Tuesday, January 15, 2008

indigestion caused by scientific beauty



You think you've got problems of understanding, maybe. Poor astrophysics: "Big Brain Theory: Have Cosmologists Lost Theirs?," by Dennis Overbye, NY Times, Jan. 15, 2008.

The article at least dramatizes an absurdity of rendering mathematical physics in ordinary terms, but also suggests the ultimate reality of mind in "nature": Facing the edge of our capability. (Theoretical physicist Lee Smolin surmises that we haven't evolved far enough to create a mathematics adequate for decidability in quantum cosmology: The Trouble with Physics, 2006.)

The notion of multiple universes (the Multiverse) seems to be a way of expressing a regionality of physics (a "universe") in The Universe, i.e., in the Multiverse that yields Big Bangs and infinitely variable kinds of physicality. Most universes (the speculation goes) don't have a physicality that leads to stars, thus possibly to conditions for a biology that can become intelligent, then maybe (in at least our case) allowing for evolution of cosmomathematical capability, whose learning curve would inevitably include a history of paradigm dissolutions (with aporetic, even funny, ends). Our astronomy is looking through a fishbowl "universe," our Hubble Volume, which happens to express an anthropic region of the Multiverse.

What difference can any result of research in this area make? What's so fascinating is this interest of inquiry that's apparently for it's own sake, as I mentioned to Mr. Overbye some years ago.

I told him today: "To this philosopher, you've got the coolest journalism job on the planet."

He replied, in part: "...It is a fun job, when not nerve wracking."