In thinking about Paul's comments, I think it
is interesting to look at the different domains of science – living systems
(complex) versus the traditional natural (hard) sciences in terms of the
propensity to atheism.
What
Kauffman & Longo (I’ve read a couple of his papers) did for me is finally
articulate the nature of the frame for a physics worldview versus the frame for
living systems & evolution.
I’ve also thought for a long time, that the difference between the premodern and modern worldviews was a
nuance of the ‘cause’ of a ‘given world’. So that in the premodern ‘god(s)/God
create the world - as it is and we must live in it – and therefore the world was ‘given’ by
God.
In the
modern worldview – the world is now given by ‘laws of nature’ – the Newtonian
clockwork – so for example, once we know the
position/speed/etc. of each part, the world is thus essentially given - the future like the past is determined
In the
postmodern worldview the ‘predictability’ of the world’s unfolding becomes
impossible despite the its theoretical deterministic quality. This is the result of our understanding of 'chaos and complexity theory'.
In this way, the ‘mythos’
underlying the ‘logos’ of the hard scientist remains similar to the mythos of religion –
a given world and the corresponding metaphorical entailments of the ‘authority’ of
God apply to the authority of Laws and can yield to a type of theism or theistic intuition.
Having said this I agree with Paul's "speculative hypothesis that most social
scientists have only a superficial understanding of physics."
However, I felt that the
converse is perhaps more important – that most physicists have a poor
understanding of the causal logic of biology (and evolution).
Social sciences, including those of living systems (unlike the natural sciences) must accept the inherent and many fundamental unknowables in
the nature of their ‘scientific objects’ of study. Although I would bet that
many social scientist struggle to do science from within the same ‘mythos’ of the
physics world view.
A deep part
of this mythos is that physics and its mathematical tool set requires a
‘prestatable (event/phase) space and proceeds to use a language or calculus of
trajectory (momentum, force, mass, etc.) to determine what will happen (this is
the fundamental conceptual metaphor that frames most science and the sense of
objectivity). In this way time (past – future) is revealed.
Here I will refer to a past blog post: The problem
with evolution is that it is impossible to prestate the (event/phase) space.
Some examples that Kauffman et al use are built on the concept of ‘Darwinian
pre-adaptations’. E.g it is impossible to prestate the potential use of the set
of three jaw-bones as the mechanisms of the inner ear. Or to prestate all the
uses of a screwdriver because it is impossible to know in advance all the
possible ‘contexts of selection’ that could use an artifact like the
screwdriver. All these unimaginable potential uses are what Kauffman has termed
‘adjacent possible’ none are directly causally determined but they become
‘enabled’ by the existence of the screwdriver. The screwdriver is a
‘pre-adaptation’ of an function that can be unpredictably ‘exapted’ to another
function. These real but virtual ‘adjacent possibles are unprestateable thus
one can’t create equations of ‘trajectory’ – so a new type of ‘law’ may be more
appropriate for the sciences of complex & living systems – a law of ‘enablement’.
My example
would be how evolution could select for a sensorium capable of symbolic
processing – but language is not selected for – by that I mean that while there
are genetic causal linkages to language processing, there is no genetic link
between such processing and the unpredictable (and infinite number) of
languages that are enabled by the processing capability. Language arises at the
level of social interaction with no direct causal relation to genes – there are
no English, Mandarin, Hindu, Sanskrit, etc. genes.
Physics/Mathematics
provides a language structured by a logic
of implication.
It is
extremely valuable and successful as a way to describe certain domains of
reality. But the map is not the territory and the descriptive logic of
implication leaves the actual logic of
causality unrevealed, inaccessible. For Kauffman et al, evolution, the
biosphere, complex systems require a different logical structure that accounts
for radical emergence.
Coming back to Paul's comments regarding the greater propensity for atheism in social scientist –
Could it be that they are more likely to be shaped by the underlying mythos of
their objects of study? A mythos of an ‘ungiven’ world. A world that (as
Kauffman says so well) creates the conditions of its own becoming?
Would this
entail a non-theistic mystical intuition regarding the world? A deeper
appreciation that we cannot navigate through life but must constantly way-find
because each step changes the conditions for the next step and there is no ‘knowable’
territory until we have trod on it? (and who knows how it will change after we move on?).
I think
Kauffman et al, have augmented my scientific underpinning for a Buddhist worldview
that is sees the world in a highly pragmatic way but also as a ‘sacred’
experience – that guides one to outgrow not only the paradox of object-subject, but the also the mutual arrogance of both science and religion in offering us a belief in certainty about the world we live - a belief that we can be certain, a belief that shapes our efforts to control our lives and paths through life - whether by magic or science.
An unknowable future of an unfolding world, is perhaps a better mythos from which to frame our sciences, and our intuitions of the sacred.
J
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