Those who increase knowledge increase sorrow

The title of this post comes from Ecclesiastes 1:18. I was reminded of these words as I was finishing Stephen Weinberg's wonderful book, The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe. Most of the book is devoted to scientific arguments (though accessible to a layman) in favor of big bang cosmology. Perhaps not unexpectedly, the epilogue is much more philosophical than the rest. In it, Weinberg lays out the two possibilities for the eventual fate of the universe. Either its density is less than a certain critical number, and therefore it will continue to expand forever and ever, cooling gradually until nothing can live in it; or else it will one day stop expanding, start to contract, and the big bang will be echoed by a symmetric event (a "big crunch").

Either way, the future does not look too promising for living things, least of all human beings. Which leads Weinberg to the following concluding reflection (emphasis mine):

It is almost irresistible for humans to believe that we have some special relation to the universe, that human life is not just a more-or-less farcical outcome of a chain of accidents reaching back to the first three minutes, but that we were somehow built in from the beginning. As I write this I happen to be in an airplane at 30,00 feet, flying over Wyoming en route home from San Francisco to Boston. Below, the earth looks very soft and comfortable--fluffy clouds here and there, snow turning pink as the sun sets, roads stretching straight across the country from one town to another. It is very hard to realize that this all is just a tiny part of an overwhelmingly hostile universe. It is even harder to realize that this present universe has evolved from an unspeakably unfamiliar early condition, and faces a futile extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat. The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.

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 that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.

At least it's a tragedy and not a farce. That is the sole comfort modern science can give us. "Vanity of Vanities, says the Teacher, All is Vanity." (Ecc. 1:2)

I saw that wisdom excels follow as light excels darkness.
The wise have eyes in their head,
but fools walk in darkness.
Yet I perceived that the same fate befalls all of them. (Ecc. 2:13-14)

Before jumping into a critique of Weinberg's point of view, I did want to make it clear that his words are strongly echoed by Scripture. It is not as if believers in God had never noticed how small we are in this vast, pointless universe.

Yet I could never merely accept this view without pursuing further. If our efforts to study the universe reveal that it is pointless, perhaps it is we who are at fault. For one thing, I suspect we are looking for the wrong thing if we search for our own special place, rather than an all-encompassing purpose for everything that exists. But I can't deny that finding our own purpose is equally important. Is it really any less farcical to think that human intelligence has arisen from random processes, only to discover as much and conclude that we really have no purpose, than to go on living like animals? It almost seems like more of a farce--a sick cosmic joke. Except no one is really there to tell it.

What if the problem is this word "comprehensible"? The grand theme of Weinberg's book is that we can understand the beginning and end of the universe because it follows simple mathematical rules. At very high temperatures, everything that exists is governed entirely by the laws of statistical mechanics. There is nothing to look at but averages. Such things as meaning and beauty have no ontological status in this view--only measurable quantities. (I find this terribly ironic, since physicists are attracted to these theories precisely because of their beauty; there is nothing more attractive than symmetry.) Thus "comprehensible" secretly means "quantifiable and predictable," excluding all other forms of understanding.

What if the meaning and beauty we find in the universe, emerging as they do thanks to random processes governed by comprehensible laws, point to a higher reality? What if human beings have access to that reality? (What if other things do, as well? There is no reason to be anthropocentric.) It would not necessarily be a reality governed by mathematical laws. Yet it could intersect with this physical realm, as evidenced by the fact that we catch glimpses of it through concrete experiences of beauty.

The problem for physics is that such a higher realm cannot be understood through mathematical description. Its nature is not susceptible to prediction, and it cannot be discovered through observation and experimentation. It is known only by contemplation, or even by faith. If that is unacceptable for an intellectual of the modern world, I can only say that we are the more impoverished for it.

Not that any of this takes away from the glory of Big Bang cosmology. To think that modern science has revealed to us details about the beginning and end of our physical universe is awe-inspiring. In case I need to clarify, I absolutely love this book, and I think the world is richer for works such as these which make science accessible to general audiences.

It's just that I'm not content to have physics without a soul.

The impossibility of economic growth?

Really great blog post by Tom Murphy, who argues that the economics profession is probably mostly deluded when it comes to the assumption that economic growth can continue indefinitely. Reads well, too, because it comes in the form of a dialogue between him (a physicist) and an economist. Main point: there are certainly physical constraints on the possibilities for economic growth, so long as human beings remain here on earth. Energy is limited, and the more energy we consume the more heat we generate. Efficiency also has theoretical limits. What's the end result? The best we can possibly do, in the long run, is converge to a steady state economy--one in which energy consumption and GDP are fixed, and the only chance for "growth" is simply in improving the quality of life that remains for those of us still on this planet.

In my opinion, the convergence to such a steady state may not be pretty. It will be a huge test of our morality when the world's population exceeds a readily sustainable level. I'm thinking wars and eugenics haven't seen their last days. But maybe I'm too cynical.

I agree with Tom's major point, and I think economists are wrong to be unaware of the physics. But I do have two ideas I want to throw out there. One is a question: what means do we have of calculating the natural equilibrium between population size and consumption, scarcity, and overall well-being? I claim that the only real "computer" we have for this is the "catallaxy," as Hayek liked to call it. In other words, the global free market--regulated by property rights and negotiated through individual transactions. The main point is that this global system of organization has a mechanism of adapting to new or undiscovered information, and I think it's probably the only way we have of making the overwhelming set of calculations necessary to ensure humans can still live peacefully on this planet.

Second, I just want to say that, as silly as it can sound, I'm optimistic about space travel. Seriously. And I imagine that one day in the future when we start to truly feel the squeeze on our ability to consume, some scientists might just feel desperate enough to make space travel a more feasible idea. But I admit, optimism can't buy bread.

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

So today, like the total nerd that I am, I actually read a couple of the articles which came out in the latest Notices of American Mathematical Society. One article that caught my attention was entitled, "A Perspective on Wigner's 'Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics,'" which refers to a famous essay by Eugene Wigner on the mysterious way in which mathematics actually seems to tell us true things about the physical world. (As opposed to merely the world of abstract ideas. It would be unsurprising of mathematics told us something about that.) In the article, Jason Nicholson appeals to the philosophy of one Robert Pirsig, who wrote what is claimed to be one of the most widely read books of philosophy ever written, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Nicholson seeks to bring Pirsig's "Metaphysics of Quality" into academic discussion, particularly among mathematicians interested in mathematical metaphysics.

Since I have never read Pirsig, let me just give a few excerpts from Nicholson's summary so that you get the main idea:

The Metaphysics of Quality is, in some limited sense, as follows. He had in his first book realized (and made the case) that Quality is an undefinable entity that is the precursor of subjects and objects; everyone knows what it is but no one can define it. He proceeds to understand that subjects and objects are only one dual pair of defined things into which the undefined Quality event gets split as it is “realized”—that is, made real through a necessarily incomplete attempt to define it. ...

In his second book, however, he is led to a different split into what he calls “static” and “dynamic” aspects of reality as the best split possible, the most useful. He actually terms them static quality (or value) and Dynamic Quality, and with them he builds his Metaphysics of Quality, a metaphysical framework that provides a different, and, he demonstrates, better way of understanding the world we live in. Dynamic Quality is the undefined Quality that was described in his first book, but now he introduces static patterns of quality alongside it to reflect the “realization” of that undefined Quality which makes up our world. They act like a ratchet: the Dynamic Quality is the constant stimulus to move to something “better”, to ratchet up, but the static quality is the latch of the ratchet itself, the making tangible of the motion up into something concrete which will prevent falling down into something “worse”. Dynamic Quality is the creative urge, whereas static quality, or patterns of static quality, is what is created in response.

In building his Metaphysics of Quality, Pirsig classifies patterns of static quality into four discrete yet interrelated levels: Inorganic, Biological, Social, and Intellectual. He describes the relationship between these levels as being analogous to the relationship of computer hardware to computer software—the software is run on the hardware, but has nothing, really, to do with it. The program that you run on your computer and write your article with has nothing to do with the computer hardware itself. Furthermore, the content of your article has nothing to do with the program you write it in. In this way the levels of static quality are related to each other: Biological is built on Inorganic, Social is built on Biological, and Intellectual is built on Social, but each level is independent of the other.

Using this idea, Pirsig makes the case that Darwinian evolution is just Dynamic Quality at work by understanding “survival of the fittest” as meaning the movement of static quality (survival) towards Dynamic Quality (fittest). Then the four levels of static quality are levels of evolution.

Nicholson then goes on to apply this metaphysics to the problem of "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics."

The key word in Wigner’s thesis is “unreasonable”; he actually hit on the solution to the problem in the title of his article. Since Dynamic Quality cannot be defined, it is by definition (so to speak) unreasonable. But that is the reason that any explanation of Wigner’s observation requires an expanded metaphysics. In our tacitly assumed subject-object metaphysics, as Pirsig makes clear, anything “unreasonable” is discarded, and so the effectiveness of mathematics in describing the natural world is an insoluble quandary. Once an “unreasonable” entity, Quality is seen as the root or precursor to all subjects and objects, the quandary fades. ...

The Metaphysics of Quality also easily solves another long-standing dilemma among mathematicians regarding the nature of their subject: the “is mathematics invented or discovered?” debate. The solution to this debate is reminiscent of the Metaphysics of Quality’s resolution of the “free will versus determinism” debate referred to above. Mathematics is invented insofar as it is a process of following Dynamic Quality—that is, insofar as it is “free”. It is discovered insofar as it is a process of fleshing out previously unknown consequences within the static patterns of quality that are mathematics as it stands. Most Ph.D. theses and much published mathematics are more of this latter type—original work, that is, new consequences of existing static patterns, but not in the sense of following only Dynamic Quality. In fact, one might say that any new development comes as a mixture of both types of originality; it lies on a continuum between purely static quality at one end and purely Dynamic Quality at the other. The most “creative” and “original” mathematics obviously sits toward the Dynamic Quality end of the spectrum.

As I understand this, it feels like simply an evolved, 20th century version of Platonism, with a dash of eastern religion added for flavor. And I'm entirely comfortable with that. The only thing I want to point out is how easily this Metaphysics of Quality fits into the idea of participation in the divine. Whereas the Platonist might say that concrete assertions in mathematics are reflections or shadows of a higher reality, Nicholson, drawing on Pirsig, is saying that mathematical ideas are "static patterns" emerging in response to Dynamic Quality. And whereas the Platonist might imagine this higher reality as unchanging while changeable things are merely shadows, Pirsig's philosophy flips that around and says that what is more real is changing, so that all of reality is cast in a Darwinian light.

Which leads me to the question: can we really escape the moral question about God's goodness? Whether God is the creator or simply the selector, whether he is the personal God of the Old Testament or the impersonal God of physics, it does seem like the process of discovery is tied up with this grand question: is it all worth it? In other words, if my intelligence is the result of a selection process that ultimately has no moral worth, why not rebel against it? Perhaps the answers we've been getting from science really are wrong on some fundamental level--not wrong in the sense that they have predictive power, but wrong in the sense that the universe is not worthy of our comprehension. Much like a young Christian who suddenly discovers he can't find it in himself to worship a God who banishes people to eternal torment in hell, maybe one day humanity will rebel against the very idea of knowledge, on the grounds that the universe is just too cruel or depressing to be worthy of our careful study.

Theodicy, it seems to me, is not merely a question for theists.