'Science and Religion: Exploring the Spectrum' Life Story Interviews

NATIONAL LIFE STORIES ‘Science and Religion: Exploring the Spectrum’ Life Story Interviews Yorick Wilks Interviewed by Paul Merchant C1672/24 This transcript is copyright of the British Library Board. Please refer to the Oral History curators at the British Library prior to any publication or broadcast from this document. Oral History The British Library 96 Euston Road NW1 2DB 020 7412 7404 [email protected] IMPORTANT Access to this interview and transcript is for private research only. Please refer to the Oral History curators at the British Library prior to any publication or broadcast from this document. Oral History The British Library 96 Euston Road London NW1 2DB 020 7412 7404 [email protected] Every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of this transcript, however no transcript is an exact translation of the spoken word, and this document is intended to be a guide to the original recording, not replace it. Should you find any errors please inform the Oral History curators ([email protected]) The British Library National Life Stories Interview Summary Sheet Title Page Ref no: C1672/24 Collection title: ‘Science and Religion: Exploring the Spectrum’ Life Story Interviews Interviewee’s surname: Wilks Title: Professor Interviewee’s forename: Yorick Sex: Male Occupation: Computer scientist Date and place of birth: 27th October 1939, London Mother’s occupation: Father’s occupation: Dates of recording, Compact flash cards used, tracks (from – to): 02/08/2016 (Track 1) Location of interview: Interviewees home, Oxford Name of interviewer: Paul Merchant Type of recorder: Marantz PMD661on compact flash Recording format : audio file 12 WAV 24 bit 48 kHz 2-channel Total no. of tracks 1 Mono or stereo: Stereo Total Duration: 2 hrs. 49 min. 28 sec. Additional material: Copyright/Clearance: OPEN Interviewer’s comments: [Track 1] Now, at the beginning of this interview, which will focus on the Epiphany Philosophers, could you say something of what, something of your life before the point that you arrive in Cambridge, and, presumably at that point, join the group. I was a typical working-class, north London child of my time. Born just before the Second World War. My father was a cabinet maker. My mother had been somewhat middle-class by origin, but had been sort of proletarianised by my father. In the war, they both worked on bomber construction, so I was a nursery child and was evacuated to Torquay where I was eventually brought up, after my father died. So, my father died very young, when I was eleven. So my family broke up, I didn’t have a great family life, and, we left north London, Edmonton it was, a very working-class suburb, and we moved to Torquay where I went to grammar school. So, I got out of being a sort of working-class boy by going to Torquay Grammar School and then Cambridge. Cambridge, I went there to do physics, which is what I was best at I thought. When I got there I decided I’d do maths instead. After I’d done a year of mathematics I realised, although I had been good at maths in Torquay, people in Cambridge were so good at maths, there was simply no point in competing. I was a small fish in a huge pond. So I shifted to philosophy, which I had always been interested in. So my degree was in, mathematics initially, but I shifted to the metaphysical, metaphysical and ethical philosophy link. [01:33] Curiously, and this is sashaying now into the connection with the EPs, because it starts there, I was at Pembroke College in Cambridge, I… Pembroke didn’t have very many people who did philosophy. And, they had a part-time philosophy tutor who was brought in as it were, being a men’s college in those days, called Margaret Masterman. She was the wife of one of the two philosophy professors. And she loomed large in my life after that in the EP. She, she was the EPs in some sense. She was certainly the most important intellectual influence in my life, aside from the EPs. She was the philosophy tutor for Pembroke. And so she became my tutor for metaphysical and ethical philosophy. Now this in some ways was a disaster for me, although not ultimately, in the short run it was a disaster, because Margaret wasn’t much of a philosopher, couldn’t teach it, didn’t want to. Took the job. I didn’t learn much from her. I taught myself all I knew. In those days that wasn’t surprising, you did teach yourself. I had taught myself enough to get a 2:1. But I, I certainly didn’t get a First, which I might conceivably have done if I had been properly taught and properly disciplined. I wasn’t, I was, you know, I was slacking off, and, Margaret didn’t demand essays, and… Margaret wanted to inspire. Margaret was an inspirer, a charismatic person, as much in philosophy as in religion, that we’ll get to in time. So Margaret thought that metaphysics was desperately important, and I caught that from her and believed it. I still believe it, that metaphysics isn’t a joke, it’s desperately important. Now that was good. The trouble was, to get the degree in Cambridge you had to actually read metaphysicians, you had to actually read Kant, and Kant was the special author in my last year. Margaret had never read Kant in her life, I mean she had no idea what was in there. So it was all sort of self-taught, and it wasn’t totally successful, although in those days, a First was quite rare, there was only one First in philosophy ever. So a 2:1 was quite good enough to do research. So I wasn’t damaged really. I was piqued I didn’t get a First, but that’s, that’s life. So I did learn some philosophy. I learnt that metaphysics was terribly important. But what I got from Margaret was this very peculiar thing. You see Margaret’s day job as it were had nothing to do with philosophy. She ran a, a unit, we’ll get to this, but she ran a research unit where she worked on computers and language. So for her there was no real difference between working on computers and language and thinking about metaphysics. She had been a pupil of Wittgenstein’s, she believed that the core of philosophy was about language, that was common belief at the time, still is in some quarters. She had been in Wittgenstein’s classes. He had thrown her out, he didn’t like women, he didn’t like ugly people, and he thought she was both, chucked her out. But she knew Wittgenstein. And therefore, Margaret believed that metaphysics was important, metaphysics was about language; she was doing research on language in computers; therefore you could do research on metaphysics with language and computers. That was simple for her, she didn’t do it, but she thought you could. So I became the person whose mission that became. So, after I had graduated in Cambridge in ’62 she offered me a job to join her research unit, which I took. And that was where I first met the Epiphany Philosophers. [04:37] Could you say more about Margaret Masterman’s belief in metaphysics as important? Yes. It’s… I haven’t got this straight in my mind, so I’m free-associating now, but it’s coherent. [pause] I mean, I don’t want to go off into a mini spiel about Wittgenstein. What Wittgenstein really believed about philosophy and metaphysics is a matter of dispute. He told all his pupils not take philosophy jobs, to go out and get real jobs, not to do philosophy, and they took him at his word. On the other hand, he obviously thought philosophy was desperately important, and metaphysics. He wasn’t against metaphysics. He knew that what he was doing was metaphysics, which made him exceptional in his time, because, nearly all the people he would have talked to, from Bertrand Russell in this country to the logical positivists in Austria, and he was Austrian don’t forget, would all have hated metaphysics. They thought it was nonsense. In fact that was the starting point of my own work, was the logical positivists’ belief that, it wasn’t just metaphysics - their belief - it wasn’t just that metaphysics was nonsense, it was pernicious nonsense that rested on a grammatical fallacy, and that, as it were, linguistics could demonstrate the fallacy. Now this, this was already moving from metaphysis and language, almost into the areas of grammar and language, which is where I sort of ended up. So there was already that link firmly there. There was a man called Carnap, who was a terribly famous Austrian philosopher, who Wittgenstein didn’t like. Carnap was the head of the Vienna Circle. Carnap published a, a series of books but, his great books are about what he calls logical syntax. His great work is called Die Logische Syntax der Sprache, The Logical Syntax of Language. And for him, if you knew what the logical syntax of language was, you could prove that metaphysics was nonsense, because, metaphysics simply didn’t obey the syntax of language. This is not the way Wittgenstein went at it, but, they weren’t that different. The trouble was, Wittgenstein liked metaphysics really, he thought language games were, language games that showed you the structure of language didn’t abolish things, they just revealed how they were.

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