Thomas Crapper, the 19th century London plumber to Kings Edward VII and George V, did not invent the toilet but he did promote it’s popularity. Actually, a bloke by the name of John Harrington invented the flushing toilet in 1596. But it was Thomas Crapper who’s advances lifted the humble water closet to a place of comfort and repose. So it is fitting that, to this day, sewer manhole covers bearing the name ‘Thomas Crapper & Co.’ adorn Westminster Abbey. Rest in peace, Thomas Crapper.
A survey of typical lifestyles carried out not long ago (by those who carry out these kinds of surveys) found that through the course of a normal day, the modern man (and, indeed, woman) has his (or, indeed, her) deepest thoughts whilst ... um ... patronizing the commode. And it stands to reason really. Most of us don’t take the time to simply sit down and ... contemplate ... stuff. You are not answering the phone, or working on your Rubik’s Cube, or updating your Facebook status. It’s just you and your ... primal self... contemplating the Great Mysteries of the Universe... and considering the State of Humanity... and weighing up the Moral Dilemmas of our Age... and whether or not it really was a good idea to go for that second helping of crab curry.
But since we don’t see university lecture halls lined with wc’s, and since Sony’s R&D department is not made up of cubicles of THAT kind, it is safe to assume that though we do our deepest thinking whilst relaxing the sphincter, it is not necessarily the best way to exercise the grey matter. Rather, it indicates that we don’t deliberately take time in our daily routines to sit and think. Oh, we think; we just don’t think through.
The subject of this blog is a response to some of the attitude I first encountered during high school, and now recently again. It is the argument that because a worldview can be arrived at based purely on logic and reasoning, it is superior to any other and that it correct as a matter of course. During my high school days, many of my friends who held to an atheistic worldview asserted this argument. Now, let me hasten to add here that, while I don’t hold to an atheistic worldview, I have the greatest respect for many who do. Stephen Hawking (though more agnostic than atheistic) is a case in point.
Stephen Hawking, who until his retirement in 2009, held the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge (also held by such as Sir Isaac Newton – 1669, and Charles Babbage, hailed as the father of the computer – 1828), is no academic light-weight. Despite outliving his predicted life-span, neuro-muscular dystrophy has limited him to a motorised wheelchair and a voice synthesizer. His life’s work includes enormous contributions to the realm of theoretical physics, which he helped popularise with books such as the best-seller ‘A Brief History of Time’.
More recently, he co-authored a book with Leonard Mlodinow called ‘The Grand Design’ in which they argued that science can explain the universe without the need for a Creator. In Stephen Hawking’s words, “The scientific account is complete. Theology is unnecessary”. Reportedly, Hawking drew a comparison between religion and science as follows:
“There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority [imposed dogma, faith], [as opposed to] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works.”
Charles Darwin, struggling to reconcile the suffering he observed as apparently necessary to the order of Creation, drifted to a position that perhaps nature had been left to run its own course. In short, his evolutionary theories did for biological science what Stephen Hawking did for cosmology; remove the need for an intelligent Creator. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, probably close to the time that Thomas Crapper was fitting manhole covers there. Interesting.
But what is also interesting is the contrast between these two thrusts of scientific thought, cosmology and biology. On the one hand, biology enshrines macro-evolution as the basis for the majority of it’s scientific paradigm, and on the other hand, cosmology builds on the now-popularised theoretical physics to explain, and explore beyond, what can be directly observed.
To explain the contrast, I need to delve into a little quantum physics and refer to the concept of entropy. Entropy, to lab-coated, bespectacled academics, is the measure of energy a body or system has which is not available for useful work. Now let me put it in layman’s terms.
Supposing you have a kiddies party. Before the party, the food table is laid out with all sorts of sugary delights. Sugars are a form of fuel for the human body. Therefore, the food table is practically bulging with potential energy.
Now introduce thirty little four year olds. (Mothers, you may want to turn away about now.) Within fifteen minutes, the potential energy locked up in the sugars has been turned to kinetic energy as all thirty kiddies bounce happy off the walls. Noticeably, sound energy, another form of kinetic energy, increases within this closed system. Give this system another hour and a half, and the colloquial expression of Sir Isaac Newton’s third law (‘what goes up must come down’) may be thought to be observed as kiddies come crashing down off the buzz. And as parents know, this occurs with whining, crying, etc. which further increases the kinetic energy tally. However, this is not Newton’s Third Law in action; rather, it is the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
This law states that entropy (or ‘chaotic energy’) within a closed system can only increase or stay the same. Put another way, there is energy in order. However, we observe throughout the universe that order breaks down. In other words, the universe is observed as moving from a state of order to a state of disorder, or from a state of having useful energy to a state of having useless energy. Relating this back to our kiddies party, the potential energy locked up in the food is converted to sound (kinetic energy in sound waves moving through the air) which becomes a sort of useless residual heat in the atmosphere. Useful energy to useless energy.
Actually, my example breaks down IF energy conscious parents were to set up a sort of turbine treadmill at our kiddies party, to harness the energy of the sugar buzz. Sure, it wouldn’t be as much fun for the kids but may just generate enough electricity to drive the dishwasher to wash the party crockery. (Just a thought. Earth first.)
Back to biology. Evolution, roughly stated, is ‘time + matter + chance = order’. Not your classical explanation, I know, but this blog is getting long.
But do you see the contrast? Darwin, who in biology popularised the notion that science obviates the need for an Intelligent Designer, used the exact opposite argument to that of physicists who also argue that science obviates the need for an Intelligent Designer. The former argues that order, left to it’s own devices, increases, while the latter argue that order, under it’s own steam, decreases. Pitting the two arguments against each other is a little like applying an irresistible force to an immovable object; nonsense.
So what’s my point? Simply this: even our best minds concede that there is a point at which the highly scientific conclusion of “Uh ... I dunno” is reached. Logic and reason, on their own, do not actually provide us with answers to all our questions. Neither are they supposed to. Reason and logic point us to the gaps and flaws in our own thinking. (Schrödinger’s cat, a famous thought experiment, is testimony to that.) At best, they help us to refine our questions. They invite us into Wonder; that childlike quality which we do well to preserve. I would go so far as to say that Stephen Hawking got it exactly wrong. The scientific account is incomplete. Theology is necessary.
I end with one more observation. In 1977, Voyager 1, a space probe designed to explore the Solar System was launched. On Valentine’s Day in 1990, at the end of it’s mission, the probe was commanded by NASA to turn and photograph the planets in the Solar System. From 6,1 billion kilometres away, Voyager 1 photographed Earth. The image is famously known as ‘The Pale Blue Dot’.
Carl Sagan, reflecting on this image, wrote:
From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. Look again at that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
Personally, when I consider the Pale Blue Dot, conscious that it hosts the most baffling concentration of order unlike anything else in the known universe, Reason and Logic lead me in the opposite direction. They lead me to no conclusions, just more questions, more wonder, more amazement. They remind me that it is my God-given responsibility to think, to take ownership of the conceptual tides which influence my worldview and ultimately shape how I see myself, others and the universe around me.
In contrast to René Descartes’s famous quote, I am therefore I think.
