As you can possibly tell, I am in a bad mood. I have wasted nearly an hour of my life reading this book already, and with 400 pages to go, I will have to spend another 4 hours just to say I finished the book.
Okay, so maybe it will turn out okay. I thought The Da Vinci Code was great, probably helped a lot by the fact that I had the version with colour pictures of all the landmarks. Angels & Demons, the first book in the series, was reasonably fun, but the science bits were terrible. Really terrible. 2000s Michael Crichton-terrible. But at least they didn't play into the story too much. They just established that maybe it was okay for a particle physicist to be religious. Fine. Oh, and the female lead had completely overthrown the established laws of physics, but that was mentioned in passing just to make her look cool. I get it. She's hot, and smart, which is also hot. Angels & Demons moved on to the story of blowing people up.
The Lost Symbol takes things a step further, though. Instead of just making up some fake science for us to choke down, Dan Brown does something awful. He takes a branch of ridiculous pseudoscience and not only legitimizes it, but makes it an integral part of the story. (So far as I can tell. Maybe he'll abandon it soon and get back to telling me about how some arch or another actually represents some part of the female anatomy.)
The "science" in question is called noetic science. Some people (weasel words, I know, but I'm too lazy to tell you just who) like to capitalize it: Noetic Science. The Institute of Noetic Sciences "conducts and sponsors leading-edge research into the potentials and powers of consciousness." They define noetic science as
Noetic sciences are explorations into the nature and potentials of consciousness using multiple ways of knowing—including intuition, feeling, reason, and the senses. Noetic sciences explore the "inner cosmos" of the mind (consciousness, soul, spirit) and how it relates to the "outer cosmos" of the physical world.
You should be rolling your eyes, sighing heavily, and if religious, saying, "Good Lord."
The reason this irks me is that when people learn what I study, I commonly get asked questions regarding the connection between quantum physics and philosophy. Now, I'm not a quantum physicist, but I've read hundreds of papers, worked through graduate level texts, and even experimented with efficient ways of performing the calculations. So I think I have a reasonably good idea about how this stuff works. But when I explain to people that no, Zen Buddhism did not predict quantum phenomena, and no, homeopathy can not possibly work because quantum theory does not work that way, and yes, the Universe exists independently of whether or not you look at it... well, they get upset.
In his book, Dan Brown write a near carbon copy of a conversation I have had. And in the book, the scientist gives in to the woo-woo supporter and goes on to turn his ideas into world-changing research. Now, to my mind, this is a clear case of the scientist going crazy and building herself a fantasy world in which she is important, and if she were the main character, I would be happy to interpret the book this way. However, because she is not the main character, the things described for her are objective... meaning the author is taking the premise that this is possible.
I'd rather read about super-intelligent slugs, because they are more believable.
Here's one offending passage (with some comments interlaced):
Her brother ran a finger down the long shelf of cracked leather bindings and old dusty tomes. "The scientific wisdom of the ancients was staggering... modern physics is only now beginning to comprehend it all.""
"Peter," she said, "you already told me that the Egyptians understood levers and pulleys long before Newton, and that the early alchemistsdid work on a par with modern chemistry,
Stop right there! No, no, no. Just no.
but so what? Today's physics deals with concepts that would have been unimaginable to the ancients.
Tell it like it is, sister.
"Like what?"
"Well...like entanglement theory, for one!" Subatomic research had now proven categorically that all matter was interconnected... entangled in a single unified mesh... a kind of universal oneness. "You're telling me the ancients sat around discussing entanglement theory?"
"Absolutely!" Peter said, pushing his long, dark bangs out of his eyes. "Entanglement was at the core of primeval beliefs. Its names are as old as history itself... Dharmakaya, Tao, Brahman. In fact, man's oldest spiritual quest was to perceive his own entanglement, to sense his own interconnection with all things. He has always wanted to become 'one' with the universe... to achieve the state of 'at-one-ment.'"
See what I'm saying? He's actually supporting this crap.
Here's the difference between ancient philosophy and modern science. Some ancient philosopher or another said everything. They took all the possible ideas, loaded them into a shotgun, and spun in circles, firing blindly. Take a concept vague enough, and it's bound to coincide in some way with a fact. But a scientist looks at the facts first, then makes testable predictions. Quantified... you know, with numbers and math and stuff. And then we test it, and see if it's true, and modify it as need be.
In particular, science talks about very specific things. We can say, "if I take measurements near this atom, here's how likely I am to spot an electron within a certain distance of the nucleus." And that's all that quantum theory applies to. It doesn't mean that waving a crystal over your orange juice will help you cure your cold. That's witchcraft.
In this particular example, quantum entanglement is the idea that you can figure out some information abut one particle by measuring a specially prepared related particle. You measure one, and instantly know something about the other. But that's all it is. It's got nothing to do with how much you love your pet rock. Tao did not predict this. He didn't know what an electron was. The concept is highly insulting to real scientists.
I could spend days tearing apart the bad science in The Lost Symbol, but I won't. I'll just mention the two that follow this passage. Peter says that polarity (what he describes as "positive and negative charges of the subatomic realm," though there are other meanings within physics) was "the 'dual world' described by Krishna." Garbage: if Krishna had said, "there are two things and they attract each other and that attraction obeys an inverse square law," then I'd listen. But just saying, "there are two sides to the world" doesn't mean squat.
Then he goes on to say that Heisenberg and Schrödinger said that they got the basics of quantum theory from Hindu mystic writings. Absolutely ridiculous. They got their ideas from hundreds of years of hard work by thousands of scientists before them. The Uncertainty Principle comes from Newton's laws of motion and 250 years of research into mechanics, matrix algebra, Fourier transforms, the development of noncommutative algebra, .... You get the idea.
Basically, if an idea doesn't make definite testable predictions, it doesn't mean anything. And that's why this upsets me. Millions of people will read this book, and instead of going and learning about DNA and genetics like they did after Jurassic Park (which took liberties, but at least it used real science as a basis), they're going to go online and read about how they can change lead into gold by staring hard enough at it. And believe it.
And I'll have to put up with ever more uneducated people telling me that I don't understand quantum theory as well as they do.
The bottom line is that if noetic science--excuse me, Noetic Science--saves the day, I'm going to headbutt this book until either the 500+ pages break, or my skull does.
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