The Goldilocks Enigma
PAUL DAVIES is an internationally acclaimed physicist, cosmologist and writer. He is the author of over 200 books, including The Mind of God, About Time, The Origin of Life, The Big Question, More Big Questions, and How to Build a Time Machine. Davies has been honoured by the UK’s Royal Society and the Institute of Physics for his talents as a communicator of science
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This is a science book in which God makes frequent appearance. It is written in a simple language that readers with some background in physics and maths can easily understand. It asks fundamental questions about life, universe and the purpose of everything. It can be a primer for those doing advanced spiritual studies. It also opens up business opportunities in ‘scientific spiritualism’.
The publishing industry can churn out ‘for dummies’ books with titles like Schrodinger’s God — Is He or is He Not?; Heisenberg’s God Uncertainty Principle, which would convey that God can be analysed or experienced, but both cannot be done simultaneously, and so on. Then there could be the megabuck business of scientific spiritualism malls that offer more technologically advanced products than currently provided by the religion businesses. That is the problem with Paul Davies’s book. It can be admired at the science level and trivialised at the God level. The author’s presumption is that we know enough science now to ask questions about the purpose of everything. Twenty thousand years ago, the wise ones among cavemen must have made a similar claim. But we consider them primitive with no knowledge of science. And 20,000 years from now, wise ones will laugh at our ignorance and claim that they know enough science to ask fundamental questions. Scientists don’t seem to learn anything from the history of science which gives us a basic rule: The more we know, the more we realise how little we know. Scientists, ignorant of the rule, become fundamentalist either/or missionaries.
The Goldilocks Enigma is a good illustration of the western scientific struggle that began as a revolt against the bullying of the Church. The Popes and their bureaucracies were like President Bush and his cabinet. They said: “Whatever we tell you is the only truth. Anyone who questions it will be sent to a Guantanamo Inquisition.” If the Church had been liberal, western science might not have progressed as it did. Western scientists should be frequently exclaiming, “Thank you, God, for creating Popes!” An elementary law of Nature that is not covered by physics is this: orthodoxy provokes protestant unorthodoxy, which eventually becomes another orthodoxy, which provokes... Science was unorthodoxy in medieval times and is orthodoxy now. It is divided into believers and non-believers who ridicule each other. They just can’t leave God alone, poor thing! The title of the book is simultaneously clever and ridiculous. Goldilocks was a dumb blonde who couldn’t do simple mental physics and maths to conclude at a glance what was just right for her. She did physical tests. In complex real life, everyone goes through the Goldilocks process in search of what is just right for him/her. Not everyone succeeds; too many somehow survive in too big or too small universes.
Davies has already written several books. In a couple of years, Davies will realise that The Goldilocks Enigma is not quite right and will write another. And then another… as part of the Goldilocks process. But he will never find what is exactly right because more choices will be offered. That is the fun of science. It is an endless, unbounded game, even without invoking God.Davies’s conclusion is that this universe, out of the infinite number of theoretically possible universes, is just right for everything. Perhaps another Davies in another universe has also proved that his universe is the only right one for life and is designed with a purpose. At the end, Davies says, “I do take life, mind and purpose seriously, and I concede that the universe at least appears to be designed with a high level of ingenuity. I cannot accept these features as a package of marvels that just happen to be, which exist reasonlessly. It seems to me that there is a genuine scheme of things — the universe is ‘about’ something. But I am equally uneasy about dumping the whole set of problems in the lap of an arbitrary god, or abandoning all further thought and declaring existence ultimately to be a mystery.” Yet, in the last sentence of the book, he says that most scientists get on with their work, leaving the big questions to philosophers and priests. Precisely! That is what Davies should have done. But Intelligent Design is a hot topic in the West, and Davies had to make his contribution to the discussion.Since the book is about science and Intelligent Design, it is about thinking: questioning, testing, speculating, finding proof, the ecstasy of great proofs and the despair of wrong ones.
All this activity requires the brain. It is the brain that makes science possible. But the brain, which is as big a mystery as the universe and which will be the biggest area of scientific inquiry in the future, does not figure in Davies’s book. Strange, indeed! It is absurd to claim to know about life and the universe without knowing how the knowing process works so that God can be given an IQ test. That’s worth a laugh.Nevertheless, the book is a must read. It is a brilliant exposition of the maths and physics of the universe. You either nod in agreement by the end, or get furious. Either way, you are provoked to think. That energises the brain.
-------------------------------------------------------------------EXCERPT ----------------
-" I began this book by saying that religion was the first great systematic attempt to explain all of existence and that science is the next great attempt. Both religion and science draw their methodology from ancient modes of thought honed by many millennia of evolutionary and cultural pressures. Our minds are the products of genes and memes. Now we are free of Darwinian evolution and able to create our own real and virtual worlds, and our information processing technology can take us to intellectual arenas that no human mind has ever before visited, those age-old questions of existence may evaporate away, exposed as nothing more than the befuddled musings of biological beings trapped in a mental straitjacket inherited from evolutionary happenstance. The whole paraphernalia of gods and laws, of space, time and matter, of purpose and design, rationality and absurdity, meaning and mystery, may yet be swept away and replaced by revelations as yet undreamt of."
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This is a science book in which God makes frequent appearance. It is written in a simple language that readers with some background in physics and maths can easily understand. It asks fundamental questions about life, universe and the purpose of everything. It can be a primer for those doing advanced spiritual studies. It also opens up business opportunities in ‘scientific spiritualism’.
The publishing industry can churn out ‘for dummies’ books with titles like Schrodinger’s God — Is He or is He Not?; Heisenberg’s God Uncertainty Principle, which would convey that God can be analysed or experienced, but both cannot be done simultaneously, and so on. Then there could be the megabuck business of scientific spiritualism malls that offer more technologically advanced products than currently provided by the religion businesses. That is the problem with Paul Davies’s book. It can be admired at the science level and trivialised at the God level. The author’s presumption is that we know enough science now to ask questions about the purpose of everything. Twenty thousand years ago, the wise ones among cavemen must have made a similar claim. But we consider them primitive with no knowledge of science. And 20,000 years from now, wise ones will laugh at our ignorance and claim that they know enough science to ask fundamental questions. Scientists don’t seem to learn anything from the history of science which gives us a basic rule: The more we know, the more we realise how little we know. Scientists, ignorant of the rule, become fundamentalist either/or missionaries.
The Goldilocks Enigma is a good illustration of the western scientific struggle that began as a revolt against the bullying of the Church. The Popes and their bureaucracies were like President Bush and his cabinet. They said: “Whatever we tell you is the only truth. Anyone who questions it will be sent to a Guantanamo Inquisition.” If the Church had been liberal, western science might not have progressed as it did. Western scientists should be frequently exclaiming, “Thank you, God, for creating Popes!” An elementary law of Nature that is not covered by physics is this: orthodoxy provokes protestant unorthodoxy, which eventually becomes another orthodoxy, which provokes... Science was unorthodoxy in medieval times and is orthodoxy now. It is divided into believers and non-believers who ridicule each other. They just can’t leave God alone, poor thing! The title of the book is simultaneously clever and ridiculous. Goldilocks was a dumb blonde who couldn’t do simple mental physics and maths to conclude at a glance what was just right for her. She did physical tests. In complex real life, everyone goes through the Goldilocks process in search of what is just right for him/her. Not everyone succeeds; too many somehow survive in too big or too small universes.
Davies has already written several books. In a couple of years, Davies will realise that The Goldilocks Enigma is not quite right and will write another. And then another… as part of the Goldilocks process. But he will never find what is exactly right because more choices will be offered. That is the fun of science. It is an endless, unbounded game, even without invoking God.Davies’s conclusion is that this universe, out of the infinite number of theoretically possible universes, is just right for everything. Perhaps another Davies in another universe has also proved that his universe is the only right one for life and is designed with a purpose. At the end, Davies says, “I do take life, mind and purpose seriously, and I concede that the universe at least appears to be designed with a high level of ingenuity. I cannot accept these features as a package of marvels that just happen to be, which exist reasonlessly. It seems to me that there is a genuine scheme of things — the universe is ‘about’ something. But I am equally uneasy about dumping the whole set of problems in the lap of an arbitrary god, or abandoning all further thought and declaring existence ultimately to be a mystery.” Yet, in the last sentence of the book, he says that most scientists get on with their work, leaving the big questions to philosophers and priests. Precisely! That is what Davies should have done. But Intelligent Design is a hot topic in the West, and Davies had to make his contribution to the discussion.Since the book is about science and Intelligent Design, it is about thinking: questioning, testing, speculating, finding proof, the ecstasy of great proofs and the despair of wrong ones.
All this activity requires the brain. It is the brain that makes science possible. But the brain, which is as big a mystery as the universe and which will be the biggest area of scientific inquiry in the future, does not figure in Davies’s book. Strange, indeed! It is absurd to claim to know about life and the universe without knowing how the knowing process works so that God can be given an IQ test. That’s worth a laugh.Nevertheless, the book is a must read. It is a brilliant exposition of the maths and physics of the universe. You either nod in agreement by the end, or get furious. Either way, you are provoked to think. That energises the brain.
-------------------------------------------------------------------EXCERPT ----------------
-" I began this book by saying that religion was the first great systematic attempt to explain all of existence and that science is the next great attempt. Both religion and science draw their methodology from ancient modes of thought honed by many millennia of evolutionary and cultural pressures. Our minds are the products of genes and memes. Now we are free of Darwinian evolution and able to create our own real and virtual worlds, and our information processing technology can take us to intellectual arenas that no human mind has ever before visited, those age-old questions of existence may evaporate away, exposed as nothing more than the befuddled musings of biological beings trapped in a mental straitjacket inherited from evolutionary happenstance. The whole paraphernalia of gods and laws, of space, time and matter, of purpose and design, rationality and absurdity, meaning and mystery, may yet be swept away and replaced by revelations as yet undreamt of."
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posted by Borrowed Wisdom | 5:07 AM
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