The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself

The Big Picture by Sean Carroll is an excellent book for anyone who wants a concise, understandable, and we'll written overview of modern science, with an emphasis on quantum mechanics and the philosophy of Poetic Naturalism. In this review I will focus on the philosophical side of his work and particularly his treatment of issues related to consciousness.As Carroll puts it, "Naturalism” claims that there is just one world, the natural world... (while) “Poetic” reminds us that there is more than one way of talking about the world . He describes these different ways of talking about the world as an "interconnected series of models appropriate at different levels". From this perspective, physics, chemistry, biology, and even psychology and sociology are simply different but useful ways of talking about the same world.From a scientific perspective, the most fundamental way of talking about the world is quantum field theory and, more specifically, the Core Theory, a term coined by Nobel Laueate Frank Wilczek. The Core Theory may be viewed as quantum field theory within a "domain of applicability" that includes most of the universe in which we live but excludes certain phenomena (e.g. dark matter, the big bang and black holes). Though the Core Theory is not the elusive Theory of Everything, it has been validated by so much data from so many experiments that it may be as close as we ever get to scientific certainty. As Carroll puts it, "We can be confident that the Core Theory, accounting for the substances and processes we experience in our everyday life, is correct. A thousand years from now we will have learned a lot more about the fundamental nature of physics, but we will still use the Core Theory to talk about this particular layer of reality". That is an audacious claim, but Carroll supports that claim with rigorous scientific reasoning.Carroll views higher level or "coarse grained theories" such as chemistry and biology as "emergent" and describes them as "... speaking different languages, but offering compatible descriptions of the same underlying phenomena in their respective domains of applicability". For example, chemistry and biology are emergent models of the universe, compatible with each other and the Core Theory, but with unique utilities in their particular domain of applicability. He briefly mentions supervenience, the view that emergent theories exist in an ontological hierarchy where higher level theories rest on more fundamental theories. For example, there could be no change at the level of biology without there being a change in the underlying chemistry. Similarly, there could be no change at the level of chemistry absent a change in the more fundamental physics. All of the models are interconnected and interdependent. Though each model has its own unique utility and coherence, that utility and coherence ultimately rests on a consistency with other more fundamental models.Unfortunately, Carroll's treatment of how different emergent models relate to each other alternates between autonomous or semiautonomous utility on the one hand and consistency with more fundamental models on the other. Though he warns readers not to begin a sentence in one model and end it in another, by moving between these two criteria for the validity of those models, he committs a very similar error. He frequently refers to consistency or compatibility among different models as essential, but also writes, "Within their respective domains of applicability, each theory is autonomous—complete and self-contained, neither relying on the other". This is just one example of where he suggests that the soundness of a model can be evaluated by its utility and internal coherence, and without reference to consistency with more fundamental models. In my opinion, when this level of credence is given to utility, one has entered a slippery slope that can lead to invalid ontological conclusions. Now, the criteria of utility does have its own domain of applicability, namely when the theory does not make ontological claims. For example, there are languages or ways of talking about everything from hair styling to stamp collecting that do not make claims about fundamental reality. Even Newtonian physics has its utility within its particular domain of applicability. In these areas, utility is a perfectly reasonable criteria. But when it comes to any model that claims to reflect, at some level, an underlying reality, utility by itself is an inadequate criteria.Another example is theism, a world view that Carroll does an excellent job demonstrating why it is not only unnecessary but a way of looking at the world but one that is ultimately inconsistent with the Core Theory. But if one evaluates the validity of theism, and particularly the theism embodied in major world religions such as Jewdaism, Christianity, and Islam, from the perspective of their utility, one is headed for an ontological train wreck. Who can deny the comfort (i.e. utility) that faith in a loving god and a blissful after life has given millions if not billions of people? But does that mean that such a world view is real in the same sense that the Core Theory is real? Of course not.The same logic applies to the role of consciousness in human behavior. Though there may be personal or social utility in the belief that conscious intent is responsible for human behavior, such a position is inconsistent with everything we know from cognitive science and everything we know about how the world works according to the Core Theory. Behavior emerges from complex brain activity, not inner experiences. The fact that our brain is responsible for both behavior and consciousness, at approximately the same time, gives rise to the illusion that conscious intent causes behavior. It is no more reasonable to claim that consciousness is responsible for behavior than to claim that a god is responsible for behavior or that a roosters crowing causes the sun to rise.Carroll tries to get around this by claiming that consciousness is just another way of talking about brain activity and the deeper layers of chemistry and physics. Unfortunately, reducing consciousness to a way of talking about experience fails to solve the Hard Problem. Consciousness is more than just a way of talking about brain states. It is dependent for its existence and form on those states, but is not identical to them. I do not claim to know what consciousness is, but whatever it is, it is more than words.Thus, poetic naturalism fails as a satisfactory philosophy of mind on two counts. First, it fails to give an adequate understanding of inner experience and secondly, it provides credence to the idea that consciousness is responsible for behavior. The first failure is understandable; the Hard Problem is hard for a reason and no one has yet come up with a satisfactory solution to it. As David Chalmers has said, that may take a hundred years. But Carroll should have seen the second failure coming. By allowing for the claim that consciousness can be responsible for behavior, he is opening the door for a new element in the Core Theory, an element he has argued persuasively does not exist. If it existed, this new element or property, somehow related to connsciousness, would make David Chalmers a very happy camper, but for the Sean Carroll who describes the Core Theory with such reverence, not so much.In conclusion, The Big Picture is an excellent book on the current status of science and his portrait of Poetic Natualism as a unifying philosophy. For those reasons, I highly recommend it to interested lay readers. However, I also urge those readers to be very careful in analyzing his treatment of consciousness. I believe he made a significant error in that analysis, though the error could very easily be my own.

Per Sean Carroll, the future is as solidly fixed as the past, so it may be pointless to urge everyone to read his book. But apparently that’s predetermined, too.It’s impressive work, far more ambitious and thoughtful than other physics “popularizers.” People who know and love Carroll from his captivating cosmology and entropy lectures will be surprised that in “The Big Picture,” he feels free to jump from black holes to philosophy by way of innumerable intervening mysteries of science. It could easily have been silly stuff, or pure speculation, but it isn’t, although his rigor definitely slips towards the end.The book has stirred up the usual backscatter of Jesus-wept reviews, but the fact that SC’s points are wide open to alert criticism, as well as not always persuasive, is no reason to one-star him, quite the opposite. Scientists who cultivate a popular following inevitably attract the snipers.SC calls his philosophy “poetic naturalism.” That raises a tiny flag: “poetic” is a squishy term not much favored in science. He means, though, that the same unyielding reality can be explained in many different ways depending on perspective. Time and Space may be emergent qualities beyond the quantum level, consciousness on the human level – and who knows what on the cosmic scale? But it’s all realism. Perhaps naturalism needs no qualifier. (Want poetry? Read Rovelli’s Seven Brief Lessons, and in a couple hours you’ll be no smarter.)Carroll says: Stick to Reality. It doesn’t have to be an election year for us to see that humans instinctively reject reality and prefer to stay safely within echo-filled parallel universes. But this is how, in a physics book, no less, we find a chapter on gender identity (“Who am I”). His point is, while facts are facts, A=A, how we relate to them is a matter of choice – a choice depending on usefulness. A man who thinks he is a woman can perhaps be accommodated; a man who thinks he is a unicorn, not so easily (unicorns don’t use bathrooms at all). As he says, the distinction between facts and human convention is crucial, though flagrantly violated in public discourse.What is reality, though? SC diligently reminds us that there is no “truth” in science (although there is in logic) – yet you can’t just make stuff up. We try to get the prediction to match the data as closely as we can, and then we call it “reality.” (SC slips into the vernacular from time to time, as do we all: “The purpose of science is to find the truth.” But, say, Darwin is no more “the truth” than Genesis is – just more useful. Try faith-based dog breeding.) There’s a whole prejudicial vocabulary we ought to eschew.So it’s odd that SC spends so much time arguing against the gods. His ending remarks cast some light on his own personal journey, but, really, we don’t expect a dentistry textbook to have a chapter repudiating the Tooth Fairy. All he needs to say is, “If your best answer to these fundamental physics problems is, “A god did it!” then you don’t belong in my class. Here we’re trying to do better.”(That said, much of modern cosmological speculation veers towards the untestable and unmeasurable: all possible universes may exist; undetectable universes pop up and back out; pretty soon you’re back to “Hey, a god did it.”)Surely the hardest point to grasp is the “Many-Worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics. SC is a confirmed Everettian and says you’d better go where the math (summed wave function) takes you. The universe doesn’t care if you like it or not, and admittedly MW is no weirder than much else. But the implications are unfathomable.SC brilliantly discusses the origin and rise of life within the context of the 2nd Law/TD. “The purpose of life is to hydrogenate CO2.” Or more “poetically,” to turn sunlight into turds in the pursuit of entropy. Yet it’s still hard to explain how replicating DNA began, and why it gained such unexpected complexity. Is there not some extropian principle at work? SC has to work pretty hard to convince himself that there isn’t. (And why does it seem to have happened just once? Why just DNA-based? SC favors hydrothermal vents and never mentions space origins.)Same with consciousness. SC dismisses the popular quantum consciousness theories, even Penrose’s, and he thinks panpsychia is silly (where’s the evidence?). Consciousness is just a phase transition that occurs when suitably complex machines get to ruminate on the past to estimate the future. But, since it is but crude “biologism” to reserve consciousness for DNA-based units, then we are now undergoing another phase shift into a global technosphere (nöosphere if you will), which, presumably, will soon decide that humans are more trouble than they are worth, and begin treating them like we treat bacteria. And then it will proceed on course to convert all matter into information processing, and then we are right back in panpsychia and the notion of the universe as a giant thinking machine.The philosophers love their thought experiments, but how they crash and burn when they hit reality! In Ethics, SC begins with the “terrible” dilemma of Abraham and Isaac. Well, if Isaac calls 911 and says his Dad is about to “sacrifice” him, we all know exactly what to do with that old nut Abe. Nothing to agonize over here. As for the trolley problem, the dilemma du jour, military targeteers work it 24/7. You decide who needs killed, and who needs spared, in order to maximize the utility function for your tribal coalition. There are a lot of unknown variables, and you can be wrong. The Law of all DNA is plain: survive and reproduce. Alone or joint is a tactical decision. “Ethics” is just calculation of each organism’s utility function.SC recognizes that interests may conflict, or may align, so there is never one “right” answer. Yet in human-speak, it’s “good” if it serves our purposes, “evil” if not. This is not the maligned “relative ethics,” but true relativistic ethics: the “right choice” is the one with the highest probability of serving a unit’s interests at a specified point and time. It will look different from different coordinates.Also, every event was baked into the universe from the beginning, so there’s no point complaining. In Darwinian terms, losers whine about the past; winners take precautions for the future. Unless whining works! (But why worry, Sean, if it’s all fixed…)Here’s where the flag goes up again, and one wonders if SC should have examined his point. Sure, all the cultural affectations and conventions (religion always being the easy pinata) are groan-worthy. But, they are as “real” as quarks and stars – they exist for a reason. So the smart DNA (Dawkins) rails against them; the smarter DNA (F de Waal) tries to explain them; and the truly clever DNA (preachers, politicians…) figures out how to package and sell them. Such collective memes serve someone’s interests, though not necessarily yours; they are natural attempts to gain leverage from the differential in human cognitive abilities. This differential ordering seems inevitable, since the emerging collective consciousness (global brain?) parallels the evolution of multicellular organisms. (But won’t such a global superorganism require great armies of subhuman drudges who do as they’re told in return for a diet of drivel? Just asking…)And that’s how we get to Moses, one of the first to codify the collective’s subjugation of the individual.Again, the warning flag: Perhaps reflecting some inner struggle, Carroll’s subtle goal seems to be to reconcile traditional, homespun worldviews with the stark, unyielding, largely incomprehensible universe science reveals. He might have been better off trash-canning everything pre-1905, and “sticking to reality.” SC is a superb explainer, especially of the inexplicable, but in the last section, his signal-to-noise ratio deteriorates markedly.Happily Carroll has a good sense of humor – otherwise his Moses-emulation might have fallen flat. The “Ten Considerations,” the Carolian Decalogue, aren’t controversial to reasonable people; they border on platitudes. (A bad one slipped through: “What matters is what matters to humans.” He’s lucky other species don’t read.) He really only needs the last one, “Reality Guides Us!” That can be shortened to “Think!” – but that’s what commandments are designed to prevent.The book ends with a dumb existentialist cliché, Camus’s “happy Sisyphus.” Carroll says, cheer up and roll that stone. But to complete his own thought-provoking discussion of zombies vs. consciousness: When Sisyphus makes that phase transition and figures out what’s going on, he ain’t happy no mo’…This book’s a feast: something to argue over on every page.