Remarkable

It’s a remarkable fact (to put it mildly) that there are a number (six, according to Sir Martin Rees in Just Six Numbers) of cosmic constants whose value appears to be undetermined by any known physical law, yet were they different – even slightly – we wouldn’t be here (and neither might the planets, stars and galaxies). For example, the value of Є is 0.007. Є defines how firmly atomic nuclei bind together, and thus determines how much of the periodic table can exist. If it were 0.006 or 0.008, I wouldn’t be writing this sentence – I wouldn’t be. The most amazing of these is the value of N, the ratio of the force of gravity to the electromagnetic force - 10 to the power 36 . This is huge, but were it a little less, gravity would be overwhelming, preventing the formation of everything we know and love – including ourselves.

It’s a Remarkable Fact that evolution produced even mammals, let alone homo sapiens. Our twig in the Tree of Life depends the myriad offshoots from which it sprang, not to mention freaks accidents in the geologic past. For example, dinosaurs would almost certainly still be roaming the planet, preventing the evolution of the vertebrate lineage from which primates sprung, had not a meteorite (of a certain size) happened to have banged into the earth some 65 million years ago. Stephen Jay Gould famously argued (in Wonderful Life) that were the “tape of life” to be replayed, homo would almost certainly not be one of its tunes.

How do we explain Remarkable Facts? In other words, what do we have to say about the fact that were it not for them, we would not be here, and were it not for most of them, no life would be possible anywhere? We could invoke the Anthropic Principle, which states something like: since the RFs need to be how they are for us to have been able to discover that there are RFs, and we have discovered them, then the RFs are in fact unremarkable. A cop out, right? So what’s the cop in? An important question in part because of its religious possibilities, and in part because there's one more Remarkable Fact to remark on...

Moronic

I am moronic - a lover of oxymora (official plural of oxymoron, according to Webster), those cuddly conjunctions of contradictions. I categorize them under a number headings: firstly the straight opposites, like science fiction, or living dead, which are usually, well, pretty ugly! Then there are the digs - most famously military intelligence, but also country music, airline food, and most nouns paired with political (e.g. political leadership). Then there are those we use everyday without even realizing they are oxymoronic (also in Webster's): boneless ribs, books on tape, standard deviation, strangely familiar, recreate, and ill health. All these can be found on the website that claims the largest collection of oxymora, www.oxymoronlist.com. (Then there are the 3-way oxymora - I know of two: Holy Roman Empire (which was none of those things) and Permanent Guest Host (a title once given to Jay Leno when substituting for Johnny Carson).

The most interesting oxymora are those that are not obvious, but when pointed out, get you thinking. Try religious truth, for example. Surely, if something is true, then it's simply true - no adjective required! How about necessary evil - can there be such a thing (cf. holy war)? My favorite, because I thought of it and I have not seen anyone else point this out, is natural selection. The phrase is Darwin's, and I almost think he chose an oxymoron on purpose. "Selection" is a human activity, something that we do when we have a choice to make, something that's conscious. Nature cannot herself select anything, but She acts as if selecting, as if evolutionary changes were somehow chosen by Her. The phrase nicely emphasizes that Nature can do what would seem to be purposive, deliberate, what would seem to need intelligence, and design, simply by a "dumb" process. It's an awfully good phrase!

Revolation

As if providing a postscript to the previous entry (see below), The Week provided this blip under its weekly so-appropriate banner "Only in America":

"A Seattle school district has temporarily banned schools from screening Al Gore's global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth after complaints from parent Frosty [sic.!]Hardison, an advocate of creationism. "The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn't in the DVD". School officials say the ban will be lifted for any teacher who accompanies Gore's film with another film representing an 'opposing view'."

Where to start. Well let's not get into the obvious criticisms of "political correctness" this boob on the part of the school board represents, and simply ask what an opposing view to Gore's really is. I have seen the movie, and as much gloom and doom as it predicts, I do not recall Al predicting "the end times" (although it may well be for anyone who lives at around sea level). Al's argument is not about nor does it depend on evolutionary theory, but rather is based on straight measurements of temperature and other current physical events, such as the breaking up of ice sheets. You then extrapolate the data into the future and predict that it could lead to a warming effect that increases sea levels dangerously. There's no theory here, but there there are opposing views. Some think that the climate may be changing but humans could not possibly put enough CO2 into the atmosphere to make a measurable difference. Some think the climate isn't even changing. But both Al's view and his opposition are based on scientific data and differ only in how to interpret that data in the context of what we know about climate and weather. So what's Frosty's point? I can understand why people would want to counter Evolution with Creationism, but countering GM with Creationism makes about as much sense to me as countering Calculus with Creationism. Perhaps Frosty would like the math teachers to present an opposing view - like the social science teachers, they'll have a job understanding what it could be!

Science & Religion: a grand canyon?

According to the website of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (www.peer.org) the Grand Canyon National Park is not permitted to give an official estimate of the age of its principal feature, due to pressure from “Bush appointees”. “In order to avoid offending religious fundamentalists, our National Park Service is under orders to suspend its belief in geology,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. “It is disconcerting that the official position of a national park as to the geologic age of the Grand Canyon is ‘no comment.’” The fundamentalists in question are a branch of the Intelligent Design (ID) protagonists called “Young Earth Creationists” or YECs. YECs believe the canyon was created during Noah’s flood, less than 10,000 years ago.

Many books have been written recently debunking Intelligent Design in all its forms; one that demands attention is by Ken Miller, professor of biology at one of the top Ivy League schools in the nation, Brown University. Since Brown is in Providence, RI, it’s perhaps appropriate that Miller is also a devout Christian. Yet he spends 3 chapters of his book “Finding Darwin’s God” roundly debunking all comers from the ID dressing room. He, as much as anyone, knows that modern biology itself is predicated upon the theory of evolution by natural selection and that the arguments of the IDs and YECs are simply specious, a grasping at straws. So why do so many Christians (mainly) still cling to a “young earth” view (according to a recent survey, a view held by 40% of Coloradans!)? Miller’s view, argued convincingly, is that many – most – of the defenders of evolution think that evolution debunks religion, so you cannot have one without the other. Since Christians, Jews, Muslims tend to be a tenacious lot, they would rather keep the faith and jettison the science, even if that means grasping the specious straw. Oxford don Richard Dawkins is a perfect example. He has written a series of marvelous books enlightening the ignorant, such as myself, on the wonders of nature and its intelligence-less workings. But then he goes and spoils it all by publishing such books as “The God Delusion” and saying things like “whether there exists a God…is a scientific question. My answer is no.” (Time magazine, Nov 13 2006). Of course, if it’s a scientific question the answer is no, but seeing religion as scientific is to make the same error as the YECs. ID is pseudo-science in defense of religion, Dawkins is pseudo-religion in defense of science. No wonder we still have a grand canyon in this area!

So how does Miller resolve it? Watch this space

Agreement

My dear bride gave me a copy of a best seller called The Four Agreements “a practical guide to personal freedom”. She remembered someone talking to me about it at a party, and I apparently showed considerable interest (those neural connections have since subsided in my own brain). She meant well, of course, but it turns out to be a book of pure drivel. “Based on ancient Toltec wisdom…in the tradition of Casteneda” – well, the Toltecs are generally agreed to be part of Aztec mythology, as Casteneda recognized. First we have the gibberish sentences that I suppose are supposed to be spiritual enlightenment (literally):

“he heard his own voice say ‘I am made of light; I am made of stars’. He looked at the stars again and realized it is not the stars that create light, but rather light that creates the stars. ‘Everything is made of light’ he said…Then he realized…he was made of stars…”

“What you are seeing and hearing right now is nothing but a dream…You are dreaming with the brain awake.”

Then there’s the false:
“let’s understand what it really means to sin. A sin is anything that you do which goes against yourself…you go against yourself when you judge or blame yourself for anything”. We should run that one by the Pope.

Then there’s the nonsense (which I swear I am not making up):

“if I see you on the street and I say ‘Hey, you are so stupid’, without knowing you, it’s not about you; it’s about me. If you take it personally, then perhaps you believe you are stupid.” …in which case, yes, you’d actually be pretty stupid. And my personal favorite:

“Even if someone got a gun and shot you in the head, it was nothing personal”

Let’s agree this is utter garbage and instead try to forge a real philosophy, one that’s based on the wisdom of actual thinkers, some actual thought of our own, and perhaps even a little speculation. That’s what I’ll try to build up over time in these pages. It won’t be deep, probably, or spiritual or even uplifting. But if I end up writing the kind of Miguel Ruiz piffle that passes for “wisdom”, just shoot me – I won’t take it personally.

Bad News

I just got the latest Quality Paperback Book Club (QPBC) flyer. It contains the following depressing titles:

Attention Deficit Democracy by James Bovard. “The American system of government is collapsing thanks to ignorant citizens, lying politicians and a government leased neither by law nor Constitution”

Failed States, The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy by Noam Chomsky. “…exposes democracy’s hollow promise”.

The One Percent Doctrine by Ron Suskind. “How the…administration is more concerned with covering their butts than about fighting terrorism”.

State of Denial by Bob Woodward. “How and why the…administration became caught in a war so different from the one they expected”.

Politics Lost by Joe Klein. “…how politicians lost their spine”.

Running on Empty by Peter Peterson. “…investigation into America’s immense fiscal crisis”.

Jeez, what’s going on in this land of the free and brave? Either we’ve got some serious problems or too many cynics. I have a sneaking suspicion it’s the former.

Six Feet Under (part one)

Time to stick our toes in some philosophical waters, and on the occasion of Gerald Ford’s and Denver Bronco Darrent Williams’ demises, we turn our attention to the taboo subject of death. We know what happens to other people when they die – they are no more, their bodies perish leaving only their records and our memories of them. But what’s it like to die – what will happen when I die, we may each ask of ourselves. And there seem only 3 possibilities:

1. I am no more, my body will perish leaving behind…, etc. My stream of consciousness, my experiences all come to an end and that’s that. Life goes on, but only for others.

2. I start having “religious experiences”, depending perhaps on one’s religion or maybe even on which religion is correct. Perhaps I walk with God, enter purgatory, rise from the dead later this millennium or reincarnate into some other life, according to how the scoring went during this one.

3. Something else, we know not what (but maybe the fledgling science of consciousness will have some clues as it matures).

Well leave the latter two for a later time (death permitting). Think about 1. for a moment. The universe is born and chugs along for 14 billion years without so much as a how-do-you-do from me, and then suddenly I pop into existence. I last a few decades and pop out of existence, only to experience nothing more for at least another 14 billion years. Raises some questions, doesn’t it? Why at that moment, in that place, of those parents did I pop? Why at all? Do I really only get one chance at existence? What of the poor sods who pop out mere minutes after pooping in? That was a long time to wait for such a short show. Maybe 1. is right, but it’s rather glum and boring. Let’s just leave it there and go on to the other 2 possibilities…

Beatlemania

"If you really stopped to think about how vastly the Fabs' [Beatles'] body of work outshines anything being created today, you'd cry", whines Chris Willman, a music reviewer for Entertainment Weekly (who apparently hadn't stopped to think up to that point - 3 sentences before, he calls Lily Allen's (?) CD "the most exhilarating pop debut in years"!). In similar vein, BBC Music Magazine reader Patrick Briggs laments that "little of any value has been written since 1971. Compare this dearth with the rich repertoire from the first half of the 20th century...Elgar, Mahler...".
Research has confirmed the intuition that we are all especially receptive to music in adolescence and carry the music we hear then the rest of our lives. No wonder then that no one now compares with the Beatles, Stones, Britten, or Shostakovich. I'm guessing Chris and Patrick are well past their adolescent years; and I imagine the older generation in the Sixties were wondering where all the Glen Millers were, just as the codgers of Beethoven's time were bemoaning the lack of Mozarts and Haydns (throughout his life, Beethoven's most popular symphony was his first). So we should consult the adolescents - what are they listening to, that they will bemoan the lack of thirty years hence? Beyonce, Ludacris, Snoop Doggy Dog. Never heard or heard of them, right? Me neither, but I have heard Coldplay, Keane and Snow Patrol, all of whom have songs that I think can be put aside the Beatles' best and not sound too shabby. And if we bothered to listen, Beyonce and Snoop may have too! Classical is always more difficult to assess - apparently everyone's buying albums by divas ("divae"?) these days, but how about the symphonies of Corigliano or perhaps some John Adams (Shaker Loops anyone?). Not Elgar, for sure, but we are past our adolescence and so have to stretch our musical tolerance and try to listen to these newer works with teenage ears, rather than sobbing over the "classics" of yore.
OK I give up - I just listened to clips of Lily Allen on Amazon and my Thomas Ades CD never got past one play. Where's my copy of Enigma Variations...