IT SEEMS nobody spends quite as much time discussing the joys of science as Jim Al-Khalili. Whether with guests on his , The Life Scientific, in the documentaries he presents or with the students he teaches and mentors at the , UK, he is on an insatiable quest to find out 鈥渨hy鈥�. He told us where this all started, why scientists need to question their own biases and about the importance of never growing up.
Richard Webb: To turn the tables a bit, what made you take up a life scientific?
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Jim Al-Khalili: I guess my passion for science, well, physics, began in my early teens, when I was obsessed with football and discovering girls and thinking I鈥檇 one day play for my beloved Leeds United, who were a good team back then in the mid-1970s. But I suddenly fell in love with physics. It was like puzzle solving; it was common sense. With chemistry and biology, I had to remember stuff, and I鈥檓 terrible at remembering stuff. Physics also dealt with the big questions. Where does the universe come from? What does an atom look like? What鈥檚 inside a star? So from about the age of 13 or 14, I wanted to do physics. If I got to play for Leeds United, that would be nice, but I was going to be a physicist.
Your latest book is called The Joy of Science. Is that something you feel on a day-to-day basis?
It is, actually. Part of why I enjoy science communication is that I like doing the science. I like finding out stuff for myself, and I can鈥檛 imagine not sharing it with as many people as possible. If you discover something new about the world, why would you not want to shout it from the rooftops? Everyone should be able to see why science is so joyful, why understanding how the world works, is something to celebrate.
You are a theoretical physicist, and that feels very different from what, say, a climate scientist or someone discovering new vaccines might do. So what actually is science?
What I try and get across in my book is that science isn鈥檛 about facts about the world. That鈥檚 called knowledge. Science is a process, a way of getting to that knowledge. And that could be sitting observing birds nesting on a cliff鈥檚 edge, it could be digging into the ground to understand geology, it could be solving algebraic equations, it could be writing mathematical computer programs to model the climate or it could be working in the lab with lasers or test tubes or whatever.
So science is about getting closer to the truth?
Absolutely. And I think, these days, there is this perception that truth is what you make of it. It is relative. But in science, particularly in the natural sciences, there is an absolute truth. Wherever we come from, whatever culture, whatever time period, whatever language we speak, we should be able to reach that truth about the world.
With all the misinformation and conspiracy theories flying around, are we turning away from a scientific way of thinking?
The pandemic has taught us we can鈥檛 face up to the challenges of the 21st century without science to develop the vaccines, to understand the nature of pandemic spread and so on. And we鈥檙e learning more as a society about how scientists work, how they think and what the scientific method is. But there does seem to be a rise in misinformation and irrational thinking as well. That鈥檚 very difficult to combat, because the people who buy into irrational ideologies think they鈥檙e behaving scientifically, that they have an inquiring mind, that they are doing all the things that the scientific method tells us to do. But they鈥檙e arriving at something that is not the truth.
How do we convince them of the truth?
If there鈥檚 someone who is adamant Earth is flat, or that we didn鈥檛 go to the moon, or that alien abductions are real, in a sense it doesn鈥檛 matter. The world would be a boring place if we all believed the same thing. But when you come to people spreading lies about vaccines, for example, we do have to do something. You can鈥檛 shout your way into getting someone to agree with you; you can鈥檛 say they鈥檙e being stupid. I think the way to tackle conspiracy theorists is to accept that they truly believe what they do believe, but also get them to understand there鈥檚 such a thing as cognitive dissonance 鈥� that they will be uncomfortable in hearing something that goes against their existing beliefs. We all need to examine those biases and beliefs we have and examine where we got our evidence from.
Science prides itself on being objective, but doesn鈥檛 it have its own problems with biases?
杏吧原创s are people, too, so they will have their own ideological views and motivations, whether it鈥檚 to get funding or to push a particular hypothesis they鈥檝e invested a lot of years into. The difference is that we have the scientific method, as we鈥檝e developed it over the centuries, which has been designed to correct for our biases. Things like reproducibility: you can鈥檛 just say 鈥淚鈥檝e discovered this鈥�, other people have to repeat that experiment or that observation and see if they get the same results.
Bad ideas don鈥檛 survive in science. There are certain dogmas that last because people fall into a way of thinking, and then you get the lone Einstein who comes along who says: 鈥淎ctually, you were all wrong.鈥� The problem is, everyone thinks that they鈥檙e the new Einstein if they don鈥檛 agree with the consensus. But the scientific method corrects for this in general. It鈥檚 one step backwards, two steps forwards, but ultimately, we tend to overcome those biases.
Does it help overall trust in science when in climate science, for example, scientists are increasingly also activists?
I can see why people would regard that as science becoming ideologically driven, rather than rationally driven. But I think the activism connected with climate change is really to try and get the point across that while we鈥檙e never sure in science 鈥� you can never be certain 鈥� with overwhelming probability things are going badly. I think sometimes you do have to shout about it when people aren鈥檛 listening. I see the activism not as political ideology, but as a necessary thing we have to do to persuade people to change their ways.
As well as a champion of science, you are a prominent humanist. Do you think religious belief and scientific thinking are incompatible?
By and large, if you are a laser physicist or an engineer or an organic chemist, if you have a religious faith, that鈥檚 not going to affect your ability as a scientist. But ultimately, a scientific view of the world does not call upon any supernatural explanations. There are very clever and very rational scientists, many of whom are good friends of mine, for whom their religious faith is very important, and I wouldn鈥檛 presume to argue with them or belittle their reasons for believing in what they believe in. But ultimately, as a scientist, I want to find a non-supernatural explanation that obeys the laws of physics. My personal view is that it鈥檚 intellectual laziness to reach a point and say: 鈥淲ell, I can鈥檛 understand things further, it鈥檚 down to a divine creator.鈥�
But in your area, fundamental physics, don鈥檛 we eventually reach the point where we can鈥檛 understand things further?
Certainly. One example is in cosmology. How did the universe start? In the big bang, when space and time started. Well, what caused the big bang? If you go purely by Einstein鈥檚 theory of relativity, there is no earlier time than the big bang, because that鈥檚 when time was created. You get that far with 鈥渉ow did the universe begin鈥� and you say 鈥渋t just did鈥�. Yet, nowadays, cosmology suggests that maybe there was a before, that maybe our universe was born in a big bang that wasn鈥檛 unique, that there are other big bangs, other universes popping into existence. What we once thought was the limit of where we could possibly get to in understanding, we later realise we can push back. Science is constantly taking us beyond what we thought we could understand.
But when cosmology starts saying there are other universes out there that we can know nothing about, isn鈥檛 it straying into that 鈥渏ust take it on belief鈥� territory?
In a sense, yes. The same applies with various highly mathematical theories like superstring theory. There are many scientists who say if you can鈥檛 design an experiment to test your theory, you鈥檙e failing one of the conditions of what you define as science, testing hypotheses. But there are reasons mathematically why these ideas make sense, and how rationally or logically they answer questions. I put them above just religious beliefs, because we hope one day to be able to test them. Just because we don鈥檛 have a way of testing some of these ideas now, doesn鈥檛 mean they鈥檙e not part of science.
To move on to a very rigorously tested theory, quantum theory 鈥� will we ever understand it?
It depends what you mean by understanding. A lot of physicists get very hot under the collar about this, because quantum mechanics as a mathematical framework, describing the universe of the very small, is very well understood. Without it, we wouldn鈥檛 have understood the nature of materials or how electrons arrange themselves around atoms. We wouldn鈥檛 have developed modern electronics. But you also need the narrative that goes with it, the story that explains: 鈥榃hat does this mean, and how does it connect to the real world?鈥� Quantum mechanics, for just coming up to a century now, seems to have got away scot-free without having a unique way of explaining what the heck is going on. But I鈥檓 now of a generation where we鈥檝e managed to finally break away from the old guard. We have now got to the stage where we can say, actually, that鈥檚 not enough.
There are so many different interpretations of what quantum mechanics might mean. Which runner would you back in that race?
Now we are bordering on something akin to religious belief: do you belong to the many worlds school or the Bohmian school or the Copenhagen school or whatever? I鈥檓 agnostic. I do prefer what are called realist interpretations: that there is a real world out there, independently of what we might think. And I do believe there is a unique interpretation. Whether or not we will find it, I don鈥檛 know, but it鈥檚 out there. The universe doesn鈥檛 care about the different ways we describe what鈥檚 going on, but whatever it does, it does behave in a certain way.
Is our problem with quantum theory that we are missing a connection between mind and matter?
There were physicists like Eugene Wigner in the mid-20th century who gave credence very strongly to the idea that consciousness plays an important role in observing the quantum world. But I think there鈥檚 something too magical and mystical for most physicists today to think the nature of consciousness and the human mind somehow has a bearing on the quantum world.
The sort of research I鈥檓 working on at the moment says that anything that behaves quantum mechanically doesn鈥檛 do so in isolation; it鈥檚 surrounded by an environment. And it is its surroundings that are looking at it, measuring it. There鈥檚 something called decoherence, where the quantumness leaks out into the environment. So with the famous cat in the box paradox, where it鈥檚 dead and alive at the same time, it doesn鈥檛 make up its mind whether it鈥檚 dead or alive once a human being with a consciousness or a PhD or a white lab coat opens the box to check it. Whatever quantumness has gone on there has decohered long before the box is open. But there is still this issue about where the boundary lies between the quantum world and our everyday classical world.
One very specific area you have worked in is the role that quantum physics plays in life.
Yes, quantum biology. I first got into this probably a quarter of a century ago, and it鈥檚 fair to say that even to this day, it鈥檚 speculative and, in some sense, controversial. Partly, biologists don鈥檛 know quantum mechanics, and they won鈥檛 accept that quantum weirdness is going on inside their labs, while physicists find biology hard and complicated. They鈥檇 much rather do their experiments in a physics lab, rather than trying to understand what鈥檚 going on inside a living cell where thousands of chemical reactions take place. And then the chemists who sit in between will say that of course everything, at some level, when you get down to atoms and molecules, is going to behave quantum mechanically.
But despite the fact that we should see quantum effects 鈥� dissipating and decohering very, very quickly 鈥� inside the warm, messy, noisy environment of a living organism, there鈥檚 growing evidence in the last decade or two that life, over the course of billions of years, has evolved the ability to fine-tune things to maintain quantum effects for long enough that they can have some functional role to play inside living cells. Quantum mechanics isn鈥檛 just going along for the ride: there are certain things 鈥� whether it鈥檚 photosynthesis, whether it鈥檚 mutations in DNA 鈥� that wouldn鈥檛 happen, or wouldn鈥檛 happen so efficiently, unless quantum mechanics is playing a role. What I find exciting is life is somehow different from inanimate matter of equivalent complexity, because life has evolved the trickery of the quantum world to make it more efficient.
If you had some words of advice for young people thinking of going into the life scientific, what would you say to them?
All children are curious, they ask all the 鈥渨hy鈥� questions. Most people, when they grow up to adulthood, stop asking the why questions. You get on with life and all the problems and challenges that it throws at you. To be a scientist, you never lose that childlike curiosity about the world. If that鈥檚 the sort of person you think you are, if that鈥檚 what gets you going, being curious about the world, then you鈥檙e already a scientist.
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