Selected
reviews of books about science, 1992-2000
THE PHYSICS OF IMMORTALITY: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead
by Frank J. Tipler, Macmillan, 528pp
SCIENCE AS SALVATION: A Modern Myth and its Meaning
by Mary Midgley, Routledge, 239pp
THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE
by John D. Barrow, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 150pp
THE ORIGIN OF HUMANKIND
by Richard Leakey, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 171pp
THE LAST THREE MINUTES
by Paul Davies, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 162pp
SHADOWS OF THE MIND: The Missing Science of Consciousness
by Roger Penrose, Oxford University Press, 457pp
Cosmology has again become a branch of theology. Particle physics and astronomy merge in sketching a universe built, against all likelihood, for the convenience of life. A melange of scientific coincidences suggests an `anthropic principle' at work. Our cosmos must be as it is, for otherwise we wouldn't be here to ask questions about it. Relativity specialist Frank Tipler now goes outrageously further, finding in cosmology the first sound, scientific case for an `Omega Point' deity who will fetch us back to life at the end of time.
Moral philosopher Mary Midgley offers an intelligent and deeply sceptical critique of this style of argument, finding it no better than `self-indulgent, uncontrollable power-fantasies'. Unfortunately, Midgley thinks anthropic scientists like Tipler, Paul Davies and John Barrow argue parochially from the existence and destiny of human life.
As Richard Leakey's book shows, humankind has had a highly arbitrary evolutionary history. Anthropocists, knowing this, point rather to the gross improbability of many basic `settings' of universal physics, underwriting the very existence of stars and the elements we're made of. These happy features are needed by life of any kind. But while Midgley misses the crucial universality of the argument, her caustic reflections are quite compelling. I once asked Davies if this gave him pause. Not a bit. Midgley, he replied sharply, `is beyond the pale.'
How, though, is one to know what's within the scientific pale, in an era when some world experts find God in their equations, while others (such as Roger Penrose) maintain that consciousness lies beyond the reach of known physics? The recent upsurge in sales of popular science books reveals a voracious hunger in educated readers for guidance in the difficult realms of cutting-edge science.
The new books by Davies, Barrow and Leakey are the first of 12 in a world-wide publishing venture aimed at making these hard ideas accessible to non-scientists. Short and brisk, they do their job well enough: astronomer Barrow on the Big Bang and after, mathematical physicist Davies on the fiery final collapse (or maybe endless frozen expansion) of the universe, palaeo-anthropologist Leakey on human evolution. Just the thing if you've never read anything on these topics, but a tad tired for people familiar with earlier (and better) volumes by all three.
This is not quite true. Paul Davies does explain a gruesome new way for the world to end. It may be that the very vacuum in which our universe is embedded is not stable--not at the lowest state it could conceivably adopt. If so, it might decay further, and a bubble of true vacuum could even now be roaring toward us at the speed of light, gobbling up all the matter and energy in its path. Fans of instant apocalypse will embrace this notion with delight. Luckily, there's no evidence in its favour.
Frank Tipler's eschatology--the theological study of `last things'--depends on today's physics containing no major hitch. This is, as the sports reporters say, a big ask, because science keeps bursting its own boundaries and gobbling up earlier certitudes. It's his boast that `I shall make no appeal, anywhere, to revelation. I shall appeal instead to the solid results of modern physical science [and] to the reader's reason'. While this is true, Tipler's non-Christian intuitions have obviously been shaped by existing religious templates, allowing his powerful physics to generate `a testable physical theory for an omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent God who will one day in the far future resurrect every single one of us to live forever in an abode which is in all essentials the Judeo-Christian Heaven'.
Midgley sarcastically dubs this `escalatorology': a fatuous belief in `an endless evolutionary escalator exalting the human race'. Tipler's Omega Point divinity is, indeed, the child and culmination of human ancestors, thinking infinite thoughts infinitely fast in the very moment that the universe plunges into the Big Crunch at the end of time. This God is a kind of cosmic computer, written into the Higgs field which permeates the universe and lends particles their mass. (As a useful side-effect of his bizarre theory, Tipler offers a precise prediction of the mass of the as-yet-undetected Higgs particle.) Given its effectively infinite capacity and benevolence--as proved by game-theory and microeconomic analysis!--this machine God reconstructs and renovates us all, building us a virtual-reality paradise to enjoy for all of virtual eternity. So we'll come back as computer emulations of ourselves, but nicer. Even Hitler and Pol Pot, but they'll have to go through a lot of Purgatory run-time first.
Foes of Tipler's reductionist atheology will need to do more than wag fingers at his presumption. While the body of his enthralling book avoids explicit equations, there's a 123-page Appendix for Scientists where much of his advanced analysis is set out in mind-crushing detail. As well as copious reading in philosophy and theology, Tipler draws on material that `would require Ph.D.s in at least three disparate fields'. His own doctorate is in global general relativity, and he can cope with the rest `only because I've spent the past 15 years teaching myself' particle physics and computer complexity theory. `I've done it,' he adds cheerfully, `so you can do it.' Don't bet on it.
No less prodigious is mathematician Roger Penrose, one of the founders of Tipler's own relativity discipline. Recently Penrose has been exploring the science of consciousness--or rather, trying to establish one. Mind cannot be understood and explained, he argues, without a new kind of quantum physics that includes gravitation. This is the realm of relativity, Einstein's powerful mathematical framework of spacetime, which to date has not been integrated with the quantum realm of quarks, electrons and light.
Like Tipler, Penrose is a Platonist: he believes in a mathematical reality deeper than the world we observe. He is also a reductionist, believing that one day we will possess theories robust enough to let us understand even the incalculable mind. For now, though, Penrose claims that minds cannot be emulated by computers--Tipler's crucial step.
In a volume dense with quantum theory and other tricky maths (simplified but difficult), he tries to convince us that human brains can do things that computers never will. If so, what makes us special? Do we have immaterial souls, for example? No, says Penrose, but we do have brains that might utilise mysterious quantum-realm abilities. His key is a sexy new theory of neural `cytoskeletal microtubules' (don't ask) that permit parts of the brain to act `non-locally' (really, don't ask) and thereby surpass their crass limitations. He might be right. Meanwhile, it's enormous fun to follow his arguments--if you enjoy climbing glaciers in your undies.