“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.”
Albert einstein
In Part 1, we explored how science’s inability to answer the big questions leads to scientism pretending as if the big questions don’t even exist.
What Remains after Science?
Science works from the inside out, needing always to be able to refine, restate, and clarify its understanding of the natural world and the physical laws that govern it.
Faith works from the outside in, unable to alter its core beliefs while it continues to explore and expound on the meaning of supernatural things and their relation to the natural world.
“[T]he scientist should go on exploring and experimenting freely, so long as he did not claim an infallibility and finality which it was against his own principles to claim. Meanwhile, the Church should go on developing and defining about supernatural things, so long as she did not claim a right to alter the deposit of faith, which it was against her own principles to claim.”
G.K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas, p. 72
What remains after science has done its job? Wittgenstein said that, “even when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched. Of course there are then no questions left, and this itself is the answer.”[1]
Although Wittgenstein had the intellectual honesty to admit the limitations of science, he still saw nothing fruitful in examining what lies beyond those limitations. While seeming to recognize and be resigned to the idea that only paradox remained, his resignation led him to conclude that we should stop asking questions.
Compare this attitude to Job’s in the Bible story. Job’s resignation to God’s non-explanation led to embracing the mystery, not in ceasing the questions. As author, philosopher, and mathematician David Berlinski noted, “scientific atheists should at least be open to the possibility that scientific explanations by their very nature come to an end well before they have done all the work that an explanation can do.”[2]
In Part 1, we touched on the limitations of science when it comes to origins, or first causes. From the point of view of the theist, the questions of ‘how did the universe emerge’ and ‘why does the universe exist’ are really the same question because they have the same answer, which is God.
Science cannot posit how something came from nothing because that requires a causeless cause. But instead of admitting it cannot answer, science says there is no answer.
If you don’t have an explanation for why the universe exists at all, then you essentially believe it just happened by chance and is ‘just one of those things’ that must be accepted (because how could you not accept it, you live in it). On what basis, then, can the atheist object to someone who believes in God for the same reasons? After all, both the believer in God and the believer in a causeless universe are certain that their respective beliefs are self-evident.
“What a man rejects as distasteful must always be measured against what he is prepared eagerly to swallow.”
David Berlinski, The Devil’s Delusion, p. 152
Origins of Consciousness
As noted earlier, the first cause problem applies to more than just the origin of the universe, but also to the origin of life, the origin of consciousness, and even the origin of species (although you might exercise prudence when mentioning that one in mixed company).
The mystery of life emerging from no life is usually explained by ‘all the right conditions’ along with a massive dose of ‘random chance,’ which is not substantively different from the ‘just one of those things’ explanation of the Big Bang.
The issue of the emergence and existence of consciousness has enough meat on the bone, so to speak, to remain capable of being chewed during polite discourse without having to digest too much. However, delving a bit deeper reveals our recurring theme.
In his book Windows on the Mind: Reflections on the Physical Basis of Consciousness, physics professor Erich Harth states, “Mind is like no other property of physical systems. It is not just that we don’t know the mechanisms that give rise to it. We have difficulty in seeing how any mechanism can give rise to it.”[3]
At least with the beginnings of the universe we have an inkling of the mechanism if not of the cause. But when it comes to the grey matter inside our own heads, we still have not a clue how it can produce a conscious mind. It’s one thing to claim that consciousness evolved, but that’s difficult to maintain when we cannot pinpoint what biological system or process is responsible.
As conscious beings, it turns out that we humans possess all kinds of mental capabilities that do not seem to provide any Darwinian survival advantages. So why do we have them? Alfred Wallace had the same question.
As a contemporary of Darwin, Wallace independently and concurrently developed the theory of evolution by natural selection, which holds that genetic mutations and the variety of chance provide a diversity of potential genetic traits that are ‘selected’ based on whether they provide survival advantages such that the organisms exhibiting them are more likely to survive long enough to pass them on.
In 1869, Wallace published an article entitled, “Sir Charles Lyell on Geological Climates and the Origin of Species.” In it, he recognized that evolution is inadequate to explain certain features of the human race (the ‘higher’ mental abilities such as mathematics, art, logic, and abstract reasoning), because those features emerged and existed separate from any usefulness for survival of the species.
“Wallace argued that characteristic human abilities must be latent in primitive man, existing somehow as an unopened gift, the entryway to a world that primitive man does not possess and would not recognize.”
David Berlinski, The Devil’s Delusion, p. 159
Thus, even at the time of Darwin when the theory of evolution was at its infancy, it was suggested that humankind’s capabilities were front-loaded with advantages prior to those advantages having any utility. Chesterton made use of the same line of argument in his book The Everlasting Man (which was partly a response to H.G. Wells, popular author and apologist for evolution, and his book A Short History of the World).
In The Everlasting Man, Chesterton set out to demonstrate that mankind was unique among creation, even to the point of appearing not to belong to this world, and was predestined for a perfection exemplified in the person of Jesus Christ.
For Chesterton, the history of the world does not indicate that primitive humans were any different or inferior from modern humans, and indeed that savagery is just as likely to emanate from civilization as from barbarism. Speaking about anthropology and evolutionary biology Chesterton says:
“Thus while most science moves in a sort of curve, being constantly corrected by new evidence, this science flies off into space in a straight line uncorrected by anything.”
G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man, p. 24
It is reasonable to conclude that the idea of man evolving from apes requires more faith on less evidence to believe than the existence of God.
The Universe Beyond…
A continuing theme of this blog is that only through what lies beyond the natural world can we begin to probe the meaningful truths of life that bring us purpose and joy. Even though we cannot fully understand them, we must confront them with awe and wonder.
The discoveries of science are limited to the created universe and contribute nothing beyond, except to the extent that the order and beauty of the universe that science helps reveal inspires us to see ‘through the looking glass.’ Moreover, science cannot contradict anything beyond the natural world, because the created universe is contained wholly within what exists beyond it.
Like the two-dimensional surface of a balloon expanding into three-dimensional space, so our three-dimensional universe must be expanding into a dimension that we inhabitants of the universe cannot access. And even if we could, we know from Gödel that science and logic cannot prove all that is true about what is knowable.
We often experience those unprovable truths in the form of paradox. Struggling to solve the paradoxes only often leaves us back where we started, in strange loop fashion. Somehow, we must learn to embrace the paradox and let it teach us about the truth of the mystery that lies beyond.
…and the Universe Within
When talking about ‘struggling to solve the paradoxes,’ a couple examples from quantum mechanics come to mind. One is the wave/particle duality of photons, and another is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
Quantum mechanics deals with the physics governing fundamental particles such as electrons, photons, and so forth. Here, strange things happen. Particles don’t move continuously, they move discretely, first here then there without being in between. And while they move discretely, the particles themselves are not discrete, but are smeared out, unable to be pinned down to in any one place. They exist in a superposition of probabilities as opposed to a single reality.
We are all familiar with the wave properties of light, if only through seeing the refractive effects of a rainbow in the sky or through a prism. Light’s wave properties are often demonstrated by passing coherent light through adjacent narrow slits to form an interference pattern of alternating bright and dark lines as the split beams recombine constructively and destructively (see Figure 5).
Figure 5: Double-slit interference pattern
We also know, thanks to Max Planck and Albert Einstein, that light is quantized into elementary, individual packets called photons. Physicists have observed individual photons behaving either like particles (for example knocking electrons out of a metal plate) or like waves (even to the point of interfering with themselves in a dual slit experiment).
Difficulty arises because wave theory and particle theory present two contradictory pictures of reality, so while it is acceptable for a photon to be one or the other at any given time, it cannot be both simultaneously. The conflict reflects the attempt to conform a new concept, like the photon, to the existing physical descriptions of reality that have served us well.
We wrestle trying to fit the concept of photons into mutually exclusive categories simply because those are the categories we have. We can’t seem to just let photons be photons. “Light is both a wave and a particle, and it is both a wave and a particle at the same time. This conclusion embodies a mystery, one that no subsequent analytical efforts have dissolved.”[4]
The Uncertainty Principle is another example of contradiction from a duality pertaining to the quantum realm. It turns out that it is impossible to measure with precision both the position and velocity of a subatomic particle. In theory, one or the other can be determined to any desired precision, but the more precise the determination is for one, the less sure we are about the other.
The inability to determine both position and velocity at the same time is not due to limitations on the instrumentations of measurement, but rather a law of nature imposed upon the observer no matter how good the equipment. In the quantum realm, our attempt to know something (epistemological effort) interferes with our ability to study the nature of that thing (ontological effort).
“The uncertainty principle, after all, is an example of the same tendency to draw ontological conclusions from epistemological premises, in this instance, from our inability in principle to know simultaneously the position and velocity of a subatomic particle, to the nonexistence of such a combined state.”
Palle Yourgrau, A World Without Time, p. 107
Much like with the wave/particle duality of photons, the Uncertainty Principle confronts us with the uncomfortable fact that observation and measurement, while essential for learning about things, cannot always unveil the secrets about things in their essence.
The Uncertainty Principle is the quantum world version of Gödel’s incompleteness theorems.
Emptying the Cup
The lesson of incompleteness is broader than systems of logic, mathematics, and science. The lesson is humility. We must recognize that, even when we know everything we can know, even if we have constructed the perfect technology or the perfect society, we have limitations.
Gödel himself, who saw applications for his incompleteness theorems beyond formal systems, imagined the following scenario.
“[A] country that depended entirely upon the formal letter of its laws might well find itself defenseless against a crisis that had not, and could not, have been foreseen in its legal code. The analogue of his incompleteness theorem, applied to the law, would guarantee that for any legal code, even if intended to be fully explicit and complete, there would always be judgments ‘undecided’ by the letter of the law.”
Palle Yourgrau, A World Without Time, p. 99
This scenario warns us against the hubris in thinking that a perfect society could ever be accomplished. We are incapable of engineering Utopia governed by a perfect code of laws that exhausts all possibilities, not just because of our own individual flaws, but because the universe will not allow it.
In recent years, science has been used as a cudgel to beat down voices who dare to raise flags of caution about the limitations of science. Scientism has been cultivating an urge to not just counter and shut down clear errors, but to silence questions and unfalsifiable statements of belief under the rationale that those questions and statements could potentially be used to propagate errors.
Many of those declaring we should ‘believe science’ are unwilling to wage their battle through debate and persuasion on the merits, instead aiming for nothing less than silencing dissent. They cannot lower themselves to suffer questions and skepticisms, otherwise they cede the self-proclaimed high ground.
The instinct to forbid debate under the guise that ‘the debate is settled’ is more akin to protecting an orthodoxy against imagined demons than to searching for truth.
Pride is humanity’s original sin. It perverts our innate and positive desires to learn and create, turning those desires into weapons of power and demonstrations of superiority.
In pride we play God, placing primary trust in ourselves. In pride we fear failure, missing the chance to learn and grow. In pride we condescend, robbing others of their inherent dignity. In pride we become puffed up, displacing everything else.
Before we can learn to embrace paradox, we must let go of pride.
Letting go sometimes feels like emptying ourselves of all we have learned and accomplished, but that is not the case. Instead, what we’re ‘pouring out’ of the ‘cup’ of our minds is the egotistic attachment to set knowledge, fixed opinions, and rigid expectations.
Consider the following classic Zen koan, which like all koans is meant to provoke doubt in how we see the world in preparation for receiving truth.
Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era, received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.
Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring.
The professor watched the overflow until he could no longer restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!”
“Like this cup,” Nan-in said, “you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”
Emptying ourselves is the art of humility, without which our hearts and minds remain hardened against learning, unlearning, and relearning.
The imagery of the cup overflowing is a powerful symbol reminding us to let things go so that our lives are open to being filled. When all of me is out of the way, then all of God can come in and do His will.
[1] Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, 6.52
[2] David Berlinski, The Devil’s Delusion, p. 151
[3] Quoted by David Berlinski in The Devil’s Delusion, p. 175
[4] David Berlinski, The Devil’s Delusion, p. 92