James Maxwell's Physical Model

[StefanR]

Below an extract from this article:

Nietzsche’s Brave New World of Force
Thoughts on Nietzsche’s 1873 ‘Time Atom Theory’ Fragment & on
the Influence of Boscovich on Nietzsche
KEITH ANSELL PEARSON

Boscovich & Natural Philosophy

Boscovich’s A Theory of Natural Philosophy was first published in Latin
in 1758 with a revised and enlarged edition published in 1763 (this was the
‘Venetian’ edition Nietzsche read).15 The work consists of 558 ‘articles’
and is divided into three main parts: an introductory part 1, part II on
‘application of the theory to mechanics’, part III on ‘application of the
theory to physics’, an appendix on the soul and God, and six further
supplements including two on ‘space and time’. In his ‘synopsis’ of the
text Boscovich presents an outline of the chief articles of the work,
pointing out the relation of his theory to Newton and Leibniz, what it
shares with them, where it departs from them and how it attempts to chart
new ground. His system offers a ‘midway’ between those of Leibniz and
Newton and has both much in common with them and much that is
different. He holds it to be simpler than either and so marvellously suitable
for ‘deriving all general properties of bodies, and certain of the special
properties also, by means of the most rigorous demonstrations’ (p. 19, part
1). With Leibniz it shares the idea that matter is composed of simple nonextended primary elements, and with Newton it shares the idea of the
universe as composed of mutual forces that vary as the distances of the
points from one another vary. There are two kinds of forces, attractive and
repulsive.16 The contention is that any particle of matter is connected with
every other particle no matter how great the distance between them, so
that with a change in the position of one the factors determining the motion
of all the rest will be altered. A departure is made from Newton who held
that his indivisible and extended atoms touched on another; a departure is
made from Leibniz who thought there was no void and that non-extended
points were at rest.
In essence, Boscovich’s work offers a specific theory of forces built
from what today one might call a philosophy of nature founded on the
principles of a ‘critical rationalism’. Matter is conceived in terms of
simple, non-extended and indivisible points that are separated from one
another:
…that each of these points has a property of inertia, and in addition
a mutual active force depending on the distance in such a way that,
if the distance is given, both the magnitude and the direction of this
force are given; but if the distance is altered, so also is the force
altered; and if the distance is diminished indefinitely, the force is
repulsive, & in fact also increases indefinitely; whilst if the distance
is increased the force will be diminished, vanish, be changed to an
attractive force that first of all increases, then decreases, vanishes,
is again turned into a repulsive force, and so on many times over;
until at greater distances it finally becomes an attractive force that
decreases approximately in the inverse ratio of the squares of the
distances. (p. 10)
Two key ideas presented in the book, but not elaborated upon in the
synopsis, include ‘compenetration’ and the ‘Law of Continuity (a law
Boscovich insists is unassailable). There can be no perfect rest anywhere
in nature, and neither can there be at all times any perfect analogy between
time and space. For Boscovich the advantage of his conception of matter -
simplicity, indivisibility, and non-extension - is that it does away with the
ideas of a passage from a continuous vacuum to a continuous matter
through any sudden change or leaps in nature. From this he adduces the
conclusion: ‘nothing infinite is found actually existing: the only thing
possible that remains is a series of finite things produced indefinitely’ (p.
12). By doing away with the idea of an actual infinity in existing things,
notes Boscovich, ‘truly countless difficulties can be got rid of’ (p. 46).17
As Peter Poellner has pointed out, Boscovich’s forces are actualised
accelerations or propensities of accelerations.18 The corpuscular doctrine
of matter - the conception of matter as made up of extended and rigid
particles moving about in empty space and interacting through pressure
and impact - has to be abandoned on account of it being internally
inconsistent. It implies that the particles of matter are accelerated
instantaneously and discontinuously by finite increments upon impact. This
discontinuous change of velocity violates for Boscovich the law of
continuity and entails that a system of interacting particles can be in two
different states at one and the same ‘instant’ of time. Such a state also
requires an infinite force. Poellner summarizes the technical details of
Boscovich’s own position as follows:
Boscovich concludes that change does not take place instantaneously
and discontinuously upon contact between moving particles, but rather
continuously, on account of a repulsive force acting asymptotically as the
distance between them decreases. Since the magnitude of this repulsive
force approaches infinity with diminishing distance, it makes direct contact
between the elements impossible. Hence the ultimate constituents of
matter must be assumed to be perfectly simple and at some distance from
each other, for they must be indivisible in principle…The upshot of
Boscovich’s theory of matter is that matter consists of unextended point
centres surrounded by fields of “force”.19
Boscovich insists that his ‘forces’ are nothing mysterious and that they
contain a ‘readily intelligible mechanism’. The difficulty we have thinking
of them in terms of non-extended points arises from our inability to
perceive them by the senses. It is thus necessary to build up a more
adequate conception of matter through a process of reasoning (throughout
the text Boscovich negotiates a position in relation to induction and
champions the rights of deduction; on the use made of induction in the
book see p. 30). This attack on the senses is what Nietzsche will comment
on around 1884-5 as one of the most significant aspects of Boscovich (it
means for him, as we shall see, giving up on materialistic atomism). This
attack on sensualist epistemology has been a principal feature of modern
philosophy of science since Descartes, and the attempt to go beyond
perception plays a crucial role in more contemporary attempts to ‘think
beyond the human condition’ (one of the best examples of this being the
work of Bergson).20
Now Boscovich is fully aware that this conception of matter is not
novel or peculiar to him. He mentions Leibniz’s monads as coming close
to his notion of indivisible and non-extended points. However, he argues
that Leibniz remained a Zenonist (articles 138 & 139, p. 59).21 In order to
escape the snares of Zeno’s paradoxes it is necessary to give up the idea of
continuous extension (such extension cannot be generated from things
without extent):
Those arguments that some of the Leibnizian circle put forward are
of no use for the purpose of connecting indivisibility & nonextension
of the elements with continuous extension of the masses
formed from them … Those who say that monads cannot be
compenetrated, because they are by nature impenetrable, by no
means remove the difficulty. For, if they are both by nature
impenetrable, & also at the same time have to make up a
continuum, i.e., have to be contiguous, then at one & the same time
they are compenetrated & they are not compenetrated; & this
leads to an absurdity & proves the impossibility of entities of this
sort. For, from the idea of non-extension of any sort, & of
contiguity, it is proved by an argument instituted against the
Zenonists many centuries ago that there is bound to be
compenetration; & this argument has never been satisfactorily
answered. (article 139, p. 59)
We will return to this crucial aspect of Boscovich’s theory shortly. For
now, a further point needs noting: the primary elements of matter are not
only indivisible they are also immutable: ‘these are quite simple in
composition, of no extent, they are everywhere unchangeable, and hence
are splendidly adapted for explaining a continually recurring set of
phenomena’ (p. 16). Boscovich does allow for a principle of divisibility
but admits it only to the extent that any existing mass may be made up of
real points that are only finite, ‘although in any given mass this finite
number may be as great as you please’. For him this is to substitute
‘infinite divisibility’ with ‘infinite multiplicity’ (my emphasis).
The divergence from Leibniz centres on Boscovich’s commitment to
simplicity and homogeneity. The oppositions to Zeno can never be
answered, he claims, with regard to the issue of ‘compenetration of all
kinds with non-extended consecutive points’, and this applies with the
same force he holds to the system of Leibniz. If we admit homogeneity
among all the elements then any distinction between masses can be seen to
depend only on relative position and different combinations of these
elements. Chemical operations are an example of this, Boscovich claims,
and their analysis is beginning to show that the enormous variety of
different materials are composed of a relatively small number of elements
which can be explained in terms of an even smaller number of ultimate
constituents, perhaps just the one. If we maintain these principles of
simplicity and homogeneity then key aspects of Leibniz’s teaching,
notably, the principles of indiscernibles and sufficient reason, can no
longer prevail. The principle of sufficient reason is for Boscovich a false
one, ‘calculated to take away all idea of true freewill’. Moreover, all
possible reasons are not known to us. If we are to decide in favour of one
sufficient reason over another then it would be necessary to know
precisely what we do not know (article 93, p. 47; see also articles 94-6).
Nature is to be built up then out of the most simple principles in which
everything is shown to depend on the composition of the forces with which
the particles of matter act upon one another (on Boscovich’s departure
from Newton see the discussion on pp. 19-20, and the treatment of the law
of gravitation on p. 24).
What does Boscovich understand by ‘compenetration’? We have on his
schema a conception of matter as composed of indivisible and nonextended
points combined with the idea of a vacuum in which they are
‘scattered’ which ensures that the points are separated from one another
by definite intervals. An interval can be indefinitely increased or reduced
but can never vanish altogether, except in cases where there is
‘compenetration’ between them:
…I do not admit as possible any immediate contact between them.
On the contrary I consider that it is a certainty that, if the distance
between two points of matter should become absolutely nothing,
then the very same indivisible point of space, according to the usual
idea of it, must be occupied by both together, and we have true
compenetration in every way. Therefore indeed I do not admit the
idea of vacuum interspersed amongst matter, but I consider that
matter is interspersed in a vacuum and floats in it (pp. 20-1).
Boscovich’s ‘law of continuity’ is simply the idea that any quantity (mass)
in passing from one magnitude to another has to pass through ‘all
intermediate magnitudes of the same class’. This idea he develops in a
discussion of Maupertuis (1698-1759). The latter thought that the law of
continuity was violated by any sudden change no matter how small
(whether of a lesser or a greater degree, and where large and small are
relative terms). Thus any passage is made up of intermediate stages or
steps which Maupertuis understands as involving small additions made in
an instant of time. Boscovich argues that this should rather be interpreted
as follows: ‘single states correspond to single instants of time, but
increments or decrements only to small intervals of continuous time’ (p.
28).
Let me now address explicitly the thinking of time that is informing
Boscovich’s philosophy of nature. Boscovich is troubled by the notion of
an instant of time simply because ‘there is need of time…’. Time has a
continuous nature, however short, in order for things to happen. In the case
of water flowing from a vessel, for example, the velocity is generated not
in a single instant but within a ‘continuous interval of time’, passing
through ‘all intermediate magnitudes’. Boscovich is novel in the attempt to
think the interval. The difficulties he reaches stem from his inability to give
up on the ‘fiction of instants’.22 We end up with the curious conception of
time as made up of not simply of intervals existing between instants but as
finite intervals conceived as infinitely divisible through the interpolation of
‘other points and still others’:
There cannot be two instants…contiguous to one another; but
between one instant & another there must always intervene some
interval of continuous time divisible indefinitely. In the same way,
in any quantity which lasts for a continuous interval of time, there
must be obtained a series of magnitudes of such a kind that to each
instant of time there is its corresponding magnitude; & this
magnitude connects the one that precedes with the one that follows
it, and differs from the former by some definite magnitude (article
49, p. 33).
What a massively revealing passage this is! Its key components merit
careful unfolding. It is interesting to note that in the previous article (48)
Boscovich refers to a ‘metaphysical argument’ that he believes supports
his law of continuity and which he has addressed in his dissertation De
Lege Continuitatis. This ‘metaphysics’ draws in part on Aristotle, and
Boscovich cites Aristotle as claiming that ‘there must be a common
boundary which joins the things that precede to those that follow; and this
must therefore be indivisible for the very reason that it is a boundary’. On
Boscovich’s model, then, we have an interval of continuous time
intervening between instants. But this interval is itself indefinitely
divisible. The key question is this: if it is impossible to generate continuous
extension from non-extended points, how is to possible to generate a
conception of noninstantaneous time on the basis of indivisible boundaries
and actual instants? Is this any more an adequate resolution of the
Zenonism that Boscovich identifies as afflicting Leibniz’s theory of
monads? (articles 138 & 139, p. 59). The notion of continuous intervals of
time is designed to fill in the black holes that characterise any attempt to
arrive at a continuous extension from non-extended and indivisible points.
But Boscovich retains an attachment to the idea of the instant and the
theory of compenetration that is fully implicated in Zenonist paradoxes.
The notion of intervals is a genuine innovation in Boscovich’s work and it
plays a key role in his argument against the sense and in favour of new
modes of thinking and knowing the universe:
Intervals, which in no wise came within the scope of the senses,
were considered to be nothing; those things the ideas of which were
always excited simultaneously & conjointly, were considered as
identical, or bound up with one another by an extremely close and
necessary bond. Hence the result is that we have formed the idea of
continuous extension, the idea of impenetrability preventing further
motion only on the absolute contact of bodies; & then we have
heedlessly transferred these ideas to all things that pertain to a solid
body, and to the matter from which it is formed (pp. 66-7).
An instant is, by definition, devoid of duration (p. 197). As Boscovich
himself appreciates there is a close resemblance between the notion of
‘points’ (of position) and that of ‘instants’ (of time). The latter cannot
provide us with a thinking of duration:
…a point is not a part of a continuous line, or an instant a part of a
continuous time; but a limit & a boundary. A continuous line, or a
continuous time is understood to be generated, not by repetition of
points or instants, but by a continuous progressive motion, in which
some intervals are parts of other intervals; the points themselves, or
the instants, which are constantly progressing, are not parts of the
intervals (p. 198)
Whereas time has one progressive motion only (duration), analogous to the
single line, space has extension in three dimensions (length, breadth, and
depth). Boscovich then decides in favour of time being generated from the
instant: ‘in the threefold class of space, & in the onefold class of time, the
point and the instant will be respectively the element, from which, by its
progression, motion, space & time will be understood to be generated’ (p.
199).




15 I have used the following English translation, cited by page number: Roger Joseph
Boscovich, S.J., A Theory of Natural Philosophy, English edition from the text of the
first Venetian edition published under the personal superintendence of the author in
1763, with a short life of Boscovich, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press 1966.
16 On this point we can note that Boscovich claims to have departed from Newton in
admitting forces that at very small distances are not positive or attractive, as Newton
supposed, but repulsive. See article 4, pp. 19-20 & article 81, p. 43.
17 Further: ‘The theory of non-extension is…convenient for eliminating from Nature all
idea of a coexistent continuum - to explain which philosophers have up till now
laboured so very hard & generally in vain. Assuming non-extension, no division of a
real entity can be carried on indefinitely; we shall not be brought to a standstill when
we seek to find out whether the number of parts that are actually distinct & separable
is finite or infinite. For if the primary elements of matter are perfectly non-extended &
indivisible points separated from one another by some definite interval, then the
number of points in any given mass must be finite; because all the distances are finite’
(article 90, p. 46).
18 Poellner, ‘Causation and Force in Nietzsche’, p. 293.
19 Ibid., pp. 293-4.
20 See, for example, H. Bergson, ‘The Perception of Change’, in The Creative Mind
(Totowa, New Jersey: Littlefield, Adams & Co, 1975), pp. 130-59, p. 132: ‘The
insufficiency of our faculties of perception - an insufficiency verified by our faculties of
conception and reasoning - is what gives birth to philosophy’.
21 For Leibniz on Zeno see Leibniz’s letter attempting to explain certain difficulties in
Bayle, in G. W. Leibniz, Philosophical Texts, trans. and edited R. S. Woolhouse & R.
Francks (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 201-8, p. 207, & Leibniz’s ‘New
System’ and Associated Contemporary Texts, trans. and ed. Woolhouse & Francks
(Oxford Clarendon Press 1997), p. 85, p. 120, p. 123.
22 For a deft treatment of this fiction see Milic Capek’s essay, ‘The Fiction of Instants’
in Capek, The New Aspects of Time: Its Continuity and Novelties (Dordrecht: Kluwer,
1991), pp. 43-55.

http://www.warwick.ac.uk/philosophy/pli ... _pli_9.pdf

[StefanR]

Here I would like to place some quotes from a very nice article, which covers some of the history of science from a viewpoint not often put together in this way. It gives some insight into the times leading up to Maxwell and past him as well. I'm not advocating anything here, but it does, in my opinion, elucidate some of the philosophical background already presented in this thread and how these ideas came to be and still linger in science today and how science today deviates from them.

NEOPLATONISM IN SCIENCE
PAST AND FUTURE
BRUCE MACLENNAN
Associate Professor
Dept. of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
University of Tennessee


I. Introduction
In this article I argue that modern Neoplatonism can contribute
to a revitalization of science and an improved human relationship to nature.
I begin by considering the role of Neoplatonism in the history of
science, considering both ideas that have contributed to the constitution
of contemporary science, and those that have been abandoned by it.
Then I mention two especially Pythagorean developments in contemporary
science. Finally, I turn to the future, to the contributions that I believe
Neoplatonic ideas can make toward the future of science.

II. The Past
Recall the alternative views of nature and science that competed
in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries.1 We may take as our starting
point the Aristotelian-Thomistic cosmology, which resulted from
Aquinas’ rehabilitation and Christianization of Aristotelian cosmology
and Ptolemaic astronomy, and which dominated European thinking
from the thirteenth century. A value system was implicit in this cosmology,
which placed a stationary Earth at the center of the universe, in the
center of which was Hell and the Devil (Easlea 1980, pp. 43, 57–8). In
polar opposition was God in His heaven, the active force outside the
circumference of the Primum Mobile.
..............
As the weaknesses of the Thomistic-Aristotelian philosophy became
apparent, two philosophical orientations presented themselves as
the chief contenders for a new philosophy of nature (Easlea 1980, pp.
89–90). On one hand was the mechanical philosophy, as developed especially
by Gassendi and Descartes, and on the other was the (socalled)
magical philosophy, which was advocated in one form or another
by Neoplatonists, alchemists, Hermeticists, adherents of the supposed
prisca theologia, and so forth. A principal difference between the
two was their view of nature.
................
One consequence of these differences
was that mechanical philosophers were stronger advocates of using
mechanistic principles to appropriate and exploit non-human nature for
human benefit, a foundation of the industrial revolution (Easlea 1980,
ch. 5). The magical philosophy, however, entailed a degree of reverence
for Nature and implied circumspection in possessing and exploiting
“her” (Easlea 1980, pp. 102–4, 111–12, 139).
................
Aside from its scientific impact, the eventual shift to a heliocentric
cosmology was a development of enormous symbolic significance.
The astronomical reasons for this change are familiar, but it is important
not to forget the philosophical background. The Central Fire—often
misinterpreted as the Central Sun—was an idea inherited from ancient
Pythagoreanism, and Copernicus called his heliocentric model
“the Pythagorean theory” and quoted the Hermetica in its defense (De
revol. orb. cael., Thorn ed., 1873, p. 30; Yates 1964, p. 154). Heliocentrism
was motivated as much by religious and philosophical considerations
as by astronomical ones, for Neoplatonism, Hermeticism, and related
philosophies considered the Sun to be “the visible god,” associated
with the Demiurge, and a potent symbol for the One and its power,
irradiating the material world and bringing it life (Yates 1964, pp. 153–
4). From this perspective, the Sun belonged in the center of the universe,
which thereby became the fountainhead of the Good rather than
the central abyss. Giordano Bruno, in his defense of Copernicanism, referred
back to the solar magic of Ficino’s book De vita coelitus comparanda,
his most overtly magical work.
..................
It was a tenet of the magical philosophy, which we find for example in
Cornelius Agrippa (1651/1993, II.56), that the stars and planets are
sources of vitality and motion, and therefore that they have souls and
are alive themselves (Yates 1964, p. 243). Similarly Kepler, who was
influenced by Agrippa, the Paracelsans, Proclus, and other Neoplatonists,
said the earth is a living being with an anima terrae structured likethe anima hominis (Pauli 1955, pp. 156–77).
............................
There is a direct line of descent from the ideas of Leibniz and
his contemporaries for formal knowledge-representation languages and
mechanized reasoning, through the development of symbolic logic and
formalized mathematics, to the computational models of knowledge
and cognition used in artificial intelligence and cognitive science, but
that is outside the scope of this paper. It suffices here to observe that the
Lullian vision affected the pursuit of method, which occupied many
seventeenth-century philosophers, including Descartes, Bacon, and
Leibniz, for this pursuit was redirected toward a methodology of abstract
relationships among monadic ideas (Ong 1958; Yates 1966, ch.
17; Rossi 2000, ch. 5). Although this drive reached its apex in the logical
positivist philosophy of the early twentieth century, it still survives
in the preference for mathematical abstraction in all scientific theories.
...........................
Already in the Pythagorean revival of late antiquity memory
was connected with spiritual practices, and biographers attributed a
prodigious memory to such figures as Pythagoras and Apollonius of
Tyana (Yates 1966, p. 56). Also beginning in antiquity was the use of
cosmologically significant structures, such as the zodiac, decans, and
planetary spheres, to organize ideas and their images (Yates 1966, p.
54). In this way the art of memory allowed the macrocosm to be reflected
in the microcosm of the individual mind.
...........................
In summary we may say that the new science took up the more formal,
logical, and abstract aspects of Neoplatonism, but left the more concrete,
imaginative, and symbolic aspects to the magi and their successors.
.............................
Thus the reality
we ordinarily experience is not the true, or most fundamental reality;
it is rather an image, shadow, or reflection, in fact, an illusion. True
reality is an immaterial abstract structure, imperceptible to our senses,
accessible only through reason and indirect experimentation.
This reductionist perspective is already apparent in Newton’s
explanation of color as wavelength. His division, on the basis of wavelength,
of the continuous spectrum into seven colors, explicitly analogized
with the seven tones of the diatonic scale, is just one example of
Newton’s intentionally Pythagorean approach, in which the hidden
quantities are real, and the manifest qualities, illusions (Bortoft 1996,
pp. 38–40, 192–212; Gage 1993, ch. 13, esp. p. 232). Indeed, the reduction
of experiential qualities to imperceptible quantities has been typical
in physics ever since the development of atomic theory. However,
modern science understands the hidden causes to be abstract and mathematical,
whereas Neoplatonism and the magical philosophy understood
them to be living, psychical, and divine actions of the World Soul (a contrast already apparent in the Kepler-Fludd controversy; see Yates 1964, pp. 440–4; Pauli 1955).
The Renaissance magi understood that different material objects
might be irradiated by the same archetypal idea, and that this hidden
connection was the cause of sympathies and antipathies between material
objects (Easlea 1980, pp. 92–4).
..........................
Although the notion that there might be occult affinities between
objects was anathema to the mechanical philosophers, it was essential
to the theory of gravity. Newton protested hypotheses non fingo,
but his acceptance of occult forces no doubt facilitated his mathematical
description of gravitational force in the absence of mechanical interactions
(Easlea 1980, pp. 90, 111, 164–83); in fact, he thought Pythagoras
had already discovered the inverse-square law by means of his harmonic
theory (White 1997, pp. 348–9). As a closet alchemist and Hermetic
philosopher, Newton believed that universal gravity demonstrated
the active presence of God in the world, whereas the mechanical
philosophers generally believed that God had left the physical world
alone since the end of the Age of Miracles (Easlea 1980, pp. 22, 182).
However, due to the hidden nature of the causes, these sympathetic
relations were difficult to determine by reason alone (Easlea
1980, p. 93). Therefore, practicing magi, such as Paracelsus, that is,
those who, among other things, were actually trying to cure the physical
and mental ills of humankind, were forced to resort to experiment to
discover the occult sympathies in the material world (Easlea 1980, pp.
100–3; see also Webster, 1982). As the limitations of a purely rationalistic
approach to the mechanical philosophy became apparent, some
philosophers, such as Francis Bacon and Robert Boyle, began to adopt
these empirical methods (Easlea 1980, pp. 90, 126–9, 194–5, 202).
Boyle, of course, had been an alchemist and Hermetic philosopher with
Rosicrucian sympathies (Easlea 1980, pp. 136–9). However, he abandoned,
along with his Hermetic ideas, the notion that the natural world
is divine, saying (Inq. Vulg. Rec. Notion Nature), “the veneration,
wherewith men are imbued for what they call Nature, has been a discouraging impediment to the empire of man over the inferior creatures
of God” (Easlea 1980, p. 139). Thus he enunciated an attitude that has
contributed to our environmental crisis.

Similarly Bacon, with metaphors that would have warmed the
cockles of Freud’s heart, enthused that the experimental method would
allow men to “penetrate further,” through “the outer courts of nature,”
to “find a way at length into her inner chamber,” in order to find the
“secrets still locked in Nature’s bosom” (Easlea 1980, p. 129). By the
“trials and vexations” of experiment, Nature would be put on the rack
and compelled to answer (Easlea 1980, p. 128). Nature and all her children
would be men’s slaves, Bacon promised (Easlea 1980, p. 129).
Nor was he alone. Many of the adherents of the new “Masculine Philosophy”
(as they called it) saw Dame Nature as a subject of torture,
domination, and exploitation (Easlea 1980, pp. 128–9, 213–14, 236,
241–52). Surely it is not coincidental that these remarks were made
during the culmination of the witchcraze (see also Merchant 1980).
Of course, like the mechanical philosophers, the magical
philosophers were also interested in practical results, but their understanding
of nature as having a soul and being divine led them to take a
more cooperative and less dominating stance toward her (Easlea 1980,
pp. 94, 103, 112). Also, the magical philosophers understood themselves
to be a part of this same nature, a unified emanation of the One,
whereas Descartes had taught the mechanical philosophers that human
souls were essentially separate from a soulless nonhuman world. So
also, the magical philosophers understood themselves as participants in
nature (Yates 1964, pp. 31–2), whereas the mechanical philosophers
took the stance of observers separate from the object of their observation,
a view that has interfered with scientific understanding in areas as
disparate as quantum mechanics, ecology, psychology, and sociology.
.........................
Against the development of modern science, I must mention a
notable dissenting voice.6 Goethe’s well-known campaign against Newtonian
science (Sepper 1988) was rooted in a different conception of the proper role of science in human life (Heisenberg 1974b). His view
has much in common with Neoplatonic and Hermetic philosophy,
which is not unexpected since he was influenced by Neoplatonic ideas,
by alchemy, by Boehmist mysticism, and so forth (Gray 1952, Pt. I;
Raphael 1965, Pt. I).7 Whereas modern science can be characterized as
analytic, observational, and reductive, Goethe’s approach is empathetic,
participatory, and holistic (Barnes 2000; Bortoft 1996, pp. 3–26,
49–76, 321–30; Goethe 1995, pp. 12, 22, 28, 41, 48; Pauli 1955, pp.
205–6). In essence it recognizes our kinship with the rest of the natural
world, and accesses the universal archetypes within our minds to facilitate
our assimilation to, and our empathetic understanding of, nature
(Bortoft 1996; Goethe 1995, pp. 22–4, 103–109). In more Platonic
terms, “like knows like” and intuitive understanding comes with participation
in the energeia of the archetypal forms.
........................
Another example of Pythagoreanism in contemporary science is
complex systems theory, which attempts to find mathematical laws of
emergence and self-organization throughout nature (e.g., Solé & Goodwin
2000).9 The same laws are found to operate at many different levels,
from atoms, to neurons, to embryological development, to social
behavior and communication, to evolution, both cosmic and terrestrial.
To put it differently, we find the same archetypal forms actualized in
many different natural systems, and these archetypes govern the formation
and transformation of these systems in space and time. These are
laws dealing with the dynamics of opposites: expansion and contraction,
cooperation and competition, uniformity and diversity, randomness
and order, definiteness and indefiniteness, discreteness and continuity,
and so forth. That is, Pythagorean ideas of unity, duality, conjunction
and mediation, balance and equilibrium, and so forth, are
found to be the fundamental principles at all levels of the cosmos, and
so the structure of these Pythagorean archetypes is the structure of the
universe, at least insofar as we can understand it.
.....................
Since contemporary science is essentially mathematical, such an
enriched understanding of mathematics can help us to understand the
unconscious cognitive-emotional structures that condition all of our scientific
enterprises (Pauli 1955, pp. 208–9). It may help us to understand
criteria of symmetry, beauty, and elegance by which mathematical and
scientific theories are judged, which contribute to their acceptance, and
which motivate the search for confirming evidence (Curtin 1982;
Heisenberg 1974c). It may help explain the, essentially non-scientific,
sources of scientific hypotheses and models, especially when they are
mathematical in form. Thus, in a previously unpublished paper, Pauli argues for “a future description of nature that uniformly comprises physis
and psyche,” and that to achieve such “it appears to be essential to
have recourse to the archetypal background of scientific terms and concepts”
(Meier 2001, p. 180). At a more fundamental level, this unified
description may deepen our understanding of the psychological components
of scientists’ preference for quantification, clear and distinct
mathematical structures, definite standards of proof, abstraction and
formalism, and other features of contemporary scientific practice that
are familiar but not inevitable. Therefore Pauli (1955, p. 208) argues
that henceforth the only acceptable scientific view will be “the one that
recognizes both sides of reality—the quantitative and the qualitative,
the physical and the psychical—as compatible with each other, and can
embrace them simultaneously.”12
..............................
V. Conclusions
As modern science emerged in the seventeenth century and displaced
the magical philosophy, it incorporated a number of ideas from
the Neoplatonic and Neopythagorean tradition, including the notion
that there is a hidden structure of abstract, and especially mathematical,
ideas underlying reality and giving rise to visible phenomena. However,
these notions were imported into a dualist framework in which an
inanimate, or soulless, mechanical world is opposed to man—and I use
the gendered term intentionally—as observer and exploiter. Over the
past four hundred years, the self-reinforcing processes of science and
society have widened this gap, and an increasingly remote and abstract
relation to physical reality has led scientists, technologists, and consumers
to withdraw from empathetic participation in living nature. Further,
with the advance of materialist, quantitative science the human
soul has, of course, been pushed further and further into the margins,
alienating many people from science.
I think that some of these disharmonies among ourselves, and
between humans and the rest of nature, may be eliminated by returning
to the Neoplatonic well, which has already nourished science, and by
drinking deeply from it again. For Neoplatonism can unite with evolutionary Jungian psychology to reveal the objective archetypal Ideas,
which inform our relations to each other, to the natural world, and to
the spiritual realm, but which also underlie our scientific concepts and
our most abstract theories. In particular, by acknowledging the psychological
and phenomenological reality of our experience of these
archetypal Ideas, we transcend the Cartesian gap, not by reducing all
phenomena to inert matter, but by recognizing the equally objective
psychical and physical aspects of a unitary reality.
For these archetypal Ideas are not abstract, inert quantities, but
qualities full of the richness of human experience, living and dynamic,
brimming with symbolic meaning, emotional and spiritual as well as intellectual.
From this perspective, even the most materialist of issues are
understood to have an equally valid and objective spiritual aspect, accessible
to empirical investigation, in the broad sense. Materialist values
are not complete in themselves, but must be complemented by nonmaterialist,
but nevertheless objective, values.
Certainly, the goal of such a Neoplatonic renewal of science and
technology is not to replace current approaches to science, but to expand
the human relation to nature in ways that will enrich our understanding,
and to lay a foundation for an environmentally sensitive technology.
As a consequence we may also anticipate the continued evolution
of Neoplatonism as a living philosophy.

http://www.cs.utk.edu/~mclennan/papers/ ... an-NIS.pdf
http://www.cs.utk.edu/~mclennan/

[webolife]

Very nice article StefanR... I've had this perspective for about 40 years now... yikes, am I that old??? The physical/metaphysical gap was entrenched well into me throughout secondary education, and after 4 decades, I'm still learning new ways to close the gap.

[StefanR]

Hi Web,

I also found it interesting to see how perspectives on Science seem to eb and flow.
As for the gap, let me just bring back a golden oldie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXi_ldNRNtM

[StefanR]

As there was some talk of Boscovich in this thread, I would like to point out that
there will be Boscovich Conference in Manchester, 22 Juli 2013.
With some interesting subjects, as for instance;
Philosophical-scientific aspects of R.J. Boscovich’s role in the development of the notion of physical field in classical electromagnetics.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/usa- ... sage/26435

[marengo]

Too many posts to read.
Presumably the topic name refers to Maxwell's model of the Aether.

You cant make a model until you know the properties of the Aether. Unfortunately Maxwell made a mistake in that.
He assumed that magnetism was a force fundamental to the Aether, and he was wrong. The magnetic effect is a derivative of the electric field. You will find it explained on my website www.aetherpages.com.

[Solar]

Since Kevin and Michael V are having a discussion (here) exemplifying some of the dichotomy expressed in the article StephanR has posted, I’ll place this here. Some thoughts on:

NEOPLATONISM IN SCIENCE PAST AND FUTURE - BRUCE MACLENNAN

Already in the Pythagorean revival of late antiquity memory
was connected with spiritual practices, and biographers attributed a
prodigious memory to such figures as Pythagoras and Apollonius of
Tyana (Yates 1966, p. 56). Also beginning in antiquity was the use of
cosmologically significant structures, such as the zodiac, decans, and
planetary spheres, to organize ideas and their images (Yates 1966, p.
54). In this way the art of memory allowed the macrocosm to be reflected
in the microcosm of the individual mind.
...........................
In summary we may say that the new science took up the more formal,
logical, and abstract aspects of Neoplatonism, but left the more concrete,
imaginative, and symbolic aspects to the magi and their successors.
.............................
Thus the reality
we ordinarily experience is not the true, or most fundamental reality;
it is rather an image, shadow, or reflection, in fact, an illusion. True
reality is an immaterial abstract structure, imperceptible to our senses,
accessible only through reason and indirect experimentation.
This reductionist perspective is already apparent in Newton’s
explanation of color as wavelength. His division, on the basis of wavelength,
of the continuous spectrum into seven colors, explicitly analogized
with the seven tones of the diatonic scale, is just one example of
Newton’s intentionally Pythagorean approach, in which the hidden
quantities are real, and the manifest qualities, illusions (Bortoft 1996,
pp. 38–40, 192–212; Gage 1993, ch. 13, esp. p. 232). Indeed, the reduction
of experiential qualities to imperceptible quantities has been typical
in physics ever since the development of atomic theory. However,
modern science understands the hidden causes to be abstract and mathematical,
whereas Neoplatonism and the magical philosophy understood
them to be living…

Today’s “science” is peculiar. Its proponents find themselves in a Living world yet accredit the Origins of Life to ‘dead matter’ whilst expounding on the virtues of intellectual, critical, and rational thinking? One then finds the Motions of Life being replaced by the word “Energy”, one finds Chemistry having evolved from Alchemy, and one finds Astronomy having evolved from Astrology. In each case the Life Principle which imbued each of the ‘Progenitors’ of the later mutation of the actual Science has been separated from them leaving learned minds pondering over ‘dead matter’ while wondering from whence life emerged. People are listening to “mechanical philosophers” using “computational models of knowledge and cognition” as opposed to realizing that the “emergence and self-organization throughout nature” *is* the physical manifestation of Cognition in Nature!!

Instead one gets the narcissism of “complex systems theory, which attempts to find mathematical laws…” and other theories of Nature’s Ways. Nature has laid down the gauntlet even to these who are as yet STILL perplexed with regard to Her mysteries. The individual must decide for themselves what is and/or isn’t the case and let no amount of faux ‘intellectualism’ and claims to “rational” or “critical thinking” sway one’s recognition of what the Cosmos and Nature has made clearly perceptible by observation. Mankind’s supposed “reasoning” can be quite unusual sometimes. ‘He’ awoke to find the qualities of the Cosmos and Nature within ‘Himself’; then turned and walked away as if ‘He’ was then the sole possessor of the observable pre-existing Attributes and Laws from which ‘He’ is derived and of which ‘He’ is part and parcel.

Watch it carefully:

It is virtually impossible to imagine how a cell’s machines, which are mostly protein-based catalysts called enzymes, could have formed spontaneously as life first arose from nonliving matter around 3.7 billion years ago. - The Origin of Life on Earth – Scientific American - “The Origin of Life on Earth”:

Notice the still existent dichotomy expressed as the “cells machines” and consider the implications of the statement “life first arose from nonliving matter…”

What then is “non-living matter” as opposed to what would be its polar opposite ‘living matter’? Just as before with Alchemy and Astrology the Life Principle has been extracted here leaving strict mechanical processes to somehow blindly(?) self-organize into functional activities that are Life beneficial. Further dissociations of the Life Principle exist in today’s “science” as it renames the Life Principle in terms of “Energy”. The mechanistic “energy” of the ‘work’ function(s). Thus, there is no association with the Functioning Principles of Nature as Intelligences.

What is the Nature of That which then, according to the implication that Life “arose”, then subsequently infuses this concept of “non-living matter”? Where did the Life Principle exist before infusing the supposed “non-living matter” into what would then become ‘living matter’? Is it even appropriate to consider said Principle as having need of ‘localality’, a ‘Where’, prior to It’s infusion of the supposed “nonliving matter”?

There are, and have long been, philosophical ‘systems of thought’ predating this high tech and overly mechanistic era, for which “matter” may exist in a state, or condition, having the germ of Life latent. Yet that latent Life Principle has not been ‘quickened’ to flourish (a different kind of “evolution”) into the ‘modes’ of Consciousness we recognize as being “alive” or constituting that which one may say is a “living thing”. Thus, the characterization of “nonliving matter” would fall ‘neath the tree of subjectivity expecting “living matter” to be…? To be …what..?

Well, it would be “Matter” that has somehow ‘accidentally’; ‘self-organized’ into the resonant symphony of smaller components, ‘systems’, ‘sub-systems’ and functional processes that when considered in terms of the total package is a living ‘Being’, a functioning organism exhibiting the faculty of Consciousness wouldn't it?

Not having a clue then as to what Consciousness is; how then can one say what Consciousness isn’t? How then could ’They’ recognize ‘modes’ of Consciousness that may differ from the one’s to which ‘they’ are accustomed to? The enzymes in that article may not have consciously known what they were doing because they were guided (or following) what are referred to as Nature’s Laws. What then makes laws? The very same faculty that ‘Man’ uses to make laws…

M-I-N-D

Thus it was Hermetically given "As above; so below." There is no such things as "non-living matter".

[Michael V]

Solar,

Interesting that you should post that here, since Maxwell's model is similarly built on a failure to reason from first principles. You have not too careful hidden within your text the tired old fallacy of "intelligent design". Presumably you have been reading that book "How to construct arguments with logical fallacies and influence people". Anyhow, since you have put so many fish in the barrel, it would be rude not to shoot at least some small few:

...find themselves in a Living world yet accredit the Origins of Life to ‘dead matter’...whilst expounding on the virtues of intellectual, critical, and rational thinking

Put in the readers mind the idea that "life" is somehow an attribute of the underlying system. Excellent technique, start by creating an unjustified, unproven and unqualified false premise and then use that to cast doubt on the opposition - in this case: "intellectual, critical, and rational thinking".

the “emergence and self-organization throughout nature” *is* the physical manifestation of Cognition in Nature!!

Just to lightly brush the surface:
- A subtle use of the term "self" to try to create the association to choice, as in self-determination. How could electrons and protons possibly organise themselves, if not for the intervention of intelligence at some level.
- No matter how hard anyone tries, no-one could possibly work out how matter tends to clump together to create larger structures by a purely mechanical process. So by a process of (highly selective) elimination, "self-organisation" could only due to an underlying intelligence.

no amount of faux ‘intellectualism’.... and claims to “rational” or “critical thinking”.... sway one’s recognition of what the Cosmos and Nature has made clearly perceptible by observation.

So the argument goes, that because we are sentient and cognitive, and "alive", then the for us to be as we are, the designer, be it god or "Nature" or "the Cosmos", must have had those characteristics prior to our coming in to being, else how could we have those characteristics now. Design requires a designer (of some description or other) and anyone who claims that rational or critical thinking have led them to conclude otherwise, has used a process of "faux intellectualism". The accusation of faux intellectualism label can be thrown in both directions; the reader will have to decide for themselves where it most properly belongs.

It is virtually impossible to imagine how a cell’s machines,

Is this some sort of evidential argument...really?. That someone once wrote that they found a mystery too difficult a problem to solve, and thus declared it, with all the authority bestowed upon them by the publishers of Scientific American, that "It is virtually impossible to imagine".

Admittedly this is not an isolated incident. The Copenhagen Interpretation is a similar pronouncement: "we cannot work it out, so it will henceforth be declared to be spooky and weird and forever impenetrable to human cognition".

The enzymes in that article may not have consciously known what they were doing because they were guided (or following) what are referred to as Nature’s Laws. What then makes laws? The very same faculty that ‘Man’ uses to make laws… M-I-N-D

If the laws of society require the intelligence of humans to come into being, then the laws of nature must also require an intelligence to come into being - after all, laws don't make themselves.
Or perhaps Father Christmas did it. Santa is an invention designed to provide an answer to a mystery - "how did those stockings get filled with presents during the night", asked the children. Since the parents refuse to admit their participation, then yes, it must have been a white bearded fat man in a red suit coming down the chimney, after all, stockings don't fill themselves with presents, and laws don't make themselves.

There is no such things as "non-living matter".

On the contrary, there is no such thing as living matter. I think we easily identified this as a false premise right at the start.

Thus it was Hermetically given "As above; so below."

So "life" occurs "above", therefore it must also occur "below" at or beyond the sub-atomic level. Does this also mean that electrons or some lower level particle are shaped variously to resemble skateboards, suspension bridges and space stations or does that make this particular gem of wisdom just a bit silly.

Hide your honesty from the non-living, uncaring universe and geld your intellect appropriately, if it helps you rationalise a meaning of life. But you're gonna have to rationalise much more rigorously if you really hope to make the ridiculous sound plausible, let alone, not ridiculous.


Michael

[moses]

Something that is alive has experiencing, which some may term consciousness. Experiencing arises in us when there are brain electrical impulses. So a bell sends vibrations to the ear, which sends nerve impulses to somewhere in the brain where there is this strange transformation into experiencing - the sound that we associate with a bell.

So on one hand there is the nerve impulse and on the other there is experiencing. Now if we understand that the experiencing is life then we must associate electrical impulses with life. Thus Maxwell's model should have life possibly appearing whenever there are eletrical impulses. And seeing that matter fundamentally has eletrical impulses, one must concede the possibility of life being associated with matter.
Cheers,
Mo

[Solar]

Solar,

Interesting that you should post that here, since Maxwell's model is similarly built on a failure to reason from first principles. You have not too careful hidden ...

No.

There was nothing intended in my post to be "hidden" in any way, shape, form or fashion. It is directly stated as I intended to state it. It wasn’t necessary to read your comments any further than the accusation you’ve falsely made that I intended anything other than what was written. Shall we play this game you are so fond of wherein the slinging of terms meant to convey some form of intelligence merely serves to embellish nothing more than your own vaulted opinion?

No; we shall not.

I have seen nothing more than narcissistic scientism in your post by far, indeed on the rare chance that I read one of them, and don’t participate in discussion with you owing to your apparent inability to see beyond your own eyelashes. My earlier post (inspired by Kevin's questions and thoughts in the ATR thread) was placed in this thread because of the quoted article it contains elucidating on this very dichotomy. It is an appropriate place for it in light of said article. Yet sadly, from the very start, you attempt in delusion to make of my post something other than it actually is which doesn't warrant any further reading of your opinion.

...seeing that matter fundamentally has eletrical impulses, one must concede the possibility of life being associated with matter.
Cheers,
Mo

That, in my mind, is a reasonable deduction. Yet, as stated, some aspects of today's "science" seems to be about the business of trying to extricate the Life Principle from the Continuum within which we find ourselves and subsequently propping itself up as the only font of knowledge and experience when it isn't. There are ways of Knowing & Understanding far beyond the grasp of materialistic science for which no model can even remotely mimic. This is something individuals Know and Understand, Intuitively; in the quietude of their own Being.

[Solar]

Nice.

"Natural Philosophy and Relativity of Boscovich"

I have to get that.

[seasmith]

$1.00 Kindle, $9.00 paper (used).



http://www.amazon.com/Theory-Natural-Ph ... 0262520036









StefanR preview, page 3

[Plasmatic]

The upshot of
Boscovich’s theory of matter is that matter consists of unextended point
centres surrounded by fields of “force”.19
Boscovich insists that his ‘forces’ are nothing mysterious and that they
contain a ‘readily intelligible mechanism’. The difficulty we have thinking
of them in terms of non-extended points arises from our inability to
perceive them by the senses. It is thus necessary to build up a more
adequate conception of matter through a process of reasoning (throughout
the text Boscovich negotiates a position in relation to induction and
champions the rights of deduction; on the use made of induction in the
book see p. 30). This attack on the senses is what Nietzsche will comment
on around 1884-5 as one of the most significant aspects of Boscovich (it
means for him, as we shall see, giving up on materialistic atomism). This
attack on sensualist epistemology has been a principal feature of modern
philosophy of science since Descartes, and the attempt to go beyond
perception plays a crucial role in more contemporary attempts to ‘think
beyond the human condition’ (one of the best examples of this being the
work of Bergson).20

Those who don't have an explicit knowledge of the epistemological facets of the opposing schools of concepts will not understand these points. Central to this debate is the understanding of the role of perception and logic as relates to meaning in cognition. This is why the various rationalist approaches are usually anti-induction and so heavily deductivist/formal. That is until a new breed of neo mystic-irrationalist tried to save appearances by making meaning a matter of "creation" from nothing as it were, that is, from nothing empirical. Thats right, to these rationalist, we don't discover causal connections inductively and integrate them into generalizations. "Discovery" is a bolt from the blue called intuition. That is, we don't discover, we CREATE meaning and truth. Good bye, Aristotle.......hello again Plato....

[marengo]

This thread is about James Clerk Maxwell's physical model (presumably of the Aether)

The fact is that his model did not work in the sense that he could not derive a viable physics from it.
Maxwell's Aether model required an infinity of gears and wheels and was complex to the extent that one could not believe that Space could possibly be that complex.
I cant help but compare Maxwell's model with the simplicity of my own Aether model.

Maxwell made a fundamental error in designing his Aether model. He took both the electric and the magnetic effects to be characteristics of the Aether. This then led to the difficulty of representing the known interactions between the two effects within the Aether model-- hence the gears and wheels.

The fact is that magnetism is NOT an effect which occurs at the Aether level.
Magnetism is merely a derivative of the electric field.

[Solar]

This thread is about James Clerk Maxwell's physical model (presumably of the Aether)

Actually no; it isn’t.

To briefly summarize:

Although the topic of the Aether has been referenced I think member Plasmatic has correctly identified the nature of the thread as being primarily epistemological with regard to the approaches of Boschovich, Maxwell, Newton, Leibnitz, Descartes, Aristotle, Plato etc in historically comparing scientific reasoning overall. The thread also covers such ideations as “contact”, physical “extension” versus mathematical “extension”, “force(s)”, “matter”, the continuity of what must be a Continuum despite its discreet appearances etc - and it does so along the lines of Natural Philosophy.

Now now approaching its sixth birthday member Stefan R has done a wonderful job of steering the thread by continually referencing comparable material relevant to the thread’s overall Philosophical tone.