Ludwig Wittgenstein on the Arithmetical Statement “2 + 2 = 4”

The philosopher Michael Dummett called Ludwig Wittgenstein a “full-blooded conventionalist” and even an “anarchist” when it came to his philosophy of mathematics. Other philosophers — mainly Wittgensteinians — strongly reject these accusations. Nonetheless, convention — obviously! - plays a part in mathematics.

Firstly, it must be said that that it’s hard to tie all of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s positions and comments on mathematics together into a single ism. (Not that putting a philosopher in a neat and tidy box is of supreme importance.) And that may not simply be because Wittgenstein’s views are “so deep”. It may partly (or even largely) be because Wittgenstein’s prose style makes things very difficult. And it may also be because Wittgenstein is believed to have contradicted himself at various places — even during the same “period”.

Of course, it would be up to me to demonstrate all this with mountains of textual exegesis, which many Wittgenstein-obsessed writers and philosophers have indeed endlessly done over the decades (i.e., in order to advance their own hermeneutics of Wittgenstein). (See ‘Taking Wittgenstein at His Word: A Textual Study’ by Robert Fogelin.)

Conventionalism

The word “conventionalist” will be used in this essay. This is how many philosophers — and others — have seen Wittgenstein’s (“late”) philosophy of mathematics. (See ‘Convention’.) That’s certainly how the philosopher Michael Dummett (1925–2011) saw Wittgenstein’s philosophy of maths. Indeed, Dummett used the rhetorical words “full-blooded conventionalist” and even “anarchist” about Wittgenstein’s philosophy.

Dummett expressed Wittgenstein’s position in this way:

“What makes a [mathematical] answer correct is that we are able to agree in acknowledging it as correct.”

Yet Dummett’s very own verificationism seems (at least to some extent) conventionalist in nature. (See ‘Verificationism’ and ‘Dummett’s Verificationism’.) So perhaps all this is largely a dispute regarding the semantics of the term “conventionalism”.

That said, Dummett’s words (directly above) about Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics may not be entirely about (mere) convention. After all, there also needs to be some kind of agreement about (what are taken to be) mathematical truths — otherwise we’d be in the situation in which an individual mathematician could have his own truths about his own mathematical statements, and even his own individual ways of establishing such truths.

So there must be some form of intersubjectivity involved here.

And in order to achieve that, conventions will be at least part of the story.

Of course, many Wittgenstein experts dispute the categorisation of “conventionalist”. (The Wittgenstein acolyte P.M.S Hacker regards it as blasphemy — see here.) That’s partly because disputes on “what Wittgenstein really meant” are legion.

Yet such experts can cite Wittgenstein’s own words to back up their positions.

For example, in Wittgenstein’s Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (which is largely made up of posthumously-published lectures, etc.), we have this:

“Mathematical truth isn’t established by their all agreeing that it’s true.”

As well as the following from the same book:

“[I]t has often been put in the form of an assertion that the truths of logic are determined by a consensus of opinions. Is this what I am saying? No.”

So Wittgenstein-was-not-a-conventionalist philosophers may well have a point — as we shall soon see.

The Arithmetical Statement “2 + 2 = 4”

What does Wittgenstein’s general position on mathematics amount to?

To make things simpler: what about Wittgenstein’s take on a single arithmetical statement - say, “2 + 2 = 4”?

Firstly, Wittgenstein makes a distinction between a reading of a mathematical statement in terms of the (simply put) conventions it abides by, and what that statement actually means.

So is it the case that the statement “2 + 2 = 4” is taken to be true entirely because of the conventions we use?

It certainly the case that the symbols in that arithmetical statement are conventional. That is, we needn’t have used the symbols “2”, “+”, “4” and “=”. (Other cultures have different numerals and symbols for numbers.) We could just as easily have used the symbols and words “flip”, “flop”, “@” and “Kripke”.

So what about the meaning of the statement “2 + 2 = 4”?

On a simplistic, naive or even political reading, someone may say that the meaning of the statement “2 + 2 = 4” is the following:

Our society, at one point in history, decided that ‘4’ is the sum of ‘2 + 2’.

Of course this must mean that “our society” must also have decided what the word “sum” means and also what the symbols “+”, “=” and “2” mean. (That’s only if individual symbols can have a meaning outside of their statemental/sentential — and larger — contexts.)

In any case, Wittgenstein himself expressed a very simple argument against this position.

In his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein wrote the following:

“Certainly, the propositions ‘Human beings believe that twice two is four’ and ‘Twice two is four’ do not mean the same.”

The meaning of the statement “2 + 2 = 4” can’t literally be, “Our society, at one point in history, decided that ‘4’ is the sum of ‘2 + 2’” (or anything similar to that).

Those words are, after all, a description of symbol-use, historical and sociological facts, etc. And such descriptions may also include facts and views about why, when and how Western culture made these decisions about these symbols.

In any case, the statement “Our society, at one point in history, decided that ‘4’ is the sum of ‘2 + 2’” could be applied to any arithmetical or mathematical statement. Or, more accurately, the clause “Our society, at one point in history, decided that […]” could be applied to any statement.

So those words (or facts) can’t be the meaning of this particular mathematical statement. That is, talk of symbols, conventions, history, etc. won’t tell us about a particular mathematical statement.

Platonism and the Techniques of Mathematics

Wittgenstein offered a position on mathematical statements which may (repeat: may) seem conventionalist. Indeed, Wittgenstein’s anti-Platonism can appear to go in a conventionalist direction.

Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics can also be seen as going in a sociological, psychological and even (as some have argued) “anthropocentric” direction. (None of these things automatically contradict conventionalism.)

Yet Wittgenstein himself went way beyond mere talk of convention.

For example, Wittgenstein wrote:

“The proposition is grounded in a technique. And, if you like, also in the physical and psychological facts that make the technique possible.”

Technique?

Well, Wittgenstein himself provided an everyday example of this. He wrote:

“I say to, ‘You know what you’ve done so far. Now do the same sort of thing for these two numbers.’ [] Now everybody is taught to do it — and now there is a right and wrong. Before there was not.”

If Wittgenstein was arguing exclusively against mathematical Platonists, then surely it can’t be said that such people would have disagreed with his words directly above. (As ever with Wittgenstein, that depends on how his words are read or interpreted.)

Few mathematical Platonists — or few people — would deny that mathematics is “grounded in a technique” (or in techniques in the plural) — even if that technique is itself grounded in an abstract Platonic realm. That is, even if a Platonic realm does exist, then mathematicians and laypersons will still require techniques, skills, symbols, conventions, particular psychological states, etc. in order to (as it were) access that realm.

Moreover, who’d argue that these facts about mathematical technique/s would constitute the “sense” (or the meaning) of the statement “2 + 2 = 4” — or the meaning of anything else in mathematics for that matter?

Again, few mathematical Platonists or anti-conventionalists would deny that conventions — and what Wittgenstein called “practices” — are required when it comes to communities of mathematicians or even the many laypersons who use mathematics. And, again, it’s hard to believe that anyone believes that the facts about techniques, psychological states, symbol-use, etc. constitute the meaning (or sense) of “2 + 2 = 4”.

Of course, all this will depend on what, precisely, Wittgenstein meant by the word “sense”. Indeed, it will also depend on what Wittgenstein took other philosophers to have meant by that word.

Yet it’s clear here that Wittgenstein did believe that at least some philosophers did take the technique (as it were) behind the statement “2 + 2 = 4” to be the sense.

So all this must also mean that, on a Wittgensteinian reading, the statement “2 + 2 = 4” must also be grounded in a technique.

And that technique will also be grounded on the adder’s knowledge of the symbols, how he was taught arithmetic, etc. It will also depend on his or her psychology, psychological states, etc…

But so what?

Again, why would a mathematical Platonist — or anyone else — deny all that?

So who was Wittgenstein arguing against?

Perhaps Wittgenstein’s conclusion to the passage above answers that question. He continued:

“But it doesn’t follow that its sense is to express these conditions.”

These words seem to go against any purely conventionalist reading of Wittgenstein’s position. That is, obviously mathematical conventions exist. However, there is — or must be — more to the story of mathematics than that.

More particularly, the sense of the statement “2 + 2 = 4” isn’t merely about conventions, symbols, techniques, psychological sates, “rules”, historical facts, etc.

Yet strangely enough, Wittgenstein himself used the word “proposition” in the third-to-last passage above.

So what is a (mathematical) proposition?

Mathematical Platonists — and others — will make a distinction between the (abstract) proposition itself (say, 2 + 2 = 4) and everything else. Indeed, even Wittgenstein himself said that the proposition “is grounded in a technique”. That too hints at a separation between the proposition itself and the (later?) technique (plus everything that’s part of that technique).

Yet Wittgenstein didn’t actually believe that the statement “2 + 2 = 4” is about a proposition (or that it “states a proposition”). That is, the symbolic statement “2 + 2 = 4” doesn’t tell us about (or refer to) the abstract reality that is (supposed to be) 2 + 2 = 4 (or 2 plus 2 equalling 4).

Conclusion

In general terms, Wittgenstein appeared to conflate (or perhaps simply distinguish) convention and intersubjectivity with (mere) “opinions” and “convictions”. In Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, for example, he wrote:

“The agreement of people in calculation is not an agreement in opinions or convictions.”

So, instead, Wittgenstein focused on psychological habits, empirical regularities (i.e., the objects we count, things generally, etc.) and, indeed, on a “form of life”. In other words, Wittgenstein characteristically believed that mathematics isn’t about “agreement in opinions or convictions”: it’s about a form of life.

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Note: What is a Statement?

The word “statement” was used many times in the essay above. That word was used instead of “proposition”. Yet some philosophers use the word “statement” as a synonym of “proposition”. That is, they argue that “different sentences can express the same statement”. Other philosophers say: “Different sentences can express the same proposition.” Thus, in that sense, a statement is taken to be as abstract as a proposition.

In the essay above, however, statements are taken to be natural-language sentences — or grammatical “strings” of symbols — which are either true or false. That is, statements aren’t taken to be abstract objects or entities in the mind or brain.

Of course all this is complicated by the fact that three (not two) distinctions have been made in philosophical literature. That is, distinctions have been made between sentences, statements and propositions.

A statement has been taken to be a sentence that’s either true or false. This conception of a statement is roughly identical to the position on a proposition. However, a statement has also been seen as the “semantic content of a meaningful declarative or descriptive sentence”. And so on and so on.

Einstein’s Brain: Does Size Matter?

There’s been a lot of excited and curious talk about Albert Einstein’s brain over the decades. Or, more correctly, there’s been a lot of talk about the size of Einstein’s brain. So does size matter?

Clearly, there’s often been the following underlying assumption when it comes to the many (often silly) discussions of the size of Einstein’s brain:

big brain = big intelligence

It may seem logical to assume that a big brain means a big intelligence… That’s until one starts to use one’s own intelligence to think about this issue.

The other extreme position is that it’s all down to how each brain is actually (as it were) used by its owner. Relatedly, it’s also said to be down to the environments in which each brain finds itself (e.g., parental surroundings, relative wealth or poverty, influence of peers, society, culture, etc.). However, this way of looking at brains may go too far as well.

So, like the endless nature versus nurture debate, it may not be a case of either/or. That is, it may not all boil down to having a big brain or all boil down to how that brain is used. That said, it may not be 50/50 either. (It may not be any other decipherable proportion.) In other words, it may be very difficult to distinguish how important brain size (as well as other aspects of the brain) has been from the environmental factors (along with how brains are used) which have impinged on that brain.

Let’s return to the size of the brain.

In the animal kingdom, some creatures with large brains are (or sometimes may simply seem) dumber than some creatures with smaller brains. Susan Blackmore (in her piece ‘Why aren’t animals with larger brains more intelligent than us?’), for example, sums up this position with these words:

“Bigger isn’t always better. Sometimes how you use it is more important than what you’ve got. There are two reasons. First, brain structure is more important than brain size, and human brains with their highly folded and complicated cortex can do things no other brains can.”

So it all depends on a hell of a lot more than merely the size of the brain.

Yet the size of a brain must surely be relevant!

[See the article ‘Do bigger brains make smarter carnivores?’, which answers its own question: “Yes.”]

Indeed, the stress on the size of the brains of Homo sapiens (i.e., you and I) and other animals has been very apparent over the years in biology, neuroscience and evolutionary theory. However, note here that all this has been about the size of the brain of different species (including Homo sapiens), not the size of the brain of individuals within each species.

The New Scientist on Einstein’s Brain

This essay began as a gut reaction to a New Scientist book in which there’s an aside (i.e., it appears in a box next to the main text) on Albert Einstein’s brain.

It would be silly to be too critical of a mere aside in a book which has ‘Einstein’s Relativity’ (i.e., not ‘Einstein’s Brain’) as a subheading. (The book is called Where the Universe Came From.) In other words, the words were written by a writer on physics (or by an actual physicist), not a writer on neuroscience (or an actual neuroscientist). Still, this boxed section captures some of the (possible) mistakes one often finds when Einstein’s brain is discussed… as it often is!

Firstly, this section (in the aforementioned book) tells us that Einstein’s brain was “initially something of a disappointment, being slightly smaller than average”.

These words sum up the large brain=large intelligence assumption of so many people.

Yet this section also states the following:

“A 1999 study showed that Einstein’s parietal lobe, the area of the brain associated with mathematics and spatial reasoning, was 15 per cent wider than in a normal brain.”

[Did this writer mean “average brain” by “normal brain” in the second quote?]

If this study — as well as other studies — was a comparison of Einstein’s brain with average (or “normal”) brains, then it wouldn’t have been a comparison with the brains of other scientists (e.g., those who also did lots of mathematical and spatial reasoning). So although Einstein’s parietal lobe might have been “wider” than the average person’s (or at least the very-limited number of brains also studied in this example), then it might not have been wider than the brains of other physicists or mathematicians.

Now another question can be asked here.

Did Einstein’s parietal lobe become wider as a result of such “mathematics and spatial reasoning”, or did it actually enable Einstein to excel at spatial reasoning and mathematics in the first place?

Indeed, what about both possibilities?

Perhaps Einstein’s brain became wider as a result of his extensive spatial reasoning, etc., and it might also have been wider from birth.

This becomes relevant in light of another New Scientist comment:

“The researchers also noticed a large knob on his motor cortex, representing Einstein’s early practice playing the violin.”

One wonders if there are also “large knobs” for excessive masturbation, knitting, kicking people’s heads in, reading Medium every day, etc. That is, surely not every excessive and/or specialised activity has its own (well) knob in the brain.

Indeed, the very idea of a large knob “representing Einstein’s early practice playing the violin” seems too (as it were) particular.

If Einstein had a large knob for (or as a result of) playing the violin, then did he also have a large knob for (or a result of) playing bowls? (Let’s just pretend that Einstein played bowls every day.) Unless, that is, Einstein’s large knob didn’t only “represent” violin-playing: it might also have represented (or perhaps neuro-physically underpinned) the playing of any musical instrument — and indeed other cognitive activities too. Perhaps this large knob in Einstein’s brain represented some kind of “music module” which was only contingently expressed in terms of playing the violin.

What’s more, even though many neuroscientists and philosophers accept the existence of what they call “modules” (see ‘Modularity’ and ‘Modularity of Mind’), they don’t also believe that modules exist as physical knobs (or at precise locations) in the brain. Holistically speaking, modules may not be instantiated in particular areas (or parts) of the brain at all.

[To see another perspective on this, see ‘The Brain Is Not Modular: What fMRI Really Tells Us’.]

Other Studies of Einstein’s Brain

There are lots of odd things about Einstein’s brain.

Then again, odd things can be found in literally every other brain.

So all this will at least partly depend on the word “odd”, as well as on context and comparisons.

Take the position of neurologist Terence Hines of Pace University.

He’s critical of most of the studies of Einstein’s brain. He believes that they're flawed. (Some “studies” have been based solely on photos of Einstein’s brain!)

Terence Hines also argues that all human brains are “unique” in their own ways. That is, if you take a random brain and then study it, then you’ll find that it’s different from other brains (i.e., in either large or small ways). Thus, Hines is suspicious of the many wild jumps from the (possibly) unique features of Einstein’s brain… to his genius.

Of course, not many other brains have been studied and discussed in so much detail.

In terms of that detail.

One study (‘The exceptional brain of Albert Einstein’) had it that Einstein had no parietal operculum in either hemisphere. (This finding has been, rather predictably, disputed — see here.) Another study had it that Einstein’s brain showed an enlarged Sylvian fissure…

An enlarged Sylvian bloody fissure! Wow!…

Seriously, so what?

And so on and so on.

So what does all this data (even if accurate) actually mean?

As Professor Laurie Hall (of Cambridge University) put it about a single study of Einstein’s brain (i.e., which linked part of Einstein’s brain to some characteristic of his intelligence or “genius”):

“To say there is a definite link is one bridge too far, at the moment. So far, the case isn’t proven.”

It’s also notable how often words like “may” are used in these studies of Einstein’s brain.

Specifically, take this passage from Professor Sandra Witelson (as published in The Lancet):

“This unusual brain anatomy [e.g., the missing part of the Sylvian fissure] may explain why Einstein thought the way he did.”

We also have this from Dr. Dahlia W. Zaidel:

“The larger neurons in the left hippocampus imply that Einstein’s left brain may have had stronger nerve cell connections between the hippocampus and another part of the brain called the neocortex than his right.”

Thus, we keep seeing phrases like “it could be”, “it may be”, “it’s possible that”, etc. in these studies of Einstein’s brain. That said, these phrases occur all the time in scientific studies. So surely that means that they’re not always (or necessarily) suspect in nature.

What’s more, it’s precisely because Einstein’s brain became such a sexy subject that some critical researchers have picked up on what’s called unconscious bias and impartial research.

Simple flaws have also been detected in many of the studies of Einstein’s brain…

That said, there are probably flaws in all scientific studies.

Now add to all that the phenomenon of publication bias, which is often blatant when it comes to Einstein’s brain.

The most frequent and obvious case of such bias is that scientific — and most definitely newspaper — publications will get excited about the differences between Einstein’s brain and the brains of mere mortals like the readers of this essay. Yet they’ll also ignore any data which shows us how similar Einstein’s brain was to the average brain — that’s if there even is such a thing!

My flickr account:

Was Bishop Berkeley a Constructivist, an Idealist, an Empiricist or an […]ist?

The 18th-century philosopher George Berkeley can be deemed to be a scientific constructivist, an idealist or an empiricist. So is Berkeley one or none of the above? Indeed, does it matter which label we attach to him?

Readers will note how Bishop Berkeley’s ideas seem very contemporary in resonance. Indeed, 21st-century idealists like Donald Hoffman, Bernardo Kastrup, etc. are harking back to George Berkeley — at least to various degrees. Then again, perhaps it can be argued that Berkeley himself was harking back to even older philosophical traditions.

So George Berkeley can be seen as an idealist, empiricist or an instrumentalist. Of course, some of these isms can be upheld together at one and the same time. Others can’t.

In any case, some readers may get annoyed with all these isms. And because of this plethora of labels (as with many other debates on “dead philosophers”), it’s probably best to simply discuss what George Berkeley actually believed and not spend too much time attempting to squeeze him into a neat and tidy retrospective box.

All that said, and in respect to the title of this essay, Berkeley can indeed be seen as a scientific constructivist (or at least as a proto-scientific constructivist).

Is George Berkeley a Scientific Constructivist or an Idealist?

That’s primarily because constructivists argue that science consists in “mental constructs” which have the purpose of explaining and describing measurements and experiences (or observations) generally. Yet, and noting the abundance of isms just mentioned, this too reads like a simple description of empiricism. In fact, it certainly squares well with — and here we go again — constructive empiricism.

Where scientific constructivism may differ from what Berkeley himself believed is its emphasis on the idea that scientific knowledge is constructed by scientific communities. This is a (partly) sociological angle that doesn’t seem to completely ring true in Berkeley’s 18th-century context.

That said, Berkeley mightn’t have had a problem with this sociological position. Indeed, he even argued as much himself in various places (if in his own 18th-century prose style). For example, Berkeley once stated the following:

“[M]athematical entities have no stable essence in the nature of things; and they depend on the notion of the definer. Whence the same thing can be explained in different ways [].”

Oddly enough, Berkeley-as-idealist (i.e., rather than Berkeley-as-empiricist) can be deemed to be more radical than 20th-century scientific constructivists. That’s because, on one reading at least, constructivists are said to believe that the world is actually independent of human minds. However, they also believe that our knowledge of the world (somewhat obviously) is not. And that’s because our knowledge of the world is said to be a “social construction”.

Arguably, Berkeley-as-idealist might have scoffed at such a distinction because talk of “the world itself” is (to quote Ludwig Wittgenstein) “a wheel that can be turned though nothing else moves with it is not part of the mechanism”.

[Some claims about social, scientific and other kinds of “social construction” seem banal and/or truistic. For example, saying that the English language, a motorway, money, or even a particular sexual kink is a social construction is a statement of the bleeding obvious.]

Now let’s turn to Berkeley’s philosophy of physics.

Berkeley on Newton and Intrinsic Properties

George Berkeley was certainly very interested in physics. Indeed, his first published book was on physics — An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision (1709). More specifically, much relevant material (in relation to this essay) can also be found in Berkeley’s Philosophical Commentaries (1707–1708), in which he discusses Isaac Newton’s Principia.

In broad terms, George Berkeley believed that physics doesn’t provide us with any (as it’s been put) “true insight” into the nature of the world.

Thus, Berkeley pre-empted the position of panpsychists like Philip Goff who often tell us that physics has nothing to say about what they call “intrinsic properties”. Indeed, Newton himself believed that physics only mathematically maps the actions, relations and correlations of bodies with mass — yet it has nothing to say about the forces themselves. That is, physics (at least at that time) had nothing to say about what forces actually are.

All this is almost to deem physics as being (another ist!) behaviourist in nature. That is, in Newton’s day, physics took a behaviourist stance on physical phenomena, rather than on human beings and other animals. In other words, physics was — and perhaps still is — about the behaviour of bodies and forces (i.e., or the behaviour of bodies when subject to forces).

In more concrete terms, Berkeley made a distinction between the mathematics involved in describing gravitation and refraction, and the (as it were) real nature of gravity and light. Here again, the maths simply describes the effect of forces (e.g., gravity and light) on bodies. It doesn’t tell us what gravity and light are.

Now, to use the terms of contemporary analytic philosophy, it can be said that Berkeley believed that the terms (for example) “action”, “attractive force” and “impetus” had no referents. However, we do know that bodies move and that they move in very-specific ways in very-specific situations (or conditions).

Yet all this didn’t mean that Berkeley also believed that we should eliminate such terms. He still believed that such terms are useful. It’s just that they don’t refer to anything.

So, for all that, the mathematics of physics can be perfect when it comes to descriptions and predictions. (At least in can be if the physicist gets his sums right.)

To sum up: Berkeley believed that the whole of Newtonian mechanics is simply a “set of equations” and nothing more. Newton, on the other hand, believed (at least according to Berkeley himself) that there’s more to physics than mere equations.

Berkeley on Occult Qualities

Berkeley’s position on physics (or at least on Newtonian physics) — as mainly expressed in his De Motu (1721) — was (proto) instrumentalist in nature. Indeed, it even retrospectively chimes in with Bas van Fraassen’s own constructive empiricism.

At least on some readings, then, Berkeley believed that science is essentially all about the description and explanation of the regularities, which are discovered primarily through experiment and observation. Indeed Berkely himself once wrote:

“[T]o be of service to reckoning and mathematical demonstrations is one thing, to set forth the nature of things is another.”

[The very notion of observation is problematic on an idealist reading, if not on an empiricist reading.]

On a broadly instrumentalist reading, then, scientific theories are “useful fictions”. These useful fictions, nonetheless, do explain the data. Indeed, on some positions, such theories can even be taken to be true. (Perhaps primarily because such theories have nothing to say about intrinsic properties, noumena, “nature itself”, etc.)

Berkeley even went so far as to argue that forces are “occult qualities” which “expressed nothing distinctly”.

This is hardly a surprising position (at least in retrospect) for a 18th-century empiricist. After all, you can’t see, touch, smell or whistle gravity or any other force known to 18th-century physics.

Berkeley put it more technically than that when he stated that

“something unknown in a body of which they have no idea and which they call the principle of motion, are in fact simply stating that the principle of motion is unknown”.

Simply put: motion is known. However, what causes motion isn’t known. Again, Berkeley goes further. He states an empiricist position in which those who

“affirm that active force, action, and the principle of motion are really in bodies are adopting an opinion not based on experience”.

Berkeley then advanced a position that may seem more akin to idealism (if to subjective idealism) than to empiricism. That is, Berkeley believed that forces are the products of what he called the “soul”. Therefore, forces are “incorporeal thing[s] [which] do not properly belong to physics”.

My flickr account:

Fritjof Capra’s Political Reasons for Using Quantum Physics to Bring About an “Eastern Liberation”

Physicist, best-selling author and “deep ecologist” Fritjof Capra believes that Western ways of thinking and behaving have “brought political disorder; an ever-rising wave of violence and an ugly, polluted environment”. He offers his solution to all that. That solution is a fusion of quantum mechanics (actually, specific interpretations of QM) and Capra’s own political and religious (“Eastern”) views.

“In our Western culture [] many have turned to Eastern ways of liberation.”

— From Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics (see passage here).

(i) Introduction

(ii) Anti-Science and The Tao of Physics

(iii) Fritjof Capra’s Physics

(iv) Fritjof Capra’s Politics

(v) Thomas Kuhn and Capra’s Political Activities

The fact that some (or even many) self-described “spiritual” people embrace quantum mechanics (actually, specific interpretations of QM) for exclusively spiritual reasons is (almost) true by definition.

However, their drawing political conclusions from quantum mechanics isn’t really obvious at all.

So why stress this physics-politics link?

It’s stressed primarily because physicist Fritjof Capra himself stresses it. That is, Capra is open (as is Danah Zohar and others) about this link— as the quotes in this essay will clearly show.

Oddly enough (or perhaps not), Capra admits that most — perhaps even all (i.e., by definition!) — New Agers, spiritualists, etc. are anti-science.

That said, some (i.e., a small number) of those otherwise anti-science New Agers are nonetheless happy with quantum science. More accurately, such people are happy with those particular interpretations of quantum mechanics which can be used to back up their prior spiritual views.

Anti-Science and The Tao of Physics

One of Fritjof Capra’s main themes is that he isn’t himself anti-science at all.

Indeed (as the subtext often goes), how can he be? After all, Capra is a scientist himself.

Capra tells us that spiritualists and other New Agers, on the other hand,

“tend to see science, and physics in particular, as an unimaginative, narrow-minded discipline which is responsible for all the evils of modern technology”.

Thus, Capra wants to save science from itself at the same time as bringing “spiritual people” on board his “spiritual science” boat (see here)…

But first of all, such people must fully embrace Capra’s very own scientific-political-religious worldview.

So the following often-quoted passage (from Capra) may make things much clearer:

“Science does not need mysticism and mysticism does not need science, but man needs both.”

It was just said that Capra is not anti-science.

However, Capra (as with Danah Zohar) is certainly against “Newtonian science”. He spends much time telling us so. Indeed Capra may not even be a (as it were) unqualified fan of quantum physics. That is, he has little to say about quantum physics (at least in his best-selling books) as it can be presented completely divorced from all the political, spiritual, ecological, sociological, psychological, historical, etc. interpretations which he indulges in. Indeed, even the technical sections of Capra’s The Tao of Physics, for example, read like mere preludes to what he clearly sees as his own far more important political and spiritual interpretations. (Those interpretations which inevitably follow all that prior data on actual quantum mechanics.)

So (again, just like Danah Zohar), quantum physics became a tool which Capra used to advance his spiritual-political worldview.

In actual fact, Capra was very clear about his prime motivation for writing his best-selling book, The Tao of Physics. For example, he wrote:

“My starting point for this exploration — the threat of nuclear war, the devastation of our natural environment, our inability to deal with poverty and starvation around the world…”

The “worldview” Capra is fighting against is “inadequate for dealing with the problems of our overpopulated, globally interconnected world”.

His own worldview (or political religion) is, of course, the answer or solution.

But there’s one thing that needs to be got straight out of the way:

What about Capra’s actual physics?

Fritjof Capra’s Physics

This is a random example which isn’t actually from anything Capra has written.

The best way to tackle the relation of actual quantum physics to Fritjof Capra’s politics is to quote Capra himself thus:

“[] I am very pleased that in all the criticism I have had from fellow physicists, not one of them has found any fault in my presentation of the concepts of modern physics. [] to the best of my knowledge nobody has found any factual errors in The Tao of Physics.”

This is odd.

I don’t believe that many — or even any — of the physicists (as well as many others) who’ve criticised Capra ever claimed that he got the quantum physics wrong. (At least not in a way that is relevant.) That’s because their criticisms usually had — and still have — nothing to do with Capra’s (to use his own words) “factual errors” or his “presentation of the concepts of modern physics”. (This may depend on how he presents each particular concept and theory of quantum physics and physics generally.) The criticisms were primarily to do with how Capra extrapolated from physics to a whole host of political, sociological, spiritual, historical, psychological, ecological, etc. conclusions and interpretations.

Thus, even if Capra’s physics is perfect in every single detail (or at least his presentations of other people’s physics is perfect), then that would still be irrelevant to the issue at hand here: Capra’s political interpretations and uses of the actual physics.

All this is also the case when it comes to Danah Zohar.

Her actual physics — and, in her case, also her neuroscience and biology — may well be faultless too. However, that simply doesn’t matter here.

[Danah Zohar’s neuroscience and her interpretations of it are almost entirely down to (as she more or less admits) four papers her husband — Dr I.N. Marshall — wrote, all of which strongly emphasise the role of Bose-Einstein condensates when it comes to consciousness.]

This situation, then, is a little like quantum mechanics and its many and varied interpretations. That is, most interpreters agree on the quantum theory, mathematical formalism/s, the mathematics generally, the experiments, the predictive results, etc. However, they interpret what metaphysically underlies all that in different — sometimes very different — ways.

In fact, Capra knows full well what the problem is.

Capra does so because he too makes a (to use his own words) “distinction between the mathematical framework of a theory and its verbal interpretation”. And then he continued:

“The mathematical framework of quantum theory has passed countless successful tests and is now universally accepted as a consistent and accurate description of all atomic phenomena. The verbal interpretation, on the other hand — i.e., the metaphysics of quantum theory — is on far less solid ground.”

All that said, other important and well-known interpretations of quantum mechanics never include references to politics, spirituality, sociology, history, ecology, “Eastern thought”, etc. So, in that sense, Capra is going much further than any other accepted interpretation of quantum mechanics. (This is even true of David Bohm, who, arguably, never went as far as Capra.)

Fritjof Capra’s Politics

One of Capra’s books.

Fritjof Capra’s political, spiritual and Eastern-centric (Capra himself often uses the word “Eastern”) account of the West’s many faults are captured in his following words:

“The natural environment is treated as if it consisted of separate parts to be exploited by different interest groups. The fragmented view is further extended to society which is split into different nations, races, religious and political groups.”

This Western way of thinking and behaving leads to Capra’s End Times and hyperbolic conclusion:

“The belief that all these fragments — in ourselves, in our environment and in our society — are really separate can be seen as the essential reason for the present series of social, ecological and cultural crises. It has alienated us from nature and from our fellow human beings. In has brought a grossly unjust distribution of natural resources creating economic and political disorder; an ever rising wave of violence, both spontaneous and institutionalized, and an ugly, polluted environment in which life has often become physically and mentally unhealthy.”

These words from Capra’s own pulpit (which are very Biblical in both content and tone) would be deemed racist if they were said by a white person about any non-white (or non-Western) culture or group.

For example, many would pick up on what they’d call its stereotypes, crude simplifications, vagueness, rhetoric, exaggerations, loaded philosophical interpretations, etc. Indeed, Capra’s words are an example of classic Occidentalism.

So perhaps the cultural critic Edward Said (who died in 2003) would have classed Capra’s views as a perfect example of positive — i.e., not negative — Orientalism. (Or at least Said should have done so had he been made aware of Capra’s work.) In other words, Occidentalism and Orientalism have often occurred together. And Capra’s own words are a good example of that fusion.

[China has roughly 254,700,000 Buddhists - so is China a deeply ecological and non-patriarchal society? What about Japan, Thailand, North Korea, Nepal and South Korea? Are they New Age, Green and spiritual utopias?]

As already stated, Capra is open about his politics-spirituality fusion. For example, he wrote:

“[S]pirituality corresponding to the new vision of reality I have been outlining here is likely to be an ecological, earth-centred, post-patriarchal spirituality.”

Here, spirituality is clearly fused with politics. Of course Capra could say that “the spiritual is the political”. After all, political activists, feminists, etc. in the 1960s and beyond said that “the personal is the political”. So that would be fair enough. And at least that would place Capra’s position out in politically open fields.

Capra is even clearer about his spirituality-politics fusion when he says that the “rising concern with ecology” has paralleled the “strong interest in mysticism”.

Yet all interest in mysticism — and even in ecology — won’t necessarily lead in the same political direction. Moreover, it definitely won’t lead (i.e., of necessity) in the very precise political directions which Capra himself strongly desires — as the Nazi movement of the 1920s and 1930s graphically shows.

So let’s take a short detour here.

Many National Socialists (i.e., Nazis) in the 1920s and 1930s were keen ecologists, believers in “animal rights”, and deeply influenced by certain mystical and spiritual traditions. So it’s ironic that much has been made of the Christianity-Nazi link by various people. The Nazi-mysticism/spirituality link, on the other hand, is rather understressed or even completely ignored.

[See ‘Examining Nazi Environmentalism During Earth Week’, ‘Animal welfare in Nazi Germany’, ‘How Mysticism and Pseudoscience Became Central to Nazism’, and the chapter ‘Lucifer’s Court: Ario-Germanic Paganism, Indo-Aryan Spirituality, and the Nazi Search for Alternative Religions’.])

To return to Capra’s own politics.

Capra became even more open when he cited the following silly binary option of moving “to the Buddha or to the Bomb”. (The former is “the path of the heart”.)

So If we choose the Buddha, then we’ll essentially choose Capra’s very own political-spiritual/religious worldview. But if we choose the (Platonic) Bomb, then we’re all, well, typical “Westerners”.

Thomas Kuhn and Capra’s Political Activities

Capra is clear that he wants to create a new (to use his word) “worldview” (i.e., a spiritual-political religion). However, he sometimes uses the word “paradigm” instead. Capra uses the word “paradigm” primarily because he’s been influenced by the philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn.

In his book Belonging to the Universe, Capra refers to Kuhn’s own well-known book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Thus, Capra uses Kuhn’s ideas as a basis for his own Kuhn-like “revolution”, as well as for the creation of his own paradigm. That paradigm is a fusion of science, politics and religion. Or, more accurately, it’s a fusion of Capra’s very own religious and political views and only certain interpretations of quantum mechanics.

So Capra’s demands are far from modest.

In the books Belonging to the Universe and The Tao of Physics, Capra demands that Western culture reject what he calls “linear thought” (see here) and the “mechanistic views” (see here) of Newton and Descartes. Predictably, he’s against reductionism too. (See ‘Hang the Reductionists’, which is the New Scientist’s account of Capra’s position on reductionism.)

Indeed, apart from his best-selling books, lecture tours, seminars, educational courses (one of which is dedicated entirely to his own worldview — see Capra Course), etc., Capra has a few other means to bring forth his political-spiritual vision.

For example, Capra is a founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy in California. This organisation “promotes ecology” and is involved with educating American schoolkids and students. Another political string to Capra’s bow is being a member of the Earth Charter International Council. The idea of the Earth Charter began with Maurice Strong and is strongly connected to both The Club of Rome and the United Nations.

So, as already stated, Fritjof Capra’s political demands are far from modest.

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Notes:

(1) On a psychological reading, perhaps Fritjof Capra is rebelling against the West as a teenager fiercely rebels against his father. Indeed Capra’s Occidentalism has a long tradition among largely upper-middle-class Western men, dating back to the explorer and writer Richard Burton in the 19th century and even before that. Today we also have the very-privileged examples of George Monbiot, Jonathon Porritt and many more of this ilk. There’s probably also a very strong element of upper-middle-class “guilt” — or even “white guilt” — here too.

(2) The quantum physicist Pascual Jordan (1902–1980) at one point interpreted biology through a Nazi lens. Take this passage:

“We know that there are in a bacterium, among the enormous number of molecules constituting this … creature … a very small number of special molecules endowed with dictatorial authority over the total organism; they form a Steuerungszentrum [steering centre] of the living cell. Absorption of a light quantum anywhere outside of this Steuerungszentrum can kill the cell just as little as a great nation can be annihilated by the killing of a single soldier. But absorption of a light quantum in the Steuerungszentrum of the cell can bring the entire organism to death and dissolution — similar to the way a successfully executed assault against a leading [führenden] statesman can set an entire nature into a profound process of dissolution.”

That’s the thing about the interpretations of quantum mechanics — they can be innumerable and infinitely variable.

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