[lit-ideas] Hawking, a cosmologist, on stuff

From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Mon, 16 May 2011 09:43:56 +0100 (BST)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/may/15/stephen-hawking-interview-there-is-no-heaven

At the end is the following Q&A:-

___________
Science, truth and beauty: Hawking's answers
What is the value in knowing "Why are we here?"

The universe is governed by science. But science tells us that we can't solve
the equations, directly in the abstract. We need to use the effective theory of
Darwinian natural selection of those societies most likely to survive. We
assign them higher value.

You've said there is no reason to invoke God to light the blue touchpaper. Is
our existence all down to luck?

Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously
created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in.

So here we are. What should we do?

We should seek the greatest value of our action.

You had a health scare and spent time in hospital in 2009. What, if anything,
do you fear about death?

I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I'm not
afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first.
I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components
fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a
fairy story for people afraid of the dark.

What are the things you find most beautiful in science?

Science is beautiful when it makes simple explanations of phenomena or
connections between different observations. Examples include the double helix
in biology, and the fundamental equations of physics."
_____________________

It is not entirely clear to me what Hawking is getting at in saying:
"We need to use the effective theory of Darwinian natural selection of those
societies most likely to survive. We assign them higher value." It is possible
that some form of naturalistic fallacy is being committed here, and unclear how
survival-value can measure moral-value or even how survival value in the past
can guide us to future commitments. It is also unclear how, particularly in a
testable way, we can measure 'the survival value of a society'.

"We should seek the greatest value of our action."
This invites the reply: so what is that "greatest value"? What should we do? It
is not perhaps entirely without point, when asked what we ought to do, to
answer that we should do what is most valuable, although admittedly it may be
somewhat tautologous in that it seems to answer the question "What, as a matter
of values, should we do?" with the assertion "Whatever is most valuable". But
nevertheless this does immediately raise the question -"What is most valuable?"
Perhaps Hawking regards his reply as a clever side-step, but it is hardly that
clever or even that worthy a side-step.

The idea that science may achieve a Theory of Everything also invites
examination, especially if everything includes science itself. Popper's view
was that science can never account for itself scientifically in several
fundamental senses, including never get to the stage where it can predict its
own future developments. But nor does Popper think anything can ever fully
explain the success of science (and certainly science itself cannot) - although
a science-influenced world view can partly explain why the success of science
cannot be fully accounted for [by emphasising how science is irredeemably
fallible 'conjectural knowledge']. The talk of a Theory of Everything that
would reveal 'the mind of God' would, I think, strike Popper as reflecting a
naive optimism - almost a scientist's pipe dream or fantasy, one as lacking any
basis in science as the belief in an afterlife which Hawking rejects. As
against a Theory of Everything Popper argued for the
essential incompleteness of all science.

Donal
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html

[lit-ideas] Hawking, a cosmologist, on stuff

Other related posts: