Systems of truth and knowledge

Pitirim Sorokin

Pitirim Sorokin was one of the main sociologists of the 20th century, perhaps the best. One of his masterpieces is titled Social and Cultural Dynamics, where he makes an analysis of the history of civilizations parallel to that carried out independently by the philosopher Oswald Spengler, the historian Arnold J. Toynbee and the anthropologist A.L. Kroeber. In one of the 42 chapters of this work, Sorokin distinguishes seven systems of truth and knowledge, which can be grouped into three large groups:

1.      Ideational systems: they are based on the truth of faith. The principle of truth is God, who provides truth through revelation, divine inspiration, mystical experience, and so forth. In this group, Sorokin classifies three systems of truth and knowledge:

A new fine-tuning case and the “great design”

Almost every case of fine-tuning discussed so far concerns nuclear reactions and their consequences, in the realm of the very small. This is what could happen if the universal constants and parameters were not fine-tuned:

• Either there would be no hydrogen in the universe, and the stars would last too short a time for life to appear.
• Or the fusion of hydrogen to give helium would not be possible, so there would be no stars.
• Or oxygen or carbon, essential elements for life, would not be generated in stars.

In all these cases, concepts and ideas are drawn from particle physics, astronomy, and cosmology.

The principle of indifference

In several previous posts I have applied the principle of indifference, albeit I did not call it by that name.

• In the post The eerie silence I wrote this:

The probability of the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence is 50%. As we know nothing, this is equivalent to throwing a coin, and if it comes up heads, we say that we are alone; if tails, that we have company.

• In the post Relativism in science? I said this:

If we have no reason to assume that a theory is true or false, its probability should be close to 0.5... Theories about which we have no information, for or against, with a probability between 0.4 and 0.6. I will cite the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence, the possibility of building strong artificial intelligence, or the various theories of the multiverse.

Lavoisier, father of modern chemistry

Lavoisier

Antoine Laurent de Lavoisier is considered the father of modern Chemistry, having introduced the quantitative method into this science. In 1768, aged 25, he was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences. The astronomer Joseph Jérôme Lalande, who defended his candidacy, explained it this way:

A young man with knowledge, ingenuity, activity, whom fortune exempts from practicing another profession, would naturally be of great use to the sciences.

Indeed, his mother’s family inheritance allowed him to buy a position in a financial company called Ferme générale, whose members were responsible of collecting taxes on behalf of the king, a position he held until 1791 and which eventually led him to the grave. Here he met his future wife, Marie-Anne Paulze, whom he married in 1771 when she was 13, who became his best scientific collaborator.

Descriptions and explanations

Lavoisier

An example will illustrate the difference between these two concepts:

• Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier is considered the father of modern chemistry. His Traité Élémentaire de Chimie revolutionized many of the ideas that until then had dominated this science. However, when it comes to the chemical reactions it describes, this book is a mere catalogue. So we are told something like this:

If we mix oxygen gas and hydrogen gas and apply fire or an electric spark to the mixture, an explosion occurs and the result is water.

This is a description. It tells what happens but offers no explanation of the phenomenon.

Exploration of the solar system in science fiction

The exploration of the solar system is one of the classic themes of science fiction, although it is surpassed by the exploration of the galaxy, both in the number of works and in the variety of arguments to which it has given rise.

Among my favorite works on this subject I will cite the following:

• Exploration and colonization of the moon. Two novels that make a series: De la Terre à la Lune and Autour de la Lune by Jules Verne, whose protagonists circumambulate the moon, but are unable to land; and two short stories: The Singing Bell by Isaac Asimov and The Menace from Earth by Robert Heinlein. In the second there is a well-established base on the moon.

Richard Dawkins versus John Lennox

Richard Dawkins

At the age of fifteen I wrote my first book, with no intention of publishing, just for my personal use. It was a two-volume zoology of invertebrates. I still refer to it, although classifications have changed a lot, with the rise of cladistics and DNA analysis.

In 1977, this time with the intention of sending it to the printer, I wrote another book in English under the title Human cultures and evolution, where I proposed the following:

·         Cultural evolution is equivalent to biological evolution. Many properties are common to both fields. Human civilizations are equivalent to biological species and describe similar life curves. There is a cultural selection, equivalent to and very similar to natural selection, proposed by Darwin to explain the origin of the species.