In the July/August issue of Analog [sorry, I don’t have a link], physicist Carl Frederick writes,
In the early 1990s, a creeping realization swept [or did a sweeping realization creep? – sorry, couldn’t resist] through the theoretical physics community that the probability for the universe to even exist was vanishingly small. Indeed, the only “theory” around that seemed able to explain the universe’s existence was Intelligent Design. This was not something physicists and cosmologists liked to talk about.
The improbability of the universe is a seeming corollary of the Standard Model of particle physics, which –
has about twenty-five free parameters (constants) specifying the masses of the particles and coupling constants, i.e. the strengths of the forces between them. These twenty-five or so constants are (as best we know) independent of each other; the value of one of the constants doesn’t depend on the values of the others. These constants, for example, determine the likelihood of atoms, the stability of atomic orbits and nuclei. From the values, one can determine, among other things, the amount of hydrogen available after the Big Bang to form stars, the masses and lifetimes of those stars, the ability of galaxies to form, and even the size of the universe.
Many of these constants seem “tuned.” If their numerical values were different by a very small amount, we wouldn’t exist. . . .
The theoretical physicist and cosmologist, Lee Smolin, looking at the individual tunings of the constants, has estimated that the probability of a universe that can support life to be at best one chance in 10229.
If the natural order is highly unlikely to exist “on its own”, an obvious hypothesis is that it is the product of a rational, super-natural order. Calling that creator “God” is rushing ahead, and identifying it with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is a headlong plunge. Nonetheless, the hypothesis is at least consistent with theism and radically incompatible with the belief that reason is a mere by-product of an irrational universe.
There are, however, alternatives. Dr. Frederick, borrowing from Dr. Smolin, offers this array of possibilities:
1) God tuned the parameters for our benefit. This isn’t [Smolin’s] preferred answer (or mine either).
2) There is a very large number of universes, in each of which the parameters are chosen randomly. The number of universes is so large that some of the universes would have the “right” values of the parameters—and we are in one of those universes. . . .
3) There is a “unique mathematically consistent theory of the whole universe.” . . .
4) The parameters evolve in time—in the Darwinian sense. This is Smolin’s belief.
Let’s look at these in reverse order:
The parameters evolve in time—in the Darwinian sense.
Not being familiar with Dr. Smolin’s work (and I probably wouldn’t be able to understand it if I were), I’ll pass over this idea quickly. The concept, I take it, is that the basic cosmic parameters are not fixed. As time goes by, they “mutate”. Thus, from a starting point where stable atomic orbits were impossible, a process analogous to organic evolution brought about our present universe of matter and chemistry and life.
How natural selection can occur on a cosmic scale is, I’ll confess, a mystery to me. Can the universe become more fit for its niche than it already is? I presume that the proponents of this view have something coherent in mind. Dr. Frederick, while calling it “appealing”, states, “the idea hasn’t, in my opinion, risen to the point of being a theory.” Until it becomes one, let us put it on the shelf.
There is a “unique mathematically consistent theory of the whole universe.”
In other words, the 25 or so parameters of the Standard Model cannot have any values other than those we observe. If that is so, the fact that the universe is a place where life and intelligence are possible implies a designer no more than does the fact that the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter equals that extraordinary number 3.14159265....
This theory is the view of the “common sense” scientist. As Dr. Frederick says, “it is in the tradition of physics to look along these lines”. All that is lacking is the “unique mathematically consistent theory” or, at least, a proof that such a theory must exist. At the moment, its proponents have more a hope than an hypothesis.
There is a very large number of universes, in each of which the parameters are chosen randomly.
This solution, Dr. Frederick’s favorite, he calls the “megaverse”. It resembles the refutation of an old, second rate theistic argument: God must have made the Earth, because it is improbably placed at just the right distance from the Sun, with just the right mixture of elements, to support life. The counterargument is that there are trillions of planets. Even if the probability of an Earth is minuscule, one was bound to turn up in that profusion. Similarly, if a vast number of universes spring into existence, it is no great miracle that ours is one of them.
Of the theories under discussion, the megaverse is on its face the best alternative to the super-natural. Is there any way to choose between them?
Accompanying Dr. Frederick’s article is a novelette, “The Exoanthropic Principle”, that imagines how evidence might be found: A scientific team succeeds in communcating, “using focused, coherent gravitons”, with an alien civilization that turns out to dwell in a space with four physical dimensions. From this, the characters (and the author) conclude that a “landscape” of universes exists.
The conclusion doesn’t really follow. It is like finding both a watch and an oboe on the beach and inferring that neither could have a maker. In any event, we haven’t yet heard from four-dimensional interlocutors – or observed anything else that might serve as evidence of the megaverse.
So far as I can see, in our present state of knowledge, to deny that the universe is a rational creation requires just as much of a leap of faith as to believe it. In either case, the manner in which existence began is beyond the grasp of our logical faculties. We don’t comprehend super-nature, but at this level we don’t comprehend nature either. We have no ability to envision, or to say much that makes sense about, either a rationality that transcends time and space or a nonrational process that brought time and space into being.
The difference is that the theistic supposition is simpler. We know that rational beings exist and create things. We have never observed anything, much less a multitude of anythings operating by different natural laws, arise out of nothing. This may be, it is true, one of those instances where Ockham’s Razor slices the wrong way, but, given the utter absence of data, shouldn’t the scientifically minded make use of it and not relegate the hypothesis it favors to the dustbin of ideas we don’t like to talk about?