Customer Reviews

The Open Universe: An Argument for Indeterminism From the Postscript to The Logic of Scientific Discovery

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I started this book expecting to disagree with it. Although I am not a full-fledged determinist, if I was forced to choose between determinism and indeterminism or "free will," I would choose determinism, because the other side of the question is so often used to defend utopian social ideals. If human beings have free will, then (so it is argued), just about any social system, whether laissez-faire or communism, syndicalism or anarcho-capitalism, becomes possible. I regard this way of rationalizing political and social ideology as palpably dishonest. Whether human beings are "determined" or not, they do in fact exhibit certain very definite tendencies of behavior and reaction which make them, within certain parameters, predictable, so that, if you study human nature and society long enough, you will easily understand why all these systems will never happen, and that only hybrid systems are at all possible. The other problem I have with indeterminism is that it goes against the grain of scientific methodology. Scientific knowledge is based on the premise of determinism. In short, science practices a form of methodological determinism.

Popper addressed both my concerns, fully admitting their legitimacy but arguing that they don't necessarily contracdict his indeterminist thesis. The criticism of free will by Hobbes, Spinoza, and Hume, Popper admits, is "sound." But, he insists, that,in and of itself,doesn't establish scientific determinism, and it is scientific determinism that he alone is combatting. As for methodological determinism, Popper again admits its validity, but denies the "metaphysical" conclusions that are so frequently derived from it. Since science is always "incomplete," there is no validity in arguing from a useful method to a dogmatic theory about the universe.

Popper's arguments for indeterminism are very brilliant and convincing--certainly a lot better than that wretched argument cooked up Murray Rothbard and propagated by Ayn Rand's followers. Popper stresses the inability to grasp, in a deterministic sense, human creativity, and then goes on to argue that the problem of self-prediction leads determinism to absurdity.

It is always refreshing to come across a book that is actually rational enough to change one's mind. Most philosophy books generally are of the preaching-to-the-choir variety: if you agree with their conclusions, you will think them brilliant; if you don't, you will regard them as silly and inept. Popper is a cut above these mere rationalizing philosophers. His books are addressed to those who are sincerely interested in learning the truth about the universe. As for those who desire merely to have their own pet ideas reinforced, they should look elsewhere.

I am a big Popper fan, but this book is out-of-date, although it contains valuable information.

Popper's arguments for indeterminism are based on the body-mind distinction: 'physicalism (or the philosophy of the identity of mind and body) is absurd.'
G. Edelman explains clearly in his brilliant book 'Bright Air, Brilliant Fire' that mind is a matter of matter. Consciousness is an emerging characteristic of life after a long evolution.
Popper's system of 3 Worlds is also flawed (World 1: physical world - brain physiology; World 2: subjective thought - human consciousness; World 3: objective thought - theories), because World 1 and 2 are the same.

His arguments against philosophical and scientific determinism are powerful, but scientifically speaking Laplace's demon is a joke. As Steven Hawking explains in John Boslough's 'Steven Hawking's Universe': 'Even if we do achieve a complete unified theory, we shall not be able to make detailed predictions in any but the simplest situations.'
Predictions will be limited to the extreme and determinism will be non-existant in brain physiology (Mozart's G minor symphony could not have been predicted). Indeterminism will be all the more true in the social sciences (historicism).
Indeterminism is a cardinal characteristic of matter: all singular events in this world are unique, free.

It is very strange that some of the brightest scientific minds (Einstein, Schroedinger) were staunch defenders of determinism (see Popper's discussions with Einstein on p. 90-92).
The fact that Einstein changed his mind at the end of his life is not confirmed in M. Jammer's book 'Einstein and Religion'.

On the other hand, Popper's remark on the arrow of time is to-the-point: 'As to the arrow of time, it is in my opinion a mistake to make the second law of thermodynamics responsible for its direction. Even a non-thermodynamic process, such as the propagation of a wave from a centre, is in fact irreversible.'

Very important is note 3 on p. 43. J. von Neumann, H.H. Goldstine: 'a mathematical formulation necessarily represents only a (more or less explicit) theory of some phase (or aspect) of reality, not reality itself.'

I recommend this book only for Popper fans.

I do not have to tell any of you philosophically inclined amazon shoppers how much a quagmire the determinism/indeterminism problem has been in philosophy. As long as philosophers have been doing philosophy, there has been opinion after opinion on the subject, some decent, most not.

Here comes Karl Popper (in my opinion, one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century) to offer his two cents. While I am a very big Popper fan, I did not come away from this book as satisfied as I could have been. The title promises a 'case for indeterminism' and at best, all we get is a "case why if the world is determined, we couldn't know that anyhow." Let me explain.

Popper sums determinism thus: Determinism is the beleif that future states of the universe are completely inevitable, as every effect proceeds inexorably from causes by static laws of nature. A crucial part of determinism, says Popper, is the belief that had we 'sufficient' knowledge of a past moment and the causal laws of the universe, we could predict with pinpoint accuract any future state of the world, as the future state would come inevitably from those unwavering cause/effect laws of nature.

In this book, Popper attacks the second part of this book - the view that so long as we have 'sufficient' knowledge of the physical coordinates of a point in time, and of the relevant scientific 'laws,' we could predict a future state. He does this in two ways. First, the fact is that this idea is untestable. If we predict a future state and get it wrong, we can ALWAYS say that the information we had was not sufficient enough, and that even though we got the prediction wrong,it is only owing to our imperfect information (rather than, as plausibly, a not-completely-determined universe). Second, Popper suggests (rightly, in my opinion) that COMPLETE accuracy is something of a chimera. To predict a happening with COMPLETE accuracy, one would need to predict it down to the smallest measurement of time - down to the smallest measurement of space. But we have no reason to believe there exist an ABSOLUTELY SMALLEST measure of either of these two things (even though there might be a smallest-we-can-get-thus-far).

These arguments are suprisingly solid (and when I've talked with determinists, they try and skirt these questions like the plague). The problem is that this is in no way a CASE FOR INDETERMINISM, as Popper wants it to be. Even if he has shown that we can not or could not successfully predict the future in any exactitude, this leaves determinism unscathed. The only thing it does is shows that even if determinism were true, we couldn't quite KNOW it (because we lack the type of omnipotence needed to know that we know it).

That, in addition to the fact that pointing out a problem for determinists does not, in any way, make a de jure case for indeterminism (just as criticizing theory A does not automatically mean we should accept B). Popper even admits to this early in his book when he suggests that neither option - determinism or indeterminism - really make all that much sense. Determinism would mean that everything (including us making up our minds on the determinism/indeterminism problem) is completely determined in advance. Indeterminism means that somewhre, there must be causes that are themselves uncaused, or, random). Either way, any answer offered beomes very bizarre very fast, and Popper gives us little reason to think indeterminism any more sensical than determinism (other than intuitional arguments).

So after reading this, I am left as I was: scratching my head and wondering whether the determinism/indeterminism problem will ever be solved. My guess? It won't, as the question seems bigger than what we can get after in our first-person viewpoints (and as William James said, if we are determined, we may just be determined to 'feel' free, which would render a 'real' solution impossible). While Popper has made some decent and original arguments highlighting problems for determinism, anyone picking up this book expecting a 'case for indeterminism' (as the title suggests) will be disappointed. All we get is a 'case why even if determinism is true, we couldn't know it as such.'

I picked up this book because of my interest in skepticism, epistemology, and the philosophy of science. I was familiar with the author (previously having written about him in my undergraduate thesis, "the Afterlife of Memory"). That being said, I was impressed not only by the meticulous thinking for which Popper is famous, but also by the applicability of some of the issues raised to my chosen field of Business Analysis.

As a Business Analyst, I occasionally encounter two types of resistance to the profession. First, there are those who reject the discipline from fear of a loss of freedom; this is quite fashionable amongst those who misunderstand "Agile" to be a rejection of all documentation and process. The second form comes as doubt, essentially stating that we can't know that the work products I produce are True, or even stating that they must be necessarily incomplete, and, therefore, useless.

In the Open Universe, Popper argues that no theory (even the physical sciences) can reduce the world to a causally determined system, thus freedom (especially where it counts: creative behavior) can never be eliminated from human experience.

He also discusses the role of abstractions (in Popper's term: World 3), such as process descriptions and other documentation, which are bound to be incomplete and possibly even wrong. Here he reminds us that in ~3,000 years of human inquiry, including many valiant attempts to reduce the world to a simple system of rules (e.g. Unified Theory), we have almost universally failed. Nevertheless, the act of trying has had a powerful effect on our ability to manipulate the material world. Our knowledge may be incomplete -- in fact the very act of attempting to perfect our knowledge seems always to lead us to discover new problems that unravel what once was thought of as an almost completed understanding.

As a BA, I don't consider myself a scientist searching for the Truth, but rather a facilitator, assisting communities in articulating a shared understanding, so they can examine their assumptions, and attempt to improve the impact they collectively have on the world (Popper's World 1).

I enjoyed reading this book. Sometimes the detailed examples from the history of physics were tough to follow, but the main argument was fascinating, and surprisingly pertinent to me as a Business Analyst.