Slingerland: What Science Offers the Humanities

PUBLISHER:

redshirt

Shaun Johnston:
In modern times we've made two revolutionary discoveries. One is, how changes in physical matter can be accounted for in terms of physical laws that can predict precisely what will happen next. Having given rise to science (how this can be studied) and industry (how it can be applied) this revolution is well under way.

The second revolution is, how emergence of species of living creatures can be accounted for in terms of them evolving from one another. This revolution, despite its promise of how much it could tell us about ourselves, remains stillborn through the mistaken application to it of principles coming out of the first revolution--reductive physicalism.

For this second revolution to advance it should be taken from under the wing of science and studied on its own terms. Tip: one recent product of evolution is creatures with minds. Minds are better studied through methods of the humanities than through those of science. Tell me, does this interest you?

Details: Written by Shaun Johnston Shaun Johnston; Published: October 28, 2011 October 28, 2011; Hits: 3097 3097

This important book consists of two quite distinct advocacies for a consilience of the sciences and the humanities. Slingerland refers to the goal as “vertical integration,” the humanities to be stacked in layers of emergence atop another stack of the material sciences, the whole pile resting on a foundation of quark and atomic physics. In his super-reductionist vision each layer is to look for its meaning in how it is accounted for by those below it. More...