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[felis_ultharus]

So I just finished Reinventing the Sacred by Stuart Kauffman. Kauffman is a biochemist and biophysicist at the University of Calgary with a master's in philosophy from Oxford -- impressive credentials for the author of this book, which argues for the non-deterministic complexity and creativity in nature as an alternative both to deterministic/atheistic science and religion.

It's an interesting introduction to some of the weirder and more wonderful aspects of science. And I sincerely do hope that he manages to make a dent in determinism and reductionism, which have done so much damage to the world. Here he follows in the footsteps of giants like John Ralston Saul and David Suzuki here.

But, largely, it's a failed book. If he'd taken an additional degree in military history, he might have known not to open up a war on two fronts, especially if you only understand the enemy on one flank.

First, the good:

• This is an excellent introduction to Kauffman's own cutting-edge work in "complexity theory." "Complexity theory" is the next step up from chaos theory, which is still deterministic. To Kauffman, some things are fundamentally chaotic or "non-ergodic," so that even a "demon" who knew all the variables still couldn't, say, predict the evolution of an ecosystem.
  
  
• It's also got some interesting details on the mathematics and logic of pure chaos, though this is some of the densest material in the book.
  
  
• Like chaos theory, complexity theory argues for patterns that emerge as a system grows. Specifically, systems develop spontaneously. This leads to "emergence," the idea that not everything can be reduced to atoms. For instance, hearts are emergent. The component atoms that make up a heart don't spontaneously form hearts, complete with aorta. Physics has traditionally argued that the "explanatory arrows point downwards" to particles. But a physicist can only explain the existence of the heart by temporarily becoming a biologist and talking about natural selection. The "explanatory arrows point upwards." These systems are "real" because they affect the distribution of matter and energy in the universe, but are only incidentally about atoms.
  
  
• The chapters entitled "Mind" and "The Quantum Brain" are the two best in the book. Kauffman argues for mind as an emergent system, not one that's simply the sum of its atoms. In "The Quantum Brain" he adds that the brain could be a quantum system -- acausal and possibilist -- thereby rescuing the concepts of free will, agency, and consciousness for scientific rationalism.

That's all good and wonderful, and all, but on the balance this work fails. It fails because it's not really a book about science, but a book about religion, and that's a subject that Kauffman knows far less than he thinks he knows. Unfortunately, that doesn't stop him from making some very bold pronouncements on the subject:

• He's so weaselly about religion that he makes me yearn for the bold honesty of a Dawkins or a Hitchens. Half the time he's saying "the creativity in nature should be the only God we need," and talking about founding a "shared global ethic" or "religion" around an atheistic but creative universe, while the other half of the time he throws out feel-good sops about respecting diversity of belief and "building bridges" between the religious and the atheists. Doesn't he see the contradiction? Or does he just assume that the religious are too stupid to notice?
  
  
• He uses that favourite adjective of the "new atheists: "clinging," referring to a religion or a god. Sure, there are people who "cling" to a religion out of psychological need or social fear, but (speaking as an ex-atheist myself) atheism has its own comforts, and its own hangers-on. In some fields -- like virtually all of academia -- an atheist pose is pretty much necessary to hold on to your credibility, whatever your own beliefs.
  
  
• "New atheist" caricatures of the 80% or more of the world who believe in a higher power are always so insulting. He seems to imagine all his conversations with religious people as if he was arguing with Jerry Falwell, and imagines all religious people as subscribing to fundamentalist Calvinist Christianity. Sometimes he throws out a feel-good line about "Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Shintoists, Buddhists..." but he's not actually aware of other religions.
  
  
• Naturally, the usual arrogance of all proselytizers is in full force here -- the idea that reasonable people don't disagree, and everyone will automatically convert if only the preacher explains it slowly enough. I was particularly offended that Kauffman tells us, repeatedly, that the universe is "inviting" us to agree with Kauffman.
  
  
• On that note, my own theistic-animistic Wiccan beliefs fit quite happily with his science of an emergent, creative universe. I see the Goddess not as a clockwork entity making a fate-based universe, but as a creative and experimental deity, and this is pretty common among Wiccans. Too bad he shot all his credibility with me in the foot with his simplistic and insulting approach to religion.
  
  
• Some of the science itself seems flawed, or at least flawed as an argument for atheism. His discussion of the quantum brain, for example, seems to lead him right up to the boundary of religion -- so rather than take the last few baby steps there, he recoils rapidly.
  
  
  • Take the "quantum brain." After dismantling the idea of a deterministic-reductionist brain, he argues that the mind makes use of quantum phenomena. He compares it to chlorophyll, which slows down quantum decoherence in photons to make use of quantum phenomena, and suggests places similar structures might exist in neurons.
    
    
  • That's all great, but chlorophyll uses a classical process to use a quantum phenomenon to a classical end. Kauffman wants quantum ends -- acausal and possibilist consciousness. But he never really addresses the problem of how causal neurons generate acausal consciousness, will, and qualia if the the neurons are running the show.
    
    
  • There's an easy way to eliminate this problem -- locating the consciousness not in the process, but in the quantum coherent material itself. This is a better analogue for chlorophyll, which collects photons to take the energy, rather than making the energy in the photons. Of course, this suggests an actually conscious quantum universe that loses more than just "information" in the decohering process, and I suspect that's a possibility Kauffman wishes to avoid. After all, a conscious universe would fit many people's definition of deity.
    
    
  • Kauffman tries to avoid sneaking "God" in through the backdoor by saying that "qualia" is a mystery that science may never have an answer to. I consider that a lazy answer.
  
  
  
• On the science problem, Kauffman doesn't quite prove his case against reductionism, either. On the issue of "Laplace's demon" -- the idea that a creature who knew the location and direction of every particle in the universe could predict the future -- Kauffman is content to say that a computer built to calculate that could never physically exist. That's a poor dodge of the question when you're arguing with people who believe in gods, Goddess, or God who can do just that and aren't bound by physical limitations.
  
  
• He also loses credibility as a scientist who doesn't seem to care enough about the environment to offer more than platitudes about it. He has a whole chapter eagerly excited about capitalist, consumerist societies where "no on is charge." But the violence that consumption does to the environment only shows in at the end as an afterthought. This also doesn't help his case for a system of common values rooted in atheism, because it makes his own value system suspect.
  
  
• Lastly, this book needs an editor. He repeats himself constantly, slips into jargon and equations without seeming to notice, and has only two modes -- densely mathematical or giddy and softheaded. Concepts vital to understanding one chapter only appear in a later chapter. It probably says something about the circles he travels in that he needs to explain commonly-quoted Shakespeare passages, but not quantum entanglement. It reads in places like a high school essay. But this is just style, and not content.

Overall, I'm glad I read it, though for reasons that would probably make Kauffman shudder. In order to understand the quantum stuff, I started delving much more deeply into quantum mechanics, and this in turn has enriched my own theistic-animist beliefs as a Wiccan.

It really is the best-kept secret in contemporary science that the classical universe arises as a solid, orderly island in a sea of liquid reality where objects can be in more than one place at once, and particles with no connection to one another can be entangled and influence each other's behaviour -- a universe where there are events with no cause. Kauffman says that the universe started quantum, and the classical part arose later for reasons that aren't understood.

"Quantum mysticism" is a phrase that makes physicists wince. But I still can't help think that mainstream physics has tricked itself into not coming to terms with the broad implications of what it's dealing with, and tricked itself for reasons that are cultural rather than empirical.

For someone like me, coming to the quantum stuff is like coming to and looking over the edge of the Goddess's dream that we call the world.

My next read is Apuleius's Golden Ass I suspect my review of that will be a lot shorter, and I hope that the above wasn't all that bad.

Comments

[em-fish.livejournal.com]

Kauffman argues for mind as an emergent system, not one that's simply the sum of its atoms.

Neurologist V.S. Ramachandran discusses the same thing in The Phantom In The Brain. I particularly loved that passage.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you've mentioned him before. I'm convinced, though, that the search for a purely-physical mind is a bit of an unnecessary limitation.

Of course, Kauffman's quantum mind seems to slip away from mind-brain identity, whatever his claims to the contrary.

[helenseidolon.livejournal.com]

When I have some time, I'm going to read your review more closely, but I will say that if you're a scaredy-cat like me, don't read Apuleius alone late at night. Other than that, it's pretty good.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

I'm enjoying it so far -- nothing scary yet. It'd have to be pretty frighting to be worse than the Silent Hill games.