In 1927, astronomer George Lemaître published a paper which pointed out that, when applied to the universe as a whole, Einstein’s General Relativistic field equations have no static solutions: either the universe is expanding or else it is collapsing (Lemaître 1927). Einstein himself found this conclusion unsatisfactory, so he modified his equations to include a term – the ‘cosmological constant’ – that would counter-balance any potential expansion or contraction, thereby producing a model of a fixed universe with no beginning or end (Einstein 1931). In 1929, the astronomer Edwin Hubble presented observations confirming that the universe is indeed expanding (Hubble 1929), as predicted by the original equations of General Relativity, leading Einstein to eventually call the cosmological constant his 'biggest blunder.' Had Einstein, instead, trusted and followed his equations, he could have been the first to predict the expansion of the universe and, by running things backward, the Big Bang itself. (Note: currently, the effect of dark matter on the universe is thought, by some, to be well accounted for by the reintroduction of the cosmological constant, though not to counter-balance expansion but to accelerate it; so the expansionary implications of General Relativity would still have been rightly predicted by Einstein had he stuck to his equations).
Einstein also resisted another implication of his theory: that a sufficiently massive body would collapse to a point of infinite density creating a bottomless well in spacetime from which nothing could escape, now commonly known as a black hole. Einstein disliked the idea, which represented a discontinuity in the fabric of spacetime, so he worked to discover some mechanism that would de facto prevent matter from collapsing to such a point:
The “Schwarzschild singularity” [i.e. black hole] does not appear for the reason that matter cannot be concentrated arbitrarily. And this is due to the fact that otherwise the constituting particles would reach the velocity of light. (Einstein 1939, p. 936)
In other words, a black hole is impossible because it would require matter to violate an ironclad implication of Special Relativity: nothing can accelerate to the speed of light. This, however, turns out to be untrue (i.e. it does not require such acceleration), and today black holes are regularly detected by astronomers. Once again, Einstein would have been well advised to have trusted his equations.
A similar conflict between mathematics and physical intuition befalls anyone who attempts to understand quantum mechanics, which entails that physical systems are regularly in a state of superposition. Superposition is almost impossible to interpret physically because it represents a system as being distributed between discrete states; e.g. a particle is both in position p1 and position p2. All the same, superposition is mathematically straightforward and can be used to make extremely precise predictions. As it turns out, quantum mechanics is generally regarded as the most predictively successful theory of all time (Lewis 2016). Accordingly, if we follow the math, even without understanding its physical significance, then we can predict which states of a physical system will be observed and when.
These cases are illustrative. When even a great thinker’s philosophical or commonsensical beliefs conflict with counterintuitive laws of nature (mathematically described), the latter often emerge victorious and have done so on historically significant occasions. There is no reason to doubt that Einstein’s commitments to both a steady-state and continuous universe were sincere and grounded in serious reflection. Still, he was wrong; here are examples in which the greatest scientist in human history, reflecting on his own greatest achievement, was led astray by his philosophical commitments about the nature of reality as a whole. All of this is a bit surprising. After all, it was Einstein who, correctly, insisted that we reject what experience tells us about the nature of space, time, and motion in favour of his Relativistic equations.
In classical phenomenology, stemming from Husserl, ‘lived experience’ is experience as one finds it. Attending to lived experience, then, is paying attention to one’s experiences as they are, without the influence of interpretation or theory. But, of course, it is everyone’s lived experience that time and space are absolute (the same for everyone everywhere), immutable (unaffected by matter or events), and distinct (one can move back and forth in space but not time). Nevertheless, Einstein's theories entail that space and time vary by frame of reference, are altered by matter and gravity, and are mathematically connected components of a four-dimensional whole. Einstein’s conclusions have been empirically confirmed. For example, if one were to construct a GPS system without employing his equations, one would be left with unusable devices – one needs to account for the ways in which space and time vary with speed and gravity in order to pinpoint a precise location on a map using trilateration from known satellite positions. Importantly, this does not change the experience of space and time. Spacetime impacts us psychologically just as it did prior to Einstein, seeming to split into two distinct, unchanging, and universal measures. All the same, we now know this experience to be a poor guide to the nature of space and time themselves.
If one takes a look up at the darkened sky, night after night, what one sees is effectively unchanged; there is certainly no experience of space itself expanding. But experience is a poor guide here; space is not only expanding in all directions but is accelerating outward, as noted above. Even Einstein was misled.
In a post-Darwinian world, it should not surprise us that there might exist some conflict between common sense, philosophical commitments, or lived experience, on the one hand, and the laws of nature, on the other. We now know that human beings are the products of nature: we have evolved through a process of variation, selection, and inheritance that favours traits that contribute to the production of offspring that survive to reproductive maturity. This is how we came to be what we are. It is entirely possible, accordingly, that certain cognitive shortcuts have been favored by evolution because they help, or at least fail to hinder, reproductive success by conferring advantages, such as energy efficiency or simplicity, if not accuracy. These shortcuts could, for example, lead us to find it instinctive to view the world a certain way – there is an evolutionary advantage, or lack of harm, in doing so – even though this way of seeing things obscures certain details, or applies in only local or special cases. We should not, in other words, presume that natural cognitive strategies will be fully generalizable because they developed as solutions to local problems.
What is surprising is that we are, somehow, able to learn some fully generalizable laws. We could very well have evolved without any capacity to know the large-scale features of reality, just as other creatures – fish, bears, beetles – have in fact done. We somehow managed the trick, however, and we can be confident in this because of the surprising predictive successes of theories such as Einstein’s General Relativity and quantum mechanics. We would have little reason to suppose that human reason could extend beyond the local conditions under which it evolved were it not for cases such as these where mathematical formalism, often not easily interpreted, leads to surprising predictions that are confirmed, repeatedly and to high degrees of precision. Somehow, the mind is able to construct models that apply everywhere and every-when, even though the brain itself evolved under spatiotemporally limited pressures. While we don’t know how this happened, we can hazard some guesses. For example, whichever features of the universe are truly universal will thereby hold in any local conditions under which human beings faced evolutionary challenges and may leave their mark there. Hence, a sufficiently sophisticated cognitive organ, forged by evolutionary forces in a local environment, could pick up the scent of the universal; human brains might have evolved a mechanism for detecting subtle but available imprints of large-scale structure that, when combined with the ability to generalize and extrapolate, allow us to posit universal laws that can be tested observationally. We currently do not know the actual story, but something like this is clearly possible, for we regularly predict with success, at least in the natural sciences.
All the same, that our evolved heuristics might have built-in blind spots with regard to the large-scale structure of reality is not surprising; perhaps it is to be expected. We should not, however, lose sight of the fact that such blind spots might equally well exist with regard to the inner world of thought and experience. The brain, like other evolved organs, has its limits, and our knowledge of any part of the world is dependent on its scope, power, and resolution. There is little reason to suppose that the scope is limitless, the power infinite, the resolution perfect. Much as the eye is not naturally able to see itself, or the tongue to taste itself, it may be that the brain is not well-evolved to know itself. Various aspects of the inner workings of our own cognitive system may, in other words, be as hidden or counterintuitive as the outer workings of spacetime; the brain is, after all, a natural system too. What is delivered to the mind by reflection on our own cognition and experiences may mislead, just as happened to Einstein when he reflected on his experience of the universe as a whole. The brain, being a physical system, may have structural features that escape what the it itself evolved to deliver to reflection, which historically needed to be focused on what is most essential for survival and reproduction. It may, of course, be possible to overcome some cognitive limitations by pooling resources (linking brains together), inventing new instruments of investigation (MRIs), and the careful use of experiment, observation, and analysis; we can, by comparison, use tools such as mirrors to allow they eye to see itself. But there is no particularly good reason to suppose that the immediate, unreflective impressions delivered by a mind about itself should have some unrevisable character, especially when up against well confirmed scientific models. Perhaps thinking about thinking is infallible; perhaps the experience of experience is incorrigible; but, then again, perhaps not. Maybe, when reflecting on itself, the mind relies on evolved heuristics that are subject to biases similar to those that impact the reflection on our experience of space, time, and motion. Without evidence for the infallibility or incorrigibility of the cognitive organ's operations on itself there is no way to know that lived experience is reliably informative, even about experience.
If this weren’t true, i.e. if our minds were completely and invariably self-transparent, then there would hardly be any need for the various disciplines – psychology, psychiatry, social work, etc. – that constitute modern psychotherapy. We know, however, that many, if not all, of us sometimes require the assistance of a trained outsider to truly understand what is going on within. Even if some aspects of self-reflection are infallible, it is clear from the legitimate need for psychotherapeutic professionals that not all of it is. The deeply held deliverances of reflection on inner experience are not guaranteed to be correct. Lived experience may very well matter, and deserve to be attended to, but it hardly amounts to a trump card against amassed scientific evidence.
There is more to say, of course, but I will come back to further issues in another post.
References
Einstein, A.: 1931, ‘Zum kosmologischen Problem der allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie’,
Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Physikalisch-mathematische Klasse, pp. 235–237
Einstein, A.: 1939, ‘On a Stationary System With Spherical Symmetry Consisting of Many Gravitating Masses’, Annals of Mathematics, Second Series, 40: pp. 922-936
Hubble, E.: 1929, ‘A Relation between Distance and Radial Velocity among Extra-Galactic Nebulae’. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 15: pp. 168-73
Lemaître, G.: 1927, Discussion sur l'évolution de l'univers
Lewis, P. J.: 2016, Quantum Ontology: A Guide to the Metaphysics of Quantum Mechanics, Oxford University Press.
