Read The Science of Discworld IV for Free Online

those who think there are two kinds of people, and those who don’t. But Benford’s distinction is an illuminating one, and it holds more than a grain of truth.
    We can paraphrase it like this. Many people see the surrounding world – the universe – as a resource for humans to exploit; they also see it as a reflection of themselves. What matters most, in this view, is always human-centred. ‘What can this do
for me
?’ (or ‘
for us?
’) is the main, and often the only, question worth asking. From such a viewpoint, to understand something is to express it in terms of human agency. What matters is its
purpose
, and that is whatever
we
use itfor. In this worldview, rain exists in order to make crops grow and to provide fresh water for us to drink. The Sun is there because it warms our bodies. The universe was designed with us in mind, constructed so that we could live in it, and it would have no meaning if we were not present.
    It is a short and natural step to see human beings as the pinnacle of creation, rulers of the planet, masters of the universe. Moreover, you can do all of that without any conscious recognition of how narrowly human-centred your worldview is, and maintain that you are acting out of humility, not arrogance, because of course we are subservient to the universe’s creator. Which is basically a superhuman version of us – a king, an emperor, a pharaoh, a lord – whose powers are expanded to the limits of our imagination.
    The alternative view is that human beings are just one tiny feature of a vast cosmos, most of which does not function on a human scale or take any notice of what we want. Crops grow because rain exists, but rain exists for reasons that have virtually nothing to do with crops. Rain has been in existence for billions of years, crops for about ten thousand. In the cosmic scheme of things, human beings are just one tiny incidental detail on an insignificant ball of rock, most of whose history happened before we turned up to wonder what was going on. We may be the most important thing in the universe as far as we are concerned, but nothing that happens outside our tiny planet depends on our existence, with a few obvious exceptions like various small but complicated bits of metal and plastic now littering the surface of the Moon and Mars, in orbit around Mercury, Jupiter and Saturn, or wandering through the outer edges of our solar system. We might say that the universe is indifferent to us, but even that statement is too self-conscious; it endows the universe with the human attribute of indifference. There is no ‘it’ to be indifferent. The system of the world does not function in human terms.
    We’ll refer to these ways of thinking as ‘human-centred’ and ‘universe-centred’. Many controversies that grab the headlines stem,to a greater or lesser extent, from the deep differences between them. Instead of assuming that one must be superior to the other, and then arguing vehemently about which one it is, we should first learn to recognise the difference. Both have advantages, in their proper spheres of influence. What causes trouble is when they tread on each other’s toes.
    Before the early twentieth century, scientists used to think that phenomena like light could either be particles or waves, but not both. They argued – often nastily – about which was correct. When quantum theory was invented, it turned out that matter had both aspects, inseparably intertwined. At about the time that all reputable scientists
knew
that light was a wave, photons turned up, and those were particles of light. Electrons, which were obviously particles when they were discovered, turned out to have wavelike features as well. So quantum physicists got used to the idea that things that seemed to be particles were actually tiny clumps of waves.
    Then quantum field theory came along, and the waves stopped being clumped. They could spread out. So now particle physicists have to know about quantum