27 September

２０１５佐倉セミナーハウス文化教養講座テキスト　１回目（１０月３日）

没落する科学

The Twilight of the Scientific Age
Martín López Corredoira

１　イントロ　科学は組織化して堕落した
Popes and priests in the Renaissance, embedded in corruption and malpractice, with much less idealism than the conceivers of the religious ideas, were dominant in a time in which the most important creators were pointing to other directions. Today, science and some of its priests occupy an important status in our society, and gargantuan amounts of money support them. A superficial view may lead us to think that we live in the golden age of science but the fact is that the present-day results of science are mostly mean, unimportant, or just technical applications of ideas conceived in the past. Science is living on its private income.

かつて教会組織の中枢が害悪の根元となって科学思想の推進者達を弾圧した。現在では科学関係の人々が社会の支配者の地位を占めているが、科学の実際の成果は矮小で無意味なものか、過去の発見の応用に過ぎないものになっている。

２　自然哲学の功績を振り返る
ニュートンの力学的世界観
Understanding the mechanics of nature was a dream pursued by human reason during many centuries and, with Newton’s system, the great triumph of modern physics was reached: a set of principles and laws which allow us to understand and to calculate motion in terms of kinematical principles and known forces, a triumph also in the understanding of gravitation as well as of celestial mechanics.

ニュートンの完成した力学は、世界の全てを理解するための統合的な理論であった。

科学の還元主義と哲学的関心
Most present-day professional philosophers are against reductionism. They see it as a major threat to metaphysical speculation, and they prefer to adopt either a non-naturalist position or claim a mysterious emergence of irreducible properties in nature. Most present-day scientist however do not even talk about reductionism but take it as an undeniable fact.

哲学者は還元主義に反対する。現代の科学者は科学の基本前提である還元主義について語ろうとしない。ただ盲目的に受け入れるだけ。

科学の成し遂げた成果
Along with the theory of evolution and genetics, the other great pieces in the puzzle to understand the nature of life were biochemistry and molecular biology, which made their greatest developments during the twentieth century. Their purpose, to explain life in terms of physics and chemistry, is a great reductionist enterprise.

２０世紀においては、生化学や分子生物学こそが科学の成し遂げた還元主義としての真の達成を示している。

３　科学の推進組織の現状と経済原理

研究主題よりも研究組織
This main researcher is usually a kind of commercial manager. They begin their careers as scientists, but they become administrators or politicians of science. The situation is well described by Gillies (2008, ch. 8): “Academics typically start with great enthusiasm for research, but, after a number of years working at research, they often become rather bored with it. They may have run out of ideas. They may have come to realise that their youthful hopes of becoming the next Einstein were an illusion, while the reality is that there are quite a number of young researchers doing better than they are. In these circumstances the sensible move is into administration and management where a tempting career ladder stretches before them”.

科学者として研究成果を挙げることより組織で要職を得ることの方が大事になる。

特定の研究分野が優遇される -- 超弦理論の例
For instance, in theoretical physics, string theory has absorbed a lot of people and funds, as well as marginalising and deprecating other approaches to the same problems (Luminet, 2008). Smolin (2006) thinks that string theory is not only speculative but the conclusions are circular, the concepts are arbitrary and the hierarchical structure of this scientific community is quite outlandish. The Nobel Prize winner in Physics, Sheldon Glashow, wonders whether string theory is not more appropriate for an Institute of Mathematics or even a Faculty of Theology rather than to an Institute of Physics (Unzicker 2010, ch. 14). Unzicker (2010, ch. 14) considers physicists working in that theory as being like a sect or mafia.

超弦理論研究組織の政治的実態を暴く指摘の数々。

論文の査読制度
As is well known, control of communications and practice of power are closely related. Thus the system, far from allowing free publication of results among professionals, works hand in hand with censorship. Theoretically, this control is presented as a quality filter but its functions are frequently extended to the control of power. Those researchers who want to publish in scientific journals are subject to the dictates of the chosen referee and the journal editors, who will say whether the paper is accepted or not: this is the peer review system.

論文の学術誌掲載と審査の実態。非常に閉鎖的で政治的である。

研究プロジェクトはいかにして決定されるか
Not only are scientists at the service of mediocre programs of research devised by mediocre scientists who dedicate more time to bureaucracy and getting funds than to thinking about science; we have even reached the incredible situation that ordinary people without much idea about science are being asked to propose topics for the future direction of science.

科学研究の方向を決定するのは官僚的組織を支配する無能な科学者と、科学の本質を知らない素人たち。

科学は資本主義の奴隷となっている
Scientific institutions follow the structure of capitalism, so they must continuously grow. Experimental science becomes more and more expensive with time, and science has opted for this way of no return, going always for an increase in funds. When a limit is reached at which the investment in science can grow no more, a crisis will become unavoidable.

資本主義の原理の中で科学研究事業が辿る過程とその帰結。

西洋文明と科学
Science is a major characteristic of our western culture, and our way of thinking. Therefore, the end of science will mean the end of modern European culture, the twilight of an era initiated in Europe around the fifteenth century and which is extended nowadays throughout the world: the scientific age.

現代西洋文明は科学によって特徴付けられている。科学の終焉は西洋文明の没落を意味する。

４　シュペングラーと『西洋文明の黄昏』
歴史哲学と科学
Let us consider for instance the case of Spengler and his work The Decline of the West, a masterpiece in many ways, with plenty of lucid ideas and admirable global vision; a giant, a brave thinker with a strong character and something interesting to tell, rather than a boring treatise of trivialities and diplomatic sentences of the kind so common among our dwarf-philosophers.

哲学者も科学者と全く同様の状況下で矮小化した研究と発表しか行っていないので、彼らの科学哲学研究論文に目を通すことは無意味。

シュペングラーが予見した西洋文明の破滅が今実現しつつある
We must bear in mind that the decadence of the Roman Empire lasted almost three centuries, after the death of Marcus Aurelius, with certain fluctuations but following a general average trend of decline (Gibbon, 1776-1789). The same thing may occur with the decline of our culture now: We have been declining all through the twentieth century, and we will continue to do it during the twenty-first century.

２０世紀はすでに科学の没落の過程にあった。

５　結論
科学は自己増殖する組織となって破滅に向かう。
Our science has become an animal without a soul, or it might be better to say, a colony of animals, a group of organisms which devour human efforts and do not offer anything but growth for the sake of growth. Scientific organizations behave like a colony of bacteria which reproduce as far as the available food/money allow. The more you feed them, the more they grow: more Ph.D. students, postdocs, staff researchers, supercomputers, telescopes, particle accelerators, papers, etc.

癌化して全てを吸収し、死滅に向かう科学。

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量子論理と自由意志

Quantum Mechanics and Free Will
Counter-Arguments

Martín López Corredoira

梗概：量子力学の不確定性の原理と自由意志弁護論
Since quantum mechanics (QM) was formulated, many voices have claimed this to be the basis of free will in the human beings. Basically, they argue that free will is possible because there is an ontological indeterminism in the natural laws, and that the mind is responsible for the wave function collapse of matter, which leads to a choice among the different possibilities for the body. However, I defend the opposite thesis, that free will cannot be defended in terms of QM. First, because indeterminism does not imply free will, it is merely a necessary condition but not enough to defend it. Second, because all considerations about an autonomous mind sending orders to the body is against our scientific knowledge about human beings; in particular, neither neurological nor evolutionary theory can admit dualism. The quantum theory of measurement can be interpreted without the intervention of human minds, but other fields of science cannot contemplate the mentalist scenario, so it is concluded that QM has nothing to say about the mind or free will, and its scientific explanation is more related to biology than to physics. A fatalistic or materialist view, which denies the possibility of a free will, makes much more sense in scientific terms.

自由意志の存在を量子力学の観測効果の考察から立証することはできない。精神や自由意志という問題は、物理学ではなく生物学と関連するものである。

古典力学は決定論的モデルに基づく
Classical physics is a deterministic model of the world.

量子力学の理論を拡張すれば、本体論的な非決定論が根底にある
the most extended interpretation on quantum mechanics accepts an ontological indeterminism in its formulation.

神経情報の量子力学的作用に注目して自由意志を弁護しようとする意見
A presynaptic membrane in the terminations of the axons of the neurons controls the triggering of neurotransmitters. These membranes are two molecules thick and have the function of master commuter (Scott 1985). The small size of the system makes quantum effects important and, hence, indeterminism is present in the membrane as well as in the neurotransmission. Sir John Eccles (1973, 1975, 1994) and Beck & Eccles (1992; Beck, 2008) back up this theory.

神経を構成するニューロンやアクソンなどの微小な組織は量子的構造になっているので、神経活動は量子コンピュータの機能を持ち、非決定論的に振る舞う。

量子力学は古典力学の決定論を覆すか？
Since determinism and denial of free will have traditionally been claimed to be one and the same, some authors thought that quantum indeterminacy would provide a new point of entry for freedom of will that was not allowed by classical physics (e.g. Eddington 1932; Jordan 1944, 1955; Frank 1957; Margenau 1961; Stapp 1995).

決定論と自由意志の否定は同義だと考えられていたので、量子的不確定性は古典力学によって否定されてきた自由意志の存在を主張する糸口とみなされた。

観測効果における精神の関与が自由意志擁護論に与えた影響
Among the different interpretations of quantum mechanics, those that are based on the collapse of the wave function by the mind when this participates in a measurement give rise in some cases to a defense of freedom of will. This idea was proposed by Compton (1935, 1981), von Neumann (1932) and Wigner (1961, 1967) and other authors such as H. P. Stapp (1991, 1993, 1995), L. Bass (1975), W. Heitler (1963), P. J. Marcer (1992), R. Penrose (1994).

観測者の精神の存在が波束の収縮をもたらし、現実世界を具現していくと考える様々な論者たち。

非決定論は自由意志を立証するものではない
The differentiation between systems that entangle mutually and systems that produce wave function collapse when coupled stands to reason in the formalism of quantum mechanics. I also agree that human beings are present in a final state of the measurement, when the results are checked. Nevertheless, I reject the statement that mind is the agent of wave function collapse. Measurement is associated with collapse and human beings are present in the final stage of the measurements, but this does not imply that human beings produce collapse.

観測行為の最終段階に人間の意識が関与していることは認められる。だからと言って人間の意志が波束の収縮をもたらしているとは言えない。

知覚と脳神経情報伝達に関する実験結果
This clearly implies that unconscious activities of the brain trigger activity of the neurons. And this means that matter governs consciousness before consciousness governs matter.

無意識の脳の活動が神経活動を促している。これが意味するところは、意識が物質を支配する以前に物質が意識を支配しているということである。

脳活動と神経情報発動に関する実験結果の意味するもの
All this is experimental evidence, not just hypothesis or speculation. And all these facts point out that there is no autonomy in the brain, there is no "ego" sending orders to the body.

仮説や思弁などではなく実験の結果が示しているのがこの事実である。その意味するところは、意識の自立性というものは存在しない、つまり体に命令を伝える“自我”なるものは無い、ということである。