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tarting with a critique of Ayn Rand, I move into a presentation of Objectivism, then to a consideration of the connection between Science and Philosophy, with some additional comments in which I try to make the scientific mentality a little less mysterious to people who have not been explicitly schooled in a scientific field.

Randism vs Objectivism

"If you mean, do I agree with the broad fundamentals of the philosophy of Objectivism, I would answer, 'Yes.' But if you mean, as Miss Rand might very well wish you to mean, do I agree with every position that Miss Rand has taken and do I regard the sum total of Miss Rand's intellectual pronouncements as being equal to what is meant by the philosophy of Objectivism, then I am not an Objectivist."

A Randite is a disciple of Ayn Rand.
Randism is the set of ideas that were Rand's personal beliefs. (This includes, of course, some - but not all - of the precepts of Objectivism.)

There is a very important distinction to be made between Randism and Objectivism. Randism asserts the congruency of Rand's statements with the principles of Objectivism: "what Rand says and only what Rand says is Objectivism." The fact that Rand has made incalculably valuable identifications of certain philosophical principles does by no means convey upon her exclusive or infallible domain in the further identification or application of those principles; nor, on the other hand, do Rand's incorrect identifications or improper applications in the least diminish the truth or usefulness of the principles of Objectivism. Unfortunately, the waters of Objectivism have been muddied by Rand's repeated attempts to convert her personal preferences into philosophical principles.

A big difference between the Objectivists and the Randites is that the Objectivists do not view Objectivism as a dogma i.e., a set of ideas to be accepted without question. We see it as an intellectual tool that is useful in helping us to understand the world, in much the same way that the Scientific Method is. From this point of view, the idea that someone can be "an enemy of Objectivism" (one of Leonard Peikoff's favorite denunciations) is as ridiculous as the idea that someone can be "an enemy of the Integral Calculus."

There are many parallels to be drawn between Rand/Objectivism and Newton/The Calculus. In each case an immensly powerful, beautiful and useful intellectual tool was derived by a human being who possessed some of the foibles of humanity. In each case the tool was jealously clung to and possessively circumscribed by its creator. In each case the tool was rejected and reviled by some reactionary people. And in each case (as time will eventually demonstrate) the power and utility of the tool will outlast the small-minded people who criticize it. Alongside these parallels there is a significant difference: it would be rather farfetched to regard a set of mathematical principles as a religion, but it is quite possible (and is indeed the practice of some people) to regard a set of philosophical principles as a religion. There are those who adulate Rand almost as if she were a deity and who regard Objectivism as a sacred dogma. And, on the other hand, there are many people in the world who reject a good and powerful set of ideas simply because they associate - wrongly - those ideas with the personal beliefs of Ayn Rand.

I believe the important aspects of her life are the philosophical achievements, not her personal attributes. Her personal foibles will eventually fade into the oblivion of historical forgetfulness - like Aristotle's male chauvinism, or Newton's alchemy, or Einstein's socks - and what will be left for future generations are the valuable philosophical identifications she made. How Rand was buffeted by the intellectual currents of her time is of course of interest to the historian of ideas; but it has little bearing on the truth of her propositions.

I would say this to the Randites: Abandon the attitude that the principles of Objectivism and the pronouncements of Ayn Rand are congruent sets. Realize that Objectivism, like the Scientific Method, is an open-ended set of principles rather than a closed and rigidly defined dogma. Recognize the importance of the work being done by those scholars who are trying to develop the ethical and political implications of the Objectivist Ethics. Until you do this, you will only be ostracizing yourselves from the living and powerful body of philosophy that is growing on the foundation of Ayn Rand's magnificent achievements.

In the hard sciences like chemistry we know pretty well who is a real scientist and who is a flake, even though there is no authoritative organization to enforce standards. The logical nature of science automatically makes it clear who is in and who is out of a scientific enterprise. You can tell whether or not someone is "really" a chemist by comparing his statements and actions with the fundamental principles of chemistry.

It is the same with "Objectivists." You don't have to (and shouldn't) take anyone's word for who they are. You must examine their principles and judge whether or not those principles are in accord with the fundamental precepts of Objectivism. Just as a scientist manifests certain specific attributes, an Objectivist manifests certain specific attributes: objectivity, rationality, libertarianism.

The hallmarks of an Objectivist are:

• In Metaphysics: objectivity; the belief that there is a reality which exists independently of consciousness.
• In Epistemology: reason rather than faith; the belief that it is the function of man's mind to perceive and understand that reality - and the confidence that the mind is capable of doing so.
• In Ethics: libertarianism; the belief that the only proper society is one that is founded upon the non-aggression principle.

To say "Ayn Rand's Objectivism" is somewhat like saying "Trofim Lysenko's genetics." In both cases, the set of ideas referred to is limited, severely distorted and, in some fundamentally important ways, wrong. Those who operate on false principles have about as much to contribute to Objectivism as Lysenko contributed to genetics. The contention that Objectivism must be defined only by reference to the ideas expressed by Ayn Rand is like saying that the Calculus must be defined only by reference to the ideas expressed by Newton. The precepts of Objectivism must be accepted (or rejected) on the same basis as any other set of scientific ideas: on whether or not they WORK, not on what any person (myself included) claims they are or should be.

Rand's incorrect definition of selfish

From the introduction to THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS, by Ayn Rand: The title of this book may evoke the kind of question that I hear once in a while: "Why do you use the word 'selfishness' to denote virtuous qualities of character, when that word antagonizes so many people to whom it does not mean the things you mean?".... there are others, who would not ask that question, sensing the moral cowardice it implies....

There are, roughly speaking, three classes of people:

1. Those concerned with their own advantage without any regard for others.
2. Those having no concern for self at all.
3. Those who are concerned with their own self-benefit and who are also aware of and concerned with their social context.

Historically, the terms most often used to designate these three categories are:

1. Selfish: concerned with one's own advantage without regard for others. This has almost always been described as wicked.
2. Selfless: having no concern for self. This has always been described as being ethically laudable.
3. Self-interested: concerned with one's own well-being. This has only sometimes been described as a vice.

It is a cognitive mistake because when she usurps the term "selfish" she does not provide an alternative term for the first category. Thus she commits the same cognitive error for which she upbraids the altruist semantics: providing convenient terms for only two out of the three categories. It is a communications mistake because the three terms enumerated above are distinctly specified also in such references as Webster's Collegiate dictionary, and thus are the terms most likely to be considered by educated Americans.

It is certainly true that there are many people to whom "selfish" does not mean the things Rand means, and to question her usage of the term is not, as she so stridently claims, an act of "moral cowardice" but merely an attempt to preserve cognitive clarity and communications utility. Perhaps it is no coincidence that in THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS, Rand places at the very last her essay on "The Argument From Intimidation."

Rand's personal statist views

"The basic political principle of the Objectivist ethics is: no man may INITIATE the use of physical force against others. No man - or group or society or government - has the right to assume the role of a criminal and initiate the use of physical compulsion against any man."

But Rand's personal stand is fundamentally statist. We can best see this in her answers to two questions put to her during her appearance at the Ford Hall Forum in 1972.

Question: Have you heard of the Libertarian Party and would you consider endorsing John Hospers and Tonie Nathan as presidential candidates?
Rand: "Look, I would rather vote for Bob Hope or the Marx brothers, if they still exist, or Jerry Lewis - I don't know who is the funniest today, rather than something like professor Hospers and the Libertarian Party. Look, I don't think Henry Wallace is a great thinker but even he - he's pretty much of a demagogue, though with some courage - even he had the good sense to stay home this time if he wanted to some extent - if he had one ounce of sincerity and wanted some freedom for his country. To choose this year to start after personal publicity - and if Hospers and whoever the rest are get ten votes away from Nixon, which I doubt, but if they do it is a moral crime."

Question: Will you comment on the issue of should amnesty be granted to draft dodgers?
Rand: "I think it is an improper question to be discussed while there is a war going on. It is a very complex question but you cannot, when men are dying in a war, say that you promise amnesty to those who refused. On the other hand I do not blame those who refused to be drafted if they did so out of general conviction, not necessarily religious, but if they oppose the state's right to draft them. They would have a case, and they would go to jail. And they would be willing to take that penalty."

What a distressing alternative: either submit to the draft or submit to imprisonment. No true libertarian would willingly accept either of these statist choices. Both Rand and her disciples have continually asserted this strong opposition to the political implementation of libertarianism. And her acceptance of the legitimacy of government coercion was repeatedly expressed both in word and deed.

Rand's failure to distinguish between politics and economics

What is Objectivism?

• One, known as subjectivity, asserts fundamentally that existence is created by consciousness.
• The other idea, known as objectivity, asserts fundamentally that there is indeed a real world that has its own existence, independent of any perceiving consciousness. The objectivity thesis controls your behavior, even if it does not control your thoughts and speech. If this were not so, you would already be dead: You wouldn't stop on the curb to let the trucks go roaring past. You wouldn't cook your food. You wouldn't drive on the proper side of the road. You wouldn't practice safe sex.... etc. The only sincere solipsist is a dead solipsist.

"Out yonder there is this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking."

But in the late 1960s the Problem of the Universals was solved by Ayn Rand. She showed that Definitions Are Not Arbitrary, and she demonstrated how to derive them directly from observations of reality. The same cognitive process that enables you to construct a correct definition also enables you to think in principles: to identify and classify things by reference to their fundamental distinguishing characteristics. This epistemological breakthrough enabled objectivity to be applied to ALL areas of human activity. The work of Rand and other philosophers who have taken up this effort has produced a set of principles now known as the Philosophy of Objectivism. These principles stand in distinct contrast to most of traditional philosophy and are, by and large, rather unpopular. (But that is to be expected of any set of ideas that is new and challenges the existing state of affairs. It has always been this way.)

Objectivism is the only philosophy that is completely consistent with Physics. The ideas of Objectivism are founded upon a set of Axiomatic Concepts: Existence, Identity, and Consciousness, and are derived from those concepts by the intellectual procedure set forth in the Objectivist Epistemology. This is a scientific, rationalist method which subsumes the Scientific Method of determining truth. It extends the Scientific Method to include areas of inquiry not usually thought to be amenable to scientific analysis. In her essay "The Objectivist Ethics," Rand applies this intellectual procedure to identifying a rational basis for ethics and morality. Nathaniel Branden, in his book "The Psychology of Self-Esteem," applies the procedure to identifying the bases of human psychology. Harry Browne gives us a rational explanation of the nature of economics. Hospers and Rothbard carry the procedure into the field of politics.

A philosophy is a set of principles which provides a consistent and comprehensive frame of reference from which to judge man and his environment.

If a philosophy is to be a comprehensive frame of reference it must encompass the full scope of man's thoughts and activities. Especially must it include Metaphysics, Epistemology, Ethics, Morality, Psychology, Politics, Economics and Esthetics - since all of man's activities are founded on one or more of these fields of study. I will give a brief exposition of the Objectivist principles as they apply to each of these fields. In order to clarify my presentation I will in each case contrast the Objectivist position with its contrary or opposite. The general schema looks like this:

• Metaphysics ... objectivity vs subjectivity
• Epistemology ... reason vs faith
• Ethics ... egoism vs altruism
• Morality ... self-interest vs degeneracy
• Psychology ... free will vs determinism
• Politics ... libertarianism vs statism
• Economics ... free enterprise vs socialism
• Esthetics ... romanticism vs anti-romanticism

Let us consider each of these terms and see what they mean.

(There is another, quite different, sense in which the term subjective is used: it refers to choices or decisions which are generated by reference to internal states of consciousness rather than by assessment of external factors. For example: the choice between chocolate or vanilla ice cream is a subjective choice. But the choice between an ice cream cone for me or a bottle of milk for my hungry baby should be an objective choice.)

The subjectivist, however, is bound by no such procedure. Since for him there is no firm, absolute "out there," his knowledge has its source in some form or another of introspection (revelation) and its validity is accepted on faith - that is, accepted without evidence or in spite of evidence to the contrary. Subjectivism is not an issue of what a statement or conclusion is about; it's an issue of the kind of evidence one uses to support a conclusion. It is not only a way of adopting conclusions, but also a way of evading conclusions by refusing to believe in them. It is not merely an emotional state of mind - it is a philosophy. It says that we should act upon our own impulses no matter what they are BECAUSE they are impulses. The very fact that we feel them is not only good enough to justify our actions, but the awareness that they are impulses is all the validation we, as human beings, require. To a subjectivist, rational explanation of thoughts and actions is not only unnecessary, but impossible.

Concerning Ethics and Morality I make this distinction: Morality describes intra-personal actions whereas Ethics describes inter-personal actions. For example: dope addiction is immoral (it is self-destructive) but it is not unethical. Stealing to support one's addiction is, however, unethical. Drunkenness is merely immoral; blocking the sidewalk with your stupefied body is unethical. Refusing to think is immoral, but failing, through this intellectual laziness, to fulfil your obligations as a husband/father or wife/mother is unethical. As you probably infer, I believe that most unethical actions have their basis in immorality. I will save you the trouble of consulting your dictionary by telling you that this distinction is etymologically unjustifiable. Cicero was the first to use the term "morals" and as he did so he noted that he meant this term to have precisely the same meaning as the Greek term "ethics." Since that time the two terms have been used synonymously, but I think it clear that there is a distinction to be made between two kinds of behavior, and the most appropriate terms to use in labeling this distinction are Ethics and Morality.

In the field of Ethics the Objectivist position is egoism: that man is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others, and that each man should live his own life for his own sake. The contrary position, altruism, holds that man must make the welfare of others the primary goal of his social relationships and that self-sacrifice is the highest virtue.

At this point I am sometimes beset with an argument that starts out: "Do you mean to say that you're the sort of wretched brute who tramples all over other people to gain your ends?" and continues by proposing a kind of false dichotomy which divides all human intercourse into two categories: sadism and masochism, and then tries to sell me masochism on the grounds that sadism is my only alternative. Most people posing this argument refuse to recognize the existence of a third type of man - the independent, self- supporting, profit-making trader, who neither sacrifices others to himself nor himself to others.

Morally, this sort of independently existing man is a self-interested person. That is to say, he is a man who is CONCERNED WITH HIS OWN BENEFIT. This implies, of course, that he knows what his own benefits actually are. Is it in my own physical self-interest to be a drunkard or a dope fiend? Hardly, for these activities are clearly self-destructive. Is it in my own psychological self-interest to be a liar or a thief? Again, no, because these actions, although not as obviously self-destructive as alcoholism or other drug addiction, are saboteurs of the mind's most basic function: integration. You cannot integrate a contradiction, and both lies and thefts are contradictions. (My second examples - liar/thief - are not merely immoral but unethical as well, and you can see from considering them that unethical actions are associated with immoral conditions.) What I'm trying to point out is that many actions which are usually called "selfish" (lies, thefts, or the wretched brute trampling on his poor fellow creatures) are not IN FACT in one's self-interest at all, and that the truly self- interested man is one who has carefully examined and rationally analysed his nature as a proper human being and thereby determined just what is IN FACT in his self-interest. The liar, thief and brute are not self-interested, they are actually self-destructive. They are degenerate. Genuine self- interest requires an awareness of the larger context that makes it possible to achieve one's values.

Objectivist morality has two fundamental bases: the acceptance of life itself as the standard of values; and the identification of the actions that are required by our nature to maintain that standard - to sustain life. The primary task of morality is to identify the conditions that must be satisfied to live successfully. We prove that something is a proper moral value by showing that we need it in order to live properly. We prove that some course of action is a virtue by showing that it is required to achieve a proper moral value. The concept of value is inextricably linked to the concept of life. The two concepts cannot be separated in practice. Each requires the other. Just as value presupposes a living valuer - "of value to whom and for what" - so life requires values, for without values the process of life is impossible: a man dies if he does not achieve values.

In the realm of Psychology, Objectivism holds that man is a creature of free will. This is to say that he is capable of making choices which are causal primaries. Determinism, on the other hand, is the principle that all of man's choices and actions are determined by forces (usually heredity and/or environment) which are outside of his control.

In political issues Objectivists are promoters of the libertarian ideal. Their political goals are based on the ethical principle that no man or group of men has the right to engage in coercion against the person or property of other people. We hold that there are only three proper functions of a governing agency: the military, to protect men against aggression by foreign criminals, the police, to protect men against aggression by domestic criminals, and the courts, to resolve disagreements which can at times arise even among just and rational men. We hold that a governing agency has no right to restrict a person's activities in the moral area (thus we oppose drug laws, laws forbidding sex acts between consenting adults, and all other "victimless crime" laws) and that it can rightfully act in the ethical area only when force (or its derivative, fraud) have been initiated. Thus we oppose all subsidies to businessmen or farmers, all tariffs and import/export restrictions, licensing laws, and all other laws restricting the freedom of production, transportation and trade. In brief, we advocate a political system wherein each individual has the right to do anything whatsoever which does not initiate force or fraud against anyone else, and in which the role of a governing agency is strictly restrained to the protection of that right. This is in contrast to the statist system, which is widespread and becoming ever more prevalent today, in which the State exercises predominant control over the actions of individuals, continually increasing the scope and intensity of its regimentation and by "a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariable the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism."

Corresponding to its political system, a society has an associated economic system. Considering the nature of libertarianism, it is clear that its associated economic system must have a strong foundation in the individual's right to own, control, use and dispose of his private property. Libertarians advocate a capitalist economic organization in which the means of production - land, capital, etc. - are owned and controlled by individuals (or voluntarily associated groups of individuals), and in which there are no restrictions on the freedom of production, transportation and trade. The opposite form of economic organization, socialism (of which fascism and communism are variants), is a system in which the economic resources are controlled by the State and in which individuals have little, if any, economic freedom.

The last philosophical category I will consider is that of art forms. Here, as before, I divide the field into two major domains. One, subsumed by the term romanticism, includes all those works which are based on the recognition that man is a volitional creature - that he has the power to make choices and that those choices are major determinators of his life. The greatest portrayal of romantic heroism can be found in the novels of Ayn Rand. The major task of a romantic work of art is, as Aristotle said, "to show things as they might be and ought to be." The other esthetic domain (which, for lack of a suitable general label, I will simply call "anti- romanticism") shows things as they "must be" (or are seen to be) and depicts man as a creature who has, essentially, no power over his destiny. Anti- romanticism began with classicism, evolved into naturalism, and is in turn evolving into absurdism. The best such work of great classical literature is the Greek drama "Oedipus Rex." A good example of naturalism is "Death of a Salesman" and a typical representative of absurdism is "Waiting for Godot." Esthetically, an Objectivist is a romantic realist. Existentially, he is a practical idealist.

If I were asked to express the essence of Objectivism in one short statement I could do no better than to paraphrase Ayn Rand, the foremost identifier and expounder of these principles:

Man is a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, non-aggression as his standard of social behavior, productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.

The Antagonism Between Philosophy and Science

On the other hand, philosophers spend their entire lives dealing with a world of imaginings, conjectures, and fantasies, NOT with the physical facts of reality - at least not beyond the faucet in the sink and the switch on the wall. They look with disdain upon the world of the physicist and the engineer as being one of "crass materialism" - beneath the dignity of their lofty intellectual position and not worthy of any serious consideration. The result is that their ideas are usually entirely separated from reality and produce a distortion when applied to the real physical world.

Consider Immanuel Kant, for example. He went to school, then he was a tutor, then he was a professor at university for the rest of his life. As far as I know he never even did so much real-world engineering as to draw a bucket of water up out of a well. Thus whereas Thales (who was a bridge- builder) gave us Aristotle, John Locke, and the United States of America - Kant (who was a pure philosopher) gave us Fichte and Nazi Germany, Karl Marx and the Soviet Union.

But I cannot place all the blame on the shoulders of the philosophers. After all, the philosopher does only half the job - he just conceives the ideas. It is the scientist who creates the means of implementing those ideas. Both men are equally responsible for the effects of their joint product.

Just as the philosophers are guilty of not knowing science - and thereby of failing to test their ideas against reality, so the scientists are guilty of ignoring philosophy - and thereby failing to understand the principles underlying their actions.

How Scientists Can Build Bombs

Another scientist, at age 89, had a similar realization:
"People should be taught when they are young that they HAVE to consider the value of the experiment before they start in on it. It is absolutely not enough to be interested. But you get so carried away with interest that you lose all sense of proportion."

Enrico Fermi was a hero-figure to many scientists. He designed and supervised the first nuclear reaction in the history of the world - in the squash court at the University of Chicago. He was dapper. Jaunty. My God, he even had a sense of humor! Then he built the first nuclear bombs and started this whole nuclear misery. You expect him to look and act like Mephistopheles, but here was a marvelous little guy making jokes, while doing everything better than everyone else. I wanted to be like him, but I couldn't. I didn't have whatever it takes for a man to enjoy himself while perfecting these weapons.

When I first heard a Nazi scientist tell of his work on weapons, I wondered if it were possible to be so completely divorced from the consequences of one's work. It seemed to me that no matter how subtle the problem a given weapon presented or how challenging its contemplation might be, the ashes and the bones resulting from government's use of that weapon would, in the end, be the same. Was it his responsibility that the rockets he helped design had fallen on London, killing helpless civilians? He claimed it was not, that he had never been accused, that in fact the Americans were glad to whisk him away to work for them before the Russians could get hold of him. He had been happy to come, and never regretted it. In this rich country the stories about postwar conditions in Germany had seemed very unreal. As had the War Crimes trials. People had followed orders - yet they appeared to have committed crimes. This troubled his orderly mind and, in the end, he had stopped reading about it or even thinking about it.

But not all of them manifest this absence of ethical responsibility in an implicit "non-thinking" manner; for some the renunciation is quite thoughtfully explicit:

"They believe that they are not obligated to judge whether they are being asked to work on the best research problem, but only whether they are being asked to do valid research. They believe that it is the responsibility of those who provide the funds to establish the directions of research. These typical scientists act according to their own beliefs and thus they have integrity. The process of producing new, valid knowledge in any area is very difficult and is typically all-consuming for those who undertake it. Those who work hard and well to this end will have little time, or intellectual firepower, to spare for issues that are beyond their area of focus. The division of labor requires that they depend upon others to evaluate the importance and broad implications of the new knowledge they produce."

One might well wonder if their abdication extends outside the laboratory to their ordinary daily behavior. Do they consider themselves responsible for the safe operation of their automobiles? For exercising due care when target shooting with their hunting rifles? Or are these things, as is the morality of their professional conduct, considered to be "beyond their area of focus"?

John Galt described these men:

"The guiltiest among you are the men who HAVE the capacity to know, yet choose to blank out reality, the men who are willing to sell their intelligence into cynical servitude to force... who reserve their logic for inanimate matter, but believe that the subject of dealing with men requires and deserves no rationality... who sell their souls in exchange for a laboratory supplied by loot.... they deliver their science to the service of death, to the only practical purpose it can ever have for looters: to inventing weapons of coercion and destruction."

The Connection Between Philosophy and Science

The primary obstacle in developing any ethical philosophy is the lack of a starting point. The scientist sees a set of "ought" terms: good, well, right, proper, virtue, should, bad, wrong, etc. - each of which can evidently be defined in terms of the others, but none of which has an independent, non-relative existence. Rand's genius was to identify the connection between the "ought" of volitional judgment and the "is" of reality.

It is no accident that many of the early Greek philosophers were practicing engineers, architects, bridge-builders, harbor designers. They were men whose minds were intimately tied directly to the facts of reality, and that's why so many of their philosophical ideas are so profound. In an attempt to link science and philosophy, a reasonable question to ask is "Where can we find a starting point - a foundation stone of certitude as the ultimate basis of human knowledge? A place where we can stand in unquestionable certainty and from whence we can build a structure of sure knowledge?"

For the scientist this is no problem - he starts by looking at the objects around him - the things that are observed by his senses. His contemplations eventually lead him to the fundamental notion (the First Law of Thermodynamics) that entities do indeed exist autonomously - they can neither be created or destroyed. This is the starting place of the scientist. But is there something that is fundamental even to this notion of the scientist? Yes, there is, and we can approach it through such questions as "What is the fundamental nature of all the things that exist?" "What laws or principles underly all things - and all the behavior of all the things?" There is an answer to these questions. It was given to us by Aristotle, and it is the Law of Identity.

The Law of Identity is one of the fundamental, axiomatic concepts identified by Aristotle. In his Metaphysics, Book 4, Part 3, he observes:

"...for these truths hold good for everything that is.... And all men use them, because they are true of being qua being.... For a principle which everyone must have who understands anything that is, is not a hypothesis.... Evidently then such a principle is the most certain of all; which principle this is, let us proceed to say. It is, that the same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject in the same respect."

The Law of Identity is a foundation of objectivity. Any scientist who probes beneath the First Law of Thermodynamics will soon encounter the Law of Identity, and there he will find the doorway into the philosophy of Objectivism. That doorway is the link between science and philosophy. When you find, in the Objectivist Ethics, the TANSTAAFL principle (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch): the idea that "You can't get something for nothing, unless someone, somewhere, sometime, is getting nothing for something", you see the direct link between Ethics and the First Law of Thermodynamics.

Objectivism is the only philosophy that is completely consistent with Physics. Indeed, Physics is a subset of Objectivism, for the fundamental principles of Physics (the Laws of Thermodynamics) are themselves founded upon the Axiomatic Concepts identified by the Objectivist Epistemology.

Objectivism starts with fundamentals and builds knowledge on a solid foundation, from the ground up. Adherents of many modern philosophical perspectives hate this very approach, and reject the need for "foundations" of any kind. They point out that philosophers have been trying to establish foundations for centuries but cannot agree on anything. Therefore, they argue, what's the use? And so THEY start in midair, with contentions that allegedly are agreed upon, but which in fact are controversial, derivative, and even arbitrary. The result is usually a ramshackle mess which presupposes an enormous amount that is never discussed, leads nowhere, and solves nothing. What Objectivism has is a consistent, comprehensive philosophical framework from which to ask questions about reality, and a consistent, comprehensive scientific framework in which to seek answers to those questions. Only this scenario can lead to a useful understanding of reality.

Philosophers have had a great deal of difficulty with the problem of what constitutes truth and how to recognize whether something is true or not. But this is a difficulty that philosophers have no business trying to impose on other fields. In other words, the fact that philosophers are still debating the nature of truth should have no more effect on the practice of science than the fact that the average business person is ignorant of the details of accountancy should have on the day-to-day behavior of a CPA. The proper attitude of the scientists should be: "We will be limited in our work strictly by the problems WE can't solve, not by the problems YOU can't solve."

The Scientific Attitude of Mind

This is the fundamental premise of science.

The other primary element of scientific thought - flexibility - is the ability and willingness to alter one's ideas so as to bring them into correspondence with that "independently existing world." Nature does not necessarily comply with the parameters established by human conjecture, and when she does not, we must accept the necessity of modifying the conjecture.

Some History of Science

In the seventeenth century, there arose a mode of scientific procedure usually associated with the names of Galileo and Francis Bacon. It was based upon observation, reason, and experiment. Galileo's work established the priority of experiment over deductive science (which was itself a great advance over the use of myth and religion to explain natural phenomena). Furthermore, Galileo's conclusions could not be ignored as a mere intellectual oddity, for they had to be used in the practical business of pointing cannons at the correct angle to compensate for the fall of cannonballs in flight.

It has sometimes been maintained that Galileo's greatest contribution was his method of thinking about the physical universe. Unfortunately the great majority of philosophers were (and remain) unable to understand his method. They still possess the deductive habit of reasoning from what SEEM to be valid basic assumptions and rarely believe it necessary to check their conclusions against the real universe.

By insisting on the experimental verification of scientific conjectures, Galileo and his successors established a general test of scientific truth which enabled scientists specializing in widely different disciplines to accept and use each other's results. The shared method created an organized scientific community, with a division of labor among scientists in various specialized fields, all contributing to the accumulation of a demonstrably valid body of knowledge. By the close of the seventeenth century, the scale of Europe's scientific effort was already overwhelmingly greater than that of any contemporary or earlier culture, and so too was the European civilization's progress in understanding natural phenomena.

We are so much accustomed to think of organizations solely in terms of hierarchical bureaucracies like armies, governments, or corporations that it is difficult to realize that an enterprise so individualistic and non- hierarchical as modern science can properly be said to be highly organized. But such a narrow impression of organization must be dismissed as misleading on the basis of the history of science. Without a formal hierarchy, Western scientists created a scientific community within which they pursued shared goals of understanding natural phenomena with dedication, cooperation, collective conflict resolution, division of labor, specialization, and information generation and exchange at a level of organizational efficiency rarely matched among large groups, hierarchical or nonhierarchical. Western science had another advantage over contemporary and antecedent sciences: it arose at a time when political and religious authorities lacked the power to suppress new ideas incompatible with conventional beliefs, though they often tried to.

Science vs Magic

Arthur Clarke: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

If you learn what this world is, how it works, you automatically start getting magic - what will be called miracles. But of course nothing is miraculous. Learn what the magician knows and it's not magic anymore. But it does no good to try to explain something as being a product of science rather than magic, in speaking to people who have no idea what is meant by "science" and who have a culturally-induced antipathy to rational thinking. They lack the basic conceptual machinery that makes any rational account of an objective world possible. They don't seem to share the ordinary, commonsense notions of causality and consistency that are necessary to even begin understanding the universe. They don't grasp that the same causes always produce the same results. They don't see anything natural about predictability at all. They act as if it were mysterious. Machines - especially computers - baffle them. They talk instead about magic and mysticism. They rely on some intuitive process that dwells deep below rational thought.

This is not necessarily the fault of the ignorant people. Although there is a vast untapped popular interest in the deepest scientific questions, for many people the shoddily thought out doctrines of borderline science are the closest approximation to comprehensible science readily available to them. The popularity of pseudoscience should be a rebuke to the schools, the press and commercial television for their sparse, unimaginative and ineffective efforts at science education. This unfortunate situation is compounded by the popular media's obsession with controversy and sensationalism. In its rush to expose "dangers" to the public health and well-being, the distortions and outright falsehoods it presents as "science" serve only to corrupt what little factual knowledge the public does possess. To top it off, we are beset by the quantum mystics, whose dim comprehension of physics, and abysmal ignorance of philosophy do not in any way inhibit their subjectivist metaphysical pronouncements. (In fact, the ideas of quantum mechanics do not contain any reasons whatsoever for giving up the concept of a reality that is independent of the mind.)

Amid the utter darkness of mysticism, scientific reason is a candle lighting the way to sense. Science is an attempt to understand the world, to get a grip on things, to get hold of ourselves, to steer a safe course. In contrast to mysticism, the scientific method has been mostly successful: microbiology and meteorology now explain what only a few centuries ago was considered sufficient cause to burn women to death. In every country we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. This is all that stands between us and the barbaric darkness of mysticism.

Goethe: "Nature understands no jesting; she is always true, always serious, always severe; she is always right, and the errors and faults are always those of man. The man incapable of appreciating her she despises and only to the apt, the pure, and the true, does she resign herself and reveal her secrets."

T.H. Huxley: "Suppose it were perfectly certain that the life and fortune of evey one of us would, one day or other, depend upon his winning or losing a game at chess. Don't you think that we should all consider it to be a primary duty to learn at least the names and the moves of the pieces; to have a notion of a gambit, and a keen eye for all the means of giving and getting out of check? Yet it is a very plain and elementary truth, that the life, the fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, and, more or less, of those who are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing something of the rules of a game infinitely more difficult and complicated than chess. It is a game which has been played for untold ages, every man and woman of us being one of the two players in a game of his or her own. The chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man who plays well, the highest stakes are paid, with that sort of overlflowing generosity with which the strong shows delight in strength. And one who plays ill is checkmated - without haste, but without remorse."

Examples of the Scientific Attitude applied

Newton started with a mathematical construct of the solar system that represented nature simplified: a point mass moving around a center of force. Because he did not assume that the construct was an exact representation of the physical world he was free to explore the properties and effects of a mathematical attractive force even though he found the concept of a grasping force "acting at a distance" to be abhorrent and not admissable in the realm of good physics. Next he compared the consequences of his mathematical construct with the observed principles and laws of the external world, such as Kepler's law of areas and law of elliptical orbits. Where the mathematical construct fell short Newton modified it. He made the center of force not a mathematical entity but a point mass. From the modified mathematical construct Newton concluded that a set of point masses circling a central point mass attract one another and perturb one another's orbits. Again he compared the construct with the physical world. Of all the planets, Jupiter and Saturn are the most massive, and so he sought orbital perturbations in their motions.

With the help of John Flamsteed, Newton found that the orbital motion of Saturn is perturbed when the two planets are closest together. The process of repeatedly comparing the mathematical construct with reality and then suitably modifying it led eventually to the treatment of the planets as physical bodies with definite shapes and sizes. After Newton had modified the construct many times he applied it to the entirety of nature, asserting that the force of attraction, which he had derived mathematically, is universal gravity. Since the mathematical force of attraction works well in explaining and predicting the observed phenomena of the world, Newton decided that the force must "truly exist" even though the philosophy to which he adhered did not and could not allow such a force to be part of a system of nature. And so he called for an inquiry into how the effects of universal gravity might arise.

In 1830, the Swedish chemist Jakob Berzelius, who didn't believe that molecules with equal structures but different properties were possible, examined both tartaric acid and racemic acid in detail. With considerable chagrin, he decided that even though he didn't believe it, it was nevertheless so.

Charles Darwin: "In October 1838, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic enquiry (into the mutability of species), I happened to read 'Malthus on Population,' and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species. Here then I had at last got a theory by which to work."

Some Critiques of Science

"I question the accuracy and validity of the Scientific Method - Science is young and clumsy - still too gross to truly measure some things." Let us examine the accuracy, validity, and gross clumsiness of science by taking a look at just a few of its actual accomplishments.

To begin with, here is a measure of the accuracy between a theoretical prediction and its corresponding experimental measurement: Experiments measure the electron's magnetic moment at 1.00115965221. The theory of Quantum Electrodynamics puts it at 1.00115965246. To give you a feeling for the accuracy of these numbers, consider them this way: If you were to measure the distance from Los Angeles to New York to this accuracy, it would be exact to the thickness of a human hair. I believe we can conclude that the theory is reasonably close to reality.

As for the validity of scientific hypotheses - surely the most outrageously unbelievable hypothesis of modern physics is the Quantum Mechanics, and yet a clever application of the uncertainty principle (which places a limit on the precision with which position can be known) yields very fine-tuned control over a type of electron flow known as quantum tunneling. The resulting device (the Scanning Tunneling Microscope, manufactured by Digital Instruments, Inc.) uses the quantum tunneling effect both to view, and to perform mechanical operations on, very tiny objects. Right down to the level of individual atoms. At the IBM Zurich lab, researchers used a Scanning Tunneling Microscope to cleave a single benzene ring off of a dimethyl phthalate molecule.

In its practical application (where the validity of the Quantum Mechanics can be measured by its commercial utility), an STM is used to monitor the production quality of an optical-disk stamping machine.

And as for gross clumsiness, these three examples should suffice to dispel that erroneous view:

The optical telescope on Palomar Mountain can detect a 10-watt light bulb on the moon. This telescope could also measure the width of a needle - at a distance of 5 miles. The best infrared telescopes could record the heat from a rabbit on the moon - were it alive and hopping.

Using very long baseline interferometry, maser images can be made accurate to 300 microarc-seconds. Were the human eye to have this resolving power, you could read these words from about 3000 miles away.

Workers at the National Bureau of Standards used a Paul electromagnetic trap to detect a single quantum jump of the outermost electron on a mercury ion from its ground state to an intermediate state. That's one single quantum jump of one single electron! Not quite the sort of thing you could reach in and fondle with your finger.

Look again at the criticism - and consider the principle underlying it:

She really should not "question the accuracy and validity of the Scientific Method" while she is writing with a ball-point pen on a sheet of paper, probably supported by the plastic surface of a desktop, and illuminated by an electric light bulb. You see what's happening - the author is using the very thing she denies, in the act of denying it. This is an excellent example of the Stolen Concept Fallacy: she is using the thing while she is rejecting the thing.

This exercise in simple geometry is a good example of the Uncertainty Principle in action: the universe is built in such a fashion that we humans are not omniscient - we can't know everything.

If you have difficulty with the notion of "mere chance being the instrument of creation" try this experiment:
Take about a dozen teaspoons and drop them (randomly but with handles up) into a soda glass. Tilt the glass to about a 45 degree angle and shake it. You will see the spoons begin to nest together. This nesting is the inevitable consequence of energy dissipation - of the interplay of the laws of physics - as the spoons settle into a "least energy content" configuration. When you consider that the fundamental morsels of matter (atoms and molecules) are sets of identical objects (every water molecule, for example, is exactly identical to every other) just like the spoons - then it is not too hard to realize that they would fit together in certain ways. Just like the spoons. This fitting together - on a larger and larger scale - can account for many aspects of the world of living things we see around us.

Always remember this: the words "chance" and "random" do not really describe the world of Reality. What they DO describe is the state of human knowledge. To be precise, they are terms that describe a state of human ignorance. When I say that an event happens by "mere chance" all I am really saying is that I do not precisely know what are the causal factors of that event. Personally, I would much rather admit to my own ignorance of the world than to invent, as an absolution for that ignorance, a Divinity to account for things I cannot yet explain.

Heisenberg: "The laws of nature which we formulate mathematically in quantum theory deal no longer with the elementary particles themselves but with our knowledge of the particles."

A commonly encountered criticism is "How can you believe in something - like an electron - which you can't possibly see?"
No one has ever seen the inside of a brick. Every time you break the brick, you see only the surface. That the brick has an inside is a simple assumption which helps us understand things better. The theory of electrons is analogous.

The ultimate justification for the ideas of science is that logical conclusions drawn from these ideas have led to useful solutions to real-life problems. From science have flowed all those great inventions by means of which mankind in general is able to exist with more comfort and in greater numbers upon the face of the earth. Hence arise the great advantages of men above brutes, and of civilization above barbarity. The acre of ripe wheat that once took a dozen men and a dozen horses all day to cut and thresh is now gathered up in six minutes as the combine rolls, one person at the controls.

How can science achieve fantastic things in the material world and yet you suppose for one minute that what we are doing is arbitrary and has no absolute, unquestionable relationship to the facts of reality? How is it possible that what we do works, if it doesn't correspond to reality?

Many scientists who are exposed to philosophy come away with the realization that if their work were to be attempted within the muddy, vague, and contradictory intellectual frame-of-reference of the philosophers, they would never achieve anything useful. So they simply abandon all philosophical considerations and confine their lives to the realm of clear, precise and meaningful scientific investigation. Thus it is that during the past 300 years the human race has gained an immense store of practical knowledge about the natural world while the philosophers are still struggling to determine how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

Steven Weinberg: "I know of NO ONE who has participated actively in the advance of physics in the post-war period whose research has been significantly helped by the work of philosophers."

Their talk is vague nonsense. At times their terms are so loosely defined that what they say cannot help but be partly true. Unfortunately, the sort of language that is admired by many philosophers does not, in fact, mean anything at all. All too often, they use language not as a means of communication but as a way to establish and defend an academic reputation. But there is nothing surprising here. In the mind of a professional philospher rhetoric is always more important than reality. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that in his mind rhetoric IS reality.

It was difficult for Satan alone to mislead the whole world, so he appointed prominent philosophers in different localities.

Why Objectivism is rejected

Objectivism, in revealing much of the nature of psychological reality, has also disclosed why many of its own important findings are still rejected: the ego of man sees that what the Objectivists have found - if analyzed and digested - would change ego itself. And man's greatest fear then rises to defend ego: the animal dread of any change in his personal identity. Only those courageous enough to master that primordial fear have been able to understand, and to benefit by, Objectivism. Even where the ego itself is not threatened, an unacceptable burden of self-responsibility is laid on the individual. It is easier to reject the philosophy than to bear the burden.

In a popular work of fiction, the story is often designed mainly to provide entertainment: the pleasure of observing the characters and events for their own sake, with no deeper significance intended. This is why popular fiction so often seems to satisfy what Rand describes as "the psycho-epistemological role of art" much better than many serious works that may give us great insights but little entertainment. And this is why Rand's own fiction is so frequently classified as merely popular fiction, since her works, like popular works, offer exciting stories that involve the reader emotionally and imaginatively in the story world. But this does not mean that her works should be dismissed as superficial fiction, or that they should be read just for pleasure.

Rand is frequently reviled, not just because she was an egoist, an atheist, and a pro-capitalist, but because she did not present her ideas in a "scholarly" fashion. This is very unpalatable to most philosophers. They want someone who documents what she says, defends it, and deals with contrary positions. Their focus is not on physical reality but on statements made by other philosophers. Rand pretty much dismissed other positions and went directly on to make her own identifications of reality. She was usually right to dismiss them, and the reasons she gave were usually correct, but to most scholars encountering her for the first time her dismissal is personally upsetting. Some find her style so offensive, in the sense of being non-scholarly, they refuse to read anything else she wrote. She did not play by the rules of their game. She did not deal with their arguments. She just brushed them aside and proceeded to make accurate identifications of fundamental truths - not merely responses to other people's dissertations.

But this process by which Rand is rejected is merely part of a technique that has been used for centuries to advocate philosophical ideas that have no relation to reality. It works like this:

The conclusion must be brazenly clear, but the proof must be shrouded in unintelligibility (this is the "scholarly fashion" of presentation mentioned above). The proof must be so tangled a mess that it will paralyze a reader's critical faculty. To provide a veneer of sophistication, the author may include many pages of abstruse technical notes, which generate an almost impenetrable aura of erudition. The students will believe that the professors know the proof, the professors will believe that the commentators know it, the commentators will believe that the author knows it - but the author is self-blinded to the fact that no proof exists and none was ever offered.

Within a few generations, the number of commentaries will have grown to such proportions that the original work will be considered a subject of philosophical specialization requiring a lifetime of study - and any refutation of the author's theory will be ignored or rejected if unaccompanied by a full discussion of the theories of all the commentators, a task which no one will be able to undertake. This is the process by which Kant and Hegel acquired their dominance. Many professors of philosophy today have no idea of what Kant actually said. And no one has ever read Hegel, even though many have looked at every word on his every page. (As J.S. Mill remarked: "Conversancy with Hegel tends to deprave one's intellect.")

This process is not necessarily a deliberate attempt to defraud people. It may be merely the inevitable consequence of how a certain kind of people handle ideas. As Branden observed, genuine self-esteem results from comparing oneself not with other people (or their opinions) but with the facts of reality. A person who lacks genuine self-esteem builds a pseudo self-esteem by comparing himself with other people. The most obvious example is the braggart who does NOT say "I can do it well," but says "I can do it better than YOU can!" When the braggart becomes a philosopher, his main intellectual focus is not on understanding, developing and expanding ideas which are the expressions of TRUTH - his main focus is on interacting, either positively or negatively, with statements made by OTHER PEOPLE (his own personal "significant others").

Rand is rejected because she did not fit into this category. Her focus was directed toward the identification of facts, not to the analysis of other people's opinions.

People focused on facts will tend to enter fact-oriented fields and become scientists, engineers, technicians, or mechanics, depending on their level of intellectual power and their specific area of personal interest. People with a more social-metaphysical focus will tend to become philosophers, scholars, politicians, or journalists, in a similar manner. Of course there are people who buck this trend: Ayn Rand as a philosopher is an outstanding example.

The Commentator Syndrome

They focus on arbitrary academic distinctions and disputes, rather than on underlying principles. Without fundamental principles to refer to, the commentator is totally dependent on the words of previous scholars. Consequently debate becomes increasingly attenuated into a series of false alternatives. The context of discussion becomes more and more nebulous, always requiring that everybody's thought be tacked onto some previous, established thought rather than attempting to refer to reality. Debate on a subject becomes lost in an argument over what so-and-so actually wrote, what he meant, how he has been interpreted, etc. Like a swamp that engulfs a myriad of streams, the commentators are tolerant, all-embracing, and stagnant.

From the introduction to an essay by Fred Seddon in a recent issue of a philosophical journal:

"The purpose of this study is to examine Adolf Grunbaum's claim that F.S.C. Northrop's interpretation of Newton's concept of relative space is incorrect."

Here is a complaint from a commentator (a well-known professor of philosophy), expressing his dissatisfaction with a discussion in which the participants were attempting to identify the nature of the concept "anarchism":

"It is rather perplexing to see supposedly morally upright people embarking on sketchy discussions of the issue, ones in which no quotations are used, no careful reproductions of the arguments of their adversaries. Most of those who are critical of anarchism manage to omit reference to the actual statements of the arguments advanced by those they criticize. I have dealt with [other's] versions of anarchism, in ways that I think adhere to scholarly caution and precision - i.e., I have used their words to characterize their views and then examined these views with those words in mind. To just jump in there and state the views without reference to the words of those who advance them is, well, irresponsible."

He was dissatisfied because of the lack of a detailed examination of the commentary. I was dissatisfied because of the lack of contemplation of fundamental truths.

Objectivism in the Universities

Philosophy is a "scholarly" subject, rather than scientific. There are competing schools of thought - Aristotelian, Plationist, Kantian, Positivist, etc. - and there is an implicit but inescapable relativism: at any given time, although one particular school of thought may be in the ascendant, the idea is never considered that one view could be permanently accepted as being absolutely correct and unchallengeable. As one philosopher put it, "OF COURSE philosophical problems are unsolvable." If you look into the typical philosophy textbook, you'll find it stated as a truism that philosophy can never, never achieve the kind of certainty that science has.

So, for Objectivism to triumph in the universities, we would have to do something far more difficult than getting other philosophers to accept Objectivist ideas. We would have to get them to renounce the philosophical relativism that is fundamental to their scholarly culture. (See the * Newspeak section of Chapter 2 for some thoughts on a similar epistemological relativism.) That's why the whole approach of gaining credibility in the universities is futile. See reference

But why should the best Objectivist thinkers focus on the existing universities, where our enemies are most entrenched, most intolerant, and most secure? We should instead be building a whole new intellectual culture of our own, from the grass roots. The abolition of the Nathaniel Branden Institute was a tragic error.

The Objectivist university would be an institution in which there would be respect for the customers. The professor would cease to be an ivory-tower intellectual. He would be immediately responsive to the real-life practical needs of his students. A diversity of intellectual interests would be fostered, and these would reflect REAL needs, needs that people would be willing to finance for themselves, not whatever passing, subsidized, intellectual fad exists at the moment. (In any case, with modern computers it may not be long before the university, as a physical entity, becomes largely needless.)

The academic opponents of Objectivism are more realistic than its advocates. They know quite well that in a rational, individualistic, morally judging, free-market culture they would not be able to dominate the universities. They would be out of a job, out of prestige, and out on their ass. Objectivism will win out, not by winning debates, but by filling the growing intellectual vacuum (both in and out of the university), by offering practical working solutions where no one else can.

We'll know Objectivism has succeeded when, and only when, thinkers like Kant and Hegel are considered part, not of philosophy, but of the history of philosophy; just as the ideas of the alchemists are taught today only as history of chemistry, not as part of the science of chemistry.