PRAEGER
CLOSER TO TRUTH
CLOSER TO TRUTH
Science, Meaning, and the Future
Acknowledgments vii
Foreword: No End for Science Exploration ix
Dr. Song Jian
Introduction: What is Closer To Truth? xvii
Chapter 1: Is Science Fiction Science? 1
Chapter 2: Why is Music So Significant? 21
Chapter 3: Is Consciousness an Illusion? 33
Chapter 4: How Does the Autistic Brain Work? 47
Chapter 5: Does Psychiatry Have a Split Personality? 65
Chapter 6: Who Gets to Validate Alternative Medicine? 77
Chapter 7: Microbes Friend or Foe? 91
Chapter 8: Testing New Drugs Are People Guinea Pigs? 107
Chapter 9: How Does Order Arise in the Universe? 123
Chapter 10: How Weird is the Cosmos? 137
Chapter 11: Is the Universe Full of Life? 155
Chapter 12: Will Computers Take a Quantum Leap? 169
Chapter 13: How Does Basic Science Support National Security? 185
Chapter 14: Can Religion Withstand Technology? 201
Chapter 15: Can We Believe in Both Science and Religion? 217
Why Ultimate Reality Works for Us: Toward a Taxonomy of 235
Possible Explanations
vi Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Since the Renaissance human beings have gradually shaken off the mentally
constricting shackles of irrational ideas and have walked up the rational
road of the experimental sciences. In the subsequent 400 years, humans
drove the advancement of modern science and technology, thus enhancing
their abilities to understand and deal with nature, and penetrated the pro-
found depths of the physical world. Francis Bacons motto Knowledge is
power has become common wisdom. Before the twentieth century, motiva-
tions for scientific study were often personal curiosities, but much has
changed in the past 100 years.
Since science has become the fundamental driving force for the prosperity
of nations, the growth of economies, and the welfare of peoples, each
government sets up scientific research systems, guides the cause of research
endeavors, implements Big Science projects, conducts scientific education,
and encourages applications. All these undertakings have generated rapid
advances in science and technology, and thereby enabled human society to
stride forward into the era of a knowledge-based, high-tech economy in
which everyone can enjoy the fruits.
The emergence of modern human thinking took place no more than
10,000 years ago, a mere instant of time compared with the three billion
years of life on earth. Furthermore, only 400 years have elapsed since
modern science first appeared. Humans are still young in their quest for
knowledge about Mother Nature. It is as if modern science and technology
were born just last night.
However much knowledge we seem to have accumulated, our under-
standing about nature is still limited. Pluto, formerly one of the nine planets
of our solar system, has only made one and half orbits around the Sun since
x Foreword: No End for Scientific Exploration
In the history of science, we often observe the same strictures and rigidities
appearing in diverse forms. For millennia human beings considered them-
selves to be the core and center of all purpose and principle. Before Coperni-
cus even the most enlightened thinkers assumed without question that our
sun and all other stars had to circle around the earth, and that the existence
of all living things were here solely for the benefit of Adams and Eves off-
spring. The masses had to submit to the Son of Heaven, just as monkeys
have to obey their king.
An elegant postulate in science is called the anthropic principle, which
means that all scientific laws and processes of Nature, the entire flow of uni-
versal history, must somehow exist to favor (or at least be compatible with)
the emergence and sustained existence of human beings. Yet human history
itself is rife with the absence of such harmony. We witness daily the gross
violations of ethics and morality. Science itself has a long history of being
resisted or attacked by politics, religion, and common customs. Bruno was
burned; Galileo was persecuted for much of his long life; Martin Luther
was assassinated; and Ma Yinchu was animadverted1. Does all this, too,
come from the anthropic principle?
Fortunately, from the beginning of the twentieth century, general condi-
tions for intellectuals, at least for scientists, began changing for the better.
Physicists who discerned the mechanism of nuclear fusion and predicted
the inevitable death of all stars, including our Sun, went free of punishment
and won Nobel Prizes even though they were, in essence, the ultimate doom-
sayers. Their theoretical calculations proved that all life on earth including
human beings will become unavoidably extinct along with the death of our
Sun some billions of years from now, if we Homo sapiens are not able to find
innovative solutions to change our destined fate.
Such annihilative forecasts, of course, are terribly discordant with man-
kinds long-range, fundamental interest. The fact that such a certain cata-
clysm could be accepted calmly by society would suggest that in some
sense the impact of the anthropic principle is weakening. If human beings
can evolve up into a higher state of being, perhaps we could penetrate deeper
into the still-dark mysteries of scientific truth. However, human beings,
dubbed Naked Apes by some anthropologists, are still biological members
of the animal kingdom. Hence it would take a great period of time to divest
ourselves of inherited habits. Or rather, we can never break away from our
animal natures.
Throughout the entire history of mankind, a traditional culture of hierar-
chies dominated societies: young follow elders; son obeys father; populace
submits to emperor; all yield to Heaven. Notwithstanding the magnificent
social and psychological benefits of such hierarchies for maintaining order
and stability, the rigidity of such structures work to suppress the talent of
those few human beings who, for the sake of breakthrough scientific inquiry,
are able to challenge current belief and change the status quo. Scientific
xii Foreword: No End for Scientific Exploration
development, with its need for creativity, innovation, and for defying the
accepted order, is often disadvantaged if children must always submit to
their parents, if students must always believe what their teachers impart.
When textbooks are sacrosanct, when sermons are as if from God, when
authority is absolute, when it is forbidden to modify existing scientific theo-
ries or to buck authority, reject parts of standard answers, and find new sol-
utions, true science can only be constrained. All these archaic ways of
thinking, though they have their social graces, are incompatible with the
modern scientific spirit.
The one and only correct way to develop frontier and beyond-the-frontier
science and technology is to encourage young people to contribute new ideas
without fear or favor, to experiment over and over and again and again, to
observe from diverse points, to try to discover new phenomena, to put for-
ward hypotheses no matter how strange, and to devise new theories no mat-
ter how different, odd, or unaccustomed.
All of our current scientific knowledge, theories, and laws, whatever we
have believed and believe with good reason, must be deemed to be correct
only relatively and conditionally. We should always be prepared for change.
And we should never forget that our view and observations are largely
gained from the surface of one planet. Such a perspective, no matter how
impressed we are with what our contemporary science has achieved, is far
too narrow, and our scientific experiences, measured in scant thousands of
years, are far too brief. We know little about the deep ocean, the inner earth,
the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud, the Milky Way Galaxy, and the multiple
billions of galaxies breathtakingly far away in space and time.
It is not exceedingly rare that there may be different hypotheses to account
for the same phenomena of nature, and it is only by repeated experiments
and continued theoretical substantiation that one hypothesis will come to
be favored over the others. For example, between the end of the nineteenth
century and the first half of the twentieth, there emerged three kinds of
atomic models, each derived from a different perspective (with different
extrapolations), that seemed to account for the atomic nucleus: liquid-drop
model, shell model, and collective model, each one overlapping, interacting
with, and complementing the other two. We continue to use each of these
models today. However, even if our current understanding of scientific theo-
ries, models, or laws seem perfect, they still may not ultimately hold up
intact, because in many areas of human understanding the ultimate truth
remains far, perhaps forever far, in the distance. All we humans should
expect is to move closer to truth, asymptotically closer and closer to our
goal of ultimate knowledge, though never knowing for sure if we will ever
arrive at the final destination of absolute, last Truth.
The age of the earth is proven to be 4.6 billion years, and if we are fortu-
nate enough to escape devastation by impacting asteroids, human beings
and our science could last another few billion years before our sun grows
Foreword: No End for Scientific Exploration xiii
old and begins to expand to swallow the earth in its fiery gases. Yet before
that day of our inevitable obliteration, science and technology should be
able to find ways for human beings to move to other oases in our vast uni-
verse, other habitable planets in our galaxy, so that the torch of human intel-
ligence will continue to shine. Although science is unable to forecast
accurately so far into the future, it is obliged to identify likely roads and sug-
gest reliable directions.
Passion for science has become good fashion in almost all human cultures,
and it is a particular virtue of oriental culture to respect and esteem forefa-
ther scientists. However, science belongs not to any one generation but to
all human history. Individual human lifetimes are short and new generations
will continue to rise and fall. This is the order of nature: as years pass, the
young replace the old. Elder scientists, versed with vast knowledge in their
fields, should not be too strict with younger scientists. It is an admirable vir-
tue that elders care for their progeny; as the old saying goes, life is short,
but caring is long. But such care must include the tolerance and respect
for deeper annotation and interpretation about conventional wisdom,
common understanding, and assumed truth. History has taught us repeat-
edly that what elders believe is not always correct, and what elders deny is
not always wrong. For the long-term interest of human civilization, it is
good for elders to create wider spaces for young scientists to explore, and,
if they can, to also keep their own minds open.
The history of science also indicates that when a major scientific break-
through occurs, people tend to regard it as an Ultimate Truth. During the
twentieth century, quantum mechanics and particle physics made such
remarkable advances so that by the 1980s some declared that science had
ended and that Ultimate Truthwhich could explain anything, a Theory
of Everythingwas within our grasp. However, in less than 20 years, new
mysteries emerged. Evidences of accelerating cosmic expansion, long
believed to be impossible due to the inevitable and dominating power of
gravity, were found by the satellite observations of COBE (Cosmic Back-
ground Explorer, 1989) and WAMP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy
Probe, 2001). In 1998, leading cosmologists and astronomers declared that
there was some kind of dark energy existent throughout the universe, a
kind of hidden power source which propels all matter in the universe to
expand against the inward pull of gravitational attraction, and that such
dark energy would have to account for an astounding 73 percent of the total
mass-energy of the universe.
Physicists suddenly had no choice other than to realize that something
heretofore no one knew existed now constitutes most of everything that
exists. Moreover, the observational data indicated that only about four per-
cent of all the energy-matter in the universe is ordinary matter, so that the
remaining 23 percent of matter must be dark. It is a dark matter that
reveals its presence by gravity, such as in the higher rotational speeds of stars
xiv Foreword: No End for Scientific Exploration
in galaxies, but it cannot be seen at all. Up to now, our best science cannot
describe what dark energy and dark matter really are nor explain how they
are generated. No wonder this latest astounding discovery silenced those
advocates who were announcing the end of science.
Modern science in China started in the twentieth century, 200 years later
than it did in Europe, and in recent decades has begun to flourish. It took
China a whole century to make up for its somnolence and end its long hiatus
from the frontiers of contemporary science. Most science and technology
China learned from the West. Yet at the beginning of the twenty-first cen-
tury it has become apparent that Chinas science cannot follow the old para-
digm of simply continuing to be a follower of the West. They must create a
new paradigm so that not only does China come to rely on its indigenous
intellectual strengths but also make original contributions to enrich all
humanity and thereby benefit the entire world.
Scientists commonly accept the proposition that students may and must
be as good as their teachers, standing on their shoulders, as it were, to reach
higher into the knowledge firmament. Young generations must be encour-
aged to be innovative, creative, and imaginative in all sectors of society,
especially in science and technology.
I am pleased that my friend, Dr. Robert Lawrence Kuhn, decided to pub-
lish Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future, which brings
together leading scientists, scholars, and artists to debate the fundamental
issues of our times, including brain and mind, creativity and thinking, life
and health, technology and society, and universe and meaning. The book
aims at encouraging young people to create, innovate, and contribute to sci-
entific progress for all humankind.
Dr. Kuhn and I often speak on the importance of science and the scientific
way of thinking as crucial for the peace and prosperity of all countries and of
all humankind. Entrusted by Dr. Kuhn, I am pleased to write this foreword.
These are subjects I am thinking about these days, and it seemed to be a good
opportunity, in the context of his book on the meaning and implications of
frontier science, to communicate with fellow readers with similar interests.
My hope is that such thinking might help catalyze a more flexible and inno-
vative academic environment in China and throughout the world, and thus
inspire greater progress in science and technology during the twenty-first
century. Such is the origin of the above narration.
Note
1. Ma Yinchu (1882-1982) , the president of Beijing University (who had earned
a masters degree in economics from Yale and a Ph.D. from Columbia), opposed
the assertions that unchecked population growth was no longer a problem under
socialism.
Introduction
Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future is a unique series of dis-
cussions about fundamental issues that explores the latest scientific research,
philosophical thinking, and expressions of human creativity. Critical to the
process, Closer To Truth tests conventional wisdom, seeks truth wherever
it may change, sees the humor as well as the import of tradition-breaking
ideas, and discerns what it means to be human in the twenty-first century
with our continuing search for collective purpose and individual meaning.
We confront the mysteries of mind, matter, and meaning, bringing
together prominent thinkers to discuss what is happening at the leading edge
of science and its broad implications for human understanding. Some of the
worlds most esteemed experts, including Nobel laureates, best-selling
authors, and renowned scholars, engage in a series of spontaneous and inti-
mate conversations that combine leading-edge science and informed intu-
ition. Closer To Truth is an inside opportunity to witness how the pioneers
in humanitys quest for knowledge chart their expeditions into the
unknown, journeys that are marked by a rigorous pursuit of truth, a readi-
ness to challenge current belief, a willingness to overturn dogma, an open-
minded exploration of inferences and implications, and a tough-minded reli-
ance on critical thinking.
I seek multi-faceted perspectives on some of the most exciting and contro-
versial big issues of our time. Areas of inquiry are brain and mind, cosmos
and astrobiology, biology and medicine, science and religion, and science
and our world.
What organizing theme brings together such topics? My own personal,
perhaps idiosyncratic take on the human condition. Whenever and wherever
xviii Introduction: What is Closer To Truth?
many; chapters are not manicured or neat, but reflect the real-time thinking
of real-world thinkers. Look for greater dimension and deeper grain; see
subjects from various viewpoints; watch for twists and curves.
A primary characteristic of the modern world is science and technology.
Knowledge-related changes have a profound effect on our daily lives and
on how we perceive ourselves as individuals. Understanding state-of-the-
art science can help us to make more informed decisions about the choices
the world presents to us.
The biggest challenge facing scientists, scholars and artists today is to get
the public to come to new knowledge with an open mind, to acknowledge
that many of the advances brought about by scientific research have changed
our lives beyond imagination and ultimately, if we are wise, for the better.
We invite readers to visit our two websiteswww.pbs.org/closertotruth
and www.closertotruth.comwhere we provide further resources for
exploring these topics, including personal information from our guest
experts. We also recommend www.scitechdaily.com, a daily resource for
intelligent, informed science and technology coverage and analysis.
I hope Closer To Truth encourages readers to become more informed and
more passionate about the fundamental issues of human existence. Closer
To Truth seeks to become the resource of record for the meaning and impli-
cations of scientific discovery and for critical thinking about who we are,
why we are here, and where we are going. Closer To Truth will return.1
Note
1. As we go to press, we have begun production of our new season of Closer To
Truth, which will focus on cosmology and fundamental physics, the philosophy of
cosmology, the philosophy of religion, and philosophical theology.
Chapter 1
Is science fiction scientific? How about diseases from distant galaxies; worm-
holes in space; fractures and travels in time; black holes with bad attitudes;
weird life forms of every variety; telepaths creating superhumans; minds
uploaded into silicon chips; souls downloaded from disposable slaves; car-
bon copies of yourself to expand your experiences in multiple lives; and
baby universes created on desktops? Those are some of the ideas conjured
up by our expert participants and their science fiction colleagues.
But science fiction can be conceived as an artistic look at human history,
society, and even human nature. In this chapter, three distinguished authors
of popular science fiction spar over exactly how science fiction is constrained
by known science and then question the value of science fiction. The authors
describe the way in which science fiction can inspire scientific research and at
the same time serve as a warning against our potential misuse of the awe-
some power of science (citing the novels Soylent Green and On the Beach).
They also good-naturedly point out its limitationse.g., no science fiction
author predicted the personal computerand wonder why its appeal is not
as strong in some countries as in others.
Scenario forecasting has been a military tool for thousands of years but
only in science fiction is the limit the writers imagination. Can science fic-
tion predict the future? Or prevent it? Writer/physicist David Brin argues
that George Orwell prevented the 1984 scenario by making people aware
of it. But best-selling author Michael Crichton questions why the omnipres-
ence of cameras in society in anyones hands is a good thing? MacArthur
Fellow Octavia Butler thinks we have more pressing things to worry about:
Global warming, for one.
2 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Although the history of science fiction writing has always reflected the sci-
ence of the times, it is perhaps most telling that although the times and
worlds change, the behavior of peopleand aliensacross each fictional
society has remained constant. This chapter is a virtual salon with celebrated
inventors of alternative futures.
Expert Participants
David Brin
Author, Kiln People, The Postman, Earth; Ph.D. Space Science
Octavia Butler
Author, Survivor, Parable of the Sower, Parable of the Talents (Nebula
Award); MacArthur Fellow
Michael Crichton
Author, Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Sphere, The Andromeda Strain;
creator, ER Television series; medical doctor.
Robert Kuhn: How is science fiction constrained by known science?
Michael Crichton: Its fiction; its not constrained.
Robert Kuhn: Should it be?
Michael Crichton: No, I dont think so. Science fiction should make sense;
it should be internally consistent; it should relate to contemporary reality in
some fashion thats recognizablethese are more important than whether
or not every bit of the physics really works right. Im very troubled if some-
thing really cant possibly occur. I dont mind if theres theoretical running
room, but if its very clear that something really cant happen, can never
happen, and is never going to happen, then thats a problem for me. In gen-
eral, I try and avoid that.
Octavia Butler: If there are no constraints, I think its fantasy, not science
fiction.
Robert Kuhn: How would you differentiate science fiction from fantasy? It
seems that science fiction describes how the world or the universe might look
one day, for better or worse, and technology, real or fanciful, plays an
important part. Fantasy, on the other hand, takes place in an alternative
world, often in an era that has similarities to the Middle Ages where magic
is often an important ingredient and technology is seldom very much
developed.
Is Science Fiction Science? 3
Octavia Butler: I think the only requirement for fantasy is that it be inter-
nally consistent. As for science fiction, if youre going to use science, you
should make some effort to use it intelligently, not necessarily correctly,
but intelligently. This means that if you want to do something odd, you are
at least aware of it and justifying it.
Robert Kuhn: Take mental telepathy, mind reading. Most scientists would
say it doesnt exist, cant exist. How do you deal with that?
Octavia Butler I had a series of books in which people were communicat-
ing telepathically. I didnt care whether it was real or not, possible or not.
What I was looking at was how that kind of communication, how a deeper
form of communication, would affect people and their relationships. They
get involved in war because they understand each other far too well. So, with
me, I wasnt using telepathy as science; I was simply using it as a tool to take
a fresh look at the human condition.
Robert Kuhn: Do you ever feel the compulsion to push science, to prod sci-
ence or to predict science?
David Brin: Sure, all of the above. Maybe I feel a little bit more liberated
because I write hardcore science fiction, about physics and stuff like that
some of the time, so I feel at liberty to press the envelope in any direction I
choose. Even if my science is implausible, even if its impossible. But I feel
a compact with the reader to make it clear which kind of science fiction
Im presenting. If were taking a vacation from reality in this short story, I
try to make it obvious. If in one novel Im going to try to play with scientific
reality, what I write will fit within the plausible range of human science. Of
all science fiction authors, only a small minority was trained scientifically,
but almost all science fiction authors have enjoyed reading history while
growing up. And so, perhaps an alternative name for science fiction should
be speculative history (including future histories) because we deal with
different pasts, alternative presents, and extensions of the human drama into
the future.
Octavia Butler: I have a problem with alternative histories. So many of
them seem to figure out how to lead us to where we are now, in one way
or another, instead of going anyplace else. Maybe different people are in
charge, but the same basic things are happening I have an ambition to write
an alternative history in which things truly do turn out as they havent.
Robert Kuhn: Can science fiction, though, enable us to deal with alterna-
tive futures in a rational way? Jurassic Park in a sense is an alternative
future, something that may happen. Is this a vehicle for dealing with alterna-
tive futures?
4 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Michael Crichton: Theres no question that the kinds of things that were
doing, broadly speaking, are alternative scenarios and that the value of alter-
native scenarios is to explore futures in a way thats safe and to say some-
thing about what they might mean.
Robert Kuhn: When you say safe, you mean in a fictional world.
David Brin: Einstein used the word gedanken experiment, thought experi-
ment, a term he coined. He said that just sitting on a streetcar in Bern, leav-
ing the clock tower and imagining he was riding on a beam of light, was
50% of the creative work that led to his Theory of Relativity. And we all
do these kinds of thought experiments with these little nubs of brain above
our eyes called the prefrontal lobes, which the Bible refers to as lamps on
the brow, to look into the future, to do these kinds of thought experiments.
We imagine, What might happen if. . .? But, our failures are obvious: no
science fiction author predicted the home computer. Murray Leinster and
John Brunner came close, but backed away at the last moment because each
thought, computers in the home, it seems logical, its heading that way, but
people will laugh at me.
Octavia Butler: Or, what possibly could we do with computers in the
home?
Robert Kuhn: Jurassic Park is great entertainment, but is it more?
Youre probably the wrong person to ask, but Ill ask anyway.
Michael Crichton: Ill give you an anecdote. The book came out, and I was
at a resort in Hawai with a lot of physicians from my old alma mater. One of
these guys, who was also a bioengineer, read it, slapped it down and said, It
can be done! And I thought, this is exactly the opposite of what Im trying
to accomplish here.
Robert Kuhn: What was your motivation for writing the book?
Michael Crichton: At that time, I was concerned about two things, which
remain concerns: the first is that, in my lifetime, one of the biggest changes
that has occurred in science is that it has become commercialized. When I
was a student, the majority of scientists worked in academic settings or they
worked in places where research was freely available unless you were in a
classified, military situation. Now, more and more thats not the case, more
and more science is private, more and more of it is secret for financial rea-
sons, and more and more of it is rushed. The problem with biotechnology
in particular is, unlike nuclear technology, you dont need a tremendous
amount of money, you dont need an Oak Ridge Processing Plant, you can
get a little kit and start doing it yourself.
Robert Kuhn: So Jurassic Park is a warning?
Is Science Fiction Science? 5
Octavia Butler: Not that everybody else is stupid, but that its terribly easy
to fool people. Weve all been fooled.
Daivd Brin: As authors, there are some very serious issues we have to think
about. Our job is to keep a character, or several characters (with whom the
reader or the viewer identifies closely) in peril or in jeopardy for 90 minutes
of film or 400 pages of a book. The easiest way to do that is to simply posit
that theyre not members of a civilization filled with skilled professionals
who will help them if theyre in trouble. Or to have a really plausible excuse
for why your heroes must remain in jeopardy. This is one of the things I liked
in Jurassic Park in that the characters were very isolated, they had taken pre-
cautions, but somebody had deliberately destroyed the precautions. So you
have the ridiculous situation of people running away from dinosaurs who
should be properly penned up, really having been fairly well explicated
how you can have 90 heart-thumping minutes, even though help should be
on the way; well, it is on the way, but its going to arrive too late.
Robert Kuhn: Do you desire to use future fiction to deal with the lack of
scientific knowledge in society?
Michael Crichton: I dont know in what way we can help people to under-
stand, when they see a number, how that number is arrived at, unless youve
been doing some experiments yourself.
David Brin: My wife is a science teacher and she finds it appalling that so
much of the testing going on focuses on memorization. The latest big fad is
attempting to emulate what foreign kids do to enable them to test well on
standardized exams. So we are stressing memorization, when the font of
our success, the reason why 90 out of the 100 best universities on the planet
are in the United States, is not our memorization of past facts but our crea-
tivity and innovation to pioneer new thinking. But thats not what our kids
are now being taught. This emphasis on memorizing facts from lists, from
worksheets, undermines the entire basis of science. Where my wife enjoys
her best teaching is in conducting experiments and getting her students to
draw conclusions and then criticize each others conclusions and come up
with new experiments to settle the matter between them.
Robert Kuhn: Are there issues in the world that you would like to see
handled in a science fiction kind of model?
David Brin: I think the most powerful science fiction stories are not those
that accurately predict the future, but, rather, those that have prevented
futures, the self-preventing prophecy that came across so chilling, and so
many people read it and were so moved, that the very scenario that might
have plausibly happened didnt happen. The best two examples that really
prevented the terrible futures they described are 1984 by George Orwell
and Das Kapital by Karl Marx, who was probably the greatest science
Is Science Fiction Science? 7
fiction author who ever lived. Both books utterly and thankfully prevented
the scenario that they described.
Michael Crichton: I actually think that 1984 came to pass. Orwell was
writing about a totalitarian state, but even though that part isnt the case,
the notion that you might live in a society that rather rigorously limits your
available behavior, and that watches you to make sure that you do what is
desired, is the case. I think we are increasingly seeing behavioral control,
but its not Big Brother doing it to us, were doing it to ourselves.
David Brin: But thats a major distinction. We are not falling into Orwells
failure mode of allowing the cameras to just look one way in a pyramidal
social structure, which is what he feared, the ancient elites lording it over
those languishing below. My point is that weve gotten our freedom from
elites. Instead, most of the cameras are now in the hands of private people.
Governments can install cameras but private people will have many more
of them.
Michael Crichton: Why is that a good thing?
David Brin: What were talking about is evading Orwells failure mode of
the elites staring at us and us not staring back.
Michael Crichton: The notion that every single thing we do is recorded,
that every purchase, even every mouse click, can be tracked in every way,
that there is no part of our lives where we can truly be alone and where we
can say that what we are doing is not available for observationexcept
maybe going to the bathroom and thats soon to change (how about intelli-
gent toilets that test your excreted fluids and solids). I think the notion that
were all on camera now is going to cause a subtle shift in our natural behav-
iors. If we were having a conversation before the camera started, we experi-
ence some subtle but genuine difference now that the cameras are rolling.
Im on the air, Im being broadcast, and Im not being my normal self. Im
concerned that there isnt going to be any part of my life where I can be my
normal self.
Robert Kuhn: Isnt science fiction a vehicle for sharpening our perspective
of contemporary problems, the technique being to move those problems to
a radically different environment so that by stripping away the trappings of
normal society, those problems become dissected out and exposed in all
their purity?
David Brin: One hopes that this is so, but the problem is this: Orwell
warned us about the State looking at us without us looking back at the State,
so were working on a society that might prevent such a situation. Where is
science fictions warning about the kind of society Michael was just describ-
ing, a society in which everybody has the camerasall right, so now were
8 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
free from spying elites, but we all spy on one another incessantly and nobody
has any privacy.
Michael Crichton: Let me tell you a story. A friend of mines husband
works in the State Department and since he was about to retire they wanted
to have a farewell party for this person. So this friend of mine, she cooks the
dinner herself, she has her son serve it, and she has her sons school friend
also serve it, because she knows that if she brings in an outside person, a
catering person, that no one at the table will talk. And I said to her, This
is a travesty: how is this different from living in the old Soviet Union?
David Brin: In all of history, no government ever knew as much about its
people, as does ours. And in all of history, I contend, no people have ever
been quite as free as ours. And both are still true after 9/11.
Michael Crichton: Im not sure of this at all.
David Brin: We can argue about this, but you find me the historical
counter-examples.
Michael Crichton: Just to start, I can give you an easy one. When Bork was
nominated for the Supreme Court and it appeared that it was going to be dif-
ficult to knock him down on intellectual content alone, one of the mecha-
nisms that was suggested was that they might introduce his videotape
rentals.
David Brin: And theres a law that resulted from that.
Michael Crichton: But, the fact is its recorded!
Octavia Butler: I have a feeling that some of the things that were doing
environmentally, for instance, are going to hurt us a lot worse than the fact
that weve got cameras trained on each other.
Robert Kuhn: Have you dealt with that in your fiction?
Octavia Butler: Yes, particularly global warming. In my books Parable of
the Sower and Parable of the Talents global warming is a character. Its
there doing things while people are trying to live their lives. And its not a
very popular notion. Global warming is something that people can still for-
get about, ignore, and, no matter how many novels come out, its just not
that important to most people right now.
Robert Kuhn: David, in your latest book, Kiln People, do you look beyond
pure entertainment? Do you see an alternative future? Do you seek to push
science?
David Brin: Kiln People is one of my less plausible ideas. Most science fic-
tion has fallen into the cliche of extending human life by extending it seri-
ally, tacking on more years at the end. In contrast, Kiln People is founded
Is Science Fiction Science? 9
on the notion that instead of extending human life serially, how about doing
it in parallel, having more life, multiple lives, at the same timewhen you
are young, when you could really use it. Every morning you lie down on a
fanciful home copier, which then turns out five or six clay copies of your-
self (Golems) with your memory, your motivation, your personality, so that
you can be in multiple places at once. You then collect the memories at the
end of the day and integrate them together in your psyche. The next day,
another five places at onceyou can work out the enormous permutations.
Its a real science fiction novel in the sense that it works out what such a soci-
ety might be like.
Octavia Butler: Do you really think that five or six parallel lives would be
enough?
David Brin: People will never have enough, but I believe that human sanity
is based, to some degree, on satiability: if you get what you want, assuming
that youre fairly sane, it should at least make you a little bit happier. And
it should shift your ambitions from what they were to something else.
Octavia Butler: I think one of the worst things that could happen to you is
you get what you want. Then youre finished, you might as well cut your
throat now, your life is done.
David Brin: Humans are monkeys; thats not going to happen. People
complain that 30% of Americans watch 40, 50 hours a week of television;
100 years ago, that same 30% of Americans watched the fire burning in their
fireplace for 40 hours a week.
Michael Crichton: They had better programming back then.
Octavia Butler: When I was a kid, I got to live a nineteenth century exist-
ence for a little while. My grandmother had a chicken ranch and there was
no electricity, we used a well for water. We told stories. I think they enjoyed
scaring the heck out of me. Some of them were true, some of them werent.
Robert Kuhn: It enriched your life.
Octavia Butler: It did. For one thing, I developed a real love for stories.
Robert Kuhn: Why has science fiction become more mainstream now?
Whats happened?
Michael Crichton: I think that technology is phenomenally important in
our lives. And its developing at a much more rapid rate. I was born in
1942, so I spent 10 years without television, in the way that Octavia is talk-
ing about, and then the arrival of television made an enormously different
world. And, a few years after that, the arrival of jet aircraft made an enor-
mously different world. And, by the time you get to personal computers
10 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
and the internet, life has become very, very different. Talking about an early
book I wrote, The Andromeda Strain, todays kids say to me, Well, why did
you write it that way? meaning that old way with all those old things. They
cant conceive of the world just 35 years ago, its such a totally different
world today.
Robert Kuhn: Some people say that The Andromeda Strain helped prepare
us for bio-terrorism, how we would react to an anthrax attack.
Michael Crichton: I always thought it was a remake of War of the Worlds.
Robert Kuhn: Does science fiction in other cultures have a different
character?
David Brin: Japanese science fiction, Brazilian science fiction are very dif-
ferent than American science fiction. There was very different, and very
interesting, science fiction literature that arose out of the old Soviet Union,
written by enthusiastic socialists. But if you travel around the world as a sci-
ence fiction author, you know the difference between those countries in
which science fiction is popular and those in which it isnt. In Japan, people
pick me up at the airport; in India they dont.
Octavia Butler: I remember a conference in New York for African
Women of the Diaspora, called The Yari Yari Conference, actually, The
Future of the Future. There were a lot of people from third world countries
where it wasnt as much a matter of press freedom so much as finding the
necessities for publishing, such as a printing press, paying for paper, figuring
out how to distribute your book, and often all by yourself.
David Brin: But there is another essential point why science fiction is an
American literature to some degree, and that is because most of the
propaganda coming out of the American experience promote suspicion of
authority and, to some degree, tolerance. As Octavia was saying, there are
a lot of cultures in which authority is a much more revered thing, or much
more of a problematical thing in day-to-day life.
Octavia Butler: Or cultures where there are a lot more needs that arent
being met.
Robert Kuhn: If we had somebody here from China or India or Africa,
how do you think they would react to our discussion about science fiction?
Octavia Butler: I think they probably would want us to focus on topics
that were more important to them. Take the writer Arundhati Roy who
has been arrested in India because she went beyond her writing fiction and
criticized something that her government was doing which was very worthy
of criticism. People in third world countries would want us to pay more
attention to whats really going on in their countries and what shouldnt be.
Is Science Fiction Science? 11
Michael Crichton
Why did you become a science fiction writer?
Because when I was a kid I loved the Arthur Conan Doyle stories of Sherlock
Holmes. And one of the things that really impressed me about them was the
sense of how real they were, how true to life they were. People go to London
and look for Holmess famous address, 221B Baker Street. I always aspired
to have that quality of realism in my writings, trying to make people think
it was true.
Is technology irreversible?
Im actually not persuaded that technology cannot be turned back. In most
of my lifetime, what powered adolescence was the desire for the freedom
as exemplified by the mobility of the automobile. That was a peculiarly
American dream, an early 20th Century dream; and now we have the entire
world sitting in traffic jams. Today, the most forward thinking people are
dreaming of a world without cars. And I think well eventually have that. I
think were going to eventually have to begin to crank this one technology,
autos, backwards.
You write books about serious science; do you think entertainment can
educate?
Tom Wolfe once said, Movies are great, but cannot explain anything.
And what people need now in terms of science and technology is that they
need explanations. They need to understand what are the risks of this
14 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
technology? What are the benefits of that technology? What are the issues
involved? What are the tradeoffs? Because there are always tradeoffs. Most
people dont understand the notion of tradeoffs; nor do they understand
the notion of risk. You can say to them, Do you want arsenic in the drink
you ordered? And they go, No, not me. But if you say, Would you be
willing to spend this amount of money on cleaning up the water, but this
would mean that you couldnt buy a new car, they go, Oh, wait a
minute. Most people cant weigh tradeoffs, especially regarding societal
issues.
David Brin
Why did you become a scientist?
I wanted to become a scientist because it seemed like this was an honest way
to see the world. Every civilization has had artistsart flows from our pores.
All the fine scientists I know have artistic hobbies. Most of my neighbors
have artistic hobbies. The idea that art is rare is a myth foisted on us by
artists. All civilizations have had art, and I was born to be an artist, I was
scribbling from an early age. But scienceonly one civilization has ever
had sciencetraining millions of people to actually be honest in how they
saw things, and to doubt themselves and to try to find out whats true
whether they like it or not. I wanted to be part of that and I struggled. I
wasnt very good at it. I got my union cardmy Ph.D. You know what? Sci-
ence is hard. Lying is easy. This civilization is willing to pay me a lot more
to fib about people who cant sue me because they are all fictitious, and who
am I to argue with civilization?
cannot be sustained, but in the long run, its going to be human creativity
thats going to be the ultimate resource.
Octavia Butler
Why did you become a writer?
I came to be a writer by accident. I discovered I liked it; I was writing when I
was 10 years old. I was writing to get away from my boring life, so fantasy
was a natural. And a couple of years later, I saw a bad movie called Devil
Girl from Mars, and watching it on television, I sat there and said, Jeez, I
could write a better story than that. Anybody can write a better story than
that. And finally it hit me that someone had been paid for writing that
bad story, so I grabbed my notebook and began to write. I didnt see the
18 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
end of that movie until many years later, when a Texas fan actually gave me
a copy of it and I watched it, and I kind of admired my good taste as a 12
year-old.
things that I had not known before. I really enjoy having an excuse to stick
my nose into all sorts of things. I think most writers are just natural liars,
but thats not really the word I want. We eavesdrop. We do all sorts of things
that get us into everyone elses business, and were also into a little bit of
everything. If youre talking to a writer about almost anything, you can at
least have a brief conversation that isnt stupid.
Were you surprised when the MacArthur Foundation called and you had been
selected as a Fellow?
When a total stranger with a very nice voice called me and said, Youve
been chosen for the MacArthur Fellowship, my immediate reaction was,
What is this? When is she going to ask me for my credit card number so I
can hang up? I couldnt believe it. And I didnt really know very much
about it. Ive heard of it vaguely. And it took me a while to begin to believe
it. They asked me not to tell anyone for a while, and I thought, That will
be my choice. I want to see whats going to happen here before I run out
and tell people and then later look really bad.
Music is a fundamental defining factor of the human mind; from brain devel-
opment to cultural progression, music pervades the human psyche. Virtually
every known human culture has some form of musical expression, and the
neurobiology of musichow the brain appreciates and processes musicis
an exploration of what it means to be human. Although there are specific
parts of the brain dedicated to the sense of sound, vast areas of the brain
(particularly the cerebral cortex) must work together to process the complex
process we call music, including areas of working memory, forethought,
movement, and emotion. Music has a special relationship to various kinds
of brain patternsmelody, harmony, rhythm, timbre, pitch, and style of
sound each have their unique representations.
Musics nonverbal character expresses a different way of thinking than do
other kinds of human cognition and thus may have broader impact on the
body, such as lowering blood pressure and easing pain. Like theories of a
universal grammar hardwired into our brains to enable language, there
may be a universal set of rules that governs how patterns of sounds can
become music and how a limited number of sounds can be combined in an
infinite number of ways.
Two streams of research come together, one anatomical, one psychologi-
cal. First, the plasticity of the brain, active during infancy and early child-
hood and perhaps into adulthood and old age, may be activated by music
in diverse ways, thus stimulating richer, healthier, better functioning brains.
Recent data goes further, contradicting long-standing maxims that no new
brain cellscalled neuronscan form in the adult brain, growth that may
be enhanced by music. Second, there is anecdotal evidence that children
and even adults who are exposed to music, especially complex forms, do
22 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
better in other areas of development. This seems true in infants and young
children and may also be true in adults and even the elderly. Can music aid
mental development? Running on treadmills increases brain size and func-
tion in young rats. Can listening to music do the same in young humans?
Three musiciansa neuroscientist, a dean of a fine arts college program,
and an education innovatordiscuss musics universal appeal and its impor-
tance to the development of human society. One panelist asserts that music
could have easily predated human language, and all concur that musics
inherent symmetry and organizational principles tap into a deep human
need to order, or manage, our environment. They investigate how music
may affect brain development, whether or not listening to classical music
can make us smarter, and musics possible role in the development of co-
operative action.
Expert Participants
Jeanne Bamberger
Professor of Music and Urban Education, Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology; pianist.
Robert Freeman
Dean, College of Fine Arts, University of Texas at Austin; past director,
Eastman School of Music; past president, New England Conservatory of
Music
Mark Jude Tramo
Director, The Institute for Music and Brain Science, Massachusetts General
Hospital; neurologist and neuroscientist, Harvard Medical School; musi-
cian, songwriter
Robert Freeman: I grew up with music all over my house and I had a music
teacher who shared with everyone the huge excitement that I have always
gotten out of music. What I dont know is whether music is part of my
genetic background or part of the fact that it was the first language I really
learned. I also still dont know how best to teach music to other human
beings.
Mark Tramo: I would argue that music in the form of song predated our
ability to speak. We were communicating emotions and ideas with grunts
and groans and chants and hums well before we were enunciating complex
ideas like the ones we are sharing right now.
Why is Music So Significant? 23
Jeanne Bamberger: Out of the grunts and groans has grown the complexity
of the music that has been created since those early human days, because
music embodies a lot of the organizing principles that we find in almost
every other domain, such as symmetry and periodicity.
Mark Tramo: And that symmetry relates to our natural affinity for music,
the degree to which children, for example, naturally gravitate to music. It
seems that as humans we have a compulsion to order, organize, control the
environment around us. And music relates to our acoustic environment;
were surrounded routinely by a cacophony of sounds coming from all
around us, and we take all of those sounds and organize them with respect
to their frequencies, with respect to when those combinations of frequencies
are occurring in time, and with this beautiful regularity, beautiful structure
and thats how we experience sound.
Jeanne Bamberger: On the basis of my research, it turns out that what
everybody knows how to do by the time they are five or six years old in this
culture, they know how to hear beginnings and endings and they know how
to hear what is usually called functions; for example, they can hear when
musical passages do not have proper resolutions in their endings. Further-
more, Ive seen a little girl, three years old, sitting on the floor, listening to
a performance of The Magic Flute. When she got bored, she stood up and
began walking: she walked one direction and at the ends of the phrases she
turned around and walked in the other direction, and she kept that up for
the whole tune. So what people can hear are beginnings and endings, and
they can hear finished and unfinished, stability and instability, so one of
the problems is that when we traditionally begin music education, we start
with notes. We teach kids how to read music, which captures features that
are very different from what were paying attention to when we listen.
Robert Freeman: Of course, I dont know what you hear when you hear
music and you dont know what I hear.
Jeanne Bamberger: No, I dont; thats right. But I tried to find that out by
asking kids to invent ways of putting down on paper something they had
clapped, for example. And what they capture is different in very specific
ways from whats captured in the standard music notation. But its also very
much inherent in what we do when people see our gestures, or movement
from and to, but they dont measure either time or pitch, which is exactly
what music notation captures. Kids use squiggles on paper, say that show a
whole little figure.
Robert Kuhn: What are some examples?
Jeanne Bamberger: Take mechanical gears. We have kids playing with
great big cardboard gears of different sizes that they had made of different
numbers of teeth, and the question was, when you turned them around,
24 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
which one went faster? Well, one little girl said, It depends on what kind of
fastness you mean. Because if youre talking about the number of times
around, then the little one is going faster. But if youre talking about those
things (i.e., gears) that connect to each other, then theyre going the same.
She was nine, and she was failing in school because the way she thought
about things was so much more complex, so much more integrated, and
using so many different sensory modalities and modes of representation that
nobody, not the other kids and not the teacher, could understand her.
Robert Kuhn: How did she relate to the gears?
Jeanne Bamberger: There were eight teeth on the little gear and it went
around four times when the big one went around once, and the question
was, how many teeth does the big one have? And the other kids said, You
better count them. And she said, You dont need to count them, its 32!
Because eight times four is 32. Then I said, Can you clap this relationship?
And we hit the table with one hand four times for every time we hit the table
with the other hand one time. Then we went to the computer and I said,
Can you get the computer synthesizer to play that rhythm using numbers?
And at that point they had to get into ratio and proportion, because the
slower gear had to have a number of teeth that was four times bigger than
the faster one, so they could use something like 12 and three, this could be
a 12-er, as they called it, and this could be a three-er. So at that moment they
had gone across all these different sensory modalities, modes of representa-
tion, including their own body action and different kinds of materials. I
think there are many things that meet in different domains and function
actively in music.
Robert Freeman: Though we dont normally teach music as though that
were the caseand we should.
Robert Kuhn: When all this is happening there are vast areas of the brain
that are involved, its not just the auditory part.
Mark Tramo: The concept that there is a single, solitary music center in
the brain is surely not correct. The auditory system is what allows us to
decode the music, makes sense of the music. To derive the meaning or to
evoke the emotions of music, one has to develop some expectations about
where the music is going. So if Im expecting a pianist to end on a particular
note, I can tell you that the anterior frontal cortex of the brain is what is
most active, trying to discern whats coming nextit is not the auditory cor-
tex in the superior temporal lobe.
Robert Freeman: What are the brain structures measuring?
Mark Tramo: The structures in the brains auditory system are measuring
the frequency, the duration, and the timing of the events as we listen to
them, and their complex combinations.
Why is Music So Significant? 25
Mark Tramo: Here is the way I think about it: we come into the world and
we are primed to extract regularities in the acoustic environment and in the
visual environment. For example, were primed to recognize faces. Our nerv-
ous system gives us that capacity.
Robert Kuhn: So are music principles built into the brain, hard wired from
birth? Or are they only out in the external world and we learn to recognize
them?
Mark Tramo: Both, in a way. They are certainly out in the external world,
and we come into that world with a predisposition to apprehend it. Its the
old differentiation between nature and nurture. Theres a continual interac-
tion between what were born with and what exists in the world. It is part
of our nature to change with the environment, but brain and environment
are inextricably linked.
Robert Kuhn: Its the plasticity of the brain.
Mark Tramo: Whats new and exciting is that were not just talking about
plasticity in three year olds, were talking about that the plasticity of the
brain lasting throughout life, though to a lesser degree. Brain plasticity con-
tinues on into adulthood; the brain is changing well into our seventh and
eighth decades of life.
Robert Freeman: For any piece of music to make sensewhatever culture
its in, whether its high art or pop artthere has to be some kind of regular-
ity or repetition. If I play the beginning of Beethovens First Sonata, then two
measures of Beethovens Second Sonata, then two measures of Beethovens
Third Sonata, even though all of which are a part of Opus II, you would
get something which makes no sense.
Jeanne Bamberger: Without repetition, there would be no coherence.
Robert Kuhn: Suppose we go to a different culture, do the same principles
hold?
Jeanne Bamberger: If I listen to Chinese music, because I do not know it, I
have the feeling that it goes on and on and on. If you cant tell where the
stops and starts are, then its like listening to a foreign language that you
dont understand. In learning a foreign language, one must learn where the
stops and starts are. In other words, how to chunk it, what generates
boundaries, what generates edges.
Robert Freeman: I like comparing music to baseball, which is my avoca-
tional passion. You cannot understand a baseball game if you dont know
something about its basic rules or structure. Baseball can seem endless in
much the same way. Thats what I get out of cricketa feeling of endless-
nessbecause I dont know what the rules and objectives are.
Why is Music So Significant? 27
Robert Kuhn: Doesnt this mean that music is more culturally based than
genetically determined?
Mark Tramo: There are some data of cross cultural studies that have com-
pared how Stanford undergraduates, and how Balinese villagers who have
never seen a pair of headphones, perform on tasks. So if I were to play a
sequence on the piano and you had to decide how well that last note com-
pletes the sequence, then you would have some opinions about how well
the last note worked. Now, a reasonable proportion of these Balinese villag-
ers will rate how well that final tone completes that sequence very similarly
to the way the Stanford undergraduates rated the tone in the goodness of
the fit.
Robert Kuhn: This would means that although the Balinese villages had no
prior cultural exposure to this kind of music, the similarity of response indi-
cates a universality of how music is perceived. This is turn would suggest
that there are some basic structures of the brain that are innate and common
to all human beings and generate similar cognitive experiences irrespective
of cultural experience.
Jeanne Bamberger: That study has come under a lot of criticism since what
they use as stimuli are not related to the music that people in the culture
know. So while it may demonstrate something, I dont think it demonstrates
how we make sense of real music.
Mark Tramo: But isnt that part of the power of the result, that although
the Balinese villagers didnt know anything about this music, yet they per-
ceived the music in the same way that Stanford undergraduates perceived
the music?
Robert Kuhn: Lets talk about consonance and dissonance.
Jeanne Bamberger: I dont know whether thats cross-cultural or not. I
doubt it because actually in Yugoslavia they sing in a way we might think
it dissonant. We used to sing it that way in the twelfth or thirteenth century.
And thats not considered dissonant at all.
Mark Tramo: Theres a whole semantics around the use of the terms con-
sonance and dissonance.
Robert Kuhn: Is that culturally determined?
Mark Tramo: Although consonance and dissonance is culturally deter-
mined, there are universals. There is context here. Lets say were watching
a movie together and we hear crashing noises, its not a happy point in the
film. The emotion that we associate with that crashing noise is very much
learned, but even four month old children can tell the difference noise and
music.
28 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Robert Kuhn: Lets talk about the impact of music on children, something
that many people know as the Mozart Effect, which supposedly will make
you smarterdo better on testsby listening to certain music.
Robert Freeman: As a music school director, thats something I would love
to see proven.
Mark Tramo: Lets see how that experiment worked, by illustrating an
example with our host that will illustrate the particular studies that came
out of the University of California at Irvine, which are referred to as the
Mozart Effect. Well imagine that there are three Robert Kuhns: one of
them was in Dressing Room 1 listening to 10 minutes of Mozarts Sonata
For Two Pianos in D Major; there was another Robert Kuhn who was iso-
lated in complete silence; and there was a third Robert Kuhn listening to
relaxation music or maybe a modern composer like Phillip Glass. And then
after ten minutes we ask all three Robert Kuhns to come and join us and
what we did was to take several pieces of paper, folded them up, cut them
in various ways, and then ask you to imagine that if we unfold the papers
which papers will match. So, Robert, please choose!
Robert Kuhn: The obvious answer would be this one, but I think youre
trying to fool me, so I will choose that one.
Mark Tramo: You are correct, although you thought the obvious answer
was actually the wrong one. Now thats the particular task that the experi-
ments used in proving the so-called Mozart Effect, and they determined
that people would do better on this task, if just prior to the task, they had
listed to Mozart for 10 or 15 minutes. Now thats promising in the sense of
showing some effect, but its very short lived and it can be explained by
non-cognitive mechanisms that have to do with arousal and positive mood
induction. Explaining the results in terms of the underlying brain mecha-
nisms is difficult to sort out.
Robert Kuhn: This focuses public attention on the fact that music may be
important for the intellectual development of children.
Jeanne Bamberger: But we dont know why! Even the people who did the
experiments cant account for it.
Mark Tramo: We need more data. Whats exciting about the Mozart
Effect was that the experiment was in the right spirit. Music taps into so
many different aspects of cognitive as well as emotional processing that it
would be hard to believe that it wouldnt have some sort of a positive effect.
If were talking about phonological processing and language, and learning
how to read, listening to music forces you to be able to decode very complex
sequences, so that may confer a positive effect. Theres some evidence that
music may be useful in the treatment for dyslexia. If we think of music in
Why is Music So Significant? 29
terms of proportions and ratios and symmetry, that would suggest a rela-
tionship with mathematical ability.
Robert Kuhn: The relationship between math and music has long been
suspected.
Jeanne Bamberger: It only goes in one direction: there are very few musi-
cians who are interested in math.
Mark Tramo: If you put first graders into an intensive arts program that
includes music training emphasizing sequencing, by the end of the year, they
go ahead of the rest of the class in math. These kinds of longer term training
programs are more important than what might happen in ten minutes. We
need to know what happens when children begin to study piano at the age
of four to nine years old. We need to collect the data. Perhaps we should
institute a national effort. If one is trying to draw children into an activity
that will exercise the brain, help to develop mental strategies and cognitive
structures, do something thats fun. Dont drill the children on rote questions
and canned answers. Music encompasses so many things that have to do
with cognition, perception and motor function, that if the individual, apri-
ori, likes music, gravitates to music naturallyits not for everybodytake
advantage of it.
Robert Freeman: I have a dream of a musical society in America that, just
as with athletics, all kids are involved when theyre 5 to 7 years old. Its
not about becoming a professional musicianwe dont need more profes-
sional musicians. What we need is a whole army of avocational musicians,
people who take great pleasure in being involved with music from an early
age. Music is truly one of Gods great gifts to humanity.
Mark Tramo: Music is one of the things that help bring us together. As
humans we never would have survived, we would have been eaten up and
killed by animals, if we hadnt bonded together and form civilizations, so
that we could fight our predators. We needed to develop social bonds,
cement the collective identity, and music has been a part of virtually every
collective ritual.
Robert Freeman: A number of female art students at the University of
Texas (Austin) decided when they were freshmen that Mozart and Beet-
hoven were for everybody, and that they would invite non-art students on
this vast campus of 51,000 people to accompany them on dates to go to
artistic events. They started a whole cottage industry.
cognitive connections with other aspect of the intellect. There may be a uni-
versal set of rules that governs how patterns of tones and rhythms can
become music. Its nonverbal essence may enable physical, mental and emo-
tional benefits beyond listening enjoyment, because the plasticity of the
brain, active during infancy and early childhood and even into adulthood
and old age, may be stimulated by music, yielding richer, healthier, better-
functioning brains. While the so-called Mozart Effect may have some
minor validitykids seem to do better at a task for 10 minutes after hearing
Mozart,but longer lasting effects are not evidentneurobiologists suspect
that someday well understand how music positively enhances brain proc-
esses, intelligence, and social interaction.
Can music literally mold the plasticity of the brain? When I listen to the
symphonies of Gustav Mahler, or the songs of Judy Collins . . .it doesnt
much matter. There is something special about music that reaches deep into
our psyches and helps define us as human beings.
Mark Tramo
Why did you become a scientist?
I grew up playing music and at a fairly early age starting writing songs in
the pop rock genre. When I was in college at Yale, I studied drama and music
even while I was a biology major and very interested in understanding brain
mechanisms of behavior. Then, when I learned that there in fact was a sci-
ence trying to understand music perception and cognition, I seized the
opportunity to really pursue this new field and combine them in my career.
Ultimately, I trained in neurology and became a neurologist at New York
Hospital, and now at Massachusetts General Hospital. I find many very
interesting questions in trying to understand the brain mechanisms respon-
sible for something that comes so naturally to all of us as being able to
apprehend the emotion and meaning in music.
Jeanne Bamberger
Why do you think music is a universally shared human experience?
Music encompasses all aspects of our life. Everything from athletic to
pure sensory experience to all kinds of higher level organizing abilities
that we all have. I just keep being more and more impressed that the whole
brain and the whole body is involved in musicits one holistic activity.
Music is certainly an activity in which our whole humanness cooperates
and participates.
Robert Freeman
What are the key developments in your field?
The program that were working on right now is the use of CAT scanning
and positron emission tomography to better understand how music is cre-
ated, how music is performed, and how music is perceived. I want to make
sure that in the work of a brilliant young neurobiologist like Mark Tramo,
the right questions are being asked and that his research is going down a pos-
itive track. Because I believe if we understood better how the human brain
works, it would not only be better for musical instruction throughout the
world, but that contribution would also help us understand how human
function occurs generally. For example, I think that playing the piano or
the organ or the violin at a very high level of technical accomplishment is
about as complex a neurobiological function as the human body has mas-
tered. Hitting fastballs in baseball is something that you do in a batting cage
several times a minute, but once you start the last movement of the Brahms
B-flat major concerto with an orchestra, there is no stopping and you are
playing hundreds of notes every minute.
parts of the world in that many people think that America stands for sex and
violence and consumerism and egocentrism. A reinvigorated program pro-
moting all the arts, not only in America but throughout the world, would
help counter this negative image and portray what a wonderful and compas-
sionate and generous country this is.
Chapter 3
Is Consciousness an Illusion?
Is consciousness an illusion? You see; you feel; you act. You think youre
conscious. Some say youre not. Modern neurosciencethe chemistry and
physiology of the brainhas made remarkable progress. But is there some-
thing of the mind that is not in the brain?
Philosophers have debated the mind-body problem and the existence of
free will for thousands of years. What do we mean when we say con-
sciousness? Are our minds just the artificial integration of multiple brain
systems? Are our feelings of self, that unique personal sense of mental
qualiadoes the color red look the same to you as it does to me?any-
thing other an epiphenomenon, seemingly real but in reality an illusion?
Furthermore, are non-human organisms conscious? And, what about
non-biological intelligences like advanced computers?
Consciousness is a fundamental fact of human existence, and the nature or
essence of consciousness is a core issue of human inquiry. It all comes down
to one compound question: is there anything beyond current laws of physics
that is needed to cause consciousness? If something new is needed, do we
extend our notion of the physical? Or is consciousness somehow an indepen-
dent, non-reducible, fundamental factor of existence? And if nothing new is
needed, how do firings of neurons, or ultimately motions of atoms or vibra-
tions of strings, emerge up into human self awareness? There are more
radical theories about consciousness today, from religion and parapsychol-
ogy to philosophy and quantum physics, than ever before.
Four renowned brain scientists tackle the conundrum of how to define and
study consciousness. One problem is that there are too many definitions!
And getting these four guests to agree on what consciousness is and what
causes it is an engaging but hopeless task that is revelatory at the same time.
34 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Expert Participants
Joseph Bogen
Clinical Professor of Neurosurgery, University of Southern California;
adjunct professor in Psychology, University of California at Los Angeles;
former consultant in neurosurgery (split brain), California Institute of
Technology
Leslie Brothers
Psychiatrist, neuroscientist; author, Fridays Footprint: How Society Shapes
the Human Mind
Stuart Hameroff
Professor, Departments of Anesthesiology and Psychology; Associate Direc-
tor, Center for Consciousness Studies, University of Arizona
Christof Koch
Professor of Cognitive & Behavioral Biology & Executive Officer for Com-
putation and Neural Systems, California Institute of Technology; author,
The Quest for Consciousness: A Scientific Approach
Robert Kuhn: Why do we call consciousness a hard problem?
Joe Bogen: Consciousness is like the wind: you dont see it; what you see
are the effects of it.
Stuart Hameroff: Proto-consciousness, something from which conscious-
ness is derived, is fundamental and irreducible; its something like spin, or
charge.
Leslie Brothers: I think we have to be careful not to toss this term con-
sciousness around too readily, as though somehow its a given that there
Is Consciousness an Illusion? 35
is such an entity as consciousness just because we have that word and we use
it. It could be that just like we have the word aliveness, we have a concept,
but that doesnt mean that there is a single thing called consciousness. There
may be many processes, many ways that we engage with the world with our
own sensations and with the sensations that we get from the outside world,
but to say that that means theres some overarching entity called conscious-
ness may be a mistake.
Stuart Hameroff: We have a semantics problem hereconsciousness is
used incorrectly to group of all kinds of things. But I have to disagree with
what you said, Leslie, because I think that consciousness, when used prop-
erly, is something very specificits experience, its awareness that biologi-
cal systems have, and as far as we know, only biological systems have.
Joe Bogen: So far.
Stuart Hameroff So far, and its just a matter of figuring out exactly what
consciousness is or means.
Joe Bogen If were going to find a scientific explanation for something, we
have to be a little bit restrictive about what were trying to explain. Because
if we try to explain all of those things that different people mean, in all of the
different ways they use the word consciousness, were not going to be able
to find any explanation. We have to focus on what were really after, which
is closer to the idea of qualia.
Stuart Hameroff: I agree. Sensations are qualia, our internal experience,
the sense of our inner life that distinguishes us from computers, which do
not have sensations, flavors, emotions, feelings, what philosophers call
qualia, which do not have consciousness.
Leslie Brothers: Christof and Francis Crick have said, lets look at visual
awareness as sort of a paradigmatic case. And see if we can find the neural
correlates of consciousness beginning with one aspect of consciousness
vision. My question would still be, are the results going to be able to be gen-
eralized in some way, or is all we are going to find the neural correlates of
visual awareness in a specific experimental setting?
Christof Koch: Its an experimental program. The hope is that you uncover
any one aspect of consciousness: sensual consciousness, visual conscious-
ness, pain, self consciousness, whatever, then the other aspects of conscious-
ness are probably closely related in kind. The same principles held when
scientists tried to study heredity in the origin of life. The belief was that
studying that aspect of heredity and how the genetic information was trans-
mitted in this very simple case probably would illuminate the way humans
pass on genetic information to their children.
36 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Robert Kuhn: One of the theories would be that each of the different
aspects of consciousnessthe visual, the auditory, each separate sensory
and motor system, memoriessomehow gets integrated together and collec-
tively give an illusion of consciousness. We call such an illusion an epiphe-
nomenon, something that seems fundamentally real but it is not.
Joe Bogen: I disagree with that theory: I dont think that integrating all this
stuff together is whats crucial about consciousness.
Robert Kuhn: Whats important in your view?
Joe Bogen: Whats important about consciousness is the experience.
Christof Koch: When you have a toothache, when you have tooth pain, it
might override everything else because it can hurt so bad. But why does it
hurt? Why is it that the release of some ions sloshing around in your brain,
some calcium and potassium ions, gives rise to this really bad feeling?
Leslie Brothers: Thats the hard problem.
Christof Koch: That is a hard problem. In this case there is very little infor-
mation integration going on, its all that one tooth that hurts. Consciousness
does not have to be integration, it can be just the sensation. Heres the criti-
cal question: how can a physical systemhow can any physical system, a
human, a fly, a robothave subjective states?
Robert Kuhn: We do many things that were not conscious of. We use the
term zombies in consciousness. Whats a zombie?
Christof Koch: A zombie is a set of sensory-motor systems that can do
very complicated behaviors in the absence of awareness or consciousness.
Leslie Brothers: A concept like zombie is a creative game that we play
with our everyday notions of people; its the body without the mind.
Christof Koch: For example, when I talk to you and I drink from a glass at
the same timethis is a very complicated move. We have great difficulty get-
ting robots to do this, to judge the distance to my mouth, to tilt it at just the
right angle. This is a really difficult problem for robotics, yet I do it all the
time effortlessly. Now there are some brain-damaged patients who cannot
see the glass, who cant tell how big it is, yet if you ask them just to grab it
and drink it, they can do that. So here you have a beautiful dissociation:
you have part of the visual system that mediates a zombie behavior thats
intact, yet another part of this visual system that mediates the conscious sen-
sation that enables one to actually see this glass of water is destroyed.
Robert Kuhn: If you ask them, Do you see a glass? they say No?
Christof Koch: Correct, they cannot see it, yet they can still do certain
highly trained behaviors, like taking the glass and drinking from it.
Is Consciousness an Illusion? 37
Robert Kuhn: Your point is that the zombie part of the brain is not con-
scious but is still able to do sophisticated behaviors.
Christof Koch: Thats correct, and theres a whole range of these uncon-
scious systems that move your eyes, adjust your gait, that come into play
unconsciously when, for example, you shake somebodys hand.
Leslie Brothers: Zombies do all the things that bodies do but without the
subjective locus of experience. For example, when I look at whats on this
table I believe that I am having my experience; I dont think Im having
Christofs experience.
Robert Kuhn Does the concept of zombie help us understand
consciousness?
Christof Koch: Yes, because if you look at the brain basis of zombie behav-
iors, if you can identify what part of the brain or what brain systems are
responsible for mediating unconscious behaviorzombie behaviors, call it
whatever you likeand compare that with those parts of the brain that are
responsible for mediating conscious behaviors, you want to ask, where is
the difference? Is there a special type of neuron involved? Special parts of
the brain? What is the brain difference between conscious and unconscious
behaviors?
Leslie Brothers: It is an assumption that conscious and unconscious behav-
iors are two kinds of separate categories. It may be that visual awareness,
being awake as opposed to asleep, being in a light state of anesthesia as
opposed to being fully awake, feeling toothache pain, these may not be uni-
fied in any overarching way.
Christof Koch: But the history of biology in the last 150 years has shown
that for every specific function that you can identify, theres always one or
more specific systems, specific cells, specific molecules, specific molecular
machineries, that carry out this function. Thats how biology works.
Leslie Brothers: Sure; each function may have its own specific systems. The
question is whether there is some overarching system.
Joe Bogen: You bet you there is!
Stuart Hameroff: You have to be careful about not confusing attention
with consciousness because it could be that our sensory inputs give us
states of mind that are really not conscious until other systems like the chol-
inerrgic system come along and select for attention, for conscious attention.
Robert Kuhn: Stuart, you are an anesthesiologist; youre in the operating
room; you literally have your hands on consciousness; you see it fade and
disappear, and then you bring it back. What can you tell us?
38 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Joe Bogen: Number two is where does consciousness come from? Most of
us believe that brains produce consciousness. Number three is at what level
in the brain is consciousness produced? We can look at the subcellular level,
at the cytoskeleton, the microtubules. We could look at the cellular level:
some people think that there are some cells that are conscious (or have the
capacity for it) and other cells that are not conscious. You can look at the
level of brain circuits, which is where I happen to look. I believe that con-
sciousness emerges at the circuit level. Or you could postulate that you need
great, massive systems before you have consciousness. And then some peo-
ple think that only whole brains can be conscious.
Robert Kuhn: Yes, and there are other some people who believe that you
need more than the brain to have true human consciousness.
Joe Bogen: Yes, some people (like Leslie) dont want to use the word con-
sciousness unless you have a brain interacting with other brains. Im not very
happy with that opinion because I think that a totally isolated human being,
or a cat or dog that never saw another cat or dog can experience pain and
hunger and thirst.
Robert Kuhn: Dont we find it absolutely fascinating that first-rate brain
scientists differ so substantially even as to the gross level in the brain that is
the primary generator of consciousnessfrom the subcellular, to cellular,
to systems of neurons, to neural circuits, to brain systems, to whole brains,
to beyond. Is that the state of play today?
Stuart Hameroff: You started too high, or too large. To find the real locus
of consciousnesscall it proto-consciousness, something from which
consciousness is derived, something so fundamental and irreducible that it
is a component of the universe that has been there all along, something like
spin or charge or massits probably down there at the quantum mechani-
cal level, at the most fundamental level of space-time geometry, and it has
probably been there since the Big Bang.
Christof Koch: Thats a mystical statement. It is totally untestable.
Stuart Hameroff: Christof, nothing youve said so far about consciousness
is testable.
Christof Koch: No, there are lots of experiments you can do in mice, in
monkeys, you in humans that involve consciousness. Thats what progress
is. Progress is not at fundamental levels of space-time geometry. Experi-
ments that brain scientists are doing today avoid all these philosophical
arguments, because otherwise we would be sitting here 100 years from
now having the same arguments. We progress by focusing on where in the
brain are the correlates for sensations and emotions.
40 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Joe Bogen: Let me get back to the question of free will. Some things you
take responsibility for; you say, I did that. Other things, like dropping
something on the floor, for example, or stumbling, you dont take respon-
sibility for. And there are certain conditions where human beings have brain
damage and they do some things that they dont feel that they did. So what
were talking about is the conviction of volition, the personal feeling that
you did it. And you can have exactly the same outwardly observable behav-
ior, say, a knee jerk, or turning ones head to look at something, sometimes it
is volitional and sometimes it is not. And what makes it volitional is the per-
son saying, I did that; I am responsible for the knee jerking or for the head
turning. Volition is that feeling on the part of the individual that he or she
did it, and this feeling must have some physiological correlate in the brain,
and thats what you want to go looking for. So when you have a situation
where you can do an act either volitionally or automatically, what you want
to know is whats the difference in nerve cell activity that characterizes that
conviction of volition.
Robert Kuhn: I want to ask a final question, If we are here 100 years from
now discussing the same subject, what would we be saying?
Leslie Brothers: Well have discovered that we had to leave behind the
notion that we could discover anything about the human feeling of being
aware. Well have discovered that the level of the subcellular, the cellular,
the neuronal, were all too low. Ultimately well understand that the highest
and most complex kinds of cognition comes from the interaction of brain
and braini.e., social systems.
Joe Bogen: I think its going to take 100 years for people to accept what I
already believe.
Leslie Brothers
Talk about your book, Fridays Footprint: How Society Shapes the Human
Mind.
I think we might be at the beginning of a paradigm shift, away from
understanding the mind and the brain as a sort of isolated, unto itself entity,
and understanding that most mental phenomena really arise from social
processes. And so well be looking to see what the social processing func-
tions of the brain are, and then also how that leads to collective social proc-
esses that then circle back and affect the brain.
Joseph E. Bogen
Are animals conscious?
When we examine the brains of animals, we see a certain organization.
And whether the animal is a monkey or a cat or a dog, the organization is
very similar. Im reasonably confident that mammals are conscious, any
mammal; I think its part of being a mammal because being conscious helps
you learn things faster. Consciousness helps you acquire learning that you
either wouldnt get at all or wouldnt get as quickly or wouldnt get as well.
But this only applies to mammals. I dont believe spiders are conscious, for
example. They dont learn much; they can do crazy, wonderful things, but
not learn much.
Chrisof Koch
Youre a nuts-and-bolts scientist. You like to knock out a neuron, then see
whats stopped working. But youre also a theoretician. Thats unusual.
Unusual, probably, from a scientific point of view. The person I collabo-
rated with was Francis Crick, one of the few people I know that one might
legitimately call a genius. The thing I admire most is the fact that hes will-
ing to question everything that hes said, everything hes done, everything
weve talked about over the last 15 years. He has this ability to have very lit-
tle emotional investment in his own ideas. To Crick, his own ideas were just
another source of ideas, but they could also be rejected as much as anybody
elses idea could be rejected. In that sense, he was totally fearless. And of
course, Crick had an amazing ability to combine facts and ideas, to have
flashes of insights about things that I could be looking at but not see. He
could bring two elements together that I never thought about, but once he
said it, Id say to myself, well, that was obvious.
What are you finding out about animals and consciousness these days?
An important development is our scientific capacity to record and differ-
entiate, in the laboratory, hundreds of individual neurons in a behaving ani-
mal, like in a monkey. So while the monkey does a particular taskfor
example, looks at a colorful paintingI can now discriminate among the
activity of hundreds of individual neurons. And that, more than anything
else, has helped us and will continue to help us decipher the brain. We really
need to look at the individual elements, the individual neurons.
Note
1. Knockout means suppressing some genes so the animal doesnt express a cer-
tain structure or function, and then observing the losses to behavior.
Chapter 4
How does the brain really work? Its all in your head, but its still a great
mystery. Funny how the brain is often compared to a current technology
first a telephone exchange, then a computer. Now neuroscience has fascinat-
ing new theories of brain function. Youll marvel at whats crammed into
your cranium.
Expert Participants
Eric Courchesne
Professor of Neuroscience, University of California at San Diego.
Portia Iversen
Founder, Cure Autism Now
Soma Mukhopadhyay
Teacher of autistic children; Titos mother
Tito Mukhopadhyay
Autistic adolescent; author, Beyond the Silence
Erin Schuman
Executive Officer for Neurobiology, Associate Professor of Biology, Califor-
nia Institute of Technology
Terrance Sejnowski
Professor, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies; co-author, The Compu-
tational Brain.
48 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Robert Kuhn: Tito, we appreciate having you here. Wed like to talk about
how people study other people. How do you feel when scientists ask you
questions and want to see how your brain works?
Tito writes on pad
Soma Mukhopadhyay (reading what Tito wrote): I get flattered.
Robert Kuhn: What are the primary characteristics of autism?
Eric Courchesne: Poor speech and language, particularly in very young
affected children, two years old; sometimes an absence of speech and lan-
guage altogether. Poor social communication skills; a disinterest in interact-
ing with other people, the willingness to just stand up and walk away when
people are talking with you; ritualistic and repetitive behavior. Autistic
patients may exhibit body mannerisms like flapping the hands or twiddling
the fingers, or rocking and twiddling strings. Or they may have obsessive
interests, interests in maps, for instancejust looking at maps continuously
for no particular reasons.
Portia Iversen: Tito, would you mind telling people why you flap your
hands and rock back and forth, and how you experience your body?
Tito writes
Portia Iversen (reading what Tito wrote): I just need to find my position in
space.
Terry Sejnowski: Interesting, exploring space.
Robert Kuhn: How does rocking help you find your position in space,
Tito?
Tito writes on pad
Soma Mukhopadhyay (reading what Tito wrote): I forget that I have a
body and it reminds me that I have one.
Terry Sejnowski: Our brain is built to actively explore the world, and I
think that what may be happening herethis is speculatingis that if
you dont have that anchor in your body, you have to continually remind
yourself, Im here, Im here, and by moving back and forth, you can do
that.
Robert Kuhn: Our kinesthetic sense tells us where our arms and legs are at
all times; we can close our eyes and we still know where our hands and legs
are. But Tito may not know any of these kinds of things.
How Does the Autistic Brain Work? 49
Eric Courchesne: Its as if each of the senses are coming into the brain sep-
arately and never connect up with one another.
Portia Iversen: Thats what hes describing.
Eric Courchesne: That must mean that he experiences a great deal of sen-
sory noise, a lot of variability, and he has no way of keeping consciously
focused.
Erin Schuman: So he increases his sensory sample rate by moving through
the environment to increase the amount of sampling information that he
gets.
Eric Courchesne: To make at least one stimulus stronger and thus emerge
above the noise.
Robert Kuhn: Tito, everybody at this table is a writer. Each of us has writ-
ten different kinds of things. You write poetry. I do not.
Tito continues writing
Soma Mukhopadhyay (reading what Tito wrote): I write my experience.
Soma Mukhopadhyay: I do not have to wait long to see what Tito says,
because he writes immediately, he doesnt sit and think. It is as if his words
have already been precomposed; he just gets up in the morning and then he
just writes them as speech.
Terry Sejnowski: Thats remarkable, almost as if it was composed while he
was asleep.
Soma Mukhopadhyay: Its just pre-thought.
Terry Sejnowski: His poems seem to occur to him in the morning. Now,
why is that? This is something that I think all of us have experienced: we
are struggling with a problem and we cant get the answer, we go to sleep,
wake up in the morning, and suddenly its a lot clearer. We either have the
answer or we know how to get to the answer. Maybe theres something
going on during the period of sleep; we know a lot of activity is occurring
in the brain during sleep; its quite different from the activity that occurs
when we are awake, but maybe this is the period during which not only
memories are consolidated but new ways of integrating together informa-
tion you have are developed.
Robert Kuhn: Does Tito read?
Soma Mukhopadhyay: Yes; he never used to read, but I found that he can
pinpoint words on a newspaper, but that I did not call reading. I do the read-
ing with him, line by line.
Robert Kuhn: So you read to him.
50 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Eric Courchesne: So, Tito, youre saying that the larger an object is, the
more difficult it is for you to perceive it. And you perceive it in parts or frag-
ments, shape and then color.
Tito writes on pad
Soma Mukhopadhyay (reading what Tito wrote): I see the room only after
I see the door.
Terry Sejnowski: Thats almost poetical. It illustrates something that were
beginning to understand about our own perception, which is that normally
you see the whole before you see the parts. For Tito, it looks like its the
opposite. Tito has a problem with putting the world together. Normally
we dont think about the fact that we can see someone and listen to them
and touch things and it all comes together in our brain almost automatically.
But, in some conditions, and apparently this is the case with Tito, those sen-
sory inputs are disconnected and so it is not at all easy to put them together.
To the autistic mind, the world must be a very frightening place when things
are coming at you unexpectedly and things dont connect. When we see mal-
functions or brain breakdowns like autism, I think we can learn a great deal
about how the brain works normally, things that arent apparent to us
because our normal brains work so well. We dont understand how difficult
that is to put together all the different pieces of the world and make it a uni-
fied whole.
Erin Schuman: Titos case is interesting, and rather hopeful, because its
clear that working together with his mother and his team, Tito communi-
cates his experiences. Tito has a great deal of first-person information that
normal people would have noway of knowing or of getting it out. Using
the computer and voice synthesizer its clear that Tito knows a lot more than
would have been recognized if only conventional methods of probing what
an individual knows were used. This suggests the possibility that there may
be other cases like Tito where there is a lot of information locked up and a
lot of synthesis going on internally, but where there is no output.
Soma Mukhopadhyay (reading what Tito wrote): I can see a point. . .It can
become bigger than the door, just a point.
Soma Mukhopadhyay: Tito can just concentrate on that point and the
other things get unnoticed.
Portia Iversen: One day, Tito and I were looking at a door and (as he
described it here) he said, I see the shape, I see the color, I see the position.
I said, What if I close it, and he said, I may have to start all over again.
In our average everyday world were confronted by thousands of kinds of
images in any given second of time, some moving, some stationary, each
with its own complex set of characteristics. When I ask Tito, How do you
see all this? He answers all these things, one by one.
How Does the Autistic Brain Work? 53
Eric Courchesne: Its almost like autistic people can only focus in like a
spotlight on just one solitary piece of the world around them, and in order
to put it together, to make any sense of their environment, they have to shift
around and around to slowly piece it all together. The separate strands of
sensory input take over his consciousness.
Terry Sejnowski: Maybe that indicates an overactive form of attention.
Normally we can tune out other, irrelevant sights and sounds, and focus
on the one critical object, but usually were continuing to be aware of the
rest of the world. If you can focus on one object extremely well, you can
imagine that theres nothing else out there except that object and it becomes
your whole world.
Eric Courchesne: Not just overactive but almost active in a way thats out
of his control. This would mean that Tito is not able to easily and smoothly
adjust his scope of attention to take in the whole scene, let alone a part of a
scene. He would be reduced to just a single feature of a scene.
Robert Kuhn: What are some of the modern theories on how attention
works and how we bind things together?
Terry Sejnowski: Its really all taking place in the prefrontal cortex of the
brain, the part in the front of the brain that allows your mind to selectively
attend to particular senses and particular features, and in fact switches
between different objects. That is a mental function that we take for granted;
we dont think twice about switching very rapidly between discussions with
different people, but for Tito this is very difficult.
Eric Courchesne: The centers for attention in the brain are located not only
in brain stem structures but also in the frontal and parietal cortex structures,
as well as certain parts of the cerebellum. All these structures are involved in
the dynamic regulation of attention and allow the rapid, smooth, and effec-
tive shifting of attention from one sensory percept, for instance color, to
another, for instance shape. Or the sensory shift can be between sensory
modalities, say between vision and audition. What we and others have
found is that autistic individuals have a great deal of trouble doing this shift-
ing, and they tend to get stuck on one thing as if their attention got locked in
or became frozen, and this situation was out of the persons control. So
apparently systems that allow for the smooth modulation of sensory inputs
are not effective.
Robert Kuhn: Lets talk about memory. How does memory work?
Erin Schuman: How does an organism store information about its envi-
ronment? Thats essentially what a memory is. What we know is that memo-
ries are stored at the interconnection between neurons (nerve cells), called
the synapse, and it is likely that memories are mediated by changes in the
54 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
strength of communication between the neurons, which is how one cell can
have impact on other cells.
Robert Kuhn: Thats done through chemicals, called neurotransmitters,
which pass from one neuron to another neuron across the synapse, the pre-
synaptic part of the first neuron influencing the post-synaptic part of the sec-
ond neuron by these chemicals.
Erin Schuman: Right. The first neuron releases a neurotransmitter that the
second neuron detects, and the latter changes that chemical signal into an
electrical signal. So, information can be stored by changing the strength of
that electrical signal. And then, once you get past the synapse you get to
the cell, and the cell has to integrate the information that its receiving from
all of the cells that are talking to it, which could be hundreds or even thou-
sands of other cells.
Robert Kuhn: As for brain structures, the hippocampus is critical in form-
ing memories.
Erin Schuman: The brain has two halves, so each person has two hippo-
campi, one in each hemisphere. In the hippocampus, a huge number of those
synapses come into a single cell. In the 1950s, one patient, called H.M., had
both of his hippocampi removed due to extreme epilepsy, and what was
noticed in H.M. was that he had profound amnesia following the surgery
and was incapable of forming new memories. That was one of the first clues
that the hippocampus is important for memory formation. Since then, ani-
mal studies have basically borne that out: for certain kinds of memories, ani-
mals that lack a hippocampus cannot form those memories.
Robert Kuhn: How about long-term memory?
Terry Sejnowski: We think that semantic memory, memory that is knowl-
edge about the world, resides in the cerebral cortex, but there is an initial
period during which you need to have a dialogue between the hippocampus
and the cerebral cortex, back and forth, for that memory to be consolidated
in the cortex.
Portia Iversen: Tito is telling us that, I have that better, meaning that he
has better memory than average.
Terry Sejnowski: That could well be. If you can really focus your attention
on something, you can really encode that in a way that it will remain there
for a long time. Attention is clearly directed by these neuromodulatory
systems, like those that use choline and serotonin as neurotransmitters.
If you could really focus the way Tito does, you could make a very strong
association.
Portia Iversen: Tito says, I have that better, meaning long term memory,
but he then adds, but I forgot my breakfast menu, and he really means it.
How Does the Autistic Brain Work? 55
who later become autistic; apparently in autism these brain growth regula-
tors are in too great abundance. The interesting point is that, for the first
time, molecular factors that may influence brain outcome have been identi-
fied at birth and blood samples from autistic individuals. This gives hope
that the pathways that lead into and out of that point may be investigated
and perhaps modified, producing a far better outcome.
Robert Kuhn: Do you have concerns about brain research in terms of how
information were learning might in the future be misapplied?
Terry Sejnowski: Tough question. There is danger. The knowledge that
were going to have very soon with the techniques that we have developed
for imaging and seeing into peoples brain could be used someday, perhaps
in a society different from ours, to control human beings.
Eric Courchesne: Sadly, just about every human technological develop-
ment at some point or another has been used by someone for ill.
Erin Schuman: Science at its core has a sort of blind, knowledge-is-good
attitude. The conventional scientific ethic says that doing the experiment
shouldnt be questioned because its the sort of blind search for the truth.
Eric Courchesne: There is no doubt that knowledge gleaned from brain
science will be extraordinarily powerful, with much opportunity for malevo-
lence. But at the same time technology has brought tremendous good for
people. So the results of better technology is a balance between the two.
Soma Mukhopadhyay (reading from Tito): I think that it will lead to the
better kinds of treatment.
58 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Tito Mukhopadhyay
Fourteen-year-old Tito Mukhopadhyay struggles daily with the challenges
of severe autism. Though nearly non-verbal, Tito can communicate inde-
pendently and is a prolific, talented, and published writer. For more infor-
mation and writing samples, visit http://www.cureautismnow.org/tito/.
Terry Sejnowski
What contact have you had with Tito?
My encounter with Tito on Closer To Truth was the first time I had met
him, and it really had an impact on my view of autism. Because although
he had a very difficult time communicating with the world, and in staying
fixed and focused, it was clear that through the work that his mother had
done with him he had found a channel of communication that other autistic
children do not have. And what made me change my mind about autism is
the fact that I saw there may be locked behind this socially impenetrable wall
a mind that is every bit the same as ours except that it just cant get through.
It cant communicate, it has trouble focusing, it has trouble holding onto
things. Ive thought a good deal about what it was that Titos mother did
for him, and how that impacted his brain so that he became as communica-
tive as he is.
things like attention and it may be the ability to pay attention and to focus
on a single sensory stimulus that is really at the heart of autism. And if we
understood more about the temporal coding part of the brain we might be
able to perhaps come up with a cure for autism.
In your opinion, is temporal coding the main way the brain works?
Its very unlikely that temporal encoding is the main way that the brain
works because of the fact that we know that sometimes it is present and
sometimes it isnt. Temporal coding seems to vary with your mood. It
depends on what youre focusing on. So to the extent that temporal coding
is important, its going to be important for the higher level of processing
rather than the basics like recognizing an object or being able to throw a
baseball. Those basic things are probably based on rate coding. But things
that have to do with your ability to think, for example, and be able to focus
your attention, might be related to the time that the spike occursnot just
how many spikes that occur.
Portia Iversen
Portia, your son Dov is autistic, and you and your husband, Jon Shestack, first
brought Tito and Soma to the U.S. What have you learned from them?
Many families and autism professionals have written asking about Tito,
his mother Soma, our son Dov, and the new teaching method Soma has pio-
neered. This method is called the Rapid Prompting Method (RPM). We are
working with Soma to produce a teaching manual for parents, teachers
and professionals, which describes step-by-step how to implement this
teaching method. And we very much agree with the basic assumption that
how an autistic person acts on the outside is not necessarily a reflection of
who they are and how they think on the inside. We would rather assume
competence.
The teaching method, which has met with some early success, and
through which we now communicate with our son Dov, is not a cure for
autism. That will require much more medical research, and we are working
hard on that front every day.
What are the recent key developments in finding a cure for autism?
The most exciting news in neuroscience in the last five years is the idea of
neuroplasticitythe concept that the brain continues to grow and change
throughout life. There have been amazing breakthroughs in the treatment
of stroke and dyslexia through neural retraining. Using specialized educa-
tion techniques, the brain is able to rewire around damaged or undeveloped
areas and re-regulate the way it deals with sensory input. CANs Neuroplas-
ticity Initiative would compile an integrated team of scientific leaders to
focus on bringing these techniques to bear on autism to find ways to retrain
the brains of people with autismfrom the very young to adults and even to
those most affected who in many instances are not able to speak at all.
You, Tito, and Mike Merzenich, Ph.D., were on 60 Minutes 2 and Good
Morning America in February, 2003. Any way to see that?
Tapes can be ordered from CBS News. Please visit www.cbsnews.com and
click on 60 Minutes 2.
In the Closer To Truth program, How Does the Autistic Brain Work? Titos
descriptions are disturbing. Have other autistics described the experience?
Titos descriptions of sensory stimulation match those of other people
with autism. Gail Gillingham Wylie, M.Sc., an autism consultant and work-
shop presenter, and her husband Clay Wylie, have made the effort to collect
these descriptions from a variety of sources and used them to create an
autistic perception experience for people to try out. You can contact them
at exgr@telusplanet.net
Eric Courchesne
What causes autism?
Theres a wide range of speculations regarding what causes autism. But
the huge difference between identical twins and fraternal twins in the likeli-
hood that if one has autism so does the other60 percent versus three to six
percent suggests a very strong influence of genetics. It also may well be
that the genes that are involved in autism somehow place that individual at
greater risk or more vulnerable to environmental events, like exposure to
viruses or toxins. Thats a possibility that autism may be caused by a reac-
tion to a virus or toxin.
How Does the Autistic Brain Work? 63
Erin Schuman
As someone who studies the brain in detail, what do you think, does the soul
exist?
I think differently from most of my scientific colleagues in that I save a
place for the soul along with all things spiritual. So for me personally, not
everything has to be explained by a molecule or an atom, and so I put the
soul in the category of those mystical things that touch us in life that I do
not think we have a molecular explanation for.
Chapter 5
The battle lines in modern psychiatry are drawn: Will biology replace
psychology? Mental health is a significant international issueincreasing
numbers of people have mental problemsyet psychiatry remains suspect
as a science. On one side is the psychological approach: traditional psychia-
trists and psychologists who use psychoanalysis, behavioral and cognitive
therapies. On the other side is the biological approach: high-tech medical
scientists, also called biomedical psychiatrists, who use mood-altering
drugs, brain imaging, genetic testing. Psychiatry is said to have a split
personality.
But who defines mental illness? When and why do such definitions
change? The treatment of mental illness has a long and unpleasant history,
including looking for demons and relying on exorcisms, and the chaining
and torturing of the mentally ill. Note psychiatrys controversial history:
beginning with hypnosis and Freuds study of the unconscious, the develop-
ment of psychoanalysis, and the various behavioral and cognitive therapies
founded on psychological theories and confirmed by statistical data as well
as anecdotal stories. Recently, psychiatry has become more integrated into
the medical sciences, with the design and controlled studies of psycho-
active drugs, CAT and PET imaging of brain diseases and abnormalities,
and genetic studies of mental illness. Do these techniques take psychiatry
out of the realm of philosophy and put it into the realm of science? And
does this mean that traditional psychiatry will become progressively less
important?
66 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Expert Participants
Nancy Andreasen
Professor of Psychiatry, University of Iowa College of Medicine; editor-in-
chief, American Journal of Psychiatry; author, The Broken Brain, Brave
New Brain; National Medal of Science
Robert Epstein
Former editor-in-chief, now West Coast editor, Psychology Today maga-
zine; University Research Professor, Alliant International University
Does Psychiatry Have a Split Personality? 67
Peter Loewenberg
Dean, Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute; Professor of History,
University of California at Los Angeles
Nancy Andreasen: If we go back in history, people like Hippocrates con-
ceptualized mental illnesses as physical in origin. The psychodynamic way
of thinking is an add-on that only really began in the late 19th and early
20th century.
Robert Kuhn: Lets use, as a specific example, depression, a mental prob-
lem that affects millions.
Peter Loewenberg: There isnt a split today: the two approaches interact.
Everyone knows what depressions like: there are emotional causes and
physical causes, and that big split, mind from body, originating 2,000 years
ago with Plato, has now been closed.
Robert Epstein: I dont agree. Youre talking theory, but when it comes to
treatment, theres very definitely a split. For a while in America, after Freud,
when psychologists and psychiatrists were the people you went to for
depression, what you got was mainly talk. Now, for the same syndromes,
you go to your HMO (Health Maintenance Organization) and you get a
drugno one talks to you. So, the psychological side of depression is very
often ignored and, in fact, what you could call the biomedical side is all most
professionals seem to care about.
Nancy Andreasen: The picture is not as bad as youre portraying it. For
sure, people received psychological treatments before good drugs were avail-
able (beginning in the 1950s). In my training, I was taught to use psycho-
therapy for the more psychological or reactive depressions, and to use
drugs for those more biologically based.
Robert Kuhn: How could you distinguish a biological-based cause for
depression?
Nancy Andreasen: There are classic signs and symptoms that are more bio-
logically based: loss of appetite, severe insomnia, variations in diurnal
rhythmin other words, fluctuations in mood according to time of day,
which suggests that theres something in the physical apparatus that isnt
working quite right, that is causing the mental problems. These kinds of
depressions are the ones that tend to respond best to medications.
Robert Epstein: I will insist that what people really have now is very lim-
ited benefits through an HMO, which might give them 10 psychotherapy
68 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
sessions a year, with each lasting perhaps 15 minutes. With a mental health
professional, theres a bookkeeper somewhere in the background who says,
No, this person needs to be on Prozac. The are about a 135 million Amer-
icans who now get their mental health services through HMOs.
Nancy Andreasen: Youre talking about economicsthats not what psy-
chiatry is and thats not what psychiatrists would like to do to take care of
their patients.
Robert Epstein: Youre not talking about reality; youre talking about the
ideal.
Peter Loewenberg: Youre also right about the training. About 50% of
psychiatry residency programs do not train in psychotherapy anymore.
Nancy Andreasen: I dont think the statistic is that high. You cant get
Board Certified in psychiatry without having demonstrated that youve had
training in psychotherapy.
Peter Loewenberg: Young psychiatrists do not know how to talk to peo-
ple; one cynical psychiatrist calls it cocktail mixingyou put in a little
of something this week and, if it doesnt work, you change the cocktail next
week and put in a little of something else. When you talk depression, and
people have had a lossa bereavement, a martial breakup, or a defeat at
workthey need someone to talk to, they need a human relationship to
work out whats going on, what they contributed to it, and how theyre
going to cope with it and adapt to it and do better next time.
Nancy Andreasen: This is ironic for me because Im a psychiatrist who was
actually involved in the criteria for defining mental illnesses that are now
being used to train people. And when you say that young psychiatrists dont
learn how to interview, Im afraid that I often agree with that. The diagnos-
tic and statistical manual lays out a set of criteria for every mental illness
and, when we put them down, we thought, well, this will help standardize
things, clarify, create reliability, but whats in fact happened is that theyve
become canonized over the course of the last 20 years, so that psychiatrists
think these are absolutes handed down from God. And young psychiatrists,
being tested by the Board Certification systems, are expected to have memo-
rized all these silly criteria. The result is that, increasingly, their interviews
are limited to asking about the signs and symptoms in those criteria, and
they dont ask about the people. Every very time I start interviewing a
patient I always ask them as human beingswhere did you grow up, what
did you study in school, what do you enjoy, and so on, and then I go on
and talk about signs and symptoms. But most of our young psychiatrists
arent trained this way, which is a real loss.
Does Psychiatry Have a Split Personality? 69
Robert Kuhn: When do mental problems pass from a quirk that all of us
have to one degree or another to something that is a medical condition?
Nancy Andreasen: When it gets to the place where the person has become
extremely dysfunctional or is experiencing pain beyond what you would
expect given the social setting, then it begins to move into a medical condi-
tion. And then we can move on to extreme examples, to severe psychotic
depressions during which mothers, tragically, can kill their own children
one of the most horrible things one can imagine, a heartbreaking situation.
Robert Kuhn: Is depression different when it is biologically based, such as
a deficit in the brains chemical system, and when it is induced by some
event, like the loss of a loved one or a problem at work?
Robert Epstein: There are depressions we tend to call reactive depressions,
which are clearly initiated by some incidents in ones life. There are others
that seem to come from nowhere; the latter are probably caused by some-
thing gone wrong in the brain.
Robert Kuhn: How widespread is depression today?
Robert Epstein: There are probably 20 million Americans who are clini-
cally depressed. But only a small portion of these people are getting appro-
priate treatment; for men the situation is even worse because men tend not
to seek treatment and tend to use destructive means for dealing with their
depression.
Nancy Andreasen: Even more frightening is that depression rates are
increasing. If you track the rates of depression in younger people versus
older people over time, the curves for people in the baby boom generation
are going up so steeply that if you extrapolate them to the end, it looks as
if everyone in that group is going to have a depression at some time in his
or her life. Its also important to realize that people think mental illnesses
are not lethal, but, in fact, depression has a 10 percent suicide rate.
Peter Loewenberg: Adolescents are especially at risk for suicides.
Robert Kuhn: Why do we think that the baby boomer generation and
younger people today have a greater incidence of depression?
Nancy Andreasen: There are multiple explanations. For one, this group is
not going to be able to achieve at the same level as their parents. There were
so many of them that opportunities were limited. You get a Ph.D. and you
wont get a job because there are all those people who went before you
who already filled all the jobs. Things are easing up now because the
parent-level people have retired.
Robert Kuhn: Tell us about the biomedical approach to depression, diag-
nostics, and treatment.
70 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Nancy Andreasen: Thats a huge concern. I see us drifting away from the
kind of world in which I grew up where the most important thing was val-
ues, relationships with other people, seeking some higher purpose.
Robert Epstein: And obligations to the community.
Peter Loewenberg: And responsibility.
Robert Epstein: There is a myth that has been sold to us that a faulty brain
is behind our problems and, therefore, if we can just go in and fix the brain,
well be fine.
Robert Kuhn: They used to blame your mother.
Robert Epstein: Exactly, it used to be your mother; now they blame the
brain. I think its nonsense and I think its wrong.
Nancy Andreasen: I teach a course on, specifically, brain/mind relation-
ships and, well, youre exhibiting dualism. We have a lot of terminology that
assumes the brain and the mind are different things, when, in fact, I dont
think they are. The brain and the mind are the same thing; they are different
words for the same thing. We are our brains, I am my brain, my brain is a
composite of the experience Ive had my entire life. My brain is different
from your brain because Ive had different experiences, as well as a different
genetic endowment.
Robert Kuhn: I dont think you need to believe in dualism to agree with
Dr. Epstein that blaming the brain in terms of physiological or biochemi-
cal rationale for every problem that we have is reductionistic, overly simplis-
tic, and philosophically naive.
Robert Epstein: The public can misinterpret the science and assume that
my problem is actually my brains problem.
Nancy Andreasen: Thats a very simpleminded way to think because
youre the carrier of your brain.
Robert Epstein: I understand; what youre saying is very reasonable, but
its also sophisticated, and the fact is thats not the message the public is get-
ting, thats not the way everyday people are looking at this, and its not the
message thats being sold by certain large industries. The message that is
being sold, if you are depressed or you are anxious, is that there is something
wrong with your brain and we will fix it by selling you some drugs.
Nancy Andreasen: Youre saying that experience affects the brain and I
totally agree. On the other hand, its the brain that experience effects and
the brain interacts with the world. Now, if you want to complain that many
people are either being taught to think in a simple-minded way or are doing
it naturally, I would agree with that, too. We shouldnt be saying that you
72 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Nancy Andreasen: Its definitely possible, but farther down the road. Its
like working with cancer or heart disease: first these technologies study the
most serious mental illnesses, like Alzheimers disease or schizophrenia,
and then manic-depressive illness, and then they move on down to the less
serious illnesses. And the emphasis is on what are the mechanisms of this ill-
ness so that we can produce better treatments and prevention, so its really a
matter of priorities in the use of these imaging tools. If I wanted to design a
study looking at the effects of psychotherapy on the brain, I could probably
finish it in two or three years and probably show something fairly conclu-
sive. The wonderful thing about imaging research is that it lets you ask all
kinds of questions. I have a friend who is studying what happens in the brain
during forgiveness. We have done neuroimaging studies of the effects of
medication on the brain and how that relates to the change of symptoms.
Neuroimaging isnt a treatment, its a way of understanding how the brain
works that then can help us understand how treatments work. My goal in
life relates to the one disease Ive worked on most of my life, schizophrenia
not just to understand mechanisms for better treatment, but to ultimately
figure out how to prevent it, because schizophrenia is a disease of adoles-
cence, and its the most tragic disease because it strikes young people and
takes away their creativity and thoughtfulness. I want to figure out what
the developmental mechanisms were in the brain that caused that illness
and figure out how to intervene so it doesnt happen.
Peter Loewenberg: The Boston studies on schizophrenia show that when
theres a job, family, home, social support, theres a 44 to 68 percent
improvement.
Nancy Andreasen: I cant say anything except I agree. Good treatment
should not be subdivided into psychological and biological domains, they
should very much be integrated.
Robert Kuhn: What are some of the ideological disruptions between the
two domains?
Nancy Andreasen: On the one side, some neurological biologists are
simple-minded reductionists who dont understand the human spirit, and
on the other side, those psychoanalysts who make up a bunch of theories
that cant be tested and waste an awful lot of time talking to people who
could be treated much more quickly and effectively with drugs.
But disorders of the human mind are not like diseases of the human kid-
ney. Subtle physical variationsfar below our detection capacitycan com-
bine with intense psychological experiences to induce debilitating mental
illnesses. Psychology and biology are both needed, each targeting its own
kind of mental problems or, for some diseases, working together in synergy.
The deep secret anguish of mental illness can often benefit from insights and
interventions of trained clinicians (even if these therapies are not as verifiable
as traditional medicine), and from the latest technologies such as brain imag-
ing and tailored drugs. Ideally, biomedical and psychodynamic methods can
combine to yield optimum benefits. Psychiatry remains an Art as it becomes
a Science.
Nancy C. Andreasen
What are key developments in your field?
As I look at things right now, there are two levels of knowledge that are
building very rapidly. The first level, in which I primarily work, is the appli-
cation of technology of imaging tools to map the brain and thus observe the
mind in action. How does the human mind focus its attention? How does it
remember? How does it experience emotions and so on? The second is at the
level of the cell or the molecule, advances in our understanding that are com-
ing from genetics, genomics, and proteomics. These two levels are happen-
ing at the same time, usually by people who dont interact with one
another. They are two quite different disciplines with different training
and methods, but its evident that the power of combining these levelsthe
very fine cellular or molecular level with the brain systems levelis going
to break open tremendous knowledge. We have an exciting century ahead
of us.
discouraged. And I said to myself, if I had taken the same amount of effort
that I put into writing that book, and applied it a field like medicine, I might
actually produce something that could benefit many people. So I decided to
go to medical school and to have a career in research. And when I saw my
first psychiatric patient, somebody with schizophrenia, the questions raised
by what that person was experiencing were so intriguing that I was just
hooked.
Robert Epstein
What are your feelings about drugs and mental illness?
There is a lot of important research being done on the brain and on drugs,
and thats where a lot of the research money is going. But I am very con-
cerned that what were learning in those areas is being misinterpreted and
misapplied. The mental health field is moving in a very dangerous direction.
Health care is a vexing issue of public policy, and a serious matter of per-
sonal concern. Costs are rising; quality of care is falling. Modern medicine
has become a silted sea of specialists, endless tests, government regulations,
and, worst of all, insurance forms. The major killerslike heart disease
and cancerdemand complex medical procedures, which are often painful,
debilitating, humiliating, expensive, and uncertain. Throughout history,
human beings have sought to prevent disease, cure illness, reduce pain, and
relieve suffering. In recent times, science has made medicine more predict-
ableincreasing success rates and identifying side effects, bringing sense
and order to the chaotic practices of the past.
But now some challenge scientific medicine with alternative medicine.
Certainly, alternative medicine makes remarkable claims. Certainly, billions
of dollars are being spent in America alone. Certainly, millions of people are
believers, and utilization of alternative medicine is growing. When we inves-
tigate, what do we find? Visionary horizons of healing? Or continuing
approval of quackery?
Some say that traditional scientific medicine has now become the new
dogma, and the medical establishment has become the new priesthood. Do
medical authorities deny different kinds of treatment to maintain their own
control? Do high-cost, orthodox doctors thwart low-cost, innovative com-
petitors? Are there alternative, non-traditional methods of curing and heal-
ing? On the other hand, is alternative medicine a colossal con game, a
world of weirdos, charlatans, and quacks, out to separate us from our
money, while providing little but false hope?
78 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Expert Participants
Hyla Cass
Psychiatrist; assistant clinical professor of psychiatry, UCLA School of
Medicine; author, Natural Highs, Kava, St. Johns Wort, All About Herbs
Who Gets to Validate Alternative Medicine? 79
William Jarvis
Professor of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, School of Medicine,
Loma Linda University; past president, National Council Against Health
Fraud; leading critic of alternative medicine; author, Readers Guide to
Alternative Health Methods
Dan Labriola
Naturopathic physician and researcher; author,Complementary Cancer
Therapies. Combining Traditional and Alternative Approaches
Wallace Sampson
Clinical professor of medicine (retired), Stanford University School of Medi-
cine; editor in chief, The Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine; Leading
critic of alternative medicine
Robert Kuhn: Lets begin with definition: what is alternative and comple-
mentary medicine?
Dan Labriola: This is a subject of some debate, and there are a number of
definitions. The one that seems to be accepted defines alternative medicine
as everything that is not traditionally taught in conventional medical
schoolswhich is, in my opinion, a very unfair definition because it includes
well-trained, well regulated people like myself, naturopathic physicians in
good regulatory districts like the state of Washington, and it also includes
the people on the Internet who are making outrageous claims and doing a
great deal of harm.
Wallace Sampson: We use a different definition: Alternative medicine are
methods and materials that do not work, methods and materials that are
not likely to work, and methods and materials that already have been inves-
tigated and found to be debatable.
William Jarvis: I go along with the NIH (National Institutes of Health)
definition, which basically says everything outside of standard medicine
treatments, drugs, procedures that have not been shown to be safe and effi-
cacious by modern medical standards.
Hyla Cass: Im rather surprised to hear your definition as everything that is
not taught in medical school and is unproved.
Wallace Sampson: No, I didnt say not taught in medical schools; I said
methods that are unproved or disproved.
Hyla Cass: So are you saying that acupuncture would not be considered a
complementary and alternative medicine?
80 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Hyla Cass: Its integrative medicine; thats exactly what Im telling you.
Wallace Sampson: If youre going to call integrative medicine just using
things that work like oil of cloves on your gum, or ear, or Peppermint, or
whatever else that weve used for thousands of years, thats fine.
Hyla Cass: We are not in disagreement.
Wallace Sampson: Oh yes we are! We are surely in disagreement because
you have taken something that is scientific medicine and called it alternative
medicine.
Hyla Cass: Excuse me! I said I am practicing integrative medicine while I
am practicing plain old good scientific medicine.
Wallace Sampson: Integrative medicine implies that youve taken some-
thing from some other place and integrated it with scientific medicine, and
Im telling you that that is not what is going on.
Dan Labriola: I think the problem is that Wallace has a unique definition
of alternative medicine. In his view, if a treatment doesnt work, its alterna-
tive medicine, but as soon as we discover that it does work, its his kind
of medicine. The presumption is that everything that we do in complemen-
tary and alternative medicine doesnt work; thats the presumption of his
definition.
Wallace Sampson: That is the correct definition.
Hyla Cass: If a six-year-old child comes to see me with ADD (Attention
Deficit Disorder) and he is already on Ritalin, Prozac, and other drugs, thats
terrible. I want to see what that child is eating, does he have any food aller-
gies, does he have a high level of mercury or lead in his blood, and I do tests
to make those assessments. Is that scientific? Id say so. Did the regular doc-
tors test for that? No, they didnt. So I check for those heavy metals, and if
present, I will use certain treatments, very safe treatments for getting rid of
those heavy metals. Ill put the child on a diet: instead of eating sugary
sweets and soda pop, he is going to get a good diet that supplies enough pro-
tein and complex carbohydrates with fruits and vegetables and some vita-
mins to help reverse the ADD.
William Jarvis: Thats right. When you get the mother to start preparing
better foods, to start organizing better diets for the child, the mother stops
blaming the child for everything it does and blames the previous bad diet,
then theres a whole release of tension between the mother and the child,
theres a whole new set of behaviors that take place in the home, and all of
these build towards a more positive experience.
Robert Kuhn: That sounds good to me.
Who Gets to Validate Alternative Medicine? 83
William Jarvis: Thats right, it is a good thing. But when scientists want to
tease out what are the factors that produce the positive results, they have to
be careful in making claims since there are so many factors running loose
here.
Hyla Cass: Ive had very good results with such children. Occasionally I
will continue to use a low dose of the drugs along with the dietary changes,
a much lower dose of the medication. So I am grateful to have medication
when I need it. But what I do have a problem with is doctors prescribing
drugs aggressively. This is a problem with medical education, its a problem
with post-medical school education where the doctors are basically being
manipulated by the pharmaceutical industry. The research is paid for by
the pharmaceutical industry; the journals are supported by the pharmaceut-
ical industry. There have been some problems with authors of papers not
fully disclosing their financial connections with the pharmaceutical compa-
nies, that they were being paid a lot of money to write a particular research
paper. A negative paper doesnt get published, so if a researcher wants to
get published, they better get positive results.
Robert Kuhn: Its an industry with economic power thats highly politi-
cized, affecting all aspects of health care.
William Jarvis: But it also has a lot of popular support, and thats ulti-
mately what it comes down. When the 1994 Dietary Supplements Health
& Education Act passed, which was a terrible setback for consumer protec-
tion, every United States senator voted for it; there was not one single dis-
senting vote.
Robert Kuhn: People get very emotional about alternative medicine,
because its your body.
William Jarvis: This is where theres a very powerful sort of self-care factor
among the mass public, and the politicians have a hard time confronting
that. Everyone wants labels to be accurate, advertising to be truthful, prod-
ucts to be safe and effective. All people will answer yes to those issues, but
you can sell a cancer patient anything if they think its going to help. For
example, theres been tremendous promotion in the marketplace for antiox-
idants, and Dan was one of the first guys to point out that all these antioxi-
dant supplements that people are buying may not be the best thing for
certain cancer patients.
Dan Labriola: I published a scientific paper in Oncology, which is a presti-
gious journal, where my co-author, Dr. Robert Livingston from the Univer-
sity of Washington, and I looked carefully at the existing human studies and
determined that there is a very good possibility that if you combine antioxi-
dantsVitamin A, B6, C, E, zinc, seleniumwith certain categories of
chemotherapy, what you can do is actually prevent the chemotherapy from
84 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
killing tumor cells. That doesnt mean there isnt a time and place for antiox-
idants. Bill Jarvis is right: there is a whole cottage industry out there saying,
use all these antioxidants during chemotherapy, youll have less side
effects. Its true, you will feel better, because you are actually reducing the
dosage of the drug, you are reducing the effectiveness of the chemotherapy
in stopping the cancer. And so even though you may feel better, you may
have a remarkably worse result and youd never know it.
Robert Kuhn: How much money is estimated to be spent on alternative
medicine?
William Jarvis: Tens of billions of dollars every year.
Robert Kuhn: This is a gigantic industry.
Wallace Sampson: In the United States, 60,000 chiropractors each make
several hundred thousand dollars a year. Do the multiplication!
William Jarvis: Congress has given the alternative medicine pill makers a
license to steal, and now the pharmaceutical companies have joined them;
they have their own supplement subdivisionsthey are all in on the party
making a fortune. We must force alternative medicine to meet the same stan-
dards that every other medication has to meet, get back to truth in advertis-
ing that doesnt allow wild claims.
Wallace Sampson: The problem is that alternative medicines are unpre-
dictable; their quality depends on the time of harvest, the growing condi-
tions, the length of storage, and so forth. These are uncontrollable, and
almost every study thats been done, except on purified materials such as glu-
cosamine, have shown such wide variations of concentrations, you dont
know what youre giving.
William Jarvis: And every marketing survey shows that although there is a
small cadre of people who are very health conscious (almost to the point of
neurosis), 80 percent of the market out is purely pragmaticthey buy alter-
native medicines because they hear about it. Its strictly a trial and error
thing driven by the market claims that are usually exaggerated or outright
wrong.
Dan Labriola: There was a group of homeopaths who promoted the use of
homeopathic immunization as opposed to conventional immunizations for
childhood diseases and other things. Im the principal author of the law in
the State of Washington to bar such practices, because every study thats
ever been done has shown that homeopathic immunization simply dont
work.
Robert Kuhn: But when any kind of vaccines, especially alternative
ones, dont work, we have an affirmative responsibility as a society to pro-
tect those children whose parents may think it works.
Who Gets to Validate Alternative Medicine? 85
88 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
William Jarvis
What does a consumer health specialist do?
Health education is my specialty and we basically deal with health behav-
ior: why people do what they do, and particularly, why people believe in
things that science cant verify. I look at consumer health from the viewpoint
of the marketplace because, after all, most of our health behavior can be
expressed by what we buy and what we dont buy.
Would you like to see standard and alternative medicine peacefully co-exist?
Obviously, scientific, evidence-based medicine is the core of our modern
healthcare system. The question is, should we also allow for traditional
medicines like Chinese acupuncture, Ayurvedic cures, maybe American
Indian medicinesomething that has a long tradition of use, which people
do because its part of their culture even though there is no science behind
it. I say, No! but what we really should have, because we can do it, is
the science of the possible. There ought to be a standard for evaluating
new products and services. If something from alternative medicine can be
proven safe and effective for a special purpose, it becomes part of standard
medicine. I dont think we really have room for pluralism in medicine like
we have pluralism in religion and in politics. Religion and politics are arenas
for opinions; medicine and healthcare are not. Claims of alternative medi-
cine must be evaluated by the scientific method. To fail to do this is to fail
to live up to the best human standards.
Wallace Sampson
Whats your definition of alternative medicine?
At Stanford, weve had a definition of alternative medicine for 20 years.
We define alternative medicine as: 1) methods that are not likely to work;
2) methods that do not work; and 3) methods that are yet to be proved to
work (methods that might work but we dont yet know if they ever will).
sectarian systems and anomalous methods is that most will eventually disap-
pear, which will be a good thing for the public good. Alternative medicine
consists of diverse and anomalous methods that people think up and invent
for themselves and then try to impose on the public. Eventually most of them
will be disproven, but many will still have a following because different
kinds of people like to believe in different kinds of things.
Dan Labriola
What are the key developments in your field?
We are now giving more attention to the natural and traditional kinds of
treatments that are available and have been known to work for many years,
but they have never been given the opportunity to be tested under rigorous
scientific criteria. That is a big change. And thats how we discovered peni-
cillin. Most of the major drugs that have been successfully developed over
the last century were discovered as a result of anecdotal use that was
repeated by providers who were competent and reliable.
MicrobesFriend or Foe?
Will we ever beat the microbes? Many people think we already have. They
couldnt be more wrong. But the dangers of infectious disease may be more
widespread than ever imagined. And the supposed cures may actually
make the problems worse.
Many bacteria become resistant to our antibiotics. Viruses evolve with
blinding speed. Prions may lurk in our meat. Anthrax is put into our mail.
Healthcare today is better today than any time in history. Weve had great
successes; significantly against the smallpox virus, partially against the AIDS
virus. But as diverse diseases (like tuberculosis) evolve resistance to treat-
ment, as new diseases migrate out of the third-world countries and spread
rapidly, and as terrorists begin biowarfare, we have to ask: will our precious
health last? And what about the third world, where the scourge of disease
exacts a terrible human toll? Whats the best way of fighting communicable
disease in the long run? Will genetic engineering play a part? Are there any
technological breakthroughs ahead? And can supposed cures actually
can make the problem worse? Stranger yet, could microbes be causing other
illnesses, like various cancers? We discuss radical ideas about microorgan-
isms and human health.
Disease-causing microbes are a serious issue, surely for human wellbeing
and perhaps for our literal survival. There are dangers of inadvertently
stimulating drug-resistant microbes and there are suspicions that microbes
may cause a broader range of diseases. We should pay increased attention
to microbiology and support an intense program of mapping and analyzing
microbial genomes.
In this chapter, four distinguished biologists examine the multitude of
unseen bacteria and viruses that inhabit every part of the globe, as well as
92 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Expert Participants
Agnes Day
Professor, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, College of Medi-
cine, Howard University
Paul Ewald
Professor of Evolutionary Biology, University of Louisville; author, Evolu-
tion of Infectious Disease and Plague Time
Alice Huang
Senior Councilor for External Relations, Associate in Biology, California
Institute of Technology; former Dean of Science, New York University
Lucy Shapiro
Professor of Developmental Biology and Genetics; Director, Beckman
Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine, Stanford University School of
Medicine
Lucy Shapiro: After World War II, when we built up our whole arsenal of
incredible antibiotics, we also built up a sense of security that we were able
to deal with all manner of infectious bacteria that were, heretofore, killing
off lots of people. Suddenly, it seemed, we had a way of dealing with disease,
and it was remarkable. And we didnt pay attention to the fact that, even as
early as the 1950s, antibiotic resistance was building and building and build-
ing, because we didnt have the ability to understand how clever these bugs
are. And now were in full trouble. There isnt a single antibiotic now that
some bug isnt resistant to.
Agnes Day: Weve gotten our wake-up call: indiscriminate use of antibiot-
ics has led to this situation.
MicrobesFriend or Foe? 93
Lucy Shapiro: But anyone in the world can get on a plane and be in Chi-
cago in 17 hours. And they can travel asymptomatically. When youre tak-
ing pathogens and putting them in completely different environments than
theyre used to, and then they very rapidly evolve, there is great potential
for deadly trouble.
Paul Ewald: Take a look at what happens when we get these nasty strains,
for example, diarrheal diseases, imported in the United States. The studies
suggest that, when these nasty strains get in the United States where we have
protection against waterborne transmission, they cant make it, they die out.
So, for example, a horrible outbreak of dysentery occurred in the early
1970s in Latin America, killing thousands, but when it got into Los Angeles,
where the water supplies were protected, the number of new infections was
about one-half, which means it just died out on its own, even without any
controlled measures. Even though we live in a global village, if we adjust
the infrastructure so that we disfavor the harmful strains, thats an extra
layer of protection.
Lucy Shapiro: But what happens with antibiotic resistance when we all get
panicked, like what happened with the mailed anthrax attacks after 9/11?
The worst outcome of this particular anthrax attack, which killed a very
few people, was the enormous collateral damage. It disrupted our entire
way of living and thinking; we had 24/7 barrage on TV. But the real villain
was the indiscriminate use of the antibiotic drug Cipro, which caused an
increase in resistance to the drug. Several years ago, there was a big chicken
flu scare, and so much Cipro was used in zillions of chickens, that although it
managed to bring down the chicken infection epidemic, the resistance to
Cipro went from almost nothing to about 15%. Were going to make Cipro
useless, and that was the big danger of this very mild attack with anthrax.
Agnes Day: Cipro is not only active against anthrax, but also about 30 or
40 different bacteria. Once you give Cipro prophylactically to people who
may have been exposed to anthrax, youre also killing off those friendly
microbes and other microbes that are living in your gut that you wanted to
keep. Its called microbial antagonism, where you want to keep the good
guys and the bad guys sort of equal.
Lucy Shapiro: The same things that have to be done to protect our popula-
tions from infectious disease are going to help us understand how to deal
with bioterrorist threats. Its tremendously important that we understand
how bacteria can evolve and change and, at the same time, the knowledge
that we acquire can be applied to how to deal very rapidly with both natural
infectious disease and bioterrorism.
Alice Huang: When we study bacteria in the laboratory, we often look
at them as single-cell animals, whereas in nature they actually exist in
MicrobesFriend or Foe? 95
communities, in very complex communities. And there are rules in that com-
munity, so that no one organism takes over. In fact, they need each other;
sometimes some bacteria will provide food for another organism and vice
versa. As we understand these situations, we also begin to realize that there
are many microbes that are very good, microbes that we actually need that
are very useful. In our own gut, we find that theres a nice mixture of
microbes and generally, if we disturb them, if that balance is not correct,
all sorts of terrible things happen. If you live on a farm, you know that cows
are known to pass gas a great deal, and the reason that they do so is because
they have a methane creating bacteria which does this. Now, one third of the
human population has the same bacteria, predominantly in their gut. And so
those are the friends that you sort of want to avoid. But two-thirds of
humans have a different kind of bacteria, so each of our guts are actually
quite different from the other.
Lucy Shapiro: Theres an incredible story about a good bacterium that
lives inside whats called an eyespot on a squid that lives in very shallow
waters off Hawaii, and this bacterium radiates photons, so it causes light
to be generated. It radiates at night, and what it does is to protect this squid
from predators because when theres a full moon shining and youve got
this squid in shallow water, the light turns on and obliterates the shadow,
and so the squid becomes invisible to predators. And then in the morning,
this particular population of light-generating bacteria goes away, and then
it comes back again in the evening, cyclically. There are many examples of
bacteria living symbiotically with other living organisms and providing criti-
cal functions.
Robert Kuhn: How do different microbial strains work together, say ben-
eficial ones versus harmful ones?
Agnes Day: One way that microbial strains work together is by bringing
about drug resistance in the sharing of extrachromosomal material that will
carry the genes encoding for drug resistance. In the past, we thought that
only like species could exchange this DNA (through conjugation where the
cells come in contact with each other). Now scientists have discovered some-
thing called promiscuous plasmids, which will also affect other species.
There are pieces of DNA called integrons that have sometimes up to six
genes that are encoding for enzymes that will destroy six different drugs.
With the rise of these types of resistance mechanisms in the bacteria, drug
discovery is going to have to be more focused and more clever.
Robert Kuhn: Were going to go to our next topicwhether microbes can
cause diseases beyond the traditional categories of infectious diseases. Most
people dont even realize that some cancers can be caused by external, infec-
tious microbes.
96 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Paul Ewald: About 15% to 20% of all human cancers are known to be
caused by infection, which is an astonishing number. If in 1975 you were
to ask scientists what proportion of all human cancer is caused by infection,
they would say perhaps one tenth of one percent. What has happened over
the last 25 to 30 years is that every five years or so weve been discovering
more and more cancers being caused by infection.
Robert Kuhn: Is this a discovery of what always was and never known
before or an increase due to changes in the human condition?
Paul Ewald: A discovery of what always was. 25 years ago virtually 100%
of cancers had causes that we didnt understand well. Now we understand
some of those causes better, enough to know, for example, that cervical
cancer and liver cancers are caused by infectious agents.
Agnes Day: And then there is the Helicobacter pylori bacteria, which has a
strong association with gastric cancer.
Paul Ewald: There is a great deal of interesting data that seems to show
that stomach cancers can be cured with antibiotics that knock out Helico-
bacter. In a study from Japan, in which experimental and control groups
were followed longitudinally in the population, there were 33 cases of stom-
ach cancer in the control group, but in the experimental group, which had
the Helicobacter bacteria knocked out, there were zero.
Lucy Shapiro: To think critically here, the operational word is triggering
something in the host. I do not think this is a simple chain of events that
cancer is caused directly by a bacterial or viral infection. In most instances,
a tissue in a person is attacked by an infection which then elicits a whole
series of biochemical reactions that result in the cancereverything in the
cell is disrupted, especially in tissues that turn over rapidly. So it is not that
the bug itself is causing the cancer; it is that our bodies are over-responding
to the infection (especially in cells that keep recycling), trying to get rid of
the infection, and as an unintended consequence of all the biochemical activ-
ity, you get mutations and when these mutations build up, you get an onco-
genic response resulting in cancer.
Paul Ewald: Sometimes yes; sometimes no. In other words, there are two
ways in which infections can cause cancer: first is a sort of the irritation
mechanism, which is what Lucy just described. But there is a second mecha-
nism in which the pathogen directly causes the cancer by encoding a com-
pound that knocks out one of the cancer-prevention genes or enzymes or
proteins in the cells. So, for example, Human Papilloma viruses produce
E6 protein, which knocks out p53, which is one of our barriers against
cancer. The virus is doing this, evolutionary speaking, because it enables
the virus to reproduce better by causing the host cell in which it is living to
live a little bit more, and that enables the virus to avoid destruction by the
MicrobesFriend or Foe? 97
immune system. But in the process of extending its reproduction time, the
virus pushes the cell one step closer to cancer.
Robert Kuhn: What is the percentage of cancers that are caused, in some
way, by infection?
Paul Ewald: Let me answer that question in reverse: In less than 5% of
human cancers can we exclude a role for infection. For about 15 to 20%
of human cancers, we say infections are playing a triggering or primary role.
And in the other approximately 7580% of human cancers we dont know
yet.
Lucy Shapiro: The impact of infectious disease goes beyond cancers. These
infectious agents can come in and cause some effect in the host and then our
immune system overreacts, causing auto-immune diseases. Many of our
modern diseases are auto-immune diseases that are triggered initially by
either a viral or a bacterial infection.
Alice Huang: A great example of this is when the Helicobacter pylori bac-
teria was discovered to be causing ulcers, which, prior to this discovery,
everyone thought was caused by stress. (For discovering that bacteria caused
ulcers, Dr. Barry Marshall and Dr. Robin Warren won the 2005 Nobel Prize
in Physiology or Medicine.) On the other hand, for the inflammatory bowel
diseases, doctors assume it must be caused by a bacteria, but when treatment
with antibiotics didnt work, we realized it was really the inflammatory
response of the host.
Lucy Shapiro: Good point. Antibiotics can be not only useless but also
dangerous. Take E. coli 0157, in which you have the genes for a toxin that
came from another kind of bacterium (called Shigella), and that Shigella is
sitting within a piece of DNA that came from a bacteriophage (a bacterial
virus). And so any treatment that a doctor gives a patient that affects E. coli
0157, which is harboring this latent virus in its chromosome, can cause the
viral genes to turn on the toxin gene and then the toxin makes the patient
very ill or even causes death. In this situation, if antibiotics are administered,
you stimulate the production of the virus that turns on the genes for the
toxin. So you cant give antibiotics in this case.
Robert Kuhn: Now to the good microbes. What is probiotics? Can
microbes be utilized to make us better?
Paul Ewald: One kind of research that has been going on since the 1960s
(and perhaps the late 1950s) studies the possibility that if you have a nasty
infection, lets say staphylococcus, perhaps you could be given a milder
staphylococcus so that the less toxic bacteria could interfere with the more
toxic one.
98 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Agnes Day: The poster child for probiotics would be the lactobacillus or
the active yogurt cultures that you see now in grocery stores, such as the Lac-
taid Milk for people who are lactose intolerant. This bacterium will break
down the milk sugar so that you dont get the stomach cramping.
Paul Ewald: Vaccinations are probiotics in that they introduce into the
human body milder strains of the disease so that the immune system is
stimulated to develop antibodies that can fight the more virulent strains of
the same disease. Thus the vaccines knock out the harmful strains and leaves
the mild strains. The diphtheria vaccination program, which is the second
most successful vaccination program in history (second only to the smallpox
vaccination program), has used just this strategy (without really knowing it).
Alice Huang: There is current researchprobably least familiar to the gen-
eral publicwhich puts anaerobic bacteria into tumors with the objective of
destroying the inside of the tumor. That the bacteria are anaerobic is impor-
tant, since once the bacteria gets into an oxygenated environment, it can no
longer spread and grow uncontrollably. Dealing with bacteria is complex.
Earlier we spoke about the water supply somewhat simplistically: if we seek
to get rid of all the bad microbes just by cleaning up the water supply, we
could cause other problems. Very often, when you treat one population of
microbes and get the desired result, it doesnt mean that other populations
of microbes dont change as well. In fact, the same treatment that eliminates
one kind of bad microbe might cause good microbes to change into bad
ones! So even though we all agree that having clean water is a good thing,
in some instances where we have become more hygienic, we have become
more susceptible as host to certain other agents. For example, the polio
virus, which has been around since Egyptian days, became an epidemic
because we developed much better water supplies.
Paul Ewald: Thats right. We know that the success associated with clean-
ing up water supplies dwarfs most other success stories in medicine, but yet
there can be potential problems in doing so. With polio, we had to come
back with a good vaccine program and knock out this straggler virus that
sort of got in the back door because it had some characteristics that made
it unusual compared to other waterborne pathogens. We must take into
account the whole balance sheet. The same kind of argument has been made
for peptic ulcers. If we knock out Helicobacter pylori, we have this tremen-
dously positive effect in reducing the frequencies of peptic ulcers and the
frequencies of some stomach cancers. However, some people argue that it
looks like this treatment might be associated with an increase in esophageal
cancerthis may or may not be true; we have to look at those data. But even
if true, the positive effect associated with knocking out Helicobacter pylori is
so great that it dwarfs the potential negative effect.
MicrobesFriend or Foe? 99
Paul Ewald
Can infectious agents trigger genetic diseases?
Autism does have indications of being caused by infectious agents. We
should be looking really hard to see what agents might be infecting the grow-
ing fetus during pregnancy.
Alice S. Huang
Is cleanliness overly emphasized in modern society?
Obviously it is important to be clean, but being too clean is not the very
best thing either. Recent studies have shown that certain socioeconomic
groups in which the children are playing on the streets in mud and with ani-
mals seem to be pretty well protected against certain diseases, and that it is
the wealthier children who are cleaner who become infected with these
diseases.
my career. She said to me early on, Keep your eye on your goals. Dont get
sidetracked, dont get on too many committees, and dont get too involved
in all these gender studies. And then she said what was probably most
important: Get to a position where you can really do some good. As a
young assistant professor, youre not going to be able to have much power
to do anything. But as you become a professor, you will be much better able
to help people. But, she continued, Remember that when you get to
that position of power, you are still a woman. And I thought she was very
wise because she realized that in order for me to succeed, it was very likely
that I would have adapted myself to the assumptions and the behavior pat-
terns that the people around me had, which would be mostly men. And that
when I became a professor, I might really have forgotten that I was still a
woman.
Agnes Day
How do disinfectants impact microbes?
Interesting question. Weve talked about antibiotic resistance, but theres
another corollary topic that needs to be discussed: resistance to the antisep-
tics and disinfectants that we use to keep hospitals and operating rooms ster-
ile, and to clean our homes. There are many products on the shelves of
grocery stores that say, Antibacterial Action, Kills 99.9 percent of the
germs. And so I had a little seventh grader who did a science project testing
these compounds. The directions said to dilute two capfuls in a gallon of
water. When she tested these antibacterial cleaning compounds against
bacteria that she had isolated from her own bathroom, she found that in
two out of three cases, the disinfectant had to be used full strength in order
to kill the bacteria, that once you diluted it in water as instructed on the bot-
tle, it had absolutely no efficacy against home microorganisms! (One did
work well when diluted one to ten.)
thrown out of their neighborhood. What about the altruistic man in Phila-
delphia who had a non-life-threatening genetic disease, volunteered for a
genetic therapy drug trial, was a borderline case for admission, and then
died because of the treatment? Then there are the sensitive, awkward ethical
issues of drug testing in third world countries. Are we exploiting the people
by using them in trials, or are we helping them by bringing medical care they
would never have had access to and then giving them training, organization,
buildings, and equipment?
In this chapter, experts wrestle with the ethics of clinical trials: a doctor
specializing in HIV medicine, a distinguished lawyer and bioethicist, and
an official from the Food & Drug Administration outline the complex issues
surrounding the development and testing of new drugs. They explain the
standards now in place for conducting clinical trials and the exceptionally
difficult task of conducting placebo control trials that are fair to all the par-
ticipants. The guests touch on the role of drug companies, consent issues,
and the need for a rigorous accreditation program for institutions con-
ducting the trials. There is also a spirited call for more scrutiny of drug test-
ing in the less-developed world, and they suggest that drug companies
have an obligation to educate local medical professionals about western
practices and to leave behind a solid infrastructure of medical facilities and
equipment.
Expert Participants
Alexander Capron
University Professor of Law, University of Southern California; Director,
Pacific Center for Health Policy and Ethics; former chairman, Biomedical
Ethics Advisory Committee, U.S. Congress
Andrea Kovacs
Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Pathology; Director, HIV Family
Clinic, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California
Robert Temple
Associate Director for Medical Policy; Chair, Center for Drug Evaluation
and Research, Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
Alexander Capron: One thing we have to recognize in this country is that
many people sign up for clinical trials because it is the only way they can
get effective treatment of any kind. Clinical trials are now often run through
private doctors offices on contract to drug companies, and many people
who do not have the money to go into that doctors office and get the highest
Testing New DrugsAre People Guinea Pigs? 109
standard of care may see an ad in the paper saying, If you have xyz disease,
come in, well treat you, and so they go into that doctors office and do not
comprehend that what they are doing is signing up as a guinea pig in a clini-
cal trial.
Robert Temple: We have clinical control trials largely because Congress,
in its wisdom in 1962, said controlled trials are the only basis for proving a
drug. So the drug industry, which are bottom-line oriented, complied.
Within ten years, every new medicine, device, or procedure had become a
clinical trial.
Robert Kuhn: What is compassionate use?
Robert Temple: Compassionate use refers to use of a drug specifically
directed at treatment of an individual person, not to learn something.
Alexander Capron: This would be a drug that isnt yet approved for that
use.
Robert Temple: Usually it involves a drug early in its clinical trials, before
it has been approved for general use. The individuals who are permitted
compassionate use appear to have exhausted available therapy. Used this
way, you often know very little about the drug and you can be surprised by
its toxicity.
Andrea Kovacs: You could have the wrong dose, and with a disease like
HIV, the wrong dose could be disastrous.
Robert Temple: We had an advisory committee meeting on this very mat-
ter relating to cancer drugs, and many members of the patient advocacy
community came to sound a note of caution. They said that it is not always
a favor to people to use an untested drug. I was very impressed by the perspi-
cacity and wisdom they brought to the whole discussion.
Robert Kuhn: Andrea, tell us about your work on AIDS, and the issues
that you have with clinical trials.
Andrea Kovacs: Im the director of the Maternal, Child, and Adolescent
Program at the University of Southern California (USC), and we are follow-
ing at the present time over 600 women, children, and adolescents, including
about 20 or 30 pregnant women. Over the last 10 years, we have seen tre-
mendous progress in terms of actual successes. When I started about one
third of the babies born to HIV-infected women were born infected. Now
the number is zero! We can actually prevent transmission of HIV to a fetus.
This success is a direct result of clinical trials. Our children were dying and
now, through clinical trials, weve been able to determine the optimal thera-
pies so that no child in our clinic has died in three or four years.
Robert Kuhn: What are the issues with which you are now wrestling?
110 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Andrea Kovacs: How to enroll children in HIV clinical trials, children who
are between the age of seven and 13, who basically do not know their own
diagnosis, but whose parents want them in clinical trials because they cannot
get the drugs through compassionate use. How do you enroll such children,
who have to sign a written assent that has the HIV diagnosis stated in the
assent.
Robert Kuhn: The children do not know that they have HIV.
Andrea Kovacs: The children do not know that they have HIV. Weve had
families thrown out of their neighborhoods, kids getting punched in the face,
because their HIV diagnosis was disclosed. Its a complicated moral
dilemma because, given the kind of discrimination that surrounds HIV, dis-
closure is such a huge issue.
Robert Kuhn: What is the difference between consent and assent?
Alexander Capron: The assent was conceived as a recognition that for peo-
ple who have not yet reached the age of consentthey are under 18they
still ought not to be involved in a clinical trial unless they agree, and this
below-age-of-consent agreement has been labeled with the term assent.
Robert Kuhn: Is it realistic to ask a seven-year-old to give an assent to
participate in a clinical trial?
Robert Temple: There are no absolute rules about this; people draw lines
where they think they can, but I think that seven years old is an age where
people believe that the child can make a reasonable decision. Younger than
seven, they probably cannot.
Alexander Capron: If my child says, I dont want to have this or that pro-
cedure, and the doctor and I have concluded that the procedure is the right
thing, I will try to persuade the child, be as comforting as I can, but in the
end, I will say, This is the treatment were going to do. But if I am volun-
teering my child, as opposed to volunteering myself, to participate in
research for the benefit of science, I will not do that without some level of
the child affirming, Im willing to play this role, and I understand that its
a role that goes beyond my own benefit.
Robert Temple: This is the easiest ethical principle for me to understand:
people who volunteer to participate in research trials are supposed to know
and appreciate what they are getting into. Well, its not easy for a physician
to convey to non-medical people the complexities of a study. You have to
tell them what the alternatives are, you have to tell them what the risks
are, you have to take care not to over-promise on the benefits side, and you
not only have to give a written document with all appropriate language,
but you also have to be available for questions. The whole process is very
hard to do, but you have to do your best.
Testing New DrugsAre People Guinea Pigs? 111
Alexander Capron: There is a real risk that people go into clinical trials
thinking that they are going to benefit from participation, and physicians
need to explain that what they are doing is research. You hear constantly
from physicians in these situations that they explain to prospective partici-
pants that the process is randomizedthey explain randomization, they
explain that this is a trialand then the physician will ask the prospect,
Are you comfortable? and the person will answer, Yes I am; Ill sign,
but then they immediately say to the doctor, But I know youre going to
give me the treatment thats right for me.
Robert Kuhn: The situation is so unnatural: this is the person who is your
doctor and he or she is in essence saying to you, I dont know if Im giving
you an inert substance or this drug that we hope will help make you better.
Alexander Capron: Its cognitive dissonance. Prospects have told their
doctors: But you must be doing it for my good because youre my doctor.
Robert Kuhn: Andrea, how do you handle clinical trials with adolescents,
especially young people who have not the highest education?
Andrea Kovacs: Young adults 13 to 18 years old who get HIV are not your
routine 13- to 18-year-olds. Frequently theyre on the streets; frequently they
come from broken homes. Since they are not legally emancipated, how do
you enroll a 13- to 18-year-old pregnant adolescent? How do you enroll
someone who is in and out of juvenile courts? These are complicated issues
and a major challenge.
Alexander Capron: I assume that in this group there is no question that
they would all know that they have the HIV condition.
Andrea Kovacs: Yes, of course; they all know their diagnosis, but I still
cannot enroll the adolescent without a parents consent.
Robert Kuhn: What is the governing rule here? Can you enroll these young
people who desperately need to be in these trials without parental consent?
It would seem that in some cases you would have difficulty in getting paren-
tal consent.
Robert Temple: A legal guardian can give consent.
Andrea Kovacs: But you have to go to court.
Robert Temple: I agree, and you have to find a legal guardian.
Andrea Kovacs: Right. So once we start doing these huge studies, which
are going to be Phase III at some point, how do we do this?
Robert Kuhn: Lets describe the key characteristics of clinical trials.
112 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Robert Temple: The simplest kind of clinical trial is to give the treatment
being tested, say, the drug you are interested in, to one randomized group,
and a placebo (an inert substance that looks the same) to a similarly random-
ized group.
Alexander Capron: The usual design of research involves what we call
blinded tests, which means that the subjects and the investigators do not
know which participants are getting the active treatment and which are get-
ting the placebo. The identity of the treatment is sufficiently disguised so that
no one knows what they are really getting.
Robert Kuhn: It is called single blind if only the patients do not know
but the investigators do know whether they are getting the active treatment
or the placebo, and double blind if neither the participants nor the inves-
tigators know. The gold standard for clinical trials is to conduct them dou-
ble blind.
Robert Kuhn: What are the phases of clinical trials?
Robert Temple: Phase I trials are the first introduction of a drug into
humans; these drugs have been studied in animals and shown to have some
efficacy. Now you give it to a small number of people, sometimes normal
people, sometimes people with the disease; you generally push the dose up
until someone develops a side effect, gets nauseated or dizzy or something
like thatthis provides some idea of what doses will be tolerated. Phase II
trials are the first control trials of the drug, which are usually conducted in
a fairly narrow, well-described population. Here the investigators are look-
ing to determine whether the drug really does what they hope it to do; for
example, in an HIV trial the investigators might compare one regimen of
drugs with another (different drug combinations, dosages, and/or time-
frames) to compare the effects on the HIV virus by monitoring the number
of viral particles per unit of blood. Phase III trials are more extensive control
trials to better define the dose, look at the drug in various severities of the
disease, look at different subsets of the population (e.g., men and women,
black and white, old and young) and to generally get much more exposure
so you can uncover the rarer side effects. After all, in a Phase II trial of say
200 people, you wont find an occurrence that happens once in 500, but
when you get into Phase III where you might have several thousand people
enrolled, you have at least a chance of finding side effects that occur at the
rate of one in 1000.
Alexander Capron: This is where you get into the sticky issue of using a
placebo (inert) control versus what they call the active control, which is the
current standard of care. For example, if youre developing an acne medicine
or a hair-loss medicine or something cosmetic, you would of course include
a placebo control (in addition to the active control) because by using a
Testing New DrugsAre People Guinea Pigs? 113
placebo control as part of the experimental design you are going to get
results that are both more reliable and more rapid, and the fact that someone
is going without any treatment for acne or hair loss for a brief period of time
is not going to raise major problems.
Robert Kuhn: However, in situations where the participants have serious
medical conditions, which might be life threatening, how can you ethically
allocate any of them to a placebo (no active treatment) group?
Robert Temple: The basic rule is you cannot deny people a therapy that is
available to them if harm might come to them by not having the therapy.
Harm is usually defined to mean something that is irreversible: death is
irreversible, a stroke is irreversible; everyone agrees that in these cases you
cannot conduct a placebo control trial anymore. However, it is often not
so clear cut. Consider depression: there are many new drugs for depression;
they have already made a big difference in therapy and scientists are excited
about their therapeutic potential. But it is a fact that only about half of the
clinical trials of Prozac for depression can distinguish the drug from the pla-
cebo. Now, if you know this experimental fact, and you now do a clinical
trial comparing a new drug with Prozac and the trial does not show any dif-
ference between them, well, what have you learned? Maybe this trial was
one of those trials that couldnt distinguish Prozac from placebo! And if
you dont have a placebo group running in parallel, there is no way to tell.
So, in these cases, we ask for a placebo control trials. Now, some people
are nervous about this kind of experimental design. After all, depression is
not a benign illness, a few people commit suicide. Fortunately, in this case,
there are several large assemblages of data, called meta-analyses, which have
looked to see whether people in the placebo group are more likely to commit
suicide, and since the clinical trials that have been conducted for depression
were short term studies, four to six weeks, the placebo group was not more
likely to commit suicide. So, as a result, we can comfortably say it is ethically
permitted to conduct placebo control trials with properly informed patients,
and it is essential to have the placebo group or we would be approving drugs
that did not work and not approving drugs that did.
Robert Kuhn: Do you agree with that, Alex?
Alexander Capron: I dont agree or disagree, because I think that there are
certain things left out of that description. What is the type of depression?
What are the circumstances of the subjects? We need to understand the par-
ticipants personal capacity to consent so that we could build in appropriate
safeguards. For example, if you are dealing with a relatively mild depression,
where the likelihood of suicide or other harm is very small, its one thing; in
more severe cases, the patients would have to be in circumstances both
where their consent was very reliable and where they were going to be given
protection of medical care. Only then would the investigators be ethically
114 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
effects, but simply because one drug company wants to have a drug on the
market to compete with its rivals. There is no great benefit to the consumer.
Robert Temple: However, the desire to find the place for your own propri-
etary product has been beneficial on some occasions. The most striking case
was with what are called statins, the lipid-lowering drugs, where multiple
drug companies competed to show the special effectiveness or comparative
advantage of their own drug. One company did a large trial in Scandinavia
showing that the drugs are good for people who had a heart attack and
whose cholesterol is over 260. Then another company did a trial in Scotland
showing that even if people didnt have a heart attack and their cholesterol
was over 260, the drug helped. To some extent, competition in this case
did what its supposed to do.
Alexander Capron: Competition developed more information than we
would have had if we only had the first study.
Robert Temple: In this case, we acquired unbelievably valuable informa-
tion. Now many lipid-lowering drugs are known to save lives and there is
general agreement that they are used too infrequently. So the multiple drugs
doing the same thing encourages more people to take these drugs, which in
general seems to be a good thing for the community.
Robert Kuhn: Why is there so much criticism in the press about clinical tri-
als and the government role in regulating them?
Alexander Capron: There have been some trials which went very badly.
One example was the death of an 18-year-old young man in a gene therapy
trial at the University of Pennsylvania in 1999. The young man had a very
rare liver disease (which mostly strikes very young children) and the pro-
cedureplacing healthy genes in his liverwas deemed to have minimal
risk, so that even though the young man did not actually meet the enrollment
criteria, he was enrolled. Within four days, he became very sick and died.
His father said that the young man had volunteered for the study to help
other sufferers.
Robert Kuhn: Making the case more troublesome was the fact that the
young mans condition was mild, well under control, and certainly not life
threatening.
Alexander Capron: Correct; he had the version that was not as severe.
Now, here is the underlying debate: would it have been better to conduct
this research in people who were critically ill, namely the little babies who
couldnt, obviously, give their assent to participate, but where ethical ten-
sion would be balanced by the notion that they are already very sick, and if
this worked, it would be a great benefit to them personally? Whereas the
young man who volunteered for the procedure really wasnt very sick and
116 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
wasnt going to benefit from it; he was doing it altruistically. The other issue
in this case is the extent to which the researchers and, indeed, the entire
research enterprise, was tied into an entrepreneurial interest in which
the researcher and the university had invested in the development of that
technique.
Robert Kuhn: So the university and the researcher had a financial interest
in the procedure? That could turn an unhappy situation into an ugly one.
Alexander Capron: The investigator was a principal owner of the com-
pany that was sponsoring the research and the university had a financial
interest in the procedure. If the research had been successful, both would
have been in a position to benefit financially.
Robert Temple: Who supports most clinical trials? Drug companies, obvi-
ously; they are interested parties. Yet its not always clear what their interest
is. I think they really do want to find out whether a drug hurts people,
because they wouldnt want to market a drug with terrible side effects,
which would be a disaster for them, so it is not in their interest to suppress
bad news. Still, drug company motivation is complicated. The ordinary
way trials are done is that a drug company, obviously an interested party,
pays an independent investigator to conduct the trial. The axiomatic
assumption is that investigator is really independent, which means that he
or she has no stake in the outcome of the trial and that he or she will conduct
it with high quality, monitoring the trials rigorously to make sure everything
is done appropriately to the highest standards. Thats the usual model.
Alexander Capron: I think that if we looked in detail at research done any-
where, we could find problems. We are coming to the point in this country
where we recognize that we need a better system than we have now for
knowing, on an ongoing basis, how well institutions that carry out clinical
research are doing. I think the government is preparing to assert that clinical
trial programs should be accredited. (This was a recommendation of the
National Bioethics Advisory Commission, on which I serve.) Such an
accreditation procedure would start off as a voluntary activity, but it would
mean that not just when a problem arises, but on a periodic basis, people
familiar with the way research should be conducted would be coming in
and taking an in-depth look at the procedures, at the consent process, at
the reviews, and particularly at how good a job the universities were doing
in monitoring the trials after they start.
Robert Kuhn: Another area of ethical concern is clinical trials conducted
by first-world drug companies in third-world countries. Cross-cultural sensi-
tivities become especially acute when the specific clinical trial would not, at
that point, have been allowed in the United States.
Testing New DrugsAre People Guinea Pigs? 117
America. The companies may want to market their drugs sometime in those
countries, but they will probably not be doing it any time soon because the
countries would use a generic version of the same drug; they wouldnt spend
money on the original.
Robert Kuhn: Poorer people as guinea pigs?
Robert Temple: We use U.S. citizens in the same way, as guinea pigs. The
antidepressant trials are conducted in America and Western Europe as well
as in Eastern Europe and in Latin America.
Robert Kuhn: Here is the difference, though. If a clinical trial is conducted
in the United States, if the treatment works, at least the same population that
participated in the clinical trials will benefit from its general usage. That is
decidedly not the case when the clinical trial is carried out, say, in Africa.
Robert Temple: Perhaps true. It is worth knowing, however, that as a con-
sequence of doing trials in these poorer parts of the world, the drug compa-
nies leave behind an infrastructure that is capable of doing trials and they
may also leave behind buildings suited for healthcare. The host counties
get access to diagnostic and other methods, tools, and facilities that they
would not have gotten otherwise.
Robert Kuhn: So here is the summary question: are the first-world drug
companies taking advantage of these third-world countries or are they pro-
viding something beneficial that these poor people would never have
received in any other way?
Alexander Capron: You can argue it in both directions, but does receiving
something valuable for allowing clinical trials in their country constitute
inappropriate inducement, or is it a just tradeoff that recognizes the cold
imbalances in the world?
Andrea Kovacs: I think it very important for the foreign, first-world phar-
maceutical and healthcare companies to participate (by any means) in the
healthcare systems of third-world countries, thus elevating the society
locally.
Robert Temple: The drug companies have the appropriate skills and
resources.
Andrea Kovacs: As long as the doctors dont just go in, exploit the people,
and then leave.
Alexander Capron: That is certainly the worst thing.
Andrea Kovacs: You educate the people; you train the local groups; you
bring in resources; and then you teach them how to do the studies.
120 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Alexander Capron: But sometimes the people whom you are training and
are benefiting are already the elite in the country; they are the scientists and
the physicians and the people who are going to have access to the fancy
equipment and buildings that you leave behind. And, yes, you may be indi-
rectly helping the population by making them better off, but their agreement
to participate personally in the clinical trial itself, with all the attendant
risks, is not necessarily recompensed by donations to the countrys elite.
On the other hand, there are things that a drug company can do beneficially
for the entire community.
Andrea Kovacs: I think we are making a real contribution to the treatment
of HIV in the third world. Now we are going to start studying other diseases
such as tuberculosis and malariawere going to study the environment, the
water, everythingand were going to have an incredible, positive impact
on these societies ravaged by these terrible diseases.
Robert Temple: Critics have complained with justification that commer-
cial interests havent been as eager to study those diseases in the developing
world as they should have been.
Alexander Capron: Because they werent diseases of our country.
Robert Temple: Right, and because there werent large amounts of money
to be made from it. So I believe that when major drug companies get into
those developing countries to do clinical trials the overall effect is usually
beneficial.
Testing New DrugsAre People Guinea Pigs? 121
Alexander Capron
From the point of view of a bioethicist, where are we heading in this century?
I havent seen many indications of major developments in ethics. There
are obviously enormous developments in science. Right now were debating
what to do about stem cells, adult stem cells and embryonic stem cells; I
think they hold enormous promise. There are complex issues about the use
of the somatic nuclear transfer techniquescloningboth to produce stem
cells and, more radically, to produce people or parts of people. This technol-
ogy, which is coming, will have a totally transformative effectprobably
not for the good, potentially remaking the relationship of generations in
ways for which we really have no analogies.
Robert Temple
How did you come to work at the FDA?
I came to the agency in 1972. I had been at the National Institutes of
Health (NIH) for a few years, and having actually thought of myself as a
consumer advocate, I wanted to go to where the decisions about medicines
are made. In those days, no one went to the FDA knowing what working
there was going to be like, but it turned out to be just fascinating. I have been
pleased with our work and have stayed ever since. My particular specialty
has been how to design trials that give you the answers you want. There
are many issues involved and these constitute most of my writings. Recently,
I have become involved in some ethical issues that have arisen relating to the
use of placebos in clinical trials, which is intimately connected with what
122 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Andrea Kovacs
Your specialty is pediatric AIDS. Talk about your successes.
The most significant development in the last five years in HIV, the human
immunodeficiency virus, is the prevention of perinatel transmission of HIV
meaning the passing of HIV from mother to baby during pregnancy or at
time of birth. When I started in this field, about 28 percent of babies were
infected. And through large-scale clinical trials we were able to demonstrate
that we could prevent transmission from mother to baby almost completely.
We are moving to transfer these techniques internationally, so that we can,
hopefully, effect similar success around the world in eliminating HIV trans-
mission to babies.
Do you think the general public understands whats going on in HIV these
days?
The general public is now beginning to understand the impact of research.
Going back 10 years, up-to-date, unemotional information was that not
accessible in the media. But we have made significant progress in presenting
accurate information about current research, how it is conducted, and how
it has really benefited the public.
The second half of the twentieth century saw the explanatory explosion of
molecular biology, the technique of studying the component parts of cells
and biologically active molecules in order to discern their mechanisms. Yet
the study of Complexity recognizes that only by studying the interactions
between these elements and their environment can the true behavior of the
system be seen, understood, and predicted.
David Baltimore takes his prodigious knowledge of biology and details
how the DNA molecules complexity is integral to producing and maintain-
ing an ordered living organism. Murray Gell-Mann, whose distinguished
career includes the theory of elementary particles and the discovery of the
quark (both of which form the bedrock of fundamental physics), discusses
Emergence with all the joy of a scientist making his first original discovery.
The wonderful thing about emergence, Gell-Mann says with sparkle, is
you dont need something new to get something new! Get enough things
interacting with each other and something new naturally emerges.
Expert Participants
David Baltimore
Nobel Laureate in Physiology/Medicine; President, Professor of Biology,
California Institute of Technology; Chairman, AIDS Vaccine Research
Committee, NIH; founding director, Whitehead Institute for Biological
Research, MIT.
Murray Gell-Mann
Nobel Laureate in Physics; Distinguished Fellow and Co-Chairman of the
Science Board, Santa Fe Institute; Emeritus Professor of Physics, California
Institute of Technology; Author, The Quark and the Jaguar: Adventures in
the Simple and the Complex.
Robert Kuhn: The normal direction of explanation is to explain biology in
terms of physics, but can we go in reverse? Can we discern principles of how
the universe is structured by examining the principles of biology and then
applying them to physics?
David Baltimore: Scientists had hoped that there would be things in biol-
ogy that were so surprising, so different than we had ever seen before that
it would inform us about new laws. But the evidence does not support this.
Murray Gell-Mann: There is a sense though in which something like that is
happening: people sometimes say that the twentieth century was the century
of physical science and the twenty-first century will be the century of life
How Does Order Arise in the Universe? 125
sciences. The progress in the life sciences is fantastically impressive and very
important, both intellectually and practically. I think the next few decades
would better be characterized as the decades of the unity of the sciences.
Restoration of the unity of the sciences, thats whats really happening. At
the Santa Fe Institute (in New Mexico), the research is now transdiciplinary,
with mathematicians and physicists and computer scientists together with
neurobiologists, evolutionary biologists, ecologists, and paleontologists, all
working together without any regard at all for disciplinary boundaries.
David Baltimore: When I characterize the human genome it is not a
result; it is just a series of questionswhat does this do? What does that
do? What does that other piece do? But, instead of having what we had
before, which was 20 questions, we now have 30 or 40 thousand questions
[the number of genes]. In fact, in a sense, we have three billion questions,
which is the number of all the nucleotides in the genome. And to deal with
this level of complication requires new techniques, new ways of handling
data, new ways of gathering data, new ways of analyzing data, and biolo-
gists are not good at any of that. Weve never had to deal with problems like
that. But, astrophysicists have had to deal with these amounts of data, and
computer scientists have, and so were bringing them in. The intellectual
strength of all of these other areas of the physical and mathematical now
becomes absolutely central to the progress of biology.
Murray Gell-Mann: Until a few years ago, Harold Varmus was the Direc-
tor of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), operating out of Washington,
and of course thats the part of the scientific establishment for which it is
easiest to get money from Congress because every person in the House or
the Senate either has an illness or has a relative or a friend who has an illness.
But Harold went around making speeches saying, dont give me all the
money allocated for science; sciences are a unity, they are all interdependent,
and they all need support. I thought that was wonderful.
David Baltimore: For biology to progress it is important that chemistry
and physics and all of the other sciences also progress, particularly engineer-
ing, because they provide the new tools, the new ways of doing things. And
thats whats happening; thats where the unity extends from the hard sci-
ences of physics and chemistry to the biological and social sciences.
Murray Gell-Mann: Most real issues that we encounter in life involve all of
these areas of knowledge. In any real situation, all come together, and yet
the tendency is to divide things up between the humanities, say, and the
sciences.
David Baltimore: Of course, most science, historically, has not dealt with
real issues and hasnt even wanted to. Traditionally, science has concerned
itself with artificial issues because theyre complicated enough, theyre hard
126 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
enough to solve, never mind solving a real problem. Ive been involved with
the HIV virus now for some long time, and one is faced with a real problem
like this, theres no hiding from itthere is a virus and this virus is killing
people, its spreading across the world, and you must deal with this real-
world problem. I have gained tremendous respect for the difficulty of solving
a practical problem. Whereas, historically, I was brought up in science to say
the tough problems are the theoretical problems or the conceptual problems
in science. And I still think they are tough but Ive learned to have a lot of
respect for practical problems.
Robert Kuhn: The early universe swarmed with simple, chaotic particles,
yet today we have complicated, orderly things like DNA molecules. How
did that all happen?
Murray Gell-Mann: There are several things that you have to talk about to
illuminate that issue. One is the initial condition of the universe, and another
is the way that complexity has arisen thereafter. Order in the early universe
is the governing circumstance. And its that order that has been responsible
for the gradually increasing average disorder.
Robert Kuhn: That sounds like a paradox.
Murray Gell-Mann: I think we can throw some light on it. The key princi-
ple is called the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which has been under-
stood now for more than a century and states that in a closed system, such
as the universe, the average disorder keeps increasing.
David Baltimore: Life is a little bit of aggregated order in the midst of a
continuing tendency to disorder. Our perception is of increasing order,
because you look back not too long ago and there was no intelligent life on
Earth. And so weve seen this highly ordered thing, the brain, evolve over a
relatively short period of time to do remarkable things, and so our percep-
tion is of increasing order and yet, underlying it, there has to be, by the Sec-
ond Law of Thermodynamics, decreasing order.
Murray Gell-Mann: But even though the average disorder in the universe
has been increasing ever since its beginning, this increasing disorder is not
occurring at every particular place in the universe. You can have local order
created in certain locations at the expense of greater disorder somewhere
else. Take your refrigerator as an example. You have ice cubes in the freezer
that are certainly a manifestation of a great deal of order, but if you go
around to the back of the refrigerator theres a lot of hot air coming out indi-
cating that the cost of the order of ice cubes is paid by a greater amount of
disorder somewhere else. So thats the way the creation of local order is per-
fectly compatible with the Second Law of Thermodynamics, but theres
another process at work as wellwe have to distinguish complexity from
order, theyre not exactly the same thing.
How Does Order Arise in the Universe? 127
David Baltimore: This means that the outcome is the same sort of ques-
tion. How many different outcomes of life could there have been? If we
could observe the evolution of life on another planet, we would see an
entirely different outcome of this process of variation and selection. Evolu-
tion would generate something that looks so different that you probably
couldnt recognize it as life.
Murray Gell-Mann: You are absolutely right, but my point is a slightly dif-
ferent one: not all types of evolution can be described in terms of a schema
that evolves by variation and selection. For life, yes, of course, but for galac-
tic evolution or for the evolution of a star or a planet, we dont have any evi-
dence that these same kind of things happens. We have no evidence that they
occur as a complex adaptive system.
Robert Kuhn: Lets talk about the concept of emergence. Is the living cell
an example of emergence?
David Baltimore: I think it might not be a bad idea to develop secret anti-
biotics that we have in our arsenal which nobody except a select group
knows how they work. In this way, terrorists cant design resistance to them.
Unfortunately we have to be thinking this way.
How Does Order Arise in the Universe? 131
Murray Gell-Mann: You have to be careful: most of the time there are very
good reasons why scientists dont assume or consider certain things. But
every once in a while, you come across an accepted idea that you mustnt
think about in a conventional way. It is just wrong, and when you look
closely, you realize theres no reason for itand this is that rare kind of
event that can be an opportunity to explain something that nobody could
explain before.
David Baltimore
Whats going on in your field today?
There is so much going on in biology today that is going to impact our
future that I hardly know where to start. The development of drugs, the
134 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
environment, is actually feeding into structure the way we deal with some-
thing as simple vision (its not simple, of course). We are learning more
and more about these cognitive interactions, between the way the system is
wired and built, and what it knows intrinsically, and what it learns. And
there will be debate for a long time about what percentage is intrinsic
(nature) and what percentage is acquired (nurture). A debate about
simple numbers is probably not a meaningful one, because the nature of
the issue doesnt lend itself to simple numbers. But theres no question that
we have enormous capabilities built into us. They come, hardwired, out of
our genes.
Murray Gell-Mann
Why did you become a scientist?
I became a scientist out of curiosity about regularities in the world.
Note
1. Fundamental components of atomic particles for which discovery Murray Gell-
Mann won the Nobel Prize.
Chapter 10
Why is the cosmos shocking? Dark matter fills the universe, controlling
gravitation forces. Dark energy confounds gravity, causing the expansion
of the universe to accelerate. And the laws of physics may not be forever.
In recent years, waves of astonishing new discoveries have inundated cos-
mologists: a universe whose expansion is speeding up, not slowing down,
contradicting all accepted theory; gravitational lenses revealing distant gal-
axies forming near the beginning of time; galactic jets shooting out thou-
sands of light years; black holes with the mass of a billion suns lurking at
the center of galaxies, swallowing entire stars in a single gravitational bite;
a universe made more of dark matter than visible matter; dark matter candi-
dates, strange and even stranger; dark energy, emerging from nothingness,
controlling the destiny of the universe. And finally, even fundamental con-
stants of nature, long thought stable, could possibly be changing. Cosmolo-
gists have been surprised by recent data. What does it all mean?
Cosmologys remarkable discoveries are revealing the deepest, most aston-
ishing secrets of a luminous universe.
The cosmos is indeed weirder that we think, even astronomers can hardly
believe it! Its so weird that four experts can only sit around and laugh as
they outdo each other in trading stories about amazing findings and discov-
eries. Our group of distinguished physicists and astrophysicists outline the
latest discoveries of how our universe began and continues to function, and
marvel at how quickly the exotic and unusual can become commonplace.
Not so long ago black holes were fantasy; now they are a given. They debate
what could be behind the accelerating expansion of the universe: is there a
new kind of energy, dubbed dark energy, that permeates empty space?
They also explain current methods for measuring that expansion. The guests
138 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Expert Participants
Roger Blandford
Professor of Theoretical Astrophysics, Stanford University (formerly at the
California Institute of Technology); interests: black holes, gravitation,
high-energy bursts.
David Goodstein
Vice Provost, Professor of Physics and Applied Physics, and Distinguished
Teaching and Service Professor, California Institute of Technology.
Alan Guth
Professor of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; discoverer,
inflation theory in cosmology; author, The Inflationary Universe.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Director, Hayden Planetarium; member, Department of Astrophysics,
American Museum of Natural History; visiting research scientist, Depart-
ment of Astrophysics, Princeton University.
Robert Kuhn: Every few months, it seems, some new discovery or
revelation in astrophysics and cosmology shocks me. Are you guys, the top
professionals, shocked?
David Goodstein: Its the most amazing thing that, just a few years ago,
black holes were considered a mathematical fantasy; there was no proof that
any such thing existed. Now it is generally accepted every galaxy is con-
densed on a black hole the way every rain drop is condensed on a particle
of dust. This has become so ordinary that we dont even mention or discuss
it in any way.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: I agree 100 percent. The new discoveries came on
quickly; scientists were rightly skeptical, but as the observations kept rolling
in, there was no doubt about it.
Roger Blandford: Another big surprise that weve discovered is very high
energy cosmic rays, which are subatomic particles that have the energy of a
well hit baseball!
How Weird is the Cosmos? 139
Alan Guth: I was genuinely surprised with the results that came out a few
years ago that the expansion of the universe appears to be accelerating.
Robert Kuhn: The universe is not just expanding but accelerating in its
expansion.
Alan Guth: The expansion of the universe is speeding up, and the best can-
didate for driving itreally the only sensible explanation that is currently on
the tableis an energy that permeates empty space. This is exactly the kind
of energy that causes acceleration, and the amount of acceleration that it
would cause is exactly whats seen in supernova observationsand when I
use this word exact, I mean to an accuracy of about 10 percent.
David Goodstein: An accuracy of 10 percent is a big improvement in astro-
physics. I can remember when they used to tell us that the most important
equation in astrophysics is one is approximately equal to 10.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: One of our biggest challenges in astrophysics is that,
since we cant take a tape measure and measure distances to stars and we
cant travel there and read our odometers, we need to be much more clever
about measuring distances in the universe. One of the most successful ways
that astronomers have developed is to look around the galaxy and find a stel-
lar event, which every time it happens, every time you see it, its the same,
whether it occurs in our galaxy or in another galaxy. Since you know the
one up close very well, then you can judge how far away the other one is
by how much dimmer it appears to be (compared with the one you know).
Robert Kuhn: If their absolute level is the same, the event, a gigantic super-
nova explosion, would be what is called a standard candle.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: Exactly. Assume that we know that the supernova in
our galaxy gives off the light of a 100-watt light bulb; then if I were to find a
similar 100-watt light bulb in another galaxy and I see how much dimmer it
is, I know how far away it has to be to be that dim.
Robert Kuhn: Supernovas are rather brighter than 100-watt light bulbs; in
fact they are brighter, for a few moments, than the entire galaxy in which
they explode.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: This enables supernovas to become our best known
standard candles, which can enable us to calculate accurate distances to the
most distant galaxies. And by doing this, we can measure the expansion of
the universe, and based on that model, my standard candle equations tell
me how bright each supernova ought to be.
Robert Kuhn: In recent years, some of the most distant supernovas were
turning out to be dimmer than predicted by the standard models of universal
expansion.
140 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Neil deGrasse Tyson: The only way you can fit your curve through these
dimmer standard candles is to be forced to the conclusion that we live in a
universe whose expansion rate is accelerating.
Alan Guth: This data is incredibly shocking, because from the point of
view of fundamental physics, we just have no explanation of what this dark
energy, the stuff that is causing the acceleration, might actually be.
Robert Kuhn: Recent evidence suggests that dark energy makes up
approximately 70 percent of the universe and dark matter makes up approx-
imately 25 percent. This means that only about 45 percent of the universe is
made of ordinary matter and energy, which includes all the atoms and radi-
ations that comprise everything we see and know.
Alan Guth: Dark energy is clearly the primary dominant component of the
universe and we have no idea what it is. We dont even understand dark
matter, which is the second most dominant component. All we know
things about is the third and smallest category of universal stuffordinary
matter and energy. So there is a tremendous amount of mystery here.
Roger Blandford: In cosmology, theres a thrill a minute: were getting new
discoveries all the time. Were fortunate to be living at a time when these dis-
coveries are being made at such a tremendous rate. This is a golden age of
discovery in astronomy, driven largely driven by new technology being
applied to observation.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: The cosmos comes to us through telescopes and
through particle accelerators, opening up vast new vistas of the universe
that, prior to these instruments, our senses had no access to. For example,
we discovered neutron stars and pulsars, which have the density equivalent
of a herd of 50 million elephants crammed into a thimble. 50 million
elephants are a thimbles worth of neutron star. These are the kinds of ideas
we have to contend with all the time. We have come to expect wild and crazy
ideas emanating out of the cosmos; the threshold for what is ridiculous has
to be quite high in the community of astrophysicists. Just look at how often
we have been baffled and had to sort of grow out of our bafflement in order
to get ready for the next set of discoveries.
Robert Kuhn: All of the things were discussing regarding the expansion of
the universe are building on a theory that Alan Guth came up with in the
early 1980s and which revolutionized everyones understanding about how
the universe began. Alan, please give us a brief summary of the inflationary
universe.
Alan Guth: The inflationary universe theory addresses the question that
the conventional form of the Big Bang theory really just left out, which is
the question of what caused the Bang, what started this enormous
How Weird is the Cosmos? 141
David Goodstein: Not stranger than any of the other things weve been
discovering in the past decade.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: I keep trying to think what discovery could ever be
as astounding to us as the Hubble telescopes discovery that we live in a uni-
verse whose expansion is accelerating. That was extraordinary, astonishing.
David Goodstein: Just think of what happened. In 1916 Albert Einstein
works a theory and equations, all by himself, which have a natural predic-
tion that the universe is expanding. But he doesnt believe it, because none
of the observational data in astronomy suggested such a wild idea. So Ein-
stein adds to his theory and equations an artificial term, something he called
the cosmological constant, which was supposed to prevent the universe from
expanding. Then the great astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered from his
photographic plates, taken by his giant new telescope, that the universe
was, in fact, expanding. So Einstein calls his cosmological constant the big-
gest mistake of his scientific career. And now weve got it back again to
explain this acceleration of the expansion of the universe.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: So Einsteins biggest blunder was saying that it was
his biggest blunder.
Robert Kuhn: Clearly everything were talking about requires the set of
fundamental laws of physics. Recent data seems to suggest that some of
these fundamental laws, some of these constants of nature, may be changing
over time?
Roger Blandford: There have been reports that one of the famous con-
stants of nature, which is called the fine structure constant, may be changing
slightly over time.
Robert Kuhn: What is the fine structure constant?
Roger Blandford: Its a combination of the speed of light and the charge on
the electron; its a famous constant that every physicist knows.
David Goodstein: If the fine structure constant is changing, it means that
the charge on the electron is not constant, and then that means that chemis-
try is changing all the time. We tend to think that the laws of physics are
eternal, and such stunning news would indicate that not even the laws of
chemistry are eternal. What a shock that would be!
Robert Kuhn: What would be the implications?
David Goodstein: There has to be a fine balance among the constants of
nature for lots of things, including for planets and people to even exist. If
the fine structure constant were to change by very much, we would probably
become impossible. And, of course, we would prefer that not to be the case.
144 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Neil deGrasse Tyson: This is the scary part; this is the scary part. Perhaps
the state we are in now is the consequence of some other catastrophic phe-
nomenon that occurred long before we were around to see it.
Alan Guth: Let me answer that wild question by also taking a jump of
maybe 10 billion light years off to the side. One of the curious things about
inflation is that once this inflationary process starts, it never really stops.
There is this peculiar material or force or field thats driving the universes
exponential expansion, as a result of the repulsive gravity that it creates.
What happens is the material thats driving the expansion is unstable so in
some places it decays and forms normal matter, and these regions become
normal universes. But it decays like a radioactive substance with a half-life,
so if you wait the half-life of this material, half of it will have decayed, in a
sense it will become normal matter. But unlike normal radioactive material,
this strange material is exponentially expanding at the same time, so in the
same half-life, the half that remains (that did not decay into ordinary matter)
grows to be much larger than what was there in the first place. The expand-
ing material goes on literally producing new universes forever. So although
our universe will very likely have the fate of ultimate emptiness, this empti-
ness will be only for our region of the universe, because meanwhile, else-
where, in virtually an infinite number of places, new, young universes are
sprouting up and developing.
Robert Kuhn: You made a jump and I missed how you did it. We had infla-
tion goingI followed thatthen we had a myriad of new universes coming
out of that. I was listening carefully but I missed how that happened.
Alan Guth: During inflation, the universe is undergoing exponential
expansion, which every so often is doubling. It just so happens that the dou-
bling time is about 10-37 seconds or some ridiculously minuscule time like
that. So, every 10-37 seconds, the universe doubles in size. Then, in a slightly
longer time scale, 10-34, a piece of the universe breaks off and becomes a new
universe while the rest of the old universe goes on exponentially expanding,
and then another piece breaks off and becomes a new universe, and on and
on. And because the universe continues to double and redouble, even though
pieces of it are constantly breaking off, it continues to get bigger and bigger.
This would be the very history of our universe during the inflationary period.
Robert Kuhn: Is that happening now or only during the early inflationary
moment?
Alan Guth: Our universe is one of these pieces that split off; when it split
off it was probably a large region, but, within that, there was something
the size of a marble that became everything that we observe today. Once it
splits off, its been expanding ever since, even if slowed after that by ordi-
nary gravity.
146 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Robert Kuhn: Were the original stuff that had this inflation; were the
marble came out of it.
Alan Guth: Exactly right.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: This multiplicity of universes allows us to reempha-
size the Copernican principle for our own existence. If youre spawning uni-
verses like they are rabbits, most universes would be inhospitable to life,
because carbon life as we know it could not exist; under different laws and
conditions, chemistry would be completely different. So you can have a
multitude of cosmoses, of universes, perhaps only one of which is suitable
for life, which is the one we happen to be in.
Robert Kuhn: This is not as surprising as it first may seem, since only in a
universe where we do exist are we around to analyze the universe. (This is
one formulation of what is called the Anthropic Principle.)
David Goodstein: There may be life in many kinds of universes, based on
different chemistries. There is no reason why life couldnt be based, say, on
silicon rather than on carbon.
Alan Guth: It is likely that only a very small fraction of the universes
would become suitable for life, but since there are an infinite number of uni-
verses, whatever that fraction is yields a very large number.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: Every time we play around with the fundamental
constants, we get something that we know wouldnt reproduce life as we
know it.
Alan Guth: It always bothers me tacking on that phrase As We Know It.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: Why does that bother you?
Alan Guth: Because if were trying to ask why is the universe the way it is,
some people say it has to be the way it is or else life, as we know it, would
not exist. But if life of a different form existedlife as we dont know it
that can still be part of a perfectly plausible universe.
Roger Blandford: Weve already demonstrated that, as far as inanimate
things are concerned, our imagination has been rather limited, so theres
no reason why we shouldnt be equally limited as far as animate things are
concerned.
Alan Guth: We have a strong tendency to define the word universe to
mean anything that looks like everything else that we see. But the theory of
cosmological inflation strongly suggests that everything we see and know is
just a minuscule, fleetingly tiny fraction of everything that really exists.
Robert Kuhn: How do you see the next 10 years in this time of dramatic
new observations and new data in astronomy?
How Weird is the Cosmos? 147
of this mapping efforts. First we were mapping our own Earth; now we are
mapping the cosmos.
David Goodstein: With all of the astonishing things that weve talked
about today, this is not the biggest revolution in the history of cosmology.
There was a time when we believed that we were the center of the universe,
that the universe existed entirely for us. And we had a set of laws of physics
that made sense, but it only made sense so long as that our centrality in the
universe was true. And then Copernicus came along and ripped us out of
the center of the universe, destroying everything we understood. Suddenly,
there was no basis for any physics of any kind. And in a very short period
of time, about 150 years, which is only five or six generations of scientists,
we had put it all back together again. But we were no longer the center of
the universe; we were living on a speck of dust in an undistinguished galaxy
somewhere in some corner of one of the inestimable and unfathomable num-
ber of universes.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: There might be some theory yet to emerge that will
give us an understanding of dark matter, dark energy, Alan Guths rabbit
universes, some theory that might come forth that connects all of this
together. We will then be looking back on these times, laughing at how
quaint our ignorance was.
Robert Kuhn: Dont we yet feel grand by being able to exalt in our under-
standing? Even though were not in the center, we are part of such enormity.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: I feel grand. I do because I dont feel smaller, I
feel bigger, because its the collective minds of all of us, the human species,
that figured this stuff out, and thats extraordinary. For me, the unheralded
discovery of the twentieth century, which I carry with me every wak-
ing moment, is the recognition that the very chemistry of our bodies were
forged in the centers of supernovae, stars that exploded, that gave their lives
to the enrichment of the galaxy, out of which formed new stars and planets
and people. So, its not so much that were in the universe, the universe is
in us.
Alan Guth
Talk about the advances in your field.
Cosmology has made tremendous progress in the past 15 years. People
dont have the opportunity to appreciate the level of detail that cosmologists
think they have in understanding the universe and the ways we have of test-
ing our theories. For example, we have the Big Bang theory, which says the
universe started as a hot, expanding ball. That means much more to theoreti-
cal physicists who can actually calculate how fast the universe was expand-
ing at any time, what the temperature would have been at any given time,
what the density of matter would have been at any time. Its a really quanti-
tative theory. And we physicists know enough about nuclear physics to
actually calculate what the rates of the different reactions would have been
under the conditions weve calculated for the early universe. With all those
independent strands of knowledge put together, we can accurately predict
the abundances of about four or five of the lightest chemical elements
around today, and our prediction agrees with what the astronomers predict,
even though the calculations we do are based on nuclear physics experi-
ments and theirs are based on astronomical measurements. But the theory
and the measurements nonetheless agree! I find that astounding and I think
it really means that we two groups are on to something here.
about what went on right at the first singularity, right at that first moment of
the big bang.
world because I want artists out there as well. But whatever you do, keep an
eye on the science pages of the newspaper.
Roger Blandford
Whats the current thinking about gamma ray bursts?
The story about gamma ray bursts is that they were thought to be very
powerful explosions that created lots of intense gamma rays from distant
sources. What now seems to be the case is that theyre not quite as powerful
as we once thought. Were not absolutely sure, but it looks like theyre only
as powerful as a typical supernova explosionnot as powerful as a 100 or
1,000 supernova explosions, as we were thinking. The way that we have
come to this conclusion is that there is now fairly good evidence that the
bursts themselves are not spherical explosions, radiating energy in all direc-
tions, but in fact almost one-dimensional explosions, like jets. And if thats
true, we only see the gamma ray bursts when the jets are pointed directly
in our direction. And so if the energy is only focused in this beam, then we
can say that its only about one percent or so of what we originally thought
it might be. In addition, there is pretty good evidence now that although we
arent sure what the cause of the gamma ray burst is, it does appear to be
associated with young and massive stars, which is evidence that points the
finger at supernovae. Were not absolutely sure, but its looking like a
stronger and stronger possibility.
Will we find life elsewhere in the universe? As a child, I was scared that aliens
might invade my nighttime bedroom. As an adult, I almost wish they would.
Humans have long wondered whether life exists beyond our home planet.
There have been endless speculations, including a good deal of science fic-
tion writing. Finally, the search gets scientific. In recent years, a host of
new technologies are turning speculation into science. We now have the abil-
ity to discern increasing numbers of earth-like planets circling faraway suns
and even investigate the composition of their atmospheres; and we have dis-
covered life in environments on Earth so extreme its not unreasonable to
imagine that microbesor moremay flourish elsewhere in the universe.
Over the last decade, biologists have discovered microbial life in a daz-
zling array of hostile environmentsmineral-rich hydrothermal vents at
the bottom of oceans, buried thousands of meters beneath the Earths sur-
face in solid bedrock, encased deep within the Antarctic ice sheet, and even
in the cooling water of nuclear reactors! These organisms are called
extremeophileslovers of extreme environments. Given the ingenuity of
life here on Earth, is it so unreasonable to imagine that microbes might flour-
ish elsewhere in the universe? Or perhaps even elsewhere in our own solar
system? Might they be able to survive an accidental journey through space
on an asteroid, and thus even colonize new worlds on which they did not
originally arise? A new hybrid field is now emerging; it is called astrobiol-
ogy, a combination of astronomy and biology, and we will explore it. We
will also ponder its potential meaning: what will be the philosophical and
theological implications of astrobiology?
Two planetary scientists and an astrophysicist make the case that the
search for life in other parts of our universe has been made all the more valid
156 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
by two recent discoveries, one taking place at the bottom of our oceans and
the other in the stars surrounding our galaxy. As it turns out, life thrives
without benefit of any sunlight along mid-ocean ridges, one of earths most
inhospitable places. And, improvements in telescope technology have
revealed the presence of innumerable new planets circling stars similar to
our own sun. The discussion then turns to the feasibility and value of finding
proof that extraterrestrial life exists. All predict our inherent inquisitiveness
and daring will lead to such expeditions into space.
Batter up in the new game of astrobiology. Mars, then Europa. Astronomer/
planetary geologist Bruce Murray has worked on missions to Mars even before
his tenure as head of Caltechs Jet Propulsion Laboratory. If anyone wants to
get our instruments to Mars, its Murray. But as for drilling for life on Mars,
he knows the difficulty. Astrophysicist and director of New Yorks Hayden
Planetarium Neil deGrasse Tyson says he doesnt care how big our shovel will
have to be to find it, if thats what we need technology to do, well invent it. Shri
Kulkarni, who observed and correctly assessed what turned out to be the first
known pulsar, has what may be the key piece of data: we now know that star
formation is accompanied by planet formation.
Are the stars out tonight? Now we know that not only are they there, so
are their planets. Multiply the stars times the planets they have all formed
and your number is unimaginably gigantic. Astronomy is divided into those
who say, just on statistics alone, there has to be life beyond Earth, and those
who refute it by saying that those statistics dont include a myriad of factors
inhibiting the development of life, and that life on Earth and human-like
intelligence in particular are chance accidents of the most remote kind.
Expert Participants
Shri Kulkarni
Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Science, California Institute of Tech-
nology; leader in the search for extra-solar planets
Bruce Murray
Professor Emeritus, Planetary Science and Geology, California Institute of
Technology; former director, NASA/Caltech Jet Propulsion Laboratory;
co-founder (with Carl Sagan) and chairman, The Planetary Society
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Director, Hayden Planetarium; member, Department of Astrophysics,
American Museum of Natural History; visiting research scientist, Depart-
ment of Astrophysics, Princeton University
Is the Universe Full of Life? 157
Robert Kuhn: The universe is a pretty unfriendly place for life. What about
all the catastrophes, the giant stellar explosions emitting jets of severe radia-
tion, comets and asteroids flying all around all the time? Talk about a hostile
environment!
Neil deGrasse Tyson: Before we wax poetic about how bad the universe is,
consider that the last major extinction, the one that took out the dinosaurs,
enabled the tree shrew to evolve to something more ambitious than a rodent
so that we were enabled to become what we are today. So these impacts are
givers as well as takers away to the diversity of life.
Robert Kuhn: Much of the radiation is intensely destructive.
Shri Kulkarni: Some stars die benignly like our own sun, so in another 5
billion years. . .
Robert Kuhn: Not benign to us.
Shri Kulkarni: Thats true, which goes to show my orientation as an
astronomer. The sun will just expand very gently.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: Well be a cinder orbiting deep within the suns
surface.
Shri Kulkarni: But that will be over 5 billion years from now so we
shouldnt be too worried. But other stars, the more massive stars, do die
catastrophically as supernovae, which is not uncommon. At some point,
they run out of fuel and, no longer able to counterbalance the inexorable
force of gravity, undergo sudden and violent collapse because gravity is the
ultimate winner in this game. The collapse process itself releases what we
call gravitational binding energy, some of which now comes off in a flash
and in gas hurtling out at very high speeds. And these supernovae are not
uncommonthere is one superova in our own galaxy every hundred years
or so. So if youre close to one when it erupts, that could be pretty bad.
Robert Kuhn: What do you call close?
Shri Kulkarni: Certainly a thousand light years would close by anyones
theory of what a supernova would do. Even more exotic, more catastrophic
things are lurking out in the universe, such as gamma ray bursts. Gamma ray
bursts are rare, but their sphere of influence is tremendous
Robert Kuhn: Gamma ray bursts are the most powerful explosive energy
in the universe.
Shri Kulkarni: Yes, they are the most powerful directed explosive energy in
the universe. They are shot forth as basically beams of light and radiation,
and although we dont understand them very well, we do know that their
sphere of death reaches out many, many thousands of light years.
158 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Robert Kuhn: Why is now such an exciting time in the search for life else-
where in the universe?
Bruce Murray: One reason is discoveries here on earth, in mid ocean
ridges, in groundwater very deep, of living systems, organisms, microorgan-
isms, that survive in environments we never believed possible.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: Why didnt we know about these extremeophiles
before? They are just on the bottom of the ocean, why not 50 years ago?
Bruce Murray: The bottom of the ocean is not easily accessible. Such
organisms werent on the radar screen, so no one thought about the possibil-
ity or looked for them.
Robert Kuhn: To have life at the bottom of the ocean means that you have
life without need of sunlight as a direct source of its energy.
Bruce Murray: Incredibly, these extremeophiles use chemical processes for
energy, they dont need photosynthesis, they dont need sunlight to live. This
is why I am optimistic, or at least less pessimistic, about finding life on Mars
or finding it in another planet around another star.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: Once you remove the sun as a requirement, it allows
you to think of other ways you might generate energy to sustain life. When
you teach Introductory Astronomy you talk about a habitable zone
around a star. Lets take our own sun. Life as we know it requires liquid
water. If there is a planet a little too close to the host star, the water would
evaporate, like on Venus; a little too far away, its frozen (like on Mars
and beyond), so there is this sort of Goldilocks interval, a relatively small
band where you can have liquid water (like on Earth). For quite a long time
this concept dominated our thinking about how and where we might look
for life in another star system.
Robert Kuhn: What are some of the conditions for life beyond Earth?
Shri Kulkarni: You need energy, thats the ultimate requirement to get life
going; it can be tidal, it can be solar, and so on.
Robert Kuhn: What about extreme cold?
Bruce Murray: Thats interesting because the satellite of Jupiter called
Europa has an icy crust, probably not terribly thin, but below that is prob-
ably saltwater, perhaps like the Arctic or Antarctic Oceans. We can now
detected organisms that really do seem to be able to live in the ice. Its -20
degrees Centigrade, way below the freezing point of water, but the organ-
isms not only survive, but they prosper.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: But the fluid within these organisms is still liquid, so
theyre not in a frozen state, not like a brick of ice.
Is the Universe Full of Life? 159
Bruce Murray: Its tougher than that because its hard to determine if
something is alive or not. The usual test is to assess its metabolism and
reproductive capabilities. But in extreme environments, how do you culture
those organisms? Its not that simple; for example, how do you know the
organisms werent a contaminant from the collection or storage equipment
from the lab, or hadnt floated in from the air?
Neil deGrasse Tyson: So now because of these extremophiles, when we
think about life elsewhere in the galaxy, we no longer restrict ourselves to
this Goldilocks habitable zonethey have broadened our thinking.
Robert Kuhn: Why is now such an exciting time in the search for life else-
where in the universe?
Shri Kulkarni: There are two reasons: one is the new technologies that for
the first time enable us to address meaningfully the question of planets else-
where, and perhaps even say something about the existence of large-scale
life, by which I mean organisms and trees and so on. The second reason is
just as important and a bit more subtle: astronomers can now say, more or
less with confidence, that every time a star has formed, then planet forma-
tion is a necessary byproduct. So we know through observations that star
formation is accompanied by planet formation, and we know that we have
the technology to actually go look for them. So this is pretty much the start
of a golden era in the search for life in the universe.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: I agree, especially in the last 10 years, ever since the
first discovery of a planet around a star other than the sun. I remember dis-
tinctly the day that that planetary count outside our solar system exceeded
the number of planets in our solar system. So todays children will only
know a time when we have in our log books far more planets outside of
our solar system than within.
Bruce Murray: Ask somebody who is 30 or older, how many planets there
are and they all say, nine. Say, no, Im sorry, its now more than 200 (and
growing, it seems, almost every week).
Robert Kuhn: How can we confirm the existence of extra-solar planets?
Shri Kulkarni: There are basically three techniques, each in various phases
of sophistication. The simplest one is where the light from the host or central
star communicates information
Robert Kuhn: As the planet revolves around the star, the gravitational field
of the planet causes a small but perceptible wobble in the star.
Shri Kulkarni: The gentle tugging of the planet on the star is small but
nonetheless measurable. So what astronomers see is that the star undergoes
a sort of a motion, which astronomers detect in two different ways. One is
160 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
something called radial velocity, which is how fast the star moves toward us
and away from us as influenced by the gravitational field of the planet. Cur-
rently, this technique is producing this abundance of planets.
Robert Kuhn: How large is that radial velocity?
Shri Kulkarni: We are talking of tens of meters per second.
Robert Kuhn: That is an incredibly small number considering the vast
distances.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: Thats part of the technologically enabling factors of
the past 10 years.
Shri Kulkarni: We can discern one part in 100 million! Astronomers can
do this quite reliably; it took awhile to develop the technologies but we are
there now.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: Logically, since gravitation is key, the first planets
we are seeing are large, they are Jupiter-sized planets. Furthermore, they
are all close to their host stars, because close stars execute one period of rev-
olution around the star quickly, which means that astronomers can get that
signature in your data quickly. Therefore, all of the first waves of extra-solar
planets are large planets close to their host stars. We need a much longer
baseline of time to find a planet far away.
Robert Kuhn: For example, an extra-solar planet in an orbit similar to our
Earthsin the habitable zonewould take about a year, since data needs
to be collected from all positions to give a conclusive reading.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: An extra-solar planet with an earth-like orbit would
take a year; an extra-solar planet with a Jupiter-like orbit would take almost
12 years. Weve barely been taking this kind of data for 12 years, and so we
would not have even seen a full orbit of Jupiter by now. When people hear
we are discovering extra-solar planets by the gravitational affect that planet
has on its host star, they say, you mean you dont actually see the planet?
And I say, no, we measure the effects of its gravity. And people get worried,
and say, Well, if you cant see it, how do you know its there? And I sim-
ply say that gravity is as much a signature of somethings existence as a
direct photograph of it; we have many ways we can measure something is
there. Just as you do if you live in a cabin in the woods, you come to learn
what a bear footprint looks like very quickly, and if you see such a footprint
outside one morning, youll start looking for the bear that was once there.
Youre not going to say, Oh, I didnt see the bear, therefore it couldnt have
existed. These are the kinds of inferences we make in astronomy, which
have been very powerful methods throughout the history of astronomy. Its
how we first even predicted the existence of the planet Neptune; it was from
its gravitational effect on the planet Uranus, which astronomers measured
Is the Universe Full of Life? 161
but did not know what was causing it. Gravity tells us there is an object out
there.
Shri Kulkarni: The other technique for finding extra-solar planets thats
been in development for some time and is now coming of age (particularly
with the huge ground-based Keck Telescopes in Hawaii) is called interfer-
ometry. Interferometry works when you have more than one telescope and
you can combine the light coming in from both or all them, and by combin-
ing the light electronically you get synergism.
Robert Kuhn: Its as if the telescope has just grown enormously in size.
Shri Kulkarni: Absolutely. With this techniquewhich will also be the
next mission that NASA has already fundedcalled the Space Interferom-
etry Mission, astronomers will be able to go looking for smaller, more dis-
tant planets around more normal stars.
Robert Kuhn: A second technique for discovering extra-solar planets is by
measuring the changes in the host stars light as the planet passes across the
face of the star as seen by our Earth-based telescopes.
Shri Kulkarni: Right. This is when the planet occults the star, eclipsing it.
Most of the time, when there is no planet eclipsing the star, you get one read-
ing for the luminosity of the star. But when the planet does pass in front of
the star, you get a little less light. Weve proven that the occulting signature
of a planet works by confirming it through the more standard radial velocity
technique that assured the presence of the planet.
Robert Kuhn: Lets talk about Europa and Mars, because they are close
and we are sending our probes there.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: They are in our backyard. Mars we know had run-
ning water; there are dried river beds that meandered, floodplains, river del-
tas, all this tantalizing evidence that it was once an oasis and, at least on
earth, wherever we find an oasis, we find life. So if life ever existed on Mars,
its in our backyard and we should seek it.
Bruce Murray: Theres a problem, which neither astronomers nor biolo-
gists appreciatethe surface of Mars is self-sterilizing; the ultraviolet radia-
tion reaching the surface would kill all life. Maybe down a meter, shielded
from the radiation, we can find life, maybe 10 meters, we dont know.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: But the sterilization is on todays Mars; past eras
could have been different.
Bruce Murray: Today, youre right. But the likely location of life on Mars
is underground: whatever life might have formed on Mars was probably
subterranean life, like in the groundwater of the earth.
162 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Neil deGrasse Tyson: So you go out digging, and if you find it, it becomes
one of the greatest discoveries of all time!
Bruce Murray: Youre glossing over the engineering problem: how deep do
we have to dig? Its a much more difficult task than commonly thought; it
could require the equivalent of a human expedition with huge, mining-like
drills.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: Im not worried about how big our shovel must be
when we get there; if its got life, its got life.
Bruce Murray: Europa has a different kind of problem. Europa is not self
sterilizing, but it is in the field of Jupiters radiation belts, so it is lethal for
our normal instruments. To investigate Europa, we have to build the same
kind of technologies used in nuclear weapons or reactorshardened elec-
tronics. So again, its not easy. If these alien extremophiles exist on Europa,
they are in an environment that not just humans cant take, but not even nor-
mal robots can survive. Its a challenge; but well do it. Both Mars and
Europa are good targets.
Robert Kuhn: Let me ask an earth-centered, solar-centered question,
which is philosophical, almost religious in its nature. Are we something spe-
cial here on this earth in this solar system? Or is life really rather common
throughout the galaxy?
Bruce Murray: Thats about as important a question as we know how to
ask, which could be answered with science. Is an Earth the norm or the freak
in the universe? As I observe the results coming in, my hunch is that when
you find Jupiter-like planets orbiting at the distance of Mercury, which is
what we are finding, if thats the typical alignment, then we on Earth are
the exception, which has profound negative implications about the abun-
dance of life in the universe, especially the abundance of human-like or intel-
ligent life.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: Im quite confident that life is not only hardy, given
how many environments we find it on Earth, its also easier to form than
we realize. First, even if Earth, at our distance from the sun, is rare, a
Jupiter-like planet close to the sun might have 40 moons or 50 moons, some
of which could possibly harbor life. So it doesnt scare me that perhaps Earth
at the Goldilocks distance is somehow rare.
Robert Kuhn: What about the time it takes for life to form?
Neil deGrasse Tyson: Typically when people ask how soon did life appear
on earth, they take the age of the earth and subtract the age of the oldest fos-
sil4.6 billion years minus 3.8 billion years, which brings you to 800 mil-
lion years. Knowing what evolution requires that seems pretty quick, but
its even faster than that because earth spent about 600 million years in a
Is the Universe Full of Life? 163
Lets say Alpha Centauri (our closest star) has planets; you cant expect them
to be all nicely lined up for you. Furthermore, we are not sure how to orient
our detection equipment; for example, whether in the infrared or optical.
Robert Kuhn: What about putting telescopes at opposite ends of the solar
system? Now that would really be an interferometer!
Neil deGrasse Tyson: People dream that.
Shri Kulkarni: The first generation of space interferometers will be tens of
meters to perhaps hundreds of meters apart, depending on final design and
particularly which wavelengths well operate. This sort of a mission, which
is called Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF), will be expensive. In my guess, well
be operating about 2015.
Bruce Murray: Let me give you a different point of view. We are in a very
early process of discovery in exploration, and it sounds very organized,
almost like laboratory science. It is not. We are exploring new territory.
You look and you find and the trick is to look properly and broadly. We
could find something next year where one of these occultations shows evi-
dence of carbon dioxide gas, which is strongly represented in our atmos-
phere, and also methane gas, which is strongly apparent in Jupiters
atmosphere. What would be significant is that these two gases are incompat-
ible together: one is an oxidized gas, carbon dioxide; one is a reduced gas,
methane. They are made of very common elements, so if we got lucky and
if we find both gases at the same time, the overpowering conclusion is that
there must be some kind of a disequilibrium going on, and the most likely
candidate creating the disequilibrium would be life, because thats why we
have exactly this situation on Earth.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: Cow flatulence gives us methane in the atmosphere.
Bruce Murray: And plants give us carbon dioxide. Lets face reality: We
could get lucky but the likelihood is that its going to be very hard to prove
life, or even have a high suspicion of lifes presence. Considering the cumula-
tive probabilities of all our approaches and technologies, I think it could
take up to 30 years.
Robert Kuhn: Thats still within the lifetime of, hopefully, all of us.
Bruce Murray: I will be disappointed personally if, within my lifetime, we
dont have a strong indication that there is life elsewhere in the universe.
And if, during this time, we do not find evidence, then my tentative conclu-
sion would be that maybe it isnt there, maybe in fact theres something spe-
cial about our planet.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: That would be in violation of the Copernican Princi-
ple, which suggests that nothing weve ever measured about our circumstan-
ces has ever been special.
Is the Universe Full of Life? 165
Robert Kuhn: Either answer to the question, whether life exists or does not
exist beyond earth, is overwhelming. A new term has developed, astrobiol-
ogyare you comfortable with it?
Neil deGrasse Tyson: Astronomers cannot do it alone. Certain questions
we know how to ask, but others only biologists would ask. The same is true
of geologists. Better yet, especially for a mission to Mars, a paleontologist: if
there is some history of life buried within the soils, you need somebody who
has experience rummaging through cross sections of a planet. So there has
been a realignment of effort by multiple disciplines all asking the same ques-
tionthe chemists, the biologists, the astronomerswe all want to know
about life elsewhere in the cosmos. And astrobiology is a nice umbrella term,
although keep in mind that its an entirely new field with no data right now.
We have not one example of life beyond earth. We are all anxiously awaiting
the first sample for the lab.
Shri Kulkarni: What about the extremeophiles?
Bruce Murray: Thats not astrobiology, thats geobiology, which is a won-
derful field.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: Extremeophiles are starter data. Practice data.
Shri Kulkarni: What really missing here is a theoretical basis for astrobiol-
ogy. Astronomy has a theoretical basis, certainly physics doesits the
granddaddy of scientific theory. It took a long time for the chemists to get
a theoretical basis of their chemical bonds. The problem is that biology has
no overarching theory to guide us.
Robert Kuhn: You cant develop a theoretical basis for astrobiology unless
you have more than one data point, and so far, we only have one data point:
life on Earth.
Shri Kulkarni: Historically, this has always been the case. Chemistry
wasnt a discipline until you could see patterns. You must see patterns; you
have to classify data; you must do all the butterfly collecting (taxonomies)
first. Unfortunately, astrobiology is a difficult subject because you cant do
this collection in the field, because the field is a bit far away.
Robert Kuhn: I am moved because astrobiology is a unifying human quest.
All peoples, all societies, all groups have a common interest in learning
deeply about the universe in which we all live. Astrobiology carries the same
meaning for all peoples at all times.
Bruce Murray: Call it a quest, not a field, because its not a field yet. You
cant have a field without a single example, life elsewhere, so its a quest,
but a noble one.
166 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Bruce Murray
Mars is your passion. What one question would you like answered?
Ive spent 40 years pursuing the mystery of what Marss surface is like,
and most importantly, what is the history that is represented by it. And
Ive been defeated again and again by Mars, even though there are much
more powerful tools, much better spacecraft, more data, better instruments.
All this technology provides new insights, but they end up breaking the uni-
fying idea we had before, which is called a paradigmlike continental drift
was when it was first proposed about 1960 for the earth and revolutionized
the fields of geology and geophysics (and continues to do so). We lack that
kind of organizing framework, that kind of paradigm, for Mars. To find that
paradigm is, for me, the most exciting thing.
which still makes sense to me. If we cant culture it, if we cant grow it, its
going to be very hard to prove its alive.
Shri Kulkarni
Do you believe in life elsewhere?
Absolutely, and I hope well find life elsewhere. I hope well get dethroned
as the only life in the universe. And I fear for those guys who will see their
cozy, special world disappear. Thats one of the reasons why I like being in
this field because this is the ultimate argument against parochial ideas like
religion.
Expert Participants
David DiVincenzo
Senior Scientist, Thomas J. Watson Research Center, IBM Corporation; vis-
iting staff, Physics Department, California Institute of Technology
Seth Lloyd
Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute
of Technology; leader in quantum information, computing, and control
Birgitta Whaley
Professor, Department of Chemistry, University of California (Berkeley);
leader in nanoscience and quantum information and computation
Seth Lloyd: The world is in the midst of an information revolution. As
computers become progressively more important, people see the world in
terms of information. At a larger level, we are trying to construct a way of
seeing the world in terms of quantum information because the world, at its
core, is quantum mechanical, and all of these quantum systems can process
information. A great example of a quantum technology thats in common
use is the laser. The laser works by taking ordinary light, which ordinarily
just comes in bursts of photons all wiggling up and down randomly at differ-
ent wavelengths, and putting the light into the same quantum mechanical
state so that all the photons are wiggling at the same wavelength.
Will Computers Take a Quantum Leap? 171
Robert Kuhn: What is a large scale? How many qubits would you need to
be able to factor the kind of large numbers used in electronic transmission of
data?
Birgitta Whaley: A few thousand.
Robert Kuhn: Compare a quantum computer with a few thousand
qubits to an Intel Core 2 Duo chip with about 291 million transistors. For
problems like factoring numbers, the quantum computer would vastly out-
perform the traditional chip or, for that matter, any classical computer of
virtually any conceivable size.
David DiVincenzo: Right; not even the largest supercomputers can
compete with small quantum computers to solve these specific kinds of
problems.
Birgitta Whaley: Even given the current rapid rate of increase in classical
computing technology, not even in 50 years.
Seth Lloyd: Another fun problem that can be solved only with quantum
computers is trying to understand whats going on in the universe. If you
have a system that has, say, one atom, it will take a few bits of information
to describe that atom, and if you have a second atom, it will take another
few bits to describe that second atom; this means that if you have, say, a
hundred atoms all interacting with one another, a classical computer would
require 10100 bits of information to completely describe the system. To put
this number, 10100 bits, into perspective, there are only about 1090 elemen-
tary particles in the entire universe! You could solve that same problem on
a quantum computer with just a few hundred bits.
Birgitta Whaley: Quantum computing would be a wonderful tool for
studying the physics and chemistry of complex systems; down the road, it
could become useful for studying biological systems.
Robert Kuhn: How would quantum computing solve biological problems?
Birgitta Whaley: In the same way it solves complex chemical problems: in
order to be able to investigate the one particular property that youre inter-
ested in, you have to simulate a huge number of interactions together. Its
true of chemical reactions and its equally true of a small group of molecules
acting in a cell.
Robert Kuhn: In describing the strange world of quantum physics, one
must understand the nature of entanglement?
David DiVincenzo: Entanglement is both a real manifestation of what
makes quantum mechanics weird, and lies at the heart of what makes quan-
tum computing powerful. Edwin Schrodinger was the one who introduced
this notion of entanglement at the very same time that he introduced the
174 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
photons, the person at the other end could detect what had happened and
would know that he had been eavesdropped upon. So quantum mechanics
is a very powerful approach to cryptography.
Robert Kuhn: Are there other potential practical applications of quantum
mechanics?
David DiVincenzo: One area that looks promising is making higher preci-
sion clocks. The very same laboratory devices that are being explored as
quantum computers are also being explored as next generation atomic
clock. They would be fabulously accurate; 1,000 times more accurate.
Seth Lloyd: An application that Ive been involved in creates entangled
lightthis is not merely laser lightwhere all the photons are in this funky
entangled state. When I send this entangled light from me to you and you
measure when it arrives, then you can tell when it arrives to a much higher
degree of accuracy than you can with ordinary light. This means that if
you combine this timing precision with super accurate atomic clocks, you
can imagine, for instance, quantum global positioning system (GPS) satel-
lites orbiting the Earth providing extraordinarily accurate positioning to
below a centimeter! One application would be to construct a telescope with
a virtual aperture the size of the whole Earth. That would be quite an instru-
ment to look up at the heavens.
Robert Kuhn: How would such a telescope work?
Seth Lloyd: If I take two telescopic mirrors, like the twin Keck telescopes
on top of the volcano in Mona Kea, Hawaii, and if I know how far apart
they are within the accuracy of the wavelength of light that Im going to
use, then I can use the distance between both telescopes as if it was a single
aperture, a single mirror. Now imagine that your mirrors are up on satellites
and they are separated by the distance of the Earth. Here the accuracy is
determined by the size of the aperture (the size of the mirror) and the wave-
length of light that youre using. And the only way you can do this is if you
can position these mirrors within the accuracy of the wavelength of light.
Robert Kuhn: Let me summarize this remarkable flow of applications of
quantum mechanics: (i) quantum technologies enable us to conceive how
to build quantum computers; (ii) by thinking about quantum computers
we develop quantum information theory through which we develop new
applications like quantum clocks; (iii) we then apply quantum clocks to cre-
ate new systems of GPS with degrees of precision previously unimaginable;
and (iv) we use these super-accurate GPS systems to build telescopes of
astonishing effective size.
Seth Lloyd: Having said all this, the reality is that building quantum com-
puters is going to be extremely difficult to do. Atoms are very sensitive things
176 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Seth Lloyd: The other thing to remember about the laser metaphor is that,
if you look at the mathematics of the laser as compared with the light bulb,
many lasers are still much less powerful in terms of their actual wattage than
light bulbs are. You dont see many 100-watt lasers sitting around. Simi-
larly, to compare quantum computers with classical computers in terms of
their absolute computing power is to make an improper comparison. The
real question is what can quantum computers do for you, and here were
only just beginning to discover the possibilities (even with the relatively sim-
ple quantum computers weve constructed so far).
Robert Kuhn: How do you guys communicate?
Seth Lloyd: By e-mail.
David DiVincenzo: Web sites
Birgitta Whaley: At meetings; our meetings are so wonderful because
theyre so interdisciplinary.
Robert Kuhn: What do you learn from each other?
David DiVincenzo: That quantum computing is going to take awhile.
Birgitta Whaley
What are key developments in your field?
At whichever stage mankind has been, the ability to solve large, complex
problems always has an impact on our future. In a sense, that ability involves
Will Computers Take a Quantum Leap? 181
us in the happenings in the world around us. It is like peeking into the future
because with an understanding of the world, we can learn how to control it,
for better or for worse. The development of quantum computers, in particu-
lar, opens up new vistas to control our physical world because we know
that we will be able to use the computational capacity for simulating very
large, complex physical systems, and exceedingly complex biological sys-
tems, which we cannot now simulate. And if we cant simulate them, we
cant understand them. Quantum computing may eventually lead to deep
understanding of the most complex object we know, the human brain,
which would really revolutionize our appreciation of ourselves as human
beings.
David DiVincenzo
dingers cat?
What is Schro
The concept of Schrodingers cat, as introduced by Edwin Schrodinger in
the 1930s, was an attempt to illustrate how, if not why, quantum mechanics
actually gives alternative views of history. We humans like to play little
what if games. We say, What if Hitler had been killed in World War
I? And then we imagine in our fantasies the things that might have hap-
pened as a result of that what if. Quantum mechanics plays a different
kind of what if game. It says that these vast numbers of alternative histor-
ies or branchings in history that may have happened are actually almost
objective. They are in a funny sense actually real, and to illustrate this
counterintuitive notion, Schrodinger introduced a little thought experi-
ment. In his imaginary experiment, Schrodinger used an atom, which quan-
tum mechanically can be in a superposition of two different states and
thereby gets entangled. He specifically used a radioactive atom, which can
be in a superposition of either having decayed or having not decayed. He
182 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
invented a game in which the decay or not decay of the radioactive atom
resulted in a cat being killed or not killed. By this progression of events, the
cat itself came to be in this odd special state of being alive and not alive,
not being alive or dead with human uncertainty of which one was the actual-
ity, but being literally in the superposition state of both alive and dead at the
same time. In this manner, real historical events can be placed into this funny
superposition state because quantum mechanics asserts that, in some sense,
all versions of history get played out all at once.
Seth Lloyd
How do we know that quantum mechanics is real?
Einstein and other famous physicists have objected to it. At a gut level,
they feel that it is aesthetically wrong for the world to be founded on proba-
bilities; it just doesnt fit with their intuition of beauty. They dont want it to
be the case. And yet quantum mechanics is without a doubt the most heavily,
frequently, and completely confirmed physical theory that has ever been cre-
ated in terms of being verified by experimentverified time and time and
time again. This is strong evidence in its favor because if there were some
way that quantum mechanics could be shown to be wrong, people would
have loved to have falsified it. Quantum mechanics is both so counterintui-
tive and so successful; to me, this combination is one of the strongest recom-
mendations for confirming a theory.
What do you think will be the greatest advancement quantum mechanics will
allow us to make?
Quantum mechanics and quantum information theory will enable us to
construct a new way of thinking about the nature of reality, how the world
works, a quantum digital way of thinking about how the world works
because at its most fundamental level the world is quantum mechanical
and operates by representing and processing quantum information. The
quantum revolution in perception and thought and more recently in infor-
mation will continue to exert major influence.
Notes
1. Factoring: The process in which you take any given whole number and find
other whole numbers that when multiplied together yield that original whole num-
ber. For example, if 12 is the given number, then its factors are 1 and 12, 2 and 6,
and 3 and 4. When the given number gets very large, factoring becomes extraordi-
narily difficult.
2. See the question on Schrodingers Cat later in this chapter.
Chapter 13
Lasers that destroy missiles, computers that break terrorist codes, genetic
identification of anthrax strainswhen enemies pursue destructive technol-
ogies, we have no choice but to keep ahead. What does it take?
We hear much about technologies that support national security, but
what about the basic sciences that underlie them? For lasers that defend or
attack, its solid-state physics; for biowarfare identification and antidotes,
molecular biology; for cryptology, number theory; for computers and com-
munication, information theory.
Science has always been divided between basic science, which may or may
not have application to the world, and applied science, which directly feeds
us useful products and services. But with the scientific spirit of discovery
tempered by recent practicalities, weve increasingly had to justify expendi-
tures on basic science, whether by the need for national defense or other
useful scientific endeavors.
The great pure mathematician G.H. Hardy said proudly, I have never
done anything useful. No discovery of mine has made, or is likely to make,
directly or indirectly, for good or ill, the least difference to the amenity of the
world. . .Judged by all practical standards, the value of my mathematical life
is nil. As it turns out, Hardy was wrong: pure math has come to have many
real-world applications, cryptology and electronic security among them.
Yet notwithstanding the frequent contributions of basic science, it has
become increasingly difficult to find funding. Should basic science funding
be cut just because it doesnt lead to anything practical? The issue must
be joined: can we afford to fund research only if it has value? While
186 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Expert Participants
Llewellyn Doc Dougherty
Director of Technology, Raytheon Electronic Systems
David Herrelko
Brigadier General (retired); former vice commander, Aeronautical Systems
Center, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base; former commander, Joint Logis-
tics Systems Center
Steven Koonin
Former Provost and Professor of Theoretical Physics, California Institute of
Technology; adviser to the federal government on civilian biodefense (Cur-
rently on leave as Chief Scientist, British Petroleum)
Robert Kuhn: Must we justify basic science with its support for national
security?
Steve Koonin: No. Science is about ones curiosity of the world. People
observe the world and they tell a story about it, and thats what science is.
It is a basic human drive. It turns out that we are able to use a good deal of
the discoveries of science to do technology, whether for economic benefit
or for national security or for both. But the science itself is something that
is so beautiful and is such an intrinsic part of being a human being that you
want to support it.
Robert Kuhn: Basic science is a central part of the human quest.
How Does Basic Science Support National Security? 187
Steve Koonin: Look at the spectacular pictures from other planets that we
now have; thats the meaning of science.
Doc Dougherty: Only a very small fraction of all basic science research
impacts national defense in any specific sense; the vastly larger fraction
makes its broad impact on society. Take the biomedical sciences.
Steve Koonin: But even biomedical research brings benefits to national
security.
Robert Kuhn: What are some examples of weapons systems that have been
based on basic technologies?
David Herrelko: All of them. Go back to the 1920s and 1930s and the
purest of pure basic science, quantum theory, led to the first transistor,
integrated circuits, lasers, everything in electronic warfare that followed.
To oversimplify a bit, the basic military research in the 1960s lead to devel-
opment and testing of new weapon systems in the 1970s, to the production
of these systems in the 1980s, to their first real applications in the 1990s
that made the precision guided weapons possible in Desert Storm (the first
Iraq war). Military scientists had waited 30 years for the maturing of these
technologies.
Steve Koonin: So the pipeline can be 30 years.
David Herrelko: Sometimes even longer.
Steve Koonin: Sometimes very short.
Doc Dougherty: It is a question of what we define as the beginning of the
pipeline. If its basic science, if its the R and D phase, if its a directly related
discoveryeach defines its own period. In military systems, I would define
the beginning as when someone has demonstrated technology that has the
potential to be applied to a defense problem; in this case we have pretty con-
crete evidence that the pipeline is probably in the 30-year category.
Steve Koonin: There are outstanding examples contrary to that. Nuclear
fission is probably the most outstanding example: it was discovered in
1939 and first applied in warfare in 1945.
David Herrelko: And I know generals who will say, Now, do that every
time. I want deterministic predictability; I want to see the result on time, so
schedule it!
Steve Koonin: Obviously you cant make science work that like that, not
basic science, not applied science.
David Herrelko: If you cant, Ill find somebody who will. Ill give him
the money. Thats what these generals say.
188 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Steve Koonin: There are two ways: first is through grants from the Defense
Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Office of Naval Research,
and other parts of the DOD that fund basic research; these grants fund
graduate students, post docs, professors, equipment, and so on. Second is
through universities that manage laboratories: Lincoln Laboratories
at MIT is a good example of a defense-oriented laboratory embedded in a
university.
Doc Daughterty: There are other stakeholders as well. Industry, obviously,
lives off DOD contracts, both in the development phase and in the competi-
tion to manufacture the selected weapon system. In the production phase,
management, costs, schedule, and control become the issuesdelivering
weapon systems reliably, on time, in proper quantities, yet always under
the pressure of changing threats and varying budgets.
David Herrelko: Industry as stakeholder, yes; but we cant ask them to do
the basic researchwe really cant.
Steve Koonin: I agree. Nor can you ask the universities to do this kind of
mission-driven, on time, on schedule, on budget sorts of activitiesthats
just not what universities do well.
Robert Kuhn: Can basic science be held to a specific time line?
Steve Koonin: Basic science, no, not at all. Basic science is a hit-and-miss
endeavor; striking out 60, 70, 80 percent of the time is normal. Hitting the
ball 30 percent of the time makes it all worth it.
Robert Kuhn: And you cant predict how or when.
Steve Koonin: You cant. You cant legislate creativity. Basic science is a
creative enterprise, like composing a great symphony.
Robert Kuhn: Brahms took a long time to write his first symphony.
David Herrelko: Science does something wonderful that very few other
organizations do: blind, peer reviews of papers, projects, and proposals.
Researchers undergo really rigorous reviewsbrutal intellectual beatings
before they can get initial funding or later publish their works. Men and
women of science care enough to perform this great public service.
Steve Koonin: Parts of the defense establishment would do well with a sim-
ilar kind of peer review; in government it does not take place as often as you
would like.
Robert Kuhn: General Herrelko, do you agree with that?
David Herrelko: I think so, but its very difficult in a military hierarchy to
communicate honestly when every third word of a subordinate is sir.
190 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
a great example of how the basic science gets built up to provide a truly
revolutionary capability. To give the B2 its stealthy capabilities you had to
understand electromagnetic scattering as well as aerodynamics. You also
had to understand propulsion: how the engines could work with a reduced
radar signature as well as provide sufficient power to fly the airplane to
design specifications.
Doc Dougherty: One of the major differences between the B2 and first
Stealth aircraft, the F-117, was driven by the basic science of computational
electromagnetics to reduce the radar signature. We had difficulty in comput-
ing a closed form solution, or even a good numerical solution, to curved
body refraction, reflection, and conductivity. We were able to compute the
solution to the faceted designthe F-117 is built of flat plates.
David Herrelko: The F-117 looks like a gemstone.
Doc Dougherty: Its got flat plates and edges everywhere; this design solu-
tion was achieved from a computational perspective. People at that time
understood that curved surfaces were probably better to disperse radar, but
they could not predict the performance accurately enough to have confi-
dence for the aircraft to be able to fly to specifications.
Steve Koonin: Those equations that you were solving, Maxwells equa-
tions, were discovered 120 years ago; at the time it was basic science.
Robert Kuhn: Very basic science with seemingly no practical application.
David Herrelko: You cant vector basic research scientists to a goal 30
years in the future. If you told the inventors of the laser that the chief reason
that they should go into the lab was so that their grandchildren could listen
to music on CDs, it would never have happened (and they would have
thought you crazy).
Robert Kuhn: Is national security synonymous with weapons systems, or is
it broader?
David Herrelko: Broader for sure.
Steve Koonin: With terrorism an ever-present threat, national security
embeds defensive measures like detecting explosives, the biometrics of per-
sonal identification (knowing who is who), monitoring ports of entry, scan-
ning cargo containers. These have nothing to do with weapons systems, but
are extremely important elements of a more broadly conceived national
defense posture. America does not mount a very large standing army, and
consequently we rely on technology, particularly standoff technologies that
can mount attacks from distant locations as we go into combat situations.
Robert Kuhn: All of which makes national defense, broadly conceived,
increasingly dependent on science and technology.
192 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Steve Koonin: There is little objective evidence. Rather, sonar data pro-
vides wonderful insights into how the oceans are changing.
David Herrelko: Anecdotal stories of beneficial spin-offs of defense and
aerospace technologies are loved by the military and NASA. Everyone wants
to claim that their algorithm is the one generating higher resolution in mam-
mograms. Success has a thousand fathers.
Doc Dougherty: Scientists are very narrow, and appropriately so.
Steve Koonin: Matt Kabrisky said that you really have only one great
choice in life: you can either be narrow or you can be shallow.
Robert Kuhn: Shallow in the sense of breadth, with sufficient knowl-
edge and understanding of diverse areas so that one can facilitate communi-
cations between these areas and envision new connections.
Doc Dougherty: We need breadth as well as depth. We need some people
to be a little less narrow and a little more shallow. (Some in the military
joke that rank times IQ equals a constant.)
David Herrelko: Im shallow and proud of it.
Steve Koonin: Shallow is okay. My choice was to be shallow, but also to be
able to grab onto a source of narrownessa scientific specialtythat has the
depth of substance to discern deep structural relationships that could be inte-
grated into new concepts. The management of science and technology is
about making connections between the right kinds of narrow people in
order to create new and interesting things.
Doc Dougherty: Thats the vital middle level; there really arent very
many people who do that well.
David Herrelko: Im worried about a cargo cult behavior that I see
among some of our scientists. Let me explain. When I ask how can we cham-
pion better science and win the funding thats needed, the answer that comes
back is always anecdotal and rarely replicable. Why do I call this behavior
cargo cult? After World War II on an island just south of Fiji, the people
took straw and bamboo to recreate air fields and recreate little airplanes
with propellers and at night they would light up their mock airport. Why
did they do this? They were hoping that the great metal birds would come
back with the ice cream and the Hershey bars, thinking that if they set the
right stage, the magic would happen. If the airport were built, perhaps the
airplanes would come. They had made a cult out of the cargo.
Robert Kuhn: So your cargo cult analogy suggests that some scientists
look to ancillary activities that were temporally associated with successful
past projects, but in fact were not causally related to them, as prescriptive
mechanisms to develop future projects. And just like those great metal birds
How Does Basic Science Support National Security? 195
would not be returning with ice cream, such ways of thinking are doomed to
failure.
David Herrelko: Right. Another concern is that the contract between the
American public and basic science is fundamentally changing. From the
end of World War II, when we were infatuated with technology, and then
got a kick in the butt with Sputnik (the first Russian satellite), we knew that
science was good for the country, that an investment in science would pay
off. Our national belief was that scientists were wise and made great contri-
butions. I dont think that same contract is true any more.
Robert Kuhn: To what do you attribute this shift away from science?
Cynicism? Academic deconstruction? Religious fundamentalism?
David Herrelko: Not cynicism. The academics have little impact. Its
fundamentalism, take your pick of any religious stripe you like. Many peo-
ple are worse than not scientific; they are anti-scientific.
Steve Koonin: The irony is that this negative anti-scientific bias is increas-
ing at a time when the positive impact that science and technology has on
everyday life is also increasing. What the cargo cult needs, to pick up your
metaphor, is a priest who understands what is really going on and so he is in
the back room on the radio calling the guys with the airplanes, even while
allowing his flock to continue building those mock airfields.
David Herrelko: In fact the stakes are higher. The pace of technology and
innovation continues to quicken. If we have citizens who are sufficiently
sophisticated to engage these issues, if we dont raise our children to excel
in math and science, we are going to lose out.
Steve Koonin: Often the political structure doesnt want to hear about the
science at all. There are many examples currently, such as stem cells, global
climate change, and levels of toxicity. People just dont want to hear about
these science-based issues, never mind the facts.
David Herrelko: I praise industry, which is trying hard to help improve
schools in their local areas. Many companies are allocating a good deal of
money to these programs, plus management time, but Im afraid its like
sticking fingers in the dyke.
Steve Koonin: Its not that everyone has to grow up to be a scientist; its
just that people should have some appreciation for these issues of national
importance.
Robert Kuhn: In todays world, one cannot be an informed citizen without
significant understanding of science.
Steve Koonin: Thats because many of the issues that impact contemporary
society are based on science.
196 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
David Herrelko: And the more fourth graders whom we carry through
eighth grade enhancing their interest in science, the more effective our basic
science will become in the future.
Doc Dougherty: Anti-science sentiment in America has done so much to
damage the educational environment, poisoning the capacity of young
people who might otherwise be interested in science.
Robert Kuhn: Thus diminishing the pool of potential scientists.
Steve Koonin: Anti-science attitudes pervading society are, sadly, a
uniquely U.S. phenomenon. There is nothing of the sort in Western or
Eastern Europe or anywhere in Asia.
David Herrelko: Student enrollment in science is down at all levels, espe-
cially at the graduate level where it really counts.
Doc Dougherty: In addition, the good economy in recent years has been
sucking graduate students out into industry, which is also diminishing the
new generation of scientific professionals.
Steve Koonin: Whats most important is to have a vital scientific base that
continues to discover new phenomena, and maybe even more importantly to
train those new generations of scientists on whom we can generate future
technologies that will be needed in the future. If were going to continue to
have a secure nation, given our social, economic and political situation, we
must have that technology base.
Robert Kuhn: The world situation changes as does our domestic environ-
ment. The nations military-industrial-academic complex, which started
seriously in World War II, probably reached its peak during the Cold War.
But now we are in a different era. Do these institutions have to change,
structurally and/or functionally?
Steve Koonin: Of course they do; circumstances are changing. Homeland
defense is now a major issue on everyones agenda. Defense technologies
are not only about the militarythe military never operates within the U.S.
but now also about law enforcement. For example, intelligence agencies
whose main charter is overseas operations now must be concerned about
domestic intelligence and operations. And these new challenges mean that
we must have new organizations, in both government and business. The
way business operates has changed. It used to be that the only players in
the defense establishment were the multinational giantsGeneral Electric,
Boeing, General Motors, IBM, and so on. Now we have a whole host of
smaller companies developing new technologies.
David Herrelko: Lets go beyond military contributions. To me basic sci-
ence has made possible all kinds of wonderful things, like inexpensive digital
How Does Basic Science Support National Security? 197
198 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Steve Koonin
What big discoveries might we see in this century?
Id start the list with information. Weve seen in the last two decades an
exponentially expanding capacity to store information, to process it, to
transmit it, to visualize it. These capabilities are going to accelerate even fur-
ther in the next several decades. Well transform the way that we deal with
the world around us, with the way that we deal with ourselves. Id put also
on the list a growing appreciation to design and fabricate materialsmateri-
als that will be stronger, lighter, more durable, more flexible, whatever prop-
erties one wants. We will even be mimicking the way living things fabricate
materials. New materials will have a big impact on the world.
I think that another transforming discovery will be that we will very likely
find evidence for life beyond our own planet, whether it will be life in exist-
ence now or life that was once in existence on Mars or under the ice on
Europa, perhaps a planet around some other star. I think it will happen.
Those environments are too rich, too active, not to have something like life
arise. And I think when that happens, when we find life, the discovery will
fundamentally transform the way we think about life and the way we think
about ourselves.
As provost at Caltech, it is part of my responsibility to understand how all
the fields of science fit together and play against and enhance one another.
As we look forward over the next several decades, a major focal point of dis-
covery is certainly biology, appreciating how living things work. One funda-
mental area is the brain, understanding how three pounds of cells and
chemicals can generate thought, memories, reasoning, and emotions. In the
physical sciences, I think the practical manipulation and application of
quantum phenomena are going to have a profound effect on the way we live.
I also think a better understanding of the earth, its climate and its geology, is
going to bring practical benefits to peoples lives over the next 20 years or so.
David Herrelko
What technologies has basic science spawned that have trickled down to the
public?
Key developments probably were the fax machine and the xerox. More
than any other commercialized technology, they may have contributed most
to bringing down the Soviet Union. In this country, we cherish loyal dis-
obedience, and as long as we have an open and free society, the future looks
good to me.
Talk about other speculative areas in which youve been involved.
It is as tough speculating on developments in basic science as it is raising
childrenall ones careful plans can be overthrown instantaneously.
How do we improve the general appreciation of science?
The numbers are devastating: how many potentially brilliant kids fall
away from math and science so that by the eighth grade theyre out of the
game entirely. Females compose half of the geniuses in this country, but they
are underrepresented in math and scienceand if you cant play, youre dis-
enfranchised and youre angry. We need to build up a solid base of people
who can use the power tools of the next generation, math and science, or
America is going to be left in the dust.
Doc Dougherty
Does the general public properly appreciate science?
I think the public sees different implications of science in their life. They
definitely see it in their consumer electronics; they definitely see it in their
national defense. However, much of science they do not understand, and
because the press for the most part doesnt pay attention, the people do not
get an opportunity to appreciate science well enough to make the connection
to everyday life.
Will our basic security improve quickly enough?
I have to differentiate between two types of security: technologies for the
electronic entertainment industry and direct national security. The security
associated with the electronic entertainment industrysuch as the economic
aspect of the entertainment industry, including encryption, copy protection,
patents, copyright rights, payment for services, payment for useis in a cat-
egory by itself. Current law and current technology are mismatched. The
other type of basic security is for the direct support of national security.
The data glut is not a data glut per se: it is a mismatch between the ability
to collect and the ability to analyze. With smarter computers, even if not
with smarter people, this mismatch will evolve and improve over time.
Chapter 14
carrying skeptic discuss how the clash between technology and religion
reshapes our search for meaning. They discuss how technology, versus sci-
ence, may drive this trend. From the alarm clock to 24-hour news, technol-
ogy constantly disrupts us and, as a result, makes the inner contemplation
necessary for a full spiritual life difficult if not impossible. The guests delve
into the rise of fundamentalisma reaction to modernity in general but also
perhaps to Western rationalismand agree that religion answers a deep
human need for ritual, connection, and inspiration.
Islamic scientist Muzaffar Iqbal laments the intrusion of the cell phone in
the mosque, while skeptic Michael Shermer retorts that you can just turn it
off. But Iqbal is talking about something bigger here, a natural result of 8
or 10 hours of work-a-day routine with all these gadgets leads to a total dis-
integration of the inner concentration of our personality. Christian sociolo-
gist Don Miller dots the i in this argument as he talks about technology,
efficiency, and its ultimate lack of capacity to give our deeper selves mean-
ing, a quest that unfailingly appears to be a universal need for all human
beings.
The conversation moves to the difference between fundamentalism and
extremism. Fundamentalists in all religions have received a tremendous
amount of media time in recent years. Iqbal stresses that extremism is differ-
ent from fundamentalism, a term that means returning to the basics or fun-
damentals of a belief. Is this just a semantic argument or does he make a
meaningful distinction? Says Iqbal, Extremists are people who have gone
out. They have left the path. You cannot blame religion for that.
Religion answers a deep human need for ritual, connection, and inspira-
tion. The Skeptics Society holds their meetings at the California Institute of
Technology (Caltech). Shermer: If ever there was a Mecca of science, its
Caltech, right? As Shermer points out, Stephen Hawking deals with the
deepest questions in the universe: why is there a universe at all, what was
there before time began? These are really traditional theological-type
questions.
Expert Participants
Muzaffar Iqbal
Founder and President, Center for Islam and Science; Regional Director for
the Muslim World, Center for Theology and Natural Science; editor Kalam
newsletter on Islam and Science
Donald Miller
Professor of Religion and Executive Director, Center for Religion and Civic
Culture, University of Southern California
Can Religion Withstand Technology? 203
Michael Shermer
President, Skeptics Society; Publisher, Skeptics magazine; author, How We
Believe and Why People Believe Weird Things; Columnist, Scientific Ameri-
can magazine
Robert Kuhn: In an age of increasing knowledge in science and technol-
ogy, it seems paradoxical that traditional religious views are also on the
ascendancy. Is this true?
Michael Schermer: It has nothing to do with God or religion; its just a
sense of humility in the face of the size and scope of the cosmos.
Don Miller: There are even more people going to church, temple, or syna-
gogue now than in the early years of the American republic. We tend to
romanticize the past and think that back then people were so much more
religious. But as a matter of fact, as measured by church attendance, we
are three times more religious now than we were 200 years ago, with about
40 percent of the population in a typical weak attending a church, temple, or
synagogue.
Robert Kuhn: I find it fascinating that in an age of science we have this
increase in traditional or fundamentalist views.
Michael Schermer: Lets not let this point go; this is very interesting.
Conservative pundits argue that America is going to hell in a hand-
basket and that we are less moral than weve ever been and that we have
to get America back to the Christian nation it used to be. They have it all
backwards: as a nation America has never been as religious as it is now,
and if this is the casewhich it ismaybe there is some correlation between
us being so religious and America going to hell in a hand-basket.
Muzaffar Iqbal: We need to distinguish between science and technology.
Science itself does not have significant impact on everyday life, certainly
not directly on church or mosque attendance. But technology does. Technol-
ogy is the application of science that defines the way human beings live, and
because modern technology is threatening the traditional way of life, people,
as a reaction, feel the need to express their religious convictions by going to
churches or mosques. Each new device that comes into existence intrudes
into our lives in a way. Take cell phones. What have cell phones done to
us? The least we can say is that they have become an additional element of
intrusion. I am thinking of the annual pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca that has
been happening for 1,400 years or more; this pilgrimage is when you leave
the world behind for at least three days and you are totally devoted to a set
204 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Muzaffar Iqbal: No, I am not saying stop now. I am saying that the
impact of all these new inventions and technological devices will be a further
disintegration of the inner center of being, so that we will require a re-
concentration of our inner life at the end of the day, or during the day. That
is precisely the purpose of religious rituals.
Robert Kuhn: This sounds serious: increasing and continuous technologi-
cal intrusions are going to have a significantly greater degrading effect on
human sense and sensitivities.
Muzaffar Iqbal: I am talking to you with my full concentration and you
are holding your attention towards me. Assume a metaphor that the energy
exchange between us is like 10 volts of electricity. What happens when sud-
denly a phone call comes in, or if Im doing 10 different things at the same
time? I have the same 10 volts of electricity but now they are divided into
smaller parts, maybe a dozen parts, and my being is shattered and you are
not listening to me any more.
Michael Schermer: I can turn my cell phone off. You can pick and choose.
We already do this.
Muzaffar Iqbal: No, you are wrong; you cannot. Once you have created
technology you cannot control it. Its the airplane and the car that brought
me here: I cannot control them anymore; I cannot travel on a camel to go
to the hajj as my grandfathers used to do.
Michael Schermer: It would take longer.
Muzaffar Iqbal: No, you cannot choose anymore. I would love to go back;
my grandfather and all previous generations took six months to go to Mecca
and every step of the way they were thinking about their pilgrimage, every
step was bringing them closer to God. But I cannot do this. I cannot go back.
Humanity cannot go back.
Robert Kuhn: Muzaffar is saying that not being able to go back, not being
able to control the intrusion of technology, has its consequences.
Michael Schermer: Of course. 50,000 years ago, we were living in caves.
So we cant have that experience anymore. So what!
Muzaffar Iqbal: The news of somebody dying in Jerusalem would not have
traveled around the world without the technology we have now. The impact
of that news would not have reached millions of people. So dont say that
you can just turn off technology; you cannot turn it off.
Don Miller: One of my fears about technology is that it may lead us to
think that we can be self-sufficient, that we can control our universe, and
that we need not be dependent or humble. One of the most fundamental
things about people who are religious is they do not see themselves as being
Can Religion Withstand Technology? 207
their own master; they have a sense that they are dependent upon something
other than themselves. And while there are many abuses to religion, one of
the qualities of religion that I really appreciate is this feeling of humility, that
Im not so independent, that I belong to a higher power, whatever that
higher power may be. I fear that technology may tempt us to think that we
can be independent and self-sufficient, to our detriment.
Michael Schermer: But we have technological failures, like the Titanic dis-
aster or the space shuttle disaster, which slap us back downand thats
good; thats how we learn and get better. Why not have a sense of humble-
ness and mutual dependency in the face of just the cosmos itself ? The uni-
verse alone is so huge, so grand, so vacuous that we should feel small and
unimportant; we shouldnt feel self-empowered.
Don Miller: I would affirm that grand vision.
Muzaffar Iqbal: The point Don is making is very important: technology
breeds a false sense of empowerment, as if we can do everything. We cannot
do everything. One need look no further than death. No amount of technol-
ogy is going to eliminate death from human existence. Death is such an over-
whelming, humbling experience. We all experience death: we see people
dying. Death is the ultimately frontier where technology must remain totally
humble; no amount of technology is going to keep the human body working
forever and ever.
Michael Schermer: It might. Give us another 10,000 years at the current
pace of Moores Law (computing power doubling every 18 months or so).
We might live 200 years, 500 years, 1000 years, 10,000 years. Then down-
load our neurons into silicon chips, or the information from our neurons
into software on chips. Silicon lasts a lot longer than protein meatits just
meat in your brainso exchange brain meat for brain metal; this is possible.
Muzaffar Iqbal: No, Michael, you are wrong. As you know yourself as a
self-aware human person, this person cannot live forever, is not designed
to live forever; thats when Im talking about.
Michael Schermer: Wait a minute! You people believe in God, you think
that we are going to live forever, just in some other stateyoure contra-
dicting yourself.
Robert Kuhn: Muzzffar, lets go back to the. . .
Michael Schermer: Dont let him off the hook here. We got him!
Robert Kuhn: The eternal life of the religious vision is imagined to be a
totally different plane of existence, involving some nonphysical existence,
which is fundamentally distinct from an enhanced physical existence. This
means, at least from a test of internal consistency, that the same self-aware
208 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
the Muslim world: one class of people who go to the Madrasa system and do
not have any knowledge of modern, Westerm, secular science, which also
comes with its own worldview; and another class of people who do not go
with the Madrasa system and who have no sense of Islamic tradition and
no participation in its routines. This dichotomy is resulting in cultural
schizophrenia in the Muslim world.
Robert Kuhn: What has been the impact on the Madrasas?
Muzaffar Iqbal: The impact on the Madrasas has been to retreat further
into their religious core, because they feel there is great need to protect their
belief and tradition in the face of this assault of Westerm thinking, which
they view as an outright attack.
Robert Kuhn: Thats the whole point here, thats what technology does: it
forces a religious group to move more deeply into their own traditions and
become more isolated from other groups. These are significant trends. What
are the implications? In the Jewish community, for example, there are large
groups who are returning to the tradition with more ritualism even while the
majority is becoming more secular. The trend seems to be increasing frag-
mentation, not only between different religions but within same religions.
Don Miller: Precisely. While there may be this sort of movement toward
more fundamentalist absolutism, at the same time there are many people
who feel free to make independent choices about their life philosophies, peo-
ple who in previous generations did not have this same availability of choice,
people who could only inherit what was passed down to them. And these
new choices are being accepted guiltlessly, thats the difference from the
past. In previous generations, if you left your father or mothers inherited
religion, you felt guilt about your desertion. Now, at least in the U.S.,
there is an almost moral obligation to make up your own mind, to construct
your own recipe for your own belief system.
Michael Schermer: Don, do you therefore think that this impulse, the reli-
gious impulse, or the impulse to adhere to customs and perform rituals, is
part of human nature? If humanity started all over again, say on Mars,
would religion evolve again?
Don Miller: Absolutely. I think there is some deep human need to have
meaning and to pursue ultimate significance.
Muzaffar Iqbal: I agree with you.
Don Miller: And every religious tradition is going to have some embodi-
ment of their belief system, including the skeptics.
Michael Schermer: This is why we hold our Skeptic meetings on Sundays
at Caltech (joke!), which is sort of the church of science; I mean if ever there
210 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
was a Mecca of science, its Cal Tech, right? In my view, religion is a social
institution that reinforces the rules of cooperation and punishes excessive
deviance or greed and thereby helps hold our social primate species together.
Its a way of living with large numbers without killing each other all the
time.
Muzaffar Iqbal: Yes, but I think that the biggest danger comes from the
new religion that you just namedscientism. Your new religion basically
denies the fundamental aspects of humanity that are unique, deeper aspects
of our psyche that are not measurable by scientific instruments. Anything
that is not quantifiable is beyond the limits of that new religion called scien-
tism; therefore no matter how powerful scientism becomes, it will forever
leave humanity in need of something higher. Therefore, even people who
believe in this new religion of scientism would always be craving to see
beyond it.
Robert Kuhn: Because of scientism, people will crave what they feel
theyve lost even more, so scientism will create even greater tensions and fis-
sions in world societies. Michael, are these stresses what you want to cause?
Michael Schermer: No, we Skeptics are just building a home for people
whose spiritual needs are not being met by religion and who find a kind of
intellectual and emotional salvation in the modern scientific worldview. I
just wrote a column for Scientific American called The Scientific Shaman;
its about Stephen Hawking, who just turned 60. And my question is, why is
he so popular? Part of Hawkings popularity is because of his nerve disease;
its incredible that he has survived at all and his courage of handling life in
his extremely debilitating condition is amazing. But another part of his wide
popular recognition is that he is dealing with the biggest, deepest, most ulti-
mate questions of existence. Hawking is daring to ask, and trying to answer,
Why does the universe bother to exist at all? Why should there be some-
thing instead of nothing? What existed before the Big Bang? What was
there before time began? These are really theological-type questions, or at
least traditionally they were theological-type questions. So there is a hunger
for ultimate answers to ultimate questions, and millions of people have
bought his books. There is a very large group of people, larger than most
people realize, who have a hunger to ask the big questions but who do not
believe in a traditional religious way of answering them. They are looking
for answers, and in my opinion there is only one answer, and that is science.
Robert Kuhn: Lets discuss religious fundamentalism. What does it mean
in America and in other cultures?
Don Miller: Fundamentalism has many different definitions. The classical
sociological view is that fundamentalism is some kind of reaction against
modernity, a kind of modernity that is perceived as something that is not
Can Religion Withstand Technology? 211
Michael Schermer: But the question on the table is not the middle way
people, its the people who fly planes into buildings, where do they come
from? And why is religion particularly good at driving people to do things
like that?
Robert Kuhn: Any religion.
Michael Schermer: Any religion. And even non-religions, too. Marxist
ideologies can get people to commit horrendous acts which they see as cou-
rageous acts of violence.
Muzaffar Iqbal: You have already decided that a particular act is a direct
result of religious teachings; we havent established that yet.
Michael Schermer: Not the teachings; its the commitment to a philoso-
phy, an ideology or religious belief. I just think that religion is particularly
good at driving people to do violent, terrible things because its good at get-
ting people to believe fanatical, extreme things. Most of the acts of these
kinds of destructive acts in todays world are committed in the name of
God; not all of them, granted, but most of them.
Don Miller: Thats such a gross generalization. I have to break in here
because we are devolving into very simplistic thinking if we say religion is
particularly good at inciting violence. They are so many non-religious
ideologies that have been good at purges and violence.
Muzaffar Iqbal: Nationalism is one of them. Look at the Second World
War. Were the killings motivated by religious extremism or by nationalism?
Michael Schermer: More nationalism, sure.
Muzaffar Iqbal: So nationalism can be bad. Any belief can be bad. Perhaps
skepticism can be bad?
Michael Schermer: I agree. Its the point you brought up initially: the prob-
lem is extremism, not fundamentalism per se. When fundamentalism
expresses itself in some extreme way, then it can cause a problem.
This may displease some, but I do not see much difference among funda-
mentalists of all beliefsa common mindset unites them all. And of this I
am sure: group exclusivity breeds antagonisms.
Id be surprised if any of todays religions turns out to be uniquely true
and in the remote chance that one is, Id also be mighty disappointed.
But religion will not go away. There is something sitting at the center
of human nature that yearns to soar far beyond our feeble bodies and
extend far beyond our passing lives, something that demands our continuing
attention. Thats real religion. We cant ignore religion to get Closer To
Truth.
Muzaffar Iqbal
Does public opinion confuse religious extremism with political extremism?
Were not talking about a purely religious war in the sense of having no
connection with politics, with social oppression. The people who are fight-
ingfor example, in the Middle Eastthey are not fighting on the basis of
what Islam tells them. They are fighting on the basis of other things. If I
am a 13-year-old boy living in Jerusalem, and my father and mother have
been killed by a bomb, and I see no other future and no hope, and I only have
my own body and a few little nails and some explosives, and I have no other
means of doing anything, then thats what I have and thats what I will use.
We are dealing with a broad social and political problem, we are not just
dealing with a religious phenomenon.
Donald Miller
Do you think the general public properly appreciates science?
There is certainly awareness that technological breakthroughs are creating
strong challenges to traditional notions of religion. And so technology in
some ways is polarizing the religious audience into people who want to keep
it the way it used to be or return it to the way it was before technology, and
people who are saying we definitely need to reconceptualize our religious
beliefs in order to account for and accommodate these technological
changes.
where they can feel affirmed, where they can share their needs and burdens.
Im not trying to downplay the issue of truth, but I dont think most people
come to religion out of some kind of abstract speculation about whether
God is real. I think that religious belief and associations are typically more
often born out of peoples personal experiences. Considering my own
beliefs, I tend to take a more experiential approach to religion and my analy-
sis of religion.
Michael Shermer
Will technology become increasingly disruptive?
I dont think technology is fundamentally destructive. All virtually em-
brace technology; even the technophobes who lambast it in op-ed pieces in
the New York Times are themselves writing and speaking under the very
blanket of freedom that technology providesI think they are terribly hypo-
critical. Medical technologies have allowed these anti-technology critics to
live long enough to write op-ed pieces against technology. Everybody uses
technology. The problem is simply that anything that is new and novel is for-
eign and scary to peoplethis will always be the casebut its just a ques-
tion of getting used to it. Take human cloning, for example. It is going to
happen. It doesnt matter whether Congress bans it or not, it is going to hap-
pen. Its going to happen somewhere outside of America first and it will hap-
pen in America in stealth. It is going to happenand then everyone will get
used to it, then itll be no big deal. But then there will be some other new
technology to rail against.
They are age-old antagonists, science and religion. But if we seek ultimate
meaning in our fleeting and ephemeral lives, and ultimate purpose in our
persisting and ineffable universe, there is an irrepressible yearning to harmo-
nize science and religion.
But is harmonizing science and religion wishful thinking? Long considered
adversaries on the battlefield of grand worldviews because at their most fun-
damental level both claim to do much the same thing, science and religion
each claim privilege to access ultimate truth, to provide deep insight into
the nature of the world around us, and to give a profound sense of our place
or purpose in the Universe.
Science is founded on empiricism and analysis; religion on revelation and
faith. Given their different foundations, can they ever be harmonized?
Should they? Or do science and religion simply inhabit divergent, non-
overlapping spheres of influenceMagesteria in Stephen J. Goulds term
with no real meaning ever able to pass between the two?
In recent years, there has been an explosion of interest in the relationship
between science and religion. Why is this happening, and why now?
This is a topic with strong views. On the one hand, some claim that reli-
gion is nonsense and that a dialogue between science and religion is a waste
of time because at best it would give false hope to religion and at worst sus-
tain mental oppression. On the other hand, other people believe that true
science must be guided by religious understanding, that wherever science is
shown to conflict with religion that science should be re-evaluated.
218 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Approached rationally, here are some questions to ask. How does scien-
tific knowledge alter our perception of religion? In fact, is there any such a
thing as religious knowledge or is it only religious belief ? And is it pos-
sible for science to bring deeper meaning to religion, instead of undermining
and eroding its basic tenets? But if so, should science have such a supporting
role, sustaining the vision of religion? Or should science offer a new and
more honest moral and ethical structure, replacing in the future what reli-
gion has dominated in the past?
In this chapter, a skeptic takes on a Christian theologian and a scientist
who is a devout Muslim. The issues are nothing but the biggestwhether
or not belief in an all-powerful, eternal deity is truly compatible with scien-
tific principles and discoveries. For the theologian and the Islamic scientist,
the antipathy between science and religion has been overplayed. They make
the case that science and religion can coexist peacefully, even productively.
The skeptic counters that conflict is inevitable in the face of our growing
knowledge base and the total absence of any kind of rational proof of a
deitys existence. They all agree that recent discoveries in cosmology and
neuroscience have cast doubt on beliefs central to most of the worlds major
religions, such as a deity creating the universe and the belief that humans
possess an immortal soul.
Expert Participants
Muzaffar Iqbal
Founder and President, Center for Islam and Science; Regional Director
for the Muslim World, Center for Theology and Natural Science; editor,
Kalam newsletter on Islam and Science
Nancey Murphy
Professor of Christian Philosophy, Fuller Theological Seminary; Director,
Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences; author, Theology in the Age
of Scientific Reasoning
Michael Shermer
President, Skeptics Society; Publisher, Skeptics magazine; author, How
We Believe, Why People Believe Weird Things, and Why Darwin Matters;
Columnist, Scientific American magazine
Muzaffar Iqbal: I did science for most of my life, and for me, science and
religion are just one thing. One single thing. It is not that one has a scientific
worldview and a religious worldview, that you have God and you have sci-
ence. No, its just one single thing. The Islamic religious tradition doesnt
Can We Believe in Both Science and Religion? 219
deal with how things work; it just states why. It was left to the scientists and
the philosophers to deal with the question of how. These are two very, very
clearly distinguishable questions, why and how?
Michael Schermer: But arent you curious? If you say that God started the
universe, arent you curious how he did it?
Muzaffar Iqbal: Exactly.
Michael Schermer: Dont you want to know what forces God used? Did
He use all four forces combined, and how did He do that? Well, thats just
science.
Muzaffar Iqbal: Exactly; that is the domain of the intellectual tradition,
and thats what the philosophers and the scientists have been working on.
But the why question is outside the domain of science. Why did God create
it as He did? The faith tradition tells you that God created it and at the same
time it also tells you that God says to go out and find out how He created it.
Go and study oceans, look at mountains, investigate camelsall these cre-
ated things are signs for humanity. The Koran gives the example of the
honey bee and says at the end of the refrain, at the end of many verses, that
this is a sign for people who think, for people who ponder, for people who
reflect. This is a constant refrain in the Koran and this is the guiding princi-
pal for the Islamic scientific traditionto go out and find.
Robert Kuhn: The same is true in the Old and New Testament as well.
Michael Schermer: I disagree with your distinction between how and why
questions, that only the former can be answered by science. Evolutionary
biologists ask ultimate why questions; for example, why do we like sweet
fatty foods? We havent answered that.
Nancey Murphy: Thats the ultimate why question in your life?
Michael Schermer: At the moment it is because Im trying to lose some
weight.
Muzaffar Iqbal: Well if thats your ultimate question. . .
Michael Schermer: Im a basic kind of guy, you know, I like my food.
Robert Kuhn: The point is a serious one. Can science answer ultimate why
questions?
Michael Schermer: Science can answer why as well as how questions. On
sweet fatty foods, the how is the physiology of taste. But when we want to
know why, we must explore our evolutionary history. Here is one kind of
why answer from evolution: foods that are high in energy value (calories)
and therefore vital for sustaining life are at once sweet tasting and high in
fat content. Assume that these foods are somewhat rare and hard to get, so
220 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
never begin to touch the question of where did the universe come from, why
is it here, why is it the way it is?
Muzaffar Iqbal: But that is the same kind of why as why is there hydrogen
bonding, just a more sophisticated version.
Michael Schermer: How about, why should there be something instead of
nothing? As weve said, you cannot get any bigger than that. Thats about
as deep as it goes.
Muzaffar Iqbal: Even in cosmology, were still dealing withafter the
beginning of the universethe existence of physical laws.
Michael Schermer: What would be before that?
Nancey Murphy: Boundaries have become so much messier because
although we used to be inclined to say that there could not have been any-
thing prior to the beginning of the universe, now we are not so sure
Robert Kuhn: We have universe models of expansion and collapse, per-
haps in endless cycles. We have multi-universe models, built on inflation
theory, where baby universes keep splitting off and forming new universes,
also perhaps endlessly. And we have multiverse models where different uni-
verses exist in different dimensions or on different branes (in different
dimensions).
Nancey Murphy: So now it is meaningful to ask what was there before the
Big Bang in our universe.
Robert Kuhn: But you always need the laws of physics.
Michael Schermer: They may not be ours though; the laws of physics may
be different in these different universes.
Nancey Murphy: But it is legitimate to ask the question, why are the laws
of physics just right for us to be here? One might say that that this is the ulti-
mate design question and only a religious answer can be provided. But you
can also hypothesize that this universe, the one in which we live, is just one
of innumerable other universes, so that no special answer is needed.
Robert Kuhn: This is part of a line of reasoning called the Anthropic Prin-
ciple and it has fascinated and infuriated many scientists and theologians. In
simple terms, the anthropic principle states that the reason that we human
beings just happen to be in a universe where all the laws are just perfect for
our existence, however improbable such an extraordinary coincidence at
first may seem, is that if this were not so, if our universe did not meet all
these stringent requirements, we would not be here to make the observation.
In other words, only in a perfect universe can we be wondering why our uni-
verse is so perfect. (As stated, this is the Weak anthropic principle. The
222 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Strong anthropic principle dips further into the murky depths of universal
uniqueness by claiming that our universe must have those properties which
allow sentient life to develop within it.)
Nancey Murphy: So theologys unique claim to answer ultimate why ques-
tions is muddied up.
Michael Schermer: Nancey, you know everything I know about all this
stuff. So why do you believe and why dont I?
Nancey Murphy: It really comes down to my own personal experience:
growing up in a Christian home, praying and finding that there really seemed
to be somebody at the other end listening and responding and talking. Basi-
cally it comes down to a matter of religious experience. But as you are point-
ing out, if you hold to a belief position and you set out to make it rational
that is, you set out to find logical, analytically defensible reasons for your
beliefyou will have difficulty. So the reason why my basic motivation is
looking for reasons why God exists rather for reasons why God does not
exist really comes down to my personal history.
Muzaffar Iqbal: Within Islamic intellectual religion the word nufs is
associated with soul. Now nufs is physical, or a combination of physical
and nonphysical elements. When I say nonphysical I mean the ideas and
thoughts that run through your mind, not the neurons that are in your mind,
but the thoughts that neurons supposedly are carrying (as neuroscience
would tell us). Some element of physicality is also involved; so nufs is one
thing and ruah is another thingruah is also in Hebrew.
Robert Kuhn: Ruah in Hebrew can mean spirit or soul, whose ambiguous
essence can be either physical or nonphysical, or it can mean unambiguously
physical things like wind or breath.
Muzaffar Iqbal: So in Islam nufs and ruah are clearly distinguished. And
the Koran talks about these two as totally separate and distinct entities. I
think what neuroscience is doing is talking about nufs.
Michael Schermer: But neuroscience knows how thoughts are generated:
we have the little synapses between two neurons across which chemical
transmitters pass signals. If there are no synapses, there are no thoughts. So
how can thoughts get carried on into eternity?
Muzaffar Iqbal: I have a very clear picture of this. Neurons are carriers of
thought; they are not thought themselves. Neurons are one thing and
thought is another thing.
Michael Schermer: No.
Muzaffar Iqbal: To me they are.
Can We Believe in Both Science and Religion? 223
Michael Schermer: To you they are because thats what you want to
believe. Youre not making any sense.
Muzaffar Iqbal: What neuroscientists are measuring through their instru-
ments are neurons; they are not measuring thought.
Robert Kuhn: Nancey, when you say you believe in a physicalist explana-
tion of the soul, you also say that this explanation is non-reductive, which
means you do not believe we can ever reduce this physical description of
the soul to the basic laws of physics and chemistry alone. Isnt Muzaffar also
arguing for a non-reductive explanation for the soul?
Nancey Murphy: What he was saying about neurons and thoughts being
different is a good example of a non-reductive approach. The firing of a neu-
ron is that which enables there to be a thoughtthere would be no thoughts
without the firing of neuronsbut we still have to make a conceptual dis-
tinction between a neuron firing and thinking.
Muzaffar Iqbal: Are we talking on the same wavelength? Im talking about
nufs and ruah and that there are two separate entities.
Nancey Murphy: No. I am committed to saying that everything mental, all
we speak about when we say mind, is physically constructed without need
of a nonphysical addition of any kind.
Robert Kuhn: Yet you do also believe that God designed, in one way or
another, the physical human brain and human mind to have spiritual as well
as mental capacities.
Nancey Murphy: Yes. I dont talk about spirit or soul as an entity or sub-
stance, but I do believe spiritual capacities emerge from our complex neural
equipment in a social/cultural context.
Robert Kuhn: Back to Michaels question about the resurrection, in which,
Nancey, you do believe. How would that occur?
Nancey Murphy: The resurrection is the part of Christian theology that we
can say least about. One underlying motivation why we believe it is going to
happen is a moral argument that there seems to need to be some life after
death if there is going to be justice in the universe. That argument has led
to the invention both of the concept of resurrection of the body and also
the concept of an immortal soul that lives on after death. But the only reason
Christians have for believing that the resurrection is literally going to happen
is the model of Jesus being raised from the dead, and the only clue that we
have about what that is supposed to be like is a set of strangely conflicting
stories about what the resurrected person of Jesus was like.
Michael Schermer: What if Jesus was in sort of a comatose state for three
days due to an epileptic seizure or some such thing?
224 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Robert Kuhn: How do you see the relationship between science and theol-
ogy, say 100 years from now?
Michael Schermer: We would be having the same general discussion, but
we would be using different examples. Instead of talking about Gods provi-
dence in this area or that area dealing with some conundrums of science to-
day that we cant explain, we will have explained all these and God wont be
involved in them anymore.
Muzaffar Iqbal: I disagree with you. As a scientist I know that our means
of investigation has been sharpening as we progress; science will surely bring
us closer to reality, closer to understanding the nature of God than we are
now, closer to truth. 100 years from well be still closer to truth. Just con-
sider the one domain of neuroscience, which is so fascinating and opening
up so many new ways of thinking. If we had been sitting here having this
debate 100 years ago, we would have had a very different discussion. We
would have focused on the clockwork universe founded on the Newto-
nian physical concept of nature; we wouldnt have had any concept of quan-
tum physics.
Nancey Murphy: When you look at the history of Christianity you can see
that it has taken centuries for the Christian faith to be re-embodied, almost
reincarnated, in the different cultures through which it has passed. Chris-
tianity is still, in many circles, struggling to come to terms with the scientific
worldview, despite the fact that the scientific worldview is now 300 years
old. For example, many people I know still envision history in terms of an
imagined initial golden age, a catastrophic fall, and then basically no
progress until the end. Whereas the evolutionary worldview (especially
when you anchor it with Big Bang cosmology) gives us history that is pretty
much an amorphous nothing in the beginning, and then a slow ascent of
more and more complex forms, that ultimately results, whether by accident
or by design, in human beings. So Christianity is yet fully to take on board
that different, evolutionary sense of the timeline of universal history. It
may take another 100 years or more for Christianity in general to absorb
and internalize the very scientific issues that we are talking about today.
Robert Kuhn: To take a specific example, do you think that in 100 years
most Christians would not believe in the immortality of the soul?
Nancey Murphy: I think that it might take 100 years for that change to
take place.
Michael Schermer: To retreat a tiny bit from my own position, I sometimes
wonder if my preference for a scientific worldview, or even for a scientism
worldview is just a personality preference. Maybe I am just the kind of per-
son who doesnt need the religious answers: I dont get anything out of the-
ology, in fact I find it kind of unfulfilling. But I like science, I am a science
226 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
fanatic. I just like the scientific approach, its openendedness, the uncertainty
of the process, the challenge of participation. But all this personal prefer-
ence, of course, makes me wonder: well, maybe my reactions are the same
as yours. You just have a personality preference for the religious worldview
in the same way that I have a personality preference for the science world-
view. I wonder whether each of us comes to our own conclusions because
of our backgrounds.
Robert Kuhn: Im not sure where, in Michaels opinion, that would leave
objective reality, but I suspect that he would come down quickly on the side
of science.
Muzaffar Iqbal: Michael, I was intrigued by the way you phrased it. I
appreciate your love for science, but you seemed to say that to have a scien-
tific worldview means that one cannot also have a religious worldview.
Nancey Murphy: I dont think that psychological or sociological explana-
tions of our personal preferences are incompatible with epistemological
explanations of the nature of reality. I too love the scientific worldview; I
see its appeals equally, at least I think I do. So, for me, its a matter of. . .
Michael Schermer: . . ..making that one little step.
Nancey Murphy: Thats right.
Robert Kuhn: That step is not so little. Admitting even the possibility of
the viability of a theological worldview is a massive leap.
Muzaffar Iqbal: Granted that ones worldview, ones belief system,
is socially construed, but I submit there is more to it than just that. Social
existence is not the only determinant of what we believe; there is some-
thing more. True belief supersedes, or should supersede, ones personal life
experiences.
Michael Schermer: Maybe; maybe not.
Muzaffar Iqbal: It also depends on how much you know yourself, how
much intimate contact you have with your own being?
Michael Schermer: What does that mean?
Muzaffar Iqbal: When Dikhr sat in his room and said Im going to disbe-
lieve every single thing that has been given to me, and he went step-by-step
through his beliefs, he could not dismiss his own being as part of the process
because he knew that he was there.
Michael Schermer: Lets cut all the verbiage: why do you believe in God?
Muzaffar Iqbal: Because I know He exists. As Nancey said, He answers
prayers; when you talk to Him, He answers.
Can We Believe in Both Science and Religion? 227
Interviews with Expert Participants
Muzaffar Iqbal
Does the general public properly appreciate science?
My answer is yes. The general public sees the conveniences of modern life
that science produced, such as the enormous improvement in health care sys-
tems. The general public also appreciates advances in communications,
travel, agriculture, and in so many other areas.
Michael Shermer
How did you become a card-carrying skeptic?
I got into skepticism after I had completed my doctorate in the history of
science. I also have a masters degree in experimental psychology, and I
was always interested in the paranormal, pseudoscience, and all kinds of
fringe groupsESP, UFOs, aliens, all that stuff. You have to be made of
wood not to be interested. Its fascinating. But what I discovered in science
is there is actually a method for discerning truth, a way of getting answers
to these questions, where you can find out if they are really true or not. So,
while I was teaching, I founded a public science lecture series at Caltech,
and I started to publish a magazine. But then Skeptic magazine, the lecture
series, Skeptic Society, and so forth, became so big that I quit teaching to
do all this full time. I then took this same genre of material and wrote some
books, which have done well. Its become something of a living.
Nancey Murphy
Why did you become a scientist?
I started out as a psychology major, and when I was in college I was dis-
mayed by the form that psychology tookbehaviorism. That realization
launched me into philosophy. I studied the philosophy of science, but
toward the end of my doctoral program, I realized that I had two reasons
for wanting to change. One was that to do philosophy of science really well,
you needed to know physics, and I dont. But also I was exposed to an athe-
istic environment for the first time in my life. And the questions about the
rationality of religious belief were much more pressing for me personally
and also a whole lot harder to answerthan the questions about the ration-
ality of science. So I decided to switch to the philosophy of religion, and
whereas I was unwilling to try to go back and learn physics, I was willing
to take another degree and learn theology in order that I would know some-
thing about the content about which I was philosophizing.
would say that the purpose of theology is merely to interpret the content of
the scriptures, others would say that theology is a discipline that reflects on
human religious awareness, and still others would assert that you should
be doing both all the time. My own entree into theology was taken from
my perspective in the philosophy of science, and I was asking, What are
the parallels in theology? And of course the data for theology differs from
the data for philosophy, just as the data for biology differs from the data
for physics. But what I was able to argue is that the structure of reasoning
is the same between theology and philosophy, or at least could be the same
in those two radically different kinds of disciplines. Your goal in both cases
is to form hypotheses that attempt to explain the data in the most coherent
and parsimonious way.
When I was 12, in the summer between seventh and eighth grade, a sudden
realization struck such fright that I strove desperately to blot it out, to eradi-
cate the disruptive idea as if it were a lethal mental virus. My body shud-
dered with dread; an abyss had yawned open. Five decades later I feel its
frigid blast still.
Why not Nothing?1 What if everything had always been Nothing? Not
just emptiness, not just blankness, and not just emptiness and blankness for-
ever, but not even the existence of emptiness, not even the meaning of blank-
ness, and no forever. Wouldnt it have been easier, simpler, more logical, to
have Nothing rather than something?2
The question would become my life partner, and even as I learned the rich
philosophical legacy of Nothing,3 I do not pass a day without its disquieting
presence. I am haunted. Here we are, human beings, conscious and abruptly
self-aware, with lives fleetingly short, engulfed by a vast, seemingly oblivious
cosmos of unimaginable enormity.4 While Why Not Nothing? may seem
impenetrable, Why This Universe? revivified by remarkable advances in
cosmology, may be accessible. While they are not at all the same question,
perhaps if we can begin to decipher the latter, we can begin to decrypt the
former. Why This Universe? assumes there is Something, and seeks the
root reason why it works for us.
I am the creator and host of the PBS television series Closer To Truth, and
for the past several years I have been bringing together scientists and schol-
ars to examine the meaning and implications of state-of-the-art science.
The next Closer To Truth series, now in production, focuses on cosmology
and fundamental physics, the philosophy of cosmology, and the philosophy
of religion, and thus I have been interviewing cosmologists, physicists, phi-
losophers, and theologians, asking them, among other questions, Why This
Universe? From their many answers, and from my own night musings, I
236 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
The problem to be solved is even broader than this. Sir Martin Rees, Brit-
ains Astronomer Royal, presents just six numbers that he argues are nec-
essary for our emergence from the Big Bang. A minuscule change in any one
of these numbers would have made the universe and life, as we know them,
impossible.10
What to make of our astonishingly good fortune? In 1938, Paul Dirac saw
coincidences in cosmic and atomic physics;11 in 1961, Robert Dicke noted
that the age of the universe now is conditioned by biological factors;12
and in 1973, Brandon Carter used the phrase Anthropic Principle, which
in his original formulation simply draws attention to such uncontroversial
truths as that the universe must be such as to admit, at some stage, the
appearance of observers within it.13 Others then took up this oddly evoca-
tive idea, calling what seems to be a tautological statement the Weak
Anthropic Principle, as distinguished from what they defined as the
Strong Anthropic Principle, which makes the teleological claim that the
universe must have those properties that allow or require intelligent life to
develop.14 Steven Weinberg used anthropic reasoning more rigorously to
provide an upper bound on the vacuum energy (cosmological constant)
and to give some idea of its expected value. He argued that it is natural
for scientists to find themselves in a subuniverse in which the vacuum energy
takes a value suitable for the appearance of scientists.15
Although the Anthropic Principle (Weak) appears perfectly obvious
some say that a logical tautology cannot be an informative statement about
the universeinverting its orientation may elicit explanatory surprise: What
we can expect to observe must be restricted by the conditions necessary for
our presence as observers. Such expectations then suggest, perhaps inevi-
tably, the startling insight that there could be infinite numbers of separate
regions, domains, or universes, each immense in its own right, each with
different laws and valuesand because the overwhelming majority of these
regions, domains, or universes would be non-life-permitting, it would be
hardly remarkable that we are not in them and do not observe them. One
could conclude, therefore, that while our universe seems to be so incredibly
fine-tuned for the purpose of producing human beings, and therefore so spe-
cially designed for us, it is in fact neither.
Since the 1970s, theists have come to use the fine-tuning argument as
empirical evidence of a creator, assuming that there are only two explana-
tions: God and chance. But posing such a stark choice between God and
chance is to construct a false and misleading dichotomy. Since the Anthropic
Principle leads to multiple universes, a multiverse, other possible explana-
tions are made manifest. I have documented 27 such explanations, a constel-
lation of what Ill call ultimate reality generators, in a kind of typology of
cosmological conjecture. Im sure there are more, or some could be subdi-
vided, but generally the taxonomy can be structured with four overarching
categories: One Universe Models, Multiple Universe Models, Nonphysical
238 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Causes, and Illusions. My claim is that the set of these four categories is uni-
versally exhaustive, meaning that whatever the true explanation of Why
This Universe?, it would have to be classified into one (or more) of these
categories (irrespective of whether we ever discover or discern that true
explanation).16
Yet the set of the 27 possible explanations which compose the categories
is not universally exhaustive, nor is there practical hope of making it so:
always, unless we can ever answer the Why This Universe? question with
certainty and finality (a dubious prospect), there will be other explanations
out there that cannot be logically excluded. Furthermore, while it might
seem tidy for these explanations to be mutually exclusivemeaning that
no two can both be rightthis simplicity cannot be achieved. The explana-
tions, and their categories, can be combined in any number of waysin
series, in parallel, and/or nested.
The 27 possible explanations that follow, these ultimate reality genera-
tors, are based on criteria that are logically permissible, a logic that for some
may seem lenient. I do not, however, confuse speculation with science. Log-
ical possibilities should not be mistaken for scientific theories or even scien-
tific possibilities. 17 A physicists speculations do not morph, as if by
cosmological alchemy or professional courtesy, from metaphysics into
established physics. That said, some of the more intriguing metaphysical
possibilities are being proffered by physicists.18
I provide no critique of the explanations; all are subject to withering
attacks from experts, as well they should be. And to the objection that the
lines of the taxonomy are drawn too sharply, or that the explanations over-
lap, I can only empathize and encourage the objector to offer a more refined
version.
One, so that it could be the case that the purpose of the universe is for the
universe to engineer its own self-awareness.25
Note: Quentin Smith theorizes that the universe caused itself to begin to
exist, by which he means that the universe is a succession of states, each
state caused by earlier states, and that the Big Bang singularity prevents there
from being a first instant, such that in the earliest hour, there are infinitely
many zero-duration instantaneous states of the universe, each caused by ear-
lier states, but with no earliest state.26 This model, like other atheistic mech-
anisms that obviate the need for a First Cause or preclude the possibility that
God exists, could empower any of these One Universe Models. Similarly, if
information is somehow fundamental to reality (as opposed to it being a
human construct to represent reality), an idea defended by Seth Lloyd (It
from Bit), information per se would undergird or endow these One Uni-
verse models (and, for that matter, Multiverse Models as well).27 Independ-
ently, should limitless domains of our possibly infinite universe exist beyond
our visible horizon,28 these domains would still be included in One Universe
Modelswe would have an inestimably larger universe to be sure, but we
would still have only one universe to explain.
3. Nonphysical Causes
This universe, however unfathomable, is fine-tuned to human existence
because a nonphysical Cause made it this way. The Cause may be a Person,
Being, Mind, Force, Power, Entity, Unity, Presence, Principle, Law, Proto-
Law, Stuff, or Feature. It is likely transcendent and surely irreducible; it
exists beyond the boundaries and constraints of physical law, matter,
energy, space, and time; and while it is the Cause, it does not itself have or
need a Cause. There is blur and overlap among these explanations, yet each
is sufficiently different in how it claims to generate ultimate reality, and suf-
ficiently opposed to the claims of its competitors, as to warrant distinction.
3.1 Theistic Person. A Supreme Being who in Christian philosophy is por-
trayed as incorporeal, omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly free, perfectly
good, necessarily existent, and the creator of all things, and who is also a
person with person-like characteristics such as beliefs, intents, and pur-
poses; a divine being (as defined by Richard Swinburne)47, a theistic
God (as defended by Alvin Plantinga) 48 with a nature. 49 In Judeo-
Christian tradition, the existence-as-essence Name offered to MosesI
am that I am.50 In Islamic philosophy, the concepts of Unity, the Absolute,
Ultimate Reality: Toward a Taxonomy of Possible Explanations 243
4. Illusions
This universe, everything we think we know, is not real. Facts are fiction;
nothing is fundamental; all is veneer, through and through.
4.1 Idealism. As argued by generations of idealistic philosophers, all
material things are manifestations of consciousness or assemblies of mind,
so that while the physical world appears to be composed of non-mental
stuff, it is not.75
4.2 Simulation in Actual Reality. We exist merely or marginally in some-
ones or somethings simulation, in an artificial world that actually exists in
terms of having physical particles and forces and galaxies and stars, but
whose entirety is not what it seems because it is derivative, not original.
Ultimate Reality: Toward a Taxonomy of Possible Explanations 245
Andre Linde analyzes baby universe formation and then asks, Does this
mean that our universe was created not by a divine design but by a physicist
hacker?76 Paul Davies speaks of fake universes, and of those beings who
created them as false gods; he ponders that if multiple universes really
exist, the great majority of them may be fakes because some of them (there
are so many) would have spawned, at some time or another, unthinkably
superior beings who would have had the capacity to create these fake uni-
versesand once they could have done so they would have done so, creating
immensely many fake universes and thereby swamping the real ones.77
4.3 Simulation in Virtual Reality. We exist merely or marginally in some-
ones or somethings simulation, in an artificial sensory construction that is
an imitation of what reality might be but is not; for example, a Matrix-like
world in which all perceptions are fed directly into the human nervous sys-
tem (brains in vats) or into our disembodied consciousness. Alternatively,
we exist as processes generated by pure software running inside cosmic
quantum supercomputers.78
4.4 Solipsism. The universe is wholly the creation of ones own mind and
thereby exists entirely in and for that mind.79
A Work in Process
If it seems improbable that human thought can make distinguishing
progress among these categories and explanations, consider the formulating
progress already made. Two centuries ago, the available options were
largely Nonphysical Causes (category 3), structured simplistically. A century
ago, scientists assumed that our own galaxy, the Milky Way, was the entire
universe. Today we grasp the monumental immensity of the cosmos.
Why Not Nothing? A taxonomy of ultimate reality generators for Why
This Universe? starts explorations.80 Nonetheless, there remains a great
gulf between the two questions: even if we eventually nail the actual explan-
ation of this universe, we may still have made no progress on why there is
something rather than nothing.81
Cosmological visions are overwhelming, but I am oddly preoccupied with
something else. How is it that we humans have such farsighted understand-
ing after only a few thousand years of historical consciousness, only a few
hundred years of effective science, and only a few decades of cosmological
observations? Maybe its still too early in the game. Maybe answers have
been with us all along. This is a work in process, and diverse contributions
are needed.82
The author thanks John Leslie, Michael Shermer, Quentin Smith, and
Keith Ward for their comments and suggestions, and Skeptic Magazine in
which this essay appears.
246 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Notes
1. Quentin Smith would reformulate my awestruck Why not Nothing? so as to
satisfy an analytical philosopher. He points out (in a personal communication) that it
is a logical fallacy to talk about nothing, to treat nothing as if it were some-
thing (with properties). To say there might have been nothing implies it is pos-
sible that there is nothing. There is means something is. So there is nothing
means something is nothing, which is a logical contradiction. His suggestion is to
remove nothing and replace it by not something or not anything, since one
can talk about what we mean by nothing by referring to something or anything,
of which there are no instances (i.e., the concept of something has the property
of not being instantiated). The commonsense way to talk about nothing is to talk
about something and negate it, to deny that there is something. Smith would rewrite
my lines like this: There is something. But why? There might not ever have been
anything at all. Why are there existents rather than no existents? As for Nothing
being easier, Smith says that the word connotes that it would have been easier
for God, and God he does not like at all. So my passage becomes, Wouldnt it
have been easier if there were not even one thing, in the sense that there is no causal
activity, whereas things require causes to bring them into existence? Wouldnt it have
been simpler in the sense that there are zero things if there are no things, and that as a
number zero is simpler than one, two, three, or any other number? Wouldnt it
have been more logical in the sense that the laws of logic do not imply there are
things, and if there are things, that fact is inexplicable in terms of the laws of logic?
(For euphony, as well as simplicity, I will continue to use NothingQuentin, my
apologies.)
2. No argument, only the fact of the matter, dissuades me from continuing to
sense, following Leibniz, that Nothing, no universe, is simpler and easier, the least
arbitrary and most logical descriptor of ultimate reality (Gottfried Leibniz, The Prin-
ciples of Nature and Grace, 1714). An empty world, Nothing, would then be fol-
lowed by, in order of increasing complexity, illogic, and oddity: infinite numbers of
universes (for parsimony, all is second only to none), one universe (its all we
know but inconceivable to explain), few-but-not-many universes (maybe theres
some simple generating principle at work), innumerable-but-finite numbers of uni-
verses, and many-but-not-innumerable universes. Peter van Inwagen argues that
since there can be infinitely many non-empty worlds (populated by things, any things
at all), but only one empty world (Nothing), the likelihood that any given world is
non-empty (not Nothing) is maximally probable (i.e., the probability of Nothing is
zero). Peter van Inwagen, Why Is There Anything at All? Proceedings of the Aris-
totelian Society (1996): 95110. The argument is fascinating and hinges on two
assumptions: (i) all possible populated worlds have the same probability and (ii) the
probability of the empty world (Nothing) is no different than that of any of the infin-
ite number of possible populated worlds. While recognizing that the empty world is
vastly, even infinitely, easier to describe, van Inwagen reasons that this should not
increase its relative probability unless one is covertly thinking that there is some-
thing that is outside the Reality. . .[like] a pre-cosmic selection machine, not a part
of Reality (for Leibniz this was God). . .or something that determines that there
being nothing is the default setting on the control-board of Reality. But there
could be no such thing, van Inwagen argues, for nothing is outside Reality, and
Ultimate Reality: Toward a Taxonomy of Possible Explanations 247
he concludes, tentatively, that the simplicity of the empty world provides us with no
reason to regard it as more probable than any other possible world. Yet I find it hard
to get out of my head the sense that the a priori probability of an empty world (Noth-
ing) is equal to that of any possible populated world (Something), in that to have
Something seems to require a second step (and likely many more), a process or rule
or capricious happening that generates whatever is populating whatever world. If
so, any given possible world (Something) would be less parsimonious than the empty
world (Nothing), which would mean that the probability of the empty world (Noth-
ing) would be greater than zero.
3. Martin Heidegger famously called Why is there something rather than noth-
ing? the fundamental question of metaphysics. Martin Heidegger, Martin, Intro-
duction to Metaphysics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959); Leibniz, 1714;
Derek Parfit, Why Anything? Why This? London Review of Books. January 22,
1998, 247 and February 5, 225; van Inwagen, 1996 (van Inwagen says we can
make some progress. . .if we do not panic); John Leslie, Modern Cosmology and
Philosophy (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1998); Bede Rundle, Why is there
Something Rather than Nothing (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004) (Rundle seeks
what might be possible in areas where it is so easy to think that we have come to a
dead end); John Leslie, Review of Why is there Something Rather than Nothing
by Bede Rundle, MIND, January 2005; Thomas Nagel, Review of Why is there
Something Rather than Nothing by Bede Rundle, Times Literary Supplement, May
7, 2005; Nothing, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.
edu/entries/nothingness/; Erik Carlson and Erik J. Olsson, The Presumption of
Nothingness, Ratio (XIV, 2001): 203221; Robert Nozick, 1981. Why is there
Something Rather than Nothing, Ch. 2 in Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1981); Nozicks aim is to loosen our feeling of
being trapped by a question with no possible answer. He says that the question
cuts so deep, however, that any approach that stands a chance of yielding an answer
will look extremely weird. Someone who proposes a non-strange answer shows
he didnt understand the question. Only one thing, he says, could leave noth-
ing at all unexplained: a fact that explains itself. He calls this explanatory
self-subsumption.
4. To Quentin Smith, grasping the universe as a world-whole and asking Why?
engenders global awe, feeling-sensations that tower and swell over us in response to
the stunning immensity of it all. The more we consider this ultimate question of exist-
ence, he believes, the more our socio-culture would improve. (Personal communica-
tion and Quentin Smith, The Felt Meanings of the World: A Metaphysics of
Feeling. (West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1986).) Arthur Witherall
argues that a feeling of awe [wonder, astonishment, and various other affective
states] at the existence of something rather than nothing is appropriate and desir-
able, perhaps because there is a fact-transcendent meaning to the existence of the
world. (Arthur Witherall, Forthcoming, Journal of Philosophical Researchhttp://
www.hedweb.com/witherall/existence.htm, 2006). Santayana describes existence as
logically inane and morally comic and a truly monstrous excrescence and super-
fluity. (George Santayana, Scepticism and Animal Faith (New York: Dover Publica-
tions, 1955), 48).
5. This is new territory, and the first step in methodical exploration is often to
construct a taxonomy. How could we (i) discern and describe all possible
248 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
continue to exist (golden age). Robert H. Dicke, Gravitation and the Universe
(Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1970).
13. Brandon Carter, Large Number Coincidences and the Anthropic Principle in
Cosmology, reprinted in Modern Philosophy and Cosmology, John Leslie
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1999).
14. John D. Barrow and Frank Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).
15. Weinberg, Living in the Multiverse; Steven Weinberg, Anthropic Bound
on the Cosmological Constant, Physical Review Letters 59, 22 (1987): 260710.
16. Methodologically, I first try to expand the possible explanations and their cat-
egories, striving to be universally exhaustivemy objective hereand only later try,
in some way, to cull them by data, analysis, or reasoning. (Falsification for most of
these is unrealistic.) After Paul Davies presents the pros and cons of the various main
positions he examines to answer the ultimate questions of existence, he asks a droll
but deeply profound question, Did I leave any out? Paul Davies, The Goldilocks
Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life (London: Allen Lane/Penguin Books,
2006), 302.
17. Modal logic allows an infinite number of logical possibilities that are (or
seem) scientifically impossible. Quentin Smith, personal communication.
18. That the explanation for the universe may be hard to understand is no surprise
to Derek Parfit. If there is some explanation of the whole of reality, we should not
expect this explanation to fit neatly into some familiar category. This extra-
ordinary question may have an extra-ordinary answer. Parfit, January 22, 1998.
19. Those who contend that Why Not Nothing? is a Meaningless Question
(1.1) often rely on what they believe to be logical contradictions in the concepts
Nothing and Something. For example, they argue that the statement There is
Nothing has no referent and makes no legitimate claim; something more, such as
a location of the Nothing, must be specified to complete it and make it meaningful,
but any such addition contradicts itself in that by specifying Something it destroys
Nothing (as it were). Rundle, 2004; Erik J. Olsson, Notre Dame Philosophical
Reviews. March 3, 2005, http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=2081. See endnote 1
above. In like manner, the question Why is there Something? makes a simple logi-
cal mistake in that it presupposes an antecedent condition that can explain that
Something, but there can be no such antecedent condition because it too must be sub-
sumed in the Something which must be explained. Paul Edwards, Why, in The
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 8, ed. Paul Edwards (New York: Macmillan,
1967), 3001. Witherall, 2006.
20. Nagel, 1981. As John Leslie puts this view, Metaphysical efforts to explain
the cosmos offend against grammar in Wittgensteins sense. Leslie, 1995.
21. To be a brute fact, a universe does not depend on any particular universe-
generating mechanismBig Bang, steady state, complex cyclicals can all fit the brute
fact framework. Even a multiverse or a God can be a brute fact. The point is that
there is a terminus of explanations: a brute fact is as far as you can ever get, even in
principle.
22. Bertrand Russell said . . .The universe is just there, and thats all. Bertrand
Russell and F.C. Copleston, The Existence of God, in Problems of Philosophy
Series, ed. John Hick (New York: Macmillan & Co., 1964), 175. Parfit states, If it
is random what reality is like, the Universe not only has no cause. It has no
250 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
explanation of any kind. Of the explanatory possibilities, he later notes that brute
fact seems to describe the simplest, since its claim is only that reality has no explan-
ation. Parfit, February 5, 1998; Quentin Smith, Simplicity and Why the Universe
Exists, Philosophy71 (1997): 12532.
23. Nozick, 1981.
24. Steven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory: The Scientists Search for the
Ultimate Laws of Nature (New York: Vintage Books, 1983); Edward Witten, Uni-
verse on a String, Astronomy magazine, June 2002; Murray Gell-Mann, The Quark
and the Jaguar (New York: W.H. Freeman, 1994); Brian Greene, The Elegant Uni-
verse: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory, reis-
sue edition (New York: W.W. Norton, 2003).
25. Davies, 2006; Davies, The Mind of God (London: Penguin, 1993); personal
communication; Davies, in Spiritual Information: 100 Perspectives on Science and
Religion., ed. Charles L. Harper, Jr. (West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Founda-
tion Press, 2005).
26. Quentin Smith, Kalam Cosmological Arguments for Atheism, in The Cam-
bridge Companion for Atheism, ed. Michael Martin; Quentin Smith, The Reason
the Universe Exists is that it Caused Itself to Exist, Philosophy, Volume 74 (1999):
13646; personal communication.
27. Seth Lloyd, Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist
Takes On the Cosmos (New York: Knopf, 2006).
28. To any observers, the visible horizon of the universe that they see, the farthest
they can ever see, is bounded by the speed of light multiplied by the age of the uni-
verse, such that light could have traveled only so far in so long. (In special relativity,
a light cone is the geometric pattern describing the temporal evolution of a flash of
light in Minkowski spacetime. Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_cone.)
29. Martin J. Rees, Before the Beginning: Our Universe and Others (New York:
Perseus Books, 1998); Martin J. Rees, Our Cosmic Habitat (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2004); Martin J. Rees, ;Exploring Our Universe and Others, Sci-
entific American, December 1999; John Leslie, Universes (London: Routledge,
1989); Davies, 2006, p. 299; personal communication.
30. Weinberg, 1987; Weinberg, 2007; personal communication. There is hardly
unanimity about the Anthropic Principle among physicists, some of whom character-
ize it as betraying the quest to find fundamental first principles that can explain the
universe and predict its constituents. David Gross hates it, comparing it to a
virusOnce you get the bug, you cant get rid of it. Dennis Overbye, Zillions
of Universes? Or Did Ours Get Lucky, New York Times, October 28, 2003; per-
sonal communication.
31. Alan Guth, The Inflationary Universe: A Possible Solution to the Horizon
and Flatness Problems, Phys. Rev. D 23, 347 (1981); Alan Guth, The Inflationary
Universe: The Quest for a New Theory of Cosmic Origins (Boston: Addison-
Wesley, 1997).
32. Andrei Linde, 1982. A New Inflationary Universe Scenario: A Possible Solu-
tion of the Horizon, Flatness, Homogeneity, Isotropy and Primordial Monopole
Problems, Phys. Lett. B 108, 389 (1982); Andrei Linde, Particle Physics and Infla-
tionary Cosmology (Chur, Switzerland: Harwood, 1990); Andrei Linde, Inflation
and String Cosmology, J. Phys. Conf. Ser. 24 ( 2005): 15160; Andrei Linde,
The Self-Reproducing Inflationary Universe, Scientific American, November
Ultimate Reality: Toward a Taxonomy of Possible Explanations 251
Archibald Wheeler, Geons, Black Holes & Quantum Foam (New York: W.W. Nor-
ton, 1998), 26870; David Deustch, The Fabric of Reality (London: Penguin Books,
1997).
41. Amanda Getler, Exploring Stephen Hawkings Flexiverse, New Scientist,
April 2006.
42. Max Tegmark, Parallel Universes, Scientific American, May 2003, 4151.
43. David Lewis, On the Plurality of Worlds (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing,
1986), 2. Lewis writes, I advocate a thesis of plurality of worlds, or modal realism,
which holds that our world is but one world among many. There are countless other
worlds. . .so many other worlds, in fact, that absolutely every way that a world could
possibly be is a way that some world is.
44. Nozick, 1981. Nozick seeks to dissolve the inegalitarian class distinction
between nothing and something, treating them on a par. . .not treating nonexisting
or nonobtaining as more natural or privileged. . . One way to do this, he proposes,
is to say that all possibilities are realized. He thus defines the principle of fecun-
dity as, All possible worlds obtain. (1278, 131).
45. Davies, 2006, 2989.
46. Personal communication.
47. Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God, second edition (Oxford: Claren-
don/Oxford University Press, 2004); Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism, revised
edition (Oxford: Clarendon/Oxford University Press, 1993); Swinburne, The Chris-
tian God (Oxford: Clarendon/Oxford University Press, 1994); Swinburne, Is There
a God (Oxford: Clarendon/Oxford University Press, 1996). In his influential book,
The Existence of God, Swinburne builds a cumulative case of inductive arguments
to assert (not prove) the claim that the proposition God exists is more probable
than not. He begins with a description of what he means by God: In understanding
God as a person, while being fair to the Judaic and Islamic view of God, I am over-
simplifying the Christian view. Swinburne states: I take the proposition God
exists (and the equivalent proposition There is a God) to be logically equivalent
to there exists necessarily a person without a body (i.e. a spirit) who necessarily is
eternal, perfectly free, omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, and the creator of
all things. I use God as the name of the person picked out by this description.
Swinburne then defines each of his terms. By God being a person, Swinburne means
an individual with basic powers (to act internationally), purposes, and beliefs. By
Gods being eternal, he understands that he always has existed and always will
exist. By Gods being perfectly free, he understands that no object of event or state
(including past states of himself) in any way causally influences him to do the action
that he doeshis own choice at the moment of action alone determines what he
does. By Gods being omnipotent, he understands that he is able to do whatever
it is logically possible (i.e., coherent to suppose) that he can do. By Gods being
omniscient, he understands that he knows whatever it is logically possible that he
know. By Gods being perfectly good, he understands that he always does a
morally best action (when there is one), and does no morally bad action. By his
being the creator of all things, he understands that everything that exists at each
moment of time (apart from himself) exists because, at that moment of time, he
makes it exist, or permits it to exists. The claim that there is a God, Swinburne
states, is called theism.
Ultimate Reality: Toward a Taxonomy of Possible Explanations 253
48. Alvin Plantinga, Reason and Belief in God, in Faith and Rationality: Rea-
son and Belief in God, eds. Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff (Notre Dame,
IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983). Plantinga argues famously that theistic
belief does not, in general, need argument or evidence to be rational and justified;
belief in God, in Plantingas well-known terminology, is properly basic. This
means that belief in God is such that one may properly accept it without evidence,
that is, without the evidential support of other beliefs. Perhaps the theist, Plantinga
asserts, is entirely within his epistemic rights in starting from belief in God [even if
he has no argument or evidence at all], taking that proposition to be one of the ones
probability with respect to which determines the rational propriety of other beliefs he
holds. Notwithstanding this position, Plantinga presents his own arguments
for Gods existence: Alvin Plantinga, Two Dozen (or so) Theistic Arguments,
lecture notes, http://www.calvin.edu/academic/philosophy/virtual_library/articles/
plantinga_alvin/two_dozen_or_so_theistic_arguments.pdf.
49. Philosophical discussions of Gods Nature, which much occupied medieval
theologians (Scholastics), seem arcane and irrelevant today, but may probe the struc-
ture and meaning of a theistic God, and as such may help advise whether such a Being
really exists. Take the traditional doctrine of Divine Simplicity (which is anything
but simple): God is utterly devoid of complexity; no distinctions can be made in God;
God has no parts. Plantinga describes the doctrine: We cannot distinguish him
from his nature, or his nature from his existence, or his existence from his other prop-
erties; he is the very same thing as his nature, existence, goodness, wisdom, power,
and the like. And this is a dark saying indeed. Alvin Plantinga, Does God Have a
Nature?(Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1980).
50. In the Bible, names are often declarations of the essence of things. Adam
means earth, soil, or reddish-brownish stuff, from which, as the story goes, God
made AdamAdam the stuff was what Adam the man literally was. The Hebrew
underlying I am that I amfirst person singular imperfect form of the verb To
Beis perhaps more accurately but less euphonically translated I continue to be
which I continue to be. Hence, since name is essence, and here the Name means
existence, Gods existence is his essence. A God of this Name can claim to be without
need of further explanation, not in the sense that a further explanation cannot be
known, but in the sense that it cannot exist.
51. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Islamic Pholosophy from Its Origin to the Present: Pho-
losophy in the Land of Prophecy, Suny Series in Islam (Albany, NY: State University
of New York Press, 2006); Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Randall E. Auxier, and Luican W.
Stone, eds., The Philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Library of Living Philosophers
Series (Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court Publishing Company, 2000).
52. George F.R. Ellis, Natures of Existence (Temporal and Eternal), in The
Far-Future Universe: Eschatology from a Cosmic Perspective, ed. George F.R. Ellis
(Philadelphia , PA: Templeton Foundation Press, 2002).
53. Robert John Russell, Eschatology and Physical CosmologyA Preliminary
Reflection, in The Far-Future Universe, 2002; Robert John Russell, Nancey Mur-
phy, and Arthur Peacocke, eds., Chaos and Complexity: Scientific Perspectives on
Divine Action (Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory Publications, 1997).
54. William Lane Craig, The Existence of God and the Beginning of the Uni-
verse, Truth: A Journal of Modern Thought 3 (1991): 8596; Paul Copan and Wil-
liam Lane Craig, Creation out of Nothing: A Biblical, Philosophical and Scientific
254 Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future
Exploration (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004). William Lane Craig and
Quentin Smith, Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1993).
55. Theists debate among themselves whether the Judeo-Christian God is theo-
logically compatible with a multiverse. While many theists denounce multiple uni-
verses as a naturalistic substitute for Godthey argue that accepting a God is far
simpler than postulating a multiversesome theists now break tradition by claiming
that a multiverse reveals an even grander grandeur of the Creator. Robin Collins, A
Theistic Perspective on the Multiverse Hypothesis, in Carr, 2007; Robin Collins,
Design and the Designer: New Concepts, New Challenges, in Harper, 2005.
56. Keith Ward, Pascals Fire: Scientific Faith and Religious Understanding
(Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2006). Personal communication. Wards blurring
of personal/impersonal models of God, he says, is influenced by the Brahman/Isvara
distinction in Indian philosophy, with resonances in Eastern Orthodox theology
(the distinction between ousia and economia).
57. Deism, Dictionary of the History of Ideas,http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/
cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv1-77. Deist website: http://www.deism.com/.
58. Michael Levine, Pantheism, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(Spring 2006 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/
spr2006/entries/pantheism/. H.P. Owen proposes a more formal definition: Pan-
theism. . .signifies the belief that every existing entity is only one Being; and that all
other forms of reality are either modes (or appearances) of it or identical with it.
H. P. Owen, Concepts of Deity (London: Macmillan, 1971). Pantheism is distin-
guished from Deism in that, while both sport nontheistic, impersonal Gods, the for-
mer allows no separation between God and the world, while the later revels in it.
Pantheisms many variations take contrasting positions on metaphysical issues: its
fundamental substance can be real or unreal, changing or changeless, etc.
59. Panentheism, a word that is a manufactured cognate of pantheism, is the doc-
trine that the universe is in God but God is more than the universei.e., it combines
the robust immanence of pantheism (God is truly in the world) with the ultimate
transcendence of theism (God exceeds the world in His ontological otherness).
More formally, panentheism is The belief that the Being of God includes and pene-
trates the whole universe, so that every part of it exists in Him, but (against panthe-
ism) that His Being is more than, and is not exhausted by, the universe. F.L. Cross
and E. A. Livingstone, eds., Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 2nd ed.
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 1027. Panentheism, a recent formulation,
is the guiding philosophy of Charles Hartshorne, process theologians, and some
who seek harmony between science and religion. Philip Clayton and Arthur Pea-
cocke, eds., In Whom We live and Move and Have Our Being: Panentheistic Reflec-
tions on Gods Presence in a Scientific World (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004).
Acosmic pantheism considers the world merely an appearance and fundamentally
unreal (it is more characteristic of some Hindu and Buddhist traditions). Panpsy-
chism, the belief that every entity in the universe is to some extent sentient, amalga-
mates Pantheism (3.4) with Consciousness as Cause (3.6).
60. Alasdair MacIntyre, Pantheism, in Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul
Edwards, (New York: Macmillan and Free Press, 1967). John Leslie derives panthe-
ism from his thesis that ethical requiredness (see below) is the ultimate reality
Ultimate Reality: Toward a Taxonomy of Possible Explanations 255
fulfillment. The cosmos might exist because its existence was ethically necessary,
without the aid of an omnipotent being who chose to do something about this.
Although Leslie surmises, a divine person might well head the list of the things that
the creative force would have created, his preferred position is a cosmos of infi-
nitely many unified realms of consciousness, each of them infinitely rich. . .a picture
of infinitely many minds, each one worth calling divine and each one expected
to include knowledge of absolutely everything worth knowing (2002, vvi).
72. Nicholas Rescher, The Riddle of Existence: An Essay in Idealistic Metaphys-
ics (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984). Reschers cosmic values
are simplicity, economy, elegance, harmony, and the like, which are maximized by
what he calls proto-laws as they bring about the existence of the spatiotemporal
laws and concrete objects of the actual universe. Witherall, 2006.
73. Parfit, January 22, 1998, and February 5, 1998. Parfit suggests that if reality
were as full as it could be (All Worlds Hypothesis), that would not be a coinci-
dence. We can reasonably assume that, if this possibility obtains, that is because it
is maximal, or at this extreme. On this Maximalist View, it is a fundamental truth
that being possible, and part of the fullest way that reality could be, is sufficient for
being actual. That is the highest law governing reality. It does not stop there. Parfit
conceptualizes the Selector as some special feature that actualizes a real world
from among countless cosmic possibilities. It would determine, not that reality be
a certain way, but that it be determined in a certain way how reality is to be. Then,
to the extent that there are competing credible Selectors, rules would be needed to
select among them, which may be followed by higher level Selectors and rules. Can
it ever stop? Parfit concludes by stating that just as the simplest cosmic possibility
is that nothing ever exists, the simplest explanatory possibility is that there is no
Selector. So we should not expect simplicity at both the factual and explanatory lev-
els. If there is no Selector, we should not expect that there would also be no Uni-
verse. It seems that we arrive back at Brute Fact, which radiates a bit more color
now, and we are enlightened by the journey.
74. In Tao, the only motion is returning. Dao De Jing, chapter 6; translation,
Arthur Waley
75. Idealism Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism; Goswami,
1995.
76. Andrei Linde, Hard Art of the Universe Creation, Nucl. Phys. B372 (1992):
42142. Using a stochastic approach to quantum tunneling, Linde develops a method
to create the universe in a laboratory. He concludes by observing that this would
be a very difficult job, but if it is true, Hopefully, he [the other-worldly physicist
hacker] did not make too many mistakes. . .
77. Davies, 2006.
78. Nick Bostrom, Are You Living in a Computer Simulation? Philosophical
Quarterly, Vol. 53, No. 211, 2003: 24355; Nick Bostrom, Why Make a Matrix?
And Why You Might Be In One, in More Matrix and Philosophy: Revolutions
and Reloaded Decoded., ed. William Irwin (Chicago: IL: Open Court Publishing
Company, 2005); Lifes a Sim and Then Youre Deleted, New Scientist, 27 July
2002. Another kind of Simulation in Virtual Reality (4.3) is Frank Tiplers notion
of a general resurrection just before a Big Crunch at what he calls the Omega
Point, which would be brought about by an almost infinite amount of computa-
tional power generated by a universe whose inward gravitational rush is accelerating
Ultimate Reality: Toward a Taxonomy of Possible Explanations 257
SCENARIO FORECASTING
Alternative ways for future events to unfold, which enhance readiness for
any eventuality.
XENOGENESIS
Octavia Butler: Xenogenesis is a generation that is wholly and perma-
nently unlike the parent generation. We can create such a generation now
with genetic engineering, and in my books, my characters actually do it.
MIDI
Jeanne Bamberger: MIDI instruments can play any instrument you want
and make it sound any way that you want, and with this synthesizing tech-
nique, everybody can make music. But Im not sure that thats so wonderful
because Im looking for ways of getting people to inquire and reflect and
question what theyre doing when theyre making music.
NEUROBIOLOGY
A branch of the life sciences that deals with the anatomy, physiology, and
pathology of the nervous system.
260 Glossary of Key Terms
CONSCIOUSNESS
Christof Koch: Its a bit difficult to rigorously define consciousness. Right
now Im conscious. Youre conscious. Youre looking at me. You can attend
to my voice. I assume youre conscious. But to really define consciousness in
very formal ways is always impossible. There are always exceptions involv-
ing, for example, sleep walking and dreaming and near-death experiences
and all those things. Right now its not terribly fruitful to try to define con-
sciousness in a more rigorous way. When you take an awake subject and
the subject behaves appropriately, unless theres some reason to suspect that
the patient is in some special state, its reasonable to assume that the patient,
or the subject, is conscious.
Leslie Brothers: How can you tell the difference between believing that
youre conscious and really being conscious? Now, if I believe Im playing
the game of Monopoly, and Im playing it, Im playing it. Theres no differ-
ence between believing that you are and being it. And I say if theres no
way to tell the difference between believing that youre conscious and really
being conscious, then what is being conscious? It might just be believing that
youre conscious. Its an illusion that creates its own reality.
PERCEPTION
Joe Bogen: A percept is a neuronal representation in the brain of some out-
side information gathered by a sensory organ, like your eye or your ear. So
what happens when theres a scene out there, youre going to have in your
head a whole bunch of nerve cell activity that corresponds to that scene.
Much of this is not conscious. I make myself deliberately conscious of this
lampshade at the edge of my vision, which I was not conscious of until I
started to talk about it. I think that I have perceptions of which I am not
conscious.
QUALIA
Sensations, flavors, emotions, feelings as perceived privately in ones con-
sciousness. A property (like redness) as it is experienced as distinct from any
source it might have in the physical world.
DREAMING
Joe Bogen: Dreaming is a kind of consciousness during sleep that is a
stream of qualia, thoughts, perceptions and so on, which are not accompa-
nied by movement. Activity has been somehow cut off. The nerve impulses
to do the action are probably coming down out of your head, but theres
something in the brainstem that inhibits them. Occasionally, the inhibition
fails, which can result in walking around. In dreaming you have a stream
of consciousness that doesnt depend on whats going on around you,
although we know that what people dream about seems to depend some
on external inputs, such as whether they are cold or theres water dripping.
But the main thing about dreaming is that it is consciousness without the
usual output or input.
TEMPORAL CODING
Terry Sejnowski: When we look at the brain we look at the final frontier of
human understanding, since the brain is the most complex device in the
Glossary of Key Terms 263
universe. Space travel is not the final frontier, its time. How does the brain
represent time and how do signals in different parts of the brain that occur
at different moments in time come together and integrate all that informa-
tion together? Were beginning to appreciate that internal time in the brain
can be used for mental functions like attentionsuch as your expectation
of where a signal is coming from in space, or what form its going to take.
This type of attention and expectation may actually happen through tempo-
ral synchrony, the firing of neurons together at the same time. And if these
theoretical ideas are true, and were in the process right now of making pre-
dictions and trying to test them, then it means that some diseases like autism
may be diseases of timing of signals in the brain.
Also: A way of representing information in the brain that depends on the
exact time when a spike occurs.
BIOMEDICINE
Medicine based on the application of the principles of the natural sciences,
especially biology and biochemistry.
DEPRESSION
Robert Epstein: Depression is an abnormal mood state that has many ele-
ments to it. One of the obvious ones is that you feel kind of down and you
feel sad, but there are other possible elements. For example, you could have
a problem with your appetite, either eating very little or maybe overeating.
You might have a problem sleeping. There are many different possible ele-
ments to depression, but fundamentally, its a lower mood state; its a state
of real sadness.
PSYCHIATRIST/PSYCHOLOGIST
Robert Epstein: Psychiatrists are medical doctors (MDs) who then go on
and specialize in psychology. Psychologists are professionals who have
extensive training in psychology and have virtually no training in medicine.
ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE
Therapies, treatments, practices, and procedures which share three
common features: 1) they have not been demonstrated within the United
States that they are safe and effective against specific diseases and
264 Glossary of Key Terms
conditions; 2) they are not taught in medical schools; and 3) they are gener-
ally not reimbursable by insurance.
Hyla Cass: Alternative medicine has been defined as those modalities that
are outside of the purview of conventional medicine. So acupuncture,
homeopathy, guided imagery, mind-body medicinethese are all consid-
ered alternative. In my opinion, I think its just part of medicine; what we re-
ally need to practice is everything. And that doesnt mean that everybody
should do everything. I dont do acupuncture. I dont do homeopathy, but
I want to have access to those practitioners who do, so I can refer my
patients and feel comfortable sending them to people whom I know are
practicing a high standard in those areas.
Wallace Sampson: Alternative medicine are methods and materials that do
not work, methods and materials that are not likely to work, and methods
and materials that already have been investigated and found to be debatable.
William Jarvis: I go along with the NIH definition, which basically says
everything outside of standard medicinetreatments, drugs, procedures
that have not been shown to be safe and efficacious by modern medical
standards.
CAM PROCEDURES
Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM). The official term used
by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) to describe everything thats
outside of standard medicine.
INTEGRATIVE MEDICINE
Popular term denoting the kind of medicine practiced by a physician who
uses the best from standard medicine and the best from alternative medicine.
The controversial aspect of this nomenclature is that how does the practi-
tioner know whats best if not all treatments have been scientifically
tested?
NATUROPATHIC MEDICINE
Dan Labriola: Naturopathic medicine is a primary healthcare provider
profession whose motto is Vis Medicatrix Naturae, which is helping nature
heal. Our underlying fundamental approach to healthcare is to support and
provide for the bodys natural healing power rather than trying to simply do
interventions.
ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE
William Jarvis: Anecdotal evidence is anything based on personal experi-
ence, regardless of how convincing it is. Scientific evidence is something that
Glossary of Key Terms 265
has an objective basis that can be repeated again and again under the same
circumstances, versus the subjective experience that felt good at the time,
seemed to be okay, but for some reason, it just doesnt seem to happen again.
ANTIVIRALS
Alice Huang: Antivirals are anything that would inhibit the growth of
virus or prevent the disease that a virus causes.
MICROBIAL ANTAGONISM
Agnes Day: Microbial antagonism is similar to the Crips and the Bloods
two gangs that used to operate in Los Angeles. What theyre doing is theyre
trying to make sure that nobody gets the upper hand. For instance, in the
lower gastrointestinal tract, in the large intestine and the colon, you have
at least 30 different types of enteric bacteria or bacteria that grow in the
gut. So, if you have all of these bacteria in you, some of which are known
to cause disease, why is it that you are not always ill? It is because certain
bacteria will produce agents, sort of like peptide antibiotics that will keep
the numbers of other bacteria low. For example, E. coli produces a peptide
called a colicin that makes other bacteria sick so they dont grow as well.
So theres this balance that is maintained between these various organisms
living in the same environment.
HELICOBACTER PYLORI
Agnes Day: Helicobacter pylori is a bacterium that lives in the stomach
and it produces, through its metabolism, clouds of carbon dioxide. The
organism attaches to the gastric lining and has been associated with ulcers
in the stomach as well as gastric cancer. People who have this organism will,
in most cases, progress to the point of gastric cancer. It is one of the few bac-
teria that science has shown to have a strong association with cancer.
PATHOGEN
A pathogen is an agent that causes disease.
266 Glossary of Key Terms
PEPTIDE
A peptide is a group of amino acids.
PLASMIDS
Agnes Day: Plasmids are small circular DNA molecules that dont belong
in the bacterial cell. They arise from other small pieces of DNA that join
together and say, Look. We can cause more damage if we work together
than if we try to go in individually. These plasmids are notorious for carry-
ing genes that encode for the destruction of antibiotics.
SYMBIOSIS
Alice Huang: Symbiosis is the ability of organisms to live together. In gen-
eral, one does something to the other or provides something to the other and
vice versa so that they live happily together.
INFORMED CONSENT
Alexander Capron: The original way informed consent arose was as an
obligation of disclosure on physicians. In a second view, informed consent
doesnt refer to the obligation of the researcher but rather sort of a more sub-
jective state of mind of the subject or the patient, that they have an under-
standing that they have become informed before they consent. The
emphasis is on the obligation, the duty, of the researcher or physician, to
make a disclosure which is understandable by the patient. The latter may
be realized or may not be, and it would obviously vary person to person.
The emphasis should not be on a signed piece of paper, a form that says
Informed Consent at the top with a signature at the bottom. That is not
informed consent by itself; informed consent is a serious process of real
understanding, of which this piece of paper is only one part.
BIOETHICS
A discipline dealing with the ethical implications of biological research
and applications, especially in medicine.
COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY
The use or operation of a computer in simulating theoretical or existing
conditions. For example, dry testing of drugs by supercomputer simula-
tions, or simulating the human brain to run experiments that cant be tried
on a human being.
Glossary of Key Terms 267
PERINATEL
Refers to the time period after the 28th week of gestation and ending the
first week after birth. Some sources extend the perinatal period until the
fourth week after birth.
MORBIDITY
Robert Temple: Morbidity is an illness or disease of some kind. The term
we use in our ethical discussion is irreversible morbidity. You go blind,
you have a stroke, you have an amputationthese are morbidities that do
not away. They do not kill youmortality would kill you. There are other
kinds of morbidities as well; being depressed is a morbidity, but one that
hopefully goes away.
and also to prescribe behavior for the system in the real world. Those predic-
tions and those prescriptions have real world consequences and the real
world consequences feed back to exert selection pressure on the competition
among the different possible schemata. In this way the schemata evolve. All
of the complex adaptive systems with which we are familiar on Earth are
related in one way or another to life, including biological evolution itself,
which in my sense is a complex adaptive system. All the various organisms
are complex adaptive systems. The immune system and the brain are also
complex adaptive systems. When something is described as a complex adap-
tive system that doesnt describe all its properties, it only describes its infor-
mational aspects. Living things also process energy, for example, and other
things besides information. The term complex adaptive system refers just
to their informational properties.
CHROMOSOME
A rod-shaped structure, usually found in pairs in a cell nucleus, that car-
ries the genes that determine sex and the characteristics an organism inherits
from its parents; a human body cell usually contains 46 chromosomes
arranged in 23 pairs.
David Baltimore: A gene is a little region on a chromosome, and a chromo-
some is a collection of genes. A chromosome is more, too, because it has to
be able to duplicate itself, so it needs signals for duplication. It has to be able
to segregate itself and send signals for segregation. Fundamentally, a
chromosome is a way of carrying genes in bite-sized pieces. Is there any sig-
nificance to chromosomes? Probably not in the sense that we could have 22
chromosomes or we could have 46 chromosomes or we could have 85 chro-
mosomes and it probably wouldnt make us any different than we are now.
Different organisms have different numbers of chromosomes and there does
not seem to be any rhyme or reason for the differences.
DNA
The large molecule that carries an organisms genetic information: a
nucleic acid molecule in the form of a twisted double strand, or double helix,
that is the major component of chromosomes and carries genetic informa-
tion. DNA, which is found in all living organisms except some viruses,
reproduces itself and is the means by which hereditary characteristics pass
from one generation to the next.
David Baltimore: DNA is the chemical molecule that carries the genetic
information of the organism. Its the backbone of chromosomes. But funda-
mentally its just a chemical that carries information in a code. The code
happens to be a four-letter code, which means that if you look down DNA,
at position one, two, three, four, five, going out to three billionwhich is
Glossary of Key Terms 269
the number of letters in the human genetic codeat every one of those posi-
tions there is either an A, G, C, or T, which are the notations for specific
nucleic acids in those positions and which constitute the genetic code. So
DNA is a marvelously and almost infinitely variable polymer of individual
units. But the important thing about it is it carries information.
GENE
The basic unit of heredity: the basic unit capable of transmitting charac-
teristics from one generation to the next. It consists of a specific sequence
of DNA or RNA that occupies a fixed position locus on a chromosome.
David Baltimore: Genes are circumscribed regions of DNA sitting on chro-
mosomes which have a particular function. Im not going to define it any
better than that because in fact when you try to define a gene, the notion of
a gene dissolves in front of you. It turns out that different people use the term
gene in different ways, but the field goes on perfectly happily anyway.
GENOME
A set of chromosomes for any particular living thing: the full complement
of genetic information that an organism inherits from its parents, especially
the set of chromosomes and the genes they carry.
David Baltimore: The genome is the aggregate of all of the genes, all those
little places on chromosomes where there is useful information that goes into
constructing the organism. Its a word you could almost do without, but its
convenient for describing what scientists do when they sequence all the
DNA that an organism hasthe description is sequencing the genome.
In fact, that is not what is being done; what is being done is sequencing just
all the chromosomes. But thats the usage of the term genome.
SEQUENCING
David Baltimore: Sequencing DNA is merely determining its detailed
chemical structure, particularly the sequence of nucleic acids (represented
by letters) that constitute the genetic code. So when we say sequencing, what
we mean is putting all of these As, Gs, Cs and Ts in sequence as they
appear in the DNA of a newt or a person or a plant or whatever organism.
The DNA of each species is different. The DNA of each type of organism is
different. The DNA of each individual within the species is different. Theres
a whole hierarchy of differences which are fundamentally the remnants of
evolution. And so we can use sequencing as a way of figuring out what evo-
lution did.
270 Glossary of Key Terms
DARK MATTER
Roger Blandford: Dark matter is a form of matter whose identity we dont
yet know. We see evidence for it in our galaxy, in other galaxies, and in the
clusters of galaxies, and indeed in the universe at large because we see gravi-
tational effects that cannot be explained by the total amount of ordinary
matter. We call it dark matter because it doesnt have light associated with
it; it doesnt have stars that create starlight. It doesnt appear to be like the
matter that everything we know is made up of. It appears to be some other
sort of matter. We suspect that dark matter may be a fundamental particle
of a sort that has not yet been described.
BLACK HOLES
Roger Blandford: Supermassive space objects that gobble up matter and
light. A black hole is a body where the gravity is by definition sufficiently
strong that no material particle and not even light can escape. What this
essentially means is a black hole defines a surface, which is known as the
event horizon, and after anything has crossed that event horizon then there
is no way of going back. It could be photon, it could be a material particle,
but once theyve crossed that horizon then they can no longer escape.
DARK ENERGY
Roger Blandford: When we try to describe the way in which the expansion
of the universe is accelerating, we cannot do this with all the matter in the
universe, including all the ordinary matter and all the dark matter. We need
some extra force in the Newtonian sense, an extra substance present that has
properties that are different from regular matter, either ordinary or dark.
And we call this mysterious force dark energy. Some are looking for an
explanation of dark energy by investigating the energy resident in the vac-
uum of space, derived from quantum mechanics.
GRAVITATIONAL LENSING
Refers to the way light travels in curved paths around stars and galaxies,
and was predicted by Einsteins theory of relativity
ASTROBIOLOGY
Astrobiology is the study of life in the universe. It provides a biological
perspective to diverse areas and links such endeavors as the search for habit-
able planets, exploration missions to Mars and Europa, and efforts to under-
stand the origin of the universe.
INTERFEROMETER
A device for determining wave properties: a device that uses an interfer-
ence pattern to determine wave frequency, length, or velocity, used here
for increasing the power of astronomical telescopes.
Neil de Grasse Tyson: We know from basic optics that the bigger your
telescope the more the resolution you have when observing some object in
272 Glossary of Key Terms
SPECTRUM
The continuous distribution of colored light produced when a beam of
white light is dispersed into its components, e.g. by a prism. The spectral
analysis of light from stars is used by astronomers to determine the stars
chemical constituents.
Shri Kulkarni: The best definition of a spectrum is in one from Newtons
work. He has light rays coming on to a prism and you get a nice rainbow.
So a spectrum is basically splitting the light into its constituent fluxes and
that tells you some detailed information about what that light is made up of.
QUANTUM THEORY
Quantum theory is the remarkable way for describing the world at the
smallest scales where the act of observation of the system is inseparable from
the objective state of the system. Quantum theory is the theoretical basis of
modern physics that explains the nature and behavior of matter and energy
on the atomic and subatomic level. At the beginning of the twentieth cen-
tury, physicist Max Planck sought to discover the reason that radiation from
a glowing body changes in color from red, to orange, and, finally, to blue as
its temperature rises. He found that by making the assumption that energy
existed in individual units, or separate packets, in the same way that matter
does (atoms), rather than just as a constant electromagnetic waveas had
been the conventional wisdomand was therefore quantifiable, he could
find the answer to his question. The existence of these individual units,
called quanta, became the core concept of quantum theory, and their
descriptions came to be framed in terms of probabilities and probability
functions, not deterministic statements and fixed equations. Several decades
Glossary of Key Terms 273
QUANTUM PHYSICS
David DiVincenzo: Quantum physics is the application of quantum theory
to physical problems, to use quantum theory as we have come to understand
it to solve problems in physics and to come to an understanding of the physi-
cal world.
SUPERPOSITION
Superposition is a principle of quantum theory that describes a challeng-
ing concept about the nature and behavior of matter and forces at the atomic
level. The principle of superposition claims that while we do not know what
the state of any object is, it is actually in all possible states simultaneously, as
long as we dont look to check. It is the measurement itself that causes the
object to be limited to a single possibility.
K. Birgitta Whaley: An object can appear to exist in two different states at
the same time. Imagine that you have a cup of coffee and a glass of whiskey
in front of you, and as a person living in a classical world, you would drink
either the cup of coffee or the glass of whiskey. The quantum superposition
is putting that person in the situation where they would be essentially drink-
ing the cup of coffee and the glass of whiskey simultaneously.
ENTANGLEMENT
Entanglement is a term used in quantum theory to describe the way that
particles of energy/matter can become correlated to predictably interact with
274 Glossary of Key Terms
each other regardless of how far apart they are. This means that the quan-
tum states of two or more objects (e.g., particles) must be described in refer-
ence to each other or one another, irrespective of their spatial distance.
David DiVincenzo: Entanglement is correlation between quantum infor-
mation, or its a correlation between quantum states of two parts or more
parts. We have learned that those kinds of correlations, or the correlations
that those systems have, are stronger than the correlations that exist between
ordinary, classical data. Another aspect of entanglement is that typically it is
created by a physical interaction or by a physical force between the two
quantum systems, which may have, however, taken place long in the past.
So you can have two systems which are not presently interacting, which
are far apart from one another, but which have a kind of memory of their
previous interaction, and this memory is embodied in those correlations.
TUNNELING
K. Birgitta Whaley: Tunneling is the name that we give to the phenomenon
where elementary particles pass through barriers by apparently disappearing
and reappearing on the other side, as through a tunnel. As an analogy, imag-
ine a person is a particle who wants to go from town A to town B and theres
a big mountain in between and no way over the mountain, and you certainly
dont know any way through the mountain. If youre a normal person (or
classical particle), then you would have to trek up to the top of the moun-
tain and then down again over the other side. And during that process, your
energy would increase considerably. If you are a quantum particle, however,
there exists a finite probability that you can go from town A to town B with-
out ever going over the mountainyou would essentially move through a
process of quantum mechanical superposition of your state in both town A
and town B. You would basically appear in town B after a certain very short
amount of time.
QUANTUM COMPUTER
A computer that uses quantum mechanical processes to do computations
which regular computers could never perform.
FACTORING
Breaking a number into its prime components; that is, given an integer like
15, doing a computation to find that its prime factors are three and five. Fac-
toring is a simple computation for a number like 15 but an extremely hard
computation for a 100-digit number. Only a quantum computer could, in
theory, factor large numbers.
Glossary of Key Terms 275
PURE SCIENCE
Scientific research to explore an interesting fact of nature often done
solely for the exploration, the elegance, or the beauty of the discovery.
Research not directed toward the exposition of reality or solution of practi-
cal problems.
BASIC SCIENCE
Scientific research that deals with general principles, often fundamental
principles, rather than practical application. Basic science seeks discovery
of essential structure, function, or facts.
APPLIED SCIENCE
Scientific research put to practical use, such as the technology of lasers
being applied to the making of CDs, fax and copying machines.
FUNDAMENTALISM
Fundamentalism is term applied to many religions as signifying a kind of
religious thought and practice that claims to adhere faithfully to original
tenets and precepts, including literal interpretation of sacred texts such as
the Bible or the Koran, and often includes anti-modernist movements or
theories.
Donald Miller: Fundamentalism is often a flight from modernity; it often
refers to a group of people who are being left out of the march of progress.
Such people often idealize a golden age of fidelity and strictness that they
want to return to. Typically this golden age is something where they fanta-
size there were religious absolutes, where people were more moral, more
pure, less given to moral looseness, and so forth. I think we have to be very
careful about this sort of mythical use of religion.
ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM
Muzaffar Iqbal: In every religious tradition, there is what we call the
normative tradition, which is the mainstream way of thinking. In the case
of Islam, we fortunately have had throughout the centuries, the two primary
sources which are living sources, the Koran and the practice of the prophet
Mohammed. These resources have never gone into oblivion. They have
always been living sources. And there is a huge amount of literature on what
276 Glossary of Key Terms
constitutes the normative practice of Islam. So those people who are extrem-
ist and who claim to be following the norm of Islam, the onus is on them to
explain how they justify their position in the face of 1,400 years of scholar-
ship that has very clearly defined ways of revolutionfor example, when
the foreign enemy has attacked, the ways of behavior in every single situa-
tion. So it is not just my position that defines the norm, it is the living sources
of Islam themselves.
CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALISM
Donald Miller: The term fundamentalism was born in the early part of the
twentieth century; I think it was actually coined about 1920. Psychologically
it comes out of a response of some Christians to a modernizing influence of
theologians who wanted to look at scripture in more critical and historical
ways. These Christians wanted to secure their faith in clear and absolute
terms, which usually includes the literal belief in the Bible. I do think were
getting more polarization among peoples, whether it be among Jews, Chris-
tians, Muslims, Hindus, or even Buddhists, and we are having more back-
lash effects. Unfortunately it seems that this is the trend. There are
probably greater similarities between liberal Protestants, liberal Catholics,
liberal Jews, and liberal Muslims, then there are between Christians who
are fundamentalists and Christians who are liberal or between Jews who
are liberal or Jews who are orthodox.
EXTREMISM
Nancey Murphy: I suppose you could apply it to any religious movement
where rather than attempting to confront the new intellectual problems
that arise, the groups leaders attempt to maintain their belief system by
means of authority, which often includes severe attitudes toward nonbe-
lievers. And because this is such a difficult strategy, it usually goes along
with an attempt to separate oneself from the host culture. So theres a sort
of us-against-them mentality and a fear of confronting intellectual problems
facing the tradition.
DUALIST
One who views human beings as constituted of two distinct substances or
elements , matter (body) and spirit (soul).
MATERIALIST
One who believes that physical matter is the only reality and that all being
and processes and phenomena can be explained as manifestations or results
of matter.
PHYSICALISM
Nancey Murphy: Physicalism is a position thats best understood in con-
trast to the opposing or competing position, which is in contrast to a dualist
view of the person that says that in addition to our bodies we have some
nonmaterial part, a soul or a mind or something nonphysical of that sort.
And physicalists hold that all those higher human capacities are really the
result of our complicated brains (see materialist).
SCIENTISM
Michael Shermer: Scientism is a world view that takes the empirical meth-
ods of science seriously, that attempts natural explanations for all phenom-
ena, does not turn to supernatural or superstitious explanations, and most
importantly, is open minded and flexible to changing answers to questions
because science is always changing.
SKEPTIC
Michael Shermer: A skeptic is somebody who is a scientist. Its somebody
from Missouri who says, Show me, who says, Thats nice. Show me
the evidence. How do you know this is true? Skeptics basically ask ques-
tions about quality of the evidence, and they seek the source of the claim.
They want to know how your belief system came about. Really, this is just
science. Skepticism is literally thoughtful inquiry; thats the original mean-
ing. And the kind of thoughtful inquiry thats most effective today is the sci-
entific method.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND CONTRIBUTORS
Jeanne Bamberger
Musicologist
Jeanne Bamberger is Professor of Music at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT) where she teaches music theory and music cognition.
Her interests include learning and the development of music cognition in
both children and adults. She was a student of Artur Schnabel and Roger
Sessions (prominent pianists and composers) and performed extensively in
the U.S. and Europe as piano soloist and in chamber music ensembles. Her
most recent books include The Mind Behind the Musical Ear and Develop-
ing Musical Intuitions: A Project-Based Introduction to Making and Under-
standing Music.
On the Web: http://web.mit.edu/jbamb/www/
282 About the Author and Contributors
of modern culture, and space and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence
(SETI).
On the Web: http://www.davidbrin.com
Octavia E. Butler
Author
Octavia E. Butler, a science fiction writer, explores issues of gender, race and
society in her books. She is the author of several novels, including Parable of
the Talents, Parable of the Sower, and Kindred, as well as short stories and
essays, and an anthology called Bloodchild: And Other Stories. Ms. Butler,
of the few female African-American voices in science fiction, has won both
of the genres most prestigious awards, the Hugo and Nebula. She is was
also awarded the MacArthur genius grant in 1995.
in on all the important bioethical issues of our day, including the proper cri-
teria for death, genetic engineering, the patenting of genes and organisms,
stem cell research, and medical and genetic privacy.
On the Web: http://lawweb.usc.edu/faculty/acapron.htm
Michael Crichton
Author, Filmmaker
Michael Crichton began his career in medicine in the early 1970s but
soon switched tracks to become a highly regarded writer and filmmaker.
Most of Dr. Crichtons books are set in the present or near future, and
some of his most successful stories are cautionary tales about the potential
pitfalls of science and technology. Known as the father of the techno-
thriller, his fiction novels include The Andromeda Strain, Congo, Jurassic
Park, Timeline, and Prey. He has also penned four non-fiction books,
About the Author and Contributors 285
including Five Patients, Travels, and Jasper Johns. His books have been
global bestsellers, translated into 30 languages. 12 have been made into
films. Dr. Crichton is also creator of the hit television drama ER. In
2000, a newly discovered species of ankylosaur, Bienosaurus crichtoni, was
named after him.
On the Web: http://www.randomhouse.com/features/crichton/
Doc Dougherty
Aerospace Engineer
Doc Dougherty is director of technology at Raytheon Electronic Systems.
Raytheon is a large aerospace company that works on national defense, mis-
sile technology and missile defense, government and commercial electronics,
and aircraft.
Dr. Gell-Mann and others further developed his ideas to build the powerful
standard model of particle physics, which to this day reigns as our best
theory of the nature of matter.
Since then he has taken up broader interests that include natural history,
historical linguistics, archaeology, history, depth psychology, creative think-
ing, and biological and cultural evolution. He taps all these fields in his study
of complex adaptive systems, which is the subject of his popular science
book, The Quark and the Jaguar: Adventures in the Simple and the Com-
plex. Dr. Gell-Mann is also concerned with global policy matters such as
population growth, conservation and biodiversity, sustainable economic
development, and geopolitical stability.
On the Web: http://www.santafe.edu/sfi/People/mgm/
Portia Iversen
Autism Activist
Portia Iversen and her husband Jon Shestack co-founded the Cure Autism
Now (CAN) foundation in 1995 after learning that their two year-old son
Dov was autistic. Autism is a developmental brain disorder that affects the
ability to communicate, form relationships, and respond appropriately to
the environment. Affecting around one in 500 people, autism has several
varieties and spans a wide range of severity.
CAN has been very effective at increasing public awareness of autism and
expanding government support for autism research. Recently, the founda-
tion brought an autistic teenager named Tito and his mother Soma to the
United States so that North American scientists could meet and study him.
Before founding CAN, Iversen was a screenwriter and an Emmy Award-
winning art director.
On the Web: http://www.canfoundation.org/
quackery, and food faddism. Dr. Jarvis is founder and president of the
National Council Against Health Care Fraud and is co-author of a textbook,
Consumer Health: A Guide to Intelligent Decisions, 7th Edition.
On the Web: http://www.chirobase.org/10Bio/wjvitae.html
Dan Labriola
Naturopathic Physician
Dan Labriola, N.D., is a naturopathic physician with the Northwest Natural
Health Specialty Care Clinic. Dr. Labriola works with cancer patients who
wish to pursue both conventional treatment, such as chemotherapy and sur-
gery, and alternative medical approaches, such as dietary, botanical, and
psychological therapies. His book, Complementary Cancer Therapies, has
received praise from both the mainstream and alternative cancer commun-
ities for its balanced approach, making Dr. Labriola one of the few physi-
cians in the United States to successfully bridge the two. He works as a
consultant to hospitals, bone marrow transplantation centers, and cancer
treatment facilities worldwide.
On the Web: http://www.cancure.org/dr_labriola.htm
information. He has done important work on the tricky but essential prob-
lem of scientifically defining complexity, which is relevant to understand-
ing all those systems. Dr. Lloyd is also a leading pioneer in the field of
quantum computing, which involves harnessing the bizarre, counterintuitive
properties of matter at the atomic scale to create, someday, a dazzling new
class of computer.
On the Web: http://www.rle.mit.edu/rlestaff/p-lloyd.htm
Soma Mukhopadhyay
Mother, Teacher
Soma Mukhopadhyay is the mother of the autistic child Tito. When he was
11, Soma brought him from their native India to the UK and then to
America. Titos unprecedented ability to describe what it is like to be autistic
is giving scientists new insights into this mysterious neurological malady.
Autism is a developmental brain disorder that affects the ability to commu-
nicate, form relationships, and respond appropriately to the environment.
People with severe autism are all but unreachable and live deeply inward
lives the rest of us cannot fathom.
But Soma, a professional teacher and loving mother, was fiercely deter-
mined that Tito reach his full potential. She educated him intensively with
what she now calls the rapid prompting mechanism, forcing Tito to keep
focused while she taught him to learn to read and write, to listen, and to
engage with the physical and social world around him. Somas labors with
Tito not only saved him from a lifetime of psychic inner imprisonment,
but offer the same chance to other autistics and their families to form rich
relationships.
Propulsion Laboratory during the time of the Viking landings on Mars and
the Voyager flybys of Saturn and Jupiter. Dr. Murray is cofounder (along
with the late Carl Sagan) and president of The Planetary Society, a large
international public participation organization dedicated to exploring the
solar system and the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI). Dr. Mur-
ray is also co-producer of the Closer To Truth television series on which this
book is based and a senior member of the Closer To Truth web site team.
On the Web: http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~bcm/HomePage/
http://www.planetary.org/html/society/advisors/society-bio-murray.html
tissues, and parts starting from a single cell. By studying an unusual bacte-
rium that splits into two different cell types at a certain stage in its life, she
made major advances in understanding the genetic and molecular mecha-
nisms behind embryonic development. Her work has also led to better
understanding of how proteins move around and perform their work inside
cells.
Dr. Shapiro also works actively to promote public understanding of sci-
ence and to reduce scientific illiteracy. She is a board member of the Scien-
tists Institute for Public Information, and gives frequent talks to lay
audiences and policy makers. She was invited to the White House to advise
President Clinton and his Cabinet about the risks biologically altered patho-
gens pose to national security and the food supply. Among other issues, Dr.
Shapiro educates people about breast cancer policies and science, and has
also spoken out about the alarming levels of resistance which bacteria are
developing to antibiotics.
Dr. Shapiro is co-founder of Anacor, a pharmaceutical company that is
working to develop new treatments for microbial infection to compensate
for the waning effectiveness of present-day antibiotics. She also sits on the
board of directors of GlaxoSmithKline, a research-based pharmaceutical
company.
On the Web: http://devbio1.stanford.edu/usr/ls/
new medical treatments. Dr. Temple has held many important positions at
the FDA over the years and is an expert in pharmaceutical regulation and
research.
depression, defined, 263. See also ethics of clinical trials. See testing new
psychiatry drugs
Dicke, Robert, 237 Europa, life on, 162
Dietary Supplements Health & evolution of universe. See order in the
Education Act (1994), 83 universe
dimensions: Ewald, Paul, 100101, 286. See also
multiverse in extra dimensions, 241 microbes
Dirac, Paul, 237 existence, explanation for. See ultimate
disease. See microbes reality
disconnected regions, multiverse in, exotic objects (cosmology), 147
240 expansion of universe, 13940, 145,
disinfectants, 103 270
disorder. See order in the universe explosives detection, 19192
disruptive technologies, 188 extra-solar planets, 15961, 168
dissonance in music, 2728 extremeophiles, 156, 15859, 165
DiVincenzo, David, 18182, 285. See extremism, 21112, 213, 276
also quantum computing
DNA, defined, 26869. See also F-117 Stealth aircraft, 191
genetics and genetic engineering factoring, 169, 172, 182, 183, 274
DOD (Department of Defense), 188 failure modes, 1617
89 faith. See religion and fundamentalism
Dougherty, Llewellyn Doc, 200, fake universes, 245
285. See also science, in national false gods, 244245
security fantasy vs. science fiction, 23
dreaming, defined, 261 fine tuning required for Big Bang,
drugs (medications): 23637
aggressive prescriptions, 8283; fine structure constant, 14344
for mental health, See psychiatry; food preferences, 21920
naturopathy, See alternative formation of life. See life in the
medicine; universe
placebo reaction, 72, 8586; free will, 4243
testing, 10722 Freeman, Robert, 3132, 286. See also
dualist, defined, 277 music, significance of
functional brain imaging, defined,
E. coli, 93, 97 261
education, rational, 2089 fundamental laws, 12728
effective complexity, 127 fundamentalism. See religion and
Einstein, Albert, 4, 143 fundamentalism
emergence, 123, 130, 133 future of the universe, 144145
empowerment from technology,
2078 gamma ray bursts, 152, 157, 271
entanglement, 17375, 27374 gedanken experiments. See thought
environment, 1517; experiments
global warming, 8; Gell-Mann, Murray, 136, 286. See also
heredity vs., 13536; order in the universe
planetary, 193 gene therapy, 103
Epstein, Robert, 75, 285. See also genes, defined, 269
psychiatry genetics and genetic engineering, 125;
302 Index