We humans have a strong sense
of self-awareness and we seek answers to questions like why the universe is
what it is, why the laws of Nature are what they are, who created the universe,
who created life, . . . etc. In this partly autobiographical article I describe
how the science of complexity has given me the answers to such questions and
moulded my worldview.
The God
Question
Many of us take it for granted
that for every effect there must be a cause, and that that cause is the
effect of a previous cause, and so on: Cause – effect – cause – effect - . . .
. Is there (and can there be) an ultimate cause, the cause of all the ensuing
effects? Many people are of the belief that ‘God’ is that ultimate and final
cause, the ‘uncaused cause’.
But how can there be an
uncaused cause? If you truly believe that God must be there because for every
effect there must be a cause, then God also must be the effect of some still
higher-level cause, and so on, ad infinitum. So, postulating the
existence of God does not really help; it just pushes the ultimate question to
‘Who created God?’.
Suppose you say that one must
stop somewhere in the reverse chain effect-cause-effect-cause-effect- . . . and then say finally that ‘I do not know who created God’. If you
are willing to say that, then God becomes an unnecessary and therefore superfluous hypothesis: You may as well say that we do not know how the
universe came into existence, why is there anything at all, why are the laws of
Nature what they are, etc. In fact it turns out that modern science
(particularly its somewhat new branch called ‘complexity science’) does have quite
credible answers to these questions now.
There has been a raging (even
violent) debate on such issues among human beings. There are three types of
people:
(1) Those who believe that there
is a God (or many gods), and certain questions must not even be asked about
God.
(2) Then there are those who
take the stand that God is an unnecessary (and ‘failed’) hypothesis, and we should simply admit
that there are some questions we cannot answer very well at present. I
subscribe to this viewpoint, and therefore call myself an atheist.
(3) There is also a third group
of people who are willing and able to be logical all the way, except that
their belief in the existence of God or ‘some higher power’ must not be
questioned! This, I think, is the result of childhood conditioning. Unlike me, there are not many people who are able to shake off what their early upbringing has done to them and strike out on their own.
Needless to say, it would be
highly desirable to find a convergence ground for all these groups. I think the
most pertinent and helpful question we should be asking in this context is: Is
it always the case that if there is a design (or order) somewhere or anywhere,
there must be a Designer or a designer; or is it that order and design can emerge
even when there is no designer involved?
I wrote a series of 127 blog
posts under the label ‘Understanding Natural Phenomena’ to explain how order can
emerge and evolve even when there is no designer present. I give an easily
comprehensible example here to illustrate this point.
Diamonds, as also silicon chips
(used in integrated circuits (ICs)), are examples of crystals. Crystals differ
from, say, glass in that in crystals the atoms or molecules are arranged in a
highly ordered manner on a regular lattice. Is there a Designer involved here
for creating this remarkably high degree of order? Certainly not. Who put the
atoms or molecules on a regular lattice? Nobody. Small crystals of, say, common
salt (NaCl) can grow spontaneously very easily. Here is how:
Take some water in a container
and add a little bit of common salt to it. It may need some stirring to
dissolve the salt. Add more salt and stir again. It dissolves. Go on adding
salt in small amounts and stir the solution every time for dissolving the salt.
There will come a stage when, no matter how much stirring you do, some salt is
always left undissolved at the bottom of the container. Decant the clear
solution into another container and let it just lie in a cool corner somewhere.
When sufficient time has passed, you will see beautiful, cube-shaped, crystals
of NaCl in the container. This well-defined shape is because of the underlying
regular arrangement of the ions of Na+ and Cl- in the
crystals.
Which designer is responsible
for this design and order? Not any that I know off!
What I find amazing is that
most people do not find this occurrence as something extraordinary or
‘miraculous’. There is the emergence of a highly ordered and extremely
well-designed array of an enormous number of ions or atoms, and most people do
not think much about it. And yet these same people believe that since the ‘creation’ and
existence of life is something which cannot emerge ‘just like that’, there
must be a designer or Designer (God) behind this. The fact is that both a crystal and a
living being have a high degree of order and design, and they differ only in
the ‘degree of complexity’.
‘Degree of complexity’ is a
technical term in complexity science. A very good description of it was given
by Murray Gell-Mann.
At a personal level, as I went
deeper and deeper into what constitutes the essence of complexity science and
what ‘degree of complexity’ really means (I have given a detailed answer in the
127 blog posts I mentioned above), my worldview and life philosophy underwent a
change. It was a gratifying experience because, like everybody else, I also
wanted answers to the usual fundamental questions we all ask about ourselves
and about our universe. Complexity science provides the best such answers we have
at present.
Why is it that I find it easy
to accept what complexity science says, and many other people do not? It is
because I have made a lot of effort to understand the finer points of
complexity science. It is also because I have imbibed, at an early age, the
spirit of the all-important ‘scientific method’ of interpreting information or
data.
The Scientific
Method
‘The scientific method’ is a
technical term which needs to be understood by everybody, although that is far
from the case at present. I have explained the 8-old way of the
scientific method in a blog post Science, Scientists, and Scientific Temper in Society, but I shall repeat some of the
description here for completeness. This method is actually a very potent tool,
not only for investigating natural phenomena, but also for solving or
preventing a number of social maladies afflicting society all over the world.
In the Wikipedia the scientific
method is described as follows: 'The scientific method is a body of techniques
for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and
integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry
must be based on empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific
principles of reasoning. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the
scientific method as: "a method or procedure that has characterized
natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation,
measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of
hypotheses"'.
The basic scientific
approach is as follows. Suppose there is a set of observations about a natural
phenomenon which we wish to explain. The scientific method for doing this is the
following 8-fold way:
1. A minimum necessary set of axioms. There is an agreed, minimum necessary, set of axioms,
which are taken as givens (their validity is either a matter of assumption, or
has been established already).
2. Logic. There is an agreed set of rules
for logical reasoning.
3. Hypothesis. The logical rules for reasoning,
as well as the axioms, are used along with a hypothesis (or model) for
describing and interpreting the observations we humans have made about the
natural phenomenon under investigation. It
is not important how the hypothesis is arrived at, because it is always going to be tested thoroughly and repeatedly. And there can even be more
than one competing hypotheses for explaining the same set of observations or
material evidence.
4. Agreed
meaning of each word. Every word
used for making any statement in science should have the same agreed meaning for
everybody. This requirement becomes particularly important when concepts like
'consciousness' are discussed or investigated. In the scientific method, a trick often employed wittingly or unwittingly is to define concepts in terms of things that are observable or, better still, measurable.
5. Reproducible
verification by objective observation. A hypothesis
must be able to explain the observations in a logically consistent way, and it
must successfully stand the test of repeated experimental verification.
If its success is only partial, we try to modify and improve it, and then check
against the observations again. That is how we arrive at the best, i.e. the
most successful, hypothesis at a given point of time in our history.
6. Predictive
capability of the hypothesis. A validated hypothesis is an example of 'induction', i.e. inference of a general or universal statement from a number of singular or individual observations. Our
confidence in its validity grows if it not only explains what is
already observed, but also enables us to 'deduce' correctly some
predictions about what more can be expected to be observed about the natural
phenomenon under investigation. Thus both induction and deduction are parts of the scientific method.
7. Elevation of a hypothesis to
the status of a theory. A hypothesis (or a set of hypotheses) that has repeatedly stood the
test of experiment, and that can successfully predict and explain a whole range of
experimental observations, gradually acquires the status of a theory.
8. The falsifiability
requirement. During the
entire process of: (i) statement of the research problem, (ii) use of logical
reasoning, and (iii) drawing of conclusions from the data and the reasoning, the
most important constraint put in by the scientific method is that only falsifiable
statements can be made. The term 'falsifiable statement' was introduced by Karl
Popper (2005). I explain its meaning with the help of an example.
Consider the
following statement S1 (Wudka 1998):
S1: 'The moon
is populated by little green men who can read our minds and will hide whenever
anyone on Earth looks for them, and will flee into deep space whenever a
spacecraft comes near '. This statement is so worded that no one can ever
observe the postulated green men and prove the statement to be false, so the
statement is unfalsifiable (and therefore not permitted in scientific discourse).
Next, consider
the following statement:
S2: 'There are
no little green men on the moon '. This is a falsifiable statement. All you
have to do to prove it false is to show material evidence for the existence of even
one green man. Berry (2010) attributes the following famous statement to
Einstein: 'Many experiments may prove me
right, but it takes only one to prove me wrong'.
Only
falsifiable statements are permitted in the scientific method. Therefore S1 is
an unscientific statement or theory, and S2 is a scientific statement or
theory.
In work
beginning in the 1930s, Popper gave falsifiability a renewed emphasis as a
criterion for acceptable statements in science. He also pointed out that not all
unfalsifiable claims are fallacious; they are just unfalsifiable. As long
as proper skepticism is retained and proper evidence is given, even an
unfalsifiable claim can be a legitimate form of reasoning (but not of what
finally becomes a part of science). We should never assume that we must
be right simply because we cannot be proved wrong.
Why did Popper emphasize the falsifiability requirement. It was an effort to tackle what he called 'the problem of induction'. As stated above, the process of doing science involves generalization from individual observations, and this is always fraught with uncertainty.
How many observations or measurements should we make so as to be able
to generalize correctly? All we can say is: the larger the number, the
better. But there is always the possibility that the next observation
(which we did not make) may go against the generalization. So we can only have low or high probabilities, but not certainties, in the induction process. The larger the number of observations which agree with the generalization, the more likely it is that the generalization is valid.
Similarly, the greater the variety of conditions in which the observations and measurements are made, the greater the probability that the inductive generalization is true. The question arises: Which variations in the conditions of observation and measurement are considered significant and relevant, and which ones are not. This is decided by the theory we believe in for the domain of investigation. If the theory is wrong, we are likely to be led astray, till somebody comes up with a better theory.
Thus, because of 'the problem of induction', strong likelihood, rather than complete certainty, is what the inferred laws of science are all about. Popper emphasized the falsifiability requirement in an effort to minimize the chances of inductivism going wrong. At the centre of the scientific method is the act of making statements based on existing theories. By restricting ourselves strictly to making only falsifiable statements, we are ensuring that even a single observation or measurement that disagrees with the pre-supposed hypothesis or theory is enough to dismiss the generalization, namely the theory, we inferred by the process of induction.
Notice the intellectual humility of the true scientist. The scientific
spirit implies an ever-present willingness to give up even our pet theories and
opinions if the evidence demands so. Contrast this with what is said in most of
the organized religions. In them, certain statements cannot be questioned, and
there are many statements or beliefs in them which are unfalsifiable.
Votaries of faith may be quick to point out that the axioms mentioned in
the 8-fold way above are also a matter of faith. No, they are not. To
understand why, let us consider the example of quantum theory.
All natural phenomena are governed by the laws of quantum mechanics. Why
the laws of Nature are what they are is something I have discussed elsewhere. Another article of mine on the anthropic principle is also relevant in
this context. The laws of quantum mechanics are highly counter-intuitive for us humans.
The quantum theory is based on certain assumed axioms, like any theory is. But
the most important thing here is that the quantum theory is the most
repeatedly and the most thoroughly tested theory ever. It is the best
theory we have at present for understanding the world around us. If anybody
does not agree, he/she is most welcome to come up with another theory, with its
own set of axioms and logical structure. If the new theory is better supported
by experimental evidence than the present quantum theory, science and
scientists will have no compunctions whatsoever in abandoning the existing
theory, and accepting the new one. This is not faith and reverence; it is, in
fact, the negation of all that.
My Evolution
as a Humanist Atheist
I was born into a Hindu family
in the western part of the Punjab district of Undivided India, and was about
two years old at the time of the Partition of the country into India and
Pakistan in 1947. My parents opted for Indian citizenship, and we had therefore
to migrate (rather flee for dear life!) to the new, truncated India. The
Government of India had hurriedly set up many ‘refugee colonies’ (in Delhi and
elsewhere) to house families such as ours. We occupied a house in such a colony
in West Delhi. These houses were constructed in such a tearing hurry (and low
cost) that walls were raised using bricks made of unbaked mud, put
together with, what else, more mud. Not much cement was used. No RCC. And also no
water connection, no electricity, no sewage pipes.
The school I went to (all the way
up to higher secondary) was also set up very recently by the Government, and mine
was the first batch of students. So, as I went up the education ladder, new
classes were started by the school for my batch each year. Mine was thus the
first batch of students to pass the Board of Higher Secondary Education
examination. The medium of instruction was Hindi.
My mother, a homemaker, was an
extremely religious and superstitious person. My father also was very religious
and superstitious. We had lost our house and all other wealth and belongings
when we fled from Pakistan, so my father had to start from scratch, all over
again. We were not exactly a poor family, but we were lower middle class. My
father did his best to make both ends meet. And he did not hesitate even to take
loans to ensure that all his children had college education.
As I said, mine was a highly
religious Hindu family, so I was a religious person to start with. I was a
voracious reader of short stories of all kinds, including the mythological
stories in Hindu texts.
By
the time I finished school and entered college, my life philosophy began to
change. Nehru and Bertrand Russell were the early influences on me as I started
questioning the basic things taken for granted in Hinduism. I became an atheist
gradually.
Bertrand
Russell was a mathematician and a writer, among other things. I noticed that
his prose had strict logic and mathematical precision. This I tried to emulate
in my writing and speech. The tendency to ensure that my language must convey
exactly what I want to say, without any shoddiness on logic, has stood me in
good stead.
Abandoning
the God concept was fine, but what about the vacuum left behind? I still needed
to get answers to the great fundamental questions everybody asks. My flair for
writing resulted in the publication of my first book (on ferroic materials) in
the year 2000. This happens to be the first comprehensive book on the subject of ferroic materials. A particularly important feature of ferroic materials is that, because of their highly nonlinear response to one or more types of applied fields, it becomes possible to field-tune some of their properties. This makes them very attractive for use in smart structures. Therefore, from ferroic materials to smart structures was the obvious next step for me for pursuing my research work.
Published in 2007, my next book had the title ‘Smart Structures: Blurring the Distinction between the Living and the Nonliving’.
While researching for this book I was exposed to the absolutely fascinating
subject called complexity science, which has had a lasting influence on my
worldview.
I am
a condensed-matter physicist by original training. What a pity that whereas every
student of physics is routinely taught subjects like quantum mechanics and
thermodynamics, nobody has yet thought of teaching complexity science
routinely. I want people to pay attention to what Stephen Hawking has said: The
present century belongs to complexity science.
My
Experience with Hinduism
My
parents reacted to my atheism with some concern, but they were not unduly alarmed.
There is something remarkably inclusive about Hindu philosophy. Unlike in Islam
and Christianity, there is no single holy book which is the gospel which cannot
be questioned or challenged. It is accepted in Hinduism that different people
have different needs, inclinations, and innate strengths and weaknesses. So a
variety of options are available for realizing God. There are at least four
spiritual paths for realizing God: Karma Yoga (Yoga means union with God),
Bhakti Yoga, Raja Yoga, and Jnana Yoga. ‘Karma Yoga is suitable for a man of
active temperament, Bhakti Yoga for a man of devotional temperament, Raja Yoga
for a man of mystic temperament, and Jnana Yoga for a man of rational and
philosophical temperament, or a man of enquiry’ (Swami Sivananda (1947), ‘All
About Hinduism’).
The
Jnana Yoga (union with God through the knowledge route) is particularly interesting. It says that people can realize God
through the questioning method as well, i.e., even by denying the existence of God to start with.
Hindu philosophy is so confident of itself that there is no doubt that even a
doubter will ultimately realize God! So, in principle, a person can well be an
atheist and still be in the Hindu fold. ‘Hinduism does not condemn those who
deny God as the creator and ruler of the world, who do not accept the existence
of an eternal soul and the state of Moksha or state of liberation. Hinduism
does not render the upholders of such views unfit to be recognized as pious and
honourable members of the Hindu religious society’ (Swami Sivananda 1947). No wonder my
professed atheism has never created any social or family problems for me.
Hindu
philosophy also asserts that all the great seers and prophets help lesser
beings in realizing God. Therefore there is no problem in viewing even Christ,
Mohammad, Nanak and Buddha as just that many additional prophets or seers who
helped people realize God. ‘Hinduism, unlike other religions, does not
dogmatically assert that the final emancipation is possible only through its
means and not through any other. . . .
Hinduism allows absolute freedom to the rational mind of man’ (Swami Sivananda
1947). I think this is the strength of Hinduism which has made it an indestructible
religion. Many invaders brought their respective religions to India, but
Hinduism simply assimilated what it found worthwhile in those religions, and moved on.
This
same spirit of accommodation is visible in the Constitution adopted by India, a
Hindu-majority nation. But I now see a serious topical problem there. Organized
religion seems at present to be the number one threat to world peace and to the
very existence of the human race. Gandhi
and Nehru did much we Indians can be grateful for, but they also screwed up a
few basic things. Under their pressure the adopted Constitution of India provided for
freedom of religion as a fundamental right. But a close look makes obvious a
clear logical inconsistency there. The Constitution says that Indian citizens
have the right to preach, practice and propagate any religion of their choice.
Suppose a religion says that its God is the only real God (and there are such
religions in India), and that it is a pious act to liquidate the followers of
any other God, or to induce or force such people to change their religion for their 'betterment'! How can the
practitioners of such a religion be legitimately given the fundamental right to ‘freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practise and
propagate religion’?
Of
course, it was added in the Constitution as an afterthought that the above fundamental right is ‘subject
to public order, morality and health’. I think this is not enough. What is
needed is that when a person is, say, 18 years old, he must declare, under oath
of allegiance to the Constitution of India, that he does not accept any such
exhortation in his religion which holds the God of any other religion as
inferior to its own, or which says that its God is the only genuine God. [If
the God concept is logically meaningful at all, and if there is only one such God
(!), how can Mr. A’s God be different from or superior to Mr. B’s God?]
Such
is the inherently irrational nature of religion that I can be certain that my
suggestion will not be accepted any time soon!
Complexity
Science
Complexity science is about complex systems. A complex system is
a highly nonlinear system, usually comprised of a large number of interacting
components, the interactions often leading to structures and properties which
cannot always be foreseen or predicted using the methods adopted in
conventional, reductionistic, science. Two apples plus two apples is not always
just four apples. New, unexpected, properties or phenomena can ‘emerge’. Life from nonliving origins
is one such example of emergence.
Complex systems are dynamical
systems. A dynamical system is one which changes or evolves with time. So,
evolution is a defining feature of any dynamical system. Biological evolution is a subset of dynamical evolution.
Complex systems are usually
‘open systems', in the thermodynamic
sense. What this means is that they are able to exchange energy and/or matter
with the surroundings. This, when considered along with the second law of
thermodynamics for open systems, explains why order can emerge in a
complex system: Entropy can decrease locally, so long as there is an
overall lowering of the free energy.
Darwin and Wallace gave us the
insight about natural selection and the resultant biological evolution. This
must rank as perhaps the biggest game-changer idea to have occurred to any
human. The idea was used for explaining, among other things, the underlying
link among all life forms. Recently, Pope Francis made a valiant attempt to
come to terms with science when he said: ‘God is not... a magician, but the
Creator who brought everything to life. . . . Evolution in nature is not
inconsistent with the notion of creation, because evolution requires the
creation of beings that evolve’.
This prompts me to point out
another aspect of evolution, namely nonbiological or chemical evolution. The Pope is accepting
biological evolution after life had been created by the Creator. Even
Darwin’s book did not deal with how life was created (or got created); it only
discussed what happened after life had emerged. The fact is that, as complexity
science tells us, biological evolution was preceded by chemical evolution.
Chemical evolution is nothing
but dynamical evolution occurring in the domain of chemistry rather than
physics. It is about natural selection and survival of the fittest in the world
of chemical reactions, leading to the emergence of ever more sophisticated and
information-laden molecules. This is how DNA emerged, without the intervention
of any Designer.
Ever since the Big Bang our
universe has been expanding and cooling. This means that gradients of various
types have been getting created all the time. And the second law of
thermodynamics says that phenomena occur so that some gradient or another may
get annulled. This is how atoms emerged.
Our Earth condensed out of
interstellar dust and gas ~4.6 billion years ago, and life emerged ~4 billion
years ago. The 0.6 billion years before the appearance of life were the years
of chemical evolution on Earth, leading to the gradual appearance of life as an
emergent phenomenon. Lightning and UV rays from
the Sun broke up the simple hydrogen-rich molecules and the fragments combined
into increasingly complex molecules. These dissolved in the oceans and moved
around, interacting in various ways. Given enough time even a rare event may
occur. One such event was the chance emergence of a molecule that could use the
smaller molecules floating around in the organic soup to make crude copies of itself. This was the ancestor of DNA,
and the rest is history. The important message here is that with reproduction,
mutation, and selective elimination of lest efficient types of molecules,
(chemical) evolution was occurring all the time, and is still occurring in the
oceans and perhaps elsewhere. This was the mechanism for the emergence of life from nonlife. No miracles there. No Creator
needed.
With the further passage of
time, molecules with specialized functions got together, resulting in the
emergence of the first biological cell. The coming together of
single-celled organisms into multi-cellular conglomerates was the next big
development, culminating ultimately in the emergence of humans.
I came across an internet meme
recently, which said something to the effect that atheism is
the belief that ‘there was nothing and nothing happened to nothing and then
nothing magically exploded for no reason, creating everything, and then a bunch
of everything magically rearranged itself into self-replicating bits which then
turned into dinosaurs. Makes perfect sense . . . matter of faith . . . ’.
No. Such a definition of
atheism is from a person who has a vested interest in ridiculing and demeaning
atheism. As I said before, an atheist is one who says that the God hypothesis is unnecessary and therefore
superfluous, because it explains nothing and simply shifts the fundamental
question to a different fundamental question. The God hypothesis stems from the
causality argument: There must a cause for every effect, so there must be a
cause (God) for the existence of the universe. But by this logic there must
also be a cause for God. The people who oppose atheism say that God is an
uncaused God. But if they are willing to accept that, they may as well accept
that the universe is an uncaused cause.
That reminds me of a sensible variant
of atheism, namely scientific pantheism. The best known votary of pantheism was Einstein.
And as Richard Dawkins has explained (in the book ‘The God Delusion’),
pantheism is nothing but ‘sexed-up atheism’. The pantheism philosophy says that Nature is all we have. We do not know why it is there, or how it came to be there, but it is something tangible and tenable (unlike the God concept), and it is a jolly good idea to respect it, cherish it, love it, and, of course, try to understand its secrets and laws by the scientific method. This is how a votary of pantheism
has expressed his sentiments: ‘We are part of nature. Nature
made us and at our death we will be reabsorbed into nature. We are at home in
nature and in our bodies. This is where we belong. This
is the only place where we can find and make our paradise, not in some
imaginary world on the other side of the grave. If nature is the only paradise,
then separation from nature is the only hell. When we destroy nature, we create
hell on earth for other species and for ourselves. . . . Nature is our mother, our home, our
security, our peace, our past and our future. We should treat natural things
and habitats as believers treat their temples and shrines, as sacred - to be
revered and preserved in all their intricate and fragile beauty’ (Paul
Harrison: Revering the Universe. Caring for Nature. Celebrating Life).
To conclude, complexity science
has taught me that there can be art without an artist, order without anybody
trying to create order, and life without the intervention of a Life Giver. And
modern quantum field theory has a credible answer to the question: How could
our universe have arisen out of nothing? (cf. Lawrence Krauss (2012): ‘A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing’).
