Twin attacks on rationality
What in the name of Darwin’s arse is THIS?
Two letters to the guardian, the first spewing a pile of garbage which manages to somehow combine eccentric views on climate change, MMR and swine-flu into a melange of utter, know-nothing knobbery. The latter gathering together a bunch of fluffy feel-good cod philosophy which would disgrace a not-very-bright sixth former.
And here’s the annoying thing. Both of them neutralise criticism in advance, by claiming that ‘true scientists’ will recognise the veracity of their stance. I have to tell them, sometimes when people disagree with you, it’s because you are talking ill founded toss.
OMG, this paragraph (from the second letter): “An alternative possible scenario is that matter at its deepest level is characterised by: (a) a quality of “interconnectedness” or very primitive “mentality”; and (b) a natural law that drives matter towards complexity. Quantum theory provides evidence that supports premise (a). The evolution of matter, from the simple elements after the big bang to the complex elements of the periodic table, many of which are necessary as a basis for the biological evolution, which is also a manifestation of this general principle, provide evidence for premise (b).”
When I started writing regularly for Nature I started getting typed letters in the post that sounded very similar. I am amazed it got published – but then again perhaps the Guardian is not used to receiving the standard crank physics letters, as these are normally sent to scientists and scientific journals.
About the first one – it’s a strange letter. It’s sad that the missteps of a few bad apples can taint trust in the entire profession. This indicates to me that any trust that is there is not deeply rooted – in other words that people are as ambivalent about scientists and their activities as they’ve been throughout history.
They haven’t a clue in The Grauniad. They once published a letter claiming that mathematicians took it as a matter of faith – but it remained unproven – that there were an infinite number of primes.
I tried to enlighten them with Euclid’s proof, one of the oldest, easiest to grasp, delightful and most famous proofs in the history of Maths. Didn’t help then and things seem not to have changed much now.
Did they at least publish your rebuttal, David?
Meanwhile, I find the assertion that quantum physics somehow supports the idea that our consciousness is meshed in with some universal ‘intelligence’ deeply insulting. Could the letter writer have derived the proof for that?
Well that second letter was full of “mentality” all right.
I honestly think some people are just desperate to stave off the abyss inherent in being an insignificant cog in an infinite universe by postulating connections that don’t exists. That’s fine, but don’t try to suggest that this is “proved” by physics.
I think you hit the nail on the head with your last comment Jenny. That second letter is a prime example of pulling “we’re like…stardust and cosmic energy man!” Into a psuedo-metaphysical coherence. And that’s only done to keep the lonliness and frailty of the ‘pointlessness’ of it all away.
The problem is if you stop clutching at straws you stop being afraid of the dark and you need “quantum” explanations, or gods, to give you meaning or hope.
“Don’t need…”, damn cell phone typos…
I just think it’s cheeky to claim that fluffy new-age things are ‘backed up’ by quantum physics – references please!
I’ve long thought it was a bad idea for physicists to name things whimsically. Think how much damage the term “entanglement” has caused over the years, for example. 🙂
There’s an excellent recent article in PNAS (i.e. a free read) http://www.pnas.org/content/107/10/4499.long
about free will. And how quantum physics doesn’t give it to us. And about how we are just cogs. Finally most people accepted the world was round and went round the sun, and one day surely they will come to terms with that too. Interconnectedness of a sort, I suppose, but not of the sort most people want.
Thanks for the link! That’s really interesting.