Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowships in Science & Religion

The Limits of Materialism

The idea that scientific advances will squeeze meaning from the world is a hangover from 19th-century physics.

by Mark Vernon

It's actually quite easy to pick holes in the argument that science will show how consciousness and God are illusions. For example, Colin Blakemore wrote that our intentions are only "what our brains have already decided to do". But is my brain not me too? Surely, he is not suggesting that there is some hidden entity inside each of us that does the deciding and then tricks us into thinking we've done it? That would be to advocate a ghost in the machine.

Blakemore also seems to argue that identifying a biological source of religious feeling would undermine the meaning of religious belief. But that doesn't follow at all. Imagine if geneticists identified the gene that allowed us to solve quadratic equations. Would we be right in concluding that quadratic equations were previously somehow fake? Not at all. Moreover, if some scientist switched the quadratic equations gene off, we would not say that they don't exist. Rather, we would merely conclude that we no longer have the capacity to appreciate their reality and power.

But let's not just seek to score points, because it's interesting to push more deeply into the issue at stake.

Blakemore's views are a product of 150 years of tremendous success in biology, successes built on the assumptions of materialist philosophy and the idea that natural processes are chemical and mechanical. His conviction that faith in materialism will not let you down is entirely understandable. In the struggle for the survival of ideas, it has proven itself to have high adaptive value. But when he proposes that life, consciousness and religion all lie within the grasp of that worldview, he is writing what the philosopher of science, Karl Popper, called a "promissory note". That note says: commit to my materialist conception of the universe and everything will become clear – not yet, maybe not next year, but surely the time will come.

I doubt that and here's one reason why. Consider biology's sister science, physics. Physics had a similar run of success on the basis of a materialist and mechanistic philosophy in the centuries that followed the Copernican revolution. However, that all changed with the emergence of quantum theory. The very stuff upon which materialism is based, atoms, suddenly ceased to look like anything that had previously been called matter. Electrons sometimes looked like particles, and at other times like waves. The even more bizarre thing is that how they look depends upon how the observer chooses to look at them.

So these days, fundamental physicists deal not in atoms but entities such as probability distribution functions. They exist in some kind of higher dimensional universe. How they "collapse" into what might then look like a particle or wave in space and time is a profound conundrum.

Which is perhaps why most physicists, in my experience, just don't ask about the metaphysical status of their science any more. The equations are all that is required to secure tenure. In fact, the few physicists who stick their necks out, and say they still believe in something like traditional materialism, also increasing feel compelled to add that why that works may be beyond science. Perhaps, they continue, we should just admit that. Materialism's promissory notes have failed to deliver.

Now, one needs to be careful here. Quantum theory is often used as cover for the weird and wonderful. As the physicist Paul Davies said to me: "There is a lot of flaky stuff in this area, where people present quantum physics in a mystical light and then draw all sorts of dubious 'spiritual' conclusions." He is quite right. However, what he doesn't do, which Blakemore does, is hold fast to his faith in old fashioned materialism regardless. Instead, he is exploring the possibility of what he calls a "self-explaining universe" containing a "life principle". He admits that this will seem "crypto-religious" to many, though they needn't be alarmed that he is appealing to God. There are more explanatory options on the table. What his approach does necessitate, though, is a way of integrating properties of life, such as mind and purpose, into physics. Moreover, these elements seem fundamental, in the sense that they are not reducible to chemicals or mechanics. To put it another way, he is turning to a different, non-materialist metaphysics. Roger Penrose concurs. He thinks that we need a new conception of science. For him, some kind of Platonism is the best option.

So where does this leave religion? It is often said that a battle has raged between science and belief. Where that metaphor falls down is when it conceives of science gaining more and more ground, eventually forcing religion off the map. Instead, a better interpretation would be to say that the emergence of mechanistic science a few centuries back threw the religious worldview into a struggle to accommodate the materialistic metaphysics implicit in it. However, for almost a century now, that materialism has itself been profoundly challenged in physics. The tide is turning again. A richer understanding of the cosmos increasingly seems to be required to understand what we observe, experience and know. Biology is, if you like, going to have to catch up.

This does not automatically re-open the door for a religious view of things. That could be the "flaky stuff" of which Davies is cautious.

However, it is a world that will look less and less conducive to the scientist who wants to hold onto notions such as that life is but a chemical process and consciousness merely an illusion.