What Hath Biology to Do with Physics?

It’s the Scientific Method, Right?  Well, Not Exactly  “The” Scientific Method is therefore Illusory…the truth is that there is no such thing as “scientific inference”—Sir Peter Medawar (nobel laureate)  Some problems with the ‘scientific method’ are that it doesn’t do justice to the process of inventing hypotheses nor to understanding natural reality as a whole.  It habituates a reductionist mindset and an algorithmic approach.

‘Felicitous Strokes of Inventive Talent’  “Hypotheses are of course imaginative in origin. It was not a scientist or a philosopher but a poet who first classified this act of mind and found the word for it…the imaginative exploit was regarded by Shelley as cognate with poetic invention. He was using the word “poetry” in the root sense poesis— the act of making, of creation. Certainly hypotheses are products of imaginative thinking.”—Sir Peter Medawar

So How can we Teach in a Nonreductionistic and Imagination Shaping Way ? Natural History, Natural Science, and Natural Philosophy

The two Aristotles  “There is the first Aristotle, who wrote the Historia Animalium. He was a keen observer of actually existing beings, deeply concerned in observing the development of the chick in the egg, the mode of reproduction among sharks and rays, or the structure and the habits of bees.” —Etienne Gilson

The two Aristotles  “But there is a second Aristotle, much nearer to Plato than the first one… ‘but inasmuch as these individuals possess one common specific form, it will suffice to state the universal attributes of the species…once for all.’…For centuries and centuries men will know everything about water, because they will know its essence, that which water is… —Etienne Gilson

The two Aristotles  The first is the Aristotle of Natural History  The second is the Aristotle of the syllogism, the deductive system, the Aristotle of Natural Science

What is Natural History?  ”The method then that we must adopt is to attempt to recognize the natural groups [forms], following the indications afforded by the instincts of mankind, which led them to form the class of Birds and the class of Fishes, each of which groups combines a multitude of differentiae, and is not defined by a single one as in dichotomy.” —Aristotle, Parts of Animals

What is Natural History?  ”The apparent indefiniteness and inconsistency of the classifications and definitions of Natural History belongs, in a far higher degree, to all other except mathematical speculations.” —William Whewell, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge  Baconian Natural History had a place for physical non-organic phenomena as well.

What is Natural Science?  “Science is a demonstrable knowledge of causes.”—Aristotle  “Science is organized knowledge…Science is, or aspires to be, deductively ordered.” —Sir Peter Medawar

What is deductively ordered?

The Third Aristotle?  Perhaps there is a third Aristotle who holds the other two together?  “Since ‘nature’ has two senses, the form and the matter, we must investigate its objects as we would the essence of snubnose-ness. That is, such things are neither independent of matter nor can be defined in terms of matter only…Since there are two natures, with which is the natural [philosopher] concerned? Or should he investigate a combination of the two?”—Aristotle Physics

The Third Aristotle?  “If…art imitates nature and it is part of the same discipline to know the form and matter up to a point…it would be part of natural [philosophy] also to know nature in both senses…Again, ‘that for the sake of which,” or the end, belongs to the same department of knowledge as the means.” —Aristotle Physics

What is Natural Philosophy? “I was coming to the increasing conclusion that I could make no further progress in modern physics without a greater understanding of Greek Natural Philosophy” —W. Heisenberg “I agree that the whole of natural philosophy will never be perfectly a science for us.” —Gottfried Leibniz and John Locke

So how does this impact our pedagogy for Natural Science?  “The best course appears to be that we should follow the method already mentioned, and begin with the phenomena presented by each group of animals, and, when this is done, proceed afterwards to state the causes of those phenomena.”—Aristotle

The ‘Methods’  The Method of Natural History is to accumulate the phenomena and classify them according to their like kinds (forms).  The Method of Natural Science is to reason from the phenomena to the causes of the phenomena [hypotheses], and set them in a syllogistic causal system.  Natural Philosophy synthesizes these two into a composite whole and asks questions of invention, interpretation, purpose, and insight

How do we teach this?  An Evidence, Reasoning, and Narrative Approach  Natural History provides the evidence  Natural Science demands clear reasoning  Natural Philosophy weaves them together to answer big questions

So What? What’s the difference?

Reasoning from Phenomena to Causes  Physical Models  Biological Models

Natural History & Natural Science The Phenomena of Motion

Natural Philosophy: The Physics Narrative From the Ancients to Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation

Natural History & Natural Science The Phenomena of Life

Natural Philosophy: The Biology Narrative From the Ancients to the present Neo-Darwinian Synthesis

We need all three Aristotles  In order to avoid the reductionistic tendency in contemporary science we should recover the first and third Aristotles, those of Natural History and Natural Philosophy.  Begin with the phenomena and let the students reason to conclusions. Let us not just teach syllogisms.  Let us remind students that the real world of God’s creation is bigger and grander than our representations of it.  We may know reality truly through natural philosophy, but that truth will always retain mystery.

So do we chuck the Scientific Method?  Well, not exactly  As it turns out, the method itself is often ascribed to big fans of Aristotle.  William Whewell and C.S. Peirce are considered as major contributors to the development of scientific method and they both thought highly of Aristotle.  But an algorithmic approach to the scientific method should be deemphasized.  And the reductionistic mindset that it often habituates must be addressed.

How do we teach this?  An Evidence, Reasoning, and Narrative Approach  Natural History provides the evidence  Natural Science demands clear reasoning  Natural Philosophy weaves them together to answer big questions

Questions?