The Thwarting of Laplace's Demon: Arguments Against the Mechanistic World-View

242 Pages·1995·11.03 MB·English

by  Richard Green

The Thwarting of Laplace's
Demon
Arguments against the Mechanistic World-View
Richard Green
THE THWARTING OF LAPLACE'S DEMON
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The Thwarting of
Laplace's Demon
Arguments against the Mechanistic
World-View
Richard Green
Associate Member, Department of Philosophy
Monash University, Australia
M
St. Martin's Press
© Richard H. Green 1995
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of
this publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or
transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with
the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988,
or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying
issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court
Road, London W1P9HE.
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this
publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil
claims for damages.
First published in Great Britain 1995 by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
ISBN 0-333-62766-0
10 9 8 7 6 54 3 2 1
04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97 96 95
Printed in Great Britain by
Ipswich Book Co Ltd
Ipswich, Suffolk
First published in the United States of America 1995 by
Scholarly and Reference Division,
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC.,
175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10010
ISBN 0-312-12472-4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Green, Richard, Ph. D.
The thwarting of Laplace's demon : arguments against the
mechanistic world-view / Richard Green,
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-312-12472-4
1. Science—Philosophy. 2. Causality. 3. Determinism (Philosophy)
I. Title.
Q175.G715 1995
501—dc20 94-43401
CIP
To my wife Genevieve
and children
Benita, Karina, Dan and John
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Contents
Acknowledgements ix
The Argument in Outline xi
Introduction
Part One An Overview
1 The Challenge of Laplace's Demon 13
2 The Continuing Failure to Explain Life
Mechanistically 41
3 Reasons for Thinking that Life is Non-Laplacean 50
Part Two The Ascent of Intelligence through Life
4 The Logic of Life 65
5 The Behaviour of Lower Organisms 81
6 The Infinite Resourcefulness of Human
Intelligence 98
7 The Logic of Learning 117
8 The Mind 132
9 Indeterministic Causality 149
Part Three Non-Laplacean Biology
10 Vitalism Reappraised 167
11 The Non-Laplacean Underpinnings of Embryogenesis 174
12 Non-Laplacean Evolution 190
Appendix: On Brains and Codes 204
Notes and References 209
Bibliography 218
Index 223
vn
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Acknowledgements
I thank the following people for reading the typescript of this
book and for their comments and encouragement: Raziel Abelson,
David Armstrong, Stephen Clark, Richard Franklin, Alan Gould,
Tim Green, Bill Joske, Richard McDonough, David Stove and
Raymond Tallis. I especially thank Professor Tallis for his help
and very strong support. The book has benefited, I am sure, from
my footnotes on embryogenesis which were added on his advice.
The intellectual adventure of exploring the issues dealt with in
the book was made less lonely by the free-ranging discussions in
nattiral philosophy which I had with my father, John Green, every
Christmas from 1975 until his death in 1988. Sadly, he did not
live to see the book in print. But he did have the satisfaction
shortly before he died of knowing that the main thoughts had
been worked out.
I thank Jean Whit worth for typing the original manuscript. I
thank Miss Dorothy Hayes for providing me with a quiet room
in which to write an earlier, related, manuscript and for the meals
she cooked for me.
Work on the book proceeded under difficult circumstances. I
am very grateful to my sister-in-law, Christine Broderick, whose
steadfast friendship made these circumstances easier for me to
endure. More than anything else I was helped during these years
by the love, understanding and wise intelligence of my beloved
wife, Genevieve. The years spent working out and developing
the thoughts in the book coincided with the growing-up years of
our daughters Benita and Karina, with most of the childhood of
our son Dan, and with the early childhood of our son John. May
the book be some recompense to Genevieve and to our children
for the many times when I let my intellectual commitments keep
me from being with them.
IX