A book review by Michael Messina
When I spoke to Christer Sturmark last fall about his book To Light the Flame of Reason, I asked him for a reading recommendation (the opportunity to speak with someone who is both an author and a publisher is rare indeed). He suggested a then forthcoming book written by a Swedish physicist, Ulf Danielsson entitled The World Itself. The book was published in February 2023 and I read it as soon as I finished another book I’ll write about soon.
The title of the book is very clearly it’s subject — few and far between are pages that don’t mention “the world itself.” The book is about reality. It’s about how our models of the world reflect our perceptions of the world versus the reality of the world itself. Do the laws of nature constrain nature, or do they simply describe our model?
Galileo wrote that the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics so mathematical literacy is essential for an understanding of the world itself. But is it? In the introduction Carlos Fiolhais, Professor of Physics at the University of Coimbra in Portugal, writes: “Danielsson leaves us a very important message in his book: Please do not mistake the world, which is real, with our descriptions of the world, which are only human attempts to represent it, and which, as the whole history of science has taught us, can be improved.”
Right out of the gate, in the first sentence of Chapter 1, Danielsson writes:
“I HAVE A SECRET TO TELL YOU: Living beings are not machines, there is no mathematics outside of our heads, the world exists and it is not a simulation, computers cannot think, your consciousness is not an illusion, and your will is not free.”
Danielsson writes that what we call laws of nature are simply our way of summarizing our knowledge of the universe which is what it is!
In the computer age in which we now live, most, if not all, of us have entertained the idea of translating everything we are, including our thoughts, into a series of ones and zeros which could then be loaded into a computer with the result being eternal life. “The only problem is that it’s not true.” Such misunderstandings are based on a dualistic view of existence which is a holdover of a worldview that is fundamentally religious. Cartesian dualism makes a distinction between body and soul, where the body consists of perishable matter, while the soul is spiritual and eternal. Danielsson does not believe that the self can be separated from its material basis, whether in the form of an immortal soul or information. “Both cases are wishful thinking and fairy tales.”
Chapter two is entitled Living Beings are not Machines. It begins with a brief recap of a discussion between Danielsson and Richard Dawkins. Dawkins said he believes that physics is the senior science. That biology deals with the complex, while physics takes care of the profound. Danielsson noted that since the discovery of DNA and the letters of the genetic code, we know that all life on this planet is connected. “Through the billions of years, evolution has changed what is told but not the language itself. To illustrate the remarkable role that genes play in the living world, Richard Dawkins invented a striking metaphor in the form of the selfish gene…to show was how genes form the very heart of evolution.” Nevertheless, it’s still not really clear what a gene is. “Just as an organism is only a way for a gene to express itself, perhaps the same can be said about its physical manifestation in the form of a DNA molecule. When we search for the core itself, we find that genes are nothing but intangible information.”
“The discovery of evolution and the genetic code suggests that the very essence of life is pure information, sequences of letters that describe how to put together an organism in the form of an animal or a plant whose sole purpose is to make more copies of itself.” If and when the code is fully understood could exact copies of each of us be made. Not a chance, says Danielsson. “Not only is the information pointless if you do not know how to read it but there are many indications that DNA does not actually contain all the information. The cell must also know when it is time to use the information in a piece of DNA to build the proteins it encodes. This information is not necessarily stored in the sequence itself.” The difference between created machines and evolved organisms is not fully defined. “Evolution shows how life is pragmatic and focused on results, in stark contrast to physics, which still celebrates simplicity and beauty…This also applies to the subjective inner self, which can be assumed to be represented in other forms of life, as well.”
Chapter 3 is entitled The Universe is not Mathematics. Because everything we find in the interior of matter in the form of particle physics can be successfully incorporated into a mathematics the temptation is to see mathematics as something existing independently. The philosophical terms for this concept is Platonism — matter is governed by mathematical laws that lie outside of the material universe. This is entirely consistent with, and almost assumes, a religious worldview in which God, as the great mathematician, instituted the laws. Danielsson writes: “Belief in the Platonic form of mathematics can thus be likened to a belief in God. Rational arguments against such beliefs are not always effective.” Danielsson argues that a much more reasonable assumption would be that there is no mathematics—not in the true sense of the word. Mathematics arises only in the brain of someone who tries to understand what is going on.
And, what applies to mathematics also applies to what we call natural laws. The laws of nature, like mathematics, belong to our description of the world and are not at all something that needs to have any existence independent of us. The universe is not governed by what we call the laws of nature; rather, the laws of nature are constructed by us to understand the universe. As an example, Danielsson uses the image of an apple falling from a tree. Newton told us that the force of gravity was responsible, but Einstein told us that what we perceive as gravity is the result of the coverture of space-time. “Nature does not need physics or mathematics to calculate how an apple falls. The apple just falls, while our description of what happens develops and improves over time…The mathematics we use to model the world in the form of natural laws does not exist in the world itself. The laws of nature manifest themselves and are identical with physical patterns in our brains that reflect phenomena that we observe in the world around us.”
Chapter 4 is entitled There is a Difference Between Model and Reality. In this chapter, Danielsson discusses philosophical concepts such as metaphysical realism (there is a world outside our consciousness that is completely independent of our ideas and preconceived notions. There is one and only one way in which the world really is), attitude relativism (there is no objective reality, only arbitrary constructions that are influenced by culture), and internal realism (there is an objective world, but the way you can make it comprehensible is not unique). “The advantage of internal realism is that it differentiates between the real, existing world and how it is described. The goal of science is to offer efficient and reliable models that can be used to make useful predictions about the world itself.” Other terms introduced are: ontology (about what really exists) and epistemology (about what we can really know — and is a much closer to what science is really about). Danielsson wrote:
The point is that science, when seen only as a system based on mathematical logic, has no meaning. What researchers like myself do in our theories is to manipulate symbols according to formal rules. It is only when these symbols are connected to the real world, or, more precisely, the aspects that we select and abstract, that meaning is generated. The problem is that there are crucial steps, which are mistakenly considered trivial and deliberately ignored. Between the high-flying ideas and the messy natural world, which is what science is all about, lies the embodied consciousness of the researcher himself. There is no objective, external, and independent connection between the abstract world of mathematics and logic and the universe. The connection is always made in a brain of flesh and blood.
Chapter 5 is entitled “Computers Are Not Conscious.” In this chapter Danielson explains why, no matter how sophisticated they become, will never rival the human mind. The first example pointed to are the computers that play chess which humans are no long able to defeat. Next, I learned about the Chinese game of Go, that makes chess look like a game of Parcheesi. A computer was programmed to play Go. Rather than tell you what happened, which is fascinating, I’ll let you discover it for yourself when you buy the book. Should we consider the possibility that we, ourselves, are simply a program running on a computer as in the movie Matrix? Although you can probably guess Danielsson’s answer by now, I’ll let you read it for yourself.
Chapter 6 is entitled, Not Everything Can Be Computed. Danielsson cites theoretical biologist Robert Rosen‘s book Life Itself. Danielsson wrote: “Rosen described how living organisms have an ability to take into account the future, to predict what will happen, and to act accordingly. It was in this that the secret of life was hiding.”
Danielsson tells the story of a group of colleagues who would meet once a week. It was traditional that one member of the group would propose a math problem for the others to solve. One day Douglas Hofstadter was visiting the university and was asked to join the party at which he was asked to propose a problem. He wrote on the blackboard: (A/B+C) + (B/C+A) + (C/A+B) = 4. The challenge was to solve for A,B, & C, where each were positive integers. Before you beat your head against the wall trying to solve it, I’ll just say that you’ll find the answers in the book. If I counted correctly, A has 80 or 81 integers, as does B & C.
Danielsson wrote: “If [theoretical biologist Robert Rosen] is right, it is enough to look at biological organisms to find examples where this kind of incalculable mathematics that we have discussed is relevant. But an important question remains. How can it be possible for something completely new to sneak into a mechanistic world where everything that happens can be reduced to atoms and voids?”
In this chapter there is an excellent explanation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, which one often hears christians throwing around in debates with scientists. In a several page section, Danielsson explains that entropy can only increase over time. The greater the entropy, the messier it is. Nothing improves with time. This is the most basic law of nature, but how could the cosmos have begun in a state of order and progressed to more order rather than disorder. Danielsson explains it better than anything else I’ve read.
Chapter 7 is entitled, Man is not Unique. Danielsson writes that instead of looking for what separates us from other beings on Earth, it may be more enlightening to focus on what we have in common and thus deepen our understanding of ourselves. “It is clear that our biological nature is central to our view of the universe. Our consciousness is in our bodies, and the world we experience through our senses is created by our using organic systems that have evolved over millions of years. We are part of a living continuum that stretches back to the very simplest organisms. All of this is crucial to our understanding of the physical world—the only world that exists.”
Danielsson suggests that we get to know an octopus which he says have intelligence comparable to that of cats. As evolutionists, we know that we have common ancestors with every other living thing on our planet. Evolution found two completely different ways to solve the problem of how to make matter think. For one thing, we think mainly with our brain while an octopus thinks with its entire body. Danielsson wrote:
In addition, an octopus not only thinks with its body; it also uses its body to express its innermost thoughts in a colorful way. (Although octopuses have long been thought to be color-blind and it is not known exactly how or if they can interpret these complex signals.) *** Other animals, whether octopuses, mussels, or bats, have a disposition that is completely different in design. All their models are realistic images of the world, true in their own way, and necessary for their survival.
And while we’re at it, what about plants?
Plants are physical systems that process a large amount of information in order to survive and grow. Root tips find their way through the soil to maximize the uptake of nutrients, and the fused networks in the ground under a forest have a complexity that surpasses the brain of an animal. Try to imagine an answer to the question ‘What is it like to be a forest?’
The final sentence of this chapter is: “[R]ather than trying to define what is exclusively human and what makes us unique compared to other species, there is more to learn, I believe, by identifying what we have in common with those other species—even bats.”
Everything in the book leads to the final chapter entitled Does Free Will Exist. While Danielsson gave us the answer in Chapter 1, it would be unfair of me to deprive you of the opportunity to read his reasoning for yourself.
Throughout the book, Danielsson cites and quotes many scholars and authors. Many were familiar to me, as I’m sure they will be to you. A list of names would be too lengthy here, but I’ll mention a few. Above, I mentioned the interview with Richard Dawkins which you can watch at https://youtu.be/UWgb5azXZTA. Danielson discusses Noam Chomsky who sees the relationship between language and reality precisely the way Danielsson has criticized. A friend of mine mentioned Max Tegmark’s review. Immediately after talking about Chomsky, Danielsson wrote: “The physicist is content with the fact that mathematics works and delivers at most rather sweeping statements about how surprisingly efficient it is. If the physicist is pressured, especially a theoretical physicist, there is a risk that he or she will take a position similar to Max Tegmark’s, and identify mathematics with the world itself.” In the section of the book entitled recommended reading, Danielsson wrote: “Our Mathematical Universe (Tegmark 2014) is in many ways a counterpoint to The World Itself. I have no objections to the strictly scientific content of Tegmark’s book, but the existential conclusions are foreign to me.”
I highly recommend this book.