Reality vs. allegory

When I was about twenty, I stumbled upon the book The Dancing Wu-Li Masters by Gary Zukav.  The book provides a non-mathematical introduction to the concepts of quantum mechanics, which is good, I suppose; but then it attempts to tie it to Eastern mysticism, which is troubling to anyone who actually understands the science.

But as a twenty-year-old -- even a twenty-year-old physics major -- I was captivated.  I went from there to Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics, which pushes further into the alleged link between modern physics and the wisdom of the ancients.  In an editorial review of the book, we read:

First published in 1975, The Tao of Physics rode the wave of fascination in exotic East Asian philosophies.  Decades later, it still stands up to scrutiny, explicating not only Eastern philosophies but also how modern physics forces us into conceptions that have remarkable parallels...  (T)he big picture is enough to see the value in them of experiential knowledge, the limits of objectivity, the absence of foundational matter, the interrelation of all things and events, and the fact that process is primary, not things.  Capra finds the same notions in modern physics.

In part, I'm sure my positive reaction to these books was because I was in the middle of actually taking a class in quantum mechanics, and it was, to put not too fine a point on it, really fucking hard.  I had thought of myself all along as quick at math, but the math required for this class was brain-bendingly difficult.  It was a relief to escape into the less rigorous world of Capra and Zukav.

To get a feel for the difference, first read a quote from the Wikipedia article on quantum electrodynamics, chosen because it was one of the easier ones to understand:

(B)eing closed loops, (they) imply the presence of diverging integrals having no mathematical meaning.  To overcome this difficulty, a technique called renormalization has been devised, producing finite results in very close agreement with experiments.  It is important to note that a criterion for theory being meaningful after renormalization is that the number of diverging diagrams is finite.  In this case the theory is said to be renormalizable.  The reason for this is that to get observables renormalized one needs a finite number of constants to maintain the predictive value of the theory untouched.  This is exactly the case of quantum electrodynamics displaying just three diverging diagrams.  This procedure gives observables in very close agreement with experiment as seen, e.g. for electron gyromagnetic ratio.

Compare that to Capra's take on things, in a quote from The Tao of Physics:

Modern physics has thus revealed that every subatomic particle not only performs an energy dance, but also is an energy dance; a pulsating process of creation and destruction.  The dance of Shiva is the dancing universe, the ceaseless flow of energy going through an infinite variety of patterns that melt into one another.  For the modern physicists, then Shiva’s dance is the dance of subatomic matter.  As in Hindu mythology, it is a continual dance of creation and destruction involving the whole cosmos; the basis of all existence and of all natural phenomenon.  Hundreds of years ago, Indian artists created visual images of dancing Shivas in a beautiful series of bronzes.  In our times, physicists have used the most advanced technology to portray the patterns of the cosmic dance.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Arpad Horvath, CERN shiva, CC BY-SA 3.0]

It all sounds nice, doesn't it?  No need for hard words like "renormalization" and "gyromagnetic ratio," no messy mathematics.  Just imagining particles dancing, waving around their four little quantum arms, just like Shiva.

The problem here, though, isn't just laziness; and I've commented on the laziness inherent in the woo-woo movement often enough that I don't need to write about it further.  But there's a second issue, one often overlooked by laypeople, and that is "mistaking analogy for reality."

Okay, I'll go so far as to say that the verbal descriptions of quantum mechanics sound like some of the "everything that happens influences everyone and everything, all the time" stuff from Buddhism and Hinduism -- the interconnectedness of all, a concept that is explained in the beautiful allegory of "Indra's Net:"

Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions.  In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each "eye" of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number.  There hang the jewels, glittering like stars in the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold.  If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number.  Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring. [Francis Cook, Hua-Yen Buddhism, 1977]

But does this mean what some have claimed, that the Hindus discovered the underlying tenets of quantum mechanics millennia ago?

Hardly.  Just because two ideas have some similarities doesn't mean that they are, at their basis, saying the same thing.  You could say that Hinduism has some parallels to quantum mechanics -- parallels that I would argue are accidental, and not really all that persuasive when you dig into them more deeply.  But those parallels don't mean that Hinduism as a whole is true, or that the mystics who devised it were somehow prescient.

In a way, we science teachers are at fault for this, because so many of us teach by analogy.  I did it all the time: antibodies are like cellular trash tags; enzyme/substrate interactions are like keys and locks; the Krebs cycle is like a merry-go-round where two kids get on and two kids get off at each turn.  But hopefully, our analogies are transparent enough that no one comes away with the impression that they are describing what is really happening.  Fortunately, I can say that I never saw a student begin an essay on the Krebs cycle by talking about merry-go-rounds and children.

The line gets blurred, though, when the reality is so odd, and the actual description of it (i.e. the mathematics) so abstruse, that most non-scientists can't really wrap their brain around it.  Then there is a real danger of substituting a metaphor for the truth.  It's not helped by persuasive, charismatic writers like Capra and Zukav, nor the efforts of True Believers to cast the science as supporting their religious ideas, because it helps to prop up their own worldview (you can read an especially egregious example of this here).

After a time in my twenties when I was seduced by pretty allegories, I finally came to the conclusion that the reality was better -- and, in its own way, breathtakingly beautiful (albeit still really fucking hard).  Take the time to learn what the science actually says, and I think you'll find it a damnsight more interesting and elegant than Shiva and Indra and the rest of 'em.  And best of all: it's actually true.

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Reality vs. allegory

Today's topic came to me a couple of days ago while I was watching a new video by one of my favorite YouTubers, Sabine Hossenfelder.

Sabine's channel is called Science Without the Gobbledygook, and is well worth subscribing to.  She's gotten a reputation for calling out people (including her colleagues) for misleading explanations of scientific research aimed at laypeople.  Her contention -- laid out explicitly in the specific video I linked -- is that if you take the actual model of quantum mechanics (which is entirely mathematical) and try to put it into ordinary language, you will always miss the mark, because we don't have unambiguous words to express the reality of the mathematics.  The effect this has is to create in the minds of non-scientists the impression that the science is saying something that it most definitely is not.

It reminded me of when I was about twenty, and I stumbled upon the book The Dancing Wu-Li Masters by Gary Zukav.  This book provides a non-mathematical introduction to the concepts of quantum mechanics, which is good, I suppose; but then it attempts to tie it to Eastern mysticism, which is troubling to anyone who actually understands the science.

But as a twenty-year-old -- even a twenty-year-old physics major -- I was captivated.  I went from there to Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics, which pushes further into the alleged link between modern physics and the wisdom of the ancients.  In an editorial review of the book, we read:

First published in 1975, The Tao of Physics rode the wave of fascination in exotic East Asian philosophies.  Decades later, it still stands up to scrutiny, explicating not only Eastern philosophies but also how modern physics forces us into conceptions that have remarkable parallels...  (T)he big picture is enough to see the value in them of experiential knowledge, the limits of objectivity, the absence of foundational matter, the interrelation of all things and events, and the fact that process is primary, not things. Capra finds the same notions in modern physics.

In part, I'm sure my positive reaction to these books was because I was in the middle of actually taking a class in quantum mechanics, and it was, to put not too fine a point on it, really fucking hard.  I had thought of myself all along as quick at math, but the math required for this class was brain-bendingly difficult.  It was a relief to escape into the less rigorous world of Capra and Zukav.

As a basis for comparison, read a quote from the Wikipedia article on quantum electrodynamics, chosen because it was one of the easier ones to understand:

(B)eing closed loops, (they) imply the presence of diverging integrals having no mathematical meaning.  To overcome this difficulty, a technique called renormalization has been devised, producing finite results in very close agreement with experiments.  It is important to note that a criterion for theory being meaningful after renormalization is that the number of diverging diagrams is finite.  In this case the theory is said to be renormalizable.  The reason for this is that to get observables renormalized one needs a finite number of constants to maintain the predictive value of the theory untouched.  This is exactly the case of quantum electrodynamics displaying just three diverging diagrams.  This procedure gives observables in very close agreement with experiment as seen, e.g. for electron gyromagnetic ratio.

Compare that to Capra's take on things, in a quote from The Tao of Physics:

Modern physics has thus revealed that every subatomic particle not only performs an energy dance, but also is an energy dance; a pulsating process of creation and destruction.  The dance of Shiva is the dancing universe, the ceaseless flow of energy going through an infinite variety of patterns that melt into one another.  For the modern physicists, then Shiva’s dance is the dance of subatomic matter.  As in Hindu mythology, it is a continual dance of creation and destruction involving the whole cosmos; the basis of all existence and of all natural phenomenon.  Hundreds of years ago, Indian artists created visual images of dancing Shivas in a beautiful series of bronzes.  In our times, physicists have used the most advanced technology to portray the patterns of the cosmic dance.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Arpad Horvath, CERN shiva, CC BY-SA 3.0]

It all sounds nice, doesn't it?  No need for hard words like "renormalization" and "gyromagnetic ratio," no abstruse mathematics.  All you have to do is imagine particles dancing, waving around their four little quantum arms, just like Shiva.

The problem here, though, isn't just laziness; and I've commented on the laziness inherent in the woo-woo mindset often enough that I don't need to write about it further.  But there's a second issue, one often overlooked by laypeople, and that is "mistaking analogy for reality."

Okay, I'll go so far as to say that the verbal descriptions of quantum mechanics sound like some of the "everything that happens influences everyone, all the time" stuff from Buddhism and Hinduism -- the interconnectedness of all, a concept that is explained in the beautiful allegory of "Indra's Net" (the version quoted here comes from Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid):

Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions.  In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each "eye" of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number.  There hang the jewels, glittering like stars in the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold.  If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number.  Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring.

But does this mean what some have claimed, that the Hindus discovered the underlying tenets of quantum mechanics millennia ago?

Hardly.  Just because two ideas have some superficial similarities doesn't mean that they are, at their basis, saying the same thing.  You could say that Hinduism has some parallels to quantum mechanics, parallels that I would argue are accidental, and not really all that persuasive when you dig into them more deeply.  Those parallels don't mean that Hinduism as a whole is true, nor that the mystics who devised it somehow knew about submicroscopic physics.

In a way, we science teachers are at fault for this, because so many of us teach by analogy.  I did it all the time: antibodies are like cellular trash tags; enzyme/substrate interactions are like keys and locks; the Krebs cycle is like a merry-go-round where two kids get on at each turn and two kids get off.  But hopefully, our analogies are transparent enough that no one comes away with the impression that they are describing what is really happening.  For example, I never saw a student begin an essay on the Krebs cycle by talking about literal microscopic merry-go-rounds and children.

The line gets blurred, though, when the reality is so odd, and the actual description of it (i.e. the mathematics) so abstruse, that most non-scientists can't really wrap their brains around it.  As Sabine Hossenfelder points out, we might not even have the language to express in words what quantum mechanics is saying mathematically.  Then there is a real danger of substituting a metaphor for the truth.  It's not helped by persuasive, charismatic writers like Capra and Zukav, nor by the efforts of True Believers to cast the science as supporting their religious ideas because it helps to prop up their own worldview (you can read an especially egregious example of this here).

After a time in my twenties when I was seduced by pretty allegories, I finally came to the conclusion that the reality was better -- and, in its own way, breathtakingly beautiful.  Take the time to learn what the science actually says, or at least listen to straight-shooting science vloggers like Sabine Hossenfelder and  Derek Muller (of the amazing YouTube channel Veritasium).  I think you'll find what you'll learn is a damnsight more interesting and elegant than Shiva and Indra and the rest of 'em.  And best of all: it's actually true.

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Congress of lunatics

I don't know if it's reassuring or distressing for me to find out that here in the United States we don't own a monopoly on anti-scientific whackjobs.

I mean, we do have a good many of 'em, there's no doubt of that.  Just counting the young-Earth creationists and the climate change deniers, we're pretty well stocked.  Add to that the people who believe in astrology, phone-in psychics, homeopathy, conspiracy theories, and the latest heinous lies uttered by our alleged commander-in-chief, and you've got a sizable fraction of Americans for whom logic and evidence are not exactly paramount.

So it's easy for me to slip into despair about my countrymen, and accounts for the mixed feelings I had upon reading about last month's annual meeting of the Indian Science Congress, meant to be a gathering of the finest scientific minds across India, where attendees were told a number of eye-opening claims, to wit:

• Einstein's General and Special Theories of Relativity were a "huge blunder."
• Dinosaurs were created by the god Brahma.
• The first in vitro fertilizations of humans were not done in Great Britain in 1977, they were done thousands of years ago in (where else?) India.
• Isaac Newton "didn't really understand gravity" and his Universal Theory of Gravitation is flat-out wrong.
• The first mechanical flight was achieved in (where else?) India, when twenty-four different kinds of aircraft were invented by Ravana, a demon god with ten heads.

If at any point you were expecting me to say, "Okay, I made the last one up," sorry to disappoint you -- these were all genuine claims made, by alleged scientists, at the meeting.

Ravana, inventor of the airplane [Image is in the Public Domain]

And in case I haven't made the point strenuously enough; this was a meeting of, by, and for professional scientists.  To be fair, a lot of the attendees were up in arms that their gathering had been, for all intents and purposes, hijacked by a bunch of superstitious loons.  "We never dreamed that some of them would spout such irrational ideas," zoologist Ashok Saxena said, in an interview with NPR after the fiasco occurred.  "They were invited to speak based on their science credentials."

"It makes me uncomfortable when pseudoscience statements are made from a platform like the Indian Science Congress," said Kushagra Agrawal, senior lecturer in chemical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati.  "The idea of such events is to show the world India's scientific prowess, but it makes me wonder what impression those Nobel laureates and other foreign scientist dignitaries will take from our country."

Indeed.  It's hard to see how any serious scientist wouldn't be appalled at this -- and, very likely, take his contributions to the field elsewhere rather than presenting at an event that had been turned into a Three-Ring-Circus of Superstitious Nonsense.  But it remains to be seen how they could have prevented it.  Previously, there was no requirement by the oversight agency that presenting scientists submit their speeches for review prior to the event; organizers trusted that credentials would assure relevance.

Fortunately, they're not going to make that mistake again.  "We've never censored scientists before," said Indian Science Congress General Secretary Premendu Mathur.  "We expected them to motivate young minds and speak responsibly, but now, each session will have to be closely monitored.  We won't allow others to use our platform for their selfish reasons anymore."

I wish Mathur luck, and certain agree with his aims, but I would like to warn him that the one thing superstitious nutjobs don't do well is shut the hell up.  If you deny them one venue, they'll find another bigger and better one.  Anyone who has the balls to get up in front of a bunch of scientists and say that airplanes were invented by a ten-headed demon god is not going to be dissuaded by a little inconvenience like submitting his speech ahead of time.

So that's today's dip in the deep end, which to my fellow Americans should either be reassuring or not, depending on how you choose to look at it.  Of course, there's a part of me that hopes there is a flaw in the Theory of Relativity, and that the speed of light isn't the universal cosmic speed limit.  Because I really want warp drive to be a thing.  But given that these same people are claiming that dinosaurs were a special creation of the gods, I'm thinking it unlikely that if it is true, these guys will be the ones who will discover it.

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You can't get on social media without running into those "What Star Trek character are you?" and "Click on the color you like best and find out about your personality!" tests, which purport to give you insight into yourself and your unconscious or subconscious traits.  While few of us look at these as any more than the games they are, there's one personality test -- the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which boils you down to where you fall on four scales -- extrovert/introvert, sensing/intuition, thinking/feeling, and judging/perceiving -- that a great many people, including a lot of counselors and psychologists, take seriously.

In The Personality Brokers, author Merve Emre looks not only at the test but how it originated.  It's a fascinating and twisty story of marketing, competing interests, praise, and scathing criticism that led to the mother/daughter team of Katharine Briggs and Isabel Myers developing what is now the most familiar personality inventory in the world.

Emre doesn't shy away from the criticisms, but she is fair and even-handed in her approach.  The Personality Brokers is a fantastic read, especially for anyone interested in psychology, the brain, and the complexity of the human personality.

[If you purchase the book from Amazon using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to supporting Skeptophilia!]

The zero-calorie diet

Today's question is: Is there any claim that is so stupid, so obviously ridiculous, that woo-woos will immediately recognize it is as bullshit?  Or can anything get published on Spirit Science and Metaphysics?

The answer is, unfortunately, that there is apparently no lower threshold for plausibility.  Because this week an article appeared over at SSaM that claims that an Indian "holy man" has not eaten for 75 years, and the majority of the people commenting didn't say, "Nonsense," they said, "Wow!  That's cool!  I'd like to learn how to do that!"

The article tells of Prahlad Jani, who lives in a cave near Ambaji Temple in the Indian state of Gujarat, who says he doesn't eat or drink.  Anything.  Ever.  At the age of seven, Mr. Jani was approached by some Hindu goddesses, who said, basically, "Yo, kid!  Knock it off with the food already!":

Three goddesses appeared to me and bade me to follow. Ma Kali, Ma Lakshmi, and Ma Saraswati.  I consented, prepared myself, and asked: ‘What about my food?’  They each put a finger on my lip and said ‘You need not be concerned about food ever again’.  I was seven, and from that day I stopped eating and drinking. 

How does he manage this?  Because his head makes nectar, or something:

Ever since that blessing, Prahlad Jani claims that he has gained his sustenance from the nectar that filters down through a hole in his palate... 

His claims were scientifically studied by a team of 30 specialists during three weeks of a variety of tests at a hospital. 

They took him into then Sterling Hospital in Ahmedabad, India.  They put him under 24 hour observation in front of cameras and found out that he did not take any kind of food or water in the 15 days that he was in hospital.  No food or water for half that time would be a sure death for anybody else.  And he did not pass urine or stool either. 

The doctors were completely surprised at this miracle.  “We believe that the sadhu Prahlad Jani’s body went through biological transformation as a result of meditation and powerful yoga in a completely natural environment that he stays,” said neurologist Dr. Sudhir Shah. 

The doctors in India are guessing that this phenomenon relates the Amrita Chakra (third eye chakra), as Hindu vedas speak of it being able to produce a divine nectar which sustains life.

Righty-o.  Let's let James Randi watch him for fifteen days, and I'm sure we'll find out that Mr. Jani is slipping out periodically for a cheeseburger and a large Coke.  And, I might add, making the normal number of trips to the bathroom.

And it wouldn't be a SSaM article if they didn't append to it a goofy quasi-scientific explanation for the whole thing:

This sounds crazy, but let’s think about it for a minute.  What do we need from food?  The minerals, which are made out of molecules, which are made out of atoms, which are made out of quarks, which are made out of superstrings, which is ultimately part of the Unified Field or Superstring Field. 

At a fundamental level of nature, nutrition is really just vibrating strings of non-local energy.  Could he somehow be receiving this information somehow without the need to physically ingest food?

Of course!  When I eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, it's so I can get my recommended daily allowance of superstrings!

If that explanation is correct, you have to wonder why people can't survive eating other stuff.  Rocks, for instance.  Rocks are, last time I looked into the question, made of minerals, which are made of molecules, which are made of atoms, which are made of quarks, etc.  And yet you don't see people noshing on chunks of granite.

I wonder why that is?

So here we have a claim that is obviously absurd.  And not only does it get published in SSaM... people believe it.  Here's a sampler of comments that appeared on the article.  Spelling and grammar are as written, because I got tired of writing [sic] every other word.

anything is possible to an enlightened person who clears their whole system of toxins and repels all negativity from there mind!!  To the ones who say bollocks,get off yr arse and do sum hard research insted of living your closed minded life! 

it's definitely real life possible... just not entirely necessary... it's a free world afterall... own self-imagery... 

Look up Sun Gazing.  It is said that if you stare at the sunrise or sunset with your bare feet on the ground for a few minutes a day for a year then you won't have to eat again.  I would love to try that theory but we have busy lifestyles that have nothing to do with nature.  Also, look up earthing!  When your bare feet are touching the ground, electrons pass through your feet and help heal and give you energy.  Maybe that's why most "primitive" cultures were always barefoot or wore shoes that were conductive to the earth.  It's not far fetched even though it sounds completely off the charts but you have to have a completely different mindset similar to an employee mentality compared to a business owner mentality.  An employee mind will say how much does it cost, a business owner will say how much will it make me.  Same subject, different perspective.  Anything is possible with the power of the mind! 

Also, this is why animals dig a hole when they are sick.  They lay in the hole to feel better although sometimes its just their time. 

I have met sadhus who can stop their heart or at least limit their pulse to 1 or 2 per minute.  Yoga and meditation is beyond the scope of biology yet.  Its an ancient art that should not be just ridiculed.  Science is yet to discover it yet.  A human in 1800's would have called todays' technology bogus or we can say it must have been beyond his scope of imagination or understanding.  We must look at it with a broad mind, although it may seem fake now but we might discover the science behind it after 50 years or so.

 I have only one response to all of this, which is:

*headdesk headdesk headdesk*

I think if I never hear the whole "science didn't know about X a hundred years ago, therefore anything is possible" argument ever again, it'll still be too soon.  Can we all, just once, apply a little logic, a little critical thinking, maybe one single fucking demand for scientifically acceptable hard evidence here?

*pant pant gasp*

The answer, apparently, is "No."  That's being "closed minded."  That's "ridiculing an ancient art."  That's calling "electrons passing through your feet and giving you energy" what it actually is, which is "being electrocuted."

Okay, I know SSaM exists as clickbait, for the sole reason that it makes money for them and their sponsors and advertisers.  I get that.  What I don't get is that there are people who apparently swallow everything that sites like that publish.  This goes beyond being credulous; this is taking the entire canon of scientific rationalism and throwing it out of the window.

So that's our excursion into the ether for today.  I hope you derived lots of nourishing quarks from reading this.  Me, I'm off to fix myself some bacon and eggs.  Unless I get visited on the way by three Hindu goddesses.  Which, I have to admit, would save me a lot of money and trips to the grocery store.

Blocking the light

I'm not sure if it's troubling or reassuring that the United States isn't the only industrialized country who has problems with superstitious, hyperreligious wingnuts.

Over here, of course, it's usually about the fact that you can't say anything about evolution without it blowing up in your face.  The issue has become so contentious that a lot of politicians, especially those who are courting conservative voters, won't even go there.  Witness Wisconsin governor Scott Walker's response when someone at a question-and-answer session a couple of weeks ago asked him if he accepted evolution.

"For me, I'm going to punt on that one as well," Walker said.  "That's a question a politician shouldn't be involved in one way or the other.  So I'm going to leave that one up to you."

Saying that "a politician shouldn't be involved" in a discussion about science is diametrically opposed to good sense.  It's the anti-science sentiment that is rampant in the U.S. that has kept us in this mess over climate change, for example.  But Walker's response is disingenuous at best; even if he does accept evolution, he's afraid to say so for fear of alienating his religious voter base.

Other countries have been facing the same sort of thing, and have responded differently.  France has, for example, outlawed the hijab; women can face a 150 euro fine for being in public with a face veil, and possibly be forced to take "citizenship instruction" as well.  This has prompted half the country to laud the Sarkozy government's ruling for supporting French culture, and the other half to cry out against its legislating intolerance and über-nationalism.

Britain is having its problems, too.  Christianity has been on the decline in the UK for some time now; Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Great Britain, went on record all the way back in 2001 as saying that "Christianity is almost vanquished in the UK."  Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, agrees, and said last year that "Britain is no longer a nation of believers...  We are a post-Christian nation."

Post-Christian, however, doesn't mean irreligious.  Immigrants now form the most religious sector in both France and Great Britain.  And as France found out, this means that the powers-that-be have to figure out how to respond to demands for acceptance and tolerance of all sorts of beliefs that we less-religious folks find pretty mystifying.  This is what led to the decision by a school in Southall, a suburb of London, to deny schoolchildren the opportunity to see yesterday's total solar eclipse, citing unspecified "religious and cultural reasons" for doing so.

Most people who are knowledgeable about the situation think this was out of deference to the school's large Hindu population.  Many devout Hindus apparently believe that seeing an eclipse makes you impure, and that the only way to combat this is to "bathe immediately after an eclipse and chant the name of god in order to overcome the powers of darkness."

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Okay, I recognize my bias here.  But really, people, what century are we in?  A couple of days ago, I wrote about the contingent here in the United States who believe that the eclipse is a portent of the End Times.  Now we have a different bunch who think that the purely mechanical movements of the Sun, Moon, and Earth result in your having to take a shower and do a little chanting so you won't be "unclean."  I'm all for letting people believe what they want, but denying an entire school the opportunity to see a rare astronomical phenomenon because some of them believe in what is (let's be honest, here) a ridiculous superstition is taking political correctness too far.  It's blocking the light in an entirely different way.

And there were some parents who agreed.  Vehemently.  The Evening Standard interviewed Phil Belman, whose seven-year-old daughter attends the school.  Belman said:  "My child went in having spent an hour preparing and making up her pinhole camera.  This is an issue about scientific matters versus religious superstition.  I am outraged - is it going to be Darwin next? We will be like mid America."

Did any of my fellow Americans wince just now?  That's how the rest of the rationalistic, science-accepting world sees us.  If you're a superstitious wingnut, you're "like mid America."

So like I said, I've always been a pretty live-and-let-live kind of guy.  But at some point, don't we need to start calling out goofy superstitions for what they are?  No, I'm sorry, your belief that 666 is an evil number doesn't mean that you will be allowed to flout company policy.  You can't sue someone for calling creationism "superstitious nonsense," because that is, in fact, what it is.  No, you can't expect an employer to hire you even if you don't want to work on Sunday.

And for cryin' in the sink, you shouldn't deny kids the right to learn some astronomy because some of them will want to rid themselves of unclean forces of darkness afterwards.  The appropriate response is, "I'm sorry you believe that, but this is science.  Bathe when you get home.  And when you're a little older, you might want to have a chat with your parents about what possible evidence they have that these beliefs are true."

Reality vs. allegory

When I was about twenty, I stumbled upon the book The Dancing Wu-Li Masters by Gary Zukav.  The book provides a non-mathematical introduction to the concepts of quantum mechanics, which is good, I suppose; but then it attempts to tie it to Eastern mysticism, which is troubling to anyone who actually understands the science.

But as a twenty-year-old -- even a twenty-year-old physics major -- I was captivated.  I went from there to Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics, which pushes further into the alleged link between modern physics and the wisdom of the ancients.  In an editorial review of the book, we read:

First published in 1975, The Tao of Physics rode the wave of fascination in exotic East Asian philosophies. Decades later, it still stands up to scrutiny, explicating not only Eastern philosophies but also how modern physics forces us into conceptions that have remarkable parallels...  (T)he big picture is enough to see the value in them of experiential knowledge, the limits of objectivity, the absence of foundational matter, the interrelation of all things and events, and the fact that process is primary, not things.  Capra finds the same notions in modern physics.

In part, I'm sure my positive reaction to these books was because I was in the middle of actually taking a class in quantum mechanics, and it was, to put not too fine a point on it, freakin' hard.  I had thought of myself all along as quick at math, but the math required for this class was brain-bendingly difficult.  It was a relief to escape into the less rigorous world of Capra and Zukav.

Read a quote from an article on quantum electrodynamics, chosen because it was one of the easier ones to understand:

(B)eing closed loops, (they) imply the presence of diverging integrals having no mathematical meaning.  To overcome this difficulty, a technique called renormalization has been devised, producing finite results in very close agreement with experiments. It is important to note that a criterion for theory being meaningful after renormalization is that the number of diverging diagrams is finite.  In this case the theory is said to be renormalizable.  The reason for this is that to get observables renormalized one needs a finite number of constants to maintain the predictive value of the theory untouched.  This is exactly the case of quantum electrodynamics displaying just three diverging diagrams.  This procedure gives observables in very close agreement with experiment as seen, e.g. for electron gyromagnetic ratio.

Compare that to Capra's take on things, in a quote from The Tao of Physics:

Modern physics has thus revealed that every subatomic particle not only performs an energy dance, but also is an energy dance; a pulsating process of creation and destruction.  The dance of Shiva is the dancing universe, the ceaseless flow of energy going through an infinite variety of patterns that melt into one another.  For the modern physicists, then Shiva’s dance is the dance of subatomic matter.  As in Hindu mythology, it is a continual dance of creation and destruction involving the whole cosmos; the basis of all existence and of all natural phenomenon.  Hundreds of years ago, Indian artists created visual images of dancing Shivas in a beautiful series of bronzes.  In our times, physicists have used the most advanced technology to portray the patterns of the cosmic dance.

[image courtesy of photographer Arvad Horpath and the Wikimedia Commons]

It all sounds nice, doesn't it?  No need for hard words like "renormalization" and "gyromagnetic ratio," no messy mathematics.  Just imagining particles dancing, waving around their four little quantum arms, just like Shiva.

The problem here, though, isn't just laziness; and I've commented on the laziness inherent in the woo-woo movement often enough that I don't need to write about it further.  But there's a second issue, one often overlooked by laypeople, and that is "mistaking analogy for reality."

Okay, I'll go so far as to say that the verbal descriptions of quantum mechanics sound like some of the "everything that happens influences everyone, all the time" stuff from Buddhism and Hinduism -- the interconnectedness of all, a concept that is explained in the beautiful allegory of "Indra's Net:"

Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions.  In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each "eye" of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number.  There hang the jewels, glittering like stars in the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold.  If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number.  Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring.

But does this mean what some have claimed, that the Hindus discovered the underlying tenets of quantum mechanics millennia ago?

Hardly.  Just because two ideas have some similarities doesn't mean that they are, at their basis, saying the same thing.  You could say that Hinduism has some parallels to quantum mechanics -- parallels that I would argue are accidental, and not really all that persuasive when you dig into them more deeply.  But those parallels don't mean that Hinduism as a whole is true, or that the mystics who devised it were somehow prescient.

In a way, we science teachers are at fault for this, because so many of us teach by analogy.  I do it all the time: antibodies are like cellular trash tags; enzyme/substrate interactions are like keys and locks; the Krebs cycle is like a merry-go-round where two kids get on at each turn and two kids get off.  And hopefully, our analogies are transparent enough that no one comes away with the impression that they are describing what is really happening.  I have yet to see a student begin an essay on the Krebs cycle by talking about merry-go-rounds and children.

The line gets blurred, though, when the reality is so odd, and the actual description of it (i.e. the mathematics) so abstruse, that most non-scientists can't really wrap their brain around it.  Then there is a real danger of substituting a metaphor for the truth.  It's not helped by persuasive, charismatic writers like Capra and Zukav, nor the efforts of True Believers to cast the science as supporting their religious ideas, because it helps to prop up their own worldview (you can read an especially egregious example of this here).

After a time in my twenties when I was seduced by pretty allegories, I finally came to the conclusion that the reality was better -- and, in its own way, breathtakingly beautiful.  Take the time to learn what the science actually says, and I think you'll find it a damnsight more interesting and elegant than Shiva and Indra and the rest of 'em.  And best of all: it's actually true.