How do the two classical arguments against reductionism fare in the new light of this startling fact—30,000 genes to make five times as many messages, rather than a set of independent linear sequences, each moving from one gene to its necessary protein? I claim no proof in any strict mathematical sense, but rather express a general feeling that the more we learn about complex systems, the less we can sustain a belief that classical reductionism might work, and the more we must suspect that emergence and contingency will enter in ever more important ways as we mount the scale of complexity in nature’s material reality. If genes are beads on a string, and each makes a definite protein, then maybe a complex body does “compute” linearly from additive combinations of genes and their decoded products. But if the simple structure of a gene doesn’t directly tell us either what protein it will make, how many proteins it will encode, or what parts of what other genes might also be involved in the construction of any protein, then how will we reduce a body made of proteins to the “basic” genetic codes of those proteins? For we now must factor in large classes of new interactions at higher levels not seriously considered before: parts of genes with other parts of the same gene, or with parts of other genes; or complete genes with other complete genes; or less certain linkages and interactions between DNA and various forms and classes of RNA. The more interactions one must consider, and the more these interactions involve larger and larger subunits, the greater the potential importance (and almost sure existence) of emergent principles becomes.
As for contingency, what about all the so-called “junk DNA”? Some may exist for truly random reasons unrelated to natural selection (genes that have, for example, become “unemployed” as their protein products disappeared for good evolutionary reasons from an organism’s repertoire, and, thus “disabled,” began to accumulate random mutations that destroyed potential function, but that would have been selected out, and predictably so, if the gene were still active). Other components of “junk” may have utilities as yet unimagined, and perhaps at emergent levels not yet understood in the embryology of bodies. In an even more basic sense, if one gene makes one protein, then we could perhaps argue that the body needs each protein it manufactures (and therefore each gene as well), and that bodies therefore represent some form of predictable and optimal conformation. But if 30,000 genes make 150,000 messages, then the same generating set could also make many more messages that do not exist. So an entirely new set of questions now emerges, all leading to thoughts of an enhanced role for contingency. Why these particular 150,000? Why not all the others that could be made? Why make them this way and not by other conceivable routes? The answers to several basic questions of this form must lie in historical accident: yes, that could have happened, but this did. Either makes sense and can be explained. But this alternative happened to prevail, and something irreducibly fascinating attends explainable claims about basic accidents with such potentially enormous consequences.
WHY REDUCTIONISM CANNOT ENCOMPASS (OR EVEN SUFFICIENTLY INCORPORATE) THE HUMANITIES IN PRINCIPLE
In opening his chapter on the mind, Wilson states his case baldly, with all cards fully exposed (page 105): “Belief in this intrinsic unity of knowledge—the reality of the labyrinth—rides ultimately on the hypothesis that every mental process has a physical grounding and is consistent with the natural sciences. The mind is supremely important to the consilience program for a reason both elementary and disturbingly profound: Everything that we know and can ever know about existence is created there.”
As a “benchtop materialist” in practical scientific work, and as an agnostic in religious matters, I completely agree with Wilson’s key premise that mental processes have physical groundings and, if knowable at all, must be consistent with the natural sciences. But I strongly disagree with the set of inferences that Wilson then attaches as scaffolding to this putative structure of material reality—leading to his argument for a full, and basically linear, unification of knowledge, a “consilience” (in his terminology) operating in a basically reductionist manner and stretching “upward” through the mind and human social organization into the conventional domain of the humanities and other traditionally “nonscientific” subjects, particularly the arts, ethics, and religion. I presented my first major reason for removing this scaffolding in the preceding section—the argument that reductionism will not suffice even within its potentially applicable domain of subjects traditionally assigned to the natural sciences. In this concluding section, I will develop my second major claim for removal: the argument that, by the logic of its enterprise and the nature of its fundamental questions, the concerns of traditional subjects in humanities (and also in ethics and religion) cannot be addressed and resolved by the methods of scientific inquiry, reductionistic or otherwise.
We should begin by reviewing Wilson’s basic argument for extension of his reductionistic chain, his program for “consilience” or unification of knowledge, “above” the sciences of maximally complex systems and directly into the humanities. In the first substantive chapter of his book, following a short introduction, Wilson presents the epitome of his argument, and its implied view of both nature and knowledge. But this short text also includes two caveats and admissions that have spelled the failure of this and similar enterprises for centuries (and will, in my view, continue to do so because the fallacies rest upon errors of logic that cannot be rectified in principle, and not upon missing information potentially “out there” for future collection). Wilson states (page 11) that his quest for consilience. . . is equivalent to asking whether, in the gathering of disciplines, specialists can ever reach agreement on a common body of abstract principles and evidentiary proof. I think they can. Trust in consilience is the foundation of the natural sciences. For the material world at least, the momentum is overwhelmingly toward conceptual unity. Disciplinary boundaries within the natural sciences are disappearing, to be replaced by shifting hybrid domains in which consilience is implicit. These domains reach across many levels of complexity, from chemical physics and physical chemistry to molecular genetics, chemical ecology, and ecological genetics. . . . Given that human action comprises events of physical causation, why should the social sciences and humanities be impervious to consilience with the natural sciences? And how can they fail to benefit from that alliance?
The first failing stems from Wilson’s own restriction and caveat, “For the material world at least ...” Even if I agree that in the material world of science, conceptual unification may be both fully attainable and rapidly progressing, my concurrence does not extrapolate to an assumption that the traditional nonscientific subjects of the humanities, ethics, and religion will join the juggernaut of rapidly expanding oneness. Speaking personally, I suspect that no world other than the material can muster any strong claim for factual existence. That is, I do not deny Wilson’s proposition because we disagree about the structure of the cosmos—he rejecting and I accepting other forms of undeniable and ascertainable reality, whether we call them spiritual, divine, or merely immaterial. “Reality” in the sense of what science calls factual truth may well exist only in “the material world,” and therefore be entirely subject to some form of unification (a proposition that can’t be proven, but that would tempt me into a large positive flutter, were I a betting man). But do all intellectual questions, and all scholarly work, necessarily address “reality” in this form? What about the logic of pure mathematics, with no reference to “stuff” out there? What about inquiry into such trenchant and poignant subjects as “What must I do in order to say, at the end, that I have lived a good life”? (A very, very different kind of question from the factual and anthropological “How do most people and most societies define and practice the elements that they include in their definition of a good life?”) The second question is terribly important, and lies within the potentially consilient domain of Wilson’s material world. But the first question, far more vital to most people, simply doesn’t reside within the scope of inquiry th
at scientific methods can address or factual knowledge decide. And if “the examined life,” “scholarship,” “intellectual inquiry,” or whatever you wish to name the serious and professional study of such questions (usually awarded to disciplines of the humanities) do not fall into Wilson’s domain of potential consilience by reduction, then all knowledge cannot be unified in his sense of the word.
The second failing lies in an erroneous inference made within the penultimate sentence: “Given that human action comprises events of physical causation, why should the social sciences and humanities be impervious to consilience with the natural sciences?” As stated above, I fully accept the first clause, but the second clause simply doesn’t follow. Just because my actions must be physically caused, and therefore scientifically explainable, I may not infer that criteria of validation, and modes of resolution for all my questions, necessarily fall under the same rubric thereby. I cannot evade the laws of physics when I fall, or the laws of neurology when I think, but I may well be able to think about vital things that all people need to address, and scholars have usefully studied, but that fall outside the questions one may ask and answer about the material world of factual reality, where science has been so successful, and where all our lives have been so powerfully impacted.
Before carrying this critique any further, I should state two propositions that, I presume, almost any scientist would find congenial, but that remain fully consistent with my position that the humanities cannot be subsumed into a consilient chain, resting on a reductionistic base, with the sciences. First, I accept that factual information in scientific form will be extremely helpful and relevant to the discussion of almost any important question in nonscientific subjects of the humanities, ethics, and religion. Second, I believe that any humanist who would reject this aid, this helpful hand of friendship, is either a narrow pedant or a fool. In fact, leading scholars in the humanities will actively seek out, and struggle to understand, such factual information, and will try to establish and nurture professional collaborations, and in many cases joint publications, with colleagues in the sciences. (I also believe that, reciprocally, scientists have as much to gain in seeking serious communication with scholars in the humanities.) But, with apologies for any apparent carping, useful collaboration between basically different entities with strong common interests does not imply fusion within a basically linear hierarchy of common structure. One need hardly go beyond the human pair bond (and its status as a base for the villages that raise our children) to appreciate both the structure and potential fruitfulness of different roles for common purposes, or nonfusion for proper diffusion.
My preference for foxes and hedgehogs over labyrinths and chains, as central images for relationships between the sciences and humanities, stems from these objections and distinctions. We do, as scholars, embrace a unity of purpose that might be compared with the well-raised child (filled with knowledge, decency, and discernment, all different but all related to the single goal of wisdom, the hedgehog’s one truly great thing). But we also recognize that many irreducibly different routes, corresponding to the fox’s plethora of working pathways, lead to this greatest of all goals. No preferred yellow brick road can bring us to the Emerald City, a mere confection of wizardry in any case; but (in a metaphor that I have used previously) we can fashion a coat of many colors, with each patch necessary to make the completed, glorious cloak of wisdom. Or, to cut the rhetoric of florid metaphor, and revert to minimal Latin (another trope of humanism in its most ancient and arrogant form, but at least in a phrase Americans ought to know): e pluribus unum.
As I have, several times before in this chapter, addressed the general issue of why central, definitive, and nonfactual questions in the magisteria of arts and ethics (two basic domains within the conventional “humanities”) cannot, in principle, be answered by powerful methods in the magisterium of science—the crucial support for my case that sciences and the humanities cannot reach, and should not seek, Wilson’s form of consilience to achieve the tighter bonding that nearly all intellectuals strongly favor—I will end by critiquing two particular (but broad) examples of Wilson’s proposals, one for the arts, the other for ethics.
For the arts, Wilson pursues reductionistic consilience by asking if we might locate the general artistic sensibilities of people in evolutionary reasons for their origin, then encoded in our neural wiring (and therefore still “with us”) as broad preferences or attractions for certain forms or configurations (“epigenetic rules” in Wilson’s terminology, page 249): “The biological origin of the arts is a working hypothesis dependent on the reality of the epigenetic rules and the archetypes they generate.” Success in such an inquiry would lead to what we might call a “psychology of aesthetics,” a factual understanding of why we prefer (or even just how we perceive) certain basic forms, and how (or even why, in terms of evolutionary origins) certain kinds of stories evoke certain emotions and feelings in most people. All fascinating; all eminently useful.
But will the arts, especially in their practice, become a higher branch of the natural sciences, as success in this form of inquiry accrues? I can see an artist deriving excellent guidance and suggestions from this new knowledge. I can even imagine the development of some useful theory about the nature of what we call human “creativity” in general, whether this attribute be expressed in answering scientific questions or constructing great works of art. But, art, at least as I understand the enterprise, is about something (or many things) fundamentally different from understanding the factual basis of human aesthetic feelings and preferences. A complete neurological analysis of the listener (quite possible, and undoubtedly interesting) will not explain, in any artistic sense that I seek, the ravishing beauty and emotional power that I experience in Handel’s three great Old Testament oratorios of tragic figures felled by their own incubi of madness, bad judgment, or rash vows (Saul, Samson, and Jephtha). And a complete neurological analysis of the composer (unfortunately impossible) will not explain why Handel was a genius and his contemporary, and then equally popular, rival Buononcini a mere journeyman.16
I don’t even deny that broad neurological understandings might aid each of these inquiries, but this level of analysis lies too far from the nonscientific and aesthetic concerns that motivate my feelings and interests. I need to add so much contingency, so much discussion of changing norms and preferences in performance and technique rather than factual truth, so much history, so many personal reasons underlying my affinity for particular pieces or personages. To understand why so simple a piece as the “Dead March” from Saul can move me to tears,17 I need (at a risible minimum of factors that I can consciously formulate) to analyze Handel’s remarkable capacity, again and again, to draw emotion (as Bach rarely, if ever, does) from elementary musical devices—one might almost call them tricks—that appear childishly simplistic. I must then factor in the placement of the piece amid more-complex choral work of Act III, at the drama’s height and just before David’s impassioned lament for Jonathan, his dear friend and Saul’s son, killed in the same battle. I must also add all the memories of a wonderful performance, as interpreted by some of the world’s greatest Handelian singers, in which I had the privilege of participating as a chorister. I must then figure out why this canonical story of a good man felled by his own insanity (also dramatizing the more general social issue of how societies save themselves when leaders go mad) moves me so much more powerfully than equally universal tales felt more strongly by other people. And then, I must not forget the particulars of contingency, where specific memory may evoke powerful feelings—an especially poignant ingredient in this case, for I shall never forget how the “Dead March,” in its searing minimalism, sounded out again and again as John F. Kennedy’s casket moved through the streets of Washington one day in 1963.
To generalize Wilson’s central misconception, a basic principle of any historical science (including evolutionary biology, where Wilson wishes to locate the origin and meaning, hence the
consilience with science, of artistic sensibility) recognizes a key fallacy in equating reasons for historical origin with explanations of current utility for the same structure or behavior. Darwin emphasized the particular evolutionary version of this fallacy, now classically expressed in an example that he could not have known: the impossibility of explaining the current aerodynamic optimality of a bird’s feather by reasons for its historical origin from a reptilian scale (for the first feathers covered the arms of small running dinosaurs and could not have served any aerodynamic function, although good models for potential thermodynamic benefits in heat retention have been proposed). Nietzsche (in his Genealogy of Morals) then explicitly generalized the argument as a central principle in any historical analysis—in showing how the origin of punishment in a primal “will to power” could neither be inferred from, nor help us to explain, its current range of utilities in modern society, from discouragement of criminal tendencies to encouragement of timely payment for debts.
By this principle, Wilson’s linkage of unproven theory for the origin of aesthetic preferences to their current application in artistic judgment cannot even hold within the legitimately scientific realm that I called the psychology of aesthetics. But he then takes the further step of moving from a scientific theory about the origin of aesthetic preferences to validating criteria for truth and beauty in art—the logically fallacious transition from a factual claim of science to an intrinsically nonfactual issue that must be adjudicated, and can be passionately and intelligently discussed (if never “resolved” in the classical terms of science), in the different magisterium of the arts.
The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox Page 26