Janus (42 page)

 

 

This illusion was shared by most of Ali's successors, including the
most eminent among them. Aristotle thought that nearly everything worth
discovering about the ways of the universe had already been discovered
and that there were no unsolved problems left.
^[6]
Descartes
was so carried away by the success of applying mathematical methods to
science that he believed he would be able to complete the whole edifice
of the new physics by himself. His more cautious contemporaries among
the pioneers of the scientific revolution thought it might take as much
as two generations to wrest its last secret from Nature. 'The particular
phenomena of the arts and sciences are in reality but a handful,' wrote
Sir Francis Bacon. 'The invention of all causes and sciences would be a
labour of but a few years.'
^[7]
Two centuries later, in 1899,
the eminent German biologist and apostle of Darwin, Ernst Haeckel,
published his book
Die Welträtsel
, 'The Riddles of the
Universe' (which became the bible of my youth). The book enumerated seven
great riddles, of which six were 'definitively solved' -- including the
structure of matter and the origin of life. The seventh -- the subjective
experience of the freedom of will -- was but 'an illusion having no real
existence' -- so there were no more unsolved riddles left, which was nice
to know. Sir Julian Huxley probably shared this opinion when he wrote:
'In the field of evolution, genetics has given its basic answer, and
evolutionary biologists are free to pursue other problems.'
^[8]

 

 

The philosophy of reductionism was a direct offspring of the rationalist
illusion. 'The invention [i.e., discovery] of all causes and sciences
would be a labour of but a few years.' Replace 'years' by 'centuries'
and you get the essence of the reductionist credo that the potentially
omniscient brain of man will eventually explain all the riddles of the
universe by reducing them to 'nothing but' the interplay of electrons,
protons and quarks. Dazzled by the benefits derived from the unsolicited
gift, it did not occur to the beneficiaries that although the human
brain's powers were in some respects immense, they were nevertheless
severely limited in other respects, concerned with ultimate meanings.
In other words, while evolution 'overshot' its target, it also grievously
undershot
it with respect to the ultimate, existential questions,
for which it was not 'programmed'. These ultimates include the paradoxa of
infinity and eternity ('If the universe started with the Big Bang, what
was before the Bang?'); the curvature of space according to relativity;
the notion of parallel and inter-penetrating universes; the phenomena
of parapsychology and of acausal processes; and all questions related to
ultimate meanings (of the universe, of life, of good and evil, etc.).
To quote (for the last time) an eminent physicist, Professor Henry Margenau
of the University of Yale:

 

An artifact occasionally invoked to explain precognition is to make
time multidimensional. This allows a genuine backward passage of
time, which might permit positive intervals in one time direction to
become negative ('effect before cause') in another. In principle, this
represents a valid scheme, and I know of no criticism that will rule
it out as a scientific procedure. If it is to be acceptable, however,
a completely new metric of space-time needs to be developed. . . [9]

 

But we are not 'programmed' for such a new metric; we are not able to
visualize spatial dimensions added to length, width and height; nor time
flowing from tomorrow towards yesterday, and so on. We are unable to
visualise such phenomena, not because they are impossible but because
the human brain and nervous system are not programmed for them.

 

 

The limitations of our programming -- of our native equipment -- are even
more obvious in our sensory receptor organs. The human eye can perceive
only a very small fraction of the spectrum of electromagnetic radiations;
our hearing is restricted to a range of sound frequencies narrower than
the dog's; our sense of smell is desultory and our capacity of spatial
orientation cannot compare with the migrating bird's. Until about the
thirteenth century man did not realize that he was surrounded by magnetic
forces; nor does he have any sensory awareness of them; nor of the
showers of neutrinos which penetrate and traverse his body in millions;
nor of other unknown fields and influences operating inside and around
him. If the
sensory
apparatus of our species is programmed to perceive
only an infinitesimally small part of the cosmic phantasmagoria, then why
not admit that its
cognitive
apparatus may be subject to equally severe
limitations in programming -- i.e., that it is unable to provide answers
to the ultimate questions of 'the meaning of it all'? Such an admission
would neither belittle the mind of man, nor discourage him from putting
it to full use -- for creative minds will always try to do just that,
'as if' the answers were just around the corner.

 

 

To admit the inherent limitations of man's reasoning power automatically
leads to a more tolerant and open-minded attitude toward phenomena
which seem to defy reason -- like quantum physics, parapsychology and
acausal events. Such a change of attitude would also put an end to the
crude reductionist maxim that what cannot be explained cannot exist.
A species of humans without eyes, such as the citizens of H. G. Wells's
Country of the Blind
, would reject our claim of being able to perceive
distant objects without contact by touch, as occult nonsense. There is
a Chinese proverb which tells us that it is useless to speak about the
sea to a frog that lives at the bottom of a well.

 

 

We have heard a whole chorus of Nobel laureates assert that matter
is merely energy in disguise, that causality is dead, determinism is
dead. If that is so, they should be given a public funeral in the olive
groves of Academe, with a requiem of electronic music. It is indeed time
to get out of the strait-jacket which nineteenth-century materialism,
combined with reductionism and the rationalist illusion, imposed on
our philosophical outlook. Had that outlook kept abreast with the
revolutionary messages from the bubble chambers and radio-telescopes,
instead of lagging a century behind them, we would have been liberated
from that strait-jacket a long time ago.

 

 

Once this simple fact is recognized, we might become more receptive
to bizarre phenomena inside and around us which a one-sided emphasis
on mechanical determinism made us ignore; might feel the draught that
is blowing through the chinks of the causal edifice; include paranormal
phenomena in our revised concepts of normality; and realize that we have
been living in the Country of the Blind -- or at the bottom of a well.

 

 

The consequences of such a shift of awareness are unforeseeable. In the
words of Professor H. H. Price 'psychical research is one of the most
important branches of investigation which the human mind has undertaken',
and 'it may transform the whole intellectual outlook upon which our
present civilisation is based'.
^[10]
These are strong words
coming from an Oxford Professor of Logic, but I do not think they
overstate the case.

 

 

It is possible that in this particular field of psychic endowment we are
-- together with our other handicaps -- an under-privileged species. The
grand design of evolutionary strategy does not exclude the existence of
biological freaks, like the koala bear, nor of self-destructive races,
like our paranoid selves. If this is the case, we have to live 'as if'
it were not so, and try to make the best of it -- as we are trying to
make the best of our suspended death-sentences
qua
individuals.

 

 

The limitations of Ali's computer may condemn us to the role of Peeping
Toms at the keyhole of eternity. But at least we can try to take the
stuffing out of the keyhole, which blocks even our limited view.

 

 

 

3

 

 

In the
Prologue
to this book I stressed the
fact that our present situation is without precedent in history. To
say it once more: in all previous generations man had to come to terms
with the prospect of his death as an individual; the present generation
is the first to face the prospect of the death of our species. Homo
sapiens arrived on the scene about a hundred thousand years ago, which
is but the blinking of an eye on the evolutionary time-scale. If he
were to vanish now, his rise and fall would have been a brief episode,
unsung and unlamented by other inhabitants of our galaxy. We know by
now that other planets in the vastness of space are humming with life;
that brief episode would probably never have come to their notice.

 

 

Only a few decades ago it was generally thought that the emergence of
life out of inanimate chemical compounds must have been an extremely
improbable, and therefore extremely rare event, which may have occurred
only once, on this privileged planet of ours, and nowhere else. It was
further thought that the formation of solar systems, such as ours, was
also a rare event, and that planets capable of supporting life must be
even rarer. But these assumptions, flavoured by 'earth-chauvinism',
have been refuted by the rapid advances of astrophysics. It is now
generally accepted by astronomers that the formation of planetary
systems, including inhabitable planets, is 'a common event' *; and
that organic compounds, potentially capable of giving rise to life,
are present both in our immediate neighbourhood, on Mars, and in the
interstellar dust-clouds of distant nebulae. Moreover, a certain class of
meteorites was found to contain organic materials whose spectra are the
same as those of pollen-like spores in pre-Cambrian sediments.
^[11]
Sir Fred Hoyle and his Indian colleague, Professor Chandra
Wickranashinghe, proposed (in 1977) a theory, which regards 'pre-stellar
molecular clouds such as are present in the Orion nebula, as the most
natural "cradles" of life. Processes occurring in such clouds lead to the
commencement and dispersal of biological activity in the Galaxy . . . It
would now seem most likely that the transformation of inorganic matter
into primitive biological systems is occurring more or less continually
in the space between the stars.'
^[12]

 

* Professor Carl Sagan (Centre for Radiophysics and Space Research,
Cornell University), at the CETI Congress. 1971. CETI (Communication
with Extra-terrestrial Intelligence) was sponsored by the US National
Academy of Sciences and the Soviet Academy of Sciences and attended
by leading scientists from both countries. Its proceedings (published
by the MIT Press, 1973) represent a landmark in the study of the
problems of extraterrestrial life, and of the possible methods of
establishing contact with alien life-forms.

 

As for the pollen-like structures in meteorites, the authors hold it to
be possible that they 'represent primitive, interstellar "proto-cells"
in a state of suspended animation'.
^[13]
At present 'some
hundred tons of meteoritic material enter the earth's atmosphere every
day; but in earlier geological epochs the accumulation rate may have
been much higher'. Part of this material may have originated in the
'cradles of life' -- the dust-clouds pre-dating the formation of stars.

 

 

Thus the doctrines of 'terran chauvinism' have become untenable, like
so many other cherished beliefs of nineteenth-century science. We are
not alone in the universe -- not the only spectators in the theatre,
surrounded by empty seats. On the contrary, the universe around us is
teeming with life, from primitive 'proto-cells', floating in interstellar
space, to millions of advanced civilizations far ahead of us -- where
'far' might mean the distance we have travelled from our reptilian or
amoebic ancestry. I find this perspective comforting and exhilarating.
In the first place, it is nice to know that we are not alone, that we have
company out there among the stars -- so that if we vanish, it does not
matter too much, and the cosmic drama will not be played out before an
empty house. The thought that we are the only conscious beings in this
immensity, and that if we vanish, consciousness would vanish from it,
is unbearable. Vice versa, the knowledge that there are billions of beings
in our galaxy, and in other galaxies, infinitely more enlightened than
our poor sick selves, may lead to that humility and self-transcendence
which is the source of all religious experience.

 

 

This brings me to a perhaps naive, but I think plausible consideration
regarding the nature of extraterrestrial intelligences and civilizations.
Terrestrial civilization (from the start of agriculture, written language,
etc.) is, at a generous estimate, around 10,000 years old. To make guesses
about the nature of extra-terrestrial civilizations a few
million
years older than ours is of course totally unrealistic. On the other
hand, it is entirely reasonable to assume that sooner or later --
within, say, its first 10,000 years -- each of these civilizations
would have discovered thermonuclear reactions -- i.e., met the anno
zero of its own calendar. From this point onward natural selection --
or rather, the 'selective weed-killer' as I have called it -- takes
over on a cosmic scale. The sick civilizations engendered by biological
misfits will sooner or later act as their own executioners and vanish
from their polluted planet. Those civilizations which survive this and
other tests of sanity will grow, or have already grown, into a cosmic
elite of demi-gods. More soberly speaking, it is a comforting thought
that owing to the action of the cosmic weed-killer, only the 'goodies'
among these civilizations will survive, whereas the 'baddies' will
annihilate themselves. It is nice to know that the universe is a place
reserved for goodies and that we are surrounded by them. The established
religions take a less charitable view of the cosmic administration.*