Before I express my viewpoints, I'd like to establish that I do not believe in God, and yes, that means i'm an atheist. Therefore, my remarks might seem biased, but that's what keeps the debate on religion vs science going. I'm sure I will have several more posts on this topic in the future.
Stephen Hawking is undoubtedly a very brilliant theoretical physicist, though I wouldn't rank him in my top 20 all time physicists. However, something I’ve noticed about theoretical physicists over the years is that if you get them talking on subjects outside physics they are generally likely to say things just as daft as some drunk bloke down the pub. I’m afraid this is a case in point. And it's quite saddening to think that numerous fans follow every one of his remarks - no matter how religulous they may be.
God and physics are in my view pretty much orthogonal. To put it another way, if I were religious, there’s nothing in theoretical physics that would change make me want to change my mind. However, I’ll leave it to those many physicists who are learned in matters of theology to take up the (metaphorical) cudgels with Professor Hawking.
Though I haven't read the book yet, i'm sure it will be the usual nonsense some people put just to get media attention for a while to fund their studies. No offense to Professor Hawking, whom I respect very much.
God and physics are in my view pretty much orthogonal. To put it another way, if I were religious, there’s nothing in theoretical physics that would change make me want to change my mind. However, I’ll leave it to those many physicists who are learned in matters of theology to take up the (metaphorical) cudgels with Professor Hawking.
Though I haven't read the book yet, i'm sure it will be the usual nonsense some people put just to get media attention for a while to fund their studies. No offense to Professor Hawking, whom I respect very much.
As usual, the media has taken a statement made by a scientist who understands precisely what it means and has the expertise to speculate on its implications, and oversimplified it to such an extent that it no longer has any serious meaning.
ReplyDeleteLet me summarize Hawking's argument.
In current models of the universe, given any state of the universe, the laws of physics can be used to run time forward or backward to obtain the state of the universe at any other time (to within the limits prescribed by quantum theory). In fact, if we could unify the current versions of GR and the Standard Model, we would be pretty close to being able to do this.
However, if we were not given any information about the state of the universe at any time, then quantum gravity, or string theory, or whatever else wouldn't help us at all --- we couldn't predict the state of the universe given no data!
So this theory wouldn't form a complete description of the universe. It's a combination of this theory AND the knowledge of the initial state of the universe (or the final state, or any state in between, mind you) that would form a complete description of the universe. This leaves room for God to choose the initial state of the universe, supposedly. And why? Because our current concept of time leaves one degree of freedom.
To see what I mean by this, suppose that time were discrete and that the universe proceeded from state S0 at time t = 0, when it begins, to state S1 at time t = 1 to state S2 at time t = 2 to state S3 at time t = 3, when it ends. The laws of physics would give S1 as a function of S0, and S2 as a function of S1, and S3 as a function of S2. That is, you'd get 3 equations but 4 unknowns. Of course you cannot solve for everything, but if you know what God decided to set S0 to, then you could solve for everything else.
Professor Hawking views this as a weakness in existing models. He proposes that it may be possible to construct a physical theory in which there is enough information, given just the equations, to solve everything. To do this, he invents the concept of "imaginary time" (in contrast with "real time" which is the time that we ordinarily perceive).
You could interpret this to mean that no longer would God be free to choose the initial state of the universe. And that's what the media statement is intended to convey.