In the era of Aristotle, the “teleological” cosmology dominated the mainstream. Everything in the universe occupies its own place to form a whole , Pointing to the ultimate goal, the same is true for people, each has its own potential, the purpose of life is to realize the potential and achieve excellence. Modern science has destroyed the teleological view of the universe, and the world after the “disenchantment” is no longer fascinating, and it has become a step-by-step mechanical clock. And people become machines.
Zhou Lian pointed out that in order to understand how to become a “complete person”, one must start with the changes in the world outlook.
This article is from WeChat official account:Chaos University (ID: hundun-university), Lecture: Zhou Lian (Professor of School of Philosophy, Renmin University of China), Support: Tang Jin, Zhao Zhe, Editor: Business Research Team of Chaos University, Original Title: “Exclusive Lecture by Zhou Lian: The Heart of the Machine and the Complete Man | Academy of Arts and Sciences, head picture: Raphael “Academy of Athens”
Hello everyone! Starting today, I will teach you the course “The Heart of Machines and the Complete Man”. I want to rethink people’s position in the universe and their self-understanding by interpreting the changes in the world outlook from the past to the present. Especially under the double attack of science, culture and humanities, how can we become a “complete human being in the modern sense” “.
I study philosophy, not science, so my foothold is always on people’s self-understanding. Of course, human self-understanding must be linked to the external environment, especially the changes in the world outlook.
The greatest impact, and even the greatest challenge, for contemporary people’s self-understanding is the development of scientific and technological concepts since modern times and their practical changes to human life.
In the first lecture, I will focus on the evolution of the world view and the discovery of people.
A little question first: Why does the stone fall?
For modern people who have been baptized in classical Newtonian physics, the answer is simple, because there is gravity. However, if we take time back to ancient Greece, ask Aristotle to answer this question. His answer is because the natural tendency of the earth element is to achieve a certain goal, that is, to be located in the center of the universe.
We can define Newton’s answer as a mechanistic explanation, while Aristotle’s answer is a teleological explanation.
Starting from the mechanistic explanation and teleological explanation, we can cut into the transformation of the world view.
Don’t underestimate Aristotle’s judgments. These judgments are not only descriptions of facts, but also extensions of ethics and value. For example, in the geocentric theory, the earth is static, which is not only a description of objective facts, but also has an ethical meaning, because for the ancient Greeks, static is noble. You see, when they understand everything, they actually have an ethical vision and a teleological color.
In contrast to Newton’s world view, we are all familiar with it. The earth revolves around its axis, about one revolution every 24 hours; the earth and planets also revolve around the sun in an elliptical orbit. This is a cold objective fact, nothing more.
Here, please pay attention to a key difference: In Newton’s worldview, the earth and planets revolve in an elliptical orbit, while in Aristotle’s worldview, the sun revolves around the earth in a perfect circular orbit.
What is the difference between an ellipse and a perfect circle? For the ancient Greeks, the perfect circle was the perfect figure. Once again, you will find that the ancient Greeks not only described the world in fact, but also gave it an ethical value meaning: the perfect circle means This orbit is perfect and perfect; the oval shape breaks this perfection and perfection.
It is interesting to note that although as modern people, we have all accepted Newton’s worldview, but if you think about it, you will find that Newton’s worldview is “contradictory” with our common sense or general experience. For example, the earth revolves around the sun, but the sun clearly rises in the east and sets in the west. What we see with the naked eye is that the sun revolves around the earth, right?
In other words, Newton’s worldview is not “obvious”. The scientific world view since modern times is actually a theoretical product, which conflicts with our common sense.
Furthermore, Aristotle’s worldview, of course, seems wrong today, but it does not mean that every single point of view is wrong, but that the entire system composed of these single points of view has been proven wrong. of. We have abandoned Aristotle’s entire system.
With the help of Thomas Kuhn,this is the “paradigm shift” from ancient science to modern science.
Today, we are going to talk about four topics:
Naturally do no purposeless things
The position of man and the nature of man
The discovery of man and the world are no longer fascinating
A person is a machine?
Aristotle: Naturally do not do aimless things
All classical philosophers, when thinking about the world, the universe, and people, are based on certain archetypes.
What is Plato’s prototype? It is mathematics. He set up a sign at the entrance of the college: Those who don’t understand geometry are not allowed to enter.
What is the prototype of Aristotle? It is biology.
Numbers are perfect, they are abstract and static; while biology is empirical and changes. Therefore, the biggest purpose of Aristotle’s philosophy is to explain “change.” Why does the world come to this, why does mankind come to this, he wants to explain the reasons behind the changes.
Aristotle gave the so-called “four-cause theory”, which at first glance is very complicated: material cause, formal cause, dynamic cause and purpose cause.
Human position and human essence: an outstanding person = a complete person
The universe is oneWith the existence of a teleology, everything in the universe has a natural tendency to realize its essence. What about people? Where is man in this teleological system of the universe?
Let’s further talk about people’s self-understanding triggered by Aristotle’s worldview.
At the beginning I asked a question, why did the stone fall? According to the mechanistic explanation, there are external gravity reasons; according to the teleological explanation, the earth element naturally wants to approach the center of the world.
Then I can also ask: Why did you come to the School of Arts and Sciences of Chaos University? Why do people eat? Why do people live? When our problem is approaching human beings step by step, it seems that the teleological explanation is more reasonable than the mechanical explanation.
Aristotle’s ethics is a typical teleological interpretation. Moreover, the teleology of points to the so-called “good things” rather than the “right things”. Everyone experience these two example sentences:
“This thing is good, so I want to achieve it.”
“This thing is right, so I must implement it.”
Everyone, put yourself in your place and think about it. Which sentence makes you more friendly? Is it the first example sentence? This thing is good, so I want to realize it-at this time you have the desire and will to realize it. And what about the second example sentence? We seem to seldom say “because this thing is right, so I want to achieve it”. It sounds very awkward, not in line with common sense, and the more fluent and common sense statement is: because this thing is right, So I have to implement it, or have to implement it. The so-called “have to”, its implicit meaning is that it constitutes a certain restriction or suppression to my will or desire.
Aristotle said that man is a purposeful animal, and everything he does is toward something good. Philosophers sometimes translate this “good” into “good”, but once translated into “good”, it doesn’t look like human words, and it will hinder ordinary people’s understanding. In fact, it is a good thing, and everything we do is to achieve something good.
Some good things are ends, and some good things are just means to achieve ends. Chinese people often say that money is not everything, but no money is absolutely impossible. In this way, money is regarded as a means to achieve an end. Compared with ends, means only have value in the sense of tools. In other words, ends are more valuable than means. Therefore, there are some “goods as ends”, which are superior or superiorFor “goodness as a means.”
The question now is, is there a good as the ultimate goal? I would like to ask everyone, what did you come to the College of Arts and Sciences for? Some people will say to learn knowledge; what for after learning knowledge? In order to improve the realm of life. What is the purpose of improving the state of life? You can keep asking questions like this until you feel as if you have nothing to say, and try to add another sentence: in order to be happy. If I continue to ask, what is the purpose of happiness? You will find that this dialogue is unsustainable. This is not human words. I am happy, what else do I need?
Aristotle believes that when questioning the ultimate goal of life, people will reach agreement at the verbal level,that is, the highest goal of life is to obtain happiness.Happiness is the so-called highest good. However, people have different opinions on the essence of happiness.
The ancient Greek word for happiness is eudaimonia, and it has many different translations, such as happiness, happiness; well-being, well-being; pleasure, happiness; and success, success. Different translations constitute different understandings, which in turn constitute various ethical theories. For example, when you understand eudaimonia as pleasure, then you will regard the happiness of the senses as the highest good. You will have an ice cream at noon and watch “Summer of the Band” in the evening, and you will feel like wow, I’m good. Happiness, this is a hedonistic understanding of happiness.
I personally prefer the translation of flourishing, which means flourishing, flourishing, and blooming.
I remember that Deng Chao and Sun Li acted in a play called “Happiness is Like a Flower”. I especially suspect that the screenwriter may have read Aristotle’s ethics. He is very keen to capture happiness as flourishing. Essential meaning-bloom. Everyone has his potential, and only when your potential is realized and given a form to yourself, you will have happiness.
Think down this line of thought. What do you think is the definition of a good horse?
If it travels thousands of miles a day, 800 nights, and runs fast, it is a good horse, right? Because this is the essence of a horse as a horse, when it realizes its essence and realizes its potential, it is a good horse.
The same is true for people. What is a good person? The so-called good people in ancient Greece refer to outstanding people, those who have fulfilled human functions.
What are the functions of people?
The famous Canadian philosopher MacIntyre said: “Human” is used as a functional concept…rooted in the form of social life expressed by classical traditional theorists. Because, according to this tradition, to be a person is to play a series of roles, each of which has its own meaning and purpose: family members, citizens, soldiers, philosophers, servants of gods. “Human” is no longer a functional concept if and only if man is regarded as an individual prior to and separated from all roles.
Compared to this concept of “function” attached to characteristic roles, I appreciate another functional understanding of people in ancient Greece. Hamilton pointed out in the “Greek Spirit” that happiness (Eudaimonia) has one of the oldest definitions: “The power of life lies in the vast space given by life. The extraordinary display.” There are two key words here, one is “broad space” and the other is “exceptional display”.
And this is inseparable from an important concept “aretê” in ancient Greece. Today we often translate “aretê” into “virtue”, but the result of doing so is “lost all the Greek flavor”, because virtue is a word of moral evaluation, but in ancient Greek, “aretê” is universal It is applied to all fields, so the most suitable translation should be “excellent”.
When the word “aretê” is applied to people, “it means all the advantages that people can have, including moral, mental, physical, and practical aspects.” A life that fully demonstrates the characteristics of human beings in all aspects is a “complete life”, that is, “the extraordinary display of the power of life in the vast space given by life”.
So, a person who leads a “complete life” is also called “completePeople”.
The ideal of such a “complete man” once existed in ancient Greece. But over time, it slowly disappeared. I’m going to talk about this disappearing process next.
From the discovery of people, the world is no longer fascinating
Since modern times, such a teleological outlook on the universe and life has been subverted, and the most fundamental reason is the loss of the purpose dimension.
McIntyre wrote a famous book called “The Pursuit of Virtue” (After Virtue), the title of this book can also be translated as “De After sex”. Rather, this is a pun expression: after the loss of virtue, how should we pursue virtue?
We just said that the translation of virtue is not as good as excellence, so the question just now can be expressed as: How should we pursue excellence after the loss of excellence? Furthermore, this question is actually asking about the loss and pursuit of the ideal of “complete man”. This is a fundamental dilemma and eternal proposition facing modern people.
McIntyre said that the system of Aristotelian teleology consists of three elements, the human nature that is accidental, that is, the human nature that has not been educated; second, the person who can be who achieves its purpose; Third, a set of ethical rules. Obviously, the role of these ethical rules is to help people develop from the human nature that is accidental to the person who realizes its purpose and essence.
The problem is, “The common result of the secular society’s rejection of Protestantism and Catholic theology, and the rejection of Aristotelianism by science and philosophy, is that it eliminates any concerns about’achieving its purpose and what may be The concept of “humanity”… After eliminating any concept of essential human nature and abandoning any concept of purpose, what is left is a moral framework composed of two remaining elements whose relationship has become extremely unclear. “
For example, we have accepted all kinds of ethical rules from childhood to adulthood, and they all tell us: it’s right to do this, so you have to do it. However, after realizing these ethical rules, do we really become the outstanding people who realize their nature? Obviously not.
Because the purposeful dimension does not exist and is lost. The code of ethics only tells us what is right and what is wrong. It does not provide us with a convincing goal.
I hope everyone can work hard to understand the kind of psychology of Catholics or Protestants. In the teachings of Martin Luther, people are driven to a dead end. I use one sentence to describe it as the individual is walking in a desolate zone of faith.
You find that nothing you do may not change God’s decision, but you are still trying to find evidence of your own salvation in clues.
Later Max Weber said that although the Protestants realize that people do not have free will and that what people do cannot change God’s decision, the Protestants believe that all the labor you do in this world is your own salvation. A kind of indirect evidence. You cannot change the will of God, but accumulating wealth on the earth through hard work to glorify God indirectly proves that you can be saved.
Only those who walk in the desolate zone of faith will anxiously look for these evidences and continue to strengthen these things. Therefore, they will achieve or find indirect evidence of their salvation through labor and vigorously developing capitalism. This is the affinity relationship between Protestant ethics and capitalism.
The Protestant religion advocates justification by faith and believes that individuals can directly establish a connection with God without going through the middle link of the church. It cancels the necessity of the existence of the Catholic Church in one fell swoop. Not only that, but also the old communities such as families, villages, and towns. Decline, which led to the rise of modern individualism.
The individualism spawned by the Reformation and the rediscovery of people in the Renaissance are very different in temperament. The Renaissance promotes human values, affirms human reason, and believes that humanity can be perfected through education. This is a kind of positive improvement. The pursuit of joyful individualism is the happiness of mortals.
Although the Reformation also affirmed the individual, it denies human rationality at the root, emphasizes the purity of faith, and is gloomy and even desperate in temperament. To borrow Weber’s words, Protestant This kind of “loneliness” became a source of “the kind of unimaginative and pessimistic individualism.”
3. The scientific revolution destroyed man’s position in the universe
Next we will enter the scientific revolution. In short, the consequence of it is to completely destroy the position of man in the universe.
As we mentioned at the beginning of the course, one of Kepler’s conceptual subversions is to emphasize that the trajectory of celestial bodies is elliptical. Replace the circle with an ellipse. At first glance, it doesn’t look great, butThis is actually a subversion of the entire classical cosmology and the values behind it.
Because since Pythagoras, an aesthetic prejudice that has governed ancient astronomy is that the circle is a perfect shape and the celestial body is a perfect object. Once the trajectory of the celestial body is no longer a circle, but an ellipse, then Plato and Aristotle’s system actually collapses. Kepler said: “My purpose is to prove that the heavenly machinery is not a sacred, living thing, but a clock-like machinery.”
Newton’s first law of motion tells us that any object will always maintain a uniform linear motion state or a static state without any external force, until an external force forces it to change this state. In Newtonian science, the reason for the formation of the mode of movement of an object is no longer its intrinsic nature; on the contrary, the object forms its mode of operation under the influence of external forces.
This explanation is very different from that of Aristotle. Aristotle said that any object has an internal motive force and has nothing to do with external motive force. According to Aristotle’s explanation, the model of object motion is based on the inner nature of the object. He also said that people are shaped in the image of God, so life has the goal of becoming perfect and perfecting.
Darwin’s theory of species evolution also puts forward a subversive idea that neither the universe nor man itself was created by God, but the result of natural evolution. Carl Sagan said, “Darwin proposed a way different from watchmakers, without the intervention of watchmakers with capital letters, the disordered nature may also produce a great order.That is natural selection”.
From Copernicus, Kepler, Newton to Darwin, what are the philosophical beliefs shaped by the modern scientific revolution?
First, almost all traces of the theory of living things have been eliminated from the laws of physics. The Greeks regarded athletic ability as a sign of life. Aristotle believed that any inanimate object would soon stand still if it was left to its nature. Therefore, if the movement is not to stop, the action of the soul on matter must be continuous. All this has been changed by Newton’s first law of motion.
Second, the concept of “purpose” is expelled from the scientific method. The idea of human beings’ place in the universe has undergone profound changes. Neither the universe nor man himself has a purpose at all, and man’s position in the universe loses its basis.
There is often a word in philosophy called disenchantment, which translates to “disenchantment” or “disenchantment”. diss means to dispel; enchAntment is charm. The worldview shown to us by modern science is a worldview that is no longer fascinating. It has lost the charm of mysticism, poetic romance and endless reverie.
Now, the world has become an infinite, immutable mathematical machine. Not only has man lost its lofty status in the teleology of the universe, but all the things that constitute the essence of the physical world among the scholars of the scholastics, those that make the world lively, lovely and spiritual, are gathered together and stuffed into these turbulence and insignificance. , In a temporary location.
The operation of the world and the universe are as orderly as a clock, but there is no life. People? Human itself is also like a clock, nothing more than a combination of some nervous system and circulatory system. The world has lost its fascinating characteristics, and people have lost their divinity.
A person is a machine? Science remains silent to everyone
Go back to the prototype or metaphor of the world view mentioned at the beginning. What is the archetype of Aristotle’s understanding of the world? Biology, that is, organisms. You will find that from Aristotle to Newton, the metaphor of our worldview has undergone a huge change, that is, from organism to machine.
In the Aristotelian world, the universe is seen as a biological organism, and each part plays its role separately to achieve natural goals and objectives together; in the Newtonian worldview, the universe is seen as a machine , Each part interacts with other parts by pushing and pulling, in the same way as the parts of the machine interact with each other.
When we look into the starry sky today, we no longer imagine the jade rabbit in the moon palace, the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl, or the gods on Mount Olympia. We will only tell children very scientifically and coldly that the shadow on the moon is not the moon palace, but the crater caused by the fall of a meteorite. This is the world view we accept today.
This is a picture of the Milky Way, where is the earth? Where are the humans?Although you are here in uppercase, you can’t actually see where you are.
Starting from Newton, we have a world picture of modern science. It replaces the qualitatively sensible world in which we live, love and die, with a quantitative, geometrically materialized world. In this world, everything has its place, but man loses its place.
This world is no longer a teleological, hierarchical, and sensible world, but a mechanical, purposeless, quantified and flattened world.
Schrodinger said these two passages in “Nature and the Greeks”:
“The scientific picture of the actual world around me is very incomplete. It gives a lot of factual information and arranges our experience in a very consistent order, but for the closest Everyone who says it’s really important keeps silent.”
“The scientific picture of the world gives a very complete understanding of everything that happens-it just makes it too understandable. It allows one to imagine the entire manifestation of the world as a mechanical clock. Behavior, because of everything science knows, this mechanical clock will continue to operate step by step as it is now, without consciousness, will, effort, pain, happiness and responsibility associated with it.”
You can read Schrödinger’s admiration and dissatisfaction with the world picture provided by modern science. At this point, we have to ask a question: Does the development of modern science help human beings understand themselves more?
There is no doubt that modern science has expanded our understanding of the universe, enhanced our knowledge, and greatly changed our way of life. But do modern science really help humans understand themselves better?
Schrodinger said:
“It cannot tell us anything about red and blue, bitterness and sweetness, physical pain and happiness; it knows nothing about beauty and ugliness, good and bad, God and eternity. Sometimes science claims to answer these Domain questions, but these answers are often so stupid that they won’t be taken seriously by us.”
“The scientific worldview itself does not contain ethical and aesthetic values. It does not say a word about our ultimate realm and goal, and it does not contain God’s reasons. Where do I come from and where do I want to go?”< /p>
“Science cannot tell us why music can make us happy, and why a song can make us cry.”
These words of Schrödinger were written in the first half of the 20th century. You can read many of his denials of science. Although he is a scientist, he still adheres to the ideals of humanism and is still very concerned about the traditional life world and life. Form has emotions and concerns that are hard to let go.
Schrödinger’s answer is not necessarily the standard answer, but Schrödinger’s question deserves to be taken seriously.
Under the background of modern mechanistic scientific concepts, what is a human being? Is man still the spirit of all things? Or to say that human beings are actually homogenous in the universe like mechanical clocks, and we are just machines.
The representative of modern philosophy, Descartes once said: “We know that humans can make all kinds of automata, that is, a machine that moves by themselves. It uses only a few parts and a large number of bones in animals. Compared with muscles, nerves, arteries, veins, etc., there are very few, so we regard this body as a god-made machine, which is very cleverly arranged, and the actions it makes are amazing. Any machine that humans can invent Can’t compare with it.”
Descartes believes that our bodies are as delicate as machines. In other words, the body is a machine.
From the fact that the body is a machine, can we further conclude that humans are also machines? What we think, what we think, what we feel, all our intellectual and spiritual manifestations, are actually nothing more than the manifestations of machines.
When the human worldview changed from Aristotle to Newton and further developed to today, after the advancement of all modern technologies such as relativity, quantum mechanics, including artificial intelligence, biotechnology, we finally need to face this problem again ——How do we understand man himself, is man a machine?
This article is from WeChat official account:Chaos University (ID: hundun-university), Lecture: Zhou Lian (Professor of School of Philosophy, Renmin University of China), Support: Tang Jin, Zhao Zhe