George Bernard Shaw on Einstein

I read Shaw's toast to Einstein probably a good 50 years ago or more, but lacking a reference as well as the appropriate memory, I was not certain where to find a certain passage I remembered. Now I have located the text of the whole speech:

Toast to Albert Einstein, by Bernard Shaw, edited by Fred D. Crawford, Shaw, Vol. 15 (1995), pp. 231-241.

This is more or less the passage I remembered:

As an Englishman, Newton was able to combine mental power so extraordinary that if I were speaking fifty years ago, as I am old enough to have done, I should have said that his was the greatest mind that any man had ever been endowed with. And he contrived to combine the exercise of that wonderful mind with credulity, with superstition, with delusion which would not have imposed on a moderately intelligent rabbit. (Laughter) 

As an Englishman also, he knew his people, he knew his language, he knew his own soul. And knowing that language, he knew that an honest thing was a square thing; an honest bargain was a square deal; an honest man was a square man, who acted on the square. That is to say, the universe that he created had above everything to be a rectilinear universe. (Laughter)

Now, see the dilemma in which this placed Newton. universe; He knew his universe, he knew that it consisted of heavenly bodies all in motion; and he also knew that the one thing that you cannot do to any body in motion whatsoever is to make it move in a straight line. You may fire it out of a cannon with the strongest charge that you can put into it. You may have the cannon contrived to have, as they say, the flattest trajectory that a cannon can have. It is no use. The projectile will not go in a straight line. If you take a poor man - the poorer the better - if you blindfold that man, and if you say, "I will give you a thousand pounds if you, blindfolded, will walk a thousand yards in a straight line," he will do his best for the sake of the thousand pounds to walk in a straight line, but he will walk in an elliptical orbit and come back to exactly the same place.

Now, what was Newton to do? How was he to make the universe English? (Laughter) Well, mere facts will never daunt an Englishman. They never have stopped one yet, and they did not stop Newton. Newton invented - invented, mind you; some people would say discovered, I advisedly say he invented - a force, which would make the straight line, take the straight lines of his universe and bend them. And that was the force of gravitation. And when he had invented this force, he had created a universe which was wonderful and consistent in itself, and which was thoroughly British. (Laughter)

I remembered the association of cultural and physical rectilinearity, and I also remembered that Shaw failed to understand the nature of scientific idealization and physical explanation. Perhaps by this time I was aware of Shaw's penchant for the crackpot mysticism that vitiated his rational diagnosis of society's flaws. 

However, I have just learned that Shaw's anti-science was more extensive and preposterous, but was mitigated somewhat, partially due to his friendship with Einstein:

Shaw, Einstein and Physics, by Desmond J. McRory, Shaw, Vol. 6 (1986), pp. 33-67.

Shaw's animosity towards (astro)physics was mitigated and in any case overshadowed by his persistent contempt for biology. Einstein's relativity (and to a lesser extent quantum mechanics) shows up in many of Shaw's later works. Einstein is likened to a great artist. The revolution in physics is favorably contrasted with what came before.

A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines

I just finished reading Janna Levin's novelization A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines. It is a superb piece of writing. At the end the author (an astrophysicist) lists her sources and indicates which aspects of the narrative are her fictional inventions and which historically accurate, with sources also for quotes.

The principal characters are Alan Turing and Kurt Gödel, both geniuses and revolutionaries in the realm of mathematical logic (Turing the theoretical pioneer of computation and artificial intelligence), both out of their minds, and both meeting a tragic end. But they are also polar opposites in one respect: Turing the mechanical materialist, Gödel the spiritualist, both unable to deal with the world they lived in from opposing yet united philosophical perspectives.

By comparison, another important character, Ludwig Wittgenstein, is sane, though he is wigged out himself. Moritz Schlick, head of the Vienna Circle (eventually murdered by a fascist), is pretty tight-assed himself, but more normal. The most human of the male geniuses are Otto Neurath and Oskar Morgenstern. All these are real people, though the actual treatment of their interchanges with the main characters are embellished in spots--with Otto and Oskar, that is.

There is so much a novel can do to remain generally digestible while engaging the ideas of Gödel, Turing, and Wittgenstein, but one gets a sense of their overall obsessions if not the technical depth of their ideas, though one gets a general notion of what they are. Not all geniuses are so one-sided, but such is the course of human history. That we can think anything at all is a wonder under the circumstances.

Of note to us would be the relationship of the innovations of the central characters in the formal sciences to their extra-formal philosophies to their actual social existence. Wittgenstein, who exploited formalism in his Tractatus, is the least impressed by it, seeing no real problem in contradiction in mathematics or logic proper, contrary to Gödel, Turing, and Schlick. All of these people, however, as is the world, were caught up in larger contradictions which they could not even adequately conceptualize, let alone surmount.

This by an astrophysicist and a first class writer. If I actually believed women were superior in integrating thought and feeling, this would convince me.

Here is her web site

Janna Levin's Space

Here, you can find out more about her novel and the take on the subject matter in an interview:

"Mathematics, Purpose, and Truth | On Being". Speaking of Faith. 2012-05-31

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A few months ago I encountered Levin (didn't know who she was) on an episode of "Star Talk" by Neil de Grasse Tyson. You can listen to the entire episode on the Star Talk site or watch it on Facebook:

Celebrating Einstein - Star Talk, March 9, 2018

StarTalk: Special Einstein Episode

Here is what I wrote at the time:

Later on, there's a lot about black holes with a side order of neutron stars. Also at the end Levin says that what is most amazing about Einstein is the acceptance of constraints (speed of light) and fierce intellectual independence. Early on, what is most interesting is the assertion that had Einstein not been there, special relativity would have been discovered within a few years. But general relativity was so different from what anyone was thinking, that without Einstein it would have taken another half century to come up with something and it would have looked completely different. This is a testimony to Einstein's imagination and intuition and intellectual boldness, the most amazing scientific achievement in history.

John Horgan on scientific materialism / scientific debate on "nothing"

Is Scientific Materialism “Almost Certainly False”? By John Horgan. Scientific American blogs: Cross-Check; January 30, 2013.

I have decidedly contrary feelings about this article. Towards the beginning, Horgan states:

. . . science’s limits have never been more glaringly apparent. In their desperation for a “theory of everything”—which unifies quantum mechanics and relativity and explains the origin and structure of our cosmos—physicists have embraced pseudo-scientific speculation such as multi-universe theories and the anthropic principle (which says that the universe must be as we observe it to be because otherwise we wouldn’t be here to observe it). Fields such as neuroscience, evolutionary psychology and behavioral genetics and complexity have fallen far short of their hype.

I begin sympathetically. Horgan then cites Thomas Nagel's objections to evolutionary theory (the origin of life itself) and evolutionary psychology, which Horgan shares. Horgan becomes rather confused in his assertions and arguments, thus vitiating his thesis. He should have been more specific in targeting the ideological dimension of science popularization. His discrediting of "scientific materialism" tout court as if it equates with positivism and reductionism discredits his argument.

Horgan concludes:

These qualms asides, I recommend Nagel’s book, which serves as a much-needed counterweight to the smug, know-it-all stance of many modern scientists. Hawking and Krauss both claim that science has rendered philosophy obsolete. Actually, now more than ever we need philosophers, especially skeptics like Socrates, Descartes, Thomas Kuhn and Nagel, who seek to prevent us from becoming trapped in the cave of our beliefs.

Horgan is on the right track regarding the philosophical popularizing of Hawking and Krauss, but otherwise he messes up.

I am now reminded that I need to finish and publish my essay "Can science render philosophy obsolete?". Here is a passage:

Only in the case where our intuitions are completely defeated by scientific knowledge, as in the case of quantum mechanics, could scientific knowledge be viewed as uninterpreted mathematically organized experimentally organized data sets. And yet the notorious history of popularization and mystical appropriations of physics over the past century reveal that no one in practice appropriates physics—the alleged master science—purely as uninterpreted mathematically organized data sets, though that is one ideology of science among others. And in the apprenticeship of physics, students surely create or appropriate some intuitions that allow their models to be graspable, however elusive they may be or inexpressible in ordinary language.

My larger argument is that philosophy has not been rendered obsolete, and such an assertion betrays the naivete of even the greatest of scientists who blithely promulgate such ideological piffle. Horgan, unfortunately, wastes his opportunity to make a meaningful correction. Readers' comments are also uninspiring.

A revealing case study of the issue can be found in a forum moderated by Neil de Grasse Tyson:

2013 Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate: The Existence of Nothing (March 20, 2013)

Here is the YouTube video itself:



Here is some of my running commentary in real time:

Physical, not philosophical question? Understand something, then absence . . . Let's see what develops. Space & time --> create universes? Problem with words indeed. (Krauss)

Objection: vacuum isn't nothing. Krauss perturbed. How, not why? Our universe didn't exist -- gravity with zero energy. Even laws don't have to exist. Multiverse: laws of universe come into existence with universe. Some universes without quantum mechanics? Eve Silverstein: space-time is emergent . . . . dimensions.

8:35 pm: argument over philosophical issues: in history of physics, e.g. Mach on reality of atoms; Einstein vs quantum mechanics . . . . Jim Holt isn't buying the pro-nothing position. Krauss has an interesting spiel, but I'm with Holt so far.

Holt: nothing is not a fruitful philosophical notion.

8:52pm: J. Richard Gott: nothing not even there. Tyson: after death, like before birth: your consciousness does not exist.

8:54pm: Krauss: universe came from nothing. Empty space, no time, no laws: everything came from nothing. Photons come from nothing. (Tyson: wrong.) Universe like zero energy photon. Our universe came from nothing. What if all possible laws exist? ME: incoherent.

8:57pm: Eve Silverstein: nothing ground state of ---- quantum system.

9:00pm: Tyson: nothing behind head of universes .....?? evolution of what's there not there with advance of scientific knowledge. Empty space . . . . now space not empty either . . . . now thinking outside our universe . . . . nothing? "Nothing" elusive . . . . just an illusion? There's always something behind it, even laws . . . . maybe no resolution. Nothing just null set in the final analysis?

9:01pm: Q-A begins.

9:03 pm: Charles Seife: infinity and nothing interdependent concepts.

9:07 pm: Eva: Experimental evidence of nothing? There's evidence of inflationary theory.

9:22 pm Krauss: Why always means how. ME: This I agree with.

Jim Holt and Lawrence Krauss are in vigorous opposition. Holt finds Krauss's assertions about nothing incoherent, as do I. Note for example the oddity of asserting that the laws of physics exist prior to any actual universe: this sounds like Platonism. My fragmentary commentary above doesn't really cover what's going on here; you will have to watch the video. But note how difficult it is to translate physico-mathematical theories into ordinary language. Tyson himself grapples with this difficulty in querying Krauss. He is not vociferous as Holt is, but he seems to find the same difficulties as we laypersons do in making sense of the concept of "nothing" as applied to cosmology. I conclude that those who trumpet that philosophy is obsolete ought instead to refrain from popularization altogether, especially when combined with (anti-)philosophical propaganda.

Richard Dawkins & Neil de Grasse Tyson at Howard University (5)

Dawkins, moved by the technological prowess of physicists poised to penetrate the secrets of the universe, extols  the Large Hard-On Collider.

Richard Dawkins & Neil de Grasse Tyson at Howard University (4)

Here is a video recording of the entire proceedings of 28 September. (I can be seen in the audience, but I won't say where & when.)

Ideology of/in the Natural Sciences (1)

Steven; Rose, Hilary; eds. 1980. Ideology of/in the Natural Sciences, with an introductory essay by Ruth Hubbard. Cambridge, MA: Shenkman Publishing Co., 1980. xxix, 363 pp.

This book appeared under other imprints with different titles. I have digitized the table of contents. Note the links on this web page. Joseph Needham's oft-reprinted article can be found here:

"History and Human Values: A Chinese Perspective for World Science and Technology"

Commentary on Needham and related issues can be found elsewhere on this blog. I have more to say about Needham's philosophical blundering. My post on "The Politics of Neurobiology: Biologism in the Service of the State" by Rose & Rose reproduces the first paragraph of the article, along with my snide remarks about historical amnesia and the secular humanist / "new atheist" movement.

It seems that the radical science movement has been all but forgotten. It was a mixed bag, and I have my doubts even about its more rational elements, but this history seems to have been swept under the rug altogether with the radicalism of the 1970s. The first article fairly summarizes the views of Marx and Engels, with some pertinent criticism of Engels' dialectics of nature (p. 14). "The Incorporation of Science" is about the incorporation of science--and science studies--within the capitalist system. Andre Gorz attempts to locate scientists within the class structure. Mike Cooley, who analyzes the labor process in production, is a name familiar to me from elsewhere: I think it is a book called Worker or Bee?. These first four essays survey the general problem of science within the capitalist system.

"The Politics of Neurobiology" antedates the current rage of cognitive science, and the attempts of neurobiologists to read off politics and society from the structure of the brain, a thoroughly ideologically blind and reactionary endeavor.

Many may remember the scientific racism and IQ controversy of the 1970s. I was studying the history of scientific racism while the skeptics movement was preoccupied with astrology and spoon-bending.

Hans Magnus Enzenberger questions the ideology and politics of the then-burgeoning ecology movement (which we now call environmentalism), for example, the then-current "limits of growth" concern.

There are several articles on women's issues and women's place in the sciences.

Sam Anderson's article on "Science, Technology and Black Liberation" reflects the revolutionary ambitions and bombast of the time. Anderson chafes against the "special nigger" status he claims is imposed on black scientists, and bursts with the ideological energy of anti-imperialism and self-reliance (even quoting Kim Il Sung). Such rebellion against bourgeois professionalism was a hallmark of the time, but such impulses ultimately could go nowhere, esp. the impulse not to remain alienated from the black masses at large.

This type of politicization was characteristic of the time and reflected in several of the essays, predating our age of lowered expectations. Of course one must also comb this literature for elements of naivete. Perhaps the most grating element in general is the sympathy for Maoism. I have my reservations about scorching broad-based indictments of "reductionism", but clearly there are real problems addressed by this label.

Three articles are of particular philosophical interest.

Lewontin and Levins articulate and claim a more sophisticated analysis of the phenomenon of Lysenkoism than what is found in other literature. They see it as more than simple bureaucratic despotism, and they also reject Maoist attempts to rehabilitate Lysenkoism. I am not sufficiently acquainted with Lewontin's philosophical proclamations to know how they hold up. I am cautious in making big political and philosophical claims for what later became known as dialectical biology, but I'm sure E.O. Wilson is falsifying history:

"Science and ideology" by Edward O. Wilson, Vol. 8, Academic Questions, 06-01-1995.

I mentioned Needham's article, which I want to return to elsewhere, as the combination of historical materialist analysis and utter philosophical/ideological confusion is noteworthy.

Finally, there is "Ideology of/in Contemporary Physics" by Jean‑Marc Levy‑Leblond which is interesting in a number of respects. I will return to this later. For now I will note that the author addresses the institutionalization and division of labor within physics, and the epistemological problems within it, including education and popularization, and the chronic inadequacy of philosophy of science to adequately address what goes on within physics, most notably quantum mechanics.

Bertrand Russell on the fusion of science & religion

Russell, Bertrand. The Scientific Outlook. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1954 (based on 2nd ed., 1949; 1st ed, 1931).

In Chapter 4, "Scientific Metaphysics", Russell notes that science is losing confidence in itself, in its grip on objective reality, hastened by the conundrums of the new physics. Russell is unhappy with Arthur Eddington's account of physics and thinks his prediction of the ultimate death of the universe will undermine faith in science, belying Eddington's optimistic tone. Russell himself is possessed by a skepticism that denies the unity and lawfulness of the universe. This development is welcomed by partisans of religion. Russell finds a bifurcation in two notions of science, one as metaphysics, the other as practical utility. Practically, science is advancing even while faith in its metaphysical foundations is weakening. Russell has his own doubts about the reality of the external world, but what is not justified is the retreat to religion on the part of James Jeans. The former quasi-religious status of scientists as a priesthood of religion is giving way to a new timidity on the part of scientists.

Chapter 5 directly addresses the question of "Science and Religion". Scientists themselves are returning to religion in face of World War I and the Russian Revolution. Russell dismantles attempts to link quantum mechanics to the rehabilitation of free will. Eddington, for example, is guilty of this. Jeans, on the other hand, argues that God is a mathematician. Russell makes short shrift of this notion and ultimately finds it a rehash of old theological arguments, which do not pass muster from the standpoint of the fundamentally naturalistic basis of science.  Russell also has a few words to say about Lloyd Morgan's idealistic notion of emergent evolution.

Russell's own indulgence in skepticism--although briefly in these two chapters--does not significantly detract from his demolition of the merger of science, religion, mysticism, and idealism, perpetrated by scientists themselves. We should also remember that Russell's erstwhile colleague Alfred North Whitehead, author of process philosophy, also took up the cudgels of idealistic metaphysics. (Not a word is said about Whitehead in this book, though I think we know what Russell thought.) This development shows up the ineluctable duality of bourgeois thought, as it vacillates between positivism and irrationalism. World War I was indeed a watershed, which generated a peak in the merger of science and mysticism among the intelligentsia in the 1920s. Yet this was minuscule compared to what followed in the wake of World War II, with the explosion of New Age thought, beginning with the Beats, then the counterculture of the '60s and '70s, and finally the yuppification of the New Age bringing it back to where it belongs among the affluent, the privileged, and the comfortable.

Richard Dawkins & Neil de Grasse Tyson at Howard University (2)

Nothing terribly original was said, but presumably the goal was to stimulate the imagination of the audience via the two fields of expertise represented here: evolutionary biology and astrophysics. Both Dawkins and Tyson emphasized the way science has enlarged our vision of the universe beyond our given natural biology of mid-range physical beings evolved to engage mid-range natural objects. Of course trying to extend our imagination through millions of years of biological evolution involves a stretch, but it seems that astrophysics' challenge to the imagination is much greater. Whether feigning incomprehension or serious, Dawkins admitted as much, asking Tyson to explain the notion of an expanding universe and what it means to be on the edge of it. Tyson rose to the challenge and attempted to explain it via analogy with a ship in the ocean. He claimed it need not so mysterious, but I believe he is incorrect.

Dawkins' explanation of evolution did not demand as much. Tyson acknowledged the counterintuitive nature of quantum mechanics, the dependence of physics on mathematics, and the fact that theoretical physics provides explanations that, in the ordinary intuitive sense, we do not understand. Science begins with sense experience, but instruments extend our range far beyond our innate sensory ability, detecting entities and phenomena we cannot directly perceive, and mathematics extends our ability to map reality beyond our limited and not completely reliable senses. Interestingly, once the counterintuitive nature of contemporary physics was acknowledged, Dawkins interjected the thought that mathematics becomes intuitive, so that physicists are able to navigate their terrain like pilots. He suggested an analogy with surgeons, who intuitively feel what they are doing with micromanipulating instruments, and in the future might conduct their surgeries mediated by virtual reality devices.

Tyson in turn introjected Dawkins' specialty into a consideration of exobiology, i.e. extraterrestrial life forms, and especially intelligent life forms. How do we know that we are intelligent in comparison to related animals whose difference from us might appear minuscule to a much more intelligent alien intelligence? Dawkins ran with this subject. Tyson reiterated his usual complaint against science fiction aliens being too anthropomorphic. Their discussion of the genetic code and what could conceivably be different indeed stimulated the imagination.

The questions subsequently posed by audience members were varied, but for now I will dwell only on one of them. Someone mentioned an impending abolition of the Philosophy Dept. at Howard University and asked for comments on the philosophy of science. Tyson responded that philosophy contributed to science until the 20th century, but with quantum mechanics became useless. While philosophy has other worthy objects of study, Tyson sees no further contributions by philosophy. Physics is high tech; armchair science is no longer possible.

Dawkins pointed out that philosophers could have easily thought of natural selection but did not. There are some good philosophers of biology, but these are the ones who are so thoroughly immersed in the science that they double as scientists.

I found Tyson's remarks especially revealing of how the scientific mind differs from the philosophical mind, and in this case I think he is dead wrong. He admits the largely counterintuitive nature of physics (while minimizing--at least this time around--the same viz. cosmology), and claims that philosophy of science is superfluous, when the revolutions in physics in the 20th century presented philosophers--and philosophically minded physicists--with the greatest challenges they ever faced. The nature of physical explanation and the theories that have emerged are far from uncontroversial, and the attempts to popularize them among the general public are fraught with pitfalls the scientists do not seem to understand. Tyson repeatedly warned against hubris, but how confident can one be now that physics is in for another revolution on account of dark matter and dark energy? (And I will add, what can Hawking possibly mean when he suggests that the universe was created out of nothing? Is this truly an empirical statement, and not philosophically controversial?)

Dawkins doesn't have this big of a problem as far as strictly biological evolution is concerned, but what about the metaphorical extension of biological evolution into social evolution? Is the concept of the "meme" a genuine scientific concept, or merely sloppy ideological reasoning by analogy? What about the sociobiology war of the 1970s?

All this and much more is fodder for a whole lot of additional discussion, as well as the question of applied science in the real world that is driven by big money, big business, and the military, which might not respect the integrity of pure research that characterize the scientific objectives of Tyson and Dawkins.

E. Haldeman-Julius on science vs. mysticism

"An accurate definition of a mystic is one who believes that he can reach truth intuitively; that he can reach truth within himself without reference to man's experiences; that he has mystical power to reach in himself and achieve what he would call truth; while the realist, of course, follows the scientific method of laboratory tests, scrupulous regarding of every fact and very careful observation. They are two separate mentalities, two hopelessly different personalities, and I can't imagine a good scientist permitting himself to become a mystic, though there are a few, and the few mystical scientists are those who are giving such comfort to the theologians; men like Eddington and Millikan, who are very good physicists, who are men of science in their own laboratories, but when they step out in the arena of philosophical thought they utter ideas that would pass for pretty good coin among the fanatics in a Salvation Army band. I think I am speaking pretty literally, because some of their arguments are the same arguments used on the street corners. In Eddington's latest plea before the Society of Friends in London, just a few months ago, and of course for that reason more important than his book, 'The Nature of the Physical World,' that he wrote about three years ago, he says that the reason the religious idea is sound is because there is proof of it in man's experience, man has experienced religion, he has experienced God, therefore it is true. Well, according to that, same logic, the poor moron who gets up on the street corner and gives his testimonial is scientific and it is absolutely right and everything that he says is true, every philosophical point that he is bringing out must be so, because he says he has experienced it; and that, of course, is mysticism. Eddington does not reach that conclusion through scientific means. He does not take the same methods that he used in his laboratory, to bring out that idea. He just simply reaches down into his insides and intuitively reaches that opinion, and I leave it to any reasonable person that it is completely without validity."

SOURCE: Is Theism A Logical Philosophy: Debate between E. Haldeman-Julius and Rev. Burris Jenkins, April 13, 1930.