The End of War

For several years I have been following the work of science journalist John Horgan, and anyone interested in the philosophy of science and/or examining contemporary scientific research from a skeptical perspective would benefit enormously by doing likewise. Among other things, Horgan has spent his career as a journalist deflating the grandiose claims of string theorists and refuting the pernicious theories advanced by various behavior geneticists and psychologists in support of the pseudoscientific doctrine of biological determinism. I highly recommend reading his illuminating books, The End of Science: Facing The Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age and The Undiscovered Mind: How the Human Brain Defies Replication, Medication, and Explanation in addition to his articles for Scientific American.

More recently, Horgan has focused his attention on the subject of war: its origins, effects, and possible abolition. His research on the topic has led to the publication of his newest book, The End of War. (Unfortunately, the release date closely coincided with that of Steven Pinker's latest deceptive tome, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, so it hasn't received the attention it deserves.) Contra the popular claims of evolutionary psychologists, Horgan aptly describes how the empirical evidence doesn't vindicate the genetic hypothesis regarding the origins of war, and why we have a legitimate reason to hope that warfare can be eliminated from human existence. Personally, I believe Horgan's fails to sufficiently take into consideration the significant extent to which the bourgeoisie and their political representatives act autonomously and will continue to engage in wars for ideological and economic hegemony wherever and whenever possible. He is also unduly dismissive of the Marxist theory of class warfare, but, coming from the conventional progressive background he does, it doesn't surprise me that he doesn't fully grasp these matters. Nevertheless, the following is an excellent lecture he gave regarding the themes covered in the book, which I encourage anyone interested in the subject to view:

Thank you for presenting John Horgan's ideas to the forum. I have also followed his excellent work for a couple of years now, particularly regarding his criticism of string theory (now re-branded as "M-theory") and the abstruse mathematical nonsense that pervades theoretical physics in general. I look forward to reading his latest book. Two sweeping deconstructions of string theory (and much of modern physics) can be found in Peter Woit's Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Search for Unity in Physical Law and Lee Smolin's The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next.

I read that article from the New York Times that you linked to as well as several others on and by Mr. Horgan, Celtiberian. I focused more on his opinions of the hard sciences and found them wanting. His opinions on psychology and other fields like that may be quite good, but I don't consider myself proficient enough in those fields to make a decision on them. He doesn't seem to be a bad journalist, but I consider his opinions flawed, especially his defense of common sense.

Red Aegis wrote:I read that article from the New York Times that you linked to as well as several others on and by Mr. Horgan, Celtiberian. I focused more on his opinions of the hard sciences and found them wanting. His opinions on psychology and other fields like that may be quite good, but I don't consider myself proficient enough in those fields to make a decision on them. He doesn't seem to be a bad journalist, but I consider his opinions flawed, especially his defense of common sense.

Horgan's contention with string theory (which I presume is what you take issue with) is basically that it's an untestable hypothesis—which is a rather serious problem for any field of research which seeks to claim the status of a hard science. Even if the elegant mathematical models behind string theory are accurate, all that proves is the theory possesses an internal logical consistency, but that doesn't necessarily indicate that it's reflective of reality.

It's un-testable as of the moment. It is not necessarily true that it will not be so in the future. If String Theory is the "bottom level" it should not be surprising that it is not provable in a deductive sense.

String theory is merely a mathematical placeholder for that which we simply cannot know, at the time at least, but I suspect for the foreseeable future as well (if ever). John Horgan's criticisms are perfectly valid and are hardly limited to his own "bias." A good number of theoretical physicists, such as those I have mentioned above, also take issue with the theory. Constructing elaborate mathematical models that are founded upon very little empirical evidence is simply not sufficient to carry scientific clout. If his critique of biological determinism is well-founded, I think it is fair to say that his challenge to modern physics might also have a solid foundation.

It is most unfortunate if this offends scientific dogmatists.

His opinions on biological determinism and his qualifications in that field have little to do with physics and the soundness of his opinions in that area. There are criticisms that can be made of String Theory, and the current lack of data and experiment is one of them. That does not mean, however, that there will never be the possibility of evidence. I'm sure that you could find several physicists that don't agree with String Theory since there are several competing explanations. What should concern everyone who takes his opinion seriously is that while he attacks a theory's current lack of experiments and the increasing un-check-ability of computer derived proof, he defends something as non-scientific as common sense.

They're still working the math out for String Theory, so experiments would be premature at the moment. I don't think that I've ever heard anyone credible say that the theory is complete and explains everything. Once they figure out which system works on paper, they can focus more energy on seeing if it in fact matches the world. How exactly they could do so eludes me and I would have to go to graduate school to give a better answer. I would say that he is being impatient.

As for his argument that there should be more funding into the other competing theories, I completely agree. The amount of funding that goes to scientific research is abysmal compared to military spending. I really don't see how what he was saying contradicts what I have said and agree with almost all of his remarks.