What Happened Before the Big Bang
Posted on 21 January 2012
For those of you who believe that technological progress cannot exist in the Dark Age, I will point to the following paragraph. We are in a Dark Ages now. He is another exhibit in the case:
Last May, Stephen Hawking gave a talk at Google’s Zeitgeist Conference in which he declared philosophy to be dead. In his book The Grand Design, Hawking went even further. “How can we understand the world in which we find ourselves? How does the universe behave? What is the nature of reality? Where did all this come from? Traditionally these were questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead,” Hawking wrote. “Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics.”
Stephen Hawking proves that, as an amateur philosopher, he is a fine professional physicist.
As a spokesman for the barbarism of the intellect, he is ironically eloquent. Philosophy dead? Say, rather, that reason is dead. Whether true or false, the sentence reflects poorly both on the man who says it and the era of which it is said.
I am not alone in the opinion, albeit others may voice my objection less forcefully. I admit I now begin to understand certain philosophical opinions I have come across frequently of late, voiced by men who do not realize that they are voicing (amateur) philosophical conclusions, and who, indeed take a Conan-esque pride in their lack of philosophical training.
Such men will utter inane philosophy (usually something that can be refuted in a paragraph, or a sentence) and burst with unseemly pride that they are above the foolish triviality, hair-splitting and vain speculations of philosophy.
To a degree, their pride is justified. They are not doing philosophy, that is, they are not attempting to reconcile their various opinions and positions and morals with their reason, and they are not using their reason to live life virtuously. Their philosophical errors are many, but all share the one common property that they cannot be used as a basis on which to erect a moral code. Philosophy is not merely speculation about the nature of words and ideas: it is habituation to the question of how best to live and how best to die.
But being irrational in thought and vice-addicted in deed is not of which to boast.
That’s the problem with being famous. They’ll print anything you say. Still, philosophy is in good company here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/one-last-mystery-for-stephen-hawking-women-6285978.html
“Last”? I think there are a million things under heaven and earth that will forever remain a mystery to a mind as closed as Hawking’s.
I ordinarily respect Hawking and consider his many contributions to modern society to be laudable. But methinks he’s gone down a road I’ve seen more than a few science fiction writers go down to: having filled themselves up with pride in the technical discernings and accomplishments of modernity, they conclude that we’ve somehow magically graduated from being human beings.
There is nothing in science itself, nothing in the understandings of physics nor chemistry nor engineering, which instructs a man how to live. These are tools. A tool is neither moral nor immoral, and it offers no suggestions as to how it ought to be used. If used at all.
We derive these answers from ourselves — from understanding how human beings work, our eternal flaws, and how best to mitigate against them. And yet, we conclude that philosophy is dead. Morality? Also dead. Unless it’s the expedient moralizing of the socialist or the “green” zealot. I used to look at films like BLADE RUNNER and shudder that we should ever achieve such a barren, technologically-dominated desert of the soul.
But it seems we’re determined to get there, and very quickly too.
Our reigning class of “smart set” folk certainly seem determined to abandon the “old wisdoms” as quickly and as rapidly as possible.
The way I see it, science is a differential equation: religion is a boundary condition.
And you can quote me on that.
A curious experience last night. I had just finished my comment above, when I swiveled around in my chair and…. I realized I was not alone. Alan Turing was standing by my chair: the same flannel trousers, held up with an old tie, the same cowlicked hair, the same fusty sports coat. “Go away!”, I cried, “Your type aren’t needed anymore.”
“I have been sent to warn you, Nostreculsus” came Alan’s reedy voice. “Warn you to repent yours sins…” He began to stammer. “…your sins against Science”.
“Humbug!” I snapped. “My sins? Go and visit Phil Jones.”
The shade solemnly intoned, “Science is a differential equation: religion is a boundary condition.”
I was caught. “Err…yes. I admit that was yours. I suppose I inadvertently quoted your work without attribution. A grievous scientific sin, to be sure. But, how can that matter? You aren’t even real.”
“You don’t believe in me,” observed the Ghost.
“I don’t.”
“What evidence would you have of my reality, beyond that of your senses?”
“I don’t know,”
“Why do you doubt your senses?”
“Because,” I noted, “a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”
At this the spirit raised a frightful cry. ” For my sins, I am condemned to walk this earth and warn others of my drear fate. Repent, Nostreculsus. For you there is still time.”
The apparition began to fade but the halting, high-pitched words could still be heard. ” You will be visited by three Spirits: the Ghost of Science Past, the Ghost of Science Present and…by….” The sound was inaudible.
This is why I love this blog.
I doff my hat to the master. You are brilliant, sir.
I just got done arguing with a vehement Gnostic science-worshiper. He was even less articulate, more arrogant, and more unable to follow a simple syllogism than others of his breed, so I was left with the unpleasant impression that the Ghosts of Science-worship are far less polite and concerned for the well being of the living than the Ghost of Christmas.
I would love to see the Ghost of Science Past with her alchemical flame, her theory of humors, her Ptolemaic astronomy, her perfect celestial motions and other Aristotelian elegance.
Also, I would love to see the silent and grim spectre of the Ghost of Science Future, a decaying and rusting cyborg, where materialism and multiculturalism and nihilism has finally convinced politically correct scientists that Science is an instrument of oppression grounded on nothing, false because all attempts at comprehensive and absolute truth are held to be false.
Philosophy is not merely speculation about the nature of words and ideas: it is habituation to the question of how best to live and how best to die.
I prefer to say philosophers are people who get older, but haven’t grown up. Like a child, anything anyone tells them they respond to with the question, “why?”. Some of them get legitimately side tracked on roads that have not yet led them to explore your particular questions. (And anyway, I think the end of all philosophical roads, the philosophical Rome, is Him who calls Himself “I AM”, but who I call “the LORD”.)
Other scientists are similar to philosophers, but respond to anything anyone tells them with “how?” or “what did?”.
Philosophy will only die when we become incurious. Fortunately, curiosity kills only cats. (Anyone with an older cat will tell you how true a statement that is.)
How can we understand the world in which we find ourselves? How does the universe behave? What is the nature of reality? Where did all this come from?
Even the nature of the questions he thinks to ask are revealing. The answer to the first three must in his mind be “[through] scientific natural laws” and the fourth must have to do with the t dimension.
“Traditionally these were questions for philosophy.”
Poor thing… He is really to be pitied. It baffles me that an astrophysicist would not be able to marvel at the universe to the point of asking “Why?” It baffled my old unlettered uncle that anyone would not recognize the Creator just by looking at the sky.
In the words of Peter Kreeft, it doesn’t take a Ph.D. to get it — it takes a Ph.D. to miss it.
No luck yet on invoking his ghost. Two problems, I think: attribution, and he’s alive.
Which reminds me of what Stephen Leacock said about the Ph.D.:
‘The meaning of this degree is that the recipient of instruction is examined for the last time in his life and is pronounced completely full. After this no new ideas can be imparted to him.’
Lest anyone think this was a case of sour grapes, I should point out that Leacock had a Ph.D. himself when he wrote that.
My humor-ruining module is running at full capacity, so do excuse this comment.
But what about those people who have two PhDs? or, worse, having a PhD in one field go on to do a bachelor’s in another?
Nimium eruditionis habent.