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Damian Veal
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Papers by Damian Veal
In his first major book, The Discovery of Dynamics (1989), theoretical physicist and historian of physics Julian Barbour described the process of discovery and progress in science as ‘a journey into the totally unknown, in which shock follows shock’. A decade on, in The End of Time (1999)2 he put forth in popular form his thesis, developed over some decades, regarding what he had come to believe would be the next great shock to our commonsense picture of the world – namely, that the concept of time would cease to have any role in the foundations of physics. More starkly expressed, Barbour predicts that the next great revolution in our understanding of the universe will entail the realisation that time does not exist – a thesis which, if true, would be shocking indeed. The question, of course, is whether it is true; and, if it is, how we could ever possibly find a way to test and confirm such a seemingly outrageous hypothesis. In our interview with Barbour, we ask him about the motivations which led him to develop his radical position, the paradoxes and problems which arise in trying to make sense of it, and his own eccentric position in relation to mainstream academic theoretical physics.
Thomas Metzinger’s work is at the forefront of interdisciplinary research between the philosophy of mind and cognitive neuroscience. Marrying an encyclopedic grasp of the philosophical literature on consciousness with a superlative mastery of the latest neurobiological research, his Being No One is a groundbreaking work that recasts the terms in which the problem of consciousness is formulated. Although advances in cognitive neuroscience over the past twenty years have sparked a notable resurgence of interest in this problem among philosophers, many have argued that consciousness cannot be reductively explained by cognitive neuroscience, while others have gone so far as to insist that consciousness is a mystery that cannot be explained tout court, and that cognitive neuroscience lacks the resources to tackle ‘the hard problem’ of explaining how first-person subjective consciousness could ever arise from un-conscious neurophysiological processes. In our interview, Metzinger discusses not only how he confronts this philosophical challenge head-on by forging new conceptual resources capable of bridging this allegedly irreducible ‘explanatory gap’, but also how innovations such as the concept at the heart of his new theoretical framework – the ‘phenomenal self-model’ – might impact upon the personal and social experience of being human.
In 2007 James Ladyman and Don Ross published Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized, an attempt to synthesize Ladyman’s ‘Ontic Structural Realism’ and Ross’s ‘Rainforest Realism’ into a unified metaphysics applicable to science from physics to economics. Beginning with a blistering polemic against what they call ‘neo-scholastic metaphysics’, Ladyman and Ross argue for an approach to metaphysics which goes far beyond the vague science-friendliness characteristic of so much of contemporary soi-disant naturalism in favour of an unabashedly ‘scientistic’ stance. Dispensing with the habitual ontology of ‘little things and microbangings’ which continues to hold sway in contemporary ‘pseudo-naturalist philosophy’, Every Thing Must Go provides the case for a radically naturalistic metaphysics capable of taking on board the most counterintuitive findings of modern physics without impugning the epistemic credentials of the special sciences. In our interview, Ladyman discusses the reasons for his exasperation with philosophers who persist in doing metaphysics as if modern science had never happened, provides a robust defence of ‘the scientistic stance’, and explains how the position developed in Every Thing Must Go provides a heuristic framework for the unification of the sciences via a dialectical synthesis of the strengths of both realism and empiricism.
One of the most fertile collaborations in contemporary popular science writing began with a biologist and a mathematician meeting for lunch at a Coventry pub in 1990. Combining their prodigious knowledge of contemporary science, the unique partnership between Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart has spawned a series of popular science books remarkable in their scope, epistemological subtlety and conceptual innovativeness. To read ‘Jack&Ian’ is to embark upon an exhilarating and intellectually enriching ride through the thickets of contemporary scientific thinking and emerge with a profound sense of how it all interconnects. Their combined critical perspective brings much-needed clarity to popular science memes such as 'emergence’, ‘chaos’ and ‘complex systems’, and they can be relied upon never to neglect the ‘big picture’. In this interview, Cohen and Stewart recount the history of their ‘complicit’ collaboration, discuss the significance of the novel ideas proposed in their co-authored works, explain their criticisms of reductionism, anthropic reasoning and astrobiology, and tell us about the aliens who helped them to write their books.
In his first major book, The Discovery of Dynamics (1989), theoretical physicist and historian of physics Julian Barbour described the process of discovery and progress in science as ‘a journey into the totally unknown, in which shock follows shock’. A decade on, in The End of Time (1999)2 he put forth in popular form his thesis, developed over some decades, regarding what he had come to believe would be the next great shock to our commonsense picture of the world – namely, that the concept of time would cease to have any role in the foundations of physics. More starkly expressed, Barbour predicts that the next great revolution in our understanding of the universe will entail the realisation that time does not exist – a thesis which, if true, would be shocking indeed. The question, of course, is whether it is true; and, if it is, how we could ever possibly find a way to test and confirm such a seemingly outrageous hypothesis. In our interview with Barbour, we ask him about the motivations which led him to develop his radical position, the paradoxes and problems which arise in trying to make sense of it, and his own eccentric position in relation to mainstream academic theoretical physics.
Thomas Metzinger’s work is at the forefront of interdisciplinary research between the philosophy of mind and cognitive neuroscience. Marrying an encyclopedic grasp of the philosophical literature on consciousness with a superlative mastery of the latest neurobiological research, his Being No One is a groundbreaking work that recasts the terms in which the problem of consciousness is formulated. Although advances in cognitive neuroscience over the past twenty years have sparked a notable resurgence of interest in this problem among philosophers, many have argued that consciousness cannot be reductively explained by cognitive neuroscience, while others have gone so far as to insist that consciousness is a mystery that cannot be explained tout court, and that cognitive neuroscience lacks the resources to tackle ‘the hard problem’ of explaining how first-person subjective consciousness could ever arise from un-conscious neurophysiological processes. In our interview, Metzinger discusses not only how he confronts this philosophical challenge head-on by forging new conceptual resources capable of bridging this allegedly irreducible ‘explanatory gap’, but also how innovations such as the concept at the heart of his new theoretical framework – the ‘phenomenal self-model’ – might impact upon the personal and social experience of being human.
In 2007 James Ladyman and Don Ross published Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized, an attempt to synthesize Ladyman’s ‘Ontic Structural Realism’ and Ross’s ‘Rainforest Realism’ into a unified metaphysics applicable to science from physics to economics. Beginning with a blistering polemic against what they call ‘neo-scholastic metaphysics’, Ladyman and Ross argue for an approach to metaphysics which goes far beyond the vague science-friendliness characteristic of so much of contemporary soi-disant naturalism in favour of an unabashedly ‘scientistic’ stance. Dispensing with the habitual ontology of ‘little things and microbangings’ which continues to hold sway in contemporary ‘pseudo-naturalist philosophy’, Every Thing Must Go provides the case for a radically naturalistic metaphysics capable of taking on board the most counterintuitive findings of modern physics without impugning the epistemic credentials of the special sciences. In our interview, Ladyman discusses the reasons for his exasperation with philosophers who persist in doing metaphysics as if modern science had never happened, provides a robust defence of ‘the scientistic stance’, and explains how the position developed in Every Thing Must Go provides a heuristic framework for the unification of the sciences via a dialectical synthesis of the strengths of both realism and empiricism.
One of the most fertile collaborations in contemporary popular science writing began with a biologist and a mathematician meeting for lunch at a Coventry pub in 1990. Combining their prodigious knowledge of contemporary science, the unique partnership between Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart has spawned a series of popular science books remarkable in their scope, epistemological subtlety and conceptual innovativeness. To read ‘Jack&Ian’ is to embark upon an exhilarating and intellectually enriching ride through the thickets of contemporary scientific thinking and emerge with a profound sense of how it all interconnects. Their combined critical perspective brings much-needed clarity to popular science memes such as 'emergence’, ‘chaos’ and ‘complex systems’, and they can be relied upon never to neglect the ‘big picture’. In this interview, Cohen and Stewart recount the history of their ‘complicit’ collaboration, discuss the significance of the novel ideas proposed in their co-authored works, explain their criticisms of reductionism, anthropic reasoning and astrobiology, and tell us about the aliens who helped them to write their books.