Nicholas Maxwell

Universities have long been dominated by a philosophy of inquiry that may be called knowledge-inquiry.  This holds that, in order to do justice to the basic humanitarian aim of helping to promote human welfare, academia must, in the first instance, seek knowledge and technological know-how.  First, knowledge is to be acquired; once acquired, it can be applied to help promote human welfare.  But, despite  this philosophy of knowledge-inquiry is an intellectual and humanitarian disaster.  It violates THREE of the four most elementary rules of rational problem solving conceivable, and as a result fails to give priority to the task of helping humanity resolve those conflicts and problems of living, such as the climate and nature crises, that need to be resolved if we are to make progress to a better world – a world in which there is peace, democracy, justice, liberty, and sustainable prosperity, for all.  Very few academics today are aware of this rationality scandal.  We urgently need to bring about a revolution in universities around the world, wherever possible, so that academic inquiry puts all four rules of rational problem  solving into practice, and becomes rationally devoted to helping humanity learn how to make progress towards a better world.  Knowledge-inquiry needs to become wisdom-inquiry, rationally devoted to helping humanity create a wiser world.

Humanity faces two basic problems of learning: learning about the universe, and learning how to become civilized.  We have solved the first problem, but not the second, and that puts us in a situation of great danger.  Almost all our global problems have arisen as a result.  It has become a matter of extreme urgency to solve the second problem.  The key to that is to learn from our solution to the first problem how to solve the second one.  This was the basic idea of the 18th century Enlightenment, but in implementing it, the Enlightenment blundered.  Their mistakes are still built into academia today.  In order to  create a civilized world, it is essential we cure academia of the structural blunders inherited from the Enlightenment.  We need to bring about a revolution in science, and in academia more broadly so that the basic aim becomes wisdom, and not just knowledge.

The crisis of our times is science without wisdom.  It is the outcome of an astonishingly successful tradition of scientific and technological research pursued within the context of an academic inquiry that is profoundly and damagingly irrational, in a structural way, when judged from the standpoint of helping humanity make progress towards a wise, enlightened world.  This damaging irrationality of academia goes back to the 18th century Enlightenment.  The philosophes of the French Enlightenment, in implementing the profound idea that we might learn from scientific progress how to achieve social progress towards an enlightened world, made three gross blunders – and it is these blunders, still uncorrected, that are built into academia today, and result in its current dysfunctional character.  We urgently need to correct these blunders and transform academia, so that it becomes rationally, effectively and actively engaged in helping humanity discover what to do to solve the global problems that threaten our future, and thus make progress towards a good, enlightened world.

The scientific community takes for granted a view of science that may be called standard empiricism.  This holds that the basic intellectual aim of science is truth, nothing being presupposed about the truth, the basic method being to assess theories with respect to evidence.  A basic tenet of the view is that science must not accept any thesis about the world as a part of scientific knowledge independent of evidence, let alone in violation of evidence.  But physics only accepts unified theories, and persistently rejects infinitely many ad hoc rivals that fit the phenomena even better.  In persistently rejecting these infinitely many empirically more successful rival theories, physics thereby makes a substantial assumption about the universe – it is such that all ad hoc theories are false – an assumption that is accepted implicitly independently of evidence, even in a sense against the evidence.  That contradicts standard empiricism.  The scientific community needs to adopt a new conception of science that represents the assumption of physics as a hierarchy of assumptions, thus facilitating the improvement of the assumption that is made, as science proceeds.

This book spells out what we need to do to solve the global problems that threaten our future: the climate crisis; the current pandemic; the destruction of the natural world, catastrophic loss of wild life, and mass extinction of species; lethal modern war; the spread of modern armaments; the menace of nuclear weapons; pollution of earth, sea and air; rapid rise in the human population; increasing antibiotic resistance; the degradation of democratic politics, brought about in part by the internet.
I argue that all these problems have come about because we have solved the first of two great problems of learning-the problem of learning to acquire scientific knowledge and technological know-how-but have so far failed to solve the second great problem of learning-learning to create a civilized world.
Modern science and technology make possible modern industry and agriculture, modern hygiene and medicine, modern power production and travel, modern armaments, which in turn make possible much that is good, but also all the above global problems. Science as such is not the problem; it is, rather, science without wisdom. All the above problems have arisen because we have modern science without wisdom. Now that we have solved the first great problem of learning, we must discover, urgently, how to solve the second one. We can do that if we learn from how we solved the first great problem of learning how to solve the second one. That requires that we bring about a radical transformation in universities all over the world. At present they are devoted to the pursuit of specialized knowledge and technology. They need to be transformed so that the basic task becomes to help humanity tackle problems of living, including global problems, in increasingly cooperatively rational ways.
The book spells out in detail the changes that need to be made to academic inquiry, why they need to be made, and how they would enable universities to help humanity actively and effectively tackle and solve current global problems.

Two great problems of learning confront humanity: learning about the nature of the universe and about ourselves and other living things as a part of the universe, and learning how to become civilized. The first problem was solved, in essence, in the 17th century, with the creation of modern science. But the second problem has not yet been solved. Solving the first problem without also solving the second puts us in a situation of great danger. All our current global problems have arisen as a result. What we need to do, in response to this unprecedented crisis, is learn from our solution to the first problem how to solve the second. This was the basic idea of the 18th century Enlightenment. Unfortunately, in carrying out this programme, the Enlightenment made three blunders, and it is this defective version of the Enlightenment programme, inherited from the past, that is still built into the institutional/intellectual structure of academic inquiry in the 21st century.  In order to solve the second great problem of learning we need to correct the three blunders of the traditional Enlightenment. This involves changing the nature of social inquiry, so that social science becomes social methodology or social philosophy, concerned to help us build into social life the progress-achieving methods of aim-oriented rationality, arrived at by generalizing the progress-achieving methods of science. It also involves, more generally, bringing about a revolution in the nature of academic inquiry as a whole, so that it takes up its proper task of helping humanity learn how to become wiser by increasingly cooperatively rational means. The scientific task of improving knowledge and understanding of nature becomes a part of the broader task of improving global wisdom.  The outcome would be what we so urgently need: a kind of inquiry rationally designed and devoted to helping us make progress towards a genuinely civilized world.  We would succeed in doing what the Enlightenment tried but failed to do: learn from scientific progress how to go about making social progress towards as good a world as possible.

How can our human world – the world we experience and live in – exist and best flourish embedded as it is in the physical universe?  That is our fundamental problem.  It encompasses all others of science, thought and life.  This is the problem I explore in this book.  I put forward some suggestions as to how aspects of this problem are to be solved.  And I argue that this is the proper task of philosophy: to try to improve our conjectures as to how aspects of the problem are to be solved, and to encourage everyone to think, imaginatively and critically, now and again, about the problem.  We need to put the problem centre stage in our thinking, so that our best ideas about it interact fruitfully, in both directions, with our attempts to solve even more important more specialized and particular problems of thought and life.
The book is intended to be a fresh, unorthodox introduction to philosophy - an introduction which will, I hope, interest and even excite an intelligent 16 year old, as well as any adult half-way interested in intellectual, social, political or environmental issues.  Scientists and professional philosophers should find it of interest as well.  The idea of the book is to bring philosophy down to earth, demonstrate its vital importance, when done properly, for science, for scholarship, for education, for life, for the fate of the world.
If everything is made up of fundamental physical entities, electrons and quarks, interacting in accordance with precise physical law, what becomes of the world we experience – the colours, sounds, smells and tactile qualities of things?  What becomes of our inner experiences?  How can we have free will, and be responsible for what we do, if everything occurs in accordance with physical law, including our bodies and brains?  How can anything be of value if everything in the universe is, ultimately, just physics?  These are some of the questions we will be tackling in this book.
These questions arise because of this great fissure in our thinking about the world.  Our scientific thinking about the physical universe clashes in all sorts of ways with our thinking about our human world.  The task is to discover how we can adjust our ideas about both the physical universe, and our human world, so that we can resolve clashes between the two in such a way that justice is done both to what science tells us about the universe, and to all that is of value in our human world – the miracle of our life here on earth – and the heart-ache and tragedy.
It is all-but inevitable that even the smallest adjustments to what we take science to tell us about the universe, or to what we hold to be the nature and value of our human world, will have all sorts of repercussions, potentially, for all sorts of fields outside philosophy – for science, for thought, for life.  And indeed revolutionary ideas do emerge in this book from the exploration of our fundamental problem.
There is, first, a revolution for philosophy.  A new kind of philosophy emerges which I call Critical Fundamentalism.  This tackles our fundamental problem, and in doing so seeks to resolve the fundamental fissure in the way we think about the universe and ourselves in such a way that this resolution has multiple, fruitful implications for thought and life.  Second, there is a revolution in what we take science to tell us about the world: it is concerned, not with everything about everything, but only with a highly specialized aspect of everything.  This is the subject of chapter 3.  Third, there is a revolution in our whole conception of science, and the kind of science we should seek to develop – the subject of chapter 4.  Fourth, there is a revolution in biology, in Darwin’s theory of evolution, so that the theory does better justice to helping us understand how life of value has evolved.  This is the subject of chapter 5.  Fifth, there is a revolution in the social sciences.  These are not sciences; rather, their proper basic task is to promote the cooperatively rational solving of conflicts and problems of living in the social world.  In addition, they have the task of discovering how progress-achieving methods, generalized from those of natural science (as these ought to be conceived) can be got into social life, into all our other social endeavours, government, industry, the economy and so on, so that social progress towards a more enlightened world may be made in a way that is somewhat comparable to the intellectual progress in knowledge made by science.  Social inquiry emerges as social methodology or philosophy and not, fundamentally, social science.  Sixth, there is a much broader revolution in academic inquiry as a whole.  We need a new kind of academic enterprise rationally designed and devoted to helping us resolve the grave global conflicts and problems that confront us: habitat destruction, loss of wild life, extinction of species, the menace of nuclear weapons, the lethal character of modern war, gross inequality, pollution of earth, sea and air, and above all the impending disasters of climate change.  These problems have arisen in part because of the gross structural irrationality of our institutions of learning devoted as they are to the pursuit of knowledge instead of taking, as their basic task, to help humanity resolve conflicts and problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational ways, thus making progress towards as good, as wise, a world as possible.  Seventh, there is the all-important social revolution that might gradually emerge if humanity has the wit to develop what it so urgently needs: academic inquiry rationally devoted to helping us make progress towards a better, more civilized world.  These fifth, sixth and seventh revolutions are the subject of chapter 7.
Academic philosophy, whether so-called analytic or Continental philosophy, is not noted for its fruitful implications for other areas of thought and life.  How come, then, that philosophy as done here, Critical Fundamentalism, has these dramatic revolutionary implications for science, for academic inquiry, for our capacity to solve the global problems that menace our future?  I do what I can to answer this question in chapters 2 and 9.
Why has academic philosophy, lost its way so drastically that it has failed to put the richly fruitful conception of philosophy, as done here, into practice?  What caused academic philosophy to lose its way?  I give my answer to this question in the appendix.
My chief hope, in writing this book, however, is that the reader will be beguiled or provoked into thinking imaginatively and critically – that is, rationally – about our fundamental problem, not obsessively, but from time to time.

Two great problems of learning confront humanity: learning about the universe; and learning how to become civilized. The first problem was solved in the 17th century, with the creation of modern science. But the second problem has not yet been solved. That puts us in a situation of great danger. All our current global problems have arisen as a result. We need to learn from our solution to the first problem how to solve the second. This was the basic idea of the 18th century Enlightenment. Unfortunately, the Enlightenment made three blunders that are still built into academia today.  Correct these ancient blunders, and we would have what we so urgently need: universities rationally devoted to helping us solve global problems and create a wise world.

Two great problems of learning confront humanity: learning about the nature of the universe and about ourselves and other living things as a part of the universe, and learning how to become civilized or enlightened. The first problem was solved, in essence, in the 17th century, with the creation of modern science. But the second problem has not yet been solved. Solving the first problem without also solving the second puts us in a situation of great danger. All our current global problems have arisen as a result. What we need to do, in response to this unprecedented crisis, is learn from our solution to the first problem how to solve the second one. This was the basic idea of the 18th century Enlightenment. Unfortunately, in carrying out this programme, the Enlightenment made three blunders, and it is this defective version of the Enlightenment programme, inherited from the past, that is still built into the institutional/intellectual structure of academic inquiry in the 21st century.  In order to solve the second great problem of learning we need to correct the three blunders of the traditional Enlightenment. This involves changing the nature of social inquiry, so that social science becomes social methodology or social philosophy, concerned to help us build into social life the progress-achieving methods of aim-oriented rationality, arrived at by generalizing the progress-achieving methods of science. It also involves, more generally, bringing about a revolution in the nature of academic inquiry as a whole, so that it takes up its proper task of helping humanity learn how to become wiser by increasingly cooperatively rational means. The scientific task of improving knowledge and understanding of nature becomes a part of the broader task of improving global wisdom.  The outcome would be what we so urgently need: a kind of inquiry rationally designed and devoted to helping us make progress towards a genuinely civilized world.  We would succeed in doing what the Enlightenment tried but failed to do: learn from scientific progress how to go about making social progress towards as good a world as possible.

What are quantum entities? Is the quantum domain deterministic or probabilistic? Orthodox quantum theory (OQT) fails to answer these two fundamental questions. As a result of failing to answer the first question, OQT is very seriously defective: it is imprecise, ambiguous, ad hoc, non-explanatory, inapplicable to the early universe, inapplicable to the cosmos as a whole, and such that it is inherently incapable of being unified with general relativity. It is argued that probabilism provides a very natural solution to the quantum wave/particle dilemma and promises to lead to a fully micro-realistic, testable version of quantum theory that is free of the defects of OQT. It is suggested that inelastic interactions may induce quantum probabilistic transitions.

Two radically different views about time are possible. According to the first, the universe is three dimensional. It has a past and a future, but that does not mean it is spread out in time as it is spread out in the three dimensions of space. This view requires that there is an unambiguous, absolute, cosmic-wide "now" at each instant. According to the second view about time, the universe is four dimensional. It is spread out in both space and time-in space-time in short. Special and general relativity rule out the first view. There is, according to relativity theory, no such thing as an unambiguous, absolute cosmic-wide "now" at each instant. However, we have every reason to hold that both special and general relativity are false. Not only does the historical record tell us that physics advances from one false theory to another. Furthermore, elsewhere I have shown that we must interpret physics as having established physicalism-in so far as physics can ever establish anything theoretical. Physicalism, here, is to be interpreted as the thesis that the universe is such that some unified "theory of everything" is true. Granted physicalism, it follows immediately that any physical theory that is about a restricted range of phenomena only, cannot be true, whatever its empirical success may be. It follows that both special and general relativity are false. This does not mean of course that the implication of these two theories that there is no unambiguous cosmic-wide "now" at each instant is false. It still may be the case that the first view of time, indicated at the outset, is false. Are there grounds for holding that an unambiguous cosmic-wide "now" does exist, despite special and general relativity, both of which imply that it does not exist? There are such grounds. Elsewhere I have argued that, in order to solve the quantum wave/particle problem and make sense of the quantum domain we need to interpret quantum theory as a fundamentally probabilistic theory, a theory which specifies how quantum entities-electrons, photons, atoms-interact with one another probabilistically. It is conceivable that this is correct, and the ultimate laws of the universe are probabilistic in character. If so, probabilistic transitions could define unambiguous, absolute cosmic-wide "nows" at each instant. It is entirely unsurprising that special and general relativity have nothing to say about the matter. Both theories are pre-quantum mechanical, classical theories, and general relativity in particular is deterministic. The universe may indeed be three dimensional, with a past and a future, but not spread out in four dimensional space-time, despite the fact that relativity theories appear to rule this out. These considerations, finally, have implications for views about the arrow of time and free will.

"Understanding Scientific Progress constitutes a potentially enormous and revolutionary advancement in philosophy of science. It deserves to be read and studied by everyone with any interest in or connection with physics or the theory of science. Maxwell cites the work of Hume, Kant, J.S. Mill, Ludwig Bolzmann, Pierre Duhem, Einstein, Henri Poincaré, C.S. Peirce, Whitehead, Russell, Carnap, A.J. Ayer, Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos, Paul Feyerabend, Nelson Goodman, Bas van Fraassen, and numerous others. He lauds Popper for advancing beyond verificationism and Hume’s problem of induction, but faults both Kuhn and Popper for being unable to show that and how their work could lead nearer to the truth." —Dr. Lloyd Eby teaches philosophy at The George Washington University and The Catholic University of America, in Washington, DC

The central thesis of this book is that we need to reform philosophy and join it to science to recreate a modern version of natural philosophy; we need to do this in the interests of rigour, intellectual honesty, and so that science may serve the best interests of humanity. The book seeks to redraw our intellectual landscape. It leads to a transformation of science, and to a transformation of philosophy, so that these two distinct domains of thought become conjoined into one: natural philosophy. This in turn has far-reaching consequences for the whole academic enterprise. It transpires that we need an academic revolution. We urgently need to reorganize universities so that they become devoted to seeking and promoting wisdom by rational means – as opposed to just acquiring knowledge, as at present. Modern science began as natural philosophy. In the time of Newton, what we call science and philosophy today – the disparate endeavours – formed one mutually interacting, integrated endeavour of natural philosophy: to improve our knowledge and understanding of the universe, and to improve our understanding of ourselves as a part of it. Profound discoveries were made, indeed one should say unprecedented discoveries. It was a time of quite astonishing intellectual excitement and achievement. And then natural philosophy died. It split into science on the one hand, and philosophy on the other. This happened during the 18th and 19th centuries, and the split is now built into our intellectual landscape. But the two fragments, science and philosophy, are defective shadows of the glorious unified endeavour of natural philosophy. Rigour, sheer intellectual good sense and decisive argument demand that we put the two together again, and rediscover the immense merits of the integrated enterprise of natural philosophy. This requires an intellectual revolution, with dramatic implications for how we understand our world, how we understand and do science, and how we understand and do philosophy. There are dramatic implications, too, for education. And it does not stop there. For, as I will show in the final chapter, resurrected natural philosophy has dramatic, indeed revolutionary methodological implications for social science and the humanities, indeed for the whole academic enterprise. It means academic inquiry needs to be reorganized so that it comes to take, as its basic task, to seek and promote wisdom by rational means, wisdom being the capacity to realize what is of value in life, for oneself and others, thus including knowledge, technological know-how and understanding, but much else besides. The outcome is institutions of learning rationally designed and devoted to helping us tackle our immense global problems in increasingly cooperatively rational ways, thus helping us make progress towards a good world – or at least as good a world as possible.

Karl Popper is famous for having proposed that science advances by a process of conjecture and refutation.  He is also famous for defending the open society against what he saw as its arch enemies – Plato and Marx.

Popper’s contributions to thought are of profound importance, but they are not the last word on the subject.  They need to be improved.  My concern in this book is to spell out what is of greatest importance in Popper’s work, what its failings are, how it needs to be improved to overcome these failings, and what implications emerge as a result.  The book dramatically develops Karl Popper’s views about natural and social science, and how we should go about trying to solve social problems. 

Criticism of Popper’s falsificationist philosophy of natural science leads to a new philosophy of science, which I call aim-oriented empiricism.  This makes explicit metaphysical theses concerning the comprehensibility and knowability of the universe that are an implicit part of scientific knowledge – implicit in the way science excludes all theories that are not explanatory, even those that are more successful empirically than accepted theories.  Aim-oriented empiricism has major implications, not just for the academic discipline of philosophy of science, but for science itself. 
Popper generalized his philosophy of science of falsificationism to arrive at a new conception of rationality  –  critical rationalism  –  the key methodological idea of Popper’s profound critical exploration of political and social issues in his The Open Society and Its Enemies, and The Poverty of Historicism.  This path of Popper, from scientific method to rationality and social and political issues is followed here, but the starting point is aim-oriented empiricism rather than falsificationism. 

Aim-oriented empiricism is generalized to form a new conception of rationality  –  aim-oriented rationalism  –  which has far-reaching implications for political and social issues, for the nature of social inquiry and the humanities, and indeed for academic inquiry as a whole.  The strategies for tackling social problems that arise from aim-oriented rationalism improve on Popper’s recommended strategies of piecemeal social engineering and critical rationalism, associated with Popper’s conception of the open society.  This book thus sets out to develop Popper’s philosophy in new and fruitful directions.

The theme of the book, in short, is to discover what can be learned from scientific progress about how to achieve social progress towards a better world.  That there is indeed much to be learned from scientific progress about how to achieve social progress was the big idea of the 18th century Enlightenment.  This was immensely influential.  But the philosophes of the Enlightenment made mistakes, and these mistakes, inherited from the Enlightenment, are built into the institutional and intellectual structure of academic inquiry today.  In his two great works, The Logic of Scientific Discovery and The Open Society and Its Enemies, Popper corrected some of the mistakes of the Enlightenment  –  mistakes about the nature of scientific method and rationality.  But Popper left other mistakes undetected and uncorrected.  The present book seeks to push the Popperian research programme further, and correct what Popper left uncorrected.

The fundamental idea that emerges is that there is an urgent need to bring about a revolution in academic inquiry so that it takes up its proper task of promoting wisdom and not just acquiring knowledge – wisdom being the capacity to realize what is of value in life for oneself and others, thus including knowledge and technological know-how, but much else besides.

Learning, Global Problems and Play
These essays are about education, learning, rational inquiry, philosophy, science studies, problem solving, academic inquiry, global problems, wisdom and, above all, the urgent need for an academic revolution. 
Despite this range and diversity of topics, there is a common underlying theme.  Education ought to be devoted, much more than it is, to the exploration of real-life, open problems; it ought not to be restricted to learning up solutions to already solved problems - especially if nothing is said about the problems that provoked the solutions in the first place.  There should be much more emphasis on learning how to engage in cooperatively rational exploration of problems: even five year olds could begin to learn how to do this.  A central task of philosophy ought to be to keep alive awareness of our unsolved fundamental problems - especially our most fundamental problem of all, encompassing all others: How can our human world - and the world of sentient life more generally - imbued with the experiential, consciousness, free will, meaning and value, exist and best flourish embedded as it is in the physical universe?  This is both our fundamental intellectual problem and our fundamental problem of living. 
As far as the latter is concerned, we are at present heading towards disaster - as our immense, unsolved global problems tell us: population growth, destruction of natural habitats and rapid extinction of species, vast inequalities of wealth and power around the world, pollution of earth, sea and air, our proclivity for war, and above all global warming. If we are to resolve our conflicts and global problems more intelligently, effectively and humanely than we have managed to do so far, then we have to learn how to do it.  That, in turn, requires that our institutions of learning, our universities and schools, are rationally designed and devoted to the task.  At present they are not.  That is the crisis behind all the others.  From the past we have inherited the idea that the basic intellectual aim of inquiry ought to be to acquire knowledge.  First, knowledge is to be acquired; then, secondarily, it can be applied to help solve social problems.  But this is dangerously and damagingly irrational, and it is this irrationality that is, in part, responsible for the genesis of our current global problems, and our current incapacity to solve them.  As a matter of supreme urgency, we need to transform academia so that it becomes rationally devoted to helping humanity learn how to make progress towards as good and wise a world as possible.  This would involve putting problems of living - including global problems - at the heart of academia, problems of knowledge and technological know-how emerging out of, and feeding back into, the central task to help people tackle problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational ways.  Almost every department and aspect of academia needs to change.  We need a new kind of academic inquiry devoted, not just to knowledge, but rather to wisdom - wisdom being the capacity to realize what is of value in life for oneself and others, wisdom including knowledge and technological know-how, but much else besides.
So, this is what these essays seek to provoke: a concerted effort to transform our institutions of learning so that they become rationally and effectively devoted to helping us learn how to create a wiser world.
With these essays before me, I can see that there is one crucial element of learning about which they say nothing - or nothing explicit.  The vital role of play in learning.  All mammals - or at any rate almost all mammals - learn by means of play.  Cats, tigers, foxes and other predators learn to hunt by means of endless mock fights when kittens and cubs.  Deer, sheep and antelope learn to escape by means of playful leaps and bounds when young.  We are mammals too.  Almost certainly, we learnt how to be adult human beings by means of play during the millions of years we evolved into homo sapiens living in hunting and gathering tribes.  Children today, out of school, learn by means of play.  Learning by means of play is almost certainly fundamental to our makeup.  Education needs to exploit it.  Schools and universities need to become places of play.  Successful problem solving is often likely to be playful in character.  The youthful Einstein called doing physics "getting up to mischief".
But our most serious problems of living are so grim, so imbued with suffering, wasted lives and unnecessary death that the idea of approaching them in a playful spirit seems sacrilegious.  We need to keep alive tackling of intellectual problems so that playful capacities can be exercised - if for no other reason (and other reasons there are, of course, aplenty).  There are two really worthy impulses behind all rational inquiry: delight and compassion.

In order to make progress towards a better world we need to learn how to do it. And for that we need institutions of learning rationally designed and devoted to helping us solve our global problems, make progress towards a better world. It is just this that we lack at present. Our universities pursue knowledge. They are neither designed nor devoted to helping humanity learn how to tackle global problems — problems of living — in more intelligent, humane and effective ways. That, this book argues, is the key disaster of our times, the crisis behind all the others: our failure to have developed our institutions of learning so that they are rationally organized to help us solve our problems of living — above all, our global problems. Having universities devoted almost exclusively to the pursuit of knowledge is a recipe for disaster. Scientific knowledge and technological know-how have unquestionably brought great benefits to humanity. But they have also made possible — even caused — our current global crises, above all the impending crisis of global warming. In this lucid and provocative book, Nicholas Maxwell argues convincingly that we need urgently to bring about a revolution in universities round the world so that their basic aim becomes wisdom, and not just knowledge.

Endorsements on the back cover of the book.
Thirty years ago, Nicholas Maxwell first argued that our universities must be rationally designed and devoted to helping us learn how to solve our problems of living. In the intervening years it has become more, not less, urgent that we take up his challenge.
Julian Baggini, editor-in-chief The Philosophers’ Magazine

This book begins by acknowledging that today most people lead longer and healthier lives than previous generations, primarily as a result of “knowledge-inquiry”, mainly in universities.  Perversely, the result is ever-expanding populations, pressing against the limits to growth on a finite planet.  Maxwell gives a good case for addressing these problems by universities putting much greater emphasis on “wisdom-inquiry”.  It is a timely and interesting idea.  I think the book deserves a wide readership.
Professor Lord Robert May, Oxford University

Which ideal matters more to us, knowledge or wisdom? Nicholas Maxwell has long fought staunchly for wisdom in this debate, and in this book he once more points out shrewdly how much our universities need to learn this lesson. It's to be hoped that this time they are listening!
Mary Midgley, Philosopher

Nicholas Maxwell argues that in order to address the problems of global society, we must transform our universities.  At UCL we fully agree and we have already made such changes central to our 2011 Research Strategy "Delivering a Culture of Wisdom". Our UCL Grand Challenges programme, which has so far involved more than 250 academics, is putting these ideas into practice.
David Price, Vice-Provost of Research, University College London

From Knowledge to Wisdom argues that there is an urgent need, for both intellectual and humanitarian reasons, to bring about a revolution in science and the humanities.  The outcome would be a kind of academic inquiry rationally devoted to helping humanity learn how to create a better world.  Instead of giving priority to solving problems of knowledge, as at present, academia would devote itself to helping us solve our immense, current global problems – climate change, war, poverty, population growth, pollution of sea, earth and air, destruction of natural habitats and rapid extinction of species, injustice, tyranny, proliferation of armaments, conventional, chemical, biological and nuclear, depletion of natural resources.  The basic intellectual aim of inquiry would be to seek and promote wisdom – wisdom being the capacity to realize what is of value in life for oneself and others, thus including knowledge and technological know-how, but much else besides.

This second edition has been revised throughout, has additional material, a new introduction and three new chapters.

What one critic has said about the second edition
“Any philosopher or other person who seeks wisdom should read this book. Any educator who loves education--especially those in leadership positions--should read this book. Anyone who wants to understand an important source of modern human malaise should read this book. And anyone trying to figure out why, in a world that produces so many technical wonders, there is such an immense "wisdom gap" should read this book. In From Knowledge to Wisdom: A Revolution for Science and the Humanities, Second Edition . . . Nicholas Maxwell presents a compelling, wise, humane, and timely argument for a shift in our fundamental "aim of inquiry" from that of knowledge to that of wisdom.”
Jeff Huggins  Metapsychology

What three critics said about the first edition of From Knowledge to Wisdom
“Maxwell is advocating nothing less than a revolution (based on reason, not on religious or Marxist doctrine) in our intellectual goals and methods of inquiry ... There are altogether too many symptoms of malaise in our science-based society for Nicholas Maxwell's diagnosis to be ignored."
Professor Christopher Longuet-Higgins, Nature. 

“a strong effort is needed if one is to stand back and clearly state the objections to the whole enormous tangle of misconceptions which surround the notion of science to-day.  Maxwell has made that effort in this powerful, profound and important book.”
Dr. Mary Midgley, University Quarterly.

“The essential idea is really so simple, so transparently right ... It is a profound book, refreshingly unpretentious, and deserves to be read, refined and implemented.”
Dr. Stewart Richards, Annals of Science.

For further quotations from reviews, see http://www.ucl.ac.uk/from-knowledge-to-wisdom/reviews/#from

Readership: Scientists, philosophers, historians, philosophers and sociologists of science, educationalists, science policy experts, science journalists, undergraduate and graduate level students, and general readers interested in science, or concerned about problems confronting humanity.

Key Features
•  Has dramatic implications for social science and the humanities, for philosophy, for education, and for the long-term capacity of humanity to learn how to make progress towards a better world
•  Written in an informal, accessible way
•  Sets out to solve basic philosophical problems concerning science
Published by Pentire Press and distributed by Amazon, Ingram and Baker & Taylor

What ought to be the aims of science? How can science best serve humanity? What would an ideal science be like, a science that is sensitively and humanely responsive to the needs, problems and aspirations of people? How ought the institutional enterprise of science to be related to the rest of society? What ought to be the relationship between science and art, thought and feeling, reason and desire, mind and heart? Should the social sciences model themselves on the natural sciences: or ought they to take a different form if they are to serve the interests of humanity objectively, sensitively and rigorously? Might it be possible to get into human life, into art, education, politics, industry, international affairs, and other domains of human activity, the same kind of progressive success that is found so strikingly, on the intellectual level, within science? These are some of the questions tackled by What’s Wrong With Science? But the book is no abstruse treatise on the philosophy of science. Most of it takes the form of a passionate debate between a Scientist and a Philosopher, a debate that is by turns humorous, ironical, bitter, dramatically explosive. Even as the argument explores the relationship between thought and feeling, reason and desire, the two main protagonists find it necessary to examine their own feelings and motivations. The book is a delight to read and can be understood by anyone.  The book should have a wide appeal. It will be of interest to any scientist concerned about the intellectual and moral integrity of modern science – whether working in a physical, biological or social science. It will be of interest to educationalists, science teachers, students, 6th form pupils, historians, sociologists and philosophers of science, and indeed to anyone concerned about the place and role of science and technology in the modern world.  First published in 1976, the book is even more relevant today than it was 33 years ago.  This second edition has a new introduction in which the author explains how the book both exploits and develops Karl Popper’s philosophy.

The aim of this book is to change the nature of science.  At present science is shaped by the orthodox view that scientific theories are accepted and rejected impartially with respect to evidence, no permanent assumption being made about the world independently of the evidence.  This view is untenable.  We need a new orthodoxy, which sees science as making a hierarchy of increasingly attenuated metaphysical assumptions concerning the comprehensibility and knowability of the universe. 

    This new conception has a number of implications for the nature of science.  One is that it is part of current scientific knowledge that the universe is comprehensible, even physically comprehensible.  Another is that metaphysics and philosophy are central to scientific knowledge.  Another is that science possesses a rational, if fallible method of discovery. And another is that the whole picture of scientific method and rationality needs to be changed.

    Within this new conception of science, long-standing philosophical problems about science, having to do with simplicity, induction and progress, find a natural resolution.

For quotations from reviews, see http://www.nick-maxwell.demon.co.uk/Reviews.htm#thecomprehensibility

This book tackles the problem of how we can understand our human  world embedded in the physical universe in such a way that justice is done both to the richness, meaning and value of human life on the one hand, and what modern science tells    us about the physical universe on the other hand.  It includes discussion of consciousness, free will and evolution.
For extracts from reviews, see http://www.nick-maxwell.demon.co.uk/Reviews.htm#thehumanworld

Is Science Neurotic? calls for a scientific revolution.  It shows decisively that science represses problematic assumptions concerning metaphysics, values and politics - assumptions that ought to be clearly acknowledged so that they can be thrown open to criticism, revision and improvement.  Maxwell argues that we need a new kind of science, and a new kind of academic inquiry having, as their basic aim, to help humanity learn how to become wiser and more civilized.  Is Science Neurotic? has dramatic implications for natural science, for social science and the humanities, and for current debates about the human value and dangers of modern science.

The book begins with a discussion of the aims and methods of natural science, and moves on to discuss social science, philosophy, education, psychoanalytic theory and academic inquiry as a whole. It makes an original and compelling contribution to the current debate between those for and those against science, arguing that science would be of greater human value if it were more rigorous – we suffer not from too much scientific rationality, but too little.  In a lively and accessible style, the author spells out a thesis with profound importance for the long-term future of humanity.

What two critics have said about Is Science Neurotic?

"This book is bursting with intellectual energy and ambition. . . [ It ] provides a good account of issues needing debate. In accessible language, Maxwell articulates many of today's key scientific and social issues . . . his methodical analysis of topics such as induction and unity, his historical perspective on the Enlightenment, his opinions on string theory and his identification of the most important problems of living are absorbing and insightful."
Clare McNiven, Journal of Consciousness Studies. 12, No. 3, 2005

"Is science neurotic? Yes, says Nicholas Maxwell, and the sooner we acknowledge it and understand the reasons why, the better it will be for academic inquiry generally and, indeed, for the whole of humankind. This is a bold claim … But it is also realistic and deserves to be taken very seriously … My summary in no way does justice to the strength and detail of Maxwell's well crafted arguments … I found the book fascinating, stimulating and convincing … after reading this book, I have come to see the profound importance of its central message."
Dr. Mathew Iredale, The Philosopher's Magazine, Issue 31, 2005, pp. 86-87.

For more quotations from reviews, see http://www.worldscibooks.com/popsci/p362.html

In this book, twelve scholars discuss diverse aspects of my work.  The book includes my ‘How Can Life of Value Best Flourish in the Real World?’ (pp. 1-56), an outline of my work, and my ‘Replies and Reflections’ (pp. 249-313).

"The name of Nicholas Maxwell for those who know him is tied to an original and revolutionary vision, and for those who do not know him it could be regarded as a token of a treasure to be discovered. Nicholas Maxwell is the man of his era; he observes the problems of his time and suggests a pervasive thought to solve them. For anyone who is somehow related to global problems, Maxwell's ideas are worth reading."
Rouhallah Ramezanivarzaneh, Metapsychology

For my contributions to some 36 further books see http://www.ucl.ac.uk/from-knowledge-to-wisdom

This book will, I hope, be of interest to those concerned about ultimate questions – the nature of the universe, the meaning of life, the fate of humanity. It is written in a lively, accessible style, and has original things to say about a number of fundamental issues. It argues that we need to sever the God-of-Power from the God-of-Value. The first is Einstein’s God, the underlying unity in the physical universe that determines how events occur. The second is what is of most value associated with human life – and sentient life more generally. Having cut God in half in this way, the problem then becomes to see how the two halves can be put together again. This is our basic problem: to see how our human world, imbued with meaning and value, can exist and best flourish embedded in the physical universe. This book tackles outstanding aspects of this problem, and in doing so throws out original ideas about science, education, religion, evolutionary theory, free will, quantum theory, and how we should go about tackling impending global crises such as population growth and global warming.

I put forward a micro realistic, probabilistic version of quantum theory, which specifies the precise nature of quantum entities thus solving the quantum wave/particle dilemma, and which both reproduces the empirical success of orthodox quantum theory, and yields predictions that differ from orthodox quantum theory for as yet unperformed experiments.

All of us, I believe, are extraordinarily active and creative intellectually when we are very young. Somehow, in the first few years of life, we acquire an identity, a consciousness of self; we discover, or create, a whole view of the world, a cosmology; and we learn to understand speech, and to speak ourselves. And we achieve all this without any formal education whatsoever. Compared with these mighty intellectual achievements of our childhood, the heights of adult artistic and scientific achievement all but pale into insignificance. It is reasonable to suppose that there is a biological, a neurological, basis for our extraordinary capacity to learn when we are very young. It probably has to do with the fact that our brains are still growing during the first few years of life. It is striking that there are things that can only be learnt during this time. If we have not had the opportunity to learn to speak by the age of twelve, we will never really learn to speak. Lightning calcula...

In Part I (Philosophy of Science, Vol. 41 No. 2, June, 1974) it was argued that in order to rebut Humean sceptical arguments, and thus show that it is possible for pure science to be rational, we need to reject standard empiricism and adopt in its stead aim oriented empiricism. Part II seeks to articulate in more detail a theory of rational scientific discovery within the general framework of aim oriented empiricism. It is argued that this theory (a) exhibits pure science as a rational enterprise (b) enables us to resolve problems associated with the key notions of simplicity and intelligibility (c) has important implications both for philosophy of science and for scientific practice itself.

Nicholas Maxwell's provacative and highly original philosophy of science urges a revolution in academic inquiry affecting all branches of learning, so that the single-minded pursuit of knowledge is replaced with the aim of helping people realize what is of value in life amd make progress toward a more civilized world. This volume of essays from an international inter-disciplinary group of scolars engages Maxwell in critical evaluaton and celebrates his contribution to philosophy spanning forty years. Several of the contributors, like Maxwell, took their inspiration from Sir Karl Popper's philosophy of science and were connected to the department he created at the London School of Economics. In the introductory chapter, Maxwell provides an overview of his though and then defends his views against objections in a concluding essay.

Humanity faces two fundamental problems of learning: learning about the universe, and learning to become civilized. We have solved the first problem, but not the second one, and that puts us in a situation of great danger. Almost all of our global problems have arisen as a result. It has become a matter of extreme urgency to solve the second problem. The key to this is to learn from our solution to the first problem how to solve the second one. This was the basic idea of the 18th century Enlightenment, but in implementing this idea, the Enlightenment blundered. Their mistakes are still built into academia today. In order to le arn how to create a civilized, enlightened world, the key thing we need to do is to cure academia of the structural blunders we have inherited from the Enlightenment. We need to bring about a revolution in science, and in academia more broadly so that the basic aim becomes wisdom, and not just knowledge.

In 1984 the author published From Knowledge to Wisdom, a book that argues that a revolution in academia is urgently needed, so that problems of living, including global problems, are put at the heart of the enterprise, and the basic aim becomes to seek and promote wisdom, and not just acquire knowledge. Every discipline and aspect of academia needs to change, and the whole way in which academia is related to the rest of the social world. Universities devoted to the pursuit of knowledge and technological know-how betray reason and, as a result, betray humanity. As a result of becoming more intellectually rigorous, academic inquiry becomes of far greater benefit to humanity. If the revolution argued for all those years ago had been taken up and put into academic practice, we might now live in a much more hopeful world than the one that confronts us. Humanity might have begun to learn how to solve global problems; the Amazon rain forests might not face destruction; we might not be face...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to spell out the urgent need to correct structural rationality defects in academia as it exists at present, so that it may become actively and effectively engaged in helping us solve the grave global problems that confront us. Design/methodology/approach The paper spells out an argument for the urgent need to bring about a revolution in academic inquiry so that the basic aim becomes social wisdom and not just specialized knowledge, problems of living being put at the heart of the academic enterprise. Findings Natural science needs to become more like natural philosophy; social science needs to become social methodology or social philosophy; and a basic task of academia needs to become public education about what our problems are and what we need to do about them. Almost every part and aspect of academia needs to change. Research limitations/implications The implication is the urgent need to bring about an intellectual/institutional revolution in ...

An important part of the mind–brain problem arises because consciousness seems inherently resistant to scientific explanation. The solution to this dilemma is to recognize, first, that scientific explanation can only render comprehensible a selected aspect of what there is, and second, that there is a mode of explanation, the personalistic, different from, irreducible to, but as viable as, scientific explanation, in terms of which consciousness can be understood. The problem of explaining why experiential or mental aspects of brain processes or things should be correlated with certain physical processes or things is a non-problem because there is no kind of explanation possible in terms of which an explanation could be couched. A physical theory, amplified to include the experiential, might be predictive but would, necessarily, cease to be explanatory; and an amplified personalistic explanation could not succeed either. There is, in short, an explanation as to why there cannot be an...

Purpose–In this paper the author aims to sketch a liberal-studies course designed to explore our fundamental problem of thought and life: How can our human world exist and best flourish embedded as it is in the physical universe? The fundamental character of this problem provides one with the opportunity to explore a wide range of issues.Design/methodology/approach–The paper addresses the following questions: what does physics tell us about the universe and ourselves? How do we account for everything physics leaves out? How can living brains be conscious? If everything occurs in accordance with physical law, what becomes of free will? How does Darwin's theory of evolution contribute to the solution to the fundamental problem? What is the history of thought about this problem? What is of most value associated with human life? What kind of civilized world should we seek to help create? Why is the fundamental problem not a part of standard education in schools and universities? Wha...

At present the basic intellectual aim of academic inquiry is to improve knowledge. Much of the structure, the whole character, of academic inquiry, in universities all over the world, is shaped by the adoption of this as the basic intellectual aim. But, judged from the standpoint of making a contribution to human welfare, academic inquiry of this type is irrational. Three of four of the most elementary rules of rational problem-solving are violated. A revolution in the aims and methods of academic inquiry is needed so that the basic aim becomes to promote wisdom, conceived of as the capacity to realize what is of value, for oneself and others, thus including knowledge and technological know-how, but much else besides. This urgently needed revolution would affect every branch and aspect of the academic enterprise.

Cutting God in Half argues that, in order to tackle climate change, world poverty, extinction of species and our other global problems rather better than we are doing at present we need to bring about a revolution in science, and in academia more generally. We need to put our ...

In the Preface to Rationality, Steven Pinker remarks that "we are smart enough to have … articulated the rules of reason that we so often flout" (p. xiv). Unfortunately, Pinker does not get the rules of reason right in this book. Pinker defends a damagingly irrational conception of reason. But despite this rather drastic failure, there is much of interest in this book, even if at a rather elementary level.

Steven Pinker's "Enlightenment NOW" is in many ways a terrific book, from which I have learnt much.  But it is also deeply flawed.  Science and reason are at the heart of the book, but the conceptions that Steven Pinker defends are damagingly irrational.  And these defective conceptions of science and reason, as a result of being associated with the Enlightenment Programme for the past two or three centuries, have been responsible, in part, for the genesis of the global problems we now suffer from, and our current inability to deal with them properly.  There is not a glimmering of an awareness of any of this in Pinker’s book.  This flaw in Enlightenment NOW is serious indeed.

In Wondrous Truths, J. D. Trout sets out to explain why modern science began in Europe in the 17 th century, and not in a number of other places and times that it might have begun. His explanation, however, despite containing a nugget of truth, is deeply flawed.

A kind of academic inquiry rationally devoted to helping to promote human welfare would give intellectual priority to the tasks of (1) articulating, and improving the articularing of, problems of living, and (2) proposing and critically assessing possible solutions - possible actions, policies, political programmes, ways of living.  The pursuit of knowledge and technological know-how would be important but secondary.  If such a genuinely rigorous kind of academic inquiry had been in place in our universities at the beginning of the year, many nations would have dealt with Covid-19 far better than they have, and thousands of lives would have been saved.

In my book Understanding Scientific Progress (Maxwell 2017), I argue that fundamental philosophical problems about scientific progress, above all the problem of induction, cannot be solved granted standard empiricism (SE), a doctrine which most scientists and philosophers of science take for granted. A key tenet of SE is that no permanent thesis about the world can be accepted as a part of scientific knowledge independent of evidence. For a number of reasons, we need to adopt a rather different conception of science which I call aim-oriented empiricism (AOE). This holds that we need to construe physics as accepting, as a part of theoretical scientific knowledge, a hierarchy of metaphysical theses about the comprehensibility and knowability of the universe, these theses becoming increasingly insubstantial as we go up the hierarchy. Fundamental philosophical problems about scientific progress, including the problems of induction, theory unity, verisimilitude and scientific discovery, which cannot be solved granted SE, can be solved granted AOE. In his review of Understanding Scientific Progress, Moti Mizrahi makes a number of criticisms, almost all of which are invalid in quite elementary ways (Mizrahi 2018). Thus Mizrahi argues that I am quite wrong in holding that "most philosophers of science have adopted some version of SE". He quotes me as declaring that SE acknowledges that "[c]onsiderations of simplicity, unity, or explanatory power may legitimately influence choice of theory" and then goes on to argue, astonishingly, that scientific realists (60% of philosophers of science) do not support SE because they hold that both "simplicity and unity count as criteria for selecting the best explanation from competing hypotheses". But this is a key tenet of SE. Mizrahi seems to think that scientific realists, in upholding a key tenet of SE, thereby reveal that they reject SE! I am baffled. It is true that there is an additional tenet of SE, as I have made clear above (and as I make clear in the book), namely: no permanent thesis about the world can be accepted as a part of scientific knowledge independent of evidence. If scientific realists reject this tenet, then they reject SE. But Mizrahi says nothing about the matter. Mizrahi's argument that a majority of philosophers of science reject SE is bafflingly incoherent.