Paul P. Mealing

Check out my book, ELVENE. Available as e-book and as paperback (print on demand, POD). Also this promotional Q&A on-line.

Saturday 10 January 2015

That Mystery of Mysteries

I read an interesting article in the latest issue of Philsophy Now (Issue 105, Nov/Dec 2014) by Toni Vogel Cary titled, That Mystery of Mysteries, about the 2 centuries old debate regarding the theory of evolution and God-manipulated speciation. Toni Vogel Carey is introduced as ‘a philosophy professor in a former life, has written for twenty years… and serves on the US advisory board of Philosophy Now.’

She presents some interesting statistics that suggest ignorance in science this century is increasing rather than decreasing. For example: ‘In Great Britain, few besides evangelicals paid attention to creationism before 2002. But by 2006, a BBC poll showed that 4 out of 10 in the UK thought religious alternatives to Darwin’s theory should be taught as science in schools.’

She then gives equally scary anecdotes for the former Eastern European block countries, where, for example: ‘In 2006, Poland’s minister for education repudiated the theory of evolution, and his deputy dismissed it as “a lie”.’

She gives other examples, from various countries and educational institutions that should ring alarm bells for anyone interested in providing scientific tuition to future generations. Towards the end of her lengthy discussion that goes back to Herschel, Lyell and Darwin (of course), she cites a recent publication by Thomas Nagel, titled Mind & Cosmos (2012) (which I haven’t read, it must be stated) where ‘Nagel argues for “natural teleology”, a view of nature as forward-looking and purposeful, yet secular rather than deistic or theistic.’ And herein lies the rub: it is very difficult for us to believe that something like us (humans) could not be the consequence of some ‘cosmic plan’ (That Mystery of Mysteries), the why and wherefore we have speculated about ever since we gained the ability to think and imagine in a way that no other species can even cognise.

At the risk of going off on a complete tangent, I wish to reference an excellent BBC doco I saw recently called Apeman – Spaceman, the first of a 5 part series, Human Universe, presented by that cross between David Attenborough and a failed rock star, Brian Cox. Cox starts his programme, in a very Attenborough-like moment, attempting to cosy up to some baboons who live in the highlands of Ethiopia. Though not our closest relative and not even true baboons, Cox explains that, amongst the higher primates, they have the most complex social behaviours, second only to humans, and can even string together a series of vocalisations, thus combining sounds that have different meanings individually.

The point of this explication is to demonstrate the humungous gap that exists between humans and all other species on the planet, cognitively. One really cannot overstate this point, as many people prefer to believe that there is nothing ‘special’ about humans at all. But as Cox states explicitly, we are ‘unique’, certainly on planet Earth and possibly in the entire universe. We are unique because we are the only species that can speculate about, let alone comprehend, our place in the much larger scheme of things. It is from this unique cognitive vantage point that both religion and science arose.

If there is any one thing that defines humanity as a species it is surely curiosity. It is curiosity that has led us into space (the focus of Cox’s first episode) but also led us on an intellectual trail uncovering such wonders as mathematical calculus, nuclear physics, the human genome and every scientific discovery since we first grasped the art of writing down our thoughts so future generations could build an unassailable cumulative knowledge that has given us computers, air travel, smart phones and all the mod-cons we take for granted in Western societies the world over.

And this exceptional evolutionary ‘success’ also creates a paradox in popular Western thinking as Carey’s discussion exposes. Whilst we all accept the benefits that science has provided for us, without even thinking about them most of the time, many of us can’t accept that science has also provided an explanation for how Earthly species have developed, changed, evolved, gained ascendency and become extinct.

I believe there are 2 reasons for this. Firstly, scientific knowledge is always contingent on future discoveries. This means we never know everything, and, what’s more, we never will. There are limits to what we can know as I’ve discussed in another post. So how do I know that evolution is true? Because the biological knowledge that underpins the human genome project (DNA) also underpins the theory of evolution, completely unknown and unforeseen in Darwin’s time. This is a well documented and carefully studied case where future discoveries enhanced a contentious scientific theory beyond its originators’ (Darwin’s and Wallace’s) wildest imaginings.

But there is still a lot we don’t know about evolution: for example, how did DNA evolve and how did it originate? Did it come from outer space? In response, creationist and ID advocates can provide glib answers that, if taken seriously, close off any further avenues of investigation; effectively stemming the very curiosity that has given us what we have learned to date.

The second reason is that our intuition and common sense can let us down when it comes to scientific knowledge. There are 2 well-known examples: Einstein’s theories of relativity and quantum mechanics. Relativity theory tells us that clocks run slower when they travel faster (relative to another clock) and clocks run faster in lower gravity (like on satellites as opposed to ground level, Earth). Intuition and common sense tell us that this can’t be true, yet the GPS in your mobile phone or in the Sat-Nav of your car depend on relativity for their accuracy.

Quantum mechanics tells us that a particle can exist in superposition with itself: an electron can go through 2 slits at once and interfere with itself on the other side, though if we try and determine which slit it goes through then it will only go through one of them. Yet quantum mechanics is not only the most empirically successful theory in the entire history of science, it underpins every electronic device you use, from TVs to computers to washing machines.

As I’ve stated many times on this blog in a variety of contexts, the biggest mystery of the universe is that it created the means to understand itself, through us. As I’ve also stated, more recently, the biggest difference between religion and science is that religion maintains the universe is teleological and science tells us that it’s not. So how do I reconcile this? Basically, I argue that ‘purpose’ has evolved, meaning there was no pre-ordained plan. It’s like God really did cast a set of dice and allowed the universe to find its own purpose. Einstein famously said, "God does not play with dice", but chaos and quantum theory suggest otherwise.

Addendum: This is a related post that I wrote a few years back, where, in the final paragraph, I come to a similar conclusion.

Friday 2 January 2015

Ursula Le Guin's acceptance speech at the American Book Awards 2014

An acerbic commentary on the publishing industry from someone who's been in it for a long, long time; very successfully, I might add.

I've added Neil Gaiman's intro because it says so much about both of them.



I came across this by accident; posted as recently as November last year.

I'm a huge fan: Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed and the Earthsea Quartet, which I re-read not that long ago. She's one of the greats: up there with Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Frank Herbert and Arthur C Clarke.

Wednesday 24 December 2014

In memory of Joe Cocker: 1944 - 2014

With a Little Help from my Friends (Cologne Concert)



The Letter (Cologne)




Just a small tribute to someone who gave us something special. An inspiration and a legend.
'With a Little Help From my Friends' never fails to give me goose bumps, but on this occasion both these songs make me teary-eyed in their final moments.


Friday 5 December 2014

Theory, knowledge and truth

Bear with me while I give a little backstory. Julia Zemiro, the effervescent host of RocKwiz (a brilliant show for those who are missing out) has made a TV series called ‘Home Delivery’ where she takes a celebrity (all comedians, either UK or Oz) back to their home town. In a recent episode she took Ruth Jones, an award-winning UK comedienne back to her home town in Wales. As part of the tour, she visited her church where a number of events in her life took place, apparently.

Given the context, Julia asked her if she was a ‘believer’. I thought Jones’ answer so candid and honest, it’s worth repeating. She said she believes there is something ‘greater than us’ but we really ‘have no idea’. Maybe not her exact words but certainly her sentiment. It was the admission of ignorance and humility that struck me – so different to any theological statement one cares to hear. And I realised, by the sheer contrast implicit in her statement, why I have such an issue with the Church; well, any church, basically. Because they all claim to know what they can’t possibly know and preach it with the absolute certainty that dogma requires.

And despite what they all claim, there is no text anywhere in the world that can tell us what, if any, greater purpose there is. Now, I’m not opposed to the idea that there could be a greater purpose and I have no problem with people believing that (like Ruth Jones). I only have a problem when they claim to know what that purpose is and what one must do (in this life) to achieve it.

When I was a philosophy student, a lecturer made the salient point that there are things one believes and things one knows and it’s important to keep in mind that what one believes should be contingent upon what one knows and not the converse. This is perfectly logical, even common sense, yet it’s extraordinary the mental gymnastics some people will perform to maintain a contrary position. To give an example, I read an account where William Lane Craig, in a conversation with the author of a Christian text, defended his belief that Mary conceived Jesus without having sex.

And this brings me to the fundamental epistemological divide that exists between science and religion, as we see it discussed and abused in the so-called Western world. Because science is essentially about knowledge, about what we know as opposed to what we might speculate and philosophise about, even though the boundaries sometimes get a bit blurred.

The success of science, over a period of 2500 years, if one wants to go back to Thales and Pythagoras, has arisen from a combination of theory, mathematics and empirical evidence. Now, whilst there is not a lot of mathematics in the biological sciences, it’s the discovery of DNA, with its inherent ‘software-like’ code that underpins all of biology and evolutionary theory in particular. And like the other disciplines of science, mathematics (in the form of knot theory) is informing us as to how DNA actually manages to function.

But out of that triumvirate, it is empirical evidence that ultimately holds sway. We can find truth in mathematics independently of any physical parameters, but when we apply our mathematics to physical theories, only physical evidence tells us if the theory is true. An example is string theory, which is a mathematical model of the universe predicting up to 11 dimensions, yet, whilst no evidence can be found to confirm it, it really does remain just a theory. Whereas Einstein’s theories of relativity (the special and general theory) are proven facts, as is quantum mechanics. Evolution, I would argue, is also a fact, simply because the evidence that proves it’s true could just as readily prove it’s wrong (the evidence is not neutral). So theories can be facts and not ‘just a theory’.

But all scientific knowledge is contingent on future knowledge which is how it has evolved. For example, Newton’s theories were overtaken by Einstein’s theories, yet the equations governing relativity theory reduce to Newton’s equations when relativistic effects are negligible. As someone once pointed out (John Worrall, London School of Economics, 1989) it’s the mathematics that survives from one physical theory to the next that informs us what aspect of the original theory was true. Again, referring to Newton and Einstein, gravity obeys an inverse square law in both their theories.

As I’ve described on another post when I reviewed Noson S. Yanofsky’s excellent book, The Outer Limits of Reason, there are limits to knowledge at all levels. So science acknowledges that it’s impossible to know everything, yet there is every reason to believe that our knowledge will increase for as long as humanity can survive. At the end of my last post, I pointed out that an implication of Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem is that mathematics is infinite, which means that there is no end to what we can discover.

So where does philosophy sit and where does religion sit amongst all this scientific knowledge? Well, I would suggest that there is an interface between science and philosophy that will always exist because philosophy quests for answers that are currently beyond our reach, some of which, like multiverses and Artificial Intelligence, may be resolved or may not.

A few years back, I said that religion is the mind’s quest to find meaning for its own existence, and I think that this is a perfectly logical and healthy thing for a mind to do. But religion, as it has evolved culturally, is full of mythology dressed up as truth. That is not to say that the figures who feature prominently in these religions are necessarily fictional, but the stories that have arisen in their wake are mythological in content. People like Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, even Confucius, never wrote anything down so we are left with their ‘sayings’ (Mohammed was illiterate, which is why the Quran is probably in verse). But myth is very hard to shake once it takes hold in the collective consciousness of a population, and once it becomes ‘religion’ it becomes heretical to even question it.

Unfortunately, much of the debate between science and religion stems from what people think constitutes truth. Truth can exist in fiction, but in the form of life-lessons rather than narrative facts. When people believe that a narrative containing mythical elements is true, they will often argue that the mythical elements really happened by giving them supernatural attributes (like the example provided by Craig above). This is anathema to a scientifically trained mind and as far from any truth they would care to entertain.

So when people use the Bible as a criterion for scientific truth, it is certain to create conflict. Four hundred years ago, Galileo was threatened with torture by the Vatican for proposing that the Earth went round the Sun instead of the converse, as was then believed. The Vatican’s contention was that this contradicted a passage in the Bible that claims that God stopped the Sun moving in the sky. Now, we all know (thanks to pure science) that God could not have stopped the sun moving in the sky because the sun doesn’t move at all relative to the Earth’s orbit.

Yet still, in the 21st Century, we have people (like Ken Ham) claiming that the book of Genesis, which is full of mythological events like a snake that talks and a woman made from a man’s rib and a man made from dirt and a piece of fruit that turns people evil, nevertheless overrules all of modern science. I apologise on behalf of all Australia for unleashing Ken Ham onto the modern world, where he clearly doesn’t belong.

I once posted a question on his website asking for the nomination of one scientific discovery in the past 2500 years that has been made from studying the Scriptures. Not surprisingly, I never received a reply.

A few hundred years before Christ was born, Euclid, who was Librarian at the famous Library of Alexandria, wrote his seminal text, The Elements. This is arguably one of the most important texts ever written, certainly more important than any religious text as it contains real transcendental truths in the form of mathematical proofs. Mathematics is the only knowledge we have that transcends the Universe. As John Barrow quipped in one of his many books (citing Dave Rusin): Mathematics is the only part of science you could continue to do if the Universe ceased to exist.

It is hard to go past mathematics if you want truths, especially truths that are independent of humanity and the Universe itself. Of course, not everyone agrees with this Platonic sentiment, but it’s hard to avoid when one considers that there are an infinite number of primes that we can’t possibly know or an infinite string of digits in pi that we know must exist yet can’t possibly cognise. Mathematics is transcendent simply because it embraces infinity on so many levels.

To quote Barrow again, in a slightly more serious tone:

Mathematics is part of the world, and yet transcends it. It must exist before and after the Universe. Most scientists and mathematicians… work as though there were an unknown realm of truth to be discovered.

Saturday 29 November 2014

A book for geeks

Matt Parker is a mathematical entertainer, as oxymoronic as that sounds, because apparently, in the UK, he does stand-up comedic mathematics and mathematical-based magic tricks with cards. Originally a school teacher from Oz, he has the official title of Public Engagement in Mathematics Fellow at Queen Mary University of London.

He’s written a very accessible book called Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension, where he attempts to introduce the reader to more obscure areas of mathematics by wooing them with games and little-known intriguing mathematical facts.

For example: if you square any prime number greater than 3 and take off 1 you’ll find it’s divisible by 24.  As he says: ‘That sentence can freak out even the most balanced mathematician.’ In a section at the back, called The Answers in the Back of the Book, he provides an easy-to-follow proof that shows this applies to any number that is not factored by 2 or 3 – so not just prime numbers. Obviously, any prime number above 2 or 3 fits that category as well. So the converse is not true: a number divisible by 24 plus 1 is not necessarily a squared prime. Otherwise, as Parker points out, we would have a very easy ready-made method of finding all primes, which we haven’t.

Basically, he is a mathematical enthusiast and he wants to share his enthusiasm. As anyone who reads my blog would know, I’m familiar with a fair sample of mathematical concepts and esoterica, so I don’t believe I’m the audience that Parker is seeking. Having said that, he managed to augment my knowledge considerably, like in the previous paragraph. Another example is his description of how to make binary computer logic gates by just using dominoes that actually can perform a calculation. In fact, he and a team of mathematicians spent 6  hours setting up a 10,000 domino ‘computer’ that took 48 seconds to compute 6 + 4 = 10, performed at the Manchester Science Festival in October 2012.

The title of this post is apt: geeks would love this book; yet Parker’s objective, one feels, is to make mathematics attractive to a wider audience. In particular, those who were turned off maths in their high school years, if not before. One of the virtues I found in this book is his selective use of visual representation, even of the simplest kind. I’m not just talking about graphs of exotic equations like Zeta functions and perspective drawings of Platonic solids or even 2D renderings of tesseracts (4D cubes), but rough hand-drawn sketches and sometimes just a list of numbers to demonstrate a series or sequence. I found these most helpful in understanding a tricky concept.

We are visual creatures because sight is our prime medium for comprehending the world. It should be no surprise that visualising an abstract concept, mathematical or otherwise, is the shortest way to understanding it. I work a lot with engineers and when they want to explain something they invariably draw a picture.

The problem with maths in education is that it’s a cumulative subject. More esoteric topics are dependent on lesser ones. If a student falls behind, the gap between what they’re expected to know and what they can actually achieve grows over the years of schooling.

Books like Parker’s attempt to short-circuit this process. He tries to introduce the reader to the more ‘sexy’ aspects of mathematics without grinding them into the ground with mind-bending exercises. His Answers in the Back of the Book allows the more adventurous and less intimidated reader to understand a topic more fully, whilst not burdening a less experienced reader with mind-expanding exercises. It is possible to read this book and come away with both a sense of awe at its magisterial wonder and an appreciation of how maths literally drives our digital world without having to do a lot of mental gymnastics. On the other hand, Parker is letting you into some of the secrets of the priesthood without feeling like you’ve done a PhD.

Although it is divided chapter by chapter into separate topics, this is a book that should be read in the order it is presented. Parker often references material already covered, partly to demonstrate how the mathematical world is so interconnected. To give an example, he sneaks up on the famous Zeta function in a way that makes it appear less intimidating then it really is, yet still manages to explain its relationship to Riemann’s famous hypothesis and the distribution of primes. I was disappointed that he didn’t explain that the non-trivial zeros, which are both the core mystery and ultimate unsolved puzzle, are in fact complex numbers involving the imaginary axis. However, he explains this in a later chapter when he introduces the reader to imaginary numbers and the ‘complex plane’.

Pythagoras famously said (or so we are led to believe, as he never wrote anything down) that everything is numbers. In the digital world this is literally true, and one of Parker’s most illuminating chapters explains how everything you do on your smart-phone from pictures to texting to music are all rendered by 0s and 1s.

Parker is very clever in that he discusses highly esoteric mathematical topics like the Zeta function (already mentioned), quarternions (imaginary numbers in 4D),  the so-called Monster or Friendly Giant in 196,833 dimensions, computer-generated self-correcting algorithms using binary arithmetic, multiple infinities, knot theory’s relevance to DNA not getting tangled and Klein bottles (4D bottles in 3D); without discussing more fundamental topics like logarithms, trigonometry or calculus. He doesn’t even explain the fundamental relationship between polar co-ordinates and Cartesian co-ordinates that makes imaginary numbers such a widely used tool.

He doesn’t get philosophical until the very end of the book, when he discusses the relevance of Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem to the study of mathematics for ever (quite literally). As I’m sure I’ve mentioned in previous posts, implicit in Godel’s Theorem is the fact that mathematics is never-ending, therefore it’s a human activity that will never stop. Also Parker points out that there could be other universes with other dimensions to ours, but any hypothetical residents (he calls them ‘hypertheticals’) would still discover the same mathematics as us, assuming they have the intellect to do so.

Sunday 12 October 2014

The 2 faces of IS: avenger of Muslims and genocidal ideologues

I apologise in advance to overseas readers (outside Australia) who can’t view this, but this interview on ABC’s Lateline current affairs programme on Thursday (8 Oct) was a standout. Emma Alberici, a well respected television journalist and previous foreign correspondent with ABC’s European bureau, interviews, or attempts to interview, Wassim Doureihi, member of Hizb ut-Tahir; an organisation which has been banned in many countries, but not Australia or the UK. This link gives a good summary of that interview, but it’s also ABC, so maybe unavailable outside Oz.

A lecture was held by the group’s Arabic spokesperson, Ismail Al-Wahwah, at Lakemba, Sydney last night, which, according to the SMH and Guardian (links), was not much different in rhetoric to Doureihi’s diatribe a few days earlier. Basically, they claim the current situation in Iraq is a direct consequence of America’s, and its allies’, involvement in that conflict, as well as earlier conflicts involving Muslims. And that, apparently, justifies everything that IS does. Though Doureihi never actually condones IS, he went to extraordinary lengths to avoid discussing their actions and/or strategy when talking to Alberici, which frustrated her enormously.

There are a couple of issues I wish to address: firstly, the sheer distortion in Dourheihi’s argument that doesn’t match the evidence; and secondly, the possible motivation behind people’s desire to join this ‘fight’ and how they manage to justify its atrocities.

Doureihi repeatedly asserted that the current conflict in Iraq is all about foreign occupation. But there is no foreign occupation in Iraq at present – the current Western forces have been invited by the Iraqi democratically elected government (as Alberici pointed out) – and IS arose in Syria, where there is no Western intervention at all, and moved into Iraq before the West got involved. Besides, IS are not attacking a foreign occupation in Iraq (the Westerners they behead are not military personnel); they are attacking people who have lived there for generations, mainly Kurds and Yazidi. In fact, they are committing genocide against these people, which has nothing to do with any foreign occupation.

One can argue about the wisdom of the West’s intervention in Iraq under Bush, especially considering the legerdemain of the so-called WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction) that never existed, and its woefully poor execution under Cheney and Rumsfeld. But you have to draw a very long bow to argue that IS have entered Iraq to right the wrongs of that misadventure, when they kill all males who won’t convert to Islam and sell all their women into slavery.

A few years back, I read The Islamist by Ed Hussain, who was radicalised in Great Britain, as a student, before becoming disillusioned and returning to a more moderate position on Islam. It’s an insightful book in that it distinguishes between the religion of Islam as practiced by many Muslims living in secular societies and the political ideology of extremists who want to reshape the world into a totalitarian Islamic state. Hussain believed, at the time, the entire world would inevitably become a ‘Caliphate’, not least because it was ‘God’s Will’. What turned Hussain around was when a student was stabbed to death by a member of his own group. Hussain suddenly realised he wanted no part of an organisation that saw killing non-adherents as part of its creed.

When IS first declared itself a caliphate, an Australian academic (I can’t recall his name or his department) made the observation, in regard to Muslims in Indonesia, that just the idea of a caliphate would have enormous appeal that many would find hard to resist. In other words, many see this as some sort of Islamic nirvana, a new ‘world order’, where all wrongs will be made right and all peoples will be made to see and understand God’s wisdom and be guided by it through Sharia law. Naturally, this is anathema to anyone living in a Western democratic secular society, and is seen as turning back the clock centuries, before the Enlightenment and before the European renaissance and before modern scientific relevations, not to mention undoing generations of women’s independence of men, whether sexually, financially or educationally.

And this is the nexus of this conflict: it’s a collision of ideas and ideals that has no compromise. IS and its ilk, the Taliban in Afghanistan and Boko Haram in Africa, are fighting against the 21st Century. They know as well as we do, that there is no place for them, politically, in the world’s global future, and they can only rail against this by killing anyone who does not agree with their vision, and committing all women to marital slavery.

Finally, there is a comment by an Australian Islamist fighting in Syria, who believes that IS’s tactics of beheading journalists and aid workers is justified because their deaths are insignificant compared to the hundreds of innocent people (including children) killed by Western sponsored air raids. If these deaths can ‘blackmail’ America and its allies into not killing innocents then it is worth it, according to him.

David Kilcullen, an Australian expert on Afghanistan and a former adviser to Condoleezza Rice during the Bush administration, is one of the few who argued against drone strikes in Pakistan because they would ‘recruit’ jihadists. The abovementioned apologist for IS would suggest that such a belief was justified.

However, IS don’t just behead Westerners; it’s one of their psychological tactics against anyone who doesn’t convert to their specific brand of Islam. It’s meant to horrify and terrorise all their enemies, whoever they might be, and it succeeds.

Contrary to popular belief and popular crime thrillers, most people who perform evil acts, as perceived by most societies, don’t believe that what they are doing is evil and can always find a way to justify it. No where is this more acute than when the perpetrators believe that they have ‘God on their side’.