Do we Need the Social Sciences?

There is a debate in philosophy of science about the status of “entities” like “churches”. Most of the philosophers agree on the fact that “churches” don’t really exist; that is, don’t really exist apart from the people that are part of a church. Just like a forest cannot exist apart from the trees being part of it. That’s pretty clear, right? The sum is merely a collection of its parts; “1 + 1 is always 2”. This is the ontological part of philosophy; the part of what exists out there in the world, with the position of “ontological individualism” winning the battle.

But there is a problem. Because if “churches” don’t really exist – in the sense I explained above – then they cannot have causal powers. After all, how can you cause something if you don’t exist? That’s impossible, right? But if that is true, a painful question arises: what then about sociology? Or what then about any social science dealing with entities like “churches”?  If these entities can’t cause anything, why then use them in “social laws” like, “If a group has the property of being a church, then its degree of solidarity will be higher than groups that do not have this property”? Then this “law” wouldn’t make sense, right? Unless, of course, it is not a causal relationship being “captured” in this ‘law”, but merely a correlation between the properties of “being a church” and “having a high degree of solidarity”. In this latter interpretation of “law” it can be true that members finding themselves to be “part of a church” have a relatively high degree of solidarity.  But then this would be merely an observation, right? Not a law representing the “causal nature of the universe”, right?

This is difficult issue for philosophers to crack. Since it is appears not to be easy to do without terms like “churches” in “social laws”; that is, if we would claim that “churches” don’t really exist and that the “laws” making use of the term “church” are not really laws, then we would have to come up with an alternative; an alternative posed in terms of individual properties instead of social properties like “being a church”, “being a football game” or “being an argument”. So how are we going to do this? Well, we could come up with a list consisting of all the “individual level properties” belonging to the social level property “being a church”. That list could look something like this: (1) the individuals share a building in which they pray, (2) the individuals believe in the same God…etc. etc. You get it? But then the problem would be that this list can go on forever! How could we ever put this in a law?! That’s impossible, right? And because this is impossible to do, it also becomes impossible, according to certain philosophers, to do away with social properties like “being a church” in social “laws”; after all, they claim, these social terms are needed to make sure that we don’t regress to those kinds of infinitely long lists.

The conclusion of this debate? Social laws are needed. Although churches might be composed of nothing more than individuals; it is conceptually impossible to reduce “social level entities” to “individual level entities”; where the former are used in sciences like sociology and the latter are used in sciences like psychology, neuroscience etc. Another implication of this observation is that it is impossible to do away with the social level sciences – like sociology – by reducing them to individual level sciences – like psychology. Therefore, our efforts to do so have failed miserably……although I seriously doubt the validity of this argument. But that’s something for another article.

But what do you think?

Perspective on Renewable Energy from a Non-engineer or Physicist

Let’s face it: we are going to run out of fossil fuels. Although the exact predictions might differ, there is little doubt that between 15 and 60 years from now our fossil fuel sources will be depleted. But that’s not our only problem: the water level is rising as well. A recent study shows that we can expect the water level to rise between 0,8 and 2 meters by 2100; more drastic predictions even talk about a rise of 7 meters (!) by the year of 2100.

We might not be alive any more by the year 2100, or much sooner for that matter: so why would we care? ‘Think about our children,’ is an argument often heard. ‘We have to leave the world behind in such manner that they have the same opportunities as we had.’ To be honest, I don’t think we should be too worried about our children’s destiny. Humanity has managed to do pretty well in coming up with all kinds of solutions for all kinds of problems, especially when we had to. Our children will do fine. But there might be another reason, next to an economical one, why we should focus on coming up with new sources of energy. And that reason is: we simply can, so why wouldn’t we try it? Also, it has to happen sooner or later, right? We can put our heads in the sand and hope the storm will pass by, but that isn’t going to solve the problem. So: let’s take a look at what we can do.

I am not an engineer or a physicist. Neither do I have any (decent) technical knowledge. Nevertheless, it seems fair to say that the storage of electrical energy in batteries is difficult, to say the least, to implement on a global scale. So we must look for other ways to store (electrical) energy. Because that’s what we need: storing energy is required as long as we cannot exactly match supply and demand. And that’s the way it is: people aren’t going to watch television at night simply because there is an oversupply of electrical energy at that point in time. No, people want their needs met right now. It might be possible to mold people’s desires into a form that better matches the (electrical) energy supply at a particular point in time; for example, by charging the use of electricity on peak hours. However, this, like tax on smoking, seems to hurt us in our self-determination: we want to decide what to do and when to do it, not the government or any other party.

So what options are left? Dams? Sure: that could be possible. We could use excess electrical energy to pump up water, so that we can use this potential energy at a later point in time (at peak hours, for example). But that’s expensive, right? Building dams? So what about this bold conjecture: since the water level is getting higher and higher, why can’t we use the rising water level as a potential energy source? I understand that using the rising water level is not going to lower the water level: the water comes, one way or another, always back in the oceans. It’s not like we can deplete the oceans by using its water. However, that is not to say that there might not be a win-win situation available: what if we could mitigate the rise of the water level and at the same time create (potential) electrical energy?

Again: I am not an engineer, but the following plan seems pretty cool to me: what if we could use holes in the ground, like the giant holes created by depleting coal mines, in order to create waterfall like structures that drive generators. Then we could come up with electrical energy, right? Furthermore, we would mitigate the rise of the water level. Think about it: why do we have to build dams up high? Why can’t we use the depths of nature, the natural spaces in the ground, in order to let gravity do what it does best, and supply us with energy?

Another, possibly far-fetched, idea is a smaller one: it is about freighters (ships) crossing the oceans. Why do these ships always have to run on fuel? They don’t seem to be in that much of a hurry, right? Can’t we just use the power of the wind to blow them forth? Or solar energy, for that matter.

I don’t know how to save the planet, but I do know one thing: we should let our imagination do the work: be wild and think about it. When the point is reached at which the economic benefits of renewable energy are more profitable than fossil fuels, the paradigm shift will be made: we will all go green. And the great thing about this paradigm shift is: you can see it coming.

But what do you think?