Advanced training in Objectivism: Who does it well?

Katherine,

Modern physics has been given a bad name by a bunch of bogus 20th century philosophers. Quantum effects fall off very quickly and really don't apply to anything bigger than a few hundred atoms. Also, they have statistical regularity.

Both contemporary physics and biology are very reality oriented. I don't doubt the progress of science, I celebrate it. There are many in the Objectivist movement, however, who twist science to fit their philosophical views.

By the way, I agree with Jason that there are philosophical axioms: existence and identity which are primary.

Jim

Post 41

Friday, August 5, 2005 - 3:49am

Jody,

Science is hierarchically reductionist. Chemists deal with quantum mechanics obliquely, but mostly to get insight into electron orbital theory. Biologists deal with the DNA molecule and natural selection. Each science deals with its appropriate level of causal explanation. No one would try to explain human beings in terms of quarks. Richard Dawkins has an excellent discussion of this in The Blind Watchmaker.

Jim

Post 42

Friday, August 5, 2005 - 6:45am

Jim-
'twas not a serious statement. I was just joking around with Katherine to see if I could push her disciplinary buttons.

Post 43

Friday, August 5, 2005 - 7:43am

If anyone wants a terrific discussion of the philosophical implications of QM, it can be found in the Feynman Lectures on Physics Volume 3 in either lecture 2 or 3 off the top of my head.

Jim

Post 44

Friday, August 5, 2005 - 8:11am

Good reference Jim. And if anyone wants the full experience the audio tapes of the lectures, although not the best sound quality, are great.

Post 45

Saturday, August 6, 2005 - 12:39am

Chemistry and biology are very important and very complicated specialties of physics. Or did I miss some recent finding that neither chemistry nor biology are sciences dealing with the properties, changes, and interactions of matter and energy? I will be the first to note that the physics curricula in high school and in college makes little to no note of these most important sub-fields of physics. It is clear that this is in fact because these fields are so full of knowledge that the person trained as a physicist simply cannot have the time to learn enough from those fields to be well-qualified within them. A complete separation of the ways tends to be the result of an unwillingness to accept ignorance of much of physics on either the part of the physicist or that of the chemist or biologist. Indeed, there are many very good reasons for by and large training people in separate departments in universities and seeing these as different specialties to a point, but in the end, they are all about physics.

Lest someone think I am insulting their specialty, I would maintain that I am not. While I was trained as a physicist, the reality is that what I know is a good smattering of solid state physics, the chemistry of solids, and engineering materials. It has proven too much for me to be expert in the other fields of physics, such as much of chemistry, almost all of biology, almost all of high energy physics, cosmology, and nuclear physics. Of course, when an undergraduate and a graduate student, I took courses in high energy physics and nuclear physics and enjoyed them. They and biology have played little role in my career, however. [Barring the important exception that I am a biological creature!] My knowledge of chemistry and engineering materials has been largely learned on the job, with the attendant problems with gaps in knowledge that tend to occur under such circumstances. The systematic study of chemistry and biology has a lot to be said for it.

Of course, we could put ourselves on more neutral ground, given the fights for resources and recognition of the various disciplines of physics and simply call ourselves natural philosophers. This has the advantage of recognizing the role of epistemology in science and it also ties philosophy to reality. What a concept!

Post 46

Saturday, August 6, 2005 - 4:58am

I wouldn't call Chemistry and Biology sub-fields of Physics. Each of these disciplines has its own emphasis - Physics on the property of the matter; Chemistry on the changes of the matter; and Biology on all living organisms. All they have in common is that they deal with the reality of the physical world and reality is the only check for the validity of both methodologies and results of any scientific investigations.

Also, natural science is hierarchical with Physics at the bottom, then Chemistry, then Biology. And Math is the tool for everything. That should be the sequence how we learn these subjects from the beginning. It seems that in US high school, science education has somewhat deviated from these principles - they try to teach molecular biology before physics and chemistry!

(Edited by Hong Zhang on 8/06, 5:37am)

Post 47

Saturday, August 6, 2005 - 10:08pm

Hong - Your distinction between physics and chemistry is incorrect. Chemistry is only about matter and energy just as physics is. In turn, biology is mostly the chemistry of living things, but also involves structures to exert forces and such things as the conversion of light into chemical energy. I do not at all deny the need to treat chemistry and biology as disciplines. Similarly, solid-state physics is a discipline, as is cosmology. There is simply too much complexity for one person to try to understand it all or to practice it all. But, it is all the consequence of the laws of physics which tell us how energy and matter interact and about the nature of each. A plant or an animal is just a very complex physical system.

Post 48

Sunday, August 7, 2005 - 12:48am

Charles,

You write, "A plant or an animal is just a very complex physical system."

The term "just" in your sentence is false. As I pointed out in the recent article on the "Ontology of Emergence," it is possible for components with only physical attributes to be relationally organized into systems with emergent attributes, such as the ability to store or process information. Biological organisms began when an accidentally emergent self-reproducing configuration of physical components survived and reproduced, and its descendants began the process of evolutionary selection of ever more complex systems of emergent capabilities.

The emergent information-storage and information-processing attributes of living organisms must be measured and studied by methods appropriate to the study of systems that have both physical and informational properties. Therefore biology (perhaps unlike chemistry) is not only a physical science, but properly a system science that studies organisms in terms of their information processes, their physical processes, and the interrelations of their physical and informational processes.

Post 49

Sunday, August 7, 2005 - 10:14am

Charles,
What I said was that Physics, Chemistry, Biology, etc., each has a different emphasis on the aspects of the physical world that they study. And I also said that all branches of natural sciences deal with physical reality. I hope that you can read what I write a bit more carefully next time.

Also, you are not suggesting that all sciences that study matter and energy are Physics, do you? As Adam has pointed out, different methodologies are required to study systems at different complexity levels, and on different aspects of matter and energy. Or perhaps you were using a much broader definition for Physics here, i.e., all sciences that study the physical world. I'd use "natural sciences", not Physics, for this latter definition.

Post 50

Monday, August 8, 2005 - 9:22pm

Whenever I make the point that physics is the underlying science of all the sciences, chemists and biologists become extremely angry. This has always been true with non-Objectivist scientists and now I have found that the emotions run as high with Objectivist scientists. Apparently, all scientists love their sub-field of study and take umbrage at those who see the value in a more universal approach in which scientists cross the boundaries between our over-rigid inheritances from undergraduate and graduate departments. Academic physicists think I have betrayed them because I think of myself not only as a solid-state physicist, but also a solid-state chemist and a materials scientist and engineer. One such physicist, a high energy physicist, said that I was just a dirty engineer. Well, so be it.

Yet, there have been many interesting cases of people crossing these largely artificial barriers and bringing new insights into one of the other sub-fields. Watson and Crick entering biology and innumerable chemists now in biological and biotechnology labs come to mind. Yes, biology does deal with information science, but what fundamental difference does it make that that information is encoded chemically rather than as a region with a magnetic or a dielectric identity? Sorry, but I see this just as a matter lying firmly in the realm of physics. There is nothing in the study of physics that says it is limited to simple systems either. Do biologists deal with complex systems and have some research methodologies designed to deal with them? Certainly. Biology would not be a discipline or a sub-field if it did not have the tools and methodologies designed to deal with those systems that they specialize in. Solid-state physicists similarly have their tools and systems that they have a special interest in. The same is true of high-energy physicists. One could make a strong argument for separating solid-state physicists from high-energy physicists too. In reality, the underlying science is all physics in each of these systems.

This is not to say that a solid-state physicist would find it trivial to begin studying the effect of a drug upon a cancer cell in a human being. Just as I have great respect for the knowledge of a good cosmological physicist, you had better believe that I have tremendous respect for anyone willing to tackle the mind-boggling complexity of the human body. Still, the operation of that body is based on physical principles fully consistent with physics. With one probable exception being that interface between the operation of a human body and its mental state. That interface does not seem to be within the realm of the biologist as yet, either. Now, the fact that traditional physics departments have neglected large and important sub-fields such as chemistry and biology is irrelevant. In fact, it is now clear that those biologists who have learned much about the study of complex and organized systems could teach solid-state physicists a lot about how to better understand complex and organized non-living materials. The many sub-fields of physics should be in communication with one another.

I tried to post a comment last night, but it was lost when the web site failed to respond.

Post 51

Monday, August 8, 2005 - 9:50pm

Hong -

Why are you angry with me? I have arranged that every chemist and every biologist would sanction your every comment in opposition to the universality of physics as an outlet to their fury. I really am a nice guy.

I have noted quite a few responses that you have made to people in which you tell them that they have not read your prior comment carefully. It has not always seemed to me that you were right about this. But let us examine this case now. I have read and re-read your post several times now. Your characterizations of physics and chemistry ring no more true to me now. Physics is every bit as much about the changes of matter as about the property of matter, not to mention about energy and its effects on matter. I would characterize chemistry as being about the property of matter and the changes in matter also. Seems that chemists even study the effects of energy on matter, such as the effects of heat on reaction rates and the effects of radiation such as light or microwaves on reactions. Indeed, there are sub-fields arising out of each of these traditional disciplines called chemical physics and physical chemistry. When I read papers from the respective journals they sure seem very similar to me. When I read a textbook on physical chemistry, it sure seems like physics to me, even in the traditional physics department sense.

Of course, the different sub-fields of physics have different emphases. I have only affirmed that statement. Did you misread me? Solid-state physics has a different emphasis than does high-energy particle physics, or they would not be different sub-fields. Biology has a different emphasis from cosmology and chemistry has a different emphasis from nuclear physics. Of course, one could further breakdown both chemistry and biology into additional sub-fields, but it only makes sense to do so on the basis of different emphases!

Emotions run high and Hong wins many more sanctions! I cannot go on now making such trivial and obviously correct statements and gathering you so many sanctions Hong. I will have to desist from this exercise, unless someone actually makes a good point sometime in the future. I have a lot of physics to do. Or is it chemistry or materials engineering? Damn, it all seems the same to me.

Post 52

Tuesday, August 9, 2005 - 3:32am

The INTEGRATED view of existence, it would seem, runs hard for most, even Objectivists - yes, lip service is given, but the full grasping of the implications seem to elude most.

Post 53

Tuesday, August 9, 2005 - 8:52am

Charles wrote:

Hong -

Why are you angry with me?

Huh?

Post 54

Wednesday, August 10, 2005 - 1:29am

    Great! We no longer have disagreements graduating into antagonisms which devolve into "Who you callin' a 'X,' you, you...'XXX' who don't even know how to do 'Y'?" over determinism/volition.
    Now we got them over reductionism/non-reductionism, neither of whom seem to accept the other as such and thence get back to the original thread-point.
    I think everyone ought to re-read Phil Coates' previous 3 posts.

MTFBWY
J-D

(...and I'm not even a scientist...)

(Edited by John Dailey on 8/10, 1:42am)

Post 55

Wednesday, August 10, 2005 - 6:08am

I want to second Robert Malcom's suggestion in post #14: "what really would be of use, for all, is a compendum of these source materials, all gathered in one spot." This could be aimed at both advanced and beginning students of Objectivism. It seems that the Web is perfect for this sort of thing -- one way to do it would be to post a list of sources, and folks could be invited to annotate the titles (such as "This is a must read"; "Attempt this only after reading X and Y"; "The author misrepresents Rand's theory of Z"; etc.). As an adult who is relatively new to Objectivism (and this forum), I would find something like that very helpful. Or maybe it already exists somewhere?

Post 56

Wednesday, August 10, 2005 - 12:00pm

> post a list of sources, and folks could be invited to annotate the titles (such as "This is a must read" [John P]

If you want to understand Objectivism well enough to integrate it to other disciplines, your work, the issues in your life [let alone be able to be an intellectual or activist trying to spread it], all of the primary sources are a 'must read'. Annotations by random individuals with wildly varying takes on Objectivism and varying degrees of perceptiveness is likely to be the blind leading the one-eyed.

Here's the way I and many others have learned and have worked to integrate it across a couple decades, in this order:

1. Read all the primary books [for most people this falls into two steps: the novels and the essay collections by Rand starting with CUI and VOS].

2. Read the complete publications Rand wrote and edited including the many things not in the anthologies and articles by other authors [Objectivist Newsletter, Objectivist, Ayn Rand Letter].

3. Take all the basic Peikoff courses on philosophy, logic, history of philosophy, the humanities, and Objectivism.

If you haven't done these (or you try to 'cram' or sprint through this very difficult and thought-provoking material), you won't have mastered / integrated Objectivism as opposed to being able to recite it or bits and pieces as floating abstractions:

TANSIR.

There Are No Shortcuts In Reality.

After you've done at least 1 and much of 2 and 3, you'd benefit from a good training and skills-building and education program. The problem with 3 is Peikoff has made it more difficult and expensive to do this than it used to be when groups would lease the tapes and give courses in their homes. This means a Training Program has to either incorporate them or find alternatives and supplements.

Phil
(Edited by Philip Coates
on 8/10, 12:04pm)

Post 57

Wednesday, August 10, 2005 - 2:46pm

Philip, I agree with you that it would be too random to allow just anyone to annotate and suggest books for such a project. Honestly I don't think that 95% of the people here at SOLO are really qualified to do this. However I think that a web guide for self study WOULD be good if undertaken by maybe 3 or 4 individuals who have been studying Objectivism for a long time. You seem to be a good canidate for such a project. The www.importanceofphilosophy.com page which is kept up by the SOLO administrators would be a good place for a self study program to be listed. Even a basic list of the "core" readings and a description of their content and usefulness would be extremely useful.

- Jason

Post 58

Monday, November 7, 2005 - 10:34am

In Post 29 of August 4th, James Heaps-Nelson wrote, "For an example of how not to do philosophy, check out OPAR page 17. Peikoff commenting on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states: "Our ignorance of certain measurements does not affect their reality or the consequent operation of nature.

"Peikoff thinks, without having looked at any data, that the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is a "measurement problem". So much for the primacy of existence."

James, I went back and looked at that section of OPAR in order to establish the context of Peikoff's statement, and I agree with what he is saying. I must say, I am simply baffled by your reaction to it. Peikoff is responding to the objection that, according to some commentators, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle implies a breakdown in the law of causality. He is simply saying that this is a non-sequitur - that just because we are limited in our ability to measure or predict a subatomic event, it does not follow that the law of causality is no longer valid. The statement that you quoted, viz., "Our ignorance of certain measurements does not affect their reality or the consequent operation of nature" is an expression of the primacy of existence. Its denial would involve the primacy of consciousness.

Remember that, according to Objectivism, the law of causality is the law of identity applied to action, and that existence is identity. Bearing this in mind, please consider the following:

Here is what Heisenberg had to say in his 1927 paper on the uncertainty principle: "I believe that the existence of the classical 'path' can be pregnantly formulated as follows: The 'path' comes into existence only when we observe it. "

And here is what one commentator had to say, "Heisenberg realized that the uncertainty relations had profound implications. First, if we accept Heisenberg's argument that every concept has a meaning only in terms of the experiments used to measure it, we must agree that things that cannot be measured really have no meaning in physics. Thus, for instance, the path of a particle has no meaning beyond the precision with which it is observed. But a basic assumption of physics since Newton has been that a "real world" exists independently of us, regardless of whether or not we observe it. (This assumption did not go unchallenged, however, by some philosophers.) Heisenberg now argued that such concepts as orbits of electrons do not exist in nature unless and until we observe them."

James, do really think Heisenberg's view is consistent with the Objectivist metaphysics and with the primacy of existence? Is it not rather as clear and unqualified a statement of the primacy of consciousness as one could get?

- Bill

Post 59

Monday, November 7, 2005 - 11:57am