(People have been asking me to comment on Stephen Hawking's new book. As a sort of warm-up, I have decided to repost the following entry from the old site.)
I am all for natural science and I have studied my fair share of it. I attended a demanding technical high school where I studied electronics and I was an electrical engineering major in college with all the mathematics and science that that entails. But I strongly oppose scientism and the pseudo-scientific blather that too many contemporary physicists engage in. Case in point: Lawrence M Krauss's recent comment quoted in the pages of the New York Times that “We’re just a bit of pollution,” . . . “If you got rid of us, and all the stars and all the galaxies and all the planets and all the aliens and everybody, then the universe would be largely the same. We’re completely irrelevant.”
So far, so good. I have no objection to cosmological theorizing, no matter how outlandish, though I am curious about what sorts of experimental data could be taken as confirmatory of the dark matter hypothesis. When physicists talk physics, I humbly listen; I do not presume to know better than they how they should proceed with their work.
But when they or popular expositors draw crazy philosophical inferences from physical theories then I feel entitled to speak out. To quote from the NYT piece:
If so [i.e., if 96% of the matter in the universe is 'dark'], such a development would presumably not be without philosophical consequences of the civilization-altering variety. Cosmologists often refer to this possibility as “the ultimate Copernican revolution”: not only are we not at the center of anything; we’re not even made of the same stuff as most of the rest of everything. “We’re just a bit of pollution,” Lawrence M. Krauss, a theorist at Case Western Reserve, said not long ago at a public panel on cosmology in Chicago. “If you got rid of us, and all the stars and all the galaxies and all the planets and all the aliens and everybody, then the universe would be largely the same. We’re completely irrelevant.”
The thesis being presented is that we human beings are "completely irrelevant," insignificant, and of no value in that "We're just a bit of pollution." Is this supposed to follow from the fact, if it is a fact, that we are not made of the same stuff as most of the rest of everything? To think so would be to embrace a breathtaking non sequitur.
If you can think clearly, you should be able to see that our relevance, significance and value have nothing to do with where our bodies are in space, or how big our bodies are, or what stuff we are made of, or whether the kind of stuff we are made of is small or large in quantity relative to the kind of stuff the rest of the universe is made of.
To see the absurdity of Krauss's reasoning, ask yourself whether our 'relevance' would be greater if dark matter were only 10% or 4% or 0% of the total matter in the universe instead of 96%. Would we become more relevant, and less of a 'pollutant' if all of the matter was like the matter our bodies are composed of? Obviously not. The very notion is absurd.
Similarly, if the universe had a center and we moved closer to or farther away from that center, would our significance and relevance wax and wane accordingly? Again this is absurd. Whatever significance we have cannot vary with our position in space or with the relative magnitude of the star which is our sun, and like facts. The upshot of the Copernican revolution, roughly, was that the earth went around the sun and not vice versa. True, but so what? How could that possibly diminish our status? And if the 'ultimate Copernican revolution' show us to be made of an underrepresented sort of stuff, how is that relevant to our status and worth?
Much is sometimes made of how tiny we are in the cosmos. Well, suppose we got bigger and bigger and bigger until we filled the entire cosmos. Does getting bigger elevate one's significance? Are fat people more significant and less irrelevant than thin people? Can I increase my moral stature by putting on weight or by being stretched on the rack? Again, this is simply absurd. Size does not matter when it comes to significance.
And the same goes for time. An individual human life is vanishingly small on a cosmic scale, and the same goes for the life of homo sapiens. We are a flash in the pan, so to speak. But would our significance be greater if we existed at every time? Is the temporal length of an individual huamn life a measure of its value? In the words of an old cigarette commercial, "It is not how long you make it but how you make it long." Plainly put, length does not matter; quality of life matters. And quality of life is not something physical.
Let me be painfully clear about what I am saying. I am assuming arguendo that
1. The kind of matter of which human beings are composed is only 4% of the total matter in the universe.
Whether or not (1) is true is a question for physicists, not philosophers. As a philosopher I am concerned with the inference from (1) to
2. Humans beings are "completely irrelevant," "a bit of pollution."
My claim is that this inference is obviously invalid. (2) does not follow from (1) and (1) offers no support for (2). (1) does not even offer inductive support for (2). Furthermore, the words and phrases in (2) are evaluative which makes (2) an evaluative claim whereas (1) is a factual and thus non-evaluative claim. So one can tax the inference with the fallacy of deriving a value judgment from a factual judgment.
But it is not just that 'irrelevant' and 'pollution' are evaluative terms. It is worse than that. Relevance and irrelevance are mind-involving notions. No physical thing qua physical can be relevant or irrelevant to any other physical thing. Relevance and irrelevance are like indifference and the opposite. The universe cannot be indifferent to us; it is neither indifferent nor caring. Your not caring about me or what I think is a conscious stance you occupy vis-a-vis me. But the universe does not occupy any conscious stance towards human beings. Thus it makes no sense to describe us as irrelevant to the universe, or it as indifferent to us.
We are obviously relevant to ourselves. So if Krauss is saying that we are irrelevant to the universe, then he is just talking nonsense.
I hope I have convinced you that the quotation from Krauss is a non sequitur and scientistic blather. But it is not just blather but something more ominous in that it is indicative of nihilism.
What is really at the bottom of this scientistic nonsense is an attempt to discredit the Judeo-Christian notion that man is made in the image and likeness of God. Of course, this image and likeness is a spiritual image and likeness as I explain elsewhere. The message of the Judeo-Christian tradition is that we human beings are of great worth, at least potentially, in that we are candidates for participation in the divine life, not as animals of course, but as spiritual beings. The message of Krauss and company is the nihilistic denial of this: man is nothing, of no value, a pollutant. Well, if he is a pollutant, then 'the environment' needs to be protected from him. Better then that he not sully the face of mindless matter.
Now the Judeo-Christian view may be false, but it cannot be dislodged by the sort of shabby 'reasoning' we have just examined.