Category: Philosophy

Bruno’s Expression

I came across this gem a couple of weeks ago. The impact with which the late Professor Bronowski asserted his “personal view” on science versus dogma cannot be overstated:

There are two parts to the human dilemma: one is the belief that the end justify the means. That push-button philosophy. That deliberate deafness to suffering that has become the monster in The War Machine. The other is the betrayal of the human spirit. The assertion of dogma that closes the mind and turns a nation, a civilization, into a regiment of ghosts [camera zooms into an open iron door to a human-sized oven]: obedient ghosts or tortured ghosts.

It’s said that science will dehumanize people and turn then into numbers. That is false, tragically false. Look for yourself [zoom out, new scene: narrator walks toward, and into, a pond outside of a complex perimeter.]: this is the crematorium and concentration camp at Auschwitz; this is where people were turned into numbers.

Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And it was not done by gas; it was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance! When people believe they have absolute knowledge with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.

Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the very brink of the known. We always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgement in science stands on the edge of error and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible. In the end, the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: “I beseech you in the bowels of Christ: think it possible you may be mistaken!”

I owe it as a scientist to my late friend Leo Szilard–I owe it as a human being to the many members of my family who died here–to stand here as a survivor and as a witness. We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act.

[Slowly leaning down toward the pond, the narrator swoops in with his right hand and scoops up muck from the bottom, slowly bringing it up…]

We have to touch people.
Bronowski, J., The Ascent of Man, Episode 11, BBC, 1973

Tags 1970s, Auschwitz, Bronowski, Dogma, Fascism, Humanism, Science, The Ascent of Man, Totalitarianism

History Literature Philosophy

Kaleidosope

Concerning the major players involved in shaping the events during the first month of World War I (August 1914), Barbara W. Tuchman wrote in the prelude to the book’s list of sources:

They seemed to have known, while they lived it, that like the French Revolution, the First World War was one of the great convolutions of history, and each felt the hand of history heavily on his own shoulder. When it was over, despite courage, skill, and sacrifice, the war they had fought proved to have been, on the whole, a monument of failure, tragedy and disillusion. It had not led to a better world. Men who had taken part at the command level, political and military, felt driven to explain their decisions and actions. Men who had fallen from high command, whether for cause or as scapegoats—and these included most of the commanders of August—wrote their private justifications. As each account appeared, inevitably shifting responsibility or blame to someone else, another was provoked.

With much insight, she elucidates through metaphor the goal of the historian who

…gropes his way trying to recapture the truth of past events and find out “what really happened.” He discovers that truth is subjective and separate, made up of little bits seen, experienced and recorded by different people. It’s like the design seen through a kaleidoscope; when the cylinder is shaken the countless colored fragments form a new picture. Yet they are the same fragments that made a different picture a moment earlier.
Tuchman, Barbara W., The Guns of August, 1962, The Random House Publishing Group, First Presidio Press Mass Market edition, p. 525.

Tags Barbara W. Tuchman, WWI

Being Philosophy

It has been suggested by many authors that perhaps the most widely accepted, perhaps cherished, tenet of Western civilization is the concept of “self-hood”–or ego if you will–as non-material, isolated and persistent. This idea began when Rene Decartes stated famously: ‘I think, therefore I exist’. From this rationale, Westerners are led to equate identity of person with the “mind” rather than the complete organism, including the material “body”. In his book Tao of Physics, Frijof Capra asserts “[a]s a consequence of the Cartesian division, most individuals are aware of themselves as isolated egos existing ‘inside’ their bodies. The mind has been separated from the body and been given the futile task of controlling it, thus causing an apparent conflict between the conscious will and the involuntary instincts.” (Capra, p 23). With the advent of modern physics, it has become clear that all matter–as comprised of subatomic particles–is in a state of flux, repeatedly coming into and out of existence all of the time. Capra further posits that this transitory property is incompatible with the Western concept of identity as applied to material things in our universe. He continues:

The phenomenal manifestations of the mystical Void, like the subatomic particles, are not static and permanent, but dynamic transitory, coming into being and vanishing in one ceaseless dance of movement and energy. Like the subatomic world of the physicist, the phenomenal world of the Eastern mystic is a world of samsara–of continuous birth and death. Being transient manifestations of the Void, the things in this world do not have any fundamental identity. This is especially emphasized in Buddhist philosophy which denies the existence of any material substance and also holds that the idea of a constant ‘self’ undergoing successive experiences is an illusion. Buddhists have frequently compared this illusion of a material substance and an individual self to the phenomenon of a water wave, in which the up-and-down movement of the water particles makes us believe that a ‘piece’ of water moves over the surface.* It is interesting to note that physicists have used the same analogy in the context of field theory to point out the illusion of a material substance created by a moving particle. Thus Hermann Weyl writes: “According to the [field theory of matter] a material particle such as an electron is merely a small domain of the electrical field within which the field strength assumes enormously high values, indicating that a comparatively huge field energy is concentrated in a very small space. Such an energy knot, which by no means is clearly delineated against the remaining field, propagates through the empty space like a water wave across the surface of a lake; there is no such thing as one and the same substance of which the electron consists at all times.” -H. Weyl, Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science. p 171
Capra, Fritjof. The tao of physics: an exploration of the parallels between modern physics and Eastern mysticism–4th ed., updated. Shambhala Publications Inc. 2000. pp 23, 212-213.

If we are not persistent egos that are distinct from, or in control of, our material bodies, what then can be said about individual responsibility, achievement, justice and the like? What alternatives are there, to these Western identity-based concepts, to justify so many influential and long-standing institutions that impact our lives?

Philosophy

The value of { }

“By definition nothing does not exist, but the concepts we have of it certainly exist as concepts. In mathematics, science, philosophy, and everyday life it turns out to be enormously useful to have words and symbols for such concepts.”

“The null set is symbolized by ∅. It must not be confused with 0 (zero). Zero is (usually) a number that denotes the number of members of ∅. The null set denotes nothing, but 0 denotes the number of members of such sets, for example the set of apples in an empty basket. The set of these nonexisting apples is ∅, but the number of apples is 0.”

“A way of constructing the counting numbers, discovered by the great German logician Gottlob Frege and rediscovered by Bertrand Russell, is to start with the null set and apply a few simple rules and axioms. Zero is defined as the cardinal number of elements in all sets that are equivalent to (can be put in one-to-one correspondence with) the members of the null set. After creating 0, 1 is defined as the number of elements in all sets equivalent to the set whose only member is 0. [Should this be instead “∅”..?]. Two is the number of members in all sets equivalent to the set containing 0 and 1. Three is the number of members in all sets equivalent to the set containing 0, 1, 2, and so on. In general, an integer is the number of members in all sets equivalent to the set containing all previous numbers.”
Gardner, Martin. The night is large: collected essays 1938-1995. St. Martins Griffin (1996), pp 397, 398

The set, { }, has zero elements.

The set, { { } }, has one element.

The set, { { }, { { } } }, has two elements.

The set, { { }, { { } }, { { }, { { } } } }, has three elements.

The set, { { }, { { } }, { { }, { { } } }, { { }, { { } }, { { }, { { } } } } }, has four elements. …

By continuing this pattern one can build the entire set of natural numbers. To me, this is truly fascinating.