Education, Liberal Arts

STEM and The Value of a Liberal Education

by Dave Seng

dude reading

An institution I recently worked for just eliminated their Liberal Arts program and is focusing on something it is calling “leadership studies.” I do not know the entire situation and motivation behind this decision and I certainly do not intend to disparage this particular university. It very well could be that they are still strongly committed to a humanities or liberal arts education and the program, as implemented, just did not work out for whatever reason. I fully understand the economic factors involved (I teach a class on the economics of information), but I do think this institution made a significant error of judgment. As important as the economic situation is for any school, at what point do those of us as educators—those who believe in the enduring achievements of our Western intellectual heritage—stand up and say there might be very good reasons to have our future leaders be broadly, liberally, and generally educated? Of course, specialization is an important reality of our knowledge economy and we all must specialize to some degree. Time is always scarce and brings with it the ever-present reality of opportunity cost. Specialization, which in many cases amounts to vocational training, should not preclude one from being generally educated.  In our knowledge economy, it is far too easy to develop what we call leaders into technological bureaucrats.  A humanities based education will help address this concern.

Whenever a university eliminates a liberal arts program it makes a tragic mistake. Without a background in the humanities or liberal arts, it becomes harder for the student to specialize and make important intellectual connections because they simply will not have the foundation and skills to do so, and it will be more difficult for the student to understand and comprehend the masters in his or her field if the student decides to make that extra step. The classes I teach draw upon the intersection of intellectual history, philosophy, and technology. I have found that even my most motivated students have difficulty understanding how the great thinkers and innovators of the past have contributed to their own field of study.  I firmly believe that an education which includes logical reasoning that corresponds to reality (not all approaches to logic succeed at that), and an exploration of the human element which always shapes our artistic and technological reality, is the best educational service that a school or university can provide to their students. After all, technology brings with it that most peculiar and vexing trait of the human condition itself—it is always an amalgam of good and evil. With an education that includes the liberal arts, STEM students will be better prepared to understand why the great ethical questions that surround our technological society matter and will come to an understanding of what it means to live a meaningful life.

I recently re-discovered how a brilliant mind can influence a field when reading through A.N. Whitehead’s Science and the Modern World. Whitehead, of course, is a great early Twentieth Century logician, mathematician, and philosopher. Whitehead draws on early Greek thought, Roman Stoicism and legal theory, and even shows how medieval Benedictine monks contributed to science and technology. In short, he uses illustrations from literature, philosophy, and history to demonstrate how math and science have contributed to the world we live in today. It is true that Science and the Modern World is not Whitehead’s most significant work, but it is his most accessible and rewarding work for the generally educated reader or for one who wants to be. Those specializing in mathematics will certainly be (or should be) familiar with his work, but I wonder how accessible his examples are for those without a broad liberal education? The same could be said of Max Planck, Werner Heisenberg, or Albert Einstein—all intellectual leaders of their fields and well versed in the great Western thinkers that shaped so much of our philosophical, artistic, and historical understanding. We need leaders and specialists in STEM fields but we must give them the foundation and conceptual tools to help them understand the masters of their own field. It does not matter where one falls on the cultural or social spectrum either. Nietzsche, Freud, and Marx were all classicists and broadly educated. Freud, of course, used his foundational knowledge to develop an entirely new area of study, analytical psychology and, along with Marx, became one of the most influential thinkers of the Twentieth Century. How will universities who eliminate the liberal arts help our future leaders understand these great social and philosophical influences of our day and aid them in carefully weighing their ideas? Similarly, it is easy to see how Whitehead, Planck, or Heisenberg became specialists in their respective fields. They were able to draw from history, literature, and philosophy to make significant contributions to math, physics, and science. They built their theories using tools given to them from those who came before them. Their generalization prepared them for specialization. The insights of Planck and Heisenberg were so profound that they contributed to a re-birth of Aristotelian metaphysics—a significant accomplishment considering the previous four hundred years of intellectual and scientific history.

A generally educated student will be able to make connections, weigh evidence, communicate clearly, and understand what went right and what went wrong in the past. These insights and skills will serve students very well as they specialize in any field. The intellectual historian Irving Babbit reminds us, “The discipline that helps a man to self-mastery is found to have a more important bearing on his happiness than the discipline that helps him to a mastery of physical nature. If scientific discipline is not supplemented by a truly humanistic or religious discipline the result is unethical science, and unethical science is perhaps the worst monster that has yet been turned loose on the race” (Irving Babbitt, Rousseau and Romanticism, 1919, 383). Given that science and technology are so fundamental to our human situation today, why would any school or university seek to eliminate a program which focuses on the greatest of human achievements and helps us to understand what it means to live a deliberately meaningful life?

Book Reviews, Philosophy of Technology

Review: The Metaphysics of Techonology

by Dave Seng

David Skrbina

The Metaphysics of Technology.

New York: Routledge 2015

311 pages

The philosophy of technology is generally conceived as the philosophical investigation of the effects of technology on society and David Skrbina’s book, The Metaphysics of Technology (MT), is an important contribution to this field. MT is divided into two sections, the first which provides a rational and critical investigation into general metaphysics and why it is important to understand that technology has a metaphysical grounding. Using this foundation, Skrbina spends some time providing a contextual metaphysical foundation for technology and explores the metaphysical outlooks from the pre-Socratic thinkers to twentieth-century metaphysicians such as Martin Heidegger and others. The second part of the book focuses on what Skrbina calls “Praxis”. This section addresses what technology does, how it functions in the actual world, and how humanity can or should respond to it’ (113–14). This section is largely focused on thinkers such as Ellul, Borgmann,Feenberg, among others who have either failed to understand the metaphysical underpinnings of technology, or who have simply missed the philosophical weight of an all-enveloping technological society.

Throughout the book, Skrbina covers the literature and history of the philosophy of technology very well. He correctly notes that most thinkers who have provided thoughtful criticism of technology have not done so from a metaphysical viewpoint and few (with the possible exception of Martin Heidegger) have provided a metaphysical foundation for understanding technology. MT is possibly the first book-length treatise that seeks to provide a metaphysical grounding for technology.

The central metaphysical claim of MT is that technology is all-encompassing, shapes humans and their society, is deterministic, and possesses intrinsic intentionality at the core of its being. Skrbina calls this phenomenon the “pantechnikon”. Our present technological situation is guided by the pantechnikon which ‘ishere identified as the universal process of creation, as the realization (techne) of a universal order (logos)’ (119). Furthermore, the pantechnikon has suprahuman power, ability to alter and even determine social conditions, has a psychological impact on people, is fixated on energy and power, and is unstoppable (119). Skrbina makes no distinction between natural and man-made creation because all being is a product of Techne-Logos.

To build his case for the pantecknikon, Skrbina unpacks the Greek concepts of techne and logos, starting with Heraclitus who believed along with the early Stoics that logos was a divine ordering principle of the cosmos. The logos embodies both material and psychic dimensions (21). For Plato and Aristotle, the connections between techne and logos are more nuanced. Techneroughly means all human activities. For Aristotle,techne refers to human creation and he makes a distinction between natural and human creative activities. On the other hand, Aristotle does connect techne with logos in both his “Nicomachean Ethics” and his “Poetics” but are still conceived as human activities. Skrbina believes that the nature of the pantecknikon was not clearly discovered by Plato or Aristotle because they did not live in a highly technological society and techne was a low-class activity of manual craftsmen, unworthy of philosophical examination(26). Nonetheless, Skrbina builds on the notions of the Stoics and Heraclitus and explains that the Heraclitean/Stoic worldview – the cosmos as a Pantechnikon – can serve as the basis for a relevant metaphysics of technology (27). In the realm of Being all creation is techne. As Skrbina points out, ‘From our biased vantage point, we see our own creations as of a different order, but they are not. All coming-to-be is creation, and all creation is techne’ (30). Technology is thus seen as a panpsychic, and pantheistic, logos that guides all reality.

With this basic understanding, Skrbina then argues for technological determinism. The argument is, that as physical beings in a physical world, we are subject to a wide range of forces and pressures. Technology is one of the forces of the world. On the pantechnical thesis the universal process of Techne-Logos drives evolution forward, creating order, complexity, and intelligence along the way. Like gravity, thermodynamics, and quantum physics, it is a constant of the universe – a natural law that in no sense depends upon human agency. The striving for order – the realization of the Logos –is the dominant force in nature. In the long run, order prevails in the cosmos. The universe is a pantechnikon (201–2). However, the unfolding of this deterministic pantechnikon has a two part process, the anthropogenic and the autogenic. The first phase, the anthropogenic phase, of technological determinism began when humans learned how to control fire and make simple tools. This phase lasted until around 1200 or when the European Renaissance began in the West. The tools created in this phase served human purposes and allowed for social and cultural flourishing. The next phase of technological determinism is autogenic. This phase, which has not been fully realized yet, but will be soon, includes intelligent and self-aware computers, nanomachines, and biotech creations that will serve their own purposes, not humans. Technology will become autonomous,self-augmenting, and self-evolving. Humans will become the raw material for these machines and humanity will become the servants of technology (205 – 8).

Skrbina addresses some critics of technological determinism and examines the response of the position known as the social construction of technology (SCOT). Skrbina uses Joel Feenberg as are presentative example of SCOT. SCOT generally holds that people are the primary sources of change in both technology and society. This perspective focuses on how technologies arise from social processes because it is ultimately humans who make the devices. In addition, this position argues that technology does not determine human action, but instead, human action shapes technology. Skrbina would claim that this position misses the entire metaphysical structure of technology and that, within the Pantechnikon, humans are a type of technology.

One perspective Skrbina does address is the Social Shaping ofTechnology (SST). This perspective admits to a socio-technological symbiotic relationship. Technology and humans do in fact affect each other in both directions. Technology pushes individuals and society to behave and communicate in certain ways. However, the technological “affordances” are often used in new and unpredictable social ways. The SST thesis realizes and takes seriously the negative effects of technology on society. It also holds that humans can learn to mitigate and control their use of technology and learn to use them in wise ways.

 Both SCOT and SST find a place for the individual and social response to technology. Skrbina would reject these positions and respond,‘When we focus on the human role in technology, we miss the larger metaphysical context’ (209).

It is, however, the larger human context in which technology rests and needs to be understood. Historically, the twentieth century saw both the most incredible advances in technology and some of the greatest human destruction and violence ever recorded due to the use of technology. It is imperative that humans learn to use their technology wisely. On the other hand, society has also found amazingly positive uses of technology that connect families across continents, cure diseases, and foster communication and learning. These are deeply human traits and seem to reflect the human condition itself. In the words of one of the chief importers of European existentialism into America, William Barrett, ‘We seem to carry over into technology that deepest and most vexing trait of the human condition itself: that our efforts are always ineradicably a mixture of good and evil’ (The Illusion of Technique, 25). To ignore the human and social relationship between technology, society, and culture is a serious mistake.

Finally, Skrbina claims that Ellul, Heidegger, Borgmann and others fall into the trap of mysticism when trying to understand the effects of a technology on society. It is a little difficult to understand how a position that claims that a universal pantheistic Techne-Logos which drives all coming-to-be is not itself bound up in mysticism.

 One of the strengths of this book is that it raises important metaphysical claims that have been forgotten or deemed impossible to answer in today’s philosophical climate – from both theContinental and Analytical schools of thought. Although Skrbinaframes these issues around technology and its impact on society, he raises the important metaphysical questions of free will and determinism, the nature and teleogy of evolution, the question of being and becoming (the one and many), and rationality and mind, among others. For those working in the intersection of philosophy and technology this book is helpful in bringing to light the important philosophical questions that somehow will not go away. It will most likely provide interesting and important classroom discussion.

Dave Seng, University of Arizona

Metaphysics, Philosophy

Aristotle and Descartes on Teleology Part Three

by Dave Seng

It can now be seen that Descartes’ influence in contemporary thought is significant. Change can be a difficult subject which is why the classical philosophers divided all reality into being and becoming. Although Descartes did not deny change, because he was most interested in Being, he unfortunately, left the mysteries of becoming untouched.

It could be, however, that Descartes thinks that investigating change in the realm of becoming is so complicated, and even seemingly indeterminate, that commenting on the nature of causation with any kind of precision is impossible. He always pursues mathematical precision in his philosophy. When expressing his dislike of the Aristotelian concepts of change, act and potency he says, “They define motion, a fact with which everyone is quite familiar, as the actualization of what exists in potentiality, in so far as it is potential! Now who understands these words? Will not everyone admit that those philosophers have been trying to find a knot in a bulrush”(246)? Certainly, Descartes would have been aware that Aristotle used the term “motion” for any kind of change, not just movement of something from one place to another. The idea that that which is in act has potential seems to be a property of being. Nonetheless, Descartes contents himself with efficient and formal causation, thinks that act and potency are worthy of ridicule, and is rather skeptical about any other kind of causation in the physical world.  For Aristotle, however, act and potency speak to deep and profound metaphysical properties of Being and provide the foundation for change and causation in the realm of becoming. Nonetheless, Descartes argues that formal and efficient causation is all that is necessary for explaining change in finite things.

As pointed out in the previous posts, Descartes wants to build his philosophy on mathematical certainty. We just may not be able to show, according to Descartes, that by using the principles and axioms of mathematics, final causality exists. On the other hand, Aristotle might point out that even if we could not find a geometric formula or mathematical algorithm to prove the existence of final causality with absolute certainty it would not mean final causes do not exist.  Ironically, after all, most algorithms are deployed for a purpose because the humans who write the algorithms act with intentionality.  Descartes, however, seeks a mathematically airtight philosophy in which everything is understood perfectly and free of any mystery of human agency or final purposes—although he does not exactly deny the possibilities of potentiality and final causation in human action. The puzzling thing about human action is that it does not seem easily reducible to mathematical precision. Nonetheless, he is skeptical of final causality and, at times, ridicules (as cited above) metaphysical notions of act and potency, and leaves the mystery of human action untouched due to the fact that it cannot be discovered with absolute certainty. If, however, Descartes’ overall philosophy is to be taken as correct, it must include all reality.  Descartes’ skepticism prevents him from speaking to human purposes and goal-directedness and therefore leaves much of reality—humanaction and purpose—notions which define our understanding of agency, simply unsolved or ignored. Although Descartes does not discard the idea of final cause, he does not answer these important questions about human reality.

So, how is one to critically understand the conversation that takes place between Aristotle and Descartes regarding final causation? From what has been examined, Descartes simply thinks that efficient cause is all that is necessary when describing change and human action in the world. His frame of reference—and the basis of his philosophy—is absolute certainty deriving from his conception of God and his quest for mathematical precision. Aristotle, who does not commit himself to the same precision in all things, would remind Descartes that those things which are not eternal, and that those things which come to be and pass away in the realm of becoming, do not seem to display the kind of properties that God might have.  Things which come to be and cease to be are effects, not causes—justas non-being cannot create being. Causation, itself, is a compelling foundational structure of Being, which is why Aristotle is so fascinated with it. That which is in potency does not put itself in act. Things cannot be the efficient cause of themselves, and Aristotle would explain that an efficient cause must first have a material cause which would bring about a formal cause and a final cause. These causes cannot be reduced to an efficient cause—simplyto that by which something comes to be. Further, efficient causes, alone, do not help us understand the nature of purpose in reality or nature. For example, we take for granted that the DNA of a gerbil causes it to be a small furry quadruped and not a cephalopod.  Efficient causes have a natural end or purpose which connects them to final cause—that for the sake of which something happens—butcannot alone explain final causation.

Can purpose be found in human agency? Aristotle thinks so. In the Nicomachean Ethics, he points out that humans always seek some good or end which they believe produces happiness. Sometimes humans misplace the good they are seeking and do evil things. The notions of just and unjust actions seem to speak to human action and intent.  Aristotle reminds his readers that knowledge of the good is the highest intellectual achievement and end that humans can accomplish. Like any other natural phenomenon—“as sight is in the body, so is reason in the soul”—ethical and practical reasoning has an end to which it is ordered (Aristotle II 342). The basis and ground of natural law and a well-ordered state is rooted in the intellectual ends and purposes of human beings who, by their nature, have potentiality. Descartes does not exactly deny final causes or human potentiality, but by leaving these important questions unexplained, he does not, in the end, help one to think deeply about what it means to live deliberately with meaning, purpose, or significance.

Next time I will explore the metaphysical issues related to Descartes’ methodology of systematic doubt and his doctrine of the“cogito.” This concludes Descartes’ understanding of final causation. I think I’ll make some contemporary assessments of Descartes and his impact on culture and technology a little later.  The important issue of whether his probably unintended separation of physics from metaphysics is good or not will need to be discussed.  For now, it is enough to see that Descartes clearly follows in the mechanistic trajectory developed by Thomas Hobbes and Francis Bacon.  Although Descartes was clearly more systematic and totalizing in his methodology.

Works cited

Aristotle. The Works of Aristotle:1. Great Books of the Western World. Vol. 7. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1999.

Aristotle. The Works of Aristotle:2. Great Books of the Western World. Vol. 8. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1999.

Descartes, Rene. Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza. Great Books of the Western World. Vol. 28. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1999.

Metaphysics, Philosophy

Aristotle and Descartes on Teleology, Part Two

by Dave Seng

This post serves as an attempt to outline the differences between a classical Aristotelian view of the world and that of the great early modern, philosopher, Rene Descartes. The purpose of these essays will help us understand how and why these differences in understanding the nature of reality matter, primarily with how we understand purpose, or teleology in the world. Cartesian philosophy is still very much present in our current intellectual climate and still has an impact on the way we view the nature of things and individuals in the world around us.  Here’s where we left off …

In this conversation, it is helpful to understand that Aristotle’s conception of act and potency are important corollaries to his notion of cause, and are necessary to understand Descartes’ position on final causation and the resulting Cartesian conception of the world. With Aristotle’s construct of act, potency, and causation in place, the discussion between Aristotle and Descartes regarding final cause becomes clear. Act is that which has actual existence in this world. Potency is all the possibilities something could undergo in the world of becoming (For sake of brevity, Aristotle’s conceptions of act and potency related to cause can be found in Aristotle’s Metaphysics, pg. 538, 565-566, and 569-575, among other places. This discussion is a quick summary). These are central concepts for Aristotle as he explains change and the causes of change in the world. With the exception of universals, virtually all things of the physical world are subject to change or movement. Both living and non-living things experience change. Change is the actualization of a thing’s potential. According to Aristotle, change is potency reduced to act. However, an outside and additional element is necessary to bring about change. Something else, always itself in “act,” is needed to actualize a potential. Potency, itself, cannot bring about act—just as non-being cannot bring about being. For Aristotle, act and potency are as fundamental as Being and Becoming, but to explain change more clearly, he provides the famous four causes which help clarify why that which reduces potential to act is called a cause. The first cause is the material cause—that out of which something is actualized The second cause is the efficient cause—that by which something is actualized. The third cause is the formal cause—that into which something is actualized. The fourth cause is the final cause—that for the sake of which something is actualized. A biological example will help explain how these four causes work in the physical world. To understand the basics of the human heart, it is important to know what it is made of—its material cause. In this case, the material cause of a heart is muscle. The efficient cause rests in the DNA that structured and ordered cells in such a way as to create a muscular heart and not a kidney or spleen. The formal cause is that which the heart muscle is fashioned into—ventricles, arteries, aorta, etc. The final cause serves the purpose of pumping blood. Aristotle sees purpose or goal-directedness wherever cause and effect relationships take place in this world, and is a significant element of his philosophy. The totality of the three previous causes all serve a goal or ultimate end, culminating in the final cause. Focusing on act and potency, the efficient cause is that which actualizes a potency. The final cause is that which actualizes the purpose or the reason something is actualized. In human activity things are done with intentionality, and the possibilities we speak of regarding human beings are often referred to as human potential. As we shall see, Descartes, in the end, reduces much of Aristotle’s causes to the efficient cause.

Note: Interestingly, Aristotle does not seem to use the same order of his four causes. On page 128, this order is given: formal, material (in this particular case—“an antecedent which necessitates consequent”), efficient, and final. On pages 514-515, the order is: efficient, final, material, formal. And on page 271, we see this order: material, formal, efficient and final. However, on page 514, Aristotle points to the goal-directedness of changeable things and their causes, “For how can a principle of change or the nature of the good exist for unchangeable things, since everything that in itself and by its own nature is good is an end, and a cause in the sense that for its sake the other things both come to be and are, and since an end or purpose is the end of some action, and all action simply change” (514)? In general, Aristotle sees the final cause as an ultimate goal-directed end.

Descartes, on the other hand, is skeptical of Aristotle’s conclusions and is not certain whether or not final cause can be discerned in reality. He does not completely deny the existence of final causality, but he thinks such knowledge transcends his abilities, “I have no further difficulty in recognizing that there is an infinitude of matters in His power, the causes of which transcend my knowledge; and this reason suffices to convince me that the species of cause termed final, finds no useful employment in physical [or natural] things; for it does not appear to me that I can without temerity seek to investigate the [inscrutable] ends of God” (316). As he explains to one of his objectors, Descartes elucidates further:


The arguments you adduce on behalf of final causality are to be referred to the efficient cause; thus it is open to us, from beholding the uses of the various parts in plants and animals to regard with admiration the God who brings these into existence, and from a survey of His works to learn to know and glorify the author of these works, but that does not imply that we can divine the purpose for which he made each thing. And although in Ethics, where it is often allowable to employ conjecture, it is at times pious to consider the end which we may conjecture God set before Himself in ruling the universe, certainly in Physics where everything should rest upon the securest arguments, it is futile to do so. We cannot pretend that certain of God’s purposes, while, as to those which you have brought forward in illustrating the difficulty in question, there is no one who does not think that he is acquainted with them (441).


As a devout Roman Catholic, it is clear that Descartes is skeptical of the notion of final causality because he does not want to be so arrogant as to claim to know the mind of God. On the other hand, Aristotle might ask, how is it arrogant or impious to say that the eye is for seeing, the heart is for pumping blood, and human beings always do something with some good in mind? And why is it necessary to completely rule out the idea of final cause in physics? At this point, it seems that Descartes and Aristotle are addressing separate questions. Descartes sees final causality in terms of God’s ultimate ends of the universe which he thinks is an impossible question to answer. On the other hand, Aristotle is not really interested in the theological implications of natural or human causation (at least in the same way Descartes is), and is more interested in making an observable ontological claim that changeable things are directed to serve a good end. Humans seem to act with some good in mind (even if their “good” is misplaced). These are two separate and independent positions for each of these philosophers. Descartes, due to his quest for indubitable certainty, reduces final cause to efficient cause. Again, because he says, “The arguments…on behalf of final causality are to be referred to the efficient cause; thus it is open to us, from beholding the uses of the various parts in plants and animals to regard with admiration the God who brings these into existence” (441).

For Descartes, all we can really know about change and causation in the physical world is the efficient cause—that which influences or brings physical matter into some discernable form, and in this case, God is the efficient cause of all being—the best we can do is admire God who creates things into existence. Descartes’ epistemological skepticism keeps him from making any claim about purpose or goal-directedness in the physical world. In general, Descartes restricts his philosophical speculations to what he knows for certain, and usually applies formal and essential causation to God and the things of this world. For example he explains, “…I have at all points compared the formal cause or reason derived from God’s essential nature, which explains why he Himself does not need any cause in order to exist, with the efficient cause, without which finite things cannot exist” (384). For Descartes, God is the efficient cause of all things and anything beyond that, he seems to indicate, is not possible to speak of with strict precision and certainty. Therefore, he is unable to express ideas of what it means to live deliberately, be ethical, and order society for good. Descartes may not even deny that human actions are ordered to a good, but he leaves these types of questions regarding action, purpose, and agency untouched. At best, Descartes leaves these types of practical questions to the efficient cause of God.

Works Cited

Aristotle. The Works of Aristotle: 1 and 2. Great Books of the Western World. Vol. 7, 8. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1999.

Descartes, Rene. Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza.Great Books of the Western World. Vol. 28. Encyclopedia Britannica,Inc., 1999.