(DV) Williamson: The Matter of Mind, Myth, and Metaphor (Part Three)

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Improvisation From The Proscenium
The Matter of Mind, Myth, and Metaphor (Part Three of Three)
by Harold Williamson
www.dissidentvoice.org
May 31, 2005

* Read Part One
* Read Part Two

This picture was taken on April 1, 1995, with the Hubble Space Telescope. This eerie structure is made of molecular hydrogen gas and dust that is an incubator for new stars. It is 7,000 light-years away, and each “fingertip” is larger than our solar system. Credit: Jeff Hester and Paul Scowen (Arizona State University), and NASA.

“Why should we not all live in peace and harmony? We look up at the same stars, we are fellow-passengers on the same planet and dwell beneath the same sky. What matters it along which road each individual endeavors to find the ultimate truth? The riddle of existence is too great that there should be only one road leading to an answer.”

-- Quintus Aurelius Symmachus

Philosophy has a warning device called “paradox”, and it calls attention to mistaken assumptions about how something works in the “real” world even though there is no mistake in the logic. It is particularly exemplified by human bias in experimental results, and this “expectancy” can be demonstrated mathematically. When this occurs, an assumption about the “real” world must be changed -- not the logic. This was not a problem with Classical or Aristotelian logic that held sway until the 19^th century, because it was only concerned with the formal properties of an argument and not its “factual” accuracy. We now use a symbolic logic that supplants ordinary language with mathematical symbols, and from this theorists build models of the “real” universe. When faced with paradox, such as infinite energies or negative probabilities, we are lost in a labyrinth where we must reconcile our senses (“matters of fact”) with our logic (“truths of reason”) to guide us to the “real” world -- wherever that is. But a compass is useless without a map, and if we are not certain where we are in relation to where we are going, how do we resolve this?

Karl Popper, the noted 20^th-century Anglo-Austrian philosopher contended that the only basis for “progress” in science is the objective reproducibility of experimental results. He did indeed have a point. But the science that he had so faithfully championed with his logically simple yet very complex methodology has dispossessed him of the very objectivity that he guarded so tenaciously. Although “progress” is a concept that is ambiguous in meaning and application, Popper argued that science could make “progress” only by avoiding idea-dependent explanations of experimental results. He contended that it is necessary to assume universal physical laws and supplement them with initial conditions. But since this is reminiscent of the cumbersome cycles and epicycles that were created to explain the incorrect worldview of the Ptolemaic system that Galileo so effectively demolished with his telescope, it is necessary to temper this approach with “Ockham’s razor” -- attributed to William of Ockham, the 14^th-century English scholastic philosopher who rejected the idea of universal concepts and was charged with heresy in 1324 by Pope John XXII. Simply stated, it is vain to do with more what can be equally accomplished with less. Science continues to use this principle a fortiori by preferring the simplest of competing theories. But this assumes that nature does indeed work this way, and this is a big assumption.

The idea of a theory of knowledge based on an understanding of human mental processes can be attributed to the 17^th-century English philosopher John Locke. This observation from his Dedicatory Epistle to An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) is incisive: “New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.” Likewise, science first attempts to explain unknown phenomena in terms of what is already “known”, and this supposedly separates viable scientific theories from mere speculation. But actually this is nothing more than the very same preference for old uncertainties over new ones; and the more comprehensive a new theory is, the more likely it will initially face considerable opposition by orthodox science.

The problem is that a theory is not necessarily wrong because it can be ruled out by any of these methods. An important example is Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. Instead of adding to the classical physics of Newtonian mechanics, Einstein’s theory engulfed it within a revolutionary new way of perceiving the universe. If Einstein had continued to wander with the multitude in the wilderness for forty years without an idea-dependent direction to guide him, we would be no closer to the “Promised Land” than we were in the 17^th century -- although we can’t be certain we are heading in the right “direction” now. In spite of the dangers inherent in the use of metaphors on all counts here, the Exodus does provide a graphic analogy of the journey that underlies the idea of “progress” in the sciences; because there can be no “progress” without a direction or destination in mind. Science follows its reason as far as it will allow, and to believe otherwise would mean that science has been able to find its way because it never had any idea where it was going. Some would not only agree that indeed this is what has happened, but also that this is preferable. The noted philosopher Paul Feyerabend has advocated an approach that is against the specific use of a rational scientific method, and he believes that a rational scientific method is not only counterproductive but also impossible to achieve.

Popper passionately attacked historical proofs as not being “falsifiable” and therefore “unscientific”, and they are in this sense. However, science has been successful in condensing experiences of phenomena into manageable forms with the use of inductive generalizations, or what are popularly known as “laws of nature.” But as the 19^th-century author Alexandre Dumas fils quipped, “All generalizations are dangerous, even this one.” I continue this thought by saying that all generalizations cloak a negative hypothesis -- viz. “This law has no exceptions.” As it has been said that a new discovery of one ugly fact can ruin a beautiful old theory, it is not possible to “scientifically” prove that a negative hypothesis is true in a finite universe, let alone in a universe that may be infinitely large. Only “historical” proofs will work -- meaning that to date no evidence to the contrary has yet been discovered. In the case of an infinite universe, proof requires the logical impossibility of performing an infinite number of actions in a finite amount of time. So in either case it is necessary to have faith that somewhere under the mattress there are no hidden peas that will disturb our fragile dreams.

We do not know if the universe is infinite, but we can say that science is a method that approximates a philosophical supertask by searching for exact knowledge in every possible time and place in a universe that is indeed gargantuan. Although it is not necessary to physically travel to all corners of the universe in order to understand it, perceptions become increasingly abstract as the observer becomes further removed in time and space from concrete existence. Most of what is known about the composition, structure, and evolution of the universe has been deduced from the study of light being emitted from distant objects. According to NASA, the most distant galaxy seen by the Hubble Space Telescope could be as far away as 13,000 million light-years. This was deduced from light that only a moment ago arrived from when the universe was less than one tenth its current estimated age of 14,000 million years. But consider that if the sun were a grain of salt, the Milky Way Galaxy with its estimated 200,000 million stars would represent a 70-ton pile of salt with each grain being over 7 miles apart. Since the universe contains some 100,000 million such galaxies, its enormousness is overwhelming to the imagination. The distance from Earth to the star Proxima Centauri is 4.3 light-years, over 25 million million miles. But if it started the journey today, the space shuttle could not reach this nearest star to our solar system within the next 25,000 years. Now consider its randomness and complexity and the brief time that we have been searching for answers, and science is far from an ultimate understanding of the universe . . . perhaps far from even asking the right question.

In an attempt to understand our world, highly specialized science has charted a course of reverse engineering, or reductionism. Although it has been provisionally useful, this charter has mandated that the complex “whole” be explained in terms of the behavior of its simpler component parts. In cosmology there is uncertainty about what that “whole” is. Yet we continue to rely on inductive logic to arrive at generalizations about specific things, with the “whole” being what we imagine within our perceptions of what is real. This is akin to dismantling the Sistine Chapel and then trying to understand its significance by performing solemn philosophical liturgies over the piles of rubble. Our technology has enabled our finding new things that are smaller and farther away; but it is perhaps not so ironic that the closer we are able to look, the less certain everything becomes. By predicating an understanding of the “whole” on the examination of its parts, we forgo opportunities of knowing things that by their very nature transcend disassembly. For instance, we have yet to learn how to explain the “emergence” of phenomena that come into existence as things become more complex -- particularly in life sciences. Consciousness does not exist at the cellular level, and life does not exist at the molecular level, and so forth. So just how relevant are narrowly focused scientific observations and theories to an understanding of the universe as a whole? According to Pierre Duhem, an early 20^th-century French philosopher of science, it is a mistake to assume that scientific theories tell us anything about reality, let alone about the entire universe.

Even with all this anthropocentric high-mindedness, we have yet to understand even basic things that are accepted as a priori knowledge. What we call “life”, for instance, has only popular meaning. Ever since Aristotle, the Western worldview has included “life” as being something more than merely organized “matter”. The “mind” is a collective term that includes various forms of consciousness. Yet there is no clear consensus of what consciousness is, let alone how it works. We do not understand “matter” well enough to build a complete model of our universe, and it may be irreducible (it cannot be made any simpler than it actually is). “Something” is missing that unifies the forces of the particle world with the forces of the world in which the brain perceives reality, and we don’t know what that “something” is. Science refers to it in general terms as the “theory of everything,” or Grand Unified Theory (GUT). It may be a strange field or particle (Higgs boson), a Platonic mathematical entity (137 or the inverse of the square of alpha, the fine structure constant), a Pythagorean harmony of the cosmos (a “superstring” symphony -- classical, of course!), or a transcendent archetype (God). Pick any metaphor you like, no one knows.

In a postmodern world, it can be argued that science is involved in a tacit search for God. Can agnosticism, then, be a valid approach to theology? Since this method must begin with a hypothesis that is only testable in terms of material phenomena, applying agnosticism to theology is a mistake. But denying altogether that God exists requires the untenable position of proving a negative hypothesis involving transcendental beliefs, which is neither good philosophy nor good science. The cosmological first cause theory supports the deist philosophy (God created the universe and then stepped aside). Arguably it is the least controversial because it is free of inherent contradictions and does not violate accepted principles of logic, but even the deist philosophy leaves open the question of God’s whereabouts and form. Since this most fundamental question about the nature of God cannot be explained in terms of material phenomena, Kant is correct with his view of God being unexplainable in this context. But is anything explainable in this context when the very existence of an absolute physical basis for phenomenal reality is controvertible in a universe that is both indeterminate (governed by probabilities) and immaterial (mental constructs of quantum events)? It seems that agnosticism is no more at variance with theology than it is with itself.

We improvise our own truths at will, but not our own history. The 19^th-century German social philosopher Karl Marx said, “Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please….” Descartes, Galileo, and Newton courageously worked to include mankind in the metaphysics of medieval scholasticism, but ironically they accomplished the exact opposite. They constructed an eternal mechanical universe that followed inexorable laws of cause and effect that firmly established the events of the past, present, and future as having been determined from the very beginning, thus making free will an illusion. Only with the establishment of the science of quantum physics was it possible to accomplish what these men set out to do; but in the process, mankind lost all prospects of finding objective knowledge in a universe that is an illusion. We had become accustomed to a simple view of our perceptions, and things were either present or absent regardless of whether they were seen or not. Even though it was impersonal, our world was solid and real. But quantum physics, the very foundation of our science, says that this simple view is not true. Again we must reconcile our senses with our reason. Are we back to where we started, or did we not ever leave?

At the beginning of the 20^th century it was difficult to obtain any scientific information, but at the beginning of the 21^st century the difficulty now lies in how to react to an unprecedented accumulation of highly specialized scientific information. Since much of the world population is not literate in the sciences and embraces a more apparent mystical worldview, a major cultural imbalance can result if an elitist parochialism is allowed to develop as it has for most human endeavor. Means often become ends-in-themselves accompanied by disdain for other philosophies that are attempts to reach the same ends. There is a danger of science becoming technology for its own sake with functionaries doing experiments simply because they can be performed, without regard to whether they should be performed. Today there is an increasing dependence on complex technologies controlled by multinational corporations that are still consolidating their power, and the consequences of these new technologies will depend on how they are used. For example, there are segments of the human genome that profoundly influence the development of the “mind” and body of each of us, and some are corporate property protected by patents. The consequences of how this technology is used will probably be much more than revolutionary; it will be evolutionary.

But at this point in time we do not know much about the overall scheme of things in biological terms either. A study by the Institute of Genomic Research reported that among the 300 or so different genes that are necessary to keep the simple bacterium alive, scientists have no idea what a third of them do. This is far from understanding the 100 million million specialized cells of the complex human organism that contain at least a hundred times as many different genes. In addition, Richard Lewontin, an eminent biologist at Harvard University, asserts that no organism can be “computed” from the information in its genes. He maintains that the use of the word compute as a metaphor to describe the role of genes is bad biology because it implies that there is an internal self-sufficiency of DNA, and an organism is the unique result of a process that includes the sequence of environments in which it develops. It gets even more complicated than this, because recent experiments have shown that variations in symmetry within the same environment are caused by random events at the molecular level.

It is not certain to what degree our sapience -- at least that which we emphatically define ourselves taxonomically as Homo sapiens sapiens -- is genetically coded. But let’s take a giant leap of faith and assume that we can capture the spirit of Daedalus by using applied genetics to redesign ourselves to be on a par with our technology before we blast into the cosmos. Will we inadvertently assume the spirit of Icarus as well, and suffer the same fate? So far, our medical strategy has been to minimize elements that work “against” us in natural selection, even though these very elements regulate our population within a perilously balanced biosphere. We have yet to cure all ills, the Fountain of Youth has not been found, and both victim and survivor can rest assured that they are not to be blamed for whatever happens in this regard. But when this is no longer the case, what will happen to society? Today, some look upon China’s policy of one child per couple as totalitarian; and others look upon birth control, abortion, and euthanasia as immoral and unethical. Americans are currently faced with the political issue of permitting research in the United States on human embryonic stem cells that may hold the key to treating a wide range of human diseases. Yet this is mere child’s play compared to what “we” will be faced with in a “brave new world” of our own design. But the role of God cannot be assumed without losing our humanness, so we does not mean us in this new theater of the absurd.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to a dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more…

-- William Shakespeare from Macbeth (V, v, 19)

* An Epilogue to this three-part series will be posted on Thursday, June 2, 2005.

Harold Williamson is a Chicago-based independent scholar. He can be reached at: h_wmson@yahoo.com. Copyright © 2005, Harold Williamson

Other Articles by Harold Williamson

* Amnesty International: US Monkeying With Human Rights
* Improvisation From The Proscenium, Part Two
* Did Newsweek Damage America's Image?
* Improvisation From The Proscenium, Part One
* Watching George Bush Trying to Pull a Rabbit Out of His Hat
* Shooting the Messenger Who Reported Human Rights Abuses in Afghanistan
* Agent Orange -- Thirty Years After
* Truth in Humor
* Redefining America
* The Missing WMD: Bush's Red Herring
* The Darkness in America
* Spinning The Vietnam War: What Goes Around Comes Around
* None Dare Call It Murder
* It Isn't God Who is Crazy
* Don't Trust Anybody Over Thirty
* Faith in the Postmodern World
* Remember Who The Enemy Is
* Obscenity, A Sign of the Times and the Post
* Thinking Anew: A Do-It-Yourself Project
* America's Blind Faith in Government
* Think Tanks and the Brainwashing of America
* Bully for the Bush Doctrine: A Natural History Perspective

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(DV) Williamson: The Matter of Mind, Myth, and Metaphor (Part Two)

Improvisation From The Proscenium
The Matter of Mind, Myth, and Metaphor (Part Two of Three)
by Harold Williamson
www.dissidentvoice.org
May 19, 2005

Stemming from the earliest attempts to understand our perceptions of fundamental reality has been the belief that there is more to it than meets the eye. The genre of philosophical thought known as metaphysics deals with the implications that arise from the logical analysis of our physical world that go beyond the scope of sensory experience. But any theory that logically implies a metaphysical solution cannot be scientifically conclusive. However, those who have found meaning and truth with the acceptance of metaphysical interpretations should not be troubled because science prohibits it; science as a method of inquiry just simply cannot support it. In the 18th century, Immanuel Kant was troubled because metaphysics had not arrived at acceptable answers to the uncertainties of the existence of God, the soul, and free will. He wondered what he could know, what he ought to do, and what he might hope. Kant arrived at the assertion that no one can understand God in the way we understand “nature” or “phenomena”. But he also held that no one can know “things-in-themselves,” or “noumena”, only as the “mind” constitutes them.

Thomas H. Huxley refused to consider Kant’s idea of noumena because it was not demonstrable by 19th-century science, but with the possibility of new discoveries he did not rule it out. At the beginning of the 21st century, quantum physics considers noumena all the time, such as virtual particles and antiparticles, supersymmetry, and “dark matter.” The “particles” and “fields” of science are ideas. No one has ever seen a “particle” or a “field”. They are “truths of reason,” not “matters of fact.” Science’s Standard Model of the universe has all “matter” being composed of elementary particles. This is essentially the same idea as the “crackpot” theory of the atomos conceived some 2,500 years earlier, but instead of having different shapes as proposed by Democritus, the modern versions have “spin”, “charge”, “mass”, and are mutable. Some particles are point-like and have no mass, while they all have very peculiar characteristics that cannot be perceived in a straightforward way. They are detected by observing their interactions with other particles in the detectors of particle accelerators. It is a miniaturized modern version of the shadows on the wall in Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” in the Republic.

Basic to human understanding is the perception of both an object’s location and its distinguishing characteristics. In the particle world we cannot know either one with certainty, and we cannot know both at the same time. At the heart of quantum theory -- the basis of 21st-century science -- is the mathematically proven Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle that shows the more that is known about where a particle is, the less we can know about what it is doing, and vice versa. The ability to measure things breaks down in the tiny world of quanta, and this uncertainty leads to many strange occurrences. For instance, the exact location of a particle cannot be predicted with 100% certainty. The location of a particle may be at a precise location with 99% probability, but there is the remaining 1% probability that it is somewhere else -- anywhere in the entire universe. Couple this with the new aptly named science of chaos and this uncertainty is magnified exponentially with time and makes indeterminacy the norm. Since these particles constitute the entire universe, quantum uncertainty takes Kant’s world of phenomena and noumena into a realm consisting only of probabilities. While large numbers of radioactive atoms obey the laws of statistics, additional knowledge will never allow the prediction of exactly when one particular atomic nucleus will decay. Because quantum uncertainty is an inherent property of matter, Pliny would now be saying that the only certainty is the betting odds.

The earliest speculations that the perceived diversity in the physical world comprises a common underlying essence prompted criticisms from Heraclitus to Socrates that this was beyond human knowledge and the senses. Plato subsequently countered with the argument that abstract theories of mathematics provide a model of reality beyond the senses. The Renaissance revived this debate with the skepticism of Montaigne and the experimental philosophies of Galileo and Descartes, and it continues to this day. Modern physics began by seeking unknown mathematical formulas that related observed phenomena and has progressed beyond the limits of an empirical science with intricate mathematical formulas that relate things that are unknown and unobservable. The study of superstring symmetry involves mathematics that considers a universe with ten dimensions, while the brain evolved to perceive only four of them for human understanding.

For the most part, theories have not been the means for knowledge breakthroughs. New technologies have enabled new discoveries, and explanations and creative ways of using what was found have been ex post facto. However, theoretical physics with theories in search of the “real” world has been thriving with the opposite approach, and now seriously considers new mathematical models of the universe long before there is any hope for the possibility of their experimental verification. Within the discipline of particle physics, the interplay between theory and experiment has been very effective in producing new discoveries that add to our knowledge of how we think the universe works. The positron, antiproton, pion, and neutrino were predicted by theory; the muon, tau lepton, and upsilon were surprise discoveries. The mathematics of the theorists has proven to be more than “saving the appearances” by predicting unknown phenomena that were subsequently confirmed by experiment, and Plato’s idea that mathematical theories provide a model of reality beyond the senses is alive and well.

It is an open question whether mathematics is an invention or a discovery. Eugene Wigner, winner of the Nobel Prize for physics in 1963, wrote about the “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences” and the unreasonably important role it plays in physics. Classical mathematical Platonism has had amazing success for over two millennia, and the line between theory and experiment is not so well defined when we consider Plato’s view of ideal forms as being archetypical of all temporal phenomena. There is a strange coherence between what our senses perceive qualitatively and what mathematics predicts quantitatively. We can easily be charmed to trust mathematics as a sort of “sixth sense” when it leads us to strange places. “Laws” of nature are mathematical transpositions of the inferences of science, and mathematics is representative of all that is known about the interactions of elementary particles. But this is, nonetheless, an ill-understood act of faith, because regardless of the aesthetics of their mathematical elegance, these models are only as true and accurate as the inferences that support them. Mathematics, by itself, does not explain anything. In 1931, the Czech-American mathematician and logician Kurt Gödel proved that all of mathematics is at least partially based on propositions that depend on logical systems that are outside the systems of mathematics.

Classical geometry has served us well, but it is limited in its ability to represent nature. Much of nature is not straight lines and planes or circles and spheres; but turbulent fluids and gases such as meandering rivers, ocean currents, and clouds, and irregular shapes such as shorelines, trees, and mountains. In 1975, the noted mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot named a new mathematics, “fractal” geometry. Actually it has been around for almost a century, but only with the advent of computers could we see the images being described by the mathematical functions. Since nature seems to be self-organizing, regenerative, and influenced by feedback, a form of nonlinear mathematics that is similar to fractals could be the tool needed to simplify while completely describing in detail the chaotic dynamics of the universe. Fractals emulate nature in that when “magnified”, the details do not become blurred like a photograph with a fixed resolution; they continue to reveal more detail, ad infinitum. Moreover, the universe seems to be infinite in detail in all dimensions; and the closer we look, the more detail we find that we do not understand.

Even though the inductive reasoning of science has proven to be a reliable method for arriving at useful generalizations, it is based on a belief that the universe is not illusory. “Illusory” does not mean that it does not exist; it means what is experienced by the senses is different from what exists. The implicit assumption of the scientific method continues to be that nature is objective, that reality is solid and independent of human consciousness, and the critical thinking that underlies inferences from discoveries, experiments, and observations is restricted to and limited by this paradigm. Regardless of human acuity, Western philosophy’s tripartite method of determining truth of knowledge begins with a (1) belief that if (2) justified is (3) true. Justification is by demonstration, and this is where the assumption that the universe is not illusory is crucial to the logic. Since we must trust that we are not being deceived by our observations in order for justification to happen, the search for truth through reason is uncertain. Therefore, reason does not determine “truth”; it only determines “what works” within our idea (mental model or construct) of reality that is based on what can be experienced by the senses.

The complexity of human consciousness is manifested by our experiences, perceptions, memories, emotions, and so forth; but it is not known whether observer effects and conscious experience are the same thing. We believe not only what we see; we see what we believe. Cognitive science interprets sensory experiences to be mental constructs. It is not a little man, a homunculus, sitting in the brain watching an on-the-scene television broadcast that is being videotaped (memory) for review in the future. It is more like the milieu of actors and playwrights. Research has shown that occurring in the subconscious brain is an adaptation, an interpretive creation that attempts to associate stimuli with meaning as a precondition for conscious perception. Only the details that are somehow determined to be meaningful and relevant are allowed to be a part of the process of perception, and the rest are ignored while the brain compensates by providing an illusion of wholeness from this discontinuity. The perceptual information is then encoded for storage where it will be decoded in those circumstances where it can be useful in new constructs for memory and other perceptions. Thus we continue to see things not as they are but as we are, and it will be necessary to know more about how the human brain “connects” with fundamental reality before we can hope to raise the veil of uncertainty that obscures our world.

Physicists maintain that we “see” only about five percent of the universe, with the remaining ninety-five percent consisting of “dark” matter and energy. Even though new technologies extend the limited capabilities of the human sensory apparatus to facilitate the ever deeper probing into the infinitesimal and immense space of the universe, they do not enhance the noetic processes of the brain that evolved concurrently with the senses to be of primary use to the human organism for its survival while hunting and scavenging the same prey favored by lions and hyenas in Africa’s sub-Saharan savannahs. Therefore it is not surprising that the discoveries of particle physics and astrophysics are pushing the human intellect to its limit. The actors in the brain are looking at an alien script and they don’t know how to interpret its meaning. Since the show must go on, it is improvisation at its very best. Even ordinary “matter” behaves in very counterintuitive ways when looked at carefully, according to Freeman Dyson, Professor Emeritus of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University. This most convincingly is a caveat for empirical, inductive, a posteriori reasoning.

In his Discourse on Method, René Descartes asserted, “Cogito, ergo sum [I think, therefore I am].” His critics questioned what he meant by his inference: I think, therefore.... They wondered whether thinking is confirmatory or causative. Little could they have known in the 17th century the implications of this rationalistic premise when related to 20th-century quantum theory where experiments have provided convincing evidence that the conscious mind of an observer has an essential and fundamental role in determining the nature of physical reality. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory of the 20th-century Danish physicist Niels Bohr explains the dualistic wave-particle behavior of “matter” by saying that no “thing” has discernible properties until it interacts with a conscious observer. Furthermore, the properties that are observed result from its interaction with a conscious observer. In other words, the basic fundamental physical properties of an unobserved subatomic particle are in an indeterminate state that will not become physically apparent until someone in the classical world decides how to interact with it. According to Dyson, the laws of subatomic physics leave a place for “mind” in the description of every molecule, and these laws cannot even be formulated without some reference to an observer.

If this is not the result of an incomplete theory or inferring too much from a single fundamental aspect of nature, we now have a new science that confuses the traditional roles of subject and object and inextricably connects the conscious processes of the human brain to the physical universe. According to Francis Crick, a co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, the brain can no longer be treated philosophically as a “black box” if we are to achieve a true understanding of conscious reality. The interaction between “mind” and “matter” strongly suggests that a connection does indeed take place in the brain between quantum states and classical reality. Roger Penrose, a noted mathematician at Oxford University, argues that it is due to quantum events in the brain that consciousness occurs. Penrose has worked in collaboration with Stuart Hameroff of the University of Arizona to propose the theory that within certain neural structures called microtubules a secluded environment exists where quantum events could occur.

Well, finally we have an answer to an age-old question: If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to observe it, is there any sound? According to the Copenhagen school there is no sound, no tree, and no forest! To say that a “thing” has no discernible properties means that it is without form and void. Of course this is a forest in the tiny world of quanta, but it is believed that the entire universe (humans and forests included) is all the same thing. Curiously, this concurs with the ancient description in the Hebrew Bible (Genesis 1:2) of our world subsequent to its creation. The heretic Protagoras would now be admonishing us: PHOOEY! [PHOOEY!] I told you that man is the measure of all things, of things that are, that they are, and of things that are not, that they are not. This is the heart of 20th-century quantum physics. So who among you can tell me with certainty that I was wrong in denying the possibility of objective knowledge? Until now, how could you even have known what I meant if you could not be certain what I said? Future applications of pure thought cannot be predicted. You should not have burned my books!”

So much for the requirement that students write science papers in the third person because experiments should be independent of the experimenter. When one considers the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory, it would not seem possible to design an experiment without introducing experimenter bias. The mere choice of how a measurement is to be made determines what will be measured. Couple this with the fickle nature of human perception and the very method of our science introduces a priori experimenter bias. From the very beginning, the conscious processes of creative thinking that design the hypothesis introduce an idiomorphic bias. In other words, thinking shapes the experiment qualitatively to enable the object of the search to be the same as expected.

Based on an analysis in 1974 of mathematical coincidences inherent in the universe, the noted British astrophysicist Brandon Carter related a rather obvious and somewhat tautological observation: “What we can expect to observe must be restricted by the conditions necessary for our presence as observers.” This connection of human observation with the physical universe has become known as the Anthropic Principle. Of course we can observe only a universe that is compatible with our own existence within it, but this principle merely limits the scope or our observations and does not imply that our observations compel the universe that we occupy to either have the form or behave in the way that it does.

To be continued . . .

Harold Williamson is a Chicago-based independent scholar. He can be reached at: h_wmson@yahoo.com. Copyright © 2005, Harold Williamson

Other Articles by Harold Williamson

* Did Newsweek Damage America's Image?
* Improvisation From The Proscenium, Part One
* Watching George Bush Trying to Pull a Rabbit Out of His Hat
* Shooting the Messenger Who Reported Human Rights Abuses in Afghanistan
* Agent Orange -- Thirty Years After
* Truth in Humor
* Redefining America
* The Missing WMD: Bush's Red Herring
* The Darkness in America
* Spinning The Vietnam War: What Goes Around Comes Around
* None Dare Call It Murder
* It Isn't God Who is Crazy
* Don't Trust Anybody Over Thirty
* Faith in the Postmodern World
* Remember Who The Enemy Is
* Obscenity, A Sign of the Times and the Post
* Thinking Anew: A Do-It-Yourself Project
* America's Blind Faith in Government
* Think Tanks and the Brainwashing of America
* Bully for the Bush Doctrine: A Natural History Perspective

Is Science another Dogma?

IS SCIENCE "JUST ANOTHER DOGMA"?
Ernest Partridge
The Online Gadfly
www.igc.org/gadfly



Published in The Online Journal, July 6, 2002

Scan the shelves of a bookshop or a public library and you will see that most of the books are about the evanescent concerns of today... They take so much for granted, wholly forgetting how hard won was the scientific knowledge that gave us the comfortable and safe lives we enjoy. We are so ignorant of the facts upon which science and our scientific culture are established that we give equal place on our bookshelves to the nonsense of astrology, creationism, and junk science. At first, they were there to entertain, or to indulge our curiosity, and we did not take them seriously. . Now they are too often accepted as fact.
James Lovelock
Science, 8 May, 2000

Science will flourish only in a society that cherishes its norms. The reason, openness, tolerance, and respect for the autonomy of the individual that distinguish the social process of science ... are norms desirable in every human community. They describe a world in which, we can agree, all of us want to live.
Gerald Piel
Science, 17 January, 1986


A student asks: why should we believe in global warming, and you respond with a meticulously logical argument, along with a citation of scientific research. As you continue, the student's eyes begin to glaze and the student-bodies begin to squirm in the seats. And as you conclude, you hear that dreaded question: "but who's to say?"

At length it finally dawns on you: to these kids, logic, science, rationality, are just "cultural artifacts" -- no more or less credible than witchcraft, astrology, divination, tarot cards, or plain off the wall hunches. (See "Yes, Virginia, there is a real world.")

Nor are these views unique to our students. Just listen to the media, to corporate public relations, to televangelists, or worst of all, to the policy pronouncements of the Bush administration. Consider the spectacle of the tobacco company CEOs telling the Congressional committee, under oath, "I do not believe that nicotine is addictive" – this, despite overwhelming scientific evidence that nicotine is, in fact, addictive. We are all aware of the evangelical Christians' avowed disbelief in evolution, the fundamental organizing principle of modern biology. And George Bush (who also has his doubts about evolution) is confident that he and his associates in the "awl bidniss" are fully qualified to dismiss the reports on global warming by two thousand leading atmospheric scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the National Academy of Sciences. (See "The President of Fantasyland," this site).

Sadly, the virus of irrationalism has spread even to the colleges and universities of the realm, in the guise of "post-modernism whose most extreme adherents regard competing theories of reality, such as astronomy and astrology as "social constructs" and "stories," each with an "equal right to be heard and appreciated." Post-modernism was (or should have been) discredited by Alan Sokol's notorious hoax: A parody article, "Transgressing the Boundaries..." which the post-modernist publication, Social Text swallowed hook, line and sinker, in its Spring 1996 issue. Sokol thus describes his article as "a mélange of truths, half-truths, quarter-truths, falsehood, non-sequitors, and syntactically correct sentences that have no meaning whatsoever."

What was Sokol's motive? First of all, he writes, "I'm a stodgy old scientist who believes, naively, that there exists an external world, that there exist objective truths about that world, and that my job is to discover some of them." And furthermore, "my concern is explicitly political: to combat a currently fashionable postmodernist/poststructuralist/social-constructivist discourse – and more generally a penchant for subjectivism – which is, I believe inimical to the values and future of the Left." (Sokol and Bricmont, Fashionable Nonsense, Picador, 269-270).

He has a tough battle ahead. For, as most of us who have taught college for more than a couple of decades will testify, the struggle to defend the integrity of critical intelligence against the onslaught of subjectivist and post-modernist mush has, of late, lost considerable ground. Thus, as George Englebretsen, a Canadian philosopher reflects:

We've become increasingly a society of people who consider channeling as effective as archival research for discovering the past, who believe therapeutic touch can heal more than modern medicine, who believe it appropriate to teach Klingon in the university but doubt that Latin serves any academic purpose. And why not? After all, many of them have been taught by professors who cannot distinguish between a legitimate treatise on a problem physics and [Alan Sokol's] bald, outlandish parody of it." (Skeptical Inquiry, July/August, 1997 )

How has it come to this? Throughout the just-completed century, the United States has been the world leader in technological innovation and scientific advancement. And yet, the American public, by and large, is dismally ignorant of basic scientific information. Thus the Los Angeles Times reports (May 10, 1992), that a third of Americans believe that astrology "has some scientific merit," and reportedly half do not accept evolution. And in May, 1996, the Associate Press reported that "fewer than half of the American adults understand that the Earth orbits the sun yearly... Only about nine percent knew what a molecule was, and only 21 percent could define DNA." (See my "Regarding Junk Science and Other Detritus").

But however ignorant the average American might be about the content of science, that ignorance is exceeded regarding the method of science. And from this ignorance of scientific method emerges the widespread belief, embraced large portions of our population, including the post-modernists, that science is "just another dogma" – a "story" that deserves no more credence than any other "story" such as astrology, aromatherapy, or whatnot.

A library of books have been written about the methodology of science, many of them quite controversial. Among philosophers of science one will find a myriad of hotly contested theories about "how science works." Even so, there are a few fundamental features of scientific activity that most observers of science will accept, and which the ordinary non-scientific citizen might readily understand. They are also features that set science distinctively apart from non-scientific truth claims. I will discuss just seven of these features.

First, scientific activity is public and replicable.

The community of scientists is elite and restricted, and yet, paradoxically, it is also open. Few individuals are qualified to conduct an experiment with a particle accelerator, or to carry out a DNA test. But anyone with requisite intelligence and diligence who is willing and able to undergo the required training may, in principle, perform these activities. Moreover, any and all such qualified individuals must be able to repeat the experiments and produce the evidence claimed by other scientists. Remember "cold fusion," that "revolutionary scientific breakthrough" that was going to supply us with and endless supply of cheap energy? It failed the "replicability test." Repeated failures by other scientists to duplicate the results claimed by Fleischman and Pons led to the well-deserved demise of this "breakthrough." "One-time-only" episodes of "Divine revelation" and "anecdotal evidence" from singular events do not cut it, scientifically. (However, as we will see below, some accounts of singular events can launch fruitful scientific investigations).


Science is Cumulative.

"If I have seen further," said Isaac Newton, "it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." And thus, of course, Newton became another of those "giants." Mathematics necessarily developed sequentially, from arithmetic to algebra (the Arabs) to analytic geometry (Descartes) to calculus (Newton and Liebnitz). Without Galileo and Kepler, there would have been no Newton. Without Linnaeus, no Darwin. Because science is ever open to new discoveries (see "falliblism" below), science allows nature to "speak to us" through experiment and observation. But only if we ask nature the right questions (i.e., if we know what we are looking for and describe it with an adequate (often mathematical) vocabulary. The science of the preceding "giants" gives us those questions. Thus science, as an accumulating body of knowledge and theory, is vastly greater than any scientists.


Science is Systemic and Coherent.

Scientific theories are marvelous structures built out of scientific concepts ("vocabularies"), laws, empirical facts, and logical entailments. (They are not, as "creationists" say of evolution, mere unconfirmed "facts." See "We're Not in Kansas Anymore"). As theories encompass more observed and confirmed facts and formulate new "laws," this growth reverberates throughout the entire theoretical system. Thus, for example, post-Darwinian discoveries in genetics, bio-chemistry and paleontology have not "refuted" evolution, they have enriched and expanded it.

Robust scientific theories are characterized by their scope of application – another indication of their structure and coherence. Thus, for example, "natural selection" explains such diverse phenomena as dated sequence of fossils, comparative anatomy and physiology, comparative species DNA, declining potency of insecticides and antibiotics. Similarly, Einstein's theory of relativity explains observations at the working end of particle accelerators, nuclear and thermonuclear reactions, the behavior of clocks on spaceships, astronomical observations, and the apparent bending of light near massive objects (e.g., during a solar eclipse).


Science is Empirical.

A scientific investigation "begins" and "ends" in experience. A scientist might find, in the field or his laboratory, an interesting phenomenon worthy of investigation. For example, Darwin found varieties of finches on the Galapagos Islands and the South American mainland. Why both the variety and the similarities? And Wilhelm Roentgen accidentally made a momentous discovery while experimenting with X-Rays in his laboratory. In a desk drawer below his apparatus, a key was placed atop an unexposed photographic plate. He later discovered an image of the key on the plate. How come? His search for an answer led to X-Ray photography.

Darwin and Roentgen developed hypotheses ("hunches") to explain these experienced phenomena. Some failed to "pan out" in experience, so new hypotheses were formed. Eventually, they came up with hypotheses which, in conjunction with settled scientific concepts and data, predicted events which were empirically confirmed by experiments.

Scientific theory and laws are not made up of "hunches." And yet creative imagination ("hunches") can play an important role in scientific investigation. Legend has it that Archimedes came upon the concept of specific gravity while taking a bath. (Did he really? Who knows? Who cares? The story is illustrative, not scientific). James Watson tells us that the idea of the double helix came to him as he recalled his boyhood exploration of the spiral staircase at a lighthouse. And Einstein thought of relativity as he was riding a Zurich trolley and contemplated the "relative motion" of a passenger walking in the trolley .

But when the scientific community demanded confirmation of the theory of DNA, Crick and Watson did not look to lighthouses. Nor did Einstein demonstrate Special Relativity with a trolley car. These insights were the beginning, not the end, of scientific inquiry. The inquiry "ended" with empirical confirmation in the laboratory or the field.


Scientific assertions are Fallible and Falsifiable.

For any statement whatever in the body of science, we know what it would be like for that statement to be false. (I exclude "formal" statements: e.g., definitions, logical rules and tautologies – a technical point which I can't elaborate here). It is thus possible, in principle (i.e., through the wildest imagination), to describe a refutation of a scientific claim. In other words, scientific statements, hypotheses and theories are falsifiable – not "false," but falsifiable. The distinction is crucial.

To put it another way, for an hypothesis, prediction or confirmation to have scientific meaning, one must be prepared to say, "expect to find such-and-such empirical conditions in the world, to the exclusion of other describable conditions." If you find these conditions, you statement has been proven true of this particular "real nature," and not some "fanciful nature." For example, Galileo determined that a free-falling object falls at a distance of d = ½ gt2 (with "d" for distance, "t" for time, and "g" for a gravitational constant at the Earth's surface). Not 1/4g or 1/3g, but 1/2g. And not time cubed, or time to the 2.5 power, but time squared. In other words, that sample equation describes one sort of nature to the exclusion of an infinitude of other "natures" described by different formulas. But experimentation and observation has proven that Galileo's formula applies to the "nature" we live in. In short, the free-fall formula is falsifiable. We can easily describe how it might be false, but have determined experimentally that it is true.

Similarly, in Eddington's famous 1919 eclipse experiment, Einstein's theory of relativity predicted that star near the eclipse would appear in a precisely defined location, and not in any other location in the night sky (a falsification). And sure enough, it appeared where predicted by the relativity theory. Confirmation!

In contrast, dogmas give us unfalsifiable assertions. Once in a debate with an evangelical minister, I asked: "Why should I believe that the Bible is the inerrant truth, and that I must believe in Jesus Christ to be saved?" He replied, "just you wait – when you die and face your maker, then you will find out." Of course, that challenge was utterly unfalsifiable to anyone alive, which is to say, to anyone at all. Similarly, economic dogmas, which are "theory rich," have an "explanation" (after the fact) for every and any developments in the national economy. What they cannot do is describe a turn in the economy that would disprove their dogma. In short, unfalsifiable assertions, because they describe every possible world, describe nothing unique about the world we live in, which is to say that they "describe" nothing at all.

An important implication of the falsifiability rule, is what Charles Peirce called "Falliblism." Because every scientific statement is falsifiable, we must be forever open to the possibility (however remote) that some new observation or experiment will prove it wrong. The "falliblist" says, in effect, that "while I have strong beliefs, I am forever prepared to change these beliefs if confronted with compelling evidence to the contrary." (See "One Nation Under God, Divisible")


The Order of Scientific Inquiry proceeds from evidence to conclusion.

In science, as in jury trials, the outcome remains in doubt until all the evidence has been examined and evaluated. Evidence is assembled, hypotheses and theories are tentatively formed, and from all this, events and conditions (all "falsifiable") are predicted. Only if the predictions "pan out," are the hypothesis and theory confirmed, whereupon science progresses once again.

In contrast, dogmatists take the position of the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland – "verdict first, trial afterwards." The caption of a New Yorker cartoon that I have used for years in my classes summarizes that "method" perfectly: "That is the gist of my position, now go out and get some evidence to base it on." This is the strategy of the preacher, the advertiser, and the political propagandist. The doctrine, or the client's product, or the party policy are all sacrosanct – not to be questioned. Beneath this exalted and unalterable truth, a scaffold of concocted "evidence" and argumentation must be assembled. This is the methodology of "creationism," of the Tobacco Institute, of the Global Climate Coalition (funded by the fossil fuel industry), and of the Supreme Court decision of December 12, 2000, Bush v. Gore.

And, of course, it is a "methodology" that is unfalsifiable – no amount of evidence to the contrary will budge these advocates from their pre-ordained conclusions.


In Science, the Burden of Proof is on the Affirmative.

We've all heard it in political and religious debates: "Prove me wrong." It a cry of despair. A belief, innocent of supporting evidence, is proclaimed to be true, absent a compelling argument in the negative. (Logicians call this "the ad ignorantum fallacy.")

This tactic of placing the burden of proof on the negative is inadmissible in courts of law, where the burden must fall on the prosecution (to prove affirmative guilt) rather than on the defense (to negatively prove "not guilty").

Common sense shows us the wisdom of placing the burden of proof upon the affirmative. For example, no one has found any evidence of Noah's ark on Mt. Ararat. "So prove to me that it isn't there and never was!" Of course we can't. Is this sufficient reason to believe the Bible story, and that this mountain is the place in question? Similarly for stories about Atlantis, the Bermuda Triangle, and UFO abductions. "Prove me wrong!" Well I can't, but so what?

The rule of "burden of proof on the affirmative" is a splendid device for de-cluttering the mind of intellectual rubbish. One might approach the world with the attitude of believing everything not disproved or, on the other hand, believing nothing unless proved. The latter, the approach of the scientist, is a far more reliable guide to truth, not to mention the management of one's practical affairs.

George Santayana had it just right: "Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect."


This list of seven (among many more) distinguishing qualities of science indicates, I trust, that science is "not just another dogma." This fact is demonstrated by the universal appeal and application of science. Scientists from around the world and from numerous cultures and traditions, readily communicate with each other, as scientists. Science is an institution and tradition which, while not without subjective elements (e.g. creative "hunches" and imaginative theories), attains an objectivity through its constant commerce with nature, and through the discipline of its methodology which ruthlessly culls out theories and hypotheses that fail the test of confirmation. Science is not perfect – no human institution is. Nor does science encompass all human knowledge, for there is much more to be learned from the arts, from literature, from moral reflection and practice, and from living in the company of fellow human beings. But science is supremely good at what it does – discovering the nature of physical, biological, and social reality, and articulating that reality in abstract and general laws and theories.

All Americans affirm science every time they boot up a computer, start a car or make a phone call. These everyday activities take place only through the successful application of thousands of scientific laws and theories. When Jerry Falwell stands before a TV camera to denounce evolution, or George Bush to debunk global warming as "unsound science," they both know that the device that is pointing at them will send their image and words to millions "out there." Thus they implicitly affirm the validity of physics, chemistry, advanced mathematics and computer science, even as they deny biology and atmospheric science.

The downgrading of science is quite agreeable to the religious right, of course. But also to the corporations that own the Congress and that put George Bush in the White House. And as the pesticide and tobacco cases vividly demonstrated in the past, and the global warming issue reminds us today, scientific research and discovery can be very threatening to the corporate bottom line. A scientifically educated and sophisticated public would appreciate the significance of that research and discovery, and would see through the sophistry of corporate public relations. That same public, under a democratic system, would select leaders that act in behalf of all citizens, act to preserve the natural environment that is our ultimate source and sustenance, and act to the benefit of future generations. Accordingly, those corporate elites whose concerns are confined to their own self interest have no stake in a public that thinks critically and is scientifically informed. Sadly, the American public today gives those elites little cause for concern.

Copyright 2002 by Ernest Partridge

(DV) Williamson: The Matter of Mind, Myth, and Metaphor (Part I)

Improvisation From The Proscenium:
The Matter of Mind, Myth, and Metaphor (Part One of Three)
by Harold Williamson
www.dissidentvoice.org
May 12, 2005

“Science and religion are two windows that people look through, trying to understand the big universe outside, trying to understand why we are here. The two windows give different views, but they look out at the same universe. Both views are one-sided, neither is complete. Both leave out essential features of the real world. And both are worthy of respect.”

-- Freeman Dyson

It seems that at the beginning of the third millennium of Western civilization, we are still faced with the same perplexing question as our ancestors: What do we really know about our world and ourselves? By “know”, I do not mean to have cognizance or awareness, but to perceive and intellectively grasp a clear and certain understanding. But what exactly is a clear and certain understanding?

The Roman scholar Pliny the Elder posited in the first century A.D. that the only certainty is that nothing is certain. In the 17th century, the French mathematician, physiologist, and philosopher René Descartes started with this idea as a premise (actually an equivalent proposition using the word doubt) and used logic to establish a foundation for human knowledge in a similar manner as Euclid established a basis for geometry. But in his exhaustive search for certainty, he created an intellectual impasse that has since divided the natural world into mental and physical realms -- the Cartesian duality of “mind” and “matter”.

In 1739, the Scottish philosopher David Hume declared two types of truth: “truths of reason” (1+1=2) and “matters of fact” (If I release this ball, it will fall). Hume argued that all knowledge of the physical world is independent of reason and consists of only sensory experience. For instance, we see objects fall all the time, and thereby become cognizant or aware that it is the custom or habit for objects to fall. It is a “matter of fact” that things fall. Any explanation of how and why things fall is a “truth of reason,” and reason does not have any cause-and-effect relationship with the event of the object falling. The “law” of gravity expounded in 1687 by the English mathematician and physicist Isaac Newton demonstrates mathematically how things fall, and it precisely describes our observations of falling objects. But this is a product of reason, a human concept or idea of the cause and effect, not the cause and effect itself. The ancient Greeks called this “saving the appearances” -- i.e. this is a “mental model” or “construct” that we can use to attempt to understand and communicate how things appear to us to be true and real.

The 5th-century B.C. Greek sophist Protagoras, whose works were destroyed in antiquity and whose ideas survive only through Plato’s writings that bear his name, refused to differentiate between sensory experience and reason by denying altogether any possibility of objective knowledge -- that is we cannot know the reality of material phenomena independently of the concepts derived from our senses, and all knowledge of reality becomes subjective by each individual’s unique ability to perceive and reason.

The effectiveness of our thinking depends on how closely our perceptions correspond with objective reality while being confined within the subjective framework of a personal point of view. This personal point of view comprises the accumulated knowledge and experience that is used by each of us to interpret new experiences and form new beliefs, but it also limits the very perceptions that give meaning to sensory stimuli. For example, we see light waves and we hear sound waves, but we perceive automobiles and music. Perception can only occur from within a personal frame of reference, and a person living in Chicago would perceive an automobile from the same light waves that an indigenous inhabitant having been isolated in the Amazon rain forest with no prior knowledge of automobiles would perceive a strange beast. This restricts and confines to a dissonant frame of reference the interpreting of new evidence to solve problems as well as acquire new knowledge. A personal frame of reference containing false perceptions can be difficult to overcome; and if we had not been able to discard the belief of the Middle Ages that the Earth is the center of the universe, there would be no astrophysics today. But without some sort of guidance by our preconceptions, we would be unable to do anything at all.

Self-esteem can be a powerful stimulus to search for truth, but it also can be a powerful stimulus to self-deception when threatened. Resistance to new ideas is directly related to their threat to self-esteem. When orthodoxy is seriously threatened, the self-esteem that is derived from it is also seriously threatened. When this happens, reactions to heresy are often emotional and physically violent. When Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems was published in 1632, it was not just a threat to the orthodox Ptolemaic worldview of medieval Scholastics. Pope Urban’s self-esteem was also threatened when he was persuaded by enraged Aristotelians that Galileo had intended the butt of the dialogue, the scholastic Simplicio, to be none other than himself. Galileo was summoned before the Inquisition and was threatened with torture. He was forced to recant his thesis and was placed under house arrest for the rest of his life. His treatise was placed on the Index where it would remain along with those of Kepler and Copernicus for over two centuries.

Galileo was spared the full wrath of the Inquisition, but three decades earlier the Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno was not as fortunate. February 17, 2000 marked the fourth centenary of his being burned at the stake as a symbol of magisterial intolerance of new ideas. Bruno’s quarrel was with the authority of Aristotle and the Church’s methods that encouraged ignorance and conformity through coercion. He incorporated Copernican principles in a pantheistic worldview that postulated an infinite universe; but unlike Galileo, Bruno’s theory was based chiefly on metaphysical grounds. Even though his era was a time, not unlike our own, when science was at odds with metaphysics, Bruno’s remarkable insight presaged modern relativistic cosmology in his book On Cause, Principle, and Unity:

“There is no absolute up or down, as Aristotle taught; no absolute position in space; but the position of a body is relative to that of other bodies. Everywhere there is incessant relative change in position throughout the universe, and the observer is always at the center of things [emphasis added].”

While taking into account the aforementioned epitasis, let’s look at what we think we know about our world and ourselves at the beginning of the 21st century. What we think, we know. Precisely how this works is not known, but our brains probably use some of the strange properties of “matter” that will be discussed later. Human vision responds to only a small fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum; and since our brains ignore much of that, our visual experience is extremely limited. We believe what we see, but our beliefs result from each human “mind” being uniquely colored and influenced by the contingencies of many additional factors including heredity, education, culture, environment, and historical circumstance. Subsequently, how can we know if there is any basis of empirical fact for the validity of these beliefs? Furthermore, how can we be certain that this is even possible?

We have journeyed into the 21st century, but not without passing through tremendous suffering and death imposed by false beliefs along the way. Morality myths are very seductive, and the misguided application of their inferences often leaves a tragic legacy that is difficult to absolve. In the late 5th century B.C., Hippocrates the Great taught that pernicious disease was not sent by angry gods as punishment, but this lesson was not learned until well after the early 17th century when what we now ascribe to germ theory was perceived to be the result of a divinely inspired morality play -- as were the Egyptian plagues described in the book of Exodus in the Hebrew Bible. Huge numbers of Native Americans died from smallpox and other epidemics while European Americans usually recovered. Their god being on their side inspired the European Americans; and the contrary was true for the Native Americans whose gods ignored their plight, whose medicines did not work, and whose population was decimated. The resulting ethnocentrism of the European Americans further objectified the natives as inferior heathen, and this eventually led to acculturation and genocide. From today’s historical perspective this was a major 17th-century geopolitical event that was initiated by chance natural occurrences, reshaped by false beliefs of ignorance, and combined with intolerance stemming from fear and greed to form the 19th-century ideology of Manifest Destiny. If you live in the United States you are part of this legacy of conformity.



Much of human history is a chronology of chance occurrences that evolved into major geopolitical events that determined who we are and what we believe. The fact that you and I exist at all as individual human beings is the result of the outcomes of innumerable chance events. In addition, according to the late Harvard University paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, if the Earth were to re-evolve, it is most probable that we would never happen again as a species. Yet it is interesting that Carl Jung, the 20th-century psychiatrist who founded analytic psychology, speculated that even what we attribute to “chance” as being merely ignorance of future events could be the result of unknown physical “laws” in cases where known “laws” of simple cause-and-effect do not work. Nonetheless, the question remains whether “laws” pertaining to matter and energy actually govern or are merely descriptive abstractions of our perceptions of nature’s habits.



The scientific method that is based on observation and experiment was introduced to the modern world in 1620 by the English philosopher Francis Bacon, and it has served to liberate humankind from many of its false and crippling beliefs, particularly in the areas of biology and medicine. The term “agnostic” was coined by the 19th-century English biologist Thomas H. Huxley. Huxley’s “agnosticism” has suffered the same fate as Darwin’s “evolution” by being misinterpreted, misrepresented, and misapplied. Science uses Huxley’s “method” by starting with a testable hypothesis, such as the circumstantial evidence of Hume’s “matters of fact,” and follows reason as far as it will allow while not pretending certainty in matters that cannot be demonstrated. Even if this search terminates with negative results, the search alone is important by demonstrating what is not “true.” In addition, some important breakthroughs in science have been serendipitous. Useful things that were not the object of the original search simply have been stumbled upon. The people whose lives have been saved by the antibiotic penicillin aren’t concerned that its discovery was an accident.



An interdisciplinary approach with its diversity of ideas is as essential to the pursuit of knowledge as diversity of the gene pool is to the survival of a species. Since there was so much yet to be discovered during the 17th century, the explosion of knowledge about our world that began at this time could be attributed to the open-minded approach of the field naturalist. It was a time when one could afford to be interested in everything. Today it is a different story since it is necessary to specialize in order to succeed. Huge amounts of material with esoteric terminology obfuscate the curricula of specialized disciplines to the extent that hardly anyone can understand any specialty other than their own. The resulting fragmentation of perspective limits the possibility of discovering a larger significance for things encrypted within the minutiae of a single discipline. Even the word academic has been reduced to mean something of no practical significance.



Honest intellectual debate is important and productive, while the clash of partisan politics among specialized disciplines is counterproductive. Given sufficient time, often the only difference between heresy and prophecy has been their sequence in history. The persecution of Galileo in 1633 by the papal Inquisition for his advocacy of the Copernican heliocentric model of our planetary system is an important example of witch-hunts that date as far back as the conviction of Socrates. Plato realized that with the conviction of Socrates, no one could long maintain his independence and integrity within the framework of partisan politics. If history teaches us anything it is that orthodoxy is transitory, and each new worldview is eventually replaced with another -- the most recent being the rejection by mainstream science of Einstein’s view that God does not play dice with an eternal universe. I cannot imagine what a Weltanschauung will be like a thousand years hence.



A more recent example of a witch-hunt was the 1950’s equivalent of a book burning of Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky’s best selling book Worlds in Collision. Velikovsky, a Russian-American physician, took a psychoanalytic approach to an investigation of how the events in the Hebrew Bible that were claimed to have occurred by divine intervention during the Exodus could be attributed to natural causes. He speculated that there was a near-miss close encounter of Earth with a cometary Venus, and proceeded to historically corroborate it with texts from around the world of ancient legends that recount contemporary perceptions of extraordinary occurrences. His theory flew in the face of orthodox Judeo-Christian beliefs and the prevailing uniformitarian doctrine of science that attributed all geological change to existing forces operating uniformly from the origin of the solar system to the present time. The threat of large comets and meteorites was believed to have ceased some 3,800 million years ago.



Surprisingly little was said in religious circles. A few influential scientists in specialized disciplines did not believe his theory to be scientifically valid, which is amazing since some of them also admitted to not having read the book. This was inconsequential because it was not a matter of hermeneutics. It was a heretical book that jeopardized their proselytism, and they proceeded to threaten a boycott of his publisher and forced the relinquishing of the rights to this best selling book to another house. Velikovsky’s editor was dismissed. It was not unorthodox theology that was causing the stir; it was unorthodox science. Intolerance is not an exclusive club.



The renowned theoretical physicist Albert Einstein reflected on such matters with this aphorism: “Yesterday idolized, today hated and spit upon, tomorrow forgotten and the day after tomorrow promoted to Sainthood. The only salvation is a sense of humor.” Velikovsky was never given an impartial and fair hearing on this matter, and the entire affair caused him to suffer from serious depression. Velikovsky’s dour mood was expressed in a gift inscription to his editor in a copy of Ages in Chaos, a sequel to Worlds in Collision: “Another heretical book that will cause wrath and indignation of those whose teaching is threatened by it.” Einstein compared the reception with that accorded Johannes Kepler. He noted that contemporaries often could not differentiate between a genius and a crank, and he encouraged Velikovsky to see the humor in the entire affair. Einstein conceded the possibility of a catastrophic scenario, although he would not consider Venus as the culprit. But at the time of Einstein’s death, some five years after the book’s publication, Worlds in Collision was said to have been open on his desk. He was keeping an open mind, since throughout his life Einstein was unconcerned about conformity and loathed hypocrisy and dogma.



The last fifty years of spectacular advances in technology have enabled discoveries that confirm some of the specific predictions of Velikovsky’s “crackpot” theory, but they are more simply explained within the scope of other theories. However, consider that people in modern times had never witnessed the collision of a comet with a planet until the fragments of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 smashed into Jupiter in July 1994 and produced several impact areas the size of the Earth. Also consider the conclusive crater evidence recently found near the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico that further confirms the theory of Luis and Walter Alvarez that an impact of a large object caused the dinosaur extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous some 65 million years ago. In addition, there is new evidence that implies that an impact of a comet or asteroid caused the most severe mass extinction event in the geological record that ended the Paleozoic Era some 250 million years ago. Couple these unique chance occurrences with the “many-body” problem of nonlinear dynamics, and it shows that a strict uniformitarian doctrine is not correct. In a self-evolving complex system that is sensitive to its initial conditions, very small unrelated chance events will produce unpredictable and sometimes drastic results by triggering a series of increasingly significant events. However, it has been problematic for science to use historical accidents as proof of any theory, even though this fundamental contingency is intrinsic in nature and pervasive in all of science from particle physics and astrophysics to climatology and developmental biology.

In 1912, Alfred Wegener’s “crackpot” theory of continental drift was ridiculed to a somewhat lesser degree, and it turned out to be correct but for the wrong mechanism of plate tectonics that was established some fifty years later by geophysicists. This further substantiated the theory of evolution by providing a mechanism for particularities in the geographical distribution of animal species that was first noted by Darwin’s contemporary Alfred Russell Wallace. Similarly, Velikovsky’s theory was labeled “crackpot” since the mechanism for its causality disagreed with prevailing models of celestial mechanics that called for a stable and peaceful solar system in recent history. But if Velikovsky’s theory were to turn out to be “right” in the same sense as Wegener’s, think about the profound implications this would have on the foundation of faith for two thirds of the world’s population. It would be based on a unique chance occurrence of nature instead of a divinely inspired morality play, and the scope of the Hebrew Bible would be nothing more than a natural history of an ancient people that chronicles their emergence from barbarism to form a small nation. However, since truth has little to do with ideology, it probably wouldn’t make any difference except to the descendants of people on the wrong side of history’s bias.

Science rejects eyewitness accounts of unique occurrences because they cannot be subjected to empirical testing, and since this is not within the purview of science, it is warranted. However, science cannot provide all the answers, and we should not discount what the ancients knew or observed. Historians are not restricted to discovering predictive patterns, but instead merely hope to re-create accurate historical records as a means of preserving knowledge. Similar accounts of extraordinary events that occurred in the same time frame to geographically and culturally isolated peoples around the world are likely to be descriptions of the same event happening on a global scale. Myths have the stigma of being fables, and many are works of sensational fiction. Yet some are historical accounts that have been reshaped by false beliefs created in the collective imagination of an era. Our ancestors tried to make sense of events by creating connections and relationships with the use of metaphors that mirrored their ancient worldviews, and they left a rich legacy of written accounts of what they perceived to be happening in their world. If Heinrich Schliemann, a 19th-century amateur archaeologist, had believed his critics’ preconceived notions of what archaeology ought to be and that there wasn’t a shred of truth in Homer’s Iliad, he would not have been successful in excavating Hisarlik (Troy) and other discoveries at Mycenae, Ithaca, and Tiryns.



It is difficult to visualize the importance of celestial phenomena to ancient societies that did not have the technology of telescopes, since today only a few people with an unaided eye could locate Venus in the night sky from among the countless stars in the heavens, let alone distinguish any terrestrial significance from this tiny point of light. Yet the sun, moon, planets, and comets were paramount in ancient worldviews as gods, and they were afforded as many human attributes as the human mind could improvise. Since science along with its technology had not yet been invented, our ancestors could only imagine the unseen causes of phenomena in human terms -- not seeing things objectively as they are, but subjectively as they, themselves, were. Throughout human history, each and every view of the universe has contained some aspect of the processes of the human brain. Today “matter” is perceived differently, but it is still subjective. Evolving from the anima mundi of the ancient Romans, “matter” now consists of “fields” and “forces” instead of possessing “souls.” Empty space is teeming with unseen fluctuating energies of the virtual particles of a modern Aether. Yet nothing has changed except human perception.



To be continued . . .

Harold Williamson is a Chicago-based independent scholar. He can be reached at: h_wmson@yahoo.com. Copyright © 2005, Harold Williamson

Other Articles by Harold Williamson


* Watching George Bush Trying to Pull a Rabbit Out of His Hat
* Shooting the Messenger Who Reported Human Rights Abuses in Afghanistan
* Agent Orange -- Thirty Years After
* Truth in Humor
* Redefining America
* The Missing WMD: Bush's Red Herring
* The Darkness in America
* Spinning The Vietnam War: What Goes Around Comes Around
* None Dare Call It Murder
* It Isn't God Who is Crazy
* Don't Trust Anybody Over Thirty
* Faith in the Postmodern World
* Remember Who The Enemy Is
* Obscenity, A Sign of the Times and the Post
* Thinking Anew: A Do-It-Yourself Project
* America's Blind Faith in Government
* Think Tanks and the Brainwashing of America
* Bully for the Bush Doctrine: A Natural History Perspective

The Insular America

The Insular America

www.smh.com.au - Seeing beyond blind faith to a dire revelation

www.smh.com.au - Seeing beyond blind faith to a dire revelation

Table of Contents - The Skeptic's Dictionary

Table of Contents - The Skeptic's Dictionary

Robert Todd Carroll

SkepDic.com