_ _ _ _ Facial hermeneutics _ _ _ _

                             In  the  space  between

                                                                                your glance

                                 and my take on its

meaning

                                  there is a fog of


                                     need-hope/
                                     hope-need:


                              the source of all texts.

Moral primer

When I think of

politics and views of

value in my eye,

The question is:

Who are you competing with?

And why?

Notes on Raymond Tallis' book 'In Defence of Wonder'

Plato: "Philosophy begins in wonder" (Theaetetus)

G.K. Chesterton:  “The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.”

Ray Tallis seems a lovely chap. Look at him! See: 

He also sounds quite lovely - his educated tone and bourgeois accent are posh but not annoying.
(I saw him at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, Tuesday 9th October, 2012 and bought the book after.)
He describes himself as an 'optimistic atheist and humanist'.
His theme in the book is 'articulate wonder' and from there the importance of philosophy today.

He identifies some mysteries to wonder about fairly early on:

*'Why is there something rather than nothing?' (often attributed to Leibniz)
*The fundamental stuff of the world (goes back to the earliest Greek philosophers from Thales onwards).
*The nature of living matter.
*The unity and multiplicity of consciousness
*Past, present and future
*Karl Popper said that knowledge is the 'greatest miracle of the universe'.
*The 'million-petalled flower of being here'. (Philip Larkin)
*Mathematics: "the enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious and that there is no rational explanation for it." - (Eugene Wigner)

He attacks what he calls the simplistic naturalism of 'Darwinitis', though I need to read more on this part, to see how he substantiates this critique.

He talks of how some people focus on only certain kinds of thing as mysterious because they are of dubious status in our knowledge. For example, ESP. Tallis argues that ESP, even if it exists, is no more amazing than SP (i.e. ordinary sensory perception).

Why the need to write about wonder?
Because in our life there are many 'enemies of wonder', and one needs to learn to combat these.

Generally the main enemies of wonder are:
Elation
Boredom
Fear
Despair

Some are inescapable:
(certain circumstances, such as being a POW, might make wonder frivolous.)
Some honourable:
(e.g. being too busy helping others)
Some are due to the choices we make
(e.g. spending too much time online or too much time working - Tallis refers to "the habit of rush" and the "treadmill of pastimes".)

On the other hand, there are several 'friends of wonder':
Philosophy
Art
Science

Philosophy has had a hard time of it lately. What with scientists such as Lawrence Krauss and Stephen Hawking questioning its social utility, there's no WONDER (sorry) that Tallis is concerned to establish the importance of all those mysteries above. What he needs to do further is to argue how important philosophy is, rather than science, in dealing with them. I am inclined to think that those in the 'experimental philosophy' movement are not fully grasping the value that philosophy has in delineating such things as what can not be known. 'Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent' (Wittgenstein).

Thankfully, art speaks for itself, in all those thousands of words. So on to science. Tallis doesn't respond in kind by attacking science, but rather praises it, but with a slight sense of caution about its omniscience and total magisterial dominance.

Thomas Carlyle talks of "That progress of Science, which is to destroy Wonder, and in its stead substitute Mensuration and Numeration", A lot of people today still see science in that way: as somehow opposed to awe and worshipful attitudes. I am enthusiastic about promoting the social value of science, i.e. its personal benefits, and not just the way it is a method for gaining more reliable information. Scientific methodology puts us in a certain relationship with the world, which teaches us a lot of things. In the practice of science there are ethical values and virtues. Within this methodology you learn to share ideas, to work together, to respect what nature does, to pay attention to details, to be persistent, and to think laterally and creatively.

I think this aspect of Dawkins' writing is much overlooked by the general populace who don't actually read his work. When he is at his most polemic talking about atheism, you can forget that Dawkins actually has a sensitive and intelligent grasp of what science really is, and isn't merely a positivist with a hatred of metaphysics. He is at his best when he elucidates a modern biological discovery and waxes lyrical about it. Those who have lost a love of learning - perhaps in their teenage years in the drudgery of school - can be encouraged to regain their curiosity if they are taken out of their intellectual comfort zone, or if they are made aware of the frailty of their most basic presuppositions. A good scientific explanation can also do this.

"There is an anaesthetic of familiarity, a sedative of ordinariness which dulls the senses and hides the wonder of existence. For those of us not gifted in poetry, it is at least worth while from time to time making an effort to shake off the anaesthetic. What is the best way of countering the sluggish habituation brought about by our gradual crawl from babyhood? We can't actually fly to another planet. But we can recapture that sense of having just tumbled out to life on a new world by looking at our own world in unfamiliar ways." 
"The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable. It is a deep aesthetic passion to rank with the finest that music and poetry can deliver." 
— Richard Dawkins (Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder) 

I do thoroughly agree, although the way he writes that last paragraph, I also question whether he protests too much? After all much of the practice of science is tedious, repetitive, and frustrating. Years and years may be spent working on a misguided hypothesis, only for another to show the experiments were flawed or had already been established. A lot of science is also highly abstract and mathematical, and some goes beyond the intellect of the large part of humanity. As something of a digression, I am also reminded of his lack of 'success' with Michael Persinger's 'God Helmet' and the nagging question I was left with after reading about his findings. Which was: 'What if our different minds are simply differently constructed (either by nature or nurture or more likely both) so that some people 'get' religion and some people don't. For example, there may be some kind of difference in our temporal lobes that affects our ability to understand aspects of reality. Thus something such as spiritual experience or religious faith might be something that comes naturally to some but is a foreign mystery to others.

Is Intelligent Design "Theory" Scientific?

According to the website for the Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness Center ('IDEA'):

"Intelligent design is a scientific theory which has its roots in information theory and observations about intelligent action." http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/832

In many respects, admittedly, it looks like science.

1) It uses diagrams, scientific terms, and empirical observations.

(For example, Michael Behe is famous for having argued that the bacterial flagellum is irreducibly complex. He supports this claim with information about the amount of proteins in its molecular structure) His book, Darwin's Black Box (1996) is a major intelligent design (ID) text.

2) It doesn't use religious terms, Bible references, or refer directly to the supernatural.

3) It uses mathematics, equations, algebra and lots of talk about probabilities. (For example William Dembski tries to use the No Free Lunch theorem: (wiki link here) 2002)

However, ID theory was ruled to be unscientific in the US federal courts in the Kitzmiller v Dover trial (2005). Judge Jones found that ID theory was nothing more than creationism in disguise, and the 'research' done by ID supporters lacked any support from peer-reviewed scientific journals. [link to legal reference]

In that trial, the cell biologist Ken Miller was a key witness. He showed firstly that many of Behe's claims are simply false (scientists can show how certain complex biochemical structures develop), and secondly that, unlike evolutionary biology, the arguments from ID creationists never propose an alternative hypothesis that is testable. Evolutionary biology has gradually told us more and more about the complex processes of cells and organisms, and is continuing to shed more light on how they work. Each time the ID theorists say that X is irreducibly complex, it merely provides yet another challenge for scientists to eventually explain.

[See Ken Miller's site]

Let us look back to the claims of the IDEA organisation. At the bottom of the webpage (link as above) they have written:

"In all of this, there have been no mentions of God, religion, or adherence to any religious text but rather we use observations about how intelligent design works in the present to look at aspects of the natural world to see if they are designed. Intelligent design theory is based solely upon applying observations about intelligent action and principles of information theory to the construction of biological systems, and nothing more. There is nothing mystical, supernatural, religious, or non-scientific about intelligent design theory. in its current form, intelligent design theory can also say nothing about the designer other than that the designer was intelligent. Whether you agree with the methodology of intelligent design theory or not, you have to agree with one thing: it has a scientific basis". [Needless to say, despite this protestation, the majority of scientists and philosophers are agreed that ID theory is not on a level with 'proper science'].

There is nothing wrong with challenging evolution. Challenging accepted theories is an important part of improving and developing new scientific understanding. However, ID theory fails to provide any testable hypotheses for scientists to investigate. It simply amounts to an expression of disbelief at the processes of nature, and suggests no other process of nature to explore.

ID theorists avoid mentioning what the intelligent designer is, but this is not actually a good strategy if they want to be scientific. (Note: By not saying it is God, they are apparently keeping their options open, but in reality almost all ID theorists are religious believers who take their holy text to be inerrant). This vagueness about the intelligent designer poses a problem: it places the intelligent designer beyond investigation.

A parallel example might be if someone (let's call her Jen) tried to find aspects of some theory in Particle Physics that are not fully explained or understood yet (such as the standard model). Now, it may well be that physicists may have to change their understanding of fundamental particles, (the Higgs Boson continues to be elusive, despite recent optimism, I believe...), however, if Jen then said that these anomalies were evidence that there is some other explanation involving a divine being, but refused to say what this other explanation is and how it might be tested, then Jen has not proposed a scientific hypothesis. She has merely pointed out difficult aspects of the currently accepted theory. Like a typical ID theorist, she might then argue that her explanation (an untestable being makes the particles behave the way they do at different times) should be taught alongside particle physics.

A website (venganza.org) was set up to protest against ID theory being taught in Kansas schools, by a man called Bobby Henderson. He made a parody religion called 'pastafarianism', and argued that his theory was the same as ID theory, but the intelligent designer was made of spaghetti and meatballs. His point was that if ID theory is a rival to evolution, then so is FSM. In fact, I would argue, the FSM would actually be more scientifically testable than traditional religions, as their concept of 'God' (the FSM) is more defined in terms of observational predictions of what their divine being looks like.

Daniel Dennett has written lots about this issue, and is recommended further reading. I have found the following article - [link here] - particularly enlightening, and will finish by including a few direct quotes from it, with comments:

"Saying, as intelligent design proponents do, "You haven't explained everything yet," is not a competing hypothesis. Evolutionary biology certainly hasn't explained everything that perplexes biologists. But intelligent design hasn't yet tried to explain anything".

In the quote above, Dennett is agreeing with Bobby Henderson in saying that ID is not a rival theory, as it proposes no alternative explanation. However, he argues the issue of creationism is more serious than the FSM website with its somewhat cheeky humour suggests:

"The focus on intelligent design has, paradoxically, obscured something else: genuine scientific controversies about evolution that abound. In just about every field there are challenges to one established theory or another. The legitimate way to stir up such a storm is to come up with an alternative theory that makes a prediction that is crisply denied by the reigning theory — but that turns out to be true, or that explains something that has been baffling defenders of the status quo, or that unifies two distant theories at the cost of some element of the currently accepted view.

To date, the proponents of intelligent design have not produced anything like that. No experiments with results that challenge any mainstream biological understanding. No observations from the fossil record or genomics or biogeography or comparative anatomy that undermine standard evolutionary thinking."

Here, Dennett is arguing that ID is not just unscientific, it is actually harmful to the progress of science, because it distracts from genuine research into controversies about how evolution works.