A dear friend of mine sent me this five-minute Youtube video about two years ago in which Richard Feynman talks about doubt, uncertainty and religion. I like it a lot and have therefore quoted it many times since.

I was excited when I found a lecture yesterday Feynman gave as part of a lecture series in 2011. A transcript of the speech was posted on a blog, and after reading it on the airplane today and decided to repost it.

There are some typos in the original transcript, I corrected a couple, but it is a very long text, and I’m sure you’ll be able to read it, even with some mistakes in it.

Some things I don’t agree with, but there are many things we can learn a lot from. I will post the most important quotes first – if you’re in a hurry, at least read these – and then post the whole lecture below the excerpt.

Excerpt:

‎If you ask [any scientist] intelligent questions — that is, penetrating, interested, honest, frank, direct questions on the subject, and no trick questions — then he quickly gets stuck. It is like a child asking naive questions. If you ask naive but relevant questions, then almost immediately the person doesn’t know the answer, if he is an honest man. It is important to appreciate that.
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“If in doubt, err on the side of caution.”
- Blaise Pascal (see Pascal’s Wager)

The one thing which we seek with insatiable desire is to forget ourselves, to be surprised out of our propriety, to lose our sempiternal memory and to do something without knowing how or why; in short to draw a new circle. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. The way of life is wonderful.
It is by abandonment.

How often must we learn this lesson? Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations. The only sin is limitation. As soon as you once come up with a man`s limitations, it is all over with him. Has he talents? has he enterprises? has he knowledge? It boots not. Infinitely alluring and attractive was he to you yesterday, a great hope, a sea to swim in; now, you have found his shores, found it a pond, and you care not if you never see it again.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson. “Circles: An Essay.”

Source: Great Literature Online via S.

“Debates about scientific realism are centrally connected to almost everything else in the philosophy of science, for they concern the very nature of scientific knowledge. Scientific realism is a positive epistemic attitude towards the content of our best theories and models, recommending belief in both observable and unobservable aspects of the world described by the sciences. This epistemic attitude has important metaphysical and semantic dimensions, and these various commitments are contested by a number of rival epistemologies of science, known collectively as forms of scientific antirealism. This article explains what scientific realism is, outlines its main variants, considers the most common arguments for and against the position, and contrasts it with its most important antirealist counterparts.”

Source: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-realism/

(Thanks, Benedikt)

All organized bodies are composed of parts, similar to those composing inorganic nature, and which have even themselves existed in an inorganic state; but the phenomena of life, which result from the juxtaposition of those parts in a certain manner, bear no analogy to any of the effects which would be produced by the action of the component substances considered as mere physical agents. To whatever degree we might imagine our knowledge of the properties of the several ingredients of a living body to be extended and perfected, it is certain that no mere summing up of the separate actions of those elements will ever amount to the action of the living body itself.

– John Stuart Mill (1872). A System of Logic (Bk III, Ch. 6, Sec. 1, 8th edn), Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer

” ‘Refinement’ is what characterizes our intellectualist philosophies. They exquisitely satisfy that craving for a refined object of contemplation which is so powerful an appetite of the mind. But I ask you in all seriousness to look abroad on this colossal universe of concrete facts, on their awful bewilderments, their surprises and cruelties, on the wildness which they show, and then to tell me whether ‘refined’ is the one inevitable descriptive adjective that springs to your lips.

Refinement has its place in things, true enough. But a philosophy that breathes out nothing but refinement will never satisfy the empiricist temper of mind. It will seem rather a monument of artificiality. So we find men of science preferring to turn their backs on metaphysics as on something altogether cloistered and spectral, and practical men shaking philosophy’s dust off their feet and following the call of the wild.”

– William James, Pragmatism, 1907

I’m too tired to write a proper review, and you all know discworld novels anyway. “Monstrous regiment” is a decent one that is definitely worth reading.

“Life was a process of finding out how far you could go too far, and you could probably go too far in finding out how far you could go.”

“The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they’ve found it.”

“You take a bunch of people who don’t seem any different from you and me, but when you add them all together you get this sort of huge raving maniac with national borders and an anthem.”

“The difficulty in philosophy is to say no more than we know.”

– Ludwig Wittgenstein

Andere Leute haben sich an anderer Stelle ausführlich (und um vieles qualifizierter, als ich das könnte) mit Konrad Lorenz und dessen Verwicklungen mit nationalsozialistischen Ideen befasst. Darum soll es hier heute nicht gehen. “Die Rückseite des Spiegels – Versuch einer Naturgeschichte menschlichen Erkennens”, 1973 erschienen, kann gewissermaßen als Hauptwerk des späten Lorenz’ verstanden werde, der hier nochmals viele ältere Ideen aufgreift und zusammenfasst, relativ losgelöst aus einem früher vorhandenen ideologisch gefärbten Hintergrund.

Das Buch enthält einige fachliche Fehler, am auffallensten ist mit Sicherheit die regelmässige Nennung “arterhaltender” evolutionärer Prozesse (er verwendet das Wort ‘Gruppenselektion’ zwar im Buch kein einziges Mal, aber doch sind zumindest die am Ende des Buches ausgeführten, komplexeren Gedankenmuster nur auf einer solchen Basis sinnvoll zu verstehen). Das hat dafür gesorgt, dass Lorenz heute in der universitären Biologie keinen Platz im Lehrplan mehr findet. Auch den auf die Spitze getriebenen stetige Vergleich zwischen evolutionären und gesellschaftlichen, kulturellen Prozessen finde ich unplausibel, obschon er zum Nachdenken anregt, gerade weil viele richtige Prämissen den Gedanken zugrunde liegen.

All dem zum Trotze enthält das Buch viele spannende Ideen, von denen ich hier einige abbilden möchte.

Abschließend muss erwähnt werden, dass mein Interesse an Lorenz nicht zuletzt durch seinen Schüler und meinen ehemaligen Professor Norbert Bischof herrührt, der seinen ehemaligen Mentor regelmäßig zitiert hat. Beide haben einen ähnlich belehrenden, ja fast besserwisserischen Stil, der mir regelmäßig große Freude beim Lesen bereitet.

“[Evolution] ist ein Vorgang der Erkenntnis, denn jede ‘Anpassung an’ eine besimmte Gegenbeit der äußeren Realität bedeutet, daß ein Maß von ‘Informationen über’ sie in das organische System aufgenommen wurden.”

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