For the past few centuries, we have philosophically operated under Newtonian physics where questions of experience and of the soul were seen as subjective, with no connection to the numerical certainty of science. However, then came quantum physics.
In his new book, Light of the Mind, Light of the World: Illuminating Science Through Faith, classicist Dr. Spencer Klavan retells the history of science and highlights the philosophical implications of each era. He argues that quantum mechanics, with its exploration of uncertainty and consciousness, has not only returned physics to the question of the soul. But, also, has provided an incredible argument for the Genesis account of creation.
You may recognize Dr. Klavan from his appearance in episode 104 - Modern Problems, Ancient Solutions - Applying the Wisdom of the Classics to the Cultural Conflicts of Today
Topics:
- The purpose of this book
- Music of the Spheres & the Medieval View of the world - the World as Beauty + Order
- Philosophical implications of "ghost in the machine" philosophy
- AI and the mechanical view of the universe
- Genesis, Consciousness, and Quantum Mechanics
- Worldviews and Science
- A clash of cultures: Scientism and Skepticism in America
- Confusing spiritual truths and scientific truths
- "What books have had an impact on you?"
- "What advice do you have for teenagers?"
Bio:
Dr. Spencer Klavan is an associate editor at the Claremont Review of Books and a podcaster on the great works of the West. Dr. Klavan is a scholar, writer, and podcast host of Young Heretics, with a lifelong devotion to the great works and principles of the West. After studying Greek and Latin at Yale University as an undergrad, he spent five years at Oxford University completing his doctorate in ancient Greek literature. Check out his latest book, Light of the Mind, Light of the World: Illuminating Science Through Faith.
Resources mentioned:
- Light of the Mind, Light of the World: Illuminating Science Through Faith
- Books of impact:
- In high school: Bible
- During grad school: Owen Barfield's Poetic Diction and Saving Appearances
- Since his last appearance: Thomas Traherne's Centuries of Meditations
Socials -
Lessons from Interesting People substack: https://taylorbledsoe.substack.com/
Website: https://www.aimingforthemoon.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aiming4moon/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Aiming4Moon
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
For the past few centuries, we have
philosophically operated underNewtonian physics, where
questions of experience and ofthe soul were seen as subjective
, with no connection to thenumerical certainty of science.
However, then came quantumphysics.
This is the Aiming for the Moonpodcast and I'm your host,
taylor Bledsoe.
On this podcast I interviewinteresting people from a
(00:32):
teenage perspective.
In his new book, light of theMind, light of the World,
classicist Dr Spencer Clavinretells the history of science
and highlights the philosophicalimplications of each era.
He argues that quantummechanics, with its exploration
of certainty and consciousness,has not only returned physics to
the question of the soul, butalso has provided an incredible
(00:54):
argument for the Genesis accountof creation.
Dr Klavan is an associate editorat the Claremont Review of
Books, a scholar, writer andpodcast host of Young Heretics
with a lifelong devotion to thegreat works and principles of
the West.
You may recognize Dr Clavenfrom his last appearance on the
podcast in episode 104, modernProblems, ancient Solutions.
(01:15):
If you like what you hear today, please rate the podcast and
subscribe.
You can follow us at aiming thenumber four moon on all the
socials to stay up to date onpodcast news and episodes.
Check out the episode notes forlinks to Dr Clayton's full bio
and podcast links to the booksmentioned in this episode, as
well as our websiteaimingforthemooncom and our
(01:35):
podcast sub stack Lessons fromInteresting People.
Check out our latest sub stackarticle on the epistemological
crisis of Gen Z.
All right with that?
Sit back, relax and listen in.
Thanks again to Paxton Page forthis incredible music.
All right, well, welcome, drKlavan, back to the podcast.
Thanks for coming back on.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Oh, thanks Taylor for having me.
It's a delight.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Yes.
So you published a new bookLight of the Mind, light of the
World, illuminating ScienceThrough Faith.
So what are you doing exactlyin this Like?
What is the point?
You track this grand worldviewcreation almost over the span of
science.
You discuss from the classicaltime of the scientific inquiry
(02:20):
and the philosophicalimplications of that all the way
up to our modern, the classicalunderstanding of modern physics
, to quantum mechanics andbeyond.
Could you kind of give us thenarrative of this worldview
development?
Where are we currently?
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yeah, well, when you say, what am I doing?
I think, even though the storyI tell in the book is vast and
spans centuries, and I find itreally exciting and has many
twists and turns, what I'm doingis actually, I think, really
simple, and that is I'm tryingto clear away an obstacle that I
think is standing in a lot ofpeople's minds between what we
(03:02):
know or want to know about theuniverse and what we've been
told science doesn't allow.
I think we've been conditionedto believe that if we want to
believe in science, capital Sthen we need to give up anything
that can't be described inpurely mathematical terms, and
(03:26):
this creates, for religiouspeople, a real hostility toward
science and a real mistrust ofscience.
The other parts of life thatneed to matter for us to make
(03:47):
any sense of things, andespecially the parts that have
to do with our soul and theimmaterial and our immortal
selves.
And what's so funny about thisis not only does this barrier, I
think, create a real problemfor people's intellectual lives,
it's also quite seriously outof date in scientific terms,
quite seriously out of date inscientific terms, and so what I
(04:08):
wanted to do with this book iskind of do a hard reset on this
idea of the war between scienceand faith, or whatever you want
to call it, and tell from a verylong view kind of standpoint.
I mean going back to the firstnatural philosophers tell a
serious, rigorous history of thescientific enterprise as a form
(04:30):
of religious expression, as away of knowing answers to
ultimate questions motivated bythe search for rational truth in
a universe created by arational mind meant to answer to
the rational mind in humanity.
And then, as the storyprogresses, we reach a point,
(04:50):
sort of right after Newtonbasically, where it starts to
look as if those largerquestions about our purpose in
the universe, about the creativemind that infused reason into
nature, it looks as if thosequestions have become sort of
irrelevant.
And there's a famous story andwe're not totally sure if it's
(05:12):
true, but it's a nice storyanyway that Pierre-Simon Laplace
, one of the great interpretersof Newton and one of the men who
applied his ideas to orbitalmechanics, was summoned by
Napoleon to ask what's happenedto God in your science?
I don't find him anywhere inyour account of the universe.
And he said, mr Napoleon, Ihave no need of that hypothesis.
(05:35):
And for a while that started tolook like the truth.
So it became a very popularassumption that you have to
choose between hard physicalfacts and biblical faith.
You can't have both.
But that assumption, which wasbased, for Laplace, on the idea
of the world as kind of amachine made out of these little
(05:58):
objects, particles, atoms,whatever you want to call it
bouncing together according toimmutable laws that will always
go in exactly the same way everytime, that idea has actually
been exploded scientificallyover the last 100 years or so by
quantum physics.
It's made part by relativity andby the marvelous discovery that
(06:21):
we're making that evenquantifiable categories like
position and space and time arenot totally independent of the
mind and they actually are bornin this relationship between the
world and the mind, which iswhy I call it light of the mind,
light of the world.
And that picture of the universewhich science is now starting
(06:41):
to describe actually looks a lotlike the one in Genesis,
chapter one.
So science is sort of wendingits way back toward pointing us
toward the things of the spiritand toward a picture of the
world that is much moremysterious, much more full of
meaning and life than perhaps wemight've thought a couple
hundred years ago.
(07:01):
But the popular assumption thatscience has disproven God, or
that God's irrelevant to science, has really lingered as a kind
of meme and got a new lease onlife from the new atheists
Richard Dawkins, is now beingcarried forward by people like
Yuval Harari.
Holdover that we're left withwhile science itself is
(07:26):
rocketing forward into a muchmore full picture of the world
that I think both religiouspeople and scientific people
need to take account of, and sothat's what the book is about
and what it aims to do.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
It's fascinating because, coming from a classical
background, at least in primaryeducation, in high school, you
get this understanding of themedieval view of the world and
at first the generalunderstanding of the medieval
concept of reality is well, youknow, didn't they think that the
Earth was the center of theuniverse and it was flat, and
all that stuff.
(07:59):
Many classical philosophers,theologians and scientists, if
you can use that term back then.
It's this grand vision of themusic of the spheres.
So I have this poster of thisguy, Boethius, behind me if
(08:20):
people have seen my studiobefore and it's this idea of
perhaps the majesty of theuniverse is not just in the
quantifiable area of the world.
Like, you have the calculations, of course, you have Pythagoras
, you have all these famousmathematicians.
It's that plus faith and it'sthis really interesting blend
that I found kind of that themethroughout your work.
(08:40):
You use the metaphor ofharmonies a lot throughout it.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Interesting.
Yeah, so Johannes Kepler is aname that comes up as well as
Boethius.
Kepler is in some ways theBoethius of the early modern
period.
As you say, there is this bigdiscovery, this Copernican
revolution, that does lead tothe much vaunted conflict
between Galileo and the CatholicChurch, which I describe in the
(09:05):
book.
That too is not what you weretold about in grade school.
There's a lot more to it andmuch more profound philosophical
issues at stake than just doesthe earth revolve around the sun
or the sun revolve around theearth.
But once that question issettled, at least in the order
of the system that Galileo sortof inaugurates and Newton takes
(09:27):
forward, there's this burst ofnew information and discoveries,
and after Newton, with guyslike Laplace, people start to
think that that discovery wasthat the world is a machine.
But Newton would have beenhorrified by that idea and
actually repeatedly wrote thatthat was not what he was talking
about.
Experience of the world, theimpact that the world makes on
(09:50):
us, not a revelation of theinner workings of all reality,
(10:11):
which must necessarily remainwhat you can call a cult, that
is, there are things outside ofus that can only make contact
with us through our perception,and science is very good at
organizing our perceptions andour experiences, but those
perceptions arise from a largerworld.
And the biggest evidence ofthis for in fact many of
(10:31):
Newton's critics is gravity.
What is gravity?
Can you touch it?
Can you see it?
No, you can observe its effects.
You can use it as a trend lineto describe the way that things
will tend to move.
But famously, gottfried Leibniz, one of Newton's major rivals,
challenges him to say just whatthis thing is.
(10:52):
And Newton says that wholesphere of questions is actually
outside of my bailiwick, outsideof my scope.
And the great scientists ofthis era, like Newton and
Leibniz too, and Keplerespecially, all were well aware
that what they were doing wasdescribing the world as it looks
(11:14):
to humankind, in part becausethey thought that was an outward
expression of somethingimmaterial and spiritual.
And yeah, kepler loves the ideaof harmonies and it's he who
ultimately discovers theelliptical nature of orbits and
the regularity of the laws bywhich those can be described.
(11:36):
And in the book I talk about howthis is a period of terrible
turmoil in the actual world ofChristendom the 30 years war,
the advent of Protestantism andthe collapse, really, of
Catholic unity.
And so for Kepler to bedescribing the world according
to these simple, pristine lawsis really for him to be
(11:57):
reasserting that God is stillthe purveyor of this perfect,
rational order?
There was no reason for him tobelieve that unless he thought
that the universe had a creator,as there is now no reason for
us to think that theperplexities we encounter in
science will have an answerunless we believe that our minds
are meant to know the universe.
(12:19):
Every scientific era isconfronted with certain things
that don't fit into the currentmap, the current mathematical
models we've built.
This is true even of relativityand quantum.
There's a famous, intractablequandary right now about the
relationship between gravity andquantum effects at the very
small level, and there arethings coming from the James
Webb Space Telescope that nobodyquite understands.
(12:42):
The scientific insistence,conviction and I would say faith
, is that when we knock hardenough against that barrier and
try hard to observe and torewrite our map and to expand it
, we will ultimately land on anew order that makes sense of
our perceptions.
But the only reason to thinkthat has nothing to do with our
(13:05):
scientific observations, whichare often quite confused, and
the world is always providing uswith 30 years wars and chaos
and calamity and confusion.
And it's only in religiousfaith, and I would even say
Judeo-Christian faith, that wecan make a confident assertion
that no one day we'll have ananswer to quantum gravity, one
day we'll have an answer tospace travel.
(13:26):
These things will be doablebecause we are placed in the
center of the universe that'sdesigned to be known by us.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Before we dive into the quantum physics and kind of
the you had modern science Iguess 21st century science would
be a different term for today'sscience as well with quantum
mechanics and everythinginvolved, there are some
fascinating implications whichyou dive into.
It's kind of the heart of yourbook that you've built up to all
the way till the final chapters, essentially, before we get
(13:55):
there, though, what are thephilosophical implications of
believing that, as you call it,you're a ghost in the machine,
so you're kind of maybe a humansoul in this grand calculating
machine of physics and of theearth and of atoms, like what
are some of the things thathappen because of that
philosophy?
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Well, it's a very old idea and it's an accusation
that is often thrown at peoplewho believe in the soul, that
they think it's like a sort ofspecter floating around, and the
only people that have everreally believed that have always
been materialists in some sense.
Aristotle, for example, didn'tbelieve that.
They didn't think that the bodyhad some kind of jelly or paste
(14:35):
or ghost floating around in thebody.
He thought that the form andthe life and the structure of
the body was itself an entityunto itself called the soul.
But Epicurus, for instance,thought that the soul was made
out of atoms, that sort ofsparkle through.
They're so thin and fine thatthey're able to make their way
past the bones and the muscle.
And, interestingly, that ideaof the soul, or the mind or the
(14:59):
consciousness, as a little sparkthat sits in the cockpit of a
Gundam, basically, or a mech,right, the way that you
sometimes find it described onReddit is like I'm a bone mech
wearing meat armor or somethingand your brain is piloting it.
Your brain is piloting it.
(15:31):
That starts to come back rightaround the turn of, yeah, what
we would call the modern era,which is not to say contemporary
right now, but rather sort ofthe dawn of the scientific
revolution and the on kind of insecret and doesn't publish in
his lifetime called the world ora treatise on light, which is
was one of my inspirations forcalling this book lighter than
my light of the world.
This is such a beautiful titlebut he he has sort of this stark
separation between body andsoul and he doesn't think that
(15:55):
mind can ever even reallyinfluence the physical world,
but rather that God kind ofbrings the two into conjunction
and in that book he designs whathe thinks of as sort of a man
machine.
There's this body that hasmoving parts, just like anything
else in the world, and there'sa mind that sits in, maybe even
just observes.
(16:15):
And this comes up in ThomasHobbes.
It comes up in a lot of bignames that we would know from
this period, because people areright around this time, getting
so excited about the things thatdo operate that way, that can
be standardized according tothese logical rules, that they
start to wonder if everything islike that.
(16:36):
And it's actually BishopBarclay, a guy who not everybody
likes very much, a philosopherthat I have a lot of time for,
who sees where this is allheaded, because what he says is,
if you have this cleavagebetween matter and mind, then
ultimately, because people cantouch matter, because they can
(16:57):
see things so immediately beforethem, they're naturally going
to conclude that this mind thingis just a fantasy, it's an
illusion and it's part of therealm that moderns learned to
call the realm of secondaryproperties.
So Galileo talks about primaryqualities.
He doesn't use quite thislanguage, but he talks about,
(17:18):
you know, things that really arein the world, like position and
space and measurable things,quantities, and then he says
there's color and sound andlight and touch, and all of
these things are mere names,without us there to perceive
them.
And when you draw thatdistinction that sharply, what
you ultimately do is you decidethat everything on the soul side
(17:40):
of the ledger, the mind, thehuman experience, that is all
fluff, it's not real.
Or nowadays we would call itsubjective, which used to just
mean things that we as subjectsexperience, but now means kind
of arbitrary and not as real asthis physical stuff.
And I think that is theconsequence of ghost in the
(18:01):
machine philosophy.
And I also think that thereason quantum physics has been
so illuminating in this way isthat it sort of explodes the
idea that there is that dividingline and separation between
primary and secondary qualities.
Because even the primaryqualities, the position of
particles in space, turns out tobe a product of the
(18:23):
relationship betweenconsciousness and matter.
So these things are alwaysintertwined, much as the soul
and the body always are, in fact.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
It's been fascinating to think about this idea, this
kind of modern mechanicalunderstanding of man.
It's been something I've beenthinking a lot about, as we
talked about off air withartificial intelligence, for
example, if you believe, as Iwas talking with, actually, a
computer scientist via email,about which is this idea that
intelligence is only thecomputational speed that you can
(18:54):
process new data with, and soyou're like, wait a second, that
has some very scaryimplications for you know, being
a human in a world where you'recreating this technology.
And I mean this computerscientist said that himself.
He said, essentially,artificial intelligence is just
a more organized, more efficientmachine and we're just this
weird evolutionary kind of thingthat has come about kind of
(19:17):
haphazardly.
And, um, the machine mind isreally what you, you need, it's
kind of charlie chaplin-esque,the machine mind of the machine
man kind of thing.
Um, and it's this scaryimplication.
Then, if you believe that youare only basically a biological
machine, then you have scary, ascary thing with artificial
(19:37):
intelligence coming about.
It's a huge, it's a trueexistential crisis.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
I'm so glad to hear that you're working on this
because that comes up in thebook and somebody who appears in
the book is Alan Turing, a namepeople might know that there's
a movie with BenedictCumberbatch playing him One of
the geniuses of the 20th century, indisputably, and a war hero,
in that he figured out how tomake a machine that could crack
(20:03):
the German encryption code.
But that's only where itstarted, because the machine he
made was a computing machine,series of numbers and perform
any mathematical operation, andthe only limit on it was
basically how much storage ormemory or computing power it had
(20:25):
.
And this was.
This is effectively cited asthe birth date of the computer
in its true form.
And Turing's other claim tofame is the Turing test, which
is probably the ultimateinspiration behind your computer
scientist friend's assessmentof humanity that the outputs of
calculations are the same thingsas thoughts.
(20:48):
And the machine that cantranslate calculations into
words, images, claims,assertions, words, images,
claims, assertions, or at leastthings that read to us like
assertions, is pretending to bea human and therefore, basically
(21:10):
, is conscious.
Anything that can trick us intothinking it's conscious by
mimicking the outputs ofconsciousness must be doing.
Consciousness must be alive andthat means that we are
basically just primitivecalculation machines, exactly as
you said.
And this idea starts to takeshape over the course of the
evolutionary era.
That is when Darwin's ideas arereally gaining hold, that we
(21:32):
are first gen computers,slapdash, thrown together by
evolution, with all sorts ofaccidents, including things like
love, desire, memory, dreams,right, these are all like a fume
that was thrown off, thesubjective experience that we
have of the world's thrown offaccidentally by evolution.
(21:55):
And when our computers getbetter than us at doing the
calculations that correspond tothe quote, unquote, real world
of pure numbers and mathematics,then there will be no need for
us anymore.
And this is the post-human ortranshuman moment.
And it's why, the minute peopleinvented this awesome toy that
(22:16):
we have now, that can drawpictures, maybe answer
scientific questions, that wehave model genes, do all sorts
of amazing stuff, the firstthing everybody said was oh no,
it's going to turn us intopaperclips.
Why did anybody think that thatwas going to happen?
Only because we have thisinsecurity that's built into us
now, that we don't know what isvaluable about us except our now
(22:40):
comparatively quite limitedability to tally up numbers and
make calculations, when all ofthis ultimately, I think, is
based on a profound error, aprofound mistake.
Not only is a machinemanifestly not doing a large
language model, is manifestlynot like what we are doing, but
(23:02):
calculation was never theessence of who or what we are.
And in order to save ourselves,I think, from this rather
apocalyptic doomsday scenario,we've got to jog ourselves out
of this longstanding mindsetthat we are just first gen
machines and computers.
(23:23):
If you read Yuval Harari's book,I think it's Homo Deus, or
maybe the other one, sapiens.
He says at one point if we arejust very carefully calibrated,
electrical signal circuits thatproduce certain impulses respond
to stimuli.
The circuits travel through,admittedly, very, very complex
(23:45):
networks, but they then conduceto our survival.
This is sort of theneo-evolutionist claim that if I
see a lion I feel fear.
But really what's happening isall these chemicals are running
through my body and all thesethings are happening so that I
will either fight or run awayand that will enable me to
survive in order to reproduce.
And that's all that's going on,really.
(24:06):
And he has a passage in his bookhe says so.
If that's the reality, why thehell do we need to feel fear?
And to me this is the crux ofit.
Exactly Because the fact that aguy as smart as Harari can't
see that?
The answer to that question isbecause that's the whole point.
If there's something there thatis has no other purpose other
than itself, it stands to reasonthat you're actually looking at
(24:29):
something with its ownintrinsic worth, what Aristotle
would have called an ultimatecause, and that is our inner
experience of the world whichgives it the character that it
has.
And that's why the quantumphysics stuff kind of
corresponds to, I think, thisreally urgent thing that can
break us out of our rut ofthinking that our machines are
(24:49):
better than us or can replace us.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Yeah, it's this.
So a very rough overview ofartificial intelligence is it's
a probability machine.
You take a bunch of data andthen it provides a probability
in through advanced calculus,linear algebra, all that fun
stuff.
What's the most probable answer?
And it does this with languagewhat's the next probable word
with large language models.
And so it's essentiallybreaking reality into metrics
(25:17):
and then making predictions offof that.
And it looks a lot like humanbehavior, because human behavior
has patterns to it, and I justfind that it's a whole nother
fascinating conversation.
Like the limitations ofartificial intelligence in some
ways show kind of thelimitations of this mechanical
view of man, because there aresome things that you can't
(25:37):
metrify or when you metrify themthat you have problems Like why
?
Like it gets really interestingwhen you start to talk about
justice issues, like why is thisa bad calculation versus that?
That's a whole other topic.
But before we go there, what isthe big kind of revelation that
quantum mechanics brings tophilosophy in this?
Speaker 2 (25:57):
sense.
Yeah, First of all, that's sowell said that the limits of our
machines, our large languagemodels, our probability
functions kind of show us thelimit also of the mechanical
view of man.
And I think now we have beenhinting at or touching on this
idea of quantum physics or whatquantum physics really does, and
I would describe it less as aparticular discovery of quantum
(26:19):
physics or what quantum physicsreally does, and I would
describe it less as a particulardiscovery of quantum physics
and more as a whole revolutionin science, which includes
actually relativity and Einsteinpeople don't always realize
this.
Einstein was very closelyinvolved with the genesis of
quantum physics and even madeseveral discoveries that
contributed to it, even thoughhe was profoundly disturbed by
it.
And he was disturbed by exactlythis suggestion that you cannot
(26:42):
actually build a, as you say,metrified map that corresponds
exactly to the territory of theworld, that our mathematical
models are always a language forpredicting the outcome of an
encounter between the human, Iwould say soul, you can say mind
or perceptive apparatus orwhatever, and whatever it is
(27:06):
that's out there.
And this is something thatphilosophers were kind of
banging on about and eventheologians and mystics kind of
had banged this drum, Ant talksabout it, Jakob Böhme, it's in
Blake, it's in the romantics.
But this is where the rubbermeets the road, mathematically
and scientifically, when youstart to see that the minutest
particles of existence, inisolation, without observation,
(27:30):
don't actually have thequalities or the quantities that
we want to attribute to themindependently of us.
And so we are.
We may not be physically at thecenter of our star system that
might be the sun but whereverhumanity is turns out to
actually be the center of theuniverse in the sense of
(27:52):
bringing it into coherence,bringing it into some form of
stability of the kind that canbe described with our numbers,
with our mathematics and, as Iargue, in the book.
This is basically what the bookof Genesis has to say about us.
Of course the authors ofGenesis wouldn't have put it in
those terms, but the idea thatyou begin with a mind that
(28:12):
creates a formless void, hoversover an indeterminate structure
and then generates determinaterealities, including time,
including location, includingobjects, by seeing them and
evaluating them from a valueladen perspective, calling it
good, is actually the picture ofthe world that science is sort
(28:34):
of nudging us toward.
And then the moment when Godputs Adam in the garden and says
name the creatures and whateverhe names them that's what they
were called was never intended,as just oh, Adam came up with
funny sound and invented theHebrew language.
Right, that's a story aboutAdam's role, putting the final
(28:56):
touch on a world that was builtfor him to bring into its final
order, and I think that that'sbasically what we're about and
what we will be about as ourscience progresses, which it
surely will.
But in order for that to be abeautiful thing and not an
apocalyptic thing, we've got tointernalize the reality of our
indispensable role in the world.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
You specifically described the moment throughout.
It's in Genesis, but it'sthroughout the entire Bible this
idea of God calling himself Iam and, under this understanding
of quantum mechanics, being, asin B-E-I-N-G, as the kind of
the thing that connects togetherboth physics and reality as we
(29:39):
know, it creates reality as weknow, and God being described as
I am, as it was always seen asthe essence of being, like the
essence of reality, but now ittakes on this very unique
perspective with thisunderstanding of physics.
Could you discuss that a little?
Speaker 2 (29:54):
bit more Sure.
Absolutely Well, god in theburning bush says to Moses I am
that I am.
It's sort of the most core, Ithink, instance of this
phenomenon that you'redescribing, and some people
think that the name of Godactually comes out of that.
The Hebrew of that statement,echia, asher, echia.
That looks somewhat similar tothe Hebrew name of god, and what
(30:19):
this asserts effectively isthat being in itself god as the
source of all being, the groundof all being, is not impersonal
but in essence and by nature, isalways first of all a character
, a person, and therefore imbuesthe world with personhood,
(30:42):
means for it to be personal andin relationship.
Now I think you need theChristian doctrine of the
Trinity to really get you to thelast piece of this puzzle,
which is that God himselfcontains relationship, that
reality is never actually justlike a mute lump of matter, but
is always in this kind of dualrelationship which Aristotle, as
(31:06):
I mentioned, sort of hadalready figured out before the
quantum physicists got there.
But running through the wholeBible, exactly as you say, there
is a picture of the world thatI think not only gave birth to
the scientific enterprise butalso is now starting to line up
with the scientific enterprisein a way that we haven't even
(31:28):
taken stock of.
We're not dispensablePersonality.
Humanity isn't dispensable.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
It's actually the point of existence and it's also
the basis of existence whichchanges everything we've covered
a lot so far in this, and oneof the things I want to just
note because some peopleprobably listening, who are
skeptics, who aren't religious,which is completely fine and I
think great, like talk aboutdifferent perspectives, of
(31:55):
course, um, we're not sayingthat material doesn't have a
bearing on reality, like that,that of, of course, in your
behaviors, chemicals andhormones don't influence you at
all.
I think what we're arguing and,of course, correct me if I'm
wrong here is what we're sayingis our modern understanding is
materialism alone is whatdefines us, and we're basically
(32:18):
suggesting a more Aristotelianperspective, which is it is both
your soul and material and likethat, that combination is what
makes us human in some sense.
When it talks about, when we'retalking about behaviors and
kind of the essence of man.
What would you say to that?
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Yeah, yeah no question, that's important.
I mean, we're definitely notsaying that matter doesn't exist
.
That's Barclay.
Barclay thought that matterdidn't exist and I think part of
the one weakness of his attackon materialism was that he
veered all the way in the otherdirection, which makes sense
(32:53):
given his position in history.
The other guy who sort of veersaway in the other direction
from the scientific enterpriseis David Hume, who says you have
this whole idea that the sunhas always risen over a 24-hour
period and therefore it's goingto rise tomorrow.
And you'd think that that meansthere's some underlying thing
called a cause, a structure thatgives rise to this.
(33:16):
But actually this is merelyexperience.
All we have is just repeatedexperience, and we have nothing
to say with absolute certaintythat that these things are gonna
.
So these are examples of, Iwould say, radical assaults on
the foundations of of science,and that's not what either of us
would want to make.
In fact, quite the opposite.
My suggestion is that.
(33:38):
Quite the opposite.
(34:04):
My suggestion is that there's agood reason why David Hume
probably the strongest critiqueof the scientific enterprise in
us that we can understand wealso have to believe that there
is something other than matter,and there's kind of no way out
of this without biting your owntail.
So my perspective is much morealong the lines of I love
science.
I can't claim to be a scientist, but I admire scientists
enormously.
I just think they've leftthemselves very vulnerable to
(34:25):
certain maladies that we'reseeing play out.
For instance, if you say thatscience is this autonomous sort
of self-generating materiallogic that arises automatically
out of your brain, generatesomething called an idea, why
(34:59):
should I believe that any morethan I believe the other random
concatenation of atoms or theother rather mechanical
concatenation of atoms insomeone else's idea that says
that Jupiter speaks to herthrough crystals?
And the answer is there is noreason.
The only possibility forscience is to believe that
there's something that makes theidea E equals MC, squared
(35:20):
different from the idea.
Crystals connect me to the godsof Jupiter, and that difference
is nowhere to be found in thestructure of the atoms or the
molecules involved found in thestructure of the atoms or the
molecules involved.
So even to be a scientist, Ithink you have to believe in
(35:45):
both matter and I would sayspirit form, whatever you want
to call it.
And then you raise this entirequestion of values, purpose and
meaning that science has to benested in.
It arose out of that context.
It is, I think, leading backtoward that context and if it is
not in that context, it's goingto attach to some other purpose
besides the God of truth, likepolitics, which is what I think
(36:06):
we've seen with the scientificAmerican just endorsed Kamala
Harris, as if science argues forsome person.
And the reason for that iswithout an overarching structure
of values, which you can't getout of matter and you have to
get out of the world of formsand ideas, science is instead
(36:27):
going to simply become thefootball that gets passed back
and forth between othercompeting value structures and
political interests footnotewitness the entire COVID era and
I just think that, like there'sno reason we don't, it doesn't
have to be this way.
You know we can have nicethings and there's no reason,
really scientifically, for us toposit In fact, there's good
(36:49):
scientific reason not to positthat matter is the only thing.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
It is something, but it's in relationship with
something else and then you havethe other extreme that says,
well then, if this is, if thebase, like the other
misunderstanding of science aswell, then it just doesn't exist
with faith, like you can't.
The other extreme just rejectit all um entirely, which is
another kind of popular movementwe're seeing as well, which is
which very unique, that you haveboth this glorification of
(37:16):
science not that science is bad,there's almost like religious
religiosity around science plusthis kind of rejection
absolutely, and this issomething I deal with in the
last sort of concludingparagraphs of the book.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
I talk about the twin figures of albert einstein and
charles spurgeon.
Einstein, mind searching fortruth, reads his Bible as a kid,
grows up in a Jewish context,loves the stories in the Bible
and then discovers that inmaterial terms there are other
books, science books, thatcontradict his Bible and
(37:51):
concludes that since these twobooks must both be providing the
same kind of truth, andconcludes that since these two
books must both be providing thesame kind of truth, he has to
jettison his Bible and go forhis paleontology textbook.
The book is designed to argue.
The book is fighting atwo-front war, one against the
vision of truth that would makeEinstein feel like he had to
choose between those two things,but the other is against
Charles Spurgeon, a preacher Iquite respect, but who says what
(38:12):
reason do the religious have todeal with every new airy
fantasy of man evolution, thesenewfangled philosophies?
The Bible tells us all aboutthem, and your grandmother knows
that your Bible is really theonly source of truth you need.
And I don't think that's atraditional Christian
perspective either.
Actually, if you look at, forexample, the way St Augustine
(38:33):
talks about the book of natureand the book of scripture and
calibrating your interpretationof each against one another,
you'll find that this whole ideathat in order to be a faithful
reader of the Bible you have tobe a literalist reader of every
sentence, as if it all describesmeasurable, quantifiable,
physical truth, actually a verymodern idea that we inherit from
(38:58):
the scientific revolution.
It's out of the scientificrevolution and this turn toward
materialism that the churchstarts to react and say well,
okay, but our Bible has the realtruth about the age of the
universe, about the dinosaursand whether or not they existed
and all of that.
And then you enter into thisweighing competition between the
(39:19):
Bible and science over whichone has more physical facts,
when the Bible never enteredinto that competition, it began
hundreds of years after theBible was written.
And if you enter the Bible intothat competition, you will turn
people away from it, likeEinstein.
And so this is a real.
I think both of these sides ofthis dispute, if you want to
(39:41):
call it that, have, I think, alot to answer for, and neither
of them needs, I think, to be ashostile to the other as they
have been percent.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
So we could talk about this for hours, but we
have to wrap up the interviewhere and with the first question
that we ask all of our guestswhat books have had an impact on
you?
Now, you've already come on thepodcast before, and previously
you said that during high school, the Bible had the most impact
on you, as you were converted toChristianity, and then, during
grad school, poetic Diction andSaving Appearances were the two
(40:18):
books that had the most impacton you.
Do you alter your opinion?
Would you like to add to it?
What is your comment upon yourprevious opinion?
Speaker 2 (40:27):
Excellent, encouraging.
I definitely still feel thatthose have been very influential
books in my life, especiallyactually Barfield's Saving the
Appearance is a majorinspiration behind Light of the
Mind, light of the World.
And I guess I would just addone other that I've read since I
talked to you last and that isThomas Traherne's Centuries of
Meditations.
Cs Lewis called this the mostbeautiful, almost the most
(40:53):
beautiful book in English, andit is a century is a series of
100 short reflections whichTraherne wrote during the 1600s
and in his life.
They were never published.
He was sort of an obscurecountry pastor, but in their
insight they are explosive.
In fact Traherne seems to havebasically predicted the entire
trajectory of all literature forthe next several hundred years.
(41:16):
The Romantic era is prefiguredin here, william Blake is
prefigured in here.
So far as I know, blake neverread Trehearne, but when he
emerged at the end of the 1800speople suddenly realized this
guy had a vision and it is justsuch a luminous book that I
would recommend really toanybody that is absolutely
fascinating.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
I'm definitely gonna, like I always create a book
list afterwards, so definitelyadding that one.
Um, what advice do you have forteenagers?
Previously you said you don'thave infinite time.
Therefore get serious aboutwhat you do want to do.
Do you have any additions orwhat do you think about that?
Speaker 2 (41:52):
I still still agree with me.
That's still true.
I would like to add somepractical advice for acting on
that idea, which is, first ofall, actually maybe.
This first one is anotherprinciple, and that is all of to
be serious.
(42:13):
You don't have to beself-important or uptight in
your youth and you should go anddo stuff and experience the
world and all of that.
But you should learn that inevery decision you make, you're
trading one thing for anotherand there's no perfect trade-off
in life.
If I go shut down this podcastafter I talk to you and I watch
(42:33):
an hour of Netflix, that's anhour that I didn't spend reading
a book.
Right Now, I'm not making anyvalue judgments yet.
I'm just saying that there arealways trade-offs in little
things and in big things,including who you marry, where
you live, what you do for aliving.
So that means two things.
(42:59):
First, it means that there's noperfect solution here.
There's no way.
I think in my youth I spent alot of time turning life this
way and that, trying to find theperfect arrangement that would
save me from missing out onanything, and that doesn't exist
.
So once you get that out ofyour head, you can breathe a
sigh of relief.
Stop measuring yourself againstsome imagined perfect version
of your life and instead askwhich tradeoffs're going to
(43:19):
spend your time?
And so I would propose to youone thing that you could trade
(43:42):
an hour and a half a day for.
That will repay valueenormously, and that is take 30
minutes each day and devote 30minutes to the life of the mind,
30 minutes to the life of thebody and 30 minutes to the life
of the soul.
Pick a routine.
There's lots of good ones outthere.
The internet is full of them.
Pick a gym routine, pick aprayer routine and pick a
(44:07):
reading routine.
And stick to it every day forsix months without fail.
And when I say stick to it, Ireally do mean you're going to
want to try other stuff.
You're going to get bored.
Just try imposing upon yourselfthis absolute, almost religious
discipline all three areas ofthose life, three of those areas
of life and then look backafter six months and see,
(44:30):
measure what has changed.
And then, if that works for you, repeat, and over the course of
four years.
If you do that, you will beunstoppable.
You will be so far ahead ofeveryone else in the world
including many, many people whoare much older than you, that I
would count that an excellenttrade-off.
So 30 minutes a day to the lifeof the mind, 30 to the body, 30
to the soul.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
How fascinating.
Well, thank you, Dr Klavan, forcoming on the podcast.
I've really enjoyed thisconversation.
I really enjoyed the book Lightof the Mind, Light of the World
, Illuminating Science ThroughFaith, One of my all-time
favorite reads across thepodcast and just one of the best
written books that I've read ofa modern writer.
So thank you so much for comingon.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
I'm blushing.
You saved that for the end.
Now I feel all verklempt andembarrassed.
You've got to shut the podcastdown immediately.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
Thank you, that's very kind.
For the past few centuries, we have
philosophically operated underNewtonian physics, where
questions of experience and ofthe soul were seen as subjective
, with no connection to thenumerical certainty of science.
However, then came quantumphysics.
This is the Aiming for the Moonpodcast and I'm your host,
taylor Bledsoe.
On this podcast I interviewinteresting people from a
(00:32):
teenage perspective.
In his new book, light of theMind, light of the World,
classicist Dr Spencer Clavinretells the history of science
and highlights the philosophicalimplications of each era.
He argues that quantummechanics, with its exploration
of certainty and consciousness,has not only returned physics to
the question of the soul, butalso has provided an incredible
(00:54):
argument for the Genesis accountof creation.
Dr Klavan is an associate editorat the Claremont Review of
Books, a scholar, writer andpodcast host of Young Heretics
with a lifelong devotion to thegreat works and principles of
the West.
You may recognize Dr Clavenfrom his last appearance on the
podcast in episode 104, modernProblems, ancient Solutions.
(01:15):
If you like what you hear today, please rate the podcast and
subscribe.
You can follow us at aiming thenumber four moon on all the
socials to stay up to date onpodcast news and episodes.
Check out the episode notes forlinks to Dr Clayton's full bio
and podcast links to the booksmentioned in this episode, as
well as our websiteaimingforthemooncom and our
(01:35):
podcast sub stack Lessons fromInteresting People.
Check out our latest sub stackarticle on the epistemological
crisis of Gen Z.
All right with that?
Sit back, relax and listen in.
Thanks again to Paxton Page forthis incredible music.
All right, well, welcome, drKlavan, back to the podcast.
Thanks for coming back on.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Oh, thanks Taylor for having me.
It's a delight.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Yes.
So you published a new bookLight of the Mind, light of the
World, illuminating ScienceThrough Faith.
So what are you doing exactlyin this Like?
What is the point?
You track this grand worldviewcreation almost over the span of
science.
You discuss from the classicaltime of the scientific inquiry
(02:20):
and the philosophicalimplications of that all the way
up to our modern, the classicalunderstanding of modern physics
, to quantum mechanics andbeyond.
Could you kind of give us thenarrative of this worldview
development?
Where are we currently?
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yeah, well, when you say, what am I doing?
I think, even though the storyI tell in the book is vast and
spans centuries, and I find itreally exciting and has many
twists and turns, what I'm doingis actually, I think, really
simple, and that is I'm tryingto clear away an obstacle that I
think is standing in a lot ofpeople's minds between what we
(03:02):
know or want to know about theuniverse and what we've been
told science doesn't allow.
I think we've been conditionedto believe that if we want to
believe in science, capital Sthen we need to give up anything
that can't be described inpurely mathematical terms, and
(03:26):
this creates, for religiouspeople, a real hostility toward
science and a real mistrust ofscience.
The other parts of life thatneed to matter for us to make
(03:47):
any sense of things, andespecially the parts that have
to do with our soul and theimmaterial and our immortal
selves.
And what's so funny about thisis not only does this barrier, I
think, create a real problemfor people's intellectual lives,
it's also quite seriously outof date in scientific terms,
quite seriously out of date inscientific terms, and so what I
(04:08):
wanted to do with this book iskind of do a hard reset on this
idea of the war between scienceand faith, or whatever you want
to call it, and tell from a verylong view kind of standpoint.
I mean going back to the firstnatural philosophers tell a
serious, rigorous history of thescientific enterprise as a form
(04:30):
of religious expression, as away of knowing answers to
ultimate questions motivated bythe search for rational truth in
a universe created by arational mind meant to answer to
the rational mind in humanity.
And then, as the storyprogresses, we reach a point,
(04:50):
sort of right after Newtonbasically, where it starts to
look as if those largerquestions about our purpose in
the universe, about the creativemind that infused reason into
nature, it looks as if thosequestions have become sort of
irrelevant.
And there's a famous story andwe're not totally sure if it's
(05:12):
true, but it's a nice storyanyway that Pierre-Simon Laplace
, one of the great interpretersof Newton and one of the men who
applied his ideas to orbitalmechanics, was summoned by
Napoleon to ask what's happenedto God in your science?
I don't find him anywhere inyour account of the universe.
And he said, mr Napoleon, Ihave no need of that hypothesis.
(05:35):
And for a while that started tolook like the truth.
So it became a very popularassumption that you have to
choose between hard physicalfacts and biblical faith.
You can't have both.
But that assumption, which wasbased, for Laplace, on the idea
of the world as kind of amachine made out of these little
(05:58):
objects, particles, atoms,whatever you want to call it
bouncing together according toimmutable laws that will always
go in exactly the same way everytime, that idea has actually
been exploded scientificallyover the last 100 years or so by
quantum physics.
It's made part by relativity andby the marvelous discovery that
(06:21):
we're making that evenquantifiable categories like
position and space and time arenot totally independent of the
mind and they actually are bornin this relationship between the
world and the mind, which iswhy I call it light of the mind,
light of the world.
And that picture of the universewhich science is now starting
(06:41):
to describe actually looks a lotlike the one in Genesis,
chapter one.
So science is sort of wendingits way back toward pointing us
toward the things of the spiritand toward a picture of the
world that is much moremysterious, much more full of
meaning and life than perhaps wemight've thought a couple
hundred years ago.
(07:01):
But the popular assumption thatscience has disproven God, or
that God's irrelevant to science, has really lingered as a kind
of meme and got a new lease onlife from the new atheists
Richard Dawkins, is now beingcarried forward by people like
Yuval Harari.
Holdover that we're left withwhile science itself is
(07:26):
rocketing forward into a muchmore full picture of the world
that I think both religiouspeople and scientific people
need to take account of, and sothat's what the book is about
and what it aims to do.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
It's fascinating because, coming from a classical
background, at least in primaryeducation, in high school, you
get this understanding of themedieval view of the world and
at first the generalunderstanding of the medieval
concept of reality is well, youknow, didn't they think that the
Earth was the center of theuniverse and it was flat, and
all that stuff.
(07:59):
Many classical philosophers,theologians and scientists, if
you can use that term back then.
It's this grand vision of themusic of the spheres.
So I have this poster of thisguy, Boethius, behind me if
(08:20):
people have seen my studiobefore and it's this idea of
perhaps the majesty of theuniverse is not just in the
quantifiable area of the world.
Like, you have the calculations, of course, you have Pythagoras
, you have all these famousmathematicians.
It's that plus faith and it'sthis really interesting blend
that I found kind of that themethroughout your work.
(08:40):
You use the metaphor ofharmonies a lot throughout it.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Interesting.
Yeah, so Johannes Kepler is aname that comes up as well as
Boethius.
Kepler is in some ways theBoethius of the early modern
period.
As you say, there is this bigdiscovery, this Copernican
revolution, that does lead tothe much vaunted conflict
between Galileo and the CatholicChurch, which I describe in the
(09:05):
book.
That too is not what you weretold about in grade school.
There's a lot more to it andmuch more profound philosophical
issues at stake than just doesthe earth revolve around the sun
or the sun revolve around theearth.
But once that question issettled, at least in the order
of the system that Galileo sortof inaugurates and Newton takes
(09:27):
forward, there's this burst ofnew information and discoveries,
and after Newton, with guyslike Laplace, people start to
think that that discovery wasthat the world is a machine.
But Newton would have beenhorrified by that idea and
actually repeatedly wrote thatthat was not what he was talking
about.
Experience of the world, theimpact that the world makes on
(09:50):
us, not a revelation of theinner workings of all reality,
(10:11):
which must necessarily remainwhat you can call a cult, that
is, there are things outside ofus that can only make contact
with us through our perception,and science is very good at
organizing our perceptions andour experiences, but those
perceptions arise from a largerworld.
And the biggest evidence ofthis for in fact many of
(10:31):
Newton's critics is gravity.
What is gravity?
Can you touch it?
Can you see it?
No, you can observe its effects.
You can use it as a trend lineto describe the way that things
will tend to move.
But famously, gottfried Leibniz, one of Newton's major rivals,
challenges him to say just whatthis thing is.
(10:52):
And Newton says that wholesphere of questions is actually
outside of my bailiwick, outsideof my scope.
And the great scientists ofthis era, like Newton and
Leibniz too, and Keplerespecially, all were well aware
that what they were doing wasdescribing the world as it looks
(11:14):
to humankind, in part becausethey thought that was an outward
expression of somethingimmaterial and spiritual.
And yeah, kepler loves the ideaof harmonies and it's he who
ultimately discovers theelliptical nature of orbits and
the regularity of the laws bywhich those can be described.
(11:36):
And in the book I talk about howthis is a period of terrible
turmoil in the actual world ofChristendom the 30 years war,
the advent of Protestantism andthe collapse, really, of
Catholic unity.
And so for Kepler to bedescribing the world according
to these simple, pristine lawsis really for him to be
(11:57):
reasserting that God is stillthe purveyor of this perfect,
rational order?
There was no reason for him tobelieve that unless he thought
that the universe had a creator,as there is now no reason for
us to think that theperplexities we encounter in
science will have an answerunless we believe that our minds
are meant to know the universe.
(12:19):
Every scientific era isconfronted with certain things
that don't fit into the currentmap, the current mathematical
models we've built.
This is true even of relativityand quantum.
There's a famous, intractablequandary right now about the
relationship between gravity andquantum effects at the very
small level, and there arethings coming from the James
Webb Space Telescope that nobodyquite understands.
(12:42):
The scientific insistence,conviction and I would say faith
, is that when we knock hardenough against that barrier and
try hard to observe and torewrite our map and to expand it
, we will ultimately land on anew order that makes sense of
our perceptions.
But the only reason to thinkthat has nothing to do with our
(13:05):
scientific observations, whichare often quite confused, and
the world is always providing uswith 30 years wars and chaos
and calamity and confusion.
And it's only in religiousfaith, and I would even say
Judeo-Christian faith, that wecan make a confident assertion
that no one day we'll have ananswer to quantum gravity, one
day we'll have an answer tospace travel.
(13:26):
These things will be doablebecause we are placed in the
center of the universe that'sdesigned to be known by us.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Before we dive into the quantum physics and kind of
the you had modern science Iguess 21st century science would
be a different term for today'sscience as well with quantum
mechanics and everythinginvolved, there are some
fascinating implications whichyou dive into.
It's kind of the heart of yourbook that you've built up to all
the way till the final chapters, essentially, before we get
(13:55):
there, though, what are thephilosophical implications of
believing that, as you call it,you're a ghost in the machine,
so you're kind of maybe a humansoul in this grand calculating
machine of physics and of theearth and of atoms, like what
are some of the things thathappen because of that
philosophy?
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Well, it's a very old idea and it's an accusation
that is often thrown at peoplewho believe in the soul, that
they think it's like a sort ofspecter floating around, and the
only people that have everreally believed that have always
been materialists in some sense.
Aristotle, for example, didn'tbelieve that.
They didn't think that the bodyhad some kind of jelly or paste
(14:35):
or ghost floating around in thebody.
He thought that the form andthe life and the structure of
the body was itself an entityunto itself called the soul.
But Epicurus, for instance,thought that the soul was made
out of atoms, that sort ofsparkle through.
They're so thin and fine thatthey're able to make their way
past the bones and the muscle.
And, interestingly, that ideaof the soul, or the mind or the
(14:59):
consciousness, as a little sparkthat sits in the cockpit of a
Gundam, basically, or a mech,right, the way that you
sometimes find it described onReddit is like I'm a bone mech
wearing meat armor or somethingand your brain is piloting it.
Your brain is piloting it.
(15:31):
That starts to come back rightaround the turn of, yeah, what
we would call the modern era,which is not to say contemporary
right now, but rather sort ofthe dawn of the scientific
revolution and the on kind of insecret and doesn't publish in
his lifetime called the world ora treatise on light, which is
was one of my inspirations forcalling this book lighter than
my light of the world.
This is such a beautiful titlebut he he has sort of this stark
separation between body andsoul and he doesn't think that
(15:55):
mind can ever even reallyinfluence the physical world,
but rather that God kind ofbrings the two into conjunction
and in that book he designs whathe thinks of as sort of a man
machine.
There's this body that hasmoving parts, just like anything
else in the world, and there'sa mind that sits in, maybe even
just observes.
(16:15):
And this comes up in ThomasHobbes.
It comes up in a lot of bignames that we would know from
this period, because people areright around this time, getting
so excited about the things thatdo operate that way, that can
be standardized according tothese logical rules, that they
start to wonder if everything islike that.
(16:36):
And it's actually BishopBarclay, a guy who not everybody
likes very much, a philosopherthat I have a lot of time for,
who sees where this is allheaded, because what he says is,
if you have this cleavagebetween matter and mind, then
ultimately, because people cantouch matter, because they can
(16:57):
see things so immediately beforethem, they're naturally going
to conclude that this mind thingis just a fantasy, it's an
illusion and it's part of therealm that moderns learned to
call the realm of secondaryproperties.
So Galileo talks about primaryqualities.
He doesn't use quite thislanguage, but he talks about,
(17:18):
you know, things that really arein the world, like position and
space and measurable things,quantities, and then he says
there's color and sound andlight and touch, and all of
these things are mere names,without us there to perceive
them.
And when you draw thatdistinction that sharply, what
you ultimately do is you decidethat everything on the soul side
(17:40):
of the ledger, the mind, thehuman experience, that is all
fluff, it's not real.
Or nowadays we would call itsubjective, which used to just
mean things that we as subjectsexperience, but now means kind
of arbitrary and not as real asthis physical stuff.
And I think that is theconsequence of ghost in the
(18:01):
machine philosophy.
And I also think that thereason quantum physics has been
so illuminating in this way isthat it sort of explodes the
idea that there is that dividingline and separation between
primary and secondary qualities.
Because even the primaryqualities, the position of
particles in space, turns out tobe a product of the
(18:23):
relationship betweenconsciousness and matter.
So these things are alwaysintertwined, much as the soul
and the body always are, in fact.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
It's been fascinating to think about this idea, this
kind of modern mechanicalunderstanding of man.
It's been something I've beenthinking a lot about, as we
talked about off air withartificial intelligence, for
example, if you believe, as Iwas talking with, actually, a
computer scientist via email,about which is this idea that
intelligence is only thecomputational speed that you can
(18:54):
process new data with, and soyou're like, wait a second, that
has some very scaryimplications for you know, being
a human in a world where you'recreating this technology.
And I mean this computerscientist said that himself.
He said, essentially,artificial intelligence is just
a more organized, more efficientmachine and we're just this
weird evolutionary kind of thingthat has come about kind of
(19:17):
haphazardly.
And, um, the machine mind isreally what you, you need, it's
kind of charlie chaplin-esque,the machine mind of the machine
man kind of thing.
Um, and it's this scaryimplication.
Then, if you believe that youare only basically a biological
machine, then you have scary, ascary thing with artificial
(19:37):
intelligence coming about.
It's a huge, it's a trueexistential crisis.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
I'm so glad to hear that you're working on this
because that comes up in thebook and somebody who appears in
the book is Alan Turing, a namepeople might know that there's
a movie with BenedictCumberbatch playing him One of
the geniuses of the 20th century, indisputably, and a war hero,
in that he figured out how tomake a machine that could crack
(20:03):
the German encryption code.
But that's only where itstarted, because the machine he
made was a computing machine,series of numbers and perform
any mathematical operation, andthe only limit on it was
basically how much storage ormemory or computing power it had
(20:25):
.
And this was.
This is effectively cited asthe birth date of the computer
in its true form.
And Turing's other claim tofame is the Turing test, which
is probably the ultimateinspiration behind your computer
scientist friend's assessmentof humanity that the outputs of
calculations are the same thingsas thoughts.
(20:48):
And the machine that cantranslate calculations into
words, images, claims,assertions, words, images,
claims, assertions, or at leastthings that read to us like
assertions, is pretending to bea human and therefore, basically
(21:10):
, is conscious.
Anything that can trick us intothinking it's conscious by
mimicking the outputs ofconsciousness must be doing.
Consciousness must be alive andthat means that we are
basically just primitivecalculation machines, exactly as
you said.
And this idea starts to takeshape over the course of the
evolutionary era.
That is when Darwin's ideas arereally gaining hold, that we
(21:32):
are first gen computers,slapdash, thrown together by
evolution, with all sorts ofaccidents, including things like
love, desire, memory, dreams,right, these are all like a fume
that was thrown off, thesubjective experience that we
have of the world's thrown offaccidentally by evolution.
(21:55):
And when our computers getbetter than us at doing the
calculations that correspond tothe quote, unquote, real world
of pure numbers and mathematics,then there will be no need for
us anymore.
And this is the post-human ortranshuman moment.
And it's why, the minute peopleinvented this awesome toy that
(22:16):
we have now, that can drawpictures, maybe answer
scientific questions, that wehave model genes, do all sorts
of amazing stuff, the firstthing everybody said was oh no,
it's going to turn us intopaperclips.
Why did anybody think that thatwas going to happen?
Only because we have thisinsecurity that's built into us
now, that we don't know what isvaluable about us except our now
(22:40):
comparatively quite limitedability to tally up numbers and
make calculations, when all ofthis ultimately, I think, is
based on a profound error, aprofound mistake.
Not only is a machinemanifestly not doing a large
language model, is manifestlynot like what we are doing, but
(23:02):
calculation was never theessence of who or what we are.
And in order to save ourselves,I think, from this rather
apocalyptic doomsday scenario,we've got to jog ourselves out
of this longstanding mindsetthat we are just first gen
machines and computers.
(23:23):
If you read Yuval Harari's book,I think it's Homo Deus, or
maybe the other one, sapiens.
He says at one point if we arejust very carefully calibrated,
electrical signal circuits thatproduce certain impulses respond
to stimuli.
The circuits travel through,admittedly, very, very complex
(23:45):
networks, but they then conduceto our survival.
This is sort of theneo-evolutionist claim that if I
see a lion I feel fear.
But really what's happening isall these chemicals are running
through my body and all thesethings are happening so that I
will either fight or run awayand that will enable me to
survive in order to reproduce.
And that's all that's going on,really.
(24:06):
And he has a passage in his bookhe says so.
If that's the reality, why thehell do we need to feel fear?
And to me this is the crux ofit.
Exactly Because the fact that aguy as smart as Harari can't
see that?
The answer to that question isbecause that's the whole point.
If there's something there thatis has no other purpose other
than itself, it stands to reasonthat you're actually looking at
(24:29):
something with its ownintrinsic worth, what Aristotle
would have called an ultimatecause, and that is our inner
experience of the world whichgives it the character that it
has.
And that's why the quantumphysics stuff kind of
corresponds to, I think, thisreally urgent thing that can
break us out of our rut ofthinking that our machines are
(24:49):
better than us or can replace us.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Yeah, it's this.
So a very rough overview ofartificial intelligence is it's
a probability machine.
You take a bunch of data andthen it provides a probability
in through advanced calculus,linear algebra, all that fun
stuff.
What's the most probable answer?
And it does this with languagewhat's the next probable word
with large language models.
And so it's essentiallybreaking reality into metrics
(25:17):
and then making predictions offof that.
And it looks a lot like humanbehavior, because human behavior
has patterns to it, and I justfind that it's a whole nother
fascinating conversation.
Like the limitations ofartificial intelligence in some
ways show kind of thelimitations of this mechanical
view of man, because there aresome things that you can't
(25:37):
metrify or when you metrify themthat you have problems Like why
?
Like it gets really interestingwhen you start to talk about
justice issues, like why is thisa bad calculation versus that?
That's a whole other topic.
But before we go there, what isthe big kind of revelation that
quantum mechanics brings tophilosophy in this?
Speaker 2 (25:57):
sense.
Yeah, First of all, that's sowell said that the limits of our
machines, our large languagemodels, our probability
functions kind of show us thelimit also of the mechanical
view of man.
And I think now we have beenhinting at or touching on this
idea of quantum physics or whatquantum physics really does, and
I would describe it less as aparticular discovery of quantum
(26:19):
physics or what quantum physicsreally does, and I would
describe it less as a particulardiscovery of quantum physics
and more as a whole revolutionin science, which includes
actually relativity and Einsteinpeople don't always realize
this.
Einstein was very closelyinvolved with the genesis of
quantum physics and even madeseveral discoveries that
contributed to it, even thoughhe was profoundly disturbed by
it.
And he was disturbed by exactlythis suggestion that you cannot
(26:42):
actually build a, as you say,metrified map that corresponds
exactly to the territory of theworld, that our mathematical
models are always a language forpredicting the outcome of an
encounter between the human, Iwould say soul, you can say mind
or perceptive apparatus orwhatever, and whatever it is
(27:06):
that's out there.
And this is something thatphilosophers were kind of
banging on about and eventheologians and mystics kind of
had banged this drum, Ant talksabout it, Jakob Böhme, it's in
Blake, it's in the romantics.
But this is where the rubbermeets the road, mathematically
and scientifically, when youstart to see that the minutest
particles of existence, inisolation, without observation,
(27:30):
don't actually have thequalities or the quantities that
we want to attribute to themindependently of us.
And so we are.
We may not be physically at thecenter of our star system that
might be the sun but whereverhumanity is turns out to
actually be the center of theuniverse in the sense of
(27:52):
bringing it into coherence,bringing it into some form of
stability of the kind that canbe described with our numbers,
with our mathematics and, as Iargue, in the book.
This is basically what the bookof Genesis has to say about us.
Of course the authors ofGenesis wouldn't have put it in
those terms, but the idea thatyou begin with a mind that
(28:12):
creates a formless void, hoversover an indeterminate structure
and then generates determinaterealities, including time,
including location, includingobjects, by seeing them and
evaluating them from a valueladen perspective, calling it
good, is actually the picture ofthe world that science is sort
(28:34):
of nudging us toward.
And then the moment when Godputs Adam in the garden and says
name the creatures and whateverhe names them that's what they
were called was never intended,as just oh, Adam came up with
funny sound and invented theHebrew language.
Right, that's a story aboutAdam's role, putting the final
(28:56):
touch on a world that was builtfor him to bring into its final
order, and I think that that'sbasically what we're about and
what we will be about as ourscience progresses, which it
surely will.
But in order for that to be abeautiful thing and not an
apocalyptic thing, we've got tointernalize the reality of our
indispensable role in the world.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
You specifically described the moment throughout.
It's in Genesis, but it'sthroughout the entire Bible this
idea of God calling himself Iam and, under this understanding
of quantum mechanics, being, asin B-E-I-N-G, as the kind of
the thing that connects togetherboth physics and reality as we
(29:39):
know, it creates reality as weknow, and God being described as
I am, as it was always seen asthe essence of being, like the
essence of reality, but now ittakes on this very unique
perspective with thisunderstanding of physics.
Could you discuss that a little?
Speaker 2 (29:54):
bit more Sure.
Absolutely Well, god in theburning bush says to Moses I am
that I am.
It's sort of the most core, Ithink, instance of this
phenomenon that you'redescribing, and some people
think that the name of Godactually comes out of that.
The Hebrew of that statement,echia, asher, echia.
That looks somewhat similar tothe Hebrew name of god, and what
(30:19):
this asserts effectively isthat being in itself god as the
source of all being, the groundof all being, is not impersonal
but in essence and by nature, isalways first of all a character
, a person, and therefore imbuesthe world with personhood,
(30:42):
means for it to be personal andin relationship.
Now I think you need theChristian doctrine of the
Trinity to really get you to thelast piece of this puzzle,
which is that God himselfcontains relationship, that
reality is never actually justlike a mute lump of matter, but
is always in this kind of dualrelationship which Aristotle, as
(31:06):
I mentioned, sort of hadalready figured out before the
quantum physicists got there.
But running through the wholeBible, exactly as you say, there
is a picture of the world thatI think not only gave birth to
the scientific enterprise butalso is now starting to line up
with the scientific enterprisein a way that we haven't even
(31:28):
taken stock of.
We're not dispensablePersonality.
Humanity isn't dispensable.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
It's actually the point of existence and it's also
the basis of existence whichchanges everything we've covered
a lot so far in this, and oneof the things I want to just
note because some peopleprobably listening, who are
skeptics, who aren't religious,which is completely fine and I
think great, like talk aboutdifferent perspectives, of
(31:55):
course, um, we're not sayingthat material doesn't have a
bearing on reality, like that,that of, of course, in your
behaviors, chemicals andhormones don't influence you at
all.
I think what we're arguing and,of course, correct me if I'm
wrong here is what we're sayingis our modern understanding is
materialism alone is whatdefines us, and we're basically
(32:18):
suggesting a more Aristotelianperspective, which is it is both
your soul and material and likethat, that combination is what
makes us human in some sense.
When it talks about, when we'retalking about behaviors and
kind of the essence of man.
What would you say to that?
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Yeah, yeah no question, that's important.
I mean, we're definitely notsaying that matter doesn't exist
.
That's Barclay.
Barclay thought that matterdidn't exist and I think part of
the one weakness of his attackon materialism was that he
veered all the way in the otherdirection, which makes sense
(32:53):
given his position in history.
The other guy who sort of veersaway in the other direction
from the scientific enterpriseis David Hume, who says you have
this whole idea that the sunhas always risen over a 24-hour
period and therefore it's goingto rise tomorrow.
And you'd think that that meansthere's some underlying thing
called a cause, a structure thatgives rise to this.
(33:16):
But actually this is merelyexperience.
All we have is just repeatedexperience, and we have nothing
to say with absolute certaintythat that these things are gonna
.
So these are examples of, Iwould say, radical assaults on
the foundations of of science,and that's not what either of us
would want to make.
In fact, quite the opposite.
My suggestion is that.
(33:38):
Quite the opposite.
(34:04):
My suggestion is that there's agood reason why David Hume
probably the strongest critiqueof the scientific enterprise in
us that we can understand wealso have to believe that there
is something other than matter,and there's kind of no way out
of this without biting your owntail.
So my perspective is much morealong the lines of I love
science.
I can't claim to be a scientist, but I admire scientists
enormously.
I just think they've leftthemselves very vulnerable to
(34:25):
certain maladies that we'reseeing play out.
For instance, if you say thatscience is this autonomous sort
of self-generating materiallogic that arises automatically
out of your brain, generatesomething called an idea, why
(34:59):
should I believe that any morethan I believe the other random
concatenation of atoms or theother rather mechanical
concatenation of atoms insomeone else's idea that says
that Jupiter speaks to herthrough crystals?
And the answer is there is noreason.
The only possibility forscience is to believe that
there's something that makes theidea E equals MC, squared
(35:20):
different from the idea.
Crystals connect me to the godsof Jupiter, and that difference
is nowhere to be found in thestructure of the atoms or the
molecules involved found in thestructure of the atoms or the
molecules involved.
So even to be a scientist, Ithink you have to believe in
(35:45):
both matter and I would sayspirit form, whatever you want
to call it.
And then you raise this entirequestion of values, purpose and
meaning that science has to benested in.
It arose out of that context.
It is, I think, leading backtoward that context and if it is
not in that context, it's goingto attach to some other purpose
besides the God of truth, likepolitics, which is what I think
(36:06):
we've seen with the scientificAmerican just endorsed Kamala
Harris, as if science argues forsome person.
And the reason for that iswithout an overarching structure
of values, which you can't getout of matter and you have to
get out of the world of formsand ideas, science is instead
(36:27):
going to simply become thefootball that gets passed back
and forth between othercompeting value structures and
political interests footnotewitness the entire COVID era and
I just think that, like there'sno reason we don't, it doesn't
have to be this way.
You know we can have nicethings and there's no reason,
really scientifically, for us toposit In fact, there's good
(36:49):
scientific reason not to positthat matter is the only thing.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
It is something, but it's in relationship with
something else and then you havethe other extreme that says,
well then, if this is, if thebase, like the other
misunderstanding of science aswell, then it just doesn't exist
with faith, like you can't.
The other extreme just rejectit all um entirely, which is
another kind of popular movementwe're seeing as well, which is
which very unique, that you haveboth this glorification of
(37:16):
science not that science is bad,there's almost like religious
religiosity around science plusthis kind of rejection
absolutely, and this issomething I deal with in the
last sort of concludingparagraphs of the book.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
I talk about the twin figures of albert einstein and
charles spurgeon.
Einstein, mind searching fortruth, reads his Bible as a kid,
grows up in a Jewish context,loves the stories in the Bible
and then discovers that inmaterial terms there are other
books, science books, thatcontradict his Bible and
(37:51):
concludes that since these twobooks must both be providing the
same kind of truth, andconcludes that since these two
books must both be providing thesame kind of truth, he has to
jettison his Bible and go forhis paleontology textbook.
The book is designed to argue.
The book is fighting atwo-front war, one against the
vision of truth that would makeEinstein feel like he had to
choose between those two things,but the other is against
Charles Spurgeon, a preacher Iquite respect, but who says what
(38:12):
reason do the religious have todeal with every new airy
fantasy of man evolution, thesenewfangled philosophies?
The Bible tells us all aboutthem, and your grandmother knows
that your Bible is really theonly source of truth you need.
And I don't think that's atraditional Christian
perspective either.
Actually, if you look at, forexample, the way St Augustine
(38:33):
talks about the book of natureand the book of scripture and
calibrating your interpretationof each against one another,
you'll find that this whole ideathat in order to be a faithful
reader of the Bible you have tobe a literalist reader of every
sentence, as if it all describesmeasurable, quantifiable,
physical truth, actually a verymodern idea that we inherit from
(38:58):
the scientific revolution.
It's out of the scientificrevolution and this turn toward
materialism that the churchstarts to react and say well,
okay, but our Bible has the realtruth about the age of the
universe, about the dinosaursand whether or not they existed
and all of that.
And then you enter into thisweighing competition between the
(39:19):
Bible and science over whichone has more physical facts,
when the Bible never enteredinto that competition, it began
hundreds of years after theBible was written.
And if you enter the Bible intothat competition, you will turn
people away from it, likeEinstein.
And so this is a real.
I think both of these sides ofthis dispute, if you want to
(39:41):
call it that, have, I think, alot to answer for, and neither
of them needs, I think, to be ashostile to the other as they
have been percent.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
So we could talk about this for hours, but we
have to wrap up the interviewhere and with the first question
that we ask all of our guestswhat books have had an impact on
you?
Now, you've already come on thepodcast before, and previously
you said that during high school, the Bible had the most impact
on you, as you were converted toChristianity, and then, during
grad school, poetic Diction andSaving Appearances were the two
(40:18):
books that had the most impacton you.
Do you alter your opinion?
Would you like to add to it?
What is your comment upon yourprevious opinion?
Speaker 2 (40:27):
Excellent, encouraging.
I definitely still feel thatthose have been very influential
books in my life, especiallyactually Barfield's Saving the
Appearance is a majorinspiration behind Light of the
Mind, light of the World.
And I guess I would just addone other that I've read since I
talked to you last and that isThomas Traherne's Centuries of
Meditations.
Cs Lewis called this the mostbeautiful, almost the most
(40:53):
beautiful book in English, andit is a century is a series of
100 short reflections whichTraherne wrote during the 1600s
and in his life.
They were never published.
He was sort of an obscurecountry pastor, but in their
insight they are explosive.
In fact Traherne seems to havebasically predicted the entire
trajectory of all literature forthe next several hundred years.
(41:16):
The Romantic era is prefiguredin here, william Blake is
prefigured in here.
So far as I know, blake neverread Trehearne, but when he
emerged at the end of the 1800speople suddenly realized this
guy had a vision and it is justsuch a luminous book that I
would recommend really toanybody that is absolutely
fascinating.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
I'm definitely gonna, like I always create a book
list afterwards, so definitelyadding that one.
Um, what advice do you have forteenagers?
Previously you said you don'thave infinite time.
Therefore get serious aboutwhat you do want to do.
Do you have any additions orwhat do you think about that?
Speaker 2 (41:52):
I still still agree with me.
That's still true.
I would like to add somepractical advice for acting on
that idea, which is, first ofall, actually maybe.
This first one is anotherprinciple, and that is all of to
be serious.
(42:13):
You don't have to beself-important or uptight in
your youth and you should go anddo stuff and experience the
world and all of that.
But you should learn that inevery decision you make, you're
trading one thing for anotherand there's no perfect trade-off
in life.
If I go shut down this podcastafter I talk to you and I watch
(42:33):
an hour of Netflix, that's anhour that I didn't spend reading
a book.
Right Now, I'm not making anyvalue judgments yet.
I'm just saying that there arealways trade-offs in little
things and in big things,including who you marry, where
you live, what you do for aliving.
So that means two things.
(42:59):
First, it means that there's noperfect solution here.
There's no way.
I think in my youth I spent alot of time turning life this
way and that, trying to find theperfect arrangement that would
save me from missing out onanything, and that doesn't exist
.
So once you get that out ofyour head, you can breathe a
sigh of relief.
Stop measuring yourself againstsome imagined perfect version
of your life and instead askwhich tradeoffs're going to
(43:19):
spend your time?
And so I would propose to youone thing that you could trade
(43:42):
an hour and a half a day for.
That will repay valueenormously, and that is take 30
minutes each day and devote 30minutes to the life of the mind,
30 minutes to the life of thebody and 30 minutes to the life
of the soul.
Pick a routine.
There's lots of good ones outthere.
The internet is full of them.
Pick a gym routine, pick aprayer routine and pick a
(44:07):
reading routine.
And stick to it every day forsix months without fail.
And when I say stick to it, Ireally do mean you're going to
want to try other stuff.
You're going to get bored.
Just try imposing upon yourselfthis absolute, almost religious
discipline all three areas ofthose life, three of those areas
of life and then look backafter six months and see,
(44:30):
measure what has changed.
And then, if that works for you, repeat, and over the course of
four years.
If you do that, you will beunstoppable.
You will be so far ahead ofeveryone else in the world
including many, many people whoare much older than you, that I
would count that an excellenttrade-off.
So 30 minutes a day to the lifeof the mind, 30 to the body, 30
to the soul.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
How fascinating.
Well, thank you, Dr Klavan, forcoming on the podcast.
I've really enjoyed thisconversation.
I really enjoyed the book Lightof the Mind, Light of the World
, Illuminating Science ThroughFaith, One of my all-time
favorite reads across thepodcast and just one of the best
written books that I've read ofa modern writer.
So thank you so much for comingon.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
I'm blushing.
You saved that for the end.
Now I feel all verklempt andembarrassed.
You've got to shut the podcastdown immediately.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
Thank you, that's very kind.
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