Customer Reviews

The Human Touch: Our Part in the Creation of a Universe

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Michael Frayn offers a thought provoking and suprisingly enjoyable treatise on humanity's role in the universe, showing a deft handle on subjects ranging from physics and cosmology, to the intricacies of language.

From beginning to end, Frayn has the wit and sensibility of a kinder and gentler Richard Dawkins (newly minted superstar author of the much more confrontational and intellectually arrogant (in my humble opinion) - "The God Delusion").

While Frayn is certainly no Christian theist, he offers some amazing insights into the central role humanity plays in the conscious understanding of the cosmos - an idea with some meaningful Biblical applications for those so inclined.

As both a philosophy professor and Christian pastor, I found Frayn's thoughts to be both strikingly original in their combinations and refeshingly coherent in their execution - think C.S. Lewis after a few weeks alone with Hawking's "A Brief History of Time."

Overall, I consider this book to be worthy reading as I found it both effective in expanding my horizons and being challenged in my assumptions.

- S.

** EDITED MINIMALLY FOR CLARITY OF GRAMMAR, SPELLING, AND PUNCTUATION **

Professional philosophers will have the same problem with this book as professional historians have with Paul Johnson (thus a few 4-stars will appear in an otherwise unassailable 5+-stars). As a non-professional philosopher (but professional scientist), I found this to be a remarkable work: An amalgam of physics, neuroscience, linguistics, and philosophy, brought to bear upon the issue of how we create the universe. Its an astonishing synthesis.

Frayn has a genius for accessibly posing the important questions. What is free will? What is consciousness? Does the universe exist (metaphorically) without us? Most important, do we have the language to even ask the right questions? Could we ever understand ourselves? Frayn has serious doubts, and the answers pour through our fingers like water. But our hands are left wet, and we thirst for more.

Michael Frayn is well known as a playwright for the hilarious farce _Noises Off_ (film version good but less funny) and for _Copenhagen_, a drama about quantum physicists. He is also a novelist, translator, and journalist. When he was at Cambridge, though, he studied philosophy, and he might say that all his works have been offshoots of that particular endeavor. He returns to the big subject in _The Human Touch: Our Part in the Creation of a Universe_ (Metropolitan Books) with a suitably big book with lots of big and important topics and plenty of profound but lightly-expressed ideas. It has to be said that most of Frayn's ideas have to do with just how deep our wonderment ought to be and how few answers we have, but still, this is a genial guided tour of the issues that have consumed thinkers since before the days of Plato.

The paradox that Frayn looks at in many different ways is this: "The world has no form or substance without you and me to provide them, and you and I have no form or substance without the world to provide them in its turn." He also says that we have not even begun resolve the paradox. "The universe plainly exists independently of human consciousness," he writes, "but what can ever be said about it that has not been mediated through that consciousness?" We have come scientifically to understand a great deal of our universe, especially the planet we inhabit, but the amount compared to the mysteries that still remain is tiny. When we look closely at its complexity, it merely becomes more complex. Frayn, as you can imagine, thinks that numbers are invented. After all, we messed around with numbers for centuries without using a symbol for zero until that concept became part of the system. "Number, in short, is not something logically and mysteriously anterior to space and time, or to cause, or to the human presence in the world." Frayn examines the truth content of stories; how can we evaluate, for instance, the statement "Sherlock Holmes lived at 221B Baker Street"? It is all less complicated than counterfactuals, which have been a puzzle for philosophers for centuries. All this is less puzzling than that of the old bogey of consciousness; Frayn writes, "About consciousness much has been said, and not a word of it that told us anything we didn't already know perfectly well from our own lifelong experience, which is nothing. We can't even say what _sort_ of a thing it is." Consciousness is plainly dependent on the mechanisms in the brain, but paradox again, no accounting of such mechanisms comes close to explaining what feeling and being aware are.

What meaning we get from the universe, too, is up to us. Frayn starts and ends his tour of paradox and how little we can really know with a Rashomon-like invitation: on a calm, clear night, just look up at the stars in wonder. It isn't enough for us humans, because we will start wondering about those lights, and their spectra, and their speed of emission, and on and on; it isn't enough, and then it is enough because it has to be. Frayn's deeply personal explanations of philosophical ideas expressed in an avuncular and amiable way is an engaging look at a broad range of important ideas. Despite his repeatedly showing how much of what we know for sure cannot really be known for sure, this is not a book of despair but an invitation to look with delight more deeply at the nature of things.

A beautifully written book that examines our view of the cosmos.

Through a great deal of thought, study, experimenting and effort we have established a view of the universe. We call it the 'Standard Model.' And while it seems to be developing a few cracks around the edges (the speed of gravity, dark matter/energy) it's the best view that we have.

Mr. Frayn points out that we have a bit of grey matter up in our heads that lives on a small clump of matter that isn't quite a sphere, that's going around a rather ordinary star. It's about a third the way out in an arm of a spiral galaxy. One of three hundred million or so stars that are going round and round. And this is just one in our local cluster of galaxies, one local cluster in our super cluster, part of we really don't know how many galaxies, perhaps 125,000,000,000 give or take a few billion. And from here we've developed the Standard Model.

This is a beautiful look at our presumptions to have to be the center of things, a look at the world by a philosopher of our time. Conclusions, no -- the book ends with the same words it uses to begin:

'Look up at the stars on a calm, clear night....'

Frayn opens his treatise lamenting about disorder in the universe. He wants straight lines, perfect circularity and stability. Why this should be the case in a cosmos initiated by the Big Bang remains unexplained. Seeking solace from scientists, who are reputed to have the universe organised, Frayn is disappointed to learn they lack a certain consistency in their own views of how the universe is organised and operates. Instead, he must fall back on asking philosophical questions about the cosmos, while stoutly disclaiming any role as a philosopher.

Frayn is a man who's learned enough about the universe to be perplexed by what it doesn't tell him. He's not alone in that. As a playwright, however, he has the language skills to explain his confusion in ways the rest of us can comprehend and sympathise with. He doesn't want to appear lofty or arcane, but the subjects run away with him. He's left to narrate the questions as he's discovered them, spicing his personal reflections with what he's learned. It's not possible to touch on how the universe is structured, how language communicates and obscures, or how our minds elude our feeling of possessing control without unearthing a number of philosophical questions. Unlike many in academia, however, Frayn is the gentlest of commentators. He doesn't really criticise the stands taken by many modern philosophical scholars, but then he doesn't really understand most of them, either. He mildly approves, for example, of Daniel Dennett's "Consciousness Explained", then blithely overlooks Dennett's Multiple Drafts Model of how we think. A better understanding would have resolved several of the questions Frayn raises in his discussion of how elusive thoughts are.

Frayn's explanation of the human role in "the creation" of the universe is almost nonexistent. It's a concept as paradoxical as the idea that the world exists only because we perceive it. He's not "anthroarrogant" in any sense, since much of the book is taken up with our own inabilities to figure out not what's going on outsides ourselves, but inside as well. In fact, his concerns about those inabilities are emphatically about his own. He is uncomfortable with the fact that although immense intellects have attempted to define the cosmos, their results only lead to further questions. Nothing is defined and nothing is resolved. Any of us, it would seem, can invent what type of universe we wish - a bit of searching and some "law" can be found that will define it. Even the great test of empirical evidence - can something be forecast from that "law"? falls short. It is this condition that admittedly disturbs Frayn. There are no dogmas to fall back on. Except the rather vague one of anthropocentrism instead of the anthroarrogance the sub-title suggests.

Frayn's approach will woo those readers who sympathise with his confusion about the indeterminate nature of the cosmos. His playwright and novelist experience gives him good insight into how widely his concerns might be shared. He even goes so far as to provide accounts of his own dreams where ideas, characters and events for fiction might be prompted. The background skills give him the ability to impart all his questions and whatever resolutions he's derived from his readings in a style at home on any stage. It's almost as if he's being a play director in dialogue with an audience about the story. Indeed, in several instances, he takes the role of an audience member questioning the issues and his attempted explanations. It's a very effective ploy, and other science writers might take note of the method. Frayn, right or wrong in his ideas, can impart them wonderfully. His moonlighting into philosophy at least deserves a look. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

I thoroughly enjoyed Michael Frayn's philosophical musings. "The Human Touch" is a fine partner in my bookcase with such volumes as Byan Magee's "Confessions of a Philosopher" and Julian T Fraser's "Of Time, Passion and Knowledge". The editorial review by Colin McGinn of the Washington Post completely misses the point about what Frayn is saying about knowledge. It seems to me that Frayn has stated the obvious that reality (in itself separate from an observer's biases) is unknowable. The central question becomes "What are the limits of what we can know and how can we reject wrong conclusions?" To forgive the pun this is the fundamental issue overlooked by fundamentalists of all persuasions and also by those in philosophy departments who expend too much emotion defending the validity of induction as a logical process. Frayn does not deny that there is a reality separate to our view of it. Whatever it is. It is reassuring to see Frayn giving Karl Popper his due. Karl Popper (1902-1994) proposed that knowledge is guesswork. These expectations or guesses express theories of reality that can never be validated absolutely but that, in science at least, should be always kept open to possible modification or rejection. Why not go even further and say that all knowledge should be open to refutation, including all forms of dogma? Michael Frayn's book is an enjoyable and rewarding read that brings a fresh perspective to our journey as knowing creatures. Let us start again and have another try as we are all wrong...although some guesses may be less wrong than others.

This is an astoundingly brilliant, yet accessible, exploration of man's true nature. As part of my joy and work, I have read many of the wisest thinkers who have set words to paper. I know of no one since the Axial Age who has presented these truths about how we humans really function as clearly and refreshingly as Mr. Frayn. Nevermind the absense of a competent editor - Frayn probably couldn't find one up to the job, please read it, understand it, and integrate the understanding. Do it for your own integration and fulfillment, your children's and, ultimately, mankind's.

I found this book irritating. Frayn constantly mixes up arguments and seems to almost willfully miss the point. For example, he conflates the question of the role of the observer in some QM interpretations with the role of consiousness in the development of science. And he clearly does not understand the philosophy of science as put forward by Popper and others. At one point he seems to suggest that General Relativity would somehow be OK even if it led to conclusions which were at variance with observation.

Another example of missing the point is where he likens the surprising creativity of some AI programs to the surprise of an earth quake. It is not the _fact_ of the surprise but the _nature_ of the surprise that matters. (I once wrote quite a simple program to play some board game or other - Go? - and was genuinely surprised at how convincingly and consistently it could beat me, it's creator.)

A sizable part of the book concerns the truth values of propositions about fictional characters, which is amusing but ultimately a made-up problem. Given that we know from Godel that there are undecidable propositions in formal logical systems, it hardly seems surprising that these would exist in novels and plays.

He should have been on firmer ground with mathematics, because imho this is where the question of how much exists independently of human minds is most arguable, but this is where he is weakest and he makes a number of mistakes.

Towards the end he discusses the idea that mind is made of some kind of non-physical stuff and seems to poo-poo the idea that there can be any such non-physical stuff. But isn't information an example of non-physical stuff?

It is telling that towards the end he says that he often doesn't know what he means by what he has written, until someone else tries to explain it back to him and he thinks "well it certainly wasn't that." So he still doesn't know what it _was_ about. And in the case of this book, neither do I.

I know Michael Frayn through exposure to his playwriting masterpiece (at least that is how I consider it) "Noises Off", a thoroughly entertaining and very, very funny farce of all things theatrical and therefore, of culture as a whole. I was not prepared for the depth and breadth of his skill in weaving the substances of philosophical thought and almost gossamer-like threads of humor and grace and compassion for the struggle we as human beings have with living life. A long book yet filled with enough insights theatrical and, especially humor, and it became an easy read, enjoyable as well as thought-inducing. I highly recommend it.

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