Nov 6, 2024 05:36 AM
https://aeon.co/essays/a-new-field-theor...t-guide-us
EXCERPTS: Modern science has rejected this ‘teleological’ way of thinking. In the 17th and 18th centuries, scientists and philosophers began to chip away at Aristotle’s seemingly ‘spooky’ notion of intrinsic causes – spooky because they suggested that rocks and creatures were guided by something not entirely material.
[...] So, how do goal-directed entities do it, moment by moment? How does an acorn seek its adult form? How does a homing torpedo find its target? Mechanistic thinking struggles to answer these questions. From a mechanical perspective, these systems look strangely future oriented...
[...] So, caught between modern science and our intuitions about teleology, we seem to have only two ways of explaining the apparent goal directedness in some systems: teleology or mechanism. Both are troublesome. Both are inadequate. In recognition of this problem, philosophers of biology and others have, in recent decades, been struggling to find an alternative. We believe we have found it: a third way that reconciles Aristotelian thinking about goal directedness with the mechanistic view of a Newtonian universe.
This alternative explains the apparent seeking of all goal-directed entities, from developing acorns and migrating sea turtles to self-driving cars and human intentions. It proposes that a hidden architecture connects these entities. It even explains falling rocks.
We call it ‘field theory’.
The notion of ‘fields’ was originally developed by physicists such as Newton, Michael Faraday, Richard Feynman and others. In physics, the concept has been used to explain gravity, electromagnetism, and particle interactions in quantum theory. But fields have also been used in biology to explain the development of living things...
[...] Our proposal is that fields direct the action of all goal-directed entities. In other words, goal directedness is the result of a particular architecture, a particular arrangement of large fields that contain and guide smaller entities. From this perspective, persistence and plasticity are possible only because a field is present wherever an entity wanders.
In field theory, fields are defined in terms of what the biologist Michael Levin calls ‘nonlocality’. They are structures whose influence extends over a broad area, not localised to any one point. Earth’s magnetic field is present not just locally, where the sea turtle happens to be at one moment, but wherever the turtle could accidentally wander. Our understanding of fields is even broader. It includes atmospheric fields that direct the formation of hurricanes, ecological fields that direct the migration of animal herds, and social fields that, to some extent, guide our wants and intentions. These fields are not metaphorical. They are real and physical. They can be detected, measured, and even manipulated... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: Modern science has rejected this ‘teleological’ way of thinking. In the 17th and 18th centuries, scientists and philosophers began to chip away at Aristotle’s seemingly ‘spooky’ notion of intrinsic causes – spooky because they suggested that rocks and creatures were guided by something not entirely material.
[...] So, how do goal-directed entities do it, moment by moment? How does an acorn seek its adult form? How does a homing torpedo find its target? Mechanistic thinking struggles to answer these questions. From a mechanical perspective, these systems look strangely future oriented...
[...] So, caught between modern science and our intuitions about teleology, we seem to have only two ways of explaining the apparent goal directedness in some systems: teleology or mechanism. Both are troublesome. Both are inadequate. In recognition of this problem, philosophers of biology and others have, in recent decades, been struggling to find an alternative. We believe we have found it: a third way that reconciles Aristotelian thinking about goal directedness with the mechanistic view of a Newtonian universe.
This alternative explains the apparent seeking of all goal-directed entities, from developing acorns and migrating sea turtles to self-driving cars and human intentions. It proposes that a hidden architecture connects these entities. It even explains falling rocks.
We call it ‘field theory’.
The notion of ‘fields’ was originally developed by physicists such as Newton, Michael Faraday, Richard Feynman and others. In physics, the concept has been used to explain gravity, electromagnetism, and particle interactions in quantum theory. But fields have also been used in biology to explain the development of living things...
[...] Our proposal is that fields direct the action of all goal-directed entities. In other words, goal directedness is the result of a particular architecture, a particular arrangement of large fields that contain and guide smaller entities. From this perspective, persistence and plasticity are possible only because a field is present wherever an entity wanders.
In field theory, fields are defined in terms of what the biologist Michael Levin calls ‘nonlocality’. They are structures whose influence extends over a broad area, not localised to any one point. Earth’s magnetic field is present not just locally, where the sea turtle happens to be at one moment, but wherever the turtle could accidentally wander. Our understanding of fields is even broader. It includes atmospheric fields that direct the formation of hurricanes, ecological fields that direct the migration of animal herds, and social fields that, to some extent, guide our wants and intentions. These fields are not metaphorical. They are real and physical. They can be detected, measured, and even manipulated... (MORE - missing details)
