Haldane’s Observation
The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.
The British geneticist J.B.S. Haldane, best known for his part in developing the mathematical foundation for the theory of natural selection, qualified this observation as a ’suspicion’ in the title essay of Possible Worlds and Other Essays (1927). In full he wrote:
Now my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. I have read and heard many attempts at a systematic account of it from materialism and theosophy to the Christian system or that of Kant, and I have always felt that they were much too simple. I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of or can be dreamed of in any philosophy. That is the reason why I have no philosophy myself and must be my excuse for dreaming.
Haldane was selling himself short; he was not actually so lacking in the philosophical department. A lifelong Marxist, he believed that any form of government - indeed authority of any kind - was intrinsically bad. He broke with the Communist Party in 1950 on account of Stalin’s support of T. D. Lysenko, whose genetic theories emphasising the role of environment over heredity became party dogma in the USSR, and he protested British policies in Egypt by leaving his post as professor at London University in 1957 and moving permanently to India. (One of the unexpected pleasures of his emigration was that it allowed him to dispense with shoes and socks in favour of sandals: “Sixty years in socks is enough.”) He also chaired the government committee that produced what is known as the Haldane Principle - a method of organisation that is not employed as widely as it might be - i.e. that government research and development efforts should be carried out by independent agencies, rather than by the departments that will benefit from their results.
The philosophical antithesis of Haldane’s Observation is Einstein’s belief that the principles of the universe are knowable, as expressed in a letter to Max Born that “He [God] does not play dice” (December 4th, 1926). This was in keeping with his 1921 remark that “God is subtle but he is not malicious” (later carved above the fireplace of the Common Room in Fine Hall at Princeton University). Commenting on Einstein’s comment, however, the cosmologist Stephen Hawking came down on Haldane’s side contending in a 1975 Nature article that “God not only plays dice, He sometimes throws the dice where they cannot be seen.”
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