Review of Davies mind of God

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The mind of god: Science and

the search for ultimate meaning

Article in Science & Education January 1996

Impact Factor: 0.63 DOI: 10.1007/BF00428620

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Peter Slezak

University of New South Wales

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Science Education 5: 201-212, 1996.

Book Review

Paul Davies,

The Mind of God: Science and the Search for Ultimate

Meaning,

Simon & Schuster (cloth), New York, 1992; Penguin, London

(paper), 1993. pp. 254, USDlO.

In a mock entry from a university course guide, Woody Allen gives the

following subject description:

PHILOSOPHY XXIXB: Introduction to God. Confrontation with the

creator of the universe through informal lectures . . . and field trips.

The prescribed text for this course might well be Paul Davies recent

best-seller

The Mind

of

God,

since the idea of finding God on field trips

is essentially the project of Davies book. This is the traditional conception

of a Natural Theology or the project which David Hume described

as experimental theism in his

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

published in 1779. The conception of a Natural Theology or natural

religion was one used by eighteenth century writers to refer to the en-

terprise of finding rational arguments and evidence for religious claims

a

posteriori

instead of establishing these claims through revelation

a priori.

In reviewing the book here, some reactions and reflections are prompted

by the unlikely event of having found myself on the Australian Television

ABC Lateline program as the atheist philosopher of science on the

same side of an issue with a Jesuit priest and theologian, Father Tony

Kelly. The issue on which we were united was our common cause as

consumers who have been misled by false advertising for Paul Davies

book. Like Father Kelly, I was led to believe that Davies book reveals

new grounds for the belief in God from the truly remarkable developments

in physics and cosmology. Undoubtedly for different reasons, we were

disappointed to find something rather less than the sensationalistic PR

had promised. The book has been hailed as providing dramatic evidence

from the frontiers of science for the existence of an intelligent purpose

behind the perceived order in the Universe. Not an altogether novel claim,

it is true; but we had been expecting profoundly new insights into the

ultimate question of origins, life, the universe and everything. If not quite

meriting an expose by ABC televisions consumer watchdog program

The Investigators, nonetheless, I feel that Professor Davies owes his

consumers an explanation.

The complaint against Davies is not new. In 1937 the philosopher L.

Susan Stebbing in her book

Philosophy and the Phys icists

complained of

the popularizations by Sir Arthur Eddington and Sir James Jeans that

they constitute a grave danger to thinking clearly (Stebbing, 1937, p.

13). She protests that Some of our scientific guides, writing in moments

of emotional exaltation, have found it easier to mystify the common reader

than to enlighten him. While conceding their unquestionable greatness


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as scientists, Stebbing nonetheless complains bitterly of their popular,

non-technical writings:

But neither Sir Arthur Eddington nor Sir James Jeans seems to care

very much whether his method of presenting his views concerning the

philosophical significance of physical theories may not make it more

difficult, or even impossible, for the common reader to understand what

exactly it is that has been said. Both these writers approach their task

through an emotional fog; they present their views with an amount of

personification and metaphor that reduces them to the level of revivalist

preachers. (Stebbing, 1937, p. 13)

This colourful portrayal is undoubtedly too harsh and too exaggerated

to apply to Davies writing, but there is an important point to be made

nonetheless. It is striking to notice the parallels: Just as Jeans offered

the latest developments in physics for the discussion of the ultimate

philosophical problem so, too, Davies appeals to science in his search

for ultimate meaning. Stebbing complains particularly about Jeans wish

to use scientific knowledge as the basis for a quite different enterprise -

namely, philosophy. She says:

There is, however, a certain obscurity . . . in the remark science ought

first to be asked to tell all she can. It suggests a final and higher court

of appeal. This suggestion is misleading. (Stebbing, 1937, p. 15)

Jeans, like Davies, portrays science as providing some grounds for belief

in transcendent realities. However, Stebbing protests that Surprisingly

little attention has been paid to the significance of the fact that the stupend-

ous conclusions are supposed to be established by means of speculations

based upon recent developments in the physical sciences (Stebbing, 1937,

p. 23).

Thus, Davies is among many scientists who have sought to go beyond

the world revealed directly by science itself to the search for ultimate

answers to the mystery of existence. Although he is clearly no New

Age groupie, Davies speaks of mystical experiences and how they might

provide the only route beyond the limits to which science and philosophy

can take us, the only possible path to the Ultimate. Notwithstanding

his cautious formulations and tentative speculations, Davies is taking a

significant step beyond science into what he euphemistically calls meta-

physics. Although he portrays this as a purely personal preference -

seeing the glass as half full or as half empty, - and, therefore, as if it

were not a substantive intellectual claim, here the physicist is taking a

radical step into the realm of religion. Davies talk of mere preference

for his view makes it sound as if it were a matter of indifference, there

being no rational considerations for choosing one position rather than

another. I believe that this is mistake. Talk of personal preference is

perhaps a coy way of saying faith - a position held precisely because it

is without rational warrant. It amounts to a concession - often explicit -


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that his view goes beyond what can be justified on scientific grounds as

such, and, therefore, that his physics has no bearing at all on his belief.

It is in this respect, ironically, that Davies, the quantum cosmologist

and relativity physicist, is closer to the theologian. By going beyond sci-

ence and outside the physical world (p. 171), and by preferring to see

some cosmic purpose rather than meaninglessness, Davies has, in fact,

endorsed the most popular, indeed the most notorious, argument for the

existence of an intelligent God who made the world according to his divine

plan. Calling this metaphysics as Davies has done is not an innocuous

terminological matter and it should not disguise the character of the claim.

In short, Davies new book is the most recent in the genre of Natural

Theology based on the so-called Argument from Design.

THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN

Historically best known among these perhaps is William Paleys writing

of 1802 which, like Davies book, is based on the conviction that the

extraordinary order and pattern in nature could not be the result of

mere chance. Paley employs the famous analogy of the intricately ordered

mechanism of a watch which is evidence of the fact that its several parts

are framed and put together for a purpose. Likewise, Paley argues, Every

indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in

the watch, exists in the works of nature with the difference, he continues,

that the contrivances of nature surpass the contrivances of art, in the

complexity, subtlety, and curiosity of the mechanism. Echoing Paleys

attitude, Davies, too, says Through my scientific work I have come to

believe more and more strongly that the physical universe is put together

with an ingenuity so astonishing that I cannot accept it merely as a brute

fact. There must be, it seems to me, a deeper level of explanation (p.

16).

Paley was evidently unaware that his argument had been devastatingly

rebutted by the philosopher David Hume twenty years earlier. Nearly

three hundred years later, Davies makes no attempt to answer Humes

criticisms either, though he aptly remarks It is all the more curious,

therefore, that [the argument from design] has been resurrected in recent

years by a number of scientists (p. 203). Curious indeed Especially since

Davies himself does little more than re-state the apparent improbability

of the innumerable, perfectly arranged conditions and to aver that it is a

question of personal judgement.

It is significant that Davies sees one problem in the difficulty of

meusur-

ing the

degree

of improbability of all the known coincidences. This is to

miss the force of one of Humes counter-arguments. Granting even the

highest degree of improbability, Hume asked: What would the world look

like if it were, in fact, due entirely to chance? Clearly any world wil l

look

designed, however it came into being, and so it is not enough for advocates


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of the design argument like Davies to simply point to the remarkably

ordered state of the universe. This is not a question of quantifying the

degree of improbability, nor a question of personal judgement. It is the

question of the plausibility of an inference which has not been strengthened

one whit by the new evidence of modern physics since Paley. Paley already

assumed the most complete and perfect design in the world and, therefore,

the additional knowledge available since his time does not increase the

force of his

argument

as such. The finely tuned physical constants imme-

diately subsequent to the Big Bang are, in principle, no better evidence

of design than the examples available to Paley.

There can be no doubt about the awe-inspiring nature of the insights

available from science which, as Davies rightly notes, has been the basis

for frequent expression among scientists of a deep reverence and wonder

akin to religiosity. Such feelings, however, must be sharply distinguished

from their

warrant

for theological conclusions, though Davies pays too

little attention to such crucial philosophical issues. Indeed, although Dav-

ies is a superlative expositor of science, my enthusiasm for his work is

tinged with misgivings. I do not wish to be ungenerous for, after all, the

theology or metaphysics turns out to be an entirely secondary and inci-

dental matter for Davies. Despite all the hype surrounding its promotion,

in a book of over two hundred pages, barely a few pages altogether are

devoted to these questions. Above all, Davies is correct in his view that

insofar as the ultimate questions are meaningful at all and susceptible of

any answers, then it is the enterprise of science which has been providing

them. It is difficult, then, to reconcile this attitude with Davies apparent

view that there can be some other enterprise to answer these questions.

Thus, the very considerable virtues of Davies, popular book are, at the

same time, its vice. Whereas the more overtly mystical and occult writings

may be more readily relegated to New Age enthusiasm, it is precisely the

scientific authority and respectability of Davies work which accords its

underlying thesis an undue weight.

Thus, I feel a certain ambivalence about Davies book since one could

hardly wish for a better antidote to the persistent popularity of purveyors

of paranormal. Sti ll, if the promotion and reception of Davies book are

any indication, it is not the physics which is being enthusiastically dis-

cussed, but its alleged support for the belief in an intelligent creator. The

deep intellectual content may be in danger of being overlooked by the lay

public in favour of its take-home message. The title of his book is an

undeniably wonderful metaphor. But Davies own minimal preference for

some highly attenuated principle behind the order in the world will be a

subtlety lost on his audience. Though more apt, it is certain that if the

book had been titled

Modern Physics for the Layman

it would have

generated little excitement, nor prompted a special Easter edition of a

TV current affairs program, inter alia. So my concern is occasioned by

the alacrity with which Davies theological thesis has been seized upon

despite the notorious inadequacy of the arguments themselves. Indeed, it


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must be said that Davies scarcely gives anything like an argument at all

for the inference from the science to the metaphysics. The few gestures

towards these questions do not even clearly reveal Davies own views until

the end of the book where they are offered almost as a casual aside and

afterthought. If it were not for the promotion of the book as a theological

treatise one might have politely ignored its amateur philosophical perora-

tions.

However secondary to the book as a whole, Davies use of the term

God does go significantly beyond mere metaphor, and in this regard he

differs from other physicists who have spoken in similar ways. Most not-

able among these, of course, is Einstein. Citing such scientists who have

expressed a profound sense of awe for the apparent design in the universe

is unobjectionable as far as it goes, but Davies neglects to indicate that

atheism can be just as easily reconciled with these feelings as belief in an

intelligent creator. In particular, although Einstein frequently and fam-

ously referred to God as a way of expressing his views, these were little

more than irreverent and striking metaphors. These references were

merely the evocative personifications of a universe full of wonder but free

of any purpose. Einstein spoke articulately of the experience of mystery

and even of the Reason that manifests itself in nature but he left no

doubt of his disdain for the idea of a God who rewards and punishes his

creatures, or has a wil l of the kind that we experience in ourselves

(Einstein, 1954, p. 11). Einstein spoke of the knowledge and emotions

which constitute true religiosity as being the experience of mystery itself

and the awareness and a glimpse of the marvellous structure of the

existing world (Einstein, 1954, p. 11). It is important to notice that these

sentiments do not seek to go

beyond

the apprehension of an order in the

world or beyond the sense of mystery itself to anything else. It was in

virtue of his possession of these non-transcendent feelings that Einstein

emphasized that in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious

man (Einstein, 1954, p. 11). Despite a common attempt to recruit Einstein

to the cause of more traditional religious sentiments, his use of the term

religious, just like the term God was slightly ironic rather than literal.

He leaves no doubt of his meaning where he says

The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by the kind

of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in

mans image; . .

. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age

that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious

feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as

atheists . . . (Einstein, 1954, p. 38)

Elsewhere, Einstein explained that the attitude which he took to be

religious in the highest sense of the word was derived from the experience

of science itself and the striving for the rational unification of experience.

Here Einstein says that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie

through various fears or blind faith, but through striving after rational


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knowledge. It is in this spirit that Einstein speaks of the intense experi-

ence of successful intellectual advance through which one is moved by

profound reverence for the rationality made manifest in existence. These

are quite unambiguous statements of an uncompromising rationality which

steadfastly refuses to go beyond the warrant of scientific reason itself.

Despite its idiom, this attitude is diametrically opposed to the kind of

transcendent mysticism which Davies embraces. A secondary, but perhaps

telling, point is the fact that Davies has seemingly failed to see how widely

Einsteins view diverges from his own. He lists Einstein among other

notable scientists whom he describes as having also espoused mysticism

(p, 226). This is an egregious misrepresentation of Einstein who expressed

awe at the comprehensibility of the world, describing the comprehen-

sibi lity itself as the greatest mystery.

Above all, Einstein says that science purifies the religious impulse of

the dross of its anthropomorphism (Einstein, 1954, p. 49). Of course, it

is this anthropomorphism which is at the heart of the Argument from

Design and it is crucial to notice that the apprehension of the design itself

does not warrant any inference to an intelligent designer. The existence

of order and regularity are not themselves evidence of such purpose, and

Einstein addressed himself explicitly to this most common motivation for

belief in a transcendent being, arguing on the contrary:

The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events the

firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of

this ordered regularity for causes of a different nature. For him neither

the rule of human nor the rule of divine will exists as an independent

cause of natural events. (Einstein, 1954, p. 48)

In these remarks Einstein is clearly on the side of Hume against Davies,

expressing a view which the philosopher Bertrand Russell called A Free

Mans Worship - the reverence of an atheist. The view is sharply at odds

with that of Davies, and my concern has been to suggest that the vast,

undeniably wonderful insights of physics and cosmology do not warrant

conclusions concerning intelligent purpose behind it all. To be blunt, for

all the extraordinary sophistication of modern science, the argument is

hardly better than the animism of primitive cultures which ascribed intell i-

gence and purpose to trees and rocks. Whether applied to rocks or to the

universe as a whole, the argument makes essentially the same analogy

and is equally bad in both cases. Indeed, as Hume noted, it is arguably

even more extravagant to compare the entire cosmos to human artefacts

since the universe is not just one among other things with which it may

be compared.

The difficulties in Davies position are to be seen in the arbitrary scholas-

tic distinctions he is forced to make once he has been prepared to counten-

ance divine intervention or artifice in creating the universe according to

some intelligent purpose. In his television remarks, Davies declined to


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accept anything like the miracle of Christs resurrection on the grounds

of the scientists preference for a world governed by strict, universal law

- a good Humean answer. But one divine intervention more or less should

make no difference. The possibility of an intelligent creation is no more

consistent with the principles of science than the more mundane suspen-

sions of the laws of nature. By accepting the possibility of metaphysical

events transcending what can be known by science (p. 171), Davies has

renounced the very principled intellectual grounds to which he appeals

for rejecting miracles. Although Davies clearly prefers a highly attenuated

notion of intelligent purpose, being just a little bit theological is like being

a little bit pregnant. In the end, the difference between Professor Davies

and the Jesuit priest is the difference between one big miracle and lots of

little ones - a matter of minor theological disputation and who gets to

wear the cassock. For a God who can make the whole universe in a Big

Bang, the odd resurrection should be childs play.

Of course, once we get into these questions of detail, there are many

deep problems for the theologian, as Hume noted two centuries ago. Why

monotheism? The existence of design does not support the inference to a

single designer, since it could just as well have been a committee of gods.

Likewise, Hume suggests that the assumption of perfection in the world

is questionable, since we have no standard for comparison. Perhaps, Hume

wrote, this world was only the first rude assay of some infant deity, who

afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame performance; it is the work

only of some dependent, inferior deity; and is the object of derision to

his superiors. Alternately, Hume suggests that the world might be the

production of old age and dotage in some superannuated deity

(Dia-

logues, Part V, 1970, p. 53).

SPIDERS BELLY?

Davies emphasis on what he does best - that is, physics and cosmology

- has perhaps caused him to overlook the relevance of other disciplines

to his claims. Davies argument makes an appeal to a mind of some kind

to explain the order in the world. But the phenomena of intelligence and

purposive action are increasingly being understood through psychology,

neuroscience and AI as complex, mechanical workings of animal and

human brains. Even without the insights of modem cognitive science, it

is hard to see how these biological phenomena could be seriously extrapol-

ated as the mechanisms underlying the entire universe. The brain is not

fundamentally more appropriate for such metaphysical purposes than any

other organ, and the universe could with equal warrant be a cosmic

kidney. This is the extravagant animism or anthropomorphism which

Hume trenchantly criticized as the grossest and most narrow partiality

by which we make ourselves the model of the whole universe

(Dialogues,

Part III, 1970, p. 38). He asks:


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. . .

yet why select so minute, so weak, so bounded a principle as the

reason and design of animals is found to be upon this planet? What

peculiar privilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call

thought, that we must thus make it the model of the whole universe?

sound philosophy ought carefully to guard against so natural an

illusion. (Dialogues, Part II, 1970, p. 28)

Later in the Dialogues, Hume makes the same point with biting irony:

The Brahmins assert that the world arose from an infinite spider, who

spun this whole complicated mass from his bowels . . . Here is a species

of cosmogony which appears to us ridiculous because a spider is a little

contemptible animal whose operations we are never likely to take for

a model of the whole universe. But still here is a new species of anal-

ogy . . . And were there a planet wholly inhabited by spiders . . . this

inference would there appear as natural and irrefragable as that which

in our planet ascribes the origin of all things to design and intelli-

gence . . . Why an orderly system may not be spun from the belly as

well as from the brain, it wil l difficult for him to give a satisfactory

reason. (Dialogues, Part VII, 1970, p. 67)

As noted earlier, Davies expression of a mere preference suggests

that his brief for a Creator is a rather attenuated one, having no particular

probative force. But this disclaimer seems inconsistent with the fact that

an argument is, after all, being offered. If his preference is to be anything

other than blind faith which might distinguish the scientist from the aver-

age church-goer, then Davies position is not a matter of indifference and

arbitrary choice. The professed indifference cannot be reconciled with

giving an argument supposedly gaining some cogency from modern phys-

ics.

PYROTECHNIC ENGINEERING

Quite aside from the Argument from Design and its difficulties, the very

question of the creation of the universe is not unproblematic. Davies

certainly emphasizes the impossibility of reconciling traditional concep-

tions of a Beginning and a Creator with modern physics, but it remains

that he does not appear to rule out the very legitimacy of such questions

as emphatically as others have done. Adolf Grtinbaum (1989), for exam-

ple, has drawn attention to the importance of distinguishing the question

of the origin of the universe from what he calls the pseudo-problem of

its creation. Interestingly, the problem does not arise uniquely for big

bang theories, since the out-of-favour steady state theory also required

the formation of matter out of nothing and without external cause. It is

noteworthy that modern cosmological theories can be seen to make more

acute the difficulties of traditional First Cause arguments for the existence


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209

of God rather than make them more plausible. Despite the suggestiveness

of a Beginning with its biblical overtones, recent physics makes a first,

uncaused cause of the universe less believable. The problem arises from

the illegitimacy of talking about causes or other events prior to the big

bang. As Grtinbaum (1989) and Smith (1988) have noted, the concept of

a cause itself is illegitimately extrapolated from the familiar notions of

event and agent causation in the world to serve as explanation of the

origin of the entire universe. This is, at the very least, an extension which

requires defence, since it is not simply the unproblematic application of

the ordinary notion of cause as it may appear. That is, the problem of

the cause of the entire universe is not the same as the problem of the

cause of any other event. First, as Grtinbaum (1989, p. 379) notes, there

are vastly many cases of causation which do not involve human purpose

or other conscious intentions of an agent. Therefore, even if one could

legitimately posit an external cause of the entire universe, it by no means

follows that such a cause must be the intentions of any conscious being

or designer. The temptation to postulate causes of this kind is the sort

of anthropomorphism or animism noted earlier. Second, and more funda-

mental, ordinary agent causation involves only the

transformation

of mat-

ter-energy and not its creation ex nihilo. Thus, the kind of cause being

supposed to explain the origin of the universe is quite different from its

everyday counterpart. For this reason, as Grtinbaum notes, the conclusion

does not follow from the premise deductively. Nor is it even supported

by it inductively (1989, p. 380).

Davies is, of course, fully aware of these points (Davies, 1992, p. 58)

but nonetheless he suggests with apparent equanimity that if one insists

on a reason for the big bang, then this reason must lie beyond physics.

However, it is not clear that there can be any rational appeal in this way

beyond physics. The illegitimacy of supposing an external cause of the

universe is essentially the same difficulty posed by any claims which go

beyond what is strictly warranted by our best available scientific theories.

The stratagem is a familiar one among proponents of the paranormal:

our current scientific ignorance about some matters is taken to warrant

extravagant conclusions about the inadequacy of science to deal with the

phenomena in question. On this reasoning, we ought to posit revolutionary

anomalies at the forefront of every scientific discipline.

This difficulty confronts the very notion of a Creator of the universe

who was responsible for the Big Bang since there was not only no matter,

but no time before the Big Bang either. However difficult to comprehend

in an intuitive sense, modem cosmological theories assert that the universe

began to exist over ten bill ion years ago out of literally nothing, without

being caused to do so. Smith (1988) explains . . . the singularity is not

even an event, that is, a point in 4-dimensional space-time; it is not a

part of but a boundary or edge of the 4-d-space-time continuum (1988,

p. 48), and as Davies himself says, No special act of creation is needed.

Paradoxically, in remarks such as this one, Davies book clearly offers a
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249081004_The_Uncaused_Beginning_of_the_Universe?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-68133762936e01694aa1d47ed966fd70-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzIyNjQ1NjY0MjtBUzoyOTExODQ2OTkyOTc3OTJAMTQ0NjQzNTI1MTUxOQ==https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249081004_The_Uncaused_Beginning_of_the_Universe?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-68133762936e01694aa1d47ed966fd70-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzIyNjQ1NjY0MjtBUzoyOTExODQ2OTkyOTc3OTJAMTQ0NjQzNTI1MTUxOQ==


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BOOK REVIEW

case as much for atheism as for the belief in God. Davies appears not to

posit a creator in this sense contrary to the physics, but then it remains

difficult to understand exactly how he conceives of the designer who is

nevertheless somehow beyond or outside the physical world (p, 171).

It is important to forestall a common misunderstanding which appears

to give some comfort to laymen and which is encouraged by Davies. It

will not do to mystify by referring to ultimate questions and metaphysics

since these are empty labels without further explanation. Such remarks

are commonly taken to imply that science has nothing to say about certain

issues such as ultimate origins. However, this is misleading because mod-

ern physics is not

silent

about causes of the universe prior to the Big Bang,

it actually rules them out. Smith (1989, p. 51) explains this by analogy with

the limitations upon our knowledge of events entailed by the Heisenberg

Uncertainty Principle. The impossibility of knowledge in this case, too, is

not due to our ignorance of the correct theory, but is a limitation upon

possible knowledge actually specified by the theory itself. Grtinbaum, too,

has emphatically made the point that questions such as What happened

before t = O? or What caused the big bang? are based on assumptions

which are denied by the model to which these questions are being posed.

As Grtinbaum says, someone who seeks to pose such questions is entitled

to reject the physical models in question by giving theoretically good

reasons for postulating the existence of causes and times before t = 0.

But, it is not possible to take the physics to be correct and, at the same

time, to complain that the model fails to answer the questions which it

actually rules out as illegitimate. Davies gives the appearance of wanting

to have it both ways.

Thus, while Davies gives a good exposition of the official answers pro-

vided by the standard Big Bang theory on these questions (e.g. p. 48), it

remains at the same time that he encourages precisely the kind of illegit-

imate questions which Grtinbaum warns against. Playing on the very

intuitions and assumptions which are denied by the theory, here and in

his earlier book

Superforce

(1984) Davies repeatedly poses such question-

begging puzzles to express dissatisfaction with the answers provided by

the orthodox account. In sections whose very titles sin against Grtinbaums

strictures (What Caused the Big Bang? and Did God Cause the Big

Bang?), Davies persistently implies that there must be a genesis paradox

or enigma requiring further explanation: We will not have explained the

existence of the universe until we have traced the source of the primeval

energy. Thus Davies speaks of a vital energy which triggered our universe

into life (1984, p. 193) and he questions the adequacy of the official

answer, since We can still ask how the vacuum acquired the energy in

the first place. These locutions in terms of triggering and what must

have happened in the first place clearly encourage the very conceptions

which we saw Grtinbaum protest against.

Half a century ago, Stebbing accurately diagnosed Davies quest for

ultimate meaning when she said that physicists of her time, like those of


12/13

BOOK REVIEW 211

the nineteenth century, were apt to suffer from

the defect of a

too

hasty passage from physics to metaphysics (Stebbing, 1937, p. 197). More

particularly, she cites the new tendency towards idealism as an unwar-

ranted inference from the abandonment of nineteenth century concep-

tions. Undeniably, the revolutionary advances of the twentieth century

appear to have suggestive affinities with non-materialist philosophies.

These affinities are what Arthur Koestler (1972) mischievously called a

negative rapprochement whereby the strange conceptions of quantum

physics and relativity theory appear to give some warrant or excuse for

the truly bizarre claims of parapsychology. This is a piece of sophistry and

a play on words since, however different from the materialistic, mechanis-

tic theories of the nineteenth century, the new physics provides no more

support for paranormal or mystical claims than the earlier physics. Davies

explicitly invoked the same spurious, if suggestive, arguments in his earlier

book (Davies, 1983, p. 8). Echoing Koestler, Davies wrote that with the

revolution in their subject, modern physicists seemed to turn common-

sense on its head and find closer accord with mysticism than materialism.

I believe that, in the end, Davies book is misleading because of its

ambivalence. The irony is that, apart from its obiter dicta, its actual

substance could just as easily be construed as an eloquent case for atheism.

Its very reticence on the metaphysical questions is a disservice since its

theology is insinuated rather than argued. Davies and like-minded physi-

cists might make it clearer that they do not speak in their capacity as

scientists when they express their preference for metaphysical answers

to ultimate questions. A more appropriate stance on such questions is

to argue for them openly or to acknowledge their illegitimacy. The notion

that we might meaningfully go beyond what our best science itself can

certify is highly suspect and would require more defence than Davies

gives. The appropriate humility would refuse to even ask questions which

are actually ruled out by our science. In this regard, I concur with David

Humes sentiment: . . . I cannot, for my part, think that so wild and

unsettled a system of theology is, in any respect, preferable to none at

all (Hume, 1779/1970, p. 53). Or, as Wittgenstein famously wrote in his

Tractatus,

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one should remain silent.

More prosaically perhaps, the attitude is captured best by a Woody Allen

character when asked a deep question about the meaning of it all; he

replies How should I know? I cant even figure out how this can-opener

works

REFERENCES

Davies, P.: 1983, God and the New Physics, Simon Schuster, New York.

Davies, P. : 1984, Superforce: The Search for n Grand Unifi ed Theory of Nature, Unwin

Paperbacks, London.


13/13

212 BOOK REVIEW

Davies, P. : 1992,

The Mind of God: Science and the Search for Ultima te Meaning,

Simon

Schuster, New York.

Einstein, A.: 1954,

Ideas and Opinions,

Crown Publ ishers, New York.

Griinbaum, A.: 1989, The Pseudo-Problem of Creation in Physical Cos molo gy,

Philosophy

of Science 56, 373-394.

Hume, D. 1779

[1970]: Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion,

edited with commentary by

Nelson Pike, Bobbs-M errill : Ne w York.

Koestler, A.:

1972, The Roots of Coincidence,

Hutchinson Co, London.

Sm ith, Q.: 1988 , The Un caused Beginning of the Universe ,

Philosophy of Science 55, 39-

57.

Smith, Q. : 1993, The Concept of a Cause o f the Universe,

Canadian Journal of Philosophy

23(l), l-24.

Stebbing, L.S.: 1937,

Philosophy and the Physicists,

Pelican Books, London.

Science & Technology Studies

University of New South Wales

Sydney 2052

Australia

PETER SLEZAK
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Documents

Review of Davies mind of God