Digressions&Impressions

Newton, Comets, Life

For just as the seas are absolutely necessary for the constitution of this earth, so that vapors may be abundantly enough aroused from them by the heat of the sun, which vapors either—being gathered into clouds—fall in rains and irrigate and nourish the whole earth for the propagation of vegetables, or—being condensed in the cold peaks of mountains (as some philosophize with good reason)—run down into springs and rivers; so for the conservation of the seas and fluids on the planets, comets seem to be required, so that from the condensation of their exhalations and vapors, there can be a continual supply and renewal of whatever liquid is consumed by vegetation and putrefaction and converted into dry earth. For all vegetables grow entirely from fluids and afterward, in great part, change into dry earth by putrefaction, and slime is continually deposited from putrefied liquids. Hence the bulk of dry earth is increased from day to day, and fluids—if they did not have an outside source of increase—would have to decrease continually and finally to fail. Further, I suspect that that spirit which is the smallest but most subtle and most excellent part of our air, and which is required for the life of all things, comes chiefly from comets.--Newton, Principia, Book III, proposition 41, translated by Cohen & Whitman  (1999) p. 926.

The quoted passage is among my most favorite bits of the Principia. It is pretty nearly the close of the first edition of the Principia. And as I note elsewhere, it contributed to the reception of Newton as a kind of modern (mathematically inclined) Epicurean--something the General Scholium attached to the second edition helps correct. To be clear Newton here does not embrace the Epicurean notion of seeds as the source of human life.

 

In this account comets play a vital role in the economy of the universe. They bring a life-giving spirit from the outer reaches of the universe to our solar system. During the seventeenth century, 'spirit' is a term for a kind of refined fluid (the term is still to be noticed when we use 'spirits' to refer to liquor.) What Newton has in mind is made explicit in the final sentence of the Book III (which I think was itself only added to the second edition): "And the vapors that arise from the sun and the fixed stars and the tails of comets can fall by their gravity into the atmospheres of the planets and there be condensed and converted into water and humid spirits, and then—by a slow heat—be transformed gradually into salts, sulphurs, tinctures, slime, mud, clay, sand, stones, corals, and other earthy substances." (Newton, Principia: 938)

 

I have to admit that if people didn't keep telling me that Newton was a rather heterodox Christian, and we didn't have abundant manuscript evidence of his interest in true Christianity, I would read him here as offering an entirely naturalistic account of the cosmic origin and sustenance of life of a sort that, say, Ibn Tufayl hints at in his account of the rationalizing intellectuals' reconstruction of the site and mechanisms of creation. In any case, we shouldn't be surprised that Leibniz  mischievously, perhaps, reads Newton as a kind of crypto-Spinozist.

 

My reason for returning to Newton's account of comets was prompted by a remark by Chris Smeenk after my recent post, where, while interpreting Whewell, I treated Herschel's (1802) discovery that binary star systems obey Keplerian motion as analogous to the claim that satellites of Jupiter and Saturn obey Keplerian motion and, thereby, showing that Newtonian's gravitation is indeed a universal quality of bodies. For, despite the existence of Newton's third rule of reasoning, which encourages the researcher to take the law of gravitation as a universal (but not essential) quality of systems of matter, Newton only has evidence about bodies in a small region of the visible universe (our solar system). And, in fact, I called attention to a Query in which Newton allows that there may be regions of space where matter is differently constituted and so obeys different force laws. (So much for quick summary.)

 

In response, Smeenk noted that Newton shows that comets also obey Keplerian motion (that is the point of Proposition 40 of Book III of the Principia). It is worth spelling out  the implications of this a bit because they point to an interesting ambiguity in Newton's theory of comets that connects up to the question of the evidence for the scope of law of gravitation. 

 

First, Newton is pretty clear that comets we can see in the sky have Keplerian motion around our Sun: "Those who banish the comets almost to the region of the fixed stars are, therefore, entirely wrong; certainly in such a situation, they would not be illuminated by our sun any more than the planets in our solar system are illuminated by the fixed stars....likely that the comets descend far below the sphere of Saturn," (1999: 892) So comets are part of the solar system and their Keplerian motion is due, in part, to the attraction of our Sun. Of course, some of the orbits of regularly returning comets go to the furthest reaches of the Sun's gravitational field. 

 

But Newton also recognizes that some "comets are not restricted to the zodiac as planets are, but depart from there and are carried with various motions into all regions of the heavens," (937; from proposition 41; emphasis added). And, in fact, this is what he assumes when comets bring spirits and vapors from the outer cosmos to our little planet. 

 

So, lurking in Newton's argument is an open research question: when comets enter the solar system, before they are captured by the Sun's gravitational field (or the gravitational field of the outer planets, etc.) are they obeying Keplerian motion? For, prior to the kind of work that Hershel (and Bradley) could do with their more powerful telescopes, it is difficult to establish what kind of force laws matter obeys far away in different regions of space. It should be noted that Book I of the Principia, presents us with a whole class of possible force laws and motions in accord with such alternative possibilities; so Newton has already developed the tools to answer that question.

 

But, and perhaps this is what Smeenk had in mind, the mere fact that cosmic wanderers do, once they enter or interact with the solar's gravitational field, obey Keplerian motion suggests that they would do so elsewhere, too. And that's because on Newton's (more speculative view articulated in the Queries (quoted on Monday) the laws of motion are themselves ground in the nature of matter--so if you obey Keplerian motion here, you do would do so there, too. (That's compatible with the thought that elsewhere in the universe there is also fundamentally different kinds of matter that might obey additional laws.) So, that the existence of intergalactic wanderers is some evidence for a possible fundamental univocity of matter. In the first edition of the Principia Newton had embraced this explicitly (as a hypothesis) -"Every body can be transformed into a body of any other kind and successively take on all the intermediate degrees of qualities," (198)- , but he had officially dropped it in later editions perhaps because he became more enchanted with a dappled universe (or because he recognized that the univocity he needed -- inertial mass -- was a thinner and more abstract quantity than the transformation thesis requires).*

 

The fact that light also passes among different regions of the universe, also provides evidence for the thought that the universe is unified (as opposed to dappled). I mention this because in the General Scholium, Newton had used the immense distances of solar systems, and their inability to interact with each other (and so fall upon each other catastrophically) as a kind of evidence of God's benevolent design. So, that a dappled universe may well be thought in accord with His wishes.

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

Chiang on metahumans (and the great chain of being)

The question is, are these worthwhile undertakings for scientists? Some call them a waste of time, likening them to a Native American research effort into bronze smelting when steel tools of European manufacture are readily available. This comparison might be more apt if humans were in competition with metahumans, but in today's economy of abundance there is no evidence of such competition. In fact, it is important to recognize that — unlike most previous low-technology cultures confronted with a high-technology one — humans are in no danger of assimilation or extinction.

There is still no way to augment a human brain into a metahuman one; the Sugimoto gene therapy must be performed before the embryo begins neurogenesis in order for a brain to be compatible with DNT. This lack of an assimilation mechanism means that human parents of a metahuman child face a difficult choice: to allow their child DNT interaction with metahuman culture, and watch him or her grow incomprehensible to them; or else restrict access to DNT during the child's formative years, which to a metahuman is deprivation like that suffered by Kaspar Hauser. It is not surprising that the percentage of human parents choosing the Sugimoto gene therapy for their children has dropped almost to zero in recent years.

As a result, human culture is likely to survive well into the future, and the scientific tradition is a vital part of that culture. Hermeneutics is a legitimate method of scientific inquiry and increases the body of human knowledge just as original research did. Moreover, human researchers may discern applications overlooked by metahumans, whose advantages tend to make them unaware of our concerns.

For example, imagine if research offered hope of a different intelligence-enhancing therapy, one that would allow individuals to gradually ‘upgrade’ their minds to a level equivalent to that of a metahuman. Such a therapy would offer a bridge across what has become the greatest cultural divide in our species' history, yet it might not even occur to metahumans to explore it; that possibility alone justifies the continuation of human research.

We need not be intimidated by the accomplishments of metahuman science. We should always remember that the technologies that made metahumans possible were originally invented by humans, and they were no smarter than we. Ted Chiang (2000) "Catching crumbs from the table," in Nature.*

The existence of metahumans (or enhanced, human cyborgs) reminds us that developments in technologies generate violations of Descartes' causal principle: what is more perfect can arise from what is less perfect. Technologies change how we conceive of what is humanly possible.+ In addition, technology helps generate violations of the great chain of being; there are  in-commensurable gaps between humans and metahumans.

Whether any technology can remove scarcity may well be doubted unless the metahumans can practice moral checks on themselves and nudge the humans into breeding at a replacement rate. Of course, if the metahumans did so, it's possible the humans would not know about it ([recall] in the way the machines/artificial intelligence nudge humans in Iain Banks' The Culture series).

The narration assumes that scarcity is the main motive for genocide. It also implies that being capable of developing science and technology, including presumably meta weapons of meta mass destruction, would generate an ethics of their proper use. Since metahumans were initially invented by humans no smarter than us, this is to be doubted. Perhaps the thought is that the ability to dominate nature (abundance, etc.) removes the desire to dominate (destroy/exploit, etc.) lesser beings. But let's leave that aside.

When I was reflecting on the story, I was initially unsure parents would indeed choose to be able to communicate with their children, and so continue their traditions even form of life, rather than choosing for their kids to be among the cognitive elite (the metahumans). Often today, it seems, designer babies represent not just the desire for healthy kids, but parents' status and economic aspirations for their children. Such parents appear to act for their childrens' good. 

But, upon second thought, Chiang's moral psychology seems persuasive. Because despite the emphasis on 'choice' in selling human enhancement technologies, our contemporary parents of designer babies are not really showing much respect for the (let's call it) autonomy of their children. Rather what they de facto do is lengthen the odds that the structure of their (parental/social) values/traditions are passed on and reproduced. 

Part of the joke of the story -- which first appeared in Nature -- is that academic journals have stopped being the vehicle for publishing original research. They are now mostly in the business of hermeneutics trying and trailing to understand metahuman science. For us the joke may be less funny because with the opacity of machine learning this possibility may well be shading into reality. Even so, it would indeed be funny if the success of an all-knowing data science would regenerate the felt need for a kind of science of interpretation that could help decode the revelations of a hidden intelligence. When computer science departments start hiring big-data-hermeneuticists, the heirs of Gadamer or Davidson can laugh at our analytic philosophers.++ Of course, with machine algorithms, there may simply be no there, there. And so this hermeneutics may well have to rely on an intentional stance.

Not unlike AL-Farabi's God (at least this is Al-Ghazali's charge), the metahumans may be t uninterested in the physical going-ons of mere mortals. One's position reflects one's choices of research topic. Chiang suggests that faced with the existence of scientifically superior metahumans, scientific humans would embrace if not standpoint epistemology, then the argument from epistemic diversity, from self-interest. If these human scientists are right, then the great chain of being would be restored.

 

On Aristotle's Cave (on Plato's Cave via --- ahh, yes -- Cicero) and Design Arguments

Great was the saying of Aristotle: 'Suppose there were men who had lived always underground, in good and well-lighted dwellings, adorned with statues and pictures, and furnished with everything in which those who are thought happy abound. Suppose, however, that they had never gone above ground, but had learned by report and hearsay that there is a divine authority and power. Suppose that then, at some time, the jaws of the earth opened, and they were able to escape and make their way from those hidden dwellings into these regions which we inhabit. When they suddenly saw earth and seas and sky, when they learned the grandeur of clouds and the power of winds, when they saw the sun and learned his grandeur and beauty and the power shown in his filling the sky with light and making day; when, again, night darkened the lands and they saw the whole sky picked out and adorned with stars, and the varying lights of the moon as it waxes and wanes, and the risings and settings of all these bodies, and their courses settled and immutable to all eternity; when they saw those things, most certainly they would have judged both that there are gods and that these great works are the works of gods.' Thus far Aristotle.--Quoted from Ross's Works of Aristotle, quoting Cicero (who is quoting Aristotle), On the Nature of the Gods (2. 37. 95-96[see here for Cicero's latin].), pp. 85-6. [HT Eric Brown & Monte Johnson]

In the context of Balbus's articulation and further elucidation of what I have dubbed (recall) the 'Posidonian argument,' the passage attributed to Aristotle above is quoted. Bywater (1876; HT Eric Brown) offers compelling reasons to believe that this is a fragment of Aristotle's lost dialogue, "On Philosophy" (or can at least traced back to it; Bywater's essay is worth re-reading for more reasons). 

Some other time I want to reflect on how we can read this passage as a comment on Plato's famous Cave (especially striking that Aristotle's cave dwellers have pictures and statues). Here I'll focus primarily on the passage itself (and the use Cicero makes of it). The inhabitants of the cave have everything that is thought needed for happiness. I am unsure, if we need to read into this Aristotle's disagreement with what is thought. But I am going to assume that this makes no difference to Aristotle's general claim.

What may well make a difference is that happy cave people have heard about God's will and power (numen et vim deorum). This is worth noting for two reasons: first, more speculatively, it may indicate that Aristotle is toying with the idea that stories about the gods (we may say that's the original sense of 'theology') arises naturally in any human community.* Elsewhere Aristotle connects the θεολόγοι with the circle around Hesiod (see Metaphysics 1000a9).

But earlier, okay here's some Plato: Aristotle allows that others (Plato) think that such ('theological' θεολογήσαντας) reflection on the gods predates philosophy greatly and goes back to earliest times (Met. 1.983b). So, it's possible that the whole Aristotelian thought experiment is meant to reveal something about Plato's anthropology/philosophy (for the political significance of this recall this post on Republic 427; and this one on the city of pigs).

Second, one wonders to what degree the fact that the cave-dwellers already had views on god influenced their judgment about the perception of the phenomena. That is, intentionally or not, Aristotle's thought experiment raises the question of confirmation bias (or theory mediated perception). Of course, I can't prove this claim, but it is worth noting that at least one of the perceptions they have -- orbits of astronomical bodies settled and immutable to all eternity --is not the product of mere unmediated impressions. Let's allow that the former cave dwellers can discover in fairly short notice that the planetary motions are sufficiently regular. But that their orbits are eternally fixed requires something which cannot be founded in such experience, but requires cosmological and physical backgrounds commitments.

To be sure, I am not denying that even without the supposition that the orbits are eternally fixed, the inference from celestial regularity to a providential god may still be likely. In particular, Cicero's Aristotle, relies on the grandeur of nature (and we are extremely close to the sublime here; yes, that is supposedly anachronistic, but I am capturing the repetitive magnitudinem pulchritudinemque.) Even so, in the thought experiment, the celestial bodies are made co-extensive in existence with the eternal god(s). That is to say, if you are properly primed, then the fact that nature is grandly ordered generates the natural, even inevitable inference that it (the order) is god(s)'s workmanship.

So, the way I read the Aristotle passage it could be part of an unmasking error theory,+ but it need not be so. After all, there may well be independent arguments for the existence of gods and their magnificent workmanship. In fact, Cicero's Balbus uses the passage in this latter (non-unmasking) way. For according to Balbus once you have been exposed to philosophical arguments for the existence of god -- and the previous passage offers a wonderful argument against the epicureans that (i) from start of great disorder random motions can never produce the particular order we have, and (ii) if they could, why not also houses and palaces (so much easier than a whole universe)? -- order in nature is evidently due to rational design.** 

 

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 Impartiality, And the Equality of All Planetarians; Huygens on Beauty and the Infinite Universe

But still the main and most diverting Point of the Enquiry is behind, which is the placing some Spectators in these new Discoveries, to enjoy these Creatures we have planted them with, and to admire their Beauty and Variety. And among all, that have never so slightly meddled with these matters, I don’t find any that have scrupled to allow them their Inhabitants: not Men perhaps like ours, but [37] some Creatures or other endued with Reason. For all this Furniture and Beauty the Planets are stock’d with seem to have been made in vain, without any design or end, unless there were some in them that might at the same time enjoy the Fruits, and adore the wise Creator of them. But this alone would be no prevailing Argument with me to allow them such Creatures. For what if we should say, that God made them for no other design, but that he himself might see (not as we do ’tis true; but that he that made the Eye sees, who can doubt?) and delight himself in the contemplation of them? For was not Man himself, and all that the whole World contains, made upon this very account? That which makes me of this opinion, that those Worlds are not without such a Creature endued with Reason, is, that otherwise our Earth would have too much the advantage of them, in being the only part of the Universe that could boast of such a Creature so far above, not only Plants and Trees, but all [38] Animals whatsoever: a Creature that has a Divine somewhat within him, that knows, and understands, and remembers such an innumerable number of things; that deliberates, weighs and judges of the Truth: a Creature upon whose account, and for whose use, whatsoever the Earth brings forth seems to be provided. For every thing here he converts to his own ends. With the Trees, Stones, and Metals, he builds himself Houses: the Birds and Fishes he sustains himself with: and the Water and Winds he makes subservient to his Navigation; as he doth the sweet Smell and glorious Colours of the Flowers to his Delight. What can there be in the Planets that can make up for its Defects in the want of so noble an Animal? If we should allow Jupiter a greater variety of other Creatures, more Trees, Herbs and Metals, all these would not advantage or dignify that Planet so much as that one Animal doth ours by the admirable Productions of his penetrating Wit. If I am out in this, I do not know when [39] to trust my Reason, and must allow my self to be but a poor Judg in the true estimate of things. C. Huygens, Cosmotheoros, “Rational Animals in the Planets”.

I have mentioned before (recall here) that in an unpublished manuscript (from 1691) Huygens embraced what one may call an ‘aesthetic-maximazation-conservation principle.’ This principle asserts that no natural beauty is wasted and so requires spectators to enjoy it. Because the night-skies on other planets are lovely there must be extraterrestrials to enjoy it (Newton, too, embraces this implication). Huygens's God would not waste the opportunity to have sentient beings enjoy the aesthetic pleasure. Neither God nor nature does anything in vain, after all. " I had noted that Huygens mentions the principle in the (posthumously published) Cosmotheoros, but rejects it as decisive (“this alone would be no prevailing Argument with me to allow them such Creatures.”)

It’s not entirely clear why Huygens rejects it the ‘aesthetic-maximazation-conservation principle’ as offering us grounds to infer extraterrestrials. Perhaps, it’s because he comes to see that there are wasted aesthetic opportunities in the universe: while he is firm that our Sun’s planets have inhabitants, and that this is so of planets of other Suns throughout the universe, he has decided that moons (and Suns) do not have inhabitants.

Another possible ground for rejecting the ‘aesthetic-maximazation-conservation principle’ is that it entails, as Huygens notes, that we humans may exist for God’s aesthetic pleasure (“God made them for no other design, but that he himself might see…and delight himself in the contemplation of them?”) I believe Huygens’s suggestion to this effect is a rhetorical question (even if Huygens embraces providential deism in the Cosmotheoros.)) A reason for thinking this is a rhetorical question is that in the quoted passage, Huygens does not consider this answer – we exist for God’s aesthetic pleasure – as decisive, not to mention that this position would bring Huygens uncomfortably close to Epicureanism --a position he rejects explicitly in the Cosmotheoros.

Rather, Huygens embraces a more Copernican, ‘all Solar Systems are Created Equal,’ principle. A more modest version of the principle is used within solar systems: ‘all planets are Created Equal’ principle. Of course, Huygens recognizes that gravity and heat will be different in different planets, and that the night sky will offer different opportunities to develop one’s astronomy. In fact, part of the fun of the book is having Huygens imagine for his reader what experiencing the galaxy would be like for extraterrestrials. Here’s a nice example:

if Amazement and Fear at the Eclipses of the Moon and Sun gave the first occasion to the study of Astronomy [on Earth], as they say it did, then it’s almost impossible that Jupiter and Saturn should be without it; the Argument being of much greater force in them, by reason of the; daily Eclipses of their Moons, and the frequent ones of the Sun to their Inhabitants. So that if a Person disinterested in his Judgment, and equally ignorant of the Affairs of all the Planets, were to give his Opinion in the matter, I don’t doubt he would give the cause for Astronomy to those two Planets rather than us.

It is notable that Huygens here draws on (Epicurean) tropes which became central to Enlightenment thought (in fact, the parallels with Adam Smith's History of Astronomy are uncanny):+ ancient science is grounded in the unpleasant experience of the spectacle the heavens offer us. The early inhabitants of the outer planets have more regular reasons – and better potential data! -- to begin to track their heavens. An implication that Huygens leaves hanging is that some extraterrestrials will surpass us in scientific knowledge. (Later, when he explicitly gets to the issue, he goes no further than to say that: “there’s no reason to think the Planetarians less ingenious or happy than our selves; we have gained our point, and ’tis probable that they are as skilful Astronomers as we can pretend to be.”)

On the whole Huygens’s reasons for suggesting his ‘all Solar Systems are Created Equal,’ principle are not very interesting (or persuasive--they rely on analogies). But after driving home the vast distances of the visible universe, and reminding his readers of the even vaster distances of the (infinite) universe invisible to us, he introduces a striking, and I think consequential, thought experiment, near the end of his book that helps explain why he adopts this principle:

For then why may not every one of these Stars or Suns have as great a Retinue as our Sun, of Planets, with their Moons, to wait upon them? Nay there’s a manifest reason why they should. For let us fancy our selves placed at an equal distance from the Sun and fix’d Stars; we should then perceive no difference between them. For, as for all the Planets that we now see attend the Sun, we should not have the least glimpse of them, either that their Light would be too weak to affect us, or that all the Orbs in which they move would make up one lucid point with the Sun. In this station we should have no occasion to imagine any difference between the Stars, and should make no doubt if we had but the sight, and knew the nature of one of them, to make that the Standard of all the rest. We are then plac’d near one of them, namely, our Sun, and so near as to discover six other Globes moving round him, some of them having others performing them the same Office. Why then shall not we make use of the same Judgment that we would in that case; and conclude, that our Star has no better attendance than the others? So that what we allow’d the Planets, upon the account of our enjoying it, we must likewise grant to all those Planets that surround that prodigious number of Suns. They must have their Plants and Animals, nay and their rational ones too, and those as great Admirers, and as diligent Observers of the Heavens as our selves; and must consequently enjoy whatsoever is subservient to, and requisit for such Knowledge.[1] (Italics added.)

There are three underlying intuitions here: first, on a cosmic scale, all Suns are equal with no marks to distinguish them and so no marks to elevate them over others. Second, most planets, including ours, are invisible at most points in the universe, and so have no claim to privileged status. Third, there is no rational ground to make one planet (ours) the measure of others.[2] Man is not the measure of things once we see ourselves in our proper place. The nod to Protagoras is important.

It is, by now, a familiar claim that Copernicanism decenters humans and our solar system. We are not at the center of creation anymore. But even so various species of humanism have survived, even thrived in the ages of Copernicanism. (Huygens knew this up close; his father was one of the great Renaissance men of his age.) Throughout the Cosmotheoros, Huygens hesitates to grant that we humans are at the pinnacle of earthly life. He is especially impressed by birds (challenging Descartes's treatment of them as  mere mechanical entities):

Birds, liv’d with more pleasure and happiness than Man could with all his Wisdom. For they have as great a gusto of bodily Pleasures as we, let the new Philosophers say what they will, who would have them go for nothing but Clocks and Engines of Flesh; a thing which Beasts so plainly confute by crying and running away from a stick, and all other actions, that I wonder how anyone could subscribe to so absurd and cruel an Opinion. Nay I can scarce doubt but that Birds feel no small pleasure in their easy, smooth sailing through the Air; and would much more if they but knew the advantages it hath above our slow and laborious Progression.*

Huygens notes that from the impartial and disinterested perspective of the universe [as it were, sub species universalis], our planet is just a “small speck of dirt."* That is, Huygens thinks embracing the 'Solar Systems are Created Equal,’ principle also has obvious implications for "Wisdom and Morality," but about that some other time more.

Rousseau's Legislator, Religion, Magnanimity and the Problem of Evil

There is a further difficulty that deserves attention. Wise men, if they try to speak their language to the common herd instead of its own, cannot possibly make themselves understood. There are a thousand kinds of ideas which it is impossible to translate into popular language. Conceptions that are too general and objects that are too remote are equally out of its range: each individual, having no taste for any other plan of government than that which suits his particular interest, finds it difficult to realise the advantages he might hope to draw from the continual privations good laws impose. For a young people to be able to relish sound principles of political theory and follow the fundamental rules of statecraft, the effect would have to become the cause; the social spirit, which should be created by these institutions, would have to preside over their very foundation; and men would have to be before law what they should become by means of law. The legislator therefore, being unable to appeal to either force or reason, must have recourse to an authority of a different order, capable of constraining without violence and persuading without convincing.

This is what has, in all ages, compelled the fathers of nations to have recourse to divine intervention and credit the gods with their own wisdom, in order that the peoples, submitting to the laws of the State as to those of nature, and recognising the same power in the formation of the city as in that of man, might obey freely, and bear with docility the yoke of the public happiness.

This sublime reason, far above the range of the common herd, is that whose decisions the legislator puts into the mouth of the immortals, in order to constrain by divine authority those whom human prudence could not move.¹⁴ But it is not anybody who can make the gods speak, or get himself believed when he proclaims himself their interpreter. The great soul of the legislator is the only miracle that can prove his mission. Any man may grave tablets of stone, or buy an oracle, or feign secret intercourse with some divinity, or train a bird to whisper in his ear, or find other vulgar ways of imposing on the people. He whose knowledge goes no further may perhaps gather round him a band of fools; but he will never found an empire, and his extravagances will quickly perish with him. Idle tricks form a passing tie; only wisdom can make it lasting. The Judaic law, which still subsists, and that of the child of Ishmael, which, for ten centuries, has ruled half the world, still proclaim the great men who laid them down; and, while the pride of philosophy or the blind spirit of faction sees in them no more than lucky impostures, the true political theorist admires, in the institutions they set up, the great and powerful genius which presides over things made to endure.'--J.J. Rousseau The Social Contract, 2.8

In the quoted passage, Rousseau addresses an instance of the transition problem, that is (recall; recall here and here] how from any status quo to create a normatively desirable or ideal political future with a population raised under bad institutions (or worse, bad breeding). Rousseau's version of the problem is something like, under what conditions can we expect a people capable of exercising the general will to form? And, in fact, Rousseau's answer is rather dramatic, and shows that he recognizes the full nature of the transition problem, namely that people need to be transformed: the legislator must "feel himself capable, so to speak, of changing human nature, of transforming each individual...of altering man's constitution for the purpose of strengthening it (etc.)" In this instance the transition program is turned into (to echo my homage to L.A. Paul) a Political Transformative experience (PTE see Helen de Cruz; P. Allen; or me). Such a PTE can only succeed with a multitude that already has ‘some unity of origin, interest, or convention’ (SC 2.10).

Rousseau proposes that the agent of transformation (the Legislator) is somebody (not unlike the legislators of Plato's Laws and Moses) who remains outside the new social order (in order to prevent corruption of his preferences/aims) he is bringing into being. For this agent religion (and this echoes Al-Farabi's version of Platonic political theory) becomes a tool for political union. Religion here plays three distinct roles: first its symbols and language are more accessible than philosophy/science and so it is a good vehicle to convey the insights of political philosophy to the lesser educated (and educatable); second, it provides an incentive for people to move beyond their personal interests (that is otherwise absent); third, the political project can piggy back on the authority that is accorded to the divine.

The two intermediate aims (the full one is to create a people capable of exercising a general will), of this transformative process are 1.`’liberty and equality’ (SC 2.11;  and 2. the formation of 'social spirit,' that is a form of civic religion. About both of these more is to be said, but I want to wrap up and point out a feature of the origins of magnanimous legislators.

A magnanimous or great soul is not possible in the state of nature, according to Rousseau, because there we are (as Hobbes thought) roughly equal. Against Plato and Aristotle, Rousseau rejects (recall yesterday) natural hierarchy. (The one nice thing about embracing natural hierarchy is that the existence of great souled people is to be expected in any natural population; these show up on a regular basis.) For Rousseau hierarchies that seem natural are the product of society.  So, a great soul is only possible after (bad societies) have generated (with force) ‘natural seeming’ hierarchies in human nature. That is to say, the fact of historical inequality and injustice is a condition of possibility for the production of magnanimous legislators!

It is sometimes said (correctly) that Rousseau did not accept the gospel of progress. And in the Social Contract religion clearly has an instrumental role to play. This allows him (echoing Machiavelli) to see in Moses and Muhammad successful political legislators. But what seems to have been less noticed is that he does embrace a form of theodicy, a kind of cunning of history, which is (perhaps indirectly) also a (proto-Nietzschean) response to the problem of evil. Past suffering makes possible higher types who will transform us into beings that can be free and equal (and generate legitimate government).

 

 

 

On Anscombe on Hume and an Obscure argument

The first argument, however, is obscure and dealt with rather sketchily. It is that 'all the points of time and space, in which we can suppose any object to begin to exist, are in themselves equal; and unless there be some cause, which is peculiar to one time and place, and which by that means determines and fixes the existence, it must remain in eternal suspense.’ Hume replies ‘Is there any more difficulty in supposing the time and place to be fix'd without a cause, that to suppose the existence to be determin'd in that matter? The first question that occurs on this subject is always, whether the object shall exist or not: the next, when and where it shall begin to exist. If the removal of a cause be intuitively absurd in the one case, it must be so in the other: And if that absurdity be not clear without a proof in one case, it will equally require one in the other. The absurdity, then, of the one supposition can never be a proof of that of the other, since they are both upon the same footing, and must stand or fall by the same reasoning.’

Why does he say 'The first question is whether an object shall exist'? This seems  to  consider the matter from the point  of view of a creator, which suggests that Hume is consciously in Leibniz country; for Leibniz argues for  the identity of indiscernibles on the ground  that God must have a reason for putting A here and now, and B there and then, which there could not be unless something distinguished A from B. Yet Hume doesn't consider  this. The questions are not easy to reformulate  and seem better left out.--Elizabeth Anscombe , 'Whatever Has a Beginning of Existence Must Have a Cause': Hume's Argument Exposed,” Analysis, Vol. 34, No. 5 (Apr., 1974), p. 147.

The obscure argument quoted from Hume by Anscombe  is Treatise 1.3.3.4, which starts follows: "Accordingly we shall find upon examination, that every demonstration, which has been produc’d for the necessity of a cause, is fallacious and sophistical. All the points of time and place,17 say some philosophers, in which we can suppose any object to begin to exist, are in themselves equal" (etc). Treatise, T 1.3.3.4 Anscombe pays no attention to Hume's footnote, which mentions Hobbes, and suggests he is in "Leibniz country." Leibniz country is a nice place where one's passport allows one entry to all possibility.

Before I get to Leibniz country, the distinguished editors, the late David and Mary Norton, comment, "Hume appears to paraphrase Hobbes, who said that ‘a man cannot imagine anything to begin without a cause...but if he try [so to imagine], he shall find as much reason, if there be no cause of the thing, to conceive it should begin at one time as another, that he hath equal reason to think it should begin at all times, which is impossible, and therefore he must think there was some special cause why it began then, rather than sooner or later; or else that it began never, but was eternal" (Of Liberty and Necessity, 276 [see for example, here].)* If Hume is really paraphrasing Hobbes, he has also made non-trivial changes or improvements: in the Hobbes passage (ii) there is no symmetry between time and place (which goes unmentioned in Hobbes). In addition, (ii) in context, Hobbes is really interested in agency (which is why place is irrelevant), whereas Hume seems -- as Anscombe notes -- to be focused on creation (which is why place also matters). In addition, in larger context (iii) Hume is taking aim at the principle that whatever begins to exist, must have a cause of existence (1.3.3.1) -- a key premise in the cosmological argument(s) for God's existence --, while Hobbes is only interested in a subjective or psychological version of the principle: "a man cannot imagine anything to begin without a cause." And finally, (iv) Hume wants to challenge the epistemic status (certainty) of the (cosmological) principle in order to undermine the claim that causation is a necessary relation, whereas Hobbes is taking aim at the idea that every action must have  a preceding cause (the will). Now, with Paul Russel, I believe that Hume was very influenced by Hobbes, but I think the note to Hobbes by Hume, if it is by Hume, was an error.

Anscombe's suggestion, that Hume is focused on creation, is not without merit. With Hume, but not Hobbes, we are in the realm of  ex nihilo nihil fit, or a weak-ish version of the PSR (akin to the principle of causality). This is indeed Leibniz land. It's also Clarke's land, especially Clarke of the  Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God; more particularly in answer to Hobbes, Spinoza, and their followers. As it happens, in the very next paragraph, Hume footnotes Clarke.

Now Clarke relies on a very particular metaphysical principle (it's also in Newton [recall]), I quote from his letter to Butler explaining it, “Necessity absolute and antecedent in the order of nature to the existence of any subject has nothing to limit it; but if it operates at all (as must needs do), it must operate (if I may so speak) everywhere and at all times alike….” (Dec 10, 1713) I call this principle 'absolute metaphysical necessity.' The background context is Clarke's (neo-Spinozistic) version of the cosmological argument in which he explains God's existence as a peculiar kind of self-cause (in which such metaphysical necessity grounds existence of God as a kind of formal cause). 

Hume's argument does justice to the principle which basically says there is no reason why God's existence should start at any given time or at any given place--no place or time has any distinctive quality/property which could single it out. This principle grounds God's omnipresence and eternality. (It also underwrites monism and the lack of limitation on God's power.)

But as Hume discerns (and Clarke exploited) this principle makes it had to see why the universal isn't a pure, homogeneous plenum (something that Clarke things Spinoza should be committed to). So, something special is required to ground any (non-Godlike) particular, non-necessary existence (which breaks the pure homogeneity of a universe governed by necessity alone). For Clarke it's obvious this means you need something like God's (completely free) will. Hume kind of agrees with Clarke, for Hume, however, it entails there is no necessary connection between creation at a given time and place and the object caused then and there.

There is, thus, a sense then in which a theory that emphasizes God's will is akin to a theory that sees us governed by brute facts. Leibniz would invoke the PSR and identity of indiscernibles in order to explain God's choice and so avoid the unwelcome result (as Anscombe discerns). But the nice thing from Hume's perspective is that he can show that from an embrace of (i) absolute metaphysical necessity, and (ii) the existence of particular variety, he can show that (iii) not all causal relations are necessary. And he does so in a way that does not rely on his separability principle.

What about Anscombe's Leibniz? I doubt Hume was thinking of Leibniz in context. And Hume has other reasons to challenge final causes and the PSR. Of course, Leibniz has resources to defend the PSR or the principle of causality (etc.), but on Hume's account one can't simply assume that causal relations are necessary in one's argument for these, and that's no small matter.**

 

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).