Archive for the Category »Science «

27
Jan
Thoughts on a Universe from Nothing
Joemar

I completed watching a lecture of Dr. Lawrence Kraus on the topic of the universe coming out of nothing. It is indeed a hallmark of success of modern cosmology that all events can be traced back now, from pieces of evidence, at the beginning of the universe up to time zero.

It goes beyond common sense to imagine how things came to be as depicted in the latest best model of cosomological understanding. As ridiculous as it might seem, most modern cosmologists are now convinced that the universe came from nothing – that is, from empty space. However, “empty space” is not really statically empty. It’s an emptiness where matter and energy are created and annihilated in a dynamic balance. This is called quantum fluctuation, which can be logically deduced from Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. A sustained imbalance of creation/annihilation process resulted to a sudden outburst of matter and energy creation, which we call the Big Bang.

This is not immune to the sticky question of cuasation. What caused the sudden imbalance? Proponents of the god hypothesis can fill an intelligent god in this gap of our knowledge, something that really doesn’t explain anything. If an intelligent designer initiated this imbalance, how can we detect the presence of this designer? Alternatively, is there a non-intelligent/mechanistic cause of the imbalance?

In the end, the question of ultimate cause has to be confronted. Following Occam’s Razor, a simpler explanation is always most likely to be correct than a complex one (e.g. intelligent designer).

A simpler explanation that have been conceived is that the universe simply came from empty space. The imbalance that brought forth our universe is not unique, it could have been happening all the time. Thus, other universes may be lying out there but they’re just very far for us to observe. Universes, like ours, can just pop-out from nothing, due to quantum fluctuations.

If our universe came from nothing then nothing more needs to be explained. Nothing, therefore, could be the ultimate cause. If we should call the ultimate cause with the name “God”, then God is actually nothing.

On how this nothingness brought forth complexity in the universe is a separate question; but one that has been answered quite sufficiently by evolution. I personally think that the initial state of nothingness is actually already complex and that the resulting universe and life forms that happened to evolve later on are just other forms of complexity. In this point of view, evolution should actually be conceived as transformation from one complex form to another complex form and not from simple to complex.

For a graphical summary of the origin of the universe, see the figure below. Source: NASA.

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24
Jan
The Paradox of the Human Brain
Joemar

If the human brain is highly evolved and that the survival of our species critically hinges on a sufficient objective understanding of the natural world, then why is it so susceptible to imaginative and inaccurate models of thinking? Think about how some credulous religious fanatics can kill thousands of people for an anticipation of heaven promised by their god – concepts/beliefs that never resulted from objective and rational understanding…purely imaginary. Less extreme examples of the credulity of the human brain are everywhere so that we can almost say that it really has a tendency to be uncritical, subjective, and even anti-realistic.

From the evolutionary point of view, perhaps a completely objective view of the world is not critical to our survival in the short term. A crude and partially realistic view of the world is probably enough to manage the survival of our species for a few thousands of years. We cannot prolong our survival though with these kinds of models of understanding the natural world. In the long run, we need to be more realistic in assessing the workings of nature. Without the efforts of science to fight plagues and diseases, for instance, through serious study of their causes and cures, our species might have already been wiped out from the face of the earth. If we are to continue to survive as a species for the next thousand or million years, we should evolve to a more rational and objective species. This has been happening throughout human history. The challenge now is on how to accelerate this transformation so we can attain peaceful coexisting rational “ideologies” before we destroy each other in a series of offensive and vindictive attacks resulting from ancient unrealistic and anti-progressive ideas.

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27
Nov
Traditional Religion, Science, and the Search for Meaning
Joemar

It seems that humans are hardwired to make some sense of life or to have some meaning. Science and religion both agree on this goal, which is to come up with meaningful models to understand everything. These two spheres of human exploration fulfill our deepest longing to make sense of the world. The only difference is that science is more realistic and objective while religion is more imaginative and subjective.

While I am critical of traditional religions, it cannot be denied that these institutions have done a lot of good to humanity in providing meaning to countless souls throughout generations. It has assisted humanity’s search for a greater view of life and to provide moral directions. However, as societies develop and mature, there is a general trend to become less and less dependent on traditional religious notions and practices. Over time, human beings realized that although we somehow get a coherent and meaningful view of the universe through the lens of myth-based religions, true progress and survival of the human species cannot simply hinge on these dogmatic and closed-ended explanations. What we need is an objective yet dynamic understanding of the world around us.

While it is helpful to simply conjure that various phenomena are results of the activities of the gods, some wise men of old stood and dared to question these mythical and simplistic explanations. They dared to know nature objectively and break the shroud of mystery that surrounds them. Objective mechanistic explanations of common phenomena were made and their accuracy tested. Over the course of time, men of able minds learned that objective knowledge of the world is most beneficial to humanity, which should now be clear to the man in the street. We learned that we need to leave myths and imaginative explanations behind to sustain mental, material and even spiritual progress of mankind.

The general procedure of working out an objective view of the universe constitutes the very core of science. In this method, data from the external world are collected using objective measures with the use of conventional standards and instruments. In this way, the data can be clearly separated from the interpretation of the observer, which can often be swayed to certain biases as a result of personal preferences, cultural background and popular paradigms. While a scientist cannot be totally free from these, all inaccuracies resulting from these biases or from honest mistakes can still be corrected. In the scientific community, data and explanations are published, presented, criticized and revised or even abandoned. The evolution of this method and the community that actively uses and promotes it to advance the objective understanding of everything in the observable world perhaps constitutes the single greatest achievement of the human race.

Since then, the advance of science has been unstoppable. Historically, the development of science has caused religions to recede into unpopularity or to retreat to so-called “spiritual realm” as science is only supposed to concern with the physical and natural world. This is reflected in a simple line to make Galileo’s monumental discoveries compatible with religious ideas of the time – “The Bible shows us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go”. This demarcation between physical and spiritual realms is of course purely arbitrary, which simply sets the bounds of where science is now but not a real limitation of scientific inquiry. As soon as science has not yet completed the grand project of coming up with an objective explanation of every observable phenomenon and as soon as myth-based or revelation-based religions can still fit scientific findings to their beliefs, these religious institutions will always be here to stay, doing the same good thing that it has been doing for millennia – providing meaning to billions of souls who instinctively resolve to make sense of their existence.

At the individual level, a choice has to be made on whether to commit oneself to a meaning of life that comes packaged and prescribed by any of the traditional religions or to adopt an open-ended meaning of existence guided by the objectivity of scientific inquiry.

Category: Philosophy, Science  Tags: , , , ,  Comments
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