We're Nothing Special, I Told You!

[turoldus]

"A black hole at the heart of the Milky Way confirms we're nothing special – and that's a central tenet of modern science"

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/13/astronomy-black-hole-space

[unkleE]

Interesting article, but it contains a "small" illogical jump. It claims that "The Copernican principle says that we are not the centre and focus and purpose of creation"

But how does science tell us anything about the purpose of creation? It can tell us the mechanics, but I don't know of any observation or experiment to measure purpose. A statement that there is a purpose, or is not a purpose, for our existence, has to come from somewhere else, metaphysics or the like.

Some people may try to dress it up to look like science, but that is surely nonsense. The proposition is something like: "Because our world and galaxy are physically similar to others, and was created in a similar manner, we can have no purpose." But how does that follow, how would one ever establish that?

Christians have never believed that God cares for us because we are physically significant - even the Psalmist almost 3 millennia ago marvelled "what is humanity that you are mindful of us?"

I don't imagine any christians are sleeping fitfully tonight because of that argument!

[bjorn]

The fascinating thing is that this fallacious argument never (or extremely rarely) seems to be challenged in scientific circles.

It speaks volumes about the shallow logic and philosophical reasoning being used when most scientists and popular science touches world view and value interests.

[humphreyclarke]

Well there are 3 important points here.

1) This is a pretty sensible application of the Copernican principle. If we look out onto the universe and we see that most other galaxies have a supermassive black hole at their centre, then things should be the same for our galaxy. Sure enough that is exactly what we observe. Our galaxy is the same as any other.

2) It is becoming clear that supermassive black holes have an indispensable role in the creation and sustaining of galaxies. A recent article noted that:

'The scientists observed and simulated how the black hole at the center of elliptical galaxy M84 dependably sends bubbles of hot plasma into space, heating up interstellar space. This heat is believed to slow both the formation of new stars and the growth of the black hole itself, helping the galaxy remain stable. Interstellar gases only coalesce into new stars when the gas is cool enough....The heating is more efficient at the sites where it is most needed, the scientists say. Alexis Finoguenov, of UMBC and the Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany, compares the central black hole to a heart muscle...Just like our hearts periodically pump our circulatory systems to keep us alive, black holes give galaxies a vital warm component. They are a careful creation of nature, allowing a galaxy to maintain a fragile equilibrium,'

A while ago black holes were supposed to be pointless and demonstrative of the bleak futility of the cosmos. Now it appears that this doctrine is rubbish. A life bearing universe needs to have a substantial amount of black holes to organise matter into galaxies and this will no doubt require some sort of fine tuning. Also see

www.astrobio.net/news/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2310&theme=Printer

archives.starbulletin.com/2008/09/16/news/story09.html

3) If we did not have a supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy, we would probably not have come into existence as they appear to be critically important. If being 'special' involves being dead, as the article suggests, I'll take being not special please.