Min overskrift er: "Mærkeligere end vi kan antage: Videnskabens besynderlighed" "Mærkeligere end vi kan antage" kommer fra J.B.S. Haldane, den berømte biolog, der sagde: "Se, min egen mistanke er at universet ikke blot er mærkeligere end vi antager, men mærkeligere end vi kan antage. Jeg fornemmer, at der er flere ting mellem himmel og jord end dem, der drømmes om, eller kan drømmes om, i nogen filosofi." Richard Feynman sammenlignede nøjagtigheden af kvanteteorien - eksperimentielle forudsigelser - til at opmåle Nordamerikas bredde op til en enkelt hårsbreddes præcision. Dette betyder, at kvanteteorien må være sand i en eller anden forstand. Og dog er antagelserne, kvanteteorien må gøre for at kunne levere disse forudsigelser, så mystiske at Feynman selv blev bevæget til at bemærke, "Hvis du tror, du forstår kvanteteori, så forstår du ikke kvanteteori."
My title: "Queerer than we can suppose: the strangeness of science." "Queerer than we can suppose" comes from J.B.S. Haldane, the famous biologist, who said, "Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy." Richard Feynman compared the accuracy of quantum theories -- experimental predictions -- to specifying the width of North America to within one hair's breadth of accuracy. This means that quantum theory has got to be, in some sense, true. Yet the assumptions that quantum theory needs to make in order to deliver those predictions are so mysterious that even Feynman himself was moved to remark, "If you think you understand quantum theory, you don't understand quantum theory."
Den er så underlig, at fysikere ser sig nødsaget til at bruge en eller anden paradoksal fortolkning af den. David Deutsch, der taler her, omfavner i Virkelighedens Stof, "mange verdener"-fortolkningen af kvanteteori, fordi det værste, man kan sige om den er, at den er frygteligt uøkonomisk. Den postulerer et enormt og hurtigt voksende antal af universer der eksisterer parallelt - gensidigt uopdagelige undtagen igennem de kvantemekaniske eksperimenters snævre kighul. Og det var Richard Feynman.
It's so queer that physicists resort to one or another paradoxical interpretation of it. David Deutsch, who's talking here, in "The Fabric of Reality," embraces the many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory, because the worst that you can say about it is that it's preposterously wasteful. It postulates a vast and rapidly growing number of universes existing in parallel, mutually undetectable, except through the narrow porthole of quantum mechanical experiments. And that's Richard Feynman.
Biologen Lewis Wolpert mener, at den moderne fysiks mærkelighed, blot er et ekstremt eksempel. Videnskab, i modsætning til teknologi gør vold på sund fornuft. Hver gang du drikker et glas vand, bemærker han, taler oddsene for, at du vil indsuge mindst ét molekyle der har passeret igennem Oliver Cromwells blære. Det er blot elementær sandsynlighedsteori. Antallet af molekyler per fyldte glas er enormt meget større
The biologist Lewis Wolpert believes that the queerness of modern physics is just an extreme example. Science, as opposed to technology, does violence to common sense. Every time you drink a glass of water, he points out, the odds are that you will imbibe at least one molecule that passed through the bladder of Oliver Cromwell. (Laughter) It's just elementary probability theory. (Laughter)
end antallet af fyldte glas, eller fyldte blærer, i verden - og der er selvfølgelig ikke noget specielt ved Cromwell eller blærer. Du har netop indåndet et nitrogenatom der passerede igennem den tredje iguanodons højre lunge til venstre for the høje cycadetræ.
The number of molecules per glassful is hugely greater than the number of glassfuls, or bladdersful, in the world. And of course, there's nothing special about Cromwell or bladders -- you have just breathed in a nitrogen atom that passed through the right lung of the third iguanodon to the left of the tall cycad tree.
"Mærkeligere, end vi kan antage." Hvad er det, der gør os i stand til at antage noget som helst, og fortæller dette os noget om, hvad vi kan antage? Er der ting ved universet, der altid vil være ud over vores fatteevne, men ikke ud over fatteevnen for en overlegen intelligens? Er der ting ved universet som er, principielt, ufattelige for noget sind, uanset dets overlegenhed? Videnskabens historie har været en lang serie af voldsomme 'brainstorms', som efterfølgende generationer er kommet overens med stigende grader af mærkelighed. i universet. Vi er nu så vant til ideen om, at Jorden drejer - snarere end at solen bevæger sig hen over himlen - at det er svært for os at forstå hvilken rystende mental revolution det må have været. Det synes trods alt åbenlyst, at Jorden er stor og ubevægelig, og at Solen er lille og mobil. Men det er værd at huske Wittgensteins bemærkning om emnet. "Sig mig", bad han en ven, "hvorfor siger folk altid, at det var naturligt for mennesket, at antage, at solen drejede rundt om Jorden i stedet for, at Jorden roterede?" Hans ven svarede, "Jamen, selvfølgelig blot fordi det ser ud som om, at solen drejer rundt om Jorden." Wittgenstein svarede, "Jamen, hvordan ville det have set ud hvis det havde set ud som om, at Jorden roterede?"
"Queerer than we can suppose." What is it that makes us capable of supposing anything, and does this tell us anything about what we can suppose? Are there things about the universe that will be forever beyond our grasp, but not beyond the grasp of some superior intelligence? Are there things about the universe that are, in principle, ungraspable by any mind, however superior? The history of science has been one long series of violent brainstorms, as successive generations have come to terms with increasing levels of queerness in the universe. We're now so used to the idea that the Earth spins, rather than the Sun moves across the sky, it's hard for us to realize what a shattering mental revolution that must have been. After all, it seems obvious that the Earth is large and motionless, the Sun, small and mobile. But it's worth recalling Wittgenstein's remark on the subject: "Tell me," he asked a friend, "why do people always say it was natural for man to assume that the Sun went 'round the Earth, rather than that the Earth was rotating?" And his friend replied, "Well, obviously, because it just looks as though the Sun is going round the Earth." Wittgenstein replied, "Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?"
(Laughter)
Videnskaben har lært os, imod al intuition, at tilsyneladende massive ting, som krystaller og sten, i virkeligheden er sammensat næsten fuldstændigt af tomt rum. Og den bekendte illustration er, at kernen i et atom er en flue midt i et sportsstadion, og det næste atom er i det næste sportsstadium Så det virker som om, at den hårdeste, mest massive, tætteste sten i virkeligheden er næsten fuldstændigt tomt rum, kun afbrudt af bittesmå partikler med så stort mellemrum, at de ikke burde tælle. Hvorfor så, ses og føles sten massive og hårde og uigennemtrængelige? Som evolutionsbiolog, ville jeg sige dette: vores hjerner har udviklet sig for at hjælpe vores overlevelse inden for de størrelsesordener af størrelse og fart som vores kroppe fungerer inden for. Vi udviklede os ikke til at navigere i atomernes verden. Havde vi gjort det, ville vores hjerner sikkert opfatte sten som fulde af tomt rum. Sten føles hårde og uigennemtrængelige for vores hænder netop fordi objekter som sten og hænder ikke kan gennemtrænge hinanden. Derfor er det nyttigt for vores hjerner at konstruere indtryk som "soliditet" og "uigennemtrængelighed", fordi sådanne indtryk hjælper os med at navigere vores kroppe igennem den mellemstore verden, som vi må navigere i.
Science has taught us, against all intuition, that apparently solid things, like crystals and rocks, are really almost entirely composed of empty space. And the familiar illustration is the nucleus of an atom is a fly in the middle of a sports stadium, and the next atom is in the next sports stadium. So it would seem the hardest, solidest, densest rock is really almost entirely empty space, broken only by tiny particles so widely spaced they shouldn't count. Why, then, do rocks look and feel solid and hard and impenetrable? As an evolutionary biologist, I'd say this: our brains have evolved to help us survive within the orders of magnitude, of size and speed which our bodies operate at. We never evolved to navigate in the world of atoms. If we had, our brains probably would perceive rocks as full of empty space. Rocks feel hard and impenetrable to our hands, precisely because objects like rocks and hands cannot penetrate each other. It's therefore useful for our brains to construct notions like "solidity" and "impenetrability," because such notions help us to navigate our bodies through the middle-sized world in which we have to navigate.
I den anden ende af skalaen blev vores forfædre aldrig nødt til at navigere igennem kosmos ved hastigheder tæt på lysets. Havde de det, ville vores hjerner være meget bedre til at forstå Einstein. Jeg vil gerne give navnet "Mellemverden" til det mellemstore miljø, vi har udviklet evnen til at handle... -Det har ikke noget at gøre med Midgård. Mellemverden.
Moving to the other end of the scale, our ancestors never had to navigate through the cosmos at speeds close to the speed of light. If they had, our brains would be much better at understanding Einstein. I want to give the name "Middle World" to the medium-scaled environment in which we've evolved the ability to take act -- nothing to do with "Middle Earth" -- Middle World.
Vi er udviklede beboere af Mellemverdenen, og det begrænser hvad vi er i stand til at forestille os. Man finder det intuitivt nemt at begribe ideer såsom, når en kanin bevæger sig ved de - nærmest mellemstore hastigheder, ved hvilke en kanin og andre Mellemverdens-objekter bevæger sig, og rammer et andet Mellemverdens-objekt, som en sten, og slår sig selv omkuld.
(Laughter) We are evolved denizens of Middle World, and that limits what we are capable of imagining. We find it intuitively easy to grasp ideas like, when a rabbit moves at the sort of medium velocity at which rabbits and other Middle World objects move, and hits another Middle World object like a rock, it knocks itself out.
"Lad mig introducere Major General Albert Stubblebine III, leder af militær efterretning i 1983. Han stirrede på sin væg i Arlington, Virginia, og besluttede at gøre det. Skræmmende som udsigterne var, ville han gå ind i det tilstødende kontor. Han rejste sig, og stillede sig ud fra sit skrivebord "Hvad er atomet hovedsageligt lavet af?" tænkte han. "Mellemrum". Han begyndte at gå. "Hvad er jeg hovedsageligt lavet af? Atomer!" Han øgede sin gang, næsten til et løb nu. "Hvad er væggen hovedsageligt lavet af? Atomer!
May I introduce Major General Albert Stubblebine III, commander of military intelligence in 1983. "...[He] stared at his wall in Arlington, Virginia, and decided to do it. As frightening as the prospect was, he was going into the next office. He stood up and moved out from behind his desk. 'What is the atom mostly made of?' he thought, 'Space.' He started walking. 'What am I mostly made of? Atoms.' He quickened his pace, almost to a jog now. 'What is the wall mostly made of?'
(Laughter)
Alt, jeg skal gøre er, at flette mellemrummene!" Da hamrede General Stubblebine sin næse hårdt mod muren i sit kontor. Stubblebine, der kommanderede 16.000 soldater, blev forvirret over sine forgæves forsøg på at gå igennem muren. Han er sikker på, at denne evne en dag vil være et almindeligt redskab i det militære arsenal. Hvem ville lægge sig ud med en hær der kunne gøre det?" Dette er fra en artikel i Playboy,
'Atoms!' All I have to do is merge the spaces. Then, General Stubblebine banged his nose hard on the wall of his office. Stubblebine, who commanded 16,000 soldiers, was confounded by his continual failure to walk through the wall. He has no doubt that this ability will one day be a common tool in the military arsenal. Who would screw around with an army that could do that?"
som jeg læste i forleden dag.
That's from an article in Playboy, which I was reading the other day.
Jeg har al mulig grund til at tro, at det er sandt; jeg læste i Playboy,
(Laughter)
fordi jeg selv havde en artikel i det. Ustøttet menneskelig intuition, oplært i Mellemverden, finder det svært at tro Galileo, når han fortæller os, at et tungt objekt og et let objekt, bort set fra luftmodstanden, ville ramme jorden i samme øjeblik. Og det er fordi, at i Mellemverden er luftmodstanden der altid. Havde vi udviklet os i et vakuum, ville vi forvente, at de ramte jorden samtidigt. Hvis vi var bakterier, der konstant blev serveret molekylernes termiske bevægelser, ville det være anderledes, men vi beboere af Mellemverden er for store til at bemærke Brownske bevægelser. På samme måde er vores liv domineret af tyngdekraften, men er nærmest ubekendt med overfladespænding. Et lille insekt ville vende disse prioriteter om.
I have every reason to think it's true; I was reading Playboy because I, myself, had an article in it. (Laughter) Unaided human intuition, schooled in Middle World, finds it hard to believe Galileo when he tells us a heavy object and a light object, air friction aside, would hit the ground at the same instant. And that's because in Middle World, air friction is always there. If we'd evolved in a vacuum, we would expect them to hit the ground simultaneously. If we were bacteria, constantly buffeted by thermal movements of molecules, it would be different. But we Middle-Worlders are too big to notice Brownian motion. In the same way, our lives are dominated by gravity, but are almost oblivious to the force of surface tension. A small insect would reverse these priorities.
Steve Grand - det er ham til venstre, Douglas Adams er til højre - Steve Grand, i sin bog, "Skabelse: Liv og hvordan man laver det" er direkte hånende over vores optagethed af stof i sig selv. Vi har denne tendens til at tro, at kun faste, materielle ting virkelig er ting overhovedet. Bølger af elektromagnetisk udsving i et vakuum synes uvirkelige. Viktorianere mente at bølger måtte være bølger i et materielt medie - æteren. Men vi finder kun rigtigt stof komfortabelt fordi vi har udviklet os til at overleve i Mellemverden. hvor stof er en brugbar fiktion. En hvirvelstrøm er for Steve Grand en ting med lige så meget virkelighed som en sten.
Steve Grand -- he's the one on the left, Douglas Adams is on the right. Steve Grand, in his book, "Creation: Life and How to Make It," is positively scathing about our preoccupation with matter itself. We have this tendency to think that only solid, material things are really things at all. Waves of electromagnetic fluctuation in a vacuum seem unreal. Victorians thought the waves had to be waves in some material medium: the ether. But we find real matter comforting only because we've evolved to survive in Middle World, where matter is a useful fiction. A whirlpool, for Steve Grand, is a thing with just as much reality as a rock.
På en ørkenhede i Tanzania, i skyggen af vulkanen Ol Donyo Lengai, er der en banke lavet vulkansk aske. Det smukke er, at den bevæger sig fysisk Den er, hvad der teknisk er kendt som en "barkan", og hele banken går over ørkenen i en vestlig retning med en fart på omtrent 17 meter om året. Den bibeholder sin halvmåneform og bevæger sig i hornenes retning. Det, der sker, er, at vinden blæser sandet opad den bløde bakke på den anden side, og så som hvert sandkorn rammer toppen af højderyggen, vælter det ned på den anden side af halvmånen og således bevæger hele den horn-formede banke sig. Steve Grand bemærker, at du og jeg selv er mere lig en bølge end en permanent ting. Han inviterer os, læseren, til at "tænke på en oplevelse fra din barndom - noget du tydeligt husker, noget du kan se, føle, måske endda lugte, som om, du virkeligt var der. Du var der jo trods alt på det tidspunkt, var du ikke? Hvordan ville du ellers kunne huske det? Men her kommer bomben: Du var der ikke. Ikke et eneste atom, der i dag er i din krop, var der da den hændelse fandt sted. Stof flyder fra sted til sted og finder sammen et øjeblik for at være dig. Hvad end du er, altså, er du ikke de ting, som du er lavet af. Hvis det ikke får dine hår i nakken til at løfte sig, så læs det igen, indtil det gør, for det er vigtigt."
In a desert plain in Tanzania, in the shadow of the volcano Ol Doinyo Lengai, there's a dune made of volcanic ash. The beautiful thing is that it moves bodily. It's what's technically known as a "barchan," and the entire dune walks across the desert in a westerly direction at a speed of about 17 meters per year. It retains its crescent shape and moves in the direction of the horns. What happens is that the wind blows the sand up the shallow slope on the other side, and then, as each sand grain hits the top of the ridge, it cascades down on the inside of the crescent, and so the whole horn-shaped dune moves. Steve Grand points out that you and I are, ourselves, more like a wave than a permanent thing. He invites us, the reader, to think of an experience from your childhood, something you remember clearly, something you can see, feel, maybe even smell, as if you were really there. After all, you really were there at the time, weren't you? How else would you remember it? But here is the bombshell: You weren't there. Not a single atom that is in your body today was there when that event took place. Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you. Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made. If that doesn't make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, read it again until it does, because it is important.
Så "virkeligt" er ikke et ord vi bør anvende overmodigt. Hvis en neutrino havde en hjerne, som den havde udviklet hos forfædre med neutrino-størrelse, ville den sige, at sten rent faktisk består næsten udelukkende af tomt rum. Vi har hjerner, der udvikledes i mellemstore forfædre, der ikke kunne gå igennem sten. "Virkeligt", for et dyr, er hvad som helst, dets hjerne har brug for for at kunne hjælpe dets overlevelse, og fordi forskellige arter lever i forskellige verdener, vil der være en ubekvem variation indenfor virkeligheder. Det, vi ser af den virkelige verden, er ikke den skinbarlige verden, men en model af verden, reguleret og justeret af sansedata, men konstrueret sådan, at den er nyttig for at kunne håndtere den virkelige verden.
So "really" isn't a word that we should use with simple confidence. If a neutrino had a brain, which it evolved in neutrino-sized ancestors, it would say that rocks really do consist of empty space. We have brains that evolved in medium-sized ancestors which couldn't walk through rocks. "Really," for an animal, is whatever its brain needs it to be in order to assist its survival. And because different species live in different worlds, there will be a discomforting variety of "reallys." What we see of the real world is not the unvarnished world, but a model of the world, regulated and adjusted by sense data, but constructed so it's useful for dealing with the real world.
Modellens natur afhænger af, hvilket slags dyr, vi er. Et flyvende dyr skal bruge en anden slags model lige fra et gående, klatrende eller svømmende dyr. En abes hjerne skal have software, der er i stand til at simulere en tredimensional verden af grene og stammer. En muldvarps software til at konstruere modeller af sin verden vil blive tilpasset underjordisk brug. Et skøjteløber-insekts hjerne har slet ikke brug for 3D software, da den bor på dammens overflade i et "Edwin Abbott - fladland"
The nature of the model depends on the kind of animal we are. A flying animal needs a different kind of model from a walking, climbing or swimming animal. A monkey's brain must have software capable of simulating a three-dimensional world of branches and trunks. A mole's software for constructing models of its world will be customized for underground use. A water strider's brain doesn't need 3D software at all, since it lives on the surface of the pond, in an Edwin Abbott flatland.
Jeg har spekuleret i, at flagermus muligvis ser farve med ørerne. Den verdensmodel, som en flagermus skal bruge for at navigere igennem tre dimensioner for at fange insekter må være temmelig tæt på den verdensmodel, som enhver flyvende fugl, en dagflyver som svalen, skal bruge for at udføre den samme slags opgaver. Det faktum, at flagermusen bruger ekkoer i bælgmørke for at indsætte de øjeblikkelige variable i sin model hvor svalen bruger lys, er tilfældigt. Flagermus, har jeg endda foreslået, anvender farveindtryk, som rød og blå som etiketter, interne etiketter, til et eller andet brugbart aspekt ved ekkoer - måske den akustiske tekstur i overflader, glat eller behåret, og så videre, på samme måde som svaler, eller endda vi selv, bruger disse farveindtryk - rødhed eller blåhed etc. - til at indikere lange og korte bølgelængder af lys. Der er intet iboende ved rød, der skaber dets lange bølgelængde.
I've speculated that bats may see color with their ears. The world model that a bat needs in order to navigate through three dimensions catching insects must be pretty similar to the world model that any flying bird -- a day-flying bird like a swallow -- needs to perform the same kind of tasks. The fact that the bat uses echoes in pitch darkness to input the current variables to its model, while the swallow uses light, is incidental. Bats, I've even suggested, use perceived hues, such as red and blue, as labels, internal labels, for some useful aspect of echoes -- perhaps the acoustic texture of surfaces, furry or smooth and so on -- in the same way as swallows or indeed, we, use those perceived hues -- redness and blueness, etc. -- to label long and short wavelengths of light. There's nothing inherent about red that makes it long wavelength.
Og pointen er, at modellens natur er bestemt af, hvordan den skal bruges, snarere end af den involverede type af sansedata. J. B. S. Haldane selv havde noget at sige om dyr, hvis verden domineres af lugte. Hunde kan skelne imellem to meget ensartede fedtsyrer, i ekstremt fortyndet form: caprylsyre og capronsyre. Den eneste forskel, ser I, er, at den ene har et ekstra par kulstofatomer i kæden. Haldane gætter på, at en hund sikkert ville kunne rangere syrerne efter molekylær vægt blot ved deres lugt, ligesom en mand kunne rangere et antal klaverstrenge efter længde blot ved lyden af deres toner. Se, der findes en anden fedtsyre, kaprinsyre, der er præcis som de to andre, bort set fra, at den har to yderligere kulstofatomer. En hund, der aldrig havde stødt på caprinsyre, ville måske ikke have mere besvær med at forestille sig dets lugt, end vi ville have besvær med at forestille os for eksempel en trompet, der spillede en tone højere, end vi før havde hørt en trompet spille. Måske lugter hunde og næsehorn og andre lugt-orienterede dyr i farver. Og argumentet ville være nøjagtigt det samme som for flagermus.
The point is that the nature of the model is governed by how it is to be used, rather than by the sensory modality involved. J.B.S. Haldane himself had something to say about animals whose world is dominated by smell. Dogs can distinguish two very similar fatty acids, extremely diluted: caprylic acid and caproic acid. The only difference, you see, is that one has an extra pair of carbon atoms in the chain. Haldane guesses that a dog would probably be able to place the acids in the order of their molecular weights by their smells, just as a man could place a number of piano wires in the order of their lengths by means of their notes. Now, there's another fatty acid, capric acid, which is just like the other two, except that it has two more carbon atoms. A dog that had never met capric acid would, perhaps, have no more trouble imagining its smell than we would have trouble imagining a trumpet, say, playing one note higher than we've heard a trumpet play before. Perhaps dogs and rhinos and other smell-oriented animals smell in color. And the argument would be exactly the same as for the bats.
Mellemverdenen - intervallet af størrelser og hastigheder, som vi har udviklet os til at føle os intuitivt komfortable med - er lidt som det snævre interval i det elektromagnetiske spektrum, som vi ser som lys i forskellige farver. Vi er blinde overfor alle andre frekvenser end det, med mindre vi tager instrumenter til hjælp. Mellemverdenen er det snævre interval af virkeligheden, som vi vurderer til at være normalt, i modsætning til mærkeligheden ved det meget lille, det meget store, og det meget hurtige. Vi kunne lave en lignende skala over usandsynligheder; intet er totalt umuligt. Mirakler er blot hændelser, der er ekstremt usandsynlige. En marmorstatue kunne vinke til os; atomerne, der udgør dets krystalstruktur vibrerer alligevel allesammen frem og tilbage. Men fordi der er så mange af dem, og fordi, der ikke er nogen overensstemmelse imellem dem over deres foretrukne bevægelsesretning, forbliver marmoren, fra vores synspunkt i Mellemverdenen, stendød. Men atomerne i hånden kunne allesammen tilfældigvis bevæge sig den samme vej på samme tidspunkt, igen og igen. I dette tilfælde ville hånden bevæge sig, og vi ville se den vinke til os i mellemverdenen. Oddsene imod det, er selvfølgelig så store, at hvis man gav sig til at skrive nuller ved universets begyndelse, ville man stadig ikke have skrevet nok nuller den dag i dag.
Middle World -- the range of sizes and speeds which we have evolved to feel intuitively comfortable with -- is a bit like the narrow range of the electromagnetic spectrum that we see as light of various colors. We're blind to all frequencies outside that, unless we use instruments to help us. Middle World is the narrow range of reality which we judge to be normal, as opposed to the queerness of the very small, the very large and the very fast. We could make a similar scale of improbabilities; nothing is totally impossible. Miracles are just events that are extremely improbable. A marble statue could wave its hand at us; the atoms that make up its crystalline structure are all vibrating back and forth anyway. Because there are so many of them, and because there's no agreement among them in their preferred direction of movement, the marble, as we see it in Middle World, stays rock steady. But the atoms in the hand could all just happen to move the same way at the same time, and again and again. In this case, the hand would move, and we'd see it waving at us in Middle World. The odds against it, of course, are so great that if you set out writing zeros at the time of the origin of the universe, you still would not have written enough zeros to this day.
Evolution i Mellemverdenen har ikke udstyret os til at håndtere meget usandsynlige hændelser; vi lever ikke længe nok. Men i det astronomiske rums og den geologiske tids enorme udstrækning kan det, der synes umuligt i Mellemverdenen vise sig at være uundgåeligt. Een måde at tænke på det er at tælle planeter. Vi ved ikke, hvor mange planeter, der er i universet, men et godt estimat er omkring ti opløftet i tyvende eller 100 milliarder milliarder. Og det giver os en god måde at udtrykke vores estimat over livets usandsynlighed. Man kunne sætte en slags landmærker langs et spektrum af usandsynlighed, der måske ville ligne det elektromagnetiske spektrum, vi netop har set på.
Evolution in Middle World has not equipped us to handle very improbable events; we don't live long enough. In the vastness of astronomical space and geological time, that which seems impossible in Middle World might turn out to be inevitable. One way to think about that is by counting planets. We don't know how many planets there are in the universe, but a good estimate is about 10 to the 20, or 100 billion billion. And that gives us a nice way to express our estimate of life's improbability. We could make some sort of landmark points along a spectrum of improbability, which might look like the electromagnetic spectrum we just looked at.
Hvis livet kun er opstået en enkelt gang - - hvis livet kunne, jeg mener, livet kunne opstå een gang per planet, kunne være ekstremt almindeligt, eller det kunne opstå een gang per stjerne eller een gang per galakse, eller måske kun een gang i hele universet, i så fald måtte det være her. Og et sted deroppe ville sandsynligheden være for, at en frø forvandlede sig til en prins og lignende magiske ting som det. Hvis livet er opstået på kun een planet i hele universet, så må den planet være vores planet, for her er vi og kan tale om det. Og det betyder, at hvis vi vil benytte os af det, har vi lov at postulere kemiske hændelser i livets opståen, der har sandsynligheder så lave som 1 til 100 milliarder milliarder. Jeg tror ikke, vi bliver nødt til at benytte os af det, for jeg formoder, at livet er ret almindeligt i universet. Og når jeg siger ret almindeligt, kunne det stadig være så sjældent, at en ø af liv aldrig støder på en anden, hvilket er en trist tanke.
If life has arisen only once on any -- life could originate once per planet, could be extremely common or it could originate once per star or once per galaxy or maybe only once in the entire universe, in which case it would have to be here. And somewhere up there would be the chance that a frog would turn into a prince, and similar magical things like that. If life has arisen on only one planet in the entire universe, that planet has to be our planet, because here we are talking about it. And that means that if we want to avail ourselves of it, we're allowed to postulate chemical events in the origin of life which have a probability as low as one in 100 billion billion. I don't think we shall have to avail ourselves of that, because I suspect that life is quite common in the universe. And when I say quite common, it could still be so rare that no one island of life ever encounters another, which is a sad thought.
Hvordan skal vi fortolke "Mere mærkeligt, end vi kan antage"? Mere mærkeligt end det, der i princippet kan antages, eller bare mere mærkeligt end vi kan antage, givet begrænsningerne ved vores hjerners evolutionære lærlingeuddannelse i Mellemverdenen? Kunne vi, med træning og øvelse, løsrive os selv fra Mellemverdenen og opnå en slags intuitiv, såvel som matematisk, forståelse af det meget lille og det meget store? Jeg kender oprigtigt talt ikke svaret. Jeg gad vide, om vi kunne hjælpe os selv til forståelsen af, for eksempel kvanteteori, hvis vi opdragede børn til at spille computerspil, begyndende i den tidlige barndom, der havde en eller anden fantasiverden med bolde, der gik igennem to sprækker i en skærm, en verden, hvori kvantemekanikkens sære hændelser blev forstørret af computerens simulation, sådan, at de blev bekendte med dem i Mellemverdenens størrelsesorden. Og tilsvarende, et relativistisk computerspil, hvori objekter på skærmen manifesterer Lorentz-transformationen, og så videre, for at bringe os selv ind i tankegangen - få børn ind i tankegangen.
How shall we interpret "queerer than we can suppose?" Queerer than can in principle be supposed, or just queerer than we can suppose, given the limitations of our brain's evolutionary apprenticeship in Middle World? Could we, by training and practice, emancipate ourselves from Middle World and achieve some sort of intuitive as well as mathematical understanding of the very small and the very large? I genuinely don't know the answer. I wonder whether we might help ourselves to understand, say, quantum theory, if we brought up children to play computer games beginning in early childhood, which had a make-believe world of balls going through two slits on a screen, a world in which the strange goings-on of quantum mechanics were enlarged by the computer's make-believe, so that they became familiar on the Middle-World scale of the stream. And similarly, a relativistic computer game, in which objects on the screen manifest the Lorentz contraction, and so on, to try to get ourselves -- to get children into the way of thinking about it.
Jeg vil slutte med at anvende ideen om Mellemverdenen på vores opfattelser af hinanden. De fleste forskere i dag vedkender sig det mekanistiske syn på sindet: vi er på den måde, vi er, fordi vores hjerner er sat op, som de er; vores hormoner er på den måde, de er. Vi ville være anderledes, vores personligheder ville være anderledes, hvis vores neuroanatomi og vores fysiologiske kemi var anderledes. Men vi forskere er inkonsistente. Hvis vi var konsistente, skulle vores respons til en person med forkert opførsel, som en barnemorder, være noget i stil med, "Denne enhed har en defekt komponent; den skal repareres." Det er ikke sådan, vi siger. Det, vi siger - og jeg inkluderer de strengest mekanistiske iblandt os, hvilket sikkert er mig - det, vi siger, er "Grumme monster, fængslet er for godt til dig!" Eller værre, vi ønsker hævn, hvilket med størst sandsynlighed udløser den næste fase i en eskalerende spiral af genhævn, hvilket selvfølgelig er det, vi ser over hele verden i dag. Kort sagt, når vi tænker som akademikere, betragter vi folk som gennemarbejdede og komplicerede maskiner, som computere eller biler, men når vi vender tilbage til at være mennesker, opfører vi os mere som Basil Fawlty, der, som vi husker, smadrede sin bil for at give den en lærestreg, da den ikke ville starte på gourmetaftenen.
I want to end by applying the idea of Middle World to our perceptions of each other. Most scientists today subscribe to a mechanistic view of the mind: we're the way we are because our brains are wired up as they are, our hormones are the way they are. We'd be different, our characters would be different, if our neuro-anatomy and our physiological chemistry were different. But we scientists are inconsistent. If we were consistent, our response to a misbehaving person, like a child-murderer, should be something like: this unit has a faulty component; it needs repairing. That's not what we say. What we say -- and I include the most austerely mechanistic among us, which is probably me -- what we say is, "Vile monster, prison is too good for you." Or worse, we seek revenge, in all probability thereby triggering the next phase in an escalating cycle of counter-revenge, which we see, of course, all over the world today. In short, when we're thinking like academics, we regard people as elaborate and complicated machines, like computers or cars. But when we revert to being human, we behave more like Basil Fawlty, who, we remember, thrashed his car to teach it a lesson, when it wouldn't start on "Gourmet Night."
(Laughter)
Grunden til, at vi personificerer ting som biler og computere er, at ligesom at aber bor i en arboreal verden og muldvarpe bor i en underjordisk verden og skøjteløber-insekter bor i et fladland domineret af overfladespænding, bor vi i en social verden. Vi svømmer igennem et hav af mennesker - en social version af Mellemverdenen. Vi er udviklede til at anslå andres opførsel ved at blive geniale, intuitive psykologer. At behandle folk som maskiner er muligvis videnskabeligt og filosofisk korrekt, men det er et besværligt tidsspilde, hvis man gerne vil gætte, hvad denne person vil gøre som det næste. Den økonomisk brugbare måde at opstille et menneske er at behandle ham som en meningsfuld, målbevidst agent med glæder og sorger, ønsker og intentioner, skyldsfølelse, skyldsansvar. Personificering og tillæggelsen af intentionelle formål er sådan en fantastisk succesfuld måde at opstille mennesker, at det næppe er overraskende, at det samme modeleringssoftware ofte overtager kontrollen, når vi prøver at tænke på ting, for hvilke det ikke er passende, som Basil Fawlty med sin bil eller som millioner af desillusionerede mennesker med universet som helhed.
The reason we personify things like cars and computers is that just as monkeys live in an arboreal world and moles live in an underground world and water striders live in a surface tension-dominated flatland, we live in a social world. We swim through a sea of people -- a social version of Middle World. We are evolved to second-guess the behavior of others by becoming brilliant, intuitive psychologists. Treating people as machines may be scientifically and philosophically accurate, but it's a cumbersome waste of time if you want to guess what this person is going to do next. The economically useful way to model a person is to treat him as a purposeful, goal-seeking agent with pleasures and pains, desires and intentions, guilt, blame-worthiness. Personification and the imputing of intentional purpose is such a brilliantly successful way to model humans, it's hardly surprising the same modeling software often seizes control when we're trying to think about entities for which it's not appropriate, like Basil Fawlty with his car or like millions of deluded people, with the universe as a whole.
(Laughter)
Hvis universet er mere besynderligt, end vi kan antage, er det så fordi, vi er blevet naturligt udvalgt til kun at antage det, vi havde brug for at antage for at kunne overleve i Afrikas Pleistocæn? Eller er vores hjerner så alsidige og udvidelsesdygtige, at vi kan træne os selv til at bryde ud af evolutionens kasse? Eller, til slut, er der nogle ting i universet, der er så mærkelige at ingen skabningers filosofi, hvor guddommelige de end måtte være, kunne drømme dem? Mange tak.
If the universe is queerer than we can suppose, is it just because we've been naturally selected to suppose only what we needed to suppose in order to survive in the Pleistocene of Africa? Or are our brains so versatile and expandable that we can train ourselves to break out of the box of our evolution? Or finally, are there some things in the universe so queer that no philosophy of beings, however godlike, could dream them? Thank you very much.