James Burke: Self - Host

Quotes 

• Self - Host : So you see how the structural view of things at the time controls what science does at every level. From the cosmic questions about the whole universe, to what bits of that universe are worth investigating, to how far you let the questions take you, what experiments to do, what evidence you can and can't accept. And down at that detailed level, the control still operates, because it even tells you what instruments you should use. And of course, at this stage, you're looking for data to prove your theory, so you design the kind of instruments to find the kind of data you reckon you're going to find. The whole argument comes full circle when you get the raw data itself. Because it isn't raw data. It's what you planned to find from the start.

• Self - Host : Earlier on in the Middle Ages, the whole structure of western experimental science happened almost unintentionally. At the time, science would've had no purpose. The church said the world around wasn't worth studying. So the new logic from Arab Spain was used to check holy writing for errors of faith, to strengthen belief. And it was looking at light with that end in mind that led one monk to discovery how the sun made rainbows. Experimentally, using glass balls and logic.

• Self - Host : There are other ways of looking at the universe. Take just one that started at the same time as our Greek way did, 2,500 years ago. But that unlike our way doesn't change the world. And yet in some ways, Buddhism does just what science does. It explains how the universe works, and comforts you when it seems to fail, and is an integral part of everyday life. Buddhism gives the Nepalese a set of values and rules of conduct for every aspect of their life. The images and temples are constant reminders of their explanation of the universe, and where you fit in the overall scheme. The explanation doesn't change, because it's built around a view of life as a recurring cycle. Like the cycle of the seasons bringing birth and rebirth every year. As in nature, there is no end, because at the moment of death, the life force returns to the universe to be used again in a different form. A kind of conservation of energy, we would say. And as the returning seasons remind the believers of the continuity of the universe as they see it, so too do the instruments that keep them all in daily contact with that universe. The opportunity to be in touch with the cosmos through prayer. Driven, of course, from the prayer wheels that are found in every corner of their lives, to be turned at every opportunity. A source of comfort, giving a sense of purpose to existence, as science aims to do for us.

• Self - Host : Ultimately, this view of the universe is different from ours because it turns away from the world. Believing that to investigate the ever-changing forms of everyday existence can only bring confusion. High in the Himalayas, the Buddhist view leads you to the understanding of the temporary nature of life, and that enlightenment can only come by leaving it behind.

• Self - Host : I'm not saying that we should all give up the life support science and technology that our rationalist way of doing things has given us, and come here to the foot of Everest, reject the world, and meditate. Just that non-scientific views of the world like this aren't necessarily ignorant. In their own way, they explain the universe as completely as science does. And as you've seen from this series, all that science gives us is what their belief gives them: certainty. Only ours changes all the time; theirs doesn't.

• Self - Host : Sometimes, when the universe isn't static like this one was, but changing, you can investigate it. But the investigation is still controlled, by the way you think the universe you're living in changes. And the kind of thing you question in your investigation depends on what you think the mechanism of change actually does.

• Self - Host : Oldest known cliché that, isn't it? Light dawns, and the darkness is swept away. Maybe that's why all scientific discoveries are always described as a kind of mystical, light dawning experience. Einstein is supposed to have thought of relativity in a dream he had about riding on a beam of light. When Darwin's theory of evolution hit him, he said, 'The scales fell from my eyes.' Gutenberg described the idea of the printing press as 'coming like a beam of light.' Kekulé was daydreaming on a London bus, when he saw atoms forming into molecules. And Newton said he got the idea of gravitational theory from a falling apple. And so on. All flashes of insight, so to speak. Great moments of discovery. That's what's supposed to separate the geniuses from the rest of us slobs, that mystical experience, isn't it? And throughout history, each time it has happened, the condition of mankind is changed for the better in some way as we took one more step on the road to understanding. And with each of those steps, each addition to the body of knowledge, as you've seen in this series our view of everything--of the universe and our place in it--has also changed. As the knowledge changed, we did. And if you look back as we have to the world of the past, we've come a tremendous way to our extraordinary hi-tech world. Full of innovation, of computers and laser beams and genetic engineering and artificial hearts. And above all, of fantastic power.

• Self - Host : You have to have some version of reality, whether it contains spotted dogs, or cows, or women that should be burnt. And science is the same. Without hypotheses, preconceptions about the world, how could you begin to research? Without theories about things, nature is just chaos. For things to make sense, you have to make up your mind about them in advance. Otherwise you don't know where you are.

• Self - Host : So, you see how the only structure in the shifting, changing face of nature is the one we impose on it with our theories. Each one the latest version of what we call the truth. New structures, new versions of how the world works, only appear because of some bit of detail the old version couldn't accomodate, that causes everything to change. In spite of what science would have us believe, that kind of switch doesn't happen because of science steadily and purposefully heading towards the truth, with one discovery somehow following another along the way as part of some grand plan. As you've seen, each structure in the past worked perfectly well. That's what the truth was for a while. And as for one discovery following another along the way, what way? Going where?

• Self - Host : That's where the whole system can lead to its own destruction. When some detail doesn't fit. That's when you see science hanging on like grim death to stop the rug being pulled out from under years of happy status quo.

• Self - Host : As the knowledge changed, we did.

• Self - Host : And yet, in spite of that, we still go on believing that today's version of things is the only right one. Because as you've learned from this series, we can only handle one way of seeing things at a time. We've never had systems that would let us do more than that. So we've always had to have conformity with the current view. Disagree with the church, and you were punished as a heretic. With the political system, as a revolutionary. With the scientific establishment, as a charlatan. With the educational system, as a failure. If you didn't fit the mold, you were rejected.

• Self - Host : The so-called voyage of discovery has as often as not made landfall for reasons little to do with the search for knowledge. Science, like all other human activities, is a product of what society at the time thinks is important. What science has done in the last few hundred years has been directed by that fact.

• Self - Host : The very logic that brings me back to Ancient Greece where the whole superstructure of western thinking began. Where the seafaring Ionians first noticed that everything came in opposites. Up down, wet dry, hot cold, and so on. And took Egyptian pyramid building techniques and turned them into pure geometry with which you could measure everything in existence. And then, put together the logic of reconciling opposites with the geometrical tool for measuring the physical world, and made what we call rationalism. The Greek way of putting a structure on the chaos of nature, and our way ever since. But you've seen how structures give way to each other. That no single structure is the only right way of seeing what you call the truth. So why should the entire superstructure--the western rational system itself--be the only right way?

• Self - Host : The final step in the expression of this view of the world lies in the practice of meditation. Used to put the believer into direct contact with the universe itself, and to bring understanding that the only permanent reality is to be found not in the parts of existence, but the whole. To become a true priest, meditation lasts three years, three months, and three days, 16 hours a day, and leads to total denial of self. This view of the universe, then, is no view. That is, there is nothing to see. There is no truth, only emptiness.

• Self - Host : So, your view of the world dictates what you do down through every level of investigation. Even down to the point where doing your research, it controls what you take to be reliable evidence.

• Self - Host : As for the permanent values that are supposed to remain unchanged in spite of our changing knowledge, well they change too. Once it was good to burn women, wrong to claim the earth went round the sun, logical to argue about angels on the head of a pin. The values change every time the universe changes. And that's every time we redefine a big enough bit of it. Which we do all the time, through the process of discovery that isn't discovery. Just the invention of another version of how things are.

• [last lines] 

  Self - Host : But, ironically, the latest product of that way of doing things, is a new instrument. A new system, that while it could make conformity more rigid, more totalitarian than ever before in history, could also blow everything wide open. Because with it, we could operate on the basis that values and standards and ethics and facts and truth all depend on what your view of the world is. And that there may be as many views of that as there are people.

  [holds up a microchip] 

  Self - Host : And with this, capable of keeping a tally on those millions of opinions voiced electronically, we might be able to lift the limitations of conforming to any centralized representational form of government, originally invented because there was no way for everybody's voice to be heard. You might be able to give everybody unhindered, untested access to knowledge. Because a computer would do the day-to-day work for which we once qualified the select few, in an educational system originally designed for a world where only the few could be taught. You might end the regimentation of people living and working in vast, unmanageable cities. Uniting them instead in an electronic community, where the Himalayas and Manhattan were only a split second apart. You might, with that and much more, break the mold that has held us back since the beginning. In a future world that we would describe as balanced anarchy, and they will describe as an open society. Tolerant of every view, aware that there is no single privileged way of doing things. Above all, able to do away with the greatest tragedy of our era: the centuries-old waste of human talent that we couldn't or wouldn't use. Utopia? Why? If, as I've said all along, the universe is at any time what you say it is, then say.

• Self - Host : The mental structure I was talking about that has already made your mind up about what you're looking at now--and without which you wouldn't recognize anything--works at a far deeper level than just seeing. It provides a framework everything fits into. The structure evaluates, explains, organizes every experience you have, intellectual or physical. It says what the whole of reality is. It provides your beliefs, judgments, morals, ethics, values. And it also provides a rulebook for the kind of questions you ask about the world, because it gives you the theory about how things are supposed to work. I want to show you what I mean by that by showing you how the structure controls how science in particular progresses. Because science is supposed to be, in some ways, independent of these things, isn't it? Objective, and seeking and discovering the truth. But as you'll see, the truth is what the structure says it is. There is progress, change. But that's because the rules of the structure control investigation at every level, until you get down to a bit of detail the structure can't handle.

• Self - Host : So, what you think the universe is, and how it works, controls the kind of questions you can ask. Not some supposedly detached scientific view of things. And as for how far you can let the questions take you, that's just as controlled.