Posted on 06/20/2009 10:04:17 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Why does the universe seem so fine-tuned for the emergence of life – including intelligent life capable of asking that “why” question? Believers simply say that God did it, while scientists are trying to come up with complicated extradimensional multiverse theories to explain our lucky break.
Theoretical physicist Paul Davies takes a completely different tack in a new book titled "Cosmic Jackpot." He argues that the cosmos has made itself the way it is, stretching backward in time to the very beginning to focus in on “bio-friendliness.”
Davies admits that the idea has theological overtones - but that's nothing new for the London-born deep-thinker. He's perhaps best-known for provocative books such as "The Mind of God" and "God and the New Physics," and for holding forth on speculative topics such as whether physical constants are actually inconstant.
After years of teaching at universities in Britain and Australia, Davies moved to Arizona just last year to start up Beyond, a research center devoted to fundamental scientific questions: How did the universe begin? How did life arise? Where do humans fit into the grand scheme? What does it all mean?
"We've been up and running for only about three months, so it’s early days," he told me Wednesday. "But we have high hopes that this will become one of the world’s leading think tanks for confronting these foundational questions."
He's currently on a cross-country tour to promote the book; on Wednesday, he lectured at George Mason University near Washington, D.C., and tonight he's giving a talk in "the other Washington," at Town Hall Seattle (and I'm planning to see him there). During a half-hour telephone interview, Davies touched upon his key theme of the universe's curious bio-friendliness. Here are excerpts from the conversation:
CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE REST OF THE INTERVIEW...
(Excerpt) Read more at cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com ...
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Why does the universe seem so fine-tuned for the emergence of life – including intelligent life capable of asking that “why” question?
Paul Davies of Arizona State University in his new book “Cosmic Jackpot” argues that the cosmos has made itself the way it is, stretching backward in time to the very beginning to focus in on “bio-friendliness.”
When asked by Alan Boyle why the universe is bio-friendly? Is it intelligent design, or blind chance, or none of the above?
Davies replies: “There are three popular responses; the intelligent-design argument; the idea that if we had a final theory of physics, then all of the undetermined parameters in the laws would be fixed by that theory; and the third is the multiverse.
What I find lacking in the conventional intelligent-design argument, is that they appeal to something outside the universe that has to be accepted as given and cannot be proved. I’d like to try to explain as much of the universe, including its bio-friendly laws of physics, from within the universe – and in a way that doesn’t appeal to something outside of it.
Even standard physics says the laws of physics are friendly for no reason, but have just been imprinted upon the universe at the time of the big bang from without, by some unknown mechanism. Again, the argument makes an appeal to something outside the universe, instead of something intrinsic to it.
For most people, the first interpretation is, “Well, God did it.” What I’m saying is that that gets us nowhere at all. It just shoves the problem off to some other realm. But saying “God did it” is no worse than saying “the laws of physics did it.” They both basically appeal to something outside the universe.
The problem with saying God did it is that God is unexplained, so you’re appealing to an unexplained designer. It doesn’t actually explain anything; it just shoves the problem off. But to say that the laws of physics just happen to permit life is no explanation either.”
“The problem with saying God did it is that God is unexplained.”
Perhaps this individual should try reading the Bible.
Man goes to amazing lengths and grotesque mental contortions to shut God out of the party.
Just a quibble. Is it really fine tuned for life if life has only happened in one place in all this unimaginable vastness?
The problem with saying God did it is that God is unexplained, so you’re appealing to an unexplained designer. It doesn’t actually explain anything; it just shoves the problem off.
Maybe. But it also doesn't take anything away from the scientist's challenge which is to figure out the all-important "how" and then for the more technical minded to figure out the almost as important "and how can we use it, and what can we make with it".
Sad what constitutes a “deep thinker” these days.
Is this satire?
That sentence is so inane I simply can’t read past it.
A Saturday night live Skit to go with Tina’s Stupidity?
The premise of the fine-tuned universe assertion is that a small change in several of the approximately 26 dimensionless fundamental physical constants would make the universe radically different: if, for example, the strong nuclear force were 2% stronger than it is (i.e. if the coupling constant representing its strength were 2% larger), diprotons would be stable and hydrogen would fuse into them instead of deuterium and helium. This would drastically alter the physics of stars, and presumably prevent the universe from developing life as it is currently observed on the earth.
The small value of the cosmological constant is telling us that a remarkably precise and totally unexpected relation exists among all the parameters of the Standard Model of particle physics, the bare cosmological constant and unknown physics.”
Astrophycisit John Polkinghorne ( now an Anglican priest) formulates the fine-tuning in terms of six principal constants:
1. N - the ratio of the strength of the electrical forces and the strength of gravity
2. Epsilon - defining how firmly atomic nuclei bind together
3. Omega - which measures the relative importance of gravity and expansion energy in the universe
4. Lambda - the “Cosmological Constant”
5. Q - the ratio of the gravitational energy required to pull galaxies apart and their mass
6. D - the number of space-like dimensions in the universe
The arguments relating to the fine-tuned universe concept involve the anthropic principle, which states that any valid theory of the universe must be consistent with our existence as human beings at this particular time and place in the universe. In other words, even if the actual probability of our universe that supports intelligent life may be very low, the conditional probability of supporting intelligent life, given our existence in it, is 1. Even if there could be other universes, less “fine-tuned” and so devoid of life, there would be no one there to observe them.
Agreed. From what we've observed so far, life is extremely rare.
“What I find lacking in the conventional intelligent-design argument, is that they appeal to something outside the universe that has to be accepted as given and cannot be proved.”
Well, the little fact that the universe itself - including time and space - started with the Big Bang by definition means that something outside the universe caused the Big Bang...
Yup. There is a deeper question, too: The universe is very finely tuned for there to even be matter and energy, and on top of that for their to be “clumpiness” (ie, not a uniform blob), and there’s more. But all the necessary constants just HAPPENED to work out perectly for this all to happen. /sarc
“Just a quibble. Is it really fine tuned for life if life has only happened in one place in all this unimaginable vastness?”
The parameters of the general model are extraordinarily finely tuned for life—and physicists who have played a substantial role in refining the general model concede that. Miniscule changes in any of the parameters make life impossible. Intelligent design follows pretty naturally from this observation. That’s not me speaking, it’s one of the formulators of the multiverse theory.
Hence, all the activity in the physics community on “multiverses.” It’s a way out of having to resort to Intelligent Design. Of course the problem is formulating a falsifiable hypothesis about multiverses.
Maybe it never began? Maybe it just has always been? I think the human mind can conceive of eternity as it applies to the future, but not as it applies to the past.
No conflict here. Very comfortable with God as the source of existence. Very comfortable with Davies looking around scientifically. ‘Strange and beautiful universe.
“The problem with saying God did it is that...”
1. Admitting God exists/created means man must bow in humble worship to his Creator, or rebel in open pride, neither of which is a palatable option to many in the “scientific” community.
2. “We” lose “control,” which we really don’t have anyway, but like to think we do.
Why is admitting the truth a problem?
Good luck with that. I enjoyed Davies' work in college, especially "God and the New Physics", but he is chasing a great white whale here.
I side with Freeman Dyson and Stephen Hawking on this question. They accept Father Stanley Jaki's argument that Gödel's incompleteness theorem of mathematics must necessarily apply to physics also, and hence to all of science.
This means that the search for a self-contained, self-proving Theory of Everything to explain all of Nature is as futile as the quest for a perpetual motion machine or faster-than-light starship.
There is, was always, and will always be an Uncaused Cause outside the realm of the observable universe.
He lost me when he called it "our lucky break".
It's not inane. It's a vexing problem. If certain physical constants differed by even a percentage point from their measured values, planets never could have formed from the cosmic dust, much less you and me. This is not a problem for young-Earth creationists, but for everyone else it is a real conundrum. And I would say it's a bigger problem for strict atheists than for anyone else.
That would be a good idea.
That theory is about 50 years behind the times. The big bang (creation) really occurred around 15.7 billion years ago (from our perspective).
Read SeekAndFind's post #12.
I think everyone from the stoutest atheist to the most devout believer can agree that we are extraordinarily lucky that the characteristics of the physical world are as they are.
Great post!
parsy who wonders about stuff like this
We are only "lucky" if the universe and everything else came about by pure chance.
If it was a creation, then the skills required would border on true omnipotence.
And no, it's not a problem, it's an "unknowable": unknowables are not necessarily "problems".
And before that there was nothing?
What if that's true but whatever caused it has no relation to our concept of religion? What if it's something completely different? Could be anything, right?
In other words, he's trying to, by using twisted logic, imply God was created...by us, not the other way around...
There are three popular responses to the fact that the universe does seem to be weirdly fine-tuned for life. And I think all three are found wanting.The three are the intelligent-design argument; the idea that if we had a final theory of physics, then all of the undetermined parameters in the laws would be fixed by that theory; and the third is the multiverse – the notion that there is a multiplicity of universes, with laws that vary from one to the other.
And now we have his new "jackpot" theory, that we are the cause of our own universe. That makes 4.
Of the 4, I personally am partial to #3, the multiverse view. I think it satisfies the Occam's Razor test (for those of us who don't accept #1, anyway).
As for #2 and #4... caca... and double caca. At least in my view.
I would much sooner accept #1 than either 2 or 4, which seem like slithering mental gymnastics with an aim more to impress the viewer than to get at the truth.
But like I said, I believe the truth lies in #3.
Alan Guth says that a universe is just something that happens once in a while and over an infinite time span (outside the confines of our current BigBang universe) there are an infinite number of universes. Some are going to be "just right" for life. We are in one of those. Pretty simple, when you think about it.
In essence, what happens when we make measurements or observations of the universe today, we’re resolving some of the quantum ambiguity that exists in the past, as part and parcel of quantum uncertainty. Stephen Hawking has made this very explicit just in the last few months in a paper published with Thomas Hertog, in which he says that the way to apply quantum mechanics to the universe as a whole is to project backwards in time from our present observations. This brings in the role of the observer in a very fundamental way.Like I said. Double-caca.
Of course, cuz if the universes existence keeps going back
into the infinite past, we would not have arrived at this
present time. Therefore, because we ARE here(aren’t we?),
the universe must have had a beginning,at a time slightly
after it did not exist.
The Big Trigger?
But absolutely unscientic. Since Guth cannot get to those
epochs, and “spaces” there is no way to prove he is correct.
He may not be able to exist in those spaces, so he could
not even observe them with his 5 senses or augmented
senses(i.e. machines) since those things wouldn’t exist or
work in a space with different physical constants...
I think it was Godel who showed that all science is based
on axioms which are accepted on faith and unprovable...
This is my point .... the human mind is incapable of comprehending an infinite past.
mega-dittoes
Yes, you are right.
If it all was created, then we are lucky beyond measure to have a Creator who loves us.
That's a rather comical comment, given that the original formulation of Occam's Razor stated "Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily."
Turtles all the way down, Guv'nah.
Please explain the following, without relying on scripture: Where did “God” come from?
I find it remarkable that religious people can’t find any other answer to the origins of the universe than that some super guy in the sky made it all from absolutely nothing, and they completely discount any theory that doesn’t include some all-powerful bearded dude in the clouds.
Personally, I just think humankind isn’t advanced enough to know about the origins of the universe. It’s okay to say “We don’t know.”
Sure, could be. My point was just that the author rejected theories that relied on something outside the universe, while the Big Bang by definition requires a cause outside the universe...
You posted: “Please explain the following, without relying on scripture: Where did “God” come from?”
In other words...Please throw out a perfectly adequate explanation that corresponds with the human condition and human experience...that accords with the created universe and the moral nature of man...and reject even the possibility of acknowledging there is a spiritual (and moral) underpinning to the universe...an origin beyond the capacity of man to measure with physical instruments even though he routinely experiences spiritual phenomena.
Sure, OK.
As Francis Schaeffer titled his book: “God is There, and He is Not Silent.”
Why should we have a problem with His explanation of the universe He created?
I'm glad then that the explorations of "lesser mortals" has prevailed in the West across history,
who understand the universe better than you think.
"If I knew God I'd be Him."
Theoretical physicist Paul Davies takes a completely different tack in a new book titled "Cosmic Jackpot." He argues that the cosmos has made itself the way it is, stretching backward in time to the very beginning to focus in on “bio-friendliness.”
The universe is an immaculate conception?
Big Bang = immaculate conception
To say that something is “fine-tuned” is to acknowledge that there is a “fine tuner.”
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