If we take any physical entity in the world, we find it is made up of things and also is a part of something bigger than it. (Of course, whether this is true at the quantum level is an open question, so I leave it alone here). In this blogpost, I want to reflect on the nature of causality between these spatial levels and offer some considerations for science educators. My presumption leading into this is that most science teachers have a confused conception of causality and probably do not realise it (as few studied philosophy and current science education deals with its crucial concepts only tacitly).
If pressed, many science teachers will say that the only ‘real’ causes are happening at the level of physics, and all other causes are merely apparent. But then they go on to treat these other ‘apparent’ causes as real causes in their teaching. Indeed, were it just a matter of physics, science educator might be forced to say that subatomic particles cause everything and that the *entire curriculum* from chemical reactions to ecosystems is the study of how we are deceived into falsely identifying different apparent causes. I think some science educators would resist that view, and if so, it is worth asking them how additional causes then come into the story. Others may concede that most of the curriculum is therefore a mirage but insist that ‘pragmatically’ these false causes can still be helpful. For example, we can build bridges using Newtonian mechanics. But then the problem comes back at them: how can causes, deceptive or otherwise, be *used at all* if only physics can do anything? How is engineering even possible?
Many contemporary scientists and philosophers have been reconsidering Aristotle’s famous ‘four causes’ for insights into the contradictory traps we get into when committing to the physics-is-the-first-and-only-mover worldview. One involves resurrecting what Aristotle called ‘formal causes’, which people now associate with concepts like ‘enabling constraints’, ‘downward causality’, ‘boundary conditions’ and so on. For example, according to Polanyi (1968), the organisation of a thing (how its parts are related) provides boundary conditions that harness physical processes. For example, a mechanism (say a clock) does not interfere with the physics underlying the metal cogs, but channels it in specific directions by delineating where physical processes occur. According to this view, the atoms within the clock’s cogs are capable of organising into many different configurations – probably infinite – and so physics underdetermines what particular relations arise from it. The underdetermined nature of physics is particularly clear in how biological process (and machines) can break down without any change to the underlying physical processes. Because physics is always happening within contexts, these contexts constrain where and how this physics occurs, and enable events (like the clock hands turning) that would be vastly improbable were they to arise spontaneously from the interaction of the underlying particles alone. This leads to the term ‘enabling constraint’ which many authors discuss but which I will attribute to Juarrero (e.g. 2023).
What interests me today is not simply the nature of the relationship between physics and context in a particular entity. I am in specifically interested in how their relationship is dialectical and gives rise to progressively bigger forms in space and time. To do so, I’d like to disrupt some of the framing that I have used so far. In particular, I want to challenge the idea that there is only one physics and one context enabling/constraining its possibilities. Rather, I want to suggest that whatever the entity at whatever scale of the world, there is a sense in which it causes in a manner similar to the physics we were just imagining, and another sense in which it causes in a manner more like enabling constraints or boundary conditions. I will call these, following Aristotle, efficient and formal causes.
To get a concrete sense of what I mean, consider a flag blowing in the wind. In one sense, the flag’s shape is the product of underlying physics. But now that the flag exists, it participates in new efficient causes. When the wind blows it, a pattern appears over the fluttering sheet. It denotes the direction of the wind, which leads to a person looking at it from indoors to get a jacket because it is coming from the north. It also modifies the wind current (to a small extent). The flag constrained its underlying molecules, which otherwise would not likely be changing wind currents or getting people to put on extra layers of clothing.
We can say that new forces arise with causal power at different moments in the history of the world. For example, temperature does not exist at the level of an atom. But once it exists at a higher level it can certainly participate in efficient causal interactions with sweaty people, and so on. With the evolution of new forms in the universe there is a corresponding evolution of new formal and efficient causalities that co-arise and provides the conditions for the possibility of new forms in turn.
But just as formal causation limits the possibilities of its underlying components, so too do the new kinds of efficient causality that arise. The effects of the blowing flag further specify specific directions for the molecular substrate of the various entities interacting with it. It is because of this dialectical process that real development and real novelty are possible. While taken in problematic and dogmatic directions, this was the original sense of Engel’s (1934) vision of dialectical materialism. Constraints do not just generate new form, they also generate new kinds of interaction, and both always occur together.
I will close with some reflections on science education. First, we should explore causality directly in science education, and efficient and formal Aristotlean causes in particular. When new phenomena are encountered in the curriculum, teachers can reinforce the distinction by asking: ‘what does the pushing? What does the shaping?’ internally in the phenomena, and also externally in how it interacts with its environment. Teachers can reinforce this by asking for bidirectional explanations from the micro to the macro. Moreover, doing so we learn to see how form and capacity to cause change link between levels in the world. The flag is a bridge, channeling underlying physics into a form that can in turn influence and be influenced by a broader array of phenomena, like the wind and so on. Each new form opens into a world that could not be accessed without it.
Second, teachers should foster campaigns against words like ‘just’, ‘mere’ and ‘only’ when describing the world. ‘Just physics’ doesn’t make sense for many reasons, one of which is the fact that physical forces themselves evolve as new forms arise in the world. There is a ‘mesophysics’ to the flags movement that is not the physics of quarks. Further, teachers need to do disentangle physics and efficient causation. When people say it is ‘just physics’ they may be wanting to assert that it is just efficient causality, which may not be physics alone (at least without a very generous stretching of what falls under our concept of ‘mesophysics’).
Third, studying biological or engineered mechanisms shows that the relation between interchangeable components matters, but the significance of mechanism as an antidote to the ‘just physics’ mentality is not generally recognised. In fact, science is commonly critiqued as ‘reductionistic and mechanistic’ in the new paradigms (that I subscribe to), almost as though the two words were synonymous.
Fourth, studying phase transitions and emergent properties also acquaints students with the notion that efficient causes underwrite possibilities, but that form and context select and stabilise actualities. But again, students are well acquainted with the fact that water changes state at a specific temperature and so on, without being mystified about how this is possible with a reductionistic mentality. This again enforces the fact that we already have enough evidence against the metaphysics that only sees physical impact as causal, and that the solution involves pointing out the contradictions that are invisible so that a more coherent view can develop.
And finally, mirages aren’t just mirages anyway. They kill people.
References
Aristotle (350BC). The metaphysics.
Engels, F (1934). The dialectics of nature. Progress Publishers.
Juarrero, A. (2023). Context changes everything. MIT Press.
Polanyi, M. (1968). Life’s irreducible structure. Science 160(3834), 1308-1312.
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