1
FQXi
essay contest 2017
Wandering
Towards a Goal; has the Universe any purpose ?
02/172017
Karoly Kehrer Jr.
Is goal-oriented behavior a physical or cosmic trend, an accident or
an imperative?
Abstract.
The development of the world-view with the help of
physicist is discussed. An investigation to try to find answer of how
causality, witnessing biological creation and theological
influence affected Human thinking and inspired them to try to find
the purpose of life in a limitless Universe. The essay also want to
find an answer of why an inanimate word would have any goal
regardless of having a limited size or being endless, and whether it
harbors life or not.
Key words: Universe, world-view, probabilistic
causality, evolution, natural selection, goal and purpose.
Changing world
view
In
the last ~3.5 million years the Human world view has drastically
changed from the limited horizon that was seen from the trees, to
trying to comprehend the observable Universe.[1] During this short
period of time countless theories were created,
armies of different supernatural creatures were invoked hoping they
would explain the unexplainables. Humans turned to the Sumerian gods,
[2]
Egyptian Sun Gods and
the Hebrew God for answers, and the western culture finally accepted
a creation theory that said that the world was “created”
approximately 4500 years ago, it took only a short six days; and on
the last day the Human race were created and shaped to God's image.
[3]
All
these theories were baseless speculations, trying to explain
Human's
relation to their
surroundings. The over-sized Human brain, being capable looking for
answers for an all important question of WHY,
settled on the answer that all things they didn't understood, or
could not find an answer to, were the doings of supernatural almighty
gods.
Among
many other reasons of why Humans believes in the existence of gods,
their Goal and
purpose,
because for eons they had experienced the role of casualty [4] and
seen countless biological creations all around them. Their feeling
was strongly reinforced by theological
teaching and by the promise that death is not the end of the life.
Their soul will live for ever.
Anything that is being created on the Earth exists and
die. Regardless of religious or pragmatic approach, these limitless
examples affected Human thinking as did the chain of the events which
always seems to have a cause before effect, and thereby setting the
arrow of time in the Human mind from past to future. As it has turned
out, however, it seems to be in conflict with Quantum Mechanics [5]
and the governing equations of the orbiting planets, regardless
whether it is played forward or backward in time the same rules
apply.
2
By
setting the arrow of time, and recognizing the rule of causality,
reinforced by the theological
teaching [6]
which suggests that
nature is goal-oriented.
This believe fits very well to the work of the human brain. Only
Humans have goals in
the animate world, like getting the necessary food, have a pleasant
and safe life, and they usually reach these goals
at the cost of their fellow humans. Well, all living creatures on
Earth have the same goal, but they don't have an over-sized brain to
recognize it. Only self conscious creatures are able to do it.
Over countless
millennia theological teachings became dogmas; and questioning their
validity was punishable by death. A sad example is is the fate of
Giordano Bruno
[7] who
was burned alive at the stake for challenging the teaching of the
Church about their geocentric dogma and was brave to say, that it is
the Earth that orbits the Sun. His statement ran against the daily
expedience of millions who seen the Sun coming up and going down
in the evening (to get some rest), therefore everybody believed in
the Church's teaching.
Regardless of the
terrible threat of being burned alive, it was Galileo
who pioneered
the observations of nature and it had a long-lasting implications
for the study of physics. He also constructed a telescope and
supported the Copernican theory, of a Sun-centered solar system.[8]
Galileo was accused twice of heresy by the church for his beliefs,
but regardless of this he wrote books on his ideas.
He
was the
first in history who saw - by using his telescope January 7, 1610 -
three small bodies circling around Jupiter. He called them Medici
planets after the ruling Medici family of Tuscany.
He began measuring natural phenomenons instead of making theories
about theories.
He succeeded - based on the results of his testing - to understand
the behavior of falling object, and was able to formulate the
governing equations of gravity's effect on materials. For the heresy
of telling that Earth does the same, that is, orbiting the Sun like
the moons orbiting Jupiter, he was imprisoned for life. After the
threat of torture he admitted that the Church was right an he was
wrong, but is still the Earth that moves, he said under his breath.
Changing
the world-view was a long and sometimes terrible painful process.
Today we rightly honor Galileo as the
father of science.
His
approach, finding answers to the problems combined with the force of
mathematics provided Humanity with a powerful tool that can record
and keep the test results of the experiments. Mathematics, the King
of Logic, helped mankind not only constructing the equations of the
observations, but in some cases using their predicting
power to
find more rules of nature. Newton had derived the gravitational
formula that was based on Kepler's
observations and Galileo's experiment. [9]
What
Humans have never even thought about, Plank's simplest equation
[10] about the quanta E=h*f revolutionized the thinking of how
Nature works at the subatomic level.
Studies
by Philipp
Lenard[11]
German-Hugrian
scientrist, won
the Nobel Prize for his work in
1905 for
the results of his research in
the late eighteenth century
on
cathode rays,
the discovery of their properties and recognising the
photo-electric effect. His work along with Hertz provided the solid
base for the Planck' equation.
Einstein's 1905 paper discussed the same effect in terms
of light quanta. The phenomena of
3
the
the
photo-electric effect finally had been confirmed by the experimental
work in the nineteen twenties by Robert
Andrews Millikan.
Inspired
by Lenard's recorded
measurements and the results of his own testing, Rutherford created
the first plausible atom model. Bohr established the laws of the
proton electron interaction, and the strange word of quantum physics
– further developed by numerous bright physicists - changed
everything that Humans thought before was true.
Heisenbergberg’s
uncertainty principle put an end to all speculations arguing that
the Universe might have a goal.
[12]
Interestingly,
almost all of the important researcher had and have strong
conviction that an almighty Creator exists, and that He has a
GOAL, and He created Humanity
to fulfill His
purposes. At the same time they believe that they have discovered
may say the opposite.
An
interesting exchange between two believers, Bohr
and Einstein...Bohr
said:
“Einstein,
stop telling God what to do”.
Others like
string theorist, the multiverse advocates and the believers in the
holographic Universe try to tell even to the Universe of how it
should be structured.
Niels
Henrik David Bohr [13] was a Danish physicist who made
foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and the
quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in
1922.
The
changing of world view
It
is fascinating of how two theories introduced to the public
at the beginning of the twentieth century changed our world-view
forever.
One
was Quantum Mechanics that told us that randomness and unpredictable
probability prevents any goal,
or purpose to exist in the Universe. The
deterministic
theory
of the 18th
century thinkers became obsolete.
The
other one, the theory of
Relativity,
somewhat in opposition with Quantum Mechanics suggested that the
behavior of the Universe and the propagation of the gravitational
force could be calculated.
The
foundation of the theory
of Relativity
rested
on the mathematics developed by Lorentz
[14] and the discovery of Henri
Poincaré [15]. Jules
Henri
Poincaré
[15] was a French mathematician, theoretical physicist, engineer, and
philosopher of science, who in 1900 found a way of combining the
concepts of mass
and energy. He recognized that electromagnetic energy behaves like a
fictitious
fluid
with mass density of m = E / c 2
; that is
E=mc2 ,
that along with Plank's E=h*f , Lorentz's equation of γ=1/sqr
(1-v2/c2),
and Newton's gravitation formula
are
the four
most famous equation ever had been discovered
and formed our word-view.
4
The
Lorentz
transformation superseded
the Galilean
transformation of the Newtonian
physics by questioning the theory
of an
absolute space and time. But the Galilean
relativity which is true only at smaller velocities than the
speed of light still being correct. (Note that in the Universe the
great majority of the objects move much smaller than that of speed
of light).
The
Lorentz transformations introduced many unintuitive features like the
fact that observers moving at different velocities
measures different distances,
elapsed times,
and different orderings
of events, but it supposes that the speed of light is constant
in all inertial reference frames.
Einstein in his 1905
paper about
Special Relativity went two steps further. He postulated the
strong invariance of light's speed when he rephrased the theory
of Special Relativity [SR], while relying on all the results of
Lorenz and Poincaré.
In addition he declared that space is empty. This assumption created
an everlasting debate. His theory of General Relativity [GR]
submitted to the
German
Analen der physic in
1916 ran into some problem, and he had to admit at the Leiden
conference [16]
in 1920 that GR would not work in empty space, that is, some aether
like substance is needed.
The Nobel committee never awarded the prize for his
work arguing that purely theoretical physics is not grounded
in discovery or experiment .
The
GR paper's pure mathematical approximation of how gravitational
forces are transmitted set an example for mathematical physicists to
formulate their theories
based on only their mathematical predictions.
As
it has been discussed earlier, mathematics is a powerful tool and has
immense predictive power, but it can became a burden too, as it is
shown in the unsupportable assumption of the creation of the Universe
according to the “big bang” theory.
If we believe that it has been created from a mathematical point, it
might suggest that an “almighty creator” had a goal
and purpose
to do it, and if He did it why some 13 billion years ago and not
earlier or later. Human logic cannot give any plausible answer about
the “timing”, but still can question what was before. Well, St.
Augustine a fourth century Christian philosopher whose
groundbreaking philosophy infused Christian doctrine with
Neoplatonism
said:
“the
Almighty was preparing hell for all those who wont believe in
creation”.
This
answer would not convince any philosophers that it has any goal
or purpose; especially not, if
one believes in an eternal Universe.
Regardless of its
questionable, or rather nonexistent physical base, it created lots
of theories which were
trying to use more pure mathematical speculations for supporting an
unprovable idea. Worse examples are the inflation theories by Andrei
Linde and Alan Guth. [17]
Further efforts were and are being made to
get backward in time to the ~10-35-th
second after the “big bang” and try to analyze of how the
material was created from nothing, how it is looked like, and how it
was behaving.
Unfortunately,
recently theories
seem to compete with one an another, by publishing more and more
unsupportable and non-physical speculations like, string theories and
super-gravity
which are valid only in 26, 10 or 11 dimensions and the proposed
holographic Universe is valid only in two dimensions. [18]
5
Again, which of these ideas would have an answer to the
question:
Is goal-oriented behavior a physical or cosmic trend,
an accident or an imperative?
Well, neither the proven and successful scientific
advance, nor these speculations seem to support any possible goal
or purpose.
After this short review of the progress of physics and
it's effect on the world-views, one can conclude that only
theological-based theories are trying to convince us that the
existence of Humanity has some goal and purpose.
Since Humanity is part of the Universe, then the
theological theories must cerebrate that all the Universe
must have a purpose, for it was created to be a home of the Human
race.
Only very few
“scientific” theories like
the
creation of the Universe by the big bang - that has no any
physical base - could inadvertently suggest that some supernatural
entity had done it; and if so, it should have had a Goal
to do it.
Since the rapidly
developing science shows a resounding negative result by finding no
indication that the inanimate word might have any goal
or purpose, it is
worth taking a look at how it affects the Humanities's thinking about
the animate creatures.
If
one would ask of what separates the animate from the
inanimate
surrounding,
one
could recognize that intelligent creatures do believe in
Goal
and purpose. The word “evolution”
tends to suggest the belief of some Goal,
and along with it an existing conscious designer too; while the
word's meaning of natural
selection
is considered to emphasize the existence of blind, uncaring force.
As far as our
larger environment is concerned, some physical processes shows a
well understood and seemingly organized path from birth to the
death of stars as it is shown by the Hertzsprung Russel diagram, and
supported by Bethe's model [18], but Cosmologist admit that it is
only a tip of the iceberg. Theories are far from in agreement as to
whether the Universe has a limited size or is limitless; is it a
curved ball or flat? For example Anna
Ijjas ET-all, at Pinkerton argues against the curved, ball-like
cosmos.
Apart from the
life-sequence of the stars and the behavior of recently discovered
Hyper-massive
objects, the inhomogenity of the observable Universe as yet
has no clear answers. The unexplainable and highly controversial
creation from nothing, - that means that the Universe was born, but
will live forever cannot have a plausible explanation. There are
many unanswered questions, such as the suspected but undetectable
dark energy and the poorly understood hypothetical dark matter. This
tells us that cosmology is far from a closed theory;
but the trends support randomness rather than predictability.
It is obvious that living creatures can only exist in
very special environments, except the most primitive life forms,
those which supposedly can survive in the intergalactic space, or as
it just happened can already be found active in Earth's rocks 300
meters underground. [20]
6
No matter what, a
dying star or an exploding Supernova
nearby will kill any life-form on any earth-like planets. It is
not a goal or purpose
of Mother-Nature, but a calculable certainty.
If
one looks on the surface of the Moon, one can see a scary proof of
random cosmic bombardment. Its surface is full of giant craters. If
one studies ancient life on Earth one can find signs of several mass
extinctions
that can be partially attributed to random bombardments from space,
and some very drastic and poorly understood change of the planet's
climate.
One can only see unpredictable randomness and not any
sign of Goal to protect and to keep the living creatures
alive. Apparently life-forms exists, just as the Universe do, but
their future depends on the blind and tremendous forces of Nature.
In
spite of the ever present danger that life can be wiped out at any
moment, creatures with over-sized brains were able to develop – and
did developed – weapons powerful enough to kill all creatures on
Earth including us Humans. It is strange, but unfortunately true,
that the curious brain of humans constantly looking for questions of
why
things are as they are, was able to unlock the secret of the
nuclear forces and have used it already in the wrong way.
There is a frequently asked question by biologist an
philosophers whether there is any limit of how complex a biological
entity can became? Can this terrible achievement have an answer to
it, telling that natural selection can go only this far and no
farther, for a biological entity with the necessary knowledge may be
able - and will be able - to commit suicide? Isn't it a shocking
proof that there is no life-form that has any Goal or purpose?
And there isn't any. Natural selection is a
blind and merciless force.
7
References
[1]The
latest
common ancestor
.humans
and chimpanzees lived around the time of Sahelanthropus
tchadensis, c. 7
Ma [3];
and S. tchadensis
is sometimes claimed to be that last common ancestor of humans and
chimpanzees, but the claim has not been established. (Millennium Man,
Kenya; c. 6
Ma)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_recent_common_ancestor
(modified on 3/2
/2017),
[2]
According
to the ancient Sumerian
texts, the Sumerian god, Anu, the “supreme Lord of the Sky”, the
currently reigning titular head of the Sumerian
Family Tree,
had two sons. They were Enki (Ea), Lord of the Earth (last
modified
(4/3/2004)
[3]
The basic narrative
expresses the central theme: God creates
the world (along with creating the first
man and woman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_creation_narrative (modified
on 2/27/ 2017)
[4]
The
relationship of cause and effect, a principle that nothing can happen
without being caused http://www.dictionary.com/browse/causality
(recent British dictionary)
[5]
Quantum
physics is the study of the behavior of mater and energy
at the molecular, atomic, nuclear, and even smaller microscopic
levels.
http://physics.about.com/od/quantumphysics/p/quantumphysics.htm] (©
2017 About, Inc)
[8]
[Galileo
by means of the telescope.
On January 7, 1610, in one of his first observations, he managed to
view Jupiter, the largest planet, through the telescope.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei
(last
modified on 27 February 2017)
[9]
Newton. He
developed the theories of gravitation
in 1666, when he was only 23 years old.
https://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/newton.html
(Last
Updated: May 05 2015
)
[10]
Planck https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Planck modified
on 27 February 2017,
His Constant
is a value that describes a quanta - the smallest measurable unit
in relation to frequency
and wavelength,
[11]
Philipp_Lenard physicist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philipp_Lenard
(modified
on 24 February 2017}
and the winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1905 The
Nobel Prize in Physics 1905
[13]Niels
Henrik David Bohr
https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1922/
(the
official website of Nobel Prize).
science.jrank.org/pages/982/Bohr-Model.html
(Copyright
© 2017 Net Industries )
[14]
Lorentz http://mathworld.wolfram.com/LorentzTransformation.html
A Lorentz transformation is a four-dimensional transformation
[15]
Jules Henri Poincaré was a French mathematician, theoretical
physicist, engineer, and philosopher of science.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Poincar%C3%A9
(modified
on 02/25 /17)
(modified
on 26 December 2016)
[18]Hertzsprunghttps://www.atnf.csiro.au/outreach/education/senior/astrophysics/stellarevolution_hrintro.
htmlBethe's model Bethe
http://www.nobelprize.org/search/?query=bethe in 1967
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/themes/physics/fusion/
[19]
In a Mexican cave system so beautiful and hot that it is called both
Fairyland and hell, scientists have discovered life trapped in
crystals that could be 50,000 years old. The bizarre and
ancient microbes were found dormant in caves in Naica, Mexico, and
were able to exist by living on minerals such as iron and manganese,
said Penelope Boston, head of NASA's Astrobiology Institute. .
The
Probabilistic Causality has relation to other philosophical problems
(Ellery Eells ISBN 0 521 39244 6)
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