Quantum Mechanical Philosophy

Following on from my last post, Subjectivity: The Mind’s I (Part 1), I read Paul Davies’ Other Worlds, for a couple of reasons. One, Hofstadter mentioned it in his ‘reflections’ that I referred to in that post, plus, I had recently come across it and already put it aside with the intention of re-reading it anyway. Also the subject of the post led me to contemplate the philosophical ramifications of quantum mechanics (hence the title), and Davies’ book was a good place to start.

As it turned out, I hadn’t read it, even though I’ve owned it for over 20 years, and I was confusing it with another one of his books, The Ghost in the Atom, which was a compilation of BBC interviews transcribed and published in the same decade (1980s). So, logically, I read them both.

Both of these were published in England before Davies came to Australia, where he wrote a string of books on philosophy and science: The Cosmic Blueprint (about chaos theory), The Mind of God (about cosmology), God and the New Physics (much the same territory as Dawkins’ The God Delusion, only written 20 years earlier, but with more depth in my view and a different emphasis), About Time (about time in every respect), The Origin of Life (about microbiology), and these are just the ones I’ve read. He now lives in America, as an astro-biologist with Arizona State University, and has since published The Goldilocks Enigma (about John Wheeler’s conjecture that the universe effectively exists as a cosmological-scale, quantum-phenomenal loop, and to whom Davies dedicated the book). This is arguably his best book, philosophically, because it entails a lifetime’s contemplation on science, epistemology and ontology.

At the top of my blog, I have scribed a little aphorism, which some may see as a definition for philosophy, but I see as a criterion. If you want a definition, I refer you to an earlier post: What is philosophy? (March 08) To quote: ‘In a nutshell, philosophy is a point of view supported by rational argument. A corollary to this is that it requires argument to practice philosophy.’ But in reference to my criterion, as well as my definition, Davies fulfils both of them admirably. It is impossible to read Davies without challenging your deepest held beliefs, especially about reality, the universe and our place in it. No, he’s not a science ‘heretic’, far from it: he just writes very well on difficult subjects about which he has a lot of knowledge.

The Ghost in the Atom (1986), has 2 authors credited: J. Brown and P.C.W. Davies. Brown was ‘Radio Producer in the BBC Science Unit, London’, whereas Davies was ‘Professor of Theoretical Physics [at] the University of Newcastle upon Tyne’. The book was a collection of radio interview transcripts (edited) of some very big names in physics: Alain Aspect, John Bell, John Wheeler, David Duetsch, David Bohm; and these are just the ones I’ve heard of. It also included: Rudolf Peierls, John Taylor and Basil Hiley; whom I hadn’t heard of. The interviews have been edited, but I get the impression from the book’s Forward that the text may actually contain more material than was originally put to air. I assume Davies was the interviewer in the programme, and he tended to play devil’s advocate to whomever he engaged. The book is a treasure, if for no other reason than some of these great minds are no longer with us.

In my encounters on the blogosphere, I’ve come across more than a few people who seem to think that philosophy has largely been overtaken by science, and any distinction is at best, academic, and at worst, irrelevant. But there are fundamental differences, as I recently pointed out in a comment on another post, The Mirror Paradox (July 08): science often deals in right and wrong answers, whereas philosophy often does not.

In a more recent post (Nature’s Layers of Reality) I made the point that ‘quantum mechanics is where science and philosophy collide, and philosophy is still all at sea.’ Quantum mechanics is arguably the most empirically successful meta-theory ever, so it’s been inordinately successful as a sieve for right and wrong answers. But philosophically it conjures up more questions than answers. (Davies makes the exact same point, albeit with more authority, in The Goldilocks Enigma.)

In The Ghost in the Atom, Rudolf Peierls argues for the traditional Copenhagen interpretation, largely formulated and promoted by Niels Bohr, and, right at the start, Peierls bridles at the word ‘interpretation’, because, as far as he was concerned, there are no alternative ‘interpretations’. He also baulked at the word, ‘reality’, or at least, in the context of the discussion. To him, physics can only give a description, and, in the case of quantum mechanics, ‘reality’ is a misnomer.

In each of the interviews, the discussion tended to centre around John Bell’s famous theorem and Alain Aspect’s consequential experiment, which affirmed Bell’s ‘inequality’ as it is called. This originally arose from a famous thought experiment proposed by Einstein and elaborated on by Podolsky and Rosen, so it became known as the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen or EPR experiment. It examines the purported ‘action-at-a-distance’ phenomenon predicted by quantum physics for certain traits of particles or photons.

If you measure the trait of one of a pair of particles (of common origin), you instantaneously get the correlated result of its complementary partner, even though you couldn’t possibly know beforehand. In a very truncated nutshell, quantum physics says you won’t know what state either particle is in until you observe one of them or take a measurement of it, which will automatically affect the other particle, even if it’s on the other side of the universe. Einstein originally formulated this in a thought experiment to prove Bohr wrong, because, according to his own (proven) theory of special relativity, it should be impossible. John Bell worked out a mathematical theorem that would prove Einstein right or wrong, depending on a number of correlated outcomes. Alain Aspect then created a real experiment to test Bell’s theorem (made the thought experiment actually happen), which ultimately proved Einstein wrong and quantum theory correct. (This was long after Einstein had died, by the way.)

The various physicists, interviewed by Davies in The Ghost in the Atom, explained the outcome of Aspect’s experiment based on their (philosophical) interpretation of quantum physics. No one disputed the actual results.

John Wheeler, who was a protégé of Bohr’s, also defended the Copenhagen interpretation, but there was a subtle difference to Peirel’s interpretation as to what constituted an observation or a measurement. For Wheeler, the quantum ‘wave packet’ collapsed (into one state or another) when, for example, a photon changed the chemical composition of a film or set off a Geiger counter or a photon multiplier. But Peirel took Eugene Wigner’s extreme interpretation that the ‘collapse’ only occurred when the result was observed by a conscious observer. For Wigner, consciousness was intrinsically involved in forming ‘reality’, although Peirel argued that we can’t talk about ‘reality’ in this context, which was how he side-stepped the obvious conundrum this view posed (it verges on solipsism).

Wheeler took the more accepted or conventional view that quantum phenomena become ‘real’ when they interact with a ‘macro’ object. But Wheeler acknowledged that the choice of apparatus, or the preparation of the experiment affected the outcome. He argued that even if you made a ‘delayed-choice’ of what to measure, you would still get a quantum mechanical outcome. For example, in the famous Young double-slit experiment, if you measure or observe what goes through each slit, you won’t get the double slit interference that is observable when you choose not to ‘observe’ individual slits. Wheeler conjectured that this would still occur even if you made the measurement or observation after the photon or particle had traversed the slits, and he has since been proven correct. In other words, Wheeler is saying that you effectively create a causal effect backwards in time, quantum mechanically. But Wheeler goes further and conjectures that this would even happen on a cosmological scale if, instead of using 2 slits, you used a galaxy lensing light from a distant quasar to create interference or not. This is theoretically possible, if technologically impossible to confirm (at this point in time). It must be pointed out that this phenomenon does not allow communication backwards in time, so paradoxes of the sort that we often see in science fiction would not be possible, but it’s still very counter-intuitive to say the least.

David Deutsch defended the ‘many-worlds’ interpretation, originally proposed by Hugh Everett, which I referenced (via Hofstadter) in my last post. Deutsch’s interpretation is subtly different to Everett’s (in fact, many of the interviewees revealed the subtle variations that exist within this field) in that the worlds don’t bifurcate but are already in existence – not a huge step if there are an infinite number of them. But Deutsch did introduce a novel idea that the separate universes not only separate but also ‘fuse’, which is how he explained the interference.

In The Goldilocks Enigma (published 20 years later), Davies makes the observation that whilst the ‘multiverse’ started off as a quantum mechanical interpretation, it is now very popular amongst cosmologists in conjunction with the ‘anthropic principle’. Both Martin Rees (Just Six Numbers) and Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion) appropriate it to explain our peculiarly privileged existence in the overall scheme of things. Not just our existence, but the existence of life in general.

The most interesting interviewee, from my perspective, both now and when I originally read the book about 20 years ago, is David Bohm. I’m a great fan of Bohm’s, if for no other reason than he defied McCarthy, even though it meant that he spent the rest of his life in England. He wrote a book on philosophy in his later years (but prior to this interview) called Wholeness and the Implicate Order, which I’ve read. Bohm is a great mind but not a great writer, which is unfortunate for laypeople like me. The advantage of the interview is that someone, as knowledgeable and astute as Davies, can draw out the ideas and the elaboration of the ideas that you long to comprehend. But it helps, in this case, if one understands the implications of the Bell inequality.

The Bell inequality can be distilled into the mandatory abandonment of one of two highly-cherished and long-assumed ideas: objective reality or the impossibility of non-local communication. Objective reality requires no explanation. But non-local communication (usually short-handed as non-locality) means the ability to communicate at faster-than-light-speed, which breaches Einstein’s special theory of relativity. Hence the reason that Einstein originally created the thought experiment which led to Bell’s theorem.

In ordinary parlance, non-locality refers to an unseen and undetectable connection between 2 objects separated in space and time, which is a more intuitive concept to grasp. Einstein called it: ‘ghostly action-at-a-distance’; which provides the title of the book.

In effect, Bohm is willing to entertain the possibility of non-locality in order to hang on to objective reality. He calls it a ‘hidden variables’ theory, but it is also known as the ‘quantum potential’ theory. The labels are unimportant; it’s the ideas he has behind them that I believe are worth pursuing. Like Bohm, I find it the easiest interpretation to live with, philosophically.

To quote David Deutsch, when he was discussing David Bohm’s interpretation with Davies: ‘A non-local hidden variable theory means, in ordinary language, a theory in which influences propagate across space and time without passing through the space in between.’

I couldn’t have expressed it better myself, and neither, I suspect, could Bohm.

Basically, Bohm is saying that there is something hidden underneath that we have not uncovered, which is why he uses the term ‘implicate order’. He gives the analogy of folding up a piece of paper and drawing lines on it, then, when you unfold it, you get a pattern. In quantum phenomena we see the pattern but not the ‘order’ underneath. My own interpretation is that quantum phenomena may be the surface effects of a hidden (or multiply-hidden) dimensions. Instead of many ‘hidden’ universes perhaps there are ‘hidden’ dimensions, but I suspect you would really only need one.

If you take a box and unfold it into 2 dimensions, you get a cross. If you go off the end of one of the branches of the cross in 2 dimensions, you would end up on the opposite branch if you were in 3 dimensions. An extra dimension allows you to ‘cut’ through space and time. Bohm even entertains the heresy of heresies that backward communication may be possible (within limitations). Bohm doesn’t discuss extra dimensions; it’s just my mind trying to come up with a ‘physical’ interpretation that would allow both non-locality and objective reality (I’m really not familiar enough with the physics to conjecture further).

The last person interviewed in the book is Basil Hiley, who worked with Bohm on the ‘quantum potential’ theory. He has come up with a mathematical interpretation using Schrodinger’s equations, in conjunction with a ‘quantum potential’ that allows non-locality (a sort of ‘absolute space-time [like] a quantum aether’ to use his own description) and, to quote: ‘[from] the statistical results of typical quantum experiments you find that they are still Lorentz invariant’ (they obey Einstein’s relativity theory).

When Davies quizzed Hiley about Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, Hiley attempted to explain it as a thermodynamic statistical effect. Davies then said, if that was the case, you wouldn’t need Planck’s constant, and Hiley said: ‘To me the value of Planck’s constant is not really relevant to quantum mechanics’, which is an extraordinary statement considering Planck’s constant is what initiated quantum theory in the first place. But to be fair to Hiley, he acknowledges this and makes the point that many people believe that if you brought Planck’s constant to zero you would get classical physics, but he asserts ‘nothing could be further from the truth.’

The value of Plank’s constant has always intrigued me: it places a limit on our ability to perceive the world. It also explains (to me) why quantum effects are scale dependent, though many people claim they are not, and mathematically that is true. But perhaps, and this is a big perhaps from someone as ignorant as me, Planck’s constant determines the hidden dimension, if there is one. This is pure speculation and obviously incorrect, otherwise, I’m sure, someone would have explored it well before now.

Addendum: There is a detailed discussion on this topic in Scientific American, March 2009 issue. The online version can be found here. Where the article has attracted 152 comments to date.

Subjectivity: The Mind’s I (Part I)

The title of this post is a direct steal from Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett. The Mind’s I is the title of a book they published in 1981, a collection of essays by various authors with the subtitle: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul. I’ve added the prefix because subjectivity is a recurring theme, at least in Part I.

After each essay they give a little commentary, but it’s the essays themselves that stimulated me. I’ve already written a post on one: Is God a Taoist? by Raymond M. Smullyan (refer Socrates, Russell, Sartre, God and Taoism in May 09).

So I will provide here my most significant impressions, or resultant thoughts, that just 3 of these essays have provoked. These are just from Part I of the book (there are 6 Parts) so I may well continue this discussion in a later post.

Borges and I by Jorge Luis Borges is an essay where Borges attempts to discriminate between his subjective and objective self in an accessible and entertaining way. It highlights the point made by John Searle in his book, MiND, that what distinguishes consciousness from other phenomena, that we try to investigate and understand, is that it has a distinctly subjective element that can neither be ignored nor isolated - it defies objectification by its nature.

The Dalai Lama makes a similar point in his book on science and religion, The Universe in a Single Atom, where he contends that neurological investigations into consciousness, whilst extremely edifying and illuminating, are really not the whole story without taking subjective experience into account.

The essay also explores, in an indirect way, the difference between the way we perceive ourselves and the way others do. I've always maintained that the most psychologically healthy relationships (work, family or friendship) are where these 2 perceptions closely align.

In the next essay, extracts from D. E. Harding's On Having No Head, Harding starts with an epiphany he had whilst looking at the Himalayas:

‘Past and future dropped away. I forgot who and what I was, my name, my manhood, animalhood, all that could be called mine. It was as if I had been born that instant, brand new, mindless, innocent of all memories. There existed only the Now, that present moment and what was clearly given in it.’

This, in itself, is an interesting revelation, coming from a man who makes no claim to mysticism. This epitomises subjective experience in as much as it cannot be shared with another. It's like someone, who viewed the world in colour, trying to explain it to a population of people who only saw shades of grey.

Harding then goes on to describe a world in which his head doesn’t exist for him, though he acknowledges they exist for other people – a form of solipsism. What I find significant is that he is highlighting what I call the inner and outer world that we all have, which is central to my own philosophy. The metaphor of ‘having no head’ which he talks about ‘literally’ (even a mirror image is a hallucination) is the void that exists in one’s mind except one’s thoughts. We have senses, yes, of which sight is the most dominating, but, as he points out, there is no screen that we view, it is simply ‘I’ looking out – the inner world’s most tangible connection to the outer world.

In other posts (specifically, Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness, Feb. 09) I argue that AI will never have this subjective sense that we have. So whilst machines can, and will be built to, ‘sense’ their environments, they won’t ‘experience’ it the way we do, is my contention. Most philosophers and scientists (including Dennett and Hofstadter) disagree with me, but both Borge’s and Harding’s essays merely underline this distinction for me.

Rediscovering the Mind by Harold J. Morowitz takes a different tack altogether. Morowitz, I assume, is a psychologist, and he tackles both the biologist and the physicist, who take a reductionist view of the world, whereby they presume they can explain macro-phenomena via investigation of micro-phenomena. Central to Morowitz’s thesis is an epistemological loop created by the accepted interpretation of quantum mechanics that it requires macro intervention by a conscious mind to produce a measurable result. He quotes Nobel laureate, Eugene Wigner: “It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness.” Because the biological reductionist reduces mind to neurons, thus molecules, thus quantum phenomena, Morowitz argues that we have a quantum mechanical epistemological loop from mind to quantum phenomena to mind.

The best analogy for superposition of states is one of those pictures that have 2 images intertwined, like the famous duck and rabbit combination that Wittgenstein once referred to, and there is even a Dali painting that uses it. The most effective ones are those utilising 2 contrasting tones where the shadow reveals one image and the light reveals another. The point is that your mind can only perceive one image or the other but not both at the same time, and you can even ‘switch’ between them. Well, quantum superposition is a bit like that (especially the famous Schrodinger’s Cat thought experiment) but once you make the ‘measurement’ or the ‘observation’ you can’t switch back.

Hofstadter tackles this conundrum in his ‘Reflections’ of Morowitz’s essay by pointing out that the mysteries of consciousness and the mysteries of quantum physics are not the same. On this I would agree, but he hasn’t eliminated the conundrum or the epistemological loop. Hofstadter then explains quantum superposition of states, culminating in a description of Schrodinger’s (simultaneously live and dead cat) thought experiment, and a discussion on Hugh Everett III’s ‘many worlds interpretation’, which he describes as ‘this very bizarre theory’.

In fact, Hofstadter gives the best dismantling of Everett’s hypothesis that I’ve read, pointing out that there is a specific ‘subjective’ world that is the one you continue on in, that effectively eliminates all the other worlds. To quote Hofstadter: ‘The problem of how it feels subjectively is not treated; it is just swept under the rug.’ (Hofstadter’s italics)

I find it interesting that Hofstadter evokes ‘subjectivity’ to eliminate, in one stroke, Everett’s contentious interpretation. Having said that, Hofstadter expands on his theme, revealing, in prose I won’t attempt to replicate, how personal identity becomes meaningless in an ever bifurcating universe for each individual occupant.

But getting back to Morowitz, one of the salient points he makes is that the evolution of the universe is a series of discontinuities, starting with the Big Bang itself. A major jump in time, and the emergence of life is another discontinuity, followed by the emergence of consciousness. Morowitz even argues that humanity’s ability for inner reflection is another discontinuity again, though I’m sure many would contest this last hypothesis without necessarily contesting the previous ones.

But, also, one wonders if there is not a discontinuity between the quantum world and the so-called classical world, the organic and the inorganic, the sentient and the non-sentient. I think he has a point, when one looks at it from that perspective, ignoring the context of evolutionary time, that our reductionist philosophy, so prized by science in general, tends to ignore or brush aside.

I expect I will return to this subject in a later post.

Politics in religion, religion in politics

This is an unusual post for me because it’s an unapologetic critique of an international political organisation. This organisation claims a moral, canonical and, even Divine, legitimacy, yet, according to the one (well researched) book I’ve read, some of its activities have been as nefarious as any secret service organisation in the world. But, even if these accusations proved untrue, I would still oppose this organisation on philosophical grounds, because it’s the antithesis of everything I believe in, and its manifesto is to win the hearts and minds of the future world of humanity.

The book is Their Kingdom Come; Inside the Secret World of Opus Dei by Robert Hutchison (1997,2006). According to the back cover, Hutchison is a journalist, born in Canada, but now living in Switzerland. He’s been a correspondent for The Sunday Telegraph and The Daily Telegraph, and won 4 National Business Writing Awards for articles published in the Toronto Financial Post. Certainly, his knowledge and insights into the financial world is one of the book’s compelling features.

Opus Dei came to international attention when Dan Brown published his bestseller, The Da-Vinci Code, an elaborate work of fiction based on a conspiracy theory concerning the supposed lineage of Jesus. Before that, few people knew that Opus Dei even existed, and that’s probably the way Opus Dei preferred it. Hutchison’s book is partly an unauthorised biography of ‘The Work’s’ founder, Jose Maria Escriva de Balaguer (1902-1975), and partly an expose of Opus Dei’s numerous ‘corporate’ adventures. Opus Dei is Latin for ‘God’s Work’, which some found a pretentious title even when it was formulated in 1930, especially since Escriva was still a young Catholic priest in Spain. But according to the official version, it really started on the day of The Feast of Guardian Angels, 2 October 1928, when he had a vision of Opus Dei: “as He wanted it, and as it would become according to His wishes down through the centuries”, which, according to Hutchison, is ‘the postulation for Jose Maria Escriva’s sainthood unveiled to the world more than fifty years later.’

Hutchison, henceforth refers to it as ‘The Work’, which apparently was Escriva’s own terminology. Escriva’s vision was that the secular population achieved ‘sanctity’ through doing ‘work’. But central to this vision was that ordinary people required ‘instruction’ as they couldn’t be left to work things out for themselves, which Escriva saw as the real danger facing humanity. This particular doctrine is a central tenet of the Catholic Church, especially when one considers how Papal authority attempts to intervene in the most intimate matters of people’s lives, specifically their sex lives. The Vatican’s attitudes towards homosexuality and birth-control are anachronistic at best and just plain immoral at worst.

But this is only one theme of Hutchison’s book, even if it be the one that I find most abrasive. It goes directly against my own existentialist leanings, and even rubs against my own experiences of religion as a child, and is one of the reasons I rejected it.

But a man has no greater zeal than when he believes he has a specific mission from God, and Escriva lived up to that expectation in spades. According to Hutchison, and other commentators, there are 2 faces to Opus Dei, and they are incongruent if not downright contradictory. For example: on the one hand Opus Dei ‘teaches’ the virtue of poverty, humility and piety, yet it wields financial clout that gives the impression of an international banking institution. Hutchison exposes some of the financial schemes that he believes Opus Dei, or personnel linked to Opus Dei, have been involved in, and cites his sources. But, even in my home town of Melbourne, I’ve seen the results of Opus Dei’s financial largesse first hand.

In the April 1, 2001 edition of The Age, Erica Cervini reports on a little-known, in-house political skirmish involving 2 archbishops with philosophical divergent views on Opus Dei: ‘Under the previous archbishop, Frank Little, Opus Dei was unable to get a foothold in the archdiocese.’ In the same article: ‘Opus Dei… has been invited by Dr. Pel to supply a priest to run St. Mary’s Star of the Sea parish in West Melbourne.’ Archbishop Pel left this legacy to Melbourne, just before taking up his position as Cardinal George Pel, Archdiocese of Sydney. Pel is a well known Catholic conservative, who publicly defends even the most controversial statements and proclamations of the Pope in the Australian media.

I have personally seen the money spent on St. Mary’s Star of the Sea, and I recently quipped to someone it was like ‘a little bit of Rome in Melbourne’. Melbourne, I have to say, though I’m not that well-traveled, is one of the most multi-cultural and liberalised secular cities of the world. Before Opus Dei took over, one could find literature at St. Mary’s explaining all the religions of the world – I have a pamphlet explaining Buddhism, quite succinctly and eruditely, and there were many others. In more recent times, the only literature I’ve seen is on how to join the priesthood. So it’s a complete change of ideology, and I have no problem using that word in this context.

Money is an efficacious means to influence and control people; it opens doors and creates obligations. There are a number of religious institutions that appreciate and utilise this simple methodology. Hutchison quotes Javier Sainz Moreno, Professor of Law at Madrid University, and outspoken critic of Opus Dei: “Opus Die knows very well that money rules the world and that religious hegemony of a country or continent is dependent upon obtaining financial hegemony…”

Of course, St. Mary’s Star of the Sea is very small beer compared to the examples that Hutchison provides. On page 164, he writes: ‘…its only interest is the spiritual well-being of its members, and it never interferes with their lives. It doesn’t own anything, certainly not a bank, and it never plays politics.’ Hutchison then proceeds to do his best to demonstrate the contrary to all these claims. In particular, he dedicates a large part of his book, and provides considerable detail, concerning the political and financial machinations that occurred during the 70s in Latin America; in particular, Argentina and Chile.

To appreciate the origins of Opus Dei’s political leanings, if not its ambitions, Hutchison starts at the beginning. In Escriva’s formative years, he had to flee for his life over the Pyrenees during the Spanish civil war when priests were being summarily executed, and nearly lost his life in the attempt. This made Escriva a life-long enemy of Marxism and socialism, and led to Opus Dei members getting government positions under Franco. During the Cold War, according to Hutchison, Opus Dei formed links with American intelligence agencies both in Europe and in Latin America. Yet Escriva states in 1970: “If Opus Dei ever played politics – even for a moment – I would have left the Work at that very moment of error.”

But it is in proselytism that Opus Dei, not only sees its ‘Work’, but where it places its greatest emphasis, at least, to its members, if not the public. It’s this double-sided nature of Opus Dei that makes it most open to criticism and distrust. Hutchison quotes from ‘a dossier prepared by a former numerary (Opus Dei member) John Roche: The single most important activity in the life of a member of Opus Dei is recruitment or ‘proselytism’.

Roche quotes from Escriva’s own ‘manual’ called the Cronica: ‘None of my children can rest satisfied if he doesn’t win four or five faithful vocations each year.’

According to Hutchison, Opus Dei denies the existence of the Cronica, yet Hutchison quotes freely from a text, that he claims to be the Cronica, throughout the book.

In other parts of the book, Hutchison reports on the psychological stress that members suffered, resulting from cognitive dissonance that unquestioning obedience can demand, especially when that obedience requires almost constant deception. According to testimony of ex-members, Opus Dei is indeed a sect, by any definition, and its members suffer accordingly. (See footnote at end.)

But the most damning testimony comes from Miguel Fisac, an architect and Escriva’s 9^th ‘Apostle’ who admonished himself when he finally left Opus Dei: “Now, Miguel, you will always tell the truth and you will try to be a good person, and nothing more.”

Fisac, who knew Escriva well, made the following revelation: “With the exception of Alvaro del Portillo, he never had a good word to say about anybody.” Alvaro del Portillo was Escriva’s personal confessor for 30 years, and became his successor when Escriva died in 1975. (The head of Opus Dei, as of 2001, was Bishop Jarvier Echeverria.)

Parts of Hutchison’s book read like an espionage thriller, that puts Dan Brown to shame, with at least two unsolved, yet related, murders, a number of suspicious deaths - most by heart attack and all opportunistic for their rivals – at least one suspected poisoning, and missing millions, involving banks with unknown stakeholders. Whilst Hutchison meticulously references his sources and carefully acknowledges what remains unknown or unproven, he leaves the reader in no doubt concerning his own opinions.

I have no need to add to the conspiracy theories concerning Opus Dei. Even at the most superficial level, Opus Dei is a political faction within an international political institution. The Vatican is effectively a ‘State’ within its own right; an oligarchy to all intents and purposes, and behaves like one. Opus Dei is the conservative faction of that state and has its own agendas that are far from transparent.

In 1982, Pope John Paul II officially proclaimed in an ‘Apostolic Constitution known as ut sit’ that Opus Dei was created ‘by Divine inspiration’, so it truly was a ‘Work of God’ and was now Canon law. As Hutchison points out, this makes Opus Dei ‘a state within the Church’ with its own authority to God independent of the Pope, which it could theoretically call upon if it ever saw fit. And what’s more it controls the Vatican finances, again, according to Hutchison, which makes it indispensable. The one consistent theme, that Hutchison maintains throughout his book, is the way Opus Dei uses financial muscle to get its own way.

Towards the end of the book, Hutchison deals with Islamic fundamentalism, which is perhaps the scariest part of the whole book. No Christian church will ever be able to have a dialogue with even moderate Muslims, while it insists that Jesus is the only path to spiritual salvation for the whole of humanity. One can see the distinct possibility of a collision between Christian and Islamic fundamentalism with the liberal, secular world caught in the middle, not only in Europe, which is Hutchison’s focus, but world wide. This doesn’t mean that atheism is the ideological answer to this collision; history shows that only moderates of both sides of any conflict can have a dialogue that will result in a pragmatic solution. I make this same point in a previous post (Left or Right, Feb.08).

In Hutchison’s last numbered chapter (I presume of the first edition), he reports on the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Africa, Asia and Europe, and its inevitable collision course with the West, which I found amazingly prescient considering it was written prior to 9/11.

In the 2006 edition, he has written an epilogue that includes the canonisation of Escriva, as well as the most recent scandals and intrigues that have rocked the Church.

But its Opus Dei’s ‘opacity’ (Hutchison’s term) to the public and its firm belief that it is doing ‘God’s work’, quite literally, and therefore answers to no other law, that makes it so potentially dangerous. As Hugh Mackay points out in his book, Right & Wrong; how to decide for yourself, when you believe your personal morality is God’s law, you can justify any action, no matter how immoral that action may in fact be. ‘We are God’s chosen’ are the words of Opus Dei’s leaders in Rome, whom Hutchison claims he lived with for 4 years. “We have been chosen by God to save the Church”, Hutchison claims he was told ‘with utter conviction’.

You may wonder why I even bother to take an interest. There are 2 reasons: firstly, the philosophical premise that ordinary people should work things out for themselves is central to my own world view, and is the antithesis to Opus Dei’s philosophy; secondly, Opus Dei is a very secretive, almost clandestine organisation, commonly called the ‘White Mafia’, even by ordinary Catholics. And an institution - in particular - a religious institution that practices secrecy while feigning openness, must surely have hidden agendas, and therefore, repels trust.

In a much earlier post I talked about the importance of Trust (Apr.08) and how it was a requisite for the future beneficence of all humanity. Confucius (500BC) once contended that trust was the last commodity a leader could afford to lose. Opus Dei represents the complete opposite to trust, just through its very existence. A point that Hutchison makes as well.

I wish I could dismiss Opus Dei as a medieval anachronism, because that’s what I believe it is, but it plays a central role in Vatican politics. Its agenda is to infiltrate every institution of power in the Western World and the Developing World. The fact that it prefers this agenda to remain hidden is the real reason it should be exposed. Opus Dei and the Catholic Church both know this: if its real political ambitions were known, it would surely fail in today’s liberal, secular society.

As long as Opus Dei holds sway in the Vatican, the Catholic Church will remain a backward institution, out of time and out of place in the 21^st Century.

Footnote: For testimonies from ex-members, refer www.odan.org and here.

Interview with a Buddhist nun

Robina Courtin is an Australian Buddhist nun, who’s lived in America for the last 15 years, and runs a prison ‘outreach’ programme, for want of a better term, which she initiated. (Actually called Liberation Prison Project and now also in Oz.)

I saw the movie she mentions, Chasing Buddha, in 2000, at a special screening where the filmmaker, her nephew (about 21 at the time) was present for a Q & A. I didn’t know she was an Aussie when I went to see the movie (I thought she must be American) but the movie opens with this off-screen voice in an Australian accent swearing like the proverbial trooper.

I remember that one member in the audience took offence, during the Q&A, saying she didn’t represent Buddhism at all. I think she’s changed even since the movie was made – in this interview (see the link below) she is less angry, though no less passionate. I can identify with that as well.

She has a very existentialist view of Buddhism, which is very similar to mine. I particularly agree with her existentialist interpretation of karma. Although I don’t agree with her ‘hypothesis’ that our current karma is a result of a past life. But her views on consciousness should not be summarily dismissed, even though they’re contrary to current Western thinking.

This link is only available for the next 2 weeks, and the interview is 55 mins long, but worth the time spent in my opinion. It's the Tuesday 2 June interview in the list. If you download it as an audio file, you can listen to it at your own leisure, but you won't get the musical selections, for copyright reasons.

I can identify to some extent with her childhood, both her attraction to religion and her trauma, though mine was not as intense, but it was soul-destroying or soul-damaging, albeit in a different way.

When you hear her sing, you wouldn’t know it was the same person.

Nature’s Layers of Reality: from Cosmology to QED to The Standard Model

In my last post I referenced Kerson Huang’s book, Fundamental Forces of Nature: The Story of Gauge Fields. Huang starts with Newton’s equation, F=ma, and works through the history of physics right up to the so-called ‘Standard Model’. The theory of ‘gauge fields’ is effectively the theme of his book, which means that the best part of it is spent in the 20^th Century following the development of quantum mechanics.

What is significant is that, if one overlooks his short detour to include Relativity Theory, Huang traces the world of physics from the scale of our everyday world to a smaller and smaller scale, resulting in the ‘Standard Model’, which includes the innards of nuclear particles: quarks and gluons, amongst numerous others. The significance of scale is a particular feature of Huang’s treatise that he reveals right at the end. I said in my previous post that the book doesn’t include ‘String Theory’, but Huang does explain its origins, almost in passing.

Quantum mechanics is such a tantalising yet daunting area of the natural world for me. I’ve read Richard Feynman’s book, QED; The Strange Theory of Light and Matter (1985), which explains everything and nothing. Feynman, who won a Nobel Prize for his pioneering work in this area, says right at the beginning that ‘no one understands quantum mechanics’, and I think that’s a very important point. QED (quantum electrodynamics) is the most successful theory ever (both Feynman and Huang, who quotes Freeman Dyson, agree on that) yet no one really understands how it works. Feynman’s book explains brilliantly, with no equations whatsoever, how one can work something out from the summing of ‘all possible paths’ to produce the path of ‘least action’; he even uses the analogy of a stopwatch to provide analogue phase changes (for each path) otherwise described by ‘complex algebra’ differential equations (the famous Schrodinger’s equation) that are used in real quantum mechanical calculations. But he doesn’t explain why we need to allow for ‘all possible paths’ in the first place, a consequence of the well-known, but enigmatic, superposition aspect of quantum phenomena. And no one else can explain it either, despite attempts to propose ‘many worlds’ interpretations and ‘Schrodinger Cats’ in simultaneous states of life and death. This is where philosophy and science collide, and so far, philosophy is still all at sea.

Huang explains how it is the mathematical concept called the Lagrangian that defines the ‘Least Action’ or ‘Least Effort’ principle, effectively the Kinetic Energy minus the Potential Energy. But Huang filled in another piece of the puzzle for me when he explained that we go from one Lagrangian to another as we change the scale of our observations. Even now, this is something that I only vaguely understand, yet I feel it is very important, because I’ve always believed that scale plays a role in the laws of physics, and Huang has effectively confirmed that, and gives a potted history of its theoretical evolution.

In a very early post (Sep.07), The Universe’s Interpreters, I make the point that the natural world exists as worlds within worlds, almost ad-infinitum, and we humans have the unique ability (amongst Earth species) to conceptualise worlds within worlds, ad-infinitum, therefore giving us the privileged position of being able to comprehend the universe that actually created us.

Huang lists a host of people, including Murray Gell-Mann, Francis Low, David Gross, Frank Wilczek and David Politzer for demonstrating a logarithmic relationship between energy and the ‘coupling constant’ (charge). Energy increases for QED (electrons and photons) and decreases for QCD (quarks and gluons). Then, Nikolai Bogoliubov, Curtis Callan and Kurt Symanzik proposed the ‘Renormalisation Group Trajectory’ or RG trajectory including a mathematical equation to describe it. The RG trajectory (according to Huang) takes us from ‘Classical Physics to Quantum Mechanics to QED to Yang-Mills’ (nucleon physics) – increasing energy with decreasing scale. Kenneth Wilson realised that the so-called ‘cutoff’ in renormalisation parameters that changes with scale, and therefore changes the Lagrangian from one range of energies to another, has a physical basis. In other words, these physical laws expressed in mathematics only work within a parameter or range of scale and change when we go from one parameter of scale to another (Hang uses the term ‘crossover’). Each one, as Huang points out, initiated its own scientific revolution during our discovery process, but in reality, reveal to us different layers of nature. Huang also references Leo Kadanoff and Michael Fisher as also contributing to our understanding of RG trajectories.

As an aside, there is one mystery arising from quantum field theory, highlighted by Huang, that I had never heard of before: when time becomes purely imaginary it reduces quantum theory to statistical mechanics, so that time relates to absolute temperature. Actually, a very simple mathematical relationship involving t (time), T (Temperature), i (square route of -1), and h (Planck’s constant). It is tempting to think that this mathematical relation arises from the fact that entropy is the only physical law we know of that gives a direction to time, with entropy being related to temperature, but Huang doesn’t make this connection, so there probably isn’t one. (Entropy, or the second law of thermodynamics, is the only law in physics that insists on a direction for time; relativity theory and quantum mechanics both allow for time reversal – so that bit is true. Reference: Roger Penrose’s The Emperor’s New Mind.)

Finally, noticeable by its absence in all this, is gravity, described brilliantly by Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. Gravity and general relativity is effectively the Lagrangian for cosmological scales, but, as everyone knows, there is no place for gravity in the Standard Model – Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity stands alone. The best exposition on relativity theory, that I’ve read (both the special and general theories) is by Richard Feynman in Six Not-So-Easy Pieces, where he describes the ‘Least Action’ principle in terms of relativistic energy or ‘maximum relativistic time’. This is intuitively opposite to the ‘principle of least time’, as postulated by Pierre de Fermat (in the 17^th Century) found in the optical phenomenon of refraction and now accepted as scientific fact, yet it is the same principle. Feynman demonstrates mathematically that the principle of maximum relativistic time (therefore ‘Least Action’) gives the correct trajectory of a projectile in flight in a gravitational field. As I describe in an earlier post (Mar.08) The Laws of Nature, Fermat’s principle in refraction and Feynman’s mathematical description of ‘Least Action’ in relativistic physics both relate to how the light or the projectile finds the ‘right’ path – the path that requires minimum effort, satisfying the Lagrangian: Kinetic Energy minus Potential Energy as a minimum. Feynman also demonstrates how quantum mechanics gives the answer that light follows the ‘least time’ principle using his analogue version of QED, in his book titled, QED (as I described above). So Feynman effectively demonstrates that the ‘Least Action’ principle applies consistently in relativity theory, classical optics and QED.

Huang gives very little space to ‘Grand Unifying Theories of Everything’ (known generically as GUT), but, of course, String Theory is the great contender. One of the best books I’ve read on String Theory is Peter Woit’s Not Even Wrong; The Failure of String Theory and the Continuing Challenge to Unify the Laws of Physics. Woit covers much of the same territory as Huang in his explanation of gauge theories, quantum field theory and the Standard Model, but then continues onto String Theory, explaining how it became the latest paradigm in our search for theoretical answers (if not experimental ones) and, specifically, the role of Edward Witten in its evolvement. In fact, reading Huang’s book, and writing this post, has forced me to re-read Woit’s book. Woit, like Huang, is a physicist and a mathematician, and I am humbled when I read these guys. Unlike me, they actually know what they're talking about.

Whilst Woit is highly critical of String Theory (or string theories to be more accurate), he is deeply respectful of Witten, who was at Princeton at the same time as Woit.

One of the points that Woit makes is that String Theory evolved out of a ‘Bootstrap’ theory (also mentioned by Huang) developed by Geoffrey Chew in opposition to QCD and the highly successful ‘Standard Model’. This theory developed from an ‘S matrix theory’ that Woit is almost contemptuous of, because some of its followers, including Fritjof Capra, refused to admit its demise, even after the Standard Model became one of the great success stories in recent theoretical physics. Woit is particularly scathing of Capra’s The Tao of Physics. (Capra’s ideas, by the way, are not to be confused with Huang’s poetical allusion to Taoism, nor mine, that I discussed in the previous post.)

But ‘Bootstrap’ theory aside, Woit has other issues with String Theory and its derivatives, for which he provides an exhaustive and illuminating history. Woit readily admits, by the way, that if you want a more positive picture of String Theory there are other books available, by authors like Brian Greene and Michio Kaku, and he generously lists them (some of which I’ve read).

The biggest problem, according to Woit, is with ‘supersymmetry’, the ‘Holy Grail’ of String theory and its derivatives. To quote his concluding paragraph on its incompatibility with the Standard Model:

‘As far as anyone can tell, the idea of super-symmetry contains a fundamental incompatibility between observations of particle masses, which require spontaneous super-symmetry breaking to be large, and observations of gravity, which require it to be small or non-existent.’

Feynman, in a 1987 interview, the year before his death, was even more damning:

‘Now I know that other old men have been very foolish in saying things like this, and, therefore, I would be very foolish to say this is nonsense. I am going to be very foolish, because I do feel strongly that this is nonsense! I can’t help it, even though I know the danger in such a point of view.’

Woit does elaborate on one of the benefits of String Theory, which is the cross-fertilisation, for want of a better term, between physics and mathematics, that he believes was badly needed. In fact, he devotes considerable space to the interaction between mathematics and physics, both historically and philosophically.

One of the truly extraordinary features of mathematics is that it allows us to go intellectually and conceptually where we can’t go physically. One can’t help but wonder if Witten’s genius, along with others, hasn’t gone somewhere that the physical universe can’t follow. In a previous post (Mar.09), The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics (a quote from Eugene Wigner) I referenced Penrose’s 3 perspectives of reality: physical, mental and Platonic, where the Platonic realm is mathematical, therefore abstract. The mental (consciousness) arises from the physical, the Platonic from the mental, and the physical from the Platonic (not unlike a self-perpetuating Escher graphic). In other words, not everything Platonic relates to the physical, although if there are an infinite number of universes (the multiverse) then perhaps it does. But my point is that Witten and his colleagues may well be exploring a part of the Platonic realm that doesn’t relate specifically to ‘our’ universe.

Leaving aside, for the moment, the idea of a multiverse (very popular, I might add, and discussed by Woit) mathematics is comfortable with dealing with infinities and multiple dimensions in a way that we are not. The current version of String Theory (Superstring Theory or M Theory) requires 10 dimensions, which means that 6 spatial dimensions need to effectively disappear, or be so physically insignificant as to be invisible, even at the sub-nuclear level.

I, for one, am a little sceptical of a ‘grand unified theory of everything’ because history has shown that the resolution of one set of mysteries always uncovers others. We always think that we are at the final limit of nature’s secrets, yet we never are, and, obviously, never have been.

Huang’s exposition has highlighted the apparent reality that the laws of physics, therefore nature, are scale dependent. Many people overlook this, and talk about quantum physics as if it really works at all scales, including the one we are familiar with, and the mathematics doesn’t contradict this, just the reality we observe (refer Addendum 2 below, and Timmo's comments in the thread for a more knowledgable perspective). Penrose has argued that there is something missing in our knowledge to explain how classical physics ‘emerges’ from quantum mechanics, in a similar way that consciousness apparently ‘emerges’ from neuron activity. But the fact that physics has different laws at different levels reflects what we observe and is consistent with nature at all levels, including biology (refer my post in Feb.09 on Hofstadter’s book, Godel, Escher, Bach: Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness).

Therefore, I don’t expect we’ll find a ‘Theory of Everything’ that encompasses all levels of nature in one mathematical expression, but a lot of people, including many who work in the field, seem to think we will. The fact that we need to go to 10 or more dimensions to achieve this, makes it more speculative than physically probable, in my view. When I think of the 10 dimensions required, I’m reminded of all the epicycles that were needed to make Ptolemy’s model of the solar system compatible with observations.

I’m not saying we already know all the answers because we obviously don’t, but I am saying that maybe we never will. Every time we’ve uncovered one layer of reality we’ve found another layer underneath, or beyond. The Standard Model suggests we have finally reached rock bottom, but even if we have, the fact that there are mysteries still unsolved suggests to me that there are still further mysteries yet to be uncovered, because that’s the one consistency that the history of science has revealed thus far.

Addendum: There is an article in this week's New Scientist (30 May 2009) on how String Theory, or a variant of it has been useful, not in cosmology, but in condensed matter physics and high temperature superconductivity What string theory is really good for

Addendum 2: I want to thank Timmo for his valuable and knowledgable contribution that you can view in the thread of comments below. He provides more detailed information and analysis on Feynman's publications in particular.

Socrates, Russell, Sartre, God and Taoism

An unlikely congregation, but bear with me and it will all become clear. Earlier this week I received 2 new books from Amazon UK: The Mind’s I, by Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett; and Fundamental Forces of Nature; The Story of Gauge Fields, by Kerson Huang.

Huang is a Chinese born American, now Professor of Physics, Emeritus, at MIT, and 79 years old when he published this book in 2007. The book covers all of physics, in a historical, therefore evolutionary, context, from Newtonian physics (F= ma) up to QED (quantum electrodynamics) and beyond, though it doesn’t include String Theory. The presentation is very unusual, with equations kept deliberately minimalist, yet he manages to explain, for example, the subtle difference between Faraday’s equations and Maxwell’s (an extra term effectively) that led to the prediction of electromagnetic waves propagating at the speed of light. He also introduces mathematical concepts like Lagrangians and Hamiltonians early in his treatise; an unusual approach.

Its relevance to the title of this post is at the end, where he quotes a Taoist poet, Qu Yuan (340-278 BC) who wrote a series of questions called Tian Wen (Ask Heaven):

At the primordial beginning

Who was the Reporter?

Before the universe took shape.

How could one measure it?

(Huang also provides the original Mandarin.)

Then he quotes Russell on mathematical beauty:

A beauty so cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without gorgeous trappings or painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show.

He follows this quote with the following rumination of his own:

Physics is truth. It sails down a trajectory in the space of Lagrangians, when the energy scale shrinks from that set by the Big Bang.

I sometimes think that God is in the mathematics; I’ll explain myself at the end.

But the subject of this post really comes from an essay written by Raymond M. Smullyan (in Dennett’s and Hofstadter’s book) titled, Is God a Taoist?. It’s very cleverly written in the style of a Socratic dialogue between God and a mortal, who wants God to relieve him of free will. It reminds me of Sartre’s seminal essay, Existentialism is a humanism, with its famous quote: ‘man is condemned to be free’. I once wrote an entire essay founded on that quote alone, but that’s not the subject of this post.

Smullyan manages to cover an array of topics, including free will and morality, in which, via a lengthy Socratic dialogue, he concludes that the real virtue of free will is that it mandates responsibility for the infliction of suffering on others. In other words, you know when you’ve done it, and you will feel guilt and remorse as a consequence. This is not a verbatim interpretation, just my own summary of it. The dialogue effectively gets the mortal to admit this when God offers to free him of all guilt associated with his ‘free will’. So the choice then of allowing God to rid him of free will, and its consequences, becomes a moral choice in itself, therefore turning the moral dilemma back on itself.

But it’s the particular Eastern references in this essay that appealed to me, in which Smullyan incorporates the idea of God as a process. (A concept I’ve flirted with myself, though Smullyan’s concept is more Eastern in influence.)

To quote Smullyan’s God character in the dialogue:

My role in the scheme of things... is neither to punish nor reward, but to aid the process by which all sentient beings achieve ultimate perfection.

Then to elaborate:

…it is inaccurate to speak of my role in the scheme of things. I am the scheme of things. Secondly, it is equally misleading to speak of my aiding the process of sentient beings attaining enlightenment. I am the process. The ancient Taoists were quite close when they said of me (whom they called “Tao”) that I do not do things, yet through me all things get done. In more modern terms, I am not the cause of Cosmic Process. I am the Cosmic Process itself.

Smullyan, then (as God) quotes the Mahayana Buddhists:

The best way of helping others is by first seeing the light [in]oneself.

He also addresses the issue of personality (of God)

But the so-called “personality” of a being is really more in the eyes of the beholder than in the being itself.

I hope I haven’t been too disparate in this rendition of someone else’s essay. Hofstadter provides his own commentary at the end, with particular reference to the role of free will which he describes thus: ‘a person is an amalgamation of many subpersons, all with wills of their own.’ He says: ‘It’s a common myth that each person is a unity.’ I assume he’s talking about split brains, but I won’t explore that issue here, as Smullyan’s essay has other resonances for me. (I admit I'm not doing justice to Hofstadter, but I don't want to get distracted; maybe another post.)

I’ve said in previous posts that God is an experience, which is one reason I claim religion is totally subjective, because it’s an experience that can’t be shared – it’s unique to the person who has it and only they can interpret it. The essay by Smullyan makes only passing reference to this idea of God (when he discusses personality). I believe he’s referring to a more universal concept, but in an Eastern context rather than a Western one.

I can’t help but make a connection between Huang’s book and Smullyan’s essay, because they both relate to 2 of my lifelong passions: science and religion. Mathematics has given us such extraordinary insights into the physical processes of the universe, at every level, and the idea of God as the process itself, in which we play a very small part is an appealing one. And calling it the Tao, effectively rids it of human personality.

Most people would make no connection between these 2 ideas, but I sometimes think I am a Pythagorean at heart. Mathematics is such a magical medium that one cannot dissociate it from God, especially if God is the Tao, and Tao is ‘the scheme of things’.