Authors: Michael Crichton
This was a terrific excitement to me, that I also could tell the difference between a beautiful work of art and one that’s not, without being able to define it. As a scientist you always think you know what you’re doing, so you tend to distrust the artist who says, “It’s great,” or “It’s no good,” and then is not able to explain to you why.… But here I was, sunk: I could do it, too!
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Why does he say he was sunk? What, exactly, is sunk?
Throughout his memoir, Feynman rather breezily dismisses most fields of activity other than physics. He is a man of mathematical rigor, so he finds little of interest in philosophy or art or psychology. These fields make no sense to him; the practitioners “don’t know what they are talking about.” Yet in the Sistine Chapel he has experienced something that sinks his conception of these other fields. Simply by doing art himself, he has acquired the ability to make perceptions about other art that agree with the formal and codified perceptions of art history.
Feynman does not discuss this remarkable incident further, although there is clearly more to be said. For one thing, his experience would seem to imply that, although he does not try to bring his critical criteria to conscious awareness, the criteria nonetheless exist. They must exist, or else he would never manage to agree with the guidebook. Second, the criteria are not arbitrary or academic, since Feynman is able to formulate those criteria simply by the experience of making pictures. The criteria of art history do indeed have something to do with the activity of making art. There is an underlying rigor to art history, which Feynman has demonstrated by reproducing its conclusions.
I am discussing this at length because it seems to me that it typifies a situation in which a tremendously bright scientist, confronted by data, even admitting the data, nevertheless does not take those data to the obvious conclusion: that there is just as much rigor to art as there is to science. It may be a different kind of rigor, but it is rigor nonetheless.
When an artist such as Jasper Johns says, “I am just trying to find a way to make pictures,”
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he means it in exactly the same way a physicist means it when he says, “I am just trying to find a way to do physics.” Like a scientist, an artist must build upon the work of his predecessors. An artist can be intimidated by the work of his predecessors, just as a scientist can be.
So for a scientist to dismiss art as some kind of formless activity in which “anything goes” means only that the scientist doesn’t understand the activity of making art. He doesn’t understand what he is dismissing.
The scientist has only his model of what the activity of art is, and his model is wrong. It’s uninformed; and it doesn’t fit the data.
The extent to which scientists are uninformed about the real work of nonscientists seems to me to reach some ultimate point when scientists consider meditative states, alterations in consciousness, and the disputed psychic phenomena. If you have never experienced these things firsthand, you will naturally find the descriptions of them to be outlandish. Because these experiences are different from the experiences of ordinary consciousness. There is no great mystery here, and certainly nothing sinister. It’s just different. It’s another kind of consciousness.
I have known in my life one computational prodigy, and, watching him, I could not conceive how he was able to do what he did; I was simply obliged, after checking a few times, to accept that he could do it. I know one film director with a photographic memory, but he’s rather tedious, given to impromptu lectures in exhaustive detail on all sorts of subjects. All that I learned is that I should never argue with him about an obscure fact, since he was invariably correct. But I couldn’t conceive how he could do what he did, either.
I have a rather similar feeling around people with psychic abilities. They can do something I can’t do. To them the ability is mundane, and on balance has its good and bad features.
I often hear skeptics say that, if psychic behavior was real, the psychics would be playing the stock market or the ponies. In my experience, many of them do. There is, in fact, a kind of secret level of activity in which psychics consult to major corporations and businesses. People seem to be embarrassed to admit this activity, but it takes place, just as you’d expect it to.
And I would remind you that, from one standpoint, you might expect so-called psychic behavior to exist in the first place. The eminently sensible Dr. Bronowski again:
In science … the process of prediction is conscious and rational. Even in human beings this is not the only kind of prediction. Men have sound intuitions which have certainly not been analyzed into rational steps, and some of which may never be. It may be for example, as is sometimes claimed, that most people are a little better at guessing an unseen card, and some people much better, than would be a machine which merely picks its answers by chance. This would not be altogether surprising.… Certainly evolution
has selected us rapidly because we do possess gifts of foresight much above those of other animals.… The rational intelligence is one such gift, and is at bottom as remarkable and as unexplained. And where rational intelligence turns to the future, and makes inferences from past experiences to an unknown tomorrow, its process is … a great mystery.…
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But to return to the original point, the experience of these other forms of consciousness seems to me to be ordinary, even mundane. These different forms of consciousness—whether inborn gifts or trained procedures—lead to other kinds of knowing, other perceptions of underlying order in the world around us. They are not mathematical perceptions, but they are perceptions nonetheless. Before you dismiss these perceptions outright as fraud or fantasy, it seems useful to experience them firsthand. If you’re not willing to experience them firsthand, you open yourself to the criticism that you dismiss what you don’t understand.
And you diminish your own experience of reality.
Because, as I have said, the scientific perception of reality is not reality itself. Even the most powerful scientific law is not a complete description of reality. There is always more to know.
I think it’s important to be very clear about this. Feynman, whom I much admire, says of nonscientific people, “they don’t understand the world they live in.” It seems to be a favorite saying of his; he repeated it often during the shuttle-disaster investigations.
But let’s be clear:
nobody understands the world he lives in
. Not you, not me, not Richard Feynman. We may each understand a part, an aspect of the whole, but, in any full or comprehensive sense, reality defies description.
And if other modes of knowing are internal, subjective, and inherently unverifiable, that doesn’t make them necessarily any less interesting or useful.
People who find numbers alien to their natures are not fringe people in the world, the disenfranchised, the despised ignorant who do not know how to solve differential equations and so are denied access to mathematical received truth.
Because science alone is not enough.
Faced with a public that embraces creationism and belief in psychic phenomena, the hard scientist is often perplexed. The scientist sees a world of beauty and complexity, entirely challenging enough for his
rational approach. Why, he wonders, is someone else dissatisfied with his vision of the world?
Why is science not enough?
The simplest answer is that, while science is a tremendously powerful investigative procedure, it doesn’t tell us what we really want to know. Max Planck put it simply: “Whence come I and whither go I? That is the great unfathomable question, the same for every one of us. Science has no answer to it.”
One reason is that science can’t tell you why anything happens. Feynman again, in a popular lecture on quantum electrodynamics: “While I am describing to you
how
Nature works, you won’t understand
why
Nature works that way. But you see, nobody understands that. I can’t explain why Nature behaves in this peculiar way.”
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This is true, but it evades the fact that, although knowledge of how things work is sufficient to allow manipulation of nature, what human beings really want to know is why things work. Children don’t ask
how
the sky is blue. They ask
why
the sky is blue.
Feynman would probably say that question has no meaning. And within the body of modern scientific thought, it does not. But it is not self-evident that this state of affairs will continue indefinitely. Physicist John Bell notes:
The founding fathers of quantum mechanics rather prided themselves on giving up the idea of explanation. They were very proud that they dealt only with phenomena: they refused to look behind the phenomena, regarding that as the price one had to pay for coming to terms with nature. And it is a fact of history that the people who took that agnostic attitude towards the real world on the microphysical level were very successful. At the time it was a good thing to do. But I don’t believe it will be so indefinitely.
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But, in the meantime, a mathematician observes that “the question of
why
is hardly touched by physical scientists, all the emphasis being placed on
how
.… The metaphysics of the cosmos is given in terms of abstract mathematics which is claimed to be absolutely devoid of goals or purposes: the reality of contemporary cosmology is a mathematical reality.”
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Yet this mathematical reality is essentially arbitrary.
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And this perception of a purposeless universe is not attained without cost. Modern science holds up its mathematical model as a triumph of reason, yet, as Hannah Arendt notes, “Modern times, dominated by technology, are characterized precisely by the fact that reason, in the sense of an originally given
self-revealing contemplative understanding, is lost, and is replaced by a detached [technology], actively preoccupied with abstract mathematical theory and physical replication.”
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To me there is nothing wrong with a mathematical perception of reality as long as that perception is not allowed to predominate. Because, as human beings, living our lives, making decisions for ourselves and our society, we must find meaning. And that meaning must be broadly based.
A mathematician:
I am aware of the ingredients out of which meaning is created … love and language, myth, rational thought and irrational impulse, human institutions, law, history, duty, ritual, religious faith, the mystic, the transcendental, the allegorical, the aesthetic sense, play, the world as a puzzle, the world as a stage, the contemplation of life and death, the necessities imposed by physics and biology; all of these and hundreds more are avenues to meaning.
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This may be why Einstein once said, “Humanity has every reason to place the proclaimers of high moral standards and values above the discoverers of objective truth. What humanity owes to personalities like Buddha, Moses, and Jesus ranks for me higher than all the achievements of the enquiring and constructive mind.”
The fact is that we need the insights of the mystic every bit as much as we need the insights of the scientist. Mankind is diminished when either is missing. Carl Jung said:
The nature of the psyche reaches into obscurities far beyond the scope of our understanding. It contains as many riddles as the universe with its galactic systems, before whose majestic configurations only a mind lacking in imagination can fail to admit its own insufficiency.… If, therefore, from the needs of his own heart, or in accordance with the ancient lessons of human wisdom, or out of respect for the psychological fact that “telepathic” perceptions occur, anyone should draw the conclusion that the psyche, in its deepest reaches, participates in a form of existence beyond time and space … then critical reason could counter with no other argument than the “non liquet” of science. Furthermore, he would have the inestimable advantage of conforming to a bias of the human psyche which has existed from time immemorial and is universal. Anyone who does not draw this conclusion, whether from skepticism … lack of courage or inadequate psychological experience or
thoughtless ignorance … has instead the indubitable certainty of coming into conflict with the truths of his blood.… Deviation from the truths of the blood begets neurotic restlessness.… Restlessness begets meaninglessness, and the lack of meaning in life is a soul-sickness whose full extent and full import our age has not yet begun to comprehend.
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Thank you very much.
Well, that was my speech for the skeptics at Pasadena. But I was never invited to speak there, so I never gave it.
1.
Kendrick Frazier, ed.,
Science Confronts the Paranormal
, Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1986.
2.
R. Razadan and Alan Kielar, “Sonar and Photographic Searches for the Loch Ness Monster: A Reassessment,” in Frazier, pp. 349–57.
3.
Isaac Asimov, “Science and the Mountain Peak,” in Frazier, p. 299.
4.
See Richard S. Westfall, “Newton and the Fudge Factor,”
Science
, 179 (1973): 751–58. For a full discussion of Newton’s entire range of working interests, from alchemy to the Old Testament, see Westfall’s definitive biography of Newton,
Never at Rest
, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
5.
R. A. Fisher, “Has Mendel’s Work Been Rediscovered?”,
Annals of Science
, 1 (1936): 115–24.
6.
Norman T. Gridgeman, “Geometric Probability and the Number Pi,”
Scripta Mathematica
, 25 (November 1970): 183 ff.
7.
See L. S. Hearnshaw,
Cyril Burt, Psychologist
, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1979.
8.
Emilio Segre,
From X-Rays to Quarks: Modern Physicists and Their Discoveries
, San Francisco: Freeman, 1980, pp. 16–19.
9.
Daniel J. Kevles,
The Physicists
, New York: Knopf, 1977, P. 233.
10.
It may be objected that “disprove” is too strong a term, that the precession of Mercury merely provoked a modification of Newtonian mechanics, or led to the understanding that Newtonian theory was only an approximation. Such arguments are evasive. Calling Einstein’s theory of relativity a modification of Newtonian mechanics is like calling the atomic bomb a modification of gunpowder. For a sensitive consideration of the profound intellectual discomfort caused by the downfall of Newtonian mechanics, see J. Bronowski,
The Common Sense of Science
, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978.
11.
Carl Sagan, “Extraterrestrial Intelligence: An International Petition,”
Science
, 218 (1982): 426.
12.
G. G. Simpson, “The Non Prevalence of Humanoids,”
Science
, 143 (1964): 769–75.
13.
Marcello Truzzi, “On the Reception of Unconventional Scientific Claims,” in Seymour H. Mauskopf, ed.,
The Reception of Unconventional Science
, AAAS Selected Symposium 25, Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1979, p. 130.
14.
See C. J. Jung,
Memories, Dreams, Reflections
, New York: Random House, 1962, for the entire story.
15.
Jung in fact had written his doctoral dissertation on the occult: “On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena,” in C. G. Jung,
Psychology and the Occult
, Princeton: Bollingen Series XX, 1977, pp. 6–91.
16.
Cited in Jung,
Psychology
, p. vii.
17.
Cited in Jung,
Psychology
, p. ix.
18.
Bronowski,
Common Sense
, p. 61.
19.
William James, “Review of ‘A Further Record of Observations of Certain Phenomena of Trance,’ by Richard Hodgson (1898),” in William James,
Essays in Psychical Research
, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986, p. 189.
20.
Letter to Carl Stumpf, in
The Letters of William James
, ed. Henry James, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1920, vol. 1, p. 248.
21.
Bronowski,
Science and Human Values
, New York: Harper & Row, 1956, p. 20.
22.
Marvin Minsky,
The Society of Mind
, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986, p. 65.
23.
Renee Weber,
Dialogues with Scientists and Sages: The Search for Unity in Science and Mysticism
, New York: Methuen, 1986, p. 210.
24.
Richard Feynman,
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!
, New York: Norton, 1985, p. 261.
25.
Feynman, p. 266.
26.
Michael Crichton,
Jasper Johns
, New York: Abrams, 1977.
27.
Bronowski,
Common Sense
, p. 109.
28.
Feynman, QED, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1965, p. 10.
29.
Interview with John Bell in P. C. W. Davies and J. R. Brown, eds.,
The Ghost in the Atom
, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, p. 51.
30.
Philip J. Davis and Reuben Hersh,
Descartes’ Dream: The World According to Mathematics
, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986, p. 275.
31.
Werner Heisenberg notes: “We cannot describe atomic phenomena without ambiguity in any ordinary language.… It would be premature, however, to insist that we should avoid the difficulty by confining ourselves to the use of mathematical language. This is no genuine way out, since we do not know how far the mathematical language can be applied to the phenomena. In the last resort, even science must rely upon ordinary language, since it is the only language in which we can be sure of really grasping the phenomena.” Werner Heisenberg,
Across the Frontiers
, New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1971, p. 119.
32.
Davis and Hersh, p. 294.
33.
Davis and Hersh, p. 297.
34.
Jung,
Psychology
, pp. 136–37.