Nature Of Science

 

Is methodological reductionism being turned into ideological reductionism? It might be okay, for scientific purposes, to reduce a human being to genes an DNA molecules, but that does not mean human beings are ultimately “nothing but” genes and molecules. Interestingly enough, the power of genetics—reducing the complexity of reality to the simplicity of genetic models—is at the very same time also its weakness of no longer being able to do justice to the complexity behind its simplified models.

 Are there any limitations to science?

Science has many limitations. Because all sciences use their own models, they are “blind” for what does not fit into their models. Each model is based on its own assumptions and refers to its own kinds of causes and boundary conditions. Each model is only a surrogate for “the real thing”. The only model that could ever qualify as a perfect replica of the original is the original itself. Therefore, scientists of the different areas or fields of science have a very selective approach; everything outside their scope is on their “blind spot,” because they neglect what they did not select. Physicists, for instance, only use a “physical eye” to capture the physical parts of this world; chemists have a “chemical eye”; and geneticists see everything with a “genetic eye.” But let us not forget that physics cannot capture everything, neither can genetics. Arguably, even all sciences combined cannot capture all there is, for they only capture what can be measured and counted.

 To gain access to the huge domain of all that counts but cannot be counted, measured, or quantified, we need more than a “scientific eye.” Let me mention a few examples. Just like the “physical eye” sees colors in nature, so the “artistic eye” sees beauty in nature, the “rational eye” sees truths and untruths, the “moral eye” sees rights and wrongs, and the “religious eye” sees a spiritual dimension in life. All these different “eyes” are in search of reality, but each one “sees” a different aspect of it. Even astronomers do not deal with the universe in in its entirety, but only with its physical aspects.

Consequently there are also many kind of blindness.

Reality is like a jewel with many facets; you can look at it from various angles, with different eyes, from perspectives. What you choose to neglect you cannot just reject.

 Fr. Robert Sokolowski, Ph.D.

Lecture

Fr. Robert Sokolowski, Ph.D., is Professor of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1962, he is internationally recognized and honored for his work in philosophy, particularly phenomenology. In 1994, Catholic University sponsored a conference on his work and published several papers and other essays under the title, The Truthful and the Good, Essays In Honor of Robert Sokolowski. Fr. Sokolowski came to the College as part of the E.L. Wiegand Distinguished Visiting Lecturers Program, which was established to bring distinguished educators to Thomas Aquinas College and St. John's College. Following is abridged from a lecture he gave at the College on March 26, 1999.

I'd like to begin with a rather confrontational claim: That phenomenology can help restore the understanding of being and mind that was accepted in classical Greek philosophy and medieval thought and can still take into account certain contributions of modernity, especially those of science. Phenomenology, in its classical form, understands the human mind as ordered towards truth, and this is the understanding of the mind that prevailed in classical thinking. Phenomenology develops this understanding through its doctrines of intentionality and evidence but with a consideration of modern problems.

 

COMMON SENSE PRINCIPLES OF DISCUSSION

by Anthony Rizzi

 

 

Effective and civil discussion is absolutely essential in reestablishing science on its firm foundation. Since discussion has in recent times become less and less clearly centered on its purpose — which is to get to the truth — we find we have developed bad habits of discussion. Indeed it often happens that, despite our good intentions, discussions degenerate into incivility. It is our hope that the following thoughts will help restore the right emphasis and civility in conversation.

 

l) The aim of discussion is to arrive at a precise statement of a problem  and a true answer. It is profitable if progress in achieving this goal is made even if there is not ultimate success.

 

2) The first step in critical thinking must be to state a problem clearly in the form A is B, or at least that A is not B. Many disagreements arise from not being clear about what problem is to be solved.

 

3) lf you are speaking to someone who has more education and knowledge in the field under discussion, give deference to him. This means that conversation will not equally split with each person speaking 50% of the time. Clearly, the one who has more knowledge will necessarily have to

spend more time relating it.

 

a)       The receiver of knowledge should not resent the giver merely because the giver gives more, i.e. speaks more. Indeed, like the receiver of a wonderful material gift, the spiritual gift of knowledge should be received with sincere appreciation. Few who receive a gift of gold will respond with accusations of unfairness about the inequity involved of them not being able to respond in kind. Rather, most will receive it with great thanks and enthusiasm as lottery winners do. Since the spiritual gift of knowledge is literally infinitely more valuable, the gratitude of the receiver of knowledge should be immense.

 

                b) One essential way of showing gratitude to the giver, which is also an exercise of justice, is to remember his gift and acknowledge him to others. Remembering is key in the process of finding and verifying trustworthy sources, for one needs to remember who has given what to be able to note whose information is reliable.

 

GRAMMAR

 Grammar is indeed more fundamental than our truth claims: before something can be true or false, it must be meaningful. Now even on this more fundamental level of grammar there is a peculiar feature of our language that cannot escape theological implications, namely the futurum exactum or future perfect. Tomorrow it will have been true that I am now writing this text. If tomorrow it turns out not to have been true that I am now writing this text, then I am not now writing this text. The reality of the present depends on what will have been true in the future, and this as a matter of principle. But for whom will this have been true tomorrow? Truth resides in the mind, and whose mind will it be, if humanity has suffered its demise, or after the heat death of the universe? Here, too, we need a mind that exists unconditionally as a foundation for our grammar and its implications. And that is the mind of God.

From Teleology And Transcendence: The Thought Of Robert Spaemann, by Anselm Ramelow.

TRUTH (Veritas est adaequatio intellectus et rei.)

 

  Truth is the correspondence of the mind and reality.

We are true and we live in the truth not because we never err or never fail into falsehood, but because we already are and always have been within the manifestation of reality. We are in the truth because, even when erring, "we are" a relationship with reality. And reality "awaits expectantly," if we may so express it, for our openness so that it can manifest itself in its true sense.

The mature thinker would probably compare the question--'Is there really such a thing as truth?'--to a young man's first hesitant conversation with a girl, from which he came away convinced 'she loves me!' Now it would be a strange lover indeed who would be content with the mere ascertainment that this is in fact the case. No, this fact, like a door springing open, becomes the starting point of a newly beginning life of love. In this life, the eternal question of lovers--'Does he or she love me?'--the question of whether they love one another, is revived every day; love can never be questioned enough, because love never has enough of hearing the reassuring affirmative reply. Behind every answer there is a new question, and behind every reassuring certainty there is an expansive new horizon.

Truth is never actually an absolute to possess. Rather, and surprisingly, it is an event to be touched by.

The following from Fides et  Ratio from Jean Paul II

    Freedom is not realized in decisions made against God. For how could it be an exercise of true freedom to refuse to be open to the very reality which exalts our self-realization?

Every truth present itself as universal, even if it is not the whole truth. If something is true then it must be true for all people and at all times.

Beyond this universality, however, people seek an absolute which might give to all their searching a meaning and an answer--something ultimate, which might serve as the ground of all things. In other words, they seek a final explanation, a supreme value, which refers to nothing beyond itself and which puts an end to all questioning.

 

”SHADOWS OF THE MIND” Sir Roger Penrose

     From the Wikipedia: Sir Roger Penrose OM FRS (born 8 August 1931) is an English mathematical physicist and Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College. He has received a number of prizes and awards, including the 1988 Wolf Prize for physics which he shared with Stephen Hawking for their contributi- on to our understanding of the universe.  He is renowned for his

work in mathematical physics, in particular his contributions to general relativity and cosmology. He is also a recreational mathematician and philosopher.

    I am a great admirer of Penrose. As a scientist he pushes boundaries, I find him fascinating. However my admiration
of him as a philosopher went down a few notches after reading “Shadows of the Mind”. After all he is a ‘materialist" and materialism goes so far and no further. It’s interesting to see him trying to wiggle his way out, trying to explain the non-material in a material way.

THE METAPHYSICS OF THE WILL

 Click here to listen to Prof Edward Feser

Dr Feser argues that metaphysical errors about the nature of the will have caused significant damage to moral theory and practice. The best way to clear up such errors is to take things back to first principles and work them forward again. In this Quarantine Lecture, Dr. Feser considers what a substance is in general and what the power of a substance is. The technical Aristotelian-Thomistic way of capturing the difference between a true physical substance and a mere aggregate or artefact, is to say that a physical substance has qua substance a substantial form, whereas an aggregate or an artefact has qua aggregate or artefact a merely accidental form

A power is a capacity to act or operate in a certain way. A power is a kind of attribute and exists only in a substance rather than in a free stranding way. Because powers have a kind of teleology, for an Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysician, the notion of a causal power is closely related to the notions of formal and final causality. Aquinas tells us that every form has some inclination following upon it and every agent acts for the sake of an end.

A rational substance is a substance with an intellect; an intellect is precisely to have the capacity to conceptualize what one knows. We have then a hierarchy of degrees to which the source of a thing's behavior is within it. A rational substance such as a human being or an angel (as opposed to an inanimate, vegetative or non-human animal substance) has a perfect knowledge of the ends toward which its powers are directed insofar as the very essences of those ends are within it. It possesses a kind of causal power which we can classify as rational appetite.

To have a will is, for Aquinas, precisely to have a rational appetite, to have in the most perfect way possible the source of one's activity within. Having a will also entails immateriality and possessing forms abstracted from matter.

Dr Feser concludes by touching on Aquinas's treatment of the reality of free choice and the lack of changeability of the human will after death.

Dr. Feser argues that metaphysical errors about the nature of the will angeability of the hu