In The Beginnings of Western Science (March 24, 2010 post), David Lindberg states that the Sixth Century (B.C.) Milesians of antiquity posed a question that had never been previously asked in either Greek or Middle Eastern culture: "what is the material origin of things---the single and simple underlying reality that can take on a variety of forms to produce the diversity and order behind chaos?" And importantly, Lindberg adds, "in the answers offered by these Milesians we find no personification or deification of nature; a conceptual chasm [that] separates their worldview from the mythological world of Homer and Hesiod. The Milesians left the gods out of the story. What they may have thought about the Olympian gods we do not (in most cases) know; but they did not invoke the gods to explain the origin, nature or cause of things." And while the idea of a god as a creator or prime mover later found a place in the ideas of Plato (Timaeus) and Aristotle in subsequent centuries, these were not anthropomorphic gods that meddled in earthly affairs. Similarly, Yahweh gradually abandoned its personal intermeddling in the history of the Hebrew people over these centuries as well. Only later in Christian mythology, with its story of a miraculous virgin birth, do we come close to a story, now about 2000 years old, of divine intermeddling that some people to this day believe is part of human history.
Occasionally, a novelist brings to life mythological dieties who intervene in human affairs to tell a story. Jose Saramago brought the god of the Jewish people to Galil to the bedroom of Mary and Joseph in The Gospel According to Jesus Christ and behold, Mary, was with child. That other Christian demiurge --- the devil ---also enters an appearance in the Saramago story. Greek mythological gods are central to John Barth's Chimera, with the objective of showing that these gods are real human beings with all the characteristic foibles of humanity. And so it is with John Banville in The Infinities, where Hermes, Zeus, and Pan lurk over and intermingle in the life of the Godley family as their patriarch, Adam Godley, sits in a coma facing his last day of life.
Early in The Infinities, Zeus slides into bed with dying man, Adam Godley's daughter-in-law for sexual intercourse. This is not new to storytelling. Even in the early chapters of Genesis (6:4), heavenly gods came down to earth, in the Greek tradition, and impregnated women who bore their children. The miracle of Jesus' divine paternity merely repeats this storytelling technique, as do other parts of the Gospel that seek to build on the Hebrew stories to form a continuous history.
The term "infinities" has multiple meanings for this playful, amusing tale, which could have been titled, with apologies to Shakespeare, A Midsummer Day's Coma. Facially, the Infinities refers to the mythological gods of Greek lore, who, without apparent conspiracy, find their way to the home of a dying mathematician as he lifelessly waits out the final day of his life. But equally, it refers to the conundrum that has plagued quantum physicists and string theorists who have pursued the theory of everything that will mathematically unite quantum mechanics and general relativity, only to find failure in the mathematical equations that produce bedeviling infinities. The dying mathematician has purportedly solved the problem (although we are not told how). The closest we come to learning of Adam's stunning achievement is the statement of Pan, in the guise of the dying man's long-time friend Benny, who says, "you see, the infinities, the infinities that cropped up in everyone else's equations and made them null, and which cropped up in his, too, he saw as exactly what----an infinity of infinities, all crossing and breaking into each other, all here and invisible, a complex of worlds beyond what anyone before him had imagined ever was there---well, you can imagine the effect. . .Well, well, you can imagine." Pan appears to be saying that the dying mathematician simply accepted the infinities and their inherent contradictions for what they are and posited the existence of multiverses, a subject addressed by Charles Seife in Decoding The Universe (August 23, 2009 post). Inquiring minds, however, would like to know more.
In this novel, the dying man in a coma can still think, and for a chapter the reader is treated to his memories and thoughts, including one glimpse of the infinities that he stared in the face and understood. "My equations spanned a multitude of universes yet they posited a single world of unity and ultimate order. Perhaps there is such a world, but if there is we do not live in it, and cannot know how things would be there." An admission that countless authors and religious leaders have contemplated for millenia: human limits in the face of a universe (and perhaps an infinite number of universes) that seem(s) to be without limit. Echoing Pan, humans can imagine multiple universes and infinity, but the limitations that make us "human" mean that we will never know the infinite how things really are in those other universes that we cannot live in.
Each of the characters in this novel seems to be coexisting in their separate universes. They notice each other and talk to each other, but they don't appear to be truly intersecting. They are almost invisible to each other.
Banville closes his treat with this observation from Zeus: "This is the mortal world. It is a world where nothing is lost, where all is accounted for while yet the mystery of things is preserved; a world where they may live, however briefly, however tenuously, in the failing of the self, solitary and at the same time together somehow here in this place, dying as they may be and yet fixed forever in a luminous, unending instant." These are themes that return us to information theory, described by Seth Lloyd and Charles Seife (August 2009 posts). As Seife noted, while the universe may be infinite, information processing cannot go on forever --- and at some point information processing will stop and the gezillions of bits of information that life has stored and preserved will be dissipated (not destroyed) so it is useless and life in the visible universe (not just human life) will become extinct. That is a universe where "nothing is lost," but in contrast to Banville, all cannot be accounted for because of entropy. Banville does not contemplate entropy or the dissipation of information, and if he did the mildly upbeat ending would likely turn out to be more pessimistic instead.
This is a deep novel, probably one people can afford to read more than once. And a dose of Greek mythology in your academic background could make it enjoyable on another level.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
David C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science (2d ed. 2007)
Following footnotes, I fear, is not a passion of many students today. Lawyers understand the importance of following footnotes, because the footnote or citation in a judicial opinion is just as important to understanding how the court arrived at its decision as the text of the opinion itself. Footnotes and citations document the development of the common law --- the precedent, rationale, and history on which the court relied.
A footnote in Charles Freeman's The Closing of the Western Mind (2005) brought my attention to the 1992 edition of David Lindberg's book, The Beginnings of Western Science, several years ago. I put the book on my Amazon wish list. Freeman also cited Edward Grant's The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages, which I subsequently read. The subject here is the history of science from the classical period up the period preceding the Enlightenment, and the extent to which cultures and institutions either encouraged or restrained scientific inquiry during this period. Freeman's thesis is that the unification of Roman state authority and Christian faith by Constantine stifled, if not suppressed the Greek intellectual tradition that relied on mental reasoning, a thesis that fits well with the nomenclature used to describe these times: the "dark" ages, and the "medieval" period. Not so fast, warns Lindberg. While not denying that much of Western Europe lost touch with Aristotelian philosophy and Greek mathematics. medicine, and science from the classical era, and observing that Aristotle and Greek mathematics, medicine, and science became a foundation for scientific progress in the Arab and Muslim world that ultimately found its way to Spain, Lindberg documents that there remained at some, scattered level an awareness of Aristotle and Greek math, medicine and scientific research that was not entirely lost to the Western world and certainly enough for Lindberg to claim that the history of western science from the classical era had some degree of continuity.
Throughout this treatise, Lindberg reminds his reader that it is error to appreciate (or critique) scientific inquiry in the Dark Ages or the Medieval Period based on our modern vantage point, and essential that scientific inquiry during these periods be examined in light of the the culture, institutions, and scientific knowledge then existing. Lindberg's focus, in contrast to Freeman, is less on the influence that Christian institutions had on scientific inquiry and more on the actual historical record of scientific investigation and research. His ultimate goal is to identify what, if anything, in the history of science was revolutionary about the Enlightenment. And to this end, Lindberg concludes, contrary to what most of us have believed or surmised, that the Enlightenment was not revolutionary because faith and magic was replaced by experimental methodology testing reasoned hypotheses with empirical research. Examples of testing reasoned hypotheses about nature, the cosmos, and medicine with experimental investigation can be found across the Dark Ages and the Medieval Period. The revolution of the Enlightenment, Lindberg says, was "metaphysical and cosmological." Platonic and Aristotelian metaphysics, which had "skirmished" throughout the medieval period, came to be replaced by another Greek tradition: Epicurean atomism, which describes "a mechanistic universe of lifeless, indivisible atoms moving randomly in an infinite void." At the core of the difference between these Greek traditions (Plato and Aristotle on the one hand, and atomists on the other) are differences in viewpoints toward a teleological principle, which has meaning for both religious institutions and science to this day.
Teleology. The principle that physical phenomena are explained by a purpose or design has been debtated since antiquity, and it continues to be debated today under the rubric of "intelligent design." Teleology implies that creation is an act of foresight and planning. I first read about teleological principle nearly 30 years ago in Jacques Monod's book, Chance and Necessity. Monod denied that a teleological force was behind the creation of life, and instead subscribed to a teleonomical principle, whereby a non-purposeful evolutionary process that relies on hindsight and the acquisition of information that allows life to cope with the future. Richard Dawkins, the author of The Blind Watchmaker, is a natural ally for this view. Ironically, a teleonomical approach fits comfortably within Hebrew literature, whose "prophets" did not actually foretell the demise of the ancient Jewish state, but in hindsight explained that demise. I mention this not specifically to support Monod's argument, but to demonstrate that the creative human mind finds a way of defining purpose not on the intentionality of some one or thing in the past, but on what it discerns in the design of things as they already exist, and then confusing the two.
Plato and Aristotle both fell victim to this confusion. Plato concluded, based on his view of the structure of the world and its a priori order in the world of forms that some intelligent god was behind the creation of the universe. Aristotle, on the other hand, saw the hand of an intelligent unmoved mover, not a creator, behind the moving forces in the cosmos, but this view was based on the orderliness of the world as he observed it. Teleology embodies an anthropomorphic bias, which ascribes to non-human spirits the same purpose that human actors would ascribe to something they had created. There is no reason to believe this bias is objectively warranted, especially if the non-human spirit is an omniscient deity for which anything is possible.
Lindberg is on to something when he says the Enlightenment is more about a change in metaphysical views than it is about a revolution in scientific inquiry. To be sure, the rate in which experimentation and empirical knowledge was employed by the scientific community accelerated during and after the Enlightenment, and perhaps Lindberg does not give enough weight to this fact, but the revolution in metaphysical orientation meant that atheism, deism, and theism all found opportunity to claim the new science for themselves. Atomism replaced the Aristotelian concept of teleology that prevailed by the end of the Medieval Period and enabled theists and deists to claim that there was an intelligent creator whose initial design of the universe set in motion the evolution that we now witness in hindsight (with some theists believing that a god can still intervene in earthly matters), and it enabled atheists to deny any initial or continuing design or purpose to nature and to appreciate the successes and failures in nature over time, as well as the chaos and order of nature, as some combination of both chance and necessity.
A footnote in Charles Freeman's The Closing of the Western Mind (2005) brought my attention to the 1992 edition of David Lindberg's book, The Beginnings of Western Science, several years ago. I put the book on my Amazon wish list. Freeman also cited Edward Grant's The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages, which I subsequently read. The subject here is the history of science from the classical period up the period preceding the Enlightenment, and the extent to which cultures and institutions either encouraged or restrained scientific inquiry during this period. Freeman's thesis is that the unification of Roman state authority and Christian faith by Constantine stifled, if not suppressed the Greek intellectual tradition that relied on mental reasoning, a thesis that fits well with the nomenclature used to describe these times: the "dark" ages, and the "medieval" period. Not so fast, warns Lindberg. While not denying that much of Western Europe lost touch with Aristotelian philosophy and Greek mathematics. medicine, and science from the classical era, and observing that Aristotle and Greek mathematics, medicine, and science became a foundation for scientific progress in the Arab and Muslim world that ultimately found its way to Spain, Lindberg documents that there remained at some, scattered level an awareness of Aristotle and Greek math, medicine and scientific research that was not entirely lost to the Western world and certainly enough for Lindberg to claim that the history of western science from the classical era had some degree of continuity.
Throughout this treatise, Lindberg reminds his reader that it is error to appreciate (or critique) scientific inquiry in the Dark Ages or the Medieval Period based on our modern vantage point, and essential that scientific inquiry during these periods be examined in light of the the culture, institutions, and scientific knowledge then existing. Lindberg's focus, in contrast to Freeman, is less on the influence that Christian institutions had on scientific inquiry and more on the actual historical record of scientific investigation and research. His ultimate goal is to identify what, if anything, in the history of science was revolutionary about the Enlightenment. And to this end, Lindberg concludes, contrary to what most of us have believed or surmised, that the Enlightenment was not revolutionary because faith and magic was replaced by experimental methodology testing reasoned hypotheses with empirical research. Examples of testing reasoned hypotheses about nature, the cosmos, and medicine with experimental investigation can be found across the Dark Ages and the Medieval Period. The revolution of the Enlightenment, Lindberg says, was "metaphysical and cosmological." Platonic and Aristotelian metaphysics, which had "skirmished" throughout the medieval period, came to be replaced by another Greek tradition: Epicurean atomism, which describes "a mechanistic universe of lifeless, indivisible atoms moving randomly in an infinite void." At the core of the difference between these Greek traditions (Plato and Aristotle on the one hand, and atomists on the other) are differences in viewpoints toward a teleological principle, which has meaning for both religious institutions and science to this day.
Teleology. The principle that physical phenomena are explained by a purpose or design has been debtated since antiquity, and it continues to be debated today under the rubric of "intelligent design." Teleology implies that creation is an act of foresight and planning. I first read about teleological principle nearly 30 years ago in Jacques Monod's book, Chance and Necessity. Monod denied that a teleological force was behind the creation of life, and instead subscribed to a teleonomical principle, whereby a non-purposeful evolutionary process that relies on hindsight and the acquisition of information that allows life to cope with the future. Richard Dawkins, the author of The Blind Watchmaker, is a natural ally for this view. Ironically, a teleonomical approach fits comfortably within Hebrew literature, whose "prophets" did not actually foretell the demise of the ancient Jewish state, but in hindsight explained that demise. I mention this not specifically to support Monod's argument, but to demonstrate that the creative human mind finds a way of defining purpose not on the intentionality of some one or thing in the past, but on what it discerns in the design of things as they already exist, and then confusing the two.
Plato and Aristotle both fell victim to this confusion. Plato concluded, based on his view of the structure of the world and its a priori order in the world of forms that some intelligent god was behind the creation of the universe. Aristotle, on the other hand, saw the hand of an intelligent unmoved mover, not a creator, behind the moving forces in the cosmos, but this view was based on the orderliness of the world as he observed it. Teleology embodies an anthropomorphic bias, which ascribes to non-human spirits the same purpose that human actors would ascribe to something they had created. There is no reason to believe this bias is objectively warranted, especially if the non-human spirit is an omniscient deity for which anything is possible.
Lindberg is on to something when he says the Enlightenment is more about a change in metaphysical views than it is about a revolution in scientific inquiry. To be sure, the rate in which experimentation and empirical knowledge was employed by the scientific community accelerated during and after the Enlightenment, and perhaps Lindberg does not give enough weight to this fact, but the revolution in metaphysical orientation meant that atheism, deism, and theism all found opportunity to claim the new science for themselves. Atomism replaced the Aristotelian concept of teleology that prevailed by the end of the Medieval Period and enabled theists and deists to claim that there was an intelligent creator whose initial design of the universe set in motion the evolution that we now witness in hindsight (with some theists believing that a god can still intervene in earthly matters), and it enabled atheists to deny any initial or continuing design or purpose to nature and to appreciate the successes and failures in nature over time, as well as the chaos and order of nature, as some combination of both chance and necessity.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Harold A. Ellis, Boulainvilliers and the French Monarchy (1988)
Bernard Mandeville (January 31 post) and Henri Boulainvilliers may not have known of each other, but they were contemporaries, separated by the English Channel, during the era of the War of Spanish Succession and it is possible to loosely connect them with this War. Mandeville's idea that there is Virtue (public benefit) in Vice (war) was employed to justify England's participation in the War of Succession because of the benefit to the English economy. Boulainvilliers was obsessed with and conflicted by the idea of hereditary succession in France, and 300 years later we know this because of a series of pamphlets he wrote for the possible successors to Louis XIV.
Historian Harold Ellis' account of Boulainvilliers as an advisor to the Duke of Burgundy and later the Duke of Orleans (regent to Louis XV) unveils an intellectual crack in the ancien regime, decades before the French Revolution that toppled the French Monarchy. Boulainvilliers was part of a public discussion between representatives of the subgroups of the Second Estate (the aristocrats who inherited their titles, the peerage who owed their titles to the monarch, and others of noble heritage (such as Boulainvilliers) who were property owners) about their role in political decision-making. This was not a democratic movement as we think of it today or even as contemplated by the American Constitution later in the 18th century; yet it was incipient republicanism, which even the royal recipients of Boulainvilliers' essays seemed to understand because Boulainvilliers' failed in his efforts to persuade the regent, Orleans, to accept his idea that the Second Estate ought to have a voice in deciding of who succeeds a dying monarch who leaves no direct heirs. Succession was the limited issue for this incipient republicanism; no one was advocating the overthrow of the French monarchy and Boulainvilliers limited his criticism of a monarchy to the concept of "absolute" or decadent monarchy. The most interesting aspect of this history to me is that the discussion was even happening at all, beginning while the Sun King was still alive.
Yet this was the Enlightenment. Boulainvilliers is also responsible for spreading Spinoza's ideas in France, and he wrote a treatise on Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise , which was a defense of secular government and religious tolerance that was not well-received by the European ruling class. Among Spinoza's "radical" ideas are the seeds of democratic institutions, freedom of speech and religious toleration, freedoms that only six decades after Boulainvilliers' death found expression in the United States Constitution. And while Boulainvilliers is not espousing radical ideas in the Spinozan sense, the discussion within the Second Estate of which Boulainvilliers was a part is that same expression of freedom in its incipiency.
Boulainvilliers, as with others who were part of this discussion, turned to French history to identify the source of the royal authority and its legitimacy, and Boulainvilliers' survey of French history back to the Frankish conquest of Gaul led him to conclude that the authority of the monarchy is derived from the "nation." The nation does not include serfs or others of the Third Estate who were later responsible for overthrowing the French monarchy, but it did include The Second Estate, and the discussion revolved around which members of the Second Estate: just the royal aristocracy? the peerage? Or as Boulainvilliers advocated --- members of the Estates-General, even other propertied nobles such as himself?
As revealed by Ellis, Boulainvilliers was intellectually conflicted. Boulainvilliers appears at times to be hostile to hereditary titles, yet his adult intellectual life is devoted to and in defense of royals who solicited his histories and opinions. He was openly hostile to "absolute" monarchy, but did not challenge the Bourbon monarchy. Central to Boulainvilliers' thought, however conflicted he might have been, is the idea of a meritocracy. He appears greatly bothered that persons who were in positions of responsibility --- either because they inherited that position or they were awarded it by the King --- were not qualified to hold those positions. Apparently he believed that his patron, the regent -- Duke of Orleans -- was qualified, and Boulainvilliers was greatly disappointed that Orleans did not seize the opportunity to turn the monarchy in only a slightly more liberal direction.
Historian Harold Ellis' account of Boulainvilliers as an advisor to the Duke of Burgundy and later the Duke of Orleans (regent to Louis XV) unveils an intellectual crack in the ancien regime, decades before the French Revolution that toppled the French Monarchy. Boulainvilliers was part of a public discussion between representatives of the subgroups of the Second Estate (the aristocrats who inherited their titles, the peerage who owed their titles to the monarch, and others of noble heritage (such as Boulainvilliers) who were property owners) about their role in political decision-making. This was not a democratic movement as we think of it today or even as contemplated by the American Constitution later in the 18th century; yet it was incipient republicanism, which even the royal recipients of Boulainvilliers' essays seemed to understand because Boulainvilliers' failed in his efforts to persuade the regent, Orleans, to accept his idea that the Second Estate ought to have a voice in deciding of who succeeds a dying monarch who leaves no direct heirs. Succession was the limited issue for this incipient republicanism; no one was advocating the overthrow of the French monarchy and Boulainvilliers limited his criticism of a monarchy to the concept of "absolute" or decadent monarchy. The most interesting aspect of this history to me is that the discussion was even happening at all, beginning while the Sun King was still alive.
Yet this was the Enlightenment. Boulainvilliers is also responsible for spreading Spinoza's ideas in France, and he wrote a treatise on Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise , which was a defense of secular government and religious tolerance that was not well-received by the European ruling class. Among Spinoza's "radical" ideas are the seeds of democratic institutions, freedom of speech and religious toleration, freedoms that only six decades after Boulainvilliers' death found expression in the United States Constitution. And while Boulainvilliers is not espousing radical ideas in the Spinozan sense, the discussion within the Second Estate of which Boulainvilliers was a part is that same expression of freedom in its incipiency.
Boulainvilliers, as with others who were part of this discussion, turned to French history to identify the source of the royal authority and its legitimacy, and Boulainvilliers' survey of French history back to the Frankish conquest of Gaul led him to conclude that the authority of the monarchy is derived from the "nation." The nation does not include serfs or others of the Third Estate who were later responsible for overthrowing the French monarchy, but it did include The Second Estate, and the discussion revolved around which members of the Second Estate: just the royal aristocracy? the peerage? Or as Boulainvilliers advocated --- members of the Estates-General, even other propertied nobles such as himself?
As revealed by Ellis, Boulainvilliers was intellectually conflicted. Boulainvilliers appears at times to be hostile to hereditary titles, yet his adult intellectual life is devoted to and in defense of royals who solicited his histories and opinions. He was openly hostile to "absolute" monarchy, but did not challenge the Bourbon monarchy. Central to Boulainvilliers' thought, however conflicted he might have been, is the idea of a meritocracy. He appears greatly bothered that persons who were in positions of responsibility --- either because they inherited that position or they were awarded it by the King --- were not qualified to hold those positions. Apparently he believed that his patron, the regent -- Duke of Orleans -- was qualified, and Boulainvilliers was greatly disappointed that Orleans did not seize the opportunity to turn the monarchy in only a slightly more liberal direction.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of The Bees (1723)
I first learned of Mandeville when reading Jonathan Israel's Radical Enlightenment, a history of the 17th century ideas that largely spawned with Baruch Spinoza and later found political institutionalization in the United States of America. Mandeville, like Spinoza, was Dutch, but emigrated to England where he practiced medicine and wrote a few treatises about society and human nature. Born toward the end of Spinoza's life, Mandeville found his intellectual groove toward the end of John Locke's life and while David Hume was but a child. Jonathan Israel's description of Mandeville piqued my curiosity. Mandeville apparently roused the ire of those who spoke from the English pulpit, as well as government, and his book The Fable of The Bees was condemned as a nuisance by a British grand jury.
The Fable is not an easy read because of the period vernacular and literary style. And to my surprise, the "fable," originally published in 1705 as "The Grumbling Hive," is as much of a statement about political economy and global trade anticipating Adam Smith 70 years into the future as it is a statement about society and human nature. Yet a particular understanding of human nature is implicit in The Grumbling Hive, which Mandeville later detailed in a series of "Remarks," added to this book in the 1723 edition. Don't look for a scientific explanation of the social insects such as E.O Wilson's Superorganism, which is discussed in the post of November 4, 2009. Mandeville's bees are the working and employer classes of early 18th century England, a prosperous nation that is nevertheless corrupted by Vices (Mandeville's word for "sloth, lust, avarice and pride"). Halfway through the fable, God (on behalf of those within the hive who preach for a virtuous society) rids the hive of these Vices and "fraud departs," "hipocrasie is flung down," debtors pay their debts, and government ministers live within their means. The consequence of a purely virtuous society, however, is that the hive becomes less prosperous and ultimately the hive collapses. In Mandeville's view, "Vice nursed ingenuity, which joined with Trade and Industry, had carried Life's conveniences, its real pleasures, comforts, ease to such a height, the very poor lived better than the rich before, and nothing could be added more."
By Vice, Mandeville does not merely contemplate crimes and immoral activity, but, more generally, individuals merely acting in their self-interest. He sometimes refers to this as self-love or pride. As Jonathan Israel explains, "Mandeville's republicanism, deism, and libertinism are thus all parts of a larger philosophical vision of man driven by egotistical impulses, always seeking his own individual self-preservation and advancement, but gradually becoming accustomed, through a protracted civilizing process, to management by lawmakers and statesmen whose chief expertise lies in their ability to regulate and restrain man's self-seeking drives by playing on man's insecurity and fear." For Mandeville, so-called Virtues are more often than not actually driven by Vices such as Pride, such as the case of charitable gift passed on by a testamentary instrument where one is motivated to preserve the memory of his own name after death.
In regards to national wealth and prosperity, Mandeville anticipates Adam Smith because individual egotistical activity collectively operates to improve the welfare of the nation (hive) and the persons (bees) within. Suspending egotistical behavior and supplanting it with acts of charity, saving, and self-denial will only diminish the general welfare. In regards to political theory, Mandeville falls in the tradition of Niccolo Machiavelli, examining society and the polity as it is rather than deriving a philosophy from a set of first principles. Mandeville, like Machiavelli, seems to be interested in "a well-ordered republic" that does not have to resort to extra-constitutional measures to preserve itself. Jonathan Israel summarizes Mandeville's view that "governments maintain themselves through their power to conserve themselves," which implies a stable political system that changes via consensus and wisdom.
Science and experimental research in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries has brought us a long way from the philosophical mind experiments of 17th and 18th Enlightenment period. We now know, and this is documented in recent books like Wilson's Superorganism (November 4, 2009 post), Gazzaniga's Human (Sept 27, 2009 post), and Iaccoboni's Mirroring People (Sept 18, 2009 post), as well as several other books cited in these prior posts, that there are human biological characteristics that underlie reciprocal or cooperative behavior and certain moral values such as The Golden Rule. Humans are not entirely egotistical from a biological imperative. While the few social insect societies forming superorganisms identified by Wilson seem to be the exception to a biological imperative based on self-preservation rather than rule, reciprocal behavior in humans and other species is not, as Mandeville suggests, so easily separated from self-preservation and the Vice of self-interest. Mandeville thus remains relevant for this point, which is at the heart of both of his Enlightenment social philosophy and political economic views.
Mandeville drew the ire of the early 18th century pulpit because he questioned the sincerity of motivations that were undertaken in the name of charity. The Fable of The Bees contains An Essay on Charity and Charity Schools. The Grumbling Hive did not draw critical comment when it was first published in 1705, but with the edition of The Fable incorporating the Essay on Charity and Charity Schools in 1723, the attacks on Mandeville began in earnest. The authorities (secular and non-secular) who promoted charitable giving and saving in the name of self-denial were probably motivated by their self-interest to see that The Fable was declared a nuisance.
The Fable is not an easy read because of the period vernacular and literary style. And to my surprise, the "fable," originally published in 1705 as "The Grumbling Hive," is as much of a statement about political economy and global trade anticipating Adam Smith 70 years into the future as it is a statement about society and human nature. Yet a particular understanding of human nature is implicit in The Grumbling Hive, which Mandeville later detailed in a series of "Remarks," added to this book in the 1723 edition. Don't look for a scientific explanation of the social insects such as E.O Wilson's Superorganism, which is discussed in the post of November 4, 2009. Mandeville's bees are the working and employer classes of early 18th century England, a prosperous nation that is nevertheless corrupted by Vices (Mandeville's word for "sloth, lust, avarice and pride"). Halfway through the fable, God (on behalf of those within the hive who preach for a virtuous society) rids the hive of these Vices and "fraud departs," "hipocrasie is flung down," debtors pay their debts, and government ministers live within their means. The consequence of a purely virtuous society, however, is that the hive becomes less prosperous and ultimately the hive collapses. In Mandeville's view, "Vice nursed ingenuity, which joined with Trade and Industry, had carried Life's conveniences, its real pleasures, comforts, ease to such a height, the very poor lived better than the rich before, and nothing could be added more."
By Vice, Mandeville does not merely contemplate crimes and immoral activity, but, more generally, individuals merely acting in their self-interest. He sometimes refers to this as self-love or pride. As Jonathan Israel explains, "Mandeville's republicanism, deism, and libertinism are thus all parts of a larger philosophical vision of man driven by egotistical impulses, always seeking his own individual self-preservation and advancement, but gradually becoming accustomed, through a protracted civilizing process, to management by lawmakers and statesmen whose chief expertise lies in their ability to regulate and restrain man's self-seeking drives by playing on man's insecurity and fear." For Mandeville, so-called Virtues are more often than not actually driven by Vices such as Pride, such as the case of charitable gift passed on by a testamentary instrument where one is motivated to preserve the memory of his own name after death.
In regards to national wealth and prosperity, Mandeville anticipates Adam Smith because individual egotistical activity collectively operates to improve the welfare of the nation (hive) and the persons (bees) within. Suspending egotistical behavior and supplanting it with acts of charity, saving, and self-denial will only diminish the general welfare. In regards to political theory, Mandeville falls in the tradition of Niccolo Machiavelli, examining society and the polity as it is rather than deriving a philosophy from a set of first principles. Mandeville, like Machiavelli, seems to be interested in "a well-ordered republic" that does not have to resort to extra-constitutional measures to preserve itself. Jonathan Israel summarizes Mandeville's view that "governments maintain themselves through their power to conserve themselves," which implies a stable political system that changes via consensus and wisdom.
Science and experimental research in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries has brought us a long way from the philosophical mind experiments of 17th and 18th Enlightenment period. We now know, and this is documented in recent books like Wilson's Superorganism (November 4, 2009 post), Gazzaniga's Human (Sept 27, 2009 post), and Iaccoboni's Mirroring People (Sept 18, 2009 post), as well as several other books cited in these prior posts, that there are human biological characteristics that underlie reciprocal or cooperative behavior and certain moral values such as The Golden Rule. Humans are not entirely egotistical from a biological imperative. While the few social insect societies forming superorganisms identified by Wilson seem to be the exception to a biological imperative based on self-preservation rather than rule, reciprocal behavior in humans and other species is not, as Mandeville suggests, so easily separated from self-preservation and the Vice of self-interest. Mandeville thus remains relevant for this point, which is at the heart of both of his Enlightenment social philosophy and political economic views.
Mandeville drew the ire of the early 18th century pulpit because he questioned the sincerity of motivations that were undertaken in the name of charity. The Fable of The Bees contains An Essay on Charity and Charity Schools. The Grumbling Hive did not draw critical comment when it was first published in 1705, but with the edition of The Fable incorporating the Essay on Charity and Charity Schools in 1723, the attacks on Mandeville began in earnest. The authorities (secular and non-secular) who promoted charitable giving and saving in the name of self-denial were probably motivated by their self-interest to see that The Fable was declared a nuisance.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Gwyneth Cravens, Power To Save The World (2007)
Three years ago, I heard a presentation by the head of the Nuclear Energy Institute about the history and then-current status of the nuclear energy industry in the United States. I had not previously given much thought to nuclear energy and my attitudes and biases with respect to nuclear energy were largely shaped by media reporting of the Three Mile Island Pennsylvania reactor meltdown in the 1970s and the Chernobyl, Soviet Union reactor meltdown in 1986. I also remember how difficult it was for Pacific Gas & Electric to get regulatory approval to startup the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant near Lompoc, California. Scary stuff that is problematic both financially and politically.
Fast forward twenty years later to a time of growing attention to carbon emissions and the reported link to a rise in global temperatures, the presentation about the nuclear energy industry's safe operating history (outside of the Chernobyl accident), the redundancy built into plant design in the name of safety, the reduction in regulatory barriers to nuclear power plant licensing and the standardization of nuclear facility designs, greater knowledge of the limited risks associated with waste storage, and nuclear power's low operating costs makes nuclear power a serious solution to reducing carbon emissions . The drawback to expanded nuclear power development remains its substantial up-front capital costs and the industry's ability to attract sufficient investment capital to expand much beyond its current 19-20% share of the contribution to electricity production in the United States. On an operating cost basis, nuclear power is more competitive than most other types of electricity production; when the capital costs are amortized and added to the equation, nuclear power is slightly more expensive. The other drawback is that it takes a long time to construct a new nuclear power facility after you have invested years in applying for a license; it is not an immediate solution if you are looking to shut down a coal-fired power plant tomorrow.
I vowed to learn more when I could find the time, and I searched for a book that would objectively address the subject of nuclear energy, because as my own experience told, beliefs (not facts) were shaped by emotional discussions about nuclear power, radiation exposure, and fear. I looked at several titles on the subject and found Gwyneth Cravens' Power to Save the World , the cover of which described Cravens as a skeptic who set about to find the truth about nuclear energy. Early on, Cravens cites polling data that lists the three sources of information that the public finds least reliable on the subject of nuclear energy --- politicians, the media, and the utility industry --- and instead she turns in her search for facts and truth to the scientists, engineers and researchers who have spent their careers addressing all of the issues that surround nuclear power. Her guide and guru is Dr. Rip Anderson, long affiliated with Sandia National Laboratories outside of Albuquerque where Cravens was raised as a child.
When I began reading her book, I thought I was departing from the winding road that holds the previous posts in this blog together. I am interested, after all, in many other things including contemporary public policy, history, art, music, and economics. This was a planned excursion to contemporary public policy and the subject of climate change and carbon. Not so fast. This is also a book about the very small --- matter at an atomic level --- and deals with the subject of uncertainty, probabilities and risk that is at the core of several earlier posts. From our knowledge of atoms, electrons, protons, and atomic nuclei, and Anderson's non-biased probabalistic risk assessment approach to nuclear safety and public health, the book builds toward the public policy conclusion that nuclear energy is one of the solutions to arresting rising global temperatures and is a safer, healthier mode of generating electricity than fossil fuel generation. Anyone who is interested in the subject of climate change, carbon policy, and clean energy should be reading this book. Our elected representatives who are deciding public policy should be reading this book.
We supposedly have a comprehensive national energy policy law reflected in the Energy Policy and Conservation Act and several other statutes, but it is questionable just how comprehensive our public policy really is given that we all but abandoned nuclear energy for forty years now and have never devoted significant resources to renewable energy supplies. Europe and Japan have leapfrogged over the United States in their share of energy production from nuclear power facilities during that time period and have moved to the head of the technological class. Amazingly, the U.S. nuclear industry has steadily maintained its 19-20% share of electricity production over the intervening decades, not from building new facilities, but from making the existing facilities more efficient. Ultimately, there is a limit to the gains to be achieved from that strategy and if nuclear is going to retain its current share the United States will have to build new reactors. As of December 31, 2009, there were 18 applications pending at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to build 28 new reactors. There are a few other announcements of investment intentions for new reactors as reflected in early site permit applications, and only last week a letter of intent was announced by Areva to consider a new nuclear facility in California's Central Valley near Fresno. According to the Nuclear Energy Institute's website, the US Department of Energy estimates that 3 new reactors will have to be brought online every two years beginning in 2016 in order for nuclear energy to maintain its 19-20% share as electricity demand increases by 21% over the next two decades. So if all the pending applications are ultimately approved, nuclear may hold its own or enjoy a slight gain over its current share if the estimated demand for electricity is correct and the financial community is able to raise sufficient capital to build them by 2030. That is an optimistic scenario because it does not factor in the litigation that seems to ensue with every application and leads to delay in the development of this clean energy.
But a more thoughtful comprehensive energy strategy might not consider maintaining the nuclear status quo enough. Pending energy legislation aimed at promoting "clean energy" renewable power sources such as hydroelectric, solar, wind, and tidal are looking to increase their share, yet ironically the House climate change legislation (Waxman-Markey) is nearly silent on nuclear energy and does not consider nuclear to be a renewable energy resource, although from a depletion point of view the supply of uranium is vastly longer than fossil fuel resources. A separate piece of legislation (HR 2768) would declare nuclear energy a form of "clean energy." To pass clean energy legislation in the Senate, it appears that there will have to be a provision that enhances nuclear energy's contribution to our national electricity supply. Instead of focusing on increasing the share of renewable energy sources for the future supply of electricity, the public policy discussion and decision should be focusing on increasing clean energy's contribution (including nuclear) to the supply of electric power. Renewable energy sources, as defined in the Waxman-Markey legislation, have their limits too, and they will never be able to satisfy the planet's energy needs. In this respect, Waxman-Markey seems short-sited. This is the balanced conclusion of Cravens' Power to Save The World.
To understand the relative role of nuclear power as a "clean energy," Cravens' research comes to this conclusion: "An inclusive analysis of the life cycle of nuclear power--the extraction of uranium and its transformation into fuel, the construction of plants, the decommissioning of reactors, and the disposal of waste--shows that throughout the process, nuclear power emits about the same amount or carbon or is slightly less than is typically produced during the typical life cycle of wind turbines and solar panels. Radiation from nuclear plants, strictly regulated, is so insignificant that it is difficult to distinguish it from normal background radiation. Even when American plants have accidentally released radioactive materials, the actual exposure of humans has been miniscule compared with what we receive daily from natural sources."
After confronting all the challenges laid at the doorstep of nuclear energy and spelling out the facts uncovered by her questioning of researchers, engineers, and nuclear scientists, Cravens has two messages for the public and policymakers. The first is a simple equation: one nuclear fuel pellet weighing 0.0007 pounds can generate the same amount of electricity 1,780 pounds of coal, or 149 gallons of oil, or 157 gallons of regular gas. The second is that the risk to health and safety from possible radiation exposure is very small; there are greater risks from chemical plants and refineries and driving automobiles, all of which are not regulated as strictly as nuclear power.
So this is a public policy book after all, but ultimately the policy begins with knowledge and understanding of the very small pieces of atomic matter that have created this issues that Cravens describes in this book. Cravens closes the book with a statement from Rip Anderson: "One day God could say to us: 'I gave you the brainiest men and women in human history to come up with an understanding of the atom and its nucleus. I gave you enough uranium and thorium to last you for thousands of years. I gave you an understanding of how when uranium decays it releases energy. You didn't need to invent anything else. You had everything you needed to provide energy for yourselves and your descendants without harming the environment. What else did you want?'"
Fast forward twenty years later to a time of growing attention to carbon emissions and the reported link to a rise in global temperatures, the presentation about the nuclear energy industry's safe operating history (outside of the Chernobyl accident), the redundancy built into plant design in the name of safety, the reduction in regulatory barriers to nuclear power plant licensing and the standardization of nuclear facility designs, greater knowledge of the limited risks associated with waste storage, and nuclear power's low operating costs makes nuclear power a serious solution to reducing carbon emissions . The drawback to expanded nuclear power development remains its substantial up-front capital costs and the industry's ability to attract sufficient investment capital to expand much beyond its current 19-20% share of the contribution to electricity production in the United States. On an operating cost basis, nuclear power is more competitive than most other types of electricity production; when the capital costs are amortized and added to the equation, nuclear power is slightly more expensive. The other drawback is that it takes a long time to construct a new nuclear power facility after you have invested years in applying for a license; it is not an immediate solution if you are looking to shut down a coal-fired power plant tomorrow.
I vowed to learn more when I could find the time, and I searched for a book that would objectively address the subject of nuclear energy, because as my own experience told, beliefs (not facts) were shaped by emotional discussions about nuclear power, radiation exposure, and fear. I looked at several titles on the subject and found Gwyneth Cravens' Power to Save the World , the cover of which described Cravens as a skeptic who set about to find the truth about nuclear energy. Early on, Cravens cites polling data that lists the three sources of information that the public finds least reliable on the subject of nuclear energy --- politicians, the media, and the utility industry --- and instead she turns in her search for facts and truth to the scientists, engineers and researchers who have spent their careers addressing all of the issues that surround nuclear power. Her guide and guru is Dr. Rip Anderson, long affiliated with Sandia National Laboratories outside of Albuquerque where Cravens was raised as a child.
When I began reading her book, I thought I was departing from the winding road that holds the previous posts in this blog together. I am interested, after all, in many other things including contemporary public policy, history, art, music, and economics. This was a planned excursion to contemporary public policy and the subject of climate change and carbon. Not so fast. This is also a book about the very small --- matter at an atomic level --- and deals with the subject of uncertainty, probabilities and risk that is at the core of several earlier posts. From our knowledge of atoms, electrons, protons, and atomic nuclei, and Anderson's non-biased probabalistic risk assessment approach to nuclear safety and public health, the book builds toward the public policy conclusion that nuclear energy is one of the solutions to arresting rising global temperatures and is a safer, healthier mode of generating electricity than fossil fuel generation. Anyone who is interested in the subject of climate change, carbon policy, and clean energy should be reading this book. Our elected representatives who are deciding public policy should be reading this book.
We supposedly have a comprehensive national energy policy law reflected in the Energy Policy and Conservation Act and several other statutes, but it is questionable just how comprehensive our public policy really is given that we all but abandoned nuclear energy for forty years now and have never devoted significant resources to renewable energy supplies. Europe and Japan have leapfrogged over the United States in their share of energy production from nuclear power facilities during that time period and have moved to the head of the technological class. Amazingly, the U.S. nuclear industry has steadily maintained its 19-20% share of electricity production over the intervening decades, not from building new facilities, but from making the existing facilities more efficient. Ultimately, there is a limit to the gains to be achieved from that strategy and if nuclear is going to retain its current share the United States will have to build new reactors. As of December 31, 2009, there were 18 applications pending at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to build 28 new reactors. There are a few other announcements of investment intentions for new reactors as reflected in early site permit applications, and only last week a letter of intent was announced by Areva to consider a new nuclear facility in California's Central Valley near Fresno. According to the Nuclear Energy Institute's website, the US Department of Energy estimates that 3 new reactors will have to be brought online every two years beginning in 2016 in order for nuclear energy to maintain its 19-20% share as electricity demand increases by 21% over the next two decades. So if all the pending applications are ultimately approved, nuclear may hold its own or enjoy a slight gain over its current share if the estimated demand for electricity is correct and the financial community is able to raise sufficient capital to build them by 2030. That is an optimistic scenario because it does not factor in the litigation that seems to ensue with every application and leads to delay in the development of this clean energy.
But a more thoughtful comprehensive energy strategy might not consider maintaining the nuclear status quo enough. Pending energy legislation aimed at promoting "clean energy" renewable power sources such as hydroelectric, solar, wind, and tidal are looking to increase their share, yet ironically the House climate change legislation (Waxman-Markey) is nearly silent on nuclear energy and does not consider nuclear to be a renewable energy resource, although from a depletion point of view the supply of uranium is vastly longer than fossil fuel resources. A separate piece of legislation (HR 2768) would declare nuclear energy a form of "clean energy." To pass clean energy legislation in the Senate, it appears that there will have to be a provision that enhances nuclear energy's contribution to our national electricity supply. Instead of focusing on increasing the share of renewable energy sources for the future supply of electricity, the public policy discussion and decision should be focusing on increasing clean energy's contribution (including nuclear) to the supply of electric power. Renewable energy sources, as defined in the Waxman-Markey legislation, have their limits too, and they will never be able to satisfy the planet's energy needs. In this respect, Waxman-Markey seems short-sited. This is the balanced conclusion of Cravens' Power to Save The World.
To understand the relative role of nuclear power as a "clean energy," Cravens' research comes to this conclusion: "An inclusive analysis of the life cycle of nuclear power--the extraction of uranium and its transformation into fuel, the construction of plants, the decommissioning of reactors, and the disposal of waste--shows that throughout the process, nuclear power emits about the same amount or carbon or is slightly less than is typically produced during the typical life cycle of wind turbines and solar panels. Radiation from nuclear plants, strictly regulated, is so insignificant that it is difficult to distinguish it from normal background radiation. Even when American plants have accidentally released radioactive materials, the actual exposure of humans has been miniscule compared with what we receive daily from natural sources."
After confronting all the challenges laid at the doorstep of nuclear energy and spelling out the facts uncovered by her questioning of researchers, engineers, and nuclear scientists, Cravens has two messages for the public and policymakers. The first is a simple equation: one nuclear fuel pellet weighing 0.0007 pounds can generate the same amount of electricity 1,780 pounds of coal, or 149 gallons of oil, or 157 gallons of regular gas. The second is that the risk to health and safety from possible radiation exposure is very small; there are greater risks from chemical plants and refineries and driving automobiles, all of which are not regulated as strictly as nuclear power.
So this is a public policy book after all, but ultimately the policy begins with knowledge and understanding of the very small pieces of atomic matter that have created this issues that Cravens describes in this book. Cravens closes the book with a statement from Rip Anderson: "One day God could say to us: 'I gave you the brainiest men and women in human history to come up with an understanding of the atom and its nucleus. I gave you enough uranium and thorium to last you for thousands of years. I gave you an understanding of how when uranium decays it releases energy. You didn't need to invent anything else. You had everything you needed to provide energy for yourselves and your descendants without harming the environment. What else did you want?'"
Monday, November 30, 2009
Richard Powers, Generosity (2009)
Two years ago, I read a wonderfully conceived novel by Richard Powers entitled The Echo Maker. Introducing his readers to some of the marvels of neuroscience and our current understanding of the human brain as revealed by what we learn from brain injuries, Powers weaves science and storytelling in a thoughtful way. My only criticism of the novel was that it was about 30 or 40 pages too long, which is not a criticism of lengthy novels but a reflection of Powers' style to discuss non-fiction science through fictional dialogue: as fascinating as the material may be, it is not always the stuff of real conversation. Powers has been criticized for perhaps writing too much, and not leaving enough to the reader to figure out what is going on. When his next novel came along, however, I jumped at the chance to read more from the creative mind of Richard Powers.
In Generosity - An Enhancement, Powers visits the mind-body problem of feelings --- in this case the feeling of euphoria --- and whether there is a genetic basis for happiness or bliss that the medical research community might be able to exploit and transform our humanness. To tell this story, Powers calls upon a literary tool that he employed in the The Echo Maker -- a scientist who is capable of talking to the public through popular media. In The Echo Maker, it was Dr. Gerald Weber, a character modeled after neurologist Oliver Sacks who writes popular books based on his own medical experiences, including the book Awakenings that later earned an Academy Award as a film. In Generosity, Powers brings us Dr. Thomas Kurton, who comfortably appears on popular science television programs to explain his latest research --- cynically, to stimulate the next round of venture capital that is needed to fund his continuing research program that has yet to develop anything practical --- and who comfortably appears on a Chicago-based Oprah-like talk show touting the potential of genomics to enhance our life. There are other parallels between the two novels as well: there is a "patient," who is worth our studying, and there are people who are genuinely concerned for the welfare of the "patient." These characters paint the humanist landscape that is cast beside the scientific data and medical mysteries looking to be explained and solved.
While both Generosity and The Echo Maker touch on topics that have been addressed in previous posts about the brain, the hot topic here is the idea that there might be a gene controlling complex behavior. Framing the issue, Powers fictionalizes about a Nobel laureate who writes in "a much reproduced Guardian op-ed: 'We must once and for all outgrow our obsolete ideas about heredity. Genes don't code for traits. They synthesize proteins. And single proteins can do incredibly different things, depending on where and when they're produced . . .We have no gambling gene, no intelligence gene, no gene for language or walking upright.'" Later, Powers explains, "A single gene defect can knock out a complex behavior. But that does not mean complex behaviors derive from a single gene. One bad allele can cause depression. But a few good ones don't necessarily cause bliss." It is the nature vs nurture debate, and Powers concludes that the scientific consensus, "if any, is vague. Most talking heads ...concede that people's bedrock emotional skills vary as greatly as their skills in math. For proof, witness the chaos of this public argument [about whether there is a gene for bliss]."
And that brings me to another recent effort in the popular media to pronounce the role of genes in programming human behavior: the suggestion in a recent New York Times article by Nicholas Wade that there is a "god gene" that has programmed humans to believe in a god. Wade describes "a propensity to learn the religion of one’s community [that] became so firmly implanted in the human neural circuitry" as though it is a fixed biological component of human DNA. Wade is not alone in this suggestion, even on the op-ed pages of the New York Times. At the heart of this discussion is whether evolution operates on genes as advanced by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene, or whether it operates alternatively or equally upon an entire organism, or on groups such as kin or whole communities as advanced by the sociobiologist E.O. Wilson. Wade, to his credit, acknowledges this debate, but never seriously muzzles the popular impression that there may actually be a "god gene." Nor does Wade acknowledge more penetrating research, such as Pascal Boyer's Religion Explained, which supports another explanation based on the human mind's adaptive embrace of animism and projection and that religion as commonly experienced across all human societies "is about the existence and causal powers of non-observable entities and agencies," what one commenter has called a "collection of fantasies about spirits." Not all of these spirits is capable of being called a "god."
About this most recent promotion of a genetic source for specific human behavior, Richard Powers could only say, "Witness the chaos of this public argument." As one letter to the editor that responded to Wade's polemic intoned:
"Many questions came to mind as I read “The Evolution of the God Gene.” What does it actually mean to postulate a god gene for religious belief? How does it work? What is the relationship between the organic gene and the human experience? Do we need one gene for a theist and another for an atheist, an agnostic or a polytheist?
"It is quite possible to accept evolution without resorting to an organic narrative to account for every specific human experience. Must there be a specific gene for playing poker or dancing the rumba? And if we believe in elves and witches, are corresponding genes required?"
In Generosity - An Enhancement, Powers visits the mind-body problem of feelings --- in this case the feeling of euphoria --- and whether there is a genetic basis for happiness or bliss that the medical research community might be able to exploit and transform our humanness. To tell this story, Powers calls upon a literary tool that he employed in the The Echo Maker -- a scientist who is capable of talking to the public through popular media. In The Echo Maker, it was Dr. Gerald Weber, a character modeled after neurologist Oliver Sacks who writes popular books based on his own medical experiences, including the book Awakenings that later earned an Academy Award as a film. In Generosity, Powers brings us Dr. Thomas Kurton, who comfortably appears on popular science television programs to explain his latest research --- cynically, to stimulate the next round of venture capital that is needed to fund his continuing research program that has yet to develop anything practical --- and who comfortably appears on a Chicago-based Oprah-like talk show touting the potential of genomics to enhance our life. There are other parallels between the two novels as well: there is a "patient," who is worth our studying, and there are people who are genuinely concerned for the welfare of the "patient." These characters paint the humanist landscape that is cast beside the scientific data and medical mysteries looking to be explained and solved.
While both Generosity and The Echo Maker touch on topics that have been addressed in previous posts about the brain, the hot topic here is the idea that there might be a gene controlling complex behavior. Framing the issue, Powers fictionalizes about a Nobel laureate who writes in "a much reproduced Guardian op-ed: 'We must once and for all outgrow our obsolete ideas about heredity. Genes don't code for traits. They synthesize proteins. And single proteins can do incredibly different things, depending on where and when they're produced . . .We have no gambling gene, no intelligence gene, no gene for language or walking upright.'" Later, Powers explains, "A single gene defect can knock out a complex behavior. But that does not mean complex behaviors derive from a single gene. One bad allele can cause depression. But a few good ones don't necessarily cause bliss." It is the nature vs nurture debate, and Powers concludes that the scientific consensus, "if any, is vague. Most talking heads ...concede that people's bedrock emotional skills vary as greatly as their skills in math. For proof, witness the chaos of this public argument [about whether there is a gene for bliss]."
And that brings me to another recent effort in the popular media to pronounce the role of genes in programming human behavior: the suggestion in a recent New York Times article by Nicholas Wade that there is a "god gene" that has programmed humans to believe in a god. Wade describes "a propensity to learn the religion of one’s community [that] became so firmly implanted in the human neural circuitry" as though it is a fixed biological component of human DNA. Wade is not alone in this suggestion, even on the op-ed pages of the New York Times. At the heart of this discussion is whether evolution operates on genes as advanced by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene, or whether it operates alternatively or equally upon an entire organism, or on groups such as kin or whole communities as advanced by the sociobiologist E.O. Wilson. Wade, to his credit, acknowledges this debate, but never seriously muzzles the popular impression that there may actually be a "god gene." Nor does Wade acknowledge more penetrating research, such as Pascal Boyer's Religion Explained, which supports another explanation based on the human mind's adaptive embrace of animism and projection and that religion as commonly experienced across all human societies "is about the existence and causal powers of non-observable entities and agencies," what one commenter has called a "collection of fantasies about spirits." Not all of these spirits is capable of being called a "god."
About this most recent promotion of a genetic source for specific human behavior, Richard Powers could only say, "Witness the chaos of this public argument." As one letter to the editor that responded to Wade's polemic intoned:
"Many questions came to mind as I read “The Evolution of the God Gene.” What does it actually mean to postulate a god gene for religious belief? How does it work? What is the relationship between the organic gene and the human experience? Do we need one gene for a theist and another for an atheist, an agnostic or a polytheist?
"It is quite possible to accept evolution without resorting to an organic narrative to account for every specific human experience. Must there be a specific gene for playing poker or dancing the rumba? And if we believe in elves and witches, are corresponding genes required?"
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Bert Hölldobler & E.O. Wilson, The Superorganism (2008)
Human (September 27 post), Mirroring People (September 18 post), and The First Word (August 31 post) all stress the social nature of the human species as something unique to homo sapiens. Marco Iaccoboni, as we saw in Mirroring People, believes that not enough weight is given to our social nature and too much consideration is given to our individuality. But what of other species? We know that other primates are social, although not to the extent of the human species. But there are other species who are even more socially organized than the human species. Meet the social insects --- bees, wasps, ants, termites --- who have established a diverse array of social communities, some of which have suppressed nearly all individuality.
Holldobler and Wilson's The Superorganism does not specifically address the big three areas of human inquiry -- the very large, the very small, and the human mind -- that I described in the August 31st post, but the book is devoted to that other question I mentioned: what is life? The subject-matter of The Superorganism is not entirely divorced from the books in the preceding posts. One of the links between each of the books reviewed in earlier posts is the subject of information and communication. The largest chapter of this beautiful book exhaustively summarizes what we know about communication within the species of the social insects --- not at the level of electrons and quarks and bosons that Seth Lloyd focused on --- but at the level of chemical compounds and the sensory capabilities of these insects: pheromones secreted to lay a trail for colony ants to follow leaders from the nest to food sources and back; odors of hydrocarbons that confirm the queen is present in the colony that shut down the reproductive capabilities of female workers so that only the queen becomes the source of eggs; odors of hydrocarbons that enable ants to distinguish members of their own colony from outsiders. There is also the suggestion, not inconsistent with Christine Keneally's statement in The First Word that human language is believed to have emerged from human motor skills, that insect communication may have emerged from the insect's motor skills.
But information is not the big idea in Superorganism. Information and communication among individual insects and competing groups of insects is just a significant piece of the evidence that supports the big idea in this book: multilevel natural selection. Since Richard Dawkins originally published The Selfish Gene in 1976, a debate has raged whether natural selection operates on genes, as advanced by Dawkins, or whether it operates on the individual organism (phenotype) --- the carrier of a collection of genes, or whether it operates on groups such as related kin, or more broadly communities or colonies. The advocates for each view were said to promote gene selection, individual selection, kin selection, or group selection respectively. Charles Darwin, because he lacked an understanding of Mendellian genetics, DNA and RNA, essentially propounded a view of individual selection, although he acknowledged, as Holldobler and Wilson note, that the altruistic behavior of the insect colony appeared to be an exception. Holldobler and Wilson join an emerging view that declares, "It's all of the above," and hence the nom "multilevel selection." The early advocates for multilevel selection, David Sloan Wilson and and Elliot Sober, refer to it as "a unified theory of natural selection that operates on a nested hierarchy of units." While declaring that "all selection is multilevel," Holldobler and Wilson acknowledge that the ultimate unit of evolution is the gene (or a group of alleles of interacting genes). Even Dawkins concedes, however, that the fate of a gene can be tied to the fate of other genes within the same phenotype, so the lines over the unit of natural selection have blurred as the debate ensues.
The unique case of the social insects posed a question for Darwin because he was bothered by the question of how the worker group of ants and other social insects could evolve if they were sterile and left no offspring. Holldobler and Wilson explain the principle of eusociality --- the care of offspring of a reproductive group by a worker group --- and the gem in this 500 page book is the presentation of a model, supported by some evidence, how the most advanced eusocial insects such as bees and leafcutter ants evolved their cohesive social organization of altruistic individuals over millions of years. While difficult for the lay person such as myself to follow on the first presentation, the theory is advanced by this sentence: "Altruism and eusociality are thus evidently born from the appearance of a phenotypically flexible eusocial allele (or ensemble of such alleles) in a progressive provisioning mother and between-group selection acting on emergent group traits, socially binding in nature and sufficiently powerful to overbalance the dissolutive effects of individual direct (within group) selection." Translation: at the gene selection level, traits are favored to enhance the survival of eggs or larvae by promoting social relationships that become strong enough (ie. that eliminate or minimize conflict within the group) to offset threats from competing social groups (other colonies or species) or the environment. This development was evolutionarily enabled because the alleles within the genes of the individual insects were flexible enough to activate this solution for survival. Finally, "when ecological and genetic factors advance a society to near the upper extreme of the superorganism continuum, subsequent selection may result in the complete loss of costly physiological structures involved in within-group competition" and "the capacity for 'selfishness' [becomes] insignificant because the underlying organs (for example, ovaries) important for within-group competition degenerate or become completely lost." For these unique groups of insects, the authors find that the colony is essentially an organism (phenotype), which they call a "superorganism." Borrowing a term from Dawkins, the authors conclude that the eusocial insect colony effectively becomes a target of natural selection because it is a coherent 'extended phenotype' of genes within colony members.
Importantly, the eusocial insects who form "superorganisms" are a very tiny percentage of the entire landscape of all species. They comprise only 15 species of more than 2600 species of insects. There is one species of vertebrates --- naked mole rats --- who fit this classification. However powerful the evidence for the superorganism is and the multilevel selection model, the truth remains that the critical unit of evolution is the gene. As the fictional character quoted in Richard Powers' Generosity says (see November 30 post), "Genes don't code for traits." Genes do code for chemical stimuli and sensory organs. This is not lost on Holldobler and Wilson who write, "Decision by decision, the insect responds to those stimuli to which its sensory and nervous systems are programmed to respond. These stimuli compose the highly filtered sensory world of the caste to which it belongs." And the science of evolutionary development, which posits that genes may not be expressed until a later developmental stage of life, undoubtedly has a role in explaining how insects "learn" altruistic behavior. Holldobler and Wilson provide evidence for this model as well in explaining that there are some species of female worker ants with ovaries in the nest that are simply suppressed by specific chemical recognition that a fertile egg-laying queen is in the nest, and when the queen dies, a worker ant's reproductive capabilities can be reactivated for the survival of the group.
If the reader of this book is, like me, learning about the social insects for the first time, there is a sense of awe in just how much we know about ants, bees, wasps, and termites. The quantum of information provided by the authors in support of their model, particularly about the ants, can be overwhelming at time. The authors' discussion of genetic social evolution and sociogenesis is delivered early in chapters 2 and 3, and the evidence follows for seven more chapters over 430 pages. After reaching the end of the book, go back and read chapters 2 and 3 again and the enormous amount of detailed evidence will come together.
Holldobler and Wilson's The Superorganism does not specifically address the big three areas of human inquiry -- the very large, the very small, and the human mind -- that I described in the August 31st post, but the book is devoted to that other question I mentioned: what is life? The subject-matter of The Superorganism is not entirely divorced from the books in the preceding posts. One of the links between each of the books reviewed in earlier posts is the subject of information and communication. The largest chapter of this beautiful book exhaustively summarizes what we know about communication within the species of the social insects --- not at the level of electrons and quarks and bosons that Seth Lloyd focused on --- but at the level of chemical compounds and the sensory capabilities of these insects: pheromones secreted to lay a trail for colony ants to follow leaders from the nest to food sources and back; odors of hydrocarbons that confirm the queen is present in the colony that shut down the reproductive capabilities of female workers so that only the queen becomes the source of eggs; odors of hydrocarbons that enable ants to distinguish members of their own colony from outsiders. There is also the suggestion, not inconsistent with Christine Keneally's statement in The First Word that human language is believed to have emerged from human motor skills, that insect communication may have emerged from the insect's motor skills.
But information is not the big idea in Superorganism. Information and communication among individual insects and competing groups of insects is just a significant piece of the evidence that supports the big idea in this book: multilevel natural selection. Since Richard Dawkins originally published The Selfish Gene in 1976, a debate has raged whether natural selection operates on genes, as advanced by Dawkins, or whether it operates on the individual organism (phenotype) --- the carrier of a collection of genes, or whether it operates on groups such as related kin, or more broadly communities or colonies. The advocates for each view were said to promote gene selection, individual selection, kin selection, or group selection respectively. Charles Darwin, because he lacked an understanding of Mendellian genetics, DNA and RNA, essentially propounded a view of individual selection, although he acknowledged, as Holldobler and Wilson note, that the altruistic behavior of the insect colony appeared to be an exception. Holldobler and Wilson join an emerging view that declares, "It's all of the above," and hence the nom "multilevel selection." The early advocates for multilevel selection, David Sloan Wilson and and Elliot Sober, refer to it as "a unified theory of natural selection that operates on a nested hierarchy of units." While declaring that "all selection is multilevel," Holldobler and Wilson acknowledge that the ultimate unit of evolution is the gene (or a group of alleles of interacting genes). Even Dawkins concedes, however, that the fate of a gene can be tied to the fate of other genes within the same phenotype, so the lines over the unit of natural selection have blurred as the debate ensues.
The unique case of the social insects posed a question for Darwin because he was bothered by the question of how the worker group of ants and other social insects could evolve if they were sterile and left no offspring. Holldobler and Wilson explain the principle of eusociality --- the care of offspring of a reproductive group by a worker group --- and the gem in this 500 page book is the presentation of a model, supported by some evidence, how the most advanced eusocial insects such as bees and leafcutter ants evolved their cohesive social organization of altruistic individuals over millions of years. While difficult for the lay person such as myself to follow on the first presentation, the theory is advanced by this sentence: "Altruism and eusociality are thus evidently born from the appearance of a phenotypically flexible eusocial allele (or ensemble of such alleles) in a progressive provisioning mother and between-group selection acting on emergent group traits, socially binding in nature and sufficiently powerful to overbalance the dissolutive effects of individual direct (within group) selection." Translation: at the gene selection level, traits are favored to enhance the survival of eggs or larvae by promoting social relationships that become strong enough (ie. that eliminate or minimize conflict within the group) to offset threats from competing social groups (other colonies or species) or the environment. This development was evolutionarily enabled because the alleles within the genes of the individual insects were flexible enough to activate this solution for survival. Finally, "when ecological and genetic factors advance a society to near the upper extreme of the superorganism continuum, subsequent selection may result in the complete loss of costly physiological structures involved in within-group competition" and "the capacity for 'selfishness' [becomes] insignificant because the underlying organs (for example, ovaries) important for within-group competition degenerate or become completely lost." For these unique groups of insects, the authors find that the colony is essentially an organism (phenotype), which they call a "superorganism." Borrowing a term from Dawkins, the authors conclude that the eusocial insect colony effectively becomes a target of natural selection because it is a coherent 'extended phenotype' of genes within colony members.
Importantly, the eusocial insects who form "superorganisms" are a very tiny percentage of the entire landscape of all species. They comprise only 15 species of more than 2600 species of insects. There is one species of vertebrates --- naked mole rats --- who fit this classification. However powerful the evidence for the superorganism is and the multilevel selection model, the truth remains that the critical unit of evolution is the gene. As the fictional character quoted in Richard Powers' Generosity says (see November 30 post), "Genes don't code for traits." Genes do code for chemical stimuli and sensory organs. This is not lost on Holldobler and Wilson who write, "Decision by decision, the insect responds to those stimuli to which its sensory and nervous systems are programmed to respond. These stimuli compose the highly filtered sensory world of the caste to which it belongs." And the science of evolutionary development, which posits that genes may not be expressed until a later developmental stage of life, undoubtedly has a role in explaining how insects "learn" altruistic behavior. Holldobler and Wilson provide evidence for this model as well in explaining that there are some species of female worker ants with ovaries in the nest that are simply suppressed by specific chemical recognition that a fertile egg-laying queen is in the nest, and when the queen dies, a worker ant's reproductive capabilities can be reactivated for the survival of the group.
If the reader of this book is, like me, learning about the social insects for the first time, there is a sense of awe in just how much we know about ants, bees, wasps, and termites. The quantum of information provided by the authors in support of their model, particularly about the ants, can be overwhelming at time. The authors' discussion of genetic social evolution and sociogenesis is delivered early in chapters 2 and 3, and the evidence follows for seven more chapters over 430 pages. After reaching the end of the book, go back and read chapters 2 and 3 again and the enormous amount of detailed evidence will come together.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)