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Galileo and the relationship between the humanities and theciences

Ever since Galileo , science has been strongly committed to the unification of theories fromifferent disciplines . It cannot accept that the right explanations of human activities must be logicallyncompatible with the rest of science, or even just independent of it. If science were prepared to settle foress than unification, the difficulty of reconciling quantum mechanics and general relativity wouldnt be theiggest problem in physics. Biology would not accept the gene as real until it was shown to have a physicaltructure DNA that could do the work geneticists assigned to the gene. For exactly the same reasoncience cant accept interpretation as providing knowledge of human affairs if it cant at leastn principle be absorbed into, perhaps even reduced to, neuroscience .

hats the job of neurophilosophy .

his problem, that thoughts about ourselves or anything else for that matters couldnt be physical, was forlong time purely academic. Scientists had enough on their plates for 400 years just showing how physicalrocesses bring about chemical processes, and through them biological ones. But now neuroscientistsre learning how chemical and biological events bring about the brain processes that actuallyroduce everything the body does, including speech and all other actions .

Research including Nobel-prize winning neurogenomics and fMRI (functional magnetic resonancemaging) has revealed how bad interpretations explanations of our actions are. And there are cleversychophysical experiences that show us that introspections insistence that interpretationeally does explain our actions is not to be trusted .

hese findings cannot be reconciled with explanation by interpretation. The problem they raise for theumanities can no longer be postponed. Must science write off interpretation the way it wrote off hlogiston theory a nice try but wrong? Increasingly, the answer that neuroscience gives to this questions afraid so.

ew people are prepared to treat history, (auto-) biography and the human sciences likeolklore . The reason is obvious. The narratives of history, the humanities and literature provides with the feeling that we understand what they seek to explain . At their best they also triggermotions we prize as marks of great art.

But that feeling of understanding, that psychological relief from the itch of curiosity, is not the same things knowledge. It is not even a mark of it, as childrens bedtime stories reveal. If the humanities andistory provide only feeling (ones explained by neuroscience), that will not be enough toefend their claims to knowledge.

he only solution to the problem faced by the humanities, history and (auto) biography, is tohow that interpretation can somehow be grounded in neuroscience . That is job No. 1 foreurophilosophy . And the odds are against it. If this project doesnt work out, science will have to face

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galileihttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurophilosophyhttp://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/10/us/3-share-nobel-prize-in-medicine-for-studies-of-the-brain.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/10/us/3-share-nobel-prize-in-medicine-for-studies-of-the-brain.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/10/health/research/10mind.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/10/health/research/10mind.htmlhttp://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/456974/phlogistonhttp://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/456974/phlogistonhttp://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/10/health/research/10mind.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/10/health/research/10mind.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/10/us/3-share-nobel-prize-in-medicine-for-studies-of-the-brain.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurophilosophyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei

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lan B: treating the humanities the way we treat the arts, indispensable parts of human experience but noto be mistaken for contributions to knowledge.

Alex Rosenberg , American philosopher, and the R. Taylor Cole Professor of Philosophy at DukeUniversity, Bodies in Motion: An Exchange , NYT, Nov 6, 2011.

Do the humanities need to be defended from hard science?

As the mathematician and physicist Mark A. Peterson has shown in his new book, Galileos Muse: Renaissance Arts and Mathematics , Galileos love for the arts profoundly shaped his thinking,nd in many ways helped paved the way for his scientific discoveries . An early biography of

Galileo by his contemporary Niccol Gherardini points out that, He was most expert in all the sciences andrts, as if he were professor of them. He took extraordinary delights in music, painting, and poetry. For itsart, Peterson takes great delight in demonstrating how his immersion in these arts informed hiscientific discoveries, and how art and literature prior to Galileo often planted the seeds of cientific progress to come . ()

Clearly Galileo was an extraordinary man, and a crucial aspect of what made him that man was thentellectual world he was immersed in. This world included mathematics, of course, but it was also full of rts and literature, of philosophy and theology. Peterson argues forcefully, for instance, that Galileos

mastery of the techniques involved in creating and thinking about perspective in paintingould well have influenced his thinking about the relativity of motion, since both requireomprehending the importance of multiple points of view . ()

he idea that the perception of movement depends on ones point of view also has forebears in proto-cientific thinkers who are far less suitable candidates for the appealing story of how common senseuddenly toppled a 2000-year old tradition to usher modern science into the world. Take the poet,hilosopher and theologian Giordano Bruno , who seldom engaged in experimentation and who, 30 yearsefore Galileos own trial, refused to recant the beliefs that led him to be burned at the stake, beliefs thatncluded the infinity of the universe and the multiplicity of worlds. ()

Galileos insight into the nature of motion was not merely the epiphany of everyday

xperience that brushed away the fog of scholastic dogma; it was a logical consequence of aong history of engagements with an intellectual tradition that encompassed a multitude of orms of knowledge . That force is not required for an object to stay in motion goes hand in hand withhe realization that motion and rest are not absolute terms, but can only be defined relative to what wouldater be called inertial frames . And this realization owes as much to a literary, philosophical andheological inquiry as it does to pure observation.

rofessor Rosenberg uses his brief history of science to ground the argument that neuroscience threatenshe humanities, and the only thing that can save them is a neurophilosophy that reconciles brain processesnd interpretation. If this project doesnt work out, he writes, science and the humanities will have toace plan B: treating the humanities the way we treat the arts, indispensable parts of human experience butot to be mistaken for contributions to knowledge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Rosenberghttp://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/bodies-in-motion-an-exchange/?hphttp://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/facultyprofiles/mark_peterson.htmlhttp://www.amazon.com/Galileos-Muse-Renaissance-Mathematics-Arts/dp/0674059727http://www.amazon.com/Galileos-Muse-Renaissance-Mathematics-Arts/dp/0674059727http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Brunohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Brunohttp://www.amazon.com/Galileos-Muse-Renaissance-Mathematics-Arts/dp/0674059727http://www.amazon.com/Galileos-Muse-Renaissance-Mathematics-Arts/dp/0674059727http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/facultyprofiles/mark_peterson.htmlhttp://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/bodies-in-motion-an-exchange/?hphttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Rosenberg

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But if this is true, should we not then ask what neuroscience could possible contribute to the very debatewe are engaged in at this moment? What would we learn about the truth-value of Professor Rosenbergslaims or mine if we had even the very best neurological data at our disposal? That our respective pleasureenters light up as we each strike blows for our preferred position? That might well be of interest, but itardly bears on the issue at hand, namely, the evaluation of evidence historical orxperimental underlying a claim about knowledge. That evaluation must be interpretative.he only way to dispense with interpretation is to dispense with evidence, and with itnowledge altogether.

William Egginton is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and Chair of the Department of German and Romance Languages and Literatures at the John Hopkins University, Bodies in Motion: An

xchange , NYT, Nov 6, 2011.

http://johnshopkins.academia.edu/WilliamEggintonhttp://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/bodies-in-motion-an-exchange/?hphttp://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/bodies-in-motion-an-exchange/?hphttp://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/bodies-in-motion-an-exchange/?hphttp://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/bodies-in-motion-an-exchange/?hphttp://johnshopkins.academia.edu/WilliamEgginton