The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox
Encyclopedia
The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox is Stephen Jay Gould's
posthumous volume exploring the historically complex relationship between the science
s and the humanities
in a scholarly discourse.
Employing the Greek proverb
about the crafty cunning fox that devises many strategies versus the persistent hedgehog who knows but one effective strategy, Gould offers a study of the division between the two ways of knowing, attempting to debunk the commonly assumed inextricable conflict between science and the arts as the two falsely opposed realms of the pursuit of knowledge.
have been characterized falsely. In each case the strategy for either side has been to portray centrist members of the opposing camp with radical minority views of extremist straw men so as to easily defeat these misrepresentations of otherwise rational mainstream arguments. He stresses the dangers of presenting cut and dried dichotomies, such as good vs. bad or spirit vs. matter, or focusing on polar positions within continuous ranges of actions, methods, discourse and beliefs.
The first period is represented by the leaders of the Scientific Revolution
in the seventeenth century, the vast majority of whom had sincere religious convictions. Atheism was extremely rare among these scholars. In the Renaissance
, which preceded the period under consideration, scholars focused on the recovery of lost knowledge with
an associated reverence for the Ancients
. Renaissance compendiums of knowledge did not necessarily discriminate between truth by observation and the mythological or fictional realm. Both were domains of human opinion and thought regarded as noteworthy, especially when associated with authoritative classical sources, and distinguishing differences between fact and opinion was not always valued above providing readers with complete documentation. Leaders of the Scientific Revolution, being the new kids on the block with respect to the established scholastics
, were forced to emphasize the value of their enterprise in order to receive resources or merit for their investigations. This meant contrasting their methods and goals with that of the established scholars. They did meet with resistance, but many of the religious scholars accepted the newly discovered knowledge of the Scientific Revolution as valid. Gould refers to some of the Roman Catholic clergy in Galileo's
day that valued the new methods. He also cites theologian Reverend
Thomas Burnet
, whose 1680 Sacred Theory of the Earth argued that God created a clockwork world with physical laws that did not require miracles or tampering with. Isaac Newton
, who accepted God's occasional intervention, criticized Burnet for not recognizing God's option for miracles. Gould cites John Ray
's
preface in 1678 to The Ornithology of Francis Willughby
, which stated that their scientific treatise did not pay undue attention to literary style and utilized methods of direct observation and validation of factual accuracy, in contrast to Renaissance compendia. Such statements of worth were necessary to receive recognition for progress in scientific
methodology, but were not made to denigrate the humanities. Statements such as Issac Newton's less than original "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." was recognition not only of other previous leaders in the Scientific Revolution, but of the Ancients who provided foundations in the sciences and humanities. Gould cites George Hakewill
, Archdeacon of Surrey's 1628 essay in defense of Modernist convictions. There Hakewill argues against both the common belief that the Universe was in constant decay and the Renaissance portrayal of Ancients as superior to Moderns. Moderns were traditionally depicted in architecture and other arts even prior to the seventeenth century as dwarfs on the shoulders of Ancient giants. Hakewill stated "we are all of one stature, save that we are lifted up somewhat higher by their means". Gould argues that "nearly all founders of the Scientific Revolution revered the great sources of Antiquity. ...The ranks of the Modernists did not include only the new scientific scholars, but also encompassed many prominent intellectuals from literary and other humanistic callings, including the theologian Hakewell."
Gould's stage two is the misrepresentation of late nineteenth century's rationalism vs. religion conflict. Gould cites J.W. Draper's
1874 History of the Conflict Between Science and Religion and Andrew Dickson White's
1896 A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom as representative of the period. He describes Draper's work as describing the Roman Catholic religion as incompatible with science while the liberal American Protestantism was compatible with science. White wrote that scientific investigation was good for genuine religion. Gould cites his own book, Rocks of Ages
as evidence for the independence of the non-overlapping magisteria
(NOMA) of science and religion, and repeats that book's argument (which he does not claim to be the first to pen) that "Science tries to record and explain the
factual character of the natural world, whereas religion struggles with spiritual and ethical questions about the meaning and proper conduct of our lives. The facts of nature simply cannot dictate correct moral behavior or spiritual meaning." He cites J. B. Russel's
1991 Inventing the Flat Earth
as showing that some supporters of the science vs. religion model misrepresent historical religious advocates. One example is the caricatures of Spanish scholars as theologians arguing against Columbus
that the world was flat, when in reality they were arguing actually that the circumference of the known spherical world was much larger than Columbus was assuming. Gould also refers to the misrepresentation of Galileo's trial as unjust though it was a result of Galileo's conscious undiplomatic ridiculing of the Pope's
position in the Copernican debate
.
The third period is represented by the C. P. Snow's
1959 Rede Lecture
, The Two Cultures
, and his later reevaluation and concessions with respect to the initial presentation. Snow's initial assumption is that the salvation of underdeveloped countries depends solely on the import, training and development of scientists and engineers in order for
these countries to rise economically and eliminate disparities peaceably by the year 2000. Gould argues that Snow reverses his position in 1963 with The Two Cultures: A Second Look and acknowledges that the original motivating assumption of "dichotomous parsing of intellectual life into contrarian literary and scientific camps" was not a true representation and Snow was sorry for having failed to recognize a third culture in the continuous spectrum of intellectual life.
The fourth period poses the postmodern relativists against the scientific realists or " 'postmodern' scholars in the humanities and social-science departments of American Universities... against researchers in the conventional science departments of the same institutions." The booty being funding, power, ownership of concepts or factual truth,
accolades for progress, and influence. He argues that most readings of the Sokal affair
misinterpret the carelessness of individual editors of the Social Text
(for not having consulted an expert in physics to "peer review" Alan Sokal's
article) as a condemnation of the entire field of Science Studies
. He goes on to argue that the science wars are without true combatants in that the vast majority of working scientists are generally too busy and unconcerned to read current valid contributions to Science Studies, or even to read recognized leaders in the field from the previous generation, such as Thomas Kuhn
or Karl Popper
. Most of Gould's contacts with colleagues revealed that they were unaware of the science war debate. This, he believes is detrimental to the working professional scientist, who would benefit from constructive criticism and insightful analysis originating outside of the sciences, and from gaining a historical perspective of their profession. He also argued that most social critics and historians of science that he was aware of were not pure relativists, and agreed that there is an external reality that may be scientifically modeled
with associated benefits of acquired knowledge and applications.
book Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge within the larger scope of his recommendations for a confederation of the physical sciences and humanities. He also provides an exegesis of texts participating in the development of the word consilience
within a larger historical context of the concept's inception by Reverend William Whewell
, who also coined the term scientist, and whom Gould proclaims as "the first modernist with joint command of both history and philosophy in the analysis of science." Whewell being best known for his 1837 History of the Inductive Sciences and for his 1840 The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Founded Upon Their History. Gould also reminds the reader that he revived Whewell's concept of consilience in print, prior to Wilson.
Gould reproves Wilson's program of reductionism
by utilizing two main arguments based upon the emergence
and contingency
or randomness
found in some complex
, nonlinear or non-additive systems. He indicates that there exist new entities, properties, and interactions that emerge in some complex systems
which cannot be predicted from knowledge of properties of the components, or of laws governing at the level of those components alone. Thus reductionism can only fail in attempts to model, explain, or describe such systems, and we must search for and depend upon new emergent principles embedded in higher, more complex levels. He also indicates that the historical contingency in some systems may cause effects that do not necessarily strictly follow a single path from identified causes and therefore may require narrative methods drawn from historical analysis and the humanities rather that classical deductive mathematical formulas prescribing necessarily linear consequences. He highlights evolution
by natural selection
as a primary example of how entities such as ourselves are not a necessary, but rather a contingent product, "we have preferred to think of Homo sapiens not only as something special (which I surely do not deny), but also as something ordained, necessary, or at the very least, predictable from some form of general process... But if Homo sapiens represents more of a contingent and improbable fact of history than an apotheosis of a predictable tendency, then our peculiarities, even though they be universal within our species, remain more within the narrative realm of the sciences of historical contingency than within the traditional, and potentially reductionist, domain of repeated and predictable natural phenomenon generated by laws of nature."
Gould goes on to portray Wilson's extension (and according to him, a misleading divergent extension) of the original meaning behind Whewell's concept of "consilience of inductions" into a philosophy of all consuming reductionism in diametric opposition to Whewell's, and as an inapt attempt to subsume the independent humanities. He shows Whewell's consilience to be a literal "jumping together" in the mind of diverse facts or phenomenon initially appearing as unrelated and that such simplification and unification under the higher generality of only one theory merits the classification as probable truth and deserves further investigation and testing. But Gould stresses that Whewell defended steadfastly, the separate and independent domains or magisteria, in particular the independence of theology and ethics, citing Whewell's 1833 Astronomy and General Physics Considered with Natural Theology. Therein Whewell defends realms of human pursuit beyond and outside of the physical sciences that are true and consistent with any truths of science, and stem from one creation and God, but are based upon different foundations and methodologies. Gould extends this defense to the humanities in general and argues that a union of equals allying the sciences and humanities requires independence and mutual respect, not a hierarchy in which the humanities are subsumed under a reductionist framework of physical science.
Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was also one of the most influential and widely read writers of popular science of his generation....
posthumous volume exploring the historically complex relationship between the science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
s and the humanities
Humanities
The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....
in a scholarly discourse.
Employing the Greek proverb
The Fox and the Cat (fable)
The Fox and the Cat is an ancient fable, with both Eastern and Western analogues involving different animals, that addresses the difference between resourceful expediency and a master strategem. Included in collections of Aesop's fables since the start of printing in Europe, it is number 605 in the...
about the crafty cunning fox that devises many strategies versus the persistent hedgehog who knows but one effective strategy, Gould offers a study of the division between the two ways of knowing, attempting to debunk the commonly assumed inextricable conflict between science and the arts as the two falsely opposed realms of the pursuit of knowledge.
Four Historic Stages
Gould prefers to focus on the commonalities between the humanities and the sciences, such as creative thinking and the psychology of transcendence and discovery. He discusses four historic periods in which the supposed Science WarsScience wars
The science wars were a series of intellectual exchanges, between scientific realists and postmodernist critics, about the nature of scientific theory which took place principally in the US in the 1990s...
have been characterized falsely. In each case the strategy for either side has been to portray centrist members of the opposing camp with radical minority views of extremist straw men so as to easily defeat these misrepresentations of otherwise rational mainstream arguments. He stresses the dangers of presenting cut and dried dichotomies, such as good vs. bad or spirit vs. matter, or focusing on polar positions within continuous ranges of actions, methods, discourse and beliefs.
The first period is represented by the leaders of the Scientific Revolution
Scientific revolution
The Scientific Revolution is an era associated primarily with the 16th and 17th centuries during which new ideas and knowledge in physics, astronomy, biology, medicine and chemistry transformed medieval and ancient views of nature and laid the foundations for modern science...
in the seventeenth century, the vast majority of whom had sincere religious convictions. Atheism was extremely rare among these scholars. In the Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
, which preceded the period under consideration, scholars focused on the recovery of lost knowledge with
an associated reverence for the Ancients
Classical antiquity
Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...
. Renaissance compendiums of knowledge did not necessarily discriminate between truth by observation and the mythological or fictional realm. Both were domains of human opinion and thought regarded as noteworthy, especially when associated with authoritative classical sources, and distinguishing differences between fact and opinion was not always valued above providing readers with complete documentation. Leaders of the Scientific Revolution, being the new kids on the block with respect to the established scholastics
Scholasticism
Scholasticism is a method of critical thought which dominated teaching by the academics of medieval universities in Europe from about 1100–1500, and a program of employing that method in articulating and defending orthodoxy in an increasingly pluralistic context...
, were forced to emphasize the value of their enterprise in order to receive resources or merit for their investigations. This meant contrasting their methods and goals with that of the established scholars. They did meet with resistance, but many of the religious scholars accepted the newly discovered knowledge of the Scientific Revolution as valid. Gould refers to some of the Roman Catholic clergy in Galileo's
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei , was an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the Scientific Revolution. His achievements include improvements to the telescope and consequent astronomical observations and support for Copernicanism...
day that valued the new methods. He also cites theologian Reverend
Thomas Burnet
Thomas Burnet
Thomas Burnet , theologian and writer on cosmogony.-Life:He was born at Croft near Darlington in 1635. After studying at Northallerton Grammar School under Thomas Smelt, he went to Clare Hall, Cambridge in 1651. There he was a pupil of John Tillotson...
, whose 1680 Sacred Theory of the Earth argued that God created a clockwork world with physical laws that did not require miracles or tampering with. Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton PRS was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian, who has been "considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived."...
, who accepted God's occasional intervention, criticized Burnet for not recognizing God's option for miracles. Gould cites John Ray
John Ray
John Ray was an English naturalist, sometimes referred to as the father of English natural history. Until 1670, he wrote his name as John Wray. From then on, he used 'Ray', after "having ascertained that such had been the practice of his family before him".He published important works on botany,...
's
preface in 1678 to The Ornithology of Francis Willughby
Francis Willughby
thumbnail|200px|right|A page from the Ornithologia, showing [[Jackdaw]], [[Chough]], [[European Magpie|Magpie]] and [[Eurasian Jay|Jay]], all [[Corvidae|crows]]....
, which stated that their scientific treatise did not pay undue attention to literary style and utilized methods of direct observation and validation of factual accuracy, in contrast to Renaissance compendia. Such statements of worth were necessary to receive recognition for progress in scientific
methodology, but were not made to denigrate the humanities. Statements such as Issac Newton's less than original "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." was recognition not only of other previous leaders in the Scientific Revolution, but of the Ancients who provided foundations in the sciences and humanities. Gould cites George Hakewill
George Hakewill
George Hakewill was an English clergyman and author.-Early life:Born in Exeter, he studied at Alban Hall, Oxford, where he was a noted disputant and orator and in June 1596, only a year after his matriculation and at the unusually early age of 18, he was elected a fellow of Exeter College. There...
, Archdeacon of Surrey's 1628 essay in defense of Modernist convictions. There Hakewill argues against both the common belief that the Universe was in constant decay and the Renaissance portrayal of Ancients as superior to Moderns. Moderns were traditionally depicted in architecture and other arts even prior to the seventeenth century as dwarfs on the shoulders of Ancient giants. Hakewill stated "we are all of one stature, save that we are lifted up somewhat higher by their means". Gould argues that "nearly all founders of the Scientific Revolution revered the great sources of Antiquity. ...The ranks of the Modernists did not include only the new scientific scholars, but also encompassed many prominent intellectuals from literary and other humanistic callings, including the theologian Hakewell."
Gould's stage two is the misrepresentation of late nineteenth century's rationalism vs. religion conflict. Gould cites J.W. Draper's
John William Draper
John William Draper was an American scientist, philosopher, physician, chemist, historian, and photographer. He is credited with producing the first clear photograph of a female face and the first detailed photograph of the Moon...
1874 History of the Conflict Between Science and Religion and Andrew Dickson White's
Andrew Dickson White
Andrew Dickson White was a U.S. diplomat, historian, and educator, who was the co-founder of Cornell University.-Family and personal life:...
1896 A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom as representative of the period. He describes Draper's work as describing the Roman Catholic religion as incompatible with science while the liberal American Protestantism was compatible with science. White wrote that scientific investigation was good for genuine religion. Gould cites his own book, Rocks of Ages
Rocks of Ages
Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life is a nonfiction book by the Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould on the relationship between science and religion. It was published in 1999 by Ballantine Books, and reprinted by Vintage Books...
as evidence for the independence of the non-overlapping magisteria
Non-overlapping magisteria
Non-overlapping magisteria is the view advocated by Stephen Jay Gould that "science and religion do not glower at each other... [but] interdigitate in patterns of complex fingering, and at every fractal scale of self-similarity." He suggests, with examples, that "NOMA enjoys strong and fully...
(NOMA) of science and religion, and repeats that book's argument (which he does not claim to be the first to pen) that "Science tries to record and explain the
factual character of the natural world, whereas religion struggles with spiritual and ethical questions about the meaning and proper conduct of our lives. The facts of nature simply cannot dictate correct moral behavior or spiritual meaning." He cites J. B. Russel's
Jeffrey Burton Russell
Jeffrey Burton Russell is an American historian and religious studies scholar who received his undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1955 and his PhD from Emory University in 1960. He is now Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara...
1991 Inventing the Flat Earth
Inventing the Flat Earth
Inventing the Flat Earth is a book by historian Jeffrey Burton Russell debunking the notion that medieval Christians believed the earth was flat....
as showing that some supporters of the science vs. religion model misrepresent historical religious advocates. One example is the caricatures of Spanish scholars as theologians arguing against Columbus
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents in the...
that the world was flat, when in reality they were arguing actually that the circumference of the known spherical world was much larger than Columbus was assuming. Gould also refers to the misrepresentation of Galileo's trial as unjust though it was a result of Galileo's conscious undiplomatic ridiculing of the Pope's
Pope Urban VIII
Pope Urban VIII , born Maffeo Barberini, was pope from 1623 to 1644. He was the last pope to expand the papal territory by force of arms, and was a prominent patron of the arts and reformer of Church missions...
position in the Copernican debate
Copernican heliocentrism
Copernican heliocentrism is the name given to the astronomical model developed by Nicolaus Copernicus and published in 1543. It positioned the Sun near the center of the Universe, motionless, with Earth and the other planets rotating around it in circular paths modified by epicycles and at uniform...
.
The third period is represented by the C. P. Snow's
C. P. Snow
Charles Percy Snow, Baron Snow of the City of Leicester CBE was an English physicist and novelist who also served in several important positions with the UK government...
1959 Rede Lecture
Rede Lecture
The Sir Robert Rede's Lecturer is an annual appointment to give a public lecture, the Sir Robert Rede's Lecture at the University of Cambridge. It is named for Sir Robert Rede, who was Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in the sixteenth century.-Initial series:The initial series of lectures ranges...
, The Two Cultures
The Two Cultures
The Two Cultures is the title of an influential 1959 Rede Lecture by British scientist and novelist C. P. Snow. Its thesis was that "the intellectual life of the whole of western society" was split into the titular two cultures—namely the sciences and the humanities—and that this was a major...
, and his later reevaluation and concessions with respect to the initial presentation. Snow's initial assumption is that the salvation of underdeveloped countries depends solely on the import, training and development of scientists and engineers in order for
these countries to rise economically and eliminate disparities peaceably by the year 2000. Gould argues that Snow reverses his position in 1963 with The Two Cultures: A Second Look and acknowledges that the original motivating assumption of "dichotomous parsing of intellectual life into contrarian literary and scientific camps" was not a true representation and Snow was sorry for having failed to recognize a third culture in the continuous spectrum of intellectual life.
The fourth period poses the postmodern relativists against the scientific realists or " 'postmodern' scholars in the humanities and social-science departments of American Universities... against researchers in the conventional science departments of the same institutions." The booty being funding, power, ownership of concepts or factual truth,
accolades for progress, and influence. He argues that most readings of the Sokal affair
Sokal Affair
The Sokal affair, also known as the Sokal hoax, was a publishing hoax perpetrated by Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University. In 1996, Sokal submitted an article to Social Text, an academic journal of postmodern cultural studies...
misinterpret the carelessness of individual editors of the Social Text
Social Text
Social Text is an academic journal published by Duke University Press. Since its inception as an independent editorial collective in 1979, Social Text has addressed a wide range of social and cultural phenomena, covering questions of gender, sexuality, race, and the environment...
(for not having consulted an expert in physics to "peer review" Alan Sokal's
Alan Sokal
Alan David Sokal is a professor of mathematics at University College London and professor of physics at New York University. He works in statistical mechanics and combinatorics. To the general public he is best known for his criticism of postmodernism, resulting in the Sokal affair in...
article) as a condemnation of the entire field of Science Studies
Science studies
Science studies is an interdisciplinary research area that seeks to situate scientific expertise in a broad social, historical, and philosophical context. It is concerned with the history of academic disciplines, the interrelationships between science and society, and the alleged covert purposes...
. He goes on to argue that the science wars are without true combatants in that the vast majority of working scientists are generally too busy and unconcerned to read current valid contributions to Science Studies, or even to read recognized leaders in the field from the previous generation, such as Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Samuel Kuhn was an American historian and philosopher of science whose controversial 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was deeply influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term "paradigm shift," which has since become an English-language staple.Kuhn...
or Karl Popper
Karl Popper
Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH FRS FBA was an Austro-British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics...
. Most of Gould's contacts with colleagues revealed that they were unaware of the science war debate. This, he believes is detrimental to the working professional scientist, who would benefit from constructive criticism and insightful analysis originating outside of the sciences, and from gaining a historical perspective of their profession. He also argued that most social critics and historians of science that he was aware of were not pure relativists, and agreed that there is an external reality that may be scientifically modeled
with associated benefits of acquired knowledge and applications.
Consilience
Gould includes an analysis of E. O. Wilson'sE. O. Wilson
Edward Osborne Wilson is an American biologist, researcher , theorist , naturalist and author. His biological specialty is myrmecology, the study of ants....
book Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge within the larger scope of his recommendations for a confederation of the physical sciences and humanities. He also provides an exegesis of texts participating in the development of the word consilience
Consilience
Consilience, or the unity of knowledge , has its roots in the ancient Greek concept of an intrinsic orderliness that governs our cosmos, inherently comprehensible by logical process, a vision at odds with mystical views in many cultures that surrounded the Hellenes...
within a larger historical context of the concept's inception by Reverend William Whewell
William Whewell
William Whewell was an English polymath, scientist, Anglican priest, philosopher, theologian, and historian of science. He was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.-Life and career:Whewell was born in Lancaster...
, who also coined the term scientist, and whom Gould proclaims as "the first modernist with joint command of both history and philosophy in the analysis of science." Whewell being best known for his 1837 History of the Inductive Sciences and for his 1840 The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Founded Upon Their History. Gould also reminds the reader that he revived Whewell's concept of consilience in print, prior to Wilson.
Gould reproves Wilson's program of reductionism
Reductionism
Reductionism can mean either an approach to understanding the nature of complex things by reducing them to the interactions of their parts, or to simpler or more fundamental things or a philosophical position that a complex system is nothing but the sum of its parts, and that an account of it can...
by utilizing two main arguments based upon the emergence
Emergence
In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. Emergence is central to the theories of integrative levels and of complex systems....
and contingency
Uncertainty
Uncertainty is a term used in subtly different ways in a number of fields, including physics, philosophy, statistics, economics, finance, insurance, psychology, sociology, engineering, and information science...
or randomness
Randomness
Randomness has somewhat differing meanings as used in various fields. It also has common meanings which are connected to the notion of predictability of events....
found in some complex
Complexity
In general usage, complexity tends to be used to characterize something with many parts in intricate arrangement. The study of these complex linkages is the main goal of complex systems theory. In science there are at this time a number of approaches to characterizing complexity, many of which are...
, nonlinear or non-additive systems. He indicates that there exist new entities, properties, and interactions that emerge in some complex systems
Complex systems
Complex systems present problems in mathematical modelling.The equations from which complex system models are developed generally derive from statistical physics, information theory and non-linear dynamics, and represent organized but unpredictable behaviors of systems of nature that are considered...
which cannot be predicted from knowledge of properties of the components, or of laws governing at the level of those components alone. Thus reductionism can only fail in attempts to model, explain, or describe such systems, and we must search for and depend upon new emergent principles embedded in higher, more complex levels. He also indicates that the historical contingency in some systems may cause effects that do not necessarily strictly follow a single path from identified causes and therefore may require narrative methods drawn from historical analysis and the humanities rather that classical deductive mathematical formulas prescribing necessarily linear consequences. He highlights evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
by natural selection
Natural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
as a primary example of how entities such as ourselves are not a necessary, but rather a contingent product, "we have preferred to think of Homo sapiens not only as something special (which I surely do not deny), but also as something ordained, necessary, or at the very least, predictable from some form of general process... But if Homo sapiens represents more of a contingent and improbable fact of history than an apotheosis of a predictable tendency, then our peculiarities, even though they be universal within our species, remain more within the narrative realm of the sciences of historical contingency than within the traditional, and potentially reductionist, domain of repeated and predictable natural phenomenon generated by laws of nature."
Gould goes on to portray Wilson's extension (and according to him, a misleading divergent extension) of the original meaning behind Whewell's concept of "consilience of inductions" into a philosophy of all consuming reductionism in diametric opposition to Whewell's, and as an inapt attempt to subsume the independent humanities. He shows Whewell's consilience to be a literal "jumping together" in the mind of diverse facts or phenomenon initially appearing as unrelated and that such simplification and unification under the higher generality of only one theory merits the classification as probable truth and deserves further investigation and testing. But Gould stresses that Whewell defended steadfastly, the separate and independent domains or magisteria, in particular the independence of theology and ethics, citing Whewell's 1833 Astronomy and General Physics Considered with Natural Theology. Therein Whewell defends realms of human pursuit beyond and outside of the physical sciences that are true and consistent with any truths of science, and stem from one creation and God, but are based upon different foundations and methodologies. Gould extends this defense to the humanities in general and argues that a union of equals allying the sciences and humanities requires independence and mutual respect, not a hierarchy in which the humanities are subsumed under a reductionist framework of physical science.
See also
- Conflict thesisConflict thesisThe conflict thesis proposes an intrinsic intellectual conflict between religion and science. The original historical usage of the term denoted that the historical record indicates religion’s perpetual opposition to science. Later uses of the term denote religion’s epistemological opposition to...
- The Hedgehog and the FoxThe Hedgehog and the Fox"The Hedgehog and the Fox" is an essay by the liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin. It was one of Berlin's most popular essays with the general public. Berlin himself said of the essay: "I never meant it very seriously. I meant it as a kind of enjoyable intellectual game, but it was taken seriously...
by Isaiah BerlinIsaiah BerlinSir Isaiah Berlin OM, FBA was a British social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas of Russian-Jewish origin, regarded as one of the leading thinkers of the twentieth century and a dominant liberal scholar of his generation... - Relationship between religion and scienceRelationship between religion and scienceThe relationship between religion and science has been a focus of the demarcation problem. Somewhat related is the claim that science and religion may pursue knowledge using different methodologies. Whereas the scientific method basically relies on reason and empiricism, religion also seeks to...
- The Two CulturesThe Two CulturesThe Two Cultures is the title of an influential 1959 Rede Lecture by British scientist and novelist C. P. Snow. Its thesis was that "the intellectual life of the whole of western society" was split into the titular two cultures—namely the sciences and the humanities—and that this was a major...
by C. P. SnowC. P. SnowCharles Percy Snow, Baron Snow of the City of Leicester CBE was an English physicist and novelist who also served in several important positions with the UK government...
External links
Reviews- The Mismeasure of science - by Michael RuseMichael RuseMichael Ruse is a philosopher of biology at Florida State University, and is well known for his work on the creationism/evolution controversy and the demarcation problem in science...
, Natural HistoryNatural History (magazine)Natural History is an American natural history magazine. The stated mission of the magazine is to promote public understanding and appreciation of nature and science.- History :... - Book review by Michael Dirda, The Washington PostThe Washington PostThe Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
, April 6, 2003, Page BW15 - Books in brief by Christine Kenneally, The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, June 15, 2003