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WSWS : News & Analysis : Science & Technology

The Mind of God: Science and the search for ultimate meaning
By Paul Davies

A descent into mysticism

By Peter Symonds
23 September 1994

The following book review was first published on September 23, 1994 in Workers News.

Despite the reputation of Paul Davies as a theoretical physicist, The Mind of God is not a book about science. It is one of a number of recent works which attempt to give religion and mysticism a new respectability by dressing them up in the latest scientific attire.

Davies covers a wide range of topics, including aspects of cosmological theory, particle physics and mathematical logic, but his treatment is completely eclectic and disconnected. The book does not illuminate the major developments but rather tears them out of their historical context and obscures their significance.

The reason is not hard to find. He is weaving a series of examples taken from science into an argument which undermines the very basis of scientific thought and opens the door to religion and superstition.

From the outset, Davies makes clear his profound hostility to the philosophy of materialism, the only firm foundation for science. He states in the preface his belief that "the physical universe is put together with an ingenuity so astonishing that I cannot accept it merely as a brute fact. There must, it seems to me, be a deeper level of explanation. Whether one wishes to call that deeper level 'God' is a matter of taste and definition."

Frederick Engels explained in his pamphlet, Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of Classical German Philosophy that the great basic question of all philosophy is that concerning the relation of thinking to being, of spirit to nature.

Idealism asserts the primacy of the spirit and in the final analysis, assumes the creation of the world by a "God" in one form or another. Materialism, on the other hand, regarded nature as primary and thought as the reflection of objective reality in man's consciousness.

Man's thought reflects nature, but not immediately or exactly. It is only through the long process of social evolution and the development of science that the ideas of man reflect more and more precisely the processes of nature and society.

Davies' refusal to accept the physical universe as "a brute fact" and his quest for "a deeper level of explanation" is a blunt rejection of the materialist basis of science which seeks to explain phenomena through natural, not supernatural, causes. His search leads him directly into the quagmire of religion.

In Davies' own field of research--cosmology, the investigation of the universe--science has made huge strides.

The theoretical developments of modern physics combined with detailed astronomical observations have enabled scientists to develop an understanding of the structure and history of the Solar System, stars and galaxies and have begun to provide a coherent explanation for the evolution of the universe itself.

In 1929, Edwin Hubble discovered that galaxies were flying apart from each other at high velocities--that is, the universe was not static but expanding. The most widely accepted scientific explanation, known as the big-bang theory, is that the universe, as we know it, was initiated in a gigantic explosion some 15 billion years ago.

Various forms of the big bang theory have been developed to explain all but the first fraction of a second when theoretically all matter was concentrated at one point. After the big bang, the universe expanded rapidly and began to cool, leading firstly to the formation of nuclear particles such as electrons, protons and neutrons, then atoms. Under the influence of gravity, denser areas of hot gases condensed to form galaxies, stars and planets, giving rise to the conditions for the emergence of life.

Further evidence to support the big bang theory was recently provided by observations made by the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite.

Since 1965, scientists have known of the existence of a background of microwave radiation in the sky at a temperature of a few degrees above absolute zero. The radiation is believed to be a faint remnant of the big bang itself. Its temperature appeared to be the same in every direction.

But the uniform temperature of the radiation posed a major problem for the big bang theory. If every region of the universe were identical then the formation of galaxies from regions of denser gas could not be explained. The highly accurate data from the COBE satellite provided the first evidence of minute differences in the temperature of the background radiation.

The big bang theory leads to some obvious questions: what set off the explosion, what came before it and what lies beyond the known universe?

The only materialist interpretation is that the Big Bang was not the starting point of the universe but a transition point between different stages of development--one of an endless series of transition points between alternating phases of expansion and contraction of the universe taking place in infinite time and space.

The advocates of religion, however, saw the opening for a theological answer. As early as 1951, the Catholic Church accepted the big bang theory, proclaiming that it vindicated the Bible and proved the necessity of a God to set the universe in motion.

But the church sought to ensure that science did not probe any further. The outstanding physicist Steven Hawking reported in his book A Brief History of Time that the Pope told a group of eminent scientists in 1981 that they could inquire into the events after the big bang but not the big bang itself, which was "the moment of creation and therefore the work of God".

Papal decree, however, did not halt scientific inquiry. Hawking and James Hartle developed a sophisticated theory showing that it was not necessary to assume that the universe had a beginning or an end--that is was "completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge".

Some physicists started to theorise about what existed prior to the big bang and others to consider the possibility of multiple "universes".

Such conjectures began to develop the big bang theory on a materialist basis but as yet remain speculative. The known laws of physics break down if applied to the instant of the big bang itself when all the matter of the universe is condensed to a single point of infinitely high temperature. At present, there is no way of confirming through observation what took place prior to the big bang or the existence of other "universes".

Modern cosmology remains in a state of flux, dependent for its further development on advances in complex areas of theoretical physics, a broad range of astronomical observations and experimental results from high energy particle accelerators or "atom-smashers".

The lack of a more comprehensive theory of the evolution of the universe has led a number of scientists like Davies to replace the search for scientific answers to the unanswered questions of cosmology with religious speculation.

It is precisely at the current limits to scientific knowledge that Davies seeks to carve out a new arena of operations for religion. His method is reminiscent of the Pope's edict: thus far but no further!

Davies rejects the "many-universes" theory, though he concedes "the decision is largely a matter of taste rather than scientific judgement".

He accepts that given the laws of physics the theories of Hawking, Hartle and others require no special act of creation and therefore no creator. But, then he asks, "Why do the laws have the form they do? Might they have been otherwise? Where do these laws come from? Do they exist independently of the physical universe?"

According to Davies, the laws of nature must have a disembodied, ghostlike existence outside of time and space, completely separated from the material world. The world might not have had a creator, but it required a designer to draw up the physical laws and to set the initial conditions for the universe.

He writes at one point: "I believe that these proposals about laws of initial conditions strongly support the Platonic idea that the laws are 'out there', transcending the physical universe. ... If the laws are not transcendent, one is obliged to accept as a brute fact that the universe is simply there, as a package, with the various features described by the laws built in."

The laws of nature, however, are not "out there". They are an approximate reflection in man's consciousness of the real, objective processes of nature--an approximation which has been refined and developed through scientific investigation and confirmed through application to technology, medicine, etc.

Davies' basic philosophical mistake is common to all religion, which arose out of primitive man's ignorance of the processes of nature. Natural events such as lightning and the passage of night and day were explained by the activities of individual gods.

In itself, the personification of natural forces represented an advance for man who, through his own practice, had begun to understand cause and effect. Man was able to cause fire, create weapons from stone and trap animals. Thus he came to believe that natural forces which he did not understand were caused by powerful beings carry out the same actions on a grand scale. In fact, these gods were nothing more than the fantastic idealisations of man's own powers.

We have come a long way from primitive man. But the essence of the God-seeking of Davies lies in the same crude idealisation of man's power and knowledge, only on a much vaster scale.

In the course of the last four centuries, modern science has been able to abstract and refine from nature the basic laws of physics. Such diverse phenomena as the interaction of sub-atomic particles and the evolution of stars and galaxies can all be explained scientifically by the operation of a few fundamental forces.

By saying that the laws of physics are created "out there" in a realm beyond nature, Davies is projecting onto God, a supreme designer, the ideas developed by man himself. And like primitive man, Davies makes his god in his own image. Rather than thunder and lightning being produced by the clash of unearthly hunters, we are presented with the fantastic vision of a supernatural physicist labouring away on his computer to design the laws of nature and the universe.

When Davies turns to mathematics, things are worse. An entire chapter is devoted to speculations on the existence or not of "a mathematical mindscape" and its relationship to mathematicians.

According to Davies, mathematics, like the laws of nature, is not of this world. He writes: "It is easy to gain the impression that there exists a huge landscape of mathematical structures, and that mathematicians explore this peculiar but inspiring territory, perhaps aided by the guiding hand of experience or the signpost of recent discoveries. Along the way these mathematicians come across new forms and theorems that are already there. The mathematician Rudy Rucker thinks of mathematical objects as occupying a sort of mental space--which he calls the `Mindscape'--just as physical objects occupy a physical space."

Such a description deliberately mystifies mathematics. In Anti-Düring, Engels explained brilliantly that mathematics, like other sciences, has its roots in the material world:

"The concepts of number and figure have not been derived from any source other than the world of reality. The ten fingers on which men learnt to count, that is, to perform the first arithmetical operation, are anything but a free creation of the mind [or a Mindscape]. Counting requires not only the objects that can be counted, but also the ability to exclude all properties of objects considered except their number--and this ability is the product of a long historical evolution based on experience.

"Like the idea of number, so the idea of figure is borrowed exclusively from the external world, and does not arise in the mind out of pure thought. There must have been things which had shape and whose shapes were compared before anyone could arrive at the idea of figure. Pure mathematics deals with the space forms and quantity relations of the real world--that is, with material which is very real indeed. The fact that this material appears in an extremely abstract form can only superficially conceal its origin from the external world."

Geometry and arithmetic and their more abstract derivations, algebra, calculus and set theory, have their origins in the social needs of man--to count objects, to measure distances and the area of land, to calculate angles in building, etc.

This also explains another great "mystery" posed by Davies. Why is mathematics so effective? Why should we be able to apply its abstract methods to the world at all, he asks.

"The fact that 'mathematics works' when applied to the physical world--and works so stunningly well--demands explanation, for it is not clear we have any absolute right to expect that the world should be well described by mathematics."

The answer lies in the fact that mathematics is not the product of a mysterious Mindscape but has its origins in man's activity in the material world. Counting and measuring give rise to number and figure and by a process of generalisation and abstraction to arithmetic, algebra, geometry and to more abstract areas of mathematics. Having been derived from the physical world, it is no accident that mathematics can be reapplied to explain new phenomena.

In the 19th century, for instance, new forms of geometry were developed. The Euclidean geometry of the ancient Greeks dealt with the straight lines, shapes and solids of three dimensional space.

Yet Euclidean geometry contained one basic assumption--the parallel axiom--which had troubled mathematicians for centuries. The axiom states that if one draws a straight line and a point on a flat piece of paper then there exists only one line that can be drawn through the point parallel to the first line.

Mathematicians began to explore what would take place if the axiom was changed. What happened if there were no parallel lines or many parallel lines or even an infinite number of parallel lines through the one point? Many different non-Euclidean geometries were developed which superficially appeared to bear no relation to the physical world.

Yet, at the beginning of the 20th century, Albert Einstein discovered that the force of gravity could be described in terms of the curvature of space. In developing his general theory of relativity, he was able to use a generalised form of non-Euclidean geometry developed by Georg Riemann in the previous century.

By exploring, in the abstract, ideas of space different from those of Euclid, Riemann and others had unwittingly anticipated the discoveries later made in physics by Einstein.

Davies' book is a rather jumbled accumulation of such answered "mysteries," all of them designed to soften the reader up for his religious conclusions. If the laws of physics are "out there," then who drew them up? If one likens the universe to a gigantic computer then who wrote the software?. And so on and so on.

But the very way the questions are posed provides Davies with the answer he is seeking to "prove". To ask who wrote the "cosmic software" assumes there must a God somewhere "out there" diligently doing his sums and drawing up the physical laws necessary to make the universe work. Furthermore, this cosmic designer has so cleverly calculated these laws so as to allow for the evolution of an intelligent life form which can appreciate this fine handiwork.

The idea is hardly new. First year university students learning the elements of philosophy will immediately recognise it as the teleological argument for the existence of God. Its chequered history, even Davies acknowledges.

In the 13th century, Thomas Aquinas argued that moving bodies act as if guided towards a definite end or goal, and therefore require God to guide them. Newtonian physics, however, demonstrated that no such divine intervention was necessary--motion could be adequately explained in terms of inertia and forces.

Similarly as biological sciences began to develop, a number of theologians such as the 18th century cleric William Paley seized on the complex relations between species and the intricacy of physiological structures as "proof" for the existence of a grand designer.

But as Davies acknowledges with regret: "Alas we all know about the speedy demise of this argument. Darwin's theory of evolution demonstrated decisively that complex organisation efficiently adapted to the environment could arise as a result of random mutations and natural selection. No designer is needed to produce an eye or a wing. Such organs appear as a result of perfectly ordinary natural processes."

So Davies is forced to turn to cosmology for fresh "proof" of the activities of a cosmic designer. He points out, for instance, that carbon, an element basic to life on earth, is only formed as the result of the simultaneous high speed collision between the nuclei of three helium atoms.

How could such a rare event take place in the course of the evolution of universe? Such collisions between helium nuclei are possible but only take place at certain well-defined energies or resonances. Scientists have discovered one such resonance in large stars, without which, there would be no carbon and no life on earth. According to Davies, such "lucky coincidences" are evidence of the grand design of a designer God.

Davies is grasping at straws. Even if physics is unable, at present, to provide an explanation for the existence of such energies in large stars, there is no reason to presuppose that the universe was pre-programmed by God to give rise to intelligent life.

But developments in science may begin to explain why the laws of physics and various physical constants are the way they are in a more fundamental manner.

A number of theoretical physicists are working towards a theory which unifies the four basic forces known to science--gravity, electromagnetism and the weak and strong nuclear forces.

In 1967, Steven Weinberg and, independently, Abdus Salam found a way of building an elegant theory which combined the electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces showing that they were simply two aspects of the one "electroweak" force.

The theory of the electroweak force has been confirmed experimentally. Its prediction of two new sub-atomic particles, known as the W and Z particles, was confirmed in the 1980s at the CERN research facility in Europe.

In other words, the electroweak theory begins to provide a coherent materialist explanation of the nature of these two forces and of several sub-atomic particles. A unified theory combining all four forces may furnish an even more complete picture.

If that were the case, then Davies' speculations about the need for a God to design the laws of physics would appear as ridiculous as the biological examples of Paley did after Darwin explained natural evolution.

Current scientific investigations have led Weinberg, Hawking and others to believe such a unified theory is achievable.

Not surprisingly, Davies dismisses the possibility of a unified theory outright. He devotes a considerable portion of his book to a series of topics--ranging from Gödel's theorem in mathematical logic to computer simulation and cellular automata--all designed to "prove" that such a theory is impossible.

It is not necessary to subject the reader to a blow by blow account of these mathematical complexities. It suffices to say that all of this mathematical machinery is mustered to crack a flea.

Gödel's theorem simply implies that such a unified theory of physical laws would not be final or complete. New problems would inevitably be raised. Given the history of science, such a conclusion is hardly surprising--Newton's laws of motion were found to work only within certain limits and were superceded by quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity, which in turn may be incorporated into a new unified field theory.

Even without the benefit of the more recent developments in mathematical logic, Engels in Anti-Düring put his finger on the source of the problem very well. It lies, he explained, in the contradiction between the character of human thought, necessarily conceived as absolute, and its reality in individual human beings, all of whom think only limitedly.

"This is a contradiction which can be resolved only in the course of infinite progress, in what is--at least practically for us--an endless succession of generations of mankind. In this sense human thought is just as much sovereign as not sovereign, and its capacity for knowledge just as much unlimited as limited. It is sovereign and unlimited in its disposition, its vocation, its possibilities and its historical ultimate goal; it is not sovereign and it is limited in its individual realisation and in reality at any particular moment."

Such a striving towards a more and more comprehensive understanding of the physical universe in all its complexity is what has inspired generations of scientists.

Instead Davies proposes a retreat into superstition. For his efforts, he is feted by the bourgeoisie and its media. His religious speculation is considered to be a legitimate part of "scientific debate".

Davies holds a senior position in mathematical physics at Adelaide University. His long line of books in the style of "popular science" have all been published without difficulty. He appears regularly on TV and radio and his articles are printed in magazines such as New Scientist. When The Mind of God first appeared, large excerpts were reproduced in Murdoch's the Australian without any critical comment.

The promotion of Davies and others like him demonstrates that deepseated class interests are at stake.

At the end of the 20th century, great strides have been made not only in understanding but also in harnessing the forces of nature. What would have appeared to be pure science fiction 100 years ago--cars, computers, aeroplanes and television--are a commonplace today.

So what is the social need being fulfilled by the promotion of Davies' mystification of science? The answer lies in the glaring contradiction between the astonishing advances in science and technology and the very backward conditions of social life for hundreds of millions of people around the world.

Mankind has been able to understand the evolution of the universe from the first few microseconds after the big bang, unravel the intricacies of atomic structure and dispatch space probes to the planets and beyond. Yet famine and wars claim the lives of millions, bubonic plague--the disease of the Dark Ages--has re-emerged and poverty, illiteracy and unemployment are on the rise.

If the forces of nature in all their complexity are comprehensible, then why cannot man understand the law-governed processes of society and plan the use of the productive forces he has created to abolish destitution and want? Such is the question which impresses itself with urgency on masses of people.

But to strip away the mystification surrounding the operation of economic forces under capitalism poses great dangers for the ruling class. Once struggling humanity understands that the real source of its misery lies in the anarchy of the profit system and the outmoded division of the world into nation states, then the solution also becomes plain--the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement by a world planned socialist economy.

Unable to offer any progressive answer to the social crisis confronting mankind, the professional apologists for capitalist today increasingly deny the very possibility that the world is comprehensible and can be re-ordered on a rational basis.

Science, in all its forms, is under sustained attack and in its place, religion, superstition and mysticism--the breeding grounds for political reaction--are being promoted by the bourgeoisie. Davies and The Mind of God are more grist for the mill.