Politics in religion, religion in politics

This is an unusual post for me because it’s an unapologetic critique of an international political organisation. This organisation claims a moral, canonical and, even Divine, legitimacy, yet, according to the one (well researched) book I’ve read, some of its activities have been as nefarious as any secret service organisation in the world. But, even if these accusations proved untrue, I would still oppose this organisation on philosophical grounds, because it’s the antithesis of everything I believe in, and its manifesto is to win the hearts and minds of the future world of humanity.

The book is Their Kingdom Come; Inside the Secret World of Opus Dei by Robert Hutchison (1997,2006). According to the back cover, Hutchison is a journalist, born in Canada, but now living in Switzerland. He’s been a correspondent for The Sunday Telegraph and The Daily Telegraph, and won 4 National Business Writing Awards for articles published in the Toronto Financial Post. Certainly, his knowledge and insights into the financial world is one of the book’s compelling features.

Opus Dei came to international attention when Dan Brown published his bestseller, The Da-Vinci Code, an elaborate work of fiction based on a conspiracy theory concerning the supposed lineage of Jesus. Before that, few people knew that Opus Dei even existed, and that’s probably the way Opus Dei preferred it. Hutchison’s book is partly an unauthorised biography of ‘The Work’s’ founder, Jose Maria Escriva de Balaguer (1902-1975), and partly an expose of Opus Dei’s numerous ‘corporate’ adventures. Opus Dei is Latin for ‘God’s Work’, which some found a pretentious title even when it was formulated in 1930, especially since Escriva was still a young Catholic priest in Spain. But according to the official version, it really started on the day of The Feast of Guardian Angels, 2 October 1928, when he had a vision of Opus Dei: “as He wanted it, and as it would become according to His wishes down through the centuries”, which, according to Hutchison, is ‘the postulation for Jose Maria Escriva’s sainthood unveiled to the world more than fifty years later.’

Hutchison, henceforth refers to it as ‘The Work’, which apparently was Escriva’s own terminology. Escriva’s vision was that the secular population achieved ‘sanctity’ through doing ‘work’. But central to this vision was that ordinary people required ‘instruction’ as they couldn’t be left to work things out for themselves, which Escriva saw as the real danger facing humanity. This particular doctrine is a central tenet of the Catholic Church, especially when one considers how Papal authority attempts to intervene in the most intimate matters of people’s lives, specifically their sex lives. The Vatican’s attitudes towards homosexuality and birth-control are anachronistic at best and just plain immoral at worst.

But this is only one theme of Hutchison’s book, even if it be the one that I find most abrasive. It goes directly against my own existentialist leanings, and even rubs against my own experiences of religion as a child, and is one of the reasons I rejected it.

But a man has no greater zeal than when he believes he has a specific mission from God, and Escriva lived up to that expectation in spades. According to Hutchison, and other commentators, there are 2 faces to Opus Dei, and they are incongruent if not downright contradictory. For example: on the one hand Opus Dei ‘teaches’ the virtue of poverty, humility and piety, yet it wields financial clout that gives the impression of an international banking institution. Hutchison exposes some of the financial schemes that he believes Opus Dei, or personnel linked to Opus Dei, have been involved in, and cites his sources. But, even in my home town of Melbourne, I’ve seen the results of Opus Dei’s financial largesse first hand.

In the April 1, 2001 edition of The Age, Erica Cervini reports on a little-known, in-house political skirmish involving 2 archbishops with philosophical divergent views on Opus Dei: ‘Under the previous archbishop, Frank Little, Opus Dei was unable to get a foothold in the archdiocese.’ In the same article: ‘Opus Dei… has been invited by Dr. Pel to supply a priest to run St. Mary’s Star of the Sea parish in West Melbourne.’ Archbishop Pel left this legacy to Melbourne, just before taking up his position as Cardinal George Pel, Archdiocese of Sydney. Pel is a well known Catholic conservative, who publicly defends even the most controversial statements and proclamations of the Pope in the Australian media.

I have personally seen the money spent on St. Mary’s Star of the Sea, and I recently quipped to someone it was like ‘a little bit of Rome in Melbourne’. Melbourne, I have to say, though I’m not that well-traveled, is one of the most multi-cultural and liberalised secular cities of the world. Before Opus Dei took over, one could find literature at St. Mary’s explaining all the religions of the world – I have a pamphlet explaining Buddhism, quite succinctly and eruditely, and there were many others. In more recent times, the only literature I’ve seen is on how to join the priesthood. So it’s a complete change of ideology, and I have no problem using that word in this context.

Money is an efficacious means to influence and control people; it opens doors and creates obligations. There are a number of religious institutions that appreciate and utilise this simple methodology. Hutchison quotes Javier Sainz Moreno, Professor of Law at Madrid University, and outspoken critic of Opus Dei: “Opus Die knows very well that money rules the world and that religious hegemony of a country or continent is dependent upon obtaining financial hegemony…”

Of course, St. Mary’s Star of the Sea is very small beer compared to the examples that Hutchison provides. On page 164, he writes: ‘…its only interest is the spiritual well-being of its members, and it never interferes with their lives. It doesn’t own anything, certainly not a bank, and it never plays politics.’ Hutchison then proceeds to do his best to demonstrate the contrary to all these claims. In particular, he dedicates a large part of his book, and provides considerable detail, concerning the political and financial machinations that occurred during the 70s in Latin America; in particular, Argentina and Chile.

To appreciate the origins of Opus Dei’s political leanings, if not its ambitions, Hutchison starts at the beginning. In Escriva’s formative years, he had to flee for his life over the Pyrenees during the Spanish civil war when priests were being summarily executed, and nearly lost his life in the attempt. This made Escriva a life-long enemy of Marxism and socialism, and led to Opus Dei members getting government positions under Franco. During the Cold War, according to Hutchison, Opus Dei formed links with American intelligence agencies both in Europe and in Latin America. Yet Escriva states in 1970: “If Opus Dei ever played politics – even for a moment – I would have left the Work at that very moment of error.”

But it is in proselytism that Opus Dei, not only sees its ‘Work’, but where it places its greatest emphasis, at least, to its members, if not the public. It’s this double-sided nature of Opus Dei that makes it most open to criticism and distrust. Hutchison quotes from ‘a dossier prepared by a former numerary (Opus Dei member) John Roche: The single most important activity in the life of a member of Opus Dei is recruitment or ‘proselytism’.

Roche quotes from Escriva’s own ‘manual’ called the Cronica: ‘None of my children can rest satisfied if he doesn’t win four or five faithful vocations each year.’

According to Hutchison, Opus Dei denies the existence of the Cronica, yet Hutchison quotes freely from a text, that he claims to be the Cronica, throughout the book.

In other parts of the book, Hutchison reports on the psychological stress that members suffered, resulting from cognitive dissonance that unquestioning obedience can demand, especially when that obedience requires almost constant deception. According to testimony of ex-members, Opus Dei is indeed a sect, by any definition, and its members suffer accordingly. (See footnote at end.)

But the most damning testimony comes from Miguel Fisac, an architect and Escriva’s 9^th ‘Apostle’ who admonished himself when he finally left Opus Dei: “Now, Miguel, you will always tell the truth and you will try to be a good person, and nothing more.”

Fisac, who knew Escriva well, made the following revelation: “With the exception of Alvaro del Portillo, he never had a good word to say about anybody.” Alvaro del Portillo was Escriva’s personal confessor for 30 years, and became his successor when Escriva died in 1975. (The head of Opus Dei, as of 2001, was Bishop Jarvier Echeverria.)

Parts of Hutchison’s book read like an espionage thriller, that puts Dan Brown to shame, with at least two unsolved, yet related, murders, a number of suspicious deaths - most by heart attack and all opportunistic for their rivals – at least one suspected poisoning, and missing millions, involving banks with unknown stakeholders. Whilst Hutchison meticulously references his sources and carefully acknowledges what remains unknown or unproven, he leaves the reader in no doubt concerning his own opinions.

I have no need to add to the conspiracy theories concerning Opus Dei. Even at the most superficial level, Opus Dei is a political faction within an international political institution. The Vatican is effectively a ‘State’ within its own right; an oligarchy to all intents and purposes, and behaves like one. Opus Dei is the conservative faction of that state and has its own agendas that are far from transparent.

In 1982, Pope John Paul II officially proclaimed in an ‘Apostolic Constitution known as ut sit’ that Opus Dei was created ‘by Divine inspiration’, so it truly was a ‘Work of God’ and was now Canon law. As Hutchison points out, this makes Opus Dei ‘a state within the Church’ with its own authority to God independent of the Pope, which it could theoretically call upon if it ever saw fit. And what’s more it controls the Vatican finances, again, according to Hutchison, which makes it indispensable. The one consistent theme, that Hutchison maintains throughout his book, is the way Opus Dei uses financial muscle to get its own way.

Towards the end of the book, Hutchison deals with Islamic fundamentalism, which is perhaps the scariest part of the whole book. No Christian church will ever be able to have a dialogue with even moderate Muslims, while it insists that Jesus is the only path to spiritual salvation for the whole of humanity. One can see the distinct possibility of a collision between Christian and Islamic fundamentalism with the liberal, secular world caught in the middle, not only in Europe, which is Hutchison’s focus, but world wide. This doesn’t mean that atheism is the ideological answer to this collision; history shows that only moderates of both sides of any conflict can have a dialogue that will result in a pragmatic solution. I make this same point in a previous post (Left or Right, Feb.08).

In Hutchison’s last numbered chapter (I presume of the first edition), he reports on the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Africa, Asia and Europe, and its inevitable collision course with the West, which I found amazingly prescient considering it was written prior to 9/11.

In the 2006 edition, he has written an epilogue that includes the canonisation of Escriva, as well as the most recent scandals and intrigues that have rocked the Church.

But its Opus Dei’s ‘opacity’ (Hutchison’s term) to the public and its firm belief that it is doing ‘God’s work’, quite literally, and therefore answers to no other law, that makes it so potentially dangerous. As Hugh Mackay points out in his book, Right & Wrong; how to decide for yourself, when you believe your personal morality is God’s law, you can justify any action, no matter how immoral that action may in fact be. ‘We are God’s chosen’ are the words of Opus Dei’s leaders in Rome, whom Hutchison claims he lived with for 4 years. “We have been chosen by God to save the Church”, Hutchison claims he was told ‘with utter conviction’.

You may wonder why I even bother to take an interest. There are 2 reasons: firstly, the philosophical premise that ordinary people should work things out for themselves is central to my own world view, and is the antithesis to Opus Dei’s philosophy; secondly, Opus Dei is a very secretive, almost clandestine organisation, commonly called the ‘White Mafia’, even by ordinary Catholics. And an institution - in particular - a religious institution that practices secrecy while feigning openness, must surely have hidden agendas, and therefore, repels trust.

In a much earlier post I talked about the importance of Trust (Apr.08) and how it was a requisite for the future beneficence of all humanity. Confucius (500BC) once contended that trust was the last commodity a leader could afford to lose. Opus Dei represents the complete opposite to trust, just through its very existence. A point that Hutchison makes as well.

I wish I could dismiss Opus Dei as a medieval anachronism, because that’s what I believe it is, but it plays a central role in Vatican politics. Its agenda is to infiltrate every institution of power in the Western World and the Developing World. The fact that it prefers this agenda to remain hidden is the real reason it should be exposed. Opus Dei and the Catholic Church both know this: if its real political ambitions were known, it would surely fail in today’s liberal, secular society.

As long as Opus Dei holds sway in the Vatican, the Catholic Church will remain a backward institution, out of time and out of place in the 21^st Century.

Footnote: For testimonies from ex-members, refer www.odan.org and here.

Interview with a Buddhist nun

Robina Courtin is an Australian Buddhist nun, who’s lived in America for the last 15 years, and runs a prison ‘outreach’ programme, for want of a better term, which she initiated. (Actually called Liberation Prison Project and now also in Oz.)

I saw the movie she mentions, Chasing Buddha, in 2000, at a special screening where the filmmaker, her nephew (about 21 at the time) was present for a Q & A. I didn’t know she was an Aussie when I went to see the movie (I thought she must be American) but the movie opens with this off-screen voice in an Australian accent swearing like the proverbial trooper.

I remember that one member in the audience took offence, during the Q&A, saying she didn’t represent Buddhism at all. I think she’s changed even since the movie was made – in this interview (see the link below) she is less angry, though no less passionate. I can identify with that as well.

She has a very existentialist view of Buddhism, which is very similar to mine. I particularly agree with her existentialist interpretation of karma. Although I don’t agree with her ‘hypothesis’ that our current karma is a result of a past life. But her views on consciousness should not be summarily dismissed, even though they’re contrary to current Western thinking.

This link is only available for the next 2 weeks, and the interview is 55 mins long, but worth the time spent in my opinion. It's the Tuesday 2 June interview in the list. If you download it as an audio file, you can listen to it at your own leisure, but you won't get the musical selections, for copyright reasons.

I can identify to some extent with her childhood, both her attraction to religion and her trauma, though mine was not as intense, but it was soul-destroying or soul-damaging, albeit in a different way.

When you hear her sing, you wouldn’t know it was the same person.

Nature’s Layers of Reality: from Cosmology to QED to The Standard Model

In my last post I referenced Kerson Huang’s book, Fundamental Forces of Nature: The Story of Gauge Fields. Huang starts with Newton’s equation, F=ma, and works through the history of physics right up to the so-called ‘Standard Model’. The theory of ‘gauge fields’ is effectively the theme of his book, which means that the best part of it is spent in the 20^th Century following the development of quantum mechanics.

What is significant is that, if one overlooks his short detour to include Relativity Theory, Huang traces the world of physics from the scale of our everyday world to a smaller and smaller scale, resulting in the ‘Standard Model’, which includes the innards of nuclear particles: quarks and gluons, amongst numerous others. The significance of scale is a particular feature of Huang’s treatise that he reveals right at the end. I said in my previous post that the book doesn’t include ‘String Theory’, but Huang does explain its origins, almost in passing.

Quantum mechanics is such a tantalising yet daunting area of the natural world for me. I’ve read Richard Feynman’s book, QED; The Strange Theory of Light and Matter (1985), which explains everything and nothing. Feynman, who won a Nobel Prize for his pioneering work in this area, says right at the beginning that ‘no one understands quantum mechanics’, and I think that’s a very important point. QED (quantum electrodynamics) is the most successful theory ever (both Feynman and Huang, who quotes Freeman Dyson, agree on that) yet no one really understands how it works. Feynman’s book explains brilliantly, with no equations whatsoever, how one can work something out from the summing of ‘all possible paths’ to produce the path of ‘least action’; he even uses the analogy of a stopwatch to provide analogue phase changes (for each path) otherwise described by ‘complex algebra’ differential equations (the famous Schrodinger’s equation) that are used in real quantum mechanical calculations. But he doesn’t explain why we need to allow for ‘all possible paths’ in the first place, a consequence of the well-known, but enigmatic, superposition aspect of quantum phenomena. And no one else can explain it either, despite attempts to propose ‘many worlds’ interpretations and ‘Schrodinger Cats’ in simultaneous states of life and death. This is where philosophy and science collide, and so far, philosophy is still all at sea.

Huang explains how it is the mathematical concept called the Lagrangian that defines the ‘Least Action’ or ‘Least Effort’ principle, effectively the Kinetic Energy minus the Potential Energy. But Huang filled in another piece of the puzzle for me when he explained that we go from one Lagrangian to another as we change the scale of our observations. Even now, this is something that I only vaguely understand, yet I feel it is very important, because I’ve always believed that scale plays a role in the laws of physics, and Huang has effectively confirmed that, and gives a potted history of its theoretical evolution.

In a very early post (Sep.07), The Universe’s Interpreters, I make the point that the natural world exists as worlds within worlds, almost ad-infinitum, and we humans have the unique ability (amongst Earth species) to conceptualise worlds within worlds, ad-infinitum, therefore giving us the privileged position of being able to comprehend the universe that actually created us.

Huang lists a host of people, including Murray Gell-Mann, Francis Low, David Gross, Frank Wilczek and David Politzer for demonstrating a logarithmic relationship between energy and the ‘coupling constant’ (charge). Energy increases for QED (electrons and photons) and decreases for QCD (quarks and gluons). Then, Nikolai Bogoliubov, Curtis Callan and Kurt Symanzik proposed the ‘Renormalisation Group Trajectory’ or RG trajectory including a mathematical equation to describe it. The RG trajectory (according to Huang) takes us from ‘Classical Physics to Quantum Mechanics to QED to Yang-Mills’ (nucleon physics) – increasing energy with decreasing scale. Kenneth Wilson realised that the so-called ‘cutoff’ in renormalisation parameters that changes with scale, and therefore changes the Lagrangian from one range of energies to another, has a physical basis. In other words, these physical laws expressed in mathematics only work within a parameter or range of scale and change when we go from one parameter of scale to another (Hang uses the term ‘crossover’). Each one, as Huang points out, initiated its own scientific revolution during our discovery process, but in reality, reveal to us different layers of nature. Huang also references Leo Kadanoff and Michael Fisher as also contributing to our understanding of RG trajectories.

As an aside, there is one mystery arising from quantum field theory, highlighted by Huang, that I had never heard of before: when time becomes purely imaginary it reduces quantum theory to statistical mechanics, so that time relates to absolute temperature. Actually, a very simple mathematical relationship involving t (time), T (Temperature), i (square route of -1), and h (Planck’s constant). It is tempting to think that this mathematical relation arises from the fact that entropy is the only physical law we know of that gives a direction to time, with entropy being related to temperature, but Huang doesn’t make this connection, so there probably isn’t one. (Entropy, or the second law of thermodynamics, is the only law in physics that insists on a direction for time; relativity theory and quantum mechanics both allow for time reversal – so that bit is true. Reference: Roger Penrose’s The Emperor’s New Mind.)

Finally, noticeable by its absence in all this, is gravity, described brilliantly by Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. Gravity and general relativity is effectively the Lagrangian for cosmological scales, but, as everyone knows, there is no place for gravity in the Standard Model – Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity stands alone. The best exposition on relativity theory, that I’ve read (both the special and general theories) is by Richard Feynman in Six Not-So-Easy Pieces, where he describes the ‘Least Action’ principle in terms of relativistic energy or ‘maximum relativistic time’. This is intuitively opposite to the ‘principle of least time’, as postulated by Pierre de Fermat (in the 17^th Century) found in the optical phenomenon of refraction and now accepted as scientific fact, yet it is the same principle. Feynman demonstrates mathematically that the principle of maximum relativistic time (therefore ‘Least Action’) gives the correct trajectory of a projectile in flight in a gravitational field. As I describe in an earlier post (Mar.08) The Laws of Nature, Fermat’s principle in refraction and Feynman’s mathematical description of ‘Least Action’ in relativistic physics both relate to how the light or the projectile finds the ‘right’ path – the path that requires minimum effort, satisfying the Lagrangian: Kinetic Energy minus Potential Energy as a minimum. Feynman also demonstrates how quantum mechanics gives the answer that light follows the ‘least time’ principle using his analogue version of QED, in his book titled, QED (as I described above). So Feynman effectively demonstrates that the ‘Least Action’ principle applies consistently in relativity theory, classical optics and QED.

Huang gives very little space to ‘Grand Unifying Theories of Everything’ (known generically as GUT), but, of course, String Theory is the great contender. One of the best books I’ve read on String Theory is Peter Woit’s Not Even Wrong; The Failure of String Theory and the Continuing Challenge to Unify the Laws of Physics. Woit covers much of the same territory as Huang in his explanation of gauge theories, quantum field theory and the Standard Model, but then continues onto String Theory, explaining how it became the latest paradigm in our search for theoretical answers (if not experimental ones) and, specifically, the role of Edward Witten in its evolvement. In fact, reading Huang’s book, and writing this post, has forced me to re-read Woit’s book. Woit, like Huang, is a physicist and a mathematician, and I am humbled when I read these guys. Unlike me, they actually know what they're talking about.

Whilst Woit is highly critical of String Theory (or string theories to be more accurate), he is deeply respectful of Witten, who was at Princeton at the same time as Woit.

One of the points that Woit makes is that String Theory evolved out of a ‘Bootstrap’ theory (also mentioned by Huang) developed by Geoffrey Chew in opposition to QCD and the highly successful ‘Standard Model’. This theory developed from an ‘S matrix theory’ that Woit is almost contemptuous of, because some of its followers, including Fritjof Capra, refused to admit its demise, even after the Standard Model became one of the great success stories in recent theoretical physics. Woit is particularly scathing of Capra’s The Tao of Physics. (Capra’s ideas, by the way, are not to be confused with Huang’s poetical allusion to Taoism, nor mine, that I discussed in the previous post.)

But ‘Bootstrap’ theory aside, Woit has other issues with String Theory and its derivatives, for which he provides an exhaustive and illuminating history. Woit readily admits, by the way, that if you want a more positive picture of String Theory there are other books available, by authors like Brian Greene and Michio Kaku, and he generously lists them (some of which I’ve read).

The biggest problem, according to Woit, is with ‘supersymmetry’, the ‘Holy Grail’ of String theory and its derivatives. To quote his concluding paragraph on its incompatibility with the Standard Model:

‘As far as anyone can tell, the idea of super-symmetry contains a fundamental incompatibility between observations of particle masses, which require spontaneous super-symmetry breaking to be large, and observations of gravity, which require it to be small or non-existent.’

Feynman, in a 1987 interview, the year before his death, was even more damning:

‘Now I know that other old men have been very foolish in saying things like this, and, therefore, I would be very foolish to say this is nonsense. I am going to be very foolish, because I do feel strongly that this is nonsense! I can’t help it, even though I know the danger in such a point of view.’

Woit does elaborate on one of the benefits of String Theory, which is the cross-fertilisation, for want of a better term, between physics and mathematics, that he believes was badly needed. In fact, he devotes considerable space to the interaction between mathematics and physics, both historically and philosophically.

One of the truly extraordinary features of mathematics is that it allows us to go intellectually and conceptually where we can’t go physically. One can’t help but wonder if Witten’s genius, along with others, hasn’t gone somewhere that the physical universe can’t follow. In a previous post (Mar.09), The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics (a quote from Eugene Wigner) I referenced Penrose’s 3 perspectives of reality: physical, mental and Platonic, where the Platonic realm is mathematical, therefore abstract. The mental (consciousness) arises from the physical, the Platonic from the mental, and the physical from the Platonic (not unlike a self-perpetuating Escher graphic). In other words, not everything Platonic relates to the physical, although if there are an infinite number of universes (the multiverse) then perhaps it does. But my point is that Witten and his colleagues may well be exploring a part of the Platonic realm that doesn’t relate specifically to ‘our’ universe.

Leaving aside, for the moment, the idea of a multiverse (very popular, I might add, and discussed by Woit) mathematics is comfortable with dealing with infinities and multiple dimensions in a way that we are not. The current version of String Theory (Superstring Theory or M Theory) requires 10 dimensions, which means that 6 spatial dimensions need to effectively disappear, or be so physically insignificant as to be invisible, even at the sub-nuclear level.

I, for one, am a little sceptical of a ‘grand unified theory of everything’ because history has shown that the resolution of one set of mysteries always uncovers others. We always think that we are at the final limit of nature’s secrets, yet we never are, and, obviously, never have been.

Huang’s exposition has highlighted the apparent reality that the laws of physics, therefore nature, are scale dependent. Many people overlook this, and talk about quantum physics as if it really works at all scales, including the one we are familiar with, and the mathematics doesn’t contradict this, just the reality we observe (refer Addendum 2 below, and Timmo's comments in the thread for a more knowledgable perspective). Penrose has argued that there is something missing in our knowledge to explain how classical physics ‘emerges’ from quantum mechanics, in a similar way that consciousness apparently ‘emerges’ from neuron activity. But the fact that physics has different laws at different levels reflects what we observe and is consistent with nature at all levels, including biology (refer my post in Feb.09 on Hofstadter’s book, Godel, Escher, Bach: Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness).

Therefore, I don’t expect we’ll find a ‘Theory of Everything’ that encompasses all levels of nature in one mathematical expression, but a lot of people, including many who work in the field, seem to think we will. The fact that we need to go to 10 or more dimensions to achieve this, makes it more speculative than physically probable, in my view. When I think of the 10 dimensions required, I’m reminded of all the epicycles that were needed to make Ptolemy’s model of the solar system compatible with observations.

I’m not saying we already know all the answers because we obviously don’t, but I am saying that maybe we never will. Every time we’ve uncovered one layer of reality we’ve found another layer underneath, or beyond. The Standard Model suggests we have finally reached rock bottom, but even if we have, the fact that there are mysteries still unsolved suggests to me that there are still further mysteries yet to be uncovered, because that’s the one consistency that the history of science has revealed thus far.

Addendum: There is an article in this week's New Scientist (30 May 2009) on how String Theory, or a variant of it has been useful, not in cosmology, but in condensed matter physics and high temperature superconductivity What string theory is really good for

Addendum 2: I want to thank Timmo for his valuable and knowledgable contribution that you can view in the thread of comments below. He provides more detailed information and analysis on Feynman's publications in particular.

Socrates, Russell, Sartre, God and Taoism

An unlikely congregation, but bear with me and it will all become clear. Earlier this week I received 2 new books from Amazon UK: The Mind’s I, by Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett; and Fundamental Forces of Nature; The Story of Gauge Fields, by Kerson Huang.

Huang is a Chinese born American, now Professor of Physics, Emeritus, at MIT, and 79 years old when he published this book in 2007. The book covers all of physics, in a historical, therefore evolutionary, context, from Newtonian physics (F= ma) up to QED (quantum electrodynamics) and beyond, though it doesn’t include String Theory. The presentation is very unusual, with equations kept deliberately minimalist, yet he manages to explain, for example, the subtle difference between Faraday’s equations and Maxwell’s (an extra term effectively) that led to the prediction of electromagnetic waves propagating at the speed of light. He also introduces mathematical concepts like Lagrangians and Hamiltonians early in his treatise; an unusual approach.

Its relevance to the title of this post is at the end, where he quotes a Taoist poet, Qu Yuan (340-278 BC) who wrote a series of questions called Tian Wen (Ask Heaven):

At the primordial beginning

Who was the Reporter?

Before the universe took shape.

How could one measure it?

(Huang also provides the original Mandarin.)

Then he quotes Russell on mathematical beauty:

A beauty so cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without gorgeous trappings or painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show.

He follows this quote with the following rumination of his own:

Physics is truth. It sails down a trajectory in the space of Lagrangians, when the energy scale shrinks from that set by the Big Bang.

I sometimes think that God is in the mathematics; I’ll explain myself at the end.

But the subject of this post really comes from an essay written by Raymond M. Smullyan (in Dennett’s and Hofstadter’s book) titled, Is God a Taoist?. It’s very cleverly written in the style of a Socratic dialogue between God and a mortal, who wants God to relieve him of free will. It reminds me of Sartre’s seminal essay, Existentialism is a humanism, with its famous quote: ‘man is condemned to be free’. I once wrote an entire essay founded on that quote alone, but that’s not the subject of this post.

Smullyan manages to cover an array of topics, including free will and morality, in which, via a lengthy Socratic dialogue, he concludes that the real virtue of free will is that it mandates responsibility for the infliction of suffering on others. In other words, you know when you’ve done it, and you will feel guilt and remorse as a consequence. This is not a verbatim interpretation, just my own summary of it. The dialogue effectively gets the mortal to admit this when God offers to free him of all guilt associated with his ‘free will’. So the choice then of allowing God to rid him of free will, and its consequences, becomes a moral choice in itself, therefore turning the moral dilemma back on itself.

But it’s the particular Eastern references in this essay that appealed to me, in which Smullyan incorporates the idea of God as a process. (A concept I’ve flirted with myself, though Smullyan’s concept is more Eastern in influence.)

To quote Smullyan’s God character in the dialogue:

My role in the scheme of things... is neither to punish nor reward, but to aid the process by which all sentient beings achieve ultimate perfection.

Then to elaborate:

…it is inaccurate to speak of my role in the scheme of things. I am the scheme of things. Secondly, it is equally misleading to speak of my aiding the process of sentient beings attaining enlightenment. I am the process. The ancient Taoists were quite close when they said of me (whom they called “Tao”) that I do not do things, yet through me all things get done. In more modern terms, I am not the cause of Cosmic Process. I am the Cosmic Process itself.

Smullyan, then (as God) quotes the Mahayana Buddhists:

The best way of helping others is by first seeing the light [in]oneself.

He also addresses the issue of personality (of God)

But the so-called “personality” of a being is really more in the eyes of the beholder than in the being itself.

I hope I haven’t been too disparate in this rendition of someone else’s essay. Hofstadter provides his own commentary at the end, with particular reference to the role of free will which he describes thus: ‘a person is an amalgamation of many subpersons, all with wills of their own.’ He says: ‘It’s a common myth that each person is a unity.’ I assume he’s talking about split brains, but I won’t explore that issue here, as Smullyan’s essay has other resonances for me. (I admit I'm not doing justice to Hofstadter, but I don't want to get distracted; maybe another post.)

I’ve said in previous posts that God is an experience, which is one reason I claim religion is totally subjective, because it’s an experience that can’t be shared – it’s unique to the person who has it and only they can interpret it. The essay by Smullyan makes only passing reference to this idea of God (when he discusses personality). I believe he’s referring to a more universal concept, but in an Eastern context rather than a Western one.

I can’t help but make a connection between Huang’s book and Smullyan’s essay, because they both relate to 2 of my lifelong passions: science and religion. Mathematics has given us such extraordinary insights into the physical processes of the universe, at every level, and the idea of God as the process itself, in which we play a very small part is an appealing one. And calling it the Tao, effectively rids it of human personality.

Most people would make no connection between these 2 ideas, but I sometimes think I am a Pythagorean at heart. Mathematics is such a magical medium that one cannot dissociate it from God, especially if God is the Tao, and Tao is ‘the scheme of things’.

Hope

It so happens that this topic arose indirectly on 2 blogs I follow: Stephen Law and Larry Niven’s Rust Belt Philosophy (see my blog roll).

Larry’s reference can be found in his 500^th post, where he ‘deconstructs’ Dr. William Lane Craig’s argument that there is no hope without a belief in God. On Stephen’s site, a group was discussing the ethics of having or not having children, and hope came up in the context of what do we live for?

About 20 years ago, I started having conversations with a tobacconist in the underground section of Flinders Street Station in Melbourne, because my traveling companion used to buy cigarettes from him. How we got onto philosophical issues I have no idea – this was years before I actually studied philosophy – he was just a bloke who had one of those stalls with standing room only in the middle of a passing throng of busy commuters every morning. But we must have done, because he lent me a book called HOPE by Arnold Hutschnecker, which was a sizable tome and obviously one he valued.

Hutschnecker was an American physician turned psychologist and his book was effectively a collection of case studies carefully reworked for public consumption. I only remember 3 things from the book. Firstly, he starts the book by recounting how he faced a firing squad, in circumstances that I can’t remember except that it was early 20^th Century somewhere in Eastern Europe (obviously, he wasn’t actually shot, and I can’t remember how he escaped). Secondly, he worked on a programme under Richard Nixon to tackle problem gambling (according to references on the Internet he was good friends with Nixon). Thirdly, he proposed that there were 2 types of hope: active hope and passive hope. Active hope is where one perceives a goal and goes after it. Passive hope is when one buys their weekly Tatts ticket, or whatever, and waits for their ship to come in. He saw this distinction as particularly psychologically significant, and I think he treated all his cases around this dichotomy.

The other point that needs to be mentioned is how important hope is just for living. Suicide invariably results when an individual loses all hope: they can no longer see a future, or the one that they do see is so bleak that they literally can’t face it.

Lastly, I can’t ignore Dr. William Lane Craig’s particular version of hope, since it’s probably closer to Hutschnecker’s passive type than active type, though I’m sure Dr. Craig would disagree.

I actually submitted a challenge to Dr. Craig on his own Q & A site regarding this, but so far he’s failed to respond. I’m not that surprised - he’s done that before. Dr. Craig prefers people to ask him questions on what God thinks, to which he seems to believe, as well as some of the people who submit the questions, to be some sort of expert. He may yet prove me wrong.

Back to topic, Dr. Craig’s particular take on this subject is that it can’t be disassociated from the hope for eternal life. He quotes Russell, as well as referring to Sartre and Camus, as examples of how atheists must axiomatically view the world as one without hope.

Below is the quote from Bertrand Russell that Dr. Craig presents as his prize exhibit (my term, not his) that seals his case: Atheism is a philosophy without hope.

That man is the product of causes which had no provision of the end they were achieving; . . . that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins--all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.

For a start, it’s worth pointing out that Russell is talking about humanity in general, with only an introductory reference to the individual for rhetorical effect. But more importantly, Russell is talking about reality rather than fantasy. It is truly humbling to realise that all the endeavours of humanity in all their glory will one day be no more. Dr. Craig, on the other hand, believes that all this glory will continue on in God’s kingdom, which is a hope of fantasy not reality. The biggest problem I have with the afterlife is the way some people (like Dr. Craig) seem to think they know exactly what it is and how it will feel to participate. I don’t mind if someone believes in an existence beyond death, I only mind that they place more importance on it than the life they are currently living.

Below is the argument I submitted to Dr. Craig.

You say: ‘if there is no God, there is no hope of deliverance from aging, disease, and death’. You must surely realise that the Buddha addressed this very issue 500 years before Jesus was even born, and founded a religion no less influential than Christianity, with no reference to God at all. The 4 Noble Truths that Gautama envisaged, arising from this reality, results in a psychological philosophy of ‘no attachment’, and, in particular, I would suggest, no attachment to the ego (the concept of 'no-self'), which is what death entails. (No, I’m not a Buddhist; I just acknowledge that his philosophy and influence is no less worthy of contemplation than Jesus’.)

So a belief in a life after death, that you espouse, arises from a specific hope that is obvious yet never articulated: the continuation of one’s personal ego. I think it is the giving up of this hope that is the real revelation, indeed, one could argue salvation, even from Russell’s rhetorical despair, at least psychologically. What you are offering, through your biblical bound philosophy, is the hope of the continuation of ego. On the contrary, I would argue that it is the psychological ‘letting go’ of one’s ego that provides the ultimate revelation and even spiritual freedom.

Unlike you, I don’t speculate about something of which I have no knowledge: a life after death. So I live my life in the knowledge that this is the only life I know and can influence. To do otherwise is to live a lie. And, believe it or not, in this intentional attitude of reality, rather than fantasy, I can find: ‘love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control’ (a biblical quote cited by Dr. Craig, Galations 5.22), as do many people of various persuasions.

The problem with your idea of ‘hope’, even though you don’t spell it out, is that it’s based on the mythical concept of ‘original sin’. Your biblical bound philosophy insists that original sin is the impenetrable obstacle to all hope, except of course through Jesus. So if you want a mythical solution to enduring hope, the Bible provides it. Original sin, of course, was created by the very God through whom you find salvation, so I find it all a bit circular. Now you will say that God didn’t create original sin. No, he just created an intelligent, curious species called humanity and left them with the temptation of the tree of knowledge. Now, this is all metaphorical, as mythology always is, but if you equate metaphor with reality then you get the particular version of hope that you are writing about. And getting back to your quote from Russell, what he is really referring to is the logical end to all humanity rather than the individual. But, unlike yourself, he doesn’t seek solace or consolation from mythology.

Hope is what everyone lives with: hope to improve their life and the lives of others, spiritually and otherwise. No argument about that, but hope for the continuation of one’s ego beyond death is not necessarily a psychologically healthy one. It can lead to the most perverse behaviour, like flying loaded aeroplanes into occupied buildings. It can also lead to inquisitions and wars, and the demonisation of people with different religious views. History is full of the iniquitous deeds done in an attempt to fulfill that particular hope.

The Singularity Prophecy

This is not a singularity you find in black holes or at the origin of the universe – this is a metaphorical singularity entailing the breakthrough of artificial intelligence (AI) to transcend humanity. And prophecy is an apt term, because there are people who believe in this with near-religious conviction. As Wilson da Silva says, in reference to its most ambitious interpretation as a complete subjugation of humanity by machine, ‘It’s been called the “geek rapture”’.

Wilson da Silva is the editor of COSMOS, an excellent Australian science magazine I’ve subscribed to since its inception. The current April/May 2009 edition has essay length contributions on this topic from robotics expert, Rodney Brooks, economist, Robin Hanson, and science journalist, John Horgan, along with sound bites from people like Douglas Hofstadter and Steven Pinker (amongst others).

Where to start? I’d like to start with Rodney Brooks, an ex-pat Aussie, who is now Professor of Robotics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He’s also been Director of the same institute’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, and founder of Heartland Robotics Inc. and co-founder of iRobot Corp. Brooks brings a healthy tone of reality to this discussion after da Silva’s deliberately provocative introduction of the ‘Singularity’ as ‘Rapture’. (In a footnote, da Silva reassures us that he ‘does not expect to still be around to upload his consciousness to a computer.’)

So maybe I’ll backtrack slightly, and mention Raymond Kurzweil (also the referenced starting point for Brooks) who does want to upload (or download?) his consciousness into a computer before he dies, apparently (refer Addendum 2 below). It reminds me of a television discussion I saw in the 60s or 70s (in the days of black & white TV) of someone seriously considering cryogenically freezing their brain for future resurrection, when technology would catch up with their ambition for immortality. And let’s be honest: that’s what this is all about, at least as far as Kurzweil and his fellow proponents are concerned.

Steven Pinker makes the point that many of the science fiction fantasies of his childhood, like ‘jet-pack commuting’ or ‘underwater cities’, never came to fruition, and he would put this in the same bag. To quote: ‘Sheer processing power is not a pixie dust that magically solves all your problems.’

Back to Rodney Brooks, who is one of the best qualified to comment on this, and provides a healthy dose of scepticism, as well as perspective. For a start, Brooks points out how robotics hasn’t delivered on its early promises, including his own ambitions. Brooks expounds that current computer technology still can’t deliver the following childlike abilities: ‘object recognition of a 2 year-old; language capabilities of a 4 year-old; manual dexterity of a 6 year-old; and the social understanding of an 8 year-old.’ To quote: ‘[basic machine capability] may take 10 years or it may take 100. I really don’t know.’

Brooks states at the outset that he sees biological organisms, and therefore the brain, as a ‘machine’. But the analogy for interpretation has changed over time, depending on the technology of the age. During the 17^th Century (Descartes’ time), the model was hydrodynamics, and in the 20^th century it has gone from a telephone exchange, to a logic circuit, to a digital computer to even the world wide web (Brooks’ exposition in brief).

Brooks believes the singularity will be an evolutionary process, not a ‘big bang’ event. He sees the singularity as the gradual evolvement of machine intelligence till it becomes virtually identical to our own, including consciousness. Hofstadter expresses a similar belief, but he ‘…doubt[s] it will happen in the next couple of centuries.’ I have to admit that this is where I differ, as I don’t see machine intelligence becoming sentient, even though my view is in the minority. I provide an argument in an earlier post (The Ghost in the Machine, April 08) where I discuss Henry Markram’s ‘Blue Brain’ project, with a truckload dose of scepticism.

Robin Hanson is author of The Economics of the Singularity, and is Associate Professor of Economics at George Mason University in Virginia. He presents a graph of economic growth via ‘Average world GDP per capita’ on a logarithmic scale from 10,000BC to the last 4 weeks. Hanson explains how the world economy has made quantum leaps at historical points: specifically, the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution and the most recently realised technological revolution. The ‘Singularity’ will be the next revolution, and it will dwarf all the economical advances made to date. I know I won’t do justice to Hanson’s thesis, but, to be honest, I don’t want to spend a lot of space on it.

For a start, all these disciples of the extreme version of the Singularity seem to forget how the other half live, or, more significantly, simply ignore the fact that the majority of the world’s population doesn’t live in a Western society. In fact, for the entire world to enjoy ‘Our’ standard of living would require 4 planet earths (ref: E.O. Wilson, amongst others). But I won’t go there, not on this post. Except to point out that many of the world’s people struggle to get a healthy water supply, and that is going to get worse before it gets better; just to provide a modicum of perspective for all the ‘rapture geeks’.

I’ve left John Horgan’s contribution to last, just as COSMOS does, because he provides the best realism check you could ask for. I’ve read all of Horgan’s books, but The End of Science is his best read, even though, once again, I disagree with his overall thesis. It’s a treasure because he interviews some of the best minds of the latter 20^th Century, some of whom are no longer with us.

I was surprised and impressed by the depth of knowledge Horgan reveals on this subject. In particular, the limitations of our understanding of neurobiology and the inherent problems in creating direct neuron-machine interfaces. One of the most pertinent aspects, he discusses, is the sheer plasticity of the brain in its functionality. Just to give you a snippet: ‘…synaptic connections constantly form, strengthen, weaken and dissolve. Old neurons die and – evidence is overturning decades of dogma – new ones are born.’

There is a sense that the brain makes up neural codes as it goes along - my interpretation, not Horgan's - but he cites Steven Rose, neurobiologist at Britain's Open University, based in Milton Keyes: 'To interpret the neural activity corresponding to any moment ...scientists would need "access to [someone's] entire neural and hormonal life history" as well as to all [their] corresponding experiences.'

It’s really worth reading Horgan’s entire essay – I can’t do it justice in this space – he covers the whole subject and puts it into a perspective the ‘rapture geeks’ have yet to realise.

I happened to be re-reading John Searle’s Mind when I received this magazine, and I have to say that Searle’s book is still the best I’ve read on this subject. He calls it ‘an introduction’, even on the cover, and reiterates that point more than once during his detailed exposition. In effect, he’s trying to tell us how much we still don’t know.

I haven’t read Dennett’s Consciousness Explained, but I probably should. In the same issue of COSMOS, Paul Davies references Dennett’s book, along with Hofstadter’s Godel, Escher, Bach, as 2 of the 4 most influential books he’s read, and that’s high praise indeed. Davies says that while Dennett’s book ‘may not live up to its claim… it definitely set the agenda for how we should think about thinking.’ But he also adds, in parenthesis, that ‘some people say Dennett explained consciousness away’. I think Searle would agree.

Dennett is a formidable philosopher by anyone’s standards, and I’m certainly not qualified, academically or otherwise, to challenge him, but I obviously have a different philosophical perspective on consciousness to him. In a very insightful interview over 2 issues of Philosophy Now, Dennett elaborated on his influences, as well as his ideas. He made the statement that ‘a thermostat thinks’, which is a well known conjecture originally attributed to David Chalmers (according to Searle): it thinks it’s too hot, or it thinks it’s too cold, or it thinks the temperature is just right.

Searle attacks this proposition thus: ‘Consciousness is not spread out like jam on a piece of bread… If the thermostat is conscious, how about parts of the thermostat? Is there a separate consciousness to each screw? Each molecule? If so, how does their consciousness relate to the consciousness of the whole thermostat?’

The corollary to this interpretation and Dennett’s, is that consciousness is just a concept with no connection to anything real. If consciousness is an emergent property, an idea that Searle seems to avoid, then it may well be ‘spread out like jam on a piece of bread’.

To be fair to Searle (I don't want to misrepresent him when I know he'll never read this) he does see consciousness being on a different level to neuron activity (like Hofstadter) and he acknowledges that this is one of the factors that makes consciousness so misunderstood by both philosophers and others.

But I’m getting off the track. The most important contribution Searle makes, that is relevant to this whole discussion, is that consciousness has a ‘first person ontology’ yet we attempt to understand it solely as a ‘third person ontology’. Even the Dalai Lama makes this point, albeit in more prosaic language, in his book on science and religion, The Universe in a Single Atom. Personally, I find it hard to imagine that AI will ever make the transition from third person to first person ontology. But I may be wrong. To quote my own favourite saying: 'Only future generations can tell us how ignorant the current generation is'.

There are 2 aspects to the Singularity prophecy: we will become more like machines, and they will become more like us. This is something I’ve explored in my own fiction, and I will probably continue to do so in the future. But I think that machine intelligence will complement human intelligence rather than replace it. As we are already witnessing, computers are brilliant at the things we do badly and vice versa. I do see a convergence, but I also see no reason why the complementary nature of machine intelligence will not only continue, but actually improve. AI will get better at what it does best, and we will do the same. There is no reason, based on developments to date, to assume that we will become indistinguishable, Turing tests notwithstanding. In other words, I think there will always remain attributes uniquely human, as AI continues to dazzle us with abilities that are already beyond us.

P.S. I review Douglas Hofstadter's brilliant book, Godel, Escher, Bach: an Internal Golden Braid in a post I published in Feb.09: Artificial Intelligence & Consciousness.

Addendum: I'm led to believe that at least 2 of the essays cited above were originally published in IEEE Spectrum Magazine prior to COSMOS (ref: the authors themselves). Addendum 2: I watched the VBS.TV Video on Raymond Kurzweil, provided by a contributor below (Rory), and it seems his quest for longevity is via 'nanobots' rather than by 'computer-downloading his mind' as I implied above.