By Donald H. Harrison
Jewishsightseeing.com, April 16, 2006

SAN DIEGO—We now have two good examples illustrating the thesis that if ever you want a U.S. President to make a momentous decision that could impact the lives of generations to come, you’d be wise to have a good story from history to tell him first.

One example was retold last night in the “Einstein’s letter” episode of the History Channel’s  10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America series.  Physicists Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, Edward Teller and Enrico Fermi were convinced that not only was it possible to split the atom to create energy, but that Nazi Germany was actively working on such a project.  It was imperative that the United States beat dictator Adolf Hitler in acquiring such a weapon.  But how to get this message to President Franklin D. Roosevelt?  These scientists, after all, were but recent immigrants to the United States.  So they turned to the colleague who could get anyone’s attention, the remarkable Albert Einstein, whose name had become synonymous with brilliance.

Although a noted pacifist, Einstein harbored no illusions about what could happen to the world if Hitler had a monopoly on atomic  power.  And so, more than three years before the United States entered World War II as a result of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Einstein urged that the United States urgently undertake its own atomic  research program.

Einstein dictated a letter to Roosevelt on August 2, 1938, explaining the implications of the ability to split an atom.  In part, this letter read:

…In the course of the last four months, it has been made probable—through the work of Joliet in France as well as Fermi and Szilard in America—that it may become possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium by which vast amounts of power and large quantities of new radium-like elements would be generated. Now it appears almost certain that this could be achieved in the immediate future.

This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable—though much less certain—that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed. A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory.  However such bombs might very well prove to be too heavy for transportation by air…

Einstein and the others decided that a letter of such portent ought not to be simply entrusted to the U.S. Postal Service; that it had to be delivered in person by someone known to President Roosevelt.  They settled on the economist Alexander Sachs, who was known to be a friend of Roosevelt’s.  It took more than two months before Sachs was ushered into the Oval Office, and it was during the “small talk” before the presentation of the letter that Sachs recalled to Roosevelt a story about Robert Fulton and Napoleon.

As the story went, Fulton had urged Napoleon to build a fleet of his steam ships and thereby be able to cross the English channel and invade England regardless of the winds that would hamper ordinary sailing ships.  Napoleon dismissed the idea as impractical.

The story was well chosen because sea power was always one of President Roosevelt’s great interests.  He had risen to public prominence between 1913 and 1920 as the Assistant Secretary of the Navy—a position that his cousin, former President Theodore Roosevelt had also once occupied.

Thus alerted by Sachs’ analogy to the history-changing potential of  atomic research, Roosevelt read the letter, then turned to his aide, Gen. Edwin “Pa” M. Watson, and said:  “Pa, this requires action.”

The second instance of storytelling occurred in March 1948 during  the next presidential administration, that of Harry S. Truman.  The United States had voted the preceding November at the United Nations Security Council  for the partition of Palestine but elements of the U.S. government, particularly the State Department, were pressuring President Truman to reverse course.

Zionists meanwhile wanted to meet with the President to urge the United States to quickly recognize the Jewish State if it should declare itself independent when the British mandate expired that coming May.  The clamor became so intense that Truman, frustrated that he was being distracted from other issues,  announced that he did not want to hear from anyone—not even Chaim Weizmann, head of the world Zionist movement—on this issue.

Eddie Jacobson  had known Truman since their days together in World War I and even had been Truman’s partner in an unsuccessful haberdashery store.  He was prevailed upon to call upon Truman at the White House to urge him to at least meet with Weizmann.  Although he knew the subject was taboo, Jacobson maneuvered the conversation to Wiezmann by pointing to a sculpture of President Andrew Jackson that Truman kept in the Oval Office.

Commenting how Jackson had been Truman’s boyhood hero, Jacobson said that he too had a hero—a man who was a hero to many Jews, Weizmann.  Jacobson then pleaded with his friend to please meet with Weizmann, whom he described as being cast from the same temperament and mould as Jackson.  Truman laughed, then cussed, and then agreed to receive Weizmann.

The two men’s meeting occurred on March 18, 1948,  during which Truman promised to recognize the Jewish State upon its declaration of independence two months later.  True to Truman’s word, the United States announced its de facto recognition of the new country,  just 11 minutes after David Ben-Gurion announced that the Jewish State would be called Israel, and declared it to be independent.

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To see original story, please click here

Quantum physics, which originated in work conducted by Max Planck and Albert Einstein at start of 20th Century, is a hugely successful theory: the predictions it makes about the behavior of subatomic particles are extraordinarily accurate. And yet, it raises profound puzzles about reality that remain as yet to be understood. Niels Bohr once said if quantum mechanics hasn’t profoundly shocked you, you haven’t understood it yet.

In quantum mechanics any situation is a blend of every possible option of what might happen and this blend is called a wave function. This seems to work for light. Sometimes light can act as a particle and sometimes as a wave. Atoms, it has been found, seem to follow the same rules. As the world is made of atoms, the world must follow the rules of quantum mechanics. Obviously in the real world life doesn’t spend its time sitting on the fence, things just happen. But in quantum mechanics things happen only when this wave function collapses and only one possibility is left.

At some point a situation has to stop having every possible outcome. When an event is observed then all the other possibilities suddenly disappear. It’s like saying that the universe is based on chance. One enormous casino. What happens next is based on chance not on an absolute certainty. Imagine the universe as a horse race with lots of evenly matched horses. Until the race is over you can’t tell which horse is going to win. With quantum mechanics the idea is that the race isn’t over until someone decides to check on the result. This is where the science fiction idea of ‘parallel universes’ comes from. If every possible outcome is waiting to happen perhaps it really does happen in another quantum universe. Every horse wins in some reality.

Erwin Schrödinger was the man who first discovered the equations that quantum mechanics relies on. Even he couldn’t believe the idea that nothing happens until someone looks to check it. He invented the most famous cat in science – Schrödinger’s cat. If nothing happens until it is observed then imagine the following. A cat is put in a box with a small gadget that will release poison. This poison will be released by something that is controlled by the laws of quantum mechanics, for example radioactive decay. Radioactive atoms are ones that are unstable and spontaneously break down into smaller atoms. So there is a lump of radioactive material and a device to detect if an atom has broken down. This atomic break-up has a 50:50 chance of happening in one hour. According to quantum mechanics, until the box is opened an hour later both outcomes should co-exist. The cat should be both dead and alive at the same time until someone observes the result.

Despite what some people think, this story was meant to show how Niels Bohr’s interpretation of quantum mechanics was wrong. It was just an interpretation. There is an easier way of thinking about this. Quantum mechanics does seem to explain a lot of things about atoms and light. This craziness of a cat that is both dead and alive only applies if you stick to the idea that everything happens until it is measured by a person. There is no paradox if you just change to the idea that a quantum event happens when the result interacts with anything. When the radioactive atom in the box decays, the cat will only die when the radioactivity detector in the box detects it. When a particle that follows quantum mechanics interacts with anything it has to commit to being one thing or another. So a quantum mechanic event can set up a sequence of events that end up with a cat that is dead or alive without needing it be both at the same time.

All this cat really tells us about quantum mechanics is that trying to use quantum mechanics to explain normal day-to-day life doesn’t work. Understanding atoms doesn’t help you understand a whole cat, but then again understanding cats doesn’t help you understand atoms, so it works both ways (no matter what cats say). Einstein’s problem with quantum mechanics was summed in the idea that ‘God doesn’t play dice’. Everyone seems to remember that but do you know not what Niels Bohr said in reply: “It is not the job of scientists to prescribe to God how he should run the world.” (Some excellent advice, were that more of his fellow scientists followed it instead of penning best sellers on atheism.) 

At the end of the day quantum mechanics does make sense in its own realm and offers explanations for strange effects that have no other explanation. In the traditional interpretation of quantum theory –sometimes also called the “Copenhagen,” “standard,” or “orthodox” interpretation — one must, to avoid paradoxes or absurdities, posit the existence of so-called “observers” who lie, at least in part, outside of the description of the world provided by physics. That is, the mathematical formalism which quantum theory uses to make predictions about the physical world cannot be stretched to cover completely the person who is observing that world. What is it about the “observer” that lies beyond physical description? Careful analysis suggests that it is some aspect of the rational mind.

This has led some eminent physicists to say that quantum theory is inconsistent with a materialistic view of the human mind. Eugene Wigner, a Nobel laureate in physics, stated flatly that materialism is not “logically consistent with present quantum mechanics.” Sir Rudolf Peierls, another leading twentieth–century physicist, said, on the basis of quantum theory, “The premise that you can describe in terms of physics the whole function of a human being…including its knowledge, and its consciousness, is untenable. There is still something missing.”

Admittedly, this is a highly controversial view. That is only to be expected, especially given the materialist prejudice that affects a large part of the scientific community. Moreover, the traditional interpretation of quantum theory has aspects that many find disturbing or implausible. Some even think (wrongly, in Dr. Steven Barr’s opinion) that the role it assigns to observers leads to subjectivism or philosophical idealism. Dissatisfaction with the traditional interpretation has led to various rival interpretations and to attempts to modify quantum theory. However, these other ideas are equally controversial. The controversy over quantum theory will not be resolved any time soon, or perhaps ever. But, even if it is not, the fact will remain that there is an argument against materialism that comes from physics itself, an argument that has been advanced and defended by some leading physicists and never refuted.

Recently the Templeton Prize, awarded for contributions to “affirming life’s spiritual dimension”, has been won by French physicist Bernard d’Espagnat, who has worked on quantum physics with some of the most famous names in modern science.

d’Espagnat says a spiritual reality is veiled from us, and science offers a glimpse behind that veil. The bizarre nature of quantum physics has attracted some speculations that are wacky but the theory suggests to some serious scientists that reality, at its most basic, is perfectly compatible with what might be called a spiritual view of things. Some suggest that observers play a key part in determining the nature of things. Legendary physicist John Wheeler said the cosmos “has not really happened, it is not a phenomenon, until it has been observed to happen.”

D’Espagnat worked with Wheeler, though he himself reckons quantum theory suggests something different. For him, quantum physics shows us that reality is ultimately “veiled” from us. The equations and predictions of the science, super-accurate though they are, offer us only a glimpse behind that veil. Moreover, that hidden reality is, in some sense, divine. Along with some philosophers, he has called it “Being”.

The deeper questions in physics are bound to interact with the religious/philosophical assumptions of the physicist. So how do scientists investigating the fundamental nature of the universe assess any role of God. Mark Vernon, who writes science articles, did a little research and came up with the following:

1. THE ATHEIST

Nobel-prize winning physicist Steven Weinberg is well-known as an atheist. For him, physics reflects the “chilling impersonality” of the universe. He would be thinking here of, say, the vast tracts of empty space, billions of light years across, that mock human meaning. He says: “The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless.”

So for Weinberg, the notion that there might be an overlap between science and spirituality is entirely mistaken: “I have to admit that, even when physicists will have gone as far as they can go, when we have a final theory, we will not have a completely satisfying picture of the world, because we will still be left with the question ‘why?’ Why this theory, rather than some other theory? For example, why is the world described by quantum mechanics? Quantum mechanics is the one part of our present physics that is likely to survive intact in any future theory, but there is nothing logically inevitable about quantum mechanics; I can imagine a universe governed by Newtonian mechanics instead. So there seems to be an irreducible mystery that science will not eliminate.

But religious theories of design have the same problem. Either you mean something definite by a God, a designer, or you don’t. If you don’t, then what are we talking about? If you do mean something definite by ‘God’ or ‘design,’ if for instance you believe in a God who is jealous, or loving, or intelligent, or whimsical, then you still must confront the question ‘why?’ A religion may assert that the universe is governed by that sort of God, rather than some other sort of God, and it may offer evidence for this belief, but it cannot explain why this should be so.”

2. THE SKEPTIC

The Astronomer Royal and President of the Royal Society, Martin Rees, shows a distinct reserve when speculating about what physics might mean, whether that be pointlessness or meaningfulness. He has “no strong opinions” on the interpretation of quantum theory: only time will tell whether the theory becomes better understood. “The implications of cosmology for these realms of thought may be profound, but diffidence prevents me from venturing into them,” he has written. In short, it is good to be humble in the face of the mysteries that physics throws up.

3. THE PLATONIST

Oxford physicist Roger Penrose differs again. He believes that mathematics suggests there is a world beyond the immediate, material one. Ask yourself this question: would one plus one equal two even if I didn’t think it? The answer is yes. Would it equal two even if no-one thought it? Again, presumably, yes. Would it equal two even if the universe didn’t exist? That is trickier to contemplate, but again, there are good grounds for a positive response. Penrose, therefore, argues that there is what can be called a Platonic world beyond the material world that “contains” mathematics and other abstractions.

4. THE BELIEVER

John Polkinghorne worked on quantum physics in the first part of his career, but then took up a different line of work: he was ordained an Anglican priest. For him, science and religion are entirely compatible. The ordered universe science reveals is only what you’d expect if it was made by an orderly God. However, the two disciplines are different. He calls them “intellectual cousins”. “Physics is showing the world to be both more supple and subtle, but you need to be careful,” he says. If you want to understand the meaning of things you have to go beyond science, and the religious direction is, he argues, the best.

5. THE PANTHEIST

Brian Swimme is a cosmologist, and with the theologian Thomas Berry, wrote a book called The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era. It is avidly read by individuals in New Age and ecological circles, and tells the scientific story of the universe, from the Big Bang to the emergence of human consciousness, but does so as a new sacred myth. Swimme believes that “the universe is attempting to be felt”, which makes him a pantheist, someone who believes the cosmos in its entirety can be called God.

The simple explanations of quantum theory come from a kids’ science blog called “journeybystarlight.”

The final theme Dr. Barr takes up of the materialist’s story is the mechanistic view of man himself. It is the final theme in more ways than one. Here the scientist debunks himself. Here all the grand intellectual adventure of science ends with the statement that there is no intellectual adventure. For the mind of man has looked into itself and seen nothing there except complex chemistry, nerve impulses, and synapses firing. That big fat nothing, at least, is what the materialist tells us that science has seen.

One recalls Chesterton’s reflections on Evolution  or  the “Thought To End All Thoughts.”  It’s astonishing to see someone like Dr. Barr making the same point here that Chesterton essentially made some seventy or eighty years prior. I could almost feel the Great One chuckling as I read the Barr essay.

However, the story is really not so simple for here again (after Chesterton’s time) the plot has twisted. Two of the greatest discoveries of the twentieth century cast considerable doubt upon, and some would say refute, the contention that the mind of man can be explained as a mere biochemical machine (Chesterton was refuting it on a rational or theological basis).

The first of these discoveries that Dr. Barr offers is quantum theory. In the traditional interpretation of quantum theory — sometimes also called the “Copenhagen,” “standard,” or “orthodox” interpretation — one must, to avoid paradoxes or absurdities, posit the existence of so-called “observers” who lie, at least in part, outside of the description of the world provided by physics. That is, the mathematical formalism which quantum theory uses to make predictions about the physical world cannot be stretched to cover completely the person who is observing that world. What is it about the “observer” that lies beyond physical description? Careful analysis suggests that it is some aspect of his rational mind.

This has led some eminent physicists to say that quantum theory is inconsistent with a materialistic view of the human mind. Eugene Wigner, a Nobel laureate in physics, stated flatly that materialism is not “logically consistent with present quantum mechanics.” Sir Rudolf Peierls, another leading twentieth–century physicist, said, on the basis of quantum theory, “The premise that you can describe in terms of physics the whole function of a human being…including its knowledge, and its consciousness, is untenable. There is still something missing.”

Admittedly, this is a highly controversial view. That is only to be expected, especially given the materialist prejudice that affects a large part of the scientific community. Moreover, the traditional interpretation of quantum theory has aspects that many find disturbing or implausible. Some even think (wrongly, in Dr. Barr’s opinion) that the role it assigns to observers leads to subjectivism or philosophical idealism. Dissatisfaction with the traditional interpretation has led to various rival interpretations and to attempts to modify quantum theory. However, these other ideas are equally controversial. The controversy over quantum theory will not be resolved any time soon, or perhaps ever. But, even if it is not, the fact will remain that there is an argument against materialism that comes from physics itself, an argument that has been advanced and defended by some leading physicists and never refuted.

The second discovery that arguably points to something nonmaterial in man is a revolutionary theorem in mathematical logic proved in 1931 by the Austrian Kurt Gödel, one of the greatest mathematicians of modern times. Gödel’s Theorem concerns the inherent limitations of what are called “formal systems.” Formal systems are essentially systems of symbolic manipulation. Since computers are basically just machines for doing such symbolic manipulations, Gödel’s Theorem has great relevance to what computers and computer programs can do.

It was recognized fairly quickly that Gödel’s Theorem might have something to say about whether the human mind is just a computer — Gödel himself was firmly convinced that it is not. Indeed, he called materialism “a prejudice of our time.” However, he never developed, at least in print, the argument against materialism based on his own theorem. That was first done by the Oxford philosopher John R. Lucas. In 1961, Lucas wrote,

“Gödel’s theorem seems to me to prove that Mechanism is false, that is, that minds cannot be explained as machines. So has it seemed to many other people: almost every mathematical logician I have put the matter to has confessed similar thoughts, but has felt reluctant to commit himself definitely until he could see the whole argument set out, with all objections fully stated and properly met. This I attempt to do.”

Both Gödel’s Theorem and Lucas’ argument are extremely subtle, but we can state the gist of them as follows. Gödel’s Theorem implies that a computer program can be outwitted by someone who understands how it is put together. Lucas observed that if a man were himself a computer program, then by knowing how his own program was put together he could outwit himself, which is a contradiction.

One may explain the Lucas argument in another way. Gödel’s Theorem also showed that it is beyond the power of any computer program that operates by logically consistent rules to tell that it is doing so. However, a human being, Lucas noted, can recognize his own consistency — at least at times — and so must be more than a mere computer.

In recent years, the eminent mathematician and mathematical physicist Sir Roger Penrose has taken up the Lucas argument, further refined it, and answered criticisms that had been leveled at it by mathematicians and philosophers. This has not quieted the criticism. However, the Gödelian argument of Lucas and Penrose, though often attacked, has never been refuted.

Where does this all leave us? After all the twists and turns of scientific history we look around and find ourselves in very familiar surroundings. We find ourselves in a universe that seems to have had a beginning. We find it governed by laws that have a grandeur and sublimity that bespeak design. We find many indications in those laws that we were built in from the beginning. We find that physical determinism is wrong. And we find that the deepest discoveries of modern physics and mathematics give hints, if not proof, that the mind of man has something about it that lies beyond the power of either physics or mathematics to describe.

Chesterton told the story of “an English yachtsman who slightly miscalculated his course and discovered England under the impression that it was an island in the South Seas.” The explorer, he said, “landed (armed to the teeth and speaking by signs) to plant the British flag on that barbaric temple which turned out to be the pavilion at Brighton.” Having braced himself to discover New South Wales, he realized, “with a gush of happy tears, that it was really old South Wales.”

Science has taken us on just such an adventure. Armed not with weapons but with telescopes and particle accelerators, and speaking by the signs and symbols of recondite mathematics, it has brought us to many strange shores and shown us alien and fantastic landscapes. But as we scan the horizon, near the end of the voyage, we have begun to recognize first one and then another of the old familiar landmarks and outlines of our ancestral home. The search for truth always leads us, in the end, back to God.

So ends Dr. Barr’s essay. I know many atheists who refuse to get beyond the notion that any scientific hypothesis rejects the supernatural outright as premise and thereby see Christianity’s role in science as pernicious. What I liked about Dr. Barr’s essay was how it supports the scientific method and rejects supernaturalism but also points out how much of current scientific thought is predicated on an intelligible universe and supports the notion of an intelligent designer or ground of being in the nature of things. While nothing can be flat out proved by the limits of the scientific approach, there is much that points to all of what the Christian senses in the fallen world about him and beyond.

Via the Official Google Research Blog at the University of Google, Alon Halevy, Peter Norvig and Fernando Pereira have published an interesting expert opinion piece in the  March/April 2009 edition of IEEE Intelligent Systems: computer.org/intelligent. The paper talks about embracing complexity and making use of the “the unreasonable effectiveness of data” [1] drawing analogies with the “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics” [2]. There is plenty to agree and disagree with in this provocative article which makes it an entertaining read. So what can we learn from those expert Googlers in the Googleplex?

Well you should go and read the paper for yourself of course, but here is a summary of personal likes and dislikes:

Agreeable opinion: yes, yes, yes!

The following opinions in the paper are agreeable:

“The first lesson of Web-scale learning is to use available large-scale data rather than hoping for annotated data that isn’t available.”

This is especially true in biomedical informatics. If I had a dollar (or a €uro) for every time somebody said to me “if only we had more annotated data”, “if only we had an a better annotated corpus” or “if only we could get better metadata” I’d be richer than Larry Page and Sergey Brin put together. Annotation of data and curation of metadata, is a slow, painful and expensive process. Often annotation just doesn’t scale because you need an army of annotators and curators to put various kinds of labels on data. So yes, hoping for annotated data can be a futile approach – we need techniques for using the data we already have. Which is where semantics comes into play,  the paper goes on to discuss semantics saying:

“The semantic web is a convention for formal representation languages that lets software services interact with each other “without needing artificial intelligence”….

…The problem of understanding human speech and writing – the semantic interpretation problem – is quite different the problem of service interoperability…

…Unfortunately the fact that the word “semantic” appears in both “Semantic Web” and “semantic interpretation” means that the two problems have often been conflated, causing needless and endless consternation and confusion”

The definition of semantic web is a bit incomplete here, because it is about more than just services, it’s about data too. But the fact that people use the word “semantic” to mean completely different things is deeply ironic and very true. The text mining community, see Semantic Enrichment of the Scientific Literature (SESL) for example,  use the word “semantic” in the sense of semantic interpretation, see Andrew Clegg’s notes on day 1 and day 2 of this conference and the David Shotton paper [3] for some examples. The database, ontology and semantic web community often use the word “semantic” in the context of deductive reasoning, which has a quite different meaning altogether. So yes, this causes endless consternation, and these two different meanings are just the beginning, there are many other meanings of the word “semantic” [4]. Which brings us neatly on to the topic of Ontological Warfare:

“In some domains, competing factions each want to promote their own ontology. This is a problem in diplomacy, not technology.”

Absolutely, most work in this area is about politics, not science or technology. So having agreed with some of what the paper say, I’m now going to disagree with a whole lot more…

Disagreeable opinion: no, no, no!

The following opinions in the paper are disagreeable, see also the reactions from Frank van Harmelen and Stefano Mazzocchi [5,6]. There are echoes of Peter Norvig vs. Tim Berners-Lee at AAAI’06 here:

“The first lesson of Web-scale learning is to use available large-scale data rather than hoping for annotated data that isn’t available.”

Well yes (see above) but, “large-scale data” isn’t always available. If you are text-mining the biomedical literature in the PubMed database for example, you are almost entirely restricted to mining the abstract summaries which are just a small fraction of the total data. This is slowly changing, thanks to PubMedCentral, but we’ve still got a long way to go before the large-scale scientific data locked up in journal articles is freely available for unrestricted mining.

Another problem with making use of available data, it implies we should just give up with annotating data completely, and stop striving for better data because it is futile and hopeless. I’d have to disagree with this, while it might be expensive, difficult and time-consuming to describe and annotate scientific data – this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t bother. A couple of groups making lots of progress with the annotation of scientific data are the SBML.org and Biomodels.net communities. The Biomodels people just had a weekend workshop which I recently attended,  Allyson Lister has blogged this extensively, see day 1 and day 2 for all the gory details. To my mind, SBML and Biomodels are an existence proof that the annotation of data (in this case metabolic models) is achievable, desirable and worth the high cost.

Back to the paper, which goes on to say:

“simple models and a lot of data trump more elaborate models based on less data.”

This is only true some of the time, but not all the time. There should be an “often” in there. “Simple models and a lot of data often trump more elaborate models…”. I can think of lots of science and technology that is based on elaborate models and small amounts of data, in fact, the elaborate model based on less data approach is how the Web came to be in the first place.

The paper moves on to talk about the “O” word (ontologies) and makes some pretty sweeping statements, claiming that:

“Ontology writing: The important and easy cases have been done…

bioformats.org defines chromosomes, species, and gene sequences…

…but there’s a long tail of rarely used concepts that are too expensive to formalize with current technology.”

Yes, some important ontologies already exist, but lots of very important cases in the biomedical and chemical domain and elsewhere remain unfinished, or even unstarted. Bioformats is inappropriate here, because it’s not exactly the leading example of a biomedical ontology, what about the Gene Ontology (GO) and other Open Biomedical Ontologies (OBO)? Finally, yes, there is a long tail of concepts that are too expensive to formalise, but I think many ontologies are nowhere near that long tail yet.

The paper concludes:

“So, follow the data. Choose a representation that can use unsupervised learning on unlabeled data, which is so much more plentiful than labeled data. Represent all the data with a nonparametric model rather than trying to summarize it with a parametric model, because with very large data sources, the data holds a lot of detail. For natural language applications, trust that human language has already evolved words for the important concepts. See how far you can go by tying together the words that are already there, rather than by inventing new concepts with clusters of words. Now go out and gather some data, and see what it can do.”

That’s easy to say if you’re Google Inc. It’s not so easy for scientists generally. Some of Google’s data comes from (quote) “user queries in search logs”: following patterns in what people type into google and which results they click on. This is data most scientists just don’t have, and as I mentioned earlier, a lot of other important data is not yet freely available, locked away behind publishers paywalls.

So, not every problem can be easily solved by unsupervised learning on unlabeled data. While it is clearly a very powerful and lucrative solution for Google,  it is not always so effective for Science generally, some have called it “Bad Science” [7]. Still, Bad Science can be entertaining sometimes, (good journal club fodder) so go and enjoy the paper.

[More commentary on this post over at friendfeed.]

References

1. Alon Halevy, Peter Norvig and Fernando Pereira (2009) The unreasonable effectiveness of data IEEE Intelligent Systems, Vol. 24, No. 2. (2009), pp. 8-12. DOI:10.1109/MIS.2009.36
2. Eugene Wigner (1960) The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 1-14. DOI:10.1002/cpa.3160130102
3. David Shotton, Katie Portwin, Graham Klyne, Alistair Miles (2009) Adventures in Semantic Publishing: Exemplar Semantic Enhancements of a Research Article PLoS Computational Biology, Vol. 5, No. 4, e1000361. DOI:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000361
4. Michael Uschold (2003) Where are the semantics in the semantic web? Artificial Intelligence Magazine, Vol. 24, No. 3., pp. 25-36.
5. Frank van Harmelen (2009) The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Fake Controversies LarKC Weblog
6. Stefano Mazzocchi (2009) Unreasonable Hypocrisy Stefano’s Linotype blog
7. Adam Kilgarriff (2007) Googleology is Bad Science Computational Linguistics, Vol. 33, No. 1, pp. 147-151. DOI:10.1162/coli.2007.33.1.147
8. Massimo Pigliucci (2009). The end of theory in science? EMBO reports, 10 (6), 534-534 DOI: 10.1038/embor.2009.111

The enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious, and … there is no rational explanation for it. …  The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve.

—

- Eugene Wigner, “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences,”  Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics, 1960.

Richard Rhodes' outstanding work provides valuable context for Hillary Clinton's recent joke.

I wrote last week about President Obama’s efforts to “reset” the United States’ relationship with Russian, its former adversary while in its incarnation as the Soviet Union.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton followed up on the metaphor, handing her counterpart, the witty Sergei Lavrov, a fake “reset” button during a meeting next week.

Good humor aside, relations between the former Soviet Union and the United States went through very tense periods during the Cold War, none more so than during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

At stake: the possible destruction of the world by nuclear weapons. 

While some saw Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s decision to turn his ships around and avert a possible nuclear confrontation as a clear victory for then-President John F. Kennedy, others later said that Khrushchev’s willingness to turn away from the brink may have averted a nuclear catastrophe of apocalytpic proportions.

The number of nuclear weapons at the leaders’ disposal had grown exponentially since the dropping of bombs Fat Man and Little Boy on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, 1945.

The bombs not only ushered in a new age of unprecedented destruction, but marked the culmination of a furious design effort headed by the brilliant J. Robert Oppenheimer. Richard Rhodes’ The Making of the Atomic Bomb is an authoritative account of the physics, physicists, geopolitics and consequences of making the bomb that caused Oppenheimer to quote Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita and say, “Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

Rhodes’ book richly deserved the Pulitzer Prize it received upon its publication in 1986. 

He weaves three major and interrelated narrative strands together seamlessly in this massive work: the evolution of atomic physics; the physicists’ gradual awareness of nuclear power’s destructive capacity; and the changing political and historical context in which they eventually saw the bomb as a necessary tool for survival to defeat the Axis Powers.

Any one of these topics are sufficient enough to fill a library.  Rhodes’ skill is that he shows the connections between the areas.  I have comparatively little education in and understanding of physics, but found myself able to understand Rhodes’ explanation of the syncretic contributions of luminaries like Albert Einstein, Eugene Wigner and Niels Bohr.  Rhodes similarly does a fine job of bringing these individuals, their passions, their competition and their belief, especially on Bohr’s part, on the value of an open society in which rank does not matter and the best ideas are implemented.

Rhodes also effectively shows the rise of Hitler’s fascist government in Germany, his hasty dismantling of the fragile and fledgling Weimar Republic and his relentless move to war.  In one of the book’s many ironies, Rhodes shows how Hitler’s antisemitism led to the forced departure of many of the people who worked tirelessly to defeat him by creating the atomic bomb.

Rhodes also depicts the physicists’ desire to finish the job and, in most cases, remorse after the bombs had been dropped in Japan, and, instead of leading to the permanent end of conflict between nations, only ushered in the most lethal and potentially destructive era yet.  Oppenheimer spoke publicly about the physicists’ knowing sin, and he was far from alone in the sense of distress at the cause to which he had contributed and dedicated many years and his most concentrated energy and attention.

In short, The Making of the Atomic Bomb is an outstanding book that I can easily picture making my list of Top 10 books for 2009.  People interested in understanding the meaning behind Clinton’s reset gesture would be well served to read Rhodes’ magisterial account of a time and place before nuclear weapons existed.

Schrödinger selbst verstand die Sache als Witz. Als er sein Gedankenexperiment vorschlug, bezeichnete er es als „burleske” Konstruktion, mit der er einen Mangel am damaligen Verständnis von Quantenphysik aufzeigen wollte. Aber noch heute wird Schrödingers Katze diskutiert, mystifiziert und in allen abwegigen Aspekten als für unser Weltbild relevant verstanden. Zeit, einen etwas nüchterneren Blick auf den meistdiskutierten Katzencontent des letzten Jahrhunderts zu werfen.

Wie hier schon besprochen wurde, verhält sich die Welt auf der subatomaren Ebene eher verwirrend: Elektronen durchfliegen zwei Spalte gleichzeitig oder befinden sich gleichzeitig in zwei verschiedenen Atomorbitalen; mithin alles Dinge, für die uns in naiver Weltsicht die Anschauung fehlt. Mathematisch lässt sich das Verhalten derweil exakt und problemlos beschreiben, zum Beispiel unter Zuhilfenahme einer Wellenfunktion, die den Aufenthaltsort des Teilchens beschreibt. Der tatsächliche Zustand oder Ort des Teilchens ist dann gegeben durch die Überlagerung aller möglichen Wellenfunktionen: wir sehen Überlagerungsmuster hinter einem Doppelspalt, wir messen durch die Überlagerung entstehende Schwebungen im Fall der Atomorbitale. Dabei finden wir für das einzelne Teilchen durchaus in der Messung (etwa auf dem Schirm hinter dem Doppelspalt) einen einzelnen Aufenthaltsort für jedes einzelne Teilchen, nur solange wir nicht messen, scheint er allein durch die Ausbreitung der Wellenfunktion gegeben; darum korrelieren die Auftreffpunkte hinter dem Doppelspalt eben auch mit den Werten, die die Wellenfunktion an den Punkten einnimmt.

Das rauszufinden und exakt zu beschreiben war für die Quantenphysiker des letzten Jahrhunderts (vor PISA-Schock und Frauen an den Instituten) noch nicht wirklich Raketenwissenschaft. Man konnte die nötigen Beschreibungen ableiten und experimentell mal um mal bestätigen. So hat man dann eine Weltbeschreibung, in der auf subatomarer Ebene die Teilchenzustände als Überlagerung ihrer möglichen Wellenfunktionen gegeben sind, bis sie eben gemessen werden: dann “kollabiert” die Wellenfunktion und wir befinden uns in unserer gewohnten Alltagswelt wieder.

Es gibt dabei nur ein Problem: wie und wann kollabiert denn die Wellenfunktion? Wenn wir uns darauf beschränken, dies gerade dem Experimentator und seiner Messung zuzuschreiben und wir vor der Messung nur Quantenwelt und Wellenüberlagerung annehmen, kommen wir schnell in an sich absurde Situationen. Und eben darauf wollte Erwin Schrödinger mit seinem Gedankenspiel hinweisen:

Man nehme eine Katze und setze sie in eine Kiste. An die Kiste angeschlossen ist ein Mechanismus, der die Katze töten kann (und wird), wenn er ausgelöst wird — Auslöser ist aber zum Beispiel der Zerfall eines radioaktiven Atoms. Wann das radioaktive Atom zerfällt, ist rein zufällig, aber wir können den Zustand des Atoms beschreiben durch die Überlagerung der Wellenfunktion „nicht zerfallen” mit der Wellenfunktion „zerfallen” und erhalten als Ergebnis eben eine Gesamtwellenfunktion des Systems. Leider bringt das unsere Katze in eine etwas prekäre Situation. Die Wellenfunktion setzt sich fort durch den kausal dahintergeschalteten Auslöser des Mechanismus, der sich nun ebenfalls in einer Überlagerung von „ausgelöst” und „nicht ausgelöst” befinden sollte, und damit eben weiter in die Box und in die Katze: diese liegt nun offensichtlich ihrerseits in einer Überlagerung der Zustände „Katze” und „Ex-Katze” vor. Und zwar ganz buchstäblich, nicht nur in einer Form ausgeprägten Ennuis des frühen Zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts. Und dieser Überlagerungszustand ändert sich erst, wenn wir die Kiste aufmachen und nachsehen.

Das alles scheint ein Mysterium, vielleicht nicht zwangsläufig, aber oft genug wird es dazu gemacht. Warum man oft auf dieser Ebene stehen bleibt, ist eine interessante Frage. Zum einen kommt es unserem menschlichen Egozentrismus und unserer alles beherrschenden Ich-Perspektive natürlich blendend entgegen: erst unsere Wahrnehmung entscheidet über die Realität. Das ist in vielen Dingen sowieso unser Welterleben. Philosophisch passt es zudem wunderbar in die Erzählungen der idealistischen Tradition: wenn im leeren Wald ein Baum umfällt, ist er dann überhaupt umgefallen? Wer wollte es Physikern vorwerfen, dass sie ins Philosophieren kommen, wenn sie sich doch einmal aus ihrer nüchternen Wissenschaft in die vorgebliche Hochsphäre der Philosophie geworfen finden. Dass sich die Geschichten über die vermeintlich gleichzeitig tote wie lebendige Katze immer noch so verbreiten, dürfte aber auch nicht zuletzt an Physikstudenten selbst liegen: zum einen die selten gewaschenen Live-Rollenspieler mit Zombiefilm-Vorlieben, die das alles ganz spannend finden; zum anderen die sozial arg gehandicapten Nerds, die jenseits der Arbeit wenig kennen und überm Bier auch mal eine coole Geschichte erzählen, vielleicht sogar ein Frau beeindrucken wollen, um sie ihrerseits mal in die Kiste zu bekommen. So verbreiten sich dann Gerüchte. Man möchte sie alle in Kisten sperren und… dann in den Kisten lassen.

All das geht an Schrödingers Kernfrage vorbei: wie und wann entsteht aus der Quantenwelt der Wellenfunktionen und Überlagerungen unsere eigentliche Welt, in der wir uns täglich bewegen und nie auf Dinge stoßen, die gleichzeitig tot und lebendig sind? Vor der Beantwortung der Frage lohnt es sich aber, die populären Missverständnisse über Schrödingers Katze durchzugehen und zu sehen, wo sie irren.

Erstes Missverständnis: Die Wellenfunktion kollabiert, wenn wir die Kiste öffnen; dann stellen wir fest, ob die Katze die ganze Zeit tot oder lebendig war — So funktioniert Quantenphysik eben gerade nicht. Wenn tatsächlich ein Überlagerungs- oder Wellenfunktionszustand vorliegt, dann wird der nicht nachträglich dadurch negiert, dass die Wellenfunktion irgendwann kollabiert. Im Doppelspaltexperiment kollabiert die Wellenfunktion des Elektrons eben am Schirm — aber das Teilchen war dennoch auf seinem Weg als Welle unterwegs, nicht als Teilchen, wie uns die Auftreffpunkte eindeutig beweisen. Wir können so experimentell unterscheiden, ob ein Objekt sich klassisch fortbewegt oder quantenmechanisch. Sollten wir Schrödingers Katzenexperiment tatsächlich durchführen und könnten wir an der dann lebenden oder toten Katze keinen Unterschied sehen zu einer klassisch überlebenden oder gestorbenen Katze, dann ist das ein guter Hinweis darauf, dass die Katze nie in einer relevanten Überlagerung von Zuständen war. Andersherum: beim Öffnen der Kiste mag die Wellenfunktion der Katze kollabieren, das ändert aber nichts daran, dass sie sich gegebenenfalls die ganze Zeit in einer Überlagerung von Wellenzuständen befunden hat. Wir finden also nicht die tote oder lebende Katze, sondern vielleicht eher etwas, was wir bisher nur in Die Fliege gesehen haben. Wenn denn.

Zweites Missverständnis: Unser Bewusstsein oder unser Wahrnehmen bringt die Wellenfunktion zum Kollabieren, darum müssen wir die Box öffnen — Dass das so nicht stimmt, dass es zumindest nicht aus der Physik folgt, habe ich in dem vorangegangenen Quantenphysik-Beitrag schon darzustellen versucht. Naiv stellt sich da sowieso die Frage, warum das vergleichsweise direktere Wahrnehmen der Katze dazu nicht ausreichen sollte. Tatsächlich wurde dieser Lösung aber vorgeschlagen, etwa vom Nobelpreisträger Eugene Wigner, der darin eine Bestätigung des ontologischen Dualismus sah: die Wellenfunktion kann sich durch den mechanistischen Auslöser ziehen, in unserer bewussten Wahrnehmung sind uns solche Zustände aber unbekannt. Ergo: das Bewusstsein ist nicht mechanistisch oder materiell und konstituiert im Vorgang des Bewusstmachens erst die ansonsten unbestimmte Realität. Beide Behauptungen sind aber anzuzweifeln: zieht sich die Wellenfunktion tatsächlich durch den Auslöser? Woher wissen wir, dass sich nicht auch durch unser Bewusstsein Wellenüberlagerungen ziehen, wenn wir es nicht anders kennen? Welche physischen Objekte haben überhaupt Bewusstsein: nur der Mensch, eine Katze oder auch eine bewusstlose Katze? Bestenfalls kommt man so mit viel Mühe zu einem Weltbild, dessen einzige Qualität die Ununterscheidbarkeit zu einem nicht-idealistischen Weltbild objektiver Realität ist. Schlimmstenfalls kann man das dann aber auch wieder weitertreiben, um am Ende zum eh nicht widerlegbaren Solipsismus zu gelangen: alles ist Wellenüberlagerung, und nur mein Gehirn konstituiert für mich allein daraus die Welt.

Drittes Missverständnis: Das Öffnen der Box ist die Messung, die zum Kollaps der Wellenfunktion führt — Das ist eng verwandt mit dem vorherigen Punkt, wird aber oft nicht so verstanden. Wie im Doppelspalt-Experiment die rein mechanistische Messung des Elektronenweges schon die Wellenfunktion kollabieren lässt, nicht die Aufmerksamkeit des Doktoranden am Detektor, so werden auch hier schon Messungen veranstaltet, bevor irgendeine Katze zu schaden kommen kann. Der Zerfall des radioaktiven Atoms muss ja irgendwie registriert werden, damit er den Mechanismus auslösen kann. Das mag etwa durch einen Geiger-Zähler geschehen. In dem Punkt geht das vom Atom abgestrahlte Photon aber eine Wechselwirkung ein, ähnlich wie es das auf dem Schirm hinter einem Doppelspalt tun würde. Wenn wir davon ausgehen, dass die Wellenfunktion an dem Punkt im Doppelspaltexperiment zusammenbricht, dann wird sie das auch bei Schrödingers Katze tun. Insbesondere treten danach, in dem eigentlichen Tötungsmechanismus eine Vielzahl anderer Wechselwirkungen auf, die sich schließlich dazu aufsummieren müssen, dass wir am Ende eine tote Katze haben. All das sind Wechselwirkungen, die potenziell das Kollabieren der Wellenfunktion nach sich ziehen — davon „erholt” sich die Wellenfunktion auch nicht mehr, weil sie jetzt auf eine Kausalkette „Atom ist zerfallen” festgelegt ist. Dem Idealisten oder Zweifler bleibt da nur der Weg, auch im Doppelspaltexperiment zu fordern, dass sich der Schirm erst füllt, wenn jemand einen Blick darauf wirft; aber der knallharte Idealist oder Postmodernist glaubt da vermutlich eh nicht, dass es überhaupt einen Schirm oder ein Experiment gibt, solange er das alles nicht wahrnimmt.

Damit nähert man sich der Beantwortung der Frage, die Schrödinger eigentlich umtrieb. Es scheinen die Wechselwirkungen mit der Umgebung zu sein, die dafür sorgen, dass Wellenfunktionen sich nicht ewig ausbreiten und komplexere Systeme keine Anzeichen dafür erkennen lassen, dass sie in überlagerten Quantenzuständen vorliegen können. Tatsächlich ist dieser Grenzbereich zwischen Quanten- und klassischer Welt derzeit unter genauer Beobachtung; nicht, weil Wissenschaftler plötzlich ihre Vorliebe für Katzen entdeckt hätten, sondern weil alles, was irgendwie mit Quantencomputern zusammenhängt, sich gerade gut auf Förderanträgen macht derzeit von großem Interesse ist. Hier konnten Physiker der Uni Frankfurt im letzten Jahr das Doppelspalt-Experiment so nachstellen, dass sie (ganz ohne „Beobachtung”) die Wellenfunktion eines Elektrons dadurch zum Kollabieren und die Überlagerungsmuster am Schirm dadurch zum Verschwinden brachten, dass sie dieses Elektron eine einzige Wechselwirkung mit einem einzelnen anderen Elektron vollführen ließen. Daneben gibt es immer noch exotischere Theorien wie die von Roger Penrose [1], dass selbst ein ansonsten ungestörtes System schließlich seine Wellennatur verliert, nämlich durch den Einfluss der Gravitation auf das System. Und die Viele-Welten-Interpretation hat sowieso kein Problem mit all dem und kann sich von außen gelassen anschauen, was wir über die Welt hier herausfinden.

Was immer das auch sein mag und was immer sich auch in geschlossen Boxen so abspielen mag: die Frage, ob Schrödingers Katze wirklich in einer Überlagerung von lebendigem und totem Zustand dahinvegetiert, bis jemand die Kiste öffnet, ist wissenschaftlich und philosophisch etwa so relevant wie die bierinduzierten Überlegungen des Fußballfans, der sich vor der Sportschau fragt: wenn ich die Ergebnisse nicht kenne, hat meine Mannschaft dann überhaupt schon gewonnen oder verloren?

Aber auch um solche Fragen sind ja ganze Institute herumgebaut worden.

[1] Zusatzzitat daraus an die Adresse aller Pseudowissenschaftler, Metaphysiker und Empirieverächter:

If something is wrong with a theory, or there is some experimental anomaly, those are motivations for changing a theory. When your motivation comes from a metaphysical reluctance for reality to be a certain way, then historically that kind of motivation has never produced the right answers.

Nachtrag: Wer alle beiden hier versteckten Cheeseburger-Referenzen auf Anhieb finden und benennen kann… sollte dringend öfter rausgehen.