What is now?

Notice I ask what and not when, because ‘now’, as we experience it, is the most ephemeral of all experiences. As I’ve explained in another post: to record anything at all requires a duration – there is no instantaneous moment in time – except in mathematical calculus where a sleight-of-hand makes an infinitesimal disappear completely. It’s one of the most deceptive tricks in mathematics, but in mathematics you can have points with zero dimensions in space, so time with zero dimensions is just another idealism that allows one to perform calculations that would otherwise be impossible.

But another consequence of ‘now’ is that without memory we would not even know we have consciousness. Think about it: ‘now’ has no duration and consciousness exists in a continuous present so no memory would mean no experience of consciousness, or ‘now’ for that matter, because once it occurs it’s already in the past. Therefore memory is required to experience it at all.

But this post is not about calculus or consciousness per se; it arose from a quote I came across attributed to William Lawrence Bragg:

Everything that has already happened is particles, everything in the future is waves. The advancing sieve of time coagulates waves into particles at the moment ‘now’.

For those who don’t know, Sir William Lawrence Bragg was son of Sir William Henry Bragg, whom, as far as I know, were the only father and son to be jointly awarded a Nobel Prize in physics, for their work on X-ray diffraction in crystals. Henry was born in England and Lawrence was born in Australia. I heard about them at school, naturally, but I only came across this quote earlier in the week. They were among the first to exploit short wave photons (X-rays) to find the atomic-scale dimensions of crystal lattices, thus pioneering the discipline of crystallography.

In the same week, I came across this quote from Freeman Dyson recalling a conversation he had with Richard Feynman:

Thirty-one years ago Dick Feynman told me about his ‘sum over histories’ version of quantum mechanics. ‘The electron does anything it likes’, he said. ‘It goes in any direction at any speed, forward and backward in time, however it likes, and then you add up the amplitudes and it gives you the wave-function.’ I said, ‘You’re crazy.’ But he wasn’t.

I’ve discussed in some detail the mathematical formulation of the ‘wave-function’ known as Schrodinger’s equation, in another post, but what’s significant, in regard to the 2 quotes I’ve cited, is that the wave function effectively disappears or becomes irrelevant once an ‘observation’ or experimental ‘measurement’ occurs. In other words, the wave function ‘permeates all space’ (according to Richard Elwes in MATHS 1001) before it becomes part of the ‘classical physics’ real world. So Bragg’s quote makes perfect sense that the wave function represents the future and the particle ‘observation’, be it a photon or electron or whatever, represents the past with the interface being ‘now’.

As I’ve explicated in my last post, the default interpretation of Feyman’s ‘sum over histories’ or ‘path integrals’ mathematical description of quantum mechanics, is that all ‘histories’ occur in parallel universes, but I would argue that it’s a consequence of the irreversibility of time once the particle is ‘observed’. Now ‘observed’, in this context, means that the particle becomes part of the real world, or at least, that’s my prosaic interpretation. There is an extreme interpretation that it does require a ‘conscious observation’ in order to become real, but the fact that the Universe existed many billions of years prior to consciousness evolving, makes this interpretation logically implausible to say the least.

Brian Cox, in one of his BBC TV programmes (on ‘Time’) points out that one of the problems that Einstein had with quantum mechanics is that, according to its ‘rules’, the future was indeterminate. Einstein’s mathematical formulation of space-time, which became fundamental to his General Theory of Relativity (albeit was a consequence of his Special Theory) was that time could literally be treated like a dimension of space. This meant that the future was just as ‘real’ as the past. In other words, Einstein firmly believed that the universe, and therefore our lives, are completely deterministic – there was no place for free will in Einstein’s universe. Interestingly, this was a topic in a not-so-recent issue of Philosophy Now, though the author of the article didn’t explain that Einstein’s strict position on this was a logical consequence of his interpretation of space-time: the future was just as fixed as the past.

But, even without quantum mechanics, we know that chaos theory also contributes to the irreversibility of time, although Einstein was unaware of chaos theory in his lifetime. Paul Davies explains this better than most in his book on chaos theory, The Cosmic Blueprint.

The point is that, both in chaos theory and Feynman’s multiple histories, there are many possibilities that can happen in the ‘future’, but the ‘past’ is only one path and it can’t be remade. According to David Deutsch and Max Tegmark, all the future possibilities occur both in quantum mechanics and at a macro level. In fact, Deutsch has argued that chaotic phenomena are a consequence of the quantum mechanics' many worlds interpretation. In effect, they disassemble the asymmetry between the future and the past. According to their world-view, the future is just as inevitable as the past, because no matter which path is chosen, they all become reality somewhere in some universe; all of which bar one, we can’t see. From my perspective, this is not an argument in support of the many worlds interpretation, but an argument against it.

In my last post but one, I discussed at length Paul Davies’ book, The Mind of God. One of his more significant insights was that the Universe allows evolvement without dictating its end. In other words, it’s because of both chaos and quantum phenomena that there are many possible outcomes yet they all arise from a fixed past and this is a continuing process - it’s deterministic yet unpredictable.

One could make the same argument for free will. At many points in our lives we make choices based on a past that is fixed whilst conscious of a future that has many possibilities. I agree with Carlo Rovelli that free will is not a consequence of quantum mechanics, but the irreversibility of time applies to us as individual conscious agents in exactly the same way it applies to the dynamics of the Universe at both quantum and macro levels.

There is just one problem with this interpretation of the world, and that is, according to Einstein’s theories, there is no universal ‘now’. If there is no simultaneity, which is a fundamental outcome of the Special Theory of Relativity, then it’s difficult to imagine that people separated in space-time could agree on a ‘now’. And yet, the fact that we give the Universe an age and a timeline, effectively insists that there must be a ‘now’ for the Universe at large. I confess I don’t know enough physics to answer this, but quantum entanglement reintroduces simultaneity by stealth, even if we can’t use it to send messages. One of the features of the Universe is causality. Despite the implications of both quantum mechanics and relativity theory on the physics of time, neither of them interfere with causality, despite what some may argue (and that includes entanglement). But causality requires the speed of light to separate causal events, which is why the ‘now’ we experience sees stars in the firmament up to billions of years old. So space-time makes ‘now’ a subjective experience, even to the extent that at the event horizon of a black hole ‘now’ can become frozen to an outside observer.

Addendum: I actually believe there is a universal 'now', which I've addressed in a later post (towards the end).

Are Multiverses the solution or the problem?

Notice I use the plural for something that represents a collection of universes. That’s because there are multiple versions of them; according to Max Tegmark there are 3 levels of multiverses.

I’m about to do something that I criticise others for doing: I’m going to challenge the collective wisdom of those who are much smarter and more knowledgeable than me. I’m not a physicist, let alone a cosmologist, and I’m not an academic in any field – I’m just a blogger. My only credentials are that I read a lot, especially about physics by authors who are eminently qualified in their fields. But even that does not give me any genuine qualification for what I’m about to say. Nevertheless, I feel compelled to point out something that few others are willing to cognise.

This occurred to me after I wrote my last post. In the 2 books I reference by Paul Davies (The Mind of God and The Goldilocks Enigma) he discusses and effectively dismisses the multiverse paradigm, yet I don’t mention it. Partly, that was because the post was getting too lengthy as it was, and, partly, because I didn’t need to discuss it to make the point I wished to make.

But the truth is that the multiverse is by far the most popular paradigm in both quantum physics and cosmology, and this is a relatively recent trend. What I find interesting is that it has become the default position, epistemologically, to explain what we don’t know at both of the extreme ends of physics: quantum mechanics and the cosmos.

Davies makes the point, in Mind of God (and he’s not the only one to do so), that for many scientists there seems to be a choice between accepting the multiverse or accepting some higher metaphysical explanation that many people call God. In other words, it’s a default position in cosmology because it avoids trying to explain why our universe is so special for life to emerge. Basically, it’s not special if there are an infinite number of them.

In quantum mechanics, the multiverse (or many words interpretation, as it’s called) has become the most favoured interpretation following the so-called Copenhagen interpretation championed by Niels Bohr. It’s based on the assumption that the wave function, which describes a quantum particle in Hilbert space doesn’t disappear when someone observes something or takes a measurement, but continues on in a parallel universe. So a bifurcation occurs for every electron and every photon every time it hits something. What’s more, Max Tegmark argues that if you have a car crash and die, in another universe you will continue to live. And likewise, if you have a near miss (as he did, apparently) in this universe, then in another parallel universe you died.

In both cases, cosmology and quantum mechanics, the multiverse has become the ‘easy’ explanation for events or phenomena that we don’t really understand. Basically, they are signposts for the boundaries or limits of scientific knowledge as it currently stands. String Theory or M Theory, is the most favoured cosmological model, but not only does it predict 10 spatial dimensions (as a minimum, I believe) it also predicts 10⁵⁰⁰ universes.

Now, I’m sure many will say that since the multiverse crops up in so many different places: caused by cosmological inflation, caused by string theory, caused by quantum mechanics; at least one of these multiverses must exist, right? Well no, they don’t have to exist – they’re just speculative, albeit consistent with everything we currently know about this universe, the one we actually live in.

Science, as best I understand it, historically, has always homed in on things. In particle physics it homed in on electrons, protons and neutrons, then neutrinos and quarks in all their varieties. In biology, we had evolution by natural selection then we discovered genes and then DNA, which underpinned it all. In mechanics, we had Galileo, Kepler and Newton, who finally gave us an equation for gravity, then Einstein gave us relativity theory that equated energy with mass in the most famous equation in the world, plus the curvature of space-time giving a completely geometric account of gravity that also provided a theoretical foundation for cosmology. Faraday, followed by Maxwell showed us that electricity and magnetism are inherently related and again Einstein took it further and gave an explanation of the photo-electric effect by proposing that light came in photons.

What I’m trying to say is that we made advances in science by either finding more specific events and therefore particles or by finding common elements that tied together apparently different phenomena. Kepler found the mathematical formulation that told us that planets travel in ellipses, Newton told us that gravity’s inverse square law made this possible and Einstein told us that it’s the curvature of space-time that explains gravity. Darwin and Wallace gave us a theory of evolution by natural selection, but Mendel gave us genes that explained how the inheritance happened and Francis and Crick and Franklin gave us the DNA helix that is the key ingredient for all of life.

My point is that the multiverse explanation for virtually everything we don’t know is going in the opposite direction. Now the explanation for something happening, whether it be a quantum event or the entire universe, is that every possible variation or physical manifestation is happening but we can only see the one we are witnessing. I don’t see this as an explanation for anything; I only see it as a manifestation of our ignorance.


Addendum: This is Max Tegmark providing a very cogent counterargument to mine. I think his argument from inflation is the most valid and his argument from QM multiple worlds, the most unlikely. Quantum computers won't prove parallel universes, because they are dependent on entanglement (as I understand it) which is not the same thing as multiple copies. Philip Ball makes this exact point in Beyond Weird, where he explains that so-called multiple particles only exist as probabilities; only one of which becomes 'real'.

Physics, mathematics, the Universe - is Reason its raison d'être?

I’ve just read Paul Davies’ The Mind of God: Science & The Search for Ultimate Meaning, published in 1992, so a couple of decades old now. He wrote this as a follow-up to God and the New Physics, which I read some years ago. This book is more philosophical and tends to deal with cosmology and the laws of physics – it’s as much about epistemology and the history of science as about the science itself. Despite its age, it’s still very relevant, especially in regard to the relationship between science and religion and science and mathematics, both of which he discusses in some depth.

Davies is currently at The University of Arizona (along with Lawrence Krauss, who wrote A Universe from Nothing, amongst others), but at the time he wrote The Mind of God, Davies was living and working in Australia, where he wrote a number of books over a couple of decades. He was born and educated in England, so he’s lived on 3 continents.

Davies is often quoted out of context by Christian fundamentalists, giving the impression that he supports their views, but anyone who reads his books knows that’s far from the truth. When he first arrived in America, he was sometimes criticised on blogs for ‘promoting his own version of religion’, usually by people who had heard of him but never actually read him. From my experience of reading on the internet, religion is a sensitive topic in America on both sides of the religious divide, so unless your views are black or white you can be criticised by both sides. It’s worth noting that I’ve heard or read Richard Dawkins reference Davies on more than a few occasions, always with respect, even though Davies is not atheistic.

Davies declares his philosophical position very early on, which is definitely at odds with the generally held scientific point of view regarding where we stand in the scheme of things:

I belong to the group of scientists who do not subscribe to a conventional religion but nevertheless deny that the universe is a purposeless accident… I have come to the point of view that mind – i.e., conscious awareness of the world – is not a meaningless and incidental quirk of nature, but an absolute fundamental facet of reality. That is not to say that we are the purpose for which the universe exists. Far from it. I do, however, believe that we human beings are built into the scheme of things in a very basic way.

In a fashion, this is a formulation of the Strong Anthropic Principle, which most scientists, I expect, would eschew, but it’s one that I find appealing, much for the same reasons given by Davies. The Universe is such a complex phenomenon, its evolvement (thus far) culminating in the emergence of an intelligence able to fathom its own secrets at extreme scales of magnitude in both space and time. I’ve alluded to this ‘mystery’ in previous posts, so Davies’ philosophy appeals to me personally, and his book, in part, attempts to tackle this very topic.

Amongst other things, he gives a potted history of science from the ancients (especially the Greeks, but other cultures as well) and how it has largely replaced religion as the means to understand natural phenomena at all levels. This has resulted in a ‘God-of-the-Gaps’, where, epistemologically, scientific investigations and discoveries have gradually pushed God out of the picture. He also discusses the implications of a God existing outside of space and time actually creating a ‘beginning’. The idea of a God setting everything in motion (via the Big Bang) and then watching his creation evolve over billions of years like a wound up watch (Davies’ analogy) is no more appealing than the idea of a God who has to make adjustments or rewind it occasionally, to extend the metaphor.

In discussing how the scientific enterprise evolved, in particular how we search for the cause of events, reminded me of my own attraction to science from a very early age. Children are forever asking ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions – we have a natural inclination to wonder how things work – and by the time I’d reached my teens, I’d realised that science was the best means to pursue this.

Davies gives an example of Newton coming up with mathematical laws to explain gravity that not only provided a method to calculate projectiles on Earth but also the orbits of planets in the solar system. Brian Cox in a documentary on Gravity, wrote the equation down on a piece of paper, borrowing a pen from his cameraman, to demonstrate how simple it is. But Newton couldn’t explain why everything didn’t simply collapse in on itself and evoked God as the explanation for keeping the clockwork universe functioning. So Newton’s explanation of gravity, albeit a work of genius, didn’t go far enough.

Einstein then came up with his theory that gravity was a consequence of the curvature of space-time caused by mass, but, as Cox points out in his documentary, Einstein’s explanation doesn’t go far enough either, and there are still aspects of gravity we don’t understand, at the quantum level and in black holes where the laws of physics as we know them break down. As an aside, it’s the centenary year of Einstein publishing his General Theory of Relativity and I’ve just finished reading a book (The Road to Relativity by Hanoch Gutfreund and Jurgen Renn) which goes through the original manuscript page by page explaining Einstein’s creative process.

But back to Newton’s theory, I remember, in high school, trying to understand why acceleration in a gravitational field was the same irrespective of the mass of the body, and I could only resort to the mathematics to give me an answer, which didn’t seem satisfactory. I can also remember watching a light plane in flight over our house and seeing it side-slipping in the wind. In other words, the direction of the nose was slightly offset to its direction of travel to counter a side wind. I remember imagining the vectors at play and realising that I could work them out with basic trigonometry. It made me wonder for the first time, why did mathematics provide an answer and an explanation – what was the link between mathematics, a product of the mind, and a mechanical event, a consequence of the physical world?

I’ve written quite a lot on the topic of mathematics and its relationship to the laws of nature; Davies goes into this in some depth. It is worth quoting him on the subject, especially in regard to the often stated scepticism that the laws of nature only exist in our minds.

Sometimes it is argued that laws of nature, which are attempts to capture [nature’s] regularities systematically, are imposed on the world by our minds in order to make sense of it… I believe any suggestion that the laws of nature are similar projections of the human mind [to seeing animals in the constellations, for example] is absurd. The existence of regularities in nature are a mathematical objective fact… Without this assumption that the regularities are real, science is reduced to a meaningless charade.

He adds the caveat that the laws as written are ‘human inventions, but inventions designed to reflect, albeit imperfectly, actually existing properties of nature.’ Every scientist knows that our rendition of nature’s laws have inherent limitations, despite their accuracy and success, but quite often they provide new insights that we didn’t expect. Well known examples are Maxwell’s equations predicting electromagnetic waves and the constant speed of light, and Dirac’s equation predicting anti-matter. Most famously, Einstein’s special theory of relativity predicted the equivalence of energy and mass, which was demonstrated with the detonation of the atomic bomb. All these predictions were an unexpected consequence of the mathematics.

Referring back to Gutfreund’s and Renn’s book on Einstein’s search for a theory of gravity that went beyond Newton but was consistent with Newton, Einstein knew he had to find a mathematical description that not only fulfilled all his criteria regarding relativistic space-time and the equivalence of inertial and gravitational mass, but would also provide testable predictions like the bending of light near massive stellar objects (stars) and the precession of mercury’s orbit around the sun. We all know that Riemann’s non-Euclidian geometry gave him the mathematical formulation he needed and it’s been extraordinarily successful thus far, despite the limitations I mentioned earlier.

Davies covers quite a lot in his discussion on mathematics, including a very good exposition on Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem, Turing’s proof of infinite incomputable numbers, John Conway’s game of life with cellular automata and Von Neuman’s detailed investigation of self-replicating machines, which effectively foreshadowed the mechanics of biological life before DNA was discovered.

In the middle of all this, Davies makes an extraordinary claim, based on reasoning by Oxford mathematical physicist David Deutsch (the most vocal advocate for the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics and a leader in quantum computer development). Effectively, Deutsch argues that mathematics works in the real world (including electronic calculators and computers) not because of logic but because the physical world (via the laws of physics) is amenable to basic arithmetic: addition, subtraction etc. In other words, he’s basically saying that we only have mathematics because there are objects in our world that we can count. In effect, this is exactly what Davies says.

This is not the extraordinary claim. The extraordinary claim is that there may exist universes where mathematics, as we know it, doesn’t work, because there are no discrete objects. Davies extrapolates this to say that a problem that is incomputable with our mathematics may be computable with alternative mathematics that, I assume, is not based on counting. I have to confess I have issues with this.

To start from scratch, mathematics starts with numbers, which we all become acquainted with from an early age by counting objects. It’s a small step to get addition from counting but quite a large step to then abstract it from the real world, so the numbers only exist in our heads. Multiplication is simply adding something a number of times and subtraction is simply taking away something that was added so you get back to where you started. The same is true for division where you divide something you multiplied to go backwards in your calculation. In other words, subtraction and division are just the reverse operations for addition and multiplication respectively. Then you replace some of the numbers by letters as ‘unknowns’ and you suddenly have algebra. Now you’re doing mathematics.

The point I’d make, in reference to Davies’ claim, is that mathematics without numbers is not mathematics. And numbers may be to a different base or use different symbols, but they will all produce the same mathematics. I agree with Deutsch that mathematics is intrinsic to our world – none of us would do mathematics if it wasn’t. But I find the notion that there could hypothetically exist worlds where mathematics is not relevant or is not dependent on number, absurd, to use one of Davies’ favourite utterances.

Earlier in the book, Davies expresses scepticism at the idea that the laws of nature could arise with the universe – that they didn’t exist beforehand. In other words, he’s effectively arguing that they are transcendent. Since the laws are firmly based in mathematics, it’s hard to argue that the laws are transcendent but the mathematics is not.

I have enormous respect for Davies, and I wonder if I’m misrepresenting him. But this is what he said, albeit out of context:

Imagine a world in which the laws of physics were very different, possibly so different that discreet objects did not exist. Some of the mathematical operations that are computable in our world would not be so in this world, and vice versa.

Speaking of mathematical transcendence, he devotes almost an entire chapter to the underlying mystery of mathematics’ role in explicating natural phenomena through physics, with particular reference to mathematical Platonists like Kurt Godel, Eugene Wigner and Roger Penrose. But it’s a quote from Richard Feynman, who was not a Platonist as far as I know, that sums up the theme.

When you discover these things, you get the feeling that they were true before you found them. So you get the idea that somehow they existed somewhere… Well, in the case of physics we have double trouble. We come across these mathematical interrelationships but they apply to the universe, so the problem of where they are is doubly confusing… Those are philosophical questions that I don’t know how to answer.

Interestingly, in his later book, The Goldilocks Enigma (2006), Davies distances himself from mathematical Platonism and seems to espouse John Wheeler’s view that both the mathematics and the laws of nature emerged ‘higgledy-piggledy’ and are not transcendent. He also tackles the inherent conflict between the Strong Anthropic Principle, which he seems to support, and a non-teleological universe, which science virtually demands, but I’ll address that later.

Back to The Mind of God, he discusses in depth one of the paradigms of our age that the Universe can be totally understood by algorithms leading to the possibility that the Universe we live in is a Matrix-like computer simulation. Again, referring to The Goldilocks Enigma, he discounts this view as a variation on Intelligent Design. Towards the end of Mind of God, he discusses metaphysical, even mystical possibilities, but not as a replacement for science.

But one interesting point he makes, that I’ve never heard of before, was proposed by James Hartle and Murray Gellmann, who claim:

…that the existence of an approximately classical world, in which well-defined material objects exist in space, and in which there is a well-defined concept of time, requires special cosmic initial conditions.

In other words, they’re saying that the Universe would be a purely quantum world with everything in superpositional states (nothing would be fixed in space and time) were it not for ‘the special quantum state in which the universe originated.’ James Hartle developed with Stephen Hawking the Hawking-Hartle model of the Universe where time evolved out of a 4th dimension in a quantum big bang. It may be that Hartle’s and Gellmann’s conjecture is dependent on the veracity of that particular model. The link between the two ideas is only alluded to by Davies.

Apropos to the book’s title, Davies spends an entire chapter on ‘God’ arguments, in particular cosmological and ontological arguments that require a level of philosophical nous that, frankly, I don’t possess. Having said that, it became obvious to me that arguments for God are more dependent on subjective ‘feelings’ than rational requirements. After lengthy discussions on ‘necessary being’ and a ‘contingent universe’, and the tension if not outright contradiction the two ideas pose, Davies pretty well sums up the situation with this:

What seems to come through such analyses loud and clear is the fundamental incompatibility of a completely timeless, unchanging, necessary God with the notion of creativity in nature, with a universe that can change and evolve and bring forth the genuinely new…

In light of this, the only ‘God’ that makes sense to me is one that evolves like ‘Its’ creation and, in effect, is a consequence of it rather than its progenitor.

One of the points that Davies makes is how the Universe is not strictly deterministic or teleological, yet it allows for self-organisation and the evolvement of complexity; in essence, a freedom of evolvement without dictating it. I would call this pseudo-teleological and is completely consistent with both quantum and chaotic events, which dominate all natural phenomena from cosmological origins to the biological evolution of life.

This brings one back to the quote from Davies at the beginning of this discussion that the universe is not a meaningless accident. Inherent in the idea of meaningfulness is the necessary emergence of consciousness and its role as the prime source of reason. If not for reason the Universe would have no cognisance of its own existence and it would be truly ‘purposeless’ in every way. It is for this reason that people believe in God, in whatever guise they find him (or her, as the case may be). Because we can find reason in living our lives and use reason to understand the Universe, the idea that the Universe itself has no reason is difficult to reconcile.

Ruminations on The Sparrow (SF novel by Mary Doria Russell, 1996)

Russell is a paleoanthropologist and so is one of the characters in her book (Anne) whom one thinks may represent the author’s world view, especially concerning religion and God. Anne is basically a good natured and tolerant sceptic.

Whether Anne is representative of the author’s point of view or not, I found Russell’s ideas of God, as expressed explicitly by the main character, Emilio Sandoz, a Jesuit (but also implicitly by others) to be old-fashioned, even anachronistic. The idea of God as a father figure and we being ‘His’ children is one I rejected in my teens, especially after reading Camus’ The Plague (La Peste).  So, in some ways, I think Russell is applying the same literary devices as Camus (pointless and undeserved human suffering) to challenge this particular version of God that many of us grew up with.

At one point the character, Anne, asks Emilio if it’s alright for her to ‘hate God’. Towards the end of the novel, another Jesuit priest proposes the idea (not original, I suspect) that God had to make room for the existence of the Universe by removing Himself, which is really a Deistic version of God that one sometimes finds appealing to scientists, because such a God would be non-interventionist. If one takes this to its logical conclusion, there is no reason for this God to have empathy or be the anthropomorphic version we are familiar with from the Bible.

The interesting point is that people sometimes ‘find God’ in the midst of their own suffering. I think of Viktor Frankl (an Auschwitz survivor) who wrote Man’s Search for Meaning and The Unconscious God, who argued that a person can find meaning through adversity. But this supports my own view that God is something that people find within themselves and is not dependent on making God responsible for whatever happens in the world.

As Russell’s novel makes clear, if one makes God responsible for everything that happens, then He’s responsible for the suffering as well as the triumphs of the human spirit. At the start of the story’s journey, the protagonists believe that everything they’re doing is part of God’s plan – it’s meant to be – but at the end, this premise is effectively negated.

One of the attractions of Sci-Fi for me, even when I was quite young, is that it allows what-if scenarios, alternative societies. I would suggest that Frank Herbert and Ursula Le Guin were particularly adept at rendering alternative social structures. Russell’s alien society is particularly well thought through and makes one consider how it may have evolved on Earth had other hominids (like Neanderthals) survived into an agricultural world. As it is, we were (and still are) very good at exploiting economically weaker sectors of our societies, at all levels, from global to local.

There is no clear resolution, at least for me, to the ‘God question’, which is a central theme of her book. One can end up ‘hating’ God, if one follows the logical conclusion from the book’s premise to its confounding end, but I believe that the characters in the story are simply following an antiquated version of God.

P.S. I should point out that this book won the 1998 Arthur C. Clarke Award.

Oliver Sacks (9 July 1933 - 30 August 2015)

Oliver Sacks died last Sunday, but I only learned about it today. He is best known for his book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and the movie Awakenings, based on another book, where he is played by the late Robin Williams with Robert de Niro playing one of his patients whom he brought out of a catatonic state, even if only temporarily.

I've heard and watched interviews with Oliver Sacks when he visited Australia, which I believe he did a number of times. I wasn't aware that he was born in England (educated at Oxford) because his career as a neurologist really started in New York where he moved in 1965 and he was living in Manhattan when he died. I was also unaware that he was gay, which just goes to show that it was a non-issue for him.

Sacks was unusual for someone in his profession in that he really cared very deeply about the people whom he studied and showed a remarkable empathy for people that most of us would dismiss as unintelligible if not unintelligent. He was a remarkably good writer, and prolific, and like many scientists who can engage the public through their literary achievements, he was often criticised and devalued by some of his colleagues.

I confess that I've only read the one tome by Sacks (The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat), a book of case studies showing the imperfections of the human mind, but in a way that made the reader aware of its intrinsic resilience and evoking dignity, not pity, for his subjects. So even before I heard or saw him speak, I was a fan. He combined a deep humility with a stimulating intelligence - a very rare individual indeed.

This is a well researched and very fitting obituary in The New York Times.

I will take the liberty of borrowing this quote, which is so apposite:

“And now, weak, short of breath, my once-firm muscles melted away by cancer, I find my thoughts, increasingly, not on the supernatural or spiritual, but on what is meant by living a good and worthwhile life — achieving a sense of peace within oneself. I find my thoughts drifting to the Sabbath, the day of rest, the seventh day of the week, and perhaps the seventh day of one’s life as well, when one can feel that one’s work is done, and one may, in good conscience, rest.”

Far from Men (Loin des Hommes)

This is a movie starring Viggo Mortensen, set in Algiers in 1954 and based on a short story by Albert Camus. Watching it, I was conscious of Camus’ philosophy all through it, and was not that surprised when I saw an online interview with Mortensen, who maintained that both he and the director (David Oelhoffen) drew heavily on Camus’ beliefs and principles when formulating the character of Daru.

As a friend of mine (who had already seen it) told me: it has similarities with another French movie (Of Gods and Men) both in terms of themes and geography. I reviewed Of Gods and Men (Des homes et des dieux) in June 2011. Both films involve men caught up in war against their wills and determined not to take sides, even when literally caught in the middle.

Camus had experience both in Algiers and in the French resistance during WWII, so he’s well equipped to tackle the subject matter. Viggo Mortensen’s character, Daru, teaches French to Arab children in a very remote location. Later in the movie we learn he’s lost his wife (not told how) and that he was an officer in the army during WWII (we assume, as the movie’s ‘now’ is the 1950s).

In the opening scenes, Daru is given custody of an Arab, Mohammed, who killed his cousin apparently, and whom he’s very reluctant to take charge of for reasons of humanity as much as inconvenience to his vocation as teacher.

Watching this movie I was reminded of a dream I had many decades ago where I was caught between 2 gangs in a pub (can only happen in a dream) and told I had to take sides. I surprised myself by refusing, even though it made an enemy of me to both sides, but, of course, I woke up before I had to deal with the consequences. That dream has stayed with me ever since, because it’s a metaphor for many situations we find ourselves in where we are asked to choose sides. In this film, this situation recurs repeatedly for its protagonist and we appreciate that this is Camus’ idealism tested in the crucible of battle where life and death, loyalty and execution are only separated by the thinnest of margins.

I haven’t read Camus’ original story, but I know enough about him to know that this character represents an ideal that he would have aspired to, as do most of us, but for which we are rarely tested and even fewer of us would pass.

Its relevance to the modern world is how easily it is to demonise Arabs and followers of Islam, in an Us and Them world. It’s worth watching this interview with Mortensen (though skip the first 4 minutes, which should have been cut) because he explains better than me how his world view is not so dissimilar to the character's, Daru, whom he plays.

Some ruminations on a debate about the existence of God

I came across this debate on YouTube between Sye Ten Bruggencate and Matt Dillahunty (31 May 2014): “Is it Reasonable to Believe that God Exists?” I’ve come across Sye before and even argued with him on Stephen Law’s blog (or attempted to) a few years back; probably more than a few years, actually. He’s a self-described presuppositionist and a member of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, who lives in Ontario, while Matt is a former Christian and now hosts a cable TV show, The Atheist Experience, based in Austin, Texas.

The debate is close to 2 hrs, including questions from the audience, which is followed by the participants’ ‘summing up’. I watched the entire debate partly because I was curious how Matt would handle Sye, who’s debating style is to make unsupported assertions then try and put the burden of proof, or disproof, onto his opponent. To give an example from my own experience: he once asked me to provide evidence that God had not made himself manifest to humankind (I’m paraphrasing from memory). I said I can’t provide evidence of something that didn’t happen, not happening. And his response was that it was my assertion therefore I had to prove it.

I was impressed by Matt’s temperament as well as his arguments, where he was very careful and precise whilst not being difficult to follow, even though he spoke quickly to ensure he stayed within the time limits imposed. Both of them were well prepared and had obviously researched each other’s positions. Sye cleverly used video excerpts of Matt to not only pre-empt Matt’s arguments but to support his own counter-arguments. Matt used humour in combination with rigid logic and precise language.

Sye’s argument was simplistic in the extreme: “It’s reasonable to believe that which is true; it’s true that God exists; therefore it’s reasonable to believe that God exists.” In his summing up Matt called it ‘kindergarten theology’ and ‘kindergarten philosophy’.

One of Sye’s key points of argument (which I’ve seen him use before) is to claim that his opponent can only argue from his (Sye’s) world view, and his world view is provided by God. He argues that any other world view is ‘absurd’, and in Matt’s case, Matt could, by his own admission, be a ‘brain in a vat’. However, Matt clarifies this by saying that he doesn’t believe he’s a brain in a vat, but it’s a well known philosophical conundrum that this can’t be proven. I first came across this in Stephen Law’s Philosopher’s Gym about 12 years ago, before I discovered him on his blog. In the debate, this logically led to a discussion on solipsism, which, Matt argued, can’t be proved to be false.

I’ve discussed this before, and, whilst all of us believe that everyone else we meet is not a figment of our imagination, there is one situation, which we have all experienced, where this is actually true. Neither Sye nor Matt mentioned this but that situation is a dream. A dream is solipsistic. So how do we know that we’re not in a dream. Because we have shared memories when we’re not in a dream. If I have a dream that includes someone I know, then when I next meet them in real life, they have no memory of that interaction, only I do. So unless one’s entire life is a dream then solipsism is a non sequitur if we have shared experiences that we can both remember.

One of the things that came out of this debate for me, and which Matt touched on briefly, is that if you have no common ground to begin with then you really can’t debate a subject. Specifically, Matt pointed out that he and Sye had different definitions of truth, which logically means that they would never be able to agree on whether something was true or not. I realised that it would be pointless for me to engage in an argument with someone whose entire world view is premised on fiction: a book of mythological stories. Sye argues that everyone knows that God exists, including babies (when Matt specifically asked him). No one can argue with that and Sye knows it, which is why he claims he’s unbeatable when it comes to arguments about the existence of God.

Matt argues that knowledge is a subset of beliefs, which I hadn’t considered before, and truth is based on evidence. Sye responded that evidence is something you take into a court and you become the judge but you can’t judge God. But if you don’t believe in God then that argument is irrelevant and without a God who actually intervenes in the assessment, one must use one’s own intellect to judge the evidence, which is what we all do all the time otherwise we wouldn’t be able to live.

So Sye’s basis for truth is God, which is revealed in scripture, and my basis for objective truth is mathematics, so we couldn’t be further apart. Sye would argue that I need his world view to believe that, because mathematics wouldn’t exist without God.  However, I would argue that mathematics trumps God because even God can’t change a prime number to a non-prime number or vice versa or change the value of Pi or make 2 + 2 = 5.  If Sye was to respond that God is mathematics then I might agree with him, but that has nothing to do with scripture.


Addendum: I've given this some more thought, plus I've watched the entire debate again. I believe I can challenge Sye's world view. Notice I say 'challenge' because that's the best one can do; I don't believe I can get him to change his world view any more than I believe he could get me to change mine.

Just to clarify my own position, I'm not anti-theist per se (as I've explained elsewhere); I believe God is something that people find within themselves, but that's another argument for another time.

My challenge is to do with my last paragraph of my original post, because I believe that mathematics gives us the only transcendental truths we know, whilst acknowledging that not everyone agrees with that position. By transcendental, I mean that mathematical truths exist independently of the human mind and even the universe. As someone once joked: If tomorrow the universe ceased to exist, the only part of science one could continue to do would be mathematics (that’s me paraphrasing John Barrow quoting Dave Rusin). I've discussed this position elsewhere.

My challenge to Sye is that mathematics even transcends God, for the reasons I pointed out in that closing paragraph. God can't change mathematics any more than we can: he can't make 2 + 2 = 5, amongst even more esoteric mathematical concepts like changing primes. If God can't change them, then logically they are independent of God. So I have a means of finding 'truths' that transcend God, therefore I don't need God in order for them to be true. What's more, mathematics provides 'truths' that anyone with the requisite intellectual ability can discover, without reference to any religious scripture or any divine revelation.

Freedom, justice, happiness and truth

This is the subject of the Question of the Month in Philosophy Now (Issue 108, June / July 2015). The actual question: What's The More Important: Freedom, Justice, Happiness, Truth? Please give and justify your rankings in less than 400 words.

Someone I showed this to said that the question was grammatically incorrect because it should be 'What's The Most Important'. However, I pointed out that then you would only discuss one of them and not all four.

Obviously, I don't always respond to the Question of the Month, even though I'm a regular subscriber and have been for a number of years. I'm not sure why I chose to respond to this one, except that it looked like a challenge. It's certainly something that I hadn't entertained before.

What's interesting is that when I started to write it, I had no idea how I'd rank them. I've done this before and it's actually very satisfying to resolve a philosophical issue simply by writing about it without much contemplation beforehand. It's similar to the spontaneity one finds when writing fiction, where I believe it's a necessary part of the process. Below is my submission.


To answer this question one must contextualise it and the context I choose is relationships. Relationships between spouses, relationships between governments and the people they govern, relationships between parents and children, relationships between employers and employees and relationships between figures of authority and the public at large. Because all these qualities: freedom, justice, happiness and truth; may have other contexts, but it’s in relationships that they are most important and most inclined to be abused or perverted. And there is one quality I would put above them all and upon which they are all dependent and that is trust. Because once trust is lost or suspect, then everything one values in a relationship becomes compromised at best and forfeit at worst.

Truth is the cornerstone of trust, so, arguably, truth is the lynch pin, but, if trust is lost, truth becomes a casualty. Honesty to oneself comes first, because, without that, one can’t be honest to anyone else. Truth informs justice because justice without truth is injustice. Justice and freedom are interdependent and require balance. Paradoxically, freedom is dependent on justice, because without justice we would have anarchy and only the powerful would have freedom. Here trust is paramount, because justice that doesn’t incorporate trust becomes oppression, and oppression is antithetical to freedom. So freedom arises from justice but only when trust is preserved. Happiness is intrinsically linked to freedom; suicide and self-harm are often the consequences of freedom curtailed, especially when it’s extreme enough to eliminate hope. Freedom and hope are partners, with hope being essential to psychological well-being; a precursor to happiness.

So there is a logical sequence of dependence, therefore importance. You can’t have justice without truth, you can’t have freedom without justice and you can’t have happiness without freedom, but requisite to them all is trust.

The fine-tuned Universe

I’ve discussed this before in relation to John D. Barrow’s revelations concerning the fine structure constant, amongst other things, in his excellent book, The Constants of Nature. A recent episode of Catalyst, called Custom Universe also raised this issue, plus the latest issue of New Scientist (6 June 2015, pp.37-39) explaining the extraordinary fine difference in mass between neutrons and protons (that can’t be explained with our current knowledge of physics) and, in particular, the consequences of small variations to that difference.

In other words, the stability of atoms, including the prototype atom, hydrogen, is dependent on the neutron being slightly heavier than the proton by 0.14% (the neutron is 939.6 Mev and the proton is 938.3 Mev). Making the difference much bigger would result in more complex atoms becoming impossible to create and much smaller would have converted all hydrogen atoms into inert helium, therefore no fusion in stars and no other atoms. Smaller still or making protons heavier than neutrons would have resulted in protons decaying into neutrons and therefore no atoms at all.

This is just one of many examples of fine-tuning in our universe that makes the evolution of complex life forms, and therefore intelligent life, possible. And, of course, we still don’t know why matter outweighed anti-matter in the early stages of the universe by 1 billion and 1 to 1 billion, otherwise the universe would be just radiation and nothing else.

The standard answer to this is the multiverse, which postulates that there exists up to an infinite number of alternative universes, and, logically, we must exist in the one universe that allows intelligent life, like us, to evolve. Brian Cox (in Human Universe) uses the analogy of a lottery. When we buy a lottery ticket the chances of winning is some astronomical number, and in our individual lifetimes, very few of us ever win. However, as Cox points out, someone wins every time, and that’s the same with the multiverse. We win because we are in it and all the others that don’t win are unknown and unknowable because no consciousness can evolve in them to find out. This is known as the weak Anthropic Principle, which I’ve discussed elsewhere.

What many people don’t realise is that if there is an infinite number of universes then there must be an infinite number of you and me, because, in an infinite amount of space and time, anything that can happen once must happen an infinite number of times – a mathematical truism.

But many see the multiverse as a cop-out, because it explains everything and nothing. It says all things are possible therefore we are possible, problem solved. It provides an answer with no explanation. And, at its extreme interpretation, it says that everything is possible an infinite number of times.

Max Tegmark advocates this extreme interpretation in his book, Our Mathematical Universe, where he postulates up to 4 levels of multiverses, including the quantum multiverse. In fact, Tegmark conjured up a thought experiment, whereby if you die you just find yourself in an alternative quantum universe, and therefore you are effectively immortal. To take this to its logical conclusion, there must exist a universe where everyone lives forever, therefore we all eventually find Heaven, or at least, its mathematically plausible equivalent.

Equally relevant to this topic, is the issue of biological evolution, and I’ve just finished reading an excellent book on this subject, Life Ascending; The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution by Nick Lane. Now many people (including Richard Dawkins, I imagine) will take issue with the word ‘invention’ and ‘evolution’ appearing in the same sentence, let alone on the cover of a book. But I doubt Dawkins would take issue with any of the material between the covers, even in the places where his name is cited. Lane, of course, is aware of some people’s sensitivity to the word ‘invention’ in this context, and is quick to explain he’s not referring to a ‘creator’ but to the extraordinary inventiveness inherent in the process of natural selection. In the same way, and for the same reasons, I have no problem in appropriating the word ‘design’ when discussing evolution because natural selection is nature’s design methodology and its more significant ‘inventions’ are the subject of the book, hence the totally apposite title.

Lane structures the book into 10 chapters that cover his ‘ten inventions’: 1) The Origin of Life; 2) DNA; 3) Photosynthesis; 4)The Complex Cell; 5) Sex; 6) Movement; 7) Sight; 8) Hot Blood; 9)Consciousness; 10) Death.

I have to say that this is the best book on evolution that I’ve read, not least because Lane has such a commanding knowledge of his subject and a very accessible style of prose. Lane is a biochemist by training and it’s his ability to explain what happens at a molecular level that gives the book so much intellectual weight. He appears up to date on all the latest discoveries and provides historical context everywhere; so we learn how theories have developed, sometimes stalled, sometimes been disproved and sometimes yet to be confirmed. Anyone who studies science, at whatever level, appreciates that we never know everything and we never will, but that we are constantly uncovering newly discovered nature’s secrets that would astound the likes of Darwin and his contemporaries with their depth and ingenuity.

All the chapters contain information that I wasn’t aware of previously, but the first two chapters are probably the most revelatory and the most enthralling. One suspects that it’s at this level that Lane is most intrigued and therefore most knowledgeable on all the latest developments. I won’t go into details, but he provides the best arguments I’ve come across on how life, at its simplest form, may have evolved from pure chemistry. In light of the title of this post, I was struck on more than one occasion on how just the right elements or combination of factors arose to produce the forebears of life as we now know it.

This is all good grist for those who believe we have a special destiny, and that there is the ‘hand’ of some immaterial force behind it all. The other extreme is to be dismissive of this view as ‘weak-minded’ and ‘unintelligent’, yet I find the idea that our existence is an accident that should never have happened equally absurd and, dare-I-say-it, unintelligent. My own view, that I’ve expressed elsewhere, is that the Universe is brim-full of purpose yet that purpose has evolved with no plan or blueprint in sight, no pre-destined goal, just a set of laws that have allowed it all to happen.

If there is a ‘creator’, then ‘he’, ‘she’ or ‘it’ works in a very strange fashion, certainly not in the manner that creationists and ID advocates would have us believe, because the ‘design’ has been done piece-meal with many wrong turns, much trial and error and many catastrophes on a grand scale, of which we could easily become one ourselves. In comparison to the epic story of life, we are like mayflies, existing for less than a day, thus far – it’s a sobering thought.

In regard to the ridiculous debate on religion versus science, it is worth quoting Lane himself from the last paragraph of his book.

I think the picture painted here in this book is true. Life most surely evolved, along the lines described here. That is not dogma, but evidence tested in reality and corrected accordingly. Whether this grand picture is compatible with faith in God, I do not know. For some people, intimately acquainted with evolution, it is; for others, it is not.

Addendum: This is a YouTube interview with physicist, Leonard Susskind, who discusses the fine-tuned universe on Closer to Truth, which appears to be a series of interviews with well known scientists and philosophers giving us their interpretation of philosophical cum scientific conundrums.

Susskind, not surprisingly, delivers a very compelling argument for the multi-verse, or, as he calls it, the mega-verse, and, in so doing, references String or M Theory as supporting this view. Personally, I'm a bit of a sceptic of String theory and its many variations, as it reminds me of Ptolemy's epicycles, but I may well be proven wrong in the near or far future. Only time will tell.

But what struck me as I listened to Lenny's argument, was that, even if it's true, it still means that our universe is very special, amongst all the possibilities. However, as I pointed out in my main post, if there are an infinite number of universes then it's not special at all.

Ex Machina – the movie

This is a good film for anyone interested in AI at a philosophical level. It even got reviewed in New Scientist and they don’t normally review movies. It’s a clever psychological thriller, so you don’t have to be a nerd to enjoy it, though there are some pseudo-nerdy conversations that are better assimilated if the audience has some foreknowledge. Examples are the Turing Test and the Mary thought experiment regarding colour.

Both of these are explained through expositional dialogue in the movie, rather seamlessly I should add, so ignorance is not necessarily a barrier. The real Turing test for AI would be if an AI could outsmart a human – not in a game of chess or a knowledge-based TV quiz show, but behaviourally – and this is explored as well. Like all good psychological thrillers, there is a clever twist at the end which is not predictable but totally consistent within the context of the narrative. In other words, it’s a well written and well executed drama irrespective of its philosophical themes.

One of the issues not addressed in the movie – because it would spoil it – is the phenomenon known as the ‘uncanny valley’, which I’ve written about here. Basically, when androids become almost human-like in appearance and movement, we become very uncomfortable. This doesn’t happen in the movie, and, of course, it’s not meant to, but it’s the real piece of deception in the film. Despite appearances that the character, Ava, is a machine because we can literally see through parts of her body, we all know that she is really an actress playing a part.

I’ve argued in the aforementioned post that I believe the source of this discomfort is the lack of emotional empathy. In the movie, however, the AI demonstrates considerable empathy, or at least appears to, which is one of the many subtle elements explored. This is very good science fiction because it explores a possible future and deals with it on a philosophical level, including ethical considerations, as well as entertaining us.

There are nods to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Asimov’s I Robot, although that may be my own particular perspective. I’ve created AI’s in my own fiction, but completely different to this. In fact, I deliberately created a disembodied AI, which develops a ‘relationship’ with my protagonist, and appears to display ‘loyalty’. However I explain this with the concept of ‘attachment’ programming, which doesn’t necessarily require empathy as we know it.

I bring this up, because the 2 stories, Ex Machina and mine, explore AI but with different philosophical perspectives and different narrative outcomes.

In memory of B.B. King - 16 September 1925 to 14 May 2015 - a True Legend

This is a trailer for a documentary on B.B. King released last year. It says it all, really.

When I think of the Blues, I think of B.B. King.

Salt of the Earth – the movie

I saw this film last weekend, and, once again, I think this is a movie everyone should see. I said that about the last film I reviewed (Citizenfour), and, in both cases, despite winning awards, they’re only being shown in one cinema in the whole of Melbourne (yes, the same cinema).

Salt of the Earth is a documentary about the life and work of Brasilian photographer, Sebastio Salgado, from around 1969 to 2013, even though he speaks French throughout the entire film.

Salgado was educated as an economist and worked as one in Europe before he made the unorthodox choice of devoting his life to recording peoples and events throughout the world, although, in the latter part of his career, he reinvented himself as a nature photographer. His son, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, co-directed the documentary with legendary German filmmaker, Wim Wenders.

The most famous photograph taken by Salgado, which some of you may have seen, is of the Serra Pelada gold mine in Brasil (taken in 1986), where people look like ants climbing impossibly steep wooden ladders, laden with bags of dirt and covered in dirt themselves.

There are many layers to this film. Firstly, there is the subject of Salgado himself, who is an extraordinary human being, not least because he goes to places and witnesses events that very few of us have the courage to attempt. Over 40 years he has recorded and chronicled humanity at its best and worst – it’s like he is willing to go and witness what the rest of us have no compulsion to see.

The film is 1hr 45 mins, much of it taken up with monologue from Salgado and full screen projections of his black and white stills. Yet this is anything but boring cinema. His photographs alone have an emotional force that is often attempted yet rarely achieved in cinema. No one leaves this film without being deeply moved and questioning the very place of humanity in the world. Whilst that last statement reads like hyperbole, I will attempt to provide the context that leads me to make it.

Salgado himself is relatively quiet spoken for someone who has seen so much and travelled so widely. Yet his voice is an eminently suitable companion to his photographs, providing a gravitas with no hint of embellishment. The documentary not only tracks his private life but also the series of ‘projects’ he embarked upon, which provides the film’s structure.

Salgado is not someone who simply photographs people, often in circumstances most of us (in the West) can never imagine, he goes and stays with them, in refugee camps in Africa or the jungles of South America, for example. He really does chronicle their lives and, in so doing, captures with his lens their pain or suffering or ebullience that the rest of us can readily empathise with.

He records the Balkan wars, the oil fires in Kuwait, the droughts and consequential famine in Ethiopia and the genocide in Rwanda. This last event made him question humanity itself, and because you literally see the world through his eyes, via his camera, you find yourself doing the same. It was after this that he reinvented himself as a nature photographer, and it is in this role that I feel he produced some of his best work.

There is a point in this movie where I found myself wondering: do we, as a species, deserve the responsibility of being caretakers of this planet? Because that’s the role we have, whether we want it or not. This film brought this home to me more than anything else I’ve seen or read.

It creates a perspective that we rarely contemplate: the petty lives we live in the West, driven by economic consumerism; whilst much of the world is exploited, starved, imprisoned by inescapable poverty; and its wildlife pushed evermore into smaller enclaves, often pursued by poachers.

We have the knowledge and the technology to make the world a better place – I don’t doubt that – but whilst the entire Western world is driven by the accumulation of wealth at the expense of everything else, we will never achieve it.

Morality is totally in the eye of the beholder

The most obvious and topical examples of this truism are the behaviours of members of IS towards ‘outsiders’. But this post is not about IS; nevertheless, it is about a clash of cultures – in this case a clash of ‘old’ versus ‘new’ in the same society, which happens to be India.

Last night I saw a documentary, 2 years in the making, by British filmmaker, Leslee Udwin, called India’s Daughter about the rape and murder of Jyoti Singh in December 2012 – a crime at once so brutal and primal that it shocked the entire civilised world. The film was due to be broadcast worldwide on International Women’s Day in March, including India, but the Indian Government unexpectedly banned the documentary from being shown in the country, ‘claiming it was an affront to women’ (according to the ABC). This about-face on the part of the Indian Government is not so surprising when the documentary itself reveals the schism that exists in Indian society on the issue of women’s roles and women’s rights.

This blog is seen and read all over the world, including India, so I hope that Indians do indeed read this, especially since they were not allowed access to the documentary.

I’ve written before that morality for most people is determined by social and cultural norms, hence the title of this post. I’ve read many articles and essays that attempt to provide a meta-ethics or an objective morality, but experience and observation suggest that culture is the overriding factor in determining someone’s personal moral compass. This incident demonstrates how 2 conflicting cultural norms can lead to tragic and fatal consequences for an individual. Written in that language, one might consider that the 2 opposing cultural norms may have equal validity, but, when it leads to a crime, comparable in nature to Jack the Ripper’s, it’s hard to maintain that relativist position.

I’ve argued previously that moral relativism is an impossible position to hold because no one can hold or defend opposing moral viewpoints. This documentary is a case in point, because, whilst it demonstrates that one’s moral viewpoint is indeed in the eye of the beholder, it also demonstrates that 2 opposing moral viewpoints cannot be sustained.

Jyoti Singh was an only daughter of a poor family who put herself through university to earn a degree in medicine, whilst working in a call centre, managing on 3-4 hrs sleep per night. So she’s an extraordinary modern success story, an inspiration for any young woman wanting to pursue a career in whatever field; but becoming a doctor, given her circumstances, is an especially outstanding achievement.

She had earned her degree and was about to start her 6mth internship the following Monday. Knowing that she would have little free time, she went to see a movie with a male friend on the Sunday night – they went and saw Life of Pi. Nothing could be more ‘ordinary’. I have seen that movie and it gave a particular resonance, because no one expects that, after being entertained by a celebrated movie, they would be murdered on their way home.

But this is where we have a clash of cultures because she was trapped on a bus with a pack of animals(6) who not only raped her but disembowelled her. I use the term ‘pack of animals’ because they were not human. No human could do that to another human. In committing that act, they gave up all rights to be called human.

The documentary includes interviews with the driver of the bus and the 2 lawyers who defended the gang. These interviews, more than anything else, reveal the cultural schism that I referred to earlier, because they all defended the gang and blamed the girl – that’s their moral perspective based on their cultural norms.

The driver maintained that he didn’t partake in the ‘incident’ (he just drove the bus), which at one point he corrects himself and calls an ‘accident’, yet he defends the actions of the others and goes so far as to say, that in the case of rape, ‘the girl is more responsible than the boy’. What’s more, he argues that she shouldn’t have fought back, then she wouldn’t have been harmed. In other words, even the fatal wounds she suffered were her own fault. But he also, tellingly, said it was a ‘message’, implying that she had forfeited all rights to her dignity and her life by going to a movie with a male friend.

The truth is that he knew nothing about her: he didn’t know that she was a recently qualified doctor or the sacrifices she had made to earn that qualification or that she had a future that he could never even dream about. No, she had no value as a human being because, in his eyes and those of his partners-in-crime, she had no self-respect. It was obvious from conversations with the filmmaker that he considered rape to be a normal activity. A prison psychiatrist related that they believed they had the ‘right to enjoy themselves’. Whereas others enjoyed themselves using money they did so with their ‘courage’ and that legitimised it in their minds. What strikes one straightaway is that the girl’s enjoyment is irrelevant – in fact, implicit in this rationalisation is the belief that her suffering: physical, emotional, psychological; actually contributes to their enjoyment.

But this admission highlights another problem in a society like India’s. There is effectively no outlet for normal sexual appetites for young men because of their strict moral approbations towards women, and this is what makes rape a normal and acceptable activity in the eyes of those who practice it. What’s more, as the bus driver points out, it’s easy to justify when it’s the girl’s own fault.

But whilst the defensive arguments of the bus driver were understandable if impossible to empathise with, the arguments of the 2 lawyers beggared belief. One lawyer, to distinguish him from the other, I will call the ‘unctuous’ lawyer – the other lawyer didn’t even deserve the title, human being, but I will come to that later.

The unctuous lawyer described a woman as something precious like a flower or a jewel that needed to be protected. In ‘our culture’, to use his own words, she is not allowed outside the home. But this is a contradiction because a person who is not allowed to interact with the outside world has no value whatsoever, except of course to be a servant to her husband and a mother to her children. So she’s a ‘jewel’ or ‘flower’ who should never be seen in public. He blames ‘filmy’ culture because it portrays women as independent (he didn’t say that but it was implied) which, in his mind, is a fantasy. And although he never says it, it’s a corollary to his viewpoint that a woman should never use her brain to become a doctor or a lawyer (like himself). So a woman can be ‘precious’ as long as she’s never seen and as long as she makes no attempt to use her brain as a man can.

But the second lawyer publicly stated on TV that if he had a sister or a daughter who committed ‘adultery’, he would pour petrol on her and set fire to her in front of the entire family. That’s his mentality. A person, who publicly admits that he would burn his sister or daughter alive, doesn’t deserve the title, human being. And he’s a lawyer. Does he consider then, that a young single woman going to a movie with her boyfriend is tantamount to committing adultery?

One can’t watch this documentary without feeling the pain of the parents and without contemplating the senseless waste of a young life that had so much promise. The mother, when discussing her daughter’s situation, having just earned her degree and on the brink of starting a career as a doctor, made the following statement: ‘It seems that God didn’t like this. He ended everything.’ Implicit in this statement is a belief that God was punishing her and her daughter for daring to follow an independent career. It is not surprising that people feel a perverse sense of guilt when they lose someone so close to them. Also, just before dying, her daughter apologised for ‘all the trouble she had caused’ – her last words, apparently. This is the culture that India has imparted onto its women: that they take the burden of responsibility and guilt, whilst those who commit the most heinous crime see no wrong in what they’ve done. It’s an upside down perverse sort of morality.

Young people, from universities mostly, protested for over a month, despite being subjected to tear gas and fire hose dowsing by police. And this is probably why the film has been banned, because the protests could easily start anew. But a consequence of the protests was that the government set up a panel to review rape laws and make recommendations. One of the members of the panel, Leila Seth, a woman and former Chief Justice, held hope that young people would challenge and ultimately change the culture, which is the only long term solution. She made the logical and true statement that the key was the education of women, because only then would women attain a sense of self-worth that men would also value and acknowledge.

Emmy Noether's birthday today

Google has honoured Emmy Noether's birthday. Few people know who she is but, amongst other contributions to mathematics, she proved a theorem, known as Noether's theorem, that underpins all of physics because it deals with symmetry and conservation laws of energy and momentum.

The mathematics is well over my head, but I appreciate its ramifications. Basically, it deals with the mathematical relationships between symmetry in space and conservation of momentum, symmetry in time and conservation of energy and symmetry of rotation and conservation of angular momentum. This applies in particular to quantum mechanics, though conservation laws are equally relevant in relativity theory.

Symmetry, in this context, is about translation: translations in space, translations in time and translations in rotation. Richard Feynman gives a good exposition in Six Not-So-Easy Pieces, where I came across it for the first time, and he describes it thus: ...a most profound and beautiful thing, is that, in quantum mechanics, for each of the rules of symmetry there is a corresponding conservation law; there is a definite connection between the laws of conservation and the symmetry of physical laws.

You can read about it in some detail in Wikipedia, though I confess it's a bit esoteric.

Noether died relatively young in America at age 53, 2 years after escaping Nazi Germany, and Einstein wrote a moving tribute to her in the New York Times (1935). Physicists, Leon M. Lederman and Christopher T. Hill, in Symmetry and the Beautiful Universe, give the following accolade: “..certainly one of the most important mathematical theorems ever proved in guiding the development of modern physics…”

The sad part about her story is that she is virtually unknown and was not given due recognition in her own time, simply because she was a woman.

Addendum: It's also 100 years since Noether developed her seminal theorem - the same year that Einstein developed his General Theory of Relativity, incorporating gravity.

Citizenfour - aka Edward Snowden

I saw this Oscar-winning movie last weekend, and, tellingly, despite very recently winning the Oscar for Best Documentary, it’s only being shown in one cinema in the whole of Melbourne. And yet everyone with internet access should watch this movie, because its message affects all of us.

For those living under a rock, Edward Snowden famously revealed that the US is capturing all our on-line activities and mobile phone calls, even though, as revealed in the film, various representatives of the government had been openly denying this (even under oath) for some time. The closest we get to acknowledgement is when someone says, in a Senate Committee Hearing, in response to this very question about accessing people’s digital communications: “Not willingly.” Reading between the lines, one could conclude that it could happen ‘accidentally’, which suggests a couple of options: the information is available if they want to access it; or they might accidentally access someone’s data whilst trying to access someone else’s, whom they can legitimately target (via a court order or whatever judicial process is required). As it turns out, thanks to Snowden’s expose, we know it’s the first option.

Ethically, there are 2 distinct but related issues implicit in the same movie. Are the American Government’s activities in this regard, ethical, and is it ethical for Snowden to use his position of privileged information to break his Government’s trust (as well as the law) by revealing them to the rest of the world?

There is a third ethical issue, entwined with the previous 2: is it ethical for the American Government to pursue Snowden with the full force of its law, treating him, effectively, as a traitor and a spy (they are charging him under the espionage act)?

Let’s deal with the first ethical issue first; after all, it’s the one that triggered the other two. As pointed out in the movie, this ‘action’ on the part of the American Government is a consequence of 9/11 and the threat of terrorist attacks anywhere in the Western world. It’s also pointed out in the movie that England have even more comprehensive measures than the US, regarding tracking everyday digital information of its own citizens.

On the same day I saw this film, I heard a news bulletin that here in Australia, the Government is currently debating a bill requiring internet providers to keep all user activity (in Australia) for however many years (I don’t know if there’s a limit). Interestingly, the only proviso the Opposition suggested is that journalists be protected in order to protect their sources. This is a very important point, because it’s only journalists that can keep politicians honest, and journalists’ roles in providing a conduit for Snowden’s ‘leak’ was crucial to his expose. I’ve said before that the health of a democracy can be measured by the freedom that journalists are allowed in criticising their elected leaders. Keeping sources ‘secret’ has been critical (at least, in Australia) in allowing journalists that particular freedom.

There are similarities between this documentary and the not-so-recent movie, Kill the Messenger, because, in both cases, someone exposed the Government or the Government’s agents in activities that the public were unaware of, and, in both cases the Government, or its agencies, effectively destroyed the whistleblowers’ lives.

But this parliamentary debate taking place in Australia reveals an ethical distinction, which, in my view, is worth noting. In Australia, because it has to be passed as Parliamentary law, it cannot be done without the public’s awareness, and, I feel, this is where the American Government went wrong. I don’t have an issue with them keeping all my digital data, most of which, like this blog, is freely available to the public anyway. And I understand how such data is crucial to stopping terrorist attacks, so, as long as the data capture is not used to persecute me personally, I have no problem.

Having said that, the movie points out how data collection on a nation’s citizens is a first step in controlling or oppressing that citizenry. So, hand in hand with this action is an essential ‘trust’ that it will be used only for spoiling terrorist attacks and that the essential democratic character of the nation won’t be compromised in the process. In some ways, this is a moot point because, after watching this film, I couldn’t help but feel that this will never be reversed. We already live in a quasi-Orwellian environment where our entire lives can be tracked digitally, if someone so requires. We effectively have no secrets regarding our on-line activity (including mobile phone communications).

Towards the end of the movie, there is a news clip of President Obama saying that we needed ‘to have this debate’, implying that it could have occurred without Snowden’s revelations. However, this is contradicted by earlier video footage (alluded to above) that, even under oath, no one was going to admit to this whilst the public remained ignorant.

And this brings to the fore Snowden’s ethics. There are some similarities here between Snowden and Assange, both of whom are now living in exile, because both had sensitive material that embarrassed the American Government in particular. However, Snowden is probably more like Chelsea (Bradley) Manning, who had access to and leaked the relevant files, in that both men acted on their conscience at considerable personal cost.

But, in the case of Snowden, he demonstrates neither the naivety of Manning nor the ego of Assange. It is clear from the outset that Snowden understood fully the consequences of his actions, and is remarkably calm throughout his entire dealings with the specific journalists he colluded with in order to make public what the American Government preferred to remain covert. This is the crux of the issue for me: not that the American Government is collecting all our communications data, but that they did it behind our backs and are now enraged that some individual dared to let everyone know.

There is some irony that Snowden now lives in exile with his partner in Russia, a country not renown for honouring freedom of speech or freedom of the press. If Snowden had done to Russia, what he’s done to America, he probably would have been assassinated. As it is, in America, they will lock him up and throw away the key, just like they’ve done to Manning, assuming they ever catch him.

Today is π Day

I only found about this yesterday, via COSMOS online. Actually, it's Pi Day tomorrow in the US where it originated because, using American date nomenclature, March 14 (3/14) gives the first 3 digits of pi. But this year is special because the date is 3/14/15, which are the first 5 digits and it will be the only time in the whole century.

π, as everyone knows, is the ratio of the circumference of a perfect circle to its diameter, irrespective of the size of the circle. But it's a very nerdy number, because it turns up in the most unexpected places, like quantum mechanics and Euler's famous formula: e^iπ  + 1 = 0; earning the sobriquet, 'God's own equation'. A simple derivation can be found here.

Pi is the best known so-called transcendental number and, of course, it has an infinite string of digits that appear to be truly random (refer COSMOS link above). COSMOS also explain that if you toss a coin 2n times, and n is large enough, then the probability of getting equal number of heads and tails is 1/√(nπ). Mathematics contains many hidden formulae like this that give unexpected relationships relevant to the real world.

Addendum: It should be pointed out that today is also Albert Einstein's birthday and this year is the centenary of his masterpiece, the General Theory of Relativity, not to be confused with the Special Theory, which he penned 10 years earlier in 1905.

Chaos – nature’s preferred means of evolution and dynamics

Ian Stewart is a highly respected mathematician and populariser of mathematics. He has the rare ability to write entire books on the esoteric side of mathematics with hardly an equation in sight. The ‘new edition’ of Does God Play Dice? has the subtitle, The New Mathematics of Chaos, and that’s what the book is all about.  The first edition was published in 1989, the second edition in 1997, so not that new any more. Even so, he gave me more insights and knowledge into the subject than I knew existed. I’d previously read Paul Davies’ The Cosmic Blueprint, which does a pretty good job, but Stewart’s book has more depth, more examples, more explanations and simply more information. In addition, he does this without leaving me feel stranded in the wake of his considerable intellect.

For a start, Stewart puts things into perspective, by pointing out how chaos pervades much of the natural world – more so than science tends to acknowledge. In physics and engineering classes we are taught calculus and differential equations, which, as Stewart points out, are linear, whereas most of the dynamics of the natural world are non-linear, which make them ripe for chaotic analysis. We tend to know about chaos through its application to systems like weather, fluid turbulence, population dynamics yet its origins are almost purely mathematical. Throughout the book, Stewart provides numerous examples where the mathematics of chaos has been applied to physics and biology.

Historically, he gives special attention to Poincare, whom he depicts almost as the ‘father of chaos’ (my term, not his) which seems appropriate as he keeps returning to ‘Poincare sections’ throughout the book. Poincare sections are hard to explain, but they are effectively geometrical representations of periodic phenomena that have an ‘attractor’.  That’s an oversimplification, but ‘attractors’ are an important and little known aspect of chaos, as many chaotic systems display an ability to form a stable dynamical state after numerous iterations, even though, which particular state is often unpredictable. The point is that the system is ‘attracted’ to this stable state. An example, believe it or not, is the rhythmic beat of your heart. As Stewart explains, ‘the heart is a non-linear oscillator’.

Relatively early in the book, he provides an exposition on ‘dynamics in n-space’. Dimensions can be used as a mathematical concept and not just a description of space, which is how we tend to envisage it, even though it’s impossible for us to visualise space with more than 3 dimensions. He gives the example of a bicycle, something we are all familiar with, having numerous freedoms of rotation, which can be mathematically characterised as dimensions. The handle bars, each foot pedal as well as the wheels all have their own freedom of rotation, which gives us 5 at least, and this gives 10 dimensions if each degree of freedom has one variable for position and one for velocity.

He then makes the following counter-intuitive assertion:

What clinches the matter, though, is the way in which the idea of multi-dimensional spaces fit together. It’s like a 999-dimensional hand in a 999-dimensional glove.

In his own words: ‘a system with n degrees of freedom – n different variables – can be thought of as living in n-space.’ Referring back to the bicycle example, its motion can be mathematically represented as a fluid in 10 dimensional space.

Stewart then evokes a theorem, discovered in the 19th Century by Joseph Liouville, that if the system is Hamiltonian (meaning there is no friction) then the fluid is incompressible. As Stewart then points out:

…something rather deep must be going on if the geometric picture turns dynamics not just into some silly fluid in some silly space, but renders it incompressible (the 10-dimensional analogue of ‘volume’ doesn’t change as the fluid flows).

The reason I’ve taken some time to elaborate on this, is that it demonstrates the point Stewart made above – that an abstract n-dimensional space has implications in reality –  his hand-in-glove analogy.

Again, to quote Stewart:

I hope this brings you down to Earth with the same bump I always experience. It isn’t an abstract game! It is real!

Incompressibility is such a natural notion, it can’t be coincidence. Unless you agree with Kurt Vonnegut in Cat’s Cradle, that the Deity made the Universe as an elaborate practical joke.

The point is that the relationships we find between mathematics and reality are much more subtle than we can imagine, the implication being that we’ve only scratched the surface.

Anyone with a cursory interest in chaos knows that there is a relationship between chaos and fractals, and that nature loves fractals. What a lot of people don’t know is that fractals have fractional dimensions (hence the name) which can be expressed logarithmically. As Stewart points out, the relationship with chaos is that the fractal dimension ‘turns out to be a key property of an attractor, governing various quantitative features of the dynamics.’

I won’t elaborate on this as there are more important points that Stewart raises. For a start, he spends considerable time and space pointing out how chaos is not synonymous with randomness or chance as many people tend to think. Chaos is often defined as deterministic but not predictable which reads like a contradiction, so many people dismiss it out-of-hand. But Stewart manages to explain this without sounding like a sophist.

It’s impossible to predict because all chaotic phenomena are sensitive to the ‘initial conditions’. Mathematically, this means that the initial conditions would have to be determined to an infinitesimal degree, meaning an infinitely long calculation. However the behaviour is deterministic in that it follows a path determined by those initial conditions which we can’t cognise. But in the short term, this allows us to make predictions which is why we have weather forecasts over a few days but not months or years and why climate-forecast modelling can easily be criticised. In defence of climate-forecast modelling, we can use long term historical data to indicate what’s already happening and project that into the future. We know that climate-related phenomena like glaciers retreating, sea temperature rise and seasonal shifts are already happening.

This short term, long term difference in predictability varies from system to system, including the solar system. We consider the solar system the most stable entity we know, because it’s existed in its current form well before life emerged and will continue for aeons to come. However, computer modelling suggests that its behaviour will become unpredictable eventually. Jacque Laskar of the Bureau des Longitudes in Paris has shown that ‘the entire solar system is chaotic’.

To quote Stewart:

Laskar discovered… for the Earth, an initial uncertainty about its position of 15m grows to only 150m after 10 million years, but over 100 million years the error grows to 150 million kilometres.

So while chaos is 'deterministic', it's computably indeterminable, which is why it's 'unpredictable'. I've written another post on that specific topic.

In the last chapter, Stewart attempts to tackle the question posed on the front cover of his book. For anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of physics, this is a reference to Einstein’s famous exhortation that he didn’t believe God plays dice, and Stewart even cites this in the context of the correspondence where Einstein wrote it down.

Einstein, of course, was referring to his discomfort with Bohr’s ‘Copenhagen interpretation’ of quantum mechanics; a discomfort he shared with Erwin Schrodinger. I’ve written about this at length elsewhere when I reviewed Louisa Gilder’s excellent book, The Age of Entanglement. Stewart takes the extraordinary position of suggesting that quantum mechanics may be explicable as a chaotic phenomenon. I say extraordinary because, in all my reading on this subject, no one has ever suggested it and most physicists/philosophers would not even consider it.

I have come across some physicist/philosophers (like David Deutsch) who have argued that the ‘many worlds’ interpretation of quantum mechanics can, in fact, explain chaos. A view which I’m personally sceptical about.

Stewart resurrects David Bohm’s ‘hidden variables’ interpretation, preferred by Einstein, but generally considered disproved by experiments confirming Bell’s Inequality Theorem. It’s impossible for me to do justice to Stewart’s argument but he does provide the first exposition of Bell’s theorem that I was able to follow. The key is that the factors in Bell’s Inequality (as it’s known) refer to correlations that can be derived experimentally. The correlations are a statistical calculation (something I’m familiar with) and the ‘inequality’ tells you whether the results are deterministic or random. In every experiment performed thus far, the theorem confirms that the results are not deterministic, therefore random.

Stewart takes the brave step of suggesting that Bell’s Inequality can be thwarted because it relies on the fact that the results are computable. Stewart claims that if they’re not computable then it can’t resolve the question. He gives the example of so-called ‘riddled basins’ where chaotic phenomena can interact with ‘holes’ that allow them to find other ‘attractors’. Again, an oversimplification on my part, but as I understand it, in these situations, which are not uncommon according to Stewart, it’s impossible to ‘compute’ which attractor a given particle would go to.

Stewart argues that if quantum mechanics was such a chaotic system then the results would be statistical as we observe. I admit I don’t understand it well enough to confer judgement and I have neither the mathematical nor physics expertise to be a critical commentator. I’ll leave that to others in the field.

I do agree with him that the wave function in Schrodinger’s equation is more than a ‘mathematical fiction’ and it was recently reported in New Scientist that a team from Sydney claim they have experimentally verified its reality. But I conjecture that ‘Hilbert space’, which is the abstract space where the wave function mathematically exists, may be what’s real and we simply interact with it, but there is no more evidence for that than there is for the ‘multiple universes’ that is currently in favour and gaining favour.

Towards the very end of the book, Stewart hypothesises on how different our view of quantum mechanics may be today if chaos theory had been discovered first, though he’s quick to point out the importance of computers in allowing chaos to be exploited. But he makes this interesting observation in relation to the question on the cover of his book:

Now, instead of Einstein protesting that God doesn’t play dice, he probably would have suggested that God does play dice. Nice, classical, deterministic dice. But – of course – chaotic dice. The mechanism of chaos provides a wonderful opportunity for God to run His universe with deterministic laws, yet simultaneously to make fundamental particles seem probabilistic.

Of course, in the real world, dice are chaotic because the outcome of a throw is subject to the sensitivity of the initial conditions, which is the throw itself. The same with a coin toss. So each throw has its own initial conditions, which creates the randomness from throw to throw that we observe.

Of course, both Stewart’s and Einstein’s reference to a Deity is tongue-in-cheek, but I’ve long thought that chaos provides the ideal mechanism for a Deity to intervene in the Universe. Having said that, I don’t believe in Divine intervention, because it assumes that God has a plan that 'He' needs to keep interfering with. I prefer to think that God is simply the laws of the Universe (a la Einstein’s God) and they will run their course.

Chaos may be 'deterministic' but you can't rerun a chaotic phenomenon and get the same result - that's how chaos was discovered. The Universe obeys 'strange attractors', which provides stability to some systems while still being ultimately unpredictable. We don't know enough to know why the Universe turned out the way it did. Every age has its own sphere of ignorance, but chaos suggests that the future cannot be ultimately known. In other words, there appears to be a limit to what it's possible to know and not just a limit dependent on our cognitive abilities.

Leonard Nimoy (aka Spock): 1931 - 2015

I first watched Star Trek when I was 16 or 17 on black and white TV. It was innovative and evoked many of the ideals of the 1960s that people from different races and backgrounds could form a team that would explore the universe. Spock is one of the great Sci-Fi icons. I particularly liked his appearance in J.J Abrams' Star Trek movie from 2009, where Spock meets a younger version of himself through a time warp, as can only happen in Sci-Fi.

From a philosophical perspective, Star Trek projected a positive, utopian scenario of human nature - envisioning a future where humans would overcome their tendency towards conflict. But it also envisioned a belief, recently expounded by Brian Cox in the final episode of his series, The Human Universe, that humans have a destiny to go beyond their Earth-bound existence.

There is a scene in Abrams' movie that is reminiscent of a scene in my novel, Elvene, where Spock is holed up in an ice cave. Such coincidences in storytelling are not uncommon, like finding the thread of a tune in a piece of music transferred into another work, though, in this case, quite unintentional, as Elvene was written many years before Abrams' Star Trek.

The newslink below to CBSNews is a very touching tribute.

Leonard Nimoy's final tweet.