Science

xchrom

(108,903 posts) Thu Jan 19, 2012, 03:59 PM Jan 2012

What Happened Before the Big Bang? The New Philosophy of Cosmology

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/01/what-happened-before-the-big-bang-the-new-philosophy-of-cosmology/251608/

Last May, Stephen Hawking gave a talk at Google's Zeitgeist Conference in which he declared philosophy to be dead. In his book The Grand Design, Hawking went even further. "How can we understand the world in which we find ourselves? How does the universe behave? What is the nature of reality? Where did all this come from? Traditionally these were questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead," Hawking wrote. "Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics."

In December, a group of professors from America's top philosophy departments, including Columbia, Yale, and NYU, set out to establish the philosophy of cosmology as a new field of study within the philosophy of physics. The group aims to bring a philosophical approach to the basic questions at the heart of physics, including those concerning the nature, age and fate of the universe. This past week, a second group of scholars from Oxford and Cambridge announced their intention to launch a similar project in the United Kingdom.

One of the founding members of the American group, Tim Maudlin, was recently hired by New York University, the top ranked philosophy department in the English-speaking world. Maudlin is a philosopher of physics whose interests range from the foundations of physics, to topics more firmly within the domain of philosophy, like metaphysics and logic.

Yesterday I spoke with Maudlin by phone about cosmology, multiple universes, the nature of time, the odds of extraterrestrial life, and why Stephen Hawking is wrong about philosophy.

5 replies

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What Happened Before the Big Bang? The New Philosophy of Cosmology (Original Post) xchrom Jan 2012 OP

I strongly disagree with Steven Hawking. Glassunion Jan 2012 #1

I agree with what Maudlin says about there being too much we don't know. Jim__ Jan 2012 #2

I think this is one case where more philosophers are definitely needed caraher Jan 2012 #3

Too many philosophers nowadays are too busy spewing postmodern attacks on science. Odin2005 Jan 2012 #4

Sure caraher Jan 2012 #5

Glassunion

(10,201 posts)

1. I strongly disagree with Steven Hawking.

Reply to xchrom (Original post)

Thu Jan 19, 2012, 05:09 PM

Jan 2012

That says a lot coming from an exceptionally uneducated loser from NJ.

If one cannot argue for the beauty of the perfection and imperfection in the physics of the universe, what's the point?

Sometimes really intelligent folks can be rather dumb at times.

Speaking of dumb, I'm off to get drunk and try my hand at extreme downhill roller skating.

Jim__

(14,077 posts)

2. I agree with what Maudlin says about there being too much we don't know.

Reply to xchrom (Original post)

Thu Jan 19, 2012, 05:16 PM

Jan 2012

... The question remains as to how often, after life evolves, you'll have intelligent life capable of making technology. What people haven't seemed to notice is that on earth, of all the billions of species that have evolved, only one has developed intelligence to the level of producing technology. Which means that kind of intelligence is really not very useful. It's not actually, in the general case, of much evolutionary value. We tend to think, because we love to think of ourselves, human beings, as the top of the evolutionary ladder, that the intelligence we have, that makes us human beings, is the thing that all of evolution is striving toward. But what we know is that that's not true. Obviously it doesn't matter that much if you're a beetle, that you be really smart. If it were, evolution would have produced much more intelligent beetles. We have no empirical data to suggest that there's a high probability that evolution on another planet would lead to technological intelligence. There is just too much we don't know.

It is at least possible that there can be only 1 most intelligent species within a biosphere, and that that species will maintain a minimal intelligence gap between it and the next most intelligent species.

caraher

(6,278 posts)

3. I think this is one case where more philosophers are definitely needed

Reply to xchrom (Original post)

Thu Jan 19, 2012, 10:45 PM

Jan 2012

A lot of the pronouncements coming from big-name theoretical physicists about multiverses and how physics should be done seem philosophically naive. They seem to mistake fashions in their efforts to understand the way the world works for deep conclusions about the nature of everything. At the same time, some of their ideas definitely have important implications for epistemology.

Odin2005

(53,521 posts)

4. Too many philosophers nowadays are too busy spewing postmodern attacks on science.

Reply to caraher (Reply #3)

Fri Jan 20, 2012, 12:52 AM

Jan 2012

Karl Popper's dictum that all good philosophy is ultimately rooted in reasoning out the implications of empirical knowledge has been forgotten in preference for linguistic navel-gazing and PoMo word salad.

caraher

(6,278 posts)

5. Sure

Reply to Odin2005 (Reply #4)

Fri Jan 20, 2012, 01:46 AM

Jan 2012

Those who want to do something other than follow a fad, however, could use something meaty like this.

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