Richard Dawkins excerpts Marcus Brigstocke
From his lecture at UC Berkeley on March 8 2008.
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A universe without purpose
A universe without purpose
New revelations in science have shown what a strange and remarkable universe we live in.
By Lawrence M. Krauss
The illusion of purpose and design is perhaps the most pervasive illusion about nature that science has to confront on a daily basis. Everywhere we look, it appears that the world was designed so that we could flourish.
The position of the Earth around the sun, the presence of organic materials and water and a warm climate — all make life on our planet possible. Yet, with perhaps 100 billion solar systems in our galaxy alone, with ubiquitous water, carbon and hydrogen, it isn't surprising that these conditions would arise somewhere. And as to the diversity of life on Earth — as Darwin described more than 150 years ago and experiments ever since have validated — natural selection in evolving life forms can establish both diversity and order without any governing plan.
The illusion of purpose and design is perhaps the most pervasive illusion about nature that science has to confront on a daily basis. Everywhere we look, it appears that the world was designed so that we could flourish.
The position of the Earth around the sun, the presence of organic materials and water and a warm climate — all make life on our planet possible. Yet, with perhaps 100 billion solar systems in our galaxy alone, with ubiquitous water, carbon and hydrogen, it isn't surprising that these conditions would arise somewhere. And as to the diversity of life on Earth — as Darwin described more than 150 years ago and experiments ever since have validated — natural selection in evolving life forms can establish both diversity and order without any governing plan. [continue]
Tags: Lawrence M. Krauss, Multiverse, The Universe, physics, quantum mechanics, space
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by doone on -
You just have to make your own purpose in life and appreciate being a carbon being on Earth versus a rock on Mercury.
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Permalink Reply by Michel on -
Given deep time and petanormous numbers of combinations, from a cloud of hydrogen you can get Shakespeare. It's been done at least once.
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Permalink Reply by doone on
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A UNIVERSE FROM NOTHING?
Sean Carroll in Cosmic Variance:
Some of you may have been following a tiny brouhaha (“kerfuffle” is so overused, don’t you think?) that has sprung up around the question of why the universe exists. You can’t say we think small around here.
First Lawrence Krauss came out with a new book, A Universe From Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing (based in part on a popular YouTube lecture), which addresses this question from the point of view of a modern cosmologist. Then David Albert, speaking as a modern philosopher of science, came out with quite a negative review of the book in the New York Times. And discussion has gone back and forth since then: here’s Jerry Coyne (mostly siding with Albert), the Rutgers Philosophy of Cosmology blog(with interesting voices in the comments), a long interview with Krauss in the Atlantic, comments by Massimo Pigliucci, andanother response by Krauss on the Scientific American site.
I’ve been meaning to chime in, for personal as well as scientific reasons. I do work on the origin of the universe, after all, and both Lawrence and David are friends of the blog (and of me): Lawrence was our first guest-blogger, and David and I did Bloggingheads dialogues here and here.
Executive summary
This is going to be kind of long, so here’s the upshot. Very roughly, there are two different kinds of questions lurking around the issue of “Why is there something rather than nothing?” One question is, within some framework of physical laws that is flexible enough to allow for the possible existence of either “stuff” or “no stuff” (where “stuff” might include space and time itself), why does the actual manifestation of reality seem to feature all this stuff? The other is, why do we have this particular framework of physical law, or even something called “physical law” at all? Lawrence (again, roughly) addresses the first question, and David cares about the second, and both sides expend a lot of energy insisting that their question is the “right” one rather than just admitting they are different questions. Nothing about modern physics explains why we have these laws rather than some totally different laws, although physicists sometimes talk that way — a mistake they might be able to avoid if they took philosophers more seriously. Then the discussion quickly degrades into name-calling and point-missing, which is unfortunate because these are smart people who agree about 95% of the interesting issues, and the chance for productive engagement diminishes considerably with each installment.
Posted by Robin Varghese at 11:06 AM | Permalink
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Permalink Reply by Adriana on -
I haven't read it yet....My reading queue is ridiculous at this point :-(
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Permalink Reply by doone on
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The Origin Of The Universe
Lawrence Krauss compares it to Darwin's Origin of the Species:
[B]efore Darwin life was a miracle; every aspect of life was a miracle, every species was designed, etc. And then what Darwin showed was that simple laws could, in principle, plausibly explain the incredible diversity of life. And while we don't yet know the ultimate origin of life, for most people it's plausible that at some point chemistry became biology. What's amazing to me is that we're now at a point where we can plausibly argue that a universe full of stuff came from a very simple beginning, the simplest of all beginnings: nothing.
Krauss believes science, and the idea that something can come from nothing, should provoke people:
I think Steven Weinberg said it best when he said that science doesn't make it impossible to believe in God, it just makes it possible to not believe in God. That's a profoundly important point, and to the extent that cosmology is bringing us to a place where we can address those very questions, it's undoubtedly going to make people uncomfortable.
(Panoramic photograph by Chris Kotsiopoloulos shot over thirty hours via Colossal, courtesy the artist and Greek Sky.)
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Permalink Reply by doone on
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Before I Die
At the corner of Adams Street and the Fulton Street Mall in Brooklyn, people have expressed one thing they would to do before they die. You can have your own: here is a Before I die kit. postedabout a day ago
Brooklyn Dental care building is under renovation, so Theresa Mullen and the Shake Shack team installed temporary barriers and applied the kit.
Via: candychang.com
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