Why is there something rather than nothing?

Jim Holt has written an entire book on this subject, titled Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story. Holt is a philosopher and frequent contributor to The New Yorker, the New York Times and the London Review of Books, according to the blurb on the inner title page. He’s also very knowledgeable in mathematics and physics, and has the intellectual credentials to gain access to some of the world’s most eminent thinkers, like David Deutsch, Richard Swinburne, Steven Weinberg, Roger Penrose and the late John Updike, amongst others. I’m stating the obvious when I say that he is both cleverer and better read than me.

The above-referenced, often-quoted existential question is generally attributed to Gottfried Leibniz, in the early 18^th Century and towards the end of his life, in his treatise on the “Principle of Sufficient Reason”, which, according to Holt, ‘…says, in essence, that there is an explanation for every fact, an answer to every question.’ Given the time in which he lived, it’s not surprising that Leibniz’s answer was ‘God’.  Whilst Leibniz acknowledged the physical world is contingent, God, on the other hand, is a ‘necessary being’.

For some people (like Richard Swinburne), this is still the only relevant and pertinent answer, but considering Holt makes this point on page 21 of a 280 page book, it’s obviously an historical starting point and not a conclusion. He goes on to discuss Hume’s and Kant’s responses but I’ll digress. In Feb. 2011, I wrote a post on metaphysics, where I point out that there is no reason for God to exist if we didn’t exist, so I think the logic is back to front. As I’ve argued elsewhere (March 2012), the argument for a God existing independently of humanity is a non sequitur. This is not something I’ll dwell on – I’m just putting the argument for God into perspective and don’t intend to reference it again.

Sorry, I’ll take that back. In Nov 2011, I got into an argument with Emanuel Rutten on his blog, after he claimed that he had proven that God ‘necessarily exists’ using modal logic. Interestingly, Holt, who understands modal logic better than me, raises this same issue. Holt references Alvin Platinga’s argument, which he describes as ‘dauntingly technical’. In a nutshell: because of God’s ‘maximal greatness’, if one concedes he can exist in one possible world, he must necessarily exist in all possible worlds because ‘maximal greatness’ must exist in all possible worlds. Apparently, this was the basis of Godel’s argument (by logic) for the existence of God. But Holt contends that the argument can just as easily be reversed by claiming that there exists a possible world where ‘maximal greatness’ is absent’. And ‘if God is absent from any possible world, he is absent from all possible worlds…’ (italics in the original). Rutten, by the way, tried to have it both ways: a personal God necessarily exists, but a non-personal God must necessarily not exist. If you don’t believe me, check out the argument thread on his own blog which I link from my own post, Trying to define God (Nov. 2011).

Holt starts off with a brief history lesson, and just when you think: what else can he possibly say on the subject? he takes us on a globe-trotting journey, engaging some truly Olympian intellects. As the book progressed I found the topic more engaging and more thought-provoking. At the very least, Holt makes you think, as all good philosophy should. Holt acknowledges an influence and respect for Thomas Nagel, whom he didn’t speak with, but ‘…a philosopher I have always revered for his originality, depth and integrity.’

I found the most interesting person Holt interviewed to be David Deutsch, who is best known as an advocate for Hugh Everett’s ‘many worlds’ interpretation of quantum mechanics. Holt had expected a frosty response from Deutsch, based on a review he’d written on Deutsch’s book, The Fabric of Reality, for the Wall Street Journal where he’d used the famous description given to Lord Byron: “mad, bad and dangerous to know”. But he left Deutsch’s company with quite a different impression, where ‘…he had revealed a real sweetness of character and intellectual generosity.’

I didn’t know this, but Deutsch had extended Turing’s proof of a universal computer to a quantum version, whereby  ‘…in principle, it could simulate any physically possible environment. It was the ultimate “virtual reality” machine.’ In fact, Deutsch had presented his proof to Richard Feynman just before his death in 1988, who got up, as Deutsch was writing it on a blackboard, took the chalk off him and finished it off. Holt found out, from his conversation with Deutsch, that he didn’t believe we live in a ‘quantum computer simulation’.

Deutsch outlined his philosophy in The Fabric of Reality, according to Holt (I haven’t read it):

Life and thought, [Deutsch] declared, determine the very warp and woof of the quantum multiverse… knowledge-bearing structures – embodied in physical minds – arise from evolutionary processes that ensure they are nearly identical across different universes. From the perspective of the quantum multiverse as a whole, mind is a pervasive ordering principle, like a giant crystal.

When Holt asked Deutsch ‘Why is there a “fabric of reality” at all?’ he said “[it] could only be answered by finding a more encompassing fabric of which the physical multiverse was a part. But there is no ultimate answer.” He said “I would start with the principle of comprehensibility.”

He gave the example of a quasar in the universe and a model of the quasar in someone’s brain “…yet they embody the same mathematical relationships.” For Deutsch, it’s the comprehensibility of the universe (in particular, its mathematical comprehensibility) that provides a basis for the ‘fabric of reality’. I’ll return to this point later.

The most insightful aspect of Holt’s discourse with Deutsch was his differentiation between explanation by laws and explanation of specifics. For example, Newton’s theory of gravitation gave laws to explain what Kepler could only explain by specifics: the orbits of planets in the solar system. Likewise, Darwin and Wallace’s theory of natural selection gave a law for evolutionary speciation rather than an explanation for every individual species. Despite his affinity for ‘comprehensibility’, Deutsch also claimed: “No, none of the laws of physics can possibly answer the question of why the multiverse is there.”

It needs to be pointed out that Deutsch’s quantum multiverse is not the same as the multiverse propagated by an ‘eternally-inflating universe’. Apparently, Leonard Susskind has argued that “the two may really be the same thing”, but Steven Weinberg, in conversation with Holt, thinks they’re “completely perpendicular”.

Holt’s conversation with Penrose held few surprises for me. In particular, Penrose described his 3 worlds philosophy: the Platonic (mathematical) world, the physical world and the mental world. I’ve expounded on this in previous posts, including the one on metaphysics I mentioned earlier but also when I reviewed Mario Livio’s book, Is God a Mathematician? (March 2009).

Penrose argues that mathematics is part of our mental world (in fact, the most complex and advanced part) whilst our mental world is produced by the most advanced and complex part of the physical world (our brains). But Penrose is a mathematical Platonist, and conjectures that the universe is effectively a product of the Platonic world, which creates an existential circle when you contemplate all three. Holt found Penrose’s ideas too ‘mystical’ and suggests that he was perhaps more Pythagorean than Platonist. However, I couldn’t help but see a connection with Deutsch’s ‘comprehensibility’ philosophy. The mathematical model in the brain (of a quasar, for example) having the same ‘mathematical relationships’ as the quasar itself. Epistemologically, mathematics is the bridge between our comprehensibility and the machinations of the universe.

One thing that struck me right from the start of Holt’s book, yet he doesn’t address till the very end, is the fact that without consciousness there might as well be nothing. Nothingness is what happens when we die, and what existed before we were born. It’s consciousness that determines the difference between ‘something’ and ‘nothing’. Schrodinger, in What is Life? made the observation that consciousness exists in a continuous present. Possibly, it’s the only thing that does. After all, we know that photons don’t. As Raymond Tallis keeps reminding us, without consciousness, there is no past, present or future. It also means that without memory we would not experience consciousness. So some states of unconsciousness could simply mean that we are not creating any memories.

Another interesting personality in Holt’s engagements was Derek Parfit, who contemplated a hypothetical ‘selector’ to choose a universe. Both Holt and Parfit concluded, through pure logic, using ‘simplicity’ as the criterion, that there would be no selector and ‘lots of generic possibilities’ which would lead to a ‘thoroughly mediocre universe’. I’ve short-circuited the argument for brevity, but, contrary to Holt’s and Parfit’s conclusion, I would contend that it doesn’t fit the evidence. Our universe is far from mediocre if it’s produced life and consciousness. The ‘selector’, it should be pointed out, could be a condition like ‘goodness’ or ‘fullness’. But, after reading their discussion, I concluded that the logical ‘selector’ is the anthropic principle, because that’s what we’ve got: a universe that’s comprehensible containing conscious entities that comprehend it.

P.S. I wrote a post on The Anthropic Principle last month.

Addendum 1: In reference to the anthropic principle, the abovementioned post specifies a ‘weak’ version and a ‘strong’ version, but it’s perhaps best understood as a ‘passive’ version and an ‘active’ version. To combine both posts, I would argue that the fundamental ontological question in my title, raises an obvious, fundamental ontological fact that I expound upon in the second last paragraph: ‘without consciousness, there might as well be nothing.’ This leads me to be an advocate for the ‘strong’ version of the anthropic principle. I’m not saying that something can’t exist without consciousness, as it obviously can and has, but, without consciousness, it’s irrelevant.

Addendum 2 (18 Nov. 2012): Four months ago I wrote a comment in response to someone recommending Robert Amneus's book, The Origin of the Universe; Case Closed (only available as an e-book, apparently).

In particular, Amneus is correct in asserting that if you have an infinitely large universe with infinite time, then anything that could happen will happen an infinite number of times, which explains how the most improbable events can become, not only possible, but actual. So mathematically, given enough space and time, anything that can happen will happen. I would contend that this is as good an answer to the question in my heading as you are likely to get.

The real war in Afghanistan is set in hell for young girls

This is probably the most disturbing documentary I’ve seen on television, yet it elevates 4 Corners to the best current-affairs programme in Australia and, possibly, the world. I remember reading in USA Today, when American and coalition forces first went into Afghanistan after 9/11 (yes, I was in America at the time) a naïve journalist actually worrying that the change to democracy in Afghanistan might occur too quickly. I found it extraordinary that a journalist covering international affairs had such a limited view of the world outside their own country.

My understanding of Afghanistan is limited and obviously filtered through the eyes, ears and words of journalists, but there appears to be two worlds: one trying to break into the 21^st Century through youthful television programmes (amongst other means) and one dominated by tribal affiliations and centuries-old customs and laws. In the latter, it is the custom to settle disputes by the perpetrator’s family giving land or daughters to the victim’s family. In other words, daughters are treated as currency and as bargaining chips in negotiations. In recent times, this has had tragic consequences resulting from a NATO-backed policy to destroy opium crops, which is the only real way that Afghan farmers can make money. Opium is the source of income for the Taliban but the trade is run by drug smugglers, based in Pakistan. They are the Afghani equivalent of the mafia in that they are merciless. With the destruction of crops, that the drug smugglers finance, they are abducting the farmer’s daughters, from as young as 7 years (as evident in the 4 Corners programme) for payment of their debts. The government and NATO are simply ignoring the problem, and as far as the Taliban is concerned, it’s an issue between the drug smugglers and the farmers.

This is a world that most of us cannot construe. If you put yourself in their shoes and ask: What would I do? Unless you are delusional, the answer has to be that you would do the same as them: you’d have no choice. It’s hard for us to imagine that there exists a world where life is so cheap, yet poverty, perpetual conflict and no control over one’s destiny inevitably leads to such a world. I hope this programme opens people’s eyes and breaks through the cocoon skin that most of us inhabit.

More than anything else, it demonstrates the moral bankruptcy of the Taliban, the cultural ignorance of the coalition and the inadequacy of Pakistani law enforcement.

It’s time the Catholic Church came out of the Closet

This programme was aired a couple of weeks ago on ABC’s 4 Corners, but it demonstrates how out-of-touch the Catholic Church is, not only with reality, but with community expectations. More than anything else, the Church lets down its own followers, betrays them in fact.

This deals specifically with a couple of cases in Australia, and it’s amazing that it takes investigative journalism to shine a light on them. Most damning for the Church, is evidence that protecting their pedophilic clergy and their own reputation was more important than protecting members of their congregation.

The most significant problem, highlighted by the programme, is the implicit belief, held by the Church and evidenced by their actions, that they are literally above the law that applies to everyone else.

This is an institution that claims to have the high moral ground on issues like abortion, therapeutic cloning, gay marriage, euthanasia, to nominate the most controversial ones, when it so clearly lacks any moral credibility. Most people in the West simply ignore the Catholic Church’s more inane teachings regarding contraception, but in developing countries, the Church has real clout. In countries where protection against AIDS and birth control are important issues, both for health and economic reasons, the Church’s attitude is morally irresponsible. The Catholic Church tries to pretend that it should be respected and taken seriously, and perhaps one day it will, when it enters the 21^st Century and actually commits to the same laws as the people it supposedly preaches to.

The Anthropic Principle

I’ve been procrastinating over this topic for some time, probably a whole year, such is the epistemological depth hidden behind its title; plus it has religious as well as scientific overtones. So I recently re-read John D. Barrow’s The Constants of Nature with this specific topic in mind. I’ve only read 3 of Barrow’s books, though his bibliography is extensive, and the anthropic principle is never far from the surface of his writing.

To put it into context, Barrow co-wrote a book titled, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, with Frank J. Tipler in 1986, that covers the subject in enormous depth, both technically and historically. But it’s a dense read and The Constants of Nature, written in 2002, is not only more accessible but possibly more germane because it delineates the role of constants, dimensions and time in making the universe ultimately livable. I discussed Barrow’s The Book of Universes in May 2011, which, amongst other things, explains why the universe has to be so large and so old if life is to exist at all. In March this year, I also discussed the role of ‘chaos’ in the evolution of the universe and life, which leads me (at least) to contend that the universe is purpose-built for life to emerge (but I’m getting ahead of myself).

We have the unique ability (amongst species on this planet) to not only contemplate the origins of our existence, but to ruminate on the origins of the universe itself. Therefore it’s both humbling, and more than a little disconcerting, to learn that the universe is possibly even more unique than we are. This, in effect, is the subject of Barrow’s book.

Towards the end of the 19^th Century, an Irish physicist, George Johnstone, attempted to come up with a set of ‘units’ based on known physical constants like c (the speed of light), e (the charge on an electron) and G (Newton’s gravitational constant). At the start of the 20^th Century, Max Planck did the same, adding h (Planck’s quantum constant) to the mix. The problem was that these constants either produced very large numbers or very small ones, but they pointed the way to understanding the universe in terms of ‘Nature’s constants’.

Around the same time, Einstein developed his theory of relativity, which was effectively an extension of the Copernican principle that no observer has a special frame of reference compared to anyone else. Specifically, the constant, c, is constant irrespective of an observer’s position or velocity. In correspondence with Ilse Rosenthal-Schneider (1891-1990), Einstein expressed a wish that there would be dimensionless constants that arose from theory. In other words, Einstein wanted to believe that nature’s constants were not only absolute but absolutely no other value.  In his own words,  he wanted to know if “God had any choice in making the world”. In some respects this sums up Barrow’s book, because nature’s constants do, to a great extent, determine whether the universe could be life-producing.

On page 167 of the paperback edition (Vintage Books), Barrow produces a graph that shows the narrow region allowed by the electromagnetic coupling constant, α, and the mass ratio of an electron to a proton, β, for a habitable universe with stars and self-reproducible molecules. Not surprisingly, our universe is effectively in the middle of the region. On page 168, he produces another graph of α against the strong coupling constant, α_s, that allows the carbon atom to be stable. In this case, the region is extraordinarily small (in both graphs, the scales are logarithmic).

I was surprised to learn that Immanuel Kant was possibly the first to appreciate the relationship between Newton’s theory of gravity being an inverse square law and the 3 dimensions of space. He concluded that the universe was 3D because of the inverse square law, whereas, in fact, we would conclude the converse. Paul Ehrenfest (1890 – 1933), who was a friend of Einstein, extended Kant’s insight when he theorised that stable planetary orbits were only possible in 3 dimensions (refer my post, This is so COOL, May 2012). But Ehrenfest made another revelation when he realised that 3 dimensional waves were special. In even dimensions, different parts of a ‘wavy disturbance’ travel at different speeds, and, whilst waves in odd dimensions have disturbances all travelling at the same speed, they become increasingly distorted in dimensions other than 3. On page 222, Barrow produces another graph demonstrating that only a universe with 3 dimensions of space and one of time, can produce a universe that is neither unpredictable, unstable nor too simple.

But the most intriguing and informative chapter in his book concerns research performed by himself, John Webb, Mike Murphy, Victor Flambaum, Vladimir Dzuba, Chris Churchill, Michael Drinkwater, Jason Prochaska and Art Wolfe that the fine structure constant (α) may have been a different value in the far distant past by the miniscule amount of 0.5 x 10^-5, which equates to 5 x 10^-16 per year. Barrow speculates that there are fundamentally 3 ages to the universe, which he calls the radiation age, the cold dark matter age and the vacuum energy age or curvature age (being negative curvature) and we are at the start of the third age. He simplifies this as the radiation era, the dust era and the curvature era. He contends that the fine structure constant increased in the dust era but is constant in the curvature era. Likewise, he believes that the gravitational constant, G, has decreased in the dust era but remains constant in the curvature era. He contends: ‘The vacuum energy and the curvature are the brake-pads of the Universe that turn off variations in the constants of Nature.’

Towards the end of the book, he contemplates the idea of the multiverse, and unlike other discussions on the topic, points out how many variations one can have. Do you just have different constants or do you have different dimensions, of both space and/or time? If you have every possible universe then you can have an infinite number, which means that there are an infinite number of every universe, including ours. He made this point in The Book of Universes as well.

I’ve barely scratched the surface of Barrow’s book, which, over 300 pages, provides ample discussion on all of the above topics plus more. But I can’t leave the subject without providing a definition of both the weak anthropic principle and the strong anthropic principle as given by Brandon Carter.

The weak principle: ‘that what we can expect to observe must be restricted by the condition necessary for our presence as observers.’

The strong principle: ‘that the universe (and hence the fundamental parameters on which it depends) must be such as to admit the creation of observers with it at some stage.’

The weak principle is effectively a tautology: only a universe that could produce observers could actually be observed. The strong principle is a stronger contention and is an existential one. Note that the ‘observers’ need not be human, and, given the sheer expanse of the universe, it is plausible that other ‘intelligent’ life-forms could exist that could also comprehend the universe. Having said that, Tipler and Barrow, in The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, contended that the consensus amongst evolutionary biologists was that the evolution of human-like intelligent beings elsewhere in the universe was unlikely.

Whilst this was written in 1986, Nick Lane (first Provost Venture Research Fellow at University College London) has done research on the origin of life, (funded by Leverhulme Trust) and reported in New Scientist (23 June 2012, pp.33-37) that complex life was a ‘once in four billion years of evolution… freak accident’.  Lane provides a compelling argument, based on evidence and the energy requirements for cellular life, that simple life is plausibly widespread in the universe but complex life (requiring mitochondria) ‘…seems to hinge on a single fluke event – the acquisition of one simple cell by another.’ As he points out: ‘All the complex life on Earth – animals, plants, fungi and so on – are eukaryotes, and they all evolved from the same ancestor.’

I’ve said before that the greatest mystery of the universe is that it created the means to understand itself. We just happen to be the means, and, yes, that makes us special, whether we like it or not. Another species could have evolved to the same degree and may do over many more billions of years and may have elsewhere in the universe, though Nick Lane’s research suggests that this is less likely than is widely believed.

The universe, and life on Earth, could have evolved differently as chaos theory tells us, so some other forms of intelligence could have evolved, and possibly have that we are unaware of. The Universe has provided a window for life, consciousness and intelligence to evolve, and we are the evidence. Everything else is speculation.

Alan Turing’s 100th Birthday today

Alan Turing is not as well known as Albert Einstein, yet he arguably had a greater impact on the 20^th Century and was no less a genius. Turing was not only one of the great minds of the 20^th Century but one of the great minds in Western philosophy. In fact, in January, Nature called him “one of the top scientific minds of all time”. He literally invented the modern computer in his head in the 1930s as a thought experiment, whilst simultaneously solving one of the great mathematical problems of his age: the so-called ‘halting problem’. I’ve described this in a previous post (Jan. 2008) whilst reviewing Gregory Chaitin’s book, Thinking about Godel and Turing, but the occasion warrants some repetition.

The 2 June 2012 edition of New Scientist had a feature on Turing by John Graham-Cumming, and it covers in greater detail and erudition anything I can write here. For the public at large, Turing is probably best known for his role at Bletchley Park, in the 2^nd World War, deciphering the Enigma code used by German U-boats. Turing’s contribution remained ‘classified’ until after his death, though, according to Wikipedia, he received an OBE ‘for his work at the Foreign Office’. Turing worked with Gordon Welchman on the Bombe, a machine they designed to run ‘cribs’ to decipher the enigma code. And, with mathematician Bill Tutte, he also developed a method to decode the Tunny cipher, which was used for high-level messages in Hitler’s command.

Turing also developed a ‘portable’ code called ‘Delilah’, which was unique in that it depended on clock-arithmetic, making it very difficult to decode compared to other ciphers. According to Graham-Cumming, the details of this have only recently been declassified.

Turing also became fascinated with mathematics in nature in his childhood, like the recurrence of Fibonacci sequences in spiral patterns in daisy petals and sunflower heads. In 1952 he published a paper on “The chemical basis of morphogenesis”, whereby ‘…specific chemical reactions were responsible for the irregular spots and patches on the skin of animals like leopards or cows, and the ridges inside the roof of the mouth.’ He provided a mathematical model (a computer simulation) of 2 chemicals interacting via diffusion and reaction in a chaotic yet repetitive fashion that would result in a variegated pattern. He speculated that this could become manifest as a literal pattern on animal skins if the 2 chemicals either turned on or off specific cells. Again, according to Graham-Cumming, as recently as January this year, researchers at King’s College London demonstrated Turing’s theory ‘…that 2 chemicals control the ridge patterns inside a mouse’s mouth.’

But, in scientific and mathematical circles, Turing is best known for his ‘proof’ of the ‘halting problem’, which is actually very simple to formulate but difficult to prove. Basically, Turing conjured a thought experiment of a machine that could compute an algorithm until it either found an answer or it didn’t, which meant it could run forever (the ‘halting problem’). Turing was able to prove that one could not determine in advance whether the algorithm would stop or not. An example is Goldbach’s conjecture, which can be easily formulated by an algorithm and run on a computer. At present there is no proof of the Goldbach conjecture but it has been derived by computers up to 100 trillion or 10¹⁴. Obviously, if we knew it could stop or not we could determine if it was true or not to infinity. The same is true for Riemann’s hypothesis, probably the most famous unsolved problem in mathematics. Chaitin (mentioned above) has invented a term, Ω (Omega) to provide a probability of Turing’s algorithm stopping. To quote from a previous post:

Chaitin claims that this is his major contribution to mathematics, arising from his invention of the term ‘Ω’ (Omega), though he calls it a discovery, to designate the probability of a programme ‘halting’, otherwise known as the ‘halting probability’.

But it was in conjuring his ‘thought experiment’ that Turing mentally invented what we now call a computer. I expect computers would have been invented without Turing in the same way relativity would have been discovered without Einstein, yet that is not to diminish either man’s genius or singular contribution. Turing’s insight was to imagine a ‘tape’ of infinite length with instructions that not only performed the algorithm but performed actions on the tape itself. It’s what we recognise today as software. Turing realised that this allowed a ‘universal’ machine to exist, now called a ‘universal Turing machine’, because the tape could instruct one machine to do what all possible machines could do. All modern computers are examples of Universal Turing Machines, including the one I’m using to write and post this blog.

One cannot discuss Turing without talking about the circumstances of his death, because it was a tragedy comparable to the deaths of Socrates and Lavoisier. Turing was persecuted for being a homosexual after he went to the Police to report a burglary. He was given a choice of imprisonment or ‘medical castration’ by hormone treatment, which he accepted. In 1954, at the relatively young age of 41, he committed suicide and the world lost a visionary, a genius and a truly great mind. John Graham-Cumming, the author of the 5 page feature in New Scientist, successfully campaigned for an official apology for Turing from the UK government in 2009. Given the current debate about gay marriage, it is apposite to remember the injustice that was done just over half a century ago to one of the greatest minds of all time. I’ve no doubt that there are many people who believe that Turing could have been ‘cured', such is the ignorance that still pervades many of the world’s societies, and is often promulgated by conservative religious groups, who have a peculiarly backward and anachronistic view of the world. Turing was ahead of his time in many ways, but in one way, tragically.

Addendum: For more detailed information, there is the Wiki site linked above, and Andrew Hodges dedicated Site. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy gives a good account of Turing’s seminal work in artificial intelligence. Andrew Hodges gives a good account of his untimely attitude to being openly homosexual and an insight into his modest character. There is a very strong sense of an extraordinary visionary intellect who was a victim of prejudice. 

Prometheus, the movie

Everyone is comparing Ridley Scott’s new film with his original Alien, and there are parallels, not just the fact that it’s meant to be a prequel. The crew include an android, a corporate nasty and a gutsy heroine, just like the first two movies. There are also encounters with unpleasant creatures. Alien was a seminal movie, which spawned its own sequels, albeit under different directors, yet it was more horror movie than Sci-Fi. But SF often combines genres and is invariably expected to be a thriller. Prometheus is not as graphically or viscerally scary as Alien, but it’s more a true Sci-Fi than a horror flick. In that respect I think it’s a better movie, though most reviewers I’ve read disagree with me.

Prometheus is a good title because it’s the Greek story about the Gods giving some of their abilities to humankind. Scott’s tale is a 21^st Century creation myth, whereby mankind goes in search of the ‘people’ who supposedly ‘engineered’ us. One of the characters in the film quips in response to this claim: ‘There goes 3 centuries of Darwinism.’ From a purely scientific perspective, it’s possible that DNA originally came from somewhere else, either as spores or in meteorites or an icy comet, but it would have been very simple life forms at the start of evolution not the end of it. The idea that someone engineered our DNA so it would be compatible with Earthbound DNA destroys the suspension of disbelief required for the story, so it’s best to ignore that point.

But lots of Sci-Fi stories overlook this fundamental point when aliens meet Earthlings and interbreed for example (Avatar). And I’ve done it myself (in my fiction) though only to the extent that humans could eat food found on another planet. I suspect we could only do that, in reality, if the food contained DNA with the same chirality as ours. The universal unidirectional chirality of DNA is one of the strongest evidential factors that all life on Earth had a common origin.

But I have to admit that Ridley has me intrigued and I’m looking forward to the sequel, as the final scenes effectively promise us one. One of the major differences with Alien and its spinoffs is that there is a mystery in this story and the heroine is bent on finding the answer to it. She wants to find out who made us and where they came from and why they did it. There is an obvious religious allusion here, but this is closer to the Greek gods, suggested by the title rather than the Biblical god. Having said that, our heroine wears a cross and this is emphasised. I expect Ridley wants us to make a religious connection.

Good Sci-Fi in my view should contain a bit of philosophy – make us think about stuff. In this case, stuff includes the possibility of life on other worlds and the possibility that there may exist civilizations greater than ours, to the extent that they could have created us. We find it hard to imagine that we are the end result of a process that started from stardust; that something as complex and intelligent as us could not have been created by a greater intelligence. Ridley brings that point home when the android asks someone how would they feel about meeting their maker, as he has had to. So I’m happy to see where Ridley is going with this – it’s a question that most people have asked and not been satisfied with the answer. I don’t think Ridley is going to give us a metaphysical answer. I expect he’s going to challenge what it means to be human and what responsibilities that entails in the universe’s creation. 

Philosophy in action - on gay marriage

Last night I went and saw a live stage production of 8 by Dustin Lance Black (whose screenwriting credits include Milk and J. Edgar), a one-off production at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Melbourne. It was a fund-raiser for the lobby group, Australian Marriage Equality, so tickets were not cheap yet the theatre was packed.

The play is based on a real-life trial held in California in 2010, when 2 same-sex couples (Kristin Perry and Sandy Stier, and Paul Katami and Jeff Zarillo) challenged the passing of Proposition 8 as unconstitutional. Effectively, Proposition 8, under Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, prevented gays and lesbians from getting married.  There was a strong TV campaign supporting Proposition 8, which I’ll address later, and some of these were shown to the theatre audience as background.

It was also relayed to the audience, right at the beginning, how the play came about. Requests by the plaintiff’s team to have the trial broadcast were overturned by their opponents, but transcripts can’t be denied forever and most of the play is taken directly from the transcript. The play is actually read, with almost no props, yet real actors were used to give it authenticity.

There is an on-line version on YouTube including George Clooney, Martin Sheen and Brad Pitt as part of the cast. The Australian production I saw included its own well-known actors like Rachel Griffiths, Lisa McLune, Shane Jacobson and Magda Szubanski (from Babe for international readers). It also included Kate Whitbread as one of the plaintiffs and she was instrumental in getting the production performed. Incidentally, Kate has been producer to Aussie film-maker, Sandra Sciberras (Max’s Dreaming, Caterpillar Wish and Surviving Georgia).

This is not a play that will attract opponents of gay marriage – it was clear from the audience’s reaction that most, if not all, members were advocates. Being a fund-raiser you wouldn’t expect anything else. Opponents, no doubt would call it propaganda and biased, but the ‘opponents’ in the trial come off very badly indeed. In fact, this is the salient point because it demonstrated how weak their arguments were when subjected to the rigours of courtroom dissection and cross-examination. It’s no wonder they opposed it being broadcast.

And that’s why I call it ‘philosophy in action’ because it demonstrated the difference between a glib, emotive, made-for-TV advertising programme and critical, evidence-based argument. It was obvious from the pro-proposition 8 campaign and other rhetoric we hear in the production, that it was based on fear. Fear that same-sex marriage will infect children (yes, I mean infect not affect). Their whole campaign was based around the need to protect children from the ‘evils’ of gay parents and gays generally.

It was obvious that many conservatives actually believe that lesbianism and homosexuality are contagious – not biologically contagious, but socially contagious like cigarette smoking or alcohol consumption or drug-taking. They have a genuine fear, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that more children will become gay if gay marriage is legalized because it’s a choice that they didn’t have before. In other words, gay marriage is a lifestyle choice and has nothing to do with biology. Allowing gays and lesbians to be perceived as ‘normal’ is dangerous because kids will become ‘infected’, whereas at present they are still ‘protected’. That’s their argument in a nutshell.

In a promotional review of the play in last weekend’s Age, both Kate Whitbread and Bruce Myles (director of the Aussie version) give their more parochial reasons for putting it on. Bruce said he was ‘disgusted’ by Bob Katter’s political advertisement in the recent Queensland state election, whereby Katter used lewd images of homosexual couples juxtaposed with Campbell Newman’s (Queensland’s Liberal party contender and shoe-in to win) statement that he supported gay marriage. It was an obvious ploy on Katter’s part to exploit homophobia to undermine Newman’s commanding lead in the polls.

Both Bruce and Kate expressed outrage at six Catholic bishops in Victoria sending out 80,000 letters exhorting parishioners to lobby against gay marriage. Apparently, few parishioners were as alarmed as the bishops, going by the response. In fact, both in Australia and the US, it’s conservative religious groups who are the most vocal opponents to gay marriage. Arguments based on arcane religious texts are arguably the least relevant to the debate. It’s effectively an argument to maintain a longstanding prejudice because the Bible tells us so.

Spencer McLaren, who plays the courtroom advocate defending proposition 8, said: “What it is really about is putting prejudice and fear on trial and showing the inhumanity of the discrimination that is occurring.”

For those interested, here is the online version (90 mins).

How an equation contributed to the GFC

Ian Stewart is well known to anyone interested in mathematics - alongside Marcus du Sautoy, he is one of the great popularisers of the subject. His book, 17 Equations that Changed the World, lives up to its brief. Stewart not only gives insights into the mathematics of 17 disparate topics, but explains how they’ve affected our lives in ways we don’t see. I’ve read a number of books along similar lines, all commendable, but Stewart succeeds better than most in demonstrating how so-called pure mathematics has shaped the modern world that we all take for granted. (By all, I mean anyone who can read this via a computer and the internet.)

The book includes the usual suspects like Pythagoras, Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, Schrodinger and lesser known ones like Boltzman, Shannon, the Bell curve, chaos theory and the Fourier transform. In all cases he explains how they have affected what we loosely call civilization. But it is the last chapter in the book that covers the Black-Scholes equation, which is most relevant to the present state of the world, and what Stewart aptly coins ‘the Midas formula’. This is the Nobel-prize-winning formula that effectively created the GFC (global financial crisis).

I was lucky enough to see the movie, The Inside Job, which had a limited release in this country, but ran for well over a month in one art-house cinema in Melbourne, such was its morbid appeal. It’s a depressing yet illuminating film because, not only do you get a recent history lesson, but you realise that no one has learnt anything and it will happen all over again.

Stewart is a mathematician yet he explains the machinations that created the current economic catastrophe with remarkable clarity and erudition, and provides antecedents that teach us how we never learn from history.

Some quotable quotes:

The banks behave like one of those cartoon characters who wanders off the edge of a cliff, hovers in space until he looks down, and then plunges to the ground.

How did the biggest financial train wreck in human history come about? Arguably, one contributor was a mathematical equation.

He then goes on to explain what derivatives are and how they became monopoly money in the hands of the biggest financial institutions in the world.

As Stewart expounds:

In 1998 the international financial system traded roughly $100 trillion in derivatives. By 2007 this had grown to one quadrillion US dollars… To put this figure into context, the total value of all the products made by the world’s manufacturing industries, for the last thousand years, is about 100 trillion US dollars, adjusted for inflation. That’s one tenth of one year’s derivative trading.

Curiously, it was a mathematician, Mary Poovey, professor of humanities and director of the Institute for the Production of Knowledge at New York University, who rang alarm bells in August 2002, when she gave a lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Beijing, titled ‘Can numbers ensure honesty?’ The lecture was subtitled ‘Unrealistic expectations and the US accounting scandal’.  She pointed out, amongst other things, that ‘by 1995 [the] economy of virtual money had overtaken the real economy of manufacturing.’ She argued that  ‘[this] deliberately confusing virtual and real money… was leading to a culture in which the values of both goods and financial instruments were… liable to explode or collapse at the click of a mouse.’ This, of course, was the year after the collapse of Enron, the biggest bankruptcy in American history (at the time) to the tune of $11 billion to shareholders.

Stewart’s major point is that people used the Black-Scholes equation routinely, with no appreciation of its dependence on key assumptions. Change the assumptions and the consequences could be dire as we have since witnessed world-wide. Its proliferation was guaranteed by its Nobel-prize-winning status and the simple fact that everyone else was using it. What’s more, it could be converted into a computer algorithm, ensuring its ubiquity.

Economics doesn’t follow natural laws like gravity, nevertheless I expect chaos theory could provide some insights. It’s the human factor that appears to be the element that people leave out or ignore. I’m not an economist – it’s the area I least understand – yet a mathematician can explain to me what went wrong in the past decade in a way that makes sense. If I can understand it, why can’t the people who run economies and financial institutions?

Stewart’s final comment:

The financial system is too complex to be run on human hunches and vague reasoning. It desperately needs more mathematics, not less. But it also needs to learn how to use mathematics intelligently, rather than as some kind of magical talisman.

Addendum 1: Stewart also explains how mathematics gives credibility to human-generated climate-change, although that’s another issue. In particular, he claims: Global warming was predicted in the 1950s, and the predicted temperature increase is in line with what has been observed.

Addendum 2 (6 Sep 2012): I've just seen the movie, Margin Call, a well-drawn fictional account of this issue, with some big-name actors: Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Demi Moore, Paul Bettany and Simon Baker, amongst others. There is a reference to this equation early in the film in a dialogue between the Demi Moore character and Simon Baker character, though its significance is not explained nor its title given. Demi's character says: 'I told you not to use that equation...' (or words to that effect) and Simon's character says: 'Everyone else is using it...' (or words to that effect). An intriguing piece of dialogue that only 'people-in-the-know' would pick up on.

Addendum 3 (3 Nov 2012): This interview with Greg Smith (formerly with Goldman Sachs) reveals the real story behind Wall Street, its culture, its hypocrisy (how it wants zero government interference in the good times and government bale-out in the bad times) and, most importantly, how nothing has changed since the GFC.

Addendum 4 (30 Jun 2013): I changed the title from 'Mathematics and the Real World'. I think it was misleading and the new title is more relevant to the discussion.

This is so COOL

This is a brilliant piece of simple, yet profound, scientific understanding, that anyone with a high school education should be able to follow. I can't imbed it so I provide this link.

John D. Barrow, in his book, The Constants of Nature provides a very neat graphic (p. 222 of 2003 Vintage paperback edition) that demonstrates why 3 dimensions of space and 1 of time provide the most 'livable' universe (my term, not his). Barrow has written extensively on the 'Anthropic Principle' in all its manifestations, and I keep promising myself that I'll write a post on it one day.

Why the argument for the existence of God (as an independent entity) is a non sequitur

This has been a point of discussion on Stephen Law’s blog recently, following Law’s debate with William Lane Craig last year. My contention is that people argue as if God is something objective, when, clearly it isn’t: God is totally subjective.

God is a feeling, not an entity or a being. God is something that people find within themselves, which is neither good nor bad; it’s completely dependent on the individual. Religiosity is a totally subjective phenomenon, but it has cultural references, which determine to a lesser or greater extent what one ‘believes’. Arguing over the objective validity of such subjective perspectives is epistemologically a non sequitur.

Craig’s argument takes two predominant strands. One is that atheists can’t explain the where-with-all from whence the universe arose and theists can. It’s like playing a trump card: what’s your explanation? Nil. Well, here’s mine, God: game over. If Craig wants to argue for an abstract, Platonic, non-personal God that represents the laws of the universe prior to its physical existence, then he may have an argument. But to equate a Platonic set of mathematical laws with the Biblical God is a stretch, to say the least, especially since the Bible has nothing to say on the matter.

The other strand to his argument is the Holy Spirit that apparently is available to us all. As I said earlier, God is a feeling that some people experience, but I think it’s more a projection based on one’s core beliefs. I don’t dismiss this out of hand, partly because it’s so common, and partly because I see it as a personal aspiration. It represents the ideal that an individual aspires to, and that can be good or bad, depending on the individual, as I said above, but it’s also entirely subjective.

Craig loves the so-called ‘cosmological’ argument based on ‘first cause’, but it should be pointed out that there are numerous speculative scientific theories about the origin of the universe (refer John D. Barrow’s The Book of Universes, which I discussed May 2011). Also Paul Davies’ The Goldilocks Enigma gives a synopsis on all the current ‘flavours’ of the universe, from the ridiculous to the more scientifically acceptable. Wherever science meets philosophy or where there are scientific ‘gaps’ in our knowledge, especially concerning cosmology or life, evangelists like Craig try to get a foothold, reinterpreting an ancient text of mythologies to explain what science can’t.

In other posts on his blog, Stephen Law discusses the issue, ‘Why is there something instead of nothing?’ Quite frankly, I don’t think this question can ever be answered. Science has no problem with the universe coming from nothing – Alan Guth, who gave us inflationary theory also claimed that ‘the universe is the ultimate free lunch’ (Davies, God and the New Physics, 1983). The laws of quantum mechanics appear to be the substrate for the entire universe, and it’s feasible that a purely quantum mechanical universe existed prior to ours and possibly without time. In fact, this is the Hartle-Hawking model of the universe (one of many) where the time dimension was once a fourth dimension of space. Highly speculative, but not impossible based on what we currently know.

But when philosophers and scientists suggest that the ‘why something’ question is an epistemological dead end, evangelists like Craig see this is as a capitulation to their theistic point of view. I’ve said in a previous post (on Chaos theory, Mar. 2012) that the universe has purpose but is not teleological, which is not the oxymoron it appears to be when one appreciates that ‘chaos’, which drives the universe’s creations, including life, is deterministic but not predictable. In other words, the universe’s purpose is not predetermined but has evolved.

Some people, many in fact, see the universe’s purposefulness as evidence that there is something behind it all. This probably lies at the heart of the religious-science debate, but, as I expounded in a post on metaphysics (Feb. 2011): between chaos theory, the second law of thermodynamics and quantum mechanics, a teleological universe is difficult to defend. I tend to agree with Stephen Jay Gould that if the universe was re-run it would be completely different.

Addendum 1: Just one small point that I’ve raised before: without consciousness, there might as well be nothing. It’s only consciousness that allows meaning to even arise. This has been addressed in a later post.

Addendum 2: I've added a caveat to the title, which is explained in the opening of the post. If humans are the only link between the Universe and a 'creator' God (as all monotheistic religions believe) then God has no purpose without humanity.

This is meant to be Australia

Ranjini was found to be a genuine refugee before ASIO decided last week she is a security risk for Australia. But the government won't tell her why, and now she's facing a life in detention. (The Age, 18 May 2012, front page)

It’s unbelievable that you can be detained indefinitely in this country without being given a reason, so that there is no defence procedure by law and no appeal process. The defendant in this case, Ranjini, can’t even confess because she’s a ‘risk’, not a criminal, apparently. As far as we can tell, she’s being detained in case she plans to execute a terrorist act; the truth is we don’t know because no one is allowed to tell us. What is unimaginably cruel is to give someone hope and then take it away with a phone call and a brief, closed interview. She’s been living in Australia since 2004.

To quote The Age:

Because she does not know what she is accused of doing, or saying, she cannot defend herself. Because there is no mechanism for an independent review of ASIO's finding, she, like the other 46, faces indefinite detention, along with two boys who were beginning to show signs of recovering from the traumas of their past.

Under the guise of ‘security reasons’, an apparent law-abiding housewife (who is also pregnant) can be incarcerated with her 2 school-age boys without even her husband knowing why. Australia is not meant to be a totalitarian government so why do we behave like one. The Minister for the Attorney General’s Department, Nicola Roxon, has so far dodged any questions on the issue. This is a law that is clearly unworkable (if it can’t be appealed or defended) born out of the post-9/11 paranoia that has seized all Western democratic countries and compromised our principles.

As is evident in the Haneef case in 2007, police and investigators tread a thin line in prosecuting possible terrorist suspects and protecting their civil liberties. In Haneef’s case, who was eventually not convicted, and other cases that have been successfully prosecuted, there have been specific accusations, involvement of the DPP and Federal Police, as well as ASIO. In the case of Ranjini, from what has been revealed thus far, there is only a risk assessment from ASIO and no specific accusations. One suspects that, because she’s a refugee, no one would care or kick up a fuss, or that the story would become front-page news in The Age.

This is not a law suited to a 21^st Century, Western democratic country; it’s a law suited to a paranoid totalitarian government.

Addendum 1: Here is a TV presentation of the story.

Addendum 2: This whole issue has a history going back 6 months at least and revealed here. We actually treat criminals better than this. The reason that the government gets away with this is because refugees are demonised in our society. Refugees don't vote and lots of people who do vote think that all refugees should be locked up indefinitely or sent back to where they come from. It's a sad indictment on our society.

Addendum 3: A lawyer is about to challenge the law in Australia's High Court. The last time it was challenged, the High Court rejected it 4 to 3, from memory, which only demonstrates that even the highest people in the land will follow political lines rather than the basic human rights of individuals.

i, the magic number that transformed mathematics and physics

You might wonder why I bother to beleaguer people with such esoteric topics like complex algebra and Schrodinger’s equation (May 2011, refer link below). The reason is that I’ve struggled with these mathematical milestones myself, but, having found some limited understanding, I attempt to pass on my revelations.

Firstly, I contend that calling i an imaginary number is a misnomer; it’s really an imaginary dimension. And if it was called such it would dispel much of the confusion that surrounds it. We define i as:

i = √-1

But it’s more intuitive to give the inverse relationship:

i² = -1

Because, when we square an imaginary number, we transfer it from the imaginary plane to the Real plane. Graphically, i rotates a complex number by 90⁰ in the anti-clockwise direction on the complex plane (or Argand diagram). Or, to be more precise, multiplying any complex number (which has both an imaginary and a Real component) by i will rotate its entire graphical representation through 90⁰. In fact, complex algebra is a lot easier to comprehend when it is demonstrated graphically via an Argand diagram. An Argand diagram is similar to a Cartesian diagram only the x axis represents the Real numbers and the y axis is replaced by the i axis, hence representing the i dimension, not the number i.

It’s not unusual to have mathematical dimensions that are not intuitively perceived. Any dimension above 3 is impossible for us to visualise. And we even have fractional dimensions that are called fractals (Davies, The Cosmic Blueprint, 1987). So an imaginary dimension is not such a leap of imagination (excuse the pun) in this context. Whereas calling i an imaginary number is nonsensical since it quantifies nothing.

In an equation, i appears to be a number, and to all intents and purposes is treated like one, but it’s more appropriate to treat it as an operator. It converts numbers from Real to imaginary and back to Real again.

In quantum mechanics, Schrodinger’s wave function is a differential complex equation, which of itself tells us nothing about the particle it’s describing in the physical world. It’s only by squaring the modulus of the wave function (actually multiplying it by its conjugate to be technically correct) that we get a Real number, which gives a probability of finding the particle in the physical world.

Without complex algebra (therefore i ) we would not have a mathematical representation of quantum mechanics at all, which is a sobering thought. We have long passed the point in our epistemology of the physical universe whereby our comprehension is limited by our mathematical abilities and knowledge.

There are 2 ways to represent a complex number, and we need to thank Leonhard Euler for pointing this out. In 1748 he discovered the mathematical relationship that bears his name, and it has arguably become the most famous equation in mathematics.

Exponential and trigonometric functions can be expressed as infinite power series. In fact, the exponential function is defined by the power series:

e^x = 1 + x + x²/2! + x³/3! + x⁴/4! + ….

Where n! (called n factorial) is defined as: n! = n x (n-1) x (n-2) x …. 2 x 1

But the common trig functions, sin x and cos x, can also be expressed as infinite power series (Taylor’s theorem):

sin x = x – x³/3! + x⁵/5! – x⁷/7! + ….

cos x = 1 – x²/2! + x⁴/4! – x⁶/6! + ….

Euler’s simple manipulation of these series by invoking i was a stroke of genius.

e^ix = I +ix – x²/2! – ix³/3! + x⁴/4! + ix⁵/5! – x⁶/6! – ix⁷/7! + …

i sin x = ix – ix³/3! + ix⁵/5! – ix⁷/7! + …

I’ll let the reader demonstrate for themselves that if they add the power series for cos x and isin x they’ll get the power series for e^ix .

Therefore:   e^ix = cos x + i sin x

But there is more: x in this equation is obviously an angle, and if you make x = π, which is the same as 180⁰, you get:

sin 180⁰ = sin 0 = 0

cos 180⁰ = - cos 0 = -1

Therefore:  e^iπ = -1

This is more commonly expressed thus:

e^iπ  + 1 = 0

And is known as Euler’s identity. Richard Feynman, who discovered it for himself just before his 15^th birthday, called it “The most remarkable formula in math”.

It brings together the 2 most fundamental integers, 1 and 0 (the only digits you need for binary arithmetic), the 2 most commonly known transcendental numbers, e and π, and the operator i.

What I find remarkable is that by adding 2 infinite power series we get one of the simplest and most profound relationships in mathematics.

But Euler’s equation (Euler’s identity is a special case): e^iθ = cos θ + i sin θ

gives us 2 ways of expressing a complex number, one in polar co-ordinates and one in Cartesian co-ordinates.

We use z by convention to express a complex number, as opposed to x or y.

So  z = x + iy (Cartesian co-ordinates)

And z = re^iθ  (polar co-ordinates)

Where r is called the modulus (radius) and θ is the argument (angle).

If one looks at an Argand diagram, one can see from Pythagoras’s theorem that:

r² = x² + y²

But the same can be derived by multiplying the complex number by its conjugate, x – iy

So  (x + iy)(x – iy) = x² + y² = r² 

(I’ll let the reader expand the equation for themselves to demonstrate the result)

But also from the Argand diagram, using basic trigonometry, we can see:

x = r cos θ  and y = r sin θ (from cos θ = x/r and sin θ = y/r)

So  x + iy  becomes  r cos θ + i r sin θ

There is an advantage in using the polar co-ordinate version of complex numbers when it comes to multiplication, because you multiply the moduli and add the arguments.

So, if:    z₁ = r₁e^iθ1   and   z₂ = r₂e^iθ2

Then:   z₁ x z₂ = r₁e^iθ1 x r₂e^iθ2 = r₁r₂e^{i(θ1 + θ2)}

And, obviously, you can do this graphically on an Argand diagram (complex plane), by multiplying the moduli (radii) and adding the arguments (angles).


Addendum 1: Given its role in quantum mechanics, I think i should be called the 'invisible dimension'.

Addendum 2: I've been re-reading Paul J. Nahin's very comprehensive book on this subject, An Imaginary Tale: The Story of √-1, and he reminds me of something pretty basic, even obvious once you've seen it.

tan θ = sin θ/cos θ or y/x (refer the Argand Diagram)

So θ = tan^-1(y/x) where this represents the inverse function of tan (you can calculate the angle from the ratio of y over x, or the imaginary component over the Real component).

You can find this function on any scientific calculator usually by pressing an 'inverse' button and then the 'tan' button.

The point is that you can go from Cartesian co-ordinates to polar co-ordinates without using e. According to Nahin, Caspar Wessel discovered this without knowing about Euler's earlier discovery. But Wessel, apparently, was the first to appreciate that you sum angles when multiplying complex numbers and invented the imaginary axis when he realised that multiplying by i rotated everything by 90⁰ anticlockwise.

A necessary law to protect women from an archaic, anachronistic, life-destroying practice

It’s extraordinary that in Australia, in the 21st Century, the Government is proposing an act of Parliament to make it illegal to marry a girl without her consent.

There were parts of this programme that had me shaking, but as teenage girls are becoming better educated their families are becoming more deceiving in arranging unwanted marriages. This programme tells the story of 4 women who dared to take control of their own lives so that they could have a future that was worth living.

What one finds unbelievable is that parents could force their daughters into a life of unhappiness and servitude against their will, obviously unaware of the opportunities they have for realising the potential of their educations.

As Ayaan Hirsi Ali wrote in her autobiography (I reviewed a year ago, March 2010), in some so-called ‘traditional’ cultures, women are never treated as mature adults, who are capable of intellectual and moral autonomy. And whilst, in the West, we find this culpable, it’s only in the last century that women have been given the benefit of the doubt, to put it kindly, that they can live and make decisions independent of men.

As Kerry O’Brien says in his summing up, the stories revealed here are both depressing and inspiring. I find it interesting that one of the girls featured (promised to a cousin in a foreign country at the age of 12, whom she first met on her supposed wedding day at age 17) had turned her father around after stubbornly refusing to recognise 2 marriages (one in Pakistan and one in Australia). He eventually realised (apparently, as he’s not interviewed) that his daughter’s happiness meant more to him than following a centuries-old tradition.

For many people, this is another arrow to fling at Islam, but there are Muslim feminists (I’ve met them) and it is they who can change this cultural relic, as it was changed in our society.

Stephen Hawking

Someone offered me this after seeing my blog. So my thanks to Peter Kim.




Created by: Online PhD

How chaos drives the evolution of the universe and life

The Cosmic Blueprint is the very first book of Paul Davies I ever read nearly a quarter of a century ago, and I’ve read many others since. I heard him being interviewed about it on a car trip from Melbourne to Mulwala (on the Victorian, New South Wales border) and that was the first time I’d heard of him. The book was published in 1987, so it was probably 1988.

Davies received the Templeton Foundation Prize in 1995, though not the wrath of Dawkins for accepting it. He’s also received the 2002 Michael Faraday Prize from the Royal Society and the 2001 Kelvin Medal and Prize from the UK Institute of Physics. He was resident in Australia for a couple of decades but now resides in the US where he’s an astro-biologist at the University of Arizona.

In America, Davies has been accused of being a ‘creationist in disguise’ by people whose ignorance is only out-weighed by their narrow-mindedness (they think there are atheists and there are creationists with nothing in between). The 2004 edition of this book is published by the Templeton Foundation and the first word in the opening chapter is ‘God’ as part of a quote by Ilya Prigogine, who features prominently in the book. But anyone who thinks this is a thesis for Intelligent Design will be disappointed; it’s anything but. In fact, one of the book’s great virtues is its attempt to explain complexity in the universe and evolution as a natural occurrence and not a Divine one.

I’ve long believed that Davies writes about science and philosophy better than anyone else, not least because he seems to be equally erudite in the disciplines of physics, cosmology, biology and philosophy. He’s not a member of the ‘strong atheist’ brigade, which puts him offside with many philosophers and commentators, but his argument against ID in The Goldilocks Enigma (2006) was so compelling that Stephen Law borrowed it for himself.

I remember The Cosmic Blueprint primarily as introducing me to chaos theory; it was the new kid on the block in popular consciousness with fractals and Mandelbroit’s set just becoming conspicuous in pop culture. Reading it now, I’m surprised at how much better it is than I remember it, but that’s partly due to what I’ve learnt in between. A lot of it would have gone over my head, which is not to say it still doesn’t, but less so than before.

More than any other writer on science, Davies demonstrates how much we don’t know and he doesn’t shy away from awkward questions. In particular, he is critical of reductionism as the only method of explanation, especially when it explains things away rather than explicating them; consciousness and life’s emergence being good examples.

I like Davies because his ideas reflect some of my own ruminations, for example that natural selection and mutations can’t possibly explain the whole story of evolution. We think we are on the edge of knowing everything, yet future generations will look back and marvel at our ignorance just as we do with our forebears.

There is an overriding thesis in The Cosmic Blueprint that is obvious once it’s formulated yet is largely ignored in popular writing. It’s fundamentally that there are two arrows of time: one being the well known 2^nd law of thermodynamics or entropy; and the other being equally obvious but less understood as the increase in complexity at all levels in the universe from the formation of galaxies, stars and planets to the evolution of life on Earth, and possibly elsewhere. Both of which demonstrate irreversibility as a key attribute.  And whilst many see them as contradictory and therefore evidence of Divine intervention, Davies sees them as complementary and part of the universe’s overall evolvement.

Davies explains how complexity and self-organisation can occur when dynamic systems are pushed beyond equilibrium with an open source of energy. Entropy, on the other hand, is a natural consequence of systems in equilibrium.

In the early pages, Davies explains chaotic behaviour with a simple-to-follow example that’s purely mathematical. In particular, he demonstrates how the system is completely deterministic yet totally unpredictable because the initial conditions are mathematically impossible to define. This occurs in nature all the time, like coin tosses, so that the outcome is totally random but only because the initial conditions are impossible to determine, not because the coin follows non-deterministic laws. This is a subtle but significant distinction.

A commonly cited example is cellular automata that can be generated by a computer programme. Stephen Wolfram of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, has done a detailed study of one-dimensional automata that could give an insight into evolution. Davies quotes Wolfram:

“…the cellular automaton evolution concentrates the probabilities for particular configurations, thereby reducing entropy. This phenomenon allows for the possibility of self-organization by enhancing the probabilities of organized configurations and suppressing disorganized configurations.”

Wolfram is cited by Gregory Chaitin, in Thinking about Godel and Turing, as speculating that the universe may be pseudo-random and chaos theory provides an innate mechanism: deterministic laws that can’t be predicted. However, it seems that the universe’s innate chaotic laws provide opportunities for a diverse range of evolutionary possibilities, and the sheer magnitude of the universe in space and time, along with a propensity for self-organisation, in direct opposition to entropy, may be enough to ensure intelligent life as an outcome. The truth is that we don’t know. (Btw, Davies wrote the forward to Chaitin’s book.)

Davies calls this position ‘predestiny’ but he’s quick to qualify it thus: ‘Predestiny is a way of thinking about the world. It is not a scientific theory. It receives support, however, from those experiments that show how complexity and organization arise spontaneously and naturally under a wide range of conditions.’

This view is mirrored in the anthropic principle, which Davies also briefly discusses, but there are two version, as expounded by Frank Tipler and John Barrow in The Anthropic Cosmological Principle: the weak anthropic principle and the strong anthropic principle; and ‘predestiny’ is effectively the strong anthropic principle.

Roughly twenty years later, in The Goldilocks Enigma, Davies elaborates on this philosophical viewpoint when he argues for the ‘self-explaining universe’ amongst a critique of all the current ‘flavours’ of universe explanations: ‘I have suggested that only self-consistent loops capable of understanding themselves can create themselves, so that only universes with (at least the potential for) life and mind really exist.’ This is effectively a description of John Wheeler’s speculative cosmic quantum loop explanation of the universe’s existence – it exists because we’re in it. Davies argues that such a universe is ‘self-activating’ to avoid religious connotations: ‘…perhaps existence isn’t something that gets bestowed from outside…’

Teleological is a word that most scientists avoid, but Davies points out that the development of every organism is teleological because it follows a ‘blueprint’ or ‘plan’ entailed in its DNA. How this occurs is not entirely understood, but Davies makes an analogy with software which is apposite, as DNA provides coded instructions that ultimately result in fully developed organisms like us. He explores a concept called ‘downward causation’ whereby information can actually ‘cause’ materialistic events and software in computers provide the best example. In fact, as Davies hypothesises, one could imagine a software programme that makes physical changes to the computer that it’s operating on. Perhaps this is how the ‘mind’ works, which is similar to Douglas Hofstadter’s idea of a ‘strange loop’ that he introduced in Godel Escher Bach (which I reviewed in Feb. 2009) and later explored in another tome called I am a Strange Loop (which I haven’t read).

Davies introduces the concept of ‘downward causation’ in his discussion on quantum mechanics because it’s the measurement or observation that crystallises the quantum phenomenon into the real world. According to Davies, Wheeler speculated that ‘downward causation’ in quantum mechanics is ‘backwards in time’ and suggested a ‘delayed-choice’ thought experiment. To quote Davies: ‘The experiment has recently been conducted, and accords entirely with Wheeler’s expectations. It must be understood, however, that no actual communication with the past is involved.’

It’s impossible to discuss every aspect of this book, covering as it does: chaos theory, fractals, cosmological evolution, biological evolution, quantum mechanics and mind and matter.

Towards the end, Davies reveals some of his own philosophical prejudices, which, unsurprisingly, are mirrored in The Goldilocks Enigma twenty years on.

The very fact that the universe is creative, and that the laws have permitted complex structures to emerge and develop to the point of consciousness – in other words, that the universe has organized its own self-awareness – is for me powerful evidence that there is ‘something going on’ behind it all.

This last phrase elicits the ‘design’ word, many years before Intelligent Design was introduced as a ‘wedge’ tactic for creationists, but Davies has been an outspoken critic of both creationism and ID, as I explained above. Davies strongly believes the universe has a purpose and the evidence supports that point of view. But it’s a philosophical point of view, not a scientific one.

This leads to the logical question: is the universe teleological? I think chaos theory provides an answer. In the same way that chaotic phenomena, which includes all complex dynamics in the universe (like evolution) are deterministic yet unpredictable, the universe could be purposeful yet not teleological. In other words, the purpose is not predetermined but the universe’s dynamics allow purpose to evolve.

How does language work?

This topic became a source of disagreement on Rust Belt Philosophy a couple of weeks ago, so I would like to point out that this essay was written prior to that discourse.

In fact, the title is the ‘Question of the Month’ in the last issue of Philosophy Now (Issue 88, Jan/Feb 2012). That issue contained selected entries of the previous Question of the Month, which was ‘How can I be happy?’ I (amongst 7 others) won a book for my entry (On Evil by Adam Morton). The editors invited me to submit for the next question of the month, hence this post.

I know of at least one professor of linguistics who reads this blog, so he may wish to challenge my thesis or theses.

Human language is unique to humanity in many respects. For a start, we think in a language and secondly it’s a cultural attribute that is effectively downloaded, independently of our genes, from generation to generation. Language in other species is ‘hardwired’ or genetically determined, like nest-building is in birds, and it’s hard to imagine that any other species thinks in a language the way we do. So what do they think in? I suggest that dreams provide the answer because we dream in imagery and emotion, and I suspect most animals think emotionally. There are animals that use logic, which we witness when they use ‘tools’, including other primates and some birds like crows, but they can only express that logic through demonstration rather than through language.

For each and every one of us there is an external and internal world and the most familiar bridge between those worlds is language. Herein lies the key because language reflects the modality of the world in form as well as function. The smallest ‘atomic’ component of language is individual words, but it’s only in the context of a sentence that they gain leverage in meaning, because the entire sentence provides a meaning that the individual words cannot. Sentences are combined to provide arguments, stories, explanations, just like I’m doing now. But the external world follows this same model because it is made up of ‘atoms’ at various levels that combine into entities, like, for example, individual cells forming a fully developed human being. The human brain can ‘nest’ concepts within concepts and language is the most familiar manifestation of this unique ability. Furthermore, language allows us to not only express concepts within concepts, but to actually think them, and these concepts within concepts are analogous to the worlds within worlds that we investigate and explicate.

But human language has another unique feature that has allowed us to leave all other species in our cognitive wake. Language allows us to carry memories across generations - even before scripts were invented - and this has led to the development of cultures and civilizations that grow with accumulated knowledge. Ultimately, language allows us to think and conceptualise as well as record, and that is what makes humanity unique.


Addendum: Speaking of Philosophy Now, here is someone who claims that chimpanzees can be taught language.