Martin Rees: Prize war
Accepting a £1m prize for spiritual works does not make the astronomer royal a fraud or a hypocrite
There are evolutionary theorists who describe scorpion flies as rapists, and Nobel laureate economists who insist that affairs of the human heart are best grasped through cost-benefit analysis. Clever people are, if anything, especially prone to intellectual tunnel vision – recasting every discussion in terms of the one discipline they have mastered, with no regard for how ideas that enlighten in one context often make no sense elsewhere.
The proselytising atheists rounding on the astronomer royal, Sir Martin Rees, for accepting a £1m award from an idiosyncratic foundation fall into a similar trap. The stated aim of the Templeton prize is to reward "insight, discovery or practical works" that affirm "life's spiritual dimension", terms which will leave nonbelievers scratching their heads but will seem self-explanatory from many a religious point of view. The biologist and celebrity atheist Richard Dawkins damns Templeton for blurring the line between science and faith in the hope of leeching the esteem of the former. He has made quite a career of treating religious doctrines as scientific hypotheses and then demonstrating that they are wanting in this regard.
Of course they are. Words can be used to joke or emote as well as inform, and neither scripture nor indeed poetry can be understood by mistaking it for something else. Metaphors ought not be metamorphosed into literal claims, while the test for moral edicts is reflective introspection and not the weight of the evidence that defines the scientific domain. Faith is a professional problem for scientists only where it demands that they close their minds to the facts. Neither Newton's religion nor Einstein's God of sorts (who refused to play dice) got in the way of their work. Conversely, the occasional book-promoting blathering of Stephen Hawking, about how with physics we can variously know the mind of God or prove he is fiction, is utterly wide of the mark.
The question with Templeton is not whether it funds some wacky endeavours, but whether it does anything to undermine the core requirement of good science, namely falsification through the experimental method. Its 2006 study into the healing power of prayer on heart disease was bizarre, but the conscientiously reported results – that prayer made no difference to survival, and by raising false hope may actually have increased the risk of complications – do not suggest intellectual corruption.
As a declared atheist who attends church for the sake of tradition, and a non-believer who nonetheless believes good can come of belief, Sir Martin's mind is one that can cope with nuance, as well as work with laser-like precision. He is perfectly entitled to enjoy his prize.
The proselytising atheists rounding on the astronomer royal, Sir Martin Rees, for accepting a £1m award from an idiosyncratic foundation fall into a similar trap. The stated aim of the Templeton prize is to reward "insight, discovery or practical works" that affirm "life's spiritual dimension", terms which will leave nonbelievers scratching their heads but will seem self-explanatory from many a religious point of view. The biologist and celebrity atheist Richard Dawkins damns Templeton for blurring the line between science and faith in the hope of leeching the esteem of the former. He has made quite a career of treating religious doctrines as scientific hypotheses and then demonstrating that they are wanting in this regard.
Of course they are. Words can be used to joke or emote as well as inform, and neither scripture nor indeed poetry can be understood by mistaking it for something else. Metaphors ought not be metamorphosed into literal claims, while the test for moral edicts is reflective introspection and not the weight of the evidence that defines the scientific domain. Faith is a professional problem for scientists only where it demands that they close their minds to the facts. Neither Newton's religion nor Einstein's God of sorts (who refused to play dice) got in the way of their work. Conversely, the occasional book-promoting blathering of Stephen Hawking, about how with physics we can variously know the mind of God or prove he is fiction, is utterly wide of the mark.
The question with Templeton is not whether it funds some wacky endeavours, but whether it does anything to undermine the core requirement of good science, namely falsification through the experimental method. Its 2006 study into the healing power of prayer on heart disease was bizarre, but the conscientiously reported results – that prayer made no difference to survival, and by raising false hope may actually have increased the risk of complications – do not suggest intellectual corruption.
As a declared atheist who attends church for the sake of tradition, and a non-believer who nonetheless believes good can come of belief, Sir Martin's mind is one that can cope with nuance, as well as work with laser-like precision. He is perfectly entitled to enjoy his prize.
New Europe: Old problems
Bailouts will not drive the eurozone or the EU through the floor – but both will need running repairs
Yesterday, Dublin. Today, Lisbon. Portugal's caretaker government now has to choose between going for a bridging loan, for which no fund or mechanism yet exists, or negotiating a bailout of anywhere between €70bn (£61bn) and €80bn. Whoever Portuguese voters choose in June's election, their true boss will be a German, Angela Merkel, whose government will be writing the terms of the loan. If the examples of Greece and Ireland are anything to go by, it will not make pleasant reading.
One of the features of the post-crisis world is that the "surplus countries" – those who export more to other nations than they import – call the shots. China is a surplus country; so is exporting powerhouse Germany, and in the eurozone, that makes Mrs Merkel the one who has to be obeyed. The German chancellor may argue that she should have such influence over the bailouts of Greece, Ireland and Portugal, since it is her electorate who will end up having to shoulder most of the burden. Ja sicher. But the politics of these bailouts is what makes their economics so absurd. When dealing with a nation struggling to pay its loans, it would make more sense to restructure its debts – so they are paid back over a long period, say. In Ireland's case, that process should have gone hand in hand with an overhaul of the banking sector. Instead of which, euro bailouts have saddled supplicant countries with even more debt at high interest rates. This enables Mrs Merkel (and Nicolas Sarkozy) to show domestic taxpayers that their money is not being frittered away on feckless southern Europeans. It is indeed difficult to persuade Germans, who got their labour costs down, to pay for countries such as Portugal, who did not.
The European project was not supposed to be run this way. When Jacques Delors called the EU an unidentified political object, the economy was doing so well the union did not need to be defined. Gloriously, it seemed free to set its own rules. Since then, the EU has erred in both directions: two of the entry criteria for the eurozone – that deficits should be no higher than 3% of the GDP, and total debt 60% – turned out to be narrow and restrictive, and yet there were no contingency plans for undefined threats like a banking crisis. So each bailout has been ad hoc and panicky. Little wonder that Europeans are losing faith in the ability of their politicians to sort these continental contagions out, and are turning instead to "patriotic" alternatives, homespun attempts to erect national firewalls.
Our month-long New Europe series started with an ICM poll which revealed that only 20% of surveyed Europeans trusted their government to deal with their country's problems. Only 9% thought they would act honestly. Our neighbours and their political elites turned out to be in as much flux as we were, from the meltdown of Germany's CDU to the aspirations of France's Marine Le Pen, who has a real chance of repeating her father's 2002 performance by going through to a second presidential round. Europe's far right is on the rise. In Finland, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands, it has populist messages which bundle immigration, crime, Islam and bailouts in one portable package, gift-wrapped for those who think that their identity, as well as their jobs and way of life, are being threatened.
Neither the union nor the eurozone will fall through the floor, but both will need running repairs. Yesterday's decision by the European Central Bank to raise interest rates shows it has some way to go before common sense triumphs over dogma. But the mood is far from being pre-revolutionary, as Marine Le Pen would have us believe, because the underlying principle of regional co-operation is more relevant today than it has been ever before. Unloved and inflexible, it is going to be some time before the union finds politicians capable of leading it, but find them it must.
One of the features of the post-crisis world is that the "surplus countries" – those who export more to other nations than they import – call the shots. China is a surplus country; so is exporting powerhouse Germany, and in the eurozone, that makes Mrs Merkel the one who has to be obeyed. The German chancellor may argue that she should have such influence over the bailouts of Greece, Ireland and Portugal, since it is her electorate who will end up having to shoulder most of the burden. Ja sicher. But the politics of these bailouts is what makes their economics so absurd. When dealing with a nation struggling to pay its loans, it would make more sense to restructure its debts – so they are paid back over a long period, say. In Ireland's case, that process should have gone hand in hand with an overhaul of the banking sector. Instead of which, euro bailouts have saddled supplicant countries with even more debt at high interest rates. This enables Mrs Merkel (and Nicolas Sarkozy) to show domestic taxpayers that their money is not being frittered away on feckless southern Europeans. It is indeed difficult to persuade Germans, who got their labour costs down, to pay for countries such as Portugal, who did not.
The European project was not supposed to be run this way. When Jacques Delors called the EU an unidentified political object, the economy was doing so well the union did not need to be defined. Gloriously, it seemed free to set its own rules. Since then, the EU has erred in both directions: two of the entry criteria for the eurozone – that deficits should be no higher than 3% of the GDP, and total debt 60% – turned out to be narrow and restrictive, and yet there were no contingency plans for undefined threats like a banking crisis. So each bailout has been ad hoc and panicky. Little wonder that Europeans are losing faith in the ability of their politicians to sort these continental contagions out, and are turning instead to "patriotic" alternatives, homespun attempts to erect national firewalls.
Our month-long New Europe series started with an ICM poll which revealed that only 20% of surveyed Europeans trusted their government to deal with their country's problems. Only 9% thought they would act honestly. Our neighbours and their political elites turned out to be in as much flux as we were, from the meltdown of Germany's CDU to the aspirations of France's Marine Le Pen, who has a real chance of repeating her father's 2002 performance by going through to a second presidential round. Europe's far right is on the rise. In Finland, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands, it has populist messages which bundle immigration, crime, Islam and bailouts in one portable package, gift-wrapped for those who think that their identity, as well as their jobs and way of life, are being threatened.
Neither the union nor the eurozone will fall through the floor, but both will need running repairs. Yesterday's decision by the European Central Bank to raise interest rates shows it has some way to go before common sense triumphs over dogma. But the mood is far from being pre-revolutionary, as Marine Le Pen would have us believe, because the underlying principle of regional co-operation is more relevant today than it has been ever before. Unloved and inflexible, it is going to be some time before the union finds politicians capable of leading it, but find them it must.
In praise of… music to make you cry
So what if Nick Clegg cries to classical music? At least he's not a Robbie Williams fan
It's his party and he can cry if he wants to: Nick Clegg, according to this week's New Statesman, listens to classical music in the evening and sometimes cries. Good for him. As a hinterland for a Liberal leader that is healthier than Gladstone's search for fallen women, or Asquith's perpetual games of bridge. There's nothing weak about letting music enter the soul. Mr Clegg didn't name a particular piece and his choices on Desert Island Discs included only two classical items, neither particularly lachrymose, but at least that is one more than David Cameron, who chose a schmaltzy piece of Mendelssohn. It's hard to imagine the prime minister crying to anything much, though he admits to being a fan of the Smiths, whose dreary dirges ought to provoke tears of rage. What might bring a nostalgic glisten to Ed Miliband's eye? Disturbingly, he was reported to have picked Robbie Williams's Angels as a favourite during the Labour leadership election, which if true ought to have disqualified him from running. Gordon Brown would surely be stirred by something Scottish and emotional: Rod Stewart's Rhythm of My Heart, perhaps, "no never will I roam, for I know my place is home", which might account for his absence from the Commons. But for politicians, there is really only one appropriate English classical tearjerker: Purcell's When I Am Laid in Earth. Its lyrical warning about the perils of ambition ought to set them all sobbing: "Remember me, remember me, but ah! forget my fate."
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