海角大神

'Dreams of Earth and Sky' draws intriguing lines between philosophy and science

At age 91, a master physicist shares his wisdom, and the burning questions he still ponders.

鈥淚 learn more from critics than from flatterers,鈥� writes Freeman Dyson in Dreams of Earth and Sky. Well then. I didn鈥檛 suppose I was going to teach Dyson anything, but he didn鈥檛 have to staple it to my forehead. So I鈥檒l keep the flattery brief. Dreams is a mind-expanding collection of twenty-one review essays Dyson wrote for the New York Review of Books between 2006 and 2014, a follow-up to his "The Scientist as Rebel," which covered 1996 to 2006. Dyson has been a professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton for many years, some sixty-two of his ninety-one, and I am of the generation that genuflects when the institute is mentioned. However, enough with the flattery; "Dreams" is just terrific if not staggeringly incandescent. It is human. Though, of course, stimulating to the point of making you hop from foot to foot. The writing is smooth as butter cream, too. Say no more, lest ye be judged a bootlicker.

Dyson is famous for his accessibility. His plainspokenness is arresting: 鈥淧oincar茅, in the late nineteenth century, discovered chaos.鈥� If that doesn鈥檛 stop you in your tracks, look again. Yet very little digging reveals the spreading roots of his thought process, its complexity, its great Whitmanesque reach. 鈥淚 like to break down the barriers that separate science from other sources of human wisdom,鈥� he writes. 鈥淲e gain knowledge of our place in the universe not only from science but also from history, art, and literature.鈥� You feel him pine for the adventure of science in its infancy: 鈥淭he scientists of that age were as romantic as the poets. The scientific discoveries were are as unexpected and intoxicating as poems. Many of the poets were intensely interested in science, and many of the scientists in poetry.鈥�

Still, if 鈥渟cience is a creative interaction of observation with imagination,鈥� remember that science consists of facts and theories. 鈥淔acts are supposed to be true or false ... theories are provisional,鈥� and let no fuzz gather on either. But theories are exciting and creative, he freely admits 鈥� helpful, unhelpful, unavoidable in our struggle to understand 鈥� and 鈥渨rong ideas and false trails are part of the landscape to be explored.鈥� Open the window and let in blunders. Charles Darwin, Lord Kelvin, Linus Pauling, Fred Hoyle, Albert Einstein 鈥� blunderers all. Where would we be without their mistakes? 鈥淎ll philosophical Experiments that let Light into the Nature of Things, tend to increase the power of Man over Matter, and multiply the Conveniencies or Pleasures of Life,鈥� Dyson admiringly quotes Benjamin Franklin.

If philosophy is a collection of meaty stories that raise questions and fire our pursuit of the answers, it is also much like the best science in its wholesale trespassing. 鈥淧hilosophers became insignificant when philosophy became a separate academic discipline, distinct from science and history and literature and religion. The great philosophers of the past covered all these disciplines,鈥� as they do today. 鈥淸William] Blake, a buffoon to his enemies and an embarrassment to his friends, saw Earth and Heaven more clearly than any of them,鈥� Dyson suggests and turns to the Jesuit credo espoused by particle physicist Frank Wilczek: 鈥淚t is more blessed to ask forgiveness than permission.鈥�

Not altogether unintentionally, Dyson has a reputation for provocation. He cares little about prevailing or received opinion. The mandarins who decide what is studied and what is funded nauseate him. He despises the politicizing and propagandizing of any science in its infancy, of any public policy formulated from half-baked ideas: nuclear weapons (鈥淭hey are effective for destroying cities and for killing large numbers of people indiscriminately, and for nothing else鈥�) and missile defense (easily 鈥渄efeated by concealing real nuclear warheads in a swarm of cheap decoys鈥�).

Dyson has said that we do not know enough about the science of climate or that of genetic engineering to make long-range predictions, and he has been raked across the coals by dull or lazy soapboxers, intent on more-left-than-thou self-aggrandizement. (The 鈥渄ull or lazy鈥� originally comes from Wendell Berry鈥檚 stinging, if crabwise, criticism 鈥� in a letter responding to Dyson鈥檚 piece on biotech in NYRB, included here 鈥� of Dyson鈥檚 failure to answer important biotech questions that Dyson himself raised; two passionate thinkers meet in a shower of sparks.) He has also said, from what rigorous testing has been conducted, it is apparent that global warming and biotechnology have the potential to be serious threats.

To paint Dyson as a black-and-white thinker or a knee-jerk contrarian is absurd. He is less the devil鈥檚 advocate than the good scientist; like Mary Beard asks when considering classical history, Dyson simply asks, 鈥淪how me the evidence and let鈥檚 see what we can make of it.鈥� Science is about rigor and testing. By temperament, Dyson is not a gloom-and-doom sort. He would rather look for answers than cry in his soup. How, for instance, might the planting of trees mitigate a number of human-induced problems, including CO2 emissions? 鈥淚f we can control what the plants do with the carbon鈥� 鈥� bring on the 鈥済enetically engineered carbon-eating trees鈥� 鈥� 鈥渢he fate of the carbon in the atmosphere is in our hands.鈥� Thus he brightly aggravates two partisan birds with one discordant stone.

His road to peace is sure to ruffle feathers. 鈥淧erpetuation of hatred and resentment is a chronic disease of human societies, and amnesty is the only cure.鈥� Get over it. No pussyfooting, no foot dragging. At conflict鈥檚 cessation, 鈥淚t is allowable to execute the worst war criminals, with or without legal trial, provided that this is done quickly, while the passions of war are still raging.鈥� (Another sentence to stop you in your tracks.) After that, 鈥淲ithout reconciliation, there can be no real peace. Reconciliation means amnesty.... Amnesty is not easy and not fair, but it is a moral necessity.鈥� There is a lot of the human condition in those words, a heightened awareness of its messy, chromatic, low-riding progress.

As with many of NYRB鈥榮 contributions, it is not always clear where the book under review leaves off and the reviewer鈥檚 knowledge is on parade. Dyson might be reviewing Ivar Ekeland鈥檚 "The Best of All Possible Worlds: Mathematics and Destiny", but the lasting impression is that he was reviewing Pierre de Maupertuis鈥檚 270-year-old memoir "The Laws of Motion and Rest Deduced from a Metaphysical Principle."

鈥淭hat nature arranges all processes so as to minimize a quantity called action,鈥� segues nicely, 200 pages later, with Dyson鈥檚 review of Daniel Kahneman鈥檚 "Thinking, Fast and Slow", and his brain system 2 鈥� the slow, conscious, critical brain 鈥� which finds thinking hard work, 鈥渁nd our daily lives are organized so as to economize on thinking.鈥� Kahneman also investigates cognitive illusions, which brings us back, 80 pages earlier, to our generals鈥� 鈥渃onstant tendency to glorify technology that is colorful and spectacular, even when it leads them repeatedly to defeat and disaster.鈥� These Venn diagrams are speckled with strange, diverting imagery: Werner von Braun鈥檚 SS problems (toadying on the one hand, then comparing, to Heinrich Himmler鈥檚 face, 鈥渢he help offered by the chief of the SS to a load of shit鈥�); Ernest Rutherford 鈥渂anging one nucleus against another and transmuting nitrogen into oxygen鈥�; black-leaved plants better utilizing sunlight; Richard Feynman creating a wholly new scientific language; Wittgenstein鈥檚 tragic, tortured soul; a seventy-six-year-old, four-page paper that invented the concept of the black hole.

The collection, as a piece, feels ordered, random, dazzled, and serendipitous. Like Dyson鈥檚 mind, you could say. You could say that he puts his words where his mouth is, and his romantic, humane heart keeps the beat.