IT IS WITHIN THE REALM of absolute certainty that I will not read Brian Greene's latest popular science book, Until The End of Time because I got enough of him in his previous work as a popularizer of the decadent phase of modern physics, one of the more public apostles of string theory. While I'm sure Peter Woit wouldn't like much of what I say, I agree, in so far as I have any understanding of the issues with what he said about Greene's religion last August
String theory is not a new, promising idea that needs time to develop. It has been around for about forty years, has been intensively pursued by thousands of physicists for about thirty years now. The end-result of all this work has just been a better understanding that the huge problems with the idea of string theory unification seem to be fatal. If you make the most optimistic assumptions about string theory unification schemes doing what they are supposed to, you end up with the “landscape”, a theory which can’t predict anything at all.
The basic problem with string theory unification research is not that progress has been slow over the past 30 years, but that it has been negative, with everything learned showing more clearly why the idea doesn’t work. The problem with progress in string theory as a function of time is not the size of the derivative, but its sign.
Though from what I also saw when I searched Woit's blog, I think maybe Greene is walking back from string theory a bit, he has been among its most influential popularizers. I saw a little of his NOVA PBS series on it and it struck me as quite decadent even then. I haven't much watched NOVA since.
The review of his latest book by Richard G. Malloy doesn't, though, require extensive knowledge of mathematics or the latest in physics to understand what's wrong with at least some of what Greene says because, as Malloy points out, him just saying is a demonstration that he doesn't really believe what he's claiming.
In his latest book, Until the End of Time, his argument goes too far or not far enough. His view presents the kind of paradox you expect in a quantum universe that exhibits spooky relationships between particles, where "what is" isn't "what it is" until someone observes or judges "that it is" (think Schrödinger's cat).
Greene argues that much of what is generally outside the domain of physics, aspects of reality like thought, language, art, ourselves and the holy grail, consciousness, are nothing but particles set in motion at the Big Bang some 13.7 billion years ago.
Greene insists all that is — all that exists — consists only of particles and fields. Nothing but "Particles and fields … . To the depths of reality that we have so far plumbed, there is no evidence for anything else."
Really? Nothing but particles? Plumb deeper, farther.
Greene's reduction of all reality to particles means there is no free will. Yet, Greene's ruminations uncover a chink in the reductionist armor. He asks why the particles that make up a big rock remain inert as a tree limb falls, threatening to land on someone, while the particles that are "you" or "me" will rush over and pull that someone out of danger. Note, we wouldn't worry about the rock getting smashed.
Greene argues that such salvific action is not free will or choice. The particles of the rock, "you" and "I" are all subject to the same inevitable and unchanging laws of physics. It is just that "you" or "I" have a more "sophisticated internal organization [that] allows for a rich spectrum of behavioral responses" not available to the rock. Curiously, Greene argues, "This notion of freedom does not require free will." He admits this use of the term "free" is a bit of a "linguistic bait and switch.
His admittance is more than that. It is more than particles of synapses firing in his fertile and impressive brain. It is an argument. And a person making an argument must be free, or it is no argument.
A belief in the mystery we call God, awareness and trust that there is a reality beyond physical reality, grounds assertions of free will and argues for purpose and ultimate meaning to our existence and the universe.
But we are more than the particles that physicists can measure. Reality is more than what our knowledge of physical reality reveals. Our knowledge itself, our consciousness, the laws of physics, math — all transcend physical particles and fields.
Ironically, Greene loses the argument that the act of argument is unfree, and in the long run, meaningless. He loses by making an argument.
It's nearly a universal trait among materialists that they insist on carving out exceptions in their mechanistic univers for what they value, science, mathematics, the findings of scientists (really those should be considered assertions, not findings to be consistent with their materialistic faith) and, of course, the professional product and status of the scientists and materialists (some of them work in other fields such as philosophy, the writing of fiction and the lower end of entertainment) . But if you're going to be consistent you can't allow them to try to have it both ways because their materialism is a hermetically closed system, it cannot allow ANYTHING to escape it and for anything to have any significance at all it would have to escape.
If everything we assert is a mere arrangement of particles that was set at the time of the Big Bang then there can be no significance to anything any scientist says and them taking pay for what they do is not only a fraud but a demonstration that, in so far as their interests lie, that they don't really buy it for themselves. If their being paid and considered to own what they earn by their work is merely an arrangement of particles in time and space then so is the person who cheats or steals or makes laws against the unionization of faculty members and it is 100% as justified (or unjustified) as them insisting that they have a right to collective bargaining and what they get from it.
It never fails to impress me at how hypocritical the materialist double-step is because everything about their ideology destroys what is to their liking and is in their perceived interest as surely as it destroys the idea of the God articulated by Moses and the Prophets and Jesus, though it certainly doesn't need to destroy other descriptions of God, or, rather gods. They could be there fiddling around with things, they could even have set the Big Bang in motion with all of the particles going where they will by their design and physics would be as powerless to disprove their role in it as it is, in fact, powerless to disprove the role of God in it.
I think modern physics, which, as can be seen from the state of decadence it seems to be in these days, has enough problems without trying to answer questions it is not equipped to consider. I think Brian Greene should spend a little time justifying him being paid or his rights to the product of his labor according to the same rules with which he wants to rob the minds of all of us of any significance, any but the most remote of all possible chances of arriving at even one truth within our lifetimes. How are we supposed to escape the random chance of that happening? How can he have claimed to?
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