Tuesday 13 March 2007

Pic of the day: The concept of disembodied consciousnesses just fails to impress some people. And not quite without reason.
(Ghost picture from Sims 2.)

Why science hates spirits

And I'm not just talking about the distilled ones. I mentioned yesterday Ken Wilber's belief that consciousness is not localized to the body, and how this clashed with contemporary science. I may have left the belief that scientists just hate to be outed as not knowing. Admittedly they probably hate that, but there is also a very good reason why they don't want to hear about a "spirit world" or any of the synonyms for that: The belief in spirits means the end to the search for knowledge. And the search for knowledge is what science is all about.

The problem is that if we accept an unseen and non-explorable spirit reality, it can be used to conveniently explain absolutely anything. Let me take an example, courtesy of my Inner Atheist ™:

Spirit is habitually used to explain why humans have free will, aesthetical sense and other unique human traits. It is also commonly claimed as an explanation of life, why living organisms are so different from dead matter. But this argument can easily be reduced to absurdity. Hydrogen and oxygen are both invisible gases, but combine two hydrogen atoms with one oxygen atoms and you have water, which is a liquid at room temperatures and quite visible, as well as having many other properties that differ from both of its components. This is a form of emergent behavior, in which the whole is different from the sum of its parts. By the logic of the spirit believers, there would have to be a water spirit to explain this.

So are you going to claim that each water molecule has a small invisible imp that is charged with making it behave like water? And yet this is a very simple compound. In comparison, even the simplest cell consists of literally millions of atoms. If you don't need an imp to explain why three atoms behave different when combined, why do you need an imp to explain that millions of atoms behave differently together? Likewise the human brain has literally billions of cells. Why do you need an imp for them to behave differently together, if you don't need it for water, or salt crystals, or any of the thousands of other emergent phenomena in nature?

The point is that if you start invoking spirits, there is no good reason why you would not indeed explain the property of water by invoking a water spirit. Or the property of diamonds (as opposed to carbon) with a diamond spirit, and so on. But if you take this to its logical conclusion, you end up explaining nothing. "It is that way because the spirits makes it be that way" is no different from "that's just the way it is". Science has no use for that kind of explanation.

***

In all fairness, the truth is that science does not know why water is water. It has some pretty good ideas, though. It seems that the sharing of electrons between the oxygen and hydrogen atoms leaves the resulting molecule slightly more negatively charged on one end and positive on the other. This weak electrical attraction makes the water molecules slightly "sticky" to each other, because the positive end of one molecule is attracted to the negative end of another. This stickiness makes water molecules less likely to break apart and fill all available space, the way gases do. It takes quite a bit of energy (in the form of a hot stove, for instance) to make the molecules so excited that they fly all over the place. This, in brief, is why water is wet.

But in the end, we don't really know why opposite electrical charges attract. It seems to be a fundamental law of nature. Why did matter split into positive and negative particles in the first place? Why aren't all elementary particles neutral, like the neutron? I've never heard any obvious reason why they couldn't have been, just the observation that if they had been, we wouldn't have been here to observe it. That is, as I've said before, not an explanation at all. In the end, science is a combination of explanation and observation. Even if you can't explain something, you will still observe it and get as many details as possible. Eventually as you gain more knowledge, you begin to see patterns that explain things (like the wetness of water, which was impossible to understand until you could look at things at a near- atomic level).

It may well be that at the end of the day, when all is known, it really is spirits that cause all things to happen. But it does not really matter, as long as the spirits behave in predictable and understandable ways. The role of science is to find the patterns in reality. Any belief that says that we cannot or should not know is an enemy of science and an excuse for ignorance. History shows us that ignorance is not just depriving us of useful tools to better our lives, but is also often used as an excuse by people who want power for dubious purposes. "The spirits have told me that we must kill all X for the greater good. Since only I can hear the spirits, your opinion is not relevant." By always searching for truth, science is also always deepening our freedom.

***

I hope this explains why most scientists are very wary of theories that imply some invisible world that can only be known by a select few. The reason why I disagree with them this time is that Wilber's world is not actually available only to the "mageborn". It is open for any random number of people who are willing to dedicate years of their lives to observing consciousness with the only instrument available for this purpose today, namely consciousness itself. And if the purpose of science is to know as much as possible about reality, it should also try to explore this realm, now that we have pretty good proof that there actually is something in that direction. Remember, once upon a time the seas were considered outside the bounds of human knowledge, and later the skies, and then space. Perhaps consciousness will be the "final frontier" of the 21st century?