Transcriber: Tanya Cushman
Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs By a show of hands, how many people know
what the Deep Field observation is, by the Hubble telescope. How many have heard of that experiment? Okay, a few. Okay, in 2003, NASA decided that it
was going to take the Hubble Telescope, and it was going to point it
at a little dark patch of sky. So, it had already done
a low-resolution map of the cosmos. What they wanted to see is, what if we took this finely honed lens and we find a little patch of sky - about the size of a pencil tip
at arm's length - where there's nothing there, and we point it there
for a really long time, would we be able to see a star there
where it looks like there's nothing? So what they did, starting in 2003, is every time the Hubble
came around the Earth, they pointed the lens there for 20 minutes to collect any lonely photons trickling in
from the distant reaches of the universe. And they did this 400 times. And in the end, they took all of this data
and they compiled it, and they put together what was there
in that little patch of space, and they didn't find a star. What they found were 10,000 galaxies. A galaxy contains 100 billion stars. So that's 1,000 trillion stars
that are all just like our sun, right? And they have innumerable solar systems
and planets going around and life forms that we can't even imagine. That's what's teeming
behind this little patch of black space. Now, if you mapped out
the whole cosmos at that resolution, it would take a million years. So, I think this a really good
consciousness raiser to start thinking about the size,
the enormity of the mysteries that surround us. So I've spent my entire life in science, and I figured if we want to understand
the mysterious existence that we have, there's no better way
than to study the blueprint. So that's what I've been doing. And science has been
tremendously successful. We've been able to get men
to stand on the moon, and we've cured smallpox and polio, and we've invented the internet, and we've tripled life spans. But what you really learn
from life in science is when you get to the end of the pier
of everything we know in science, when you get to the end
and you stand there, you see that beyond,
it's all uncharted waters. It's all the stuff that we don't know; it's the vast mysteries around us, like dark matter and dark energy, or why mass and energy are equivalent, or how you build consciousness
from pieces and parts, or what the fabric of reality is, or what life and death are about. These are all the things that are beyond
the end of the pier in science. And what you really learn
from a life in science is the vastness of our ignorance. Now, we will, as we move forward, continue to build slats out
and get a little bit more each year, but in fact, it's a giant ocean
that's in front of us. And so there's no guarantee
how far we'll get, and certainly in our brief twinkling
of a 21st century lifetime, we're not going to get that far. So we're confronted
with these very deep mysteries. Now, given that situation, I've been very interested
by these recent books by the neo-atheists. So, these are very important
and insightful books, but I think they've left the public
with a misconception, that scientists don't have the capacity
to gamble beyond the available data, that scientists are acting
as though we've got it all figured out: E = mc², F = ma - we sort of get it. We get how to describe
the cosmos in equations, or if we don't know how yet, we're pretty sure
that our toolbox will capture it. But I actually think that's not
a very good description of science. Science, actually,
is extremely open-minded: it doesn't throw out
the baby with the bathwater, where the baby is all the awe
and the mystery that drew us into science
in the first place. So science, instead, is very comfortable
holding multiple ideas in mind, saying, "Well, it might be this,
it might be this." The scientific temperament
is one of creativity, making up lots of narratives, and then trying to find evidence
to weigh in favor of one over others, but sometimes you just
can't find evidence. There are many questions
that are beyond the toolbox of science, and in those cases, we're perfectly comfortable holding on
to all of those different narratives. There's not a strict need to commit. So that's what really happens in science, and so I've been a little concerned about this voice from the books
by the neo-atheists, whether this is how science
is going to be represented. I think that we know too little
to commit to a position of strict atheism where we act as though
we've got it all figured out. On the other end of the spectrum, I think that we know way too much to commit to a particular
religious position. There are 2,000 religions on the planet, and as has been pointed out
by the neo-atheists, everybody already knows
what it's like to be an atheist because all you need to do
is look at someone else's religion, and you say, "Well, that's patently
ridiculous you would believe in that." And of course, they're looking back at you
and thinking exactly the same thing. So there are problems with committing
to any particular religion. The holy books
of these different religions were written millennia ago by people who didn't know
about the size of the cosmos and the big bang and bacterial infection
and DNA and hallucinations and the fabric of reality - they didn't know any of this stuff. They didn't even know much
about neighboring landscapes or cultures. Now, what's funny is, every time
I sit next to somebody on an airplane, I always ask them, "Hey, have you heard of
the Hubble Deep Field observation?" Nobody has. But everybody's willing to defend
their particular religious story. You don't have to be an anthropologist to realize that brains absorb
whatever culture has poured into them. So if you're born in Saudi Arabia,
you're going to love Islam, and if you're born in Rome,
you're going to love Catholicism, and Tel Aviv, Judaism; in India, Hinduism; in Springfield, Ohio,
you're going to love Protestantism. And it's no coincidence that you don't find
a big blossoming of Islam in the middle of Springfield, Ohio, and you don't find a blossoming
of Protestantism in Saudi Arabia. If there were one truth, you would expect it might
spread everywhere evenly, but in fact, we are products
of our culture. That should be clear. The strange part is that people are willing
to fight and die over this product, over the product
of what gets poured into them and the stories they're told. Now, Ralph Waldo Emerson pointed out that the religious stories
of one generation become the literary
entertainment of the next, right? So, think about Isis and Osiris
or the Greek or Roman panoplies. Nobody's fighting and dying
over that anymore - not too much. (Laughter) But I'm going to give you
an example of this. I don't know if anyone's heard
of the creation story from the Bakuba Kingdom in the Congo. But their creation story goes like this: There was originally
a white giant named Mbombo, and Mbombo had a sharp pain in his belly and vomited up the stars
and the moon and the earth. I'm not making this up. And then he had -
he was not over his illness - he had another pain in his belly
and vomited again, and this time produced the people
and the animals and the trees. And included in this second ejection was, and I quote, "The leopard,
the eagle, the anvil, woman, the monkey Fumu, firmament, medicine, man and lightning." So, if you find the creation story
of the Bakuba Kingdom an unlikely explanation
for how we actually got here, just consider that if you were
of the Bakuba Kingdom, you would look at the Western story of the naked couple and the talking snake
and the prohibited produce, (Laughter) (Applause) and you would find that
equally bizarre, right? And if you were Bakuba
and you were living in Kansas, you would be fighting to put this
in your children's text books, right? (Laughter) (Applause) So, I'm not suggesting that the story of Adam and Eve is suspect
because there are competing stories; I'm suggesting it is suspect because the available scientific evidence
weighs so strongly against it. So, the Earth is about
4.5 billion years old, by the best of our estimates now. The Biblical account
says it's 6,000 years old. Well, that's a problem because it has to account for
why the Japanese were making pottery and the Magdalenians
were painting cave paintings and the Persians were domesticating goats 4,000 years before the planet existed. So there are problems here, and I think that we could
sort of safely say that we know maybe too little
to commit to strict atheism, but we know way too much to commit
to any particular religious story. So that puts me somewhere in the middle. And what has surprised me is the amount of certainty that you find
when you walk into a bookstore. So I walk in, and I find the books
by the neo-atheists and the books by
the fundamentally religious, and those are your only choices. What happens is these are
very smart people on both sides that spend all of their energies
polarizing each other and arguing against each other's details. And I feel like there should be
another voice in there somewhere, because in fact, if you imagine
the space of possibilities - it's enormous, right? I mean, you've got
all sorts of possibilities for what might be going on. So imagine this space, and take
the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition. That's one point
in this possibility space. And take the Eastern religions - another point in the possibility space. And take the idea that we're just atoms, and when we die,
we shut off and we scatter - another point in the possibility space. And if you start populating this, you see that there are
giant landscapes in between of possible stories
that might be going on, and I feel like there's not enough
discussion about this; instead, there's this false dichotomy
about God versus no God, which I think is much too limited, really,
for a modern discussion. So for myself, I'm finding myself
in this middle position. Now, some people call that agnosticism, which is a term that I think
is sort of a weak term because the way that it's typically used, people mean, "Well, I'm not certain if the guy with the beard on the cloud
exists or doesn't exist." That's typically what they mean: whatever was poured into my head,
you know, I have my doubts about it. So I don't call myself an agnostic; I call myself a Possibilian. And the idea - (Laughter) The idea with Possibilianism is an active
exploration that's poured into my head - you know, I have my doubts about it. So I don't call myself an agnostic;
I call myself a Possibilian, And the idea - (Laughter) the idea with Possibilianism is an active exploration
of this giant space, trying to make up new narratives
and figure out new stories rather than getting caught
in this false dichotomy. So Possibilianism is now one year old. (Laughter) And I first announced it
in a live interview on NPR a year ago; I defined it and talked about it, and I left the studio and got in my truck, and I drove back to my laboratory
at Baylor College of Medicine, and I settle in for a day's work, and I open my inbox, and I had hundreds of emails from people saying, "Hey, I think
I'm a Possibilian too." (Laughter) (Applause) So I googled the word,
and it turned out that it didn't exist; there were zero hits. So I did what anybody would do: I bought possibilian.com, (Laughter) and then I waited and watched
to see what happened. Well, what happened was amazing. What happened was Facebook groups started; it went all over the blogosphere; there were articles published
by The New York Times and MSNBC. The Uganda Sunday Times just published
a huge article on Possibilianism. It's gone all over the world. If you now google it,
there are 10,000 hits, and it's really caught on in some way. It's really caught fire. Now, one thing I noticed: on the radio, I said "Possibilian," but people misheard or misremembered, so other groups started popping up too. They call themselves
"possibilitarians" or "probabilians," and they spelled it
any way you can imagine. And I thought, "That's perfect. That's right in the Possibilian spirit - spell it anyway you want to." (Laughter) So the thing I started wondering about is, Why, why has this caught on
as a worldwide movement? Because keep in mind,
it's a joke movement, right? We specifically don't subscribe
to anything, so why is this catching on? And I think it's because maybe people
are getting a little bit tired of the debates between Dawkins
and the Discovery Institute, maybe people are getting
a little bit tired of the certainty that is proposed about topics
that one can't possibly be certain on. So, Voltaire said, "Doubt
is an uncomfortable position, but certainty is an absurd position." So I think that maybe it's the time when there's just the right groundswell
for this sort of idea. Now, I want to clarify a couple
of points about Possibilianism. Sometimes when I talk
about this, people will say, "Hey, that's terrific that Possibilianism
is about anything goes. I'm so glad you're a Possibilian because
then you get what I'm talking about" - with ESP or crystals or whatever. It's not anything goes. (Laughter) It's anything goes at first. And then what we do is we import
the tools of science, right? So it would be terrific
if ESP existed; we'd all love that. But to the extent that
we're currently able to do it, we've tested these sorts of things and can't find any evidence
to weigh in favor of it. So Possibilianism, you can actually
take the tools of science and rigorously try to rule out
parts of the possibility space as well as open up new parts
of the possibility space. And really, the interesting part
of the possibilium comes where science leaves off, where we're no longer able to test things, and instead, we're at the point
that's beyond science's toolbox. That's a really interesting part
of the possibility space. And I think the reason that we know
that we need to be creative and come up with new narratives and have tolerance for multiple ideas is because there is so much
that we're missing, and we're aware of the amount
that we're missing. So in every generation, scientists have always felt that they
sort of have all the pieces of the puzzle: okay, we can take Newtonian physics,
Einsteinian physics and quantum mechanics, put it all together -
we sort of got all the pieces. We should be able to get it all from here. But it has never ever been true
in the history of humankind yet that we've had all the puzzle pieces. So just imagine trying to understand
something like the Northern Lights before you understand
what the magnetosphere is, or how muscles work before you understand
the concept of electricity, or how the heart works before the concept
of a pump was understood. You would make theories,
have all kinds of ideas, but they would be doomed to be incorrect. And we know that's the situation we're in. First, there's all the stuff
that we don't even know we don't know. But the thing I want to emphasize is that there's a lot
that we know for sure we don't know. (Laughter) So take for example
the concept of dark matter. So what happens is astrophysicists
look out in the sky, they look at the gravitational pull
of everything they can see, they figure out where
it's supposed to be going, and it turns out the equations
don't quite work out. So there's this fudge factor
of dark matter where you say, "Well, in order
for the equations to work out, we'll assume there's something
out there we can't detect in any way - we just can't see it,
we don't know what it is - but it must be there, and it's causing all this gravitational
pull that we can't account for. But it's not a fudge factor exactly. Ninety percent of the known universe
is what we call "dark matter." (Laughter) So what this means is we're sweeping
a lot under the rug; we know that there's a lot
we don't understand. And what I study every day
when I go into the lab is this: this is the human brain. It's three pounds. It's the most complex thing
we have ever found in the universe. It's made of hundreds of billions
of pieces and parts. They are connected in such density that if you took a little
cubic millimeter of brain tissue, there are more connections in there than there are stars
in the Milky Way galaxy. So it's an incredibly complex system, and yet somehow this wet
biological network is you. It's all your hopes
and aspirations and dreams, every piece of love you've ever felt, hunger, joy - everything. This is you. And the reason we know this is because if you lose a part
of your pinkie, you're no different, but if you lose a piece
of brain tissue of that size, you're a completely different person. It changes you; it changes
your conscious state; it changes who you are. So we know that somehow
you are this thing, but what we do not know
is how to take mechanical pieces and parts and build it in such a way so that there's private,
subjective experience. If I gave you a trillion Tinkertoys, and I said, "Okay, put them together
so this turns that and ..." At what point do you add
one more Tinkertoy and say, "Okay, now it's experiencing
the taste of feta cheese"? (Laughter) So the issue is not only do we not have
a theory of how the brain works, we don't even know
what such a theory would look like because we don't have the tools to say, "Okay, if you carry the two
and you do a triple integral here, that equals the redness of red
or the feeling of pain." Right? We don't know
how to make that translation. So these are the sorts of things
that we know we don't know. Okay, so I think all of this calls
for a little bit of intellectual humility. So, I was giving a talk
on Possibilianism not so long ago, and a guy came up to me after, and he said, "Good job, Dr. Eagleman." He said, "You know what? You should be a politician because you're avoiding
committing to anything. That's a great job for a politician." (Laughter) And what he said was, "You know what? You should just cowboy up
and commit to some position." So I thought, "Wow, well,
that's a really strange idea," right? It's a lovely expression that we have
in this part of the country about cowboying up, which means making a firm decision. And we all admire this sort of thing, and I think it's really a great trait. If you are making a decision about: am I going to take the cattle
out in this storm, or am I going to marry this woman,
or am I going to sell the ranch? We admire people who make firm decisions. But what I'm going to suggest is that there are some domains
where it's appropriate to do that and some where there aren't. So my question to you is, Would you ask the Marlboro Man what his opinion is on the possibility
of extraterrestrial civilizations? Would you ask him over,
say, an astrobiologist? And if you wouldn't, that suggests
that there's a certain domain where it's appropriate to cowboy up
and make a firm decision, and there's other domains where it's appropriate
to not commit to a particular idea in the complete absence
of evidence to do so. So, I'm going to suggest
that the next time somebody says, "Well, you should just cowboy up
and commit to a decision," we can say, "You know what?
What I'd rather do is geek out." (Laughter) (Applause) And the idea with geeking out is, I'm going to be creative
and come up with new narratives; I'm going to be comfortable
holding multiple possibilities in mind. And if you're going to geek out, you should feel free
to cite the gospel of science, to tell the three words that are the most important three words
that science ever gave to humankind: ["I don't know"] (Applause) So my message to you
is to go back out in the world today and be comfortable with the idea
of holding multiple hypotheses in mind. And this is not just a plea
for simple open-mindedness; it's actually a plea for an active exploration
of new parts of the possibility space. Because I think this is really important for our educational systems
for our children and for our legislation, and it's even important
for our future of warfare against other peoples
of arbitrary deities and cultures against whom we have historically
been willing to take up arms, right? So my plea is to leave
this auditorium today and go back into this strange
mysterious world that we're in and try to lead a life
that is free from dogma and full of awe and wonder and to celebrate possibility and to praise uncertainty. Thank you very much. (Applause)
