The Gods Themselves Book

There's No Free Lunch

The wonder of Asimov's fiction is that it has so many possible interpretations, many of which are acutely philosophical and often counter-cultural. Here's one about The Gods Themselves:

Scientific method is the modern intellectual fetish. We talk like we know what it means; and that what it means is the rational expansion of knowledge, leading to an improvement in the human condition. But both presumptions are questionable. Historically, scientific progress has been more accidental and the consequence of less than creditable emotions than a rational search for knowledge. And the real value of scientific results can't be assessed by the method that produces them. In other words, as with Asimov's Electron Pump (or with nuclear power which is a bit closer to home), we can't tell if science is rational or not in its output. We're flying blind, celebrating the fact that we're flying without caring in the least about our destination or that flying might be dangerous.

Our blind spot about scientific method is its source: Thought. There is a cost to the ability to think. But because this cost is deferred, it looks like its a free gift in and to the universe - mind appears as something different than body. As if thinking were a character of existence rather than of something that exists. Cogito ergo sum: Descartes' dualism is the practical philosophy of everyday life even if the professionals have debunked it long ago. So, for example, those things associated with thinking - language, mathematical analysis, contemplation, meditation, reading, story-telling - are considered more or less spiritual. That is, they appear unaffected by the iron laws of material economics.

But the reality is a very strict physical law: Think now, pay later; and pay big. Thinking takes energy. Not just the energy required of the organism in which thinking is taking place, but also the energy required to execute the ideas that thinking produces. The central resource of the cosmos is the local differentials in energy. To the extent these are present, work is possible. Thought is the instrument that seeks to minimize work by minimizing the potential for work. Thought seeks to exploit these differentials, and thus annihilates them. The ultimate victim is thought itself. The more we think, the closer to death we come. Thought is a suicide mission.

Consequently, the evolution of thinking beings is an ecological disaster for the universe. The universe, and its separate components like the Earth, consume themselves much more quickly with the existence of thought than without it. Thinking sucks up energy differentials and flattens them. Thinking then begets technology which begets waste heat which begets entropy which is another name for death. Thinking beings have an inevitable death wish that even Freud never considered.

Therefore to the extent that Asimov is thought-provoking (and he clearly is that), he is destroying the capability of the universe to maintain thinking beings at all. Makes one think, doesn't it?

Postscript: Perhaps Asimov anticipated Alain de Botton. See: