Quantitative Science in Evolution of Humanity

Throughout history, human intelligence has made incredible advances towards understanding of one powerful phenomenon known as the nature. But the intriguing question, has the evolution of science helped in the evolution of humanity, even today remains unanswered.

This article, therefore, aims to explore through the evolution of natural science and find out how successful we have been and to analyze the possible factors that serve as impediments in the improvement of the human condition.

From the natural sciences, I have chosen to use the evolution of Physics for two purely personal reasons:

(a) natural philosophy or the philosophy of nature (old name for physics);

(b) the belief that it is the only quantitative science that has benefited mankind in several respects.

It all began from the two most important human inventions: fire and the wheel. The former was probably the result of a necessity to survive the cold and the latter in my opinion was a beginning of a struggle to find symmetries in nature, for the wheel was circular in shape, perfectly symmetrical. Since then, the human imagination with the advancement of time has been revolving around energy (fire) and symmetry (wheel). It is through these two phenomena we will see how our treatment of reality has changed with respect to time.

Symmetry or regularity has been the key foundation for a human mind to comprehend the complexities of nature. If a scientist wants to understand a process at hand, he or she will naturally check the order and authenticity of the informed views on the process by the use of the scientific method. If true, he or she will eventually develop an understanding that verifies its regularity, order, balance or symmetry. If not, back to the board of new hypotheses and experiments.

Notable success was seen in the methods of the Greeks throughout the Middle Ages as they used geometry and numbers to understand the structure and working of the solar system. Their assertion was based on the results they had obtained through measurements.

Apparently, there is no evidence to suggest whether the Greeks were surprised to find that the earth was spherical and the planets revolved around the sun in circles. One could, however, make a safe guess that they would have liked to believe it. If they hadn’t, they could have re-tested their assertions which they didn’t during that time.

The Greeks, such as Aristotle relied on reason intuitively to perhaps find justifications of what they saw daily. For instance, they compared the orbits of planets with chariot wheels. They calculated that the Earth was fixed because that’s how they had seen it.

The Copernican and Galilean discovery of the earth being heliocentric and of the sun being at the center of the solar system went through extreme difficulties of acceptance by the church and the general public. These "heretics" were persecuted for distorting an established belief. Their views survived regardless; due to their authenticity which was later to be picked up by Kepler who went further to prove the Greeks wrong by showing that the planets moved in ellipses, not circles; a finding that is so beautifully illustrated in his Astronomia Nova which he published in 1609. This was an important step in the evolution of the human mind: development of the ability to question and challenge established beliefs.

After the introduction of the scientific method by the Saracens came an intellectual revolution in the 17th century in Europe. Newton, being the father of the scientific revolution, put the accurate findings of Kepler and Galileo in his standard mathematical equations generally known as the laws of motion and gravitation - to facilitate the understanding of the behavior of not only celestial bodies but also daily life objects. His comprehensive work was compiled in his Principia Mathematica (1687). Newton’s laws were perfect at his time, virtually unchallenged. But, it was Newton himself who had inadvertently identified the problem in his own perception and his laws. He writes: "...the parts of space cannot be seen or distinguished from one another by our senses.... From the positions and distances of things from anybody considered as immovable, we define all places, we estimate all motion.... And so, instead of absolute places and motions, we use relative ones."

And yet, he also writes: "The centre of the system of the world is immovable. This is acknowledged by all, while some contend that the earth, others that the sun, is fixed in that centre..... Absolute, true and mathematical time of itself and from its own nature flows equally without relation to anything external...."

It appears here that Newton, despite the fact that his laws supported the heliocentric view of the earth, was not fairly convinced of the idea. His laws as well as his views were suffering from a contradiction. This is where Einstein comes in to finally bring an end to Newton’s dilemma with his theories of relativity. He pointed out the asymmetry in Newton’s laws by showing that events simultaneous in one non-accelerating frame are not simultaneous in another reference frame moving with respect to the first. Newton’s assertion therefore could not be maintained. This was another crucial step towards evolution in which time for the first time in history was seen as a relative phenomenon, as an agent of change that had different meaning for observers at different locations. It was now a solid fact that the Earth indeed is moving.

The advent of Quantum Mechanics, a set of postulates that predicted uncertain behaviour of elementary particles, sent a series of shock waves in the consciousness of the human mind. Neils Bohr claims: "Anyone who has not been shocked by Quantum Mechanics has not understood it."

Another assertion of a radical physicist, Richard P. Feynman, to note: "I think I can safely say that nobody understands Quantum Mechanics."

Despite the initial reaction, the phrase "Everything is probable" steadily gained competence over "Everything is possible." This wonderful branch of Physics led to a more respectful understanding of the behaviour of smaller particles, such as the nucleons and electrons but it also profoundly narrowed the human vision to either the position of the particles or their momentum providing no clue to the path they follow while they move. Einstein could not accept that. He termed quantum mechanics as "incomplete" and completely absorbed himself in finding the "hidden parameters" of the particles in motion. Subsequently, he gave up and said, "God does not play dice with the universe." Symmetry had finally met its blow. While searching for symmetry in the universe it seems that the quantitative understanding is evolving towards chaos.

Today, we talk of living in a quantum world where nothing is certain. This is a strange development but was it already expected? Is it really chaos or is it our fallacious understanding that causes us to see chaos? When we assume the human mind to be evolving, what type of it are we claiming? Is it rational, scientific, spiritual or all?

Energy is defined in Physics as the ability to do work. It is a statement carrying a powerful meaning. For instance, energy enables growth as well as destruction, it indicates the availability or non-availability of natural resources or it gives evidence of the stability or instability of objects. What are the factors that determine the "right" use of energy? But first let’s go back to history again and how we used energy. The first use came as a result of a necessity to survive. With the growth of population, energy needs grew too. So, man went out hunting for energy. And he found it; in the sun, in the fossils and in atoms and inside the nucleus. Population as well as energy needs will never stop to grow. To gain energy, one needs to know the means to gain it. Today, the means is science.

Here, I attempt to make an analogy. Consider a country A which is rich with resources, its soil fertile, its technology fully developed and its economy booming. People of all classes are living happy lives. Country A learns of another country B which is in a bad economic and social condition but has rich resources which can end country A’s energy concerns forever. A’s government loves the idea and launches a propaganda through the information media to convince the happy people that their happiness is an illusion and the country is in danger of terrorist attacks from the people of country B - who share beliefs harmful to the interests of country A, and hence immediate action should be taken. A gets the go signal from its naïve people and bombards high tech bombs (made with the aid of modern science) to crush the innocent resistance. A then paves way through body parts, rubbles of hospitals and school buildings, to get the much needed resources. This is known as war for energy. It happens today as it did in ancient times. The only difference throughout time has been the evolving warfare technology; spears and arrows in middle ages, gunpowder and canon till the 17th century, TNT, machine gun and tanks in the 18th and 19th centuries and now the nuclear bomb is the cherished security asset of populations today.The use, same as it was in antiquity: competition, destruction and invasion. It is clear that scientific intelligence has indeed evolved but what role has it played in the evolution of humanity? We are seeing changes but, is human changing with them?

In his book Religion and Science, Bertrand Russell writes, "It is difficult for a modern mind to realize how recent is the belief in development and gradual growth."

In order to see what Russell had meant one is forced to think that there are some inherent characteristics of the human mind that are immune to whatever intellectual development takes place inside or outside the mind. Newton’s work - the Copernican system having been accepted - did nothing to shake the religious orthodoxy. Einstein, although not religious and a pacifist by heart, was one of the chief contributors towards the nuclear bomb program that took hundreds of thousands of lives in Hiroshima and Nagasaki - aimed at defeating his home country Germany which was then ruled by the racist Nazis.

Belief in a particular doctrine can be best described as an "inherent characteristic" of the human mind. Beliefs, thus, become the basis of identity and hence enable an individual to recognize and differentiate other individuals. These differences define our need to compete for energy especially when these differences become causes of conflicts.

Albert Szent Györgyi, a Nobel laureate, was a man dedicated to science. In addition to this, he has been a voice in the political arena of our time, speaking of freedom and the responsibilities of the scientist to fellow human beings. In his remarkable essay, Lost in the Twentieth Century he writes about his pursuits in science and the "primitive" surroundings that woke up the social activist in him: "The sole general interest in this story is that it sheds a vivid light on the turbulence of our days, showing the conflict between my scientific world and pre-scientific surroundings which were immiscible. Looking back gives me the feeling of frustration. Resisting Hitler, building academics, research schools, living for years with a finger on the trigger instead of fingering test tubes,and all this to see the part of the world I worked for trodden down as a colony, and to see mankind on the brink of extinction. Should science not be stopped till man reaches the maturity necessary to deal with the forces which science creates, without the danger of self-destruction?"

In the study of natural science, humans did a marvellous job in hunting down the symmetries needed for comprehension for the ever-increasing complexity of nature. The development of regularity had been slow in the beginning as man had been struggling to overthrow the established but false symmetries of phenomena and processes. Today, although the progress is incredibly speedy, the established beliefs as Russell had pointed out still remain unshaken.

There is still a significantly large portion of the human population that thrives on these beliefs and hence we still live in a "pre-scientific" world as Györgyi had identified. This leads to say that science has not been powerful enough to lead the common man into introspection of established beliefs and their radical justification. Unfortunately, this is very true. We can owe this to the inborn certainties in the human mind, such as fear and death.

Death is a certainty no one can argue with and fear has its many forms; fear of loss, fear of heights, fear of control, fear of destiny etc. There is no universal scientific method to deal with these certainties. Therefore, it becomes important to the common human to "invent" his or her symmetry to alleviate fear and to escape the very idea of death. These "false symmetries" exist in the form of superstition, myth and religions. As a result, when they influence decisions especially belief systems of yesterday and today, we find countless instances of persecution and mass violence, such as wrong or unjustified use of energy.

However, it is important to note that although myth and religion have done enough to disrupt the real or true symmetrical view, their positive achievements stand out sharply as well, especially the glorious music, architecture, sculpture, painting and dance that have been inspired by particular mythologies.

They encapsulate experience gained through centuries and millennia of interaction with nature and with human culture. They contain not only lessons but also, at least by implication, prescription for behaviour.

So, we can’t underestimate the importance of these "false regularities." Even the hunters of true regularities, such as Newton and Einstein believed in them.

Science, despite having its successes has, on a large scale, failed to enable the human mind to evolve as a whole. Nevertheless, science is here to stay and one can only hope to see humans finding rational certainties in the chaotic environment they are surrounded with today. One, therefore, needs to broaden horizons of thought and re-examine the significance and role of these "false symmetries" that in matters of influence have always had a powerful edge over the symmetries determined by science. They invariably lead the man of limited or unlimited resources to decide what to make of the abundant Nitrogen in the atmosphere; to choose TNT over fertilizers or vice-versa.

It is interesting to note that scientists like Galileo, Kepler, Darwin and Einstein were least drawn to these beliefs and myths. This gave them the added strength to sprout revolutions in the world of science that have inspired generations. Could we arrive at such a critical level of understanding of human nature? No one can refuse the mathematical fact that 2+2=4. What would be the problems faced if we make the irrefutable human facts - such as the colour of the blood, a foundation for understanding? After billions of years of evolution, humans still await the revolution in humanity.