THE REALITY OF IDEAS
Are the only truths those that can be proven by scientific experiment, or are there other truths, perhaps like those of mathematics, that are not part of the material universe? What might it mean if there are?
Ard Louis, a Christian, and professor of physics at the University of Oxford, and filmmaker David Malone explore whether there are truths outside the material world. This is the short introduction to the second film in the documentary series.
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TRANSCRIPT TO INTRODUCTION
SUNETRA GUPTA: We are in fact capable of having these huge realisations, ones that actually overwhelm us, and make us feel that we are understanding something that we perhaps shouldn’t. That we shouldn’t go there. This idea of, you know, where angels fear to tread.
NARRATOR: In a material world true knowledge can come from the things we can see, hear and touch because these are what scientists can measure and sometimes turn into beautiful truths.
FRANK WILCZEK: The more I thought about how it comes to be that our perception of the world at a deep level matches our perception of beauty. It’s a puzzle, it poses a deep mystery.
NARRATOR: But are there other truths we can discover which come from pure thought or imagination?
GREG CHAITIN: Discovering mathematics is messy, you know like making love it’s messy. As new mathematics always is. And then moments like that you say it wasn’t me, I didn’t discover this. This idea exists out there independently of me and maybe it wanted to use me to express itself.
NARRATOR: Would these ideas also be real and true or would they be just figments of our imagination?
BEN OKRI: We have no instrument by which to record the absolute nature of reality because whatever instrument that is will at some point be filtered through the lens of consciousness of us.
NARRATOR: Professor Ard Louis is an Oxford physicist who believes that reality is rational and mechanical and whose rules are ultimately scientific and mathematical. But he also believes that there are truths that are not part of the material world. Truths placed there by God. A God who wants us to know those truths.
Like Professor Louis, film maker David Malone also feels that some truths are more than just human inventions. But as a non-believer the idea of a God who somehow put those truths in the world so we would know them just makes no sense to him.
Together they are on a journey to reconcile their intuitions about truth and meaning and perhaps even God to life in a material world.
More than any other animal human beings shape the objects and the world we live in. Not just the physical, the things made by our hands, but those made by our minds as well. And these objects and ideas then shape us in return. But are the only truths those which science can prove.
For Professor Louis the answer is absolutely not. Not because of his belief in God but because of his study of mathematics.