Philosophy or Science?—Part 2

In ancient Greece—where the foundations of Western knowledge were laid—there was initially just the discipline of philosophy. Science had yet to arise. (You might say that the old Greek philosophers sat around and thought, rather than got off their duffs and went out to run experiments—and you’d not be far off the truth.) 

In the pre-Socratic period (roughly 6^th to 3^rd centuries BCE) the philosophic aim of thinkers was to understand the basic character of the world; what was referred to as “natural philosophy.” Those ancient Greeks later turned their main attention from the natural world toward humans. When Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato came along, they were definitely interested more in ethics and politics. The branch of philosophy that addressed the natural world morphed into what we know as science, splitting from human-centered philosophy. The science-versus-philosophy rift had begun. 

Aristotle and his cohorts felt that anything one needed to know about anything could be discovered through reason alone. The breach between philosophy and science widened in the growing realization by natural philosophers (scientists) that knowledge of the world needed to be verified by physical experiments. Human reasoning and logic alone can sometimes veer away from reality; they need to be kept in check by empirical observation. 

Galileo (17^th century CE) was one of the first true scientists; he advanced the science of mechanics by verifying his ideas through experiment, thereby trashing many of the ancient Greeks’ philosophic ideas about the natural world.

The disagreements between philosophy and science were kept to a minimum by the later rise of a discipline that has come to be called “philosophy of science.” Scientists, of course, cannot be absolutely objective, even if they try to be. They are human, after all, and make assumptions, have beliefs, and form opinions—some of them rather whacky at times. Thus, philosophy of science attempts to keep scientists on track by asking questions like: Can science be expected to lead to certainty and truth? What is the so-called scientific method and what are its limitations? Is a new or updated scientific theory/experiment closer to the truth than the old one? How do we know? How do we tell true science from pseudoscience?

By the middle of the 20^th century, however, science became increasingly specialized and partitioned itself into countless narrow areas of specialization. A person could spend a whole career in one of these restricted fields and become so steeped in its esoteric knowledge that she would be quite unable to converse in any depth with a scientist in what could be presumed to be a closely-related field. For example, a biologist studying the mating characteristics of a butterfly in Panama might not be able to understand a biologist researching a caterpillar-caused disease in oak trees in North America.

Specialization continued to add to fragmentation and compartmentalization of the growing number of scientific disciplines. If different scientists could not communicate very well with each other, what is to be said about those individuals pursuing the study of the philosophy of science in those arcane specialties? What appeared to be happening is that these “scientific” philosophers were neither able to keep up with the increasingly specialized scientists, nor maintain their connections to traditional philosophers. They seem to have been drawn into a kind of no-man's land, where they find themselves separated from both “pure” scientists and “pure” philosophers.

Where is this struggle going? I don't think anyone can predict. It's a 2,000-year-old conundrum that has been wrestled with by countless learned people. It appears to me that the current tussle is just the latest facet of an enduring struggle between philosophers and scientists. The fact that I can relate better to one camp (scientists) than the other, is just a measure of the bias of my education and my personal predilections. I think it's useful to try to understand the other camp, if only to widen one's otherwise narrow perspective. In a fundamental way, we're all philosophers and scientists.

Oak Apple Gall

The oak apple gall is caused by a wasp (Amphibolips confluenta) that lays an egg on the center rib of a budding oak leaf. The egg hatches and the larva's saliva causes the leaf to mutate and form a ball around the larva (top photo). The larva eats from the mutated leaf and then hatches in mid-summer. The middle photo shows the gall cut open, with the fine lacing that holds the larva inside. In the bottom photo I extracted the center of the gall and cut it open, to show the wasp larva. (I said a prayer to the wasp gods, asking forgiveness for killing an innocent larva.) (Click to enlarge.)

Philosophy or Science?—Part 1

Having been educated in physics, I find myself relating more easily to an article on science than one on philosophy. When I encounter something written on a scientific topic, I find myself drawn to it—even if it's a branch of science that is over my head. At least I can pretty much follow the argument presented by the writer, though I may drop out part way through, because it's not a specialty that interests me (or that I can really comprehend).
 

When I read an article on philosophy, however, I often find myself quickly lost in a forest of philosophical jargon that soon abandons me to the depths of expressions and ideas that seem so foreign, that I get left behind. Things seem so squishy and ungrounded that I get lost among the glut of philosophical trees and completely lose any comprehension of the philosophical forest. I often give up, just after starting.

Now, I know that philosophy has an honored and deserved position in the pantheon of human ideas and has been life’s focus for many astute sages, so it makes sense for me to try to understand it. I also have read that in today's culture, scientists and philosophers sometimes lock horns with each other. Furthermore, I'm aware that during the ancient Greek period, science and philosophy were pretty much one in the same. These seem like conflicting thoughts that make it hard to wrap my head around, so I’m compelled to keep trying.

So what's going on? As someone with a scientific background, must I choose sides and therefore reject the teachings of philosophy, as some of today's leading scientists have done, or do I delve into the struggle and try to get a better understanding of philosophy, so that I might embrace it better than I currently am able to do?

Faced with a quandary such as this, I often turn to the dictionary, in an attempt to clarify my grasp of the central terms that I'm pondering. Here are the definitions of philosophy and science that I found:

·         Philosophy: the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence. Its root: love of wisdom.

·         Science: the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world, through observation and experiment. Its root: to know.

This tells me that philosophy might ask questions like: What's going on? What's the nature of things? How do we know that our understanding is valid? How can this knowledge guide us ethically? How do we improve our knowledge and how do we measure that improvement?

In contrast, while I see science asking some of the same questions, science does not necessarily address ethics. Science studies the “how” but not necessarily the “why.” While philosophy is primarily concerned with the human mind and its ability to comprehend reality, science is primarily concerned with the nature of the universe—independent of how the human mind might perceive it. 

More on science and philosophy next time...

A New Family

      Here are three photos of the rapid growth of a nest of five Carolina wren babies. The top photo shows them at one week of age. Notice the big beaks--the better for mom and dad to fill with bugs. If you look carefully, you can make out five chicks. (Click to enlarge.)
     In the middle photo, they are about two weeks old and about ready to go. Notice that their feathers are fluffy and mature looking. Dad was hanging around, calling out endlessly, urging them to leave.
     The bottom photo is what I found the next day. Empty nest! Only a few feathers discarded and left behind. I didn't get to see them fly, but assumed that they made it OK.

Noisy Night Jar

Sometime in mid-April we will hear our first whippoorwill call out into the night air. They have arrived in the northern Shenandoah Valley from Florida or Central America and are getting ready to gobble up countless insects and beget their next generation of chicks. No bird is quite as emphatic and clamorous as the whippoorwill. They begin to call, as deepening dusk settles over the area—the first calls of the season being primarily from the males, showing off their vocal skills to all available females within aural range.

The whippoorwill's scientific name—Caprimulgus vociferus—aptly captures this bird's insistent song. It is in the night jar family and is an onomatopoetic name—meaning that its call has essentially the same sound as its name: whip-poor-WILL. (Although I think a closer rendition of our local bird’s accent is something more like per-for-REAL. If you’ve ever heard one of these birds, try singing out these alternative renditions in a falsetto and see which seems closer… just be sure you are alone, or accompanied by congenial people.) 

One of these guys will begin to call out, and quickly seems to get seized by an urge to keep going, without pause, until he threatens to bring on himself a serious case of laryngitis. In fact, one intrepid ornithological accountant once recorded a performance of 1,088 continuous calls!

Recently sitting in the tub, as nightfall came on, I could make out three whippoorwills simultaneously calling—trying to outdo each other in the vociferousness department. As they repeatedly called, I wondered how they could be aware of their competitors presence. If you don't shut up and listen now and then, how can you know that you have rivals in the vicinity?

Because of its nocturnal habits, there is a lot of mystery about the behavior of the whippoorwill. Its coloring is cleverly cryptic. In the daytime they rest on the ground, so well camouflaged that you could step on one and not see it. In the dark they become really hard to spot. In fact, here's a cute bit of whippoorwill lore: while you might catch sight of a gaggle of geese, you'd more properly refer to it as an “invisibility” of whippoorwills.

So a whippoorwill is far more often heard than seen. Although I may hear a whippoorwill call anytime during the night, they are most active at dusk and just before dawn. Their gut has an amazing capacity—they can consume up to 2,000 small insects in one night! The female whippoorwill lays two eggs, which are timed to hatch as the moon is waxing. (Can they really read a moon almanac?) That way, the parents can see bugs all night, to catch and feed their ravenous youngsters. Or maybe they need the bright moonlight to see their own cryptically-colored chicks in the dark?

I sat there soaking, listening to the three insistent whippoorwills call—seemingly ignorant of each other. At least that's how it seemed to me. Their repetition rate varied all over the place, so they sounded like three tin-eared musicians, oblivious to the fact that their calls were both out of sync and out of tune with each other. It was a lousy trio! They lack the harmonizing skills of katydids that I'll be hearing in another couple of months, when a dozen or more of them will call out and gradually get in sync with each other, until the woods literally throb with the pulse of their calls.

Quadruple-trunked Sycamore Above My Tub

Just leafing out.

Advancing Evening—Part 2

As the sun dips even farther below the western horizon, it grows ever darker. (I remind myself that the sun really stays right where it is; it's we who are rotating away from it.) I look upward, wondering how soon I'll spot the first evening's star. The sky is a medium indigo color—not quite yet ready to reveal that first pin point of starlight. 

It hits me that I am watching a game of “photon competition.” As the sun's profuse outpouring of photons (call it bright light) gets intercepted by yonder ridge, it lowers the light level surrounding me. As the sun’s photons decrease, the much fewer photons I receive from distant stars will begin to get a chance to be noticed. Those stars scattered out their abundant allotment of photons millions of years ago—a scant few of them finally reaching my eye. They will become visible only when the arriving nighttime reduces the sun's photons to near nonexistence.

The opposite of the rising ridge-shadow phenomenon visits in the morning, as the sun's first rays illuminate the very tips of trees. The shadows then retreat down the tree trunks—slowly yielding to the new day's light. 

I am reminded of a time a decade ago, when I meandered through Glacier National Park in Montana, and then across the border into Canada's Waterton Lakes National Park—the other half of that gorgeous Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park. Camped on the Canadian side, I arose before dawn to watch the morning's light slowly grow. I was greeted by the stunning sight of a distant, tall Rocky Mountain peak bathed in a golden spotlight, as the sun lit up the top of the mountain. I was riveted by the view, watching the brilliant yellow creep down the mountain. Then I noticed a dark, horizontal line etched across the mountain’s face. Curious! It didn't seem as if it could be a rock formation, so what could it be? Then it seemed to grow a wee bit larger and even appeared to undulate. Curioser! 

Perplexed, I stared at this wavering black line, and then noticed that it took on the appearance of a string of black pearls on a quivering necklace. Finally, I watched as the black pearls transformed into tiny Canada geese. Their wide V-formation grew larger, bore down upon me, and eventually flew overhead. By then, the mountain was half bathed in light, and I was still standing, unmoving, stunned.

When you take the time to register the sun's slow creep, as shadows steal sluggishly across the landscape, like the minute hand of a clock, another world exposes itself to you...a world that our rushed pace usually keeps hidden from us. It's great to step away from that bustle and become aware of a more measured world—one that lights up those serene places in our consciousness.

Sycamore Tree Seed Pod

About 1/2 inch across.