The Truth Is Out There, but It’s Not So Simple : Science File / an exploration of issues and trends affecting science, medicine and the environment
In reflecting on the O.J. Simpson verdict, I find myself standing--once again--firmly on both sides of the fence. And I’ve concluded that it has a lot to do with physics. Curiously, physics has a lot to say about seemingly mutually exclusive viewpoints, such as whether a verdict is fair or not.
As the father of quantum mechanics, Niels Bohr, put it: “The opposite of a shallow truth is false. The opposite of a deep truth is also true.” A shallow truth is something simple and easy to pin down or refute--for example, “I have 10 fingers” or “two hydrogens and an oxygen make H2O.” Deep truths are murkier but also more interesting: The nature of matter, for example, or the value of life.
Obviously, Simpson is not both guilty and innocent. Physics does not say that any viewpoint is as good as any other, or that your reality is as good as mine. On the contrary. Physics looks for those things that do not change, no matter what.
Einstein’s theory of relativity, often trotted out as a scientific support for the fuzzy idea that “everything is relative,” actually means exactly the opposite. In fact, Einstein called it the theory of invariants. Invariants are those things that never change.
What he did show, however, is that appearances can be deceiving. And that the way reality appears depends directly on your point of view. What you see, in other words, depends on how you look.
For example, a person speeding along on a flight from Los Angeles to New York sits in the self-contained world of a 747 that happens to be moving along at about 500 mph relative to the Earth. If the passenger tosses a coin into the air, it will travel straight up, and straight down.
However, to a person sitting on a passing cloud, the coin would appear to trace a gentle parabola, like water in a fountain--traveling forward as well as up, and forward as well as down.
Can a coin follow a straight line and a curved line at the same time? No. So which perspective is right? Both. Both are right as long as you remember to put your own point of view into the equation--moving or standing still.
In the same way, a human being is both a unique individual and nothing but a pile of electrons and quarks. Similarly, a Bach concerto is a moving emotional experience and nothing but a mathematical sequence of notes. A Picasso, viewed with a powerful microscope, dissolves into a grainy pattern of dots.
The Simpson trial demonstrated beyond doubt that the black community, the white community and the jury all lived in different self-contained worlds to some extent--like the people in the 747. When people are confined to one point of view, they can’t see the other--literally. (Curiously, Einstein called the space and time you perceive as “proper” space and time--as opposed to everyone else’s.)
The same kinds of mutually exclusive positions dominate discussions about abortion rights, pornography, welfare, child abuse. Is pornography that exploits women and children a serious threat to their welfare? Or is freedom of speech worth protecting at almost any cost? One could easily answer yes to both.
Ditto for: Should able people pull their own weight in society or should people who need it get help? Should children be protected from violence or should the government have the right to tell people how to raise their families?
Physics offers an outlook that avoids the often impossible choice between one valid truth and another; instead, it encourages using both truths to get a deeper perspective on the problem. Light is a wave, but it’s also a particle. Life is explained by biology, and by novels and poetry.
Is Simpson guilty? A lot of whites find the jury verdict unfathomable. They can’t imagine how anyone could possibly believe that the LAPD could be at the same time racist enough and smart enough to frame him, and stupid enough to make the mistakes they did. But many blacks see the world in a way that white people will never understand, a world where racism is a permanent part of the frame of reference.
There are deep truths on both sides of this divide. And racism looks different depending on whether you’re sitting in the plane, or on (or under) a particular cloud. To disagree with someone’s perspective is not the same as questioning whether it is valid at all.
The major lessons of 20th century physics have revealed that there are limitations to any one point of view, and true understanding requires many different kinds of truths.
As physicist Max Born wrote: “The belief that there is only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it seems to me the deepest root of all the evil that is in the world.”
