Rating: 
Summary: Astonishing.
Review: This book is one of the most astonishing works I ever read.
The aim of the author is to find a place for God in the quantum universe, for he sides with Fred Hoyle who stated: "I have always thought it curious that, while most scientists claim to eschew religion, it actually dominates their thought more than it does the clergy."
After a long and stubborn search for God's place in the physical universe and after not finding it, the author recommends the faithful to turn to ... mysticism.As always with Paul Davies, his scientific writing is outstanding: clear explanation and comments on the evolution of scientific thought and on the latest theories regarding physics, astronomy, cosmology, quantum mechanics. Some readers could become nervous because these comments are always mingled with the search for ... God, but that's the subject of the book. One star for the solution. Four stars for the scientific content.
Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant, Comprehensive; Rational, Yet Acknowledges Mystery
Review: This is a brilliant book and very thought provoking. Written in a very understandable way for the layman such as myself and questions some of the heavy weights in substantial comprehensive order and understanding. Some of the points raised with much more detail are as follows:
The book is written with clarity with ideas in physics and logic. And yet, Davies acknowledges the eventually of all logic and math which hit boundaries or encircle themselves, as in the explanation of Godel's Theorem. Anotherwards, the study of physics is truly mind expanding, beneficial in our knowledge and understanding, and yet paradoxically, the same rational logic and mathematical equations are always doomed to failure: with infinite regress or mysterious self-explaining axioms or unexplained rings. So it is, at the end of the book Davies, an educated, and I'd like to say brilliant, physicist, acknowledges that mysticism and meditation are valid alternatives to the paradox of circular logic, acknowledging that the universe remains a mystery where mathematics and rationalism will never completely decode in a supertheory of everything calculated and finished. I'm very impressed with this balanced view and can't help but think of all the great understanding in physics, and simultaneously, the psychology Carl Jung's Eastern approach of the "collective unconscious" or the world of symbols, images, dreams and the unconscious, archetypes undefined by our scientific logic.
Godel's Theorem relates to our Rationalism and Logic, which turns out to always be Circular, Uncomputable. I personally think this is what made the brilliant man Nieztsche go insane, besides syphillis. The fact of the matter is all rational thinking rests and ends in a total paradox, which cannot equate a determination of truth. Our truths are merely the best set of lies. Such paradoxes reveal that there are certain logistics and mathematical statements that cannot be determined true or false. This puts uncertainty in our logistic rationality and mathematics. Such statements together as
"This statement is a lie"
"If the statement is true, then it is false; and if it is false, then it is true "
&
SOCRATES: "What Plato is about to say is false"
PLATO: "Socrates has just spoken truly."
Other ideas in this book include the Idea of a Self Contained Universe. The existence may not require anything outside of it: specifically, no prime mover or supernatural act needed. In this he addressses the ideas of initial laws, initial conditions, nonlocality of singularity, a point of infinite compression. Davies writes about the differences of the big crunch, big bang, expansion, contraction, cycles, the steady-state theory of continuous creation.
Davies supports, with many references, not necessarily a designer as we intepret in monotheism, but the universe with intelligent design from a complex set of conditions with particular laws of physics based on such conditions.
Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle - that all measurable quantities are subject to unpredictable fluctuations in their values, the micro world indeterministic, as in quantum fluctuations.
Creation Without Creation - The shape of the universe being a cone with no abrupt beginning; time fades gradually away toward the base, no well-defined beginning, although time is still finite in the past. This takes in Einstein's idea of space possibly being finite. And also the expansion of the universe over time.
Two Types of Physics, Newtonian and Quantum - The universe of Newtonian physics of contingency of determined causes by a chain of cause and effect events and the Quantum physics that reveal an indeterminacy of electrons and chance events. While we live in a rational world, the deepest layers are absurd.
Stochasticity - The principle of compromise of the being with the becoming or the necessary and the contingent, the cause and effect Newtonian and the undetermined of Quantum, an open system with general laws. There is a difference between stochasticity and anarchy. There is order in disorder; even chaos can possess statistical regularities. God plays dice.
General Laws of Organization Exist in Open Systems - that is within Quantum physics consists of indeterminacy within a range of defined boundaries., which limits the amount of possibilities. Regarding the electron, the nature of the alternatives is fixed necessarily, whereas, the actual alternative adopted is contingent. The prediction of probabilities over certainties.
Necessary or Contingent - The religious paradox of whether God, the Creator or the universe or the beginning point is necessary or contingent. If he/she/it is necessary, then all good, evil, ethics and choice is predetermined as a prior or axiom. If this is true then free choice cannot be, as contingency cannot come from necessary. If he/she/it is contingent then all good, evil, ethics and choice is based on the preexisting meanings they are formed and built from and then free choice becomes chaotic. The dualism of the dipolar God of Plato as the God of Good - the eternal and unchanging in the world of perfect forms and the God of Demiurge the fleeting and impermanent in the world of changes is one attempt. The Christian idea of ex nihilo, of a God outside and transcendent of our world of changes is another. However such ideas do not reconcile a God with a permanent nature creating a world of change, so this dilemma remains.
We Do Not Know The Initial Conditions That Determined The Laws Of Physics - Such conditions were much different then they are today. Cosmologists have argued that thermodynamics and similar processes could have erased the details of the cosmic initial conditions.
Process Theology (Whitehead & Russell) - that all life consists of and is simultaneously determined by the both the lower biological levels that make it up, and in turn, determined by the teleology or final goal-directed causes of the higher levels of organizations which they are part of. There is both the Newtonian predetermined cause and effect and the undetermined Quantum.
Ontology - There is No Definitive Proof of The Meaning of "Existence.
Mathematicians Attempt to An Equation of a Theory of Everything -A superstring or master code of the entire universe. Einstein believed there is such a code; this is based solely on the rationalism.
Anthropic Principle - We construct our theories as part of the universe, not outside it, and this fact must inevitably limit the theories we construct. We relate our existence as observers of the universe to the laws and conditions of the universe.
The Laws of Physics - are universal, absolute, eternal and omnipotent as in all-powerful. Or is it that humans impose the regularities of nature on the world by their minds in order to make sense of it. We can never get behind the stuff of the cosmos to the law as such. Can the software exist without the hardware? Davies is convinced that with our mathematics we discover objective truths about he universe rather then invent them.
Davies writes of Von Neumann's Universal Constructor - self-replication through a control mechanism and Turings machine, Conway's game of life and the ideas of both together.
The idea and objections of mulitiple universes.
The idea of Virtual Worlds to The Real World And A Master Code is unknowable, due to the wisdom in the uncomputable numbers and number called omega which is defined by a halting problem with a formula to overcome but never revealed and can be compared with the magic numbers of the ancient Greeks. The universe must be algorithmically compressible, or economical in computation, within our horizon of computation, time-dependent, with a finite number of particles, and in order for us to know part from whole, must contain both linear and locality properties.
Rating: 
Summary: Too many assumptions!
Review: This is a good book overall, but if never quite focus too well and it leaves the subject at the end with way too many assumptions that will make you feel like you have been running in circle and never really got nowhere. Overall: Decent to Good.
Rating:
Summary: Too many assumptions!
Review: This is a good book overall, but it never quite focus too well and it leaves the subject at the end with way too many assumptions that will make you feel like you have been running in circles and never really got anywhere. Overall: Decent to Good.
Rating:
Summary: Top Quark discovery adds weight to his arguments
Review: When Paul Davies' book was published 1993, scientists had yet to discover the top quark, but Davies predicted that it would be found one day, and therefore add further evidence to his view of an ordered, symmetrical universe which seems to be designed on purpose. The "drama" for the search for the top quark, as the author called it, had not yet been completed. Well, he was absolutely right. The top quark was discovered in March1995 at Fermi Lab. It is this kind of accuracy that sets it apart from the less rigorous Creation Science-styled books. This book cannot be dismissed since the author's knowledge of mathematics, philosophy and physics seems so wide-ranging. Moreover, he is well aware of the skepticism to the designer Universe arguments, and they are presented in this volume at every turn. Davies' powers of prophetic vision and synthesis of information are amazing. The heart of the book are the chapters on his "deep feeling" that the inherently mathematical nature of the Universe, which he admits is hard to convey to the lay reader, must lead to the inescapable conclusion that the world as we know it could not have happened by sheer chance. Ironically, Davies says, by doing their work, scientists end up thinking about God more than theologians.
Rating:
Summary: This is indispensable reading for truth seekers.
Review: With lucidity and wit, prolific writer Paul Davies, aprofessor of mathematical physics, surveys the history of science, philosophy and mathematics to try to answer the human race's deepest questions. While acknowlegingthe possibility that the universe might be a meaningless fluke, Davies convincingly argues that the existence of consciousness in the universe cannot be "a byproduct of mindless, purposeless forces." Though he is not religious in a conventional sense, Davies believes that the rationality of the universe, the fact thathumans can understand how the universe works, is evidence ofpurpose and meaning. Particularly fascinating is Davies' meditations on mathematics. Davies points out that the fact that the universe's deepest laws can beexpressed mathematically strongly suggests that thereis more to our world than meets the eye.Anyone who has ever looked at the night sky and wondered if our lives have a purpose should read this book. Thoughtrained as a scientist, Daviesis as familiar with Leibnitz, Kant, and Aquinas as he is with the latest developments in quantum physics. He also provides a fun and thought-provoking chapter on Virtual Worlds and Real Worlds. Truly a delight to read.
|
