OUP
ISBN 978-0-19-969574-4

Quantum physics will always baffle our intuitions, and pop science books trying to explain it will always be written, often by excitable physicists keen to spread their philosophical wings.

The flapping noises that this produces may greatly reduce any excitement for the reader. Let us begin, then, with some irritation, by considering the Via Negativa, or negative way, at Vedral’s invitation. This approach was favoured by the Cappadocian Fathers of the 4th century, who tried to elucidate what God was by focussing on what he wasn’t. When Vedral says things like, “the Cappadocian Fathers reach [sic] the ultimate knowledge of God in the same way that we reach the ultimate understanding of reality” (p.195), it seems reasonable to apply this negative way to his book.

A reliable account of the universe may not be one that says, “to a scientist, any knowledge always refers to the knowledge of the future. Hence historians are not scientists…” (p.19) Bad news for geologists, palaeontologists and cosmologists.

Does I = log 1/p mean that information, the keystone of the book, is “proportional” to log 1/p (p.29)?

Vedral says we can calculate the information-carrying capacity of any object by using its area and mass. Thus, “a typical head is 20 centimetres in diameter and weighs 5 kilograms. That means that a typical human head can store 10 to the power of 44 bits of information. Compare this to the best current computers which are still only of 10 to the power of 14 bits of information” (p.185). No mention here of a computer’s area or mass. Might we compare the information-carrying capacity of Vedral’s head and a particularly large turnip?

There are many questionable remarks throughout the text, but those concerning the “reality” Vedral purports to decode invite the most negative verdict. At the outset he states that “we create our reality through our understanding of the Universe” (p.7). Then it turns out that, “we can think of the Universe as a large balloon within which there is a smaller balloon, our reality” (p.174). Is the large balloon not really there, then? Or is the smaller balloon our view of reality, somehow floating around inside it like a cartoon thought bubble? Later on, it seems that, “we run these programs [natural laws] to generate our picture of reality” (p.211). So now we end up with a picture of reality, rather than reality itself.

Picture a large thought bubble within which there is a smaller turnip.

Paul Taylor

Allen Lane, ISBN 978-0-713-99826-9

The title is enough to attract any skeptic, and the author’s name should be added bait for anyone familiar with advances in evolutionary theory over the last three decades, since many of these advances have been made by Trivers himself.

The subtitle encapsulates the thesis of the book. Trivers is proposing an explanation for the well-known but puzzling phenomenon of self-deception: how can someone simultaneously know and apparently not know something. Murky though the mechanism may be, the motivation has usually seemed to be defensive: hiding uncomfortable truths from oneself. Freud and repressed memories will be routinely mentioned.

Trivers radically overhauls traditional views. “From the simple premise that the primary function of self-deception is offensive – measured as the ability to fool others – we can build up a theory and science of self-deception. In our own species, deceit and self-deception are two sides of the same coin”.

This fledgling science is robustly rooted in biology, and the gains from this approach are substantial: “The dynamics of deception and its detection have been studied in a broad range of other species, with the advantage that we can see things in others that we can’t easily see in ourselves. This enterprise also greatly extends our range of evidence and leads to a few general principles of some considerable value.”

When it is realised just how broad this range of species is, namely from viruses to apes, the theoretical benefits can be appreciated. Deception is ubiquitous and seemingly necessary, and the evolutionary arms race of deception and detection has been a strong promoter of the adaptation called intelligence.

Deception can also be seen to operate at different levels, wherever there may be conflicts of interest. Such conflicts may be internal to the organism, as in genomic imprinting: “one of the most striking discoveries in the past thirty years of genetics is that we are expected not to be unitary creatures with a single self-interest, but to have a paternal genetic interest and a maternal one, which may differ, with each acting to promote a view of the world from its standpoint”.

Trivers’ account is very wide-ranging, encompassing chapters on immunology, aviation disasters, false historical narratives and a caustic assessment of the social sciences. The theoretical discussions are enlivened by surprisingly candid confessions and anecdotes, making this an irresistible read.

Paul Taylor

Prometheus Books, ISBN 978-1-61614-441-8

It is the fact of denial that has provoked Smith to add yet another species to the teeming ecology of books on evolution.

He draws on a decade of US college teaching to produce an unusually clear and systematic account of how it is that evolution, as theorised by Darwin and refined since, is beyond debate.

Smith’s approach is simple and cogent. There are three main elements to acknowledge: all organisms reproduce; their offspring are not identical to their parents; individuals have varying numbers of offspring, including zero. These three blatantly obvious and independent facts of life, taken together, inevitably bring about changes in the kinds of life-forms inhabiting the Earth. These changes are known as evolution, which is implicit if that trinity is acknowledged.

The book swarms with illuminating examples from all walks, wriggles, flights and growths of life, and recent research on the inner workings of DNA and the genome is clearly outlined for the non-specialist. Among many startling items is the realisation that the global weight of oceanic viruses is equivalent to 75 million blue whales, but that they are mostly unknown.

Against the steady flow of praise, doubts can be voiced about Smith’s coinage of “Teflon” versus “Velcro” symbols, in his concluding discussions. Predator alerts are Teflon symbols in that no alternative connotations may stick to them, unlike the semantically sticky symbols of human communication. Labels seem a better analogy than a mess of Velcro.

Given the virtues of this book, it was also a shock to see Smith mention the Templeton Foundation, with no footnote (despite 40 pages of them) to point out the religious motivations of the funders.

Beware of the god.

Paul Taylor

MIT Press
ISBN 10: 0262526433

This slim book is part of MIT’s Essential Knowledge series. The term “knowledge”, however, seems to pose some difficulties for the author. In his glossary, he defines knowledge as “the sum total of one’s information about a subject or subjects”, although the term “information” does not feature in the glossary or the index. But compare this to his definition of “know”: “a word used for a belief held very, very strongly”.

That is certainly not how I use the word, or I would be unable to distinguish between those who know something and those who are convinced that they know something but are mistaken. Of course, I must often, unfortunately, include myself in the latter set, but therein lies a key point: it would not be possible for us to have acquired the concept of a mistake if what we believed were always true. Nilsson reports on p.xii that he cannot “distinguish knowledge from belief in a qualitatively meaningful way”.

For Nilsson, everything reduces to beliefs: explanations are beliefs, and all declarative sentences stored in a computer are its beliefs. (Nilsson also reveals in the Preface that he has not grasped the distinction between a statement or proposition and the various sentences that may express it.)

Beguiled by casual usage and technical jargon like “knowledge base”, Nilsson endows the computer with a set of beliefs which are indistinguishable from knowledge. Does the computer “hold its beliefs” equally strongly? It would presumably have to hold them very strongly for them to count as knowledge.

The force of that venerable slogan, Garbage In, Garbage Out, eludes him. Suppose a computer could be given The Knowledge – a detailed, working map of London – while another was given a map with randomised street names and a distorted scale. What kind of knowledge would that be?

Nilsson presents us with a diagram he calls a network of beliefs. This links observations about rising sea levels, at one end, to carbon dioxide increases at the other, via global warming, with explanations going in that direction and consequences in the other. But are the nodes in this network physical phenomena or beliefs about them? How could a belief in rising sea levels be a consequence of a belief in increasing carbon dioxide? The author seems to find this diagram useful, as it pops up again, fifteen pages later, exactly the same apart from a brand new title: “a Bayesian belief network”.

Certainly, the problems of epistemology are never straightforward, but despite a chapter outlining the history of science and a cautionary chapter on belief traps, it does not seem that they are made any clearer at all in this book.

Paul Taylor

Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780810886773

This is a substantial compendium of papers – running to some 650 pages – examining the distinctly insubstantial thesis that we will somehow survive brain death. The thirty papers, drawing on work in developmental psychology, comparative psychology, neuroscience, behavioural genetics, evolutionary biology and philosophy of science, among other fields, are grouped in four main sections,: Empirical Arguments for Annihilation, Conceptual and Empirical Difficulties for Survival, Problematic Models of the Afterlife, and Dubious Evidence for Survival.

Given the scope and depth of the arguments and evidence presented, a comprehensive account here might leave room for little more than our journal’s title, so only a selection of the most striking chapters will be discussed.

Matt McCormick, in his chapter, Dead as a Doornail, expresses a pivotal argument about possibility and probability: “possibilities are easy to conceive of, but they aren’t reasonable to believe on that basis alone… Possibility doesn’t establish probability or reasonableness”.

The way in which we might assess the relative probabilities of rival hypotheses is discussed in a key section of the ninety-page centrepiece of the collection, Augustine and Fishman’s chapter, The Dualist’s Dilemma: The High Cost of Reconciling Neuroscience with a Soul, where they discuss Bayes’ Theorem. The independence hypothesis – that the mind is independent from the brain – can be criticised using Ockham’s Razor – the idea that we should prefer simple explanations that do not rely on multiple entities brought in ad hoc to cover the data that is to be explained. The status of this principle of parsimony has often been questioned, but Augustine and Fishman describe how Ockham’s Razor can acquire an objective basis by combining Bayesian confirmation theory with algorithmic information theory. The upshot is that, “the dependence thesis is vastly more probable than the independence thesis. Accordingly, the independence thesis… should be rejected”.

In another notable chapter, it feels nothing short of a privilege to have a consultation with neurologist David Weisman, who shares his clinical experiences of one of his patients.

The patient “was once a child, and before that he was an infant. Like all of us, he started life aphasic… As his brain matured, linguistic ability developed. Eventually, a mind emerged. Then his brain grew a tumour and became dysfunctional, diminishing his linguistic ability and then his consciousness. Before he had any brain at all, he was in the same state as that which followed the death of his brain”.

Weisman notes, with the candour and conciseness he might employ in his medical notes, “this seems to be the deal”.

Although every chapter rewards close reading, Ingrid Hansen Smythe’s paper, Objections to Karma and Rebirth, scores highly, perhaps due to its very amusing satirical slant. The disastrous follies of reincarnation and the pop-religious clichés of karma are deftly filleted in a sharp and accessible style. Regarding the “ethics” of karma, she argues that, “imagining that we can accurately measure the ethics of our actions is a strangely puerile delusion”.

What all these papers show is how quickly a range of insurmountable problems arise as soon as implications are drawn out from the unconsidered and cosseted beliefs of those devoted to rebirth and survival. As long as people pick and mix their ideas without acknowledging the logical relations between them, they will wallow in delusions. The arguments in this excellent book should sway the open-minded. It is also bulky enough for self-defence.

Paul Taylor

MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262527569

When a hopeful hypothesis bites the dust, when yet another self-contradiction is dragged into the light of logical analysis, when another friend turns out to be lost in La-La-Land, the honest skeptic may fleetingly wonder whether the efforts of doubt are worth it.

Are all those figmentalists, awash with make-believe, having more fun?

No.

There they flounder: hexed, hoaxed and haunted, bedevilled, befuddled and bamboozled, fleeced, flummoxed and forlorn.

Beyond the reach and dreams of their depleted imaginations and gimcrack doctrines sizzles an Epicurean knees-up, the rum realm of ‘Pataphysics, lit up by literary fireworks and the flicker of absinthe aflame. Enjoy the craic of creativity and hyperfaluting nonsense, the time-shifting bewilderments of bicycles and Hancock’s artworks. Mingle with the poets and mathematicians of Oulipo and step warily by the dog-faced baboon.

Welcome, then, to a cult beyond all cults, to the very particular science of imaginary solutions, ‘pataphysics, that is to metaphysics what metaphysics is to science.

Hugill recounts the spectacular spirallings of Alfred Jarry and his successors in a reverse chronology stuffed with fascinations. Mentioned in passing is a ‘pataphysical prank that yanks the magic rug from under all that Brownian motion around The Holy Grail. ‘Pataphysics is, on one of its endless levels, a sort of philosophical shenanigan shot through with jet black humour that makes common or garden paranormalism give up the ghosts.

Hugill has provided an extremely good book of its kind, there being nothing like it.

Paul Taylor