Universal Physics

July 17th, 2006 Fred McVittie

The development of the science of physics, particularly over the last 400 years, can be seen as the triumph of a particular approach to knowledge gathering. This approach disregards the position of the human being within the scientific process, and attempts to construct an objective position outside of incarnate humanity from which to regard the world. In order to achieve objectivity it is necessary to consciously abandon our embodiment as ‘medium sized objects moving at medium speed’ (Dawkins 2003), and embrace an organised scepticism toward the data of the senses and the common sense which these senses produce. This in turn has required an increasing reliance on the (apparently) disembodied language of mathematics . Alongside this evacuation of the human being from its privileged position at the heart of physics is the corresponding development of a set of protocols for the objective verification and falsification of knowledge, enshrined in the idealisations of the scientific method. This project, the construction of Rational Physics through mathematisation and scientification, has been astonishingly successful, and its creations and discoveries are truly awe inspiring. However, the creation of new conscious knowledge does not necessarily mean the erasure of the old, and even though the findings of physics are as close to factual as we are likely to get, they still may not get us ‘where we live’. Science may have abandoned the body at some point in the late 16th Century, but as functioning humans we still take it around with us everywhere we go. Also, whilst our consciousness may be able to engage with the mathematical abstractions of quantum theory and dark energy, our non-conscious cognition (and actually much of our conscious, in the form of covert metaphors) is still working with the tools provided by an embodied evolution.

Within the system of beliefs, biases, misconceptions, common sense, and generalisations that Brown (1991) identified as ‘Human Universals’ there are a subset which refer specifically to matter, energy, and their interactions. In any formal, rational system of knowledge constructed through the protocols of science, this subset of knowledge would be called ‘physics’. In the context of human universals, which operates without scientific protocols but only with the innate and accumulated knowledge that comes with embodiment, this subset could be referred to as ‘Universal Physics”, a set of general principles and theories about the way the world works that is held by all cultures, and that is a result of a common biology and a common evolutionary history. While Rational Physics is the physics of the disembodied universe of atoms, quarks, membranes, black holes, and quanta. Universal Physics (UP) is the physics of dreams, intuition, emotion, art, God, and human frailty.

(Note: The “Universal Physics” referred to here is in no way connected to that proposed by Ethan Skyler http://www.physicsnews1.com/ or of the ‘commonsense science’ of Barnes, Bergman, Collins and Lucas http://www.commonsensescience.org/ )

Brown, D. E. (1991). Human Universals. New York, McGraw-Hill.
Dawkins, R. and L. Menon (2003). A devil’s chaplain: selected essays. London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

Posted in Brown, D. E., Dawkins, Richard, Embodiment, Evolution, History, Mathematics, Metaphor, Physics, Universals | No Comments »

Human scale understanding

September 26th, 2006 Fred McVittie

The fact that, as Dawkins puts it, human beings are ‘medium-sized objects moving at medium speed’, would be banal were it not for the fact that the physical laws which structure reality vary according to scale and velocity. The largely Newtonian physics which applies at human scale are not applicable at a quantum level, and Cartesian spacetime breaks down at speeds approaching that of light. Atoms are not tiny solar systems and one cannot subdivide matter infinitely, as one might cut up a cake, without arriving at wildly different substituents . Modern physics, and science more generally, (unlike naive physics and pre-scientific study), does not restrict itself to investigations only of human scale phenomena, which inevitably requires having to deal with phenomena that do not offer themselves intuitively to our understanding, an understanding which is most determinedly human scale.

Posted in Dawkins, Richard, Matter, Newton, Isaac, Physics | No Comments »

Medium Sized Objects moving at Medium Speed

May 10th, 2007 Fred McVittie

We are, as Richard Dawkins memorably put it, ‘Medium sized objects moving at medium speed’. The scales at which all of creation operates stretches in size from the Planck length to the horizon of visible space, a scale of some 40 or so powers of magnitude, and as Joel Primack and Nancy Abrams relate in ‘The View from the Centre of the Universe’ , we occupy a tiny proportion of this scale somewhere in the middle. From an evolutionary perspective we have been medium sized objects for a very long time, since before we had an opposable thumb, since before we had language, since before we had consciousness, since before we had the complex unconscious we have today. We were medium sized objects moving at medium speed when our entire psychophysical repertoire was limited to flight or fight, breeding and eating. It is as medium sized objects that our being asserted itself such that our physiology, and indeed our psychology has designed itself to operate within that particular range and scale of operation, to solve problems and exploit opportunities offered within that range and scale. To our distant ancestors these problems would be ones of basic survival, of hunting, gathering, avoiding predators and identifying prey. Driven by the attractions of pleasure (nature’s reward for survival-enhancing behaviour) and the distress of pain (the stick that nature holds in her other hand), those of our ancestors who were best able to respond to these coaxings would be those who survived the longest, and therefore were most likely to leave their imprint in the genetic record.

The processes of evolution are contingent and conservative, and there is no place within its mechanism for wild experimentation and flights of fancy. Should nature occasionally have the urge to assert herself as revolutionary artist, the beautiful mutants that result from such bohemianism, less well equipped to solve the problems of medium sized objects moving at medium speed, never make it into the museum of natural history we carry in our genome. For this reason we have never evolved eyes capable of seeing into the heart of the atom, or into the reaches of outer space; in survival terms we have nothing to fear and nothing to gain from such extended sight. We can hear the roar of a lion and the wimpering of a potential next meal, but not the background hum of the universe. We can hold apples in our hands, and we can hold the hand of a lover, but have never had need to grasp a quark.

Posted in Dawkins, Richard, Evolution, Pain, Pleasure, Primack, J. & Adams, N. | No Comments »

The Matter Delusion

October 8th, 2007 Fred McVittie

In the talk that Richard Dawkins presented as part of the Tedtalks series in 2006 he referred to physical matter as a ‘convenient fiction’. Our experience of the apparently solid table in front of us and the apparently solid wall around us is, he claims, a product of our brains interpreting the relationship between our (middle sized) bodies and the (middle sized) objects of the world. Physics determines that the relationship between two medium sized objects is generally one of non-penetrability, we cannot routinely walk through walls or pass our hand through the surface of a table. If we wish to avoid repeatedly banging into walls and other matter then the survival imperative of an evolutionarily determined brain requires that interpretation of this relationship dramatises this non-penetrability. We see and feel walls and similar objects as ‘hard’. This general principle applies to all substances, resulting in the various grades of hardness and softness we encounter without a second thought to their provenance. All matter, in this understanding, is a story told to us by our brain so that we might better navigate the world of the medium-sized.

This seems straightforward enough; ‘the world is’, to paraphrase JBS Haldane, ‘queerer than we can suppose without making up imaginary entities like solid matter’. This raises the question of what the ontological difference might be between the convenient fiction of matter and the equally fictional (although possibly less convenient) god? Why is believing in god a delusion whereas believing in matter is simple common sense? A posting on the Richard Dawkins website forum noted that the distinction is not between god and matter, but between god and the experience of matter that we call ‘hardness’. Whilst this refinement does shift both entities more clearly into the realm of abstractions, it does not explain the very different attitude we have to these concepts. ‘Hardness’ is one of a range of human interpretations of the properties of the universe; it is qualia familiar as common sense to (apparently) everyone and hardwired from birth. God, on the other hand, whilst it is also a human interpretation of the workings of the universe, and whilst some variation of the god concept seems to be a human universal and therefore also approaches the status of common sense, possibly even hardwired, seems to be less resistant to disbelief. Although god, as a concept, in some cases ‘won’t go away’, the presence of atheists in the world (and even in foxholes) demonstrates that he, she, or it can indeed be banished by an act of educated will. As Dawkins goes on to mention in the same presentation, the most determined efforts my Major Albert N. Stubblebine of US Military Intelligence failed to dissolve the hardness of matter by a similar act of will. A failure of organised disbelief that caused him to repeated crash into the wall he was trying to walk through.

These two delusional entities, the hardness of matter and being of god, may mark two points on a continuum of embodied imagination in which the impact of the delusion is felt to greater or lesser extents. The hardness of matter is felt at the surface of the body, the being of god, if it is felt at all, is felt in the mind. Both feelings are, in a sense, interpretations. ‘Hardness’ is an interpretation by the sensorimotor system of certain enduring and consistent laws of physics related specifically to the properties of substances; god seems to be an interpretation of a supposed unification of the big questions of life, the universe, and everything.

Posted in Dawkins, Richard, Evolution, God, Haldane, J.B.S., Sense, Substance | No Comments »

The God Paradigm

October 17th, 2007 Fred McVittie

The ‘God Hypothesis’ which Dawkins puts forward in ‘The God Delusion’ is not, strictly speaking, a hypothesis at all. A hypothesis is a statement from which experiments might be directly derived, the results of which support or nullify that hypothesis. No such experiment can be produced from the general concept of a God. God could, however, be considered a paradigm from which other, more functional hypotheses can be derived. In this, the God Paradigm would be essentially no different from the Big Bang paradigm: both have a certain explanatory power but neither can be tested directly. A significant difference of course, is that the Big Bang paradigm can be used to generate hypotheses which are in turn fully testable and falsifiable. The results of such experiments can never prove or disprove the reality of the paradigm, but they can lend support to its validity as an explanatory structure. The search for the existence of background microwave radiation (COBE) was one such hypothesis which, when found to be valid, supported the Big Bang paradigm. A theist who argued that the presence of such radiation does not prove that the Big Bang happened is completely correct, as paradigms can only be supported, not proven. However, as such supporting evidence increases, as it has in the case of evolutionary theory, then the onus is on the dissenter to provide a better paradigm supported by better, properly supporting hypotheses. The God paradigm does not have a good record in generating functional hypotheses, and to the extent that it has, these have tended to be null and therefore fail to support the overall paradigm of a divine entity.

There are two hallmarks of a really good paradigm particularly a large-scale ‘cosmological’ paradigm that explains pretty much everything. Firstly, it has to provide a satisfying, easily grasped ‘big picture’. Secondly, it should be capable of generating many statements or hypotheses that can be tested. The God Paradigm, depending on which version you look to, has a record of being excellent at fulfulling the first requirement, as evidenced by the millions of people worldwide who not only grasp it but hold onto it in the teeth of quite amazing adversity. The second requirement, that it offers testable hypotheses, is less well covered, and to the extent that it is, has not performed well. The deist God, who lit the blue touch paper of the Cosmos and then stood well back, is completely inaccessible, and makes no moves, mysterious or otherwise, that might leave tracks in the experimental record. (This is the God for cop-outs in my opinion). Some other Gods, that of Roman Catholicism for example, are much more amenable to hypothesising, since He does intervene in the ways of the world. Miracles and intercessionary prayer are perfectly testable hypotheses which, if demonstrated as valid, would lend support to the God Paradigm. Such support would not constitute proof, of course, for the same reason that the results of COBE don’t prove the Big Bang paradigm. You could demonstrate the existence of miraculous cures and crying statues from now until Doomsday, and that would still not prove the existence of God, but would only lend support to the God Paradigm, an explanatory structure that, however well supported, would always be tentative, always open to doubt, always ready to be swallowed up by the next, even more encompassing big picture. The fact that these hypotheses have not been validated means that they do not provide such support, and the GP, for many of us, is just too weak to take seriously. However, lack of support does not mean disproof, and the God Paradigm, whilst it remains devastatingly unsupported, to the point that it is probably a hazard to passers-by, is as valid as it ever was. It just seems such a shame that so many people invest in this catastrophically weak idea of a divine being, an entity incapable of pulling of the simplest testable miracle, when there are so many other paradigms around which have awe-inspiring explanatory power and in their complexity and elegance make Chartes and Canterbury look like Birmingham Bullring (on a bad day).

Posted in Atheism, Dawkins, Richard, Evolution, God, Paradigm, Religion, Science | No Comments »