I should note that I definitely agree that many narratives are accurate and consistent with a world-as-place-of-things interpretation, and that some pressures towards accuracy are not new. But there are other pressures that are new—the development of materialist religions, for example, seems to mostly have resulted from materialist worldviews dominating supernaturalist worldviews, and I think Peterson is pointing to those new pressures in that section.
Which indicates that world-as-place-of-things is not a recent development, as Peterson seems to think
I can see a handful of different ways to interpret his statement, and don’t know which one Peterson is trying to point at.
One way I conceptualize this is that a lizard is able to perceive the world around it and navigate its environment, but likely doesn’t have a sense of what it would be like for there to be an environment without a lizard at the center of it. But for a physicist, imagining a world without a physicist at the center of it is the basic act of physics. In this view, whether the Inuit map-making counts as belief in ‘objective reality’ hinges on whether they viewed the maps as meaningful in the absence of Inuit to relate to the maps or traverse the territory.
His writings on alchemy seem somewhat relevant here; a compressed summary is that he viewed the alchemists as empiricists / engaged in the heroic project, but they had this incorrect belief that internal orientations were relevant to the outcomes of rituals. A quote:
Virtually every process undertaken by pre-experimental individuals—from agriculture to metallurgy—was accompanied by rituals designed to “bring about the state of mind” or “illustrate the procedure” necessary to the successful outcome desired. This is because the action precedes the idea. So ritual sexual unions accompanied sowing of the earth, and sacrificial rituals and their like abounded among miners, smiths, and potters. Nature had to be “shown what do to”; man led, not least, by example. The correct procedure could only be brought about by those who had placed themselves in the correct state of mind.
The process of discovering that this was false—that nature did not have to be shown what to do, and ‘just happened’ or followed deterministic dynamical laws—transmuted alchemy into chemistry. I think this is what he means by world-as-place-of-things and it likely is a recent development, whereas world-as-thing-that-can-be-perceived (and thus accurately mapped) is obviously an old development, possibly old enough that lizards have it.
But for a physicist, imagining a world without a physicist at the center of it is the basic act of physics.
I think this was mostly only true of Newtonian physics. Relativity gets rid of an imaginable perspectiveless reality (you might be able to mathematically describe it, but as early as Descartes people noticed that this isn’t the same as imagining), and quantum mechanics are also famously resistant to imagination as a means of understanding the whole, and focused on observations instead.
I should note that I definitely agree that many narratives are accurate and consistent with a world-as-place-of-things interpretation, and that some pressures towards accuracy are not new. But there are other pressures that are new—the development of materialist religions, for example, seems to mostly have resulted from materialist worldviews dominating supernaturalist worldviews, and I think Peterson is pointing to those new pressures in that section.
I can see a handful of different ways to interpret his statement, and don’t know which one Peterson is trying to point at.
One way I conceptualize this is that a lizard is able to perceive the world around it and navigate its environment, but likely doesn’t have a sense of what it would be like for there to be an environment without a lizard at the center of it. But for a physicist, imagining a world without a physicist at the center of it is the basic act of physics. In this view, whether the Inuit map-making counts as belief in ‘objective reality’ hinges on whether they viewed the maps as meaningful in the absence of Inuit to relate to the maps or traverse the territory.
His writings on alchemy seem somewhat relevant here; a compressed summary is that he viewed the alchemists as empiricists / engaged in the heroic project, but they had this incorrect belief that internal orientations were relevant to the outcomes of rituals. A quote:
The process of discovering that this was false—that nature did not have to be shown what to do, and ‘just happened’ or followed deterministic dynamical laws—transmuted alchemy into chemistry. I think this is what he means by world-as-place-of-things and it likely is a recent development, whereas world-as-thing-that-can-be-perceived (and thus accurately mapped) is obviously an old development, possibly old enough that lizards have it.
I think this was mostly only true of Newtonian physics. Relativity gets rid of an imaginable perspectiveless reality (you might be able to mathematically describe it, but as early as Descartes people noticed that this isn’t the same as imagining), and quantum mechanics are also famously resistant to imagination as a means of understanding the whole, and focused on observations instead.