Macro or Micro it is all about values.
REH
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, November 03, 2003 8:47
PM
Subject: RE: [Futurework] Our mysterious
universe
I
was thinking about the chance nature of human existence --both at the macro
and micro level.
That's what money is all about.
REH
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, November 03, 2003 3:05
PM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Our
mysterious universe
arthur
Life is a crapshoot.
Yes, but sometimes the dice may be
loaded.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, November 03, 2003
11:09 AM
Subject: RE: [Futurework] Our
mysterious universe
P.S.: Merton met his end
in a most ironic of possible ways. He was electrocuted while
plugging in an appliance in a hotel room. A great and powerful
mind overcome by a toaster. Try to explain that!
arthur
Life is a
crapshoot.
OK, here's my take on it. It's
something I posted to a friend recently:
Ken, one of my reference points on this kind
of thing is Thomas Merton, the American Trappist monk, who argued that
people have to approach the mystery of their being by using both
rationality and faith. As ever so many great scientific minds
have demonstrated, rational thought and science can give us an
enormous amount of information about the universe and our place in
it. However, there will always be a boundary between what we can
explain and understand and what we can't, and we really have no way of
knowing whether we have explained much about the state of our reality
or just a tiny bit of it. So, Merton argues, there is a boundary
and, no matter how far we push out into the unknown, there always will
be. He argues, further, that what lies beyond that boundary can
be treated in two different ways, either by denial or by faith.
Denial is the approach of the atheist - there is nothing out there
that we can't ultimately explain in rational terms. Faith is a
little harder to explain. The fundamentalist has faith, but
his faith is very close to the approach of the atheist in that he
defines and delineates what lies beyond the boundary and therefore
excludes mystery. Even though I'm a deacon in a Baptist church,
my own preference and path is agnosticism. I want to believe
that there is something immense, eternal and purposeful beyond the
boundary, but of course I cannot know.
Personally, I think that the two most
important components of religion are respect for mystery and
compassion for all living beings that share the mystery with us.
A book I read while in the slums of Sao Paulo a few years ago puts it
this way:
... in a creative universe God would
betray no trace of his presence, since to do so would be to rob the
creative forces of their independence, to turn them from the active
pursuit of answers to mere supplication of God. And so it is: God's
language is silence. The Old Testament suggests that God fell silent
in response to the request of the terrified believers who said to
Moses, "Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak
with us, lest we die." Whatever the reason, God ceases speaking with
the book of Job, and soon stops intervening in human affairs
generally, leading Gideon to ask, "If the Lord be with us, why then
. . . where be all his miracles which our fathers told us of?" The
author of the Twenty-second Psalm cries ruefully, "My God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me?"
Whether he left or was ever here I do
not know, and don't believe we ever shall know. But one can learn to
live with ambiguity - that much is requisite to the seeking spirit -
and with the silence of the stars. All who genuinely seek to learn,
whether atheist or believer, scientist or mystic, are united in
having not a faith but faith itself. Its token is reverence, its
habit to respect the eloquence of silence. For God's hand may be a
human hand, if you reach out in loving kindness, and God's voice
your voice, if you but speak the truth. (Timothy Ferris, The
Whole Shebang, Simon & Schuster, 1997, p.312)
Hope this helps.
Ed
P.S.: Merton met his end in a most
ironic of possible ways. He was electrocuted while plugging in
an appliance in a hotel room. A great and powerful mind overcome
by a toaster. Try to explain that!
----- 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
-----------------------------------------------------
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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