Redefining Reality - The Intellectual Implications of Modern Science

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Ideal types let us give explanations, and we can judge how good the explanation is based on how well the ideal type matches up with the messy reality. It will never mesh perfectly, but the When we look at society, what is the ideal type we should use to explain its most basic dynamics? What is the single most important motivating element? Everyone believed that culture is a good thing, that a stable and functional society is necessary to create principle by which this stability is achieved? The answers proposed at the end of the 19 th th centuries were strongly tied to preexisting economic and political beliefs. On one side were those who thought society was designed to create harmony but required competition. Society must pit interests against interests. Everyone wants everything, but only some can have it, and some will always have more than others. Society comprises inherently unequal elements: People are not just different; some are superior. Society ought to create a stage where those who are superior can lead and those who are inferior can follow. A stable society is not a static society. Society can improve itself, can adapt and grow, but in order for this to happen, the internal arrangements must foster fair and ongoing competition. In his essay “The Gospel of Wealth,” American industrialist Andrew Carnegie explicitly claims that as culture advances, “human society loses homogeneity.” The ideal type that Carnegie makes use of is the law of competition. People are pitted against people, and there are winners and losers. That is how things are and must be, and to try to change this situation will be to undermine the workings and the successes of society. 162
Society is composed of individuals with unequal abilities and because the winners are the ones who will drive the culture to a better future. This view of human groups derived much of its support through an analogy with evolution. Adaptation is the result of competition for scarce means of survival in ecosystems, and in human society, there are scarce resources, as well. If adaptation is healthy for biological species, the same should hold true for cultures. Although some saw competition as the basis of human social structures, others believed that humans are fundamentally cooperative. Human society brings people together, and the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts because those parts support and build on one another. Those who held the view that human reality was primarily competitive took great pains to explain how their rather dark view of humanity would ultimately create better conditions for all. The contrary view, that we are primarily cooperative beings, was much more optimistic. Modernity may have created low-wage jobs and pollution, but underneath, the human heart connects us all and will ultimately lead us to a good place. The name most strongly linked to this view is the Russian Pyotr Kropotkin, whose book shows that we are not only social beings, but even more, we lean on each other, holding each other up and helping all to advance. Those who favored humanity motivated by competition claimed that it aligned with Darwin’s theories, giving their camp, life in an ecosystem is forever competitive; survival of the human context, inspires ingenuity. 163
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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
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Although this aspect of the theory
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Darwin posited that children look l
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The key to understanding how we pas
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This picture of illness is quite di
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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 and 160: As such, when we look at the innate
Page 161 and 162: In looking at reality, we can exami
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: Historians create narratives that e
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
Page 211 and 212: It has long been argued, however, t
Page 213 and 214: But the idea of using the body’s
Page 215 and 216: Although that seems worrisome, it i
Page 217 and 218: I equally much for how w
Page 219 and 220: 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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