Semantron 22 Summer 2022

Semantron 22 Summer 2022 Matter

Semantron was founded in 1992 by Dr. Jan Piggott (Head of English, and then Archivist at the College) together with one of his students, Richard Scholar (now Senior Tutor at Oriel College, Oxford and Professor of French and Comparative Literature).

Editor’s introduction: what matters

Neil Croally

The stars are matter. We are matter. But it doesn’t matter.

Captain Beefheart

Derek Parfit was (variously) a fellow of All Soul’s College, Oxford from 1967 until his retirement in 2010. He died in 2017, aged 74. Though originally educated as an historian, Parfit became a remarkable philosopher, all the more so because, during his long and illustrious career, he published only two books: Reasons and Persons in 1984, and the very substantial two volumes of On What Matters in 2011. Parfit’s writing, in its clarity, its thoroughness and its humanity, is exemplary. But my interest in him in this introduction is that he kept asking ‘what matters?’, whether he was investigating our notions of personal identity, our rationality, our obligations to future generations, 1 or – arguably his most ambitious programme – the possibility of combining rule consequentialism with contractualism and Kantian deontology into a unified theory of secular ethics. 2 I have been wondering what matters, in the realms of ethics and politics (of course), but also in relation to what it means to be a conscious, reasoning, and sometimes rational human being. In this latter area I have been looking for serious explorations of two related but different questions, namely, the role played by evolution in the development of human abstract (or meta) reasoning, on the one hand, and the nature of (human) consciousness, on the other. I do not want to spend too long on the first of these questions, apart from to say that there has been a large amount of interesting work done in this area over the last twenty years or so, and that, in order to understand where the human ability to reason in such a successfully abstract way came from, we could do worse than once again starting with Aristotle’s famous dictum that ‘man is by nature a political animal’ ( Politics 1253a). 3 1 Broadly speaking, the interests of Parfit 1984. 2 This is what Parfit 2011 tries to do in. There are many books and articles on rule consequentialism, and on Kant’s ethics. On contractualism in ethics, see Scanlon 1998. In the third edition of Practical Ethics (2011), Peter Singer states: ‘ . . . I am now more ready to enterta in – although not yet embrace – the idea that there are objective ethical truths that are independent of what anyone desires. I owe that shift . . . to my reading of a draft of Derek Parfit’s immensely impressive forthcoming book, On What Matters ’ (p. xii i). Responses to Parfit can be found in Singer 2016; Parfit 2017 responds in turn. 3 Tomasello 2014 argues for the origins of human reasoning in collectivity, supported by good experimental evidence. The key terms Tomasello employs are ‘joint’ or ‘collective intentionality’ (intentionality is, in this sense, the awareness that others have thoughts). For further discussion of the nature of reason – as modular, as domain- specific or domain-general, as a ‘spandrel’, as not uniquely human, see also Dennett 2017; Godfrey-Smith 2017 (on octopuses); Papineau 2003; Sperber & Mercier 2017. That our ethics arose out of our social nature is, in some ways, obvious; for discussion, see Singer 1981. For an overview of human evolution in terms of neurological development, see Dunbar 2014; for the role that cooking in particular plays in that development, see Wrangham

Editor’s introduction

The history of the study of consciousness is an old one, but one which is wrapped up in the history of science and philosophy in the modern era. Two of the founding giants of these areas of intellectual investigation are, respectively, Galileo (1564 – 1642) and Descartes (1596 – 1650). From the former we have adopted the view that the proper language for the description of the physical world is mathematical. From the latter, we have inherited a theory that there are two types of stuff, two kinds of substance, namely, the mental and the material, or mind and matter. Descart es’ position is normally referred to as dualism and his interest as the mind/body problem; Galileo’s view amounts to the establishment of what we recognize as science. Galileo’s approach, one where the focus was measurable matter, over time became domin ant, not least because of the obvious successes of physical sciences and the resultant technological advances. 4 The very possibility of the completeness of physics (to use Papineau’s phrase) also created something like a materialist orthodoxy in philosophy and psychology. 5 And that orthodoxy was further sustained by the remarkable advances in brain-scanning technology. In recent years neuroscientists have investigated neural correlates of mental states, have advanced the idea that the brain is a sort of global workspace or an organ that integrates information (so-called Integrated Information Theory ). They have also tried variously to combine these new and exciting (but incomplete) theories with existing theories of perception (where perception is based on abduction, or inference to the best explanation) and of embodied cognition, as well as with some of the insights of psychoanalysis. 6

But for all the advances of neuroscience, for all the sheer cleverness of the materialist approach, there has remained a doubt, expressed in a variety of ways. For Thomas Nagel, in his famous e ssay ‘What is

2009. For introductions to the important subject (and vast bibliography) of the evolution of culture, and the role played by language in that evolution, see Dunbar 2005, and 2014; Sperber 1996. 4 Lord Kelvin is often quoted in this contex t: ‘ I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind. ’ More pithily: ‘To measure is to know.’ 5 For the completeness of physics, see Papineau 2002: 232-56; and pp. 13-46 for one of the best philosophical cases made for a materialist approach to consciousness. Skinner 1971 is one of his articulations of behaviourism, a materialist psychological theory of human behaviour. There is a famous story concerning Max Planck, the celebrated theoretical physicist, who reports the following in a 1924 lecture: ‘ When I began my physical studies [in Munich in 1874] and sought advice from my venerable teacher Philipp von Jolly . . . he portrayed to me physics as a highly developed, almost fully matured science . . . Possibly in one or another nook there would perhaps be a dust particle or a small bubble [my italics] to be examined and classified, but the system as a whole stood there fairly secured, and theoretical physics approached visibly that degree of perfection which, for example, geometry has had already for centuries. ’ Such optimism about the future of physics should be rare: not only was it blasted away by the revolutions of relativity and quantum theory; it is also inconsistent with Popper’s falsificationist theory of science. It is surprising, therefore, to find that Stephen Hawking, in his 1992 book, Black Holes and Baby Universes , says: ‘Although we have not found the exact form of all [the physical laws], we already know enough to determine what happens in all but the most extreme situations.’ 6 Seth 2021 is a very good recent survey of advances in neuroscience. It is also Seth who spends a lot of time on abduction, and on our experiences of the world as a sort of controlled hallucination. Antonio Damasio one of the neuroscientists most concerned with showing that Descartes was wrong to separate thought (or consciousness) from a) emotions and b) the body (that is, cognition is embodied); on emotions and consciousness, see Damasio 2006 and 2021, and Solms 2021 (who introduces some psychoanalytic insights as well); on embodied cognition, see Damasio 2010.

Editor’s introduction

like to be a bat ?’, the physical sciences can never account for the texture of physical experience, or what philosophers often refer to as qualia . 7 Frank Jackson introduced the thought experiment about a scientist (Mary) who knows everything about the physics of perceiving the colour red but who, stuck inside a black and white room, has never actually perceived the colour red. Jackson argued the following:

1. If materialism is true, then Mary has a complete and final theory of colour experience.

2. If she has such a theory, then she cannot experience anything new.

3. Yet when she leaves the room, she experiences something new, namely, the colour red.

4. Therefore, materialism is false.

This difference between a materialist understanding of the physical world and the mental experience of it is sometimes refer to as the explanatory gap . 8 Another term for the same difficulty, coined by the pre-eminent living dualist, David Chalmers, is the hard problem . Here is one way Chalmers described this: It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can we explain why there is something it is like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion? It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does. 9 So, at this point, we can say that we have the sort of matter that is observable and measurable in the language of mathematics. This is what science does. And we also have subjective experience, also observable (we experience it!). The former is quantitative ; the latter, qualitative . One way to deal with this to be a dualist, and respect the two, different aspects of reality. But this means – very briefly – that subjective experience is not explained. (Or, at least, not yet.) Then there are two non-dualist responses. The first is that of the hard materialist, who must argue that our subjective experiences are a sort of illusion (or a ‘magic trick’, as Dennett has sometimes said) 10 and that the only real matter is the measurable kind. This is not an explanation of subjective experience either. The second response must have a different view of the nature of matter. Science since Galileo has defined key terms in our understanding of matter in relation to each other. So, we understand mass in relation to distance and force, and distance and force in relation to other phenomena. This means that physics is an excellent tool for prediction because it tells us (simply put) 7 Nagel 1974. 8 Jackson 1986; see also 1982 by the same author, and Papineau 2002: 141-60 for a discussion of the explanatory gap by an avowed materialist 9 Chalmer 1995: 201. In the same essay Chalmers goes through what he takes to be ‘easy’ problems (e.g. how do perceptions get turned into language ? What happens when something is on ‘the tip of your tongue’?) , by which I think he means questions answerable in principle using scientific method; for critical discussion of this characterization of ‘easy’ problems, see Dennett 201 3: 310-18. Seth 2021: 22., from a neuroscientific perspective, tries to redraw the problem as ‘real’, rather than either easy or hard: ‘ The primary goals of consciousness science are to explain, predict and control the phenomenological properties of conscious experience.’ For an excellent survey of the various arguments launched against materialism, see Searle 2004. Levine 2001 is another good introduction to the main arguments, 10 See Dennett 1991, where he argues for this position at length.

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what matter does rather than what it is . In arguing that this is science’s understanding of matter in his recent book, Philip Goff has gone back to the philosopher, Bertrand Russell and the physicist, Arthur Eddington. 11 In The Analysis of Matter , first published in 1927, Russell attempted to solve the incompatibility of idealism and materialism, and he thought he could do so by positing a matter that was neither material nor the stuff of thought: They [both materialists and idealists] have thought of the matter in the external world as being represented by the percepts when they see and touch, whereas those percepts are really part of the matter of the percipient’s brain. By examining our percepts it is possible . . . to infer certain formal mathematical properties of external matter . . . But by examining our percepts we obtain knowledge which is not purely formal as to the matter of our brains. This knowledge, it is true, is fragmentary, but so far as it goes it has merit in surpassing . . . the knowledge given by physics. 12 In a similar vein, Russell says that ‘mental events are part of that stuff [i.e., the stuff of the world], and the rest of the stuff resembles them more than it resembles traditional billiard- balls’. 13 For Russell, then, the intrinsic nature of matter is neither the stuff of the world nor mental events but a certain independent property. As he says : ‘A piece of matter is a logical structure composed of events.’ 14 Not many philosophers have followed Russell in what has been termed ‘neutral monism’ (i.e., there’s only one sort of stuff – monism, and it is neither physical nor mental – neutral), perhaps because he posited this third type of stuff to explain the other two types. Eddington agreed with Russell that we needed a new and better understanding of matter, because, though a celebrated physicist himself, he did not believe that physics told us anything about the intrinsic nature of matter. 15 But he did believe that a simpler answer was available.

Eddington argued the following:

a. Physics tells us nothing about the intrinsic nature of matter. b. The only thing we do know is that some forms of matter – inside our brains – have an intrinsic nature made up of forms of consciousness.

So, the simple hypothesis is that the intrinsic nature of matter outside our brains is continuous with the intrinsic nature of matter inside our brains. As Eddington himself wrote (using ‘thought’ where we use ‘consciousness’): ‘Why not attach [matter] to something . . . of which a prominent characteristic is thought? It seems rather silly to prefer to attach it to something of a so- called “concrete” nature inconsistent with thought, and then to wonder where thought comes from.’ 16 This view has the benefit of being a non-dualistic theory: mass and charge in physics are very simple forms of matter- 11 Goff 2019. Goff (pp. 176-9) also discusses the response of certain philosophers of science – causal structuralists – who argue that to define mass in terms of distance and force (and so on) is relational rather than circular. 12 Russell 2009: 589. 13 Ibid.: 593. 14 Ibid.: 590. 15 In 1919, from observations of star positions in a total solar eclipse, Eddington confirmed Einstein’s general theory of relativity. 16 Eddington 1928: ch. 12; see Goff 2019: 130- 8 for a discussion of Eddington’s panpsychism.

Editor’s introduction

as-consciousness; chemical properties are more complex forms of matter-as-consciousness derived from the basic forms; brain processes are even more complex forms of matter-as-consciousness derived from the more basic forms of chemistry and physics. The non-dualistic nature of the theory has some attractions for both dualists and confirmed materialists. For the former, subjective experience is finally included in a scientific understanding of consciousness. For the latter – and I am referring to philosophers such as David Papineau – consciousness is introduced into the material world as nothing special, as something identified with common physical processes. 17 Panpsychism – the view that consciousness is everywhere – will intuitively strike many as crazy, partly we because we so strongly equate consciousness with the ability to feel pain. (Is the pavement wincing as I walk on it? Do the keys on my computer keyboard feel stress because of the constant drumming?) But there might be something in the science of consciousness programme Goff proposes: 18 a. Realism about consciousness: the reality of subjective experience is a basic datum, equal in status to other observed data. b. Empiricism: quantitative data are equal in status to qualitative data. c. Anti-dualism: consciousness should not be seen as separate from the physical world but as part of its intrinsic nature. d. Methodology: start with the basic forms of consciousness. Goff is aware of the problems his proposal faces, even in principle. Arguably the most important of those problems is the relationship between basic and complex forms of consciousness, or how a combination of basic forms of consciousness creates more complex forms. 19 I would add that Goff’s keenness to embrace subjective experience as part of the physical world leads to a sort of hyperbole, such as when he claims that ‘far from being a mystery, consciousness is the only bit of physical reality we really understand. It is the rest of the physical world that is a mystery .’ 20 Or when he says: ‘Nonetheless, in having the experience [of pain] and thereby grasping its character, you have a complete [my italics] understanding of what it involves .’ 21

I leave it to the reader to judge whether my analysis of the possible ways out of the hard problem is correct, and also whether we should give any credit to the non-dualistic panpsychist programme

17 Indeed, insofar as I understand Papineau, he believes that those neuroscientists looking, say, for neural correlates of subjective experiences are thinking dualistically, still holding consciousness as something special to (human) animals. Papineau 2002: 22-3 also says that, when David Chalmers (1996: 134-6) argues that phenomenal properties can be identified with intrinsic properties of the physical realm, he, though a famous dualist, is giving the ‘optimal formulation of materialism’. Sea rle 2004 makes the case for what he terms ‘biological naturalism’, as follows: a. conscious states are real: they are a subjective ontology. It is impossible to show that they are an illusion (hard materialism); they cannot be reduced to neurobiological causes (supervenience); b. but conscious states are entirely caused by neurobiological processes; c. conscious states are realized in the brain system, i.e. at a higher level than that of individual neurons (which are not conscious); d. conscious states – real themselves – cause things in the world (contra epiphenomelists) ; e. therefore, we can make a causal but not an ontological reduction. 18 Goff 2019: 174. 19 Ibid.: 144ff. discusses the ‘combination problem’.

20 Ibid.: 131. 21 Ibid.: 180.

Editor’s introduction

proposed by Philip Goff. What I can say, though is that in this volume there are considerations of matter and of what matters – in art, in science, in technology, in therapy, in co-operation, in possibility. I commend to it to you as our very own de rerum natura , or res publica of ideas.

Bibliography

Chalmers, D. (1995) ‘ Facing up to the problem of consciousness’ , Journal of Consciousness Studies 2: 200-19 (1996) The Conscious Mind. Oxford Damasio, A. (2006) Descartes’ Error . London (2010) Self Comes to Mind . London (2021) Feeling and Knowing. Making Minds Conscious. London Dennett, D. (1991) Consciousness Explained . Boston (2013) Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking . London Dunbar, R. (2005) Evolutionary Psychology . London (2014) Human Evolution . London Eddington, A. (1928) The Nature of the Physical World . London Godfrey-Smith, P. (2017) Other Minds . The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life. London

Goff, P. (2019) Galileo’s Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness . London Jackson, F. (1982) ‘Epiphenomenal Qualia’, Philosophical Quarterly 32: 127-36 (1986) ‘What Mary didn’t know’, Journal of Philosophy 83: 291-5 Levine, J. (2001) Purple Haze: the Puzzle of Consciousness . Oxford Nagel, T. (1974) ‘What is it like to be a bat?’, Philosophical Review 83: 434-50 Papineau, D. (2002) Thinking about Consciousness . Oxford (2003) The Roots of Reason . Oxford Parfit, D. (1984) Reasons and Persons . Oxford

(2011) On What Matters. 2 vols. Oxford (2017) On What Matters. Vol. 3. Oxford Russell, B. (2009) ‘Physics and Neutral Monism’, in The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell (eds. R. Egner & L. Denonn; London), 589-96 [extracted from The Analysis of Matter , first published in 1927] Scanlon, T. (1998) What We Owe to Each Other . Cambridge, Ma. Searle, J. (2004) Mind: a brief introduction . Oxford Seth, A. (2021) Being You . A New Science of Consciousness . London Singer, P. (1981) The Expanding Circle . Princeton (2011 3 ) Practical Ethics. Cambridge ed. (2016) Does Anything Really Matter? Essays on Parfit on Objectivity. Oxford

Solms, M. (2021) The Hidden Spring . London Sperber, D. (1996) Explaining Culture . Oxford

& Mercier, H. (2017) The Enigma of Reason. A New Theory of Human Understanding . London

Skinner, B. (1971) Beyond Freedom and Dignity , New York Tomasello, M. (2014) A Natural History of Human Thinking . Cambridge, Ma. Wrangham, R. (2009) Catching Fire . London

Contents

Jumpers by Tom Stoppard: modern or postmodern? DIEGO LACHEZE-BIER

The Theory of Everything: are we almost there? RATHAN SUBRAMANIAN

The evolution of the electrochemical battery CAMILLE BORDES

Autonomous vehicles AMJAD KHAN

34 Liberty’s ‘ terror ’: prosecution for political dissent in England during the decade of the French Revolution JOE WILLIAMS

Die Verlobung in St. Domingo : a critique of European colonialism? SASHA STRIGO

Virtual reality, augmented reality and surgical training MICHAEL WONG

Methods of training neural networks RORY PROBERT

The maintenance of capitalism: a political and philosophical analysis EMILIO NUNZI

The nonlinear behaviour of a periodically forced guitar string SHIWEI ZHANG

79 Accelerating modernization or unjust oppression? Chinese control of Tibet since Hu Yaobangs’ reforms in 1980 DAN RAWKINS

Political and social change in Spain in the films of Pedro Almodóvar CIARAN ROBBINS

Chirality JEFFERSON XUE

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Should North and South Korea reunify? WILFRED WHITELEY

Universal basic income or the minimum wage? MAX DAVIS

112

Evaluating the environmental impact of electric cars SINAI RHODES

118

The limits and benefits of liberal democracy RYAN BHASKAR

123

Stem cell therapies as an alternative to current medical practices LOUIS NG

138

Stem cell therapies and Alzheimer’s Disease SAMEER KHALIL

157

Investigating P vs. NP and its effects METE IYIGUYN

161

The cultural impact of Gutenberg’s printing press NICHOLAS DUTFIELD

165

Epigenetic therapies and morphine addiction CHRISTOPHER PATON

173

Capitalism and imperialism: a Marxist perspective ARJAAN MIAH

187

Can glucose-responsive insulin remove the threat of growing diabetes cases? JEDEDIAH BEFEKADU

192

Inequality and the wealth tax DANIEL MULCAHY

196 To what extent can developments in particle therapy revolutionize cancer treatment? TEYMOUR TAJ

201

Using RRT to solve the piano mover’s problem TOM CHEN

211

What makes Tesla cars so technologically advanced? THOMAS CHAPMAN

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220

Minitel and Videotex PENN MACKINTOSH

224

Modernist perversions: The Waste Land and history JAMIE CHONG

228

Francis Bacon and T.S. Eliot SAM STEWART

244

Should the breeding of brachycephalic dog breeds be banned in the UK? EDWARD STARR

249

Quantum gravity: loops or strings? KONSTANTINOS DORAN

254

Bacteriophage therapy and s uperbug infections OLIVER J. XUE

280

Cerenkov radiation: particles can travel faster than light, and why that matters FIONN MILHENCH

283

The magical rea lism of Márquez’s Cien años de soledad WILLIAM LORD

286

Technocalypse I EKOW AMOAH

Jumpers by Tom Stoppard: modern or postmodern?

Diego Lacheze-Bier

Stoppard’s Jumpers , after its first performance in 1972, was met with mixed reviews. Praised as ‘Stoppard’s most ambitious work’ , 1 many appreciated the play for its attempt to tackle profound philosophical ideas, while others suggested the opposite, that these ideas where outdated, lacking nuance and that the play was far more effective in its portrayal of ‘ the collapse of a dysfunctional marriage ’ than anything else. 2 While many had, and continue to have, strong opinions on the quality of the work, none has come to a definite conclusion on its classification as a modernist or postmodernist play. While Jumpers sits chronologically in the early days of the postmodern period, it does not have the same blatant postmodernist tones as some of Stoppard’s other works, such as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1966). The play shares conventional characteristics of both genres, and, problematically, while Stoppard is acutely interested in postmodernist concepts and explores them through their very own language, he is often critical of them and so one must be careful when labelling his plays as postmodernist themselves. 3 This essay aims to explore the various features of Jumpers in order to judge its position within the two fields of drama. To begin with, it is helpful to define what makes a play modernist or postmodernist, though the latter clearly exists in some relation to the former. Modernist writing is a response to the rapid and dramatic social and economic changes of the late 19 th and early 20 th century, both in Britain and internationally. The numerous wars and the problems associated with accelerated technological advancement characterize Modernism as a literature not only of change but of crisis. 4 Writers began to reject traditional, accepted ideas, choosing to explore the world and the future of humanity through new forms of expression, through a more critical, nuanced lens. Individualism emerged, which suggested both that the individual is more important than society, and that society is a threat to the integrity of the individual. There was a break from traditional literary form, in particular in the use of stream-of- consciousness narration. Absurdity, a nonsensical style of writing meant to reflect a world constantly struggling to achieve true meaning, became more common. Modernism proposed that truth could only be achieved – if at all – through reason and science. In other words, rational empiricism was seen as more trustworthy than the sorts of metanarratives which pervaded contemporary culture. The conventional notion of a hero fell away, replaced with the anti-hero, a protagonist who may act virtuously but without virtuous motivation. 5 In summary, modernism in literature discarded traditional, hegemonic literary ideas and form.

1 See Hinden 1981: 4. 2 Billington, Jumpers. 3 See Kelly 2001: 213. 4 Sarkar, Modernism: Definition, Philosophy, Characteristics, Examples in Literature. 5 Sherif, Features of Literary Modernism.

Jumpers

Postmodernism exists, as the name suggests, as a development, or in many cases a criticism, of modernist philosophical ideas. While modernism mourns the loss of certainty while at the same time striving to achieve universal truths through a rational approach, postmodernism actively encourages and revels in the notion of there being no truth whatsoever. Meaning and truth become fragmented as they only exist temporarily and subjectively – truth is in the individual perception of reality rather than in anything concrete. 6 These beliefs expose themselves through literature in a complete repudiation of realism and representation; no form of literature can portray reality effectively. Irony and playfulness became central to postmodernist literature, even when dealing with serious themes, as postmodernist authors saw profundity as yet another injection of presupposed moral values into their work. The use of pastiche, intertextuality, and metafiction all served to remind the reader or audience that the piece of literature was not a true reflection of reality and that the authorial intention mattered very little. 7 Finally, once again in order to undermine the concept of representation, writers introduced magical realism into their work, breaking up an otherwise ‘ordinary’ narrative with the insertion of strange or even impossible occurrences. 8 Postmodernist literature, in accordance with postmodernist philosophy, aimed to eliminate objective interpretation through a variety of literary techniques. Stoppard’s Jumpers is a play directly concerned with philosophy, as George Moore, the protagonist, is a moral philosophy professor. His faculty members are part of an acrobatics team, the so-called ‘Jumpers’. Archie is the vice chancellor of the university and represents th e philosophical position of the entire faculty, a position with which George alone disagrees. George’s wife, Dorothy or ‘Dotty’, is aptly named; once a talented singer, her romantically idealistic perception of the moon is shattered by the broadcast of a lunar expedition. She is left depressed and unstable. Archie is a consistent comfort to Dotty as she sees him regularly, often without George’s knowledge, who is apathetic towards his wife’s mental state. A performance of the Jumpers at the Moore’s house en ds with the murder of one of the gymnasts, later revealed to be Duncan McFee, a rival philosopher. Inspector Bones visits the Moore residence to look for clues. Despite suspecting Dotty, whose condition is widely known, his idolization of the ex-singer distracts him, and the case is never solved. The play is interspersed with long speeches on philosophy by George as he dictates notes to his mute secretary. The play ends with a dream-like coda in which George and Archie present their views in a symposium, the latter speaking mostly nonsense and calling forth impossible and fictional witnesses to provide testimony. The various techniques employed in Jumpers highlight Stoppard’s ability to fluently combine modernism and postmodernism, and their diversity is part of the reason why it is so hard to define the play as either genre. George assumes the role of the anti-hero common to both modernist and postmodernist literature. As the central character, Stoppard invites the audience to sympathize with him in his qu est to answer his own question ‘Is God?’ (I, pp. 15 – 16). He explains, as he dictates to his secretary, that the question ‘Does God exist?’ (I, pp. 15 -16) is flawed in that it suggests the possibility of there not being a god of some kind, a notion which he finds unacceptable. His statement that ‘the question will not go away’ (I, p. 17) is problematic, as it quickly becomes clear that he exists in a world that has long surpassed that question – a world governed by the ‘Rad - Libs’, who violate the sanctity of

6 Drake, Modernism vs. Postmodernism. 7 What is postmodernism? What are the characteristics of Postmodern Literature? 8 Magical realism

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‘God’ by appointing their ‘spokesman for Agriculture’ (I, p. 28) as Archbishop of Canterbury. The question, therefore, of ‘Is God?’, which George claims to be a reoccurring one, seems only to replay within his own mind. The moral and philosophical beli efs at the core of George’s life are under threat, and so he is driven to justify them by answering this constant, nagging question, and yet he never can. The play is punctuated with his lengthy and often tenuous arguments in favour of faith and moral absolutes, not as a reflection of his incompetence but to show just how desperately he desires to provide some justification for his beliefs in the face of a society hostile to those same principles. The audience certainly sympathizes with his plight, and yet, as with any anti-hero, his flaws are often irritating. His messy argumentation, which he himself describes as ‘necrophiliac rubbish’ (I, p. 16) in a bout of frustration, are often incomprehensible and dull, while he displays a significant lack of empathy in his continued shunning of Dotty, at one time describing her episodes of mania as ‘childish nonsense’ (I, p. 19). George is an anti-hero, and more so a modernist one, as his flaws thwart the pursuit of Reason, the goal of the ‘modernist philosopher’. Indeed, George’s long and chaotic monologues, which might as well be soliloquys as the presence of the silent secretary has very little effect on George nor on the audience, echo the reintroduction of stream-of-consciousness narration present in other modernist texts, such as Joyce’s Ulysses (1922). 9 Other modernist aspects to the play include the absurdity of the c oda, with Archie’s nonsensical speech, such as ‘if goons in mood, by Gad is sin different or banned good, f’r’instance’ (coda, p. 73), as well as the non-sequiturs in dialogue throughout the play. Stoppard also makes use of many postmodernist literary techniques, yet they influence the mood more strongly than the modernist ones. He employs pastiche, combining the ‘ whodunnit ’ murder mystery of McFe e’s death 10 with the tragedy of not only Dotty’s situation as she deteriorates mentally, trapped in an apathetic marriage, but of George, condemned to fruitless ruminations and paralysed in the complexities of his own thought. All this, along with the burgeoning romance between Dotty and Archie and the ironic comedy infused into every line of the play, create a characteristically postmodernist undertone which offers little certainty and assurance to the audience. The irony is comically apparent at times; Stoppard’s precise description of the setting, so that ‘when [the door] is wide open the inside of it is hidden from the audience’, means that the body of McFee, attached to the back of the bedroom door, is clearly visible to the audience when the door is closed and George is not present in the room, but as George enters, the door opens and the body is obscured from his view. This results in him being blissfully ignorant of a corpse, and therefore a murder, even as Bones questions him about it. Crouch, the caretaker, la ments to George that he’d ‘made quite a friend of him’, implying the ‘him’ to be McFee, and yet George assumes he means his missing rabbit, and replies ‘do you real ize she’s [Dotty’s] in there now, eating him?’ (II, p. 67), much to the surprise of Crouch a nd the amusement of the audience. The comedic irony both serves to suggest that McFee’s death is in fact rather meaningless, but also symbolically represents the postmodernist notion of subjective truth, as George, who never actually sees the body, lives in a different, yet equally as authentic, reality. The symposium, ‘in bizarre dream form’ ( coda stage direction) is an example of postmodernist magic realism and characterize s the final atmosphere of the play as one of confusion and futility. So, Stoppard’s use of techniques belonging to both modern and postmodern drama create a play with significant modernist character but with an undeniably postmodernist undercurrent.

9 Stream of consciousness . 10 See Hinden 1981: 5.

Jumpers

The philosophy behind Jumpers is far more enlightening than are the techniques, as its points towards a fundamental criticism of both postmodernism and m odernism. George’s entire preoccupation is with the existence of a God, as without a Being of greater consciousness, moral absolutes dissolve into disarray. McFee, George’s opponent, is a mor al relativist, and proposes the opposite – ‘that moral judgements belong to the same class as aesthetic judgements’ (I, p. 43); morality is dependent on what society deems good or bad and is a reflection of contemporary sensibilities. Such a perspective on the world, George argues, is at odds with the ‘irreducible fact of goodness’ (I, p. 46) and is symptomatic of a pervasive moral emptiness and ethical chaos plaguing his world. 11 McFee’s ideology is strikingly similar to postmodernism, as the two suggest that objective truth, and thus objective morality, is a fallacy. On the other hand, both the ‘Rad - Libs’ and the other philosophers of his faculty brand themselves as ‘logical positivists’, or empiricists, and George’s revolt against both groups is therefore by proxy a revolt against modernist ideals of reason and rationality. These ideals are responsible in Jumpers for society’s lack of order, and ultimately the desire to land on the moon, which collapses Dotty’s psyche as her idealistic perception of the un iverse is disrupted. Even the Jumpers themselves are symbols of rampant moral gymnastics, 12 with their leader, Archie, embodying the insidiousness of seemingly arbitrary philosophy. Jumpers is an intrinsically critical play. Stoppard’s union of both moder nist and postmodernist dramatic technique is masterful, yet it doesn’t automatically define the text as belonging to either set. His implicit criticism of both ideologies suggests the play itself exists outside of either genre, using their techniques only as a platform from which Stoppard can more fluidly undermine them.

Bibliography

Billington, M. Jumpers. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2003/jun/20/theatre.artsfeatures1 Consulted: 21/08/21 Drake, T. Modernism vs. Postmodernism Modernism vs Postmodernism (uidaho.edu) Consulted: 21/08/21 Durham, W. (1980) ‘Symbolic Action in Tom Stoppard’s “Jumpers”’, Theatre Journal 32(2): 169-179 Hinden, M. (1981) ‘Jumpers: Stoppard and the Theater of Exhaustion’, Twentieth-Century Literature 1(1): 1-15 Kelly, K. (2001) The Cambridge Companion to Tom Stoppard. Cambridge Magical realism. magic realism | Definition, Authors, & Facts | Britannica Consulted: 22/08/21 Sarkar, S. Modernism: Definition, Philosophy, Characteristics, Examples in Literature. Modernism | Definition, Philosophy, Characteristics, Examples in Literature - All About English Literature (eng- literature.com) Consulted: 21/08/21 Sherif, A. Features of Literary Modernism. Features of Literary Modernism | Sherif Ali - Academia.edu Consulted: 21/08/21 Stream of consciousness. stream of consciousness | Definition, Authors, Books, Examples, & Facts | Britannica Consulted: 22/08/21 What is postmodernism? What are the characteristics of Postmodern Literature? What is postmodernism? What are the Characteristics of Postmodern Literature? | Literary Articles (literary-articles.com) Consulted: 21/08/21

11 See Durham 1980: 172. 12 See Durham 1980: 171.

The Theory of Everything: are we almost there?

Rathan Subramanian

The Theory of Everything 1 is a hypothesized framework consisting of the fundamental laws of the universe from which all laws can be derived and is generally considered the holy grail of physics. Since the advent of relativity and quantum mechanics in the early 20 th century, the objective of many theoretical physicists has been finding a theory of everything by uniting the four fundamental interactions (namely the weak, strong, electromagnetic, and gravitational interactions). Today, the weak, strong, and electromagnetic forces have been explained quantum mechanically in electroweak theory, quantum chromodynamics and quantum electrodynamics (QED) respectively. However, the leading framework to describe the gravitational force is general relativity. Therefore, many believe that a unification between general relativity and quantum mechanics and hence a unification all four interactions is the last step toward a theory of everything.

This proposed unified theory of general relativity and quantum mechanics is known as quantum gravity. 2 However, there are clearly incompatible ideas in the two constituent theories that make quantum gravity as a simple combination of general relativity and quantum mechanics impossible.

8𝜋𝐺 𝑐 4

𝐺 𝜇𝜈 +𝑔 𝜇𝜈 Λ=

𝑇 𝜇𝜈

The above equations are Einstein’s field equations 3 which are the central equations describing the predictions of general relativity. 4 In general relativity, Einstein united the initially separate concepts of space and time into a singular 4-dimensional mutable space-time and proposed that the presence of matter 5 will distort the geometry of space-time which is what we observe as a gravitational field. In this equation, 𝑇 𝜇𝜈 , known as the stress-energy tensor, is the mathematical description of energy and momentum present in a point in space time and 𝐺 𝜇𝜈 is the Einstein tensor which describes the curvature of space-time at a point. Therefore, this equation predicted that when there is energy and momentum at a point in space, the local space-time must be distorted. In this interpretation we ignore the 𝑔 𝜇𝜈 Λ term as this term accounts for dark matter and the expansion of the universe and is negligible the majority of the time. When this space-time curvature is accounted for at all points in space-time, it results in a continuous gravitational field. On the other hand, one of the key ideas in quantum mechanics is that energy can be quantized into discrete indivisible packets known as quanta. Based upon this notion, the standard model was created in which all forms of known matter can be subdivided into a series of quarks and leptons, with forces being mediated by virtual particles known as gauge bosons and mass being a property of the Higgs 1 See Mann 2019. 2 See Wood 2019. 3 See Einstein Field Equations (General Relativity) (2019) 4 This is plural as the equation shown above is the contracted form of 10 equations. 5 Space-time can be curved by mass or energy as they are proven to be equivalent for bodies at rest by E=mc 2 .

Theory of Everything

Boson. Furthermore, quantum mechanics suggests is that all matter has an associated wave function which governs the physical properties of the matter which is given by the Schrödinger equation:

∂ ∂𝑡

𝑖ℏ

Ψ(𝑟, 𝑡) = 𝐻̂Ψ(𝑟, 𝑡)

This equation is a differential equation and is essentially a statement of the conservation of energy for a particle. The momentum of a particle can be calculated using the wavelength of the wave function, and the modulus squared of this wave function describes probability density function of the particle. From this fact, we can derive the Heisenberg uncertainty principle which states that the momentum and position of a particle cannot be measured with an infinite accuracy simultaneously (they are non- commutable). This is because, in order for position to be measured with high accuracy, there must be a single distinct peak in the probability density function of the particle. However, as the Hamiltonian ( 𝐻̂ ) is a linear operator, this wave function can be represented as the sum of many other wave functions using a Fourier transformation. As each of the constituent wave functions have different wavelength and therefore correspond to a different momentum, the momentum is known to a higher uncertainty. These ideas cause conflict between the two frameworks as, firstly, general relativity is defined by the stress-energy tensor at a point. 6 However, by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics, this is impossible, as the stress-energy tensor has information about the momentum at a point in space-time which are non-commutable quantities. Moreover, for gravity to be represented like other forces in quantum mechanics, the gravitational field must be quantized into a boson referred to as the graviton. This is an issue because the gravitational field, by definition, is a continuous quantity, whereas the graviton is discrete. Furthermore, if such a particle did exist and represented the curvature of space-time due to energy, the particle itself would have energy and would therefore curve space-time itself, generating more gravitons. This self-reproducing nature of gravitons would lead to the infinite reproduction of gravitons and therefore infinite energy. Although this same issue occurs in QED when an electron interacts with itself due to its charge affecting the local electric field, it is circumvented using perturbation theory and renormalization which simplifies the interaction with a series of adjustments after a weak disturbance to the system. However, in order for renormalization to be successful, highly precise measurements of relevant quantities are required but, owing to the inability to measure precisely the gravitational field at a point, we say that gravity is non-renormalizable and therefore the infinite energies that are calculated cannot be renormalized to sensible values unlike in QED. Finally, quantum mechanics is not background independent (it assumes a flat space travelling through time) and treats time independent of space which is contrary to the teachings of general r elativity’s mutable space-time and its background independent equations. 7 One proposed solution to the problems with quantum gravity is known as loop quantum gravity. 8 Loop quantum gravity addresses the issue of background independence by proposing to describe the quantum evolution of space-time by describing the change over time of 3d space slices taken out of the 4d space-time in a similar way to how wave functions describe the motion of particles.

6 See Odenwald: What is it about quantum mechanics that is incompatible with general relativity? 7 The Schrödinger equation treats time and space independently proven by how there are both temporal derivatives and spatial derivatives in the Hamiltonian operator contrary to the teachings of relativity. 8 See Loop Quantum Gravity explained (2019).

Theory of Everything

𝛿 2 𝛿 𝛾𝑖𝑗 𝛿 𝛾𝑘𝑙

− 𝑅 3 (𝛾)𝛾 1/2 +2Λ𝛾 1/2 ]Ψ[𝛾

[−𝐺 𝑖𝑗𝑘𝑙

𝑖𝑗 ]=0

The equation shown above is known as the Wheeler-DeWitt equation which mathematically describes this idea. However, this equation is unsolvable using our normal metrics of space-time curvature but only using mathematical objects known as Ashketar variables. Ashketar variables are quanta of angular momentum which will change orientation depending on the curvature of space-time and the path of the quanta and therefore acts as a representation of the curvature of space-time itself. When these variables are used to solve the Wheeler-DeWitt equation, the result is a quantum field of gravity which is resemblant of other quantum fields in quantum field theory. Although, in order to do so, these Ashketar variable needed to be evaluated over closed loops and hence the name, loop quantum gravity. Therefore, any geometry of 3d space can be represented as a formation of these loops known as spin networks. An implication of the quantization of space-time is that there is a smallest length and minimum time, namely the Planck time and Planck time respectively, that are indivisible. The theory of loop quantum gravity has many merits such as its merger of quantum mechanics and general relativity without the need for inductive leaps like other theories of quantum gravity. Moreover, loop quantum gravity is consistent with Hawking and Beckenstein’s equations for black hole entropy. However, as a result of the quantization of space, another prediction of loop quantum gravity is the speed of light is slightly slower for higher frequencies of light compared to lower frequencies due to higher frequencies’ faster oscillations being impeded by the ‘ granular ’ space-time it travels through. However, this was tested using a gamma ray burst and measuring at which points in time different frequencies of light reach us and during this test there was no clear difference between the arrival times of different frequencies of light. (However, this could be due to being unable to measure the difference in time at high enough precision.) A second theory of quantum gravity is known as M theory 9 which is the successor to super string theory. It postulates that all particles are, in reality, a series of open and closed strings with varying modes of oscillation rather than the point particles that we currently conceptualize them as. These strings can describe the properties of all fundamental particles in the standard model and how they evolve in time, however, it also predicts the existence of the graviton and the axion which in theory would solve both quantum gravity as well as our uncertainty on dark matter. However, in order for this theory to be mathematically viable, these strings must be oscillating in 11 dimensions which is contrary to the 3 spatial and 1 temporal dimensions we observe. Therefore, theoretical physicists suggests that these unseen dimensions are actually entwined among one another on the Planck scale and that we are just currently unable to observe them. This assumption can explain certain phenomena that we observe such as the relative weak strength of the gravitational force when compared to the other fundamental forces which is due to the graviton being able to move through more dimensions that the other gauge bosons and therefore having a lesser effect on the dimensions we can observe. Moreover, in 1997 Juan Maldacena published a paper which addressed AdS/CFT conformality. 10 AdS, referring to anti-de Sitter

9 See String Theory. 10 See AdS/CFT correspondence.

Theory of Everything

spaces which is commonly used in string theory, and CFT, referring to conformal field theory, which is a form of quantum field theory, are united in this paper further giving credibility to M theory.

Nevertheless, there are several shortcomings to this theory. Firstly, in order for M theory to predict the particles we observe, the extra dimensions must be intertwined in specific ways which leads to the question as to why that particular arrangement is adopted by the universe as opposed to the other arrangements. Moreover, due to M theory still being a mathematical conception, there is no experimental evidence to suggest its accuracy. This is a real issue, as the conception of string theory itself revolves around a series of inductive leaps such as the reimagination of particles as strings and the forceful introduction of new dimensions without proof. This is further exemplified by the prediction of supersymmetry 11 which suggests that every fermion has a bosonic counterpart with a spin that differs by a half and, as of yet, these particles have been observed despite the decades of attempts to find them in particle accelerators. Moreover, in order to be a theory of everything, the final iteration of string theory must be fully described using only the fundamental facts of nature which is highly unlikely as it is built upon the teachings of QFT which is a highly approximated and parametrized theory. Despite the promise of solving quantum gravity in loop quantum gravity and M theory’s candidacy for a theory of everything, some suggest that a theory of everything may not even exist. Gödel ’s incompleteness theorem 12 suggests that there are no fixed number of fundamental axioms in mathematics and therefore, extending it to physics, argued that there are no finite number of fundamental truths that can describe the universe in its entirety. Therefore, it is plausible that, even with the completion of a theory of quantum gravity, we are no closer to finding a theory of everything, simply because it doesn’t exist. Ultimately, although quantum mechanics and general relativity seem irreconcilable due to fundamental differences, there are many theories of quantum gravity which appear to be promising. However, owing to the lack of evidence despite the many years of searching, it is highly unlikely that we will be able to develop a theory of everything in the foreseeable future: even if such a theory is conceptualized, there will be no way to verify it due to our current technological inadequacy and we are even unsure as to whether it can even exist.

Bibliography

AdS/CFT correspondence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdS/CFT_correspondence. Consulted: 07/08/21 Einstein Field Equations (General Relativity) (2019) University of Warwick. https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/physics/intranet/pendulum/generalrelativity/.Consulted: 06/08/21 Gö del’s incompleteness theorems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems. Consulted: 07/08/21

11 See Supersymmetry (2021) . 12 See Gö del’s incompleteness theorems.

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