James Le Fanu: Why Us? (The limitations of science)

by John Clinch , Friday, June 19, 2009, 18:27 (5634 days ago) @ John Clinch

Part 2 - Only a few weeks ago, we read of a new theory hypothesising about what had hitherto been a mystery: why there is just enough oxygen on this planet to support multi-cellular life ... the "great oxygenation event" that made it all possible. If LeFanu had addressed his mind to this problem, doubtless he would have said something like "we haven't the slightest idea" why the atmosphere all creatures breathe is composed of 21% of this highly unstable and reactive gas and then gone on to draw the same mysterian conclusion. And we find that there has been another recent discovery at Harvard of how protein molecules may have combined as a precursor to RNA, resolving yet another gap in our evolutionary knowledge. (Still so confident, Le Fanu and dhw, that the origin of life will remain forever beyond our grasp?). - Because his is a book about metaphysics pretending to be a book about science. If it was a bit more honest about its intent, it would at least come clean about this. But there's not a single reference to the wider philosophical framework, and none to epistemology or metaphysics. Remarkably, despite the fact that he discusses the hard problem of consciousness, he doesn't even reference the rich body of literature associated with philosophy of mind. - Of course, the man has a point of sorts, but he expresses it in such an odd way. As you are doubtless aware, Kant advocated a distinction between things as they appear to us and things as they are in themselves. I will take gravity, for instance, since LeFanu refers to it. Gravity is, on the Newtonian model, the attraction of one massive body to another and, on the Einsteinian model, better to be understood as a curvature of space-time. It is measurable and real and it is an obvious phenomenon of nature. Now, in an important sense we can't ever know what gravity is in itself but we sure as hell understand its phenomena in different (if imperfect) ways, even if we have yet to connect it with the most successful theory of all time ... that of quantum mechanics. LeFanu might as well have argued (it's unclear why he singled out gravity for special mention) that "we haven't the slightest idea" about the three other forces of nature ... the strong and weak nuclear forces and electromagnetism ... and called them "non-material" too. What can he mean? Surely he cannot mean that gravity is a spiritual force? He just makes his preposterous claim and leaves it hanging there, content to plant a seed of doubt with the unsuspecting reader. - The fundamental logical fallacy he commits throughout is that his argument, such that it is, is basically the argument from personal incredulity. How can this limited genome encode for human intelligence? How could evolution have produced such fecundity? How does this three pounds of jelly perform the natural miracle of consciousness? And yet, Mr LeFanu, we are here as a result of all of these processes. And we are finding out how al the time. - Actually, if he was more intellectually honest, he would address what is really going on in science. On the human genome project, yes, it was certainly a huge surprise to find that there was not a different order of magnitude more genes for humans as for fruit flies, and that much DNA appears to be "junk." But we've only just found this out. The current task is to establish exactly how this relatively limited recipe cooks up to such a richly diverse set of phenotypes. As it happens, I personally know someone (there are obviously many others) actually carrying out research into this field - about the process of morphology and epigenetics ... at the Wellcome Foundation. It's happening right now and we can be reasonably confident that we will have a very good idea some time later this century. - Cont'd