What is space? 1

Well, I'm reading another book: Our Mathematical Universe, by another physicist. The basic notion of the book looked interesting to me. Could it be that the universe is not just able to be described by mathematics. Could the universe be mathematics, a "giant mathematical object" (6).

I took the author to be a Pythagorean of course, not too different from Plato, for whom ideas were the ultimate reality. For Pythagoras, though, number was the ultimate reality.

1. Two chapters in, the book isn't what I'd really expected. But I think I should finish it. The guy's agent suggested he write the book in a somewhat personal style. I'm sure I'll appreciate it.

2. The title of this post relates to the second chapter, "Our Place in Space." In it, Tegmark reviews the process by which we came to infer the size of the earth, the moon, and the sun. He explains where our sense of how far away the sun and the stars comes from. Lastly, he asks what space is. Is it infinite or finite?

It is truly amazing to read of how ingeniously these measures were made. I certainly puts my limited smarts in their place. Even more sobering is to realize how many Americans of unremarkable intelligence somehow feel competent to dismiss such things.

"How far away are the stars and what are they made of?" Can't you hear some wise ignoramus sitting in a bar saying, "There's no way they can know that. They're just making it up."

In the 200s BC Eratosthenes in Egypt used the distance between two cities in Egypt and the number of degrees difference in the angle between the two cities and the sun to calculate the circumference of the earth.

Aristarchus of Samos at the same time used lunar eclipses to figure out the distance to the moon and its size. Using trigonometry, he made a good attempt at inferring the distance to the sun and its size. The result was a proposal that the earth goes round the sun two thousand years before Copernicus.

On and on the chapter goes. The ability to break down a spectrum of light in the 1800s answered our questions about the composition of stars. Many other deductions, simply following our knowledge of how things work here, helped answer other questions of temperature, pressure, mass, distance, etc.

3. The chapter ended with some anticipation of how general relativity has changed our sense of space, particularly how space bends. Space would not need to go on infinitely because it could possibly bend back on itself. In other words, if you went far enough in one direction, you would eventually come back from the other. Tegmark doesn't actually lean that way, as I think we'll see.

A final observation is that we should not expect common sense to be of much good when it comes to the greatly small or massively big. Human experience was not designed to have common sense about such things. Human experience is designed to work in the "our size" world.

Trickling into my new office

Wayne Schmidt and David Wright have graciously allowed me continue answering Seminary Dean email and do other exciting administrative tasks until late August when David Smith officially begins... :-)

... but I have begun to trickle over to my new office (Steve Lennox's now old office).

I move one or two boxes of books over a day from the Seminary, a good way for an attention deficit, hoarder guy to move.

Today I came across Michael Knibb's two volume edition of Ethiopic Enoch. Boy, my career sure didn't take in that direction. :-)

Proud of South Carolina

I'm delighted to see that South Carolina has stopped displaying the Confederate flag on its own initiative. I'm sure the flag doesn't represent hatred to most of the people for whom it is a sign of southern pride and dignity. But it's been 150 years since the end of the Civil War. Better for everyone to move on.

My great grandfather fought for the North, but he had a cousin who died in the South. The difference? His family moved to Indiana in the early 1800s. The common people usually don't make the wars, even though they are compelled to fight them.

Did slavery need to end? Absolutely. Was the Union a greater good than a loose collection? I would say absolutely. Was Robert E. Lee a man of honor? I'm willing to say so. I'm willing to honor all the fallen soldiers on both sides. Were the soldiers of the North more noble? Not in my book, even if I think theirs was the more righteous cause.

Let's just say that the Civil War ended April 9, 2015, a mere 150 years later. North and South are now equal. Black and white are now equal. From now on, let's say, a person is to be judged by the content of their individual character, North or South.

Liberal Arts 4: The Value of Music and Art

Fourth post in my series on the importance of the liberal arts for civilization. Previous posts include:

A Vision for the Liberal Arts
The Value of Philosophy
The Value of History

1. It seems to me that music and art are the most human of the liberal arts, with literature following close on their heals. Obviously some individuals have more capacity in this area than others. In this post, I am not targeting those who recognize the value of art and music but don't have much ability. I am targeting those who would try to remove them from curricula altogether.

A squirrel intrinsically knows the value of a nut, but he can't dance with it or scratch a representation of one in the side of a tree. When I hear of legislatures cutting funding for art or music because they think they are a waste of resources, my initial reaction is to think of them as sub-humans. Mere gorillas, thinks I. How do you make a human being into mere road kill? You take away the part that distinguishes him or her as human.

The ability to appreciate music and art is almost entirely limited to the human species. I'm sure some other species sing to each other, but you don't find hole-drawings in a rabbit hole (unless you're visiting Watership Down).

Even the hyper-utilitarian Soviet Union supported the arts, even if they did so for the wrong reasons--to show their superiority. So the hyper-utilitarian capitalist on this score, who wants to remove "wasteful" expenditures on art and music in the public schools, shows him/herself inferior even to the hyper-utilitarian communist, for whom it was all about the benefit to the State.

2. Of what benefit is art and music? Oscar Wilde would say the question itself is wrong, but let's entertain it for a moment.

Aristotle and Marcuse both recognized the cathartic value of art. Again, many sins are no doubt committed in the public schools when art or music becomes a mere lesson. Some of my children had an art teacher whose main goal seems to have been to teach the children to hate art (the J. Evans Pritchard, PhD type).

But what capacity art and music has to release unhealthy energies! When I was in college, I would sometimes get into a spiraling funk of self-doubt. In such times, there was nothing like a good movie on television to pull me out, to reset my brain, to put me in a different world on a different trajectory.

Aristotle realized this catharsis that art offers. How sad music can vent sadness. How angry music can vent anger. I've often wished I had the talent to paint or play my feelings out. How fantastic it must be to have the talent of a great painter or musician! To be able to express one's feelings in such a channeled way!

Of course art and music can feed unhealthy emotions too. Music can lead us to God, and music can go hand in hand with unbridled sex and drugs. My parents' generation tried to suppress the power of the Beatles, but they lost soundly. Ideas don't hold a candle to the power of music and art, the wimps.

We should be aware of this power. An educated person is, a person who has studied liberal arts. Why have opinions changed so quickly on homosexuality in America? Is it not in large part because of the movies and media of the last twenty years, which have normalized it in our consciousnesses? The influence of movies and television are the power of literature intensely multiplied through art and music.

Art and music amplify the emotions of a society. If you live in a climate where the weather often becomes dangerous, you need to know how to respond in a storm or flood. So art and music can be healthy releases and they can be unhealthy. How shortsighted to think such things are insignificant parts in an education.

3. Of course for those who have a sixth sense, the importance of art and music is obvious. Like someone who has never seen or heard, how difficult it is to describe vision or hearing. Beauty is something God has uniquely given to humanity. Blessed are those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.

In that sense, Christians should especially value art and music, as one of God's special gifts for humanity. They are arguably part of the imago Dei, the image of God. They are part of the glory and honor with which God has crowned us in the creation.

Like the emotions they feed and express, art and music are are neither good nor evil in themselves. But they can be expressed in good and bad ways. They can be sanctified. They can be vilified.

Tolstoy recognized the ability of art to point us toward the greater good--the love of God and our fellow human. They hold an immense capacity to bind us together, to help us see others as the same as ourselves. What does it mean to be human? Art and music are doorways to our inner humanity, much as literature, a door through which that Nazi, "Idea," cannot as easily pass.

4. Oscar Wilde of course pushed back against the idea that art must have an instrumental value at all. Art is valid for its own sake, he argued. (Of course the philosopher of art might note that art for him still served pleasure, and pleasure happiness, but we'll forgive this minor philosophical infelicity on his part)

"Life much more imitates art than art imitates life," he said. I don't entirely agree, but poets must be allowed their exaggeration. Certainly life does often imitate art. When cell phones went through the flip-phone stage, it was not lost on me that this form was inspired by Star Trek in the 60s. Indeed, how many careers in science were inspired by the artistry of Star Trek and other movies?

Art and music inspire. The artistry of a good teacher can set a student on a lifelong trajectory. Even sports is a form of art or can be seen to be such.

5. When you think of how much more powerful art and music are than science or courses on countless subjects that focus on ideas, how stupid we must feel to think that they are an unimportant part of an education!

An Idea for Greece from the Peanut Gallery

I'm far from an economic expert, but I wonder if there is a way to invert pay-backs. What if Greece's loans were structured for five years in terms of stimulus, directed by economic experts outside the country, and the amount they had to pay back each year went from smaller to greater rather than greater to smaller, as the economy grew back?

Someone told me yesterday that of the money Greece is currently receiving, 90% is going back to the European banks... only 10% to Greece itself.

3. Philo the Citizen

Continuing my review of Reading Philo: A Handbook to Philo of Alexandria, edited by Torrey Seland.

Introduction
Philo the Jew

1. Torrey himself is the writer of the third installment: "Philo the Citizen." Wow, what a great chapter. This book is shaping up to be my recommendation for anyone who is wanting a gateway to a master's or doctoral level study of Philo. It is also excellent for someone with a very basic knowledge of Judaism or the classical world.

I've been wrestling in my mind with what a complete beginner would think of the book. Would he or she understand it? It's not that there is anything very difficult to understand in the book. Thus far, it is extremely well written and understandable. What I haven't decided in my mind is whether someone who had never heard of Philo or the Roman world would have a good enough point of reference to follow it entirely.

Then again, the book seems to be written as a gateway to more advanced studies. In this endeavor, it is far superior so far to The Cambridge Companion to Philo. Each chapter makes a point to suggest possible avenues for further study in Philo research. In that sense it gives an undergraduate student some ideas of how one might move into this arena as a scholar.

On the other hand, it seems to me that it expects the reader to have some basic sense of ancient Judaism and the Roman world. It does not really introduce the reader to who Caligula was or what the Sabbath commandment was. I'm on page 75 and we have not yet had a catalog of Philo's works. These features lead me to believe that this is a "bridge work" to more advanced study for someone who has some background knowledge but only on an introductory level (such as a person might get, shameless plug, from my book).

2. So Seland gives us the requisite background on Philo's family. He gives the various debates over the state of Jews in Alexandria. He is judicious in giving the spectrum of opinions without giving in to temptation to come to conclusions. He gives the briefest sense of Philo's political theory. He presents the primary passages and treatises in Philo that you would want to study to go further on the subject. He addresses the main issues of debate surrounding the persecution of Jews that took place somewhere around 38CE.

In short, if you wanted to do research into Philo's political philosophy or the political situation of Alexandria around 40CE or the Greco-Roman political world vis-a-vis Philo, Seland's chapter would be a most excellent place to begin. You would know from there to go to De Josepho and De Somniis, as well as Legatio and the Ad Flaccum. You would know my favorite passage in Philo, the one that currently has me smiling.

3. One conspicuous aspect of the chapter is the way E. R. Goodenough dominates it. Goodenough is no doubt a central feature in the history of this discussion, but he is a very old source (1938) and some of his positions are seriously questioned (e.g., that Philo wrote some of his treatises for a Gentile audience).

Some very recent sources are mentioned at the end, although Seland does not engage them greatly. I don't know them myself, so perhaps Seland does not think they are on target. In any case, many sources are mentioned in the notes, and all the classic sources are referenced (Goodenough, Tracy, Tcherikover, Smallwood, Modrzejewski).

Excellent chapter!

Liberal Arts 3: The Value of History

Third post in my series on the importance of the liberal arts for civilization. Previous posts include:

A Vision for the Liberal Arts
The Value of Philosophy

1. If you think about it, every single bit of knowledge and experience is part of history. Every truth about God that has ever been known or experienced by the creation was a part of history. Much as philosophy reflects on everything, history encompasses everything.

Salvation unfolded in history. Science and math developed in history. Literature was written in history.

2. Perhaps the most valuable gain from history is a sense of identity and self-critique. The history of political rhetoric is bad history, propaganda. That's not history well taught. That's not history taught by expert historians. That is skewed history taught to rouse or manipulate the masses.

Hitler taught history that way. History taught rightly shows us our blind spots. History taught rightly reminds us when we are acting just like "your fathers who killed the prophets." History shows us when our practices are not as eternal as we think they are. History shows us the cultural influences on our thinking and practices and pops the bubble of our self-ignorance.

History shows us the warts of the "greatest generation." History shows us that there were prostitutes and the vilest of men alongside the revivals of the Old Northwest Territory and the Wild West. History shows us that the US is only one among many great nations. History is self-knowledge.

I often affirm that God can speak to you through the Bible wherever you are in your knowledge, whether you know what the Bible meant originally or not. But having a sense of the Bible's meaning in history changes you. It lays bare a thousand ignorant interpretations you thought were God but were really looking at yourself in the mirror or the burrito you had last night for supper. The deeper the sense of the Bible in his historical context, the less embarrassment we are likely to bring to God and the less abuse we are likely to bring to others.

History shows Protestants that the doctrines they see in the Bible sometimes took centuries to unfold, that there would scarcely be a canon without the church. History shows catholics that the Pope was once merely the bishop of Rome, not even first among equals at the beginning. History deconstructs the fairy tales we tell ourselves to make ourselves surer, smarter, and better than we really are.

3. "Those who don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it" (Santayana). There is another utility to the past. There is a reason why generals study the wars and battles of the past. There is a reason why great leaders read the biographies of leaders of the past. There is a reason why aspiring businessmen read the stories of past businesses.

There are great lessons to be learned from the successes and mistakes of the past. Why try to reinvent the wheel? In my own field, the history of biblical interpretation has the power to make me a better interpreter than anyone who has lived before me, because I can build however feebly on the best insights and mistakes of the past. I do not have to build an aqueduct or a dome from scratch. The feat was accomplished in history, thousands of years ago.

History is immense power. Those who know it can see into the souls of men. Those who know it can anticipate their opponent's next move. Those who know it can rule as kings and queens--or become them. History wins elections. History conquers enemies.

4. Why? Because history is full of examples, and humanity in the end is still the same humanity it always was. From a moral perspective, history is full of examples to emulate and examples to shun. Isn't this what Hebrews 11 is all about, a crowd of historical (and literary) examples meant to spur us on? And what is the wilderness generation of Hebrews 3 but a bad historical (and literary) example meant to dissuade us from a bad course of action.

History is full of heroes and villains. Perhaps most of the time they were more complex than the flat characters we make them out to be. Was Richard III a fiendish child murderer or the loser whose story was ultimately told by the winners?

5. It is a sin for history to be boring. There are too many delights here, too many insights, too much to be gained. The professor of any history class that is boring should be shot.

History is power. History is immensely useful. A knowledge of history is key to the perpetuation of civilization.

Philosophy Monday: Seland's Reading Philo 2

A couple months ago I started reviewing Torrey Seland's edited text, Reading Philo. I need to finish reading it in the next couple weeks.

For today, I have read the chapter, "Philo the Jew," by Karl-Gustav Sandelin of Åbo Akademie University in Finland.

1. I was very impressed with much in this chapter, especially the section on "The Jewish Way of Life." This section treated Philo in relation to topics like circumcision, Sabbath observance, dietary laws, and sexuality. Sandelin leans toward Philo being a law-observant Jew and rightly emphasizes the fact that Philo unusually accepted the literal interpretation of passages in addition to the allegorical.

Sandelin interacts with a significant cross-section of Philonic scholarship, a field I have always liked because the body of literature is comparatively small and high quality. That is to say, it takes a certain caliber of scholar to engage Philo on an advanced level, so you don't get as much craziness. It is also a tight academic community and so everyone knows each other. While Philo himself is complicated, a student with a competent guide could easily master the body of literature, although it will require engagement with multiple languages.

2. Sandelin's little section at the end on Philo in relation to other Jewish groups was short but clear as as well. Philo was clearly not a Sadducee or a Pharisee or an Essene, although he deeply admired the Essenes and another similar group in Egypt, the Therapeutae.

Sandelin is pretty much spot on with his summary of Philo and Scripture. The Law was Scripture for Philo, and other parts of the Jewish canon were quite secondary, although Sandelin hints that Philo knew of a tripartite approach to the canon (Contempl. 25).

3. For much of this chapter, I found myself saying, "Seland's done it. This is a great introduction to Philo." I did have a more mixed review about Sandelin's treatment of Wisdom and the Logos. My alarm bells went off when he favorably started drawing on Burton Mack.

In particular, I have serious questions about this sentence: "The higher realm is that of Wisdom and the lower forms the dominion of the Logos or Word" (34). Sandelin is speaking of the difference between the intelligible and perceptible worlds here and aligning these two with them. While there is no doubt that Philo thinks in terms of these two worlds and considers the intelligible world superior to the perceptible one, I am scratching my head to remember an identification of wisdom with the one and Logos with the other.

I'll have to dot my i's, but I think Mack probably over-systematized Philo here. With Philo, you have to be very careful about mixing a set of allegories he uses in one place with those he uses in another. In general, I would just avoid anything by Burton Mack in general.

So I thought that the part of the chapter dealing with the Logos was weak. But it will no doubt be treated again by Greg Sterling later in the book, so there is more to come.

4. So to summarize chapter 1: mostly excellent, with some questions about one part.

E5. There is no one, correct form of church government.

This is the fifth post on the Church in my ongoing series, theology in bullet points. The first unit in this series had to do with God and Creation (book here), and the second unit was on Christology and Atonement.

We are now in the third and final unit: The Holy Spirit and the Church. The first set of posts in this final unit on the Spirit and the Church was on the Holy Spirit.
_______________________________
There is no one, correct form of church government, nor is there one "denomination" or organized Christian church that is the correct church. [1]

1. Until the year 1054, it was fairly easy for Christians to assume that there was only one true visible church that was the Church, even if it was allowed that some of those in its membership might be weeds rather than wheat. [2] There were some smaller groups, such as the Coptic Church in Egypt or the church in Ethiopia. But the difference in size no doubt made it easy to consider them deviations from the true church rather than groups with equal claims to be in the Church. [3]

However, in 1054, the Orthodox churches of the East were separated from the Roman Catholic Church, leaving Christianity in two halves. Looking back at this Christianity separated by region, culture, and language, it seems all the more impossible to consider either the true church. Two different bodies of believers with very similar, yet slightly different structures, were both legitimate forms of the Church.

There was still a great deal of similarity between these two groups in belief and form, as well as with the earlier Coptic and other groups. This form was the episcopal form of governance, where the church is governed by bishops and even more authoritative archbishops over geographical areas. These authority figures have authority analogous to that of a king, which is unsurprising given that this was the structure of governance outside the church at the time.

2. Here we reach upon a very important principle. As people and culture has changed, church governance has changed. While some might find in this dynamic a weakness to be corrected, it is rather a great strength.

God meets his people where they are, and culture is one of the most central features of human existence. The Bible does not dictate the specific forms in which Christianity functions, and it is always perilous to look to the Bible for the specifics of how to do things. Form and process have everything to do with context, and it would be silly and counterproductive to think we must mimic the forms of the Bible, which themselves were a function of the ancient cultures of the peoples of the Bible themselves. [4]

So we are not surprised that in a world where kings and their representatives governed the world, the church would primarily be governed by authoritative figures.

3. The Protestant Reformation confirmed the notion that there is not one, true visible church. Despite the split of East and West, all the existing churches retained a certain "catholic" form. Indeed, there are "Old Catholic" groups to this day in Europe that are neither Roman Catholic or Orthodox. When the Church of England was founded, some of its defenders argued that it was a truer catholic church than the Roman Catholic Church. [5]

But the new groups that emerged from the Protestant Reformation differed more greatly from what had come before, both in belief and practice. As culture changed and the common person gained more power in the world, new forms of church government would arise that gave more power to the ordinary believer. The presbyterian form of governance would rise, where church leaders are chosen (i.e., elected) from their equals. We especially associate this form with Reformed and Presbyterian churches.

To be sure, this new form of church governance was justified by reference to the Bible. It was a necessary game, given the Reformation need to find biblical precedent for its practices. But the objective historian recognizes that this was every bit as much God meeting his people within the culture of their time and place. Is it any coincidence that the presbyterian form of governance rose at the same time as representational governments were arising?

4. The Reformation also saw the rise of Anabaptist churches that did away with church hierarchy all together. The house church movement today reminds us of these groups that tried to be lead directly by the Holy Spirit. Inevitably, individuals with more charismatic personalities emerge as leaders in such contexts, even if they do not bear an official role.

While we would not want to de-Christianize such groups, they tend toward the kind of anarchy that Paul tried to redirect in 1 Corinthians 14. In such contexts, much of what is attributed to the Holy Spirit is inevitably the whims and eccentricities of human personalities. Further, the power of the church is typically muted in such amorphous cells because of their isolation and lack of structure.

A much more stable and culturally appealing form is the congregational structure of church governance, where individual churches have their own individual leadership without any overarching church hierarchy. The Baptist tradition most typifies this approach, and it has dominated the United States. Again, it is no coincidence that a form of governance that emphasizes individualism would thrive in a nation that emphasizes democracy on the local level.

5. The Bible does not dictate any of these forms of governance, remembering that description in Scripture does not imply prescription. Even if Israel and the New Testament churches had certain forms of governance, this fact does not dictate that we must have those forms. What is essential are the functions of the Church, not the forms.

We can make a further claim. If it were important to God for all his people to believe and practice the same thing, then we would find that the most spiritual individuals in the Church, those who are most in tune with God, would migrate over time to a particular visible church group or tradition. But we do not find this migration.

What we find instead is that there are equally godly, equally holy individuals across the spectrum of church groups and denominations. We find equally godly Roman Catholics, Orthodox, Coptic, Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, Anabaptist, Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal, and other Christians. This observation suggests that God is far more concerned with the attitude of our hearts than the beliefs of our heads or even our specific church practices.

This is not an argument against truth or there being preferred positions on belief and practice. It is simply an observation that these matters surely are not God's first order of business.

6. My own denomination provides an excellent case study for how church governance can fit hand in glove with culture. The Wesleyan Church has a largely presbyterian form of governance, mirroring the United States. An equal number of ministers and non-ministers elect their leaders on each level of church governance.

But the church does have a regional, national and international structure, with elected leaders at each stage of governance.  There is a shared, core set of beliefs and practices, with an increasing amount of latitude for local churches and individuals. On the local level there is a significant amount of overlap with congregational forms of governance. Ministers are more chosen by the local church than appointed by district leaders, although district leaders often play a significant role in who "candidates."

International conferences are given greater leeway to contextualize the form of Christianity to their own particular cultural contexts. There is currently a drive to move membership within the church toward entry level Christianity rather than a more mature state of discipleship, which would be expected of leaders. The result would be a broader membership without loss of those beliefs and practices considered dear to our tradition.

7. You might argue that the varying denominations of the Church today are simply an example written large of the diversity of the local body of Christ. As in a local church there are differing individuals with differing gifts and roles to play, so in the universal Church, different Christian groups tend to play different roles.

Some denominations emphasize the Spirit more than others. Some denominations emphasize salvation more than others. Some denominations emphasize God's sovereignty more than others. Some denominations emphasize God's grace more than others. Some churches emphasize an optimism of God's power. Some emphasize human sinfulness.

Perhaps if there were only one visible church, these valid elements would blur together into gray. [6] The Church is a unity in diversity, not a monolithic unity. Diversity in the church thus has some strengths, even if the current diversity may seem more an embodiment of weakness.

We should strive for greater unity and it would surely be ideal if a great movement of reuniting were to take place among the tens of thousands of different church organizations. In the meantime, there is still no one, correct form of church government or correct Christian denomination.

Next week: E6. The Church is in the world but not of the world.

[1] A "denomination" is a group of Christians that are organized together into a common organizational structure, usually with common beliefs and practices.

[2] Augustine, Sermon 23 on the New Testament.

[3] Cyprian's slogan, "there is no salvation outside the church," was formed in the middle of controversy over groups deviating from the mainstream church over the purity of priests and bishops who had renounced Christ under persecution ("To Jubaianus, Concerning the Baptism of Heretics," 21). It was used until the late twentieth century to deny non-Roman Catholics the possibility of salvation, although since Vatican 2, baptized members of other churches are considered, "separated brethren."

[4] Therefore, while it is perfectly acceptable to call church leaders today by the titles they had in the New Testament church (e.g., elders, deacons, overseers, etc), it is ignorant to think that we must use those models, designed as they were in the light of first century culture.

[5] E.g., John Jewel.

[6] More likely, these variations would simply occur on a local level.

Feynman Graphic Novel

A couple weeks back I finished working through Logicomix, a graphic novel of the life of Bertrand Russell. Today I finished another graphic novel on Feynman.

1. Richard Feynman was an incredibly colorful character, a typical genius. Unusually for such geniuses, he was a showman. He had the strange knack of taking things that very few people could understand and boiling them down with incredible clarity and panache.

I've read and blogged about some of his life. For example:

• The Character of Physical Law
• The better part of a biography of him: Quantum Man

I've read the better part of his book, QED, but I don't think I've blogged about it. I have a few more of his books, including the third volume of the lectures he gave at Cal Tech from 1961-63, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, and Six Not So Easy Pieces.

2. But I would say that if you want somewhere to start, this graphic novel is the place. It has the essential framework... his beginnings that led him to MIT... his early interactions with bedrocks of Twentieth Century physics like Einstein, Niels Bohr, von Neumann, Wheeler, Bethe, etc... how he went to Princeton for grad work and was tapped for the Manhattan Project.

There's the story of his first wife Arlene, who died in the middle of the Manhattan Project. Hints at his womanizing were given. There was the development of his famed Feynman diagrams. He received the Nobel Prize in physics along with two other individuals who helped shape the fundamentals of "quantum electrodynamics" (QED).

In the graphic novel, Feynman reduces the fundamental components of quantum theory to 3. First, you need to know the amplitude of a photon going from one place to another. Then you need to know the amplitude of an electron going from one place to another.  Then you need to know the amplitude of an electron absorbing or emitting an electron.

3. The graphic novel also incorporates the key books and lectures Feynman gave, including the ones I mentioned above. There's the double slit experiment. There's his quirky personality... how he picked safes at Los Alamos... how his friends locked him in a room until he would write up his QED findings... how he took repeated vacations around the world... was offered immense sums of money to be wooed by various institutions but in the end stayed at Cal Tech... how he dramatically showed everyone in a press conference why the Space Shuttle exploded.

I think the most interesting part of this graphic novel to me was the fact that Feynman didn't always understand the equations of others and the various physicists often didn't fully understand each other's work. There was often a period where someone would show that two physicists were really saying the same thing in different ways.

Very well done!

Philosophy Addendum to this morning

A quick supplement to my post earlier this morning.

In a non-Christian setting especially, philosophy is the place where a student will encounter ethics in its most potent form. As I will argue in subsequent posts, they should also encounter ethics in history, literature, and other parts of the liberal arts curriculum.

But philosophy can and should set the stage for discussions on the meaning of life and the significance of virtue and beauty. Philosophy should challenge utilitarian assumptions while also demonstrating their potential value. On a Christian campus, these discussions interact naturally with faith and Scripture.

Ethics will be the primary way in which faith integrates with the content of several other disciplines. For example, in business and economics, it is not enough to know the principles of how to make money. One should also know the importance of ethical considerations. Philosophy questions whether the making of profit is an appropriate end-in-itself.

In any case, I didn't want to leave the importance of philosophy in a liberal arts curriculum without mentioning this most important piece. Individual disciplines may know the content of ethical issues in their discipline the best, but philosophy reigns as the meta-discipline best equipped to process that content.

Liberal Arts 2: The Value of Philosophy

Continuing my series on the value of the liberal arts in college...

1. I've said before that philosophy logically stands at the heart of a liberal arts curriculum. This is because philosophy stands alongside every other discipline and clarifies what that discipline is really about and what is going on when you study that discipline. And, obviously, philosophy on a Christian campus will clarify all other disciplines from a Christian standpoint. [1]

2. Take critical thinking. Logic is one of the areas treated by philosophy, how to think clearly.

Logic is the bedrock of civilization, rational thinking. One of the things I find reassuring about logic is that it is timeless and absolute. It doesn't matter where you are from or when you live in history, logic does not change.

Learning about culture is also part of the liberal arts (history and sociology), and I strongly affirm its value as well. But civilization is toast if we yield to the notion that a European simply cannot understand an African or that a man simply cannot understand a woman. Logic cuts across location and particularity.

Different cultures may assume different propositions in their communication. They may have different rules for how one thought "causes" another. But the nature of cause and effect remains the same. A logician could "translate" conversation and culture into a clarified language of logic.

So "tribal" thinking is the enemy of civilization and philosophy undermines it at its very heart. Philosophy looks for truths that are bigger than us as individuals or groups. Philosophy says that the same truth applies to a white person as to a black person. Philosophy insists that each truth claim be considered on its own, no matter who suggested the truth.

This all sounds rather modernist, and it is to a large degree an impossible dream. But civilization steers by this dream of timeless, objective, universal truth. Postmodernism, if made the shining star, becomes the enemy of civilization. [2] Presuppositional epistemologies that overextend assumptions far beyond what is demonstrable are the enemies of civilization. [3] And a "party-spirit" such as voting only for one political party or only accepting information from one cable news channel is a threat to civilization.

Logic leads us to this conclusion, while giving each option its turn to speak and letting each student come to her own conclusion.

2. Philosophy lays bare our thought assumptions. It shows us ourselves. It shows us options we did not know to consider. In that sense it makes us "freer" persons, as the liberal arts are meant to. We now can freely choose option A among options A through E.

Before, we didn't know B, C, D, or E. We were an unthinking slave to option A. Now we may still choose option A, but we will now choose it freely rather than because our mommy always said that and we had never heard anything different.

A science major may think that he or she is completely objective. A science major may assume that empirical method is the only valid way to arrive at truth. Philosophy comes alongside and points out that science has a lot of assumptions. In walks Thomas Kuhn and makes it clear that science goes through trends and phases, that "normal science" resists paradigm shifts.

Even in religion, a person may assume that he or she is just reading the Bible and doing what it says. Philosophy comes alongside and points out that tens of thousands of other Bible readers think the same and yet disagree vastly with them. Philosophy points out that while the content of a person's theology may come largely from the Bible, the organization of that content comes from far more complex sources, including the interpretive traditions to which the Bible reader is heir.

3. Philosophy makes us humble. Despite the modernist bent of everything I've said so far, postmodernism does come along and warn us that even the philosopher is not outside reality looking on. I as a knower am part of what I am knowing. I cannot pull myself out of the world to make it an object. My interpretation of the world will always be unreflective and constructive to some extent.

Philosophy leads me to the conclusion that faith is intrinsic to all human knowing (except, perhaps, my sense that something exists). Philosophy suggests that the human elements to existence are more significant than the cognitive. Philosophy suggests that ideas are simply tools we use to help us make our way through the world.

But, then again, I am giving you my conclusions from philosophy, which no doubt relate strongly to my identity as a Christian. Nevertheless, conclusions like these, I believe, stand at the heart of a thriving civilization.

But philosophy will equip you and then let you decide. It is the ground zero foundation of the liberal arts... and potentially one of the most powerful weapons against barbarism.

See also this addendum.

[1] We are talking here about the cognitive dimensions of a curriculum. IMO, a Christian philosophy also suggests that these cognitive dimensions are not the most important human dimensions.

[2] Understand me. Insofar as postmodernism contributes to truths about the limitations of modernism, it is to be embraced. Underlying my scheme here is not contradiction but pragmatism, the only coherent philosophical option in the end. See my posts this fall as we read through Preludes to Pragmatism.

[3] Yes, I am targeting Reformed epistemology here as potentially hostile to civilization.

A Vision for the Liberal Arts 1

1. I wish there was a better name for them, given the fact that a lot of people break out in hives at the word, "liberal" (the phrase comes from millennia before the current sense of the word, "liberal"). "General education requirements" has no power at all. "Liberating arts" does clarify a little, but again doesn't communicate much to outsiders.

How about this--it's the part of a college curriculum meant to protect civilization from barbarism? The liberal arts is the part of the curriculum meant to separate students from apes and monkeys. It's the part of the curriculum meant to protect society from stupid.

History, literature, art and music, philosophy, psychology, basic math and science, those are typical fare in a general education curriculum. The medieval topics were grammar, logic, rhetoric (the trivium), music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy (the quadrivium). The State of Indiana has translated them into certain core skills: written communication, speaking and listening, quantitative reasoning, thinking scientifically, thinking socially/behaviorally, and thinking humanly/artistically. Those Indiana colleges that participate can swap a 30 hour block fulfilling these competencies.

2. There are still places where the liberal or "freeing" arts can be taught without explanation. I fear, though, that in our "what's it for," utilitarian world, they will be in danger. Their vulnerability is compounded, I think, by professors and colleges who do not show or articulate what they are for. If the professor loves the topic and can communicate that enthusiasm, a student can be changed without necessarily knowing why he or she was required to take that course.

But if the professor is merely selfish, just teaching what he or she wants to teach, if the professor begrudges having to teach a general education course, if some hapless adjunct is drafted to teach it who doesn't really know what he or she is doing, then it would probably have been better if the student hadn't had to take the class. Where there is no vision, the liberal arts perish.

3. I might brand them this way--The liberal arts are civilization's best defense against barbarism, against us being mere animals, ripping whatever meat satisfies our passing appetites. A business major without a sense of virtue and human value is just a gorilla, no matter how much money he or she ends up making. A political science major with no sense of the meaning of life is just a baboon.

You might ask where my mention of Christianity is in this. Obviously there is a rich, Christian way of teaching these subjects. Indeed, these subjects could be taught in an insidious, evil way that deconstructed humanity. When I speak of the value of the liberal arts, I mean when they are taught in the way that coincides with core Judeo-Christian values like the worth of every person and the existence of meaning.

But there are plenty of people calling themselves Christians out there who are just as animal as anyone else. Religion, even Christianity, is often used as a tool of stupid and oppression. When stupid reads the Bible, stupid thinks the Bible teaches stupid things and then beats up others who disagree with stupid. The same goes for stupid reading the Qur'an or the Communist Manifesto.

4. The purist might not like the tactic I'm taking--using abusive language and arguing for the utility of the liberal arts. The liberal arts usually are meant to move us toward peaceful co-existence, not my militant and strident tone. The liberal arts are usually thought to be valuable for their own sake, not for their instrumental value.

But I wonder if the truth could use some "mercenaries" from time to time. Utility usually wins, especially when resources are scarce. Power wins over truth time and time again. The meek will inherit the earth to come, but in the meantime force tends to win. I have no problem with Bonhoeffer cooperating in the plot to assassinate Hitler and do not consider it sinful. (However, if you've absorbed the benefit of the liberal arts, all sorts of warning lights should be going off at what I'm saying).

So think of me as a mercenary for truth. No, I'm not going to kill anybody. In the next few posts I'm going to argue that, in terms of the long term benefit for the human race, the liberal arts are actually more important than being able to get a job or having a major, at least when they are taught well and with the assumption of universal human value and the meaningfulness of life.

They hold the power to make the world a better place for a longer time than some passing skill you might learn in a major. And a deep Christian version of them, I believe, is the most powerful of all to change the world for good.

E4. The church is one body even though it has many members.

This is the fourth post on the Church in my ongoing series, theology in bullet points. The first unit in this series had to do with God and Creation (book here), and the second unit was on Christology and Atonement.

We are now in the third and final unit: The Holy Spirit and the Church. The first set of posts in this final unit on the Spirit and the Church was on the Holy Spirit.
_______________________________
The church is one body even though it has many members.

1. When the church at Corinth was having problems with disunity, Paul drew on a metaphor that was arguably known in the Greek-speaking world and perhaps particularly known in some way at Corinth. [1] Although the precise background is not clear, Paul's meaning seems clear enough, especially in the light of the Corinthian situation.

The Corinthian church suffered from significant disunity. Its key problem seems to be that some in the community thought themselves superior to others in the community. Indeed, some of them seemed to think themselves superior to Paul.

Some clearly thought themselves wiser than others (e.g., 1 Cor. 3:18). Because they thought they had superior knowledge, some seemed to revel in their superior freedom to do things others in the community did not do (cf. 8:2, 7). Some thought that they had superior spiritual gifts to others in the church, such as the gift of tongues (e.g., 12:4; 14:1-2).

1 Corinthians 12-14 is Paul's response to this problem in the Corinthian church. The various individuals in the Corinthian church are like the various members of a body. It would be absurd for the parts of a body to fight against each other because they are one body. The different parts of the body serve different functions, and they all contribute to the common benefit (1 Cor. 12:7).

The different parts of the body are not to look down on each other (e.g., 1 Cor. 12:16). We give extra honor to the parts of the body that are often overlooked just to even out the honor among the parts of the body (e.g., 12:23). "For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit" (12:13).

Paul reiterates this image of unity in diversity throughout first Corinthians. The one loaf in the Lord's Supper indicates that, "because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread" (1 Cor. 10:17). [2] The collective body of Christ at Corinth is "the temple of God" (3:16).

2. So in what does the unity of the Church consist and in what ways is it diverse? 1 Corinthians 13 makes it clear that a key characteristic of its unity is the love of the members of the church for each other. It is no coincidence that 1 Corinthians 13 appears here, in the middle of a discussion of spiritual gifts. If the Corinthian church was divided, the solution was for them to love each other.

Paul repeatedly expresses this aspect of Christian unity. Tell Euodia and Syntyche to be of the same mind (Phil. 4:2). Tell the Philippians as a whole to be of the same mind, in one spirit, in one accord (2:2). Have the attitude of Christ, who had the rank of a king, but had the attitude of a servant (2:5-7).

Paul was not speaking of unity in belief here, although he assumed that all Christians affirmed Jesus as Lord on the basis of his resurrection (Rom. 10:9). They served one God (Eph. 4:6), and Paul no doubt assumed a number of beliefs Christians held in common. But in his letters, the focus of unity is on Christians loving each other and considering each other to be of equal value.

In Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 10, Paul makes it clear that this unity in spirit was more important than unity on the debated issues of his day. There was disagreement in his day on whether believers should eat meat offered to an idol. There was disagreement on whether Gentile believers should observe the Jewish Sabbath. Paul indicates that unity of spirit and building each other up was more important than getting the right answer on these issues.

3. Paul thus assumed that there would be diversity both in the local assembly and the universal Church. In 1 Corinthians, he assumes a diversity both of gifts and functions in the church. We should be careful not to make the various lists he gives into anything like absolutes. The letters of the New Testament are generally "occasional" in nature. That is to say, they were written on specific occasions to address specific issues. Paul did not write them--and God did not intend them--to be anything like absolute categories.

It would be absurd for a Christian to say, "I cannot help with that task because my spiritual gift is x." Similarly, it would be ridiculous for a believer to say, "I do not do that function because I am a prophet or a teacher." It is human nature to want to categorize and to pigeonhole, but that is not Paul's purpose. He is giving us examples of the kinds of gifts people have and the key roles of the early church. He was not giving exhaustive lists or absolute categories, nor was he thinking that the roles he mentioned would necessarily extend two thousand years.

For example, an apostle for Paul was a role unique to his day because to be one, the risen Jesus needed to have appeared to you physically and commissioned you to go as a witness to the resurrection (1 Cor. 9:1). In 1 Corinthians 15:8, Paul indicates that he was the last of this sort of apostle. So anyone who calls him or herself an apostle today is not using the word in the same way as the New Testament. [3]

Nevertheless, Paul's lists illustrate the kind of diversity of gifts among the body of Christ, as well as the various roles that individual believers often play. Romans 12:8 mentions people who are good at giving, people who are cheerful, people who are compassionate, people who are diligent. 1 Corinthians 12:28 mentions those who are good at helping others. Then there are the more showy gifts: healing, prophecy, tongues, leadership, teaching (Rom. 12:6-7; 1 Cor. 12:8-10, 28; Eph. 4:11).

The functions that take place in the church are the key, not these roles as clear cut, distinct offices ordained by God. Indeed, to make these roles into distinct positions runs the risk of giving an individual the temptation to boast that he or she is such and such a thing in the church. No personality profile or strengths test is meant to become a self-fulfilling prophecy but to describe your general gifts and tendencies so that you can function as well as possible in the world and be able to manage your weaknesses.

The capacity of human nature to take the good and use it for ill is both astounding and pervasive. How ironic it is, therefore, that many take so much pride in their supposed spiritual gifts or their supposed God-given role in the church. And how foolish it would be to limit what God wants to do through you because you have resolved that you are only an eye or that you are only an ear! That was not Paul's point.

The Church is made up of many members with many different gifts. These gifts match naturally with varying roles that we all may play in the body of Christ. But none of us are more significant in God's eyes. All of us are equally loved in God's eyes. And so should we be in each other's eyes.

The Church is one body, even though it has many members.

Next Sunday: E5. There is no one, correct form of church government or denomination.

[1] The classic study here is Ernest Best's, One Body in Christ: A Study in the Relationship of the Church to Christ in the Epistles of the Apostle Paul (London: SPCK, 1955). It was, for example, an image known in Stoic circles. See also Robert Banks, Paul's Idea of Community: The Early House Churches in Their Cultural Setting, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1994).

[2] The tendency of individualistic American Christians to use individual cups and wafers is a general demonstration of the fact that we have missed one of the major points of communion--oneness.

[3] There seems to be an assumption by some that, because the lists in Ephesians and 1 Corinthians mention apostles, that there must still be apostles today. But this is a pre-reflective reading of Scripture that does not yet know that these words were written to them first before they became God's word for us.

Ruled out of Oord-er

Yesterday, Northwest Nazarene confirmed its decision to let Thomas Oord go. My initial post on this situation is here. Tom has recorded and posted a civil response here and his video version here.

1. I have greatly mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I suspect Dr. Oord could win a lawsuit against NNU. It is overwhelmingly clear to any fair-minded person that this lay off is for ideological reasons rather than NNU's economic situation. And given that Kevin Timpe is leaving for Calvin, there is a theology/philosophy spot open anyway. In short, this is exactly why tenure was invented and about the only thing it is actually good for.

2. On the other hand, I sympathize with the board and administration, because having professors that are radical for their clientele is not good for a desired trajectory or potentially for business. This may seem Cro-Magnon to say, but universities do have to have students to stay open, and what parents think of a university is a significant factor in whether you have students.

Yes, I like to think of universities as "liberating" the minds of youth. Yes, I see universities as one of the best hopes for the future of Western civilization.

But there is a balancing act here. Woody Allen once wrote, "If it bends, it's funny. If it breaks, it's not." The same might be said of a "niche" educational institution such as Christian colleges are. You can stretch students and their parents will tolerate some stretching if it is within tolerable limits. But there is also a break point, where faculty are just not mission fit and "bad for business."

Most of the time, truth is not this objectively obvious thing. Those who think all universities should just hire the best scholars are several decades behind the curve. If postmodernism is good for anything, it has shown us that there is no such thing as the Spock-like, objective scholar. This is especially the case in the liberal arts and subjects like theology.

3. Who a university hires sets a trajectory not only for the university but for generations of students. I'll use Dr. Martin at IWU as an example. His thinking had significant elements of Reformed epistemology to them, IMO. As a Wesleyan I didn't like it, even though he was a godly man, a great professor, and an incredible mentor.

He had an immense impact on generations of IWU students. I sometimes hear his voice even in Steve Deneff's preaching (truth is revealed rather than discovered). Who a university hires can have an immense impact on generations, especially at small colleges, especially when they are forming the leaders of a denomination.

So you think of the fact that open theism seems very prevalent in the Nazarene Church. Why is that? Is it not because there are a number of influential Nazarene professors who teach it? Again, I don't think open theism is the boogie man. As heresies go, I put it in the category of heresy-light, the kind that most of us have rattling around somewhere in our thinking.

So I feel for the board and administration in that sense. Tom is obviously a great guy and a great professor, but they very likely see him as a bad influence on the denomination. This is why it is essential to hire the right people to teach on the front end.

4. But lastly and mostly, I feel for Tom and the faculty at NNU. Here is one of the Nazarene church's best scholars and brightest minds. One model for a university is as a place where experts on particular topics push the boundaries of knowledge and understanding on that topic. In some cases, a university is a place where the brightest minds of a particular generation become masters of truth.

But there are other models that are also legitimate and more dominant for obvious reasons. There's the model of college as a place to learn a skill to get a job. There's college as a place for students to be formed according to the particular virtues and ideology of a particular group. Christian colleges tend to fall especially in this last "formational" category, IMO.

Most professors unthinkingly assume that their role is the first one--to pursue the bounds of knowledge and enlighten students. By contrast, parents (especially at Christian colleges) assume that the point of the college is the last two--to form students in some particular Christian set of ideas and values and to equip them to get a job.

Of course the ideological pinch is also present at secular institutions, but with different boundaries. There are boundaries you just can't push there either, just different ones. And social media is lynching secular professors these days too.

The leadership of NNU has soundly located it yesterday in the formation/vocation camp with this decision, not the research/push the bounds of truth camp. They've implicitly said, "Send your kids here to be formed along traditional Nazarene lines." They've rejected, "Send your kids here to be cutting edge thinkers." I accept this decision as the nature of the game, even if it saddens me.

5. So its just a bad situation all around. Tom is an excellent thinker and professor. He should be teaching somewhere. I was hoping maybe United in Dayton would hire him, since Jason Vickers is leaving there for Asbury Memphis. (nudge, nudge) I think there are students who would go to a particular graduate school just to study with him (including a LOT of angry young Nazarenes right now).

The world needs thinkers who push the boundaries. They just need to be at the right schools. They need to be at places where it's okay to push their particular boundaries of choice.

Friday Novel: The Run

Alan's alarm went off at 5:45am, reminding him that he was not in Chicago any more. For a moment he struggled to get his bearings, to figure out where he was in the world. The impulse to go back to sleep was immense, and he almost did. Catching himself on the verge of unconsciousness, he deliberately rolled himself off the dorm room bed onto the floor below.

He was to meet someone called Quirk in front of Peterhouse for a morning run and exercises. This was a "run club" in Peterhouse. He would be joined by a random collection of Peterhouse students who, for various reasons, liked to kill themselves early in the morning.

He arrived to find eight or nine students already there, mostly men but with a couple women, as well as a slightly older person he took to be Quirk. He imagined that some of this collection must also be part of the Society. Clearly he was the new person.

"Six kilometers this morning, ladies and gents," Quirk said. "I expect all of you but the new guy to be under 32 minutes. Randolph, I'm with you this morning."

Fox had warned him that there was a physical component for those who were able. It wasn't expected of every member of the Society. After all, Fox had said, some members were constantly falling down stairs because their heads were somewhere else.

But Fox thought he might have the capacity to be the complete package, the "full monty," the brains and the brawn.

"Begin at your leisure," Quirk finally said. "Ready Randolph? How far do you think you can run and how fast?"

"I've been training for the last month," he said. "I've been doing three miles in about twenty-two minutes."

"Well, that's pathetic," he said. "Alright then. Let's go."

How the Bible and Theology Connect

The Bible and theology connect in two ways, in terms of their content.

1. First, they connect historically. The community of faith from which the books of the OT emerged (Israel) was in continuity with the community from which the books of the NT emerged (Jesus movement), which was in continuity with the community that recognized these books as Scriptural canon (the early church). The central beliefs and core ethics of Christianity reached a kind of stability in the community of the early church, and these beliefs and ethics have a continuity historically with the communities that preceded.

Thus the theology of the Church grew historically out of the theology of the earliest church, which grew out of the theology of Israel diachronically.

2. Synchronically, we can say that the historically particular materials of the Bible provide the raw content of Christian theology, while Christian theology provides the organization of that content. Pre-reflectively, we do not see this distinction. We see them as one as the same. We think the Bible is theology. We might read the text as a collection of individual universal truths and our theology as something like knowing which verse to quote on which topic.

But this perspective is usually unreflective. It does not understand the historical particularity of each text (or a "hyper-reflective" reader may choose to look past it). As reflective readers, we recognize that the organization of the biblical content is an act that, de re, must take place from outside the text. The texts themselves, to a large degree, do not tell us how to integrate their content with one another. It is something our minds (or preferably communities) do of necessity, whether we realize it or not.

This implies that theology is primary in terms of cognitive meaning in the sense that the organization of content is far more determinative of meaning than the content itself. To the extent that we do not realize that we are the ones organizing the content, to that extent we mistake ourselves for the Bible, to that extent we lift ourselves to have the authority of the Bible. This unreflective approach to the Bible is also why there are tens of thousands of Christian interpretive groups who think they are just following the Bible when they are mostly following the coincidences of their own interpretations.

3. In the same sense that we always live in the present, and we only understand the past in the present (and it is hard to meet the past apart from traditions that bring it to us), Christian belief and practice is understood and taught most clearly in its organized, theological form. There is a drive to connect this theology to specific biblical texts and there is a perceived power in doing so, but this primarily has to do with the affective dimensions of our thinking and practice. In terms of cognitive content, it complicates and can obfuscate.

Yet Scripture is arguably about much more than the cognitive. Arguably its function in the Christian community is primarily sacramental. In that sense, while theology can stand alone cognitively, it loses a good deal of its power when it is not connected to biblical materials.

Feynman 7: New Laws of Nature?

And so we reach the end of Richard Feynman's famous lectures, The Character of Physical Law, a series of lectures he gave at Cornell in 1964. The six previous were:

• Gravitation as an example of physical law
• The relation of physics to math
• Great conservation laws
• Symmetry in physical law
• Telling the past from the future
• The quantum mechanical view of nature

1. In the six previous lectures, Feynman had given some descriptions of the principles of nature. But what is nature. What is the something that these are principles of? What is the energy that is conserved? What is the something that has these mechanical laws?

First, that something is matter. Feynman embarks then to give a taste of the panoply of particles that had been discovered by 1964. The "standard model" was then in process of development. In fact, I have another book of Feynman's from the 80s I'd like to blog through sometime called QED, in which he presents some of this material from a vantage point twenty years later.

"All ordinary phenomena can be explained by the actions and the motions of particles" (151). And these particles are present everywhere in the universe. The make-up of matter in far away galaxies is exactly the same as the make-up of matter here.

The many particles that have been discovered--electrons, protons, neutrons, photons, neutrinos, mesons, anti-particles, etc--can be grouped into families. Feynman describes the situation in his time as similar to that of Mendeleev when he was putting together the periodic table and scientists were locating elements on it.

He also mentions a problem that I believe continues even today, which I consider to be Kuhnian "naughty data" just calling for an Einstein or Dirac to solve. Why do so many of the equations of quantum mechanics go to infinity unless you trick them?

2. So how do you find "new laws" of nature? Feynman presents the scientific method. He is worth quoting: "If it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is--if it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong. That is all there is to it" (156).

One interesting feature about the development of twentieth century physics is the fact that studies were sometimes wrong and not immediately recognized to be so. That is encouraging. These individuals who developed relativity and quantum mechanics sometimes presented papers with errors. They weren't like the proofs of geometry. The greatest minds in physics often did not immediately see what was wrong with their experiments or lines of thought. They were, in the end, mere mortals.

Feynman gives a nearly straight line from Karl Popper--"There is always the possibility of proving any definite theory wrong; but notice that we can never prove it right" (157).

3. It is fun to see how Feynman suggests the process begins. First you look in an area where there are problems and unknowns. Then there is a "feeling" around, an intuitive step because you do not know exactly where to look or even perhaps what you are looking for. Let's just say this is not how a lot of people imagine science working.

As the chapter progressed, Feynman makes it clear that he gets regular mail from ignoramic crack pots like me making stupid suggestions in an area about which they are incompetent. Here are some fun quotes from the last part of this chapter:

• "Such remarks are obvious and are perfectly clear to anybody who is working on this problem. It does not do any good to point this out. The problem is not only what might be wrong but what, precisely, might be substituted in place of it" (161).
• "So please do not send me any letters truly to tell me how the thing is going to work. I read them--I always read them to make sure that I have not already thought of what is suggested--but it takes too long to answer them, because they are usually in the class of 'try 10:20:30'" (161-62).
• "The inexperienced, and crackpots, and people like that, make guesses that are simple, but you can immediately see that they are wrong, so that does not count" (171).

He talks about how people tell him to start from first principles. The problem here is that "all the principles that are known are inconsistent with each other" (160-61). It's easy to point out the problems (as I have)--inconsistencies, infinities--but what are you going to substitute in its place? THAT is what is important.

And there are an infinite number of possibilities of these simple types.

4. In the end, Feynman argues, the great discoverers are great guessers. He mentions Newton and Maxwell, the two first greats. Newton's laws were fairly close to the surface. Not so today. Maxwell guessed at the right answers on the basis of a wrong idea. Einstein was driven to resolve paradoxes among existing laws. Quantum mechanics was developed from two completely different starting points.

Here is another key insight of Feynman: "We must keep all the theories in our heads, and every theoretical physicist who is any good knows six or seven different theoretical representations for exactly the same physics. He knows that they are all equivalent, and that nobody is ever going to be able to decide which one is right at that level, but he keeps them in his head, hoping that they will give him different ideas for guessing" (168).

In the end, he does not believe that history repeats itself in physics. The next big discovery will not come in the way it came for Newton or Maxwell or Einstein or Schrödinger. How do you know when it has worked? "Science is only useful if it tells you about some experiment that has not been done" (164). "You can have as much junk in the guess as you like, provided that the consequences can be compared with experiment." "It is not unscientific to make a guess" (165).

When two principles work in a certain area but are inconsistent with each other, how do you find harmony, if you should? "To guess what to keep and what to throw away takes considerable skill. Actually, it is probably merely a matter of luck, but it looks as if it takes considerable skill" (166).

Feynman gives some of his guesses. Here's an interesting one: "I rather suspect that the simple rules of geometry, extended down into infinitely small space, are wrong." In other words, his hunch is that space is not continuous.

5. You can tell that Feynman isn't particularly impressed with a lot of philosophers. However, "the philosophers who are always on the outside making stupid remarks will be able to close in" eventually, as the science gets closer and closer to completeness. Eventually, the unknown of physics will become known, and then the physicists will not be able to "push them away" (173).

The chapter ends with these striking thoughts on the future of physics. "I think it has to end in one way or another" (172). "We are very lucky to live in an age in which we are still making discoveries. It is like the discovery of America--you only discover it once. The age in which we live is the age in which we are discovering the fundamental laws of nature, an that day will never come again."

"There will be a degeneration of ideas, just like the degeneration that great explorers fell is occurring when tourists begin moving in on a territory." "In this age people are experiencing a delight, a tremendous delight that you get when you guess how nature will work in a new situation never seen before." (173).

Why does it work like this? Feynman's feeling is that it is because "nature has a simplicity and therefore a great beauty" (173). Feynman, who of course was a genius the likes of which I have never met, could recognize when he had a breakthrough. "You can recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity. It is always easy when you have made a guess, and done two or three little calculations to make sure that it is not obviously wrong, to know that it is right" (171).

6. The quote at the beginning of the last paragraph is the end of the chapter and the book. Of course, again, these are arguments that have next been extended to God as the great artist and creator, the great designer.

But in my following the flow I have missed what I consider an important point. Many experimental physicists by their very personality as pragmatists may scoff at competing philosophies about what is happening. My post over the previous chapter dipped into some of those debates, which many consider irrelevant.

But Feynman makes it clear that these philosophies can actually be important. These philosophies are "really tricky ways to compute consequences quickly" (169). "A philosophy, which is sometimes called an understanding of the law, is simply a way that a person holds the laws in his mind in order to guess quickly at consequences."

But it may be that one of these approaches to the data gives a slightly better way forward with the unknown. Newton's laws of gravitation worked oh so well except for this tiny discrepancy with Mercury. That gave Einstein a window to completely re-conceptualize the matter. And so, if it were to turn out that pilot waves provided a way forward that indeterminacy does not, even though the results are entirely the same otherwise, that would make it a better theory.

Feynman 6: Quantum Mechanical View of Nature

This is the second to last chapter in Richard Feynman's, The Character of Physical Law, a series of lectures he gave at Cornell in 1964. The five previous were:

• Gravitation as an example of physical law
• The relation of physics to math
• Great conservation laws
• Symmetry in physical law
• Telling the past from the future

1. In this lecture Feynman gives the Bohr interpretation of quantum mechanics, the interpretation of quantum phenomena held by the majority of quantum physicists. Mind you, the majority of quantum physicists are simply followers of a Kuhnian paradigm they learned in school. Much smarter than me, but not the likes of Feynman or Hawking or Kip Thorne. And Hawking is wrong as often as not these days (e.g., on the existence of the Higg's boson).

I suspect most quantum physicists get annoyed at the question of whether the dogma of uncertainty is right. But it smells like classic Kuhn to me. Logical positivism died in philosophy some sixty years ago, but it is still the name of the game among classical physicists. Feynman ends this chapter with a nice touch. It's okay to have biases as long as you're willing to change them given experimental evidence. I'm willing.

But the current situation in physics has Kuhn written all over it. Bohr, it seems to me, was an ideological bully with charisma. When de Broglie proposed that nuclear particles had pilot waves, he was shut down by the Bohr mafia, the clique that ruled the physics roost at that time. John von Neumann claimed in 1932 to have shown that there couldn't be any other hidden variables like de Broglie's pilot waves that go with particles. It's what the Kuhnian dominant group wanted to hear. Case closed.

Except it wasn't. A physicist by the name of Greta Hermann found an error in von Neumann's argument in 1935, a fact ignored till the 1980s. No one wanted to hear.

Similarly, David Bohm in the 1950s was able to solve the problems with de Broglie's original version of pilot wave theory. John Stewart Bell revived Bohm's approach in the 1980s and also clarified why von Neumann's objection didn't work. And now, John W. M. Bush at MIT has shown that analogous phenomenon in fluid mechanics demonstrate the same results as the standard quantum approach. They require more complex explanations, but the results are the same.

2. I checked some of the online physicist response to Bush and it sounds very much like what Kuhn described as the expected reaction of "normal science." "Who cares." "It's just a different interpretation." It yields the same results but the Copenhagen interpretation is simpler. "It's just about what philosophy you feel most comfortable with."

Here I suppose my theology should bias me toward the indeterminant Copenhagen, but my distaste for logical positivism is even greater. Logical positivism basically says that a falling tree doesn't make a noise in the forest unless someone is there to hear it. If you can't observe it, it doesn't exist.

On the other hand, physics has been stuck for a long time. Hawking can talk about a theory of everything but he's got nothin. There hasn't been any real progress made on a unified theory in a half a century. Quantum mechanics and relativity are just as irreconcilable as they were in the 1930s. String theory has produced NOTHING, and Sheldon was smart to give it up (Big Bang Theory).

This situation suggests to me that something needs backed up to first principles, and the Copenhagen bullies seem as good a place to start as any.

3. Of course none of this is what Feynman presents in this chapter. For all Feynman knew in 1964, von Neumann's critique of de Broglie stood. In his words, "That theory cannot be true" (146).

The double slit experiment basically shows a number of seemingly contradictory things (watch the video):

• that electrons go through one of the two slits one at a time (and thus behave like particles)
• that electrons going through two slits produce an interference pattern (an thus behave like waves)

Even if you send the electrons one by one, particle by particle, they will end up producing an interference pattern like a wave. This is a remarkable thing. It's like the electrons know where they need to go to make the interference pattern even though you shoot them one by one.

But if you try to observe which slit each electron goes through, it stops yielding an interference pattern. You can't tell which hole the electron goes through without in effect changing the situation (to detect is to force a different outcome).

4. Feynman again emphasizes that there is nothing that can be understood about this situation. We simply have to accept it. The equations work even though they have no meaning.

"We invent an 'a', which we call a probability amplitude, because we do not know what it means... To get the total probability amplitude to arrive you add the two together and square it" (137).

• Nobody can give you a deeper explanation for this situation. They can only describe it in more detail. So "you can mention that they are complex numbers instead of real numbers" (145). "But the deep mystery is that no one can go any deeper today." 
• Nature herself does not know which slit the electron will go through.

In effect, "the future is unpredictable" (147). "It is impossible to predict in any way, from any information ahead of time, through which hole the thing will go, or which hole it will be seen behind" (146).

4. I am open to the Copenhagen interpretation, mind you. At the beginning of the lecture Feynman warned that intuition and common sense are completely useless in quantum physics because there simply aren't ordinary human world analogies. "I think I can safely say," Feynman said, "that nobody understands quantum mechanics" (129).

Logic - comic (graphic novel with Bertrand Russell)

A few weeks back, my Wesley Seminary colleague Brannon Hancock mentioned a couple of graphic novels to me, one largely focused on Bertrand Russell and the second on Richard Feynman. I finished the one on Russell yesterday and wanted to report.

1. The one on Russell is called Logicomix. It's a whopping 352 pages. It gives you a taste of Russell, along with an important collection of others working on logic in the late 1800s and first part of the twentieth century: Gottlob Frege, David Hilbert, Kurt Gödel, Ludwig Wittgenstein, etc. One theme that runs throughout the novel is the frequent connection between the obsession of some of these for logic and a certain madness many of them skirted with.

Russell's family itself had a fair amount of schizophrenia in it. Georg Cantor and Kurt Gödel both had serious mental health issues. Frege turned out to have horrible Nazi sympathies. Wittgenstein himself, like Russell, had seriously obsessive tendencies.

The setting of the graphic novel is the writers of the novel writing the novel, in Greece, nonetheless. This allows the narrators to step into the story at various points to explain things and to reflect on the overall themes. An interesting backdrop is that one of them is also in a play being performed from Greek tragedy, the Oresteia. This is a series of blood obligations started when one Greek king killed the children of another.

Then ensues a series of revenge obligations that ends with Orestes on trial before Athens with Athena arguing that the blood debt needs to stop and the Furies insisting that he must die for killing his mother. This backdrop fits with the madness theme.

2. The setting of the story itself is Russell giving a lecture in America in 1939 while America is on the brink of war. He had taken a pacifist stance on WW1 and the group to which he was speaking was hoping he would do so again with WW2. In response, he presents his life story.

The story is largely one of his obsession and the obsession of others to ground mathematics on a firm basis. He and Alfred North Whitehead spend 10 years writing volumes meant to ground mathematics firmly on logic. Russell considered the work a failure. But as an example, they spend some 250 pages proving that 1 + 1 = 2.

Wittgenstein enters the scene as someone who undermines Russell's whole enterprise. "Whereof we cannot speak, we must be silent," and Wittgenstein would include the ultimate foundations of logic and math in that category. The climax of the novel, it seems to me, is Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorem, which demonstrated that you could not ultimately prove anything as a self-contained system. Nothing can be completely grounded in itself.

(This is a major qualification to sola scriptura--the meaning of the Bible as a whole cannot hold together without some axioms which are ultimately outside of the Bible itself.)

3. The tortured point of the novel seems to be that extreme positions and obsessions--on logic, on war, on communism or capitalism--all seem to invite madness and insanity. Russell wrestles with how Frege could be so brilliant and yet froth at the mouth at the murder of Jews or how Hilbert could completely disown his schizophrenic son. Not long after Gödel's breakthrough, Moritz Schlick was gunned down by a Nazi in Vienna (1936).

In the graphic novel, Russell tells the pacifist crowd that they would have to make up their own minds about World War 2. In the novel he says, "The thought of Hitler and Stalin taking over Europe is too hard to bear" (296), despite his distaste for war. This doesn't seem to be a completely accurate picture of Russell, since he supported Chamberlain's appeasement policy.

4. I would say that as a graphic novel on such heady topics, it held my attention. It shows that there is a market for such things. This collection of eccentrics were, more or less, the founders of analytic philosophy. I have some admiration for them, whose goals were clarity and certainty. Gödel took the latter away from them, but I am nonetheless thankful for these accountants of philosophy.

I believe that the thinking of the world right now, including America, could use some serious house cleaning. I would love to break down our thinking into "atoms of principle" and try to help us find clarity on the most important issues of the day.

It remains as hard as ever to do that, though, because of the politics of knowledge and the persistence of our individual intuitions. The "preaching" I hear in person, page, and social media often seems oh so irrelevant, destined to continue the marginalization of Christianity within society. The rich and powerful play jacks with each other while the world burns. Their resources have nothing to do with truth, only perpetuating self-interest. But they have the power to make it happen. The public runs rampant with madness, convinced that its ignorance is true insight.

Who will free us from this body of death?