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The Mind of God
Einstein once said that the thing which most interested him wasn't whether God existed or not, but whether God had any choice in creating the world as it is. Einstein wasn't religious in the conventional sense, but he liked to use God as a metaphor for expressing the deeper questions about human existence, an instinct that runs deep in many scientific disciplines, especially physics.
As someone who was for years unnerved by the very term "physics" -- memories of high school, maybe -- one of the most pleasant surprises in recent years has been reading physicist/authors like Freeman Dyson and Evan Harris Walker and discovering the surprisingly strong link between physics and spirituality.
Physicists seem to have taken on some of the heaviest questions of human existence: "Why are we here? Why is the world the way it is? Where have all the Gods gone?"
In The Mind of God: The Scientific Basis For a Rational World, (just published in paperback by Simon and Schuster, US $12) Paul Davies, a professor of Mathematical Physics at the University of Adelaide in Australia (and the author of God and the New Physics and The Cosmic Blueprint), continues this tradition brilliantly.
"The modern world is plagued by a greater diversity of beliefs than ever," writes Davies, "many of them eccentric or even dangerous, and rational argument is regarded by a lot of ordinary people as pointless sophistry. Only in science, and especially mathematics, have the ideals of the Greek philosophers been upheld (and in philosophy itself, of course). When it comes to addressing the really deep issues of existence, such as the origin and meaning of the universe, the place of human beings in the world, and the structure and organization of nature, there is a strong temptation to retreat into unreasoned belief."
Just what is rational thought, anyway? asks Davies, and true to his word, he jumps into a beautifully written, lively -- and yes, profoundly rational -- romp through some of the biggest mysteries in the universe: human reason and common sense, metaphysics, time and eternity, the creation, real and virtual worlds, theoretical physics, the necessity of God, and finally, "the mystery at the end of the universe."
Rather than a book of answers, this is a surprisingly readable, fast-paced inquiry into whether or not science and rationality can unlock the mysteries of the world, from the nature of consciousness to the notion that the world is really a kind of supercomputer, and all of us bits and data swirling around inside.
"I cannot believe," writes Davies near the end of the book, "that our existence in this universe is a mere quirk of fate, an accident of history, an incidental blip in the great cosmic drama. Our involvement is too intimate. The physical species Homo may count for nothing, but the existence of mind in some organism on some planet in the universe is surely a fact of fundamental significance. Through conscious beings the universe has generated self-awareness. This can be no trivial detail, no minor byproduct of mindless, purposeless forces. We are truly meant to be here."
Perhaps because they are trained to deconstruct the matter that makes up the universe, physicists go deeper into questions like this than almost any other contemporary subculture of writers.
If Paul Davies were teaching physics, every kid might learn to love science and appreciate its potential for tackling, and perhaps one day even answering, these age-old questions about life. Davies' ruminations here on Metaphysics: Who Needs It? ought to be required reading for anyone who needs to be reminded of the importance of science in the contemporary world. Since most scientific language is arcane and inaccessible to much of humanity, the rest of us tend to forget just how seminal, even spiritual, subjects like physics can be.
If you care about issues like the existence of God, rationality, and the reason for our very being, you can hardly do better than The Mind of God. Davies doesn't have all of the answers, nor does he pretend to, but he sure has the right questions.
"I cannot believe," writes Davies near the end of the book, "that our existence in this universe is a mere quirk of fate, an accident of history, an incidental blip in the great cosmic drama. Our involvement is too intimate. The physical species Homo may count for nothing, but the existence of mind in some organism on some planet in the universe is surely a fact of fundamental significance. Through conscious beings the universe has generated self-awareness. This can be no trivial detail, no minor byproduct of mindless, purposeless forces. We are truly meant to be here."
Um, I'm sorry, but coming from an alleged supporter of rational thought, this sounds very out of place. "This can be no trivial detail" - says who, exactly? The burden of proof lies upon the one who makes the affirmative claim, so until this guy can produce actual evidence that we are "meant" to be here (aside from his nigh-religious clinging to this somehow mysterious and supernatural "meaning of existence"), I shall continue to believe otherwise.
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
...don't try to pass a few books being written on the frontiers of science (pardon the euphemism) as a new trend of any kind. The hayday of the epistemological enquiries on the meaning of physical reality and the mind of God and all that, came with quantum mechanics (a subject which, need I remind, Einstein never believed in, and some will say, probably with some justice, never understood; you know, the ``der gute Gott würfelt nicht'' (``God does not play dice'') story). These glorious days are gone. The day you see Ed Witten (the current ``pope'' of fundamental physics) or some such person writing something about Life, the Universe, God and Everything, maybe that will mean something. But I don't think that will come.
Sorry to disappoint you but, no, there isn't any hidden spirituality in physics. Spirituality is an attribute of the human mind, not one of the world around us. I don't call a book crackpot when I haven't read it, but I would simply like to remind how Sokal made a point by publishing a paper on the hermeneutics of quantum gravity. Spirituality, hermeneutics, whatever, just do not apply to physics, any more than the color ``green'' does.
I am an atheist myself. I do not think science and religion are incompatible, however. In the same way that art is not incompatible with science. But trying to write a book about both seems to me very much like trying to explain Michelangelo's paintings in terms of quantum physics, or vice versa.
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...more controversial than Oolon Colluphid's trilogy of philosophical blockbusters Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes and Who is this God Person Anyway? (Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
Mr. Katz is not trained in a technical field where saying things precisely is both norm and necessity, but rather he is a journalist. To many journalists precision is secondary to seemingly more lofty goals such as "style" or "sensationalism." Admittedly, Mr. Katz is worse than most in this regard. (Witness all the fuss over his loose use of the word "interactive" in his Oscars aricle). Then again, I would wager that anyone who has read /. for more than a week has divined this already about Mr. Katz and has set his User Preferences accordingly.
/. headlining. He would do much towards increasing his signal-to-noise ratio if he were to write rather than ramble--if he put more effort into the rudaments of communication, e.g. researching elements of his essays and paying some attention to the audience to which he his writing, it would save him from bathing in chagrin as frequently as he does. Journalism is very seldom profound, and in his haste to publish his essays here take on a slapdash, imprecise character that I (and probably most other /.ers) find tiring in articles that promise so much more. I'd love to see Mr. Katz spend 5x as much time on a single essay, put his heart into it, and publish here 0.2x as often. Even the most jaded among us has to admit that sometimes he does have something valuable to say--the difficulty is that these gems are so infrequent.
My impression is that Mr. Katz believes every jot and tittle he scribes is worthy of
It would be refreshing and an excellent exercise for Mr. Katz if he were to devote some effort to deconstructing the nature of verbal communication in this increasingly technical society. (That sounds like the name of a Katz article right there...). His essays typify the dichotomy between the technical and the non-technical, the analytic and the artistic, the realist and the impressionist. His writing has the pretense of profound knowledge but the attitude of an outsider, and as a consequence he often conveys to his reader an arrogance typical of those who believe that the non-technically oriented have somehow cornered the market on philosophy. He provokes ire primarily because, at a fundamental level, he underestimates the capaibilities of his audience, and his sloppiness costs him credibility in the long run.
It's sad: in trying to wear the two hats of journalist and philosopher he succeeds at neither, and he really does have some interesting ideas once in awhile.
I've had this in paperback on my shelf for years now! The publication information says copyright 1992, first Touchstone edition 1993.
It's a fine book, and I really have nothing against a review that appears seven years after publication. But Jon, this is a too important detail to get so badly wrong.
Always keep a sapphire in your mind