Interview with Cumhuriyet

[To be published, likely in an edited version, in the Turkish national newspaper, Cumhuriyet]

1. What is the current most important debate in the philosophy of science for you, philosophically and methodologically?

Only speaking for myself, and not for academic philosophy in general, I would say that the most important debate concerns the nature of scientific reasoning itself, what it has in common with other forms of human thought (e.g., ideology, mythology, morality, 'common-sense', etc.), and also how it is distinct from them. The prevailing idea of science for a long time had it that scientific reasoning makes a radical break with these other forms in that it gives us an impartial view of the world. While this is certainly to some extent true, more sophisticated reflection on science reveals that it is also deeply culture-bound, not just in the sense that cultural values play a role in the interpretation of data, but also in the very choice of programs of research. The sciences that deal with the distant, experimentally unrepeatable past, such as paleontology and cosmology, are particularly susceptible to influence by elements of pre-scientific thinking.  I've often thought, for example, that one would learn a good deal by doing a comparative study of Big Bang cosmology with creation myths from around the world. This is not to say that moden cosmology does not have a unique relation to the truth among all the different ways human beings have accounted for their origins, but only that it would be surprising if no pre-scientific, mythological tropes made their way into the way in which scientists talk about this highly speculative question. 

2. Did Harun Yahya send you his book of creation? What do you think about it? (Maybe you know that the magazine of the Turkish Academy of Science and Technology censored the February issue, which was about Darwin's theory. It was a big scandal here.)

No, and I'm offended that he left me out! I would have liked to pore over all the beautiful images, particularly the one of a caddis fly that turned out to be a fishing lure Harun Yahya had copied and pasted from the internet (to see the work of the talented artist who created it, go here: http://www.grahamowengallery.com/fishing/more-fly-tying.html). I have tremendous respect for traditional belief systems --I've already said I think we should study the way scientific thinking overlaps with them-- but there's nothing 'traditional' about a politically driven mass media campaign to deny the best available theory of the origins of life on earth. Real traditionalists are not worried about that theory. I think the content of the claims of creationists, whether of the Old Testament literalist school or of the intelligent-design school, are entirely without interest. To the extent that their movement is interesting, it is so as a social and political phenomenon.  One interesting question is why it only gains traction in certain societies, e.g., Turkey and the United States, and not so much in others, such as Saudi Arabia and Sweden.  It seems to me that in the Saudi Arabian case we are looking at a society in which what the individual citizen thinks about matters such as this is of no consequence, as long as the citizen behaves in the way that the state dictates.  In the case of Sweden there is a high degree of freedom of expression, coupled with high science literacy and a general lack of interest in fundamentalist or revivalist religious movements.  But in the US and Turkey both there is robust and chaotic democracy, with different factions competing to have their vision of the social good predominate. Couple these with mediocre science education, a proneness towards populist suspicion of elite expertise, and a religious tradition that cannot easily accommodate the thought that humans are a particular kind of animal, and what do you have? The spurious pseudoscience of people like Henry M. Morris and Harun Yahya.

 3. A recent book indicts Darwin for the crimes of the Nazis. Everbody knows Darwin died half a century before the Nazis came to power. How reasonable is it to allocate moral responsibility to the scientists of the past, as has been done by some scholars and many fundamental religionists?

It is not at all reasonable to allocate moral responsibility in that way. Nazism, as well as the contemporary eugenics movement in the United States, England, and elsewhere, was more influenced by the caricatured version of evolution promoted by Herbert Spencer and other so-called "social Darwinists" who stressed the "survival of the fittest" over all other mechanisms of selection in nature.  This phrase is usually attributed to Darwin, though in fact it was coined by Spencer himself, and presupposes a framework for the acquisition of traits that is more Lamarckian (the inheritance of traits acquired by the parents) than Darwinian (the inheritance of traits through sexual selection).  Certainly, having the biggest teeth and claws is sometimes the best way for a creature to make it to reproductive age and pass on its genes, but docility and cooperation often work just as well.  For example, among baboons there is a high mortality rate for adolescent males, each trying to show that he's stronger than the others by fighting his way to the top, and often getting killed in the process.  But in any group a certain percentage of males will prefer to stick around the females and engage in nothing more dangerous than food collection and reciprocal grooming.  These nice guys make it to reproductive age in high numbers and pass their genes on, and they do so precisely by not manifesting those behavioral traits --bravery, strength, etc.-- that a certain cartoonish version of Darwinism associates with 'fitness'.  Fitness in a Darwinian sense is whatever works to get one's genes passed on, and not necessarily strength, let alone blondeness or any of the other traits Nazi ideologues inexplicably associated with biological superiority. 

4. What is the main impact of Leibniz on the history of philosophy of science?

Leibniz is curious to the extent that he was a very great thinker in a number of areas of scientific investigation who nonetheless did not contribute much in the way of scientific discoveries or breakthroughs.  There is a "Leibniz's Law," but it pertains strictly to metaphysics and so is, of course, subject to debate, unlike, e.g., Boyle's Law, named for Leibniz's English contemporary Robert Boyle, who discovered something indisputably true about the behavior of gases.  Leibniz was instrumental in the develoment of the infinitesimal calculus, though it's not clear whether he or Isaac Newton got there first.  He was among the first people to properly identify fossils as the true remains of animals, rather than as 'imitations' of animals.  Some people say that his relativistic view of time and space, in contrast with Newton's view of these as a sort of absolute container into which physical things may be inserted, was an important anticipation of certain developments in 20th-century physics.  I believe however that a good historian of science and of natural philosophy should not get into the practice of handing out laurels to thinkers in the past according to how well they managed to anticipate what we today take to be true.  They should be judged on their own terms, which is to say how well they responded to the conceptual difficulties that were present in their own scientific context.  It is in these terms that Leibniz's genius is most evident.  

 

5. You believe that race does not exist. Why do you think most poeple believe that there is? What is a human being for you?

 
All the scientific evidence suggests that race is what might be called a "historical kind," yet one that consistently gets mistaken for a natural kind.  That is to say, racial categories emerge in human history as a result of social circumstances rather than as a result of the recognition of some deep biological reality, yet once they emerge they appear to describe reality in the same way as, e.g., the categories we employ for talking about animal or plant species.  But 'races' are not species: there are no barriers to interfertiliy between, say, Inuits and Pygmies, or between Pygmies and Germans, and all of the visible physiological differences between these groups are in the end of no real biological significance.  What's more, the bare fact that there are visible physiological differences between humans, that for example someone from Stockholm has lighter hair than someone from Mogadishu, does not entail, as was generally supposed from the time of Blumenbach and Kant's work in physical anthropology up until the end of World War II, that there must be a set of basic human subtypes --Negroid, Mongoloid, etc.-- in the same way that there is a set of species of butterfly in the genus Papilio.  We know of many cases of ethnic groups perceived as 'racially' different in one epoch or region but not in another: for example, in the US 100 years ago, Irish immigrants were thought by the Anglo-Saxon elites to be 'racially' inferior, whereas today it simply would not make any sense to talk about 'the Irish race' in America.  In principle, there is no reason why, e.g., the perception of 'Blacks' in the US could not follow a similar course as the perception of the Irish.  In Romania today, the Roma (i.e., 'Gypsies') are often perceived as naturally or innately different from the majority ethnic group, while a foreign visitor to Romania might be forgiven for failing to be able to distinguish them at all from other Romanian citizens.  In Germany, the difference between Germans and Turks tends to be conceived along naturalistic or essentialistic lines, whereas a Turk in Canada is more easily absorbed into that vaguely defined class we refer to as 'white' people.  'White' here clearly functions not as a biological notion, and certainly not as a description of skin color, but more as an honorary term indicating social inclusion.  Indeed, in South Africa under apartheid, Japanese businessmen were explicitly classified as honorary whites, while lower-status Chinese merchants were designated as 'coloured'. What a vivid illustration of the social construction of race! My point is that we need to stop conflating the unfortunate existence of these social categories with biological ones.  It is not for political reasons that I insist upon this, either, but only in recognition of some basic scientific facts.  In another possible world it might have been the case that human beings today should be obliged to coexist with other, inferior humans, e.g., if we had not killed off all the Neandertals, we would have had to face a situation in which a subgroup of humans --not homo sapiens, but members of the homo genus nonetheless-- really was cognitively and culturally inferior to us.  That would have required us to come up with different moral and political philosophies than the ones we have, most of which are today based on the presumption of universal equality among humans.  But the Neandertals are all dead, and all of the remaining subgroups of humanity are cognitively and culturally equal, with only trivial differences in appearance between them. That's just a fact.

6. Which is the most influencial recent popular science book for you?

I don't read much popular science (for me, the more obscure, the better!), though like a lot of people I've been impressed with Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel.  I might also recommend the little-known but immensely readable book by Daniel Lord Smail called On Deep History and the Brain.  Both of these authors attempt to show a way of connecting the academic discipline of history to the natural sciences.  In the end, I agree with them that this approach will prove most useful in resolving a number of lingering questions about human nature. 

Comments

[TW]

Thanks for this. Am I right to assume that this was conducted by email, as seems to be so common today?