Fields as Formal Causes, with David Bentley Hart

and well welcome David very pleased that you're here in Hampstead England um and it's wonderful that we can actually meet in person um thank you um I do have an agenda there's a question I'm burning to discuss with you and whether or not you think it's has any value or not I have haven't the faintest idea but been thinking a lot about um the basic principles of physics recently and and trying to think about them without the fog of mathematics that normally udes all discussion and prevents all thought on the subject and the what I'm really interested in is the question of fields the fields of nature which include the gravitational field the electromagnetic field Quantum matter fields um the strong weak nuclear fields and in my own hypothesis morphic Fields the fields are um as causes as but the thing is the thing as you and I and many other people have discussed the mechan mechanistic revolution in the 17th century um for formal and final causes were amputated from nature we were left with just material and efficient causes or material and moving causes yeah but when field theory was introduced into science in the 1840s by Faraday it was a profound Revolution that in many ways went beyond mechanistic understanding and although Fields have been crammed into kind of classical science and the physics textbooks and all that kind of thing they don't follow the rules um and what I've I've got this illustration that I thought I might try out on you if you're up for probably I'm always yes yes so this is a obviously a white plate and what I have here are a series of small bar magnets there's one and each one has a north and a South Pole now normally when we're told about magnets you know the North Pole repels other North Poles and attract South poles and it sounds as if repulsion and attraction are equivalent you know they repel or they attract in seemingly equivalent ways but actually um what happens is there's a formative process going on and what I need to do is just throw individual bar magnets down and if if attraction and repulsion were equal you'd end up with a kind of random um melee of magnets that's not what happens so you see the the theough attraction repulsion norn like poles repels different poles attract sounds as if it's equivalent in practice um attraction dominates right and what's happening is a formative effect here what's happening is clearly some kind of formative process um now let's see if we want to guess both in the screen there way um a kind of formative process um where um there's a kind of causation involved here which is not Material causation because the magnetic field isn't material Y and it's not really energetic in the sense I have to throw them in and there's a certain amount of energy but what's pulling them together is a force a magnetic force but that force is not mov moving energy um it's um it's something else it pulls them towards an end they're attracted um but when the magnet each of those magnets when it attracts another magnet loses no energy when it attracts it it there's no expenditure of energy and if you have a magnet on your fridge door and it's holding up a piece of paper on the fridge door against the power of gravity it can do it for years on end and and it's not expending any energy to defy the power of GRA gravity and so but when a magnetic field is or or a gravitational field is operating is not expending energy so take the as gravitational field to look at another formative field the formative effect of gravitational fields is usually to create spheres the moon the Sun the Earth um but say there's a meteor meteorite heading through empty space with a particular velocity if it's attracted towards the Earth through the Earth's gravitational field and zooms down and hits the Earth with a big bang um the meteorite hasn't gained any well it's gained potential energy from the Earth's magnetic field which gives it kinetic energy which makes it hit the Earth but the Earth has expanded no energy whatsoever in making that happen in fact when the meteor rise on the earth the mass of the Earth increases a little bit and its gravitational pull increases so what I'm suggesting is that the gravitational fields and the magnetic field are acting as formal and final causes you know when Aristotle said a stone Falls to Earth because it's seeking its proper place and it's a final cause actually that seems to be the case um so I just wondered whe and I've never seen this discussed in philosophy of science anywhere it's very attractive though isn't it it's um well it is I mean of course when when formal and final causes were banished from scientific language progressively in the in the 17th century they had already in a sense been converted in the minds of many into extrinsic physical so they were still being thought of in ter of mechanical energy mechanical relations push and pull but of course that's not that's not what they actually are in in Aristotle's law there they really are a set of rational relations that are logically prior to the actions that that obey them and that that are inductible from one another but actually I never thought of this before um no energy expanded yeah no I mean of course it's always been the issue with Fields hasn't it I mean you know we don't really know what gravity is no Newton was baffled by it right and he never came up with you know his ultimate answer was in terms of the Divine will because he thought matter itself couldn't have the power to act on all other matters through the universe at a distance the very notion of a formal calls was something that had been um so utterly altered by early uh by the by the early modern period in put people's imagination there was already a sort of tacit mechanism that had come into scientific or natural philosophy as early as the 14th century and I think that by the 17th century it was fairly established way of misreading the Aristotelian tradition but what you're saying makes uh an um I have to say surprisingly kind of sense to me because of course because what a formal cause really is uh in Aristotle thought is a rational relation of order that explains um a possibility that that doesn't seem to be inherent merely in matter and motion right the the the set of ordered relations do uh dictated by an antecedent finality which again isn't something that things are necessarily aiming at but but the but uh the perfeo the complete expression of their potentials and it's an entirely different it's an entirely different understanding of causality than uh than the mechanistic picture and it might be you might be right that maybe one of the reasons that we find Fields so baffling trying to to Define them is because we are we're using a truncated causal eological language um see youve taken me off guard here I would I all right I'm at least it's all right for me but I'm maybe not all right for you particular it's it's the the thing is you see well I mean it's only recently that I've got excited by this because I've always thought that you know my whole hypothesis of for formative causation with morphic Fields is all about morphic Fields as formative causes or formal causes but it's only very recently that I've come to realize that all Fields have their property and that they if you say you know what you were saying about Aristotle something that's not just contained in the matter or in the movement which gives a rational order then the organization of these magnets that we just looked at lining up is a formal pattern that's to do with rational relations and stuff it's nothing to do with the matter of it because the matter of the iron magnets if you demagnetize an iron magnet by heating it up the actual amount of iron is still the same the weight is still the same the molecular the atomic Constitution and crystalline form is much the same um all that's happened is it's lost its magnetism and so um the the there is a kind of it so it's not the material course the iron that's G this effect and it's not the way I threw them on the U the the plate that's causing this effect cuz if I'd thrown little bits of ordinary iron if they were demagnetized they wouldn't have lined up like that right you know I I I I I fascinated in recent years by the feel is it Paul Davies is the filler with the demon in the machine you know this this desire to find uh way of of writing information into the fundamental laws of physics but always with the presupposition I think I mean I can't speak for them the presupposition that that that what they're hoping to do is to write the laws of information into physics according to the Paradigm of mechanism still yes so uh that in some sense you can get from information Theory to the information itself of course information Theory concerns only only bits transmission of information yes it's very limited right it's um in fact they would call the syntactic rather than the semantic I wouldn't even call it that because that's a misuse of the idea syntax already is an order of symbolic relations rational what they're really talking about would be more paratactic which and um and of course I think that's the fundamental error right is they want they they realize that there is something missing from the picture that explains the propensity towards order that that seems I mean even neant Tropic order which you see everywhere in life um but they want to to do it in a way that's still continuous with the 17th century scientific revolution's basic premise that everything is a mechanistic relation and yeah well I think it was doomed to failure because I think what I think anyway um and I mean obviously I'm not don't represent the majority of you but I think word is form not information right I think information means puts form into something it just mystifies the whole thing by creating another mathematical fog because then you think information Theory quantifying bits and all that kind of thing whereas the plain English word form um helps it to explain you know the form of the the sun is roughly a sphere and so is the earth and the form with these bar magnets are sort long thin things and they join up into an elongated form um all these things are playing in our minds work in terms of recognizing forms that's what they do I mean they it's um information simply obfuscates the issue in my opinion no I haven't I mean you're speaking to the converted actually in fact uh the book that I have coming out in August has at least in part uh an argument just to this effect and I I also agree that it's doomed to failure to try to understand uh the ordered relations of things such as you see in in a magnetic field or arising from a magnetic field or imposed or or impressed by a magnetic field in terms of information Theory anything that was to quantify it in terms of that that allowing it to be dissolved into relations between discrete Quant of energy or mass is not going to succeed because there's the form is inherently a top- down structure yes um even when when you're talking about semantic and syntactic information in terms of information Theory uh one of the more nonsensical suppositions that one gets both I think in uh evolutionary theory but also in things as diverse as Linguistics and um and physics and any other number any any of diff differing spheres of concern the the notion that somehow one can moveed from the quantification to this what is clearly a qualitative relation of or a qualitative state of ordered relations that does not emerge naturally merely from from mechanistic J to position or the exertion of one force on another is never going to work is you're never going to be able to demonstrate how the one arises from the other because it's precisely the opposite isn't it it's yes it's it's in fact this is even in information Theory this should be obvious because of course information Theory tells us that the greater the order at say the semantic or formal level the grad of the disorder at what they call the syntactic you know that um you can create an algorithm that that repeats a limited pattern of numbers say in in a periodic way uh you know uh 1 2 73 with an with repeat infinitely but of course that's you know a very impoverished the very very little information actually contained there the the it it can be done but the more orderly this syntactic or as I'd say paratactic level is uh the more confined the constrained and impotent the level of actual what they would call information let's just say semantic content or formal content is um so you could never come up with an algorithm to generate an aaren you know no right it's because the causation works in the other direction it's the the semantic content which exists primarily at the level of well in that case an intending intellect that has that's already related to the Future imposing an order on what would otherwise be simply either well random in one sense I mean it's a random sequence uh um that at the paratactic level the the more the more determinate it is at the higher level the more random it is at the lower and in another sense totally deterministic if it were simply beanis relations so you you never be able to get from the latter to the former there must be it has to and and I never thought of applying this to Fields before and this and I should of course you talk about morphic field so it should be obvious I suppose but um but it's seems sort of obvious doesn't it yes well it wasn't obvious to me so recently that it applies to all Fields because all fields are to down causes yeah and the gravitational field of the universe according to Einstein contains the entire universe and is that which could know through which the interrelation of all planets galaxies and everything is ordered through this field it's a top- down field it doesn't emerge from matter it's there to start with um it's their right from the beginning of the universe according to Big Bang Theory according to Big Bang Theory there's a primal well M Theory and and super String Theory there's a primal 10 or 11 dimensional field at the very moment of the Big Bang which then splits up or Bates into the other fields of nature but the point is that the whole thing is within a field right from the beginning it's not that the field somehow emerges by informational processes somehow it's there from the beginning and the magnetic field is there from the beginning the electromagnetic field with light and its presence in matter and the fields that organize the quantum matter fields that organize an electron electrons and an atom and atoms and molecules and things are there from the beginning at least from the beginning of the molecule um so all Fields it seems to be a top down causes and all of them are formative and I mean I'm I'm still thinking about this but nearly all of them work through attractional repulsion um the strong nuclear field for example which is the field responsible for what called the strong nuclear interactions keeps the quarks together inside a proton or a neutron and then helps shape the whole nucleus of the atom and these are very localized Fields they only operate in the scale of an and the weak uh interaction keeps atoms together and where through changes in it you get radioactive decay but these are fields that are incredibly localized but nevertheless organize the nucleus of every atom and then so you've got very localized Fields there which are still top down because they you know the the strong interaction keeps the quarks together in a proton or a neutron and without this strong interaction they'd fly apart and when you put them into a particle accelerator with enormous energy you can break up this strong iteration then you can get these separated particles briefly and then they assemble again so um all of these fields seem to me to have this top down quality and I think one of the problems in philosophy of science and indeed in in the thinking of scientists just in Practical working in science is exactly that this kind of ization is they've tried to sort of shoehorn this into a mechanistic model and I've just been reading a book on history of theories of fields in The Ether history of fields in in the 19th century you know when Faraday thought that the H of space was permeated by forces and matter was produced by forces that were non-localized they were they came together in kind of knots in atoms and things but they spread through all fa space um and then Maxwell tried to think of the electromagnetic ether The luminiferous Ether and a lot of 19th century physicists like the idea of ether as subtle matter and it to explain his properties mechanically know Maxwell's model was a vortices of fluid yes whizzing around in tubes for the lines of force but then what relativity theory in Einstein 1985 showed that you don't actually need the this mechanical ether the fields are self-sufficient or self-subsistent um but then what are they and you know as S Lawrence Bragg said in a wonderful historic footage from the Royal Institution talking on magnets you know giving demonstrations of magnets picking things up and so on it says a magnet is the ultimate explanation the field of the magnet can't be explained in terms of anything except magnets and of electromagnetic fields and he says what a magnet made up of it's made up of little magnets uh inside it um and so even in super string and M Theory which try and explain magnetic fields in terms of other fields is basically Fields all the way down you know um of course the the great resistance I mean I you know one way characterizing classical Aristotelian iology is simply to say that it presumes from the first that nature has a mind likee structure rather than mind being an emergent result of physical forces that that all of Nature has a mind because of course a top- down cause a formal cause has to be constrained by a finality I mean it has to be determined by that for which it is right which means that there's a sort of horizontal structure in in the sense that that there's there something like the structure of time in the sense that there's a past and a future and a present that's in the way that there is in a thought that intends an N but it also has to exist in a kind of now at at a higher level to be to be for I I'm being very vague here but the point is that that uh um if you start talking in that way when you if you try to recover that notional form in its classical acceptation rather than the sort of um distorted um mechanistic picture of it which allowed it to be dismissed just on the grounds that it was a defective mechanistic model then of course you're also in you I mean I I see why what the anxiety would be you you're you you're also you begin invoking a prior mind likee structure to to the physical relations you're talking about um that has to be there Serv and this little mystery of what direction that might seem to point in for yes um but the but you see the prim mind likee structure is actually there in field Theory I mean the whole universe as a universe in so far it's a Unity is held together by the gravitational field um and that's part of physics it's not as H to Wild speculation it's physics has these top down explanations it's not just atomistic it's a combination of top down and bottom up theories and the fields are what give the top down and although they may have crudely misinterpreted Aristotle the fact is that his theory of stones falling to the Earth in terms of of form and final causes wasn't just something in the mind Stones actually do fall to the Earth and and go Splat if they fall into water and things so something was actually happening it it wasn't just in the mind and and I say mind like I don't mean just in the mind I don't mean something that one has Dred up that exists only in in thought I I I mean that the very physical relations that say compose a tree as a tree are a set of rational relations that are always already mind likee as if the tree itself as a physical object is a thought yes you know that and um the uh you say you say science is full of top down and bottom up but of course you know that the ideological I wouldn't even say ideological the religious commitment of someone like say well the recently departed Daniel dennet for instance is that that somehow all those top down causes can be reduced to the bottom up causes you and yes I mean what he dismissed as skyhooks things that come from well gravity is a Skyhook yeah well that's that's why I'm enjoying this conversation because EV it it see you say it and immediate it seems obvious but for some reason um apparently our habits of thought don't Point towards the obvious that's what I always thought though about the Aristo alian uh scheme is that it it is simply a recognition of something that's obviously true about the the ways in which you describe a thing or event if I were to ask you what something is or what happened of course I'm asking you a set of you immediately a set of interrelated questions that can't be separated from one another without making the question vacuous you know what it's made of what what shape it has what what uh um but also what what makes it have it how does it begin and and what the full expression of all its potentialities are that is that would be its fin a way of thinking a final cality is it's def whatever it is is defined by that tenos that full expression of whatever the potential its potentials are as a finite thing or event um and all that the Aristotelian neology says is that this very obvious set of rational relations which is what your mind tells you you need in order to Define to recognize to recognize something as a discret something or event in relationship to a universe of other somethings and events um is is really an ontology you the the the the has no reason um but the whole history of of of of of of modern thought in the west at least on these things I mean we talk about the mechanistic philosophy in which which're on the one hand was trying to separate so final and formal causes are just suppositious uh Notions of some sort of extrinsic design which is not what they were but it's also you see in the the cartisian division between between aise and and raise extens if these are these are these are ontologically distinct realities and that the latter can only is as you say to the degree that it possesses order it's solely through the the will of God it's not it's not something intrinsic to the very structure or even the Conan supposition that there's a um something so utterly discontinuous between the neological realm of phenomena and and what mind does that that that all we know of reality is representation and the representation is itself only a kind of noetic allegory of a reality that we can't know whereas Ariston you're in the realm of Common Sense which is you know the Stone Falls uh you know uh and it always falls therefore there's a finality written into the relationship of stone and Earth uh what is the nature of that finality um and it's somehow is it's obviously primordial it's not something that arises out of The Accidental ju position of stoneless and Earth it's well exactly but that's exactly why you see I think we can recover something of that sense through thinking about fields in a new way I think the answer is hiding in plain sight and that that the gravitational model I mean back to dennit and skyw I mean you say what's an explanation of the tides going up and down in the ocean every day well the gravitational force of the Moon well that sounds like a Skyhook to me is quite literally yeah literally I mean it's it's so the thing is that the um but but it's amazing actually people like dennit how many Quant ignota they were willing he he was willing or they are willing to tolerate as as simply on notes that at some point these will be reduced to Blind mechanical interactive forces that are nothing but the exchange of energy between physical Mass but what's so extraordinary about it is that is such an old-fashioned agenda because it was over superseded in physics Itself by field Clippers Al from Faraday onwards well maybe from Newton onwards well from Newton onwards because well Newton didn't call it a field Theory but nevertheless Newtonian grav gravitation never fitted into this mechanistic model and and what and in 18th Cent 17 18th century science electricity and magnetism were more or less extruded um you know they they no one really understood them it was really only field theory that came to the rescue with Faraday but if you look at the early magnetic theory of Gilbert you know 1600 de magnete where Gilbert shows that the lad Stone points towards the Earth's north pole not the North Pole star that the Earth itself as a magnet Gilbert called it the soul of the earth and so the you he's lorded as the you know origin of modern magnetic Theory but his explanation of the Motive Power res a of the magnet was the soul of the AR it was a formal cause well well of course P literally is a form in a the you know the the form of of of the body but also the form of the living thing and but uh no you see I I I but but Mike that's why I brought up this issue of of of this ethology being mind-like relations Is I think that that's that's not that shouldn't be treated simply as as a metaphor or as a as as a quaint uh sentimental or picturesque way of talking that actually that's a there might be some good hard empirical reasons to say calling it The Soul of the earth you know that that it has an actual rational structure toward an end Bo seems well I think that actually what's happened is that the the old idea of souls as organizing principles and has actually in modern science been replaced by Fields yeah because you know the first Greek PR sycratic philosopher thali says you know the loadstone has a soul and the Greeks thought magnetism was explained by Souls not just living organisms magnetism so did Gilbert at the beginning of the 17th century then Faraday calls it a magnetic field and they thought that the soul of the universe held everything together the animal Mundi or whatever they quilled it um but then we have the gravitational field what Aristotle called the vegetative Soul shaping bodies is in my way of understanding the morphogenetic field so there's a sense in which Souls have replaced fields in modern science having been driven out in the 17th century they came back in the 19th century um in Disguise under the name of fields well and but also because of course the language of Soul had been uh subsumed into the cartisian picture you know in which the soul isn't actually a form ofite principle it's not even part of natural philosophy so yes no I like this so so again as I say though what what I find rather Shar talking is it all seems obvious now that you say it uh but honestly it had never occurred to me before um that you could act I mean I I've always that there's a principle of order in the formation of everything the formation of life and the in in the way in which all things consist that obviously can't be reduced to Mechanical causes but I actually hadn't thought in terms of uh this uh of of of something that's resonant in modern physics as a real as yes Quantified in res in modern physics as actually qualifying for the descriptions it's right there staring Us in the face I mean it took me a very long I it'san only in the last few months I been thinking about this I think we could continue this later we have to um break off at this stage CU it's dinner time thanks very much

Channel: Rupert Sheldrake

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Id: dU0NIU5d4BI

Length: 35min 19sec (2119 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 14 2024