The Myth of Objectivity
This is the fourth installment of my God of Scientism series. Whether one writes a newspaper article, a science paper or a novel, one always writes from a specific viewpoint, coherent with one’s belief system. Contrary to this common sense approach, modern western culture embarked on a quest for the “objective truth” in an effort to replace human beliefs with the “logic of facts”. Senator Sam Moynihan famously said that everyone is entitled to their opinion, but not to their facts. It is my “opinion” that distinction between facts and mere opinions is fallacious. There is no such thing as “objective fact” divorced from writer’s belief system.
A few years ago I had a discussion with the head of Microsoft Vision Research group. I suggested to him that computer vision research would benefit from the recent advances in study of human brain. Much to my surprise, he did not think it was a good idea. In his opinion, computer vision would be “limited” by constraints of a particular, carbon based implementation of “vision algorithm”, used by human brain (much like Chomsky does not think that linguistics needs to study brain). His ambition was to extract the pure “essence” of vision, irrespective of physical embodiment. Presumably, once this is accomplished, he will be able to build a better one with silicon transistors. His beliefs are a rather pure expression of dualism, which is a belief that our minds are independent of our bodies. Modern science as taught today at leading western universities is replete with dualistic thinking: scientists talk about structure vs function, waves vs particles, nature vs nurture, brain vs behavior, perception vs cognition, mind vs body, competence vs performance, learning vs development.
Since dualists believe that structures are objective, they concluded that there is a single, world wide hierarchy of concepts. It turns out however, that there are as many “scientific” taxonomies as there are communities of sceintists. For a chemist, helium is a molecule, because it behaves like a molecule of gas. For a physicist, helium is an atom because it does not display molecular spectrum. George Lakoff’s analysis of zebras (some evolved from horses and some from zebras) and lung fish disprove existence of one, world-wide pre-ordained hierarchy in biology. Cladists, who classify animals by similarity of genome, often battle with Linnaean taxonomists, who classify animals by their shape. As it turns out, they are both right, but in two separate contexts. Like Narcissus, scientists close their own senses, unable to recognize their work as their own child. They fall in love with their own image, mistaking it for another person looking at them from outside world.
Dualistic thinking affects not only the researchers, it also affects the artists like Gene Roddenberry, who in turn have big influence on forming the belief systems of young computer scientists. My claim is that in the end any symbol system, whether religious or scientific, is grounded in its creator’s belief system, whether it is Jesus’ vision of Christianity or Dawkins’ passionate critics of it. Rather than being a mirror copy of external reality, a “representation in mind” of an “objective truth”,“reality” is always active creation of human author’s imagination.
Dualists loath to admit that their opinions are subjective like everyone else’s. In Star Trek, Nemesis, Captain Picard banishes his feelings from interfering with his job exclaiming: “I can not allow my personal feelings unduly influence my decisions. I work for federation, federation holds dear the idea that all men can be united”. Aside from the “fact” that Picard here argues for the world government and the difficulty of imagining in just which “organ” does the federation hold theses ideas “dear”, there is no doubt in Picard’s mind about their “objective” existence. The ever present references to the “facts” and the “truth”, are pervasive and omnipresent mantras of western media too, Guardian’s 2016 article titled “The truth about Brexit did not stand a chance in the online bubble”, expressed disappointment with web communications which presumably contributed to victory of Leave EU campaign and concluded: “If we tolerate a political system which abandons facts and a media ecosystem which does not filter for truth, then this places a heavy burden on users to actively gather and interrogate information from all sides”, a truly frightening thought indeed.
Cartesian facts are always free of context, as they must be, just like in Chomskian linguistics semantics must be free of syntax. This is so that we can live in a Platonic world of absolute truths, unencumbered by beliefs. How did this emphasis on a context free “objectivity” come about? And why does western science always try to reduce its subject to rigid, timeless form? The answer is that Cartesian science simply had to exorcise time and being. The argument that time is basically a geometric parameter which makes it possible to follow the unfolding of succession of dynamic states has been asserted in physics for more than three centuries. Emile Meyerson described the history of modern science as a gradual implementation of what he regarded as necessary consequence of human reason: “the different and the changing had to be reduced to the identical and the permanent. Time had to be eliminated.” To find the answer as to why this had to happen, let’s go back in time and show how historical events shape our beliefs.
Medieval farmers at the end of the first millennia during a string of bad harvests, gave up ownership of their fields voluntarily to militant landlords in exchange for protection of their families in time of starvation. Monks of Cluny, using advances in messaging technology which allowed them fast communication with Rome, legitimated this new order in Pax Dei agreement, establishing stable political order run by these militant warlords, now called aristocracy, who were in full control of indentured servants. In the conclusion of his book, End of Certainty, Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine describes how almost 700 years later, Rene Descartes in a similar time of political instability during the Thirty Years’ War between Catholics and Protestants began his search for a different kind of certainty that all humans independently of their religion could share. His conclusion was that science based on mathematics was the only way to reach such certainty. Descartes views, embraced by Christian church became immensely successful and found expression in Leibniz’s effort to create the single world language as well as in Newton’s physics. Countless other scientists followed their example.
In the 20th century, Albert Einstein, who lived through the rise of fascism, anti-Semitism and two world wars, also looked to science as a means to avoid turmoil of everyday existence. Alas, during his life science promise of certainty which began with the Promethean affirmation of power of reason ended in two world wars and the alienation and negation of everything that gives meaning to human life. Einstein reportedly stated that he learned more from Fyodor Dostoyevsky than from any other physicist. Still, he wrote in a letter to Max Born in 1924: “if I were to abandon strict causality I would rather be a cobbler than a physicist”. The contemporary science is still shackled by this quest for certainty. French sociologist Levy-Bruhl expressed it clearly: “Our feeling of intellectual security is so deeply anchored in us that we do not even see how it could be shaken…Our nature around us is order and reason, exactly as is the human mind.”
However, by the end of the 20th century, physicist Ilya Prigogine made it clear that the feeling of confidence in the “reason of nature” has been shattered. Like Meyerson, he stated sarcastically that the “ultimate triumph of modern science was the elimination of time” and he concluded his seminal work, Order Out of Chaos , with this claim: “Epoch of certainties is over. Physicists have no privilege whatsoever to any kind of extraterritoriality. As scientists, they belong to their culture”. In very next paragraph he quotes my favorite Merleau-Ponty’s warning: “As long as I keep before me the idea of an absolute observer, or knowledge in the absence of any viewpoint, I can never understand my situation in the world. Once I acknowledge my viewpoint, my contact with the social in the finitude of my situation is revealed to me as the starting point of all truth, including that of science”.
The next instalment of The God of Scientism is called The Myth of Equality.
