Philosophy
On this page I outline the main philosophical ideas which underpin my thinking. More detailed or specific articles are available through the sub-pages to the right.
A central role in my thinking is played by the idea of evolution. The notion has come to the prominent role it currently holds in my views through several different channels.
Its importance first exploded into my consciousness in 11th grade, when after the third or fourth reading of Stephen Hawking’s Brief History of Time, I was pondering the Anthropic Principle during lunch break in my high school cafeteria. It has many formulations but the one that most intrigued me was the one stating that “The Universe is the way it is because if it had been different we would not have existed, and would therefore not be here to observe it.” The principle has been offered as a way to make sense of the well known physics fact that had the physical laws been of the same form, but with physical constants even slightly different from the known values, the universe would have been very much simpler, less interesting and complex than it currently is, and would not have been able to support something as complex as a carbon based life form. Note my use of the phrase “make sense” rather than “explain”; more on my views on the concept of explanation elsewhere.
I realized that the circular formulation of the anthropic principle was strongly reminiscent of the biological theory of natural selection which states that, for instance “Rabbits are the way they are because if they had been different they would no longer exist, and we would not be observing them.” Of course, different rabbits did exist, but they were selected out of the gene pool long ago by parasites, predators or competition for resources with other rabbits. Thus we no longer see these different (slower, hard of hearing, etc) rabbits.
At the time I was struck by this similarity, and also by the fact that it did not seem to have occurred to Hawking or any other of the writers concerned with the topic until recently. It was almost like an “evolution blind spot”. The origin of this blind spot became clear to me only much later.
Another place where I found evolution to play a central role was in the Buddhist philosophical tradition. The metaphor of the Bhavachakra, aka the Wheel of Samsara or the Wheel of Becoming, made a very strong impression on me. It represents the continuous flux and change in the world, the cycle of life and death. It is held in the jaws and claws of a giant dragon symbolizing (in the version I was familiar with) Time, and it is divided in six sectors representing six forms of unenlightened existence.
Change plays a central role in the Buddhist world view. It starts from the observation that everything changes, and consequently it relies on an interaction centered ontology. Objects have no independent existence, but are only bundles or swarms of interactions among other objects. Objects come into existence as swarms come together, they exist while the swarm lasts, and then disappear as the swarm breaks apart. Remarkably, and in stark contrast to western thought, this is held to apply not only to physical objects, but also to mental objects, because mental objects are dependent on the human mind, and the mind is nothing more than a swarm of sensations, emotions and other interactions. The mind and everything that springs from it is no more or less permanent than the rest of the world of Samsara (the world of becoming). Thus Buddhism is a process centered philosophy.
A third element which contributed to my fascination with evolution is the split in Greek thought which took place with the antagonism between the approaches of Heraclitus and Parmenides. Heraclitus focused his metaphysics on flux and change, whereas Parmenides was mostly concerned with substance. Parmenides’ strong aversion to what he saw as the paradoxes inherent in the notion of change led him to abolish the idea altogether. The radical nature of this approach seems to have been transmitted to Plato, for he makes use of a similarly radical argument (in the Theaetetus) to abolish empirical perception due to the impossibility of deriving true, permanent knowledge from it. Since the impossibility of permanent knowledge is aesthetically abominable to him, then, in Plato’s view, that simply means that permanent knowledge will have to come from some other source, namely the realm of Ideas (or Forms). This is the point at which western thought parts ways with Heraclitus and falls under the long spell of Parmenides’ notions centered on substance and on permanence, in particular permanent (as opposed to circumstantial) knowledge.
I was intrigued by this because time seemed to me to be the least understood aspect of our universe, and also paradoxically the least studied one. Time seemed to be shunned by the best minds of the Western World. This Parmenidean bias running through all of Western philosophy seemed to be the deep origin of the blind spot mentioned above. It also manifested itself through the western infatuation with the deductive method. Any idea that did not have a deductive link to the rest of our knowledge is simply not taken seriously, and since evolution theory does not have a deductive structure, it has to this day not been fully digested by the western philosophical establishment. Change and evolution seem to have dropped off the map after the Theaetetus and especially after Aristotle’s logic. I believe it is about time to bring them back.
The main reason I think Change has come of age and is ripe for a more honest and direct appraisal is the fact that Darwin’s theory of evolution showed that impermanence (or becoming, in Buddhist jargon) is not only not evil, but it is about the most constructive force known to man. Almost every seemingly magical thing which had been traditionally ascribed to God’s ineffable nature was understood in one stroke by the construction of a theory which fundamentally did little else than to look straight into the blind spot: change and evolution. Darwin’s theory of evolution was the fourth thing which brought the importance of Change to my attention.
Finally, my study of physics has led me to believe that natural selection might be far more general a concept than commonly thought. Its relevance is usually thought to be confined to the life sciences, but there are physics concepts with a logical structure which strongly resembles that of natural selection: eigenmodes and Feynman’s path integral formulation to quantum electrodynamics. The constructive and destructive interference of waves leading to either eigenmodes or exponentially attenuated fields respectively and the constructive or destructive interference of neighboring paths in Feynman’s formulation leading to allowed or forbidden paths are situations which may be formulated in a natural selection jargon. The electron is more likely to impact the screen in this region than in the other region because if it had been in the other region it would have interfered destructively with other electrons and we would not have observed it.
The above statement has the same form as the Anthropic Principle and Natural Selection: the phenomenon has this property because if it had been otherwise it would not have been at all and we would not have observed it.
I explore further my conception of evolution in the sub-pages above and to the right.
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