What Else Is True?

An Interview with Piet Hut

Piet Hut, interview text, submitted by email, and published in The World & I, Aug. 2001.

While pioneering computational astrophysics and also probing ways of knowing, our featured scientist sees signs that science and mystical religion may be meeting in the corner into which objective science has painted itself.

Piet Hut, professor of astrophysics in the school of natural sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, was born in Utrecht, Holland, in 1952. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Amsterdam in 1978 based on a variety of research directions, ranging from classical mechanics (tidal interactions between stars in double star systems) to elementary particles physics (the behavior of neutrinos in the first second after the big bang) and other topics (such as the thermodynamics of black holes). Hut was appointed to his present position in 1985.

While his main research area is theoretical astrophysics, he frequently collaborates with colleagues in other areas, from geology, paleontology and cognitive science to particle physics and computer science. He is involved in the project of building GRAPEs, the world's fastest special-purpose computers, specialized for stellar dynamics, at Tokyo University. As a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History, he is using the newly renovated Hayden Planetarium for interactive simulations of star cluster evolution. His graduate text book "The Gravitational Million Body Problem," co-authored with Douglas Heggie, will soon be published by Cambridge University Press.

Hut is a founding member of the Kira Institute, which in 2000 held its third summer school, on "Ways of Knowing," http://www.kira.org. His interdisciplinary activities have included the following: co-organizing a conference on "Fundamental Sources of Unpredictability" at the Santa Fe Institute; organizing a session at the State of the World Forum on "The Role of the Subject in Science"; co-organizing a conference on "Ambiguity Brought into Focus" at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies in Kyoto; participating in the Sixth Mind and Life Conference, a five-day dialogue between five physicists and the Dalai Lama; and participating as a fellow at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

The World & I: In broad terms, what is the religious (or philosophical) tradition with which you are most closely associated?

Piet Hut: A difficult question in a global age! I have learned most from Taoism and Buddhism, especially Tibetan Buddhism, but I also have a deep respect for other contemplative traditions, such as Sufi and Christian mysticism. Among philosophers, Spinoza and Husserl are two of my heros.

The World & I: What are your views on the origins of the universe, life, and human beings?

Piet Hut: I can give several answers, depending on the context of the question. Within our scientific world view, I think there is hardly any doubt left that the Universe started with the Big Bang. Also, I think it is quite likely that life evolved from non-living matter through the increasing complexity of organic molecules formed and kept together under the right conditions.

The question of the origin human beings (and mammals, squid and octopi, and other intelligent animals) begs the question of the origin of consciousness. This is a more tricky question, since it involves the connection between the objective presence of electrochemical reactions in a brain and the subjective awareness of the individual, whose brain is described by neuroscience. This connection will be studied intensely over the next few decades.

At the moment I know of no solution, or even the beginning of a solution to the question of how to connect subject and object here; we're not talking about apples and oranges here, but about two aspects of reality that seem to be far, far more different than anything else we have encountered in science. I'm very excited about the prospect of new experimental investigations and new theoretical discussions in this area. Who knows from which unexpected corner the first glimpse of a solution will present itself?

So far, though, I have answered your question from within a scientific world view. However, there are other answers possible, equally valid I think. From a more esoteric way of looking at this reality we find ourselves in, we can also say that every moment everything arises in a new and full and uncontrived freshness. The whole notion of history and explanation and origins is then something that is contained within the stories that are part of what arises right "here and now" where the notion of "here and now" is wider than the "here" and the "now" that are of course part of our conventional story of reality.

The World & I: What is your concept of God? How did you come to hold this view? How do you define yourself in relation to this God concept? How does the existence of pervasive and enduring human suffering interact with your view of God?

Piet Hut: My concept of God? This is the type of question which is almost impossible to answer briefly! If I give a one-liner response, it would almost certainly offend at least some of my friends. The shortest answer is: I do not have any specific concept of God. However, I may use the notion of God to express my sense of respect and my intentions in life, in circumstances where that is the appropriate language to use. In other circumstances, I may use terms like Tao or Openness or Being.

My views evolved from a Dutch Protestant Christian upbringing, through a discovery of Hinduism and Buddhism while I was in high school, followed quickly by an appreciation of Medieval Christian mysticism. While Protestantism seemed far too dry and theoretical, the other approaches I discovered showed a far more scientific attitude of probing reality through an interplay of experiment and theory.

How I define myself? This is a central question. My life-long attempt has been, and still is, not to define myself. The central message of many esoteric forms of spiritual practice is to find a way to drop the self image you are carrying around. This picture of yourselves includes all that you have, but it mistakenly tells you that you are what you have. While we have a job and we have money, we normally say that we are a scientist or farmer or whatever, and that we are rich or poor. What we really are is vastly more than what we can possibly deduce from any conventional picture. If I were to summarize in three words what I am trying to strive for, I would say: freedom from identification. The rest follows.

The question of suffering is one of those profound challenges that we find ourselves facing in this life; we are born without any manual and the user instructions we are fed through our environment while we grow up are often not that helpful (children can be extremely cruel). One of the worst attitudes to suffering is to link it with supernatural forms of Good and Bad, as an easy way out. If suffering is seen as coming from a God punishing us for our Sins, it can easily lead to forms of hypocrisy, fatalism, and a pious attitude of irresponsibility (though I haste to say that here, too, many individuals have found ways to lead authentic and responsible lives, notwithstanding these dangers). The Buddhist attitude to suffering, as inherent to the human condition, can also be misused of course. However, at least it has not led to the forms of crusades and holy wars that the monotheistic religions have brought to the world.

The World & I: What, in your view, is the purpose, if any, behind the development of the universe, life, and human beings? If you believe there is an underlying purpose, how is it relevant to scientific investigation and scientific models of the world?

Piet Hut: Science asks for the "how", not the "why" of material reality. We just try to describe Nature in as compact and elegant a way as we can find. In relative terms we can then answer specific "why" questions. For example, we can say that water has certain properties "because" of the specifics of the interactions between the molecules that constitute water. However, we do not pretend to even look at any ultimate "why" question.

It is interesting that Gautama Buddha, a couple millennia before the start of modern science, had a similar attitude. He simply refused to even address any metaphysical "why" questions. His attitude was more practical, making suggestions as to the "how" of leading a good life, and the "how" of engaging in spiritual forms of practice.

Any talk of underlying purpose quickly acts as a mirror to reflect one's own psychological make-up. It is a much better tool for a therapist than for a philosopher. In fact, in the more mystical forms of monotheistic religions, we also find a turn away from the whole question of purpose. The Sufis have the most beautiful poetry, inviting us to let go of all our little agendas and attempts of probing cosmic purposes, and to become more like butterflies; or like clouds, in Taoist poetry. We in Europe have the wonderful little book `The Cloud of Unknowing' written by an anonymous English Medieval writer.

So, in short, I'm happy to stick with the "how" and to drop the "why" questions.

The World & I: How do your religious or philosophical world view and values affect, if at all, your practice of science (theoretical, analytical, and experimental) and/or your daily life routines?

Piet Hut: In so far as my work in science is part of my daily life, everything is drenched in world views. Any moment in our lives, any way in which we react to anything, is colored if not structured by how we view the world, and how we view ourselves and others. Those who deny this, or who maintain that they do not have a world view, are not aware of the tacit assumptions on which their lives are built. This makes your question a bit difficult to answer -- as if you were asking how a fish is affected by water.

Very briefly, my favorite notion of `freedom from identification' plays a double role in my life. First, it acts as a description of reality. I really think we are free to drop any type of identification at any time, and whatever prevents us only has power in so far as we give it power. Secondly, it acts as a goal. I cannot think of anything more effective to strive for -- but the funny thing is that it is self-undermining. If I view myself as a searcher, a striver for a goal, I have already taken on a new identification, perhaps one of the most pernicious types of identifications! So what to do? Perhaps there is really nothing to be done. The challenge may be "how to be". This tension, between being and doing, and trying to not-try in moving from doing to being, pervades my whole life, whether I am at work in science or anything else.

But perhaps your question is addressed at the concrete effects of my world views, in influencing the results of my scientific research. That would be much more difficult to answer. During the quarter century that I have worked in science, I have also been interested in contemplating reality from a philosophical and spiritual angle. I see no way to disentangle that part of my life, to find out how I would have lived and worked otherwise, with what results. Perhaps it is more the style of my work that is influenced by my vision. Trying to remain free from identification may have made it possible for me to collaborate with many colleagues in many different disciplines. Building bridges between disciplines has certainly been characteristic of my whole career.

The World & I: How would you characterize the relationships between your scientific and religious (or philosophical) world views? Are they complementary, separate, partially overlapping, or other?

Piet Hut: For me, they are more than complementary. Rather, I see them as part of the same world view. Both are based on a respect for critical thinking, informed by critical experimentation.

The World & I: What future developments do you foresee in the relationships between science and religion (or philosophy)?

Piet Hut: Under normal circumstances, every experience comes as a set or package deal, including an experiencer and something that is experienced. The experience is then seen as an experience by an experiencer of an object that is experienced. In other words, just as a stick has two ends each experience has a subject pole and an object pole. In the experience of dancing, there is a dancer dancing a dance; when dreaming, a dreamer dreams a dream; when drinking water a drinker drinks the water. Following the metaphor of the conscious experience as a stick, we always find ourselves at one end of the stick, as the subject pole, while we use the stick to learn about the object pole, just like a blind person finds his or her way in the world by using a stick. It is easy to forget the stick, and forget that you hold a stick, and to focus only on what is touched by the stick and thereby makes itself felt. However, by doing so we overlook much of what is involved in the most basic experience of ourselves and of the world.

From the days of Galileo, science has focused almost exclusively on studying the object pole of experience. While this has been a sensible approach, so far, we are now reaching the limits of an approach that tries to cut off the object end of experience as if somehow it could exist by itself. In various areas of science, from quantum mechanics to neuroscience and robotics, the subject pole of experience can no longer be neglected. Most likely, science will change qualitatively, with this required extension of its methodology.

In other words, we have painted ourselves into a corner, scientifically, by describing the whole world in objective terms. The price of success is that we are finding less and less room for ourselves to stand in! The challenge we now face is not to reduce ourselves to objects, but to explore ways to let science naturally widen its area of investigation. This can be done while staying true to its methodology of peer review, based on an interplay between theory and experiment, with experiment having the last word.

Many of my colleagues may be surprised by this outlook. For them, "widening the area of investigation" will mean pulling the subject into the world of objects, thereby reducing ourselves to objects. Their goal may be to describe the subject as accurately as possible, for example by charting in detail how the brain functions on all spatial and temporal scales, and on different levels of complexity of description. While I share that goal as perhaps the most exciting human intellectual accomplishment, namely for a brain to map itself, I don't see that as an end station. Something is still left out. No matter how accurately you can describe the electrical and chemical processes in my brain, you may not know what it feels like for me to have a subjective experience that is correlated with the objective phenomena that you can measure.

I don't mean to imply that subject and object are islands that cannot be bridged. On the contrary, as in the example of the stick above, I think they are intimately connected. It is only through our emphasis on the object side of experience, to the neglect of the subject side of experience, that we have come to see the object side as existing in isolation. Once we wake up from that myopic view, we can recognize how one-sided all of natural science has been, so far. We can then extend our field of inquiry from the object to a wider view that encompasses both subject and object. This does not mean that we have to give up our objective scientific method, in exchange for some vague form of subjective, uncontrollable and arbitrary approach. Far from that.

First of all, our so-called objective methods are objective only when seen from an idealized vantage point. In practice, these methods are not truly objective, but rather intersubjective, not more and not less. What is considered objectively true is what passes through the intersubjective peer review of a respected body of scientists. As a group, they are less likely to be stuck to one particular form of prejudice, but there have been plenty of historical occasions where scientists collectively came to the wrong conclusion. The beauty of science is that it seems to be robust enough to recover from these mistakes, sooner or later. When science will grow into a study of subject and object in a more evenhanded way, scientists will still use intersubjective methods, in the form of peer review, just as they did while focusing solely on objects.

Secondly, the commonly held notion that contemplative investigations are arbitrary and in principle outside the domain of a scientific approach just reflects a basic ignorance of such methods, whether they are labeled spiritual, meditative, or mystic. There is a vast body of literature describing how various meditators compared notes with each other. In Buddhism alone, for several centuries there were universities in India and Tibet with many thousands of students, all of whom were trained in these techniques in very systematic ways. Many of them engaged in collaborative forms of practice that I don't think are very different in spirit to the collaborative laboratory experiments in physics. The difference is mainly that their laboratories did not exclude the subject pole of experience, and hence that they were less purely focused on the object pole.

So I expect science to move into a detailed investigation of the subject pole of experience, in addition to the traditional object pole. To what extent philosophy and contemplative traditions can help here remains to be seen. Already in computer science a lot of wheels have been reinvented, by figuring out how to teach robots to recognize objects for example -- reinventing notions that had been suggested long before by psychologists and philosophers. At first, there was little awareness among computer scientists about the existence of these earlier `wheels', but recently the work of a perceptual psychologist like Gibson, and of phenomenologist philosophers like Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, is beginning to attract some attention. One may argue that reinventing wheels has been a waste of time and energy, but perhaps reinventing a notion from scratch may not be such a bad idea, if it leads to a fresher and more original view of things. But at the end of the day, it would be good to compare notes with other traditions, if nothing else to make sure that neither side has overlooked important aspects of reality.

So my guess would be that the next few centuries of scientific research will focus on the interplay between subject and object. In these investigations, intersubjective methods will be used to describe the dynamics of both subject and object, each according to whatever will turn out to be the most appropriate and effective way. Building concepts and theories for subject-object interactions will be challenging and so fascinating as to make any of the recent talk about `the end of science' laughable. However, a restriction to descriptive theories will still not succeed to catch all of reality, even with the subject pole of experience being included.

The World & I: We seem to be experiencing as a culture a resurgence of interest in such matters as near-death experiences, life after death, and angels. How do such matters as these relate to your religious (or philosophical) and scientific views?

Piet Hut: Near-life experiences are rare enough. Most of the time, we are barely alive, while we go through our daily routines. To come close to really being alive is what interests me far more than speculations about what happens after death.

The World & I: Quantum theory has been appropriated by many Westerners with an interest in Eastern religions, as evidenced by such terms as "quantum mind," "quantum self," "quantum society, and "quantum healing." What associations are you able to make between quantum theory and your philosophical views?

Piet Hut: And of course, most uses of the word quantum have little to do with what physics deals with; they are more a sign of the times, in which scientific slogans have reasonable cash value. As for the real quantum physics, it tells us that nature is nothing like the clock-work mechanism that we physicists thought it was, during the seventieth through the nineteenth centuries. Spontaneity seems to be part of reality itself, and not some all-to-human approximation to a rigorously deterministic world. Particles have no objective state that can be measured in the same way by different observers; rather, the way nature answers is very much influenced by the questions you ask. All this points toward a convergence of scientific and contemplative views -- or at the very least, many of the barriers which there seemed to be between the two are now dropping away.

The World & I: What have been some historical interactions between your religious or philosophical tradition and science?

Piet Hut: In many way, the richness of quantum mechanics comes closer to the views one finds in many Hindu and Buddhist traditions, compared to those in Greek and Judaic mythologies. It may well be that the more limited and rigid views in the latter helped science get started, by encouraging an approach to natural philosophy that was sufficiently limited to get a chance at answering questions one by one. But now that science has grown so far beyond its original framework, it is not surprising that it has left behind most of the original assumptions, such as the determinism and objectivity that were part of a classical mechanistic view. Perhaps Europe was the right cultural place for science to be born and raised to make its first steps. But now it is high time to invoke non-European world views to provide a richer palette from which to draw in interpreting what it is that science has found.