The Five Ages of the Universe: Inside the Physics of Eternity
by
by
It Ain’t Over Til It’s Over... And Not Even Then
There’s nothing like a little speculative cosmology to provide distraction from Covid, climate change, and Trump. In the end we’re all toast.
Well not quite, the future of the universe is apparently in the hands of brown dwarf stars. These little buggers will persist indefinitely, perhaps eternally, pumping out the energy of a 40 watt lightbulb long after everything else in the universe has returned to cosmic uniformity. And given that life survives in the most hostile places, perhaps some nasty virus is destined to triumph, even over the cockroaches.
So the eschaton will be delayed indefinitely. This news will not be welcomed by Adventists and others who look forward gleefully to the annihilation of creation. But if the apocalypse doesn’t conform to their expectations, they might find religious solace in the scientific account of the first milliseconds of creation. The story here is even less credible than that contained in the book Genesis.
According to recent scientific thinking (more precisely, as of 20 years ago), the Big Bang occurred in what might be described as an entirely non-evolutionary way. At least the process by which a dense dot of immense energy became a universe billions of light years wide in more or less a millionth of a second is somewhat vague. The hand-waving involved in explaining this preposterous claim doesn’t hold up well against the simple directness of ‘Fiat Lux.’
There are also other oddities which might provoke a rush to the exit from scientific theory. It turns out that even the basic terms have questionable meaning:
So there are things that can never be known - a comfort perhaps to those who think that this justifies their knowledge of what can’t be known. These enthusiasts can point out scientific faith in the existence of such things as dark matter to rationalise their own prejudices. Of course the difference between theirs and the scientific narrative is that very few people have been burned at the stake for the latter. So although the secular story doesn’t have a demonstrably superior beginning or conclusion, it is certainly less harmful.
I think the real reason for the preferability of science to religious thought, demonstrated in cosmological discussion, is their relative stances toward language. Science treats language - even its own technical language - as an essential but disposable commodity. Individual scientists may believe their own press and become fixated on the terms in which their theories are expressed, but the scientific community as a whole periodically purges itself of concepts, vocabularies, and explanations. Gravity, for example, or empty space really have no fixed meaning. At the start and finish of the universe, time has no meaning whatsoever. The terms are like pieces in a puzzle for which the rules of placement are entirely unknown. Their relationships with each other twist and morph constantly.
Compare that with the practice and intention of most religious thinking: to fix the language of religion as ‘truth.’ Religion inevitably becomes doctrinal to the extent that it relies on language to express that which is beyond language. If such religious language is taken as more than poetic reference to that ‘beyond,’ it is both disrespectful of reality and false. And nowhere is this clearer than in cosmology. The fight against language within language is one that has to be waged but will always result in defeat. Perhaps the real virtue of scientific thought is the courage to face that inevitable defeat.
Back to Covid, climate change, and Trump...
Postscript 12/11/2020: indeed it will never be over: https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswi...
There’s nothing like a little speculative cosmology to provide distraction from Covid, climate change, and Trump. In the end we’re all toast.
Well not quite, the future of the universe is apparently in the hands of brown dwarf stars. These little buggers will persist indefinitely, perhaps eternally, pumping out the energy of a 40 watt lightbulb long after everything else in the universe has returned to cosmic uniformity. And given that life survives in the most hostile places, perhaps some nasty virus is destined to triumph, even over the cockroaches.
So the eschaton will be delayed indefinitely. This news will not be welcomed by Adventists and others who look forward gleefully to the annihilation of creation. But if the apocalypse doesn’t conform to their expectations, they might find religious solace in the scientific account of the first milliseconds of creation. The story here is even less credible than that contained in the book Genesis.
According to recent scientific thinking (more precisely, as of 20 years ago), the Big Bang occurred in what might be described as an entirely non-evolutionary way. At least the process by which a dense dot of immense energy became a universe billions of light years wide in more or less a millionth of a second is somewhat vague. The hand-waving involved in explaining this preposterous claim doesn’t hold up well against the simple directness of ‘Fiat Lux.’
There are also other oddities which might provoke a rush to the exit from scientific theory. It turns out that even the basic terms have questionable meaning:
“[T]he existence of a causal horizon leads to some ambiguity regarding what the term “universe” actually means. The term sometimes refers to only the material that is within the horizon at a given time. In the future, however, the horizon will grow and hence will eventually encompass material that is currently outside our horizon. Is this “new” material part of the universe at the current time? The answer can be yes or no, depending on how you define “the universe.” Similarly, there can be other regions of space-time that will never lie within our horizon. For the sake of definiteness, we consider such regions of space-time to belong to “other universes.”
So there are things that can never be known - a comfort perhaps to those who think that this justifies their knowledge of what can’t be known. These enthusiasts can point out scientific faith in the existence of such things as dark matter to rationalise their own prejudices. Of course the difference between theirs and the scientific narrative is that very few people have been burned at the stake for the latter. So although the secular story doesn’t have a demonstrably superior beginning or conclusion, it is certainly less harmful.
I think the real reason for the preferability of science to religious thought, demonstrated in cosmological discussion, is their relative stances toward language. Science treats language - even its own technical language - as an essential but disposable commodity. Individual scientists may believe their own press and become fixated on the terms in which their theories are expressed, but the scientific community as a whole periodically purges itself of concepts, vocabularies, and explanations. Gravity, for example, or empty space really have no fixed meaning. At the start and finish of the universe, time has no meaning whatsoever. The terms are like pieces in a puzzle for which the rules of placement are entirely unknown. Their relationships with each other twist and morph constantly.
Compare that with the practice and intention of most religious thinking: to fix the language of religion as ‘truth.’ Religion inevitably becomes doctrinal to the extent that it relies on language to express that which is beyond language. If such religious language is taken as more than poetic reference to that ‘beyond,’ it is both disrespectful of reality and false. And nowhere is this clearer than in cosmology. The fight against language within language is one that has to be waged but will always result in defeat. Perhaps the real virtue of scientific thought is the courage to face that inevitable defeat.
Back to Covid, climate change, and Trump...
Postscript 12/11/2020: indeed it will never be over: https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswi...
posted by The Mind of BlackOxford @ August 29, 2020
0 Comments
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home