String Theory & God

[Ragamuffin_artist]

For anybody in the know: to what extent does String Theory and its implications open the possibility for the existence of God?

[Humphrey]

Well, if we found a theory of everything (String Theory being the main contender) there is a unique, self consistent description of reality. In the extreme version of this, there will be no room for God. The deity has nothing to do besides 'breathe fire into the equations' because there are no free parameters, no choices to be made and no room for design. But then we might ask ourselves, in the least extreme version, why there happens to be a coincidence between this theory and the biofriendly 'fix' of the universe. You would be entitled to ask 'why are things the way they are'. It's quite close to Charles Babbage's conception of God who creates "one general and comprehensive law, from which every visible form, both in the organic and inorganic world flows" and is more deserving of credit and glory than a god who intervenes in the course of creation.

As an addendum I should mention that string theory is getting a lot of flack at the moment for not making any testable predictions. See, for example, Peter Woit's blog http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/

[theshadowhost]

this one time i asked the internet to do my philosophy essays for me.

[Ragamuffin_artist]

Novice that I am, I am also a bit put off by the fact that here we have a theory that cannot be experimented on. I also question how it is known that these strings (which have never been seen and never can be seen) are known to exist in precisely 11 dimensions. For that matter, I even wonder what sort of evidence led people to believe that such strings even exist in the first place. When can we expect the LHC to start providing some answers to life's unanswered questions?

Anyone know where one could find an easy-to-understand intro to either String Theory and/or the Theory of Everything that an Art Historian such as myself could possibly grasp?

[Humphrey]

Novice that I am, I am also a bit put off by the fact that here we have a theory that cannot be experimented on. I also question how it is known that these strings (which have never been seen and never can be seen) are known to exist in precisely 11 dimensions. For that matter, I even wonder what sort of evidence led people to believe that such strings even exist in the first place. When can we expect the LHC to start providing some answers to life's unanswered questions?

Well it's something of a controversial topic at the moment. The grander the theory it seems, the harder it becomes to make testable predictions. For instance in this interview here with Paul Steinhart ( http://seedmagazine.com/content/article ... alison/P3/ ), he says:

...in the inflationary picture, because it allows an infinite number of patches of every possibility, there will always be some patches that actually don’t produce gravitational waves. Since you get an infinite amount of everything, it might be that we are living in one of those patches of the universe. How do we prove or disprove that idea?

It’s a very strange kind of science. To me, the playing field becomes uneven between a theory making testable predictions, versus a theory that is Teflon. From what I can tell, there is no observation that can disprove inflation. Some people even advertise that as an advantage. To me, that’s a new and unacceptable way of thinking.

The thing string theory has going for it (or so I am told) is that it is mathematically beautiful which is often a guide to truth. However, there is no doubt now that string theory does not do what it is supposed to do and exactly what, if anything, it does achieve remains a mystery.

Anyone know where one could find an easy-to-understand intro to either String Theory and/or the Theory of Everything that an Art Historian such as myself could possibly grasp?

I'm told Brian Greene's 'The elegant universe' is good.

[Humphrey]

When can we expect the LHC to start providing some answers to life's unanswered questions?

Well, it looks at the moment as if Fermilab might beat LHC to the Higgs Boson. If that the case LHC could end up being a very expensive white elephant.

[Ragamuffin_artist]

Thanks Humphrey. I actually just watched Brian Greene's 'The elegant universe.' (or parts of it, at least) Absolutely blows my mind. Which is why I'm somewhat surprised and mildly disappointed that this has essentially already turned into a dead thread. Pity.

[schmod]

When can we expect the LHC to start providing some answers to life's unanswered questions?

Well, it looks at the moment as if Fermilab might beat LHC to the Higgs Boson. If that the case LHC could end up being a very expensive white elephant.

Not necessarily. Fermilab have actually been systematically ruling out the existence of the Higgs boson across an increasingly large energy range. At this point, my money would be on the LHC not finding the Higgs. If it is found, it will almost certainly be in an energy range that the Tevatron (Fermilab's big accelerator) is not capable of reaching.

That all said, even though Fermilab's accelerator is scheduled to go offline shortly after the LHC goes online, their scientists have been publishing some of their most groundbreaking results yet, in the past year. Pretty impressive stuff.

The bad part of this is that the Standard Model would be incorrect. The good part of it is that the Physicists would stay employed, and that the LHC could potentially yield evidence that leads to newer, better theories. There are plenty of other uses for the machine, apart from verifying the existence of the Higgs.

We'll look really stupid if the Higgs exists, but outside of the LHC's energy range.

(As for the existence of God, I wouldn't really turn to String Theory. Much like religion, it's pretty much impossible to devise a test that can conclusively prove or disprove its correctness. It's more of a theoretical curiosity than something that could be put to good use. Quantum Mechanics, on the other hand, are well-understood, and could hypothetically be interpreted to offer 'proof' of the existence of some higher power.)

[Humphrey]

Thanks for that overview schmod, I was wondering whether Fermilab was in with a shot of finding the Higgs or not. The thing that worries me is the sheer level of hype which has gone into the LHC and whether it is going to be able to live up to expectations. Ragamuffin, what schmod says is right. Not many people talk about the metaphysical implications of String Theory; the focus is more on quantum mechanics (e.g Bernard d'Espagnat) and issues such as the apparent 'fine tuning' of the physical constants. It is usually unacceptable to mention God in normal scientific discourse for various historical reasons and because of its lack of testable scientific consequences (e.g "Because God exists, I predict that the density of matter in the Universe should be x and the fine structure constant should be y") but there is plenty of speculation out there (e.g Barrow and Tipler's 'Strong Anthropic Principle', Wheeler's 'Participatory Universe').

On general Cosmology for the layperson I would recommend the Royal Societies podcasts

http://royalsociety.org/page.asp?id=3093

John D Barrow has a number of lectures up at Gresham College which are worth a listen (e.g 'why is the universe so big?', 'what is a black hole?', 'What is the universe made of?').

http://www.gresham.ac.uk/events.asp?Pag ... &curPage=1

For sheer metaphysical speculation (some theological dross, but some interesting) I would go to the physics/cosmology section here:

http://www.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/faraday/Multimedia.php

George FR Ellis who is one of the world's leading theorists in cosmology is a contributor here. He also has a rather bland but interesting page here called 'An integrative view of science and cosmology' which I found quite useful.

http://www.mth.uct.ac.za/~ellis/cos0.html

[Gregory]

As I understand things, the fine tuning argument would become a non-starter in some respects - although one still has to explain why the universe exists... even if there are multiple dimensions there appears to be an elegant universe

All that said, string theory is not my forte

[Ragamuffin_artist]

Today (April 3), American National Public Radio's "Science Friday" just aired a panel discussion which included Professors Michael Turner, Lawrence Krauss, and Stephen Weinberg, and string theory champion Brian Greene. Topics included the viability of string theory and what to expect from the LHC. Here's a link to the episode (mp3/podcast in the top left corner): http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200904031