Checking references
Reading Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God is an irritating experience, and not just in the more obvious or predictable way. There is also the matter of her pretense of scholarship, which upon inspection turns out to be rather thin. For example:
Chapter 11, ‘Unknowing,’ begins with three pages of factual statements with names, dates, and other particulars, beginning with the Second International Congress of Mathematicians in Paris in 1900 and what David Hilbert said there, what it implied about confidence in scientific progress, what Virginia Woolf said, what Picasso and James Joyce were up to, moving on to the First World War, the depression, and the war after that, with a pause halfway through to sum up: “It was now difficult to feel sanguine about the limitless progress of civilization. Modern secular ideologies were proving to be as lethal as any religious bigotry.”
Then we move to “Modern science had been founded on the belief that it was possible to achieve objective certainty.” We get a brisk mention of Hume and Kant, then James Clark Maxwell, then Albert Michelson and Edward Morley, then Becquerel and Planck, and at last we arrive where we knew we were heading, at Einstein and Bohr and Heisenberg. “Niels Bohr (1885-1962) and Werner Heisenberg (1901-76) developed quantum mechanics, an achievement that contradicted nearly every major postulate of Newtonian physics.”
That, thank god, is the end of the third paragraph. We’ve taken in a lot and are panting slightly. One more paragraph to go, to complete this magisterial survey. “So much for the traditional assumption that knowledge would proceed incrementally…In the bewildering universe of quantum mechanics” and so on, you can write it in your sleep. But what’s interesting about all this is that there is not one reference for any of it. Not one. It’s all poured out of Karen Armstrong’s teeming mind, apparently, so thoroughly assimilated and absorbed that there is no need to reference it – it is just her Knowledge. We do not get a reference until the end of the fourth paragraph of the chapter, three pages in (p. 264), for a direct quotation from Einstein. And what is the reference? Richard Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind, p. 356.
In other words, most of that three pages is just a summary of part of a secondary book, a popular history of ideas, but it’s not presented that way. She nowhere says ‘to summarize pages 355-6 from Richard Tarnas’s best-selling book’ or similar – she just spouts it all as if it were an overflow of her vast erudition. That’s not illegal, but it’s not best practice, either. (Apart from anything else, it doesn’t really give Tarnas adequate credit, because it looks as if the reference is just to the direct quotation.) It’s not best practice, and in someone like Armstrong, it’s also deeply irritating. Why? Because she does convey an air of authority and wisdom and deep learning. There’s that ridiculously boastful pile of books on the front cover, for one thing! There’s the third sentence on the first page, in the Introduction, for another: “‘That book was really hard!’ readers have told me reproachfully, shaking their heads in faint reproof. ‘Of course it was!’ I want to reply. ‘It was about God.'” A barely-veiled boast – I Write Hard Books. Well this book at least is not hard, it’s pseudo-hard, and when you look closely at it it also turns out to be pseudo-erudite and inadequately referenced.
The first three pages aren’t an aberration, either; she goes on the same way. Page 266 gets really down to it with Heisenberg and that other fella. “In 1931, the Austrian philosopher Kurt Gödel (1906-78) devised a theorem to show that any formal logical or mathematical system must contain propositions that are not verifiable within that system; there would always be propositions that could be proved or disproved only by input from outside. This completely undercut the traditional assumption of systematic decidability.” Then there’s what John Dewey (dates provided, as always) said in his Gifford Lectures in 1929, then there’s commentary about our limited minds, all reference-free, then there’s a quotation from “the American physicist Percy Bridgman” (dates provided again), including (this must have thrilled Armstrong) “We are confronted with something truly ineffable.” The direct quotation, at last, gets a reference: “Quoted in Huston Smith, Beyond the Post-Modern Mind“. Another secondary source, you see – and one with an apparent agenda. This is thin, second-hand, warmed-over, paraphrased stuff, but it’s not presented that way. Armstrong has a reputation as a scholar, but it’s not always earned.
“Modern science had been founded on the belief that it was possible to achieve objective certainty.”
Now I will readily admit to being somewhat ignorant when it comes to philosophy, but even I know that modern science is founded on the belief that it is not possible to achieve objective certainty.
I accept that some scientific theories are so well supported by the evidence that on a practical day to day basis no scientist is going to suppose they are wrong, but that is long way from believing that they cannot ever be proven wrong.
Her citing of quantum theory is a good example of how what was accepted in science for many years can be overturned by new evidence. It shows that science, rather than dealing with certainty only accepts theories as being provisionally true, always subject to revision.
If Armstrong can be this rubbish in an area I know a little about, how can I have any trust in her getting things right in areas I know even less about ?
Before she published this book, I’ve heard a lot of good things about Armstrong. I picked up Holy War, her book about the Crusades and how they influenced the modern conflicts in the Middle East. This is a topic that interests me, so I was looking forward to it.
Aside from the rambling nature of the book, her poor scholarship was evident to me also. She left out obviously relevant pieces of history when they contradicted her views (I noticed this, and I have only a passing knowledge of the relevant history myself).
I wonder where her reputation came from. Is it just that she says nice things about the religious, or has she written a good book at any point?
Matt: you can’t. Don’t. It is of course possible to read her for her ideas, and to find her interesting, and so on – but reliable she is not.
Some,
I wonder too. Partly that she’s a popularizer…partly that a lot of people love her unctuous tone…partly that she does a lot of radio etc so people assume she’s an ‘expert’ and her reputation becomes self-perpetuating…partly that she says nice things about religion and the religious, as you say…
But it’s still puzzling, because the shoddiness of her ‘scholarship’ is pretty dang obvious.
You see what I mean by ‘bludgeoned’? She’s very painful to read. And she does this every time, as though rehearsing the sketch of a history is actually to say something herself. As I say, even theology is hard work, and Armstrong has yet to do it.
Oh I see what you mean all right. None of this comes as a surprise.
She’s painful to read in more than one way. There are layers of painfulness to reading her.
Still, your having checked the references really does add another level. I didn’t bother. All that irrelevant detail. Who knew she cribbed it all from surveys and and synopses! So little, if any, by way of primary sources. It really is disturbing to think that this woman has piled up all those ‘difficult’ books and has the reputation of being an expert. Thanks for this. It takes my dislike of Armstrong to an entirely different level.
“It was now difficult to feel sanguine about the limitless progress of civilization. Modern secular ideologies were proving to be as lethal as any religious bigotry.”
The Green Revolution alone, one act of science, has done more good for humanity than every religion combined.
And the level of warfare has been declining for centuries, largely because when the primary driver of wealth moved from land to capital, war became a less useful way of getting richer. That transition was of course driven by “modern secular ideologies”, or at least their precursors.
“…quantum mechanics, an achievement that contradicted nearly every major postulate of Newtonian physics”
In which Armstrong demonstrates ignorance of what a postulate is, Newtonian physics and quantum mechanics in only 13 words. And some complain she rambles! (Both quantum mechanics and relativistic physics are compatible with/approximate to Newtonian physics at certain scales, unless I am mistaken.)
I’m sorry, what?
The text of Hilbert’s address can be found here. It appears to be about difficult and unsolved problems in mathematics, and the challenge that awaits mathematicians in trying to solve them. I don’t see how this implies anything for confidence in scientific progress. Am I missing something?
And then there’s this:
Nnnnnnnnrgh.
“Could be proved or disproved only by input from outside” is a description which betrays a lack of comprehension of the incompleteness theorems. “Input from outside”? What the heck does that mean? The first incompleteness theorem shows that, in a finitely axiomatizable and consistent system of sufficient strength, there are true sentences which are not provable in the system.
Saying that such sentences are provable by `input from the outside’ is nonsensical. Presumably it is an uncomprehending reference to the fact that, given a sentence S which is unprovable in theory T, you can construct a stronger theory T’ (e.g. by adding S as an axiom) in which S is provable. But then T’ will have its own sentence S’ which is not provable in T’. And so on.
Also, she does not appear to know the difference between completeness and decidability. The latter refers to the existence of an effective method (finite algorithm) for determining whether a formula belongs in a set (e.g. the set of valid sentences or the set of invalid sentences); the former refers (roughly) to the provability of all valid sentences. They are not the same! General first order logic is complete but not decidable (for some members of set of invalid sentences there is no finite method for demonstrating this; nevertheless, every valid sentence is provable), and IIRC there are systems that are decidable but not complete.
David: Yes, a physicist friend of mine told me once that classical (Newtonian) mechanics can be derived (ie deduced) from quantum mechanics, and not knowing much about the latter I see no reason not to accept that proposition.
But ‘quantum mechanics’ is a term the Armstrongs of the world often throw in for effect when trying to sell something to the more credulous sector of the book-buying public. The response sought is ‘Gee, she must know a lot’, or even ‘Gee, she must know what she’s talking about’.
Other snake oil salespersons use the terms ‘bargain’ and ‘value’ much the same way. Of course, no bluffer’s lexicon is complete without the names of Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg etc; because as they knew very well what they were talking about, it clearly follows that the dropper of their names does too.
And also also, I missed this on my first pass:
No.
In fact, before Gödel proved the Incompleteness Theorems, he proved the Completeness Theorem for General First Order Logic.
There are plenty of formal systems which are complete. Many are also decidable! The Incompleteness Theorems only apply to formal systems of sufficient strength, which can be roughly characterised as having the ability to represent the natural numbers plus addition and multiplication.
Jennie, she may have had the last paragraph of Hilbert in mind, which is at least sort of germane. But of course all the other mentions of “science” in the speech are refer to the “mathematical science”, which presumably Armstrong didn’t acknowledge. (Well, there is one mention about Poincare and astrophysics early on, but it seems like a throwaway line.)
Thanks Jennie. Since that sentence is from the long passage before the direct quote, it is not referenced, so it is impossible to tell if she took it from Huston Smith and got it wrong, or if Huston Smith got it wrong, or if she took it from someone else and got it wrong, or if someone else got it wrong. Or all those.
The claim about what Hilbert said is this:
“Hilbert confidently predicted a century of unparalleled scientific progress. There were just twenty-three outstanding problems in the Newtonian system, and once these had been solved, our knowledge of the universe would be complete.”
“All that irrelevant detail. Who knew she cribbed it all from surveys and and synopses! So little, if any, by way of primary sources.”
Very very little. She reads various religious texts, I’m sure – albeit in translation – but all the commentary and narrative is cribbed from very secondary sources – more like tertiary. There’s one place where she drones on about Wittgenstein in a knowing way, ending with a direct quote with a reference. The reference is to Ray Monk’s biography.
I might put that one in another post.
She really is ineffable.
Hmmm.
OK, first, Hilbert most certainly was not saying that there were only 23 unresolved problems. The 23 problems he mentioned were merely representative and interesting ones. Or so at least one might think from the following passages in his address:
And
Also, and as Benjamin Nelson also says above, it appears that she is ignoring the distinction between mathematical science, the subject of Hilbert’s address, and the whole of science. It is ridiculous to suppose that Hilbert would have asserted that solving all unsolved mathematical problems was equivalent to having a complete “knowledge of the universe.”
Pah. I’m consulting the primary text for a blog comment. She obviously can’t be bothered to do so for a book. There is, I conjecture, a difference in scholarly standards here.
When I was an audit clerk there was a basic strategy we were warned about when someone had something to hide – they would try to drown us in paper.
Give someone enough chaff and by the time they hit the things that actually matter, they will just stare at it blankly and miss its significance.
Now that I am a journalist (One of those “Staff reporters” on the webpage) the same thing happens with press releases.
The whole point in Armstrong’s scholarship is to information dump – give you so much data that you can’t quite process it right so you end up missing how shallow, or false it is.
So with her references not working – I am not all that suprised. They weren’t supposed to work, they are just there to throw chaff.
Armstrong’s Holy War on the Crusades is an appalling piece of work, based on historiography that was already over 30 years out of date when she wrote it, and making spurious links with the present-day Middle East. She treated Runciman’s 1950s work (which has now been pretty well overturned) as if it were a primary source. In fact she failed my litmus test for all popular works on the Crusades, by repeating and embellishing a factual error made by Runciman, which shows she had not looked at primary sources and had not checked the accuracy of Runciman’s footnotes (which are misleading in this instance). She’s an English Literature graduate, and should leave Mediæval History to those of us who know our way around Niketas Choniates and the various Frankish and Arab chronicles.
I know…I knew she was bad on central specifics (so to speak) but I didn’t know she was that sloppy and superficial overall. I didn’t know she just read poppy secondary stuff and then simply paraphrased it into her books and that that was pretty much all she did. It’s a little surprising to me, still, because I would think it would eventually catch up with her. I can’t see why the UN and the US Congress treat her as an important expert when her expertise consists in reading pop history and talking fluff.
Ugh.
Hilbert’s problems were, famously, open questions in mathematics. They had nothing to do with “the Newtonian system”. Problem #6 asked if it was possible to axiomatize all of physics; this question remains unresolved today, as any attempt to do so requires knowing “all of physics”, which we don’t. Problem #19 asked about the solutions to Lagrangians, which occur in mathematical physics (Lagrangian mechanics is an alternate viewpoint on classical physics, which is equivalent to the Newtonian formalism but more convenient for some problems). However, it’s the sort of question a mathematician would care about: a mathematician wants a theorem which covers every situation, including all the special cases and irregularities, while a physicist will be happy with a tool which works in the situations one is actually likely to encounter while studying real experiments.
It is sometimes said, wrongly, that physicists of Victorian times thought that all the hard work was done, no new original ideas had to be found, and all that remained for later generations was to compute more decimal points. That not all Victorians were so daft was pointed out by Richard Feynman in his Lectures on Physics, but not everybody has listened.
And as for quantum mechanics “contradict[ing] nearly every major postulate of Newtonian physics”. . . well, in quantum physics, we still have the conservation of momentum and the conservation of energy. We still represent interactions between particles using potential functions. In both classical and quantum physics, we use Lagrangians to predict the behaviour of systems. The advent of quantum mechanics did not displace the statistical-physics concepts of entropy, microstates, macrostates and ensembles — indeed, it refined them. Most fundamentally, quantum physics has not overruled or undermined the idea that hypotheses about the physical world are tested by experiment.
Armstrong doesn’t know a damn thing about mathematics or physics.
Yet she goes right ahead and pronounces on them anyway.
Ugh indeed.