Aliens, Soccer Balls, and the Brisker Derech

I have decided to reserve Thursdays for reposting old posts. Today's post was originally published in January of 2008. Although I don't have any interest in the World Cup, I figured this would be an appropriate time to repost this.

Aliens, Soccer Balls, and the Brisker Derech

My Gemara rebbi presented an excellent analogy which he used to illustrate the difference between "good science" and "bad science," and the difference between good Talmudists and bad Talmudists. The analogy is from a book about particle physics by Leon Lederman called The God Particle (1993). Here is the analogy as written by Lederman, with my own emphases in bold:

The Invisible Soccer Ball

Imagine an intelligent race of beings from the planet Twilo. They look more or less like us, they talk like us, they do everything like humans - except for one thing. They have a fluke in their visual apparatus. They can't see objects with sharp juxtapositions of black and white. They can't see zebras, for example. Or shirts on NFL referees. Or soccer balls. This is not such a bizarre fluke, by the way. Earthlings are even stranger. We have two literal blinds plots in the center of our field of vision. The reason we don't see these holes is because our brain extrapolates from the information in the rest of the field to guess what should be in these holes, then fills it in for us. Humans routinely drive 100 miles per hour on the autobahn, perform brain surgery, and juggle flaming torches, even though a portion of what they see is merely a good guess.

Let's say this contingent from the planet Twilo comes to earth on a goodwill mission. To give them a taste of our culture, we take them to see one of the most popular cultural events on the planet: a World Cup soccer match. We, of course, don't know that they can't see the black-and-white soccer ball. So they sit there watching the match with polite but confused looks on their faces. As far as the Twiloans are concerned, a bunch of short-pantsed people are running up and down the field kicking their legs pointlessly in the air, banging into each other, and falling down. At times an official blows a whistle, a player runs to the sideline, stands there, and extends both his arms over his head while the other players watch him. Once in a great while, the goalie inexplicably falls to the ground, a great cheer goes up, and one point is awarded to the opposite team.

The Twiloans spend about fifteen minutes being totally mystified. Then, to pass the time, they attempt to understand the game. Some use classification techniques. They deduce, partially because of the clothing, that there are two teams in conflict with one another. They chart the movements of the various players, discovering that each player appears to remain more or less within a certain geographical territory on the field. They discover that different players display different physical motions. The Twiloans, as humans would do, clarify their search for meaning in World Cup soccer by giving names to the different positions played by each footballer. The positions are categorized, compared, and contrasted. The qualities and limitations of each position are listed on a giant chart. A major break comes when the Twiloans discovery that symmetry is at work. For each position on Team A, there is a counterpart position on Team B.

With two minutes remaining in the game, the Twiloans have composed dozens of charts, hundreds of tables and formulas, and scores of complicated rules about soccer matches. And though the rules might all be, in a limited way, correct, none would really capture the essence of the game. Then one young pipsqueak of a Twiloan, silent until now, speaks his mind. "Let's postulate," he ventures nervously, "the existence of an invisible ball."

"Say what?" reply the elder Twiloans.

While his elders were monitoring what appeared to be the core of the game, the comings and goings of the various players and the demarcations of the field, the pipsqueak was keeping his eyes peeled for rare events. And he found one. Immediately before the referee announced a score, and a split second before the crowd cheered wildly, the young Twiloan noticed the momentary appearance of a bulge in the back of the goal net. Soccer is a low-scoring game, so there were few bulges to observe, and each was very shortlived. Even so, there were enough events for the pipsqueak to note that the shape of each bulge was hemispherical. Hence his wild conclusion that the game of soccer is dependent upon the existence of an invisible ball (invisible, at least, to the Twiloans).

The rest of the contingent from Twilo listen to this theory and, weak as the empirical evidence is, after much arguing, they conclude that the youngster has a point. An elder statesman in the group observes that a few rare events are sometimes more illuminating than a thousand mundane events. But the real clincher is the simple fact that there must be a ball. Posit the existence of a ball, which for some reason the Twiloans cannot see, and suddenly everything works. The game makes sense. Not only that, but all the theories, charts, and diagrams compiled over the past afternoon remain valid. The ball simply gives meaning to the rules.

This is an extended metaphor for many puzzles in physics, and it is especially relevant to particle physics. We can't understand the rules (the laws of nature) without knowing the objects (the ball) and, without a belief in a logical set of laws, we would never deduce the existence of all the particles.

The young Twiloan’s theory of the invisible ball is an example of “good science.” Of course, collecting and quantifying data is an absolute necessity. Without the charts, tables, and formulae of the elder Twiloans, the young one couldn’t have made his discovery. Nevertheless, there is a significant difference between the findings of the elder Twiloans and those of the young one. The formulae of the elder Twiloans are merely descriptions. They might be precise, and they might enable the elder Twiloans to predict the actions of the players with great accuracy, but they do not help them to understand what they see. The “invisible ball” theory of the younger Twiloan, on the other hand, imbues the phenomena with meaning. Without his theory, the actions were meaningless, but in light of the theory, the Twiloans can understand what is going on: "That’s a kick-off!" "That's a pass!" "He just scored a goal!" Without the theory of a ball, all they would have is a whole lot of meaningless (albeit well-organized) quantitative data.

The good scientists are the ones who go beyond the quantification of empirical data. They do not content themselves with precise descriptions of how things behave but seek to understand what things are. Take Einstein, for instance. His revolutionary discoveries in physics didn't magically emerge from the data. Einstein only arrived at his theories by thinking about basic, fundamental questions, such as “What is time?” and “What is space?” The theory of special relativity isn't simply a new quantitative scheme, but a whole new concept of space and time.

What is true in natural science is also true in the science of Talmud. There are certain Talmudists who, like the elder Twiloans, believe that the essence of learning is the quantification of halachic data. The practitioners of these darchei ha’limud (methods of learning) content themselves with identifying “patterns” or “trends” in the various sugyos throughout Shas. They may even sharpen their findings with analytical labels (such as “cheftza” and “gavra”) and formulate the various patterns using the chakirah method of presentation. Unfortunately, such Talmudists have missed the boat. They become so preoccupied with detecting halachic patterns that they begin to think that the patterns are the ideas – that their descriptions are definitions.

Like the charts and formulae of the elder Twiloans, the explanations of these Talmudists are useful and necessary, but they are not the essence. The true Talmudists go beyond the quantification of halachic data and seek the invisible ball – the conceptual theory that gives meaning to the halachos. They will collect and organize halachic data and they will attempt to see patterns and trends, but only as a means of discovering the underlying concepts. Any analytical jargon they utilize will only be used to clarify their understanding of the underlying ideas; the analytical terms will only be employed to facilitate thinking, never to replace it.