Matt Ridley: The Evolution of Everything: How Ideas Emerge (2015)

Edition: Harper Collins, 2015
Review number: 1513

While there are many interesting ideas, points and quotes in this book, I found it frustrating and unconvincing. While it is apparently about how evolution works in a number of settings, essentially those of complex emergent systems, much of it uses that as the basis for an attack on any form of control or management of these systems - it's a libertarian manifesto in all but name.

I have a fair number of issues with the book. First, and fundamentally, I don't think it makes a case for the word "evolution" being applied consistently to all the subjects. It starts, naturally enough, with one of the best known and best understood subjects, the evolution of life. Here, there is a sound mathematical foundation, a set of statistical rules which can predict many things (such as, for instance, the ways in which altruism can bestow an evolutionary advantage despite the immediate appearance that it shouldn't). While there are mathematical models for some of the other concepts, such as the economy, there isn't the same broad agreement on the most acceptable model. In some cases (education, for instance) it is hard to even see what a model would be like, and here it feels more as though something is evolutionary because it is complex and changes over time.

Second, the shortness of the treatments of the different topics makes it appear that Ridley makes his points through selective quotation. Some of the discussions do talk about other ideas in the field, but I think they are not given even the appearance of a fair hearing. Some authors are quoted repeatedly, which makes selective quoting seem more obvious. I don't think that this appearance was Ridley's intention, but it does reduce the impact of the book.

Thirdly, the book seems to me to avoid talking about some of the ethical issues involved in taking the libertarian approach. While he talks approvingly of unregulated private enterprise, and even makes it seem that this will improve the lot of everyone, the problem is that even in today's heavily regulated world, unethical individuals abuse positions of power over others: there have always been companies run as sweat shops, and we still see prosecutions for slavery and exploitation on a regular basis (especially, it seems, in those underground industries which are less regulated because of their essentially criminal nature, such as prostitution). It often seems that those who put forward libertarianism do so because they expect that they would be among the winners, and they don't really think about what this means for the losers. This isn't to say that live isn't going to be grim for the losers in the world as it is today, or hasn't been miserable in the past, and Ridley does cite several examples, including some from the worst moments of British colonialism.

Overall, there is much said which is interesting, but I found the book more frustrating than convincing. My rating: 5/10.

Alexander Broadie: Introduction to Medieval Logic (1993)

Edition: Oxford University Press, 1993
Review number: 1505

The title is perhaps somewhat misleading. I would expect that a book introducing medieval logic should be fairly easy to follow for someone like myself, with a doctorate in modern mathematical logic and an interest in medieval philosophy. But the first few chapters assume a fair amount of prior understanding of the form of logic used in the middle ages, i.e. one based on natural language rather than symbolic representation of carefully pre-defined and abstract ideas of such ideas as truth, implication, proof and so on (this, the basis of modern mathematical logic, being the legacy of Frege and others such as Russell, Tarsky, and Gödel).

In fact, what is eventually revealed is a way to relate the arguments of medieval logicians, which can seem weird and monumentally pedantic, to a process which moves from the potential ambiguities of natural language towards more abstract understanding of the processes of logic. No matter how interesting that might be to me, though, the path travelled through mainly fourteenth century logical arguments is one I found hard to follow. For me, the best part of the book is the concluding chapter, in which Broadie discusses the transition from scholastic logical thought to humanistic ideas of proof, more based on rhetoric and Ciceronian legal arguments, and the relation of scholasticism to the ideas of modern mathematics.

I would have welcomed a lot more historical context, and also some way to connect the thematically organised discussion to that context

My rating: 5/10.

Anicius Boethius: The Consolation of Philosophy (c. 524 AD)

Translation: V.E. Watts
Edition: Penguin Classics, 1969
Review number: 1475

There are a few books which have had a huge influence on the age in which they were written. However, few people today read The Consolation of Philosophy, which could be considered the foundation of medieval culture.

Boethius was a statesman in sixth century Italy, just after the final fall of the Western Roman Empire, but was disgraced and imprisoned; like many politicians in that situation, he maintained his innocence. But in prison, according to the account in this book, he underwent a mystical experience, being visited by a woman he eventually recognises as Philosophy, who goes on to teach him to treat his situation in what could nowadays be termed a "philosophical manner".

What appealed to the medieval mind about this? From the literature of western Europe over the next nine hundred or so years, it is partly the mystical element, and partly the allegorical flavour - the figure of Philosophy is a precursor of many later personifications. Not only that, but Boethius' distillations of classical philosophy, as well as his translations of Greek philosophers into Latin, were the main way in which their thought survived in an age of little literacy and where Greek scholarship was almost non-existent. Writers and thinkers influenced by The Consolation of Philosophy would include almost every notable figure from the best part of a thousand years of history.

The only book I can think of with a similar effect is Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, which has many points in common with The Consolation of Philosophy. The later work was basically a way to make it easier to understand Puritan ideas about Christian salvation, while the earlier was doing the same with classical philosophy;  both had allegorical elements, Bunyan's more so; both authors were imprisoned, with prison playing an important part in their books; both proved incredibly popular and influential. The influence of Bunyan continues to this day, and many of his figures of speech have entered the English language ("slough of despond", for example); Boethius was responsible for the popularity of the idea of a "wheel of fortune", though he did not invent it.

Essentially, what Boethius is doing is a popular exposition  of neo-Platonist thought. He was a Christian, and yet is pretty circumspect about his theology in the book, talking of "God" but never mentioning Jesus. Some readers have wondered whether he was a Christian in name only, as he would have needed to be to be a successful politician in sixth century Italy, but his approach to philosophy inspired the medieval mind because he is able to start bringing the pagan thought into a monotheistic context, a process which culminated in the elaborate systems of Thomas Aquinas celebrated in Dante's Divine Comedy.

In modern editions such as this one, The Consolation  of Philosophy is divided into books each made up of several sections, which each end with poetry. Boethius was famed for his Latin prose style, though Watts does admit that the poetry is uneven in quality. Not having ever read the original, I wouldn't know, and it is perhaps less apparent in this translation, which I would suspect is not as great as Boethius at his best nor as poor as his worst, but is more even throughout. This is also one of the most academic of the Penguin Classics translation in its presentation (the actual translation is clear and readable enough), with footnotes identifying references in learned articles throughout.

Ours is an age which has learnt from the romantics to value "originality". Perhaps less so now than a few years ago (after all, what is original in the albums of the latest winners of the X Factor). I suspect that this is part of the reason why Boethius' work fell out of favour. As a philosopher, he does not claim to have any new insights - just ways to put together old ones to appeal to modern (in his time) tastes. As a distillation of ancient philosophy, the alternating prose and poetry is perhaps harder to get into today when it is not the kind of writing commonly encountered; there are far better introductions for the modern reader, which would go on to later thought - for a philosophy beginner who wants a close modern equivalent, where fiction and philosophy mingle in an approachable manner, I would recommend Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World, aimed at a young teen audience but with plenty of charm for older readers.

The Consolation of Philosophy appeals to me because I have long been interested in the medieval way of thought. Perhaps in itself it has less to offer than as a window into a very different, yet recognisable, world to the modern West. But in the end I rate it at 8/10.

H.D.F. Kitto: The Greeks (1951)

The Greeks has long been touted as the best basic introduction to the culture of ancient Greece, where the foundations for much of the way we think and live today were laid but which still can seem strangely alien from a viewpoint two and a half millennia years later. Now over sixty years old, is it still worth reading?

Clearly, the book itself has not changed in any way (especially as mine is quite an elderly copy). It remains an excellent basic description of ancient Greece, concentrating on the aspects of the culture which are especially influential. Kitto is occasionally self-indulgent, getting carried away by his love of the literature, as when he translates large portions of the first book of the Iliad which are not directly relevant to the aims of the book (though it does illuminate aspects of the culture almost in the way that a lengthy Bible quote would shed light on Western culture, or a section from the Koran would on Arab thought). My background (growing up with a parent who had not just studied classics, but who wrote books about Greece and Rome alongside translations of ancient texts) does not make me an ideal test for the use of The Greeks as an introduction, but from what I can see it does seem to do the job it sets out to do.

One thing which has certainly changed is the correctness of the assumptions Kitto makes about how much of Greek culture is already known to the general reader. Kitto assumes a certain amount of knowledge in his readers, and in the 1950s he would have been able to assume more than would be the case today; after all, most British schools still taught at least Latin in those days, and hardly any do so today. This has two consequences: the number of people who have any idea that the book might be interesting to them is smaller, and the likelihood is that they will find it far harder to understand. On the other hand, web sites like Wikipedia will fulfil many of the needs which The Greeks was intended to, so it is not as useful as it once was.

Edition: Pelican, 1958
Review number: 1456

John Fowles: The Aristos (1964, revised 1980)

The title may suggest "À la lanterne les aristos!", the cry of the French revolutionary mob in The Scarlet Pimpernel. But in fact Fowles is using the Greek word aristos, meaning "the best" without the reference to hereditary privilege it now has in its best known English descendant, aristocracy, or being restricted in application to people, as the same word has it. This is a book which describes Fowles' personal philosophy, which is all about the best (in his view) relative to each particular situation. Most of The Aristos originated when Fowles was in his twenties, but the material was revised for its initial publication and again for this edition.

In the introduction, Fowles - who studied French at university - cites his models as French, particularly Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, and Chamfort (and also mentioning Montaigne). Having only read Pascal and Montaigne from this list, I can see the relationship, but what The Aristos really reminds me of is André Gide's The Fruits of the Earth, also the product of a university student of great literary ability who was a left-leaning amateur philosopher.

Not that literary quality is particularly apparent here - The Aristos is written in note form. Note form is not unknown in philosophy, obviously, and, true to his influences, The Aristos is much more like Pascal's Pensées than, say, Witgennstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The latter is much harder to read, perhaps because it is even more compressed than the other works. Fowles explains to the reader that the form is used so that it acts as a bald statement of a philosophy, not as an attempt to persuade anyone else through its artistry. This is somewhat disingenuous, as he then almost immediately slips in a rhetorical metaphor, which is perhaps more artistically pleasing than illuminating of his meaning. He says that life is like being adrift on a raft in the middle of an ocean, the point of the image being that there is no way to know the shores beyond the horizon might be like, so likewise there is no real way to be sure about what happened before birth or will happen after death.

Fowles' basic argument in The Aristos is based on his reaction to one of the most famous ideas in Pascal's Pensées. This idea is known as "Pascal's Wager", that the rational man should believe in God, because there is nothing to lose in the next life if he is wrong, and everything to gain if he is right. (This doesn't work for me personally, as I don't see belief as something I can turn on and off as this suggests is necessary; but that is off the topic.) But, Fowles says, in the second half of the twentieth century, after the horrors of the two world wars, to choose to believe in a Christian God is no longer as reasonable, as it is harder to accept the concept of a God who loves his creation, making the choice between belief and atheism less balanced than it was in the seventeenth century. Thus the rational person should assume that this life is all there is; and this in turn means that we have a moral duty to make this life as good as possible for as many as possible, which we can do by aiming to reduce social injustice and inequality.

This may not be convincing (it is rather more so in its full form than summarised as drastically as I have done here). The intention is not so much to convert as to give an alternative to both capitalism and communism, neither of which, in Fowles' opinion, provide both "equal access to the chief sources of happiness" and "the maximum freedom [to the individual] to decide what these sources should be". Indeed, he goes so far as to suggest that one or other of the two ideologies will collapse in 1989 if they fail to bring greater equality (picking the date as the two hundredth anniversary of the French revolution): a remarkably prescient prediction, as it turned out.

It could be argued that this philosophy seems rather glib for a writer from a comparatively privileged background: born in the West, well educated (at a time when class distinctions mattered more in British universities than they do today, despite all the fuss about the Oxbridge intake from private schools), well respected in his chosen profession, and so on - a "champagne Socialist". Fowles himself recognises this potential problem, and argues that for the good of society, socialism cannot be left as the province of the poorest workers. His response is to call for us to seek to promote greater equality of opportunity (which he carefully differentiates from equality of innate talent); if we don't do so, he says, we are just selfish and ultimately living futile lives.

The inspiration for The Aristos is explicitly the ideas of Heraclitus, one of the earliest Greek philosophers, whose work survives solely in quotations and descriptions in the writing of others; it is his use of the word aristos which Fowles has followed. Fowles ends his book with an appendix containing the major Heraclitan material, in his own translations: four pages in all but a useful background for the philosophically inclined reader (and I am pretty sure that this is a book which will not attract any other kind).

Is Fowles convincing? Overall, not really, though most people will agree with at least some part of what he has to say. There is much food for thought, and the whole of The Aristos is interesting and readable: the layout may look like the Tractatus, but Fowles is much more easily comprehensible. Clearly an important document for deeper understanding of his fiction, The Aristos is more, as an intelligent person's reaction to the modern wold, it is a fascinating byway in twentieth century philosophy. My rating: 7/10.


Edition: Triad/Granada, 1981 (Buy from Amazon)
Review number: 1422

Robert M. Pirsig: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (An Enquiry into Values) (1974)

Published: Vintage, 2004.

I have been intending to read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for over twenty years, but have never got round to it until this February. Though famously influential, there are still surprisingly few books at all like it, with its combination of fictionalised travelogue and philosophical speculation. The nearest equivalent I can think of is Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World, which aims more at teaching the basics of philosophical thought rather than taking a polemical approach as Pirsig does here.

The narrator tells the story of a motorcycle trip from Minnesota to California, initially with friends but eventually just with his son Chris. This kind of trip obviously provides a lot of time for solitary thought, and the narrator does just that: musing about how philosophy relates to the world around us. To the narrator, the journey is also about finding and at the same time escaping the person he names Phaedrus (after a character in one of Plato's Socratic dialogues). Phaedrus turns out to be his own self, the university lecturer who suffered a breakdown and had his mind almost wiped by "Annihilation ECS", also (and to me at least, better) known as electroconvulsive therapy.

What fascinated Phaedrus, and continues to interest the narrator, is the difference - indeed, conflict - between two ways of looking at the world. The "Classic" mode is intellectual, analytical, reductionist and concerned with underlying processes; while the "Romantic" mode is emotional, artistic, holistic and concerned with surface beauty. Pirsig seems to overstate broadness of the division between the two: I would say that most people probably use a mixture, depending on context (a sports fan is likely to be more analytical about a football game, for example, but might respond to music on an emotional level, not really sure why particular songs appeal to them). It does seem reasonable that background, education and personality would make most of us use one mode in preference to the other. Phaedrus sought to bring back unity between the two viewpoints by giving the concept of "Quality" pre-eminent status, the idea being that everyone can recognise "good work" on a non-rational level and so gain an understanding of the thought mode which is more alien to their personality. Pirsig spends quite a lot of effort on the argument that Quality is non- (or more accurately, pre-) rational, but does not convince me. I think it probably can be analysed, though any analysis would need to take into account factors such as culture and personality which influence an individual's recognition of Quality on a subconscious level. Leaving that aside, the one thing I did not find clear about the philosophical discussion in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is just how the concept brings about a union between the Classical and the Romantic. It's obvious that "quality" is an element of both, but then so are other concepts (beauty, for example).

As the title suggests, much of the philosophical speculation is illustrated with reference to motorbike mechanics. The mechanics is rather more simplified than the philosophy, but it is Pirsig's big selling point and leads to some nice clear exposition. The references also underline a major point of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance which is that philosophy should underpin the way we act in everyday life. (Of course, it is easy to argue that it does, albeit unconsciously, but Pirsig obviously means something more deliberate and, indeed, life-changing.) A drawback of the use of mechanics to illustrate his points is that it sometimes makes the key idea of Quality seem very closely related to the Protestant work ethic: put something into everything you do and you will produce Quality outputs.

The most novelistic aspect of the book is the psychological journey made by the narrator, retracing the footsteps of his former self with an increasingly reluctant companion. The tension builds well (even if the philosophy is likely to deflate it every time it is introduced, for many readers) to a final scene which, according to Pirsig's introduction to the twenty-fifth anniversary edition which is reprinted here, has been frequently misunderstood over the years. As Pirsig points out, the narrator of a story has the opportunity to paint himself in a favourable light, which means that nothing he says about himself (or his alter ego, Phaedrus) can be taken at face value. But even if the reader ignores this advice, it seems to me that it would be quite hard to feel that the narrator is a nice person, particularly considering his behaviour to his son. Phaedrus is rather more congenial, though his obsessive search for philosophical truth might make him a rather disconcerting person to spend time with. The ending still feels a little contrived to me, but this is partly because it is the kind of event that seems to mark an end rather than because it is intrinsically unconvincing.

In the afterword, Pirsig describes Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance as a "culture-bearing" book, using a term derived from a Swedish word which has no direct English equivalent. What this means is that it appeared at the time of a cultural shift, and by being a head of the curve, became incredibly successful as a result. I think this is perhaps undervaluing the book: people did find their lives changed by it, and it has continued to find a readership ever since. In other ways, it is a good description of a book which is very much of its time, something which is probably an important reason for my feeling that the philosophy was less than convincing. (The other book Pirsig mentions as a culture-bearer, Uncle Tom's Cabin, is similarly not going to be as effective now as it was when it appeared, because the issues it addresses are less in the mind than they were then.) While it remains a fascinating read, particularly to anyone interested in philosophy or cultural history, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is no longer likely to change your life.

Thomas S. Kuhn: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962)

Edition: University of Chicago Press, 1970 (Buy from Amazon)
Review number: 1101

Of the thousands of books written about science during the twentieth century, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is the one which has caused the most controversy. It is a famous account of how (in Kuhn's opinion) science actually works, as opposed to the way in which scientists think that they work, and it acts as a summary of Kuhn's ideas; much of the rest of his writing is basically a series of historical case studies which back up and illustrate this summary.

The general view of science is that it proceeds by accretion, new facts gradually allowing theory to become a closer approximation to reality. Kuhn proposed a different model: a generally accepted paradigm determines not just what questions are investigated but how facts are perceived by scientists. However, anomalies appear and grow in importance, until a period of confusion is ended by a revolution which establishes a new paradigm.

The main reason that this is controversial is basically that it seems to make science a matter of opinion rather than fact, especially because of what Kuhn says about the way that the facts change or appear to change when the current paradigm changes. Summaries of Kuhn's arguments tend to make what he says more alarming than it actually is, and I found The Structure of Scientific Revolutions far more convincing than I expected.

Part of the problem with this kind of analysis of science is that the pattern of scientific communication has changed over time, as private letters and public books gave way to refereed journal articles, which in turn are now giving way to the exchange of pre-prints, electronically or otherwise. This is a factor unconsidered by Kuhn - though he was surely aware of it - and in my opinion makes it difficult to compare scientific practice even across relatively short periods as is necessary for this kind of study.

The major idea that Kuhn has which is difficult to agree with is that there is no such thing as scientific progress, that the paradigms are more or less equivalent as explanations of the universe. He explicitly says that there is no rational reason why, in a time of crisis with a current paradigm, one of the competitors to replace it is chosen rather than the others. (The evidence he gives for this is the frequent inability of a new paradigm to predict even some well known facts accurately, as with the century it took for a correct derivation of the moon's orbit from Newton's theory of gravity.) It is, I suppose, an almost inevitable consequence of Kuhn's feeling that a paradigm embodies its own special world view, as then two paradigms would have concepts far enough apart to make them impossible to compare meaningfully. The standard interpretation of issues like the moon's orbit would be that it can take time for a new theory to be properly understood, especially when, like Newton's, it uses unfamiliar mathematics.

However, it seems to me (and to many who have been involved in the practise of scientific research) that there is one very important property of a paradigm which Kuhn minimises: its explanatory power. By pre-supposing that this is unimportant, he anticipates his own conclusions. A scientist's perception of a paradigm is that it should be a model of the phenomena being investigated, and in particular that it should match with investigations already carried out. Exceptions can be made (as in the case of the moon) but they are just that: exceptions. Kuhn objects to this characterisation on the grounds that problems investigated under one paradigm are quite possibly meaningless under another, but I would expect that many would not be; Einstein's theory of general relativity would be useless as a model of the universe under gravitation if it failed to explain the path of a thrown ball on Earth, or the motion of the moon, as well as the Newtonian theory it replaced. (He specifically objects to the common characterisation of the relationship between these two theories that says that Newton's laws approximate to Einstein's when velocities and energies are low, because they make incompatible underlying assumptions, but to say the predictions of the motions of bodies are approximately correct seems to me to be perfectly valid.) Thus, any paradigm which is a candidate to replace one under crisis should explain almost all the well known facts already explained together with some of the more problematic areas. (Another reason for the word "almost", as well as the difficulties in correctly applying new paradigms is that those pushing them may in their enthusiasm make erroneous measurements, as Galileo seems to have done when he reported that pendulum swings take a uniform time even for large displacements even though this is true only when the angle of swing is small.) This more traditional description has the advantage that it preserves the idea of progress towards the goal of describing the universe (not in the more unfortunate cultural sense in which scientific progress is often taken, and which is probably one of the reasons behind Kuhn's rejection of the concept). Another factor which Kuhn doesn't mention which tends to influence the acceptance of a new paradigm (at least when it is mathematical in nature) is the feeling among researchers that it is elegant and beautiful.

Even after forty years, Kuhn's book is thought provoking - more so than reports of his arguments elsewhere. Most readers are unlikely to agree with all his ideas, but it is definitely better to read them here at firsthand.

Bryan Magee: Confessions of a Philosopher (1997)

Edition: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997
Review number: 1035

Brian Magee has spent much of his adult life presenting "highbrow" TV programmes, mainly attempting to popularise philosophy. This book is partly autobiography, and partly short accounts of the ideas of some of the philosophers who have been important in his life.

Having been disturbed by philosophical problems (such as whether the world we see is real) to an unusual extent as a child, Magee studied philosophy. However, he was disillusioned by postgraduate study at Oxford, then in the grip of linguistic analysis, which he felt was both sterile and, because not concerned with what he considered the real problems, not really philosophy. Eventually moving into TV, he used the fact that it paid well to work only half the time, spending the rest of his life studying philosophy, attending concerts and seeing plays. In the course of time, he came to know two of the outstanding philosophers of the twentieth century, Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper.

The major portion of the book consists of explanations of the main philosophical problems as Magee sees them (those raised by Kant, basically), and descriptions of the ideas of several philosophers, both those who have attacked these problems (particularly Schopenhauer, for whom he has a great admiration) and those who turned important schools of twentieth century philosophy away from them into the dead ends of logical positivism and linguistic analysis. These explanations, generally well integrated with the biographical material, are clear and easy to read, and have the real virtue of pointing the reader to the original sources (while warning of some of the most difficult to read - Hegel, Fichte in particular).

Confessions of a Philosopher has certainly made me want to go away and read more philosophy and think about these problems; and that is something that I think would make Magee feel he has succeeded.

John Searle: Mind, Language and Society: Philosophy in the Real World (1999)

Edition: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999
Review number: 932

In this book, John Searle sets out a defence of what he calls the "default" positions in philosophy, the assumptions that are likely to be made by someone who has never encountered the sort of speculation that philosophers indulge in (such as the existence of the real world). He ignores the term "naive realism", probably because it would psychologically undermine his arguments before he starts, but that is basically what the default assumptions amount to.

According to Searle, the book is intended for those who know nothing about philosophy, but he quite frequently lapses from his stated ideal of not using any unexplained technical terms. The arguments he uses are also quite complex, thought perhaps not compared to, say, Sartre's philosophical writing. The major virtue of the book is Searle's writing style, much clearer than many philosophers. (In the twentieth century, philosophers have begun to want to come across as scientific rather than mystical, and this has made their writing much easier to read than nineteenth century equivalents.)

The book's major flaw is Searle's assumption that he is always right and that the philosophers who have disagreed with him are wrong; his writing loses interest as soon as he fails to convince the reader of a point in his argument. (In my case, this was about when he argues that introspection about the nature of consciousness is impossible.) The book becomes more sketchy towards the end, with far less on language and society than on mind, and this does not help - despite the sub-title, Mind, Language and Society has little to do with the real world. There are still interesting sections (that on the boundary between philosophy and science, for example), but I would say that he certainly fails to deliver an integrated account of the three elements of the title, his stated aim.

Overall, Mind, Language and Society is thought provoking if not as important as it thinks it is, and clear if not as non-technical as Searle thinks it is. Worth reading if you have an interest in philosophy.

Richard P. Feynman: The Meaning of It All (1998)

Edition: Viking, 1998 (Buy from Amazon)
Review number: 884

These three lectures, about science, society, philosophy, religion and so on, were delivered in the early sixties but not published until after Feynman's death. They read as though they are basically transcriptions of more or less off the cuff speaking rather than as composed in written form for the book.

Basically the theme of the talks is how science relates to society's other concerns, with interesting digressions on subjects like why politicians' promises can't be trusted (because real life situations are often too complex for sound bit answers). The sections where Feynman defines science and where he talks about religion are particularly interesting, but there are thought provoking ideas throughout.

There are two - at least - disappointing aspects to the lectures. One is the occasional piece of naive American patriotism, endorsing the space race, for example, because it wouldn't do to let the Russians get too far ahead. This is more a product of the time and place than anything else, but it certainly dates what is said and reduces the impact of the more interesting bits.

The other problem is more serious, and pervades the whole book. The general tone of the lectures is over-simplified, and has a tendency when written down rather than spoken to come over as patronising. Feynman was a great communicator, and I suspect this problem is a result of the lectures being transcribed from the oral to written medium without editing. The Meaning of It All is interesting, but could have been fascinating if intended to be a book from the start.

Ayn Rand: Atlas Shruged (1957)

Edition: Signet, 1982

Like much of the more literate end of the science fiction genre, Ayn Rand's novels were inspired by a social theme that she wanted to discuss, her philosophic viewpoint known as objectivism. It is completely inseparable from Atlas Shrugged, much more obviously than in the two greatest novels which do something similar, Brave New World and 1984.

Essentially a hymn to libertarian capitalism, Atlas Shrugged is the story of a competition between a group of people who really produce something and others who think that they are owed a living. The latter are turning the US into a planned economy, effectively ruining the country's industrialists one by one. Then the men who do the work - innovators, scientists, engineers - begin disappearing rather than see their efforts enriching others; it is as though Atlas, holding the world on his shoulders, shrugs. The heart of the book is the description of the chaos that takes hold as the industrial base of the nation crumbles, as those who do not feel that they can abandon the world struggle to keep things going.

As a portrayal of the future, it is not a particularly imaginative piece of science fiction, being basically a caricature of the effect socialist ideas would have overlaid on forties technology. It is rather strange to read a science fiction novel in which railways play such a huge part. This is one of the reasons why the novel is not a big classic of the genre, as it does not contain many ideas of interest to devotees.

The characterisation is quite well done for at least the central few characters on the side to which Rand is sympathetic; Dagny Taggart, Hank Rearden and Francisco d'Anconia are believable. Their enemies are generally one dimensional, with the occasional attempts to make them more real actually having the opposite effect; Dagny's brother Jim is one of the worst in this respect, because he is quite an important character.

I find several aspects of Rand's right wing philosophy distasteful, and her method of argument in this novel is one of them. She exaggerates and distorts the positions that she attacks, making them so ludicrous that her self-imposed task of demolishing them is easy. She polarises the possible economic views very strongly and puts all the decent characters on her side, and all the profiteers, scoundrels, weaklings and spongers on the other. If the argument were this easy, we'd all be libertarians. Naturally, in a novel as opposed to a philosophical treatise, the reader expects some simplification; but subtlety is also welcome. This is one reason why Gide and Sartre are far better novelists than Rand could aspire to be, and their novels make their philosophical points more strongly. The other thing that Rand does not do with her characters, which is almost effortless in Gide and done best by Sartre in his trilogy, it to develop the argument, to have the characters change over time as their understanding grows and circumstances move on. Rand's argument is merely repeated over and over, at what feels like louder and louder volume (as the situation deteriorates). Here, the choice of the science fiction genre is partly to blame, because by using the background to make her case for her, Rand makes it more difficult for herself to use character development to do so. The novel also includes about twenty pages of undiluted philosophical sermonising, in the form of a radio address; this is extremely dull and much better skipped.

It would be really easy to criticise Rand's philosophy as developed in Atlas Shrugged, but most arguments against it would really be a criticism of the novel. One which occurs to me however as a consequence of her oversimplified characters, which means that she equates capitalists with good men, socialists with bad. It is all too easy to see that good capitalists would help the world more than evil socialists, but it is hardly something with any relevance to the real world, where people are not so black and white. It should be remembered that unrestricted capitalism has fairly consistently led to exploitation of the work force, with slum accommodation and abuses like truck shops and child labour. (Even though these things have been eradicated from much of the West for most of the twentieth century, this has actually meant that manufacturing has largely moved elsewhere, in search of cheaper, exploitable labour.) Evil men are evil, whether capitalist or socialist, and the philosophy presented in Atlas Shrugged in no way takes account of this.

Criticisms like these do not prevent Atlas Shrugged from being a fascinating and thought provoking novel. The use of this edition to promote objectivism means that the novel over-sells itself; it is not as great a classic as the cover and introductory material make out. I don't really approve of the novel being so obviously used as a marketing device; it has forewords, afterwords, summaries of objectivism and even a response card. It does have a marvellous cover illustration, but I prefer literature to be literature and not a sales pitch.

Umberto Eco: Serendipities: Language and Lunacy (1998)

Edition: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999
Review number: 648

Some of Eco's essays in semiotics (those in Travels in Hyperreality, for example), are to me fairly impenetrable. The five in this collection are not like that. Concentrating on aspects of the history of linguistic thought, they show a wide ranging and brilliant mind, but are written in a lass academic style. (It was the vast array of references to writers that I had never read that was daunting.) They read more like they are notes related to one of Eco's novels, and are particularly close in style to the digressions in Foucault's Pendulum.

The reason for this is that all the essays except the first deal with a subject similar in many ways to the pursuit of the ultimate conspiracy which is the theme of that novel - the quest for the original language of mankind, or, more specifically, for that used by Adam to name the beasts of the earth in Genesis and that used by God to speak to him. This may seem to be an obscure subject, but it says something about the way that those who discussed it felt about the relationship between language and the physical world, and that is an issue of some importance in philosophy as well as being of interest in itself.

These essays are not particularly closely connected; each concentrates on a particular small part of the theme (Dante's views, for example, or the supposedly fundamental languages devised by eighteenth century philosophers) with little reference to the others. Each is interesting in itself, and a book which contained them all as chapters would probably be fascinating, though I found Serendipities rather on the bitty side.

The first essay, based on a lecture given to open the academic year at Bologna University, is rather different in nature. Entitled The Force of Falsity, its subject is influential lies of the past. Forgeries have had a surprisingly big effect on history, from the Donation of Constantine, used to bolster the claims of the Papacy to dominion over the secular rulers of medieval Europe, to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which inspired Hitler. Both these forgeries led to wars, but others had a positive effect; eastward and westward exploration by Europeans in the fifteenth century were inspired by erroneous beliefs - eastward by Prester John, westward by an incorrect estimate of the circumference of the globe. The latter, which was Columbus' inspiration, has itself been the victim of misrepresentation, as Eco points out - anti-clerical campaigners in the nineteenth century claimed that the reason Columbus travelled was to prove that the earth was round in defiance of established church doctrine; few educated people in 1492 would have believed in a flat earth.

None of the essays are about anything of earth shattering importance; all are interesting and determinedly erudite.

Paul Feyerabend: Farewell to Reason (1987)

Edition: Verso, 1987
Review number: 513

Farewell to Reason is a collection of essays on the subject of relativism. Though they were rewritten for inclusion in this volume, their independent origin still shows in a certain repetitiveness and in disparity of content - some are far more concentrated on a single theme than others (for example, some are criticisms of particular writers).

The essays pick on the same kinds of targets as Feyerabend's book Against Method, and attack the idea that science is a unified whole, with a single overriding method. Karl Popper is singled out for criticism, but much of what is said would apply to anyone who contrasts "scientific thinking" with other modes of thought (this is usually done do dismiss religious ideas).

Most of the criticisms that can be made of Against Method are also appropriate here. The rhetorical style of Feyerabend's argument, his use of Galileo as a paradigm of scientific method, and the use of counter examples from areas not always regarded as scientific such as economics are faults common to both. The essay form adds new problems, and some parts do not fit into the whole terribly well (notably the discussion of Aristotle's philosophy of mathematics, though it is interesting in itself). Neither Popper nor Feyerabend seem terribly convincing to me; while it is obvious that not all scientific thought is uniform, most practising scientists have quite similar ideas about what they are trying to do. These differ in details (such as the precise relationship between theory, experiment and whatever may count as underlying reality), but then philosophy does not interest many and certainly there are few who would let it affect their work.

The most interesting new point is part of the essay on Galileo and the church, in which Feyerabend parallels the attitude of Catholic cardinals then and the scientific establishment today. As the money and administrative side of scientific research grow every larger, it is more and more difficult to be a (successful, rather than starving) iconoclast. For science to have a religious orthodoxy of this kind is a bad thing, and we need people like Feyerabend to continually attack its genesis.

Paul Feyerabend: Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge (1975)

Edition: Verso, 1993
Review number: 408

Possibly Feyerabend's best known book, Against Method is basically an attack on the idea that science has a single, monolithic 'method', one which has stood the test of time and produced the 'advances' (the advance of science is a subsidiary target) leading to the science we know today. Instead of the close connection between ideas of rationality and scientific method on which many thinkers would base their understanding of science on, Feyerabend points out contradictory and irrational ideas, to his mind not just part of science but at its very core. They are particularly important, he believes, in the challenging of fundamental assumptions which leads to 'revolutions'.

A major part of the book is taken up with brilliant analysis of the example he uses to underpin most of his argument, the writings of Galileo in which he sought to establish the Copernican system as against the accepted Ptolemaic one, and in particular to prove that the earth moves despite immediate appearances.

Feyerabend exposes the logical poverty and propagandist nature of Galileo's argument most convincingly. However, there are reasons which make it a bad example to use as a paradigm of scientific practice. Firstly, it comes from an early period of modern science in which mathematics was not established as the language of argument. Galileo's writing has a literary nature more akin to what would today be considered philosophy rather than physics (the major work quoted by Feyerabend, the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, is modelled after the Socratic dialogues of Plato). To carry conviction, modern scientific reasoning is expected to be couched in mathematical terms, even if new mathematical ideas have to be introduced to express it. (Strong arguments can be introduced against this, though it is not Feyerabend's theme here; not least of these would be the important question as to why mathematics seems to so successfully model the universe.)

Secondly, few (if any) practising scientists today would cite Galileo as a paradigm for scientific reasoning. A hero, yes, but an example, no. To use him as the principal prop on which to base an attack on the scientific method does not make the attack significantly more convincing, particularly as Feyerabend occasionally tends to follow Galileo into propaganda. He does use examples other than this one, but they are not particularly convincing and often trivial (several optical illusions among them).

Feyerabend does have important things to say, but he has a tendency to make rather too much of them. The way in which scientists work is of course not monolithic, nor has it remained changeless over the last four centuries. Of course the assumptions underlying scientific thought need to be made clearer and are not unchallengeable. Of course scientists do not think as clearly in the heat of the moment as they may do later when formalising what they want to say for public consumption.

Niccolò Machiavelli: The Prince (1514)

Translation: George Bull, 1961
Edition: Penguin, 1977
Review number: 368

There are a few books whose fame is based more on a distorted picture of their contents than on those contents themselves. Examples include the abstraction of the "unities" from The Poetics, and, more recently, the relationship between the writings of Stanislavsky and the dogma of "method acting". The Prince has perhaps suffered more than these two from its reputation, for that reputation accuses Machiavelli of advising princes to act in a hardly honourable way. Machiavelli was so strongly disapproved of that he was frequently equated with the devil during the sixteenth century. This is thought to be the reason for the popularity of the name "Old Nick" in England at this time, for example, though it seems to pre-date Machiavelli in origin. He appears in various Elizabethan plays in this character, notably Marlowe's The Jew of Malta (under a punning version of his name, Make-Evil).

The reason for this disapproval was based around Machiavelli's abandonment of the ideal man of virtue for the man who wishes to succeed in the real world. He explicitly denies that he is writing about the idealised states beloved by ancient philosophers (Plato's Republic is probably the most famous); he is writing about things the way they are. "The gulf between how one should live and how one does live is so wide that a man who neglects what is actually done for what should be done learns the way to self-destruction rather than self-preservation."

This is the seed on which Machiavelli's reputation as a demon was built. For it amounts to a rejection of the teachings of the Christian church, and of the chivalric ideals of the later Middle Ages. The church told men that God would protect and bring honour to the virtuous; chivalry that virtue was the duty of the true knight his burden being to accept what his conduct brought upon him. (I am using the male gender because the idea of a successful female ruler was alien to Western culture for many years to come; England's Elizabeth I succeeded by being as manlike as she could manage.) Such high standards were never maintained; many rulers went beyond Machiavelli's teachings in cynicism and opportunistic behaviour (Philip IV of France is a good example). Machiavelli openly states that this sort of thing is the way to behave in advice aimed at rulers; this is what is shocking about The Prince.

The reason that Machiavelli states this so openly is because of the underlying assumptions he makes. To him, the aims of a ruler are, first and foremost, to retain posession of a kingdom - The Prince deals only with monarchial forms of government - and secondly to enhance his own standing as a ruler. His advice about morality is derived from these ideas. This presupposition is in contrast to the earlier idea that the aims of the ruler should be to honour God, to set an example of obedience to the church, to act as the fount of chivalry for his people, and so on.

Having seen how Machiavelli breaks with the past, the question that follows is how relevant is is writing to the present day, almost five centuries later. The way that nations work and rulers relate to them was already changing in the early sixteenth century; in some ways, the type of states that Machiavelli was writing about already belonged in the past. He still retained unquestioned the idea that the principal function of the prince is to lead the nation in war. Virtually nothing that does not ultimately pertain to warfare is given any attention. But as the modern economic structure developed, this swiftly changed so that finance and trade came to be the dominant factors. Today, too, we in the West live in a culture in which government is far more intrusive into our everyday lives. Custom and tradition are less important and more easily manipulated (principally through the popular media).

But although Machiavelli's understanding of the function of a ruler is today out of date, and with it much of the detail of The Prince (for example, the need to become an excellent hunter to practise skills needed in fifteenth century warfare), his cynical and pragmatic view of life has not. Indeed, it is perhaps the dominant philosophy of our age and is the natural consequence of accepting the idea that we do not answer to any "higher power" for the actions we perform. The methodology adopted by Machiavelli could be applied to almost any situation: first, decide what is to count as success; then look at various ways in which it is possible to act in terms only of whether they will increase chances of success. The word "only" is important; Machiavelli would have us ignore the conventions of morality except to remember that they will influence the way that others think of us, which itself may be an element of the criteria for success.

Roger Penrose: The Emperor's New Mind (1989)

Edition: Oxford University Press, 1989
Review number: 283

It is easy to lose track of what The Emperor's New Mind is about. It is intended as an examination of the claims of 'strong AI' from a fairly sceptical viewpoint (as the title indicates). The style aims at popular science, but it is difficult to follow and occasionally, I suspect, dauntingly full of complex mathematics (as a mathematician myself, I find this a little difficult to
tell).

The strong AI position is basically that it is possible for a sufficiently complex computer program to mimic the workings of an intelligent mind. In computer science terms, this is more precisely expressed by saying that the workings of the mind are algorithmic or computable in nature. Penrose's book naturally starts, then, with an explanation of these terms, together with a discussion of related ideas by Turing (the famous Turing test, and the Turing machine, which is one of the more accessible ways to define computability). He also talks about results showing that there are concepts which are not algorithmic in nature: the halting problem (there is no algorithm to determine in general if a computer program will ever complete its task) and Gödel's incompleteness theorem (which implies that there is no computer program which can mechanically prove every mathematical result about arithmetic). This first section ends with a digression into the lambda calculus, an alternative formulation of computability, which is extremely difficult to follow.

The second - and longest - section of The Emperor's New Mind is an exposition of the physics that Penrose expects to lie behind the aspects of the mind that would be non-algorithmic: quantum mechanics and, in particular, the resolution of the differences between quantum mechanics and relativity. (This is one of the most important and most difficult problems in modern theoretical physics.) He postulates that the way this incompatibility will be overcome will involve the incorporation of an asymmetric time element into the theory, and this requires a discussion of thermodynamics and entropy. (The question of why time appears to flow and many events seem irreversible when the major physical theories behind them are indifferent to the direction in which time flows is another important problem in today's physics.)

It is in this section, dealing admittedly with three of the most notoriously difficult parts of physics, that the limitations of Penrose's ability to write for the layman become apparent. His explanations seem to simplify in the wrong places, and complex mathematics is presented without sufficient textual exposition to make it palatable. He has not a great deal of space, but does tend to digress to explore areas of the theory that he finds interesting, but which are not relevant to his main theme. That would be fine in a book about quantum mechanics, for instance, but is misplaced when quantum mechanics is being introduced for another purpose.

Following a brief description of the physical construction of the human brain and some experiments to do with consciousness, Penrose rounds off the book with his explanation of how the brain might work, contrasted with the ideas of strong AI enthusiasts. He is not in fact particularly concerned to detail reasons for finding strong AI unlikely, but is more interested with coming up with a physical description of consciousness which would be intrinsically non-algorithmic in parts. He does list some arguments against strong AI, including a most interesting couple of pages about mathematical thought, often considered to be one of the most strongly algorithmic modes of consciousness (because mathematical writing uses a style which can make proofs look rather like algorithms).

The level of detail into which Penrose goes when explaining quantum mechanics and general relativity is unnecessary, and he would perhaps have been well advised to cut this section of the book considerably, expanding the final discussion about intelligence and consciousness instead. That discussion is, after all the main point that Penrose wants to make, the reason why he wrote the book. It is also the most interesting and lucid section. If you already know something about relativity and quantum mechanics, the rest of the book may well seem fascinating, but it cannot be recommended as an introduction to either subject.

If I have been rather critical of Penrose's writing, it is not because I disagree with his position on strong AI, but because I feel that his style is not suited to a popular approach. (I would tend to think strong AI unlikely on intuitive grounds - the way I think and feel doesn't seem mechanically determined to myself - and therefore I would say that the burden of proof lies with its proponents.)

Thomas Browne: Religio Medici (1643)

Edition: Renascence Editions, 1998
Review number: 170

Ever since reading Dorothy Sayers' Gaudy Night for the first time, and seeing how much pleasure the metaphysical poets and Thomas Browne gave her (through the enjoyment she assigned to her characters), I have wanted to read these works for myself. This year I have finally got round to doing so, and was not disappointed. They provide much the same kind of pleasure, in the images used and the linguistic invention in which the writers take such joy. This is perhaps to be expected in poetry, but much less so in prose (even seventeenth century prose), particularly when the subject under discussion is philosophy and theology.

There are many parallels with Gide's Fruits of the Earth, which I read only a short time before Religio Medici: both are written mainly in prose, a prose which reads like poetry; both have similar subject matter; both were written by comparatively young men. Browne's work is, naturally (given its date) more orthodox and (given Browne's nationality) more Protestant in outlook. However, Browne was not completely orthodox; he thought for himself and was not afraid to come to different conclusions from mainstream seventeenth century Anglican theology. (He is much more tolerant of Catholicism and other religions, for example.)

The joys of Religio Medici are in its beautiful language and Browne's humanity, his understanding and his insight. It is not surprising that it was loved by Lord Peter, and by many others.

André Gide: Fruits of the Earth / New Fruits of the Earth (1897/1935)

Edition: Penguin, 1970
Review number: 144

Fruits of the Earth is a strange little book - or, in this edition, two books, since New Fruits of the Earth is also included. Forty years separate the two parts, the first being written in Gide's twenties and the second in the late 1930s during his Communist phase. They both have a similar structure, consisting of anecdotes, poetry and exhortation apparently aimed at a certain Nathaniel, the personification of the reader. (The name is actually rejected in the second part as too mournful, a comment which I was unable to find a justification for looking in the Bible, the original source for it.) The purpose of the writing is to give instruction on a philosophy of life, a subject that Gide felt qualified to write about at such a young age because he had recently recovered from near-fatal tuberculosis.

The philosophy Gide is seeking to put forward us a kind of hedonism; it rejects the sophisticated urban pleasures, however, and counsels a joy in the simple things of life, particularly the countryside. The method Gide uses is a literary rather than pedagogic one; his most stringent exhortation is extremely poetic. In this, he comes across as the opposite in talents to Sartre, whose literature frequently fails to come across as anything more than propagandist exhortation.

The writers who most frequently came to my mind as I read this excellent, though strangely unattributed, translation, are D.H. Lawrence and Joris-Karl Huysmans, because of the subject matter, and Lawrence Durrell, because of the style. It also read as I would expect French poetry at the turn of the century to read, though my French is certainly not up to reading poetry. Done as well as this, the book is a better argument for its worldview than any logical exposition; it was certainly a stimulating yet comfortable one to read.

Roger Scruton: The Aesthetics of Music (1997)

Edition: Clarendon Press, 1997
Review number: 74

An academic survey of the philosophy of the aesthetics of music must cast its net quite wide. To try to understand the effects that music has on us, and how we distinguish music which has aesthetic effects from sound which does not. The subject, comprehensively surveyed by Roger Scruton, takes in psychology, musicology as well as general aesthetics and philosophy.

A basic knowledge of philosophy and of music is required, though not to such an extent as to exclude amateurs like myself. The discussion is clear, though some bias toward (for example) tonal music does come through. Some of the general aesthetic theory becomes quite hard going, but it is worth while for the understanding of the later music-related discussion.

It is not a book which will change the way I listen to music, but it has certainly shown me the variety of issues which any theory of musical aesthetics needs to answer.