The Closer to Truth PBS Television Series - a Review and Commentary

I've just completed viewing all 290 episodes of this long-running philosophical discussion series.  It was a four-month undertaking - watching and absorbing nearly 130 hours of video.  Having invested all that time, I now feel a need to react by way of offering a review of sorts, pointing out "the good, the bad, and the ugly", and also by way of injecting some commentary on selected elements of the content.

I started here by presenting the slick one-minute introductory and promotional video at the top of this post.  Well done, but perhaps promising more than can be delivered.  After all, the goal is no less than attempting to explore, in depth, the biggest questions of reality.  Can't get much more ambitious than that.  These are questions that the world's greatest thinkers have been pondering for nigh onto three thousand years without great concurrence (perhaps without real progress).

It's a good quality effort.  The majority of the episodes, at least, are definitely worth the time.  It's a pretty level-headed attempt, and a true passion of the series' host, who is also its executive producer, Robert Lawrence Kuhn.  He summarized his 'mission' succinctly during the series' first season (2008).  It appears at the end of the 13th and last episode of the season, an exploration of the idea or reality of God titled "Does God Make Sense?", and it was the summary statement at the end (see minute 25:15).  Speaking about how the best arguments for and against the existence of God both contain "circularities, endless regressions, dead ends."  He goes on to say:

“Many people seem certain of their beliefs. I wish I were certain. (Switching to a sing-song voice:) I may continue lurching and lapsing in my beliefs. (Changing to a firm assertive voice:) But I will never cease wondering, striving, searching. (Passionate voice) My search is what this entire series is all about—an exploration of Cosmos, Consciousness, and God. (Finally trailing into a workmanlike tone for the tag line) For me, for now, passionate uncertainty … is Closer to Truth.”

The tone and emphasis of that last sentence was of special interest to me.  His passion is obvious and laudable.  But he is no real fan of uncertainty as an intrinsic part of physical reality (e.g. the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle) or as inherent logical, philosophical, and even mathematical attributes of the realm of the abstract.

Quite the contrary. He was using the term in a very different sense as he crafted the summary of the episode such that the title would come out as the very last words spoken—something that he makes a point of finding a way to do for each and every episode.

The structure of most episodes is designed to highlight philosophical friction points--a sort of humanized version of uncertainty.  He loves to juxtapose these arguments - the more passionate the better.  That is what he means by that last sentence in the quote.  

I would hope to see him explore the far deeper philosophical concept of ‘big U’ uncertainty itself, the underlying fundamental physical superposition of contradicting descriptions of the world (like wave-particle duality), which I call 'big P Paradox'.  But no.  He always dismisses this intrinsic uncertainty - never delves into it.  His bias is one that most scientists and philosophers share, and that human curiosity craves almost like a drug.  He is still looking for the 'bedrock' underlying reality.  He uses that word frequently.  He seems blind to that alternative view of physical and abstract 'Truth' that insists that there is no such bedrock (implicitly, fundamentally, not even in principle).

So, the series sticks to the goal of pursuing ‘Truth’ through interviews and conversations with some of the best thinkers of the day.  He moves back and forth across the gulf on both sides of an issue, contrasting a diverse array of seemingly competent and coherent arguments on each side, and leaves it at that.  Think of a man standing on a bulkheaded shoreline before a raging chaotic sea, pondering its fury (that intractable gulf between the opposing positions), and yet never once appearing to consider actually jumping in to experience it - to seek to come to terms with it.

The strength of this series, and the reason I strongly recommend it to others, is the quality of the people he interviews. There are exceptions.  He countenances a few crackpots, but I won't name names.  The greatest weakness of the series comes out when Kuhn can’t help but inject his personal biases, which are most evident in the topics of Consciousness and God.  I note that quite a few of the episodes are 'funded in part by' the John Templeton Foundation, which has a distinctly spiritual, even religious emphasis, though also an exemplary organization for pursuing critical thinking and embracing the role of the scientific process.

I was drawn to the series many years ago because of the Cosmos content. From my physicalist perspective, the other two foci (Consciousness and God) seem far inferior, of far less universal importance. For me, 'Cosmos' as a topic is Universal (more-or-less by default, actually), whereas I construe Consciousness and God as human-focused particulars that lie deep inside the Universal theme and, even then, as cherry-picked Western-culture-oriented members of a much larger set of such particulars.

To be sure, there is a perspective in which a metaphysical 'Consciousness' and/or a Supreme Creator Being stand on an equal footing with the scientific investigation of the Cosmos.  One can argue, and Kuhn frequently does, that if either of these two concepts/entities is fundamental, then all else subsumes to them.  Assuming one can define it adequately, consciousness could be viewed as fundamental using the old Descartes argument: "The only thing that is demonstrably real to me is my own thought".  Everything else that I experience is filtered through that processor known as 'mind'.  And, of course, a Creator God, if demonstrated to exist (think the Junior High School girl in a hyper-intelligent civilization in some higher universe who created our universe as a simulation for a School Science Fair Project), also trumps all other explanations of reality.

I highlighted the 'if' in the last paragraph.  One must necessarily choose their 'axioms' - the precepts that they decide are 'given' rather than subject to question - in order to construct any coherent system that describes reality.  To me, Consciousness, in particular, utterly fails as a foundational axiom.  I could go with either of the other two - Our Cosmos being physical or being a hyper-advanced civilization's or mind's experimental test of some hypothesis or other (or even just a video game).  But given that Consciousness has been shown to be the highly selective, error-prone, heavily processed internal narrative that the brain generates in order to cohesively direct its collective community of trillions of living cells toward best survival outcomes, it could hardly be considered fundamental.  Many aspects of the idea of 'self' and first-person experience cannot be generalized or described objectively (e.g. what does 'red' actually look like?).  Science takes great pains to remove the individual from the 'facts' through a process of reproducible experiment.  Even the oldest eastern faith traditions recognize the problems of individual 'attachment' and 'desire' as hindrances to achieving 'Truth'.  It seems to me that Western individualism is on the wrong track, and I would argue that only an ego-centrist, dare I say a Narcissist, would consider a specialized human mental function to have a fundamental role in reality.

Yes, there is that interesting 'Measurement Problem' in quantum mechanics, which posits that some as-yet-undefinable form of 'observer' is required to entangle itself with the system before an observable's 'wave function collapses' or its information is resolved within the observer's 'universe'.  I worded that last sentence very carefully because I think the best interpretations of this process only get us closer to the primacy of 'Big P Paradox' rather than any fundamental role for Consciousness.

A walk through the world of Brandon Sanderson

 

This quote, from Brandon Sanderson's epic fantasy "The Way of Kings" nearly perfectly connects my real world situation, as a solitary pilgrim on foot, with Sanderson's imagined epic Fantasy universe.

King Nohadon records that he walked more than a thousand miles from his presumed capital of Abamabar to the sacred city of Urithiru without companions and not revealing his identity.  He could have made the trip in an hour by 'Oathgate,' but his quest was about the journey, about getting to know the nature of his world, its people, and the land—to experience the grit and suffering of ordinary lives so that he could more wisely rule.

Nohadon was not just a great monarch; he was a sage and a pathfinder.  His published collection of forty parables, bearing the title that Sanderson chose for his novel, had survived 4,500 years through a period of recovery and reconstruction following an Armageddon-like war on the planet Roshar.  Most knowledge from the time before that apocalypse had been lost.  So Nohandon's book contained much of the surviving wisdom.

Nohadon ruled during the Age of Heralds, when Ishar, greatest among them, a human made immortal by the 'Almighty', organized the Knights Radiant to face the enemy species called Voidbringers, who call themselves the Singers.

Thing is ... the Singers are Roshar's native species.  Humans invaded here after destroying their home planet of Ashyn several thousand years before the time of Nohadon.  And of course, they then set about conquering the planet and enslaving the native population.

In the present day setting for the novel, all Singers had become subservient and nearly mute.  All except for a small band of free peoples called the Listeners, who live deep in a bleak region called the Shattered Plains.

The Listeners did not remember that humans existed.  The humans thought that all Singers had been fully subdued.  But now, after 4500 years of 'silence', the evil power of the god 'Odium' stirs again.  The Listeners are taking 'warform' and discussing re-conquering their world; and among humans, rumors are being whispered that the Knights Radiant may be returning ...

On the Shattered Plains, with a 'Highstorm' approaching, the human aristocrat warrior Dalinar Kholin faces off against Eshonai, leader of the tribe of Listeners. Work copyright by Tor.com and Michael Whalen.

"Way of Kings," published in 2010, is Brandon Sanderson's signature work, and the one for which he should be remembered.  The key to Sanderson's writing style is character point-of-view.  There is no absolute good or evil, and each character sees the world differently.  The reader is not made privy to the big picture, only what the characters know; and nobody seems to remember much or care much about the underlying mythopoeia, its magic powers, its gods, its hidden realms.  This is, for me, both a blessing and a curse.  But more about that later.

The cover art for the United States release, shown above, is a master-work in itself, from the artist Michael Whelan.  It features the geography of the Shattered Plains, and the epic meteorology—a phenomenon called the 'Highstorm' that is far beyond a simple thunderstorm.  It contains a spirit, called the Stormfather.  It both ravages the planet as it rakes across the land every few days, and restores the planet's pseudo-physical energy source, called Stormlight. 

"Way of Kings" was Sanderson's first novel in the Stormlight Archive series.  His plan is for ten books in this series and as many as 35 (possibly revised to 31 recently) set in his mythical universe called the Cosmere.  So far, he's written four Stormlight Archive books, the latest of which was just released in November 2020.

The books were recommended to me by my daughter and future son-in-law.  I just spent the last couple months reading all four.

So here's the thing.  These books average 400,000+ words apiece (close to 1300 pages).  No author can give 30+ books of that size the craftsmanship that they need.  I strongly recommend "Way of Kings" because it is Sanderson's Magnum Opus—the book he always wanted to write and the one that he spent more than a decade perfecting.  He originally finished it in 2002 before he had any books published. In that original version, his hero, Katahdin [who he misspells as 'Kaladin'], was an aspiring knight.  After he finished writing the first of Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" books, twelfth in the overall series, which he was asked to complete posthumously, he then returned to "Way of Kings" with a new understanding of Jordan's strength in presenting a world from various character points of view, and rewrote it from scratch, giving Katahdin a far more interesting character arc [though he continues to misspell the name].

Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" series is the epitome of an author filling pages to sell books.  Read his first couple of books in that series, and maybe Sanderson's last three, but run, don't walk, away from the ones in the middle.

But I digress.  Sanderson's second book in the Stormlight Archive series, "Words of Radiance," came out in 2014.  I found it also to be great fun.  It was the one that sold best, vaulting to a NYT bestseller almost immediately based on the reception of "Way of Kings".  But "Words of Radiance" begins to show signs of hasty writing and worse, of writing character studies using what I call 'Board Meeting' scenes to fill pages rather than advance the plot.  In the third novel, "Oathbringer" the stuff I consider filler and fluff overwhelmed the story, seriously bogging it down, and I would not recommend it.  "Rhythm of War", the fourth book, is a little better, with some action and interesting plot twists mixed in with the board meetings, and it has a decent climax; but it suffers most from the curse of 'hasty' plotting and writing.  (In the interest of keeping this post reasonably tidy, I'm not offering any supporting detail here.)  Sanderson is no longer just an author sitting at a keyboard.  He has become a novel manufacturing industry.

My recommendation, and this is advice I am now going to begin taking myself, is to seek out the one or two books that made an author famous and read only those.  They are the best because they are the stories that the author really slaved over, agonized over, took pains to perfect.  It is writing that managed to overcome the overwhelming odds against an unknown author getting published, and then to break out of the crowd even among those titles that publishers took a chance on.

Sanderson has accumulated a huge fan base who will now consume everything he writes; and to his credit, he is producing good stories with interesting characters.  And he is keeping publisher deadlines.  He's a hard worker and has that grand vision to produce perhaps the largest unified collection of works ever set in a single imagined universe.

Good on him.  But for me, as a choosy consumer, there are other brilliant talents whose stories and writing style are just as worthy if not more so; and my reading time is limited.  I've chosen not to read any more of Sanderson's works, and I've now moved on to Patrick Rothfuss's "The Name of the Wind" also on the recommendation of my daughter and her fiancée.  From there, I'll move on to seek out breakthrough Sci-Fi and Fantasy works from other new shining stars.

Rothfuss, by the way, is apparently the polar opposite of Sanderson in terms of productivity.  Published in 2007, "Name of the Wind" was envisioned as a trilogy, and the second installment was released in 2011; but his editor/publisher Betsy Wolheim is pissed.  She doesn't think he's written anything since 2014, and has not seen a word of the third book ten years on.  It seems to me that Rothfuss has been distracted by his fame, much as, I believe, George R.R. Martin is.

Okay, so now, lastly, I want to spend a little time examining the value of Sanderson's writing technique, using limited character points of view (POV), which, crucially, he uses to justify withholding big picture information that other characters (non-POV characters) know.  Even when he writes from the POV of his most knowledgeable characters (notably the 'worldhopper' Hoid, known as Wit on Roshar), he conveniently makes them 'insane' or deliberately enigmatic.  The reader gets manipulated like a puppet on a string.  And I deeply dislike being manipulated.  It's a control thing.  The reader discovers the world only as the author chooses to reveal it.  That's a 'DUH' kind of statement, but when I, as reader, keep getting bludgeoned by the author's obvious evasiveness, rather than feeling like the plot is flowing naturally, then I rebel.  At its best, this writing strategy as applied in the first book, "Way of Kings", feels fresh, like we are discovering the ways of the world as the characters discover them.  At its worst, in the many manifestations of politics-oriented and/or power-juggling board meetings, I feel disrespected as a reader.  I'm left hanging, with unspoken and unfathomable character relationships and motivations.  I'm confused and bewildered by an endless parade of new powers, new rules of magic, and newly revealed beings/spirits, all of which seem ad hoc, only partially explained, deliberately obfuscated, or just hinted at, until I'm left wondering whether it's worth muddling on.

I'll give one basic example - the origin story.  Sanderson's world-building is meticulous, unrivaled in its variety and detail; but the depth of his universe is far weaker than its breadth.  The underlying creation story is vague and vaguer.  The world supposedly began with a thing called Adonalsium, which could be a person, a force, or something else.  Nobody knows.  Strangely, none of the religious thinkers and scholars that Sanderson depicts have anything useful to say about it ( ... really?).  Adonalsium apparently interacts with the universe through a set of four primal commands, called Dawnshards, which must be invoked by a command ('abra-cadabra') and with intent - i.e. to accomplish a task ... like, say, the Creation.  What are these four commands?  Well, only one has even been identified.  The one called 'Change'.  There is no information in the Sanderson officially maintained encyclopedia, regarding the other three ... or rather, the information declares that they are unknown.

That world, as its inhabitants experience it, was the result of Adonalsium being attacked by a mob of mortals and shattered, using those Dawnshards, into sixteen 'Shards,' each with a portion of the original power.  Sixteen people from the mob adopted/absorbed those powers and became the first immortal 'Vessels' of the powers; and all the conflict and intrigue that Sanderson writes about can be traced back to the various plots and schemes of these Vessels and their inherent Shard powers, each of which is different.  Four of the original sixteen Shards have been killed (splintered), two have combined into a hybrid within one person, and only three (including one of the dead ones) have any relevance at all (so far) in the realm of the Stormlight Archive series.  Two others have some sway on other worlds, four others are named but without supplying anything other than the name, and two have not even been named, only hinted at in vague terms such as 'one that is hiding and just wants to survive' or one that may be related to Wisdom or Prudence.

Sanderson's stories are all about the power mongering and politics of interaction between the Shards, and the complex set of rules governing what powers their Vessels give to lesser creatures that the Shards create and manipulate, almost always for their own benefit.  The complexity is bewildering, to say the least.  It's great for the Sanderson devotee, not so much fun for a more casual reader.

Sanderson apparently does 'know' a lot more than he's revealing.  Okay, fine.  He's trying to sell books.  A three- (formerly seven-) book series called Dragonsteel, planned for far in the future, will be about the Shattering of Adonalsium, but that is not going to be released until he is finished with all ten of the Stormlight Archive books.  The next one, the fifth, is planned for a 2023 release.  By the time he gets around to writing Dragonsteel I'll be long dead.  What are the chances that he'll actually ever accomplish such a grand plan?  Honestly, I think it's a long shot.

The Stars align for author MaryLee MacDonald

Talk about great timing.  A week ago, MaryLee MacDonald's latest novel, Montpelier Tomorrow was released.  It's a novel about a mother/caregiver who sets aside her own goals in order to care for a son-in-law suffering from ALS.  ALS. Yes, the book was released in the very midst of the current viral ALS Ice Bucket Challenge craze.

And now, barely a week later, and therefore just in time to add to her well-deserved publicity buzz, MaryLee has won the Jean Leiby Chapbook Award for 'The Rug Bazaar', which I assume will lead to its publication in the Florida Review.  If you can't read the small print in the image above, here's the Judge's commentary:

The Rug Bazaar is a duet of stories, both of which concern American women traveling in Turkey. Both are love stories, and both seem to fly in the face of everything you'd think a love story could be. These are independent stories, yet, as a pair, they harmonize. In music, we might call this "call and response," how one instrument follows another, and, in following, comments on the first. I'll leave it to the reader to pick the order in which these two pieces might best be read. But, surely, read them both! Much of the beauty of The Rug Bazaar is to be found in the way each story complements the other.
 

The award is no fluke, and it's not her first.  MaryLee earned a Masters Degree in English/Creative Writing way back in the 70's but drifted away from writing as the demands of life intervened.  Once her children were out of the house and finished with college, she returned to full-time writing.  You can read her full bio here.

Montpelier Tomorrow has debuted to high praise from readers.  As a caregiver herself, MaryLee knows her subject from the inside.  As she says,

I ... never thought that ALS would be a subject I would come to know so well.  ... Any caregiver, for any long-term debilitating disease, will recognize her or himself in these pages; but, this is not a diary, nor is it autobiographical. I hope it is, as Wordsworth said of poetry, "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility."

Well said, MaryLee.  As the sages declare, we make our own "luck", and I have no doubt that the 'alignment' of the ALS Ice Bucket buzz and the release of Montpelier Tomorrow was meant to be.

I look for many more good things coming from this talented author. 

'Hothouse' by Brian Aldiss. Book review and analysis

First published in the UK as 'Hothouse' this is the US Book Club edition from 1962

The Long Afternoon of Earth by Brian W. Aldiss
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

First a personal note. Here is a book that I first read 50 years ago, at the time when it won a Hugo award. I loved it then. It made a lasting impression. It is enlightening to see how my memory of the book contrasts with my current impressions. Back then I was struck by the wildly imaginative setting and several of the vivid scenes.

What impresses me now, apart from the author's far-reaching imagination, is his skill at constructing the tale. Using a rich vocabulary and engaging prose, Aldiss actualizes a setting some five billion years in the future when the sun is about to go nova and burn all life on Earth to a crisp. He brings this world to the reader by populating it with well-realized characters who face conflict with a seemingly endless array of threatening new life forms.

This is a world dominated by vegetation. Plants have assumed the niches formerly occupied by most animals, and the animals have largely gone extinct. Some plants can see, though none can hear. Some are able to walk or crawl or fly, though always crudely compared to their animal counterparts. There is one vegetable creature, taking the form of a giant spider, that has conquered outer space and now spins its webs between the earth and the Moon. Is this plausible? Is it sci-fi? More on this later.

The plot centers on Gren, an inquisitive and rebellious adolescent male in a tribe ruled by women. The elders of the tribe declare that it is time for them to 'Go Up' - presumably to their death - leaving the youngsters to establish a new social order. In the uncertainty that ensues, Toy is the young woman who assumes leadership. Because Gren questions Toy's decisions, she banishes him from the tribe, and another young woman, Poyly, sides with Gren.

Without the support of a tribe, Gren and Poyly are not likely to survive in this hazardous world. But a morel - a brain fungus with the knowledge of a sage - parasitizes both of them and helps them successfully negotiate all challenges. However the morel has its own agenda, and therein lies the conflict that is the focal point of the rest of the story. To say more would be to cross the boundary into spoiler territory.

This book was first published in the UK under the title "Hothouse." I am delighted to note that "Hothouse/Long Afternoon of Earth" was recently re-released (2009) so that the current generation has a chance to experience this masterful tale. I hope this generation will come to the book without pre-conception, because it does not fit cleanly into the genre that Aldiss identifies with. There is an image problem.

The image problem can be crystallized by this example: There is a scene in the middle of the book in which Gren enters a cave where thought is corrupted, as if by a psychedelic drug, and into which beings are involuntarily drawn, as if by a pheromone on the wind. When Aldiss later explains the purpose of this cave, the explanation is more mystical than physical. The resulting processes utterly defy basic laws, such as that of gravitation. (Yes, this is deliberately vague, so as to avoid spoilers.)

Reviews of this book have a bimodal distribution. People generally either love it or hate it. The common theme among the negative reviews is that it is not science fiction. I have to agree. Though I don't pay attention to labels and don't make reading decisions based on them, I can see where others might be put off by unmet expectations. If this book were identified to readers as a Fantasy, no one would object to the metaphysical scenes and concepts.

That is the crux of the image problem. The more inflexible hard-sci-fi enthusiasts don't like their unswerving faith in reductionism challenged by an example of emergence and irreversible evolution that could undermine their static 'fact-based reality' paradigm, even if the example is fictional.

These poor vulnerable victims of the grand enlightenment should have been forewarned.

Brian Aldiss was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America in 2000 and inducted by the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2004.  He will celebrate his 89th birthday in August 2014. As far as I know he is still active and still thinking so far outside the box that "the box" is little more than a quantum fluctuation amid the profound diversity of reality. He has lived long and prospered. May he continue to do so.

Postscript and commentary:


Without giving away too much about 'Hothouse/Long Afternoon of Earth' or about my own distant future sci-fi/Fantasy novel series 'Eden's Womb' I want to note that Aldiss and I both share a thirst to explore the distant future, to speculate about the fate of mankind, and to understand our place in the cosmos.

Fifty years after first reading 'Long Afternoon of Earth' I cannot quantify the degree to which Aldiss's book influenced mine, because I ran across many other inspirational sources along the trajectory to my book, and because my original book concept was set just a decade or two into the future.


In 2001, after seeing a commentary that Brian Aldiss wrote in the journal 'Nature', I wrote him a fan letter.  To my delight he replied with an obviously personalized and thoughtful response.  This is a letter I will always treasure.

Personal letter from Brian Aldiss.  The addresses are obsolete.

The over-arching themes of 'Hothouse' and of 'Eden's Womb' are the same.  As you can see from the letter (and from Aldiss's original commentary in 'Nature') we both believe that humans find themselves effectively alone in the universe because of the unfathomably short time span during which we have been capable of interstellar communication using radio signals and the vast distances to other similar, putatively short-lived civilizations.

To guess the longevity of intelligent beings' radio technology, we have a statistical sample of one.  If we are anywhere near the center of the statistical distribution (and it is sheer fantasy to assume otherwise), one must conclude that the capability for interstellar communication among 'intelligent' beings lasts barely two centuries (one that we have lived through and one more that is to come as the ability tails away because of the possible forms of decay, including those discussed in the letter, social upheaval, economic crisis, global pandemics caused by mutated microbes, major earthquakes, and/or mega-cyclones).

We are a needle in an unimaginably giant haystack.  Two centuries is 0.0000014% of the life of the universe.  The probability that two civilizations will coincide--exist simultaneously in relative time--is therefore one in five hundred billion.  Current estimates are that there are *only* 8.8 billion habitable planets in our galaxy.  Rounding up to ten billion, that means that we would have to flawlessly separate cognitive radio signals from random noise coming from every one of the fifty nearest full-sized galaxies before we would have a 50/50 chance of finding just one civilization like ours.

The nearest major galaxy to us, Andromeda, is 2.6 million light years away.  How do you hold a conversation with somebody if it takes them 5.2 million years to reply?  Suppose we find that there is or once was microbial life on Mars.  Suppose we find fish in Europa's seas, as Brian Aldiss speculates in his novel?  We will glory in the knowledge that life is abundant, if not ubiquitous.  But we will still be without conscious friends or enemies.  We will remain sole stewards of our own fate.  So we better get used to it.  The road ahead is full of perils, and the vast majority of of them are self-inflicted.  Will we learn?  Will we successfully negotiate the 'Long Sojourn into Harmony and Balance' as the humans in my novel 'Eden's Womb' have?  It seems doubtful.  Yet if we do, that is still just the first step in an epic, epic journey.  Check my novel for more ...