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Ch. 8 - The Grand Design

Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2010 11:39 pm
by Chris OConnor
Ch. 8 - The Grand Design

Please use this thread to discuss Ch. 8 - The Grand Design.

Re: Ch. 8 - The Grand Design

Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2010 12:52 pm
by WONK
This is my typical critique of the standard science text for laypeople...

I don't understand why the generalization in the last few pages is used. Here they are talking about conservation of energy as being universal. With 90% of both the matter and energy in the universe being dark (because we can't make any real observations of them) and the multitude of evidence that many of our assumed unversal laws and constants are not completely valid through space and time this generalization is more than what is needed. What we know about the universe is what we can see and measure in the framework we currently exist in and that is enough without trying to go the extra step and place a universal conservation constraint based on incomplete and inconclusive data. It isn't that exceptions to this generalization are not already being discussed such as the work of Stuart Kauffman, which makes the need for this type of constraint unnecessary and too limiting.

All that I would like to see is a qualifier to the conservation statement that in our corner and time in the universe this is valid. For most laypeople they will read past the qualifier with no questions but for everyone who has looked deeper it will open a wider look. And this will make it easier for those who are trained, but not deeply into theory, to accept that there are many ideas less absolute than when you first learn about them.

Re: Ch. 8 - The Grand Design

Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2010 6:44 pm
by DWill
Wonk--I'm not reading this book; it's probably a bit beyond me aimed at the general reader though it might be. But I noticed your reference to Stuart Kauffman, whom I've come across and find interesting (while also difficult). I'd be glad to hear what you think of his work and any recommendations on his books or chapters therein.

Re: Ch. 8 - The Grand Design

Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2010 8:05 pm
by WONK
I've not read any of Kauffman's books but I study Complexity so I have read many many references to him and portions of his work that have appeared in other texts. Possibly the best way to get a feel for his work is to read Part 3 in Melanie Mitchell's book Complexity.

The key to his idea is that Real World events self-organize. This doesn't fit with the 3rd Law of Thermodynamics but the 3rd Law isn't valid outside of closed systems, which is not the universe. The idea here is that nothing in the real world is random but chaotic. That is because real world things only combine is specific ways. For example H2O is one of the few ways H and O can combine. You can't have H153O. The real world frequently appears random because the chaos is so close to pure randomness we can not tell the difference. This means that the universe has to self-organize and this changes everything. You could even create a law based on this. This fits in with the Grand Design in many ways because the end state or non-random events such as H2O are really the controllers of the chaos in the universe or the end or observation state controls the whole.

The Grand Design is not that hard of a book for a layperson to read. It just appears odd because it is taking the math of Quantum and changing it into everyday language. This gives it a feel of talking in parables and not science or like some Buddhist statements such as listening to one hand clapping. It is fun because it is so different.

Re: Ch. 8 - The Grand Design

Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2010 11:11 pm
by JulianTheApostate
WONK wrote:I don't understand why the generalization in the last few pages is used. Here they are talking about conservation of energy as being universal.
The guiding principle of physics is to explain the world in terms of a few universal laws. When some phenomenon seems to violate the laws, physicists strive to find an explanation consistent with those laws, instead of discarding them. Given how successful physics has been at understanding the world, it's a principle that's worth following.

Sometimes experimental data requires revisions to those laws. Even though the physics of Newton was successful for centuries, relativity and quantum mechanics were necessary to explain the world more accurately. Major paradigm shifts like those are extremely rare.

Hawking works at the boundaries of physics, the areas which don't have an solid explanation. You could spend your lifetime learning the material that physics completely understands, but books for the layman often emphasize the more speculative subjects.

Re: Ch. 8 - The Grand Design

Posted: Sat Nov 06, 2010 8:20 am
by tbarron
I recently finished The Grand Design and I'm currently reading Leonard Susskind's The Cosmic Landscape, in which he touches on the debate between quantum mechanics like Susskind and general relativists like Hawking over whether information is lost when matter falls into a black hole (Susskind also has a book specifically about this debate called The Black Hole War). Hawking's claim that information is indeed lost when matter falls into a black hole would violate QM's requirement for conservation of information. On the other hand, QM's conservation requirements would mean that as the black hole evaporated, the information that was lost into it would have to be recovered, which seems contradictory.

The point is not that these two groups of physicists clashed so much as that the two paradigms for understanding the very small (QM) and the very large (GR) were in conflict and physicists didn't see a way to reconcile them.

Both in The Grand Design and The Cosmic Landscape, Hawking and Susskind discuss how string theory / M theory offers a framework for understanding how something can seemingly come from nothing, why there is something rather than nothing. M theory makes the same predictions as QM in the micro world
and the same predictions as GR in the macro world. However, M theory requires 11 dimensions, some of which are invisible, and predicts an infinity of physics, each with a different set of fundamental numbers (gravitational constant, ratio of the strengths of gravity and electromagnetism, etc.).

The picture I get is of a vast network of universes, each with its own set of physical laws, determined by the fundamental numbers active in each universe. From the outside, one of these universes looks like a black hole. From the inside, it looks like the outer edge of the universe is accelerating away from the observer in all directions (which is what astronomers observe in the universe we inhabit).

This puts the Anthropic Principle in a new light. It's not that our universe is so perfect for us because it was designed so, but rather that we evolved in this particular universe because it happens to be the one out of all the randomly generated universes that was suitable for our evolution.

Of course, although Hawking claims to be describing *The* *Grand* Design, as if it is a Theory of Everything and answers all questions, I still have a few.

Where did the megaverse come from? Just because we have an answer to "Why does *this* univers exist?" (just because -- it happened by chance) doesn't answer why there something rather than nothing at one step up the ladder of universes.

If we object to supernatural explanations based on causes for which we have no evidence (God), why should we accept "scientific" explanations based on invisible causes like an infinite number of universes we can't visit and invisible dimensions? Perhaps that's where the logic of the math points, but maybe some day we'll discover somewhere along the line someone forgot to carry a 2 and none of it means anything. It's a commonplace that what "everyone knows" today may be shown to be completely wrong tomorrow.

I guess I'm just a hard shell skeptic. I don't see any way to ever be certain of anything. And the more I learn, the less certain things seem.

Re: Ch. 8 - The Grand Design

Posted: Sat Nov 06, 2010 6:18 pm
by WONK
<The guiding principle of physics is to explain the world in terms of a few universal laws. When some phenomenon seems to violate the laws, physicists strive to find an explanation consistent with those laws, instead of discarding them. Given how successful physics has been at understanding the world, it's a principle that's worth following. >

My point is that universal conservation of energy is an unnecessary gerneralization that is unproven and, at this time, possibly has been shown as being invalid over the whole history and breadth of the universe. So why not add the simple conditional phrase that would make the generalization valid? Kauffman's additional law would make this generalization even more unnecessary because it seems to be valid over more conditions and still produces the same results in our corner of the universe (i.e. it is possibly even more universal). Why paint yourself into a corner when there is no need to do so? One of the big problems with the history of science is that laypeople tend to ignor the way science adjusts when new information is added and considers a previous law being changed with a new one as proof that science is nearly always wrong. (The idea that Einstein proved Newton wrong about gravity so Einstein must be wrong as well...) It is such a simple matter to start with using a perfectly valid conditional phrase that accents the fact that science is at flux within itself at this time. It is forcing laypeople to acknowledge that only blind faith has absolutes and that science is not part of miraculous answer system but the laborer in the real world system.

Re: Ch. 8 - The Grand Design

Posted: Thu Nov 25, 2010 11:56 am
by WONK
Both the General theory and String come up with at least 11-dimensions. Since the 11-D General theory was developed in the 1950s this is a relatively old physics concept. There are just enough gaps in the real world that require more than 4-D to get the mathematics explaining them to work.

Consider this: You have a shadow moving on the 2-D ground. You use mathematics to explain how it moves and distorts during the day. The math becomes very complicated. Now instead of using the 2-D math you create a 4-D world where there is a stationary tree that doesn't change directions or size and project a shadow onto the ground as a light source (sun) moves. The math is much easier and you have rendered the 4-D world into a 3-D event (motion across a 2-D ground with time the third dimension). This is what is happening with the 11-D universe and our 4-D ability to see it. The math tells us that there is a projection from more dimensions into our 4-D shadow world. We are now in the realm of CSI. We get clues about the crime, or in this case the way the universe works. We then build up what has to happen for these events to occur. Blood on the ground means that someone was bleeding. Typing the blood tells us about the person or persons who bled. We have never and can not physically see the event but the clues tell us that it happened. We can not see the 11-D but the physical clues tell us that they are there.

M-Theory is not a theory in the mold that most people think of. It does little to explain a specific physical event. It is a framework that explains how the math describing something such as Quarks and the math explaining something such as a super nova relate to each other and how to pull the overlap between the two extremely different events together. It sets the parameters on how these different equations have to be framed so there can be a passing of information between the completely different events. M-theory is a theory that sets the conditions that all of the other, more specific, theories have to meet.

Re: Ch. 8 - The Grand Design

Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2012 7:38 pm
by ant
The Grand Design was more of a grand contradiction by Hawking.

Hawking writes:
Traditionally these (referring to his outlined list of questions - my words not his) are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. It has not kept up with the modern developments in science, particularly in physics. As a result, scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge
Ironically, Hawking goes on to engage in philosophy nearly throughout his entire book!
For starters his claim against philosophy in particular is an engagement in philosophy. The claim itself in not a statement of science. It is a metaphysical statement about science. DOH!! :P

Further, Hawking and his compatriot state in the book that the laws of nature tell us how the universe works but does not answer the "why" questions (questions that a child can ask but that science can not answer). Yet, Hawking's conclusion is..,
Because there is a law like gravity the universe can and will create itself from nothing...Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist
DOH! There he goes again, contradicting himself! :roll:

Laws describe how aspects of the universe function, they do not answer "why" questions. Laws are not creators in themselves.
Laws can explain the works of a jet engine - they can not explain who created the engine.

Re: Ch. 8 - The Grand Design

Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2012 11:35 pm
by WONK
Complex systems is the physics and mathematics that model how sets of simple physical things create everything. When 'things' interact with other things you get everything including life. There is the starting question of where and why the very simple beginnings happen but everything past that comes from the beginning. There is no real need for any why after the simple quantum particles and energies flashed into existence. After the 'Big Bang,' or whatever you want to call it, you have a physical chain of events that creates all there is and all there might be.

Hawking has simplified too far because the book is for non-scientists but what he is trying to bring out is that science can tell you the 'why' for everything that is around us and what might be in the past and future absent the first what came before the 'Big Bang'. Science does explain that there are multiple variations on the 'Big Bang' so in a way it tells you that there exists variations of the universe or variations of every past and future--or that from nothing or everything the 'Big Bang' occured. Although this sounds like a classic philosophy, it isn't because it is based on the known science of what is around us. You can call it philosophy but it doesn't fit what the classic form is because it comes from what is observed around us and not what is 'thought' about what is around us.