The Importance of the Heretic

The Times Magazine published a long profile of the legendary "subversive" theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson last weekend. Dyson's most recent claim to fame is his stubbornness in acquiescing to his community's consensus that global warming is a man-made and dangerous problem; he says “all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated," and argues that global warming has reached a cultish fame ahead of more practical issues facing mankind, like poverty and infectious disease, and that increased carbon in the atmosphere has positive as well as negative effects. Dyson is a celebrated scientist, one "fleeced" out of a Nobel, and his notoriety as a heretic is often spoken of with exasperation; he says, "the world always needs heretics to challenge the prevailing orthodoxies." Despite what you think of his "trillion carbon-absorbing trees" idea, or his famous Dyson sphere (really, this man would have made a killing as a science fiction writer), Dyson makes an important point that is increasingly salient as the country tries to recover from an authoritarian administration where deregulation equalled a free market and creationism equalled religion. On that subject, Dyson has said,

"Science and religion are two windows that people look through, trying to understand the big universe outside, trying to understand why we are here. The two windows give different views, but they look out at the same universe. Both views are one-sided, neither is complete. Both leave out essential features of the real world. And both are worthy of respect.

Trouble arises when either science or religion claims universal jurisdiction, when either religious or scientific dogma claims to be infallible. Religious creationists and scientific materialists are equally dogmatic and insensitive. By their arrogance they bring both science and religion into disrepute. The media exaggerate their numbers and importance. The media rarely mention the fact that the great majority of religious people belong to moderate denominations that treat science with respect, or the fact that the great majority of scientists treat religion with respect so long as religion does not claim jurisdiction over scientific questions. ... I am neither a saint nor a theologian. To me, good works are more important than theology."

And there you have it: that rare creature, the theist-scientist: the complete dissident.

For further reading: The Scientist As Rebel (2008); A Many-Colored Glass: Reflections on the Place of Life in the Universe (2007); Disturbing the Universe (2001).

Science and Democracy

Dennis Overbye for the Science Times: "Science is not a monument of received Truth but something that people do to look for truth."

Peter Steinberg and Ken Bloom at CERN react; Adam Frank, author of The Constant Fire, Beyond the Science vs. Religion Debate talks to Melissa Lafsky at Discover (part I and part II). This is a debate that will go on, most likely, forever: regardless of how many amazing and fundamental truths are revealed in this eon of scientific exploration, I doubt that any TOE will encompass "God created the Earth and everything in it, including quantum physics." (Right off the bat, wouldn't that theory need to be revised to include the universe and everything in it? Or, rather, multiverse...)

I will admit that religion has its place, and has historically contributed both good and ill to developing societies. However, it's high time that religion admit to being less viable as The Great Explainer of Life--or at least separately viable--and allow science to move forward without today's myriad attempts to bamboozle. (I'm looking at you, intelligent design.)

To quote Einstein: "It is in fact nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for what this delicate little plant needs more than anything, besides stimulation, is freedom."

Einstein on Religion

Einstein's reputation as an eccentric mathematical genius can sometimes overshadow his accomplishments as a writer and philosopher: throughout his life, he published more than 300 books and papers, and while most revolved around his groundbreaking theories in physics, many express his ideas about religion, politics, and ethics.

Of particular interest to me are his essays on religion. I've often found it difficult to express my affinity for the notion of science as religion; that is, believing in a universal force as a divine principle. In a piece titled "The Religious Spirit of Science," Einstein is much more articulate:

'[The scientist's] religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reaction.'

He continues in "Science and Religion":

'But mere thinking cannot give us a sense of the ultimate and fundamental ends. ... To put it boldly, [science] is the attempt at the posterior reconstruction of existence by the process of conceptualization. But when asking myself what religion is I cannot think of the answer so easily. ... This qualification has to do with the concept of God. During the youthful period of mankind's spiritual evolution human fantasy created gods in man's own image, who, by the operations of their will were supposed to determine the phenomenal world. ... In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, to give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests. ... The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.'

I imagine a realignment of faith like this: replace the idea of an omnipotent, omniscient God who governs mankind's thoughts and actions with an omnipotent, omniscient and mathematically definable religious paradigm that still allows for free will but imparts no judgment, acknowledges no guilt, and affects everyone equally, regardless of nationality. Best of all, its missionaries would have to be exceptional minds, people who care deeply about reaching that elusive fundamental understanding and who are qualified to explore it. Quantum physics still presents a "leap of faith" in the sense that none of it is evident, or even intuitive; our innate yearning for the belief in something bigger than life is still satisfied, and in a more complete way. Scientific explanation doesn't just replace the need for religious parable, it provides the ultimate fodder for inward exploration: not "why are we here?" but "how did we become?"

Both essays are excerpted from Einstein's Ideas and Opinions. I also recommend his The World As I See It and the biographies Einstein: The Life and Times by Ronald W. Clark and Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson.