God (or Not), Physics and, ofCourse, Love:
Scientists Take aLeap"What do you believe is true eventhough you cannot prove it?"This wasthe question posed to scientists,futurists and other creative thinkers byJohn Brockman, a literary agent andpublisher of Edge, a Web site devotedto science. The site asks a newquestion at the end of each year. Hereare excerpts from the responses, to beposted Tuesday at www.edge.org.Roger SchankPsychologist and computer scientist;author, "Designing World-ClassE-Learning"Irrational choices.I do not believe that people are capableof rational thought when it comes tomaking decisions in their own lives.People believe they are behavingrationally and have thought things out,of course, but when major decisionsare made - who to marry, where tolive, what career to pursue, whatcollege to attend, people’s mindssimply cannot cope with the complexity.When they try to rationally analyzepotential options, their unconscious,emotional thoughts take over and makethe choice for them.
Richard DawkinsEvolutionary biologist, OxfordUniversity; author, “The Ancestor’sTale”
I believe, but I cannot prove, that alllife, all intelligence, all creativity and all"design" anywhere in the universe, isthe direct or indirect product ofDarwinian natural selection. It followsthat design comes late in the universe,after a period of Darwinian evolution.Design cannot precede evolution andtherefore cannot underlie the universe.Judith Rich HarrisWriter and developmental psychologist;author, "The Nurture Assumption"I believe, though I cannot prove it, thatthree - not two - selection processeswere involved in human evolution.The first two are familiar: naturalselection, which selects for fitness, andsexual selection, which selects forsexiness.The third process selects for beauty,but not sexual beauty - not adultbeauty. The ones doing the selectingweren’t potential mates: they wereparents. Parental selection, I call it.
Kenneth FordPhysicist; retired director, AmericanInstitute of Physics; author, "TheQuantum World"I believe that microbial life existselsewhere in our galaxy.I am not even saying “elsewhere in theuniverse.” If the proposition I believe tobe true is to be proved true within ageneration or two, I had better limit itto our own galaxy. I will bet on its truththere.I believe in the existence of lifeelsewhere because chemistry seems tobe so life-striving and because life,once created, propagates itself in everypossible direction. Earth’s historysuggests that chemicals get busy andcreate life given any old mix ofsubstances that includes a bit of water,and given practically any old source ofenergy; further, that life, once created,spreads into every nook and crannyover a wide range of temperature,acidity, pressure, light level and so on.Believing in the existence of intelligentlife elsewhere in the galaxy is anothermatter.
Joseph LeDouxNeuroscientist, New York University;author, "The Synaptic Self"For me, this is an easy question. Ibelieve that animals have feelings andother states of consciousness, butneither I nor anyone else has been ableto prove it. We can’t even prove thatother people are conscious, much lessother animals. In the case of otherpeople, though, we at least can have alittle confidence since all people havebrains with the same basicconfigurations. But as soon as we turnto other species and start askingquestions about feelings andconsciousness in general we are inrisky territory because the hardware isdifferent.Because I have reason to think thattheir feelings might be different thanours, I prefer to study emotionalbehavior in rats rather than emotionalfeelings.There’s lots to learn about emotionthrough rats that can help people withemotional disorders. And there’s lotswe can learn about feelings fromstudying humans, especially now thatwe have powerful function imagingtechniques. I’m not a radicalbehaviorist. I’m just a practicalemotionalist.
Lynn MargulisBiologist, University of Massachusetts;author, "Symbiosis in Cell Evolution"I feel that I know something that willturn out to be correct and eventuallyproved to be true beyond doubt.What?That our ability to perceive signals inthe environment evolved directly fromour bacterial ancestors. That is, we,like all other mammals including ourapish brothers detect odors, distinguishtastes, hear bird song and drumbeatsand we too feel the vibrations of thedrums. With our eyes closed we detectthe light of the rising sun. Theseabilities to sense our surroundings area heritage that preceded the evolutionof all primates, all vertebrate animals,indeed all animals.
David Myers Psychologist, Hope College; author,"Intuition"As a Christian monotheist, I start withtwo unproven axioms:1. There is a God.2. It’s not me (and it’s also not you).Together, these axioms imply mysurest conviction: that some of mybeliefs (and yours) contain error. Weare, from dust to dust, finite andfallible. We have dignity but not deity.And that is why I further believe thatwe shoulda) hold all our unproven beliefs with acertain tentativeness (except for thisone!),b) assess others’ ideas withopen-minded skepticism, andc) freely pursue truth aided byobservation and experiment.This mix of faith-based humility andskepticism helped fuel the beginningsof modern science, and it has informedmy own research and science writing.The whole truth cannot be foundmerely by searching our own minds,for there is not enough there. So wealso put our ideas to the test. If theysurvive, so much the better for them; ifnot, so much the worse.
Robert SapolskyNeuroscientist, Stanford University,author, "A Primate’s Memoir"Mine would be a fairly simple,straightforward case of an unjustifiablebelief, namely that there is no god(s)or such a thing as a soul (whatever thereligiously inclined of the rightpersuasion mean by that word). …I’m taken with religious folks whoargue that you not only can, but shouldbelieve without requiring proof. Mine isto not believe without requiring proof.Mind you, it would be perfectly finewith me if there were a proof thatthere is no god. Some might view thisas a potential public health problem,given the number of people who wouldthen run damagingly amok. But it’sobvious that there’s no shortage offolks running amok thanks to theirbelief. So that wouldn’t be a problemand, all things considered, such a proofwould be a relief - many physicists,especially astrophysicists, seem weirdlywilling to go on about their communingwith god about the Big Bang, but in myworld of biologists, the god conceptgets mighty infuriating when you spendyour time thinking about, say,untreatably aggressive childhoodleukemia.
Donald HoffmanCognitive scientist, University ofCalifornia, Irvine; author, "VisualIntelligence"I believe that consciousness and itscontents are all that exists. Space-time,matter and fields never were thefundamental denizens of the universebut have always been, from theirbeginning, among the humbler contentsof consciousness, dependent on it fortheir very being.The world of our daily experience - theworld of tables, chairs, stars andpeople, with their attendant shapes,smells, feels and sounds - is aspecies-specific user interface to arealm far more complex, a realmwhose essential character is conscious.It is unlikely that the contents of ourinterface in any way resemble thatrealm.Indeed the usefulness of an interfacerequires, in general, that they do not.For the point of an interface, such asthe Windows interface on a computer,is simplification and ease of use. Weclick icons because this is quicker andless prone to error than editingmegabytes of software or togglingvoltages in circuits.Evolutionary pressures dictate that ourspecies-specific interface, this world ofour daily experience, should itself be aradical simplification, selected not forthe exhaustive depiction of truth but forthe mutable pragmatics of survival.If this is right, if consciousness isfundamental, then we should not besurprised that, despite centuries ofeffort by the most brilliant of minds,there is as yet no physicalist theory ofconsciousness, no theory that explainshow mindless matter or energy orfields could be, or cause, consciousexperience
Nicholas HumphreyPsychologist, London School ofEconomics; author,"The Mind MadeFlesh"I believe that human consciousness is aconjuring trick, designed to fool us intothinking we are in the presence of aninexplicable mystery. Who is theconjuror and why is s/he doing it? Theconjuror is natural selection, and thepurpose has been to bolster humanself-confidence and self-importance -so as to increase the value we eachplace on our own and others’ lives.
Philip Zimbardo Psychologist, emeritus professor,Stanford; author, "Shyness"I believe that the prison guards at theAbu Ghraib Prison in Iraq, who workedthe night shift in Tier 1A, whereprisoners were physically andpsychologically abused, hadsurrendered their free will andpersonal responsibility during theseepisodes of mayhem.But I could not prove it in a court oflaw. These eight Army reservists weretrapped in a unique situation in whichthe behavioral context came todominate individual dispositions, valuesand morality to such an extent that theywere transformed into mindless actorsalienated from their normal sense ofpersonal accountability for their actions- at that time and place.The “group mind” that developedamong these soldiers was created by aset of known social psychologicalconditions, some of which are nicelyfeatured in Golding’s "Lord of the Flies."The same processes that I witnessed inmy Stanford Prison Experiment wereclearly operating in that remote place:deindividuation, dehumanization,boredom, groupthink, role-playing, rulecontrol and more.
Philip W. AndersonPhysicist and Nobel laureate, PrincetonIs string theory a futile exercise asphysics, as I believe it to be? It is aninteresting mathematical specialty andhas produced and will producemathematics useful in other contexts,but it seems no more vital asmathematics than other areas of veryabstract or specialized math, anddoesn’t on that basis justify theincredible amount of effort expendedon it.My belief is based on the fact thatstring theory is the first science inhundreds of years to be pursued inpre-Baconian fashion, without anyadequate experimental guidance. Itproposes that Nature is the way wewould like it to be rather than the waywe see it to be; and it is improbablethat Nature thinks the same way wedo.The sad thing is that, as several youngwould-be theorists have explained tome, it is so highly developed that it is afull-time job just to keep up with it.That means that other avenues are notbeing explored by the bright,imaginative young people, and thatalternative career paths are blocked.
Alison GopnikPsychologist, University of California,Berkeley; co-author, "The Scientist inthe Crib"I believe, but cannot prove, that babiesand young children are actually moreconscious, more vividly aware of theirexternal world and internal life, thanadults are. I believe this because thereis strong evidence for a functionaltrade-off with development. Youngchildren are much better than adults atlearning new things and flexiblychanging what they think about theworld. On the other hand, they aremuch worse at using their knowledgeto act in a swift, efficient and automaticway. They can learn three languages atonce but they can’t tie their shoelaces.
David Buss Psychologist, University of Texas;author, "The Evolution of Desire"True love.I’ve spent two decades of myprofessional life studying humanmating. In that time, I’ve documentedphenomena ranging from what menand women desire in a mate to themost diabolical forms of sexualtreachery. I’ve discovered theastonishingly creative ways in whichmen and women deceive andmanipulate each other. I’ve studiedmate poachers, obsessed stalkers,sexual predators and spousemurderers. But throughout thisexploration of the dark dimensions ofhuman mating, I’ve remainedunwavering in my belief in true love.While love is common, true love israre, and I believe that few people arefortunate enough to experience it. Theroads of regular love are well traveledand their markers are well understoodby many - the mesmerizing attraction,the ideational obsession, the sexualafterglow, profound self-sacrifice andthe desire to combine DNA. But truelove takes its own course throughuncharted territory. It knows no fences,has no barriers or boundaries. It’sdifficult to define, eludes modernmeasurement and seems scientificallywoolly. But I know true love exists. Ijust can’t prove it.