April 16, 2004
UGLINESS VS. BEAUTY:
The Meaning-Full Universe (Benjamin D. Wiker, April 2004, Crisis)
In a now-famous passage from his justly acclaimed The First Three Minutes, physicist Steven Weinberg provides a rather dismal assessment of the human drama:It is almost irresistible for humans to believe that we have some special relation to the universe, that human life is not just a more-or-less farcical outcome of a chain of accidents reaching back to the first three minutes, but that we were somehow built in from the beginning…. It is hard to realize that this all [i.e., life on Earth] is just a tiny part of an overwhelmingly hostile universe. It is even harder to realize that this present universe has evolved from an unspeakably unfamiliar early condition, and faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat. The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.
These words were written, according to Weinberg, as he viewed human life from an airplane, 30,000 feet above the Earth. But it isn’t that being five-and-a-half miles in the air provides some particularly insightful vantage from which human life can best be judged. Even at that height, as Weinberg himself admits, the “earth looks very soft and comfortable,” and the network of towns and cities connected by roads is ample evidence of human beings busily acting, quite purposively, as if they were at home in the universe. It is not, then, the space that separates him from Earth that makes what appears below to be pointless but the seemingly infinite and hostile space above.
This rather dreary but poetic passage has been quoted so often that Weinberg probably wishes he had been satisfied to watch the in-flight movie or to work a crossword puzzle rather than having to suffer the continual echo of the last sentence thrown back at him by those who are convinced that the human drama is not a farce. As one who likewise opposes Weinberg’s dismal assessment, I hope to do him the favor in this piece of releasing him from the perpetual defense of a meaningless universe. [...]
Physics has become the queen of the sciences in modernity, precisely because we have adopted a materialist cosmology. A materialist cosmology is reductionist; that is, it assumes that everything—living and nonliving—can be reduced to matter in motion (as created from energy, propelled by the release of energy in a variety of reactions, and governed by a number of forces). This motion is not purposeful precisely because the materialist cosmology jettisons an intelligent creator. Purpose, design, and function are all accidents of the pointless, purposeless actions and reactions of matter and energy.
According to this view, the Big Bang is simply the initial explosion that set the whole thing in motion. This theoretical presumption thus demands that everything must be understood, ultimately, as “just a more-or-less farcical outcome of a chain of accidents reaching back to the first three minutes.” As a result, biology, which focuses on purpose, design, and function, is a provisional science, awaiting its ultimate reduction to the lifeless world of physics.
But what if the Big Bang was really a Big Bloom? We are accustomed to characterizing the origin of the universe as an enormous explosion. Perhaps it had more of the character of a flower rapidly unfolding from a densely packed bud, and it is a mere prejudice that keeps us from seeing the evidence before our very eyes.
For quite some time physicists, with the help of chemists, have been bent on reducing everything to the fundamental chemical elements; and further, reducing the elements, through a playback of the cosmic tape, to hydrogen; and finally, reducing even this origin to a set of fundamental laws somehow bound up in some even more fundamental mode of matter or energy.
But such reductionism is now being challenged as physicists have begun to un-earth more and more evidence that the fundamental constituents, laws, and forces are fine-tuned and finely crafted for life. In short, it’s beginning to look like the universe is biocentric.
Such biocentrism turns Weinberg’s universe upside down—or more properly, turns it right-side up again. If we could replay the cosmic tape according to the biocentric view, we would not see a chaotic explosion—a Big Bang that happens to create, quite offhand and by accident, a lush and purposeful planet—but a Big Bloom governed by humanly unimaginable precision, whereupon the newly forged elements emerge from the fire as shining parts and rush toward their biological conclusion.
If the Bloom were compressed into a 14-minute tape, the first third of a minute would be dark and brooding anticipation. Suddenly, there would be blinding light, and the first stable elements that had been kneaded in darkness would emerge as the initial unfolding of the infinitely dense original bud.
Over the next ten minutes, we would see the universe bloom at the speed of light, expanding in every direction even as the elements swirled and condensed into the first stars, the fiery furnaces that would forge the heavier elements needed for the ultimate intricacies of complex life.
Near the end of this phase, we would see our own solar system form. In the last three minutes of the tape, we would witness a dizzyingly rapid crescendo of creation on Earth, with the most intricate, spiraling integration of biologic complexity in the last half-minute, as species after species of living being arose, bursting forth with staccato regularity in every imaginable form occupying every imaginable nook. In the last fraction of a fraction of a second, human beings would arrive, the most complex and curious of all biological beings, somehow the crown and glory of the Bloom, the only one capable of a science of biology.
Since human beings arrive at the result of a long conspiracy of fine-tuning—not only in regard to the fundamental forces and laws, but also because of the elegant and precise fitness for life of the chemical elements such as carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen—cosmology is becoming not just biocentric but anthropic (from the Greek anthropos, human being). In contrast to Weinberg’s dismal assessment, then, purpose is written into every part. The vast spaces above him are not hostile and pointless but point to the ground teeming with every manner of living thing below. And again, we human beings seem to be built in from the very beginning.
Here's a case where our aesthetic sense is a sufficient basis to discount Mr. Weinberg's despair. Posted by Orrin Judd at April 16, 2004 11:23 AM
No, it isn't.
There is no way to distinguish between the farcical or design viewpoints--the truth, whatever it may be, is wholly unaffected by our apprehension of it.
But let's take the design point of view as stipulated. How did this immensely capable designer come to be? Doesn't matter what the response is, because it answers nothing.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at April 16, 2004 11:38 AMJeff:
Exactly. The Truth is unknowable. All we have is the reality we create. It can be lovely or ugly. You choose ugly, which does allow you to weasel out from under morality but leaves our aesthetic sense unsatisfied. No one who cares about beauty could choose a world where you can crush a child's skull for your own convenience and have it mean nothing.
Posted by: oj at April 16, 2004 11:48 AMMr Weinberg suffers from too much navel gazing (as do most theologists for that matter). What difference does it make whether we were designed in or not? We are here! Life is a gift horse, let's not look it in the mouth.
Posted by: Robert Duquette at April 16, 2004 12:01 PMUntil the Great Old Ones come when the stars are right! Cthulhu fthagn!
If the above makes no sense to you after reading Weinberg's quote, then you obviously have never read HP Lovecraft.
Posted by: Chris Durnell at April 16, 2004 12:23 PMThis is a little quirky, but I think any insights or profundities uttered while staring out of an airplane window are suspect. I've lost count of how many articles I've read about Canadian politicians overcome with a sense of mission and sacrifice as they ponder the "vast expanse" below them and are instilled with a commitment to save the cute little creatures (who always look just like ants) below. Judging from most of their actions thereafter, we would have been much better off if they had just slurped the free booze and fallen asleep.
St-Exupery's drivel speaks for itself. Last month in Florida I saw an IMAX movie on the Blue Angels. What those pilots do is amazing and beyond courageous, but listening to them talk about what they think and feel up there was very scary. Something does something weird to the mind up there.
Posted by: Peter B at April 16, 2004 2:04 PMI want to know where the Tapeworms come in.
If the point was Me, what was the point of the Tapeworm?
Nearly all my ancestors had them, but I don't, and I get along fine without 'em.
So if there was a designer, it follows that, either, A) the Big Spook wanted to torture the point of his creation by inflicting on him completely unnecessary suffering; or B) the point was not Me but the Tapeworm.
If B, then the Big Spook is in danger of having his whole project turn to ashes.
If A, then Weinberg's despair is nothing compared with the despair he ought to feel.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at April 16, 2004 2:20 PMWe are the "Old Ones".
Or at least that's the way everyone else will think of us in few billion years from now, as they get caught up in our projects to reshape the universe to better fit our needs.
(Why do intellectuals always assume we've reached some sort of destination, that after 14 billion (or whatever) years, there's nothing new left to be done or learned, and that for the next 20 billion or so years everything is going to suddenly become forever unchanging?)
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at April 16, 2004 2:33 PMI believe about a third of the decimal places in the extremely remote odds that a universe fit for life randomly developed have to do with the chemical composition of the earth and the circumstances that brought about its orbit around our star in this particular interval of cosmic history.
It appears that the issue of whether the Anthropic argument is regarded as compelling or a curiosity seems to hinge on how well a person grasps the basics of statistics and probability: Those for whom it is convincing have an internal number for the chances, and when the figure gets too big, they stop thinking "coincidence",and start thinking "design". Those for whom it is not, I suspect, don't even entertain the numbers. I.e. one says "We're here. We won the lottery, so who cares how long the odds were?"
The other says, "We're here. We won the Lottery, but the odds are so long, we had no business or reasonable expectation of winning. There's something suspicious about how this 'lottery' got set up in the first place. Provided, of course, that it was REALLY a lottery in the first place."
A big factor in the calculations is that all the factors have to be independent: We don't know, as yet, whether physical constants like the speed of light, planck's constant, the gravitational constant, or Coloumb's constant (among many), are truly independent of each other, or whether they are connected in some way so that, for example, a change in the speed of light is perfectly counterbalanced by the mass of the Mu-meson.
I heard someplace that the ratio of three constants works out to exactly 137.x00000. I.e., the inputs are irrational, but the result of the equation is rational. It's a curiosity that bugs a few mathematicians, phycisists, but apparently not Evolutionists...
Posted by: Ptah at April 16, 2004 2:34 PMMr. Eager;
Scientists in the United States have developed a drink containing thousands of pig whipworm eggs.Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at April 16, 2004 2:45 PMTrials suggest it can dramatically reduce the abdominal pain, bleeding and diarrhoea associated with the disease.
A number of studies have suggested that live worms could be an effective treatment for conditions like Crohn's disease and colitis, known collectively as inflammatory bowel disease
In fact, some scientists believe the eradication of worms from human stomachs over the past 50 years may be behind the rise in these conditions.
Of course, the very concept that existence is farcical presupposes an objective esthetic standard outside of existence, and thus requires G-d.
Posted by: David Cohen at April 16, 2004 4:31 PMI am surprised no one has mentioned the current materialist explanation for the finely-tuned fundamental constants, viz. the "multiverse" theory. It stipulates that many (perhaps an infinite number of) unconnected universes came into existence by unknown means, each with different values of the constants (the mechanism for this is also unknown), and we just happen to be in one with the proper ratios for life. This is, of course, unverifiable/unfalsifiable and hence not science at all. I actually heard this expounded recently by a Jesuit astronomer from the Vatican Observatory -- I naively expected more from a Jesuit.
Ptah -- Just a minor quibble. The constants are all the result of measurements and hence are, by definition, rational, not irrational (since any measurement is always of finite precision).
Posted by: jd watson at April 16, 2004 5:53 PMI feel sorry for Dr. Weinberg that he looks at the universe and is full of despair rather than awe. One wonders why he became a physicist.
Posted by: brian at April 16, 2004 7:25 PMHe didn't say he was in despair. He's a realist.
Other people look at realists and say, gee, you must be in despair, no chance of spending eternity with, eg, Jerry Falwell.
Some of us, on the other hand, would hate being saved. Rather be dead.
And, great deal, I get what I want.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at April 16, 2004 8:35 PMOrrin:
And that ain't no joke, either. The Mormons have the world's largest genealogical library, specially hardened against nuclear attack (!) for the purpose of collecting the background of every Latter-Day Saint in the world so that their ancestors could all be posthumously baptized; aside from its original purpose it's become a real resource for non-Mormons, my aunt spent a great deal of time there in the '70's researching our family history.
Posted by: Joe at April 16, 2004 10:21 PMPtah: "I heard someplace that the ratio of three constants works out to exactly 137.x00000. I.e., the inputs are irrational, but the result of the equation is rational. It's a curiosity that bugs a few mathematicians, phycisists, but apparently not Evolutionists..."
The fine structure constant is 1/137.03599976(50).
"The physicist goes lonely and afraid,
in a world he never made, while
the mathematician lives happy and contented,
in the world that he invented."
"... but apparently not Evolutionists."
Nor economists, nor geologists. Why should it?
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at April 18, 2004 7:42 AM