In the Beginning, there was ... Philosophy. – Détails, épisodes et analyse

In this Episode, I introduce the life and work of a forgotten hero of science: Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859). In his own time he was such a famous explorer and discoverer that many of his contemporaries were influenced by his thinking, most notably Charles Darwin. And even though he is no longer as well known as Darwin today , many places, species, mountains and rivers are still named after him. He took a global approach to Nature, treating Nature as an interrelated whole, in which everything is in flux. He became the first ecologist who truly understood the importance of the environment and its influence on life. He approached Nature as a living organism. Politically, he was inspired by the ideals of the French revolution, which made him an opponent of colonialism and slavery.

Literature:

• Andrea Wulf: The Invention of Nature (2015; a magnificent biography, on which this episode is based)

• Friedel Weinert: The Scientist as Philosopher (2004: Ch. I.2 in which I explain the emergence of this notion of nature)

Websites:

• https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/alexander-humboldt

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt

This episode looks at three pre-Darwinian accounts of the development of organic nature: the Great Chain of Being, Design arguments (Paley) and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's 'transformatism'. All of these accounts assume, in one way or another, that the explanation of organic life requires the postulation of purpose and design in nature. This assumption is in striking contrast with mechanical explanations in astronomy and physics. The idea of 'evolution' was well accepted before Darwin. But Darwin's achievement consists in the articulation of a testable mechanism - natural selection - which explained evolution, without requiring design and purpose. The episode ends with a succinct description of Darwin's 'revolution'.

Literature:

• J. C. Greene, ‘The Kuhnian Paradigm and theDarwinian Revolution in Natural History’, in: G. Gutting (ed.): Paradigms and Revolutions (1980: 297-320)
• F. Weinert, Copernicus, Darwin & Freud (Wiley 2009)

In the last episode on Human Rights, I left open the question of whether Civil Disobedience should count as a fundamental human right. A good example of this debate occurs in the film The Great Debaters (2007). After having defined civil disobedience (following the philosophers John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas), I argue that it should count as a fundamental human right - under specified conditions: it should be a non-violent, public and political act, undertaken by a group in society whose fundamental human rights are under threat. I discuss the role of civil disobedience in both democratic systems, in which it can play an active part, and in totalitarian regimes, in which it mainly plays a passive part. Civil disobedience can be seen as the right for fight for one's rights.

Literature:

- M. Walzer, Obligations: Essays on Disobedience, War and Citizenship (1970)

- J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (1971: Ch. VI)

- J. Habermas, 'Civil Disobedience', in: Berkeley Journal of Sociology 30 (1985): 95-116 (translated form the German original in: Die Neue Unübersichtlichkeit, 1985: 79-99)

Following on from the last two episodes, which broadly dealt with issues of human freedom and justice, the question of the need for human rights arises naturally. I distinguish civil from human rights. Civil rights exist on the national level and they may differ from country to country. I propose three criteria to differentiate them from human or universal rights, which, as the term suggests, are transnational and transcultural. I explain why I think we need human rights, which I characterise as ethical benchmarks. They constitute standards for a dignified human existence.

Literature:

To start, there are excellent articles on human rights in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

In this episode I briefly describe the events of the French Revolution and then turn my attention to the life and times of two prominent 'engaged philosophers': Voltaire and the Marquis de Condorcet. Both fought against the injustices of the Ancient Regime, i.e. the time prior to the French Revolution, when France was ruled by absolute monarchs. Through their active defence and rehabilitation of the victims of injustice both Voltaire and Condorcet brought to light the religious intolerance and the obscurantism of their age.

I also briefly discuss the controversial German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel who became the philosopher of the French revolution.

I conclude this episode with a brief look at engaged intellectual in our age: Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre and Noam Chomsky.

Literature:

A good, concise introduction to the ideas of the French Revolution is George Rudé, The French Revolution (1988). A classic, comprehensive study is Albert Soboul, The French Revolution 1787-1799 (English translation 1975).

There are numerous biographies of Voltaire. For this episode I used Jean Orieux, Voltaire (2 volumes 1977). For Condorcet I used the brilliant biography of Elizabeth & Robert Badinter, Condorcet - Un Intellectuel en Politique (1988), which unfortunately has not been translated into English.

The next couple of episodes continue Part I on Political Philosophy.

The next two episodes will discuss the impact philosophical ideas have had on the social and political world. In the current episode (17), I start with the influence John Locke's political philosophy had on the adoption of the English Bill of Rights in the wake of the Glorious Revolution (1688), as well as French philosophers and the American Declaration of Independence (Jefferson). Locke, the Enlightenment philosopher, is often seen as the Godfather of liberalism. His ideas laid the foundations for liberal democracies worldwide.

In the following episode (18), I look at two French philosophers around the time of the French Revolution: Voltaire and Condorcet, and describe their fights for justice. Then I turn to Human Rights and the state of democracy in the face of the rise of populism.

Literature:

The classic source of liberalism is John Locke's The Two Treatises of Government, especially Part II, first published in 1690. His Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) is also worth reading. Every good book on political philosophy will discuss Locke's ideas and his influence. Voltaire's Lettres Philosophiques (1734), his Treatise on Religious Tolerance (1763) and his Dictionnaire Philosophique (1764) are well worth perusing.They give a flavour of Enlightenment ideas.

The question of whether humans enjoy free will (or not) has occupied people for centuries. Science has not yet found a definitive answer but we are all familiar with the phenomenon. When we want something (a mental event), we get up to get it (a physical event). When something happens to us (a physical event), we react with, say, sadness or joy (a mental event). How is this possible? How can physical events influence mental states? And how can mental states lead to physical events? In this Episode I introduce to rival accounts: determinism (which claims that we are not free agents) versus libertarianism (which holds that our mind are free to choose between options). I discuss the pros and cons of each position and conclude that I am more convinced by the libertarian argument, i.e. the belief in the freedom of the will, than determinism - unless proven otherwise.

Literature:

There is a vast amount of literature on free will, consciousness and the mind. I found the following helpful: Susan Blackmore, Consciousness-An Introduction (2003); Richard Swinburne (ed.), Free Will and Modern Science (2011).

There are also good articles in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

In previous Episodes, I have made many references to the laws of nature. Laws of nature are the regularities in the natural world, which exist independently of our knowledge of them. But in the textbooks of science you find many equations which encode the natural regularities. These equations are the laws of science. The laws of science are only approximately true because the employment of mathematics involves the use of abstractions and idealisations. The laws of science are subject to modifications, but the laws of nature just are. I limit myself to two philosophical attempts to explain what the natural laws tell us about the natural world: the regularity view and the structural view.

Literature:

The material of this episode draws on my Introduction to the volume Laws of Nature , edited and introduced by Friedel Weinert (1995).

In this Episode, I discuss some systematic ways in which discoveries are made in science. This follows on from Episode 13 (A, B) which introduced thought and real experiments. In this Episode I look at methods - systematic ways - to go about scientific discoveries. There are three methods: two different forms of induction and deduction. Induction works either by inferring from some to all cases (from 'some ravens are black' to 'all ravens are black') or by the method of elimination: use the evidence to eliminate the wrong explanation. To illustrate the latter method (also known as abduction) I compare the work of a scientist who tries to solve problems, to the work of a detective who tries to solve a crime. The detective uses evidence ('clues') to eliminate potential suspects in order to identify the real culprit. The scientist uses evidence in order to identify the real solution to a scientific problem from amongst possible solutions. In between the two methods stands deductivism: according to this method a scientist makes a hypothesis - a bold conjecture - and then submits it to rigorous tests.

Literature:

I discuss these methods in more detail in two books: Friedel Weinert, Copernicus, Darwin & Freud (2009) and Karl Popper-Professional Philosopher and Public Intellectual (2022).

Part B of this Episode concentrates on imaginary and real experiments in the modern era. I introduce Foucaults' famous pendulum experiment (1859), which gave a visual demonstration that the Earth turns on its own axis. I propose that thought experiments answer 'what-if' questions about the natural world. They are models of possible worlds. The episode finishes with a discussion of the famous double-slit experiment on the atomic level. It started out as a mere thought experiment before becoming an iconic a real experiment. It demonstrates the weird behaviour of quantum particles, i.e. the wave-particle duality.

Literature:

You can find brief, handy descriptions of scientific experiments in Rom Harré, Great Scientific Experiments (1981) and George Johnson, The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments (2009). The material of episodes 13 (A, B) is based on Friedel Weinert, The Demons of Science (2016), where you will find many more references to experiments in science.