Stephen Hawking has a new book coming out (The Grand Design, with Leonard Mlodinow). Among other things, he points out that modern physics has progressed to the point where we don’t need to invoke God to explain the existence of the universe. This is not exactly a hot flash — I remember writing an essay making the same point for a philosophy class my sophomore year in college — but it makes news because it’s Hawking who says it. And that’s absolutely fine — Hawking has a track record of making substantial intellectual contributions, there’s every reason to listen to him more than random undergraduates waxing profound.
This issue is, of course, totally up my alley, and I should certainly blog about it. But I can’t, because I’m on hiatus! (Right?) So, as an experiment, I made a video of myself talking rather than simply typing my words into the computer. Radical! Not sure the amount of information conveyed is anywhere near as large in this format, and obviously I didn’t sweat the production values. I fear that some subtleties of the argument may be lost. But if we’re lucky, other people elsewhere on the internet will also talk about these questions, and we’ll get it all sorted out.
Let me know if the Grand Video Experiment is worth repeating and improving, or whether it’s just a waste of time.
Something that I should have said, but didn’t: there doesn’t need to be some sophisticated modern-physics answer to the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” The universe can simply exist, end of story. But it’s still fun to think carefully about all the possibilities, existence and non-existence both included.
Oh, I just bought and read “The Grand Design”. As usual with Hawking, it is a model of clarity.
I think he writes so clearly because it is such an effort to be incredibly profligate with language, like
Anthony. The book is totally non-technical, so should be understood by virtually everyone.
I am a person of faith and have a great interest in the objective truth that science brings to life. I am not a creationist and believe in the truth of evolutionary process. I find the process of evolution and Darwin’s theory to be a very intelligent design. Study of the objective truth of science inevitably leads me God – there is a granduer that science uncovers that touches me spiritually.
People of faith, who are not fundamentalists, realize that any talk of God is by analogy only. Several posts back a person spoke of the “incomprehensible jargon of the Trinitarian arithmetic.” Truthfully, I never understood that jargon either. But one day I remembered back to my chemistry classes in which we learned that there are three states of matter. Gas, liquid and solid. Now the doctrine of Trinity states that there are three person in one God and further that each of these persons is fully God. Just like there are 3 states of matter but only one molecue. Water is fully H2O, Ice is fully H2O, and Steam is fully H2O. To continue the analogy, Christians claim Jesus is fully God, the Holy Spirit is fully God, and God the Creator is fully God. Like matter, God has three different manifestations and each is fully God. Water, Steam and Ice are each fully H2O. Science gives me useful analogy to better understand the Trinity.
I am not looking for Science to prove the existance of God to me. Science also cannot disprove the existance of God either. Faith in God is not strictly a rational intellectual activity like science, but at least for me the rationality of science, does enrich my spiritual life and understanding.
Chris Hitchens? I’ve always figured his pathological hostility to Bill Clinton might have had something to do with envy from back when they were at school at the same time. I can imagine that it must have rankled, a kid with an Arkansas accent and a lower class background, obviously smarter than the silver tongued Trot. Though I actually wonder if it might all be due to the seeming probability that Bill Clinton might have had more romantic success than Hitch. Needless to say it’s hardly surprising that Al Gore as Clinton’s VP would share in the aura of Hitchens’ hostility. Funny he doesn’t seem to have had similar problems with George W. Bush. At least not when it suited him. As to his stuff on slate, I can well believe its incredible, a lot of what he’s produced is incredible. In its literal meaning. I wonder how much of that would stand up to the Sagan level of verification.
Actually, religion poisons everything. Gordon
Well, that would be confirmation of my point, in a way.
Oh, a climate change denier. You get that off of Randi? Or that other great “skeptic” and champion of “science” and “reason”, Penn Jillette? Not only leaned logic in the Sagan school but science from Cable TV.
I have wondered if Bertrand Russell’s career in cribbing Thomas Huxley didn’t have its origin in his possible anger with Kurt Godel’s very rapidly rendering Russell’s masterpiece a far lesser achievement than he had intended. Or he could have just given up on really serious work. He admitted that he was pretty much shot after the effort of producing the Principia. Or maybe it was pique at Wittgenstein who was also somewhat critical of his work. Of course, it could have had something to do with his collaborator on that great work, A. N. Whitehead who was religious. Though I’m certainly fond of Bertie and he was a giant of logic, he could be pretty unfair in his criticism, he sometimes bent the truth about those he wanted to hurt and at times he could be really catty.
Did you like this passage in Hawking (as quoted by Peter Woit)?
“We seem to be at a critical point in the history of science, in which we must alter our conception of goals and of what makes a physical theory acceptable. It appears that the fundamental numbers, and even the form, of the apparent laws of nature are not demanded by logic or physical principle. The parameters are free to take on many values and the laws to take on any form that leads to a self-consistent mathematical theory, and they do take on different values and different forms in different universes.”
I’ll give him points for using the phrase “the apparent laws of nature” which he asserts “are not demanded by logic or physical principle”. Maybe he’s bowing to the signal interference from all those memes that are in the way.
I wonder what do you make of that? Especially in light of your parroting the “Extraordinary claims” line. It seems like a pretty massive departure from the ordinary. How much evidence are you going to exact as the price of its extraordinary content?
I think that you do not really understand science or the scientific method. Do you understand terms like model-dependent reality, and duality? Yes, I support that quoted speculation, and it is speculation based on, for example, the Standard Model, which has many free parameters and has been extraordinarily confirmed. Also, the many universes interpretation of QM is now largely the mainstream interpretation because it has the least assumptions, believe it or not. Stick to Bach…he is magnificent enough for anyone. Wittgenstein was an obfuscator who just played language games(hmmm like a poster here.) You would benefit from reading Russell’s essay ” An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish” because you seem to be an expert on it.
I understand a proposal to cut physics loose of its subject matter and to exempt its theoretical division from the vulgar necessity of demonstrating that its product has some actual, physical existence. Mathematics envy, perhaps? Math, though, is, at least, about itself in the pure line of things. if physics isn’t about physics anymore, what is it about? And if it’s about no knowable, physical entity, it’s become metaphysics of an entirely useless variety. A hobby, in other words.
“Not demanded by logic or physical principle” Alas, poor Russell, not even attached to logic.
Gordon, if I’d learned how to argue from the regular new atheist sources I would start to scream “ad hominem” at this point.
Peter, you might want to read A. S. Eddington’s Science and the Unseen World, A Swarthmore Lecture he gave in 1929. Its science is pretty dated (as he pointed out it would become in the lecture) and a popular presentation, but he makes some interesting points about the limits of science which are still valid and probably will remain valid. I typed it out a while back so you’ll find some typos, one thing I’m not is an editor.
http://anthonymic.blogspot.com/2009/07/science-and-unseen-world.html
I’d suggest that Gordon go look at Bertrand Russell’s sort of review of his “The Nature of the Physical World,” though, if it’s read through the imaginary memetic prisms of the new atheism I’d guess its impossible to really understand it.
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/bright/russell/twilight-of-science.html
Hmm, “new atheism” is the new buzzword, I see. Totally meaningless, of course, as is the torrent of your writing. What it seems to be in your mind is an atheist who simply doesn’t think that religion is a special category that it is somehow impolite to criticize. BTW, Eddington went rather strange as he aged. Likely, what you call “interesting points”, I would call strange.
Gordon, you might want to review, among others, the writings of Jerry Coyne for his use of the term “new atheist”. Go lecture him and others who have left evidence of their use of it for their ideology before you pull that one on me.
I think you’ll find that Eddington’s lecture dates from the same year as Russell’s review, in which he defers to Eddington’s credibility in physics to the point where he has to take seriously things that Russell obviously hates.
And, if you can count, I believe you’ll find that Eddington was ten years younger than Russell, which would have made him younger than Russell was when he launched his career in anti-religious invective. See what reliable information you can find out when you look at the documentary record and don’t just go on seat of the pants “skeptical” propaganda?
And I’ll make a prediction. Though, from what I’ve read of it, Eddington was quite wrong in his Fundamental Theory, much of what he was saying in the 1930s will become increasingly interesting to current arguments in physics. I think it was anti-religious bias that was responsible for some of the things popularly said about him. His work in the epistemology of science is extremely interesting. I’m always recommending that people go look at what he had to say about the idea of “existence”, as I did in a comment above.
Interesting to you, perhaps. Historical works can be interesting though–look at “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” by Charles Mackay, published in 1841 and still relevant in debunking, for example, your verbose rants.
…to the point where we don’t need to invoke God to explain the existence of the universe. This is not exactly a hot flash — I remember writing an essay making the same point for a philosophy class my sophomore year in college …
I think I read a proof of it once (that matter can appear out of nothing and given infinite time and space…) in The Journal of Irreproducible Results, but my memory could be faulty…
On the first page of chapter 1 of Hawking’s book, he says that philosophy is dead. I thought that was extreme, but given the example on this blog, I am coming around to his (and Feynman’s) view.
Russel’s History of Western Philosophy was great, but it is now history. The only philosophy of value now is subsumed by neuroscience and game theory. Religion tries, but is just silly. I find even Daniel Dennett to be somewhat boring.
Russell (typo)
Gordon, I think you should hustle over to the CFI blogs and inform them that philosophy is dead as many of them seem to be making their living on its dead corpse, you’ll want to stop by Daniel Dennetts and tell him the news too, Peter Singer, etc. I think Alonzo Fyte will be devestated, though so you might be kind and not tell him. However, I’d imagine they might want to find out where Hawking gets his authority to sign its death certificate. They might also point out that as Hawking seems to want to hog metaphysics as the property of theoretical physics and cosmology that he’s going to have a legacy fight on his hands. Considering what Russell pointed out about the direction that physics seemed to be headed in, in that review, and the present state some of its theoretical wing, they might find it a bit ironic for him to say that.
I haven’t seen anything in your comments that would lead me to conclude you were any more reliably authoritative in the matter of what is worthwhile and what belongs to who, and I generally figure people are the best judge of that for themselves. And Hawking said just the other week that authority was the business of religion and he shunned it as beneath the standards of science, as he authoritatively declared God unnecessary. Which leads me to think he has forgotten a thing or two about logic, though, as you point out, yourself, sometimes physicists go a little off after a certain age.
Um, I’d really like to know if Sean Carroll wants this to stop because I could go into what Gordon said about neuroscience in quite a bit of detail but it will take many, many comments to go back and forth. Gametheory, I am unprepared to go into that as its an area in mathematics I’ve never entered, though I doubt Gordon has the slightest idea about it, himself. He could probably wiki faster than I could go looking for information on that one. I just hate having to go up against wiki rangers as I’ve got to go find what they’re leaning on and then go looking for sources with more reliably objective editing, and they don’t care much about quality in documentation anyway.
Anthony, obviously I should have used the word “vacuous” instead of verbose, though that adjective
applies also. I do not know why you think I don’t know math etc. I have published in J Math Phys, have equations named after me (by Stephen Hawking :)) , graduate theoretical physics degree…..and you?? But you are correct in that
this argument is going nowhere. As I said ( Samuel Johnson),”I can bring you an argument, but I cannot bring you understanding. ”
Go ahead and have the last word or set up your own blog so that you can drivel on and on and on…..
OK, where’s your mathematical evidence that God doesn’t exist. Maybe it was the quality of your logical discourse that led me to conclude you were just another sci-scout who had learned what they did from Sagan and Randi. I’m really finding it interesting to see the kind of product that science and math departments are turning out these days. Overspecialization. I’ve been trying to remember who I heard say that cosmology was the science that told us nothing about everything.
Though, unless Carroll wants to step in, I’d like to know what you imagine neuroscience has to add to the present debate.
I asked a friend about the ideas I threw out about why Russell might have started his third career, in anti-religious invective. He said that he’d put his money on the Wittgenstein theory, pointing out that Russell had said that his critique of Russell’s work had been devastating and was what had convinced him that he was not going to produce any good work in philosophy. I remember what he said about being entirely flummoxed about L. W’s abandonment of the lime light in favor of becoming a rural school teacher. Just as the guy he figured was going to finish his work for him was becoming famous after the Tractatus had made a splash.
I had another one that I didn’t mention, just as today, it’s a real attention getter if you crave attention. I mean, how many of the new atheists faithful would have heard of a host of relatively unknown scientists, mathematicians and philosophers if they hadn’t taken it up? It can guarantee you a following, of a sort. If you want that kind of thing. Coyne is a good example, his book on evolution is great, far better than what Dawkins has written, but its his anti-religious blog of the same name that has gained him a cult.
I don’t think that science and religion are mutually exclusive. Staunch proponents of either side have been at odds for centuries and will be for sometime. No need to go into apologetics. “Belief in God” and technological advance are coexisting hallmarks in the of in the history of human society. There have been atrocities commited by both sides – dark moments in progress. But we have to learn how to work together for the common good. Let’s teach our children to think creatively and intelligently, and of course, act responsibly without any bigotry. These are the things that have stood the test of time. Science does not have to prove or disprove God. And theologians should not throw Stephen Hawking out the window either. I think he has made a revolutionary and conceptual leap. His opinion is not doctrine though. But I warn against prophets of doom and “end-times” campaigns. Let’s all think clearly and stay curious. After all, that’s the spirit of true discovery. Discovery that will help us all, that’s of course if want any help.
Doc Lalana, most of the long time critics of Hawking I’m aware of are atheists within science and mathematics. As are many of the long time critics of Richard Dawkins. It’s only been since Dawkins has begun his fall back career in religious bigotry that the number of his religious critics have outstripped those of his scientific pronouncements.
I read at least one paper that Woit linked to that made an argument for some theistic advantage from multiverse theory, though I didn’t really see it, myself. I do have to say that the first time I ever heard the idea it reminded me more of the phrase in the account of the Buddha’s first sermon to the five monks when it talks about the ten thousand world system being shaken. But I certainly don’t think it has any relevance to science.
Scientific developments have time and again challenged religious beliefs and pre-concieved notions. Understanding the universe, about its beginnings, workings, and its end, have posed questions that man has tried to answer. Philosophosers, scientists (particularly physicists and cosmologists) and theologians have developed theories to settle the issues. Efforts have been made to find a simple concept that will explain everything. It could be an easier pill to swallow. But forces are diverse and a unified theory might not be realistic. As we improve our analytic component by observing, measuring and studying data provided by new imaging tecnology we could be closer to answering serious questions. We also have to keep filtering information, separating the useful from the useless. Likewise, we have to be able to detect intellectual malware and corrupt files that are continously bombarding our minds, thanks to the explosion of networking. Mental security is crucial and has to be guarded.
I generally try to avoid using metaphors for things because people have such a bad habit of imagining their metaphors are what’s really there. But other people find other things useful.
Isn’t this completely circular? If all possibilities must exist, then God must create all possibilities in one of those possibilities, then all possibilities must exist. We are back to where we started – the same chicken egg debate we’ve always had. What is new here?
This is quite profound. If you would like to speak as a guest on my radio talk show or appear as a caller to discuss the God Question live on the air, you may at 646-378-0539 October 18, at 8 pm EDT or visit the show blurb at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/alpha_centauri_and_beyond