Wed 25 Mar 2009
Ignorance is Bliss
Posted by anaglyph under Philosophy, Religion, Science
[25] Comments
This man is Bernard d’Espagnat. He has a brain the size of a planet. In his extraordinary career, he has worked with other people with brains the size of planets, including Louis de Broglie, Enrico Fermi and Niels Bohr.*
D’Espagnat has just been awarded the 2009 Templeton Prize, which, in the words of the Templeton Foundation, is bestowed on a recipient for ‘progress toward research or discoveries about spiritual realities’, and carries with it a useful £1 million in pocket money.
M. d’Espagnat was given the prize this year for his work in quantum physics, and in particular for his assertions that ‘reality’ (whatever that is) can never be truly known by us in any meaningful sense. Crucially, in regard to the Templeton Prize, his conclusions about what he has discovered in his research veer towards the metaphysical.
‘Unlike classical physics,’ d’Espagnat explains, ‘quantum mechanics cannot describe the world as it really is, it can merely make predictions for the outcomes of our observations. If we want to believe, as Einstein did, that there is a reality independent of our observations, then this reality can either be knowable, unknowable or veiled.’
D’Espagnat subscribes to the third view and hypothesizes a ‘‘veiled reality’ that science does not describe but only glimpses uncertainly’. A veiled reality that encompasses what he refers to as a ‘Being’ and ‘a great, hypercosmic God’.
All things considered, I’m happy that the Templeton Foundation is spending their (evidently) vast fortunes in this way (let’s face it – the money could be going to Creationists). John Templeton, the founder of the organization, was the kind of religious person of whom we need many more. As a practising Presbyterian Christian he asked a question that all believers of religion should ask:
Why shouldn’t I try to learn more? Why shouldn’t I go to Hindu services? Why shouldn’t I go to Muslim services? If you are not egotistical, you will welcome the opportunity to learn more.
Indeed.
It puzzles me, however, that M. d’Espagnat, genius that he indisputably is, seems unable to grasp what is apparently too much of a subtlety of his ‘veiled’ reality; if it exists why must it imply the existence of his hypercosmic God, rather than infer instead that our human brains (planet-size or otherwise) may simply not be capable of understanding the true nature of things? This, to me, seems to be a far likelier explanation than the unsupported jump to the notion of a mysterious and inscrutable creator.†
Perplexingly, d’Espagnat himself seems to be within stepping distance of the same conclusion. He said, on receipt of the prize:
I feel myself deeply in accordance with the Templeton Foundation’s great, guiding idea that science does shed light (on spirituality). In my view it does so mainly by rendering unbelievable an intellectual construction claiming to yield access to the ultimate ground of things with the sole use of the simple, somewhat trivial notions everybody has.
It would appear, then, that he is merely replacing a simple (or trivial) faith in God with a complicated one built on the scaffold of a type of physics and mathematics that very few people understand. Sure, it’s not the thunder-and-lightning enemy-smiting God of the Evangelical Christians/Muslims/Hebrews, but it comes from exactly the same irrational place; the hubris of humans and our belief that the Universe revolves around us.
It seems, then, that in this realm we’ve not really made many advances since Copernicus after all.
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*If those names don’t mean anything to you, they should. They are among the brightest and most insightful scientists we have ever known.
†Which, in any case, is a completely simplistic and futile supposition – as I’ve said elsewhere: if you want to make that assessment, then you may as well suppose that you, your world and all your memories were created by that God yesterday, fully formed and intact – how would you ever know? It’s the same kind of intellectual pursuit. From there, a raft of fanciful worlds become possible and reality unravels like ball of wool in the paws of a kitten.
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d’Espagnats theory is still bettr than yers, Revrend.
His, aftr all, won him a prize.
Yea, but has this guy ever won a real medal?
Joey: Yeah, the only religious prize I ever won was a toffee apple on the hoop-la at a church fete. Does that count?
Atlas: He could still get one of those if he plays his cards right.
No. That dont count.
Lemme know if anyone evr awards ya a Radionic Machine or sompm.
You know, James Hutton, who in my totally biased opinion more or less created what we think of as science (Ok, mostly geology), was a devout Presbyterian. I think Darwin was too (no research done. Most Prezies I know are very intelligent and articulate people. Not so much as the local Greek orthdox guys, but close. Not really a point to that, just an interesting correlation.
Anyway, I think you nailed it, and so did Templeton, when you point out that ego is basically the only common denominator in most religious world views. While the existence of a hypercosmic god is totally plausible, just by the mere fact that hypercosmic anything is plausible, thinking that that being or entity or whatever is even aware of you, much less gives two shits about you, is pretty preposterous.
Which is why my religion is mostly centered around beer and bourbon. I mean, yeah they don’t give a shit about me and may smite me, but I figure as long as I’m tithing money into the coffers of a deity who probably doesn’t care, it might as well taste good.
Joey: Which reminds me… must be time to start fishing Mysterious Corner out of storage. Now, where to put it…
Casey: I like the way you think in regard to your gods…
To be fair to d’Espagnat, one must consider that he has thought long and hard on these matters, and for that, he (and anyone) must be applauded. I’m happy he got a million pounds for it. But the leap from showing there is a ‘mystery’ in the universe to there being a ‘creator’ is one that defies all scientific sense. Paul Davies, in his book The Goldilocks Enigma, makes a good fist of explaining how a scientific mind might arrive at the conclusion that the Universe was ‘created’, and the reasoning is persuasive. But as I think I’ve said elsewhere, the concept is intellectually banal unless you think, for some reason, that you might be able to understand the mind of that creator, or that that creator has been, or is, influential in the universe we know. Otherwise, sure, go ahead and postulate God/Ra/The Rainbow Serpent – whatever you like – it does not matter; we and that being have as much chance of having any meaningful discourse as aardvarks and amoebas. Speculation is speculation no matter how you come to it, and once you get into that, you may as well believe in a personal God. Or pixies.
The Templeton Prize bothers me slightly in that respect. One wonders about the reason for continuing with it, when every year the recipient gets further and further away from demonstrating any rational basis for spirituality and, in my mind, closer and closer to showing that it is a comfortable abstraction at best. It’s like they hold a faint hope that somewhere, somehow, science will lift up the bottom wire of the fence just enough for the entire Christian church to squeeze through (it’s worth noting in this context that John Templeton Jr, who now runs the Foundation after his father died last year, is an Evangelical Christian).
1 Million? Damn, I can make shit up like that!
Well, I doubt anyone here is going to argue that what you make up is shit.
I try nevr to make shit up.
I mean, why fight gravity?
Once again though isn’t it funny that they give the money to a scientist – ie even a dodgy one is considered to have more weight in his opinions than say our friend Danny from the Ministry of Fire.
Science once again is used as a kind of benchmark. Even the phrase “progress toward research or discoveries about spiritual realities” is a giveaway, as the term ‘research’ whilst not specifically owned by science (witness all the crazy ‘research’ the Rev has drawn to out attention here at The Cow) does have a scientific ‘ring’ to it, as research is usually what scientists do.
Well good on the old fool for conning these desperadoes out of their million pounds, why they need to find a scientist who’s willing (and old enough) to say that “yes, your imaginary friend may exist” baffles me a bit. If they have so much faith in their god, then why do they need an eminent scientist to give them a boost – could it be they have doubts?
More likely it’s just to add weight to a marketing campaign so that more fools may be suckered in…
What a load of old tosh, I prefer Tenpole Tudor to Templeton.
The King
King Willy:
>>why they need to find a scientist who’s willing (and old
enough) to say that “yes, your imaginary friend may exist†baffles me a bit
It’s not actually in the least bit baffling, if you think about it. We are, in essence, rational creatures. When something falls on our head, we look up in order to know what it was and how it happened, so that we may attempt to avoid it falling on us a second time.
Religion is a kind of primitive version of science. Once, science and religion were exactly the same thing: a way to explain the thing falling on your head. The problem became that if the reason for the thing falling was not immediately apparent we developed a curious tendency to make up an explanation, rather than wait for some more data. Thus, science and religion parted ways, and those who followed religion have been looking for a way back ever since (well, except for the ones who invented Faith, a concept which is known in legal documents as an Escape Clause).
Personally, I find it highly bewildering that Faith is not just invoked at the beginning of any argument about religion, for that is surely where the argument will end up. Why not just cut to the chase and save everybody some grief? Religious people really hate the idea that what they believe is just magical thinking. They want the science.
Hence the Templeton.
I usta cite my fervent belief in virgin birf in ordr to fight paternity suits …
… and then they came up wit this DNA nonsense …
Yeah, and let me guess: you were going under the name of ‘Jesus’ Polanski…
I think it’s great, and that we should encourage all theists to consider his theories. The more we can steer theists towards scientific thinking and rational decision making, the sooner religion will decline. Then we can go on being rational human beings who take responsibility for our actions and morals. If I had to push forward a “spiritual leader” in the way governments install puppet leaders in weak states in order to work their agendas, this guy would be at the top of my list. He may be a little off, but at least he accepts science as a means for explaining our physical world, rather than blind faith.
I really think there are so many other useful things that 1 million pounds could go towards on this planet. Say survivors of those fires down under, homeless, the hungry, the disabled? Why to a guy who is only speculating (although on a higher and by far more educated level that others) about the universe.
I personally believe the human mind is not designed to understand it all. I know when I watch shows about the universe and all of it’s contents, it gives me a damn headache. Yet, I keep watching and wondering. Maybe we are not supposed to know until we die? Maybe even then we won’t know. Just seems strange to pay someone, a very smart someone, all of that money to speculate….which is what many of us do on a daily basis with no recognition.
Am I even making sense here? It is early. :)
I’ve always found that putting rational and religion in the same sentence never made ANY sense to me Rev, but I guess I see your point. I tend to think more in binary – but maybe that’s just me.
MI – you are of course right, there are far more worthy causes, but then when did the money ever end up in the right hands really – sure as hell not on this planet.
You raise a good point about questions though. I’ve always thought it’s a kinda software problem with humans that results in some people getting caught in a loop whilst others go “yeah, I don’t know and that’s ok, maybe one day we MAY find out, no harm in looking.”
I think it relates to the programming you get as a child in many ways. Usually kids ask a lot of questions and mostly they get the answer. When they apply this to a bigger template (like say the universe or existence) then answers tend to be less concrete or none at all! Some people just can’t handle this and we end up with magic thinking or just plain old delusion as I call it. Add to this the fact that the parents may be filling them with nonsense about supernatural beings and hey – problems.
The good thing about reason and a bit of common sense is that it can get you a long way out of this stuff, but many appear to be on the cusp of reason perhaps, but secretly governed by faith (ie a knowledge of nothing at all). Hence these sorts of foundations like Templeton and their misguided attempts to reassure themselves that they’re ‘really onto something here’ – poor buggers and they make us suffer every f..king step of the way with them.
I’m not sure I agree with your assertion that the human mind is “designed” though, I’m sure you didn’t mean ID, but these days it’s a loaded term. Funny to see their theory ‘evolving’ though isn’t it – seems like a basic law of nature for a replicating packet of information to adapt to it’s circumstances. Good ol’ Darwin.
Her majesty is asleep, and I must off, goodnight Cow people.
The King
I’ve always found it interesting that Chritian apologetics, or what passes for them anymore, revolve around having someone with some outside authority say that there isn’t a way to say they can’t prove them wrong for sure.
Origen would be very upset and probably disappointed. As would, you know, almost fifteen hundred years of philosophers who didn’t let the title of Christian give them liscence to be intellectually lazy.
Which is my biggest problem with faith in general. It is generally just laziness. Regardless of what anyone says to the contrary, faith is infintely easier than actually examining beliefs. I have lots of friends and family entrenched in religion, and at this pointe, we have reached a detente. They know not to ask me anything about God or even talk to me about him. Just for the fact that I may accidentally fuck up their faith with questions.
I think I may have to pick up that book. Have you read it?
In your analogy of aardvarks and amoebas, we’re the aardvarks, right?
No. Not ‘Jesus Polanski’.
‘Joseph’ …
Guy whos wife is a virgin and, ah, insists on remaining one.
RebTurtle: Hey, good to see you again.
I suspect that if M. d’Espagnat was pushed, he’d agree with most of what I said in my post. Quantum physicists are playing in a peculiar realm, where the odd seems commonplace, and the unintuitive is experimentally provable. Now I understand tiny bits of this stuff, but I imagine that when you immerse yourself in it, you find yourself swimming in all kinds of oddness that (in my opinion) our brains simply may not be able to grasp. So on the one hand, you have a structure, or frame, of mathematics that point us in a direction that surely has some truth to it (indeed, we’ve managed to use the weirdness of quantum effects in our real life: your USB flash drive, for instance, uses quantum tunneling – a VERY bizarre and counter-intuitive phenomenon – to erase its memory) yet on the other we predict outcomes (like wave/particle duality and quantum entanglement – which Einstein refused to accept as real) that provide perplexing scenarios that are so baffling that for many years it was thought that the maths was wrong.
It must be a highly disturbing experience; to look into the heart of things and know that they are not what they seem. The Christians call it ‘Looking into the Face of God’, but I see it as just an effect of our limited capacity to understand.
Put it this way: the assumption that underlies all science is that we humans will necessarily be able to understand everything. But to me that implies hubris of the highest order – why should that be so? I’m not putting this question in a mystical sense, but in a purely biological one; you wouldn’t expect an ant to understand (or to even be able to come to understand) the basic concept of photosynthesis, so where is the imperative that says humans can understand, or even come to understand, the true nature of things?
Sadly, that always leaves the door open for metaphysical speculation (and its simplistic branch – religion), because as I said to King Willy, we are creatures that inherently want to know why things happen. The hardest thing of all seems to be to take the stance of “I don’t know why that happens – let’s see if we can get some more data”.
MI: Well, sure, you can say that’s ‘a waste’ of money, but in the Grand Scheme of Things, I’d rather see money wasted on someone who is trying to seriously understand more about our universe than on some daft Creationist ‘Museum’, or flying the Pope here and there to hold forth on matters of contraception. The ‘waste of money’ argument is a slippery slope – it implies that everything can be quantified monetarily, and that is not the case; should we sponsor artists to create? That is surely a ‘waste’ of money. Should we give tax incentives to sports? Should we sponsor scientific pursuits that have no obvious practical outcome (like studying coral reefs, say, or the weather in Antarctica)?
And in the case of the Templeton Prize, it’s not even our money – John Templeton could just have easily left the money to his children (to be squandered away on hookers and cocaine, perhaps, or in JT Jr’s case, another Creationist museum, maybe…), but he decided that he wanted it to go to help look at the Big Questions. Personally, I think that’s pretty admirable, especially coming from a Christian.
As King Willy said, I’d also be wary of the term ‘designed’. I don’t believe human minds were ‘designed’ in any way more meaningful than rainbows or supernovae are ‘designed’. Once again, the implication of saying that is that we are somehow important and I simply don’t believe that. We are no more important than a jellyfish is important, or a tree is important. Or we are equally important as those things – whichever way you like to look at it. There is absolutely nothing that we know that suggests that we are more important than anything else in this universe (except our egos). In fact, the more we know about the universe, the less important we seem. You might like to read Paul Davies’ ‘The Goldilocks Enigma’ in this respect – Davies suggests that one extraordinary conclusion of his work is that consciousness is somehow embedded in the structure of the universe. It’s an amazing claim, and his support for the idea in his argument is quite thrilling. However, the smackdown comes when he points out that consciousness does not necessarily imply our consciousness. So: Consciousness? Yes! Us? Not necessarily. Our existence might be implied in the structure of the universe, but equally, so might any other consciousnesses. It’s quite humbling, and to my mind is an insight equal to Copernicus’ idea that the solar system might actually not be revolving around the Earth…
King Willy: Fundamentally, asking questions is a good thing. But the problem with quantum mathematics (using the ‘things falling on your head’ analogy) is that sometimes when you ask the question ‘Why is something falling on my head?’, you get the answer ‘Friday’. Our brains are not good with the weirdness of the quantum world. Richard Feynman, one of the geniuses of our age said “It is safe to say that nobody understands quantum mechanics”.
The problem is, that for many people, that idea is one teensy step away from a full declaration of “Well, there you go then! You scientists don’t know nuthin’! God obviously exists!”
Casey: Faith is convenient rather than lazy I think. I agree that for many people laziness is involved, but on the whole there is a deep, abiding need to believe that Mr. God is there, In Control, and that everything means something. Even the possibility that there is no meaning is a hard one to embrace, as is the further idea that even if there is a meaning, it may not be one that means anything to us. Strangely, the concepts of hubris and humbleness, which are supposedly important in the doctrine of Christianity, at least, seem to me hardly ever brought to bear in any proper sense. Christians are not humble. The Christian doctrine (and most other religions) puts humans fairly and squarely on top of the heap – there is no real humility in that.
The Goldilocks Enigma? Yes, I’ve read it. I’ve read most of Paul Davies’ work – he’s a brilliant thinker. He’s also exceptionally good at explaining his ideas in simple language. I highly recommend him (he’s also won the Templeton, by the way).
Cissy Strutt: I’d have to consult Douglas Adams on that.
Joey: Ah, of course. Silly me. What was I thinking? Incest in the Bible! Tsk, how implausible.
Yea, there was a whole plague of incest in the Bible.
Where in th Bible was that?
Sex Acts o th Apostles?
Can we have an ‘Incestuation of the Apostles’ poster Rev?
My father (prof physics) used to begin his quantum theory lectures with the first year Phd students thus: “if you think you understand quantum mechanics – you don’t.”
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! – is a good read, I’m sure you’ve read it, but if not there are a few pearls.
The King
My fathr do Art in Heaven.
Atlas: I think that was a plague of loquats.
Joey: I’ve got that on DVD! (eep, that was almost a Malach comment).
King Willy: Your dad was using a variation of the famous John Wheeler quote:
‘If you are not completely confused by quantum mechanics, you do not understand it.’
Wheeler is notable as the first person to bring up the idea of consciousness being a critical part of the shaping of the universe. His ideas are pretty challenging.
(And yes, I’ve read most of Feynman).