總網頁瀏覽量

2011年3月3日 星期四

Implications of a Multiverse I

The problems of whether or not there is a creator of the universe and if so, how his existence or non-existence may be connected with the meaning of our lives have always been debated in the West since the Renaissance. Cosmology is thus never merely cosmology and biology never merely biology. Those institutions which feel that their power, influence or authority may be affected, like the monotheistic religions which are committed to a particular view of how the universe and man came about have thus always fought with tooth and nail against the advances of science once they perceive any threat from that direction. We are all familiar with how Copernicus and Galileo in the 17th and Darwin in 19th and 20th centuries were viewed and treated by some "Christians". This tug of war between science and monotheistic religions has taken on new twists with the discovery of the Newtonian laws of motion in the 17th and Einstein's theory of relativity and the laws of quantum mechanics and now the theory of multiverse in the 20th centuries. This impression is particularly strong last night when I read the last chapter of a book  called Parallel Worlds (05) by the best-selling popular science writer Michio Kaku, entitled "Beyond the Multiverse".


Kaku begins with three quotations: Cardinal Baronius: "The Bible teaches us how to go to heaven, not how the heaven go."; William James: "Why there is something rather than nothing? The unrest which keeps the never-stopping clock of metaphysics going is the thought that the non-existence of the world is just as possible as its existence." and Einstein: "The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed." Kaku keeps on adding more thought provoking quotes from some of those famous scientists and philosophers throughout the ages who have pondered on the existence of the universe and concludes with his personal observation. He provides an excellent run down of all kinds of views on this complex, perflexing and fascinating question. It is so full of jewels of wisdom that I don't think I cannot do better than by recording his quotes and those by Kaku himself. So let them speak for themselves:


Charles Darwin confessed in his autobiography to "the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity for looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity" and said that "My theology is simply a muddle."


Thomas H Huxley, Darwin's "bull-dog" : The question of all questions for humanity, the problem which lies behind all others and is more interesting than any of them, is that of the determination of man's place in the Nature and his relation to the Cosmos. (1863)


Issaac Newton in the Philosophia Naturalis Principia Mathematica ( The Principles of Mathematics in Natural Philosophy): "The most beautiful system of the sun, planes, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being."


Albert Einsten: "I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this phenomenon or that. I want to know God's thoughts. The rest are details...Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind." 


Kaku says that Nicholas Copernicus wrote his De Revolutionibus Orbius Celestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Orbs) on his deathbed in 1543 so as to evade the reaches of the Inquisition but that Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in the streets of Rome in 1600 for holding that there were an infinite number of planets in the heavens, harboring an infinite number of living beings, writing that "Thus is the excellence of God magnified and the greatness of his kingdom made manifest; he is glorified not in one, but in countless suns; not in a single earth, a single world, but in a thousand thousand, I say in an infinity of worlds." They suffered their fates, Kaku says, "not that they dared divine the laws of heavens; their true sin was that they dethroned humanity from its exalted place at the centre of the universe....It would take over 350 years, until 1992, for the Vatican to issue a belated apology to Galileo. No apology was ever issued to Bruno."


In the days of Galileo, "the universe was seen as a dark, forbidding place. Earth was like a small, flat stage, full of corruption and sin, enclosed by a mysterious, celestial sphere where omens like comets would terrify kings and peasants alike. And if we were deficient in our praise of God and church, we would face the wrath of the theatre critics, the self-righteous members of the Inquisition and their hideous instrument of persuasion. Newton and Einstein freed us from the superstitious and mysticism of the past. Newton gave us precise mechanical laws that guided all celestial bodies, including our own...Einstein revolutionized how we view the stage of life. Not only was it impossible to define a uniform measure of time and space, the stage itself was curved. Not only was the stage replaced by a stretched rubber sheet, it was expanding as well. The quantum revolution gave us an even more bizarre picture of the world...the downfall of determinism meant that the puppets were allowed to cut their strings and read their own lines. Free will was restored, but at the price of having multiple and uncertain outcomes. This meant that the actors could be in two places at the same time and could disappear and reappear. It became impossible to tell for certain where an actor was on stage or what time it was. Now the concept of the multiverse has given us another paradigm shift, where the word "universe" itself could become obsolete. With the multiverse, there are parallel stages, one above the other, with trapdoors and hidden tunnels connecting them. Stages, in fact, give rise to other stages, in a never-ending process of genesis. On each stage, new laws of physics emerge. Or perhaps only a handful of these stages are the conditions of life and consciousness met. Today, we are actors living in act 1, at the beginning of the exploration of the cosmic wonders of this stage. In act 2, if we don't destroy our planet through warfare or pollution, we may be able to leave Earth and explore the stars and other heavenly bodies. But we are now becoming aware that there is the final scene, act 3, when the play ends, and all the actors perish. In act 3, the stage becomes so cold that life becomes impossible. The only possible salvation is to leave the stage entirely via a trapdoor and start over again with a new play and a new stage."  This is the best short summary of the development of our cosmologies throughout the ages that I have found so far!


(To be cont'd)


4 則留言:

  1. Good evening, my dear old friend!  I'm not sure about th existence of multiple universe. However, multiple universe do exist in science fiction. If multiple personality do exist in human beings, then it's possible for multiple universe to exist (in theory). "Multiply by infinite number, affection...    By scientific terms, multiverse do exist,      Infinite explorations and experiments ,       Number them from zero to infinity,         Affection could be infinite..." 










    [版主回覆03/03/2011 23:56:00]Multiple universe is a consequence of the combined operation of the principles of string theory and quantum theory. If we accept its premises, then it is capable of mathematically accomodating many of the values of the data collected by physicists everywhere. It is however totally unrelated to the psychiatric condition of multiple personality or dissociation.

    回覆刪除
  2. Dear friend, Star Trek storries are supreme, I remember one that tells how spirits are given back bodily form, but not fresh and bone, in a totally scientific method!
    [版主回覆03/10/2012 10:23:32]It's the eternal fear of man that he will be replaced by machine and rendered totally irrelevant. The only thing that he can boast is that he's got something which machines don't yet have: what he thinks of as his emotions.
    [pinkpanther501101回覆03/10/2012 09:16:22]They are in the form of holograms given "skins". The spirits don't like them and try to tear the "skins" away! The English used are very concise and very "advancedly scientific".

    回覆刪除
  3. Dear friend,
    I am reading Star Trek series' Deep Space Nine--WARPED and find it a superb science fiction. Although some part of it, like a person can melt into a wall and hide himself, are so weird and unscientific that you might find it absurd. But with your scientic knowledge as I found in your blog, you must enjoy the book. Although a fiction it is based on scientic theories already known, like worm hole, hallucinations in psychiatry etc. You are a rational man and don't believe in the supernatural, but this book blurs the line between these two worlds. The English is very good and technological and is a pleasure to read. I strongly recommend it to you if you haven't read it!

    回覆刪除
  4. Dear friend,
    I am reading Star Trek series' Deep Space Nine--WARPED and find it a superb science fiction. Although some part of it, like a person can melt into a wall and hide himself, are so weird and unscientific that you might find it absurd. But with your scientic knowledge as I found in your blog, you must enjoy the book. Although a fiction it is based on scientic theories already known. You are a rational man and don't believe in the supernatural, but this book blurs the line between these two worlds. The English is very good and technological and is a pleasure to read. I strongly recommend it to you if you haven't read it before!
    [版主回覆04/03/2012 14:13:46]You're probably right. The problem with science fiction, for me, is that you never know which part of what the author is saying is "science" and which "fiction" or if we are kind, "not yet science". If I were less burdened with a backlog of books still to be read, I would probably make a start of reading science fiction. But for the moment, I don't think that I am yet in that fortunate situation where I can spend hours pouring over the intricacies of various imaginative and probably very exciting scenarios using the known principles of science unless I myself wish to start writing some science fiction myself. As it is, I'm already drowned by various commitments on my limited time. But do not on that account let my own priorities deter you from enjoying the engrossing adventures in Deep Space Nine--WARPED. Happy reading.

    回覆刪除