Category: Science

Randall’s Aristotle, Chapter VII, “The Heavens”

I have been reading Aristotle by John Herman Randall, Jr. (1960 Columbia Press).  Chapter VII, “The Heavens” discusses Aristotle’s cosmology. It really hit home for me why the Catholic church took so much offense from Galileo and other 16th/17th Century natural philosophers saying that the Earth was not the center of the universe, that the Earth revolved around the sun along with the planets, etc.
The church had adopted Aristotle’s ideas by that time, and that included the notion that as you traveled out away from the Earth, you would approach divine perfection.  Unlike Plato who thought that such divine perfection existed in some other realm, Aristotle said such perfection was the outermost layer of the Universe.  As evidence of this perfection, it was pointed out that the stars moved in an apparently unchanging circular pattern through the night sky, and such circular motion was considered “divine” or “perfect”.  The stars, unlike the planets, exhibited this circular motion because they were closer to perfection.

As the Church became increasingly Aristotelian, it would have adopted the notion that this outer realm of the universe was where the divine resided, rather than in some “other realm” outside the universe as a more Platonic Christianity would hold.  However, the natural philosophers of the 16th/17th century began to show that the rest of the universe operated in accordance with the same natural laws as the ones operative here on Earth, and that the Earth revolved around the sun.  This would have started calling into question the whole scheme in which the Earth is at the center, and “imperfect”, while as you moved out away from the Earth, you approached “perfection”, and a different set of natural laws from the ones on Earth.  But, if the Church had already rejected the Platonic notion of the divine in another realm, and the divine also didn’t exist in this universe, then that would tend to suggest that it didn’t exist anywhere.  It wasn’t just a question of Astronomy for the Church, it literally called into question it’s most fundamental tenants.

Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos”

I am currently watching Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” on Netflix. I recall seeing bits and pieces of this throughout the 1980’s on PBS, but I was basically too young to follow it in great detail (I am only 38). It is a journey through intellectual history, with an emphasis on Astronomy and Physics, with a little Philosophy thrown in for good measure. I think that it is, overall, a very good series.

Episode 7, “The Backbone of Night” was an especially interesting episode since it seems to present a slightly different interpretation from how I have heard most Objectivists interpret the history of Ancient Greece, which tends to focus on Aristotle. Sagan agrees that the Ancient Greeks, especially the Ionians, were the birthplace of the scientific method of observation and experimentation. But, he goes on to say that there was another strand of thought running through Ancient Greece centered in Pythagoras, which deemphasized experimentation and observation in favor of “deduction”. (I think Sagan even used the word “deduction” to describe the Pythagoreans.) This ultimately led to a mystical world-view (or was based in a mystical world-view), which was expressed in the ideas of Plato. Interestingly, he even says that this Pythagorean worldview took reason out of the hands of the Ionian merchants and artisans –practical men concerned with ideas- and put it into the hands of the elite slaveholders, which was more consonant with the ownership of slaves. This was because the Pythagorean system emphasized the mind over the body, and “the body” was associated with the physical labor of the elite’s slaves. (I assume because the slaves would be viewed as less than fully rational manual laborers who merely used their bodies.)

Sagan then goes on to say that Plato’s ideas were basically adopted into Christianity. (Sagan hasn’t come out and said he’s an atheist, but he all but says so at various points in the series.) Sagan then essentially says that the early flowering of “expermentalism” in Ionia was suppressed by the Pythagoreans and later Plato, and that Aristotle was essentially no better than Plato. It wasn’t until the Enlightenment that the “Ionian world view” was rediscovered, or so says Sagan. What I found interesting is how much he deemphasized the philosophy of Aristotle in the episode be implying that it was just a sort of outgrowth of Plato. Possibly this is due to the fact that the Catholic Church adopted Aristotle after the Renaissance, along with the Aristotelian notion that the Earth was the center of the universe, although, in fairness, the notion that the Earth was the center of the universe predates Aristotle. This might lead most to believe that Aristotle is to blame for the troubles of Galileo, Copernicus, and various other natural philosophers near the Enlightenment era.

My understanding is that while Aristotle was a student of Plato, he was much more interested in experimentation and observation given his belief that the essences that form the basis of mental concepts exist in each concrete thing, rather than in some other realm. I am no expert in classical philosophy, but this is my general understanding. At any rate, the “Cosmos” series is extremely interesting, and I recommend that you watch it if you haven’t ever seen it.

The Movie “Agora”

Agora makes some fairly easy observations about the nature of faith and how it necessarily leads to force, and usually outright violence, but that is not what I want to focus on here. I think that an even greater truth is revealed by this great movie. It is an exploration of the nature of evil men, and how they survive and thrive with the assistance of good people. Just so that the reader is clear, when I say “good”, I mean that the ultimate standard of the good is man’s life. That which promotes his life is good. Furthermore, all things created by men should be judged by this standard, if living is one’s goal. An automobile is good if it serves the purpose of transportation of human beings in the most efficient manner possible. A house is good if it serves the purpose of habitation. A philosophy is good if it serves the purpose of guiding human beings in living their lives. Similarly, all men should be judged by this standard. A man is good if he strives to produce the values necessary for living. (For more detail about life as the ultimate standard of value, consult the works of Ayn Rand.)

The movie is set near the end of the Roman Empire. Christianity is on the cusp of becoming the dominant philosophy of the time, and society and government is disintegrating. In Alexandria, the pagans and a few Christians still continue to study the works of the Ancient Greek philosophers and scientists. Hypatia is a female natural philosopher teaching the ideas of Ptolemy: that the Earth is the center of the universe, and that the Sun and the Planets revolve around the Earth in complicated epicycles. (This notion was later enshrined by the Catholic Church and it wasn’t seriously challenged until the 1500’s.) At the beginning of the movie, Hypatia is a believer in the Ptolemeic system, but, throughout the movie, she begins to doubt this system of planetary motion, and even conducts scientific experiments to test some of the objections that are raised against the modern, heliocentric view of the solar system.

There are two major plot threads running through the movie, and Hypatia’s struggles to understand the nature of our solar system is one of them. In and of itself, this plot thread would have made an excellent movie. The author of the script goes even deeper than this, however, by skillfully interweaving another thread into the plot. This second thread involves the struggle between the remaining secular elements in Ancient Alexandrian society, and an increasingly dominant, and emboldened religious group. The secularists are represented by Hypatia, the natural philosopher, and her student and suitor, Orestes. At the beginning of the movie, Orestes is still her student, and he rather casually notes that the planetary system proposed by Ptolomy seems rather silly. It is this initial criticism of Ptolomy by Orestes that plants the seed of doubt in Hypatia’s mind, and leads her to begin rethinking the entire system of planetary motion.

The men of pure faith are represented in the movie by two characters: Ammonius, who is a classic “rabble rouser” and street thug, prone to acts of violence, and Cyril, the Bishop of Alexandria, who is motivated by power-lust. However, the movie makes it clear that by themselves, Ammonius and Cyril would not have been able to unleash the death and destruction that they bring. Better men like Orestes choose to compromise with them out of political and social expediency over the years, and thereby lend them an aura of social and political respectability, which eventually results in the best person being held in subjugation by the worst people, with the worst possible result.

Since it is historical fiction set prior to the fall of the Roman Empire, and the advent of one of the darkest periods in human history, one should not expect a happy ending in Agora. But, bad things happen to good people in (good) fiction for a reason, and it is very important that the reasons in Agora be understood by all of us.

The Incest Taboo

I am just finishing up the 30th Anniversary edition of Richard Dawkin’s “The Selfish Gene”. (I believe that I have already finished the original edition, but the 30th ed. has two extra chapters.) Taken purely as a text on evolutionary biology (and nothing more philosophical than that), it is an excellent work. I will probably have more to say about it in a formal book review once I finish it, but I wanted to note one fact that I discovered that I found very interesting. If correct, I think it gives a definitive and rational answer to the question: why not have sex with your relatives?

In chapter 6, titled “Genesmanship”, it discusses, on page 99, and in an endnote on that page, the high probability of brother-sister matings leading to serious genetic diseases for their children. In fact, the footnote says that each person caries, on average about 2 recessive “lethal genes” per person. The gene is “recessive”, which means it doesn’t manifest itself unless you get a copy from both your mother and your father. Normally, because of out-breeding (non-relative breeding), a child will only get one recessive of any given lethal gene, so he will be safe. But, since brothers and sisters have a high probability of getting the same lethal gene from their parents, the chance of a child from a brother-sister breeding getting two copies of the same recessive lethal gene turns out to be about one in eight. That means if you have 8 children, you are likely to have at least one child with a serious genetic problem that will result in early death. (I was vaguely aware of the fact that this was the reason that brother-sister breeding was bad, but I had no idea the probability of death for their children was that high.) To draw an analogy, a brother-sister breeding would be like taking a revolver with 8 chambers, putting a bullet in one of the chambers, and then playing “Russian Roulette” with your kid.

To me, this had to be a major reason for the “incest taboo” in most human cultures. (I say most, because there are examples of brother-sister breeding, such as the Pharaohs in ancient Egypt.) Pre-historic people probably would have “quickly” noticed that brother-sister breeding led to the death of more children than non-brother-sister breeding. (When I say “quickly”, I mean over the course of decades.) (And, yes, I am assuming that people want to have children, but even the minority of people who don’t are going to be raised in a cultural environment that views brother-sister breeding with great revulsion for this reason, and are therefore probably going to view it with revulsion themselves.)

FYI-Dawkins seems to suggest that this fact would lead to an “instinctive” revulsion by people against incest, but I regard human beings as a “tabula rasa” at birth, and I am not sure that this is consistent with the idea of “tabula rasa” at birth, so I think the taboo would have arisen through observation, not due to any sort of “innate knowledge”. (I will probably have more to say on “instincts” and the idea of “tabula rasa” when I write a book review of “The Selfish Gene”.)

The New Psychology of Time

This was an interview of Stanford Professor Philip Zimbardoon on NPR’s “Think”, which is broadcast in the Dallas area. (The podcast is available at http://www.kera.org/audio/think.php.)

This professor seems to be studying an interesting and important aspect of the human mind, which is the capability for long-range planning and thinking. He seems to take the position that this is a skill that must be developed rather than an automatic function, which I agree with. He noted his work with inner-city youths to teach them how to think long-range, which illustrates that it is a skill that must be learned. Another interesting statement by this professor was when he noted that school students need to be taught how to engage in long-range planning, and that this skill is one of the things that distinguishes (most) adults from children –as well as what distinguishes (most) modern men from primitive man. I also agree with this. He said something to the effect of: schools should teach children how to meditate on taking long-range action, which I took to mean: visualize a goal, then think about what they need to do to achieve that goal, and (presumably) take action to achieve that goal. If only Texas schools spent time teaching children this skill, instead of wasting time on that meaningless minute I’ve spoken of before.

Iron Age Coup D’Etat

PBS had an interesting episode of NOVA last night about “bog bodies” that date back to Iron Age Ireland and England -which was around 350 B.C. Occasionally, in the bogs of those countries, a mummified body will be found because the plants in the bogs secret a substance that preserves flesh in a similar manner to how leather is tanned. The bog bodies usually show evidence of having been intentionally killed or murdered, such as having their heads bashed in, and having been stabbed fatally. The other interesting thing noted was that the bodies usually show evidence of having been people who would have been of high social standing.

There is some debate as to why these people of high social rank were killed and put into the bogs, but as soon as I learned that they were people of high social standing, I thought “coup d’etat”. Later in the show, there was a suggestion that these people may have been tribal chieftains, which strengthens my thinking on this subject. These killings may have been how people in a tribal society, which has no concept of elected government, deposed of a leader. If they had had a concept of elected representatives, then they simply would have voted for a new leader, but since they would have had no concept of that, the only way to get rid of their leader would have been to kill him, probably instigated by the leader’s “political rivals”. They noted that the killings were usually brutal, which suggested that they weren’t just ritualistic, but I think the brutality would make sense. If hard times had fallen on the tribe, and the leader was regarded as responsible, then brutally killing him for tribal resentment that may have built up over many years, would make sense.

The “Will To Live”

Various news articles are reporting on a study which found that age-related disease is not necessarily an accurate indicator of which senior citizens will reach extreme old age. If I understand the article in Forbes correctly, a better indicator of who will live a long time is whether they remain disability-free. The article quotes Dr. James S. Goodwin, director of the Sealy Center on Aging at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, as saying “…’when people go on to become disabled, that’s the bad sign,’ he added. ‘Because it’s disability that interferes with your life and your ability to thrive — to be physically and mentally able to reach your potential. So really, these things we call diseases could be thought of as risk factors for disability. Because when people become disabled, that’s when they become truly sick. And that’s when they stop living long'”(Forbes, “Disability Stronger Predictor of Longevity Than Disease Is”, 2-11-2008)

It sounds like what these studies are confirming is a “common sense” idea: it’s not just your physical health that determines how long you will live, but your so-called “will to live”. People who become disabled would tend to loose this will to live because they are no longer able to enjoy their lives, and probably become dependent on others for their survival. For a human being, this state is probably, from a mental and emotional stand-point, so untenable that most of us may invariably loose our will to live. If the choice to live in the present is a “basic choice” that necessitates one’s future choices, then I think this makes sense. If one has nothing to look forward to in the future but pain and suffering, then there would be no motivation to make that basic choice to live.