Reinventing the Sacred A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion

1. Reinventing the SacredA New View of Science, Reason, and Religion A review of Stuart Kauffman’s book By Paul Bassett Nov. 10, 2009

2. Stuart Kauffman • Physician • Professor, Biochemistry and Biophysics • MacArthur Fellowship “Genius Award” • Santa Fe Institute resident 1986-97 • Founded the BIOS Group • Currently at the University of Calgary • Biological Sciences and Physics and Astron. • Philosophy

3. Synopsis • A new way to harmonize science & religion • Science needs to get past reductionism • Religion needs to get past supernaturalism • The universe possesses “ceaseless creativity” • Biosphere, Culture, Economics, Minds, Morality,... • cannot be reduced to the motions of elementary particles • science can never predict their detailed unfolding • The true source of mystery, & the sacred • A natural notion of God • worthy of superseding all other gods • We sharply disagree about the nature of minds • Challenging for non-science readers

4. Reductionism • Social sciences • Psychology • Physiology • Cell Biology • Molecular Biology • Chemistry • Many-body physics • Elementary particle physics • Reductionism is the most powerful epistemology ever invented.

5. Reductionism Overreaches The deepest claim (Stephen Weinberg): All events in the universe, “from asteroid collisions to a kiss, to a court in France finding a man guilty of murder,” are nothing but the motions of elementary particles. Hume’s “Naturalistic Fallacy” reflects this claim: One cannot deduce ought from is. i.e., moral principles cannot be derived from what happens to particles & their aggregates

6. The “Multiplatform” Refutation • IF the same phenomena occur in settings that operate by different rules (or conversely) • e.g. chess, “payrollness”, semantics, mind • THEN those rules are insufficient to explain such phenomena • i.e., the phenomena can’t be reduced to those rules • such epiphenomena are called emergent • Emergent phenomena are just as real as particles • They too are part of the “the furniture of the universe.”

7. Pre-adaptations • Most mutations are “silent” • they neither help nor hurt. • When the environment changes, some silent mutations become helpful • Advantageous pre-adaptations spread • They give species novel capabilities • e.g., resistance in pathogens, swim bladders from lungs; feathers into wings; light sensitive skin into eyes, jaws into ears, rigid engine blocks … • Pre-adaptations are random acts of creativity.

8. Pre-adaptations are Unpredictable • Predictions are based on stated pre-conditions • DNA is finite but infinitely many pre-conditions may (indirectly) change DNA • Conclusion: evolution is inherently unpredictable • Creativity in the biosphere is rampant but partially lawless • i.e., consistent with all physical laws but not reducible to them • Could non-physical laws emerge? Yes!

9. The Adjacent Possible • Random juxtapositions permit novelties • E.g. Pre-adaptations • E.g. Economics, culture, thoughts… • are rampant with creativity when unrelated things happen to come together • E.g. Adjacent molecules randomly react • Brownian motion creates new juxtapositions • A combinatorial explosion of novel polymers can result • Catalytic reaction chains will explain how life arose

10. Self-Organizing Processes Abound • Crystallization (salt, snowflakes) • Liposomes • Self catalyzing molecules • Giant network formation • A single egg becomes a trillion-cell adult • Self-organized criticality of complex systems

11. Life’s Origins, 3.8 Billion years ago • RNA forms spontaneously • RNA can catalyze its own reproduction • Liposomes can confine mutually catalytic networks • To be alive a system must have 3 properties: • Reproduction • Metabolism • Autonomous behavior – be an agent

12. Agency Leads to Goals, Values • Finite agents must extract “signals” from “noise” • Unbounded happenings internalize to a finite set of signs • Internal signs often signal what has (survival) value • Agent’s “doings” try to achieve goals • Goals denote desired happenings, states • EG, bacteria sense then swim up glucose gradients • Shopping’s doings are independent of enroute happenings • Choosing among goals involves having values (meta-goals) • Kauffman transcends Hume: • Agents CAN infer ought from is because the is concerns doings • This is how morality emerges as a causal factor in the universe • None of the above can or need be reduced to physics

13. Mind and Consciousness I believe the human mind is not algorithmic, and is not a mere “computational machine.” Rather, I believe that the mind is more than a computational machine. – S.K. • Are mental tours-de-force not computable?? • E.g. Gödel showed unprovable truths exist • But the subconscious has vast potential to create new ideas from adjacent possible inputs • S.K. wants minds to violate the CTD principle

14. Church, Turing, Deutsch (CTD) • Church-Turing (1936): Nothing can compute more than what a computer can • Resisted all attempts to refute • Deutsch (1985) elevated CT to a physical principle (CTD) & proved QM satisfies CTD • A CTD violation would have profound effects: • Alter our understanding of how the universe works • Solve problems known to be unsolvable

15. Are we threatened to think machines might outthink us? • S.K. proposes a QM model for thinking • Inspired by quantum coherence in photosynthesis • Even if right, CTD  his model can’t beat machines! • Ironic that • His model reduces thinking to particle motions • S.K. subtracts when he could have added to the list of simple mechanisms that causes stunning creativity & novelty

16. Hofstadter: “I Am A Strange Loop” • Minds are goal-seeking algorithms operating in parallel at many levels • including subconscious & emotional • mutually irreducible with complex feedback loops • Like DNA, they evolve • rendering minds unpredictable & creative • Bekenstein, Lloyd, Ng • It’s algorithms all the way down!

17. A New Worldview • The universe is a far richer space and place • “We are members of a universe … which we co-create.” • interestingly self-referential • We do not need a supernatural God. • “The creativity in nature is God enough…. From that new sacred, we can hope to invent a global ethic to orient our lives, and our emerging global civilization”

18. A New Worldview Cont’d “Science itself begins to tell us that reason alone is an insufficient guide to living our lives forward. Then perhaps we must reexamine and reintegrate the arts and humanities along with science, practical action, politics, ethics, and spirituality.”

19. Morality and Ethics “The profound fear behind the attack on evolution is the fear that … we will be left with a Godless, meaningless, amoral secular humanism. One deep purpose of this book is to say … that if we take God to be the creativity in the universe and find … the roots of our ethics [is] due to evolution itself, then this deep fear is unfounded. … The sacred and the moral remain utterly valid. So I want to say that I am sympathetic with the feelings and beliefs of those who espouse intelligent design. But as science, it fails.”

20. Morality and Ethics Cont’d “My own hope is that we will continue to invent institutions from international courts to nongovernmental agencies that act across national boundaries, to help shape our evolving laws and our morality, partially embedded in those laws, across our traditions.”

21. The Final Word “We must use the God word, for my hope is to honorably steal its aura to authorize the sacredness of the creativity in nature. May we find the creativity in nature sacred whether we are atheists or believers in a God who breathed life into this universe of ceaseless creativity.” S.K’s message deserves a wide audience.