Glib Science

Martin Rees - Baron Rees of Ludlow, Astronomer Royal, Master of Trinity College Cambridge, President of the Royal Society - who recently gave us the modishly gloomy "Our Final Hour" suggesting that we humans may not make it into the 22nd Century, has a piece in the Times with the headline "We may never discover how the Universe ticks"; subheading "Our brains are limited. It may take a posthuman species to work out the big questions". It all strikes me - rather like the Final Hour book - as somehow a bit glib coming from the scientist with perhaps the most titles and the most honours in Britain:

[W]e should be open to the prospect that some aspects of reality — a unified theory of physics, or a full understanding of consciousness — might elude us simply because they’re beyond human brains, just as Einstein’s ideas would baffle a chimpanzee.

Even so, that need not mean that the fundamental questions were for ever unanswerable. That’s because we humans need not be the culmination of the evolutionary tree: indeed it seems implausible that we are, because astronomy makes us aware that immense time-horizons extend into the future as well as into the past. Our Sun formed 4.5 billion years ago, but it’s got six billion more before the fuel runs out. And the expanding Universe will continue, perhaps for ever, becoming ever colder, ever emptier.

As Woody Allen said: “Eternity is very long, especially towards the end.” So there is time enough for dramatic posthuman evolution, whether organic or silicon-based, on the Earth or far beyond. And for those species that come after us, even the most baffling problems that we can pose may be as straightforward as simple arithmetic is to us.

The suggestion that there are some things we can never understand because our brains are too small is by now well-established enough to be something of a cliché. Science fiction is full of super-intelligent beings, of course, from Mr Spock to diffuse intergalactic clouds, who look down in pity and contempt on us mortals and our pathetic understanding, [If cheetahs wrote science fiction, would it be full of beings who could run incredibly fast? And skunks - really smelly aliens?] It's a claim that's always struck me as a cop-out. It combines a religious belief in our humble place in the face of higher beings - along with all the unprovability of religious beliefs - with a kind of post-modern doubt about the reliability of human intelligence. It's also, I suppose, a cheap way for scientists, always being accused of hubris, of making a show of modesty. But I like my scientists to have hubris, dammit. Isn't that what they're there for? You can't have them stroking their chins, full of self-doubt and angst.

The point is that once we've acquired language and culture, and a methodology for finding things out - science - and the ability to build up our knowledge and understanding cumulatively and systematically, then we're on the way. Individually we may not be intelligent enough, but as a species, culturally; if there's a problem, then we've got the tools either to solve it, or reformulate it, or to just change our definitions so the problem evaporates. Intelligence is the manipulation of symbols. Once you can manipulate symbols, reason, solve problems, as we can, then you're intelligent.

Other alien species might, conceivably, be faster at manipulating those symbols, or have other cognitive advantages, but that doesn't mean they'd be operating on a higher level of understanding. Of course it'll be claimed that if there was another level that we're incapable of understanding, then - by definition - we wouldn't know about it. Which is what makes the whole concept, like religion, so, well, unscientific. It's just hot air.

As for the idea that after we've gone there'll be another intelligent species along in a minute - well, Rees is a great deal more sanguine about that than I am. They don't grow on trees, intelligent species.

Comments

[DaninVan]

If/when we end it all, I seriously doubt we'll be 'going quietly into the night'. There'll be a loooong stretch before the Earth heals enough to support a different superior species.
One could argue that our sophistication will be our downfall, our Achilles heel.

[tolkein]

But some things are truly unknowable. Two examples, Godel's Incompleteness Theorems, and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.

[Mick H]

Well yes, but those don't reflect the shortcomings of specifically human intelligence, but of intelligence in general. Any intelligent species would come up against them.

[tolkein]

MH

That was my point. There are some things that are truly unknowable, so postulating super species to solve big problems humans can't is, if I can be pardoned for a moment, an act of faith.

[Mick H]

OK, sorry. Yes, agreed.