[U.S.] Edwin Arthur Burtt: “The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science”

[U.S.] Edwin Arthur Burtt: The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science, translated by Xu Xiangdong, Peking University Press, January 2003

P16 p. 2 The central place of epistemology in modern philosophy is by no means accidental; it is the natural inference from something deeper and more meaningful, namely, the concept of man, especially the idea of man’s relation to the world around him.

P18 p. 3
For mainstream medieval thought, compared with the physical world, man occupied a more important and more definite position in the cosmos. But for mainstream modern thought, nature has a more independent, more definite, and more enduring status than man.

P24 p. 11
Just as medieval thinkers regarded it as perfectly natural that nature should submit to human knowledge, purposes, and destiny, so now people naturally regard nature as existing and operating in its own self-sufficient independence; and insofar as the basic relation between man and nature is entirely clear, they think that human knowledge and purpose are in some way produced by nature, and that man’s destiny depends wholly upon nature.

P30 p. 15
Science was natural philosophy, and the influential figures of that period were at once the greatest philosophers and the greatest scientists. But it was mainly because of Newton himself that a real distinction gradually emerged between the two: philosophy gradually came to take science for granted. Another way of stating our central thesis is this: are not the problems philosophers now set out to solve directly born of that uncritical acceptance? A brief summary of Newton’s work will show that this is very likely to be the case.

P36~38 pp. 22~24
First, historically, there was no known celestial phenomenon that was not explained by the Ptolemaic method. If one did not use more modern instruments, the Ptolemaic method could indeed achieve the kind of precision people expected. Predictions of astronomical events were made, and in terms of the actual occurrence of those events, those predictions were no more in error than those made by a Copernican. ………… The new astronomy clearly gained nothing in precision. According to Ptolemaic thought just as according to Copernican thought, one could correctly draw maps of the motions of the heavens.
Second, the evidence of the senses seemed perfectly clear in this matter. ………… The earth is a solid, immovable body, and on the not-too-distant limits of its sphere, the light ether and the tiny starlight drift around it day after day; to our senses, this must be beyond dispute.
Third, on the basis of this supposedly unshakable evidence of the senses, a natural philosophy of the universe was erected, and this natural philosophy offered human thought a rather complete and satisfying Beijing. Earth, water, air, and fire—the four elements—were the categories by which people were accustomed to think about the inorganic realm. Their ascending hierarchy involved not only actual spatial relations, but also dignity and value. …………
Finally, there were certain special objections to the new theory, objections that, given the state of astronomical observation and mechanical science then attained, could not be satisfactorily answered. If the Copernican doctrine were correct, then some of those objections—for example, the assertion that a body falling vertically in air must land west of its point of departure—could not be refuted until Galileo laid the foundations of modern dynamics. Other objections, such as this one: in the Copernican view, the stars ought to exhibit annual parallax, because every six months they deviate from the earth by as much as 186,000,000 miles, could only be answered after Bessel discovered such parallax in 1838. …
On these considerations, we can safely say that even without the religious scruples opposed to Copernican astronomy, it was still rash for wise people throughout Europe, especially those with an empiricist cast of mind, to accept an immature result produced by unbridled imagination before there had been a reliable induction from people’s confirmed sense experience. For induction, after all, takes years and years to build up gradually. The essential trait of contemporary philosophy is empiricism, and in emphasizing empiricism we would do well to remind ourselves of this fact. If contemporary empiricists had lived in the sixteenth century, they would first have mocked this new cosmology outside the courtroom.
Yet why, in the face of such
weighty facts, would Copernicus still suggest that this new theory gave the true account of the relation between the earth and the heavens? He must surely have been moved by powerful reasons, and if we can precisely determine the source of those reasons, we will discover the cornerstone and foundational structure of the philosophy of modern physical science. For in answering these serious objections, he could only affirm that his idea reduced the astronomical facts to a simpler and more harmonious mathematical order. Replacing the eighty epicycles of the Ptolemaic system, the Copernican system was simpler: it needed only thirty-four epicycles to “save the phenomena,” and all those epicycles required by the assumption of a stationary earth were now eliminated. Since the main planetary phenomena, except for the moon, could now be well expressed by a series of concentric circles centered on the sun, the Copernican system was therefore more harmonious. But from the solid philosophical objections just raised, what is this high degree of simplicity and harmony? ////—In my recent article, I also mentioned that we now think the Copernican system closer to “truth” than the Ptolemaic system simply because it is “simpler,” and on this point the author seems to have something of the same meaning. Of course, the author is not talking casually like I am; he offers not only detailed analysis and examples, but also, after “simple harmony,” goes on to ask where this metaphysical preference for simplicity comes from.

P52 pp. 34~35
Yet the question Copernicus answered so effortlessly now contains a startling metaphysical assumption. ………… In astronomy, is it legitimate to take as reference point anything other than the earth? ………… Is the universe, as a whole including the earth, fundamentally mathematical in structure?

P56 p. 38
For Copernicus, the transition to the new world view was nothing more than the result, inspired by the revived Platonism of the time, of mathematically simplifying a complex geometric labyrinth into a beautiful, simple, and harmonious system.

P71 p. 50 As a philosopher of science, Kepler’s substantial and progressive achievement was embodied in this emphasis of his: that a valid mathematical statement must be a hypothesis that can be strictly verified in the observed world.

P80 p. 67 Up to the time of Galileo, people still took it for granted that man and nature were inseparable parts of a larger whole, within which man’s position was more fundamental.

P93 p. 71
For Aristotle, insofar as an object is extended, space is not something that supports all objects, nor is it something occupied by them; rather, space is the boundary between any object and the objects surrounding it. The object itself is a substantial thing with qualities, not a geometrical body. ……… Yet the revival of Neoplatonism, together with the mathematical advances of the age, which reached their climax in Copernican astronomy, had already promoted the development of this idea: physical space was assumed to be identical with the geometric realm, and physical motion was beginning to acquire the character of a purely mathematical concept. Thus in Galileo’s metaphysics, space (or distance) and time became fundamental categories. The true world is a world of objects whose motion can be mathematically reduced, which means that the true world is a world of objects moving in space and time.

P103 p. 80
He (Galileo) abandoned teleology as a basic explanatory principle, depriving of their foundation those beliefs concerning the decisive relation between man and nature, according to which nature is dependent on man. He portrayed the natural world as a vast, self-sufficient mathematical machine composed of material motions occurring in time and space, while man, endowed with purpose, feeling, and secondary qualities, was pushed aside as an insignificant spectator, as a half-real effect outside this great mathematical drama. From these extreme and diverse achievements, Galileo must be regarded as a giant in the history of thought. In every respect, he paved the way for the two thinkers—the only ones who could rival him in this continually developing current of thought—Descartes and Isaac Newton.

P186~187 p. 153
All this taught Boyle never to reject things simply because they surpassed our intellect; rather, we should turn around and ask whether this is because our capacity is too limited to grasp them. This applies equally to science and religion, but especially to the latter.
It was largely because of this temperament that, in his thinking, Boyle favored the scientific concept we have already noted in Galileo, the concept that later came to be called positivism.

P208 p. 177 Newton was a remarkable genius in scientific discovery and design; but as a philosopher he lacked critical power, was crude, inconsistent, and could even be said to be a second-rate philosopher.

P208 p. 177
In the Preface to the Principia, Newton noted that “all philosophy seems to be founded on this: from the phenomena of motions to analyze the forces of nature, and then from those forces to demonstrate other phenomena.”

P212 p. 180
Even the most superficial student of Newton will clearly see that Newton was a thoroughgoing empiricist, just as he was a consummate mathematician. Like Kepler, Galileo, and Hobbes, he believed that “we work on the causes of sensible effects”; and in every statement of his method, he emphasized that what we strive to demonstrate is precisely the observed phenomena of nature. Not only that, he also held that experimental guidance and confirmation must accompany every step of this explanatory process.

P218 p. 184
The classic declaration rejecting hypotheses appears at the end of the Principia. “Whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called a hypothesis; hypotheses have no place in experimental philosophy, whether they are metaphysical or physical, whether they concern occult qualities or mechanical qualities. In experimental philosophy, particular propositions are deduced from phenomena and then, by induction, are made general. What is thus discovered are the impenetrability, mobility, and impulsive force of bodies, as well as the laws of motion and the law of universal gravitation.”

P226 p. 191
Thus, for Newton, science consists of laws that merely state the mathematical behavior of nature, laws that can be clearly deduced from the phenomena and strictly verified in the phenomena; and we must sweep away anything further from science, so that science becomes an absolutely certain system of truths about the behavior of the physical world.

P238 p. 201
The authority of the great Newton became, without a trace of exaggeration, the support of that worldview which was to have the greatest consequences for later thought. According to that worldview, man is an insignificant little spectator, irrelevant to a vast mathematical system, and the regular motions of that system, in accordance with mechanical principles, constitute nature.

P239 pp. 201~202
What people once believed to be their world—brilliant, full of birdsong and blossoms, filled with joy, love, and beauty, everywhere displaying purposeful harmony and creatively ideal qualities—has now been pushed into a tiny corner of the messy brain of living beings. The truly important external world is a hard, indifferent, colorless, soundless, dead world; it is a world of quantity, a world of motion that can be calculated mathematically according to mechanical laws. The world with the various qualities directly perceived by human beings has, quite ironically, become the strange, tiny result of the vast machine out there. In Newton, Descartes’s metaphysics, obscurely explained and stripped of the demand for serious philosophical consideration, finally overthrew Aristotelianism and became the dominant worldview of modernity.

P283~284 pp. 237~238
God is not separated from the world that science seeks to understand; in fact, every real advance in natural philosophy brings us closer to knowledge of the first cause (“Optics,” p. 345). For this reason, such progress deserves the highest regard, and it will also expand the boundaries of moral philosophy, because “through natural philosophy we can know what the first cause is, what power he has over us, and what benefits we derive from him. From this, our duties toward him and the duties among human beings are revealed to us by this light of nature” (“Optics,” p. 381). So although religion and science are two fundamentally different interpretations of the universe, each works in its own way; yet for Newton, in the final analysis, the domain of science depends on the God of religion, which leads this devout mind to be more fully convinced of God’s reality and more willing to obey his commands. Thus, although the two are in essence incommensurable, and although he successfully excluded religious prejudice from the theorems of positive science, this thinker, who wrote theological essays almost as much as classic scientific works, never doubted the existence of God and His dominion. On the standpoint that may be called pure science, this fact has a strong and weighty influence.

P322~323 pp. 227~228
In order to predict and control the mind precisely in the way other sciences predict and control their objects, people wanted to materialize the mind. Even if we grant the legitimacy of this motive, did the ancients and medievals, in holding that the mind was in some sense a privileged, superior entity as opposed to the vast physical nature, completely go astray in this doctrine? …………

P324 pp. 278~279
If only the order of nature were always so profound and so fascinating, then it would still be an object for a mind that imagines rationally. As for purpose, have we not empirically noted that every object of mind is likewise a means to the realization of further purposes? In an irreducible relation to something unknown, is it not related to a more valuable end that it serves? If that is the case, then purpose is a function even more basic than knowledge and sensation. As for mind, the term itself includes cognitive, appreciative, and purposive activity; therefore a complete account of it must be sought outside the material world. Mind seems to be something irreducible: it can know the material world extended in space, passionately love the order and beauty of that world, and continuously transform that world in accordance with a good that is more attractive and more commanding. Mind has such a capacity: it can sense, know, and idealize this world, and remake it into something better.

P324 p. 279
Perhaps only after theological superstition has been completely extinguished can we speak of these things without misunderstanding. Compared with ancient Greek thought, this is the misfortune of modern thought. But in these two-sided considerations, the great difficulties of modern metaphysics are exposed. Only when a proper philosophy of mind has appeared can a proper cosmology begin to be composed; and such a philosophy of mind must fully satisfy the motives of both the behaviorist and the idealist, the former wanting to treat mental substance experimentally and measure it precisely, the latter wanting to see a striking difference between the two universes—one a universe without mind, the other a universe organized through a mind adequately explained into a vibrant, sentient unity. I hope some readers will be able to see how this seemingly impossible reconciliation could arise. As for myself, I must admit that it is beyond my ability. I only wish to emphasize that, whatever the final solution may be, one indispensable part of its foundation is to provide a clear historical insight into the premises of our present world of thought. ////—This hope of the author has already been put into practice by, for example, postmodernists; of course, reflection on, or even refutation of, the “metaphysical foundations” of modern science must be undertaken with extreme caution, lest one overcorrect and fall into error. Moreover, the “metaphysical foundations” of modern science may not, as the author says, have been simply accepted “without criticism” by modern scientists and philosophers. And then there is the question: did modern science develop only after these metaphysical presuppositions had first been established as its intellectual foundation, or did these metaphysical presuppositions gradually take shape along with the development of modern science? Or, to take the more recent theory of relativity and quantum mechanics: they too changed many inherited metaphysical presuppositions. It seems impossible to say that a change in metaphysical foundations made the new physics possible; it seems more as though the development of metaphysical ideas and the theories and conclusions of the new physics were parallel and simultaneous, and often it was precisely the development of science that prompted scientists to change their metaphysical thinking. In short, the development of science seems to be an irreversible historical process; the new metaphysical ideas formed alongside that development cannot be refuted just by talking back in the absence of scientific support. More importantly, how can we, against the background of this age, break the superstition of science in a way that still trusts science, and, additionally, establish human dignity in a new way?

February 14, 2006

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Starry Sky
2008-11-18 22:35:36 Anonymous 124.205.78.86 
I read it two years ago, it’s so fierce… Respect!

Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.