Solvitur ambulando: Scientist, Catholic – and Hiker?

In speaking about Pierre Duhem as a man of science and man of faith, it is impossible not to think first of what may be his most memorable statement:

Of course, I believe with all my soul in the truths that God has revealed to us and that He has taught us through His Church, I have never concealed my faith, and that He in whom I hold it will keep me from ever being ashamed of it, I hope from the bottom of my heart.

Such were the words Duhem put almost at the very start of his long and famous essay, "Physics of a Believer." At its end Duhem registered the place, Peyreleau, where he wrote it, and the date, 9 September 1905, when he completed it. A year later, almost to the day, he was back in that quaint village and made a magnificent drawing of it as it is overshadowed by the almost vertical mountainside at the confluence of the Tarn and of the Jonte.

The famous gorges of those two rivers he chose repeatedly for his September hikes, his only form of recreation. Hiking kept him only from his writing desk, not from his constant reflections - scientific and philosophical. Duhem, who composed his writings in his head, found in walking a most effective help for his mind to find answers to many a problem.
[SLJ Scientist and Catholic: Pierre Duhem 11]

Why Duhem?

Duhem was unique among modern scientists with his penetrating insights into the method of the exact sciences, and in particular of physics, both on the conceptual level and along the vast and broad front of its use in history. In fact he did, what historians and historians of science were supposed to have done long ago: He discovered the true origins of Newtonian physics. That those origins are steeped in a culture, the Middle Ages, which for many is still the classic embodiment of obscurantism, could have but served as lèse majesté. But as if insult were to be added to injury, Duhem also spelled out the fact, with a vast and most original historical research that those origins are intimately connected with Catholic dogmas, such as the creation out of nothing and creation in time.
[SLJ Scientist and Catholic: Pierre Duhem 9]

(Yes, I hope to continue with our study of SLJ's The Relevance of Physics, but not today. Soon, I hope. Dr. T.)

Not appropriate to hold a conference on Duhem?

As you read that title, you may have wondered what is going on. Do you detect a certain sort of doubt, or perhaps a tone of sarcasm here?

I hope you did. It is hard to imagine what will happen in the next five years, though of course much depends on what you and I are able to accomplish in that time. I certainly hope there will be a conference - perhaps two, one on each side of the Atlantic. Certainly there needs to be some serious study of Duhem - I still wish to see an English translation of Le Système du monde and his study of Leonardo - indeed, a complete edition of his collected works, in both French and English - and there are several other lesser projects too. But without fail there must be some sort of meeting which must include a proper celebration.

However. And I say this with some childish delight, because as I am presently examining Jaki's study of Duhem, I learned something curious about Duhem which makes me wonder just how appropriate it would be to hold such a conference at all! Here, let me show you:

The day of Duhem's anniversary [of his death] was duly marked by the loyalty of his friends. One of them was the Abbé Lethellieux, director of the Revue des Jeunes, a bimonthly aimed at university students, who secured two contributions on Duhem. The first, to appear in the August 10 issue, was written by François Mentré who, as a specialist on Cournot's philosophy, was, as will be seen, very familiar with Duhem's works pertaining to the philosophy of science. Almost an entire shelf in his library, Mentré noted at the outset, was filled with Duhem's publications. Mentré had hoped to meet Duhem in person at the Congrès de philosophie et d'histoire des sciences in Geneva in 1904, but Duhem, who at the urging of Paul Tannery sent a paper, informed Mentré in a letter of his horror of attending such 'Babylons.' Whereas Duhem's dislike of congresses was fairly well known, it is only through Mentré that a precious glimpse of Duhem's reflections on the history of experimental method became available to the public. Mentré quoted from a letter, which Duhem wrote on October 24, 1913, in response to Mentré's congratulations on Duhem's findings about Buridan, Oresme, and others: 'Your letter,' Duhem wrote, 'showed me that you have been greatly preoccupied by a thought which has been haunting me for a long time. The progress of experimental method has been conditioned by the progress of industrial technique and, in particular, by the [progess of] the glass industry. This was, I believe, the topic of my last conversation with my venerable friend Jules Tannery... I would gladly know of an alert investigator who would do on this topic a research which neither you nor I can undertake. I bet he would arrive at interesting results.'
[SLJ Uneasy Genius: the Life and Work of Pierre Duhem 231, emphasis added]

Ah, doctor - so you think because "Duhem's dislike of congresses was fairly well known" we ought not have a conference?

No; I wanted to get your attention. Read that first line again:

The day of Duhem's anniversary was duly marked by the loyalty of his friends.

So I think it ought to be clear we should have the great Duhem Conference to include Wednesday September 14, 2016, with a solemn Mass and great anniversary talks and a banquet. We, his friends and students from all over the world, must mark the century with our loyalty.



God willing, let us plan for this.

Duhem and the New Year

Welcome to 2011, dear friends and scholars and members of our Duhem Society - and all interested and thinking men!

In just five years we shall see the centennial of Duhem's death and the semi-centennial of the appearance of Jaki's great The Relevance of Physics. With God's help I will try to get further into our projects and perhaps we shall see some more formal actions taken as we advance.

In a tiny attempt to assist my own work, I am re-reading Jaki's book on Duhem, which seems even more rich and fertile in ideas than it did the last time I read it. For today, just a tiny sample, but one which is joyful and revealing, as well as suited to the day:

Récamier pointedly recalled that Pierre found very amusing the Ecole's New Year parties and added that "he certainly collaborated in them." In fact he wrote the text for one of those parties, including the poems to be sung by the chorus.
[SLJ Uneasy Genius: the Life and Work of Pierre Duhem 59]

Here is my own challenge for our members, be you a physicist or philosopher or simple student: write a suitable poem - yes, one that might be sung, if possible.

If, come 2016, God will permit us to have an international conference, good. We ought to have scholarly lectures and seminars and symposia and publish formal proceedings. But if we are true to Duhem and Jaki we ought to have poems and songs as well. We must always recall that we are men, members of the human species, who eat and sleep - and yes, who rejoice at festive times. If we forget this, we could never be scientists:

Science finds its facts in Nature, but Science is not Nature; because Science has coordinated ideas, interpretations and analyses; and can say of Nature what Nature cannot say for itself.
[GKC The Resurrection of Rome CW21:358]

And sometimes it may be better said as a good old rousing chorus in a sort of drinking song... Let us wear lab coats, let us drink our beer from 750-ml beakers, let us rhyme elements and equations - let Science and Engineering join Art and Music and Literature in proclaiming the glory of God!

Duhem or Chesterton?

I have found what seems to be a startling parallel - or perhaps I might say a convergence of ideas - between Duhem and Chesterton. Even more remarkable, it is a sort of derivative from Darwinian evolution - though it is what we might call a sane form of Darwinian reasoning. It suggests a great mystery, and yet a positive one, since it urges fruitfulness: to me this strongly suggests the great "Analogy of the Body" from St. Paul (1Cor12). See what you think.
-- Dr. Thursday

Here is Duhem:

What is true of all living beings, is also true of scientific doctrines: It is through struggle that selection is made among them; it is the conflict which fragments and sweeps away the false ideas; it is the struggle which forces the right ideas to make more precise and more valid the proofs which they claim to themselves; it is the struggle which forces the fruitful ideas to deliver all their products.

Now this struggle of ideas is impossible if science is entirely in one single locality; when this absolute centralisation is in effect one finds before long in each branch of knowledge only one teacher, and the disciples of that teacher. The teacher, no longer exposed to being contradicted, and long since accustomed to seeing his best ideas received as products of a genius, hardly has any concern to protect himself from an exaggerated confidence in his own judgment, confidence which delivers him defenseless against the habit of making errors. The disciples, receiving their master's teachings as oracles instead of improving them with free discussions through a contact with opposite doctrines, yield to the nonchalant habit of repeating a lesson already learned which ends in no longer being comprehended.

Precisely because we feel how dangerous it would be to let French science reach that point, we desire to see our universities vigorously armed for engaging in a contest with one another. We wish that a doctrine proclaimed in Lyon may see an opposite doctrine rise in Toulouse or Nancy, that a doctrine proclaimed in Paris might develop in Lille or in Bordeaux. We wish that in France each man of science may find at every moment these two essential conditions for scientific work: the freedom which permits him to put forward all his ideas, and the opposition which obliges him to produce only mature ideas.
[PD quoted in SLJ, Uneasy Genius: The Life and Work of Pierre Duhem 133; see my note at the end.]

And here is Chesterton:

Because a man prayed and fasted on the Northern snows, flowers could be flung at his festival in the Southern cities; and because fanatics drank water on the sands of Syria, men could still drink cider in the orchards of England. This is what makes Christendom at once so much more perplexing and so much more interesting than the Pagan empire; just as Amiens Cathedral is not better but more interesting than the Parthenon. If any one wants a modern proof of all this, let him consider the curious fact that, under Christianity, Europe (while remaining a unity) has broken up into individual nations. Patriotism is a perfect example of this deliberate balancing of one emphasis against another emphasis. The instinct of the Pagan empire would have said, "You shall all be Roman citizens, and grow alike; let the German grow less slow and reverent; the Frenchmen less experimental and swift." But the instinct of Christian Europe says, "Let the German remain slow and reverent, that the Frenchman may the more safely be swift and experimental. We will make an equipoise out of these excesses. The absurdity called Germany shall correct the insanity called France."
[GKC Orthodoxy CW1:304]

I might add that Jaki has a caveat about the implications regarding "evolution", and I could add my own. But I think we can examine the ideas here without jumping to any unwarranted conclusions; Chesterton (and Jaki) have plenty to say about Darwin, as they remember to distinguish proper science from improper philosophy - but we shall defer that topic for the time being.

A note about the Duhem quote: There appears to be a typographical error in SLJ's text. In checking the footnote reference, there is a diswcrepancy of pagination, so it seems that the article by Duhem must be what SLJ would note as "1989(13)" and not "1898(12)", but I do not have access to the materials in question to verify. The footnote of the citation gives page 246 for "1898(12)" but the bibliography has "On the General Problem of Chemical Statics", JPhCh 2:1-42 and 91-115. Item 13, however, is "Une soutenance de thèse de doctorat à la Faculté des Sciences de Bordeaux", RPBSOu 244-50 (avril); which agrees with the context of the quotation.

A Link to Your Christmas Gift

Courtesy of Dr. Kelly of the Catholic Association of Scientists and Engineers, I have the delight of presenting you with a link to a most startling website...

http://randoduhem.monsite-orange.fr/

It offers hiking tours to the sites visited and painted by Pierre Duhem!

Amazing. Delightful. Awesome. How I hope I may go there someday. At least both you and I can have a small glimpse of the natural beauty of Cabrespine...

* * *

My very best wishes for a happy and holy Christmas day and season to you and your family...

Duhem on the relation of the sciences to metaphysics

[Early September 1894, the Third International Scientific Congress of Catholics held in Bruxelles...]

Duhem's hour came the following morning when he attended, in the philosophy section of the Congress, some lectures dealing with topics that touched on the relation of sciences to metaphysics. After the Pere Bulliot, future head of the philosophy department of the Institut Catholique in Paris, had read his paper on the concepts of matter and mass, Duhem asked, not without the promptings of some present, for permission to make a few remarks. Although his remarks were not reported in the Compte rendu of the Congress in the form of a verbatim quotation, the printed text can, partly because of its incisiveness and clarity, be taken for the most part for Duhem's actual words. Duhem, the report begins, 'is convinced that these researches [having for their object the confines of the positive sciences and metaphysics] will, if done wisely and prudently, lead to the reconciliation of Christian philosophy and modern science, but he insists on the extreme difficulty of such studies.' Duhem's reasons were as follows:

Only the principles of the different positive sciences are of interest to philosophers; but, in order to know these principles, it is not enough to read a book of popularization, not even the first chapters of a treatise written by a competent scientist. One does not comprehend the meaning and bearing of the principles on which a science rests except when one has studied that science for years, applied in a thousand ways those principles to particular cases, and mastered in depth the technique of what the Germans call the materials of science.

For example, the obvious sense of Euclid's [parallel] postulate is accessible to a child who studies the first book of geometry. But in order to understand the exact sense of that postulate, to grasp the reasons which give it a special place among the truths of geometry, to see clearly what would become of geometry if that postulate were to be abandoned, one must have a complete mathematical training which requires years of work.

If therefore we want to handle with competence and fruitfully the questions which are of the domain common to metaphysics and to positive science, let us begin with studying the latter for ten, for fifteen years; let us study it, first of all, in itself and for itself, without seeking to put it in harmony with such and such philosophical assertion; then, as we have mastered its principles, applied it in a thousand ways, we can search for its metaphysical meaning which will not fail to accord with true philosophy.

Anyone who would find exaggerated a similar labor must not forget that every hasty, scientifically incorrect solution of one of the problems relating to the common frontiers of science and philosophy, would result in the greatest prejudlce against our cause. The philosophers must imitate the patience of scientists. Once a problem is posed, scientists devote centuries, if necessary, to solving it. They accept only a precise and rigorous solution.

At any rate, the schools we are combatting give us example. The positivist school, the critical school, publish numerous works on the philosophy of science. These works carry the names of the greatest names of European science. We cannot triumph over these schools except by opposing them with researches done by people who, too, are masters of the positive sciences.

[quoted from Compte rendu du Troisième Congrès Scientifique International des Catholiques tenu à Bruxelles du 3 au 8 septembre 1894 (Bruxelles: Société Belge de Librairie, 1895) in Jaki, Uneasy Genius: The Life and Work of Pierre Duhem, 113-4, emphasis added]