Three Scientific Revolutions: How They Transformed Our Conceptions of Reality (2 page)

The third revolution began in the latter nineteenth century with the discovery of such subatomic particles as the electron, proton, neutron, and proof of electromagnetism, along with Charles Darwin's later evolutionary theory of natural selection. The twentieth century brought about further astonishing developments in particle physics culminating in two fundamental classes of particles, the fermions and bosons, plus the discovery of strong and weak nuclear forces. It also encompassed innovative advances in geology, paleontology, chemistry, biology, medicine, neurophysiology, and genetics, along with creating such significant theories as Max Planck's quantum mechanics, Einstein's theories of relativity, Niels Bohr's solar model of the atom, Werner Heisenberg's introduction of matrix mechanics and the uncertainty principle.

It also comprised the vastly improved telescopes such as Edwin Hubble's telescope at Mount Wilson's Observatory in Los Angeles and even more powerful telescopes that by the end of the century disclosed a much more extensive universe with about 125 billion galaxies each consisting of trillions of stars, as well as the dramatic lunar landing confirming the geographical similarity of another planet to the earth. Furthermore, there was evidence of the accelerating expansion of the universe following the big bang and the existence of black holes and dark energy about which we know very little and yet they apparently compose around 95 percent of the matter of the universe. Also, since the big bang itself presumably had a cause, this suggests that it must be an offshoot of another universe giving rise to the concept of multiverses.

The final chapter discusses the current scientific advances that are a prologue to the impending fourth revolutionary transformation in our conception of reality and way of life. These include the vastly extended telescopic observations owing to the creation of such recent powerful telescopes as the James Webb Space Telescope and the Kepler Space Telescope, along with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) to search among the trillions of exoplanets for evidence of the environmental conditions that would allow for the existence of living creatures and especially extraterrestrial intelligence. They also comprise interplanetary space explorations to seek a new home for terrestrial human beings when our planet becomes either uninhabitable or consumed by the eventual increase in radiant heat from the sun due to the latter's future atmospheric changes.

In addition, there is the fantastic progress in computer science and robotics that researchers predict will permit human beings to have each of their cranial neurons and synaptic connections replaced by electronic components and then encoded in a computer program or installed in the head of a robot and thus achieve a weird kind of programmed existence or robotic longevity. Equally fantastic are the anticipated medical advances plus genetic discoveries that will eliminate most health problems, along with the detection of the “aging genes” that will greatly extend our lifespan if there can be found another habitable planet to travel to and live on.

The chapter also describes the latest attempt at a final unified theory, namely, string theory, which has not produced any empirical evidence and thus is unlikely to be a concluding theory thereby raising the question as to whether it is even possible. Given the seemingly unlimited dimensions and diversity of the universe, the previous scientific assumption that a final unified theory (that eluded Einstein) is attainable now seems to me to be improbable. If, due to limited knowledge and funds, no such theory is feasible, this obviously does not detract from the fact that Christianity and other world religions, along with philosophical metaphysical systems, are no longer credible in contrast to the formulation and adoption of the scientific methodology that produced the described transformations in our worldviews. In its place I have suggested the theory of “Contextual Realism” in a previous book by that title and mentioned later in the present book.

Furthermore, I find more encouraging and promising the advances in genetics, such as heterochromatin, that will enable scientists to identify the essential genes at least partially responsible for the terrible cruelties, iniquities, and suffering pervading human existence. Just as geneticists have discovered the particular genes or systems of genes and the cellular fluids that direct the causes of human physical illnesses, they are now close to detecting the genetic causes that produce the greatest human atrocities: murders, rapes, assaults, repressions, injustices, deceptions, etc. Detected and deactivated they would enable us to improve human nature thereby supplementing or even replacing religion, parental guidance, and social laws as the major determinate influences directing human behavior. Considering the contentious, devastating, and depressing past history and present state of the world situation, I find the prospect of genetically improving human nature the most promising and admirable hope for the future, vastly preferable to being electronically programmed in a computer or installed in a robot.

Chapter I

THE FIRST TRANSITION OWING TO THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHIC INQUIRIES DURING THE GREEK HELLENIC AND HELLENISTIC PERIOD

Considering that the United States emerged as the dominant world power after World War II due to its superior armaments, which were based on its advanced scientific and technological developments, and also to its being the freest and most prosperous country after defeating Russia in the Cold War, it is appalling how little most Americans know about and appreciate the reasons for these achievements—that it was the ancient Greeks who first initiated the scientific method of inquiry that contributed so greatly to America's ascendance while the conception and adoption of democracy also was first introduced in Athens by Cleisthenes in 508 BCE. According to Robin Lane Fox, an ancient historian, in his
The Classical World
,

in the spring of 508 BC ... Cleisthenes proposed ... that the [Athenian] constitution should be changed and that, in all things, the sovereign power should rest with the entire adult male citizenry. It was a spectacular moment, the first known proposal of democracy, the lasting example of the Athenians to the world.
¹

As supporting evidence of these two crucial influences, science and democracy, astrophysicist Carl Sagan stated in his incredibly informed book
The Demon-Haunted World
:
Science as a Candle in the Dark
: “At the Constitutional Convention of 1789 John Adams repeatedly appealed to the analogy of mechanical balance in machines . . .”; “James Madison used chemical and biological metaphors in
The Federalist Papers
”; and Thomas Jefferson, who described himself as a scientist, wrote in the Declaration of Independence, “that we all must have the same opportunities, the same ‘unalienable' Rights,”
²
though sadly this did not include women and slaves. As Jefferson adds:

In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demonhaunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness. (p. 434)

In this book I shall describe the three past revolutionary scientific transitions that radically transformed our conceptions of the universe and human existence. I also argue that given the enormity and complexity of the universe the traditional scientific goal of a “unified final theory” should be replaced by the theoretical framework of “contextual realism.”
³
Rather than seeking a
final
theoretical framework to explain all empirical evidence as most scientists of the past intended, we should realize that such inquiries are conducted within successively deeper and expanding
conditional
but nonetheless
real
physical contexts of the universe that appear to be endless.

Turning to the first scientific transformation of our conception of reality, while the Egyptians and Mesopotamians had made significant contributions in astronomy, mathematics, biology, and medicine that antedated the scientific inquiries of the ancient Greeks, it is generally conceded that it was the latter who first began a
systematic
attempt to attain a more empirical-rational understanding of the universe by replacing the previous mythological and theological accounts with empirical observations, logical and mathematical reasoning, and rational explanations.

For instance, it was the Greek Milesians Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximines who, in the sixth century BCE, rejected a divine creator of the universe for naturalistic explanations in terms of Water (Thales), an Unbounded (Anaximander), and an Air-Substrate (Anaximines) and adopted such ordinary explanatory principles as “separating off” or “condensation and evaporation” to explain how our current universe came to be from that original state. Though an admirable effort, this attempted
unified
explanation
is now referred to as the “Ionian fallacy.”

Another extremely gifted person whose influence extended throughout the centuries (string theory in physics is a modern example) was the Ionian philosopher Pythagoras of Samos, also from the sixth century, who was a musician, mathematician, astronomer, mystic, and founder of the Pythagorean philosophical and religious school in Croton. Reputed to be an accomplished lutenist, this facilitated several of his unique mathematical discoveries, the first being that the intervals of musical scales in which the consonances and successive octaves could be expressed in numerical ratios comprising the first four integers. This was followed by his speculation that the motion of the planets emits a musical harmony called the “Music of the Spheres,” though too remote to be heard by human ears.

Among his other mathematical discoveries were irrational numbers, the Pythagorean theorem, the tetractys (a triangular figure of four rows of numbers that add up to the perfect number ten), and that spatial configurations can be created from “arithmogeometric units”—e.g., an extended line drawn from two points, plane figures such as triangles and rectangles from several lines, a circle from a joined curved line, and three-dimensional spatial objects such as pyramids cubes, spheres, and complex polyhedra from plane figures. As Aristotle states, based on these inquires “the Pythagoreans . . . construct the whole universe out of numbers—only not numbers consisting of abstract units: they suppose the units to have spatial magnitude.”
⁴

Thus the Pythagoreans were able to represent the four elements of the physical world—earth, air, fire, and water—by four polyhedra: the earth by the 4-sided pyramid or tetrahedron, air by the 6-sided cube, fire by the 8-sided octahedron, water by the 20-sided icosahedron, and the universe itself by the 12-sided dodecahedron. Because Plato apparently assigned different polyhedra to the four elements, explaining their disintegration and reconfiguration as due to the separation and recombination of their constituent plane figures, they came to be known as “the five Platonic solids.” Kepler in the early seventeenth century began his astronomical theorizing in his
Mysterium Cosmographicum
(The Cosmographic Mystery) with the five polyhedra of Pythagoras perhaps as revised by Plato. Other of their astronomical contributions also were extremely important, such as Eudoxus of Cnidus who made the determination of the solar year to be 365 days and five hours, along with originating the long-prevailing view that the celestial bodies revolve on a series of concentric spheres with the earth in the center.

His pupil Callippus of Cyzicus increased his number of spheres to thirty-four to account for certain astronomical irregularities that were adopted by Aristotle. But Philolaus of Croton, in 259 BCE, astutely assigned “an oblique circular motion” to the earth around a central fire while Heraclides of Pontus and Ecphantos of Syracuse attributed to it an axial rotation from west to east to explain the apparent rising and setting of the sun, along with determining that Mercury and Venus revolve around the sun. This culminated in Aristarchus of Samos's prescient sun-centered astronomical theory in the third century BCE, though eclipsed by Ptolemy's geocentrism until Copernicus's adoption of heliocentrism.

These celestial innovations were complemented by such empirical theories as Empedocles' conception of the four elements, earth, air, fire, and water, as basic; Anaxagoras' rejection of Empedocles' four elements as too limited, declaring that the original mixture consisted of an infinite number of infinitely divisible particles that were representative of all the diversity of things, but too minute to be discernable except for air and aither; Leucippus' and Democritus' astute atomic theory that the underlying matter of the universe consisted of solid, indivisible, insensible particles that varied in their size, shapes, solidity, and motions, excluding sensory qualities.
⁵

However, deriding such empirical explanations Plato, in his famous “allegory of the cave,” described sensory knowledge as mere reflections of the imperfect material objects in the physical world or “Receptacle,” declaring that mathematics could free one from these perceptual illusions to ascend to the intelligible world of perfect archetypes, the “Realm of Forms,” culminating in the “Form of the Good” and the “Demiurge.” Apparently the latter was the creator of the real world by imposing the ideal archetypes on the imperfect Receptacle.
⁶
It was Plato's philosophy that was the most influential during the medieval period because of its easy conformity with Christianity, interpreting his Demiurge as God.

Yet it was not Plato's philosophy but that of his pupil Aristotle that would prove the most dominant from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century following the syntheses of his philosophy with Christianity by Thomas Aquinas. Rejecting Plato's methodology that relied on mathematics for attaining knowledge of the Forms because Aristotle thought it only applied to abstract magnitudes, not to the empirical world, he created the formalism of logic for deducing specific physical properties from empirical premises stating their
genus
and
species
derived from empirical inductions.