Bertrand Russell and “A Way of Feeling"

Bertrand Russell, the previously mentioned mathematician and philosopher, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950 (“in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought”),

Bertrand Russell
Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.

 wrote about himself “I ought to call myself an agnostic; but, for all practical purposes, I am an atheist.” He wrote in his book “Religion andScience” these words:

There is, however, one aspect of the religious life, and that perhaps the most desirable, which is independent of the discoveries of science, and may survive whatever we may come to believe as to the nature of the universe. Religion has been associated, not only with creeds and churches, but with the personal life of those who felt its importance. In the best of the saints and mystics, there existed in combination the belief in certain dogmas and a certain way of feeling about the purposes of human life. The man who feels deeply the problems of human destiny, the desire to diminish the sufferings of mankind, and the hope that the future will realize the best possibilities of our species, is nowadays often said to have a religious outlook, however little he may accept of traditional Christianity. In so far as religion consists in a way of feeling, rather than in a set of beliefs, science cannot touch it.

I think that Russell, the agnostic philosopher, has said something important and worth keeping in mind.

The Value of Religious Feeling to Society

RobertAltemeyer, retired professor of psychology at the University of Manitoba, listed on the web pages of Canadian Agnostics, confirms the above when he notes in his book “Amazing conversions : why some turn to faith & others abandon religion” that:

In conclusion, let us recognize that if such findings put religion in a poor light, other studies have been more heartening. For example, religiously committed college students recalled volunteering more hours as tutors, relief workers, and campaigners for social justice than other students did. So it would be as fundamentally wrong to see religion as inherently bad as it is to see religion as fundamentally perfect - fundamentally speaking. The challenge is to increase its good effects, which we sorely need, and lessen the unfortunate ones.

But, as my wife reminds me, it is complicated - see : 

Behind the Headlines: Into the Mystic - Interview with Laura Knight-Jadczyk

....

Laura: Well yeah, and I guess that my particular character, my nature, adds to the mix. Like I said, things have to be logical, they have to make sense, and I'm really kind of very, very stubborn, and if something doesn't make sense I want to know why it doesn't make sense, and I'm a little ruthless with myself. Because if I come across something that really upsets me, but it does make sense - and this is something that I went through years ago, because it was difficult to transition out of a very strong religious background to where I am today.

But you know, there's even an answer for why - Bob Altemeyer wrote a book on amazing conversions, about why some people convert to religion, and why some people convert out of it, and he did some scientific studies on it, and I pretty much fit the profile of the person who converts out of religion. You get conditioned from your childhood to the idea that there is truth, and that truth is very valuable. That's the first thing that happens. And there's something in you that responds to that and says yes, I can see that because that is logical, the truth is important and it's valuable, and it's a goal to be sought.

And then you turn around and you apply that principle to the beliefs that you're being taught in religious terms, and then you say wait a minute, you know, this part of that religion that says truth is important, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free", that's a good thing, but the rest doesn't - I mean, the story that goes with that cannot possibly be true.

So it's like, for many people being brought up in a religious background, programs into them or inculcates into them certain principles that take. And then that becomes their foundational principle in respect of everything, literally everything, including the religion that puts that into them.

Joe: So it's kind of a trap, in a certain sense?

Laura: Yeah. But it's a useful thing because, in a certain sense, you could say that Christianity has in it a sneaky little program that works on certain kinds of people, and I'm not the only one who thinks that way or feels that way about the religion, you know. I'm not the only person who has looked at it, who has grown up, and said yes, truth is valuable, and then turned around and said this religion can't be true in the sense that they're promulgating it.

So I don't think that's particularly extraordinary, I mean Altemeyer found plenty of people who went through a similar process, and nearly all of them went through it rather painfully and protractedly. It took time, it took effort. But they were all - I mean truth, even to yourself, being honest even with yourself; "I can't believe that" is what you say. But when you give it up, then you also give up a whole lot of the familiarity of your life growing up, and things like fellowship with family members who refuse to give it up and who think that you are the black sheep of the family, or you're heretical, or something along that line. I mean I used to say some really off the wall things about religion when I was a kid, and my grandmother would call me a little heathen! (...)

 

Coming next: Plato and The Value of Myths and Parables

P.S.1. As I have mentioned under the previous note, I am learning about Generalized Uncertainty Relations. Today (14-03-23) the author of the paper that I am reviewing brought to my attention this paper: 

Hilbert Space Representation of the Minimal Length Uncertainty Relation

A. Kempf, G. Mangano, R. B. Mann

    The existence of a minimal observable length has long been suggested, in quantum gravity, as well as in string theory. In this context a generalized uncertainty relation has been derived which quantum theoretically describes the minimal length as a minimal uncertainty in position measurements. Here we study in full detail the quantum mechanical structure which underlies this uncertainty relation. 

"...Technically, as we will see, a minimal uncertainty in position will mean that the position operator is no longer essentially self-adjoint but only symmetric. ...

... From the dimensionalities of these subspaces, i.e. , since the deficiency indices are (1,1), one concludes that the position operator is no longer essentially self-adjoint but has a one-parameter family of self-adjoint extensions instead..."

I have asked the author my naive question:

"In "Hilbert Space Representation of the Minimal Length Uncertainty Relation" the Hilbert space seems to be L^2(dp/(1+beta p^2)), where p is essentially  "the momentum space representation". Is it also your choice?

But you are talking about gravity. How do you define the momentum space when you have a non-flat metric?"

And now I have to do my homework calculations  and  try to understand what really these people are doing? Are they just playing with "genetically modified monstrous" harmonic oscillators?

P.S.2. 15-03-23 The list of most cited mathematicians has been released. I am not happy with this list. Alain Connes is there only at the position 81! He should be listed as Number One. Citations should not matter.

On the photo taken by me at CIRM, Luminy, Marseille: My wife (back turned), 

and Professors Daniel Sternheimer, Alain Connes, Daniel Kastler (and others).