My discussion relies on the following sources:
Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam, 1988).
Stephen Hawking, Black Holes and Baby Universes, and Other Essays (New York: Bantam, 1993), p. 127.
Supplemental Sources:
Roy Bashkar, Plato Etc., The Problems of Philosophy and Their Resolution (London & New York: Verso, 1994).
John Boslough, Stephen Hawking's Universe (New York: Avon Books, 1989).
Peter Coles, Hawking and the Mind of God (New York: Totem, 2000).
Tim Folger, "The Return of the Invisible Man," in Discover, July/August, 2009, at p. 42.
Brian Greene, The Fabric of the Cosmos (London: Penguin, 2007).
Ian Hacking, The Social Construction of What? (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991).
Michio Kaku, Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind (Oxford: Oxford University press, 1989).
Roy E. Peacock, A Brief History of Eternity: A Considered Response to Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time (Suffolk: Monarch, 1989).
Stephen Hawking is a fascinating thinker, whose popular writing about science manages to make it clear, to admirers and students alike, just how exciting physics and science can be. Like Carl Sagan, who contributed the introduction to Professor Hawking's book (in the first edition that I own), Hawking loves to share his enthusiasms. Professor Hawking is child-like in his capacity for wonder and delight in discovery, so is Brian Greene (a fellow New York subway "strap-hanger"), whose boyish enthusiasm and humor remind me of Richard Feynman and Stephen Jay Gould.
These men -- there are women who are equally fascinating in their scientific enthusiasms and just as impressive in their learning (Lisa Randall) -- make science as attractive as philosophy, or any other intellectual discipline, by reminding us that science tells us about the universe that we inhabit and about ourselves. We are a species driven to understand all that exists, but also wondering "why there is something rather than nothing." It is the questions that drive those of us obsessed with knowing both how and why things are "real" as opposed to mere appearances:
"Philosophy and theology are for wounded souls. Indeed those of us who take up the study of any of the humanities, of language and literature, history and art, philosophy and theology, or any of the natural sciences, have been pierced to the heart by something precious, beautiful, deep, and enigmatic that leaves us reeling. We know that the doctors are not telling us everything, that the wound will not heal, that we are not going to recover. We have suffered a blow that has destroyed our equilibrium; we have been shaken by a provocation, by something that has left us breathless, pursued by questions that we cannot still."
John D. Caputo, Philosophy and Theology (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2006), p. 71. ("A Review of the Television Series 'Alice.'")
I cannot resist a recommendation for a book which I have not yet read (something I avoid, usually) by a philosopher and novelist, several of whose previous books I have read and enjoyed. Get yourself a copy of Rebecca Goldstein's recent work dealing with Godel's famous "incompleteness" theorem. If anyone can explain that stuff to me, then it must be Rebecca Goldstein. Thus far, few "errors" have been inserted in this essay, after it was reposted. The images accompanying this work at Critique are highly instructive. Unfortunately, all images are blocked by New Jersey's government hackers.
Thanks to Ms. Goldstein, who is probably a professor somewhere by now, I have been fascinated by the "mind/body" problem for decades. However, I won't hold that against her. Among the things that you may learn from writers, "like" Ms. Goldstein, is that real science -- and there are many false sciences -- is also a kind of humanism. I have just discovered Donna Haraway's work. I am enjoying Professor Haraway's "Cyborg Manifesto." I am told that my views are "like" the typical Latino person's non-philosophical mumbo-jumbo by persons who then ask that I explain philosophical concepts to them. I will do my best to accomodate these critics.
My interest in science is based on the aesthetics of science, the way that ideas and evidence seem to fit together so (there is no other word for it) "beautifully." I studied geology in college, expecting a grim experience in fulfilling a science requirement, but it turned into a fascinating class. As a history student, accustomed to thinking in terms of thousands of years, I was fascinated to learn the story of the earth's ecological and geological history, spanning millions of years. The universe, I was told, is (as Carl Sagan would say) "billions" of years old. Imagine the candles on that birthday cake.
The grand Opera of the earth's natural history and organic evolution -- as Darwin understood so well -- includes a huge cast, with bizarre species and clashing forces on stage. Think of it as a colossal performance of Verdi's (not Sir Elton John's) Aida, with the universe (or God, if you prefer) as a sort of Franco Zefirelli-like director and conductor. Look out, here come the elephants!
I hope to write more in the future about books of science and scientific theory. On my science reading list is A People's History of Science. I wish to focus here on three issues in connection with Stephen Hawking's work that, I believe, are philosophically fascinating. There are other scientific issues that interest me just as much that I continue to study, but these three are highly relevant to many of the discussions in this blog.
I do not know whether I will be able to continue posting essays, given all of the computer viruses that I am struggling against, or for how long I will be able to do so. I will certainly continue to try to do so. As I type these words, my computer is under attack once again. I cannot regain access to my e-mail account where drafts of works in progress are stored. I cannot write today, as I would like to. I will write here (blogs) and spend the day trying to return to my work at MSN. I will focus on Peter Coles's commentary on Hawking's Brief History of Time, returning to the original text, as needed, to supplement my discussion. I am not a physicist and my interest in the discussion is philosophical. I certainly do not claim any expertise in science. Let's just play with these concepts.
What is the importance of theory in science?
Theory, especially in particle physics, is crucial to scientific progress. So if you are someone who is good at theoretical reasoning, at home with abstractions, and you have been told that science is not for you, you have been misinformed. If you are good at philosophy or legal theory, then you probably would make a good scientist. I wish that someone had said these things to me when I was younger, but it may be that some students who come across these words now will benefit from them and be led to pursue science studies. No wonder they want to prevent me from writing. These are highly dangerous suggestions.
"The tiny scales of length and time involved in quantum gravity demonstrate why this is a field for theorists rather than experimentalists. No device has yet been built capable of forcing particles into a region equivalent to the Planck length or less. Attempts to figure out what happens when quantum physics and gravity go together have to involve regions where gravity is so strong that its quantum nature reveals itself. It is at this interface that Stephen Hawking's work is situated." (Coles)
Hawking's physical limitations -- confinement to a wheelchair and inability to speak without the aid of a computer syntheziser -- have allowed him to achieve a freedom in his imagination that others find difficult. His mental travels are more exciting than the real journeys of most others. I can relate to that. "Intelligence is important in science," Einstein says, "but imagination is more important."
Much of the progress in physics in the twentieth century is the result of "thought experiments" which are not different in essence from Plato's allegory of the cave, Descartes' evil demon, Wittgenstein's little green man from mars. This includes Einstein's mythical elevator to the stars. (See Boslough's discussion above and Greene's chapter on Einstein's ideas.)
Many people are confined and limited as to where they can go -- sometimes by social barriers of race or poverty -- yet we are always mentally free. We are free to interpret the constraints under which we labor and struggle. Professor Hawking is not alone in his predicament or in the solution that he has found for it. No wheelchair will "determine" Professor Hawkins' options. (See "Tales of the Forest of Arden" and "Frank Kermode and the Man in the MacIntosh.")
What is it like in a black hole? Does time really run backwards if you fall into one, as Hawking once suggested? Maybe the same happens if you wander into New Jersey? Hawking has since changed his mind about this "backward-running" time theory. What is time? Is it paradoxical to attempt a "history" of time? Can entropy ever reverse direction becoming its opposite?
Here is an issue not explored by Hawking: Can we escape the time-sense of our species, as it inheres in the languages-- including mathematics -- in which we forge our minds and ourselves, in order to acquire an appreciation of time independently of human constructs? Or does such a notion become meaningless? In what sense is time "independent" of human constructs? Is there nothing outside the text in which our meanings are and must be? ("Jacques Derrida's Philosophy as Jazz" and "'Inception': A Movie Review.")
"Everyone is familiar with what time DOES, and how events tend to be ordered in sequences. We are used to describing events that invariably follow other events in terms of a chain of cause-and-effect. But we can't get much further than these simple ideas. In the end, the best statement of what time is, is that time is whatever it is that is measured by clocks." (Coles, Boslough)
Here is Hawking's summary:
"Hubble's observations suggested that there was a time, called the big bang, when the universe was infinitesimally small and infinitely dense. Under such conditions all of the laws of science, and therefore all ability to predict the future, [a future before time?] would break down. If there were events earlier [earlier?] than this time, then they could not affect what happens at the present time. Their existence can be ignored because it would have no observational consequences. One may say that time had a beginning [notice the paradox produced by language: time has a "beginning," but does the beginning have a beginning?] at the big bang, in the sense that earlier times simply would not be defined. [If there is a time "earlier" than the big bang, whether that time is "defined" or not, then does the big bang really constitute the beginning of time?] ... In an unchanging universe a beginning in time is something that has to be imposed by some being outside the universe; there is no physical necessity for a beginning. One can imagine [imagine?] that God created the universe at literally any time in the past. [In the past? Our past? Or His past? Is the past present to God, who transcends the limitations of time?] On the other hand, if the universe is expanding, there may be physical reasons why there had to be a beginning. One could still imagine that God created the universe at the instant of the big bang, or even afterwards [afterwards?] in just such a way as to make it look as though there had been a big bang, but it would be meaningless to suppose that it was created BEFORE [before?] the big bang. An expanding universe does not preclude a creator, but it does place limits on when [when?] he might have carried out his job!" (Hawking)
The concept of time is built into the language being used by Professor Hawking and (as a result) into his conceptual universe as well -- even as he seeks to escape it -- in order to rethink the notion of time, and in the process, to expand the English language and mathematics. This Kantian "rethinking" involves the use of imagination and a dream-like capacity to project the mind into bizarre settings -- black holes, big bangs, even into the "Mind of God."
"Hartle-Hawking function represents all the physically possible histories our universe might have. The universe we see [and know?] is just one possible outcome among many. It was an intriguing idea, but for years it remained just that."
Put on your safety belt:
"Hawking's most recent work explores the implications of the notion that the universe is a giant quantum phenomenon. The problem with conventional attempts to understand the cosmos, he now believes, is that researchers have failed to appreciate the full bizarre implications of quantum physics. These efforts to create a unique theory that would explain all the properties of the universe are therefore doomed to fail. Hawking refers to such attempts as 'bottom-up' theories because they assume that the universe had a unique beginning and that its subsequent history was the only possible one."
A hermeneutics of freedom? Get a load of this:
"Because the universe has many possible histories" -- narrative options? -- "and just as many possible beginnings, the present state of the universe selects the past. [emphasis added!] 'This means that the histories of the universe depend on what is being measured,' Hawking wrote in a recent paper, 'contrary to the idea that the universe has an objective [i.e., entirely external] observer-independent history." (Kant) (Also crucial is how we measure so-called external reality.)
Discover, July/August, 2009, at pp. 50-51, then see "Immanuel Kant and the Narrative of Freedom" and "John Searle and David Chalmers on Consciousness."
"How many ways can you play Shakespeare's Ophelia?" If you agree, as an actor, that Ophelia can be interpreted in many different ways, then you are compelled to accept that all other performances and even the meaning of the play may be altered by a significant (if subtle) reinterpretation of one of the key parts in Hamlet. This does not make any of the words in the play different. The objective reality of the play is still present. However, what it all "means" has been altered by a new "reading" of Ophelia. Trial lawyers and judges may wish to bear this point in mind. Spin that top.
This cosmological thinking is begging to be related to Roy Bashkar's work in the philosophy of science. I wish to compare Bashkar and Hawking in an essay focusing on the idea of dialectics and hermeneutics transferred to the quantum thinking set forth by Hawking. Depending on the fluctuations of my computer warfare, I may be able to write this work soon. Essential biological developments in Chile and elsewhere are often ignored by investigators looking into the quantum universe conjecture. This is unfortunate.
Einstein's revolution in twentieth century physics was the result of several creative thought experiments, as I have suggested, myths worthy of inclusion in Plato's Republic. To demonstrate the constancy of the speed of light and the relativity of all other motion, Einstein "used fictions involving trains and elevators ... " (Boslough, p. 26.) This is to adopt a version of idealism combined with rigorous empirical method that makes such thought experiments "fecund," as Germans say. ("Conversation On a Train.")
This magical territory of thought -- where wheelchairs and other constraints are left behind -- is a kind of "Forest of Arden," an enchanted grove of abstractions involved in an intricate dance to the music of the spheres. Wonderland? Professor Hawking and William Shakespeare have more in common than you may suppose.
Hawking is a kind of "Hamlet" of the physics world, pondering the beginning and end of time. Wouldn't Hawking be a great lecturer at Hogwarts Academy of Witchcraft and Wizardry? Perhaps this is exactly the sort of wizard that Hawking has become, an escape artist, unconstrained by wheelchairs and voice synthesizers, nor the boundaries of the cosmos. If nothing -- not even light -- can escape a black hole, then Professor Hawking may be the only mental visitor of such black holes to have "escaped" their darkness and returned to tell us about them.
If there was a big bang, then something must have exploded; if so, then this something must have existed before (before?) exploding, in order for it to explode. Hence, there must have been an instant before the big bang that made the big bang possible; but then, there must have been an instant before that to make that second instant possible, so that we find ourselves with a major "infinite regress" problem.
This "infinite regress" difficulty is one result of thinking in terms of linear time, something we cannot help doing in an Enlightenment culture shaped by Newtonian physics. This notion of linear regularity is built into our legal system, politics, maps, real estate divisions, army units, the way we are assigned seats in school and in a million other places in culture. (Michel Foucault, Ian Hacking) A crucial observation in the philosophy of science is Hacking's insight: "This discussion of [scientific] ideas and classifications takes for granted the obvious, namely that they only work in a matrix." (The Social Construction of What?, at p. 11 and "'The Matrix': A Movie Review.")
All thinking is networks-thinking. ("David Stove's Critique of Idealism" and "Donald Davidson's Anomalous Monism.") Ordered sequences and time slither into our thinking immediately, with the use of words combined into sentences, governed by such time-dependent factors as grammar and punctuation marks -- like the abrupt "dash" -- or the alarming exclamation point!
The most fascinating and startling results appear in intellectual work only when one reconsiders what everyone else thinks is obvious. To those whose mental world has crumbled and been rebuilt, nothing is obvious. Everything is precarious and tentative. Such persons -- survivors of devastating mental traumas or crises, like torture and rape -- are explorers visiting a strange planet. They are (necessarily) philosophers and scientists, often without realizing it. (See the film "Starman" and "David Hume's Philosophical Romance.")
I have been thinking of a children's story in which the characters are words and punctuation marks, a story that would seek to illustrate the concerns of Michel Foucault in The Order of Things. I am sure that the average eight year-old will get the "issues," even if most N.J. lawyers will not. ("Hansel and Gretl.")
Perhaps we will end up with a "super" big bang, giving rise to the big bang; but then we will need a "super-duper" big bang, in order to give rise to that super big bang, and so on ad infinitum. What if the universe does not abide by our notions of regularity and order? Perhaps the universe is a beatnik. What if the universe is "into" freedom? Is freedom a different and much more beautiful kind of order than we have so far imagined? Is it wise to seek to imprison the universe in our categories and pin it to a formula? Will it not be a better idea to allow the universe (or God) to reveal "herself" to us in her own good "time"? I am telling you that, gulp, both God and the universe are women. We're in trouble. ("Pieta.")
The conceptual universe of persons, like Professor Hawking, forced "into" themselves -- in order to go beyond themselves -- is enriched by talk of weak and strong nuclear forces, photons and gauge bosons, by the poetry of "particle pairs," and thought experiments involving the loss of a single particle in a "dialectic" to a black hole, so that the "forlorn particle" hovers at the edge of that black hole, awaiting "his" partner in a state of "desolation." I think that I know how that particle "feels." I will call "him" the "Tristan particle."
"Near a black hole, though, the pairs can get split up. One particle can fall into the black hole while the other feeds on the gravitational energy of the hole and flies away to safety. [Or hovers?] The transformation of gravitational energy into particles (think E = mc2) gradually causes the black hole to shrink. Eventually, at an inconceivably distant time in the future, the black hole will vanish entirely. [Expelliamus!] What is left behind is a problem that physicists still have not fully solved."
Discover, July/August, at p. 48.
Notice a difficulty not fully explored or (perhaps) recognized by this very good author: Is it possible for anything in the universe to fully or totally disappear? If not, then what exactly may happen to that black hole? Where does it go? Does the black hole go to Trenton, New Jersey, perhaps? If so, will there be any way to determine the difference in Trenton, New Jersey as compared with a black hole? I doubt it. Wormholes?
This is fascinating science, but it is also poetry and philosophy. It is science revealing a universe that is both a mirror and door. I suggest that Professor Hawking reconsider his essay on free will.
Is science the map or the territory?
Some physicists, Hawking among them, would regard the construction of a so-called "Theory of Everything" as being, in some sense, reading the "Mind of God." Or at least unravelling the inner secrets of physical reality. Others simply argue that a physical theory is just a DESCRIPTION of reality, rather like a map, a story among many stories.
A theory might be good for making predictions and understanding the outcomes of observation or experiment, but it is not more than that. Roy Bashkar is very helpful in pondering this "principle of selection" that seems to allow the universe to choose narrative options, moving from description to actuality, or instantiation:
"Take the set-theoretic paradoxes. These stem from treating totalities as aggregates. Insofar as a set is or represents a totality, it must be supplied with an emergent principle of structure. Conversely a member of a set must be supplied with a corresponding principle of differentiation. Unless this is done, the situation is ungrounded. A person is not an instance of herself. [A mere description.] She is herself."
"Explanation and the Laws of Nature," in Plato Etc., The Problems of Philosophy and Their Resolution (London & New York: Verso, 1994), p. 34. ("Donald Davidson's Anomalous Monism.")
I prefer to adopt a middle position on this issue by analogy to aesthetics and to American Constitutional theory. Think of science as both map and territory, except that the map is always unfinished or incomplete. Are you not both your name and yourself? ("Umberto Eco and the Semiotics of Power.")
Science is a painting that an artist -- for example, Leonardo da Vinci -- has never finished because he has eternity to make it perfect. Really, the painting is the work of many artists over generations. A detail is added here today, tomorrow another surfaces elsewhere, so that the image is always coming into sharper focus, clarifying before our eyes, astonishing viewers with its richness and beauty of detail. (See "Manifesto for the Unfinished American Revolution.")
Reality (the universe) is what sits for the portrait (which is human knowledge); humanity paints that portrait, which will turn out to be (to some degree) a self-portrait. No, that does not mean that "it is all relative." ("Metaphor is Mystery.")
The U.S. Constitution is not only the document under glass in Washington, D.C., but the tradition of interpretation which clarifies and sharpens a detail here, another there, over centuries. The American people, through the efforts of the best legal minds among them, are the painters of this glorious canvas, which will always be unfinished.
We are only beginning to understand how lovely the universe is. Perhaps the beauty and terror -- massive explosions of super novas and minuets of intricate interactions between celestial bodies -- merely "reflect" our own interactions with one another and with the enigma that we seek to decipher. It may be that, rather than knowing the "Mind of God," we will discover that we participate in that mind and in this glorious universal harmony that we may describe, simply, as "love." Instantiation. ("Is it rational to believe in God?")
A far less poetic way of expressing this insight says that the universe is a "program" running forever, through cycles, fitting into the mythology of Hinduism with its cycles of creation. Now rent the final installment in the Matrix trilogy. Any thoughts?
Is the ultimate "how" the same as "why"?
"If the Theory of Everything is discovered," it will explain "whether the universe has a meaning, and what our role is in it," as well as enable us "to know why the universe exists at all." [Leibnitz: "Why is there something rather than nothing?" Hawking] thinks it possible to replace religion and metaphysics with a mathematical theory that encodes all the laws of nature. But the philosophical questions to be asked about the universe will inevitably involve some that cannot be answered in the framework of mathematics." (Coles)
Nothing and no amount of knowledge (and this is a principle compatible with belief in God) will reveal the meaning of the universe. Meanings are the discoveries that are also constructions of free agents. There are as many meanings of life and the universe as there are free beings to think about "meaning," even if some very specific meanings seem quite compelling (love) to millions of us.
Freedom only requires that meanings be as protean as we are. We must "select." At the foundations of the universe is a quantum mystery called "freedom" that keeps us guessing. We must allow the universe and its meaning(s) to come to us in their own good "time."
At this point, Hawking has stumbled on to a contemporary variation of Descartes's dream. See also Terry Eagleton's script for the film, Wittgenstein. To know everything with the clarity and precision of mathematical truth may be a perennial human fantasy. Professor Hawking has recently expressed some second thoughts about this youthful ambition -- as did the older Wittgenstein about his youthful intellectual hubris -- since Hawking's published conversations with Roger Penrose (a Platonist-mathematician and friend), but perhaps, even more, as a result of his recent marriage and the experience of falling in love.
The mystery of this event, falling in love, and its puzzling irreducibility to a mathematical equation -- each woman is a kind of "singularity" and maybe also a super nova! -- has caused Professor Hawking to assume a more humble stance before the mysteries of the universe. This is wise. It is also profoundly philosophical. After all, God may not wish us to know "Her" mind just yet, since we still experience so many difficulties in understanding ourselves or in knowing our own minds.
Some philosophers believe that we have no minds, which leads me to wonder what they use to ask the question whether we have a mind in the first place. Anyway, that sounds like a good issue for another essay.
