Making little discoveries is the lot for most of us. We can’t all be Darwins, Newtons, or Einsteins. And King Tut’s tomb has already been found; thank you, Howard Carter. No, for most of us, small discoveries about Nature and humanity tend to punctuate our lives, usually coming upon us unexpectedly and most often as tiny insights. Our individual finds might not affect any other lives except through our own applications of them—so, maybe indirectly, we can change the lives of others with our discoveries. Anyway, one small discovery occurred when a colleague and friend tossed a little book my way, saying he found it on a bookstore sale table and thought I might enjoy the read. I thanked him for buying me a copy of Universes by John Leslie, a Canadian philosopher at the U. of Guelph (it’s in Ontario, if you want to know).*
Little discoveries. How about little facts? Leslie, in recounting various justifications for accepting an anthropic principle on the origin of the universe, lays out some bits of information about the strengths of the four fundamental forces that you—like me—can find thought-provoking. For example, Leslie writes, “Gravity…needs fine tuning for stars and planets to form, and for stars to burn stably over billions of years. It is roughly 10^39 times weaker than electromagnetism. Had it been only 10^33 times weaker, stars would be a billion times less massive and would burn a million times faster” (5). I won’t burden you with all the other bits of information like that save for this, “If the neutron-proton mass difference—about one part in a thousand—had not been almost exactly twice the electron’s mass then all neutrons would have decayed into protons or else all protons would have changed irreversibly into neutrons. Either way, there would not be the couple of hundred stable types of atom on which chemistry and biology are based.”
There it is. Tiny changes in the relative strengths of fundamental forces and sizes in elementary particles would make the universe as you know it incapable of existing. Although nuclear and quantum physicists are probably well aware of the delicate balances that underlie the cosmos, for most of us, the information can be a personal discovery. And to the above I can add Leslie’s note that just a one percent strengthening of electromagnetism might have doubled the years needed for intelligent life to form by making chemical reactions more difficult. That anthropic principle of a universe fine-tuned for life can’t be dismissed out of hand for the reason elucidated in Leslie’s relatively famous parable: That if a man stood before a firing squad of fifty marksmen, escaping being shot would be either a matter of intention or a matter of extreme luck—the possibility of everyone’s missing the target being rare. Are you here because of intention or luck? Is the universe itself in existence because of intention or luck?
If you ask any atheist, you will probably get the answer “luck” or "deterministic luck." Any believer will respond, “intention.” Experience (the experiment of life) and knowledge (acquired through others’ efforts) suggest that the chance of those marksmen mentioned by Leslie all missing the target isn’t just slim, it’s extremely slim, on the order of extreme improbability. The point is, getting a universe perfectly fine-tuned for life is like those marksmen missing the target if luck is in control. Of course, those on the side of “luck” could just as easily argue that if there is an infinite possibility for universes, then this is the one with consciousness that recognizes itself. We are, as components of the universe, the thinking part, the cosmos conscious of itself and simply because we are conscious, we impose "intention."
Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow also make a point about the delicate balance of forces when they write, “The one thing that is certain is that if the value of the cosmological constant were much larger than it is, our universe would have blown itself apart before galaxies could form and…life as we know it would be impossible…our universe and its laws appear to have a design that both is tailor-made to support us and, if we are to exist, leaves little room for alteration. That is not easily explained, and raises the natural question of why it is that way” (102).** Hawking and Mlodinow go on to explain that the “origin of the universe was a quantum event” (131). Then, using Feynman’s “sum over histories,” they write, “In this view, the universe appeared spontaneously, starting off in every possible way” (136). As a result, “We are the product of quantum fluctuations in the very early universe” (139). Luck?
Maybe just because of my background, I favor “intention” over “luck.” I’m unconvinced by Hawking and Mlodinow that since the vacuum of space breeds virtual particles that come into and go out of existence, that the vacuum is, in itself, “nothing” that produces something. If the vacuum is part of the universe, it isn’t necessarily a “creator” of what is. And as for those virtual particles that “fill” the void and arrive from and go back to “nowhere,” I would ask how they form the energy and matter of that which exists on a more permanent basis. Are virtual particles real particles? But, let’s say we know without question that the “vacuum” produces something (everything?), we still don’t know why. In this matter we merely describe.
Now, I know from Feynman’s description of QED, that photons seem to act with intention. As teleological as that sounds, there’s very little way to explain how they do what they do when they encounter glass. As Feynman explains, firing photons at glass results in a certain percentage being reflected while others pass through. The percentage changes with increasing layers of glass, and then returns to the original percentage. How do the photons know when to increase in number passing through or being reflected? It can’t be luck. It can’t be chance; the pattern repeats itself regardless of the numbers of glass layers. We know a great deal about how the universe works. We can even describe its workings or model them. But we don’t know why they do what they do. Yet, strangely, the forces and particles of the universe all seem to have consistently followed a set of rules or laws seemingly preset at the outset. Random? Intentional?
And all of this brings me to two considerations, one general and the other specific: 1) Am I (are you) the product of intention or luck? 2) What ever-so-slight intentional or fortuitous variation would have shaped my (your) life differently?***
Think in parts per some unit or in percentages. Had you done something differently by, say, 10%, would your life have been appreciably different? Had some choice been different in one part per hundred, what might have been the consequence? Ever-so-slight changes can produce very large consequences. Look back on your life to see, in Robert Frost’s words, “the road not taken” or, the corollary: The roads taken.
*Leslie, John. 1989. Universes. London. Routledge.
**Hawking, Stephen and Leonard Mlodinow. 2010. The Grand Design. New York. Bantam Books.
***Let’s say you are in a relationship. Any relationship involves sundry other relationships. Had the first meeting between you and your significant other not occurred in a world of more than seven billion, what would that non-event have meant for your ensuing lifestyle? And you and I could go on with what-ifs, seeing in them either consciousness (intention) or mere randomness. Is it true that randomness plays a key role in our lives? Of course. Which two haploid gametes fused? Did they fuse because from its beginning (or from before its beginning) the universe operated in a manner that your existence was inevitable? If you are an atheist, you will probably argue that you are, in fact, a product of randomness. If you are a believer, you will argue intention and possibly the anthropic principle.
But is there a compromise? Could you see some validity in an argument that has intention forming a universe of indefinite (if not infinite) possibilities, one of which is you? No doubt deists would side with that argument, their “watchmaker God” having made the watch and then wound it to run as it must according to the interactions of mechanisms put in place at the outset. Definitely, even two centuries after the Deists, such determinism appealed to the likes of Einstein and Hawking. But it isn’t just an argument made by the scientific community. It’s a variation of this kind of argument that enabled Pope Pius XII to declare the Church has no argument with either physical or biological evolution. It is, in fact, an old argument dating to the fourth century, one made by St. Augustine of Hippo: God created the cosmos of infinite possibility and allowed it to unfold according to its inherent rules. Arguing from the perspective of Neoplatonism, Augustine would say that God created the possibility of forms to exist, making the continuous evolving of forms the nature of life as well as the nature of Nature.
Little discoveries. How about little facts? Leslie, in recounting various justifications for accepting an anthropic principle on the origin of the universe, lays out some bits of information about the strengths of the four fundamental forces that you—like me—can find thought-provoking. For example, Leslie writes, “Gravity…needs fine tuning for stars and planets to form, and for stars to burn stably over billions of years. It is roughly 10^39 times weaker than electromagnetism. Had it been only 10^33 times weaker, stars would be a billion times less massive and would burn a million times faster” (5). I won’t burden you with all the other bits of information like that save for this, “If the neutron-proton mass difference—about one part in a thousand—had not been almost exactly twice the electron’s mass then all neutrons would have decayed into protons or else all protons would have changed irreversibly into neutrons. Either way, there would not be the couple of hundred stable types of atom on which chemistry and biology are based.”
There it is. Tiny changes in the relative strengths of fundamental forces and sizes in elementary particles would make the universe as you know it incapable of existing. Although nuclear and quantum physicists are probably well aware of the delicate balances that underlie the cosmos, for most of us, the information can be a personal discovery. And to the above I can add Leslie’s note that just a one percent strengthening of electromagnetism might have doubled the years needed for intelligent life to form by making chemical reactions more difficult. That anthropic principle of a universe fine-tuned for life can’t be dismissed out of hand for the reason elucidated in Leslie’s relatively famous parable: That if a man stood before a firing squad of fifty marksmen, escaping being shot would be either a matter of intention or a matter of extreme luck—the possibility of everyone’s missing the target being rare. Are you here because of intention or luck? Is the universe itself in existence because of intention or luck?
If you ask any atheist, you will probably get the answer “luck” or "deterministic luck." Any believer will respond, “intention.” Experience (the experiment of life) and knowledge (acquired through others’ efforts) suggest that the chance of those marksmen mentioned by Leslie all missing the target isn’t just slim, it’s extremely slim, on the order of extreme improbability. The point is, getting a universe perfectly fine-tuned for life is like those marksmen missing the target if luck is in control. Of course, those on the side of “luck” could just as easily argue that if there is an infinite possibility for universes, then this is the one with consciousness that recognizes itself. We are, as components of the universe, the thinking part, the cosmos conscious of itself and simply because we are conscious, we impose "intention."
Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow also make a point about the delicate balance of forces when they write, “The one thing that is certain is that if the value of the cosmological constant were much larger than it is, our universe would have blown itself apart before galaxies could form and…life as we know it would be impossible…our universe and its laws appear to have a design that both is tailor-made to support us and, if we are to exist, leaves little room for alteration. That is not easily explained, and raises the natural question of why it is that way” (102).** Hawking and Mlodinow go on to explain that the “origin of the universe was a quantum event” (131). Then, using Feynman’s “sum over histories,” they write, “In this view, the universe appeared spontaneously, starting off in every possible way” (136). As a result, “We are the product of quantum fluctuations in the very early universe” (139). Luck?
Maybe just because of my background, I favor “intention” over “luck.” I’m unconvinced by Hawking and Mlodinow that since the vacuum of space breeds virtual particles that come into and go out of existence, that the vacuum is, in itself, “nothing” that produces something. If the vacuum is part of the universe, it isn’t necessarily a “creator” of what is. And as for those virtual particles that “fill” the void and arrive from and go back to “nowhere,” I would ask how they form the energy and matter of that which exists on a more permanent basis. Are virtual particles real particles? But, let’s say we know without question that the “vacuum” produces something (everything?), we still don’t know why. In this matter we merely describe.
Now, I know from Feynman’s description of QED, that photons seem to act with intention. As teleological as that sounds, there’s very little way to explain how they do what they do when they encounter glass. As Feynman explains, firing photons at glass results in a certain percentage being reflected while others pass through. The percentage changes with increasing layers of glass, and then returns to the original percentage. How do the photons know when to increase in number passing through or being reflected? It can’t be luck. It can’t be chance; the pattern repeats itself regardless of the numbers of glass layers. We know a great deal about how the universe works. We can even describe its workings or model them. But we don’t know why they do what they do. Yet, strangely, the forces and particles of the universe all seem to have consistently followed a set of rules or laws seemingly preset at the outset. Random? Intentional?
And all of this brings me to two considerations, one general and the other specific: 1) Am I (are you) the product of intention or luck? 2) What ever-so-slight intentional or fortuitous variation would have shaped my (your) life differently?***
Think in parts per some unit or in percentages. Had you done something differently by, say, 10%, would your life have been appreciably different? Had some choice been different in one part per hundred, what might have been the consequence? Ever-so-slight changes can produce very large consequences. Look back on your life to see, in Robert Frost’s words, “the road not taken” or, the corollary: The roads taken.
*Leslie, John. 1989. Universes. London. Routledge.
**Hawking, Stephen and Leonard Mlodinow. 2010. The Grand Design. New York. Bantam Books.
***Let’s say you are in a relationship. Any relationship involves sundry other relationships. Had the first meeting between you and your significant other not occurred in a world of more than seven billion, what would that non-event have meant for your ensuing lifestyle? And you and I could go on with what-ifs, seeing in them either consciousness (intention) or mere randomness. Is it true that randomness plays a key role in our lives? Of course. Which two haploid gametes fused? Did they fuse because from its beginning (or from before its beginning) the universe operated in a manner that your existence was inevitable? If you are an atheist, you will probably argue that you are, in fact, a product of randomness. If you are a believer, you will argue intention and possibly the anthropic principle.
But is there a compromise? Could you see some validity in an argument that has intention forming a universe of indefinite (if not infinite) possibilities, one of which is you? No doubt deists would side with that argument, their “watchmaker God” having made the watch and then wound it to run as it must according to the interactions of mechanisms put in place at the outset. Definitely, even two centuries after the Deists, such determinism appealed to the likes of Einstein and Hawking. But it isn’t just an argument made by the scientific community. It’s a variation of this kind of argument that enabled Pope Pius XII to declare the Church has no argument with either physical or biological evolution. It is, in fact, an old argument dating to the fourth century, one made by St. Augustine of Hippo: God created the cosmos of infinite possibility and allowed it to unfold according to its inherent rules. Arguing from the perspective of Neoplatonism, Augustine would say that God created the possibility of forms to exist, making the continuous evolving of forms the nature of life as well as the nature of Nature.
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