Alan Lightman, Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine (2018)

 

In this literate and charming text, physicist and humanist Alan Lightman writes of his (and our) desire for something more than the material universe, even though there is no evidence for it that he can accept.

After a transcendent experience in which he felt he was one with the night sky, Lightman found himself pondering the difference between the Absolutes and the material world described by science.

He notes that “Every culture in every era of human existence has had some concept of Absolutes.  Indeed, one might group a large number of notions and entities under the heading of Absolutes: absolute truth (valid in all circumstances), absolute goodness, constancies of various kinds, certainties, cosmic unity, immutable laws of nature, indestructible substances, permanence, eternity, the immortal soul, God.”

Science, on the other hand, describes the material world.  Lightman neatly sums up the philosophical pragmatism that underlies science: “We scientists do not pretend to know what ‘reality’ is.  That slippery idea is either unknowable or a resident of the land of philosophy….  All the laws of nature discovered by scientists are considered provisional.  They are considered to be approximations of deeper laws.  The laws are constantly being revised as new experimental evidence is found or new (and testable) ideas are proposed.”

The material world and the Absolutes occupy different realms:

A fascinating feature of the Absolutes—in fact, a defining feature—is that there is no way to get there from here, that is, from within the physical world.  There is no gradual, step-by-step path to go from relative truth to absolute truth, or to go from a long period of time to eternity, or from limited wisdom to the infinite wisdom of God.  The infinite is not merely a lot more of the finite.  Indeed, the unattainability of the Absolutes may be part of their allure.

Finally, the tenets of the Absolutes have not been proven, nor can they be proven, certainly not in the way that science has proven the existence of atoms or the law of the pendulum swing.

We have heard this before.  For example, Stephen Jay Gould’s Rocks of Ages (1999) argued that science and religion occupy different spheres, grandly named Non-Overlapping Magisteria.  Gould argued that science’s magisterium of facts did not overlap religion’s domain of values.  Gould’s non-overlapping argument has its critics, including me.  Moral arguments do rely, at least partly, on science.  For example, when discussing needle exchange programs for drug addicts, social science research that such programs save lives is relevant to the discussion.  The social science isn’t sufficient, since how we weight it is affected by our values, but neither can it be ignored.

Lightman mostly avoids this discussion, touching on it only in a brief passage in which he asserts that any statements made “about the material world, including statements recorded in sacred books, must be subject to the experimental testing of science.”

Along the way Lightman notes that there is, in fact, a link between science and the Absolutes.  For, at bottom, the edifice of science relies on its own Absolute, which Lightman dubs the Central Doctrine of Science: “All properties and events in the physical universe are governed by laws, and those laws hold true at every time and place in the universe.”

The fact that science rests on an unprovable doctrine isn’t surprising, either.  Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem (1931) states that no logical system is self-proving.  Put another way, you have to start with an unprovable assumption.  (Remember postulates from high school geometry?  Gödel proved they’re necessary.)  In mathematics, postulates are considered useful if they lead to “interesting” and self-consistent systems.  In life, doctrines are useful if they lead to “good” results.  Given how successful science has been at describing the material world and improving our lives, we are justified in accepting its Central Doctrine.

In reading back over this, I find myself belittling the book’s basic points for being obvious.  This isn’t fair.  Although the issues the book raises are old, books that bring this discussion to a new audience are valuable.  Further, my dry recitation does not convey that Lightman has written a sometimes lyrical, sometimes gently humorous, always readable account of our longing for certainty and immortality, combined with a summary of how science works and how it cannot answer that longing.  I wish my summary could do it justice.  I recommend this book, particularly for those new to this subject.