To judge by some of the reviews, Stephen Hawking has evidently given up his quest for the Theory of Everything.
A scientist is in a situation like those SF scenarios where we come into possession of advanced technology. The challenge is whether we, with our primitive technological understanding, or unevolved brains, can figure out more advanced technology.
There are variants on this scenario. The technology may be more advanced because it comes from the future. Or it may be more advanced because it comes from a superior alien civilization.
There are variants on that scenario as well. The alien technology may be more advanced because the alien civilization is further along the historical continuum, but someday we will catch up. Or it may be more advanced because the aliens are smarter than we are.
If the aliens are smarter than we are, then their technology may defy our best efforts to understand it. We can never reason at their level. So the design will remain opaque to human understanding. Or perhaps we can learn a few things from studying the advanced technology–which will jump-start our own technology–but other things forever elude our grasp.
In another variant, the technology may defeat our efforts to figure it out, not so much because the alien engineers are intellectually superior, but because their type of intelligence is simply incommensurable with ours. How they perceive the world, process information, &c.–is so different from ourselves that we have no common referent point. We can’t tell what problem they were trying to solve. We just don’t think like they do.
This scenario often takes the form of an alien cockpit. After scientists figure out how to get inside the spacecraft–or the craft obliges them–they poke around the cockpit, trying to figure out if they can operate the control panel. Is there something analogous to human experience, some common denominator, some Rosetta Stone, which will enable them to decrypt the system?
Of course, this scene tends to be a bit of a letdown since the cockpit was designed, not by superior aliens, but human beings pretending to be aliens. The cockpit suffers from the limited imagination of the screenwriter and FX dept., as well as the demands of a satisfying plot.
To what extent is our universe comprehensible? Is God like a toymaker who comes down to the level of the child? Who designs a toy that we can take apart, put back together, or recombine–in ways we can fully master and exhaust?
Or is God like a toymaker who designs a user-friendly toy that a child can play with, even though the underlying technology remains unintelligible to a child?
A cosmic toymaker? How about a "divine tinkerer?" Someone who takes billions of years to evolve various species which then die in mass extinction events. Sorry, just tinkering round. And lastly, tinkering around with primates and their genes to make several upright species. Finally one stuck, the rest of the early ape species and primate species and hominid species went extinct. But the one that stuck has overflowed the planet, obeying the command to multiply and fill the earth quite literally. (Starting around 1850 that command became impossibly easy to fulfill in fact, for that was when humanity reached the first billion mark. What is it now, over 6 billion in merely the last 150 years?)
ReplyDeleteI also question the use of the term "user-friendly" in reference to the cosmos.
"User friendly?" Tell that to all the dead critters that lived prior to human beings arriving on the scene, and to those that perished during periods of mass extinction. Tell that to the earliest large-brained species that could walk upright but was still prey to big cats, bears, parasites, worms, viruses, bacteria, as well as death via extremes of heat, cold, hunger, nutritional deficiencies or genetically-related ailments. And suffered so for millions of years till they evolved tongues and brains to speak, to harness fire, and develop a written language by which they could preserve more detailed knowledge and pass it along to future. Of course even after the time it took to develop such things in one species, all the rest continued to suffer. And the medical and agricultural sciences (as well as the immense benefits to a population's general health provided by water treatment plants and plumbing) are all new developments in this "user friendly" cosmos.
Convenient of course that you, Steve, live at this particular time in human history and in one of the most "user friendly" nation's on earth, rather than say the ages of great faith and great plagues. (Though who knows what the future holds and how "user unfriendly" it might become because all those microbes keep evolving?)
What signs does the solar system show of being "user friendly?" We're flying around in an ocean of deadly cosmic rays and flying matter, part of a cosmic shooting gallery. Lifeless planets to our left and right (just look at the craters and evidence of past impacts on the earth, not to mention all the craters on the moon). One good solar flare or gamma ray burst from a nearby supernova and we're outta here. Even if another star simply drifts too near our own.
The stars are relatively well off, of course. The cosmos must appears pretty user friendly to them. At least they get to exist longer than the lifetimes of living creatures on this planet. Most stars will continue to exist via internal fusion reactions for billions of years to come no matter what happens on any of their planets. Others explode, still others are new, forming as I type this. Then there's black holes. No one even knows how long they can exist on average, there's no H-R diagram to help chart such info.
But if you mean by "user-friendly" the idea that the cosmos supports life at all, I agree, it does support life, and death, with which it appears to be in equilibrium so long as the next generation keeps being born. But only life on a minimum of planets apparently. Most planets do not appear to be very "user friendly."
EDWARD T. BABINSKI SAID:
ReplyDelete“A cosmic toymaker? How about a ‘divine tinkerer?’ Someone who takes billions of years to evolve various species which then die in mass extinction events. Sorry, just tinkering round. And lastly, tinkering around with primates and their genes to make several upright species.”
i) Since I don’t buy into your evolutionary narrative, you’re deriving a conclusion from a premise that I reject.
ii) What’s the fundamental distinction between a mass extinction and organisms dying one-by-one from predation, old age, &c? One way or the other, it all adds up.
iii) Even if, for the sake of argument, I bought into something like your evolutionary narrative, a novelist can create a story in which different phases of history come and go. Each epoch has its own internal drama. A golden age, silver age, bronze age, &c. Each stage contributes to the next stage.
“(Starting around 1850 that command became impossibly easy to fulfill in fact, for that was when humanity reached the first billion mark. What is it now, over 6 billion in merely the last 150 years?)”
Do you think the world is overpopulated? Is that your complaint? If so, why don’t you and other like-minded infidels do the honorable thing? That would free up more resources for the rest of us? Where’s your sense of philanthropy, Ed?
“’User friendly?’ Tell that to all the dead critters that lived prior to human beings arriving on the scene…”
I see you lack the intelligence to know the difference between “user-friendly” and “bio-friendly.” Something is user-friendly if it’s easy to operate. A weapons-system may be user-friend. That doesn’t make it bio-friendly.
You never miss an opportunity to remind us that there’s no correlation between infidelity and high IQ.
“Tell that to the earliest large-brained species that could walk upright but was still prey to big cats, bears, parasites, worms, viruses, bacteria, as well as death via extremes of heat, cold, hunger, nutritional deficiencies or genetically-related ailments. And suffered so for millions of years till they evolved tongues and brains to speak, to harness fire, and develop a written language by which they could preserve more detailed knowledge and pass it along to future. Of course even after the time it took to develop such things in one species, all the rest continued to suffer.”
Who elected you to speak on behalf of the animal kingdom, Ed? I don’t remember your name on the ballot. I don’t see the animals lament their sorry lot in life. You project your squeamishness onto the animal kingdom, but there’s no evidence that the animal kingdom reciprocates your sentiments. Try not to be such a child, Ed.
Cont. “Convenient of course that you, Steve, live at this particular time in human history and in one of the most ‘user friendly’ nation's on earth, rather than say the ages of great faith and great plagues.”
ReplyDeletei) Yes, it is a convenient time to be alive. That’s one more reason to thank God for his unmerited blessings. And greater blessings bring greater duties.
ii) Do you think life is better during, say, the great ages of faithlessness, like Stalinism? The Khmer Rouge?
iii) Oh, and btw, you might also want to brush up on the doctrine of the Fall. Pointing to bad things in world history is hardly a defeater for Christian theology.
“What signs does the solar system show of being ‘user friendly?’ We're flying around in an ocean of deadly cosmic rays and flying matter, part of a cosmic shooting gallery.”
Sounds like the fine-tuning argument. Are you an ID-theorist?
“The stars are relatively well off, of course. The cosmos must appears pretty user friendly to them. At least they get to exist longer than the lifetimes of living creatures on this planet.”
Is that supposed to be an argument? As a Christian, I think some living creatures on this planet will outlive the stars.
As for animal life, if they pass into oblivion, then they don’t know what they’re missing. (Although, since you assume bestial existence is so unbearable, that would be a relief.)
If, on the other hand, God restores some animals to life, then they didn’t really miss out on anything worthwhile in the long run. So either way, what’s the problem?