Directory of Lost Causes

Recently there has been something of a trend in certain sections of the media - not particularly high profile - to talk about the convergence of science and religion, or science and mysticism. Perhaps one of the earliest examples of this, and a paradigmatic title, to boot, is The Tao of Physics. More recent examples of the same phenomenon include The Field and a documentary with the rather naff title of What the Bleep Do We Know? (If they wanted to use a naughty word why didn't they just go ahead and use it?) Now, let me lay my cards clearly upon the table and say, I do not like science. I have never liked science. I just don't like it. Perhaps it's the stereotypical Romantic in me, but I have never got past the stereotypical meglomaniac with a test-tube image of science. Well, perhaps that's doing both me and science an injustice. Actually, I'm a little more thoughtful on the subject than that. However, I parted company with science at an early age. When I was thirteen or thereabouts, I recall, I got the highest marks in my class for physics, and the teacher actually spoke to me privately to ask me to take the class as one of my options, since so few people took physics. Looking back now, I feel rather sorry for him and almost wish I had taken physics. What actually happened was that I hated science so much that I managed to get an unusual arrangement for myself, not generally allowed, and after options I took no science classes whatsoever.

Since that time my interest in science has grown a little, partly because I'm just a very curious person (oi, you're making up you're own jokes there, as Frankie Howerd would say) and I want to know everything. I also have a sense that I have neglected science, and I want to catch up. So, I was naturally quite interested in this whole 'science meets mysticism' phenomenon. There also seemed to be something pleasingly utopian about it - the mystics and scientists all holding hands and building a peaceful world together. That's still a pleasing idea to me. However, in my admittedly desultory attempts to catch up on my science, I have found some of my prejudices being confirmed in as much as, after plunging back in with an open mind, I still come out hating certain fundamental aspects of the scientific world. This has also made me uneasy about the whole 'science meets mysticism' dream, too, and a while back I expressed my misgivings in this blog entry.



To explain in brief, my misgivings go a little like this: I hear some people saying that modern science, particularly quantum mechanics, is 'saying the same thing' as mystics such as Lao Tze were saying before the birth of Christ. However, the people who say this, it seems to me, tend not to be scientists. In my experience, people with a very scientific background look on the extrapolations that many people have made of quantum mechanics - extrapolations, for instance, to do with a holographic universe in which all information is stored indestructibly as if in 'the mind of God' - as pure philosophy, and not science at all. I become a little uneasier when I reflect that I know very little about science. If I have any kind of mystical beliefs about the world (actually, I have inclinations rather than beliefs) then I would rather not base them on something that I fundamentally don't understand just because I think it will lend my ideas some kind of authority by doing so. I find, in fact, that I am not interested in authority, that I do not want it, that I am even suspicious of authority as it exists, for instance, in phrases such as 'scientific fact'. I think the scientific response to any claims I might make that science supports my beliefs (or inclinations) about the dreamlike nature of reality etcetera would be, in words of greater or lesser politeness, "What the fuck do you know?" You see, I'm not a scientist. Let's forget that nice, utopian alliance. Let's not hold hands.

This brings me to an e-mail that I sent to New Scientist magazine this morning. I was having my breakfast of Weetabix and Bran Flakes when I noticed a still from the film What the Bleep Do We Know? Was I going to get some offical scientific stance on the validity of this 'science and mysticism converge'-type film? I was eager to find out, and I rather suspected that the film would be trashed; ("We'll have no mysticism round here, thank you very much!") I was not wrong. Here is the e-mail I wrote, which should explain what I found:

Dear New Scientist,
I read Marcus Chown's review of Quantum Enigma (19 August, p.47) with interest, partly because of a general desire to learn more on the subject of quantum theory, and partly because of a specific curiosity as to what would be said in the pages of New Scientist about the film What the Bleep Do We Know? Marcus Chown tells us that the film is "one of the most scandalously bad misrepresentations of physics in years", and this certainly piqued my curiosity. However, I soon discovered that Mr Chown was indulging in misrepresentation of his own. First of all, he states that "the main character successfully uses this mind-over-matter technique to thin her thighs". This categorically does not happen in the film, and I rather wonder at Mr Chown's motives for making such a claim. Perhaps it was simple inattention, for which theory there is further evidence. He goes on to say, "[t]he irony here is that the true world revealed by quantum theory ... is far wilder than anything in the movie. It is a place where an atom can be in two places at once".

This was a fact that was, actually, dealt with in some detail in the film. It cannot be "far wilder than anything in the movie", because it was in it. I realise that these remarks were part of a review for a book, and the article itself was not about the film, but, apart from getting his facts right, could Marcus Chown not, perhaps, have enlightened us as to precisely why the film was such a terrible misrepresentation of physics? I, for one, would have been interested to find out. Instead, he makes that claim without following up in any substantial way - only with two slight statements about the film that are actually false.

Was there any need to mention the film at all, or did Mr Chown wish to mention it just in order to dismiss it in some vague manner? I am still interested to know why the film is misleading about physics, and Mr Chown's article has left me none the wiser.



Well, this is rather depressing, isn't it? It would be much better, I think, if the 'peace process' went ahead in the way that those people who made the scandalously bad misrepresentation of physics seem to desire. Many of them, if the credits are to be believed, are prominent scientists themselves. Are these people imposters? Are they renegades? How is it that they are managing to misrepresent their own science so badly? This is not a rhetorical question, I really want to know what's going on here.

To be fair, there are even the very occasional nods in a magazine like New Scientist to the old science-meets-mysticism chestnut, such as an article by the Dalai Lama on why Buddhism resembles quantum mechanics, and, whether it is, in some 'factual' sense, 'right' or 'wrong', I applaud such openness.

What I don't applaud is the monopolisation of authority, and if I were to give an example of why I still, so very often, feel that I hate science, I would have to go no further than the same issue of New Scientist mentioned above. There’s an article entitled ‘All About Me’ and the opening blurb runs thus:

If you are looking for deeper self-knowledge, forget introspection and put your faith in science. Not only will it tell you about your health, it can also reveal secrets about your ancestry, personality, sexuality, attitudes, perceptions and intelligence.

"Don't think for yourself," it tells us, "Let science do the thinking for you. After all, you're not a scientist. What the fuck do you know?"

To which I reply, "I might ask you the same question."

Not today, thank you. Sell your genetic Bibles somewhere else. I think I'll stick with the introspection.