Humanism, Cosmology and the danger of awe

June 2, 2013

The speech delivered as the keynote to the 2013 Humanist conference be seen in its entirety at this web site.  At this point for those who haven't seen it, I suggest they do so, as it was meaningful in many ways.  I commented afterwards that I  felt that he had provided me with valuable new information, inspired me to learn even more, and had dissipated any concern that he represented the danger that I described in the pre-speech section above.  He clearly and unambiguously described separate levels of understanding each with their utility for addressing a given issue, and more importantly that his expertise in particle physics gives him no special knowledge in other areas of life, from climate change, to the safety of the air we breathe and even to such issues as same sex marriage.  Only with my personal conversation after the speech did I see another side of its meaning.

Dr Carroll as a scholar and a human being seems so far removed from those who aspire to be elevated to god-like authority due to their special knowledge, that my criticism could seem misplaced.  He gets manifest pleasure out of sharing his own understanding with those at various levels, without the slightest hint of personal aggrandizement.  What he does not seem to appreciate is how his profession's endeavor, especially when expressed in the mass media by his own colleagues and friends can have serious adverse consequences.  In my brief personal discussion I gave one example that he was familiar with,  something that was an extension of the "LaPlace Demon" in his 1814 "Essays on Probability" that he discussed at 18 minute mark of his speech, that under certain theoretical conditions it could be possible to know the future with absolute accuracy.

I asked him about the illustration derived from this by his colleague Professor Brian Greene on a Nova Program, that with all appropriate verbiage of "it's only speculative," conveyed to the millions of viewers that such a thing is actually in the realm of possibility, along with the acknowledged "controversial" theory that the future actually exists right now the same the past once did.   This belief is shared by more people than I had expected, and to my surprise, Sean Carroll told me he didn't see a problem with this Nova segment.  I responded by reminding him of his own words that he had just delivered,  after first saying that in the fundamental laws of physics the future and the past are on exactly equivalent grounds, "you would be crazy to use this in the macroscopic, or real world"  Greene didn't display a quantum experiment in the Nova segment, but this film strip of real life,  with a tacit message to the viewers designed to be disconcerting-- that among the "scientific elite" the common understanding of time is illusory.

When I first saw the Nova episode I was disturbed based on the esteemed PBS venue and on the funding by the U.S. Government, so I explored it further; and while there was no response from Dr Greene, I did correspond with several eminent academic physicists and cosmologists.  They understood my point, which is available on the link in the first section.  Dr. Carroll, was either oblivious to, or unconcerned about, the higher level domain of understanding of mass perception where the power of visual imagery such as Brian Greene's filmstrip had more influence on the millions of viewers than his qualifying words about it.  If the term "impossible" has any meaning, it includes knowing the future and quantum teleportation, both also considered possibilities on the Nova program.

In spite of Sean Carrolls enjoyable informative talk, the social problem that I identify not only exists but is growing, abetted by his colleagues whom he chooses not to criticize.  There are those of equal academic rank who express visceral anger at Carrolls approach, which I don't happen to share.  My only personal argument with him is that he allows the field theory of human affiliation, that has rules almost as invariable as the quantum version, to blind him to the excesses, and societal harm, of those with whom he has a close affiliation.

Laplace's demon,  the root of justification of belief that the future is theoretically knowable has been made obsolete by those such as Professor George F. R.  Ellis, and even more eloquently by Nobel Laureate Erwin Schroedinger, in his brilliant monograph, "What is Life."  We now know more about the ever emerging complexity of life has that has relegated this position to the historical archives, no longer to be in the working papers of theoretical physics. Not only is the future not currently existing, as Dr. Green's graphically conveyed, but it is intrinsically unknowable for human purposes.

I happen to believe that our need for supernatural comfort is a byproduct of our peculiar brain, which is unique in evolving to anticipate our own annihilation. Humanists invidiously focuses on how this is satisfied by theistic religions, yet are too ready to ignore the defects of other versions of such anodynes to existential dread.   One of these protective devices is human affiliation, losing the isolated vulnerable self into the aggregation -be it tribe, religion, ideology or academic discipline. These are affiliations that in the absence of religion takes on an imperative that transcends everything else, including the search for truth-especially when in conflict with the group's consensus.

I don't know whether Dr. Carroll can see the harm that his fellow theoretical physicist Brian Green's is doing to the consciousness of our society, as I am sure that I am oblivious to the invisible affiliations that I am responsive to that shape my own thinking.  It is a universal that can only be minimized by those who are willing to look at their own group consenses, whether it be with actual people or to ideas that are deeply internalized.

I close with the words of my favorite psychologist-philosopher of the late 19th century, William James,  "Rationally is only a smallest of forces in human affairs"

I think he was on to something.
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Here's my article, Notes on Pop Cosmology and its consequences, that covers this same subject with more links and a refutation of time travel as being conceptually possible. 

http://consilienceforum.blogspot.com/2011/12/notes-on-pop-cosmology-and-its.html


Erwin Schrödinger, as described in this Wiki article, could be seen as the archetypal exceptional genius that defines an era.  He is known to the public, if at all for his paradoxical "cat" that is both alive and dead until we open the box that contains him.  It is misconstrued, as he meant it to illustrate the absurdity of the misinterpretation, as in "reality" an organism is either dead or alive.

His protean contributions to theoretical physics were lucid and seminal, which his Nobel Prize is too common to fully signify.  He attempted to incorporate mystical Eastern religions into his scientific analyses, while living a full life true to himself, including insisting on a household with both his mistress and his wife-unacceptable to American standards of morality.   He left Germany out of antipathy for the Nazi regime, but then apologized to Hitler later, something he regretted for the rest of his life.

While being one of the handful of greats in theoretical physics, with his speculations in his monograph, "What is Life" acknowledged by both Watson and Crick as being the framework for their discovery of DNA, he described the limits of physics, and it's language:

"CHAPTER 1

The Classical Physicist's Approach to the Subject

This little book arose from a course of public
lectures, delivered by a theoretical physicist to an
audience of about four hundred which did not
substantially dwindle, though warned at the
outset that the subject-matter was a difficult one
and that the lectures could not be termed popular,
even though the physicist’s most dreaded
weapon, mathematical deduction, would hardly
be utilized. The reason for this was not that the
subject was simple enough to be explained
without mathematics, but rather that it was much
too involved to be fully accessible to
mathematics."

This man who made perhaps the greatest contributions to theoretical particle physics of the 20th century, here acknowledges that natural language when used with precision and wide ranging metaphors has an explanatory capacity that equations lack.  Those who feel intimidated by such collections of formulas as accurately representing reality take note.