Physical Eliminativism: Does today’s science tell us that everything is nothing?

Photo: John Wheeler at Princeton. His observer-dependent universe is a key element of the holographic principle in Gefter’s Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn.

Some physicalist philosophers such as Daniel Dennett have concluded consciousness is an illusion because of its conflict with physicalism. The dogma of physicalism overcomes the rather obvious existence of consciousness. But, now dogmatic physicalism appears to have convinced some that not only does this eliminate consciousness, but all of what we consider real. Is physicalist science turning eliminativist? (This is the second in a series on the holographic principle, if somewhat of a diversion.)

We used to trust religion and religious authorities to tell us what was real about us and the world we inhabit. Then we learned to trust science. Science, after all, gave us spacecraft, electric lightbulbs, and robotic lawnmowers.

We came to prefer science because it was so, well, real. Religion dealt with airy fairy things like spirits, angels, demons, nirvana, Brahman, souls, Creators, and other such things outside the grasp of reality. Science was about things that were real, stuff that could be put under a microscope or viewed through a telescope, that could be measured, tested, and proven.

Most today think science still tells us what is real. What would happen if the latest and best science available to us agreed with at least one religion in saying everything we think we know is real is an illusion?

Consider these two accounts of reality:

“It is the power of delusion, or maya, which makes us believe in the reality of things, which has no reality outside our imagination…the self alone is real.”

“We had found the universe’s secret: physics isn’t the machinery behind the workings of the world; physics is the machinery behind the illusion that there is a world.”

The first statement is from a YouTube video titled “The Peace of Shanti” promoted by Medium writer James Kowall in a post titled “The Truth the Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth.”

The second is the conclusion of Amanda Gefter’s book Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn: A Father, a Daughter, the Meaning of Nothing, and the Beginning of Everything, the 2015 Physic World’s book of the year, and apparently, a summary of what many of the leading physicists and…