Genesis and the Big Bang, by Gerald L. Schroeder

At the suggestion of Tap, I recently read parts of Gerald L. Schroeder's Genesis and the Big Bang. (New York: Bantam, 1990). Other people have mentioned the book from time to time.

Schroeder is clearly intelligent, and a good writer. I found some parts of particular interest.

Schroeder is a working scientist, and therefore writes with some authority. He appears, throughout, to be attempting a reconciliation of the Bible with the findings of modern science, a laudable goal, indeed, as both of them are part of God's revelation to us.

One way that he tries to do this is by using relativistic time. Einstein did not see time as constant, but flexible, depending on the physical system. Schroeder points out that God is outside of time, and that observed time depends on the motion of the observer and the observed, and that the apparent duration of an event won't be the same for two observers who are moving relative to one another. All this (which he explains at some length, with diagrams) leads him to conclude that the six days of Genesis might be the same as the billions of years that modern scientists believe is the age of the universe.

That's an interesting conclusion. However, no matter how good his science, I have trouble believing that this will be acceptable to young-earth creationists. I have trouble accepting it, myself, because it seems too complex and convoluted to me. Also, there is another question. Does Genesis really describe the creation of the earth, the solar system, or the universe, or all three?

Thanks, Tap. I believe Schroeder's heart is in the right place, and he may even be correct about creation week -- God may have observed the same events as a single week, and we (speaking of a hypothetical observer -- there were no humans in existence at the beginning) as billions of years, or the reverse. But I think he's working too hard here.

Maybe my problem is that, like almost all of us, I really think of time as a universal, constant, flow, no matter what Einstein said.

Thanks for reading.

And God created neutrons

I don't really know why God created neutrons, but I'm going to muse about this matter. Neutrons are one of the sub-atomic particles we first discovered. They were found to exist in the nucleus of most atoms.

Neutrons are one of (we think) a veritable "zoo" of subatomic particles. We now believe that neutrons are made up of three smaller quarks. Even though they are not considered to be fundamental (that is, basic building blocks, which cannot be broken down), the Wikipedia article on neutrons still lists them, with protons, as being one of the two building blocks of an atomic nucleus. They have no electrical charge, so do not interact with other particles in some of the ways that charged particles do. Why, then, did God make these anonymous entities? Obviously, we can only speculate about this, but I shall do so.

I guess that the main reason God made neutrons is that they make it possible for atomic nuclei to exist. (Except for the most common isotope of Hydrogen, Hydrogen1, which has no neutrons in its nucleus, just a proton.) Why do I say this? In the first place, atomic nuclei are extremely small. The Wikipedia article that is linked to earlier in this paragraph tells us that such nuclei are about 1/100,000 the size of the atom itself. Suppose that you were shrunk to 1/100,000 of your current size. You would be almost invisible to the naked eye. The nucleus is not only very small, but is extremely dense, roughly 10,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms per cubic meter. (A cubic meter of water would have a mass of about 1,000 kilograms.) The nucleus is packed! Or, in other words, you and I are mostly space, because most of an atom is basically empty, except for the tiny nucleus, and we are made of atoms. It's no wonder that some sub-atomic particles can pass right through us without hitting anything!

Not only is a nucleus dense, but electrical charges are concentrated there. Each proton has a single positive charge. All atoms, except for Hydrogen, have more than one proton. That means that from 2 to 92 positive charges are jammed into an exceedingly tiny volume. Like charges repel each other. So how is it possible that these protons can exist together in the nucleus? It isn't easy, but the presence of neutrons seems to make that possible. In other words, there is a force that holds the nucleus together, and it is stronger than the electrical repulsion forces that would break it apart.

If there were only one proton in all atomic nuclei, the only type of atom would be Hydrogen. As fine as these are, and as important, the complexity of matter, especially living matter, would be impossible if there weren't many types of atoms, not just one. Suppose you had to prepare a blog post, a poem, or a business document, with no letters but an h! Written communication would be impossible.

Without neutrons, you wouldn't be here. The hereditary information that came from your parents couldn't have existed, in the form of DNA. Without neutrons, your life would be dull and dry, assuming you somehow existed as you do now without them. There would be no flavor molecules, no sugars, no caffeine. There would be no semiconductors, no computers. No musical instruments, no paintings, no books, no flowers. Nothing but a cloud of Hydrogen.

I'm thankful for neutrons.

I don't understand everything about nuclear physics, by a long shot. For more detail on these topics, check the links in this post.

Thanks for reading.

I'm thankful for vibration

I'm thankful for vibration. Why?

Here's why. Vibration makes it possible for waves to exist. Something vibrates up and down, or back and forth, or around and round, and a wave is created. So who cares?

Waves are really important. If you live near the ocean, or any other large body of water, waves can kill you, or help transport you, or bring things to you, or give you occasion for recreation. That's one sort of wave, and it is, I believe not nearly as important as some other kinds of waves.

The most important kind of wave is electromagnetic. I have posted on this type of wave in the past, and tried to indicate why I (and you) should be grateful for its existence. Let me just indicate some reasons why I'm thankful for electromagnetic waves, in brief. Without them, there would be no light, and we couldn't see. Our appreciation of beauty would be much diminished. Without them, I wouldn't be able to listen to a radio, or watch television, or connect, through our wireless router, to the Internet, or through our cell phone, to other people. Without them the sun's energy would not reach the earth, and power photosynthesis, the water cycle, and keep us from freezing solid.

Another kind of wave is sound waves. (Many of the principles that apply to electromagnetic waves also apply to sound and other mechanical waves, but there are significant differences.) Without sound, I couldn't hear voices or music or various kinds of signals and warnings. I love to hear music and other sounds. God must, too. In Job 38:4-7, Job is told that, at the creation of the earth, heavenly beings shouted and sung! In Revelation 5:6-14, we are told that, when Christ is honored in heaven, heavenly beings, and humans, will shout and sing! (I recognize that it is possible, perhaps even likely, that neither of these passages are meant to be taken absolutely literally. But they mean something. I believe that God likes sound, including music. After all, He designed the universe so that mechanical waves would make them possible.

I have posted about other things I am thankful for, probably including vibrations, at other times. See here and here for links to these posts.

I'm also grateful for readers like you. Thanks!

Quantum physics requires that minds be non-physical

In a recent article in First Things, "Faith and Quantum Physics," Stephen M. Barr argues that quantum physics, one of the most non-common sense, and also one of the most successful, theories of modern science, requires that human minds be non-physical. As Barr points out, he is not the first to say this -- other prominent thinkers have done so. He also points out that some of the opposition to the seeming weirdness of quantum physics is because of exactly this conclusion.

Barr's argument goes like this:

Predictions of any kind, made as statements of probability, such as, for example, which party will win the U. S. Presidential election of 2004, are meaningless unless they predict a measurable actual outcome. There was an election, and the Republicans won, however that happened, and whatever has become of it. Quantum physics makes predictions about physical systems, in the form of mathematical equations. (There are no equations in Barr's article) But these are usually measured by laboratory devices, which are, themselves, physical systems, and the same mathematical equations apply to them, and are only predictions. Says Barr:
And this leads to the remarkable conclusion of this long train of logic: As long as only physical structures and mechanisms are involved, however complex, their behavior is described by equations that yield only probabilities-and once a mind is involved that can make a rational judgment of fact, and thus come to knowledge, there is certainty. Therefore, such a mind cannot be just a physical structure or mechanism completely describable by the equations of physics.

There is more in Barr's article, for sure. He also says that quantum physics is more congenial to Judeo-Christianity than it is to Buddhism, and that quantum physics presents strong arguments against determinism, or, in other words, for free choice. He finally examines the different philosophical views that are used to explain the findings of quantum physics, and comes down as in favor of the approach of Neils Bohr, although he understands that Bohr's thinking had some weak spots.

It is refreshing, but should not be surprising, that a physicist states that a great scientific theory provides evidence that a mind is not simply a material object, and that such minds make real choices. After all, God's revelation includes the natural world, as well as the Bible.

Thanks for reading.

Kepler's prayer -- a prayer for scientists

In his God's Universe (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2006) Owen Gingerich, an astronomer and Kepler scholar, refers to Johannes Kepler, the great astronomer, more than once. He quotes Kepler thus:

If I have been enticed into brashness by the wonderful beauty of thy works, or if I have loved my own glory among men, while advancing in work destined for thy glory, gently and mercifully pardon me: and finally, deign graciously to cause that these demonstrations may lead to thy glory and to the salvation of souls, and nowhere be an obstacle to that. Amen. - The Harmony of the World, 1619, end of book 5, Chapter 9. Gingerich cites previous translators, which his own translation relied on.

All I can say is to repeat the last word of Kepler's prayer.

Thanks for reading.

What was God doing before the Big Bang, and St. Augustine

A common statement about what God was doing before the Big Bang goes like this:

He was preparing Hell for people who ask such questions.

For example, the last page (before the Epilogue) of Simon Singh's Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe (New York: Harper Collins, 2004) says this, and attributes the origin to St. Augustine. (Singh acknowledges, of course, that Augustine didn't know anything about the Big Bang, and that he wrote about the origin of the universe more generally.) Singh is not the first person to say this.

Unfortunately, this is a misreading of Augustine. Here's what he really said:
Lo, are they not full of their old leaven, who say to us, "What was God doing before He made heaven and earth? For if (say they) He were unemployed and wrought not, why does He not also henceforth, and for ever, as He did heretofore? For did any new motion arise in God, and a new will to make a creature, which He had never before made, how then would that be a true eternity, where there ariseth a will, which was not? For the will of God is not a creature, but before the creature; seeing nothing could be created, unless the will of the Creator had preceded. The will of God then belongeth to His very Substance. And if aught have arisen in God's Substance, which before was not, that Substance cannot be truly called eternal. But if the will of God has been from eternity that the creature should be, why was not the creature also from eternity?" (Confessions, public domain, Book XI) Augustine, as I understand him, saw such a question as an attack on God's omnipotence and eternity, and argued, in the last part of his Confessions, not just in the paragraph quoted above, that God is outside time, so the question has no meaning.

If you do a search on the phrase "What was God doing before He made heaven and earth" you will see that the misreading is widespread.

Thanks for reading.

Joe Haldeman, God, and physics

Joe Haldeman is an honored science fiction writer. His The Forever War, about a meaningless, destructive war fought over several centuries in the future, and the human cost of that war, won both the Hugo and Nebula awards, which seldom happens.

I recently read his Forever Free (New York: Ace, 1999), which, says Haldeman, is a sequel.

I usually try not to give away the plot of literature I mention here, but in this case, I will summarize. William and Marygay Mandella, veterans of the Forever War, have been shunted off to an out-of-the-way planet, after peace has been made with the Taurans. They decide that they want to escape their situation (which includes being dependent, and in communication, with an undesirable society on earth) and escape in time, as well as space, hoping to return after millenia have passed behind them, with, perhaps improvements in the situations they want to leave behind. So they, with help, capture a ship that has the capacity to go nearly as fast as light, hoping to come back, after many years, to see what has happened to humans on their planet, and also to humans on earth.

They don't get far. Suddenly, the anti-matter that powers their ship disappears. They escape back to the planet they left, only to find that no one is alive there. Clothes and other artifacts have been left behind, as if everyone was suddenly vaporized, or something. The Mandellas, and others, go back to earth, to find the same situation. Some of them are beginning to think that perhaps their attempted journey caused the disappearances. OK, so far, but I was surprised by the resolution.

It seems that a god, or gods, had been doing an experiment on our galaxy for millenia, but, when these particular "rats" decided to escape, prevented it, and terminated the experiment. However, a representative god appears to tell the Mandellas about this, and agrees to bring everybody back. (All the people on earth were put in suspended animation in Carlsbad Caverns, and those on other planets are in similar situations.)

William Mandella has been a physics teacher, and he, and others, decide, as the book ends, that they should check out basic physics, and physical constants, because at least some of these are part of the experiment, and not really natural. They find that some of these are, indeed, not the same as they were before.

(In case you don't know it, some physical properties of the universe appear to have been fine-tuned, such that, if they were only slightly different, we wouldn't be here.)

My opinion is that Haldeman should have stuck to science fiction, and left theology out of it, but I'm not a famous writer. Thanks for reading.

Owen Gingerich on Copernicus

Owen Gingerich has written The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolas Copernicus. New York: Walker & Company, 2004. The title comes from Arthur Koestler's book, The Sleepwalkers, which was a popular book about early astronomy. According to Gingerich, Koestler claimed that nobody, or at least no important astronomers, read Copernicus' work, De revolutionibus (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, 1543). Gingerich found most, or all, of the existing copies, and shows, from evidence such as annotations in the books by important astronomers, such as Kepler, that Koestler's claim was false. Gingerich is a professor of astronomy and the history of astronomy.

He writes: Today we admire Copernicus for having the audacity to introduce the heliocentric cosmology into Western culture, essentially triggering the Scientific Revolution. The Copernican cosmology did not just provide the modern blueprint for the solar system. It was a compelling unification of the disparate elements of the heavenly spheres. The greatest of scientists have been unifiers, men who found connections that had never before been perceived. Isaac Newton destroyed the dichotomy between celestial and terrestrial motions, forging a common set of laws that applied to the Earth and sky alike. James Clerk Maxwell connected electricity and magnetism, and showed that light was electromagnetic radiation. Charles Darwin envisioned how all living organisms were related through common descent. Albert Einstein tore asunder the separation between matter and energy, linking them through his famous E = mc² equation.
Copernicus, too, was nothing if not a unifier. In the Ptolemaic astronomy each planet was a separate entity. True, they could be stacked one after another, producing a system of sorts, but their motions were each independent. The result, Copernicus wrote, was like a monster composed of spare parts, a head from here, the feet from there, the arms from yet another creature. Each planet in Ptolemy's system had a main circle and a subsidiary circle, the so-called epicycle. Mars with its epicycle was a prototype for each of the other planets, but because the frequency and size of the retrograde was different for each planet, an epicycle with an individual size and period was required for each planet. Copernicus discovered that he could eliminate one circle from each set by combining them all into a unified system. Owen Gingerich, The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolas Copernicus. New York: Walker & Company, 2004. pp. 53-4.


He presents evidence that ". . . neither Copernicus nor his predecessors were interested in adding extra circles just to make the predictions work a little better. Nevertheless, the legend of epicycles on epicycles has become so pervasive that barely a year passes without some author in the Physical Review or the Astronomical Journal remarking, apologetically, 'Maybe my theory has too many epicycles.'" Clearly, I haven't stamped out the myth. pp. 59-60.

And writes about Kepler:
In the Ptolemaic system, the Sun moved around its circle at a constant speed -- it just looked as if it moved at different speeds because it wasn't at the center of the Earth's circle.
And this, Kepler believed, had to be wrong. If Mercury, the planet closest to the Sun, moved fastest, and Saturn, the most distant planet, moved slowest, then this was because Mercury, being closer, soaked up more of the Sun's motive power and thus naturally moved faster. But in winter the Earth wasn't closer to the Sun than in summer, and Kepler reasoned that it should actually be going faster in its orbit in winter. That was physics, and Kepler, as the world's first astro-physicist, worked out the consequences. p. 168.

Thanks for reading.

John C. Polkinghorne on physics and free will

I reject a compatibilist account of human agency since I do not believe that the mere impression of choice can be the foundation of moral being. John Polkinghorne, "Physical Process, Quantum Events, and Divine Agency," pp. 181-190, in Quantum Mechanics: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action, Volume 5, edited by Robert John Russell, Philip Clayton, Kirk Wegter-McNelly, and John Polkinghorne. Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory Foundation, 2001. Quote is from p. 188.

Those who have appealed to (an assumed indeterministic) quantum theory . . . have to recognize how ill-defined and problematic is the concept of "indeterminate quantum events." The only events that we might feel reasonably free to invoke with some degree of confidence (assuming we have espoused the appropriate interpretative proposal) are measurement events. Their strictly episodic nature does not obviously fit them to describe agency which must surely be assumed to have a more free-flowing character. John Polkinghorne, "Physical Process, Quantum Events, and Divine Agency," pp. 181-190, in Quantum Mechanics: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action, Volume 5, edited by Robert John Russell, Philip Clayton, Kirk Wegter-McNelly, and John Polkinghorne. Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory Foundation, 2001. Quote is from p. 188-9.

Those who have appealed to chaos theory, ontologically reinterpreted as reflecting openness and not mere ignorance, and potentially affording a desirably continuous account of active process . . . do so partly because the exploration of a strange attractor seems to have a much wider and more flowing character than is afforded by a discrete series of measurement events. John Polkinghorne, "Physical Process, Quantum Events, and Divine Agency," pp. 181-190, in Quantum Mechanics: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action, Volume 5, edited by Robert John Russell, Philip Clayton, Kirk Wegter-McNelly, and John Polkinghorne. Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory Foundation, 2001. Quote is from p. 189

Those who appeal to quantum theory are supposing that its widely held (but poorly understood) indeterminism is the appropriate place at which to begin. Those of us who appeal to chaos theory are supposing that its direct connection with macroscopic phenomena, where human and divine agency are both expected to manifest themselves, makes it the more promising zero-order approximation. Both groups surely know that there is much more work to be done.
This might seem to be a disappointingly modest conclusion to the discussion, but problems of the exercise of agency are of immense difficulty and are unlikely to yield, after centuries of effort, to a contemporary quick fix. We can nevertheless be affirmed in the value of continuing the enterprise by our belief in our direct experience of human agency, and by our religious intuition of divine providence, both of which assure us that these fundamental experiences must be capable of being accommodated within an adequate worldview. John Polkinghorne, "Physical Process, Quantum Events, and Divine Agency," pp. 181-190, in Quantum Mechanics: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action, Volume 5, edited by Robert John Russell, Philip Clayton, Kirk Wegter-McNelly, and John Polkinghorne. Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory Foundation, 2001. Quote is from p. 190.

". . . being dead, yet speaketh." Science

My wife saw a quote from a previous post of mine, which said this:

"I am constantly struck by the strangeness of reading works that seem addressed, personally and intimately, to me, and yet were written by people who crumbled to dust long ago." (source)

She told me that she wanted to know some of the statements that seem addressed to me. In other words, who speaks to me, though dead? (Hebrews 11:4, KJV, says "By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts: and by it he being dead yet speaketh.")

In the first installment of this series, I quoted 10 brief sections from the Bible which particularly speak to me. In the second installment, I posted quotations from three of my favorite dead authors of fantastic literature, all of them Christians, namely George MacDonald, J. R. R. Tolkien, and C. S. Lewis.

Quotations from science are more difficult. Science typically depends on periodical articles, many of them so specialized that even scientists reading outside their own area find them difficult to understand. Most scientists of the twenty-first century have never read Galileo, Newton, Darwin or Einstein, whereas, in literature and theology, as I understand it, it is important to read the classics. Nonetheless, below are some important quotations from the literature of science. (The quotations are in black. Various reference and explanatory material is in this color.)

Galileo accepted the inerrancy of Scripture; but he was also mindful of Cardinal Baronius's quip that the bible "is intended to teach us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go." "The Galileo Affair," by Catholic.net.

And so, after postulating movements, which, farther on in the book, I ascribe to the Earth, I have found by many and long observations that if the movements of the other planets are assumed for the circular motion of the Earth and are substituted for the revolution of each star, not only do their phenomena follow logically therefrom, but the relative positions and magnitudes both of the stars and all their orbits, and of the heavens themselves, become so closely related that in none of its parts can anything be changed without causing confusion in the other parts and in the whole universe. Therefore, in the course of the work I have followed this plan: I describe in the first book all the positions of the orbits together with the movements which I ascribe to the Earth, in order that this book might contain, as it were, the general scheme of the universe. Thereafter in the remaining books, I set forth the motions of the other stars and of all their orbits together with the movement of the Earth, in order that one may see from this to what extent the movements and appearances of the other stars and their orbits can be saved, if they are transferred to the movement of the Earth. Nor do I doubt that ingenious and learned mathematicians will sustain me, if they are willing to recognize and weigh, not superficially, but with that thoroughness which Philosophy demands above all things, those matters which have been adduced by me in this work to demonstrate these theories. In order, however, that both the learned and the unlearned equally may see that I do not avoid anyone's judgment, I have preferred to dedicate these lucubrations of mine to Your Holiness rather than to any other, because, even in this remote corner of the world where I live, you are considered to be the most eminent man in dignity of rank and in love of all learning and even of mathematics, so that by your authority and judgment you can easily suppress the bites of slanderers, albeit the proverb hath it that there is no remedy for the bite of a sycophant. If perchance there shall be idle talkers, who, though they are ignorant of all mathematical sciences, nevertheless assume the right to pass judgment on these things, and if they should dare to criticise and attack this theory of mine because of some passage of scripture which they have falsely distorted for their own purpose, I care not at all; I will even despise their judgment as foolish. Nicolas Copernicus, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, public domain, 1543, from the dedication to Pope Paul III. The Wikipedia article on the history of science says that this book, claiming that the earth was not the center of the universe, began the scientific revolution.

Our design not respecting arts, but philosophy, and our subject not manual but natural powers, we consider chiefly those things which relate to gravity, levity, elastic force, the resistance of fluids, and the like forces, whether attractive or impulsive; and therefore we offer this work as the mathematical principles of philosophy; for all the difficulty of philosophy seems to consist in this – from the phenomena of motions to investigate the forces of nature, and then from these forces to demonstrate the other phenomena; and to this end the general propositions in the first and second book are directed. In the third book we give an example of this in the explication of the System of the World; for by the propositions mathematically demonstrated in the former books, we in the third derive from the celestial phenomena the forces of gravity with which bodies tend to the sun and the several planets. Then from these forces, by other propositions which are also mathematical, we deduce the motions of the planets, the comets, the moon, and the sea. I wish we could derive the rest of the phenomena of nature by the same kind of reasoning from mechanical principles; for I am induced by many reasons to suspect that they may all depend upon certain forces by which the particles of bodies, by some causes hitherto unknown, are either mutually impelled towards each other, and cohere in regular figures, or are repelled and recede from each other; which forces being unknown, philosophers have hitherto attempted the search of nature in vain; but I hope the principles here laid down will afford some light either to this or some truer method of philosophy. Isaac Newton, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, public domain, 1687. This passage is from the Preface to the first edition. Newton was a philosopher, in his own eyes, and scientific journals weren't as important in his day, hence the introduction of Newton's ideas in this book, rather than in a journal article. This book, more than any other, founded classical physics. The Wikipedia article on the history of science says that this book completed the scientific revolution.

It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life, public domain, 1859. This is the last paragraph of that book. Note that Darwin said "originally breathed into a few forms or into one," thus allowing for Divine creation.

"I did not think; I investigated." Wilhelm Roentgen, on his thoughts when he first discovered X-rays, from an interview with McClure's Magazine, May 1, 1896. Ideally, scientists don't have preconceived ideas about what they will find, but just let the facts take them where they will. In practice, of course, that isn't always true.

Sometimes, as Max Planck observed, and Thomas S. Kuhn quoted (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, (Wikipedia article on that book, accessed 12/07/2006) p. 151):

"a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."

Thomas S. Kuhn was a historian of science. The quotation encapsulates the idea of his book, namely that science doesn't "progress" (he didn't use that word) by adding experiment to experiment, but by sudden leaps, or scientific revolutions, when some scientist has a revolutionary insight, such as Newton's (possibly legendary) sudden revelation, when seeing an apple fall from a tree, that gravity is an attractive force. The following quote is from a man who is not known for the experiments he did, except those he did in his own head:

The basal principle, which was the pivot of all our previous considerations, was the special principle of relativity, i.e. the principle of the physical relativity of all uniform motion. Let as once more analyse its meaning carefully.

It was at all times clear that, from the point of view of the idea it conveys to us, every motion must be considered only as a relative motion. Returning to the illustration we have frequently used of the embankment and the railway carriage, we can express the fact of the motion here taking place in the following two forms, both of which are equally justifiable :
(a) The carriage is in motion relative to the embankment,
(b) The embankment is in motion relative to the carriage.

In (a) the embankment, in (b) the carriage, serves as the body of reference in our statement of the motion taking place. If it is simply a question of detecting or of describing the motion involved, it is in principle immaterial to what reference-body we refer the motion. As already mentioned, this is self-evident, but it must not be confused with the much more comprehensive statement called "the principle of relativity," which we have taken as the basis of our investigations.
The principle we have made use of not only maintains that we may equally well choose the carriage or the embankment as our reference-body for the description of any event (for this, too, is self-evident). Our principle rather asserts what follows : If we formulate the general laws of nature as they are obtained from experience, by making use of
(a) the embankment as reference-body,
(b) the railway carriage as reference-body,

then these general laws of nature (e.g. the laws of mechanics or the law of the propagation of light in vacuo) have exactly the same form in both cases. Albert Einstein, Relativity: the Special and General Theory, public domain, from the chapter entitled "Special and General Theory of Relativity." The theory of special relativity was actually introduced in an article, one of those published in Einstein's breakout year, 1905, not in this book.

Margrethe So what was this mysterious thing you said?

Heisenberg There's no mystery about it. There never was any mystery. I remember it absolutely clearly, because my life was at stake, and I chose my words very carefully. I simply asked you if as a physicist one had the moral right to work on the practical exploitation of atomic energy. . . . (p. 36) Michael Frayn, Copenhagen. New York: Anchor Books, 2000. (Copyright by Michael Frayn, 1998) This excerpt was written about two scientists, not by them. For more on this play, see here. Scientists have occasionally been very concerned about the social impact of their work. They haven't always been concerned enough.

We wish to suggest a structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid (D. N. A.). This structure has novel features which are of considerable biological interest. . . . It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material. J. D. Watson and F. H. C. Crick, "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid" Nature 171:737-738, 1953. The first sentence is the opening sentence of this paper. The second sentence I have quoted comes near the end of this two-page article, and it indicates that Watson and Crick knew that this was a highly significant result. Crick is now dead. Watson isn't (yet).

Watson and Crick might not have published this paper without the work of Rosalind Franklin. I am sorry to say that none of the quotes above are from a woman, except the fictional one from Margrethe Bohr, who was not a scientist. There have been, unfortunately, until my own lifetime, few women who achieved prominence in science. I have previously posted about a female scientist who didn't achieve prominence, but did some very significant work.

I'm thankful for the electromagnetic spectrum

I'm thankful for the electromagnetic spectrum. The what? you say. The electromagnetic spectrum. You read correctly.

So what is this? The electromagnetic spectrum is one of the types of energy. Instances of this type of energy can be thought of as little energy vibrations. They all belong to a family, as the different notes on a piano keyboard belong to one family. When sounded, each piano note is different, but they are all very much alike, sounds, vibrations of a certain type. (Sounds are a different sort of vibration from the vibrations of the electromagnetic spectrum). Sounds differ from one another in their frequency and wave length. High pitched sounds have a high frequency and a small wave length. Low pitched sounds have a low frequency and a large wave length. But all sounds are very similar, part of the same family. The members of the electromagnetic spectrum are like that. They are very similar, differing in their wave lengths and frequencies. (They, and sounds, also differ within the two families in the amount of energy they have.) The energy of the electromagnetic spectrum travels at the velocity of light, c in Einstein's famous e = m times c squared equation.

So why should I be thankful for the vibrations of the electromagnetic spectrum? Because I wouldn't be here without them, and neither would you. How so? Well, let me list some of the members of this large family. It includes, at the very small wave length, high frequency, and high energy end, gamma rays. Then, as wave length increases, and the frequency and energy decrease, X rays, ultraviolet rays, light, infrared/heat, and all of the radio waves. The range is enormous. Gamma rays have wave lengths on the order of a trillionth of a meter, and the radio waves can have lengths as long as 10 million meters. (We don't use those for ordinary communications.) As the Wikipedia article on this subject puts it: "In our universe the short wavelength limit is likely to be the Planck length, and the long wavelength limit is the size of the universe itself (see physical cosmology), though in principle the spectrum is infinite."

Okay, so there is a tremendous family of energy. So why is this important? There are many reasons, dear reader, but I will mention one as of most importance. Our earth gets most of its available energy from the sun, carried here by light, which is part of the electromagnetic spectrum. This light keeps the earth from being a frozen ball of rock and ice. It fuels photosynthesis, the process by which plants turn water and Carbon Dioxide into food. It powers the water cycle. It makes it possible for those of us blessed with eyesight to see the world around us. If there were no electromagnetic spectrum, we wouldn't be here. Because there is an electromagnetic spectrum, we are.

In case you are wondering how we can be heated by light, the energy in light is absorbed by matter. This absorption of energy heats things up. Objects so heated can, then, give off heat in other ways.

Besides the critical energy we get from the sun, I'd like to mention two other aspects of the electromagnetic spectrum. One is color (See also here). God didn't have to create light at all, I guess, and when He did, it didn't have to be colored. But it is. Without that part of the electromagnetic spectrum, light, we wouldn't see color in flowers, in babies, in great art, in the sky, the grass, and sidewalks. (I know -- some of us can't see color, and some can't see at all. But most of us can do both, and take it entirely too much for granted.) The second aspect is just that we (and many animals) can see at all. I take this too much for granted. There are many other reasons that the electromagnetic spectrum is important, in industry, in medicine, in communications, and elsewhere, but that will do.

Lest there be any doubt, I'm thankful to God for the electromagnetic spectrum. Although I can't prove it, I believe that God designed the universe to include it, and I'm glad He did.

Here's a post on Biblical references to light.

By the way, I'm also thankful for the Wikipedia, and for Rebecca, who suggesting that November be a month of blogger gratitude emphasis. I also thank you, my readers. I am posting this on November 23, 2006, Thanksgiving Day in the United States. For what it's worth, Rebecca is a Canadian. Here is another post expressing my gratitude for a number of things, here's one, expressing my gratitude for cell division, and here is one expressing my gratitude for Carbon atoms.

Chance and 20th Century physics, 2

The previous post on this topic is here. In it, I discussed the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, and quantum physics in general. Some thinkers have believed that the unpredictability of sub-atomic particles is the explanation for free choice in the human brain.

Albert Einstein, who was, of course, one of the pillars of twentieth century physics, including quantum physics, is renowned for many things. One of them is that he said something like "God does not play at dice." (in German) Another is his long argument with Neils Bohr, another of the titans of twentieth-century physics, about quantum physics. (The Wikipedia article on Bohr includes a photo of Einstein and Bohr, engaged in this long argument.) These facts are often taken to mean that Einstein believed that everything can be predicted, at least in principle, or that he disbelieved in quantum physics. Apparently this is not completely correct.

I have recently read a book which deals with the subject of Einstein, indeterminacy, Bohr, and quantum physics, Einstein Defiant: Genius versus Genius in the Quantum Revolution, by Edmund Blair Bolles. Washington, DC: Joseph Henry Press, 2004. (The two geniuses are Bohr and Einstein.) Bolles puts Einstein's saying this way: "I, at any rate, am convinced that He is not playing at dice." Quote is from p. 252. Bolles' source is Max Born's Born-Einstein Letters, translated by Irene Born. New York: Walker Publishing, 1971. Bolles says that the statement was in a letter to Born, also an important physicist.

Bolles argues that what Einstein really meant was that indeterminacy, or unpredictability, does not imply that there are not real causes, even for the actions of sub-atomic particles. Some of his colleagues were, it seems, willing to believe that all we could do is predict these actions statistically, not individually, and that what happened to an individual particle was simply a matter of chance. Einstein apparently agreed, except that he would not have agreed with the last clause. He believed that, if we could just perceive them, there are real influences, even on sub-atomic particles.

I suppose that Einstein's view, if correct, means that quantum uncertainty cannot be the foundation of human free will.

Thanks for reading.

Does anything ever happen by chance? Nancey Murphy 2

For Isaac Newton and other architects of the modern scientific worldview, the "laws of nature" were a direct expression of God's will -- God's control of all physical processes. However, today they are generally granted a status independent of God, not only by those who deny the very existence of God, but also by many Christians, who seem to suppose that God, like a U. S. senator, must obey the laws once they are "on the books." Consequently, for modern thinkers, deism has been the most natural view of divine action: God creates in the beginning -- and lays down the laws governing all changes after that -- then takes a rest for the duration.
Not all modern theologians have opted for this deistic account, but in many cases the only difference has been in their additional claim that God sustains the universe in its existence. Those who have wanted (or who have believed Christianity needed) a more robust view of God's continued participation in the created order have been forced to think in terms of intervention: God occasionally acts to bring about a state of affairs different from that which would have occurred naturally. . . . It is an ironic bit of history: the laws that once served as an account of God's universal governance of nature have become a competing force, constraining the action of their very creator. Nancey Murphy, "Divine Action in the Natural Order: Buridan's Ass and Schrödinger's Cat," pp. 325 - 357 in Chaos and Complexity: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action, edited by Robert John Russell, Nancey Murphy and Arthur R. Peacocke. Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory Publications, 1997. Quote is from p. 325.

Murphy goes on to say, and I agree, that any description of how God acts must include not just unfolding rules, created in the beginning, along with (presumably) the elements, but must allow for God to act specially. One reason for this, she says, is that we get to know a person by observing their actions. God's actions tell us about Him. Another is to allow for answers to supplicating in prayer. If God never does things specially, why should prayer be encouraged in the New Testament? Third, says Murphy, if God doesn't act specially in some circumstances, then God is responsible for all evil, too, because it must be the unfolding of the way He made things. There must also, she says, be room in such a description for extraordinary acts. (She avoids using "miracle" for these, but, to many of us, that is what she means.)

My previous post on Murphy and chance is here.

Thanks for reading.

Does anything ever happen by chance? Nancey Murphy

A long time ago now, Julana commented on one of my posts, asking if anything ever really happened by chance. That is a deeply profound question. One reason it is so profound is because it can be re-phrased as "How does God act? Does He control everything?"

Nancey Murphy has answered the last part of the previous question, as follows:

To say that each sub-atomic event is solely an act of God would be a version of occasionalism, with all the attendant theological difficulties mentioned above: it exacerbates the problem of evil; it also comes close to pantheism, and conflicts with what I take to be an important aspect of the doctrine of creation -- that what God creates has a measure of independent existence relative to God, notwithstanding the fact that God keeps all things in existence. To put the point another way, if God were completely in control of each event, there would be no-thing for God to keep in existence. To create something, even so lowly a thing as an electron, is to grant it some measure of independence and a nature of its own, including inherent powers to do some things rather than others. "Divine Action in the Natural Order: Buridan's Ass and Schrödinger's Cat," pp. 325 - 357 in Chaos and Complexity: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action, edited by Robert John Russell, Nancey Murphy and Arthur R. Peacocke. Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory Publications, 1997. Quote is from pp. 340-41. (The hyphen in "nothing" was in the original, as was the emphasis on that word.)

Wow! Electrons with independence?

Thanks, Julana. To see my last post on this subject, go here.

Thanks, readers. I expect to post more on Murphy's view of these matters later.

The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin

I found (thanks to a Google alert) a web page which is a study guide to Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed. The study guide seems to cover the work quite well, and also gives quite a bit of background, such as a discussion of feminism. Just one quibble -- the author doesn't spell Le Guin correctly! (Feminism isn't a major theme of this book.)

The Dispossessed (New York: Avon, 1974) should be one of the works that lives on long after Le Guin is dead. Although Le Guin says that she is a Taoist, not a Christian, I found one aspect of the book inspiring. I was teaching physics while on sabbatical, and was having a struggle. (I'm not a card-carrying physicist, although I like it, and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools was satisfied that my credentials in the field qualified me to teach it, at two colleges. My doctorate was in genetics and zoology.) Shevek, the hero of the book (and a male) decided that what he had visited another planet for wasn't what some of the people there wanted him to do, but that he was there to "do physics." (p. 222) I took it that I had visited another college to do physics, too, and, God being my helper, I would and did.

In that same book, and in that same chapter, Le Guin's hero sets to work and does physics, and invents the ansible, a device for instantaneous communication across light-years of distance. (You have to get an ansible to that far location before you can use it to communicate from there, of course.) Le Guin had already used the ansible in some other fiction. A number of other science fiction authors have used the device, even the name, since Le Guin introduced it, including Orson Scott Card.

When Shevek realizes what he has done, he thinks: "And it is strange, exceedingly strange, to know that one's life has been fulfilled." (p. 226)

Shevek did physics in spite of politics and other pressures.

The book is by no means a physics text. Le Guin uses it to examine the meaning and necessity of government, as well as human relationships, and a political movement, anarchy, which attempts to have no government, no hierarchy. There are symbols, such as walls, and two planets, with vastly different physical conditions, and vastly different political structures, all of which make the book interesting on a number of levels. There are literary devices. But, aside from that, it's a good story, well written, about a good man.

* * * * *

On February 7th, 2008, I added links to some Wikipedia articles. I also posted on The Left Hand of Darkness, another of Le Guin's novels.

Choice and 20th Century physics, 1

I continue a series of musings on the question, "does anything at all really happen by chance?" This post is the third on that subject. The first two consider what the Bible has to say on the subject. (Here's the second, which has a link to the first, or, better, click on the "choice" label at the bottom of this post.)

Modern physics seems to say that almost everything that happens to sub-atomic particles is due to chance.

This belief is known as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. (I have posted previously about Werner Heisenberg.) This principle states that it is impossible to determine both the position and speed* of sub-atomic particles precisely. Some positions are more likely than others, and, if you know what you are doing, you can produce a graphed curve describing the likelihood that the particle will have each possible position, but the exact position is uncertain. A similar statement could be made about the speed. As a result, electron positions cannot be known, but are described as wavefunctions, or orbitals. They are often shown as blobs or clouds in chemistry texts.

Does this mean that everything at the sub-atomic level is due to chance? As I see it, not necessarily. It means that nothing at the sub-atomic level can be predicted absolutely by physicists, except as a statement of the probability that certain things will happen, something like predicting that there will be a 30% chance of rain. Unlike (we suppose) weather prediction, which will get better and better as we learn more about what causes weather events, and are better at detecting these causes, prediction at the sub-atomic level has fundamental limits -- it isn't ever going to get any better, if the theory is correct. Just because something can't be predicted doesn't necessarily mean that it's actually random, however.

Einstein was notoriously uncomfortable with this idea. He is said to have quipped (probably in German, not English) "God does not play at dice." (do a Google search on this phrase -- in quotation marks -- if interested.)

Some have speculated that this sub-atomic (quantum) uncertainty is a physical basis for free will. That may be so, but there are at least a couple of problems with this idea. First, just because physicists can't predict something doesn't mean that God doesn't control it. (God must at least allow sub-atomic events, but I suppose it is possible that He really does let some or all of them happen at random. It is also possible that every sub-atomic even is directed and controlled by God.) Second, it is not clear that chance events on the sub-atomic level could be responsible for the brain activity that leads to choices. The sub-atomic, after all, is orders of magnitude smaller than a nerve cell. To have such events change the action of nerve cells, at least one of which would be expected to do something if an individual chooses, would be roughly as if random impacts from dust particles in the air changed the direction of a moving car.

I'll probably have more to say about this later.

Thanks for reading.

*It's really not the speed, or even the velocity, but the momentum, but I'm trying not to be too technical here.

E=mc squared by David Bodanis

I'd like to thank one of our daughters, who urged me to purchase a used copy of this book at one of the bookstores in Stratford, ON. I'm glad she did.

David Bodanis begins E=mc2: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation (New York: Berkley Books, 2000) with a story that Cameron Diaz, the movie actress, was once asked, in an interview, if there was anything that she, Diaz, wanted to know. She supposedly replied that she would like to understand Einstein's famous equation. Perhaps she read this book. It doesn't impart complete understanding of the equation, but it helps.

Bodanis' book is about the history of science. He introduces a number of ideas, and some of the characters who were important in developing those ideas. He has written things about E, m, c, and 2 that I didn't know before I read the book, and about scientists that I had not heard of.

Here he is on the velocity of light:

[Einstein's] new realization about light changed everything; for the speed of light becomes the fundamental speed limit in our universe: nothing can go faster. . . . light isn't just a number, it is a physical process. There's a big difference. If I say that -273 . . . is the lowest number that there is, you could rightly answer that I'm wrong: that -274 is lower, and -275 is lower yet, and that you can keep on going forever. But suppose we are dealing with temperatures. The temperature of a substance is a readout of how much its inner parts are moving, and at some point they're going to stop vibrating entirely. That happens at about -273 degrees on the centigrade scale, and that's why -273 degrees is said to be "absolute zero" when you're talking about temperature. Pure numbers might be able to go lower, but physical things can't: a coin or a snowmobile or a mountain can't vibrate any less than not vibrating at all.

So it is with light. The 670,000,000 mph figure that Roemer measured for the light speeding down from Jupiter is a statement about what that light is like. It's a physical "thing." (p. 50)

I've been studying, and teaching, science for about a half century, and I had never thought to put it that way before.

Bodanis explains that celeritas, a Latin word meaning "swiftness," is the origin of the use of c for the velocity of light.

He told me some things about women scientists that I wish I had known before. One such woman was Emilie du Châtelet, who added to Newtonian physics the idea that there is such a thing as energy, which exists in many forms, one of them being kinetic energy (the energy an object possesses due to its motion) which, she found, is proportional to the mass of the moving object times its velocity squared. du Châtelet died in childbirth at 40. He also writes about Lise Meitner, who worked out the details of fission, and Cecelia Payne, who made fundamental discoveries about the composition of stars, but was not given a position at Harvard for many years, because of her sex. (Meitner now has an element named after her, so her achievement is recognized, but she was treated shamefully during her lifetime, by a co-worker.) Bodanis also writes about male scientists, lest there be any doubt.

Bodanis covers some interesting history. There are conflicting opinions about the role of Werner Heisenberg in the unsuccesful German atomic bomb program. Bodanis believes that he wanted to succeed, but was thwarted by allied sabotage. He also blames James F. Byrnes, a South Carolinian who advised Truman, for the fission bombing of Japan, when Japan was already close to surrender. There are alternative views on these opinions. He writes that Einstein's famous letter to President Roosevelt, urging US development of the bomb, was ignored. He credits Oppenheimer for his superb administration of the US atomic bomb program.

Most scientifically literate people understand that Einstein's famous equation is a by-product of his special theory of relativity, which is not principally about the equivalence of matter and energy, but about relative motion. I suspect that, like me, they might learn a great deal more about these matters, and other things, from Bodanis' book.

Michael Frayn's Copenhagen

My wife was good enough to go to see a production of Michael Frayn's Copenhagen with me on Father's Day, at Centre Stage South Carolina. She assigned me to report to our daughters on our attendance. (She also pointed out a grammatical mistake. Thanks!) I decided to do this as a blog post.

This play won the Tony award (best Broadway play) for 2000. It was an amazing choice. There are only three characters, all playing dead people, on a bare stage. The plot is that the dead people, Werner Heisenberg, Neils Bohr, and Bohr's wife, Margrethe, are trying to understand a visit Heisenberg made to Bohr, in Copenhagen, in 1941, by discussing it, over and over. There's enough physics in the play that I once assigned the script for a physics class to read.

Based on this description, the play doesn't sound like much, but it is. There are many interesting aspects of our lives explored during Copenhagen. Can we really ever understand ourselves? Is memory accurate? Why do we do things? What is the responsibility of a scientist for the application of that scientist's work? Do humans perceive reality, or determine it?

Bohr and Heisenberg were two of the greatest physicists of the past century. Heisenberg, like many others, studied under Bohr, in Copenhagen, Denmark, where Bohr lived. During, or before, World War II, many of the physicists of Europe, ethnic Jews, left. Heisenberg did not. He was in charge of Germany's nuclear physics program. He did go to see Bohr. Frayn's play dramatizes real uncertainty about why he went, and what they said to each other. The play works in Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, which tells us that we cannot accurately measure both the momentum and position of sub-atomic particles, and Bohr's Complementarity, which says that a sub-atomic particle can present itself as either a wave or a particle, depending on how it is measured. Although neither of these ideas was supposed to be about ordinary human knowledge, both of them have influenced our thinking about how we know, and what reality is. (So has Einstein's Theory of Relativity, which, again, was not supposed to be about moral absolutes, but about measuring movement of one physical system from a second one, but has influenced our thinking about moral absolutes*.)

Historians are not clear about what happened during Heisenberg's meeting with Bohr, except that these people, who had been great friends until that time, had a falling out during this meeting. Frayn dramatizes this lack of clarity, having the actors suggest that Heisenberg was trying to use Bohr to find out about Allied work on nuclear fission (the atomic bomb), or to get Bohr's advice on the production of an atomic bomb, or that Heisenberg was trying to tell Bohr that he, Heisenberg, would try to deliberately hold back the German nuclear program, or that Heisenberg wanted Bohr's blessing for working on a project which might protect Heisenberg's country from destruction by the Allies, even though Bohr was in Denmark, occupied by the Germans.

Both men survived the war. Both were invited to give Gifford lectures, a noted and long-running series of prestigious lectureships on natural theology. According to the play, Heisenberg was generally shunned by physicists after the war, even though, as Frayn put it, Heisenberg had not built a fission bomb which destroyed two cities--the scientists working for the Allies had.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was founded by some of the scientists who helped produce fission bombs, questioning, after the fact, the impact of their scientific offspring. It is still discussing the implications of nuclear weapons, almost sixty years after their testing and use. One of its features is the Doomsday Clock, which represents how close we are to nuclear war. Currently, it is set at seven minutes to midnight.

There was a discussion after the play, and perhaps a third of the audience stayed for it. The leaders tried to center it on the moral responsibility of scientists for the application of their work, but it ranged further. My belief is that scientists are partly responsible for the forseeable consequences of the application of their work, and might be morally obligated, under some circumstances, to stop working in certain areas. The only time that I know of when that happened was at the Asilomar Conference on recombinant DNA in 1975, and even in that case, most of the research which was questioned then is now being done, and perhaps all of it will be, including germ cell DNA engineering (changing the DNA of a sperm or egg, or cells which produce them).

My only contribution to the discussion was when a lady said that there were no absolute moral standards, in response to one of the leaders, who said that there are, and that they come from a supernatural God. I remarked that her statement was itself an absolute. The leader got her to agree that there was at least one thing (raping a two-year-old) that was absolutely wrong. The discussion pointed out that one argument for actually using the fission bomb was that the deaths caused would be far less than if the Japanese had been defeated more conventionally.

I thought about asking three questions. First, is a scientist responsible for how the public sees reality as a result of her work (see remarks on relativity, the uncertainty principle, and complementarity above)? Second, could, or should, such a play be written about the invention of gunpowder (my wife says guns--she's probably right) rather than the fission bomb? Third, the play brought out that Heisenberg was an accomplished musician. It didn't bring out, but it is true, that Bohr was a student of philosophy (as was Einstein, and most of the European physicists of the first half of the previous century). I don't believe that most scientists in the U. S., nor, probably, the rest of the world, are as versed in the humanities as those of Bohr's times. If this is true, is that dangerous? Shouldn't scientists know more than science?

My wife and I certainly were gripped by the play, and were glad we went. It wasn't merely entertainment.

* * * *

*Rebecca Goldstein has recently written on how the work of Einstein, and of Kurt Gödel, a great mathematician, both of them fierce believers in an objective reality, was used to argue that there is no such thing.