|
Email
|
If you enjoy this article, consider making an online donation to support the Global Spiral.
|
| On Rationality and Emotion, Faith and Hope
Introduction
The historical interaction of science and religion in the West can be seen as tension between faith and rationality, with the rise of science steadily driving out irrationality and replacing it with the clear light of reason.
Part of the change was the replacement of emotionally based faith by evidentially based proof, leading to sound theories grounded in logical reasoning and confirmed by scientific evidence)
Through Galileo and Newton, the idea of immutable laws impartially ordering the physical world came into being. With the rise of atomic theory and the understanding that the macroscopic behaviour of matter is determined by forces acting between its constituent particles, an evidence-based picture emerged of how matter is structured and its behaviour determined. The secrets of life and the universe were one by one being laid bare by reason, and categorised in a series of laws that codified our understanding.
As our understanding deepened, apparently quite disparate physical phenomena came to be understood as manifestations of unifying underlying principles. The secrets of life and the universe were one by one being laid bare by reason, and categorised in a series of laws that codified our understanding.
The periodic table of the elements established the basic components making up both the natural and the living world around us, showing how living matter and inorganic material are built up of the same basic chemical elements. The discovery of the cells at the basis of living matter, with their internal biochemical processes, showed how chemical interactions and thermodynamics underlie the functioning of living organisms.
The need for special design was removed by the understanding of the power of the process of Darwinian natural selection acting over very long time scales in sculpting the nature of living organisms. The discovery of the molecular structure of the genome - the DNA double helix, with its ability to store and replicate information - and the biochemical bases of neuronal activity, showed how heredity and brain function are based in basic chemical and physical principles.
The same reasoning power and understanding could be applied to technology, based in our scientific understanding, enabling us to tame and control the environment to a large degree. The principle of rationality became understood to be the basis of an ordered life. Rationality was seen as impeded by emotion, scientific proof thought to remove the need for faith, and hope in the face of evidence was seen as simply an irrational manifestation of our more primitive biological heritage, which we had to learn to overcome.
In the West, the scientific paradigm took over management strategies and provided the idea of rationality as the basis of how both communal and individual life should be lived. The demons of the past were being driven out by science. Science would provide a Third Culture, "rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are" [Horgan].
However, it is becoming clear that this view is overdone: science is not the answer to all our needs, and rationality is claiming things it cannot give. Modern technology underlies a series of major problems facing humanity today, ranging from large-scale environmental destruction to the creation of weapons of mass destruction, and does not by itself provide any help in resolving the resulting problems that have the potential to threaten the very existence of human life.
Reason by itself cannot provide an ethical basis for living, and indeed a scientifically based outlook can lead to inhumanity just as much as fundamentalist religion can. Rationality is not all that is important in human nature. A broader understanding is needed that incorporates what science can teach us, but that also has a sound ethical basis and a more humane perspective on the world, and values each of Emotion, Faith, and Hope.
2. The present scientific world-view
Science deals with repeatable situations where quantitative experimental tests can determine reliable repeating patterns of behaviour. It focuses in essence on three domains, and how they relate to each other:
-The small (quantum theory and particle physics)
-The large (astronomy and cosmology)
-The everyday and the complex (solids, liquids, gases, waves, heat, sound, light; materials, chemistry, and life)
This characterizes how rationality organizes and comprehends the world - on the basis of unexpected evidence.
2.1 Particles and Matter
All matter is made of extremely small particles called quarks and electrons. They are electrically charged. Quarks bind together to form positively charged protons and neutral neutrons, together called nucleons because they in turn bind together to form the positively charged nuclei of atoms. Such nuclei when surrounded by the right numbers of electrons (exactly balancing the positive charge of the nucleus) form atoms.
The different kinds of atoms (depending on the charge of the nucleus) form the various chemical elements (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, sulphur for example) characterised in the periodic table of the elements - one of the central discoveries of science.
Atoms bind together to form molecules, which in turn form materials of all kind, which then when combined in an appropriate manner constitute macroscopic objects - rocks and lakes, birds and flowers, zebras and humans.
Hierarchical structure of matter, and associated interactions:
Macroscopic objects Macroscopic behaviour
Macroscopic materials Constitutive relations
Molecules Chemical Binding
Atoms Atomic Binding
Nucleons and nuclei Nuclear Binding
Quarks and electrons Fundamental Forces
-------------------------------------------------------
Table 1: Hierarchical structure of matter.
Thus the constituents of matter, including the material out of which living beings are constructed, are known. These constituents interact with each other through four fundamental forces (gravity, the electromagnetic force, the strong nuclear force, and the weak force), and it is these interactions that determine their macroscopic behaviour - the gas laws in the case of gases, elasticity in the case of solids, and so on.
Underlying all physical change is the conversion of energy from useful to unusable forms - the famous second law of Thermodynamics. Microscopic conservation laws - conservation of charge, energy, momentum, and matter - underlie macroscopic conservation laws of fundamental importance to us (objects do not just appear and disappear, for example, and we need an energy source in order to do work). These conservation laws in turn are based in a subtle and beautiful way on symmetries in the underlying physics.
2.2 Complexity and Life
How does life and consciousness emerge from inanimate physics and chemistry? In essence, the basic building blocks outlined above are put together in complex modular hierarchical structures. The key chemical element around which this is all based is carbon, which can form the basis for very long chains of atoms such as polypeptides. The levels of the biological hierarchy are characterised in Table 2.
The key element is the living cell, which is the module out of which all living beings are constructed. This is not obvious because a cell is so small- a human being, for example, is comprised of 10^13 = 10,000,000,000,000 cells. They link together to form highly structured tissues and systems
Hierarchical structure of life and functioning
The biosphere Global resource cycles
Biomes Energy and material interchange
Ecosystems Species interdependence
Animal populations Competition and the food chain
Individual organisms & animals Physiological functioning
Limbs & physiological systems, Organism homeostasis & control, including the brain including purposive actions
Tissues Growth, maintenance, repair
Cells Growth, specialisation, death
Organelles Cell homeostasis
Macro Molecules Folding, recognition, binding
Building Block Molecules Combine to form polymers
Chemical elements Chemical binding
------------------------------------------------------
The structure of these complex systems results in emergence of higher levels of order and function that are not present in the lower levels, and cannot even be described in the languages appropriate at those levels. They function by a combination of bottom-up and top-down causality. Not only do the microscopic laws acting on the constituent particles at the lower levels act to physically determine what happens at the higher levels (for example, when electric forces between protons and electrons in my arm conspire together to enable me to move my arm in a tennis shot), but additionally the higher levels control what happens at the lower levels.
Thus the higher levels are not just puppets in the hands of the lower levels - through these interactions they have their own rationality and causal effectiveness at each level, characterised by a language of description appropriate at that level. Purpose is embodied in the set of goals imbedded in these hierarchically structured feedback control systems
Information underlying the higher levels of this hierarchy is stored in molecular structures, in particular in the paired base sequences in DNA that constitute the genetic information of each organism. The whole is self-assembling, the developmental process in each organism being based on hierarchical pattern-recognition processes that convert the specific base sequences in the DNA for that organism into proteins according to the universal genetic code. This reading of genetic information is not a simple algorithmic process; it is highly context dependent, with positional information determining which part of the gene will be read in each cell at each specific stage of development.
At the higher levels, organisms live in ecosystems where they interact with each other to form energy and food chains which underlie major resource cycles. The entire set of such ecosystems forms the biosphere, existing on the surface of the continents on Earth, in seas, lakes, and rivers, and in the atmosphere above.
2.3 Historical origin of complexity
This enormously complex interconnected system of living organisms, culminating in self-aware consciousness, has occurred through the processes of Darwinian evolution. Initial processes that are still ill-understood resulted in single-cell organisms, and then cells learned to join together to form multi-cellular creatures. Random variations in the gene caused variations in living organisms, which were then better or less well adapted to survival in their current environment. Those that were better adapted outperformed the others and their genes had a better survival and reproduction rate; hence these best-adapted organisms came to dominate, the others falling by the wayside.
Consciousness and the associated ability to plan rationally results in better survival rates, resulting in the generation of organisms with purposive behaviour, eventually including the ability to make conscious choices of goals.
The specific genes in each organism result from a contingent historical process, and contain a record of that process (for example the migration of life from the sea to land). They are therefore to a major degree determined by historical events such as global heating and cooling cycles on the surface of the Earth.
Nevertheless one can suggest that there will necessarily be a convergence to the same solutions in terms of physiological structure, because of common functional problems faced by organisms on the one hand, and the restricted nature of possible engineering responses (based on the underlying physical and chemical laws) to these problems on the other hand; for example there are only a limited numbers of ways that an eye or ear can function. Biological evolution explores a restricted possibility space.
2.4 The Cosmos
The biosphere exists on the surface of the planet Earth, one of the nine planets circling the vastly larger Sun. The planets and Sun together comprise the Solar System, and is held together by gravity.
The Sun is a vast nuclear reactor, also held together by gravity, in which hydrogen is converted to helium by nuclear burning at very high temperatures at the centre, thus releasing vast amounts of energy that flow into space as radiation.
The small amount of this energy that is received by the Earth powers the biosphere, for example being used in photosynthesis to power the growth of plants and also being the energy source for all the weather on earth.
The Sun is just a typical star, looking much larger and hotter than other stars because it is so much closer than they are.
Together with about 10^11 = 100,000,000,000 other stars, it forms the Galaxy, a huge disk of stars that we see at night as the Milky Way. We see it edge-on, because we are located in the outer regions of the disc.
While stars shine brightly because of their emitted radiation, planets only shine by reflected light, and so are very difficult to see at a large distance. We have detected only a few planets circling other stars; nevertheless there probably are a great many other planets in the Galaxy.
The galaxy is just one of a huge number of other galaxies that we can see as very faint images in the sky, very faint because they are so very far away from us.
We can detect about 10^11 = 100,000,000,000 other galaxies in the visible region of the universe, each similar in size to our own Galaxy This region also contains exotic objects such as radio sources, quasi-stellar objects, and X-Ray sources, as well as dark matter that we cannot directly see, but can detect by its gravitational effects.
This visible region of the universe may be part of a vastly larger cosmos, most of it unseen by us because light will never reach us from those extraordinarily distant regions.
Hierarchical structure of Associated Astronomy Processes
The whole Universe Formation of the Universe
The observable Universe Expansion of the Universe
Large scale structures (walls, voids) Structure formation
Cluster of galaxies Galaxy cluster formation
Galaxies Evolution of Galaxies
Star clusters Star cluster evolution
Stars and their planetary systems Stellar evolution
Planets, including the Earth Planetary formation
------------------------------------------------------
Table 3: Hierarchical nature of astronomical structure.
It is crucial to note that the universe is not static, as astronomers initially supposed. The observable region of the universe is expanding, with clusters of galaxies getting ever more distant from each other.
By measuring the expansion rate, we can see that it had a start in a Hot Big Bang event in the past, about 10^10 = 10,000,000,000 years ago, when all the matter was concentrated in an indefinitely small volume.
It is probable that it will expand forever in the future, with the matter in the universe ever getting more and more dilute. It will also get ever colder as the stars burn out one by one, and galaxies become ghostly remnants of their former glory.
One of the crucial features to note here is the immensity of the universe relative to humanity.
The entire Earth is a tiny - almost invisible - speck in the Galaxy, which itself is a minute part of the cosmos as a whole. We are very small indeed relative to what exists. We cannot affect it in any serious way on scales larger than that of the earth.
We are confined to a tiny fraction of the entire cosmos, and that will always be the case. We will never be able to visit the furthest regions we can see, and we cannot see all there is. We do not know what the nature of the universe is on the largest of scales - that is, much bigger than the observable part of the universe.
2.5 Historical origins of the cosmos
The hot big bang expansion phase of the universe is well understood, because matter and radiation were then in equilibrium at the very high temperatures consequent on the universe being condensed to a very much smaller size than today. The process of nucleosynthesis - creation of the light elements (deuterium, helium, lithium) from protons and neutrons - took place when the temperature was about 109K.
The tightly bound matter and radiation let go of each other when the temperature dropped to about 4000K, and the universe became transparent at that time (previously it was very opaque - light could only penetrate a few cm. at most). The radiation we receive from that time ("Cosmic Background Radiation") is one of the key pieces of information we have about the early universe, and much of present day cosmology is engaged with measuring and interpreting minute fluctuations in this radiation.
First stars formed by gravitational attraction, but without hospitable planets circling them because the elements needed for life did not yet exist. The most massive ones did not last long by astronomical standards: they burnt their nuclear fuel too fast.
However they had time to synthesise heavier elements deep in their interiors, and in particular the elements essential for life such as Carbon and Oxygen, before their death in a spectacular supernova explosion.
That explosion spread these elements through space, forming the clouds of dust from which second generation stars could form, surrounded by planets that might support life. This is the origin of the elements out of which all living beings on earth are made, as well as the earth itself.
What happened before the Hot Big Bang era is much less well established. Many believe it was preceded by an era of very rapid accelerating expansion, when the universe very quickly became very much larger in an exceedingly short time interval. This "inflation" ended when the effective negative energy field driving it decayed away, its energy being transferred to radiation that would have then heated up the universe to high temperatures after the super-cooling that would have resulted from this rapid expansion.
Inflation would have both smoothed out the universe, thus explaining why its structure is so simple on very large scales, and introduced fluctuations that were the seeds of later structure development as the universe expanded after this inflationary epoch ended. This proposal explains the origin of the clusters of galaxies we see around us at the present time; however its underlying physics is still ill-defined, so it is a broad set of ideas rather than a specific unique proposal for what happened then.
Even earlier than inflation, the universe would probably have been dominated by quantum gravity effects - some combination of quantum ideas with Einstein's theory of gravitation. However we do not yet have a good theory of quantum gravity, so our theories about this epoch are highly speculative.
In particular we do not know if these effects can remove the inevitability of an initial singularity - a boundary to space-time - at the start of the universe. It is possible that we face an intriguing choice: either there were very special (`fine-tuned') conditions at the start of the universe, or there was indeed a singularity.
The latter is a very extreme situation - a start to space, to time, and even to physical reality itself, so this is then the boundary of what physics can say about the universe. Some physicists find that a very unpalatable prospect.
One alternative is that we live in a multiverse - there are many other expanding universe regions, apart from the one we can see around us. Perhaps there are even truly disconnected universes, quite separate from our own.
Because there are then so many universes in existence, with varying properties, at least some of them would be like the rather improbable universe in which we live. We can do statistics concerning this family of universes, and try to show that the universe we see is in fact probable.
However this possibility is not observationally testable, so this possibility - foreshadowed in science fiction novels, such as Olaf Stapledon's Starmaker - may or may not be true. Uncertainty remains at the foundations of cosmology.
2.6 Consciousness and the brain
The brain is the most complex system known to us. Brain function is based on mechanisms allowing information storage, processing, and usage, mainly through the electrochemical properties of neurons (the cells that are the basic computational units in the brain), which are connected together in immensely complex ways.
Neurons are made up of a cell body together with long branching extensions called dendrites and axons. Information embodied in action potentials flows down dendrites to the cell body, where summation of inputs is performed and the output is sent down numerous axons to meet dendrites of other neurons at synapses). Here the incoming information is transferred by neurotransmitters from the axon to the dendrite, which are separated there by a small gap. A single neuron may be connected in this way to hundreds or even thousands of other neurons.
Hierarchical structure of the brain: Components
The brain: Brain stem, cerebellum, neocortex, spinal cord
Neocortex: Frontal, Temporal, Parietal, Occipital lobes
Neural networks: 10^11 neurons each with 102 to 103 connections
The neuron: Axons, body, dendrites, synapses
Axons: Nerve fibre, sheath (myelin)
Biochemical molecules: Proteins, nucleic acids
Organic molecules: Bases, Amino Acids, Sugars, Phosphates
Atoms: Nucleus, electrons
-------------------------------------------------------
Each level of structure in the hierarchy carries out a different function, described in a different language. Neurons are clumped together in major functional areas. Some brain regions are dedicated to automatic (instinctual) functions, some are the seat of our inherited primary emotions, while some are dedicated to analysis of sensory input, to higher cognitive functions, and to handling motor output. Bottom-up and top-down action combine to create consciousness - an emergent feature, based on the physical and chemical interactions underlying the functioning of the complexly interconnected neurons.
The neurological details of these mechanisms are relatively well understood at a micro level, and the broad ways brain areas function is understood at a macro level, showing how various brain areas correlate with various aspects of consciousness.
Nevertheless, the way that consciousness itself is generated is simply not understood. Nor do we understand the relation between the mind and the brain: how matter is able to support self-transcendence.
2.7 Problems at the foundation of science
At the fundamental level, we do not know what the quantum theory of gravity is, although there are two well developed attempts under way to solve this fundamental question.
However problems run much deeper than that; in particular, we do not understand the quantum measurement problem - how microscopic states relate to measurements made by macroscopic laboratory apparatus. The problem is that the laws by which measurements are supposed to occur are not compatible with the measuring apparatus itself obeying the laws of quantum physics; but it is inconsistent for that apparatus to not be composed of matter that obeys these laws.
In terms of the relation of fundamental physics to macroscopic systems, the fundamental problem is we do not know how the micro laws determine the macro arrow of time - which is the future direction of time, which is the past; but that distinction is one of the most important characteristics of macro systems.
In terms of cosmology, I have emphasized above the uncertainty about the way the universe originated in some kind of quantum state, and whether or not there might exist a multiverse. However again the issues run deeper than this.
The fundamental issue is, what determines the existence and specific nature of the laws of physics? What chooses which laws of nature apply? These laws determine the evolution of the universe itself, and of the matter in the universe; but what determines them?
This is a meta-scientific issue, for no scientific experiment can resolve this question. However it gains its specific bite by realising the issue of fine-tuning of the universe for life. There are numerous ways in which the laws of physics and the nature of the universe seem remarkably suited for intelligent life to exist. Most univ |
|