Old theories about the universe are now giving way to new theories about the multiverse. In a December 2011 Harper's Magazine article, Alan Lightman, a physicist at MIT, ruminates on why these new multiverse theories are an indication that physics is now stepping outside the boundaries of science and into the realm of faith. The history of science can be viewed as the recasting of phenomena that were once thought to be accidents as phenomena that can be understood in terms of fundamental causes and principles. One can add to the list of the fully explained: the hue of the sky, the orbits of planets, the angle of the wake of a boat moving through a lake, the six-sided patterns of snowflakes, the weight of a flying bustard, the temperature of boiling water, the size of raindrops, the circular shape of the sun. All these phenomena and many more, once thought to have been fixed at the beginning of time or to be the result of random events thereafter, have been explained as necessary consequences of the fundamental laws of nature—laws discovered by human beings.
This long and appealing trend may be coming to an end. Dramatic developments in cosmological findings and thought have led some of the world’s premier physicists to propose that our universe is only one of an enormous number of universes with wildly varying properties, and that some of the most basic features of our particular universe are indeed mere accidents—a random throw of the cosmic dice. In which case, there is no hope of ever explaining our universe’s features in terms of fundamental causes and principles.
It is perhaps impossible to say how far apart the different universes may be, or whether they exist simultaneously in time. Some may have stars and galaxies like ours. Some may not. Some may be finite in size. Some may be infinite. Physicists call the totality of universes the “multiverse.” Alan Guth, a pioneer in cosmological thought, says that “the multiple-universe idea severely limits our hopes to understand the world from fundamental principles.” And the philosophical ethos of science is torn from its roots.
Or as Meillassoux says, it's the "necessity of contingency"
ReplyDeleteHis problem seems to be more with the idea of randomness than scientific integrity, but I don't know why it's problematic. Random phenomena happen all the time -- at least, random in the sense that they can't be explained from a causal perspective without resorting to philosophy.
ReplyDeleteOne night in Minneapolis, I grappled with the idea of repeating decimals. It conflicted with that same need for order and finality that the writer seems to crave here.
Every hypothesis is a faith-based statement -- that's just his straw man, but I have a hard time with his sensational idea that one complex hypothesis 'tears the roots from the philosophical ethos of science.'
If there is any world being torn apart, I suspect it is only his own existential view, and perhaps that's a good thing.