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... to restore theology to the mainstream of science
An essay on physical theology
Essay submitted to the Dubai Strategy Forum writing competition, October 2002.
Contents
1. Summary
2. Theology
3. Physics
4. Physical Theology
5. Strategy
6. An Initiative
1. Summary
Experience shows that driving with closed eyes invites disaster. Reliable visual knowledge is essential to success in traffic space. More generally, we need reliable knowledge to navigate in the space of life. Our need to see one another and our planetary and cosmic environment is daily becoming more obvious. It seems clear that we need globalisation of knowledge to arrive at a common solution to our global problems.
In every human tradition that I know of, theology, in one form or another, provides the primary guiding light. It shows a big picture in which we can all see where we fit in. This fit provides a guide to action.
Since we evolved in Africa, we may have developed as many theologies as we have languages. A global theology must be one that is common to all languages. To do this for theology, we follow the path of science, which adjoins special technical language to natural language to express its concepts.
The plan here is to to use the technical languages of mathematics and physics to illustrate a network model of the physical world. Then we move beyond physics to the wider space of human spirit. Our move is made possible by the properties of networks. Networks can exist at any scale; networks can be made of networks and be part of other networks. One point may be part of many networks. Networks can imitate one another. On consideration the network model seems as versatile and intuitive as set theory.
Most importantly, we may draw ethical conclusions from the constraints imposed by the layered nature of real world networks. Networks do not work if higher ('softer') layers do not respect the protocols of the lower ('harder') layers upon which they are built. In particular, this potential error illustrates the danger of communities violating the rights of the people upon which they are built. back
2. Theology
In my Christian tradition, science and theology parted company in the days of Galileo (1564 -1642). This partition arose from disagreements about the identification of trustworthy knowledge. In Galileo's world the Church said: 'trust divine revelation, embodied in the Bible and your Church'.
Galileo said: 'let us learn to read the book of nature'. He added that this book appears to be written in mathematical language. Rewriting the book of nature in human language is now called science. Our scientific faith is that ultimately the world makes sense. We can see the sense when we understand how things work. Scientific faith also holds that open, evidence driven inquiry ultimately converges on truth.
Christian theology guarantees the intelligibility of the world by postulating an omnipotent, reasonable and loving god who specially created us to enjoy Him. Nature seems to tell a similar story. We enjoy a universe that is built from simple beginnings whose intelligibility comes from the way it parts fit together. We read that we depend upon a complex universe which began to evolve from a simple point about fifteen billion years ago.
Evolution shows that each of us sits somewhere in a tree of life that is rooted in the initial singularity. It gives historical meaning to the structure and relationships of the parts of the world. Although the origin of life remains shrouded in mystery, there seems to be no physical problem with it. Ordered structures (like ourselves) result from the contrast in entropy between the sunlight entering Earth and the cooler radiation leaving it.
Christians say that God is invisible. The alternative view here identifies god and the world. Revelation and experience become connected. The scientific way requires us to find evidence for (or against) our readings of the world. From the scientific point of view, all information is physically encoded. Observability is the foundation of scientific consensus, since we all inhabit the same world and can look at it for ourselves. If god and the world are one, science is part of theology. back
3. Physics
Physics is the archetypal science, with roots in the ancient world. Aristotle (384-322 bc) wrote on physics. His model of the world led him to postulate a first unmoved mover to explain change. Aristotle's teaching entered Christianity through Saint Thomas Aquinas (1224 -1274) and his contemporaries. Aquinas' proofs for the existence of god follow a similar path to Aristotle's argument for an unmoved mover: the visible world cannot explain itself. We must therefore postulate an invisible explanation, commonly called God.
Let us seek a similar path from modern physics to a new model of God. Physics has two foundations: relativity and quantum field theory (qft). At the heart of relativity is the assumption that the laws of physics (including the speed of light) are the same for every freely moving observer. From this, using an imaginary (and imaginative) system of rods and clocks, Einstein was able to reveal the local structure of spacetime.
Further, he realised that a person falling in a gravitational field would not feel his own weight ('the happiest thought of my life'). Incorporating this idea in a mathematical model, Einstein was able to extrapolate from the local structure of spacetime to the structure of the whole universe. His insights are supported by modern cosmology. Since the velocity of light is simply the velocity of communication, we see that the large scale structure of spacetime reflects the network of gravitational communication which binds the universe.
To see how this works in detail, we turn to quantum field theory. Qft arises from the union of special relativity and quantum mechanics. Seen through the eyes of quantum information theory, quantum mechanics describes the processes of the world as a form of computation. Quantum processes communicate by exchanging particles.
The universe as a whole is held together and shaped by the exchange of gravitons. The quarks in a proton are bound by exchanging gluons. Own own physical structure is communicated by photons. The structuring effects of communication are everywhere to be seen. back
4. Physical Theology
Qft is now the 'standard model' of the world. We have pictured the world of qft as a network. The reason for choosing networks as an explanatory tool is that they are both intuitively familiar and mathematically as powerful as can be. Network structure has been used in theology before, in the theory of the Trinity published by Aquinas.
In his Summa Theologiae, Aquinas first established that God exists. Then he studied properties of God which follow from observations and reasonable assumptions. Among these properties are simplicity and unity. Next he turned to the Trinity, a feature of God revealed in Christian tradition. As the Apostle's Creed says: 'I believe in God, The Father Almighty, ... in Jesus Christ his only Son, ... in the Holy Spirit, ... . How can three distinct personalities be reconciled with the simplicity and unity of God?
Earlier, in his discussion of simplicity, Aquinas noted that God is so great that we can only speak of Him negatively, removing incompatible features. The task, then, is to devise a logically consistent model of the Trinity which fits all the revealed and observed evidence.
The model that Aquinas proposed arises from notions of generation and relationship. The Son is generated from the Father rather as a mental word is generated from the mind. The act of generation establishes the relationships of fatherhood and sonship which distinguish Father from Son without compromising divine unity. The mutual love of Father and Son generates the Holy Spirit.
We may envisage the Trinity so conceived as a network with persons for nodes and relationships for links. In conformity with Christian doctrine, Aquinas restricted the number of persons in the Trinity to three. A larger network operating on similar principles of generation and relationship could be conceived to embrace every 'personality' in the universe from quark to galaxy and beyond.
The passage from physics to theology follows this important symmetry of networks: their basic structure is independent of their complexity. Networks may be nested and mapped to one another like the sets of set theory. We suggest that just as all of mathematics can be developed from set theory, so an understanding of the whole world can be developed from the the theory of communication networks. back
5. Strategy
When we learn to read, we learn to discern meaning in lines of physical symbols. Not just writing, but every physical structure can be read for its meaning. When we learn to write we learn to assemble written symbols for ourselves. When we learn to act (which comes long before writing) we learn to make physical assemblies, like meals or houses.
Theology, like all science, has a practical purpose. Each theology provides a story of the world that serves to guide our behaviour. Christianity tells us that we are made in the image of God. We can readily agree with this proposition. The network model of God can be realised as a mathematical structure. Human networks find a place in this structure. In the light of physical theology, the basic developmental challenge facing the world today is to make sure that everybody is adequately connected into the networks of human life.
This leads to a grand strategy: we must make our networks so attractive that people will want to use them, thus enriching them and contributing to their growth. On the other hand, in the interests of justice, we must make it possible for people to leave failing networks in favour of those that are succeeding. The idea might be summed up in the phrase 'freedom of connection'.
One can only connect to a network if one can obey its protocols. A key to freedom of connection, then is 'community of protocols'. The recognition of a network theology is a step toward such community.
Perhaps it could become a principle of social symmetry that the wealth expended in trying to restrain dissident entities by force be matched by equal expenditure to embrace such entities by extending our networks. back
6. An Initiative
Theology explains and informs religion. Tithing is an ancient religious practice contributing to the welfare of a whole community. We are all by right peers in human networks. Every network user needs access to hardware. Right without power is worthless. In the modern world, this means that everybody needs income, To share money, therefore, is to share the power to be.
Let us imagine a system with the following features. A global fund is established with a life of (say) one month into which everyone may pay their tithe. At the end of every month, the sum of the fund (less certain costs) is disributed equally to all contributors. The effect of this (if people give in proportion to their income) will be to transfer money from rich to poor. With suitable means of personal identification and encryption, the operation of the fund may be secret and anonymous, enabling us to share our wealth privately.
You may feel that people will cheat. Some will pay their tithe and others won't. Maybe. But maybe, when we understand the enriching effect of expanding networks, we will find that the tithing fund is not only good for our souls, but good for business and the environment too. It seems obvious that a unit gain of wealth improves the lot of a poor person more than the loss of that same unit reduces the happiness of someone wealthy. The net human welfare is thus increased, and with it the value of our community to each of us. Finally, the failure tolerant nature of networks may guide us in the construction of societies that can survive hatred, violence, disease, deprivation and all the other evils we encounter in life. back
Books
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| de Witt, Bryce S and Neill Graham (eds) , and Hugh Everett III, J A Wheeler, B S DeWitt, L N Cooper, D van Vechten, N Graham (contributors), The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, Princeton UP 1973 Jacket: 'A novel interpretation of quantum mechanics, first proposed in brief form by Hugh Everett in 1957, forms the nucleus around which this book is developed. The volume contains Dr Everett's short paper from 1957, "'Relative State' Formulation of Quantum Mechanics", and a far longer exposition of his interpretation, entitled "The Theory of the Universal Wave Function", never before published. In addition, other papers by De Witt, Graham and Cooper and van Vechtem provide further dicussion of the same theme. Together they constitute virtually the entire world output of scholarly commentary on the Everett interpretation.' Amazon back |
| Hawking, Steven W, and G F R Ellis, The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time , Cambridge UP 1975 Preface: Einstein's General Theory of Relativity ... leads to two remarkable predictions about the universe: first that the final fate of massive stars is to collapse behind an event horizon to form a 'black hole' which will contain a singularity; and secondly that there is a singularity in our past which constitutes, in some sense, a beginning to our universe. Our discussion is principally aimed at developing these two results.' Amazon back |
| Jech, Thomas, Set Theory, Springer 1997 Jacket: 'This book covers major areas of modern set theory: cardinal arithmetic, constructible sets, forcing and Boolean-valued models, large cardinals and descriptive set theory. ... It can be used as a textbook for a graduate course in set theory and can serve as a reference book.' Amazon back |
| Khinchin, A I, Mathematical Foundations of Information Theory (translated by P A Silvermann and M D Friedman), Dover 1957 Jacket: 'The first comprehensive introduction to information theory, this book places the work begun by Shannon and continued by McMillan, Feinstein and Khinchin on a rigorous mathematical basis. For the first time, mathematicians, statisticians, physicists, cyberneticists and communications engineers are offered a lucid, comprehensive introduction to this rapidly growing field.' Amazon back |
| Klein, Richard G, The Human Career : Human Biological and Cultural Origins , University of Chicago Press 1999 Review: 'The Human Career describes one of the most spectacular changes to have occurred in our understanding of human evolution. The once-popular fresco showing a single file of marching hominids becoming ever more vertical, tall and hairless now appears to be a fiction. ... For most of the past four million years several species of hominids coexisted, sometimes in limited geographical areas. The eventual peopling of the planet with a single homogeneous species of hominid is shown to be exceptional on the geological timescale. ... If you could have only one book that deals with human evolution, this is definitely the one to choose. ' Jean-Jacques Hublins, Nature. 403:364 27 January 2000. Amazon back |
| Kreyszig, Erwin, Introductory Functional Analysis with Applications, John Wiley and Sons 1989 Amazon: 'Kreyszig's "Introductory Functional Analysis with Applications", provides a great introduction to topics in real and functional analysis. This book is part of the Wiley Classics Library and is extremely well written, with plenty of examples to illustrate important concepts. It can provide you with a solid base in these subjects, before one takes on the likes of Rudin and Royden. I had purchased a copy of this book, when I was taking a graduate course on real analysis and can only strongly recommend it to anyone else.' Krishnan S. Kartik Amazon back |
| Kuhn, Thomas S, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, U of Chicago Press 1996 Introduction: 'a new theory, however special its range of application, is seldom just an increment to what is already known. Its assimilation requires the reconstruction of prior theory and the re-evaluation of prior fact, an intrinsically revolutionary process that is seldom completed by a single man, and never overnight.' [p 7] Amazon back |
| Misner, Charles W, and Kip S Thorne, John Archibald Wheeler, Gravitation, Freeman 1973 Jacket: 'Einstein's description of gravitation as curvature of spacetime led directly to that greatest of all predictions of his theory, that the universe itself is dynamic. Physics still has far to go to come to terms with this amazing fact and what it means for man and his relation to the universe. John Archibald Wheeler. ... this is a book on Einstein's theory of gravity (general relativity).' Amazon back |
| Nielsen, Michael A, and Isaac L Chuang, Quantum Computation and Quantum Information, Cambridge University Press 2000 Review: A rigorous, comprehensive text on quantum information is timely. The study of quantum information and computation represents a particularly direct route to understanding quantum mechanics. Unlike the traditional route to quantum mechanics via Schroedinger's equation and the hydrogen atom, the study of quantum information requires no calculus, merely a knowledge of complex numbers and matrix multiplication. In addition, quantum information processing gives direct access to the traditionally advanced topics of measurement of quantum systems and decoherence.' Seth Lloyd, Department of Quantum Mechanical Engineering, MIT, Nature 6876: vol 416 page 19, 7 March 2002. Amazon back |
| Tanenbaum, Andrew S, Computer Networks, Prenctice Hall International 1996 Preface: 'The key to designing a computer network was first enunciated by Julius Caesar: Divide and Conquer. The idea is to design a network as a sequence of layers, or abstract machines, each one based upon the previous one. ... This book uses a model in which networks are divided into seven layers. The structure of the book follows the structure of the model to a considerable extent.' Amazon back |
| von Neumann, John, and Robert T Beyer (translator), Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, Princeton University Press 1983 Jacket: '... a revolutionary book that caused a sea change in theoretical physics. ... JvN begins by presenting the theory of Hermitean operators and Hilbert spaces. These provide the framework for transformation theory, which vN regards as the definitive form of quantum mechanics. ... Regarded as a tour de force at the time of its publication, this book is still indispensible for those interested in the fundamental issues of quantum mechanics.' Amazon back |
| Weinberg, Steven, The Quantum Theory of Fields Volume II: Modern Applications, Cambridge University Press 1996 Jacket: '[This volume] gives an up-to-date and self-contained account of the methods of quantum field theory, and how they have led to an understanding of the weak, strong and electromagnetic interactions of the elementary particles. The presentation of modern mathematical methods is throughout interwoven with accounts of the problemd of elemntary partricle physics and condensed matter physics to which they have been applied. Topics are incl;uded that are not usually found in books on quantum field theory, such as the Batalin-Vilkovsky formalism and its application to renomralisation and anomalies in gauge theories; the background field method; the effective field theory approach to symmetry breaking; critical phenomena; and superconductivity. The book contains original material and is peppered with examples and insights from the author's experience as a lkeader of elementary particle physics. Problems are inlcuided at the end of each chapter.' Amazon back |
| Weinberg, Steven, The Quantum Theory of Fields Volume I: Foundations, Cambridge University Press 1995 Jacket: 'After a brief historical outline, the book begins anew with the principles about which we are most certain, relativity and quantum mechanics, and then the properties of particles that follow from these principles. Quantum field theory then emerges from this as a natural consequence. The classic calculations of quantum electrodynamics are presented in a thoroughly modern way, showing the use of path integrals and dimensional regularization. The account of renormalization theory reflects the changes in our view of quantum field theory since the advent of effective field theories. The book's scope extends beyond quantum elelctrodynamics to elementary partricle physics and nuclear physics. It contains much original material, and is peppered with examples and insights drawn from the author's experience as a leader of elementary particle research. Problems are included at the end of each chapter. ' Amazon back |
| Weinberg, Steven, The Quantum Theory of Fields, Volume III: Supersymmetry, Cambridge University Press 2000 Jacket: '[This volume] presents a self-contained, up-to-date and comprehensive introduction to supersymmetry, a highly active area of theoretical physics that is likely to be the centre of future progress in the physics of elementary particles and gravitation. The text introduces and explains a broad range of topics, including supersymmetric algebras, supersymmetric field theories, extended supersymmetry, super-graphs, non-perturbative results, theories of supersymmetry in high dimensions, and supergravity. A thorough review is given of the phenomenological implications of sypersymmetry, including theories of both gauge and gravitationally mediated supersymmetry breaking. Also provided is an introduction to mathematical techniques, based on holomorphy and duality, that have proved so fruitful in recent developments. The book contains much material not found in other books on supersymmetry, some of it new. Problems are included at the end of each chapter.' Amazon back |
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