The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself, by Sean Carroll, hardcover, published 2016.
This post is a beginning and will be followed by others which delve further into the book’s interesting material.
photo credit: NASA, ESA, and F. Paresce (INAF-IASF, Bologna, Italy), R. O’Connell (University of Virginia, Charlottesville), and the Wide Field Camera 3 Science Oversight Committee (go to NASA website)
Why do I provide this review?
I’m a strong proponent of the scientific approach to determining how the world works and finding valuable ways to conduct our lives. People who are not professional scientists can benefit by thinking scientifically, and Carroll shows valuable ways to do this.
I also believe that non-scientific ways of contending with our lives are not only valuable but are also crucial partners to scientific thinking. Carroll agrees, calling himself a “poetic naturalist,” which I will discuss further below.
Carroll admits that all science deals with inevitable uncertainty but that we have ways of sorting through evidence to arrive at best approaches. I agree. In the same way, religious people must avoid clinging to dogma, which requires certainty in personal beliefs.
Credentials: Carroll’s to write this book and mine to review it
Carroll holds a B.S. degree in Astronomy, Astrophysics, and Philosophy from Villanova University and a 1993 PhD in Astronomy from Harvard University.
My education is a B.C.E. degree (Bachelor of Civil Engineering) from the Georgia Institute of Technology 1980, which included comprehensive training in calculus, physics, chemistry, astronomy, and the history and philosophy of science. With a lifelong interest in the latter two subjects, I have not only received postgraduate training in the history and philosophy of science but have also read many books on the subjects over the last four decades.
Carroll argues throughout The Big Picture that atheism is the most rational religious belief.
my spiritual qualifications which counter Carroll’s atheism:
I follow Jesus, and nothing in my education or career has caused me to lose that interest. I must emphasize, however, that I believe the efforts of Creationism and Intelligent Design to be utterly misguided and harmful to society. I will shed further light on this opinion during the review.
My particular take on Christianity may not be widely shared (also explained further in the review). I suggest that Carroll’s arguments are fully capable of refuting many more widely held religious viewpoints. Still, I will demonstrate that a particular set of Christian beliefs hold up against Carroll and push back on his atheism.
the following aspects are the basis of my rating:
- The book is well-written and relatively easy to follow.
- The book covers valuable topics worth the reader’s time to consider.
- On the surface, Carroll is not dismissive of people who have religious beliefs. Unlike many prominent atheists, Carroll does not ridicule believers.
- Carroll helps regular people be able to apply some scientific thinking in their lives.
- The book gives scientists a way to accommodate other ways of thinking.
- Carroll reveals a personal preference or bias he calls “poetic naturalism,” by which he advocates for atheism in numerous more or less subtle ways. These appear defensible but are rationally disputable.
- Carroll weaves his science expertise with his atheism in such a way as to induce readers to support atheism when science alone literally does not. Science cannot prove “ what reality actually is” but can only explain how it works.
Because of the last two, I would rate the book 3.5 stars, whereas I might have given it five stars if Carroll had not succumbed to many attempts to discredit theism (which seems unnecessary, given the book’s title). I enjoyed reading and thinking about his discussions on the meaning of life. Although he does not hide his atheistic bias in public or when lecturing, he goes to some length in the book to appear open to considering theist beliefs rather than summarily dismissing them. He provides several reasons he says support atheism over belief in a Creator, but they each have flaws beneath an appearance of indisputable rationality. My review will discuss many of these and show why they are flawed. I do not think science can prove one way or the other about the existence of a Creator. Ontology is not a scientific pursuit. How we know what we know and use what we think we know (epistemology) is more the realm of science when contending with the natural world. My review will show why his atheistic arguments compel no one to abandon belief in a Creator.
Carroll’s methods that appear rational but can be deceptive or misleading:
- poetic naturalism
- abductive reasoning
- Bayesian reasoning
The details of my review will illustrate more specifically why I appreciate most of what Carroll says. The way scientists think and work is highly beneficial. As practiced today, science succeeds, even though its practitioners, like all humans, must be wary of their biases and hubris. Ordinary people can benefit by applying more scientific thinking in their lives.
However, I also show that Christians (or other religious people) need not be intimidated by his descriptions or arguments. He calls himself a “poetic naturalist,” which means he is an atheist, but he believes that various perspectives besides science can help us come to grips with our existence. From this, one might think he can respectfully consider what a religious person might say or believe. He might be able to glean some value from the person’s point of view without accepting the validity of that religion.
Terrace Cafe, Rue de Buci, Paris. photo credit: zoetnet on flickr
summary of the book
Carroll says that the progress of physics in discovering the tiniest particles in nature and determining their behavior is a monumental achievement for humankind. These are the various subatomic particles of quantum mechanics, and the overall theory of their behavior is called the Standard Model or Core Theory. Carroll contends that this theory has been so thoroughly verified that it will never be overthrown.
He discusses how the understanding of the subatomic particle behavior is applied in numerous ways in our current world, mainly by scientists and engineers. Regular people don’t make life decisions based on what they think the top quark is doing, neutrinos, or even atoms. Carroll says our macroscopic lives depend on “emergent” phenomena and behavior. An illustrative example is how the gases of our atmosphere affect us. We don’t need to know what each gas molecule is doing. All we need is to make measurements of emergent behavior. The pressure, temperature, and moisture content give us practical, actionable information.
Carroll would say that the work of physicists to determine the microscopic realm enables us to design or realize the emergent behaviors we use in real life.
He suggests that the same methods by which scientists sort through hypotheses, gather evidence, and evaluate it can also be used by non-scientists to help navigate their lives. He describes Bayes’ Theorem as a valuable method for the evaluation process. The theorem involves a statistical equation with a scale between zero and one. These endpoints are equivalent to certainty, with zero representing a belief that cannot be true and 1.0 for a belief that cannot be false. If a proposition has, to begin with, no evidence one way or another, then the Bayes value is 0.5.
The equation can also be employed more intuitively without statistics. Here is an excellent YouTube video that demonstrates the value of Bayes Theorem when statistical probabilities are available: (click to go to video)
One chooses a starting credence, say, 0.5, to represent no current evidence one way or the other. Then, with accumulating evidence, the equation is recomputed. Each iteration updates the credence to believe the original proposition.
The YouTube video shows an instance of Bayes’ equation when probabilities are available. Carroll suggests we can also use Bayes intuitively for ordinary life decisions. This opens the analysis to considerable interpretation and bias, which I will cover in more detail in the next post of the review.
Carroll admits that scientists must accept levels of uncertainty for their hypotheses. I agree that all humans go about their lives by hypothesizing about possible decisions and trying to deal with uncertainty. We must accept that uncertainty is inevitable and not close our eyes to questions or doubts about our beliefs.
a short aside to explain the term certainty in this context
Most of my readers are ordinary folks, not philosophers or other intellectuals. We don’t need university degrees to discuss profitable ways to be good people, live worthwhile and fulfilling lives, and pursue happiness. When I say we need to accept uncertainty, I do not mean we must question whether the sun will come up tomorrow. Nor should we worry about whether the chair we sit on is really there or if it will suddenly dissolve and plop us onto the ground.
But when we try to plan our day or set goals for the future, near or far, we must guess the best actions to take when we don’t know everything that might happen. When we consider whether God exists, we can read what many others have said over the millennia. Nothing can be proven, and whatever combination of beliefs we most prefer may be incorrect. We choose what to accept, reject, and ignore. We each end up with a set of “working assumptions by which we operate because they seem to work for us. Many of us might never discuss these things with friends or family, but we will admit that our ways might not work for everybody.
As a Christian, I can say I do not know for sure that a Creator exists. I like to believe it, but I might be wrong (plain and simple). I also acknowledge that even if a Creator exists, we have even more uncertainty about what that Creator might be like.
Much of what we can feel perfectly certain about depends on a framework of human-devised rules. Playing the game of chess is such a framework. We know for sure where we can move the knight on the board. Mathematics is also a framework of rules that enable certainty about equation outputs. Yet, even some math foundations are questionable. Euclidian geometry requires that we accept certain “givens,” assumptions called postulates. For centuries, this geometry was thought to provide certainty, until in the late 19th century, a few curious investigators decided to see what would happen if they started with different assumptions. They discovered new, perfectly valid geometries and abandoned the long-held certainty associated with Euclid!
Scientists also cannot prove their hypotheses; they have working assumptions. These are convenient and held as long as they remain useful. It is best to avoid the trap of assuming our working assumptions can never be wrong or challenged. We can assume that justification for a belief is “good enough” if it seems to work within what Carroll calls a “domain of applicability.”
For a great explanation of how science works and how what we claim to know depends on an agreed-upon framework, see the following video showing the great physicist Richard Feynman explaining the difficulty of answering “why” questions.
Carroll divides the book into six parts. Part 1 introduces his poetic naturalism point of view and essential developments that guide science today. These include entropy, the arrow of time, and the latest observations of the Universe.
Part 2 discusses how scientists determine how things work and why we cannot have total certainty. He talks about scientific methods and hypothesis testing. Carroll thinks scientists usually arrive at the best explanations, even if uncertainty remains.
Part 3 discusses the physics of microscopic particles, quantum mechanics, and the Core Theory. Carroll asserts that “effective field theories” enable ordinary people to apply esoteric physics in everyday life.
In part 4, Carroll gets more into biology, evolution, and how life might have emerged.
Part 5 discusses current investigations of where human consciousness might come from and what we mean by saying we think or animals think.
Part 6 is Carroll’s assertion that atheists can still care about ethics and values. He says that life is not meaningless even if no god exists.
conclusion of the review introduction
I agree that atheism need not drive a person to feel meaningless or hopeless. Scientific practices are very valuable to society, and ordinary people can benefit by learning to think more scientifically. Carroll’s “poetic” idea is also an above-average way to think. People who revere science do not help society by pretending to be smarter than everybody else. We must be respectful of each other, even when disagreeing. We can at least consider the points of view of others and try to understand their metaphors and models of the world.
In the next post, I will discuss how scientists, being humans, cannot help but think that they give us an understanding of underlying Reality, not merely how the world seems to function. We all have working assumptions that enable us to live without continually questioning our point of view. In essence, we bet Reality is what we imagine, or close enough. We may sometimes bolster our ideas with fallacious thinking. Even scientists can use deceptive tactics to defend their hypotheses. Carroll, for example, uses the term “abduction,” which sounds on par with deduction and induction but is a sneaky way of trying to overcome uncertainty. I will discuss this further in the next post.
Carroll’s poetic naturalism is such a beneficial way to think that I will further discuss how others can adopt it. Of course, poetic supernaturalism is also worthwhile, if not better. (More in the next post.) I agree with the recent ideas of Model Dependent Realism, a term introduced by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow in The Grand Design (2010). This way of thinking about science is similar to language being metaphor-dependent. The following post will cover these issues.
The next post will start by mentioning the work of several eminent scientists of the past who would virulently disagree with Carroll about whether science can say anything about the existence of a supernatural realm. These men were more productive than Carroll in their fields, and each became famous for their scientific contributions. They also were not necessarily religious. They would even more virulently disagree with the endeavor of Intelligent Design. One can believe in a Creator without trying to find proof in nature.
Here is a minor spoiler for one of my conclusions from reading and seriously considering Carroll. We accept that complete certainty is unattainable for any belief or lack thereof. The crucial problem for human societies may come from people who hold beliefs so firmly that they cannot accommodate other points of view. A term often applied here is “fundamentalist,” but it is essentially a closed-mindedness. Why should we not allow people the freedom to believe whatever they choose, including belief in naturalism or atheism? It depends on whether or not those beliefs cause harm.
An atheist can argue that the Spanish Inquisition was extreme harm caused by the religion of Christianity. A counterargument could be that the Spanish Inquisition failed to follow the teachings of Jesus. Conversely, a theist could point to ways that the religion of atheism has caused harm. One could suggest that the Holocaust was rooted in atheism, as would any genocide perpetrated by a dictator. An atheist might then seek evidence that some bizarre or defective religious belief lay behind those actions.
If we avoid thinking that our beliefs entitle us to restrict other’s beliefs, we may make progress. That is why I appreciate Carroll’s poetic naturalism, but I would encourage him to explore the poetic part with a more open mind than he currently seems to hold, given this book.