Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal - Raphaël Liogier: Humanity, Metaphysics, Mainstream Science, and Physicalism

Episode Date: July 24, 2024

Welcome to Theories of Everything's Rethinking the Foundations Series featuring Raphaël Liogier. Raphaël Liogier is a distinguished sociologist and philosopher, specializing in the study of beliefs, secularization, and the interplay between spirituality and modernity. Become a YouTube Member Here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdWIQh9DGG6uhJk8eyIFl1w/join Patreon: https://patreon.com/curtjaimungal (early access to ad-free audio episodes!) Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b92xAErofYQA7bU4e Join TOEmail at https://www.curtjaimungal.org Links: - Raphaël Liogier's Book Khaos - https://amzn.to/4bWc7pQ - Rethinking the Foundations (YouTube Playlist) - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZ7ikzmc6zlOYgTu7P4nfjYkv3mkikyBa - Q&A - Thumbnail Photograph of Raphael by © Saâd A. Tazi Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 01:38 - Origins of Science 04:50 - What Are Human Beings? (Anthropology) 10:05 - Why Humans Create Obstacles 16:13 - Epistemology / Determinism / Astrology 33:00 - The Traditional Man & Paradigm Shifts 36:39 - Current Phase of Science 40:41 - Physicalism / Totalism 49:29 - Zombie Science 59:46 - Metaphysical Foundation of Science 01:09:00 - What is the Universe? 01:18:03 - Outro / Support TOE Support TOE: - Patreon: https://patreon.com/curtjaimungal (early access to ad-free audio episodes!) - Crypto: https://tinyurl.com/cryptoTOE - PayPal: https://tinyurl.com/paypalTOE - TOE Merch: https://tinyurl.com/TOEmerch Follow TOE: - NEW Get my 'Top 10 TOEs' PDF + Weekly Personal Updates: https://www.curtjaimungal.org - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theoriesofeverythingpod - TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theoriesofeverything_ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/TOEwithCurt - Discord Invite: https://discord.com/invite/kBcnfNVwqs - iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/better-left-unsaid-with-curt-jaimungal/id1521758802 - Pandora: https://pdora.co/33b9lfP - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b92xAErofYQA7bU4e - Subreddit r/TheoriesOfEverything: https://reddit.com/r/theoriesofeverything #science #podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And on the other side, you have the quantum paradigm, where we have to accept the void that they call that uncertainty. Albert Einstein, even if he's a great genius, he couldn't admit that there is this void. Professor Raphael Leogier of the Institute for Advanced Studies UM6P is going to take you through his controversial stance on the foundations of science, human nature, and the challenges we face in the age of AI. In this presentation for the Theories of Everything channel, we'll explore the evolution of scientific inquiry and knowledge itself, the rise of

theoretical models, and the emergence of what Raphael calls zombie science. Stick with it, because the professor skillfully ties these threads together toward the end, bringing the conversation to a powerful conclusion that both excites and angers his peers. Exploring the tension between the digital and quantum paradigms, the concept of chaos with the K, and the fundamental nature of reality itself. Leogier. Leogier.

You could say, I remember that I said to my American and British friends to pronounce it like, liar, jerk. And you get rid of the jerk thing. Okay. Professor, I'm so glad to bring you on to the Theories of Everything podcast. We met at the Institute for Advanced Studies and that's where you're the scientific director at the UM6P of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Morocco. Welcome to the channel.

Thank you. You're going to be giving a talk on rethinking the foundations of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Morocco. Welcome to the channel. Thank you. You're going to be giving a talk on rethinking the foundations of the academy centered around the question of how can we improve scientific inquiry. Please take it away. Yeah. So the main thing I wanted to say is there are three different aspects, three different aspects in the foundation of science. The anthropological, the epistemological, and the metaphysical. It will be hard and not long enough to develop all that.

But let's say that there is a common ground between those three origins of science. The common ground is that actually, science comes from the feeling, it comes from a feeling that is typically human, that there is something that is missing around. It's what I call the anguish of the void. And this anguish makes human wants to actually find something to fill it. Like if the world is not complete in itself. There is this feeling of incompleteness that is very deep in human being. So there is this sentence that comes from Greek science that can summarize this common ground, anthropological, epistemological, and metaphysical ground of science.

It is the idea that human beings try to save the appearances. Like if the world is not complete, so it's just everything we see around in the world is apparent. But we are part of the world. So it's not only the world that is around that is incomplete. It's also us. We are incomplete. And so this feeling of incompleteness and this desire to complete is actually the very origin of science. And it's the very origin of science.

And it doesn't distinguish science from religion on that aspect, science from tradition, because it's just this original desire to give meaning. Now we have another concept. We go from filling this void, filling this void because things are not complete, it's to give meaning. And actually, giving meaning or complete what seems to be incomplete is the very definition, the original definition of what is knowledge. And science is about knowledge.

Now the real question is, why do we need knowledge? So why do we need to complete that? And it's at that time that we can enter into this anthropological aspect of what are human beings. When you ask anthropologists, usually, even now, when you ask anthropologists or when you ask scientists, and even like everybody for that matters, most people will tell you that what distinguishes a human being from an animal is the fact that we are more complex beings.

They will even specify the sense of complexity, saying that it's their brain. I mean, there is this idea about the brain, that the human brain that is supposed to be more complex than the brain of an animal. And I don't believe that. What I'm saying is that, I mean, we are right to think that the human brain is now more complex than animal brain, as far as we can say. But what I'm trying to say is that is not what distinguish animals, I mean regular,

like average animal, from human beings. What distinguish them is the fact that human beings, according to what I just said before in my introduction, are actually complexed animals, like frustrated animals, because this feeling of incompleteness, this feeling of incompleteness is related to the feeling of weakness. You need to feel something up. You need to complete something in the world and to complete something in yourself. So to go beyond yourself, so to go beyond what you look like, like to go beyond your organism, that's the origin of technology. You need to go beyond because you feel that you are

weak. And it's actually true. It's actually true. We are one of the weakest, originally, animals, not really adapted to our environment. So we are very weak. And so because we are very weak and where it's called this feeling will come with some, there is some hypothesis that this feeling will come from what is called neoteny. You mean physically weak? Yeah, physically weak because we were born too early because some kind of a bad, I mean a morphology that is not the hip of the woman, so we give birth, human mammifers, they are born too early, so because they are too early, they are too weak in their environment, so the human beings, they have to work in a more complex social way in order to survive. It's not like a horse that is right away efficient in the world.

And so it complexifies the way to be the world. And so it complexifies the social, the way to be the solidarity. For instance, the solidarity in most mammals is a solidarity between the parents and the kids from generation. But in human beings, it's a solidarity between the uncle, the uncle of the uncle of the uncle and the grandfather and the father, even the friend of the father that could be a godfather, et

cetera, et cetera. So it creates, it un-broadened and complexified this network of solidarity that become more and more complex to protect the human being that at first is weaker. But this feeling of weakness has created some kind of frustration. And this frustration has created the desire to be more than what it seems, to be more than what we look like. So it created what I call, you see, the desire to be not only the desire to survive,

not only that you have in all biological organism, but also the desire to live that you have in most mammals. So to improve the condition of survival, we could call that comfort with minimal techniques that you have also with birds, you know, when they build a nest and with other animals. But with human beings, there is another desire, the's the desire to be, that comes from their complex. And it's what creates the ego. It's what creates this inner speech, they talk to themselves.

They say, for instance, when I'm coming to your podcast, I said, I talk to myself, you know what, as a second person, like, you have to behave like that. You, you, you. What is this you? This you is the other myself that completes myself, that I need to complete to say something about myself. And step by step, it became, I mean, it's related to the necessity to go beyond yourself, to go beyond the appearance,

and to start to think about the world and to feel that there is something missing, that there is something missing around. And I think it's really the anthropological origin of science. But to add something else, I think what makes now the specificity of science is the fact that because we feel weaker than the other animals, we feel unadapted, fragile. You're right, right. Yes. It's like if you are seeing ourself as a problem, like we are a problem for ourself.

In Greek, the word problema, it translates like obstacles. Usually in order to survive, animals, they wait for an obstacle that becomes a problem, because obstacle means problem actually, in order to avoid it, to overcome it, to go beyond it, to do something about it in a very efficient way. The ones that can't do that, they actually die, they don't survive, and that's also part of the process of natural selection. But with human beings, because they feel this kind of frustration, this kind of feeling of incompleteness, they project problems, like obstacles, that actually don't exist.

Don't exist yet. So they make problems because they feel they are a problem for themselves. They make problems. And actually the foundation of mathematics, the origin of mathematics, it's even what it means. Mathema in Greek, that means something that you put as a problem, a priori. Like you haven't met anything. And you say, how much water do you need to fill this tub,

et cetera, but it's not in front of you. Yes. So you make problems, but it's for the best, the foundation of mathematics, but it's also for the worse because they create problem where they don't exist up to the point they can't destroy themselves, human being. They can create beyond themselves, but they can't also destroy themselves in the name of this desire to be that is related to the ego. But the very dynamic of science is directly related to that.

That's the reason why when I say that human beings, they make problems. They also invented another kind of problem that is game. So they put constraints, so they create obstacles. What is game, after all? A game is to create an obstacle that does not exist. And when you overcome this obstacle, it could be you are just facing yourself, making an obstacle in front of yourself. It's like a game that you're playing with yourself or with others, with different teams or things like that. And it's very ancient, these ways.

And when you are doing that, when you are winning, you say, you feel good, like you have accomplished something. It's your ego. It's your desire to be, to be beyond, to be more. When if you just, you know, let's think about something that is more recent. Why did we go to the moon? More exactly, why did we spend, why we have spent so much money to go to the moon? Because there is no reason on a survival point of view.

There is not even any reason on what I call the comfort point of view, the desire to live better. You know? There is no reason. But we create an obstacle, a problema. It's a problem, it's an obstacle, the distance. How can we do that? Why do we go there?

There is no reason. It's just to see ourself, because we see ourself as the problem, you remember, see ourself succeeding in going to the moon. So we create an obstacle, the distance between the earth and the moon. But when we are on the moon and we're able to walk on the moon, we turn and we see a new perspective on the earth and we are able even to make some experience in the condition of the Moon that we couldn't actually do, we couldn't actually perform on the Earth,

that will help us. That will help us to solve problems that will actually come to us. But afterwards, and that we will be able to solve just because we were going to the moon, like with mathematics, like with everything. So the very process of science comes from the fact that, how can I say that, that we are problematic animals. So we are animals that make problems because we are a problem to ourselves because these neoteny things are the origin of human beings, this feeling of, I will say, weakness.

That is the anthropological basis of the foundation of science. Now we could come, if you want to, to the epistemological foundation of science. Because now that we know that we want to complete ourselves, because the world seems to not be complete through its appearances, we want to know the real thing. We want to know what is beyond, what is the real thing. So there is this obsession with truth because it's not complete around, like it's an illusion. There is something more. Even our body might be more. And so we want to go beyond. And so we think that there is something that is determined. That's the idea of determinism.

That's the first scientific idea. There is some kind of law that determines us, but it's beyond our immediate reach. So we try to find them somehow. And it's that. That is the first knowledge. The first human, the first science, in fact, the first science is astrology. That becomes astronomy. But it's astrology. Astrology, astronomy, we will see later the difference. But why? Because when human beings looked at the sky, and by the way that's interesting that even in English you say the sky, like the physical sky, and you say heaven. That means something else, like the source of some kind of knowledge, of some kind of

something is happening there, our fate is determined in heaven or something. And when they were looking at the sky, they were thinking that maybe that was the source of what they are, of their destiny, of their fate. That is the first sign. So that we are determined by what is happening in the stars. So that's the first science, this kind of science. It's what I call symbolic correlationism, because it's symbolic correlations. It works only with symbolic correlations.

It doesn't work with theory yet. We'll come to that. It works only with symbolic correlations. It doesn't work with theory yet. We'll come to that. It works only with symbolic correlations. So our way to try to fill the gap that we have in front of us because we think it's an illusion, because we are a problem to ourselves, et cetera etc. It's to give meaning through correlations, to give meaning to everything, everything that happens. It's completely open. There is no random event in symbolic correlationism. There is no difference between monotheistic traditions, polytheistic traditions, shamanism, Bible and everything on that aspect. There are differences, many differences, but we don't have time to enter into those differences

with those different traditions. But there is one common thing, one common principle. Everything has meaning. So everything is openly interpreted. Be it the Word of God, be it the Word of nature, of the invisible world, of the spirit, whatever, doesn't matter. It always has a meaning. So you just give a meaning. And so I remember I did a little thesis like some 30 years ago where I started saying,

actually astrology works, but it doesn't work in the way we think it does. How so? It actually works. Because if we think we are determined, and it is the basic scientific belief that there is determination in everything, that one thing is determined by another, which

is determined by another, that things that are here and now are determined by things that were there just before, etc., etc., etc., etc. Of course, it has something quite logic to think that what determines you most is actually the first moment, like when you are a blank page. The first thing that is written on you, even if it is the very thin thing, it will be the thing that is behind everything that will be written afterwards, so it will be more determinant, it will be stronger. So it's quite logical to think that knowing that even the moon is having some effect on

the level of the ocean, that you can imagine that Mars or Neptune or any planet or even like the most remote celestial object could have an effect, even if it is the tiniest effect that you can't see, that you don't have the instruments to measure. And even if it is the thinner effect, the moment where you were born, where you were like this blank page, almost nothing, we can imagine that maybe the state of the entire universe at this moment of birth will do something to you

that it's hard to measure. So of course, it's logical to think that there is some kind of truth in astrology. But because we're talking about epistemology, the second question is if there is something of a truth, how can you get this truth? What is the methodology? Because it's not enough to say, yes, it's coherent to think that the state of the entire universe at a precise moment will be what we now call initial conditions of a being? And but how can you actually touch these knowledge and make it a real knowledge?

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Go to Shopify.com slash theories now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in. Shopify.com slash theories. And so it's what I'm trying to explain to some of my colleagues that are positivists, like hard scientists, positivists. I tell them the traditional man, if we can say there is a traditional man, even if it is a little bit too broad, it doesn't work with theories. And we will come to what is a theory. Everything has a meaning for him.

So that means he doesn't embarrass himself with the, you know, the constraint of finding a specific coherent inside a theoretical, you know, logic. He sees something that is happening. He just says, oh, the guy was born this day at this hour, and the sky was like that, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And he's just right about it. And so those minuscule little interpretations, they just agglomerate without entering into a specific theoretical frame.

It's easier to understand that with acupuncture, for instance, because with acupuncture, there are some departments of acupuncture, even in the modern faculty of medicine, because we know it actually works, but we don't know why. We have many interpretations. We can say, yeah, it works. Interesting. Yeah, it works because there is the nervous system, but it is not exactly the nervous system.

We say, yeah, maybe it's like the blood system, but it's not exactly that either, et cetera, et cetera. So what is it? And where does it come from? But in fact, acupuncture was born out of these symbolic correlationism way of thinking. So somebody like a few thousand years ago will walk, he fell, just imagine he fell on his knee, on her knee,

and suddenly he had a headache, headache, and he doesn't have the headache anymore. So it's just an information, an open information. You don't know why, but because the traditional man gives a symbolic interpretation, he says that's the way the Tao works, or that's the way nature works, or that's the way the spirit works, or something. It means something about the spirit.

It doesn't matter, in fact, what it refers to. What matters is that he interprets it, and what happened was true, was real. And so he says, yeah, it is the way of God, it is the way of that or that. And so it is a certain day, it is on a certain part of the body, and he does that to the head, so maybe the knee is related to the head. And that's it. And so that makes this symbolic system start to work. But if you, at first, when you have just one information that's nothing, but when you have

thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of information that are lost, that you have lost the track in time, it becomes a symbolic system that is open. And that's the difference between a theory. So it's always open. you can always add something. So you will reach a certain kind of knowledge that in a way is deeper than what we reach with theoretical closed theories, but not as efficient. So you can't build technology with it, but doesn't mean that it's not a certain kind of knowledge that can make you reach a certain point deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper, and

deeper. So that's the reason why when we are in our world with a theoretical framework, we try to understand why acupuncture works. So we are like, just imagine that it's like sand, a huge amount of sand. And so you say, look, there is this huge amount of sand. And this huge amount of sand is actually acupuncture, this entire knowledge of qigong, acupuncture, all these things that they have in Chinese culture, ancient culture. And so the theoretical human, I will say, the contemporary human, he will try to understand

what's happening by digging, by taking one grain of sand one after the other, doing that. And he said, I will find something, like I will find a theoretical model behind it, but he will not find anything. And at the end, there is nothing left. And he sees everything is on the other side, and he hasn't found anything, because it's a symbolic, symbolic correlations that actually work and are not graspable in a theory because it's too complex. It's the agglomeration over thousands and thousands and thousands of years, right? So now there is the second time in the history of science. Of course, there are many phases, very complex phases

but I try to make it simple in the first part of this this interview to be able to come to what I call zombie science. The second time is we could locate it in space and time. We're not sure, not completely sure, but to make it easy, we can locate it in Greece. And it is there that we had the beginning of what we could say a theoretical way of thinking, theoria in Greek. That means exactly, that means view, but a little bit more than view, even if it means etymologically view, it means perspective.

A specific perspective and a perspective is something that is focused because when you have a perspective on you, I'm focused. You know in a symbolic correlationism, correlations, it's not focused there, it's focused. So it is the try to find coherence, but close coherence, why this is happening. For instance, what is the difference? Because we are talking about astrology. Let's say we have this Greek guy, let's imagine we have a Greek scientist, one of the first scientists, he's walking in Athens and he looked at the sky.

And when he looked at the sky, he said, oh, that's interesting. The star is there and there's this shape here and everything seems there. And so he makes a theory, so a perspective, a coherent perspective out of it. He said, oh, the earth might be at this distance, maybe if I see it smaller because there is a distance, and I imagine those things. And he makes a theory out of it. And he's glad with his perspective, with his focused perspective, that he's coherent, logical, we could say, with cause and effect, not with correlations, because he thinks in terms of

cause and effect, it might work this way, he thinks. But he works the day after, it also works the day after, and the day after, the day after, and after a few weeks, he looks at the sky and there is something that has changed, and he sees that his perspective is not coherent anymore. I mean, if he accepts what he sees now, it doesn't work anymore, this theory. So he feels bad. He feels, oh my God, what's happening? What's happening with me? So at first, it turns out it's what scientists even do today. It tends to ignore, like it's a detail, the little thing that doesn't work.

He thinks to ignore it. He will even call it, now we say, oh it's random, it happened randomly, or it's an interference. It's the outside, we weren't able to isolate all the variables, so that's fine, just interference, just random. So he finds, and scientists over the history of science, they tend to find little tricks to pretend that it didn't really completely happen, so to make the theory still being very neat and work and still work. But at the end, next month, it's even worse. It's not coherent at all.

So he needs to break the theory. Theory is like a drawer. It's like a drawer. So you put, you have a certain shape, the drawer has a certain shape, and the theory, the coherence of the theory, it's a certain shape, a certain form. That's the reason why we say formalization, because it has a certain form. And so you try to put object in it, like the universe in physics. And that's fine when it fits into it. And at one moment, you can't close the drawer. It doesn't work. So

you get angry. So again, you pretend it is not working because there is something that you can fix it and you try to fix it. at one moment you can't fix it anymore because it's too big, because it doesn't work. And so you decide to break this drawer and build another one that's called an epistemic break in the history of modern science. Is that the same as a paradigm shift or no? It's the same as a paradigm shift. A paradigm shift is a little bit more than a theory, but that works the same way because in a paradigm, the paradigm is like you have the entire different discipline and theories

that are inside those disciplines that can't work anymore because the general perspective that allows them to be coherent is broken. So we could say, I would say, let's, the paradigm shift will be, you know, like the furniture inside you have all the drawers. It's the furniture itself. Okay. So the whole chest of drawers is the paradigm shift. Exactly.

And it doesn't work. So you break everything and you change the furniture. Is this actually the paradigm shift? But that is very interesting. It's very interesting because it explains something. It explains why in our theoretical world, the world that is built on theories, we are becoming more and more efficient, right? But it doesn't mean that our knowledge of what is real will improve.

Because in fact, we are losing time when there is this paradigm or theoretical break because we need to rebuild everything from scratch to find something more coherent. Of course, we use some knowledge we had before, but it's just completely reversed. You need to find something that was broader, bigger. The traditional man, he doesn't do that. Maybe he can't isolate the variables because because it's not a coherent system. But his knowledge continues to accumulate, because remember what I said. When you want to save a theory, when you want to save the coherence of the theory, you expel

out of your vision, your perspective, theory or perspective, everything that does not fit into it and you say it's random. But in fact, random is also true. So the traditional man, what does he do? He doesn't expose anything from the pretext of randomness. He just add it and add it and add it in an open. I see. Open way, because he gives and added and added in an open way.

And because he added, he doesn't know why in the modern sense, but his knowledge become more and more and out of reach from a theoretical point of view. That's why acupuncture, we can't understand why it works, but it actually does work. And so there is some kind of... It is the second time. In this second time, because we isolate variables, we were able to understand the causal relations between those variables inside the system. So that's the reason why we were able to build machine.

We were able to build more efficient machine. It comes from this theoretical way of seeing things, of accumulate knowledge. It's not that the traditional man does not accumulate knowledge, but it is that when we accumulate knowledge, because we accumulated inside the drawer It's immediately something we can use

to build machines that are actually built out of the isolation of variables like Causal variable cause effect machine cars etc etc etc etc etc etc so There was different cars, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc. So there was difference inside this theoretical world, we could say, of science that started, supposed to have started in Greece, but maybe there was some beginning also in India with mathematics and in the Arabic world also, but let's say in Greece, there were different phases. And I will just leave all those phases aside because it will be too long and come through the year. The last one is very interesting and still very interesting for us and for what we are living now in the academics and in science, in the

way science is actually evolving. It is in this phase where we transform theoretical models, theoretical perspectives, because that worked so well in a specific domain that we decide that it is the truth in itself, that we can apply it to everything. And it becomes ideology. It's when from a theory, we made an ideology in the 20th century. What does that mean, an ideology? An ideology that is grounded into science, into specific science. That means it's a theoretical view, perspective, that pretends that it is general, it can apply to everything. Let's take an example.

Because the great thinker of the 20th century, great epistemologist, maybe the greatest epistemologists of the 20th century, Karl Popper used this example to make his case. He said about Darwinism, natural selection, he said, because it's a successful theory, it is so successful that it doesn't know and doesn't accept to have limits. And this is a risk because it will be applied to everything. And I'm sure you heard about what is called social Darwinism. So you apply what actually worked in a certain realm in the animal realms and in specific way, natural selection, like the idea of the survival of the fittest,

et cetera, et cetera. And you say, oh, that's the same with human beings that worked with human beings, that works with human beings, therefore we need to eliminate the weakest. And it becomes an ideology that has served the Nazi government, for instance, that was that based that on the superior race that was supposed to be the fittest, etc., which wasn't true because actually, actually they did exactly the opposite. They fought against the one that they were complex, that frustrated them the most, the Jewish, because they thought they were richer, they had bank, they were international, etc.,

etc. But we'll not enter into those details, but it's interesting to see that the theory, so the view, that doesn't see its limit because it's too successful, will be applied to everything without distinction. And it becomes an ideology that justified a government, a certain politics, because it pretends that's the truth. That's the truth in itself. Wherever you're going, you better believe American Express will be right there with you.

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Terms apply. Let me ask you, so in physics, physics is seen as the most precise and successful of all the sciences. It is. And do you believe the fact that it's the most successful in its domain is the reason why we have physicalism or materialism as the dominant philosophy in science? I think it's partly, yes. I think it's a good, yeah, it's a good question, your question.

It's true that physics was from the 19th century, from the end of the 19th century, because at the beginning it was biology. There was this burning of biology, everything was biologic in the end of the 19th century, because at the beginning it was biology. There was this paradigm of biology, everything was biologic in the end of the 18th and 19th century, but step by step, the end of the 19th century and the 20th century with general relativity and quantum physics and all that, it becomes like the physics paradigm. And it's partly, if we are materialist, it's also because physics was expanded its view to everything around. But it's changing.

I think we'll come back to that because it's changing now. It's one of the very interesting things about physics. But in the middle of the 20th century, you're perfectly right. You're really perfectly right. You're really perfectly right. So this risk that can become ideology, make science from science to ideology, inside the theoretical, with a theoretical model, it's what Karl Popper called totalism. He calls that totalism. So a science gives a total view of the universe from its specific point of view. It says it's not a point of view, that's the universe.

I don't understand that last point. Can you please expand on that? What do you mean, it's not a point of view, that's the universe? Because when I come back to what I said, when I said what is a theory? A theory is a focus because it exactly means view, point of view. So a point of view is just a perspective. A perspective has limits.

It's a very definition of a perspective. That's the reason why we say, even in current English, oh, you need to see things in a different perspective. But so when a perspective, which is a theory, is a perspective, pretends to be all the perspective in ones, like being the truth of the universe, it's not a perspective anymore, and it's what is totalism. It's what actually Kallpopper called totalism. Yes?

Let me see if I understand this. You have and I have a perspective of this cup. It's a different perspective. I see it from the whatever is the back of this circular object, even though there's no such thing, and I see it from the whatever is the back of the circular object, even though there's no such thing. And you see it from the front. And if we wanted to actually know the cup or see the true cup, you would have to have all the angles, in which case that's a synonym for the universe. It's like if we the totalism is the idea that you see, you don't see a perspective on the object, but you know the totality of the object, whatever that means.

And if you know the totality of the object, you know the totality of the universe. Or you tend to. It's what is interesting. It's a tendency. So that means, for instance, you had this idea in the history of science, at one moment in history of science, and still the case somehow that the smaller, I mean the smallest thing you know, the closer to the general truth you are. It's what I call that substantialism. It started with atomism. So when you have the most little part, it is this part that actually sustains, that is the pillar of everything else, so you know everything else.

It is just the idea. So this idea comes from the idea that actually we can know everything, that what is in front of us are actually real facts that are, and if you enter, and the closer we get to the thing itself, the closer we get to the truth. So we don't admit that things can be just apprehended through different perspectives.

But we think that the best perspective is when you get closer and you get to actually analyze what is smaller, smaller, smaller, smaller, smaller. While when you have a phenomenological point of view, you say, when I get closer, that's just change the perspective. For instance, if I look at the table, the table is what it is in

its own right, because it's useful for me to do that and certain things, and it has certain laws of nature. When I get closer, I see the molecular structure, but when I see the molecular structure, I lose the other perspective on the table, and I understand a specific layer that is just a molecular layer. And if I get closer, I will see the atomic structure of the table, and now it's something else. So you either think science is only a question of perspective and you will never reach the entire things, or you think that you can reach the entire thing by getting more and more

and more and more, closer, closer, closer, or further. And so that's for Karl Popper, it's a complete misunderstanding of what he says. That's the reason why. He said that totalism almost always becomes totalitarianism, becomes political, because there is no reason when you say that is the truth, that you're not going to justify all the decisions you can make because it applies to everything, right? So he invented, we could say, a medicine, like a medicine against totalism. That would be a medicine against totalitarianism. And that medicine was?

And the medicine is actually the principle of refutability. And it's really strange when you say it at first. When you say it at first, when I say it at first to my students, they feel really strange. Because it says that a theory must be considered truth only when it is refuted. What are you talking about? It's not only the thought that I know it's refutable. No, it has to be refuted. Why?

Because everything is about a perspective. It's like a field. It's like even the field of a peasant that has a field in front of him that he cultivates with agriculture. So a field has a certain shape, like a theory, as I as you are not reaching the limit of the field, you don't know the shape of the field. So the refutation, it's not something that has to make you feel bad because it's like you have to break The theory that's a revolution when he said that when when when Karl Popper said that it's on the contrary the knowledge

The final knowledge of the theory because you know its limit Because when it's refuted that means that Because when it's refuted, that means that now you know what is your theory because you have the shape of your theory, you know the limit like the peasant know the shape of the field that he must cultivate. And it's very interesting. So he said when you refute it, it's not that you miss something, it's actually that you actually got something.

And as long as you haven't refuted your theory, you could believe that it can apply to everything, but it doesn't because a theory is always a perspective. And it's what the medicine invented to prevent science to become totalism and to become totalitarianism. So in other words, if you haven't refuted it, you don't know its border, and so you think it extends on to infinity, and because it extends on to infinity in your mind, you then apply it everywhere. Exactly. You understood everything. That's exactly that. And so it's potentially totalitarianist. And so that's from now on that I'd like to talk about what I call zombie science.

Because I think the medicine, the genius, I mean the medicine, that great medicine that found Karl Popper doesn't work anymore because zombie science, because what I call zombie science. What is zombie science? It is the fact that nowadays, because artificial intelligence, and artificial intelligence is not only the specific, I mean these images we have of artificial intelligence, it is those somehow anthropomorphic robots, I mean subjectively anthropomorphic or even physically anthropomorphic robots that are supposed to be so intelligent that they can

solve things. No, it is not that. It is that they don't work actually the way we work as human beings. I mean contrary to what many people say, but maybe then again we will come back to that. But why there is something groundbreaking in a bad way with artificial intelligence. It's because it's like if we came back to correlationism, like in the first moment in the history of science with correlations, but without the symbolic background, so totally empty of symbolic background, but with no theory. So that's the main problem.

Why? I'll explain why. Because it's like if we are adding more and more correlations, correlation of what? Of data, of information. And specifically of heterogeneous information, heterogeneous data. That is very important to keep in mind these things about heterogeneous data, heterogeneous information.

Because if we knew, if there weren't heterogeneous information. Because if we knew if there weren't heterogeneous informations, that means we will have a theory that will make us understand the relation they have with each other, those information, like the theoretical coherence of those informations. But now that we have artificial intelligence you know, coherence of those informations. But now that we have artificial intelligence and artificial intelligence is the possibility

of artificial intelligence, suppose two conditions that we have reached now and are going to expand. The first condition is the computational capacity, you know, to treat those information in a massive way that goes beyond our capacity as human beings. And the second is an almost infinite access to data, to information in real time. So the second condition is the internet. The fact that the internet provides this computational, I mean that works with correlation, correlation, correlation of data with an infinite number of data, like it feeds data.

So what happened? What happened is that you will have, let's talk about medicine, for instance, because it's very, it's more obvious in medicine, but it will work. It works in different other science disciplines, scientific disciplines. But in medicine, for instance, now, the use of artificial intelligence in medicine. Let's say you have this color, the color of your eyes. You know your ethnic origin. You have information about your genes.

You have information about, I don't know, things that are totally like the fact that every morning you had the habit, something very, like every day, not even structural, that you wake up at that hour of the day and you go at night and you eat at a certain hour and you eat certain things and you put everything in it, all those informations. And you put them and you put them and they are heterogeneous information, they are not related, like you are blonde, or you have dark hair, or you have that, or that, or that, or something else, something else, you have this size, and not this size, you have this weight, you have other things, and other things, other things, other things, and all that, all those heterogeneous data will be in the box and they will be linked

with the internet, with millions of other people, with millions of millions of data about those other people. And you will have the information, let's say, but I just said that randomly, of course, it's not accurate at all what I'm saying But it's where we we go. It's what I'm trying to say. They will say okay according to that all those correlations You have 98.7 percent of chance to have a liver cancer at 42 years old and to die. What is the the I?

Mean it's accurate the percentage and everything is accurate, but you don't know why. I mean, the data scientists that did it, it doesn't know why either. Nobody knows why. So it is the first time in humanity. you see? So it is the first time of humanity that the correlations, like in the first time, the first phase, but it's going so fast in efficiency that we don't have time to understand what is actually happening because it needs time to build a theory with the isolation of variables, etc. etc. etc. So that means that for the first time, the more efficient we become, the less knowledge we have of the coherence of the reason why we are actually efficient. It is the first time in the history of humanity that we reach that point. It's what I call zombie science.

Because it goes in one direction, it's more and more efficient, and you, like me, we are not going to refuse it on like a political pretext, like, no, I don't want to submit to zombie science. Yes, I want to submit because I want to survive. You know? Let me see if I understand this. So there's pre-science which is astrology and then maybe alchemy and we could talk about that in the Q&A. Recall this is a lecture where Raphael is speaking pretty much uninterrupted for 60 minutes or so. There will be an actual Q&A which is more like the podcast format with the interchange and the conversation delving deeper into the topics. For that click the link in the description. So there's pre-science, which is astrology,

and then maybe alchemy, and we can talk about that in the Q&A. And then there's science, and then there's zombie science. And what zombie science and pre-science have in common is that they were built from correlations, but pre-science has symbols associated with it, whereas zombie doesn't. And both also have that they work, quote unquote,

but we don't know why. Yeah, exactly. And in this third moment, the problem is, and there's a difference between the first moment, it is the speed, but it has some consequence. It doesn't give any meaning. So it doesn't fulfill the ambition that was the original ambition of science in human being that I talked about

in the first part of this talk when I talked about the anthropological meaning, the feeling of weakness, the void, etc., etc., etc., etc. And that is a problem because zombie science can't be attacked, can't be, I mean, the problem with zombie science can't be solved with the refutability principle of Karl Popper. Because there is no theory to attack. There is no theory, there is no specific field. And it becomes more totalist than what we could have with Darwinism, but without even a theory. And it's full of bias, like racist bias and everything.

But you can't control them. You can't say this theory has its limit, because it just goes this way. That's the reason why I say it's zombie, because it doesn't have a heart, not even a theoretical heart. Symbolic heart don't even think about it, but not even a theoretical heart. So you can't fight against it. And it goes so the risk is what we could call zombie totalism. And at the end, zombie totalitarianism.

And it's what is actually happening at the scale of our planet now with the social networks and people controlling people, but it's not really people because in the middle there are artificial intelligence and marketing. It's a world of correlations. The correlations, when I give my data, the computer knows. I mean, he knows. What does that even mean to say he knows? He doesn't know in a current way that it will work better if I see other image to buy that, etc., etc.

And he just escaped our grasp, our theoretical grasp, our symbolic grasp. That's what is the problem. That's what is the real problem nowadays. It's what I call the epistemological risk, major risk, of artificial intelligence. That is not the risk that usually people are pointing out. They say, yes, the machine will replace the human beings, et cetera, et cetera. I don't believe in that.

I don't believe in that at all. But I believe in the problem with these epistemological risks. But we haven't talked yet about the metaphysical foundation of science. You know, first, that was anthropological. Second, I talk about epistemological with the three phases. And now it's the metaphysical foundation. And it's this metaphysical foundation that we are losing completely today because of zombie science, because of this zombie science.

What is happening now with artificial intelligence? Instead of being cursed with this development of zombie science, I think it could be an opportunity to come back to the real definition of what are human beings, of what is human intelligence and what is human science. When I said in the beginning that human beings are not, at first at least more complex animals than other animals, but they are first and for all more complex like frustrated and so they create problems, so they create constraints that don't exist to go beyond themselves completely, I mean, not being pushed by survival and things like that because this frustration, this complex, this ego, so they create games, and when you win at a game, it doesn't improve

your condition, but it improves your ego. You think you have won something, but after you become more efficient because you have played a game, et cetera, et cetera, we could talk about art. Again, it's part of this thing, this tendency we have in human beings to create problems that don't exist before. We entertain the habit, the bad habit in the 20th century up to now to say that we are the most complex animals. We are the most complex brain, etc., etc. What we are is our capacity to solve

problems better than other animals. And it was true until the rise of artificial intelligence that are on their way—they are not already, but they are on their way—to be more complex on the network point of view, the complexity itself, to be more efficient in solving any problems that we face. Let's imagine that even in the 80s, in the 80s when we were talking already, 80s, 90s about artificial intelligence, it was about chess, playing chess, etc. People were saying, even specialists, that as long as it is quite simple or you play and the machine plays with a regular player, like a medium player, the machine wins.

But when it is with the best player on earth, like a human being, like in full capacity of all the complexity of his brain, the machine can't win. Now we say the opposite. I don't know if you mentioned that. We say the opposite. Now we say, when it's a question of complexity, at the end of the day, we know the machine will always win, whatever the level of the player is in front. So you have ping pong, and you know that one moment the machine will adapt, and correlation

of that out, and at one moment the machine will win, will always win. And so we feel like, as Freud would put it, narcissistically wounded. We feel, oh my God, we have created a God, like someone or something that is more than us, that is beyond our own reach. And we feel bad about it. We say it's taking out even our humanity. But if we come back to what I said when I said the very definition of humanity is not to be more complex, but it's to be problematic animals. If we became more complex, it's like just an effect of the fact of this original feeling

that we have. So we could say that they are not taking our humanity. It's not possible. Because they will always win, and that's true, and it wasn't the case of animals. So because we got used to be more complex and more efficient, we thought it's our definition. But in fact, it's not because they will win at ping pong that they are more than us. It's because we have the wrong view on what is to be human.

To be human is not to be better at ping pong, like to be better at overcoming an obstacle, but it's to create obstacles that are not in front of us, and the machine can't do that. Because the machine can't see why it will create an obstacle where the only thing that is important is to be efficient. And so if we come back to what we are with the desire to be with this thing about this feeling of the void, this thing that we have in us,

that we see that there is something missing, and so we need to create games, for instance, obstacles. Or we need to create challenges and to create these kinds of things, or a new game for that matter. That is not in the reach of a machine because it doesn't have anything. It doesn't have, I mean, it is not something that you program, even if a program can program itself to become always more efficient. But it's not a question of efficiency.

It's a kind of efficiency that comes from what I call the feeling of chaos that I write, and it's the name of my book, Chaos. Yes, spelled differently. Yes, it's in Greek, K-H-A-O-S. And if I write it this way, it is not like to pretend that I know Greek, even if it is the Latin letters that are used, and that I don't use C-H-A-O, you know, that O and S. It's because chaos in Greek is a positive word. That means void, but doesn't mean empty. It's like in quantum physics.

It's quantum void, in fact. It's not quantum emptiness, because it doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean anything. It's void because it can't be grasped, it can't be represented because it's more than what we see. It's more than the limitation of the objects. It goes beyond that. So it's a pure potential that actually is the origin of matter that explains in a way that we cannot know everything in nature. We cannot grasp everything.

It's the feeling of infinity taking the word infinity as it is non-finite. But when you are with the computing thought, you think the world is something finite like Like a program and so you want to even narrow time to make it something compact something You know where you are going so there is no time anymore But progress is the opposite of that now we confuse it but it is the opposite of that Progress is the fact that there is always openness Because chaos it is the fact that there is the void at the basis of the universe that can't be grasped and that is not meant to be grasped, actually.

And so it's what I call raw transcendence. Because it's transcendence, it means transcendence is not a state like paradise or something. It could be formalized this way. But transcendence is the very tendency of human beings to go beyond because through their original frustration in front of the world, they actually discovered that the world is not complete, is not complete at all. And they found even different ways to do that with symbolic, with theory, with all that. And so chaos is what gives meaning, beyond all the possible meaning, and so that maintain

in human beings this desire to be. And it's actually what we have lost. And so it is why we are like crumbling in a state of what I will call mythical depression. So the incapacity of telling what we are and what we are doing here positively, it's not a question of dogma of religion or science against religion and all that. It's a question that we have lost track of the idea that we can go beyond because the universe is about openness. And so the AI, you were talking about paradigm, I think AI there is a big fight, we could say even a giant metaphysical fight between two tendencies in science.

Huge tendencies. And I don't know which one of them will win. The first tendency, it's the tendency to think that the universe is made of data, of information. It comes from the vision we have of artificial intelligence. And it creates, because we talk about physics, like digital physics, for instance, theory of information. Everything is information. Everything is just made of information. The human beings, they are just their genes. The universe is just also information like in a computer game. And even our mind is just the brain.

And by doing that, we forgot the very nature of what is a human being, like this void, what I said before, like this thing. We forgot what is the world, the fact that it's incomplete, and we always try to complete it in an open view. And we forget what is the mind. The mind is the void itself. It doesn't have any material ground. The mind is just the fact that there is something, the very name of the mind in fact, it's not the brain. It's just the fact that there is something in nature that goes beyond itself. And we don't know exactly why.

We don't know why there is openness, that there is this thing. But it gives meaning. So on one side, we have that. We could call that, I don't know, the digital paradigm or something like that. And on the other side, you have what we could call the quantum paradigm, where some people start to say we have to accept the void, and they call that uncertainty, since Schrodinger or Niels Bohr. And even the fight with Albert Einstein on one side and Niels Bohr on the other side was already a bit like that.

Albert Einstein, even if he's a great genius, he couldn't admit that there is this void, this openness. He wanted everything to be restrained to a specific set of cause and effect. And he couldn't understand that maybe cause and effect are a product of our view, our perspective on this layer. But maybe on the deeper layer, it's what shows quantum physics, cause and effect are not yet fixed into the world we know today, the order we know today. But because we can't accept that today, the very word chaos, k-h-a-o-s in Greek, that was positive, that is the origin even of the critical mind,

of the idea to go beyond, became chaos in English with the C-H-A-O, which means we need order. We need order for order. We need technology for technology. We need to believe that what is important is order. And what is it? A world when we think that everything is information, it's that everything is ordered. Everything is already there. Even if it is a paradox, let me tell you, and maybe that can be my final word on that,

there is a paradox in the very idea that the world is made up of pure information. It's totally absurd. I'm wondering if people that are actually pretending that see this absurdity, because what is data? What is an information? Even the very word information said it. It's actually a trace of something else.

It's what is an information. It's something that gives a form to something else, but doesn't give the totality of what it is. It just gives the form. That's the reason why it's a trace. It's a print. You know, it's like when we are talking, it's not you. It's just the image of you. It's just a certain number of information. When an animal, like a tiger, for instance, is walking on the sand

on the beach, he's not there anymore. And when you look at it, you say, oh my God, there is the information of the tiger, because there is his feet, his foot on the sand, his paw, you know, on the sand. But my question is, if you say the world is made of information, I will say, where is the tiger? Where is the tiger? Where is the tiger? That's totally absurd to say that information is the substance itself. It doesn't mean anything. It's not coherent at all.

So it would be akin in your view to saying that the world is made of impressions, but impressions are pressed upon by something else. I think it will be another podcast because I will be like two hours to explain exactly what I what I mean by Chaos and positive hubris and other things that works pretty well in science, but from from now what I will say is I will say that the world is Not in formation like something static that we think we can agglomerate, but it is the

relation itself, the process, the processual, like the famous British philosopher will put it in his process philosophy. He said it is the affect, the fact that it is the relation itself, the fact that things are affected by things. So we make a mistake when we think that things have specific borders and so they are separated and they can touch each other the way they touch each other. That's just a cognitive effect on our level. And it's also a statistical effect that allows them to behave more or less like that, like

in a cause and effect way. Because to have a pure cause and effect, you need to figure out pure objects with their limitations so they move into cause and effect. But when you don't have borders, time and space borders, specific, it's just a question of intensity, that doesn't work with the effect, that just works into the relation. So the deep meaning of the world is the relation itself. Some people, Leibniz will say it's the perception, but I prefer not to use this word because when you think perception, we think just the fact that we look at something or we hear

something, but it's more than that. It's the fact that I agree in a way that everything is a question of traces, but not static traces that will be compared like a substance and that you can agglomerate them to be more intelligent like a machine. No. The relation itself is dynamic, so it can't be grasped. And it's, in fact, I will say, it's related to infinity, to the meaning of infinity, because it's not finite.

Hmm. It's not finite. It's not finite. When you try to understand what is infinity, you cut it in bits, so in finite bits, so you lose what it is. It's like when you want to know what is the motion in classical physics. You have different time, it's the object, the module,

the object is there and there and there. No, the object is never there. But what does that mean? So you have all those paradoxes that could help us to see what is actually the world. It's through the paradox, through the aporia, through these limits of our perception of science, of limits of formalization that we can better understand what is really reality. Not through the medium way of what we perceive around because it's useful, etc. But that's great that it is useful. But we don't have, I mean, we have to try to exercise our mind.

It's another part of my world. To exercise our mind, to trust the efficiency efficiency but to not trust that because it's efficient it's true the truth is something else it's real exercise to do that it's part of the chaos project what i call the curse project professor thank you so much for this wonderful presentation and for people who are watching there will be a Q&A that you can watch and the link is in the description. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. Thanks to you.

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