Category Archives: Science

Philosophy, Science

Philosophy and science

THE PERTINENCE OF PHILOSOPHY vs. SCIENCE

THROUGHOUT much of the history of philosophy, there was no such thing as science in its modern form: in fact, it was from philosophical enquiry that modern science has evolved. The questions that metaphysics set out to answer about the structure and substance of the universe prompted theories that later became the foundations of “natural philosophy”, the precursor of what we now call physics. The process of rational argument, meanwhile, underpins the “scientific method”.

Since the 18th century, many of the original questions of metaphysics have been answered by observation, experiment and measurement, and philosophy appeared to be redundant in these areas. Philosophers have since changed their focus to examine science itself. Some, like Hume, challenged the validity of inductive reasoning in science, while others sought to clarify the meaning of terms used by science, opening up a “philosophy of science” that considers areas such as scientific ethics and the way science makes progress.

ADVANCES IN SCIENCE

MOST of the sciences evolved from branches of philosophy, complementing them with scientific theories describing the physical world. But as the pace of progress accelerated with the scientific revolution of the Enlightenment, the natural sciences largely replaced metaphysics, and by the end of the 19th century psychology and neuroscience began to provide a scientific alternative to the philosophy of the mind.

In the 20th century, Albert Einstein’s theories seemed to provide a comprehensive explanation of the physical universe, but many aspects of the new physics threw up almost as many questions as answers – problems that science alone could not explain. And just as science appeared to be replacing aspects of philosophy, some philosophers turned their attention to science itself. Karl Popper proposed a practical answer to the problem of induction, the basis of scientific methods, while Paul Feyerabend questioned the notion of a single reliable scientific method, based on Thomas Kuhn’s idea that science makes advances not in a smooth progression, but in radical jumps.

. On the Origin of Species

The cultural influence of science reached a climax in the mid-19th century with the publication in 1859 of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. Although it was a scientific rather than a philosophical work, his theory of evolution by natural selection put many aspects of philosophy in a new perspective. In the same way as Copernicus’s proposal of a heliocentric universe challenged religious authority and became symbolic of emergent Renaissance humanism, Darwin’s explanation of evolution presented humans as just another animal – part of the natural world rather than separate from it. In his later Descent of Man, he applied the principles of evolutionary theory specifically to humans, explicitly stating for the first time that we have evolved from animals, and so challenging previous notions of man as superior to other animals because of his ability to reason. But perhaps most important in terms of its effect on philosophy was the implicit idea that humans are not the pinnacle of God’s creation, but merely a stage in the evolution of the natural world.

ATOMIC THEORY

In the 5th century BCE, the philosopher Leucippus and his pupil Democritus proposed the revolutionary notion that everything is composed of indestructible particles in empty space. In other words, it was through philosophy that Atomic Theory first emerged.

Like many other philosophers, the Atomists, as they were later known, attempted to explain the reality of motion and change. Parmenides had said that these are mere illusions, since motion requires the existence of a void, which he deemed a logical impossibility.

Atomists turned this argument on its head, however, suggesting that since motion is patently possible, the void must exist, and matter must be free to move within it. Since the movement of matter takes place at a microscopic level, it is not visible. Matter is formed of minute particles that Leucippus called “atoms”, which exist in empty space, and the changes that can be observed in the cosmos are due to the motion of these atoms in the void. Each atom is an eternal and unchanging entity, both indestructible and indivisible, but capable of joining with others to form different substances and objects.

Where Parmenides posited eternal, immutable unity, the Atomists proposed an infinite diversity of eternal particles that gives rise to an ever-changing cosmos.

Building blocks

According to the Atomists, the atom is the basic unit of every material substance. These building blocks of matter are constantly in motion in the void, and react with each other, being either mutually repelled or attracted. There are countless kinds of atoms, which join together in different combinations to form the huge variety of substances. They then separate as those substances decay. The atoms themselves are immortal, and remain intact. They continue their movement throughout the void, continually and ceaselessly combining, separating, and reforming.

NEED TO KNOW

> The void described by the Atomists is more than empty space – it is an absolute absence of matter, akin to a vacuum.

> The word “atom” comes from the Greek atomon, meaning “uncuttable” or “indivisible”.

Kinds of Atom

Democritus suggested that atoms come in a range of sizes and shapes, their properties determining the characteristics of different substances. He proposed that the atoms of liquids are smooth and can move freely past one another, while solids have more rigid atoms that move less and can connect with other atoms.

AIR – Air atoms are light and wispy, and move freely and independently

WATER – The smooth, round atoms of water give it its flowing, liquid character

IRON – Atoms of iron have hooks that interlock to give the metal its solidity

SALT – The taste of salt is caused by its jagged atoms acting on the tongue

“Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.” – Democritus (5th century BCE)

Standard
Mental Health, Psychology, Science

Schools of Thought: Humanistic Psychology

HUMANISTIC PSYCHOLOGY

THE move towards cognitive psychology came about through frustrations with what were seen as the limitations of psychoanalysis and behavioural psychology. In the 1950s, another movement within psychology also began to gain ground – one that rejected all the main strands of psychology: psychoanalysis, behavioural psychology, and the emerging cognitive psychology approach. This fourth approach has become known as humanistic psychology.

Rather than seeing the human psyche as a minefield of conflicting parts of the self, driven by primitive urges (as the psychoanalytic approach was characterised), or viewing the self as the result of myriad stimulus-response exchanges that make us who we are (as behaviourists do), or seeing the reasons for our beliefs and actions as residing in our perception and cognition of what’s around us (as the cognitive psychologists are doing), humanist psychologists view the individual as a whole person with their own free will, desires, responsibilities, passions, aims, and aspirations. In short, all the kinds of things that make us human. For the humanists, the concept of mental health for far too long had been obsessed with reducing negative states such as anxiety or depression. The humanists wanted mental health to be all about striving for something better, like happiness or fulfilment.

What do you really want from life?

Two key thinkers are the pioneers of the humanist psychologist movement. One is Abraham Maslow, best known for his 1954 concept of the “hierarchy of needs,” which dates from 1943, and which presents an image of what people really want from life – and the idea for striving for something for its own sake. Having established lower-order needs – such as food, shelter, belonging, self-esteem – we seek knowledge, meaning, and, ultimately, the realisation of our full potential.

The second, Carl Rogers, shared Maslow’s view that humankind seeks this higher state of self-actualisation, making the most of our talents or education or skills. And along with that, we seek positive regard, which can be love, or simply respect, from others. In his 1961 book On Becoming a Person, he discussed some of the conditions necessary to achieve this state – a discussion that was to form the basis of a client-centred therapy (later renamed “person-centred” therapy). At its heart is the concept of unconditional positive regard – the kind of parental love that children can enjoy no matter what they might do, and which gives them a freedom to take risks and discover what they like doing. In cases where children receive only conditional positive regard, parental love may only be won through good behaviour or excellent performance, with the risks of the child becoming a perfectionist or neurotic later in life. Client-centred therapy could redress this by the therapist providing the unconditional positive regard, and allowing the client to start finding their own way toward their self-actualising goals.

The “I” and the “me”

For Rogers, an important theoretical aspect was the self concept. There are two parts to it: the “I” that does stuff, and the “me” that the “I” sometimes thinks about, such as when we say “I am ashamed of myself.” The self concept develops as we grow up, and we are happiest, Rogers believed, when we have congruence between the “I” and the “me” – that is, minimal conflict between the perceived self and the kind of behaviours we actually find ourselves doing.

Rogers developed his “Q Sort” test – a kind of personality test using a deck of flash cards – to measure levels of this congruence, which allowed for some degree of quantitative testing to demonstrate correlation between congruence of the self concept, and other measures of well-being or social adjustment.

Nonetheless, humanistic psychology is often characterised as being more of a qualitative than quantitative strand of psychology. By contrast, positive psychology is a related branch that also has as its goal not simply a reduction of psychological pain, but more positively, the advancement of well-being – looking, for example, at the science of happiness, or how creativity is stimulated: in many respects, another route to the summit of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

. See also Positive Psychology

Standard
Health, Psychology, Science

Psychology: How can I improve my memory recall?

 MEMORY

Intro: Some people are gifted with an elephant-like memory, others with a Dory-like recall. The key to a better memory is to repeat, repeat, repeat, with a touch of emotion  

THE PHOTOGRAPHER of the “documentary” that is your life story is an inch-long, slug-shaped region in the brain called the hippocampus, nestled within the head of the coiling snake of the emotional limbic circuit. Your emotions – good and bad – are the gatekeeper of what makes it in, and what gets left on the cutting-room floor. You won’t remember what you ate for breakfast last Wednesday because it wasn’t exciting, but if your lover got down on one knee to propose to you that morning, the fact you were eating a bowl of oatmeal at the time will be forever remembered, as clear as day.

That’s why dry lectures and seminars, dreary news bulletins, and boring books leave your head almost as soon as they are over. You’ll forget an arbitrary fact – such as 1769 being the year French ruler Napoleon Bonaparte was born – by the time you turn the page because it has no significance to you. However, if you’re a lover of all things locomotive, then you may have noted to yourself that this was the same year that the steam engine was invented, making Napoleon’s birthday easier to remember. The frontal lobe pathways for new memories and information will sprout from your established memory patterns, much like a new branch budding from an old grape vine.

Crucially, memories are only packaged into long-term storage once you have brought them back to mind at least once. Everyone loves stories – they are the lynchpin of our understanding of the world, and many people often entertain friends with fond memories that begin with “remember the time when…” and reminisce with family over tales from childhood. Each time you recall the memory, its neural pathways become strengthened and thickened, and more likely to weather the passage of time.

Your memory is at its worst when your body clock is slumping, for most of us, this will be the late afternoon and early evening. However, for night owls this will be in the morning.       

Even though memories are famously fallible – where we are often left grasping at straws after a disagreement when both parties are adamant their version of events is true – there are various things we can do to improve memory recall. Keeping a diary is one such method which should be used to record memories as soon as possible after the event, before they are contaminated by emotions or misty recollections. Telling stories is another effective method because repeating anecdotes to others will help form very strong memories by tying positive emotions to them, making the memory more likely to be stored long-term. Another method to improve memory includes creating mind maps which help to make visual connections between pieces of information that you want to learn. The more connections you make within a topic, the more likely you’ll retain information.

Why can I still remember skills, even years later?

When it comes to learned skills, especially those involving repeated movements, your brain’s most primal regions are like a memory-foam mattress

TEN, TWENTY, THIRTY, or more years may have passed since you last mounted your childhood BMX, but you haven’t forgotten how to ride. Like writing, swimming, driving, or typing on a keyboard, the ability stays with you, long after the hours of learning are forgotten. Sometimes called “muscle memory” (correctly termed procedural memory), muscles themselves have little to do with it.

Rather, these skills are stored in the cerebellum, far from your conscious memories of events. A large-wrinkled region tucked under the back of the brain, the cerebellum is under the orchestration of a curved tadpole-shaped structure in the middle of the brain called the basal ganglia.

With each attempt at a skill, slowly but surely, a path of neural connections forms in the brain. Through repetition and practice, these abilities build a well-trodden walkway deep inside your brain’s circuitry. The weeds of time are slow to obscure this path, so you will be able to retrace your steps and get back into the saddle well into your old age, even if you’re a bit rusty. It takes an estimated 20 hours of deliberate, focused practice to gain basic skills in a new hobby. Expert craftspeople and athletes take somewhere in the region of 10,000 hours firming up brain pathways before they reach the top of their game.

It’s not only the highly skilled who rely on procedural memory: most of what you do everyday is executed on “autopilot”, such as brushing your teeth or getting dressed. These tasks require very little conscious thought because they run via the basal ganglia rather than being under the direct control of the frontal, decision-making brain regions, which are free to focus on other things. If we didn’t have these programs, we would have to concentrate every time we tie our shoelaces.

These “unthinking” skills become so well established that they actually outperform our conscious brain’s ability for that task. When we try to think too much about something we’re good at, we can “choke”, which has been an athlete’s undoing on the day of the big event.

The Unforgettable Brain of Molaison

In 1953, pioneering neurosurgeon Dr William Scoville performed neurosurgery on Henry Molaison. Henry was alert as his skull was opened and portions of his brain removed, but anaesthetised. At the time no one knew what the hippocampus did, but Dr Scoville had a misguided hunch that this structure was the reason for the epilepsy that had plagued Henry. Sadly, the operation left the 27-year-old unable to ever make a new conscious memory.

Henry’s epilepsy mercifully settled, and his personality and intellect were unaffected, but he would forget events after a few minutes. Incredibly though, his “habit hub” (basal ganglia) and procedural memory circuitry were intact. He was able to learn new skills even though he instantly forgot how he had learned them.

Through studying Henry’s brain, scientists found that our regular memory and our “muscle” memory are stored in separate areas. From what we’ve learnt from his brain, patients suffering memory loss can be rehabilitated faster by teaching them new techniques and skills.

. Appendage

Standard