Dyson, Freeman J. 1988. Infinite in all Directions. New York: Harper and Row.

Seminar notes below prepared by Helen Couclelis and Brendon Larson

Summary
Freeman Dyson is a professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton. He has served as a consultant to the US Defense Department and has written widely on the ethical dilemmas of the nuclear age. This book is a revised version of the Gifford Lectures Dyson gave at Aberdeen in 1985. It is organized in two parts. Part One is “about life as a scientific phenomenon, about our efforts to understand the nature of life and its place in the universe”. Part Two is “about ethics and politics, about the local problems introduced by our species into the existence of life on this planet” (p. 5). The link between the two parts and the book’s central message is the unbounded diversity of both life as a scientific phenomenon and of human destiny, and the philosophical problems that diversity poses.

Dyson is anxious to make it clear that the views on the relationship between science and religion expressed in the book are those of one working scientist, not of “science”. A wide diversity of views on that issue is possible. Dyson’s own view is that “scientific materialism and religious transcendentalism are neither incompatible nor mutually exclusive” – as long as neither claims absolute authority (p. 8). Dyson’s view does not seem to fall neatly into any of Barbour’s four classes of relations between science and religion (discussed in this seminar a few weeks ago) of conflict, independence, dialogue and integration. Rather, he seems to allude to a possible region of overlap between the two, made up of ‘meta-scientific’ issues on the one hand, and a Socinian view of God as evolving Mind on the other. In the final chapter of the book Dyson outlines five open questions where science and religion appear to clash – or, seen from a different angle, questions that cross the boundaries between the two domains.

Questions
We may use these questions as the starting points of our discussion todey.

1 The origin of life. That in itself is not a major problem from a philosophical point of view. Much more significant is the emergence of mind and consciousness, the failure of science to account for these phenomena, and the attractiveness of theological accounts.

2 The problem of free will. How do we reconcile the human experience of free will with a belief in scientific causality? Monod’s view of the universe as pure ‘chance and necessity’ denies free will. So does a theology postulating a God that is omniscient and omnipotent. A Socinian theology postulating an evolving, growing and learning God can accommodate both free will and scientific causality.

The next three problems are related:

3 The problem of forbidden teleology. Purpose is not acceptable as an explanatory principle in science. However, there are ‘meta-scientific’ principles, such as the Anthropic Principle in cosmology, that may ponder teleological questions such as the choice of laws of nature and the choice of initial conditions for the universe.

4 The argument from design. Does the existence of an orderly world imply the existence of an intelligent world-maker? The problem is related to that of forbidden teleology. Dyson thinks that from a meta-scientific perspective the argument has some merit.

5 The problem of final aims. Asking about the ultimate purpose of the universe is asking to read God’s mind. Dyson has his own view on the matter – that the universe is constructed to accommodate maximum diversity. This seems to give an indirect answer to the perennial question: if there is a God, why is there so much suffering and evil.re one and the same.

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