Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #81881 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 336 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780618592265
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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From Publishers Weekly
With an articulate blend of science, metaphysics and philosophy—and a dash of religion—physicist and cosmologist Davies discusses the implications of the fact that the conditions of our universe are "just right" for life to exist: a concept known as the anthropic principle. Had any of the universe's physical laws or constants been just a bit different, life as we know it would have been impossible. In attempting to explain why this is so, Davies summarizes the current state of knowledge in cosmology and provides an accessible introduction to particle physics. He evaluates numerous explanations for the structure of our universe, such as the possibility that ours is but one of an infinite number of "multiverses," and examines the question that inevitably arises in discussing the anthropic principle: does the design of the universe imply the existence of an intelligent designer? Davis's own feeling is that there is likely some sort of still undefined "life principle" in the cosmos but recognizes that this "is something I feel more in my heart than in my head." While there is much of interest, readers of Davies's earlier book The Mind of God will be familiar with a good deal of what is presented. 35 b&w illus. (Apr. 11)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Readers of a certain age may recall Carl Sagan, on his television series Cosmos, explaining how life on planet Earth was the result of a series of remarkable conditions, all happening to exist: just the right planet, at just the right distance from the sun, with just the right atmosphere, etc. Without any one of these conditions, we might not be here. Davies, acclaimed physicist and author of numerous popular science books (The Fifth Miracle, 1999), expands on the life-as-series-of-lucky-breaks theme, exploring such elements as the speed of light, the carbon atom, the big bang, and the many-universe theory. Davies is an enthusiastic writer, clearly amazed and delighted by the universe and its beautiful mysteries, and his thesis, that the universe is tailor-made to support human life (though not necessarily designed for this purpose), is both engaging and enchanting. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

Customer Reviews

Ambitious and absorbing
'Why is there something rather than nothing?' is an ancient metaphysical riddle. Over the last half-century, a new question has emerged on top of this old conundrum - 'why is that something (the universe), against an apparent astonishing level of odds, so structured that it (through the emergence of intelligent life) can ask such a question?'

Paul Davies certainly feels these questions not only need answering, but that both must be answered together. The self-consciousness of the universe for him, is not the anthropocentric trivia that it has historically been relegated to by cosmologists and physicists.

In this typically clear and engaging tour of the increasingly wacky frontiers of contemporary science, Davis seems almost trying to present a reductio ad absurdum argument to convince us of his case. Rather than accept that life must in some way be central to the universe, it seems that the best scientific minds available would have us believe in an infinity of universes, our almost unique one favourable for life being of course the one we find ourselves in (the anthropic observer effect). But this leads to even greater head spinning conclusions, such as that it would be statistically more likely that our universe is a computer simulation running in one of these multitude of 'real' cosmoses. Here, scientific theory becomes as non-testable as religious claims of an intelligent designer for the universe, and applying Occam's razor rule of simplicity would seem to suggest that in fact religious belief is more rational than modern cosmology. This, however, is not something the author does, rather settling on speculation as to how the apparent intrinsic nature of life in our universe may require that any future 'theory of everything' must link consciousness, the physical laws of the universe, and the creation of the universe itself, together in some way we can only make rather wild guesses at now.

I enjoyed this book a great deal, there is no doubt that the goldilocks enigma does need explaining, and Davis brings out the utter weirdness of all current attempts to either solve it or explain it away. Whether we can dismiss the multiverse arguments so easily, unsatisfying as they may be is another matter. One of my former philosophy lectures, David Papinau, reviewing this book in the Independent, pointed out that Davies seems at one key part of the book to fall back on the argument that the multiverse universe doesn't explain why there are any universes at all, when the point of the book is to explain why our universe is seemingly so set up for the possibility of life. But clearly Davis is attempting to reconcile the two questions I introduced at the beginning of this review - making consciousness something fundamental to the universe may (highly speculatively) explain both why the universe is so incredibly structured to enable its own self-awareness and to explain the very fact of the universe itself.

Such speculation will of course give some comfort to those who are unable to share Richard Dawkin's scientific reverence for a cold, blind and accidental universe. Others may shudder that some of the world's greatest thinkers are taking seriously again the idea that this world of suffering and evils may in some way have been intentioned after all. Either way, this is a must read for anyone interested in the big questions of existence.

A Superb Book on the Physics and Philosophy Surrounding Single and Multiple Universes
This is an important book on how the universe can and might be, in which Paul Davies critically examines different hypotheses about single and multiple universes. His book illuminates the most critical issues of physics and philosophy (and of some biology) underlying our understanding of Science and Religion. He has called himself an agnostic, and he does not argue for religious beliefs. This newest book by Davies is somewhat more technical than his other books but is still well within the general readership level.

Davies updates and expands upon all previous overviews I know of in the ways the universe can begin and remain in existence, enriching previous accounts especially in his discussion of multiple universes. Also particularly fascinating is his discussion of dark mass and dark energy, which constitute 96% of our (potentially) observable universe and which we cannot see and about which we can make only indirect observations.

Throughout the book, Davies flags the free parameters, or "constants of nature", some 20 of them counting force coupling constants and the masses of elementary particles, which, in the standard models of nuclear physics, astrophysics and cosmology, must be exquisitely fine-tuned to yield a single universe capable of supporting life. As an alternative to this fine-tuning, physicists have proposed multiple universes, or a multiverse, wherein infinite universes, a few of them with properties supporting life, could counterbalance the infinitesimal probability of the degree of fine-tuning necessary in a single universe if it occurred only by chance. The difference between these views has obvious and profound metaphysical and religious implications.

Beginning about two-thirds through the book, Davies describes the possibilities afforded, in principle, by string theory/superstring theory/M-theory to bring about a multiverse. Unfortunately, that is the problem with the current state of string/M theory. It is a mathematical construct wherein physical theories might be "accommodated" - it can in principle provide a way to make predictions for those theories - but so far it cannot predict anything real, anything that has been or could be measured. And right now the odds are about even and rapidly getting longer that it ever will.

However, if a multiverse can, in principle, be supported, or dignified, by string/M-theory, we have a science-fiction writer's paradise. Davies spells out some of these wild possibilities - wild because there would be infinite possibilities, including infinite variations of the laws of physics among different universes - and he describes some that might be more likely from probability arguments. (I cannot do justice to that exciting ride without quoting his whole discussion. But, mind you, Davies does not do this in any lighthearted way; he is deadly serious in scientifically examining these possibilities.) One of the inevitable possibilities is that some universes are but computer simulations by some superculture out there in another universe. And the show-stopper in that scenario is that our own universe, including our very selves, is most probably a simulation (imagine an incredibly advanced virtual reality emulation of everything, even our consciousness). In the multiverse picture, the universe we perceive, and any God we worship, are fakes!

Every philosopher's wildest dreams can and will come true with infinite possibilities in infinite universes. This multiverse thing is annoying, isn't it? Even Davies was annoyed, as he indicates in the book, when in 2003 he published an article in the New York Times which pointed out that the threat of fake universes constituted a reductio ad absurdum of the entire multiverse idea.

In a recent note(1) Davies concluded that there were three alternatives, and he explains this more thoroughly in the book. Namely, the argument leading from the laws of physics we know - to multiple universes with fake physics - to anthropic selection - to the elimination of God is a contradictory loop; and the multiverse advocates are thus "hoist by their own petard!". However, Davies admits (p.189) that there is still some wiggle-room; and for the remainder of the book he takes the standard position that The Two Explanations for why our universe is so unexpectedly suited for life must come down to either (1) fine-tuning (which Davies terms a "fluke") or (2) a multiverse. Davies, the agnostic, then devotes the next-to-last chapter to what he terms a "third [option], ...favored by many nonscientists, ...[a universe] that has been designed...by an intelligent creator."

To my disappointment, Davies begins his next-to-last chapter with a biological discussion of "The Intelligent Design Movement in the United States", which is equated with anti-Darwinism. I would strongly suggest that the book "The Language of God" by Francis S. Collins(2) be substituted for Davies' attempts here. But then Davies moves quickly on to his more comfortable ground of physics. While concluding that belief in a God who makes the laws of physics, who is responsible for the universe and for continually holding it into existence without tinkering with its day-to-day operation, is popular with many scientists as well as theologians, Davies is uncomfortable with this as its being, in his view, an hoc explanation that leads us "no further forward" (no further forward to a purely scientific explanation). He then goes on to ask many questions couched within physics, that, for me, are not the dilemmas an agnostic or atheist faces, e.g., "who created the creator?". The agnostic constraints Davies imposes on himself in this chapter seem to go beyond an evenhandedness in treating belief and non-belief in God. Perhaps the alternative and stronger definition of an agnostic applies to Davies (a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality, as is God, is unknown and probably unknowable). In summarizing this chapter, Davies writes: "Unless everything that can exist does exist, something still unexplained must separate what exists and what doesn't" and "We are not finished yet!"

Davies' last chapter titled "How come Existence?" begins with his quoting the somewhat opposing views of several well-known physicists, e.g., of these two atheists: Stephen Hawking said "The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet" and Freeman Dyson said "As we look out into the universe and identify the many accidents of physics and astronomy that have worked together for our benefit, it almost seems as if the universe must in some sense have known we were coming." Davies then discusses the Two Explanations in terms of the Anthropic Principle: (1) a passive selection mechanism in a multiverse (the Weak Anthropic Principle) or (2) the laws of physics and evolution of the universe being fine-tuned to bring forth life and the human mind (the Strong Anthropic Principle). Davies then addresses whether life should, in the first place, be considered a fundamental or accidental phenomenon. After some very elegant discussion, he concludes from both scientific and philosophical considerations that life, and mind in particular, is a unique, extremely important and fundamental phenomenon of nature. Further, he considers that the connection between (1) life and mind and (2) the cosmos must be deeper than that from just "the crude lottery of multiverse cosmology combined with the Weak Anthropic Principle." Then he says much about teleology and Platonism in physics, which is important but not necessary to comment upon here, and then goes on to the "delayed choice" experiments of quantum mechanics and Wheeler's "Participatory Principle". Davies' bottom line is that neither of The Two Explanations, the universe fine-tuned for life (which Davies calls a "fluke") or the multiverse picture, can scientifically answer the ultimate question of existence because they both require a (scientifically) unexplained starting point. Lastly, Davies considers briefly a self-engineered, self-aware universe perhaps brought about through quantum backward-causation, such as causal loops and wormholes, but concludes a missing ingredient would be self-awareness. (I must note that that notions of traveling backwards in time to change the future were, in my view, forever put to rest by simple, non-quantum arguments from spacetime properties.(3) ) Davies ends the chapter by discussing the outstanding questions that prevent us from fully explaining, scientifically, the mystery of existence.

N.B. One short section titled "Afterword: Ultimate Explanations" is included at the end of the book and is extremely useful. Here, Davies gives a brief summary description of seven, as it turns out, classes of universes that embody the various attributes and their interpretations discussed throughout the book, thus collecting in one place each of their achievements in explaining things and their failures to do so. After reading the book, one can then use this splendid synopsis as a quick reference to what all currently envisioned universes can, might, and cannot be like, presented in a mere eight pages. (However, if you cheat and start reading back there first, you won't understand it.) At the end of this Afterword, Davies indicates which two of the seven types of universes he thinks might have the best chance of being true; but I won't spoil the book for you by revealing these. However, I will say that, not surprisingly, these two do not include the simplest, most straightforward one, since that one references a God, which is considered by Davies to be too "ad hoc".

In summary, let me emphasize that this book explains, in simple language, both scientifically and philosophically, the ways the universe can begin and remain in existence more comprehensively than any previous account I know of when it comes to multiple universes. Although one might infer that his agnosticism leans more toward atheism, that does not affect his tremendous contributions. Davies continues to serve a vital function in being a critical watchdog, from the science side, of the most important, underlying issues in the field of Science and Religion.

Dr. Martin P. Fricke
Del Mar, California
May 7, 2007

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1. Paul Davies, "Reloading The Matrix", pp. 58-63, Science and Spirit, March-April, 2007
2. Francis S. Collins, The Language of God, Free Press Div. of Simon & Shuster, Inc., NY (2006)
3. See, for example, Brian Greene, The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality, Alfred A. Knopf, NY (2004)

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Added on 5/8/07:

Addendum re. Davies' Agnosticism.

The discipline of Science and Religion includes, as it must to be healthy, agnostics, atheists, deists, monotheists, and others of different philosophical or religious persuasion. However, it is only natural that atheists (who deny the existence of a deity) are not much interested in the subject of Science and Religion, whereas agnostics and those of any religious confession are usually very interested in what science might clarify for us about the mysteries of religious revelation.

As I've indicated, Davies' agnosticism, or even atheism, does not detract one iota from his extremely valuable contributions to Science and Religion. He serves as a critical scientific watchdog for the most important scientific ideas impacting this field. I thank God for Davies' long-time interest in this field, of which he was a pioneer and founder.

OK, but nothing new, inconclusive
Paul Davies latest book --- "Cosmic Jackpot" in the US and "The Goldilocks Enigma" in the UK --- recognizes and accepts the evidence for fine-tuning to support complex biological life. So he does fulfill the promise of the book's title, and he is an asset by supporting the observations and their implications.

The book's subtitle is "Why Our Universe is Just Right for Life" yet he fails to answer the "why" question. In his own words, in the last paragraph of the book, he writes: "So, how come existence? At the end of the day, all the approaches I have discussed are likely to prove unsatisfactory. In fact, in reviewing them they all seem to me to be either ridiculous or hopelessly inadequate: a unique universe that just happens to permit life by a fluke; a stupendous number of alternative parallel universes that exist for no reason; a preexisting God who is somehow self-explanatory; or a self-creating, self-explaining, self-understanding universe-with observers, entailing backward causation and teleology. Perhaps we have reached a fundamental impasse dictated by the limitations of the human intellect."

Hmmm.... "...a fundamental impasse dictated by the limitations of the human intellect"?

And then Davies ends his book with this last sentence, "The whole paraphernalia of gods and laws, of space, time, and matter, of purpose and design, rationality and absurdity, meaning and mystery, may yet be swept away and replaced by revelations as yet undreamt of."

Soooo...., at the end of the day, I can't recommend Davies' book for its content or conclusion; his recognition of fine-tuning [the "goldilocks enigma"] is not unique, or new, or even early. There's certainly no "wow" in Davies' text. But it does accept the observations, and that is synergistically helpful.