Considering the depth which theoretical scientists must often explore in their efforts to gain that deeper understanding of the fundamental nature of reality it is refreshing to note that discussion of the anthropic principle is yet ongoing. Lisa Zyga writes in her article What Anthropic Reasoning Can Really Tell Us that anthropic reasoning is losing credibility as a viable explanation for the existence of our Universe because anthropic conclusions reflect mostly our biases rather than our knowledge. I don't share her point of view. Insomuch that it is possible to bury our heads in too much mathematics (Einstein did it to support his static universe theory — he was wrong) it is also possible to demand too much of empiricism to explain what cannot be tested. Sometimes we really do need a leap of faith.
The conventional description of the anthropic principle states that the Universe is the way it is because we are here to observe it. The notion that if it were any other way than that is the way that it would be and we would still be here to observe it is as much a contradiction of the anthropic principle as supportive of it. That amended description does not sit well with physicists studying it. In essence, anthropocentrism holds that the Universe could only exist as it does to support life. To most theorists this is all just a little too pretty and fortuitous to merit title to viable theory. And therein lies the problem with it. Even if things were so, it is just too difficult to fit it into the context of Big Bang Theory. Life can not be determined to exist so it must be purely coincidental. But the anthropic principle is still too attractive and tempting to dismiss entirely. It is still the only scientific reasoning for the emergence and evolution of life. What is missing in the debate is the perception of a coherent framework to support anthropic reasoning.
Quantum theory can help. If we were to reduce the temperature of the entire Universe and everything in it to absolute zero than everything would condense into a single colossal atom. Thermal dynamics prevents this from happening. But, philosophical as it may sound, we are still essentially all one. Imagining the entire history of the Universe compressed to the time frame of a split second helps us to appreciate the role that time plays in differentiating existence. Nevertheless, everything could be perceived as happening at the same time. Same place, same time. Temporarily harboring those radical ideas will allow us to perhaps see the entire process of creation from that first quantum fluctuation when space, time and matter were first realized to the present to be a singular expression. In fractal terms this expression is not so random. Life is not such a fortuitous event after all. Life is essential to the whole, because the expression has made life manifest and purposeful. Determination of life is essential to the complete anthropocentric nature of the expression. It is not really so unscientific to say that the Universe could not have turned out any other way because any other direction would not have supported life because it's true. In its pure originality the evolution of the Universe is determined to follow the course that it takes because the only influences that might make it different imply directions that do not conform to the reason for this expression in the first place. That would have produced a flawed equation — a mutant fractal expression, if you will. But the point is that we are not co-incidental to the nature of existence.
Like any idea, which is what this grand expression represents, this one too passes in time for the observer. The lifetime of his context — ie. his part of the Universe, is as corporeal and as finite as is his life. Thermal dynamics has given us the frame of reference which allows us to position ourselves in our relative time and place and from which we can see the time cones of the past and the future. I like to think that I can see the big picture so I am comfortable with the idea that creation continues at the periphery of the Universe in the perpetual process of new beginning. We are where we are, not where it has been, and not where it is. It shall pass on.
This implies that the WMAP cold spot represents the earliest period — the beginning of creation's history — notwithstanding that there can be no place in nothing for the Universe to have begun, therefore no center of the Universe, it is here nonetheless and this fact must ascribe to at least that much logical reasoning.
Friday, February 8, 2008
Anthropocentrism — unravelling existence
Monday, January 21, 2008
Reconciling religion and science
Scientific American published online part of a conversation between Lawrence M. Krauss and Richard Dawkins titled Should Science Speak to Faith? which can also be found in the July issue of the magazine. Richard Dawkins recently published the book titled The God Delusion in which he zealously protects science from incursion by religion and judging from the readers' reviews is very ardent in his rejection of God.
It must be pointed out that for someone who clearly professes to be an atheist, he certainly appears to have a very solid perception of just what it is he is rejecting. In other words, he does not appear to give quarter as to how any individual who does profess to believe in God actually interprets God. Therefore his own faith is very strongly entrenched.
Now, I am personally opposed to explaining reality in non-scientific terms, for I firmly believe that natural forces created the Universe and natural forces perpetuate reality, end of story. But, believe it or not Richard Dawkins, I believe in God. Just not your God, because it is very apparent that you must indeed have one so that you can profess to not believe in Him.
I place Richard Dawkins in the same category as the mathematician who believes that mathematics is the holy grail. They are both a respectable and scholarly kind, many even decorated for their contributions to their respective fields, but it is still fact that because mathematics can prove the impossible, it is obviously not the holy grail, and then it follows that neither is pure science the holy grail.
Which of course begs the question, can we reconcile religion and science? It is my considered opinion that scientific subjects should occupy only the realm of science in academia, and that religious subjects be placed under the umbrella of theological academia, and that never the twain should meet. There should be no conflict between the two but that they should exist only in the minds of fundamentalist creationists who find themselves drawn to scientific pursuits and vice versa. I think it immature and unprofessional for a master of one discipline to embroil himself critically in the affairs of another's, no matter how polar the relationship between the two disciplines.
Richard Dawkins has committed a professional faux pas.
Friday, January 18, 2008
What is real and what is not
I wallow in a wave of messages which stir at times seemingly chaotic in the recesses of a mind that when it purports to be together cares not in a way that matters as to whether what it knows is "right" or "wrong" or just abnormally engaged. It only seeks the truth. It declares its right to think independently.
On the other hand, who is there to say that what I know is not the truth or right in any sense at all, even if how I come to know it is through deep investigations into the logic and common sense of things, which when measured against the tide of human accountability often finds itself misplaced or shrugged aside because it does not meet the desirability of delusion or pretense or satisfy the status quo's at times ridiculous established nonsense.
So maybe I had better stay with what I think to be so, for the messages that pass through me are sane and coherent to any who can see the real sense in how I think, not chaotic at all unless placed before some of those paper carriers of acceptable social mores who carry those permission slips of the obtuse and quasi-scientific string theorists and astrophysical cranks who say that the Universe has always been there and will continue to expand and contract like the beating of some colossal heart, as if an infinite amount of matter could really have been produced by something finite in principle — a singular explosion, the so-called "Big Bang".
Nonsense, The Universe came from nothing and will continue to create for infinity at the periphery. The Universe can only be observed from within.
