Philosopher here. He is like Plato’s “Philosopher King” in The Republic, intent upon opening up the
Way of Truth to mankind entombed in the dark “Cave” of ignorance.
