This is about a loop in our universe (that includes us), and which I’ve long been fascinated by.
To quote from another post I wrote, The introspective cosmos:
We are each an organism with a brain that creates something we call consciousness that allows us to reflect on ourselves, individually. And the Universe created, via an extraordinary convoluted process, the ability to reflect on itself, its origins and its possible meaning.
This insight is also reflected in Eugene Wigner’s 2 miracles: the miracle that the Universe can be comprehended and the miracle that we have the ability to comprehend it to the degree that we do. Or as Einstein so famously said:
The most incomprehensible thing about the Universe is that it’s comprehensible.
As Wigner explicitly stated and Einstein implicitly believed, the medium for that comprehension is mathematics. This loop, that I alluded to in my opening, is also implicit in Roger Penrose’s 3 worlds.
The question in the title was one I found on Quora. Most of the questions that Quora’s algorithms address to me are either too silly, or too specialist and esoteric for my capabilities to respond.
In this case, after reading the other answers, I thought they had largely missed the mark, and perhaps the point. The authors may draw the same conclusion about my answer.
I found that my answer went in a subtly different direction to what I intended, but resulted in a mini-epiphany. There is a limit to what we can know because there will always be a limit to the mathematics we know, which thus far determines what we know of the cosmos.
My answer to What does logic reveal about reality?
Fundamentally, it reveals that there are limits to what we can know.
Epistemology is the ‘theory of knowledge’ (dictionary definition) - effectively, the study of what we can know. Whereas ontology is defined as ‘the nature of being’, which, in effect, is what we call reality.
Since the Enlightenment, it’s become increasingly apparent that it’s our knowledge of mathematics that determines the limits of what we can know, both at the cosmological and the infinitesimal scale. But mathematics itself has epistemological limits according to Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem.
In effect, Godel proved that, in any axiom based mathematical system, there will be mathematical truths that we can’t prove. In practice, this means that there will always be mathematical truths that lie beyond what we currently know. In this context, ‘what we currently know’ is transient. So even though we may, and will, know more in the future, it will never be complete.
The point is that we use logic to reveal these mathematical truths and so the corollary to Godel’s theorem is that there will always be a limit to what that logic can reveal, no matter how much it has revealed already. Basically, we extend our knowledge by extending our axiomatic system. To give an example: by employing the new axiom, √-1 = i, we uncovered a whole new realm of mathematics.
Some centuries later, we then used that particular mathematics (called complex algebra) to describe a newly discovered phenomena called quantum mechanics (QM). In fact, without that knowledge (revealed by pure logic) quantum mechanics would never have been developed into a consistent and highly successful theory. And arguably, QM is ‘the evanescent substrate on which we all exist’ [or reality] to quote Clifford A Pickover.
And this is the loop: QM is the substrate of the Universe, which created humans which discovered an abstract mathematics, which not only describes, but prescribes the rules for QM.
Sunday, 30 June 2019
Sunday, 26 May 2019
Evolution of culture; a uniquely human adaption
I finally got around to reading Sapiens; A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, after someone lent me a copy. I’d already read and reviewed his follow-up book, Homo Deus, so I’m reading them in the reverse order. I have to say he makes bleak reading, yet you feel there’s a lot of truth in his words. Having said that, I still feel I can challenge him on some issues to provide a more optimistic outlook. He is both provocative and thought-provoking, which are not necessarily one and the same thing.
He makes the point, which I’ve long known, that what separates us from all other species is that we have undertaken a cultural evolution that has long overtaken our biological evolution. This was accelerated by the invention of script, which allowed memories to be recorded and maintained over generations, some of which have lasted millennia. Of course, we already had this advantage even before we invented script, but script allowed an accumulation of knowledge that eventually led to the scientific revolution, which we’ve all benefited from since the enlightenment and has accelerated in the last 2 centuries particularly.
One of Harari’s recurring themes is that much of our lives are dependent on fictions and myths, and these have changed as part of our cultural evolution in a way that we don’t appreciate. Jeremy Lent makes similar observations in his excellent book, The Patterning Instinct, though he has a subtly different emphasis to Harari. Harari gives the impression that we are trapped in our social norms and gives examples to make his case. He points out that past societies were very hierarchical and everyone literally knew their place and lived within that paradigm. In fact, the consequences of trying to live outside one’s social constraints could be dire, even fatal. The current paradigm, at least in Western societies, is one of ‘individualism’, which he also explored in his follow-up book, with the warning that it could be eroded, if not eliminated, by the rise of AI, but I won’t discuss that here.
He effectively argues that these ‘fictions’, that we live by, rule out the commonly held belief that we can change our circumstances or that there is an objective morality that we can live by. In other words, he claims our lives are ruled by myths that we accept without question, and the only thing that changes are the myths themselves.
I take his point, but throughout history - at least from around 500BC - there have been iconoclasts who have challenged the reigning paradigm of their time. I will mention four: Socrates, Jesus, Buddha and Confucius. The curious point is that none of these wrote anything down (we only have their ‘sayings’) yet they are still iconic figures more than 2,000 years after their time. What they have in common is that they all challenged the prevailing ‘myth’ (to use Harari’s term) that there was a ‘natural order’ whereby those who ruled were ordained by gods, compared to those who served.
They all suffered for their subversions: Jesus and Socrates were executed, Confucius was exiled into poverty and the Buddha was threatened but not killed. Jesus challenged the church of his day, and that was the logical cause of his execution, not the blasphemy that he claimed to be ‘the son of god’. A lot of words were put in Jesus’ mouth, especially in the Bible. Jesus stood up for the disenfranchised and was critical of the church and the way it exploited the poor. He wouldn’t have been the only rabble-rouser of his time in Roman occupied Palestine but he was one of the most charismatic.
Buddha challenged the caste system in India as unjust, which made him logically critical of the religious-based norms of his time. He challenged the ‘myth’ that Harari claims everyone would have accepted without question.
Confucius was critical of appointments based on birth rather than merit and argued that good rulers truly served their people, rather than the other way round. Not surprisingly, his views didn’t go down very well with the autocracy of his time. He allegedly proposed the dictum of reciprocity: ‘Don’t do to others what you wouldn’t want done to yourself’. An aphorism also attributed to Jesus, which has more pertinence if one considers that it crosses class boundaries.
As for Socrates, I think he was the original existentialist in that he made a special plea to authenticity: ‘To live with honour in this world, actually be what you try to appear to be.’ Socrates got into trouble for supposedly poisoning the minds of the young, but what he really did was to make people challenge the pervading paradigm of his time, including the dominion of gods. He challenged people to think for themselves through argument, which is the essence of philosophy to this day.
To be fair to Harari, he gives specific attention to the feminist paradigm (my term, not his, as I don’t see it as a fiction or a myth). But I do agree that money, which determines so much in our societies, is based on a very convenient fiction and a great deal of trust. Actually, some level of trust is fundamental to a functioning society. In fact, I’ve argued elsewhere that, without trust: truth, justice and freedom all become forfeit.
The feminist paradigm is very recent, yet essential to our future. I recently saw an interview with Melinda Gates (currently in Australia) who made the salient point that it’s contraception that allows women to follow a destiny independent of men. Not surprisingly, it’s the ‘independent of men’ bit that has created, and continues to create, the greatest obstacle to their emancipation.
One of the more interesting discussions, I found, was Harari’s argument that political ideologies are really religions. I guess it depends on how you define religion. This is how Harari defines it, simultaneously giving a rationale to his thesis:
If religion is a system of human norms and values that is founded on belief in a superhuman order, then Soviet Communism was no less a religion than Islam.
I’m not convinced that political ideologies are dependent on a belief in a ‘superhuman order’, but they are premised on abstract ideas of uncontested ‘truth’, and, in that sense, they are like religions.
Contrary to what many people think, political thinking of ‘right’ and ‘left’ are largely determined by one’s genes, although environment also plays a role. Basically, personality traits like conscientiousness and goal-oriented leadership over people-based leadership are what are considered right-leaning traits; and agreeableness and openness (to new ideas) are considered left-leaning traits. Neuroticism would probably also be considered a left-leaning trait. Notice that all the left-leaning traits are predominant in artistic or creative people and this is generally reflected in their politics.
Curiously, twin studies have shown that a belief in God is also, at least partly, a genetically inherited trait. But I don’t believe there is any correlation between these two belief systems: God and politics. I know of people on the political right who are atheists and I know people on the political left who are theists.
I know that in America there seems to be a correlation between the political right and Christian fundamentalism, but I think that’s an Americanism. In Australia, it has little impact. We’ve very recently elected a Pentecostal as PM (Prime Minister) but I don’t believe that had any bearing on his election. We’ve had two atheist PMs in my lifetime (one of whom was very popular indeed), which would be unthinkable in America. The truth is that in some cultures religion is bound irretrievably with politics, and it can be hard for anyone who’s lived their entire lives in that culture to imagine there are political regimes where religion is a non-issue.
And this brings me to Harari’s next contentious point:
Even though liberal humanism sanctifies humans, it does not deny the existence of God, and is, in fact, founded on monotheistic beliefs.
Again, I think this is a particular American perspective. I would argue that liberal humanism has arisen from an existentialist philosophy, even though most people, who advocate and follow it, have probably never studied existential philosophy. There was a cultural revolution in Western societies in the generation following World War 2, and I was a part of it. Basically, we rejected the Christian institutions we were raised in, and embraced the existentialist paradigm that the individual was responsible for their own morality and their own destiny. No where was this more evident than in the rise of feminism, aided ineluctably by on-demand contraception.
So contrary to Harari’s argument, I think the humanist individualism that defines our age (in the West) was inextricably linked to the rejection of the Church. None of us knew what existentialism was, but, when I encountered it academically later in life, I recognised it as the symptomatic paradigm of my generation. We had become existentialists without being ideologically indoctrinated.
I feel Harari is on firmer ground when he discusses the relationship between the scientific revolution and European colonial expansion. I’ve argued previously, when discussing Jeremy Lent’s The Patterning Instinct, that Western European philosophy begat the scientific revolution because, under Galileo, Kepler and Newton, they discovered the relationship between mathematics and the movements of stellar objects – the music of the spheres, to paraphrase the ancient Greeks. The Platonic world of mathematics held the key to understanding the heavens. Subsequent centuries progressed this mathematical paradigm even further with the discovery of electromagnetic waves, then quantum mechanics and general relativity, leading to current theories of elementary nuclear particles and QED (quantum electrodynamics).
But Harari makes the case that exploration of foreign lands and peoples went hand-in-hand with scientific exploration of flora, fauna and archaeological digs. He argues that only Europeans acknowledged that we were ignorant of the wider world, which led to a desire for knowledge, rather than an acceptance that what our myths didn’t tell us was not worth knowing or exploring. Science had the same philosophy: that our ignorance would lead us to always search for new theories and new explanations, rather than accept the religious dogma that knowledge outside the Bible was not worthy of consideration.
So I would agree there was a synergy here, that was both destructive and empowering, depending on whether you were the European conqueror or the people being subjugated and ruthlessly exploited for the expansion of empire.
Probably the best part of the book is Harari’s description of capitalism and how it has shaped history in the last 400 years. He explains how and why it works, and why it’s been so successful. He also points out its flaws and its dark side. The book is worth reading for this section alone. He also explains how the free market, if left to its own devices, would lead to slavery. Instead, we have the exploitation of labour in third world countries, which is the next best thing, or the next worse thing, depending on your point of view.
This logically leads to a discussion on the consumerism paradigm that drives almost everything we do in modern society. Economic growth is totally dependent on it, but, ecologically, it’s a catastrophe in progress.
One of his more thought-provoking insights is in regard to how communal care-taking in law enforcement, health, education, even family dynamics, has been taken over by state bureaucracies. If one reads the neo-Confucian text, the I Ching, one finds constant analogies between family relationships and relationships in the Court (which means government officialdom). It should be pointed out that the I Ching predates Confucius, but contemporary texts (Richard Willem’s translation) have a strong Confucian flavour.
I can’t help but wonder if this facilitated China’s adoption of Communism almost as a state religion. Family relationships and loyalties still hold considerable sway in Asian politics and businesses. Nepotism is much more prevalent in Asian countries than in the West, I would suggest.
One of my bones of contention with Harari in Homo Deus was his ideas on happiness and how it’s basically a consequence of biochemistry. As someone who has lived for more than half a century in the modern post-war world, I feel I’m in a position to challenge his simplistic view that people’s ‘happiness setting’ doesn’t change as a consequence of external factors. To quote from Sapiens:
Buying cars and writing novels do not change our biochemistry. They can change it for a fleeting moment, but it is soon back to its set point.
Well, it works for me. Nothing has given me greater long term happiness than writing a novel and getting it into the public arena – the fact that it’s been a total financial failure is, quite frankly, irrelevant. I really can’t explain that, but it’s probably been the single most important, self-satisfying event of my life. I can die happy. Also I enjoy driving possibly more than any other activity, so owning a car means more to me than just having personal transport. I used to ride motorcycles, so maybe that explains it.
I grew up in a volatile household, which I’ve delineated elsewhere, and when I left home, the first 6 years were very depressing indeed. Over decades I turned all that around, so I think Harari’s ‘happiness setting’ is total bullshit.
But my biggest disagreement with Harari, which I alluded to before, is my advocacy for existentialist philosophy which he replaces with ‘the religion of liberal individualism’. Even though I can see similarities with Buddhism, I wouldn’t call existentialism a religion. Harari pre-empts this objection by claiming all ideologies, be they political or cultural, are no different to any religion. However, I have another objection of my own, which is that when Harari talks about religion, he is really talking about dogma.
In an issue of Philosophy Now (Issue 127, Aug/Sep 2018), Sandy Grant, who is a philosopher at University of Cambridge, defines dogma as an ‘appeal to authority without critical thinking’. I’ve previously defined philosophy as ‘argument augmented by analysis’, which is the antithesis of dogma. In fact, I would go so far as to say that philosophy has been historically an antidote to religion, going all the way back to Socrates.
Existentialism is a humanist philosophy (paraphrasing Sartre) but it requires self-examination and a fundamental honesty to oneself, which is the opposite of the narcissism implied in Harari’s religion of self-obsession, which he euphemistically calls ‘liberal individualism’.
Harari is cynical, if not dismissive, about the need for purpose in life, yet I would argue that it’s fundamental. I would recommend Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl was a holocaust survivor and psychologist, who argued that we find meaning in relationships, projects and adversity. In fact, I would contend that the whole meaning of life is about dealing with adversity, which is why it is the theme of every work of fiction ever recorded.
If I go back to the title of this post, which I think is what Harari’s book is all about, there is a hierarchy of ‘needs’ (not Maslow’s) that a society must provide to ensure what Harari calls ‘happiness’, which is not so much economical as psychological. Back in July 2015, I wrote one of my 400 word mini-essays in response to a Question of the Month in Philosophy Now. The only relevant part is my conclusion, which effectively says that a functioning society is based on trust.
You can’t have truth without trust; you can’t have justice without truth; you can’t have freedom without justice; and you can’t have happiness without freedom.
I think that succinctly answers Harari’s thesis on happiness. Biochemistry may play a role, but people won’t find happiness if all those prerequisites aren’t met, unless, of course, said people are part of a dictatorship’s oligarchy.
A utopian society would allow everyone to achieve their potential – that’s the ideal. The most important consequence of an existentialist approach is that you don’t forfeit your aspirations for the sake of family or nation or church or some other abstract ideal that Harari calls religion.
While on this subject, I will quote from another contributor to Philosophy Now (Issue 110, Oct/Nov 2015), Simon Clarke, who is talking about John Stuart Mill, but who expresses my point of view better than I can.
An objectively good life, on Mill’s (Aristotelian) view, is one where a person has reached her potential, realizing the powers and abilities she possesses. According to Mill, the chief essential requirement for personal well-being is the development of individuality. By this he meant the development of a person’s unique powers, abilities, and talents, to their fullest potential.
He makes the point, which I’ve long known, that what separates us from all other species is that we have undertaken a cultural evolution that has long overtaken our biological evolution. This was accelerated by the invention of script, which allowed memories to be recorded and maintained over generations, some of which have lasted millennia. Of course, we already had this advantage even before we invented script, but script allowed an accumulation of knowledge that eventually led to the scientific revolution, which we’ve all benefited from since the enlightenment and has accelerated in the last 2 centuries particularly.
One of Harari’s recurring themes is that much of our lives are dependent on fictions and myths, and these have changed as part of our cultural evolution in a way that we don’t appreciate. Jeremy Lent makes similar observations in his excellent book, The Patterning Instinct, though he has a subtly different emphasis to Harari. Harari gives the impression that we are trapped in our social norms and gives examples to make his case. He points out that past societies were very hierarchical and everyone literally knew their place and lived within that paradigm. In fact, the consequences of trying to live outside one’s social constraints could be dire, even fatal. The current paradigm, at least in Western societies, is one of ‘individualism’, which he also explored in his follow-up book, with the warning that it could be eroded, if not eliminated, by the rise of AI, but I won’t discuss that here.
He effectively argues that these ‘fictions’, that we live by, rule out the commonly held belief that we can change our circumstances or that there is an objective morality that we can live by. In other words, he claims our lives are ruled by myths that we accept without question, and the only thing that changes are the myths themselves.
I take his point, but throughout history - at least from around 500BC - there have been iconoclasts who have challenged the reigning paradigm of their time. I will mention four: Socrates, Jesus, Buddha and Confucius. The curious point is that none of these wrote anything down (we only have their ‘sayings’) yet they are still iconic figures more than 2,000 years after their time. What they have in common is that they all challenged the prevailing ‘myth’ (to use Harari’s term) that there was a ‘natural order’ whereby those who ruled were ordained by gods, compared to those who served.
They all suffered for their subversions: Jesus and Socrates were executed, Confucius was exiled into poverty and the Buddha was threatened but not killed. Jesus challenged the church of his day, and that was the logical cause of his execution, not the blasphemy that he claimed to be ‘the son of god’. A lot of words were put in Jesus’ mouth, especially in the Bible. Jesus stood up for the disenfranchised and was critical of the church and the way it exploited the poor. He wouldn’t have been the only rabble-rouser of his time in Roman occupied Palestine but he was one of the most charismatic.
Buddha challenged the caste system in India as unjust, which made him logically critical of the religious-based norms of his time. He challenged the ‘myth’ that Harari claims everyone would have accepted without question.
Confucius was critical of appointments based on birth rather than merit and argued that good rulers truly served their people, rather than the other way round. Not surprisingly, his views didn’t go down very well with the autocracy of his time. He allegedly proposed the dictum of reciprocity: ‘Don’t do to others what you wouldn’t want done to yourself’. An aphorism also attributed to Jesus, which has more pertinence if one considers that it crosses class boundaries.
As for Socrates, I think he was the original existentialist in that he made a special plea to authenticity: ‘To live with honour in this world, actually be what you try to appear to be.’ Socrates got into trouble for supposedly poisoning the minds of the young, but what he really did was to make people challenge the pervading paradigm of his time, including the dominion of gods. He challenged people to think for themselves through argument, which is the essence of philosophy to this day.
To be fair to Harari, he gives specific attention to the feminist paradigm (my term, not his, as I don’t see it as a fiction or a myth). But I do agree that money, which determines so much in our societies, is based on a very convenient fiction and a great deal of trust. Actually, some level of trust is fundamental to a functioning society. In fact, I’ve argued elsewhere that, without trust: truth, justice and freedom all become forfeit.
The feminist paradigm is very recent, yet essential to our future. I recently saw an interview with Melinda Gates (currently in Australia) who made the salient point that it’s contraception that allows women to follow a destiny independent of men. Not surprisingly, it’s the ‘independent of men’ bit that has created, and continues to create, the greatest obstacle to their emancipation.
One of the more interesting discussions, I found, was Harari’s argument that political ideologies are really religions. I guess it depends on how you define religion. This is how Harari defines it, simultaneously giving a rationale to his thesis:
If religion is a system of human norms and values that is founded on belief in a superhuman order, then Soviet Communism was no less a religion than Islam.
I’m not convinced that political ideologies are dependent on a belief in a ‘superhuman order’, but they are premised on abstract ideas of uncontested ‘truth’, and, in that sense, they are like religions.
Contrary to what many people think, political thinking of ‘right’ and ‘left’ are largely determined by one’s genes, although environment also plays a role. Basically, personality traits like conscientiousness and goal-oriented leadership over people-based leadership are what are considered right-leaning traits; and agreeableness and openness (to new ideas) are considered left-leaning traits. Neuroticism would probably also be considered a left-leaning trait. Notice that all the left-leaning traits are predominant in artistic or creative people and this is generally reflected in their politics.
Curiously, twin studies have shown that a belief in God is also, at least partly, a genetically inherited trait. But I don’t believe there is any correlation between these two belief systems: God and politics. I know of people on the political right who are atheists and I know people on the political left who are theists.
I know that in America there seems to be a correlation between the political right and Christian fundamentalism, but I think that’s an Americanism. In Australia, it has little impact. We’ve very recently elected a Pentecostal as PM (Prime Minister) but I don’t believe that had any bearing on his election. We’ve had two atheist PMs in my lifetime (one of whom was very popular indeed), which would be unthinkable in America. The truth is that in some cultures religion is bound irretrievably with politics, and it can be hard for anyone who’s lived their entire lives in that culture to imagine there are political regimes where religion is a non-issue.
And this brings me to Harari’s next contentious point:
Even though liberal humanism sanctifies humans, it does not deny the existence of God, and is, in fact, founded on monotheistic beliefs.
Again, I think this is a particular American perspective. I would argue that liberal humanism has arisen from an existentialist philosophy, even though most people, who advocate and follow it, have probably never studied existential philosophy. There was a cultural revolution in Western societies in the generation following World War 2, and I was a part of it. Basically, we rejected the Christian institutions we were raised in, and embraced the existentialist paradigm that the individual was responsible for their own morality and their own destiny. No where was this more evident than in the rise of feminism, aided ineluctably by on-demand contraception.
So contrary to Harari’s argument, I think the humanist individualism that defines our age (in the West) was inextricably linked to the rejection of the Church. None of us knew what existentialism was, but, when I encountered it academically later in life, I recognised it as the symptomatic paradigm of my generation. We had become existentialists without being ideologically indoctrinated.
I feel Harari is on firmer ground when he discusses the relationship between the scientific revolution and European colonial expansion. I’ve argued previously, when discussing Jeremy Lent’s The Patterning Instinct, that Western European philosophy begat the scientific revolution because, under Galileo, Kepler and Newton, they discovered the relationship between mathematics and the movements of stellar objects – the music of the spheres, to paraphrase the ancient Greeks. The Platonic world of mathematics held the key to understanding the heavens. Subsequent centuries progressed this mathematical paradigm even further with the discovery of electromagnetic waves, then quantum mechanics and general relativity, leading to current theories of elementary nuclear particles and QED (quantum electrodynamics).
But Harari makes the case that exploration of foreign lands and peoples went hand-in-hand with scientific exploration of flora, fauna and archaeological digs. He argues that only Europeans acknowledged that we were ignorant of the wider world, which led to a desire for knowledge, rather than an acceptance that what our myths didn’t tell us was not worth knowing or exploring. Science had the same philosophy: that our ignorance would lead us to always search for new theories and new explanations, rather than accept the religious dogma that knowledge outside the Bible was not worthy of consideration.
So I would agree there was a synergy here, that was both destructive and empowering, depending on whether you were the European conqueror or the people being subjugated and ruthlessly exploited for the expansion of empire.
Probably the best part of the book is Harari’s description of capitalism and how it has shaped history in the last 400 years. He explains how and why it works, and why it’s been so successful. He also points out its flaws and its dark side. The book is worth reading for this section alone. He also explains how the free market, if left to its own devices, would lead to slavery. Instead, we have the exploitation of labour in third world countries, which is the next best thing, or the next worse thing, depending on your point of view.
This logically leads to a discussion on the consumerism paradigm that drives almost everything we do in modern society. Economic growth is totally dependent on it, but, ecologically, it’s a catastrophe in progress.
One of his more thought-provoking insights is in regard to how communal care-taking in law enforcement, health, education, even family dynamics, has been taken over by state bureaucracies. If one reads the neo-Confucian text, the I Ching, one finds constant analogies between family relationships and relationships in the Court (which means government officialdom). It should be pointed out that the I Ching predates Confucius, but contemporary texts (Richard Willem’s translation) have a strong Confucian flavour.
I can’t help but wonder if this facilitated China’s adoption of Communism almost as a state religion. Family relationships and loyalties still hold considerable sway in Asian politics and businesses. Nepotism is much more prevalent in Asian countries than in the West, I would suggest.
One of my bones of contention with Harari in Homo Deus was his ideas on happiness and how it’s basically a consequence of biochemistry. As someone who has lived for more than half a century in the modern post-war world, I feel I’m in a position to challenge his simplistic view that people’s ‘happiness setting’ doesn’t change as a consequence of external factors. To quote from Sapiens:
Buying cars and writing novels do not change our biochemistry. They can change it for a fleeting moment, but it is soon back to its set point.
Well, it works for me. Nothing has given me greater long term happiness than writing a novel and getting it into the public arena – the fact that it’s been a total financial failure is, quite frankly, irrelevant. I really can’t explain that, but it’s probably been the single most important, self-satisfying event of my life. I can die happy. Also I enjoy driving possibly more than any other activity, so owning a car means more to me than just having personal transport. I used to ride motorcycles, so maybe that explains it.
I grew up in a volatile household, which I’ve delineated elsewhere, and when I left home, the first 6 years were very depressing indeed. Over decades I turned all that around, so I think Harari’s ‘happiness setting’ is total bullshit.
But my biggest disagreement with Harari, which I alluded to before, is my advocacy for existentialist philosophy which he replaces with ‘the religion of liberal individualism’. Even though I can see similarities with Buddhism, I wouldn’t call existentialism a religion. Harari pre-empts this objection by claiming all ideologies, be they political or cultural, are no different to any religion. However, I have another objection of my own, which is that when Harari talks about religion, he is really talking about dogma.
In an issue of Philosophy Now (Issue 127, Aug/Sep 2018), Sandy Grant, who is a philosopher at University of Cambridge, defines dogma as an ‘appeal to authority without critical thinking’. I’ve previously defined philosophy as ‘argument augmented by analysis’, which is the antithesis of dogma. In fact, I would go so far as to say that philosophy has been historically an antidote to religion, going all the way back to Socrates.
Existentialism is a humanist philosophy (paraphrasing Sartre) but it requires self-examination and a fundamental honesty to oneself, which is the opposite of the narcissism implied in Harari’s religion of self-obsession, which he euphemistically calls ‘liberal individualism’.
Harari is cynical, if not dismissive, about the need for purpose in life, yet I would argue that it’s fundamental. I would recommend Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl was a holocaust survivor and psychologist, who argued that we find meaning in relationships, projects and adversity. In fact, I would contend that the whole meaning of life is about dealing with adversity, which is why it is the theme of every work of fiction ever recorded.
If I go back to the title of this post, which I think is what Harari’s book is all about, there is a hierarchy of ‘needs’ (not Maslow’s) that a society must provide to ensure what Harari calls ‘happiness’, which is not so much economical as psychological. Back in July 2015, I wrote one of my 400 word mini-essays in response to a Question of the Month in Philosophy Now. The only relevant part is my conclusion, which effectively says that a functioning society is based on trust.
You can’t have truth without trust; you can’t have justice without truth; you can’t have freedom without justice; and you can’t have happiness without freedom.
I think that succinctly answers Harari’s thesis on happiness. Biochemistry may play a role, but people won’t find happiness if all those prerequisites aren’t met, unless, of course, said people are part of a dictatorship’s oligarchy.
A utopian society would allow everyone to achieve their potential – that’s the ideal. The most important consequence of an existentialist approach is that you don’t forfeit your aspirations for the sake of family or nation or church or some other abstract ideal that Harari calls religion.
While on this subject, I will quote from another contributor to Philosophy Now (Issue 110, Oct/Nov 2015), Simon Clarke, who is talking about John Stuart Mill, but who expresses my point of view better than I can.
An objectively good life, on Mill’s (Aristotelian) view, is one where a person has reached her potential, realizing the powers and abilities she possesses. According to Mill, the chief essential requirement for personal well-being is the development of individuality. By this he meant the development of a person’s unique powers, abilities, and talents, to their fullest potential.
Thursday, 9 May 2019
The Universe's natural units
It’s well known that Einstein’s general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics (QM) are incompatible. Actually, Viktor T. Toth (IT pro and part-time physicist) claims ‘incompatible’ is a misnomer, in as much as:
We can do quantum field theory just fine on the curved spacetime background of general relativity.
Then he adds this caveat:
What we have so far been unable to do in a convincing manner is turn gravity itself into a quantum field theory.
These carefully selected quotes are from a recent post by Toth on Quora where he is a regular contributor. His area of expertise is in cosmology, including the study of black holes. On another post he explains how the 2 theories are mathematically ‘incompatible’ (my term, not his):
The equation is Einstein’s field equation for gravitation, the equation that is, in many ways, the embodiment of general relativity:
Rμν−12Rgμν=8πGTμν.
The left-hand side of this equation represents a quantity formed from the spacetime metric, which determines the “deformation of spacetime”. The right-hand side of this equation is a quantity that is formed from the energy, momentum, angular momentum and internal stresses and pressure of matter.
He then goes on to explain that, while the RHS of the equation can be reformulated in QM nomenclature, the LHS can’t. There is a way out of this, which is to ‘average’ the QM side of the equation to get it into units compatible with the classical side, and this is called ‘semi-classical gravity’. But, again, in his own words:
…it is hideously inelegant, essentially an ad-hoc averaging of the equation that is really, really ugly and is not derived from any basic principle that we know.
Anyway, the point of this mini-exposition is that there is a mathematical conflict, if not an incompatibility, inherent in Einstein’s equation itself. One side of the equation can be expressed quantum mechanically and the other side can’t. What’s more, the resolution is to ‘bastardise’ the QM side to make it compatible with the classical side.
You may be wondering what all this has to do with the title of this post. The fundamental constant at the heart of general relativity is, of course, G, the same constant that Newton used in his famous formula:
On the other hand, the fundamental constant used in QM is Planck’s constant, h, most famously used by Einstein to explain the photo-electric effect. It was this paper (not his paper on relativity) that garnered Einstein his Nobel prize. It’s best known by Planck’s equation:
E = hf
Where E is energy and f is the frequency of the photon. You may or may not know that Planck determined h empirically by studying hot body radiation, where he used it to resolve a particularly difficult thermodynamics problem. From Planck’s perspective, h was a mathematical invention and had no bearing on reality.
G was also determined empirically, by Cavendish in 1798 (well after Newton) and, of course, is used to mathematically track the course of the planets and the stars. There is no obvious or logical connection between these 2 constants based on their empirical origins.
There is a third constant I will bring into this discussion, which is c, the constant speed of light, which also involves Einstein, via his famous equation:
E = mc2
Now, having set the stage, I will invoke the subject of this post. If one uses Planck units, also known as ‘natural units’, one can see how these 3 constants are interrelated.
I will introduce another Quora contributor, Jeremiah Johnson (a self-described ‘physics theorist’) to explain:
The way we can arrive at these units of Planck Length and Planck Time is through the mathematical application of non-dimensionalization. What this does is take known constants and find what value each fundamental unit should be set to so they all equal one. (See below.)
Toth (whom I referenced earlier) makes the salient point that many people believe that the Planck units represent the physical smallest component of spacetime, and are therefore evidence, if not proof, that the Universe is inherently granular. But, as Toth points out, spacetime could still be continuous (or non-discrete) and the Planck units represent the limits of what we can know rather than the limits of what exists. I’ve written about the issue of ‘discreteness’ of the Universe before and concluded that it’s not (which, of course, doesn’t mean I’m right).
Planck units in ‘free space’ are the Universe’s ‘natural units’. They are literally the smallest units we can theoretically measure, therefore lending themselves to being the metrics of the Universe.
The Planck length is
1ℓP=1.61622837∗10−35m
And Planck time is
1tP=5.3911613∗10−44s
If you divide one by the other you get:
1ℓP/1tP=299,792,458m/s
Which of course, is the speed of light. As Johnson quips: “Isn’t that cool?”
Now, Max Planck derived these ‘natural units’ himself by looking at 5 equations and adjusting the scale of the units so as they would not only be consistent across the equations, but would non-dimensionalise the constants so they all equal 1 (as Johnson described above).
In fact, the definition of the Plank units (except charge) includes both G andh (which is h/2π). I checked the relationship between h and G, by calculating G from h, knowing the Planck units for length and time. In effect, I reverse-engineered the calculation, having to find the Planck mass from h then putting it into the formula for G.
The point is that I was able to derive G from h using Planck units. The Universe lends itself to portraying a consistency across metrics and natural phenomena based on units derived from constants that represent the extremes of scale, h and G. The constant, c, is also part of the derivation, and is essential to the dimension of time. It’s not such a mystery when one realises that the ‘units’ are derived from empirically determined constants
We can do quantum field theory just fine on the curved spacetime background of general relativity.
Then he adds this caveat:
What we have so far been unable to do in a convincing manner is turn gravity itself into a quantum field theory.
These carefully selected quotes are from a recent post by Toth on Quora where he is a regular contributor. His area of expertise is in cosmology, including the study of black holes. On another post he explains how the 2 theories are mathematically ‘incompatible’ (my term, not his):
The equation is Einstein’s field equation for gravitation, the equation that is, in many ways, the embodiment of general relativity:
Rμν−12Rgμν=8πGTμν.
The left-hand side of this equation represents a quantity formed from the spacetime metric, which determines the “deformation of spacetime”. The right-hand side of this equation is a quantity that is formed from the energy, momentum, angular momentum and internal stresses and pressure of matter.
He then goes on to explain that, while the RHS of the equation can be reformulated in QM nomenclature, the LHS can’t. There is a way out of this, which is to ‘average’ the QM side of the equation to get it into units compatible with the classical side, and this is called ‘semi-classical gravity’. But, again, in his own words:
…it is hideously inelegant, essentially an ad-hoc averaging of the equation that is really, really ugly and is not derived from any basic principle that we know.
Anyway, the point of this mini-exposition is that there is a mathematical conflict, if not an incompatibility, inherent in Einstein’s equation itself. One side of the equation can be expressed quantum mechanically and the other side can’t. What’s more, the resolution is to ‘bastardise’ the QM side to make it compatible with the classical side.
You may be wondering what all this has to do with the title of this post. The fundamental constant at the heart of general relativity is, of course, G, the same constant that Newton used in his famous formula:
On the other hand, the fundamental constant used in QM is Planck’s constant, h, most famously used by Einstein to explain the photo-electric effect. It was this paper (not his paper on relativity) that garnered Einstein his Nobel prize. It’s best known by Planck’s equation:
E = hf
Where E is energy and f is the frequency of the photon. You may or may not know that Planck determined h empirically by studying hot body radiation, where he used it to resolve a particularly difficult thermodynamics problem. From Planck’s perspective, h was a mathematical invention and had no bearing on reality.
G was also determined empirically, by Cavendish in 1798 (well after Newton) and, of course, is used to mathematically track the course of the planets and the stars. There is no obvious or logical connection between these 2 constants based on their empirical origins.
There is a third constant I will bring into this discussion, which is c, the constant speed of light, which also involves Einstein, via his famous equation:
E = mc2
Now, having set the stage, I will invoke the subject of this post. If one uses Planck units, also known as ‘natural units’, one can see how these 3 constants are interrelated.
I will introduce another Quora contributor, Jeremiah Johnson (a self-described ‘physics theorist’) to explain:
The way we can arrive at these units of Planck Length and Planck Time is through the mathematical application of non-dimensionalization. What this does is take known constants and find what value each fundamental unit should be set to so they all equal one. (See below.)
Toth (whom I referenced earlier) makes the salient point that many people believe that the Planck units represent the physical smallest component of spacetime, and are therefore evidence, if not proof, that the Universe is inherently granular. But, as Toth points out, spacetime could still be continuous (or non-discrete) and the Planck units represent the limits of what we can know rather than the limits of what exists. I’ve written about the issue of ‘discreteness’ of the Universe before and concluded that it’s not (which, of course, doesn’t mean I’m right).
Planck units in ‘free space’ are the Universe’s ‘natural units’. They are literally the smallest units we can theoretically measure, therefore lending themselves to being the metrics of the Universe.
The Planck length is
1ℓP=1.61622837∗10−35m
And Planck time is
1tP=5.3911613∗10−44s
If you divide one by the other you get:
1ℓP/1tP=299,792,458m/s
Which of course, is the speed of light. As Johnson quips: “Isn’t that cool?”
Now, Max Planck derived these ‘natural units’ himself by looking at 5 equations and adjusting the scale of the units so as they would not only be consistent across the equations, but would non-dimensionalise the constants so they all equal 1 (as Johnson described above).
In fact, the definition of the Plank units (except charge) includes both G and
The point is that I was able to derive G from h using Planck units. The Universe lends itself to portraying a consistency across metrics and natural phenomena based on units derived from constants that represent the extremes of scale, h and G. The constant, c, is also part of the derivation, and is essential to the dimension of time. It’s not such a mystery when one realises that the ‘units’ are derived from empirically determined constants
Addendum: For a comprehensive, yet easy-to-read, historical account, I’d recommend John D. Barrow’s book, The Constants of Nature; From Alpha to Omega.
Addendum (13 April 2023): According to Toth, the Planck units don't provide a limit on anything:
...the Planck scale is not an inherent limit of anything. It is simply the set of “natural” units that characterize Nature.
So the Planck scale is not a physical limit or a limit on what can be observed; rather, it’s a limitation of the theory that we use to describe the quantum world.
Read his erudite exposition on the subject here:
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-Planck-length-the-smallest-measurable-length-Why-cant-it-be-smaller/answer/Viktor-T-Toth-1
Friday, 3 May 2019
What is the third way?
This is the latest Question of the Month from Philosophy Now. I should point out that my last entry didn’t get published. After a run of something like 5 in a row, that was a bit of a perspective-changer. I had been getting cocksure. So I have 7 out of 9 published and now aiming for 8 out of 10. But 7 out of 10 is still a good result over a period of around 10 years. I should point out that I don’t enter every single one of them. I pick and choose, which skews my chances of success.
The ‘third way’ referenced in the question is basically a reference to an alternative societal paradigm to capitalism and communism. I expect that most, if not all responses will be variations on a 'middle way'. But if there is a completely out-of-the-box answer, I’ll be curious to read it. So, maybe the way the question is addressed will be just as important, if not more important, than the proposed resolution.
I think this is the most difficult question Philosophy Now has thrown at us in the decade or two I’ve been reading it. I think there definitely will be a third way by the end of this century, but I’m not entirely sure what it will be. Is that a copout? No, I’m going to attempt to forecast the future by looking at the past.
If one goes back before the industrial revolution, no one would have predicted that feudalism would not continue forever. But the industrial revolution unintentionally spawned two social experiments: communism and capitalism that spanned the 20th Century. I think one can fairly say that capitalism ultimately prevailed, because all communist inspired revolutions became State-run oligarchies that led to the worst excesses in totalitarianism.
What’s more, we saw more societal and technological change in the 20th Century than all previous history. There is no reason to believe that the 21st Century won’t be even more transformative. We are currently going through a technological revolution in every way analogous to the industrial revolution of the 19th Century, and it will be just as socially disruptive and economically challenging.
Capitalism has become so successful globally, especially in the high-tech industries, that corporations are starting to eclipse governments in their influence and power, and, to some extent, now embody the feudal system we thought we’d left behind. I’m referring to third world countries providing exploited labour and resources for the affluent elite, which includes me.
There is an increasing need to stop the wasteful production of goods on the altar of economic growth. It’s not only damaging the environment, it increases the gap between those who consume and those who produce. So a global economy would give the wealth to those who produce and not just those who are their puppet masters. This would require equitable wealth distribution on a global scale, not just nationally.
Future technologies will become more advanced to the point that there will be a symbiosis between humans and machines, and this will have a dramatic impact on economic drivers. A universal basic income, which is unthinkable now, will become a necessity because so many jobs will be AI executed.
People and their ideas are only considered progressive in hindsight. But what was radical in the past often becomes the status quo in the present; and voila: no one can imagine it any other way.
Addendum: I changed the last sentence of the third-last paragraph before I sent it off.
The ‘third way’ referenced in the question is basically a reference to an alternative societal paradigm to capitalism and communism. I expect that most, if not all responses will be variations on a 'middle way'. But if there is a completely out-of-the-box answer, I’ll be curious to read it. So, maybe the way the question is addressed will be just as important, if not more important, than the proposed resolution.
I think this is the most difficult question Philosophy Now has thrown at us in the decade or two I’ve been reading it. I think there definitely will be a third way by the end of this century, but I’m not entirely sure what it will be. Is that a copout? No, I’m going to attempt to forecast the future by looking at the past.
If one goes back before the industrial revolution, no one would have predicted that feudalism would not continue forever. But the industrial revolution unintentionally spawned two social experiments: communism and capitalism that spanned the 20th Century. I think one can fairly say that capitalism ultimately prevailed, because all communist inspired revolutions became State-run oligarchies that led to the worst excesses in totalitarianism.
What’s more, we saw more societal and technological change in the 20th Century than all previous history. There is no reason to believe that the 21st Century won’t be even more transformative. We are currently going through a technological revolution in every way analogous to the industrial revolution of the 19th Century, and it will be just as socially disruptive and economically challenging.
Capitalism has become so successful globally, especially in the high-tech industries, that corporations are starting to eclipse governments in their influence and power, and, to some extent, now embody the feudal system we thought we’d left behind. I’m referring to third world countries providing exploited labour and resources for the affluent elite, which includes me.
There is an increasing need to stop the wasteful production of goods on the altar of economic growth. It’s not only damaging the environment, it increases the gap between those who consume and those who produce. So a global economy would give the wealth to those who produce and not just those who are their puppet masters. This would require equitable wealth distribution on a global scale, not just nationally.
Future technologies will become more advanced to the point that there will be a symbiosis between humans and machines, and this will have a dramatic impact on economic drivers. A universal basic income, which is unthinkable now, will become a necessity because so many jobs will be AI executed.
People and their ideas are only considered progressive in hindsight. But what was radical in the past often becomes the status quo in the present; and voila: no one can imagine it any other way.
Addendum: I changed the last sentence of the third-last paragraph before I sent it off.
Friday, 26 April 2019
What use is philosophy?
Today I received my copy of Philosophy Now (Issue 131, April/May 2019), a UK based periodical I subscribe to.
Leafing through its pages, I came across the Letters section and saw my name. I had written a letter that I had forgotten about. It was in response to an article (referenced below), in the previous issue, about whether philosophy had lost its relevance in the modern world. Did it still have a role in the 21st Century of economic paradigms and technological miracles?
There are many aspects to Daniel Kaufman’s discussion on The Decline & Rebirth of Philosophy (Issue 130, Feb/Mar 2019, pp. 34-7), but mine is the perspective of an ‘outsider’, in as much as I’m not an academic in any field and I’m not a professional philosopher.
I think the major problem with philosophy, as it’s practiced today as an academic activity, is that it doesn’t fit into the current economic paradigm which specifically or tacitly governs all value judgements of a profession or an activity. In other words, it has no perceived economic value to either corporations or governments.
On the other hand, everyone can see the benefits of science in the form of the technological marvels they use every day, along with all the infrastructure that they quite literally couldn’t live without. Yet I would argue that science and philosophy are joined at the hip. Plato’s Academy was based on Pythagoras’s quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. In Western culture, science, mathematics and philosophy have a common origin.
The same people who benefit from the ‘magic’ of modern technology are mostly unaware of the long road from the Enlightenment to the industrial revolution, the formulation of the laws of thermodynamics, followed closely by the laws of electromagnetism, followed by the laws of quantum mechanics, upon which every electronic device depends.
John Wheeler, best known for coining the term, ‘black hole’ (in cosmology) said:
We live on an island of knowledge surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
I contend that the ‘island of knowledge’ is science and the ‘shore of ignorance’ is philosophy. Philosophy is at the frontier of knowledge and because the ‘sea of ignorance’ is infinite, there will always be a role for it. Philosophy is not divorced from science and mathematics; it’s just not obviously in the guise it once was.
The marriage between science and philosophy in the 21st Century is about how we are going to live on a planet with limited resources. We need a philosophy to guide us into a collaborative global society that realises we need Earth more than it needs us.
Leafing through its pages, I came across the Letters section and saw my name. I had written a letter that I had forgotten about. It was in response to an article (referenced below), in the previous issue, about whether philosophy had lost its relevance in the modern world. Did it still have a role in the 21st Century of economic paradigms and technological miracles?
There are many aspects to Daniel Kaufman’s discussion on The Decline & Rebirth of Philosophy (Issue 130, Feb/Mar 2019, pp. 34-7), but mine is the perspective of an ‘outsider’, in as much as I’m not an academic in any field and I’m not a professional philosopher.
I think the major problem with philosophy, as it’s practiced today as an academic activity, is that it doesn’t fit into the current economic paradigm which specifically or tacitly governs all value judgements of a profession or an activity. In other words, it has no perceived economic value to either corporations or governments.
On the other hand, everyone can see the benefits of science in the form of the technological marvels they use every day, along with all the infrastructure that they quite literally couldn’t live without. Yet I would argue that science and philosophy are joined at the hip. Plato’s Academy was based on Pythagoras’s quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. In Western culture, science, mathematics and philosophy have a common origin.
The same people who benefit from the ‘magic’ of modern technology are mostly unaware of the long road from the Enlightenment to the industrial revolution, the formulation of the laws of thermodynamics, followed closely by the laws of electromagnetism, followed by the laws of quantum mechanics, upon which every electronic device depends.
John Wheeler, best known for coining the term, ‘black hole’ (in cosmology) said:
We live on an island of knowledge surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
I contend that the ‘island of knowledge’ is science and the ‘shore of ignorance’ is philosophy. Philosophy is at the frontier of knowledge and because the ‘sea of ignorance’ is infinite, there will always be a role for it. Philosophy is not divorced from science and mathematics; it’s just not obviously in the guise it once was.
The marriage between science and philosophy in the 21st Century is about how we are going to live on a planet with limited resources. We need a philosophy to guide us into a collaborative global society that realises we need Earth more than it needs us.
Thursday, 4 April 2019
Is time a psychological illusion or a parameter of the Universe?
I’ve recently read Paul Davies latest book, The Demon in the Machine (released in Feb) and I would highly recommend it.
We have reached a stage in politics and media generally that you are either for or against a person, an idea or an ideology. Anyone who studies philosophy in any depth realises that there are many points of view on a single topic. There are many voices that I admire yet there is not one that I completely agree with on everything they announce or proclaim or theorise about.
Paul Davies new book is a case in point. This book is very intellectually stimulating, even provocative, which is what I expect and is what makes it worth reading. Within its 200 plus pages, there was one short, well-written and erudite passage where I found myself in serious disagreement. It was his discussion on time and its relation to our perceptions.
He starts with Einstein’s well known quote: ‘The past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.’ It’s important to put this into its proper context. Einstein wrote this in a letter to a mother of a friend who had recently died. It was written, of course, not only to console her, but to reveal his own conclusions arising from his theories of relativity and their inherent effect on time.
A consequence of Einstein’s theory was that simultaneity was dependent on the observer, so it was possible that 2 observers could disagree on the sequence of events occurring (depending on their respective frames of reference). Note that this is only true if there is no causal relationship between these events.
Also, Einstein believed in what’s now called a ‘block universe’ whereby the future is as fixed as the past. Some physicists still argue this, in the same way that some (if not many) argue that we live in a computer simulation (Davies, it should be pointed out, definitely does not).
I’m getting off the track, because what Davies argues is that the so-called ‘arrow of time’ is an ‘illusion’, as is the ‘flow of time’. He goes so far as to contentiously claim that time can’t be measured. His argument is simple: if time was to ‘slow down’ or ‘speed up’ everything, from your heart rate to atomic clocks would do so as well, so there is no way to perceive it or measure it. He argues that you can’t measure time against time: “It has to be ‘One second per second’ – a tautology!” However, as Davies well knows, Einstein’s theory of relativity tells us that you can measure the ‘rate of time’ of one clock against another, and this is done and allowed for in GPS calculations. See my post on the special theory of relativity where I describe this very phenomenon.
Davies argues that there is no ‘backwards or forwards in time’ and the arrow of time is a ‘misnomer’, a metaphor we use to describe a psychological phenomenon. According to him, it’s our persistent belief in a continuity of self that creates the illusion of ‘time passing’. But I think he has it back-to-front. (I’ll return to this later.)
So, if there is no direction of time and no flow of time, how do we describe it? Well, one way is to talk about whether phenomena are symmetrical or asymmetrical in time. In other words, if you were to reverse a sequence of events would you get back to where you started, or is that even possible? Davies argues that entropy or the second law of thermodynamics accounts for this perception. But here’s the thing: without time, motion would not exist and causation would not exist; both of which we witness all the time. And if time does not ‘pass’ or ‘flow’, then what does it do?
Mathematically, time is a dimension, which even has a smallest unit, called ‘Planck time’. Davies says it’s not measurable, but we do, even to the extent that we derive an age of the Universe. John Barrow, in his The Book of Universes, even provides an estimate in ‘Planck units’. Mathematically, we provide 4 co-ordinates for any event in the Universe – 3 of space and 1 of time. And, obviously, they can all change, but time is unique in that it appears to change continuously.*
And time is ‘fluid’ for want of a better word. Its ‘rate’ can change in gravity and relativistically because the speed of light is constant. The speed of light is the only thing that stops everything from happening at once, and for a photon, time is zero. A photon traverses the entire universe in zero time (from the photon’s perspective).
But for the rest of us, time is a constraint created by light. Everything you observe has already happened because it always takes a finite amount of time (from your perspective) for the photon to reach you and nothing can travel faster than light (because it travels in zero time). This is the paradox, but it’s the relationship between light and time that governs our understanding of the Universe. If something speeds up relative to something else (you), then the light it emits increases in frequency if it’s coming towards you and decreases if it’s moving away. Obviously, the very fact that you can measure its frequency means you can measure its velocity (relative to you), which is meaningless without the dimension of time.
So note that all observations (involving light) mean that everything you perceive is in the past – it’s impossible to see into the future. So the ‘arrow of time’, that Davies specifically calls a ‘misnomer’, is a pertinent description of this everyday perception – we can only observe time in one direction, which is the past.
Davies explains our perception of time as a neurological effect:
It is incontestable that we possess a very strong psychological impression that our awareness is being swept along on an unstoppable current of time, and it is perfectly legitimate to seek a scientific explanation for the feeling that time passes. The explanation of this familiar psychological flux is, in my view, to be found in neuroscience, not physics. (emphasis in the original.)
I’ve argued previously that perhaps it is only consciousness that exists in a constant present. It is certainly true that only consciousness can perceive time as a dynamic entity. Everything around us becomes instantly the past like we are standing in a river where we can’t see upstream. It is for this reason that the concepts of past, present and future are uniquely perceived by a conscious mind. Davies effectively argues that this is the sole representation of time: that ‘time passing’ only exists in our minds and not in reality. But if our minds exist in a constant present (relative to everything else) then time does pass us by; and past, present and future is not an illusion, but a consequence of consciousness interacting with reality.
There are causal events that occur around us all the time, but, like a photographic image, they become past events as soon as they happen. I believe there is a universal ‘now’, otherwise the idea of the age of the Universe makes no sense. But, possibly, only conscious entities ride this constant now, which is why everything else is dynamically going past us in a literal, not just a psychological, sense. This is where Davies and I disagree.
Meanwhile, the future exists in light beams yet to be seen. Quantum mechanically, a photon is a wave function (ψ) that’s in the future of whatever it interacts with. A photon is only observed in retrospect, along with its path, and that’s true for all quantum events, including the famous double slit experiment. As Freeman Dyson points out, QM gives us probabilities which are in the future. To paraphrase: ‘quantum mechanics describes the future and classical physics describes the past’. Most physicists (including Davies, I suspect) would disagree. The orthodox view is that classical physics is a special case of quantum mechanics and, in quantum cosmology, time mathematically disappears.
Footnote: I should point out that Paul Davies is someone I’ve greatly admired and respected for many years.
*Paradoxically, at the event horizon of a black hole, time stops and we enter the world of quantum gravity. The evidence for black holes are accretion disks
where the matter from a companion star forms a ring at the event
horizon and emits high energy radiation as a result, which can be
observed. However, from everything I've read, we need new physics to understand what happens beyond the event horizon of a black hole.
Addendum: I've since resolved this paradox to my satisfaction: it's space that crosses the event horizon at c. Then I learned that Kip Thorne effectively provided the same explanation, demonstrated with graphics, in Scientific American in 1967. He cited David Finkelstein who demonstrated it mathematically in 1958.
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