"The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible."
~ Albert Einstein
Dr. Davies and his op-ed stirred up quite a firestorm as expected. Dennis Overbye, NY Times science writer, contacted Dr. Davies to get his comment on the disturbance caused by Davies' op-ed.
Reached by e-mail, Dr. Davies acknowledged that his mailbox was “overflowing with vitriol,” but said he had been misunderstood. What he had wanted to challenge, he said, was not the existence of laws, but the conventional thinking about their source.
There is in fact a kind of chicken-and-egg problem with the universe and its laws. Which “came” first — the laws or the universe?
If the laws of physics are to have any sticking power at all, to be real laws, one could argue, they have to be good anywhere and at any time, including the Big Bang, the putative Creation. Which gives them a kind of transcendent status outside of space and time.
On the other hand, many thinkers — all the way back to Augustine — suspect that space and time, being attributes of this existence, came into being along with the universe — in the Big Bang, in modern vernacular. So why not the laws themselves?
Dr. Davies complains that the traditional view of transcendent laws is just 17th-century monotheism without God. “Then God got killed off and the laws just free-floated in a conceptual vacuum but retained their theological properties,” he said in his e-mail message.
Despite the vitriol, Davies is still right. The idea of transcedent laws is a theological one. Transcendence, immutability, eternality ... all which are currently ascribed to the laws of physics ... are theological concepts. Dr. Davies is quite correct in pointing that out. Substitute "God" for the "laws of physics" and you end up in the same place ... no real difference.
Overbye writes,
But the idea of rationality in the cosmos has long existed without monotheism. As far back as the fifth century B.C. the Greek mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras and his followers proclaimed that nature was numbers. Plato envisioned a higher realm of ideal forms, of perfect chairs, circles or galaxies, of which the phenomena of the sensible world were just flawed reflections. Plato set a transcendent tone that has been popular, especially with mathematicians and theoretical physicists, ever since.
Plato's little 'g' god is quite safe to scientists. You have the properties of god without the moral rules. Still, the idea of an independent transcendent reality does not sit well with some scientific materialists. They turn to quantum uncertainty for hope.
Dr. Wheeler has suggested that the laws of nature could emerge “higgledy-piggledy” from primordial chaos, perhaps as a result of quantum uncertainty. It’s a notion known as “it from bit.” Following that logic, some physicists have suggested we should be looking not so much for the ultimate law as for the ultimate program.
Two problems with this, of course. One, it is irrational. Appealing to "higgledy-piggledy" might as well be appealing to flying spaghetti monsters. Two, appealing to an "ultimate program" merely begs the question ... who wrote the program? Programs cannot create themselves, after all. Again, irrationality.
I like Overbye's bridge analogy...
When I was young and still had all my brain cells I was a bridge fan, and one hand I once read about in the newspaper bridge column has stuck with me as a good metaphor for the plight of the scientist, or of the citizen cosmologist. The winning bidder had overbid his hand. When the dummy cards were laid, he realized that his only chance of making his contract was if his opponents’ cards were distributed just so.
He could have played defensively, to minimize his losses. Instead he played as if the cards were where they had to be. And he won.
As a bridge player myself, this analogy is quite useful. It also supports Dr. Davies point once again.
The scientist is the bridge player who has overbid his hand. The dummy's hand is face up on the table. Time to play the hand. The declarer must have faith that the cards are distributed just so or he will be set. He steps out in faith and begins to play his hand. Guess what! The cards are distributed just right and the declarer makes his contract. Pure joy!
Here is where Overbye misses the point that Dr. Davies is trying to make.
For the bridge analogy to truly work, we have to deal not only with the existence of the laws, but with the precision of the laws. The odds of the laws being something other than what they are is ginormous. To make the analogy work, we are not talking about one bridge hand. We are talking about one hand after another being dealt. Each time, the declarer over bids. Each time, the declarer makes his contract. Two times in a row. Ten times in a row. One hundred times in a row. One thousand times in a row. Ten thousand times in a row.
After the cards have broken just right 10,000 times in row, the rational bridge player begins to doubt that pure chance is at play any more. He begins to wonder, maybe the hands are rigged. The rational person would begin to suspect that something other than chance is required to explain why he keeps getting "lucky" breaks each time.
This is the current state of physics. Your world view can only tolerate so much luck before it starts to look very lame. And once you eliminate luck, you come face to face with the reality of God. No wonder the hate email is filling Dr. Davies' inbox.
Did you catch it last night?