Non-theist physicist interviewed on Fresh Air

[The Other Michael]

I heard a bit of this today (Tuesday) and he certainly sounded pretty much non-theistic.

Physicist Brian Greene. With his book, The Elegant Universe, he developed a reputation for explaining complex scientific theories with insight and clarity. A PBS series was based on the book. His new book is The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality. Greene is a professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard and his doctorate from Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.

I did hear him explain the "God of the Gaps" concept, and a bit that slammed ID, creationism etc being taught in schools.

You can hear the audio from http://freshair.npr.org/

cheers,
Michael

[gilly54]

I caught this on Fresh Air also. Dr. Green sounded like he could have been a regular poster here on the IIDB.:D

He said that science could never prove the non-existence of a god, an unfalsifiable claim. He was magnanimous towards religion, saying science explains the 'how' but religion, if necessary, may explain the 'why', but his tone turned more harsh when Terry Gross asked him about creationism and intelligent design being taught as science, saying it disturbed him greatly.

I shouted "right on!" when he said the "God of the Gaps" is continually being replaced by science.

[Doctor X]

Anyone read his books? Can neophytes benefit from them?

--J.D.

[apocalypsecow]

Did anybody catch physicist Brian Greene's interview on NPR'S Fresh Air last night? He talked (very well) on several topics, explaining superstring theory, and why creationism shouldn't replace evolutionary theory in schools.

I particularly liked the talk on string theory, and I'll probably check out his book The Fabric of the Cosmos (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0375412883/qid=1079539629/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/102-7098068-3563365) . I was wondering if anybody has read this yet.

[apocalypsecow]

I'd like to know more about his books as well. I was impressed by the fella. He didn't pull any punches.

[brighid]

I caught that yesterday and it was a really good interview. He speaks very clearly, concisely and in simple terms so the average person is able to understand things like quantum physics and string theory. That interview made me want to go out and buy his latest book.

Brighid

[Godless Sodomite]

I caught THE ELEGANT UNIVERSE on PBS, but I missed the Fresh Air interview (it's good to have the link). The Nova documentary was very interesting.

Here's a link to an interview with Greene about THE ELEGANT UNIVERSE (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/greene.html)

-Jerry

[Janaya]

Here is the home page of the NOVA series The Elegant Universe. (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/) I saw most of it when it aired last fall. I thought it was very well done and can recommend watching it. He explained string theory in a way that even I could understand. LOL. That's quite a feat.

[Angrillori]

I read Elegant Universe and just bought (but haven't read) his latest.

I really enjoyed EU, but had some trouble bending my mind around some of the quantum/GR weirdness. I found that reading Hawking's Brief History first helped a ton.


But I definitely reccomend Elegant Universe and Brian Greene. He's eloquent, smart, and willing to take shots at ID/creationist nonsense. ROCK ON!

[Jesse]

Originally posted by apocalypsecow
Did anybody catch physicist Brian Greene's interview on NPR'S Fresh Air last night? He talked (very well) on several topics, explaining superstring theory, and why creationism shouldn't replace evolutionary theory in schools.

I particularly liked the talk on string theory, and I'll probably check out his book The Fabric of the Cosmos (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0375412883/qid=1079539629/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/102-7098068-3563365) . I was wondering if anybody has read this yet. There's another thread on this, so I'm merging them.

[Mageth]

Originally posted by Doctor X
Anyone read his books? Can neophytes benefit from them?

--J.D.

Yes (The Elegant Universe) and yes (though, as someone else noted, some background may be helpful).

[luvluv]

Doctor X:

Anyone read his books? Can neophytes benefit from them?

Heck, yes. The Elegant Universe is a fantastic introduction to relativity and string theory. I'm the opposite of Angrilori, as I found Greene's book a hundred times more readable than Hawking's. But then I must admit that I, too, read Brief History of the Universe before reading EU, so it might have helped me in ways I am not aware of.

BTW, what's the point in explicitly saying that a phycisist is non-theist? Are most physicists theists or something?

[Jesse]

Originally posted by luvluv
BTW, what's the point in explicitly saying that a phycisist is non-theist? Are most physicists theists or something? The point was just that he actually discussed some of his views on science and religion in the NPR interview linked to above.

[Jesse]

For anyone who's still interested in hearing this interview, go to http://freshair.npr.org/day_fa.jhtml?todayDate=archive and on the "Archived Shows" bar on the right, select March 16, 2004. The discussion about science and religion starts at around 11:08. Here's a transcript of the first part of it:

Terry Gross: Well, if the world is filled with dimensions that our senses don't allow us to percieve, you could argue that some or all of those dimensions are the world of microparticles, but I guess you could also argue just as easily that that world is a more spiritual one, in which we see spiritual forces that--in which there exist spiritual forces that we are incapable of percieving.

Brian Greene: Yeah, I would dissuade people from heading in that direction, and let me tell you why. Indeed string theory is, the theory that I work on, one of the cutting-edge developments in an attempt to build what Einstein called a "Unified Theory", a theory that might describe everything in the world using one basic master equation, and this approach, called string theory, does entail that the universe have more than the three dimensions that we know about. So we all know about left/right, back/forth, up/down; this theory does say that there are other dimensions beyond those. And since we don't see them, many people might say "Well, perhaps they are on par with some of the mystical ideas, or theological ideas." And the main difference, and the key distinction to keep in mind is, when we talk about these extra dimensions, we ultimately, we haven't been able to do it yet, but we ultimately imagine that we'll make predictions for how these dimensions behave and the implications that these dimensions have for observable phenomena. And that's the key difference between the scientific incarnation of these strange ideas, and the mystical incarnation: we only will believe these ideas when we can test them experimentally. There's no act of faith that's going to be involved in our taking on the theories that we're studying, and I don't think that's true of either the theological or mystical approaches, which always, as far as I have encountered so far, involve some element of faith, and a key inability to make predictions that will be testable, and allow us to determine whether those ideas are right or wrong.

TG: What's wrong with faith? What's wrong with just believing something because you have faith even though it isn't empirically provable or testable?

BG: Nothing's wrong with it at all, in fact my brother is a Hare Krishna, and for many years the developments that we've come upon in physics and string theory, I always enjoy telling him about these developments, and a lot of the time he'll say to me "Well we already knew that, that's in Veda text number twenty-three" or something of that sort. And it's an interesting exchange, because when we've ever gone into more detail on it, it seems as though many of the ideas that we have come upon do have a kind of resonance with ideas that have been articulated in ancient texts, or even in more modern theological or mystical texts. And I think that's very interesting, but from the point of view of what we really believe as truth from the scientific perspective, we have laid down, over the last few centuries, a particular yardstick to determine what we believe and what we don't believe. From the scientific point of view, that yardstick involves making a prediction that an experimenter can go out and measure, and determine whether your prediction is right or wrong. If your prediction is confirmed, your ideas are right; if your prediction is not borne out by the experiment, your ideas are plain wrong. And we have found this to be a very fruitful way to describe the universe; we have got very deep ideas which are now describing the world and able to make predictions. Now it's not to say that that yardstick is the right one outside of science--when it comes to religion and mystical ideas, maybe faith is the right yardstick. But the key thing to bear in mind is, you're not going to be able to really make a prediction, you're not going to be able to say how the universe truly works, if you're not, at least as far as I've seen in any example, working in the scientific context, where experiment is the yardstick.

TG: Do you think that science necessarily conflicts with religion, and vice versa?

BG: Not at all. I mean oftentimes people do talk about this conflict between science and religion, and look, if you want to stop teaching evolution and start teaching creationism, then yeah, there's a conflict. But I don't consider the over-arching realms of science and religion to be in conflict, because for instance it could be that everything that I'm doing as a scientist, and everything that every other scientist is doing, is simply revealing the laws that were laid down by some divine being. This is absolutely possible; in fact, if you think about it, there's no way ever for science to disprove that possibility, because the retort can always be, "well, the divine being set it up, so that you would describe things and make that argument to try to disprove what the divine being set in place." So it's completely unfalsifiable that what we're doing might be revealing God's design, and to tell you the truth, if that's what we're doing, I think it's pretty cool. I'd be very excited to spend my life trying to work out the laws that the divine being set down. Now, I should say, I see no evidence for a divine being, I see no evidence for anything but the laws of physics, and again, if there is no divine being, then what we're doing is revealing laws that have described how the universe began, and how it's going to evolve for a hundred billion years into the future. I think that's pretty cool too, and I'm excited to try to work out those laws, laws unto themselves.

Terri Gross then asks what his reaction is to people who want creationism or "intelligent design" taught in schools, and he says it's "highly unfortunate and very dangerous when one tries to substitute religious ideas for scientific breakthroughs and scientific developments". He also derides the "God of the gaps" approach where religious explanations are used to fill in gaps in scientific knowledge, and says that for some people (but not him, he says) religion may be good for addressing the "why" questions of life, questions of meaning, but the "how" questions should be the domain of science.