HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY

OF SCIENCE

MECHANICAL WORLD VIEW OF

SCIENCE
Answer this!

WHAT IS
LIFE ?
 FIND IT
DIFFICULT?
Even people from the medical
science BEFORE (or even
now) finds it difficult to
answer, too.
The question “what is life?” gave rise to
mechanical philosophy or world view.
Here it goes!
Arthur Peacocke (Chapter 2)
What’s there?  ontology

“…the stuff of the world, matter, possesses energy, and is located in space at
a particular time.”

“The concepts of space, time, matter and energy continued to appear to be

‘given’, self-evident features of the world, a priori concepts essential to our
thinking”.

Are these four concepts constantly the same in different cultures, traditions or
historical periods?

Ex: what changes to our conceptions of these concepts have been introduce by
new theories such as relativity theory and quantum mechanics?
Samir Okasha (2002)

Science  usually taught in a ahistorical way.

The origin of modern science  the scientific

revolution  in Europe between 1500 and 1750.

Previous foundations  Aristotelianism.

Modern Science  paradigm changes  e.g. the

Copernican Revolution.
”Mechanical Philosophy”
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) The language of mathematics
could be used to describe the behaviour of actual objects in
the material world  also the importance of testing
hypothesis experimentally  the empirical approach.

René Descartes (1596-1650) ”mechanical philosophy” 

the physical world consists simply of inert particles of
matter interacting and colliding with one another  all
observable phenomena can be explained in terms of these
inert particles  still the dominant view today.

”Mechanical philosophy”  the final downfall of the

Aristotelian world-view?
 The climax of the scientific revolution
Isaac Newton (1643-1727)  “Mathematical Principles of
Natural Philosophy”  improved the ”mechanical
philosophy” with a powerful dynamical and mechanical
theory  three laws of motion plus the principle of
universal gravitation.

Newton  great mathematical precision and rigour 

invented the mathematical technique we now as “calculus”
 this gave great success to the Newtonian world-view in
the following 200 years  it was believed that anything in
nature could be explain from such an epistemology 
chemistry, optics, energy, thermodynamics,
electromagnetism.
The downfall of Newtonianism

Relativity theory (Einstein)  Newtonian mechanics does

not give the right results when applied to very massive
objects  or objects moving at very high velocities.

Quantum mechanics  the Newtonian theory does not

work when applied on a very small scale  to subatomic
particles.

Both theories  “are very strange and radical theories,

making claims about the nature of reality that many people
find hard to accept or even understand”  what is going
on here in terms of ontology and epistemology?
Physicalism

Physics is considered the most fundamental of all

scientific disciplines  for the objects of other
sciences are themselves made up of physical
entities

E.g.: botany  plants are ultimately composed of

molecules and atoms, which are physical particles.

What about cognitive processes?

Life Sciences

Charles Darwin  The Origin of Species (1859)  the

“discovery” of evolution by natural selection  paradigm
shift?

Subsequent work has providing striking confirmation of

Darwin’s theory  the centrepiece of the modern
biological world view.

Molecular Biology  a paradigm shift?  from the DNA

double-helix to the Human Genome Project.
New scientific disciplines

New scientific disciplines  computer science, artificial

intelligence, linguistics, neurosciences.

Probably the most significant in the last 30 years 

cognitive science  the various aspects of human
condition  perception, memory, learning and reasoning
 the human mind similar to computers.

Social and human sciences  ex: economics, sociology,

anthropology  have flourished in the 20th century 
considered to lag behind in terms of sophistication and
rigour  why? What is your opinion? What would make
them sophisticated and rigorous?
Logical Positivism

The fundamental feature of a scientific theory is that it

should be falsifiable.

That a theory is falsifiable  does not mean that is false 

it means that the theory makes some definite predictions
that are capable of being tested against experience  if the
predictions turn out to be wrong  the theory has been
falsified or disproved.

Karl Popper  theories that are not falsifiable  do not

deserve to be called science  pseudo-science.
Science and pseudo-science
Example  Freud’s psychoanalytic theory  can be reconciled with
any empirical findings whatsoever  the concepts can be made
compatible wit any set of clinical data  is unfalsifiable.

Example of a falsifiable theory  Einstein’s theory of general

relativity  it would predict that light rays from distant starts would be
deflected by the gravitational field of the sun  extremilly hard to
observe – except during a solar eclipse  this prediction was
confirmed by observation  by Arthur Eddington in 1919.

“There is certainly something fishy about a theory that can be made to

fit any empirical data whatsoever”.

Does this criteria hold in modern science? How about the theory of
evolution? Is it falsifiable? Is it pseudo-science?
The paradigm of Modernity
What is the paradigm of Modernity?

Modernity  from ~1450 to ?

Scientific Rationalism  1600

Mechanicism  1600

Materialism  1700

Positivism  1800
 Scientific Rationalism
Decartes  1600

Rationalism  identification of reason with mathematical

procedures.

The whole of knowledge can be constituted by reasoning

 excluding any dogmatic influence  the constitution of
the universal science.

”Chains of reasonings”  clear and distinctive  that can

be applied to any branch of knowledge  including
morality.
Cartesian mechanicism

The first product of rationalism in the scientific field 

Cartesian mechanicism

Mechanicism  the ancient atomistic conceptions of

Democritus and Epicurus?  forerunners of materialism

Democritus  the principles of all things are the atoms

and the vacuum.
Democritus
The necessary movement of atoms gives rise to visible bodies through
aggregations and disgregations.

Even our knowledge is constituted through material pathways, when

the “fluxes” of atoms coming from existing bodies strike our sense
organs.

The vacuum  not being a possibility of manifestation  could not

have a place in the manifested world, leading the atomists to a paradox
 not admitting by definition any other positive existence than that of
the atoms and their combinations, the atomists are directly led to
suppose that between the atoms there exists a vacuum in which the
atoms can move.
The mechanicist thesis

The mechanicist thesis  everything is explainable based

solely on the principles of matter and local movement.

Any concept lacks explicative value if such concept cannot

be analysed in terms of the dynamical possibilities inherent
to the material structures, by reason of the configurations
and movements of the component particles.
The way to materialism

Decartes  did not feel like proposing his “animal-

machine” theory at the human level  dualism  mind
and matter  Decartes considered one term and
consciously neglect the other  as opposed to his
successors who negate the existence of one of the parts
altogether  considering only the part that was amenable
to the mechanicist conception in order to reduce the entire
reality in a way that was naturally going to lead to
materialism.

Materialism  a later product  became explicit with the

revival of mechanicism in the XVII and XVIII centuries.
The net result

Positivism  each increment in knowledge produces a

correspondent withdrawal of ignorance  the idea of a
knowledge that grows as an asymptotic approximation
towards an infinite point of view that represents complete
knowledge.

Reductionism  the principle of analysing complex things

into simpler more basic constituents  the view that things
and living processes can be explained (only) in terms of
the material composition and physicochemical activities of
their components.
Asymptotic knowledge grow

Total
Knowledge
The limits to reductionism
The reductionist ideal in relation to the highest hierarchical levels of
emergence  the human “mental process”  the most promising
strategy?

“New neuroanatomical components that one had no idea about are

being described simply by looking at where specific proteins are
distributed in the brain. My guess is [M. Raffs’] that the reductionist
approach, even where it is just a fishing expedition, will lead to real
understanding in unpredictable ways, and that the molecular and
cellular basis of memory, learning and other higher brain function
could well emerge bit by bit, until the mystery gradually disappears,
just as has been happening in developmental biology”

(M. Raff, in the discussion of a symposium paper by W. G. Quinn,

1998: 124).
Paradigms of complexity

In the 1900’s  alternatives to the reductionist-positivistic

epistemologies.

Technological evolution  produces a perception of

increasing complexity and interactive synergies.

Frontier disciplines  cognitive sciences, evolutive

sciences, systemic thinking, philosophy of science,
experimental epistemology, cybernetics, semiotics.
In a mechanical view,

WHAT IS LIFE?
“Mechanical” questions?
Comments? Explosive
reactions?
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