Paying Attention To The Sky

The final theme Dr. Barr takes up of the materialist’s story is the mechanistic view of man himself. It is the final theme in more ways than one. Here the scientist debunks himself. Here all the grand intellectual adventure of science ends with the statement that there is no intellectual adventure. For the mind of man has looked into itself and seen nothing there except complex chemistry, nerve impulses, and synapses firing. That big fat nothing, at least, is what the materialist tells us that science has seen.

One recalls Chesterton’s reflections on Evolution  or  the “Thought To End All Thoughts.”  It’s astonishing to see someone like Dr. Barr making the same point here that Chesterton essentially made some seventy or eighty years prior. I could almost feel the Great One chuckling as I read the Barr essay.

However, the story is really not so simple for here again (after Chesterton’s time) the plot has twisted. Two of the greatest discoveries of the twentieth century cast considerable doubt upon, and some would say refute, the contention that the mind of man can be explained as a mere biochemical machine (Chesterton was refuting it on a rational or theological basis).

The first of these discoveries that Dr. Barr offers is quantum theory. In the traditional interpretation of quantum theory — sometimes also called the “Copenhagen,” “standard,” or “orthodox” interpretation — one must, to avoid paradoxes or absurdities, posit the existence of so-called “observers” who lie, at least in part, outside of the description of the world provided by physics. That is, the mathematical formalism which quantum theory uses to make predictions about the physical world cannot be stretched to cover completely the person who is observing that world. What is it about the “observer” that lies beyond physical description? Careful analysis suggests that it is some aspect of his rational mind.

This has led some eminent physicists to say that quantum theory is inconsistent with a materialistic view of the human mind. Eugene Wigner, a Nobel laureate in physics, stated flatly that materialism is not “logically consistent with present quantum mechanics.” Sir Rudolf Peierls, another leading twentieth–century physicist, said, on the basis of quantum theory, “The premise that you can describe in terms of physics the whole function of a human being…including its knowledge, and its consciousness, is untenable. There is still something missing.”

Admittedly, this is a highly controversial view. That is only to be expected, especially given the materialist prejudice that affects a large part of the scientific community. Moreover, the traditional interpretation of quantum theory has aspects that many find disturbing or implausible. Some even think (wrongly, in Dr. Barr’s opinion) that the role it assigns to observers leads to subjectivism or philosophical idealism. Dissatisfaction with the traditional interpretation has led to various rival interpretations and to attempts to modify quantum theory. However, these other ideas are equally controversial. The controversy over quantum theory will not be resolved any time soon, or perhaps ever. But, even if it is not, the fact will remain that there is an argument against materialism that comes from physics itself, an argument that has been advanced and defended by some leading physicists and never refuted.

The second discovery that arguably points to something nonmaterial in man is a revolutionary theorem in mathematical logic proved in 1931 by the Austrian Kurt Gödel, one of the greatest mathematicians of modern times. Gödel’s Theorem concerns the inherent limitations of what are called “formal systems.” Formal systems are essentially systems of symbolic manipulation. Since computers are basically just machines for doing such symbolic manipulations, Gödel’s Theorem has great relevance to what computers and computer programs can do.

It was recognized fairly quickly that Gödel’s Theorem might have something to say about whether the human mind is just a computer — Gödel himself was firmly convinced that it is not. Indeed, he called materialism “a prejudice of our time.” However, he never developed, at least in print, the argument against materialism based on his own theorem. That was first done by the Oxford philosopher John R. Lucas. In 1961, Lucas wrote,

“Gödel’s theorem seems to me to prove that Mechanism is false, that is, that minds cannot be explained as machines. So has it seemed to many other people: almost every mathematical logician I have put the matter to has confessed similar thoughts, but has felt reluctant to commit himself definitely until he could see the whole argument set out, with all objections fully stated and properly met. This I attempt to do.”

Both Gödel’s Theorem and Lucas’ argument are extremely subtle, but we can state the gist of them as follows. Gödel’s Theorem implies that a computer program can be outwitted by someone who understands how it is put together. Lucas observed that if a man were himself a computer program, then by knowing how his own program was put together he could outwit himself, which is a contradiction.

One may explain the Lucas argument in another way. Gödel’s Theorem also showed that it is beyond the power of any computer program that operates by logically consistent rules to tell that it is doing so. However, a human being, Lucas noted, can recognize his own consistency — at least at times — and so must be more than a mere computer.

In recent years, the eminent mathematician and mathematical physicist Sir Roger Penrose has taken up the Lucas argument, further refined it, and answered criticisms that had been leveled at it by mathematicians and philosophers. This has not quieted the criticism. However, the Gödelian argument of Lucas and Penrose, though often attacked, has never been refuted.

Where does this all leave us? After all the twists and turns of scientific history we look around and find ourselves in very familiar surroundings. We find ourselves in a universe that seems to have had a beginning. We find it governed by laws that have a grandeur and sublimity that bespeak design. We find many indications in those laws that we were built in from the beginning. We find that physical determinism is wrong. And we find that the deepest discoveries of modern physics and mathematics give hints, if not proof, that the mind of man has something about it that lies beyond the power of either physics or mathematics to describe.

Chesterton told the story of “an English yachtsman who slightly miscalculated his course and discovered England under the impression that it was an island in the South Seas.” The explorer, he said, “landed (armed to the teeth and speaking by signs) to plant the British flag on that barbaric temple which turned out to be the pavilion at Brighton.” Having braced himself to discover New South Wales, he realized, “with a gush of happy tears, that it was really old South Wales.”

Science has taken us on just such an adventure. Armed not with weapons but with telescopes and particle accelerators, and speaking by the signs and symbols of recondite mathematics, it has brought us to many strange shores and shown us alien and fantastic landscapes. But as we scan the horizon, near the end of the voyage, we have begun to recognize first one and then another of the old familiar landmarks and outlines of our ancestral home. The search for truth always leads us, in the end, back to God.

So ends Dr. Barr’s essay. I know many atheists who refuse to get beyond the notion that any scientific hypothesis rejects the supernatural outright as premise and thereby see Christianity’s role in science as pernicious. What I liked about Dr. Barr’s essay was how it supports the scientific method and rejects supernaturalism but also points out how much of current scientific thought is predicated on an intelligible universe and supports the notion of an intelligent designer or ground of being in the nature of things. While nothing can be flat out proved by the limits of the scientific approach, there is much that points to all of what the Christian senses in the fallen world about him and beyond.