Chapter 15: Legacies of Revolution: From Newton to Einstein (p.

95)

I. Classical sciences (rationalism) and Baconian sciences (empiricism)

A. Abstract (Classical) sciences were pursued in the theoretical style of Isaac Newton,
Rene Descartes, and Pierre Simon Laplace, all of whom followed Platonic Idealism,
and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who seemed to prefer Pythagorean universalism
(despite the growing importance of empirical sciences)
1. David Hume (1711-1776), born in Berwickshire, Scotland, and educated
in law at the University of Edinburgh, was a candidate for the Chair of
Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh University before taking a position as
librarian at the Advocate’s Library and writing a comprehensive volume
on the history of England
a. Hume’s Treatise on Human Nature (1739-1740) was an attack on the
Cartesian system of knowledge, and on the extreme universalism and
rationalism of Leibniz, by claiming that absolute certainty is not
possible in either rationalistic thinking or empirical observations,
since humans are capable of error in both efforts
b. although unpopular when first published, Hume’s philosophical works
reinforced the Newtonian concept that science is limited to what we can
observe, and statements about ultimate causality cannot be considered
scientific knowledge (including attempts to explain gravity’s ability
to “act at a distance” in mechanistic terms)
c. Hume considered statements about causality to be speculative, since we
can never know with certainty that event A causes event B (just because
we have observed that B consistently follows A in the past does not mean
that such a correlation will always hold true in the future)
d. natural law is also considered speculative in Hume’s opinion, and the
regularities that we observe in nature are based more on the human habit
of making inferences than on universal principles (Hume could be
regarded as a nominalist, or a particularist, for his attacks on the concept
of universal, unchanging natural laws)
2. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), born in Konigsberg, Prussia, and educated at the
University of Konigsberg, began taking courses in theology, but his primary
interests were in philosophy, mathematics, and the physical sciences; after
obtaining his Ph.D. degree, he became a Professor of Logic and Metaphysics
at the University of Konigsberg, where he published his major works of
philosophy and speculative science
a. Kant’s Investigation of the Question Whether the Earth Has Undergone
Any Change in Its Axial Rotation (1754), based on Newtonian physics,
proposed the hypothesis that the Earth, spinning on its axis, has slowed
down in its rotation due to tidal forces (primarily those of the Moon)
b. Kant’s The Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (1755),
again based on Newtonian physics, argued that the solar system originated
as a whirling disk of dust and gas (the nebular hypothesis), that the Milky
Way galaxy was also a nebula (spinning disk of stars), and that many other
nebulae visible in space could be galaxies similar to the Milky Way galaxy
I. Classical sciences and Baconian sciences (continued) (p.96)
A. Abstract (Classical) sciences (continued)
2. Immanuel Kant (continued)
c. Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781) set the framework for his greatest
philosophical system, which he called Transcendental Idealism (intended
to synthesize the extreme empiricism of David Hume with the extreme
rationalism and universalism of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz)
1) Kant argued that everything in existence could be categorized as either
noumena (the “thing-in-itself”, independent of perception) or phenomena
(that which can be perceived), and that rationalistic claims to know with
certainty what is beyond sensory perception (like Platonic idealism) are
unfounded; he proposed 4 “antinomies” to illustrate limits of rationality
a) the thesis that both space and time are limited (which seems logical)
is contradicted by the antithesis that both space and time are infinite
(which also seems logical), and reason cannot decide between them
b) the thesis that all substances are composed of indivisible particles
(like the atoms of Democritus) is contradicted by the antithesis that
all substances can be divided into an infinite number of smaller
particles (like the subatomic particles of modern quantum physics),
and reason alone cannot choose between these alternatives
c) the thesis that humans have free will (spontaneity) is contradicted by
the antithesis that all events are part of a causal chain that cannot be
altered (determinism), which reason alone is unable to judge
d) the thesis that an absolutely necessary being or substance must exist
(necessity) is contradicted by the antithesis that no such substance or
being exists (contingency), and this is undecidable by reason alone
2) Kant’s resolution to these “antinomies” is to reject the claim that reason
can answer all questions about the ultimate nature of reality (noumena),
and to accept that scientific knowledge claims must be limited to what is
perceived (phenomena), as understood by the mind, which would mean
that some scientific questions might remain forever unanswerable
3) Kant, unlike Hume, believed in a world of Platonic dualism (his noumena
corresponding to Plato’s universal forms, and his phenomena corresponding
to Aristotle’s particulars), but he still could not escape Hume’s conclusion that
we cannot make absolute knowledge claims about what lies beyond perception
3. Pierre Simon Laplace (1749-1827), born in Beaumont-en-Auge, Normandy, France,
attended a Benedictine school before enrolling at the University of Caen, originally
studying theology, but switching to mathematics. He was appointed to a teaching
position at the Ecole Militaire (military college) in Paris, where he collaborated
with Antoine Lavoisier on measuring the specific heat of metals, and the boiling
points of ethanol and ether. In 1773, Laplace was elected to the French Academy
of Sciences, and by 1806 he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish
Academy of Sciences. Laplace developed the dynamic theory of tides, which took
into account not only the gravitational forces of the sun and the moon, but also the
Earth’s rotation and the effects of continental land masses and deep sea ridges, to
predict the height of tides in unprecedented accuracy (within a few centimeters).
I. Classical sciences and Baconian sciences (continued) (p.97)
A. Abstract (Classical) sciences (continued)
3. Pierre Simon Laplace (continued)
a. the nebular hypothesis for the solar system, which had been proposed in 1755 by
Immanuel Kant, was given a more precise mathematical foundation by Laplace,
who argued that the planets more distant from the sun (the gas giants Neptune,
Uranus, Saturn, and Jupiter) were older than the planets more proximal to the sun
(the rocky planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars)
b. Laplace was most famous for his works on statistics and probability theory, and
his five-volume work on Celestial Mechanics (published in 1799, 1802, 1805,
and 1825), which applied a more refined version of Issac Newton’s differential
calculus to the motion of celestial bodies, demonstrating for the first time that the
orbit of Jupiter was not shrinking, and the orbit of Saturn was not expanding, but
their orbits within the solar system were in equilibrium (relatively stable)
c. more than any of his predecessors, Laplace was a strict determinist, stating that
if all of the forces in nature were known, we could predict the future behavior
of everything in existence, from the smallest atoms to the largest bodies in the
universe, as far into the past and into the future as our calculations could take us
d. at the end of his life, Laplace is reported to have said, “what we know is so little,
and what we are ignorant of is immense”
4. Albert Einstein (1879-1955), born in Ulm, Germany, educated at the Swiss Federal
Polytechnic School in Zurich, Switzerland, earned his Ph.D. at the University of
Zurich. Einstein taught theoretical physics at University of Zurich, the University
of Bern, Switzerland, the Charles Ferdinand University in Prague, Czechoslovakia
(Austro-Hungary), the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics in Berlin, Germany, and
the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton University in New Jersey (U.S.A.).
Einstein was elected a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences in 1913, a
foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1920,
a foreign member of the Royal Society of London in 1921, a member of the Spanish
Academy of Sciences in 1923 (after winning the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921 for
contributions to theoretical physics, including the photoelectric effect), and a full
member of the National Academy of Sciences (United States) in 1942.
a. while working at the Swiss Patent Office from 1902-1909, Einstein found that
classical Newtonian physics was inadequate to explain the newly-discovered
laws of electromagnetic fields, and by 1905 he had developed his theory of
special relativity to reconcile them – three other influential papers that Einstein
also published in 1905 were on the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, and
the equivalence of matter and energy (E = mc2)
b. Einstein expanded his ideas about relativity to gravitational forces, leading to his
1916 publication The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity, which
predicted that even light could be bent by a strong gravitational field (confirmed
during a solar eclipse on May 29, 1919, by Sir Arthur Eddington, who observed
the bending of light from a distant star as seen through gaps in the sun’s corona)
c. Einstein is credited with alerting U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt to the
dangers of atomic power in the hands of Nazi Germany, which started the U.S.
Manhattan Project to develop atomic weapons during World War II
I. Classical sciences and Baconian sciences (continued) (p.98)
A. Abstract (Classical) sciences (continued)
4. Albert Einstein (continued)
d. Danish physicist Niels Bohr disagreed with Einstein about quantum physics,
which Bohr believed to be based on indeterminacy at the subatomic level, while
Einstein believed that our inability to predict subatomic motion was based on
measurement problems rather than causality problems (stating that “God does not
play dice with the universe”), and he would spend the last years of his life in an
effort to unify quantum mechanics with relativity (unfinished)
e. Einstein’s attempt to achieve a “grand unified theory” was a bold attempt to
reconcile two seemingly contradictory disciplines within physics (the very small
with the very large), in the tradition of Platonic Idealism, and this attempt is
an ongoing project occupying the best minds in physics today (including Roger
Penrose, Edward Witten, and the late Stephen Hawking)
B. Practical (Baconian) sciences were pursued in the empirical style of Francis Bacon,
and in the fields of taxonomy and evolutionary biology there have been a number of
important contributions by John Ray, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Carolus Linnaeus, Jean
Baptiste de Lamarck, Georges Cuvier, James Hutton, Charles Lyell, Richard Owen,
Charles Darwin, Gregor Mendel, and Alfred Russel Wallace (which could be said to
follow in the tradition of either Aristotelian realism or radical empiricism)
1. John Ray (1627-1705), born in Black Notley, Essex, England, studied at Trinity
College in Cambridge University. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society
of London in 1667, and was a lecturer in Greek and in Mathematics at Cambridge
University, but his chief interest was in the natural history of plants and animals
(publishing systematic botanical works, like Historia generalis plantarum in three
volumes, from 1686, to 1688, to 1704).
a. Ray was the first to define what we now call the “biological species” concept,
which is based only on those characteristics that are shared from the ancestral
population to the descendent population (he stated that “one species of plant
never springs from the seed of a different species of plant”)
b. this shift in focus, from the individual organism (in classical Aristotelian botany
and zoology), to the population of interbreeding organisms, would make shared
inherited characteristics the primary criterion of taxonomy (rather than individual
differences in traits, which could be natural variability within the species instead
of excluding characteristics that are used to distinguish different species)
1) for example, there are some breeds of dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) that are
smaller than a red fox (Vulpes vulpes), and other breeds of dogs that are larger
than a maned wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus), but all breeds of dogs are still
the same species because, despite their variability, they share several inherited
characteristics in a common interbreeding population (including friendliness
to humans) that other species do not share
2) the focus on interbreeding populations rather than individuals makes sexual
reproduction an essential part of the “biological species” definition (which
applies to most eukaryotes, although it does not apply to some eukaryotes,
and it does not apply to any of the prokaryotes)
I. Classical sciences and Baconian sciences (continued) (p.99)
B. Practical (Baconian) sciences (continued)
2. Georges-Louis Leclerc, or the Compte de Buffon (1707-1788), born in Montbard,
Burgundy, France, was educated at the Jesuit College of Godrans in Dijon, and
received advanced study in medicine, mathematics, and botany at the University of
Angers in France. He incorporated the differential calculus and integral calculus of
Newton and Leibniz into probability theory, was elected to the French Academy
of Sciences, was appointed as director of the Royal Garden and the Museum of
Natural History in Paris, and wrote 36 volumes of the Histoire Naturelle (from
1749-1788).
a. Leclerc speculated that the world was much older than the 6,000 year history
favored by scholastic theologians (his estimate was about 75,000 years), and
that a passing comet might have caused the formation of a solar nebula (from
which all planets in our solar system eventually emerged)
b. Leclerc favored John Ray’s “biological species” concept in classification over
the more traditional approach of taxonomy according to an individual’s traits
(which Carolus Linnaeus was using), arguing that reproductive fertility between
populations was the defining feature of a species
c. Leclerc entertained the notion that species might first come into existence from
morphologically similar species in the same genus, and that new genera might
originate from older genera in the same family, etc. (in the same way that a new
variety might originate from an older variety within a species), but he ultimately
rejected this view because it seemed to him that if fertile matings could not occur
between an ancestral species (like the leopard) and a putative descendent species
(like the housecat) at the present time, then it would be difficult to imagine any
time in the past when such matings might have been possible
3. Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778), born in Smaland, Sweden, was educated in botany
and medicine at Lund University in Skane, and at Uppsala University. He would
later become a professor of medicine and director of the Botanic Garden at Uppsala
University, and was one of the founding members of the Royal Swedish Academy
of Sciences. Linnaeus published systematic works in zoology (Systema Naturae,
first edition in 1735) and botany (Species Plantarum, first edition in 1753), which
would form the basis of his hierarchical taxonomic system
a. Linnaeus argued for a more natural system of classification, with most emphasis
on reproductive structures (especially in plants), since he believed that all species
were capable of sexual reproduction
b. Linnaeus, like his contemporary Georges-Louis Leclerc, almost accepted the idea
that one species could change into a different species over time, and he was the
first taxonomist to suggest that humans should be grouped with the great apes in
the same order (Anthropomorpha, which is now called Order Primates), but his
inability to imagine a mechanism for such evolutionary change led him to accept
Aristotle’s view on the fixity of species
c. the binomial classification system established by Linnaeus (Genus and species,
like Homo sapiens), along with higher taxonomic ranks (Family, like Hominidae;
Order, like Primates; Class, like Mammalia; Phylum, like Chordata; & Kingdom,
like Animalia) was an improvement over Aristotle’s system (replacing it)