For as long as humans have lainon their backs and stared into thespeckled depths of space, they

have postulated theories to explain themysterious patterns we see out there.Cosmologists tend to be better at pick-ing the right theories from the fancifulones. But few have applied that talentto the less celestial spheresof human activity as con-sistently and eÝectively asGeorge F. R. Ellis, whoseunusual ethical philosophyhas driven him to supple-ment his theoretical workin South Africa with paral-lel careers as a Quaker phi-lanthropist, antiapartheidactivist and policy guru.

A heavy streak of altru-ism has probably run in El-lis since childhood. Grow-ing up in Johannesburg, hetook his moral instructionfrom a father whose anti-government articles gothim Þred as editor of thecityÕs chief liberal newspa-per and a mother whohelped to found the BlackSash, an organization ofwhite women voters thataggressively fought apar-theid for 40 years.

The ethic of communityservice had evidently takenroot by the time he left theUniversity of Cape Town(U.C.T.) for graduate studyat the University of Cam-bridge. As he honed histheoretical skills with someof the giants in the ÞeldÑattending relativity lecturesby Fred Hoyle and workingwith fellow student Stephen W. Hawk-ing on new mathematical techniques in-vented by Roger PenroseÑEllis exploredhis moral side as well. He took manytheology courses and spent his sparetime restoring cottages and churches inEngland, Austria and Holland. Observ-ing that Òwhenever there was poverty,prisons or peacemaking, youÕd ÞndQuakers,Ó he abandoned the AnglicanChurch for the Society of Friends. Theinßuence was profound: the Quaker ten-ets of confronting injustice through ra-tional dialogue and advocating tolerancefor those with diÝerent beliefs would

emerge as patterns throughout EllisÕscareer.

Life in Cambridge, Ellis says, Òwaspleasant but too parochial.Ó With hisÞrst marriage souring, Ellis decided toreturn to South Africa. U.C.T. had invit-ed him to head the department of ap-plied mathematics, which would allow

him to cast his intellectual net muchmore widely than just relativity andgravitation theory, into such areas asbiology. Then there was apartheid: ÒIwanted to see if I could make a bit of adiÝerence,Ó he says.

Soon Ellis was presenting slides hehad taken of children starving in theCiskei homeland to groups at churches,universities and community centers.The money he helped to raise estab-lished an orphanage and a milk distri-bution program. As a member and laterchairman of the Quaker Service Fund,Ellis supported development projects

initiated by Stephen Biko, the black or-ganizer whose murder by police a fewyears later would make him a symbolof the struggle against apartheid. EÝortsto alert the public about the squalidconditions of the squatter camps thatwere quickly growing around CapeTown led Ellis to co-author a volumethat criticized the governmentÕs futile,and increasingly violent, attempts toremove the squatters. Ellis proposedsite and service schemes to meet themost basic housing needs of all low-in-come people. ÒThe housing minister atthe time rejected the suggestions out ofhand,Ó Ellis says. ÒBut about Þve years

later they basically becamepublic policy.Ó

In the interim, Ellis pur-sued the strategy of mar-shaling information as aweapon against violence.ÒThe government was try-ing to hide what was hap-pening,Ó he recalls. ÒItÕs abit like Germans afterWorld War II who said theynever knew about the deathcamps and so on. Our phi-losophy was that people inSouth Africa would neverbe able to say they didnÕtknow. So the South AfricanInstitute of Race Relations[of which Ellis was regionaldirector] put out reportson deaths in detention,forced removals and otherinjustices.Ó

As the violence escalatedin the late 1980s, however,the job of observing be-came harder to bear. ÒAtone point, the police orga-nized a group of black vigi-lantes to attack a squattersettlement,Ó Ellis says.ÒThey systematically burntdown a couple of thousandhouses every day, so thatover the course of twoweeks they made 70,000black people homeless. And

every day I would look out from my of-fice window and see the smoke goingup from that. We tried all sorts of things:getting mediators, calling the police,calling cabinet ministers. But the policewere acting in collusion with these at-tackers, providing them with transportand weapons. So there was absolutelynothing we could do about it. And I kindof despaired at that point.Ó

In 1988 Ellis left South Africa for theInternational School of Advanced Stud-ies in Trieste. He threw himself into histheoretical work, visiting Queen MaryCollege in London and the University

50 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN October 1995

Thinking Globally, Acting Universally

PROFILE: GEORGE F. R. ELLIS

SOUTH AFRICAN COSMOLOGIST George F. R. Ellis proposes anatural law of moralityÑand lives by it.

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of Texas at Austin and serving as pres-ident of the International Society ofGeneral Relativity and Gravitation andpublishing numerous papers on theevolution and density of the universe.

But contributing only to science ap-parently failed to satisfy his sense ofduty. By 1990 Ellis was back at U.C.T.and had redoubled his eÝorts to exposea conspiracy by forces intent on scut-tling peace eÝorts. ÒWe had an historicspeech by [South African President] deKlerk when he released Nelson Mande-la [leader of the African National Con-gress],Ó Ellis recounts. ÒThe ANC wasunbanned, and the government wassupposed to be negotiating. The kind ofundeclared war which it had been wag-ing was supposed to be coming to anend. Yet we then saw a rising wave ofviolence with no real explanation. Thegovernment called it Ôblack on blackÕ vi-olence and essentially said that this isjust the way blacks are. But the peopleon the ground who were seeing whatwas happening became more and moreconvinced it was being fomentedÓ by aÒThird ForceÓ composed of parts of themilitary, police and security forces andsanctioned at the highest levels.

Ellis began collecting evidence andpublishing it in letters to the local news-papers. But then Òthe national directorof the Institute for Race Relations start-ed putting out statements saying thatthere was no evidence of any ThirdForce activity,Ó Ellis recalls. ÒI felt I hadto do something about this, because asfar as I could see, it simply wasnÕt true.Ó

In a series of articles, Ellis argued thatÒa strictly judicial style of inquiry is verylimited in its...ability to attain an under-standing of what is happening when adirty-tricks campaign is in operation,with evidence being ÔlostÕ or destroyedand high-ranking oÛcers committingperjury at judicial inquiries. . . . A broad-ranging causal analysis . . .based on ascientiÞc approach of hypothesis test-ing is far more useful and.. .reliable.Ó

So, quasiscientiÞcally, Ellis laid outthe evidence. He showed that his hy-pothesis was both more likely than thealternatives and consistent with theSouth African militaryÕs history of wag-ing illegal, covert wars in Angola andMozambique. Based on the observedpatternÑan act of terrorism each timenegotiations moved forward, steadilyincreasing in brutalityÑhe predictedhow the violence would continue.

It was a theory most whites did notwant to hear. ÒA lot of my peers thoughtthat I was going way out on the edge,ÓEllis says. ÒWhat was happening was sohorriÞc it was mind-boggling: gangswith guns were getting on the blackcommuter trains to Johannesburg and

killing people. And they organized it sothat at the next station there would bepeople waiting on the platform withguns so that those who jumped oÝ thetrain would be shot down as they triedto run away. People found it hard to be-lieve this could be planned by the mili-tary.Ó In the past year, confessions andtestimony from the trial of a high-levelmilitary oÛcer have conÞrmed that El-lis was more or less right all along.

CliÝord Moran, dean of science atU.C.T., observes that the same distinc-tive talent that enabled Ellis to persuadepeople of Third Force activity nowmakes him Òthe leading thinker in sci-ence policy formulation in this country.ÓEllis, Moran says, Òhas the amazing abil-ity to absorb an enormous amount ofknowledge from across a wide Þeld ofendeavors and put it all together insome sort of synthetic framework.Ó

As president of the Royal Society ofSouth Africa, Ellis last year drafted a300-page discussion document thatserves as just such a foundation for thefuture of research in the rapidly chang-ing country. He suggested four majorguidelines for prioritizing funding: thegovernment should support sciencethat is of high quality, exploits currentstrengths, redresses racial and genderinequalities, and can be applied to thecountryÕs development. More remark-able is the fact that his analysis, whichhas garnered much support in the newgovernment, seems to undermine therationale for continuing to fund his ownhighly theoretical work in cosmology.

Lately that work has taken on a famil-iar pattern: drawing connections amongdisparate facts and ideas in order tochange peopleÕs perception of what isreal and what is possible. Within cos-mology, Ellis has been exploring alter-natives to the so-called standard mod-el. According to many in the Þeld, thistheory posits that the big bang was fol-lowed by a period of rapid inßation,yielding a universe near Òcritical densi-tyÓÑthat is, with just about enoughmatter to recollapse eventually in a bigcrunch. Ellis says his aim is to counter arecent trend Òof researchers being verydogmatic, almost to the point of dis-

54 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN October 1995

ÒThe foundational line

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Copyright 1995 Scientific American, Inc.

counting the astronomical evidence.ÓIn a controversial article in Nature last

year, Ellis and a colleague reviewed allthe observations that might indicate thetrue density of the universe. They con-cluded that Òno strongly convincingcase can be made for a critical-densityUniverse.Ó On the contrary Òan openUniverse [one that continues to expandfor all eternity] should be preferred,Óeven though that assumption may con-ßict with current inßationary theories.

ÒPeople need to be aware that thereis a range of models that could explainthe observations,Ó Ellis argues. ÒFor in-stance, I can construct you a sphericallysymmetrical universe with Earth at itscenter, and you cannot disprove it basedon observations.Ó Ellis has published apaper on this. ÒYou can only exclude iton philosophical grounds. In my viewthere is absolutely nothing wrong inthat. What I want to bring into the openis the fact that we are using philosoph-ical criteria in choosing our models. Alot of cosmology tries to hide that.Ó

Ellis himself has been delving intothe philosophical territory that lies be-yond cosmology. In a speech deliveredlast year at the Center for Theology andthe Natural Sciences in Berkeley, Calif.,he argued that observations of humanbehaviorÑincluding the behavior ofthose who claim that all moral systemsare arbitrary cultural artifactsÑindi-cate that a universal moral law does ex-ist. ÒThe foundational line of true ethi-cal behavior, its main guiding principlevalid across all times and cultures, isthe degree of freedom from self-cen-teredness of thought and behavior, andwillingness freely to give up oneÕs ownself-interest on behalf of others,Ó Ellisproposed. He calls the principle keno-

sis, a Greek word for self-emptying.Science itself could explain such a

universal ethic only as a result of evolu-tion, he says. But because evolutionarypressures apply to populations, ratherthan individuals, and favor the strongat the expense of the weak, this hypoth-esis is patently incorrect, according toEllis. The only other option, he argues,is that Òthis moral law has comparablestatus to that of physics. There is anethical underpinning to the universe aswell as a physical one.Ó How did it getthere? That, he says, is like asking whyany physical law is the way it is. OneanswerÑthe one he believes is correctÑis that a benevolent Creator arrangedthings just so intelligent beings couldexperience kenosis. In explaining thisparticular patternÑsomething he willdo at length in a forthcoming bookÑEl-lis may not be right. But cosmologistsdo have a better record than most onsuch matters. ÑW. Wayt Gibbs

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN October 1995 55Copyright 1995 Scientific American, Inc.