Image: HarperCollins Publishers
Among the many reasons I chose to pursue physics was the desire to do something that would have a permanent impact. If I was going to invest so much time, energy and commitment, I wanted it to be for something with a claim to longevity and truth. Like most people, I thought of scientific advances as ideas that stand the test of time.
My friend Anna Christina Büchmann studied English in college whereas I majored in physics. Ironically, she studied literature for the same reason that drew me to math and science. She loved the way an insightful story lasts for centuries. When discussing Henry Fielding’s novel Tom Jones with her many years later, I learned that the edition I had read and thoroughly enjoyed was the one she helped annotate when she was in graduate school.
Tom Jones was originally published 250 years ago, yet its themes and wit resonate to this day. During my first visit to Japan, I read the far older Tale of Genji and marveled at its characters’ immediacy, too, despite the thousand years that have elapsed since Murasaki Shikibu wrote about them. Homer created the Odyssey roughly 2,000 years earlier than Genji. Notwithstanding its very different age and context, we continue to relish the tale of Odysseus’s journey and its timeless descriptions of human nature.
Scientists rarely read such old—let alone ancient—scientific texts. We usually leave that to historians and literary critics. We nonetheless apply the knowledge that has been acquired over time, whether from Newton in the 17th century or Copernicus more than 100 years earlier still. We might neglect the books themselves, but we are careful to preserve the important ideas they may contain.
Science certainly is not the static statement of universal laws we all hear about in elementary school. Nor is it a set of arbitrary rules. Science is an evolving body of knowledge. Many of the ideas we are currently investigating will prove to be wrong or incomplete. Scientific descriptions certainly change as we cross the boundaries that circumscribe what we know and venture into more remote territory where we can glimpse hints of the deeper truths beyond.
The paradox scientists have to contend with is that, while aiming for permanence, we often investigate ideas that experimental data or better understanding will force us to modify or discard. The sound core of knowledge that has been tested and relied on is always surrounded by an amorphous boundary of uncertainties that are the domain of current research. The ideas and suggestions that excite us today will soon be forgotten if they are invalidated by more persuasive or comprehensive experimental work tomorrow.
When the 2008 Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee sided with religion over science—in part because scientific “beliefs” change whereas Christians take as their authority an eternal, unchanging God—he was not entirely misguided, at least in his characterization. The universe evolves and so does our scientific knowledge of it. Over time, scientists peel away layers of reality to expose what lies beneath the surface. We broaden and enrich our understanding as we probe increasingly remote scales. Knowledge advances and the unexplored region recedes when we reach these difficult-to-access distances. Scientific “beliefs” then evolve in accordance with our expanded knowledge.
Nonetheless, even when improved technology makes a broader range of observations possible, we don’t necessarily just abandon the theories that made successful predictions for the distances and energies, or speeds and densities, that were accessible in the past. Scientific theories grow and expand to absorb increased knowledge, while retaining the reliable parts of ideas that came before. Science thereby incorporates old established knowledge into the more comprehensive picture that emerges from a broader range of experimental and theoretical observations. Such changes don’t necessarily mean the old rules are wrong, but they can mean, for example, that those rules no longer apply on smaller scales where new components have been revealed. Knowledge can thereby embrace old ideas yet expand over time, even though very likely more will always remain to be explored. Just as travel can be compelling—even if you will never visit every place on the planet (never mind the cosmos)—increasing our understanding of matter and of the universe enriches our existence. The remaining unknowns serve to inspire further investigations.
My own research field of particle physics investigates increasingly smaller distances in order to study successively tinier components of matter. Current experimental and theoretical research attempt to expose what matter conceals—that which is embedded ever deeper inside. But despite the often-heard analogy, matter is not simply like a Russian matryoshka doll, with similar elements replicated at successively smaller scales. What makes investigating increasingly minuscule distances interesting is that the rules can change as we reach new domains. New forces and interactions might appear at those scales whose impact was too tiny to detect at the larger distances previously investigated.
The notion of scale, which tells physicists the range of sizes or energies that are relevant for any particular investigation, is critical to the understanding of scientific progress—as well as to many other aspects of the world around us. By partitioning the universe into different comprehensible sizes, we learn that the laws of physics that work best aren’t necessarily the same for all processes. We have to relate concepts that apply better on one scale to those more useful at another. Categorizing in this way lets us incorporate everything we know into a consistent picture while allowing for radical changes in descriptions at different lengths.
Partitioning by scale—whichever scale is relevant—helps clarify our thinking—both scientific and otherwise—and why the subtle properties of the building blocks of matter are so hard to notice at the distances we encounter in our everyday lives. In doing so, we can also elaborate on the meaning of “right” and “wrong” in science, and why even apparently radical discoveries don’t necessarily force dramatic changes on the scales with which we are already familiar.
It’s Impossible
People too often confuse evolving scientific knowledge with no knowledge at all and mistake a situation in which we are discovering new physical laws with a total absence of reliable rules. A conversation with the screenwriter Scott Derrickson during a recent visit to California helped me to crystallize the origin of some of these misunderstandings. At the time, Scott was working on a couple of movie scripts that proposed potential connections between science and phenomena that he suspected scientists would probably dismiss as supernatural. Eager to avoid major solecisms, Scott wanted to do scientific justice to his imaginative story ideas by having them scrutinized by a physicist—namely me. So we met for lunch at an outdoor café in order to share our thoughts along with the pleasures of a sunny Los Angeles afternoon.
Knowing that screenwriters often misrepresent science, Scott wanted his particular ghost and time-travel stories to be written with a reasonable amount of scientific credibility. The particular challenge that he as a screenwriter faced was his need to present his audience not just with interesting new phenomena, but also with ones that would translate effectively to a movie screen. Although not trained in science, Scott was quick and receptive to new ideas. So I explained to him why, despite the ingenuity and entertainment value of some of his story lines, the constraints of physics made them scientifically untenable.
Scott responded that scientists have often thought certain phenomena impossible that later turned out to be true. “Didn’t scientists formerly disbelieve what relativity now tells us?” “Who would have thought randomness played any role in fundamental physical laws?” Despite his great respect for science, Scott still wondered if—given its evolving nature—scientists aren’t sometimes wrong about the implications and limitations of their discoveries.
Some critics go even further, asserting that although scientists can predict a great deal, the reliability of those predictions is invariably suspect. Skeptics insist, notwithstanding scientific evidence, that there could always be a catch or a loophole. Perhaps people could come back from the dead or at the very least enter a portal into the Middle Ages or into Middle-earth. These doubters simply don’t trust the claims of science that a thing is definitively impossible.
Despite the wisdom of keeping an open mind and recognizing that new discoveries await, however, a deep fallacy is buried in this logic. The problem becomes clear when we dissect the meaning of such statements as those above and, in particular, apply the notion of scale. These questions ignore the fact that although there will always exist unexplored distance or energy ranges where the laws of physics might change, we know the laws of physics on human scales extremely well. We have had ample opportunity to test these laws over the centuries.
When I met the choreographer Elizabeth Streb at the Whitney Museum, where we both spoke on a panel on the topic of creativity, she, too, underestimated the robustness of scientific knowledge on human scales. Elizabeth posed a similar question to those Scott had asked: “Could the tiny dimensions proposed by physicists and curled up to an unimaginably small size nonetheless affect the motion of our bodies?”
Her work is wonderful, and her inquiries into the basic assumptions about dance and movement are fascinating. But the reason we cannot determine whether new dimensions exist, or what their role would be even if they did, is that they are too small or too warped for us to be able to detect. By that I mean that we haven’t yet identified their influence on any quantity that we have so far observed, even with extremely detailed measurements. Only if the consequences of extra dimensions for physical phenomena were vastly bigger could they discernibly influence anyone’s motion. And if they did have such a significant impact, we would already have observed their effects. We therefore know that the fundamentals of choreography won’t change even when our understanding of quantum gravity improves. Its effects are far too suppressed relative to anything perceptible on a human scale.
When scientists have turned out to be wrong in the past, it was often because they hadn’t yet explored very tiny or very large distances or extremely high energies or speeds. That didn’t mean that, like Luddites, they had closed their minds to the possibility of progress. It meant only that they trusted their most up-to-date mathematical descriptions of the world and their successful predictions of then-observable objects and behaviors. Phenomena they thought were impossible could and sometimes did occur at distances or speeds these scientists had never before experienced—or tested. But of course they couldn’t yet have known about new ideas and theories that would ultimately prevail in the regimes of those tiny distances or enormous energies with which they were not yet familiar.
When scientists say we know something, we mean only that we have certain ideas and theories whose predictions have been well tested over a certain range of distances or energies . These ideas and theories are not necessarily the eternal laws for the ages or the most fundamental of physical laws. They are rules that apply as well as any experiment could possibly test, over the range of parameters available to current technology. This doesn’t mean that these laws will never be overtaken by new ones. Newton’s laws are instrumental and correct, but they cease to apply at or near the speed of light where Einstein’s theory applies. Newton’s laws are at the same time both correct and incomplete. They apply over a limited domain.
The more advanced knowledge that we gain through better measurements really is an improvement that illuminates new and different underlying concepts. We now know about many phenomena that the ancients could not have derived or discovered with their more limited observational techniques. So Scott was right that sometimes scientists have been wrong—thinking phenomena impossible that in the end turned out to be perfectly true. But this doesn’t mean there are no rules. Ghosts and time-travelers won’t appear in our houses, and alien creatures won’t suddenly emerge from our walls. Extra dimensions of space might exist, but they would have to be tiny or warped or otherwise currently hidden from view in order for us to explain why they have not yet yielded any noticeable evidence of their existence.
Exotic phenomena might indeed occur. But such phenomena will happen only at difficult-to-observe scales that are increasingly far from our intuitive understanding and our usual perceptions. If they will always remain inaccessible, they are not so interesting to scientists. And they are less interesting to fiction writers, too, if they won’t have any observable impact
Weird things are possible, but the ones non-physicists are understandably most interested in are the ones we can observe. As Steven Spielberg pointed out in a discussion about a science fiction movie he was considering, a strange world that can’t be presented on a movie screen—and which the characters in a film would never experience—is not so interesting to a viewer. Only a new world that we can access and be aware of could be. Even though both require imagination, abstract ideas and fiction are different and have different goals. Scientific ideas might apply to regimes that are too remote to be of interest to a film, or to our daily observations, but they are nonetheless essential to our description of the physical world.
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23 Comments
Add CommentI clicked through to the article because of the buzzwords in the headline ... and several paragraphs in it's still about college memories. Well shame on me for following the buzzwords, but could you at least make the titles relate to the article more? It undermines your credibility to trick us readers like that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisExcuse the rest of us for not having your level of ADD. Interesting writing generally takes a couple paragraphs to introduce itself, maybe if you kept at it for more than 30 seconds you'd get a little more out of it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLoved the article, keep 'em coming!
"You'll learn why, although it's true that scientists sometimes have been wrong, that doesn't mean there are no rules--or that everything is possible".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSometimes? All scientists have been wrong 99% of the time. The modern light bulb was a success only after Edison FAILED over one thousand five hundred times. That's a pretty impressive ratio.
Human knowledge is finite. Human ignorance is nearly infinite. Pride and arrogance complicate matters considerably.
“Weird things are possible.” Really? Like perhaps neutrinos exceeding the speed of light? As for ghosts, there is far more evidence for ghosts then string theory. But string theory gets funding, when genuine evidence of the paranormal is utterly ignored. Since when has science become a religion?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDavidD, parapsychology had it's funding and failed in most epic fashion to produce any credible result. I don't expect Randy to be paying that prize money any time soon.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI enjoyed the article and I can find little fault with the Author’s general message. The problem as I see it is that science is fast approaching a “threshold” where all that we know and all that we can prove with some degree of certainty is related to what we call Ordinary Matter and Ordinary Energy and how they interact. This is to be expected since these are the most obvious constituent parts of our reality that we can observe, study and subject to scientific investigation. It is only natural that as advance up the Evolutionary path and we become ever more sophisticated technologically we are beginning to get small glimpses of what may turn out to be some of the other essential components of the reality of our Universe.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLike I said in a recent post here about the Neutrino article, new discoveries do not mean that old views were wrong just that they were probably proper and appropriate with respect to our level of knowledge and the Time and Place. I always try to remember we currently believe that we only have “reliable data” for what we “think” is approximately 4.5% of the known Universe and what it may do under certain conditions. To me that is the “real” test of just how much we do or do not know. Looks to me like the Professions of Mathematics, Particle Physics and Cosmology may be the “growth industry Professions” of the next Millennium. Would love to stick around to see how things turn out, but since I am a miniscule part of a miniscule part etc. I probably wont make it that long.
For the upper stage, I have to say string theory is not physics up to now, as we don't have any map between the math of string to physics parameter. BTW, good article~
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisclear expression from a natural philosopher. One limitation of the article is that the author doesn't go back into her history further than the Newtonian Scientific Revolution which was essentially really sparked by Copernicus, who she references. This 'Copernican Shift' is truly a paradigm shift from what had been universally adhered to in the western world for the previous 2000 years 400BCE to 1600 CE): Aristotle's natural philosophy of the world. It was such a fundamental shift that it did throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater as far as the fundamental model whereby the natural processes are thought to operate, from a quasi-animistic theory of elements and their anima-l attraction of what we today call inanima-te objects like trees and rocks. The Aristotelian universe is composed of the 4 elements, earth, fire, water, air, plus the 5th element, the'quint'-essence or ether which fills the level above the atmosphere in which humans operate; the spheres/planets are suspended in this ether. All matter operate by their goal, or designed purpose, Greek 'telos'. Stuff goes where it is designed to go. So, earth and water, being heavy correspondingly dry and wet , go 'downwards' according to their nature, whereas, fire and air being light and correspondingly dry and wet, by their natural form goes 'upwards. What the scientific revolution did was to rebrand reality according to a model of mechanism, replacing entirely the belief that the universe is animate and shifting our belief in the fundamental composition of the constituitive elements of matter and their operations.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe author makes a good point with her emphasis on the concept of measures of distance as differentiating how scientific theory operates in the 'human' realm vs how it does in the macro and microscopic world. However, I don't believe the author gives enough weight to the proposition that our fundamental scientific paradigms changed in the past. Quantum mechanical theory has the same markings of a fundamental paradigm shift that the 'Copernican Shift' had with relation to Aristotelian natural philosophy. Will our new natural philosophy springing up from string theory and quantum mechanics soon have more implications for our day to day lives just as the Copernican shift away from the Aristotelian theory changed everyone's view of the world? Should be interesting and I think we have to be open to that. And to almost expect it.
*** Interesting to note that in the last 20-30 years a very large percentage of popular western culture has in some ways been shifting back to an Aristotelian anima-ted universe. How many people have you heard thank the'Universe' for the good things it brings, treating it as a personal being with will and purpose? The book 'The Secret' has been a powerful vanguard for this pop philosophical shift. According to this natural philosophy, we 'attract' good and bad things into our lives as though the Universe were animate and submit in esoteric ways to our passions, beliefs, and wishful thinking. Interesting. The mechanistic Newtonian universe has seemed to be running out of steam in our everyday lives with people superimposing Aristotelian animism over the implications for a world based on quantum mechanics...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUnderlying Randle's writing seems to be an assumption of materialism typical of far to many scientists and this magazine(perhaps it should be called "Materialist American"?) Based on this excerpt, I don't expect much better from the rest of the book. It is a mistake to declare that one has to "choose between" science or Christianity. Physics(and more broadly the other natural sciences) is the study of changing, mobile being- particles in motion, etc. But if we properly want to study being in all it's aspects or talk about fundamental nature of reality( if we want to ask why anything exists at all, or if we even want to begin to properly study God in His unchanging nature), we need to turn to metaphysics(something that physicists too often ignore or just confuse with physics and mathematics).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor more elaborate dicussion on the proper roles of science, mathematics, and philosophy, I recommend The Science Before Science and other books by physicist Anthony Rizzi. Incidentally, he too discusses time travel. Here is his website:http://www.iapweb.org/
Metaphysics is not science. It is philosophy. Physicists do not confuse metaphysics with physics. They just don't deal with metaphysics. Richard Feynmann said the philosophy of science is as important to scientists as ornithology is important to birds.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell, maybe Feynmann was biased because he's a scientist. Let's hear it from the philosophers. Bertrand Russell said science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know. Ludwig Wittgenstein said most of metaphysics is nonsense, it is nonsensical in itself but any statement about it must be.
"These doubters simply don’t trust the claims of science that a thing is definitively impossible."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIsn't this a basic misunderstanding of the nature of science?
To my mind, science is not in the business of saying what is "definitively impossible". Instead, it's in the business of advancing theories which it holds to be true until contradicted by observable fact. Now sometimes it is never contradicted -- this is usually the sign of a good theory -- but it always leaves the possibility open that it might be sometime in the future.
The article is evidence in a way that scientists are often not the best people to ask about the nature of science. You can tell this from her basic position: that we know everything there is to know about the observable universe; and the only surprises that await us are on the super-small and super-massive scale.
Not only is this obviously just a physicist's view (do we know everything there is to know now about human biology?) shaped by the present moment in physics, it shows a real lack of feeling for the whole history of science.
"Ghosts and time-travelers won’t appear in our houses, and alien creatures won’t suddenly emerge from our walls."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLisa, (setting aside the issue there're people who report seeing exactly these things), ever since I was a kid in the Seventies doing Chemistry and Physics at school, and Engineering followed by Environmental Science at University, I've always been struck by no matter how many of us did a particular experiment, (using the same equipment and identical amounts of whatever substances), few people ever got the same or even closely similar results.
I even checked this out with various lab assistants to see if my observations were anomalous but they confirmed it was actually the norm.
It's always assumed this's down to experimenter error, but is it - in EVERY case?
I remember while at grammar school doing experiments with my best mate testing the properties of litmus paper, etc., and others covering chromatography and our results almost enraging our normally genial Hindu science teacher who accused us of mucking about, until he realised our sincerity but made us do the whole thing again with him supervising us. In the end, after a tetchy conversation with the chief lab assistant, he concluded we must've been sabotaged somehow, and told us to write it up again but with the expected results.
Even in every day life things don't always pan out the way they're supposed to: how many people've struck a match only for it to fail to ignite properly? We always blame the match, the sandpaper, the technique - but is that ALWAYS true?
Most people'll automatically answer, yes, but put it this way: in order to explain anomalous astronomical observations astronomers've had to conceive the concepts of dark matter and dark energy - but what if by brushing aside the sort of anomalies I've been describing we're overlooking something similar to dark matter and dark energy operating on the everyday human level?
If you ever watched "Ghost Lab" by the Discovery Channel, you know that ghost hunters may also get funding. :)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRE: How Quantum or Particle Physics could help illuminate the Mechanisms of our Creativity, Consciousness, etc -- or "Memophorescenicity" to be exact -- as one that is warped in our brain-mind active and interactive processes; that gives rise to our evermore dynamic Memories of reality (including knowledge, intelligence, etc) that only we (each alone) can learn, access, create, and communicate in our both science and philosophy epistemologies, complementally and evolutionarily into the 21st century and beyond on Earth!?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn a comment above: "Dr. Strangelove" accurately observes that "Metaphysics is not science. It is philosophy. Physicists do not confuse metaphysics with physics. They just don't deal with metaphysics. Richard Feynmann said the philosophy of science is as important to scientists as ornithology is important to birds." … and that "Bertrand Russell said science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know. Ludwig Wittgenstein said most of metaphysics is nonsense, it is nonsensical in itself but any statement about it must be."
Upon further analysis, I concurred that Russell was right regarding the relationship between science and philosophy issues, in general; however, Feynmann had definitely mis-analogized the scientists for the birds folly: as in pronouncing his metaphysical analogy, he should have had realized that "birds" are not the same as "birders" or "ornithologists" -- as birds do not read philosophy of science (or ornithology) at all; but ornithologists (or scientists who study birds) do -- otherwise we (humans, birders, scientists, or philosophers, etc) won't be able to understand birds or ornithology, at all!
So, philosophy of science or ornithology is for us, humans only: the scientists ourselves who should be aware of philosophy as well, even if not steep at all; otherwise our hard-earned scientific works would be meaningless, shortsighted, aimless, regressive, incomprehensible or incommunicable among ourselves -- but not with birds -- as Feynmann had so mistakenly or derogatorily analogized above!? (to be continued below)
RE: Quantum physics-philosophy-psychology: Rules & Creativities (continued from above)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhereas, philosophically, Wittgenstein was totally a wildcard: as he was not a trained nor practicing scientist, at all; but was an aspiring Western philosopher of psycholinguistics, logics, and rhetoric, in general; at a time when he was in training and self-actualizing under the tutelage of the British mathematician and philosopher Russell!?
Thus, Wittgenstein was in fact unable to completely differentiate the relationship between metaphysics (philosophy or psychology) and physics (or science) at all, as observed above; and elsewhere before here: ( http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2011/06/24/defending-stephen-jay-goulds-crusade-against-biological-determinism/#comment-2052 ) "Defending Stephen Jay Gould's Crusade against Biological Determinism -- RE: How a universal philosophy could help understand global reality of today and beyond!?" (ScientificAmericanUSA; July 5, 2011) where I fully outlined our current understanding of the relationship between science and philosophy epistemologies: especially from the primeval or local cognition, organization initiatives (as in symbolism and religion creations) to the comprehensive global recognition, cooperative communications (as in science and technology progresses) of our universal philosophy, or sociology, or humanity as a whole, on this unique planet Earth!
[Also, for more elaborations on these humanist matters, please see my seminal science-philosophy-psychology book "Gods, Genes, Conscience" (links below) especially Chapter 5.1 Spiritual Creativity and Social Beliefs; Chapter 5.3 The Meaning of Gods; Chapter 6.1 Scientific Creativity and Social Progresses; and Chapter 6.4 The Meaning of Life on Earth; etc.]
In reading the "Ghosts and rules of science" article above, I thought Lisa Randall has articulated a very clear, firm, highly self-circumscribed and well-disciplined vision and mission of her own field of scientific work: the currently Particle Physics, in both the theoretical and practical aspects of work; in which, she clearly stresses that the sound science must be consistently explored and scrutinized by our currently-known rules of science (and philosophy of science and society, thereof); and with which, she seems to be strictly adhering to this vision and mission, since beginning of her aspiration and training in physics at Harvard*! (to be continued below)
RE: Quantum physics-philosophy-psychology: Rules & Creativities (continued from above)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this[*Caveat lector: Since the mid 1970s, Harvard has been renowned for its promoting of the pseudoscientific neo-Darwinism, or Sociobiologism, as an evolutionary aspect of "altruism" in ants -- in attempting to extrapolate this social insect behaviorism into to those of us: humans and societies -- please see EO Wilson's 1975 mostly controversial book "Sociobiology: The New Synthesis." Meanwhile, at Oxford (UK) Richard Dawkins has had also begun to rise in attempts to advance his then ingeniously-fantasized neo-Darwinist reductionist pursuit: Geneticism -- a stealthy anthropomorphically-reduced perversion (or altered egoism) of the 19th-century theory of Eugenics (or "selective breeding for genius" a term first coined by Sir Francis Galton in his 1883 book "Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development") -- as now Dawkins' newfound "evolutionary theory-rhetoric" of our ultimate human destiny and reality: which is nothing but a mere "service carrier" to our "genes" on Earth!? -- Please see Dawkins' 1976 mostly perverted pseudo-genetics book "The Selfish Gene" of the 20th-century Biology and Genetics literature!
[No doubt, both Sociobiologism and Geneticism have (had) since been exerting an indelible influence and impact on the general public Psyche, as well as in the High Academia, in their currently accepting or rejecting or confusing or corrupting the idea of "evolution" as "evolutionism:" a fact or fiction; true or false; a fantasy or reality; etc -- inquiries so perverted and convoluted that our future competent scientists (especially biologists, geneticists, etc) and philosophers of science must help to untangle and resolve and cleanup all these messy "evolutionism vs. creationism" and "geneticism vs. genetics" and "sociobiologism vs. sociology" and "science vs. religion" antagonisms and controversies, etc that have had been polluting our intellectual and spiritual airs ever since the publication of the great British naturalist (not a neurologist nor geneticist nor cytologist) Charles Darwin's 1859 seminal treatise "The Origin of Species" (TOS).
[Indeed, TOS could now be reconsidered as an evolutionary prequel work to the 20th-century Biology and Genetics work and literature worldwide -- whereas genetics work alone was first independently uncovered by the Augustine monk-botanist-statistician Gregor Mendel, as described in his 1865 seminal science report "Experiments with Plant Hybrids"!] (to be continued below)
RE: Quantum physics-philosophy-psychology: Rules & Creativities (continued from above)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFurthermore, in the "Ghosts" article: I thought Randall's intellectual currency, attitude, and mission (as expressed above) towards science (especially particle physics) and society, is exceptional: calm, clear, and collected -- but not as sensational or as loose as those of her contemporary academic pop-science author-predecessors, such as Wilson and Dawkins (as exemplified above) -- and her literary calling has also been recently resonated in unison by another exemplary SA blogger (in science and philosophy issues) Janet Stemwedel here: ( http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/doing-good-science/2011/09/28/what-a-scientist-knows-about-science-or-the-limits-of-expertise/ ) "Doing good science: What a scientist knows about science (or, the limits of expertise)" (September 28, 2011)!
Not surprisingly, through her diligently hard work, Randall has now become "one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world, a rousing defense of the role of science in our lives" as blurbed on the front flap of her new book "Knocking on Heaven's Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World" Thus, her currently attempts in promoting her own scientific thinking and rules (or philosophy) of science and of society (if applicable socio-psychologically) shall subject to the steepest global scrutiny, possible!
As SA readers may have known, we humans can (and will continue to) create different lines of thinking (practical as well as metaphysical) about ourselves and societies since our hominid-ancestors began to roam, fashion, and organize their each local cognition and survivorship via inventions of their each respective lively artifacts (as in symbolism and religion) and more elaborated tools (as in science and technology nowadays) over 50 thousand years ago on Earth.
Even today, no matter how advanced our science and technology (that they are) have evolved and achieved, we humans (being the descendants of our hominid-forebears) are no exception (both in biology and physiology) that we are still (and will be) living and surviving (psychologically or philosophically) by the evermore active, creative, and interactive guidance and processes of our long-inherited spiritual (as in religion or spiritualism) and scientific (as in reality or materialism) thinkings!
As such, for our humanities to survive and understand ourselves better into the 21st century and beyond, (to be continued below)
RE: Quantum physics-philosophy-psychology: Rules & Creativities (continued from above)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this… these 2 (spiritual and scientific) lines of thinking or creativities (as in science and philosophy outlined above and more below) shall not be used to undermine or annihilate each other; but let them co-evolve and advance mutually and complementally as a WHOLE HUMANITY on Earth! -- And not as Dawkins has had incomprehensively and irresponsibly blurbed on Randall's book (back cover) that "Science has a battle for hearts and minds on its hands: a battle on 2 fronts -- against superstition and ignorance on one flank, and against pseudo-intellectual obscurantism on the other. How good it feels to have Lisa Randall's unusual blend of top flight science, clarity, and charm on our side."
Philosophically, while without comprehending or training or discerning these 2 active and creative and interactive -- or adversely reactive, if without priori learning or knowledge -- lines or experiences of contemplative thinking, Randall seems to be veering on the edge of attempting to subscribe her contemplation or psychology to her scientifically-trained thinking alone: especially whenever she tries to discuss (or dismiss) her many an extracurricular peer's artistry creativities (as a mere materially or physically impossibility, in accordance to her learned-physics rules, of course) and especially when consulting and providing advice to her peers each idiosyncratic lines of thinking (aesthetic, spiritual, sci-fi, religious, or otherwise) as expressed in their literary or imaginary creations.
Whereas please note that in any literary or imaginary creations nowadays, ANY THING (especially one that is emotionally-soothed or spiritually-envisaged, curiosity-arousal, intellectually-logical, self-referential, or creatively-believable, including the aspired or inspired imagery of Gods, or the self-imaginative or reflective Quantum Mechanics of ghosts, etc) IS POSSIBLE in our brain: be it real or imagined: such as Theoretical Mathematics or Physics, which can (and will) be all discovered and created (all at once or in a spatial temporal fashion) in our Human Mind indeed, ever since antiquities worldwide! And that is the applicability of Quantum Physics to the understanding of the miraculous working of our Human Mind: social, interpersonal, idiosyncratic, or otherwise!
Indeed, neurologically or quantum biologically, the Power of Creativity is certainly not a fit of our imagination, at all (whether psychologically or philosophically); (to be continued below)
RE: Quantum physics-philosophy-psychology: Rules & Creativities (continued from above)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this… but is the Power and Dynamics of "Memophorescenicity" in our brain -- the evermore dynamic QUANTUM PHYSICS or MECHANICS of our voluntary and involuntary sensing, experiencing, learning, communications, and memory processing of QUANTUM MECHANISMS in our brain -- as One that has had been extensively and empirically characterized, localized, and defined in my 2006 pop-science-philosophy book "Gods, Genes, Conscience" (linked below) please see Chapter 15: The Universal Theory of Mind (in general); and Chapter 15.4: Memory Modulation and Recall: A New Hypothesis of Psychic Imagery, Perceptivity, Creativity, and Reflectivity (in particular).
Thus, to be able to communicate any scientific ideas and the rules of reality, to the general public receptively (and successesfully as a result) is Not to antagonize or belittle or do battle or annihilate its underlying religious or spiritual thinking or beliefs; but Always try to (sensitively and responsibly) elaborate, guide, and differentiate both the spiritual and scientific thinkings, and learnings, and communications, and co-evolution: that are all inherently active, creative, and interactive curiosities and inquiries lurking in the public Mind (of all ages, of course, worldwide)!
Consequently, any well-trained, principled, and disciplined scientists who may have had achieved and commanded an influential societal status like Randall's (or likewise as a trust in science) must (from now on) Never attempt to dispense (any data-driven) Science at the expense of (any state-recognized, emotion-derived) Religion, worldwide! Above all, for any scientists who would like to promote Science nowadays, they must now begin to learn and empathize with this socio-psychologically "cause and effect" fact or the rule of our Human Condition that: To promote (any truly healthy) Science, one must also be able to uplift (any spiritually healthy) Religion too: simultaneously and holistically in sync with our science and philosophy epistemologies, inquiries, creativities, etc above!
Best wishes, Mong 10/5/11usct3:11p; practical science-philosophy critic; author "Decoding Scientism" and "Consciousness & the Subconscious" (works in progress since July 2007), "Gods, Genes, Conscience" (iUniverse; 2006 — http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?isbn=0595379907 ) and "Gods, Genes, Conscience: Global Dialogues Now" (blogging avidly since 2006 — http://www2.blogger.com/profile/18303146609950569778 ).
Feynmann's analogy was correct. The birds are the scientists. The ornithologists are the philosophers. Science is what scientists do. Ornithology is what birds do. Think about it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWittgenstein understood both physics and metaphysics. He believed language and mathematics cannot express the truths of metaphysics. Since all our ideas are expressed in language and mathematics, they become nonsensical when describing metaphysics. It doesn't mean metaphysical truths do not exist. But we cannot express them sensibly.
Wittgenstein was well-versed in physics, mathematics and logic. His ideas on the limitations of logic and mathematics as a disguised tautology are similar to Godel's Incompleteness Theorem.
Interesting excerpt and good discussion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSomething that Professor Randall might have missed in her earlier decisions is that mathematical theories tend to hold far longer than scientific theories. Maybe she should have gone into mathematics.
Significant changes in mathematics can have a far reaching impact on science. Our current science and technology would not be possible without the calculus begun by Newton & Leibniz. And this comment applies to essentially all current scientific theories.
At an early point in its' history, Quantum Mechanics was called Matrix Mechanics - referring to the underlying mathematics it came from.
There are still breakthroughs to come in mathematics that could have the kind of impact calculus did on science. And these breakthroughs will be more permanent than the scientific theories developed using them.
People argue as if terming anything impossible is against science. There are certain arguments that are termed impossible by physics. The conscious judgement and understanding of physical principles is rudimentary for the reasoning within reality. Recently I had a discussion with a friend of mine who was asserting that traveling to past was fundamentally not flawed despite I pointed out how it violated "Casualty Principle".He challenged the validity of the principle to make his point. The ideas and arguments we make should be within the domains of physical possibilities. It would certainly help in deriving o the reality from much fantasized Sci-Fis.
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