As
with screws (and screwdrivers) so with the universe. It’s
complicated and multi-layered. It is composed of different sorts of
things that belong to different classes of things (and some that
probably aren’t “things” at all). Asteroids, planets and stars
are at the same time different and similar. While asteroids (or at
least many of them) are composed of rocks of various compositions,
stars (according to NASA) are “giant balls of hot gas”. Some
planets are made of rock, some are mainly gases and fluids. So far,
so different. But at a certain level of abstraction they are all
composed of atoms organised in certain ways. Stars are composed of
hydrogen and helium (at least for the most part). In the case of our
own planet, which we obviously know best, it is composed of atoms of
iron and nickel (in alternating solid and liquid layers) surrounded
by silicate rocks (rich in iron and magnesium) topped off by a solid
crust. What sort of tool could be used to study such things? Well,
much of this particular type of stuff (at least of Earth) can be
observed directly or indirectly. It can be measured, poked and
prodded. Different bits can be collected and compared. So, at a basic
level, this kind of stuff here on Earth, and what turns out to be the
fairly similar stuff beyond Earth, can be studied using the tools of
the physical sciences. But problems arise when we apply these tools
inappropriately.
What
kind of thing is a beetle or a chihuahua
or an elephant? Clearly, just like a planet or a star, all of these
can be thought of as material objects, and as such are composed of
atoms. And yet it turns out that certain atoms, organised in a
certain way, give rise to new types of things, or at least new types
of properties, that don’t seen to be well suited to study by the
physical sciences. So if you took the beetle, ground it up, did a
chemical analysis, and worked out the proportions of different types
of atoms, would you know everything there was to know about the
beetle? Of course not. And arguably you will have missed all the
really important things. Because the tools of the physical sciences
aren’t enough. You need the tools of the life sciences. And you
need a whole new array of concepts, like the concept of information
to explain what that was encoded in the atoms of the beetle’s DNA,
and with it concepts like replication, protein synthesis, ion
transfer, let alone concepts like homeostasis, locomotion and
reproduction. All of these, and whole new sets of tools, are needed
to study beetles (and chihuahuas etc).
But
what about persons? Think about a single individual human being. We
could again simply grind them up, and work out their chemical
constituents (65% oxygen, 18% carbon and so on; see here). As far as
atoms go, these are exactly the same sort as those encountered in
planets and beetles. And yet this is perhaps an even less
satisfactory account than that of the chemical constitution of the
beetle. So we could apply all those additional tools of the life
sciences. And yet would we really want to claim we understood that
particular person? Because we would still be missing a number of
their vital aspects. Assuming the individual we have selected is just
like you and me, then we know that as well as being an object (a
thing made of stuff that can be prodded and poked), they are a
subject. They have an interior life and a personal perspective, the
have motives, desires and beliefs; we know this, because it is true
of us. They (and we) will come to a time when this ceases to be the
case (i.e. when they are dead). At that time our physical analysis
will largely still stand (at least for a short period). But we all
know that in a real sense they (and we when it happens to us) will be
fundamentally different from how they were in life. Something that
was present will at that time no longer be present. So it looks like
we now need a further and distinct set of tools and concepts,
including those of neurology and psychology. But what about all that
first-person, personal perspective stuff? What is a motive, purpose,
desire or belief? What kind of tools do we need to study these?
It
gets more complicated still. Because the the odd thing about people
is that usually they do not exist in isolation and only function as
individual specimens. All the healthy human individuals ever
encountered, have existed and do exist within a dense network of
relationships with other human individuals (and occasionally
non-human ones). If we don’t study this aspect of being, with yet
another set of appropriate tools, we will miss something vital. And
emerging from and produced by these networks comes lots of stuff we
haven’t classified yet. Things like football scores, paper money,
political manifestos and poems. What kind of things are these? What
sort of tools do we need to investigate them? It’s clear that the
tool of the physical sciences that we started off with have little or
no purchase on these “things”.
Which
of these various levels is the most important? Which type of description and set of tools is the most useful. The real answer is
that it depends. One could probably make an argument for each one of
them in turn. But if the experts at any one level were to claim that
only their descriptions and explanations, generated by the tools
appropriate for their level of analysis, were the true ones, and all
the others were somehow wrong, or illusions, or were so unimportant
that they could be ignored, we would quietly smile and assume they
were after a big pay rise. What we wouldn’t do is take this type of
claim seriously. It would be as bizarre as insisting I can tackle any type of screw with a watchmaker's screwdriver.
And
we haven’t got to arguably the most interesting and important level of all yet and its appropriate tools. Theology will have to wait for a
different post.
