If you are a scientist, chances are that you consider your work valuable. In some small — or large — way it makes the world a better place. History, you probably think, demonstrates the positive impact that science has had on humanity. Life expectancy has increased dramatically over the past couple of centuries. It is no longer common that people die from minor infections. In many parts of the world, fresh water can be accessed by simply opening a faucet.
There is, of course, the problem of climate change. Scientists can help find solutions but, regrettably, solving the problem is not entirely under their control. Too often greed and unscientific beliefs get in the way of doing the right thing. If the world listened to scientists, we would still be on the upward trajectory that has increased life expectancy and helped people in the past.
This narrative sounds nice. So nice that it is rarely questioned publicly in scientific venues. To be clear, there is indeed little doubt that an honest assessment of any situation is better than one that is shaped by lies. Lies are often constructed to serve the purpose of the entity that creates them. Those who do receive the benefits are unlikely to appreciate being lied to. Unbiased assessment of observations is the bedrock of science.
Science is not the only profession tasked with honest assessments. Consider investigative journalism, the study of history, or espionage, just to name a few. None of those would be called science. Science does not have a monopoly on truth seeking. Acceptable science goals are delineated by funding agencies, editors of journals, and organizers of conferences.
Historians are more likely than scientists to notice that the causes of climate change involve technology. The development of technology often uses scientific advancements. The campfires of early humans did not increase the atmospheric CO2 to the levels we are currently seeing. There is no doubt that forest fires, and natural causes more generally, can have a big impact on our atmosphere. Ironically, scientists themselves emphasize that human drivers are the leading cause of climate change.
Scientists have answers that typically take one of two routes: Some point out that science will continue solving any upcoming problems if only we let it. That vision is more common among technology enthusiasts than geoscientists. Another route is to argue that the politics of applying science is outside the scope of science itself. In this view, the problem is the greed of those who apply science, not science itself. I will get back to these in later newsletters.
For now, I’ll pause here and observe the paradoxical nature of the situation: Over centuries, science has enabled an upward trajectory, only to find that our planet may well end up in a worse position than where we started. Upward trajectories go up, not down. There is an inconsistency here that is not easy to resolve. A scenario in which consistency cannot be accomplished immediately is called a paradox.
Some paradoxes are never resolved. Consider the statement “This sentence is false”. No matter how a person reads or interprets this statement, it remains intrinsically inconsistent. It is a logical paradox. In binary logic, where any statement can either be true or false, it cannot be consistently argued that the above sentence is true. Neither can it be argued that the sentence is false, since that would require its reverse to be true. There is no way to resolve this inconsistency.
Some of the most famous paradoxes do have solutions, but the solutions are not obvious. The theory that allows solving them may not even be known at the time. Among the most famous examples is Zeno’s paradox of Achilles and the tortoise. It is one of several related paradoxes that the Greek philosopher Zeno of Alea formulated in the fifth century BC. In it, the fast runner Achilles and a tortoise have a race. The tortoise is given a substantial head start. Zeno argues that Achilles can never overtake the tortoise. Every time Achilles reaches the point where the tortoise was in the previous time step, the tortoise has moved further.
Needless to say, there is nothing in reality preventing a fast runner from overtaking a tortoise. Today, we can solve Zeno’s paradox by recognizing that the infinitely many iterations described in the paradox amount to a finite distance. After running that finite distance in a finite time Achilles would reach and then overtake the tortoise. Realizing that infinitely many vanishingly small pieces may amount to a finite whole is the basis of calculus. It took a couple of millennia after Zeno formulated his paradoxes until the calculus was developed that could resolve it.
Some paradoxes have directly resulted in the proposal of a new theory. The theory of relativity was the result of attempts to resolve the paradox of a constant speed of light. The speed of light does not depend on the speed of its source. That is different from the speed of sound. An airplane can overtake its own sound envelope in what is called “breaking the sound barrier.” In contrast, a light source that moves at high speed still shines its light forward and backward with exactly the speed of light.
One might think that because the speed of light is so large, we cannot do such experiments. It is true that even modern rockets do not achieve speeds that would make such an experiment easy. However, we are situated on a planet that moves around the sun at a speed much faster than any spaceship humans have built. In a single year, Earth travels more than five hundred million miles, corresponding to a speed of more than sixty thousand miles per hour. If we point a light in the direction of our planetary motion, shouldn’t the light travel more slowly than if we point it in the opposite direction? If light behaved like sound, that would be the case. In the 1880s the physicists Albert A. Michelson and Edward W. Morley did an experiment to show that the speed of light does not, in fact, depend on the direction of a beam relative to the direction of Earth’s movement.
More complicated paradoxes can be constructed around the constant speed of light. What if two spaceships fly into opposite directions, each going at 80% of the speed of light? Shouldn’t one of them see the other going faster than the speed of light? Hendrik Lorentz and George F. FitzGerald independently suggested that this paradox could be resolved if lengths are contracted in moving reference frames. Albert Einstein further generalized these ideas. According to Einstein there is no difference between a stationary and moving reference frame. Each will see objects in the other as contracted. The result was the Special Theory of Relativity. Notice that the solution to the paradox of the two spaceships did not involve experiments on actual spaceships.
The examples so far addressed science alone. The paradox of the downward-leading upward trajectory involves values. What is “good” for our planet is hard to define objectively. Do we only consider humanity? Do we include nonhuman life? What is “good” anyway? David Hume already observed in the mid-1700s that it is impossible to use reasoning based on facts for concluding on what “ought” to be done.
Hume’s statement does not preclude using science in conjunction with basic values. For example, we might agree that an outcome, in which technology erases all life on Earth, is not “good.” It makes sense to assume that life has a value. Erasing all of it, can hardly be good. Ultimately, sciences depend on moral philosophy for much of their reasoning about questions of “ought.”
The discipline of moral philosophy developed around the objective of assessing values. It has a millenia-long history of doing so. However, climate change and other environmental concerns involve modern technology. The tools for assessing climate impacts are scientific tools that are not normally taught in moral philosophy. A person can feel like they are a thoroughly “good” person, and yet violate the expectations of preserving the planet for future generations. In fact, as we shall see, pretty much all of us living in the developed world are in violation of the expectations of being a “good” person according to scientific criteria. Moral philosophy classes do not normally teach this.
Moral philosophy creates other paradoxes when related to science. Consider a species’ capacity for language: Moral philosophy normally assumes the existence of a grammatical language that can be used for reasoning. Yet, ethologists like Frans de Waal have observed behaviors in many other species that we would consider moral if we saw them in humans. Those species are not capable of grammatical language. Linguists like George Lakoff, have pointed to inconsistencies between even our own cognition and the assumptions of moral philosophy. A related concern is that moral philosophy, as it is taught in school or university, is mostly anthropocentric, i.e., the value of nonhuman life is only considered in relation to human values. Yet, Darwinian evolution establishes a relationship between humans and other species that does not allow for a clean cut between value-imbued humans and valueless nonhumans. Biocentric philosophies recognize this, but much of moral philosophy remains anthropocentric.
These brief thoughts should make it clear that there are plenty of paradoxes involving science and moral philosophy. Some relate to language, some to natural sciences, some to values. The lives of future generations play a role and so do nonhuman lives. Technological advances will be the topic of some. I may also touch on religion and history, but in basic terms, realizing that my background is primarily in science and technology. If you notice something wrong, please comment! https://open.substack.com/pub/annedenton/p/the-klein-bottle-promise?r=1yvj7g&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
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