Tomorrow Happens (24 page)

Alas, the behavior of a more gaudy element drives many scientists to over-react by spurning the entire conceptual realm of direct mental control . . . even mental control over our own bodies! Professionals who openly admit the necessity of using placebos in drug experiments will, perhaps in the same breath, deny any possibility the a patient's emotional self-image might directly affect the course of disease! It's an excessively narrow-minded reaction that does them—and science—no credit.

Let me shift gears and talk briefly about the Continuity Expression.

It's a simple trick of geometry and physics that we learned about early as undergrads, at Caltech. You draw a box in space, perhaps containing some matter. To keep things interesting, let's say that the material is in motion, a fluid or gas. Maybe a river. Or light flowing from the sun. First carefully measure what's inside the box. Also, keep an accurate accounting of anything that crosses all six faces of the box, entering or leaving through the boundary.

Assuming that nothing is created or destroyed, the resulting expression must balance. If a net
outward
flow is seen, the total amount of stuff remaining inside should decrease by exactly the amount that departed. It's a simple, rather obvious concept that enables us to derive everything from gas dynamics to the transfer of photons in the solar interior. The Continuity Expression has been essential to developing an understanding of particle physics within the blazing targets of high-energy accelerators.

Now add in the notion of
information
in the formal sense, as both a thermodynamic and a mathematical property. Some physicists get all spooky about information, especially down at the level of the quantum. But on one thing they agree. It takes
energy
to convey information from one patch of space to another. And most of them feel that information must obey relativity—the speed-of-light limit. In fact, information is nearly always carried, across any appreciable distance, by some form of electromagnetic radiation.

Combine these two notions and you quickly see another reason why scientists have trouble with parapsychology. Telepathy and other psi phenomena appear to involve transfers of information from one person or place to another. One individual's brain state gets partially transposed to another brain, far away. And so on. Neurons fire that might not otherwise have fired, as the recipient thinks some new thoughts that weren't generated from within or by normal sensory input. Something
entered
the second brain to stimulate these changes.

But what entered? If we carefully eliminate all the mundane stimuli of radio, sound, light, smell . . . what's left? Mystics claim
unknown channels beyond the ken of science
, but the Continuity Expression lets you check for unknown channels, indirectly! By measuring even minute changes within a given volume that cannot be explained in normal ways. It's how x-rays and radioactivity were discovered.

You want open-mindedness? Physicists have looked for other, unknown channels. They've looked
hard
, with the incentive of a Nobel for anyone who finds one! The Continuity Expression lets them trawl for clues either within the box or crossing the boundaries.

If it's strong enough to affect neurons in a systematic way, don't you think they would have found it by now?

Oh, that won't set back the enthusiasm of a true believer. For example, many still hold faith in the old mind-matter dualism of Descartes. Neurons react
to
the mind, not vice versa. And the mind operates on a plane of its own.

Sound silly and old-fashioned? I agree, sort of. And yet the contrarian in me has an answer. If you stretch your imagination, there could be some support for the dualist view!

Picture some future time when thinking beings may occupy simulated software realms within some vast cybernetic space. Realms that emulate reality with fine attention to every detail. We don't yet know how far simulation can be extended, or whether there are inherent limits. Some very smart people believe there aren't, in which case there's no guarantee that
you
, reading this paragraph right now, aren't living in such a simulation. (Two SF stories in this volume study this theme.)

What is reality? It's an old sophomoric conundrum, one that only gets more irritatingly relevant as time goes on. I fear it may become
the
cliché of the next century. Get used to it.

In a software world, brain-body dualism might easily be true! So could "hidden channels," especially if some denizens of the simulation occasionally gain access to bits of lower-level language code.

Again, we can't disprove any of this . . . and if it ain't true now, it could plausibly become true, tomorrow.

Want another reason for the ongoing fascination with psi? For some people it may have to do with the disappointing state of our
fulcra
.

A fulcrum is a pivot that enables a lever to work. Archimedes said, "Give me a fulcrum, a lever that is long enough, and a place to stand . . . I will move the world."

Today, even while trying to solve pressing contemporary problems, some of us also pause and dream even bigger dreams than Archimedes had. To visit faraway stars. To terraform planets. To commune with whales or aliens. To acquire infinite supplies of energy, resources, and lifespan.

Back in the middle of the 20th Century—a time of wretched despair on many levels—some of these dreams actually seemed within grasp. Proponents of atomic power claimed their
fulcrum
would eliminate poverty, reshape the City of Tomorrow and blast huge, Orion-Class spacecraft—bearing whole colonies—to Mars. Even Einstein's speed limit still had a provisional quality, sounding more like an advisory notice than The Law.

Today, physics still seems exciting in abstract. Finding the Higgs boson is neat, all right. Black holes in the center of the galaxy? Terrific. I just love pictures from the Space Telescope and salivate over the idea of orbiting interferometers.

But none of those things offer any obvious new fulcrum—no apparent way to vastly expand the range of cool things we can
do
! Most of the assertive spirit of derring-do has already moved on to biology, a field that seems rife with new ways to alter human reality, both for well and ill. But 21st Century biology is so large-scale, so expensive and massively
corporate
, that its new fulcra appear to come at the price of sacrificing all individualism or romance.

Wouldn't it be nice to have a shortcut? A way around all the committees and buildings and laboratories and budgets and accountability structures of Big Scale Science? How about a
personal-scale fulcrum
, that anybody with the right talents or connections might cobble together . . . or even create out of sheer will power, using the almost-infinite power of desire?

Oh, yes. I understand the wish. The need. The reason why science doesn't always satisfy. Sometimes mere pictures from space just don't seem enough. It would be thrilling to learn that some cheap and easy route had been found, to evade the prim rules of Einstein and Boltzmann and the daunting problem of cosmic scale.

Hey, where do I sign up?

Oh, I could go on and on. There are so many implications of telepathy alone, not to mention all the other purported psychic marvels . . . is it any wonder that I toy with them, now and then, in works of fiction? Even while I cast a skeptical eye toward them, in my role as a licensed Doctor of Natural Philosophy?

In fact, I confess sharing some of my colleagues' hostility—at a mild level—toward the whole notion of parapsychology. Not because I think it's a Great Big Threat To Rational Thinking or that a few crackpot dreamers will bring the house of science crashing down. (What panicky silliness!) But for another reason altogether.

When you get right down to it, I dislike psi because
I
don't think it's anything real grownups should be bothering with right now
.

Even if the next wave of super-cautious parapsychology experiments do manage to replicate some statistical anomalies in a card trick, or reproduce vague drawings at-a-distance, or even find a treasure or two . . . I cannot respect a field that tries to resurrect the
elitism of magic
. The belief that some special sub-race of beings living among us have inherent powers that raise them high above the common herd—not just in the quantitative way that genius and hard work can lift you, but in the profoundly qualitative sort of way that a speaking man stands apart from a mute chimpanzee.

That is what the romantic impulse has always boiled down to, folks, ever since way back when Byron and Shelley rejected the egali-tarianism of the Enlightenment. All the way to the mystics of the Nazi SS, extolling their vision of a master race. Altogether too much of the so-called New Age has a nauseatingly similar agenda—to flatter believers that they are special, loftier than others, because of some quality deep within that a very few possess.

Not something learned or earned or created through hard cooperative work, but a trait of specialness that smolders within, waiting for the right incantation to ignite it in full glory . . . or full fury.

Didn't we have enough of that during all the thousands of years that romanticism ruled the Zeitgeist of every human culture? Doesn't that appalling history - in dismal, ignorant, hierarchical societies—tell us something important? History warns that romanticism, for all its obvious
artistic
appeal, can be utterly poisonous when it infects a society's political structure, or the halls where earnest people study the hard difference between
true
and
false
.

Science and the other fruits of Enlightenment offer a much better way.

Oh yes, the sheer egotistical roar of romance can be alluring! Each of us, trapped forever in a single subjective theater, wants to believe we're special, the hero of the story. Some get to find a sense of importance from doing useful work. Many are lucky enough to participate in the adventure of science, or some other endeavor that contributes to a new kind of mature, shared adventure. Millions achieve value simply by working hard, being good citizens, and raising a generation of people slightly better than themselves.

Others yearn for something to raise them up out of the herd. Out of mundanity, to a realm of genuine specialness. Intervention by a power from the outside . . . or a power from within. What's the difference? Either way, the fantasy offers hope. And hope spawns belief.

To sum up, parapsychology boils down to a whole bunch of metaphors. (Doesn't everything?)

To an angry or frustrated romantic, psi can seem a means of transcending dreary everyday life, leaving the mundane neighbors behind.

To those focused on the future, it suggests cool powers that our children may take for granted, mediated by loyal machines. Powers that will democratize and elevate everybody.

To those focused on the past, psi is yet another auspicious magic, returning to Ancient Wisdom, snubbing the prim, book-keeping tyranny of the Continuity Expression, and its coldly dispassionate ilk.

To a frightened little child, psi may seem to offer a way to communicate and understand.

To a science fiction author, psi can offer a way out of some awful chapter, when you've written the hero into a jam and there seems to be no other . . .

Well, never mind that last bit. In fact, forget I mentioned it!

Anyway, when you get right down to it, we do love our charlatans and their tricks, don't we? Maybe that's the biggest reason why some myths keep on breathing with a life of their own.

So just ignore that man behind the curtain, pulling all the levers. . . .

. . . and pay heed, instead, to the Great and Powerful Oz.

And now an item written especially for NESFA Press and the Boskone convention . . . in honor of Boston
. . .

Dear Lilly,

This transcription may be a bit rough. I'm dashing it off quickly for reasons that should soon be obvious.

Exciting news! Still, let me ask that you please don't speak of this, or let it leak till I've had a chance to put my findings in a more academic format.

Since May of 2001, I've been engaged to catalog the Thomas Kuiper Collection, which Harvard acquired in that notorious bidding war a couple of years ago, on eBay. The acclaimed astronomer-philosopher had been amassing trunkloads of documents from the late Sixteenth and early Seventeenth Centuries—individually and in batches—with no apparent pattern, rhyme, or reason. Accounts of the Dutch Revolution. Letters from Johannes Kepler. Sailing manifests of ports in southern England. Ledgers and correspondence from the Italian Inquisition. Early documents of Massachusetts Bay Colony and narratives about the establishment of Harvard College.

The last category was what most interested the trustees, so I got to work separating them from the apparent clutter. That is, it
seemed
clutter, an unrelated jumble . . . till intriguing patterns began to emerge.

Let me trace the story as was revealed to me, in bits and pieces. It begins with the apprenticeship of a young English boy named Henry Stephens.

Henry was born to a family of petit-gentry farmers in Kent, during the year 1595. According to parish records, his birth merited noting as
mirabilis
—he was premature and should have died of the typhus that claimed his mother, but somehow the infant survived.

He arrived during a time of turmoil. Parliament had passed a law that anyone who questioned the Queen's religious supremacy or persistently absented himself from Anglican services, should be imprisoned or banished from the country, never to return on pain of death. Henry's father was a leader among the "Puritan" dissenters in one of England's least tolerant counties. Hence, the family was soon hurrying off to exile, departing by ship for the Dutch city of Leiden.

Leiden, you'll recall, was already renowned for its brave resistance to the Spanish army of Philip II. As a reward, Prince William of Orange and the Dutch parliament gave the city a choice: freedom from taxes for a hundred years, or the right to establish a university. Leiden chose a university.