In Our Time - Space in Religion and Science

Episode Date: February 18, 1999

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of thought about space, and examines whether cyberspace has introduced a new concept of space in our world or if its roots are in Einsteinian physics. It would have seemed extraordinary to Dante or Newton, from their different perspectives, that at the end of the 20th century there would be learned scholars who would find no place for religion in the great schemes of thought and belief. In the 20th century our notions of physical space have been revolutionised. Einstein said that space was not a separate entity; we’ve probed and explored the outer reaches of our physical space with space flight, powerful telescopes and theoretical physics. But in the last 20 years, with the birth of the Internet, a virtual form of space has been introduced to us - cyberspace - where people can meet and communicate ideas; you sit at home, punch the keys and you can rove all over the world - the keyboard becomes a magic carpet. But does cyberspace introduce a new concept of space in our world? Or does it really have its roots in Einsteinian physics and even in Medieval theologyAccording to the science writer Margaret Wertheim, cyberspace - life on the surfing internet - gives us not only virtual reality, but a soul. Dr John Polkinghorne, the distinguished physicist and ordained priest in the C of E, is not happy with this news, but he does believe that religion is not destroyed by the new technology, and that latest theories in physics reinforce it. With The Reverend Dr John Polkinghorne, Fellow of Queen’s College, Cambridge and Canon Theologian of Liverpool; Margaret Wertheim, science writer and author of The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet.

Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio 4. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello, in the 20th century, our notions of physical space have been revolutionized. Einstein said that space was not a separate entity. We've probed and explored the outer reaches of our physical space with spaceflight, powerful telescopes and theoretical physics.

In the last 20 years, with the birth of the Internet, a virtual, form of space has been introduced to a cyberspace where people can meet and communicate ideas. Use it at home, punch the keys and you can rove all over the world. The keyboard becomes a magic carpet. But does cyberspace introduce a new concept of space in our world, or does it really have its roots in Einsteinian physics or even in medieval theology? To discuss this phenomenon of our time, I'm joined by the Reverend Dr. John Polkinghorn, a distinguished scientist, as well as being an ordained priest, a fellow of Queens College, Cambridge, and Canon Theologian of Liverpool, he spent his scientific career as a theoretical physicist looking at elementary

particles. For him, religion and science are united in their quest for ultimate truth in the universe. And Margaret Vertey is fascinated alike by religion and science, author of the critically acclaimed Pythagoras' trousers, which looked at religion's intimate historical connection with physics. Today she publishes her latest book, The Pearly Gates of cyberspace, a history of space, from Dante to the internet. Just for those who are slightly fuzzy and unclear about it. Mike Givertheim, could you briefly tell them

what cyberspace is? Well, I think that you can see cyberspace basically as being this collective immaterial space that I in some sense go into when I'm online on the internet. Now, the internet is, if you like, the physical collection of technologies,

the computers that make up the servers and the connections in between them, the physical landlines and the optic fibers. And cyberspace is, if you like, the immaterial, non-physical space that is the emergent property that comes out of this physical

hardware. I think the best way of looking at it is perhaps to say that when I'm online, I am sitting there, my body is sitting there in the chair in front of the computer, but I, or at least some very important part of me, some powerful part of me, is in a very real sense in another place, another space

of being, which I actually think is becoming an increasingly important space of being as another space of being in addition to the physical space of our bodies. So you're sitting there and you're pumping in these messages and they're being pumped back to you around the world and you're communicating with people by as it were electronic letters and you're raiding libraries and they're reading

your libraries and you're going to websites and so out there somewhere is your mind and maybe more than your mind that's what's going on really as you're sitting in your study well i wouldn't say that your mind leaves your body and goes into cyberspace obviously your mind in some sense stays with you in the physical body too but i think there is a very real sense in which in some sense your mind also goes out into this other space i mean when one is surfing around. One has a very powerful sense, at least I do and a lot of other people I've talk to who do spend a lot of time online, have this sense that there is a very real landscape and geography there, particularly when you're in these online worlds known as muds. They have a very

powerful sense of being in another world which not only enables you to communicate, but it actually has its own architecture, its own geography, if you like. Yeah, it's a huge claims. Is it much different from reading a book? I mean, when I read a book, my body's there. and I'm reading, I don't know, Anikrania or Saman Wushti, or whatever it is, and off you go, following the characters, the plot the situation. Can you explain to people who are not as intrigued by cyberspace as you are why this is fundamentally different? Well, actually, I don't think it's fundamentally different from that.

I totally agree, and this is a point I actually make in my book, that in fact all literature is in fact a creation of a virtual world, something like the Divine Comedy or the Illyid is, of course, an expression of a very powerful virtual world that one very much does feel a sense that one is in when one is reading. We could use fictional for virtual, couldn't we? Yeah, well, I think there is a difference

in that you are, yes, when I read Anacrin and I feel like I'm in the virtual world of Anna too, the difference with cyberspace. Why do you have to use virtual instead of fictional? I'm not trying to be clever, but just as much of interest. Well, it's just that historically that is the word people are using. We talk about virtual worlds. That's not a term that I use.

In fact, it's not a term I'm entirely happy. with, but it is the historical term that people have decided to use. The difference, I think, with cyberspace is simply that it allows these things to happen in real time collectively with all sorts of other people. When I'm reading Anna Karenna and I'm reading it by myself, if I'm in a mud world, I can be in it with thousands of other people all over the world. But I totally agree with you, and one of the claims of my book is that, in fact, cyberspace is not this totally new thing, that all of these other things like fiction

are, in fact, precursors, and so I believe very much is television. John Polkinghorn. What's your view of cyberspace, before we get on to the ideas inside it? Well, I think it's not qualitatively different from the world of literature. It differs perhaps in some details. One is that it is, of course, very, very extensive, and it creates these fantasy worlds. Now, literature also deals with fantasy, but great literature deals with real life. It creates a fictional world that reflects back on real life. That's the power of Anna Karenina that it deals with human relationships.

One of the dangers of the cyber world, I think, is that it does prove very addictive and addictive in the sense of helping people to live diminished illusory fantasy worlds in which they are great heroes or whatever it may be. Why does it be diminished? Let it is illusory with Granchard you, but why does it happen to be diminished? Well, it's diminishing if the pictures and images that are being presented do not themselves reflect back on human reality. If it is just a constructed world with a great emphasis on fantasy,

see it. And of course, that's not true of all of the cyber world. There's a great deal of information in it and things like that. But I think the things we're particularly thinking about these virtual worlds, these mugs and things like that, are very encouraging and obviously very addictive to people who spend, you know, tens of hours a week in an unreal world. I'm just a little bit worried about that. I think that's very right that they can be addictive and certainly I know people who have been become addicted to them. In fact, one friend of mine almost lost his relationship because he was spending so much time in a mud world. But then on the other hand, I have other friends who, one woman who said to me that in fact she found the experience of participating in this mud very powerful because she was someone who is very shy and rather overweight. And she felt that in the flesh she was often judged by the fact that she was overweight. And she actually found it a very liberating, and for her a very positive experience, to be able to be online in this world where people couldn't immediately judge her by the way she looked. So I think it works both ways.

There's no question it can be addictive, escape as fantasy, so content. television, so can literature. And cyberspace, in a sense, just has all the dangers that all these other things, too. But perhaps in both positive and negative. Yes, it's powerful. Can I come to somewhere near the centre and the most fascinating thing about Margaret's book

and put a quotation of hers to you, John? Sure. In the book, you write, cyberspace is an attempt, I'm quoting, is an attempt to realise a technological substitute for the Christian space of heaven, a place where we will be freed from the limitation and embarrassment of physical embodiment. Now, what's your reaction to that?

My reaction, that is, is a great deal of caution. The cyber world is a human-created world containing a great deal of illusion, and it's a world that comes on end when you pull out the plug. The Christian heaven is a divinely sustained world of a destiny beyond death that is concerned with reality and which will be everlasting

because God's faithfulness will keep it that way. So I think that the two should not be confused in any way, and that's, again, an illustration of the dangers of fantasy if you make any equation between them. Secondly, it is intrinsic to us as human beings, that we are embodied. It is dangerous for us to think that we are angels, because that's not what we are. And that's, of course, the Christian hope of a destiny beyond death

has always been that of resurrection, of a re-embodied life. We are not floating free in a sort of astral plane, whether it's a spiritual astral plane or a cyberplane. You mustn't replace turn pie in the sky, which is a distortion of the Christian thing, to pie in the computer, which will be even more distorting. What's your action of that, Margaret? Oh, I actually totally agree with everything that John just said. Because in effect, what I'm trying to say in my book is not that I buy into this notion, but that there are an enormous number of people, particularly in America, who are saying that cyberspace will be a new form of heaven, a place where we can ultimately download ourselves as disembodied spiritual beings.

and need you talk of the soul, I mean, not to get to the heart of the matter. Yes. You say that cyberspace is a technological substitute for that ultimate Christian space called the soul. Yes. Can you develop that? Yes. What I would just like to make clear, though, is I'm not saying that I believe that. What I'm reporting on is the sociological phenomena that a lot of the gurus and champions of cyberspace in America are making this claim.

And so what I'm trying to do is understand why the claim is made and on what basis such a claim could be made. Let's start with why first and then go into what basis? Why is the cloud made? And why is it being made now? Well, I think that what is going on here is that many people in the modern world are not like John a formal religious believer, but they are desperately seeking for some sort of spirituality in their lives

and they do have a very real sense that they are not just the matter of their bodies that they are in some sense of spiritual being and they want to have, if you like, a home for the soul. And in the age of modern science, we've had a profound problem because we have had a picture of reality that recognizes only physical space and therefore we have had a cosmological picture in which we could recognize only our bodies and we could locate only our bodies.

And this immaterial eye, this soul, spirit, psyche, whatever word you want to use, has if you like kind of been pushed out of the realm of reality because there's no space for it which the medieval world picture had. And I think that that has caused, if you like, not only a spiritual crisis, but a psychological crisis. And so many people, if you like, are looking for a space for their spirit, their soul.

And by being a non-material space, people are saying, ah, because it's a non-material space, cyberspace must be a place where my soul could be. You are talking very specifically about space, if I can reassure listeners that what we're talking about

is exactly that at the time of Dante, we'll come to Dante in a moment, there was literally space in Dante's scheme of things. You drew a diagram of the world as it was known. And outside the known world, there was this huge space which was heaven, and that is the space to which the soul could go,

where angels belonged, where God, but that was that space. And you're saying, particularly since Newton, going back to the ideas of Aristotle, there is no nothing, there is no space for anything. And so cyberspace, this interconnection, is a place where there can be a soul, that's what's being picked up by your gurus. Okay, John Hawkinghorne, what's your view?

Well, I agree with Margaret that I think there are a lot of wistful non-believers around, who would certainly want to believe that there is more than simply matter, simply the bits and pieces, the atoms and molecules that make us up. But I think to look into cyberspace for that is the wrong way to look, because we're not just computers made of meat. There's something much more subtle than that. There are good arguments for saying that the brain is much more than just a very complicated computer.

And in fact, interestingly enough, there are just hints and encouraging hints from science itself of how one might think about it. You see, if we're thinking about information, about pattern, as a lowly picture of what the soul might be, then we wanted to be embodied in some way. We wanted to be connected with the human body, not just floating out there in this electronic, artificially created space.

Now there's something called complexity theory that's coming along. It's just an infant science at the moment. People are just studying computerized models. And they find that when they study these very complex systems, that they develop quite astonishing patterns of large-scale order. In other words, if you're going to describe these systems, Of course you need to describe the exchange of energy between the bits and pieces. But that's not enough.

You need a complementary description in terms of pattern and structure. But complexity of the theory is only, it's very tentative at the moment, isn't it, John? The randomness, the interdependence of states, but it is technical. There's no mathematical equation for it at all. Why do you seek to have, as it were, physical proof and validity for your religious conviction? Well, I'm not quite seeking that. What I'm seeking is to understand what I am as a person. I think I'm a psychosomatic unity, as people say.

In other words, I don't think I'm an apprentice angel. I don't think my soul is a detachable spiritual bit of me. I think I'm just an animated body. But I'm more than the material of my body, which is changing all the time through eating and drinking, wear and tear. And what I really think the soul is, is the almost infinitely complex information-bearing pattern in which the material of my body is organized.

That's a very old idea. It goes back to Aristotle, who said that the soul, was the form of the body, and Thomas Aquinas in the Middle Ages, took that up. Quineas didn't believe in the platonic picture of Apprentice Angels. He thought we were just exactly that. And I think that if people have this wistful desire to recover the soul, which is absolutely right, we are certainly more than just bits and pieces, that's the direction which to look. Of course, it's a very infant, rude, undeveloped subject at the moment. This, your view would be very hotly contested by people

who are in the driving seat of intellectual science at the moment, Dawkins, Dennett, Pinker, the idea of seeking a soul in this way. Well, it would be contested by them. Whether they're in the intellectual driving seat of science at the moment is an extremely contestable judgment. Yes, I would say, agree with John on there.

It will be contested by reductionists who go for a quick fix, an easy answer. Dennett says that essentially that we are just computers and archic computers. He is in his grandiosely entitled the book Consciousness explained. He never deals with awareness. He never deals with feels, what it is to perceive a patch of pink.

I mean, tremendous claims are being made, which are just unsubstantial. I don't think that's the driving seat of intellectual... Well, I think... You could be, they could be going the wrong way, but there's no doubt they are making the argument, John. They are, but... Well, of course they're making the argument. We're making the argument again.

This is... Opportunity not, but never... The interesting thing, I think, is that precisely what you're saying, John, is what is going on with the cyber community. And what I think is interesting about these cyberspace people is that they do actually represent the opposite trend to the Dawkins and Dennets and...

Well, some do some don't. Well, many of them do because their claim is that, in fact, there is this immaterial pattern that is the essence of a human being. And in fact, I think what they're doing is reinventing in cyber form some sort of version of the soul, which I sort of... Yeah, but it's a diminished version.

It's a... Oh, no, I totally agree. You just think where, you know, the soul is the software running on the hardware and the body. No, exactly. That doesn't work. But their claim is the very opposite to the people like the Dawkins Den. They actually want to say that there is this immaterial, essential, me, that can potentially live forever that I could potentially download into cyberspace.

Can I bring us to Dante, who plays a big part in your book, and you and John may disagree here. You make the claim that Dante's great poem, The Divine Comedy, was the first virtual world, and we can go from Dante's Divine Comedy to cyberspace and get lessons. from it. Can you briefly tell us why this is important to your notion? Yes, I think the remarkable thing about the divine comedy for me

is that it's the most beautiful and poetic vision of the medieval world picture and that what we see there is not only a complete picture of the physical world as described by medieval science, but we also see a complete picture of what medieval is really understood in a sense as, if you like, a spiritual cosmology. The circles of hell, the... Yes, the circles of hell. the circles of heaven and the various cornices of purgatory. And what Dante really shows you is in a poetic form

how, for the medieval's, the immaterial reality of the soul, the cosmology of soul, in a sense mirrored and reflected, the physical cosmology which their science described. So the medieval's lived in a genuinely dualistic world. They did believe that there was a spiritual space of the soul and a physical space of the body, and these were two parallel realities. For them, however, unlike in the modern world,

the primary reality was the underlying reality of the spirit, of which the material world was, if you like, the secondary reflection. And Dante shows us this not only in beautiful theological terms and poetic terms, but I also think, as the point John made before, that it is, in my mind, one of the most remarkable articulations of what it is to be a human being in a psychological sense, and I think it can be seen as the great work of pre-Froidian psychologists, So he weaves together theology, science and poetics in a way that is a truly holistic vision.

But he shows us that for medieval people, reality was not just the physical. What's your reaction to that, John Paul? Well, my reaction is a little bit cautious. I mean, I'm not at all sure the extent to which Dante took his geography seriously. It has a high symbolic element to it. I think the best part of the Divine Comedy actually is purgatory, which is really hopeful where people work their way. up the mountain and the mountain shakes with hallelujahs when anybody takes the next step upwards.

Hell's too sadistic and heaven's too vague, as I think you say in the book. I think these things are symbolic. I don't think that Dante thought he was fusing physical geography with spiritual geography in quite the way, I think, that you're suggesting. No, no, I don't mean to imply that it's a literal thing. I think for the mediaevals, it is symbolic. But the question arises, for instance, did Dante and his contemporaries really believe there was a conical mountain of purgatory in the southern hemisphere. And I think that question is really a modern question

because for us it couldn't really exist because we've circumnavigated the globe and we know there is no physical mountain of purgatory. But for them it wasn't a physical question. They weren't obsessed with the notion that things were only real if they could be located in physical space. You can't say something about it's not being real.

There's one cyber world, if you like, which is not a humanly created world to which we have access, and most sciences would agree we have access. That's the world of the world mathematics. Most mathematicians think that they are discovering things. The Mandelbrot set was there before Mandelbrot found it, so to speak. Now that's the sort of... The things already exist and they exist and you find them out. We have this amazing power to explore that world

and make big discoveries. It's not just a game that we're constructing in the way we might construct a cyber game. That's a very interesting thing. Yes. I agree. I agree. And that seems to be a world, which is a world of thought and not a world of physical things, to which we undoubtedly have access. And I think that's where I'd look for a way of anchoring, if you like, a noetic world, a mental world in modern thought. What is it, Galileo? I've discovered that the language of the world and it is written in mathematics. Absolutely. Yes. And so what does that tell you, John Porkinghorne? If things are there to be discovered, is your conclusion, or do you draw from that, that they were put there by

someone to be discovered? Well, I think that the world of mathematics seems to be a world of everlasting truth. And you're absolutely right that world, which is an abstract world in some sense that we can explore with our minds, is also anchored in the physical world in the sense that mathematics is the key to unlock the secrets of the physical universe. The search for beautiful equations is a technique in theoretical physics. So where does that take you to go back to? Well, what that takes me is to say that the world that is interpretable through mathematics, the physical world that's interpretable through mathematics in that way, is a world shot through with science of mind in its beautiful pattern and structure, and that's just to me that there is indeed a mind, a capital

am divine mind behind it. I see theoretical physics in that sense as witnessing to the mind of the creator. And how do you move from that mind to the soul and you still feel with Margaret Vertheim or Margaret Vertheim's gurus whatever? Let's presume into your arguments because it's too complicated. Well, except that I'd like

to make the claim that I don't actually agree with these people. You do come in very emphatically behind it again again, but I accept the distinction. It's just getting in the way at the matter. Where is this a space for the soul? Well, I think we're amphibians that we have a foot in both worlds.

We have a foot in the physical world. Just hit me on the head with the hammer makes that pretty clear. We have a foot in a mental world of some sort. And I'm appealing to our mathematical experiences just as an illustration of that. And I think that we just have this dual character. But the dual character is not that there are two bits of us, a mental bit and a physical bit that are, say, for example,

separate to the death and the mental bits, the real bit that really matters. They're somehow integrated in this way. looking for models, and of course they're kiddies' toys, really, intellectual toys, in a sense that we don't understand what we are ourselves, we flail around a bit, wave our arms. But I think things like the generation of pattern through complex systems is just a little hint in a hopeful direction. A hopeful direction, not for defending religion, but for understanding humanity. Well, Margaret Vertan, we go, in your book, we go through Newton, we go through the Enlightenment,

but I'm belting through that because we're belting through our lot in time. And I'm coming to the 20th century now, when people like Paul Davis and Stephen Hawking have equated the drive for theories of everything. Theories of everything tow are very unattractive. Never mind. Theories of everything. They've equated that with God. Yet you say this is little more than a set of equations. I think the problem is that if I don't have any problem with the notion that theories or physics can ultimately, in some sense,

be a reflection of God, because of course in a Christian sense the whole of nature is in some sense a reflection of God. What I have an objection to with some of these people is that they seem to want to reduce God to nothing but a set of equations. And of course that cannot be the case. God is not in any Christian sense. Just a bunch of equations who created the God. He must also be the God of salvation if he used to have any real theological meaning.

And I do not see the link between the God of Christian salvation and the God who is expressed in the theories of quantum mechanics and relativity. But I come back to you, John Porkinghorn, I mean, you're a very eminent, a particle physicist and so on, and you've got these people of great, great intelligence. We're talking, I mean, that's not messing about. And they are bringing this to bear, this physicist, the scientific knowledge, on the idea of religion.

Now, I come back to your question, I asked you earlier. Why is it important to you? Why do you think that it is important that religion, which most people have seen hitherto, let's just take Christian religion for the last 2,000 years, as being an act of faith, a leap of belief, why is it important that that should have the confirmation, the underlining, the consolation of physics? Well, it's important because truth is one,

and truth is the essential religious question. Faith isn't a question of shutting your eyes, gritting your peace and believing in possible things. because the Bible something tells you that's what you've got to do. It's the search for truth, and ultimately I believe the search for truth is the search for God. Is it? A lot of people thought it was that they received faith. They were struck by faith. Faith is a commitment to the truth.

Science involves actually an act of faith in that sense. It involves a commitment to the intelligibility of the physical world. Now, part of that truth is the truth that physics reveals. And I very much hope my friends and colleagues in my old subject of particle physics will one day discover a grand unifying theory, a gut as we, another unattractive action. If you're not very good at these, actually, is I, you know. If they do discover a gut, it won't be a toe. It won't be a theory of everything.

It won't even be a theory of everything in physics. If I could write the equations of particle physics on my T-shirt, that would be great. But he wouldn't explain to me how bulk matter behaves. It wouldn't explain turbulent fluids and things like that. Even in physics, it wouldn't be a theory of everything. And we're very much more than just being physical things. The real theory of everything, I think, is theology. Because theology is the attempt, the human attempt, the limitedly successful human attempt,

to understand God. If God is the ground of everything, then the more we understand God, the more we will understand everything. Do you think that cyberspace, given that it is very, very recent, and has developed with extraordinary rapidity, and the fact that it's developed with such rapidity

and people are so greedy for it, and I mean that, you know, well, if greed can be good, anyway, they are greedy for it. Yes, yes. That it's got power. Where do you think it's going to take us? Well, I think there's no question

that more and more things are being done online, Schools, for instance, are having kids. Yeah, but intellectually, where will it take us? Oh, well, I think that it is developing into a very powerful collective alternative space of being another very powerful place where we will increasingly spend time. And for me, the really positive aspect of this is that I think it is going to force back into our discussion about reality the notion that we must take seriously that we are not, as John said before, just the matter of our bodies, Not that there's necessarily something ontological separate,

but that we are beings of spirit and psyche as well. And that this, in fact, I think, is going to actually be the thing that will finally kill the materialist reductionist view of life. Not that cyberspace is necessarily the answer, but I think it's going to force us to take seriously the discourse of non-materialism. And actually that's a positive thing. It's going to deeply challenge Dawkins and... It already is, I think. I think it already is.

I think it will help the challenge. there are purely reductionist's few. The point is it's a good servant but a bad master, and one of the things it can do for us, for example, to enable us, for example, to explore the behavior of complex systems. And we are learning some things from that, and there's much, much more to learn. The beginning of the next millennium

will surely see greater advances in our understanding of what the, even just the physical world that science studies in its impersonality, what their world is like, it's richer than the reductionists are prepared to say. To come back to one of the basic things, finally, in Margaret, Lertheim's book, This business of the soul and the body, which your clients wanted to bring together.

You see cyberspace, is her analogy, other people are right, is the analogy of cyberspace being the space for the soul? Is it something that you can live with at all? Well, if it's just a humanly created separate space, I don't find it very helpful. If it's integrated with the physical world, I do find it a helpful image, perhaps of how we exist as more than our bodies, but in our bodies. And therefore, how would you take on, what's your take on? the soul then, Margaret. You've done a lot of work

on this, and we know you're quoting other people, but what does this mean to the cyberspace kid? Well, I think the real question is many people are looking to cyberspace for spiritual satisfaction. Can it actually provide that? I mean, I think in a sense we have

returned to something like the medieval system in that we now, if you like, live in a dualistic, we're increasingly living in a dualistic world of two separate spaces, one physical and one non-physical. And people are looking to that non-physical space, cyberspace, and hoping that it might provide spiritual satisfaction. I think it's a very serious question whether it will be able to provide that satisfaction

because it's not ultimately bodded in a real theology and ethics. And so I think it's really highly debatable that it will be able to provide that satisfaction. Well, there we are. Thank you very much for my good first time. Good luck with your book. Dr. John Polkinghorn, very good to see you again. And thanks very much to you for listening. We hope you've enjoyed this Radio 4 podcast. You can find hundreds of other programmes

about history, science and philosophy at BBC.com.com.uk forward slash radio four.