Date: Mon, 27 May 1996 10:15:45 -0500
Subject: Re: waiting for Godel


>Gee Ralph, give me a little credit.  I know a meaningless parallel/
>analogy from real analysis [maybe at least sometimes], like I said.
>
>Some of this type of crap has been done about astronomy / physics /
>theology such that some people have told me that if I were really
>informed about science I would know that it leads right back to god.
>
>I don't think so.
>
>Lisa

This refers to the Big Bang theory. Several years after Einstein published
his theory of general relativity, people came up with solutions for the
evolution of the universe in which, as you go back in time, you suddenly
hit a time when spacetime is a single point, with infinite curvature,
energy density, etc. -- a point where some quantity like those goes to
infinity is called a singularity. Later on, in the 1960's, Hawking and
Penrose proved several theorems about the necessity of obtaining a
singularity in various conditions. To some people, I suppose, the idea of a
singularity some finite time ago leads inevitably to god, through some idea
of a First Cause or some such mysticism. Clearly, the laws of physics are
of no use at a singularity, and furthermore they don't allow you to
extrapolate past it, so you can't give a causal explanation of why the
universe happened. Why people should think the existence of some mindless
primordial fireballimplies that of god is beyond me. In any case, we know
very well that general relativity breaks down before the singularity is
reached, and that quantum gravity effects will be important. Quantizing
gravity even offers a stab at answering the question "Why?" by saying that
the universe was one of the possibilities allowed by the laws of physics
and the vacuum (in quantum field theory, the vacuum is an extremely
complicated object, but explaining why would take us far afield), existing
outside of time and space, would at some point make a transition to some
other state, which happened to be the one that led to the universe.
Explanations like this, of course, are really outside the domain of science
for the nonce, but I still like them a lot better than "god." The only
logically justified statement you can make is that if you go far enough
back, it leads to a mystery, which is hardly shocking considering that we
are pretty sure our knowledge will always be limited. If somebody wants to
be clever and say that mystery is god, it means nothing at all.

Rahul




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