Imperialism of Physics

Is Philosophy Dead?

Stephen Hawking

In his book, The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking says that "philosophy has not kept up with modern discoveries in science, particularly physics."

 The amusing bit here is that all scientific inquiry is philosophical. Science makes certain assumptions in its approach to understanding the world. 

These assumptions flow from a philosophical viewpoint. Hawking’s focus on scientific reasoning is an ideology, a worldview that flows from positivism. No scientist is an objective machine.

Positivism is an epistemological assumption, an idea about how we know. Before we can investigate reality we need a framework for organizing our knowledge. What sort of questions do we ask? What can be known? It would be a waste of time to ask questions about what cannot be known. So, philosophy helps us to narrow our search by helping us to frame our questions.

Kant attempted to limit metaphysical questions, adopting the attitude that philosophy was really a theory of knowledge. Instead of taking interest in the great cosmic problems, he tried to stop centuries of philosophical thought by reframing the problem to fit his critique. His question was “How are synthetic judgments possible a priori?” He concluded that philosophy is unable to answer metaphysical questions and as such concludes that philosophy should serve the hard sciences, especially physics. That philosophy which follows Kant’s tends to avoid the difficult questions. Having abdicated this area of thinking, philosophy appears to have died, at least academically.

José Ortega y Gasset´s Perspectivism was a reaction to Kant. Perspectivism is the position that one's access to the world through perception, experience, and reason is possible only through one's own perspective and interpretation. It rejects both the idea of a perspective-free or an interpretation-free objective reality. Ortega y Gasset´s Perspectivism is useful in developing a reaction to Kant.

In What is Philosophy Ortega y Gasset observes that the post-Darwinian 19th century witnessed a sea-change in how science pretends to know. The idea was that the “soft sciences” such as biology would no longer content itself with generalizations, but would introduce mathematical rigor in its way of knowing. A way of knowing based on a wholistic understanding, generalizations based on clinical practice and a lifetime of experience would no longer be permitted. The new way of knowing would be “objective” and “pragmatic,” based on mathematical models. The sort of science that involved precise deductions, sensory observation, and experimental knowledge was new. The idea was that there was a scientific method that would combine pure reasoning by which we arrive at logical conclusions and pure experimental perception, confirming the conclusions of pure theory. This method of knowing, the 19th century method of science ushered in advances in physics that would be the intellectual marvel of the 20th Century.

Ortega y Gasset, being a philosopher, recognized that the method itself would not suffice for carrying the science of physics to its incredible triumphs. Pure logic and simple objective perception alone did not alone create the scientific paradigm that would carry human society forward to such advances. The first two sides of the triangle, logic and perception were powerful. But there is a third which gives its power to the paradigm: Practical utility.

Apart from pure logic and objective perception, practical utility drives the paradigm. Since the 19th century, practical utility for the human society has driven scientific achievement and discovery. Ortega y Gasset points out that “practical utility” is an inadequate framework for scientific inquiry:

“The third characteristic, its practical utility for man’s dominion over matter, is not exactly a virtue or a test of the perfection of physics as a theory and a form of knowledge.” (What is Philosophy, José Ortega y Gasset, p.41) In Greece, this utilitarian fruitfulness would not have won a decisive influence over every mind, but in Europe it coincided with the predominance of a type of man--the so-called bourgeois wanted to settle himself comfortably in the world, and for his comfort to intervene in it, to modify it for his own pleasure. Therefore, the bourgeois age is honored most of all for the triumph of industrialization, and in general, for those techniques which are useful to life--medicine, economics, administration. Physics acquired a peerless prestige because out of it came both medicine and the machine. The masses of the middle class became interested in it not out of intellectual curiosity, but through their material interests. It was in such an atmosphere that what we might call the “imperialism of physics” was produced.”

Wittgenstein: victim of the imperialism of physics

“Born and educated as we are in an age which shares this mode of feeling, it seems to us a very naturally thing that first place among the various kinds of knowledge should be granted to that which, whatever its standing in theory, gives us domination over matter. But a new cycle is beginning within us; for no sooner do we see that this form of supremacy makes practical utility appear to be a norm of truth than we cease to be content. We begin to realize that this skill in dominating matter and making it conform to our wishes, this enthusiasm for comfort is, if one makes of it a principle, as open to argument as any other. Alerted by this suspicions, we begin to see that comfort is merely a subjective predilection, or to put it bluntly, a capricious desire which Western peoples have exercised for two hundred years, but which does not in itself reveal any superiority of character.”

“...the urge for the comfortable and the convenient which is the ultimate reason for a preference for physics is in now ay an index of superiority.”

The search for the comfortable and the convenient defines our way of life. It is entwined with our worldview, baked into our epistemology. While knowledge and wisdom are not equivalent, the modern view of wisdom is what makes us comfortable. The search for comfort and convenience informs the epistemology that drives science. What is “practical” is what is “useful,” that is, what makes us comfortable. By eliminating “impractical” questions, we can arrive at the practical and useful. In this way, by restricting the questions that may be asked our way of knowledge is defined by the comfortable, informed by materialism and pragmatism.

The philosopher of bourgeois comfort was Auguste Comte. HIs famous formula of meaning was “science d’où prévoyance; prévoyance, d’où action.” “The reason for knowing is to be able to predict, and the reason for prediction is to make action possible.” As Ortega y Gasset puts it, “The result is that action--advantageous action, of course--becomes the thing that defines the truth of knowledge.”

The epistemology of exploitation is clearly explained here, critiqued by a prominent 20th Century philosopher. As the great physicist Boltzmann blandly stated it, “There are no correct reasonings except those which have practical results.” No wisdom exists which does not enable us to exploit, or further the cause of exploitation. Truth, then is at the service of utility. The philosophy that was baked out of these ingredients was called pragmatism in the 20th century. The idea is that there is no other truth than success in dealing with things, making things, consuming things, enjoying and exploiting things. The technical knowledge which advances our exploitation is science and this is the only knowledge. Anything else which goes by the name of knowledge is really outside the realm of useful investigation, therefore useless by definition.

Kant

This is an audacious epistemology, but one which, like a virus has spread throughout all the organic systems of wisdom and philosophy, weakening them. How can anyone contaminated with such a materialistic view seriously speak of wisdom, of life, or of the “meaning of life?” And yet the imperial triumph of physics owes itself to this epistemology. While science pretends to be value-neutral, the focus on “practical usefulness” has led to some terrible results.

José Ortega y Gasset

Since Ortega y Gasset wrote his critique at the beginning of the last century, the “practical usefulness” of science has mushroomed. A practical solution for the Japanese was found in the atomic-bombing of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the fire-bombing of Dresden. For Hitler, Farben’s Zyklon B gas was a practical and useful solution for the Jews. The pesticide plant in Bhopal, the nuclear meltdown of Chernobyl, global warming, climate change, air pollution, the destruction of habitats, extinction of plants, birds, and animals, all these are by-products of our penchant for practical usefulness. 

Atomic Weapons: Practical and Useful?

By excluding ethical considerations from science, we have managed to discover how to weaponize anthrax and smallpox virus, how to reduce the ice at the polar ice-caps, and how to machine-gun hundreds of thousands of young men in an afternoon on the bomb-torn fields at Ypres and Verdun. We know how to melt Vietnamese children with Napalm and how to register, fingerprint, and database every Muslim on the planet. The Nazi scientists who worked at Auschwitz learned how many hours it takes before human being freezes to death, and exactly how many calories are needed to keep a human alive for a month at hard labor until he starves to death. The man-made disasters of science are legion; spend a half-hour watching the news and chances are you will witness one. All these great achievements were made possible by the epistemological paradigm of positivistic materialism.

But as long as we have cheap wifi, internet porn, sex, drugs and rock and roll, and new iphones, why should anyone care? Philosophy is dead, says Hawking, since it doesn’t advance the cause of science any further. What questions it contemplates do not bear on the physical science and therefore have no use. As Ortega y Gasset puts it, writing a hundred years ago in reference to the imperalism of physics:

“...the intellectual life of Europe has for almost a hundred years suffered from what one might call the ‘terrorism of the laboratories.’ Overwhelmed by this superiority, the philosopher was ashamed of being overwhelmed, which meant that he became ashamed of not being a physicist. As the problems which are genuinely philosophic do not permit of solution according to the method of the physical sciences, the philosopher gave up any attempt to attack them; he renounced his philosophy, contracting it to a minimum, putting it humbly at the service of the physics. He decided that the only philosophic theme worth pursuing was meditation on the fact of physics, that philosophy was merely a theory of knowledge, and nothing more.”

“Kant was the first to adopt such an attitude in a radical form; he did not interest himself directly in the great cosmic problems, but with the imperative hand of a town policeman he stopped all philosophic traffic--twenty-six centuries of metaphysical thought--by saying, “Let all philosophizing remain suspended until this question is answered: How are synthetic judgments possible a priori?” Well, now, “synthetic judgments a priori” meant to him physics, the factum of the physio-mathematical science. But these statements of the problem as he saw it were not even a theory of knowledge. Their point of departure was the knowledge of physics as it existed, and they did not ask “What is knowledge?”

Philosophy is, in a very real sense, dead. If Ortega y Gasset complained about the death of philosophy a hundred years ago, Stephen Hawking’s snide epitaph drives another nail into the coffin. What role does philosophy play in a world where the imperialism of physics is absolute?

Speaking to Google's Zeitgeist Conference in Hertfordshire, the author of 'A Brief History of Time' said that fundamental questions about the nature of the universe could not be resolved by philosophy. "Most of us don't worry about these questions most of the time,” he said. “But almost all of us must sometimes wonder: Why are we here? Where do we come from? Traditionally, these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics."

This is as good an example as exists of Ortega y Gasset’s principle of the “imperialism of physics.” Hawking's mind-numbing hubris is apparent here, as is his lame attempt at philosophy. He refutes himself here with his own sophomoric

philosophical musings. “Philosophy is dead” is a philosophical discussion on the nature of epistemology as we have seen in the above comments of Ortega y Gasset.

But of course Hawking sees nothing wrong with appropriating a discipline which he has declared dead. Of course, Hawking is more interested in “imaginary time” and other mind-boggling speculations to muster the proper rigor to make a philosophical proposition.

What Hawkins means to say is that metaphysics has not kept up with physics, but he is beyond his depth.

Metaphysics, before Kant decided to throw the baby out with the bathwater, was the branch of philosophy that dealt with the “hard” question of consciousness.

The metaphysics of Aristotle and Aquinas is a useful framework on which to understand modern science, especially quantum mechanics. Even Heisenberg knew this. Ken Wilber has documented the fascination of modern physicists like Bohr, Einstein, Schrodinger, and Heisenberg with mysticism. In quantum mechanics, cosmology, and evolutionary biology, scientists are just catching up to over two thousand years of philosophical and theological insight from the great philosophers of the Upanishads.

Scientists like Hawking are concerned with the practical and the useful. They rarely understand the philosophical framework of their technical labor. They are mere technicians crunch numbers and tinker with instruments, with little insight into the philosophical basis for their calculations.

Atheist technicians like Hawking are poor imitations of the great scientists of the scientific enlightenment and the great pioneers in modern physics -- vanishingly few of whom were atheists. Real scientists do more than play with equations and tinker with instruments; they should have a meaningful understanding of natural philosophy as it relates to their work.

It’s hard to believe the present day advocates of atheism and popular science like Dawkins and Hawking would pass a freshman philosophy class. They may be charismatic representatives of popular science, but they are hardly trained in philosophy, or even introspective enough to think through the basic problems.

The imperialists of physics, our scientific priesthood, lack the philosophical basis to ask meaningful questions. Their questions are strictly limited by the paradigm that dominates their fields, that of “practical and useful truths.” And so a great mind like Hawking believes that the cosmos has no purpose. In his case, philosophy is dead; lacking a deep philosophy for himself, he wants it to be dead for everyone else. And sadly, few philosophers challenge the imperialism of science and physics. Those who dare are silenced.

Formerly philosophers were independent intellectuals. They did not depend on an income provided by a university or an employer. At the same time, they enjoyed enough prestige to say controversial things. Philosophers were patronized by kings. They came from wealthy families and had the independence of wealth and time to think.

Today, what philosophers exist, are hired brains. They live on university grants, or Pell grants, or grants from corporations. They are contracted to work out problems for corporate America or for the Defense Department; they belong to “think tanks,” and are charged with using the best and brightest brains to advance the interests of the 1% who can afford to hire them. But make no mistake; the 1% are interested in results. They want practical, useful results. The tangible results of philosophy must have a practical application which can be monetized. Otherwise philosophy is useless and dead.

Unlike Plato and Aristotle who wanted to train the elite in high conversations, today’s philosophers are specialists. They work on discreet, technological problems. They advise the President’s lawyers on what might be considered “torture,” or the ethics of artificial intelligence. They work at the behest of corporate America, corporate Europe, or China Inc. They have abandoned the noble tradition of considering the Big Questions ever since Kant let all the air out of the balloon that was metaphysics.

Nietzsche

Nietzsche pronounced God dead and Russell and Wittgenstein presided at his funeral and watched as the casket was lowered into the ground. Modern philosophy has been unable to find his pulse. But they aren’t looking too hard.

Independent thinkers like Ortega y Gasset don’t exist anymore. Silenced by the party mob in the east and the corporate mob in the West, philosophers are given neither space nor time nor money to think. Thinking is a dangerous activity. The best and brightest brains are not encouraged to think about meaning, unless it means money.

So where to find the best and brightest brains? They have been co-opted into image-making by Hollywood, Big Media, and the Internet moguls of Google, and Facebook. Or crunching numbers for Wall Street and inventing schemes to crash the world financial markets. The best and brightest brains sell products and services that destroy the planet in faster and better ways. They use their gifts and genius to further the destruction of the planet and its ecosystem while driving better cars and using better cell-phones.

Does exploitation have a price? We are told not to ask. It’s not a “useful” question. Is the climate changing? “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” Isn’t it logical that if we burn all fuel on earth the planet will warm? It’s not a question for science.

So philosophy is dead. The only philosophy available to us is the epistemology of exploitation and the hedonism of corporate geniuses like Donald Trump who would rule the free world. And with no more philosophy than hedonism armed with positivistic science, corporate geniuses from the brain trust work overtime to create Ponzi schemes to squeeze profits from the dying planet. Any attempt at debate is squashed, any conversation to the contrary is monitored.

In this impoverished atmosphere I write: Where conversation is suppressed; where trivial texting has all but ruined the meaningful exchange of ideas; where the endless repetition of clichés and memes are viral. Where the dogma goes unchallenged, that’s where I come in. I have a well-read, well-trained brain, a pen and a blog. I am as independent a thinker as you will read. No one pays me for my thinking time. I am not a clone, a bot, or an agent of corporate America. I belong to no organized religion. My days are numbered and I yearn for the truth. In short, I am a dangerous man: I am a philosopher.