PHILOSOPHY PATHWAYS Issue 40

I. 'On the Three Cultures - a view from the philosophical side' by
Hubertus Fremerey

I. 'ON THE THREE CULTURES - A VIEW FROM THE PHILOSOPHICAL SIDE' BY HUBERTUS FREMEREY

In his famous Rede Lecture of 1959 the English author (Lord) C.P. Snow (1905-80) compared "two cultures" that in his opinion seemed to be peopled by two different sorts of intellectuals, who didn't talk the same language and therefore could not understand each other. One culture was that of classical erudition and "men of letters", those philosophers, theologians, jurists, poets, literary critics and writers of all sorts, who seem to define what the concepts "erudition" and "culture" are all about. The other culture is peopled by scientists and engineers and "men of practical achievement" like managers and politicians and officers and public officials who are "mere practitioners" and not "thinkers".

With his lecture Snow was reacting to the "Sputnik Shock" caused by the launch of the Sputnik by the USSR in November 1957. In his opinion the Sputnik was made possible by the high value and importance the Soviet Union attached to practical and scientific knowledge in its educational programs on all levels. The typical "intellectual" - while having and expressing his opinions on everything - seemed unaware (and even defiantly and proudly so) of the scientific and technical (pre)conditions that more and more define our modern world and that which is in the making.

This situation seemed comparable to that in China around 1900: The old Confucian mandarins clinging to old wisdom and its tradition were unaware of modern technical possibilities which they likewise despised, but then China fell prey to western colonial powers and later to the Japanese. The traditional disdain of western intellectuals for all things technical and practical and scientific was as unjustified, stupid and dangerous as the complacency of the Chinese mandarins had been for China some 60 years back and the whole system of education and curricula had to be reformed in the West just as it had been under the Meiji-Tenno in Japan, lest the communists of Russia and China with their "enlightened" faith in modern science and technology take over.

Of course this "enlightened" faith in modern science and technology had its origins in Western Europe and in the USA of the 18th century and was only adapted by the Russian and Chinese communists later on. In 1851 Queen Victoria opened the first great World Exhibition in London, then "the fabric of the world". The modern steam engine was put into practical application in 1776, the steam ship was invented 1805, the first steam-powered locomotive started the age of the railways in 1825, and the age of electricity began in the 1860s. So the second part of the 19th century was the era of intensive industrialization in Europe and the USA, and the Russian Revolution of 1917 - like the Sunist and Maoist Revolutions in China of 1911 and 1949 and like the Meiji-Revolution in Japan - were late and desperate tries to keep up with the western technical progress.

Against this historical background, the intellectual arrogance Lord Snow chided in his Rede Lecture has to be seen as part of a deeper resistance of conservative thinking against the whole thrust of "modern thinking" and the spirit of "transforming the world by applied science and engineering" altogether. It is then no coincidence, that the resistance against modernization grew first in the most advanced countries.

The struggle between the members of the "Two Cultures" - Scientists and Scholars - thus in its roots goes back to the timeless struggle of conservatives against progressives, of deep moral scepticism against the optimism of "people of action and progress". And much of the common European and Asian hatred of the USA and of modern liberalism and communism - which are both children of the hopes of Enlightenment - only mirrors this pessimistic (or realistic?) resistance against the (false?) hopes and promises of "progress by science and technology". The arrogance of the elderly and conservative "mandarins" answers the arrogance of the youthful modern "progressives".

But this picture is a simplification. As the "Marcusean Revolt" and the "Student Revolt" of the 60s made clear, the issues at stake are more complicated: The Revolt of the Sixties was a revolt in the name of a new "real" life of love and tenderness, of peace and mutual understanding and social justice to be realized all over the world by a new youth against a dumb and mechanistic and mindless "progressivism of the elderly". So it's not always the conservative and the churches and mullahs that defend human ideals against "mindless modernism and progressivism".

Lord Snow in his lecture tends to assume some symmetry between scientific and technical knowledge on the one hand and the "knowledge" of artists and poets and "spiritual masters" of all sorts on the other. But this symmetry does not exist and its assumption is an important misunderstanding.

It is mostly a "why" that haunts pensive people. The question "why?" is the question of freedom and existence: "Why are we here? Why should we do this and not that?" etc. "Why is it, why should it be?" is totally different from "What is it, what must it be?" and from "How is it, how must it be?" The natural order showing up in the laws of nature is, what it is. But the order of a human society, the social and moral order, is not what it is, it is the outcome of human understandings and misunderstandings and of human design.

Of course people are and should be interested in "facts" concerning the world they live in. But they have to take those facts for granted. What really is disturbing people are the questions of freedom, the ethical questions: "Why should we do this and not that?". The questions of ethics, of "what should we do and why, and what should we do not - and why not?" are totally different from the questions of physics and engineering. There cannot be a symmetry then, and in this Lord Snow was just plain wrong.

The above applies to the concept of a "Third Culture" too - and by the same argument. The "Third Culture" is a term coined by Snow himself somewhat after his Rede Lecture to indicate what was needed in his opinion: a third culture peopled by men and women trained or at least acquainted to both cultures - that of the "humanists" and that of the "scientists" - combining their approaches and insights to a new way of seeing the modern and coming world. The term itself was made known to a larger public later on (1989) by the then bestselling book of John Brockman 'The Third Culture'. Brockman made readers aware of a new species of "learned people" that are engaged in very modern ("leading edge") scientific fields (like computation and robotics, micro-biology and bio-engineering, high-energy physics, cosmology, nano-technology etc.), who think on the problems of a world in the making but are mostly unknown to the old "erudite" and "well read" people trained in the classical faculties of "philosophy, theology, law and medicine".

But the dream of a new "Third Culture" never materialized. The serious popularizers of the wonders and horrors and dangers of modern technical "progress" - many of them Nobel laureates in one of the scientific categories of that prize - are hardly ever aware of the meaning or importance of modern philosophical or theological arguments, and maybe not even interested too much. The same applies vice versa to the members of the old faculties as representatives of "the old wisdom". They usually not only don't know too much of modern and forthcoming scientific and technological results, but they are not even really interested. But there are Commissions with members of both "cultures".

The concept of "making people aware of imminent problems" - problems hard to grasp and hard to evade, veiled or not clearly discernible now - is an old one. During the 1960s there evolved what is called "technology assessment" (TA) to study the possible impact of new technical devices and technologies on society, economics, politics, the environment etc. But this approach - while sensible and important - should not naively be overestimated. Prognostics and futurology, trend and impact analysis and even science-fiction are all different sorts of TA. But then of course Marxism was some sort of grand social TA too, and the warnings of Herbert Marcuse and of the Club of Rome have been likewise. There are dangers everywhere and what is new is always risky. If the atomic industry should have been stopped, why not the computer industry, the television industry, the avionics industry, the automobile industry, the electrical industry, the steam engine, the printing press and the using of numbers and letters before? Of course one has tried that.

One can become sensitive to some dangers - and that's it. The debates on the dangers of nuclear energy and on those of global warming and of globalization are important, and those on the dangers of "green" and "red" genetic engineering and of PID and of the possible criminal uses of computers even by the police and the politicians etc. are likewise. All these debates remain open debates that by the very nature of the problems debated cannot be closed definitely. So the term "The Third Culture" in practice designates only a special and important branch of TA concerning some leading edge technologies. But that does not imply that those people inhabiting the Third Culture are more "wise" than the older "intellectual elites. They remain specialists in their relative fields and "technical advisors to the men and women in charge of decisions.

Of course there is one great difference in the quality of some actual debates on our future: The Atomic bomb was the first weapon in history that made the self-destruction of mankind a real possibility. And now with genetic engineering and with microcomputers and nano-technology the possibility to change the very nature of man becomes a real possibility too. That is scaring us - and it should be.

Now here we are back to the center of philosophy: "What is the nature of humankind - and what should it be?" That is a typical philosophical question that no mathematical or physical argument can answer. It is one of the deepest of those "why questions" commented on above. If we are able to do nearly everything, our top question should be, "What shall we do with our abilities - and why?".

The question of what should be done can never be answered by a reference to facts. That would be "the naturalistic fallacy" (G.E. Moore). Facts always are circumstantial and instrumental. Facts are to be respected, but they don't force us to go this way and not that one. While it may seem "natural" to be out for wealth, lust and power, the monks and nuns in Christendom, Islam and Buddhism vow "poverty, chastity, and obedience" without being forced to do so. There is pride and there is humility - which may be the greater one. There is this exemplary scene of the proud king asking the humble saint, a scene which appears in several cultures in different versions. So the very deep question not asked by the people of the Third Culture remains: What should be the true values of mankind: "Wealth, lust and power" of all sorts or "honesty, love and authenticity" - to name but one possible alternative set of values.

The greatest danger of Enlightenment from the beginning around 1700 till today always remains some thoughtless and ignorant inability of most scientists and engineers to get at a deep and complex understanding of the concepts of "improvement" and "progress": "Improvement in what sense?", "progress to what end or goal?" What indeed does it mean to "improve" oneself? What does it mean to "improve" society? In what way does it matter? Why should it be important? What do we aim to - and why? Lest all these questions seem empty we should always ask what is it, that makes the monks and nuns vow "poverty, chastity, and obedience" without being forced to do so - and without being fools or neurotics.

Philosophers and theologians as representatives of "the old intellectual elites" despise the "naturalists" and the "secular humanists" and "pragmatists" as clinging to "flat" concepts of reality, to concepts, that appeal to the men and women in the street, concepts that are decidedly "democratic" in that they seem to confirm the "common sense" and repudiate any deeper understanding as "elitist". A "deep" concept of reality is - like the Platonist and the Neo-platonist one - a concept that is not restricted to mere facts and rules and laws and effects, but which sees the world as one great cosmos giving sense and importance to the eternal human striving for "the good", "the true" and "the beautiful", not being content with the pleasant and convenient solutions that a mere intelligent animal would prefer.

But this seemingly elitist stand is not necessarily undemocratic in itself: What the Buddha said or what Jesus said surely is not "common sense", but it is not complicated or unacceptable or unintelligible to the common man and woman either. So there is a difference to be made - a decisive difference - between a superficial and convenient simplicity and a deep and fundamental one. The great works of Bach and Mozart and Beethoven are "simple" in a way that is totally different from and even incompatible with any mere "spa music", and the great works of Rembrandt or of Picasso are likewise incompatible with any mere cosyness or pleasantness. So the concept of "simplicity" and "intelligibility" in itself is a very deep and disturbing one.

There are some very deep riddles in human goals and values and concepts of the self and of the world we are living in which cannot even be approached without reference to religious and philosophical ideas and experiences, but which cannot be dismissed as mere sentimentalities or superstition either. As one critic of behaviorism once put it aptly: "After giving up the unjustified anthropomorphic concept of rats we now tend to fall to a rattomorphic concept of man." And this sort of thinking in chains of cause and effect without any real understanding of what the deeper longings of the human soul are aiming at is the great danger of scientific and technical thinking and should be held in check everywhere and by all means.

Of course there should be improvements in the way we handle war and violence and poverty and famine and illness and injustice and human indifference and other evils of all sorts. The promises of the Enlightenment are indeed great hopes for mankind. But ours is a time when by the very progress on the technical fronts not only new dangers but the deep paradoxes of the concept of a good life become visible for a growing number of pensive people. It is these paradoxes that tend to evade the bright scientists and engineers while they eagerly "improve life conditions". And it is these paradoxes that are the traditional field of the "old intellectual elites".

The next Philosophical Society of England London Group meeting will be upstairs in 'The Globe' in Covent Garden (opposite the Opera House). On the Third Monday of each month we start at seven, break at eight and "end" at nine, thought there is of course no obligation to leave immediately. Sorry if I appear over keen to repeat this, but every time we move someone somewhere loses contact and ends up in a group of one. (Mathematicians allow for groups of one, I'm not sure if Philosophers do.) I mentioned the new venue to one such "group" the other night - having not met for many months and a few ideas set me off. I hope some of the ramblings below will prompt ideas that you will bring along (in your head or even on paper) I will endeavour to ensure that anyone who wants to speak has the opportunity to do so - in my usual non-intrusive style!

If philosophy is for something is it possible that philosophers might achieve their objective?

Is a love of wisdom analogous to a love of justice that should prompt us to behave differently and change the world, or is it like a love of music (or curry) that we might simply enjoy philosophy for it's own sake? Unlike engineering or even writing poetry, philosophy seems to be very open ended. We don't produce conclusive answers, just more questions. Is this helpful?

Our discussion in the pub the other day suggested philosophers keep an open mind. Marx and Darwin both developed new ideas without feeling compelled to stick to established principles, yet each could now be seen as a founder of new explanatory theories that (of course) are now being modified, developed, even attacked. If discussing UK politics we were to limit our thoughts to which of the half dozen candidates should get my vote every few years based upon the published manifestos, University Political Theory departments would hardly be needed, but if we are trying to work out how to live best (either as individuals or societies) are we really looking for "The answer"? (Why) do we think it is there to find? Einstein's physics gives better predictions than Newton's (though most of us use Newton's most of the time in "real life"). If we accept Popper's definition of science, one day there will be an explanation - like a one minute mile - that, whilst not proven, is better than we will ever need. So why keep on looking? Is ignorance bliss?

Do you really belive that the apparently solid objects all around you are mostly empty space? Is beauty a real attribute of "things out there", or a necessary reaction between your mind and whatever it is that might be out there, or just your mind doing it's own thing? People (notably Kant) have devoted a lot of time to finding out, but could we ever know? And if we did know, what use is the knowledge?

Half the point of Pub Philosophy is, presumably, the pub. Does this mean our little group has got further than being a footnote to Plato? (What, really!?)

Meetings of the London Group take place on the 3rd Monday of each month, starting 7.30 pm. Everyone is welcome to come along.

I remember in school once we were asked to write a short science fiction story for General Studies. Underneath my effort - about people escaping by rocket ship from a dying planet and colonizing pre-historic Earth - the teacher scribbled, 'Nice try, but you did telegraph the ending somewhat!' (I'd called my story 'Evolution'.)

The winning tale was of altogether different calibre. A group of explorers travel by time machine back to the Stone Age. Stumbling over a small settlement, they are attacked with clubs and spears, and one of the travellers pulls out his gun. No sooner has the bullet found its target then the traveller begins to fade away.

Yes, he had indeed shot one of his own ancestors. (Far less of a coincidence than first appears, given that each of us has four grandparents, eight great grand parents, sixteen great great grandparents, and so on.)

What brought this memory back was that three weeks ago I received an unexpected commission to write a short essay about time travel and the time travel paradoxes. (See 'Ask a Philosopher' answers page 18 for a couple of neat answers from Hubertus Fremerey and Steven Ravett Brown to a question I posted there.) I'm looking for all the help I can get - any tips will be fully acknowledged. The finished essay will be posted here.

The philosopher David Lewis, in 'The Paradoxes of Time Travel' ('The Philosophy of Time', LePoidevin and Macbeath Eds. OUP 1993) pours scorn on my schoolmate's solution to the Grandfather paradox. In Lewises version, a time machine traveller kills his Grandfather a year before his father was born. But as Lewis points out, this involves a glaring logical contradiction:

     "No Grandfather, no Father; no Father, no Tim; no Tim, no
     killing. And, for good measure, no Grandfather, no family
     fortune; no fortune, no time machine; no time machine, no
     killing."

What are the alternatives? You go back in time, but only as a disembodied observer. Then granddad lives. You go back in time, but every effort you make to kill granddad is thwarted by a series of increasingly improbable accidents. (As you are about to shoot the sniper's rifle with telescopic lens, a bee stings you in the hand, and so on.) So he lives. You go back in time to a world exactly like this world up to the point where you appear in your time machine. Then grandad (your grandad) still lives, it is only 'grandad' in the alternative universe who dies.

Here is what I want to say. But I am aware that a lot of people will not like this solution, which depends heavily upon philosophical considerations about personal identity:

You, Tim, go back in the past to a year before your father was born. At the moment when you materialize, the past that you recall, the past you read and heard about and saw in family photo albums never existed. You never existed. You not thirty-seven years old, you are one minute old. Of course, it is impossible for you to believe this. But it is a logical fact about memory that 'memories', however vivid, can be false. Bertrand Russell once considered the irrefutable sceptical hypothesis that the universe was created by an evil demon five minutes ago, together with ourselves and our apparent memories.

You are one minute, two minutes old. You can do anything. If granddad dies, then his son son never lived, so there never was a 'Tim'. (The same is true of the time machine which Tim built. There never was a family fortune, and the time machine was never 'built'.) That's fine because your memories of 'Tim', your father, your granddad are all false. If you chicken out and go back to the present you cannot resume Tim's life, because Tim is not you. If you murder Tim and take over Tim's life that still will not make you Tim. So you might as well shoot granddad now and kill two birds with one stone...

Any thoughts on this? As I have a deadline to meet, I'd appreciate hearing from readers any time during the next week. Please send your suggestions, comments or objections to: klempner@fastmail.net, subject: 'Time Machine'.

Geoff asked: "I am interested in the idea of time travel, as described in H.G. Well's novel 'The Time Machine'. Is time travel consistent with the laws of logic? How would a philosopher explain the time travel paradoxes?"

www.geoffreyklempner.net

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