Filling The Gaps

Crammed into this past week I was lucky enough to be in several situations that had me contemplating the greatest fragility and complexity of life from a variety of viewpoints. The first was a debate at Intelligence Squared with the topic being “Science Refutes God” (see it here). Truthfully after the greatest debater of our time Christopher Hitchens passed away, this topic is one that I have stopped watching, as no one could do it better. Lawrence Krauss and Michael Shermer being on the pro-side though did convince me that it would be an entertaining evening, which it was. And from the polling the atheists won, which wasn't very surprising to me. Sitting next to me a friend said in regards to the religious side arguing for supernatural interference, and the holy word of the ancient Hebrews, “is this really 2012?”, to which I shrugged. It did seem like a debate that David Hume or Spinoza would have had with some religious leaders in another century. Still the main point remains, and was brought home through a very astute question to both sides: “What would make you change your position on this topic?” The Christians said basically nothing could. It was a matter of faith. Krauss on the other hand made the point that science follows the evidence, and our views as scientists are always changing. If, he said, he walked out of the debate and the stars spelled “you are wrong” in Aramaic, he would indeed be moved by this. The religious side used a very old tactic of explaining that many, in fact most, people have spiritual experiences, as a sort of proof that a consensus makes a truth. This is a bizarre assertion in light of our understanding of science, as people have illusions, old genetic predispositions, hallucinations and many other misleading feelings. Shermer points all of this out nicely. The argument is also intertwined in people’s minds with a moral one, where God is needed for ethics. I find this absurd, as my morals and ethics are strong I think, and those of most of my friends are, and those of secular societies (eg Sweden) are as well. So God really isn't needed to keep us from being bad. Even if the concept of God did make us more moral, it becomes immoral to lie about scientific evidence in order to achieve this. Deception in the name of civility neither works for long, nor is intellectually or ethically acceptable.

Something I think may be newer came up recently as well. It is newer to me at least, as I am only a casual observer of the very disciplined and complicated field of philosophy. In October a group of scientists and philosophers all got together to discuss the topic of “Moving Naturalism Forward.” I was not invited, as the group was especially esteemed, and I am not especially esteemed and would have not contributed anything useful.  Physicist Sean Carroll organized it, and wasn't the only scientist present. Janna Levin, Richard Dawkins, Simon DeDeo, Jerry Coyne, Noble laureate Steven Weinberg and others were there as well. Though the entire thing is 15 hours long, and I haven’t watched all that much of it yet, the sections I did watch seemed especially philosophy focused. This is not surprising as the topics were big ones in the history and present work of philosophy including free-will, morality and meaning. While there were many brilliant philosophical arguments made (I am a big fan of some in the room, especially Rebecca Goldstein), two things surprised me. First was that it seemed decided that scientists need philosophers for some big questions. That may be true, but in a way it is a shame, as scientists should be able to ask their own philosophical questions. This was true of Einstein, Newton, Darwin and just about every other famous scientist we can think of. The philosophers even invoked those names as examples of scientists doing good philosophy, but pointed out that many scientists do not, which is fair enough. Sean Carroll said that he would like philosophers to help understand the implications of Quantum Mechanics, and wishes that they would have done so earlier. That was generous of him I thought, and while I get his point that a new paradigm needs some deep probing, there is no topic more misunderstood by philosophers (at least many) than Quantum Mechanics, so I would in a way prefer that Sean, Janna and the rest of us who use QM, also seek meaning rather than waiting for the philosophical community to weigh in. Actually I think we do, even if that meaning is confined within a specific area of research.

The more upsetting point of these conversations was regarding scientific and philosophical ethical responsibility. Even many of the scientists were swayed by the arguments of Daniel Dennett and others about Free-Will.  I have exhausted the topic in this blog before, so I won’t again, other than to say that as a pure materialist I find that since the rules of everything in the universe are governed by physical reality, so too should humans, including the issue of free-will.  Actually most of the attendees agreed to some extent, though the philosophical argument is nuanced and confusing to a layman of philosophy such as me. The troubling thing was not the ideas of determinism or choice, but that it seemed to me that the agreement was that society could not handle the absence of free –will, whether it was scientifically accurate or not. Dennett and others sited some experiments where people lose a sense of right and wrong when they feel that they have no choice. Coyne disputed these studies, saying that over the long term he would imagine that there is not this effect. Still, there was near consensus that because we do at least feel we have choice, it is better to ignore, or at least put off the scientific possibility that we don’t. This sounds to me a lot like the God argument regarding morals. The suggestion is that morals don’t fall away when we abandon God for a scientific view of the universe based on reason, logic and experiment, but they do if we abandon free-will.  I find this insulting to humanity, and an underestimation in the power of knowledge.

The debate and watching this summit were the bookends of my week- long journey into the understanding of life. In the middle was something very different, and actually had nothing to do with materialism and logic, but rather just about the joy of being alive. It was a Poets House and American Museum of Natural History event which was a conversation between one of my favorite naturalists E.O. Wilson (see a blog I wrote about him here) and the poet Robert Hass, who I had the pleasure of getting to hear and read for the first time, despite his many years of literary fame and success. I immediately wanted to write a blog about the night, but I thought better of it, and instead wrote poetry (some of my poems here. The are admittedly not Hass quality). It seemed that abstraction and metaphor expressed my thoughts better than I could with normal description.

There is one idea that brings this all together for me. It is the title of one of the poems I wrote, and the title of this blog. It is “filling the gaps”. The God of The Gaps is an old expression which is still relevant in many ways. Humans invoke god to fill in the gaps in our scientific knowledge. For some these are also filled by philosophy. For others of us we look to science to fill as many as it possibly can with the understanding that it will certainly fail to fill them all. Rather than creating myths, or even from formalized speculation in the way of logical deductions made by philosophy, I fill these gaps by observing and creating art. Poetry, music, painting and sculpture don’t give concrete answers, but they provide a way to inspire contemplation, learn about ourselves, and visualize aspects of the universe that is still incomprehensible.  I will still read philosophy because it is so challenging and can be enlightening, and I will still do science. What I can’t forget though is what fills those gaps, which is humanities ability to create pictures of truth that we cannot explain any other way.

To Love in Wilson's World

Many years ago a mentor and friend told me something long before I had children. She was already a grandmother. She told me that unconditional love is largely an illusion. She stressed that there were two major exceptions which were unidirectional. That is we love our children and our grandchildren unconditionally, and no one else. She said this in a non-selfish, but rather self-aware moment just after her mother had passed away. She had a realization that no one would ever love her unconditionally again. At the time I had no idea if she were correct. I loved my parents and grandparents after all. She assured me that love for a parent is not unconditional as love for a child is. Now many years later I do understand her point, as the depth of sacrifice I would make for my children is so unquestionable that it is unique, despite all of the many loves in my life.

I have had the pleasure of having several incredible conversations with the great octogenarian biologist E.O. Wilson. Perhaps the last of a certain kind of field naturalist, Wilson has been respected in his role as Harvard Professor, scientist and popularizer. And as much as any of this, he is such a nice guy. This is why those of us who are not biologists were surprised this last year by the complete attack of Wilson over a paper he co-published with two Harvard mathematicians challenging a fixture in modern biology that he himself had helped to form. That is something known as Kin Selection. If you are interested in understanding the theory in any profound way look into it from a biologist not applied physicists like myself, but I think I get the very basics of the concept. The idea is that altruism is apparent in many, or perhaps most creatures. What Wilson's students and he had conjectured more than 40 years ago, and has become the accepted view popularized by the Richard Dawkins book “The Selfish Gene” in 1979 is that self-sacrifice is the way in which natural selection works to spread the genes of the family. Therefore altruism is not really selfless, or doesn’t really exist in the way we think of it. Instead an animal may alert a kin to danger by sacrificing himself.  Darwin himself never came to this conclusion, instead claiming that it was a problem that was too complicated to fit into the theory. Wilson, Dawkins and others felt that understanding of genetics allowed them to realize what had eluded Darwin. 

So until last year all of this was accepted. That is until Wilson and the Mathematicians challenged this with a new theory of group selection. It was published in Nature, and immediately attacked by Dawkins and most of the biology community.  The idea is that altruism does actually exist outside of kin relations. Sacrifice for a group, in order to strengthen the group rather than an individual family line was occurring. The mathematicians used models to identify this, something that biologists are not as used to as we are in physics.  The original idea of group selection was articulated by the Maynard Smith who described what he called the "Haystack Model" which indeed considers statistical ramifications of altruism.  This can be visualized by picturing a group of animals that grow up together in a haystack. They mix randomly in the haystack as well as emerge from the original haystack to form groups in new haystacks. From this, traits that benefit the group may result in  altruistic acts at the sacrifice of the individual. In essence Wilson is saying that the haystack model more resembles the norm than traditional Kin Selection.

In June Wilson addressed a group at the World Science Festival to discuss the requirement to change views with evidence. His bravery is profound, as shaking up the world of evolutionary biology at 81 is not a completely pleasant affair. I spoke to him about this and he had the most rational response I have ever heard. I am paraphrasing but he basically told me that he would be failing as a scientist if he didn’t report this, because this is what he and his colleagues were observing in nature. That is what made him love nature and science. It is also what makes me love him. What he said officially is this “I think that’d be a pretty poor scientist, who couldn’t reverse his view from new evidence.”

I couldn’t figure out why there was such anger about his paper. There are debates and disagreements all of the time. This is good and important for progress in science. But this wasn’t like Wilson had claimed that evolution was not occurring. It was basically a revision to something that was observed but still not confirmed in a way that I would consider definitive. I have no idea who is right about this issue, but I was shocked by the response. Then I remembered the conversation with my friend about unconditional love, and also another experience I had with E.O Wilson. I was taking my 6 year old daughter to California for a family reunion, and by great luck we were sitting across the row from Wilson and his friend. (see picture above;)) Wilson is most famous for his work with ants, and I told my daughter Juliette this, and the four of us talked ants. It was incredible that my little girl was discussing ants with the world’s foremost ant expert. What I loved most though was not Wilson as terrific as he was. I loved Juliette. I was so happy for her. I was in love with her, as she was gaining a memorable experience. Looking back I realized that I loved Juliette more than anyone in the world. I realized that I loved her and her alone unconditionally. I would sacrifice my life for her. Was this Kin Selection? Was I genetically programmed to carrying on my genes by protecting her, and caring more for her than anyone else? I have a son now too and I feel the same for him. Perhaps this is why Dawkins and the rest take Wilson's challenge to Kin Selection as such a profound and threatening concept to them. Are they afraid that their own love of family, and the love that their parents gave them is being reduced?  This may not be it at all, but I could understand how that could happen.

With all of this said, WiIson, myself, Dawkins and all of the others are scientists. Emotion is the magician of science, always making things feel certain even when they are unresolved. Wilson has more emotion than most, and a personal tie to Kin Selection but instead he collaborated with mathematicians to see if Kin Selection was an illusion. What he claims to have found, altruism in group selection, may or may not be correct, but it is the most admirable and hardest thing for person in science to do. By doing this Wilson has elevated science, and given us all reason to contemplate if indeed we can love and be loved by more than just our ancestors.