James Ladyman's Understanding Philosophy of Science is a pretty good beginning text in the philosophy of science. It is very well organized, and as straight forward as can be. There are two main sections. The first deals with the scientific method, the second deals with the question of realism.
The first section goes through the various stages in the philosophy, especially the question of induction, from the rather naive position of Francis Bacon through falsificationism and the theory of scientific revolutions.
The second section is about the question of realism, especially the problems created by underdetermination, explanation, and inference to the best explanation. There is a very good focus on van Fraassen and the nature of constructive empiricism.
This book is an excellent choice for a first introduction to the main questions in contemporary philosophy of science.
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
Review of Wesley Salmon's Four Decades of Scientific Explanation
Four Decades of Scientific Explanation Is an excellent overview of the history of scientific explanation as seen from the standpoint of one of its most significant contributors.
Since the late nineteenth century is is generally agreed that science provides explanations of the phenomena in the natural world. But exactly what does an explanation look like? What form does an explanation take? How do we recognize an explanation and distinguish it from pseudo-explanations and the like?
Salmon's history covers the discussion from Hempel to the state of the art in 1989 when the book was written. He covers all the major theories and all the major questions. The book is highly readable, and definitely a worthwhile investment for those who want to understand this corner of the philosophy of science.
Since the late nineteenth century is is generally agreed that science provides explanations of the phenomena in the natural world. But exactly what does an explanation look like? What form does an explanation take? How do we recognize an explanation and distinguish it from pseudo-explanations and the like?
Salmon's history covers the discussion from Hempel to the state of the art in 1989 when the book was written. He covers all the major theories and all the major questions. The book is highly readable, and definitely a worthwhile investment for those who want to understand this corner of the philosophy of science.
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Review of David Corfield's Toward a Philosophy of Real Mathematics
(Apology in advance. This may just be a hasty emotional outburst. I think I had a stronger negative reaction to the book then I should have. The author is clearly a very bright guy, and the book is better than I portray it. If you are interested in the philosophy of mathematics, read it.)
Imagine that you were Catholic, or at any rate well versed in Catholicism and Catholic teaching and practice. Now imagine you encountered a philosopher of religion. Would you have the following gripe?: Philosophers of religion don't seem to deal with what is really important to religious people. Philosophers deal with the existence of God, almost to the exclusion of lots of important philosophical problems.
So, because you don't get why the standard problems are oh-so-important you write a book. In it, you spend a chapter insisting that philosophers must look to the history of religion to understand the real problems of religion that bother its real practitioners. What problem faces practitioners? For example, you might say that looking at history, the Catholic mass started out in some language, I assume Greek (or not), and then turned to Latin, then to the vernacular, and now there is a proposal being floated to return to Latin. The history of why and how is long and complicated, and you bog chapter two down with scholarly minutiae of this history. This is a difficult and controversial question with many serious repercussions. Other religions had the same issues. Reform Judaism's split from orthodox Judaism involved the language of prayer, and Islam still is exclusively Arabic. So whatever western religion you are, chances are that the language issue is important. So why the heck do philosophers of religion act as if the only important questions are those about the nature of God, you ask repeatedly. There are serious arguments in favor of a Latin mass, you say. It is traditional, if was more fruitful in producing scholars, it forced congregants to focus on other parts of the religion, it retained an aura of mystery in the religion. . . Your book then picks on other problems that bother religious people, like food habits, concepts of purity, and the nature of fundamentalism. Each issue does contain some specks of philosophy, though few that would seriously interest most philosophers of religion. Naturally religious people like this approach, because sorting through the Ontological Argument is pretty foreign to their religion, but arguing over what language mass out to be said in is quite familiar to them. So you are hailed as a serious philosopher of religion who takes note of Real Religion, not the fake stuff studied by philosophers.
David Corfield performs a similar service for the philosophy of mathematics. He takes questions that are traditionally off the radar of philosophers of mathematics, and faults them for ignoring them. Then he elaborates on the history and nature of mathematics at great length and with serious depth, and attempts to show that there are real philosophical questions there. Are there? Yes. Am I just being conservative and scared of mathematics by thinking that those are not the important questions? I think not.
Corfield's book could be uncharitably described as warmed-over Lakatos. (I wouln't describe it as such, but I can see it.) I presume that Lakatos and his famous book Proofs and Refutations has more fans in mathematicians than in philosophers of mathematics, likely because the book is just one long mathematical problem, discussed from the perspective of the problem's history, and the history of the concepts contained in the objects of the problem. Lakatos makes some interesting philosophical points along the way: namely he tells us that our mathematical concepts change over time. But more on this in a moment.
But philosophers wonder where the important and interesting philosophy is. And that is the difference between him and traditional accounts of the philosophy of mathematics. His recent blog post about two cultures is thus odd. Besides for the fact that I do not know what philosophical problem is meant when he claims that his goal is to understand the rationality of mathematics through the history of its practice, and the fact that he caricatures traditional philosophy of mathematics by claiming that it is reducible to logicism, it misses the point. In reality it is just that there are different sets of questions that can be deemed philosophical. The ones that traditional philosophers think about are different from his, because they are not easily articulated as interesting philosophical problems, answering the traditional questions about epistemology, metaphysics, and methodology. Perhaps if they were articulated as such, they would appeal to more philosophers. As they are, they are phrased as long mathematics discussions, with some nod towards an ill defined philosophical problem.
Chapter one sets up the book and makes a case for looking at the history of mathematics as it has been practiced by real human mathematicians - with all the baggage that comes with it.
Chapter two gives us a lesson on automated theorem proves and suggests that they are so far only as good as the mathematicians that guide them, and that the real philosophical problems in mathematics ought to be what notation mathematicians need to use. You see, some notations are harder to work with and some are easier - hence the philosophical problem. Get it? Right.
Chapter three makes a philosophical problem out of thinking up conjectures. Can computers do it? Probably not so well.
Chapter four discusses the interesting problem of analogy in mathematics. Many branches in mathematics and many problems in mathematics display interesting analogies with other branches and parts of branches of mathematics. Sometimes it only gets interesting when the analogies fail to hold, sometimes a good analogy can make a whole branch of mathematics obsolete, as all of its questions get reduced to other questions.
Chapter five has an account of Bayesianism in mathematics. A Bayeseian approach as it is traditionally understood in the philosophy of science is there to try to solve the problem of induction. It does so by saying that the logic of science is not inductive in any straight forward way, but rather it is probabilistic. (This is a gross oversimplification.) This is clearly not a problem you will have in mathematics. So Corfield's Bayesianism is restricted to the nature of Bayesianism in mathematics given a subjectivist approach, that is measuring mathematicians' subjective assessments of the probabilities that a given theorem is true.
Chapter six gives a few case studies showing that theories of science often rely on their underlying theories of mathematics, or the outstanding mathematical problems, for their solutions. This is not overly newsworthy, though it is good to have a list of case studies and a nice analysis.
Chapter seven begins Corfield's discussion of Lakatos. He is generally critical, and addresses Fefferman's criticism, and also mentions Steiner's. In some sense he really does nitpick Lakatos to death. I say this as a compliment. Lakatos does make some real mistakes, and does not adequately or fairly represent the history of mathematics, even in the very restricted case he gives.
Chapter eight continues the critique of Lakatos, and this time focuses on the question of what the mathematical research program is. This looks a bit more familiar to philosophers of science. This follows the traditions of Kuhn, Popper, Lakatos, and Fayerabend in looking for the methodology behind scientific, and in this case mathematical research. Corfield claims, correctly, I think that Lakatos' view of the history of science cannot be simply carried over to the history of mathematics. The study of the methodology of mathematical research programs needs 1) some refinements, and 2) more nuance than has been given so far. This program is probably of some interest to philosophers of science and mathematics. The study started by Kuhn was very much in vogue for a bit, though philosophers of science have tended to loose interest in this in favor of the traditional problems in the philosophy of science. Kuhn and co were certainly more influential in the long run outside philosophy than they were in it.
Chapter nine is about the question of what lead to the acceptance of groupoids as an important field of study.
Chapter ten is perhaps the most disappointing. I say that because it shows the most promise and delivers the least. We are offered that tantalizing suggestion that higher-order algebra has something interesting to offer philosophers. What we are actually given is a description of roughly what higher-order algebra is, and thus suggestion that it is of a higher level of abstraction, and that some of the notation can be done in pictures. (Repeating some other philosophers who unconvincingly tried to show that pictures are philosophically interesting.) The idea of infinitesimals, sets, and modals held real promise as a field of philosophical research, and they panned out because people were able to show that there were questions that philosophers could ask and try to settle about them. I had hoped that we would at least see some real questions or suggestions about higher order category theory or algebra, but we did not. What is it about them that a philosopher might want to know about that is not there with all other branches of mathematics? That is the only thing I want to know. There is no satisfying answer given.
(As a criticism of the book, it is annoying that despite the existence of real criticism of some key ideas that he deals with, they do not appear in the book. For example, the notion of revolutions in mathematics is taken for granted, as is the legitimacy of Lakatos' idea in general. Joseph Dauben, a giant in the history of mathematics, whose essay must be well known to Corfield, famously disagreed with Crowe about the existence of revolutions in mathematics. There are also some very critical reviews of Lakatos' Proofs and Refutations in the literature that are well worth reading that Corfield ignores.)
To be honest, I do find many of the problems discussed in the book interesting, but I fail to see how many of them are philosophical. (I hope the author was not pulling one of those "let me show you a lot of math, therefore I must be right.) Many are really psychological or sociological. The problem with this is that there is a good reason why we do not see mathematics and science papers starting out "Well, first I thought X, then I realized that X was wrong, so I changed Y, and got a proof for Z. Then I had lunch and realized that I can get a proof for W if I only . . ." No one cares what got you to the theorem or the proof. Your personal history of conjectures, subjective probabilities, luncheons, conferences, and the clever insights you used to get you to the proof are not what makes up a philosophy of real mathematics. Real mathematics is what appears in mathematics journals. Everything else is part of a philosophy of real mathematicians. They are a fascinating bunch, but not necessarily a subject of philosophical reflection.
That being said, the structure of mathematical knowledge and discovery probably ought to be a part of the philosophy of mathematics. One wonders however how that could be done. Is there a logic that really describes the whole process for each case? I would doubt it, and perhaps that is what makes the problem so uninteresting - the fact that it is truly intractable.
Corfield may be doing mathematics from the inside, but he is doing philosophy from the outside. He misses the questions that are important to real philosophers. Chapter one approvingly quotes Diderot in an epigraph saying "To speak informatively about bakery you have got to have put your hands in the dough." By this token, Corfield hasn't said much about bakery, but rather he has given us a cookbook of recipes that people rarely use. Let me end with the following challenge to Corfield: Stephen Stich and Adam Morton write
We see a few not-so-very-interesting problems, and a lot of fancy modern mathematics, but few clear convincing arguments that the two have met.
Imagine that you were Catholic, or at any rate well versed in Catholicism and Catholic teaching and practice. Now imagine you encountered a philosopher of religion. Would you have the following gripe?: Philosophers of religion don't seem to deal with what is really important to religious people. Philosophers deal with the existence of God, almost to the exclusion of lots of important philosophical problems.
So, because you don't get why the standard problems are oh-so-important you write a book. In it, you spend a chapter insisting that philosophers must look to the history of religion to understand the real problems of religion that bother its real practitioners. What problem faces practitioners? For example, you might say that looking at history, the Catholic mass started out in some language, I assume Greek (or not), and then turned to Latin, then to the vernacular, and now there is a proposal being floated to return to Latin. The history of why and how is long and complicated, and you bog chapter two down with scholarly minutiae of this history. This is a difficult and controversial question with many serious repercussions. Other religions had the same issues. Reform Judaism's split from orthodox Judaism involved the language of prayer, and Islam still is exclusively Arabic. So whatever western religion you are, chances are that the language issue is important. So why the heck do philosophers of religion act as if the only important questions are those about the nature of God, you ask repeatedly. There are serious arguments in favor of a Latin mass, you say. It is traditional, if was more fruitful in producing scholars, it forced congregants to focus on other parts of the religion, it retained an aura of mystery in the religion. . . Your book then picks on other problems that bother religious people, like food habits, concepts of purity, and the nature of fundamentalism. Each issue does contain some specks of philosophy, though few that would seriously interest most philosophers of religion. Naturally religious people like this approach, because sorting through the Ontological Argument is pretty foreign to their religion, but arguing over what language mass out to be said in is quite familiar to them. So you are hailed as a serious philosopher of religion who takes note of Real Religion, not the fake stuff studied by philosophers.
David Corfield performs a similar service for the philosophy of mathematics. He takes questions that are traditionally off the radar of philosophers of mathematics, and faults them for ignoring them. Then he elaborates on the history and nature of mathematics at great length and with serious depth, and attempts to show that there are real philosophical questions there. Are there? Yes. Am I just being conservative and scared of mathematics by thinking that those are not the important questions? I think not.
Corfield's book could be uncharitably described as warmed-over Lakatos. (I wouln't describe it as such, but I can see it.) I presume that Lakatos and his famous book Proofs and Refutations has more fans in mathematicians than in philosophers of mathematics, likely because the book is just one long mathematical problem, discussed from the perspective of the problem's history, and the history of the concepts contained in the objects of the problem. Lakatos makes some interesting philosophical points along the way: namely he tells us that our mathematical concepts change over time. But more on this in a moment.
But philosophers wonder where the important and interesting philosophy is. And that is the difference between him and traditional accounts of the philosophy of mathematics. His recent blog post about two cultures is thus odd. Besides for the fact that I do not know what philosophical problem is meant when he claims that his goal is to understand the rationality of mathematics through the history of its practice, and the fact that he caricatures traditional philosophy of mathematics by claiming that it is reducible to logicism, it misses the point. In reality it is just that there are different sets of questions that can be deemed philosophical. The ones that traditional philosophers think about are different from his, because they are not easily articulated as interesting philosophical problems, answering the traditional questions about epistemology, metaphysics, and methodology. Perhaps if they were articulated as such, they would appeal to more philosophers. As they are, they are phrased as long mathematics discussions, with some nod towards an ill defined philosophical problem.
Chapter one sets up the book and makes a case for looking at the history of mathematics as it has been practiced by real human mathematicians - with all the baggage that comes with it.
Chapter two gives us a lesson on automated theorem proves and suggests that they are so far only as good as the mathematicians that guide them, and that the real philosophical problems in mathematics ought to be what notation mathematicians need to use. You see, some notations are harder to work with and some are easier - hence the philosophical problem. Get it? Right.
Chapter three makes a philosophical problem out of thinking up conjectures. Can computers do it? Probably not so well.
Chapter four discusses the interesting problem of analogy in mathematics. Many branches in mathematics and many problems in mathematics display interesting analogies with other branches and parts of branches of mathematics. Sometimes it only gets interesting when the analogies fail to hold, sometimes a good analogy can make a whole branch of mathematics obsolete, as all of its questions get reduced to other questions.
Chapter five has an account of Bayesianism in mathematics. A Bayeseian approach as it is traditionally understood in the philosophy of science is there to try to solve the problem of induction. It does so by saying that the logic of science is not inductive in any straight forward way, but rather it is probabilistic. (This is a gross oversimplification.) This is clearly not a problem you will have in mathematics. So Corfield's Bayesianism is restricted to the nature of Bayesianism in mathematics given a subjectivist approach, that is measuring mathematicians' subjective assessments of the probabilities that a given theorem is true.
Chapter six gives a few case studies showing that theories of science often rely on their underlying theories of mathematics, or the outstanding mathematical problems, for their solutions. This is not overly newsworthy, though it is good to have a list of case studies and a nice analysis.
Chapter seven begins Corfield's discussion of Lakatos. He is generally critical, and addresses Fefferman's criticism, and also mentions Steiner's. In some sense he really does nitpick Lakatos to death. I say this as a compliment. Lakatos does make some real mistakes, and does not adequately or fairly represent the history of mathematics, even in the very restricted case he gives.
Chapter eight continues the critique of Lakatos, and this time focuses on the question of what the mathematical research program is. This looks a bit more familiar to philosophers of science. This follows the traditions of Kuhn, Popper, Lakatos, and Fayerabend in looking for the methodology behind scientific, and in this case mathematical research. Corfield claims, correctly, I think that Lakatos' view of the history of science cannot be simply carried over to the history of mathematics. The study of the methodology of mathematical research programs needs 1) some refinements, and 2) more nuance than has been given so far. This program is probably of some interest to philosophers of science and mathematics. The study started by Kuhn was very much in vogue for a bit, though philosophers of science have tended to loose interest in this in favor of the traditional problems in the philosophy of science. Kuhn and co were certainly more influential in the long run outside philosophy than they were in it.
Chapter nine is about the question of what lead to the acceptance of groupoids as an important field of study.
Chapter ten is perhaps the most disappointing. I say that because it shows the most promise and delivers the least. We are offered that tantalizing suggestion that higher-order algebra has something interesting to offer philosophers. What we are actually given is a description of roughly what higher-order algebra is, and thus suggestion that it is of a higher level of abstraction, and that some of the notation can be done in pictures. (Repeating some other philosophers who unconvincingly tried to show that pictures are philosophically interesting.) The idea of infinitesimals, sets, and modals held real promise as a field of philosophical research, and they panned out because people were able to show that there were questions that philosophers could ask and try to settle about them. I had hoped that we would at least see some real questions or suggestions about higher order category theory or algebra, but we did not. What is it about them that a philosopher might want to know about that is not there with all other branches of mathematics? That is the only thing I want to know. There is no satisfying answer given.
(As a criticism of the book, it is annoying that despite the existence of real criticism of some key ideas that he deals with, they do not appear in the book. For example, the notion of revolutions in mathematics is taken for granted, as is the legitimacy of Lakatos' idea in general. Joseph Dauben, a giant in the history of mathematics, whose essay must be well known to Corfield, famously disagreed with Crowe about the existence of revolutions in mathematics. There are also some very critical reviews of Lakatos' Proofs and Refutations in the literature that are well worth reading that Corfield ignores.)
To be honest, I do find many of the problems discussed in the book interesting, but I fail to see how many of them are philosophical. (I hope the author was not pulling one of those "let me show you a lot of math, therefore I must be right.) Many are really psychological or sociological. The problem with this is that there is a good reason why we do not see mathematics and science papers starting out "Well, first I thought X, then I realized that X was wrong, so I changed Y, and got a proof for Z. Then I had lunch and realized that I can get a proof for W if I only . . ." No one cares what got you to the theorem or the proof. Your personal history of conjectures, subjective probabilities, luncheons, conferences, and the clever insights you used to get you to the proof are not what makes up a philosophy of real mathematics. Real mathematics is what appears in mathematics journals. Everything else is part of a philosophy of real mathematicians. They are a fascinating bunch, but not necessarily a subject of philosophical reflection.
That being said, the structure of mathematical knowledge and discovery probably ought to be a part of the philosophy of mathematics. One wonders however how that could be done. Is there a logic that really describes the whole process for each case? I would doubt it, and perhaps that is what makes the problem so uninteresting - the fact that it is truly intractable.
Corfield may be doing mathematics from the inside, but he is doing philosophy from the outside. He misses the questions that are important to real philosophers. Chapter one approvingly quotes Diderot in an epigraph saying "To speak informatively about bakery you have got to have put your hands in the dough." By this token, Corfield hasn't said much about bakery, but rather he has given us a cookbook of recipes that people rarely use. Let me end with the following challenge to Corfield: Stephen Stich and Adam Morton write
Why is there so little philosophy of mathematics? . . .One explanation might be that mathematics is hard , and philosophy is hard, so the philosophy of mathematics might be doubly hard. . . . But it cannot be the whole story since very sharp and troubling points in the philosophy of mathematics can be made with elementary mathematical examples. One reason why a philosopher of mathematics needs to know some advanced mathematics is to call the bluff of others. Irrelevant by terrifyingly technical exposition is common in second rate work. . .Corfield writes that
the prospective philosopher of mathematics quickly gathers that some arithmetic, logic, and a smattering of set theory is enough to allow her to ply her trade, and will take some convincing that investing the time in non-commutative geometry or higher-dimensional algebra is worthwhile. One of the main purposes of the book has been to argue against this.I do not know who is right on this one. But if Corfield is, the burden of proof is still on him (or perhaps he would be magnanimous enough to show us even if it wasn't) to show that there are interesting enough philosophical problems that can only be solved if we are aware of the higher mathematics being done by groupoid theorists, and mathematicians who study higher-order algebras.
We see a few not-so-very-interesting problems, and a lot of fancy modern mathematics, but few clear convincing arguments that the two have met.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Review of Moshe Koppel's Meta-Halakhah
(Note: Normally after reading a book, I would just type out something as an afterthought and post it here. This time is no different, but this time it comes with an apology to the author. This book deserves more than some afterthoughts, I am just not in a position now to write any up right now.)
I think Jewish philosophy took some wrong turns over the years. Let me explain. A significant portion of Jewish philosophy has always been, parasitic, if you will, off all other philosophy. This is not a bad thing. To the contrary. Jewish philosophy, in its good days, took the latest tools from the mainstream philosophers, and applied them to problems of Jewish concern - sometimes integrating them with Jewish thought, or criticizing them from the perspective of Jewish thought, or criticizing Jewish thought thought from the perspective of the most modern pieces of secular philosophy. Some of the most prominent Jewish philosophers did that, and it is mainly because of their ability to do that so well, that we now see them as part of mainstream thinking. When we think of Philo, Maimonides, Gersonides, Mendelssohn, Albo, Krochmal, and many others, this should be readily apparent.
Modern Anglo philosophy broke with European philosophy with the works of Frege and Russell. As the story goes, Russell broke off with Hegelian idealism, and two streams of thought started - one caught on in English-speaking countries, and the other on the
continent. That is not to say that there is not a lot of overlap in the questions they ask, the methodology they employ, or the answers they give. But there are considerable differences between them, and for better or worse, philosophers in the "continental tradition" and philosophers in the Anglo "analytic tradition" do not read each other's works much. The Anglo philosophers tend to see their philosophy through the light of formal logic, whereas the philosophers on the continent tend to see their philosophy through the light of sociology. These are different takes on philosophy.
More modern European Jewish philosophers like Franz Rosenzweig wrote within the tradition of Hegel and the Europeans. The tradition continues with Levinas doing Jewish-like philosophy within a very Franco-European tradition. (Sometimes manifested in works of people like Marc-Alain Ouaknin.)
All of this is not about being territorial. Rather it still about the "wrong turns" I mentioned. J. B. Soloveitchik, perhaps the most important Jewish philosopher in the English-speaking world alive in my lifetime, also took inspiration from much of the
European existentialism in which he was educated. Naturally, an industry grew up studying Soloveitchik. What has failed to happen in Jewish thought was any attempt at analytic Jewish philosophy - that is Jewish philosophy that has emerged using the tools of modern 20th and 21st century Anglo thought. (There are some works that might be classified as exceptions.)
I think that for all I don't like about it, Moshe Koppel's Meta-halakhah might have been the first book that competently employs the tools of modern logic and analysis to Jewish thought. Koppel tackles some of the hardest and trickiest problems that Halakhah (Jewish Law) faces. These are not questions about any particular law, or legal problem, but rather he asks the questions about the foundational issues about the law. Jewish law is notoriously complicated. There are disputes, reconciliations, open questions, and principles of derivation. Some of the toughest moments come when we ask questions like: can all of Jewish Law be derived mechanically from the original Law (at Sinai)? What is the nature of an "interpretation" of Jewish law? How could Moses not have understood the laws being taught in his name by Rabbi Akiba? What does it mean for the Torah to be a "living" document and also be divine? If God has the law up in Heaven that is perfect, why do we consider it a foundations of Jewish Law that the Torah is "not in Heaven"? Why was it so bad to write down the law? Isn't it better, if the law is perfect, to have it down so it does not get changed?
Koppel deals with all these questions, and more using the notions of computability, model, derivability, verifyability, provability, etc. He gives a spirited defense of an understanding of Jewish law that has a two-fold nature. That is there is a level of Jewish law that is intuitive, and a level on which it is logical. He claims that prophets only have intuitions about what the law is, and interpreters of the law are only able to put them in to formal models. Each has its advantages, but both are necessary for the complete functioning and understanding of Jewish Law.
Like I said, because of this book's uniqueness in treating issues of Jewish Law in a sophisticated way it deserves more careful consideration than I am giving it here. I will just say that while I think Koppel's treatment must be on the right track, I am not convinced that it is right. He claims outright that he did not write a scholarly book, and that is correct. He should have. There is some literature that would be useful, and the topic deserves a more extensive treatment. Nonetheless this is a valuable contribution, and the lack of critical reception over the past 10 years since the book came out speaks more of the sorry state of contemporary Orthodox Jewish thought than it does of the book itself.
It should be read by all who want to start understanding the hard questions about Jewish Law.
(PS I'm not sure what the deal with the approbation is. I didn't really understand it. It looked weird.)
I think Jewish philosophy took some wrong turns over the years. Let me explain. A significant portion of Jewish philosophy has always been, parasitic, if you will, off all other philosophy. This is not a bad thing. To the contrary. Jewish philosophy, in its good days, took the latest tools from the mainstream philosophers, and applied them to problems of Jewish concern - sometimes integrating them with Jewish thought, or criticizing them from the perspective of Jewish thought, or criticizing Jewish thought thought from the perspective of the most modern pieces of secular philosophy. Some of the most prominent Jewish philosophers did that, and it is mainly because of their ability to do that so well, that we now see them as part of mainstream thinking. When we think of Philo, Maimonides, Gersonides, Mendelssohn, Albo, Krochmal, and many others, this should be readily apparent.
Modern Anglo philosophy broke with European philosophy with the works of Frege and Russell. As the story goes, Russell broke off with Hegelian idealism, and two streams of thought started - one caught on in English-speaking countries, and the other on the
continent. That is not to say that there is not a lot of overlap in the questions they ask, the methodology they employ, or the answers they give. But there are considerable differences between them, and for better or worse, philosophers in the "continental tradition" and philosophers in the Anglo "analytic tradition" do not read each other's works much. The Anglo philosophers tend to see their philosophy through the light of formal logic, whereas the philosophers on the continent tend to see their philosophy through the light of sociology. These are different takes on philosophy.
More modern European Jewish philosophers like Franz Rosenzweig wrote within the tradition of Hegel and the Europeans. The tradition continues with Levinas doing Jewish-like philosophy within a very Franco-European tradition. (Sometimes manifested in works of people like Marc-Alain Ouaknin.)
All of this is not about being territorial. Rather it still about the "wrong turns" I mentioned. J. B. Soloveitchik, perhaps the most important Jewish philosopher in the English-speaking world alive in my lifetime, also took inspiration from much of the
European existentialism in which he was educated. Naturally, an industry grew up studying Soloveitchik. What has failed to happen in Jewish thought was any attempt at analytic Jewish philosophy - that is Jewish philosophy that has emerged using the tools of modern 20th and 21st century Anglo thought. (There are some works that might be classified as exceptions.)
I think that for all I don't like about it, Moshe Koppel's Meta-halakhah might have been the first book that competently employs the tools of modern logic and analysis to Jewish thought. Koppel tackles some of the hardest and trickiest problems that Halakhah (Jewish Law) faces. These are not questions about any particular law, or legal problem, but rather he asks the questions about the foundational issues about the law. Jewish law is notoriously complicated. There are disputes, reconciliations, open questions, and principles of derivation. Some of the toughest moments come when we ask questions like: can all of Jewish Law be derived mechanically from the original Law (at Sinai)? What is the nature of an "interpretation" of Jewish law? How could Moses not have understood the laws being taught in his name by Rabbi Akiba? What does it mean for the Torah to be a "living" document and also be divine? If God has the law up in Heaven that is perfect, why do we consider it a foundations of Jewish Law that the Torah is "not in Heaven"? Why was it so bad to write down the law? Isn't it better, if the law is perfect, to have it down so it does not get changed?
Koppel deals with all these questions, and more using the notions of computability, model, derivability, verifyability, provability, etc. He gives a spirited defense of an understanding of Jewish law that has a two-fold nature. That is there is a level of Jewish law that is intuitive, and a level on which it is logical. He claims that prophets only have intuitions about what the law is, and interpreters of the law are only able to put them in to formal models. Each has its advantages, but both are necessary for the complete functioning and understanding of Jewish Law.
Like I said, because of this book's uniqueness in treating issues of Jewish Law in a sophisticated way it deserves more careful consideration than I am giving it here. I will just say that while I think Koppel's treatment must be on the right track, I am not convinced that it is right. He claims outright that he did not write a scholarly book, and that is correct. He should have. There is some literature that would be useful, and the topic deserves a more extensive treatment. Nonetheless this is a valuable contribution, and the lack of critical reception over the past 10 years since the book came out speaks more of the sorry state of contemporary Orthodox Jewish thought than it does of the book itself.
It should be read by all who want to start understanding the hard questions about Jewish Law.
(PS I'm not sure what the deal with the approbation is. I didn't really understand it. It looked weird.)
Monday, January 28, 2008
Review of A Debate on Jewish Emancipation and Christian Theology in Old Berlin
I have been reading a lot more lately than I have been writing about, but I wanted to throw in a note about the collection By Richard Crouter and Julie Klassen that I just read.
As soon as Jews had some freedom in Germany during the Enlightenment, they started producing an abundance of scholars and men of letters. Each one staked out his own position on Jews and their relationship to the state. From Mendelssohn and on, they advocated for Jewish emancipation from the prejudicial and anti-Semitic laws of the German state. Mendelssohn argued (on philosophical grounds) for simple equality, and a sort of separation of Church and state. David Friedlander, after a long and what must have seemed like fruitless quest to try to improve the Jews and their situation in Germany, argued for mass fake conversion to Christianity.
What do I mean by "fake"? Well, he thought that Jews really didn't need the ceremonial laws, and he thought that no one would know if Jews didn't believe in Jesus when they converted to Christianity, so he asked the State, in an Open Letter, to accept the mass conversion of Jews who agree to stop outwardly practicing Judaism, and get baptized Protestant without actually believing in Jesus.
If you ask me, that misses the point from the perspective of both religions. And the important protestant theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher and Wilhelm Abraham Teller both agreed. Both wrote responses to Friedlander's letter. Naturally they agreed that keeping the Jewish rituals was unnecessary, but they thought that a fake conversion was no conversion at all, and moreover has the potential to harm Christianity. Of course, in accordance with Enlightenment values, neither thought that being Jewish should be a bar to getting rights though.
For Jews, especially those of Mendelssohn's ilk, keeping the mitzvot is Judaism (though they definitely argued in favor of the existence of God). For Christians Belief in the divinity of Christ is Christianity.
Crouter and Klassen collect their three documents as well as anonymous satirical polemic asking for rights for Jews. The translation reads well, and it is a valuable set of documents for those interested in this period.
I wish they would have included more of the responses to Friedlander. There were many written in pamphlets and in the popular press. I would love to have seen some of them. Also, I should mention that there is an essay at the end that feels totally out of place. It is mostly a discussion about the situation of the Turks and their problems with emancipation in contemporary Germany. While it is interesting, it just really doesn't belong here. I am not sure who at Hackett publishers agreed to it. It's point is unclear and except in the sense that Turks and Jews are both not considered German and they both have had problems there, I am pretty sure the essay is unrelated to the others.
(Also, there is one minor error, which I am not sure whether I ought to attribute to Teller or to the translators, but on p 135 they use the term "yom Ha'aretz", which literally means "earth day". The word they meant to use was "am ha'aretz" - literally: people of the earth.)
As soon as Jews had some freedom in Germany during the Enlightenment, they started producing an abundance of scholars and men of letters. Each one staked out his own position on Jews and their relationship to the state. From Mendelssohn and on, they advocated for Jewish emancipation from the prejudicial and anti-Semitic laws of the German state. Mendelssohn argued (on philosophical grounds) for simple equality, and a sort of separation of Church and state. David Friedlander, after a long and what must have seemed like fruitless quest to try to improve the Jews and their situation in Germany, argued for mass fake conversion to Christianity.
What do I mean by "fake"? Well, he thought that Jews really didn't need the ceremonial laws, and he thought that no one would know if Jews didn't believe in Jesus when they converted to Christianity, so he asked the State, in an Open Letter, to accept the mass conversion of Jews who agree to stop outwardly practicing Judaism, and get baptized Protestant without actually believing in Jesus.
If you ask me, that misses the point from the perspective of both religions. And the important protestant theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher and Wilhelm Abraham Teller both agreed. Both wrote responses to Friedlander's letter. Naturally they agreed that keeping the Jewish rituals was unnecessary, but they thought that a fake conversion was no conversion at all, and moreover has the potential to harm Christianity. Of course, in accordance with Enlightenment values, neither thought that being Jewish should be a bar to getting rights though.
For Jews, especially those of Mendelssohn's ilk, keeping the mitzvot is Judaism (though they definitely argued in favor of the existence of God). For Christians Belief in the divinity of Christ is Christianity.
Crouter and Klassen collect their three documents as well as anonymous satirical polemic asking for rights for Jews. The translation reads well, and it is a valuable set of documents for those interested in this period.
I wish they would have included more of the responses to Friedlander. There were many written in pamphlets and in the popular press. I would love to have seen some of them. Also, I should mention that there is an essay at the end that feels totally out of place. It is mostly a discussion about the situation of the Turks and their problems with emancipation in contemporary Germany. While it is interesting, it just really doesn't belong here. I am not sure who at Hackett publishers agreed to it. It's point is unclear and except in the sense that Turks and Jews are both not considered German and they both have had problems there, I am pretty sure the essay is unrelated to the others.
(Also, there is one minor error, which I am not sure whether I ought to attribute to Teller or to the translators, but on p 135 they use the term "yom Ha'aretz", which literally means "earth day". The word they meant to use was "am ha'aretz" - literally: people of the earth.)
Friday, December 21, 2007
Review of Taming Democracy
Harvey Yunis' Taming Democracy: Models of Political Rhetoric in Classical Athens is a thorough discussion of political rhetoric in Ancient Athens.
Political deliberation was an important feature of democratic Athens, and the methods and goals of that deliberation was obviously of great import. Different rhetors had different approaches to how and why one persuades an audience do adopt a particular suggestion.
Yunis addresses Thucydides' (and Pericles'), rhetoric implicit in the famous funeral oration, Plato's Gorgias, Phaedrus, and Laws, which displays the evolution of his thought on Rhetoric, and Demosthenes more practical approach to mass persuasion.
Thucydides, Plato, and Demostheses played radically different roles in classical Athens and their approaches to mass rhetoric, and also thereby, mass education are readily apparent. Yunis does a good job spelling it all out.
Political deliberation was an important feature of democratic Athens, and the methods and goals of that deliberation was obviously of great import. Different rhetors had different approaches to how and why one persuades an audience do adopt a particular suggestion.
Yunis addresses Thucydides' (and Pericles'), rhetoric implicit in the famous funeral oration, Plato's Gorgias, Phaedrus, and Laws, which displays the evolution of his thought on Rhetoric, and Demosthenes more practical approach to mass persuasion.
Thucydides, Plato, and Demostheses played radically different roles in classical Athens and their approaches to mass rhetoric, and also thereby, mass education are readily apparent. Yunis does a good job spelling it all out.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Review of Why Johnny Can't Add
Morri's Kline's Why Johnny Can't Add was written in 1973 as an attempt to change the direction of mathematics education. Mathematics went through a small upheaval at the turn of the century with the foundational "crisis", the Bourbaki program, and related developments.
These developments inspired pedagogical reform that Kline felt made little sense. The book is an extended polemic against the pedagogical reforms that came to be known as "the New Math".
His argument is essentially that the New Math involves teaching abstract mathematics and a whole bunch of other things like set theory, group theory, arbitrary bases, and clock arithmetic, . . . to schoolchildren, at the expense of the basics.
The reforms insisted on abstraction, Kline argued for a more concrete approach to the teaching of mathematics.
For the record I am not convinced that Kline or his opponents were correct. I have no idea how mathematics is taught today, and I am pretty convinced that there are few good theories of education. But he did make a good recommendation. Kline suggests that we really need to treat mathematics education like a real science. That is we have to do real research in to what works in education. This needs to be taken more seriously than it is.
These developments inspired pedagogical reform that Kline felt made little sense. The book is an extended polemic against the pedagogical reforms that came to be known as "the New Math".
His argument is essentially that the New Math involves teaching abstract mathematics and a whole bunch of other things like set theory, group theory, arbitrary bases, and clock arithmetic, . . . to schoolchildren, at the expense of the basics.
The reforms insisted on abstraction, Kline argued for a more concrete approach to the teaching of mathematics.
For the record I am not convinced that Kline or his opponents were correct. I have no idea how mathematics is taught today, and I am pretty convinced that there are few good theories of education. But he did make a good recommendation. Kline suggests that we really need to treat mathematics education like a real science. That is we have to do real research in to what works in education. This needs to be taken more seriously than it is.
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Review of Malcom Gladwell's The Tipping Point
Malcom Gladwell's The Tipping Point is a famous book. It was not a great book, or even a good book, but perhaps a not bad book. Basically he took a bunch of famous and some not so famous incidents that seemed to involve a bunch of people and trends that seemed to emerge, and wrote about them and put them all in to a book, and tried to make a point. The point was that there is a system to understanding the "tipping points". I thought the point fell kid of flat, and was not really well argued. He took the lessons of the hipster Hush Puppie shoes, the sudden drop in crime in NY, the Bernie Goetz incident, the Zimbazrdo prison experiment, the success of Sesame Street and Blue's clues, teenage suicide in Micronesia, and a few other things and claimed that there is a time where trends hit a "tipping point" and they take off. There is also a special kind of people who make it happen, and it can only happen if the message is sufficiently "sticky".
As far as the drop in crime is concerned, I tend to be a fan of Leavitt and Dubner who attributes it to the legalization of abortion. Gladwell did not know of Leavitt and Dubner when he wrote the book, I presume.
Gladwell attributes all these tipping points to mavens, who are enthusiastic about products they are experts on, Connectors, who are really social people who know all sorts of people and Salesmen who love selling good products. These people are responsible for all the big tipping points in history.
There is an interesting example about the rule that 150 people seem to be a maximal community size.
He also has an interesting suggestion about a way to slow down the smoking epidemic that is so sensible that it is certain to never be adopted. He suggests that teens will smoke regardless of what adults do. So instead of trying to stop them from smoking, you should just get them to have too little nicotine so they won't get addicted. There is a reasonable belief that lowering the nicotine levels of cigarettes will stop people from becoming addicted.
As a whole I did not love the book. And while the examples are a mixture of the things everyone knows and some interesting well chosen anecdotes, the thesis of the book is not clear. It attempts to be a social scientific explanation of why some things take off and some don't, I don't see the causal mechanism that accounts for the success of say, the sales of the book The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. To tell me that suddenly mothers started coming to the readings with their daughters, just doesn't explain why it happened, or how it could be reproduced, or it could have been predicted from the nature of the books' audience. . .
It is a quick read, so you wouldn't be wasting too much time figuring out what all the hype was about. Maybe Blink, his other book, is better.
As far as the drop in crime is concerned, I tend to be a fan of Leavitt and Dubner who attributes it to the legalization of abortion. Gladwell did not know of Leavitt and Dubner when he wrote the book, I presume.
Gladwell attributes all these tipping points to mavens, who are enthusiastic about products they are experts on, Connectors, who are really social people who know all sorts of people and Salesmen who love selling good products. These people are responsible for all the big tipping points in history.
There is an interesting example about the rule that 150 people seem to be a maximal community size.
He also has an interesting suggestion about a way to slow down the smoking epidemic that is so sensible that it is certain to never be adopted. He suggests that teens will smoke regardless of what adults do. So instead of trying to stop them from smoking, you should just get them to have too little nicotine so they won't get addicted. There is a reasonable belief that lowering the nicotine levels of cigarettes will stop people from becoming addicted.
As a whole I did not love the book. And while the examples are a mixture of the things everyone knows and some interesting well chosen anecdotes, the thesis of the book is not clear. It attempts to be a social scientific explanation of why some things take off and some don't, I don't see the causal mechanism that accounts for the success of say, the sales of the book The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. To tell me that suddenly mothers started coming to the readings with their daughters, just doesn't explain why it happened, or how it could be reproduced, or it could have been predicted from the nature of the books' audience. . .
It is a quick read, so you wouldn't be wasting too much time figuring out what all the hype was about. Maybe Blink, his other book, is better.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Review of Capitalism and Arithmetic
Frank J. Swetz's Capitalism and Arithmetic is a translation of the Trevisio Arithmetic by an unknown Italian teacher of arithmetic. (The translation is by David Eugene Smith, and there is a thoughtful tribute to him in the book.)
The Trevisio was a rather ordinary book teaching students, mostly merchants how to compute using addition, subtraction, division, multiplication, basic fractions, and the like.
It is historically interesting because we find a lot of mathematical techniques whose import we may not have otherwise been aware. Granted, it makes dull reading if you already know arithmetic through long division, but it does give us a few interesting clues about the life and times of the book.
Mathematically, I never realized how important some of these computing rules, like "casting out nines", or "the rule of three" were. Culturally, we can see the influence on banking and trade on the style of arithmetic and other areas of life. By merely looking at the examples, we can tell what was important to the culture, and money was certainly important.
There is also a good chunk of analysis and historical background thrown in.
The book is probably of interest to people who study the history of mathematics education, and the history of old reckoning books.
The Trevisio was a rather ordinary book teaching students, mostly merchants how to compute using addition, subtraction, division, multiplication, basic fractions, and the like.
It is historically interesting because we find a lot of mathematical techniques whose import we may not have otherwise been aware. Granted, it makes dull reading if you already know arithmetic through long division, but it does give us a few interesting clues about the life and times of the book.
Mathematically, I never realized how important some of these computing rules, like "casting out nines", or "the rule of three" were. Culturally, we can see the influence on banking and trade on the style of arithmetic and other areas of life. By merely looking at the examples, we can tell what was important to the culture, and money was certainly important.
There is also a good chunk of analysis and historical background thrown in.
The book is probably of interest to people who study the history of mathematics education, and the history of old reckoning books.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Review of Wheelan's Naked Economics
Charles Wheelan's Naked Economics is pretty good as popular books on economics go. It is a very clear basic discussion of a number of the more important economic issues that effect individuals, countries, and the world. The basic lessons, as one would expect are about markets, and incentives. But there are also great discussions about inflation, deflation, interest rates, globalization, the IMF, the World Bank and a whole host of other things.
I thought the discussion of demystifying the fed was great, as I never really knew what exactly the fed does, and how it controls interest rates or the money supply? Wheelan really clears a lot up.
The book has no math, and no graphs or charts, but it manages to get it's point across pretty well. It is peppered with anecdotes about interesting economic thingies, and has a spate of good examples. I enjoyed the book.
I thought the discussion of demystifying the fed was great, as I never really knew what exactly the fed does, and how it controls interest rates or the money supply? Wheelan really clears a lot up.
The book has no math, and no graphs or charts, but it manages to get it's point across pretty well. It is peppered with anecdotes about interesting economic thingies, and has a spate of good examples. I enjoyed the book.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Review of Segal's Mathematicians under the Nazis
Sanford Segal's Mathematicians Under the Nazis is a long, meticulous and painstakingly researched book about the history of German mathematics, mathematical institutions, and mathematicians during the Nazi era.
The book does a good job of dispelling a number of impressions that one might have of Mathematicians and Nazis. First, there is one reading of Segal's book that can be construed as the history of the petty bickering among the mathematicians in Nazi Germany. German mathematicians quarreled incessantly. Many of them spent a lot of time jockeying for power. Almost none were above political quarrels or denunciations. Many of them got truly swept up in Naziism. Many had little problem with the initial full-scale of removal of Jews from universities. This was especially true in Gottengen, which was a mathematical powerhouse and also a bastion of right-wing activity. Segal traces much of this attitude to the idea of the good German university professor as a civil servant who was in some way beholden to the state.
Secondly, lest one get the impression that the German state was efficient, Segal clears much up there too. First there were many overlapping bureaucracies, all of which competed for resources, and all of which were driven to backstabbing to get ahead.
In the "total state" as Nazi Germany was, there was a push to make all the country's institutions hierarchical. That is, there would be a leader of each institution with a clear command structure. The Nazi state was interested in this, and other types of existing hierarchies mattered little to them. In an attempt to get ahead then, there were various mathematicians who attempted to ingratiate themselves as "fuhrer" of German mathematics.
One of the main contenders for this position was perhaps the most colorful character in the story. Ludwig Bieberbach, who was a rather respected mathematician, attempted to Nazify mathematics itself. In a series of articles, Bieberbach identified a style of mathematics that he thought was Aryan and another that was Jewish. Racially typologizing mathematics was part of a tradition that went back at least as far as Felix Klein, and was used by many, especially Oswald Spengler in his famous Decline of the West. This generated something of a small research program in "Nazi Mathematics".
Segal's book is rife with detail, and tells the stories of many of the Jewish and German mathematicians who were impacted by Naziism, like Courant, Landau, Suss, Blaschke, . . . The Book also details the many mathematical institutions in Nazi Germany, such as Nazi mathematics camps, and mathematics in concentration camps.
The book is long and detailed and was an enlightening read.
The book does a good job of dispelling a number of impressions that one might have of Mathematicians and Nazis. First, there is one reading of Segal's book that can be construed as the history of the petty bickering among the mathematicians in Nazi Germany. German mathematicians quarreled incessantly. Many of them spent a lot of time jockeying for power. Almost none were above political quarrels or denunciations. Many of them got truly swept up in Naziism. Many had little problem with the initial full-scale of removal of Jews from universities. This was especially true in Gottengen, which was a mathematical powerhouse and also a bastion of right-wing activity. Segal traces much of this attitude to the idea of the good German university professor as a civil servant who was in some way beholden to the state.
Secondly, lest one get the impression that the German state was efficient, Segal clears much up there too. First there were many overlapping bureaucracies, all of which competed for resources, and all of which were driven to backstabbing to get ahead.
In the "total state" as Nazi Germany was, there was a push to make all the country's institutions hierarchical. That is, there would be a leader of each institution with a clear command structure. The Nazi state was interested in this, and other types of existing hierarchies mattered little to them. In an attempt to get ahead then, there were various mathematicians who attempted to ingratiate themselves as "fuhrer" of German mathematics.
One of the main contenders for this position was perhaps the most colorful character in the story. Ludwig Bieberbach, who was a rather respected mathematician, attempted to Nazify mathematics itself. In a series of articles, Bieberbach identified a style of mathematics that he thought was Aryan and another that was Jewish. Racially typologizing mathematics was part of a tradition that went back at least as far as Felix Klein, and was used by many, especially Oswald Spengler in his famous Decline of the West. This generated something of a small research program in "Nazi Mathematics".
Segal's book is rife with detail, and tells the stories of many of the Jewish and German mathematicians who were impacted by Naziism, like Courant, Landau, Suss, Blaschke, . . . The Book also details the many mathematical institutions in Nazi Germany, such as Nazi mathematics camps, and mathematics in concentration camps.
The book is long and detailed and was an enlightening read.
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Review of Dennett's Breaking the Spell
There is an important but often overlooked piece of philosophical methodology. Generally one can ask the following question: Does X exist or not? Then a fight breaks out. Some philosophers say yes, some say no. Let us say that a good number of philosophers then say "no, there is no X" but there are a very large number of people who still disagree. Perhaps common sense disagrees. It doesn't change the fact that X might still not exist, but they are then left with a very important question: Why do so many people believe that X exists?
Daniel Dennett's book, Breaking the Spell tries to answer this question for the philosophy of religion. The main question we start with is about the nature of God and religion. Philosophers have taken to answering "no" to the question of whether or not God exists or religion is true. But then it is left to anthropologists and philosophers to solve the mystery of why most of us believe that it is.
There is a new trend at least for the past 10 years or so to try to marshal the resources of evolutionary biology, cognitive science, economics, and sociology, to come up with an answer that is more sophisticated than the ones given like Critias in Ancient Greece, or Marx or Freud. Pascal Boyer made a good attempt a few years ago. So have others. Dennett wrote a book that is meant to be both popular and thorough.
Much of what Dennett writes is repeated from others, though Dennett's is a very good synthesis. Dennett's book is also strongly polemical. He believes that religion is too harmful to just leave alone.
The argument goes something like this: Humans have a developed system for detecting intentional agents. That is, we know when we are dealing with a another person who is doing something on purpose, and we know something about others who know that we do things on purpose. So we are a species that is capable of positing agency and things like that.
Secondly Dennett makes a case for memes. Memes are the features of culture that are capable of being passed around. A meme can be a tune, a phrase, a language, a fad or whatever. Memes get passed around and replicated pretty much the same way that genes do.
So put this all together with evolutionary biology and you get a theory that says that humans are quite satisfied positing more intentional agents than may exist. Those may be our supernatural agents (and there is good cognitive science evidence which describes how circumscribed our religious conceptions may be). There is the possibility that these religious memes do enhance either our own (or even possibly) our group fitness and ultimately led us to the religious stage where we are today.
Naturally, religious people will not want their religions deconstructed the way he does, but the fact is, there is no principled reason to look at humans and religious phenomena any differently than anything else.
I am overall sympathetic to his project. I thought Boyer, however dense and dull the read was essentially right, though perhaps not comprehensive. Dennett's book is for more general audiences. But I
found the book mildly annoying sometimes. For one, Dennett is bit full of himself. He thinks he's got it all figured out. Now, he might, but coming off like that is off-putting. Also, there is no reason he had to spend the first 75 pages telling us that this is an important question to ask. If we didn't think it was a good question, we wouldn't bother reading the book. I really do not need to waste as much time as I did on not even getting to the question of the book.
That being said, this book deserves a wide readership, undoubtedly it needs a wider readership then it is certain to get. Read it.
(BTW, Leon Wieseltier's review in The New York Times is among the worst reviews ever written of a philosophy book. Dennett is not a religious person obviously, and it not very well informed about what religion is. But he does suggest in his book that when we do get around to studying religion from a properly scientific perspective it would have to be done by a person who has a real deep understanding of the religion. Wieseltier does not have the same methodological compunctions. His review reminds me of some rabbis and fundamentalist Christians I've encountered who have no problem dismissing evolutionary theory by insisting that their grandmother was not an ape. "I have pictures of her" QED. Wieseltier has no need to be competent enough to judge the science, or even think about science. He can just botch Hume, ignore the fact that science produces real results, and believe he has thusly refuted Dennett. Man, even when the Times is being conservative they screw it up.)
Daniel Dennett's book, Breaking the Spell tries to answer this question for the philosophy of religion. The main question we start with is about the nature of God and religion. Philosophers have taken to answering "no" to the question of whether or not God exists or religion is true. But then it is left to anthropologists and philosophers to solve the mystery of why most of us believe that it is.
There is a new trend at least for the past 10 years or so to try to marshal the resources of evolutionary biology, cognitive science, economics, and sociology, to come up with an answer that is more sophisticated than the ones given like Critias in Ancient Greece, or Marx or Freud. Pascal Boyer made a good attempt a few years ago. So have others. Dennett wrote a book that is meant to be both popular and thorough.
Much of what Dennett writes is repeated from others, though Dennett's is a very good synthesis. Dennett's book is also strongly polemical. He believes that religion is too harmful to just leave alone.
The argument goes something like this: Humans have a developed system for detecting intentional agents. That is, we know when we are dealing with a another person who is doing something on purpose, and we know something about others who know that we do things on purpose. So we are a species that is capable of positing agency and things like that.
Secondly Dennett makes a case for memes. Memes are the features of culture that are capable of being passed around. A meme can be a tune, a phrase, a language, a fad or whatever. Memes get passed around and replicated pretty much the same way that genes do.
So put this all together with evolutionary biology and you get a theory that says that humans are quite satisfied positing more intentional agents than may exist. Those may be our supernatural agents (and there is good cognitive science evidence which describes how circumscribed our religious conceptions may be). There is the possibility that these religious memes do enhance either our own (or even possibly) our group fitness and ultimately led us to the religious stage where we are today.
Naturally, religious people will not want their religions deconstructed the way he does, but the fact is, there is no principled reason to look at humans and religious phenomena any differently than anything else.
I am overall sympathetic to his project. I thought Boyer, however dense and dull the read was essentially right, though perhaps not comprehensive. Dennett's book is for more general audiences. But I
found the book mildly annoying sometimes. For one, Dennett is bit full of himself. He thinks he's got it all figured out. Now, he might, but coming off like that is off-putting. Also, there is no reason he had to spend the first 75 pages telling us that this is an important question to ask. If we didn't think it was a good question, we wouldn't bother reading the book. I really do not need to waste as much time as I did on not even getting to the question of the book.
That being said, this book deserves a wide readership, undoubtedly it needs a wider readership then it is certain to get. Read it.
(BTW, Leon Wieseltier's review in The New York Times is among the worst reviews ever written of a philosophy book. Dennett is not a religious person obviously, and it not very well informed about what religion is. But he does suggest in his book that when we do get around to studying religion from a properly scientific perspective it would have to be done by a person who has a real deep understanding of the religion. Wieseltier does not have the same methodological compunctions. His review reminds me of some rabbis and fundamentalist Christians I've encountered who have no problem dismissing evolutionary theory by insisting that their grandmother was not an ape. "I have pictures of her" QED. Wieseltier has no need to be competent enough to judge the science, or even think about science. He can just botch Hume, ignore the fact that science produces real results, and believe he has thusly refuted Dennett. Man, even when the Times is being conservative they screw it up.)
Monday, January 22, 2007
Review of Williams' The Origins of Field Theory
L. Pearce Williams' The Origins of Field Theory is a good book on the history of how Field Theory in physics grew from its Newtonian beginnings to it form in Maxwell's equations. The Newtonian model is nicely laid out. Then it moves on to a discussion of electromagnetism using the naturalphilosophie of the time, especially the Kantian critique of Newton. (This was a lot more important than I had realized) Schelling's critique and then Oersted's contributions are then addressed. Finally, we come to the hero of Field Theory - Faraday. Faraday's electrostatic and magnetic lines of force, and their difficult births and acceptance, make up a good chunk of the book. It then concludes with a discussion of Maxwell famous synthesis and mathematization of Faraday's work which ultimately turned it in to the Orthodoxy of its time.
It was a good read. There were a few places I wish the author would have spent a bit more time working out the experiments for us. I forgot what some the apparatus that Faraday used was like. But beside this, it is a good simple read if you are interested in this sort of thing. There are practically no equations or anything to scare away the intelligent curious layperson, like me.
It was a good read. There were a few places I wish the author would have spent a bit more time working out the experiments for us. I forgot what some the apparatus that Faraday used was like. But beside this, it is a good simple read if you are interested in this sort of thing. There are practically no equations or anything to scare away the intelligent curious layperson, like me.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Review of Garfinkel's Forms of Explanation
Alan Garfinkel's Forms of Explanation is a bit dated and I am not sure what to make of it.
Chapters 1 and 2 are certainly worthwhile reading. They offer the beginnings of an interesting discussion of contrastive explanations and one account of what it is to be a reductive explanation. There are actually many more kinds than Garfinkel describes, but no matter. His is interesting enough. Chapter 3 peters out to some warmed over naive Marxism/Rawlsian stuff. There for some reason he pulls a fast one and pretty much tells you he is going to conflate explanations and justifications, and you should live with it. I suppose one can't argue with that.
Chapter 4 he builds up to a position that can probably be paraphrased as "given that we live in a society (with relations between individuals) you can't explain the relations in society by appealing only to individuals.
The book ends with what we'd now call a pragmatic account of explanation. Garfinkel was probably not aware of the work by people like Achinstein on this very notion, or he just didn't bother mentioning it. And the real statement of pragmatic explanations was published about a year before by van Fraassen, and he was most likely not aware of that either.
I am hesitant to recommend this, but the book is about the question of explanation in the philosophy of the social sciences. There is not all that much out there on this topic and you can do worse, but perhaps skipping chapter three would make it less annoying to read.
Chapters 1 and 2 are certainly worthwhile reading. They offer the beginnings of an interesting discussion of contrastive explanations and one account of what it is to be a reductive explanation. There are actually many more kinds than Garfinkel describes, but no matter. His is interesting enough. Chapter 3 peters out to some warmed over naive Marxism/Rawlsian stuff. There for some reason he pulls a fast one and pretty much tells you he is going to conflate explanations and justifications, and you should live with it. I suppose one can't argue with that.
Chapter 4 he builds up to a position that can probably be paraphrased as "given that we live in a society (with relations between individuals) you can't explain the relations in society by appealing only to individuals.
The book ends with what we'd now call a pragmatic account of explanation. Garfinkel was probably not aware of the work by people like Achinstein on this very notion, or he just didn't bother mentioning it. And the real statement of pragmatic explanations was published about a year before by van Fraassen, and he was most likely not aware of that either.
I am hesitant to recommend this, but the book is about the question of explanation in the philosophy of the social sciences. There is not all that much out there on this topic and you can do worse, but perhaps skipping chapter three would make it less annoying to read.
Friday, December 15, 2006
Review of Lewis' What Went Wrong
As usual, Bernard Lewis produces a great piece of writing. What went Wrong: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response is a well-told tale of the relevant bits of Islamic history leading up to their poor position in the world today.
Islam, once a real force in culture and science and even justice, has been reduced to an almost negligible space in the intellectual, financial, economic, moral, and scientific outlook of the planet. Their ownership of fossil fuels being their only positive contribution to the rest of the planet. After the 15th century Islam stopped
The book talks about many things that hindered Islam's inability to modernize. The ones that stick out in my mind are Islam's inability to separate between church and state - a big impediment to modernization. Islam's lack of interest in anything that was not religious seems like a problem too. Real efforts to modernize seemed to have been spurned on by their need to win wars, something they have not been doing lately. (From being controlled by the secular Ottomans to the British and French, to the loss against Israel. . .)
My only gripe about the book is that I wish it was clearer about what went wrong. It does a good job at looking at the history, and the title made a promise that it did not deliver on, namely what went wrong. The conclusion chapter made some strides in this direction, but the reader is left to put the pieces together for himself.
Otherwise a pretty good read.
Islam, once a real force in culture and science and even justice, has been reduced to an almost negligible space in the intellectual, financial, economic, moral, and scientific outlook of the planet. Their ownership of fossil fuels being their only positive contribution to the rest of the planet. After the 15th century Islam stopped
The book talks about many things that hindered Islam's inability to modernize. The ones that stick out in my mind are Islam's inability to separate between church and state - a big impediment to modernization. Islam's lack of interest in anything that was not religious seems like a problem too. Real efforts to modernize seemed to have been spurned on by their need to win wars, something they have not been doing lately. (From being controlled by the secular Ottomans to the British and French, to the loss against Israel. . .)
My only gripe about the book is that I wish it was clearer about what went wrong. It does a good job at looking at the history, and the title made a promise that it did not deliver on, namely what went wrong. The conclusion chapter made some strides in this direction, but the reader is left to put the pieces together for himself.
Otherwise a pretty good read.
Monday, November 27, 2006
Review of Charles Townshend: Terrorism
Terrorism is a notoriously unclear subject. It is full of linguistic, moral, social, and legal ambiguities. One wants an introduction that sorts it all about and makes things a little clearer. Charles Townshend's Terrorism: A Very Short Introduction does not do that. These very short introductions are hit or miss, and this one is definitely a miss.
The book basically starts out with some definitional questions and attempts to disambiguate terrorism from other things. moves on to some history, and then to revolutionary terrorism, national terrorism, and religious terrorism. Finally the book has a little to say about counterterrorism and democracy.
This is a superficial book. When reading this, one gets the impression that the author is a specialist is some related field, but clearly not this one. There is detail without background in many cases, and and judgements without context in others. The author makes no attempt to not be snide or hide sympathies for some group or other. The writing at times is not careful, and frankly, I thought the pictures were poorly chosen.
I would go in to detail, but that would make me go back and look at the book to remember what I didn't like about it. This is an exercise I find too painful to be worth it.
The book basically starts out with some definitional questions and attempts to disambiguate terrorism from other things. moves on to some history, and then to revolutionary terrorism, national terrorism, and religious terrorism. Finally the book has a little to say about counterterrorism and democracy.
This is a superficial book. When reading this, one gets the impression that the author is a specialist is some related field, but clearly not this one. There is detail without background in many cases, and and judgements without context in others. The author makes no attempt to not be snide or hide sympathies for some group or other. The writing at times is not careful, and frankly, I thought the pictures were poorly chosen.
I would go in to detail, but that would make me go back and look at the book to remember what I didn't like about it. This is an exercise I find too painful to be worth it.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Review of David Knight: Ideas in Chemistry
Knight’s book Ideas in Chemistry: A History of the Science is an interesting survey of the history of Chemistry. It is nice, informal, and very readable. The chapters are broken down in such a way that makes it look like the history of chemistry is a series of new developments, both in terms of chemistry’s discoveries, and also in terms of its methodological evolution. There is a discussion for example of chemistry as a teachable science, discussing the apprentice system, and another chapter on chemistry as a reduced science, addressing chemistry playing second-fiddle to physics. . .
This book does have some shortcomings. Specifically, one does not come away with a feel for the history of chemistry, but rather one leaves with just a taste for it. The book would be a great supplement to a class where there was a fuller story presented, and more coherence to the whole history.
But Knight's book is user friendly, and it is a good outline of the general history of the field from Alchemy to the present. I would recommend it as a quick overview, not a text.
This book does have some shortcomings. Specifically, one does not come away with a feel for the history of chemistry, but rather one leaves with just a taste for it. The book would be a great supplement to a class where there was a fuller story presented, and more coherence to the whole history.
But Knight's book is user friendly, and it is a good outline of the general history of the field from Alchemy to the present. I would recommend it as a quick overview, not a text.
Sunday, October 22, 2006
Review of Weston's A Practical Companion to Ethics
You know a book is just going to suck when there is a deliberate preachy lie on page 1. Anthony Weston 's A Practical Companion to Ethics does just that.
The book goes downhill from there. First sentence of page two insists that our instincts tell us to be prejudiced. It must be his instincts, as they are certainly not mine. I must have been raised by non-judgemental hippies. Second sentence on page two says that ethics says not to be prejudiced. This again is wrong. Ethics says nothing. Ethics is something you do, it is not a set of dogmas. Ethics is an activity that tells you how to think about right and wrong, not what is right and wrong.
The rest of the book is just full of those type of stupid things.
Much of the book is taken up with trite suggestions like listen to other people. See what they are saying. Maybe you'll learn something. Religion does not say that homosexuality is wrong, because people can reinterpret the Bible. Mandela, Tutu, Ghandi, and Socrates are wise. Listen to them. Say "hello" to people on the street. Volunteer in a homeless shelter to get "perspective" on homelessness. If people disagree about whether euthenasia is morally legitimate, try to think outside the box. (Here's an out-of-the-box suggestion, flip a coin.) Moral exploration does not need ethics. This is obviously true because Alice Walker told a story about a horse.
The junk is piled high and deep. How Oxford let this get published is way beyond me. Any ethicist that uses this is her classroom as a guide to ethics is obviously misleading their students, and most likely incompetent.
(Oh, and since I'm on the lookout for these things, p 68 has a reference to "restorative" justice". I'm adding that to the list of justices.)
To be prejudiced is to have strong negative feelings about someone who is of a different ethnicity or gender or age or social class (or. . . ) from yourself.This is not what it is to be prejudiced. And it is not like anyone who has ever thought about anything does not know this. You would think that this sentence would be qualified somewhere in the text. But it isn't. To give a better definition we would want to say that to be prejudiced is to have strong negative feelings about someone of a different type than yourself merely because they are of a different type After all, I know many young blacks who harbor strong negative feelings against George Bush, Weston's definition makes them prejudiced. I don't like Hitler much. I guess that I am prejudiced. We are after all of differeing races.
The book goes downhill from there. First sentence of page two insists that our instincts tell us to be prejudiced. It must be his instincts, as they are certainly not mine. I must have been raised by non-judgemental hippies. Second sentence on page two says that ethics says not to be prejudiced. This again is wrong. Ethics says nothing. Ethics is something you do, it is not a set of dogmas. Ethics is an activity that tells you how to think about right and wrong, not what is right and wrong.
The rest of the book is just full of those type of stupid things.
Much of the book is taken up with trite suggestions like listen to other people. See what they are saying. Maybe you'll learn something. Religion does not say that homosexuality is wrong, because people can reinterpret the Bible. Mandela, Tutu, Ghandi, and Socrates are wise. Listen to them. Say "hello" to people on the street. Volunteer in a homeless shelter to get "perspective" on homelessness. If people disagree about whether euthenasia is morally legitimate, try to think outside the box. (Here's an out-of-the-box suggestion, flip a coin.) Moral exploration does not need ethics. This is obviously true because Alice Walker told a story about a horse.
The junk is piled high and deep. How Oxford let this get published is way beyond me. Any ethicist that uses this is her classroom as a guide to ethics is obviously misleading their students, and most likely incompetent.
(Oh, and since I'm on the lookout for these things, p 68 has a reference to "restorative" justice". I'm adding that to the list of justices.)
Saturday, October 14, 2006
Review of Stephen Nathanson's Should We consent to be Governed
Lately I have come to think of political philosophy as the study of four questions. (I think I read this in a paper by Dudley Knowles.) (1) Are governments legitimate?; (2) What is the best form of government?; (3) Are governments constrained by the rights of their citizens?; and (4) what is the proper distribution of resources. Stephen Nathanson's book is a short introduction to political philosophy, though it really only gives us a discussion of question (1) only touching on the others. This is not a criticism, but it does show that the question that Nathanson discusses is really only one of the big questions.
Though it is one of the big questions, it is also the least important. After all, you have to be a philosopher to think that the question of the legitimacy of government is really up for grabs. It is a really interesting theoretical question, or rather the reasons are really interesting theoretical answers, but the question?. . .c'mon. In high school we were all anarchists. We hated the government, the man, and authority. But then we grew up.
Nathanson's discussion is what you have when you grow up and you try to explain to your former high school self why you sold out. We all sold out. I hope there aren't many people who were thinkers in high school, and still think now what they thought then. Nathanson's discussion however is geared to the high-schooler. Nathanson clearly does have the ability to be subtle as a philosopher, though it is not exhibited here. (Though he has one argument in the final chapter that kept me tossing and turning for hours last night, and I cannot think of a good satisfying refutation.)
Nathanson Claims that there are 4 positions we can take on whether we should be governed. (1) No. (2) Accept your government. (3) Assume your government is an instrument of repression. and (4) be a critical thinker about your government, but accept the fact that governments are legitimate.
Naturally Nathanson takes the safe route and argues for (4) and against the others. The arguments are mostly simple and straight forward. Use the standard anarchist arguments for (1) and refute them. Take Plato's Crito as an argument for (2) and refute it. Take the Leninist/Thyrsamachus argument for (3) and show how misguided it is. And finally, show how Martin Luther King had a view of (4) and how true and widely acceptable it is. So there were no surprises.
Besides for its simplicity and limited scope, I shan't critique the book. I would actually recommend it to someone if they were a precocious high-schooler and wanted to know what political philosophers talk about, and what the opening moves in a discussion of one of the major questions in political philosophy are.
Though it is one of the big questions, it is also the least important. After all, you have to be a philosopher to think that the question of the legitimacy of government is really up for grabs. It is a really interesting theoretical question, or rather the reasons are really interesting theoretical answers, but the question?. . .c'mon. In high school we were all anarchists. We hated the government, the man, and authority. But then we grew up.
Nathanson's discussion is what you have when you grow up and you try to explain to your former high school self why you sold out. We all sold out. I hope there aren't many people who were thinkers in high school, and still think now what they thought then. Nathanson's discussion however is geared to the high-schooler. Nathanson clearly does have the ability to be subtle as a philosopher, though it is not exhibited here. (Though he has one argument in the final chapter that kept me tossing and turning for hours last night, and I cannot think of a good satisfying refutation.)
Nathanson Claims that there are 4 positions we can take on whether we should be governed. (1) No. (2) Accept your government. (3) Assume your government is an instrument of repression. and (4) be a critical thinker about your government, but accept the fact that governments are legitimate.
Naturally Nathanson takes the safe route and argues for (4) and against the others. The arguments are mostly simple and straight forward. Use the standard anarchist arguments for (1) and refute them. Take Plato's Crito as an argument for (2) and refute it. Take the Leninist/Thyrsamachus argument for (3) and show how misguided it is. And finally, show how Martin Luther King had a view of (4) and how true and widely acceptable it is. So there were no surprises.
Besides for its simplicity and limited scope, I shan't critique the book. I would actually recommend it to someone if they were a precocious high-schooler and wanted to know what political philosophers talk about, and what the opening moves in a discussion of one of the major questions in political philosophy are.
Friday, September 15, 2006
Review of Watson's The Double Helix
By now everyone really knows the story of the discovery of DNA, and this book is not really all that interesting. It is Watson's retelling of the story of how he and Crick uncovered the molecular structure of the double helix, and what it was like to realize that A's G's C's and T's were paired the way they are.
There is a bit of excitement conveyed in the thrill of the discovery, but I can't help but not be that excited. When one reads how sociologists of science see this this as one of the most important books of their discipline, one cannot but loose respect for those sociologists of science.
This book is clearly written for science-phobes, and makes no attempt whatsoever to convey actual scientific information. Nor do you get a feel for the scientific methodology.
Good scientists often write popular books to explain their discoveries to the public. This is not one of them. This explains the lab gossip that was going on while the real sicence was being done.
Neither is the book sexy, as it is often hyped. Sure, if you find it odd or risque that a science student in his mid-20's thinks about girls a lot, then this will be an odd and risque book. But even by the standards of its time, it was pretty demure. Feynman really knew how to embellish an autobiography. Watson. . . not so much.
Unless you are really bord, you can skip this book, and your life will be no less empty.
There is a bit of excitement conveyed in the thrill of the discovery, but I can't help but not be that excited. When one reads how sociologists of science see this this as one of the most important books of their discipline, one cannot but loose respect for those sociologists of science.
This book is clearly written for science-phobes, and makes no attempt whatsoever to convey actual scientific information. Nor do you get a feel for the scientific methodology.
Good scientists often write popular books to explain their discoveries to the public. This is not one of them. This explains the lab gossip that was going on while the real sicence was being done.
Neither is the book sexy, as it is often hyped. Sure, if you find it odd or risque that a science student in his mid-20's thinks about girls a lot, then this will be an odd and risque book. But even by the standards of its time, it was pretty demure. Feynman really knew how to embellish an autobiography. Watson. . . not so much.
Unless you are really bord, you can skip this book, and your life will be no less empty.
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