The Myths We Live By [Paperback]

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.

A wise man once counseled me that whenever I wrote, spoke or teach, to always stick to what I know. For once someone drifts outside his or her own area of expertise, they are likely to start making fundamental mistakes.

Sage and obvious advice, but nonetheless advice that is often not followed by experts in one field who are then thought to be an expert on everything. One of the most misquoted and misattributed people in history may well be Albert Einstein. For more than a century his name has become synonymous with genius, so some have assumed that he would have wise things to say about everything from God to politics.

This book, although a few years old, deserves to be resurrected and remembered as one of the best examples of a professional philosopher taking on some of the worst excesses of "Popular science." If this book were to come out in a new edition I am sure that Mary would have a great deal of fun with all those people who claim that quantum mechanics is the explanation for everything from how to run a business to the behavior of stock markets. Sadly it is not, and some of the authors of such books have taken "surprising" short cuts.

Mary Midgley is known to be a combative philosopher and here she takes on those scientists who breezily tell us that their equations will help us to "Know the Mind of God." To which we have to pose the Emperor's New Cloth's question: "Who and when was it decided that meaning, purpose, good and evil, are all subject to the laws of the material universe? And secondly that they are to be found in a series of equations that will almost certainly be re-written in the future?"

The answer to the question, "How and when did this happen?" can probably be traced back to the 1930s, when a number of influential scientists at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge embraced an extreme Marxist and Leninist position and advocated a mechanistic and deterministic science that would be able to provide the answers to absolutely everything. In effect they firmly believed in the idea of a scientific priesthood that would hold all the keys to the kingdom of truth. There are still many professional scientists who believe to this day that science as it is now will be able to provide all the answers to "Life, the universe and everything." And by using their positions of authority to promote the idea in popular books, they try to persuade us that current scientific models can answer any question and anything that cannot be explained - including data on parapsychology and unorthodox healing - is therefore "Woo."

Someone once said to me, "Science works, it has given us telephones, computers and airplanes." That is the crux of the problem, and it is a problem: it mixes up science and technology, and allows "scientism" to flourish - the notion that science has ultimate authority over all other interpretations of life and over all other fields of inquiry. And ultimately scientism would have us believe in a universe without value, meaning or purpose. Throughout the essays in this book, Midgley consistently points out that scientism has created a dangerous myth about how the universe operates, and that myth has informed everything from the way in which we treat the environment to the way in which we practice medicine.

Midgley writes that we must continue to develop new ways of thinking, and she points out that the development of ideas of ecology, ecosystems and Gaia are all examples of a welcome move away from the competitive nature of scientism to a more cooperative relationship with each other and with other life forms. In other words we have to understand that we have been mislead into believing a seriously flawed myth, and if we want to achieve lasting change in the world, we need to change those myths. Happily that process is already underway.

Highly recommended.

Richard G. Petty, MD, author of Healing, Meaning and Purpose: The Magical Power of the Emerging Laws of Life

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