Chris Marsh, 28 May 2007

Before attempting to refute it, I should address the questions: what is (or is meant by) ‘the mechanistic paradigm’?, why refute it? or what’s wrong with it?, and what should be put in its place?

The mechanistic paradigm is a pattern of thought within orthodox science, and influencing wider ‘secular’ society, based on the presumption that the world, or the universe, is like a machine, inanimate (lacking soul or spirituality), and unconscious apart from the epiphenomenal consciousness of any animal, including the self-awareness of an individual human being. Bizarrely and anomalously – to some minds anyway, those of committed atheists in particular – the paradigm pervades much of religious society too, as witness this letter to The Guardian, 26 May 2007:

Thanks to Harry Krota for highlighting the worrying decline in British science. What a pity though that he had to spoil it all by making it an opportunity for bashing Christianity. In the US there are many more fundamentalist colleges and a far more fundamentalist mindset than in secular Britain, and yet science there is flourishing. To assert that faith is somehow responsible for the decline of science in Britain but not the US shows a lack of logic which I’m sure he would not accept in a science paper. In fact, the monotheistic world-view is perfectly suited for the emergence of science since it posits a rational order of which we are stewards and provides a motive for the pursuit of truth that science ultimately is.

Dr Gordon Welch, Chester.

What that letter illustrates is that the origin of the mechanistic paradigm, and materialism in philosophy: ‘the view that all facts (including facts about the human mind and will and the course of human history) are causally dependent upon physical processes, or even reducible to them,’ (Encyclopædia Britannica), derives from the scientific revolution of the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries (and before that from Aristotle), which did not deny the existence of God and the human soul, but supposed a dual universe, of matter and mind (Descartes’ res extensa and res cogitans), or body and soul, material Creation and divine Creator. Later materialists of the 19th century onwards had only to excise God and all things spiritual from this model to arrive at the modern, secular version.

Whether there is anything ‘wrong’ with the idea of a machine-like material world is nothing to do with whether it is ‘true’ or not. I do not believe that anyone can know what is true, other than in senses to do with one’s experiences, memories, beliefs and convictions: personal ‘stuff’, which cannot be extended in any reliable way to what is true for anyone else or for the world.

My motive in seeking to refute the mechanistic paradigm is concerned with how the world machine is supposed to work; in particular the idea that there are laws governing how the mechanisms of the world operate, how bodies move in space in relation to each other, how gravitational, electromechanical and nuclear forces exert their influences, how energy enables movements and forces, and is accumulated, redistributed, and its potential used up, wasted in background heat and entropy. There is nothing ‘wrong’ with descriptions of the regularities observed in various phenomena which employ such models, or with the mathematical formulae, functions and expressions which define these patterns with precision, and allow useful predictions to be made, so long as it is recognised that these descriptions are just that: descriptions, or metaphors, using ordinary and mathematical languages. The danger lies in the belief that ‘laws’ which ‘govern’ the world have any kind of independent or transcendent existence, because with such a belief comes an acceptance that ‘laws which govern’ are an inevitable part of life, and thus essentially ‘good’. And that is just what has happened. Try saying out loud the phrase ‘bad law’. Sounds odd, doesn’t it? It’s an oxymoron. The effect of that is a tendency felt by all of us to assume that what is legal is right. And the notion of a mechanical world, predictable, determined, regardless of our will, our desires and intentions, which are supposedly illusions anyway, makes us accept being passive and powerless, necessarily obedient, and judged faulty if not. The usefulness of that mindset to the dominant class of society, whose servants make the legislation which sets the laws which bind us, is obvious.

If not mechanisms and laws, then what? Memories and habits, says Sheldrake – and he notes that ‘The law metaphor is embarrassingly anthropomorphic [whereas] [H]abits are less human-centred. Many kinds of organisms have habits, but only humans have laws.’ (Sheldrake belief)

The trouble with Sheldrake’s alternative is that it almost invites scoffing by mainstream scientists. There are many reasons for that.

Firstly, there is the problem with language which Bergson points out:

Listen to the discussion between any two philosophers one of whom upholds determinism, and the other liberty: it is always the determinist who seems to be in the right. He may be a beginner and his adversary a seasoned philosopher. He can plead his cause nonchalantly, while the other sweats blood for his. It will always be said of him that he is simple, clear and right. He is easily and naturally so, having only to collect thought ready to hand and phrases ready-made: science, language, common sense, the whole of intelligence is at his disposal. (Bergson, 1946, p.41)

Secondly, there is who Sheldrake is. He was at the top of his profession as a biologist, having gained a doctorate and a Cambridge fellowship, and then he turned traitor and heretic, but still claims to be a practising scientist. Plus he is a Christian, a member of the Anglican Church. The latter, incidentally, weakens the points he makes against materialism, because materialism requires there to be a location for its laws other than in the minds and discourses of scientists, and the best place for them is in the Mind of God.

Chris: ‘I’m also concerned that the power of the hypothesis falls down is if you bring God into it. It’s a bit like Descartes’ dualism, whereby the phenomenon of ‘I think I’ll move my arm’ (spirit), and ‘it moves’ (body) is due to God’s two synchronised clocks. Similarly, orthodox science’s ‘true theories’ have somewhere to be and operate from: the mind of God. That’s why I have a problem with your religious beliefs: they render your hypothesis unnecessary.’

From dialogues with Sheldrake

Sheldrake’s reply to this was: ‘If you look at my website you’ll find there’s a clear separation between science and the spirituality aspects, and I think you’ll also find the same if you look at my books. There’s nothing I can do about people confusing themselves, but I try to make [a] clear distinction in these areas.’ I don’t think that helps!

Bergson says that language favours the philosopher arguing for determinism (an inevitable aspect of materialism). In an essay on William James, he also says that intellectuals favour simplicity, and Sheldrake’s ideas fall down on that one too, particularly in his first book, A New Science of Life, in which it is unclear whether his science is wholly new, or is a new bit not unlike old science, with its various fields: so why not another ‘morphogenetic’ field?

Sheldrake’s critics accuse him of bringing back ‘vitalism’, the assumption being that vitalism is an old idea, long-since discredited. Sheldrake seems to favour the notion of ‘organicism’, but again that doesn’t help. Interestingly, Bertrand Russell, an opponent of organicism, seems open to there being a need to study ‘the action of the whole [which] has a certain unifiedness and completeness which is left out of account in the process of analysis.’ (organicism and vitalism)

My concept of ‘habitude’ is intended to be a way out of the muddle. It sets aside the mechanistic paradigm on the grounds that it is illogical and against common sense – and dangerous because it colludes with the dominant ideology of capitalism. It is illogical because it presupposes transcendent, eternal laws governing all mechanisms, and with the death of God, there is nowhere for the laws to be, to operate from. The laws are only in scientists’ minds and discourses; in the world there are patterns, but no laws. ‘Explanations’, ‘how things work’ are inventions not truths (Bergson on James, p.256). The idea that consciousness is an epiphenomenon, an illusion resulting from the functioning of a wholly material brain, means that our experiences of having free will and being able to exercise choices are illusory. But we know that’s silly, it’s just smart words. Suggestions that quantum effects, and the introduction of some uncertainty, a range of possibilities and probabilities, don’t help. What we experience is not that we shake a dice every time we choose what to do; it is that we choose what to do.

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