Printer FriendlyThe following lecture was presented by Professor Stephen Pennell, Mathematical Sciences, on Tuesday, October 5, 2004, at a series entitled: "If This Were The Last Lecture I Would Give, What Would I Say?" organized by the Multi-faith Council of the University of Massachusetts Lowell and funded by the Council on Diversity and Pluralism.
Thank you to Imogene and the Multi-faith Council for inviting me to give this talk. The first think I would like to say is something I say to all my classes at the start of every semester: Please consider me a pathological liar. Please don’t take anything I say on faith; please think about what I say for yourselves and see whether it makes sense to you.
Preparing this talk was a very challenging exercise. As you all probably know, speakers in this series are asked to respond to the question “If this were the last lecture you would give, what would you say?” My initial reaction was that for my last lecture I should talk about something fun. Since nothing is more fun than math, it seemed obvious that I should talk about math. However, when I mentioned this idea to my wife, Melissa, her reaction was less than enthusiastic. I trust her judgment, so went back to the drawing board to try to come up with another topic.
Imogene had given me a list of questions to think about in preparation for this talk. One of those questions particularly resonated with me: “What have you learned?” We are a university, after all, and learning is our business. Furthermore, Imogene asked me to give this talk just after the end of last semester, and I still had final exams on my mind. It struck me that a last lecture is a summing up, in the same way that a final exam or a final paper sums up a course. In any event, I’d like to talk to you about what I have learned and how I have learned.
Curiosity is what drives me to learn, and I don’t think I am the only person for whom this is true. I think curiosity is part of human nature. Even as children we start to wonder where we came from, where the world came from, how things work. I grew up a Roman Catholic. The Roman Catholic equivalent of a Frequently Asked Questions list is a small book called the Baltimore Catechism, written in question and answer format. I had to memorize it as a kid, and I still remember parts of it. The first three questions were
Q: Who made you?
A: God made me.
Q: Why did God make you?
A: God made me to know, love, and serve him in this life and to be happy with him forever in the next life.
Q: Who is God?
A: God is the Supreme Being who made all things.
There was always at least one kid in all of my classes who thought “Supreme Being” was “String Bean,” so the answer to the third question became “God is the String Bean who made all things.” This may have been a common problem, because in the new version of the Baltimore Catechism, as I discovered today in a Google search, the answer to the third question is “God is the Creator of heaven and earth, and of all things.” My point is that the Roman Catholic Church provided an answer to every question, and for many years that was enough for me.
Eventually, though, I started to learn some science. One of my graduate school professors said that most people have two boxes in their brains, a religion box and a science box. Some concepts are put into the religion box, some are put into the science box, and there is no mixing. That was the case with me. I started filling up both my science box and my religion box with concepts. In science class I worked out of the science box, and in church (and most of the rest of the time) I worked out of the religion box, but curiosity was the driving force behind both box-filling activities. My balance between religion and science shifted over time, but I happily used the two-box system for many years. Little by little, though, this system became untenable for me.
About ten years ago, I decided to try a one-box system. I dumped everything from my religion box and my science box into one big box, threw out a few things, and tried to see how everything fit together. That’s where I am now, still trying to see whether religion and science can coexist in one box in my brain. So far I think they can – they seem more complementary than contradictory to me. It seems to me that the religious mode of inquiry seeks truth through personal experiences such as interactions with other people, reading scripture, or experiences interpreted as direct contact with God. The scientific mode of inquiry, on the other hand, seeks truth in nature. There is an element of faith in each approach. The reader of scripture believes that God is telling the truth in scripture; the scientist believes that no false evidence has been planted in nature – if the universe appears to be about fifteen billion years old, that’s because the universe is about fifteen billion years old, not because the evidence has been tampered with. (Of course, scientific conclusions are always subject to revision if new data come to light.)
There are some questions that science just cannot address, such as “Does God exist?” or “Why is there something rather than nothing?” Science literally cannot deal with the supernatural. For example, suppose I tell you I have a theory that God created the universe last Thursday and implanted false memories in all of us. How would you test my theory? My response to all your questions would be “That’s the way God made it.” How could you prove me wrong? That’s not science.
On the other hand, there are questions that religion cannot answer. If you want to know the date of the next lunar eclipse, ask an astronomer, not a theologian.
I have been doing a fair amount of reading on the science vs. religion debate, and I wanted to tell you about two issues I found to be of particular interest: the anthropic principle, and intelligent design. The anthropic principle states that the universe was designed to make human life possible. Proponents of this idea note that if the values of various physical parameters were just slightly different, the universe would look quite different and human life would be impossible. For example, if the gravitational attraction between protons were just slightly stronger, stars would collapse before there was time to produce heavy elements such as carbon. If the mass of a neutron were just slightly closer to the mass of a proton, there would be much less deuterium in stars and again the production of heavy elements would be much less likely. Many people find this viewpoint compelling, but it doesn’t cut much ice with scientists. First of all, the mere fact that an event is unlikely does not mean it must have been caused deliberately. The probability of any particular number being selected in the Powerball lottery is something like one in two hundred million, yet some number is always selected. Secondly, if the universe were different from the one we know, it is possible that non-human forms of life would have evolved. Human life evolved because of the existing conditions in the universe, not vice versa.
The intelligent design argument says that the universe is so complex it must have been deliberately created. An often cited analogy is that if someone walking along a deserted beach found a watch, she would know it must have been made by an intelligent being rather than by nature. This argument does not cut much ice with scientists either. Let me give you an example from personal experience. There are mathematical systems called cellular automata that are governed by very simple rules yet are capable of producing very complex patterns. If you were just to observe the patterns without knowing how they were generated, you would think they were designed deliberately. Think of a square array of light bulbs, some turned on and some turned off. Suppose that every five seconds a bulb can change state, from on to off or vice versa, according to some simple rules. One rule might be that if a bulb is currently off but two or more of its neighbors are on, then it will turn on. With a small set of simple rules like this, the light bulb array can flash in very complex, regular patterns. If even such a simple system can exhibit complex “behavior,” isn’t it possible that the same thing can happen on a larger scale? Stephen Wolfram, creator of the software package Mathematica, believes that everything in the universe can be described in terms of cellular automata.
All this leaves me with more questions than answers. The older I get, the less I know. So, Imogene, in answer to your question “What have you learned?” I have to confess “Not much.” I’m hoping to get by on partial credit. Meanwhile, I take solace in a comment by Voltaire: “Doubt is not a very agreeable state, but certainty is a ridiculous one.”
References:
Goodenough, Ursula. 1998. The Sacred Depths of Nature. Oxford University Press.
Kurtz, Paul, ed. 2003. Science and Religion: Are They Compatible? Prometheus Books.
Hampl, Patricia. 1992. Virgin Time. Ballantine Books.