The Night Is Large& Vitality [Paperback]

The first chapter, a review of four books on symmetry is easily the most informative and insightful ten pages I have ever read on the subject. Gardner's rare talent for making things clear is shown to such advantage here that I would recommend it as a must read for anyone wanting a career in science writing. It's almost magic, the way he evaporates the fog.

The next nine chapters are on the physical sciences including chapters on relativity, quantum mechanics, time, superstrings, cosmology, etc., all good reads. The next five are on the social sciences, and it is here that I was introduced to a side of Gardner that I had not found in the other three collections of his that I have read. Chapter 11, "Why I Am Not a Smithian," is on economics and is primarily a dissection of the supply-siders who held forth during the Reagan years. It makes for lively reading even though, curiously it turns into a tribute to Norman Thomas as "the only notable American" to vigorously oppose the Japanese internment camps during WW II. In the next essay, "The Laffer Curve," Gardner continues his assault on the "voodoo economics" of the Reagan years as he presents his own satirical "neo-Laffer curve." Gardner is a sharp eyed and sharp-penned social critic, and, as he demonstrates in Chapter 21, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," a pretty good movie critic as well. (Although here I think he underrated the magic of Spielberg's movie in order to better concentrate on zapping the usual Spielberg schmaltz and pseudoscience.) Politically speaking, Gardner reveals himself as a "social democrat."

The chapter on "Newcomb's Paradox," which Gardner interprets as "related to the question of whether humans possess a genuine power to make free, unpredictable choices," has the effect of revealing Gardner's personality. You'll have to read it to see what I mean, but the choices he makes are psychological choices and reveal him as a man who is not afraid to stand by his beliefs. Herein and in the next chapter we encounter the question of whether we can have free will in the view of an omniscient God. Gardner's solution (with C. S. Lewis and others) is to put God outside time and avoid the contradictions. Incidentally, Gardner makes the very salient point that any language that allows sets to be members of themselves or evaluates the truth or falsity of its statements will run into contradictions (p. 419).

It is here in the chapters on philosophy and religion that Gardner is at his most intriguing. He is a theist and a believer in free will, although he admits that "distinguishing free will from determinism" is something we are incapable of doing (p. 427). He equates free will with self-awareness and consciousness, and declares (p. 444) "I am not a vitalist who thinks there is...a soul distinct from the brain." Yet on page 438 he writes, "I cannot conceive of myself as existing without...a brain that has free will." Although none of this is contradictory, we can see that there is something Gardner believes in that is akin to Bishop Berkeley's idealism and beyond the rock of realism that Samuel Johnson gave a kick to in an attempt to refute Berkeley. I agree with Gardner that we are not about to find an answer to the conundrum of free will, although I think it's important to add that as a practical matter the illusion of free will is, for us, as good as the "real" thing. Readers may be surprised to learn that Gardner also identifies himself as a "fideist," a word I had to look up. It refers to someone who believes in God as a matter of faith.

I would like to say (since Gardner doesn't) that consciousness as self-awareness should be made distinct from consciousness as self-identity. The former is a question of relative complexity, e.g., chimp consciousness versus flatworm consciousness. The latter is an illusion with great psychological power foisted on us by the evolutionary mechanism primarily to make us fear death. It is adaptive for long-lived creatures such as ourselves, but is otherwise empty. When the Buddhists (and the Vedas and yogic psychology) say the ego is an illusion, this is what they are talking about, this delusional self-identity that we sometimes refer to as consciousness.

There are number of funny jokes and asides herein. One of my favorites identifies Ayn Rand (philosophically speaking of course) as "the ugly offspring of Milton Friedman and Madalyn Murray O'Hare" (p. 484).

He makes the reader think. He considers the breath and width of human knowledge to all be worth talking and writing about. He is never unforthcoming with his opinions. Naturally, this makes for some controversal opinions coming out. But he lets you know when he blunders as well.

This collection certainly lives up to a testiment that he has had a long life writing and making folks think about the world they live in.

His greatest flaw, in my opinion, is his belief in a god. But then, nobody is ever perfect.