Intro. [Recording date: September 24, 2024.]
Russ Roberts: Today is September 24th, 2024, and my guest is physicist and author Alan Lightman. This is Alan’s third appearance on EconTalk. He was last here in April 2020 talking about stardust, meaning, religion, and science. His latest book and the topic for today’s discussion is The Miraculous from the Material: Understanding the Wonders of Nature. Alan, welcome back to EconTalk.
Alan Lightman: Nice to be back on your show, Russ.
Russ Roberts: Now, you write that you don’t believe in miracles, but you do believe in the miraculous, and that’s in your title, The Miraculous from the Material. It’s a lovely title. Explain that difference for you between miracles and miraculous.
Alan Lightman: Well, for me, a miracle is something that contradicts the laws of nature as we understand them. Generally, people who talk about miracles refer to the intervention of God and the physical world–or some supernatural being, the intervention into the physical world. And of course, the word ‘supernatural’ by itself already means beyond the natural or beyond anything that human beings can explain. So, that’s what I mean by a miracle; and I don’t believe in miracles.
But, by the miraculous, I mean the experience of awe, the beauty that we see in the world, the tremendous order, and in particular, visually extraordinary phenomena, which is what I talk about in the book. And, I feel that I–and most of us are–are open to experiencing these extraordinary phenomena. And, that’s what I mean by the miraculous. So, I think that we can have a scientific worldview, which means that we believe that the world is made out of–it follows natural law–but we can still be appreciative and open to these beautiful phenomena.
Russ Roberts: And this book is a set of short explanations and observations about such beautiful visual phenomena. I think everybody has their own list. This is yours, presumably. And at one point–I can’t remember which, and there are things like rainbows, flowers, shooting stars, etc.–at one point, you mentioned how, I think it was spider webs, which another chapter you just talked about how all of your children or grandchildren will stop and examine a spider web. And, I recently, we did an episode on owls, and I mentioned how my granddaughter loves owls. And I tried to get all of my children and now my granddaughter to be in awe of the natural world. On its own terms. They were all raised with some level of Jewishness as well, religious belief, but I felt it was important to give them just that transcendent appreciation of beauty.
And, just, I’m curious what your thoughts are as a parent and grandparent, as how you did that. And, by the way, none of my kids are scientists. One of them studied science, but none of them became scientists, at least not yet. I wouldn’t say that was my goal. I don’t have a goal that my granddaughter become an ornithologist or an expert on owls. But, I’m curious what your thoughts are on that as a parent and grandparent.
Alan Lightman: Well, I think that most children from my own limited experience do have an awe and an appreciation of the natural world. So, I think as a parent–and I’ve got four grandchildren as well–I think that I just want to encourage that and I want them, my children and grandchildren, to spend time in nature and just to pay attention. I think that the awe is natural, but we need to pay attention.
And, we don’t really pay attention as much in the world today as we used to because of the way that everything has been digitized. We all have our smartphones and are looking at those instead of looking at the trees and the sky and the water. And also, the pace of the world has gotten so fast, driven by the speed of communication that we don’t take the time to just pay attention. And, I think when we pay attention, the awe will come, but we need to make time to pay attention.
Russ Roberts: Now, some would argue that the rise of science in the last couple centuries has reduced the amount of awe. Things that were before considered, as you say, supernatural or religious divine, now some would argue that the magic has been dispelled because now we understand why these things happen–at least at some level, I would stress. But, you argue the opposite in the book in a number of places, so explain that.
Alan Lightman: Well, I think that you can still find awe in a natural phenomenon like a rainbow or a volcano or lightning or a spiderweb, even if you understand the science behind it. I understand how Saturn forms its rings, and I encourage everybody to get a good pair of binoculars or a small telescope and look at the rings of Saturn. And, I understand how those rings form by gravitational pull and angular momentum. But, every time I look at the rings of Saturn, I’m just blown away by the beauty of them and the perfection.
So, I don’t think that understanding, in this case scientific understanding, is incompatible with awe and appreciation of beauty.
I do agree with you that science over the last couple of centuries has given explanations for many phenomena that we didn’t previously understand, but we still have an emotional reaction to these things. When I go outside on a clear night and look at the stars, I know how far away some of them are. I know that stars are suns like our sun. But it doesn’t reduce the magnificent, the majesty of that view of a night sky for me. That’s an emotional reaction.
And I think our emotional reactions–a whole set of emotions–come from a very ancient part of the brain, the amygdala. I’m probably mispronouncing it. And that’s a very ancient, primitive part of the brain. And, we still react with that ancient part of our brain to the beauty that we see around us. Even if we have another part of the brain that has read up on the latest theories of diffraction and astronomy, that primitive part of our brain, which is the seat of our emotions, is still active. And, of course, I’m very, very glad that it is.
Russ Roberts: For me, I think the knowledge actually usually enhances the awe. I mean, if you think of the stars, I live in Jerusalem–not a very industrial city, but there’s sufficient light pollution that there’s only a handful of stars are visible on a winter night. If I head a couple hours south into the desert here, you get an extraordinary view of the Milky Way. So, I like that when I’m looking at the skies here in Jerusalem, I know there’s a richer tapestry to be enjoyed.
And when I see that tapestry, the knowledge that they’re not all equally far from me is I find so mind-blowing that even when we look at a constellation which looks like it’s representing something, when you realize that they’re not actually near each other often, maybe almost ever–I think there’s a handful–but most of them are very far apart. It’s an illusion that they look like they’re close to each other. To me, it’s like going from 2D to 3D, even of course we know it’s 3D [3 dimensions]. So, for me, it makes it better for me.
Alan Lightman: Well, I agree with you that understanding and knowledge has a beauty of its own.
Russ Roberts: And you write in the book very nicely about being aware of that, as human beings, is quite extraordinary. Well, maybe we’ll come back to that.
Russ Roberts: Let me ask a more philosophical question. Are there limits to what we can understand about the physical world, the material? Obviously, we’ve made tremendous progress over those centuries we’re talking about; of course, we don’t know why things are the way they are. We kind of have a side of us that wants to know, I think. But, understanding the physical processes and the laws that produce these phenomena is an extraordinary achievement in and of itself of the human mind, which as you point out, is just this weird little set of neurons firing in a three-pound package, [?] a crazy idea that that would lead to understanding the past that we can’t observe directly at all or at least doesn’t feel like we can. Are there limits to what we can understand or you think what we will understand?
Alan Lightman: Well, I think when you talk about understanding, we need to distinguish between the physical world and maybe you could call it the moral or ethical world. There certainly are boundaries to the province of science, and there are questions that–important questions–that don’t lie within science, like: Does God exist, or would we be happier if we lived to be a thousand years old, or is it ethical to kill an enemy soldier in time of war? Those are all very important questions, but I think they lie outside of science.
So, we’ll put those questions aside and just talk about the physical world, and ask the question: Are there limits to what science can know about the physical world? And, I don’t think that there are any limits, in principle. I view science as a long project of getting better and better approximations to the way the natural world works. And, we don’t have complete knowledge of how the world works physically, but we have very, very good approximations. And, I think that our approximations will get better and better.
There’s another aspect of that question, and that is whether science is the best tool for understanding certain physical phenomena.
And, of course, let’s take our feeling of appreciation for nature or our awe at looking up at a night sky or our falling in love. So, all of those experiences are mental sensations. And, I do believe, and I think that most scientists agree with me, that all mental sensations are ultimately based in the physical neurons of our brain and the chemical and electrical exchanges between them. So, I think that all of those experiences that I mentioned, like falling in love, are ultimately rooted in the physical brain.
But, even if you wired up my brain to a vast computer that recorded all of the electrical activity in the 100 billion neurons in my brain, you put all of that out on a chart, it still wouldn’t convey or represent what I feel when I look up at the night sky and feel part of it–that feeling that I have. Even though I believe that that feeling is ultimately rooted in the material brain. Science is just not a good tool for capturing that feeling. That is, the data of all of those neurons and what they’re doing doesn’t really capture the sensation and the feeling that I have.
Russ Roberts: Yeah, I think the philosophical term is qualia, which is a really pretentious way, maybe just to say feelings, but–
Alan Lightman: Right, qualia; yes, I know about that term.
Russ Roberts: But, the puzzle for me is: Why would we not expect science to unlock that? At one point, you mentioned the emergent phenomena of the brain and consciousness, which we talk about every once in a while in this program–without much progress. But, in going beyond what I just said: Do you not think there will be a, quote, “big enough computer”–a computing version of the brain that would allow us to predict who you’d fall in love with or which night sky would make you more rapturous, etc.? Do you think it’s beyond our understanding? Is it a computing challenge or is it a philosophical barrier?
Alan Lightman: Well, it depends on who you talk to. And I did talk to a neuroscientist at MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] named Robert Desimone about just this question, about whether a computer and a neuroscientist working together could eventually predict who we would fall in love with. And, what he said was it’s a question of probability: that right now we’re at a level where a neuroscientist working with AI [artificial intelligence] could probably, if they did enough interviews with you and examined your brain, they could probably say, ‘Well, there’s a 70% chance you fall in love with Mary and a 30% chance you’ll fall with Eileen.’ And he said that those probabilities will probably get higher and higher as the technology and as the neuroscience advances.
So, I think that in principle that you might be able to make such predictions with high probability, but still there’s the question: Does the computer capture the qualia? Does the computer capture the feeling of being in love? And, there was a great philosopher named Thomas Nagel who wrote a book, “What Does it Feel Like to Be a Bat?”
Russ Roberts: It’s an essay. Yeah, it’s an article.
Alan Lightman: Yeah, an essay. And, of course, he argues that in principle, we can never really know what it feels like to be another organism. I mean, I don’t know exactly what it feels like to be you, Russ Roberts. I can look at your expressions and hear what you have to say, and I can sort of compare that to my knowledge [?] help with the expressions that I make and the things that I say, and conclude that you probably are feeling things that I’m feeling or that I can understand. But, I don’t know for sure what you’re feeling. And I don’t know what my wife is feeling, for sure. I certainly hope that she’s, most of the time she’s happy with me and not unhappy with me. I mean, I guess I agree with Thomas Nagel.
One very interesting question that has come up a lot recently–and certainly since the advent of ChatGPT [Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer] and the realization that computers are getting pretty smart–is a question of whether a computer can ever be conscious. And of course, you have to define what you mean by consciousness, which is of course the fundamental mental sensation. And, my view, and I think the view of many AI experts, is that any finite list of attributes of consciousness that you can write down–like being able to recognize yourself in a mirror, self-awareness, being able to plan for the future–any limited list of manifestations of consciousness you can make that we will someday, maybe 10 years away or 20 years away, have a computer that will check all the boxes of manifestations of consciousness.
But that’s not the same as saying: Is the computer really conscious? And, to answer that question, you would have to know what it feels like to be a computer. And, maybe 100 years from now, we’ll all have silicon chips in our brains that make us part-computer and part-machine. And, then, we may start knowing what it feels like to be a computer. But we certainly don’t know now.
Russ Roberts: Yeah. I was in my first driverless car recently. I was picked up by a driverless car in San Francisco, which has these on the street. And, my joke I’ve used here in the past is: I wonder if it has any regrets that it’s not an electric automated vacuum cleaner or Roomba. Does it sit and long for it to be something, some other kind of computer machine, generative machine? It’s hard to imagine.
I was thinking about your love example. Most of us would have trouble remotely defining what it means to be in love. In its earliest manifestations, I would say it has a physical correspondence to–I would sometimes get a stomach ache thinking about a person and missing her.
And, I think as you stay longer with one person, there’s a different set of physical and of course emotional reactions. And, how would you begin to quantify? I mean, I don’t know. Some of it seems to be beyond the purview of science.
Alan Lightman: Yeah, I would agree with that.
Russ Roberts: Let me ask you about physics. You have a Ph.D. [Doctor of Philosophy] in physics. I don’t know what your dissertation was on, but usually it’s something you specialized. I’m just curious, given the enormously wide range of phenomena in this book, how many of the explanations came effortlessly to you, versus having to do research? Some of the smartest people I’ve ever met are physicists. They’re not just smart though: they know about things. Which, that’s two different things. And if I say, ‘Why is this such and such a way?’ They usually have some idea, and it’s kind of extraordinary. How’s that work for you in this book?
Alan Lightman: Well, the book has all kinds of scientific explanations. Some of them come from the field of biology, some from chemistry, some from physics. And, there were, I don’t know what fraction of chapters come from the world of physics, but the physics, I was able to write the explanations and the understandings from my own knowledge. There were fields that I was not very familiar with, like weather, and what makes the colors of a mandarinfish–which is chemistry and biology. And, for those, I had to do some research. And, even when I did the research, I didn’t completely trust myself in fields that weren’t my own. And I would talk to experts in that area.
One of the great privileges of living in the Boston/Cambridge area, which is where I live, is that there are plenty of experts nearby in almost every subject. And, I have the privilege of knowing some of them. So, I can pick up the phone and ask someone, ‘What are the reasons why the mandarinfish has these colors?’ and so on.
So, of course, if you’re a scientist, you have a feeling for all of the sciences. You understand logical arguments, you understand quantitative arguments; but you may not know the details and fields other than your own. And, I take a very humble approach to this: that I can learn from a lot of different people. And of course, writing a book and writing a book, the things that you learn–and I know you’ve written some books yourself–the things you learn in the research is one of the joys and pleasures of writing the book.
Russ Roberts: For sure. I was [?] going to say: my dad was a very curious man, and he was not an academic. He would occasionally write people in the Boston/Cambridge area, say, for information, and many of them would write back, which is really nice. And then, he would tell me they were ‘on his staff’–they were part of the people he could consult. And, I would just add that the people you’re talking about when you say ‘the experts,’ they’re actual experts. They are people who actually do know about these scientific phenomena.
I’m curious if writing the book made you more curious. Did it start to, or the things you what the book that you didn’t intend to because something grabbed your eye?
Alan Lightman: Oh, yeah. It definitely made me more curious, and more interested, and of course more aware that there are zillions of extraordinary phenomena out there, only a small fraction of I understand.
What started off the book is: I’m a jogger, and I was running by a field that I often run by, and it was early in the morning. I think it was probably in the fall. And there was a beautiful mist hanging over the field that went up maybe about six feet or something like that–this layer, this six-foot layer of mist hanging over the field. And, I had seen such mists before, and I knew that as it gotten warmer and the sun came out, that they would dissipate. And I began thinking about why mists form, and I realized that I didn’t understand all of it. I had some guesses, but I didn’t know for sure all the details and what makes a mist form. And, so, that’s what started the book off. It was my own curiosity.
Russ Roberts: Yeah. It’s like my wife asked me why hotels are so expensive in New York. I’ve got a pretty good idea, but why they’ve gotten more expensive as Airbnb has basically been eliminated from New York–is it because hotels were going to be built, would have been built, but because of Airbnb they weren’t? And now that Airbnb is gone, they’re–I don’t know. So, I’m of course semi-joking because the knowledge that economics brings to the world is limited compared to, say, physics, but I’ll take what I can get.
Russ Roberts: Tell us what ball lightning is. I’d never heard of that. And, it happened to you once. Explain what that is.
Alan Lightman: Well, that’s a good example because we don’t really fully understand what ball lightning is. But, what causes it–but, the phenomenon itself occurs usually during a thunderstorm. And, a shining ball forms, that is something like maybe two feet or three feet in diameter, and moves very quickly. And my own experience with it was that one summer I was standing on the second floor deck of my house and a thunderstorm was just letting up, and suddenly this shining ball came at me. It went by me and into the house and exploded with a bang. I mean, I think it knocked out some electrical appliances. And it moved very quickly. The entire phenomena, from the time I first saw this ball to the time it exploded, was probably only about three seconds.
And so, there are various theories about what it is. It’s certainly some kind of electricity. That is, you probably have the lightning and the thunderstorm probably ionizes an isolated region of air–that is, it strips the electrons off the atoms: that’s what ionization is. And it’s electrically charged; but we don’t really know much more than that about it. It is a rare phenomenon, but it’s really extraordinary.
Russ Roberts: In the movie version, it would either be an alien or God talking to you to get your attention.
Russ Roberts: I expect that the bang was extremely loud. Is that correct?
Alan Lightman: Um, it wasn’t extremely loud. It was loud. I guess–you know, an interesting case was I think I had written something about it. And there was a legal case in the State of Tennessee that involved ball lightning and someone had had property damage, and one of the lawyers in the case got in touch with me and asked me to describe what it was. And so, the fact that a lawyer that I didn’t know would call me up and asked me to be a witness, so to speak, suggested to me that this is a very, very rare phenomenon.
Russ Roberts: The reason I ask is that I’ve never been struck by lightning, but I’ve heard it strike, quote, “nearby.” Nearby, meaning maybe 30 yards away. It’s really loud. And, I’m curious: One–you didn’t write about this–one, why is it loud? And, secondly, when it fried your appliances, did the ball lightning leave any other mark, physical manifestation in your house? Like scar, like burn marks or–?
Alan Lightman: No, it didn’t. It didn’t leave anything. It didn’t leave anything like that.
Russ Roberts: Were you alone?
Alan Lightman: I was alone.
Russ Roberts: Did you yell? Do you remember?
Alan Lightman: I’m pretty sure that my wife was in the house, and I think I did yell.
Russ Roberts: But, she heard either the bang or the yell or both?
Alan Lightman: Yeah, she heard something. She either heard it or saw it because she was another spectator and confirmed my experience. I mean, I thought maybe I imagined the whole thing.
Russ Roberts: Sure. And, one of the conceits of–I’m blanking. Oh, encounters of the–I can’t even remember the name of it now. I think it’s Spielberg film.
Alan Lightman: Encounters of the Third Kind.
Russ Roberts: Is that what it is? I can’t even remember the name now, but I think one of the great charms of that movie is that if you actually did see aliens, people would not treat you kindly. And, I think it could have been a comedy. I’m sure there’ve been some comedies like it. But, part of that movie is watching how frustrating and unbearable it would be to see something extraordinary that no one believed you. And, what you just described, a ball of light coming through the sky and almost hitting you and going into the house–I’m glad your wife heard the noise. That’s all I’m going to say.
Alan Lightman: Right. Well, I hear you and I understand what you’re saying.
Russ Roberts: It’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. That’s the title, sorry.
Alan Lightman: Yeah, Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
But, there are a lot of people that claim to have seen UFOs [unidentified flying objects] and other kinds of supernatural phenomena. Of course, the UFO is not supernatural, but there are people that say that they saw supernatural events. And, science requires that phenomena be repeatable in order to be believable. I mean, there are certain exceptions to that like the origin of our universe happened only once, and yet science still believes it because there’s a lot of evidence and a lot of fingerprints of that event.
But, the method of science is that something should be reproducible. It should be witnessed by more than one person, and so on. That’s just the way that science works. It’s a very conservative process of science. We need a lot of evidence to believe something. I think there are both pluses and minuses to that approach. But, on the whole, science has done very well for us civilized people; and it has brought us antibiotics and all kinds of cell phones and all the other parts of our modern world has been brought to us by science and technology.
Russ Roberts: Do you have a thought on why it’s so loud, lightning, when it strikes, or when a piece of ball lightning ricochets off your dining room wall?
Alan Lightman: Well, of course, thunder–I mean, lightning is associated with thunder. And, thunder, I’m pretty sure is when there’s a region of space where there’s a pressure wave and it’s first evacuated from air, and then the air rushes back in; and that’s what makes the sound. I mean, after all, sound is just vibrating molecules of air. That’s what sound is. So, it has something to do with removing the air from a region and then having it rush back in.
Russ Roberts: And, of course, we know sound travels slower than light, so there’s a delay there.
Alan Lightman: Yes, we see the lightning bolt first and then hear the sound.
Russ Roberts: I mean, does every lightning bolt have thunder? Sometimes we just don’t hear it?
Alan Lightman: No, I don’t think so. I mean, I’m not an expert on lightning, but I do have a chapter of it in the book. But, I don’t think that every lightning bolt has thunder associated with it. And of course, static electricity, which is related to lightning and all electrical phenomena, it doesn’t have any sound at all associated with it.
Russ Roberts: A couple places in the book you talk about the role of color in nature, and of course, as human beings, we like–for whatever reason, another mystery–we like color; and we like a mandarinfish. And, if you haven’t seen one folks, you should buy Alan’s book or you could cheat and Google Image it. But, animals generally tend to specialize in either being colorful or not colorful, and there’s a Just So story afterwards to try to understand those two differences. But, those stories make sense.
But, one piece I struggled with–and I know this but I don’t understand it–some animals use color to signal that they’re dangerous because they’re poisonous. You talk about frogs; the mandarinfish is an example, because general color doesn’t make sense. There’s a mating advantage sometimes, but in general, color is costly because you’re easily seen, and that means your predators can see you.
How is it possible for a predator to learn that you’re dangerous? Because, if I eat you and I die–
Alan Lightman: Then you’re dead–
Russ Roberts: Yeah. That’s problem number one. And, I also have very little–if I’m a fish, there’s schools of fish, but there’s not that many fish schools where baby fish can learn that mandarinfish are poisonous and you should stay away. How does that work?
Alan Lightman: Yeah. Well, there are two ways it could work, and probably both of them operate. One is that if you’re a predator and you take a small bite out of a mandarinfish–let’s just say–and you get some poison that makes you very sick, that doesn’t kill you, then you would know to stay away from fish that look like that in the future.
The other mechanism that probably also operates is that as a matter of natural selection, that if your ancestor fish–well, it would have to be part is the same as the first example–that if you were a predator of a mandarinfish and took a small bite that made you sick but didn’t kill you, then the descendants of yours, which had genes that recognized the mandarinfish as being dangerous, that those fish would survive–that those predators would survive–and the ones that didn’t have the genetic makeup to be wary of this particular colorful fish would not survive.
So, I think that natural selection operates, but I also think that probably even without going several generations and taking into account Darwinian evolution, that there are probably some predators who have had bad experiences with mandarinfish and getting a little bit of poison, but not enough to kill them.
Russ Roberts: And of course, that would allow other fish to become colorful imitating the poisonous ones and free-riding on their–
Russ Roberts: Right. If it works that well.
Alan Lightman: Their adaptation, they would adapt to that.
Russ Roberts: And then they could use it for mating or whatever.
Russ Roberts: Let’s move to some of my favorite things in the book that I learned, and I’m going to ask you some follow-up questions. I never thought about it: Mount Everest is the highest mountain on the face of the earth. It’s 29,000-plus feet. I was shocked to learn it couldn’t be much higher. Explain. There could never be a 80,000-foot mountain on the earth and there are higher mountains than Everest on Mars. Why is that?
Alan Lightman: Well, I think the reason is related to why glaciers can move. That is, as the mountain gets higher and higher, there’s more and more pressure at the bottom of the mountain. And, at some point, there’s so much pressure–because there’s more pressure, because there’s more weight as the mountain gets higher. And, at some point, the pressure at the bottom can liquefy the ground underneath it, and then the mountain is not standing on a solid foundation anymore. And, that liquid can escape and limit the height of the mountain because you’ve taken away part of the base of the mountain.
So, it has to do with the amount of gravity: the weight of the mountain exerts a pressure–and of course, the weight is related to gravity–the pressure at the base of the mountain basically melts the bottom of the mountain when it gets above a certain height. And, planets with lower gravity and therefore less pressure at the base can have taller mountains.
Russ Roberts: Presuming there’s a sufficient force in the up-thrust over time. It’s not like the mountain tries to be harder [?higher?–Econlib Ed.] or people try to build a bigger one.
Alan Lightman: Yeah, right.
Russ Roberts: Hummingbirds: When wings flap 1200 times per minute, that’s really fast. And, they do it in a way that you described in the book as sort of semicircular oscillation. It’s not constant. I mean, it’s not the same every time. It reminds me a little bit of treading water, a weird movement–which would be hard to describe–that you do with your arms to stay in place. I have a memory that most animals other than humans live for roughly the same number of heartbeats–
Alan Lightman: Number of heartbeats–
Russ Roberts: Meaning their hearts wear out after pretty much the same number of beats. So, I assume hummingbirds don’t live very long. Is that correct? Do you know?
Alan Lightman: I don’t know the answer to that question. It’s a good question. My guess is no, they don’t live very long. They also have a very high rate of metabolism. I mean, to supply the enormous energy needs to flap 1200 times a minute. And I think that’s also a limit to their lifespan–that the higher the metabolism we have, the more that we’re taxing the body; and the parts just wear out.
Russ Roberts: Yeah. You also point out they get really warm because they’re flapping their arms really hard, their wings.
Alan Lightman: Right. That’s pretty obvious: that movement creates heat.
Russ Roberts: And so they have to dissipate it.
Alan Lightman: They have to dissipate it, and so their bodies are designed to dissipate heat efficiently. It’s sort of the same reason why camels have most of the fat in their bodies in a hump so that the rest of their bodies can be thin: the skin can be thin and can dissipate heat easily because came camels–this was not a chapter of the book–but camels, which live in hot places, need to be able to dissipate heat easily and efficiently.
Russ Roberts: Presumably they don’t pant, which is the other way that some dogs release heat.
Alan Lightman: Yes. Right, exactly right. I’ve never seen a panting camel, but that would be another way to keep cool.
Russ Roberts: I was stunned to read that there were about 9 million lightning strikes per day on our Earth. That seems implausible, but I’m going to take it as approximately true. It’s obviously not a census; it’s not a precise number. Long-time joke on the program: If you said 9,357,640, I probably would find it even more plausible. But–
Alan Lightman: I wouldn’t say that.
Russ Roberts: I know you wouldn’t because you’re a serious person, unlike many economists–inside joke for listeners. But, how do we know that and is a strike meaning it lands, it hits the Earth?
Alan Lightman: No, I think that that just means that they’re visible. Nine million strikes are visible, lightning bolts are visible; and I think most places on Earth have weather stations that record these things. But, even if you don’t have a weather station in every hundred square miles of the Earth, you can still look at the places where you do very good recording statistics and you can extrapolate from that to other parts of the Earth. So, that’s probably the way that that number was computed.
Russ Roberts: That’s very cool.
Saturn has 146 moons. How many, if any, are as big as ours? Do you know? If some are bigger, how big? What’s the biggest moon in our solar system? Is it ours? Do you know? And, why does Saturn have so many?
Alan Lightman: No, ours is not the largest.
Russ Roberts: Why does Saturn have so many?
Alan Lightman: Well, it is probably related–although I don’t know for sure–to the reason why it has rings, although the total mass in the rings is not–is very little.
But, it comes down to the formation of planets, which was the condensation of material out of a vast revolving gas cloud around the sun when our solar system first formed. And, there were lots of fragments in that gas cloud, and there were other objects that broke up. There were collisions between different fragments. And, I don’t know exactly why Saturn has so many moons, but I know that the conditions around each planet were a little bit different. And, it was probably just an accident of the conditions around Saturn. It’s probably not unrelated to the fact that Saturn has the rings, which also came from debris at the time that the solar system was formed.
I do know that our moon is not the largest moon in the solar system. And, whether or not you call something a moon or a planet is somewhat arbitrary. I think we usually define moons as smaller bodies than planets that are orbiting things that we call planets.
And, of course, if a planet gets large enough, then it becomes a star. I mean, if a mass becomes large enough, then the temperatures at its center are high enough to start nuclear reactions, which is the energy source of stars. So, Jupiter, of course, is the largest planet in our solar system. And, if Jupiter were, say, 10 times the mass that it is, it could have been a star.
Russ Roberts: I refrain from asking whether it ever has any disappointment about that.
Russ Roberts: But, I actually want to ask a semi-serious question along those lines before I forget. At one point you write–you’re talking about looking up at 100 billion stars. I think you’re looking at the Milky Way. Most of them–this is a quote now:
Most of them with their own solar systems, and almost certainly some of those solar systems were inhabited by living beings, probably some of them smarter than us. Because of the vast distances of space, we will probably never be in contact with those other beings, yet we are fellow spectators in this strange place of a universe we find ourselves in. We, intelligent and living beings, constituting only a small fraction of the total mass of the universe, are the only means by which the universe can observe itself, the only means by which the universe has self-awareness.
Close quote. Some people think that everything has some level of consciousness. That paragraph suggests to me that you don’t agree with that. Am I right?
Russ Roberts: I think [inaudible 00:53:22] my Jupiter remark, right?
Alan Lightman: Yes, right. Well, consciousness is almost certainly a graded phenomenon. It’s not an all or nothing phenomenon. So, I think crows and dolphins have a fairly high level of consciousness, although probably not as high as human beings. We know that they can recognize themselves in mirrors. We know that crows play with each other or they exhibit activity that looks very much like our play.
But, I think as you go down the ladder of the animal kingdom and you get to smaller and smaller brains, that the mental capabilities decrease. And I think at some point, and where you draw the line is probably somewhat arbitrary, but at some point that all of the mental activity that we associate with consciousness doesn’t exist. I don’t think an amoeba could be conscious in any meaningful sense. I also do not think that inanimate matter like rocks are conscious. I don’t think they do any thinking at all. So, it’s a graded phenomenon.
Russ Roberts: You’re smiling when you say that, although there are people who think otherwise, right?
Alan Lightman: Oh, I know there are people who think otherwise. But, from everything in neuroscience, the mind and the brain are the same thing. And it’s just a question of how many neurons you’ve got and how many connections there are between the neurons.
It’s not the absolute number of neurons that leads to higher brain activity and experiences like consciousness. It’s also the number of connections between them, which we call synapses. So, I’m sure that people who have pets, particularly dogs, that they feel like that those dogs are really in tune with them emotionally. And so, there’s certainly some level of consciousness there. But, you really have to define what you mean by consciousness. And, I think there are many levels of consciousness.
Russ Roberts: But, what about the universe as a whole? Or, a lot of people wax poetic about how the Internet has made the Earth conscious, or us conscious–whatever that means–that we have some emergent level of quote, “understanding,” crowdsource, whatever you want to, I don’t know what you call it–some crowdsource level of awareness, knowledge, insight. Do you believe in any of that?
Alan Lightman: So, if I can rephrase your question, are you asking whether a group of intelligent beings can have sort of a group consciousness? And, I think that’s a matter of semantics. I mean, you could say that everything that human beings have created, all of our art and science and our civilization and our cities and buildings, that that is a group activity, and really you can interpret that as one mega-being, one mega-consciousness. And, you can do that if you want.
But, I think that each of us human beings has a very strong sense of being a separate entity, an independent entity. There’s a boundary between me and the lamp on my table, and we’re not the same thing and I’m separate from it. And, I don’t hear the thoughts of other people in my brain, although that could change in 50 or 100 years.
So, we do have such a strong sense of being independent beings that I think that we are independent beings in any meaningful sense. And any group consciousness that you attribute to a group of human beings is a metaphor or an interpretation or a philosophical statement.
Russ Roberts: I would describe it as a form of romance. We like to belong, human beings, and there’s something romantic, poetic, whatever you want to describe it, spiritual, about the idea that we’re connected to the lamp or the sunset–or, you and I are talking; we’ve never met. We’re both born in Memphis, Tennessee. We both lived in the Boston area. We have this connection. I’ve read Einstein’s Dreams, which one of your earliest books–which is a wonderful, recommended to listeners. So, I connect to you in a certain way. But, I’m going to die and you’re going to die. And that connection will be severed, presumably. And, it might even be severed when we hang up the Zoom call in any real sense. But I don’t like that idea. I think part of the appeal of religion is–and other forms of romance–true or not, is that they speak to this urge for belonging that we have.
Alan Lightman: Yes, I agree with everything you said. I had forgotten that you and I were both born in Memphis, Tennessee. But I think that our feeling of belonging and need to belong–and certain other feelings that we have, including our appreciation of beauty–I think that those feelings were hardwired into us through natural selection. If you go back a couple of million years ago when our species was emerging, Homo–I don’t know whether that’s a genus or I think that’s, I guess, a genus; I was never that good with zoological categorizations–that when we lived in caves–and I think we know from archeology that usually there were 15 or 20 people to a cave, something like that–that we depended on each other for survival. The hunters went out and gathered food, and the others stayed in the cave, kept the fire going, and took care of the children, and so on.
We were a highly interdependent community in those early days. And, if one of us got separated from the group–went out on a walk from the cave and couldn’t find their way back or something–it was a quick death. And so, there was–the sense of being connected to other people and needing other people was really important as a survival strategy. So, I think that that need was built into our brains as a survival strategy.
Now, that may de-romanticize the wonderful feeling of being connected to other people and being connected to nature. So, I think it is a wonderful feeling, and it’s something that I honor and treasure. But, I do think that it has a scientific or an evolutionary explanation. Like many of the things that we experience and the ways that we relate to the world and even the things that we value had an evolutionary origin. We’re animals, and we’re magnificent animals. We’ve created art and science and philosophy, and even economics; but in the end, we’re animals. That’s what Charles Darwin told us. And, it doesn’t make us any less magnificent to say that we’re connected to chimpanzees and dolphins and crows.
Russ Roberts: Yeah, I think the reason you forgot I was from Memphis is I don’t have any accent from my birthplace. I lived there a year, but my parents grew up there. And so, when they would be in Boston, where we lived for almost a decade, they would lose a lot of their accent. I hear it in your voice; it’s still there. But, when they would go home to Memphis or talk on the phone to someone from Memphis, it would get stronger. I assume that’s true for you, too. I’m sure there’s an evolutionary explanation for it as well.
Russ Roberts: But, I want to close with an observation. It’s not a coherent thought, so I’m not going to try to make it a question, but I’m going to let you just respond to it. You used a common metaphor–that, of course, you didn’t mean literally–when we talked about creation, you said: The fingerprints of the creation are still present. And, I couldn’t help but think about the Sistine Chapel and the ceiling where Michelangelo imagines God animating human beings with a fingertip. It’s a magnificent thing. And as you alluded to briefly in our conversation and in the book, humans have created some really extraordinary, beautiful things–through intention. The Sistine Chapel is one of my top 10, probably–the ceiling of it.
And we don’t like–I don’t know, maybe you feel differently–but as human beings, and whether this is–you can think of this as either evolutionary or divine–we like causation a lot. We like the idea that there’s fingerprints. There’s things that hint at the origins of things. And, it’s just interesting how compelling that is. And, I know you didn’t mean that that way, and I don’t believe that God has a hand. I don’t even know if Michelangelo thought God had a hand. But he wanted to show something causal there. Anyway, just any thoughts on that?
Alan Lightman: Well, we desire order. And, I think that’s at the root of what you’re talking about: that we don’t want to live–I mean, the universe is strange enough as it is. And we shudder at the thought that things can happen randomly and accidentally without cause-and-effect relations. It just means anything could happen. You could start floating up in the air, or the books on your bookshelf could start coming out at any moment, or the sun could turn into a pumpkin. You know–we want–because the universe is as strange as it is, we would like there to be some explanation, some reason, some cause-and-effect relations for everything that we see.
And, that was really part of the motivation of a famous book written 2000 years ago by the Roman poet Lucretius, who wrote a book called The Nature of Things, in which he suggested the atomic process: that everything is made out of atoms that obey cause-and-effect relations, everything is material. And, part of the motivation was to diminish the power of the gods to perform acts at random and upon whimsy. And, that was one of the motivations for his proposing the material atomic hypothesis underlying all phenomena: to diminish the power of the gods. I mean, he still believed in the gods, but he thought that they should stay in their place and let us human beings conduct our lives as we would like to.
Russ Roberts: But, we do like order. And, at the same time, as you point out in the book, you want some kind of unpredictability. You don’t like the idea that we would literally know everything about what’s coming next.
Alan Lightman: Yes. Well, you’re right and that’s another interesting facet of our human minds.
I think it’s related to the fact that–and my wife is a painter, and she always talks to me about what makes a good painting–and a totally symmetrical painting is not as interesting as a painting that has a little bit of asymmetry or a painting that has a little dot of red paint over in the right-hand corner–something that breaks the perfect symmetry.
So, it is an interesting aspect of the human mind and the human psyche that although we like most things to be orderly and predictable and symmetric, do we also like a little bit of unpredictability.
And, if you read a novel and the actions of characters are completely predictable, the novel is not as interesting to you. It’s always nice to have a few surprises.
Russ Roberts: Sure. My guest today has been Alan Lightman. His book is The Miraculous from the Material. Alan, thanks for being part of EconTalk.
Alan Lightman: Well, thank you, Russ, for inviting me again to be part of your very stimulating program.
