EDGE Question 2006.pdf

HOWARD GARDNER

Psychologist, Harvard University; Author, Changing Minds

Following Sisyphus, not Pandora

According to myth, Pandora unleashed all evils upon the world; only hope remained inside the box. Hope

for human survival and progress rests on two assumptions: (1) Human constructive tendencies can

counter human destructive tendencies, and (2) Human beings can act on the basis of long-term

considerations, rather than merely short-term needs and desires. My personal optimism, and my years

of research on "good work", could not be sustained without these assumptions.

Yet I lay awake at night with the dangerous thought that pessimists may be right. For the first time in

history — as far as we know! — we humans live in a world that we could completely destroy. The human

destructive tendencies described in the past by Thomas Hobbes and Sigmund Freud, the "realist" picture

of human beings embraced more recently by many sociobiologists, evolutionary psychologists, and game

theorists might be correct; these tendencies could overwhelm any proclivities toward altruism,

protection of the environment, control of weapons of destruction, progress in human relations, or

seeking to become good ancestors. As one vivid data point: there are few signs that the unprecedented

power possessed by the United States is being harnessed to positive ends.

Strictly speaking, what will happen to the species or the planet is not a question for scientific study or

prediction. It is a question of probabilities, based on historical and cultural considerations, as well as our

most accurate description of human nature(s). Yet, science (as reflected, for example, in contributions

to Edge discussions) has recently invaded this territory with its assertions of a biologically-based human

moral sense. Those who assert a human moral sense are wagering that, in the end, human beings will

do the right thing. Of course, human beings have the capacities to make moral judgments — that is a

mere truism. But my dangerous thought is that this moral sense is up for grabs — that it can be

mobilized for destructive ends (one society's terrorist is another society's freedom fighter) or

overwhelmed by other senses and other motivations, such as the quest for power, instant gratification,

or annihilation of one's enemies.

I will continue to do what I can to encourage good work — in that sense, Pandoran hope remains. But I

will not look upon science, technology, or religion to preserve life. Instead, I will follow Albert Camus'

injunction, in his portrayal of another mythic figure endlessly attempting to push a rock up a hill: one

should imagine Sisyphus happy.

MARTIN E.P. SELIGMAN

Psychologist, University of Pennsylvania, Author, Authentic Happiness

Relativism

In looking back over the scientific and artistic breakthroughs in the 20th century, there is a view that the

great minds relativized the absolute. Did this go too far? Has relativism gotten to a point that it is

dangerous to the scientific enterprise and to human well being?

The most visible person to say this is none other than Pope Benedict XVI in his denunciations of the

"dictatorship of the relative." But worries about relativism are not only a matter of dispute in theology;

there are parallel dissenters from the relative in science, in philosophy, in ethics, in mathematics, in

anthropology, in sociology, in the humanities, in childrearing, and in evolutionary biology.

Here are some of the domains in which serious thinkers have worried about the overdoing of relativism:

• In philosophy of science, there is ongoing tension between the Kuhnians (science is about

"paradigms," the fashions of the current discipline) and the realists (science is about finding the truth).

• In epistemology there is the dispute between the Tarskian correspondence theorists ("p" is true if p)

versus two relativistic camps, the coherence theorists ("p" is true to the extent it coheres with what you

already believe is true) and the pragmatic theory of truth ("p" is true if it gets you where you want to

go).

• At the ethics/science interface, there is the fact/value dispute: that science must and should

incorporate the values of the culture in which it arises versus the contention that science is and should

be value free.

• In mathematics, Gödel's incompleteness proof was widely interpreted as showing that mathematics is

relative; but Gödel, a Platonist, intended the proof to support the view that there are statements that

could not be proved within the system that are true nevertheless. Einstein, similarly, believed that the

theory of relativity was misconstrued in just the same way by the "man is the measure of all things"

relativists.

• In the sociology of high accomplishment, Charles Murray ( Human Accomplishment ) documents that

the highest accomplishments occur in cultures that believe in absolute truth, beauty, and goodness. The

accomplishments, he contends, of cultures that do not believe in absolute beauty tend to be ugly, that

do not belief in absolute goodness tend to be immoral, and that do not believe in absolute truth tend to

be false.

• In anthropology, pre-Boasians believed that cultures were hierarchically ordered into savage,

barbarian, and civilized, whereas much of modern anthropology holds that all social forms are equal.

This is the intellectual basis of the sweeping cultural relativism that dominates the humanities in

academia.

• In evolution, Robert Wright (like Aristotle) argues for a scala naturae , with the direction of evolution

favoring complexity by its invisible hand; whereas Stephen Jay Gould argued that the fern is just as

highly evolved as Homo sapiens. Does evolution have an absolute direction and are humans further

along that trajectory than ferns?

• In child-rearing, much of twentieth century education was profoundly influenced by the

"Summerhillians" who argued complete freedom produced the best children, whereas other schools of

parenting, education, and therapy argue for disciplined, authoritative guidance.

• Even in literature, arguments over what should go into the canon revolve around the absolute-relative

controversy.

• Ethical relativism and its opponents are all too obvious instances of this issue

I do not know if the dilemmas in these domains are only metaphorically parallel to one another. I do not

know if illumination in one domain will not illuminate the others. But it might and it is just possible that

the great minds of the twenty-first century will absolutize the relative.

DAN SPERBER

Social and cognitive scientist, CNRS, Paris; author, Explaining Culture

Culture is natural

A number of us — biologists, cognitive scientists, anthropologists or philosophers — have been trying to

lay down the foundations for a truly naturalistic approach to culture. Sociobiologists and cultural

ecologists have explored the idea that cultural behaviors are biological adaptations to be explained in

terms of natural selection. Memeticists inspired by Richard Dawkins argue that cultural evolution is an

autonomous Darwinian selection process merely enabled but not governed by biological evolution.

Evolutionary psychologists, Cavalli-Sforza, Feldman, Boyd and Richerson, and I are among those who, in

different ways, argue for more complex interactions between biology and culture. These naturalistic

approaches have been received not just with intellectual objections, but also with moral and political

outrage: this is a dangerous idea, to be strenuously resisted, for it threatens humanistic values and

sound social sciences.

When I am called a "reductionist", I take it as a misplaced compliment: a genuine reduction is a great

scientific achievement, but, too bad, the naturalistic study of culture I advocate does not to reduce to

that of biology or of psychology. When I am called a "positivist" (an insult among postmodernists), I

acknowledge without any sense of guilt or inadequacy that indeed I don't believe that all facts are

socially constructed. On the whole, having one's ideas described as "dangerous" is flattering.

Dangerous ideas are potentially important. Braving insults and misrepresentations in defending these

ideas is noble. Many advocates of naturalistic approaches to culture see themselves as a group of free-

thinking, deep-probing scholars besieged by bigots .

But wait a minute! Naturalistic approaches can be dangerous: after all, they have been. The use of

biological evidence and arguments purported to show that there are profound natural inequalities among

human "races", ethnic groups, or between women and men is only too well represented in the history of

our disciplines. It is not good enough for us to point out (rightly) that 1) the science involved is bad

science,

2) even if some natural inequality were established, it would not come near justifying any inequality in

rights, and 3) postmodernists criticizing naturalism on political grounds should begin by rejecting

Heidegger and other reactionaries in their pantheon who also have been accomplices of policies of

discrimination. This is not enough because the racist and sexist uses of naturalism are not exactly

unfortunate accidents.

Species evolve because of genetic differences among their members; therefore you cannot leave

biological difference out of a biological approach. Luckily, it so happens that biological differences among

humans are minor and don't produce sub-species or "races," and that human sexual dimorphism is

relatively limited. In particular, all humans have mind/brains made up of the same mechanisms, with

just fine-tuning differences. (Think how very different all this would be if — however improbably —

Neanderthals had survived and developed culturally like we did so that there really were different human

"races").

Given what anthropologists have long called "the psychic unity of the human kind", the fundamental

goal for a naturalistic approach is to explain how a common human nature — and not biological

differences among humans — gives rise to such a diversity of languages, cultures, social organizations.

Given the real and present danger of distortion and exploitation, it must be part of our agenda to take

responsibility for the way this approach is understood by a wider public.

This, happily, has been done by a number of outstanding authors capable of explaining serious science

to lay audiences, and who typically have made the effort of warning their readers against misuses of

biology. So the danger is being averted, and let's just move on? No, we are not there yet, because the

very necessity of popularizing the naturalistic approach and the very talent with which this is being done

creates a new danger, that of arrogance.

We naturalists do have radical objections to what Leda Cosmides and John Tooby have called the

"Standard Social Science Model." We have many insightful hypotheses and even some relevant data.

The truth of the matter however is that naturalistic approaches to culture have so far remained

speculative, hardly beginning to throw light on just fragments of the extraordinarily wide range of

detailed evidence accumulated by historians, anthropologists, sociologists and others. Many of those

who find our ideas dangerous fear what they see as an imperialistic bid to take over their domain.

The bid would be unrealistic, and so is the fear. The real risk is different. The social sciences host a

variety of approaches, which, with a few high profile exceptions, all contribute to our understanding of

the domain. Even if it involves some reshuffling, a naturalistic approach should be seen as a particularly

welcome and important addition. But naturalists full of grand claims and promises but with little interest

in the competence accumulated by others are, if not exactly dangerous, at least much less useful than

they should be, and the deeper challenge they present to social scientists' mental habits is less likely to

be properly met.

PIET HUT

Professor of Astrophysics, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton

A radical reevaluation of the character of time

Copernicus and Darwin took away our traditional place in the world and our traditional identity in the

world. What traditional trait will be taken away from us next? My guess is that it will be the world itself.

We see the first few steps in that direction in the physics, mathematics and computer science of the

twentieth century, from quantum mechanics to the results obtained by Gödel, Turing and others. The

ontologies of our worlds, concrete as well as abstract, have already started to melt away.

The problem is that quantum entanglement and logical incompleteness lack the in-your-face quality of a

spinning earth and our kinship with apes. We will have to wait for the ontology of the traditional world to

unravel further, before the avant-garde insights will turn into a real revolution.

Copernicus upset the moral order, by dissolving the strict distinction between heaven and earth. Darwin

did the same, by dissolving the strict distinction between humans and other animals. Could the next step

be the dissolution of the strict distinction between reality and fiction?

For this to be shocking, it has to come in a scientifically respectable way, as a very precise and

inescapable conclusion — it should have the technical strength of a body of knowledge like quantum

mechanics, as opposed to collections of opinions on the level of cultural relativism.

Perhaps a radical reevaluation of the character of time will do it. In everyday experience, time flows, and

we flow with it. In classical physics, time is frozen as part of a frozen spacetime picture. And there is, as

yet, no agreed-upon interpretation of time in quantum mechanics.

What if a future scientific understanding of time would show all previous pictures to be wrong, and

demonstrate that past and future and even the present do not exist? That stories woven around our

individual personal history and future are all just wrong? Now that would be a dangerous idea.

JOHN GOTTMAN

Psychologist; Founder of Gottman Institute; Author, The Mathematics of Marriage.

Emotional intelligence

The most dangerous idea I know of is emotional intelligence. Within the context of the cognitive

neuroscience revolution in psychology, the focus on emotions is extraordinary. The over-arching idea

that there is such a thing as emotional intelligence, that it has a neuroscience, that it is inter-personal,

i.e., between two brains, rather than within one brain, are all quite revolutionary concepts about human

psychology. I could go on. It is also a revolution in thinking about infancy, couples, family, adult

development, aging, etc.

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