The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss - Fruitful Disagreement in an Age of Division with Robert George and Cornel WestRobert George and Cornel West

Episode Date: June 12, 2025

One of the great pleasures of hosting the Origins Podcast is talking with fascinating thinkers who challenge my perspectives and with whom I can have frank, if provocative, discussions. My recent conversation with Robert George and Cornel West was particularly enjoyable. These two distinguished intellectuals embody the spirit of respectful and meaningful dialogue that the Origins Project Foundation aims to foster. Robert George is a renowned conservative legal scholar and Catholic professor at Princeton University, while Cornel West is a leading progressive philosopher and Protestant scholar at Union Theological Seminary, and an academic celebrity. Together, they've authored a timely new book, Truth Matters, exploring how fruitful dialogue can bridge ideological divides even during polarized times.In our conversation, we tackled subjects including philosophy, theology, politics, and the crucial role respectful disagreement plays in uncovering deeper truths. Joining the discussion as a scientist, atheist, and someone raised in a Jewish tradition, I brought a viewpoint to our exchange that differed from those of both Robert and Cornell, who in spite of their political differences are both Christians, and scholars in the humanities . It was especially rewarding to find common ground with Robert and Cornel despite our differing starting points. All told, I found it one of the most fascinating discussions to date, and the first with more than one person. It worked. :)This kind of rich and thoughtful engagement is precisely what inspired me to start the Origins Podcast. Robert George and Cornel West remind us that disagreements are valuable, as they help us move closer to understanding not only each other, but also ourselves.As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project YouTube. Get full access to Critical Mass at lawrencekrauss.substack.com/subscribe

Hi and welcome to the Origins Podcast. I'm your host Lawrence Krause. In this episode, I had a roll-looking good time with two amazing intellects and two amazing intellectuals. People I've been thinking about having on the program for an incredible time. Two people you would think would be as disparate as you could imagine, but in fact they teach a class together at Princeton. And there's a book that's just come out called Truth Matters, a dialogue on fruitful disagreement in an age of division. And the topic really captured me because that's one of the points of the Origins Podcasting the Origins Foundation

is to lead fruitful and respectful dialogues about topics that are important and sometimes inconvenient and sensitive. But that's what learning and scholarship is all about. Now, Robert George and Cornell West on the surface could not be more different. Robert George is a distinguished professor of jurisprudence, a well-known conservative scholar, if you want, at Princeton. And Cornell West is a well-known progressive. He's also a professor of philosophy and Christian practice of the Union Theological Seminary. And this progressive left wing, if you want to call it that, intellectual, and this conservative intellectual come together to have fascinating discussions.

And I came in sort of as a third wheel. because in fact what is kind of interesting is that both Robert George and Cornel West, while they differ in many things, also have many similarities. They both study social sciences and humanities. They're both Christians. One's a Catholic, one's a Protestant. And it was fun to have a discussion to confront them with some of the things they talk about as someone who comes in as a scientist with very different sensibilities, also as an atheist and someone who grew up Jewish.

and we just had the most fun, and it was one of the most enjoyable podcasts I've done a long time. I really love these guys, and they were a lot of fun, and the topics we delved into are very deep in philosophy, in theology, in modern society,

and we didn't, there were no holes barred. I think you'll really find this discussion fascinating and certainly provocative. I'd love them on again, and it was a good example of exactly what they talk about, how you can disagree, agree fruitfully and try and together lead your way to what the truth is, recognizing that

you might be wrong. And we all, I hope, exhibited that during the podcast. I hope you enjoy it. You can watch it ad-free on our Critical Mass Substack site, and if you subscribe to that site, the proceeds will go to support the Origins Project Foundation, the nonprofit foundation that produces this podcast, or you can watch it on our YouTube channel, and I hope you'll subscribe to that if you do, or you can listen to it on any podcast listening site. No matter how you watch it or listen to it, I think you'll find this incredibly entertaining and thought-provoking and provocative as well, which is really, in some sense, what this podcast is all about. With no further ado, Robert George and Cornell West. Thank you, Robert George and Cornell West, two intellectual heroes.

together in one place I'm so excited to be doing this with you it's going to be so much fun well we are the ones who are thoroughly blessed to be on your show and well we're all blessed I guess in that sense I'm happy to even use the word blessed for the moment and I I respect both of your intellect so much and and as I was telling you beforehand I feel like I've had this dialogue with you already I've been I have this is the book that we'll be talking about and and every page is marked, sometimes with exclamation marks, because I was talking to both of you, sometimes yelling in the middle of the night. And the most fun for me, and we'll hopefully get to a few of these points,

is when I, I mean, sometimes one of you is wrong and sometimes another is wrong. Sometimes I'm really excited that both of you are wrong. That's probably most of the time, Dr. Krause. You've got a couple of cracked vessels here. Yeah, that's right. Well, every now and then I met, maybe even I'm wrong, so we'll see. But, you know, I want to spend, because there's so much to do here, I want to spend a lot of time talking about the incredible ideas. Really, I want to just have a discussion that mirrors the discussion you had, a fun intellectual discussion of ideas.

And we'll get there. But you may not have seen the podcast before, but this is an origins podcast. And before we do anything, I really like to find out how people got to work. where they are now, or at least at the beginning of their well-known. Both of your well-known intellectuals, academics, and I don't have to cover your academic career, but I like to find out how people got to where they are. So I'm going to start with you, George, for a moment,

just to see, I want to go back, way back. So you're a child of immigrants, right? Your father was Syrian. Yes. And mother was Italian? That's correct, yes. Now, were they working class? Had either of them gone to college or?

No, both of my grandfathers were coal miners. Those were the immigrants, one from southern Italy, one from Syria. Really, Dr. Crosswood saved me from the coal mines was World War II. Now, I wasn't born until a decade after the end of World War II. But my father was drafted at age 18 in 1944, right out of high school. He hadn't even finished high school. They later sent his parents a diploma. And he went off to fight in Normandy and Brittany. And then when the war was over, he served afterward for a while in the occupation army. He came back. And of course, he had those military skills. And he had new opportunities. He had a booming economy. So although he didn't have the opportunity to go to college, his circumstances didn't allow for him, I guess. Yeah, he couldn't take advantage to the GI Bill because of family circumstances. But many didn't have to go into the coal mines as a result of which, you know, I'm not in the coal mines.

But I grew up with parents who had been high school educated, but not college educated. I was the first in my family to go to college. My parents were very keen that we go to college. There were five of us, all boys. I was the first. I was the pioneer, first one out there. But my boyhood was very much a kind of hub. I described it as a Huck Finn boyhood.

It was in the hills of Appalachian, the heart of West Virginia, growing up, hunting and fishing and playing bluegrass music, as Cornel knows, I'm still a very avid and active bluegrass banjo player. I do some performing, and Cordell and I do some singing together. I want to, we should have had you perform both of you here, but anyway, go on. Well, he's a Grammy way. I'm not a Grammy one. By the way, I don't want to point out.

I was nominated for a Grammy, but that's a different thing. I didn't win. Anyway, go on. I have no musical ability. I should point that out as well. Oh, okay. When I was 18 years old, I went off to college. I ended up going off to Swarthmore College.

But I was very badly behind my fellow students. I sometimes put it this way. You've heard of people who don't know anything. I didn't even suspect anything. And there were all these kids there from Andover and Exeter and Groton in St. Paul's and these great public high schools at Chevy Chase, Maryland, and Bethesda, and so forth. And they just seemed to know everything. they had heard of...

Why did you choose Swarthmore then? I mean, you must have known something about... You chose a private liberal arts college. Well, let me explain that to you then. So my mother, although she was not herself college-educated, had it in her head that there were better colleges for her sons out of state and that we should go out of state to college so we could attend a better college.

Now, she couldn't have told you what the better colleges, were. She wouldn't have been able to say whether Harvard would be better than Oklahoma State or what, but she knew that there were better universities and colleges out of state. So senior year, I went in as the rest of my class did, at least those in our class who were going on to college, a lot of my classmates didn't go on to college. Some went into the minds, for example. But I went in to see the guidance counselor. Her name was Mrs. Simons. I remember her very well. She was, I think, the girls volleyball coach in the chemistry teacher. But she was also the college guidance counselor and I explained that my mother was interested in having us go out of state to college

and she had very little experience at sending students out of state. Basically, with a college-bound students, she would look at your record and say, well, you've got a good record. You should go to West Virginia University, the flagship state university. Then if your record wasn't so good or you needed some remedial help, she'd send you to one of the satellite state universities. But in my case, since I said that I wanted to go out of state, she initially resisted that, by the way. She said, why would you want to do that? We've got a very good university right in time. She said, if you go out of state, that's expensive. Even if you go to a public university, you're going to pay out of state rates. Why would your mother want you to do that? And I said, well, she just does.

And so she just, having very little experience herself, sending people away to college, she just handed me a book, a great big, fat book. Cornell, you'll remember it. To the thicker than the Bible, it's called Barron's College Guide. And she ended me that book, and she said, here, this explains all about the different colleges. and I looked at it, and there are 3,000 profiles of various colleges, and I said to myself, I can't read 3,000 profiles of colleges, but I'm leaving through sitting in Mrs. Simon's office, and I notice in the front, they had the colleges, the book had the colleges classified by how selective or competitive the admissions was. So in the very top category, it was most competitive, and then under that highly competitive

and very competitive. And I noticed in the most competitive category, there were, I think 12. if I recall correctly, 12 colleges in universities, six of the IBS, all but Cornell and Penn in those days, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, and then three other colleges, Amherst, Swarthmore, and Williams, none of which I'd ever heard of. But I thought, well, I can read 12 profiles. So I read the profiles. And, you know, I figured out that three of these were small colleges. And I said to myself, Robbie, small college, that's good. For a kid like you, a hit from the hills, in Western. If you go to a small college, you won't get lost and they'll take care of you.

You go to a large university. Who knows what's going to happen to? Some folks took me on the tour. We got in the pickup truck. It was a crew cab pickup truck, which was unusual in those days, a truck with two front and the back seat. And we went around to see these colleges. And I don't know if you've ever been to Swarthmore, no Cornell. It is the most beautiful place in the world. It is literally in an arboretum, literally in a arboretum. So we went there and not only was it beautiful and had beautiful buildings, I had

an individual tour that you didn't go with a group. If you were a prospective student, you were assigned a student, a current student, and in my case, her name was Peggstone. I can remember that too. And she took me to her 11 o'clock class, which happened to be a philosophy class. And I sat through the class, and I didn't understand a word they were saying, but it sounded so

cool. And the students were arguing with the professor. And at first I was sort of scandalized, but then I realized this is a good thing. These students are arguing with the professor about existence and me and all this stuff. And it was just so great. And then the thing that struck me was as when class ended and Pegg was taking me down to lunch, the kids continued, the students continued arguing on the way to end the dining hall and then all the way through lunch about the issues they were talking about in class. And again, I didn't understand what they were saying. But it really sounded profound to me, and I thought, gee, this can imagine spending four years

in an environment like this, it would be the most wonderful thing in the world. And I said, but they're going to admit you, you know, hillbilly from Westford. But apparently, there was a hillbilly quota. I was going to say, there's hillbilly quotas. They had to admit it. Exactly. And my first year, I have to tell it was one heck of a struggle. It was very difficult.

And I didn't know whether I'd make it. And I, you know, I didn't know whether. whether I could stay. I mean, I was just so behind. But fortunately, a wonderful professor realized that I was struggling. And he perceived in my participation in class discussions that I was the complete dummy. And so he just made a project of me. And he got me up and going, taught me how to write essays, taught me how to sort of think

analytically. And the next thing I knew, you know, I was getting quit grades and learning all this stuff. and I compiled a good record and off to Harvard Law School and then to Oxford for my doctorate in philosophy and then I had this job at press. So this is like one of these scary stories, you know. Well, you know, but a single act of kindness can change their life as my wife always said.

But, you know, I will get to that later. I mean, you both talk about, obviously you're both gifted teachers and interested and dedicated teachers. And part of teaching is sort of passing along the gift that you've had, as you both point out. And clearly, I imagine what that professor did for you has impacted on how you deal with students, I'm sure. I can tell you this. Very often, I realize it. I catch myself and I realize I'm lecturing the way James Kirk lectured. I'm interacting with the student the way James Kurt, that was his name, interacted with students on.

And I'll tell you, since I can never pay him back for what he did for me, this is my way of doing my best. Exactly. as a gesture in the direction. If I can do even a little bit of what he did for me, then at least I will have passed that gift that he gave me along. Absolutely. In fact, this is a, you know, I'm going off topic here, or at least I'm going ahead of myself here because we haven't got to Cornell yet. I still have one or two questions of you, George, but Robert, I mean, but if you, in my teaching career, if you,

one of the perhaps most satisfying thing you can never remember is if there's one student, you can remember that you saved. Oh, yeah. You know, who would have, who would have, you know, just would have gone by the wayside and you had an impact. Have each of you had, does that resonate with each of you? Yeah. Oh, it's so true.

So true. So great. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I've also learned, by the way, to suck that, that, that it's important to suck up to your students, too, because I taught at Yale for many years. Actually, around the same time, I was there in the Venetmenty school, but, but, Later on, and later on, the first time I tried to write something for the Wall Street Journal, I wrote to the editor who I, or someone had recommended me.

And he said, did you teach at Yale, physics for poets class? And I said, yeah. He said, I was in that class. And I said, I said, what grade did you get? He said, I got an A and then I knew I was in. Anyway, but, but, you know, but, you know, Before, somehow that is what I want to go to Easton before, Swarthmore, your parents, my parents didn't go to college either.

We were the first, my brother and I, the first kids to go to college. But something, you clearly were a dedicated intellect. You wanted to go to Swarthmore. You wanted to learn. You were fascinated by that class you went to. Where did you get that? I mean, were there books in the house? What was it that kindled your enthusiasm for intellectual ideas?

Well, I have to tell you, Dr. Krause, that when I, Ron. I'm good sports. Lawrence, not Dr. Lawrence. You can call me brother if you want. I'm fine with that too. Brother Lawrence. So let me tell you, brother. This is, I don't hold this against my parents. I know the most wonderful parents. Cornell knew them. They were just the greatest people in the world. But of course, they had no understanding of the intellectual life as something valuable for its own sake. They didn't have an understanding of knowledge. And the pursuit of knowledge is intrinsically valuable. So what I was brought up with when they would talk about their ambition for their sons to go to college was, well, if you go to college, you'll advance in the world. You'll be able to go into a professional field, be a doctor, lawyer, accountant, something like that.

You'll make more money. You'll have a good income and more comfortable life. You'll have social status. Maybe you'll have influence. And those are all good things. And I continue to believe those are all good things. But since that was what I was brought up with and had no conceptual. of the intellectual life as something intrinsically valuable.

For my first year, almost year and a half, I was proceeding on that basis, on that understanding of what college was for and what was all about. Then I had, as Cornell knows, he's heard me tell the story many times, an epiphanal experience. That's the only way I can describe. It's the closest thing to a religious experience

I've ever had a conversion experience I've ever had in my life, but it was intellectual. In an ordinary course in political theory, course, very good course, but a survey course beginning with Plato, going all the way up through John Rawls, who was the hot, the hottest thing in political philosophy in those days. We were assigned Plato's dialogue called Gordias. And for those who are familiar with the dialogue, you'll know that one of the things that it, questions that it raises, Plato raises this through Socrates's interactions with the sophists, with his debating partners, one of the

questions is, why are we doing this? Why are we debating? Why are we discussing? Why are we going back and forth with each other? Why are we engaging in this, to use the fancy word, dialectic? Why are we trying to get at things? What are we doing here? And of course, this office, sir represented in, well, power, money, prestige, status, training. They're paid very well to help the young men of Athens from the best families in Athens to be effective orators, and persuasive so that they can take their place and maintain their family's stature in public life, in public affairs. But through this process of argumentation, Plato brings us around to seeing something that I had not only never seen before, I'd never considered. And that is that the point

is not status, prestige, money, standing, winning victories in the argument, showing off that it's most fundamentally, no matter what other benefits it might confer instrumentally, most fundamentally, we need to get out the truth. We want the truth for its own sake, for its intrinsic enrichments as of us as the kind of creatures we are, what his student Aristotle would describe as rational creatures, rational animals. Well, I mean, the light bulb really did go off or go on over my head, and suddenly I could see it. Suddenly I could see that I myself had been on the side of the sophists, And I could see that they were in the wrong. And his arguments were compelling against them. And that led to both a frightening and exhilarating experience. And that was I had to tell my, I had to admit to myself, I taught through very little in my life. I had lots of opinions. I was active in politics when I was in high school and all sorts of stuff. I had opinions about everything. But with only just very few exceptions, I'd not actually earned my opinion. I hadn't reasoned my way to my life. I hadn't done inquired and thought.

I just picked up the ambient, you know, things from the ambient culture or I believe things because I thought, well, this is what smart, sophisticated people believe. And I wanted to be a smart, sophisticated, well-respected person. So I should believe these things too. So all of a sudden, everything was on the table. I had to re-examine all my beliefs. I couldn't take anything for granted.

This is what I say was both frightening and experience. It's wonderful. It's frightening because, you know, we tend to identify herself with our convictions. sometimes spoke, we wrap our emotions more or less tightly around our convictions. And so if you begin questioning everything, you don't know who you're going to be. Yeah. When you go through the process.

But it's also exhilarating because I felt for the first time, my gosh, I'm free. I'm free man. I'm no longer the slave to the culture or to people's opinions of what sophisticated smart people. I can believe whatever I think is actually true. And to go to the title of our book now, truth matters. It really does much. It doesn't matter whether it gets you anywhere. It doesn't matter whether it gets you head.

Even if it leaves you behind, even if it disadvantages you to believe the truth, it's still better to believe the truth. That old aphorism, it's better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied. So it was transformative of my and epithnal, as I say, it was really transformative. You know, there's a lot of pedagogy that says that the only real learning you do is when you confront your own misconceptions. And that you remember. the first time you confront your own

conceptions you really remember it otherwise you sometimes you know things go in one ear and out the other but when you suddenly realize that you're wrong in fact even in science museums that aha it's exhilarating in a way for many people's terrifying but it's exhilarating it's that aha experience

suddenly see the world in a new way and I've often said that I hope that every student once in their life has something that they profoundly believe to be true, at the very core of their being, be shown to be wrong, because that's really the experience we want them to have.

And I know you guys talk a lot about that. So I don't want to go too much further, but I do want to ask you why, you must have been a good student, because otherwise you wouldn't have gone to Swarthmore. You must have been good enough to make the cut. So you must have been interested in school and doing well when you were younger. So did you read a lot yourself when you were younger? Did you read? No?

I wasn't a great reader. I have to admit. And I was a good student, but not a great student. I wasn't my class valedictorian in high school or anything. That's wonderful. I've always loved to point that out because a lot of people get discouraged because they say, you know, I didn't want to go into subject because I wasn't the best person. And then I know so many people, Nobel Prize winners and other people who, you know, weren't the best in their class. And it doesn't matter. Well, you know, it was amazing because I was not the winner of all the awards and so forth when I was in high school. But when I graduated from college, I was given the award for the outstanding graduating man, and I had, you know, it was five beta capital. It was unimaginable to me when I entered when you started more. And especially because it was so hard and I was struggling so much. And all these kids were so much more than anybody you ever met before. So again, I have to, you know, thank Professor Kerrith and my other wonderful professors who brought me a little. He struggled that you got more out of it, I guess. But anyway,

boy, this is, well, we'll have time for the rest of your book. But hold on. Two last things. One, you decided that just having the JD and you and fulfilling your mother. there's expectation of being a lawyer, wasn't good enough, and you wanted to decide, and you went to Master's Divinity and then PhD in philosophy. You just didn't want to be a lawyer? Well, no, let me tell you about that. So basically that experience with Plato turned me on to philosophy. Now, remember, it had been a philosophy course that I had attended, a philosophy class that I attended on that first day as a visitor. I didn't understand the thing. It just sounded really cool. So it was that experience, with Plato reading the Gordias that turned me on to philosophy.

And pretty soon I realized that while I was interested in many dimensions of philosophy, what we call philosophy of mind, aesthetics, what I was most in, logic, what I was most interested in were the philosophy of law and moral and political philosophy. And I got especially interested to another professor in medieval thinkers in the Muslim and Jewish and Christian medieval thinkers, people like Averroes, Maimonides, applying us, exactly. And so I did apply to law school, but I also wanted to study more medieval philosophy. And I figured out that although ordinarily they have to get into a PhD program, and Harvard doesn't have terminal masters programs in this area, in most universities in the United States,

don't. I figured out that there was a degree program in the Divinity School that I could use to take courses. Master's in Divinity is very much like a BA for, you know, a general BA for people who wanted to graduate. I have a friend of mine. Yeah, my degree was called an MTS, a master of studies. Yeah, you could just read the kind of stuff you want. And I was reading the kind of stuff I wanted. It also made law school more palatable because, of course, when you go to law school, if you're thinking you're going to study philosophy, you're wrong. Yeah, yeah. You're studying a lot of stuff that was to me pretty boring, but I could keep my mind alert by also doing these courses in medieval philosophy and other philosophical subjects. But I realized fairly soon that I really wanted to pursue an academic

career. Now, to do the work I most wanted to do in philosophy of law, especially in the tradition of philosophy of law that I was interested in, it's come to be known as the analytic tradition, the tradition of analytic jurisprudence, analytical jurisprudence, to do it at the best place, in the world, which was Oxford University, you needed to have a first law degree. Now, that's easy for British students and for students in some other countries because you can get a first law degree as a bachelor's. Exactly. You go directly to law school. Yeah. In the United States, we don't do that. We don't have undergraduate degrees in law. So to qualify for admission to the DeField Program, the Doctor of Philosophy program in Philosophy of Law in Oxford, I needed a first law degree. So by getting that law degree at Harvard,

I would fulfill that requirement, which indeed I did. And then I went on to the program at Oxford where I did my defil in philosophy of law. But in the meantime, to make money in the summers when I was in law school, I worked for big law firms in Boston. And dawn if I didn't find it really interesting. And in an area that I never would have imagined I would find interest. I was working for three major law firms, the first summer after first year, summer after second year, and then as a young lawyer after I graduated, three major Boston law firms and in each case working in the commercial and industrial real estate

market, a real estate department. Now, that sounds really boring when you don't know anything about commercial and industrial real estate. When you do know something about it, it turns out to have all sorts of interesting dimensions. So I hesitated just a moment. You know, I thought about maybe I will make my career as a practicing lawyer. But I'm glad that in the end I decided not to do that. Now, I went ahead, and of course, I had my law degree, and I got myself admitted to the bar in New Jersey and in Pennsylvania and the appellate courts and Supreme Court of the United States and so forth. And I've continued as of counsel to a law firm to practice part-time appellate litigation, whatever I can do consistently with fulfilling my obligations at Princeton. So I've got a

hand in there, but I'm very glad that I decided that I didn't get deflected and I decided to carry on with an academic career. It's been a beautiful, fulfilling, wonderful career. And it's enabled me to teach courses with my beloved brother. Yeah, you guys, you've been able to pay that gift forward. It is a very, it's a great privilege to many, not people realize, I mean, it's a true privilege. And it's a, it's a privilege. And also what I've realized afterwards, it's kind of a safe job, too, even though you're supposed to be intellectually risky. It's a very safe job to be in academia, too. But it's very, it's a great privilege to be able to do what you want. And there aren't many jobs where you can. And in academia, unfortunately, more and more, you have less

freedom to do what you want, but we'll get there. And one of my great concerns. And the very last one line answer to this question, and then I want to go to Cornell. I have to ask everyone this. Why? So it's one of the glaring things that we'll talk about in both of you, your backgrounds, is no science. And so. And I want, so did science ever interest you? Not until I had to learn it because it became very highly relevant to what I was doing. And I'll tell you how that happened. So I slept through biology in high school.

Physics are a little more interesting, but, you know, I basically slept through biology. A lot more interesting, but okay, we won't go. So then in the 1990s, I served on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. And then in the early 2000s, with a new administration, President Bush, I was appointed to the president's council on bioethics. And there we have all these very important, very important issues on which you actually had to know the biology. And, you know, here again, once you actually begin learning something, that only did it because I had to. I had to figure out like where babies come from and, you know, how human life began and all this stuff. Well, lo and behold, it turns out to be fascinating.

And really, so all of a sudden I found myself, here's that I'm reading through these texts in human embryology and developmental biology and going into the literature and having opportunities to discuss these things with, you know, some of the world's greatest authorities on human embryology, teratology, and so forth. So that's how I ended up learning something about science and also figuring out why people who are so dedicated to science are so dedicated. It really is interesting. Yeah, well, absolutely. But, you know, I hit the point that, that, you know, sometimes, you know, there's a right time to learn things. And sometimes when you don't know why you're studying something, it's sometimes you just goes in one or the other again. And then it's when there's a reason. And it also points out something that I'm sure both of you have found your careers.

I was a professor of physics and astronomy for many, many years. I never took an astronomy class in my life before that. And in physics, I often say I learned much more physics after my PhD than before. the ID being a lifelong learner, the fact that it doesn't end, and you learn, even as a faculty member, you learn much more if you're, if you're reasonable and good throughout life. And I think one of the things we want, you talk about teaching a lot in your book and we'll get there, I hope, you know, the kind of things you want to imbue with kids. But one of them, I think that you don't discuss, but I think what is really important is how to teach them to be lifelong learners.

that it doesn't end at college, to keep asking the questions to keep learning. Anyway, we'll get there, but I want to get to Cornell. He's been so patient and smiling and happy over there. A wonderful, wonderful conversation. Well, yes, and I'm sure it's just part of what's going to be continuing it to be a wonderful conversation that way. You, now it seemed to me, between the two of you,

your parents were more professional. Your mother was a teacher and a principal, right? That's exactly. And father was a contract. A wonderful lady. A wonderful lady. I had the blessing to know her. Yeah.

Yeah. She's, she, she, she, she, Irene West. She loved Brother Robert, too. There's a school named after her, isn't this? She must have been a great teacher. True, brother, Lawrence. Absolutely. My research.

B. West Elementary School right there in El Gross, California, right outside of Sacramento. It's a beautiful thing. Beautiful thing. So you, look, I mean, you are of all, are also clearly, and like Robert, but clearly, I mean, a lifelong intellectual, someone fascinated by ideas and many other things. Did that come from your mother or father? Where did that come from when you were really young?

Well, I tell you, now you know, brother, any quest for origins has its mystery, Sidnet. No, of course. That's the greatest mystery of all. That's why I do it. Something rather than nothing. What is the origin? the melody and the origin of the universe, all of these origin questions, which are indispensable

questions. But in the end, there's always a sense of mystery given our finitude. And the origins of my own love of learning is a difficult thing. Mom would read poetry to us all the time. And I learned a lot in Sunday school and Vacation Bible School. You can imagine one of the great works of work world poetry is the book of Job. Now, Granted, I wasn't reading it in Hebrew. It was the King James. But the King James Version was still Poet. Yeah.

They flattened it out recently, but the Cape Townsend's version has an elective affinity to Shakespearean language. But it's hard to know exactly where it comes from, though. It really, they had a bookmobile way out where we grew up on the truck. Bookmobiles. I love them. They were such great gifts. And I loved those books. But I would read, you know, I read every book and the bookmobile.

I wouldn't surprise me. I mean, yeah. Well, it wasn't that big a bookmobile. That's true, but I emerged really with two heroes. And even when I was all through undergrad and grad, I'd always have two

pictures on my wall. I'd have Malcolm X and Albert Einstein. Those were the two figures. I read Einstein. In fact, I picked up playing the piano in part because of his, the violin. The violin, I was going to say. You're a better violin player than he was.

Well, no, no, no. I played for a number of years, but I was just so glad to be part of his company. Yeah. A young person playing the violin. I did play first violin for a good while. Went on to Harvard and made some money playing out for Chamber of Violin just to get me through alongside. So you've always been musical.

You've always been musical as well? Well, no, not really. I love music. It saturates my soul. but I was never really a musician other than those years playing the violin. Definitely. But it was Kirkegaard and Einstein. Really?

That hit me hard at the bookmobile. And then there in college, I'd have the Malcolm X picture and Einstein right next to you. Well, now I'm going to jump ahead. I mean, I want to get to the other things you did and why you chose to do what you did. But once again, now I'm going to ask you that question. Because, you know, I meet people I really admire. intellectual, I always wonder how come they didn't become physicists? And so let me ask you the

question. If Einstein was up on the wall, how come, you know, he didn't become a physicist? Well, because you know, and I know, Brother Robbie knows that Albert Einstein was so much more than a physicist, even though he was a physicist, right? He was the one that said imagination

was much more important than knowledge. He was the one that had a sense of fallibility, but a fundamental commitment to truth. I was just reading the other night, his great correspondence would sit with Freud. Remember Einstein is asked to choose anybody in the world to have a dialogue when he chooses Freud. It's 1931.

Let's talk about war. And what's the first thing he says in the letter to Freud? I love your fundamental commitment, your pursuit of truth. Well, there you go. It doesn't get too much better than that. And I, it's dialogue with Tagore. And, you know, his other... More religious than you are, Tagore.

because I have a sense of the invisibility of things, and you only go with what is visible. Ooh, and I say that. He was a little woo-woo at times. It's true, I guess. Well, he's got, but he had a spino-sistic sensibility. Yeah, I know, of course he's. I'm just poking.

Absolutely. But, you know, just again, as an aside, his letters are great. I don't know if you ever read his letter to Madam Curie, which is if you ever wanted to look at intellectual courage. Yes. It's a really fascinating one because we will get to wokeness and other things. Maybe.

I mean, sometime in our aid of this, we'll get to that. But it's a wonderful letter to Mancure because she was vilified because, you know, she had a relationship and, you know, various things. And Einstein basically wrote her an incredible letter to be intellectually brave and not. care what people think. It's a great, I'll find it. You'll give me your email afterwards and I'll send you the email because I often look at it because it's, it's really inspiring. And also that he reached out to help someone who was being vilified, which is a true act of courage. And I know how many people, virtue signal and don't even reach out to people who are, for one reason, another, vilified in the modern world. And just reaching out to someone like that is an act of

courage. Well, you remember, he opened his door to Paul Robes and NWB, the boys, what they will basically banned, passports taken away. Yeah, absolutely. That's a real actor. He's a towering what Lionel Trilling once called a figure

rather than just an intellectual. Yeah, I absolutely. And that's a rare thing. But also, even in my education though, brother, it's also true that from the very beginning I was always concerned about the quest for truth as

it related to, be it the new physics of Descartes or the relatively theory of Einstein? That's why Whitehead has always meant so much to me. Yeah, in fact, and maybe why you guys called your course, and named him after Whiteheads. By the way, I have to ask, again, it's later on the question. I didn't know this. So the title of the course is Adventures of Ideas. It is, right here, my brother. There it is.

That's his book. And you said to me, you said in the, not to me, but I keep feeling like you were talking to me when you're writing the book, but you're talking to Robert. But I did not know this, that originally the Society of Fellows, that was required reading. That's exactly right. And I was in the Society of Fellows, and it wasn't required reading by me. I was probably one of the many lack. You see how things had begun, a little decline had set in.

Yeah, it's just a decline. The minute they admit it, look, it was very clear. The minute they admitted me to the Society of Fellows that started to go into decline in any case. But you know who talks about this is Harry Levin, and Harry Levin came in that first way. And he, you know, and his godfather was whitehead, of course. Yeah. And he was the dissertation advisor for Edward Zaid actually, too. It's a dissertation on those of Congress.

But Levin talks about this in his essay. And each one of those students had to read that and have discussions about it. And by the time you got in, or, of course, you know, you had campus cone and Quine and Cabell and Pripy. Yeah, Quine was in. So many of my teachers were a society of fellow people. Yeah, no, you weren't in the, you weren't in the, Society Fellows? You would have great. No, no, no, no, no, no. I was never part. It's funny how we kind of overlap. This is also another first, because the three of us are almost the same age.

Within six months of each other, which is not, so we're the same, the same whatever. You have a certain sensibility that we share. But they also have come, we have, I have been close to you probably without ever knowing it. When I was in the Society of Fellows, you just get free meals and I ate at the law school, which was right next to the physics department every day to get my free. meals there. So you were probably there studying. And Cornell, when you were in the indie school of Yale, I was at, well, I was up Science Hill. So we've been close with each other. Would you say you overlap with Salt Crypte?

No, I didn't overlap with Salt Crifke. No. So's a bit older. Yeah, a little bit older. So's a little bit older, though. Yeah. I, you know, I did overlap with is a, I don't know, an intellectual combatant of yours, but only one year. Leon was.

Well, the Leon, we, yes, yes. Well, Leon comes out of... He criticized everyone, so you weren't... He comes out of Berlin and trilling at the same time. Well, and I think because I've talked Leon since then, but I think because I was a physicist and therefore a sort of a peasant, we never talked much.

But now we do. Mitzed opportunity. Yeah, well, yeah, there's a lot of missed opportunities. You find out later in life. You know, youth is wasted in the young. So was education, by the way. Exactly. Your grandfather was a pastor.

So did you get your religion through him? No, no, no. It was too mom and dad because he's in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I'm in Sacramento, California. Yeah, yeah. My father's father. I have the C.L of West Metropolitan Baptist Church. Absolutely.

Now, you were, you must be, A, have been a good student because he gone to Harvard. You were a student body president, which usually means, it surprised me because, I mean, I'm obviously I know of you and I know a lot about you, but this is the first time we've actually ever had to chat and I'm so excited about it. But normally the student body president is kind of the regular guy. And if I had to pick someone who wasn't a regular guy, that would be you. And so I was on, did you change much or what happened? You very cat.

No, no, I'm saying, brother, I've always been in that sense, though. But yeah, I graduated four. 4.0 straight A's and stupid body president and set records into two-mile as an athlete. Yeah, there you go. So you're the perfect, you were the first perfect candidate for Harvard and then maybe not a Rhodes Scholarship. But anyway, you went to, but when you, I want to know why you chose near Eastern languages at Harvard. Why did you choose that? Well, what happened was my, my beloved chairman, it was John Rawls. That I went in his office when I decided to graduate in three years rather than four.

And I was actually majoring in philosophy, but you had to take a colloquium in junior year and senior year. And I asked whether I could take the colloquium the same year, the junior and senior colloquium. He said, absolutely not, Cornell. He said, we love to make an acceptance, but you can't. I said, but I'm majoring in philosophy. I've got to graduate in three years because of running out of money.

My parents have daughters going to college and so forth. And I went back to my dorm, and I discovered I had taken all these courses in nearest and language. and literature with no clan whatsoever to major in the Eres of the language and literature. So I had all these years in Hebrew, Arameh, Mesopotamian thought with the great Thorgett, Jakobson,

and the great biblical scholars and so forth. And so I just decided, well, let me major in it. But I wasn't a real major because my real major was in philosophy. So I went to talk to DeQuine and Nelson Goodman and the other.

others, and of course the Hillary Button would admit and continue to mean the world to me. And I said, can I still go to graduate school in philosophy? If I made the nearest language and literature, he said, sure. Sure you can. Now, the reason why I had taken all those languages was I wanted to read the biblical text in the original language. So I took Greek, I took Coyne and classical Greek, and I took... Was that because of your interest in religion then I was wondering. I mean, you obviously took these classes that must have interested you.

And it was because you had a deep interest in the Bible and... Absolutely. I want to get at what was the formation of these texts and how you read these things in the original language rather than depend on the English. And I'm so glad I did. It was just, I mean, I'm so glad you did too because you're interspersed with everything you write and say are these wonderful illusions and quotes and knowledge of that. And I find it incredibly inspiring.

It's really, really great. Oh, that's very kind. Well, it's true. Okay, well, let's now move toward, this is great. I've learned a little bit about each you, and it's important. I mean, I also think it's fascinating because you guys do a lot of talks about other things, but I think it's interesting for people, you know, to learn a little bit more about you and how you got to where you got to.

And I think it's good for young people to learn this, because it's often, you know, there's a country music song and said, the long and winding road that brought me straight to you. And, and, but it's often, you know, it's funny to see where people end up and see that it isn't always just a linear trajectory. And I think it's important for young people to realize that. I often tell young people, in fact, as Robert, I often say, choose a, when they ask where they want to go to school, I said, choose a place first you want to live.

And secondly, the kind of place that it doesn't matter, you can get a good education anywhere, anywhere, or a bad education anywhere. But choose one where your peers are going to, are people who are interested, and they're going to learn from them. And often, and choose a place where, you know, unless you're absolutely certain what you want to do in life, and there's a few people who are, choose a place where there may be options. He may discover something you had no idea you were interested in. And anyway, I don't like to give advice too much, but that's when young people ask me, that's what I say. That's good advice.

That's wise. Well, the other piece of advice along those lines that I always give students, gave my own children is look for the truly great. professors, pay less attention to the course descriptions or whether you happen to be interested in the subject matter, learn from the people who can teach you how to think. You can almost apprentice your mind to them. So if the great scholar happens to be somebody who does Chaucer, and you're not especially interested in the English literature and Chaucer, nevertheless, take that guy's class, just find out who the best professors are and study with them. Learn from how to learn how to think. Yeah, absolutely.

Great point. And you probably don't know in advance. And again, to point it out, I mean, I, well, know, I went to a school in Canada. I grew up in Canada, and then I went to my PhD at MIT. And I tell kids, you know, even at an unknown school, you can have great teachers. And you don't have to go to Harvard or wherever. And so it's really important to know that. You can find those great teachers. And not only that, as you all talk about. And we all know. no as professors, there's nothing better if you're a teacher than having a great student. And so it just is inspiring. And if you're interested, and I'm sad to say that, you know, you talk about how the kids,

I mean, obviously the kids fight to get in your course. And so it's a very self-selecting group. But in general, it's, it's so refreshing to meet students who are actually interested and aren't there to get there just a degree to get a job. Oh, yeah. It's a real problem today. The pre-professionalism and the, the, you know, just excessive, absolutely excessive focus on ambition.

Ambition is a good thing. You know, no one's saying, don't be ambitious. But gosh, if that replaces, if it overwhelms the desire for knowledge, the desire to grow intellectually, then you've just wasted your parents' money and your time. Yeah, yeah. Too many kids nowadays seem to me just sort of it's four years' right of passage. They don't know why they're there. In fact, you know, I should ask you this.

Boy, we're going on to all different targets. But I mean, as a kid, I mean, for me, education was always important. I always knew I wanted to go to college and then later on, the professor. But ideas were always fascinating to me across the spectrum. But now where was that going to go there? My mind is just gone. Well, well, anyway, I was going to say something profound, but it's okay. I'll say this, though, brother.

Then you see, when we were coming along, this is not the need. onistic age or anything, but just a few decades ago, we didn't have brands. We didn't have market strategies for careers. We didn't have these teleological ends and aims that somehow we had to have, we reduced our ambition down to just money making because ambition can be a beautiful thing when it has a deep sense of vocation to it. Yeah, well, if you want to be the greatest poet, like Keith or Shelley or that, that takes tremendous. ambition, but it's not ambition that's flattened out, market-driven. And so you reduce causes to brands and reduce vocations to just professions. And you reduce greatness to just worldly success.

That is a dumbing down that is unbelievably devastate. And that's what we've seen. You talk about it in the book. And I, right away, I did remember, you reminded me of the point, which was I wrote one of my books. I spent a lot of time in Switzerland in Zurich. And there in Switzerland, they streamed kids, so only about 10 to 15% of kids go to college. It's not as if you can't. And it first shocked me,

because my first thought was everyone should go to college. Everyone should have a college education. And then I must admit, my mind has, I think he's evolved on that, that I think obviously everyone should have the opportunity to go to college. But I think I see a lot of kids are in college, you're just not ready. They have no idea why they're there.

And so I think it's maybe not for everyone right away. And it's fine to go back. But I think for a lot of people, it is just four years in there for a credential. And you wonder whether they are wasting their parents' money and maybe society's time. It was a shock to me to think that maybe college isn't for everyone. I don't know if you, what do you go? is a real problem. And this is why I love the way Cornell begins our courses together. So that, you know, we can only take a very tiny proxion of the students who apply because we want to keep

a seminar format where you can really engage issues. We don't want to get up there and lecture at people. I think you said 18 or 19. That was about mine. Yeah, that's the most we can do. I mean, if we let the 800 kids in who want to get in, especially two hands like us, we'd be up there pontificating. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Students would love it, but it wouldn't be the education you want to give them. That's right. But, you know, they come in with, they may come in with the credentialist attitude. They want to get the Princeton degree or the Harvard degree and then up the Goldman Sachs and then onto this and that. So Cornell opens by saying, let's think about why we're here. What we're here to do is to learn how to die. Now that, you know, if you're going to Goldman Sachs, you know, you're going to go Goldman's and Brother Cornell said, your professor said, you're here to learn how to die. You're here to learn out of about. But, you know, pretty soon they understand that you're here to learn how to die so that you can learn how to live. How to live.

Like you guys, I'm going to get into the deep stuff. Now we're going to get into Plato. Now we're going to get into the meaning of life stuff. Now we're going to get into the big, deep, you know, questions of the human nature, the human good, human dignity, human destiny. This is a serious business, in other words. So I don't know if getting an A&R class is going to help you to get into Harvard Law School. You know, I don't know if our recommendation is going to help you to go to Morgan Stanley. Oh, sure. You're going to learn how to die in these.

Yeah, and I learn how to die. That's a really, and you know what? This actually, it's a good segue finally to whatever I want to talk. Because unlike you guys, you only get one crack. And life, that's what for me, like, because there is no afterlife, sorry, makes life for me so much more special. You got this one chance. don't blow it. You make every

moment count. Make every second worthwhile because you have one chance here. And I know you guys agree with me in spite of the fact that you think you'll be hanging out there shooting the breeze for an eternity afterwards. But anyway, but actually that does make a segue

because your book, look, the book Truth Matters is a dialogue on fruitful disagreement and native division. And I want to cover a whole bunch. There it is. I was going to do the promo for you. But look, we'll talk about a lot of the ideas. I have no agenda here because the point is to have the kind of discussion that your book's all about. Because it's so important to be able to have respectful, enjoyable, joyful, as Cornell would say, conversations.

Where you don't agree about topics that may be difficult to talk about. And I want to address some. So there's a lot of things I have here. We won't get to all of them. But I really just want to have that kind of dialogue, except it won't be a dialogue. It'll be a trialogue. And I do want to point out that that's something that hadn't hit me until I thought about doing this. You know, a lot of people might say, and you talk about your kind of antipodes, right?

You know, at least on paper, Robert George might look like this sort of classical, conservative Catholic. And Cornell looks like the sort of progressive jazz, you know, rebel. and that's fine. But you know, you're not, you're actually just two points on that sphere because you really, when I think about it, you have so many, compared to me, you have so many more similarities than differences.

Both Christian, yeah, different denominations, but to me that's just in the noise. Although I know they're profound differences. It can make a difference, my brother. I know, I know, I know it does. And there's also truth in what you're saying, Lawrence. But you're both of a humanistic, There's no question that part of the bond between Cornell and me, part of that foundational bond, is the shared Christian Christian.

And we'll get there. That relativizes the differences, you know, between Catholic, Baptist and Wisconsin. Even Jewish Christian. Yeah, absolutely. And we talked about your brother, Michael, when he was here, the very distinguished law professor, legal scholar, and he was here for a year in the Madison program, very devout, observant Jew. And Michael and I, no question about it, had a bond that was in part founded on that shared. faith. Absolutely. And so you've got that

Christian share. You've got your humanistic you know, basically you're both humanists in different ways. And so you've got that shared thing. And and whereas, and so if I had to pick of someone who in some sense is more of the I have to pose to you guys, it's me.

Right? Because first of all, I'm a scientist. I mean, I happen to love writing and reading and books and of all sorts. But, but my fundamental sensibilities are those of a scientist. I'm an atheist. I won't say a devout atheist, but, and I'm a Jew, right? And so, and, and, you know, and I, and I, you know, and I, I kind of, I'm also a different, I grew up in Canada, which makes me automatically, no matter what my

politics are, they are to the left of most Americans, and, and, but I'm also thought of as now called a right-wing pundit because I write about my complaints about modern academia and, freedom of speech and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and then you know I and when I write in the Wall Street Journal I'm a right wing pundit so I'm so it we are now kind of there's no antipose we're kind of different parts of the sphere and I think it'll be fun to have that dialogue because I may we'll we'll have some disagreements that you guys wouldn't have that that that that we three can have although on that last one Lawrence on the defense of free speech and the importance of uh, open inquiry and truth-seeking. We're all three. We're all three, of course.

I mean, to this day, I'm still kind of dumbstruck, flabbergasted at how free speech came to be a right-wing call. I know. It's a incredible. Something I discovered a right-way because the same thing I believed all my life. It was a left-wing call. It was a left-wing call. And it was at least one of the rare respects in which, you know, even after my conversion to conservatives, and I remained a left-winger on free speech, but now that makes you a right one. Yeah, and I'm a left winger in other ways, but I'd be converted to the right wing because I defend free speech and because I criticize

the I criticize a lot of the last administration because of that, because of issues of wokeness and identity culture that I thought were hurting the country as well as academia. And you mentioned that word identity,

an identitarianism. I'll tell you something. I think on board with Cornell and me. I disagree about a lot of other things, but Cornell and I are fundamentally, and this book is fundamentally anti-tribal. Oh, yes. We just think the trouble. We understand, we understand human beings, made the way we are with the nature we have.

We're naturally tribal. We got that. We got that. And we don't think that, you know, desiring to be in communities, including communities integrated around shared beliefs, that's not bad in itself. Yeah. That's a good thing and makes possible some wonderful things. Yeah.

what we mean by tribalism when we reject tribalism is the idea of you know my country right or wrong or that that kind of thing that we will cast truth aside in order to remain in good standing in the tribe neither one of us going to do that and both of us have you know felt the consequences of yeah slinging to people in our so-called tribe we're not but i think but one of the crucial messages I think of the text is that dogmatism is ideologically and theologically and politically promiscuous. So that if certain dogmatists are in place and abusing power, they can be right-wing, they could be centrist, they could be leftist.

You're trying to be Socratic and prophetic, which means you're trying to be consistent in any form of dogmatism that is blinding willfully or not. willfully, any serious pursuit of truth, but not just truth. And here I do think, and what Whitehead said that music, mathematics, metaphysics, those three are the three great achievements. You see, then when you see a scientist, that's secondary now, because it's the mass, it's the mass and the music. What is the conception of science without symmetry? But that's an aesthetic ideal. What is the conception of science without some coherence and harmony? Those are aesthetic ideals,

you see, so that even when one says I'm a scientist, it really means I am a certain humanist of a sort that puts a premium on quantitative analysis. Oh, no, just quantitative. I agree with everything you said, but I think one of the guys, one of the things you often attribute to Christianity or Catholicism, I mean this, the no, and we'll get to it. I'm amazed in the book how you talk about, and it's really important to question yourself to be able to have dialogues with others so that you can learn your wrong. That's right.

And that's so important, and you emphasize so much. But I kept writing science, science, because that's what science is all about. Science is, first of all, a social. You don't do it alone. And it's based on a dialectic. It's based on throwing your ideas out and being willing to have them being torn down. And it is a, well, it's jumping ahead. You talked about dogmatism.

And I think Robert, somewhere in the book, you say, you know, the big thing is you'll, you criticize other people's ideas and that's great and open up. but then you become dogmatic in your own. And I think what I love about science is it recognizes that we're all that way. We're all flawed. And it provides us a set of tools to overcome that. So science, the process of science is based on saying scientists are human. And therefore, they're flawed.

They're biased. They're all of the things that humans are. And we're going to provide your tools that overcome that. So, yeah, you're a scientist you want to believe, but other people will show you that you're But you never overcome it. I mean, you can be a Persian when it comes to science. So you got a community over time that's involved in putting forward arguments and producing evidence, seeing what kind of logical valid conclusions you can reach.

But you never overcome it because you're perennally in that process. Yeah, that's right. It's Cooney and in that sense of acknowledging that you're going to have frameworks and paradigms that are dominant. And those parents have their own dog, which is... Yeah, well, I don't... I think Coon is a little, my opinion, out of date in that regard. I think you're right that what science... In fact, hey, I'm going to get to the point where you talk about later what truth is.

But... And it's funny how I'm just going way over where I was going to do later. But the nice thing about science is there is no such thing as scientific truth. There's only scientific falsehood. and it's really what you guys are saying, that science can never prove something to be true. It can have a theory that's correct, but it can always be subsumed by something deeper,

and you never have a complete view of the truth, which is something I know that Cornell in your own way, and Robert Yoth, I mean, you all emphasize this, even in you talk about the traditional philosophers recognizing this, that we never have a complete view of truth. But science codifies that. It basically, we even have a quantitative way of understanding it. That will always, you always can have an experiment around the corner that's going to show that you have to revise what you thought was right.

It works. And let me just say, what works will always be true. So Newton, I drop a ball a million years from now, whenever we, whatever theory of quantum gravity or whatever we have, if we're around, it's going to be a totally different fundamental picture of the world. But the ball will still fall and it'll still be described. by Newton's laws. So that's the other thing people don't realize is that scientific revolutions aren't like human revolutions, although even human revolutions don't do away with everything they've before, as you know. They subsume it. So what's true before is always incorporated within the new thing, but it's always, it's never complete. And I, and I, and so when you guys talk about that, I keep again

saying science, science, science. Well, I agree with most of what you just said there, but everything that sounds right to me about what you've said about science, the same can be said for philosophy. Going all the way back to the very beginning, our father, Socrates, is, you know, testing every view he holds. And in fact, he's formally denying that he knows anything, except that he doesn't know anything. The one truth he'll affirm is that he doesn't know anything. Yeah, absolutely. I don't think we're meant to take him literally about that. He does know some things. Yeah. But nothing is immunized from critique, from challenge. And I think the way I'd sum it up is not that, you know, there's no truth in science. I'd rather say science understands just as philosophy when it's sound

and when it doesn't become dogmatism understands that all truth is revisable. It's revisibility. And that's connected to our foul ability, which means that we never have a genuine interest in shutting down critique, challenge, immunizing our beliefs against critique or challenge. We've always got to be open in view of the fact, the knowledge that we do have, that our knowledge is partial at best and prone to error. And not only partial and prone to error, absolutely, that I was going to paraphrase Cornell later on I have some notes where he said it a different way. ultimately that we have to also realize that the easiest person to fool is yourself.

Oh, absolutely. And therefore, we have to take special care to realize when something seems special or wonderful doffs, we have to be asking ourselves, is there a reason that it does? Or am I just fooling myself? That's right. And that's probably the hardest part about being a scientist in a way. You know, I've seen experimentalists who've been deluded because, you know, if you do an experiment, you always get some weird result.

It's just statistics, right? and you know something weird happens and the real problem is when the scientist says oh there's something significant there without asking the question is it just an accident and and so go on sorry the danger the danger that cornel has pointed to so often and here here is channeling hyac is the danger of science falling into scientism yeah and supposing that that the only truth is truth that can be ascertained by the methodologies of the natural sciences. There are methodologies that are appropriate to the national natural sciences that are not appropriate to the study of literature, to the examination of some philosophical questions.

That there are things that when your subject matter is empirical, then there are certain methods that apply. If they're interpretative, different methods of plot. Well, yes and no. Again, we're jumping ahead here. I guess I'm a big scientist, scientismist in a sense. No, no, in a sense. because when people say that, I say, yeah, but it's really empirical. When you're doing literature, you're reading the spoken word. The question I was going to ask, let me ask Cornell, because I think he mentioned the word revolution. It's not much of reading. It's not much of reading, Lawrence.

It's discerning meaning. I know discerning meaning, but what are you using? You're using reason, experience, evidence, all of the things that I think science uses. So let me throw this out. And sovereignty is introduce that. I want you to both jump on me because it's part of it. my anti-religiosity and and that is I was going to ask you a question I maintained that no knowledge has ever come from by revelation now I know that is an anathema to at least at least

maybe it isn't anathema to Cornell but he used the word revelation you don't use it so much George and Robert I mean I said oh god George Robert yeah it's all right they're both it's probably having two first names but um uh three actually yeah yeah it's true but but but I don't think revelation is ever, there's no evidence that I can see that I know of, and I'm happy to be wrong here, although no one's yet to convince me, that revelation produces knowledge. It's always evidence, reason, deep thought, and to me that's the process of science, and testing, testing our ideas to see if they're right, being willing to change them.

But see so much. And that's true for literature, humanities, philosophy. It's true for science, too. Of course it is. So much hanged on what you mean by. revelation. Now, when I hear you say exemplary physicists, there's no scientific truths,

I come to the defense of science and say, yes, there's truths in science. Of course they're true. Give me one absolute truth. No, I didn't say absolute. Oh, okay. You're right. They're provisional truths. I didn't say absolute at all. But then you trotted out called Popper's falsification. You see, falsification is not the same as warranted

and assertibility. I think Popper's wrong about that. He gets part of it right. He doesn't get enough of it right. Warns and defertability is much more stronger, and it is headed toward a truth pursuit, but it's not capital T truth. It's not absolute truth in that sense. There is such a thing. That means, though, that, and this is where Einstein is right, the interplay of evidence, argument, intuition, imagination, speculation,

evidence underdetermined, making hypotheses that go beyond the evidence that can open up new insights, my brother. Oh, yeah. That's part of the history of science itself. Of course. But if by revelation, what we mean is a certain kind of intuition, a certain kind of insight, and goes back, we can get Emersonian and it talks about your personal experience. When you fell in love, let's say, were there some.

revelations that were intuitive that you knew to be true based on your experience and nothing to do with mathematical knowledge and nothing to do with quanta tale of analysis but you just said based on your experience brother orange in love no but that's where do we should no but hold on robber you come in a second yes well first of all let me just say in science here's what we say we don't say this is true this is fault we say this is likely to be correct this is unlikely to be correct. That's all we get into science. And we can quantify that, which is the beauty of science. We can say, and that's it. So it's likely that the sun will rise tomorrow. Very, very likely. Truths at this moment, small tea, are better than the falsehood. Because we're not relativist.

We're not relativist. But you said revelation. And I, now I want to come back here and really, really, really parse this a little more carefully, although it's not where I intended to go. But this is so much fun. You talk about intuition, but intuition is based on experience and based on evidence, past evidence, and even often not always reason applied to it, but some level in which your brain is working. And so there's no insights that you get about the world that are profoundly true, or that add to knowledge of the world that aren't based on the reason, reflection, evidence, testing. That's what I would say. If that's scientism, then I'm, then that

Let me give you a brief example before we move to Brother Rob. Okay. Move to the fifth section of the old on the west wind. Okay. He's talking about muses. He's talking about the way in which the wind

has affected the clouds and the waves and all of a sudden now it's affecting him so that the very leaves that come out of him become the words themselves. So he calls it inspiration and intuition, something bigger is working inside of him that's not reducible to just his personal experience. He's opened himself to something. We don't know what it is, but he can't be a reductionist about it. He can't be scientific in the sense that it's got to be

only the evidence or only the argument. Something else is happening. Once you open that door, my brother, we would William James and company, right? Is that something more? What is that something more. Oh, if he'd get Polly Vailen at this point something to multiple interpretations, then something more could be amused. It could be God like Socrates himself has voices, right?

He's got voices from where? The God, well, it's hard to say. But if we go back to Brother Lawrence in love, something is working through you. Something is affecting you that's not reducible to your personal experience. I think that's true.

in terms of your magnificent scientific reflection. You're talking about a universe from nothing. Oh, my God, you'd make it all kind of leaks. This is fascinating stuff. It is fascinating. This is a free play of intelligence and intuition and maybe a little openness to something bigger than by the lines. That's why I do science,

because the universe, the imagination, the universe is so much greater than the imagination of mine or any humans. I learn from the universe because I'm forced to. You're right, there's something else out there, and that's what science is all about. And I would say, yeah, of course, there's things that are beyond me, but beyond me in a sense that I only don't know where they come from, but that doesn't mean they don't come from somewhere. They don't just pop in into your mind.

I can't reduce it to where what set of experiences or what, you know, because perhaps more like you, Brother Cornell, rather than you, brother, Robert. We're not rational. We know where it comes from. We don't know. We don't know Y'all way. we don't know God, we don't know Jesus, we don't know Allah, we don't know. We know we created Jesus, but anyway, that's a different story.

We'll get to there. Well, we've got our strong interpretation. No, he's a Palestinian Jewish brother now. I'm hearing some heavy-duty dogmatism here. I don't know. But, you know, but the point is that we, you know, in that sense, again, to, I know you guys have a dialogue. I think Robert thinks humans are more rational than you do. Right.

I come, I guess I come in the middle somewhere. Or maybe I actually, no, I'm a big human. I do think reason is a slave of passion. Oh, you do? You buy the human. I think if it wasn't, if it wasn't, we wouldn't need science. That's my point.

We need this well-defined methodology because we all want to believe. We all want things. I think you're acquainted all knowing. And science overcomes that. What was that, Robert? Sorry. I think you're equating all inquiry with science. Of course.

Now, of course, in the old classic sense of the word, that's true. Science is just the pursuit of knowledge. In a way. Understand science. And when our listeners hear that word, they're going to be thinking of the natural sciences and the particular methods appropriate experimentation and so forth that are appropriate. Testing, reflection, reason. Well, now, but of course, some of those, like reflection, pertain not only to the natural sciences, but to fields outside the natural science.

Yeah, I mean, that's why I don't think it's, I mean, we tend to complementalize it. But what I'm saying, when I read throughout your book, both of you, beautiful discussions about testing, reflection, changing your mind, being willing to be wrong, all of that, which is so important to both of you, is central to me. but what I'm saying is that basically it's not you often I'm actually surprised in some sense you define it you base it on your on the Christian experience which I was surprised to see personally but but but those things are just a process which I think is common to everything I call it the scientific method but I just don't see I see a commonality in the way all music literature social science humanities and science all go about things and And that commonality are exactly the things you described. Reflection, being willing to be wrong, dialectic, discussion, reason, all of that.

And that's when I think of science, that's what I think of. And I don't mean to be either dogmatic or patronizing, because I don't think science is more important than literature or drama or music in any way to the human experience. It tends to work and produce technology, and therefore it has certain values. But it's not fundamentally more important. It's just that it codifies the very things you've been talking about, I think. But again, I don't know if you disagree with me. I'd be happy to hear why if you do.

Well, I'm having trouble isolating the proposition that you got on the table for affirmation or dissent. Well, I'm just saying I don't think, I guess what I'm arguing is that there's a commonality to all of human inquiry, all the development of knowledge. And none of it, all of it has a same. the same basic tools, the same basic requirements, and I think they're all the opposite of revelation. Okay, I disagree with the end. But here's what I agree with. Knowledge is insights.

Insights are insights into data. There is no innate knowledge. That's this mistake to believe that things innate knowledge. Strictly speaking, knowledge is not a matter of intuition. If by intuition, we mean literally what intuition means, which is knowledge that is the fruit of no insights into data. So data-free, data-free knowledge. No. And if all knowledge is insights, insights into data, the data are supplied by experience.

All right. And so knowledge is, in the words of the philosophical theologian Bernard Lonergan, a dynamic combination of experience, understanding, and judgment. All knowledge begins with the senses. This is just classic medieval philosophy, actually. And then, you know, we move on the basis of our intellectual operations from experience to a certain level of understanding the experience. We identify the conditions under which something will be or not be the case. And if we can then reach the conclusion that the conditions for being the case had been fulfilled, then we move beyond understanding to judgment. And this is Largan's point about knowledge being or insights being the product of experience, understanding,

and judgment. So the mistaken views on this account are, one, a naive realism, which would simply equate knowledge with experience. And experience makes impressions on the brain, and it just records the stuff like in a dictionary, words in a dictionary back here. Now, it's more than that. the second mistake would be to stop it at understanding. This is sometimes called idealism epistemologically, that we move from experience to some level of understanding, but we still think that all we can understand is what seems the case to us. We can't reach what is in fact true out there. What's called critical realism is the view that we can move from experience to understand, to judgment so we can say that something is the case out there. And that's going to be true of

every discipline, whether the natural sciences, humanities, the social sciences, and if that's what you mean, then I do agree with you, that all knowledge, all inquiry has the same basic structure. Where I would disagree, I think, Lawrence, if I'm attributing this to you correctly, and if I'm not just correct me, is that we can use the same methods, the same methodologies, the same modes of inquiry to figure out what is the case in biology or in physics that we use in, say, history or constitutional or illegal interpretation or the interpretation of literature, literature or music or something like that. There are certain experimental methods that are entirely appropriate in knowledge yielding in chemistry and physics and biology that are not

available to... I think I would agree with you there. My point, I think you put nail on the I think very clearly there in the sense that when you talked about the last step of judgment, I don't like to use the word judgment myself, but what is the, are we assuming that we're really capturing the real world where physics has the advantage is that you, you don't, we don't judge that we're saying we understand the real world by saying we do, we go to an experiment. And if it's wrong, so that's where we have that extra ability to say, are we really understanding the real world? let's do the experiment. Oh, it was right. Well, maybe we're understanding the real one. So we're being

guided by this thing that you don't have the opportunity so much in in certain other fields. Although, although, again, I would argue that I would argue, though, that you sometimes even do. Let's take literary criticism or something, you know, far removed. You can make an onsas about Chekhov, as you guys like to talk about it, or Joyce. And I was going to ask you why the dad is your best shorts are ever written in English. You just reread it. You get to read it tonight and you'll be convinced. I told myself tonight I'm going to reread it, but I wanted to ask you.

I was going to ask you why you thought it was, but let's get there in a second. You can make a presumption about something and then you can check his other, his other writing. And so you could, you do have access to external modalities or whatever you want to call you, ways of checking to see if your judgment is correct. But you remember now, there's no problem with that. But so that's not that different than physics. You're not going to be able to run a controlled experiment.

Yeah, yeah. It's harder to run control, especially it's, in social sciences, probably the hardest place to run controlled experiments because people are so complicated. But see, that's, you know, but there's two things at stake here in a certain one is that

the very notion of method. And I talk about Goddimer being my favorite philosopher. I studied with him for you. His critique of any form of method as opposed to ways of approaching a subject matter and being respective of what the subject matter is. So I think that there is a continuity between what used to be called the geisdivist and the nature of wisdom chap, the natural sciences and the human. I think there's continuity. I don't think there's a major fisher. Sure. So C.P. Snow and others, when they talk about the two cultures, they might talk about the descriptive role of physics departments versus English departments, but what's going on at a

human level is continuous. So I'm agreeing with you on that, but the difference is here, though, that in physics, you're not really able to linger along with the why question. When you say it's turtles all the way down, well, that's a conclusion that has a certain conclusion in physics, maybe because you're not living a life. But when you're a participant in living a life, meaning and structures of feeling, and structures of appreciation and friendship and love and sacrifice and services and something bigger,

you don't have to worry about that with the quantums. You say, you don't have to worry about that with the quantum vacuons and the quantum fluctuations and so forth and so on, right? It's better than, again, I think you've made a really important point and I think it's one of the reasons people misunderstand these fundamental questions about, you know, why is there something rather than nothing or,

it is because in fact, in science, the why question makes no sense often, because it presumes purpose and meaning, whereas there may be no purpose and meaning. In human affairs, we make our meaning, and that's a different. We fill our lives with meaning and purpose, and so it's a very, it's a concept that is familiar to us

and integral to our everyday life, but when it comes to understand the universe, it may just be irrelevant and it may not be, in fact, I would argue that any time you ask the why question in science, you're really asking how. You're never presuming person. Why would you ask the why question in science? What was that? That's not what, that's what science is not about why questions. I know, but we use it because we're colloquia. You're right. Science is about how? Never why. And so it's not wise or something rather than nothing. It's how is there something rather than nothing. But we say it because we're human and why means so much to us as

individuals. Well, it does. But then there's the domain of why questions and the intellect is used there as well. And in some ways, it functions exactly the way it functions when we're engaged in a scientific inquiry. But we use different methods, because the methods of experimental methods, for example, are not going to answer why questions. Well, let's see. Why does she love me? Why did I don't know with their experimental questions? Why should I want her? Why did she? Why did she? Why did she, or actually, better still, we've experienced all of us of that, why did she leave me? Maybe there are good empirical reasons for that. Why shouldn't I betray my friend?

You know, there's no way you do a scientific, there's a right answer to the question, why shouldn't I betray my friend? But you don't get at that answer by using the methods that are appropriate in physics or in biology. I'm sorry, I think you use reason, experience. No, no, no, no, no. Again, Lawrence, of course you're using reason. Because you can't answer the question why without knowing what the consequence. But here's the point.

You can't answer the question why without knowing how, right? You can't, if I don't know the impact of my actions, which is science, then I can't answer the question why, right? Why shouldn't I kill you? Often you have. Why is a question of explanation? If you have a why question based on the Ptolemaic universe, you've got a problem. So the why and the how are still tied together.

If you got a why in terms of your understanding of psychological dynamics and it's thoroughly pre-Froidian and has nothing to do with certain kinds of instincts and drives and nothing to do with how selves and egos are constituted, you don't have to be a Freudian to accept those issues being very important, right? So even as Christians, when we ask the why question, we're not unafraid of the how people of the society. We say bring it on, bring on all the how you can get rid of. As long as the natural scientists don't become imperialistic, as long as the natural scientists don't become imperialistic and try to answer the why questions with the methods of science or dismiss the why questions is not valid questions. Well, yeah. Why should I not betray my friend is a perfectly valid question. The intellect can go to work on it, but you're not going to solve it with an. experiment. Okay, well, let me say that let's see if we can find a place to agree here at a point,

which is, which is before we move on to the maybe the first of the 58 questions I listened to that I was going to ask you. But anyway, here, that if long as we accept that there are certain domains where the why question is totally inappropriate. And when it comes, when it comes to trying to understand the universe, as far as we can tell in every, and we may one day be wrong on this, the why question is totally irrelevant. But it's not irrelevant when we want to understand the why of human dynamics, maybe. What was that?

If we're trying to understand how the universe exists, is not an, is not a, is not a, is not a scientific question in science. No, it's not a scientific question. That's a cosmological, right? That's a, well, I'm a cosmologist, theological question. Yeah, I know, well, you know,

it's a theological question because you make it a theological question. Well, okay, let's put it this way. Is it a valid question? It's a question we can ask. It's just not useful for science. If it's a valid question, now, can we answer the question or does it make sense to approach the question by the use of scientific methods? Your answer is going to be no. Maybe let me step back.

It may not be a valid question. I think it's like saying what is the color, what is the color of what's the color of the word fast? I mean, that's a question I can ask, but it may not be a valid question. Exactly right, but it's an unintelligible question. So I think we're driving you to the point where you're going to have to bite the bullet. You're not going to want to do this. And say that this question, you know, why is not a valid question and the same question for the same reason that, you know, how tall are leprechauns is not a valid question.

And yet everybody understands that it's a perfectly valid question. Well, yeah, okay. Interesting point. I think, which means we've got to use methods. We're going to have to use the old nog and the intellect, but approach the problem philosophically not in terms of physics. Philosophy, but reflection and reason and evidence. Again, I love, you know, by the way.

But not experimentation. Oh, I think even for philosophers, there's experimentation. Well, there's this funny, there's a funny new stuff called experimental philosophy. You do thought experiments. Oh, no, Einstein did. I mean, you're a different kind of thought. They're not controlled experiments. Well, no, but if you say you're a utilitarian, like my friend Peter Singer, I know you both.

We know securely. We're trying to answer a question that we have by comparing possible answers to knowledge that we have securely. That's all thought experiments end up being. But that's not what scientists characteristically do. They do experiments. Yeah, I'm not a theorist, so I do. Well, yeah. But I do thought experiments in my head.

but let me just ask question my problem with the word why and then we'll go somewhere else is not a problem it's just that why presumes purpose so why is a useful question when you're looking when you're thinking about purpose and it's not a useful question when you're not thinking about purpose can we agree on that i think we can but i don't think you want to be dogmatic and assuming that there's no purpose no well no absolutely we we shouldn't be dogmatic there may be as i often tell people if if tonight i look up at the sky and the stars rearrange them to themselves, either in Aramaic or Hebrew or even English, to say, I'm here, then I might begin to think

a little differently about the universe than I do. But so I'm game. Just do it for me. Just do it for me. No, you remember, brother, our conception of truth is very, both Greek and I digarian, I hate to invoke the Nazi gangster, but he's got the philosophic insight here. It's Alephia. It's revealment and concept. now that's true when it comes to nature that's true when it comes to human relations that's true

when it comes a whole host of context yeah but but the difference is the difference between purpose and prediction you see that for the most part the new science is after day card especially is really much about predicting future experience in light of past experience and that's a certain kind of purpose but it's very very small p prediction prediction is the purpose of science. That's the reason why you engage in. That's what I'll talk is all about. It's all about. Now, why talk is not about prediction at all. It's about purpose in a more meaningful, substantive sense of purpose, right? Well, when you say more meaningful, it's in a way that creates meaning. I mean, the why question creates meaning.

You can sort of do not like to assert that. That's an assertion. What? Well, I mean, the question is that creates meaning. I mean, the inquiry might be into what is the meaning of this? Yeah, yeah. What should I agree? Or what is meaning? Because you remember the moment that we talk about in Nietzsche, right? When Nietzsche says, what makes us think

that truth is a good thing? What makes us think that the truth doesn't lead to self-destruction? What makes us think when we raise the issue of meaning that meaninglessness is where they evidence points. And I see, that's where Nietzsche's headed. That's exactly where Leoparty's headed.

That's where Kafka in certain moments at it. But Kafka is so complicated that he's got so much love flowing through him. And you can see it with Samsa and his sister and so forth. So that there's more going on at Kafka because he's just subject to so many interpretations and there's no way of choosing one or the other oftentimes. But what means then, though, that nihilism, which is lack of meaning is also an answer to the question of meaning. So we can't assume that by raising the question of meaning that is going to move toward me and Brother Robbie's position, because we're over against denialism of all varieties, but we know we have to refer with.

Yeah, I think, I mean, but to me, it's the sort of my life work in physics, say, or my knowledge of physics leads me to the empirical. likelihood that there is no meaning to the universe. And so I become, I guess, I would say, empirical, the empirical evidence suggests makes me in the terms you put it as a Nicholas. I don't think of it that way, because I do think people make their own meaning when it comes to the human experience, but cosmically, there's no meaning or purpose to our existence or to the universe. And the only reason I say that is because I see no evidence in everything I've studied about the universe. Now, other people obviously can come to different conclusions, but that's, that's, I've been

driven to it by my study of the universe, not because of maybe I have some interpretelection to be in a list. I don't know. But I like to think I've been driven by evidence rather than bias. But, you know, we're all... You haven't been. You haven't been. Why? Thank you for letting you know. Right. Yeah. You presupposed what I think you previously denied, which is that you can use the methods of science to reach but profitably study questions. questions that are not themselves appropriate for science. It's not, it's not the evidence of science that is, is driving you to say that the why questions are out of bounds. Because the, the, the, the, the, um, the apparatus of science simply can't address those questions. So you got to,

you got to choose what, you can. No, I think let me be a little bit here then. And it's undoubtedly my fault, Robert, not yours here for a misunderstanding me. Because I, let me, look, I become, I guess when I first became sort of well known on, I mean, to some, I mean, to some of it's a little bit of a bit of it. I mean, some extent publicly was when I fought the teaching of intelligent design in high schools. Yeah. The biologists weren't doing their job at the time, and I spent a lot of time. So I saw it as an attack on science, this effort to put intelligent design in the high school biology classroom. And so let's take intelligent design as an example. So intelligent design is somehow says that the evidence tells us that cells were clearly designed. And in fact, it's the opposite.

it. The evidence tells us that there's no, that in particular, there's no evidence of any conscious design when it comes to life. And that doesn't mean there isn't, by the way. It just means there's nothing specific that tells you, yes, you had to insert intelligence in order to make this cell function this way. It couldn't have done otherwise. There's no way natural processes could do it. There's no way evolution could do it. And by evolution, I mean not an undirected process, but a process directed by natural selection and mutation. So there's an example of what I mean, I think,

that the evidence, there's no evidence of explicit design. And that's all science can do. What science can't do, I agree with you, is say there's no designer. That, I think, is true. But I think science can say, is there any evidence that you need an intelligence beyond just chemistry and physics and natural processes to get from A to B.

And so I think that's a valid. It sounds to me like you've got some adversaries who think that you can use scientific methods to arrive profitably at answers or to analyze profitably why questions. And if your point against them is, well, no, scientific methods are not appropriate to that subject matter. You can't profitably address the why questions. Well, then I agree with you. But it seemed to me you were making a snobloor point, and I apologize if I missed you,

which was that you can use the scientific method to show that there's no answer to the why questions. No, no. All you can do is, no, I guess I'm just trying to say it's quite limited. Science is much more humble and even I am than people sometimes claim. But the point is that always,

we can ask is where does the evidence lead us? And if you can just say, is there evidence for X? Is there evidence for purpose? And you can say, I have no evidence for purpose. That doesn't mean there's no purpose, but I can at least use a scientific method to look for evidence of purpose. Do you agree with that? Oh, sure. Well, I guess maybe I'm the outlier here. I mean, I don't see what the scientific method itself is going to do to help you with the Y questions. So it seems to me that that Let's get away from why to purpose.

Okay. Well, then I just take those as synonymous. Okay, well, I mean, you really don't think that science cannot You can look at the history of biology and ask is there a purposeful direction to evolution? And you can ask that question.

And the answer, maybe we don't know, or the answer is yes or no. And I think what biology, I know what biology would say is there's no evidence that evolution has a purposeful direction. And I think that's a fair scientific question and one in which the biology community

has definitively answered. Do you not agree? Guys, I'm glad to see Cornell's on my side here, at least, anyway. Let me give you an example. Sorry, go on. In a particular moment, in the end, I'm still very much with Robbie, but let's look at it just slightly differently.

Let's look at it slightly differently. Let's look at it from the banish point of human experience in history, right? So you got huge dialogues on natural religion or Shelling's essay on essence of human freedom or the powerful text, the prose poem, and Grand Inquisitor, right? So you've got Jewish brothers and sisters in concentration camps. Yeah. Right? You got African buzz and sisters on slag shields.

You got Armenians. You got Palestinians in Gaza. You got Muslim Uyghurs in China. And we say, well, what evidence would lead us to infer? that there is a good God, that there is a powerful God. And at that point, it's not a creative designer going through nature. We're talking about it's going through our hearts and minds and soul. And so to Brother Robbie and I say, well, in the face of that overwhelming evidence of human wretchedness

that is persistent every generation. I just use a few examples, but we don't. You're used to the word wretched. I love it. I'm going to use it so much more often now than I did before. I have to read the book. You know, when you talk about it. It doesn't have the last word.

That is to say that there is still some counter evidences available to human beings, no matter how weak and feeble they are. That lead us to infer that as wretched as we are, it doesn't cancel all of the love. love the joy. The joy. I was waiting for you to use the word joy. Oh, absolutely.

That's what makes you, yeah, that's different, Nietzsche and you is that, yes, the world is wretched, but it's also joyful. And, you know, by the way, here's my late friend, Cornyn McCarthy, who I, Oh, one of a great, a great novelist now.

But he, when I first met him, you know, his books are dark, many of them. And he was such a chipper, happy guy. And I, and I, I remember meeting him, and, and we, start and how can you be so so happy? And he said this to me, which is actually now my mantra,

maybe it'll be, you can use it too for now. He said, well, I'm a pessimist, but that's no reason to be gloomy. That's wonderful. Isn't that wonderful? Yeah, I remember it from the day he told me about it. That's author Schopenhauer, right? Yeah, philosopher pessimism,

who goes to the opera every night and has wonderful times with his, dog and I was just reading of Maupu Sophtraibati short story beside Schopenhauer's corpse This is a short story of a follower of Schopenhauer and Mopuzov reflecting on their hero and he's laughing as he's on his deathbed

Just like William Blake He has a smile with a laugh Blake's laughing because he's invoking Jesus Christ Chauvinhauer's laughing for We don't know what but he still has that counter effort against the kind of wholesale pessimism. I think that McCormick is saying, look, I'm as pessimistic as Leopardi, but I'm not balaumy.

Exactly. The joy. Absolutely. When we look at those people in the concentration camps, when we look at those people in slavery, and we ask ourselves the question, should I oppose that or should I support them? Or more to the point, why should I oppose it? In fact, I should oppose it.

We're not going to get anywhere. We wouldn't credit somebody who said, well, I got an equation here. No, but you might say. We wouldn't get anywhere if somebody said, well, I'm going to run an experiment that we'll show you. You know, we're going to use our intellects to try to get at the answer, to try to show that there is, in fact, a profound inherent and equal human dignity that's. being violated by the slave system, by the concentration camps, by the Nazis, right? But we're not going to use the methods of the natural sciences. I think we do. Sorry, a little bit. I mean, you talk about inherent human dignity a lot

in the book, and I'm sure in life. And you, and I know that it's central, part of your belief in the inherent human dignity, not just come from Thomas Jefferson, but from the Bible, from the, from the, from the, from the, from the inherent God. I think the Bible, I think the Bible articulates it. Okay. But I would argue that one can come to the same conclusion without God. And because I would share... And I think we can use the methods of science. We can use the methods of genetics.

We all humans share... I share a common humanity with you for so many biological groups, both of you, with all humans. Not only that, I share atoms. I'm breathing in the atoms today that you breathed out the other day. And so we share all of this common humanity. And I would argue in some sense, for me, science in every way, we have the same DNA, we have the same ATP, we have the same nucleic acids. That inherent commonality tells me that all humans deserve the same kind of dignity or same kind of treatment because we are the same. There you go.

Everything was science up until that last normative conclusion. I know, I know. But what I'm saying is I use the results. judgment, but you did not reach that valid judgment. Of course, I agree you can't get odd from his. Okay, but you can't get damn close. But I guess my point is, you can't even get close. Will you agree with you?

But hold on. Can't get off from it. I guess my point is you can't get ought from his, but you can't get ought without is. If you don't know what is, is then any conclusions you have about odd are ridiculous. Absolutely. You know, we've all said that a million times. That's not.

No, you're right about. Yeah. You're right about it. I mean, I've got to know whether that's a human being in the bush and not say a rabbit that I'm hunting in order to know whether to shoot into the bush. But it's not by the scientific methods that would show me that it's a human being rather than a rabbit, that I decide if it's a human being.

It's reason. Well, but let me get. I've asked the question. I was addressing his Islamic audience once and I, well, I've done this a bunch of times. And I basically said, so the question is, why do you kill your neighbor? And I asked, if you stop believing in God, would you kill your neighbor? And at once someone put up their hand. Okay, but most of the time, people realize that they wouldn't do it.

And they realized they wouldn't do it for a whole bunch of reasons that they thought about what the, if I come, my neighbor, then my neighbor can kill me. And we can't have a society together. And, and, and, and, and, I mean, I think Cornell in your book echoes, I thought of Rousseau, when you said this, Cornell, you said, basically we can't have freedom without constraints. Now, I know you guys criticize Rousseau, but to me, that's the same as him saying, you know, man is born free, but forever lives in chains. It's the same idea that if we allow, if we allow each other to kill our neighbors and don't have any legal, don't have any constraints on that, then we have anarchy and we'll have clearly, and then I can ask, what does anarchy mean? It means that I can

be killed when I walk up my door, and maybe I don't want that to be the case. So it seems to me there's a whole bunch of rational reason-based arguments why you should behave in the way that you might think would be based on values. Brother Lawrence, you raised that question to the Muslim audience. And while only the one person puts up his hand, okay, I get that. But we'll get to ask yourself this question. Is Alexander the great, great? Oh, I know that's in your book, okay? Yeah. And the answer to that is not. Well, no, I don't think, I think that's dogmatic. I think the answer is, the answer is it's complicated, right?

There was certain greatness in him. You know, in fact, I too was in a movie once, but with Werner Herzog made me a villain in one of his movies. And there's a great line in that movie. Someone's talking about Alexander the Great, and apparently he, someone gives him a cup of water, you know, when the troops are starving, and he pours it out. And he says, too much for one, not enough for many.

So he didn't want to drink water when the troops were not. And so that's kind of great, even if what you're saying is that power isn't greatness. I know the point you're making is that power isn't greatness, but that doesn't mean it wasn't great, right? Alexander the Great was not called Alexander the Great because he poured the water out. Alexander the Great was called Alexander the Great because he showed that he could conquer and dominate and subjugate people all over the known world. That was why I was given the title, The Great. And for an enormous number of people throughout history and even today, it's in something like that. Conquest, domination, subjugation, that greatness lies.

It's not kind of like written into the code of the human mind. I'm surprised you because you say the opposite in your book. You say that if I have students now, would they say he's great? I was surprised. You'd say most people would say he's not great. And I was surprised because we have America, make America great again for the same reason,

subjugation, all of that crap that you just talked about is what people are voting into in this current administration. Throughout most of history and across cultures, people have identified great. Now, let's get to my students, right? And most of my students would say he's not great. Now, what accounts for that? What accounts for the fact that my students don't see things today?

Most of my students are secular, but what accounts for them not seeing things today? The way people in Alexander the Great's time and a lot of people, other people in the world today, saw is great. Now, there's no way to tell that story without leaving religion out of the picture. There's no way to tell that story without leaving Christianity out of the picture. The reason people don't think Alexander's the greatest great. The reason my students today and the reason you and the reason Brother Cornell and me are not like the people in Alexander the Great's Time who regarded him as great because he was capable of subjugation, domination, conquest, is that we're heirs to a culture which celebrates compassion, decency, care, goodness, the widow, to care for the widow, the orphan, the loving, what's the Hebrew word for loving kindness, Gordon? Hesed. Hesed.

Hesed. Yeah. But the reality here is, though, the concrete history based on evidence and experience leaves us to conclude that religious and non-religious folk specialize in killing other people.

Absolutely. And you make that point really well, yeah. So that I think what Robbie and I do overlap. would be, well, we're convinced that even looking at the dark side, the underside of Christendom, which has a long history. Yeah, long and checkered history. Jews against Arabs, against Turk. Yeah.

Black folk, women, and so forth, that that love ethic, that love ethos, that love enacted and embodied is still a fundamental source of accounting. prevailing force against this Alexander the great definition of greatness. Yep. Well, you know, look, I think it's one of, this is where I, you know, and again, I recognize my, I'd be willing, I recognize expertise that both of you have that, you know, although I'm a student of history, probably not adequately as much as either of you, but I, my perception, based on my limited knowledge, is that Christianity was around for a long time,

when those wonderful things you're talking about weren't necessarily a central piece of societal infrastructure and people didn't innately have the kind of sensibilities that we have today. And I would argue it comes from the Enlightenment, not so much really. I know you disagree with me, Robert, but I think if you look, there's nothing changed about Christianity between then and now, but there's a huge thing that's changed in society. And if I can look historically, I would say, well, you know, maybe people, maybe people, the enlightenment cause people that be able to ask questions, reason, change their minds, realize that there are no authorities.

By the way, you're a big person on authority. And both of you talk about authority. And authority is anathemat of science. In fact, one thing I want you to do. You believe in the authority of science. Well, no, no, no. They're scientific experts. In fact, there's a great quote, and I want to use this in your class.

You're in the biologists in their consensus. Hold on. Next time you teach your class. There's this great quote. You know, I looked at the books, you know, I love the book. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Aristow, L.E., you know, there's great. The one person you're missing that you should put in there is Galileo. You should have readings if you don't. And here's what Galileo said.

In the sciences, the authority of thousands of opinions is not worth as much as one tiny speck of reason in an individual man. And I think that's the point of science. There are no authorities. Any professor can be wrong. Any students can say you made a mistake. That's absolutely true. I agree with that. When you talk about the enlightenment, let's see. Do we talk about the alignment? Could you have gotten Soviet communism without the Enlightenment? Could you have gotten Nazism without the invite and the Enlightenment? Okay. Knowledge doesn't necessarily make you, you know, reason doesn't that. No, no, no.

It's a, it's a tighter question than that. It's a tighter question than that. Well, hold on. You've gotten these unprecedented tyrannies and totalitarian systems of the 20th century. Unknown to a lot of bad stuff. No, you could have gotten the tyrannies of the fourth century, or six centuries. Which are really bad. Different side, different tyrannies.

Or Nazi Germany. And the answer to that is clearly no. Well, why? I'm not so sure. I mean, Marx is a philosopher. I mean, is it a corruption of Enlightenment? Is it a corruption of Enlightenment ideals? Absolutely a corruption of Enlightenment ideals.

But just as there were many corruptions of Christianity, but it's by reference to those ideals, whether they're Christian ideals or Enlightenment ideals, that you critique the abuses and make it possible to overcome them, which I think was Cornell's point. Yeah, I guess so. It just seems to me, if I look at things in that notion, which as Cornell would say,

we all, has been abused as often in a scientific world as a non-scientific world because we are all wretched. But I would argue that the notion that people, the notion that people should be treated equally, the notion that people of a different color are not fundamentally different is, I would say science

has helped push that notion forward far more than religion, in my opinion. No, no, no, no, no. The Imago Day, I mean, the Amago Day, honestly, you get scientific racism out of the Enlightenment. You get scientific racism of the 19th century was also

re-git. You know that slavery was justified by religion as much as anything house. It was in the 19th century science, you got the apologesis of the black folk. Of course, you get these abuses, but I'm saying, at a fundamental level, religious folk they were calling for the common origin. I know people can abuse it, but I'm saying the fact is that you have the same DNA as I do,

that you have the same biological processes, that everything about your body is the same as mine. And in every sense, that factual bit of evidence is profoundly important in the recognition to me. And so that's what I mean by this. I mean, I'm not saying science was abused in every way. So can you think, can you think, can you think of that? July 4th, 1910, you got Jack Johnson fighting against Jeffrey. If you say they both have the same kind of biological structure, that same kind of protons and neutrons shot through them. But when Jack Johnson knocks out that vanilla brother and within two hours,

they kill 10 black people across the nation. All of those cells and protons and neutrons are not doing enough moral work for people to accept this black man as a human being who deserves. That's because humans are flawed. We all agree with that or maybe not Robert so much. We religious folk have been on the cutting edge all the time, not even most of the time. I'm saying in both cases, when it comes to the authority of science,

however we define authority, a sort of religion, whatever religion you're talking about, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, what is casteism, is a slice in each tradition that has been able to hold it together. Dittero is a great example of the Enlightenment, who is anti-imperial, anti-racist, and, I mean, that's a very rare thing. Same is true with Harriet Tubman,

who probably knows well because he had her Bible in his head. And Harriet Tubman doesn't represent all of Christianity. She's a particular black Christian woman who's loving everybody no matter what color. Same would be true with King. Same would be true with Rabbi Heschel. Same would be true with Dorothy Day. These are they who constitute the prophetic slice

of secular and religious. religious traditions. And there's a book that I wonder if you've read. It's by my colleague here at Princeton, Tom Leonard. Do you know Thomas Leonard, Cornell, Tim Leonard, and the history department? I just know the name, though, but. Do you know the book? It's called illiberal reformers.

Lawrence is out of book. No, I know. I've heard the title by and read the book. Wonderful. It's a wonderful book, but boy, it's a sobering book. It's a look at the eugenics movement. And who was where in the eugenics movement? And it makes very clear that the great and the good, the scientific establishment, the academic establishment, the leaders of American business, the leaders of the great foundations, the Rockefellers, the 14th.

They were all the ones. And it was all in the name of science and in the name of enlightenment ideals. And they really thought what kind of fool would be against improving the human race. Now, we know that what was wrong with eugenics now today is not just that they got the science wrong. it was that they had a fundamental fundamentally false understanding of human meaning and value things that cannot be understood except by reference to things you cannot taste, touch, smell, feel, things that you can't inquire into by scientific methods. And the only people who are standing up against eugenics in those days.

But here's the problem and I'm going to jump at because I know I'm back, well, I do value your time. I may not sound like I am because I hope we can go for another 20 minutes if you don't mind. I can't believe it's already. I know. I know. I thought I want you to, isn't this great? When we go to hours and it doesn't feel like it, to me, that's the wonderful thing.

I just counsel my three o'clock dialogue. This is too rich. I'm not leaving this. I'm not leaving this. I loved you before. I love you more now. But anyway, this is great. Thank you.

I'm actually truly honored by that because, but let me, you hit a point there. and again, it was a point I was going to go to later, and now I'm going to it now, because I'm not going to get to everywhere. You talked about they misunderstood human values. I would agree, okay? Okay. The one thing that does concern me,

and it's somewhere in the book, and Robert, you say this explicitly, more or less, that there are things that should not be done, that are wrong, that we should not allow because more or less it goes against Christian values, or at least it goes against values which you derive from being Christian. And the problem, you talk about the economy,

you talk about the market economy, there's some things thou shalt not do. There's some things that should not be sold. And what I always worry about that is... I made no appeal to the authority of the Bible or the Christian faith. Maybe not the authority of the Bible, but the question... But what you make appeal to is the authority of what is right and wrong. And you've...

Oh, yeah. Okay, fine. But here's my problem with that. And it's always been, who determines what's right and wrong? Well, that's what the problem is. Because I agree with you. And if you were determining for me what was right and wrong, I'd feel totally comfortable. But if Donald Trump was determining for what's right and wrong, I wouldn't be so comfortable.

So who determines this stuff? That's what bothers me about it. All right. So each of us, of course, has no choice, but does it decide for himself what is right or wrong? Now, that doesn't mean that we don't have corporate decisions that need to be made, right, including about what's right or wrong. Are we going to have a system of slavery or not? I can't dictate that individually.

You can't dictate that individual. You and I can have a individual view about, individual view about whether slavery is right or wrong. We have to have one. But somebody's got to decide to the society whether slavery is right or wrong. And there are different decision procedures that have been proposed over the years. These are kind of political scientists classify them as types of regimes. You can have a monarchical regime. You can have an aristocratic or oligarchic.

You can have a democratic process. And my own view of the matter is the best way of handling, the least bad way of handling them, is with a mixed regime. One that corresponds more or less to what the American founders had in mind when they, distinguishing it from a democracy, said that we should have a republic. So we're going to make our decisions corporately, and they're going to be important democratic elements of the decision procedure, but they will be constrained by, for example, a constitutional system of checks and balances, and by, for example, having constitutional guarantees that the judiciary is empowered to rule on, not getting the final say in every case, but nevertheless having a role. I think that's the safest and the best we can do. So what I do say, I think what you're pointing to is that while I believe in the market, and I probably would give more room for the market to operate than Brother Cornell would, I agree with Brother Cornell that not everything should be determined by the market.

There are some things that should not be for sale, like human beings, for example, should not be for sale. Now, we're going to have to make a decision about whether I'm right about that. Now, what's the procedure for making a decision? I kind of like our Republican, our constitutional Republican, system. I wouldn't want a pure democracy. Just put it up for a vote. Then we all, you know, raise our hands and we decide. I want a system of checks. I want constraints on power, even the power of the, of the demos. So I'm not strictly speaking a Democrat, but I want important

democratic elements to the process subject to the checks and balances that make us, strictly speaking, a republic rather than a democracy. Cornel, I don't, where are you on this? Well, I mean, a lot of this hangs on what we understand the background conditions to be. You know, I mean that if the condition for the possibility, even of the republic that you're talking about, is, you know, massive massacre of people or enslavement of people, that has to be taken into consideration in terms of the real, the concrete history, the actual history itself. I think in terms of my commitment to democratic practices and counter-majoritarian institutions contributing to democratic practices. You have to have courts that preserve rights and liberties. That's a precondition of any democracy, and the courts do not proceed in a democratic manner.

Their role is to ensure that civil liberties and rights of people, against the censoring, against the violation of free speech and free expression and so forth, their role is to create the preconditions for democratic flourishing. And so that's part of the mixed, the separation of checks and balances, I think, that Robbie's talking about. Absolutely, which is essential to us right now, and maybe it's not. Yeah, we're relying on it right now. Part of the problem there is, though, I mean, he, even with the courts.

We've had Supreme Court justices who were slaveholders and supporters and so forth. Because there's no guarantee. There's no guarantee. All we can do is there's a religious system that would give us the best chance. Absolutely. The safest, you know, exercise and caution. So you don't want a monarchical system. You might begin today with a wonderful monarch.

Our founders had the opportunity to make, he resisted it, which made him the perfect mark. He didn't want to be marked. They could have went in Washington. But then what happens next, right? You can try to do something where you identify the greatest among the group and you have an aristocracy. Well, you know, that generally doesn't work out very well. So, you know, democracies have their flaws. Part of why I don't want an unrestrained democracy. I want to constrain democracy. We know the tyranny of the majority. The tyranny.

There's no, there's nothing that the tyranny of the majority is very real. So I just don't think there's any perfection here. We just have to kind of, that's why, did I describe it a moment ago as the least bad? Yeah, yeah. But you know, but you talk about the paternity of the majority actually leads to another point, which I remember from the book and an important discussion. We're talking about Martin Luther King and just laws and civil disobedience, which, of course, I sympathize with tremendously. The question, of course, but what surprised me, once again, Robert, I think, more than more than Cornell. And I'm going to call you Brother Robert and Cornell because at this point, we're brothers. Absolutely. But, yeah. And I'm a brother with your brother. So then.

Well, yeah. Anyway, I like to think that I've risen, maybe one day I'll rise in. But anyway, that you argue in some sense that just laws, more or less you can't determine what's just laws without religion. And I mean, well, I can get the quote if you want. I mean, more than I'm kind of notorious for holding the view that's sometimes called natural law theory. I know, I know I'm, I don't want to misquote you. I'm going to quote you in this one. You say, I'm all for religion, by the way.

I mean, I'm not running away from religion. But you talk about, you talk about, let's see, I'm hoping this is you. Yeah, it is you. Now, we talk about a Republican civic order. and we can have government not only of the people, by the people, etc. But of course, in a Republican civic order, the people are themselves in a certain sense sovereign. But it will only work if the people understand that,

though sovereign in one sense, they are subject to a higher law, what King had in mind referred to the natural law and the law of God. Are you therefore saying that you cannot have a republic without a recognition of the natural law of God. With that, it won't be functional. Okay, so that's what I'm asking. So the natural law and the law of God.

So for King, we're under judgment. Where the human law is under the judgment of a higher law. And then he says, the natural law and the law of God. The natural law is the moral law, including principles of justice, right ordering of society, insofar as they are ascertainable by unaided human reason. even apart from revelation. Hold on.

Is there ascertainable unaided by human reason? No, no. Unated reason. That is reason unaided by revelation. Oh, okay. So, right, okay. Then there's the second thing that is the law of God. Now, the law of God can mean different things.

Sometimes it's the medieval's would refer to it as the eternal law. That is the ordering of the universe by God. as the creator of the universe. I think what you need to have any kind of a just system is the apprehension by the rulers, by the people themselves ideally, but at least by the rulers, that they are accountable to a higher law. Now, it'll be good enough if they believe there's a rationally attainable higher law, if they're Aristotle.

Okay. That'll work. That'll work. Okay. For King, it wasn't just. the natural law. Yeah, for King. It was also the. And for you, I think it's fair to say, right? Yeah. So, well, yeah, I mean, I'm a believer. I believe in God. So yeah, I would say that I would say with Lincoln that we're a nation under judgment, and that is that we're answerable to God. The kings,

the presidents, they didn't, they didn't create our rights. They didn't confer them on us. Therefore, they cannot legitimately take them away. They're not given to us by any human power. Now, where do they come from? We can have a debate about where they come from. We can have a debate about where they come from. You know, I'm going to ultimately say, well, ultimately, things are the way they are because God created the reality and the way it is. But whether or not you reach that judgment, if you reach the judgment that there is a moral law above the human law, and it's knowable by our natural reason, that gives you what you need to have a republic. So that rulers understand that they are answerable to principles of justice, that the, that the, that the, that the, the,

there's something beyond them, your positive law. They can't make something true simply by making it law. Okay. They can't make slavery okay by creating a law permitting slavery. Yeah. It's so long under the higher law. To reality, which you guys talk about a little bit. I mean, in some sense, reality has to win.

And reality is... Yeah, that's it. Yeah, being in touch with reality. That's right. One of my favorite science fiction writers wrote a quote, quote, said, reality is that which continues to exist even when you stop believing in it. Philip Dick. Oh, Philip K. Dick.

That's good. You see, that was exactly the issue between Tegor and Einstein. When Tegor said, there is no reality independent of human perception, almost like Barclay. And Einstein said, I'm more religious than you. Reality is independent of human consciousness. And he says, how do you know? I just that that's the postulate that I make that's a that's a certain kind of fiduciary element of my human inquiry that's a trust or faith that I have

reality is independent of human perception I'll give you a little bit I'll give me a little tool I often use it doesn't and of course you can't convince people of things they don't want to believe anyway but but you know people who talk about consciousness is somehow creating reality is if human consciousness is important they misunderstand quantum mechanics when they think human consciousness is relevant it's not important at quantum mechanics at all. But the best example is simply to look out at night at stars that are 2 million light years away. Actually take it, we're 20 million light years away, which existed, and for which the chemistry and nuclear physics of those stars was perfectly well producing

exactly the same thing as our sun was doing before human consciousness existed. So the very fact that those stars were working very well back then, and we can see it because we have the evidence of 20 million years ago, means that the human consciousness is irrelevant to the functioning of reality. You know, so it's a lot like that. What I usually do is appeal to just every day experience, Josiah Royce and others used to do this, namely this wonderful conversation we've had right now. There's no way it can be undone that the passage of time is such that we started at T1 and we're now at T-22 and we never can undo what has.

been done. That is a truth that can never be reversed. It's amazing, although we don't understand time very well, but you're right. I think, I mean, it's some people would argue that time itself is an illusion. I say that that's not an illusion because if you got, if you had if you had to teach a class 15 minutes ago,

it wouldn't be an illusion when the students would be mad at you. They'd be upset. Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. 45 years from now, the three of us will be physically dead. Yeah, absolutely. Consciousness. That's not a a mental projection, all you got to do is look at our coffins.

Yeah. Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, the point is that, yeah, so, so it, but anyway, I wanted to give you that little tool because I think it's important to really point out how relevant human consciousness is to, to, because people, because quantum mechanics gets abused. Right. No, I agree. To elevate human consciousness or consciousness beyond that.

And I think, I think, anyway, I forget how we got there, but, but that. Oh, that's true. I'm going to ask you three more questions and I'm going to let you go because I could talk well I could spend the whole I mean I've this is I'm enjoying it um oh oh let me ask you one I was I'll ask truth and beauty I want to get away from this is for Cornell this is for Cornell because Cornell's been truth and beauty um you know he said truth is inseparable from beauty goodness even the holy truth talk without beauty talk is impoverishing and and and then he quoted John Keach, which is lovely statement, beauty is truth, truth, beauty. I love that, but let me give another

quote that you may not know, but of a mathematical physicist, Herman Vile, lived around the same time as Einstein and did some important stuff. Herman Vial said, and I love this quote, because it demonstrates he's a mathematician, he said, when I have to choose between truth and beauty, I choose beauty. And he could do that because he was. a mathematician. I claim the sad thing about being a physicist is you don't have that option. And so what if truth isn't beautiful is what I want to ask you for now? Well, I mean, that was a certain version of the Nietzschean point that we made before, right? But if the value of truth itself has been overvalued, but truth itself generates such

negative destructive consequences, right? And that's what you see in Iceman cometh by Eugene. you know, Neil, people can't face the truth about themselves. So Sierski says you can't face the truth about themselves. Reality is too heavy. The burden of freedom is too overwhelming. Well, that's a serious challenge. It really is. I just think that, you know, one has to answer these kind of questions for oneself and

try to make the strongest case. As I mentioned with the real key quote about not just answering the question, but living the question because there's no theoretical resolution of the question. It's an existential affair back to the guard again. It's an existential affair. It really is. And I think, you know, somebody like Keats reminds us, think of the great philosophers who put beauty at the center.

Whitehead would say the same thing that the brother who I didn't know of, but I want to read more about him. Whitehead would say the same thing. George San Diego would say the same thing. truth has been overvalued. Beauty is much more important, but the two or so intertwined. I think there's something to be said for that. Well, yeah, I guess for me, the thing I guess is in the by the beholder.

I hope truth is. Oh, no, no, no. It's not just to be an eye to beholder. Partly so, but not only, those stars that you see, that's not just your eyes. That the symmetry of a mathematical equation, that's not just your eye. the beauty in Grand Canyon that generates a sense of the sublime that moves. Let me give you an example of the retro. Let me give an example you.

Let me turn to you. Let me turn to you. Doing some work, bro. No, I know, but let me turn to a source of wisdom, namely you. And say, okay, truth is sometimes not beautiful in the sense that the truth is that humans are wretched. That's right. But I think you would say, in fact, I know you'd say,

because I think you say it later in the book, and in general in other places. And I would agree with you that that doesn't make it not beautiful. The fundamental tragedy, the fundamental tragedy of being human is beautiful itself because we have the option of joy, we have the option of goodness. We have all of those things.

And so the fact that humans aren't good necessarily doesn't make it less beautiful because we're so complicated and all of those possibilities of existence are there, and that's beautiful. I think what you just said is beautiful, brother. You sounded poetic, not just physicists either. That's pure poetry, man. Well, yeah, that's a high compliment.

Melville says in the greatest short story written by an American, Billy Budd, that truth is a jagged edge. It cuts a variety of different ways. Now, when I say that Jesus Christ is the truth, and people say, oh, my God, he's really lost his mind at that point. Well, that includes what? That includes the cross. That includes the wretchedness. That includes the love.

That includes the greed and hatred and so forth. And at the same time, that includes the blood at the bottom of that cross that generates possibilities of a love that even the most powerful empire of the history of the world at that. moment cannot crush out. It cannot erase. It cannot eliminate. So when Jesus says, I am the truth. It's an existential truth that says, I can embrace all that is wretchedness, look unflinchingly at the darkness, and still hold on to a truth, a beauty, a goodness, a holy, though it makes very little sense in the eyes of the world. In fact, it is foolish. It's folly in a certain sense. Well, when you, I want to just add to that because you talk about exigent, actually you compared, you said, you talk about existential truth. And I don't know what you mean by you. You compare it to the truth of the physicist in one point. You say, physicist has some truth. Then there's existential truth. What's a difference? Well, we talked about that before. One has to do with the love of power, the love of prediction. The other has to do with the power of love and the power of surrendering. So that when we, when we, when we were talking about purpose tied to the why and prediction tied to the how. It's the same point. Yeah. It's the same

point there, you see. Okay, well, look, I'll leave that. I would push that further, but it is getting late. I want to give Robby. I want to quote, just a quick one right on then, Lawrence. So, I mean, I think when Cornell's talking about existential truth, he's talking about truths about meaning and value, which cannot be reduced to or expressed in equations that cannot be proven by experimental methods. You have to, a wrong with them that's been intellect of acts, but not those conducted using the methods of the natural sciences. Using reason? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's still questions of truth, right? It's still questions of truth. So you're going to be using reason, the nogum, the mind, the intellect. Yeah, as long as we use reason, we're willing to be wrong.

arguments. Yeah. That's science to me. This set of questions. So, so existential questions are questions about meaning and value. That's right. Okay, okay, about meaning and value. That's okay. Okay. And then we've already had our long discussion about whether you can get at meaning and value. Let me ask, there's a quote from you, I have quotes from all of you that are fascinating, but I just pick two now because it's getting late. You say Cornell will notice that while I believe that the universe is ordered in a way that it renders it fundamentally intelligible to the inquiring human intellect. It is not so tightly ordered that there are no paradoxes or even absurdities. Could you elaborate, Robert? Yeah, yeah. So this goes to a difference that Cornell and I have

had for a long time, and we've argued back and forth about it. I'm fundamentally an Aristotelian. An atomist, all tomas are Aristotelian. Thomas was the great commentator, really, on Aristotelian. Sala. And Cornell is fundamentally a Kirkagardi. Now, what's the difference between the two? I think we can reason our way to the important conclusions. Cornell once said, well, you can reason your way, part of the way, but at the end of the day, the crucial moves are the leaps of faith.

And that's this difference of sensibility. But then as soon as we start actually arguing with each other, both of us have to introduce caveats. Both of us have to introduce nuances. And pretty soon, these two guys who look like they were. we're just worlds apart philosophically. You had the nuances and the caveats. And we're not there.

We're still not in the same place. And I think the reason we're not in the same place has to do with what philosophers call ontology. So how tightly ordered or highly ordered is reality? How penetrable is it to the human intellect in all the domains of science, of literature, of art and of music and history and, and economics and and so forth. So I don't want to be driven to the old ultra. I'm clearly a rap from Cordell's point of view, I'm a rationalist.

From my point of view, it is a fideast. But I don't want to be driven to the ultra rationalism where I say, you know, there's nothing paradoxical in human affairs. Everything's so intelligible that it's just a question of when we're going to get there. If we just, if we stay determined, stay on track, you know, we're going to eventually get there. And I do think that the world isn't that. at the end of the day, I have to admit, the world is not that highly ordered or accessible or penetrable to the human intellect. There are probably some things related to love, for example,

and some fundamental questions of meaning. There are probably also some scientific questions that, you know, at the end of the day, we're just not going to be able to penetrate them. They're a paradox. We're going to do the best we can. Probably go to advance and, and, and, and, and, and, deep in our knowledge, you would know this better than I. Maybe I'm wrong about that. But in the domains that I do know about, I know that sometimes you kind of hit the wall. Yeah, no, you hit the wall, but I guess I'm more optimistic than you and that. I mean, that's why I can do science, because I haven't seen a wall yet that we haven't been able to get around. So there may be things, I agree with you. There's certainly the possibility that the human intellect will, that there'll be

limitations to our understanding of the world, ultimately. But there's one thing I can say for certain is that we don't know there are. And when people claim to me, and you haven't certainly, but when people tell me we'll never understand love, I always say, how do you know? Oh, yes, no. You have to understand it to know we're not going to understand it. So you're right. There may be, and one of the joys in my life is finding out that you can understand things you didn't think you ever could. And so that search will continue forever. I hope there's forever mystery, and I think there will be. I think it's a, you know, job security thing for science and everything else. The mysteries won't end. And I think, and, and I want to, anyway, I want to end with

two quotes from you guys and then another quote that I think is, is great. Well, anyway, I think it's, I'm trying to figure, okay, it's probably brother Robert that said this. It reads more like Robert. Yeah, it does. It said it's, it's better to live in a real world with full knowledge than it is to live in a world of illusion, which I think we all, all of three of us would agree. Of course, I would say that's the reason I'm not religious, but I won't go there. I couldn't resist getting it in there. It says it's too much dogma for me, brother of the Lord. It's too much dogma. Let me ask you this question. Let me ask you this question. If you were to believe in a, an illusion that led toward the enhancing of humanity as opposed to

a disillusion that led toward the destruction of humanity wouldn't you for a moment draw distinction between life-enhancing illusions and life-destroying illusions? I mean, that's a very hypothetical question. Of course, I'd be driven in that direction. Ultimately, however, though, I think it's so ultimately, I think

how it comes back to bite you in the butt in the end. Ultimately, If you base your actions in the long run on illusions, you're going to produce actions that are counterproductive. But if we're talking about the destruction of the whole species, we know what the long run is in that hypothetical. Yeah, yeah. But I don't think it's, I don't, yeah, look, I'll buy what you said.

I don't think it's, I don't think it's science that's going to destroy the human species. It's going to be, it's going to be, we may use the tools of science. We know what it is. it's going to be greed, human greed, and human hatred. Exactly. It's like my friend, Steve Pinker would say, you know, when you talk about science and people say, oh, science is bad because it produced X, Y, Z. He points out, well, you know, architects produce a concentration camp.

Does that mean architecture is bad, you know, ultimately? And obviously, it's how you use it. He's absolutely right about that. And so in the last page or your book, well, Cornell, you get that. We say we talk about why truth matters. we're really talking about allowing our precious students full access to the great intellectual traditions that will force them to wrestle with what it means to be human in their fallible quest for truth and beauty and goodness and the holy. And you know, it made me think, you quoted him earlier, but one of my favorite quotes from Raina Maria Wilkie,

who I think we all love, is let everything happen to you, beauty and terror. Just keep going. no feeling is final. And that for me is a reason to keep on going, but it's a reason to be able to listen to people like you and have the privilege that your students have to be able to have conversations with you. And for me, it is truly, and I mean this, one of the privileges of my life

that I've been able to be in a position to have this conversation with the two of you. And it is... Thank you. Thank you so much. It's really... It's been great, and it's an example of what your book is all about, which is dialogue and respectful dialogue.

And I hope that someday we can continue it in person, but it's been such a privilege. We shouldn't. This is one of great two hours and 40 minutes. They've flown by. You've been marvelous, brother, Lars, and the dialogue. We just hope that people listening in could be unsettled and unnerved. We make it very clear.

We don't believe in safe spaces. We want Socratic spaces. People are respected, but they're unnerved. They're unsettled. Unnerved and unsettled. In fact, you know, I knew we were kindred spirits, Cornell, when I heard from Robert quoting you, because I actually have said this, and I've seen it on coffee cups now when people call me,

but I said the purpose of education is to make us uncomfortable. And he quoted you saying, the purpose of education is to make you unsettled, which I like your word too. We couldn't be in more agreement. And it's a lovely unsettlement. Thank you, gentlemen. We'll one day have a beer or something together. I appreciate the time you took.

Cognac, Cognac in the name of Checo. Cognac in the name of Coyne. Okay. Oconeck is fine. Even one single malt whiskey is fine with me. But I guess I feel especially lucky that you were willing to take the time to spend the time and go extra. So thank you very much. I think that I can't imagine.

This time will go by really quickly for anyone who listens. It's been such, it'll be wonderful. Thank you so much. But we thank you. Thank you. You stay strong, though, brother. You stay strong to both of you. Brother Robbie, brother Robert.

He got the good work inside academia and outside of academia. We'll all try and fight the good fight, and I keep trying to. Absolutely. Absolutely. Oh, this is wonderful. Hi, it's Lawrence again. As the Origins podcast continues to reach millions of people around the world, I just wanted to say thank you. It's because of your support, whether you listen or watch, that we're able to help enrich the perspective of listeners by providing access to the people and ideas that are changing our understanding of ourselves and our world and driving the future of our society in the 21st century.

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