When Dawkins uses the term heresy (he does frequently) you know science is metaphysical. The editor of Nature, Robert Madox, said this of Rupert Sheldrake's work: “Sheldrake is putting forward magic instead of science, and that can be condemned in exactly the language that the Pope used to condemn Galileo. It is heresy.”
Not “Sheldrake's theory is untestable.” Not “Sheldrake is absurd.” No, Madox had to go for the brass ring. Sheldrake is a heretic, and it is right for me, a scientist, to condemn him as such, just as (get this logic) it was right for the Pope to condemn Galileo. What's wrong with this picture?
Easy. Sheldrake hit biology in the metaphysics. Even pointing out that it's a form of ontological view is apparently too much for the sensitive biologist, who doesn't want to be reminded that reductionism, utilitarianism and mechanism are forms of philosophy, not neutral windows through which to see the world.
So enraged was Madox that he was prepared to out his institution as a Pope-like authority, failing for one second to see the irony or the damage he was doing.
What did Sheldrake really do that was so wrong? He suggested that form was as much a causal influence as material. In other words, he suggested an Aristotelian view of how entities come to be, from crystals to patterns of behavior in birds. “Formative causation” was the reason why. Forget the New Age brush with which he's been tarred: THIS is the real reason he got creamed. Why? Because as an institution reductionist materialist science has staked its claim to an assault on Aristotle. That's sort of what the early modern origins of science was.
Of course, a bunch of theoretical physicists and cosmologists weighed in on Sheldrake's behalf. So be careful when you use the term materialism. And be careful about saying things like this:
the notion of arche-materiality does not authorize its relation to Darwinism by constructing an ontology or appealing to scientific realism but rather by articulating a logical infrastructure that is compatible with its findings. Following this logic, one can make explicit that the structure of the trace is implicit both in our understanding of the temporality of living processes and in our understanding of how time is recorded in the disintegration of inanimate matter.
It means that you ARE constructing, or rather endorsing, an ontology and that you ARE appealing to scientific realism. One kind of scientific realism. Not, for instance, the scientific realism advocated by quantum theorists. You are also buying in to an ideological view of science as outside of philosophy, that goes back to the seventeenth century, but which is rapidly becoming useless.
The only reason science has an easier ride than humanities in the current economic climate is that it's been so wholly co-opted by big business. Percentage of grants awarded to scientists under 35 in the USA in 1980? 23%. In 2003? 4%. Why? They're a less safe bet. If you kept badgering them to justify their existence, they'd fall apart too. No wonder scientists have been making common cause with the humanities of late. (See the slew of attacks on the SUNY Albany admin in Nature, after they got rid of French etc.).
You have to at least acknowledge that Sheldrake has guts.
As a biology enthusiast and philosophical person, I really appreciate this post. I struggled with issues surrounding this topic throughout my undergraduate career at Rutgers University. From the first moment I opened my Biology 101 textbook, I found myself facing an entirely insular logical structure. I could not get over the first words that expressed themselves on the very first page of the very first chapter. They read: "Cell Theory." Two words, which, at first glance, and perhaps without intent, seem like nothing more than the description of what "is." Cells “are,” yet the RNA World is a hypothesis, not a reality. I couldn't stress enough, to anyone who would listen: "No, no. It's Cell THEORY." We, humans, are modeling them. No one can prove that any of these entities, in fact, exist within a natural world without the direct invention of the human mind.
ReplyDeleteWithin a philosophy classroom, such a discussion would seem natural. In a lab, it was almost impossible to instigate. No one was interested in those questions, only the accuracy of the data presented within the accepted logical model prescribed by our professors, our textbooks, and ultimately accepted by ourselves, as students. Was Mendel “right?” Of course he was right, and now what’s important is discovering the standard margin of error of gene selection within the statistical model that supports his “findings”…
Aristotle may have been wrong about many things (like…perhaps…the nature of women), but his theories about nature do have value in the face of the current dogma associated with accepted scientific knowledge.
As a biology enthusiast and philosophical person, I really appreciate this post. I struggled with issues surrounding this topic throughout my undergraduate career at Rutgers University. From the first moment I opened my Biology 101 textbook, I found myself facing an entirely insular logical structure. I could not get over the first words that expressed themselves on the very first page of the very first chapter. They read: "Cell Theory." Two words, which, at first glance, and perhaps without intent, seem like nothing more than the description of what "is." Cells “are,” yet the RNA World is a hypothesis, not a reality. I couldn't stress enough, to anyone who would listen: "No, no. It's Cell THEORY." We, humans, are modeling them. No one can prove that any of these entities, in fact, exist within a natural world without the direct invention of the human mind.
ReplyDeleteWithin a philosophy classroom, such a discussion would seem natural. In a lab, it was almost impossible to instigate. No one was interested in those questions, only the accuracy of the data presented within the accepted logical model prescribed by our professors, our textbooks, and ultimately accepted by ourselves, as students. Was Mendel “right?” Of course he was right, and now what’s important is discovering the standard margin of error of gene selection within the statistical model that supports his “findings”…
Aristotle may have been wrong about many things (like…perhaps…the nature of women), but his theories about nature do have value in the face of the current dogma associated with accepted scientific knowledge.
Thanks Amanda. It's even hard in philosophy, and for a different (but weirdly related) reason. You are rarely allowed to say what exists (ontology), only how we can understand or access notions of existence (epistemology). Why? Because science has taken over the ontological reins. (And then it washes its hands of having ever done so.)
ReplyDeleteTim, do you think epistemology - with its focus on whether what exists is - is unable to proceed metaphysics? Leaving aside here for the moment the point that epistemology has to be grounded in a metaphysics of correlation between human and world, I mainly ask this from a religious POV: as to whether God proceeds metaphysics. I'm thinking this would, interestingly, be an argument for a strict atheism. Interestingly because atheism is so constantly placed on the side of epistemological doubt.
ReplyDelete