Albert Einstein on Bertrand Russell

 

Remarks on Bertrand Russell's Theory of Knowledge

By Albert Einstein

When the editor asked me to write something about Bertrand Russell, my admiration and respect for that author at once induced me to say yes. I owe innumerable happy hours to the reading of Russell's works, something which I cannot say of any other contemporary scientific writer, with the exception of Thorstein Veblen. Soon, however, I discovered that it is easier to give such a promise than to fulfill it. I had promised to say something about Russell as philosopher and epistemologist. After having in full confidence begun with it, I quickly recognized what a slippery field I had ventured upon, having, due to lack of experience, until now cautiously limited myself to the field of physics. The present difficulties of his science force the physicist to come to grips with philosophical problems to a greater degree than was the case with earlier generations. Although I shall not speak here of those difficulties, it was my concern with them, more than anything else, which led me to the position outlined in this essay. 

In the evolution of philosophic thought through the centuries the following question has played a major role: What knowledge is pure thought able to supply independently of sense perception? Is there any such knowledge? If not, what precisely is the relation between our knowledge and the raw material furnished by sense-impressions? An almost boundless chaos of philosophical opinions corresponds to these questions and to a few others intimately connected with them. Nevertheless there is visible in this process of relatively fruitless but heroic endeavours a systematic trend of development, namely an increasing scepticism concerning every attempt by means of pure thought to learn something about the "objective world,"· about the world of "things" in contrast to the world of mere "concepts and ideas." Be it said parenthetically that, just as on the part of a real philosopher, quotation-marks are used here to introduce an illegitimate concept, which the reader is asked to permit for the moment, although the concept is suspect in the eyes of the philosophical police. 

During philosophy's childhood it was rather generally believed that it is possible to find everything which can be known by means of mere reflection. It was an illusion which any one can easily understand if, for a moment, he dismisses what he has learned from later philosophy and from natural science; he will not be surprised to find that Plato ascribed a higher reality to "Ideas" than to empirically experienceable things. Even in Spinoza and as late as in Hegel this prejudice was the vitalizing force which seems still to have played the major role. Someone, indeed, might even raise the question whether, without something of this illusion, anything really great can be achieved in the realm of philosophic thought-but we do not wish to ask this question. 

This more aristocratic illusion concerning the unlimited penetrative power of thought has as its counterpart the more plebeian illusion of na1ve realism, according to which things "are" as they are perceived by us through our senses. This illusion dominates the daily life of men and of animals; it is also the point of departure in all of the sciences, especially of the natural sciences. The effort to overcome these two illusions is not independent the one of the other. The overcoming of na1ve realism has been relatively simple. In his introduction to his volume, An Inquiry Into Meaning and Truth, Russell has characterized this process in a marvellously pregnant fashion:

We all start from "naive realism," i.e., the doctrine that things are what they seem. We think that grass is green, that stones are hard, and that snow is cold. But physics assures us that the greenness of grass, the hardness of stones, and the coldness of snow, are not the greenness, hardness, and coldness that we know in our own experience, but something very different. The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself. Thus science seems to be at war with itself: when it most means to be objective, it finds itself plunged into subjectivity against its will. Naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows that naive realism is false. Therefore naive realism, if true, is false; therefore it is false. 

Apart from their masterful formulation these lines say something which had never previously occurred to me. For, superficially considered, the mode of thought in Berkeley and Hume seems to stand in contrast to the mode of thought in the natural sciences. However, Russell's just cited remark uncovers a connection: If Berkeley relies upon the fact that we do not directly grasp the "things" of the external world through our senses, but that only events causally connected with the presence of "things" reach our sense-organs, then this is a consideration which gets its persuasive character from our confidence in the physical mode of thought. For, if one doubts the physical mode of thought in even its most general features, there is no necessity to interpolate between the object and the act of vision anything which separates the object from the subject and makes the "existence of the object" problematical.

It was, however, the very same physical mode of thought and its practical successes which have shaken the confidence in the possibility of understanding things and their relations by means of purely speculative thought. Gradually the conviction gained recognition that all knowledge about things is exclusively a working-over of the raw-material furnished by the senses. In this general (and intentionally somewhat vaguely stated) form this sentence is probably today commonly accepted. But this conviction does not rest on the supposition that anyone haactually proved the impossibility of gaining knowledge of reality by means of pure speculation, but rather upon the fact that the empirical (in the above mentioned sense) procedure alone has shown its capacity to be the source of knowledge. Galileo and Hume first upheld this principle with full clarity and decisiveness. 

Hume saw that concepts which we must regard as essential, such as, for example, causal connection, cannot be gained from material given to us by the senses. This insight led him to a sceptical attitude as concerns knowledge of any kind. If one reads Hume's books, one is amazed that many and sometimes even highly esteemed philosophers after him have been able to write so much obscure stuff and even find grateful readers for it. Hume has permanently influenced the development of the best of philosophers who came after him. One senses him in the reading of Russell's philosophical analyses, whose acumen and simplicity of expression have often reminded me of Hume.

Man has an intense desire for assured knowledge. That is why Hume's clear message seemed crushing: The sensory raw material, the only source of our knowledge, through habit may lead us to belief and expectation but not to the knowledge and still less to the understanding of law-abiding relations. Then Kant took the stage with an idea which, though certainly untenable in the form in which he put it, signified a step towards the solution of Hume's dilemma: Whatever in knowledge is of empirical origin is never certain (Hume). If, therefore, we have definitely assured knowledge, it must be grounded in reason itself. This is held to be the case, for example, in the propositions of geometry and in the principle of causality. These and certain other types of knowledge are, so to speak, a part of the. instrumentality of thinking and therefore do not previously have to be gained from sense data (i.e., they are a priori knowledge). Today everyone knows of course that the mentioned concepts contain nothing of the certainty, of the inherent necessity, which Kant had attributed to them. The following, however, appears to me to be correct in Kant's statement of the problem: in thinking we use, with a certain "right," concepts to which there is no access from the materials of sensory experience, if the situation is viewed from the logical point of view.

As a matter of fact, I am convinced that even much more is to be asserted: the concepts which arise in our thought and in our linguistic expressions are all-when viewed logically-the free creations of thought which cannot inductively be gained from sense-experiences. This is not so easily noticed only because we have the habit of combining certain concepts and conceptual relations (propositions) so definitely with certain sense-experiences that we do not become conscious of the gulf-logically unbridgeable--which separates the world of sensory experiences from the world of concepts and propositions.

Thus, for example, the series of integers is obviously an invention of the human mind, a self-created tool which simplifies the ordering of certain sensory experiences. But there is no way in which this concept could be made to grow, as it were, directly out of sense experiences. It is deliberately that I choose here the concept of number, because it belongs to pre-scientific thinking and because, in spite of that fact, its constructive character is still easily recognizable. The more, however, we turn to the most primitive concepts of everyday life, the more difficult it becomes amidst the mass of inveterate habits to recognize the concept as an independent creation of thinking. It was thus that the fateful conception-fateful, that is to say, for an. understanding of the here existing conditions-could arise, according to which the concepts originate from experience by way of "abstraction," i.e., through omission of a part of its content. I want to indicate now why this conception appears to me to be so fateful. As soon as one is at home in Hume's critique one is easily led to believe that all those concepts and propositions which cannot be deduced from the sensory raw-material are, on account of their "metaphysical" character, to be removed from thinking. For all thought acquires material content only through its relationship with that sensory material. This latter proposition I take to be entirely true; but I hold the prescription for thinking which is grounded on this proposition to be false. For this claim-if only carried through consistently absolutely excludes thinking of any kind as "metaphysical."

In order that thinking might not degenerate into "metaphysics,'' or into empty talk, it is only necessary that enough propositions of the conceptual system be firmly enough connected. with sensory experiences and that the conceptual system, in view of its task of ordering and surveying sense-experience, should show as much unity and parsimony as possible. Beyond that, however, the "system" is (as regards logic) a free play with symbols according to (logical) arbitrarily given rules of the game. All this applies as much (and in the same manner) to the thinking in daily life as to the more consciously and systematically constructed thought in the sciences.

It will now be clear what is meant if I make the following statement: By his clear critique Hume did not only advance philosophy in a decisive way but also-though through no fault of his-created a danger for philosophy in that, following his critique, a fateful "fear of metaphysics" arose which has come to be a malady of contemporary empiricistic philosophizing; this malady is the counterpart to that earlier philosophizing in the clouds, which thought it could neglect and dispense with what was given by the senses.

No matter how much one may admire the acute analysis which Russell has given us in his latest book on Meaning and Truth, it still seems to me that even there the spectre of the metaphysical fear has caused some damage. For this fear seems to me, for example, to be the cause for conceiving of the "thing" as a "bundle of qualities," such that the "qualities" are to be taken from the sensory raw-material. Now the fact that two things are said to be one and the same thing, if they coincide in all qualities, forces one to consider the geometrical relations between things as belonging to their qualities. (Otherwise one is forced to look upon the Eiffel Tower in Paris and that in New York as "the same thing.") 1 Over against that I see no "metaphysical' danger in taking the thing (the object in the sense of physics) as an independent concept into the system together with the proper spatio-temporal structure.

In view of these endeavours I am particularly pleased to note that, in the last chapter of the book, it finally crops out that one can, after all, not get along without "metaphysics." The only thing to which I take exception there is the bad intellectual conscience which shines through between the lines.

ALBERT EINSTEIN 

SCHOOL OF MATHEMATICS 

THE INSTITUTE of ADVANCED STUDY

PRINCETON 

1 Compare Russell's An Inquiry Into Meaning and Truth, 119-12.01 chapter on "Proper Names."

From The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell, Vol. V of "The Library of Living Philosophers," edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp, 1944. Translated from the original German by Paul Arthur Schilpp. Tudor Publishers.

Related reading: What Albert Einstein Thought of Christianity; Einstein Was Right About Education

Geometry and Experience according to Albert Einstein

Math has its own indisputable logic. In this sense, it has greater certainty than most sciences.

This is the address given to the Prussian Academy of Sciences by Albert Einstein on January 21, 1921 in Berlin.

Related reading: John Lennox on Nonsense; Blaise Pascal; Using Arab Math to Uncover Authors of Torah

Einstein on the Value of Philosophy

Sinclair Lewis, Frank Kellogg, Albert Einstein, and Irving Langmuir at the Hotel Roosevelt in New York in 1933 gathered to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s birth.


"So many people today—and even professional scientists—seem to me like somebody who has seen thousands of trees but has never seen a forest. A knowledge of the historic and philosophical background gives that kind of independence from prejudices of his generation from which most scientists are suffering."

Albert Einstein, 1944

Einstein-Bohr Debate

Alice C. Linsley

It is said that in the field of Physics two great minds represented the age-old determinism- indeterminism tension or paradox. They are Albert Einstein and Neils Bohr.

Einstein preferred the determinism of classical physics over the quantum physics of Bohr and Heisenberg in which Complementarity and Uncertainty dictate that all properties and actions in the physical world are to some degree non-deterministic. Einstein and Bohr had good-natured arguments over such issues throughout their lives.

Heisenberg and Bohr

Bohr was convinced that light behaved like both waves and particles, and in 1927, experiments confirmed the de Broglie hypothesis that matter like electrons also behaved like waves. Bohr conceived the principle of complementarity: that items could be separately analysed as having several contradictory properties, such as a wave or a stream of particles depending on the experimental framework – two apparently mutually exclusive properties – on the basis of this principle. Bohr summarized the principle as follows:

[H]owever far the [quantum physical] phenomena transcend the scope of classical physical explanation, the account of all evidence must be expressed in classical terms. The argument is simply that by the word "experiment" we refer to a situation where we can tell others what we have done and what we have learned and that, therefore, the account of the experimental arrangements and of the results of the observations must be expressed in unambiguous language with suitable application of the terminology of classical physics.

This crucial point...implies the impossibility of any sharp separation between the behaviour of atomic objects and the interaction with the measuring instruments which serve to define the conditions under which the phenomena appear.... Consequently, evidence obtained under different experimental conditions cannot be comprehended within a single picture, but must be regarded as complementary in the sense that only the totality of the phenomenena exhausts the possible information about the objects.[1]

For example, the particle and wave aspects of physical objects are such complementary phenomena. Both concepts are borrowed from classical mechanics, and measurements (e.g., the double-slit experiment) can demonstrate one or the other, but not both, phenomena at a particular moment. The principle of complementarity explains this as being due to the very nature of the measuring devices used. A measuring device may be designed to demonstrate either the particle or wave aspects, but the demonstration of one necessarily precludes the possibility of simultaneously demonstrating the other, because the object being measured is unavoidably affected by the measurement. It is impossible to design a measuring device that demonstrates both phenomena simultaneously not because of lack of creativity on the part of the experimenter, but simply because such a device is literally inconceivable. Moreover, Bohr implies that it is not possible to regard objects governed by quantum mechanics as having intrinsic properties independent of determination with a measuring device.

In Copenhagen in 1927 Heisenberg developed his uncertainty principle. The ultimate limitations in precision of property manifestations are quantified by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and Planck units. Complementarity and Uncertainty dictate that all properties and actions in the physical world are therefore non-deterministic to some degree.

At a conference Como in September 1927 Bohr gave a presentation in which he demonstrated that the uncertainty principle could be derived from classical arguments, and without quantum terminology or matrices. Shortly before his death Bohr complained that no professional philosopher had grasped his understanding of complementarity.


Related reading:  Chance, Fortune, Determinism and Indeterminism

Chance, Fortune, Determinism and Indeterminism

Alice C. Linsley

My students have many questions about divine intervention, luck, randomness, etc. Luck is random. There is no pattern with luck. Divine intervention is detected by observing patterns in nature and in human experience over long periods of time (collective memory). Faith is built by those who observe and reflect on what they observe. This is true for religious people and for non-religious people.

Today, as in the ancient world, one hears conversations about individual choice, determinism, randomness, free will, predestination, destiny, fortune, and chance. We have had such discussions in class. To gain some definition, let us consider the meanings of the words chance, fortune, determinism and indeterminism. This will be helpful preparation for the lesson in which we explore the different worldviews of the physicists Albert Einstein and Neils Bohr.

Chance
The word chance expresses the idea of swerving, bending or falling away from a determined path. The swerve does not mean that the path will never be regained in the individual's life.

The concept of chance is related to the word “declension” from the Latin verb declino, declinare, declinavi, declinatum, meaning “to turn aside”, in the sense of varying the form of a noun, pronoun or adjective according to its grammatical function. This usage is much like that of inflectere “to bend” which refers to morphological changes. The word inflection, or casus, indicates a “falling” from the basic nominative case.

Chance implies a pattern of decline or inflection or an action that appears to spin off a projected path. Chance permits the possibility of a singularity or a rare anomaly. Soren Kierkegaard believed in chance in as much as he believed that the operation of the supernatural in the natural world may lead to side paths in the individual's life. This is how he understood Abraham's offering of Isaac. Such radical action is sometimes necessary to reach one's existential destiny, but does not represent a total departure from the original path of one's life.


Fortune
The word fortune expresses the idea of making strong or fortifying. One's fortune is not left to chance, but forged by character and effort. When someone says, "May you have good fortune," they wish for you positive returns for your hard work.

Machiavelli did not believe in chance. He believed in fortune. He wrote in chapter 1 of The Prince that new principalities are won by "the arms of others or with his own, either by fortune or prowess." In other words a person can come into power by fortune or by his own strengthening of his position.


Determinism
In determinism all events, including human action, are ultimately determined by causes external to the will. Some philosophers take determinism to imply that individual humans have no free will and therefore cannot be held morally responsible for their actions.

For some, determinism is the mechanistic and impersonal rule of causation from antecedents. This view is typically held by atheists and radical materialists.

Others may see God or some metaphysical explanation for Cause. An extreme view is found in a non-biblical teaching that God has predestined all humans to either heaven or hell.

Albert Einstein held a view that physics is fundamentally determined by laws that can be discovered and explained mathematically. Einstein preferred the determinism of classical physics over the quantum physics of Bohr and Heisenberg in which Complementarity and Uncertainty dictate that all properties and actions in the physical world are to some degree non-deterministic. Einstein and Bohr had good-natured arguments over such issues throughout their lives.

Bohr and Einstein at Paul Ehrenfest's home in Leiden 

(December 1925)

Indeterminism
Indeterminism holds that not all events are wholly determined by antecedent causes.  When it comes to human actions, the will is free to make deliberate choices not determined by or predictable from antecedent causes.

Numerous physicists have asserted that a strict determinist view cannot do justice to nature. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and Planck units suggest ultimate uncertainty. Complementarity and uncertainty dictate that all properties and actions in the physical world are therefore non-deterministic to some degree.

Now we must consider the principle that observes that randomness resolves itself in patterns. This can be observed in physics experiments and in studies of human thought that show that the human brain will construct meaning where something appears to be meaningless. This is why statistical randomness does not prove the actual existence of true randomness.

Related reading:  Machiavelli Believed in Fortune; Schrödinger's 1931 paper on Indeterminism in Physics, presented to the Congress of a Society for Philosophical Instruction; Time and Eternity

Time and Eternity

Alice C. Linsley

Joan Violet Robinson said, "Time is a device to prevent everything from happening at once." To this, someone has cleverly added, "Space is a device to prevent everything from happening in Cambridge."

The British historian Arnold J. Toynbee (1889 – 1975) said, “History is just one damn thing after another.” He wrote a 12 volume analysis of the rise and fall of civilizations.

Karl Marx (1818–1883)wrote, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle.” He also said, "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce."

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) wrote, "…the dialectical principle constitutes the life and soul of scientific progress.”

Herbert Spencer wrote, “…the genesis of the great man depends on the long series of complex influences which has produced the race in which he appears and the social state into which that race has slowly grown… Before he can remake his society, his society must make him.” He also said, "The wise man must remember that while he is a descendant of the past, he is a parent of the future." He coined the phrase "survival of the fittest."

We began our study of Metaphysics with the question of eternity. You were asked to explain the difference between eternity and time and recognized that the property of eternity is timelessness. Eternity pertains to that which is outside of time and space. It is not bounded, and as such has been considered an attribute of the Unmoved Mover, or the First Cause, or the Uncreated Creator.

Aristotle's Unmoved Mover is a primary cause of all the motion in the universe. The entity moves other things, but is not itself moved by any prior action. In Book 12 of his Metaphysics, Aristotle describes the Unmoved Mover as perfectly beautiful, indivisible, and contemplating only the perfect contemplation: itself contemplating. He equates this concept with the Active Intellect.

Many ancients believed that there was an original substance at the beginning of time. They recognized that time, space, matter and motion are interconnected. There were a range of views, sometimes conflicting, on the questions of elements and their interactions, primal substances from which life emerges, and causes. The ancient Afro-Asiatics regarded blood and water as the substance of life and these became importance symbols in their philosophical theology.

Afro-Asiatic metaphysics is reflected in the book of Genesis and throughout the whole Bible. In this view God created everything from nothing (creatio ex nihilo). At the beginning of time chaotic waters covered everything until God’s Word (logos in Greek) moved like a breath or spirit (ruach in Hebrew) over the vast deep and established a fundamental binary order in the world. There is no sense in the Biblical accounts of creation of this earth or cosmos being the product of a previous world that exploded. In other words, unlike the early Greek-speaking metaphysicists, the Afro-Asiatics do not appear to have regarded the creation of the world as the product of a cycle of events, but as the direct and special creation of God. This is not to say that they took a linear approach to time, as we shall see.

In his book The Myth of the Eternal Return, the Romanian anthropologist Mircea Eliade writes that the myth of cyclical time was “discernibly present in the earliest pre-Socratic speculations. Anaximander knows that all things are born and return to the apeiron. Empodocles conceives of the alternative supremacy of the two opposing principles philia [love] and neikos [strife] as explaining the eternal creations and destructions of the cosmos…The eternal conflagration is, as we have seen, also accepted by Heraclitus. As to the eternal return – the periodic resumption, by all beings, of their former lives – this is one of the few dogmas of which we know with some certainty that they formed a part of the primitive Pythagoreanism.”

In the mid-20th century the question of infinity was taken up but pioneers in the Logic. Most who contributed to this conversation were mathematicians. The English mathematician, John Wallis, was the first to use the notation for such a number. The German Georg Cantor formalized ideas related to infinity and infinite sets. In his theory, there are infinite sets of different sizes called cardinalities. For example, the set of integers is countably infinite, while the infinite set of real numbers is uncountable. Students often equate eternity and infinity, but these are different concepts. They have in common the idea of extension, with infinity referring to space and numbers, while eternity is unbounded and timeless.

In this second part of our study of Metaphysics we take up the subject of time and consider various theories of history. Philosophy concerns itself with the nature of time and history. It asks these questions:

• Where should philosophers look to understand the nature of time? What is history? Is a linear account of events the only way to speak of events in time?

• In thinking about time and history should we look at the lives of individuals or the whole human species? Should we consider nations or ethnicities?

• Can we discern patterns or cycles of progress and decline, or is there no overall change in the condition and circumstances of humanity?

• If history is progressing toward some end, what is the driving force or the material engine moving the progress?

Most views of history fall into the following categories: Cyclical, Static, Linear Progress, or Linear Decline.

Cyclical

There are different cyclical theories of history. The atomistic view holds that this world came into existence through the destruction or explosion of a previously existent world and that all matter is of one substance and was at one time condensed. In this view there is an eternal cycle of worlds giving birth to new worlds. This view is represented in the classical Greek philosopher, Democritus. In this view there are a limited number of souls and these souls are recycled (metempsychosis).

Spiral symbol cyclical time found on Proto-Saharan rock carvings



The mythical-religious view is concerned with ceremonial enactments that place the priest or shaman and his community in the eternal present (anamnesis). This often meant marking out sacred space within a circle or at the top of a mountain. It might also involve sacred time which was usually high noon, a time when there were no shadows. Among the ancient Habiru (Hebrew), the sacred center of space and time was the mountain top at high noon. Mircea Eliade explored the mythical-religious aspects of ancient peoples and their religious practices. He showed that archaic religious ceremonies were performed as reenactments of divine action (energeia), cosmological archetypes, or celestial patterns. In this view, human actions and rituals mirror what the universe tells us about God’s actions.

The political view holds that kingdoms and nations rise and fall depending on economic fortune and geographic location. The nations who have wealth must work to preserve it, but not at the expense of the average worker. Revolutions occur when wealth is not well distributed among the social classes, or when only a few control the means of production. Marx's dialectical materialism is cyclical, which is why he said, "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce."

The religious view, especially evident in Hinduism and Buddhism holds that time and matter cannot be escaped except by the most virtuous souls. All are caught in the cycle of reincarnation. Plato believed that there are a finite number of souls and at birth the human receives one of these eternal souls (metempsychosis), rather the way vital organs are harvested and transplanted from the dead.

Criticism of cyclical view: There is no way to prove the existence of previous worlds. More research is needed to establish the degree to which human history is determined or influenced by conscious or unconscious archetypes. A study of ancient civilizations suggests that kingdoms that achieve prominence and then decline are changed, so that we cannot speak of recovering former prominence or even of being the same society.

Static

A static view of history maintains that nothing really changes as time moves because human nature is unchanging or immutable. A static view of history is represented by the statement, “There is nothing new under the sun.” Plato viewed all things as reflections of Forms (Ideas). Nothing changes since the Forms are changeless. What we perceive as “change” is the Form in flux; so rain changing to snow or hail is not change, but flux, since both are reflections of the Form water, the essence of which is H2O and unchanging.

Criticism of static view: Human ingenuity has led to the invention of new things, things unimagined by archaic peoples. There is hope that human nature can be changed through religious conversion and transformation, or through education and social conditioning, or through biotechnology. Plato’s view speaks more about the function of Mind than Matter.

Linear Progress

Things improve with the passing of time. Modern technology is proof of human progress. Given more time, humans will evolve into a higher species and will invent even greater things. A variation on this idea is liberal ideology that through co-operation the nations of the world can achieve unity. The hope for human progress led to the establishment of the National Council of Churches and the United Nations.

Many Americans in the 1940s were hopeful that humans were becoming more humane and societies more just. World War I was supposed to be the war to end all wars, but instead it was the prelude to World War II. The atrocities committed by Hitler and Stalin, and the bombing of Pearl Harbor were sobering reminders that evil is not easily dismissed, that sin is not obsolete.

The 1950s was a time of optimisim in American. The economy was booming and new devices such as dishwashers, televisions and modern homes suggested that the future would be more comfortable, but with prosperity came other problems.

Criticism of linear view: Modern technology has led to more powerful weapons and more effective propaganda. These have been used to exterminate millions of people in ethnic and religious wars in spite of international co-operation.

Linear Decline

Things are gradually getting worse. Life used to be better or humans were once more noble. Rousseau held a romantic notion that in the state of nature humans are good but we have become corrupted by the influences of civilization.

Dispensational writers such as Hal Linsay and Tim LaHaye (Left Behind) believe that great tribulation is coming and great wickedness, but God will intervene when things get bad enough. Dispensationalists have even constructed a schedule of final world events using selected passages from the Bible. In this view, Noah’s flood was worldwide and represents one of many of God’s course corrections to human history.

Criticism of Linear Decline: While there is no doubt that civilizations decline, there is no evidence that humans are more evil today than they were in ancient times. The idea that history is spiraling toward a final universal destruction fits into this category, but when we add the element of a glorious new kingdom rising from the ashes, this theory can be moved to the cyclical category.

Hegel’s Dialectic

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 – 1831) argued that history is a constant process of dialectic clashes (between “thesis” and “antithesis”) that result in a conjunction of the two (“synthesis”) to form something new. Hegel believed that this dialectic process was directed by God, though his idea of God was not that of Christians or Jews. The end of this process was to bring humanity to a civilized state.

Hegel built on the pre-Scocratic idea of conflict between opposites. (Remember the conflict between Love and Strife?) His dialectic has as its cause the energy of negativity. He believed that the natural impulse of people and civilizations is to develop by "successive gradations" toward freedom and toward higher logic. Thus understood," Hegel writes, "the dialectical principle constitutes the life and soul of scientific progress."

Hegel with his students in Berlin
Sketch by Franz Kugler

Hegel wrote, "Absolute knowledge... must not remain in its immediacy as an inner feeling or as a vague faith in an indefinite abstract being-in general, but must proceed to comprehend the Absolute in the mythical term 'God.' To know God is not above comprehension, but is above reason which is the knowledge of things finite and relative."

Hegel believed that the dialectical character of reality speaks of reaching beyond doubt to a vision of reconciliation of oppositions. He felt that his approach to understanding history makes for a more positive vision of the future.

Criticism of Hegel’s dialectic: The clashes of history are often multifaceted, involving factors that Hegel’s theory does not take into consideration. This view reflects 19th century optimism about human progress, an optimism that was greatly diminished by the events of WWI and WWII.

Marx’s Class Struggle

Karl Marx (1818 – 1883) adapted Hegel’s dialectic to his political class struggle. For Marx, the continual struggle was between those who controlled the means of production and wealth and those who struggled daily to earn a living. Only as the workers of the world rose up and overthrew the oppressive capitalists could there be a new order: Communism. Marx believed that this dialectic process is a material mechanism that moves events in history.

Marx's view of progress, called "dialectical materialism" proposes that every economic order grows to a state of maximum efficiency, and at the same time develops internal contradictions and weaknesses that contribute to its decay. Through conscious acts those oppressed by the system can make history by rising up and establishing a new economic order.

Marx’s view of the world is materialistic. is He is not concerned about life after death, the soul, or questions concerning time,eternity and infinity. He sought a reform of western society through revolution, or the uprising of the working class. In his view, the welfare of the working class depends upon the perpetual overthrow of social, religious, political and economic structures that make protect the rich and oppress the poor. The Communist state is responsible for collection of wealth and resources and their distribution.

Criticism of Marx’s Dialectic: The experiment of Communism failed and the countries that comprised the former Soviet Union are rebuilding along capitalistic lines. Capitalism remains the best means of accumulating wealth and achieving a higher standard of living. Capitalism as an economic system is morally neutral. However, because humans are prone to greed, capitalism works best when restrained by just laws that prevent oppression of workers. Marx's view of human nature is to pessimistic. Adam Smith has a more realistic view in recognizing that humans want to amass wealth but also can feel sympathy for those who are without basic needs and often share from their abundance. 

Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Thomas Samuel Kuhn (1922 – June 17, 1996) wrote a book titled The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (University of Chicago Press, 1962) that introduced an influential theory about how science progresses. Kuhn presented the idea that science does not progress gradually, but instead makes huge sudden leaps through periodic revolutions which he called “paradigm shifts.” According to Kuhn, science maintains stable growth until an individual who stands outside the discipline introduces a revolutionary new vision or solution. John Newton and Albert Einstein are examples of how discoveries and revolutions come about as a consequence of anomalies.

According to Kuhn, scientific revolutions result from epistemological shifts as scientists encounter anomalies that cannot be explained by the universally accepted paradigm within the scientific community.

Criticism of Kuhn: Stephen Toulmin (1970) argued against Kuhn’s theory, pointing out that not all breakthroughs in science are sudden anomalous visions. Some breakthroughs are more common and less dramatic than Kuhn proposes. The discovery of the structure of DNA came through prolonged steady investigation and the double-helical structure was not unexpected, yet it provided a mechanism for the duplication of genetic information that has enormous consequences for medical and biological research. In other words, steady scientific research can lead to quiet scientific revolutions without there being a dramatic paradigm shift.


Philosophy through time

We began our study of Metaphysics with a discussion about the "philosophical project" and how it moves forward. We concluded that the philosophical projects advances because humans are innately curious and ask questions about the world in which we live. Curiosity and questions are the basis for the natural sciences, mathematics and exploration.

Curiosity and skepticism go hand-in-hand. The curious often learn not to rush in without careful consideration. The archaic family seeking shelter would have been glad to find a cave, but did not enter it without first exploring to determine whether it was safe. It is likely that the cave was already inhabited by a bear or a lion. The exercise of skepticism is necessary for human survival.

On the most fundamental level, it is human curiosity that moves the philosophical project forward. There is also an element of truth in the Hegel's view that "…the dialectical principle constitutes the life and soul of scientific progress.” The dialectic is an ideological tug-o-war which strengthens muscles until one side wins. Galileo's observations caused him to reject the earlier view that the earth was the center of the solar system. The Western Church was forced to struggle with the new understanding and eventually accepted Galileo's view, changing his status from heretic to in 2008.

Curiosity and skepticism, when cultivated by a logically reasoning mind, can produce innovative thinking and recasting of former ideas. Another factor that stimulates creativity in the philosophical project is the tension between seemingly opposite ideas. The tug-o-war between Plato and Aristotle on the chief Good, or between essentialism and evolution on the question of change, drives the project. When the tension is lost, the project begins to lack vitality and can reach a dead end. Jacques Derrida claimed that this happened in Western philosophy with the abandonment of Plato's focus on the larger metaphysical questions. The dominance of Aristotelian thought, as a vestige of medieval Scholasticism contributed to this, as did modern materialism. (See Magee, pages 29-30).

Kuhn's understanding of paradigm shifts also has bearing on the development of philosophy through time. The great philosophers represent epistemological breakthroughs. Such is the case with Ludwig Wittgenstein who argued that family resemblance is not based on essence, but on function. We recognize all varieties of chairs because they have a common function, not a common essence. Some have arms, others do not. Some have backs, others do not. Some have legs, others do not. All have a flat surface upon which we may sit. This is not their essence, but their function.

The Biblical View

In the Bible we read that there will be a new heaven and earth (a new cosmos) and that Christ will rule over His eternal kingdom. St. Paul writes that the whole of the creation eagerly awaits and groans in anticipation of this day of the revealing of the sons of God (Romans 8:19-22). This cosmos will give way to an eternal kingdom over which Christ will rule forever. This is suggestive of a cyclical view or recapitulation; what the Early Church Fathers understood as the restoration of Paradise (recapitulation).

There is also the view that things were once better (Paradise) and turned bad with sin and death. In this view, which is an incomplete story, we have linear decline. However, the resurrection and second coming of Jesus Christ, completes the story. From linear decline comes linear progress. Imagine a vertical line pointing down and then turning upward.


Did Abraham's ancestors hold a linear view of time?

It is often repeated that the Jews were the first introduce the idea of linear history, which may be true, but Abraham and his ancestors were not Jews. Abraham's ancestors were Nilo-Saharans who held a cyclical view. This is evident in the deep analysis of the story cycles and couplets of Genesis.

We tend to read Genesis as a linear sequence, but upon closer examination we find a very different structure. It is one that Abraham and his ancestors would have recognized and they were not Jews. They were Nilotic peoples who tended toward binary tensions expressed in parallel accounts. The parallel stories highlight similarities such as the moral lapses of Noah and Lot while drunk. Noah's misbehavior led him to blame ("curse") his grandson. Lot's drunk state led to incest with his daughters.

Sometimes the parallel stories contrast the character of two figures, as in the accounts of Abraham and Isaac attempting to pass off their wives as their sisters. Sarah was Abraham's half-sister whereas Rebecca was Isaac's patrilineal cousin. In other words, Abraham did not lie and Isaac did.

Other parallel accounts include the two creation stories. Genesis 1 and Genesis 2-3 are parallel accounts from different traditions. The second story about the garden, the serpent, and the tree of life is older than the first story about the six days of creation.

Likewise, there are two flood accounts. In one we read that Noah was to save one pair of animals, a male and female, and in the other we read that he was to save seven pairs of "clean" animals.

This parallelism is not limited to the book of Genesis. It is found in the Psalms and throughout the Old Testament. Adam and Enoch are paralleled in Hebrew in Psalm 8:4. The story of Korah opposing Moses' authority has a parallel in the story of Sheba who opposed David's authority. In the end, both Korah and Sheba lost their lives.

The blood on the door posts in Egypt has a parallel in the story of the passover of Rahab and her family by the scarlet cord hung from the window.

The birth of twin boys to Rebekah has a match in the story of Tamar's twin sons.

The story of Sarah's miraculous conception of Isaac is paralleled by Hannah's conception of Samuel. In the New Testament, we find a parallel between Elizabeth's miraculous conception of John the Baptist and Mary's conception of the Son of God, to whom John would bear witness.

There are also parallel stories about cousin wives. Nahor, Abraham's older brother, married his cousin wife Milcah before ascending to the throne of his father, Terah. This happened before Abraham made his journey to the land of Canaan. However we are not told about Nahor's wife and children until after Sarah's burial.

Likewise, Abraham married his cousin wife before Sarah died, but Keturah is not mentioned until after Sarah's burial. This has lead people to assume that Abraham married Keturah after Sarah died. Instead we have parallel cousin-wife stories.

Abraham and all the Horite rulers listed in the Genesis "begats" had two wives. This was their custom. The first wife was a half-sister, as was Sarah to Abraham. The second wife was a patrilineal cousin or niece, as was Keturah to Abraham. This pattern describes Moses' wives also. His first wife was his Kushite half-sister and his second wife was his Midianite patrilineal cousin, Zipporah.

History is not told in a linear way in the Bible. Some events described took place around the same time. Between other events there are great gaps of time. This is not to say that Abraham's ancestors lacked a device for narrating events in a linear fashion. This was done through recounting the lists of rulers found in the Genesis “begats.” These are authentic king lists that establish that Noah lived before Nimrod and Nimrod before Abraham, etc. We can imagine a Nilotic story teller elaborating on the character of various rulers as is evident in Genesis 4:23, where we are told that Lamech bragged to his two wives. Another elaboration is found in Genesis 10:8-12 concerning the Kushite kingdom-builder Nimrod who was said to be a “mighty hunter.”

This is not to say that Abraham's ancestors lacked a device for narrating events in a linear fashion. This was done through recounting the lists of rulers found in the Genesis "begats." These are authentic king lists that establish that Noah lived before Nimrod and Nimrod before Abraham, etc. We can imagine a Nilotic story teller elaborating on the character of various rulers as is evident in Genesis 4:23, where we are told that Lamech bragged to his two wives. Another elaboration is found in Genesis 10:8-12 concerning the Kushite kingdom-builder Nimrod.


Related reading:  Early Metaphysics: Primal Substance and Cause; Theories of Change and Constancy; The Experience and Perception of Time; Levi-Strauss and Jacques Derrida on Binary Oppositions; The Story of Ontology