Qm Field Theory: No proof Something from Nothing

On March 30, 2016 I posted, on this blog,[1]  "Quantum Particles Do not Prove a universe from Nothing." The post was backed by sources such as Scientific American, David Albert, Even Hawking's Center for Theoretical Cosmology[2]Even so there are atheists telling me it's wrong. I dispute this. Rather than being wrong I think is couches it's terms in the parlance of an old theory. Because it doesn't explain things in the jargon of the newly accepted theory skeptics have an appropriate juncture at which they can charge it with being wrong because it appears out moded.

The major issue is that virtual particles (VPs) do not really emerge from nothing uncased at lest there's no proof that they do. This issue revolves around the emergence of VPs from true actual nothing, that is the lack of any thing at all. I will bracket discussion for this paper of why the scenario of origin must begin with this state of true nothing[3]

What is it about the parlance of that previous post that is outmoded? That article is based upon the Scientific American article that says VP's are produced when regular particles collide and thus while they do appear from no previous VP they are not appearing from a state of total true nothing.

Quantum mechanics allows, and indeed requires, temporary violations of conservation of energy, so one particle can become a pair of heavier particles (the so-called virtual particles), which quickly rejoin into the original particle as if they had never been there. If that were all that occurred we would still be confident that it was a real effect because it is an intrinsic part of quantum mechanics, which is extremely well tested, and is a complete and tightly woven theory--if any part of it were wrong the whole structure would collapse.

But while the virtual particles are briefly part of our world they can interact with other particles, and that leads to a number of tests of the quantum-mechanical predictions about virtual particles. [4]

This is what is now supposed to be wrong, it is said that particles don't collide, to from VP but they are formed by the uncertainty principle (Heisenberg). We know that particles are not really little balls. So the image conjured by talk of particles colliding, that of children playing marbles,is not really analogous. The actual process is very complex it really boils down to an exchange of mathematical equations. One problem that makes it more acute is that the notion of particles has been discorded. It is not  factually incorrect one metaphor replacing another and the new metaphor will someday be replaced in turn. At the moment it appears that talk of particles is old hat and misleading while the new  metaphor makes the illusion that VPs are coming out of nothing.In reality, however, the original expatiation I gave in the other article is as close to right.The fact that VPs are not coming from true nothing is not refuted by the new more hip field theory.

Quantum Field theory is Just the latest in a long line of attempts to replace God with the powers of God detached from God's consciousness. "since the scientific revolution of the 17th century, what physics has given us in the way of candidates for the fundamental laws of nature have as a general rule simply taken it for granted that there is, at the bottom of everything, some basic, elementary, eternally persisting, concrete, physical stuff."[5] Newton said it was Material particles (going back to the Greeks, smaller and smaller bits of matter) at the end of the 19th century they said material particles and electromagnetic fields. As Albert points all all physics is and has always been about how that elementary stuff is arranged.[6] In this latest turn they just do away with the bits of matter,they aren't really particles at all.


Let's choose a field theory image to replace the marbles. We might think of field as a kind background radiation. because it is throughout the entire universe, everywhere. Rather than balls particles are described as little bits of field, there are scientists and science reporters talking of it this way.[7][8] These bits of field exchange values and thus identities with each other. This is what makes one speak of particles colliding. That is a metaphor as is exchanging values,All we really know is something is going on in mathematical equations.Field theorists write that into talk of exchange of identity of the "bits of field" they call particles.

Particle physics as we know it today began with the ideas of Hideki Yukawa in 1935. Physicists had long been concerned with how forces are transmitted, finding the concept of fields, such as electric and magnetic fields to be very useful. A field surrounds an object and carries the force exerted by the object through space. Yukawa was interested in the strong nuclear force in particular and found an ingenious way to explain its short range. His idea is a blend of particles, forces, relativity, and quantum mechanics that is applicable to all forces. Yukawa proposed that force is transmitted by the exchange of particles (called carrier particles). The field consists of these carrier particles.[9]

All of this is nice and cleansed and washed spotless by the good people who write text books and popular science style articles, but in reality where the people who really know what is what about field theory all the mathematically free popular layman-level talk about QM and God-free universe is bull shit. Not that field theory is BS no no,I do not say that but the idea that science magically proves that the universe did or could spring into existence out of actual true nothing with no external force or power helping it, is BS!

The best proof of this is a source called Physics Stack exchange This site is for serious researchers of all levels. They have high school kids to Professors who research discussing everything. Let's look at what some of the professors say. A poster who is apparently a layman asks about Krauss's book The Universe From Nothing, and his assertion that VP's pop out of nothing."I am reading the book of Lawrence Krauss "A universe out of nothing", where he explained that the vacuum is not empty. "

1. Is the vacuum empty or is it not?
2. Are there particles in the vacuum and can they create a universe?
3. But when virtual particles are just a mathemacical "trick" to calculate something, what does Lawrence Krauss mean?
4. What is the matter about the vacuum?[10]

The moderator, "a Curious Mind" answers:

The vacuum is "empty" in every precise sense of the word. What we call "particles" in quantum field theory are states created by so-called annihilation and creation operators, which represent "substracting" and "adding" a particle of a certain type to a state. The free vacuum is by definition precisely the state from which you cannnot substract anything, hence it is "empty". The interacting vacuum is by definition the lowest-lying energy state, but we can't talk about particles for interacting states, so it's meaningless to ask if it is "empty"....The "boiling brew of particles" is a misinterpretation of what so-called vacuum bubbles mean. They are the Feynman diagrams that contribute to the energy of the interacting vacuum state, and if internal lines of such diagrams described actual particles, then these diagrams would mean a continuous creation and annihilation of particles in the vacuum. But the internal lines of Feynman diagrams are not associated to actual particles states (i.e. no creation/annihilation operator of the free theory belongs to them), so this is nonsense. There are no particles in the vacuum and they don't create a universe....He is misinterpreting Feynman diagrams to give laymen reading the book a magical and mysterious, but math-free picture of what quantum field theory is about. This picture is almost completely wrong.It's the lowest-lying energy state of the theory, and the start for so-called perturbation theory. Not much more.[11]

Another poster, Arnold Neumaier:

The only way the usual dynamical language for virtual particles is justified by the theory is as purely figurative analogy in ”virtual reality”, useful for informal talk about complicated formulas and for superficial summaries in lectures capturing the imagination of the audience.This has to be kept in mind when reading in professional scientific publications statements involving virtual particles. Otherwise many statements become completely misleading, inviting a magical view of microphysics and weird speculation, without the slightest support in theory or experiment.[12]

Two things we need to know to make sense of what was just said. First, wen physicists speak of :"nothing" they don't mean  that in the sense most people use it.  They mean something very different, Understanding this will tell us what they mean by Qm vacuum. ohnRennie tells us:

In Physics "nothing" is generally taken to be the lowest energy state of a theory. We wouldn't normally use the word "nothing" but instead describe the lowest energy state as the "vacuum". I can't think of an intuitive way to describe the QM vacuum because all the obvious analogies have "something" instead of nothing "nothing", so I'll do my best but you may still find the idea hard to grasp. That's not just you - everybody finds it hard to grasp..[13]

Nothing is the lowest level energy state in a theory, so that would mean an individual particle is "nothing." Rennie goes on to talk about an analogy,if you could turn off the Qm field,there would still be fluctuation, This is vacuum flux, it is the Qm vacuum. it means there are still "particles" messing around.

....The key point is that when I say "turn the field down" I mean reduce the energy to the lowest it will go i.e. you can't make the energy of the electric field any lower. By definition this is what we call the "vacuum" even though it isn't empty (i.e. it contains the fluctuations). It isn't possible to make the vacuum any emptier because the fluctuations are always present and you can't remove them.[14]

The skeptic merely says there are particles they are popping out of nothing. The problem is the physicists include the particles as part of nothing, there's no empirical observations that they are coming out of real nothing not just coming from some primordial field; in other words a group of more particles,

That does not mean that Krauss doesn't understand or doesn't know what he's saying. He knows but what he is saying is really a faith statement. He wants us to think his statement is a precise factual understanding of the universe but it is actually nothing more than a faith statement based upon facts but those facts do not include empirical knowledge of the origin of the universe, he's really just discussing an educated guess.

Even if we assume field theory as a literally true statement of what happens with sub atomic particles it can't be the case that they actually do emerge from true nothing. The reason is very simple and it is assumed by the theory.The theory itself assumes that prior conditions exist, a framework in which the things emerge. They may not have direct causes in the conventional sense but they clearly do not just pop into existence out of actual noting. There are prior conditions without which the particles would not be possible. Those conditions have to be accounted for. The frame work consists mainly of Time, physical law, ad what they  now call field,or Vacuum flux which means more particles.

"He [Krauss] acknowledges (albeit in a parenthesis, and just a few pages before the end of the book) that everything he has been talking about simply takes the basic principles of quantum mechanics for granted."[15] The term"nothing" is erroneous since by that term physicists do not mean what regular people mean by the term.They do not mean the absence of anything at all. "For a half century, physicists have known that there is no such thing as absolute nothingness, and that the vacuum of empty space, devoid of even a single atom of matter, seethes with subtle activity. "[16] I have quoted at least three physicists saying Krauss is wrong his statements can't be taken literally. I think a good term for what they are saying is that his statements are faith based statements or atheist dogma based upon field theory. The  three physicists are A Curious Mind, Arnold Neumaier, and Paul Matt Sutter, I close with statement by David Albert the philosopher with Ph.d  in physics, from his review of Krauss:

The fundamental physical laws that Krauss is talking about in “A Universe From Nothing” — the laws of relativistic quantum field theories — are no exception to this. The particular, eternally persisting, elementary physical stuff of the world, according to the standard presentations of relativistic quantum field theories, consists (unsurprisingly) of relativistic quantum fields. And the fundamental laws of this theory take the form of rules concerning which arrangements of those fields are physically possible and which aren’t, and rules connecting the arrangements of those fields at later times to their arrangements at earlier times, and so on — and they have nothing whatsoever to say on the subject of where those fields came from, or of why the world should have consisted of the particular kinds of fields it does, or of why it should have consisted of fields at all, or of why there should have been a world in the first place. Period. Case closed. End of story.[17]

Atheists are making a faith statement when they assert the particles come from actual nothing, There is no reason to assume that because there is no empirical scientific evidence to establish true actual nothing,nothing in that statement when spoken by physics does not mean absence of things. Things must be explained.

Be sure and read additional quotes in comment section.

watch the video which is a good (although very innovated) explanation of what all this means,


Sources

[1]
http://christiancadre.blogspot.com/2016/03/quantum-particles-do-not-prove-universe.html

[2] see FN 2 Paper cited,Center for Theoretical Cosmology, static website,  University of Cambridge (no date cited)
http://www.ctc.cam.ac.uk/outreach/origins/quantum_cosmology_one.php
(accessed 3/8/18)
Stephan Hawking is associated with the CTC.This statement is more admission than documentation. It admits that quantum theory might not pertain to the universe as a whole. After all the theory has only been validated under normal conditions of space/time, temperature and the like. We have no idea if it still applies at the big bang expansion where the laws of physics seem to be suspended, temperature and time approach infinity.

[4] Gordon Kane, “Are Virtual Particles Really Constantly Popping In and Out of existence? Or Are They Merely a Mathematical Bookkeeping Device For Quantum Mechanics?” Scientific American, (Oct. 9, 2006) on line version URL: http://www.scientific american.com/article/are-virtual-particles-rea/ accessed 10/12/15

[5] David Albert, "On The Origin of Everything: A Universe from Nothing By Lawrence Krauss.." New York Times Sunday Book Review. (MARCH 23, 2012).
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books/review/a-universe-from-nothing-by-lawrence-m-krauss.html
(accessed 3/10/18)

Continue reading the main storyShare This Page

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• More[6] Ibid

[6] Ibid

[7] Paul Matt Sutter, "What Are Virtual Particles?" a video on you tube posted by and introduced by Fraser Cain (posted Jun 13, 2016 )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kn5PMa5xRq4
(accessed 3/10/18)



[8] ________, "'virtual' partocles are just 'Wiggles' in the Electromagnetic field." Live Science (August 22, 2016)
https://www.livescience.com/55833-what-are-virtual-particles.html
(accessed 3/10/18)

teaches at Ohio state

[9] "The Yukawa Particle and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle Revisited." BC Open Text book, produced by BC Campus.no date indicated
https://opentextbc.ca/physicstestbook2/chapter/the-yukawa-particle-and-the-heisenberg-uncertainty-principle-revisited/
(accessed 3/9/18)

[10] Qmechanic  "Virtual Particles Real? Virtual Particles Create a universe?"Physics Stack Exchange, blog  published Stack Exchange Inc. (Sept 7,2015)
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/205674/virtual-particles-real-virtual-particles-create-a-universe
(accessed 3/10/18)
"Physics Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for active researchers, academics and students of physics."

Founded in 2008, Stack Overflow is the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers. More than 50 million professional and aspiring programmers visit Stack Overflow each month to help solve coding problems, develop new skills, and find job opportunities.Stack Overflow partners with businesses to help them understand, hire, engage, and enable the world's developers. Our products and services are focused on developer marketing, technical recruiting, market research, and enterprise knowledge sharing. Learn more about our business solutions here.

[11] A curious Mind (moderator of stack exchange) Ibid.

[12]Arnold Neumaier, Stack Exchange, Ibid.

Neumaier Lectures  at the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, University of Vienna.

[13] John Rennie, ''What is meant by Nothing in Physics./ Quatum Physics?" Physics Stack Exchange (June 29, 2012)
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/30973/what-is-meant-by-nothing-in-physics-quantum-physics
(accessed 3/29/2012)

Rennie, undergrad degree Cambridge in Qm Chemistry, PhD, also at Cambridge, in solid state photo chemistry. After finishing my PhD I worked as a colloid scientist for Unilever Research. 

[14] Ibid.

[15] Albert, op. cit.

[16] Malcolm W. Brown, Physicists Comfirm Powerof Nothing, Measuring Force or universla Flux."  New York Times (Jan 21,1997)
http://www.nytimes.com/1997/01/21/science/physicists-confirm-power-of-nothing-measuring-force-of-universal-flux.html
(accessed 3/10/18)

[17] Albert op cit 

C.S. Lewis: Meditation on The Third Commandant

Lewis, looked vegly like actor
Broderick Crawford (Highway
Patrol 1956-1960).


http://web.mit.edu/bcf/www/BSJ97/cslewis.html

Lewis Explains why there can;t be a Christian Political party.

The Christian Party must either confine itself to stating what ends are desirable and what means are lawful or else it must go further and select from among the lawful means those which it deems possible and efficacious and give to these its practical support. If it chooses the first alternative it will not be a political party. Nearly all parties agree in professing ends which we admit to be desirable --- security, a living wage, and the best adjustment between the claims of order and freedom. What distinguishes one party from another is the championship of means. We do not dispute whether the citizens are to be made happy, but whether an egalitarian or a hierarchical State, whether capitalism or socialism, whether despotism or democracy is most likely to make them so.

please read the whole thing in the link above.

Where Tillich and Marcuse meet:Phenomenology

Tillich.....................................Marcuse


Marcuse was an atheist I am under no illusions that he believed in God or that his ideas prove God in anyway, Yet there are three points of convergence where his views and those of my theological hero Paul Tillich meet, (aside from the trivial fact they were both German). They fled Hitler to the U,S. They were both socialists and they both used Phenomenological method (both into Heidegger) to understand their chosen fields, this essay was posted last year in March under tittle "Tillich, Phenomenology, and Theological method." Note the correspondence to last weeks post where Marcuse talks  about the decline from reason to empirical knowledge.



Atheists are always talking about how stupid theology is. "I don't have to read the theology because I know it's stupid." I hear various ones (not all but many) say that all the time. I would like them to actually read some theology and tell me why it's stupid. Here is some theology for them to read. They are always saying "what else would you use but scinece?" What that really means is their self selected set of facts form scinece that back their ideology, excluding those that disprove their ideology. My answer to them is "phenomenology." But you have to read this to know how it works.

Tillich was born August 20, 1886, in Starzeddel, then a province of Brandenberg, Germany (now part of Poland), family moved to Berlin 1900. His father was a Luthern Pastor. He was ordained as a Luthern Pastor in 1912 and kicked around giving lectures at various universities: Berlin, Dresden and Frankfurt.[1]

His liberalism and opposition to the Nazi movement led to his dismissal in 1933. Fortunately, Reinhold Niebuhr, whom he had met in Germany, offered him a position at the Union Theological Seminary in New York. Tillich became a U.S. citizen in 1940, then took up a position at Harvard in 1954, followed by one at the University of Chicago in 1962, where he was to remain until the end of his life.[2]

Paul Tillich is the central figure in the current effort; Heidegger is definitely a major influence upon Tillich. Be that as it may the great Theologian did not merely copy off the philosopher’s understanding of being. Tillich was a influenced by Heidegger philosophically, but was also his political enemy. The former was a leftist and a socialist, the latter a right-winger and Nazi. Tillich was coming from the perspective of a larger tradition; Christian theology is not all Aristotelian, there’s a whole Platonic wing that produced centuries of complex and brilliant ferment form which the average communicant is totally cut off. That tradition also has it’s own take on being. Tillich lived in that tradition like a fish lives in water. Perhaps it was Heidegger’s connection with the “life world” that gave him his connection to Nazism through the notion of the folks, the soil, the people and their traditions.[3] It’s easy for us to judge looking back on Nazism as the emblematic evil, while we forget many intelligent people were duped by it. Perhaps it was Tillich’s connection with the medievalists and his love of the Platonic that enabled him to see the valuable connections in Heidegger’s ties to the past. Tillich was not a dusty scholar, however, stuck in the library with no connection to the life of the day. He was a vibrant intellectual of modernity and he constantly tried to bring his medievalism into the present and understand it in a modern light. He used Heidegger to modernize. Nevertheless, in the world of their present, however, Germany of the 1930’s these arid philosophical issues took on a concrescence of life and death.

Tillich’s response to the political situation of his day was a proving ground for his theological method, and he responded to the crisis of Germany in the twenties and thirties the same way he responded to modern theology; by relating the human situation in which he lived to the larger picture of faith and the Christian and seeking the psychological points of contact where the human perception of God manifested it in symbolic terms pointing to our ultimate concerns. Tillich contrasts “Kerygmatic” theology with “apologetics.” Kerygma refers to the unchanging truth, and this contrasted with the temporal situation, always in flux.[4] Tillich’s concept of “the situation” includes the cultural context of time and place. Tillich is the embodiment of his own concerns. He more than any other theologian of the twentieth century, personified liberal theological credo; translating the timeless truth of the Gospel into the moment in one’s own cultural context, as he advocated doing.

Tillich’s major methodological move is called “correlation.” In a nut shell, he correlates the great truths of Christian doctrine, though an understanding of the symbols it uses, with the existential apprehensions within the current situation, when the two stack up in some way, he lined them up.[5] Tillich understood this as a philosophical task, even for theologians. The task of the philosopher must draw upon material from all realms of culture.[6] One central question give focus to the entire inquiry: what does it mean to exist? Tillich understood this as an “existential” analysis. The cultural context of this term as used in that era meant that the question was central to human understanding.[7 The term “existential” is closely related to phenomenology. Both deal with allowing the sense data to suggest the categories into which we organize the data. Both deal with human understanding as rooted in its own immediate life situation. It begins with the perspective of the individual in the concrete situation. One immediate implication of this aspect is that it might suggest that we ignore the phony Aristotelian perspective of which atheists try to hard to root themselves, the “rational man,” the “scientist” (meaning “reductionist”) who decides before the tally is ever made that there can’t be anything beyond the material. This “rational man” is a phony place to start because it automatically rules out the transcendent, the sacred, the aspects of human existence that have always meant the most to people. It assumes form the beginning that there’s “nothing there” and reality must be defined by pre set ideology involving the wearing of white lab coats.

As the term “existential” implies, the perspective is concerned with the meaning of existence. According to Tillich’s perspective of the existential self understanding rooted in the standard point of the meaning of existence was the primary issue and fundamental problem around which all of human understanding orbits. “Existence is the question which underlies all other questions.”[8] Yet Tillich did not pin the answer upon existentialist dogma. Nor did he root the answer in the situation itself. The answer would not come from the situation but from the universal and timeless message brought by the symbols of the Christian faith. This is no retreat to the ivory tower; it’s an attempt to bring the truth of the message to the place where it is needed, the actual concrete situation of life, and to apply in a relevant way. Tillich said “the method of correlation explains the content of the Christian faith through existential questions and theological answers in mutual interdependence.”[9]

The term “correlation” Tillich uses in three different ways. It can indicate the correspondence of a series of different sets of data; it can designate the interdependence of concepts; or it can designate the real interdependence of things in structural wholes.[10

There is a correlation in the sense of correspondence between religious symbols and that which is symbolized by them. There is a correlation in the sense between concepts denoting the human and those denoting the divine. There is a correlation in the factual sense between man’s ultimate concern and that about which he is ultimately concerned. The first meaning of correlation refers to the central problem of religious knowledge…the second meaning of correlation determines the statements about God and the world, for example the correlation of infinite and finite. The third meaning of correlation qualifies the divine human relation within religious experience…[11]

This is a crucial passage in Tillich, because these concepts, his take on symbols and their participation in what they symbolize, the use of symbols as the delivery system for revelation, meaning, answers, as well as the religion of the eternal and the temporal, these are the concepts which form the basic engine of his ontotheology. [12] In the next chapter these concepts will be crucial in formulating the meaning of “being itself, “ or “the ground of being.” There has been a certain degree of fear expressed by various theological concerns that correlation relativizes the divine or makes God dependent upon man. Tillich argues that God is not dependent upon man but our understanding of God’s revelation to us is dependent upon our willingness to understand. Solidarity between humans and the divine is dependent upon our willingness to be in solidarity.[13] Thus it is also dependent upon our wiliness to seek correlation.

The methodology of correlation proceeds as follows: In analyzing the human situation the theologian demonstrates that symbols used in the Christian message offer answers to the existential questions that arise. The answers are much older than existentialism. Tillich points out that they are as old as humanity and they have been expressed in many ways since humans began to think philosophically.[14 In pondering our existential condition we realize that we are strangers in the world and we can’t penetrate beyond the surface level of science. In coming to grasp this realization we also realize that we ourselves are the answer to this problem. Because we are human, because we are trapped in an existential dilemma we automatically have the credentials and the method for moving beyond the surface level, which is the level of science, and penetrating the nature of being. Though our state as examples of being for itself we are able to understand the nature of existence. This is where we can employ philosophical thinking in understanding our own being. “whoever has penetrated into the nature of his own finitude can find the traces finitude in everything that exists. And he can ask the questions implied in his finitude as the question implied in finitude universally.”[15]

Sources

---

[1] Sam Addision, Website for Gifford Lectures. “Authors, Paul Tillich.” URL http://www.giffordlectures.org/Author.asp?AuthorID=169 visited 10/20/10.

[2] Ibid

[3] find

[4] Michael Gleghorn. “Paul Tillich’s Theological Method: A Summary Evaluation.” Online PDF file, URL: http://michaelgleghorn.com/documents/PaulTillichsTheology.pdf

visited 10/28/10. no pagination.

Gleghorn is a conservative from Dallas Theological Seminary so his ultimate evaluation of Tillich’s theology is negative. He finds that Tillich is prone to error due to his method. Yet his summary of Tillich’s view is cogent.

[5] Gayton B. Hammond, “An Examination of Tillich’s Method of Correlation.” Oxford Journals: Journal of The American Academy of Religion Vol XXXII, Issue 3, 248-251. On line version URL: http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/content/XXXII/3/248.extract . Visited 11/8/10, Hammon is professor of Philosophy and Religion at Virginia Polythechnic Institute in Blacksberg Va. Ph.D. Vanderbilt, Yale Divinity School.

[6 Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Paul Tillich quoted in Alistter E. McGrath, “Paul Tillich: Method of Corroletion,” The Christian Theology Reader. (online page 53) Maldan Ma, USA: Blackwell Publishing, Alister E. McGrath ed. first published 1995, second edition 2001-2004 Google books online version URL: http://books.google.com/books?id=yDls7tV0mRcC&pg=PA52&lpg=PA52&dq=Paul+Tillich+Method+of+Correlation&source=bl&ots=81AvGNSD_Z&sig=0deQITzlW4LAUyLi10IR0wZdolY&hl=en&ei=-2bJTNTjB4G0lQf66YDBAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CB0Q6AEwATgK#v=onepage&q=Paul%20Tillich%20Method%20of%20Correlation&f=true visited 11/8/10.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ontotheology, I understand that this term is used mockingly of thinkers such as Tillich. It’s like the term “phalologocentric” it’s a means of saying “this is out of date,” ‘this is opposed to our truth regime.” I therefore use it proudly and defiantly.

[13] Tillich in McGrath, Ibid.

[14] Ibid. 54

[15] Ibid.

Marcuse's Critique of Science

very rare to find an image of him this young




Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) was one of the major thinkers of the 20th century. He was a member of the Frankfurt School (The Institute for Social Research) which moved from Frankfurt am Main in Germany to New York in the 30's, to evade Hitler. Marcuse stayed in America after the war and went on to become the major thinker behind the New Left in the 1960s.[1] Marcuse's major idea ,and the title of his major book, One Dimensional Man [2] argues that in modern life human aspirations for the greater good are sublimated by the acquisition of false needs that keep the individual addicted to the  system and closed within the realm of discourse that supports the status quo. A Major aspect of this critique dealt with the relation between technology and freedom. Some have argued that his critique of technology only extends as far as economics, but that is a mistaken impression. Marcuse's critique of technology did not extend only to areas of economics but also to science itself.  

According to Marcuse Modern technology extending from the enlightenment exists in dialectical tension between avenues of liberation and creation of  "new mechanisms of oppression and domination."[3] Technology is driven by the quest for a better life. Technology affords liberation from toil. Here we need to make the distinction between the technology and technics. Technology is "a mode of production, as the totality of instruments, devices and contrivances which characterize the machine age," technics is "the technical apparatus of industry, transportation,communication."[4]

This is not to say that technics is good and technology bad, or vice verse, Nor does it limit domination to just areas involving industry, transportation,communication. The distinction merely covers the totality of means of production and the specific apparatus used to subjugate nature,

Marcuse was an early critic of what he considered to be the exploitative, predatory approach to nature brought about through the direction of technology, industry and science under consumer capitalism, however his alternative; a “new science” and “new technology” which would treat nature as an “ally” in the general struggle for liberation and emancipation, was not without its problems....Although Marcuse had discussed technology throughout his career, by the late 1960s and 70s, he began calling not merely for a new approach to technology, but a “new  science” and a “new technology” which would work alongside nature in order to fulfill its inherently liberating potentialities. These, he contended, were directly linked to our own potential for social change, and opposed to the predominant mindset consisting in plundering nature for reasons largely rationalised by consumer-capitalist economics. [5]

The distinction between technology and Technics allows a critique of both the physical means of production and the psychological aspects of manipulation and  discourse that govern its use. This includes the attitudes fostered toward nature not only in science and economics but human nature as well.[6] The Dialectical aspect, along with the total critique afforded by understanding technology in all its aspects and techics enables an understanding of  repressive desublimation. Thecnologiocal rationality closes down oppositional elements of the higher culture and  negates their transcending  functions. That is to say the ability to understand alternatives to what is is burred in the  instant gratification, the real of discourse is closed around that one dimension, obedience, which now takes the form of consuming, satisfying false needs; hence one dimensional man.[7]

Marcuse's overall critique was rooted in an understanding of science and it's affects upon the actual nature of rationality. According to Daly and Mackey:

In his essay On Science and Phenomenology Hperbert Marcuse attempts to lay out the ways in which a split has occurred between the scientific and philosophical views on the world, and how this split has been detrimental to the development of human society in the west. For Marcuse this split is located in the relationship between human subjects and the concept of reason, which has been present in the discourses on science an philosophy since the ancient Greeks.[8] [emphasis mine]

This was an analysis of Husserl's essay  “The Crisis of European Science and Transcendental Philosophy.” Marcuse observes that "According to Husserl, science,-modern science, Galilean as well as post-Galilean,-originates in the Greek idea of knowledge and truth and comes to rest in a scientific rationality in which truth and validity contain in themselves illusion and repression." [9] 

He finds Husserl's work indicative of an understanding of Western rationality represented by thinkers as diverse as Bergson, Dilthey, Max Weber, Spengler, Piaget, and Bachelard. "In Husserl, it is modern science itself, this most sacrosanct child of Western rationality, that is questioned. In this reexamination, modem science appears as the end of a fateful development which begins with Greek thought, that is, with the origins of Western thought itself-as the "end" of this development in the twofold sense of termination and of fulfilling the telos."[10]  

....for Marcuse the enlightenment lead toward a shift in the role reason played in human society. With the rise of a mathematical view of the world, everything became determinable in a manner that existed only in relation with other things and objects. In this manner reason and the world became detached from universal and objective concepts that were transcendental, instead functioning only on the level of the empirical. Therefore in fields such as the various sciences and medicine, which were ideally to be guided and given meaning by the field of philosophy, instead existed merely to progress for the sake of progress. Reason, removed from any critical investigation into its own ends, could merely be utilized to master and control nature, of which man is a part. [11]

In other words, there is a shift from discursive reasoning that can be used to transcend the realm of discourse to formulate critique, to empirical thinking that forms the basis of what Barrett called The Illusion of Technique,[12] After that early period Marcuse did not concerns himself that much with science per se, but more with it's application to domination of nature and the social realm, But his social critique is rooted in Husserl's   realization of the same kind of shift from reason that animates  scientism.


Sources


[1] Arnold Farr, "Herbert Marcuse", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2017/entries/marcuse/

(accessed 4/20/18)

from the article:

Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) was one of the most prominent members of the Frankfurt School or The Institute for Social Research  (Institute für Sozialforschung) in Frankfurt am Main. The Frankfurt School was formed in 1922 but went into exile in the United States in the early 1930s during the reign of the Third Reich. Although most of his colleagues returned to Germany after the World War Two, Marcuse remained in the United States.The Frankfurt School has had an enormous impact on philosophy as well as social and political theory in the United States and around the world. In the 1960s Marcuse ascended to prominence and became one of the best known philosophers and social theorists in the world. He was often referred to as the Guru of the New Left (a title which he rejected). During the late 1970s through the 1990s Marcuse's popularity began to wane as he was eclipsed by second and third generation critical theorists, postmodernism, Rawlsian liberalism, and his former colleagues Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin. In recent years there has been a new surge of interest in Marcus

[2] Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man: Studies in The Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. Boston,Mass.: Beacon press, 2nd edition, 1964. No page indicated.


[3] Farr, op cit
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marcuse/#DiaTec
(accessed 4/20/18)

[4] Marcuse in Farr,  Ibid. Originally from Technology, War and Fascism: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse (Volume 1), Douglas Kellner (ed.), London and New York: Routledge.1998.

[5] Michael KIDD, Abstract:  "Technology and nature: a defense and critique of Marcuse." Polis, Peer reviewed academic journal, Volume IV, Issue 4 (14), New Series, September – November 2016
http://revistapolis.ro/technology-and-nature-a-defence-and-critique-of-marcuse/?lang=en

(accessed 4/20/18)

[6] Ibid

[7] Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, op cit., 75.

[8]Ben Daly and Rose Mackey. "Herbert Marcuse on Science ad Phenomenology." Introducing the Frankfurt School,  Website, (April 25, 2008).
https://frankfurtschool.wordpress.com/2008/04/25/herbert-marcuse-on-science-and-phenomenology/
(accessed 4/20/18)

[9]Herbert Marcuse, On Science and Phenomenology. Boston: BSPS, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science book series, 1964.
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-009-5345-1_2

[10] Ibid.

[11] Daly and McKey,  op cit.

[12] William Barrett, The Illusion of Technique: A Search for Meaning in a Technological Civilization.New York:Anchor Books, 1979, 3.