Post by humphreyclarke on Jul 22, 2009 9:37:07 GMT
Here is an interesting article from Leonard Susskind from Physics World. Essentially it's an attempt to cheerlead for the String Theory Anthropic landscape by invoking Darwin and the science-religion 'conflict'.
physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/39672
Susskind starts with a bit of 'conflict thesis-ing'
(Well not quite, perhaps pushed back is more appropriate than 'ejected'. Before the publication of the Origin there had been much speculation amongst Christian intellectuals concerning some kind of progressive law that God might have implanted in nature. In Darwin's 1876 autobiography he recalled that at the time of writing the On the Origin of Species the conclusion was strong in his mind of the existence of God due to "the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity 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". He also wrote "I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance. Not that this notion at all satisfies me". But it satisfied a lot of his religious contemporaries)
Again there is a failure here to distinguish between what Medieval natural philosophers would have called primary (final) causation and secondary causation (natural causes accessible to human reason), and also the erroneous idea that the two are in conflict. Susskind continues:
Enter String Theory
Physical infinity as a substitute for God.
...by invoking a gigantic non-observable universe in which anything that can exist does exist (including presumably, God)
Peter Woit isn't impressed!
www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/
For me Darwin's great legacy is to provide the link between the world of biology and the world of physicals laws which govern the universe. The contemporary challenge is to dissect how the two interact to produce the complexity we see around us today. As far as final causation goes, it seems a straightforward choice between an ultimate purpose and infinite nonsensical randomness.
physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/39672
Susskind starts with a bit of 'conflict thesis-ing'
In successfully explaining the origin of species, he eliminated superstition and set a new standard for what an explanation of nature should be like. As I wrote in my book The Black Hole War (Little Brown, 2008), Darwin’s masterstroke was to have “ejected God from the science of life”.
(Well not quite, perhaps pushed back is more appropriate than 'ejected'. Before the publication of the Origin there had been much speculation amongst Christian intellectuals concerning some kind of progressive law that God might have implanted in nature. In Darwin's 1876 autobiography he recalled that at the time of writing the On the Origin of Species the conclusion was strong in his mind of the existence of God due to "the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity 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". He also wrote "I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance. Not that this notion at all satisfies me". But it satisfied a lot of his religious contemporaries)
In other words, before Darwin, even the greatest physicists had little alternative to a supernatural explanation of the origin of life, and therefore of nature itself. It was the success of Darwinism that forced the issue and set the standard for future theories of origins, whether it be it of life or of the universe.Explanations must be based on the laws of physics, mathematics and probability — and not on the hand of God.
Again there is a failure here to distinguish between what Medieval natural philosophers would have called primary (final) causation and secondary causation (natural causes accessible to human reason), and also the erroneous idea that the two are in conflict. Susskind continues:
How and why Darwin came to reject Paley’s compelling argument is well known, but what is less noted is that physics and cosmology pose very similar questions, such as why the universe seems so incredibly fine-tuned for the existence of life. The only explanation, if we can call it an explanation, is that if it were less fine-tuned, intelligent observers like ourselves would have been impossible. I am, of course, referring to the cosmological constant, L. Theoretically, one would expect L to be unity in natural Planck units. But if it were anything bigger now than it is known to be — 10–123 — it would have prevented the evolution of galaxies, stars and us. Like Paley, we encounter what appears to be an extremely unlikely occurrence.........as Paley might have complained, accidents involving 123 decimal places are too unlikely.
Enter String Theory
The emerging paradigm for explaining the special properties of our universe is, in a sense, an attempt to live up to the standard set by Darwinian evolution: to provide a natural (as opposed to supernatural) non-accidental explanation for the apparently very unlikely specialness of the universe and its laws. Surprisingly, it involves the same two central principles: an enormous landscape of possibilities and random mutation. It even involves a mechanism similar to DNA.
Physical infinity as a substitute for God.
Just as the details of DNA determine the biological details of a living organism, so the details of the fluxes, branes and other elements determine the properties of the universe. Again, the numbers are so staggering that even if the world as we know it seems extremely unlikely, there will be many ways of arranging the elements to make the constants of nature consistent with life. In particular, there will be many configurations in which the cosmological constant will be fine-tuned to 123 decimal places......Whether string theory with its huge landscape, and eternal inflation with its reproducing pockets of space, will prove to be correct is for the future to decide. What is true is that as of the present time, they provide the only natural explanation of the universe that lives up to the standard set by Darwin.
...by invoking a gigantic non-observable universe in which anything that can exist does exist (including presumably, God)
Peter Woit isn't impressed!
www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/
Lenny Susskind gives new depth and meaning to the word “chutzpah” with an article in Physics World on Darwin’s Legacy. It seems that Darwin’s legacy for physics is the field of string theory anthropic landscape pseudo-science. Luckily, I don’t think creationists normally read Physics World.
For me Darwin's great legacy is to provide the link between the world of biology and the world of physicals laws which govern the universe. The contemporary challenge is to dissect how the two interact to produce the complexity we see around us today. As far as final causation goes, it seems a straightforward choice between an ultimate purpose and infinite nonsensical randomness.
