“I
do not believe that any scientist who examined the evidence would
fail to draw the inference that the laws of nuclear physics have been
deliberately designed with regard to the consequences they produce
inside the stars. A commonsense interpretation of the facts suggests
that a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with
chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth
speaking about in nature.”
astrophysicist
Fred Hoyle
Hoyle was has been wrong on several things; I guess it's no surprise that his philosophical stance on what natural laws are is also wrong...
ReplyDeleteReally? He hasn't been spot on every single time? Whew! Now you can ignore everything he says that doesn't support your particular faith.
ReplyDeleteI know you exaggerated with your sarcastic comment, but is that even close to what I was suggesting?
ReplyDeleteNo.
The point is that he is someone who did exactly what you just wrote: ignore everything that doesn't support his particular faith.
Let me put it another way... His own 'commonsense interpretation of the facts' led him to reject the Big Bang model. Therefore, it is safe to conclude that this 'commonsense interpretation of the facts' is completely irrelevant when it comes to something like finding meaning within the natural laws.
Or, let's put yet another way:
The statement you quoted is a lie.
there are an awful lot of people who've recognised the anthropic principle, Hugo. A person has to work very, very hard to ignore fine tuning.
ReplyDeleteYes, good choice of word: anthropic principle.
ReplyDeleteWe, humans, are pattern seeking machines. It helps us in everything we do in life. In light of evolution it makes perfect sense: animals that recognize patterns better survive better.
But it does not stop there, we are also "too good" at spotting pattern, which means that we generate a lot of false positives. This also makes sense in light of evolution: it's better to have false positive and escape imaginary predators rather than being eaten due to skepticism that this noise, or this weird shape in the dark, must be something else.
Who has never seen a face on the moon? What do we see when we look at clouds? Who has never noticed a face they thought was familiar? What do we see when we look at letters arranged in such a way that they look like a certain word?
Same thing for fine tuning. It is quite easy to see all these numbers and conclude: OMG, someone put these numbers there!
Stopping to think about it from a rational ground does not yield the same conclusion. Take pre-Newton's time for example, it was possible to compute gravity at that time. They were able to get that 9.81m/s^2 value, right?
So, did they know why it was that value? Not yet. It was thus fairly normal for people at the time to say: OMG, someone must have put this exact value in place!
Think about it, if the value is different, lots of things go wrong. Ask astronauts in space, can they stay there for too long? No, and they have to do exercices, a lot, and they still lose muscular mass.
So the gravity we are used to has to be just like that, otherwise we could not be who we are.
But was this value fine tuned? Of course not, because it's only like that here on Earth. Life evolved as part of this system so is fit for this particular system.
Why would the entire universe be different?
We are the ones who are good at describing it with precise numbers. There is no good reason to think that it was made like that on purpose.