WEBVTT 00:00:18.860 --> 00:00:24.261 The science delusion is the belief that science already understands the nature of reality in principle 00:00:24.537 --> 00:00:27.002 leaving only the details to be filled in. 00:00:27.248 --> 00:00:30.303 This is a very wide spread belief in our society. 00:00:31.163 --> 00:00:33.531 It's the kind of belief system of people who say 00:00:33.654 --> 00:00:36.261 I don't believe in God, I believe in science. 00:00:36.476 --> 00:00:41.022 It is a belief system which has now been spread to the entire world. 00:00:43.621 --> 00:00:47.948 But there's a conflict in the heart of science between science as a method of inquiry 00:00:47.963 --> 00:00:53.183 based on reason, evidence, hypothesis, and collective investigation 00:00:53.890 --> 00:00:57.205 and science as a belief system or a world view. 00:00:57.853 --> 00:01:03.552 And unfortunately the world view aspect of science has come to inhibit and constrict 00:01:03.552 --> 00:01:07.889 the free inquiry which is the very lifeblood of the scientific endeavor. 00:01:09.503 --> 00:01:13.983 Since the late 19th century, science has been conducted 00:01:13.983 --> 00:01:17.382 under the aspect of a belief system or world view 00:01:17.382 --> 00:01:22.468 which is essentially that of materialism. Philosophical materialism. 00:01:22.591 --> 00:01:28.287 And the sciences are now wholly-owned subsidiaries of the materialist world view. 00:01:29.942 --> 00:01:34.692 I think that, as we break out of it, the sciences will be regenerated. 00:01:36.075 --> 00:01:41.544 What I do in my book 'The Science Delusion' - which is called 'Science Set Free' in the United States - 00:01:42.835 --> 00:01:49.819 is: take the ten dogmas or assumptions of science and turn them into questions, 00:01:50.065 --> 00:01:54.955 seeing how well they stand up if you look at them scientifically. 00:01:56.545 --> 00:01:58.701 None of them stand up very well. 00:01:59.148 --> 00:02:03.582 What I am going to do is first run through what these ten dogmas are, 00:02:03.582 --> 00:02:08.381 and then I will only have time to discuss one or two of them in a bit more detail. 00:02:08.580 --> 00:02:12.732 But essentially the ten dogmas which are the default world view 00:02:12.840 --> 00:02:16.335 of most educated people all over the world are, 00:02:16.335 --> 00:02:21.262 first that nature is mechanical or machine like, the universe is like a machine, 00:02:21.262 --> 00:02:25.008 animals and plants are like machines, we are like machines. 00:02:25.069 --> 00:02:26.835 In fact, we are machines. 00:02:26.944 --> 00:02:30.774 We are "lumbering robots" in Richard Dawkins' vivid phrase, 00:02:31.244 --> 00:02:34.428 with brains that are genetically programed computers. 00:02:35.704 --> 00:02:40.725 Second, matter is unconscious, the whole universe is made up of unconscious matter. 00:02:42.293 --> 00:02:47.522 There is no consciousness in stars, in galaxies, in planets, in animals, in plants, 00:02:47.522 --> 00:02:51.622 and there ought not to be any in us either, if this theory is true. 00:02:51.775 --> 00:02:55.623 So a lot of the philosophy of mind over the last hundred years 00:02:55.623 --> 00:02:59.622 has been trying to prove that we are not really conscious at all. 00:03:00.361 --> 00:03:07.637 So the matter is unconscious, then the laws of nature are fixed. This is the dogma three. 00:03:07.822 --> 00:03:12.272 The laws of nature are the same now as they were at the time of the Big Bang 00:03:12.272 --> 00:03:13.901 and they will be the same forever. 00:03:14.255 --> 00:03:19.161 Not just the laws but the constants of nature are fixed which is why they are called constants. 00:03:19.792 --> 00:03:24.687 Dogma four: the total amount of matter and energy is always the same. 00:03:25.132 --> 00:03:30.663 It never changes in total quantity except at the moment of the Big Bang when it all sprang 00:03:30.663 --> 00:03:33.752 into existence from nowhere in a single instant. 00:03:35.422 --> 00:03:40.422 The fifth dogma is that nature is purposeless, there is no purposes in all nature 00:03:40.422 --> 00:03:45.682 and the evolutionary process has no purpose or direction. 00:03:46.837 --> 00:03:54.475 Dogma six: the biological heredity is material, everything you inherit is in your genes 00:03:54.475 --> 00:04:01.696 or in epigenetic modifications of the genes, or in cytoplasmic inheritance. It is material. 00:04:02.880 --> 00:04:07.602 Dogma seven: memories are stored inside your brain as material traces. 00:04:08.232 --> 00:04:13.433 Somehow everything you remember is in your brain in modified nerve endings phosphorylated proteins. 00:04:13.586 --> 00:04:15.757 No one knows how it works, 00:04:15.757 --> 00:04:20.442 but nevertheless almost everyone in the scientific world believes it must be in the brain. 00:04:22.058 --> 00:04:24.786 Dogma eight: your mind is inside your head. 00:04:24.955 --> 00:04:29.323 All your consciousness is the activity of your brain and nothing more. 00:04:29.845 --> 00:04:36.821 Dogma nine, which follows from dogma eight: psychic phenomena like telepathy are impossible. 00:04:36.821 --> 00:04:40.366 Your thoughts and intentions can not have any effect at a distance 00:04:40.366 --> 00:04:42.451 because your mind is inside your head. 00:04:42.589 --> 00:04:47.997 Therefore all the apparent evidence for telepathy and other psychic phenomena is illusory. 00:04:48.690 --> 00:04:53.407 People believe these things happen but it is just because they don't know enough about statistics, 00:04:53.407 --> 00:04:58.307 or they are deceived by coincidences or it is wishful thinking. 00:04:59.799 --> 00:05:03.511 And dogma ten: mechanistic medicine is the only kind that really works. 00:05:03.511 --> 00:05:08.791 That is why governments only fund research into mechanistic medicine 00:05:08.791 --> 00:05:12.036 and ignore complementary and alternative therapies. 00:05:12.252 --> 00:05:15.929 Those can't possibly really work because they are not mechanistic, 00:05:15.929 --> 00:05:22.179 they may appear to work because people would have got better anyway or because of the placebo effect. 00:05:22.179 --> 00:05:27.383 But the only kind that really works is mechanistic medicine. 00:05:27.675 --> 00:05:33.762 Well, this is the default world view which is held by almost all educated people all over the world, 00:05:33.762 --> 00:05:40.891 it is the basis of the educational system, the national health service, the Medical Research Council, 00:05:40.891 --> 00:05:47.571 governments, and it is just the default world view of educated people. 00:05:49.002 --> 00:05:53.330 But I think every one of these dogmas is very, very questionable 00:05:53.330 --> 00:05:57.547 and when you look at it, it turns they fall apart. 00:05:59.316 --> 00:06:03.265 I am going to take first the idea that the laws of nature are fixed. 00:06:03.774 --> 00:06:09.102 This is a hangover from an older world view before the 1960's when the Big Bang theory came in. 00:06:09.102 --> 00:06:14.983 People thought that the whole universe was eternal, governed by eternal mathematical laws. 00:06:16.675 --> 00:06:20.088 When the Big Bang came in, then that assumption continued, 00:06:20.088 --> 00:06:26.649 even though the Big Bang revealed a universe that is radically evolutionary about 14 billion years old. 00:06:26.649 --> 00:06:31.287 Growing, and developing, and evolving for 14 billion years. 00:06:31.287 --> 00:06:35.248 Growing and cooling and more structures and patterns appear within it. 00:06:35.771 --> 00:06:40.512 But the idea is, all the laws of nature were completely fixed at the moment of the Big Bang, 00:06:40.682 --> 00:06:42.705 like a cosmic Napoleonic Code. 00:06:43.797 --> 00:06:45.933 As my friend Terence McKenna used to say, 00:06:46.717 --> 00:06:51.704 “Modern science is based on the principle: give us one free miracle and we’ll explain the rest." 00:06:51.894 --> 00:06:55.913 And the one free miracle is the appearance of all the matter and energy in the universe 00:06:56.054 --> 00:06:59.363 and all the laws that govern it from nothing in a single instant. 00:07:01.931 --> 00:07:06.639 Well, in an evolutionary universe, why shouldn't the laws themselves evolve? 00:07:07.122 --> 00:07:13.942 After all human laws do, and the idea of the laws of the nature is based on a metaphor with human law. 00:07:14.049 --> 00:07:19.720 It is a very anthropocentric metaphor: only humans have laws, in fact only civilized societies have laws. 00:07:20.166 --> 00:07:22.555 As C. S. Lewis once said, 00:07:22.570 --> 00:07:28.184 "To say that a stone falls to earth because it is obeying a law makes it a man and even a citizen." 00:07:29.294 --> 00:07:33.179 It is a metaphor that we got so used to, we forget it is a metaphor. 00:07:33.795 --> 00:07:37.725 In an evolving universe I think a much better idea is the idea of habits. 00:07:38.464 --> 00:07:43.133 I think the habits of nature evolve, the regularities of nature are essentially habitual. 00:07:45.148 --> 00:07:48.683 This was an idea put forward at the beginning of the 20th century 00:07:48.683 --> 00:07:51.116 by the American philosopher C. S. Peirce. 00:07:52.362 --> 00:07:55.334 And it is an idea which various other philosophers have entertained, 00:07:55.334 --> 00:08:00.123 it is one which I myself have developed into a scientific hypothesis, 00:08:00.200 --> 00:08:02.892 the hypothesis of morphic resonance 00:08:02.892 --> 00:08:06.368 which is the basis of these evolving habits. 00:08:06.568 --> 00:08:10.825 According to this hypothesis, everything in nature has a kind of collective memory. 00:08:11.917 --> 00:08:14.184 Resonance occurs on the basis of similarity. 00:08:14.921 --> 00:08:19.318 As a young giraffe embryo grows in its mother's womb, 00:08:19.318 --> 00:08:24.255 it tunes in to the morphic resonance of previous giraffes, 00:08:24.255 --> 00:08:28.005 it draws on that collective memory, it grows like a giraffe, 00:08:28.005 --> 00:08:31.686 it behaves like a giraffe because it is drawing on this collective memory. 00:08:31.686 --> 00:08:37.091 It has to have the right genes to make the right proteins, but genes in my view are grossly overrated. 00:08:37.429 --> 00:08:43.663 They only account for the proteins that the organism can make, not the shape, or form, or the behavior. 00:08:45.048 --> 00:08:49.289 Every species has a kind of collective memory. Even crystals do. 00:08:49.289 --> 00:08:53.732 This theory predicts that if you make a new kind of crystal for the first time, 00:08:54.608 --> 00:08:59.653 the very first time you make it, it won't have an existing habit. 00:08:59.653 --> 00:09:04.872 But once it crystallizes, then the next time you make it there will be an influence from the first crystals 00:09:04.872 --> 00:09:10.538 to the second ones all over the world, by morphic resonance it will crystallize a bit easier. 00:09:10.538 --> 00:09:13.955 The third time there will be an influence from the first and second crystals. 00:09:14.693 --> 00:09:20.745 There is in fact good evidence that new compounds get easier to crystallize all around the world, 00:09:20.791 --> 00:09:23.153 just as this theory would predict. 00:09:23.338 --> 00:09:27.579 It also predicts that if you train animals to learn a new trick, 00:09:27.809 --> 00:09:30.691 for example rats learn a new trick in London, 00:09:30.768 --> 00:09:34.575 then all round the world rats of the same breed should learn the same trick quicker 00:09:34.698 --> 00:09:36.791 just because rats have learned it here. 00:09:36.883 --> 00:09:41.139 And surprisingly, there is already evidence that this actually happens. 00:09:43.262 --> 00:09:47.388 Anyway, that is my hypotheses in a nutshell of morphic resonance, 00:09:47.388 --> 00:09:50.627 everything depends on evolving habits not on fixed laws. 00:09:50.765 --> 00:09:55.020 But I want to spend a few moments on the constants of nature too. 00:09:55.020 --> 00:09:58.943 Because these, are again, assumed to be constant. 00:09:58.943 --> 00:10:03.847 Things like the gravitational constant, the speed of light are called the fundamental constants. 00:10:04.647 --> 00:10:07.103 Are they really constant? 00:10:07.534 --> 00:10:10.775 Well, when I got interested in this question I tried to find out. 00:10:11.467 --> 00:10:14.547 They are given in physics handbooks. 00:10:14.547 --> 00:10:19.546 Handbooks of physics list the existing fundamental constants and tell you their value. 00:10:19.684 --> 00:10:24.499 But I wanted to see if they've changed, so I got the old volumes of physical handbooks. 00:10:24.499 --> 00:10:27.760 I went to the Patent Office Library here in London, 00:10:27.760 --> 00:10:30.864 and they are the only place I could find that kept the old volumes, 00:10:30.864 --> 00:10:35.614 normally people throw them away. When the new values come out, they throw away the old ones. 00:10:36.628 --> 00:10:42.121 When I did this I found out that the speed of light dropped between 1928 and 1945 00:10:42.121 --> 00:10:44.797 by about 20 kilometers per second. 00:10:45.197 --> 00:10:51.582 It's a huge drop because they were given with the errors of any fractions, decimal points of error. 00:10:51.582 --> 00:10:54.905 And yet, all over the world it dropped 00:10:54.905 --> 00:10:58.938 and they were all getting values very similar to each other with tiny errors, 00:10:59.030 --> 00:11:03.064 then in (1945) 1948 it went up again, 00:11:03.268 --> 00:11:06.122 and then people started getting very similar values again. 00:11:07.568 --> 00:11:11.148 I was very intrigued by this, and I couldn't make sense of it, 00:11:11.148 --> 00:11:13.111 so I went to see the Head of Metrology, 00:11:13.111 --> 00:11:15.863 at the National Physical Laboratory, in Teddington. 00:11:16.908 --> 00:11:20.704 Metrology is the science in which people measure constants. 00:11:21.550 --> 00:11:22.999 And I asked him about this, I said: 00:11:22.999 --> 00:11:28.958 what do you make of this drop in the speed of light between 1928 and 1945? 00:11:29.435 --> 00:11:30.592 And he said, "Oh dear", 00:11:30.777 --> 00:11:35.553 he said "you uncovered the most embarrassing episode in the history of our sciences." 00:11:36.091 --> 00:11:42.499 I said well, could the speed of light have actually dropped, and that would have amazing implications if so. 00:11:42.637 --> 00:11:46.865 And he said, "no, no, of course it couldn't have actually dropped, it is a constant!" 00:11:47.695 --> 00:11:51.474 Oh, well then how do you explain the fact that everyone was almost finding 00:11:51.474 --> 00:11:54.205 it going much slower during that period? 00:11:54.358 --> 00:11:59.459 Is it because they were fudging their results to get what they thought other people should be getting 00:11:59.459 --> 00:12:03.300 and the whole thing was just produced in the minds of physicists? 00:12:04.346 --> 00:12:06.695 "We don't like to use the word fudge." 00:12:07.065 --> 00:12:08.963 I said, well what do you prefer? 00:12:09.055 --> 00:12:13.031 He said, "well we prefer to call it intellectual phase-locking." 00:12:19.567 --> 00:12:23.408 So if this was going on then, how can we be so sure it is not going on today, 00:12:23.408 --> 00:12:28.485 and that the present values produced by intellectual phase-locking? 00:12:28.485 --> 00:12:30.407 And he said, "no, we know it is not the case." 00:12:30.407 --> 00:12:31.766 I said, how do we know? 00:12:31.766 --> 00:12:35.212 He said, "well, we have solved the problem". I said well how? 00:12:35.212 --> 00:12:39.795 He said, "well we fixed the speed of light by definition in 1972". 00:12:41.471 --> 00:12:43.434 So it might still change. 00:12:43.573 --> 00:12:47.619 He said, "Yes but we'll never know because we defined the metre in terms of the speed of light, 00:12:47.789 --> 00:12:50.066 so the units have changed with it". 00:12:50.082 --> 00:12:53.406 So he looked very pleased about that, they'd fixed their problem. 00:12:56.504 --> 00:12:58.633 But I said, well then what about Big G? 00:12:58.956 --> 00:13:03.984 The gravitational constant known in the trade as Big G, it is written with the capital G. 00:13:04.153 --> 00:13:11.335 Newton's universal gravitational constant. That has varied by more than 1.3 per cent in recent years. 00:13:12.966 --> 00:13:16.697 And it seems to vary from place to place and from time to time. 00:13:17.266 --> 00:13:23.115 And he said, "well there is a chance of errors, and unfortunately there are quite big errors with the Big G. 00:13:24.298 --> 00:13:28.466 So I said, what if it is really changing, perhaps it is really changing. 00:13:29.450 --> 00:13:33.497 And then I looked at how they do it: what happens is that they measure it in different labs, 00:13:33.497 --> 00:13:37.303 they get different values on different days, and then they average them. 00:13:37.672 --> 00:13:39.518 And then other labs from around the world do the same 00:13:39.518 --> 00:13:41.952 and they come out usually with a rather different average. 00:13:42.059 --> 00:13:46.587 And then the International Committee on Metrology meets every 10 years or so 00:13:46.587 --> 00:13:51.557 and averages the ones from labs from around the world to come out with the value of Big G. 00:13:51.712 --> 00:13:57.112 But what if G were actually fluctuating? What if it changed? 00:13:57.250 --> 00:14:01.925 There is already evidence actually that it changes throughout the day and throughout the year. 00:14:02.079 --> 00:14:07.183 What if the Earth, as it moves through the galactic environment, went through patches of dark matter 00:14:07.183 --> 00:14:12.706 or other environmental factors that could alter it? Maybe they all change together. 00:14:12.782 --> 00:14:15.865 What if these errors are going up together and down together? 00:14:15.865 --> 00:14:20.625 For more than 10 years I have been trying to persuade metrologists to look at the raw data. 00:14:20.763 --> 00:14:23.913 In fact, I am now trying to persuade them to put it online on the internet, 00:14:24.020 --> 00:14:26.953 with the dates and the actual measurements, 00:14:27.045 --> 00:14:31.625 and see if they are correlated; to see if they are all up at one time, all down at another. 00:14:31.932 --> 00:14:36.518 If so they might be fluctuating together and that would tell us something very, very interesting. 00:14:36.609 --> 00:14:40.593 But no one has done this, they haven't done it because G is a constant. 00:14:40.778 --> 00:14:42.853 There is no point in looking for changes. 00:14:43.439 --> 00:14:49.024 You see, here is a very simple example of where a dogmatic assumption actually inhibits inquiry. 00:14:49.362 --> 00:14:53.755 I myself think that the constants may vary quite considerably. 00:14:54.216 --> 00:14:56.764 Well within narrow limits, but they may all be varying. 00:14:56.903 --> 00:15:02.342 And I think the day will come when scientific journals like Nature have weekly reports on the constants 00:15:02.342 --> 00:15:04.702 like stock market reports in the newspapers. 00:15:05.332 --> 00:15:12.151 This week Big G was slightly up, the charge on the electron was down, the speed of light held steady, 00:15:12.201 --> 00:15:13.223 and so on. 00:15:16.392 --> 00:15:24.934 So, that is one area, just one area where I think thinking less dogmatically could open things up. 00:15:25.179 --> 00:15:27.687 One of the biggest areas is the nature of the mind, 00:15:27.810 --> 00:15:31.102 this is the most unsolved problem as Graham has just said. 00:15:31.625 --> 00:15:35.164 Science simply can't deal with the fact that we are conscious. 00:15:36.533 --> 00:15:41.354 And it can't deal with the fact that our thoughts don't seem to be inside our brains. 00:15:43.061 --> 00:15:46.220 Our experiences don't all seem to be inside our brain. 00:15:46.451 --> 00:15:50.117 Your image of me now doesn't seem to be inside your brain. 00:15:50.225 --> 00:15:54.168 Yet the official view is that there is a little Rupert somewhere inside your head 00:15:54.291 --> 00:15:57.215 and everything else in this room is inside your head. 00:15:57.308 --> 00:15:59.326 Your experiences is inside your brain. 00:16:00.017 --> 00:16:03.870 I am suggesting actually that vision involves an outward projection of images, 00:16:03.931 --> 00:16:07.374 what you are seeing is in your mind but not inside your head. 00:16:07.544 --> 00:16:11.910 Our minds are extended beyond our brains in the simple act of perception. 00:16:12.770 --> 00:16:19.091 I think that we project out the images we are seeing and these images touch what we are looking at. 00:16:19.445 --> 00:16:23.864 If I look at you from behind and you don't know I am there, could I affect you? 00:16:24.110 --> 00:16:25.649 Could you feel my gaze? 00:16:26.048 --> 00:16:29.079 There is a great deal of evidence that people can. 00:16:29.187 --> 00:16:31.957 The sense of being stared at is an extremely common experience, 00:16:32.065 --> 00:16:36.405 and recent experimental research actually suggests it is real. 00:16:36.544 --> 00:16:38.387 Animals seem to have it too. 00:16:38.540 --> 00:16:41.841 I think it probably evolved in the context of predator-prey relationships. 00:16:41.965 --> 00:16:47.105 Prey animals that can feel the gaze of the predator would survive better than those that couldn't. 00:16:47.443 --> 00:16:52.578 This would lead to a whole new way of thinking about ecological relationships between predators and prey, 00:16:52.805 --> 00:16:55.286 also about the extent of our minds. 00:16:55.471 --> 00:17:01.239 If we look at distant stars, I think our minds reach out in the sense to touch these stars 00:17:01.377 --> 00:17:04.989 and literally extend out over astronomical different distances. 00:17:05.465 --> 00:17:07.542 They are not just inside our heads. 00:17:07.881 --> 00:17:13.266 Now it may seem astonishing that this is a topic of debate in the 21st century. 00:17:13.450 --> 00:17:16.964 We know so little about our own minds that where our images are 00:17:17.087 --> 00:17:20.585 is a hot topic of debate within consciousness studies right now. 00:17:22.137 --> 00:17:28.020 I don't have time to deal with anymore of these dogmas, but every single one of them is questionable. 00:17:28.173 --> 00:17:32.464 If one questions it, new forms of research, new possibilities open up. 00:17:32.602 --> 00:17:37.713 And I think as we question these dogmas that have held back science so long, 00:17:39.204 --> 00:17:42.023 science will undergo a re-flowering, a Renaissance. 00:17:42.521 --> 00:17:45.179 I am a total believer in the importance of science. 00:17:45.302 --> 00:17:49.268 I have spent my whole life as a research scientist, my whole career. 00:17:50.283 --> 00:17:54.891 But I think by moving beyond these dogmas it can be regenerated. 00:17:55.030 --> 00:17:58.926 Once again it will become interesting, and I hope life affirming. 00:17:59.203 --> 00:18:00.446 Thank you.