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It was a warm evening in May, a little
overcast, nothing dramatic. So far so good. I was walking on
a disused road in the East End of London over the River Lea,
noticing that the area was called the `Greenway' project, a small-scale
nature reserve. As I crossed the Lea, with old concrete pill-boxes
to my left displaying the occasional desultory graffiti I could
see upriver (upcanal actually) towards the Big Breakfast studios,
a hint of muted sunset reflected in the water beyond the lock
separating tidal from non-tidal regions of the cut, and all of
a sudden the song of robin and blackbird impinged on my consciousness.
Robin: silver-threaded contralto with rapid and continuous melodic
variation; blackbird: a measured improbable baritone traversing
a melodic line that only an inebriate could follow. I spotted
the male blackbird on a tree and as I approached it I noticed
the accurate yellow on its beak and eyes. Turning down to the
canal the vegetation was lush, having gained a spurt from the
recent warm, moist weather. A heron was perched on the other
side of the water, but it looked wrong. As I came to the water's
edge it suddenly turned, and I realised that I had been looking
at its back it had been staring up a covered culvert in the hope
of an evening meal. It did not look away as I turned under the
bridge I had just walked over, and I noticed the plaque commemorating
the Victorian sewage engineer W.F.Bazelgette as responsible for
the 'Northern Outfall Sewer'. Nice touch. Past the bridge I was
approaching the lock when my heart missed a beat. I don't often
get this premonition, but it is nearly always right. Ahead, in
the wall by the canal, there was an old door, but, this time,
it was off its hinges. Acting as calmly as I could I slowed my
pace a little and turned only my eyes as I drew level with it.
And saw nothing. Absolutely nothing. One cannot describe it:
it is neither dark nor light, nor full of detail nor blank. Two
seconds later my vision lurched and through the broken door was
revealed the old house standing there, the house I had only previously
seen from the bridge. It was enough. I jacked out, consulted
briefly with the other examiners and jotted down our assessment
for candidate, code number: G0D03761. Later that week I explained
to her that the mark, one short of the 75% required for a distinction,
was a tough mark but reached by virtue of the demanding brief
she had set herself. `The birds were fabulous,' I told her, `And
the social realism was great, particularly the contrast between
the well-meaning eco-socialists of the 'Greenway', and the cheerful
petty vandals. But you forgot that they had kicked in the door.'
No, this is not an extract from a forthcoming William Gibson
novel, but a way of introducing my discipline: computer graphics.
I teach artists the use of 3D computer graphics systems, which
will one day be used to deliver virtual reality environments
like the one in the above scenario. Or will they? I don't regard
this as a trivial question, because much depends on it. In the
recent writings of physicists Frank Tipler and David Deutsch
an assumption is made that humanity will have the option to live
in virtual reality as a genuine, or even the only, alternative
to 'real' reality. From this assumption some pretty serious implications
for humanity are drawn. I am both encouraged and discouraged
by this use of a predicted technology upon which to construct
a metaphysics. I am encouraged because the whole contemporary
phenomenon of writings by scientists on philosophical issues
is an intellectual breath of fresh air. I am doubly encouraged
because there is an implicit recognition of technology (as recognised
by the Victorians in honouring Mr Bazalgette of the Northern
Outfall Sewer). But I am discouraged because of the cavalier
way in which these two scientists have treated the technology.
The technology matters because technology has always mattered,
far more than the history of science gives credit. Newton honoured
his predecessors by saying that if he could see so far it was
because he stood on the shoulders of giants. But what did he
see with? The telescope. Science was born through the
observation of the planets by means of the first and most significant
piece of research technology ever invented. Earth-bound, science
could not arise, because of the difficulty of separating out
cause and effect, shown for example in the Greek misconception
of force as that which produced velocity. Through the telescope
measurements could be made of bodies whose motions, although
complex, were affected by simple and clear-cut factors. The success
of the gravitational theory in resolving the question of planetary
motion gave science the confidence to apply its method to terrestrial
problems. In another critical example for modern physics the
optical instruments of Michelson and Morely were to establish
the invariance of the speed of light, leading to Einstein's theory
of relativity. And in the final triumph for the telescope, it
was a modern descendant of this humble instrument that, in the
hands of Eddington in May 1919, provided experimental proof of
a key prediction of Einstein's relativity: the curvature of space
near massive bodies.
Technology is no mere 'application' of science, it is as intimately
related as the chicken and the egg. After Darwin we can confidently
assert of course that the egg came first (its parents were proto-chickens),
and I am tempted to say by analogy that the technology is the
egg, its parents being merely proto-science. The Greeks could
not establish a proper empirical science for two reasons: they
were contemptuous of 'research' (both Heraclitus and Plato chide
Pythagoras for attempting to understand the world by measuring
it), and they had no technology to do it with, even if they had
been motivated. The great Greek contribution was of course geometry,
and it is of interest to note that Newton's inverse square law
of gravitation derives from the geometry of a sphere (as does
the inverse-square law in other situations). Anything spreading
out from a point in three-dimensional space can be pictured passing
through the surface of an imaginary sphere, and diminishes in
inverse proportion to the area of the sphere, which is in proportion
to the square of its radius. Hence a Greek of phenomenal imagination
and geometrical skill could have anticipated the inverse-square
law, without ever using a telescope. It is a sobering fact however
that the greatest philosophers almost never deduced a physical
law from axioms they chose to work with, and very often 'deduced'
completely incorrect physical laws, as Descartes did regarding
mechanics. It seems that careful observation and measurement
are the only basis for science.
Which brings me to the central theme of this essay: the 'new'
metaphysics, and how it is related to science and technology.
Ever since Aristotle's metaphysics, we have had an instinct to
take the science of our time and construct philosophical systems
from it. Saint Augustine abandoned nine years of commitment to
the Manichean sect (an early rival to Christianity) because a
leading Manichean bishop called Faustus could not answer his
questions on astronomy. By an irony of fate Augustine helped
create the Catholic system that persecuted Galileo for progress
in that very question. However, by the time that Newtonian science
was established it was intellectually profound enough to spawn
a metaphysics of its own, one we could call a reductionist metaphysics.
Laplace was the first to find that God was not needed in this
mechanical universe, though a Deist metaphysics survived for
a while which relegated God to setting the mechanism in motion
and then retiring. In the middle of the nineteenth century it
would have been safe to assume that physicists would adopt a
reductionist metaphysics, while biologists were required to call
on more Platonic ideas about living organisms, a vitalist point
of view. They could not have anticipated that the twin revolutions
of Darwinism and the new physics would reverse the positions,
leaving physicists prone to a more fluid, paradoxical view of
the world and the biologists as the arch-reductionists.
Hence we can say that the metaphysics of the late 20th century,
an outpouring from contemporary scientists, is broadly divided
into two: a 'new' reductionism found mainly amongst the Darwinists;
and a quite different type of metaphysics with its roots in the
'new' physics. We could call this second type an 'anthropic'
metaphysics, after the work of John Barrow and Frank Tipler.
The metaphysics built on the science of any period in history
is not neutral or value-free, but is an attempt, sometimes more
honest than others, to locate human meaning in the results of
science. Hence both the reductionist metaphysics of biologists
like Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould, or of the philosopher
Daniel Dennett, and the anthropic metaphysics of Fritjof Kapra,
Gary Zakov, John Barrow and Frank Tipler (to name just a few
on both sides), are highly valuable. Ever since Plato poured
scorn on the Pythagoreans for attempting to understand musical
intervals by listening, most Western philosophers have
been remarkable for their lack of interest in the perceptual
world, Kant another prime example. While the philosophers may
have sharpened our ability to reason about abstract principles,
the new metaphysics offers much more interest because of its
roots in the measurable universe.
An individual who epitomises the early move to observation is
Leonardo da Vinci, stating in his notebooks that he had little
time for re-hashing the ideas of the Greeks. His thinking, though
broadly medieval, was rooted in a powerfully developed gift for
observation of the natural world, a gift that was as much artistic
as scientific. Leonardo was also a consummate technologist.
He worked a full century before the ideas of Galileo became known,
but represented that part of the Renaissance that looked to the
future (i.e. the Enlightenment), while the neo-Platonists, including
Michaelangelo and Ficino's Academy, represented that part of
the Enlightenment that looked back to the Greeks. Both were essential
of course, and both operated under the medieval world-view summed
up in the phrase 'as above so below', or in another common formulation:
'man as microcosm'.
Which brings us back to the anthropic metaphysics, introduced
above, but not defined. Barrow and Tipler's formulation of the
strong anthropic view is this: 'consciousness is as essential
to the existence of the universe, as the universe is to the existence
of consciousness'. The symmetry of this statement restores man
in part to the place he had during the ancient world up to the
time of the Enlightenment, in other words up to the time of the
reductionist metaphysics of Laplace. However, the anthropic metaphysics
was bound to follow on the heels of the first paradox facing
science, that of the nature of light. Although the use of light
(in telescope and microscope) had been central to the Newtonian
physics, Newton could not do more than speculate on its nature.
Later science showed that light was both a particle and a wave,
depending on how the experimenter approached it. Even today most
scientists resist the implication that the experimenter determines
the outcome of the experiment, because this undermines the notion
of the impartial observer. However, light has consistently forced
this paradox on its investigators, firstly through the wave/particle
duality, secondly because its speed is invariant with respect
to the observer, and finally through the paradox demonstrated
in the Schroedinger's cat gedanken experiment. Whatever
a scientist may think of the anthropic metaphysics, as a social
phenomenon it is on a significant scale. It also forces a re-evaluation
of the medieval view under which Leonardo worked and wrote. Stephen
Jay Gould has attacked Leonardo for pursuing the idea of 'as
above so below' in Leonardo's parallel, extensively pursued,
between the human circulation and the movement of water in streams,
rivers and oceans. Gould has a point, but we don't ridicule Einstein
for his hidden variables theory or for the debacle over negative
gravity, so why attack Leonardo for a folly on a much smaller
scale? The answer must lie with the reductionist rejection of
the medieval principle, a principle now resurrected in the `anthropic'
form.
This is all by way of a context for the main point being made
here. The new metaphysics is a watershed in Western intellectual
history, and while I side squarely with the anthropic side of
it, I find the genetic reductionism of the Darwinists intellectually
stimulating and vital to healthy debate. What I don't want to
see is a metaphysics that becomes as speculative as that of earlier
and generally redundant philosophical thinking, simply because
it is not taking technology seriously. To understand this
point we need to look at Tipler and Deutsch's ideas in more detail.
Frank Tipler in his Physics of Immortality postulates
a time in the far future called the Omega Point when all of humanity
will live in virtual reality, an artificial and enhanced simulacrum
of the universe maintained by a computer of infinite calculating
power. Presumably my imaginary students of the far future would
be employed flat-out to build this virtual world, though Tipler
implies that we could not just simulate but improve on reality.
David Deutsch in his Fabric of Reality also requires a
machine that can generate any world, though he is more cautious
in predicting future computer power. Deutsch suggests that rather
than computers speeding up in an exponential growth of calculating
power, we slow down the metabolism of the brain. The acknowledged
down side of this approach is that five minutes spent in the
virtual world would be at the cost of five years suspended animation
in the physical body! Tipler and Deutsch use virtual reality
scenarios to construct different metaphysics however (though
some would call it more like science fiction), Tipler for the
proof of the existence of God, and Deutsch for a more interwoven
cosmology involving parallel universes. In both cases, there
is more scope for careful study of technology before leaping
into the dark.
Going back to the technology of virtual reality, let us consider
what would be involved in an attempt to create the virtual fragment
used to introduce this essay. Firstly, an acutely developed artistic
eye is needed, nothing short of the sensitivities of a Leonardo.
Secondly computing power is needed in two aspects to deliver
the virtual world, known as modelling and rendering. Modelling
refers to the representation of the virtual world in the computer,
and its evolution in time. Perhaps based on the relative cheapness
of computer memory in recent years, both Tipler and Deutsch assume
that memory will become effectively infinite, and so the modelling
is of no difficulty. The rendering of this world is a different
problem, and relates to the need to deliver sense impressions
of it to the VR inhabitant. A visual perspective virtual cinematographic
view has to be generated in real time, along with other sensory
input, chiefly sound, aroma, and kinaesthetic data. As already
mentioned Tipler assumes infinite computing resources available
for this, though Deutsch accepts that there would be limits.
The question then arises, are there limits to computing, and
if so, do they fall short of delivering a believable virtual
world?
For me, one virtue of teaching and researching 3D computer graphics
is to force the virtual reality modeller to look again at the
natural world. In doing so a profound respect for it is generated,
a respect somewhat lacking in the theorists. The more one attempts
to model natural phenomena (and there is a vast research effort
going into this around the world) the more difficult the problem
seems. The sheer richness of the visual world makes reconstructing
the canal scene not just a highly ambitious engineering project,
but perhaps simply impossible. An analogy that might be useful
is the early optimism about colonising the moon. Are we applying
the same optimism to the growth of computing power that we did
to space technology in the sixties? Looking at virtual reality
systems of today it is truly an open question. It has been suggested,
and I have sympathy with this view, that to faithfully model
a universe you would need a computer the size of a universe.
There is no doubt that we can model (to use this term in a slightly
different way) aspects of the real world for simulation,
for artistic, leisure, and research purposes. I can think of
three examples, all of which have cost a million dollars or more
to implement, and which achieve their goals to a considerable
extent: an installation by artist Char Davies called Osmose,
the `hemispherium' at Teeside University used amongst other things
to simulate town planning projects, and the planetarium in New
York which will use computer-modelled starfields. In each case,
the gap between the real and virtual versions is stark, to say
the least, though this does not make the projects fail in their
own terms.
To conclude, the recent phenomenon of the new metaphysics, that
is philosophical and speculative writings with a deep root in
science, is a major breakthrough in human thinking. It is at
its strongest when its scientific basis is strongest, though
even the wildest speculations in this genre may hold more value
than some of the philosophies of old, divorced as they were from
systematic, careful and sensitive observations of the natural
world. This is also a plea however to take technology seriously,
the same technology without which science could not arise. Computer
technology is as intimately bound up with contemporary science,
as the telescope and related instruments were with early science,
but we should not make assumptions about its possible future
development. Unless of course we pass a door in a wall, or turn
our head too quickly, and find nothing.
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