Digressions&Impressions

Spinoza, Hume, and the Story of Thales and his Olive Presses

Most courteous Sir,—When Professor N. N. visited me recently, he told me that he heard that my Theologico-Political Treatise has been translated into Dutch, and that someone, whose name he did not know, was about to have it printed. I earnestly beg you to inquire carefully into the business, and, if possible, prevent the printing. This is the request not only of myself, but of many of my friends and acquaintances, who would be sorry to see the book placed under an interdict, as it undoubtedly would be, if published in Dutch. I do not doubt, but that you will do this service to me and the cause.

A short time ago one of my friends sent me a pamphlet called "Homo Politicus," or Political Man, of which I had heard much. I have read it, and find it to be the most pernicious work which men could devise. Honor [eer] and riches are the author's highest good; he adapts his doctrine accordingly, and shows the means to acquire them; to wit, by inwardly rejecting all religion, and outwardly professing whatever best serves his own advancement, also by keeping faith with no one, except in so far as he himself is profited thereby. For the rest, to feign, to make promises and break them, to lie, to swear falsely, and many such like practices call forth his highest praises. When I had finished reading the book, I debated whether I should write a pamphlet indirectly aimed against its author, wherein I should treat of the highest good and show the troubled and wretched condition of those who are covetous of rank and riches; finally proving by very plain reasoning and many examples, that the insatiable desire for honor and riches must bring and has brought ruin to states.

How much better and more excellent than the doctrines of the aforesaid writer are the reflections of Thales of Miletus, appears from the following argument [redenering]. All the goods, he says, are in common among friends; wise men are the friends of the gods, and all things belong to the gods; therefore all things belong to the wise. Thus in a single sentence, this wisest of men accounts himself most rich, rather by generously [edelmoedig]  despising riches than by sordidly seeking them. In other passages he shows that the wise lack riches, not from necessity, but from choice. For when his friends reproached him with his poverty he answered, "Do you wish me to show you, that I could acquire what I deem unworthy of my labour, but you so diligently seek?" On their answering in the affirmative, he hired every oil-press in the whole of Greece -- for being a distinguished astronomer he knew that the olive harvest would be as abundant as in previous years it had been scanty --, and sub-let at his own price what he had hired for a very small sum, thus acquiring in a single year a large fortune, which he bestowed liberally as he had gained it industriously, &c.--Spinoza to Jarig Jelles, The Hague, 17 Feb., 1671. Translated by R. H. M. Elwes (with modest modifications).+ [Here is the Dutch version in De Nagelate Schriften.]

In today's post, I am primarily interested in the third quoted paragraph (although the first two are definitely fascinating). I have noted before (recall) that in his Natural History of Religion, David Hume explicitly treats Thales as an "atheist" and, by implication, a proto-Spinozist, who treats cosmogeny without recourse to a deity. Presumably Hume's account of Thales was influenced by Diogenes Laertius, who presents Thales as a kind of pantheist (although not a monist about gods) and Cicero, who, in De Divinitatio (1:111), treats Thales as an exemplary natural philosopher with the skill to have rational foresight of nature.

This matters because Hume treats Thales kind of as the founder of philosophy, especially natural philosophy.* In this -- that Thales is the first real philosopher -- he kind of follows the presentation of Diogenes Laertius, who also attributes to Thales the saying, 'know thyself.' 

And, as regular readers know (recall) I am quite fond of the story of Thales, and its variants in Aristoteles, about Thales' monopolizing oil-presses. Thales shows up in these digressions more regularly (recall here; here; here; here; here); and even in my scholarship (and also here). 

I was reminded of the quoted passage by Spinoza by a Dutch learned (non academic) correspondent, Marco van Heugten, in response to a handbook chapter I published on "Spinoza and Economics."  Van Heugten correctly noted I had missed its significance. This is a shame because it could have nicely supported the general claims in the chapter in which I had argued that that Spinoza thought the open‐ended pursuit of wealth is a species of madness (Ethics 4, p44S), even though he did not reject moderate desire for the conveniences of life (Ethics 4, p45c2s). (Most of my chapter is on how he diagnoses a political problem of luxury, and the institutional mechanisms by which it can be managed.)

Spinoza's version of the story of the olive presses is close to Aristotle's version. In one important respect Spinoza's version of the Thales story deviates from Aristotle's. Aristotle very strongly implies that Thales knowledge of the heavens is irrelevant to his source of wealth (regardless what Thales and his friends or the common people may have thought). Monopoly is a decidedly terrestrial feature (and, as Aristotle claims, knowledge and use of it widespread), and any correlation between celestial phenomena and harvests an irrelevant aside. As it happens this nicely fits Aristotle's tendency to treat the heavens and terrestrial matters as relatively distinct.

Spinoza, who lived in an age of commerce, and whose Political Treatise is full examples that he understands the nature of monopoly, the role of incentives, and mechanism design just fine, does not treat Thales' astronomical knowledge as an aside. Post Galileo and Descartes, one may say, the heavens and earthly matters are re-integrated and so the idea that one could forecast (the directionality of) harvests based on astronomical observations was not wholly implausible. (Of course, Spinoza also recognizes that Thales was a monopolist.)

The point of the previous passage is nicely illustrated by Gassendi's (1649) treatment of the anecdote in volume 2 of the Animadversiones. My former (Ghent) colleague, Steven Vanden Broecke called my attention to it.+ Gassendi, who is a critic of judicial astrology, cannot take the relative decoupling of the heavens and terrestrial matters for granted because the new science is re-integrating them (which opens the door to certain forms of astrology still familiar to casual readers of the newspaper). And so he adds more detail about the kind and historical basis of empirical knowledge Thales would have possessed.

As an aside, if I were Justin Smith, I might report to you the contents of seventeenth century almanacs on seasonal forecasting here. But I'll stick to what I know and mention that in the nineteenth century, the economist-logician, Jevons, tried to model, like a modern Thales, the correlation between sun spots and grain harvests. As I learned from my friend Sandra Peart, Jevons thought that the sun spots shaped economic moods (and expectations). Jevons treats Thales as "the father of philosophy."

Interestingly enough, Spinoza does not treat the anecdote about Thales to criticize the vulgar who mock the learned (which is common feature in the story about Thales). Rather, in his rendering it's Thales' own circle of friends who need persuading. And this makes me think that the letter to Jelles was partially intended for Spinoza's circle. 

This suspicion is strengthened by the fact that I have been unable to find the source of the 'argument' attributed to Thales, who is presented here as an exemplary, generous wise man (and it seems to me worth comparing it with (Ethics IV, P45S)). Since Spinoza lived a life very much in the spirit of the 'argument,' it was undeniably important to him. It's psychologically interesting that Spinoza volunteers the story after suggesting he will write a pamphlet (which he never did) against the doctrines of Homo Politicus. And the implication is that he, too, could be rich if he had wanted to be. This would have appealed to Jelles, who was a merchant, but who had turned his back on the business world and had been devoted to his studies. But judging by Spinoza's request to him (in the first paragraph), Jelles was taken to be still influential in worldly affairs. 

So, let me wrap up. Of course, in Spinoza the real point is that if one has wealth one should bestow it on noble causes. This echoes the account of liberality in Book IV (I think, please correct me) of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. And this is either a hint to his friend (who was wealth), or, perhaps more kindly, a thank you to his generous friend. 

We know that Adam Smith very much lived in the spirit of the argument attributed to Thales by Spinoza. (I don't have any reason to think Smith was influenced by Spinoza's depiction of Thales on this score.) But Hume does not. Hume explicitly defends the pursuit of (non-excessive) riches for the wise man and offers himself as an exemplar in his autobiography.

As regular readers know, I think Spinoza is not very far from Hume's pre-occupations at key points in his works. Paul Russell has offered solid reasons for thinking that this idea is a natural effect of the presentation of the Treatise.** In that light it is worth remarking, again, that in Hume's hands, at the start of his own philosophical project, Thales is treated as a natural philosopher and not a moral philosopher. This is, in fact, revisionary because it goes against Thales as one of the exemplary Greek wise men (and the presentation in Diogenes Laertius). And so a Spinozist, free-thinking reader of the Treatise is also alerted to the fact that Hume is no slavish follower at all.  

 

 

 

David Hume, Intellectual Arbitrage, and the Grounds of True Freedom

On the other Hand, Learning has been as great a Loser by being shut up in Colleges and Cells, and secluded from the World and good Company. By that Means, every Thing of what we call Belles Lettres became totally barbarous, being cultivated by Men without any Taste of Life or Manners, and without that Liberty and Facility of Thought and Expression, which can only be acquir'd by Conversation. Even Philosophy went to Wrack by this moaping recluse Method of Study, and became as chimerical in her Conclusions as she was unintelligible in her Stile and Manner of Delivery. And indeed, what cou'd be expected from Men who never consulted Experience in any of their Reasonings, or who never search'd for that Experience, where alone it is to be found, in common Life and Conversation?

'Tis with great Pleasure I observe, That Men of Letters, in this Age, have lost, in a great Measure, that Shyness and Bashfulness of Temper, which kept them at a Distance from Mankind; and, at the same Time, That Men of the World are proud of borrowing from Books their most agreeable Topics of Conversation. 'Tis to be hop'd, that this League betwixt the learned and conversible Worlds, which is so happily begun, will be still farther improv'd to their mutual Advantage; and to that End, I know nothing more advantageous than such Essays as these with which I endeavour to entertain the Public. In this View, I cannot but consider myself as a Kind of Resident or Ambassador from the Dominions of Learning to those of Conversation; and shall think it my constant Duty to promote a good Correspondence betwixt these two States, which have so great a Dependence on each other. I shall give Intelligence to the Learned of whatever passes in Company, and shall endeavour to import into Company whatever Commodities I find in my native Country proper for their Use and Entertainment. The Balance of Trade we need not be jealous of, nor will there be any Difficulty to preserve it on both Sides. The Materials of this Commerce must chiefly be furnish'd by Conversation and common Life: The manufacturing of them alone belongs to Learning.--David Hume "Of Essay-Writing"+

I quote from one of Hume's withdrawn essays. I was reminded of this essay by Emily Nacol's An Age of Risk; she makes the important point that Hume "frames this exchange as a risk-free, positive-sum one that issues in profit on both sides, in a metaphor that prefigures the kind of argument he will make about the positive-sum experience of free trade in his essays on commerce." (86-7) Today's digression is a further elucidation of this thought.

The title of Hume's essay may mislead those expecting instruction in writing essays. It's not a how-to, self-help manual of that kind. Rather, the official theme of the essay is to explain the utility or advantageousness of the genre. (I return to that below.) Much of the subtext of the essay is devoted to the explicit shaping of the judgment of his implied audience -- learned and conversable women -- into seeing how worthy his works (and works like it) are. And it is an open question how much of this is servility or (or commercially prudent) flattery, and how much of it is sincere (I return to this below.) This is a stark contrast to the more youthful Hume, who in the "advertisement" to the Treatise where he was more willing to claim that he allowed himself to be instructed by the judgment of his public ("the approbation of the public I consider as the greatest reward of my labours; but am determin'd to regard its judgment, whatever it be, as my best instruction.") Unfortunately "Of Essay-Writing" involves Hume in sexist stereotypes (some of which thinly disguised by attempts at wit), and so one hopes this is the reason why Hume thought it better to withdraw it.

On a different day I would reflect a bit more on how in the nature of a speech act of withdrawing a text in circulation, or not reprinting it in later editions of a text, in the age of printed and electronic publication. Doomed to failure, but, perhaps, not intending to fail. But here I want to focus on three of Hume's very striking claims. 

First, Hume views his essays as a form of what we would call arbitrage between two relatively closed domains: that of specialist learning and that of semi-public conversation (the "learned and conversible Worlds"). And Hume thinks this arbitrage is useful to both domains ("their mutual Advantage"). 

The question Hume leaves hanging is to what degree this arbitrage gives rise to a third domain. Now sometimes arbitrage does not give rise to anything new: it is merely a mechanism to facilitate commerce that would perhaps not happen or occur less efficiently (rapidly, etc.) without the arbitrage. But arbitrage can also generate new products; the instruments that facilitate trade (money, optical fiber cables, mammoth tankers, etc.) may themselves become thriving industries with their own technicians, after all.   

That a third domain is generated by Hume's arbitrage is partially obscured by the fact that in addition to commercial and economic tropes, Hume also uses language of diplomacy (in which he represents himself as an ambassador from the learned). Diplomats are primarily representatives and so it is unnatural to think of them as somehow productive of new kinds. But even Hume notes, explicitly, that diplomates generate treaties and federations ("League, offensive and defensive,") that may take on a life of their own.

So, Hume's essays are not merely arbitrage between other domains, they also are intended to help reinvigorate, perhaps constitute, the domain of what he calls "polite Writing" and Belles Lettres. That he sees his arbitrage activity as more than just facilitation of trade, is clear in that he hopes to shape the judgment of his audience of it. He is not asking his audience to become better judges of the world of learning -- they require his arbitrage for that! -- not better judges of the conversible world (whose criteria are immanent in common life). He does hope, of course, that his arbitrage will improve both domains, so indirectly criteria of judgment in these may be shaped by his activity.

As an aside, as regular readers know I am not un-attracted to the idea of philosophy as a form of intellectual arbitrage. (It's the kind of thing I associate with Liam Kofi Bright's writings bringing together formal tools with topics in fields previously unconnected.) One important difference since the time of Hume's writing is that (recall my musing on synthetic philosophy here; and here with a nod to Lewens) given the fracturing of the learned world into many esoteric domains, intellectual arbitrage can now take place among many specialist sciences as well as among the specialist sciences and the manifest image along many (to use Galison's phrase) trading zones.

So, with the growth of sciences arbitrage opportunities have grown, too. I leave it to a sociologist of science to formulate the law that accounts for the proportion of arbitrage to underlying intellectual developments!* Either way, Hume strikes me as an important role-model for the very possibility of intellectual arbitrage and theorizing about it. In particular, such arbitrage promotes a liberal civilization: one that ends the zero-sum cycle of winners and losers.

Second, Hume makes a striking, easily missed claim about the significance of conversation. It is necessary (can only be acquir'd) for the acquisition of "Liberty and Facility of Thought and Expression." I think Hume is here more radical than one may recognize. It is easy to assume for those shaped by Descartes' meditator, or the recurring image of an arm-chair in a quiet study found in philosophical writing, to assume that what the mind needs to be prepared for genuine ('facility') and independent ('liberty') thinking is a withdrawal from the noisiness of everyday and the stupidity of common sense and public opinion. 

And while Hume certainly allows that some thinking requires silence and withdrawal, the mind gets prepared for this by being socially engaged in discussion with others. We can see recognition of this insight in such institutions as the oxbridge high table, the public seminar, and the social club. Hume would certainly include the coffee house and dinner table in this category. It also follows that for Hume the world of learning is even in an intellectual sense not wholly self-sufficient.

Hume does not quite explain why the mind's emendation toward liberty has to be socially embedded. That's in part because here he does not explain what he means by liberty of thought (a phrase that echoes Cicero, Spinoza, and the freethinkers). Presumably the idea is that in conversation we are practiced in encountering the viewpoints of others on a variety of topics, of listening, and of sharpening our argumentative and rhetorical skills. Hume also seems to think that in conversation we are exposed to more variety of human life/experience. 

I could stop here. But I want to note a third feature. For Hume's claim echoes (recall) an important passage -- which he himself claims is free from "servility and flattery" -- in his dedication (to the tragedian Home) of his Four Dissertations:

Another instance of true liberty, of which antient times can alone afford us an example, is the liberty of thought, which engaged men of letters, however different in their abstract opinions, to maintain a mutual friendship and regard; and never to quarrel about principles, while they agreed in inclinations and manners. Science was often the subject of disputation, never of animosity. Cicero, an academic, addressed his philosophical treatises, sometimes to Brutus, a stoic; sometimes to Atticus, an epicurean.

Liberty of thought is characterized by the possibility of mutual friendship and conversation among those that may differ in ideology (abstract opinions). That is to say, liberty of thought is a virtue in the context of political and theoretical polarization. So, strikingly, the very social institution that make freedom of thought possible (conversation, itself (recall) the grounds of civilization) are also the site of its expression, while simultaneously vulnerable to implosion. 

The pandemic makes the effects of the absence of conversation visible. On a personal level it reduces a sense of connection (see this moving post by Helen de Cruz). But if Hume is right then one of the long-term social casualties of the past year is the absence of a fertilizer of freedom. But, perhaps, if i understand Hume correctly, the writing of essays, to engage in arbitrage, which involves finding the opportunity for mutual gain, presuppose some such liberty of thought and is intended to contribute to it. And so maybe we have others means to encourage it.

Whewell, Newton, Kant, and Hershel's Double Stars

We may observe, however, that the law of gravitation according to the inverse square of the distance, which thus regulates the motions of the solar system, is not confined to that province of the universe, as has been shown by recent researches. It appears by the observations and calculations of Sir John Herschel, that several of the stars, called double stars, consist of a pair of luminous bodies which revolve about each other in ellipses, in such a manner as to show that the force, by which they are attracted to each other, varies according to the law of the inverse square. We thus learn a remarkable fact concerning bodies which seemed so far removed from us that no effort of our science could reach them; and we find that the same law of mutual attraction which we have before traced to the farthest bounds of the solar system, prevails also in spaces at a distance compared with which the orbit of Saturn shrinks into a point. The establishment of such a truth certainly suggests, as highly probably, the prevalence of this law among all the bodies of the universe. And we may therefore suppose, that the same ordinance which gave to the parts of our system that rule by which they fulfil the purposes of their creation, impressed the same rule on the other portions of matter which are scattered in the most remote parts of the universe; and thus gave to their movements the same grounds of simplicity and harmony which we find reason to admire, as far as we can acquire any knowledge of our own more immediate neighbourhood.--William Whewell Astronomy and General Physics, Considered with Reference to Natural Theology, 1864, (Bridgewater Treatise, "New Edition, with New Preface"),pp 229-230 [HT David Haig]

I quote from the edition of Whewell's Bridgewater Treatise in which he adds a new preface in order to respond to Darwin's Origin (which he quotes, but doesn't name). In the preface, Whewell makes a point of associating Darwin with the system of Epicurean chance, which at the cosmogenic level is to be associated with the nebular hypothesis as developed by Kant and Laplace. In the Bridgewater Treatise Kant is not mentioned only Laplace. (I suspect that Whewell, who was one of the greatest historians of science of his age, was not unfamiliar with the Kantian provenance because he alludes to it in his treatment of copernican turn of the critical philosophy elsewhere.*) So, arguments against one (the nebular hypothesis) reinforce the arguments against the other (Darwinism), and vice versa. 

One may wonder why, after after the empirical success of the Principia, and its Rule 3, anybody would have doubted the universality of the law of gravity. But, as a matter of fact, Newton himself had opened to the door to this possibility, in the 1706 Latin edition of the Opticks which ultimately ended up in Query 31 of the later English edition.+ It reads:

Since Space is Divisible in infinitum, and Matter is not necessarily in all places, it may also be allowed that God is able to create Particles of Matter of several Sizes and Figures, and in several Proportions to Space, and perhaps of different Densities and Forces, and thereby to vary the Laws of Nature, and make Worlds of several sorts in several Parts of the Universe. 

Newton sometimes uses ‘world’ in a metaphysically neutral sense, to mean a solar system or, more generally, a closed (or virtually closed) system of interacting celestial bodies. In the above passage, however, ‘world’ is a metaphysically richer notion. A world in this sense is constituted by the kinds of particles and forces it contains, particles and forces that are ontologically prior to the world they constitute. Moreover, the above passage suggests that within ‘worlds’ of this kind particles and forces are prior, in some sense, to the laws of nature.

For Newton laws are clearly contingent. They are not grounded in God’s immutability (as Descartes’s were), but depend on God’s will. Their contingency stands in stark contrast to the necessity of Newtonian space and time. For Newton, space and time could not have been otherwise and are a consequence of God’s necessary existence. As he writes in the General Scholium to the Principia, “by existing always and every where, [God] constitutes Duration and Space . . . ’Tis allowed by all that the supreme God exists necessarily; and by the same necessity he exists always and every where.” Physical laws do not possess such necessity. (Although Newton’s laws are contingent, they are necessary in relation to God’s will. Given God’s edicts, they could not be otherwise. ) As Roger Cotes wrote in the editor’s preface to the second edition: “From this source [God], then, have all the laws that are called laws of nature come, in which many traces of the highest wisdom and counsel certainly appear, but no traces of necessity” (Newton 1999: 397; the denial of necessity distances Newton from the charge of Spinozism and its attack on design arguments.)

In the above passage, the contingency of Newton’s laws is also coupled to the claim that they may not be universal. They may hold of some worlds (in the metaphysical sense), but not all. Their variability has at least two consequences. First, a universe with metaphysically distinct worlds entails causal disconnectedness among (some of) its parts. This disconnectedness appealed to Newton, because it could prevent different solar systems from collapsing in on each other. It thus supports the argument from design of the General Scholium. 

So, while in the eighteenth century the Huygensian claim that the law of gravity only held for celestial bodies in our solar system was defeated by the stronger claim that it held throughout the solar system, including terrestrially, it was not obvious it would hold in other solar systems throughout the galaxy. Huygens (recall here; here) and Newton seemed to posit a universe with tenuously connected solar systems (light could pass among them), even though Newton encouraged us to take or hold true the laws universally in context of inquiry. 

In 1802, Herschel wrote (in the Transaction of the Royal Society):

If, on the contrary, two stars should really be situated very near each other, and at the same time so far insulated as not to be materially affected by the attractions of neighbouring stars, they will then compose a separate system, and remain united by the bond of their own mutual gravitation towards each other. This should be called a real double star; and any two stars that are thus mutually connected, form the binary sidereal system which we are now to consider. (Vol. 92, 481)

Herschel's language here is conditional. But on p. 486 he goes on to claim there is overwhelming empirical evidence for the reality of binary systems. Interestingly, on. p. 485 Herschel claims that Binary systems are themselves causes by law of gravity because their production and the phenomena they give rise to cannot be the effect of "casual situations" that is, chance.

So, from the point of view of physical astronomy, Herschel's discovery of binary systems was analogous to the seventeenth century discovery that the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn obeyed Keplerian motion. But from a cosmological perspective, Herschell provided empirical evidence for the hitherto unavailable "simplicity and harmony;" whatever else might be discovered, Hershel showed "a remarkable fact" that the motions of bodies obeyed at least one law or set of laws. This claim which was taken for granted by Descartes on metaphysical grounds, and left open empirically by Huygens and Newton, could now be taken as established, or at least "as highly probable." 

Let me close with three observations. First, Whewell clearly thinks that (strong evidence for) the actual university of the law of gravity points to a single, unified cause of the universe. In itself that does not settle the debate with the systems of necessity and chance, in favor of theism. But it does burden shift in one non-trivial way against the system of chance (but not the system of necessity). 

For, Whewell thinks, not entirely unfairly, that the system of chance must assume that the present laws of nature are themselves the effect of historical evolution. That's the "supposition that the universe has gradually approximated to that state of harmony among the operations of its different parts," (p. 30).** For, the system of chance has, if it accepts the principle of sufficient reason (which it may not, of course) no right to positing, without further explanation, the existence of natural law that governs motions of bodies.++ (The system of necessity gets this posit for free.) 

Second, and this is the burden shifting against the necessitarian, if one accepts the principle of sufficient reason, the now universal law of gravity appears without foundation at all: "no [sufficient] reason, at all satisfactory, can be given why such a law must, of necessity, be what it is." (216) In particular, while gravity is a universal quality of matter there is no reason to think (here Whewell explicitly disagrees with Newton's editor, Cotes) it is a necessary quality (p. 222).

Third, while Whewell's language is still voluntarist ("ordinance"), Whewell changes the character of God's voluntarism. For Newton, theological voluntarism is compatible with God choosing different laws of motion for different parts of the universe. Newton allows the genuine possible that God settled for a dappled universe. Whewell's nature, by contrast, obeys a single ordinance/decree by God, who could choose differently in different parts of the universe, but did not.

 

 

 

 

On Paley's (and Nieuwentyt's) Watch, Spinozism and the Scientific Revolution

In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there, I might possibly answer, that, for any thing I knew to the contrary, it had lain there for ever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to shew the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be enquired how the watch happened to be in that place, I should hardly think of the answer which I had before given, that, for any thing I knew, the watch might have always been there. Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch, as well as for the stone?...For this reason, and for no other, viz. that, when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive (what we could not discover in the stone) that its several parts are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day; that, if the several parts had been differently shaped from what they are, or in any other order, than that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been carried on in the machine, or none which would have answered the use, that is now served by it.--William Paley (1802), Natural theology: or, Evidence of the existence and attributes of the Deity, 1-2 (emphasis in original; capitalization modernized.)

There is no doubt that Paley's design argument "displaced" Cicero as the source of pre-eminent design arguments (see Jantzen, p. 119). This got reinforced, perhaps constituted, by its (that is, Paley's) role in debates over Darwinism and Creationism (see this neat paper by Adam Shapiro). To be sure, there are ways of understanding Paley's argument that can be traced back to arguments presented in Cicero (go read Jantzen it's splendid book). In addition, as Jantzen notes (pp. 121, 168-9, Paley's argument was itself clearly inspired on a design argument presented in the preface to a translation of Nieuwentyt's Religious Philosopher (see pp. xlvi-xlvii). So, we should not assume that Paley's argument was wholly new. In what follows I will remain resolutely agnostic about the epistemic status of Paley's argument.

I want to talk about watches, but first we need to discuss stones. Stones are absent in Nieuwentyt's argument. The introduction of a stone in Paley's argument is not a minor detail. To underststand this, we need to remind ourselves that traditionally the design argument is contrasted with two alternatives: chance and necessity. The former is associated with Epicureanism, the latter with Spinozism. Now both Paley and Nieuwentyt oppose the watch argument to chance. 

Nieuwentyt's argument is explicitly directed against Spinozism. I don't just base this claim on the contextual detail that Nieuwentyt's other (posthumous) book -- Gronden van zekerheid (The Grounds of Certainty) -- is a brilliant methodological polemic with Spinozism. Rather, "necessary laws of nature" are the explicit third contrast to an "understanding artifice" as the cause of the watch (xlviii).+ So, Nieuwentyt is still in the orbit of the traditional design argument. Now, to be fair sometimes Nieuwentyt treats an appeal to the ignorant "laws of nature" as identical to an appeal to chance. But when he needs to sometimes he clearly distinguishes them).*

But Paley is distinctly uninterested in Spinozism. First, he treats laws in deflationary (even nominalist) manner. When Paley turns to the possibility of treating "necessary laws of nature," he demotes them to mere "laws of metallic nature." (7) For Paley, harking back to an older, more traditional view, laws presuppose “agents” (or “powers”) and its these powers which are causally efficacious. The only necessity Paley allows is hypothetical necessity (549). And this turns out to be the way in which chance events intersect. (He uses hypothetical necessity to explain the appearance of chance.) I actually think this reflects the impact of Hume, who is mentioned just once coincidentally on the previous page (548), and Hume's famous attack on the presupposition of natural order. But I can't prove that today.

Now, a Spinozist would not accept that a stone and a watch are treated fundamentally differently. Obviously they have different degrees of complexity (or perfection), they may resist destruction in different ways, and they may have different effects on the world. But God is immanent in both, and there are no fundamental differences in their nature.**

By contrast, Paley treats stones and watches differently because (as I suggested the other day) he wants to treat living and inanimate things differently. For Paley it’s not the case that all the parts of nature exhibit apparent design. Paley clearly distinguishes between living things (which do exhibit design) and inanimate ones, which may not. For, there is a lack of symmetry between living and inanimate things. In chapter 17, he shows that the living things are so formed that they can successfully navigate and draw from the inanimate surroundings. But the reverse claim is not made. So, for Paley (but Nieuwentyt), nature is bifurcated in a way that begs the question against the a Spinozist if the Spinozist had to be taken seriously. The bifurcation also helps prompt a further key difference between Paley and the more traditional design arguments. And it connects to the changing understanding of what a clock/timekeeper is.

As regular readers know (recall), I am fascinated by a feature in what I have dubbed the Posidonian (design) argument. A key premise in it, is this (quoting Cicero): "our friend Posidonius has recently fashioned a planetarium; each time it revolves, it makes the sun, moon, and planets reproduce the movements which they make over a day and a night in the heavens." That is, the argument uses as a premise that a concrete model accurate represents nature's patterns or order. But if we look at Paley's argument, he makes no such claim.

Rather, all Paley needs is that the the watch has a particular, functional internal coherence and complexity and indicates time ("its several parts are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day.") In fact, even if the clock is irregular or sbroken altogether, it makes little difference to Paley's argument. "It is not necessary that a machine be perfect, in order to shew with what design it was made: still less necessary, where the only question is, whether it were made with any design at all."  Irregular, even “stopped” watches are sufficient for Paley’s purposes (5)! 

As an aside, one may well think that Paley's argument is an obvious improvement, because his works with more minimal assumptions than the ancient argument. They need a working machine, he can do with an irregular one. Fair enough.++

Now, it is worth noting that all of the scientific instruments that Paley mentions – telescopes (e.g. 24), microscopes (e.g., 182), a lever (e.g, p, 48), a pump (e.g., 171), a hydraulic machine (82)  – are means toward creating a model of nature or intervening in nature, but not themselves such concrete models. The same is true of Paley's treatment of the eye which is an “optical instrument,” (e.g, 277) rather than, say, part of a model that successfully represent nature. (Paley mentions temperature, but never a thermometer or a barometer.) By contrast, a planetarium does represent nature. 

There is an important, underlying issue. In ancient times it was quite natural to think of the motions of the celestial bodies as being time (or the true measure of time, for present purposes that makes no difference). We can find an important representative of this view in the Timaeus (itself non-trivial when it comes to reflecting on Design arguments):

Wherefore, as a consequence of this reasoning and design on the part of God, with a view to the generation of Time, the sun and moon and five other stars, which bear the appellation of “planets,” came into existence for the determining and preserving of the numbers of Time... Of the other stars the revolutions have not been discovered by men (save for a few out of the many); wherefore they have no names for them, nor do they compute and compare their relative measurements, so that they are not aware, as a rule, that the “wanderings“ of these bodies, which are hard to calculate and of wondrous complexity, constitute Time. Plato, Timaeus [38C-39D]***

So, if you  take such a position on the nature of time, the successful concrete model of the heavens is simultaneously not just an indicator, but a kind of representation of time. During the scientific revolution such a view was decisively abandoned. Leibniz, Huygens and Newton don't agree about much, but the heavenly motions themselves become imperfect means toward measuring (what I'll call) a 'temporal frame' (see here for explanation). But the measurements of these motions require all kinds of corrections and themselves don't bring you in contact with absolute time (if you are Newtonian), something you may well think non-existent (if you are Huygens/Leibniz). More important, a local time-keeper may be calibrated with astronomical motions, but can be decoupled from them. What a watch indicates is local time; there is no clear representation of nature's motions in them. 

 

 

 

 

On Paley's little noticed Change to the Argument from Design

Consider the following "design inference pattern" (quoted from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy):

• [A] Some things in nature (or nature itself, the cosmos) are design-like (exhibit a cognition-resonating, intention-shaped character R)
• [B] Design-like properties (R) are not producible by (unguided) natural means—i.e., any phenomenon exhibiting such Rs must be a product of intentional design.

Therefore 

• [C] Some things in nature (or nature itself, the cosmos) are products of intentional design. And of course, the capacity for intentional design requires agency of some type.

I call this the "modern" inference pattern. In commenting on [A], the authors, Del Ratzsch and Jeffrey Koperski, remark, this "premise...at least, is not particularly controversial even now." In what follows, I stipulate they are right about this, and I do not mean to challenge that claim here. But now consider, Newton's General Scholium (adapted from Motte's 1729 translation): “[D] All  natural things which we find are suited to different times and places [E] could arise from nothing but the ideas and will of a Being necessarily existing." ("Tota rerum conditarum pro locis ac temporibus diversitas, ab ideis & voluntate entis necessario existentis solummodo oriri potuit.) Here I ignore (but recall) Newton's reasons for conjoining [D&E]. A striking contrast between [A] and [D] is that Newton insists all things (tota rereum) exhibit aptness to every time and place, whereas the moderns made do with merely some apparent design in nature. That Newton needs the universal quantifiers is no surprise given the rather strong modal claims he wants to end up with (recall).

But as it happens, while one of Newton's particular modal arguments is somewhat unusual, the claim that all of the parts of nature exhibits design is not so unusual. We can find the claim, for example, in the design arguments of the early seventeenth centurty Jesuit, Lessius, who I dicussed last week (see especially the arguments supporting the "fifth reason").And, more important, it is inscribed in (recall) one of my favorite design argument in Cicero, "all the parts of the universe have been so appointed that they could neither be better adapted for use nor be made more beautiful in appearance," (omnes mundi partes ita constitutae sunt ut neque ad usum meliores potuerint esse neque ad speciem pulchriores). In fact, Newton's teacher, Barrow, was fond of quoting Cicero's passage (see here). 

Given that we moderns like universal quantifiers alongside our universal laws, it kind of surprised me that in the "modern" inference pattern we make do with less than universal apparent design whereas a good Jesuit and a good Stoic (Cicero's Balbus) happily embrace the universalizing claim. I would not be surprised if some pre-modern inference patterns also rely on merely some design, but I have not found an example yet. 

But, while allowing for my selection bias, this made me wonder when and why the modern inference pattern (with "some" in [A]) became so standard. I wondered if Hume quietly inserted it into his Dialogues. But no, there we also find (Cleanthes) appealing to "The curious adapting of means to ends, throughout all nature." (D2.5; of course, this is compatible with the claim that not all parts exhibit design.)

So, I tentatively suggest that William Paley is the main source of this feature of the "modern'' inference pattern. The reason I think this can be found at the heart and start of his watch analogy. He writes, "It is not necessary that a machine be perfect, in order to shew with what design it was made: still less necessary, where the only question is, whether it were made with any design at all." William Paley (1802, Natural Theology: Or, Evidence of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Chapter 1, Paragraph 2.) It is quite obvious (given the role of analogy in Paley's argument from the watch to nature), that Paley inserts the thought to prevent a natural objection -- familiar, especially, from Diderot (who used birth-defects to great effect in attacking final causes) and from concerns over the problem of evil-- to allow that some parts of nature are "irregular," that is, that not all all parts of nature always exhibit design. Paley himself notes that the seasons are a mixture of apparent "necessity and chance," (Chapter 26, paragraph 3; the whole chapter engages with the problem of apparent defects.)

Paley clearly recognizes the old (Aristotelian?) insight that defects and imperfections are kind of intrinsic to teleological objects. If something has a proper end/functioning, it should, in principle, be able to misfire. Of course, somebody like Diderot rejects final causes, so he will be unmoved by such considerations altogether. But one may well wonder why earlier design arguments did not hedge their bets about apparent design, if "some apparent order" is sufficient to get the argument to a designer going. (Not all of them are invested in proving a necessary being.)

Perhaps the following helps explain. In most pre-modern design arguments variants of the principle of sufficient reason are doing non-trivial work in the background: nothing comes from nothing or some causal principle are all assumed or asserted along the way.  But while Paley asserts the uniformity of nature (see chapter 25) he does no such thing. For him the uniformity of nature is that the universe itself is a "system."* I don't mean to suggest that Paley thinks God intervenes in the workings of the universe through miracles. But he is quite eager to keep distance between Spinozism (even God is governed by necessity) and his own more Voluntarist approach. Of course, Clarke (and I suspect Newton) thought his branch of Voluntarism was compatible with the PSR, but Leibniz had shown that this too easily generates the suspicion of Spinozism--a charge hard to refute against an able and determined opponent without appearing inconsistent.

The previous paragraph is offered without much evidence. But in a footnote to chapter 25, paragraph 3, Paley quotes MacLaurin (who is writing in the wake of the intense debates) approvingly as follows:

If we suppose the matter of the system to be accumulated in the centre by its gravity, no mechanical principles, with the assistance of this power of gravity, could separate the vast mass into such parts as the fun and planets ; and, after carrying them to' their different distances, project them in their several directions, preserving still the equality of action and reaction, or the state of the centre of gravity of the system. Such an exquisite structure of things could only arise from the contrivance and powerful influences of an intelligent, free, and most potent agent. The fame powers, therefore, which, at present, govern the material universe, and conduct its various motions, are very different from those, which were necessary, to have produced it from nothing, or to have disposed it in the admirable form, in which it now proceeds.—Maclaurin's Account of Newton's Phil. p. 407,ed. 3.

Now it is important to note that unlike Newton, Clarke, and Maclaurin, Paley thinks astronomy "is not the best medium through which to prove the agency of an intelligent Creator" (Ch. 25, par. I; emphasis in original). It merely provides supporting evidence. Maclaurin's whole paragraph is indebted to Newton's General Scholium. The "mechanical principles" in the passage are a reference to Descartes and his (Spinozistic) followers. (Maclaurin treats Descartes as a Spinozist without Descartes fully realizing it.) Maclaurin thinks that if you are committed to a Spinozist plenum physics (and the PSR), there is no way you can generate the present configuration of the solar system with the particular variety we find there.+ (The argument exist in terse form in Newton's General Scholium and elaborated by Clarke in his 1705 Boyle lectures.) I am pretty confident that this train of argument was prompted by a now lost letter by Bentley to Newton.

Newton too had insisted that the laws that govern the present solar system are incompatible with a Spinozist cosmogony. But Maclaurin is more explicit that the present laws of nature are incompatible with the powers that both originate nature and that give it present order. But this bifurcation between, on the one hand, the origin and constitution of nature, and its present operation, on the other hand, seems to violate the PSR. And if you hold on to the PSR it seems the dividing line between the origin and order of nature and its present operation seems to be arbitrary (not to mention that it seems to make God less perfect than desirable.) If you incline to Deism you can resist this problem (and hold on to PSR), but if you want to avoid Deism and defend a Voluntarist theology (as Paley does) the PSR has to go.  

Darwin on Savages (II); the Posidonian Argument, revisited

If an architect were to rear a noble and commodious edifice, without the use of cut stone, by selecting from the fragments at the base of a precipice, wedge-formed stones for his arches, elongated stones for his lintels, and flat stones for his roof, we should admire his skill and regard him as the paramount power. Now, the fragments of stone, though indispensable to the architect, bear to the edifice built by him the same relation which the fluctuating variations of organic beings bear to the varied and admirable structures ultimately acquired by their modified descendants.

    Some authors have declared that natural selection explains nothing, unless the precise cause of each slight individual difference be made clear. If it were explained to a savage utterly ignorant of the art of building, how the edifice had been raised stone upon stone … it would be unreasonable if he declared that nothing had been made clear to him, because the precise cause of the shape of each fragment could not be told. But this is a nearly parallel case with the objection that selection explains nothing, because we know not the cause of each individual difference in the structure of each being." Charles Darwin (1868) The Variation of Plants and Animals under Domestication, [page 426] [HT David Haig.]

Earlier in the week (recall), I noted that in Origin of Species (right at the start, in fact) one of Darwin's argumentative strategies, relying on was indebted to Hume and Adam Smith, is to rely on the ignorance of savages for heuristic purposes. This strategy entails that i) one is not allowed to attribute knowledge of (to use eighteenth century terminology) remote consequences to the intentions of ancient savages and that (ii) even in domestication and artificial selection there are unintended consequences. But this is not the only methodological use of the ignorant savage. (Again, I ignore the racial issues lurking in the corner here.) He famously closes the Origin, with a related use: "when we no longer look at an organic being as a savage looks at a ship, as at something wholly beyond his comprehension; when we regard every production of nature as one which has had a history; when we contemplate every complex structure and instinct as the summing up of many contrivances, each useful to the possessor, nearly in the same way as when we look at any great mechanical invention as the summing up of the labour, the experience, the reason, and even the blunders of numerous workmen; when we thus view each organic being, how far more interesting, I speak from experience, will the study of natural history become!" So, the lack of knowledge of savages frames Origin.

The origin and function of this savage-ship trope in ideas on the division of labor and the slow development of technology (illustrated by ships) in Mandeville and Hume has been articulated by Stephen Alter in a very nice essay (HT Catherine Kemp an her important essay). However in Mandeville and Hume the ignorant savage is absent in this particular ship trope!

As Alter notes,  a very similar trope (about savages) ends Descent of Man (1871) "He who is not content to look, like a savage, at the phenomena of nature as disconnected, cannot any longer believe that man is the work of a separate act of creation." The target is the theory of separate creation. Such an idea (of special creation) is made possible or conditioned -- historically one may say -- by the inability to see nature as connected (and presumably) law-governed. Here Darwin also echoes Hume (The Natural History of Religion) and Smith (The History of Astronomy and the History of Ancient Physics), where science is first made possible, in the context of the political escape of the state state of nature, by the achievement of treating nature as connected and regular (see my book for details).

So, much for set-up.  

At the top of this post, I quoted the closing lines of Variation. The underlying conceit is that natural selection can explain the machinery behind the origin and variety of domestic and non-domesticated species. As Darwin acknowledges it can't explain everything, and the point of the savage being explained the role of an architect and his tools in a a building, is that it is not an objection to Darwin's theory that it can't do so (in particular explain the reason why in nature small differences -- the raw materials for selection -- spontaneously seem occur). Let's grant Darwin his claims. Darwin's use of an architect example is not innocent, of course, because God is often likened to a divine architect (the house/divine architect analogy is a prominent target in Hume's Dialogues).

One may well wonder why our distance from the savage's understanding of the hidden machinery of nature is such a recurring trope in Darwin. While I don't deny the autobiographical significance of his encounter with 'non-civilized' peoples in his travels, and the more general sense of cultural superiority of Victorian England, I think there is also an explanation rooted in the history of ideas and what I have  been calling the Posidonian argument. Recall Cicero's argument:

But if all the parts of the universe have been so ordered that they could not have been better adapted for use, or more beautiful as regards appearance, let us see whether they are the work of chance, or whether their arrangement is one in which they could not possibly have been combined except by the guidance of consciousness and the divine providence. If, then, the things achieved by nature are more excellent than those achieved by art, and if art produces nothing without making use of intelligence, nature also ought not to be considered destitute of intelligence. If at the sight of a statue or painted picture you know that art has been employed, and from the distant view of the course of a ship feel sure that it is made to move by art and intelligence, and if you understand on looking at a horologe, whether one marked out with lines, or working by means of water, that the hours are indicated by art and not by chance, with what possible consistency can you suppose that the universe which contains these same products of art, and their constructors, and all things, is destitute of forethought and intelligence? Why, if any one were to carry into Scythia or Britain the globe which our friend Posidonius has lately constructed, each one of the revolutions of which brings about the same movement in the sun and moon and five wandering stars as is brought about each day and night in the heavens, no one in those barbarous countries would doubt that that globe was the work of intelligence.--Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods.

In Cicero's argument, when confronted by an intricate, successful representation of the movements of nature, a savage/barbarian will immediate grant that the representation is the product of artificial design. If one then grants the premise that artifice "produces nothing without making use of intelligence, nature also ought not to be considered destitute of intelligence" in virtue of the fact that nature is superior (in some sense) to artifice, some cleaned up version of the argument goes through (see this reconstruction by Hunter). That nature is superior to artifice, I dub nature's superiority premise. As regular readers know, I have been interested in a particular version(s) of this so-called Posidonian argument, revived and articulated in the early modern period (see here on Dennett and Descartes, here on Boyle's plagiarism, here on Locke/Newton, here on Voltaire, and Voltaire and Spinoza, etc.). My particular interest in the argument is made clear by the following (rational) reconstruction:

(I) A necessary condition of the possibility of (an (intended)) successful scientific representation or concrete model of (a region of) nature is that (a region of) nature is orderly;

(II) (A region of) Nature’s hidden order could not be the product of chance [as suggested by Epicureanism] or necessity [as suggested by Spinozism], but only by an Ordering God/Very powerful/infinite mind;

(III) [It’s possible that] Science produces successful representations and successful concrete models of (a region of) nature.

(IV) ∴ There is a God (of order).

In my reconstruction, Cicero''s nature's superiority premise is suppressed, but it lurks behinds (I) and (III). The savage's assent that surely the machine is (intelligently) man-made is suppressed in (III). [I leave it as an exercise to the reader to reinstate them into a longer rational reconstruction.] Even so, the savage/barbarian gazing at the machine shows up throughout the sources.

Let me, in closing, return to Darwin. I think the framing of his arguments by way of a savage is explained by the known pull of the Posidonian argument on his readers (and perhaps himself). It should come as no surprise, then, that Darwin explicitly endorses  a version of nature's superiority premise in Origin:  "But Natural Selection, as we shall hereafter see, is a power incessantly ready for action, and is as immeasurably superior to man's feeble efforts, as the works of Nature are to those of Art."--(Chapter 3.) The echoes to Cicero's Posidonian argument are unmistakably. (As noted, Cicero's argument known in various guises throughout the eighteenth century. (In my view Paley does not present the strongest version of it, but that's for another time.) Darwin's innovation is that rather than speaking of nature as such, he speaks of natural selection. And the effect of that substitution is to make transparent that premise (II) misses at least alternative. So, it needs needs to be rewritten.

(II*) (A region of) Nature’s hidden order could not be the product of mere chance [as suggested by Epicureanism]* or mere necessity [as suggested by Spinozism],+ but only by an Ordering God/Very powerful/infinite mind or Natural Selection.

The relationship between (a) natural selection and an ordering god  and between (b) natural selection as an alternative to Epicureanism and/or Spinozism is not transparent. The significance of this point is not, primarily, that the conclusion of the Posidonian argument is now undermined (after all a Deist will be untroubled by the existence of natural selection), but rather that the functionality of the Posidonian argument as such is destabilized. It's fruitfulness as a thinking device comes to an end with Darwin.

 

On Four or Five Methods of History of Philososphy (and the debates over Stoicism and Spinozism that Encouraged them)

In the middle of the seventeenth century, [I] the standard approach to the historiography of philosophy, which at this time almost universally meant writing the history of ancient philosophy, was still closely modelled on Diogenes Laertius's book on the Lives of Eminent Philosophers. A typical work would be organized by sect, each section being subdivided by author, with a doxography of the sect's distinctive arguments presented in the section to devoted to its founder--in the case of the Stoics, Zeno of Citium. Passages on later philosophers adhering to the particular school would follow the treatment of the founder, in broadly chronological order. While mention would be made of particular specialisms or idiosyncracies which appeared in the work of these later adherents, there would be no detailed treatment of what scholars would today recognize as the basic stuff of the history of philosophy, [II] the presentation of how the course of philosophical argument over time led to modifications in the doctrines maintained by the philosophers and the schools. Those who wrote on the history of philosophy could discuss whether theses were true or false, in light of the best philosophical accounts of their own age, or of revealed religion, but they provided no serious account of how progress in philosophy might be made, of how within a certain tradition of philosophical argument, arguments might be found wanting and replaced, where possible, with better ones. [Emphasis and numbering added--ES] Christopher Brooke Philosophic Pride: Stoicism and Political Thought from Lipsius to Rousseau, pp. 139-140. (For an earlier version of Brooke's argument, see here.)

I have quoted from the opening lines of a section on changes in the historiography of philosophy that Christopher Brooke recounts in chapter six of his impressive monograph (from which I learned a lot). Before I get to that, let me say something about Brooke's wonderful book. The main thrust tells the story of the miraculous come-back of Stoic ideas in political theory (and ethics, meta-ethics) after Machiavelli's seeming knock-out blows against them. The Stoic political theory that Machiavelli undermined is associated with Seneca's views on the ruler's constancy. As Brooke nicely notes a key move made by the re-founder of Stoicism, Lipsius, is to switch constancy as a virtue from the ruler to the subject. In an unusual oversight, Brooke fails to note the significance of this move  to Descartes, whose philosophy is -- as I have noted before (here; see also this post on Descartes's pride and generosity) -- written from the perspective of the technocratic (and constant) subject and, which, in  fact, embraces constancy as a key virtue in his second methodological and regulative maxim in the Discourse on Method.  Be that as it may, a more fundamental difference, and this is nicely emphasized by Brooke, is that the Machiavellian prince is not immanent in the political order (she acquires dominions and subjects for her own glory) whereas for Lipsius she is serving the common good (32-33). Lipsius's position comes under attack from both Christian (Augustianian) moralists as well as 'secular' (61--Montaigne)and (Hobbesian) political realists and Brooke ably recounts the developments of Stoic ideas (switching from Seneca to Marcus Aurelius along the way) all the way to Rousseau.*

Okay, let me turn to methodology. In chapter six, Brooke recounts a "revolution" (141) in the historiography of philosophy away from doxography (which, it is worth noting, itself imposed an order on its source material). One of the innovations was (III) to think of philosophy as "problem-driven," in particular,

examining particular philosophical questions, the arguments to which these had historically given rise, and, crucially, those moments at which the participants in those arguments appeared to agree that the state of the question had changed, or that the argu­ment had moved on. In considering the topics that were debated between the artisans of the different schools, furthermore, the new historians of philosophy had the highest praise for those they considered to be 'eclectic' philosophers, those who were not beholden to the dogmas of a particular school, but who enjoyed the freedom to draw as they saw fit from among the various authorities and arguments that were available to them. (141)

This revolution is associated with Pufendorf and Thomasius and makes a narrative of "progress" possible. (I go over some of the same material here, where I provide an analysis of how the new early modern historiography creates revolutionary baselines from which progress is to be discerned.) Brooke correctly notes that this historiography is itself made possible by the embrace of eclecticism -- the selection (of what is best) -- as a respectable philosophical stance. It also involves a more subtle shift from philosophy as a coherent way of life as philosophy as arguments (of course, arguments are possible in the former and the latter is compatible with a life-style). In context, Brooke notes that it, thereby, rejects a focus on schools and their internal tradition/development. While problem driven philosophy is still familiar to us, it is important to emphasize that such eclecticism is also incompatible with another way of thinking about philosophy, systematicity.

Systematicity is mentioned when Brooke discusses another methodological innovation (one responding to the ways in which Stoicism and Spinozism were seen as species of atheism or at least hostile to "religious orthodoxy" (141)) pioneered by Buddeaus:

Rather than examining each of the ancient philosophical schools by list­ing their opinions on various topics, Buddeus sought (IV) to identify the nuclear or constitutive principles of those philosophical schools, the key teachings from which other doctrines were considered to flow. This was then a way of dist­inguishing the core from the peripheral arguments of the various schools...(141)

The core is here like a timeless, but knowable essence from which other less essential doctrines flow. (This is the central explanatory framework of seventeenth  century science before it gets displaced by a focus on laws.) Buddeus treats a temporal tradition here as akin to a substance. But once such a body of knowledge is treated as a substance with an essence it is not a huge step to seeing it as a system with a core and a periphery. This allows then a comparison, as Brooke notes, in Spinozism before Spinoza, between Stoicism and Spinozisms and the identification of these as instances of the same system. (Leo Catana has done fine work (see here, and here) on how Buddeus's ideas on systematicity were carefully developed (and partially transformed) and made influential in the work of Brucker whose ideas were taken up in the critical (Kantian) philosophy and its historiography.)

Okay, so we have here three methods of history of philosophy:

• Doxography of potentially many sects (I)
• A focus on the innovations in arguments that solve (philosophical) problems and, thereby, produce new doctrines (II&III)
• A focus on systems with a core and a periphery. (IV)

In Brooke's hands the views of Pufendorf and Thomasius (III) are very close to what he takes to be the contemporary understanding ('scholars today') of the history of philosophy (IV) which is why I don't distinguish them in this list. To be sure, and Brooke ignores this, there are able adherents of IV today (see Alan Nelson; not to mention those of us that reject I-IV).

Of course, there is a non-trivial difference between II & III: many scholars today would, while not eschewing evaluation altogether ('does an argument succeed on its own terms?;' 'are there hidden tensions?;', etc.), understand  themselves primarily as describing the arguments that lead to novel doctrines of the past finding, as it were, the historical truth or historical meaning (see Lærke); while the eclectic historians (of the seventeenth and eighteenth century) are seeing themselves as paving the way for improved doctrines, that is, more progress (say in a 'science of morality' (144)) by learning from other people's mistakes.

That is to say the eclectic historians share  something in common with Lipsius and Machiavelli. For, one commonality between Lipsius and Machiavelli noted by Brooke is that both believe (V) that history can be instructive. For Lipsius and Machiavelli, the instruction does not generate "general rules with universal application" (31), but maxims which rely on contextual judgment and prudence in knowing then and knowing when to apply them.  That is the historian can also aim

• to be instructed by the past (III&V)

Now, here my point is not to collapse entirely the distinction between political history and the history of political theory, although a too rigorous separation makes one misunderstand, even underestimate, contributions to both genres (Thucydides  Machiavelli, Hume, maybe Tacitus),--about which another time very soon. Rather, I want to close with a pet-peeve about the contemporary stance that Brooke subscribes and exemplifies so ably: it privileges recent scholarship and, thus, exhibits a certain unwillingness to learn from the source material. So, for example, Brooke does not treat his sources (many of which are offering philosophical interpretations about the nature of Stoicism) as symmetrical in understanding with recent scholars. So, for example, the sources are never allowed to challenge the findings about ancient Stoicism by recent scholars (although he ably notes controversies among them and also ably shows when material was or was not available). Now, undoubtedly recent scholars have the advantage of using more sources and better technical tools (about dating, authorship, etc.), and I would not wish to deny that classical philology advances (say, from the days of Lipsius). But Brooke always privileges the perspectives of recent scholars over his early modern sources.

So, for example, as we have seen, in chapter six (in fact, the argument starts at the end of chapter five), Brooke treats the interest in the Stoic attitude toward providence and divinity as a modern phenomenon primarily as  a result of the rise of Spinozism, Pantheism, and Deism and the ways these (each) swerve uncomfortably close to atheism. I agree with his reading of the early moderns. But he treats their interpretation of Stoicism as a distinctly (early) modern phenomenon. This is odd because it is a recurring theme in a widely read text and important source, Cicero's On the Nature of the Gods, that (recall) ancient schools disguise their true doctrines on the gods out of fear of popular odium. (In Cicero the topic is raised polemically about the Epicureans twice, but it is also discussed in the context of other schools and himself). Early Modern readers did not miss the point and often treated fear of popular odium as a danger for all of the ancient, philosophical sects (recall here, and here on Smith and Toland on Pythogoreans). While this seems apt for Epicureans, it may seem odd to raise this concern about the Stoics. But while, the Stoics often talked of (partial) providence (for the virtuous [for evidence and this terminology, see Runia]), they also embrace fatalism and so the early modern suspicion of the nature of their theism is not without ground. The point here is not to defend esotericism or the early modern readings of the Stoics (who, inspired, by Plutarch often treat Stoics as religious hypocrites);** rather the point is to nudge us toward a methodology that treats our historical subjects as equal partners in our intellectual voyage(s).

 

On Doing the Noble for the Wrong Reason(s)?

The greater ability for experiencing abstract and general feelings, that is feelings that are only the consciousness of what several individual feelings have in common, like the greater ability for forming abstract and general ideas is the greatest distinction of hearts and minds. Only those hearts capable of such feelings are truly just, for it is only them that are capable of being ruled by immutable principles. Only on the sensibility of such hearts can we rely, as they are always susceptible to being moved by general motives. Their conscience is silenced with difficulty – and it is always active. Remorse is in them less fallible and more efficacious, all the ideas of its duties more complete. Such people especially know to fulfill these delicate duties of honesty that morality alone imposes and recognizes, and which always bring regret and the loss of feelings of happiness when they are forgotten, and which display those disinterested virtues, the fruit of a sublime need to have always the greatest and most satisfying idea of oneself.--Sophie de Grouchy (1798) Letters on Sympathy, translated by Sandrine Berges, Letter 5.

ln the quoted passage, De Grouchy embraces the idea that various exalted cognitive and intellectual abilities are prerequisites to, let's call it, exemplary moral behavior (in which she includes acting from principle in light of conscience and the right sort of feelings and impartial motives). Having an 'active' conscience means it can motivate action. Now, I think that with 'honesty,' De Grouchy is evoking Cicero's honestum (from De Officiis), or that what is honorable or noble.

Unfortunately, it is not entirely obvious how early moderns understood Cicero's honestum. In a classic article, James Moore, has canvassed eighteenth century (primarily British) attempts to articulate it in a modern context. On Moore's reading, by the time of Hume, honestum is grounded in the sentiment of humanity. De Grouchy is not a critic of the sentiment of humanity; she treats it, for example, as the "first cause" of sympathy (in Letter 1). But in the quoted passage she suggests that morally exemplary behavior is psychologically grounded ultimately in a peculiar form of self-love: "the fruit of a sublime need to have always the greatest and most satisfying idea of oneself."

De Grouchy seems here to be offering the wrong sort of reason to explain exemplary acts of honor, and to be swerving uncomfortably close to those unmasking masters of morality -- Mandeville, Nietzsche, etc. -- who suggest that moral behavior is just another species of self-love or vanity. Now, to be sure, De Grouchy is clearly not suggesting that we act good because we desire praise or to be thought well by others. So, she is not charging the moralist with hypocrisy or a certain form outer-directed dissembling. And, in addition, she is suggesting that moral actions are done for properly moral reasons (i.e., principles).

Yet, the psychological cause of exemplary moral behavior is the desire to have the best possible and most gratifying self-image and to live up to it. It's this need that is called 'sublime' by De Grouchy. I think on this point De Grouchy echoes two famous predecessors--one of which she certainly read. First, she evokes Spinoza's idea from the preface of Ethics 4, that "because we desire to form an idea of man, as a model of human nature which we may look to...I shall understand by good what we know certainly is a means by which we may approach nearer and nearer to the model of human nature that we set before ourselves." As Andrew Youpa has suggested, this exemplary idea is both adequate and inadequate in Spinoza.  In its adequate manifestation it is an expression of God and this connects up to the De Grouchy's sublime.

Undoubtedly, the previous paragraph is rather too speculative for most. Not only because De Grouchy does not often hint of Spinozistic influence, but also because she is herself rather allergic of talk of even Spinoza's God. So, it is more likely that she is articulating an idea she found in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (hereafter TMS, which she translated and to which her Letters are an appendix). There Smith denies that our morally exemplary behavior is caused by "the love of our neighbour," as the Christian hopes (and Hutcheson thought) nor is it "the love of mankind," (which the defenders of humanity had promoted), rather it is a stronger love, a more powerful affection, which generally takes place upon such occasions; the love of what is honourable and noble, of the grandeur, and dignity, and superiority of our own characters" (TMS 3.3.4).

It is not entirely clear if Smith here offers two distinct strong motives that can explain (most) exemplary moral behavior: one is love of the noble (that is, a desire to be Cicero's honestum) and the other is very close to De Grouchy's posited desire to live up to the best possible and most gratifying (exalted) self-image, or that these amount to the same thing. Either way, both De Grouchy and Smith assume (with the Stoics) that what we think of ourselves will influence our behavior and that we better have access to rather inflated ideas (of the right sort) of ourselves in order to act nobly when needed such that the inflated idea becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

On Order & Simplicity (and transcendental arguments) in Newton and Scientific Models

9. To choose those constructions which without straining reduce things to the greatest simplicity. The reason of this is manifest by the precedent Rule. Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, & not in the multiplicity & confusion of things. As the world, which to the naked eye exhibits the greatest variety of objects, appears very simple in its internall constitution when surveyed by a philosophic understanding, & so much the simpler by how much the better it is understood, so it is in these visions. It is the perfection of God's works that they are all done with the greatest simplicity. He is the God of order & not of confusion. And therefore as they that would understand the frame of the world must indeavour to reduce their knowledg to all possible simplicity, so it must be in seeking to understand these visions. And they that shall do otherwise do not onely make sure never to understand them, but derogate from the perfection of the prophesy; & make it suspicious also that their designe is not to understand it but to shuffle it of & confound the understandings of men by making it intricate & confused.--Isaac Newton ca 1670s-1680s, Rules for methodising | construing the Apocalyps. in Untitled Treatise on Revelation (section 1.1) [HT Eliot Sober]

Laurie Paul called my attention to Sober's essay on simplicity, which discusses, in passing, the passage quoted from Newton's papers. In the passage, Newton draws a distinction between confusing appearances (which exhibit "multiplicity") and an orderly and simple hidden (internal) constitution. I note here that his language is rather Rationalist (a "philosophic understanding" grasps the hidden constitution of things), but in context it's clear that the interpretation of Scriptures (or prophetic visions) and of nature (they are treated as analogous enterprises) is also an empirical matter (note the role of "observation").*

Sober does not mention the role of order, which in Newton is resolutely coupled with simplicity. Before I get to that it's worth noting explicitly, Newton's doctrine of simplicity here. Even so there is a subtle distinction between order and simplicity. Let me first explain simplicity. For, note the difference between (i) simplicity being a feature of God's works, especially the internal constitution of things and (i*) simplicity being a cognitive feature accompanying a philosophical understanding of that internal constitution of things. Truth just is when (i) and (i*) match. It also turns out that the simplicity in (i*) also involves (i**) a property or virtue of a successful epistemic reduction to a more limited number of elements. Newton is here echoing Boyle (as Yoram Hazony has argued in a different context). To be sure, a 'construction' is what we would call an 'intepretation,' but for reasons that will become clear below, I am going to be happy to trade on an equivocation in which 'construction' also evokes a concrete model.

Order, however, is a feature (I am inclined to say, a perfection) of God: "He is the God of order"--this evokes 1 Corinthians 14:33-40. (There order seems to really mean 'peaceful,' especially of prayer-service & preaching -- sadly, in context women are treated as a source of disorder.) A natural reading is that God's order explains the absence of confusion (that is, order) in the hidden constitution of nature.

That God is the God of order is a feature, not a bug, of a very  important argument that I have dubbed (recall, here too, and here) the 'transcendental version of the Posidonian argument' that can be traced back to Cicero's On the Nature of the Gods.  (Some version of it is clearly articulated in Boyle and Clarke.) It can be rendered as follows:

(I)                A condition of the possibility of (an intended) successful scientific representation or concrete model of (a region of) nature is that (a region of) nature is orderly

(II)              Nature's hidden order could not be the product of chance [as suggested by Epicureanism] or necessity [as suggested by Spinozism], but only by God

(III)               Science is successful.

(IV)             ∴ There is a God (of order)

I have worded [II] in such a way as to allow that God may just emanate his order to Nature. I have worded [I] to allow concrete models -- e.g., a portable planetarium -- to play a key role in the argument (as they do in Cicero, Boyle, and Clarke). In addition, I'll stipulate that one way to cash out a successful scientific representation or concrete model of the hidden structure of nature, is in terms of simplicity, epistemic reduction, and representational accuracy. Obviously, the first two premises may well be thought controversial (and here I am ignoring different kinds of interpretations we may put on these premises). Some other time I'll explore how reasonable they would have been in the early modern period (and how they can be seen to presuppose a commitment to PSR).

This argument violates what we may call a 'neutrality requirement.' The thought behind the neutrality requirement is that when science plays a rule in establishing facts/features/stuff/phenomena (etc.)about the world -- like its hidden structure or order --, it ought to be neutral with regard to these facts (features, etc.). The neutrality requirement, we may say a lack of bias, underwrites the epistemic authority of science in the context of controversy.  The transcendental version of the Posidonian argument violates the neutrality requirement when it comes to order; it presupposes it.

As the eminent Spinoza and Kant scholar, Ursula Renz (who likes transcendental arguments), noted in recent discussion of some of this material, violating neutrality requirements just is what transcendental arguments do. (This is just another way of explaining the way in which transcendental arguments tend to feel circular.) This is worth emphasizing because we live in a philosophical culture that is attracted to at least one rather influential transcendental argument (the so-called Quine-Putnam indispensability argument which appeals to the authority of science to argue for the existence of [or ontological commitment to] mathematical objects which are indispensable for science functioning).**

Here I do not wish to prove that Newton was explicitly familiar with the Posidonian argument (that's for another time, although if Dennett is right about Descartes then there is a direct source, but Boyle is also a possible source; later he can learn about itfrom Locke and Clarke). But it is worth noting here that he explicitly accepts its conclusion, tacitly assumes the truth of (II), and can be charitably read to be committed to (I). Every scientific success he generates, firms up his commitment to its conclusion, and, in turn, spurs on his science.

Smith, Design, Hume/Kant, and Transcendental Illusions

In every part of the universe we observe means adjusted with the nicest artifice to the ends which they are intended to produce; and in the mechanism of a plant, or animal body, admire how every thing is contrived for advancing the two great purposes of nature, the support of the individual, and the propagation of the species. But in these, and in all such objects, we still distinguish the efficient from the final cause of their several motions and organizations. The digestion of the food, the circulation of the blood, and the secretion of the several juices which are drawn from it, are operations all of them necessary for the great purposes of animal life. Yet we never endeavour to account for them from those purposes as from their efficient causes, nor imagine that the blood circulates, or that the food digests of its own accord, and with a view or intention to the purposes of circulation or digestion. The wheels of the watch are all admirably adjusted to the end for which it was made, the pointing of the hour. All their various motions conspire in the nicest manner to produce this effect. If they were endowed with a desire and intention to produce it, they could not do it better. Yet we never ascribe any such desire or intention to them, but to the watch-maker, and we know that they are put into motion by a spring, which intends the effect it produces as little as they do. But though, in accounting for the operations of bodies, we never fail to distinguish in this manner the efficient from the final cause, in accounting for those of the mind we are very apt to confound these two different things with one another. When by natural principles we are led to advance those ends, which a refined and enlightened reason would recommend to us, we are very apt to impute to that reason, as to their efficient cause, the sentiments and actions by which we advance those ends, and to imagine that to be the wisdom of man, which in reality is the wisdom of God. Upon a superficial view, this cause seems sufficient to produce the effects which are ascribed to it; and the system of human nature seems to be more simple and agreeable when all its different operations are in this manner deduced from a single principle.--Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) 2.2.3.5

Unlike Hume, who explicitly informs his readers of the “elements” of his system (1.1.4.7; see Hazony), Smith is silent on the elements of his system. But Smith's interest in discerning principles, which are the explanatory grounds (that is, axioms, fundamental causes, common notions, etc.) of a system (see here), is (further) evidence that he is interested in systematic knowledge (recall). And while he makes no mention of elements, Smith is less silent on the “principles of human nature.”

For example, at the start of TMS, Smith writes, in one of the most Hobbesian passages of his oeuvre, “And from thence arises one of the most important principles in human nature, the dread of death, the great poison to the happiness, but the great restraint upon the injustice of mankind, which, while it afflicts and mortifies the individual, guards and protects the society.” (TMS 1.1.1.13, 13) Later Smith notes that it is universally accepted that “compassion” is a “principle of human nature.” (TMS 1.3.1.2, 43) So, Smith seems to be committed to the idea that there is a heterogeneous mixture of principles in human nature. With that in mind, let's turn to TMS 2.2.3.5.

I have long found TMS 2.2.3.5 (quoted above) extremely difficult to parse (especially this part: "When by natural principles we are led to advance those ends, which a refined and enlightened reason would recommend to us, we are very apt to impute to that reason, as to their efficient cause, the sentiments and actions by which we advance those ends.") One important claim is that according to Smith it is relatively easy to distinguish between efficient and final causes when it comes to bodies; but when it comes to mental activity, it is very difficult to distinguish between final and efficient causes ("accounting for the operations of bodies, we never fail to distinguish in this manner the efficient from the final cause, in accounting for those of the mind we are very apt to confound these two different things with one another"). Another important claim is that some scientific systems of human affairs have a tendency to explain by mono-causes (or single, fundamental explanatory principles).

In the passage quoted at the top of this post, Smith is critical of the tendency to reduce human affairs to single, explanatory principles. This is a recurring theme in TMS. For example, earlier in TMS, he had written critically of “Those who are fond of deducing all our sentiments from certain refinements of self-love [Hobbes and Mandeville--ES], think themselves at no loss to account, according to their own principles, both for this pleasure and this pain.” (TMS 1.1.2.1) He is also critical of Hume: “The same ingenious and agreeable author who first explained why utility pleases, has been so struck with this view of things, as to resolve our whole approbation of virtue into a perception of this species of beauty which results from the appearance of utility." (TMS 4.2.3) Echoing Toland's criticism of Spinoza (recall), Smith insists that Hume's mistake is one common to “men of reflection and speculation.” (TMS 4. 2.11) In fact, in context, Smith accuses Hume of  adopting a stance of "refined and enlightened reason" in his explanation of the origin of justice (in order to "impute to that reason" what is really caused by resentment; see here for a defense of that claim). In particular, he claims that Hume's mistake is a natural one ("we are very apt to impute") for a thinker to make. That is, Smith treats Hume as an exemplar to diagnose the existence of a kind of (what Kant will call) transcendental illusion.

Much of TMS 2.2.3.5 recycles a standard seventeenth and eighteenth century design argument (the "circulation of the blood" may be thought a modern touch) that could have been penned by a lesser follower of, say, Samuel Clarke. Smith, who was a close student of Cicero, signals his familiarity with Boyle's version of the Posidonian argument (recall).

Yet, Smith is undoubtedly also familiar with Hume's argument against final causes, and he leaves it unclear why he does not accept Hume's argument. (I have argued that Smith's considered views only are made clear in his posthumous work.) Oddly, when Hume wrote Smith with his objections and suggestions for improvement, he (Hume) did not comment on this point of disagreement. Perhaps, that is because he discerned that in Smith's treatment, the Designer's ends that can be inferred from his works, turn out to be oddly Epicurean: "[I] the support of the individual, and [II'] the propagation of the species." Smith here, anticipates, the argument of Philo:

You ascribe, Cleanthes, (and I believe justly) a purpose and intention to Nature. But what, I beseech you, is the object of that curious artifice and machinery, which she has displayed in all animals? The preservation alone of individuals and propagation of the species. It seems enough for her purpose, if such a rank be barely upheld in the universe, without any care or concern for the happiness of the members, that compose it. Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (D.26)