Scientific Anomalies and a Warning to the Curious
An Experiment With Time is a scientific and
philosophical (and the author would like to think psychological)
treatise on time in the context of the author's and others' experience of
precognition in dreams. It is anomalous but it is also a serious if difficult book which
has achieved cult status because it represented a sincere scientific
attempt to deal with the problem of precognition at that point in history when
spiritualism was already a memory amongst serious thinkers and the new
physics had not yet fully established itself in the public's
consciousness.
However, it is a very difficult book indeed. The
writer is at pains to be clear and he does a good job of this but you
have to be of a mathematical or analytical bent to get anything out of
this book and I am afraid that I am not. Although I probably
read every word, I did not study every word and so it must sit in my
library where my copy of Hawkings' A Brief History of Time sits - as
read but perhaps not truly comprehended.
Still, the thesis remains
interesting - that there is, 'logically', a perceiving soul seated above
the person who is taking in sense impressions from the 'real' world, one
that can see into past and future and whose indistinct impressions can
form a dream or altered state awareness of events that are yet to take
place as much it can make use of its remembrance of things past. Perhaps modern neuroscience might theoretically find this lodged somewhere in the right hemisphere but no one has found it any more than anyone has found Descartes' soul which he postulated to be in the pineal gland.
I
cannot evaluate this claim in the slightest (there must always be a creeping if tiny doubt about absolute physicalist claims) but the work - from someone who
has an engineers' determination that his analysis should be logical -
does have the virtue of ensuring that this ignorant reader is not
automatically dismissive of any thesis that does not accord with obvious
sensory impressions of the material world. As for the experience
of precognition (as opposed to the theory), the material is
persuasive without allowing a fixed view. The phenomenon appears to be
something to be explained. Although there may be adequate
materialist explanations in due course, it is not scientifically
literate to assume that a classically materialist explanation is the
only possible one.
Dunne refers to the beginnings of quantum theory and
we now know that the nature of matter is far more complex than anything
he or (say) Eddington might have expected in the interwar period so
contemporary scientists are perhaps just a little less certain of their ground
in rejecting unusual possibilities than previous generations might have
been. Quantum effects theoretically might give a base for an ultimately materialist explanation for the apparently impossible. The book clearly poses questions that still require a definitive answer over eighty years later.
Michael Brooks' survey of anomalies in recent science might be regarded as a riposte to the 'end of science' thesis promoted by John Horgan in the mid-1990s. He makes a very good case although one has the suspicion that it is not that there is nothing else to know (which this book shows would be an absurd proposition) but perhaps that there are things that, because of our limitations as human observers, we may never know. Brooks adopts a systematic approach, taking us from anomalies in cosmology and physics through those in biology thence to evolutionary studies, neuroscience and medicine.
However, it might be better here to separate out the one-off nagging anomalies, which may or may not be important. They may, of course, be of considerable importance if proven but the broader sets of anomaly that frustrate scientists in their fields and indicate the potential (no more) for a major 'Kuhnian' paradigm shift, equivalent to that from the Ptolemaic to the Copernican astronomical system, are much more interesting. Such paradigm shifts can have significant associated cultural and political effects whereas the one-off anomalies have (largely) yet to be settled even as anomalies. They imply rather than state major paradigm change rather than just an adjustment in our existing paradigm.
Given the subject matter, 13 Things That Don't Make Sense is mostly an easy read by a science journalist and consultant with considerable skill in explaining complex matters to the lay reader but, be warned, you will have to keep your wits about you. The general reader is going to have to take many claims for granted. Nevertheless, he feels as if he is reliable and the only truly 'wobbly' section is that on free will which we will come to in a moment. Let's dispose quickly of the 'one-offs' - cold fusion, a navigational anomaly with the Pioneer spacecraft, disputed evidence for life on Mars and the freak alleged 'ET' signal received in 1977. These are fascinating but inconclusive and bear in mind that these are anomalies as of 2009 and we are a decade and a half on from Brooks' assessment.
We are just going to have to admit that, as of today, we
don't know whether cold fusion is possible, whether there is life hiding away in some corner of on
Mars or there are signalling aliens - not until more experiments can be
mounted (at considerable public cost), possibly not even then. Even the cultural implications have been priced in already thanks to popular science fiction. The
anomalies that imply more immediately possible paradigm shifts fall into two general areas - the
nature of physics and of the universe and the nature of life and of
matters affecting the relationship of mind and body. Perhaps the
anomalies in the first zone (which relate to serious problems with the
current consensus derived from Einstein's revision of Newtonian
mechanics) might impact on the latter, but, at this point in history,
such a leap would be so speculative as to be scientifically meaningless.
The cosmology and physics
anomalies are interesting but hard to make relevant to daily life. Our
model of the universe works near to us but it does not quite stack up the
further that you move away from our immediate locality - issues of dark
energy, dark matter, possible unknown gravitational forces and 'varying
constants' suggest that some of the finest mathematical minds and some
significant astronomical resources are going to be puzzling away at
these issues for a good time to come. What may be more relevant
to us as persons on this planet is the complex of debates surrounding
some very basic questions about human existence that have hitherto been
left to philosophers but into which scientists are now intruding:
* what exactly is life? - to which there still appears to be no clear answer
* what is the role of the virus in evolution?
* why death? and why sexual rather than asexual repoduction?
* whether we have free will?
* and how the placebo effect and homeopathy work (or don't work) in medicine?
Brooks
is effective in outlining, without (except in one case - free will)
prejudice, the contrasting scientific theories and the inconclusive
evidence in each case and he is not shy of making a subsidiary point of
considerable importance about the flaws in scientists rather than in
scientific method. Scientists themselves are not objective
machines but are human beings dependent on their own perception,
expectations (both group and their own) and prejudices and (my opinion
and not his) on measurement and analytical tools created by humans for
humans. Even peer review can be unreliable, although the track record of
scientific method in uncovering reliable facts remains, on balance, a
good and effective one - if a lot more long-winded and cumbersome (and
so expensive) than some lay people think.
Towards the end of the
book, Brooks get a little less sure-footed. His account of the free will
debate is not very convincing. In this area, many scientists are
missing the point about free will and the human condition - or rather
about the impossibility of measuring 'intent in the field'. One might
concede that, for most of the time and in most conditions (especially
under conditions of both stability or extreme emergency), the human mind
is much more on auto-pilot than we like to think. Free will is possibly
meaningless insofar as actions undertaken on auto-pilot involve a
suspension of will and a body and mind losing themselves to cause and
effect. It is this phenomenon that the scientists are clearly recording.
However,
it is an unscientific and dangerous assumption to believe that a mind
is not capable of setting the autopilot in the first place or of taking
charge and making decisions, including positive decisions to reconform
the mind to meet internal needs. Whether this proposition is true or
false, it is also untestable for all the reasons noted by the
philosopher Heidegger and others that each instant of consciousness is
unique for each person - no instant can be held down and quantified
without the fact of it being studied becoming part of the equation. Once
observed in ways that meet the needs of scientific method, the 'will'
may well disappear in the very decision to concede to the process. The
answer to the riddle may be that the binary absolute of free
will/determinism is absurd in itself - much of the time we are on
autopilot but we have developed a consciousness capable of exerting will
which most do not use very often but some do. The quality of free will
is its uniqueness. Scientific method is not good with highly contingent
or random effects and consciousness is complex, contingent
and referent to the randomness of external inputs.
The danger here (given
that the case is not proven either way) is that experimental evidence
will create, much as early Darwinism did, an inappropriate model of
human behaviour that might meet the paradigm of what can be observed but
cannot embrace what cannot be observed (a similar problem to that of
cosmology). History has a precedent - the use of evolutionary studies in
Rassenpolitik in the first half of the last century. Darwinism led to eugenics-led racism in public policy and the acceptance of limited data to indicate a claimed lack of free will might easily lead to a false belief in the efficacy of policies directed at mechanical manipulation of human populations, apparently successful for most people most of the time but seeding violent resistance because those policies do not work on some of the people some of the time and even some people all of the time and all people some of the time. A sufficient to academic or commercial purpose 'working
model' of the mind, based on autopilot behaviour, might become
integrated into cultural and political policy and so into social and
economic regulation - the path to a state- or community-directed 'soft'
tyranny. We are part way there already as a panicked elite seizes any tool to hand in order to deal with the threat to its power of 'free-thinking' humanity.
Out of this alleged anomaly (the alleged lack of free will),we might
well see new attempts at social control which seem scientifically appropriate
but which become massive perversions of the human condition as they are
integrated into ideological presuppositions about human nature.
However, before being too harsh on the neuro-scientists' potential
political naivete, the research has one good side benefit - the
destruction, even amongst scientists themselves, of any pretensions by
humanity to ultra-rationalism or objectivity. The book could be seen as a
running commentary on the lack of full rationalism in scientific
treatment of anomalies but the point is a much bigger one and raised by
Brooks himself - rational decision-making by humans is an illusion. An interesting and politically complex position in the age of artificial intelligence which is supremely rational. However, this
does not tell the whole story.
If human decision-making is not rational
by any external standard (such as that of scientific positivism), it
is perfectly rational from the point of view of the organism itself
(which fact irritates many rationalists). It is just that an outsider
does not understand the base assumptions of the person making the
decision - what appears irrational to an outsider is not to the insider. The issue is with the information being supplied to the individual and its historical and experiential context. From a survival point of view it is ridiculously irrational for anyone to fight defending Bakhmut under current conditions but it becomes rational from other more complex points of view. The issue then comes down to assessing why particular individuals have a
'will' to accept 'incorrect' assessments of their environment (from the
point of socially constructed reality) that lead to (apparently)
irrational responses and why this may have survival benefits (or not).
For example, if you are a victim of external power but cannot change
things for the better, a decision to take up magic or religion might be a
rational act (a sort of social placebo effect amongst other things) in
order to avoid despair, to aid survival and to build community cohesion
that offers survival advantages.
This apparent irrationality is
perfectly rational and may even be 'willed' - Sartre's famous case of
the waiter who 'becomes' a waiter rather than a person is the type of
all strategies of survival through inauthenticity. But it does not mean
that persons are not capable of being authentic. It may also mean that
neuroscientists are only investigating inauthenticity. Some subjects
may decide not to be investigated yet these may be the very persons who need
to be investigated to make any progress in understanding free will
(say). Scientists, indeed all rationalists, have had real difficulty
understanding these practical points of living in the world, the phenomenological point of view. It is good
to see psychologists and neuroscientists beginning a journey towards
understanding the counter-productiveness of pure 'objective' rationality
even if (unlike us 'existentialists') they still have a way to go yet
and may blunder into politics along the way.
Very different
problems arise with the placebo effect (where 'not-knowing' is part of
the effect) and with homeopathy. In both cases, there seem to be real
effects. Yet the difficulty of proving or disproving these effects
divides scientists into sceptics and those who are more open-minded in
debates that can get increasingly bitter. One solution for some
scientists in understanding the placebo effect is to allow doctors to turn
into shamans and keep patients in the dark for their own good. Another
in relation to homeopathy is to postulate that water has structural
qualities that permit the phenomenon and that, one day, homeopathy might
indeed be 'tamed' and introduced back into allopathic (conventional)
medicine. The common denominators here (sociologically) are the desire
of the 'expert' positivist-minded scientific community to accrue power
to itself and to systematise any effects into what is acceptable on
positivists' own terms. The placebo effect is observable and homeopathy probably functionally useful (for psychological reasons) bunkum but science seems unable to consider the possibility that the lack of evidence may be irrelevant to the existential use value of the irrational to an essentially biological creature.
Just as with the problem of free
will, it may be that science is reaching the limit of its ability to
know more widely and it has boundaries beyond which there can be only
'magic' (with magic's negative connotations). In fact, true scientists
(and there are many magnificent examples in this book) remain
open-minded about all anomalies at all times and remain determined to
push scientific method to its limits. They know what they do not know. It
may be that the human mind will not be able to know or grasp the true
nature of the universe for a number of technical perceptual and
measurement reasons and that the modelling will have to move from
science to art - or rather to the art of increasingly sophisticated but
ultimately untestable mathematical modelling that may pull cosmology
back to the domain of belief i.e. belief in the most cogent mathematical
model where the components may not be tested, in fact, against real
conditions in the world. At this level, science really does revert to
religion but the religion of the 'most reasonable belief in the
circumstances', certainly not as experimentally verified truth.
A
similar process may be happening at the 'mind' level too but under
conditions which may be more dangerous for human social development and
survival. Experimentally, it is impossible to know all actions or
thoughts or all responses and feelings within a conscious human
community but neuroscience and medicine may try to do precisely this -
creating 'laws' that enter into consciousness and become self-fulfilling
as socially constructed reality rather than as true representations of
what is the case. This is important. A physical or cosmological
law does not (unless you believe in magic) change the conditions of the
universe through enunciation but a psychological or social 'law' changes
the conditions of society when people with power decide to take it on
and impose it throughout a culture. The power of 'incantation' is
understood in the context of the placebo effect and probably applies to
many more social conditions than health provision. As we have noted, Social Darwinism came
to include racist nonsense but its acceptance by elites resulted in the
masses adopting and believing in racial science as if it were true and
many (though not all by any means) then became racists with conceptions
of inferiority and superiority, some of which may have come to be socially true
but were to be proven to be biologically idiotic (regardless of moral considerations).
Given
that scientists do not KNOW how either the placebo effect or homeopathy
works (or otherwise), they should continue to work in good faith and
with a bit of humility to establish the mechanisms (whether
psychological or physical) for the phenomena but they should not allow
politicians and bureaucrats to purloin anomalous studies at the expense of
human freedom - nor state as law that something is not so when persons
clearly experience it as so. Though Brooks would undoubtedly not agree
(given his status within the scientific community as one of its
interpreters), it might be argued that, just as free will can never be
known not to not exist in a human community amounting to several
billion, so the public has a right not to trust scientists absolutely
and to demand the right to homeopathic treatment (though not necessarily have the rest of us pay for it) even if it should be
'proved' to be wholly placebo in effect. If it works, don't knock it!
Similarly,
if a placebo works in many cases, as it clearly does in pain relief,
then this fact should permit the public to accept guidance from people
who are not in white coats but can also provide relief and comfort -
even real shamans if necessary. What Brooks points out is the real
danger that over-enthusiasm for placebo effects will result in a drift
away from rational medicine to quackery that causes real damage to
persons with severe and very real organic illnesses. He is absolutely
right. The way forward is probably an easy tolerance of the
self-healing within the mind (thanks to a bit of TLC) in order to ensure
that patients continue to get checked up and take white coat advice
where it matters. The existence of anomalous 'white coat syndrome' (my perfectly normal, often optimal, blood pressure rises radically whenever I am in the presence of a clinician) suggests caution in assuming that 'expertise' covers all the bases for humanity. Whether free will, placebo or homeopathy, the men in
white coats should continue to investigate and theorise but should not
deny phenomena too eagerly from what amounts to ideological distaste or
class self-interest.
Where we may get to is a bad scenario or a
good scenario. The bad scenario is where the new consensus is that we do
not know our own minds and others must take care of us, perhaps by
lying (manipulating variants of the placebo effect) or by controlling and limiting grey area
therapies through massive regulation and integration into the
mainstream. This is where some would have us go and I suggest that this
derives from a personality type that is attracted into bureaucracy and
politics. The second scenario is the good one. It allows persons
to make choices as if they had free will all things being equal (even if
some neuroscientists might argue against it), is open and transparent
about techniques (including the dangerous new zone of neuro-marketing
and political 'nudge') and allows, where not harmful, the public to find
their own structures of coping that make may use of science and of belief,
even what positivists might dismiss as magic. In the meantime, if
society wants rational behaviour, it can do its part by creating a
society of equals with access to full information, power over their
environment and sufficient resources.
This review has gone off at
a tangent because the book does not raise these questions directly
itself. It stops at the science and avoids philosophy - and certainly
politics. Whether we understand or do not understand the nature of the
universe is unlikely to affect us directly (unless resolution of
anomalies such as cold fusion or new particles gives us new energy
sources or weapons of war) but any scientific theory about our minds has
enormous import for the turn of our culture and our society. This
book is worth reading if you are scientifically curious but it is also
worth reading if you like to think of yourself as an educated citizen.
You will learn two big things amongst the many small things - that
science is far more complex than the establishment of simple truths (a
fact worth bearing in mind in accepting any standard view of climate
change) and that important work is going on now on anomalies related to
consciousness that we, as free individuals, must get a grip on lest
others with power take them up and adapt them to purposes that end our
freedoms with cataclysmic speed. Educate yourself or others will educate
you to their requirements.