"The Relativity of Wrong"

Part 2 of A Mechanistic Universe, or Objective Reality

I recently came across an article that offers a good jumping off point for another topic that I was originally going to write about in "A Mechanistic Universe." In it, Isaac Asimov responds to a critique by an English major.

"It seemed that in one of my innumerable essays, I had expressed a certain gladness at living in a century in which we finally got the basis of the universe straight.

I didn't go into detail in the matter, but what I meant was that we now know the basic rules governing the universe, together with the gravitational interrelationships of its gross components, as shown in the theory of relativity worked out between 1905 and 1916. We also know the basic rules governing the subatomic particles and their interrelationships, since these are very neatly described by the quantum theory worked out between 1900 and 1930. What's more, we have found that the galaxies and clusters of galaxies are the basic units of the physical universe, as discovered between 1920 and 1930.

These are all twentieth-century discoveries, you see.

The young specialist in English Lit, having quoted me, went on to lecture me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern "knowledge" is that it is wrong. The young man then quoted with approval what Socrates had said on learning that the Delphic oracle had proclaimed him the wisest man in Greece. "If I am the wisest man," said Socrates, "it is because I alone know that I know nothing." the implication was that I was very foolish because I was under the impression I knew a great deal.

My answer to him was, "John, when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."

The basic trouble, you see, is that people think that "right" and "wrong" are absolute; that everything that isn't perfectly and completely right is totally and equally wrong.

However, I don't think that's so. It seems to me that right and wrong are fuzzy concepts, and I will devote this essay to an explanation of why I think so."

I will resist the temptation to cite the entire article and simply hope that you will all be enticed to read it. For those that don't, he goes on to specifically discuss the development of our concept of the shape of the earth over the last 2500 years and more generally says

"What actually happens is that once scientists get hold of a good concept they gradually refine and extend it with greater and greater subtlety as their instruments of measurement improve. Theories are not so much wrong as incomplete.

This can be pointed out in many cases other than just the shape of the earth. Even when a new theory seems to represent a revolution, it usually arises out of small refinements. If something more than a small refinement were needed, then the old theory would never have endured."

My own point revolves around several recent discussions on the topic of Objective Reality, Subjective Reality, and the inclusion or exclusion of intelligent design (ID) from school science curricula.

I believe that there is an objective reality, which is to say a reality that exists independently of our minds or what one might call the 'truth,' that we all live in with subjective perspectives - perspectives that change for each person. I was reading a book earlier on qualitative methodology for sociology and it said "For the qualitative investigator, all perspectives are valid. The investigator doesn't seek truth or morality." From the perspective of a sociological qualitative investigation, it seems to run against the advice to say that evolution is right and ID is wrong. This idea is rooted in the belief that "The reality that is important is that which the people perceive as important."

However, to place evolution and ID on equal footing is quite mistaken. I recently saw a definition by Jerry Coyne of 'what do we mean by a scientific "fact" (truth)?' - 'An assertion for which there is so much evidence that it would be perverse to deny it.' There is a tremendous amount of evidence that backs up evolution and we (the human species, including those that support ID) have found nothing that goes against it. The advantages of science is a fairly lengthy discussion in itself, but I like to think of the primary advantage as specific, falsifiable, reproducible, predictions. For example, regardless of the cultural background of a person, if that person jumps, they will fall according to the laws of gravity. Their speed and position will at any given time be able to be predicted with extreme accuracy by traditional physics.

I'd like to make an analogy to compressing data to discuss one difference between physics and sociology that I think is pivotal to the discussion. The analogy goes as follows: If you wanted to compress an image, you could take shortcuts based on patterns. In describing a patch of light blue, you could say "Pixel 1: 69 Red, 155 Green, and 203 Blue; Pixel 2: 69 R, 155 G, 203 B; Pixel 3: 69 R, 155 G..." and so on up to the last pixel in the batch, or you could say "654 pixels of 69 R, 155 G, 203 B. In binary terms, that saves a lot of space. Just because something can be described with a pattern or formula doesn't mean that it has to repeat or that it has to be simple. The Mandelbrot Set is a fantastic example of simplicity that represents complexity. The set is described by "Z_n+1 = Z_n² + c, but is quite complicated.

Similarly, the language of physics and math allow us to take shortcuts to understand the world around us. In the example of falling, we don't have to describe each and every person in every circumstance as long as we have a rule that they all follow. Now, if our picture had many variations or a pattern that was not yet completely discernible, it would be much more difficult to compress the image. Perhaps we could condense some parts, but not others. The patterns of people are complicated. It's one reason that paying detailed attention in sociology is so helpful. A quantitative approach can miss a lot of the detail in trying to compress the data. However, this is not to say that there is not an objective, mechanistic universe. It is simply that we don't yet have the tools to describe it in full. The qualitative approach gathers data of a complicated, but natural process. Qualitative findings help us to approach a more complete understanding of reality.

We continue to refine our understanding of the objective reality that affects us all. In considering the shape of the earth, we go from a x100 magnification to a x1000 magification to a x5000 magnification. However, as Asimov points out, small refinements can have drastic implications. The Earth is "almost" flat, but

"the flat earth presupposes the possibility of an infinite earth, or of the existence of an "end" to the surface. The spherical earth, however, postulates an earth that is both endless and yet finite, and it is the latter postulate that is consistent with all later findings."

Similarly, with limited tools, living things have "the appearance of design." However, as we learn more of anatomy, embryonic development, genes, fossils, geographical distribution and other fields that support evolution, we can see that the postulates of ID are not consistent with our findings while the postulates of evolution are.

A mechanistic universe

[Originally, this was a much longer note, but the size got out of control and I pruned it back]

I believe in a mechanistic universe, which tends to lead to debates. At it's core, the belief is that everything behaves without fail to natural laws (though we might not know or understand them all). As a result, the more we know of those laws, the more we are able to explain. The alternative is that there is 'something more' that is above or outside of those laws whether it be God, ghosts, a soul, or love. (Very important: I am not saying that love don't exist. I'm a fan of love. I just don't think that it's supernatural)

A friend recently told me that I was underestimating and taking away from the majesty of the universe. I told her that she was underestimating the capabilities and majesty that can arise from purely mechanical phenomena.

A computer is an excellent analogy. Everything on a computer can be represented by zeroes and ones. Every video or movie that we watch can be represented in zeroes and ones (as most that we see are edited on computers). There's a computer game called Second Life which is, as it sounds, a sort of virtual second life. Characters interact in the game, buy and sell goods (to the point that some people make a living entirely from the game), they can go to church, they can do almost anything they can imagine. Now, from the point of view of one player, everything in the entire world - all that is done by millions of real people, can be described by zeroes and ones.

Another example I enjoy is the Mandelbrot set. The set (to quote wikipedia) "has become popular outside mathematics both for its aesthetic appeal and for being a complicated structure arising from a simple definition" - it is described by "Z_n+1 = Z_n² + c. I highly recommend watching a video that zooms in on the Mandelbrot set.

And of course, the brain and DNA are both mechanistic, but can very clearly lead to some astounding results.

C.E. Joad and Bertrand Russell

C.E. Joad, The Present and Future of Religion, 1930
"To say that there is a God is not to say anything more than that we need to think there is, and the need is in no sense a guarantee of the existence of that which satisfies it. Thus the great religions of the world are not theology, but pyschology; witnesses...to the inventive faculty of man."

Bertrand Russell, Why I am Not a Christian, 1957
"I may say that when I was a young man and was debating these questions very seriously in my mind, I for a long time accepted the argument of the First Cause, until one day, at the age of eighteen, I read John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, and there I found this sentence: 'My father taught me that the question, Who made me? cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question, Who made God?' That very simple sentence showed me, as I still think, the fallacy in the argument of the First Cause. If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu's view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, 'How about the tortoise?' the Indian said, 'Suppose we change the subject.' The argument is really no better than that. There is no reason why the world could not have come into being without a cause; nor, on the other hand, is there any reason why is should not have always existed. There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination."

Confucius's Golden Rule

I've heard it said that Western morals are largely based on Christianity, especially on Jesus's Golden Rule. I've also heard it argued by others that the Golden Rule comes from the physiology of our brain and has been a part of homo sapiens interaction long before Christianity.

I recently came across a fun bit of trivia that might at least clear up the myth that the Golden Rule originated with Christianity. I'm sure there are other examples, but this is the one I stumbled across. In Confucius's "The Analects," (written ~2,500 years ago) he writes 己所不欲，勿施于人, which could be translated to "What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others" or "Do as you would be done by."