The problem with popular science books

Most really are not about science.

It used to be claimed that distinguished scientists writing books for the general public would provoke the snobbish disdain of their colleagues. It was considered to be intellectual shallow to take ones research to the masses. However, all that changed with Stephen Hawking's bestseller A Brief History of Time. It made him a lot of money and a celebrity. After that many scientists got in on the act. Now there is a steady stream of popular science books.

I think scientists should write books for popular audiences. My problem is that I think in the end most really aren't about science.
There seem to be two common agendas of authors. Both are extremely ambitious and filled with hubris.

One agenda is that the topic of the authors research is THE big thing in science. It doesn't just revolutionise a particular specialised field of science but will revolutionise all of science. The author promotes their specialisation [chaos theory, string theory, complex adaptive systems, quantum information, self-organised criticality, systems biology, evolutionary biology, emergence, cosmology, …..] as THE most fundamental and important sub-discipline of science, because it has such profound implications for all of science.

The second agenda goes even further. The work of the author and her/his field is THE answer to the meaning and purpose of humanity and the universe. Only when we accept this will we truly understand why we are here, where we are going, and how to tackle the grand challenges facing humanity.

I illustrate the latter by giving quotes from the end of several highly acclaimed and influential popular science books. I have featured these quotes in earlier posts.

``Where then shall we find the source of truth and the moral inspiration for a really scientific socialist humanism? Only, we suggest, in the sources of science itself,..... it is the conclusion to which the search for authenticity necessarily leads. The ancient covenant is in pieces; man at last knows that he is alone in the unfeeling immmensity of the universe, out of which he emerged only by chance. Neither his destiny nor his duty have been written down. The kingdom above or the darkness below: it is for him to choose.''

Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modem Biology, trans. Austryn Wainhouse (New York: Knopf, 1971), p. 167

But if there is no solace in the fruits of our research, there is at least some consolation in the research itself. Men and women are not content to comfort themselves with tales of gods and giants, or to confine their thoughts to the daily affairs of life; they also build telescopes and satellites and accelerators, and sit at their desks for endless hours working out the meaning of the data they gather. The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things which lifts human life a little above the level of farce and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.

Steven Weinberg, The First Three Minutes (Basic Books, 1977), pages 154-155.

If we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, .... Then we shall all ...[discuss] why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason - for then we would truly know the mind of God.

Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

This post was stimulated by reading an excellent paper by Ian Hesketh about Big History where he discusses the whole genre of popular science writing. More on that later….

Jesus week talk

Here is the latest version of the slides for my talk "Jesus and Science" which I will give as part of Jesus Week, organised by several student Christian groups on campus.
It begins with a discussion of God's Two Books, considers the failures of the modernism of Stephen Hawking, the claims of postmodernism, and then looks at Jesus being a source of grace and truth, as described in John 1.
Comments welcome.

Modern physics is not a threat to Christianity

Martin Rees, is the UK Astronomer Royal and a former President of the Royal Society. He is an atheist. He has an interesting article in the Telegraph newspaper, Even a theory of everything has limits. It is stimulated by Stephen Hawking's new TV series The Grand Design based on his recent book with Leonid Mlodinow.
Rees points out the limitations of Hawking's reductionist triumphalism.

Nearly all scientists are “reductionists” in so far as they think that everything, however complicated, obeys the basic equations of physics. But even if we had a hypercomputer that could solve those equations for (say) breaking waves, migrating birds or human brains, an atomic-level explanation wouldn’t yield the enlightenment we really seek. The brain is an assemblage of cells, and a painting is an assemblage of chemical pigment. But in both cases, what’s important and interesting is the pattern and structure – the emergent complexity. 

This is why the Grand Design has no relevance to most of the things that humans value. True, if you believe God is some magician who lit the blue touchpaper to set our universe expanding, you need to modify your beliefs. But nothing in modern physics – and here I disagree with Hawking and Mlodinow – need give Rowan Williams (for instance) any intellectual discomfort.

Thus, a very distinguished atheist scientist, acknowledges modern physics does not represent an intellectual threat to Christianity.

Against the arrogance of the reductionists

Phil Anderson is one of the most influential theoretical physicists of the second half of the twentieth century. He has also been a strong critic of reductionism, emphasizing the role of emergence in all of science. He recently published a book of his essays, More and Different: notes from a thoughtful curmudgeon. I highly recommend it. Here is small extract from an essay "Emergence vs. Reductionism".

Physicists - and scientists in general - love to do two things; (a) to take apart, to analyze into simpler and simpler components; (b) to mystify, to say it is not really this, it’s that. They like to take upon themselves the role of the shaman or the mullah. Everything comes from a First Cause – the First Equation – and only the appropriate scientist can investigate this with his very expensive equipment, and understand it with his abstruse theories. 

The arrogance this attitude fosters has to be experienced to be believed. Such books as Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time covers the whole of science in six brief chapters, spending the rest of the book on personal speculations about the first millionth of a picosecond of time when, he seems to feel, all that matters happened.

Known by the company you keep

I first became aware of Leonid Molidnow as co-author of Stephen Hawking for his recent popular book The Grand Design, which has received negative reviews. The other day while browsing books in a Sydney airport bookstore I also discovered Molidnow has co-authored a book with Deepak Chopra,  The War of World Views: Science vs. Spirituality.

Two bestselling authors first met in a televised Caltech debate on “the future of God,” one an articulate advocate for spirituality, the other a prominent physicist.  This remarkable book is the product of that serendipitous encounter and the contentious—but respectful—clash of worldviews that grew along with their friendship.    

In War of the Worldviews these two great thinkers battle over the cosmos, evolution and life, the human brain, and God, probing the fundamental questions that define the human experience.

You can read on Wikipedia why Chopra is a "magnet for criticism." I find it deplorable the manner in which he tries to use quantum physics to support his ideas about New Age spirituality and "medicine."

I would not describe Molidnow as "a prominent physicist". I had not heard of him until he co-authored the popular book with Hawking. Various publicity material for the books states Molidnow "is at Caltech" which gave me the impression that he was a faculty member. However, his own webpage at Caltech states he is there as a guest.

Hawking says there is no heaven

This week Stephen Hawking was interviewed by the Guardian. The following statement has attracted significantly publicity:

I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first. I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.

The Guardian article also states:

Hawking responded to questions posed by the Guardian and a reader in advance of a lecture tomorrow at the Google Zeitgeist meeting in London, in which he will address the question: "Why are we here?"

In the talk, he will argue that tiny quantum fluctuations in the very early universe became the seeds from which galaxies, stars, and ultimately human life emerged. "Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in," he said.

I beg to differ with Hawking. Science is about evidence. Hawking is a loud proponent of M-theory. However, there is no experimental evidence that string theory is valid. Furthermore, even if it is valid, making philosophical deductions from the content of scientific theories is problematic.

But, I would contrast this lack of evidence to the evidence for heaven. What? Yes, there is some evidence. There is some historical evidence (including eyewitness accounts) that Jesus Christ was crucified and that he rose from the dead. If Jesus really did rise from the dead then it is highly likely that there is an afterlife heaven exists. I agree that not everyone accepts the validity of or agrees with the evidence. But there is evidence that should be examined, weighed and considered. In contrast, for Hawkings ideas there is no concrete empirical evidence that I am aware of.

Joyful optimism without the modernist baggage

Previously I posted about the naive optimism so characteristic of modernism, whether in the unification of Yugoslavia or Stephen Hawkings view of what string theory can deliver. Irenicum wrote a perceptive comment on that post about how these views are so problematic because they overlook the sin of man.

It is interesting to see the critical but appreciative manner in which Karl Barth engages with the optimism of the 18th century, particularly embodied in Leibniz [better known to a science nerd like me as co-inventor of Calculus than as a philosopher].
Note that the wikipedia entry on Leibniz's Theodicy and optimism, states "the word “optimism” here is used in the sense of optimal, not in the mood related sense, as being positively hopeful, as contrary to pessimism."

As usual Barth is full of surprises.

It is worth considering this historical phenomenon, because in all its forms it approximates closely to the doctrine of creation as justification as it must be represented in dogmatics, and this approximation cannot be overlooked, and is not so simple to explain as might at first sight appear.

We, too, have had to state clearly the principle that the nature as well as the existence of the created world is affirmed by God its Creator, so that to this extent it is justified and perfect.

It is notable that in the whole history of ideas there is hardly a single verdict which verbally corresponds so closely to the Christian verdict as that of 18th century optimism....

It cannot be denied that Leibniz and all his stronger and weaker followers proclaim glad tidings, and thus display a formal affinity to the proclamation of the Gospel. Nor is it an accident that this century of all others produced the finest music: J. S. Bach and G. F. Handel, Gluck and Haydn, and the incomparable Mozart. And from this source there gushed out in other directions too a whole stream of natural joy in life in the strength of which we still live to-day....

Maintaining the same background, but emerging from it, even Christian preaching must take up again the theme of the stern and unmistakeable judgments of God, and learn to proclaim rather more radically and restrainedly what it means that all things work together for good to them that love God....

[Leibniz] must be taken seriously in dogmatics because he too, although in a very different way, tried to sing, and in his own way did in fact sing, the unqualified praise of God the Creator in His relationship to the creature....

....the Christian way of affirming the Creator's justifying Yes to His creation obviously has another dimension and a wider scope. It includes what is palpably missing in optimism: a true and urgent and inescapable awareness of the imperilling of creation by its limits, of sin and death and the devil. Unlike optimism, it has a compelling reason to view reality as a whole and therefore in this dimension too, and to take it seriously as a whole and therefore with an eye to this aspect too. For this reason it cannot be equated with 18th century optimism.

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 3.1 The Doctrine of Creation, p.404-7.

From Yugoslavia to String Theory: Modernist Towers of Babel

The scientific successes of Newtonian mechanics eventually led to the intellectual hubris of the Englightenment and Modernism. The promise of rational man discovering universal truth that will liberate him and create a just technological society.

I found the following fascinating

Marxist-Leninist ideology concerning the national question was largely derived from the eighteenth-century Enlightenment: it wanted to overcome the past and reject it. When applied to Yugoslavia, exactly because of its similarity to the Enlightenment it helped the Yugoslav Communists to perceive the common ethnic, linguistic and other characteristics of Croats and Serbs.... Marxism and the Enlightenment also shared the belief that humanity could create new human beings and a fundamentally different society

The contested country: Yugoslav unity and communist revolution, 1919-1953, Aleksa Djilas (Harvard University Press, 1991).

In my lectures in Serbia this was juxtaposed with the final sentences of Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time where he looks forward to what String Theory can offer humanity.

If we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, .... Then we shall all ...[discuss] why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason - for then we would truly know the mind of God.

This all reminds me of Genesis 11:

¹Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.... ⁴Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth."

Science, technology, and multi-culturalism have their merits and a role to play. But, none can deliver an inevitable progress towards human utopia nor a personal knowledge of the Creator and Redeemer of the universe.

One distinguished scientist's response to Hawking

There is a good article in the Guardian, by Eric Priest

Stephen Hawking can't use physics to answer why we're here

Modern belief in God is not about covering the gaps in our knowledge, but about answering different types of questions

Hawking a rehash

People are starting to ask me about Stephen Hawking's new book, the Grand Design.
He seems to be pushing the idea of multiple universes as  a way to solve the problem of the Anthropic Principle (that the natural constants of nature are fine tuned). He also appears to be claiming that the quantum theory implies the existence of multiple universes. Of course, this all implies that God does not exist....
None of these claims are particularly new or based on actual experimental evidence...

There is a cynical review by John Crace in the Guardian and a critical review by Karl Giberson in the Huffington Post.