Prologue: 2x3x7
No, they’re not dimensions, though we may have to visit dimensions later.
In Douglas Adams’ ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ series (books, radio, TV: take your pick) a giant super-computer (by the name of ‘Deep Thought’) is built to answer the question of ‘Life, The Universe and Everything’. After millennia of calculation, Deep Thought finally returns the long-awaited answer to the distant descendants of the original programmers. Before the big reveal he(?) spends some time assuring them that whilst they won’t like it, it is correct.
Then (fanfare); the answer:
42
Only then do they realise that an even bigger computer will need to be built to understand what the question really means… It will need to be the size of a planet.
The mice (who, in the story, are actually 3D representations of advanced multidimensional beings) commission the building of just such a computer.
The planet-sized computer is known by its inhabitants as ‘Earth’. After 4.5 Billion years of computing, the calculation is almost complete when the Earth is demolished to make way for an intergalactic bypass…
Meanwhile no-one thinks to consult Marvin the Paranoid Android, who repeatedly tells us he has ‘a brain the size of a planet’.
Be careful what you ask for...
Adams, despite many questions about it, always maintained that, despite the numerical symbolism that people found in it, or its importance in various mystical traditions, that the number 42 was chosen randomly, and had no special significance that he was aware of.
All very entertaining stuff (and I apologise to true Adams fans for my rather fast-and-loose summary).
This story emphasises the importance, when asking questions, of asking the right questions. It’s a bit of a no-brainer to realise that you tend not to get answers to questions that you haven’t asked; or that the question you ask needs to be suitably specific if it is to engender more than the vaguest of answers.
So many traditional stories work around the motif of ‘be careful what you ask for… you might just get it!’, especially in scenarios where the protagonist has a limited number of wishes at his disposal (I know it’s non-gender-neutral to say ‘his’, but let’s face it; these stories don’t usually reflect very well on the protagonist).
However, even deeper perhaps, is the issue of remembering to ask questions at all. To keep questioning what we think we know; to take seriously those inconvenient little facts that just won’t go away, and look again.
We tend to be so wrapped up in the daily grind of our lives and the distractions that it offers, that we rarely stop to check what’s actually going on…
Reality, Language & Consciousness… Or What is wrong with the way that most people see the world now?
Most of us have well and truly bought-in to the currently prevailing worldview of Materialism (also known as Physicalism).
How could most of us do anything else? It’s what we were brought-up with, and our parents before us, and theirs before them, for generations…
It’s very difficult to break out of such entrenched social and cultural conditioning.
But that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible;
After centuries of thinking that:
– it was right to physically punish children;
– people with different coloured skin were somehow less human;
– women were lesser copies of men, ruled by emotions and incapable of rational thought;
– the suffering of animals was of no consequence;
– the environment was ours to exploit in whatever way we saw fit…
…We’ve thought again (ok… so it’s a work in progress…).
Sadly it’s taking a lot longer to truly sink in than we might hope, but things have changed and will probably continue to inch forwards.
The Matter of the Universe
We need to think again here too.
The materialism I’m speaking of is not the same as ‘being materialistic’ and having a tendency to want to accumulate physical wealth, or measuring the worth of something in monetary, superficial or utilitarian terms – although that is a logical outcome of the materialist worldview.
In this sense, materialism refers to the deep-seated idea that the most fundamentally ‘real’ thing about the Universe we inhabit is Matter.
Matter came first. Everything else comes from Matter, or arrangements of Matter.
After the Big-Bang
came atoms,
which made molecules,
which made living cells,
which made complex organisms,
which made complex organisms with complex brains,
which made consciousness.
(I realise I’ve grossly simplified this and left out masses of important details; but this is more-or-less the level on which most educated lay-people ‘know’ about it.)
Very few people question this.
Unless they have, or ‘get’, religion.
We take it for granted. It’s what we teach in schools.
All that matters is matter...
According to this Physicalist worldview, the Universe is, at the most basic level, ‘truly’ nothing but Matter and arrangements of Matter.
The arrangement of Matter known as the Human brain is believed to produce ‘consciousness’ as an emergent property, somehow resulting from its great complexity. (Or some assert that we just have the illusion of consciousness.)
No-one can even begin to explain how that emergence works (this is the so-called ‘Hard Problem’ of Consciousness).
If this is correct, it would logically follow that death of the brain results in termination of the consciousness that it spawned. Death is the end.
Meanwhile, Science itself (arguably the reason that we hold these views in the first place) has moved on, and preaches a different story now.
Unbeknownst to the general public… Modern physics has spent the last hundred years pulling the rug out from under its own feet.
Despite around a century working to find fault with the predictions of Relativity and Quantum theories, both continue to stand up to the most rigorous tests and observations. Clearly something is still missing as they can’t currently be reconciled with each-other; but they both ultimately come to some important shared conclusions:
- Time is not what it seems.
- Space is not what it seems.
- Matter is not what it seems.
- The way we observe things, or the conditions prevailing when we make observations can affect the thing observed, even when we don’t directly interfere in doing so.
- Some observations can change the ‘past’.
Occam's Razor
The simplest explanation (and therefore if we apply Occam’s razor, the best and most likely true explanation) is that both space and time are mental constructs which help us make sense of the world around us; and although we can’t explain why, observation seems to be crucial to what actually happens.
Almost all academic Physicists working in relevant fields believe this, but they are not usually very vocal about it (because it’s confusing for them too; because it’s over most people’s head and too abstract for most of us; maybe because it’s embarrassing and undermines their credibility; because they don’t want to break ranks and put their heads over the parapet with outlandish interpretations that might damage their careers… and so on).
Ideas such as multiple ‘universes’ and ‘hidden variables’ (unknown, yet-to-be-discovered influences) are posited by those physicists for whom this is just too unpalatable, but many of these are attempts to ‘make the problem go away’ by making further assumptions which cannot be tested, and do not make for simpler explanations.
In his excellent book ‘The Order of Time’ Carlo Rovelli explores the question of the reality of time in great detail; first demolishing the various ways we have previously understood time; then exploring a universe without time; and finally rebuilding the time that we experience as a consequence of context and perspective. Time appears to flow, and appears to be irreversible, simply (massively paraphrasing here…) because we have to look at it from a certain position in spacetime.
We have also recently become aware that the part of the physical universe that we can actually observe is less than 1% of what is out there; and we cannot assume that what we see (even if we’re interpreting it correctly) is representative of the rest; especially when there are so many observations which do not fit our current ‘understanding’ of cosmology.
Meanwhile, breakthroughs in Biology and Psychology have, among other things highlighted strengths and limitations in the ways that we perceive reality.
So... where do we go from here?
If you have ideas, do let me know; otherwise, tune in in a week or so for the next installment…
After all, what could be more real than the real world?
