Re: d'Espagnat wins Templeton Award

On 20/03/2009, at 6:37 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Perhaps I should do better. The last Renaissance revived and polished  
the methods of Socrates and the other thinkers of the pre-Roman  
universe. The way the knowledge was re-assimilated was with a heavy  
flavouring of Roman fascism. The mathematical universe of Islam and  
the pre-Islamic thinkers had to be accommodated as well. The argument  
method (not the only method of exploring a terrain of ideas) was  
perhaps in use before, but Socrates had developed it into a formidable  
procedure.

I am mainly concerned with the effect of Socrates. Pythagoras and  
Plotinus and all the other guys you love are in the pantheon of  
mathematicians - they are the "Good Greeks". These guys knew how to  
ask the right questions. Socrates knew less about asking questions but  
he knew a hell of a lot about giving answers. Socrates never asked  
fishing questions. ("Fishing question": a real and honest demand for  
information; you don't know if the fish will bite, where, when etc.)  
Socrates only asked "Hunting questions". ("Hunting question": when you  
have the animal - the target - in your sights.) Socrates wanted people  
to confirm his opinions which he would hoodwink everybody into  
imagining were the morally responsible ones to hold.

"You wouldn't elect your best athletes by lot now would you?"

"No we wouldn't"

"So why would you elect your politicians by lot?"

The required response is embedded in the comparison; a fake  
comparison. The technique involves taking two really quite different  
things and making them appear the same. Its a kind of a magic trick.  
Works every time. However, there may well be excellent reasons for  
electing politicians anonymously (risk of bribery, corruption etc.)  
Pure sophistry. I love it. Aristotle was simply wrong so no need to  
bother with him anymore.

But then, Socrates never set out to be a constructive thinker. He is  
nowhere as imaginative as Plotinus and Pythagoras. Socrates' purpose  
was to attack and remove 'rubbish'. Socrates will show brilliantly  
that all suggestions offered are wrong or faulty in some way. Not ONCE  
does Socrates offer a better idea. "Not My Job" rules with him. "I am  
not here to help you forge ideas I am here to help you find the true  
ideas, the ones you can trust. Its just that you have to come with the  
ideas I criticise." He seemed to believe that if you simply attack  
what is wrong, or in error, then what you are left with will be true  
and trustworthy. This has left us with our obsession with criticism.

There is a remarkable paradox in how the revival of Greek argument  
thinking in the last Renaissance served a dual purpose. On the one  
hand, humanistic thinkers used the system of reason and logic to  
attack the dogma that suffocated society. On the other hand, Church  
thinkers led by Thomas Aquinas developed the same argument logic into  
a powerful way of defeating numerous heresies that were forever  
surfacing. This argument/logic type of thinking became standard in  
seminaries, universities and schools. The paradox is that Church  
thinkers and non-Church (humanistic) thinkers found equal value in the  
methods. Perhaps this is not too surprising given that the new methods  
were a clear and obvious advance on the existing ones.




Of course - I merely continue the triage of defective ancient Greek  
thinkers by one more Greek. Plato and Pythagoras and Plotinus and  
Euclid are all in the mathematic pantheon and above reproach (I won't  
forgive Plato the slaves or the fascination with Sparta, though). I am  
rather concerned with the legacy of Socrates though. The Greeks  
bequeathed us argument and democracy and we have wanted to keep the  
two together ever since because nobody can conceive of how to operate  
a democracy without argument. Plato gave us "the Truth" which we are  
always said to be after. So our traditional thinking system is like  
that: it is based on the search for "the truth". It was never a case  
of being in search of "the best design". Truth has to be uncovered and  
checked by logic and argument (supplemented by statistics and other  
methods). The result is a strong tendency toward negativity and  
attack; the very nadir of creativity in other words. Negativity and  
fear are seen to be a powerful way of uncovering the truth or,  
securing compliance with somebody's definition of it. Negativity and  
attack can also provide the attacker with a very seductive and  
addictive feeling of satisfaction as well. The Crusades were an  
exercise in taking all of this for a jolly walk.






>
>
>> It's all argument bloody
>> argument.
>
>
> That is what I like. I appreciate arguments. It is my way.


What's wrong with a simple discussion? Why does there always have to  
be a winner and a loser? Why do we have to make like adversaries when  
what we want to do is share perceptions and explore a topic? Why can't  
there be as many theories about something as heads in the room? We all  
lay out our piece of the mosaic and in the end we have the Big  
Picture. I try not to confuse thinking with perception. Argument, as  
the executive function of critical (vertical) thinking lacks design  
energy. Argument makes you right, that's all. Nothing is constructed  
or created by argument. Argument was never for the purpose of  
generating new ideas. Argument was invented to weed out all the  
inferior or incorrect ideas as a way of having some confidence in what  
is probably an arbitrary conclusion locked in by the original choice  
of premises anyway. Remember, after Goedel, any argument is only as  
good as its starting premises which can never be proved from within  
the argument.

OK - you are being very scholarly in your deployment of this word  
"argument". I do feel there is more, much more though, to the  
scientific method than just criticism and attack. A hypothesis arises  
in the first place as an act of imagination.




So - there it is. Just as I say - the Church banished creativity and  
the creative interpretation of information. People were forbidden to  
use conceptual imagination in understanding data. Creativity was seen  
as evil and suspect and the work of sorcerers and witches and  
alchemists. Anybody who could "think" in the medieval period better  
have good connections in society. As soon as "thinking" came back into  
fashion at the Renaissance, the Church once again felt threatened by  
rising levels of education in society and in some very direct sense,  
this is WHY the Church invented school. To impart the "right"  
knowledge to those who had the right beliefs. We cannot underestimate  
the extent to which education today is the product of this miserable  
state of affairs.

In Japan, where there was never any exposure to Hellenistic or Arabic  
or Roman influences, it turned out rather differently. The Japanese  
never wasted any time arguing about the rights and the wrongs of  
anything. The Japanese method was to encourage everyone to think how  
everything might be improved and to trial as many ideas as possible. A  
high failure rate of ideas must be envisaged in this style, but the  
result is that innovation and design-thinking is encouraged.


K







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