Section 7
Moreover, it has become clear that even infinitesimally small differences in the original explosion that cosmologists see as the starting point of our universe would have resulted in a world in which conscious life would not occur. In other words, ours is only one among billions of possible worlds, all of them equally rational. This has given rise to the so-called anthropic principle, which in its weak form states that our location in the universe is necessarily privileged to the extent of being compatible with our existence as observers, and in its strong form states that the universe must be such as to admit the creation of observers within it. In both formulations this looks like an attempt to impose an immanent and necessary rationality on facts that suggest radical contingency. As far as physics can tell us, there could have been billions of other universes; there is, for us at least, only this one. We possess no powers of reasoning that can show that it had to be this one, unless we start by assuming that our consciousness is the measure of all things.
These new developments in physics and cosmology open the way for a real dialogue between believers and scientists such as was impossible when the mechanistic model dominated physics. Our missionary task, however, is rendered more difficult by the fact that other branches of science are still so largely controlled by mechanistic models. Thus one can observe the peculiar fact that precisely during the period when mechanical models in physics were breaking down, biologists were abandoning earlier vitalist theories and trying to describe the phenomena of plant and animal life in mechanistic terms—and this in spite of the extensive demonstrations of the capacity of even very lowly animals to recognize and solve problems, in other words, to engage in purposeful activity. F. H. C. Crick, whose discovery of the DNA molecule has had such a profound effect on popular thinking about the nature of life, is quoted as saying that “the ultimate aim of the modern movement in biology is in fact to explain all biology in terms of physics and chemistry,” and there is no doubt that this reductionist way of thinking is very widespread. Yet its absurdity is obvious, for not even a machine can be explained by the chemical and physical analyses of its component wheels and shafts and pulleys. It is possible to show how the functioning of each part contributes to the operation of the whole, but it would be absurd to say that we have “explained” the machine as a whole if we have no idea of the purpose for which it was designed and built. It is explained by understanding its purpose. And biologists have shown that the discovery of the physical basis of the genetic code in the DNA molecule, so far from explaining the origin of life, made it more mysterious. Even if we assume that the genetic code is the chance product of natural selection, it is without biological function until it is translated, and the machinery for this translation depends on components that are themselves the products of the translation. The possibility of this occurring by chance is so small as to amount to zero probability, so that even Crick has seriously suggested that life may have been transmitted to this planet from some other part of space. To say these things, of course, in no way questions the enormous importance of these discoveries about the physical and chemical conditions for the existence of life. It merely denies that the knowledge of these conditions constitutes an explanation.
In a similar way, the enormous advances in our knowledge of the structure and functioning of the brain have been used to disseminate the idea that the objects we call our minds have no real existence, and that what we experience as our own mental life is to be fully “explained” as the functioning of approximately ten billion electrical circuits in the cerebral cortex, and therefore that it is in principle possible to create an electronic computer that will be equivalent to a human being in its mental operation. Again, to attack this is not to call into question the great fruitfulness of our increased knowledge of the physical condition of mental life. It is to point out that to regard knowledge of these conditions as an explanation leads to absurdity. One way of stating the absurdity is as follows: however we may explain our mental states, we know that we have them. I think that I exist. If this idea is only a series of electrical pulses in my brain, the capacity of the brain to produce these pulses must be the result of evolution by natural selection. But since the idea that I can by my will affect the operation of these pulses is an illusion, the existence of this idea can have no effect upon what happens in the world of physical and chemical change. Therefore, it can have no bearing on natural selection. Therefore, the existence of this illusion is an unexplained mystery since it cannot have arisen from natural selection. The “explanation” fails to explain.
Everyone is aware of the difference between a movement of his hand that is consciously performed for a purpose and a movement brought about by applying an electrical current from a battery to the appropriate nerve. It may seem a waste of time to point out that they are not the same. We know perfectly well the difference between a responsible action and an involuntary jerk. And yet the power of the mechanistic image is so great that it permeates the mind of our culture with the idea that “explanation” must be in its terms, and that to explain behavior in terms of the responsible action of a person who is capable of understanding and accepting a purpose is “unscientific.”
The sciences that deal with human behavior in society have likewise been enormously influenced by the mechanical model. The Newtonian paradigm has drawn economists and sociologists into the attempt to formulate laws analagous to the laws of classical physics, on the basis of which predictions could be made for the future. Armies of experts are employed by governments and business corporations in the belief that the future performance of human beings in their roles as consumers, producers, and citizens can be predicted and thus, by altering their circumstances, controlled. The recent advances in computer technology have stimulated further development into even more ambitious projects of futurology. It is not difficult to show both that this kind of prediction is—except to a very limited extent—theoretically impossible and also that in practice its failures are much more evident than its successes.
If one takes the single most far-reaching change in the world of thought in this century, namely, the one associated with the name of Einstein, it is not only impossible to imagine that it could have been predicted in 1850; it is also absurd, because to have predicted it would have been already to achieve it. Once again, we have to say that whatever may be the usefulness of mechanical models in economics or sociology, these can in no way provide an explanation for human behavior, much less a way of predicting it.
In the first chapter I spoke of the characteristic dichotomy in our culture between a public world of “facts” and a private world of “values.” Plainly, what I have been sketching in these recent paragraphs is what is called the world of facts, broadly conceived as a world of material entities operating according to laws that are mechanical in character. Corresponding to this world of facts is a kind of knowledge that is understood to be objective and impersonal, a knowledge that does not involve the knower in a personal risk. One may make the point simply by referring to the ways in which this knowledge is communicated in the course of the school curriculum. The statements of a textbook in physics, biology, or economics are not normally introduced by the phrase “I believe” or “we believe,” as are the creedal statements of the church. The latter statements explicitly involve a personal commitment; by implication it is possible not to believe. The statements in a scientific textbook (and I am not speaking here of scientific papers written at the frontier of new discovery, where the real nature of scientific knowledge becomes explicit) are made in the third person, and there is no suggestion that the writer is at risk. Here we are dealing not with personal opinions but with facts.
It is at this point that we touch the central core of our culture, which is an ideal of knowledge of what are called “the facts,” a knowledge that is supposed to be quite independent of the personal commitment of the knower. “Fact,” says Alasdair MacIntyre, “is in modern western culture a folk-concept with an aristocratic ancestry.” The aristocrat involved was Lord Bacon, who advised his contemporaries to abjure speculation and collect facts. By speculation, he was referring to the Aristotelian belief that things are to be understood in terms of their end or purpose. This he rejected. But what resulted from his call was not the activity of a lot of magpies collecting any odds and ends lying about with no rhyme or reason. It was shaped—as any rational activity has to be shaped—by another speculative framework, namely, the belief that things are to be understood in terms of their causes. The “facts” thus understood are “value-free” insofar as the idea of value is related to an end or purpose for which the thing in question is or is not well fitted. Here is the origin of what MacIntyre calls the folk-concept of “fact” that dominates the consciousness of modern Western man. There is in this view a world of facts that is the real world, an austere world in which human hopes, desires, and purposes have no place. The facts are facts, and they are value-free. The personal beliefs and value judgments of the student do not enter into the picture. They have their place in another realm of discourse, in that area where the personal opinions, tastes, and convictions of individuals are freely exercised in a pluralistic society. There is no need for the writer of the science textbook to use the formula “I believe,” because the facts are simply there whether one believes them or not. Science thus relieves one of the responsibility of deciding whether or not to commit himself to the truth of its statements. They are just facts.
And yet this folk-concept of a world of facts is denied by the actual practice of science. At the frontier of research, scientists do have to make difficult decisions whether or not to commit themselves to a new line of enquiry. They have to decide which problems are worth investigating and which are not. They have to make value judgments in the light of a vision of the purpose of scientific activity. The decision may make or break the scientist’s career. And the scientist is sustained in his intense mental struggle by a passionate concern to solve the problem he has decided to tackle. His enterprise is not value-free: it is impregnated through and through by commitment to a purpose. And, to return to the school textbooks, even the humblest student beginning the study of physics engages in a purposeful activity. The facts described in the textbook do not simply imprint themselves on his mind. They have to be understood through an arduous enterprise of learning the appropriate skill in the use of words, of ideas, and of apparati. And this only happens if there is a preliminary act of faith—faith that the enterprise is worthwhile, that the methods developed by previous scientists are trustworthy, and that the teacher is a competent exponent of them.
So we already have the evidence of the dichotomy that runs through our culture. We all engage in purposeful activity, and we judge ourselves and others in terms of success in achieving the purposes that we set before ourselves. Yet we accept as the final product of this purposeful activity a picture of the world from which purpose has been eliminated. Purpose is a meaningful concept in relation to our own consciousness of ourselves, but it is allowed no place in our understanding of the world of facts. Perhaps the point at which the self-contradiction becomes most obvious is in the application of social sciences to public administration. A social scientist who believes that he can understand and therefore predict and control human behavior on the basis of value-free scientific laws, that is, laws that do not assume any disputable judgments about what is good for human beings, is called upon to apply his skills as a civil servant. He cannot do so without acknowledging his capacity to pursue self-chosen purposes with a freedom that his science denies to those upon whom he is operating. The manipulator credits himself with the capacity for purposeful action that he denies to the manipulated. And if his purposes are questioned, there is no agreed-upon framework of “facts” by which they can be evaluated, for facts are value-free. It becomes simply a matter of the comparative skill and vigor of the different manipulators. If one goes on to ask, “By what criteria can the manipulator determine the direction in which to influence human behavior?” it will not be sufficient to answer with a recital of traditional moral values. These rest upon a different (and older) world-view and have no basis in “facts.” Of course, most scientists are still influenced by their traditional values; but insofar as they wish to be rigorously consistent, these scientific manipulators cannot allow those values to be determinative. If they are eliminated, what will control the scientist’s judgment? It can only be whatever element in his mental and emotional constitution is of greatest force. In eliminating purpose from the category of “facts,” the manipulator hands over control to whatever is of predominant force in his own nature. Man’s conquest of nature turns out to be nature’s conquest of man.
We have again come, from another angle, to the cleavage running through our culture between the private and the public worlds, a public world interpreted in terms of efficient causes and a private world in which purpose and therefore value judgments still have a place. I have affirmed that we cannot accept the situation in which Christian faith is admitted as no more than a possible option for the private sector. We cannot settle for a peaceful coexistence between science and religion on the basis of an allocation of their spheres of influence to the public and the private sectors respectively. We cannot forever live our lives in two different worlds. We cannot forever postpone this question: What is the real truth about the world?
A missionary encounter with our culture must bring us face to face with the central citadel of our culture, which is the belief that is based on the immense achievements of the scientific method and, to a limited but increasing extent, embodied in our political, economic, and social practice—the belief that the real world, the reality with which we have to do, is a world that is to be understood in terms of efficient causes and not of final causes, a world that is not governed by an intelligible purpose, and thus a world in which the answer to the question of what is good has to be left to the private opinion of each individual and cannot be included in the body of accepted facts that control public life. We have to go back to the point where Lord Bacon advised his followers to collect facts and abjure speculation and ask exactly what is meant by knowing the facts.
Knowing is the exercise of a skill that has to be learned. It has to be learned by submitting to the authority of parents, teachers, and learned men and women, and giving our attention, often with some strain, to what they say. It is a purposeful activity in which we sometimes succeed and sometimes fail. It is not a mechanical process. Facts do not imprint themselves on our brains in the way that images of objects are imprinted on a photographic plate.
As learning proceeds, more and more of what we know passes from a conscious awareness to a kind of knowledge of which we are not directly aware. In learning to read, we have to begin by attending to the exact shape of the letters. Soon we can stop worrying about these and learn to recognize words. Later we are no longer aware of the individual words but take in the meaning of whole sentences and even paragraphs. If we habitually use different languages, we may remember what a paragraph said but forget what language it was in. Our knowledge of the whole depends on knowing the letters and words; yet as we read we are not aware of the knowledge. Polanyi takes this as an example of what he calls the tacit component in knowing. We can attend focally to the meaning of the paragraph because we are tacitly aware of the marks on the paper and the separate words. If, on the other hand, we are reading the proofs of a book, we have to attend focally to the words on the paper while tacitly being aware of the meaning of the whole.
A very large part of our knowledge is tacit and cannot be communicated by specifying precise details. I can immediately recognize my wife in a crowd of a thousand people, but I could not give a description of her that would enable anyone else to do so. In this sense I know a great deal more than I can put into words. There are millions of human beings whose faces are basically formed in the same way and with the same color, but I could never confuse one of these with my wife. Yet I could not account for this fact by the most detailed measurements of her nose, chin, forehead, and so forth. This is the most vivid example of our capacity to recognize a configuration that is made up of many details. While we attend to the pattern we are only subsidiarily aware of the details. But a complete account of the details by itself would not enable us to recognize a pattern. This is why I said above that a person who knew everything specified in Laplace’s formulas for perfect knowledge would in fact know nothing; for to know the smallest components of an entity is not to know the entity unless we also know the pattern, and our knowledge of patterns is much more than can be specified in words. Therefore, the Laplacean ideal, which still exercises such a determinative influence over popular understanding of science, can only lead into a blind alley.
All science develops by the recognition of significant patterns, and the power to recognize them is a skill that is developed only through practice. There are no mathematical rules for deciding whether any configuration is a significant pattern or is simply an accident. The statistical probability of a collection of pebbles falling into a significant pattern is precisely the same as the probability of their falling into any one particular random grouping. Our recognition of a significant pattern is an act of personal judgment for which there are no rules. It is a judgment of value: the pattern represents something a human being finds meaningful in terms of intrinsic beauty or of purpose. And although rules have been devised for quantifying the regularity in a series that may or may not be random, the application of these rules by the scientist to a particular case is a matter of personal judgment that depends on skills acquired by practice and is not capable of quantification or of verbal definition.