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The Truth is Out There: Pragmatism and The X-files
It occurred to me the other day that the American Philosophy of Pragmatism shares some remarkable similarities with the television series The X-files. Let’s start with the TV show’s moto – “the truth is out there.” If you never saw the show it revolves around two FBI agents, Mulder and Scully, a man and woman who are assigned to cases that explore unusual and often paranormal circumstances. Mulder is obsessed with discovering the truth about UFO’s and he is convinced that “the truth is out there” waiting to be found.
Each week the pair, Mulder eagerly and Scully with less enthusiasm, would track down the solution to some bizarre case. Inevitably their efforts would solve the case, but always in a way that would leave you with more unanswered questions than you started with. No matter how many questions were answered there was always more mystery and uncertainty. Through nine seasons Mulder’s faith that the “truth is out there” never waned. Every week he attacked each new case with the same innocent enthusiasm as if the truth was right around the next corner.
This sounds to me remarkably like the American Philosophy of Pragmatism. Like Mulder, the Pragmatists believed that the truth was out there. And like Mulder and Scully the truth was never in hand and always around the next corner. That is because the philosophy of Pragmatism rests on a foundation of what Charles Sanders Peirce called Fallibilism. Fallibilism is the understanding that no matter what we think we know it will never be the whole truth. Peirce realized, as did his friend William James, that the truth was out there, but it was much bigger than we could assume we knew with certainty.
As scientists Peirce and James both realized that our understanding of reality is created through a process of sampling. Peirce worked for the coast guard making maps of the ocean floor. The way you determine the shape of the ocean floor is by determining the depth of the ocean at different places. You drop a weighted line into the water from a ship and record how far the line goes down before it hits bottom. Then you move the ship and do it again, and again, and again. From all of these measurements of depth you can create a topographical map of the ocean floor.
The accuracy of your map always depends on the number of depth measurements you are able to take and how close together they are. That is your sample size. If you take a measurement every few miles your map will not be very accurate. If on the other hand you take a measurement every few feet you will create a very accurate map.
If our objective is to create a map of reality, what kind of sample are we talking about? Obviously the sample of reality that we have access to is limited by the constraints of our physical senses and our minds. Human bodies are only able to perceive through those means – maybe there is a lot more to reality than what can be perceived in human form. In fact, forget the maybe, advances in technology have already shown us that there is more. We have discovered sounds beyond what the human ear can hear, light that the human eye cannot see, and an atomic universe far smaller than we can feel with human skin. How much more reality is there beyond what even our machines can tell us about? We are one species of animal, on one planet, in an immense expanse of time and space. We have five senses and one mind to work with. Thinking that we know what is ultimately real is like thinking we can map the entire ocean floor after having dropped only a few weighted lines.
The Pragmatists wanted to leave a great deal of space around what might ultimately be found to be real and at the same time they never lost their faith in the fact that “the truth is out there” – that indeed “something” is ultimately real. There is a reality and it can be known. But we are safest to assume that what we currently know is the tip of the iceberg of truth while never losing our spirit for inquiry.
Another X-file notable quotable is “I want to believe.”
‘Maybe there is a lot more to reality than what can be perceived in human form’
Reading this blog I had to think about the brilliance of Einstein which became more clear reading Green’s book about the cosmos. Many great names are mentioned, but most of them have ONE great discovery, while Einstein is in the beginning, in the middle and even much towards the end (of what we know now). He absolutely is the personification of a person who could literally constantly cross the line of what reality is..I of course learned before about cosmoslogy but I never knew HOW much came from Einstein, how brilliant this man was.
Today I read the amazing story of the search for a force that would be opposite to gravity which would keep the universe static -the repulsive gravity. Because of the cosmological constant which he aided everything was exactly in balance which was also his theological belief. Of course later the expansion of the universe was found, which proved he was wrong and he removed the idea of the cosmological constant.
But sixty years later a physical mechanism was found that matched with Einsteins concept of the cosmological constant, which connected to the idea of inflaton-cosmology which explained the BANG of the big bang (sorry Catherine, I hardly understand what I am talking about). What I think is so AMAZING is that even when he is wrong, he still is describing something so fundamental. Reading this book is an example of what you describe, the fascination for all that is discovered, knowing that there is still so much more to find.
I would like to beat the same tree as Liesbeth and introduce to you Albert Einstein in a way which will surprise you !
In those two excerpts, one can see that the creativity of a Genius like him follows some laws which are quite fascinating [ Einstein is not the only one, basically many creative scientists were like him and found some unexpected source for their creativity]. MY view is that the X file’s technique to find anything new is just the “after the fact way of addressing the discovery”.
For the real time discovery to happen, some very different forces must be at play, if one believes Einstein… the words lucidity , certainty, “beyond doubt ”are the ones which are crucial… and I believe, like Einstein , that in this certainly relies the creative power of human mind.
Enjoy !
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At the age of 67 Albert Einstein remembered these incidents in his “Nekrolog” (“Autobiographic Writings”) which he wrote for the book “Albert Einstein as philosopher and scientist” which was published by Paul Arthur Schilpp.
About the compass, the first “wonder”, he wrote:
“I encountered a wonder of such a kind as a child of 4 or 5 years when my father showed me a compass. That this needle behaved in such a determined way did not fit into the way of incidents at all which could find a place in the unconscious vocabulary of concepts (action connected with “touch”). I still remember – or I think I do – that this incident has left with me a deep impression. There must have been something behind things that was deeply hidden. To things which man sees from childhood on in front of him he does not respond to in such a way, he does not wonder about the falling of bodies, about wind and rain, not about the moon nor about the moon not falling down and not about the difference between the animate and inanimate.”
About his “holy geometry book”, the second “wonder”, he wrote:
“At the age of 12 I experienced a second wonder of a very different kind: a booklet dealing with Euclidean plane geometry that came into my hands at the beginning of a school year. Here were assertions, as for example the intersection of the three altitudes of a triangle in one point which – though by no means evident – could never-the-less be proved with such certainty that any doubt appeared to be out of the question. This lucidity and certainty made an indescribable impression on me. That the axioms could not be proved did not annoy me. Actually I was completely satisfied when I was able to rely on such theorems whose validity were not doubtful to me.
I remember for example that my uncle told me about Pythagoras’ Theorem before the holy geometry book came to my hands. After hard work I succeeded in “proving” this theorem due to the similarity of triangles; thereby it seemed “evident” to me, that the relations of the sides of a rectangular triangle must be completely defined by an acute angle. Only what did not seem “evident” to me in a similar way seemed to need evidence. Also the things that geometry is about did not seem to be of another kind than the things of sensual perception, “which could be seen and touched”.”
What I mean Jeff, is that the first attraction of a scientists is that indeed Truth is out there. BUt if he /she believe it is not attainable, and if he/she never succeeds to reach and absolute certainty about Truth, there would have been no Science.
The nature of this absolute certainly is ,to me where Ideas touch the Sacred, where ideas touch God. It is a certain kind of spiritual self-confidence. If not for it, we are still in flat New Age land, like the X file seem to imply.
The philosophy behind the X file departs from the Holy Scientific Truth, at the point where they never succeed to reach any definite conclusion.
There is more mystery at the end than at the beginning. Science’s faith is precisely the opposite, and I feel it is a very precious faith.
With true Science, at the end there is a bit more absolute certainty than at the beginning, not less. It is such an important point, for someone like me. Absolute certainty that Einstein is talking about with his geometry book, is sacred, as well as the wonder about the compass.
I might find the same kind of confession from Tesla.
Give me a minute…
Well, with Tesla, it is a bit different, and as usual completely unexpected. Ok I post it although it is a bit out of subject here. But it shows as well the power of ideas, and of True certainly that emerge from them.
From tesla’s auto biography :
“The moment one constructs a device to carry into practice a crude idea, he ( one ?) finds himself unavoidably engrossed with the details of the apparatus. As he goes on improving and reconstructing, his force of concentration diminishes and he loses sight of the great underlying principle. Results may be obtained, but always at the sacrifice of quality. My method is different. I do not rush into actual work. When I get an idea, I start at once building it up in my imagination. I change the construction, make improvements and operate the device in my mind. It is absolutely immaterial to me whether I run my turbine in thought or test it in my shop. I even note if it is out of balance. There is no difference whatever; the results are the same. In this way I am able to rapidly develop and perfect a conception without touching anything. When I have gone so far as to embody in the invention every possible improvement I can think of and see no fault anywhere, I put into concrete form this final product of my brain. Invariably my device works as I conceived that it should, and the experiment comes out exactly as I planned it. In twenty years there has not been a single exception. Why should it be otherwise? Engineering, electrical and mechanical, is positive in results. There is scarcely a subject that cannot be examined beforehand, from the available theoretical and practical data. The carrying out into practice of a crude idea as is being generally done, is, I hold, nothing but a waste of energy, money, and time.”
Finally I feel the tesla post is even more on target. Somehow Tesla makes a virtual map of his device, a perfect one. He is able to construct the true way his invention is working , directly in his mind, to run it , to test it directly in his mind, because the laws that govern his device are already in his mind, already perfect.
Isn’t it amazing, and completely counter current with our post modern attitude of “touching” everything ?
Einstein was the same type, he was an adept of thought experiment.
now here is my pragmatic question : without those two guys [ and I take only two here, who mastered the power of their mind, but I could find many more; it is as there is a pattern and that the most creative scientists are working this way only : with the power of the mind and inspiration] ; so without those two guys, where would be humanity at the moment ? much much further down.
I feel we shall hence give them credit and try to emulate them as much as we can…
This is amazing and inspiring Jeff.. to think that there is always more to discover, always something to uncover around every bend and corner – makes you want to keep your eyes open + rooted in the perspective that life is never dull.. Thank you for this!