Peak in the Cirque of the Unclimbables, Canada. Photo by Tom Frost.

In last week’s column, I visited the phases of our human development, from infancy to adulthood, as assembled by philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum in Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of the Emotions. Despite my own high regard for Martha Nussbaum, I found her “phases” rather dispiriting. As helpless infants we’re anxiety-ridden, because we have no power over our care-givers. They come and go as they wish, not necessarily as we wish. Then shame comes into our consciousness, supposedly as a side-effect of our vulnerability. Next disgust enters, as we internalize societal mores. After that, we have jealousy and envy to deal with, as we jockey for place in the world.

Finally — if these and a few other ingredients get mixed at the right time and in the right proportions — we can end up with a fine, generous-minded, high-functioning grownup character. Or not, if the mix wasn’t done right.

As I noted here last week, I didn’t recognize me in MCN’s developmental story, grounded though it must be in the well-credentialed researchers whose findings she cites. So, does that mean “The Science Says It”? What should I make of that? Should it overrule my remembered experience? Have I been outvoted?

Looking for light on the Science question, I read Philip Kitcher’s What’s the Use of Philosophy? (Oxford 2023). Here’s the back story, as Kitcher tells it. When the 20th century dawned, it appeared that Science was the magisterium from which all rightly formulated questions could be answered. If you couldn’t put your question in a form answerable by Science, it was likely either to be nonsensical or else detritus deposited by pre-scientific confusions still awaiting cleanup. So philosophers of science set themselves the task of determining the sorts of entities that were eligible for scientific explanation and the sorts that should be excluded as ineligible.

How’d that work out? After careful and laudable investigations, stretching over the course of the whole twentieth century, it became obvious that there wasn’t one all-embracing-umbrella discipline called “Science.” The magisterium wasn’t there. Instead, there were many sciences, each with its own criteria for inclusion and exclusion plus its own investigative methods. Nor could this plurality of sciences undergo reduction from the more complex down to the simpler level (e.g. with life sciences hopefully describable in terms of chemistry) till one landed at physics on the bottom level — foundational to and explanatory of the ones above. The sciences just didn’t seem to work in that layered way.

Where might present-day philosophy operate, according to Kitcher? It can make clarifying contributions to the work of laying out methods and boundaries for the research programs in the sciences and other disciplines. Additionally, it can help people make sense of their life experiences so as to “refine and revise their ‘plans of life’ … .” There remain new topics to explore, methods for framing them and multiple upshots — depending how each topic is framed and what method proves revelatory or fruitful.

Meanwhile, I’ve still got MCN’s developmental psychology jangling round in my brain. So, nerved by Kitcher’s conclusions, I’ve begun reading a very different book with a very different take on developmental psychology. It’s by Lisa Miller, Professor of Psychology and Education at Columbia University. She holds other titles, seems well published in professional journals and, together with colleagues, has herself initiated and carried through “extensive and groundbreaking research,” including “advances in our understanding of brain science… neuro-imaging, lengthy interviews with hundreds of children and parents, case studies, and rich anecdotal material … .” So, whatever the worth of her findings, she’s not getting her results at second hand. She’s opening doors that were closed heretofore.

What has she found? That children of widely different cultures whose “natural spirituality” is appropriately supported, are “40 percent less likely to use and abuse substances, 60 percent less likely to be depressed as teenagers, 80 percent less likely to have dangerous or unprotected sex,” and “more likely to have positive markers for thriving and high levels of academic success.” The title of her book is The Spiritual Child: The New Science on Parenting for Health and Lifelong Thriving (St. Martin’s Press, 2015).

What do I make of such findings?

Personally,

I think they’re on to something.

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