Beyond causality

[Celerity]

In order to bridge the yawning gulf between the humanities and the sciences we must turn to an unexpected field: mathematics

https://aeon.co/essays/to-better-understand-the-world-follow-the-paths-of-mathematics





In 1959, the English writer and physicist C P Snow delivered the esteemed Rede Lecture at the University of Cambridge. Regaled with champagne and Marmite sandwiches, the audience had no idea that they were about to be read the riot act. Snow diagnosed a rift of mutual ignorance in the intellectual world of the West. On the one hand were the ‘literary intellectuals’ (of the humanities) and on the other the (natural) ‘scientists’: the much-discussed ‘two cultures’. Snow substantiated his diagnosis with anecdotes of respected literary intellectuals who complained about the illiteracy of the scientists but who themselves had never heard of such a fundamental statement as the second law of thermodynamics. And he told of brilliant scientific minds who might know a lot about the second law but were barely up to the task of reading Charles Dickens, let alone an ‘esoteric, tangled and dubiously rewarding writer … like Rainer Maria Rilke.’

Sixty-plus years after Snow’s diatribe, the rift has hardly narrowed. Off the record, most natural scientists still consider the humanities to be a pseudo-science that lacks elementary epistemic standards. In a 2016 talk, the renowned theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli lamented ‘the current anti-philosophical ideology’. And he quoted eminent colleagues such as the Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg, Stephen Hawking and Neil deGrasse Tyson, who agreed that ‘philosophy is dead’ and that only the natural sciences could explain how the world works, not ‘what you can deduce from your armchair’. Meanwhile, many humanities scholars see scientists as pedantic surveyors of nature, who may produce practical and useful results, but are blind to the truly deep insights about the workings of the (cultural) world. In his best-selling book The Fate of Rome (2017), Kyle Harper convincingly showed that a changing climate and diseases were major factors contributing to the final fall of the Roman Empire. The majority of Harper’s fellow historians had simply neglected such factors up to then; they had instead focused solely on the cultural, political and socioeconomic ones.

In my own book, The Oracle of Numbers: A Short Philosophy of Mathematics (2023), currently only available in the original German, I tried to counter this intellectual parochialism. During my academic training in mathematics, physics and philosophy, I witnessed many instances of this narrow-mindedness and always wondered why highly intelligent people in these fields guarded themselves against major insights from the other fields. I wanted to motivate them, and the inquisitive general public, to open their minds and see that the neverending quest for a better understanding of the world follows many paths.

Ludwig Wittgenstein once said: ‘I want to show the colourfulness of mathematics.’ In that spirit, I placed mathematics at the centre of my project because, in my view, mathematics searches along more of these many paths than any other intellectual discipline. It is connected on a deep level both with the natural sciences and the humanities. It bridges the gulf between them, and it does so by putting certain metaphysical and epistemological dogmas into question, as will become clear in the following.

snip

[biophile]

1. This is a good read

The same divide occurs within science today. If you aren’t with the mainstream thought, you are shunned. Once you have swallowed the “current” science it seems as if the mind closes to new information or a different theory.
It happens in medicine for certain- climate science too.

[marble falls]

2. For some reason brings this to mind ...

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said, "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
In tenement halls"

[Celerity]

3. Disturbed "The Sound Of Silence" 03/28/16 - CONAN on TBS

[marble falls]

4. Just the best version of the this song.

[Igel]

5. Read "The two cultures" decades back.

First week as a freshman headed to lecture for chemistry--then had our "tutorials" section or whatever they were called. TA, work problems, get questions answered that the 380+ student lecture hall couldn't tolerate.

TA assigned "The Two Cultures". It was a tech school. It had a "humanities" "department" (scare quotes justified): You could take a year of Intro/US history, a year of Intro/World history, a year of Intro/English-language literature, or a year of Intro/Philosophy. You had to take 3 of the 4. Otherwise, it was science, math, engineering. (No, no languages. No music. No arts. Math, science, engineering. And the "hum courses." My snarky US history adjunct, day 1, said that he knew his role: It was to teach us enough history that we didn't embarrass ourselves at cocktail parties while talking to the boss's wife and saying some stupid like mention George Washington's victory over the Confederates at the Battle of the Bulge.)

In some ways, the divide is greater as a lot of humanities/social "sciences" have made claims about science that most science/engineering types reject. In some ways the divide is less as those claims have gained prominence in some parts of science and engineering, or at least the hierarchical apparatus that the science/engineering folk are employed in.