The eerie silence

I recently read a book, "The Eerie Silence", by physicist Paul Davies. Paul Davies is the head of project SETI. The book is about the search for extraterrestrial life/intelligence. Of course, to-date, there has been no hint of any life whatsoever outside our own planet. Nevertheless,  the 50-year old project SETI, apparently now privately funded, is alive. There are many excellent reviews of the book on the Internet, for example, on the Guardian (see here and here), the New York Times, Goodreads, Science News, and others. The book is, indeed, interesting. It debunks UFO stories, discusses the issue of whether life is a commonplace in this galaxy (or in the universe)--with no conclusions, of course, the issues of habitable zone and multiple biospheres on Earth, the probability of intelligent life elsewhere (and Drake's "equation"), the need for less anthropocentric search methods, the possible ways that aliens might communicate with us (which may be far from what we currently think of or use), the inability we might have in even recognizing advanced extraterrestrial technology, various philosophical issues, what would happen if we ever recognized that life existed, and an optimistic conclusion.

Now, all that is great, we need to be optimistic, we need to keep searching and wondering and, as is well known, the answer to the question "is there life elsewhere" would be profound regardless of whether it is positive or negative. But the book is rather long and tends to get a bit boring at times. Drake's "equation" for instance is hardly anything remarkable. It's just a back-of-the-envelope calculation that anyone with high school knowledge can think of (except that data may be missing, and they still are). At times, there are diversions towards religion, history or philosophy. What I found remarkably shallow is the author's claim that it was monotheistic religions (and, by this, he means the Abrahamic religions) are conducive to science. Namely, Davies claims, in the book and elsewhere, that, as opposed to Hinduism, the Abrahamic religions hold that the universe had a beginning. He also claims

The Greek philosophers taught that humans could come to understand the world by the existence of reason, which achieved its most disciplined form in the rules of logic and mathematical theorems that followed therefrom. They asserted that the world wasn't arbitrary or absurd, but rational and intelligible, even if confusing and complicated. However, Greek philosophy never spawned what today we would understand by the scientific method, in which nature is `interrogated' via experiment and observation, because the Greek philosophers' touching belief that the answers could all be deduced by pure reason alone.

Meanwhile, monotheism increasingly shaped the Western world view during the formative stages of science. Judaism represented a decisive break with almost all contemporary cultures by positing an unfolding cosmic narrative based on linear time.

The concept of linear time, and a universe created by a rational being and ordered according to a set of immutable laws, was adopted by both Christianity and Islam, and was the dominant influence in Europe at the time of Galileo. The early scientists, who were deeply religious, regarded their work as uncovering God's plan for the universe, as revealed through hidden mathematical relationships. What we now call the laws of physics they saw as thoughts in the mind of God. Without belief in a single omnipotent rational lawgiver, it is unlikely that anyone would have assumed that nature is intelligible in a systematic, quantitative way, mirrored by eternal mathematical forms.

Davies' claims suffer from a number of historical and logical inaccuracies.

1. It is true that ancient scholars had not fully developed the scientific method, but it is not true that they only relied on things they could do in their heads. Indeed, the name of Archimedes is never mentioned in the book. Neither is any mention of the Antikythera mechanism. It is true that these things belong, perhaps, to the domain of engineering, but it is clear that nobody could have built them by thinking only, without any kind of experimentation. The claim that "nature [was not] `interrogated' via experiment and observation does not seem to be correct.
2. When Davies speaks of monotheistic religions, he means the Abrahamic ones. There have been other monotheistic religions which are not included in his `reasoning', for instance, Zoroastrianism.
3. Davies speaks of what--he thinks--monotheistic religious scientist achieved several centuries after these religions were invented, but he never mentions what happened, for example, when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. Who got rid of all work in mathematics and reason, up to that point, if not the new monothestic religion (or the particular version which the emperors adopted)? 
4. The claim that "linear time" and "universe which has a single beginning" are both mentioned by monotheistic religions does not imply that monotheism implies these concepts. It is, merely, an accident that these concepts were adopted by the Jews (and hence by Christians and Muslims). The implied implication is not valid. 
5. "Early scientists were deeply religious." We've heard this argument many times. But why is not Davies considering the obvious fact that those scientists had to be religious in order to be allowed to do what they were doing. Yes, some of them believed in god (there was no alternative anyway), some did not, but everyone had to pretend and behave as if they actually believed. So we will never know the truth. Imagine, for instance, the future historian who will claim that "in 20th. c. America, every president was highly religious and always appeared to pray in public". We, of course, know that without appearing to be religious they stand no chance of getting elected.

This is a weak point of the book. Other than that, I liked it, but, as I said, I could have read the same things in half the space.

Davies seems to be a smart person. So let us examine why he often digresses to praise monotheism. Well, there are several reasons, among which I can identify at least two:

1. First, he's director of SETI which is privately funded, so he needs to please donors. Many of them (by virtue that they come from a religious country) are probably religious.
2. Second, he probably likes awards. For example, he's a recipient of the Templeton prize. This is a very peculiar prize because it is given to all kinds of people, including ones who have caused harm. The prize has been criticized by Richard Dawkins ("[the Templeton prize is] usually [given] to a scientist who is prepared to say something nice about religion"),  Sean  Carroll (people cannot take Templeton research grants when they do not support Templeton's beliefs) and Martinus Veltman ("the Templeton prize bridges the gap between sense and nonsense")

Davies' claims that monotheism is conducive to science gives religionists ground to support their irrational beliefs. Some Muslims believe that the Quran contains science and they sometimes quote Davies as scientific support of this ridiculous claim.

On the Christian front, Davies seems to be a friend of John Lennox who likes to use "mathematics" and "logic" and "science" to support his religious claims. (The worst of all, in this conversation, is that Davies and Lennox, a physicist and a mathematician, discuss "specified complexity", a bogus concept invented by William Dembski for the sole purpose of promoting creationism.)

Last but not least, I can't fail but notice that the website (mentioned in the Eerie Silence) IETI (invitation to extraterrestrial intelligence, created because if--they claim--aliens get in touch with us, they might do so over the Internet) contains 100 individuals (inviting aliens) among which a certain Sohail Inayatullah who "brings an Islamic and Indian tantric perspective to understanding the Other, space travel, and alternative futures."

The upshot of all this is that, by trying to please everyone, including those who have nothing to do with science, one ends up having their work used for the purposes of the those who do nonsense.

Arithmetica Universalis

Staffan Rodhe's office door was open today, I was passing by, so I dropped in. I was admiring the collection of ancient mathematical texts on his shelves. I first picked up a book by Lagrange, then one by Euler, and then the Arithmetica Universalis by Newton. I opened it somewhere in the middle and found a square piece of paper  (size around 10 cm) with some equations on one side and a couple of geometric drawings on the other. Clearly, it belonged to an careful reader of some past century. Most likely, Staffan explained, it was written some time in the 18th c. I took a couple of photos of both sides, as well as a copy of the title page of the book because they are, in my opinion, like pieces of art. It also makes me wonder how people thought back then, how similar to us they were, etc. Note that this edition of Arithmetica Universalis was published in 1732 in Lugdunum Batavorum, i.e., Leiden. There is a free version on the internet from a 1752 copy from Amstelodamum (Amsterdam). The original edition dates from 1707.

Greek debt and German concern

No doubt, the Greek financial crisis is due to, among others,
(i) politicians' greed (they did put a lot of money in their pockets, and still possess them),
(ii) the politicians' slackness in collecting taxes (they didn't want to, they themselves and their friends would have to pay taxes and that was not in their plan),
(iii) Europe's turning a blind eye to Greek financial reports (everybody and their mother knew that Greeks were faking their papers, come on!) .

However, here is an alternative piece of information which should make Germans, now pointing fingers towards Greece, reflect upon their recent history.

According to Albrecht Ritchl, professor of Economic History at LSE, the largest debtor of all times is Germany. In the June 2011 issue of Der Spiegel, Ritchl gave an interview (original German version here) pointing out that

during the 20th century, Germany was responsible for what were the biggest national bankruptcies in recent history. It is only thanks to the United States, which sacrificed vast amounts of money after both World War I and World War II, that Germany is financially stable today and holds the status of Europe's headmaster. That fact, unfortunately, often seems to be forgotten.

This happened twice. First, during the Weimar Republic, and then after WWII. The US helped Germany on both occasions tremendously, but it was also agreed that

there wouldn't be a repeat of high reparations demands made on Germany.

That is, that Germany would not have to pay its war victims. This was the actual financial basis of the German Wirtschaftswunder.  In fact,

[w]ith only a few exceptions, all such demands were put on the backburner until Germany's future reunification.

As we know, reunification took place, but Germany did not pay reparation. I don't think it's only Germany's fault. It's likely that Greek politicians didn't ask for it loud enough for they didn't want to. They had money pouring in their pockets via Europe, why should they want to make their benefactors unhappy, reminding them that Greece lost 10% of its population due to WWII casualties (one of the largest losses in the world, after Poland and Soviet Union)? As Ritchl says,

[c]ompared to [the Weimar Republic] default, today's Greek payment problems are actually insignificant

and that

[i]f the mood in [Greece] turns, old claims for reparations could be raised, from other European nations as well. And if Germany ever had to honor them, we would all be taken the cleaners. Compared with that, we can be grateful that Greece is being indulgently reorganized at our expense. If we follow public opinion here with its cheap propaganda and not wanting to pay, then eventually the old bills will be presented again. 

This is something to keep in mind. The Greek elite consists, of course, of unreliable politicians and their buddies who have faked papers, stolen money, avoided taxation, asked Greeks to borrow more, made them believe they live and can live in luxury without working, numbing their brains with false hopes... But, on the other hand, who is shouting to whom? Read some history and see that the whole of Europe has been a mess.

I don't know what "the solution" could be. I'm afraid that one of the most difficult things to acquire is not money, but the right mentality (what does work mean?). And this is lacking in Greece. But, at the same time, lack of the right mentality of different sorts is encountered in other countries as well. By shouting and finger-pointing you cannot eliminate history. Unless you can make people forget it, and this is something that frequently happens. In history. (History is being constantly revised to reflect the point of view of those in power, the winners.)

Holodomor

In the Ukrainian language, holod=hunger, mor=plague

Holdomor refers to another Stalinist crime: the famine of 1932–1933 in the Ukraine during which millions of people were starved to death. I knew little about it, until the "a Nadder!'' blogger informed me that, like Katyn, Holodomor is yet another Soviet massacre.

What is more surpsising is that, unlike Katyn which is now almost universally acknowledged as a Soviet mass murder (excepting the deniers who live in their own world), Holodomor is, still, thought to be just another Stalinist operation, not a particular crime per se. One of the problem seems to be that, during the 30's, Walter Duranty, a pro-Stalin journalist living in the USSR, published in the New York Times denying the famine, contradicting other voices, like that of Gareth Jones, and thus establishing a lie, even in the west. I also read that western intellectuals, sympathetic to the Leninist/Stalinist "progressive'' regime, talked down the famine.

What is interesting to consider is this: How can it be that such huge crimes, murders of incredible magnitude, can be trivialized or denied? The blame is not (only) with the regime that caused the murders: they do their job. It is the others, the good boys, the deniers, who propagate the lies.

I will give a parallel in my domain: I constantly see the decline of the education system, the way that, nowadays, the university spoon-feeds students, collects their tuition and grants them a piece of paper. I wonder how it is possible to have system in which, say, maths/science students cannot do elementary high-school algebra; and I shout about it. Well, the politicians (who cause the situation) will definitely not speak about it. But what about academics? Among them, there are several deniers who will contradict me and it is they who are the most dangerous ones. The politicians are doing their job: they ensure that more students will go through the university pipeline, they will establish a good name for themselves and they will be re-elected; this is their goal. However, this goal would not have been possible had the deniers been absent.

Certainly, I do not claim that deniers of the university ridicule are at the same level as deniers of mass massacres, but, logically (and I'd dare say psychologically), there are parallels. So it seems to me.

Katyń

I saw, yesterday, the film Katyń by the famous Polish director Andrzej Wajda. Probably one of the most important films of the early 21st century, it tries to restore the historical truth about the mass murder of 22 thousand Polish people (military officers, engineers, intellectuals, merchants) in the Russian Katyn (Катынь) forest near the Polish border. Ordered by Joseph Stalin and Lavrentiy Beria, the head of the secret Soviet Police NKVD, these people were captured, shortly after USSR invaded Poland, kept as prisoners for several months, and finally executed and buried in mass graves. The Nazis, who invaded Poland almost simultaneously as the Soviets, took advantage of the massacre for their own propaganda. At the end of the war, the Soviet-occupied Poland started an organized propaganda to convince everyone that it was the Nazis who had committed the massacre; anyone who dared deny this was imprisoned, marginalized or killed. The situation lasted until 1990 when Mikhail Gorbachev acknowledged Soviet responsibility; and Boris Yeltsin made public the documents authorizing the massacre.

An excellent review of the film is written by Anne Applebaum who tells us that the film is in the classic Wajda style:

For half a century, beginning in the darkest era of communism and continuing through the years of Solidarity, martial law, and the post-Communist present, Wajda has been conducting precisely this kind of cinematic dialogue with Polish audiences. Although they have sometimes been celebrated abroad, his movies have always been made with his countrymen in mind, which gives them a special flavor.

We don't need too much of Polish history to watch the film, although some certainly helps. From Applebaum's review I also learned that Wajda's father was among the Katyn massacre victims and that there are several references in the film about Wajda's own life; for example, that he wanted to be an art student, and that his mother had, for years, no idea what had happened to her husband. Wajda was asked why he made the film now.

Most of those who actually remembered the events of 1939 were now dead, he explained—Wajda himself is eighty-one—so the film could no longer be made for them. Instead, he said, he wanted to tell the story again for young people—but not just any young people. Wajda said he wanted to reach "those moviegoers for whom it matters that we are a society, and not just an accidental crowd."

But both in the interviews he's given and in the film itself, Wajda seems to be saying something rather different about the need for a national cinema. By making Katyn, he wanted to create something that would get Poles to talk to one another, to reflect upon common experiences, to define common values, to admire similar virtues, to forge a civil society out of an anonymous crowd. Katyn is deliberately intended to inspire patriotism, in the most positive sense of the word. This too helps explain why Wajda made a film that asks not just "what happened?" or "what did the Soviet Union do to us?" but rather "how did we, as a society, react afterward?" as well as "and how do we remember it now?"

Wajda has achieved his goals as he has, indeed, created discussions, and

"Have you been to see Katyn yet?" was something one was asked with some frequency in Warsaw this past fall.

Most interestingly, he has managed to solicit some Russian reaction:

[O]n the day after the film's release, a government-owned Russian newspaper, Rossiiskaya Gazeta, declared that Soviet responsibility for Katyn was "not obvious." In a snide article, one of the newspaper's pundits threw doubt on a decade's worth of voluminous archival publications, and accused Wajda of "separating us further from the truth."

The film includes rare original photographs, excerpts from German newsreels presenting the Katyn massacre as a Soviet crime, and excerpts from Soviet newsreels presenting the massacre as a German crime.

Unfortunately, not everybody will be able to watch the film because it's not a main Hollywood production. I'm lucky to be in Edinburgh where the film scene is very good.

P.S. (Added 20 Feb. 2013). Here is a link on Andrzej Wajda's biography, as presented by culture.pl

Saint Joseph Stalin

A couple of years ago, a certain Aleksandr Filippov wrote a history textbook, titled “Russian History, 1945-2007”, for Russian schoolchildren. In it, he returns to an almost Soviet view of Stalin's legacy, claiming that there were "rational reasons behind the use of violence [by Stalin] in order to ensure maximum efficiency". Stalin is being hailed as an efficient manager who [merely] had to resort to extreme measures to modernize the lumbering of Soviet agrarian economy.

In a review of the textbook by Irina Karatsuba, historian and associate professor in the Department of Regional Studies at Moscow State University, we read that "this was without doubt a paid-for textbook, written on someone’s orders, phony all the way through", that "Putin is the second most effective leader the country has ever had, after Stalin".

There is, indeed, a movement in Russia aiming towards the rehabilitation of Stalin. Putin himself is, certainly, behind it. Recall that Putin's dream is to be buried next to Stalin. In the revisionist scheme, the Orthodox Church cannot remain indifferent. Indeed, icons of Stalin have already appeared:



The icon on the left shows Stalin standing before the Blessed Matrona of Moscow, a 20th-century saint. According to legend, Stalin would frequently talk to the woman who gave him advice on how to defeat Nazi Germany in World War II.

The icon on the right depicts Stalin himself as a Saint.

Absurdities? Stupidities? Irrational acts? Indeed, all of the above and more. Revising history happens all the time in all countries. Even if we now, most of us, see the aforementioned revision as totally irrational, it may, in the end, become the norm: if a lie keeps being propagated by an official source for long time then it persists; people forget and the next generation is brought up starting from different initial conditions. And we all know that getting rid of (bad) initial conditions is tough.

Endnotes

1.Irina Karatsuba's review: This past summer I read this textbook in detail and took part in a round table discussion organized by the journal “Bolshoi Gorod” in which the textbook was discussed. After studying Filippov’s textbook and discussing it with the authors, I came to the inescapable conclusion that this was without doubt a paid-for textbook, written on someone’s orders, phony all the way through. It is based on one very dangerous idea, which can be summed up succinctly as, “The State is everything, the individual nothing.” Regarding the current regime, the textbook is absolutely servile, stating simply that Putin is the second most effective leader the country has ever had, after Stalin. And this is the crowning glory - there is nowhere higher to go. For this reason, of course, its introduction into schools in any capacity (and I think it will be introduced, as the leading textbook) can bring only harm.

The textbook automatically brings to mind how we all once studied. Soviet textbooks contained not a word of truth, of course, and no one took them seriously, nor did they expect to learn anything from the subject of history, but searched for the truth instead on their own. I recall how a textbook I was once studying (I graduated from high school in 1977) said that “the careerist Ezhov and the political adventurist Beria, using some of Stalin’s personal marks, fabricated accusations that resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Communists.” Reading this, at age 16, I thought to myself: But how could these two people, with the help of a third, kill tens of thousands of people… What kind of regime was this? I think this is about the line of thought that will be followed by those who study from Filippov’s textbook.

But for me, as a professional, this is of course sad, because it is not just a step backward, but ten steps backward in comparison with the textbooks that were written at the end of the 1990’s and the beginning of this decade. And I am very bitter about how the textbooks of Dolutskiy and other authors are being replaced with nonsense like this.

This event is not, of course, unique. It is part of a general process of searching for a new Russian identity. A reconsideration of the Soviet period is taking place, expelling the odious waste of “the terrible 1990s” (although the current occupants of the our political Mount Olympus during the same 1990s all occupied high-profile posts) - this is all part of the creation of a myth about ourselves. But this myth is phony through and through, and worse than that it is immoral, because it sanctifies the spilling of blood and use of violence. It just perpetuates a falsehood. All of which brings to mind the words of the 16-th century Russian essayist Ivan Peresvetov, who wrote to Ivan the Terrible, “In Russian czarism there is belief, but no truth. But God does not love belief. He loves the truth.” Immortal words.

I would also recall the words of Petr Chaadaev, who wrote in 1837 that “The era of blind belief has passed. I think that now the truth is our greatest obligation to the Motherland.” Alas, this was such a premature hope, because even today this “now” has not yet arrived. But what will become of our Motherland, and of the truth, if this “now” never arrives?

Of course, the universities cannot be separated from society as a whole, and this false conception of history is beginning to penetrate them as well. One of the authors of the textbook, Leonid Polyakov, is professor of at the Higher School of Economics. This is a person who has said the most incredible things lately, such as that “we really never know what happened in the past”, and we need a positive myth about ourselves… In other words, we should just make ourselves look good, tell ourselves falsehoods - that this will help us. I do not understand how it is we can build something on falsehoods that will help us. But beyond this it becomes an issue of individual honesty, and I cannot believe that the majority of my colleagues, in either the universities or schools, will be inclined to teach according to the Filippov textbook. On the contrary, I have seen only shock, deep shock, in reaction to this textbook. The academic and teaching communities will oppose this textbook; they are already opposing it.

2. Another example of history revisionism: Almost every Greek will now tell you that the revolution against the Ottomans has started from within the Church and that the Bishop Germanos of Patras (Georgios Gotzias 1771-1826) proclaimed the national uprising on 25 March 1821 (national day of Greece). This is a mere myth. The truth is that the Greek Church did not want any uprising at all because the priests had a special status in the Ottoman Empire as tax collectors and hence benefiting themselves from the money deals with the Turks. In fact, when Patriarch Gregory V (Georgios Angelopoulos 1746-1821) failed to suppress the revolution, the Turks hung him. The Greek State revised the history, and now this Patriarch is now a Saint of the Orthodox Church. (To be fair, it is true that the hanging of the Patriarch was, indeed, perceived as an atrocious act amongst Greeks and did help in creating a national sentiment, so, indirectly, it did help the uprising. But it seems that the Patriarch himself had no intention of supporting a revolution against the Turks.)