Foreword

For some months now I have been meaning to write this paper. Brian Lennon (a.k.a. The Reader¹) asked me to deliver a paper to the Bram Stoker club and I made as many excuses as I could before I realised I just needed to get it done. The following is basically the paper I delivered, ± some dynamic changes.

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Water, fire, air and dirt
Fucking magnets, how do they work?
And I don’t wanna talk to a scientist
Y’all motherfuckers lying, and getting me pissed.

— Insane Clown Posse, Miracles

I claim this is not as insane or clownish a statement as one might be tempted to think, although it’s not gotten across in exactly the most compelling manner – especially in the context of its music video, which you might recall is a montage of the ICP’s de facto right and left brains, Misters Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent J, respectively, musing about chroma-keyed flowers in glorious technicolour. It’s widely ridiculed, and yes, a huge part of that ridicule is aimed at the wilful ignorance of J and Dope.

We (this is a deliberate ‘we’, sorry: I’m basically talking precisely about university students who come to a talk with a Blake reference and the word ‘ontology’ in the title, and even moreso about the insecure Popular Mechanics readers you will find trying to relate the intricacies of the Ising model to either the Posse themselves or a totally fictive audience of Juggalos who somehow read obscure physics blogs²) we find this sort of wilful ignorance repellant, in a knee-jerk, unmeditated sort of a way. Calling scientists ’liars’ strikes a nerve – brings to mind anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers, creationists, even just your grandad, who thinks Einstein is all well and good but didn’t the whole relativity thing ultimately lead to PC going just absolutely mad.

A cursory glance at the Wikipedia page for ‘Miracles’ will of course enlighten you as to the motivation behind the song: Shaggy just had a child and felt that the mysteries of the world were (a) beautiful and (b) effectively ruined by scientific explanations. Look uncomfortably within yourself and decide the extent to which you agree with Mr Dope’s sentiment. Think of the number of times a joke has been quote ‘ruined’ when someone explained it, or how shit Arthur C. Clarke’s sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey is, because it gives an explanation for what the Hell the monoloth thing is and it’s just flat-out disappointing.

ICP are basically wrong, yes, but almost every critique of this song is, I argue, levelled with the shocking naïveté of the teenage atheist YouTuber: the word ‘science’ is blasted rapid-fire into the black-and-white face of the well-meaning juggalo, who I stress quite simply does not live in the same world as us, the rhetorical inhabitants of the physics blogosphere. Most people don’t, it will not shock you to recall. Most of the members of my extended family, who are pretty normal and well-educated and smart, can summarize everything they know about science in just about the letters given to them over a game of Scrabble. I have tried to explain to many of them how magnets work, and this is why I’m considered the boring cousin.

Science is, of course, something I consider interesting and important. For most of my life I have held this belief. I did not start to believe this because I grew up in a world with penicillin or GPS or bicycles or the Nintendo Wii or a fridge full of seedless grapes or the Internet or atomic weapons or climate change or mass surveillance technology or Charli XCX. I didn’t put ‘physicist’ on the ‘what I want to be when I grow up’ page in my 3rd class scrapbook because I wanted to contribute in some small way to the exciting body of work that is solid state theory, nor because I thought that maybe some day a paper I wrote might help in the development of medical technology. But if you tried to push me in the last year or so to tell you what I wanted to do with a degree in Theoretical Physics I would sheepishly concede that this is the sum total of what I would be likely to give to the world.

In fact I chose to do this degree because I watched Back to the Future when I was 8 and from then on the only thing I did on my parents’ laptop apart from play Club Penguin was watch videos about space and time and read Wikipedia articles about black holes, and if you told me that you could use X-rays for medical purposes I would sort of smile to feign interest and then go back to trying to figure out how to visualise a 4-dimensional shape. This I wager is pretty much the standard story for physics students. I initially didn’t do particularly well in physics in secondary school because I was expecting to hear more about parallel universes and string theory and all I learned was stuff I didn’t really quite get about projectiles falling in parabolae and the harmonic motion of a ball on a string.

That’s not to say none of this stuff was interesting: the derivation of a soaring golf ball’s parabolic motion – Pynchon’s ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’ – is very much a gift handed down to us after a flood of Aristotelian failure. The simple harmonic oscillator nearly speaks for itself and, as I’ve learned throughout the last few years, is a far more compelling and beautiful problem than just a mass on a spring. But during the Leaving Cert I didn’t totally get this. There was, to me, little importance to be found in having an equation that summarises the motion of a launched ball. I didn’t live in a world that I considered mechanical or linear. Inasmuch as one may wish to describe wormholes and magnetic monopoles as irrelevant bullshit, this is how I felt about the modulus of expansion and conventional current. The world I lived in was impressionistic and slightly bizarre – shaped much moreso by the art with which I interacted than by tight descriptions of frictionless voids. I knew I lived in the physical world, of course – if only tenuously – but it wasn’t obvious to me that perfect parabolae also did. I was told we ’neglect air resistance’. I was told Newtonian physics had been proven ‘wrong’ by Einstein. Not only did I have little reason to care – I was actively told not to believe it.

So so much for physics. Except no, I chose to study it, because I felt there would come a point where I would finally have rigourous, holistic description of the world. Indeed, by the end of first year, I was beginning to see how approximations weren’t necessarily ‘wrong’, they were merely a method of shaving a few hairs off of a given problem in order to be able to write it down simply. I ran computer simulations that showed me what the motion of a ball looked like with and without air resistance, and, yes, it is very nearly parabolic even when you factor in a drag term. Not once did I go outside throw a ball.

All the while I was excited for the day that I would finally learn how it all fits together. I was aware that there are two Big Theories in physics today: general relativity and quantum field theory, and that they don’t quite fit together. To me this is obviously a disaster for anyone who actually wants a description of the world. You can see I would’ve been quite compelled to learn about string theory, which is supposed to finally reconcile these two big dogs. You can see equally how dismayed I was to learn from a great many physicists that string theory isn’t ‘real science’. You may have heard this said – that string theory isn’t ‘real science’ because ‘real science’ has to be what’s called ‘falsifiable’ – that is to say, it should predict things that can be shown to be false by experiment. This is Karl Popper’s view, and kind of the de facto standard philosophy of science today: that we cannot ever find truth in this world, only slowly decrease falsehoods.

String theory is pretty heavily derided because its predictions only significantly differ from the apparently approximate predictions of general relativity and quantum field theory at energy scales too large to currently test with any of the equipment we have on Earth – I’m sure most of you have seen that picture of the huge Future Circular Collider the size of Geneva that CERN wants to build with the caption ‘come on bro please just one more collider and we’ll solve all of physics bro please’. Even that thing won’t ever conceivably get to the energy scales corresponding to the microscopic length of strings.

For a lot of people, this doesn’t seem to present any kind of a problem. If you ask my uncle or physicist Sabine Hossenfelder they’ll tell you: hey, what we have works. We wouldn’t have smartphones if it didn’t. Isn’t that all we want out of science? Maybe there is no ’theory of everything’.

But if you’re like me in any way you’ll find Popper’s view a bit chilling. We can only decrease falsehoods? So science isn’t the search for truth? This is near-dogmatically accepted as the only correct way to look at science in today’s world, and it’s why when you ask the average physics student what they’re going to do after they graduate you’ll only get one of two answers: they’ll go to work in finance, or they’ll go into some area of physics and do work that they hope one day will be used to advance technology.

The implicit assumption in this view is that most problematic of words: ‘progress’. This standpoint on science is a utopic one. Eventually we will have learned enough to solve every problem and then we can sit back and enjoy the fruits of our labour. I read once an article about Catholic neoconservatism³ which made the interesting point that most extremist utopic fringe movements are notoriously vague about what actually happens after the Revolution or the Second Coming of Christ or the Great Reset or whatever, the illustrative point being that, when probed about what everyone would do after Communism was finally achieved, Karl Marx said that they would “fish during the day and write angry manifestos at night”. And while I won’t attempt in this speech to go full Unabomber, Aldous Huxley⁴ in Brave New World pretty much gets across what happens if we’ve solved every problem, including the massive ennui that comes with having solved with every problem: every virtuous thing evaporates. Truth, Beauty, Love all cease to be things that are pursued or even exist in the world, and art, science, and human relationships are trivialised. ‘Progress’, if you really want to model it as a linear hike toward fully automated luxury space communism, cannot be what we’re doing science for: because if it was, then there would be nothing to live for once we’re done.

Of course this is the standard reductio ad absurdum for hedonistic preference utilitarianism, and I’m merely working up to it from the point of view of a physicist going through an indescribable spiritual crisis. In general I like the rule that there is no progress, only change, but there are obvious exceptions: medicine needs Popper, for instance. We want to decrease falsehoods in medical science because we do ultimately want people not to die of cancer or curable viruses. Don’t for a minute mistake this for the apologia of a relativist anti-vaxxer. But I feel that it’s a mistake to think that all science should be done just for the good of the medical profession, as much as I think it’s a mistake for atheist YouTubers to clown the Posse for not wanting their mysteries ruined.

And so of course we come to the alternative, and an answer to the question you’ve all been asking yourselves: what does this have to do with the Rattlin’ bog? The answer is unfortunate and is the kernel of truth hidden in ICP’s lyrical miracle: if we reject Popperian epistemology and hedonism and ‘progress’ and uphold ’truth’ and ‘beauty’ as virtues we seem to discover yet another reductio ad absurdum that’s arguably more troubling. What do we do when we’ve searched for and found all the Truth? What happens when we’ve answered every question?

This is not a question that troubles most physicists. Some, unfortunately, are weirdly, annoyingly against the idea of seeing this sort of thing as a problem. My favourite person to rant about, whom I find far and away more annoying than the Insane Clown Posse, is the rather sane physicist Lawrence Krauss. He is famous for believing you can resolve the age-old question ‘why is there something rather than nothing?’ using the fact that, in quantum field theory, random vacuum fluctuations beget particles: thus the Big Bang, thus checkmate people who care about philosophy⁵. It’s a profoundly bad argument, of course, not least because quantum fields are generally thought of as the base elements of the ontology of QFT anyway, and particles are only ever emergent phenomena - the goalposts have barely even shifted, and the question remains: whence quantum fields? Whence this holy ghost, vacuum? For Krauss, the questions of physics and metaphysics present themselves as mere annoyances to posture about.

Krauss has a loud voice, and his existence is probably the most scathing indictment of Popperian rationalism that exists: he once said of a prominent friend, “As a scientist I always judge things on empirical evidence and he always has women ages 19 to 23 around him, but I’ve never seen anything else, so as a scientist, my presumption is that whatever the problems were I would believe him over other people…I don’t feel tarnished in any way by my relationship with Jeffrey [Epstein]; I feel raised by it.” It’s a voice that I would almost contend is unfortunately representative of the views of the caricature of a physicist that the average person has in their head.

And I do understand why physicists get this way⁶: because even upholding Truth as your raison d’être is an existentially exhausting exercise. For Krauss, that’s another thing crossed off the list, and one day he can relax. But for someone like Violent J, filled with his infant son’s childlike wonder, to have this huge looming question of the Queerness of Being ruined by the Lawrence Krausses of the world, even if the intricacies of his ontologically-unsound argument aren’t known to him, is a smarmy gut-punch – even if J doesn’t know any QFT, it’s easy to smell intellectual dishonesty, and in this particular example the otherwise quite competent and knowledgeable physicist Krauss positively reeks of it.

Where the Dope-J Thesis really fails though is in its lack of commitment to truly not wanting an explanation. A sense of wonder, an anger at the perception of being lied to, are contingent on a sincere desire to know the truth. Dope doesn’t say ‘I don’t wanna fuckin’ know how magnets work’ – he asks how it is that they do. It is the canonical ‘can’t have your cake and eat it too’ situation, and at the end of the day everyone would prefer to eat the cake. Solving a mystery doesn’t per se ruin it.

But the kernel of dread remains. What if we run out of mysteries? What if we solve every question? In practice, obviously, we probably can’t, but this is a philosophical discussion, so how about in principle: well, we still can’t – Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems forbid us from even constructing a finitistic system in which to consider those questions. But that’s only in logic, and Gödel’s Theorems only explicitly forbid us from answering weird self-referential questions like ‘is this sentence answerable?’ – they don’t on their own say anything about the physical world.

So in physics, in principle, can we solve ever question? Many physicists safeguard against this possibility by introducing what I have christened a Rattlin’ Bog ontology. To explain, I will give my last word on QFT. I mentioned before that particles are not really the basis of QFT, that it’s really fields that we talk about and particles simply bubble out of them when you give them enough energy. In practical QFT calculations you quantify this by computing Feynmann diagrams – they’re pictures of particles colliding, except that no two particles ever actually touch: a mediator particle is exchanged between the two. Take that in for a second. No particles ever touch, but they can exchange mediator particles? So the mediator particles also don’t touch, the just exchange more mediators? Ad Infinitum? As we expand the mathematical infinite series of mediators, of course, the strength of the interactions become less and less important, and we can cut off at some arbitrary accuracy and take the model we have as an ’effective field theory’. And so in that hole there was a tree, and on that tree there was a branch, and on that branch there was a twig, and on that twig there was a leaf, and on that leaf there was a nest, and in that nest there was an egg, and in that egg there was a chick, and on that chick there was a flea, and on that flea there was a bacterium, and in that bacterium there was a cell, and in that cell there was an atom, and in that atom there was a nucleus, and in that nucleus there was a quark, and between any of the quarks within that nucleus there were mediator particles, and describing that theory to order 1 there was an effective field theory, and describing that theory to order 2 there was an effective field theory, and describing that theory to order 3 there was an effective field theory, and so forth.

One hopes that in practice this tedious song is truncated by some Planck-scale theory like string theory. But I have heard it said by some physicists, in all earnestness, that it might just be turtles all the way down. With a little bit of mischievous hope in their eyes when they say it. I think a person can placate oneself then, by saying there’s always mysteries to be solved in physics in principle, always cake to be eaten.

But finally having covered all bases, found a world full of things to explain and quote ‘ruin’ and have our cups runneth over with quandaries, our we home and dry? Or did we just run ourselves into a Sysphean corner? For a few months now I have been thinking that this might be the case. Truth and nothing but it, but to what end? Am I in the end just Lawrence Krauss? Are the Insane Clown Posse right after all? Should I quit the pursuit of knowledge and start my own clown-themed rap troupe, knowing that my quest is, at the end of the day, just to mine through the infinite list of things I can do to keep myself from being bored?

As per usual, the cure to this existential woe, and the hopeful probable conclusion to this rambly and hastily-typed paper, lies in the Red Hand Files, Nick Cave’s ask-me-anything-type blog. Asked about meaning and hopefulness in the context of the tragic loss of his son, Cave, who seems to be one of the most thoughtful and interesting rock musicians around⁷, namedrops the English philosopher Ian McGilchrist. It is worth reproducing here his full summary of McGilchrist’s thesis in The Matter with Things⁸, since it’s surprisingly eloquent: “Philosopher, neuroscientist and psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist says we require three things to attain a meaningful life. The first is feeling part of a wider community – family, friends, and society in general. Second is an understanding of nature and a connection to the natural order of things, which McGilchrist feels we have largely lost. Finally, we need to form a relationship with the sacred or divine – this can be found in art, music, poetry and religion, where we acknowledge the ineffable and all-encompassing force that holds the world together.”⁹

The second point – that we’ve lost a connection with the natural world, is obviously hinting at the fact that I don’t know what breed of trees those are out there and couldn’t point out a single constellation to you if I tried. That’s important, but there’s a subpoint here that I think McGilchrist is maybe hinting at without necessarily saying. The quest for Truth is not a game of racking up numbers a lá Cookie Clicker. A description of the world is necessary merely to not feel so lost - a good scientific explanation should enhance our wonder at the world, not ruin it. And so I think finally contrary to the falsificationist view that physics is, like any other art, an attempt to assign an ordered narrative to the world. Maybe we try to say it’s more than that because we think we need to be taken more seriously than humanities students, or because we need to secure funding for our incredibly technologically demanding experiments, or because trying to believe in something has been drilled into our heads as ‘irrational’ and ‘unscientific’. But I think that physicists have a duty to fulfill which requires the deepest humility and the greatest commitment. It is not to condescend to juggalos with the Ising model, or to belittle theists with vacuum fluctuations, and dismiss philosophical questions as pointless. It is to help people to see all the ways in which we can understand the world. This doesn’t mean telling people that there are parallel Universes – which is only one possible interpretation of quantum mechanics – or that Newton was ‘wrong’ but here’s a parabola anyway. It means, simply, trying to answer questions and making your answers available in the simplest, most uncondescending, accessible way that you can, and accepting that if people don’t listen, it’s probably because they just don’t need to. This is not any more stupid than any other art.

Questions

After delivering the speech I immediately sat down, and then Brian came up to the podium to ask if there were questions, and then I slightly awkwardly got back up and said “oh yeah, I should answer some questions.” Bit embarrassing but you can’t spend your whole life worrying about that sort of thing. I will try to reproduce the questions and answers that I can remember, but fair warning: Gonzo journalism ahead.

Brian: Okay, well, I suppose I’ll start with a question. So you talk about McGilchrist’s conception of meaning. It reminded me of William James’ conception of religion as ’total reflection’. A lot of New Atheism seemed to have spawned a kind of new-wave spiritualism in which physics takes on the role of religion. Do you think it’s possible for this to actually be done successfully?

Me: Well, I’m not sure. Of the New Atheist writers I really think there’s only two who are particularly good – Daniel Dennett is very good, I think, and Richard Dawkins is definitely right sometimes. But even Dennett’s point against nihilism is basically another reductio – it’s a non-constructive proof. He just says that if nihilism is true then nothing matters anyway so we might as well just go on as though there is meaning. But he doesn’t come up with an actual well-defined meaning. [I should’ve added that Dennett’s anti-nihilism is contingent on the reader subscribing to doxastic voluntarism¹⁰ – that is, being able to choose to believe. I don’t honestly think that, if you are fully convinced that nothing matters, it’s really going to pull you out of despair.] So yeah, maybe. But I haven’t seen it done. I think for something to be ’total reflection’ it necessarily has to be placed outside of the physical world. But maybe. It would certainly be nice to believe since I could get a job out of it.

Wilbur: Do you think that secondary school education makes you more logical?

Me: Em, I don’t really know. I think I wasn’t very logical when I was in school. I think it’s very hard to teach teenagers to be logical because I think being completely hardline rational is antithetical to the point of being a teenager. I certainly was never rational… well, ever, but I certainly didn’t even approach rational until I went to University.

David: Would you say that the fact that secondary school education is stratified into all these different subjects is unhelpful to education?

Me: I kind of like the fact that in secondary school it’s very all-over-the-place. I wanted to work Paul Feyerabend into this essay but I haven’t actually read him yet and I think he’s also a bit of a nut but… he says that science and knowledge in general should be kind of anarchical. Maybe what I don’t like about primary and secondary education is that there’s sort of an implication that there’s some central epistemological well to which you appeal, rather than that you sort of grow with it personally and naturally. Ideally it would be nice if you could teach every child in their own way but… I mean, my parents are teachers, and it’s apparently hard enough just to get a class of kids to sit down. To teach them all in your own personal way – it would require an army. There’s no perfect answer, I don’t think.