In following up the links in this post at Peter Woit's blog - most of which I don't understand any more than I understand proto-ugric - there was this book review, which contained many interesting ideas. One of which was this:
In one of my favourite passages of Time Reborn, Smolin sits in a cafe and dreams up a truly outre idea (that fundamental particles follow a principle of precedent rather than timeless laws) and then sees where the idea takes him. In creative minds, such conjecture injects vitality into science. The basic problem – that the institutional, professional and social structures of science can inflate such dreams into entire faddish disciplines before asking if nature agrees with them – is one that Baggott doesn't quite get to.
"Precedent rather than timeless law," reminds me nothing so much as an idea that the widely despised and derided scientist, Rupert Sheldrake, proposed three decades ago, only instead of "precedent" he used the word "habit". The book he raised that idea in, A New Science of Life, was condemned by no less a personage in the scientific establishment than John Maddox, the editor of Nature Magazine who advocated that the book be burned. Ever since, Sheldrake and his work have been on the atheist-materialist Index Prohibitorum.
And the Sheldrakian heresy held by Smolin it doesn't end there. He is also reported to think:
This view is a logical and metaphysical dead end, says Smolin. Even if there was a theory of everything (which looks unlikely), we'd be left asking: "Why this theory?" Or equivalently, why this universe, and not one of the infinite others that seem possible? Most of all, why one in which life can exist? A favourite trick of cosmologists is to invite the question by arguing that it only gets asked in universes where life is possible – the so-called anthropic principle. Smolin will have none of that. He argues that because life-supporting universes are generally also ones in which black holes can form, and because black holes can spawn new universes, a form of cosmic natural selection can make a succession of universes evolve towards ones like ours.
In this scenario, not only is time real, but the laws of physics must themselves change over time. So there's constant novelty and no future until it becomes the present. The possible price you pay is that then space, not time, becomes illusory. That might seem an empty bargain, but Smolin asserts that not only could it solve many problems in fundamental physics and cosmology, but that it is also more amenable to testing than current "timeless" theories.
"But the laws of physics must themselves change over time" Or rather
THE LAWS OF PHYSICS MUST THEMSELVES CHANGE OVER TIME !!!
Readers of this blog will remember the posts about Jerry Coyne, Sean Carroll and PZ Myers issuing a fatwa and calling their hoards of sci-ranger-avengers against Sheldrake over his far, far less extensive heresy of merely noting that the reported values of the speed of light and the gravitational constant has shown variation over time and that it is possibly an indication that those weren't constant. As I pointed out, the same month that the fatwa was issued, papers saying that the speed of light might well not be constant were announced as forthcoming. By that time TED had caved to the pressure of them and their anonymous "scientific advisory board," removing Sheldrake's talk and issuing a dishonest act of contrition for having violated the materialist orthodox ban on anything they deem unacceptable. Only I suspect we won't see them go after Smolin because he's not on the list of banned persons as Sheldrake is.
Consider the last part of that first excerpt above, " In creative minds, such conjecture injects vitality into science," Which was what Sheldrake said his primary motive for writing the book that got the latest fatwa against him issued by the high priesthood of scientistic materialism. I strongly suspect that the past century or more, or at least the post-WWII period, will be seen as an age in which the establishment of science became increasingly damaged by a materialistic orthodoxy of which the three . mentioned in the last paragraph function as clergy.
So, how come these guys don't pay any price for their intellectual suppression, their double standards, their hypocrisy, their misrepresentations? Apparently being an atheist means never having to answer for those kinds of things. Just to repeat that last sentence in the last paragraph.
No comments:
Post a Comment