Top positive review
4.0 out of 5 starsCovers Much Ground, but Lacks Detailed Analysis!
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 25, 2004
Mary Midgley has written an important book that, in true Midgley fashioin, straddles the middle ground between deference to science and its efficacy, and a critical eye of some goings on in the scientific community.
This book is about 'mtyhs' and their importance in science. Unfortunately, 'myth' might not have been the best word to describe Midgley's enterprise. In this book, she is NOT, a.) saying that science is a myth (that it is not trute), b.) using 'myth' to mean 'fairy tale', or c.) going on a fashionable post-modern lit-crit 'exploration' exploring the history of mythology as it relates to science. YEEEECCHHH!
Mary Midgley is much too smart for that. Rather, 'the myths we live by' are those metaphysical concepts that bleed into science now and again, masquerading as part of testable science: concepts like the gene as selfish replicator, materialism that would reduce mind to matter, the AI view that humans are smart machines, etc. Not that these concepts can't be valueable at times, but concepts like these are philosophical assumptions, not not testable fact.
To give an example of Midgley's intent here, my favorite section is that on the bran/mind conundrum that scientists are itching to resolve by pretending the mind doesn't exist. Midgley (and this reviewer) both have confidence that the mind is caused by the brain and that dualism is not tenable. But here's the problem. "Explainling" the mind by neurons and synapses IGNORES the emprically obvious: I can see neurons in brains, but can't 'feel' them in my mind. The brain and mind 'feel' of different qualities, and any explanation of the former doesn't necessarilty 'explain' the latter.
Other theorists like Dennett, say that the first person is an 'illusion' put forth by our genes to aid survival. If so, then it is not an illusion anyone (including Dennett) can 'stand back from' long enough to check whether it IS ACTUALLY an illusion (as one pulls stick that looks bent out of the water to find a straight stick). Others like Blackmore posit memes - units of culture (whatever such units consist of) that infest our minds while we are just passive vessels, waiting for memes to duke it out and replicate. Midgley responds with the obvious: if we are asked to believe that, then isn't it WE who are asked to believe that, and doesn't that in turn create a dilemma? If we are asked to believe that we aren't willfully in control of our minds (but the memes are), then how is it that we could willfully believe that at all? All of this is attempts by scientists to push explanatory theories farther than they seem to be able to go. IF materialism works on a physical level, then we must force it to explain mind. Midgley's answer? The mind seems to resist phsysical explanation in that way. What explains one thing brilliantly, may be clumsey when applied to another.
That was just my favorite example; there are many more. The point she is trying to make is that while 'myhts' are essential to science (mtetaphysics can not truly be seperated from it), we must watch how we use it. In the tradition of William James, Midgley warns that the world is quite pluralistic in its qualities and we may just need a pluralistic approach to dealing with it. Grand unified theories? Don't be so sure. Universal acids? Probably not. Ultra-reductionism? No matter how much we can reduce, there will always be whole organisms that need explaining just as much.
The only complalints I have are these: first, as a long time Midgley fan, I feel that she is, in some ways, writing the same book over and over again. This tends to happen to philosophers that say really original or contreversial things, as thhey keep having to re-explain themselves. If you've not read Midgley before, or not much of her, I wouldn't worry about this. If you have, read it but you might end up skimming some sections.
The second complaint is simply that as this book is ony 170-some pages, and she covers so many areas (myths), she doesn't really go into any in as much detail as I wanted to see. Otherwise, no complaints.
