and how they might be most meaningfully answered. Philosophy is how you determine how to test a method to determine its validity. It was to philosophy that scientists had to look for direction. Today, philosophy is seldom held in such high esteem—a problem that will be explored throughout the duration of this work.
Today, students hapless enough to declare a philosophy major are repeatedly tormented with obligatory and unsolicited advice regarding the limitations this would place on their work-résumés. What might one do with a philosophy degree?! What gets accomplished in a philosophy building?! Indeed, the buildings that house the physical sciences—departments of micro-biology, chemistry, and physics, among others—are the buildings where the frontiers of science are being pushed forward. The physical sciences are where the hard work is being done. Now one finds that departments of philosophy are across the quad (if they even get their own building). This is where the ineffable questions are being asked: what is the meaning of life? Which is is the is that I mean when I say that this cup is red or this earth is round? These questions are answered by thinking through an endless variety of thought experiments, carefully engineered haikus, or until patience for such questions runs out. Then it’s back across the quad to do some real work. Philosophy is where we sort through our own shit, but the sciences are where actual work gets done. After all, I’m not going to think my way through my enormous pile of student loan debt. Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math—the STEM disciplines, that’s where the jobs are. Philosophy has been secreted away in the humanities to be spoken of only with the cautious skepticism that was once reserved for the sciences (try to remember what happened to Galileo and other “crazies” in the seventeenth century). We have forgotten that philosophy is responsible for the status of science: philosophy supplies the courage, creativity, and criteria for scientific action. Today it gets ignored.
It wasn’t always ignored though. Indeed, modern science—that practice to which we have all piously pledged our scholastic allegiance—is indebted to philosophy. Science is incapable of transforming its own foundations. This transformation must come from without. Philosophy was responsible for the modern scientific revolution, and in 1934 this was still recognized.
Take meteorology as an example. In the medieval era, of what did meteorology consist? Remember that in medieval Europe, only a handful of people were allowed to ask such questions. Indeed, only a select few could read and write. Such education was indistinguishable from theological convention. There are many instances of rainfall in the Bible. Conveniently, there is even a theme that is common to each of them: God is responsible for rain. So here’s the medieval meteorological puzzle; see how you do: It is raining. Why might it be raining? and what might you do about it?
Entire communities gathered behind the learned folks for their understanding of the cause behind the rain: God is responsible. The meaning that the rain (or lack thereof) might have for the people: we have been bad/good and have been cursed/blessed. You can also imagine how such an understanding of meteorology might influence the behavior of the communities’ members: now they might spend an extra hour praying each day; now they might make an additional sacrifice each week; now they might cut out certain other punishable behaviors; and so on.
Present day meteorology has benefited from a number of scientific discoveries. Each of them seem arbitrary or meaningless in their own right, but taken together and with an understanding of how they fit together, they give us a deep understanding of the relationship between atmospheric composition, pressure systems, temperature, air flow, and fluid dynamics.
How do we get from theological interpretations of reality to scientific ones? How do we get from medieval to modern? The answer is metaphysics. Metaphysics supplies the ways by which we may come to know the universe. In the medieval period in Europe, the metaphysical principle was simple: everything is God. My obnoxious neighbor, seasonal depression, periwinkle, cumulonimbus clouds, and pinecones—they’re all God. How do we understand them better, change them, or influence them? Through God. Do you see? The medieval metaphysic is actually quite thorough. No stone is left unturned. By understanding God, we understand everything (and the reverse). Moreover, nothing falls outside of this metaphysical perspective, and if it does, it is necessarily wrong because it doesn’t fit with the primary principle that everything is God.
This changes with the modern revolution, which may be summarized in an equally simple manner: everything is not God, not one; they are just independent things! That is, the world is not made up of a bunch of manifestations of God, but of a bunch of different things: hard things, soft things, organic things, heavy things, light things, highly reactive things, docile things, and so on. How do we understand them better? By isolating each single thing and learning everything there is to know about it. How do we change them? By carefully manipulating them and recording what we find. How do we test them? By making predictions based on earlier discoveries and testing those. Eventually, after looking at everything individually and then in combination, we will know everything. This is the modern scientific ideal.
The shift from “everything is God” to “everything can be understood by scientific fact” is a dramatic one. It changes the way the world looks. It changes the way we understand the weather, the way we educate our children, and the way we understand ourselves. Indeed, it changes everything. Auguste Comte captures this profound change in the first few pages of his 1844 work, A General View of Positivism. The positivist worldview is described at greater length in the introduction to Part III.
The modern shift was a remarkable one, and it cannot be viewed independently from the science that was rapidly developing through it. Alfred North Whitehead has written a very cheerful volume chronicling the development of science and modernity titled Science and the Modern World.
Philosophy allowed meteorologists to consider weather patterns as complicated combinations of things instead of as acts of God. When understood factually, the universe is understood to yield to the impressive hand of modern science. Consider a few examples from the century leading up to the eighth International Congress of Philosophy. Steam engines (1804) make the world more easily and efficiently navigable; refrigeration (1856) extends the shelf life of perishable foods; the telephone (1876) connects people who share no spatial proximity; airplanes (1903) allow humans to defy gravity. The metaphysics of modernity had not only changed the way we understand the world, it had transformed the latter in favor of humans.
In 1924, a group of philosophers dubbed the “Vienna Circle” doubled down on this matter-of-fact metaphysics. Why not? It had already accomplished so much. Before 1924, there were two places where scientists could look in order to understand the universe: physical quantities and phenomenal qualities. Physical quantities are those attributes of things that are measurable and quantifiable: a rock’s density, volume, hardness, and so on—that is, the thingliness of things which can be known in a matter-of-fact way. Phenomenal qualities are those attributes of things that are given in my experience of them: how a rock feels in my hand, how heavy it seems, and what it means for me and from my particular perspective—that is, my experience of the rock. These qualities are not so easily summarized through matters-of-fact because environmental context, time of day, and individual differences can change how heavy a rock feels to me. The Vienna Circle decided that scientists no longer needed to bother with phenomenal qualities. So these were dropped. After all, what kinds of breakthroughs had the examination of experience led to? Philosophers of science had cast their lot with the modern revolution. Philosophy and Science could now skip, arm-in-arm, through the fields of the universe over which they were slowly gaining complete control.
In 1934, it was time for the Congress to convene once again to review all that science—that they—had achieved. As I mentioned previously, the group had much to be proud of and much to look forward to! Indeed, nuclear physicists had been developing the ability to harness the enormous amounts of energy that held atoms together. The very structure and integrity of the smallest constituents of the universe were soon subject to the will and caprice of the scientist. What might they have to cheer about at this congress?
Edmund
