Peter Mason - Science, Marxism and the Big Bang: A Critical Review of Reason in Revolt

In 2011, the newspapers broke a major story: Scientists operating the biggest machine on earth, the 27 kilometre Large Hadron Collider, claimed to have discovered evidence which disproved Einsteins theory of relativity.

The Large Hadron Collider, deep underground below the French-Switzerland border near Geneva, powers subatomic particles to within a fraction of the speed of light. The apparent discovery of faster-than-light neutrinos, tiny subatomic particles produced at the site, would not only defy Einsteins special relativity but would disobey the law of conservation of energy as well. (New Scientist, 7 January 2012)

Scientists eagerly awaited further experimental results. Well-known physicist and TV personality Brian Cox said that if the result was correct it opened the possibility of time travel, while another well-known TV scientist, Jim Al-Khalili, rejected the results, saying that if neutrinos have broken the speed of light, I will eat my boxer shorts on live TV. However, the team that produced the results found problems with their measuring methods. The team leader quietly resigned under a cloud and all bets are off. It seems that Al-Khalilis boxer shorts are safe.

Twenty years ago, newspapers ran stories of scientific results which appeared to disprove the Big Bang theory of the origins of the universe. A number of books argued the same thing.

The Big Bang Never Happened, by Eric Lerner, published in 1991, was highly critical of the scientific establishment. In 1995, Science and the Retreat from Reason, by John Gillott and Manjit Kumar, expressed a deep unease about modern science. Rich in quotes from Marxists of the Frankfurt school (on which one word later), the authors curiously make not one single mention of the Big Bang theory, the major science story of the time, and one long under attack for being a 'creation story' by critics. This astonishing omission in a book whose aim was to provide a Marxist critique of modern science indicates some loss of nerve. Nevertheless, the authors maintain that modern science has departed from 'reason'. The most common scientific interpretation of quantum mechanics the highly successful science of atoms and other microscopic particles was and remains a subjective one", the authors assert, adding, "it often lapses into outright solipsism".

The publicity suggested that science was suffering a deep crisis. The book under review in the following pages, Reason in Revolt, published the same year as Science and the Retreat from Reason and leaning heavily on The Big Bang Never Happened, argued that major scientific discoveries of the current epoch, including Einsteins general theory of relativity, quantum mechanics and the Big Bang theory, represent a retreat into mysticism. Marxist philosophy, Reason in Revolt argued, shows that the Big Bang theory is a return to creation mythology.

By contrast, Science, Marxism and the Big Bang argues that Marxist philosophy does not provide a ready-made key for making judgements about scientific ideas. Today the Big Bang theory the idea that our universe has an origin in time and is evolving is entering popular consciousness while Reason in Revolt, whose misrepresentation of Marxist philosophy we set out to expose, is long forgotten. But the ideas discussed in the following pages, including a defence of Einsteins theory and the Big Bang theory, have stood the test of time and remain of interest to Marxists today.

As materialists, Marxists accept the scientific theories that over time have been confirmed and integrated into the general scientific outlook of the period, such as Einsteins theory of relativity and, more recently, the Big Bang theory. These ideas arose as part of an historical process of discovery which is materialist at root, as we attempt to show in these pages. But we also recognise that this historical process has not ended, reaching some kind of ultimate stage of absolute knowledge. The Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator, was powering up at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) facilities in Geneva as the first edition of this book went to print. We pointed out that many scientists expected results from the collider to provide upsets and pose new challenges and they have. Many theories have failed as the particles they predicted have not emerged from the vast jungle of data. Meanwhile Einsteins theory of relativity has survived and newspaper headlines were recently busy reporting glimpses of something lurking in the undergrowth which closely resembles the elusive Higgs Boson, thought to confer mass to particles. Many more experiments are needed to be sure of capturing this prey, and nothing is certain.

The philosophy of Marxism can help us understand the nature of scientific discovery, and this is another theme of this book, but it might be worth adding here a point not made explicit in the following pages: In common usage the word theory suggests an idea with a degree of speculation, while in scientific language even the most indisputable, well-established science may be termed a theory. In physics, scientific theories have to make definite predictions not of a general kind, but of a quantifiable kind. To do so, scientists need to put numbers derived from experiments into mathematical equations. Newton used geometry as the basis of his epoch-making publication Principia Mathematica, in which the famous three laws of motion appear.

Using mathematics, a scientific theory in physics will tell you to take one of Newtons laws that if you use a definite quantity of force on an object of a measured amount of mass, it will accelerate at a specific rate. With this kind of mathematical precision, we know that if experiments provided a different figure for the acceleration, the theory is wrong. According to Einsteins theory, as an objects speed approaches the speed of light, its mass increases also, and so proportionately more force is required to make it go faster. Particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider routinely demonstrate this fact as they accelerate atomic particles very close to the speed of light, requiring more and more force as the mass of the particle increases.

At the speed of light an accelerating objects mass becomes infinite, and so an infinite amount of force would be needed to make the object go faster than light and clearly this is impossible. But it is worth pointing out that if faster-than-light neutrinos were discovered and, hypothetically speaking, were always travelling faster than light (there is no suggestion that they were), then they would not pass through Einsteins speed-of-light limit which is not to say they wouldnt cause any problems for physics.

* * *

In May 2011, the Earth-orbiting satellite Gravity Probe B confirmed two of Einsteins space-time theories. One of NASAs longest running experiments, the satellite proved the warping of space and time caused by gravitational fields. This warping of space and time is ridiculed as a medieval viewpoint in Reason in Revolt, reflecting a doctrinaire approach previously best exemplified by the treatment of science under Stalin. Adherents of Stalin in the field of science ridiculed as subjective idealism a fundamental pillar of Einsteins theory of relativity the principle that space is relative to the observer or specific frame of reference (a principle which becomes more astonishing the more it is considered). Yet the discovery of this principle predates Einstein by many centuries. In no sense should this principle be interpreted to mean that space and time are somehow subjective to the individual it is an entirely objective phenomenon, as we attempt to show in the pages of this book.