Turtles All The Way Down

The summer of ’05 seems to be turning into a good old-fashioned sophomore bull session, arguing
across the political divide about intelligent design vs. evolution.
Paul Campos, for my money, has the best entry yet. He argues that it’s
turtles all the way down, as in

The student asks the great sage, "O Master, upon what does the Earth rest?" The
sage replies, "O seeker of knowledge, the Earth rests on the back of an enormous turtle." The
student then asks, "Tell me, Wise One, upon what does this turtle rest?" The
sage answers with annoyance, "Well obviously it’s turtles all the way down!"

As usual, the two sides are arguing past each other.

First, the secular liberal is mistaken in his belief that there are special
people called "scientists" (or more broadly, "rational thinkers," "members of the reality-based
community" etc.) whose beliefs are based solely on something called "the facts" or "evidence" or
what have you, and who therefore don’t rely on faith-based reasoning.

Because it all comes down to faith. But the conservatives are arguing the opposite, and just as
foolishly:

Second, the cultural conservative is mistaken in his belief - a belief
held by many proponents of intelligent design theory - that a more tolerant attitude on the part
of natural scientists toward supernatural explanations would confirm that the divine origins
of life are empirically verifiable. Science can tell us nothing about God for the same reason
that a comprehensive physical description of the Mona Lisa, down to the level of subatomic particles,
would tell us nothing worth knowing about the Mona Lisa.

The British radio astronomer Bernard Lovell recently told
Mary Wakefield
that he wasn’t too sure
about the Big Bang. This is the guy who helped invent the radio telescope that was used to detect
the background radiation from the Big Bang.

"The Big Bang? Well it is of course conventional wisdom that there was one, but I’m not so sure," said Sir Bernard. "There is a tendency to talk about it as if it happened, but we really do not know."

He looked, as I remember, a little impatient. What about black holes, surely they exist?

"Everyone now believes in black holes, but they forget that the evidence is just circumstantial," he said. "One infers a black hole from plotting in detail the structure of a distant galaxy but no one really knows."

I felt confused. Why does everybody talk about these things as if they’ve been proved? I asked. "Young people get enthusiastic. And I suppose they just think it makes a better story."

Of course, Sir Bernard Lovell is 90. He could just be confused. Or maybe he is a postmodernist, and he believes in “narratives.”