How To Be An Agnostic
equally importantly for us human beings, with which science
can be of assistance. Can it inform us with how to live? Plato
preserved Socrates’ change of direction in his dialogue the
Phaedo. Phaedo was an intimate of Socrates, and their conver-
sion helps take our discussion a stage further on.
Causes and conditions
The dialogue recalls the last conversation Socrates had with his
friends – a poignant time to refl ect on the nature of meaning.
In these hours, Socrates pondered the signifi cance of life and
death, and how one might rejoice in the former and prepare
for the latter. And he recalled his fi rst forays in the world of
ideas. ‘When I was a young man I was wonderfully keen on
that wisdom which they call natural science, for I thought it
splendid to know the causes of everything, why it comes to
be, why it perishes and why it exists,’ he recollects. He sought
answers to questions again remarkably similar to those asked by
us moderns. What matter is it that allows us to think? Is it our
brains that hear, see and smell? And when our brains perish, do
our memories and insights – do we – perish too?
At fi rst he thought that science was a good way of enquir-
ing into our wellbeing because, as it claimed, it did indeed seem
to explain life’s causes. However, his optimism did not last. For
upon further inspection, the explanations it offered seemed
really quite easy to unravel. Socrates offers a simple example
in Plato’s dialogue, a parallel to the modern question asked by
Wigner about the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics.
Does 1 + 1 = 2? There are, in fact, good reasons to doubt it. For
one thing there are examples in nature when 1 + 1 ≠ 2, as when
two raindrops coalesce. Alternatively, there is, strictly speaking,
no mathematic proof that 1 + 1 = 2. Today, mathematicians
would say that it is, rather, something that follows from the def-
inition of natural numbers (1, 2, 3, 4 ...). This is Socrates’ tussle
with cosmic religion: it’s fascinating – he admits – compelling,
but not very practical. For how should we live? The dialogue