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A non-believer looks at physics

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Phys Educ 22 119871. Printed in t h e UK

steed, were better. He was an excellent mechanic and had a fine sense of design, but the brothers Christian and Constantine Huygens were better. He was a distinguished architect but no match for Wren. and so we might go on. I suspect that part of the reason for all this takes us back again to Hookes social class. If he had been in a position to let science be a hobby. he might have outstripped all these gentlemen science competitors. But to him science had to be a profession and his own ideas had often to be put aside to investigate some new whim or wish of the members of the Royal Society. There are certainly many other reasons for Hookes neglect - one of the major ones seems to be the shadow cast over him by the figure of Newton, a man who disliked him greatly and who dominated the 18th and 19th centuries. But there is no reason here to introduce Newton - 1987, the tercentenary of the publication of his Principia has already brought a mass of celebration Newton into being. It is better to end on a positive Hookean note, just as I began on a rather negative one. Having surveyed all the personal, medical, social and financial hardships Hooke had to endure, and the many jobs he had, his earliest biographer John Ward remarked Aperson of less ability than he would have found it impossible to discharge the duties of these several employments at once; but so great was his industry, so tireless his imagination, so accurate his skill in every problem that he undertook, and his mind so fruitful of inventions that he went through all with great merit and approbation. O n e can hope that the genius which made Hooke such an important figure of 17th century science will also make him better known within the community of physicists and physics teachers in the country of his birth.

A non-believer looks at physics

Hermann Bondi
The January 1987 issue of Physics Education had a special feature on Physics and Faith, a feature that included articles by two fine physicists of the present time who are believers and also an article that discusses the religious faith of some of the founding fathers of physics. I thoroughly welcome this feature, because there is far too much of an assumption that all scientists, and those in the physical sciences especially, must be non-believers. In my view the spread of beliefs and non-beliefs amongst physicists is much the same as in the general population and to counter-balance the view that physics and faith are incompatible is therefore something that needed to be done. Yet, at the same time, I am very concerned that the presentation in Physics Education conveys the contrary orthodoxy, namely that all physicists are of necessity believers in some established religion. We all know some physicists who are non-believers and, while I have no intention whatsoever to engage in a head-count or opinion survey, I feel it would be advantageous if I, as a humanist and non-believer. set out my contrasting views in much the same manner as Polkinghorne and Josephson have done. I certainly do not regard it as my task to show that there is a contradiction between physics as we know it now and any one of the innumerable creeds that are rampant in the world today. It is surely a task for any believer in a particular faith to examine whether he sees a contradiction or not; it is not my job to handle this. I will, however, later in this article. discuss at some length how I see a sharp difference in the nzerhods of argumentation of physics and at least of some of the religions that I know of. Just to make my own views clear, I describe myself as a humanist, as somebody who believes that, imperfect and awkward though we human beings are, we must solve our problems in our own way by relying on our capacities and must take account of our own weaknesses as best we can and
0031-9120/87/050280~05S2.50~ 1987 IOP Publishing Ltd

Acknowledgments

This article is loosely based on a talk given at the Department of Atmospheric Physics, University of Oxford. The author thanks D r F W Taylor and especially Drs David Andrews and Desmond Walshaw for their invitations and hospitality.

Bibliography

. Hookeschief writings are contained in his Micrographia

(1665), Lecriones Cutlerianae (1679), and Posrhumous Works (1705). There isalife of Hooke prefixed to the Posthumous Works, an account given in John Wards The Lives ofrhe Professors of Gresham College (1740) and, more recently, in Margaret Espinasses Robert Hooke (1956). SomepartsofHookesdiaryhave been, albeit inaccurately, transcribed in The D a y of Rober! Hooke ir (edited by Henry W Robinson and Walter Adams, 1935) and in volumeX of R T Gunthers Early Science in Oxford (1935).

that there is no point in appealing to a hypothetical higher authority. It will naturally be important for me to make clear where my views differ so much from those of quite a number of other people. An attitude of awe

I would like to start at a rather basic level of attitudes to physics and, indeed, to all we see around US. This is an attitude of awe. of wonder and of mystery. I have constantly the strongest awareness of how pitifully little we scientists have yet managed to account for or even describe satisfactorily. I am terribly unimpressed by the views of some of those who, as Mr Poole quotes in places, suggest that when we have understood the Big Bang or, in another field, the quark, then really the Universe will be all ours. I regard this as totally mistaken. For me. science is the endless frontier; science is always trying to advance outwards to new territories. The whole history of science is to me an attempt to get to grips with a growing volume of knowledge that arises because of the improvements technology makes in our instrumentation and experimentation. As long as technology advances, science will surely always find new challenges, new things to account for. Any idea of exhaustion of material is utterly abhorrent to me. Nor is there anything special about the origin of the Universe or the nature of high energy particles in physics. There is to me just as much challenge to science in accounting for complexities as there is for individual or so-called fundamental items. I am as struck by awe and wonder in geology as in astronomy, in looking at the simplest forms of life or at the most complex forms of ecology. I hope I have indicated enough to show that in my respect for the unknown, in my belief that we have not mastered all that much so far, I am not very different from some religious physicists. It is after this, however, that various stages arise with some of which I feel very much in conflict.
An anti-revelationist viewpoint. The first level that arises after this, as we penetrate to more religious views, is the idea of God as the architect of the Universe, the idea that it is perhaps more comfortable to believe that the Universe had an architect. Somebody whom we all respect who held such a view was Einstein. However, his God who is responsible for the Universe is, in his own description, in no sense a personal God, not a God who takes the slightest interest in the misdeeds of us humans. not a God who is any way interested in our prayer. O n e stage further come people who have, as it were, a feeling that there is a Supreme Being in

existence who is concerned about them. who does listen to prayer but a Being about whom they have no knowledge in any tangible way; their beliefs are based on their feeling. In having that feeling of course their ability to communicate it is of necessity somewhat limited. It is at the next stage of religiosity that I find my path diverges so strongly and so completely from those of believers and this is the step that is best referred to as revelation: the supposed way in which knowledge of God comes to people. I am a total disbeliever in any form of revelation and indeed I find it something worrying and disturbing in its influence on people. I regard this as the crux of the matter and I am worried if people suggest that the feelings of awe, wonder and mystery, in which I so fully share, are in any way an excuse for or lead to or compel a belief in revelation. It is at precisely this point that my disbelief arises and nowhere else. When people ask me whether I am an atheist, I say that I cannot answer this question without a definition of God. To disbelieve in a Supreme Being gives it just about as much shape and context as to believe in it. If people tell me, as some do, that God is nature, I certainly do not disbelieve in nature. If people tell me that God is love, I certainly do not disbelieve in love. Tell me who your God is and then, and only then, can I say whether I disbelieve. If it is a God who has revealed himself and you firmly believe in that revelation. then my disbelief sets in. It is as an anti-revelationist, rather than as an atheist, that I would wish to be known. Why this strong dislike of reve!ation? It is here, and perhaps only here, that my humanism and my science meet and merge. What we all know as humans, what is so strong in science (where I am very much a follower of the philosophy of Karl Popper), is that all knowledge is provisional, liable to be revised-nothing has any great certainty in it. Science in particular is that which is always liable to

Sir Hermann Bondi is Master of Churchill College, Cambridge, and President of t h e British Humanist Association. He obtained his BA in 1940, his MA in 1944 and has several honorary degrees. He w a s a Fellow ofTrinity College, Cambridge (1943-9,1952-4), Professor of Mathematics, Kings College, London (1954-67) and years of public service (1967-84) were in t h e fields of defence and energy and on t h e Natural Environment Research Council. His interests include astrophysics, t h e theory of gravitation, physics and ecology a n d he has published widely in t h e s e fields.
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be overturned. to be disproved, which makes it inevitably purely provisional. There is always room in science. as there is in life, for doubt, for uncertainty, for being ready to revise. Yet it appears to me that believers in the various revealed religions have an iron, a firm. an absolute belief in their revelation. Indeed, if this revelation is as singular and important as they claim, they could hardly do otherwise. Over-great certainty is always a danger in human affairs, whether the belief is in Christs or Karl Marxs or Mohammeds revelation. It is such beliefs of utter certainty that have led people to commit the most awful crimes. To take a small example: the people who so fiendishly burned old women as witches would never have done such a cruel and beastly thing had they not thought, sincerely and honestly thought, that they were commanded by Holy Scripture to act in this manner. It is not relevant to my argument that Holy Scripture has since been interpreted differently. What is relevant is that it is faith that made people do such things. Again, we know surely that there are numerous religions in the world that in many important aspects contradict each other; and yet they each have believers of the greatest sincerity, the highest intelligence and the most complete and unquestioning faith. A t most one of them can be right and it is therefore evident that it is a defect of the human make-up that we are liable to form views of such certainty that we are liable to believe with sincerity and assurance that which is wrong. The humility that one may always be wrong comes to us from life and from science. Revealed religion, however, with its demand for firm faith, flies in the face of our knowledge of what humans are liable to get right and what they are liable to get wrong and is, as I have been saying, most dangerous. It is not in any contradiction between what his religion says and what physics says that I see any difficulty for a scientist to be a firm believer in a revealed religion. It is in the difference between the uncertain nature of scientific knowledge, which experience has so much taught us is always only provisional knowledge, and the unquestioning blindness of faith that I see the contradiction, one which it is for our believing colleagues to get over far more than any supposed conflict of evidence. Goodness and intelligence Two or three further comments may be in place. We humanists are sometimes accused of over-estimating the goodness and the intelligence of our species. I do not think we over-estimate this. We have to take ourselves as we are. To know our imperfections is certainly chastening but, since we are the measure of all things, we have got to use this measure with all its
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faults. Moreover, I do think that we have pretty powerful social instincts. not perhaps as strong as I would ideally like them to be. but they are there. SO much indeed of the beastliness of man to man in the pages of history was caused by faith in a revelation, by a degree of certainty that is just not possible for us humans. Religious wars with their appalling sufferings. religious intolerance which is SO strong even today. all these follow from this evil certainty, whether this expresses itself in wanting to slay the infidels or in opposing contraception or in supporting denominational schooling, which divides children and puts one group against the other. We humanists do not form a church and we do not have a dogma. There are many issues of social policy, of practical politics and of attitudes where we differ from each other. What holds US together is that we believe in the legitimacy of rational argument and the illegitimacy of referring to the authority of a revelation. We recognise the existence of a human craving for certainty, which is fulfilled by many religions, but regard this as one of the less desirable traits of human beings, just as we all think of greed as one of the less desirable traits. As a scientist and physicist. I know that I must live with uncertainty. I do this gladly and cheerfully but I am worried about those who are too sure by half. Opposing views Having explained how my own views came about, it would perhaps be appropriate if I tried to make clear how I differ from some of the authors in the January 1987 issue. First, it will I think be clear from what I have said that many of the quotations which M W Poole gives, and with which he so profoundly disagrees, are quotations with which I disagree equally. Neither do the gaps seem to me to provide a reason for God, nor a reason against. Again in the same line, I agree that science is a tremendous adventure, an adventure which one could well call spiritual: but it has many limitations. limitations that preclude it from looking at what some call the deeper meaning of existence. This, however. in no way leads me to a belief in revelation. After all, there is much in life in which science has no role. The way I choose my friends or my spouse. the way I like some people and do not like others, has nothing to d o with science but is a rich and essential part of my life. So, just as the gaps in science are irrelevant to the question of God (and to me, as will be clear, it is not a question of gaps but rather of a sea of ignorance in which there are a few little bits of science, themselves liable to turn and twist this way or that way), much of the stress on the limitations of science and the limitations of applicability of certain concepts

that Josephson discusses is very close to my thinking. However, where he and I differ. I think, is that to me an essential part of the nature of science is its communicability. After all, in science nothing is significant until it has been published, read and understood by some others. Indeed, ready communicability is essential to science. which deals with knowledge which in a certain sense is manifest. I tend to think that the other matters he talks about, such as meditation or mysticism, are not nearly so communicable and I therefore find it difficult to see how one can speak of unification between something that by its nature must be communicable and something that is not nearly so possible to get from one person to the next. But I may be counted as a sceptic, rather than as an opponent, in this respect. I think that Polkinghorne makes much the same point as I do, especially in his paragraph, When we enter the realm of personal experience.... Polkinghorne stresses that the openness to correction is not strange to theology. My example that the burning of witches was thought to be a religious duty and is now believed not to be like that at all, suggests that his thinking is not so different from mine. Yet in theology there is an appeal to the authority of the Scriptures and it is such an appeal, to something which may indeed be interpreted in different ways but which is basically unquestionable, that I regard as so firm a division between the world of revealed religion and that of science. As an aside, let me say that many religious people criticise our humanist ethics for being relative and having no absolute basis. That is a claim that to me sounds strange from a theology which at one stage instructs people to burn witches and at another condemns this. Either theology is inflexible or it is at least as variable as our humanist ethic. The articles in the January issue did not refer to a point that has been made two or three times in recent years, when religious people, very ignorant of physics, have claimed that quantum theory, which incidentally they regard as new sixty years after it has become totally accepted, makes a belief in God compulsory. I do not think any of the readers of your journal, who after all are physicists, will have any truck with this idea. This is indeed a silly revival of the God-ofthe-gaps when in fact there is not even a gap, for quantum theory is as sound a way of predicting the outcome of experiments as anything else that we know in physics. It is certainly more reliable than a

well known form of physical science, weather forecasting. Rarely have I heard that the unpredictability of the weather proves the existence of God. Findings and faith

As I said at the beginning, I do not regard it as my task to suggest whether a particular theology of a particular religion is or is not in conflict with what we know in science. Yet two further remarks are relevant to this issue. In some branches of science, notably cosmology, adherents of some religion or other are frequently keen to point out how much science and its latest findings (the very term findings shows how little they know about the nature of science) confirm or support their religion. This, as I have been saying. is their business rather than mine. I do. however, want to point out that if some development in science supports, in their view, their particular religion, then they must in all honesty say that when science changes, as it so often does, that the change counts against their religion. While not strictly in the realm of physics, the distortion of biology by some Christian fundamentalists, notably in the United States, is a worrying phenomenon of our time. They resolve what they see as a conflict between their religion and science by distorting science with creationist myths and demand equal treatment for something that has none of the character of being open to observation and test and disproof as a scientific theory. Far be it from me to claim that what we now regard as the most plausible account of the origin and evolution of life will be unchangeable: This is, however, a matter for scientific argument and discussion and not something to be settled by an appeal to authority, an appeal which is quite nonsensical in a scientific argument. I would hope that most, if not all, religious readers of Physics Education will agree with such a condemnation of the creationist movement, which fortunately has not yet taken much root on this side of the Atlantic. I hope that in this article I have said enough to outline my view and to give an idea of where I do see differences and where I do feel that individuals must make their choice. Science is that, in a sense, in which, through appeal to observation and experiment, agreement is, at least in principle, possible. There does not seem to be any such possibility of agreement on questions of belief and non-belief. I am happy to rest my case here.

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