The Return of the Aristotelian Repressed

[Bubba_Switzler]

This fall, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences will host a conference in Vatican City titled “Scientific Insights into the Evolution of the Universe and of Life.” A notable presentation will be by Cambridge University theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, the most recognizable face in today’s scientific world. The title of his presentation: “The Origin and Destiny of the Universe.”

Hawking’s view represents a daring revival of an ancient philosophical doctrine, associated with Aristotle, that the universe has no beginning. That much a fascinating 2006 article in The New Scientist makes clear.

The article notes how “unsatisfying” today’s cosmological thinking is because it requires the extraordinary fine-tuning of physical constants at the first moment of cosmic history, the Big Bang. The tuning was so fine that it suggests — God forbid! — an intelligent designer, precisely setting the control knobs to produce you and me.

From the perspective of secularism, this implication is unacceptable. The famous and totally hypothetical case for undetectable multiple universes is one attempt to get around the difficulty. In the infinity of such universes, one was set just right, totally by chance, to allow for the existence of life.

forward.com/articles/13034/

 

[tuviskazinai]

Thanks for posting this! Fascinating.

I was slightly disturbed by the end of the article:

We’re left wondering how Hawking came to be invited to address a Vatican audience given his view, whose main interest lies in the way it undercuts religious faith.

The great psychologist William James, for one, would not be surprised. He observed that most of us arrive at our opinions — whether on religion, politics or science — based not on a judicious weighing of evidence, but rather on the prestige of the ideas in question. That is, the prestige they confer on us. Even Vatican officials aren’t immune from such human tendencies, and the fact is that, the merits of his theories aside, Stephen Hawking is a very prestigious scientist. As I have come to realize from countless frustrating personal interactions, lots of religious folks feel a social need to affirm certain ideas, including scientific ones, outside the realm of their expertise. With their personal prestige at stake, they will not be dissuaded.

As an admirer of the Catholic Church, I’m disappointed to say that, in the Vatican’s strange embrace of Hawking, we can observe that same depressing dynamic at work.

Maybe I’m misreading this, but I don’t think it makes any sense at all. He is saying that we arrive at our opinions based on prestige rather than evidence, and that that is bad. And yet he thinks that the Vatican’s invitation of Hawking falls down on the side of “reaping prestige” rather than “a judicious [and unbiased] weighing of the evidence” – after spending the entire article talking about how Hawking’s hypothesis is contrary to 2000 years of traditional Church teaching. Isn’t this a bit bizarre?

I, for one, think it’s great that the Vatican has the courage to listen to an alternative point of view, to consider Hawking’s argument on its own merits, and to be open to the evolution of its own understanding of the universe.

Peace,
+AMDG+

PS - Let us pray for Hawking, who has recently been quite ill…