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The Foundations of Science: The Missing Parameter Arthur M. Young stx Q175 Y65 1985 ~ BROADSIDE EDITIONS ~ $3.es I THEFOLINDATIONS OFSC Missing Parameter summ artzt vincingly spelled out in Arthu REFLEXIVE UNIVERSE anc TRYOFMEANING. Therea somerhing crucial is lacking ir world view is widespread, Eur back on gen eralizations. In contrast, young,s targeting is precise, his evidence detailed. science-, he demonstrates, has failed to grasp th. fundamental orga nizingrore of the ;;;;'rum of action, or photon, which has the measure for- mula of angular moqentum (mlzltl anJgov- erns the countlesscycles of action tlrrorgi which cosmos and consciousness evolvel Here, he argu-es, we find ourselves unavoidrbit con- fronted with the underlying purposefulness of the univers e. Examini, g .o"'rrtri b u ti o iro * Planck and Heisenberg]fro* Bateson" , and Bohm and szent-Gyor#i, young provides an overview of the effects of quarrt,r* physics and the consciousness movement on the history of science . . . . Essential reading for anyone per- plexed about the nature of reility. I $ grduate of Princeton university Arthur Yt. Young, deyeloper and design ei'of ,h. Bell lglicopter, is the author of Tb; Reflexiie uniugrse, and The Geometry of Meani,nrg and founder of the Institute-for the Studj, of consciousness in Berkeley, california. RosERr BrucGS AssocrArEs ISBN# 0-931191_03_3 ii;i THE FOUNDATIONS OF SCIENCE: The Missing Parameter Arthur M. Young ROBERT BRIGGS ASSOCIATES SAN FRANCISCO l I THE FOUNDATIONS OF SCIENCE was originally titled "Are the Foundations of Science Inadequate?" and published in Vol. 7, No. 1, of ReVision. It is reprinted here with the kind permission of ReVision. All rights are reserved. No part of this publica tion may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permis sion in writing from the publishers, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a written review for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper or broadcast. Copyright © 1984 ReVision Printed in the U.S.A. Published by Robert Briggs Associates Box 9 Mill Valley, California 94942 Designed by Mark Ong First Broadside Edition 1985 ISBN# 0-931191-03-3 '> The recent interest in a cosmology or paradigm which can explain man and life has rarely been accompanied by any attempt to criticize or re structure science. However, in recent years several eminent scientists have expressed the need in science for a recognition of something other than the parameters mass, length, and time, which have so far served as the foundations of physics. These criticims strike at the core of science and have an important bearing on its implications, especially for man and his place in the uni verse. My two books, The Reflexive Universe (1976) and The Geome try of Meaning (1976), written in the early 1960s, were based on my sense of this need in physics and other sciences. The following gives a brief account of the growth of science and its cleavage of our culture, then comments on the consciousness move ment and on the contributions thereto which come closest to my own ideas, thereby giving the reader an introduction to my theory of proc ess. Then I shall quote from several well-known scientists who, in dependently of the consciousness movement, have indicated the need in science for what amounts to an added parameter. I shall conclude with what I believe this parameter to be. Over the 300-odd years since the origin of modern science (in New ton and the Copernican revolution), there has been, of course, criti cism of science. Blake rebuked Newton for his single vision; Bergson proposed that evolution could only be accounted for by what he called an elan vital; and countless others claimed that science simply could not deal with the spiritual side of man. But during my lifetime the prestige of science has increased to such an extent that it now displaces religion as a fundamental credo. Ac cording to deterministic and reductionistic philosophy there are no 1 longer grounds for retaining a belief in spirit. Science will account for it all; no longer will it be necessary to cloak any part of human life in mystery. Yet even with the triumph of science, as evidenced by the growth of technology on which modern civilization depends, there remains part of life which does not fall within the province of science. Science may explain the how but it cannot explain the why. This view is so long standing that it seems common sense. The scientist pursues his own interests and leaves morality to the church. The layman has his work days and his Sundays, and all questions are referred to the appropriate department. However satisfactory this solution may be for most people, it de prives science of its greatest incentive, the search for truth-a pursuit which need not and must not be confined to certain areas or pro fessions. In the seventeenth century, Francis Bacon distinguished be tween primary and secondary causes, and assigned science to the latter. While this distinction may hold true for the cultivated fields of science, it breaks down at science's frontiers-as I discovered in 1959 when I began my inquiry into ESP and other "non-scientific" phenomena. The scientist is not just pursuing secondary causes; he is forced to come to grips with primary causes, and must revise basic assumptions. Such a "paradigm shift" was necessary early in this century with the advent of quantum physics, which got its start in 1900 when Planck proposed that light is radiated in quanta of action, whole units which do not, like waves, dissipate as they travel through space. A photon from Sirius arrives on earth with the same energy it had when it left Sirius. Quantum physics necessitated a basic revision in the foundations of science. Its implications are still not worked out. After Planck, Heisen berg discovered the uncertainty principle, which undermined the basic classical assumption of things having a determinable position in space and a predictable future. More recently the results of the EPR (Ein stein, Podolsky, Rosen) experiment indicate the photon is outside of space and time. Meanwhile, other sciences such as biology and psy chology continue to model themselves on classical physics, which as Oppenheimer observed "has been quite outdated." THE CONSCIOUSNESS MOVEMENT Then in the early seventies there began the "consciousness move ment." The war in Vietnam, experiences with LSD, the interest in yoga 2 and Zen, and the increasing interest in ESP contributed to what be came not a paradigm, but for most a life style that was in part a reaction against the materialism of the scientific establishment. My own interest in consciousness began in 194 7 with Zen and Hin du philosophy. Precognitive dreams and the discovery that I could do ESP myself led me to search for a scientific basis for telepathy and re lated phenomena. This took me into ten years of study of quantum physics and other sciences and resulted in the two books already men tioned. What I found was not just a scientific basis for ESP, but the necessity to reinterpret the implications of science. The quantum of action, I believe, holds the key. It not only contrib utes the dynamic that was missing in classical physics, but requires that we recognize indeterminacy (action) rather than law as fundamen tal. Laws are important but they are, as it were, a scaffold for the con struction of life, which is now seen as the principal theme of universal process. This put me at odds with both science and the consciousness move ment. To science I was a metaphysician, or a mystic; to the conscious ness movement my reinterpretation of science put too much of a de mand on the reader. If science was wrong, why bother with it? But to fail to answer science in its own terms puts the consciousness movement at the mercy of the outdated assumptions of classical phy sics. Parapsychology has become a cargo cult, with parapsychologists imitating scientific protocol in the hopes of objectifying their results. There's nothing wrong with objectivity of method, but the assumption that the universe is exclusively objective theoretically excludes con sciousness and ESP. The fact that science is encountering a similar lack of objectivity (particles have no identity; the photon is "virtual," i.e., nonobserv able) only makes the scientific establishment more insecure and less tolerant toward suggestions from outside the fraternity. BATESON AND THE GEOMETRY OF MEANING To come now to individual contributions to the consciousness movement, I consider that of Gregory Bateson to be outstanding. Bate son was the first to apply the notion of logical types to problems in sci ence. His book Steps Toward an Ecology of Mind (1975) shows that nature is more than physical objects-it includes their interrelation ship. Interrelationship is mental. This distinction he elevates into a difference of "logical type" -a term first introduced by Bertrand Rus- 3 sell to deal with the confusion between a class and its members. Russell defined a class as a different "logical type" than its members (the class of elephants, he said, is not an elephant). Since the beginning of philosophy, no formalism has been agreed upon to distinguish physical objects, or sense data, from concepts. By applying Russell's notion of logical types to this issue, Bateson made a start on this formalism. I have been interested in the idea of logical types and the question of higher logical types since 1925 when I first read Russell. The question of higher types, as far as I know, has not been established. Some people think, for example, that mammals would constitute a higher logical type (than elephants), and vertebrates another, but this extension doesn't hold up. The class of mammals is a larger class, but it is still a class. In The Geometry of Meaning, I drew on position and its successive derivatives-velocity, acceleration, and the third derivative, change of acceleration-to establish a four-fold analysis which I considered to be equivalent to that of logical typing. I found this could be correlated to the four functions of Jung and the four causes of Aristotle, and even made sense of the four elements-an idea that antedated Greek philosophy and was the basis for astrology (see Figure 1). Figure 1 Control Acceleration Position Velocity The third derivative is change of acceleration. It is the way we con trol a car, and is the basis of cybernetics. Control is not generally in cluded in science because, being at the option of the operator, it cannot 4 be used for prediction. But, as I will show, it is of great importance for cosmology. While there is no formal rule for logical types, there is for the de rivatives: each successive derivative is obtained by the division of the previous one by time. (Acceleration is the rate of change of velocity, i.e., velocity divided by time). What is most important is that the fourth de rivative, the criterion for control, is the goal or the target-which is a position; so we are back to the same category (position) that we started with. Position and its derivatives then constitute what is known as a "four operator": we return to the starting point after four steps. This be comes the basis for the cycle of action to which I will refer later. When I met Bateson in 1976 at a seminar he gave at Lindisfarne, I was interested that he equated the distinction between physical object and concept to position and its first derivative. He assigned the first de rivative, which he recognized as a ratio, to the world of ideas. "The ratio between 5 and 10 pounds of oats," he said, "is not part of the ma terial world. It does not have mass, it does not have any other physical attributes, it is an idea." I had myself correlated the first derivative to idea, but also had extended the correlation to the second and third de rivatives, which I assigned to emotion and control respectively. The existence of control as an entity that can be given mathematical expression on par with other measure formulae of physics is of im mense import. It demolishes the impasse created by determinism and shows just how determinism, instead of being in opposition to free will, becomes the means to making free will effective. Man makes machines which he controls. By controlling them he extends his free dom. Thus the whole implication of the "laws" of science has been grossly misinterpreted. The laws of nature make it possible to control nature. But if man can extend his freedom by using the laws of nature, why can't nature do so? Is man not part of nature? My thesis is that nature does just that. Life is that point in the development of organization at which nature uses its own laws to extend freedom. The plant, by using the laws of chemistry to grow and reproduce (t his is what the cell does), conquers time. The animal, which inherits the principle of cellular organization from the plant, goes a step further and uses the laws of chemistry to attain mobility and conquer space. Man has the potential to conquer both. This increase of freedom, from the first unicellular 5 plants to man, is the payoff which the investment in determinism, char acterized by molecules, represents. THE EMERGENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE ARC This introduction to the theory of process enables me to address another aspect of the consciousness movement. This is the idea of "emergence"-the interpretation of consciousness, free will, etc., as something that emerges with the more highly developed life forms. Many in the consciousness movement seem to feel that by calling a faculty such as sensitivity, growth, choice, consciousness, etc., emer gent, they provide an explanation. My reaction to this is to ask: Where was it before it emerged? This brings me to what I call the arc (see Fig ure 2)-an overall view of the entire sweep of levels of organization in nature (the Great Chain of Being, but updated to include the discover ies of quantum physics). This arc depicts the descent from the initial freedom of light or the life spark, to the constraint of molecules and molar substance, followed by the ascent back to freedom. Figure 2 Level I. Light Man II. Nuclear particles Animals III. Atoms Plants IV. Molecules and molar objects Nuclear particles, which are subject to forces and the constraint of time, still have some freedom of motion, hence the impossibility of assigning a definite position to an electron. Atoms, which are con strained in position, still have freedom to absorb or release energy. Molecules are constrained in both position and energy and so provide the determinism on which the higher entities, cells and multicellular organisms, can build. 6