Chapter
2
WAS THE DISCOVERY OF SCIENCE
A FLUKE?
2.1 Discovering Science
"...venient
annis / Saecula seris quibus oceanus / Vincula rerum laxet: et ingens / Pateat
tellus: Typhis novos / Detegat orbes: nec sit terris / Ultima Thule."
(There will come
an age in some distant future when the Ocean shall loosen its shackles and the
Earth shall lie wide open; and Typhis [Jason's sailor-guide] shall discover a
new world. And no longer shall there be
an end to the Earth.)
During the 16th century, the European centrist view of the
world suddenly changed. Up to that time,
Europeans saw Earth predominantly as earth, that is, land as opposed to
water. Six-seventh's of Earth's surface
was inter-connected land; the remaining one-seventh was water, the stuff in
which the connections were made. This
belief was based on Ptolemaic-Christian cartographic dogma. Indeed, the prophet Esdras declared
Six
parts has thou dried up. (II Esd 6:42)
God's plan seemed obvious.
He had given man dominion over the rest of creation so it was fitting
that land, destined for life and the "creation of souls" should have
preponderance over water. The earthly
habitat was a single landmass, the Island
of Earth, or Orbis
Terrarum. It included Europe, Asia
and Africa, surrounded by a comparatively
small amount of water. However, within a
span of several decades, this viewpoint would flip-flop. Earth would become two-thirds connected ocean
and the remaining dirt would become the stuff in which the water connections
were made. Never before had man's conception
of his environment undergone such a dramatic metamorphosis.
The passage above depicts the dramatic shift in humanity's
perspective regarding the planet on which it lived, as a result of the
discoveries made by a few daring adventurers who plunged themselves into the
unknown during the age of exploration. A
few decades prior to men like Columbus and Magellan, the structure of the Earth
was believed to be hard, dry and small; afterwards, it was known to be wet,
round and large. And one could not go
back to the old notion. Once the
discovery was made, that was that! Further
investigation could only fill in the details of this essential fact. The explorations of these brave few and the
discoveries they made are completely analogous to the intellectual inquiries of
a few men and women and the fundamental laws describing the way nature behaved
that they uncovered.
Science, and in particular, physics, which is arguably the
most fundamental of all the sciences, is about discovery --- not invention! Doing physics is like sailing around
the Earth. A sailor-explorer pokes into every
nook and cranny around the globe, until ultimately every cartographic detail of
the finite-sized Earth is completely known.
Likewise, a physicist pokes into every nook and cranny of nature, trying
to ferret out all possible laws of physics.
Once they are known, the discovery of all subsequent knowledge can be
likened to finding a few more hidden peaks or valleys that simply add a little
more detail to an overall structure that no longer permits catastrophic
change. The fundamental laws of nature
are not invented. They are discovered
through inquiry. This is the difference
between science and technology. It is a
crucial distinction that the average person fails to appreciate. Magellan circumnavigated the globe and in the
process discovered that the Earth was round and mostly covered with water. He didn’t make it so. Likewise, Newton, investigating the motion of an apple
falling on Earth and the Moon falling around it, discovered the law of
universal gravitation. He didn’t make it
so.
The first accurate timepiece was invented after discovering
a regularity that nature exhibits. In
1583, Galileo Galilei was attending Sunday services when, numbed by the steady
drone of evening vespers, his gaze fell upon an oil lamp, hanging by a long
wire attached to the ceiling of a nave in the church, and swinging steadily
back and forth. The motion was like the
steady beating of the human pulse, which, in those days, was the device
that experimenters used to keep track of time.
Clearly, there is no such thing as a standard human pulse and the pulse
of any single individual can behave erratically (imagine the effect on a pulse
being monitored during some critical experiment when its owner happens to
observe that a strikingly beautiful, marginally-clad, member of the opposite
sex has just entered the room). Galileo
observed that the swing of a simple pendulum was isochronous, independent of
its amplitude --- and certainly independent of the spurious appearance of
semi-naked members of the opposite sex.
This simply means that as a pendulum swings to an fro, the time it takes
to complete one full cycle is the same that it took to complete the previous
one, even though each successive excursion from the vertical is a little less
than the one before. Inspired by this
observation, Galileo rushed home to experiment with simple pendula made with
strings and weights. Upon changing the
values of the weights and the lengths of string, he discovered that the weight
didn’t matter but the length of string did.
A pendulum=s
period increased according to the square root of its length, i.e., quadrupling
the length of string doubles its period.
This astonishing behavior is the result of the interplay between the
laws of gravity and motion about which Galileo knew nothing. But Galileo was not a fool. He put this discovery to good use in
constructing accurate clocks that would subsequently be used to investigate the
motion of objects rolling down inclined planes or falling from the Leaning
Tower of Pisa. Newton would then use the results of Galileo=s investigations to uncover
the mathematical laws that accurately described the behavior of the bodies in
motion that Galileo had observed.
Nowadays, there are thousands of ways to make a watch. Making a new watch is inventing. We know the laws of physics that govern their
behavior. We understand why certain
things execute periodic motion (like pendula) and why others do not (like
weights falling from the Leaning Tower of Pisa). Someone invented the watch that I wear. Its timing mechanism is based on the periodic
vibrations of a small crystal buried deep inside it. It cost $39.95 and it keeps time accurate to
about 1 second a month, much better than Galileo=s
simple pendulum clock. But I have no
doubt that eventually someone will come along and make one even better and
cheaper. That=s what invention is all about --- putting the
laws of physics to use in a way that hasn’t been done before.
The inventor might be aware of the underlying laws of
physics or he or she might not. No
matter. In either case, inventors
fabricate or make things, but they do not make new laws of physics. The laws of physics are what they are and the
task of scientist is to ferret them out.
The behavior of the universe is described by physical laws that
can be expressed in mathematical form --- Galileo=s
pendulum clock being a prime example. It
is an astonishing thing that the universe behaves in a way that can be
expressed in the language of mathematics.
It is perhaps the most profound mystery of our time. We do not know why the universe behaves this
way --- but we know that it does. This
fact is a very recent discovery. We only
stumbled upon it several hundred years ago, thanks mostly to a few men of
boundless curiosity and energy. Since
that time, the dominant operational paradigm that has guided us to all our
technological wonders has been the process of scientific exploration --- the
drive to find the mathematical laws that hold the key to the mysteries of the
universe of which we are a part. And in
that endeavor, science has been incredibly successful.
Like mapping the Earth, doing science is a cumulative
process. Once we discovered that the Earth was round, there was no going
back. The Earth is what it is. Once a fundamental physical law is
discovered, it, too, is what it is. You
don't un-discover it or prove it wrong!
New discoveries pile up on top of old ones. You might find out that a particular law is
incomplete or that there is a greater, underlying physical law from which it
can be derived. You might find out that
a particular law applies only under special circumstances, but in those
circumstances where it is known to apply, another law cannot be found that is
in conflict with it. Nor do you discover
a scientific result again. Archimedes= discovery of the principle
of buoyancy has never been discovered again, nor has it ever been undiscovered
or proven wrong. It is still
taught in physics classes pretty much in the same way that Archimedes, over
2000 years ago, originally set it forth.
It is true that today we can derive it today from more fundamental
“underlying” principles, but that doesn’t make Archimedes= discovery wrong. Au contraire --- it validates it even
more! Indeed, much of Greek science and
all of its mathematics are still as valid today as they ever were. The Greek society that launched the
scientific methodology has long since vanished from the face of the Earth but
its legacy is still alive.
2.2 Rules of the Game
Assume
that you know nothing about how the game of chess is played but you want to
learn. There is no book of rules, no
instruction manual and no one willing to spend the time to teach you how to
play. So you go to a chess match in
hopes that, by observing games being played, you might figure out how to play
it yourself. You sit down close to two
players engaged in a match C
and you watch closely what they do.
You observe many games and you assiduously record each move
that is made. You soon discover that,
even though the games are complex and rich in diversity, they are not totally
chaotic. Patterns emerge out of this
complexity because most random moves are not permissible. Moves are governed by certain rules that restrict
the possible evolutionary paths that a specific game can take. If there were no rules, patterns would not
emerge and chaos would reign. Further observation and searching for patterns
indicative of an underlying structure would prove futile.
But there are rules and the pieces must move in strict
abeyance to them. For example, you
quickly discover that the pawns, small pieces initially placed along the front
row when each game begins, can move one or two, but no more than two, spaces
forward on their first move. After that,
they are limited to one space forward.
Every so often they are moved one space diagonally forward, but only
when capturing an opponent=s
piece. It takes only a bit more effort
to learn that the two pieces known as rooks, or castles, initially placed at
the two opposite corners along the back row of the chess board can move along
either the row or column that passes through their current position, in any
direction and for as many spaces (or less) as are unoccupied. They cannot A
jump@ over any
piece that lies along their path of movement.
They can capture an opponent=s
piece only if there is a free path all the way to its position on the board.
You continue to uncover the ways in which the individual
pieces can move: bishops have the same freedom of movement as the rooks, only
their movement is restricted to the two diagonals that pass through their
current position; knights can move in L-shaped steps, two steps forward or
backward, right or left, followed by one step at right angles to the direction
of the initial steps --- and the knights are permitted to skip over pieces.
Eventually, you pretty well work out the permitted movements of all the
pieces. You finally learn that the game
ends when one player places the opponent=s
king in checkmate, a position from which the king cannot escape; no free
position exists on the board to which he can move to avoid capture.
This is how you A
learn@ the game of
chess, by slowly discovering the rules that govern its play. It might take you awhile to learn it this way
C and you might even
miss some of the rules. For example,
there is a move known as “Castling@
in which the king and Aking=s side@ rook may be switched and
placed adjacent to each other on the two free spaces that lie between them, but
such a move can be made only once per game, and only if the king or the rook
have not yet moved and only if the spaces between them are empty. You might have to observe many games before
seeing this particular move in action and you might have to observe many such
moves before you figure out its full set of restrictions. However, if you did not know of the existence
of this move, you could still play the game of chess with a more than an
adequate degree of proficiency.
The end result is that slowly but inexorably you learn all
the rules of the game. There are no more
to be discovered. Your apprenticeship is
over. There are unlimited numbers of
games that have not yet been played, subject only to the restriction that the
rules must be obeyed. There is no need
for despair; the wonderful complexity of the world of chess now lies before you
even though the satisfaction and joy that comes from the process of discovering
how the game is played is no longer an option for you.
This is close to the situation that scientists find
themselves in as we enter the 21st century. We pretty much know Athe rules of the game@ C i.e., the fundamental laws of physics that
describe the behavior of the matter and energy that make up the visible
universe. These laws have emerged by
meticulously observing the behavior of the things that constitute the universe
and exposing the rules that permit the occurrence of that behavior. Most of this painstaking work took place
explosively only within the past few centuries.
It was performed by a relatively small number of people who were so
driven by curiosity to unlock the mysteries of nature that nothing could stand
in their way to keep them from engaging in the newly emerging enterprise that
we now call “ … doing basic science.”
The fundamental laws are astonishingly few in number, yet they have
allowed a plethora of exceedingly complex structures to emerge --- structures
such as our Earth and the creatures that inhabit it. Each and every one of
these structures is made of the same identical building blocks --- nuclei and
atoms manufactured either by processes that take place inside stars or in
processes that took place during the genesis of the universe, itself. The multiplicity of the complex structures
that make up the universe are analogous to the multiplicity of games of chess
that can be played. The emergence of any structure must obey the rules of the
game. There are myriads of structures that never emerge in nature, even though
one could imagine them, as authors of science fiction frequently do. Just as
there are chess games that cannot be played involving moves that disobey the
rules, such imagined structures do not exist because they could only do so by
violating the known laws of physics.
Like the subtle “Castling” move in the game of chess, there most
assuredly are some subtle rules in nature that we do not know as we enter the
21st century, but their discovery is unlikely to have a big effect
on our understanding about the possible complex structures that can emerge
based on those rules that we already do know.
The claim that our knowledge of fundamental science is
almost complete is an astonishing claim to make. The past is littered with the
embarrassed corpses of those who made such a claim before. History teaches us the danger of making such
pronouncements. Nonetheless, throughout
this text, we will continue to argue that the process of “doing fundamental
science@ is quite
analogous to the process of uncovering the rules that govern the play of
chess. It is extremely probable that the
human species has recently crossed an important threshold: its future science
will center not so much on learning the rules of the game but increasingly on
how best to play it.
2.3 Science
- Fluke … or Inevitability?
Was the emergence
of the scientific enterprise a fluke or inevitability? Many, if not most, scientists think that it
was inevitable … that once the human species evolved, their discovery of the
scientific enterprise would soon follow.
The emergence of complex structure is so pervasive in the natural world
that the development of the complex mental structures necessary to do science
usually is taken as a given. It seems as
inevitable as the evolution of increasingly complex species shaped by natural
selection from those less fit to deal with the vagaries of a changing environment
or the development of nuclear weapons by societies who constantly war with
others for the limited natural resources of the Earth. Faced with such examples, scientists might be
forgiven for believing that what they do was their manifest destiny. Yet was the emergence of science preordained
or was it one of many possible intellectual enterprises that just
happened? Can we imagine an evolutionary
process that would lead to intelligent life forms that never engage in
the scientific enterprise? Alan Cromer argues convincingly in his book, Uncommon
Sense, that in fact this might be the case.
Cromer supports
this thesis by appeal to work of the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, who concludes,
on the basis of his studies of the mental development of children, that the
human brain is not endowed with preexisting mental structures. In other words, the ability to “do science”
is not “hard-wired” into the human brain. Instead, it learns structures
that progress through four stages of increasing complexity: the sensorimotor,
preoperational, concrete operational and the formal operational. Only those humans that reach the last stage
of mental development are ready to engage in the kind of complex mental
processing that characterizes mathematics and physics. Given this, Cromer argues that humans more
likely than not get trapped in circumstances that prevent them from reaching
this final stage of mental development.
They only achieve a breakthrough when the proper conditions are
satisfied.
The language,
concepts and mental constructs of any society evolve from its own history and
peculiar set of circumstances. Once
particular constructs become imbedded, that society will find itself limited in
its activities and the institutions that it creates. Engaging in the scientific enterprise
requires a high level of mental activity.
The individuals in a such a society must advance intellectually beyond
the ability to think in a purely egocentric fashion, that is, they must be able
to distinguish between an internal world of private thought and an external one
that exists apart from private thought.
Without such a differentiation, the purely internal world and the
external one are mixed together in a personal stew in which the ability to
think abstractly is irretrievably lost.
Perceptions of the
external world can never be anything more than a mere representation that
world. They are not identical to
it. Science is based on the ability to
think in an abstract way, the ability to represent external things and events
by symbols and to be able to manipulate those symbols as a way of describing
the behavior of the external world. But
it also requires the ability to realize that the real world might behave
differently than does its symbolic representation. The real, external world is
under no obligation to pay attention to what those abstract symbolic
manipulations have to say about it. Most
primitive societies never developed cultures that opened an avenue to such
abstract thinking.
Could the emergence
of science really be a fluke? Could its appearance among primitive societies be
almost universally inhibited by the prior emergence of some other way of
thinking? The modern educated person
nominally attains the final Piagetian stage of development by adolescence. This stage is characterized by the ability,
absent during earlier stages of development, to solve problems, deal with
hypothetical questions, engage in several concrete operations simultaneously,
theorize, etc. But even in this stage,
an individual doesn’t distinguish ideas from external reality. Adolescents can be so overwhelmed by the
apparent power of their thoughts that they believe that their thoughts have a
reality simply because they think them.
When humans first reached this stage of cognitive ability about 10,000
years ago, new ideas hit with such an impact that they were considered to be
divine revelations for they had never occurred before and no one knew where
they came from. They were believed to be messages from a supernatural being.
How else could one
explain the apparent regular motion of the Sun, Moon, stars and planets --- the
regularity of the seasons, rainfall, night and day --- the whole panoply of
natural phenomena that cried out for explanation. What more natural expression of egocentric
thought processing than to postulate the existence of a supernatural being with
human characteristics that fashioned the world and the things in it. Thus, when the stage of formal thought was
first breached by primitive societies, the supernatural vessel was already in
place, fully vested with an unlimited supply of power, intelligence and wisdom
that could be invoked to explain any mysteries that otherwise could not be
easily understood.
How could any
members of a primitive society that had adopted such a limiting mode of thought
develop the capability of engaging in the scientific enterprise? Clearly, certain prerequisites had to be in
place. In order to illuminate what they
might be, Cromer examines two cultures that evolved at about the same time in
reasonably close proximity --- the ancient Israelites and the early
Greeks. One culture never established an
environment that encouraged its members to think abstractly --- the other
somehow did. One culture became trapped
in an egocentric thought-processing mode --- the other managed to free itself
from such shackles and developed a mode of thought that would ultimately lead to
the scientific enterprise, a prize that lay in a darkened room behind a closed
door that stood a very good chance of never being opened.
2.4 The Roots of Science
Free inquiry is one
of the cornerstones of science. A
society whose individuals are free or, even better, encouraged to investigate
the nature of their surroundings, ask questions and debate issues about what
they observe is a society in which science stands a good chance of being
discovered. Free inquiry is not an option in societies ruled by an authority
that acts as a source, or serves as a conduit to a proclaimed source, of
non-debatable truth, which it dispenses to an unquestioning citizenry.
Societies in which free enquiry is suppressed are riddled with events that defy
explanation. Self-inconsistencies are the rule rather than the exception. The scientific enterprise is based on a
search for rules that explain or describe one’s surroundings in a
self-consistent way. Science cannot emerge in a society that depends on an
authority for its truths. Rules that
lead to self-consistent explanations of events will never emerge in such a
society. Any scientific theory must be
internally self-consistent if it is to have any hope of generating predictions
about the behavior of phenomena that do not diverge from behavior that is
actually observed. Internally inconsistent theories are given little credence
by societies that value truth based on inquiry and debate. Such theories are
quickly discarded as valueless. Many circumstances must be in place if science
is to emerge in a given culture, but foremost among them, are mores that
encourage free inquiry and reject authoritarian principles riddled with
internal contradictions.
The road to science
opened for the early Greeks but remained closed to the ancient Israelites even
though those two cultures had similar times and places of origin. Why? Cromer argues that the success of the Greeks
can be traced to their adoption of a polytheistic culture whose gods suffered
human shortcomings while the failure of the Israelites had its roots in the monotheistic,
authoritarian culture that they adopted. How did this happen?
The culture of the
Israelites has its roots in ancient Egypt. In 1372, Amenhotep IV succeeded his father as
Pharaoh of Egypt. He recognized only one
god, the sun god Aton, and he believed that he was Aton=s son, from whom he derived supernatural power. He changed his name from Amenhotep (satisfying
to Amon, the dynastic god of the pharaohs) to Akhenaten (pleasing to
Aton) and he suppressed the worship of all the other, traditional Egyptian
gods. After his death, Egypt recovered
from this temporary aberration and re-established its traditional polytheistic
religion. It is likely that Akhenaten’s
monotheism influenced the Hebrews that fled Egypt during the century that
followed his rule. It=s even more likely that both Akhenaten and Moses had been influenced by
the practice of monolatry
that was widespread among the many nomadic tribes that were scattered
throughout the surrounding desert.
Most of the myths
that were later assembled by Hebrew scholars would ultimately become the Greek
version of the Old Testament. The myths stemmed from a single event in the life
of these immigrant Israelites: the conquest of Canaan. The god, Yahweh, adopted these Israelites. He
was a jealous god whose pronouncements, passed down to his people through
Hebrew prophets, led them to become ever more isolated than they already were:
When Yahweh your
god has brought you into the country, which you are going to make your own
(Cannan), many nations will fall before you...
You must put them under the curse of destruction. You must not intermarry with them; you must
not give a daughter of yours to a son of theirs, or take a daughter of theirs
for a son of yours, for your son would be seduced from following me into
serving other gods; the wrath of Yahweh would blaze out against you and he
would instantly destroy you. (Deut 7:1-4)
It is difficult to
imagine that a society that willingly obeys such pronouncements is ever likely
to embrace free enquiry and debate as the basis of a way of life. Science cannot exist in isolation. As we shall soon see, western science burst
forth during the renaissance. New ways
of thinking took root. The printing
press was invented and the ideas of many suddenly became available to
anyone. The advance of knowledge
accelerated rapidly as new ideas that developed in one culture rapidly
cross-fertilized old ideas in another.
Isaac Newton arguably did more than other human being to change the way
in which people viewed the world. He is
commonly portrayed as having done his greatest work in total isolation from
others, but he never would have been able to do so had he not have had access
to prior exposure to the great work of his predecessors and to the printed
words that gave permanent record to their thoughts. A society that totally
isolates itself from exposure to others is a society that is doomed to
stagnate. By accepting the
pronouncements of Yahweh, this is the path the Israelites chose to take.
Such a society has opted
for rule by authority rather than by reason. Yahweh would regulate its civil
affairs by religious law passed down though chosen prophets:
These
are the words which Moses addressed to all Israel
beyond the Jordan,
in the desert, in the Arabah facing Suph...
It was the fortieth year, on the first day of the eleventh month, that
Moses told the Israelites everything that Yahweh had ordered him to tell them.
... There, in Moab
beyond the Jordan,
Moses resolved to expound this Law.
These laws are not
to be questioned --- not to be debated; there is no room for a “scientific
revolution.”
Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam are all monotheistic religions based on the teachings
of prophets. They agree that chosen
prophets can directly know the mind of God but they disagree on which prophets
to believe. Since there is no rational
way to decide, conflict that drives monotheistic societies towards
irrationality and intolerance is inevitable.
Open, rational discourse between practitioners of the different religions
is useless. Open, rational inquiry among
members of a particular religion is discouraged for fear of weakening the
foundation on which the religion is based.
The emergence of science stands little chance in such environments. Ask
Giordano Bruno or Galileo what happens to those who voice opinions that
threaten the foundation of a society controlled by religious dogma.
The early Greeks
chose a different route. Homer’s works of fiction, the magnificent Iliad
and the Odyssey, provide the earliest description that we have of
ancient Greek culture. The Iliad and the Odyssey were assembled
from epic poems first sung by bards, but they are far more consistent than they
would be if they were mere assemblies written by a number of authors. They are unified works, each with a
beginning, middle and end. The
characters have personalities. There are
scenes that shift from the Achaeans to the Trojans to the Olympians, with
corresponding changes of mood and setting.
There are plots and subplots.
They are the oldest works of Western literature.
In 1876, the
archaeologist, Heinrich Schliemann, unearthed evidence of a highly evolved,
late Bronze Age civilization that flourished at Mycenae from 1400 to 1200 B.C.E., eventually
vanishing by 1100 B.C.E. Their language
was written in a script called Linear B that was a precursor of the Greek
language. Documents in Linear B
contained the names Zeus, Here, Poseidon, Hermes, Athena, and Artemis --- all
gods and goddesses of the classical Greek period, yet recorded some 700 years
before their colorful exploits were written about in the Iliad and Odyssey.
In the Iliad,
Agamemnon, the king of Mycenae, leads a Greek
expedition to Troy,
which he lays under siege for ten years, eventually destroying it through the
ruse of the Trojan horse. Is this story
myth or fact? There is no doubt that the
Iliad is fiction, but did the Trojan War actually take place? Was a city called Troy destroyed and plundered by the
Mycenaens? Schliemann=s work proves that Mycenae was a great kingdom around 1250 B.C.E., but
was it ever ruled by an Agamemnon who led a thousand black ships from the
shores of Greece to those of Turkey? A
ruin of a second-millennium city lies in northwest Turkey
that is consistent with the suspected site of Troy.
But its reality is irrelevant to our study here. The archaeological evidence is consistent
with Homer. Wars were rampant during
that era all along the shores of the eastern Mediterranean
and it=s likely that one of them was the Trojan
War. Homer=s
account is about a real period that took place in Western history.
The Olympian gods
described by Homer existed centuries before, but Homer had the final say about
who they were, just as the editors of the Old Testament had the final say about
the Israelite=s Yahweh.
But Homer was a poet --- not a prophet.
His religion is a joyous one, without sin or piety. Yahweh is the projection of the absolute patriarch,
surrounded by subjects that obey his will, but Zeus is a loving family man,
surrounded by a quarrelsome family, whose meetings reflect the openness of
Greek society.
Homer=s gods have human characteristics and they are subject to
limitations. They amuse themselves by
stirring up the affairs of humans but they do not have unlimited power to do
whatever they might like. They are bound
by natural law. Homer makes this quite
explicit in the response that one god gives another when asked for a favor:
I shall
gladly do what you ask of me, if I can and it is not impossible. (Iliad, xiv, p.262)
To the egocentric
mind, nothing is impossible. As Jesus
put it:
In truth I
tell you, if your faith is the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this
mountain, ‘Move from here to there’, and it will move, nothing will be
impossible for you. (Matt. 17:20)
Realizing that some
things are impossible is a basic tenet of science. Such a realization can only originate in a
mind that has freed itself from belief in omnipotence. If Homer were alive today, he would most
certainly take issue with modern authors who create stories in which gods, or
humans, perform such remarkable feats as: (i) traveling instantaneously from
here to there, and in doing so, exceed the fundamental limit of the speed of
light; (ii) reviving the dead; (iii) traveling back in time, etc. Homers gods do none of these things for such
deeds fly in the face of natural law --- to which all creatures, gods and
humans alike, are inextricably bound.
Unlike the Old
Testament that describes an ancient Israelite society whose affairs were directed
by Yahweh, the Iliad and Odyssey tell us of a Greek society whose
affairs were subjected to open debate in public assembly. In such assemblies, the lowliest subject
could make his position known, even if it refuted the position of an authority. Consider, for example, the comment delivered
by the lowly Thersites (Athe ugliest man that had come to Ilium@) during an assembly in which Agamemnon is
about to launch the army into war:
My
lord, he shouted at the King in his loud and nagging way, what is your trouble
now? What more do you want? Your huts are full of bronze and ... you have plenty of the choicest women in
them, too. Maybe you are short of gold
... or one more girl to sleep with and to make your private property, though it
ill becomes you as our general to lead the army into trouble through such
practices. (Iliad ii, p. 46).
Clearly, open
questioning and argument, even if its source was the lowest ranking member of
society, was to be revered even more than the authority of the king if the
argument was deemed persuasive enough by the majority of the assembly=s constituents. This institution
of free debate set ancient Greece
above all other nations. The key
ingredients of any open debate are competition, argument, persuasion, and
peer review --- all necessary prerequisites for objectivity and,
ultimately, science.
Profound
inconsistencies that stem from the belief that the natural world is subject to
the domain of an omnipotent god permeate the Hebrew Old Testament. For example,
misfortune commonly befalls a good man, but how can an omnipotent god allow
such a thing to happen? No such
inconsistency afflicts the Iliad and Odyssey. Homer’s many Greek gods suffer human
shortcomings and it is therefore comprehensible how misfortune can befall a
good man. Consider the council, which
the goddess Athena gives to the Ares, the god of war, when he flies into a rage
upon learning that his human son, Aescalaphus has been killed in battle:
Take
my advice then, and set aside all thoughts of avenging your son. Many a finer and stronger man than he has
been killed before now and will be killed hereafter. We (the gods) can hardly be expected to keep
our eyes on the pedigree of every man on earth. (Iliad xv, p. 275)
All of the Greek gods
have human frailty. They are not
omnipotent. Evil can befall a
good man --- and it is understandable how such a thing can happen.
A prophet did not
tell the Greeks that a god demanded that they live in isolation from others,
nor did they choose to do so. The Greeks built a society that was based on the
sea, the dominant backdrop of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Theirs
was a maritime economy. Greek merchants sailed far and wide. They traded as far
west as the Pillars of Hercules at the entrance to the Mediterranean and as far
east as Scythia on the Black Sea. Greek colonies dotted the islands and coastal
regions of Turkey, North Africa, Sicily and Italy. Anyone seeking adventure or fleeing
persecution merely had to jump on board a Greek ship and sail to another colony
where his past was not known but he could speak the language, merge with the
local culture and add a little of his own to it. Indeed, in the 6th century B.C.E.,
the brilliant Pythagoras would be forced from his native Samos, off the coast of
Turkey, to live on Croton, a
Greek colony off the coast of southern Italy. There he would establish the
Pythagorean cult that developed much of our current mathematics. The sea was a road to freedom, adventure,
wealth and knowledge --- all factors that contribute to the emergence of
science.
A seafaring economy
depends on shipbuilding --- and building ships requires the ability to think
using logical structures. This was
perhaps even more of a requirement for those that did not participate in ship
design or building but actually went out to sea in them! There could be no prophets on board a Greek
ship for a failure to think quickly and logically when circumstances required
would have immediate and disastrous consequences. Consider Odysseus= sailors about to encounter Scylla and Charybdis --- what to do? No time to pray to an omnipotent god here.
Some seafarers and traders grew quite
prosperous. A wealthy merchant class emerged that could afford to educate its
children. These children were not required to herd sheep all night rendering
them too sleepy during the day to have any hope of acquiring any sort of
knowledge. The importance of this circumstance cannot be
overstated. It led to a teaching
profession. Teachers, such as the famous
Protagoras of Plato’s dialogues, traveled from place to place, gathering
knowledge, giving talks and conducting seminars. They signed on as tutors for the children of
the wealthy wherever their services were desired.
In short, we can
identify a number of critical factors that had to be in place for the Greeks to
develop the process of rational, objective thought processing which was a
necessary precursor to the development of science:
·
assembly --- affairs conducted by debate and
persuasion among peers.
·
maritime economy --- cross-fertilization of
cultures prevented isolation and parochialism.
·
widespread Greek-speaking world --- facilitated
exchange of culture and ideas.
·
wealthy class --- allowed free time for
education which led to teachers.
·
Iliad and the Odyssey --- literary
works that promoted creativity and rational thinking.
·
literary religion --- many gods with limited
power --- no prophets that passed down non-debatable truths from an omnipotent
god.
·
stability --- persistence of these factors for
1000 years.
All these factors
came together in one great civilization, that of ancient Greece. It was
fortuitous. It did not happen
twice. Moreover, had the Persians
defeated Alexander at the battle of Issus (333 B.C.), Europe might have become “Orientalized”
rather than Asia becoming “Hellenized.” Some prophetic religion out of Palestine might have spread through Europe
400 years before Christianity. We might
have gotten Socrates but most assuredly we would have lost Euclid.
But Alexander did
win the battle of Issus and eighteen months later founded Alexandria, which became the center of Greek
learning for 700 years. Mathematics and
astronomy advanced to heights not seen again for another 1300 years! Central to these achievements was the discovery
and development of deductive reasoning and a rudimentary science during the 6th
and 2nd centuries B.C.E.
Fortunately, this science and mathematics were translated into Hindu and
Arabic where they were preserved for centuries until being rediscovered by
those first few Western scholars that awakened from centuries of the
self-inflicted sleep that permeated all of Europe
until the Renaissance. It is to this
astonishing period in history that we now turn our attention.
Review Questions:
1.
Why does your text argue that science is a process of
discovery rather than invention? State
why you agree or disagree with this proposition.
2.
Was the pendulum clock discovered or invented? How?
3.
Were watches discovered or invented?
4.
How is “learning how to play chess” like “discovering
the laws of science?” State why you
agree or disagree with this analogy.
5.
The Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget claims that humans
progress through four stages of mental development. Describe the essential features of the 4th
stage.
6.
Why does Alan Cromer argue that a person must have
reached Piaget’s 4th stage of mental development in order to engage
in the process of “doing science?”
7.
Why would a primitive society believe in the existence
of a supernatural being or power that fashioned the cosmos and controls the way
it works?
8.
Why does Cromer pick the ancient Greeks and Israelites
circa 1200 B.C.E. in order to illuminate those factors that lead to the
emergence of the scientific enterprise?
9.
What would you say is the essential feature that must
be in place for a society to have some of its members develop the process of
“doing science?”
10.
Why would the adoption of a monotheistic religion based
on the teaching of prophets who claim to know the mind of god inhibit the
emergence of science?
11.
What was the likely origin of monotheism in the ancient
Israelite society?
12.
Why did the ancient Israelites become such an isolated
culture?
13.
What are some of the differences between the Hebrew Old
Testament and Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey?
14.
How does the polytheism of the early Greeks differ from
the monotheism practiced by the ancient Israelites?
15.
What is the distinguishing feature between the many
Olympian gods of the Greeks and the single god, Yahweh, of the ancient
Israelites that set the stage for the beginnings of western science?
16.
How does the polytheistic religion of the ancient
Greeks explain the problem of “how evil can befall a good man?”
17.
How did the emergence of a wealthy merchant class in
early Greek society help set up an environment that would ultimately lead to
the beginnings of science?
18.
List those factors that helped contribute to the
beginnings of western science.
Conceptual
Questions:
- Newton’s 2nd
law of motion can be stated mathematically as F = ma (F
is the net force that acts on a body of mass m and a is its
resultant acceleration). Would you
say that Newton
discovered or invented this law?
- Do you
think it true that the ancient Israelite culture suppressed free inquiry
and debate? If so, why? If not, why not?
- One of
the most basic results of the theory of relativity is that no massive
object can travel faster than the speed of light. Do you think that this is really
impossible --- or might scientists of the future discover some way to do
it? Are all things possible?
- Do you
think that modern science is based on the process of open assembly and
debate --- much like that practiced by the early Greeks in Homer’s Iliad
and Odyssey? How do you think
scientific issues are decided today?
- Do you
believe that those factors that ancient Greeks established that led to the
beginnings of western science are universally necessary? If not --- which ones could be omitted
and why? Are there any more that
are needed that you can think of?
1000 - Word Essays:
1.
The Salt Lake Tribune published an article on October
21, 1999 whose headline caption read: BYU Faculty More Willing to Value
Faith Over Inquiry. The article
quoted results of a study that was a part of Baylor University’s
“Faith and Learning Project” launched in 1995, which looked at how faculty at
five church-affiliated universities make sense of their religious
orientation. The study found that less
than one-third of BYU faculty agrees that they should have unrestricted freedom
to explore or write about academic issues that question or challenge church doctrine.
In contrast, 70 percent of Baylor faculty and 75 percent of Notre Dame faculty
agree that they should be free to support any idea, even if it questions tenets
of faith. Discuss whether or not academics at church affiliated universities
should have unlimited freedom to investigate, discuss and publish any idea that
might undermine the basic religious foundation of the affiliated church. In particular, comment on how your position,
if widely supported, might affect the future course of the scientific
enterprise.
2.
Do you think it likely that all societies have as a
common thread in their path of emergence from a primitive state, a stage in
which they hypothesize the existence of a supernatural being or power in order
to explain things that are otherwise inexplicable? Support your position with appropriate
references.
3.
Sam Brownback, a Republican senator from Kansas, made the
following statement in an editorial in the New York Times on August 9,2000 in
response to the selection by Al Gore, the Democratic Presidential nominee, of
Joseph Lieberman as his Vice-Presidential running mate:
“… In a time when families of all faiths feel their
values are under attack, Senator Lieberman and I are part of a political
alliance that is quite logically emerging between theologically orthodox
Christians and Jews. Certainly, there
are significant differences in outlook.
But there is one sense where these two groups clearly and strongly
agree: We share a belief in Universal Truths, in a moral order, ordained
by God, and discovered, not created, by man …”
A Universal Truth is a thing
that is true at every place and at all times, past, present and future,
throughout the universe. Do you agree
that there is such a thing as a Universal Truth? Do you think that practitioners of Judaism
and Christianity can agree on what they are?
Do you think that scientists can agree on what they consider to be
Universal Truths? How would either of
these groups go about deciding what is or is not universally true?
Click here to go back:
Monolatry is the worship by a tribe of a single god who supposedly has taken
the grateful tribe in question under its protection. The existence of other gods protecting other
tribes is taken for granted. This
practice goes back to the ancient Babylonians of 3000 BC and perhaps further
back than that.
Nowadays, most of our children achieve this sleepy, daytime state by herding
photons from the TV all night.