3
Epistemology and the Problem of Peace*
I
May I say that I am very happy to see the unexpectedly large number of young people here? I plan to undertake quite a long and adventurous journey with you, and so perhaps I should first introduce myself.
Today, at eighty-three years of age, I am the happiest person I know. I find life indescribably wonderful. It is undoubtedly also terrible, and I have experienced painfully sad deaths among my close relations and friends. Sixteen of my close relatives fell victim to Hitler, some in Auschwitz, some by suicide. But despite everything, although I was desperate more than once and still today have grave worries, although for me it has been up one minute and down the next, I am happy.
I will not spend much longer on myself. What I feel is stated well in the first eight lines of the Prologue in Heaven in Goethe’s Faust. I see the world as he does:
Die Sonne tönt nach alter Weise
In Bruderspharen Wettgesang,
Und ihre vorgeschriebne Reise
Vollendet sie mit Donnergang.
Ihr Anblick gibt den Engeln Starke,
Wenn keiner sie ergriinden mag:
Die unbegreiflich hohen Werke
Sind herrlich wie am ersten Tag.1
I say all this because I consider the current dominant ideology among intellectuals – of the wickedness of our world – to be a foolishness and a false religion. Men are terribly in need of suggestion, and this dangerous need for suggestion is one of my main themes today. My theme is large. I have worked hard but gladly to present it as simply as I can. I fear I have not fully succeeded, and I must ask for your active cooperation.
But I would also ask you not to believe anything that I suggest! Please do not believe a word! I know that that is asking too much, as I will speak only the truth, as well as I can. But I warn you: I know nothing, or almost nothing. We all know nothing or almost nothing. I conjecture that that is a basic fact of life. We know nothing, we can only conjecture: we guess. Our best knowledge is the wonderful scientific knowledge we have built up over 2,500 years. But the natural sciences consist precisely of conjectures or hypotheses.
In Greek, Latin, English, and German there is a clear distinction between
(1) Wissen [knowledge] ≠ Vermutung [conjecture]
ich weiß [I know] ≠ ich vermute [I conjecture].
The distinction is quite simple:
(2) Wissen implies certain truth
thus: Wissen implies sureness or certainty.
In these languages you cannot seriously say: ‘I know today is Friday, but I’m not quite sure.’ The rejoinder would be: ‘If you’re not quite sure, you don’t know it but only conjecture it.’
My first thesis, then, is:
(3) So-called scientific knowledge is not knowledge, for it consists only of conjectures or hypotheses – even if some have gone through the cross fire of ingenious tests. In short:
(4) We do not know, we guess. Although scientific knowledge is not knowledge, it is the best we have in this field. I call it conjectural knowledge – more or less to console people who want certain knowledge and think they cannot do without it.
Such people have a dangerous need for suggestion, they lack the courage to live without assurances, without certainty, without authority, without a leader. Perhaps one could say that they are people still trapped in childhood.
Others may need friends and confidants, or people they look up to as a model or as having achieved something out of the ordinary. If they are looking after a sick person, they may often long for an authority (a medical authority). But there is none; for knowledge – certain knowledge – is an empty word.
Science is the quest for truth. But truth is not certain truth.
(5) Truth ≠ certain truth
Truth ≠ certainty.
Everyone knows what truth is. It is the correspondence of a statement with the reality about which the statement says something:
(6) Truth = correspondence with reality, or perhaps
Truth = correspondence of the alleged facts with the actual facts.
But definitions are not important. And quibbling over words is a menace.
(7) We can assert the truth, attain the truth, often enough. But we can never attain certainty. For we know – in the sense of conjectural knowledge – that there are people with a delusion that they are Einstein or a reincarnation of Goethe. So presumably I speak the truth when I say that I am just now giving a lecture in Zurich. But from my experience of such people, I cannot be absolutely sure that I am not caught up in some similarly terrible mistake.
Now, only absolute certainty would mean genuine knowledge. We never get beyond conjectures – except perhaps with trivialities – at least not in the natural sciences. (It is perhaps different in mathematics or in formal logic, but I shall not speak of them today.)
Science is the quest for truth, not for certainty. How does it work?
(8) Scientists, like all organisms, work with the method of trial and error. The trial is a solution to a problem. In the evolution of the plant or animal kingdom, error or, to be more precise, the correction of error usually means eradication of the organism; in science it usually means eradication of the hypothesis or theory.
The process is thus one of Darwinian selection. Question: What in the animal realm corresponds to so-called knowledge, to conjecture or hypothesis? Answer: expectation. Or more precisely: a state of the organism in which it prepares for a change (or no change) in its surroundings. When flowers are in bud, they are in this sense expecting spring weather: they have incorporated the hypothesis or theory that it is getting warmer. Often enough the theory is false, and the blossom is killed by frost.
(9) In this sense there is an infinite amount of innate knowledge in plants and animals. A baby expects to be cared for and nursed, and soon to be smiled at. Not only does it expect these things, it needs them. Inborn needs are inborn theories.
(10) All organisms are all the time highly active. They actively investigate their environment, look for better living conditions, for a better world. And they themselves actively improve their conditions of life.
(11) Life improves the environment for life. It has been doing that for millions of years, and we are the fortunate inheritors.
Since this process takes place through trial and (the elimination of) error, there are also many mistakes in our world.
(12) Problems arise together with life; and there are problems only when there are values: for example, evaluations of living conditions.
Now I am coming to the end of what I wanted to explain about the theory of knowledge and the philosophy of science.
(13) Science begins with problems. It attempts to solve them through bold, inventive theories. The great majority of theories are false and/or untestable. Valuable, testable theories will search for errors. We try to find errors and to eliminate them. This is science: it consists of wild, often irresponsible ideas that it places under the strict control of error correction.
Question: This is the same process as in amoebas and other lower organisms. What is the difference between an amoeba and Einstein? Answer: The amoeba is eliminated when it makes mistakes. If it is conscious it will be afraid of mistakes. Einstein looks for mistakes. He is able to do this because his theory is not part of himself but an object he can consciously investigate and criticize. He owes this to specifically human language, and especially to its offspring, human writing. Einstein said somewhere: ‘My pencil is more intelligent than I.’ What is expressed, or even better what is written down, has become an object we can criticize and investigate for mistakes. A theory formulated in language thus becomes something similar to, but also quite different from, expectations, which are part of all plants and animals.
(14) The method of natural science is the conscious search for errors and correction of them through conscious criticism. Ideally such criticism should be impersonal and directed only at the theories or hypotheses in question.
This brings me to the end of my remarks on the theory of knowledge. I turn now to the theory of animal language and specifically human language, which is the second part of my lecture. The third part deals with the inborn need for implicit guidance, and the fourth part with the problem of peace.
II
I shall begin with a model that I owe to the great psychologist Karl Bühler. Bühler distinguishes three functions of speech. The first two are found among many animals and all humans, the third only among humans.
The lowest function is the function of expression, which may consist in facial gestures, tail movements or various forms of calling. These expressive movements may be regarded as symptoms of the inner state of the organism.
(Incidental remark. Materialists and behaviourists are not keen on this. They will not accept any inner state, but propose to limit themselves to behaviour. But it can soon be shown that this is a mistake. A thermometer displays by its ‘behaviour’ not only the external temperature but above all its inner state: oscillating molecules with increasing amplitudes result in the lengthening of a column of metal. If behaviourist ideology were correct, we could not appeal to these inner states but should simply explain the lengthening of the column as an effect of heating.)
An animal may express its state through movements of its face or tail, even if no other animal is there to react to it. But if another animal does react, the expressive movement becomes a signal. This ‘announcement function’, the second in Bühler’s model, may be a signalling function, and if it is reciprocal we have communication between animals. Of course, communication at this level also takes place between humans – for example, infants before they have learnt a human language, or people who have no specifically human language in common but try to make themselves understood through facial expressions, signs, or pointing.
Bühler’s third function, the function of representation [Darstellung], is unique to specifically human language, in which there are statements that describe or, as Bühler puts it, represent facts.
One of Bühler’s theses is that the higher function is always accompanied by the lower. When a bird gives a warning cry, this serves not only as a means of social communication but also as an expression of an inner state. The higher we go in the functions of language, the more complex the language becomes.
I should point out briefly that only a few theorists of language have gone as far as Bühler. Most speak of expression, and some of social communication (which may naturally have very practical functions, as the example of the warning cry shows). Commands or invitations also belong in this category. But very few have seen that what is decisive for human language and its many wonders is that it can describe facts and that such descriptive statements may be either true or false. Only through this huge step forward can the utterance become objective and factual criticism begin. Criticism is rational only when it concerns the truth or falsity of statements or theories.
Here I shall end my brief presentation of an important part of Bühler’s theory of language.
I myself have added a few functions of language to Bühler’s – above all, the critical function, that is, critical discussion of the truth or falsity of propositions. And I also stressed its huge importance when I spoke of how Einstein differs from an amoeba.
In fact, I have often stressed that the critical stage of human language must logically be preceded by a dogmatic stage. Only when a dogma is established as a kind of background can one begin to criticize, and only later can the dogma – the background of critical discussion – itself be included in the criticism. First there needs to be a solid framework. Later one can contrast a number of such frameworks and pass on to critical discussion of them.
III
Now I come to the third part.
I shall begin with my fifteenth thesis.
(15) Animal languages, including human languages, presuppose a large number of inborn needs: for example, the need for active self- expression, the need to engage in communication with others, and the need to learn by trial and error in these matters too. Without such inborn needs, and without active learning through trial and error (the scampering of kittens is a good example), it would not be possible for higher animals to survive.
(16) The innate knowledge of animals and humans, as well as knowledge acquired through active learning, consists of expectations. Unfulfilled expectations are experienced as difficulties or problems, which lead again to experiments, to active learning – to research.
(17) Active learning of both animal and human language assumes a very high degree of suggestibility. The ability to copy is not enough. More is involved even than in copying plus empathy, although that is getting closer. We are talking now of a deep inborn need to agree with the wishes and evaluations of other communicating members of the same species. Only this can explain the mass migration of herrings or the swarming of bees or even a swarming of mosquitoes. And we know (in the sense of conjectural knowledge) how suggestible certain animals are. A chicken can be hypnotized by a chalk line.
(18) Human languages rest upon inborn needs to learn a language, to speak, to describe, to communicate. They are largely the result of an inborn need, connected with language, to be guided by suggestion.
(19) All this is very closely connected to our strong need to discover the world around us, to learn about it and thus to know. Human groups create myths, medicine-men, and priests. In due course an inner conflict arises that may reinforce this need, an unacknowledged feeling that we really know nothing or only very little. As there is a strong need for security – or for assurance by comrades and helpers – the need will also be strong to have a common dogma and to suggest the truth of the dogma to one another. It is a need for implicit guidance.2 Uncertainty is feared, and dogma becomes fanatical belief.
This is how the war psychosis, the war fever, came about at the beginning of the First World War.
But before I come to the topic of war and peace, may I say a few words about art – and about modern art.
We all know that the greatest art is religious art: the cathedrals, the Sistine Chapel, the St Matthew Passion, the masses of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert.
How does religious art fare today?
I think a great deal is explained if we assume that a false religion has established itself today: namely, the religion that our world, at least our social world, is a hell.
I am anything but an enemy of religion. My religion is the doctrine of the splendours of the world; of the freedom and creativity of wonderful human beings; of the terror and suffering of the despairing people we can help; of the extent of good and evil that has emerged in human history and keeps emerging over and over again; of the joyful message that we can prolong people’s lives, especially those of women and children who have had the toughest life. I know nothing else. And although the scientific quest for truth is part of my religion, the magnificent scientific hypotheses are not religion. They must not be.
But modern art is explained by this crazy belief of the modern religion: by the belief in the wickedness of the world and of the social order in which we are supposed to live in Switzerland, Germany, Britain, and North America. Everywhere young people are talked into believing – and shown with intellectualistic arguments and with the help of modern art – that they live in a hell. What are the consequences? Children actually do need leaders and models, dogmas, and a firm routine. Later, as adolescents, they can and should begin to free themselves of the leaders, dogmas, and ‘all-knowing’ ideologies. Indeed that is quite easy. Just don’t let yourselves be talked into believing anything – not by me either, of course. From any history book you can learn for yourselves whether our own age, which has abolished slavery, is not the best age of which we have historical knowledge. Of course we have made and continue to make many mistakes – through our appalling ideologies, for example.
The Russians, who live in an otherwise much worse world, suggest to their children and young people that their country is paradise. The fact is that this helps. The Russians are more contented than we are. The need for suggestion is a great power. But so is the truth when one is struggling for it.
IV
I have been trying to show the epistemological, biological, and linguistic roots of our dangerous susceptibility to dogmas and ideologies. One of the roots of this susceptibility is, quite simply, cowardice. Now, I too am cowardly, and I would not like to feign unusual courage or urge anyone on to heroic deeds. But I shall stress that the great problem of establishing perpetual peace on earth is not unsolvable.
This is the theme of Kant’s book On Perpetual Peace. It is a fine, sad, and wonderfully encouraging book.
It seems clear to me that the main obstacle to peace is not the atom bomb.
When I last talked to the great atomic physicist Niels Bohr – I think it was in 1952 – he said that the atom bomb would certainly preserve the peace. I was and am not so optimistic. But after all, he has been right up to now.
I see only one very difficult road to peace. It is a long road. Perhaps there will be a nuclear war long before we have taken a step along this road. Intellectuals, who mostly have the best of intentions, must first be persuaded to be a little more modest and not to try to play a leading role. No new ideologies, no new religion. Instead: ‘A little more intellectual modesty.’3
We intellectuals know nothing. We grope our way along. Those of us who are scientists ought to be a little more modest and, above all, less dogmatic. Otherwise science will fall by the wayside – science, which is one of man’s greatest and most promising creations.
Intellectuals know nothing. And their lack of modesty, their pre-sumptuousness, is perhaps the greatest obstacle to peace on earth. The greatest hope is that, although they are arrogant, they may not be too stupid to realize it.
We will go on making mistakes. But there is hope that the following hypothesis may be true: without ideology, no war. The struggle against ideologies is in any case a struggle worth conducting.
I should like to finish by asking you once more not to believe anything that I have said, and to realize that I have no wish at all to end with a fanfare.
I only wanted to point out to you the great dangers lurking in ideologies, and to draw your attention to the dangerous need for knowledge, belief, and mutual suggestion that seems to lie hidden in our evolutionary biology and the structure of knowledge, as well as in our language.
Notes
1‘The Sun’s singing, as of old, rivals the music of his brother spheres, and with thunderous course he completes his predestined circuit. The sight of him gives strength to the angels, though none of them can fathom his nature; the inconceivably lofty works of Creation are as splendid as on the first day.” Faust Part One, lines 243-250, plain prose translation from Goethe: Selected Verse, Penguin Classics, Harmondsworth, 1964, p. 180.
Commentary:
(1–2) The ancient harmony of the spheres.
(3) Newton? No: Ptolemy.
(4) Sonnen-Untergang [sunset] (Mozart, Dies Irae, or Don Giovanni).
(6) In my edition there is a semi-colon at the end of this line. But I think it should be a colon: ‘ergründen mag’ [‘can fathom’] alludes to ‘unbegreiflich’ [inconceivably’].
(7–8) Men are among these works. They can grow in the Sun’s thunderous course.
2 I owe the German expression Suggestionsbedüfnis to Professor E.K. Herz. This term cannot easily be translated into English.
3 I used the remark in inverted commas to sum up my criticism of Ernst Bloch in a television debate that I had with him in Vienna in 1968. Wolfgang Kraus was the presenter.
* A lecture delivered in Zurich, August 1985.