What and why we believe - Rated 
It seems quirky, claiming to "imagine six impossible things" as Alice's White Queen did. Before breakfast or at any time. Wolpert shows, however, that most of us are firmly convinced of many things that aren't so: gods, unlikely events, strange medical practices - the list seems almost endless. The lack of tangible evidence supporting or even evidence countering, those things we have faith in seems to have little impact on our credulity. In a dozen illuminating chapters, this award-winning biologist examines this almost inexplicable facet of our lives. Written with precision and deep insight, Wolpert demonstrates his command of how belief is a fundamental aspect of our society. Why do we believe the things we do?
As a biologist, Wolpert naturally turns to our evolutionary roots for clues to the origins of belief. That which sets us apart from the other animals - our oversized brain, our use of tools, and our ability to use language - as the indicators. The brain's capacity to store, retrieve and assemble information is tied to our abilities in technology and language. For Wolpert, the prime element is the making of tools. Making tools means envisioning the final product, and devising how to bring it about. Put more simply, understanding cause and effect - something even other primates have trouble with. From this beginning, he argues, come social relationships and a sense of values. Along the way, we also developed the idea of agency which we assigned to events or circumstances that were out of ordinary, everyday experience. If the process of flaking stone went wrong, why did that happen. The best-laid plans, etc.
From this beginning, Wolpert shows how the panoply of modern beliefs has come into our lives. The onset of conceiving an agency either began or enhanced the mind's "belief engine". The belief engine demands an identifiable cause for circumstances. When that's not readily apparent, we extend our belief to things we must imagine. These explanations can, and are, passed around the community, establishing both a bond among its members and reinforcing the interpretation. Once the idea gains prominence, it resists challenge and is difficult to overturn. Religion, of course, is the ultimate organised form of belief, often touted as society's best glue. Wolpert accepts this situation without rancour, even admitting his disturbed son's conversion to a fundamentalist Christian sect has improved the boy's behaviour. That given, Wolpert cannot excuse rigid adherence to dogmas that have no basis in reality. Science has disproven so many religious and other belief systems that he insists the wider society examine their beliefs more critically. There are other facets than family relations to consider.
Recent claims that religious folk, or even those with faith in such things as homeopathy or "crystal healing", actually feel or live better may have statistical substance. Wolpert wants these claims investigated fully, since the early results have little validity. Part of how these practices seem effective lies within the brain's dealings with the rest of the body. It is this aspect that suggests paths of study, since it 's clear the objects or methods have no curative power in themselves. Many of the methods are accompanied by common-sense recommendations regarding diet and abandonment of harmful habits such as smoking or lack of exercise. Although Wolpert is even-handed in his approach to the many common delusions of our times, he clearly wishes their validity be openly investigated and the results aired.
Such an investigation, Wolpert concedes, will be [and has been] difficult to launch and sustain. Clearly, our minds, however powerful in certain talents, have a tendency to seek immediate answers. The validity of the cause need not be certain if an acceptable origin can be declared. We are willing to believe in ghosts or other paranormal phenomena simply because somebody forcefully declares them to be true. Similar views are firmly held about medical practices. As with other views of agency, we are uncomfortable with illness that we cannot understand. Any explanation, forcefully given with a promise of relief, finds easy acceptance. Hence, "alternative", or in Wolpert's Britain "complementary", healing methods are widespread. Whether they are a form of "placebo" medicine, which appears to cure remains to be determined.
Wolpert's book comes at a time when examining our beliefs seems more crucial than ever. We maintain ideas about ourselves, but it becomes too easy to project them to others. When more reasonable ideas are put forward, we must not be too ready to reject them. This book should provide a basis for people willing to apply reason and science to accepted dogmas. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
Well thought out, well collected, lacking in depth - Rated 
Rather than putting forward any ground-breaking or revolutionary ideas, Lewis Wolpert here prefers to gather together a selection of scientific examples and quotes from other thinkers on the subject to form a straightforward explanation of why it is in human nature to believe, whether that means to believe that throwing a rock might hurt somebody or to believe that there are forces beyond what science has shown us to be fact.
The sections about child development compared to the learning processes in other animals is interesting reading, as did the section about the effect religious hope has been seen to have on hospital patients and their health.
The truly interesting parts of this book are often the results of the various experiments that Wolpert cites as examples, rather than Wolpert's collection opinion.
However I'm an atheist and it is to this book's credit that I ended up feeling a little more sympathetic to people who have religious beliefs, not to say that I agree with them but at least I now have some reason to understand *why* they might be inclined to believe against the odds and against the evidence.
Wolpert keeps things brief, covering a variety of different topics without exhausting any of them. This book might leave you wanting to find some more intensive reading into one particular aspect.
Interesting but incomplete? - Rated 
Contains some interesting ideas regarding the origin of belief and the author's opinion that it is related to the evolution of the human grasp of 'causal interactions' and tool use. Opinions are one thing but unfortunately these ideas are never really devloped or truly substantiated in any way. In one sense this might not a bad thing as it limits the length of the book and keeps it within the realm laymen like myself but overall I found it a tad frustrating and came away feeling somewhat short changed.
Overview of Belief Systems. - Rated
Lewis Wolpert is preaching to the converted in my case but I was still interested, nay alarmed, to read many of the quoted statistics relating to what people think/believe about cause and effect in the world at large.
It's true that everyday cause and effect belief is hard-wired in humans but we didn't know where to stop. We ascribed the Why? question to effects that had no why answer, not unless one subscribes to the supernatural.
The case is made for the special belief that has allowed science to progress in spite of our own human intuition which is completely geared up for counting Gazelles not Molecules or Galaxies... However Prof. Wolpert stops short of putting the boot in to Religion and all the other phoneys, unlike our friend Prof Dawkins.
Easy to believe, hard to digest - Rated 
"Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast" is a disappointing book. Disappointing because the topic is so well chosen: the evolutionary origins of beliefs, with attention to everyday common sense as well as the high end temptations of religion and alternative medicine. Disappointing because the author's previous mapping of related territory - in "The Unnatural Nature of Science" - promised much. And disappointing, too, because stating (twice, with variations) in the Introduction that "I admit I am a reductionist materialist atheist" is such a great start.
Wolpert throws in any number of intriguing ideas, but the argument is simply difficult to follow, making reading a chore and a good case less convincing than it should be. The material is not inherently that difficult - if not easy - but the writing makes it an uphill struggle.
Take just four sentences from the chapter "Believing": "Beliefs are held in one's memory and can be recalled. We express beliefs even when, all too often, we do not have the evidence, knowledge, or facts to support them. Moreover, emotions can undoubtedly influence our beliefs. In addition, the distinction between knowledge and belief becomes less clear in relation to memory." The sentences are pithy, but lurch here and there, with "in addition" piled on "moreover" but no pause to demonstrate, for example, how it is that emotions can influence beliefs. The distinction between "knowledge" and "belief" in the last sentence is referenced as if it was obvious, or previously explained. But it isn't and the distinction is never defined. Just a page before Wolpert was conflating "ideas" and "beliefs" - "15% of our day-to-day conversations contain ideas, that is, beliefs, about causes."
The problems aren't just in the detail. The sensibly short chapters ought to make the architecture of the book clear, but it isn't. Wolpert argues that early humans' adoption of tools - making and using them - was critical to the origin of belief. This has been controversial (see Marek Kohn's review for the Independent,) but then nothing that follows seems to depend on it. Again, at the outset of the book we're told it will concentrate on causal beliefs (though the definition here is again hard to grasp) but nestling at the end is a chapter titled "Moral". How moral beliefs relate to causal beliefs, and what's already been said about their origin, is unclear.
The best material reprises key ideas from "The Unnatural Nature of Science". The challenging proposition is that our instinctive ways of understanding causes are at odds with the reality of the physical and biological world, as science reveals it. We struggle with probabilities, preferring to over-interpret chance; we employ common sense models of physical causes which struggle with volumes and Newton's laws of motion, let alone particle physics. This leads to an interesting aside on how we respond to possible global warming: it's a key question for everyone, but few of us are equipped to assess the science - of necessity that leaves us guided by our flawed beliefs.
Unfortunately, the occasional opaqueness of "The Unnatural Nature of Science" is here the dominant quality.
|
