WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.920 Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon and welcome to this session of the Festival of Ideas. 2 00:00:06.580 --> 00:00:10.680 My name is Paul Davies and I'm here to just chair this occasion. 3 00:00:11.320 --> 00:00:14.660 So I'm not going to say very much except the usual housekeeping things, 4 00:00:14.800 --> 00:00:17.560 which is, first of all, please switch off your mobile phones. 5 00:00:18.520 --> 00:00:23.480 Secondly, I gather you've got some sort of feedback type questionnaire on your seats 6 00:00:23.480 --> 00:00:27.960 and we'd appreciate it if you could find time to complete that before you leave. 7 00:00:27.960 --> 00:00:34.980 And we have to finish on the dot at 2.45, so I'd like to move things right along. 8 00:00:35.980 --> 00:00:42.160 Margaret is planning to talk for about 40 minutes and then to take questions from the floor. 9 00:00:42.420 --> 00:00:46.800 And I see a microphone there. I don't see any others. 10 00:00:47.240 --> 00:00:51.200 So when it comes to question time, I'll pop up again and field those. 11 00:00:51.340 --> 00:00:56.360 But please do keep your questions short and to the point, 12 00:00:56.380 --> 00:00:57.420 because we inevitably... 13 00:00:57.960 --> 00:01:05.620 We discourage rambling discourses in the interests of other people who'd like to ask questions. 14 00:01:07.760 --> 00:01:10.420 Margaret Wertheim is a remarkable person. 15 00:01:10.540 --> 00:01:14.440 Her background is physics, mathematics and computing. 16 00:01:15.480 --> 00:01:19.760 But for many years she's had experience as a writer and broadcaster. 17 00:01:20.000 --> 00:01:27.940 And the word broadcaster applies not only to devising and producing questions, 18 00:01:27.960 --> 00:01:30.580 TV series, but also presenting. 19 00:01:31.020 --> 00:01:33.380 And this is an extraordinary mix of skills. 20 00:01:34.400 --> 00:01:39.280 It's a mix of skills that is very rare at any level. 21 00:01:39.380 --> 00:01:43.640 But at the intellectual level that Margaret brings to bear upon the subject matter, 22 00:01:43.760 --> 00:01:46.920 it is pretty much unique, I think. 23 00:01:47.020 --> 00:01:52.100 And we're enormously privileged in having her with us today to share her ideas. 24 00:01:52.920 --> 00:01:56.260 She's covered a variety of topics in her career. 25 00:01:57.960 --> 00:02:03.780 but one of the recent subjects that she's come to consider in great depth, 26 00:02:03.860 --> 00:02:07.280 both historically and scientifically, is the nature of space. 27 00:02:08.280 --> 00:02:14.560 And what I have neglected to do is to write down the actual title of this particular address, 28 00:02:14.660 --> 00:02:15.640 but I have found it here. 29 00:02:17.180 --> 00:02:20.720 The title of this presentation this afternoon is 30 00:02:20.720 --> 00:02:24.900 The Rise of Science, The Birth of Space, and The Loss of Soul. 31 00:02:25.200 --> 00:02:27.380 What an extraordinary collection of topics, 32 00:02:27.380 --> 00:02:30.040 and we very much look forward to hearing what Margaret has to say. 33 00:02:30.120 --> 00:02:30.500 Thank you. 34 00:02:38.740 --> 00:02:42.460 Thank you. It is a real honour to be invited here. 35 00:02:42.680 --> 00:02:46.960 And I guess, following on from what Paul said, 36 00:02:47.020 --> 00:02:48.860 I'm the only one that gets to ramble on today. 37 00:02:49.160 --> 00:02:53.340 But I will try to keep the ramble to about 40 minutes 38 00:02:53.340 --> 00:02:57.360 because I'd very much like to leave time to have a discussion, 39 00:02:57.380 --> 00:02:58.340 with you all. 40 00:02:58.460 --> 00:03:02.200 So I'm going to take off my watch here and have it firmly in front of me 41 00:03:02.200 --> 00:03:06.260 so that I can make sure that we do leave time for that. 42 00:03:07.860 --> 00:03:13.780 I'm particularly honoured to be giving this talk today with Paul as the MC 43 00:03:14.680 --> 00:03:21.940 because Paul himself has coined what I think is a really, really fabulous term 44 00:03:21.940 --> 00:03:24.860 for something that we have come to in science today. 45 00:03:26.200 --> 00:03:27.360 Scientists are on the run. 46 00:03:27.380 --> 00:03:30.140 Physicists, I should say, are on the verge, they hope, 47 00:03:30.200 --> 00:03:35.180 of very soon having a unified theory of all of the fundamental forces 48 00:03:35.180 --> 00:03:36.960 and particles of nature. 49 00:03:37.920 --> 00:03:41.440 And within this theory, one way of understanding it 50 00:03:41.440 --> 00:03:44.600 is that we live in an 11-dimensional universe 51 00:03:44.600 --> 00:03:49.480 in which everything that is, the matter, all of the matter, 52 00:03:49.560 --> 00:03:52.220 and all of the fundamental forces and all the energy in the universe, 53 00:03:52.400 --> 00:03:56.880 can in a sense be understood as simply a by-product 54 00:03:56.880 --> 00:03:57.360 of the universe. 55 00:03:57.380 --> 00:04:00.700 And that this is the underlying folding up, or if you like, 56 00:04:00.780 --> 00:04:04.060 geometric structure of this 11-dimensional space. 57 00:04:04.560 --> 00:04:07.660 And that this space will become, in a sense, 58 00:04:07.820 --> 00:04:11.440 the fundamental thing of reality of which all other things, 59 00:04:11.540 --> 00:04:13.060 all matter and energy and forces, 60 00:04:13.320 --> 00:04:17.340 become, in a sense, by-products of the space itself. 61 00:04:17.820 --> 00:04:20.400 And in one of his books, I have to say I forget which one, 62 00:04:20.620 --> 00:04:23.940 Paul coined a very beautiful way of describing this. 63 00:04:24.020 --> 00:04:26.600 He said that in this view of the world, 64 00:04:26.600 --> 00:04:29.500 that we would have to see the universe as ultimately nothing 65 00:04:29.500 --> 00:04:31.200 but structured nothingness. 66 00:04:31.540 --> 00:04:37.240 And I think that's an immensely apt and extremely poetic way of looking at it. 67 00:04:37.360 --> 00:04:41.020 And it is a truly extraordinary way of seeing the world. 68 00:04:41.160 --> 00:04:46.360 And I'm going to talk about that in more detail a bit later on in the talk. 69 00:04:47.520 --> 00:04:50.540 But I just wanted to sort of let you know where we're going, 70 00:04:50.620 --> 00:04:54.220 that ultimately I want to get to the point of talking more about this concept 71 00:04:54.220 --> 00:04:56.580 that we have come to of living in the universe. 72 00:04:56.580 --> 00:04:58.380 In the universe of structured nothingness, 73 00:04:58.380 --> 00:05:02.880 where space itself becomes the fundamental substrate and being of all reality. 74 00:05:03.980 --> 00:05:10.460 I also want to explore in this talk how there have been some psychological, 75 00:05:11.620 --> 00:05:17.660 theological and philosophical consequences of this way of seeing 76 00:05:18.340 --> 00:05:25.560 that I think presents us with some very deep questions that we need to think about in our culture. 77 00:05:25.660 --> 00:05:26.560 And I think that's a very important point. 78 00:05:26.580 --> 00:05:29.420 It is one of those extraordinary subjects, I believe, the history of space, 79 00:05:29.700 --> 00:05:33.560 where what we see is that science is not something that happens in a vacuum, 80 00:05:33.640 --> 00:05:38.500 but actually is very much related to wider cultural and social themes. 81 00:05:38.740 --> 00:05:41.680 And that space, for all its sort of ephemerality, 82 00:05:41.920 --> 00:05:45.460 is one of the most tangible places and subjects, I think, 83 00:05:45.460 --> 00:05:49.460 in which we can see the interaction between science and the wider culture. 84 00:05:50.560 --> 00:05:53.400 Before I get to where we are today, 85 00:05:53.820 --> 00:05:56.560 I'd like, however, to take you back a little bit to the past. 86 00:05:56.580 --> 00:05:57.540 A little bit in history, 87 00:05:57.820 --> 00:06:00.180 because I think in order to understand the extraordinary nature 88 00:06:00.180 --> 00:06:02.960 of physicists' conception of space today, 89 00:06:03.300 --> 00:06:06.240 that we have to have some understanding of what came before, 90 00:06:06.580 --> 00:06:08.240 and how this picture arose. 91 00:06:08.960 --> 00:06:12.300 So, where Stephen Hawking presents a brief history of time, 92 00:06:12.600 --> 00:06:16.520 what I want to do is give you very much today a brief history of space, 93 00:06:16.700 --> 00:06:17.920 and I will try to keep it brief. 94 00:06:19.140 --> 00:06:22.860 One could, of course, start a history of space anywhere at all. 95 00:06:23.500 --> 00:06:25.420 I choose today, 96 00:06:25.420 --> 00:06:27.120 and as I do in my book, 97 00:06:27.200 --> 00:06:28.540 to start with the medieval period. 98 00:06:28.820 --> 00:06:32.220 And the reason that I do that is because the medieval period 99 00:06:32.220 --> 00:06:35.700 was a time when we did have a radically other spatial scheme 100 00:06:35.700 --> 00:06:37.400 before the rise of modern science. 101 00:06:37.600 --> 00:06:41.340 And it's a spatial scheme that, in fact, lasted for a good 1500 years. 102 00:06:41.640 --> 00:06:44.460 So it was one that the finest minds of the Western world 103 00:06:44.460 --> 00:06:48.960 found very appealing and very intellectually and emotionally satisfying 104 00:06:48.960 --> 00:06:50.100 for a very long time. 105 00:06:50.660 --> 00:06:53.560 So I'd like to start in the Middle Ages, 106 00:06:53.660 --> 00:06:55.400 and then trace the development of the Middle Ages, 107 00:06:55.420 --> 00:06:57.620 and the development of the modern scientific conceptions of space 108 00:06:57.620 --> 00:07:00.180 from the Middle Ages up to today, 109 00:07:00.320 --> 00:07:01.620 the physicists' view today. 110 00:07:03.160 --> 00:07:04.920 In the medieval period, 111 00:07:05.320 --> 00:07:09.400 Europeans had an extremely different concept of the spatial scheme 112 00:07:09.400 --> 00:07:11.300 in which they believed humanity was embedded 113 00:07:11.300 --> 00:07:12.880 than the one that we have today. 114 00:07:13.460 --> 00:07:14.980 The most obvious example, 115 00:07:15.140 --> 00:07:17.020 the most obvious manifestation of this 116 00:07:17.020 --> 00:07:20.440 is that medieval Europeans believed that they lived 117 00:07:20.440 --> 00:07:22.080 at the centre of the universe. 118 00:07:22.160 --> 00:07:23.520 The Earth was at the centre, 119 00:07:23.520 --> 00:07:26.000 surrounded by the ten celestial spheres 120 00:07:26.000 --> 00:07:29.620 that were believed to carry the sun, the moon, the planets and the stars 121 00:07:29.620 --> 00:07:31.400 revolving around us. 122 00:07:31.800 --> 00:07:34.680 And that geocentric cosmology 123 00:07:34.680 --> 00:07:38.420 was described by the Aristotelian science of the day, 124 00:07:38.500 --> 00:07:41.340 which obviously the medievals had inherited from the Greeks. 125 00:07:41.420 --> 00:07:44.580 So they had their own science, their own physical cosmology 126 00:07:44.580 --> 00:07:48.280 to understand this physical space in which they believed they lived. 127 00:07:49.120 --> 00:07:51.660 A critical aspect of this, however, 128 00:07:51.720 --> 00:07:53.460 was that they believed that 129 00:07:53.460 --> 00:07:55.120 physical space was finite. 130 00:07:56.240 --> 00:07:59.040 Medieval people believed that at the outermost sphere, 131 00:07:59.120 --> 00:07:59.840 the tenth sphere, 132 00:08:00.080 --> 00:08:01.840 which was called the premium mobile 133 00:08:01.840 --> 00:08:03.620 and which was the sphere that was responsible 134 00:08:03.620 --> 00:08:06.000 for imparting the motion 135 00:08:06.000 --> 00:08:09.100 to the inner spheres of the planets and stars beneath it, 136 00:08:09.440 --> 00:08:12.480 medieval people believed that space and time 137 00:08:12.480 --> 00:08:15.220 literally stopped at this outermost sphere. 138 00:08:15.520 --> 00:08:19.220 So physical space in their cosmology was finite. 139 00:08:19.540 --> 00:08:22.400 And it actually occupied, it was a fairly small space. 140 00:08:22.400 --> 00:08:23.880 They believed we were at the centre of the Earth 141 00:08:23.880 --> 00:08:27.160 and all these spheres around us. 142 00:08:27.180 --> 00:08:29.700 It was actually a fairly small and compact universe. 143 00:08:31.580 --> 00:08:34.220 And what this enabled them to believe 144 00:08:34.220 --> 00:08:36.920 was because physical space was finite, 145 00:08:37.000 --> 00:08:40.140 there was, so to speak, metaphorically speaking, 146 00:08:40.400 --> 00:08:44.280 plenty of room left for some other kind of space to be. 147 00:08:44.640 --> 00:08:47.980 Now, they believed that physical space stopped at the outermost sphere, 148 00:08:48.040 --> 00:08:49.580 so it wasn't if you went beyond it 149 00:08:49.580 --> 00:08:52.380 that you would actually sort of physically go in. 150 00:08:52.400 --> 00:08:52.860 It wasn't if you went anywhere else. 151 00:08:53.280 --> 00:08:55.860 That was the end of space per se. 152 00:08:56.280 --> 00:08:59.460 But they did believe that beyond this physical space 153 00:08:59.460 --> 00:09:01.500 there was another kind of space, 154 00:09:01.740 --> 00:09:04.280 and that was the space of the Christian soul, 155 00:09:04.540 --> 00:09:08.760 what was often on medieval maps depicted as heaven. 156 00:09:08.940 --> 00:09:10.580 So if you look on medieval maps, 157 00:09:10.680 --> 00:09:11.740 you see the Earth at the centre, 158 00:09:11.900 --> 00:09:14.100 the circles of the sun, the moon, the planets and stars, 159 00:09:14.260 --> 00:09:15.120 the premium mobile, 160 00:09:15.360 --> 00:09:18.920 and beyond that it usually says the imperium heaven of God. 161 00:09:19.260 --> 00:09:21.620 And medieval people believed that, 162 00:09:22.400 --> 00:09:23.560 because physical space was finite, 163 00:09:23.900 --> 00:09:26.740 there was in a sense an infinite room left 164 00:09:27.400 --> 00:09:29.020 for there to be another kind of space, 165 00:09:29.260 --> 00:09:31.720 which was, as I said, the space of the Christian soul. 166 00:09:31.980 --> 00:09:34.980 And interestingly, the realm of the Christian soul 167 00:09:34.980 --> 00:09:37.680 had its own very complex geography, 168 00:09:38.160 --> 00:09:40.240 which is most beautifully described for us 169 00:09:40.240 --> 00:09:41.740 in the Divine Comedy of Dante, 170 00:09:42.100 --> 00:09:43.880 where we have the great journey 171 00:09:43.880 --> 00:09:48.020 through the three major kingdoms of the Christian soul space, 172 00:09:48.240 --> 00:09:52.240 which is the journey through, first of all, hell, 173 00:09:52.400 --> 00:09:53.920 then inferno, then up Mount Purgatory, 174 00:09:54.000 --> 00:09:55.460 and into the heavens. 175 00:09:55.940 --> 00:09:57.900 So for medieval people, 176 00:09:58.180 --> 00:10:00.460 this space of the Christian soul 177 00:10:00.460 --> 00:10:03.080 was in a very real way for them 178 00:10:03.080 --> 00:10:05.680 another plane, another space of being. 179 00:10:05.940 --> 00:10:08.360 So basically medieval people believed 180 00:10:08.360 --> 00:10:10.180 that there were two spaces of being. 181 00:10:10.480 --> 00:10:12.220 There was the space of the body, 182 00:10:12.340 --> 00:10:13.440 the material world, 183 00:10:13.680 --> 00:10:15.560 and then there was the space of the soul, 184 00:10:15.720 --> 00:10:17.400 which was an immaterial world. 185 00:10:17.640 --> 00:10:20.420 And they believed that these two spaces of being 186 00:10:20.420 --> 00:10:22.320 were the two fundamental aspects 187 00:10:22.400 --> 00:10:22.940 of reality. 188 00:10:23.320 --> 00:10:25.100 And indeed for them, 189 00:10:25.140 --> 00:10:27.740 the immaterial realm of the Christian soul 190 00:10:27.740 --> 00:10:29.600 was seen as the primary reality, 191 00:10:29.880 --> 00:10:32.120 and they believed that the physical realm 192 00:10:32.120 --> 00:10:34.540 of the earth and mankind 193 00:10:35.240 --> 00:10:36.620 as a physical being 194 00:10:36.620 --> 00:10:40.080 was a secondary and indeed rather pale reflection 195 00:10:40.080 --> 00:10:42.460 of the realm of the Christian soul, 196 00:10:42.660 --> 00:10:45.620 which was for them the true and primary reality. 197 00:10:46.040 --> 00:10:47.600 And it was that reality 198 00:10:48.400 --> 00:10:51.020 that was primarily depicted in medieval art. 199 00:10:51.020 --> 00:10:54.400 Most medieval, early medieval art I should say, 200 00:10:54.520 --> 00:10:57.120 was not concerned with trying to portray 201 00:10:57.120 --> 00:10:59.540 what we would think of as the reality 202 00:10:59.540 --> 00:11:01.840 of physical bodies here on earth. 203 00:11:02.040 --> 00:11:03.740 What most medieval art, 204 00:11:03.860 --> 00:11:05.460 at least in its early phase, was about, 205 00:11:05.580 --> 00:11:07.500 was trying to depict 206 00:11:08.020 --> 00:11:10.180 the Christian soul in heaven. 207 00:11:10.320 --> 00:11:12.820 So you get the iconic gold backgrounds 208 00:11:12.820 --> 00:11:15.160 or sometimes iconic blue backgrounds, 209 00:11:15.360 --> 00:11:17.120 which are meant to be signifying 210 00:11:17.120 --> 00:11:19.380 the mystery of heaven. 211 00:11:19.800 --> 00:11:21.000 And in medieval art, 212 00:11:21.020 --> 00:11:22.020 early medieval paintings, 213 00:11:22.140 --> 00:11:23.480 you see that figures are often painted 214 00:11:23.480 --> 00:11:24.360 at different scales. 215 00:11:24.460 --> 00:11:27.600 So Christ will usually be the biggest figure in the picture, 216 00:11:27.760 --> 00:11:29.420 angels will be smaller still, 217 00:11:29.560 --> 00:11:31.960 and ordinary men and women will be the smallest of all. 218 00:11:32.160 --> 00:11:34.200 And this is not because they were sort of childish 219 00:11:34.200 --> 00:11:36.560 or immature or couldn't see the world around them. 220 00:11:36.580 --> 00:11:38.460 It was because what they were trying to do 221 00:11:38.460 --> 00:11:41.840 was represent the relationships 222 00:11:41.840 --> 00:11:44.160 of those individual beings 223 00:11:44.160 --> 00:11:46.040 to each other in spiritual terms. 224 00:11:46.100 --> 00:11:47.620 So Christ being, you know, 225 00:11:47.640 --> 00:11:51.000 the leader of the Christian church, 226 00:11:51.000 --> 00:11:52.840 at the time Catholic only, 227 00:11:53.060 --> 00:11:54.940 was portrayed as the biggest figure 228 00:11:54.940 --> 00:11:57.980 because he was the one of greatest spiritual stature. 229 00:11:58.780 --> 00:12:00.120 So for medieval people, 230 00:12:00.200 --> 00:12:02.300 it was this primary reality of the Christian soul 231 00:12:02.300 --> 00:12:03.320 that they were, 232 00:12:03.540 --> 00:12:06.360 that most of their thinking was focused on. 233 00:12:07.480 --> 00:12:09.540 And they acknowledged, really, 234 00:12:09.640 --> 00:12:11.840 that man as a dualistic being, 235 00:12:11.900 --> 00:12:13.580 as a being of body and spirit, 236 00:12:13.660 --> 00:12:15.760 that each of those aspects of man 237 00:12:15.760 --> 00:12:17.840 needed its own theatre of action, 238 00:12:17.900 --> 00:12:20.000 literally its own space of being. 239 00:12:21.320 --> 00:12:23.920 But the Western world began to go through 240 00:12:23.920 --> 00:12:26.980 a shift in its conceiving of its place, 241 00:12:27.080 --> 00:12:29.060 of mankind's place in the world, 242 00:12:29.200 --> 00:12:32.260 in around about the 14th century 243 00:12:32.260 --> 00:12:34.400 is when we see this shift taking place. 244 00:12:34.860 --> 00:12:38.060 And initially, it doesn't take place in science, 245 00:12:38.080 --> 00:12:39.920 but actually in art. 246 00:12:40.540 --> 00:12:41.600 And what we, 247 00:12:41.760 --> 00:12:44.720 the place where we really see this shift 248 00:12:44.720 --> 00:12:46.400 coming into being first 249 00:12:47.000 --> 00:12:49.500 is in a radical shift in painting, 250 00:12:49.640 --> 00:12:50.980 where no longer do we have 251 00:12:51.000 --> 00:12:53.260 the iconic representation 252 00:12:53.260 --> 00:12:55.380 of the spiritual stature of people 253 00:12:55.380 --> 00:12:57.880 against iconic gold and blue backgrounds. 254 00:12:58.140 --> 00:12:59.780 In the early 14th century, 255 00:12:59.860 --> 00:13:01.540 particularly with the painting of Giotto, 256 00:13:01.700 --> 00:13:03.460 we begin to see this concern 257 00:13:03.460 --> 00:13:05.560 with what we would now call realism, 258 00:13:05.840 --> 00:13:09.780 a desire to portray realistically 259 00:13:10.560 --> 00:13:13.420 physical bodies in physical space. 260 00:13:13.780 --> 00:13:15.740 And what we see now is the shift 261 00:13:15.740 --> 00:13:17.620 to portray depth, 262 00:13:17.840 --> 00:13:20.980 to show real, realistic, 263 00:13:21.000 --> 00:13:21.960 realistic-looking landscapes, 264 00:13:22.120 --> 00:13:23.380 so that you see mountains 265 00:13:23.380 --> 00:13:28.220 and attempts to make things look like 266 00:13:28.220 --> 00:13:30.000 there's depth and distance in the painting. 267 00:13:30.460 --> 00:13:33.120 And this coincides with a fundamental shift 268 00:13:33.120 --> 00:13:35.040 that is going on where the Western world 269 00:13:35.040 --> 00:13:37.140 is now getting back an interest 270 00:13:37.140 --> 00:13:38.660 in natural science, 271 00:13:38.860 --> 00:13:40.520 an interest that the Greeks had had 272 00:13:40.520 --> 00:13:43.820 but had been largely lost for 1,500 years. 273 00:13:44.140 --> 00:13:46.520 And so this newfound interest 274 00:13:46.520 --> 00:13:48.880 in observing the material world, 275 00:13:49.040 --> 00:13:50.060 observing nature, 276 00:13:50.060 --> 00:13:52.340 begins to be reflected in painting 277 00:13:52.340 --> 00:13:56.300 with the shift to making painting reflect 278 00:13:56.300 --> 00:13:58.480 the reality of what is happening 279 00:13:58.480 --> 00:14:00.660 to material bodies here on Earth. 280 00:14:01.380 --> 00:14:04.120 But what we also have going on at this time 281 00:14:04.120 --> 00:14:06.320 is a very interesting theological development. 282 00:14:07.440 --> 00:14:11.060 The great mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras, 283 00:14:11.820 --> 00:14:13.920 the Greek, in the 6th century BC, 284 00:14:14.100 --> 00:14:16.300 had made the claim that the world 285 00:14:16.300 --> 00:14:18.400 could be understood by the language of mathematics. 286 00:14:18.840 --> 00:14:20.040 And Pythagoras actually said, 287 00:14:20.060 --> 00:14:20.280 even though he had historically believed 288 00:14:20.280 --> 00:14:22.260 that the numbers were literally gods, 289 00:14:22.580 --> 00:14:25.080 what we get in the late Middle Ages 290 00:14:25.080 --> 00:14:29.520 is this Pythagorean idea comes into Christianity 291 00:14:29.520 --> 00:14:31.880 and gets re-conceived in Christian terms 292 00:14:31.880 --> 00:14:35.560 in the framework of there is a belief begins to emerge 293 00:14:35.560 --> 00:14:39.200 that the Judeo-Christian God has created the world 294 00:14:39.200 --> 00:14:40.900 according to mathematical laws. 295 00:14:41.260 --> 00:14:43.700 And so when we find mathematical relationships 296 00:14:43.700 --> 00:14:44.840 in the world around us, 297 00:14:44.860 --> 00:14:46.440 that what we are doing is seeing 298 00:14:46.440 --> 00:14:47.960 how God made the world. 299 00:14:48.560 --> 00:14:53.360 and there was a very particular belief that God had made the world not just according to 300 00:14:53.360 --> 00:14:59.360 mathematical laws but to the particular laws of Euclidean geometry and since God had made the 301 00:14:59.360 --> 00:15:05.360 world according to Euclidean geometry a belief began to emerge among the painters that that is 302 00:15:05.360 --> 00:15:12.400 the way they ought to portray it and this view was specifically expressed at the end of the 13th 303 00:15:12.400 --> 00:15:18.440 century by Roger Bacon who was one of the earliest medieval champions of mathematical science and 304 00:15:18.440 --> 00:15:24.940 Bacon wrote a treatise to the Pope of the time Clement IV arguing that since God had made the 305 00:15:24.940 --> 00:15:28.920 world according to geometry that this is the way painters ought to portray it and that the Catholic 306 00:15:28.920 --> 00:15:33.960 Church ought to support that endeavour and he called this new way of representation geometric 307 00:15:33.960 --> 00:15:39.320 figuring and it's what we now call perspective. I happen to think that the term geometric figuring 308 00:15:39.320 --> 00:15:41.540 is very beautiful and it's a 309 00:15:41.540 --> 00:15:41.940 a 310 00:15:41.940 --> 00:15:42.220 a 311 00:15:42.220 --> 00:15:42.320 ! 312 00:15:42.320 --> 00:15:48.280 term that I think we could have kept but Bacon argued a very interesting thing from this he said 313 00:15:48.280 --> 00:15:53.960 not only should painters do this because that would be a true representation of God's handiwork 314 00:15:53.960 --> 00:16:01.280 but that if they did what they could do was to create illusions that were so powerful that 315 00:16:01.280 --> 00:16:06.440 people would believe they were actually looking at the scene in front of them so that if you had 316 00:16:06.440 --> 00:16:11.080 a picture of you know Saint Francis talking to the birds or you know 317 00:16:11.080 --> 00:16:12.200 taming the birds or you know 318 00:16:12.200 --> 00:16:17.380 wolf of Gubbio that if you did it in this new geometric figuring style people would think they 319 00:16:17.380 --> 00:16:23.440 were really and truly looking at Saint Francis there doing this miracle in front of them and 320 00:16:23.440 --> 00:16:28.900 Bacon argued that if we therefore used this that people would be so overwhelmingly believing in 321 00:16:28.900 --> 00:16:33.620 these images that they would be converted to Christianity therefore this new geometric 322 00:16:33.620 --> 00:16:41.140 figuring would be a way of converting heathens and reinvigorating Christian faith and by reinvigorating 323 00:16:41.140 --> 00:16:45.480 in Christian faith, Bacon had a very specific goal in mind. He wished to get a new crusade 324 00:16:45.480 --> 00:16:51.340 going to the Holy Land. So it's an interesting thing that one of the impetuses towards this new 325 00:16:51.340 --> 00:16:59.420 style of representation was to reinvigorate Christian faith. But what it did was it had 326 00:16:59.420 --> 00:17:06.320 the effect of starting to get artists thinking about Euclidean space and how do objects relate 327 00:17:06.320 --> 00:17:12.480 to one another within Euclidean space and how can we represent that on a two-dimensional surface. 328 00:17:14.700 --> 00:17:20.140 It has been argued by the art historian Samuel Edgerton of Yale University, and I believe 329 00:17:20.140 --> 00:17:27.600 it's a very important argument, that the next 300 years of perspectival representation, 330 00:17:28.540 --> 00:17:33.420 in which it has to be said that some of the prospective painters, particularly of the 15th 331 00:17:33.420 --> 00:17:35.960 century, were indeed the leading mathematicians of their day, 332 00:17:36.020 --> 00:17:36.300 because they were the first to have a perspective of the world. 333 00:17:36.300 --> 00:17:42.020 Because they became expert geometers. That this 300 years of perspective painting actually 334 00:17:42.020 --> 00:17:49.040 retrained Western people to see space around them in a new way. Today we tend to think that 335 00:17:49.040 --> 00:17:54.480 this Euclidean concept of space, you know, the idea that space has length, depth and height, 336 00:17:54.660 --> 00:18:00.220 we tend to think that this is an obvious or natural conception of space. But it has been pointed out 337 00:18:00.220 --> 00:18:06.200 by historians of science that this idea of space was not thought natural or even reasonable until 338 00:18:06.200 --> 00:18:13.920 the 17th century, particularly with the work of Galileo. It was Galileo who first articulated the idea in the early 17th century 339 00:18:13.920 --> 00:18:23.720 that in some sense Euclidean space was the arena of reality in which matter moved. But that idea of space, of matter 340 00:18:23.720 --> 00:18:30.360 moving through an empty three-dimensional void was not accepted until the early 17th century and indeed 341 00:18:30.360 --> 00:18:36.180 met with a great deal of resistance when it was originally, when it began to be discussed as an idea in space. 342 00:18:36.180 --> 00:18:37.120 And that is why we have this idea of space as a form of perspective painting. And that is why we have this idea of space as a form of perspective painting. 343 00:18:37.260 --> 00:18:40.300 And that is why we have this idea of space as a form of perspective painting. And Edgerton makes the point, I think, very importantly, 344 00:18:40.480 --> 00:18:47.400 that in this sense, art, the 300 years of perspective painting from the beginning of the 14th to the beginning of the 17th century 345 00:18:47.400 --> 00:18:56.020 actually retrained Western people to think about space in Euclidean terms and to actually explore the geometry of Euclidean space. 346 00:18:56.700 --> 00:19:03.340 So it is fair to say, I think, that the great perspective painters from Giotto through Raphael 347 00:19:03.340 --> 00:19:06.160 can in many ways be regarded as in the world of space. 348 00:19:06.180 --> 00:19:09.260 In some sense, a sort of proto-scientific movement. 349 00:19:09.440 --> 00:19:16.860 And these were people who were deeply concerned with mathematical investigation of Euclidean space and the geometry within it. 350 00:19:17.560 --> 00:19:25.420 Now, by the early 16th century, when we get to the height of perspective painting with people like Raphael and Michelangelo, 351 00:19:26.400 --> 00:19:31.120 Europeans had come to think of themselves as living in a Euclidean space. 352 00:19:31.340 --> 00:19:36.160 That at least the space here on Earth could indeed be regarded as... 353 00:19:36.180 --> 00:19:38.300 a geometrical Euclidean arena. 354 00:19:38.860 --> 00:19:41.920 But that raised a very, very troubling question for them. 355 00:19:42.040 --> 00:19:43.140 And that was this. 356 00:19:43.660 --> 00:19:47.880 If the space here on Earth is to be understood as a Euclidean arena, 357 00:19:48.280 --> 00:19:51.100 how far out does that space extend? 358 00:19:51.460 --> 00:19:53.760 Does it extend as far out as the moon? 359 00:19:54.260 --> 00:19:55.360 Perhaps the planets? 360 00:19:55.520 --> 00:19:57.720 Does it even extend to the stars? 361 00:19:58.500 --> 00:20:00.920 Now, to us, that might seem a very odd question. 362 00:20:01.060 --> 00:20:04.900 We've watched robot... we've watched men walk on the moon and robot probes 363 00:20:04.900 --> 00:20:06.160 scuttling around the space. 364 00:20:06.160 --> 00:20:06.920 And we've watched them go up to the surface of Mars. 365 00:20:07.100 --> 00:20:12.600 We know there is a continuity between terrestrial space and celestial space. 366 00:20:13.020 --> 00:20:15.860 But to people of the Middle Ages and even of the Renaissance, 367 00:20:16.200 --> 00:20:19.860 that was a radical and really quite a shocking idea. 368 00:20:20.340 --> 00:20:26.920 They didn't think that there was this homogeneity between the terrestrial and the celestial realms. 369 00:20:27.160 --> 00:20:28.320 Quite the opposite. 370 00:20:28.520 --> 00:20:32.340 While they did believe that the celestial realm was also a physical realm, 371 00:20:33.160 --> 00:20:35.900 because it was part of this small finite physical cosmology 372 00:20:36.160 --> 00:20:36.940 that I talked about before, 373 00:20:37.280 --> 00:20:43.180 they did think that there was a fundamental distinction between terrestrial space and celestial space. 374 00:20:43.460 --> 00:20:45.820 And the fundamental distinction had many aspects. 375 00:20:46.040 --> 00:20:48.640 But two of the most important are this. 376 00:20:48.860 --> 00:20:53.280 They believed that everything here on Earth is made up of the four basic elements, 377 00:20:53.460 --> 00:20:55.080 Earth, air, fire and water. 378 00:20:55.600 --> 00:21:01.200 And that everything here on Earth was prone to decay and death and disintegration. 379 00:21:01.460 --> 00:21:04.600 But everything in the celestial realm, although it was physical, 380 00:21:04.600 --> 00:21:08.280 was believed to have been made up of a fundamentally different substance. 381 00:21:08.340 --> 00:21:13.200 It was made up of this mysterious quintessence, sometimes referred to as the ether. 382 00:21:13.800 --> 00:21:20.100 And everything that was literally ethereal up there in the celestial realm 383 00:21:20.100 --> 00:21:25.140 was said to be eternal, immortal and not subject to change or decay. 384 00:21:25.700 --> 00:21:32.960 And so although the terrestrial and celestial realms were both part of the physical arena, 385 00:21:33.180 --> 00:21:34.580 there was a fundamental difference. 386 00:21:34.600 --> 00:21:37.180 There was a fundamental and qualitative distinction between these two realms. 387 00:21:37.320 --> 00:21:40.880 Where the Earth was the realm of that which was subject to decay and death, 388 00:21:41.060 --> 00:21:43.700 the celestial realm was not subject to decay and death. 389 00:21:43.800 --> 00:21:44.440 It was eternal. 390 00:21:44.760 --> 00:21:50.860 So there was this, if you like, qualitative distinction between these two spaces within the physical realm. 391 00:21:51.180 --> 00:21:54.500 And this distinction between terrestrial and celestial space 392 00:21:54.500 --> 00:21:58.780 was extremely important for the whole of medieval thinking about the world, 393 00:21:58.880 --> 00:22:03.660 because this stood as a metaphor for the dualistic aspects of man, 394 00:22:04.600 --> 00:22:05.280 body and soul. 395 00:22:05.540 --> 00:22:10.200 The celestial realm stood as a metaphor and sort of a guarantee for them 396 00:22:10.200 --> 00:22:15.980 of the immaterial space of the Christian soul that existed totally beyond the physical realm. 397 00:22:17.020 --> 00:22:20.220 Now, when the question arose in the early 16th century about 398 00:22:20.220 --> 00:22:25.780 if the space here on Earth was Euclidean, might that extend out to the planets and stars, 399 00:22:26.020 --> 00:22:29.400 because otherwise you'd have to sort of define some barrier to end to it, 400 00:22:29.420 --> 00:22:31.280 and it was hard to see where such an end might be, 401 00:22:31.460 --> 00:22:33.820 that raised the question of, well, may... 402 00:22:34.600 --> 00:22:38.100 that it raised the issue that perhaps there wasn't a qualitative distinction 403 00:22:38.100 --> 00:22:40.360 between the terrestrial and the celestial realms. 404 00:22:40.440 --> 00:22:45.780 Perhaps they were one unified realm, one large Euclidean space. 405 00:22:46.280 --> 00:22:51.500 And that, as I said, was a really radical and difficult idea for people at the time to accept, 406 00:22:51.660 --> 00:22:57.860 because by calling into question that distinction between the terrestrial and the celestial realm, 407 00:22:58.020 --> 00:22:59.840 if that distinction didn't exist, 408 00:23:00.140 --> 00:23:03.720 then the universe, the physical world itself, 409 00:23:03.720 --> 00:23:07.200 did not...could not be said to be seen as a metaphor 410 00:23:07.200 --> 00:23:10.640 for the dualistic aspects of man as a being of body and soul. 411 00:23:11.360 --> 00:23:18.940 As we all know, the cosmology of the 17th century did indeed come to the conclusion, 412 00:23:19.080 --> 00:23:21.720 particularly we finally get to it in the great cosmology of Newton, 413 00:23:21.880 --> 00:23:26.980 that there is a continuity between the celestial and the terrestrial realm, 414 00:23:27.060 --> 00:23:31.640 and indeed one of the great achievements of Newtonian cosmology 415 00:23:31.640 --> 00:23:33.700 is to show that the celestial realm, the terrestrial realm, 416 00:23:33.720 --> 00:23:38.860 and the same laws that acted here on Earth also acted out there among the planets and stars. 417 00:23:39.060 --> 00:23:42.200 And that is one of the greatest achievements that Newton made 418 00:23:42.200 --> 00:23:46.460 to demonstrate that a physical law, in particular the law of gravity, 419 00:23:46.680 --> 00:23:50.120 actually did operate out there among the planets and stars. 420 00:23:50.260 --> 00:23:52.240 And what that meant is that the planets and stars, 421 00:23:52.340 --> 00:23:54.060 because they are operating according to gravity, 422 00:23:54.220 --> 00:23:55.780 are material bodies. 423 00:23:55.940 --> 00:23:58.540 They're not made of some other ethereal substance. 424 00:23:58.780 --> 00:24:01.660 They're actually made of the same matter that's here on Earth. 425 00:24:01.800 --> 00:24:02.960 So in some ways, 426 00:24:02.960 --> 00:24:05.320 the most important aspect of Newtonian cosmology 427 00:24:05.320 --> 00:24:07.840 was to break down this medieval distinction 428 00:24:07.840 --> 00:24:10.280 between the heavenly realm, 429 00:24:10.520 --> 00:24:12.080 the realm of the stars, 430 00:24:12.140 --> 00:24:13.240 and the earthly realm, 431 00:24:13.340 --> 00:24:17.860 and to unify the cosmos as a single Euclidean arena. 432 00:24:19.240 --> 00:24:21.520 What Newton's cosmology also did, 433 00:24:21.560 --> 00:24:23.180 and Newton himself was troubled by this, 434 00:24:23.240 --> 00:24:25.580 because he in some sense understood the problem, 435 00:24:25.800 --> 00:24:29.700 but of course there was no obvious way 436 00:24:29.700 --> 00:24:32.700 to then draw a boundary to the universe, 437 00:24:32.960 --> 00:24:35.980 so that the very quick consequence of Newton's cosmology, 438 00:24:36.080 --> 00:24:38.560 although Newton himself didn't necessarily see it in quite that way, 439 00:24:38.620 --> 00:24:40.560 was that there was no end to the universe, 440 00:24:41.200 --> 00:24:43.700 that the stars would simply go on forever. 441 00:24:44.140 --> 00:24:48.380 And what that meant was that the physical universe became infinite, 442 00:24:48.480 --> 00:24:50.380 unlike the medieval universe, 443 00:24:50.580 --> 00:24:53.380 in the case where the physical world was finite. 444 00:24:54.340 --> 00:24:58.700 And this was sort of precipitated in some ways a theological crisis, 445 00:24:58.960 --> 00:25:01.920 because if the physical world is infinite, 446 00:25:02.960 --> 00:25:05.720 then there is literally no room, 447 00:25:05.920 --> 00:25:07.020 sorry, not literally, 448 00:25:07.780 --> 00:25:11.960 it's hard to see how there can even metaphorically be any room left, 449 00:25:12.280 --> 00:25:14.280 because once physical space goes on forever, 450 00:25:14.560 --> 00:25:18.300 it's hard to see how there could be anything beyond it. 451 00:25:18.560 --> 00:25:21.520 And although it's literally true that the medieval didn't think 452 00:25:21.520 --> 00:25:24.000 that the heaven was literally outside the final sphere, 453 00:25:24.200 --> 00:25:27.180 it was extremely metaphorically and philosophically important 454 00:25:27.960 --> 00:25:31.320 that the physical was not infinite. 455 00:25:31.320 --> 00:25:37.820 And so the infinitization of physical space with the Newtonian cosmos 456 00:25:37.820 --> 00:25:40.320 created this enormous theological dilemma 457 00:25:40.840 --> 00:25:45.420 that there was no longer any room left for a space of spirit or soul. 458 00:25:45.800 --> 00:25:48.280 In particular, there was no longer any place 459 00:25:48.280 --> 00:25:50.720 where one might imagine heaven or hell to be. 460 00:25:51.000 --> 00:25:53.920 So it is at that point in history that you begin to get the decline 461 00:25:53.920 --> 00:25:56.140 of the concepts of heaven and hell, 462 00:25:56.240 --> 00:25:58.780 and we get a shift to a sort of more amorphous notion 463 00:25:58.780 --> 00:26:01.300 of simply a Christian soul being. 464 00:26:01.300 --> 00:26:01.620 So it's not just about the physical space and time, 465 00:26:01.620 --> 00:26:03.420 or beyond physical space and time, 466 00:26:03.520 --> 00:26:05.920 but where might it possibly be? 467 00:26:06.300 --> 00:26:09.700 And I think this remains a very, very big question 468 00:26:09.700 --> 00:26:14.580 for contemporary Christianity, 469 00:26:15.200 --> 00:26:17.880 and indeed, as I hope to go on to say, to explain to you, 470 00:26:18.020 --> 00:26:20.720 for it has greater than theological consequences, 471 00:26:20.960 --> 00:26:25.080 there are also ultimately enormous psychological consequences 472 00:26:25.080 --> 00:26:27.780 even for all of us who are not Christians. 473 00:26:28.480 --> 00:26:30.520 But before I discuss that at greater depth, 474 00:26:31.300 --> 00:26:34.620 I want to go on to talk briefly about post-Newtonian concepts of space, 475 00:26:34.760 --> 00:26:37.900 because they in themselves introduce an interesting dimension to it. 476 00:26:39.300 --> 00:26:43.720 Newton believed, as did people up until the beginning of the 20th century, 477 00:26:43.960 --> 00:26:48.260 that effectively the universe was this vast, endless Euclidean void, 478 00:26:48.420 --> 00:26:52.580 three simple dimensions of space that go on forever. 479 00:26:53.820 --> 00:26:56.640 That view was very beautiful and very simple, 480 00:26:57.300 --> 00:27:00.740 but Einstein came along in the early 20th century, 481 00:27:01.300 --> 00:27:05.060 and gave us a very different conception of space, 482 00:27:05.420 --> 00:27:07.900 one that I think is really quite extraordinary. 483 00:27:10.380 --> 00:27:12.880 The great achievements of relativity, 484 00:27:13.440 --> 00:27:16.180 and there are many, but for the point of view of the history of space, 485 00:27:16.280 --> 00:27:18.220 we can reduce them to two, 486 00:27:18.360 --> 00:27:21.080 is that with Einstein's special theory of relativity, 487 00:27:21.440 --> 00:27:24.560 he demonstrated how time could effectively be understood 488 00:27:25.300 --> 00:27:27.000 as another dimension of space. 489 00:27:27.520 --> 00:27:30.880 Time was clearly a different, a somewhat different dimension of space, 490 00:27:30.880 --> 00:27:33.660 than the other three, and we experience it in a different way. 491 00:27:33.880 --> 00:27:36.720 But effectively in special relativity, 492 00:27:37.080 --> 00:27:39.240 we live in a four-dimensional space, 493 00:27:39.440 --> 00:27:41.240 and it's sometimes referred to as space-time, 494 00:27:41.380 --> 00:27:43.240 but physicists often also just truncate it 495 00:27:43.240 --> 00:27:44.740 and talk about four-dimensional space. 496 00:27:45.620 --> 00:27:48.400 The even more extraordinary thing Einstein did 497 00:27:48.400 --> 00:27:51.560 was when he developed his general theory of relativity, 498 00:27:52.020 --> 00:27:54.220 and what he showed with general relativity 499 00:27:54.880 --> 00:27:57.720 was that we could understand the force of gravity, 500 00:27:57.980 --> 00:28:00.520 not as something separate to space, 501 00:28:00.520 --> 00:28:02.200 but as something that was in the space and somehow imposed on matter. 502 00:28:03.320 --> 00:28:06.680 Newton himself had wondered how on Earth gravity came into being, 503 00:28:06.720 --> 00:28:07.800 what gravity was. 504 00:28:08.020 --> 00:28:09.640 Well, Einstein answered this question 505 00:28:09.640 --> 00:28:12.300 by saying that we could understand gravity 506 00:28:12.300 --> 00:28:17.000 as simply not as some extra thing in the cosmological equations, 507 00:28:17.240 --> 00:28:20.420 but as something which is simply a byproduct of the shape 508 00:28:20.420 --> 00:28:22.740 of the underlying space structure. 509 00:28:23.160 --> 00:28:25.700 So if you, I mean, the usual way that this is demonstrated, 510 00:28:25.800 --> 00:28:29.140 and it's a bit metaphorical, but it's quite effective, I think, 511 00:28:29.140 --> 00:28:30.720 is if you imagine a big rubber sheet, 512 00:28:31.420 --> 00:28:33.260 and I have a bowling ball in it, 513 00:28:33.280 --> 00:28:35.480 the bowling ball makes a depression in the rubber sheet, 514 00:28:35.700 --> 00:28:39.240 and if I was to get a little marble or something 515 00:28:39.240 --> 00:28:42.260 and put it near the bowling ball, it would roll to the centre. 516 00:28:42.580 --> 00:28:45.360 So what general relativity suggests 517 00:28:45.360 --> 00:28:48.960 is that this is sort of like what is going on with gravity, 518 00:28:49.040 --> 00:28:50.880 that the sun, for instance, a big object, 519 00:28:50.980 --> 00:28:53.460 is stretching the underlying fabric of space 520 00:28:53.460 --> 00:28:56.000 and causing things to fall to it. 521 00:28:56.220 --> 00:28:58.240 So gravity becomes now 522 00:28:58.240 --> 00:28:59.720 not a separate entity, 523 00:28:59.920 --> 00:29:02.420 but something that becomes a byproduct 524 00:29:02.420 --> 00:29:05.680 of the underlying geometry or structure of space. 525 00:29:06.280 --> 00:29:09.280 This idea is truly, I think, 526 00:29:09.340 --> 00:29:13.380 one of the greatest things that physics has ever come up with. 527 00:29:13.540 --> 00:29:15.680 I mean, general relativity is rightly regarded 528 00:29:15.680 --> 00:29:18.800 with all the sort of mystical fervour that it is, 529 00:29:18.880 --> 00:29:20.680 because there is something deeply mysterious. 530 00:29:20.840 --> 00:29:22.740 How could a fundamental force like that 531 00:29:22.740 --> 00:29:26.320 be seen as a byproduct of something as ethereal 532 00:29:26.320 --> 00:29:28.220 and apparently non-existent? 533 00:29:28.240 --> 00:29:31.080 It's not as non-existing in some ways as space, 534 00:29:31.240 --> 00:29:33.900 but this is what comes out of the equations of general relativity, 535 00:29:34.080 --> 00:29:35.020 and it really works. 536 00:29:36.160 --> 00:29:38.180 In the last 30 or 40 years, 537 00:29:38.360 --> 00:29:40.820 physicists have conceived of an idea 538 00:29:40.820 --> 00:29:43.220 of perhaps they could do something like this 539 00:29:43.220 --> 00:29:45.920 to explain all the four fundamental forces of the universe, 540 00:29:46.080 --> 00:29:48.680 which are not only gravity, but the electromagnetic force 541 00:29:49.240 --> 00:29:50.460 and the two nuclear forces 542 00:29:50.460 --> 00:29:54.320 which operate inside the nucleus of atoms. 543 00:29:54.700 --> 00:29:56.320 And so there has been this desire 544 00:29:56.320 --> 00:29:57.900 to sort of, if you like, 545 00:29:58.240 --> 00:30:02.800 do for gravity what Einstein did for gravity, 546 00:30:02.940 --> 00:30:04.460 but do it for all the fundamental forces. 547 00:30:04.880 --> 00:30:08.340 And it has been discovered that in order to do this, 548 00:30:08.420 --> 00:30:11.400 physicists have had to propose the existence of other dimensions. 549 00:30:12.920 --> 00:30:15.040 So the proposals are at the moment, 550 00:30:15.080 --> 00:30:17.660 depending on which theory one looks at, 551 00:30:17.760 --> 00:30:19.160 and there are many of them, 552 00:30:19.260 --> 00:30:23.200 that we live in a 10 or an 11-dimensional space, 553 00:30:23.540 --> 00:30:27.320 and by understanding the underlying physics in that way, 554 00:30:27.320 --> 00:30:30.020 that you can, in some sense, 555 00:30:31.120 --> 00:30:35.360 explain all the forces and also all the particles, 556 00:30:35.400 --> 00:30:36.620 all the matter in our universe, 557 00:30:36.760 --> 00:30:39.780 as simply underlying byproducts 558 00:30:39.780 --> 00:30:43.460 of the geometry or sort of curvature of the space. 559 00:30:45.340 --> 00:30:48.660 And this is Paul's idea of structured nothingness. 560 00:30:48.780 --> 00:30:50.960 It's also... I like to think of it myself 561 00:30:50.960 --> 00:30:53.840 as being the origami version of the universe, 562 00:30:53.900 --> 00:30:55.460 that in a sense, in the beginning, 563 00:30:55.520 --> 00:30:57.300 there was just this sort of unstructured space 564 00:30:57.320 --> 00:30:59.100 and gradually, as time went on, 565 00:30:59.220 --> 00:31:02.520 it sort of crinkled itself up into this very complex form, 566 00:31:02.720 --> 00:31:06.340 which is all the structure and marvellousness 567 00:31:06.340 --> 00:31:07.840 of the universe today. 568 00:31:08.360 --> 00:31:10.240 This is, I think, one of the... 569 00:31:10.240 --> 00:31:14.020 I really hope that we get to see this in my lifetime. 570 00:31:14.140 --> 00:31:17.500 I'm very much looking forward to seeing the final version of this. 571 00:31:18.380 --> 00:31:21.600 And it's an extraordinary beautiful construct, I believe. 572 00:31:22.160 --> 00:31:23.500 There's a very real sense, I think, 573 00:31:23.520 --> 00:31:27.080 in which one can understand the history of modern physics 574 00:31:27.320 --> 00:31:28.840 in the sense there's a gradual sort of rise 575 00:31:28.840 --> 00:31:30.740 in the status of space in our scheme, 576 00:31:30.840 --> 00:31:32.800 because in an Aristotelian world picture, 577 00:31:32.880 --> 00:31:34.140 which is what the Medievalists held, 578 00:31:34.340 --> 00:31:37.480 space was just one of ten fundamental categories of being 579 00:31:37.480 --> 00:31:39.600 and it was not a particularly important one. 580 00:31:39.720 --> 00:31:41.100 In Newtonian physics, 581 00:31:41.340 --> 00:31:44.520 there are essentially three fundamental categories of being. 582 00:31:44.600 --> 00:31:47.140 There's matter, there's the forces like gravity, 583 00:31:47.320 --> 00:31:48.760 and then there's space itself. 584 00:31:49.440 --> 00:31:52.180 And what we get today is the idea 585 00:31:52.180 --> 00:31:54.960 that ultimately space, in some sense, 586 00:31:55.120 --> 00:31:56.680 becomes the ultimate, 587 00:31:56.680 --> 00:31:59.340 and final substrate of which everything else 588 00:31:59.340 --> 00:32:00.820 is ultimately enfolded. 589 00:32:01.100 --> 00:32:03.400 And I think it's a very beautiful 590 00:32:03.400 --> 00:32:06.160 and aesthetically satisfying view of the world, 591 00:32:06.200 --> 00:32:07.000 and I think that... 592 00:32:07.680 --> 00:32:09.500 I certainly hope that it happens in my lifetime. 593 00:32:09.920 --> 00:32:14.060 But there is also a philosophical problem 594 00:32:14.060 --> 00:32:15.860 and a psychological problem 595 00:32:15.860 --> 00:32:19.580 that we face by seeing the world in this way. 596 00:32:19.820 --> 00:32:21.500 And that is that, as I said before, 597 00:32:21.680 --> 00:32:25.200 the Medievals had a sense that a dualistic concept of man, 598 00:32:25.200 --> 00:32:26.980 man as a being of body and soul, 599 00:32:27.240 --> 00:32:30.180 required, in some sense, a dualistic spatial scheme, 600 00:32:30.280 --> 00:32:32.160 that each of those aspects of man 601 00:32:32.160 --> 00:32:34.460 needed its own space of being, 602 00:32:34.560 --> 00:32:36.220 its own kind of arena of action. 603 00:32:37.280 --> 00:32:39.020 Now that we have this picture 604 00:32:39.020 --> 00:32:41.760 of everything being a byproduct of space, 605 00:32:41.880 --> 00:32:44.580 and everything, in some sense, being enfolded into space, 606 00:32:45.240 --> 00:32:47.760 that can accommodate all the physical phenomena, 607 00:32:47.920 --> 00:32:49.960 all the particles, the energy, the forces, 608 00:32:50.140 --> 00:32:52.300 but it's very difficult to see 609 00:32:52.300 --> 00:32:55.180 how this picture can accommodate anything like that. 610 00:32:55.180 --> 00:32:56.840 Something like a spirit or soul, 611 00:32:57.160 --> 00:32:59.180 whatever word you want to use. 612 00:33:00.180 --> 00:33:06.100 And I think that this remains a very, very big problem for us. 613 00:33:06.220 --> 00:33:10.180 How do we, within a purely physicalist account of reality, 614 00:33:11.180 --> 00:33:14.160 accommodate the mental, psychological, 615 00:33:15.180 --> 00:33:18.720 and theological, spiritual aspects of human existence? 616 00:33:19.300 --> 00:33:21.360 Descartes, I believe, understood this problem 617 00:33:21.360 --> 00:33:24.240 because he was living at the same time as Galileo, 618 00:33:24.240 --> 00:33:25.160 at the very beginning of his life, 619 00:33:25.180 --> 00:33:26.080 at the very beginning of modern science. 620 00:33:26.560 --> 00:33:28.320 And he was one of the great architects 621 00:33:28.320 --> 00:33:31.680 of the mathematical and mechanical theory of the world 622 00:33:31.680 --> 00:33:33.200 that came into being in the 17th century. 623 00:33:33.400 --> 00:33:35.580 But he believed that, like the medievalists, 624 00:33:35.580 --> 00:33:39.840 that man also, that his soul needed a place of its own. 625 00:33:39.940 --> 00:33:42.320 And so Descartes tried to invent this thing 626 00:33:42.320 --> 00:33:43.740 called the res cogitans, 627 00:33:43.920 --> 00:33:46.660 which he divided reality into two areas. 628 00:33:46.840 --> 00:33:50.920 The res extensia, which was the realm of matter in motion, 629 00:33:51.060 --> 00:33:53.220 which physics and science would discover. 630 00:33:53.220 --> 00:33:55.960 But he also said there is another arena of being. 631 00:33:56.000 --> 00:33:57.340 It's called the res cogitans, 632 00:33:57.400 --> 00:34:00.140 and that is literally the realm of thinking. 633 00:34:00.480 --> 00:34:01.640 And for Descartes, of course, 634 00:34:01.640 --> 00:34:03.340 that was also the realm of the Christian soul, 635 00:34:03.460 --> 00:34:04.280 he being a Catholic. 636 00:34:04.660 --> 00:34:08.680 But very quickly, even by the end of the 17th century, 637 00:34:08.740 --> 00:34:09.440 people were saying, 638 00:34:09.580 --> 00:34:12.100 well, the res cogitans doesn't really exist, 639 00:34:12.260 --> 00:34:15.400 that the totality of reality is the res extensia, 640 00:34:15.480 --> 00:34:18.320 literally the extended realm of matter in motion, 641 00:34:18.420 --> 00:34:21.820 and that all mental phenomena must be understood 642 00:34:21.820 --> 00:34:23.200 as a secondary biome. 643 00:34:23.200 --> 00:34:25.480 And that's the byproduct of the motion of matter 644 00:34:25.480 --> 00:34:26.740 in physical space. 645 00:34:27.240 --> 00:34:31.260 And we still have that problem going on today, I believe. 646 00:34:31.340 --> 00:34:35.780 There is an increasing tendency in our society today, I think, 647 00:34:35.780 --> 00:34:36.680 for people to say, 648 00:34:37.480 --> 00:34:40.360 that if you cannot mathematically triangulate 649 00:34:40.360 --> 00:34:43.040 the position of something in physical space, 650 00:34:43.140 --> 00:34:45.600 if you can't sort of draw me a map of the universe 651 00:34:45.600 --> 00:34:48.900 and say, well, it exists at those particular mathematical coordinates 652 00:34:48.900 --> 00:34:50.680 and that's where it literally is physically, 653 00:34:50.900 --> 00:34:53.120 there's an increasing tendency to say, 654 00:34:53.200 --> 00:34:55.160 that it does not exist at all, 655 00:34:55.320 --> 00:34:59.800 or that it is either an illusion or a delusion, 656 00:34:59.840 --> 00:35:01.440 or at the very best, 657 00:35:01.460 --> 00:35:03.420 that it's some kind of secondary manifestation 658 00:35:03.420 --> 00:35:05.260 of the true underlying reality, 659 00:35:05.640 --> 00:35:08.320 which is the matter in motion in the physical space. 660 00:35:08.860 --> 00:35:11.620 And this has not just been a problem for Christianity, 661 00:35:12.200 --> 00:35:12.940 as I said earlier, 662 00:35:13.200 --> 00:35:16.760 the emergence of this view of the world 663 00:35:16.760 --> 00:35:18.740 made it very problematic to make sense 664 00:35:18.740 --> 00:35:20.620 of the concept of an afterlife. 665 00:35:21.100 --> 00:35:23.180 It also made it increasingly problematic 666 00:35:23.200 --> 00:35:26.940 to make sense of what do we mean by the word soul at all. 667 00:35:27.100 --> 00:35:29.840 And there is a secular equivalent of that going on now 668 00:35:29.840 --> 00:35:33.340 because we have some of the new materialist philosophers of mind, 669 00:35:33.400 --> 00:35:36.380 and in particular Daniel Dennett comes to the fore here, 670 00:35:36.500 --> 00:35:38.220 who are essentially making the claim 671 00:35:38.220 --> 00:35:39.980 that the self is an illusion, 672 00:35:40.280 --> 00:35:42.160 that it is just a secondary byproduct 673 00:35:42.160 --> 00:35:44.100 of the neuronal chemistry 674 00:35:44.100 --> 00:35:47.620 and that the self is an illusion that does not really exist. 675 00:35:48.220 --> 00:35:51.000 And I want to finish up in a minute 676 00:35:51.000 --> 00:35:52.440 so that we can have some time for discussion, 677 00:35:52.440 --> 00:35:55.600 but I think that we have a very great problem 678 00:35:56.260 --> 00:35:58.840 philosophically and psychologically in the world today 679 00:35:58.840 --> 00:36:02.740 because while I personally adore the physics conception of the world, 680 00:36:02.800 --> 00:36:03.580 and as I said before, 681 00:36:03.640 --> 00:36:06.440 I really hope to see the unification of relativity 682 00:36:06.440 --> 00:36:10.820 and quantum mechanics in these so-called theories of everything, 683 00:36:11.060 --> 00:36:14.680 I do believe that great those theories are, 684 00:36:14.800 --> 00:36:18.260 they can only and do only accommodate 685 00:36:18.260 --> 00:36:21.120 an account of the physical phenomena. 686 00:36:21.120 --> 00:36:25.340 And I myself believe, like Descartes, 687 00:36:25.480 --> 00:36:28.800 that mental phenomena are as fundamentally real 688 00:36:28.800 --> 00:36:29.860 as physical phenomena, 689 00:36:30.200 --> 00:36:33.240 and that indeed we do need an account of reality 690 00:36:33.240 --> 00:36:36.880 that neither prioritises the physical nor the mental 691 00:36:36.880 --> 00:36:40.560 and tries to explain one as a secondary byproduct of the other. 692 00:36:40.620 --> 00:36:43.120 It is my view that Descartes was right when he said, 693 00:36:43.200 --> 00:36:44.500 I think therefore I am, 694 00:36:44.580 --> 00:36:46.340 and that mental phenomena, 695 00:36:46.480 --> 00:36:48.100 we need an account of reality 696 00:36:48.100 --> 00:36:51.100 which treats the mental and the physical 697 00:36:51.120 --> 00:36:53.840 both as primary aspects of being. 698 00:36:54.240 --> 00:36:57.500 And I'll just tell you a very brief story to end up on. 699 00:36:58.000 --> 00:37:00.840 I gave a talk about this a couple of years ago 700 00:37:00.840 --> 00:37:01.860 at an American university, 701 00:37:01.980 --> 00:37:05.560 and afterwards an anthropologist came up to me 702 00:37:06.120 --> 00:37:07.240 who'd heard the talk, 703 00:37:07.300 --> 00:37:09.600 he was a professor at the college where I was talking, 704 00:37:09.760 --> 00:37:12.680 and he said to me that he worked in Namibia, 705 00:37:12.700 --> 00:37:13.940 I forget the name of the tribe, 706 00:37:14.040 --> 00:37:15.060 but he worked in Namibia, 707 00:37:15.080 --> 00:37:18.540 and one day this Namibian man came up to him and said, 708 00:37:18.660 --> 00:37:20.860 do you Western people really believe 709 00:37:21.120 --> 00:37:25.220 that you are just sort of isolated points in empty space? 710 00:37:25.900 --> 00:37:27.100 And he said, yes, 711 00:37:27.160 --> 00:37:29.940 that's the way our science tells us to think about ourselves. 712 00:37:30.320 --> 00:37:33.840 And he said this Namibian guy looked at him with infinite pity 713 00:37:33.840 --> 00:37:36.100 and said, how do you bear it? 714 00:37:36.740 --> 00:37:39.620 And he went on to explain that in his culture 715 00:37:40.240 --> 00:37:42.320 they saw things rather differently, 716 00:37:42.420 --> 00:37:44.880 that they believed that each individual in some sense 717 00:37:44.880 --> 00:37:46.760 had a kind of self-space 718 00:37:46.760 --> 00:37:49.560 that extended out from their body around them. 719 00:37:50.100 --> 00:37:52.140 And so when they were moving through their village 720 00:37:52.140 --> 00:37:53.580 in the daily course of their lives, 721 00:37:53.720 --> 00:37:55.640 their self-space would intersect 722 00:37:56.400 --> 00:37:59.480 with the other self-spaces of the other people around them. 723 00:37:59.600 --> 00:38:02.280 So he explained to this anthropologist 724 00:38:02.280 --> 00:38:04.060 that for him and his people, 725 00:38:04.140 --> 00:38:06.420 they actually didn't see themselves as being alone. 726 00:38:06.640 --> 00:38:08.900 They believed that their selves were in some sense 727 00:38:08.900 --> 00:38:12.960 literally interconnected with the other selves in the tribe. 728 00:38:14.060 --> 00:38:17.260 And so they didn't see themselves as sort of isolated 729 00:38:17.260 --> 00:38:19.020 in an empty space. 730 00:38:19.020 --> 00:38:21.700 They saw themselves really in a space 731 00:38:21.700 --> 00:38:23.060 that was full of other selves. 732 00:38:23.260 --> 00:38:25.020 And he said to this Western anthropologist, 733 00:38:25.840 --> 00:38:28.200 he didn't understand how we could bear it, 734 00:38:28.220 --> 00:38:31.700 to be thinking of ourselves in this isolated way. 735 00:38:32.400 --> 00:38:35.120 And I don't think we are bearing it. 736 00:38:35.240 --> 00:38:38.040 I think we are in some sense lost in space. 737 00:38:38.620 --> 00:38:42.900 And although I don't want to advocate a return to medieval dualism, 738 00:38:42.920 --> 00:38:45.360 I don't believe, I'm not a Christian, 739 00:38:45.420 --> 00:38:46.740 although I was brought up a Catholic, 740 00:38:46.820 --> 00:38:48.840 but I don't believe that there is some sort of, 741 00:38:50.280 --> 00:38:54.780 separate metaphysical entity that is extractable from the body, 742 00:38:54.920 --> 00:38:57.920 which I think is a version of the down-mind-load 743 00:38:57.920 --> 00:38:59.140 into cyberspace concept. 744 00:38:59.460 --> 00:39:00.720 I don't believe in that. 745 00:39:00.980 --> 00:39:04.680 So I don't want to argue for a dualistic metaphysics. 746 00:39:04.880 --> 00:39:09.020 But what I do think we need is a more pluralistic epistemology, 747 00:39:09.220 --> 00:39:13.620 an epistemology which takes seriously the reality 748 00:39:13.620 --> 00:39:17.760 of the physical body and the matter in the physical space. 749 00:39:17.820 --> 00:39:18.860 And I think on that front, 750 00:39:19.020 --> 00:39:20.480 I think we are doing absolutely fabulously. 751 00:39:20.860 --> 00:39:23.580 But I think we also do need to understand 752 00:39:23.580 --> 00:39:27.280 that mental phenomena are also primary, 753 00:39:27.580 --> 00:39:31.740 and in some sense that we do actually need to understand ourselves, 754 00:39:31.880 --> 00:39:33.360 literally ourselves, 755 00:39:34.700 --> 00:39:37.160 in a primary way as mental beings. 756 00:39:37.340 --> 00:39:40.340 And I'm not certain that we don't actually need, 757 00:39:40.440 --> 00:39:44.220 in some sense, a conception of a self-space. 758 00:39:44.340 --> 00:39:46.740 I have no proposals for what that might be. 759 00:39:47.000 --> 00:39:48.420 I think it's a philosophical 760 00:39:48.420 --> 00:39:51.160 and epistemological and psychological problem. 761 00:39:51.600 --> 00:39:53.800 And I don't know what the answer is, 762 00:39:53.920 --> 00:39:57.180 but I think we need to somehow get that back into our world picture 763 00:39:57.180 --> 00:40:00.540 to literally solve this problem of, in some sense, 764 00:40:00.560 --> 00:40:02.420 being truly lost in space. 765 00:40:02.820 --> 00:40:03.760 So thank you. 766 00:40:22.600 --> 00:40:24.200 Well, thank you very much, Margaret, 767 00:40:24.300 --> 00:40:26.120 for this fascinating tour through space. 768 00:40:27.440 --> 00:40:28.960 I'm sure there are going to be questions, 769 00:40:29.080 --> 00:40:30.080 so let me just repeat, 770 00:40:30.620 --> 00:40:33.320 those who wish to ask questions should come to the microphone here 771 00:40:33.320 --> 00:40:35.800 and try to keep them short and to the point. 772 00:40:35.920 --> 00:40:37.800 And we have about 20 minutes. 773 00:40:39.940 --> 00:40:41.220 In modern thought, 774 00:40:41.400 --> 00:40:47.680 how is the light of a star that has died or disintegrated, 775 00:40:47.680 --> 00:40:51.660 that continues through space and is seen, say, from the Earth 776 00:40:51.660 --> 00:40:54.320 as something that exists but really doesn't? 777 00:40:54.680 --> 00:40:56.520 How do you see that light? 778 00:40:56.680 --> 00:40:57.620 Does it exist? 779 00:40:57.720 --> 00:40:59.220 It's no longer the star, 780 00:40:59.460 --> 00:41:01.120 can it be considered the soul 781 00:41:01.120 --> 00:41:04.940 or the non-physical entity of the star still existing? 782 00:41:05.500 --> 00:41:11.460 Well, the very simple answer to that is that the folk... 783 00:41:11.460 --> 00:41:16.000 We have a concept of light now as both waves and particles, 784 00:41:16.180 --> 00:41:17.660 and both of those are light. 785 00:41:17.680 --> 00:41:20.740 But our physical phenomena that might have left the star 786 00:41:20.740 --> 00:41:21.900 billions of years ago, 787 00:41:22.040 --> 00:41:23.960 and although the star is no longer there, 788 00:41:24.220 --> 00:41:26.600 the light is still travelling towards us, 789 00:41:26.620 --> 00:41:28.040 and the light is a physical phenomena 790 00:41:28.680 --> 00:41:30.160 which continues its journey. 791 00:41:30.720 --> 00:41:35.920 So just because the star itself is no longer physically there, 792 00:41:36.020 --> 00:41:38.980 doesn't mean that the light stops ceasing to be. 793 00:41:39.680 --> 00:41:42.080 So the light itself is a physical phenomena 794 00:41:42.080 --> 00:41:44.820 that continues to have a reality 795 00:41:44.820 --> 00:41:47.660 and an existence as physical focus. 796 00:41:47.680 --> 00:41:48.580 So it's not just photons or waves. 797 00:41:52.260 --> 00:41:53.820 Gentleman here, would you like to go ahead? 798 00:41:55.560 --> 00:41:58.380 You described the 11 dimensions 799 00:42:00.680 --> 00:42:03.280 as being a model that's been put forward to describe space. 800 00:42:03.780 --> 00:42:10.640 Has there been some proposal by physicists or other people 801 00:42:10.640 --> 00:42:15.180 that the other realms you're talking about, 802 00:42:15.260 --> 00:42:16.200 the mental, physical... 803 00:42:17.900 --> 00:42:20.040 spiritual realms can be described by other dimensions 804 00:42:20.040 --> 00:42:21.200 or those 11 dimensions? 805 00:42:22.720 --> 00:42:26.060 Well, physicists themselves don't tend to do that, 806 00:42:26.180 --> 00:42:30.400 but certainly I've seen things where other people 807 00:42:30.400 --> 00:42:34.540 have attempted to spiritualise the other dimensions. 808 00:42:35.660 --> 00:42:37.460 I think it's a bit problematic. 809 00:42:39.180 --> 00:42:42.500 Sorry, Newton himself tried to spiritualise 810 00:42:42.500 --> 00:42:44.140 three-dimensional space. 811 00:42:44.860 --> 00:42:46.880 I didn't have time to go into it today, 812 00:42:46.880 --> 00:42:49.300 but as I said earlier, there was tremendous resistance 813 00:42:49.300 --> 00:42:51.660 to this idea of the world, 814 00:42:51.800 --> 00:42:55.860 the universe being conceived as an empty Euclidean void. 815 00:42:56.180 --> 00:42:57.940 And in fact, historically, 816 00:42:58.000 --> 00:43:01.640 one of the very important ways in which that idea was accepted 817 00:43:01.640 --> 00:43:05.220 was through a tradition that came to its highlight with Newton, 818 00:43:05.400 --> 00:43:10.060 who effectively associated empty space with God. 819 00:43:10.340 --> 00:43:12.640 So as Newton talked very strongly about this, 820 00:43:12.680 --> 00:43:14.760 that space might be empty of matter, 821 00:43:14.840 --> 00:43:16.760 but it was full of spirit. 822 00:43:16.880 --> 00:43:21.340 Space became for Newton synonymous with the presence of God. 823 00:43:21.680 --> 00:43:24.200 And so one of the reasons you could accept the idea 824 00:43:24.200 --> 00:43:27.900 that space was infinite was because God was unbounded 825 00:43:27.900 --> 00:43:28.540 and therefore infinite. 826 00:43:29.280 --> 00:43:31.280 So there were great attempts... 827 00:43:31.280 --> 00:43:34.180 There was a very strong tradition in the 16th and 17th century 828 00:43:34.180 --> 00:43:37.420 to spiritualise Euclidean space, 829 00:43:37.560 --> 00:43:40.040 and it was indeed an important part of the acceptance 830 00:43:40.040 --> 00:43:42.620 of the idea that space itself was spiritualised. 831 00:43:42.960 --> 00:43:45.780 That theological trimming, if you like, 832 00:43:45.780 --> 00:43:49.280 was kind of got rid of by the 18th century physicists. 833 00:43:49.540 --> 00:43:51.660 And equally, there have been attempts, 834 00:43:51.860 --> 00:43:53.580 not generally by physicists themselves, 835 00:43:53.960 --> 00:43:57.020 but by people often in... 836 00:43:57.020 --> 00:43:58.860 some people in the science and religion movement, 837 00:43:58.960 --> 00:44:00.740 to suggest that space... 838 00:44:00.740 --> 00:44:03.040 that these new 10 or 11-dimensional spaces 839 00:44:03.040 --> 00:44:05.840 could somehow be spiritualised too. 840 00:44:06.420 --> 00:44:08.880 But I don't think it's going to be any more fruitful 841 00:44:08.880 --> 00:44:11.480 than the attempt by Newton and his colleagues 842 00:44:11.480 --> 00:44:13.500 to do it with three-dimensional space. 843 00:44:13.600 --> 00:44:14.740 And I'll put it this way. 844 00:44:14.740 --> 00:44:17.560 One of the reasons why people have attempted to... 845 00:44:18.280 --> 00:44:20.960 have perhaps seen it fruitful to spiritualise 846 00:44:20.960 --> 00:44:23.020 these 11-dimensional constructs 847 00:44:23.020 --> 00:44:25.200 is because they're quite right about something, 848 00:44:25.260 --> 00:44:26.480 that within these theories, 849 00:44:26.660 --> 00:44:28.680 matter becomes no longer primary. 850 00:44:29.080 --> 00:44:31.300 Both matter and energy become part 851 00:44:31.300 --> 00:44:32.800 of the underlying substrate of space. 852 00:44:33.040 --> 00:44:37.360 So they're in a very real sense post-materialistic theories. 853 00:44:37.980 --> 00:44:40.400 Matter is no longer the primary thing. 854 00:44:40.700 --> 00:44:43.200 But what people forget about this 855 00:44:43.200 --> 00:44:44.720 is that they're still physical things. 856 00:44:44.740 --> 00:44:45.080 They are physical theories. 857 00:44:45.420 --> 00:44:48.360 They are theories about the physics 858 00:44:48.360 --> 00:44:51.840 of the interaction between matter and energy 859 00:44:52.740 --> 00:44:54.040 and the other forces. 860 00:44:54.340 --> 00:44:57.780 And so they remain fundamentally physical theories. 861 00:44:58.740 --> 00:45:00.740 And there really isn't anything in these theories 862 00:45:00.740 --> 00:45:03.980 that is really directly addressing 863 00:45:03.980 --> 00:45:06.440 the psychological or theological dimension. 864 00:45:06.520 --> 00:45:10.480 And I myself don't think it will prove any more fruitful 865 00:45:10.480 --> 00:45:12.580 to spiritualise that realm 866 00:45:12.580 --> 00:45:14.040 any more than it did for Newton. 867 00:45:15.220 --> 00:45:17.600 Margaret, I think a lot of people misunderstand 868 00:45:18.000 --> 00:45:19.520 with these higher dimensions 869 00:45:19.520 --> 00:45:21.420 that they're somehow in parallel 870 00:45:21.420 --> 00:45:23.540 to our three dimensions of space, 871 00:45:23.640 --> 00:45:25.520 whereas they're perpendicular to them. 872 00:45:25.640 --> 00:45:27.400 And so this gives the impression 873 00:45:27.400 --> 00:45:29.320 that it's some other realm 874 00:45:29.320 --> 00:45:30.720 which is disconnected from ours, 875 00:45:30.740 --> 00:45:32.660 like the realm of the spirit or something. 876 00:45:32.820 --> 00:45:33.740 But these are bolted on. 877 00:45:34.380 --> 00:45:35.580 It's not just, you know, 878 00:45:35.600 --> 00:45:37.140 we've got the three dimensions of space 879 00:45:37.140 --> 00:45:38.420 this way, that way and that way. 880 00:45:38.560 --> 00:45:41.380 These would be extra dimensions perpendicular to those three 881 00:45:41.380 --> 00:45:43.720 that we can't visualise, we can't see them, 882 00:45:43.760 --> 00:45:45.020 because they're rolled up very small. 883 00:45:46.040 --> 00:45:49.180 They're not sort of other disconnected regions entirely. 884 00:45:49.840 --> 00:45:52.220 Yeah, I think that's a really critical point. 885 00:45:53.100 --> 00:45:53.720 Gentleman here. 886 00:45:53.900 --> 00:45:56.200 Perhaps we're just trying to explain the unexplainable 887 00:45:56.200 --> 00:46:00.720 and perhaps some things are meant to be unexplained. 888 00:46:02.340 --> 00:46:04.400 That's not the sort of thing to say to a physicist. 889 00:46:07.880 --> 00:46:08.720 Go ahead. 890 00:46:09.040 --> 00:46:11.100 This question follows on from that one. 891 00:46:11.900 --> 00:46:13.120 Could you speak a little louder? 892 00:46:13.180 --> 00:46:14.480 I'm having a bit of trouble hearing. 893 00:46:14.760 --> 00:46:15.100 Okay. 894 00:46:15.760 --> 00:46:18.140 This question follows on from that one, really. 895 00:46:19.300 --> 00:46:22.680 I'm a bit troubled about how one makes, 896 00:46:22.740 --> 00:46:24.520 at the beginning of the 21st century, 897 00:46:24.660 --> 00:46:27.920 a principle distinction of what is physical. 898 00:46:27.960 --> 00:46:29.980 When you were talking about the medieval worldview, 899 00:46:30.280 --> 00:46:31.560 I mean, we could be very, very comfortable 900 00:46:31.560 --> 00:46:34.360 about saying the physical is one of the four elements, 901 00:46:34.440 --> 00:46:36.420 but we don't have an elemental picture anymore. 902 00:46:36.700 --> 00:46:40.780 And it seems that the whole march of 20th century physics 903 00:46:40.780 --> 00:46:43.960 has made the world a stranger and stranger and stranger in place. 904 00:46:44.200 --> 00:46:47.400 And we can talk about particles and we can talk about waves 905 00:46:47.400 --> 00:46:48.620 and we can talk about fields, 906 00:46:48.780 --> 00:46:52.560 but it doesn't bear any relation to what we used to speak about 907 00:46:52.560 --> 00:46:53.460 as the physical. 908 00:46:54.200 --> 00:46:59.780 Is this just a word we use to sort of negatively distinguish it 909 00:47:00.760 --> 00:47:02.480 from something that is supernatural 910 00:47:02.480 --> 00:47:05.040 or does it really have any meaning anymore? 911 00:47:05.400 --> 00:47:06.180 The physical? 912 00:47:06.460 --> 00:47:06.820 Yes. 913 00:47:07.820 --> 00:47:08.780 I mean, and... 914 00:47:09.420 --> 00:47:10.760 I mean, the physical and the physical, 915 00:47:10.780 --> 00:47:11.460 and the mental, I mean... 916 00:47:13.200 --> 00:47:15.620 I don't understand how you make a distinction 917 00:47:15.620 --> 00:47:17.260 between the physical and the mental either. 918 00:47:18.440 --> 00:47:19.900 Well, I mean... 919 00:47:21.240 --> 00:47:21.760 Sorry. 920 00:47:22.620 --> 00:47:23.580 Come on, come on. 921 00:47:23.920 --> 00:47:28.000 I mean, there's no question that a radical distinction 922 00:47:28.780 --> 00:47:29.920 between the physical and mental 923 00:47:29.920 --> 00:47:32.600 is one of the fundamental philosophical problems 924 00:47:32.600 --> 00:47:34.360 that we've had ever since the Greeks. 925 00:47:35.740 --> 00:47:38.120 And I think that is part of the problem, 926 00:47:38.220 --> 00:47:40.500 that we make such a radical distinction. 927 00:47:41.160 --> 00:47:44.720 But, I mean, there clearly is... 928 00:47:44.720 --> 00:47:46.060 There clearly is... 929 00:47:46.060 --> 00:47:49.200 I mean, my own view is that there must be some form of a grading, 930 00:47:49.300 --> 00:47:51.260 but, I mean, there are physical phenomena. 931 00:47:52.360 --> 00:47:56.520 We can study things like how bodies fall 932 00:47:56.520 --> 00:47:57.940 under the influence of gravity, 933 00:47:58.140 --> 00:48:03.260 and we have reaped tremendous rewards 934 00:48:03.880 --> 00:48:05.360 from this understanding, 935 00:48:05.400 --> 00:48:08.560 this very detailed examination of the physical world. 936 00:48:08.620 --> 00:48:09.780 I mean, we've got microchips. 937 00:48:10.620 --> 00:48:11.820 We've got computers. 938 00:48:12.740 --> 00:48:15.080 We've got electricity flowing to our houses. 939 00:48:15.220 --> 00:48:16.900 We wouldn't have these things 940 00:48:16.900 --> 00:48:20.040 without a very thorough and detailed examination 941 00:48:20.040 --> 00:48:21.780 of physical phenomena. 942 00:48:22.820 --> 00:48:24.560 So I don't think we can say that, you know, 943 00:48:24.560 --> 00:48:26.180 the distinction is completely bogus. 944 00:48:26.200 --> 00:48:29.500 At the same time, we all know the feeling of love and hate 945 00:48:29.500 --> 00:48:31.300 and fear and rage, 946 00:48:31.600 --> 00:48:35.240 which I believe also have physical correlates in our bodies. 947 00:48:35.280 --> 00:48:38.340 When I feel angry, I'm sure my blood pressure goes up 948 00:48:38.340 --> 00:48:38.980 and all of that. 949 00:48:38.980 --> 00:48:42.740 But that said, there is also the physical feeling, 950 00:48:43.740 --> 00:48:45.920 which philosophers of mine have been debating, 951 00:48:46.820 --> 00:48:49.620 you know, hugely debating at the moment. 952 00:48:49.660 --> 00:48:54.100 Is the experience of these things something to be explained, 953 00:48:54.120 --> 00:48:55.860 or is it only the underlying physical phenomena? 954 00:48:57.720 --> 00:48:58.880 I think that... 955 00:48:58.880 --> 00:49:02.120 I guess the point that I was making is what Noam Chomsky says, 956 00:49:02.260 --> 00:49:04.560 and that's that as soon as we understand something, 957 00:49:04.720 --> 00:49:05.500 we call it physical. 958 00:49:05.760 --> 00:49:08.480 If we don't understand it, we call it something else. 959 00:49:09.240 --> 00:49:12.240 Like the nature of mentality and that sort of stuff. 960 00:49:12.380 --> 00:49:13.220 We're having a real... 961 00:49:13.220 --> 00:49:15.380 We're having real difficulty getting a handle 962 00:49:15.380 --> 00:49:17.440 on what the nature of mentality is 963 00:49:17.440 --> 00:49:19.020 and whether it's identical with brain states 964 00:49:19.020 --> 00:49:20.900 and whether, you know, what it is. 965 00:49:21.000 --> 00:49:23.700 And so we call it mental and physical. 966 00:49:24.200 --> 00:49:27.460 But, I mean, it just doesn't seem to me 967 00:49:27.460 --> 00:49:30.680 that there's any principled way of making a distinction 968 00:49:30.680 --> 00:49:32.660 between those since physics has admitted 969 00:49:32.660 --> 00:49:35.700 so many weird and wonderful things into its purview 970 00:49:35.700 --> 00:49:36.600 over the last century. 971 00:49:36.820 --> 00:49:38.960 But physics has admitted many weird and wonderful things. 972 00:49:38.980 --> 00:49:41.540 But all of them are still about the physical world. 973 00:49:42.000 --> 00:49:48.060 I mean, physicists do indeed study physical phenomena 974 00:49:48.060 --> 00:49:51.560 that they actually set up experiments 975 00:49:51.560 --> 00:49:53.820 to very specifically test. 976 00:49:54.260 --> 00:49:57.560 I mean, because we've got quantum mechanics and string theory 977 00:49:57.560 --> 00:50:01.600 doesn't mean that physics has left the realm of the physical. 978 00:50:01.740 --> 00:50:04.980 And most physicists would very staunchly maintain 979 00:50:04.980 --> 00:50:08.340 that ultimately their theories must be reflected 980 00:50:08.340 --> 00:50:10.800 in the data of physical experimentation 981 00:50:10.800 --> 00:50:12.100 or physical phenomena. 982 00:50:12.400 --> 00:50:14.320 And I think that's very critical to the enterprise. 983 00:50:14.540 --> 00:50:17.920 But that said, I mean, I think your deeper point 984 00:50:17.920 --> 00:50:19.600 is a really important one, 985 00:50:19.700 --> 00:50:25.600 that when we have tended to have this very strong division 986 00:50:25.600 --> 00:50:28.240 between the physical and the mental, 987 00:50:28.300 --> 00:50:31.180 and clearly that strong division is problematic, 988 00:50:31.260 --> 00:50:33.840 but we do talk about mental phenomena. 989 00:50:34.080 --> 00:50:37.560 I mean, people write whole books on things like love and anger 990 00:50:37.560 --> 00:50:41.460 and without ever talking physics. 991 00:50:41.580 --> 00:50:42.920 And so they should. 992 00:50:43.540 --> 00:50:45.900 I think we need to move on to the next question, please. 993 00:50:46.600 --> 00:50:49.660 The physical world which you described so beautifully 994 00:50:49.660 --> 00:50:53.920 is the concept that has come to us through observation 995 00:50:53.920 --> 00:50:55.420 refined by experiment. 996 00:50:56.660 --> 00:51:01.520 The idea of a psychological dimension that you talk about 997 00:51:01.520 --> 00:51:04.080 is really in the realm of belief. 998 00:51:05.440 --> 00:51:07.380 And I guess we can... 999 00:51:08.660 --> 00:51:11.620 That belief might then generate a hypothesis, 1000 00:51:12.440 --> 00:51:14.600 which is what you've put to us, I think. 1001 00:51:15.040 --> 00:51:19.340 But I guess there are other sorts of hypotheses we can have 1002 00:51:19.340 --> 00:51:22.080 for explaining psychological phenomena. 1003 00:51:22.320 --> 00:51:25.160 They may just be the way our brains sort of work 1004 00:51:25.160 --> 00:51:25.980 and all that sort of thing. 1005 00:51:26.080 --> 00:51:29.260 Why do you give primacy to the hypothesis 1006 00:51:29.260 --> 00:51:30.840 that there is this extra dimension? 1007 00:51:33.080 --> 00:51:34.800 You mean the realm of... 1008 00:51:34.800 --> 00:51:37.100 You mean thought and feeling, I think. 1009 00:51:37.980 --> 00:51:40.780 I mean, it's an experience we have, 1010 00:51:40.920 --> 00:51:44.340 but I don't quite see why you have to build it into a... 1011 00:51:49.220 --> 00:51:51.220 ..an explanation as fundamental, 1012 00:51:51.540 --> 00:51:55.300 as the fundamental explanation 1013 00:51:55.300 --> 00:51:58.120 that's been generated for the physical world. 1014 00:51:58.440 --> 00:52:02.100 I mean, can it not be simply a product of the physical world? 1015 00:52:02.340 --> 00:52:04.880 That has been the claim of materialist philosophers 1016 00:52:04.880 --> 00:52:08.040 since the mid-17th century. 1017 00:52:08.120 --> 00:52:09.820 I happen to disagree with it. 1018 00:52:11.200 --> 00:52:15.880 That idea comes about, basically, historically, 1019 00:52:15.940 --> 00:52:17.640 in the mid-17th century. 1020 00:52:17.860 --> 00:52:21.300 Nobody before the mid-17th century would have made such a claim. 1021 00:52:21.360 --> 00:52:23.120 In fact, the Medieval's made the opposite claim, 1022 00:52:23.880 --> 00:52:25.320 that if anything, it was... 1023 00:52:25.320 --> 00:52:26.300 I mean, for medieval people, 1024 00:52:26.480 --> 00:52:30.960 it was the spiritual phenomena which were the primary, 1025 00:52:31.120 --> 00:52:33.300 they saw it that way, 1026 00:52:33.420 --> 00:52:34.860 and that the physical, you know, 1027 00:52:34.860 --> 00:52:36.220 was, in fact, in their view, 1028 00:52:36.300 --> 00:52:39.580 a secondary and rather pale reflection of the true reality 1029 00:52:39.580 --> 00:52:40.640 and the primary reality, 1030 00:52:40.800 --> 00:52:44.460 which, in their view, was the spiritual. 1031 00:52:44.660 --> 00:52:45.840 And I think, in fact, looking back, 1032 00:52:45.860 --> 00:52:48.220 we have to understand that for medieval people, 1033 00:52:49.140 --> 00:52:52.820 the spiritual realm did not include simply what we would call the soul, 1034 00:52:52.900 --> 00:52:57.260 but I believe embedded in that was a concept of psychology 1035 00:52:57.760 --> 00:52:59.120 and that for medieval people, 1036 00:52:59.220 --> 00:53:02.260 what we would call psychology was actually part of their theology. 1037 00:53:02.540 --> 00:53:04.840 So, the point I'm trying to make is, 1038 00:53:04.860 --> 00:53:07.700 that it is a very recent historical phenomena 1039 00:53:07.700 --> 00:53:10.780 to see the physical as the primary. 1040 00:53:12.080 --> 00:53:15.960 And there's nothing a priori about... 1041 00:53:15.960 --> 00:53:17.760 You can't logically prove that. 1042 00:53:18.220 --> 00:53:22.060 It is a belief, too, that the physical is the primary. 1043 00:53:22.400 --> 00:53:24.220 Medieval people held the opposite view. 1044 00:53:24.620 --> 00:53:26.620 My own view is that the two, 1045 00:53:26.740 --> 00:53:28.920 that neither one nor other should be privileged 1046 00:53:28.920 --> 00:53:29.980 and that we actually... 1047 00:53:29.980 --> 00:53:30.960 They are both... 1048 00:53:30.960 --> 00:53:32.560 Need to be... 1049 00:53:32.560 --> 00:53:34.700 In my view, they are both... 1050 00:53:34.700 --> 00:53:37.900 Both primary phenomena and clearly related phenomena 1051 00:53:37.900 --> 00:53:41.380 and that we need, ultimately, a world view 1052 00:53:41.380 --> 00:53:44.140 which has a very sophisticated understanding 1053 00:53:44.140 --> 00:53:45.420 of the physical phenomena, 1054 00:53:45.620 --> 00:53:46.500 which I believe we're getting, 1055 00:53:46.600 --> 00:53:48.860 and we also need a very sophisticated understanding 1056 00:53:48.860 --> 00:53:49.840 of mental phenomena 1057 00:53:49.840 --> 00:53:52.260 and that, ultimately, those two things must be married together. 1058 00:53:53.760 --> 00:53:54.280 But... 1059 00:53:54.280 --> 00:53:55.700 Your question, sir, 1060 00:53:55.860 --> 00:53:58.220 did it relate to the additional dimensions? 1061 00:53:58.460 --> 00:53:59.620 Did I pick that up correctly? 1062 00:53:59.920 --> 00:54:01.080 Yeah, that's right. 1063 00:54:01.360 --> 00:54:03.700 But he was saying the dimension of thought. 1064 00:54:03.900 --> 00:54:04.640 Yeah. 1065 00:54:05.260 --> 00:54:06.540 I mean, is it that we... 1066 00:54:06.540 --> 00:54:08.960 The point that Margaret was dealing with earlier, 1067 00:54:09.120 --> 00:54:11.240 that you mustn't think of these extra dimensions 1068 00:54:11.240 --> 00:54:14.100 as somehow other universes disconnected from ours. 1069 00:54:14.220 --> 00:54:17.820 It's simply a geometrical property of our universe. 1070 00:54:17.940 --> 00:54:19.200 There could be these other dimensions 1071 00:54:19.840 --> 00:54:22.180 which are rolled up very small so we don't see them, 1072 00:54:22.280 --> 00:54:24.900 but they could be exposed through powerful instruments, perhaps. 1073 00:54:25.380 --> 00:54:27.480 It's simply a mathematical fact that if you put them in, 1074 00:54:27.500 --> 00:54:29.900 you can explain the various forces of nature. 1075 00:54:30.860 --> 00:54:32.520 It's just a pretty physical thing. 1076 00:54:32.660 --> 00:54:33.780 It seemed to me that we were putting... 1077 00:54:33.780 --> 00:54:37.620 We were putting thought and psychology as something extra. 1078 00:54:38.100 --> 00:54:38.960 I am, yes. 1079 00:54:39.640 --> 00:54:42.360 And Margaret was dealt with that, I think, in her answer. 1080 00:54:42.360 --> 00:54:45.040 What I mean is, on what belief, 1081 00:54:45.620 --> 00:54:47.940 because I think it can only be a belief at this stage, 1082 00:54:49.400 --> 00:54:51.120 what leads you to that belief? 1083 00:54:51.400 --> 00:54:52.580 Well, let me ask you the question. 1084 00:54:52.680 --> 00:54:57.780 What leads you to the belief that the material is primary? 1085 00:54:58.560 --> 00:55:00.980 I don't actually know the answer, 1086 00:55:01.080 --> 00:55:02.060 but on the other hand, 1087 00:55:02.060 --> 00:55:03.680 I think there are... 1088 00:55:03.780 --> 00:55:08.660 There are a number of ways in which one could... 1089 00:55:09.260 --> 00:55:16.700 I mean, it's an old question as to whether the brain is all there is 1090 00:55:16.700 --> 00:55:19.760 or whether there is something extra to the brain. 1091 00:55:19.840 --> 00:55:21.100 Well, it isn't actually an old question. 1092 00:55:21.200 --> 00:55:21.980 It's a new question. 1093 00:55:22.060 --> 00:55:23.180 Margaret, before you pick up the answer, 1094 00:55:23.560 --> 00:55:24.800 you're very faint, apparently. 1095 00:55:25.140 --> 00:55:25.640 Oh, sorry. 1096 00:55:25.640 --> 00:55:26.160 Can we swap places? 1097 00:55:26.380 --> 00:55:26.700 Oh, okay. 1098 00:55:26.700 --> 00:55:28.580 Because your words are much more important than mine. 1099 00:55:28.740 --> 00:55:30.020 Why don't you come to the lecture? 1100 00:55:30.160 --> 00:55:30.520 Oh, okay. 1101 00:55:31.420 --> 00:55:33.020 I mean, the thing is, 1102 00:55:33.020 --> 00:55:34.160 it isn't an old question. 1103 00:55:34.240 --> 00:55:35.220 It's a new question. 1104 00:55:35.640 --> 00:55:36.840 Well, it's sort of... 1105 00:55:36.840 --> 00:55:40.220 What I was trying to say before is that for the medievals, 1106 00:55:40.820 --> 00:55:42.600 it simply wasn't a question at all. 1107 00:55:42.840 --> 00:55:44.080 I mean, medieval theology, 1108 00:55:44.380 --> 00:55:45.880 the mental phenomena, 1109 00:55:46.520 --> 00:55:48.520 well, the spiritual, 1110 00:55:48.580 --> 00:55:51.260 which I think we have to include in understanding modern terms, 1111 00:55:51.280 --> 00:55:52.200 was mental as well. 1112 00:55:52.900 --> 00:55:56.940 It was simply unquestioned to them that that was the primary reality. 1113 00:55:57.440 --> 00:56:01.080 It is a very recent historical development 1114 00:56:01.080 --> 00:56:02.800 to see it in a way, 1115 00:56:03.020 --> 00:56:03.900 that you are suggesting. 1116 00:56:04.580 --> 00:56:07.620 And the position that you're putting forward, 1117 00:56:07.700 --> 00:56:08.380 I'm suggesting to you, 1118 00:56:08.440 --> 00:56:10.640 can't be justified on a priori ground. 1119 00:56:10.700 --> 00:56:11.760 That too, in some sense, 1120 00:56:11.820 --> 00:56:12.940 is a belief system. 1121 00:56:15.020 --> 00:56:19.420 I mean, I think that you're suggesting 1122 00:56:19.420 --> 00:56:21.820 that your position is somehow beyond belief 1123 00:56:21.820 --> 00:56:25.220 and that any other position is simply a matter of belief. 1124 00:56:25.360 --> 00:56:26.920 And I'm suggesting to you that, in fact, 1125 00:56:26.920 --> 00:56:29.660 your position is the one that, for most of human history, 1126 00:56:29.820 --> 00:56:31.920 would have been considered absolutely aberrant. 1127 00:56:32.480 --> 00:56:34.160 That doesn't mean it's not right, 1128 00:56:34.320 --> 00:56:37.320 but I'm just saying that I think you have to acknowledge 1129 00:56:37.320 --> 00:56:38.320 that in some sense, 1130 00:56:38.500 --> 00:56:40.740 that too is a belief. 1131 00:56:42.500 --> 00:56:45.720 Sorry, sir, I'm rather concerned that we're now down 1132 00:56:45.720 --> 00:56:47.460 to about the last two minutes. 1133 00:56:47.800 --> 00:56:51.020 And it's, I think, only fair to allow the last two people 1134 00:56:51.020 --> 00:56:52.060 to come in with quick questions. 1135 00:56:52.100 --> 00:56:54.160 And can I discourage no further questions? 1136 00:56:54.760 --> 00:56:55.240 Okay. 1137 00:56:55.300 --> 00:56:56.780 I was just wondering if, 1138 00:56:56.820 --> 00:57:00.700 to try and combat the idea that self is just an illusion, 1139 00:57:00.920 --> 00:57:01.360 has anyone, 1140 00:57:01.360 --> 00:57:04.420 sort of, talked about emergent property 1141 00:57:04.420 --> 00:57:06.640 as an explanation for a soul, 1142 00:57:06.800 --> 00:57:08.500 like by looking at all the, 1143 00:57:08.500 --> 00:57:10.240 some of the physical parts 1144 00:57:10.240 --> 00:57:11.140 and seeing as, 1145 00:57:11.940 --> 00:57:13.700 describing it as emergent property? 1146 00:57:14.040 --> 00:57:17.040 Yes, people have suggested that as an idea, yes. 1147 00:57:17.380 --> 00:57:19.680 And can it actually work? 1148 00:57:19.840 --> 00:57:20.520 Do you think it... 1149 00:57:22.500 --> 00:57:25.820 I don't have a problem with the idea of the self, 1150 00:57:25.880 --> 00:57:26.440 in some sense, 1151 00:57:26.520 --> 00:57:29.480 as an emergent property of the physical, 1152 00:57:30.120 --> 00:57:31.180 because it seems to me, 1153 00:57:31.180 --> 00:57:32.480 I mean, I don't believe, for instance, 1154 00:57:32.620 --> 00:57:33.380 that when I die, 1155 00:57:33.480 --> 00:57:35.380 that my self will continue on after me. 1156 00:57:35.420 --> 00:57:37.380 I do believe that my self is actually, 1157 00:57:39.100 --> 00:57:39.540 definitely, 1158 00:57:41.260 --> 00:57:42.540 in some sense, 1159 00:57:42.640 --> 00:57:44.740 does emerge from my body. 1160 00:57:44.900 --> 00:57:47.820 So I am one person who doesn't actually think 1161 00:57:47.820 --> 00:57:50.160 that there is a self separable from the body. 1162 00:57:50.680 --> 00:57:53.660 But I would like to sort of put it in this way, 1163 00:57:53.720 --> 00:57:56.040 that I think that even if one understands it, 1164 00:57:56.060 --> 00:57:58.420 that the ontology of the self, in some sense, 1165 00:57:58.460 --> 00:58:01.160 emerges from the physicality of the body, 1166 00:58:01.160 --> 00:58:02.600 which I do believe is true, 1167 00:58:02.720 --> 00:58:07.820 that when the self comes into being, 1168 00:58:08.100 --> 00:58:11.420 that it is then a phenomena which needs, 1169 00:58:11.540 --> 00:58:14.020 as the chaos and complexity people would say, 1170 00:58:14.120 --> 00:58:14.440 it becomes, 1171 00:58:14.760 --> 00:58:17.480 it then has properties of its own, 1172 00:58:18.160 --> 00:58:20.040 which need to be explored and investigated 1173 00:58:20.040 --> 00:58:21.300 in their own right, 1174 00:58:21.420 --> 00:58:23.080 and which cannot be explained 1175 00:58:23.080 --> 00:58:28.680 in terms of the underlying physical chemistry of my brain. 1176 00:58:28.900 --> 00:58:29.760 So I think that the self, 1177 00:58:29.760 --> 00:58:32.340 once it does come into being actually, 1178 00:58:32.420 --> 00:58:36.140 is a fundamental aspect of my being, 1179 00:58:36.300 --> 00:58:39.420 just as my body is a fundamental aspect of my being, 1180 00:58:39.500 --> 00:58:42.720 and does indeed need its own discourse. 1181 00:58:43.460 --> 00:58:45.140 And the final question please. 1182 00:58:46.940 --> 00:58:47.500 Thanks. 1183 00:58:48.480 --> 00:58:50.140 I haven't studied much physics, 1184 00:58:50.180 --> 00:58:53.200 but there is a phenomenon of electrons splitting into, 1185 00:58:53.320 --> 00:58:56.040 splitting sub-atomically into a positron as well. 1186 00:58:56.320 --> 00:58:57.660 Sorry, into what? 1187 00:58:57.780 --> 00:58:59.120 I'm having a hard time hearing you. 1188 00:58:59.120 --> 00:59:00.300 An electron into a positron? 1189 00:59:00.460 --> 00:59:03.440 Or like into both particles at once in a sub-atomic field? 1190 00:59:03.720 --> 00:59:04.000 Is it? 1191 00:59:04.560 --> 00:59:06.360 An electron won't become a positron. 1192 00:59:06.420 --> 00:59:10.520 You can have a photon splitting into an electron and a positron. 1193 00:59:10.660 --> 00:59:11.120 That's right, yeah. 1194 00:59:11.240 --> 00:59:13.100 So you've got that splitting effect, 1195 00:59:13.280 --> 00:59:15.200 and it seems that that's, 1196 00:59:16.780 --> 00:59:18.640 there's no theory that can deal with that, 1197 00:59:18.700 --> 00:59:21.040 and perhaps what you're suggesting is that 1198 00:59:21.040 --> 00:59:23.960 physical phenomena actually need, 1199 00:59:24.420 --> 00:59:26.320 there needs to be theories which deal with 1200 00:59:26.320 --> 00:59:28.040 things beyond physical phenomena, 1201 00:59:28.040 --> 00:59:32.000 that perhaps there's causes beyond the pure physical plane. 1202 00:59:32.160 --> 00:59:33.180 Is that something that you're, 1203 00:59:34.360 --> 00:59:37.980 like trying to address by dealing with these extra planes 1204 00:59:37.980 --> 00:59:38.880 beyond the physical, 1205 00:59:39.000 --> 00:59:41.580 that physics isn't just dealing with physical phenomena, 1206 00:59:41.720 --> 00:59:47.460 but it's playing in a field which is affected by some other kind of... 1207 00:59:48.100 --> 00:59:51.480 Well, on the question of photons turning into electrons and positrons, 1208 00:59:51.540 --> 00:59:53.380 that's actually something that's very well understood, 1209 00:59:53.460 --> 00:59:56.340 and physicists have a very, I believe, you know, 1210 00:59:56.880 --> 00:59:57.540 you know, 1211 00:59:58.040 --> 01:00:01.700 very, what to me is a very acceptable explanation of that phenomena, 1212 01:00:02.080 --> 01:00:05.840 and that is a physical phenomena that's been studied very well. 1213 01:00:06.440 --> 01:00:10.360 But, so I don't put that in the category of what I'm talking about here. 1214 01:00:10.700 --> 01:00:15.040 That is a purely physical phenomena with a very good theory and explanation for it. 1215 01:00:15.420 --> 01:00:19.160 But you're right in that I am suggesting that 1216 01:00:20.680 --> 01:00:25.020 a purely physicalist account of the world is incomplete. 1217 01:00:26.280 --> 01:00:28.020 I don't know if I want to say that, 1218 01:00:28.040 --> 01:00:29.460 I don't want to say that we need other theories, 1219 01:00:29.600 --> 01:00:31.060 I'm not saying theory is a quiet word, 1220 01:00:31.120 --> 01:00:34.640 I'm not suggesting that we need another science. 1221 01:00:35.180 --> 01:00:38.480 I think science is the thing that does deal with the physical world 1222 01:00:38.480 --> 01:00:39.660 and does it extremely well. 1223 01:00:39.840 --> 01:00:45.140 What I'm suggesting is that we need to have a very serious way 1224 01:00:45.140 --> 01:00:49.540 of discussing and describing in our society mental phenomena 1225 01:00:49.540 --> 01:00:54.620 as medieval Christianity did have embedded within it, 1226 01:00:54.680 --> 01:00:55.820 and as far as I can tell, 1227 01:00:55.920 --> 01:00:58.020 all other religious and mythological phenomena, 1228 01:00:58.040 --> 01:01:01.240 all other mythological systems have embedded within them as well. 1229 01:01:01.360 --> 01:01:04.840 One of the things that we tend to forget when we look at mythological systems, 1230 01:01:04.960 --> 01:01:06.400 say take the Greek myths for instance, 1231 01:01:06.640 --> 01:01:10.140 is that they weren't simply stories about the creation of the physical world. 1232 01:01:10.300 --> 01:01:14.960 What they were is primarily stories about the formation of the human being 1233 01:01:14.960 --> 01:01:16.300 as a psychological entity, 1234 01:01:16.640 --> 01:01:19.480 and how human, in a sense, 1235 01:01:19.540 --> 01:01:22.320 they're pre-Freudian psychological theories. 1236 01:01:22.520 --> 01:01:27.060 They're really stories about the behaviour of human beings 1237 01:01:27.060 --> 01:01:30.380 in relationship with one another and with their world and in society 1238 01:01:31.060 --> 01:01:32.420 as psychological beings. 1239 01:01:32.760 --> 01:01:35.980 And in some cultures, particularly Aboriginal culture I know is one, 1240 01:01:36.120 --> 01:01:39.640 a large part of their mythological stories, 1241 01:01:39.700 --> 01:01:41.060 if we can use that word, 1242 01:01:41.200 --> 01:01:45.540 is to try to understand how human beings came to be human beings 1243 01:01:45.540 --> 01:01:47.840 as psychological creatures. 1244 01:01:48.340 --> 01:01:51.660 So a lot of Aboriginal so-called mythology 1245 01:01:51.660 --> 01:01:54.520 is not about the creation of the physical world at all. 1246 01:01:54.560 --> 01:01:56.580 It's about how did human beings, 1247 01:01:57.060 --> 01:02:00.020 come to be psychologically constructed. 1248 01:02:00.240 --> 01:02:02.620 Now we do have a science that's attempting to do that at the moment. 1249 01:02:02.660 --> 01:02:03.960 It's called evolutionary psychology. 1250 01:02:05.940 --> 01:02:08.580 I don't actually have a lot of respect for it, 1251 01:02:08.620 --> 01:02:11.100 but I think they are attempting to do something 1252 01:02:11.100 --> 01:02:14.020 which in fact is something that a lot of mythological systems 1253 01:02:14.520 --> 01:02:17.700 did and have been doing for hundreds of thousands of years, 1254 01:02:17.820 --> 01:02:21.500 which is to actually address the question of how human beings 1255 01:02:21.500 --> 01:02:24.560 not only came to be as physical entities but as psychological entities. 1256 01:02:24.800 --> 01:02:26.360 And that is what I'm suggesting, 1257 01:02:27.060 --> 01:02:27.580 that we need. 1258 01:02:27.680 --> 01:02:31.420 And my own view is that evolutionary psychology is not the way to go. 1259 01:02:32.080 --> 01:02:34.800 Although some interesting insights may well come out of that, 1260 01:02:34.900 --> 01:02:37.940 but I don't see it as being really getting to the issues 1261 01:02:37.940 --> 01:02:39.160 that I think are important. 1262 01:02:39.700 --> 01:02:41.460 So in terms of the physical world... 1263 01:02:41.460 --> 01:02:44.620 I'm sorry, I'm just going to have to truncate the discussion. 1264 01:02:44.900 --> 01:02:47.540 Fascinating though it is, we're already five minutes over time 1265 01:02:47.540 --> 01:02:49.080 and some people will want to go elsewhere. 1266 01:02:50.160 --> 01:02:51.280 Thank you very much. 1267 01:02:59.300 --> 01:03:01.060 Thank you very much. 1268 01:03:02.820 --> 01:03:08.180 Thank you very much. 1269 01:03:09.160 --> 01:03:12.020 So my thanks to you, Margaret, 1270 01:03:12.120 --> 01:03:15.600 and anyone who has not had enough of space 1271 01:03:15.600 --> 01:03:19.060 would do well to go to the tent and buy Margaret's book, 1272 01:03:19.240 --> 01:03:21.120 The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace.