Harry, know one can know what you know.
Only you can and that may or may not be myth.
REH
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, November 02, 2003 10:48
PM
Subject: RE: [Futurework] Our mysterious
universe
Keith,
I'm probably a lot closer to finding out
the truth than you are -- even with your emphysema. Yet, I find no evidence at
all for support of the myth, any myth. Even one to guide me, whatever that may
mean.
All my life I have enjoyed speculation on
the universe, and what it may mean,
if it means anything. But, always it is for entertainment purposes and
doesn't lead to much that is
important.
The major problem in discussions of
this sort is that you cannot argue
with faith. Faith requires no logical support, no significant evidence,
nothing.
The universe is in a period of transition
from what and to what nobody knows. When we are in this transition nobody
knows and we are unlikely to find out. This transition will take 1000
generations, or one million generations,
of human beings. How can we take a snapshot of what is now and extrapolate in
all directions with any sense?
So, enjoy your myths, as without doubt you
will. Just remember they
are myths.
Harry
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For those who like to ponder on the mysteriousness of
the universe and the significance (or not) of our place within it, the
following article from the New York Times of a recent conference on
cosmology is fascinating indeed.
Even atheists have faith (in the
credibility of their own brains) but I feel sorry for them because they have
no myth to guide them. For the same reason, I feel sorry for agnostics because
they obviously would like to believe in a myth but haven't the energy or
imagination to search for, or to devise, their own. I don't have much time for
most beliefs, particularly for those which are associated with formal
religions, unless the believer can write about it briefly and defend it
adequately against criticism even if it can't be proved to be true.
So,
in two paragraphs, here's mine. It isn't true in any absolute sense and if I
lived long enough it would probably be described in different metaphors as
scientific ideas change, but it keeps me happy at the present time, gives me
purpose and doesn't hurt anyone -- and those are the best criteria for any
sort of valid belief. My belief owes a great deal to the thinking of Freeman
Dyson, Lee Smolin, and a few more and is also echoed in some of the
contributions to the conference described below. Here goes:
I believe
that the extraordinarily precise physical parameters of the universe which
gives rise to both black holes and lifeforms suggests that their joint
existence is connected in a significant way. I believe that lifeforms, given
an evolutionary chance, develop an informational database which conjoins with
the physical database of the universe itself. Along with Lee Smolin, I believe
that all matter descends into a black hole sooner or later and form another
universe with a slightly different physical database from its parent. As a
modification to Smolin's ideas, I believe that the new physical database has
been modified in one way or another by the informational database of its
previous lifeforms and thereby lays down slightly different physical
parameters in its progeny (summarised as the "cosmological constant" as
mentioned below)
If the new universe with its new set of parameters
also leads to life-forms which also evolve then it will also possess black
holes and will therefore be able to produce further universes in due course.
If a new universe has a set of parameters which don't give rise to life then
it won't also possess black holes and will not give rise to a new generation
of universes. It will become a corpse in due course -- a body without a soul.
The various universes which survive (of which ours is one) will have different
survivabilities according to the informational contributions of its lifeforms.
Therefore, it may be possible that anything a lifeform does and thinks, even
if it reduces to only one significant quantum event, may be contributing to
the future survivability of the universe's offspring. Thus endeth my
evolutionary theory.
Now follows the article -- a superb description of
an incredibly complex subject:
<<<< ZILLIONS OF
UNIVERSES? OR DID OURS GET LUCKY?
Dennis Overbye
CLEVELAND --
Cosmology used to be a heartless science, all about dark matter lost in
mind-bending abysses and exploding stars. But whenever physicists and
astronomers gather, the subject that roils lunch, coffee breaks or renegade
cigarette breaks tends to be not dark matter or the fate of the universe.
Rather it is about the role and meaning of life in the
cosmos.
Cosmologists held an unusual debate on the question during a
recent conference, The Future of Cosmology, at Case Western Reserve
University here. According to a controversial notion known as the anthropic
principle, certain otherwise baffling features of the universe can only be
understood by including ourselves in the equation. The universe must be
suitable for life, otherwise we would not be here to wonder about
it.
The features in question are mysterious numbers in the equations of
physics and cosmology, denoting, say, the amount of matter in the universe or
the number of dimensions, which don't seem predictable by any known theory
yet. They are like the knobs on God's control console, and they seem almost
miraculously tuned to allow life. A slight tweak one way or another from the
present settings could cause all stars to collapse into black holes or atoms
to evaporate, negating the possibility of biology.
If there were only
one universe, theorists would have their hands full trying to explain why it
is such a lucky one. But supporters of the anthropic principle argue that
there could be zillions of possible universes, many different possible
settings ruled by chance. Their view has been bolstered in recent years by a
theory of the Big Bang, known as inflation, which implies that our universe is
only one bubble in an endless chain of them, and by string theory the
so-called theory of everything whose equations seem to have an almost
uncountable number of solutions, each representing a different possible
universe.
Only a few of these will be conducive to life, the anthropic
argument goes, but it is no more surprise to find ourselves in one of them
than it is to find ourselves on the moist warm Earth rather than on Pluto. In
short we live where we can live, but those can be fighting
words.
Scientists agree that the name "anthropic principle," is
pretentious, but that's all they agree on. Some of them regard the idea as
more philosophy than science. Others regard it as a betrayal of the
Einsteinian dream of predicting everything about the universe.
Dr.
David Gross regards it as a virus. "Once you get the bug you can't get rid of
it," he complained at the conference. Dr. Gross, director of the Kavli
Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, Calif., had agreed to lead
a panel discussion on the notorious principle. Often found puffing on a cigar,
he is not known to be shy about expressing his opinion. "I was chosen because
I hate the anthropic principle," he said.
But playing a central role in
defending the need for what he called "anthropic reasoning" was Dr. Steven
Weinberg, a Nobel laureate from the University of Texas. Like Dr. Gross, Dr.
Weinberg is a particle physicist who is known for being a hard-core
reductionist in his approach to science, but he evinces a gloomy streak in his
writings and his talks. He is still famous for writing in his 1977 book,
The First Three Minutes, "The more the universe seems comprehensible,
the more it also seems pointless."
Dr. Weinberg is among the most
prominent of theorists who have reluctantly accepted, at least provisionally,
the anthropic principle as a kind of tragic necessity in order to explain the
gnarliest knob of all.
Called the cosmological constant, it is a number
that measures the amount of cosmic repulsion caused by the energy in empty
space. That empty space should be boiling with such energy is predicted by
quantum theory, and astronomers in the last few years have discovered that
some cosmic repulsion seems to be accelerating the expansion of the universe.
But theoretical attempts to calculate this constant, also known as lambda,
result in numbers 1060 times as high as those astronomers have measured.
So despairing are physicists of understanding the cosmological
constant that Dr. Weinberg joked earlier at the meeting that he would no
longer read papers about it. Back in 1989, before any cosmological constant
had been discovered, Dr. Weinberg used the anthropic principle to set limits
on the value of the constant. Suppose instead of being fixed by theory, it was
random from universe to universe. In that case the value of the cosmological
constant in our universe may just be an "environmental effect," he explained,
and we shouldn't expect to be able to predict it exactly any more than you can
calculate how much rain will fall in Seattle this Christmas.
In his
paper, Dr. Weinberg argued that lambda in our universe could not be too big or
the repulsive force would have prevented the formation of galaxies, stars and
us. Since we are here, the constant should be small. The recently discovered
"dark energy" causing the cosmic acceleration fits comfortably inside Dr.
Weinberg's limits, vindicating in a way the anthropic approach.
In his
talk, Dr. Weinberg described the anthropic principle as "the sort of
historical realization scientists have been forced to make from time to time.
Our hope was to explain everything. Part of progress is we learn what we can
explain on fundamental grounds and what we cannot."
Other panelists,
including Dr. Alex Vilenkin, a physicist from Tufts University, suggested that
the anthropic reasoning was a logical attempt to apply probabilities to
cosmology, using all the data, including the fact of our own existence. Dr.
John Peacock, a cosmologist at the University of Edinburgh, argued that the
anthropic principle was not a retreat from physics, but an advance. The
existence of an ensemble of universes with different properties, he explained,
implies a mechanism to produce variation, a kind of cosmic genetic code, the
way that evolution implies the existence of genes.
"You gain new
physics," Dr. Peacock said. But when his own turn came, Dr. Gross questioned
whether the rules of the anthropic game were precise enough. What were the
parameters that could vary from universe to universe? How many could vary at
once? What was the probability distribution of their values, and what was
necessary for "life"?
Anthropic calculations are inherently vague and
imprecise, he said. As a result, the principle could not be disproved. But he
was only getting warmed up. His real objection, he said, was "totally
emotional." Ascribing the parameters of physics to mere chance or vagaries of
cosmic weather is defeatist, discouraging people from undertaking the
difficult calculations that would actually explain why things are they way
they are. Moreover, it is also dangerous, he declared to ringing applause. "It
smells of religion and intelligent design," he said, referring to a variety of
creationism that argues that the universe is too complex to have evolved by
chance.
Dr. Lawrence Krauss, the astrophysicist from Case Western who
had organized the conference and recruited the panel, characterized the
anthropic principle as "a way of killing time" when physicists didn't have a
better idea. Dr. Krauss, who has battled creationists over biology instruction
in the public schools in Ohio, said he had encountered anthropic arguments as
an argument for fine-tuning, the idea that God had fixed the universe just for
us.
Dr. Weinberg replied that the anthropic principle was not really a
part of science, but rather "a guess about the future shape of science. If we
didn't have things in our universe that seem peculiar, like the value of the
cosmological constant, we wouldn't worry about it." Dr. Weinberg compared the
situation to a person who is dealt a royal flush in a poker tournament. It may
be chance, he said, but there is another explanation "Namely, is the organizer
of the tournament our friend?"
"But that leads to the argument about
religion," he said to much laughter. In fact, Dr. Weinberg said, the anthropic
principle was "a nice non-theistic explanation of why things are as nice as
they are."
By then the audience was squirming to get in on the action.
Hands were waving as Dr. Gross called the session to an end. "Clearly there is
a diversity of opinion," he intoned. "Some people find the small value of
cosmological constant so bizarre that only the anthropic principle will pick
it out." Nobody who adheres to the anthropic principle, he said, would hold on
if there were "an honest old-fashioned calculation," that explained the
cosmological constant.
Given the floor for the last word, Dr. Weinberg
agreed that it was too soon to give up hope for such a breakthrough. "I'm
prepared to go on hoping that one will be found," he said. "But after the
passage of time one begins to entertain other possibilities, and the anthropic
explanation is another possibility." Applying that mode of reasoning, he said,
could help make the cosmological constant less peculiar. "But we don't know if
that's the help that we really deserve to get," he concluded.
And it
was time for lunch.
Dr. Gross reported later that younger physicists
had thanked him for his stand. Dr. Weinberg said the panel had generated more
fuss than the subject deserved. "Those who favor taking the anthropic
principle seriously don't really like it," he said, "and those who argue
against it recognize that it may be
unavoidable." >>>> New York Times -- 28 October
2003
Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>, <www.handlo.com>, <www.property-portraits.co.uk>
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