>
>This essay (Cosmic Joy & Local Pain) sounds interesting. I'll see if I
>can get a copy through our inter-library loan.
>
>How does Morowitz compare Monods and Morris? Reading Monods was just as
>dreadful for me as reading the French existentialists like Albert Camus
>and Jean-Paul Sartre.
>
In a nutshell, Morowitz first presents the two at opposite extremes of
science, not surprising ;-), the twist comes when he then shows how the
two reach the same conclusion about the origin of life.
I'll now give an extensive quote from the book since the context also
contains an interesting discussion of methodological naturalism.
Interestingly enough (in view of current controversies), Morowitz
argues that meaning and purpose are not out of bounds for science
and concludes (contra Gould, Dawkins, Dennett and Monod) that science
has revealed a universe of purpose, meaning and design. I could almost
hear Phil shouting "amen" as I read this :). Morowitz is really an
interesting character, anyone know any more about him? According to
the jacket cover he is professor of molecular biophysics and
biochemistry at Yale.
Here's the quote:
That tendency to divorce the content of biology from any
metaphysical issues has been a major theme for over a
century. It is restated in the idiom of molecular biology
by Jacques Monod, whose views are certainly representative
of a large number of contemporary biologists. In the book
_Chance and Necessity_ (1971) he states, "The basic premise
of the scientific method [is] . . . that nature is _objective_
not _projective_." By objective he means that the laws oF
nature have no purpose other than their existence. He
elaborates: "We can not attribute any design, any project
or purpose to nature." The rigor with which he adheres to
this is evidenced: "But the postulate of objectivity is
consubstantial with science: it has guided the whole of its
prodigious development for three centuries. There is no way
to be rid of it."
In terms of our prior discussion, Monad's insistence on
nature's objectivity as a basic methodological principle of
science seems unnecessary. In Margenau' s scheme, such a
statement would constitute a new metaphysical criterion;
given the choice, we choose objective constructs over
projective constructs. Such a metaphysical criterion is
not introduced because in many cases we have no way of
preknowing if a construct is projective or not. Only after
developing a mature, coherent science can we ask about
purpose or meaning. Huxley's search for freedom led to
Monod's putting a heavy metaphysical yoke on science as he
tried to bar that discipline from helping us understand
vital aspects of our existence.
In short, the postulate of objectivity is a good political
ploy for scientists to put distance between themselves and
theologians, but there is no valid philosophical reason why
it must enter science as a basic premise. We can formulate
our natural philosophy with no commitment one way or the
other about nature's objectivity and then later raise questions
about meaning.
Monad goes further than the methodological denial of purpose.
He labels any attempt to find meaning in the scientific study
of the umverse as "animism." This deliberate denigration of the
search for purpose by the blatant choice of a pejorative word
indicates the depth of his disdain for those who disagree with
his philosophy. He thus aims his heavy artillery at Pierre
Teilhard de Chardin in a mean-spirited and vicious attack on
Teilhard's evolutionary approach.
In his final attempt to convince one of the purposelessness of
the universe, Monod argues that everything we see in the living
world is the result ot chance and that it is not possible to
predict the existence of the life from the laws oE physics. Since
far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics, the theory of dissipative
structures, synergetics, and other theories of self-organizing
systems were incompletely formulated when Monod wrote his monograph
(and are still incompletely formulated), he was asserting what
yet undeveloped branches of physics would be unable to do. Indeed,
he was so eager to make everything the result ot chance that he
abandoned the scientist's usual caution of withholding from
predicting what future science will or will not he able to
accomplish. In short, the author of _Chance and Necessity_
was so determined to eradicate purpose that he transmogrified
his versions of both science and philosophy.
What started out as Thomas Huxley's attempt to free science from
religion ended one hundred years later with Jacques Monod's
assertion: "The biosphere is a unique occurrence non reducible
from first principles." That is exactly what certain theologians
would assert, after which they would continue defining it as a
sacred mystery to be seen only through the eye oE faith. Once an
event is unique in the Monad sense, all explanations are equally
plausible; the event is effectively removed from the methodology
of science and must he considered as history.
[at this point, Morowitz criticizes the Creation Research Society
and Henry Morris for awhile] ...
After 190 pages, Morris gets to his real point: "We must conclude,
therefore, that if the Bible is really the Word of God (as its
writers allege and as we believe) then evolution and its geological
age-system must he completely false." He has previously hinted,
"then Satan himself is the originator of the concept of evolution."
Morris is also explicit in stating what future science will not do.
"The study of biochemistry and terrestrial environments can never
explain the origin life." This comes close to Monod's assertion
that "the biosphere is a unique occurrence non reducible from
first principles." The archopponents have curiously come to the
same conclusion, one because he is certain he knows the answers
and the second because he is certain they are unknowable.
Jacques Monad and Henry M. Morris are important as representatives
of what the public envisions as the scientific and religious
points of polarization. Accepting one is to build in unnecessary
metaphysical criteria that remove science from the search for
meaning. To accept the other is to deny the epistemological
foundations upon which science is built and to replace them with
a statement of faith prior to the science. If that's the best we
can do, I want to go back to the oily bilge for some more thinking.
-- Harold Morowitz, "Knowing and Guessing", in _Cosmic Joy &
Local Pain_, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1987, pp. 62-66.
Morowitz returns briefly to Monod in a later essay, giving the
following interesting quote from Freeman Dyson [_Disturbing the Universe_]
Jacques Monod has a word for people who think as I do and for
whom he reserves his deepest scorn. He calls us "animists,"
believers in spirits. " Animism," he says, "established a
covenant between nature and man, a profound alliance outside
of which seems to stretch only terrifying solitude. Must we
break this tie because the postulate of objectivity requires
it?" Monod answers yes: "This ancient covenant is in pieces;
man knows at last that he is alone in the universe's unfeeling
immensity out of which he emerged only by channe." I answer
no. I believe in the covenant. It is true that we emerged in
the universe by chance, but the idea of chance is itself only
a cover for our ignorance. I do not feel like an alien in this
universe. The more I examine the universe and study the details
of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe
in some sense must have known that we were coming.
-- Freeman Dyson as quoted by Harold Morowitz in _Cosmic Joy &
Local Pain_, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1987, pp. 296-297.
Quote from _Disturbing the Universe_.
=========================
Brian Harper |
Associate Professor | "It is not certain that all is uncertain,
Applied Mechanics | to the glory of skepticism" -- Pascal
Ohio State University |