It is time to face reality, California Institute of Technology theoretical physicist Sean Carroll says: There is just no such thing as God, or ghosts, or human souls that reside outside of the body. Everything in existence belongs to the natural world and is accessible to science, he argues. In his new book “The Big Picture: On the Origin of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself,” out this week from Dutton, Carroll describes a guiding philosophy along these lines that he calls poetic naturalism. It excludes a supernatural or spiritual realm but still allows plenty of room for life to have a purpose.
“I think we can bring ideas like meaning and morality into our discussions of the natural world,” Carroll says. “The ways that we talk about the universe are what make it meaningful.” He eloquently argues that point in his far-ranging book, which takes on the origins of consciousness, the likeliness of God based on a rigorous application of Bayesian probability statistics, and many other “big” questions that scientists are often loath to tackle.
Scientific American spoke with Carroll about his philosophy and how we can all take a closer look at just what we truly, deeply believe. [An edited transcript of the conversation follows.]
Naturalism is the viewpoint that everything arises from natural causes and that there is no supernatural realm. You coin the term “poetic naturalism” for your own particular brand of this guiding philosophy. Why the need for a new term? Naturalism has been certainly been around for a very long time, but as more people become naturalists and talk to each other, their disagreements within naturalism are interesting. I thought there was a judicious middle ground, which I call poetic, between “the world is just a bunch of particles,” and “science can be used to discover meaning and morality.”
To me the connotations of “poetic” are that there’s some human choice that comes into how we talk about the world. In particular, when it comes to questions of morality and meaning, the way we go about deciding what is right and wrong, and meaningful or not, is not the same as the way we discover what is true and false.
Just because we have no evidence of another realm of reality beyond the physical world, how can we conclude it doesn’t exist? It’s not a matter of certainty, ever. I would make the argument that if there were a supernatural element that played a role in our everyday life in some noticeable way, it’s very, very likely we would have noticed it. It just seems weird that this kind of thing would be so crucial and yet so difficult to notice in any controlled scientific way. I would make the case that it is sufficiently unlikely in a fair Bayesian accounting that we don’t need to spend any time thinking about it anymore. Five hundred years ago it would have been a possibility. I think these days we’re ready to move on.
All I can say at the end of the day is we should all be trying as hard as we can to guard against our individual cognitive biases, the things we want to be true. The existence of life after death, for example, I would love that to be true. My cognitive bias is in favor of that. And yet I don’t think it is true. The best we can do is try to be honest.
So do you think it’s impossible for a religious person to believe in poetic naturalism? Of course that depends on what you mean by religious. There’s actually a movement called religious naturalism. Religion involves a whole bunch of things—practices, casts of mind, morals, etc., so you can certainly imagine calling yourself religious, reading the Bible, going to church and just not believing in God. I suspect the number of people who do that is much larger than the number of people who admit to it.
The mistake comes when we try to pretend that it doesn’t matter what our view of the ontology of the world is. I think it does matter. But having made those decisions [about your worldview], there are many ways you can live a life that’s meaningful and socially relevant and familial. I think we have a misunderstanding of meaning because we relate it to something outside the natural world, when it doesn’t have to be that.
This argument for naturalism feels particularly timely, when politicians and many in society are increasingly hostile to science and evidence-based thinking. How receptive to the approach of naturalism do you think most people are? I think that scientists have a sort of professional level of understanding of the universe, and scientists are overwhelmingly naturalists. Whereas people on the street, or in Washington, D.C., still don’t admit to this. There aren’t a lot of naturalists in Congress. The way we talk about these things in the public sphere has not caught up with the way we understand the universe as it really is.
As a physicist, what inspired you to write a book essentially on philosophy? It evolved over a very long time. I’ve always been interested in not only physics directly, but also the wider consequences. I was a philosophy minor as an undergraduate. I always have thought that doing physics was part of a larger intellectual project of trying to understand the whole world in different ways.
What do you hope readers take away from this book? I think there’s a bunch of people who still, because they just haven’t thought about it that much, have the informal idea that science can explain what happens when two atoms bump into each other, but it can’t explain how the universe started or how life began. I hope people get the idea that we’re well on our way to answering those questions. There’s no obstacle in our way that says we’re just not going to be able to.
Universe is Finite, "Soccer Ball"-Shaped, Study Hints
Sean Markey National Geographic News
October 8, 2003
What is the shape of the universe? The question has tantalized humankind since civilization first gazed toward the heavens.
Theories about whether space is finite or infinite, flat or curved have blazed in the firmament of scientific discourse with varying intensity over time, burning brighter or fading in the face of new data and competing ideas.
Now a new study of astronomical data only recently available hints at a possible answer: The universe is finite and bears a rough resemblance to a soccer ball or, more accurately, a dodecahedron, a 12-sided volume bounded by pentagons.
If proven by further evidence and scrutiny, the model would represent a major discovery about the nature of the cosmos.
"What makes it exciting now is it's not a matter of idle speculation," said Jeffrey Weeks, a freelance mathematician in Canton, New York, and study co-author. "There's real data to look at and the possibility of getting a definite answer."
Weeks, recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship or so-called "genius award," arrived at the model with a team of French cosmologists while studying cosmic background radiation observed by NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP).
With a microwave antenna pointed into deep space and shielded from local interference emanating from the sun, Earth, and moon, the spacecraft has recorded the clearest soundtrack to date of the microwave radiation echo of the Big Bang, the event most scientists believe created the universe.
Cosmic Afterglow
Like the visible light of distant stars and galaxies, cosmic background radiation allows scientists to peer into the past to the time when the universe was in its infancy. Density fluctuations in this radiation can also tell scientists much about the physical nature of space.
NASA released the first WMAP cosmic background radiation data, collected since October 2001, in February.
Combing through those observations, Weeks and his colleagues found that the most telling information supplied by WMAP was, in fact, the resounding echo of what was missing. Density fluctuations on the largest scale were far weaker than expected, a gap Weeks and colleagues say is best explained by a finite universe.
To illustrate the concept, Weeks points to the analogy of an ocean and a bathtub. While the ocean (an infinite universe) can support 40-foot-long waves, a bathtub (the finite universe) is simply too small. The bathtub cannot support waves longer than the length of the tub itself.
Moreover, observations of the cosmic background radiation enabled Weeks and his colleagues to posit possible shapes for the universe to explain its fluctuating density. The researchers could then test their models through mathematical proofs against the microwave data gathered by the WMAP satellite.
Among cosmologists, three broad categories vie as the most likely shapes to fit the cosmos: flat, negatively curved (saddle-shaped), and positively curved (spherical) space.
But Weeks said the discovery of dark energy in 1998, a little-understood force found in the vacuum of space, make models for negatively curved space more difficult to reconcile with scientific observations. Meanwhile the shape of flat universe models, Weeks said, imperfectly fit the mathematical proofs derived from WMAP cosmic background radiation recordings.
Think Positive
So Weeks said he started with the simplest model of a finite space, a torus.
(To picture a torus, roll up the sides of a piece of paper to create a cylinder. Starting over, roll the paper top to bottom to create a new cylinder. Now imagine rolling both ends simultaneously, but instead of using paper—two-dimensional space—start with the rectangular space of your office or living room—three dimensional space.)
"When you actually go and do the computation and you say, what sort of microwave sky do you expect to see in a torus universe, it doesn't match very well," said Weeks.
"But the good news then is that…if you start with a dodecahedral block of space and again hook up on the sides, then it matches quite well."
In other words, taking the density fluctuations in cosmic background radiation recorded by WMAP, the math adds up if the universe is finite and shaped like a dodecahedron.
Weeks cautions that his team's model of a finite, dodecahedral-shaped universe, while promising, is hardly a proven theory. "There's more work to be done, he said. "It could be affirmed, or it could be refuted."
A description of their research appears tomorrow in the science journal Nature.
In an accompanying perspective article, George F. R. Ellis, a mathematician at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, writes that the researchers' cosmic map "accounts for the WMAP data better than do standard models," he wrote.
"Can this proposal be confirmed? Yes indeed," Ellis wrote, noting that future observations from WMAP's successor, a European satellite to be launched in 2007 even more accurate than its NASA counterpart, will provide key observations on cosmic background radiation that could confirm or disprove Weeks' theory.
Ellis concluded: "The WMAP data, as interpreted by [Weeks and colleagues], suggest that we might indeed live in such a small closed universe."
I can vividly remember where I was on March 8, 1971. I spent most of that night in my mother’s bedroom in Las Cruces, New Mexico, listening to the static-filled reception from an old radio that was giving round by round updates of Muhammad Ali’s epic battle with Joe Frazier at Madison Square Garden.
I was 10 years old, and wanted badly for Ali to win. I can’t recall exactly why I wanted to him win. I don’t remember much of anything about Ali prior to that night other than he used to be called Cassius Clay and he had been banned from boxing for refusing induction into the Vietnam War. I didn’t know if that was noble or an act of treason. But I knew it was different because even at 10 years old you feared words like “war” and “draft.”
I grew up an only child without a father and though my uncle next door and my youth coaches were my role models, I was passionate about my sports heroes: Ali, Dr. J, the Oakland Raiders. What captivated me about Ali were not his political views, but his charisma, his defiance, his confidence and his talent. Through my young eyes, I saw not just style but substance. He was a graceful gazelle and a gallant gladiator. He said black was beautiful. That’s why I wanted him to beat Frazier.
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Of course, Ali didn’t win that epic brawl, which still stands as the barometer for which all boxing events are judged. But it was just one highlight in an incomparable life whose impact will be felt and debated for years after his death we now mourn.
Ali, who died Friday at age 74, called himself the “Greatest Of All Time,” a moniker, which many perceive was limited to his exploits in the ring. But Ali was the Greatest not only for what he did inside of the ring, but for the peace and inclusion he preached after denouncing the militant views of the Nation of Islam.
We mourn Ali today because no athlete of his generation has used his athletic platform to stir the social consciousness of America while entertaining us as either villain or hero. Jack Johnson gave black America its first black sports hero; Joe Louis was a heavyweight icon. Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier; but Ali’s influence crossed racial and ethnic barriers, speaking out in an era when it would have been easier to remain silent.
For me, the Frazier fight was just the beginning of the journey with Ali, his bouts against Ken Norton, Earnie Shavers, George Foreman and two more with Frazier all serving as bookmarks in my own life. Little did I know in 1971 that we’d meet face to face several times, the first coming when we stood side-by-side at urinals in a restroom at the St. Louis Airport. At the time, a handshake didn’t seem appropriate. So I smiled and nodded and he did the same.
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Muhammad Ali stands over Sonny Liston during their bout in Maine. Ali won the fight with a first round knock-out to claim the heavyweight champion title.
Photo: Getty Images
Years later, we crossed paths in New York once at a press reception and then later during a promotional appearance in front of group of teenagers with his daughter Laila Ali.
“Sometimes I wonder if they really are aware of what he stood for and why he is so great,” she said that day. “Sometimes kids, if somebody is rich and famous, they automatically get excited. But do they really know what Muhammad Ali stands for?”
“I don’t think there’s ever going to be another athlete like Muhammad Ali.” she added. “I don’t care if it’s 1,000 or 2,000 years from now. Even if someone comes along that’s close to him, it’s still not going to be like him cause he was the first.”
Youngsters today should know Ali was a symbol hope, particularly for black Americans in the 1960s when racial injustice was rampant. By proclaiming himself “pretty,” he was saying “black is beautiful,” at a time when black Americans needed to hear and feel that way.
They should know he was a symbol for those opposing the Vietnam War, a hero in history though when he first made his stand he was ridiculed more than praised. Traitor, draft dodger and anti-American were what most people called him when he first refused to join the Army, declaring, “I ain’t got no quarrel with them VietCong.”
It was a bold statement that would cost him his heavyweight title and three of his best years as a fighter. But it would ultimately strengthen his legacy as a man of principle. Today’s athlete can’t comprehend that. Imagine Tiger Woods risking not being allowed to play in the Masters by speaking out against Augusta National’s policy against female members, or Michael Jordan taking the risk of losing his Nike endorsements if he denounced the practices in the company’s sweatshops.
Ali spoke for himself, but he also spoke for thousands and even millions of people who opposed an American social system that treated minorities as second-class citizens.
I didn’t understand any of this on March 8, 1971. I just wanted him to win because he was Ali, a charismatic athlete that moved my emotions.
Over the next four decades, I along with the rest of the world learned to appreciate Ali even more. And while his life was an open book, there remains a lot of about Ali we either don’t understand or simply ignore.
An honest assessment of his impact has to include his conversion to the Nation of Islam that embraced the doctrine that white people were devils who had been genetically created by an evil scientist. He was also a womanizer and his ugly verbal abuse of opponents like Frazier often went beyond acceptable boundaries.
“You can’t call a man country boy, bear, or any kind of animal,” Frazier once told me. “You can’t do that because these are the guys that helped him rebuild his career when he was in trouble. You think about some of the guys he fought. They knew they couldn’t win. But they took a chance anyway, so why call them names? They’re men like him.”
Those flaws have been largely forgiven, erased when he later denounced the Nation of Islam doctrine and adapted more tolerant beliefs that promoted harmony among all people. Even Frazier, who died in 2011, tried to release the bitterness he had held.
“The butt whoopin’ was then,” Frazier said in 2007. “Life is to live now and enjoy some of the good things that he’s done. Anyway I can help him, I will.”
To truly understand Ali’s impact those flaws should not be ignored, but offered as part of the complete picture of the journey that made him an icon in American history.
Some would debate there were more important black athletes like Johnson, Louis and Robinson. But there will never be another generation like the 1960s where one man could influence race relations, the attitudes on war and rewrite athletic achievement the way Ali did. He made black America proud, he galvanized whites opposed to the war, and he marveled rich and poor with his talent.
It is a shame Parkinson’s disease robbed us of all Ali had to offer. The disease silenced a voice, which could have served as an arbiter of peace and understanding in today’s tension between America and Muslims.
Sadly those born after March 8, 1971, will largely remember Ali as the sanitized, feeble man, who lit the flame at the 1996 Olympics and became a trademark for corporate endeavors and a fundraiser for his museum.
They may not take the time to know the total man, who has no regrets.
“God has been good to me,” Ali told his biographer Thomas Hauser. “I’m thankful I’ve got a good life and nine healthy children. I’m thankful I was three-time heavyweight champion of the world. I’m thankful I live in a country like America. I’m thankful I’ve been able to travel and meet people all over the world. I’m thankful people still remember me.”
The fact that Ali won the heavyweight championship three times is almost a sidebar to being Ali, because as much as we revere the boxer we’ll always remember the man, flaws and all.