Motus Mentis

I’ve been spending a lot of time around philosophers lately, and I’ve noticed something.

Before I begin, let me say, for purposes of full disclosure, that although I have had a lifelong interest in philosophy, I was raised by two scientists. My mother is a physical anthropologist, and my father, an immunologist, did the research that led to the eradication of rH hemolytic disease. He was in fact recently considered for the Nobel Prize.

So, despite my deep and genuine admiration (envy, even, on occasion) for the purity and discipline of the trained philosophical mind, sometimes I can feel a bit, shall we say, conflicted. And although what we now call science (a relatively recent arrival) was, in its infancy, known as “natural philosophy”, science and philosophy are two different things entirely.

Here are some definitions of “philosophy”, from the Merriam-Webster online dictionary:

• a discipline comprising as its core logic, aesthetics, ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology
• pursuit of wisdom
• a search for a general understanding of values and reality by chiefly speculative rather than observational means
• an analysis of the grounds of and concepts expressing fundamental beliefs

Here’s what we get for “science”:

• knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method
• such knowledge or such a system of knowledge concerned with the physical world and its phenomena

It is plain to see that science and philosophy are plowing separate furrows. They both ask questions, and seek answers, but they ask, generally, rather different questions, and they have very different ways of arriving at answers. They also attract different sorts of minds.

Things get interesting when the two bailiwicks overlap, or when scientists start “chatting” with philosophers. We see from the definition above that science is “concerned with the physical world and its phenomena.” There is a bit of a dispute, however about where this frontier is to be drawn, and occasionally armed conflict flares up. Both groups wish, it seems, to expand their Lebensraum, and the philosophers, who in their heyday laid claim to vast tracts of wilderness, now see the smoke rising from hostile camps all about their borders.

The problem is that troublesome bit about the “physical world”. The scientists, who began their program massively ignorant not only about the workings of the physical world, but also about what might even be possible for them to learn, have found again and again, to their delighted surprise, that Nature is orderly, comprehensible, lawful, and willing to share its secrets. Emboldened by their success, they have concluded that there is no territory that lies beyond their grasp. In other words, “the physical world and its phenomena” has become, simply, everything.

It is important to keep in mind, though, how scientific inquiry works. We observe, we guess, we predict, we test. In order for the territorial expansion to proceed as rapidly as possible, we must be sensitive to the limitations of the terrain – if we encounter an obstacle, we must be willing to choose a new line of attack. To unpack the metaphor, this means that an optimal scientific inquiry, however bold, however inspired, must always defer to the empirical results. What’s more, we can never become complacent about our hold on conquered territory, and we cannot even begin to be confident of our possessions until supply lines are brought in from the rear, garrisons established, and the landscape explored and mapped. They can never have complete certainty – scientists are happy to say “we just don’t know” – but what scientists have in spades, and will have as long as they roll like Guderian over every horizon, is optimism.

The philosophers, on the other hand, quite rightly see that the scientists are getting ahead of themselves. It is their job, after all, to think about these things, rather than just scrabbling in the dirt looking for shiny baubles. In the philosopher’s view the scientists, besotted with their winnings in the slag and dross of the material world, have deluded themselves that they can conquer the Moon by climbing trees.

Philosophers have a very different set of tools and methods. Philosophy does not seek, except in passing, to classify and assort the contingent mess of the world, but strives rather to look past the clutter to see not just what is, but what can, must, and ought to be. The philosopher’s instrument is not the microscope or the particle accelerator, but Reason. And this has a very important implication: if your Reason can’t answer the question, you’re done. There will be no further assistance – no forthcoming observation or experiment that might help things along. If you are going to be a success as a philosopher, you’d jolly well better have the answers. And that’s good, because we need those questions answered, and frankly, there are a lot of places science is just never going to go. Ethics, for example, is a notorious weak spot.

But in some of these disputed hinterlands – Mind, for example – the action can get rather heated. The scientists, of course, are perfectly content to claim these areas as well, just like almost everything else. The philosophers insist they are wasting their time – the territory might be overrun, but never subdued. Phooey, say the scientists. Just wait. You’ll see.

So this is what I’ve noticed: scientists assume, arrogantly and quite possibly wrongly, that they are going to turn the entire world – everything there is – into Festung Wissenschaften. But in the meanwhile, they happily admit there is plenty they just don’t know. For philosophers, however, “Beats me!” is simply not acceptable, and you will never hear them say it. They’ll just tell you how things are, and then it’s up to you to prove them wrong.

Who’s right? Beats me.