Why I Call Huxley 'The Great Freethinker'

I've recently been reading some of the work of T. H. Huxley, on and off; I have a taste for freethought in my reading, but Huxley is easily the gold standard. He's not above making sharp comments about opponents, particularly in private correspondence. One thinks of his biting (but still rather witty) letter to Darwin about Samuel Butler. But it never overcame his underlying rational civility, a sort of courtesy born in the Court of Reason, based on his firm convictions that we should follow clear reasoning wherever it goes, sitting down before Truth to learn from her rather than presuming to dictate to her, and that bad reasoning for correct conclusions is still bad reasoning, no matter how right the conclusions. It could be said of him, as he said of Darwin, that he "had a clear rapid intelligence, a great memory, a vivid imagination, and what made his greatness was the strict subordination of all these to his love of truth." It's a rare breed much more important to civilization than the jabbering and ranting kind; a model worthy of being held up as an example to people on all sides. And that's even taking his flaws into account.

Liturgical Midsummer

Summer solstice has already come (for blogging on the solstice, see Rebecca, and Rebecca again, and at ScienceBlogs, Chaotic Utopia). However, the fixed holiday with which it is most closely associated is today. It's the Nativity of John the Baptist, which, as it used to be the closest major solemnity to the solstice , was for a very long time the feast of Midsummer. In the medieval period the celebration of this day was often very wild; it was the big let-loose before everyone had to buckle down for the long, hard work of preparing for winter. Liturgically, it's a breath of Advent in Ordinary Time.

UPDATE: Amy Welborn has a selection from Augustine on the day

Mill and Whewell on Natural Series

I realized that there is another post I wanted to do on natural classification, so here it is. A little background first. In the nineteenth century, the two most significant philosophers of science are William Whewell and John Stuart Mill. Whewell wrote the monumental History of the Inductive Sciences and Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, both of which are the first of their kind, and are largely unrivalled as instances of historical-philosophical scholarship. Delving deeply and insightfully into the history of science -- not just physics, but chemistry, biology, mineralogy, and others -- Whewell built up a fact-base in the attempt to construct an accurate and thorough philosophy of science. However, it was his rival, Mill, with whom he agreed on very little, whose philosophy of science was the most influential. Mill began writing his System of Logic -- in effect, his own philosophy of science -- and came across Whewell's History, and used it as the foundation for some of his own conclusions. My own opinion of the rivalry is no secret; while I don't think Whewell got everything right (given his breadth, it would be astonishing if he did) I'm in the pro-Whewell camp all the way through. I find myself agreeing with the judgment of C. S. Peirce, which I have mentioned before:

Whewell described the reasoning just as it appeared to a man deeply conversant with several branches of science as only a genuine researcher can know them, and adding to that knowledge a full acquaintance with the history of science. These results, as might be expected, are of the highest value, although there are important distinctions and reasons which he overlooked. John Stuart Mill endeavored to explain the reasonings of science by the nominalistic metaphysics of his father. The superficial perspicuity of that kind of metaphysics rendered his logic extremely popular with those who think, but do not think profoundly; who know something of science, but more from the outside than the inside, and who for one reason or another delight in the simplest theories even if they fail to cover the facts.

Harsh but fair, I think. In any case, I wanted to look at one particular disagreement between Mill and Whewell that is relevant to natural classification. This is Mill's claim that natural groups should be arranged in a natural series. As he says, almost everyone, including Dr. Whewell, stops short of such a claim; only Auguste Comte goes so far as to treat of it. Mill's reasoning is that, as a general instrument for investigating nature, the purpose of classification is merely to arrange the most similar things next to each other; but when we are using it to facilitate a particular inductive inquiry, we have to expect more from it. Not only must we arrange the phenomena into kinds; we must "arrange those Kinds in a series according to the degree in which they exhibit it, beginning with those which exhibit most of it, and terminating with those which exhibit least." The argument for this last point is rather obscure and for fear of not conveying it properly, I'll quote it:

We must consider as the type of the class, that among the Kinds included in it, which exhibits the properties constitutive of the class, in the highest degree; conceiving the other varieties as instances of degeneracy, as it were, from that type; deviations from it by inferior intensity of the characteristic property or properties. For every phenomenon is best studied (ceteris paribus) where it exists in the greatest intensity. It is there that the effects which either depend on it, or depend on the same causes with it, will also exist in the greatest degree. It is there, consequently, and only there, that those effects of it, or joint effects with it, can become fully known to us, so that we may learn to recognise their smaller degrees, or even their mere rudiments, in cases in which the direct study would have been difficult or even impossible. Not to mention that the phenomenon in its higher degrees may be attended by effects or collateral circumstances which in its smaller degrees do not occur at all, requiting for their production in any sensible amount a greater degree of intensity of the cause than is there met with.

So, to use Mill's example, human beings are the animals with the greatest 'intensity' of the phenomena of organic life. So human beings need to be put in the highest place, and all the other animals arranged in a series below it; because (apparently) we can only get the most accurate understanding of lower animal life by studying human beings. Not only does Mill think this is the best way to go about studying things; he thinks that this principle of natural series is more fundamental than the principle of natural affinity, which is subordinated to it. He also thinks that this is the way biologists have tended to classify animal life, and that implicit reference to a natural series is the only explanation for the high degree of agreement among different classifications.

Whewell will have none of it, since he thinks this whole idea is absurd. As he puts in a footnote on Mill's Logic in the Philosophy of Discovery:

There are some points in my doctrines on the subject of the Classificatory Sciences to which Mr. Mill objects, (ii. 314, &c.), but there is nothing which I think it necessary to remark here except one point. After speaking of Classification of organized beings in general, Mr. Mill notices (ii. 321) as an additional subject, the arrangement of natural groups into a Natural Series; and he says, that "all who have attempted a theory of natural arrangment, including among the rest Mr. Whewell, have stopped short of this: all except M. Comte." On this I have to observe, that I stopped short of, or rather passed by, the doctrine of a Series of organized beings, because I thought it bad and narrow philosophy: and that I sufficiently indicated that I did this. In the History (b. xvi. c. vi.) I have spoken of the doctrine of Circular Progression propounded by Mr. Macleay, and have said, "so far as this view negatives a mere linear progression in nature, which would place each genus in contact with the preceding and succeeding ones, and so far as it requires us to attend to the more varied and ramified resemblances, there can be no doubt that it is supported by the result of all the attempts to form natural systems." And with regard to the difference between Cuvier and M. de Blainville, to which Mr. Mill refers (ii. 321), I certainly cannot think that M. Comte's suffrage can add any weight to the opinion of either of those great naturalists.

(It should be pointed out that, despite the quotation marks, Whewell is only paraphrasing Mill; although it is an accurate paraphrase.) Mill replies in a later edition:

Dr. Whewell, in his reply (Philosophy of Discovery, p. 270) says that he "stopped short of, or rather passed by, the doctrine of a series of organized beings," because he "thought bad and narrow philosophy." If he did, bit was evidently without understanding this form of the doctrine; for he proceeds to quote a passage from his History, in which the doctrine he condemns is designated as that of "a mere linear progression in nature, which would place each genus in contact only with the preceding and succeeding ones." Now the series treated of in the text agrees with this linear progression in nothing whatever but in being a progression.
It would surely be possible to arrange all places (for example) in the order of their distance from the North Pole, though there would be not merely a plurality, but a whole circle of places at every single gradation in the scale.

It can be granted, I think, that Mill's natural series doesn't have to be a linear progression, and thus that Whewell's reply is not entirely adequate; but Mill misses, I think, the not-so-subtle barb in Whewell's last sentence, which puts forward a complaint that Whewell makes many times against Mill's Logic in many different forms: that Mill fits his account of science to presupposed philosophy instead of doing the hard work Whewell does to find out what scientists have actually done and build the account of science on that. Whewell's response would have been stronger had he pointed out the vagueness of Mill's 'natural series' (what does it mean to say that the phenomena of sensation are more 'intense' or are found in a 'greater degree' in human animals than in other animals?) and that it seems otiose (given that the natural series is simply a gradation, it seems that the typological classification of natural affinities, which both Mill and Whewell agree is a very important part of the classification process, would do everything already in the way of 'gradations' useful for scientific purposes).
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Quotation from Whewell is from On the Philosophy of Discovery (1860), Lenox Hill (New York: 1971), 270. Quotations from Mill are from A System of Logic.

Malebranche on the Science of Man

The most beautiful, the most pleasant, and the most necessary of all our knowledge is, undoubtedly, the knowledge of ourselves. Of all the human sciences, the science of man is the most worthy. Yet this science is neither the most cultivated nor the most complete that we possess; ordinary men neglect it altogether. Even among those who take pride in science, there are very few who apply themselves to this science, and there are still fewer who apply themselves to it with any success.

Nicolas Malebranche, The Search after Truth, Lennon & Olscamp, trs. (Cambridge: 1997) xxxix. 'Science' here is used more broadly than we tend to use it.

Links for Thinking

* Chris has an excellent post on the conceptual metaphor theory of our temporal attributions (the view that we conceive of time metaphorically by mapping it onto space).

* Ben Witherington provides an excerpt (about the Epistle of James) from his forthcoming commentary on Hebrews, James, and Jude. (As a complete aside, surely it's a bit unusual to link Jude with Hebrew and James rather than the Petrine epistles? I wonder what the reasoning behind it was.)

* If you ever happen to be on any of the worlds in the Empire, check to see if the Gideons are leaving the Klingon-language paraphrase or translation in hotel rooms. (The latter is being done by the same people who are working hard to restore the complete works of Shakesepeare to the 'original Klingon'.) The weblog mu''a'vo'mu' has regular reflections on the Klingon language version of the Bible. You never know when these things will come in handy.

* Clark has an interesting post on Heidegger and the Hebrews.

* The 127th Christian Carnival is the Voltron Edition.

* Everyone who can should contribute something to the DonorsChoose.org drive at Science Blogs, even if it's only $10. The drive is to provide students, especially underprivileged ones, with adequate science materials for school. Since I have a soft spot for third and fourth graders (in undergrad I tutored third & fourth grade math), and Janet Stemwedel's Adventures in Ethics and Science has quite a few challenges for these grades, I recommend this, this, this, this, or this from her challenge. The first link goes to a challenge already 26% complete, so only a few more donations would be enough to complete it. The second-to-last link goes to a challenge that is 35% complete, to provide science materials for 4th-graders in Katrina-devastated St. Bernard Parish (all their science textbooks were ruined in the flooding). Even if you don't have the means to donate, or if you can't (it only accepts U.S. donations, unfortunately), you can still pass the word. The drive ends July 1st.

* Wilson has an excellent post called Language, empire, and hope. Well worth reading!

* You can read Hippolyte Delehaye's classic 1907 work on the principles of historio-hagiography, The Legends of the Saints at Medieval Sourcebook.

* More on the Christian tradition of God as Mother. (HT: verbum ipsum)

Hume on Thomas More

In the Catholic liturgical calendar, the feast of Thomas More (and John Fisher) is tomorrow, but I'll be out of town, so I'm posting this today. I thought it would be interesting to look at Thomas More through the eyes of someone who admires him even despite a stern disapproval of his Catholicism, namely, David Hume. From his History of England:

After the prorogation, Sir Thomas More, the chancellor, foreseeing that all the measures of the king and parliament led to a breach with the church of Rome, and to an alteration of religion, with which his principles would not permit him to concur, desired leave to resign the great seal; and he descended from his high station with more joy and alacrity than he had mounted up to it. The austerity of this man’s virtue, and the sanctity of his manners, had no wise encroached on the gentleness of his temper, or even diminished that frolic and gaiety, to which he was naturally inclined. He sported with all the varieties of fortune into which he was thrown; and neither the pride, naturally attending a high station, nor the melancholy incident to poverty and retreat, could ever lay hold of his serene and equal spirit. While his family discovered symptoms of sorrow on laying down the grandeur and magnificence, to which they had been accustomed, he drew a subject of mirth from their distresses; and made them ashamed of losing even a moment’s chearfulness, on account of such trivial misfortunes. The king, who had entertained a high opinion of his virtue, received his resignation with some difficulty; and he delivered the great seal soon after to Sir Thomas Audley....

The oath regarding the succession was generally taken throughout the kingdom. Fisher, bishop of Rochester, and Sir Thomas More, were the only persons of note, that entertained scruples with regard to its legality. Fisher was obnoxious on account of some practices, into which his credulity, rather than any bad intentions, seems to have betrayed him. But More was the person of greatest reputation in the kingdom for virtue and integrity; and as it was believed, that his authority would have influence on the sentiments of others, great pains were taken to convince him of the lawfulness of the oath. He declared, that he had no scruple with regard to the succession, and thought that the parliament had full power to settle it: He offered to draw an oath himself, which would ensure his allegiance to the heir appointed; but he refused the oath prescribed by law; because the preamble of that oath asserted the legality of the king’s marriage with Anne, and thereby implied, that his former marriage with Catherine was unlawful and invalid. Cranmer, the primate, and Cromwel, now secretary of state, who highly loved and esteemed More, entreated him to lay aside his scruples; and their friendly importunity seemed to weigh more with him, than all the penalties attending his refusal. He persisted, however, in a mild, though firm manner, to maintain his resolution; and the king, irritated against him as well as Fisher, ordered both to be indicted upon the statute, and committed prisoners to the Tower....

John Fisher, bishop of Rochester, was a prelate, eminent for learning and morals, still more than for his ecclesiastical dignities, and for the high favour, which he had long enjoyed with the king. When he was thrown into prison, on account of his refusing the oath which regarded the succession, and his concealment of Elizabeth Barton’s treasonable speeches, he had not only been deprived of all his revenues, but stripped of his very cloaths, and, without consideration of his extreme age, he was allowed nothing but rags, which scarcely sufficed to cover his nakedness. In this condition, he lay in prison above a twelvemonth; when the pope, willing to recompense the sufferings of so faithful an adherent, created him a cardinal; though Fisher was so indifferent about that dignity, that, even if the purple were lying at his feet, he declared that he would not stoop to take it. This promotion of a man, merely for his opposition to royal authority, rouzed the indignation of the king; and he resolved to make the innocent person feel the effects of his resentment. Of Sir Thomas More. Fisher was indicted for denying the king’s supremacy, was tried, condemned, and beheaded.

The execution of this prelate was intended as a warning to More, whose compliance, on account of his great authority both abroad and at home, and his high reputation for learning and virtue, was anxiously desired by the king. That prince also bore as great personal affection and regard to More, as his imperious mind, the sport of passions, was susceptible of towards a man, who in any particular opposed his violent inclinations. But More could never be prevailed on to acknowledge any opinion so contrary to his principles as that of the king’s supremacy; and though Henry exacted that compliance from the whole nation, there was, as yet, no law obliging any one to take an oath to that purpose. Rich, the solicitor general, was sent to confer with More, then a prisoner, who kept a cautious silence with regard to the supremacy: He was only inveigled to say, that any question with regard to the law, which established that prerogative, was a two-edged sword: If a person answer one way, it will confound his soul; if another, it will destroy his body. No more was wanted to sound an indictment of high treason against the prisoner. His silence was called malicious, and made a part of his crime; and these words, which had casually dropped from him, were interpreted as a denial of the supremacy.y Trials were mere formalities during this reign: The jury gave sentence against More, who had long expected this fate, and who needed no preparation to fortify him against the terrors of death. Not only his constancy, but even his cheerfulness, nay, his usual facetiousness, never forsook him; and he made a sacrifice of his life to his integrity with the same indifference that he maintained in any ordinary occurrence. When he was mounting the scaffold, he said to one, "Friend, help me up, and when I come down again, let me shift for myself." The executioner asking him forgiveness, he granted the request, but told him, "You will never get credit by beheading me, my neck is so short." Then laying his head on the block, he bade the executioner stay till he put aside his beard: "For," said he, "it never committed treason." Nothing was wanting to the glory of this end, except a better cause, more free from weakness and superstition. But as the man followed his principles and sense of duty, however misguided, his constancy and integrity are not the less objects of our admiration. He was beheaded in the fifty-third year of his age.

That's a bit long, but I think it's interesting enough to warrant it. Jennifer Herdt, in her wonderful Religion and Faction in Hume's Moral Philosophy, notes that this appraisal of Thomas More is something of an anomaly for Hume's view on the psychology of religion. Generally speaking, Hume holds that (monotheistic, and particularly institutional monotheistic) religion induces an 'artificial life' -- an unnatural way of living -- that is characterized by gloom, hypocrisy, and irrationality. These make sympathetic understanding impossible; they interfere with an outsider's ability to put themselves in the religionist's shoes. The only understanding available is to identify causes external to the religious viewpoint (supposedly) affirmed: secret motives, passions, political factions. The religious viewpoint in itself is incomprehensible. None of these apply to More, however. As Herdt notes:

The virtues of constancy and integrity are hardly those which Hume should in theory discover in a theist, even the most sincere. So Hume in this instance seems to give the lie to his own assumptions about the nature of theistic belief and therefore to the limits of sympathetic understanding of a theist by a non-theist.

[Jennifer Herdt, Religion and Faction in Hume's Moral Philosophy. Cambridged (1997) p. 214]

So Hume's account of religion has no place for people like More. Of course, as Herdt goes on to note, Hume's account of religion, insofar as it is directed at anybody, is directed at the very narrow Scottish Calvinism that Hume knew growing up; and seen in this light a lot can still be said for Hume's account. The anomaly of More isn't a counterexample for the account, strictly speaking; it just marks a way in which it is limited.

Duhem on Teaching Physics by History

Despite the familiarity of most philosophers today with Duhem's name, many of his actual arguments are rather neglected. One of the more interesting of these is his argument that the proper method for teaching physics is historical:

To give the history of a physical principle is at the same time to make a logical analysis of it. The criticism of the intellectual processes that physics puts into play is related indissolubly to the exposition of the gradual evolution by which deduction perfects a theory and makes of it a more precise and better-ordered representation of laws revealed by observation.

Besides, the history of science alone can keep the physicist from the mad ambitions of dogmatism as well as the despair of Pyrrhonian skepticism.

This passage summarizes the three basic functions of teaching physics by teaching the history of physics.

(1) Analysis. The sort of history Duhem has in mind is a somewhat idealized one. When teaching physics according to the historical method, you are using history to get the point of the physics across, not doing history for history's sake. So it's OK to abstract a bit from anything that might interfere with or distract from understanding the physics. What you are looking for is the general interplay between theory and experiment that gives the theory its content.

(2) Moderation of Ambition. The history of science is a history of error: brilliant people using ingenious methods to come to wrong conclusions. By giving students of physics an idea of this history of dead-ends, confusions, hesitations, wrong assumptions, etc., you help to give them the sense that it's not enough to do the experiments and come up with the theories the way we usually imagine scientists do; you also must be self-critical and willing to be wrong many times before you get something workable -- and when you get something workable, you must be willing to recognize that it, too, could be superceded. Since Duhem is a positivist, he also thinks it helps to underscore the fact that physics represents provisionally rather than explains definitively; for instance, on this view, Newton's theory doesn't explain anything, but it represents a certain range of phenomena so astoundingly well that it can still be used after everyone has learned its flaws and limitations. And by learning physics historically, Duhem thinks you're more likely to recognize that newer theories will be fortunate if they do even half so well. When the physicist is tempted to put too much weight on his own pet theories, the history of physics can remind him that such dogmatism contributes nothing of value to physics. Against presumption, the history of physics teaches humility.

(3) Encouragement. But if the history of science is a history of error, it is also a history of progress, and the progress sometimes comes about through even serious errors. Each era in physics draws strength from the earlier eras and is pregnant with the eras to come. When you teach physics historically, you don't merely teach that physical theory is representation; you teach that it is a representation that approaches "natural classification and an increasingly clearer reflection of realities which experimental method cannot contemplate directly." When the physicist is tempted to despair of the possibility of progress, the history of physics can remind her that physics has come through worse with astounding feats of progress. Against despair, the history of physics teaches hope.

Such is Duhem's argument, anyway. It represents a sort of philosophy of science that I wish were more common, namely, the kind that thinks seriously and carefully about ways to improve scientific pedagogy.
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All quotes are from Pierre Duhem, The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory. Philip Wiener, tr. Atheneum (New York: 1962) 269-270.