Brian Greene (physicist and co-founder of the world science festival) wrote a lovely opinion piece in yesterday’s New York Times.
A few highlights:
“Science is a way of life. Science is a perspective. Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding in a manner that’s precise, predictive and reliable — a transformation, for those lucky enough to experience it, that is empowering and emotional. To be able to think through and grasp explanations — for everything from why the sky is blue to how life formed on earth — not because they are declared dogma but rather because they reveal patterns confirmed by experiment and observation, is one of the most precious of human experiences.
Science is the greatest of all adventure stories, one that’s been unfolding for thousands of years as we have sought to understand ourselves and our surroundings. Science needs to be taught to the young and communicated to the mature in a manner that captures this drama. We must embark on a cultural shift that places science in its rightful place alongside music, art and literature as an indispensable part of what makes life worth living.
It’s the birthright of every child, it’s a necessity for every adult, to look out on the world… and see that the wonder of the cosmos transcends everything that divides us. "The accompanying picture shows a kayaker about to launch into the universe. I found the image intriguing, especially because I was in a car stuffed with kayaking gear. My husband, children and I were on the way to Shirttail: canyon on the North Fork of the American River.
Within minutes of being on the water Cliff (age 8) said softly and intently “I love this” and Audrey (age 7) yelled “Yippee” with her paddle raised high.
They marveled at the clarity of the deep water, and learned that their own bodies are largely made of water. They admired the thumbsized apricot colored sticky monkey flowers, and learned that the plant is related to the 50 foot tall empress tree in our backyard. They scrambled after small frogs and learned that they are becoming more rare. They touched the deep green large notched leaf of the Kellog’s oak and learned that they do not grow at lower or higher elevations in California. At the end of the day, they were completely satisfied and so were we.
Today, my mind is less cluttered with technical details, and I am grateful, once again, for science.
Pamela, thanks! I understand and I agree. However, science is beautiful when it is within our life, when it is changing and when deeper minds can find it so creative and mysterious like poetry or religion are. In contrary, many scientists think that scientific image of the world is simply true and can rather explain the life instead of be within it. Such view, in my opinion, has nothing to do with genuine science. So, science should not be about explanations (moreover, any explanation needs explanation :-), but rather about orientation.
Boris, when you say that “many scientists think that scientific image of the world is simply true and can rather explain the life instead of be within in it”, do you meant that there other approaches to experience life that some scientists cannot appreciate?
Certainly I agree that one does not need to be a scientist to live life fully but still, as Brian Greene points out in his article “Like a life without music, art or literature, a life without science is bereft of something that gives experince a rich and otherwise inaccessble dimension.”
He took a bit of flak for that from some readers because he doesn’t mention religion.
Pamela, thanks for response! :-) Let me cite end of Sellars text Philosopy and the Scientific Image of Man
“Thus the conceptual framework of persons is the framework in which we think of one another as sharing the community intentions which provide the ambience of principles and standards (above all, those which make meaningful discourse and rationality itself possible) within which we live our own individual lives. A person can almost be defined as a being that has intentions. Thus the conceptual framework of persons is not something that needs to be reconciled with the scientific image, but rather something to be joined to it. Thus, to complete the scientific image we need to enrich it not with more ways of saying what is the case, but with the language of community and individual intentions, so that by construing the actions we intend to do and the circumstances in which we intend to do them in scientific terms, we directly relate the world as conceived by scientific theory to our purposes, and make it our world and no longer an alien appendage to the world in which we do our living. We can, of course, as matters now stand, realize this direct incorporation of the scientific image into our way of life only in imagination. But to do so is, if only in imagination, to transcend the dualism of the manifest and scientific images of man-of-the-world.”
It is about ethics, poetry, religion, personal relationships, about love, and of course about religion as well (however, religion can be evolutionist oriented – for instance Teilhard de Chardin or even Ortodox Church Catechism that I have read).
a person can be “joined” to science. I like that.
“The language of community” is precisely what Brian Greene used in his article that made it so beautiful, dont you think?
@Boris – I thought Greene’s piece was excellent but am having a hard time connecting with your comments. You write “many scientists think that scientific image of the world is simply true and can rather explain the life instead of be within it”. But I have rarely encountered scientists with such a simplistic view.
Later you make the point that science can be “about religion” and mention Teilhard de Chardin. Certainly the two spheres interact but mostly it’s a case of religion having to adjust to new scientific discoveries. De Chardin’s attempt to rationalise evolution as ’God’s plan’ was mis-guided. I remember trying to read it and getting bogged down in the amorphous nature of his ideas. I was relieved some years later to see his work thorough debunked by Peter Medawar.
In a slightly similar vein I don’t really get the quotation from Sellars. Apparently we must “transcend the dualism of the manifest and scientific images of man-of-the-world”. Is there really a difference? Maybe I’m being a bit slow on the uptake after another long, hard week…?
Pamela: “The language of community” is precisely what Brian Greene used in his article that made it so beautiful, dont you think?
Boris: I do :-).
Stephen: But I have rarely encountered scientists with such a simplistic view.
Boris: You are lucky man!
Stephen: Later you make the point that science can be “about religion” and mention Teilhard de Chardin. Certainly the two spheres interact but mostly it’s a case of religion having to adjust to new scientific discoveries. De Chardin’s attempt to rationalise evolution as ‘God’s plan’ was mis-guided. I remember trying to read it and getting bogged down in the amorphous nature of his ideas. I was relieved some years later to see his work thorough debunked by Peter Medawar.
Boris: Not, science can not be about religion, but religion can accept scientific results. This has been my point. I do not think that Chardin was a scientist. He, simply, offer a religious view on evolution.
Stephen, thanks for your comments! Can you, please, express your doubts about Sellars text more clearly?
Nice weekend to both of you! :-)
Hey Boris, not sure if I can shed much further light but…
You said: “I do not think that Chardin was a scientist. He, simply, offer a religious view on evolution.”
That may be your view but De Chardin certainly thought he was presenting a rigorous scientific viewpoint. Alas, his prose is dressed with countless scientific vagaries and Medawar did a fine job of bending him over a barrel for a well deserved spanking.
And can I express my doubts about Stellar’s text? Perhaps my response derives partly from my antipathy to the turgid prose so beloved of philosophers. Why can’t these people write plainly? I had a go at reading the Philosopy and the Scientific Image of Man but it’s written in a kind of linguistic treacle. I was exhausted by the effort after only a few paragraphs. To take just one of the more lucid points:
Thus, there is man as he appears to the theoretical physicist — a swirl of physical particles, forces, and fields. There is man as he appears to the biochemist, to the physiologist, to the behaviourist, to the social scientist; and all of these images are to be contrasted with man as he appears to himself in sophisticated common sense, the manifest image which even today contains most of what he knows about himself at the properly human level.
These seem to me wholly artificial divisions that lurk only within Sellar’s mind. Granted, some particle physicists may be divorced from reality (!) but most of them have real lives too and an appreciation of the wider aspects of human existence.
The contrast in the writing style between Sellar’s piece and Medawar’s is telling. Medawar is lucid, witty and rigorous. Sellar’s is so unlcear that I don’t know what to make of it.
That may be your view but De Chardin certainly thought he was presenting a rigorous scientific viewpoint. Alas, his prose is dressed with countless scientific vagaries and Medawar did a fine job of bending him over a barrel for a well deserved spanking.
Boris: Of course, I think Hegel accounted himself a Scientist or even a Genuine Scientist among blind physicists, chemists etc. :-).
Regarding Sellars, you are right philosophers (but not all… as Hume or Popper, and Dewey are enough lucid) love difficult language, but it is about taste :-). As Czech King and Roman Emperor Charles IV found Czech wine too bitter (compared with French) for the first time, but when he went on in drinking, he recognized the wine very tasty. I think we should return to philosophical questions and debates in our days to prevent oversimplification (as, for instance, Monod did) of our life and our world. However, I agree that it is better to be lucid in both the science and the philosophy.
Undoubtedly, most of scientis live normal life, but the Sellars text is not about this trviality, rather, it is challenging to reconcille two deeply different images of the man: the scientific (let me say Monod´s one or “Man as a Machine”) and the manifested, i.e. Man as a Person (personal reationships, personal faith, personal integrity).
Hey Boris, nice to hear from you. I am having most trouble getting to grips with the “different images” of man that you mention. I don’t see that this division that you posit really exists. I’m no expert on Monod’s writing, though have recently read Chance and Necessity, but I didn’t get the sense that he was arguing for a purely mechanistic view of human existence.
Perhaps you mean the gulf in perception between our molecular/cellular understanding of “how life works” (still extremely incomplete as all concerned would readily acknowledge) and the potential richness of human experience. Is that it? If so, that’s clearly an ongoing project…
Perhaps you mean the gulf in perception between our molecular/cellular understanding of “how life works” (still extremely incomplete as all concerned would readily acknowledge) and the potential richness of human experience. Is that it? If so, that’s clearly an ongoing project…
Boris: Hi Stephen! Yes, this is my point. For example, free will or the value of scientific image of the world for our lives. You can find a nice article in recent Science (vol 320, p 1025). Let me cite the words of E. N. Lorenz from that retrospective:
“We must wholeheartedly believe in free
will. If free will is a reality, we shall have
made the correct choice. If it is not, we
shall still not have made an incorrect
choice, because we shall not have made any
choice at all, not having a free will to do so."