Not too long ago, I had a discussion with a friend of mine about the limitations of the laws of nature. He argued against the idea of a 'perfect' law of physics, i.e., a law of physics which has no exceptions. I disagree with him and here I will explain why.
First, let me clarify my friends arguments. According to him laws of physics are not neatly obeyed: energy is not conserved in certain physical processes*; quantum field theory stops working at a certain wavelength; and all around it is a messy business doing physics. I think he is wrong. My friend is essentially proposing a new principle of physics. Here I will understand a principle to mean a law of nature about the other laws of nature, a kind of meta-law. His principle states that principles of nature cannot be exact and as such we might call it the "Inexactness Principle". This principle is of the form "all rules have exceptions", which cannot be logically true: according to the rule it too must have some exceptions, for otherwise it would hold perfectly, which is not allowed. That is to say that, there must be certain principles of physics which do hold exactly for the Inexactness Principle to hold true. Thus, a serious interpretation of the Inexactness Principle leads us to a contradiction. This refutation is at least somewhat general. My friend is what we might call an epistemological pessimist in that he argues against the power of ideas (in this case ideas about physics). But in doing so, pessimists needs to use ideas and theories to justify their pessimism. It is for this reason that epistemological pessimism is inherently weak and contradictory. Those who value science and philosophy should be aware of this argument. I am optimistic about our ability to nip pessimism in the bud.
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In the sixties a meme was born. The meme in question is 'the personal is political' and in 'current year' 2017 it keeps popping up in articles online. I want to push back against this meme somewhat because it is partly false and I think it can be harmful. Here I will explain why.
First of all, what is politics? Politics can be seen as a set of open problems as well as solutions to past (political) problems. This is generally how we draw lines between disciplines. The same is true of physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, etc. The problems that professionals in a discipline concern themselves with are what define that discipline. As such, the problems that politicians and political scientists concern themselves with are what define politics. These issues are mostly about how to improve a society, e.g. how can life be made better for everyone involved in a society, what kind of institutions does a society need to have, etc. The meme 'the personal is political' states that all personal problems are political and all political problems are personal; this is at least partly wrong. Political problems, it has to be admitted, usually cause suffering, and in this sense political problems can result in personal problems. Such personal problems can then justly be called political. However, the reverse is not always true. There are personal problems which are not political. Consider something as benign as what to have for breakfast, or what movie to watch tonight. I think these problems are personal problems, in the sense that I alone will have to solve them, mostly because these choices cannot cause others to suffer. Therefore it is difficult to create institutions to solve such personal problems. In fact, there is a whole class of personal issues which cannot be solved by institutions. These issues concern the question how to be happy? (Utopian thinkers disagree with me here --- they think that institutions should be created in order to make a heaven on earth --- but they are wrong.) It would be misleading to call these problems political problems. The same is true for art. Recently, I bumped into this quote by Toni Morrison: "All good art is political! There is none that isn't. And the ones that try hard not to be political are political by saying, 'We love the status quo'." I think she is wrong. Art, like all other disciplines, is about solving certain problems. In this case: how to write a good story? how to engage the reader? how to make a beautiful painting or a good piece of music? Political problems can be mixed in, this could make the work of art more interesting, and a lot of good art is about politics. But not all art is. Otherwise, what would distinguish art from politics? In fact, I am of the opinion that one should not have to think about politics. By all means, think about politics if you are interested in it. Make it your life if it makes you happy. But do not feel obligated to do so. Just like you should not feel obligated to be interested in physics, video games, or occult movies, we should all be free to think about the topics that interest use, and we should let others explore the topics that interest them. But let us not be coerced into doing so. 'The political is personal' blurs the boundaries between different disciplines, and it makes us feel obligated to change our personal lives for bad reasons. We can all be a little happier by realising that sometimes 'the personal is just personal'. Currently I'm reading Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery and in the first chapter there is a rather beautiful refutation of induction which I thought worth sharing.
The problem of induction is the problem of how to justify our believes: why do I think that my ideas are true? Inductivism is the idea that our belief is based upon a generalisation of a finite number of cases, e.g. we see a couple of white swans and conclude that all swans are white. Popper, following Hume, points out that the logical support* for induction is missing. Why do a finite number of observations justify general theories? What justifies this jump from the particular to the general? (In this case: why are we sure that no black swans exist?) In fact, the problem runs deeper, for even if there was some justification for the principle of induction then we have yet to justify that justification and this is the problem of induction all over again. The same is true for all justifications of our knowledge; we can always ask: why is that justification true and not some other justification? Justifications are always easy to vary and easy to vary theories are "not even wrong", we reject them outright. The idea of justifiable knowledge is refuted and with it the hope for certainty; but that is okay, certainty was not as interesting an idea anyway. *As Popper points out, inductivism has to be either a synthetic or a tautological truth. It seems to me, as it does to Popper, that inductivism is a synthetic truth. Accepting this will lead to the above reasoning. |