Modern Age - Fall 2014 - 84

MODERN AGE

of the history of science, which depicts the
progress of science as synonymous with the
early modern pioneers' breaking the strangle-
hold of Christian dogma on human thought.
Historians of science now know (as even
Stephen Jay Gould admitted) that modern
science had its origins in the Middle Ages,
with Platonic, Aristotelian, and specifically
Christian ideas providing fuel and not a
damper for effective speculation about nature.
Caiazza effectively refutes Gould's two-track
theory (two "non-overlapping magisteria"),
in which religion is allowed to survive free
of molestation at the cost of conceding the
entire domain of "fact" to the authority of
science. Caiazza points out that Gould's idea
is nothing more than the resurrection of Siger
of Brabant's theory of "double truth." Both
ideas threaten to bifurcate human thought
into irreconcilable fragments.
Finally, in the crucial chapter  7, "The
Counterrevolution in the Philosophy of Sci-
ence," Caiazza informs the reader about the
fascinating trajectory of the philosophy of
science in the English-speaking world in the
course of the twentieth century. Philosophy
of science began with the logical positivism
of the Vienna Circle in the early 1900s,
which led to the "Unity of Science" move-
ment, in which all human knowledge was to
be regimented according to a single, rigorous
method, with mathematical physics at its
base. Led by Thomas Kuhn, historians of sci-
ence demonstrated that the unity of scientific
method was an unsustainable myth. This
turn to historicism has influenced American
philosophy beyond the philosophy of sci-
ence, with Alasdair MacIntyre's critique of
rationalistic ethics, After Virtue, as a prime
example.
The heart of the book lies in Part  III, in
which Caiazza examines the ideas and argu-
ments of three champions of scientism (or
reductive materialism), one in each of three
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FALL 2014

crucial fields: physics (Stephen Weinberg),
biology (E. O. Wilson), and social science
(Stanley Milgram). The examples are well
chosen, since each exemplar combines
preeminence in his field with considerable
philosophical sophistication. Caiazza deftly
exposes the unfulfilled promises and unex-
amined assumptions of each of the three
reductionist programs.
In the case of Weinberg's attempt to reduce
all human knowledge to particle physics,
Caiazza points out that the weird and myste-
rious character of modern quantum mechan-
ics (in contrast to the simple and determinis-
tic world of classical mechanics) undermines
Weinberg's project. Caiazza carefully
introduces the reader to this fascinating new
quantum world, with its indeterminacy and
unbounded entanglements, a world that is
likely to remain forever beyond the reach of
the would-be reductionist. Caiazza might
also have pointed to the internal inconsisten-
cies within Weinberg's philosophy of science,
which combines a naive reductionist mate-
rialism with a strangely Neoplatonic theory
of scientific insight. Weinberg admits (in
Dreams of a Final Theory) that we are able to
discern true theories by virtue of their inher-
ent beauty, an idea that sits awkwardly with
his "atoms and the void" ideology.
Caiazza then turns to the second great
reductionist project of modern times, the
dream of a kind of cosmic Darwinism that
would explain all the world's phenomena,
including human thought and intuition, by
means of natural selection, with its combi-
nation of brute, mindless processes and the
tautologous logic of the survival of the fittest.
E. O. Wilson, the evolutionary entomologist
and founder of sociobiology (now known
more often as "evolutionary psychology"),
serves as the appropriate bête noire for this
chapter. Caiazza highlights the fundamental
incoherency of the Darwinist project, since
Modern Age - Fall 2014

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