Description
Having imagined a machine-like world, scientists now haunt this machine uneasily. Their plight is paradoxical: They have realized their world only through intense mental effort, yet this effort finds no legitimate place in the world it so painstakingly comprehends. It seems “objectivity” only comes at a cost. Why, for example, is science unable to describe a smile? Why is the moral life of a physicist regarded as his or her own private affair?
This exclusion of human qualities from science has practical as well as theoretical consequences. If we systematically imagine a world in which human beings don’t exist, we will eventually create a world in which they can’t exist.
Few would question the fact that sense experience originally provided a firm basis for empirical natural science. Yet contemporary science has reduced the world to particles and forces that lie well beyond the reach of our human senses. The extraordinary—and alienating—fact is that human experience no longer has a place within our scientific worldview. The authors of this book have begun to unravel this paradox. They show that the concepts of modern physics such as mass, force, or velocity are deeply rooted in the experience of specific senses. Each of our senses is a gateway into a different aspect of the world. This insight throws a new light on the dilemmas of contemporary science, such as the wave-particle duality in quantum mechanics. By recognizing the essential role of sense perception in scientific knowledge, this highly readable book lays the foundations for a science that, while maintaining its rigorous methodology, can begin to incorporate the fullness of human experience into its domain.
“In this brilliant book, the authors build a fascinating bridge between science and the world of the senses, a bridge that holds great promise for overcoming the fragmentation and alienation that is so characteristic of our time.”—Fritjof Capra, author of The Tao of Physics and The Web of Life
Contents
Preface to the Second Edition
Acknowledgments
Preface
1. Two Smiles
The Scientific View
Inner Experience and the Outer Environment
2. The Deeper Roots of Materialism
Space, Matter, Time, Force, Energy
The Craftsman and the Scholar
The Relation of Materialism to Sense Experience
The Sense of Touch
The Somatic Sense
The Kinesthetic Sense
The Sense of Balance
The Body Reaches Out: Eyes
Galileo: Scholar and Craftsman
3. Changing Relations to Physical Reality
The Origins of Terrestrial and Celestial Mechanics
The Lonely Self
The Rise of Technology and the Concept of Energy
Electricity Challenges Mechanical Thinking
The Enigma of Quantum Reality
Relativity Theory Also Challenges Ordinary Thinking
Models and the Creation of Scientific Knowledge
4. Conscious Participation
A Thunderstorm and Acoustics
Scientific Thinking Leads to General Concepts
The Thunderstorm Again
The Two Roots of Vision
Looking at a Lake
Looking into Water—Reflections as Space Creators
Looking into Water—Visible and Tangible Objects
No Longer Coincide
Looking into Water—Color Aspects
In Search of Real Color
Geometrical Representations of Nonspatial Qualities
Independent Physical Principles Cooperate
A Visit to the Realm of Imaging
A Visit to the Realm of Chemical Action at a Distance
5. Science Coming of Age
Mathematical Physics: Exercise for
the Development of Sense-free Thinking
From Nature to Knowledge
The Objectivist Worldview
The Nature of the Physical World
Biology As a Science of Life
Holism
Morality and Choice in Science
Bibliography
Index
About the Authors
