Lawrence Krauss writes:
Classical human reason, defined in terms of common sense notions following from our own myopic experience of reality is not sufficient to discern the workings of the Universe. If time begins at the big bang, then we will have to re-explore what we mean by causality, just as the fact that electrons can be in two places at the same time doing two different things at the same time as long as we are not measuring them is completely nonsensical, but true, and has required rethinking what we mean by particles. Similar arguments by the way imply that we often need to rethink what we actually mean by 'nothing', from empty space, to the absence of space itself.
Perhaps this passage that I just dug up answers or helps to answer the question I posed yesterday: How can someone so intelligent spout such nonsense as I quoted Krauss as spouting? Answer: he's a mysterian! We have discussed mysterianism before in these pages in connection with the theologian James Anderson and in connection with the materialist philosopher of mind Colin McGinn. With Krauss (and others of course) we find the mysterian move being made in the precincts of physics. Marvellously manifold are the moves of mysterians!
Yesterday I quoted Krauss as saying, "Not only can something arise from nothing, but most often the laws of physics require that to occur." I commented:
This is just nonsense. Whatever the laws of physics are, they are not nothing. So if the laws of physics require that something arise from nothing, then the laws of physics require that something arise without there being laws of physics. [. . .]
So you've got this situation in which nothing at all exists, and then something comes into existence because the physical laws (which don't exist) "require" it.
This implies an explicit logical contradiction: the laws of physics both do and do not exist. They do exist because they govern the transition from nothing to something. They do not exist because they are included in the nothing from which something arises.
Completely nonsensical (in the sense of being logically contradictory) but true nonetheless!
Now this is either a mysterian position or a dialetheist position. The dialetheist holds that, in reality, there are some true contradictions. The mysterian does not hold this; he holds that there are, in reality, no true contradictions, but some propositions no matter how carefully we consider them appear to us as contradictory, or perhaps must appear to us as contradictory given our irremediable cognitive limitations.
This raises all sorts of interesting questions. Here is one: One task of science is to render the world intelligible to us (understandable by us). But if natural science in one of its branches issues in propositions that are unintelligible (either because they are intrinsically contradictory or such that they appear or even must appear as contradictory to us), then how can one call this science?
Forgive me for being naive, but I would have thought that science, genuine science, cannot contain propositions that are nonsensical! And would it not be more reasonable to take the apparent nonsensicality that crops up in the more far-out branches as a sign that something has gone wrong somewhere?
Recent Comments