Redefining Reality - The Intellectual Implications of Modern Science

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Planet of the Apes, which is based on evolutionary psychology, wrestles with questions of determinism in psychology, especially with the question of inherent violence and the lack of altruism. Can we develop intelligence from a brain that is the result of an evolutionary process that is inherently competitive and come out caring? In contrast, this difference in viewpoint is a choice or whether it is instilled within us and is just masked by our competing baser desires. Cosmides and Tooby, “Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer.” Workman and Reader, . . . Planet of the Apes. Are there aspects of human behavior that are leftovers from our desires no longer advantageous, can we change them or are we stuck with them? Do we have a special emotional bond to nature? We use such phrases as mother earth, but do we really feel an emotional attachment to the planet in the same way as toward a parent? Are we programmed to be uncomfortable with ecological destruction? 152
In looking at reality, we can examine individual elements or larger truths about the structure that do not reduce to truths about the members; such features are called emergent. The study of emergent properties in human groups is sociology. When we take a sociological viewpoint on reality, what we think, what we do, and what we want. Although it can be affected also works in the other direction. The term emergence refers to a nonreducible entity that has parts that do not share the properties of the whole. Earlier, we looked at thinkers who held a view about the unity of science: that psychology reduced to biology, biology reduced to chemistry, and chemistry reduced to physics; thus, all science is just complicated physics of some level or another. When we eventually reach a sophisticated enough level in our will disappear; we will arrive at a theory of everything that is a complete description of nature. But those who contend that there are emergent elements to reality hold that we can know all about how the parts work and never gain a sense of the full nature of reality. The emergentist view is that reality has levels. In the case of biology, we cannot understand the organism without knowing also need ecology. The grand-scale questions may have genetic- or molecular-level aspects, but they must be seen in the interaction on 153
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Topic Philosophy & Intellectual His
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Steven Gimbel, Ph.D. Professor of P
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Table of Contents LECTURE 11 Dark M
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Table of Contents SUPPLEMENTAL MATE
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: I and technological a
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This question allows us to turn fro
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The study of reality is what philos
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Semmelweis noticed that the inciden
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ut sometimes, even after checking t
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. The Matrix. We don’t believe
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Wisdom comes from rejecting the imp
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Thus, Aristotle’s prime mover, th
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Aristotle had said that an object
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For centuries, mathematics was cons
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th century, the Russian mathematici
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had turned their attention to logic
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Abbott, . Bell, Men of Mathematics.
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Scientists thought that the physica
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H. A. Lorentz had found, when you a
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Thinkers as far back as Gottfried L
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E grounds. First, the prin
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If you woke up tomorrow in a small
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speed up going in and slow down com
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Is it true that a difference that m
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Einstein thought, there would be lo
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Scientists largely hated this idea,
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If Gamow and Alpher’s work was ri
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Although physicists at the end of t
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In the 19 th century, there was the
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In 1873, James Clerk Maxwell publis
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The idea of a large central mass at
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We know, however, that for a given
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whether light is a particle or a wa
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is a particle, then the slits would
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One of the early results of quantum
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eams, we also knew that there were
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The hadrons are made up of quarks,
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As the meaning of the physics began
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The demon is a being with a super-i
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ignoring certain elements, we can c
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One of the simplest fractal pattern
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Earlier, we talked about Thomas Kuh
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so greatly separated that no proces
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een able to form in that environmen
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Nicolson, . Panek, . Our theories
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Similarly, James Clerk Maxwell, in
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But as we move away from the pole,
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Great press has been given to a pot
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Some people take the idea of a theo
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see from CAT scans that when someon
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Because we are just atoms, we, too,
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Would the randomness of quantum mec
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Aristotle thought that this world i
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If you select strange enough traits
Page 109 and 110: Although this aspect of the theory
Page 111 and 112: Darwin posited that children look l
Page 113 and 114: The key to understanding how we pas
Page 115 and 116: This picture of illness is quite di
Page 117 and 118: How much of who we are is determine
Page 119 and 120: inferred that the function of that
Page 121 and 122: a byproduct of mental illness, Freu
Page 123 and 124: With the genetic approach, we are w
Page 125 and 126: After Freud, psychology developed i
Page 127 and 128: experiences that are not our own, t
Page 129 and 130: Behaviorism was an attempt to make
Page 131 and 132: Psychology, which had begun as a se
Page 133 and 134: I th century, psychology had the lu
Page 135 and 136: part, in the group. To understand t
Page 137 and 138: acting in ways that showed a lack o
Page 139 and 140: has learned from the so-called barb
Page 141 and 142: led him to begin one of the most fa
Page 143 and 144: ules. We are now adult in our ethic
Page 145 and 146: In a contract-based relationship, y
Page 147 and 148: The study of psychology changed for
Page 149 and 150: Instead, we are a part of the world
Page 151 and 152: But it turns out that exposure to c
Page 153 and 154: Glickstein, . Lynch, . mean we
Page 155 and 156: But evolutionary psychologists Leda
Page 157 and 158: suited to solving these problems an
Page 159: As such, when we look at the innate
Page 163 and 164: We see this also in the writings of
Page 165 and 166: one universal is crime. Crime is no
Page 167 and 168: To avoid such situations of anomie
Page 169 and 170: Historians create narratives that e
Page 171 and 172: Society is composed of individuals
Page 173 and 174: © Digital Vision/Thinkstock.
Page 175 and 176: The concept of race has long been a
Page 177 and 178: there are different combinations am
Page 179 and 180: Perhaps race is what Durkheim calle
Page 181 and 182: Gould, . Hernnstein and Murray, . K
Page 183 and 184: Slavery, for example, was a necessa
Page 185 and 186: Parsons’s picture is not the Marx
Page 187 and 188: In defeat, the smaller neighbors wo
Page 189 and 190: Economics became a science with the
Page 191 and 192: self-interest. Second, the large-sc
Page 193 and 194: Under the classical model, this sho
Page 195 and 196: How do we account for these effects
Page 197 and 198: If the star is large enough, when i
Page 199 and 200: © amenic181/iStock/Thinkstock.
Page 201 and 202: What environment on Earth could pro
Page 203 and 204: The possibility of life on other pl
Page 205 and 206: Our newfound alien interlocutors te
Page 207 and 208: Perhaps the best evidence for extra
Page 209 and 210: Mayor and Frei, . Morrison, Billing
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It has long been argued, however, t
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But the idea of using the body’s
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Although that seems worrisome, it i
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I equally much for how w
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The use of one’s DNA in creating
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With cytoplasmic transfer, the nucl
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Macintosh, . Given that multiple
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we could begin with the desired por
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The second step is trickier. Here,
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Aside from medical uses, we can alt
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We can now use medical technology t
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The problem here is that sometimes
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of disease and disorder. In America
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performance-enhancing drugs? We see
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Advances have led to hand-shaped ap
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Warwick then went a step further. H
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Scientists at MIT have taken DNA fr
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Computers can do many things, but c
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possible right answers. The machine
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player having a king and a pawn and
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If intelligence or sentience is an
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enable us to become a global villag
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engineers used their technological
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Another intriguing development on t
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In these lectures, we’ve seen tha
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leave messages or comments, and whe
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This ability of mothers doesn’t m
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But Einstein showed us that the rea
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Barabasi, Albert-Laszlo. Linked: Th
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———. The Descent of Man: and
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Gilligan, Carol. . Cambridg
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Kramer, Peter. . New York: Viking
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eings that we are willing to act in
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Rothman, Sheila M. Medical Enhance
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———. . London: Century, 2002.
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Redefining Reality - The Intellectual Implications of Modern Science

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