Is Physics a Science?

In sociology, students at all levels are presented with some discussion about whether and how sociology is a science. Physics – especially Newtonian physics – is taken as a kind of standard against which sociology is measured. Actually, a scientific investigation of college textbooks revealed that physics education is deficient in presenting students with the methods and limits of experiment and theory. 

Since the Renaissance, the term experiment has been used in diverse ways to describe a variety of procedures such as a trial, a diagnosis, or a dissection … To examine changes in the textbook construction of experimental method, introductory texts in psychology, sociology, biology, and physics were surveyed during three time periods: 1930-1939, 1950-59, and 1970-79. […] … the percentage of texts with discussions of research methods increased from 50%-90% in psychology, from 25%-70% in sociology, from 20%-45% in biology, and from 16%-30% in physics. Even in the 1970s, such discussions were absent from the majority of biology and physics texts.
"What Counts as an Experiment?: A Transdisciplinary Analysis of Textbooks, 1930-1970," Andrew S. Winston and Daniel J. Blais. The American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 109, No. 4 (Winter, 1996), pp. 599-616.

Visiting the University of Texas Kuehne Library for Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy, I found that this is still true.

Another concept is missing, paradigm. Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions was published in 1962. (See Necessary Facts here.) I was assigned it in a philosophy class at Lansing Community College in 1975. My last undergraduate class in physics was in 1982. Paradigm and experiment were never explicitly discussed.
  

At the UT Kuehne Library (honoring John Matthias Kuehne, 1872-1960), I checked nine recent physics textbooks, both for freshmen and for classes in modern physics, typically the second year for majors, seeking index entries for experiment and paradigm. The results were disappointing. Neither term appeared in these:

• Bernstein, Fishbone, Gasiorowicz, Modern Physics (2000).
• Benson University Physics, (1996)
• Giancoli, Physics for Scientists and Engineers (2000)
• Halliday, Resnick, Walker, Fundamentals of Physics (2005)
• Hech, Physics: Calculus (2000)
• Learner, Physics for Scientists and Engineers (1996)
• Tipler, Physics for Scientists and Engineers (1991)
• Young and Freedman, Sears and Zemansky’s University Physics (2004). 

Of those, the last was most disappointing being the 11^th edition of the standard textbook that served the first post-war generation in the 1950s and 1960s. Tipler was one of the books we had at Lansing Community College because it was newly written in 1976 and because Paul Tipler taught at the University of Michigan. He, too, ignored Kuhn.

M31: Andromeda Galaxy, at first a "cloud"
then a spiral within our galaxy,
then an "island universe" like our
own Milky Way.

Better treatment appeared in Lea and Burke, Physics: the Nature of Things (1997). And this speaks to the validity of critical sociology: It is Susan M. Lea who made the effort to present students with discussions of experiment, including the nature of experiment, thought experiment (first Galileo, then Einstein: pp 11, 132, 445), and experiment and theory. As a woman in a man’s world, Dr. Lea easily adopted the sociological perspective of considering the accepted from a different point of view.

However, even Lea and Burke fall into positivist fallacies that plague science with “the problem of induction.”  (See Necessary Facts on David Harriman’s Logical Leap here and here.)  

They say (page 12): “Physics is an experimental science that prides itself in getting close to reality through laboratory testing of theory. … How can we be certain that the experimental process of dissecting nature into component part is ultimately correct? We can’t! Belief in experimental science depends on one’s worldview.” Again (page 14): “Consistency with experiment and usefulness in understanding nature are the properties of a good physical theory. The word truth is conspicuously absent. Aristotle… Kepler and Galileo… Newtonian physics, thought absolutely true for 250 years. In the twentieth century, we have learned that Newtonian physics is not exact but stands as an excellent approximation. Absolute truth is elusive. We continue to seek greater depth in our understanding, greater elegance in our theories, and greater precision in our experiments. Whether truth can be achieved in some approximate sense by this process is unanswerable. We believe in physics because we know we can organize our knowledge and employ it to describe the behavior of nature with greater accuracy using only a small number of fundamental ideas.”

 The objectivist answer is that rational-empiricism works. The physicists who are not sure about reality never think twice about getting into an elevator and expecting it to operate. And if it fails – despite the failsafe which was designed by the same laws – then some cause must be and can be found. In a lecture on “The Primacy of Existence,” Objectivist philosopher David Kelley notes that these doubters do not drive their cars according to the theory that we can never know anything for certain.

(Note the two words, lower case o-objectivist, and upper case. The first is the general rational-empirical method, the scientific method. Capital-O Objectivism derives explicitly from the published works of Ayn Rand and is a modern school of thought based on the objectivism of pre-Kantian Enlightenment )

Also, Lea and Burke gloss over the key problem with doubt: “Physics is an experimental science that prides itself in getting close to reality through laboratory testing of theory.”  What is this reality to which we can get close, but never discover?

To know that we are closer, not farther, requires some test. That test is reality.

In the history of science, few inventions came from engineering applications of scientific principles. Rather, engineering achievements provided data for theoretical explanation. The telegraphs of the world transmitted our ideas across continents, each click creating a magnetic field that collapsed, inductively broadcasting evidence of our existence into the Galaxy, all a generation before Maxwell.

The best sociology discovers facts, creates theories, identifies causes, and tests hypotheses. As passive description, ethnography is not highly regarded, though it is passionately defended. Passive description is good science – and good description is not passive. We bring our expectations to our observations. A scientist knows to be ware of preconceived notions and to be open to new perceptions. At the same time, the scientific observer often has good reason to seek exactly the phenomenon under investigation. It is not really passive. If only implicitly, certain factors are held constant, while others change. Aristotle’s description of the chick embryo is a paradigmatic example cited as one of the greatest scientific experiments in history. (See Necessary Facts here.)  

But sociology knows these facts. Sir Anthony Giddens’s international standard undergraduate textbook, Sociology, has an entire chapter (number 20) on Research Methods with three explicit discussions of experiment. It begins with two discussions of sociology as a science (pp 7-8; and 12-14).

Moreover, in sociology, we enjoy some self-criticism in examining the historical development of our field, from Comte (I prefer Spencer), Weber, Durkheim, and Marx, through to Parsons, Merton, and your choice of pop stars of the current generation. Physics students do not understand their science as a historical development. As Kuhn pointed out fifty years ago, physics is presented whole and complete, without development. No wonder they are surprised by a new explanation of a previously unperceived fact.

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS
The Sokol Affair
Reflections on the Sokol Affair
David Harriman's Logical Leap
David Harriman's Logical Leap Almost Makes It
"Big Bang Theory" and Modern Philosophy

Around Austin - Dressed for Encounters

My branch library (Little Walnut Creek) was closed for renovations, so my request for The Education of Henry Adams was sent the next-nearest at North Side, off Burnet and Steck. Leaving there, I saw Costume World. So, I stopped in, browsed the rentals and retail merchandise, and chatted a bit with the staff. This works out well for us, because we are regulars at Dragon's Lair, down the road at Burnet and Koenig.

Most often, we play D&D Encounters, but we also have enjoyed artist and author signings, and costume nights.

Previously on Necessary Facts

• Around Austin
• South by Southwest
• Austin at Night
• Science and Engineering Festival
• Austin Children's Museum

Sociology: A Defense and a Call for Reform

I often recommend the OrgTheory blog by Brayden King and Fabio Rojas, sociologists who study firms, groups, and other organizations as apart from and yet of course within the broader, deeper, and longer matrix of global society.   Of late, Prof. Rojas has taken the humanities to task for being unproductive as job placement apprenticeships.  Not only are humanities majors unemployed, they are unemployable because they learn nothing of economic value.  Unlike STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), humanities have no practical purpose.  I disagree and have insisted on the economic value in a liberal education on this blog.  More to the point, though, I also remind the good professors that by their own standards sociology is also useless.

I pointed out before in comments on their blog and on my own that someone who is good with machinery can work as a technician, engineer, or, ultimately, professor of engineering.  Whether you hold a certificate, associate’s, bachelor’s, master’s or doctorate, you can work in HVAC, industrial controls, computer programming, or for tht matter, a wide range of healthcare or business careers.  You can be a phlebotomist, nurse, or doctor; you can be a bookkeeper, accountant, or manager at many levels.  With sociology, those options do not exist.   In sociology, the only degree that counts is a doctorate; and the only use of a Ph.D. is to teach classes in sociology.  – Or so it would seem.  I disagree.

About the Sociology of Music
by Jennifer Lena

I do agree - because it is obvious – that there are no job openings reading  “Sociologist: AA degree minimum BS preferred to liaison with software developers and marketing department of leading social media company.”  The fault lies not with our stars.  Mainstream sociology is anti-market, anti-capitalist, and Marxist.  This is choice, not destiny.

Worldwide the leading English language textbook for this study is Anthony Giddens’s. (Sociology, Cambridge: Polity Press 1989; subsequent editions.)  Giddens of course is the architect of New Labor in the United Kingdom (or as George Orwell called it Ingsoc).  Says Sir Anthony: “Sociology is the study of human social life, groups, and societies. … The scope of sociology is extremely wide, ranging from the analysis of passing encounters between individuals in the street to the investigation of global social processes. … It teaches us that what we regard as natural, inevitable, good or true, may not be such, and that the ‘givens’ of our life are strongly influenced by historical and social influences.  These are in the influences sociologists study.” (3^rd ed., pg 2) 

Citing C. Wright Mills, Giddens continues: “The sociological imagination requires us, above all, to ‘think ourselves away’ from the familiar routines of our daily lives in order to look at them anew.”  (page 3)  “It is the business of sociology to investigate the connections between what society makes of us and what we make of ourselves." (Page 6)

First, I point to the semantic distinction that sociology has a "business" rather than a goal, mandate, purpose, calling, mission, imperative or objective. Moreover, if any segment of civilized society has this "sociological imagination" is merchants, traders, buyers and sellers, shopkeepers, and capitalists. We know from the historical record that a community of Sumerians lived among the Hittites. 

Both McCloskey and Weber
cite Benjamin Franklin as
our capitalist Paradigm

Deeper still, if anything ameliorated contact between bands of hunter-gatherers most likely to come to blows over territory, it was the exchange of gifts. In Africa, 12,000 years ago, sea shells daubed with red ochre and strung together traveled far. The "dumb barter" method perhaps invented by Phoenicians depends on trust -- and insight into the wants of others. Herodotus says that the Lydians were the first retailers. He may have been factually incorrect while still hinting to the remnants of the Hittite-Sumerian engagement; but the fact is that he cared enough about retailing to wonder how it started - and he knew that the Greeks did not invent it. 

“It is sociology’s task to study the resulting balance between social reproduction and social transformation.” (page 6)  Giddens cites the founders of the study: Comte, Durkheim, Marx, Weber, Foucault, and Habermas. “Habermas is perhaps the leading sociological thinker in the world today.  … According to Habermas, capitalist societies, in which change is ever present, tend to destroy the moral order on which they in fact depend.  We live in a social order where economic growth tends to take precedence over all else – but this situation creates a lack of meaning in everyday life.  Here Habermas comes back to Durkheim’s concept of anomie, although he applies it in a new and original way.” (Page 12.)

Where is the "sociological imagination" to accept the morality of capitalism on its own terms, rather than ethnocentrically condemning it for not being one's own?  Empirical evidence is also lacking.  How many "capitalist societies" did he examine?  In 3000 years, China never had one.  Greece and Rome were not. Did this happen to the Islamic Golden Age that the drive for profits destroyed the moral foundation of Islam?  Was this the case in Renaissance Italy, or in Holland later, or then in England and America?  Are these different capitalist societies or continued expressions of the same one?  How have Singapore and Hong Kong fared?  Is Singapore in moral decline?  How would you measure that?  Any moral standard would by definition be objective, which is denied by the insistence on the "sociological imagination."

Nothing in Giddens's introductory chapter

Spencer may have created
"The Modern Life" 

 approaches a marketable use for the study.  No citation exists for a sociologist who actually made the world a better place.  We have many critics, of course, but nothing like a lightbulb or a suspension bridge or a computer or a medicine is offered.  I submit that any such examples that could be found are submerged under an anti-capitalist mentality that decries earning money by invention, making fortunes by removing inefficiencies, earning a living by creating markets.  Sociologists might mention Thomas Edison, but they are not happy that he was a millionaire.  (In fact, Giddens does not cite "invention" at all, though he does discuss "innovation centers" as a kind of city where bright people come together as at Cambridge. )

I agree 100% that stepping outside your given cultural context is important.  This is required  for  understanding that others near to you or far away are different.  Indeed, in our global capitalist society you may have more in common with people geographically distant from you, but culturally close.  That said, the fundamental error is that sociology attempts to study societies, organizations, firms, polities, and groups without acknowledging the individual as the primary element of any conglomerate, agglomerate, or confluence. 

Sociology could have been built on Herbert Spencer, William Graham Sumner, and Georg Simmel.  In our time, the works of Dierdre McCloskey – Bourgeois Virtues; Bourgeois Dignity – define a new narrative to explain us to ourselves.  But McCloskey is considered an economist, though, of course, so were Marx, Weber and Simmel.  In America, Robert King Merton and his socialist comrade Paul Lazarsfeld made money from their public relations firm.  Sociology could be defined as the study of the individual in society.  We belong to many societies – local, national, and global, professional, recreational, religious, and more.  Recently, Jennifer Lena of Bernard College has been writing about how musicians socialize among themselves.  In the internet age, you can find musical collaborations on YouTube. National Public Radio reported on Musicians Collaborate from Afar on the Web .  TED Talks gave us "Eric Whitacre: A virtual choir 2,000 voices strong."

Simmel studied Money
on its own terms

According to the most politically powerful sociologist of our generation, the leading sociologist of our time railed against capitalism.  Neither of them perceived the sociology of music.  In Giddens’ textbook “music industry” is an Index entry pointing to a discussion of media imperialism. Bollywood appears not at all. Afro-Celtic music is missing of course. 

Science has a sociology, as do art, sports, video games, board games, comic books, micro breweries, cooperative groceries, garden clubs, veterans associations… and within sports, NASCAR, the Olympics, sandlot softball, community center chess, ... the list is as deep as human action.  I assert that sociology will be economically viable when we break the Marxist monopoly and admit that markets are an important means for people to cooperate in the attainment of common goals serving individual needs.  When we do that - and educate a generation on that basis - then sociology will have a market function, whether you completed a certificate in social media or a doctorate in (well, ahem, after all...) "social media." 

Sociology has the same value as a liberal education.  Indeed, sociology could be the gateway to the liberal arts. I suggest that the most profitable path to that goal is for sociology to begin with the individual and demonstrate the reward in pursuing it as an academic study with market utility.  

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS

Capitalist Culture

Modes of Survival 

The Shroff 

Tycoon Dough is Democratic

The Future of Money 

A Man's Home is His Market 

Profits and Benefits in Foreign Languages

 Should we trust university professors who deny the value of a university education? In the past year, several prominent libertarian professors have been speaking out against college education.  On OrgTheory Fabio Rojas argues that humanities and fine arts produce no job skills.  (His guest blogger, Jennifer Lena, counters.) On EconLog, Bryan Caplan finds no economic value in foreign languages.  Ayn Rand warned that you should not hire a plumber who denies the validity of plumbing.

On EconLog, in reply, I wrote:

“David Henderson's comment about mathematics (Aug. 10 below) comes closest to explaining the true value in learning a foreign language in a general way for most people. Physical education knows the value in cross-training. Certainly, mental education cannot deny a similar claim. In my comment to the original post, I mentioned learning Fortran, Basic, and Java. In discussing the artistry in money with my numismatist friends, I speak in a vocabulary of line and space, with special words such as frost, luster, field, device, and toning. What makes English powerful is its nearly 1 million words, perhaps 90% of them borrowed. The more words, grammars, and syntaxes you know, the better your thinking... or so I claim. The opposite of that is Orwell's Newspeak, a restricted language designed to prevent thought, especially critical analysis and synthesis.”

On OrgTheory as here on Necessary Facts, I pointed out that economics and sociology are seemingly “useless” studies.  Consider an analogy to engineering.  You can complete a Ph.D. and before that be licensed by your state as a professional engineer.  That allows you to practice at the highest conceptual levels, teaching others, solving the hardest problems.

But you can have a master’s, a bachelor’s, or an associate’s, as well, and work at other problems, more limited, concrete, and known, all of which still offer challenge and reward reflected in the relative pay available.  You do not need a Ph.D. to work in HVAC, factory automation, electronic controls, computer networking, automotive repair, website design, or a thousand other occupations.  But an economist with an associate’s degree will not find ready employment.  Outside of college, no one hires sociologists to work as sociologists, certainly not with an associate’s degree.  Thus, the economists and sociologists on Org Theory must admit that their fields are useless.

When I was on KGO (a San Francisco radio station) a few years ago (circa 2006) to discuss that day's 400-point fall in the Dow-Jones Index, I pointed out that at the time it was about a 3% fall. Various financial pundits were saying that it was due to an even bigger fall in China's stock market. I didn't know enough to comment on that. At the end, one of two hosts asked me, "If you were giving a 12-year-old American kid advice on what languages to learn, what advice would you give?" I think he was expecting me to say "English and Chinese." I answered, "Two languages: English and math."
"Thoughts on Second Language" by David Henderson Aug. 11, 2012, on EconLog.

And, as above in my comments about numismatics, economics has its own special vocabulary, even its own special mathematics.  The classic supply-demand curves are examples of mathematical ignorance.  The independent variable, Price, is always on the ordinate (Y-axis).  This is just plain wrong. 

Yet, it works… demonstrating that the special vocabulary, grammar, and syntax of economics may serve a special important purpose (perhaps). 


We think in symbols and analogies.

The true value in learning foreign languages may not be the ones alleged by public education: utility on the job; exposure to culture; meeting people.  Like algebra, drawing, and music, learning to understand and express yourself in different modes expands your inner world.  Your inner experience is primary.  We say that language is a social artifact: you learn it from others and do not invent your own.  But alone on his island, Robinson Crusoe needed language.  Language is how we think.  We also can think in colors, shapes, spaces, sounds, and so on.  Language then – your own or a foreign one – is another cognitive tool.

When you stop and think about it, the fact is that every language is a foreign language.  You learn your first one in the womb.  But if people around you have other modes – music, for instance – that, too, will become a “native” language… which is probably why music is passed so easily.  Few people can play an instrument, but fewer still never hum, whistle, sing, or tap.  Is music education a waste of time because so few high school or college students go on to become professional musicians? 

The 2012 Olympic Games are closing today.  As a nerd, I often hated gym class but I always felt that it was the fault of the school because I liked running around, chasing balls, and jumping over stuff.  (Perhaps in a prior life I was a Labrador retriever.)  Being able to climb a ladder maybe more useful than learning to climb a rope.  But in my work, I stayed off the high iron because I knew how I did on the balance beam.  Would the professors argue that physical education is a waste of time and money because so few graduate to worldwide acclaim or professional status?

In 100 years we have gone from the steamship to the spaceship, but education still consists of one person speaking to a passive array of listeners.  Like Soviet agriculture, public education is doomed to minimal innovation and production – and for the same metaphysical reasons.  So, yes, education as we produce it is open to criticism – even from first principles. 

But we do have some competition: Ohio State versus Harvard; Stanford versus Mt. Holyoke; Antioch versus Phoenix.  And no one has come up with anything better than the liberal education: trivium and quadrivium – Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic; Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, Astronomy.  Today, that would be English composition, philosophy, foreign language, algebra (calculus, etc.), law, economics, music, and science.  Before you sign on as an apprentice and pursue a career, you need the fullest possible range of intellectual abilities.  And learning never stops. 

Previously on Necessary Facts:
The Economic Value in a Liberal Education
The Pretense of Sociology
Two Cheers for American Education
Another Cheer for American Education

The Remarkable Story of Risk

Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk by Peter L. Bernstein explains that the modern world was created by the mathematics of chance.  Earlier times had traders, bankers and merchants.  Our capitalist culture is special because of the mathematics of risk invented by Fermat and Pascal.  Those tools within the Renaissance cultural context allowed the idea that we could - and should - discover and control the future. 

 “The revolutionary idea that defines the boundary between modern times and the past is the mastery of risk: the notion that the future is more than a whim of the gods and that men and women are not passive before nature.” (pg 1 ppb)

I first reviewed this book for the Objectivist Living discussion board here. Over the years I alluded to it occasionally there and on the Rebirth of Reason website. My copy has dozens of Post-its.  Looking through the book again, I made still more notes. Perhaps it is my own ignorance, but hardly a page lacks something important worth marking for future reference. 

These facts, insights, observations, and assertions reflect more than shopping at a supermarket.  After all, von Mises called his work Human Action, not People at the Grocer’s.  “Fear of harm ought to be proportional not merely to the gravity of the harm, but also to the probability of the event.“ (Attributed to the Port Royale Logic.) In criminology, we say that punishment must be “swift, certain, and severe.”  Statistical evidence shows that only certainty seems to prevent crime.

The development of risk theory has deep roots.  Astragalus “knuckle bone” dice are known from Egyptian tombs of 3500 BCE – and pharaoh’s dice were loaded.  But the ancient world had many of the artifacts we assume are modern from accurate astronomy to steam-powered mechanisms.  True enough, the arithmetic was cumbersome, but something else far more consequential was lacking.

“Up until the Renaissance, people perceived the future as little more than a matter of luck or the result of random variations and most of their decisions were driven by instinct.  When the conditions of life are so closely linked to nature, not much is left to human control. As long as the demands of survival limit people to the basic functions of bearing children, growing crops, hunting, fishing, and providing shelter, they are simply unable to conceive of circumstances in which they might be able to influence the outcomes of their decisions.  A penny saved is not a penny earned unless the future is something more than a black hole.” (pg. 18)

From there, Bernstein covers the expected territory of probability theory and statistics: Pascal, Fermat, Graunt, Galton...  Allusions and examples from the American stock markets abound.  While an impassioned capitalist, he is not perfectly consistent in an Objectivist sense, admitting to the need for some government regulation of the financial markets.  However, lowercase-o objectivism runs throughout this work, as it must in any exploration that supports facts with theories and that validates hypotheses with evidence.  Bernstein quotes Chicago economist (and Nobel laureate) Harry Markowitz on diversification: “Diversification is both observed and sensible; a rule of behavior which does not imply the superiority of diversification must be rejected both as a hypothesis and as a maxim.” (pg. 252).

Also my Randian comrades will find it curious that John Maynard Keynes could be quoted as an objectivist: “When once the facts are given which determine our knowledge, what is probable or improbable in these circumstances has been fixed objectively and is independent of our opinion.” (A Treatise on Probability, 1921; cited pg 226.)

Peter Lewyn Bernstein (January 22, 1919 – June 5, 2009) shared his passion for markets with Robert Heilbroner (The Worldly Philosophers) with whom he attended both primary and secondary school, as well as Harvard College. (Biography on Wikipedia here.) Bernstein is also associated with the efficient market hypothesis which says that current prices reflect all the information that is generally available and out-performing the market is impossible without taking on more risk. (See Investopedia here and also Wikipedia here.) [edited 11 Feb 2021.]

Bernstein was the first editor of The Journal of Portfolio Management. He authored several books including Capital Ideas: The Improbable Origin of Modern Wall Street.  Bernstein published five of his ten books after he was 75 years of age.

Business Week’s reviewer, Peter Coy, call the theme of risk management “The Closest Thing to a Crystal Ball” (here)  “Bernstein brings Against the Gods up to the present with an account of how some skeptical researchers--beginning with the Israeli-born psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in the 1950s--trashed the classical model of rationality by exploring how people actually behave in risky situations. The bottom line: People behave irrationally, even when they know they are doing so. Bernstein relates an anecdote about a distinguished Soviet professor of statistics who showed up at an air-raid shelter during a German bombardment. Until then, he had scoffed at the prospect of being hit. What changed his mind?  “Look,'” he explained. “There are 7 million people in Moscow and one elephant. Last night, they got the elephant.”

Also on Necessary Facts:

Mere Gold is Not Enough: Hayek's "Denationalisation"

Numismatics Informs Economics

Debt: the Seed of Civilization

Electronic Money: Coins without Realms

Science in the Middle Ages

Objectivists value the scientific method as the cornerstone of the engineering achievements of our civilization from structural trusses and direct current to alternating current and cybernetics.  We too easily see the Middle Ages as a time of ignorance and barbarism in which learning was chained to (and by) theology.  The reality is more complicated.

“The Middle Ages was a period ruled by the Witch Doctor, in a firm, if mutually jealous alliance with Attila. The Witch Doctor controlled every aspect of human life and thought, while the feudal Attilas looted one another’s domains, collected material tributes from serfs – who worked, lived, and served in subhuman conditions – and maintained the power to burn heretics at the stake.

“Philosophy, in that era, existed as a “handmaiden of theology,” and the dominant influence was, appropriately, Plato, in the form of Plotinus and Augustine. Aristotle’s works were lost to the scholars of Europe for centuries. The prelude to the Renaissance was the return of Aristotle via Thomas Aquinas.” – Ayn Rand, “For the New Intellectual.”

Astronomy, in particular was not dormant, nor could it be.  The problem of Easter required bringing lunar and solar calendars into alignment.  Whether biology, botany, and medicine had any hint of modernism is a difficult question, but can only be answered with direct citations to contemporary works.  Like the revolution of the Earth on its axis and the orbit of the Earth about the Sun, proof contrary to spontaneous generation did not come until the 1840s. As with astrology versus astronomy, it is too easy to dismiss alchemy as not being "real" chemistry. While its paradigms are not ours, the practices were utilitarian: dying wool and leather were important crafts. Paints, pigments, and finishes also were consequential.

“Historians have long recognized that the rebirth of science in twelfth-century Europe flowed from a search for ancient scientific texts. But this search presupposes knowledge and interest; we only seek what we know to be valuable. The emergence of scholarly interest after centuries of apparent stagnation seems paradoxical. This book resolves that seeming contradiction by describing four active traditions of early medieval astronomy: one divided the year by observing the Sun; another computed the date of Easter Full Moon; the third determined the time for monastic prayers by watching the course of the stars; and the classical tradition of geometrical astronomy provided a framework for the cosmos. Most of these astronomies were practical; they sustained the communities in which they flourished and reflected and reinforced the values of those communities. These astronomical traditions motivated the search for ancient learning that led to the Scientific Renaissance of the twelfth century.” (Astronomies and Cultures in Early Medieval Europe by Stephen C. McCluskey. Cambridge University Press,  1997.) 

“Measurements by clepsydras prove … that although the earth is at the center of the universe, it is eccentric to the sun's orbit. At times the sun is borne at a greater distance from the earth than at other times. When the sun is climbing upwards in Cancer and Gemini, in the steeper tracts of its course, it takes longer, lingering 32 days in Gemini; but it requires less time in the lower tracts, 28 days in Sagittarius, the elapsed time for the other signs varying between those extremes (848-849) . “Dominant Traditions in Early Medieval Latin Science” by William H. Stahl, Isis, Vol. 50, No. 2 (Jun., 1959), pp. 95-124. 

Mean Speed from the Oxford
Calculators used by Galileo

"The sorry state of scientific studies at the close of the Roman Empire in the fifth century reflected Roman, not medieval, failures and short-comings." "How Science Survived: Medieval Manuscripts as Fossils” by Sharon Larimer Gilman and Florence Eliza Glaze. Science, New Series, Vol. 307, No. 5713 (Feb. 25, 2005), pp. 1208-1209.

“The dominant explanation of human behavior at this time was astrology.  Charles, like most of his contemporaries, ruled with the advice of the recognized social scientists of the day, the court astrologers. In this vein Oresme was ordered by Charles to translate Ptolemy's Quadripartitum from Latin into French. This order discharged, Oresme then attempted to debunk the popular conceptions in an attack on judicial astrology, Contra judiciaros astronomos (1360), which he later translated into French. There is no hint in the historical record that Oresme's efforts altered the predominance of astrology in the determinance of social policy; indeed, he returned to the attack ten years later with a treatise entitled Contra divinatores horoscopios, and in a series of Quaestiones (a stylized form of question and answer popular with academicians of the period).”

“Nicole Oresme and Medieval Social Science: The 14th Century Debunker of Astrology Wrote anEarly Monetary Treatise” by Kevin B. Bales, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 42, No. 1 (Jan., 1983), pp. 101-111.

“WHEN historians and historians of science flatly state that Ptolemy's Almagest and Geography dominated the fields of astronomy and geography for fourteen centuries, they are apt to mislead unwary readers into supposing that Ptolemy was the supreme authority in Latin science during that period. Quite the contrary, his works might almost as well never have been written for all the influence they had in the Latin West until translations were produced from Greek or Arabic texts in Toledo and Sicily in the twelfth century.' If there was any dominant tradition of Latin science in the first thirteen centuries of the Christian Era, it was a stream of encyclopedic literature, the main course of which may be traced backwards through the Latin encyclopedist Varro and the Platonizing Stoic Posidonius; to trace sources beyond them is difficult indeed. In any case it is well to bear in mind that this stream of encyclopedic works skirts around Ptolemy without being appreciably influenced by him. We can trace its course through the extant writings of Pliny, Theon of Smyrna, Cleomedes, Geminus, and numerous others.

“Of the three, Martianus Capella offers the best account of encyclopedic science and will be discussed first. He seems to have flourished in the first half of the fifth century.  Martianus Capella wanted to produce an encyclopedia in the Varronian tradition and, by excluding two of Varro's disciplines, medicine and architecture, laid the foundation of the medieval trivia and quadrivia.

The first work of Archimedes translated into Latin was the Measurement of the Circle. It was translated from the Arabic twice in the twelfth century.' The first translation, which I have argued (but not surely) was done by Plato of Tivoli, was most inferior; just three manuscripts are known, only one of which is medieval. Apparently not long after this first translation the great translator Gerard of Cremona again used the Arabic text and rendered the Measurement of the Circle into Latin. This time the translation was quite accurate, and so before 1187 a faithful version of this short but important treatise became available. We are fortunate that this version was included in MS Bibliotheque Nationale, Fonds latin 9335, a handsome codex of Gerard translations. Incidentally, this manuscript is one of the best examples of intelligent copying of scientific works. It has marginal variant readings which cite alternate copies. The drawings are carefully made. Even more important the transcription of numbers - even of six places - is almost perfect. “The Impact of Archimedes on Medieval Science,” by Marshall Clagett, Isis, Vol. 50, No. 4 (Dec., 1959), pp. 419-429. 

"Among late thirteenth and fourteenth century philosophers, the Averroists have been particularly noticed by historians as advocates of the autonomy of the sciences. In arguing, for example, that physics might give an answer to the question of the eternity of the world different from the answer given in accordance with Christian belief, Boethius of Dacia based himself largely on a conception of physics as an independent discipline with its own principles, rational methods, and conclusions. This approach to the autonomy of the sciences was not, however, the only influential one in this period. Another basis for the autonomy of physics is found in the work of certain Oxford commentators on Aristotle's Physics, most prominently in William of Ockham's Expositio super octo libros Physicorum. This second approach makes physics autonomous by placing greatest confidence not in deductively and causally prior principles of physics, which some thought could be proved or made known by metaphysics, but rather in propositions accepted on the basis of experience, if not known in themselves. The primary evidence cited in the following paper." “The a Posteriori Foundations of Natural Science: Some Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Physics, Book I, Chapters 1 and 2” by Edith Dudley Sylla, Synthese, Vol. 40, No. 1, Jan., 1979, pp. 147-187.

 In The Logical Leap, Objectivist physicist and philosopher David Harriman denigrates medieval science. In Chapter 3 "The Mathematical Universe" under the subhead "The Birth of Celestial Physics" on page 85 (ppb), Harriman says that with the Ptolemaic Model, the relative sizes of the orbits of the planets could not be calculated.  That leads to an interesting contradiction.  If it is true that the Geocentric model prevents such calcuations, then they must have used some other model, because the relative sizes of the orbits were known.  On the other hand, perhaps the geometry and observations of the time did, indeed, allow them to make those calculations, even assuming the Geocentric model.  My reference for that is Astronomies and Cultures in Early Medieval Europe by Stephen McCluskey (Cambridge, 1998).  In fact, because of the religious viewpoint, the very scale of the measurable universe and the comparatively small size of the (spherical; not flat) Earth, were substantiating evidence to the relative unimportance of Earthly affairs. Saturn's orbit was estimated to be 72 million miles from Earth. (McCluskey, page 203).

Browne on Kuhn

Gregory M. Browne is the author of Necessary Factual Truth (University Press of America, 2001), the inspiration for the title of this blog.  He offers these comments on my recent reviews here and here of Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

Kuhn makes some good points, most of which are a reaction to the philosophy of science of the Logical Positivists.  But both the Logical Positivists and Kuhn share faulty assumptions that lead them to misunderstand what I call “Deep Kinds”. 

In short, they are unaware of the existence of Deep Kinds, or at least are unaware that some kinds have deep essences—that is, deep sets of necessary attributes, more than what one may be aware of any given time, more than what one learns when one learns the meaning of the term referring to them, more than what one may put in a short definition or concept.  Such are most kinds in chemistry and biology, such as gold and horses.   These have attributes that it took as much investigation to discover—the atomic structure of gold and the DNA of horses—which nonetheless were as necessary to the kinds as the known attributes we had put in our dictionary definitions.  Aristotle understood this, but this was forgotten in the reaction to Scholasticism and not rediscovered, by most philosophers, until the work of Hilary Putnam and Saul Kripke in the 1970s.  Ayn Rand realized this truth independently, and, through Leonard Peikoff, influenced me to elaborate the idea and gives this type of kinds a name.

In the interlude, the doctrine that only defining attributes are necessary, and that definitions are just the short “Nominal Definitions” that we find in dictionaries, whose function is merely to express meaning and not summarize knowledge, prevailed by the early 20^th century reign of the Logical Positivists.  So “All triangles have 3 sides” was considered necessary (but non-factual, because it expressed a conventional definition), but “Gold has 79 protons” was not considered necessary (though admittedly factual).

But by the 1930s it was seen that this simple model was inadequate, even by many disciples of the Logical Positivists.   The Ordinary Language philosophers came up with “cluster concepts” and “family resemblance concepts”, and in general “open textured” concepts, W. V. Quine came up with a holistic view of knowledge, and others extended this to a holistic theory of meaning.  Meaning and knowledge came to be widely seen as relative to a conceptual scheme.  And Kuhn concluded that scientists with different conceptual schemes or different “paradigms” could sometimes not communicate, because what was said in one scheme or paradigm was incommensurable with what was said another, and that they were not talking about the same things, because the meanings and references of their terms differed.

However, the later Putnam and Kripke rejected this, as he said that the scientists in different paradigms were talking about the same things, that their terms had the same referents, the “natural kinds” (Deep Kinds) even though their definitions might differ.  So scientists from ancient Greece on down who talked of gold were talking of the same kind of thing, the same natural kind with the same essence.

 

And Rand avoided the mistakes too, since she did not consider that what was excluded from the definition was not necessary, and insisted that new discoveries need not invalidate old theories but rather can add to our knowledge.

Nonetheless, Kuhn deserves credit for exposing some of the weaknesses in Logical Positivist philosophy of science.

Dr. Browne and I met at Eastern Michigan University.  I was walking the halls waiting for a criminology class to begin and I saw “Ayn Rand” written on the blackboard at the end of a couple of columns of philosophers starting with Thales.  Over the semester, I stood outside and eventually took a seat to watch the lectures.  He now teaches online for Yorktown University in Denver.

The Pretense of Sociology

The Pretense of Knowledge: Of What Use is Sociology?

On the OrgTheory blog Jennifer Lena (bio here) replied with some numbers to Fabio Rojas’s continued complaint that people who do not major in STEM (science technology engineering mathematics) are wasting their tuition dollars because liberal arts majors have no job prospects.  But, of what use are sociology and economics?

True, large organizations hire some kinds of economists, but if economics really were useful, then you could get an associate’s degree in it and find a $40,000 a year job with a local employer.  After all, engineering, science, and technology work that way:  get a master’s in civil engineering or a doctorate in electrical engineering and you are only in a different place than your colleague with an associate’s in civil technology or industrial controls.  But you all have jobs at your level.  With sociology and economics that is not true.  No one (except colleges and universities) hires people with sociology degrees to work as sociologists.  By that standard, it is a useless field.

Moreover, Prof. Lena provides survey numbers to indicate that some to many fine arts majors – painting, sculpture, theater, dance – do at least nearly as well as STEM majors, and better than humanities majors at finding work in their fields after graduation.  The close ties between universities and museums, for instance, provides one path.To me, however, the most telling part of Jenn Lena’s work is reflected in the individual comments that show the lack of correlation between how the person feels about their fine arts education and where they are working today.  Whether a lawyer benefited from drama class depends on the lawyer, not the class. 

"Those most likely to work as professional artists at some point were majors in design, dance, music performance, and theater. The largest gaps (between those who intended to become artists and have never worked in this capacity) are among creative and other writing majors (28% gap) and architecture (14% gap). Of course, the higher a student’s degree, the more likely they are to work as a professional artist: 86% of those with an arts-related master’s degree do so, compared with 71% of those with an arts bachelor’s degree." ("Paid in Full" by Jenn Lena here.)

Perhaps the bottom line of whether and to what extent arts (and humanities) “pay off” by whatever measure can be derived from the biography of Steve Ditko on Wikipedia here:

Stephen J. "Steve" Ditko (born November 2, 1927) is an American comic book artist and writer best known as the artist and co-creator, with Stan Lee, of the Marvel Comics heroes Spider-Man and Doctor Strange.

Following his discharge [from the US Army], Ditko learned that his idol, Batman artist Jerry Robinson, was teaching at the Cartoonists and Illustrators School (later the School of Visual Arts) in New York City. Moving there in 1950, he enrolled in the art school under the G.I. Bill.

The ultimate question may be what science fiction author L. Neil Smith calls “Asimov’s Fallacy.”  In his Foundation trilogy, Isaac Asimov posited a science of psycho-history whereby the huge numbers of humans in the Galaxy allowed statistical predictions of future events.  The fallacy is that all such numbers depend on the actions of individuals with free will.  It may well be true that 47% of fine arts majors earn 61% less than 79% of business majors, but that says nothing about the success of any single artist … or of those who do not complete their college education at all, such as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, though granted that the founder of Cypress Semiconductor, T. J. Rodgers earned his doctorate in electrical engineering by inventing MOSFET chips.

No sociologist or economist in 1950 predicted that there would be good jobs in comic books.  Moreover, the modern curricula in computer graphics and web design definitely raise serious questions about the predictive value of sociology and economics.

On this same subject here on Necessary Facts, is The Value of a Liberal Education.