The brute force of “Why is there something rather than nothing?”
Question 3:
Intelligibility / Comprehensibility
“Why -- rather than nothing–
--
is there something – so ‘law-like’ ,
such that physics is possible?”
This
is unexpected – there is NO REASON for our something to be such.
This
amazed Einstein, and is the basis for all our science and our daily existence
(as living creatures).
“You find it strange that I consider the comprehensibility of the world
to the degree that we may speak of such comprehensibility as a miracle or an eternal mystery. Well, a priori one should
expect a chaotic world which cannot be in any way grasped through thought.… The kind of order created, for
example, by Newton’s theory of gravity is of quite a different kind. Even if
the axioms of the theory are posited by a human being, the success of such an
enterprise presupposes an order in the objective world of a high degree which
one has no a priori right to expect. That is the “miracle” which
grows increasingly persuasive with the increasing development of knowledge.”(Einstein,
1956).
Life
only exists (and perpetuates) because natural processes are ‘reasonably’
predictable – i.e. ‘law-like’.
But
as the scientists noted above, this ‘orderliness’ and ‘law-like’ reality had to
have COME FIRST…
We should expect a NOTHING, so ‘why is there an orderly
universe—one we can study, analyze, and ‘do science on’? We should NOT expect
this to be the case---
One
writer (physicist with an additional degree in theology) John Polkinghorne:
“One
of the most striking features of the
physical world is its rational transparency to us. We have come to take it
for granted that we can understand the universe, but it is surely a highly
significant fact about it that this is the case. Einstein once said that the
only incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible. He
was referring to what Eugene Wigner, in a memorable phrase, called ‘the unreasonable effectiveness of
mathematics’. Time and again we have found that the physical theories which
fit the facts are characterized in their formulation by the unmistakable quality of mathematical beauty.
It is an actual technique in fundamental physics to seek theories endowed with
mathematical economy and elegance, in the (historically justified) expectation
that they will be the ones which describe the way the world actually is. There is a marvellous congruence between
the workings of our minds (the mathematical reason within) and the workings of
the physical world (the scientific reason without). Of course, up to a
point the need to survive in the evolutionary struggle provides an explanation
of why this is so. If our thoughts did not match in some degree the world
around us we should all have perished. But that can only apply to the relation
of everyday experience (the world of rocks and trees) to everyday thinking
(counting and Euclidean geometry). Wigner was not talking about anything as
banal as that. He had in mind such
things as the counterintuitive quantum world, whose strangeness is made sense
of in terms of highly abstract mathematical entities. It is hard to believe
that the ability to conceive of quantum field theory is just a spin-off from
evolutionary competition.
“Science
does not explain the mathematical
intelligibility of the physical world, for it is part of science’s founding
faith that this is so. Of course, we can always decline to put the question,
shrug our shoulders and say ‘That’s the way it is, and good luck for you
mathematical chaps.’ It goes against the grain for a scientist to be so
intellectually supine. The meta-question of the unreasonable
effectiveness of mathematics insists on being answered.”
It
just looks so ‘suspicious’ that nature is intelligible to us:
“We’re
so used to using science to understand the world that we seldom stop to think
how odd it is that this is possible. Of course, we must have an everyday
understanding of everyday things, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to keep alive
at all. We’d soon come to grief if we didn’t know that there’s something
pulling us down to earth, so that it’s a bad idea to step off a high ladder.
However, to be able to go on beyond this; and to understand with Newton that it
is the same gravitational force that also keeps the Moon circling the Earth and
the Earth circling the Sun; and then with Einstein to realize that this is
due to the curvature of space—time (that is, that mass and energy actually
bend space and time); and that it explains the structure of the whole universe—this
is an ability that goes far beyond
anything we need for survival. Where do we get this marvellous power to
understand things?
“Actually,
it’s even odder than this, for it is mathematics that confers this strange
ability. I suppose one of the greatest scientists I’ve ever known was Paul
Dirac, who, for more than thirty years, occupied Newton’s old professorship in
Cambridge. He was one of the founding fathers of quantum theory, and he spent
his life looking for beautiful equations. You might find this a rather odd
idea, but mathematical beauty is something that those with an eye for such
matters can recognize quite easily. Dirac looked for beautiful equations
because, time and again, we’ve found that they’re the ones that describe the
physical world. Dirac once said that it was more important to have beauty
in your equations than to have them agree with experiment! Of course, he didn’t
mean that it didn’t matter whether or not the equations fitted the facts, but
if there was a discrepancy it might be due to not solving the equations
correctly, or, even, that the experiments might be wrong. At least, there was a
chance that it would all work out in the end, but, if the equations were ugly …
well, then there was no chance at all.
“When
we use mathematics in this way—as the key to unlocking the secrets of the
universe—something very strange is happening. Mathematics is pure thought. Our
mathematical friends sit in their studies and they dream up, out of their
heads, the beautiful patterns of pure mathematics (that’s what mathematics
is really about, making and analyzing patterns). What I’m saying is that some of the most beautiful of these
patterns are actually found to occur, out there, in the structure of the
physical world around us. So, what ties together the reason within (the
mathematics in our heads), and the reason without (the structure of the
physical world)? Remember, it’s a very deep connection, going far beyond
anything we need for everyday survival. Why is the world so understandable?
“You
have a choice. You can always shrug your shoulders and say ‘That’s just the way
it is, and a bit of luck for you chaps who are good at maths.’
This, it seems to me, is just incredibly
lazy. My instinct, as a scientist, is to try to understand things as thoroughly
as possible. I can’t give up a lifetime’s habit just at this point.”
[Einstein
quote from John Polkinghorne, Reason and
Reality: The Relationship between Science and Theology, London, SPCK, 1991,
pp. 76–8; John Polkinghorne, Quarks,
Chaos and Christianity: Questions to Science and Religion (Second Edition.;
London: SPCK, 2005), 2.]
Of
course, you can have an intelligible universe without ACTUAL intelligent
observers (e.g. all conscious life could be destroyed by itself in a nuclear
war) but all you need for this argument is that there could be THEORETICAL
observers to do the ‘pure maths’ – and then find them
in sea shells, Mandelbrot leaf patterns, wind vortices, and
intersecting/intertwining sea currents.
What
might this law-like, orderliness, intelligibility imply about some ‘maker’ of
our SOMETHING? [And
how might it affect our expectation of being confronted by such an OTHER, in
some possible port-mortem situation?]
Would
this suggest that the OUTSIDE OTHER had features of uber-orderliness and
uber-mathematics and uber-logic and uber-sequencing?
…………………………………………………………………………….
Excursus – those who
recognize the (possible) implications of this – the physicists ‘closest to the
detail’:
It is a well-known fact that the
pre-modern theistic scientists such as Newton presumed that the laws of nature
were originated in the ‘mind of God’. And there might have been a softening of
that stance as science enter the modern era.
But once we got into REAL HARD
SCIENCE ‘stuff’, the leaders more and more talked in similar ways (quotes below
taken from Flew’s work):
Einstein:
I’m
not an atheist, and I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the
position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many
languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not
know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The
child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but
doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most
intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged
and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited
minds grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations. [Emphasis
added.]8
I
have never found a better expression than “religious” for this trust in the
rational nature of reality and of its peculiar accessibility to the human mind.
Where this trust is lacking science degenerates into an uninspired procedure.
Let the devil care if the priests make capital out of this. There is no remedy
for that.12
Whoever
has undergone the intense experience of successful advances in this domain
[science] is moved by profound reverence for the rationality made manifest in
existence…the grandeur of reason incarnate in existence.13
Certain
it is that a conviction, akin to religious feeling, of the rationality or
intelligibility of the world lies behind all scientific work of a higher
order…. This firm belief, a belief bound up with deep feeling, in a superior
mind that reveals itself in the world of experience, represents my conception
of God.14
Every
one who is seriously engaged in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that
the laws of nature manifest the existence of a spirit vastly superior to that
of men, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel
humble.15
My
religiosity consists of a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit
who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail
and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a
superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe,
forms my idea of God.16
Hawking ends his best-selling A Brief
History of Time with this passage:
If
we discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable by everyone,
not just by a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists and
just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of
why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it
would be the ultimate triumph of human reason—for then we should know the mind
of God.
.
OTHERS: “Einstein, the discoverer of
relativity, was not the only great scientist who saw a connection between the
laws of nature and the Mind of God. The progenitors
of quantum physics, the other great scientific discovery of modern
times, Max Planck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, and Paul Dirac, have
all made similar statements,” [Flew, Antony; Varghese, Roy Abraham. There Is
a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind (p. 103).
HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.]
Werner
Heisenberg,
famous for Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and matrix mechanics, said, “In
the course of my life I have repeatedly been compelled to ponder on the
relationship of these two regions of thought [science and religion], for I have
never been able to doubt the reality of that to which they point.”
Erwin
Schrödinger,
who developed wave mechanics, stated: “The scientific picture of the world
around me is very deficient. It gives me a lot of factual information, puts all
our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but is ghastly silent about
all that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell
a word about the sensation of red and blue, bitter and sweet, feelings of
delight and sorrow. It knows nothing of beauty and ugly, good or bad, God and
eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but
the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them
seriously.
Max
Planck,
who first introduced the quantum hypothesis, unambiguously held that science
complements religion, contending, “There can never be any real opposition
between religion and science; for the one is the complement of the other.”21 He
also said, “Religion and natural science are fighting a joint battle in an
incessant, never relaxing crusade against skepticism and against dogmatism,
against unbelief and superstition…[and therefore] ‘On to God!’”
Paul A.
M. Dirac,
who complemented Heisenberg and Schrödinger with a third formulation of quantum
theory, observed that “God is a mathematician of a very high order and He used
advanced mathematics in constructing the universe.”
.
And—although
not a modern scientist, we can mention Charles
Darwin—when looking at the universe as a whole:
“[Reason tells me of the] extreme
difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful
universe, including man with his capability of looking far
backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity.
When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an
intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to
be called a Theist.” [Charles Darwin,
The Autobiography of Charles Darwin
1809-1882, ed. Nora Barlow (London: Collins, 1958), 92-92]
[Above
quotes from Flew, Antony; Varghese, Roy Abraham. There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind
, HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.]
I am not
here trying to connect this with ‘God’ at this point, but it is suggestive to
see how others brighter than I and closer to the REAL detail are interpreting
what they see and experience.
(back to
the Index)
…………………………………………………………………………….