"Conservative Physics"

The past couple decades have witnessed attempts to cultivate what might best be called a "Conservative Physics." The largest outlet for this view is The American Spectator, and its largest proponent Tom Bethell, who's the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science.

Before I continue, (in the interest of full disclosure) I should let you know that my (real) name was proposed by a few folks connected with the "PI Guides" to write the guide to science. Even though it would have been a good opportunity for me in some ways, I think Bethell was the better man for the job. For one thing, Bethell is not a scientist, and would tend to have a more popular approach to the subject. Certainly he wrote a much more topical, philosophically lighter book than I would have (albeit one that fails to get to the heart of the shortcomings of modern science), and I expect that was what the editors of the series were aiming for. So I hold no grudge.

Bethell wrote a piece in 1993 on Petr Beckmann's alternative to Einstein's special relativity ("Doubting Dada Physics"). Not sure, but he may also have been the one who interviewed Carver Mead (Sep/Oct 2001). Much more recently—September in fact—, Bethell updates the anti-relativity argument with "Can We Do Without Relativity?" in which he plugs his book, Questioning Einstein: Is Relativity Necessary?.

The purpose of this post is to point out the severe limitations of this line of thought. My problem is not with people who question mainstream physics (heck, that's what mainstream physicists are supposed to do!), but that the "conservative" critiques are not radical enough.

Quantum Mechanics

Over the past several years, various conservative non-scientists have recommended to me Carver Mead's Collective Electrodynamics (MIT Press, 2000). The typical claim is that Mead sees the obscurantism in quantum mechanics as usually taught these days and that his thinking obviates these problems. As the September-October 2001 American Spectator interview makes clear, Mead sees (some of) the shortcomings of the current paradigm of physics. How could a conservative not warm to him?

I started read Mead's book expecting some sort of real insight into the nature of the (quantum) world. In actuality, Mead succeeds in saying very little about the world we humans live in. Even his mathematical claims are modest:

This approach does not produce a new theory in the sense that it contains startling new equations, for it does not. The results it derives for standard electromagnetic problems are identical to those found in any text on the subject. (5)

I found that even this is an understatement. On page 20 (chapter 1) he arrives at equation 1.17. On the following page he proclaims

We have, however, just encountered our first big surprise: We recognize the second form of Eq. 1.17, which came from Newton's law, as the integral form of one of Maxwell's equations!

Actually it's not so surprising, considering that 1.17 is derived ultimately (via equation 1.7) from equation 1.1, which is actually just another form of that same Maxwell equation he thinks he has derived by other means. In other words, Mead has smuggled in by assumption what he later claims to have serendipitously discovered.

I didn't make it past the first chapter, in large part because the circularity of the argument made it clear to me that it would be a waste to invest more time in a book whose mathematical argument wasn't even carefully vetted.

The deeper problem that put me off the book is that Mead isn't careful to distinguish theory-laden "observations" from what the experimental observer actually sees with his eyes and takes in with his other senses.¹ You can get a sense of this in the Spectator interview when he talks about "ten-foot electrons." It's not that one sees or feels electrons that big, but that experiment filtered through theoretical conceptions indicates that the electron is that "big" (i.e., the waveform of which it consists takes up that much space). Mead himself may "see" these electrons (i.e., have a sense of their presence intuitively), but invisible to him and unexpressed are the assumptions through which his "observations" are being filtered (such assumptions are what enable stage magicians to fool their audiences). The result is that it's not clear that Mead claiming anything about reality, as opposed to the abstractions of physics.

Relativity

There was a strong reaction against Bethell's 1993 piece on relativity. That the reaction of mainstream physicists and their allies against a supposedly conservative thesis was sometimes childish and unnecessarily persnickety might to some be cause for circling the wagons. But I would ask first: what are we circling around? Is it worth protecting?

I think it was around 2002, shortly after I read Bethell's 1993 piece on relativity, that I ordered the Beckmann book Einstein Plus Two. I didn't get very far into it before I stopped reading. As I recall, the problem was in Beckmann's presentation of the first example of "purely optical" evidence that he cites: his explanation of stellar aberration (1.3.1, p. 31) is rather incomplete and not open enough about how the phenomenon not only fails to support this theory, but actually undermines it. (Please forgive my poor memory of this point.)

Brad DeLong, Professor of Economics (!) at UC Berkeley, authored one of the reactions against Bethell. He really doesn't have much to say about the Bethell's claims against Einstein—relativity largely rises or falls on experiment, and no amount of experimental evidence will ever rule out the possibility that some future experiment will eliminate a long-held and cherished theory (such is the strength and weakness of modern science). He's left with "snipping around the edges" by questioning some details Bethell gets wrong, but mostly questioning the motivation underlying Bethell's critique of Einstein.² Most notably he attributes opposition to Einstein to the right's latent Antisemitism (!)—something akin to Jimmy Carter's recent blaming opposition to President Obama's health-care plan on racism. Somehow questioning motivations is supposed to neutralize the force of an argument.

I'll leave you to read over DeLong's critique and judge for yourself.

Before I continue, I should note that I actually think Einstein's relativity is a great support to Jewish and Christian religions and moral absolutes, as I've written here.

Deeper Problems

Physicist and philosophy professor Richard Hassing once said in an introduction to a talk:

The bookstores contain quite a few books on the weirdness of quantum physics. To my knowledge, there are no books on the weirdness of classical physics, which is even described by physicists as common sense sharpened up. I don't think this is right, and so the most basic theme and more accurate title of this lecture is "Classical Weirdness."

Hassing is exactly right. Conservatives think they've been swindled with modern physics (i.e., quantum mechanics and relativity), but fail to notice that their pockets have already been picked by classical physics.³ For example, most obviously: the Law of Inertia talks about bodies unaffected by outside forces: when was the last time you saw a body isolated from all forces?

Less obviously: why does Newton's assumption of inertia make organisms less natural? If organisms are unnatural, then how much more unnatural are rational organisms (humans)! How can we ever be at home in a universe in which we are unnatural?

The real challenge for people searching for the truth (among them many political conservatives) is to come up with a way of understanding and talking about nature that is not only true to the established results of the science of the last few centuries, but is also true to much more fundamental human experience of the world, in all its sensory and moral dimensions.

That's the way that we're going to make the world a more human, more humane place more conducive to human happiness.

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Regarding the connection of modern science and political divisions, I cannot recommend enough Yuval Levin's excellent Science and the Left:

Putting aside all the loose talk of a Republican assault on reason, this simpler point does ring true: There is indeed a deep and well-established kinship between science and the left, one that reaches to the earliest days of modern science and politics and has grown stronger with time. Even though they go astray in caricaturing conservatives as anti-science Luddites, American liberals and progressives are not mistaken to think of themselves as the party of science. They do, however, tend to focus on only a few elements and consequences of that connection, and to look past some deep and complicated problems in the much-valued relationship. The profound ties that bind science and the left can teach us a great deal about both.

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Notes

1. A typical fault of modern science that might be understood as a consequence of talking only to one's fellow specialists who are intimately familiar with the typical experimental set-ups. Unfortunately these set-ups are completely unknown to non-specialists like you and me.

2. One of the most unlikely parts of the DeLong piece is that the sentence "First, conservatives who dislike Einstein do so for one of two reasons" precedes three bullet points. One would think that even professors of economics could count, and correct a fault after over 11 years of its being on the web.

3. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute is an excellent organization and publishes some excellent books. Unfortunately, the A Student's Guide to Natural Science is disappointingly uncritical of the received view of the sciences. ISI would have been better off retitling and repackaging Ralph M. McInerny's A Student's Guide to Philosophy, which is spot-on about the modern natural sciences.

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Tom Bethell, "Doubting Dada Physics," The American Spectator 26:8 (Aug 1993), p. 16.

Brad DeLong, "Conservative Fear of Albert Einstein" (6/16/1997), accessed October 31, 2009.

Anonymous, "Carver Mead: The Spectator interview," The American Spectator 34:7 (Sep/Oct 2001), 68-76.

Richard F. Hassing, "On Aristotelian, Classical and Quantum Physics," Public Lecture, Thomas Aquinas College, March 7, 2003.

Tom Bethell, "Can We Do Without Relativity?" The American Spectator (September 2009).

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Note: Work is busy. Not sure how often I'll be posting for now.

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Update (Nov. 10): Brad DeLong has reposted his petulant piece on his blog (but he has cleaned up his bullet points).

As Mike Flynn has pointed out in the comments, Steve Barr has blogged about Bethell's piece on the First Things blog. Bethell and Barr have exchanged salvos in the comments. Frankly Barr is getting the better of it (so far). The exchange has come to the notice of a Discover Magazine blog.

Hiatus Explained

I've been away from the blog for the past several weeks because my new job required me to move. I'm now busy finding my way in my new position.

Hope to post again before the end of October.

Love: Marital vs. Romantic

Some may think it takes chutzpah for a bachelor to write on marriage, But just as a medical doctor doesn't need to have cancer to diagnose a patient's illness, I hope my detachment will aid my objectivity.

Before anyone misunderstands the title of this post, I need to be very clear that I'm not trying to say that marriage is necessarily opposed to romantic love. What I am trying to say is that they exist in tension. To the modern mind, romance is the only justification for marriage. But when one looks at marriage itself, the reasons for it are much more practical and earthy.

What brought this subject to mind is a book I recently read, Captain from Castile by Samuel Shellabarger—an entertaining novel, but by no means a literary classic. The story is about Pedro de Vargas, a young Spaniard nobleman from Jaén who accompanies Cortez in his conquest of the Aztec Empire (Mexico) after a frightful run-in with the Spanish Inquisition. Pedro has two love interests. On the one hand, there is Luisa de Carvajal, a young noblewoman, who is his romantic ideal. On the other hand, there is Catana Pérez, a common girl who works as a barmaid and entertains as a dancer, whom he also loves.

These two women don't respectively represent the two sides of love that are the subject of this post, but rather two perspectives on love, one of which divides the two sides, while the other unites them. On the one hand, there is the upper-class perspective, represented by Luisa. For the rich, (romantic) love is a game, an entertainment, while marriage is for the practical purposes of children, allying families, and securing societal station. The poor, meanwhile, lack the luxury of "playing" at love, but must find whatever (romantic) love they can in their spouses.

Of course, from our modern perspective, "love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage," so the separatist perspective is incomprehensible. Despite the fact that the song attributes that opinion to the "local gentry," a large part of our belief comes from the democratic, egalitarian times in which we live: we're all commoners; we lack the cultured detachment that plagues the wealthy.

Despite this incomprehensibility—in fact because of it—it is especially important to make an effort to appreciate the merit of the position. Please don't mistake me to be advocating adultery or making love a game. I am not here advocating a line of behavior, but simply an appreciation of a lost perspective.

The Divine Romance

Romantic love is prefigurement of the Divine Love. This was plainly realized by the time of Plato's Symposium, which praises love as divine.¹ In Michelangelo's "Creation of Man" on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Eve hides under God's arm; Adam extends his finger in longing as much to Eve as to God. There's something similar being shown in Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II's The Jeweler's Shop when Anna encounters the Bridegroom (Christ) with the face of her husband Stefan, even though their marriage is suffering grave difficulty: it is through her human bridegroom that she will reach her Divine Bridegroom.

Francis Schaeffer, in his video series How Should We Then Live?, takes issue with the separation of the romantic ideal from one's spouse, particularly in reference to Dante's love for Beatrice, whom Dante may never have met and who was definitely never his wife. (He says the idealization of Beatrice degraded Dante's wife to "a dray horse of a woman."²) But there's something Schaeffer is obviously missing here: Dante's love for Beatrice drew him to God in a particular way.

In the mysterious, inexhaustible "otherness" of an unfulfilled love, don't we catch a glimpse, albeit fleeting, of the mysterious, inexhaustible "otherness" of the Love that will be fulfilled only after death?

True, no finite creature can fully re-present the goodness of the Creator. God is always much more than us and we will never exhaust his goodness, whereas a human lover cannot help but fall short and cease to draw us effectively to God. The shortcomings of someone with whom you consort on a day-to-day basis are so much more familiar.³ (Familiarity breeds contempt, the adage goes.) The sacred is set apart from the mundane. This is why it's so much easier for a near-stranger (like Beatrice) to represent the sacred.

Loves' Perils

Of course, there is a danger of seeing in romantic love, not a reflection of eternal love, but the eternal love itself—and this may be an error to which many practitioners of courtly love fell prey. The key is to understand that this world is a pale reflection of a greater world. Realizing this difference, we can use the longing human love puts in us to understand more fully and draw us to love God, as it is clear that Dante did with his love for Beatrice.

But there is also a danger of confusing marital love for eternal love.⁴ I think this is the danger to which we are particularly prone today. Marriage is a very practical societal reality and it may be that one's spouse will not stir one's heart forever. That spouses should be perpetually head-over-heels "in love" is a false ideal; along with the human failure to live up it, this expectation is the culprit behind the staggering divorce rate in this country. It's also the reason so many young people cohabitate instead of marrying: they realize (usually from the example of their divorced parents) their own inability to live up to this unattainable illusion. Of course the degradation of marriage to a legal formality instead of a lifelong commitment (a commitment based on the continuation of love beyond feelings of love) is why homosexuals think they can wed: if marriage means simply benefits from society without real commitment, they are as capable as anyone else!

At the root of confusing marital with eternal love is the confusion of marital love with romantic love: the idea that the two are necessarily identical. Certainly it is best for spouses to have feelings of love to assist them in their duties to one another. Marriage is not always going to be a heart-stirring affair. It's hard work at times. What we need nowadays is to reaffirm the practicality of marriage: it is the cornerstone of human society. The difficult truth is that, whether there's romance involved or not, we need to have marriage. There is a human need for romance, but romance will come and go, and humans can learn to live in its presence or absence. The unavoidable truth is that no society can long endure without marriage to raise up the next generation.

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Along similar lines, here's a though-provoking article by Sam Schulman I ran across on why homosexual "marriage" cannot bear the weight of that name.

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Notes

1. Procreation is one divine aspect of love, as it allows finite creatures to participate in the eternal. Is it any surprise that we would have feelings of eternity in an act that allows us to participate in it?

2. Quoted from memory. Cf. p. 58 of the book version.

3. I mean "consort" in multiple senses.

4. It's probably truer to say that we today confuse all three loves (romantic, marital, eternal): we have such a one-dimensional ideal of love today. C.S. Lewis's book on The Four Loves is an apt antidote.

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Samuel Shellabarger, Captain from Castile (Garden City, NY: The Sun Dial Press, 1946).

Aristotelian Empiricism

A question that's been disputed here in the past is the existence of things not open to direct empirical verification, in the modern sense of the positive empirical sciences. One disputed reality is the existence of substances, which are not directly sensible, and which we only know through their "accidents" or sensible characteristics.

The book by Richard J. Connell I've been reading explains how metaphysical principles, such as substances, are known through their sensible, physical effects. As he writes on p. 175, "Undoubtedly, some people will be surprised to learn that, according to the Aristotelians, there is nothing in the intellect which was not originally in the senses in some manner."

Even the modern, empirical sciences infer the existence of non-sensible realities from their sensible effects:

Next, let us consider some examples from the experimental sciences. Magnetic fields are not directly observable; their existence is known through the medium of observable movements. Certainly, the observable motions are distinct from the magnetic fields and cannot be identified with them. These movements, which cannot be reduced to other, known attributes or realities, are the first things to be apprehended. The fact that they are not (notice the negation) accountable for by what is already known leads to the affirmation of another, unobservable attribute to explain the motion. The magnetic field is then conceived so as best to account for the observed effects. Indeed, the whole process of constructing an hypothesis on magnetic theory is measured by the demands of teh observed phenomena through which the very existence of the unobservable attribute is known.

An electric current is another illustration of the same kind of noetic procedure. The deflections of meter needles, the shocks that come from "hot" wires, etc.—surely none of these, either singly or collectively is the electric current. These phenomena lead to a knowledge of something else which is the current, but the phenomena themselves are not that current. (183-4)

So unless we want to dispose of the essences discovered by science, which are in themselves not sensible, there is no principled, non-arbitrary way to rule out inferences to metaphysical principles, even immaterial ones, so long as they have a basis in sensible reality.

The doctrine that has been outlined here can, I think, be interpreted to support the empiricists in their insistence upon the necessity of verifying the meaning of terms in sense experience, without, however, denying the reality of non-sensible substances and accidents; for, if their verification principle is understood as demanding that names signify either (1) things that are directly sensible, or (2) things that are not directly sensible but which are knowable through the medium of something that is, then the principle is true. On the other hand, the present doctrine, although insisting upon sense experience as the origin of intellectual knowledge, does not exclude true and meaningful metaphysical propositions, however difficult and infrequently attained the latter may be. To repeat, it does not, as a matter of principle, rule out all metaphysical statements, but only those which pretend to be prior and independent of experience—in other words, all rationalistic "metaphysics." (185)

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Richard J. Connell, Matter and Becoming (Chicago: The Priory Press, 1966).

The Past and Future of Space Exploration

Today is the fortieth anniversary of the first manned Moon landing and Moon walk.¹ To commemorate, Google has introduced Google Moon, which includes markers for the six manned moon landings (but what about the unmanned? robots are people too! haha). Here's a zoomed-in map of the Apollo-11 moon landing site. (Hat-tip to GoogleMapsMania, where there are a few more moon-related links.)

Apparently the Apollo 11 astronauts are on the stump today for the manned mission to Mars. I'm rather doubtful of the advisability of working toward such a mission now.

First of all, manned missions are "astronomically" more expensive than unmanned missions for the simple reason that we rightly value human life and want to return our astronauts to Earth alive. Equipment requires testing so that some spring doesn't fly off and puncture a spacesuit, for example. Even more, all the equipment to maintain an Earth-like environment is dreadfully heavy. Since increasing payload weight increases the amount of fuel required, which itself increases the weight and thus the amount of fuel needed, the total fuel required to lift a payload into orbit increases with the square of the weight. So life-support alone makes manned missions much, much more costly.

Secondly as any space scientist can tell you (privately), the vast bulk of space science comes from unmanned missions, e.g., the successes of Voyager, Mars Rover, and Galileo. Scientists remain silent in public because they want to keep their NASA funding. Pound for pound and dollar for dollar, unmanned missions are scientifically orders of magnitude far more productive than manned missions.

Of course there's far more than scientific discovery at stake with a Mars mission: there's also national pride, firing the imagination of science students, etc. But can we really afford to spend billions of dollars simply to feel better about ourselves at this point? Can't we motivate our students in a more cost effective way, say, by promoting parental involvement? Besides, unmanned missions are exciting too: just look at the interest created by the pictures from the Voyager missions, or the Mars Rover.

Granted: our government has just given away close to $100 billion to unwise banks and failing businesses. The federal budget is over $2 trillion. A couple billion dollars a year seems a measly amount by comparison. Mark Thornton has a great response:

I have to admit that with all the hundreds of billions of dollars the federal government is wasting, it is hard to muster the energy to argue against a few additional billion. I reiterate that the real cost is not just a dollar amount, but all the things that could be produced if the proposal is rejected. This is an enormous amount of scientific and technical ability that could otherwise be used in the private sector to produce important discoveries and help keep the US economy number one in the world. In contrast to conventional wisdom which sees government budgets as a benefactor to science, the economic view shows that every dollar government spends on science actually hurts the progress of science and scientific discovery because scientific resources are diverted away from where they are needed most into nonperforming bureaucracies. We must also consider the fact that estimated or projected budgets are almost universally inaccurate and vastly underestimate the true cost of programs. For example, the International Space Station was more than 500% over budget and is still incomplete after twenty years. The actual cost of the Shuttle moving resources into space was underestimated by a factor of twenty. Based on current estimates of the total cost of going to Mars ($170 billion) the true cost could easily mount to $1 trillion.

As history has shown, government bureaucracies are horribly inept at space exploration. (This is for the simple reason that it gets its funding from its citizens at gunpoint, as it were—bullies are horribly lazy.) Privatizing space exploration would be far more efficient way to achieve goals in space and to benefit society.

People arguing for publicly funded manned missions point to the legacy such missions will leave for future generations. But I think it is more likely that future generations would blame us for opting to pleasure ourselves (as our consumeristic society already does too much these days) with an inefficient effort that saddles them with more public debt.

I'm sure that someday we'll land astronauts on Mars. In the meantime public funding would be better spent on exploring with robots and maybe developing more efficient propulsion systems. But really it would be best to turn over space exploration to the free market.

Notes

1. There is an obvious joke here, but that poor man's memory has been held in public view far too long already.

A Gap in the Mask

I heard on NHPR this morning that Massachusetts is challenging the Federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) for impeding its enforcement of same-sex "marriage equality." (I can't find at link at NHPR, but here's another write-up.) Apparently, despite Obama's posturing as "moderate," his administration is "coming out" in favor of the suit.

Further, a group of Iraq-war veterans are advocating repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that bars homosexuals from openly identifying themselves as such in the military. We'll see what Obama does with that one.

American Papist notes a NY Times Magazine piece in which Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg admits something extraordinary:

Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion.

She could have said "populations that some didn't want to have too many of," but by saying "populations that we don’t want to have too many of," she makes it clear that she was in favor of directing abortion to eliminate certain (read: minority) populations. (Would any cue less subtle have made it through the spin machine?) Back in Europe there were times in the first half of last century when the populations targeted as undesirable would have included Jews like Justice Ginsburg herself. How quickly we forget the lessons of history!

Despite the massive spin control the media exercises on behalf of the liberal world order, the ugly truth occasionally peeks out from behind the mask. Or perhaps liberals feel secure enough in their mastery of our culture that they don't have to hide any more. If only the American people were less indoctrinated into the cult of "what difference does it make?"!

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Update (7/19): Michael Gerson has an insightful analysis of the Ginsburg interview.

The Priority of Ordinary Experience

I mentioned a few posts back that I have been reading Richard J. Connell's Matter and Becoming. I ran across an excellent passage that I thought I'd share.

Let me put the matter another way. The ordinary experience of men leads them to declare that they know real things and not [merely] images, concepts, or the impressions within their knowing powers. The burden of proof, therefore, is on him who opposes this view, and we may legitimately inquire as to how he is going to verify his statement that "we do not know realities (but only images, etc.)." How is he going to show this to be true? It seems to me that the proponents of this doctrine have too often escaped being made responsible for their declaration. It is, after all, true that positions which go counter to the experience of men must be established and not gratuitously stated. How then, unless truth is to be redefined so that it does not imply an extrinsic standard, is such a position to be verified?

That last sentence is very elegantly put! To unpack: truth is the correspondence between our minds and (exterior) reality, so we need exterior reality to confirm any claim; unless we redefine "truth" to omit the reference to exterior reality, there can be no (coherent) way to confirm the claim that we don't know exterior reality. Of course, philosophers ever since Descartes have been trapped in their heads and unable to speak of truth except by redefining truth as mere consistency.

Connell continues,

It seems philosophers are sometimes led to deny or doubt the fact that we know the exterior world because they cannot explain how. In so doing they fail to distinguish the fundamentally different questions which the mind can ask (or at least they fail to make use of these distinctions). It is especially true that certain epistemological difficulties have arisen because the question whether something is has often gone undistinguished from the questions asking what, how, or why it is. This point needs elaboration.

Everyone knows that some things are living; but most people will declare that they do not know what life is. Similarly, everyone is aware that he understands, sees, moves his arms, etc.; but the largest part of mankind is ignorant (even in part) of what these activities are and how they occur. As Professor DeKoninck of Laval University pointed out, this was Descartes' error with regard to motion: that there is motion is very evident; but what motion is, is very obscure. Thus, because it is evident that there is motion, Descartes thought it was also clear what movement is; he confused the two questions.

The last two sentences allude to Descartes' derision of Aristotle's definition of motion (Physics III.1) as superfluous: for example, in Rules for the Direction of the Mind, 24, 426, he calls them "magic words" and not understandable.

Actually the few pages in which this passage occurs are wholly excellent. I can't wait to get to the rest of the book.

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Richard J. Connell, Matter and Becoming (Chicago: The Priory Press, 1966), 7.