THE LOGICAL FALLACY OF NATURAL SCIENTISTS

Abstract

Since the second half of the twentieth century, the study of humanities and, in particular,
philosophy has lost its prominence and the natural sciences have gained prominence. This is
primarily because of various paradigm-shifts in popular and mass culture which have
elevated the transparent methodology of the natural sciences above the abstract and, often,
arcane concepts of philosophy. In this paper, I argue that the basic premises of the
assumption of the natural sciences that any discipline that does not adhere to scientific
principles and methodology is not worthy of serious consideration is logically and historically
flawed. This is accomplished by tracing the growth of the epistemological development of the
sciences and various philosophical arguments such as Cartesian substance dualism, Spinozas
determinism and scientific theories such as Heisenbergs Uncertainty Principle and Godels
Incompleteness Theorem, among many others.

Main Article

Logical positivists, since the Enlightenment, have attempted to do away with whatever they
are unable to understand or quantify in all the intellectual disciplines. This fracture between
the natural sciences, on one hand, and philosophy, on the other, can be traced back to the
Descartes Discourse on Method. Descartes broke with the Platonic and Aristotelian tradition
and sought to inculcate a rigorous rationality in philosophy. He was irrefutably the father of
modern philosophy and science and as Husserl rightly points out in his lectures at the
Sorbonne in 19291 that in Meditations Descartes aimed at a complete reform of philosophy,
including all the intellectual disciplines. For these are only dependent members of one
universal discipline, that of philosophy. The irony is not lost on those who are witness to the
pervasive condescension of natural scientists towards the discipline that gave birth to their
own.

What Descartes tried to accomplish was to strike at the very roots of the intellectual
disciplines by discarding the prevalent methodologies as well as all the accumulated
knowledge in the field of philosophy. In Discourse, he elaborates how he adopted a
rationalist approach to rederive basic philosophical axioms and in Meditations, elucidates the
various philosophical hypotheses which he arrived at by using this scientific rationalism. The
primary contradiction was Descartes application of rationality to a predominantly
subjectively oriented discipline. He sought to create a sapientia universalis that is his, his
cognition aspiring to the universal yet one that is genuinely scientific, one for which he can,
right from the beginning, take responsibility from its absolutely evident bases.2

Regardless of this inconsistency between his ends and the means to achieve those ends, his
contribution to the development and advancement of the natural sciences, and, consequently,
civilization itself is undisputable. His methodology laid down the groundwork for the auto-
corrective cumulative progression of the natural sciences. However, unlike him, natural
scientists do not seek to start off from absolute poverty by overthrowing established
intellectual disciplines but rather build on the framework left by their predecessors. Yet, the
underlying principle remains the same. In order to arrive at absolute certainty, scientists try to

1
These lectures formed the basis of the Cartesian Meditations which was published a couple of years later.
2
Same as above.
rule out any doubt by evaluating the veracity of their hypothesis through experimentation.
This is achieved by strictly adhering to what Karl Popper calls the criteria of falsifiability.
He demarcates between scientific and unscientific claims by asserting that a hypothesis or
statement can be deemed scientific only if it can be proven to be false or nullified through
experimentation or observation. This seems to be a rather reasonable basis for the distinction
between the natural sciences and other branches of knowledge, especially the humanities.
However, the breakneck progress of theoretical physics since the beginning of the twentieth
century has for the first time created a paradox in the empiricist view of the natural sciences.

The two greatest discoveries in the field of physics in the twentieth century are two theories
which are empirically incompatible, namely Theory of General Relativity and Quantum
Theory. Einstein was responsible for proving that Newtonian laws of gravity, which worked
wonderfully on the level of our day to day experiences, needed to be slightly adjusted to be
applied to astronomical scales. What is quite conspicuous is that for the first time, a major
discovery had been theoretically proposed before it could be tested almost immediately.
Einstein proposed that space actually behaved like a fabric and gravity was the result of the
curvature of space caused by matter. His theory was verified by Eddington, almost three
years after the publication of the paper. As a result, Einstein did disprove Newtons notion of
gravity as a force which exerted its influence without contact even though the latters
equations still formed an integral part of his calculations. His accomplishments, in turn, led to
a plethora of research papers and theories about various aspects of the universe and ushered
in the golden age of cosmology.

Around the same time, Niels Bohr was working on what would later be designated old
quantum theory. His work led to a quasi-metaphysical dispute between him and Einstein. We
shall not elaborate upon their enthralling debate here but it will suffice to state that these two
theories, at the time, seemed quite discordant. One dealt with the awe-inspiring stellar objects
and the very nature of space and time itself and the other with the structure and nature of
particles at the subatomic level. Just as Einsteins General Relativity proved that Newtonian
mechanics was inadequate to study cosmological phenomena, Bohrs theory highlighted that
even Einsteins equations broke down at the when applied at the subatomic level. Perhaps,
the only thing that saved Bohr from ridicule was that his findings were irrefutably true in
repeated experiments. But, its implications were momentous and this led to the birth of
quantum mechanics during 1900-1925.3

These two watershed moments of the twentieth century could not have been possible without
the two greatest minds in the fields of physics since Newton. Conspicuously, they were
involved in a prolonged scientific, and often metaphysical, debate about the veracity of
Bohrs findings. Einsteins driving force was his conviction that god does not play dice with
the universe which he believed was questioned by the interference pattern created by the
double-slit experiment. This amazing experiment was conducted by shooting a beam of light
at a place with two slits. As per the laws of classical mechanics, it was expected that the
photons would pass through one slit or the other like a particle but instead they behaved like
waves and created alternate dark and light bands of light on the screen behind the plate. On
the other hand, when detectors were placed at the slits, the photon passed through either one
of the slits and not through both slits contrary to their behaviour when the detectors were not
present. These led to the formulation of wave-particle duality, a principle which Einstein
found extremely disconcerting. This property of photons, and as it was later demonstrated,

3
Difference between old mechanics and quantum mechanics
electrons suggested that at the subatomic level, matter behaved according to probabilities and
not certainties.

Since then, theoretical physics has remained in a state of tenuous harmony reconciled to the
fact that general relativity can offer incredibly precise depiction of the universe on an
astronomical scale while quantum mechanics held sway over the realm of subatomic
phenomena.

Around the same time, mathematics was undergoing a process of recovery, in no small
measure, due to the efforts of David Hilbert from its foundational crisis who tried to iron out
the myriad paradoxes and inconsistencies which plagued the discipline. In 1931, Kurt Godel
sounded what is widely considered the death knell of the most cherished dream of all
mathematics4. Godel published his two Incompleteness Theorems which demonstrated that it
is impossible to provide a complete and consistent set of axioms for all mathematical
theories. In other words, as a discipline, mathematics, perceived as the most reliable and
indubitable discipline would always remain incomplete. For most mathematicians, this is
tantamount to heresy. Even though all natural scientists believe that their discoveries and
theories are inviolable, a misconception prevalent even among the masses, a mathematician is
far more hesitant than a theoretical physicist to make statements which are not literally, and
not just empirically, true and verifiable.5

It can, therefore, be discerned that neither theoretical physics nor mathematics, both once
considered, and, in some circles the misconception still prevails, can be used to derive
inviolable laws. Nonetheless, it would be fallacious to claim that they cannot provide
empirically true generalizations. Rather, it would be more accurate to assert that they suffer
from the same limitations that the lesser scientists hold against philosophy. Karl Poppers
falsifiability cannot be applied to every claim or theory across the natural sciences or even
mathematical theorems. There are, of course, those luminaries who are willing to concede the
intersections between the natural sciences and philosophy. Carl Sagan and Richard Feynman
adopt the most balanced approach in this respect even though Michio Kaku, John D. Barrow,
Brian Greene, Brandon Carter, Robert Dicke, and, Stephen Hawking have also contributed to
a holistic understanding of mankinds place in the cosmos.

The mutual antagonism between the natural science and philosophy was sparked off during
the Enlightenment and has persisted ever since. After the series of epoch-making discoveries
in physics and astronomy, many scientists began to question the veracity of philosophical
claims. They sought to experimentally confirm all their observations and, consequently,
became incapable of dealing with the complexities of philosophy. Eventually they rejected
whatever they could not comprehend and, even worse, feared would eventually lead to
questioning of their own authority. This is the most inherent trait of human nature and has
surfaced numerous times throughout mankinds eventful history. In order to protect
themselves from scrutiny, these scientists drew up their own principles and standards of
judgment which they not only subjected to their own pursuits but to all the other disciplines.
They not only refused scrutiny by other standards but also sought conformity to their
methodology from other disciplines. This dangerous trend is prevalent even today among
prominent celebrity scientists such as Richard Dawkins and Neil deGrasse Tyson.

4
Michio Kaku - Hyperspace
5
Fermats Last Theorem
On the other hand, there was a distinct shift and reversal in this myopic and narrow-minded
approach to philosophy. Towards the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th
century, there was a sudden outcrop of mathematician and scientists turned philosophers such
as Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead and Edmund Husserl who managed to restore
philosophy to its rightful place among all the prominent disciplines.

It is fallacious to think that nature conforms to our intuitive conception of the universe. There
are several examples in various sciences of the same. Returning to the metaphysical debate
between Bohr and Einstein over the validity of the wave-particle duality, their mutual
animosity grew over an even more bizarre phenomenon of quantum mechanics. It was the
principle of quantum entanglement. This principle showed that a subatomic particle decays
into a pair of correlated particles. Simply put, if one of the two resultant (daughter) particles
is found to spin clockwise then the other particle would spin counterclockwise. The startling
aspect of this feature of entangled6 particles is that quantum entanglement occurs even over
large distances even faster than the speed of light. This is counterintuitive to the
understanding of the laws of physics. Einsteins theory of Special Relativity states that
nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Needless to say, Einstein was extremely
dissatisfied with the outcome of these experiments. He pejoratively described quantum
entanglement as spooky action at a distance and in a paper written along with his colleagues
Nathan Rosen and Boris Podolsky declared that the nature of physical reality provided by
quantum mechanics is inadequate. The basic principles to quantum mechanics as discovered
by Bohr, Shrodinger and Pauli have stood the test of time and rigourous experimentation.
Hence, Einsteins objections to what he considered counterintuitive and inconsistent field of
research have been completely refuted.

Godels is also accredited with destabilizing a fundamental principle of physics. Godel met
Einstein during his visit to the States in 1933 and they immediately formed a strong bond.
Later, when Godel fled Germany due to the atrocities of the Nazis, he moved permanently to
the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton where Einstein and Godel maintained an
enviable friendship. Even though much younger than one of the greatest luminaries in all of
human history, Godel himself had acquired an intimidating reputation. Barely into his
thirties, was the prodigious mathematician hailed as a stalwart in his own right. Einstein, for
his part, was grateful to find a kindred soul in a mathematician as he was always conscious of
his own limitations with mathematical calculations.

For Einsteins 70th birthday, he provided a solution to the equations of general relativity
which allowed for time travel to the past in a rotating model of the universe. The solution
perplexed Einstein to a great extent primarily because it seemed to contradict his notion of a
forward moving river of time. Even though Einsteins notion of time was not as rigid as
Newtons notion of a linear time, yet Einstein had conceived of time as forward-moving in a
way reminiscent of Heraclitean entropy. Godels solution could not hold true for various
reasons but certainly led to speculations about many other hidden possibilities within
Einsteins equations.

Yet another abomination, Chandrasekhars limit, posthumously named after the Indian
astrophysicist, was the product of his work on the maximum permissible limit of a white
drawf to avoid gravitational collapse. This allowed for the existence of black holes, a chimera
of contemporary astrophysics. An entire community of scientists led by Eddington attempted

6
Entanglement used by Schrodinger
to suppress Chandrasekhars research and publicly ostracize him till the time the young
scientist reluctantly ceased working on his seminal idea. Eddington held onto his convictions
vehemently trying to discredit the very idea of black holes clearly reflected in his declaration:

The star has to go on radiating and radiating and contracting and contracting until, I
suppose, it gets down to a few km radius, when gravity becomes strong enough to hold in the
radiation, and the star can at last find peace. I think there should be a law of Nature to
prevent a star from behaving in this absurd way!

After winning the Nobel Prize, along with William A. Fowler, Chandrasekhar concluded his
lecture entitled On Stars, Their Evolution and Their Stability with the words:

The mathematical theory of black holes is a subject of immense complexity; but its study
has convinced me of the basic truth of the ancient mottos,

The simple is the seal of the true

and

Beauty is the splendour of truth.

These instances of scientific hubris prove that renowned scientists have often fallen prey to
their hubris and obscured the very spirit of scientific endeavour. Militant scientists might
argue that the instances only prove that principles and methodology of scientific approach are
inherently self-consistent and it is merely the lapse in adhering to these standards. There is a
logical fallacy in this claim. It assumes that the two aspects of scientific approach, the basic
tenets and the practice are separable. This is nothing short of evasive argument of lesser
theologians who try to justify the misery and suffering of billions compared to the fortuitous
circumstances of less than a few thousands with the claim God works in mysterious ways. If
the militants employ this argument then the progress of science becomes coincidental rather
than as a consequence of relentless human effort. The latter proposition is probably beyond
question.

The principles and methodology of science are also not beyond scrutiny. Historically,
philosophy, science and mathematics were closely intertwined. Since the fragmentation of the
disciplines, a logical positivism has become far more appealing than the abstract propositions
and refutations among the masses. Philosophy is in fact in decisive battle for survival. The
reasons for this pitiable state of humanitys crowning achievement have been discussed
briefly in the previous chapter. They will be dealt with substantially at a later time. What
remains the focus at the moment is the fallacy of natural scientists.

Universe locality, multiverse, a different set of laws in other universes weak anthropic and
strong anthropic principle