Bernard Kastrup attacks Brian Cox and sides with Chopra

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Brian Cox and the idolatry of nerds A couple of weeks ago, a Twitter war broke out between Deepak Chopra, a well-known proponent of integrative medicine, and Brian Cox, a physicist and TV-star who is famous for science documentaries on UK television. The war was covered in a highly tendentious way in an article in the New Statesman. Here, however, I want to focus on what the Twitter exchange seems to reveal about the appalling state of our culture. To give you a flavor of the exchange, I want to start with specifics. Then, I will move to broader, more generalized commentary. Specific commentary The contentious part of the discussion seems to have started with the exchange illustrated in the figure above. Chopra’s point is philosophically sound and quite easy to understand. As Bertrand Russell stated, science can only explain one thing in terms of another thing [Russell, B. (2007). The Analysis of Matter. Nottingham: Spokesman Books]. This way, one can never scientifically explain the primary creation event, for there would be, by definition, nothing else in terms of which to explain it. For example: we can scientifically explain the human body in terms of tissues; tissues in terms of cells; cells in terms of molecules; molecules in terms of atoms; atoms in terms of subatomic particles; and subatomic particles – tentatively – in terms of an imagined Big Bang. But we cannot explain the Big Bang, or whatever else science considers the primary creation event, in terms of anything else. After all, by definition, nothing else existed. Chopra’s intent is clear: with the term ‘Big Bang’ he is actually referring to the primary creation event, whatever that may be called in today’s cosmology. In his necessarily-short Twitter message, he says ‘Big Bang’ simply because that is popularly understood to mean the primary creation event. Yet, Cox replies to Chopra’s statement as if it had been false and naïve. That he felt the need to add an infantile hashtag is as disturbing as it is revealing but, for the sake of substance, let’s leave that silly detail aside for now. In his reply, Cox refers to the theory of eternal inflation, clearly suggesting that it offers a scientific cause for the Big bang. It’s outside the scope of this essay to elaborate on the theory, but the essential point is this: eternal inflation only offers a scientific cause for the Big Bang if we drop the notion that the Big Bang was the primary creation event; that is, if we assume that there was something else prior to the Big Bang. Indeed, eternal inflation simply postpones the primary creation event forever, by proposing that the universe is eternal [Linde, A. D. (1986). Eternally Existing Self-Reproducing Chaotic Inflationary Universe. Physics Letters B, 175 (4), pp. 395–400]. It goes around the issue of first cause, instead of tackling the issue. It leaves the epistemic hole pointed out by Chopra completely intact. As such, Cox’s reply doesn’t at all refute the essence of Chopra’s message and Cox obviously knows this. Yet, he seems to have willfully chosen to use his authority to – there is no other way to say it – mislead his Twitter audience for the sake of making someone else look like a fool. What can possibly motivate such behavior from a scientist and public educator? Answers later. For now, bear with me. Cox goes on to throw highly-specialized scientific literature at Chopra. Under different circumstances, this would be an entirely valid attempt to claim the scientific high-ground. But, in this case, Cox obviously already had the scientific high-ground to begin with, for he is the physicist in the discussion. So what is he trying to accomplish? The implicit but clear message seems to be this: because Chopra is not a physicist, he is not qualified to conclude anything from physics in order to interpret the broader aspects of reality. Only physicists, as the new priesthood of modern culture, are supposedly qualified to do that. Yet, this contradicts Cox’s own outreach efforts to explain physics to the common men and women on the streets. The whole point of that effort can only be to equip people to interpret their broader reality on the basis of physics. That Chopra does precisely this is either entirely legitimate or Cox should give up his TV-star role as science educator for the masses. One can’t have it both ways. I am sure Cox would react to what I just said above by claiming that Chopra’s understanding of physics is simply wrong. He would claim that his reference to technical papers makes this clear. Peer-reviewed scientific papers, as such, seem to be considered by Cox as sufficient to give legitimacy to an ontological position, even if they don’t necessarily prove it. Are there, then, peer-reviewed scientific papers corroborating Chopra’s main claim that reality is not objective but, instead, entirely in consciousness? There are plenty. Here are just some, all of which have been published in the most respected scientific journals in the world: Kim, Y.-H. et al. (2000). A Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser. Physical Review Letters 84, pp. 1–5. The authors show that observation not only determines the reality observed at present, but also retroactively changes the history of what is observed accordingly. This is entirely consistent with the notion that reality is fundamentally a story playing itself out in mind. Gröblacher , S. et al. (2007). An experimental test of non-local realism. Nature 446, pp. 871-875. The authors show that reality is either entirely in consciousness or we must abandon our strongest intuitions about what objectivity means. As far as the practical applications of Chopra’s claims are concerned, the differences between these two alternatives are not so significant. Physicsworld.com, in a related article, went as far as to claim that ‘quantum physics says goodbye to reality.’ Lapkiewicz, R. et al. (2011). Experimental non-classicality of an indivisible quantum system. Nature 474, pp. 490–493. The authors show that, unlike what one would expect if reality were independent of mind, the properties of a quantum system do not exist prior to observation. Renowned physicist Anton Zeilinger, in a related New Scientist article suitably titled “Quantum magic trick shows reality is what you make it,” is quoted as saying that “there is no sense in assuming that what we do not measure about a system has [an independent] reality.” Xiao-song Ma et al. (2013). Quantum erasure with causally disconnected choice. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 110, pp. 1221-1226. Again, the authors show that no naively objective view of reality can be true, which is consistent with Chopra’s claim that reality is fundamentally subjective. A less-technical explanation of the experiment in this paper, as well as its results, can be found here. A bunch of others, too numerous to comment on individually: Aspect, A. et al. (1981). Experimental Tests of Realistic Local Theories via Bell’s Theorem. Physical Review Letters 47(460). Aspect, A. et al. (1982). Experimental Realization of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen-Bohm Gedankenexperiment: A New Violation of Bell’s Inequalities. Physical Review Letters 49(91). Aspect, A. et al. (1982). Experimental Test of Bell’s Inequalities Using Time-Varying Analyzers. Physical Review Letters 49(1804). Tittel, W. et al. (1998). Violation of Bell Inequalities by Photons More Than 10 km Apart. Physical Review Letters 81(17). Weihs, G. et al. (1998). Violation of Bell’s Inequality under Strict Einstein Locality Conditions. Physical Review Letters 81(23). Etc. So where does this leave us? The conclusion is inescapable: according to Cox’s own values, Chopra’s key message that reality is in consciousness cannot be cavalierly dismissed as New Age woo or nonsense.

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