Chapter 11. Part K
Discussing and interpreting the moral
implications of the new worldview offered by the New Physics will be the
business of my next two chapters. I will present a moral code and an argument
for it that is not as all-encompassing as Hegel’s, but is more useful. The
theory of morality presented in the remainder of this book offers some firmer
measures by which to judge our actions.
Karl Popper
On the other hand, it will not satisfy the
demands of the most exacting philosophers, such as, for example, Karl Popper
and his disciples. (4.) Popper loved the physical sciences and considered them
to be models of what Science should be, but he found Biology disappointing
because he felt its foundational theories (notably the Theory of Evolution)
could not be tested in neat, clear ways to see whether they could be falsified.
He then wrote the social sciences off pretty much completely.
Popper argued that only theories which can be
tested in ways that risk their being falsified deserve to be called “Science”.
He was deeply impressed by the Theory of Relativity, for example, because it
was formulated in such a way that it could be tested definitively. If it had
failed to predict Eddington's observations of the stars visible during a full
solar eclipse, then the theory would have to be viewed as a failure. But it
succeeded brilliantly, and Einstein's international reputation soared.
Biology is not that neat. The Theory of
Evolution can only be tested in ways that, if successful, may make it seem more
likely to be true. In his early work, Popper did not even want to call Biology
a “science”. But gradually, over years, he came to concede that some theories
could make probabilistic, Bayesian kinds of predictions, rather than neat,
causally linked ones, and still be rigorous enough to be properly called "scientific".
The psychological theories of Adler and the historical ones of Marx weren’t
that kind of useful, but Popper came to see that the Theory of Evolution was.
(5.)
We
accept now that the history of life does not proceed by cause-effect
steps as they are pictured under the Enlightenment worldview. Instead life
proceeds forward through time like a river with many branches and tributaries
connecting to the main channel. The difference is that life flows "uphill".
It flows against the gradient of entropy, opportunistically searching for new
habitats in which some new species or new way of life may take root, adapt, and
flourish. This is a better, more helpful metaphor for describing how life moves
across time.
Under this model, the life flow keep
bifurcating. Some forks get detoured and some get blocked completely and die
out. Whether a given branch will be present further on in the natural history
of the world is dependent on many odds-governed factors such as changing
climates, the rates of evolution of other species (especially those that are
its food, its competion, and its predators), and so on. But the whole system
keeps expanding relentlessly as is shown by the way the amount of biomass on
this planet has been increasing since life began here about three billion years
ago.
The model of human cultural evolution
presented in the rest of this book will not satisfy Popper's most rigorous
early demands, but it will do what we need it to do. It will give us categories
that will lead us, via logic and evidence, to guidelines that we can use to steer our path,
as a species, toward better odds of surviving over the long haul.
Notes
1.Fox, Matthew Allen; "The Accessible
Hegel"; Humanity Books; 2005.
2.Hamilton, Edith; "Mythology: Timeless Tales
of Gods and Heroes"; Warner Books, pp. 16-19; 1969.
3.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/731/731-h/731-h.html
4. Popper, Karl; "Science: Conjectures and
Refutations"; in Curd, Martin and J.A. Cover; "Philosophy of Science:
The Central Issues"; W.W. Norton and Co.; 1998.
5.
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA211_1.html
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