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Stephen Hawking "The Grand Design"

Posted September 18th, 2010 by Greg Mayers

I probably won't read Stephen Hawking's book, The Grand Design,  mainly because of what I heard today (Sep 17) on Science Friday on NPR. You can check this out on the web page. Recent (like within the last few months or maybe a year) observations have brought into question something physicists have taken for granted: the Fine Structure Constant, aka the Alpha Constant. The simplistic version is that 1 equals 1 everywhere and everywhen in the universe - the immutable laws of nature that allow Hawking to run all his calculations in his head, or on super computers. Now it appears (and is debated) that 1 does not equal 1 everywhere and everywhen in the universe. To say it another way, a lab experiment that consistently gives the same results on earth, when duplicated under the same conditions in a different part of the universe will yield different results. Even the vaulted theory of relativity is brought under question since it depends on a constant, the speed of light, but if constant is inconstant in physics, then everything is brought into question. In other words a randomness or unpredictability seems to be built into the very structure of the nature.

 
If these observation prove true, then this is as revolutionary to Einstein's physics as Einstein was to Newtonian physics. (There has to be a preponderance of evidence to overthrow established laws of physics according to the Carl Sagan theorem). In short all of our calculations are true only for our small part of the universe. The rug has been pulled out from under physics. The great question now becomes: Can there be a starting point in physics for the universe? This addresses a great question in physics: why are the conditions for life to arise true for the universe - only the slightest of variance and life could not arise in the universe. But according to this new theory (the alpha constant is not constant) the conditions for life are only true for this portion of the universe, and are not true for other portions of the universe. It also brings into question all the conclusions about other places, times and scales that modern Astro-physics draws. In other words, physics as we know it might have to be completely revamped.
 
I bring this to your attention not because I think physics is wrong. I don't. I think it is a methodology that can yield only relative measurable truths which open up further questions to investigate. But I think we suffer like those before us from the "arrogance of the living" and in our day that arrogance is the arrogance of the human intellect, the proclaimed supreme arbiter to all things "real.". My suspicion is that we've hardly begun to begin to understand the sciences. Five hundred years from now we will be laughed at by our progeny. I do believe that Truth is One and that at some date theology and science will converge. But that convergence is a long way in the future, more than millenia away. (Can we count on millenia being a constant any more?)
 
Secondly I don't think science and theology can or should be mixed up now- and from what I read reported about Hawking's new book he oversteps his bounds when he starts on theology. Some of history's greatest theologians (thinkers about God) refuse to define God, but it seems that Hawking has some presumptions about God that he doesn't explicate. What God is he referring to? No religious tradition endorses a generic Deists' god, which is an invention of the Enlightenment. What does he mean by "create"? The Buddhist say that reality is cyclic, without beginning or end. The monotheistic religions say that reality is linear, and science seems to take its view of reality from the monotheistic religions. The universe starts and stops. Is Hawking's conclusions about god a modern variant of the philosophical uncaused cause argument?
 
Hawking is a brilliant physicist, but he is drifting into his undeveloped areas of knowledge. And who knows, if the alpha constant is definitively shown to be inconstant, and table top lab experiments are in the works to answer that question as I write, maybe even the brilliant Hawking could be irrelevant...
 
(As an aside, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris are opposing a god that religious traditions do not recognize, the Enlightenment god mentioned above. The monotheistic religions are especially skeptical of a quantifiable deity. The wise religious man doesn't debate these modern atheists who are fundamentally only having an argument with themselves about their anemic definition of god. The wise religious man just sits back and watches the show, knowing that it's just a battle with windmills.)
 
 

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1 out of 1 members found this useful.

omg

Posted September 18th, 2010 by Jennifer Grove

Greg, I wanna go to your church. 

"The wise religious man doesn't debate these modern atheists who are fundamentally only having an argument with themselves about their anemic definition of god. The wise religious man just sits back and watches the show, knowing that it's just a battle with windmills.)"

Thank you for being a Voice for this alternative way of going up thru the Spiral. Not everyone went thru Orange the way that Integral Dogma seems to have decided is the only way to go thru it. 

Thank you. 

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