Transcription
Commonly referred to as the "rock star physicist," he has been described as the natural successor for BBC scientific programming by both David Attenborough and Patrick Moore, and by some as England's equivalent to Neil deGrasse Tyson. That must feel good, does it? If you're a scientist, to be described in that way?
Nothing by me. By David Attenborough, and you know, his, I mean, I was there when he, when he said it, actually. I was presenting him with an award. It was the Radio Times Awards, I think. And so I presented him with it, with the award, and he stood up to the microphone and and said, "If I had a torch, I'd pass it to you," and then went and sat down again. And of course, there's nothing you can say.
And I've thought about it since. And the real answer is that there can't be a successor in the way there can't be a successor to Neil Armstrong, because David Attenborough invented the form, really. Natural History documentary was pioneered by him. So he's the first, and still the best. If you watch Blue Planet 2, he's still making groundbreaking documentaries. So there will ever be another one. There's 50 years of natural history. Possibly what he's referring to in terms of succession is the sort of popularization, humanization, if there could be such a word, of data and information that can have previously been somewhat esoteric and inaccessible. And I suppose that must be one aspect of your work that's difficult to quantify, your personal charisma, your particular success. Is that something that you, how has that much impact on you psychologically?
Well, I mean, the first thing is, humanization is a good word, actually. Because I think that science is, I mean, what is it? It's the study of nature. So in it, it's a humble pursuit. It's about just looking at essentially small things and asking very simple questions, almost childlike questions. "Why is the sky blue?" "Why is that leaf green?" "What are those little points of light in the sky?" And whether those little points of light in the sky, and so with the things we find out, be met, I think, demand a response. They especially talk about cosmology. You know, we're talking about the size and scale and origin of the universe. These, these are eternal. And so I think they demand a human response. And that's the thing that I've always felt over when I, when I was little, doing, doing astronomy, I'm just looking up at the sky, the feelings that you get from looking at those points of light and understanding they're of the world, understand how far they are away, and so on, are deep and challenging feelings, I think. And people miss that a lot. People think of science as the thing you do in the lab with, with some batteries in school, you know, that science and a switch, not the questions about the origin of the universe itself.
I think you're precisely correct that, actually, we don't spend enough time analyzing that feeling. And to continue the comparison between yourself and David Attenborough, what one senses is that he has a deep love of his subject, and it means something to him, and he wants people to understand it. And that's what you've just described. Is that when you, for you, the study of the cosmos is not about mathematics and relationships between physical phenomena, abstract from emotion, but very much as somehow the experience of that emotion, or the realization of that emotion, or something, relationship between those emotions? Could you explain that a little bit?
Advice? Yeah. I think, I think the, the act of doing science is an emotional response to nature. And you see it with David Attenborough. He loves life on Earth, you know, living things. He finds them fascinating. Has a connection to them. Understands that the idea that we are a one unbroken chain of life stretching back four billion years is a powerful idea. And I always think that, you know, when you look at a blade of grass and in the pavement, always sticking up outside through the concrete, that the history of life on Earth is written into that thing. So that the more, the more you understand, and the more you think about the things that you're looking at, the more powerful the experience is, and the more challenging the thoughts are. And in that sentence, the, the idea that the fact that in order to understand the blade of grass, you have to understand the history of life on Earth, four billion year timescales. Those, those, I think, are challenging ideas immediately. And, and they're emotionally challenging ideas. So I think science is an emotional response to the universe. Because you become a scientist when you, you latch onto an idea like that. And so I want to know, I want to know what the origin of life was, so I can understand the things I see today. So you see in minutiae of life, the continuum of nature. And that, that is a, and through that aperture, the most profound questions conceivable. We have to imagine answers to them. I think all the roads of inquiry lead to profound ideas, not on an always actually to the statement, "We don't know." So we don't know yet. If we ever will, and how life began. Probably began on Earth. Yeah. There are theories that it came, panspermia, that it began somewhere else and then was brought here by cometary impacts or asteroids. It's possible. It's unlikely, though.
But if you think about there, any source of authority, but is there any significance to those theories? Or just philosophically, I suppose, if life was at some point in a stellar or in a galactic, that it interrupts the narrative of life beginning on at this point? Is there, are there profound philosophical implications? Is it relevant? And is there any reason to believe it might be true?
I think it doesn't matter philosophically, because it had to begin somewhere. Because we know the universe was hot and dense 13.8 billion years ago, which is a thing we call the Big Bang. And we know that there wouldn't have been any life around then. Just physical conditions were far too extreme. So life began somewhere. And the way I like to look at it, let's say it began on Earth. It doesn't matter that it could have begun on Mars or somewhere else. But the argument's the same. It means that geochemistry became biochemistry. So what happens somewhere, and most likely on Earth, is that a dead planet, but an active planet with, you know, the hot core and volcanoes and those things. Yeah, chemical reactions happened in the oceans, which changed from geology and geo-treaty to biochemistry. And that's a profound thing. So the planet did, almost certainly, gave birth to us, which is quite a nice, it's an ancient philosophical idea, very manic game to us, but that's very like, like the pre-hire idea, I suppose, that, yeah, there'd be a mother Earth in a very literal sense.
It has to have. What about the, the distinction between geo and bio life? Why, why is that so significant? By what metric are we understanding life? If there is a meteorological system that can produce life, is that not in itself life?
What is, yeah. So it's almost a semantic distinction in a way. I mean, you're right, it's still just chemistry. And so when does geochemistry become biochemistry? So the standard answer would be when molecules begin to self-replicate. So that would be, so information can be passed from generation to generation. Once you've got that, then you have evolution. Wow. And then you have life. So you've got to have some physical, chemical, chemical, some molecule that can reproduce itself. And the information in the structure of the molecule is passed on to the copy. And once you've got that, I think you basically got life. That's determined as biology. We can see that as biochemistry, self-replicating molecules. Prior to that, it can't be tracked or understood in that way. Yeah. If you've, if you've got a system which can't pass information on, then you can't have evolution. And if you can't have evolution, you can't get the life that we see today. Never might you can't even get single-celled organisms, because they're very complicated bits of chemistry. And the key thing is, how did chemistry get so complicated? And I think the key to that is that you get something that can pass information. So you don't lose information, you add information from generation to generation.
Professor Cox, this distinction between geological life and biological life seems contingent on its relationship with us as the observer, and how we narrate that transition. As you said, it's almost a semantic distinction. As in, it is in both forms, it is chemistry. Is it not possible that our role as observer, and the way that we narrate information, is the true determinant, as opposed to the observable, and obviously extremely significant fact that cells are now self-replicating? To us as observers, that's extremely significant. But only perhaps to us as observers. Given that, you know, in this great scope of 13.8 billion years, all this happening is some great area of creation.
It's a really important point. I think you're talking about the, the value of consciousness in the universe, the value of civilizations. We know of one place in the universe where there are, in Richard Feynman's words, atoms that can contemplate atoms. That's what we are now. And that, to me, is, we are the most valuable structures that we know of in the universe. Now, when I say that, sometimes people get very, you know, people are liable to say things. "Oh, humans are damaging the planet, and we're better off without them." This is nonsense, right? The, the point is, the most remarkable thing about our physical universe is that there are places where atoms can contemplate atoms. At one place that we know of. And that might be, we might be quite rare. We don't know. We've looked a bit, and we've seen no sign of anyone else. We've, it's called the Great Silence. Astronomers call it the Great Silence, because we listen with radio telescopes and we see no sign of any other civilizations. So it could be quite a lonely existence that we have here. But therefore, very valuable indeed.
Whilst I understand the necessity for science as the study of nature to be based on evidence, indeed, that is its essence, that is its modus operandi, that is what defines it. Does not the requirement that until there is evidence, we stay with the assumption that there is, and even though we don't know, is parenthesized, doesn't that lead to a sort of, do not think that somehow facilitates the dogmatic aspect of science, which is meant that this sort of science has become somewhat doctrinaire and informative of areas beyond the humble study of nature, and has become, in fact, a kind of ideology that leads to materialism, rationally, and all of the other things are on that particular evolutionary chain?
I, I hope not, because it shouldn't really. Do you think it does? Talking about great scientists, I've just not been able to drink tea properly. The esophagus, it's gotta go straight into the tummy. And this chocolate and lemonade are made at a later point. I think science itself, it is, it's, it's humble in the sense that it's about paying attention to small things. And that's it. So you think about an example would be Einstein's theory of general relativity, which is the framework within which we do cosmology, which is the study of the universe. So these are grandiose aims, you know, we talk about the origin and evolution of the universe. That's a big idea. But Einstein's theory of general relativity was conceived as a theory of gravity, which is a theory of how things move around in the vicinity of the Earth. And that's it. So it's talking about, if you throw a ball in the air, what happens to it? Now, it perhaps had the moon goes around the Earth, or the Earth goes around the Sun. It became a theory of the structure, the large-scale structure of the universe afterwards. And I think that's really crucial. There are very few scientists who try to begin by saying, "I am going to answer the great questions. I want a theory of everything. I want to understand the whole universe." That is not the road to wisdom, actually. In science, the road to their oats are wisdom, well, knowledge first, and then wisdom, is by paying attention to small things. And then what we find, I think, because the universe appears to be simple, that at its very basic level, there are laws of nature that seem to be accessible to us, and we seem to be able to understand. And there are very few of them. Then virtually all roads of inquiry lead you to, if you followed them to some depth, to some well, the fundamental...
I wouldn't call them truths, because if we have to say that we don't have the full set of fundamental laws of nature, we certainly know that. So the laws that we have at the moment are incomplete. They break down in certain situations. For example, Einstein's theory doesn't work at the center of a black hole or at the origin of the universe. So we don't have the theoretical tools to talk about what happens right in the middle of a black hole, for example.
So it's more the observation of a conditional pattern as opposed to an absolute truth? Because we don't know what's on the either side of that pattern. Is it? Do you think they could just be models?
That they are, in a sense, models. Yeah. Of the way that reality works.
What about masks? Like with the thing that you said about Oppenheimer earlier? I was really interesting. Homer, you said that he, his discoveries that led to, well, he ran the Manhattan Project. So and he became haunted by, as many people did. You know, I think he felt that the first bomb on Hiroshima was so horrific, but almost justifiable in the sense that it was an act to end the war. The second one on Nagasaki, I think he thought was gratuitous. And he felt the power the scientists and engineers had given to politicians was so great that the politicians wouldn't be able to handle it, wouldn't be able to control it. And he, he actually said in the 1950s that he was surprised that we were still here. And as did many, Richard Feynman, well, mentioned also worked on the Manhattan Project. And he said he was very surprised that we were here in the mid-1950s. He thought that we would not control this power. But actually, we have remarkably up to, so, you know, 70 years after we got that power, we, we're still here. So we haven't used it again. But I think that, yeah, that often time, it felt that there are great lessons for the way that we run society in the approach, the scientific approach, which was an, by by analogy, almost. So these ideas that I've spoke about already, that we don't have absolute truths in science, and we don't think we know anything for certain, and we are humble with the way that we approach nature. And crucially, that our opinion counts for nothing in the face of nature. If we, we can be shown to be, and we should be delighted when we're shown to be wrong, because it means we've learned something. And that's at the heart of the scientific endeavor. And he felt those things could be translated from science to politics, and the way that we run societies. And then if we do that, we would have the wisdom to control the power.
This is a very beautiful ideology, isn't it? And it's sort of not underwritten by, well, as you say, like the idea of approaching nature with humility, with grace, with an understanding of our own limitations, seems to me like a spiritual doctrine that should be used in it. Precisely in politics, in domestic familial life. This is sovereign for me. That is almost a universal idea that we approach nature with love and compassion. Because obviously, what I was very curious about with the one, the reasons I wanted me used, will respect you enormously. I respect what you've done, and the depth, breadth of knowledge that you have, and the way that you've conveyed it is awesome. But I know that as a man of science, that you are, I sort of up famously atheistic. Is that right?
No, no. I don't think so. I mean, first of all, I reject the label because I think that it's divisive. And so I genuinely think that science does not rule out the existence of a creator, by, by definition, because we don't know how the universe began. That's it. We don't know. Right? We have a theory of what might have happened before the Big Bang, a theory called inflation, which says that the universe was still around, but doing something else. But we're still left with the question, how did that start? How did the universe have a beginning? And if so, had they begin? The answer is, we don't know. So you can't read it from the scientific perspective. It is wrong to say that science has anything to say at all about the the nature of a of a creator or the the the can be the because we don't know. Yes. Now, all I say is that I don't personally have any faith. Right? I have a personal faith. Now, do you mean faith as in pre-existing ideology that you use as a framework for understanding reality? Or do you mean faith, a sort of an inward belief that there is beauty in great? Because when you said that humility and all that, that sounded like a faith.
Well, yes. So as far as it depends, and you could talk about this more actually, how you define the word. I mean, to me, all I mean when I say that is I don't have a religion that I adhere to. I don't, I do not know what the origin of the laws of nature is. And, and that's enough for me. Yeah. I don't really, I, I don't feel compelled. I'd love to know, but I don't feel compelled to go further than the statement that I don't know. And I think that's a certain, one of my books, that's one of the greatest of mysteries. We are part of the greatest of mysteries. And for me, that's enough. Yes. Yes. Yes. There's a very beautiful humility in that. That's wonderful. Because I, what I was gonna say is that, like, that I do have faith. And if it were, if I have to sort of unpack it, and not moved for us to continue our conversation, what I'm fascinated by is perennialism and patterns that are found consistently throughout human mythologies. They're dislocated geographically. They seem to have universal themes and ideas. And they're later discovered to have relationships that can, to some degree, be described by science, by the language of science. And the spirits aren't particularly, as you describe it, with such a, what would I say, so spirit of love, eg, for example, like that. It was curious to me that Oppenheimer, as I understand and remember, I mean, dangerous territory. And any time I step toward science review, or never cited a ring like that, I think he quoted the Bhagavad Gita at the point that the, of those tests, those nuclear tests. And indeed, buddy, you know, attacks, "I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds." Yeah. Yeah. And for me, there's something, what is that? That in, like, you know, this is a thing I can't get made around. And this is GCSE stuff, is that contained within, as it was then, this, you know, it's one of the smallest components of our physical reality, with the capacity for such enormous destruction? There's inconceivable energy withheld, like that. I mean, like that. We'll know the reasons I'm curious about is because they're inferences in religious scripture that seem to be trying to describe that, that within the infinitesimally small, there is great power. That there is limitless. That all things are endowed with consciousness. These are the sort, I like when I approach religion, I don't sort of pick one particular book. I write on with these guys. And anyone who's not with it, I'd like to see them killed. Like it's much more like, "Oh my God." They seem to be describing stuff without the language, without the capacity, somewhat try, for example, when dealing with a mind such as yours, would be the, you know, the recent discovery of the benefits of mindfulness. Now, mindfulness and meditation for millennia have been spoken of as valuable for the human condition, to have an access to an aspect of your own consciousness that's precisely not about rationalism and materialism, but is about access to perhaps the systems that very kindly run your kidneys for you, and all of that. And so when that's discovered and demonstrably valuable, it becomes popularized or underwritten by dogmatic science, at least. But there were communities and ideologies that knew that these technologies were powerful without the apparatus we had. And I think contained throughout scripture, people talking about oneness, unity, respect for nature, the nature, the nature of the soul, the nature of consciousness. And it's only from, for me, whether it's from a scientific background or religious background, it's only when it becomes doctrinal, or people go, "This is definitely the answer," thank you, that it becomes problematic. Yeah. Yeah.
And I think, I mean, so I would say that I, I don't think that, I think the way to access, and the way to build models about the way that nature works is to observe nature, right? Which is essentially the scientific method. Yes. You observe nature, you come up with some model, you test it, and if it doesn't agree with what you see, then it's wrong. You throw it away. Or you, yeah. But I suppose really, if you think about the human condition for many thousands of years, from the time when we first had such a thing, it's about, it's a response to nature. So everything about being human is about responding to nature. So I would be surprised if, if people didn't, in that endowed responses that they have, didn't so observe things, patterns, and discover things. You know, you don't need, you don't need modern science to allow you to discover that there's a regularity in the passage of the seasons, for example, because you see it. It's of what it means to be human. So I'm not surprised. And also, as you say, in terms of how to exist as a, as a human being, then the science is not going to tell you that. Actually, it can tell you, well, it would be better to eat a little bit less fat. But it's not going to tell you about how to be content and happy. What it does is, I think, provides a framework of not truth. I don't like the word truth, you see, buddy. But, you know, I'm trying to get out because we can always, we can always discover things that are different. But it provides you a framework. For example, it says, well, the Earth goes around the Sun. No. And it tells us that there are 300 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Really? And that's one of two trillion galaxies in the observable universe. Getting heavy now. But that's challenging, isn't it? But then, what are we to make of that? Humility, limitlessness. And I think it's one of the most interesting things that we are, we've discovered that we are physically an insignificant speck in the universe. You can't argue otherwise. There are two trillion galaxies in the bit we can see. But yes, at the same time, there's the idea that consciousness, atoms contemplating atoms, might be very rare. And therefore, we can be valuable and insignificant at the same time. And this is what Oppenheimer meant by, well, in his lectures, I spoke about him, not on the podcast, actually, brought his show earlier, that he talks about an idea called complementarity, which comes from, it came from the early quantum mechanic studies of people like Niels Bohr and others. And it is actually, it comes from Eastern philosophy, I think. This idea that you have to hold mutually contradictory, apparently mutually contradictory ideas in your head. You have to, in order to get a full picture of reality. And true in interpreting quantum mechanics. And what he said is, what you've already referred to, is that people have known it for a long time. That you also have to do it to understand the human condition, of the user, in a society. And it's, it's a, it's a very good example of how science and deeper philosophical thinking intersect. Yes. Yes. That's that's fascinating and beautiful. Because I suppose what's implicit in that are quite fundamental ideas around objectivity and subjectivity, the inner and outer world, and the way that they relate. And it is our, our, our tendency to regard that the world from, see from an individualistic perspective, leads potentially to quite a lot of problems. One of the things that I'm very curious about, and like, I know that you're in a rationalism, reason, and what's demonstrably is hugely significant and important. But what fascinates me is that it seems that, certainly in earlier times, people were relating to their own consciousness in ways that somewhat defy our rational understanding. People were having yogic, meditative trips. And now people like, you know, through our West, go and piyo interests, romantic plants, that people have always used, have different experiences within consciousness that tackle the sort of ideas that you're saying science deals with now empirically and rationally. And necessarily. But the fact that there may be other avenues to, you know, again, I would be reluctant to use a word as absolute as truth, but there are different avenues to understanding, different avenues to insight. Fascinates me with the construction of mythologies. As you said, man is continually relating to his own environment, shaping to environment, it's shaped by his environment. The, the basis of what one of the bases, I'm sure, of evolution is that the way that we relate to external conditions. And of course, those conditions vary. And anthropological cultures that were early adopters of agriculture have myths that demonstrate that where gods are sacrificed and put in the ground. And hunter societies tend to be more individualistic, you know, the myths evolved to represent natural circumstance demonstrably. But what I'm interested in, were one of the things I'm interested in, Professor, is how we use, as we've just touched upon with that idea that Oppenheimer and I said that itself echoed a spiritual idea, how can we use what we learn in science to inform our societies in bloody difficult times, politically and globally? What values can we extract?
Well, there are. I'll answer that. And then I want to go back to something you said, which about roots to insights, which I thought was really interesting. But the answer to that question directly is that, and Oppenheimer pointed out. So if you think about political philosophy, the way that we organize our society. So you might think that there are mutually contradictory axioms. So for example, one could be freedom of the individual. If you're libertarian, extreme libertarian, you think that individual freedom is the most important thing. And you might be prepared to compromise a bit and build something in order to have a society with, ultimately, you're talking about freedom as the end of the base, the basis. Whereas if you're on the, if you're a communist, further to the to the left, you might be think that society is all that matters. And you might reluctantly build a bit of individual freedom in. Now, Oppenheimer was saying this idea of complementarity. The two ideas of freedom and society are inextricably linked. They feed off each other. They're both necessary for the other to exist. So you can't have freedom without a society, and you can't have a society without freedom. And it's, but so that just the idea that you don't start saying, "I am a conservative," or "I am a Marxist," or "I am or whatever." You, you have to understand that human society and its interaction with individuality is very complicated. Yes. And you need to, you need to understand, you need to be comfortable with holding those two ideas. We call them orthogonal in physics, at right angles, the mutually contradictory ideas. I'm dry, I'm drawing a little. That's good. Orthogonal, 90 degrees to each other. You have to hold both of them in your head and be comfortable and understand that you need them both to get a full picture. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis. There's another spirituality. It's not contradictory. And you have to do it in understanding quantum mechanics. And that's the great thing, because nature forces you to think like that. So it's no longer optional, which is also a key point. Yes. You, so you train, and you, you're forced to think in that way. And that's very valuable. Yes.
But also, Mayor Sabra, and the way that it's the semantics and these systems of taxonomy actually operate. Is a word like freedom determined by the powerful? So freedom ultimately becomes in what we can say in our society, freedom within limits. And ultimately, freedom to consume, freedom to behave in accordance with these ideologies. This is what freedom means. When political figures talk about, "They hate our freedoms," or "They're attacking our freedoms," what they mean by freedom is often indicated by the maxims they spout when in crises, eg, "Go out and drop," after 9/11, or "There's no such thing as society," from Margaret Thatcher. These, but these are momentary fissures through which we can glance what they mean, what is the state, what it, what is their truth? Because, you know, like you, we were discussing earlier, in my son's intentionally daft radio show, the, oh God, no, I forgot my, I was saying here, sometimes I come, I was operating on a level that was challenged. I think what you've said is, you've given examples of people who are convinced that they are right. That is the point. Yes. Certainty. You should be aware of people that are said. Yeah. And I think that, you know, really, if you think about where free society is, then it means that there's a spectrum of viewpoints on every issue. And so you can imagine, I'd call it a distribution. Within mathematics, we call the tails of the distribution, which is that the bits at the end. So most people might believe the stuff in the middle, but there are people on either side that believe other things. And you have to, by definition, in a free society, find yourself occasionally at odds with the majority. That is a signal that you live in a free society, and you should celebrate it. And I think that the key lesson for me from just thinking rather more scientifically about things is that is to understand that when you find yourselves in disagreement with other people, it is a signal of a healthy, a healthy society. And you should celebrate. Every time you find you're in an outlier, you should be waving a flag. You should be running down the street cheering, going, "I don't live in North Korea." That's what you should be. But that's been lot less. You do live in North Korea, which case, don't run down the street, flag. Don't say, "Oh, North Korea." Day. But, but I think we've lost that, you see. On Yemen, we both, we're both on Twitter, and we, you see that the polarization of debate means that people are just not thinking. They're not stopping and thinking. The fact that this person is saying something with which I disagree signals to me that our society is healthy. And the moment that nobody's saying things that I disagree with is the moment you should actually, then you should leave the country and run.
Don't you think that what we're witnessing now is a time of foreclosure around discourse? That more and more things are becoming taboo? That there's a re-enslavement? And the internet, as you just indicated, a very good example of that. These are the things that are unsayable. Furthermore, the only think that the idea we have to say that there are ideologies, ideals are being set. There is such a thing as power. We're not living in a society that's constantly fluctuating in accordance to the will of the majority. We're living in a democracy where the function of democracy is to limit the capacity of people to impact its objectives. And one of the problems of globalization is that it has meant the establishment of elites that are not subject to sort of national, any kind of regional law. But they'd let seem to live in a kind of what islands, a sort of a rarified protected space. That's what you've seen with the Brexit vote. And, and I don't think it's the right route at all. I mean, I think that I'm a great fan of the European Union. However, what you've seen in the Brexit vote is extremely positive in the sense you're talking about, because what you've seen is a statement by the majority of people in the country that they reject the status quo. Sure. And they have done it. They have rejected the status quo. Prime Minister resigned. There's now absolute flux in politics. And, and so I think that we do, Ryan. I think we have to know two things here. One, it's a massive anomaly. It doesn't happen very often. Stuff like Brexit. That's why everyone's wetting themselves and all giggly and excited. Who that Brexit in itself was an emotional reaction or rational reaction? People won't go more because I want to see these trade laws. It was emotions. But it showed you that the status quo can be overturned in a democracy. Because at the moment, we don't have the status. I would say within certain guidelines. I don't think, you know, when's the vote for now, we're gonna tax corporations at this rate. Now, we're gonna, or this is how we want to pay mortgages. This is how we want our society to run. You can argue that it may be that we see, for example, Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister, which would have been absolutely unthinkable two years ago. And if he does become Prime Minister, it will be as a result of the Brexit vote. That will be the route that a more radical politician managed to. That's how a radical politician will have gotten to Number 10. Now, I, I'm, I think Brexit is a mistake. Because I think that the people that voted to to challenge the status quo are going to suffer the most from this. The removal of the freedoms that we have to move around Europe. Europe. The removal of access to single market. Ellis thinks I think actually it's the wrong solution. Possibly, unless they think it's interesting democratically. And it can, it can still happen. Unless it doesn't lead to a left-wing government who use it as an opportunity to create new legislation around the behavior of transnational corporations, different taxation law, somebody. You know, there is, I was talking to someone in here recently about like a possible left-wing outcome for Europe. I don't. We dragged down a bloody Brexit quagmire. Whenever man who understands the bleeding, we're talking about it. You could see it as a healthy attack on the status quo. You could see. I don't think it'll have that result. But no, I mean, I, but the fact that it's an anomaly is what concerns me. And the fact that we lower the threshold of what's acceptable for a democracy. See, we've got democracy once in a while. We can have a Miss Guardian, misguided carnival of disruption, instead of led democracies. Why don't we control our communities and control our resources so that the most vulnerable P will have access to power? That's democracy. If it's not that, it's not democracy. It's a piece of theater. And like, don't settle for that. Remember, like, because you and I, we talked a little bit about, no, exactly. You were very keen, I encourage young people to vote. A point where I was saying, it's pointless. And like, it was a soft integral. I sense that you and I have a lot more in common ideologically than we have in separation, even though you are a scientist and I'm a religious maniac. And you are sort of pro-democracy, and I'm proud mass decentralization and dissolution of power where possible. You know, but I feel that we're both driven by the idea that we're essentially optimistic. Is what I would say about you. You seem like an optimistic man. Yeah. And you have to be. Because if we go back to what we're talking about earlier, about the, the value of this place, the Earth. And I think one of the, if I could, if there's one message that I would like people to take away from anything that I do, is to, is to value this place. And it's, that's not some kind of like, so hippie type thing. It's just based on the observation, the, the complexity of life on Earth. It may well be, it may make us quite a unit. We could be unique in a galaxy, for example. I don't think I'm sure there'll be other civilizations out there in the billions of galaxies in the universe. But it could be that the average is that there's about roughly one civilization per galaxy at any one time. And imagine that. I mean, Arthur C. Clarke once famously said that there are two options: either we are alone, or we're not. And both are terrifying. Yeah. But I think we need to proceed on the basis that we are now. And imagine, if people thought about that, which is just a matter of perspective, if people thought, "Actually, that if we decided to have a nuclear war tomorrow, accidentally perhaps, and and destroyed intelligent life on the planets, it may be that we destroy meaning in the galaxy." Right? And meaning, I use advisedly. Could, if you think about it, meaning obviously exists in the universe because it means something to us. So there are collections of atoms that somehow have this property of meaning. It emerges. It means something to us. If we go, then there will be no meaning in this corner of the universe. Meaning is local. And it's temporary. And I think in accepting that, but by which I mean, it's in your head. In your head. But now, say, you think it's global. In a way, though, in a way, it's irrelevant whether there are other civilizations or this one's unique. Empirically, I mean, it to us, it doesn't matter. Like, evil life is beautiful, or life isn't beautiful. Whether or not someone's over there having a beautiful time, to me, sort of irrelevant. And also, terms such as local and temporal are highly subjective terms, as we have already established, that refer to patterns themselves that exist within a context. And our consciousness relates only to that context. So the meaning that emerges, like whatever this thing is, that transition from unlife to life through various gradients, geological to biologic, or whatever preceded that, and whatever follows that, meaning is one of its component. It exists as organically as trees. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, the physicist, some scientists refer to is an emergent property, which is something that emerges from some more fundamental structure. And then this is from the difference between us now. Is actually a question, because because I think that the great challenge of human existence is to come to terms with the fact that the meaning exists, but it is, as I said, it's local, in the sense that it's not universal. And I think that's the difference. If I have to define a difference between a religious person and non-religious, I would say that, well, it's a question too, but I would say that religion is searching for global meaning, and I think it's local. And I think there will come a time in the life of the universe when there is no meaning left. Because I think that, as far as coaching it, well, I mean, I think that's what I think. That's my truck. That's precisely the problem. Is that materialism and rationalism lead to individualism, capitalism, and consumerism. We can see in real time what it leads to politically and socially. I mean, more brutally than that, though. I mean, that in the far future of the universe, there won't be any suns left shining. So there won't be any atoms that can contemplate atoms. Only, of course, in a universe. I understand that. And I said, an enormous thing to say, Brian. And I've got absolutely no bloody kit to argue with, actually. What is it? What do you feel like if I say there will come a time in the future when there is no consciousness in the universe, and so all possibility of meaning has gone, but the universe will still be there?
I would say that, hmm, within my philosophy, consciousness and matter have the reverse relationship to yours. I believe matter emerges from consciousness, not vice versa. So even where the Astrophysical context always and evolves, as you know, brilliant men such as yourself and your predecessors have demonstrated that will happen, that to me is essentially irrelevant, because it's just part of the cosmic ballet continuing within the framework of consciousness. And I underwrite this, of course, speculatively, like all theories that are the bookend creation. It's speculative, as anybody else's. But for me, the preceding the Big Bang, there is consciousness. Consciousness that is not individualized consciousness. There's not expressed for a matter. And this is not something that I would narrate or use to underwrite or support any particular ideology. It's not like, you know, a consciousness for white people, or a consciousness for Muslims. Pure consciousness expressing itself through matter. And that these patterns and habits that are so beautifully delineated, these rules that discover, these rules that Herman Melville describes as part all human sciences, but passing fables, as we discover what lies beyond them. Like these are an expression of this consciousness. So when eventually, whatever is the existence that of human beings are consumed by the sun, that doesn't matter to me, because individuation, I believe, is temporal. That I am just part of a whole consciousness, temporarily occupying this individual. Or I can't put it any better than Bill Hicks. We are one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. And I would say that the reason that geology becomes biology is because the, geology is conscious. That consciousness is in all things. And the reason that we should love nature, and love the, and love one another, is because we are all one. And there are motifs for this throughout our culture. Why are we moved by heroism? Because a person sacrifices themselves for another? Why? Because they know, inadvertent commerce, on some deeper level, that there is no distinction between self and other. This is merely the grid of the senses dealing with physical information. The experiencer receives this is inside, this is outside. But ultimately, and essentially, those distinctions are animalistic attempts to understand limitless phenomena. So that's why it doesn't matter to me. Although I would say, like you, we have to regard this thing with love. Because love, in a very Christian sense, actually, like C.S. Lewis says, you feel like you're rewarded when you do a good thing. And when you do a bad thing, you know that was bad. So let's just go with that. Be kind to one another. Love one another. Let people believe what they want to believe. So mine comes from an, I'm not ashamed of the bits that sound a bit hippy, because for me, love is an energy. Love is a force. And whilst it's difficult to quantify and measure, without it, we are nothing.
See, I think my view is, it's certainly bleaker. I think that actually the road, see, I would say that the road to wisdom is, is the most challenging question that I face, given that I'm saying that matter and energy and the laws of nature exist, and then life emerges from them, and then there will come a time when there's no life. So that challenges you to say, what is the value then of life, given that it is temporary? And this emerges, and it will go away again, and there will be time, and the, and the universe is dark, and there is nothing left. And I think that this is how you get some sort of delight from what I do, because I think that the, in the sense that the peace, right, as a human being, I think comes from finding your accommodation with your temporary existence, and learning that it's so, that the temporary nature of it, to me, makes it more valuable. To define as a tiny amount of time is nothing in the life of the universe. A tiny amount of time when we, not only individually, but as a human race, can exist and explore and love the universe. It's a finite, tiny amount of time. And I think that's a much more difficult accommodation to come to. It's where I think that's really, I think that's what reality is. And so it's not to come to accommodation with it, but I think in that accommodation is the way you learn to love the planets and the people on it, because you learn that they are temporary and valuable and fragile. As long as it leads to that conclusion, it sort of doesn't really matter. But what we'll say is, we've already acknowledged in the, in this brief interview, that our understanding of the temporal framework and the spatial framework are sort of breaking down the more we examine them. So why would we continue to use that framework to conjecture billions of years in the future when it's breaking down right now? I mean, the way we do it, by the way, is to get mad scientific, cada, freedom, an equation which comes from general relativity, from Einstein's theory, published in 1915. And, and what Einstein's theory tells us is that there is a given thing, which is the fabric of the universe. It's called.
Space-time. So there's a thing, and it doesn't tell you where it came from. It tells you there is such a thing, but it does tell you how that thing stretches and warps and deforms and changes in response to the matter and energy that are present in the universe. So you can calculate, given this amount of matter, and this amount of radiation, and dark matter, and dark energy, you know, given all that stuff, now what will it do in the future? What is the response of the fabric of the universe to this stuff? And that's what enables us to say with some confidence that unless there's new physics, then, you know, understand, and there might be, but given what we know now, the universe is accelerating in its expansion, which we observe, and it will come to a point where we think it will just double continually in size every twenty billion years or so, forever.
Yes, we can make that prediction, given what we know now. So there is, that's the baseline, sort of baseline prediction is we are in the universe that will end up in what's called an exponential expansion, doubling in size every 20 billion, so forever. Boobs, life cannot exist indefinitely in such a universe. Not, but that's, that's necessarily a linear equation, and reality may be fractal, may be spiral. Right, at the basis of that theorem is the acceptance, and we don't know where it comes from or where it's going, and it infers that it's, you know, as I know you've talked about a lot in your programs, is expanding into apparent nothingness. But then you see like that, our linguistic and indeed psychological tools, and neurological tools, I would imagine from your perspective, start to break down. And so this is again, where I sort of invite, sort of, you know, faith.
One thing, it is a theory that is tested. So it is the theory that allows us to build, for example, the satellite navigation system. Yes, I'm not having a go at bloody, I instigated this work model, but, but Brian, when you say satellite navigation systems, fantastic though they are, these are not tools that we're going to use to measure the expanse of a universe doubling in millions of years. This is a localized bit of information, applies to us as carnal beings. I mean, just a quick explanation of how we know it's expanding at all. It's simple observation that if you look at the light from a distant galaxy, then you find that it's stretched. So quite literally, the colors change, it's called redshift. So it's a light, as a wavelength, and the long wavelengths are red, and the short wavelengths are blue. And what you find is light that should have been blue, because you see it coming from a particular kind of atom in that galaxy, is actually now red. And the explanation is that space has been stretching during the time the light has been traveling. And what you find is the further the galaxy is away, the more the light is stretched, which is exactly what you'd expect if you live in an expanding universe. And by making those measurements, you can measure how fast the universe has been expanding its billions of years. And this is a simple observation, no one could refute it, and it's absolutely beautiful. And I only, I know that already, and the reason I know already is because I've watched you explain it elegantly and in a way that makes sense to me, and it's meaningful to me. But what I would add to that is, we see red, we see blue, we somehow within our minds experience red, we experience blue, we have eyes, we have senses, we live in this realm where something is experiencing something. And like you said, atoms experiencing other atoms. Now, what we have to continually acknowledge is that there is a finite ability to understand information. There is evidently limitless information. At some point, we're gonna hit a wall. And, you know, and continue the one. What exists beyond that is theories, conjecture, imagination. And it's curious to me that it's steeped in our theological history. There were people speculating in similar ways and reaching similar conclusions. Of course, no one can as accurately say that's because space is stretching, so you experience red is different because waves traveled different for the different density of spoken people aren't saying stuff like that, but people are speculating and trying to understand the phenomena of limitlessness. Reminded me, yeah.
And you write about something you said, insight, which is this, which is that, so I would say that where I would, I would disagree with you in, in a sense, in that the finding out the way that nature works, I think is the, is the, is only done through what we might loosely call the scientific method, right? Which is, which is making observations and building theories and checking them. However, it's not surprising to me that someone had a thought a few thousand years ago, which turns out to be in accord with what we discover. All right. Well, I would disagree. I don't think that they had those thoughts by some royal road to the truth or something. I don't think that. I think that they, it, so let's say these, you say in, in some context, a religious context or theological context, few thousand years ago. We think these, just say for the sake of argument, in the Koran. Well, yes, Larry, as I say, we say, we think that we live in an expanding universe. Hmm. So we think that points of light in the sky, or the worlds, as, as people did say, and we think they're all rushing away from each year, from us, right? And then so, well, certainly for the galaxies, this is true. So, but the fact that someone said that is something you could imagine saying. You can imagine looking up at those points of light and dreaming that there are the worlds. I'm Ashley Giordano Bruno, who famously did that and got burnt at the stake in Rome, and his ashes thrown into the Tiber, I think is power. The New Year's celebrations, they're coming. Well, don't expand across the Tiber, limitless particles, because he said that. He said, I think, leader of the worlds, and worlds without end, limitless. And now he had no reason to say that. It was pure thought. But he is something that you could imagine someone saying very poetically. Now, he turned out to be right. But I don't think that. I think the fact that he was right was coincidental. Yeah. I don't think he had some path route to knowledge through meditation. That I don't think there is a route of knowledge of nature through meditation. There may well be, that I'm sure there is a route of inner peace and a better understanding of yourself and your relationship with nature. But I would, I do not think that you can find out, you could build new physical theories by, by meditating, by meditating, by thinking. I mean, I have to just when someone has a flash of intuition or inspiration, all these things, and all this information is entered in the world through people's contrary. Sheket is by doing sign. Definitely check it through science here. That I was just dreaming about something. I refused to check it. That is wrong. That's, I think from whatever angle you approach it.
When you get into dogma and doctrine and telling people what to do and what they can be and what they can't be, I think you get into really dicey territory. From my perspective, where the bias is, is has gone towards, you know, sort of science, particularly economics, sometimes particularly from political science. Like, well, you know, I watch your programs, I watch you talk about the way that water's behaving and pebbles in lakes and the life of strawberries. For me, this is awesome and beautiful and glorious, and precisely what we need to examine and track. But what I feel is, is somehow the same way as the, you know, one could say the philosophy of Christ was used to underwrite a great big powerful economic institution that ends up saying, don't put that there, visibly people than that. To me, is, you know, that people use science to say, don't think that, live there, obey these rules, this is, you're right that this is entirely wrong. Curse science. So science is a body of knowledge. It doesn't tell you anything really. It doesn't tell you anything about how to, what, what to make of that knowledge. And it can tell you there are two trillion galaxies in the observable universe, full stop. Doesn't tell you what that means, right? What, what are you to make of that? Doesn't tell you it's the same width. And we're going to go back to Oppenheimer, you know, the idea that, so you can build an atomic bomb, and science tells you, it gives you the knowledge such that you can build an atomic bomb. It certainly does not tell you what to do with it, right? That mean, actually, we would hug you, that your common sense tells you not to use it. Don't press that button. It's, but, so I think that's a key point that, so for me, the, the proper interaction between science and religion and philosophy and theology and art and music and literature, all this thing is that, that they go together. Yes, allow us to build a view of what our place in the universe is, and what it is to be human. None of them on their own will allow you to build that idea, to come to that conclusion. What does it mean to be human? But, but you need them all. They're so beautiful, isn't it? Thesis, antithesis, synthesis. That you have to come together. And that means that one of the things you've mentioned a lot, Brian, is humility. That there needs to be humility in all these communities. And in a sense, an idea of an objective, like you said about sort of with the libertarianism, but ultimate individualism, communism, saw our version of the subjugation of the individual in favor of the state. We have to, in order to build systems, human systems that make sense to us, with it, is going to need to be a collaboration between science, spirituality, our theology, and all these taxonomies are interchangeable, because one man's spirituality is another man's science. Now, I recognize that what you're saying is on the bandwidth of material energy that can be measured, magnified, shrunk, swayed out, double-blind tested. There are certain things that we can say on this plane are factual at this time, at this moment. On this, I think the crisis that we're going through at the moment as a civilization is, we don't have a point. There isn't a meaning to our civilization. And I just made it, yes, a programmer a while ago about commercial space flight, and talked to people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, and these entrepreneurs who were trying to go out beyond the earth. And they all share a philosophy, or certain philosophy, which is that humanity, if you're looking for meaning, what drives us, we need frontiers. We need frontiers of knowledge, there, which you might call intellectual or in spiritual frontiers, and physical frontiers. We need somewhere to go. Carl Sagan once said, that somewhere out there, there's something waiting to be known. How beautiful. And yet, so we don't have that on the earth anymore. There are no frontiers. They're obviously, bought political borders, but there are no places that we haven't been. There's no Wild West to push into. And so they think that the next step to go out upwards to the stars, to stepped onto the moon, and to Mars, and beyond that, that's the place where are you, where we will find meaning again.
Well, I hope purpose, possibly there, right? And it's certainly very intrepid. But I would query the idea that we are without frontiers, because there are certain ideological and metaphysical spaces that we have not tried to access. We have not, here on, what value is it if we start building new societies on Mars, if they're new and bloody earth, we're treating each other appalling. There are basic principles that, you know, that I've found their way into common consciousness, mostly through spirituality, long, long, long before monotheism. Pantheistic cultures all find versions of, look after one another. That's not to say there isn't, and you would know much more than me, kind of brutality in nature, with razoolology or astronomy, there's a brutality and a finality. But are these the principles that we want to be governed by as human beings? For the frontiers, I would be interested in traversing and heading toward are equality, love, new systems that give us once again a vision, so that the exploration of space becomes valid, but not once again the pursuit of economic power, the pursue of dominions, dominions new with conquered and subjugated mother earth. They see what other planets we can [ __ ] up.
Well, one of the, one of the ideas is that how do you develop new political systems? So you look at, for example, the American, so the, the movement from Europe into America, and ended up with the American Constitution. And so they're obviously, they were pros and cons of their years, but you got, one of the things you got was this document, which I think is widely recognized as one of the, the most important statements of how you might say nice poems, but if it doesn't relate to the way you run a society, then what value is it? And this is precisely the problem now, which is not put it into practice. If you grow it, and even then, Brian, it was except for these people, you know, except for women, except for these people that live here already. But the point is that, no, there's certainly, there is a relationship between the physical and the spiritual. That if we grow into new territories physically, there is a possibility that will somehow help us to discover within ourselves new notions. But like we can do that without getting on a spaceship. We could just start saying, it's not judge people, couldn't what they look like, or, you know, like one of the ideas is that our system on this planet now has become quite ossified. What does that mean? Fossilized, locked in, ossifer. Where is, if you go to, if you imagined it, in a hundred years' time or something, we have that the Mars colony is, is looking to become independent. And there, then the, the act of going to a new place and beginning again, can allow you to access different ways of being and different ways of interacting that might not be possible here, because of the historic borders and, and, and problems that I mean, how, if I sort of agree, that doesn't make me want to get on a spaceship. That makes me want to get on a barricade. It makes me want to change the world. It makes me say, like, if we've reached a sort of a point of crisis, like for me, it's not like, I'll bloody, let's go somewhere else. For me, it's like, we've gonna have to change. I mean, like you, like, well, no, that. Or the one area where science is not being allowed to, it'll not the one, but I, an area where science is not being allowed to inform the way we treat the planet is with climate change. People are not going, right, maybe because for me, one of the things I've learned over the course of these podcasts, and I must say this, one of the ones that have been like a great big iceberg of information smashing into my consciousness, hopefully gives their flow, unlikely the other vessel in that analogy, is that, is that all our ideologies are caveated by, and as long as it doesn't affect the interests of the powerful, we must attack about climate change. As long as it doesn't affect the interests of the powerful, we must have fair races. As long as it doesn't impact, so for me, it's about finding ways of impacting the interests of the powerful. Until we are prepared to do that, and to ever read their address that frontier, it's no point in jumping on Elon Musk's spacecraft, or saying, here, perhaps it is a virtual reality experiment. We have to start saying, right, what is happening? Right, these people are bathing in this way, why? Well, that's gotta be regulated and stopped and stripped.
You're right. I mean, interesting though, Jeff Bezos, with the Amazon CEO, whose glass company, Blue Origin, and he said to me, first of all, why his company called Blue Origin? Because it refers to the earth. They're the blue origin of humanity. And he said, the one thing we've learned in our exploration of the solar system and beyond is that this planet is the best one, right? We've learned that number one. And that means that it is a jewel. He calls it a jewel of a planet. And therefore, we must protect it. At the same time, we have a large population which is making increasing demands on the resources. So what is the solution? How do you support an expanding population, all of whom want a better life for them and their children, at the same time as protecting this beautiful blue planet? The answer is to get the resources from elsewhere. That's the answer. Final answer.
Another one would be to start prioritizing the health of the planet above economic needs. I mean, as long as you've got capitalism in the form it's now in, which many people would argue is way beyond capitalism, then, then it's inevitable. And what a Marxist critical theory, that isn't the first discovery page one, is this is a limited resource. We are, it cannot provide a limited growth. And so that's got to go. They may well have a, you can argue that you have a point in, in Europe, North America, and the West, that you might call. But if you talk about sub-Saharan Africa, or India, or large parts of China, then it is difficult to see how you can lift those people out of poverty at the same time as reducing the demand on the planet, because those people are there, and they live in poverty, and it's right that they aspire to to life for their children. But the answer can, can be innovation. I mean, for example, I was in China about two weeks ago, and that they just cancelled the building of 150 coal-fired power stations. And cancelled it. And the reason they cancelled it was because solar power's cheaper. So it was absolutely, it was partly market-driven decision, partly because they have a problem with pollution in the cities. But, but the point is that innovation has delivered a solution, because solar power makes no impact on the planet at all. Useful. So like, you know, so once you know that wisdom is acting on knowledge, once we've got the facts, just in the next few should be a round of phone calls like, hey, guess what? Now solar power. Only as quickly as possible. Who did, whose interests do you challenge when you make that edict? You know, so, well, actually, I'm going, I'm literally going to church, Brian Cox, earlier today, and there's a guy sat next to me on the panel, and he was a Hong Kong property developer. And he said that the one of the things about China that's rather, which is good, is the, the, the interests that those fossil fuel interests that has become this, but it doesn't, it doesn't exist in China. The ruling party make the decision. They make a decision based on, we don't want pollution, we want less pollution, 'cause it's killing our people, and we want cheap, accessible power. That is solar. So immediately, I will draw a line through a hundred and feed the contract for 150 coal-fired power stations, and I'll change it to solar panels. Done. And, and he said, he argued that I do obviously counter arguments, but he argued that that's why he said to me, that's why China will beat you, you know, beat you, because we will make decisions like that now. We could debate that, but it's interesting. And one thing that sort of is, is distinct, is that China comes from a different philosophical tradition, has a completely different veldt and shown, so it's able to make decisions like that, not just because of Maoism and post-Mao communism, but because of the philosophies that preceded it. Branko, just because when people listening, I know that there are big problems with human rights. I'll sing each. I am NOT waving the flag for the Chinese sister. And there are systems within which those interests matter a lot less. Yes, there are. And that's that. What is interesting to me, what I feel, Brian Cox, is that you have been, kind of in my language, ace a prophet and an educator and a Swami for such valuable, beautiful information. And like, who knows what the future holds for me? You know, you get my vote on the next David Attenborough deal. Like, I mean, like, I see you is very much the human voice of science. But for me, like, as you have indicated, there needs to be many voices in the human conversation for us to have a chance. And once again, what I feel like is that there is much to learn from the realms that can never be empirically demonstrated. And like, you know, that sounds quite high-minded, but simply to mount love and kindness, and the ability for ordinary people for to have their need to make contact on the powerhouse. Sagan said, for small creatures such as we, the vastness is variable only through love. All right. Carl Sagan. Let's give us. We're Broncos. I want you to on record, make a commitment to come back and be interviewed again. Would you do that? Yes. Whatever you want. I enjoyed it very much. I will be back tomorrow. We're on a 40 might get intense because we're coming at things from quite different in positions, but I absolutely adore you and I'm very grateful to you for the education. Thank you. I've enjoyed it very much. Thanks, man. Cheers. You.