Natural Road, Common vs. Private Experience, and Experimental Science

Orientation #

He recaps “the first reading in Aristotle’s first book of Natural Hearing” (scopus of natural philosophy, general before particular, confused before distinct) and says he “mentioned it last time” that the elements point towards matter (prev. lecture). He hands out a paper on the natural road as a whole, to be asked about “next time”. The class breaks off as he begins “the third reading” of the handout page on experience. The previous class worked through the confused-to-distinct opening of the Physics; the next opens with Paul VI and turns to the senses of “nature”.

The class, in order #

1. Aside: eye, ear, nose of the mystical body (“an eye or an ear or a nose”) #

Before the text: Thomas’s reading of Paul’s body-comparison in 1 Corinthians.

• Hands and feet = active life; eyes and ears = contemplative life. In the active life the eyes are the bishops (episcopal), the feet “the rest of us”, directed by the hands.
• In the contemplative life the eyes are the masters “like Thomas”, the ears the learners; this fits Aristotle in the Metaphysics: the eye is the sense of discovery, the ear the sense of being taught.
• The nose (a later text in Paul): those who are neither masters nor learners but, being near them, “get a little bit of the perfume”; e.g. visitors to a monastery who get “a whiff of the spirituality” without being able to sit down with John of the Cross.
• A student adds: the Cloud of Unknowing makes the nose the organ of discernment; he agrees.

2. Recap of Reading I and the handout on the natural road (“the scopus, the aim or the goal”) #

What the first reading taught: the goal of natural philosophy is to know natural things through their causes; the order is general before particular, because general is to particular as confused to distinct, and the confused is before the distinct in our knowledge (three kinds of signs given, touching other kinds of confused/distinct besides general/particular); the reason is that the confused is more known to us, the distinct more known by nature, along “the inborn or natural road”. “One of the most important texts” where Aristotle elaborates this aspect of the road. The handout (about ten copies): since Aristotle nowhere gathers his remarks on the natural road, it gives the whole picture: what a road in knowledge is (a before and after); what the first road is and why; why one must see every before-and-after on it; the kinds of before-and-after: (a) of different kinds of knowing (sensing before memory, memory before experience), (b) of the order in which different things are known (sensible before non-sensible), (c) of the order in which one and the same thing is known; then (pp. 5–6) more known to us vs more known by nature; then (p. 7 on) common consequences. Left with them for questions next time.

3. Does “general before particular” hold for every science? Boethius on how natural philosophy proceeds (“proceeds rationabiliter, reasonably”) #

Point: the reason given in Reading I might seem to apply to any reasoned-out knowledge, but the natural road is followed especially in natural philosophy.

1. In Thomas’s commentary on Boethius’s De Trinitate (“a tremendous work”; Msgr Dionne joked that he doubted the same Boethius wrote it and the other work), Boethius says with “the brevity of wisdom”: natural philosophy proceeds rationabiliter, mathematics disciplinabiliter, wisdom intellectualiter; Thomas devotes a whole article to each word.
2. Thomas distinguishes two senses of “reasonably”; the one applying to natural philosophy is named from the nature of reason, which is to get its knowledge from the senses.
3. Natural philosophy is the closest to the senses — Aristotle in antiquity, Einstein in the 20th century: it “begins and ends in the senses”. Conclusion: the natural road (confused to distinct) is followed most of all, not only, in natural philosophy. Test on geometry: the geometer does treat triangle before equilateral, quadrilateral before square or rhombus, but geometry as a whole goes from the simple to the composed (plane before solid), whereas natural philosophy as a whole goes from change in general to its kinds.

4. The orders of consideration of the three sciences (“from the simple to the composed”) #

Point: each part of philosophy has its own order of consideration (“order of determination”); it is a mistake to proceed the same way in every part (Thomas, Boethius, Aristotle).

• Natural philosophy: (i) general to particular; (ii) towards matter (“its elements” in the first paragraph = the cause called matter), and this twice: Natural Hearing → On the Universe → Generation and Corruption, then the soul studied first in a kind of abstraction from the body, then the more bodily aspects of living things.
• Geometry (Euclid, “my master”): (i) simple to composed: square before cube, circle before sphere — the cube is not a form of square but composed of six squares, the sphere is a circle rotated; (ii) equal to unequal: species of triangle given equilateral, isosceles, scalene; quadrilateral square, oblong, rhombus, rhomboid, “less and less equalities”; axioms of equality first, then the axiom of inequality (whole greater than part); Pythagorean theorem (equality, ends Book I) before the theorems of the obtuse and acute triangle (greater than / less than, end of Book II), and the equality theorem is used to prove the inequality theorems. “There may be some exceptions … but for the most part.”
• Wisdom: seems like natural philosophy in taking the communia (being, act, ability) before separate substances, but better described as going towards the immaterial: first what can be in matter but need not be, then what cannot be material. Within the common things, Book IX takes act and ability first as found in changing things, then rises to a completely universal consideration that fits immaterial things; Books VII–VIII say things of material substance and lead up to a general notion of substance; “the one” begins as the beginning of number and reaches the one convertible with being. So wisdom goes less universal to more universal and away from matter — “exactly the opposite” of natural philosophy; and theology, since God, the last thing known, is the simplest, starts from the composed — the opposite of geometry.
• Summa contra Gentiles shows revealed theology and natural theology reversed in order. Order of consideration is only one of seven ways sciences differ in proceeding, and belongs to “the third road”; the present topic is the first road.

5. Common and private experience defined (“all men have and cannot avoid having”) #

Point: a distinction “of universal importance”, like confused/distinct (which grounds why we define and divide); needed for philosophy of nature, experimental science and theology (“the reading from Paul VI”).

• Common experience: two parts — all men have it, and cannot avoid having it. Pleasure and pain: no way to live without hunger, bumps, some pain. Whole and part: unless you take your steak in one gulp and your beer in one swallow, or breathe in the whole atmosphere rather than a part, you experience whole and part.
• Private experience: which only some men have (even one). “Avoidable” is not in the definition, since not always true — a car breaks your leg without your choosing. Acquired by experiment, prolonged experience, special effort and tools, or chance exposure. Men will never experience giving birth. His example: as a boy only male cats; his daughter’s female cat had kittens, her cat book said each kitten goes to its own nipple; he tracked one oddly-marked kitten and found it always went to the same one — nature avoiding “chaos” in feeding seven at once. He now has an experience of cats not everyone has; others have it of canaries, parrots, kinds of dogs.

6. “Philosophy of nature” in the narrow sense (“Did you register for a lab”) #

Point: the term is used for the part of the study of nature based on common experience; “experimental sciences” for the part based on private experience.

• Wider sense: Newton’s Principia Mathematica Naturalis Philosophiae; Scottish departments still called “natural philosophy”; natural philosophy (Greek word) and natural science (Latin) were once synonyms.
• Narrow sense (handout, third paragraph): parts of philosophy that require no private experience, developed by the early Greeks and Plato and ordered by Aristotle in the eight books of “hearing about nature” (his translation: Natural Hearing) and the three books about the soul (De Anima) — eleven books understandable by common experience alone. Hence no lab: not because the course needs no experience but because it rests on experience “you already have and can’t avoid having”; a lab tries to get a bit of the experience not everybody has.
• Syllogism from Reading I: knowledge from common experience is more general than knowledge from private experience; the general is known before the particular; so knowledge from common experience comes before knowledge from private experience. Pleasure and pain in general — everyone can discuss; which is worse, a broken leg or childbirth — only someone with both.
• Caution: as general/particular is only one kind of confused/distinct, so common/private must not be identified with general/particular: triangle vs equilateral triangle is general vs particular with no difference of experience.

7. Bohr: the two tasks of science (“extend the range of our experience”) #

Point: Bohr’s opening remark states the two parts of experimental science and, by contrast, what philosophy of nature does not do. Biographical setting: Bohr began modern atomic theory in 1913 applying the quantum to the atom; the “Bohr Festival” lectures in Germany, where young Heisenberg objected, Bohr kept looking at him, then took him on a two-hour walk that shaped all his later thinking; the Copenhagen institute (Heisenberg, Oppenheimer, Gamow; many later Nobel laureates; “filial reverence” of Pauli and Heisenberg); Einstein a loner, Bohr gregarious; Bohr rewrote his essays endlessly.

1. “The task of science is both to extend the range of our experience and to reduce it into order” = the empirical part (Greek word for experience; gaining experience not everybody has, by experiment or prolonged observation) and the theoretical or mathematical part (reducing it to order).
2. Contrast: the fundamental parts of philosophy do not extend experience but understand the experience we already have — of change in Natural Hearing, of being alive (our common inward experience) in the books about the soul.
3. “Reduce experience to order” is strange: Aristotle finds order in things; a learned friend confirmed it is no exaggeration. Explanation: physics orders experience by mathematics worked out independently of the natural world, so order is brought in from mathematics rather than found — “a very strange kind of knowledge”.
4. Division of labour, empirical vs theoretical physicists (a book in his office co-written by one of each): the experience grounding a theory is often not the theorist’s own — Michelson–Morley, not Einstein, for special relativity; Eddington’s eclipse team after the First World War confirming general relativity, Einstein replying “I knew it would be”; Heisenberg under Sommerfeld with empirical and theoretical physicists responsible for his degree; Bohr going down to the lab to encourage “the boys”, breaking something; the Assumption biologist whose first graduate course was on how to use his instrument; the joke that equipment blew up because Pauli was in the train depot; de Broglie’s wave mechanics mocked (“Comédie Française”), backed by Einstein, confirmed at Bell Labs in New York before Europe. Stressed: “strange as it may seem”, human belief is more necessary for experimental science than for philosophy — the theoretical physicist believes the empirical physicist; a chemistry or biology textbook contains statements its teacher could not have experienced. Not so in philosophy of nature, where everybody has the experience.

8. Heisenberg: general and specific experience (“Who cannot be betrayed with a plot”) #

Point: Heisenberg (Gifford lectures, published as Physics and Philosophy) makes “somewhat the distinction we’ve made”.

1. “Since the time of Galileo the fundamental method of natural science had been the experiment”, which lets one pass from general to specific experience — his general/specific ≈ common/private.
2. Slight exaggeration: a biologist observing a bird in its habitat day after day also acquires a specific experience without experiment; what is characteristic of the physical sciences is the experiment.
3. Experiment = subjecting nature to something not found in nature so that something is revealed — as one tests character by contrived circumstances: the film of CIA candidates told to relax at an estate while secretly tested; the party joke of the woman who said yes to a million dollars and was then offered twenty (“we know what you are, we’re just telling you about the price”); in All’s Well That Ends Well Parolles (≈ “words” in French) captured by disguised comrades and disgraced — “Who cannot be betrayed with a plot?”
4. Second statement: some statements of ancient philosophy are “rather nearer” to modern science — not that they reached it — showing how far one gets by combining ordinary experience (≈ common experience) without experiment and the effort to bring logical order to it from general principles.
5. Terminology: Heisenberg’s general/specific; others’ common/special; his own common/private. Both Bohr and Heisenberg see that the scientist’s experience needs sophistication, effort, special tools and training. Class breaks off: “Now, the third reading is from…”

His words #

• scopus: the aim or goal of a science (natural philosophy: to know natural things through their causes).
• natural road / inborn road: an order of before and after in our knowledge, from confused to distinct, more known to us to more known by nature [ed.: via naturalis].
• Natural Hearing: his rendering of the eight books of “hearing about nature” [ed.: Physics].
• rationabiliter / disciplinabiliter / intellectualiter: Boethius: natural philosophy proceeds reasonably, mathematics learnably, wisdom in an understandable way.
• order of consideration / order of determination: the sequence in which a science takes up its subjects.
• wisdom: Aristotle’s Metaphysics; “ability” [ed.: potency]; communia, the common things (being, act, ability).
• common experience: experience all men have and cannot avoid having.
• private experience: experience only some men have (Heisenberg: “specific”; others: “special”).
• philosophy of nature (narrow sense): study of natural things for which common experience suffices; experimental sciences: the part requiring private experience.
• empirical part / theoretical (mathematical) part: Bohr’s two tasks: extend experience; reduce it to order.
• experiment: subjecting nature to something not found in nature so that something is revealed.
• belief (human): the theoretical physicist’s reliance on what empirical physicists have done.

Texts #

Read in class

• Berquist handout on common and private experience (“second page”), first three paragraphs; Note for Book One, Reading Ten, p. 12.
• Bohr, opening remark of his essays: “the task of science is both to extend the range of our experience and to reduce it into order”.
• Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy (Gifford lectures): the passage beginning “Since the time of Galileo”.
• Berquist handout on the natural road (structure described, not read).

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Natural Hearing (Physics) I, Reading I; Aquinas commentary lectio 1 (verified source).
• Paul, 1 Corinthians (body of Christ) with Thomas’s commentary; Aristotle, Metaphysics (eye vs ear); Cloud of Unknowing.
• Thomas, commentary on Boethius, De Trinitate (the three adverbs).
• Euclid, Elements Books I–II (inferred); Newton, Principia Mathematica Naturalis Philosophiae.
• Aristotle, Metaphysics VII–IX; Aristotle, On the Universe, On Generation and Corruption, On the Soul.
• Thomas, Summa contra Gentiles (order of revealed vs natural theology).
• Paul VI, “the reading from Paul VI” (on theology).
• Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well; Einstein on science beginning and ending in the senses.

His questions #

• Is the reason for “general before particular” applicable to any reasoned-out knowledge? Only in so far as it belongs to the natural road, which natural philosophy follows most of all, being closest to the senses.
• Is geometry really from the general to the particular? Partly (triangle before equilateral), but as a whole from simple to composed and equal to unequal.
• Is there any way to live without experiencing pleasure and pain, or whole and part? No; that is what makes such experience common.
• Why is there no lab for this course? Because it is based on experience you already have and cannot avoid having.
• Which is worse, a broken leg or giving birth? Only someone with both experiences could say; left open.
• Is Bohr’s “reduce our experience to order” an exaggeration? No (a learned friend confirmed): physics brings order from mathematics rather than finding it in things.
• Was the Michelson–Morley experiment conducted by Einstein? No; the theorist’s starting experience is not his own — hence belief is more necessary in experimental science.
• What Shakespeare play tests a man by a plot? All’s Well That Ends Well, Parolles.