As David Klinghoffer notes at Evolution News & Views, Paul Steinhardt , a Princeton theoretical physicist who worked on eternal inflation theory, sees the multiverse as a “fatal flaw” in the reasoning he helped advance, and is “stridently anti-multiverse today”:
“The multiverse idea is baroque, unnatural, untestable and, in the end, dangerous to science and society.”
Steinhardt and other critics believe the multiverse hypothesis leads science away from uniquely explaining the properties of nature. When deep questions about matter, space and time have been elegantly answered over the past century through ever more powerful theories, deeming the universe’s remaining unexplained properties “random” feels, to them, like giving up. On the other hand, randomness has sometimes been the answer to scientific questions, as when early astronomers searched in vain for order in the solar system’s haphazard planetary orbits. As inflationary cosmology gains acceptance, more physicists are conceding that a multiverse of random universes might exist, just as there is a cosmos full of star systems arranged by chance and chaos.
The big problem is that the multiverse is fashionable without serious evidence.
It’s something that’s just gotta gotta gotta be true. That’s the danger to science and society.
Note, for example:
“The multiverse is regarded either as an open question or off the wall,” Guth said. “But ultimately, if the multiverse does become a standard part of science, it will be on the basis that it’s the most plausible explanation of the fine-tunings that we see in nature.”
Right. See Copernicus, you are not going to believe who is using your name. Or how.
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Good for Dr. Steinhardt,,,
As to the main article
In the article, they are basically trying to ‘explain away’ the fine-tuning of the universe we observe by saying, ‘well, if such and such parameter were not as it were we would not be here to observe it’,,,
Lucky us! 🙂
The problem with their assumption, i.e. the assumption of ‘a universe habitable for observers’, i.e. livability, is that, as Robin Collins, Michael Denton, and Guillermo Gonzalez have now shown, not only is this universe habitable for life, i.e. livable, but this universe is also found to fine-tuned to be of maximum benefit for life just like human life to be able to discover the structure of the universe
The main problem that the naturalistic physicists/astronomers ran into with ‘anthropic selection’, i.e. ‘we observe a universe with fine-tuning because otherwise we wouldn’t be here’, is that other universes with other observers, with the same constants that they are currently trying to ‘explain away’, are much more plentiful,,,
Thus, let’s not forget grand-daddy of all problems in this area of ‘plentiful universes with other observers’, i.e. the Boltzmann Brains paradox.,,, a paradox which was wrought by Penrose’s 1 in 10^10^123 fine-tuning of the initial entropy of the universe.
Of course, there is also Leggett’s inequality that could be touched upon in regards to pointing out that consciousness is primary to reality in the first place, but I think the point is now sufficiently made that the naturalistic assumptions of these scientists, trying to ‘explain away’ the fine tuning of the universe, are what are leading them astray in their reasoning.
Sure there are some erroneously held beliefs that can be dangerous to science, but is the multiverse in that category?
Seems to me that at best the multiverse is not much more than speculation or scientific musings. What’s wrong with speculation? Why exactly is that dangerous, other than upsetting News? (along with aliens too I think!).
Seems some scientists support it and others like Steinhardt don’t. Perhaps the idea offends people of faith, but I’m not sure why it would.
roding,
“Seems some scientists support it and others like Steinhardt don’t. Perhaps the idea offends people of faith, but
I’m not sure why it would.”
I don’t think it’s a matter of being upset, rather, of the original basis for doing science being abandoned. It is the materialists who are upset with the inevitable if there is but one universe. The one universe we know of operates according to laws, and therefore, there is a law-giver. In a multiverse, everything being equal, is possible, in fact inevitable, even the law-giver himself; only he isn’t all that significant, given the many universes where he doesn’t exist. That seems more palatable for a materialist. The universe we already kkow to exist remains quite palatable to theists. i don’t see why anyone would be upset by it.