The Eric Metaxas Show - David Berlinski (Encore)

Episode Date: September 7, 2022

Polymath David Berlinski, writer, mathematician, and raconteur, brings it all together in his sparkling discussion with Eric about "Human Nature." (Encore Presentation)

Folks, welcome to the Eric Mattaxas show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m.investments.com. That's legacy p.m.investments.com. Eric McTaxis show with your host, Eric Metaxis. Hey there, folks. Perhaps you've heard about Socrates in the city. I recommend it. Socratesin the city.com. I usually interview, really extraordinary people.

We have these wonderful conversations. But just before I shifted to the interview format, I had David Berlinski as my guest, and he spoke. I only got to introduce him, but I have been longing to talk to him ever since then, and here he is for us today. David Berlinski, welcome to the program. Thank you so much. You've written many books. Did you write a book with the title, A Tour of the Calculus? Yes, I did. Shame on you. Okay, it's just so funny to me. I have to crack jokes. It's not funny to anyone else, so we'll just edit that out. But you are a mathematician.

I've written a lot about mathematics. Not many people can say that, David Berlinski. So I want to help my audience, who isn't familiar with you because I don't want to just read your biography. How do you just read your biography? How do you just do? describe yourself. I mean, you've written many extraordinary books. The most recent, for me, that I've read is The Devil's Delusion, a spectacular takedown of the so-called new atheists. I borrowed from it for my new book, Is Atheism Dead? But you've written many books. How do you, how do you describe yourself if somebody were to ask you what you do? I think, honestly, I spent a whole lot of time in the academic world, and I wound up teaching mathematics, something. and down Silicon Valley, various community colleges, various colleges, San Jose State University,

for example. But around 1992, I said I'm going to live strictly with my pen, just as a writer. And so I would describe myself now in exactly those terms. I'm a writer. I happen to have written a lot about mathematics. Right. That's true. Well, actually, in the bio that I have on you, it does claim that you're a mathematician. So I'm going to go with that. We're going to kick your diffidence to the curb and we're going to say, that man is a mathematician. He's a philosopher. He's a

polymath. Senior fellow with the Discovery Institute, I am a gigantic fan of the Discovery Institute and grateful that they have you aboard there. I often hear about you through Stephen Meyer, whom I just saw

very recently. And I think he's He's the one that said to me that David Berlinski is coming from his home in Paris to America. And maybe he'll be in the same time zone and you can have a conversation. So that's, it's to Steve and the Discovery Institute that I owe this time. And here we are. And here we are. So let's talk about your most recent book.

It's called Human Nature. It is not a book that I have read, but I wanted to interview you about it. And so what is it, what is it about? Well, human nature is, is a collection of the essays that I've written unified, I think, by a single question. Is there such a thing as human nature? And if so, what are its characteristics or its properties? And this is a question, I mean, it's such a big question. So I talk about it in any number of different ways and from any number of different perspectives.

But that's essentially why the book is entitled human nature, because that is the question in my sunset years that seems to have occupied me more than any other question. What is human nature? Is there such a thing? And as you are no doubt aware, the very idea of human nature is under tremendous attack right now. It seems somehow to be in any number of fields from anthropology to political science, to gender studies, it seems to be a deeply suspicious notion. If you want to dismiss someone's work, say in anthropology, you will say he's an essentialist, meaning by that, he believes there are essential properties attached to a human being. And those essential properties are part of its human nature. So those are the issues. They're very, very problematic.

They're very controversial. And I don't think that anyone, and I'm including myself, has reached anything like complete clarity about them. Well. But they're raging. They're raging. Part of what's appealing to me about the idea of using this subject for a collection of essays as a framing principle is that, you know, you're aware more than most that there are people who are somehow at war with human nature. There's something about human nature that offends them.

It seems to me that ultimately their beef is with God. In other words, I would say that there's something annoying to them about the idea that we're made in God's image and we have these. We want to be able to, you know, do. anything. We don't like to be bounded in any way. We would like to be able to evolve into other species. And anybody who says, maybe I can't, gets on my nerves. There's a great deal of truth to that. I would begin by saying, we are all at war with human nature in one way or another, whether we admit it, whether we're forthright, whether we're candid. But there is something about human nature that is, of course, inexorably

tragic and limited. Even the bluntest facts about human life end in disappointment, often in despair, and certainly in death. These are facts with which we struggle, were at war with them. We wish they were otherwise, but we have no power to imagine how better to make the situation than the situation we find ourselves. But quite beyond that, which is an immemorial lament, there is a... a sense of defiance and the rejection of human nature that I think you very perspicuously attribute to a withdrawal from religious commitment. After all, virtually all of the Western religions coincide on one point of principle that the human being,

shallow, ignorant, limited as he is, embodies an image of the deity. that is, when we consider a human being, we say with Shakespeare, what a work of art is man. What we mean in part is that work of art embodies some aspect of divinity, not all aspects of the divinity, surely, because we are limited, finite, and living on borrowed time, but some aspect of the divinity, and to reject the idea of human nature as it's been classically framed in the Western tradition, at least from the Greeks, but probably back to the Sumerians, is in a way to undertake a withdrawal from any kind of religious encounter, even to the extent of denying the possibility of limitations, as you yourself said.

And we're certainly living in a culture which is manifestly engaged and attacking any sense of limitations, limitations in terms of length of life, limitations in terms of the inexorableity of death, but also limitations in the frivolous sense that it is widely supposed that human beings are capable in one way or another of bending to their satisfaction any constraints of personal identity or necessary features of the human condition. For example, gender. For example, just pulling it out of a hat.

Nobody's talking about that. It's the canary and the coal mine. I mean, look, we're among friends, we can be honest. Nobody really takes the gender disputes all that seriously. It has repercussions, certainly. But everyone quite deep down understands that proposing to eliminate the gender binary, which has been a property of human nature for 10,000, years is a fruitless task. It can't be done. It won't be done. It is a performative action.

And it speaks to a much deeper level of antagonism than merely having some monstrous hairy six-foot-two guy clamber out of the swimming pool after having that's a frivolous aspect. On that, on that horrible image, let us pause. We'll be right back, folks. I have the joy of speaking with David Berlinski. The new book is Human Nature. Don't go away. In case you haven't been paying attention, the Biden administration has caused a financial crisis, and they have no clue how to fix it.

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Go to inspireadvisors.com slash Eric. That's inspireadvisors.com slash Eric. Advisory services are offered through Inspire Advisors LLC. Registered Investment Advisor with the SEC. Folks, welcome back. I'm talking to David Berlinski, mathematician, philosopher, polymath, author, raconteur, Parisian at this point, although with no discernible accent. David Berlinski, you were just talking about, in discussion of human nature, this issue,

this idea, which of course is utterly preposterous, that somehow what we've all known forever, for many millennia, that there are men and women that somehow, I don't know how, but through some sleight of hand, we can make that all go away. What do you suppose is behind this? Because it seems like a kind of madness. If somebody says, listen, I believe roosters can lay eggs, make a note of it going forward, and you'd say, where did you get that idea from, and what do you propose to do about it? But what do you suppose is behind it?

Well, I think that in a highly individualistic society, such as we are progressively occupying, and in pretty much a secular society as well, the individual, his desires, his aptitudes, his bellities, his needs become overwhelmingly important, not only for the scientific analysis of society, as Max Weber, for example, argued, but also in terms of, but also in terms of terms of any personal program of development and satisfaction. It is entirely, it has been entirely reduced to a kind of conuncopia of needs, which because we're human beings are infinite in their nature. No matter how many times you satisfy a particular need you find to your astonishment, there is another need that replaces it. We are by nature never satisfied with what we have.

This is, of course, a piece of folk wisdom, but it's nonetheless true. And we're reaching the point in an abundant society where the primitive needs have well been satisfied. Very few people that we talk to go without eating, for example, or lack shelter. There are such people, but by and large, the Malthusian imperatives have been satisfied in the West, certainly in the United States and in Europe. There remains in a secular society, the incestimate. demand for the creation of new needs, and of course, new victims, those who cannot satisfy their needs, no matter the restraints that, say, 100 years ago, would have limited the expression

of that desire. A hundred years ago, of a man said, well, I intend to become a woman. You would have been regarded as a fool, rightly so. And vice versa, a woman who decides to become a man. Bear in mind, there have always been men who enjoy provocatively dressing as women. and vice versa. That's not an issue. The issue is ontological. It has become ontological. Not whether we can propose to make a man look like a woman, but that we can undertake an exercise in which he becomes a woman. Now, from that, it's one step to ask the obvious reductial at absurdum questions. Can we change a man's age, is chronological age in just the same way? For example, at my age, I would very much like to be 20 again.

Is that ontologically possible? I'm not talking about reduction in appearance or improvement in appearance. I'm talking about could one be that very thing? Or to put the matter another way of a man or a woman were to conceive the desire to be a spoon, kitchen utensil. Is that a possibility? I mean, you can certainly imagine, given the... society we're living in, a group of people who ardently wish to become spoons and become

serviceable utensils in a restaurant. Is that possible? Well, if it's not possible, I'm not asking whether it's likely. If it's not possible, why make a preferential distinction when it comes to changing sex? If it's not possible for a human being, say, to become a turtle, is it impossible for reasons that are more significant, more serious than the ones we might offer in defending the impossibility of changing the binary distinction that we all, that we can trace back to time immemorial? Are there more powerful arguments at work? And I think there's an error of frivolity about that. We all know that we can't become spoons, nor can we change our chronological age, nor can we become turtles.

And the revolve is when we make a distinction saying, ah, but those things we can't do, but we can change sex. And that's what I mean by human nature. Why is that particular distinction lifted from the stream of history and declared to be mutable and not irrefragable? Well, let me ask you, because what's fascinating to me is that, you know, you could take a sample of blood. from someone and know in a moment. What kind of chromosomes do they have? Is it a man or a woman?

You don't need to look at them. You can know because this is something intrinsic to every single cell in their body. So obviously, Bruce Jenner didn't say that I would like to change the chromosomes in every of the innumerable cells in my body. So it really becomes a mental thing. It becomes I guess it's the idea. A human being seem to think that with my mind, I can do whatever I like. And they kind of insist on it despite the physical reality. There's something, it really has less to do with cosmetics and surgery

than it does with this idea that you don't have the right to tell me who I am. And maybe if there's a God, God doesn't have the right to tell me who I am. I somehow have the right to determine anything I like with regard to myself. I mean, it's preposterous, but it seems to me at the essence of it. It's very much a weak sputtering form of defiance, isn't it? Yes. My desires, my needs, my ambitions for their satisfaction, no, no boundaries. I mean, nothing else in the animal world or the physical world, for that matter,

such that we can point to it and say, it knows no boundaries. That's not possible in physics. I mean, everything is what it is in physics. The laws of physics determine what it can be, the transformations it can undertake. Same thing is true of chemistry. The same thing is true throughout the biological world. Why should the social arena in the early part of the 21st century have witnessed this kind of, let's admit it, luridly fascinating, display of petulance, to the point where people who determine that they are, in fact, entitled to change their sex just as they could be entitled to change their chronological age, become extremely indignant when limitations are suggested, extremely indignant.

I think that's what makes it on some level funny, because you think, where did you get the idea that we have to bend to your way? wishes. I mean, I want to, because you've written extensively on Darwinism and whether natural selection can, you know, turn mouses into elephants and things, I see a relation. In other words, the idea of accepting that there are these forms that God or nature has created certain things, there seems to be kind of a will to power. The idea. that anything can become anything over time, and if you say no to that, you offend me. Oh, that's for sure a will to power, an urge to power, a desire for power.

In fact, if you step back from the frivolous debates about gender, I myself would very much like to see the new revised reformed Bruce Jenner put back on the box of Wheaties. I think that would be an improvement all around. sees sales just skyrocketed. But that's neither here nor there. Bruce Jenner is not the issue. The issue is a will to power with respect to what? And one answer is that

these are the manifest images of something much deeper down, the latent images. It's a will to power against reality. This is what is intolerable. The idea that whatever we may say about the external law, whether we're talking about gravitation or quantum mechanics or chemistry or biology, I think that in some deep sense, we all recognize the platitude that reality does exist,

and sooner or later it bangs us on the head, sooner or later to everyone. And the desire to escape from that, the failure to make your peace with reality, is, I think, the latent content of these very frivolous and superficial discussions about gender. Nobody really cares what Bruce Jenner wears or how he displays himself. But the attack on reality, that's something else. And that goes straight back to the totalitarian dogmas of the 20th century. You may recall, in Allwell's 1984, there are very powerful scenes. always 1984 is a flawed novel in many respects, but ideologically, it's a very sophisticated

discussion. And the Inquisitor, the novel, has a hapless prisoner. And his task is to persuade him that if the party says two plus two equals five, two plus two does equal five. Hang on just a moment. Forgive me. This is a famous scene. We're going to go to a quick break, and we will return talking to David. Burlinsky, don't go away. Tell me, Eric, why is relief factor so successful at lowering or eliminating pain?

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Folks, I'm talking to David Berlinski. The new book is Human Nature. David, you were just reminding us of this scene. My friend John Zmirak has brought up this very scene many times on this radio program. This fascinating moment when the party, these totalitarian monsters in the novel 1984 by George Orwell, they're trying to force Winston Smith to say that if the party's, says two plus two equals five, you must agree with it. It's an extraordinary thing. Not trying to force them to say that. Saying it is easy. They're forcing him to believe it.

And that's not easy at all. They succeed. They succeed. And that's a weak part of the novel because they succeed by physical violence, which never really works. But that is the idea. The essential idea is that reality is maliable, infinitely maleable, and power accrues to whatever individual or group is capable of enforcing their vision of reality on everyone else. And in this, as in so many other things, practice makes perfect. You begin the assumption of power by relatively trivial things like gender studies. And then you move on from there, but it's a totalitarian. impulse. The impulse is the desire to force people to suspend their disbelief at will,

to force them to suspend their disbelief at will, not by violence, but by endless intimidation and harassment. Those are very effective techniques. And once one group, for however long, it's never very long, seizes control of reality, then the entire apparatus of power and control devolves into their hands. And that's what I think is taking place now. The attack is an attack on the principle of reality as something independent, inexorable, inflexible, and irrefragable.

But you'd have to still ask why we would side with reality. In other words, in a funny way, I mean, I know what you're saying is exactly correct, but I would say that I side with reality because God created reality. And I mean, because, you know, the Hindus say that everything's illusion. I don't believe that. I believe there is this thing called reality.

If there were not such a thing called reality, that's actually reality, I would say, well, what does it matter whether people want to change it? That's exactly what people do say. That is exactly what people do say. What does it matter? Who controls a sense of reality? reality provided that what we're doing is satisfying any number of vagrant desires, the desire, for example, of a man to be a woman or woman to be a man. Now, the interesting part of Orwell

in 1984 is that he chose the proposition that two plus two equals four. And he insists on in placing that in doubt. And when you talk to anyone and you say, well, could two plus two equals five, there's an automatic rejection, automatic rejection. And if you pressure them, why can't two plus two be five? There are always crackpots on Twitter who say that it can be five. Let's neglect them because they are crackpots. The answer that comes about is that two plus two equals four is necessary. It's a necessary feature of the world. It's not a necessary feature of our thinking. It's a necessary feature of the world because it can be demonstrated from first principles. could be demonstrated very rigorously.

The minute that idea comes into the discussion, some things are necessary, they are absolutely implacable in their false. There's no place where they're false. Then the discussion shifts. If two plus two equals four is necessary, are there features of human existence similarly necessary? I believe that certainly there are. that is one of the meanings of human nature, the necessary features of human beings. The things they cannot change should not wish to change, must accept, and need confront. Those are the necessary features of human beings.

For example, you can talk about a quantum particle being in two places at once, quantum entanglement, quantum position. These ideas break down at the subatomic level, but a human being cannot be in two places at once, and I would argue that's a necessary feature of human life. I'm here in Florida right now. I can't be in Paris. It's just not possible. It's not that it's difficult. It's not possible. Aging goes in one direction, not in the other direction. It's not that it's difficult. It's impossible. You cannot change your species. You cannot become a turtle. Look, you can very well imagine rewriting the genetic code. You're sitting here. Eric, you're sitting at your desk, we put your body in a machine and begins unscrambling the genetic code

in your body all the way back to the last common ancestor of you and the turtle. Then it goes forward to a turtle. Well, anything of you left there? If your answer is no, then the obvious conclusion is that some necessary feature resists that kind of transformation. There's, There's no question about it. I mentioned, you know, wanting to connect this to the idea that anything can become anything over time, the idea which, you know, strikes me as ideological wishing on the part of scientists. And, but I think there's a connection also to the idea, and we're going to go to another

break here, but to the idea that. people, in some ways, being at war with the idea of representational art, the path that art took into the 20th century, it's touching some similar ideas to what we're talking about here. We'll be right back, folks. I'm talking to David Berlinski. You can read his book, Human Nature. You can read any of his books, and I recommend that you do. My Pillow is having their biggest sheet sale of the year. You've all helped build my pillow into the amazing company it is today. Now Mike Lindell, inventor and CEO wants to give back exclusively to my listeners. That's you. The Perkale and Giza Dream bed sheet sets are available in a variety of colors and sizes,

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They're known to sell quickly. So order now with promo code Eric at mypillow.com. promo code Eric at my pillow.com. Welcome back. I'm talking to David Berlinski, author of human nature and many other books. David, I was just trying to get at this idea that's in my head that the war against representational art, the idea that the avant-garde had 100 and more years ago, that we're now going to do the next thing. And the next thing is to invent our own reality just to do representational art. it's somehow kitchy, you know, that's for the bourgeoisie.

We want to be more exciting and more inventive. I think at its core, it was a war against God, against God's reality. There was something there. All of this strikes me in a way as a satanic project, that there is something about everything that is offensive to me, and I just want to go to war with reality. And we just see it taking on these different forms in a way. an idea of mine.

Yeah, well, maybe satanic project, huh? Well, I'm not sure. I mean, the history of 20th century art is very complicated. And at a certain point, don't forget, when the Impressionists came on the scene at the end of the 19th century, they were regarded with a great deal of hostility. Sure. A great deal of hostility. Today, we regard Impressionism is one of the loveliest manifestations of the Western tradition. I'd love to have a wall full of Impressionists.

Right, right. slightly out of my price range right now. To a certain extent, what's happened in both art and music is that really ambitious artists, under the impulse of this desire to be new, to be revolutionary, made the objects of their affection inordinately complex with respect to what had come before. You see that even more clearly in music, 20th century music. nobody in his right mind wants to go to a concert and hear a lot of stuff written with a 12-tone row serial music. It's very complicated, it's very ingenious, and sometimes it can even be beautiful,

but it's just way too complex for the musical experience for the most part. And as a result, both in art, graphic arts, and in music, and to a certain extent in literature, under that revolutionary impulse to constantly be providing something new, the art forms themselves seem to have collapsed. Classical music, to my way of thinking, no longer exists. It's a museum enterprise. The great tradition of Western art, representational art from, say, Giotto, to 1930s and 1940s, that's also collapsed.

It doesn't mean they're not very good artists. Freud was a fine artist. Francis Bacon is a wonderful artist. But these are isolated cases now. The impulse, the artistic impulse, has scattered. fragmented. And I think it's overwhelmingly true in music, classical music, that incredible tradition, say from Palestrina to Stravinsky, if you would, even beyond Stravinsky, that's no longer a vital living force. You don't hear classical music in the same way that my parents

heard classical music. Or read poetry, obviously. You could say the same about poetry. This is the first time since I would say 1400 that we lack a major poet in English. Somebody everyone would recognize. Perhaps Auden, W.H. Auden was the last major poet to play that role. But I can't think of anyone, a touchstone like Orden, automatically repair to his verse to illuminate a particular situation. There's no one. And I think that's true in France as well. And in Germany, certainly in Germany.

I mean, it is fascinating, and we could go in so many different directions. But your book is called Human Nature collection of essays. We just have a few minutes left, really. What do you touch on in the book that we haven't gotten near yet? Well, I think language is a very interesting case. And when we talk about human beings, I think it is almost obligatory to say human beings have one property, it's a species-specific property that's not shared anywhere in the animal kingdom, needless to say, the plant kingdom, they're able to express their thoughts. They're able to express their

thoughts. How this property came to characterize human beings, how it emerged over evolutionary time, what its secret nature really is, the extent to which it's bounded, the extent to which it can vary, these are all tremendously suggestive and important questions. And I think as the result of linguistic inquiry over the last 50 years, principally the Chomskyan Revolution, we now see that language is a much more tightly constrained system than we ever imagined. Languages can't vary all over the place. In fact, it could be argued, and Chomsky has argued,

that there's only one language, the human language, in every particular language, just a variation. Small variation. I think that's a deeply suggestive thesis, is one of the profound results in the social sciences. The doctrine that human language is species-specific. It is a necessary feature of human identity. It is in many respects a complete mystery.

And there's only one of them. It's, I mean, you put yourself forth as an agnostic, but you realize, of course, that all of these ideas, that we're talking about somehow lead us back to the God of the Jews, to the Bible, the idea that there is such a thing as human nature that were made in God's image, that language is central to who God is, to who we are. I mean, it's at least fascinating to think about that. And I think that people who tend to be uncomfortable with,

with some of these things usually tend to be cavalier atheists, I guess. At least that's my experience. Well, I have to be candid in one respect. I'd never really met honest to goodness atheists. I've talked to a lot of people who affirm their atheism grandly, often in print, but always inevitably in conversation, but they really don't mean what they're saying. What atheism comes to in practice is a kind of watered down form of agnosticism. I say watered down, but it's, of course, exactly the kind of agnosticism to which I commit my allegiance as a secular Jew.

An undiluted agnosticism. Forgive me, we're going to yet another break. Folks, I'm talking to David Berlinski. His collection of essays is called Human Nature. you can read his other books. I recommend them highly. We'll be right back. Folks, welcome back.

A few minutes left with David Berlinski. His book, The Devil's Delusion, is one of which I'm particularly fond at Socrates in the city a few years ago. He spoke about it. So you can go there to Socratesin the city.com and listen to his lecture. David, we were just talking about the idea of agnostic. versus atheism, and you're quite right. I agree with you that people who claim, who are ardent in claiming their ardent atheism really can't be and aren't actually atheists.

And so I've never heard it put that way, but you said it's really a watered-down agnosticism. So why do you suppose you, when you describe yourself as an agnostic, let me just say, What do you mean by that? I think there are two ways to look at it. It might be useful to invoke a distinction of scope. You can say very affirmatively, very aggressively, I believe, I believe that God does not exist. Very few people are willing to say that.

Very few people are willing to say, that's one of my beliefs. That's internal to me. On the other hand, you can say, I don't believe that God exists, which is quite a different. proposition. It means that the proposition affirming God's existence is simply not among my beliefs. It could be because I haven't paid any attention to it. And for many people, that's absolutely true. I've just never considered the matter.

I think that distinction is crucial to the discussion of contemporary atheism because what most atheists really mean to say is, I don't know. I've never really, I've never really seriously. committed myself to the inquiry. It's just not one of my beliefs. By the way, I think that's exactly the position Christopher Hitchens adopted. At least it was when I talked to him. He was not willing to be avowedly an atheist. He simply said, I can't bring it in. I can't accommodate that belief. It's not one of my beliefs. I'm perfectly prepared to live my life without that, which is fine. Which is fine. But it just, you can imagine exactly the same kind of declaration with respect to some interesting propositions of mathematics.

I don't know. Not one of my beliefs, fundamental theory of the calculus. It's a weak form of agnosticism because it speaks to a certain flabbiness of inquiry, to which I'm clearly, obviously. But we flabby intellects find it very difficult to go beyond. Very difficult. And that's something I think is not widely appreciated. It is very easy to be an agnostic. I mean, you don't lose anything.

It's very difficult. It's very difficult, as the Hindus say, to pass over the razor's edge to faith. It's very difficult. I remember Dick Cavett at the Socrates in the city event where you spoke, he asked you in the private dinner afterward that did you ever worry about falling on either side, you know, of the razor's edge of agnosticism. We've just got a 30 or so seconds left, but maybe you can respond to that. Sure.

Everybody worries about falling on one side or the other. If you fall on the wrong side, you face the awful possibility of judgment. If you fall on the right side, you face the awful possibility of being forever deprived of divine comfort. Neither is particularly attractive. Well put. It's just very enjoyable to have you as my guest today. David Berlinski, thank you for your time and for all of your books. To be continued, I hope. Thank you. I hope so, too. Thanks for having me on. Zay because of Zay, good.