{"id":874,"date":"2015-01-18T14:49:26","date_gmt":"2015-01-18T12:49:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/filosofille.wordpress.com\/?p=874"},"modified":"2026-05-12T09:12:44","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T08:12:44","slug":"qa-52-the-real-world-keeps-us-honest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/qa-52-the-real-world-keeps-us-honest\/","title":{"rendered":"QA 52. The real world keeps us honest"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"standard<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Still thinking about the need for a new mode of thinking… What is the proper relation between philosophy and science now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last year<\/a>, citing Stephen (Philosophy-is-Dead) Hawking and Martin Heidegger, I wrote about \u201cthe end of philosophy\u201d in the triumph of science. Given the massive productivity of scientific theory and technology and a world in turmoil, social-order thinking put its faith in scientific standards of evidence, objectivity and rationality. But it\u2019s no good. Science can\u2019t tell us about the meaning of life, precisely because meaning belongs to another order of thought: call it \u201cethics\u201d or \u201cwisdom\u201d. Pascal knew that the heart has its reasons, but we don\u2019t give the heart much credit. And so it seems that the new task for thinking is to return to the beginnings of philosophy, to inquire into the nature of subjectivity and how to live well with others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With this division of labour, I effectively left science to its own devices and carried on with my own business. (After all, it is hard to relate to someone who gloats about leaving you in the dust.) Happily, it seems that my judgement was premature. A reconciliation, under new terms, may be on the cards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

\"turok-massey-2012\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve just read Neil Turok\u2019s From Quantum to Cosmos: The Universe Within<\/em> (Faber, 2012). Previously a colleague of Hawking\u2019s at the Cambridge University department of applied mathematics and theoretical physics, Turok now directs the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada.* The book highlights the historical advances in physics that come together in the equation-of-everything above, told in a way that illuminates how revolutionary those advances have been. Physicists have shown remarkable courage and imagination by abandoning old certainties and cherished beliefs \u00ad\u2013 learning to think differently \u2013 in the face of new evidence, new predictions, new implications and new ideas from surprising places.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is also clear that Turok, like Einstein, knows science to be a profoundly human and social endeavour. He admires the 18th-century Scottish Enlightenment, in particular the philosopher David Hume and his \u201cprofoundly democratic idea that knowledge is based on capacities which everyone shares\u201d:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our ability to do science is rooted in our relationship with the universe, our nature as living beings. Our feelings and instincts are far more profound than our ideas. Our ideas allow us to imagine many things, but they can be unreliable, misguided, or misleading. It is the real world that keeps us honest. (Turok, 14)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

That could be said just as well of our ability to do philosophy, and the practices that I\u2019m busy with. As could this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We each have an internal model of the world, which we are always comparing against our perceptions\u2026 a selective representation designed to capture reality\u2019s most essential elements\u2026 and predict their behaviour. In receiving data from our senses, what we notice are the surprises \u2013 the discrepancies between our experiences and the predictions of our internal model, which force us to correct it. (Turok, 15)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

As could this (although “imaginary” needs some unpacking):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mathematicians are often viewed as unworldly, working in a dreamed-up, artificial setting. But quantum physics teaches us that, in a very real sense<\/em>, we all live in an imaginary reality. (Turok, 95)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The leading edge of theoretical physics and philosophy\u2019s \u201cnew task for thinking\u201d thus seem to share some common ground. That\u2019s exciting. It opens the possibility of a new relationship and the question of what that relationship may be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"einstein<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve got a few hunches. One is that the division of labour between the nature of things and the meaning of life is still necessary and  useful. Philosophy isn\u2019t going to catch up to physics (witness lame attempts by popular thought to appropriate scientific concepts and findings), and science can\u2019t tell us why and how our lives matter. Nor can science justify the ethical ramifications of its own work. A new field of relationship might allow each discipline to learn from the other, to support and challenge each other, and to sharpen the contradictions between them \u2013 conceivably and hopefully to the benefit of all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wonder how critical philosophy could become more robust and productive. If our social and political thought can\u2019t depend on scientific methods of objective observation, prediction and testing, and if the Western philosophical tradition is also in question, how can we proceed? By what means? What would count as evidence? From science\u2019s side, what are the implications of the \u201cobserver effect\u201d in physics for our understanding of the relationship between consciousness and matter? My hunch here is that relativity and relationship may be connected in really interesting ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I think that, following Emmanuel Levinas\u2019s analysis of the priority of ethics over ontology, we might have to take Hume\u2019s \u201cis-ought\u201d problem and turn it on its head. Hume points out that no description of \u201cwhat is\u201d can provide a basis for any prescription of \u201cwhat ought\u201d to be done. Levinas suggests that description is always already implicated in an ethical responsibility for others. This suggests a deep interdependence of philosophy and science that remains to be explored.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

* Of local South African interest, Neil is the son of ANC veterans Ben and Mary Turok. (I worked briefly with Neil when he was setting up the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cape Town. Humble admin work on my part, but I can attest he’s  a genuine good guy with a ferocious intellect and interest in everything.)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Still thinking about the need for a new mode of thinking… What is the proper relation between philosophy and science now? Last year, citing Stephen (Philosophy-is-Dead) Hawking and Martin Heidegger, I wrote about \u201cthe end of philosophy\u201d in the triumph…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,142],"tags":[174,175,114,176,112,177,107],"class_list":["post-874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-thinking-out-loud","tag-from-quantum-to-cosmos","tag-hume","tag-levinas","tag-neil-turok","tag-new-thinking","tag-physics","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=874"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2328,"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874\/revisions\/2328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}