Science

Standing stones

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There is more to a memory than its physical traces.  And despite the importance of libraries, a book recedes into oblivion until someone opens it.  The same applies to the data filed on the ‘world wide web’ – for just like our books, artworks or machines, and even the ancient stone circles, it represents ideas and memories that cannot be realised or revived without an act of recognition.  Indeed, as with the world itself, all such devices remain essentially oblivious to the fact that theirs is a reality of oblivion.  Together with the universe at large, they simply function as temporary storage devices for the information built into them, which scientists read as the laws of physics.  Nonetheless, this physical memory is active at its own level – because everything exists in active form.  Thus the physical world ‘behaves’ lawfully.  However, there are other sorts of activity that build into different realities – where information translates into knowledge, meanings and understandings that act both within and upon the laws of physics.

Of course anyone can set a stone rolling, and the physical world happens to resonate with our activities.  The computer is a more sophisticated example which appears to take on a life of its own; but in terms of that ethereal thing called awareness, or its ephemeral counterpart called intention, it is more like the rolling stone.  And of course, only physical forces can upend stones, though no one is in any doubt that these stones were put there intentionally. As such they represent a part of nature that is more than just natural.  They represent an intentional shaping of reality located in a nature that acts without intention or awareness.  They remind us of a fact that physics does not teach – of things we are apt to forget.  Meanwhile, scientists hang onto the idea that it is always possible for the standing stones to have fallen into place by chance.  But where in nature do we find the ‘thingness’ of intention and awareness except as resonant features of our beliefs, theories and ideas?

Mike Laidler

Needing to know

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Green is the colour of nature (photosynthesis) in reflecting the one colour it doesn’t need.

Things seen as causes of consciousness depend on an eventuality that is conspicuously more than those causes.

We know by the fact of knowing as much as of the fact of the facts known.

The fact that an objective world can be separated from our subjective world in an act of knowing owes to the fact of the subject, not the object.

It is a myth that science can explain the bigger picture by subtracting everything from the picture in order to identify an original cause.

Causality is a contextual reality in a context that now includes our line of sight.

The universe is incomplete in all its objective causes and states – which can now be seen as a prelude to the presence of an extensive subjective dimension.

Facts speak to us only insofar as we select them for that purpose.

Science remains a natural philosophy insofar as it doesn’t exist without the need to know – which an objective world doesn’t seem to share with us.

No fact exists on its own, especially a known fact – and the world alone is not enough to account for the fact of knowledge.

Science changes the world through the thinking by which the world became more than it was.

Every perceived fact is a fact made of perception.

It is not the facts that generate a truth or falsity, but our values – our vested interests held in a point of view.

It seems unthinkable that we need to think outside the world that ‘science has given us’ in order to see a world in which science represents but one form of thinking – in which thinking makes science what it is.

We become victims of our own prejudices in judging ourselves by the scientific standards we impose on the world.

Mike Laidler

Philosophy versus science

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There is no contest, not because they are doing different things, but because they are indispensably complimentary when it comes to the big project of trying to understand the essential nature of existence – and it would be naïve in the extreme to say that one can work without the other.

Stereotypically, science explores facts whilst philosophy explores ideas; however, there is no known fact or truth that is independent of its conceptualisation, and the ‘known evidence’ simply reiterates the problem of getting to know – for in order to make progress we need to constantly re-evaluate the evidence, which never was independent of our values. Indeed progress seems to require cohorts of dedicated scientists and philosophers who are passionately involved in their version of ‘the truth’.

Furthermore, values can prejudice our perceptions, including our approach towards knowledge and its ‘value-free’ content – since an understanding is not something to be recognised outside itself, nor does a fact discover its own relevance. But we don’t think of a scientific fact as beholding to its personal relevance for the discoverer, though it is impossible to detach the personal from any aspect of human endeavour. Yet it is assumed that a philosopher’s work can be entirely personal to them and of little or no wider significance until others happen to discover some meaning in it for themselves.

Mike Laidler

Elephants and Feathers

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My left leg and a light bulb don’t equal two of anything even though one plus one surely equals two – except there is always scope for an active imagination to find a connection. Indeed no branch of mathematics is without its imaginative dimension – especially when we take a mathematical equation to stand for an equalisation of differences, so to prove that mathematics not only shows how the universe works, it also shows how it is. However, reality is bigger than our explanations, which is why an active imagination remains an essential requirement for doing science. And it takes an active imagination to say that all things are really one thing because the differences disappear at atomic levels.

Therefore, whilst it is true that an elephant equals a feather because their differences disappear when comparing their behaviour under gravity, nevertheless such convergences in reality have nothing to tell us about the emergent divergences – whereby realities come to differ from one another. Meanwhile, our scientific equations rely on differences that can be equated. Yet even at an elementary level there remains a functional difference between energy and matter, otherwise we would have no basis to start looking for their equivalence. And despite all our proofs there are other phenomenal differences that pertain – because life is an unnecessary divergence within material reality, and consciousness marks a fundamental departure of a different sort, whilst the brain provides only secondary evidence of the existence of a thought.

Mike Laidler

Angry science

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Typically, there is more to a scientific fact than meets the eye and that extra something is the scientific theory.  Of course, all theories begin as speculative and sometimes emotive interpretations of observation.   But no fact becomes ‘a fact of science’ unless it is wrapped up in a theory.  And as it happens, there is nothing more theoretical than our attempts to explain the ‘beginning of the universe’.

Scientists are firstly human beings who relish peer support and it is only natural for them to defend the validity of their ‘pet’ theories by citing the extent of their confirmation.  But theories remain theoretical whilst the principle job of the scientist is, in fact, to seek disconfirmation – though it is not uncommon to see ‘dispassionate scientists’ becoming passionately attached to ‘their’ favoured theories.

For instance, a high-level dispute has recently broken out over the validity of the dominant theory of ‘The Big Bang and inflation’ as the explanation of the beginning of the universe.  Suffice it to say that scientific theories rise to dominance on the back of the amount of support they receive, especially when they are confirmed by observation.  But the observable facts are always open to revision and according to the late Karl Popper, who remains a respected authority on this topic, the weight of evidence is no guarantor of the truth.

In addition, this fracas has all the elements of a classic scientific dispute of the type predicted by the late Thomas Kuhn in his seminal book: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.  The proponents of the dominant theory of inflation are acting as though their take on the facts has the status of a ‘paradigm’ – in short, it overrules any facts to the contrary and in so doing stands for an accord that preserves its version of ‘normal science’ as the official view of reality.

But science depends on its revolutionaries – the problem being that it’s all theory at the end of the day; and the speculation remains fallible, especially when the theory is so broad-based in its ambitions as to claim the status of a ‘theory of everything’.

Mike Laidler

Further Reading: Hannah Osborne’s article on 13.5.17: ‘Hawking Pens Angry Letter about How the Universe Began’ https://www.google.co.uk/amp/www.techtimes.com/amp/articles/207265/20170515/stephen-hawking-32-other-scientists-pen-furious-letter-about-origin-of-universe-theory.htm

Is science never right?

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Is it true, as said, that ‘science is never right’?† Then is there something that goes beyond the fact of the ‘scientific facts’, calling into question their propriety, which might also call into question scientific findings in fields of study ranging from medicine and psychology to economics and climatology? Does it mean that there is more to knowledge and discovery than science can offer and that our scientific methodologies have their limits? Or does it mean that science is above reproach – because it has already taken account of its fallibilities and has dispensed with belief, especially the dogma of believing totally in itself? Might this allow scientific opinion to form the bedrock of opinion about matters touching upon explanations of fact, including the nature of existence; therefore we can be assured that non-scientific opinions are inferior – for what can those opinions amount to if even the rational sciences can’t profess to being absolutely right – ever? But is it possible that there is more to the universe than its scientific firmament, and who is qualified to say? Who is the impartial questioner of the facts? – not science, if science deems that those questions can be valid only when they are framed scientifically. 

If physicists are ‘never right’‡ then does it mean that governments are being approached to fund scientific projects on false pretexts, with promises of results that cannot be trusted? Does it mean that the famous Higgs boson is not necessarily real just because physicists say it is, or that it may be when they believe otherwise – because the evidence to contradict or redefine their findings is always round the corner? Are scientists claiming that the evidence tells them what to think, when it is their thinking that directs their attention to ‘the evidence’ and its selection? How important is the weight of evidence if it stands to be overturned by facts that hitherto weighed lightly in the minds of scientists? Perhaps explanation is but a technical way of expressing theories loaded with meanings that cannot be finalised – meanwhile discovery involves something more than a factual retrieval exercise. Perhaps it means that the real world is bigger than science and that science remains as it was at the outset – a methodological philosophy of nature. Perhaps ‘nature’, so called, amounts to a theory about something that is bigger than our grandest ideas about what it is – including the idea that it is a thing in existence definable by advantage of its observation.
Mike Laidler

† Interview with the scientist Brian Cox on BBC Radio 4 Today Programme, 16 June 2016. (Vide: ‘The science paradox’.)
‡ Per Professor Brian Cox speaking on ‘Start the Week’, BBC Radio 4, 19 December 2016. 

The Mind In Science

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Foreword: This article was first published as a letter in the January 2016 edition of The Psychologist: the monthly publication of the British Psychological Society; volume 29, no 1. (www.thepsychologist.org.uk)

I would like to add some philosophical observations to the recent contributions on the performance of psychological research.

There is a fundamental ‘uncertainty principle’ in psychology because the study of behaviour can change it, intentionally or not, whilst psychological research cannot control for the incalculable influences of its findings. In addition, psychology is open to the accusation of being subjectively invested in its subject matter to the detriment of ‘pure objectivity’ – after all, don’t we start with subjective premises like thoughts, feelings, memories, attitudes etc? And, despite the physical sciences being just as susceptible to ‘confirmation bias’ they seem better placed to get away with the trick of being ‘essentially objective’ – as if ‘objectivity’ is independent of the meaning we give to it. In fact, it may be fair to say that scientists are more like tinkerers than independent observers, and to make this point I take my cue from the works of Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper.

Science faces a continuous challenge to determine the facts, which, aside from the most general of interpretations, are rarely conclusive. Indeed, the ideal of science – that the facts will speak for themselves – is a complete myth. Furthermore, every fact is a fact in multiple contexts and its isolation does not necessarily reflect its true nature. Evidence, such as it is, is a construct of the questions we ask, and is limited by all those we fail to ask. In general terms, there is no evidence without a mind to be convinced, and it doesn’t matter how objective we strive to be, we cannot escape the fact that there would be no objectivity without a subjective backdrop; indeed objectivity exists as a selective version of subjectivity. It is no wonder then that as the evidence accumulates, we find ourselves overturning or re-interpreting facts of prior investigations that were hitherto taken to be conclusive.

In reality, science remains a community of tinkerers. We like to think that our discoveries bolster our claims to have mastered the facts and that we know what we are doing because, like Little Jack Horner, we have managed to pull the plum out of the pie. And though we might have good reasons for selecting our pie, our generalisations don’t mean that the facts have told us what to think, or that that the ‘hard evidence’ runs our research – indeed it remains very much the opposite. Meanwhile, we strive to remain in control of our selections, so ensuring that the results remain subject to our foibles – which is why, as Karl Popper pointed out, we can always find confirmations of our pet theories and still be wrong.

A cynic might conclude that reliability and replication thereby serve to promote a line of research at the expense of the wider truth. But what kind of truth is to be found outside research? It would seem that the answer lies in our assessments of validity, so long as we remember that those assessments remain no more than that – since no fact speaks for itself whilst it requires a theory to speak for it. Nevertheless, there is one conclusion we are entitled to draw on the basis of our privileged position as subjective entities in an objective universe – that no matter how research proceeds and performs in the future, it remains relative to the unique ‘contamination’ of the mind in science, and necessarily so, albeit, paradoxically, not necessarily sufficient to convince us.

Mike Laidler MBPsS
philosophyalive.co.uk

References
Kuhn, Thomas S (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press.
Popper, Karl R (1957). The Poverty of Historicism. Routledge & Kegan Paul

Factualities

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Explanation is not all it seems.  Explanations owe more to matters of language than fact.  They echo the voice of authority, partly borrowed from the facts, but crucially sponsored by the credibility of who says what.  For most purposes they serve as rarefied beliefs – vouching for the way things ‘must be’.  At the cutting edge they take the form of specialised communications between like-minded thinkers claiming to speak for the truth – assuring us that facts dispel uncertainties, and truth is furthered by the elimination of contradiction.  Contradiction showcases opposing statements of fact.  Either way, the facts are neither disposed to tell us anything, nor explain themselves.  In most cases the facts have been selected to suit the explanation, though their proponents gain rhetorical advantage in pretending it is the other way round.   Politicians are particularly adept at this – the fuzziness of language being the politician’s weapon of choice and first line of defence.

Scientific explanation tackles the problem by putting its explanations on trial – as if the facts will decide.  Scientists acknowledge known unknowns, but it is the unknown unknowns that weaken their conclusions, which harbour a persisting hiatus that outstrips all progress in working towards an ultimate truth.  The strange thing about scientific explanation is that it can seem right, because it works, yet still be wrong – being ‘right’ for the wrong reasons.  Nevertheless, for scientists, it is the explanation that counts, and they soldier on without knowing whether their findings will ever have a practical application.   In the meantime the whole of explanation comes down to tentative theories which remain fallible because of the ever vacant space for the unknown.  But the greater fallacy is due to our precepts of what we need and don’t need to know, given the fact of what we take to know already – prescribing that whereof we cannot know, thereof we must ignore.

Mike Laidler

True colours

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Understanding the world we live in is not a matter for science alone, because science remains embedded in the psychology and philosophy framing our understandings. Nor is nature being exclusively scientific and mathematical in accommodating our unscientific theories. And even our best theories can be found to dissolve into unknowns that are surrounded by beliefs and misunderstandings. Indeed an appropriate understanding might entail foregoing our aspirations to ‘certain knowledge’ as the epitome of truth – and the reason is simple, for our theories cannot capture a cosmos that is bigger than us by concentrating on an abstract, lifeless, insensate version of nature as the real fact of it.

Then what of reality? The fact that reality now contains the medium of perception and understanding shows that things have changed radically from the anaemic truth we look to and seek to promote as its objective explanation. In fact, matters of truth and reality become relevant only in the presence of an inquiring mind. So we begin by knowing that we live in a medium that is more than the material facts that know nothing, but then we pretend to demote that subjective reality in order to discover a greater truth about its origin in a nature that is devoid – in a reductive truth that we imagine might explain for us the fact of subjective existence, as if that truth could ever exist apart from the imagination.

So what can we understand about the extent of a universe that apparently expands to exceed itself in the evolution of appearances and understanding? Where might we begin? What can we prioritise as the factual basis for an explanation of existence? We like to think that we can begin at the beginning, but explanation is a secondary truth and the notion of ‘beginnings’ is as much of a psychological threshold. And whereas we learn from experience that a new beginning marks a change from what was, explanation tries to identify its own origins with the thing explained, as if there is no difference – as if explanation begins and ends with the facts referenced, as if it is the facts that have explained things to us. However, we learn from the fallibilities of our explanations that there is an unavoidable difference, that explanation marks a new beginning in a nature that has no cause to explain things to itself.

We have invented explanation as a means of explaining things to ourselves on the pretext that the facts are in charge; and by affiliating our retrospective observations with the idea of causality, we demonstrate to ourselves that our suppositions are real, that indeed we can eliminate ourselves from the equation by being objective – by allowing the facts to speak for themselves. In fact, explanation is a myth we hold onto in the belief that the facts can ‘explain things to us’ and show us, by what they are, what can and cannot happen next.   Thereby we deceive ourselves in believing that the facts select themselves and stand alone as concepts of necessity ‘leading us’ to an explanation of existence, including ourselves, in the pre-existence of causes, or nature, or God, even to the existence of alternative forms of existence which, by comparison to everything else we know, amount to forms of non-existence.

Paradoxically, in countenancing the possibility of a comparative reality of non-existence we find ourselves there – in a mind observable as no more than a brain generating motives, purposes, reasons and desires now existing as a part of nature. But we also know these qualities are neither typical of nor fundamental to that nature; yet in thinking about ourselves as a part of a nature containing thought we catch this erstwhile nature accomplishing something new and unnatural – as we think. Thereby, it becomes self-evident, as only it can, that we occupy a reality that can be one thing and another – a reality which challenges our ideas of existence and non-existence – since it is now apparent, in the fact of their emergence, that things now exist which cannot be identified as something else, in things as they were; but neither can they be written off as ‘immaterial’.

The nature of change shows us something remarkable about the nature of nature – that the ordinary is filled with the extraordinary, which we then deem to explain in terms of things as they were, especially when there is nothing else to see. However, change cannot be adequately explained by that means – otherwise we would be concluding that things hadn’t really changed. And this debate about fact and change goes to the heart of our ability to perceive nature and ourselves, bearing in mind that self-perception is not an original part of nature as we see it.   So it should be of no surprise to us, that this tangle of explanatory deficiencies has its roots in the certainties we attach to our perceptions in the everyday.

For instance, an inquiring mind might well wonder about the true nature of sound, light and colour – is it in the reality of the unperceived, or does it depend upon a convergence of possibilities within an emergent reality of mind – in the new nature of perception? And does our qualification to know as much not come from the facts of perception known only to us? Then are we not entitled to say that perception adds something to the physical world – that perception generates the sounds and colours in life, in ‘bringing them to life’; so might it also be true to say that without this living perception such ‘things’ exist in an incomplete state of reality, in a truth ‘for sure’, which is not the whole truth? Even so, why should this realisation endow us with an absolute knowledge of the yet wider reality, in the possibility of things to come? Is it not feasible that our truths could remain subject to endless conjecture for as long as we cannot conceive of the possibility that they too exist as a part of a much bigger truth, beyond explanation in terms of things as they are now?

Mike Laidler

The Sound of Silence

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Science is a reality proceeding to its completeness through the realisation of possibilities and the discovery of what is there. A prerequisite for this exercise is the capacity for knowing which the knower uniquely brings to the facts under study in a reality now extended by a new and different kind of realisation – one that takes place in the mind.

This process of completion began long before we invented science. Hearing a sound extends the reality from its physical state into a co-existing mental state. It is futile to argue whether the one or the other is the more real, they both add up a new reality – a reality that has already changed with the advent of its perception. We now know that we occupy both versions of this new reality – knowing that the physical waveform of sound is not everything to know, that perception brings sound to life and without that living perception the ‘sound’ remains in the silence of its physical state. Meanwhile the forests may fall and the mountains crumble without the full reality of sound having made its appearance.

Scientists know that the reality of knowledge is incomplete without an objective basis, yet tend to overlook the fact that the objective basis is incomplete within a wider reality that is known to obtain – that the world is incomplete in the oblivion of its physical completeness without the presence of a knowing realisation to change what happens next.

Mike Laidler