In my beginning is my end. In successionT S Eliot "Four Quartets" (East Coker)
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,
Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth
Which is already flesh, fur and faeces,
Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.
Houses live and die: there is a time for building
And a time for living and for generation
And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane
And to shake the wainscot where the field-mouse trots
And to shake the tattered arras woven with a silent motto.
Philosophy is one of those peculiar subjects which only really makes sense in the round. In order to understand any one bit of it you have to understand the whole of it. I well remember, as a student, getting hopelessly confused by it all and only making some kind of sense of it the second time around. I think that may be one of the reasons first year philosophy students are obliged to read Plato's "Republic" as an introduction to philosophy. Also it is written in deceptively easy language to follow but is, nevertheless, very profound. I am a great believer in the notion that simple is good.
Like Plato I am going to follow the discourse wherever it may lead. I am going to start with a problem of everyday usage because that seems to me to be a real problem. It may be that everyday ideas are wrong but it must, surely, be the philosopher's job to demonstrate this if it is the case. Also I believe that it is less open to arbitrary preconceptions. I do not mean that it is without preconception for common usage is full of such things. I mean that any other starting point will demand a basic proposition which might have no obvious relationship with anything other than the fertile imagination of its author. At least by being culture bound there is a case to answer which has some history and popular support.
I have a further reason for avoiding the stylised logic of science and that is that science, by definition, is always wrong. That might seem a little surprising but consider the nature of scientific enquiry. We used to believe rather naively that science concerned itself with the establishment of matters of fact. If that were so then we philosophers could pack our bags and leave all enquiry after knowledge in the capable hands of the scientists.
Readers may be familiar with a now highly celebrated book by T S Kuhn (b. 1922) entitled "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" (NY, 1962). Kuhn was originally a particle physicist who turned to the philosophy of science in order to explain what scientific endeavour was all about. He describes long periods of settled scientific development in which one set of concepts or paradigm, as he calls them, holds centre stage. This is followed by a period of revolutionary change in which the paradigm is replaced by another one which the scientific community accepts as a better way of understanding science. He holds that the nature of scientific enquiry is that a set of constructs are put forward and are then subjected to rigorous testing. Eventually it emerges that the concepts fail the testing and so it is necessary to re-think and put forward fresh theories. So scientific theory is always right until proven wrong or, in other words, is always wrong. Not much of a basis for establishing sound philosophical reasoning!
I want to suggest a further aspect of scientific enquiry which needs to be clarified at this stage. Science concerns itself with process - how things happen. Now, cause and effect used to be the province of the philosopher and I am glad to say that it is most certainly not so any longer. So, if you want to know how the chicken crossed the road - ask a scientist. However, if you want to know why the chicken crossed the road then you should look to either psychiatry or philosophy (more of that later). If you want to know which came first - the chicken or the egg - then unless it is a process question (which it is not) the scientist will be of no use.
To put the problem into a cosmological framework then you could say that science will eventually trace back the sequence of events to the Big Bang. And that's all. So there is no point asking a scientist what preceded the Big Bang because that is either unknowable or before science began. Nor is there any point in asking why because scientists only deal with how.
I will return many times to the nature of scientific enquiry but for now I want to move on. I said earlier that I wanted to begin with the every day problem of time and space.
As I sit and ponder on the world around me I am aware of an apparent distance between any 2 objects. Indeed, I find it quite impossible to imagine those 2 objects without distance of some degree or another. We call this the dimension of space, rightly or wrongly. Whatever it is it does seem that it is essential to any attempt to make sense of the world. I have tried to do without it or to replace it with another concept and, quite frankly, I cannot.
Now, the idea of measuring 2 things seems simple enough. So let me get a little more ambitious and measure not just 2 objects in front of me but 2 objects a huge distance apart - 2 stars for example. Still no problem. We have the technology! So let us go the whole way and measure from one end of the cosmos to the other. We may struggle with the technology here but we can probably extrapolate and come up with a reasonably accurate distance for the entire cosmos.
Well, there's the problem. I am sure you have guessed what's coming next. My question is if you are at either point, at the edge of the cosmos how can you even think of their being something beyond that point? That is the whole problem with space. It eventually cashes out as a paradox. It is by definition about finite measurement and yet cannot make sense without implying infinity.
Exactly the same thing happens with time. Follow the sequence back to the very beginning and ask what came before it. Eternity?
So what do we do about this predicament. We have 2 totally central ideas which we cannot get rid of, time and space, and neither of them makes any obvious sense.
And that is what this blog is all about...
Pierre
Tags: beginning end T S Eliot Four Quartets philosophy Plato Republic discourse logic science Kuhn scientific revolutions paradigm process cause effect how why Big Bang time space cosmos paradox
Like Plato I am going to follow the discourse wherever it may lead. I am going to start with a problem of everyday usage because that seems to me to be a real problem. It may be that everyday ideas are wrong but it must, surely, be the philosopher's job to demonstrate this if it is the case. Also I believe that it is less open to arbitrary preconceptions. I do not mean that it is without preconception for common usage is full of such things. I mean that any other starting point will demand a basic proposition which might have no obvious relationship with anything other than the fertile imagination of its author. At least by being culture bound there is a case to answer which has some history and popular support.
I have a further reason for avoiding the stylised logic of science and that is that science, by definition, is always wrong. That might seem a little surprising but consider the nature of scientific enquiry. We used to believe rather naively that science concerned itself with the establishment of matters of fact. If that were so then we philosophers could pack our bags and leave all enquiry after knowledge in the capable hands of the scientists.
Readers may be familiar with a now highly celebrated book by T S Kuhn (b. 1922) entitled "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" (NY, 1962). Kuhn was originally a particle physicist who turned to the philosophy of science in order to explain what scientific endeavour was all about. He describes long periods of settled scientific development in which one set of concepts or paradigm, as he calls them, holds centre stage. This is followed by a period of revolutionary change in which the paradigm is replaced by another one which the scientific community accepts as a better way of understanding science. He holds that the nature of scientific enquiry is that a set of constructs are put forward and are then subjected to rigorous testing. Eventually it emerges that the concepts fail the testing and so it is necessary to re-think and put forward fresh theories. So scientific theory is always right until proven wrong or, in other words, is always wrong. Not much of a basis for establishing sound philosophical reasoning!
I want to suggest a further aspect of scientific enquiry which needs to be clarified at this stage. Science concerns itself with process - how things happen. Now, cause and effect used to be the province of the philosopher and I am glad to say that it is most certainly not so any longer. So, if you want to know how the chicken crossed the road - ask a scientist. However, if you want to know why the chicken crossed the road then you should look to either psychiatry or philosophy (more of that later). If you want to know which came first - the chicken or the egg - then unless it is a process question (which it is not) the scientist will be of no use.
To put the problem into a cosmological framework then you could say that science will eventually trace back the sequence of events to the Big Bang. And that's all. So there is no point asking a scientist what preceded the Big Bang because that is either unknowable or before science began. Nor is there any point in asking why because scientists only deal with how.
I will return many times to the nature of scientific enquiry but for now I want to move on. I said earlier that I wanted to begin with the every day problem of time and space.
As I sit and ponder on the world around me I am aware of an apparent distance between any 2 objects. Indeed, I find it quite impossible to imagine those 2 objects without distance of some degree or another. We call this the dimension of space, rightly or wrongly. Whatever it is it does seem that it is essential to any attempt to make sense of the world. I have tried to do without it or to replace it with another concept and, quite frankly, I cannot.
Now, the idea of measuring 2 things seems simple enough. So let me get a little more ambitious and measure not just 2 objects in front of me but 2 objects a huge distance apart - 2 stars for example. Still no problem. We have the technology! So let us go the whole way and measure from one end of the cosmos to the other. We may struggle with the technology here but we can probably extrapolate and come up with a reasonably accurate distance for the entire cosmos.
Well, there's the problem. I am sure you have guessed what's coming next. My question is if you are at either point, at the edge of the cosmos how can you even think of their being something beyond that point? That is the whole problem with space. It eventually cashes out as a paradox. It is by definition about finite measurement and yet cannot make sense without implying infinity.
Exactly the same thing happens with time. Follow the sequence back to the very beginning and ask what came before it. Eternity?
So what do we do about this predicament. We have 2 totally central ideas which we cannot get rid of, time and space, and neither of them makes any obvious sense.
And that is what this blog is all about...
Pierre
Tags: beginning end T S Eliot Four Quartets philosophy Plato Republic discourse logic science Kuhn scientific revolutions paradigm process cause effect how why Big Bang time space cosmos paradox
