Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Why is Modern Physics so Successful?



https://i.ytimg.com/vi/PYTKsuqE8u4/maxresdefault.jpg
 
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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. 
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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]


Here follows the “review of Ardley’s book” to which the seminarian (see above) refers (http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/content/II/6/167.full.pdf):
 

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

 

The Second Volume of Jesus of Nazareth -- Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection

 

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’.

Some modern science properly belongs somewhere in Enid Blyton’s “Magic Faraway Tree”. For instance, we are expected to believe that (http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/gravity-waves-black-holes-verify-einstein%E2%80%99s-prediction):

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 (exousía). 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.



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