0:00:18.860,0:00:24.261 The science delusion is the belief that science already understands the nature of reality in principle 0:00:24.537,0:00:27.002 leaving only the details to be filled in. 0:00:27.248,0:00:30.303 This is a very wide spread belief in our society. 0:00:31.163,0:00:33.531 It's the kind of belief system of people who say 0:00:33.654,0:00:36.261 I don't believe in God, I believe in science. 0:00:36.476,0:00:41.022 It is a belief system which has now been spread to the entire world. 0:00:43.621,0:00:47.948 But there's a conflict in the heart of science between science as a method of inquiry 0:00:47.963,0:00:53.183 based on reason, evidence, hypothesis, and collective investigation 0:00:53.890,0:00:57.205 and science as a belief system or a world view. 0:00:57.853,0:01:03.552 And unfortunately the world view aspect of science has come to inhibit and constrict 0:01:03.552,0:01:07.889 the free inquiry which is the very lifeblood of the scientific endeavor. 0:01:09.503,0:01:13.983 Since the late 19th century, science has been conducted 0:01:13.983,0:01:17.382 under the aspect of a belief system or world view 0:01:17.382,0:01:22.468 which is essentially that of materialism. Philosophical materialism. 0:01:22.591,0:01:28.287 And the sciences are now wholly-owned subsidiaries of the materialist world view. 0:01:29.942,0:01:34.692 I think that, as we break out of it, the sciences will be regenerated. 0:01:36.075,0:01:41.544 What I do in my book 'The Science Delusion' - which is called 'Science Set Free' in the United States - 0:01:42.835,0:01:49.819 is: take the ten dogmas or assumptions of science and turn them into questions, 0:01:50.065,0:01:54.955 seeing how well they stand up if you look at them scientifically. 0:01:56.545,0:01:58.701 None of them stand up very well. 0:01:59.148,0:02:03.582 What I am going to do is first run through what these ten dogmas are, 0:02:03.582,0:02:08.381 and then I will only have time to discuss one or two of them in a bit more detail. 0:02:08.580,0:02:12.732 But essentially the ten dogmas which are the default world view 0:02:12.840,0:02:16.335 of most educated people all over the world are, 0:02:16.335,0:02:21.262 first that nature is mechanical or machine like, the universe is like a machine, 0:02:21.262,0:02:25.008 animals and plants are like machines, we are like machines. 0:02:25.069,0:02:26.835 In fact, we are machines. 0:02:26.944,0:02:30.774 We are "lumbering robots" in Richard Dawkins' vivid phrase, 0:02:31.244,0:02:34.428 with brains that are genetically programed computers. 0:02:35.704,0:02:40.725 Second, matter is unconscious, the whole universe is made up of unconscious matter. 0:02:42.293,0:02:47.522 There is no consciousness in stars, in galaxies, in planets, in animals, in plants, 0:02:47.522,0:02:51.622 and there ought not to be any in us either, if this theory is true. 0:02:51.775,0:02:55.623 So a lot of the philosophy of mind over the last hundred years 0:02:55.623,0:02:59.622 has been trying to prove that we are not really conscious at all. 0:03:00.361,0:03:07.637 So the matter is unconscious, then the laws of nature are fixed. This is the dogma three. 0:03:07.822,0:03:12.272 The laws of nature are the same now as they were at the time of the Big Bang 0:03:12.272,0:03:13.901 and they will be the same forever. 0:03:14.255,0:03:19.161 Not just the laws but the constants of nature are fixed which is why they are called constants. 0:03:19.792,0:03:24.687 Dogma four: the total amount of matter and energy is always the same. 0:03:25.132,0:03:30.663 It never changes in total quantity except at the moment of the Big Bang when it all sprang 0:03:30.663,0:03:33.752 into existence from nowhere in a single instant. 0:03:35.422,0:03:40.422 The fifth dogma is that nature is purposeless, there is no purposes in all nature 0:03:40.422,0:03:45.682 and the evolutionary process has no purpose or direction. 0:03:46.837,0:03:54.475 Dogma six: the biological heredity is material, everything you inherit is in your genes 0:03:54.475,0:04:01.696 or in epigenetic modifications of the genes, or in cytoplasmic inheritance. It is material. 0:04:02.880,0:04:07.602 Dogma seven: memories are stored inside your brain as material traces. 0:04:08.232,0:04:13.433 Somehow everything you remember is in your brain in modified nerve endings phosphorylated proteins. 0:04:13.586,0:04:15.757 No one knows how it works, 0:04:15.757,0:04:20.442 but nevertheless almost everyone in the scientific world believes it must be in the brain. 0:04:22.058,0:04:24.786 Dogma eight: your mind is inside your head. 0:04:24.955,0:04:29.323 All your consciousness is the activity of your brain and nothing more. 0:04:29.845,0:04:36.821 Dogma nine, which follows from dogma eight: psychic phenomena like telepathy are impossible. 0:04:36.821,0:04:40.366 Your thoughts and intentions can not have any effect at a distance 0:04:40.366,0:04:42.451 because your mind is inside your head. 0:04:42.589,0:04:47.997 Therefore all the apparent evidence for telepathy and other psychic phenomena is illusory. 0:04:48.690,0:04:53.407 People believe these things happen but it is just because they don't know enough about statistics, 0:04:53.407,0:04:58.307 or they are deceived by coincidences or it is wishful thinking. 0:04:59.799,0:05:03.511 And dogma ten: mechanistic medicine is the only kind that really works. 0:05:03.511,0:05:08.791 That is why governments only fund research into mechanistic medicine 0:05:08.791,0:05:12.036 and ignore complementary and alternative therapies. 0:05:12.252,0:05:15.929 Those can't possibly really work because they are not mechanistic, 0:05:15.929,0:05:22.179 they may appear to work because people would have got better anyway or because of the placebo effect. 0:05:22.179,0:05:27.383 But the only kind that really works is mechanistic medicine. 0:05:27.675,0:05:33.762 Well, this is the default world view which is held by almost all educated people all over the world, 0:05:33.762,0:05:40.891 it is the basis of the educational system, the national health service, the Medical Research Council, 0:05:40.891,0:05:47.571 governments, and it is just the default world view of educated people. 0:05:49.002,0:05:53.330 But I think every one of these dogmas is very, very questionable 0:05:53.330,0:05:57.547 and when you look at it, it turns they fall apart. 0:05:59.316,0:06:03.265 I am going to take first the idea that the laws of nature are fixed. 0:06:03.774,0:06:09.102 This is a hangover from an older world view before the 1960's when the Big Bang theory came in. 0:06:09.102,0:06:14.983 People thought that the whole universe was eternal, governed by eternal mathematical laws. 0:06:16.675,0:06:20.088 When the Big Bang came in, then that assumption continued, 0:06:20.088,0:06:26.649 even though the Big Bang revealed a universe that is radically evolutionary about 14 billion years old. 0:06:26.649,0:06:31.287 Growing, and developing, and evolving for 14 billion years. 0:06:31.287,0:06:35.248 Growing and cooling and more structures and patterns appear within it. 0:06:35.771,0:06:40.512 But the idea is, all the laws of nature were completely fixed at the moment of the Big Bang, 0:06:40.682,0:06:42.705 like a cosmic Napoleonic Code. 0:06:43.797,0:06:45.933 As my friend Terence McKenna used to say, 0:06:46.717,0:06:51.704 “Modern science is based on the principle: give us one free miracle and we’ll explain the rest." 0:06:51.894,0:06:55.913 And the one free miracle is the appearance of all the matter and energy in the universe 0:06:56.054,0:06:59.363 and all the laws that govern it from nothing in a single instant. 0:07:01.931,0:07:06.639 Well, in an evolutionary universe, why shouldn't the laws themselves evolve? 0:07:07.122,0:07:13.942 After all human laws do, and the idea of the laws of the nature is based on a metaphor with human law. 0:07:14.049,0:07:19.720 It is a very anthropocentric metaphor: only humans have laws, in fact only civilized societies have laws. 0:07:20.166,0:07:22.555 As C. S. Lewis once said, 0:07:22.570,0:07:28.184 "To say that a stone falls to earth because it is obeying a law makes it a man and even a citizen." 0:07:29.294,0:07:33.179 It is a metaphor that we got so used to, we forget it is a metaphor. 0:07:33.795,0:07:37.725 In an evolving universe I think a much better idea is the idea of habits. 0:07:38.464,0:07:43.133 I think the habits of nature evolve, the regularities of nature are essentially habitual. 0:07:45.148,0:07:48.683 This was an idea put forward at the beginning of the 20th century 0:07:48.683,0:07:51.116 by the American philosopher C. S. Peirce. 0:07:52.362,0:07:55.334 And it is an idea which various other philosophers have entertained, 0:07:55.334,0:08:00.123 it is one which I myself have developed into a scientific hypothesis, 0:08:00.200,0:08:02.892 the hypothesis of morphic resonance 0:08:02.892,0:08:06.368 which is the basis of these evolving habits. 0:08:06.568,0:08:10.825 According to this hypothesis, everything in nature has a kind of collective memory. 0:08:11.917,0:08:14.184 Resonance occurs on the basis of similarity. 0:08:14.921,0:08:19.318 As a young giraffe embryo grows in its mother's womb, 0:08:19.318,0:08:24.255 it tunes in to the morphic resonance of previous giraffes, 0:08:24.255,0:08:28.005 it draws on that collective memory, it grows like a giraffe, 0:08:28.005,0:08:31.686 it behaves like a giraffe because it is drawing on this collective memory. 0:08:31.686,0:08:37.091 It has to have the right genes to make the right proteins, but genes in my view are grossly overrated. 0:08:37.429,0:08:43.663 They only account for the proteins that the organism can make, not the shape, or form, or the behavior. 0:08:45.048,0:08:49.289 Every species has a kind of collective memory. Even crystals do. 0:08:49.289,0:08:53.732 This theory predicts that if you make a new kind of crystal for the first time, 0:08:54.608,0:08:59.653 the very first time you make it, it won't have an existing habit. 0:08:59.653,0:09:04.872 But once it crystallizes, then the next time you make it there will be an influence from the first crystals 0:09:04.872,0:09:10.538 to the second ones all over the world, by morphic resonance it will crystallize a bit easier. 0:09:10.538,0:09:13.955 The third time there will be an influence from the first and second crystals. 0:09:14.693,0:09:20.745 There is in fact good evidence that new compounds get easier to crystallize all around the world, 0:09:20.791,0:09:23.153 just as this theory would predict. 0:09:23.338,0:09:27.579 It also predicts that if you train animals to learn a new trick, 0:09:27.809,0:09:30.691 for example rats learn a new trick in London, 0:09:30.768,0:09:34.575 then all round the world rats of the same breed should learn the same trick quicker 0:09:34.698,0:09:36.791 just because rats have learned it here. 0:09:36.883,0:09:41.139 And surprisingly, there is already evidence that this actually happens. 0:09:43.262,0:09:47.388 Anyway, that is my hypotheses in a nutshell of morphic resonance, 0:09:47.388,0:09:50.627 everything depends on evolving habits not on fixed laws. 0:09:50.765,0:09:55.020 But I want to spend a few moments on the constants of nature too. 0:09:55.020,0:09:58.943 Because these, are again, assumed to be constant. 0:09:58.943,0:10:03.847 Things like the gravitational constant, the speed of light are called the fundamental constants. 0:10:04.647,0:10:07.103 Are they really constant? 0:10:07.534,0:10:10.775 Well, when I got interested in this question I tried to find out. 0:10:11.467,0:10:14.547 They are given in physics handbooks. 0:10:14.547,0:10:19.546 Handbooks of physics list the existing fundamental constants and tell you their value. 0:10:19.684,0:10:24.499 But I wanted to see if they've changed, so I got the old volumes of physical handbooks. 0:10:24.499,0:10:27.760 I went to the Patent Office Library here in London, 0:10:27.760,0:10:30.864 and they are the only place I could find that kept the old volumes, 0:10:30.864,0:10:35.614 normally people throw them away. When the new values come out, they throw away the old ones. 0:10:36.628,0:10:42.121 When I did this I found out that the speed of light dropped between 1928 and 1945 0:10:42.121,0:10:44.797 by about 20 kilometers per second. 0:10:45.197,0:10:51.582 It's a huge drop because they were given with the errors of any fractions, decimal points of error. 0:10:51.582,0:10:54.905 And yet, all over the world it dropped 0:10:54.905,0:10:58.938 and they were all getting values very similar to each other with tiny errors, 0:10:59.030,0:11:03.064 then in (1945) 1948 it went up again, 0:11:03.268,0:11:06.122 and then people started getting very similar values again. 0:11:07.568,0:11:11.148 I was very intrigued by this, and I couldn't make sense of it, 0:11:11.148,0:11:13.111 so I went to see the Head of Metrology, 0:11:13.111,0:11:15.863 at the National Physical Laboratory, in Teddington. 0:11:16.908,0:11:20.704 Metrology is the science in which people measure constants. 0:11:21.550,0:11:22.999 And I asked him about this, I said: 0:11:22.999,0:11:28.958 what do you make of this drop in the speed of light between 1928 and 1945? 0:11:29.435,0:11:30.592 And he said, "Oh dear", 0:11:30.777,0:11:35.553 he said "you uncovered the most embarrassing episode in the history of our sciences." 0:11:36.091,0:11:42.499 I said well, could the speed of light have actually dropped, and that would have amazing implications if so. 0:11:42.637,0:11:46.865 And he said, "no, no, of course it couldn't have actually dropped, it is a constant!" 0:11:47.695,0:11:51.474 Oh, well then how do you explain the fact that everyone was almost finding 0:11:51.474,0:11:54.205 it going much slower during that period? 0:11:54.358,0:11:59.459 Is it because they were fudging their results to get what they thought other people should be getting 0:11:59.459,0:12:03.300 and the whole thing was just produced in the minds of physicists? 0:12:04.346,0:12:06.695 "We don't like to use the word fudge." 0:12:07.065,0:12:08.963 I said, well what do you prefer? 0:12:09.055,0:12:13.031 He said, "well we prefer to call it intellectual phase-locking." 0:12:19.567,0:12:23.408 So if this was going on then, how can we be so sure it is not going on today, 0:12:23.408,0:12:28.485 and that the present values produced by intellectual phase-locking? 0:12:28.485,0:12:30.407 And he said, "no, we know it is not the case." 0:12:30.407,0:12:31.766 I said, how do we know? 0:12:31.766,0:12:35.212 He said, "well, we have solved the problem". I said well how? 0:12:35.212,0:12:39.795 He said, "well we fixed the speed of light by definition in 1972". 0:12:41.471,0:12:43.434 So it might still change. 0:12:43.573,0:12:47.619 He said, "Yes but we'll never know because we defined the metre in terms of the speed of light, 0:12:47.789,0:12:50.066 so the units have changed with it". 0:12:50.082,0:12:53.406 So he looked very pleased about that, they'd fixed their problem. 0:12:56.504,0:12:58.633 But I said, well then what about Big G? 0:12:58.956,0:13:03.984 The gravitational constant known in the trade as Big G, it is written with the capital G. 0:13:04.153,0:13:11.335 Newton's universal gravitational constant. That has varied by more than 1.3 per cent in recent years. 0:13:12.966,0:13:16.697 And it seems to vary from place to place and from time to time. 0:13:17.266,0:13:23.115 And he said, "well there is a chance of errors, and unfortunately there are quite big errors with the Big G. 0:13:24.298,0:13:28.466 So I said, what if it is really changing, perhaps it is really changing. 0:13:29.450,0:13:33.497 And then I looked at how they do it: what happens is that they measure it in different labs, 0:13:33.497,0:13:37.303 they get different values on different days, and then they average them. 0:13:37.672,0:13:39.518 And then other labs from around the world do the same 0:13:39.518,0:13:41.952 and they come out usually with a rather different average. 0:13:42.059,0:13:46.587 And then the International Committee on Metrology meets every 10 years or so 0:13:46.587,0:13:51.557 and averages the ones from labs from around the world to come out with the value of Big G. 0:13:51.712,0:13:57.112 But what if G were actually fluctuating? What if it changed? 0:13:57.250,0:14:01.925 There is already evidence actually that it changes throughout the day and throughout the year. 0:14:02.079,0:14:07.183 What if the Earth, as it moves through the galactic environment, went through patches of dark matter 0:14:07.183,0:14:12.706 or other environmental factors that could alter it? Maybe they all change together. 0:14:12.782,0:14:15.865 What if these errors are going up together and down together? 0:14:15.865,0:14:20.625 For more than 10 years I have been trying to persuade metrologists to look at the raw data. 0:14:20.763,0:14:23.913 In fact, I am now trying to persuade them to put it online on the internet, 0:14:24.020,0:14:26.953 with the dates and the actual measurements, 0:14:27.045,0:14:31.625 and see if they are correlated; to see if they are all up at one time, all down at another. 0:14:31.932,0:14:36.518 If so they might be fluctuating together and that would tell us something very, very interesting. 0:14:36.609,0:14:40.593 But no one has done this, they haven't done it because G is a constant. 0:14:40.778,0:14:42.853 There is no point in looking for changes. 0:14:43.439,0:14:49.024 You see, here is a very simple example of where a dogmatic assumption actually inhibits inquiry. 0:14:49.362,0:14:53.755 I myself think that the constants may vary quite considerably. 0:14:54.216,0:14:56.764 Well within narrow limits, but they may all be varying. 0:14:56.903,0:15:02.342 And I think the day will come when scientific journals like Nature have weekly reports on the constants 0:15:02.342,0:15:04.702 like stock market reports in the newspapers. 0:15:05.332,0:15:12.151 This week Big G was slightly up, the charge on the electron was down, the speed of light held steady, 0:15:12.201,0:15:13.223 and so on. 0:15:16.392,0:15:24.934 So, that is one area, just one area where I think thinking less dogmatically could open things up. 0:15:25.179,0:15:27.687 One of the biggest areas is the nature of the mind, 0:15:27.810,0:15:31.102 this is the most unsolved problem as Graham has just said. 0:15:31.625,0:15:35.164 Science simply can't deal with the fact that we are conscious. 0:15:36.533,0:15:41.354 And it can't deal with the fact that our thoughts don't seem to be inside our brains. 0:15:43.061,0:15:46.220 Our experiences don't all seem to be inside our brain. 0:15:46.451,0:15:50.117 Your image of me now doesn't seem to be inside your brain. 0:15:50.225,0:15:54.168 Yet the official view is that there is a little Rupert somewhere inside your head 0:15:54.291,0:15:57.215 and everything else in this room is inside your head. 0:15:57.308,0:15:59.326 Your experiences is inside your brain. 0:16:00.017,0:16:03.870 I am suggesting actually that vision involves an outward projection of images, 0:16:03.931,0:16:07.374 what you are seeing is in your mind but not inside your head. 0:16:07.544,0:16:11.910 Our minds are extended beyond our brains in the simple act of perception. 0:16:12.770,0:16:19.091 I think that we project out the images we are seeing and these images touch what we are looking at. 0:16:19.445,0:16:23.864 If I look at you from behind and you don't know I am there, could I affect you? 0:16:24.110,0:16:25.649 Could you feel my gaze? 0:16:26.048,0:16:29.079 There is a great deal of evidence that people can. 0:16:29.187,0:16:31.957 The sense of being stared at is an extremely common experience, 0:16:32.065,0:16:36.405 and recent experimental research actually suggests it is real. 0:16:36.544,0:16:38.387 Animals seem to have it too. 0:16:38.540,0:16:41.841 I think it probably evolved in the context of predator-prey relationships. 0:16:41.965,0:16:47.105 Prey animals that can feel the gaze of the predator would survive better than those that couldn't. 0:16:47.443,0:16:52.578 This would lead to a whole new way of thinking about ecological relationships between predators and prey, 0:16:52.805,0:16:55.286 also about the extent of our minds. 0:16:55.471,0:17:01.239 If we look at distant stars, I think our minds reach out in the sense to touch these stars 0:17:01.377,0:17:04.989 and literally extend out over astronomical different distances. 0:17:05.465,0:17:07.542 They are not just inside our heads. 0:17:07.881,0:17:13.266 Now it may seem astonishing that this is a topic of debate in the 21st century. 0:17:13.450,0:17:16.964 We know so little about our own minds that where our images are 0:17:17.087,0:17:20.585 is a hot topic of debate within consciousness studies right now. 0:17:22.137,0:17:28.020 I don't have time to deal with anymore of these dogmas, but every single one of them is questionable. 0:17:28.173,0:17:32.464 If one questions it, new forms of research, new possibilities open up. 0:17:32.602,0:17:37.713 And I think as we question these dogmas that have held back science so long, 0:17:39.204,0:17:42.023 science will undergo a re-flowering, a Renaissance. 0:17:42.521,0:17:45.179 I am a total believer in the importance of science. 0:17:45.302,0:17:49.268 I have spent my whole life as a research scientist, my whole career. 0:17:50.283,0:17:54.891 But I think by moving beyond these dogmas it can be regenerated. 0:17:55.030,0:17:58.926 Once again it will become interesting, and I hope life affirming. 0:17:59.203,0:18:00.446 Thank you.