To pick up where we left off: The Believing Brain makes the case that beliefs come first, and explanations follow.  We’re hardwired to believe, and this wiring leads to all kinds of false conclusions about the world, because the way our belief system works leaves us open to all kinds of cognitive biases.

Shermer coins a couple of ugly words to embody the basic biological issues underpinning belief: patternicity and agenticity.  Patternicity is our tendency to see patterns — even when they aren’t there.  Agenticity is our tendency to infuse these patterns with meaning, intention, and agency.  (Shermer acknowledges that agenticity is comparable to what Daniel Dennett calls “the intentional stance.”)

Presumably evolution selected for these traits.  You’re better off if you occasionally see a pattern that isn’t there than if you miss patterns and as a result are eaten by a predator hiding in the trees.  You’re more likely to survive if you assume that some inexplicable event was caused by someone with a mind like your own.  And, of course, God is the ultimate pattern, the ultimate agent.  So, primitive man sees lightning in the sky and wonders What’s up with that?  He tries to see a pattern in the even, he assumes that there is intention behind the event.  He decides that some being in the sky is angry about something.  What’s he angry about?  Well, maybe he’s angry at us.  What can we do to calm him down?  Maybe we should sacrifice a goat or something.  Sacrifice a goat, and maybe the lightning stops.  Hey, it works!  Better keep sacrificing goats.  If the lightning comes back — maybe we didn’t sacrifice enough goats.  Or maybe we sacrificed them the wrong way. Or maybe he’s sick of goats — he wants rams or our virgin daughters or something.  Let’s give them a try!

This all seems plausible to me, and Shermer points to lots of neurological research to show what may be going on in the brain to account for this at the physical level (dopamine and whatnot).  But I’m always a little worried when people come up with evolutionary explanations for the way we are — not because I don’t believe in evolution, but because these explanations don’t tend to be testable, so  you can make up an evolutionary case for just about anything and no one can prove you wrong.

This is popular science writing, so Shermer also brings in lots of anecdotes from appearances on TV shows and encounters with conspiracy fanatics and the like.  These are pretty entertaining, although they don’t always advance the plot.  For example, he goes into a lot of detail about why the 9/11 truthers are nuts — good to know, but a little off topic.

The counterbalance to the believing brain is, of course, the scientific method.  Shermer’s discussion of the scientific method is fine, although I started skimming at that point — I already knew most of what he was talking about. Science is our only hope but, as Shermer acknowledges, the problem with the scientific method is that if it leads to conclusions that counter our beliefs, we tend to stick with our beliefs.  It’s easier to believe in miracles than to understand the null hypothesis.

Wherever I go, people stop me and say, “Rich, have you finished 1Q84  yet?  What did you think?  Should I give it to my husband for his anniversary?”

I’m happy to report that I finished 1Q84 during the fourth quarter of the Giants-Packers game.  Much excitement!

Murakami has a unique way of creating a world that is at once beyond strange but still somehow believable.  But weirdly, even at 925 pages I thought he left too many plot threads unresolved.  With his single-minded focus on his two main characters, he seemed to let everyone else drift away by the end.

Anyway, here is Nat King Cole singing “It’s Only a Paper Moon,” which provides the epigraph for the novel and figures somewhat obsessively in its action and symbolism:

A Universe from Nothing by Lawrence M. Krauss.

For many religious folks, the God of the Gaps argument from design has retreated from humanity (What a piece of work is a man!) to the universe.  OK, Darwin has a point, but still, there must be a Prime Mover, an Uncaused Cause.  But maybe not.

…[W]hat I find remarkable is the fact that the discoveries of modern particle physics and cosmology over the past half century allow not only a possibility that the Universe arose from nothing, but in fact make this possibility increasingly plausible.  Everything we have measured about the universe is not only consistent with a universe that came from nothing (and didn’t have to turn out this way!), but in fact, all the new evidence makes this possibility ever more likely.  Darwin demonstrated how the remarkable diversity of life on Earth, and the apparent design of life, which had been claimed as evidence for a caring God, could in fact instead be arrived at by natural causes involving purely physical processes of mutation and natural selection.  I want to show something similar about the Universe.  We may never prove by science that a Creator is impossible, but, as Steven Weinberg has emphasized, science admits (and for many of us, suggests) a universe in which one is not necessary.

The Reactionary Mind by Corey Robin.

Might as well track them here, so I can look back at these entries and feel guilty:

Physics on the Fringe by Margaret Wertheim.

Four hundred pages in, the links between the two characters representing the two narrative threads are a lot clearer: they held hands once when they were ten years old, and now they are somehow linked forever, though they haven’t met since.  Both are confronting a shadowy religious conspiracy.  But there’s a fundamental weirdness, with one of them apparently having slipped into a parallel world imagined by the other.  Suspense is building, as both characters find themselves in increasing jeopardy.

But the thing I’m having the most trouble with in Murakami’s weird universe is a basic real-world setup: one of the characters, Tengo, has rewritten someone else’s story at his editor’s behest, in order to make the story win a new-writer contest for a literary magazine.  Apparently, in 1984 Tokyo, winning this contest is a big deal, with huge press coverage, and if it ever gets out that Tengo rewrote the story, there will be an equally huge scandal.  Huh?  Knowing nothing about Tokyo in 1984, I have no sense of whether this is realistic.  But I’m pretty sure no one cares about awards from literary magazines in my neck of the woods….

I’m having a lot more difficulty with this than I am with the more straightforward fantasy elements of the story.  OK, so one of the characters sees two moons in the sky; little people spin themselves out of a sleeping character’s mouth and make a dog explode.  I’ll buy that.  But a press conference about a short story???

This blog is supposed to be about reading — at least, that’s what it says at the top.  But it’s going to take me a while to get through my current book, so it might be worth while issuing an interim report.

1Q84 is a 900-page novel by the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami. It was published in three volumes in Japan, but that’s not the way we do things around here, so we get this intimidating but beautifully designed doorstop of a book.  So far (150 pages in) it follows two young Japanese characters in alternating chapters.  It takes place in 1984, but one of the characters has slipped into a slightly parallel universe that she has started referring to as 1Q84. We are beginning to see tendrils of connections between the two stories, but there is no sense of where it’s all heading

None of which tells you anything about what it’s like to read this (or any other) Murakami novel.  It’s like inhabiting a matter-of-fact dreamworld where the most mundane events — say, a traffic jam on a Tokyo expressway — somehow become inexpressibly eery.  I suppose one could slot it under magical realism, but it’s really sui generis.  And certainly an acquired taste.  I was shocked to see it near the top of the local bestseller list;  I wonder if it will end up being the most unread book of the year.  I find it difficult to put down, but it’ll be interesting to see if I feel the same way 500 pages from now.  Dreamworlds can get dreary if you live in them too long.