contact@onbelief.orgA Sense of Perspective
Modern physics teaches us the importance of understanding that all of our observations are linked to a frame of reference both in space and time. It is sometimes difficult in our everyday lives to apply this principle in a more psychological sense so that we can understand the limitations of our own perspective. As we seek to model the world using our limited observational and logical capacities, it is inevitable that we develop a self or human-centered understanding that impedes our analysis.
Imagine
As an exercise in understanding our human-centered perspective, consider the gardener musing at the fact that as the bumble bee moves from flower to flower collecting nectar the insect never realises at the same time it is pollinating her lovely garden. Pull away from the bee and see the gardener as a bee-like creature having spread that flower from it original ecological niche, perhaps thousands of miles away, and stimulating a vast chemical industry in fertilizer production to keep that flower in an adequate state of nutrition. Unlike the bee she is of course aware of the origins of her fertiliser. Her large brain has endowed her with a more expansive world model and so scope for exhibiting a more diverse range of behaviours than the bee. She can grow roses or tulips or bluebells at various times and then decide to use the chemical industry again to have a patio instead of a flower bed. Zoom in once again to the human for another perspective and see that this 70 kilogram gardening creature contains more bacterial cells than brain cells. From the frame of reference of the bacterium the human host is an elaborate feeding and transport mechanism for individual organisms, which otherwise might not thrive. Why should the gardener not have a patio to sit in as she carefully nurtures her bacteria? [For an inspiring talk by Michael Pollin, elaborating this particular take on perspective click here > ]
Thus if our belief-modeling of the world is insufficiently comprehensive it can present us with illusions of meaning, purpose, transcendence, and spirituality. Such states of mind lead to the imagination of the supernatural and thus help sustain many traditional ways of existing. For the bee, the flower and the bacterial species our self-regarding transcendence is merely a matter of convenience or inconvenience. As Michael Pollin lucidly implies, it is an absurd vanity for us to view ourselves as anything but an integral part of the biosphere. We have no special place that is detached from the rest of nature although clearly our intelligence places upon us senses of awareness and responsibility and gives us an ability to manipulate our environment through self-conscious decision making.
How Puny We Are
Consider now the puny almost infinitesimally small fraction of the cosmos that can sustain life. First of all reflect on what a tiny fraction of the earth's volume we and other life forms can inhabit. The earth has a mean radius of 6,371.0 km so giving a volume of 1,083,207,300,000 km³ and life occupies a little skin a few kilometers thick. Even if by some marvelous technological development we could occupy a 10 km deep band this still would leave 1,078,114,274,000 km³ or 99.95% of the earth's volume uninhabitable. Today of course we exploit very much less than that. Zoom out in your mind to consider what a tiny fraction of the heliosphere our little planetary crust occupies. Pull back even further to see the enormous distances between stars in our galaxy and think of how insignificant our (and other) tiny little 'biocrusts' really are within the galaxy. Think how sparsely populated with life our galaxy will be even if every star has a life-supporting planet. Lastly zoom out again and think of the images of the deep field camera of the Hubble Space Telescope (below) and see how most of space is intergalactic and so lifeless. On this scale of things our existence by mass, energy, and volume is almost completely negligible. We are nothing in the vastness of the cosmos which is almost entirely hostile to life. Ultimately our existence will be snuffed out as our planet changes and our star dies. Our existence on any meaningful scale of analysis is both transient and tiny.
(Taken from: http://www.stsci.edu/ftp/science/hdf/hdf.html.)The Hubble Ultra Deep Field view represents a "deep core" sample of the cosmos, cutting across billions of light-years. Consider not the beauty of the galaxies above but the emptiness of visible matter in intergalactic space seen in this projectional image to gain a more meaningful insight into the puny scale of our existence. [To see an explanatory video of this image click here. For a larger more expansive image click here]
How Does New Information Influence Our Perspective ?
When we are exposed to new observations (such as that shown in the image above) and so arrive at new ideas, it is natural and desirable for us to try to incorporate these into our existing world view. If we are to avoid becoming unstable in our analysis and instead achieve a synthesis of ideas we need, in the first instance, to try and add to rather than merely change our interpretations of existing observations. If we cannot logically 'patch' the new observations on to the old we then need to look for a new theoretical framework constrained by the logic of belief revision. This approach has important caveats and inevitably leads to conservatism that works against belief change. Indeed some inertia of ideas is a likely prerequisite for the formation of culture for ideas do not instantly permeate a culture or immediately have the logical impact that might be expected. Inconsistencies and discordance are likely to arise which will only be resolved over time as new accommodations are made to existing ways of thinking and new belief structures are created.
Those with a supernatural and mythological view of existence will therefore tend to interpret the astronomical picture above as yet more evidence for the existence of a God and marvel at the power of the creator. Those with a naturalistic and mechanistic way of thinking might see in that picture yet more evidence that the physical existence of our bodies and even our entire planet is an extremely minor perturbation in the state of matter within the universe as a whole. From the second perspective we might marvel that with our eyes and technology and our very limited computational abilities we can even begin to comprehend the vastness of space. The idea that we puny humans can appreciate and understand some higher form of supernatural existence will seem even more preposterous and even more ridiculously egocentric than it did before.
If we fail to look for and also find internally consistent mechanistic explanations of the world around us we are then condemned to the supernatural, mythical or mystical outlook which, although emotionally satisfying, has achieved so little by way of explanation or practical significance. As we search for mechanistic explanations we might consider the validity of our present cultural truths and having done so also devise for ourselves our own personal manifesto for change of belief. We can also adopt a more radical stance and de-emphasise the concept of belief in 'the truth' by faith be it scientifically, religiously or politically inspired and instead adopt an acceptance of uncertainty and a more enquiring and expansive view of ourselves and our world. To those who might reply by saying that we should not overlook the emotional satisfaction of mysticism or mythology, I say consider the potentially much richer and more rewarding view of our existence which you are missing.
On the Nature of Belief
www.onbelief.org
Scotland, 12th October 2007 and thereafter
Copyright 2007 onwards
