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Why Beliefs Matter: Reflections on the Nature of Science
This book discusses deep problems about our place in the world with a minimum of technical jargon. It argues that 'absolutist' ideas dating back to Plato continue to mislead generations of theoretical physicists and theologians. It explains that the multi-layered nature of our present descriptions of the world is unavoidable, not because of anything about the world but because of our own human natures. It tries to rescue mathematics from the singular and exceptional status that it has been assigned, as much by those who understand it as by those who do not. It provides direct quotations from many of the important contributors to its subject, and concludes with a penetrating criticism of many of the recent contributions to the often acrimonious debates about science and religions.
250 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 2010
20 people are currently reading
1374 people want to read
About the author
E. Brian Davies
6 books4 followersEdward Brian Davies was a professor of Mathematics, King's College London (1981–2010), and was the author of the popular science book Science in the Looking Glass: What do Scientists Really Know. In 2010, he was awarded a Gauss Lecture by the German Mathematical Society.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 11, 2013
Mr Davies is clearly an intelligent and wise man and his book started out very well, but gradually it started to disappoint as it became clear the author was promoting his own rational/spiritual world view in the form of humanism. To be fair he picks a well reasoned fight with almost everyone that has a schism of belief that affects their work, from Plato to Dawkins to the Pope. To his further credit he actually presents his world view well, so perhaps for the thoughtful among the atheists, reductionists, determinists, scientists, Platonists, and maybe even the religious, it could be quite acceptable, reasonable, and... human. However, he should have left the chapter on science and religion out of this book, or limited it to the topic of 'scientists and religion' specifically. He himself admits his knowledge of world religion is narrow so his arguments are often weak, typical, and in some cases just naive.
Nevertheless, i will recommend this book anytime anyone ever tells me they believe in science or think that mathematics is the language of the universe etc. which happens quite a lot these days...
Nevertheless, i will recommend this book anytime anyone ever tells me they believe in science or think that mathematics is the language of the universe etc. which happens quite a lot these days...
March 31, 2020
The ideas in this book are so beautifully organized that in every succeeding chapter, I was able to trace a connecting philosophy with the preceding chapters and believe somehow that I had stumbled onto a tremendous insight, a fundamental connection between special relativity and constructivist mathematics for instance, before realizing that while this connection has not been spelled out, they appear in this book precisely because the author connected them as a family of ideas and organized them into chapters without explicitly mentioning why they are connected.
Mostly I will take away from this book the beautifully compelling idea of pluralism of thought, that is imbibed so beautifully in the way he presents scientific ideas and personalities. I loved how deep his understanding of the views of famous scientists is, with fascinating insight into their personal philosophies that might have driven their theoretical work, and how we tend to reduce scientists to their single biggest idea or unified thread of worldview when in actuality they are complex and pluralistic and holding a variety of world views at different points of their life or in different fields of their life, such that it is intellectually impoverished to seek to overfit all their diverse set of datapoints into a veneer of internal consistency. Wittgeinstein, Einstein on Platonism and Religion, Godel, so many of the most famous thinkers are shown in all their complexity.
His method of argument is similarly beautifully pluralistic (I don't know if the internal consistency of pluralism is a paradox). There’s a section where he mentions Dawkins’ argument against god, that if he must be as complex as the universe he created and therefore is meaningless as a concept, upon which I immediately thought of z=z2+c. A few lines later, he brings up exactly this, but he goes a step further where I had stopped to marvel at my ‘gotcha’. He mentions the opposite case of a trefoil knot that is simple but complex to describe.
Notes
Fabulous knowledge of scientists and their internal contradictions. Wittgenstein. Einsteins Platonism. Godel. Keynes.
Astronomy and mechanics were two very different fields.
Log tables had a great run of 400yrs since John Napier 1585. Sidereal coordinates were similarly tabulated by Kepler. Soon pendulum made tine measurable, now physics could make huge strides.
Scholastic philosophy then mechanical (Newton Kepler Huygens Galilei) then mathematical, that goal is to find the equation, Maxwell. Quantum physics, explanation not equal to understanding.
Newton himself never considered his inductive formulae as logical proofs. Only as stable derivations accepting provisional basis.
Punishing antisocial behaviour despite personal loss is not irrational because it benefits the community.
Pluralism as against cultural relativism where all things are valid, or ontology where one thing is valid, doesn't even say many things are valid but only that as humans we need multiple viewpoints to understand the world. - refine the argument rather than seek to falsify it. How to teach kids pluralistic thinking
Teleonomic just has impression of teleology for useful simplification, like function of an organ. Because you know what I mean.
Newton's laws described motion, they didn't cause it. General relativity
Anthropocentric value systems of teleology in biology. Biological clock. Adrenaline to help animal escape danger. Cancer.
Physics and math and reality not as causative but as stable routines or syntaxes in language. Math has redundancies since numbers can be patterned into a formula, so each number reduces the probability of next number being anything but a few options. But the view that understanding syntax not key to mathematics (stroke victims)
Einsteins weakness was preferring general equation over particular solutions. Ignored black holes whole searching for unified theory. But black holes have taught us more about spacetime than anything else. Unlike Newton
How does natural selection work if time is not real
Why do liquids like water alcohol mercury despite molecular difference all behave like liquids. Imprecise threshold between liquid and gas, or one species and next.
Reductionism seeks to understand, determinism seeks to predict. What's the gap, p/np? Probability Vs statistics?
Free will deniers: if I clone you and put you in two identical rooms, control for everything. Will you say exactly the same things? Infinite regression until ? Ball rolling down sand indentation, what paths. The problem of internal consistency: Sam Harris atheist and free will denier. The virtue of hypocrisy. Pluralism. Euclidian Vs hyperbolic geometry, both are correct
Beliefs about thoughts are all intuition. What is intuition if not selecting testable hypothesis of np hard
Poppers world's: 1. Material, physical. 2. Mental. 3. Products of human mind.
Internal consistency: godel proved it cannot be proved, but did not disprove it. Platonists seek to prove it eventually. Platonism is a world view that currently cannot be provenctruenor false, like it's alternatives, materialism and reductionism
Invention discovery not diametrically opposed. Galileo invented pendulum clock or realized its possibility to regulate the click, ie discovered. Some things are potential, which we actualise, and invent, by purposeful design.
Left inferior Parietal lobe recognizes 1-4. One part of brain identifies syntax. Other does arithmetic. Third is surprised that these two are different.
Geometric intuition uses Visual systems. Maybe algebra uses language. Synesthesia might combine them.
Difference between brain and computer. Parallel. Low memory. Better at spotting regularities or patterns than irregularities.
Pick out a predator. Error in background needs to have a pattern otherwise we're blind to it
Platonists Vs constructivists in terms of personality, orderliness Vs openness?
To a congenitally blind person, the Mandelbrot would be as good as set of prime numbers
Baconian frequentist, statistical tests and significance values. Objective. Bayesian was subjective and not favoured. Computers changed this. It is now decided because both subjective and objective.
Einstein: it is incomprehensible why the universe is comprehensible to us. High degree of regularity and we identify and describe it through math.
Outstanding mathematicians of history were uncomfortable with things we take for granted, like negative numbers, distributive law. are we smarter, no.
Chemistry would outshine math if we had no eyes but sophisticated smell.
Why are constant values so precise: Resonance of carbon. Carbonaceous chondrites and extremophiles for panspermia of Hoyle. Cosmological constant.
Why does the std model work so well. Aren't particles just theoretical constructs.
General relativity is computationally impotent in designing paperclip or trains. Only Newtonian. Similarly future fundamental theory will have to incorporate standard model as some sort of limit or approximation
No theorem that proves that universe should follow scientific laws
Electrodynamics X Newton mechanics = special relativity. Special X Newton gravity = general relativity
Replace grandfather time travel paradox with electron and photon and it suddenly doesn't feel like a paradox
Mostly I will take away from this book the beautifully compelling idea of pluralism of thought, that is imbibed so beautifully in the way he presents scientific ideas and personalities. I loved how deep his understanding of the views of famous scientists is, with fascinating insight into their personal philosophies that might have driven their theoretical work, and how we tend to reduce scientists to their single biggest idea or unified thread of worldview when in actuality they are complex and pluralistic and holding a variety of world views at different points of their life or in different fields of their life, such that it is intellectually impoverished to seek to overfit all their diverse set of datapoints into a veneer of internal consistency. Wittgeinstein, Einstein on Platonism and Religion, Godel, so many of the most famous thinkers are shown in all their complexity.
His method of argument is similarly beautifully pluralistic (I don't know if the internal consistency of pluralism is a paradox). There’s a section where he mentions Dawkins’ argument against god, that if he must be as complex as the universe he created and therefore is meaningless as a concept, upon which I immediately thought of z=z2+c. A few lines later, he brings up exactly this, but he goes a step further where I had stopped to marvel at my ‘gotcha’. He mentions the opposite case of a trefoil knot that is simple but complex to describe.
Notes
Fabulous knowledge of scientists and their internal contradictions. Wittgenstein. Einsteins Platonism. Godel. Keynes.
Astronomy and mechanics were two very different fields.
Log tables had a great run of 400yrs since John Napier 1585. Sidereal coordinates were similarly tabulated by Kepler. Soon pendulum made tine measurable, now physics could make huge strides.
Scholastic philosophy then mechanical (Newton Kepler Huygens Galilei) then mathematical, that goal is to find the equation, Maxwell. Quantum physics, explanation not equal to understanding.
Newton himself never considered his inductive formulae as logical proofs. Only as stable derivations accepting provisional basis.
Punishing antisocial behaviour despite personal loss is not irrational because it benefits the community.
Pluralism as against cultural relativism where all things are valid, or ontology where one thing is valid, doesn't even say many things are valid but only that as humans we need multiple viewpoints to understand the world. - refine the argument rather than seek to falsify it. How to teach kids pluralistic thinking
Teleonomic just has impression of teleology for useful simplification, like function of an organ. Because you know what I mean.
Newton's laws described motion, they didn't cause it. General relativity
Anthropocentric value systems of teleology in biology. Biological clock. Adrenaline to help animal escape danger. Cancer.
Physics and math and reality not as causative but as stable routines or syntaxes in language. Math has redundancies since numbers can be patterned into a formula, so each number reduces the probability of next number being anything but a few options. But the view that understanding syntax not key to mathematics (stroke victims)
Einsteins weakness was preferring general equation over particular solutions. Ignored black holes whole searching for unified theory. But black holes have taught us more about spacetime than anything else. Unlike Newton
How does natural selection work if time is not real
Why do liquids like water alcohol mercury despite molecular difference all behave like liquids. Imprecise threshold between liquid and gas, or one species and next.
Reductionism seeks to understand, determinism seeks to predict. What's the gap, p/np? Probability Vs statistics?
Free will deniers: if I clone you and put you in two identical rooms, control for everything. Will you say exactly the same things? Infinite regression until ? Ball rolling down sand indentation, what paths. The problem of internal consistency: Sam Harris atheist and free will denier. The virtue of hypocrisy. Pluralism. Euclidian Vs hyperbolic geometry, both are correct
Beliefs about thoughts are all intuition. What is intuition if not selecting testable hypothesis of np hard
Poppers world's: 1. Material, physical. 2. Mental. 3. Products of human mind.
Internal consistency: godel proved it cannot be proved, but did not disprove it. Platonists seek to prove it eventually. Platonism is a world view that currently cannot be provenctruenor false, like it's alternatives, materialism and reductionism
Invention discovery not diametrically opposed. Galileo invented pendulum clock or realized its possibility to regulate the click, ie discovered. Some things are potential, which we actualise, and invent, by purposeful design.
Left inferior Parietal lobe recognizes 1-4. One part of brain identifies syntax. Other does arithmetic. Third is surprised that these two are different.
Geometric intuition uses Visual systems. Maybe algebra uses language. Synesthesia might combine them.
Difference between brain and computer. Parallel. Low memory. Better at spotting regularities or patterns than irregularities.
Pick out a predator. Error in background needs to have a pattern otherwise we're blind to it
Platonists Vs constructivists in terms of personality, orderliness Vs openness?
To a congenitally blind person, the Mandelbrot would be as good as set of prime numbers
Baconian frequentist, statistical tests and significance values. Objective. Bayesian was subjective and not favoured. Computers changed this. It is now decided because both subjective and objective.
Einstein: it is incomprehensible why the universe is comprehensible to us. High degree of regularity and we identify and describe it through math.
Outstanding mathematicians of history were uncomfortable with things we take for granted, like negative numbers, distributive law. are we smarter, no.
Chemistry would outshine math if we had no eyes but sophisticated smell.
Why are constant values so precise: Resonance of carbon. Carbonaceous chondrites and extremophiles for panspermia of Hoyle. Cosmological constant.
Why does the std model work so well. Aren't particles just theoretical constructs.
General relativity is computationally impotent in designing paperclip or trains. Only Newtonian. Similarly future fundamental theory will have to incorporate standard model as some sort of limit or approximation
No theorem that proves that universe should follow scientific laws
Electrodynamics X Newton mechanics = special relativity. Special X Newton gravity = general relativity
Replace grandfather time travel paradox with electron and photon and it suddenly doesn't feel like a paradox
September 15, 2010
One of the best science books of the last few years. Really an outstanding approach...the most open-minded book to tackle science that I've ever read. The only minor flaw is the writing tends to be heavy and subject matter is re-hashed from time to time...other than that, superb.
December 12, 2015
This is a nice overview of where science is at today, and how it got here. Very broad and easy to read.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews