Customer Reviews

The Life of the Cosmos

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Lee Smolin's speculative book is revolutionary.
For him, physics are not mathematics, but biology. Cosmology is a question of natural selection. This selection happens via black holes, where universes are created with slightly different random new values for the parameters of the standard model in physics.
There are no eternal laws, only worlds which are the result of random and statistical processes of self-organization.

I agree, there are a lot of ifs in this book, with a crucial one on p. 93: 'If quantum effects prevent the formation of singularities ... then time does not end in the centre of black holes, but continues into some new region of space-time.'

Smolin explains that behind the central principles of relativity and quantum mechanics lies the essential fact that 'All properties of things in the world are only aspects of relations among real things, so that they may be decribed without reference to any absolute background structures.' (p.259)
For Smolin, the future of physics is to find a solution for the tension between the atomist description of elementary particles, and their relational use in the gauge principle. He believes that string theory is part of the solution.

Smolin's point of view is partly shared by the late Nobel Prize winner Ilya Prigogine in his difficult book 'The End of Certainty'.

Even if his theory is falsified, this book is a real bargain, because it contains magnificently clear (a real bonus) explanations of the 4 basic forces in physics, the gauge principle, symmetry breaking, quantum mechanics, gravity, the second law of thermodynamics, the theory of natural selection, Leibniz's philosophy, the reason why mathematical and logical truths may be eternal ... I could go on.
Into the bargain, it contains a deadly attack on determinism and a very polite but definitive refutation of the anthropic principle.

A great book by a true and free humanist.

Smolin attempts two things in this book: to put forth a novel idea of how the laws of nature have come to be as they are, and to develop for the non-expert reader the context of why such an explanation of the laws of nature is necessary. The novel idea, cosmological natural selection, which has been described in other reviews, is fascinating. Whether or not it is true, or how it could be proven either true or false, is deeply problematic. Regardless, Smolin has demonstrated that we can provide a consistent answer to the cosmological argument without resorting to theistic reasoning. And unlike the extreme reductionists, he accounts for the full intricacy of the physical, biological, and cultural world we live in. The second function of this book, providing a context for his theory, is an even more successful endeavor. The subject matter here is much the same as Paul Davies' "The Mind of God," but Smolin's book is more comprehensive. Despite being the most poorly copy-edited book I have ever encountered, I consider this a great book.

I was looking forward to reading this book (despite the tiny type size mentioned previously) but found myself struggling with it. This is not because it is too technical, but more becaue of the verbose style of the author. The text is filled with tautologies and sentences that just don't make sense. One can get the gist of what Smolin is saying, but the repetition at times within the same paragraph was annoying enough to take the shine off the story. The book could be quite a bit shorter. The copious typos didn't help either.

That said, there is plenty if interesting stuff to ponder here. Perhaps because Smolin is trying to appeal to a popular audience, I sometimes found his explanations lacking in depth - for example, the assertion that certain parameters that determine the composition of the universe and its hospitability to life are fine-tuned to an accuracy of one part in 10 to the 60th power. Not being a physicist or mathematician, I can only take what Mr Smolin says at face value. I'm also not sure about black holes being the generators of new universes - it strikes me as an idea that can never betested or proved. Perhaps the development of the grand theory that Mr Smolin ultimately hopes for will provide further support for his cosmological natural selection, through testing of new mathematical models. But I still feel that much of what he is saying will always remain beyond the scope of science, and to a large degree must be taken on faith. But I take my hat off to him for thinking so big.

A unified theory that would give us an objective and complete view for our world has always been the dream of physicists.

Lee Smolin in his extraordinary book illustrates many significant views of the obstacles facing the unification of general relativity and quantum theory into one universal cosmological theory that could provide us, in principle, an objective and complete understanding for the universe as a whole. In his masterpiece, he does not only explains the previous efforts to approach such a theory like the string theory or inflationary models, but also discusses the philosophical obstacles facing them in a very persuasive and intellectual way. Furthermore, he proposes a theory, which he calls "The cosmological natural selection", that is similar, to a certain extent, to the evolution theory in Biology in which universes are a product of a bounce or explosion in a black hole when the matter reaches a certain density. Unlike the case of singularity in which time just ceases, Smolin proposes the continuity of time and an explosion which will 'slightly' change the parameters of the elementary particles, or their physical properties (mass, charge, etc.), in that new created universe. These parameters are the rule for creating more universes if their settings allow the universe to have more black holes and thus, more new created universes.

What is most interesting I think is the type of questions that the author poses in each chapter. For they spark a very deep, yet casual, philosophical wonders that puzzled our world for centuries. This book is for anyone who would like the taste the joy on an intellectual philosophical and scientific journey that tries to unveil some of the mysteries of this world.

A unified theory that would give us an objective and complete view for our world has always been the dream of physicists.

Lee Smolin in his extraordinary book illustrates many significant views of the obstacles facing the unification of general relativity and quantum theory into one universal cosmological theory that could provide us, in principle, an objective and complete understanding for the universe as a whole. In his masterpiece, he does not only explains the previous efforts to approach such a theory like the string theory or inflationary models, but also discusses philosophical obstacles facing them in a very persuasive and intellectual way. Furthermore, he proposes a theory, which he calls "The cosmological natural selection", that is similar, to a certain extent, to the evolution theory in Biology in which universes are a product of a bounce or explosion in the blackhole when the matter reaches a certain density. Unlike the case of singularity in which time just ceases, Smolin proposes the continuity of time and an explosion which will change the parameters of the elementary particles, or their physical properties (mass, charge, etc.), in that new created universe. These parameters are the rule for creating more universes if their setting allow the universe to have more blackholes and thus, more new created universes.

What is most interesting I think is the type of questions that the author poses in each chapter. For they spark a very deep, yet casual, philosophical wonders that puzzled our world for centuries. This book is for anyone that would like the taste the joy on an intellectual philosophical and scientific journey that tries to unveil some of the mysteries of this world.

This is a beautiful book, to be read by everyone who is fascinated by the ongoing quest to unify cosmology and particle physics. The author has a cute idea - that the familiar multiple universes undergo a process of evolution and natural selection - but he goes much further, into the philosophical foundations of quantum theory and the basic notions of space and time. I particularly enjoyed (and found convincing) his claim that we are living in a period, analogous to the early years of this century, when the shared ideas that have been so productive, have become inadequate. A new paradigm is needed, according to Smolin, one that takes into account the self-organizing properties of the Universe, and the inter-relationships between all of its components. One doesn't have to agree with the author to appreciate the originality of his ideas, the clarity of his arguments (masterful explanation of black holes, for instance) and his candid description of his own struggle to break away from conventional thinking about fundamental physics issues. Smolin thinks big, but he is not afraid to admit that his theories are not fully worked out, and that many scientists object to his ideas (I, for one, could not follow his rejection of fixed external physical laws, when his theory of incrementally evolving Universes seems to require just that). But no matter - anyone who wants to appreciate (without math!) what is really happening on the frontiers of physics should read this book. One gripe: the book is set in a font so tiny that it's almost unreadable.

If I had to take just one book on a deserted island this would be it. Lee Smolin is a first-rate genius! And despite the fact that this book is over ten years old (granting that years in the science world are more akin to dog years) it has stood the test of time through its shear elegance. There are really more concepts in this book than a simple book review can do justice, but I wanted to point out with this review that what Smolin proposes in this book (cosmological natural selection) is THE most logical, graceful and sweeping "Theory of Everything" that I have ever come upon. Even Smolin's erstwhile nemesis Leonard Susskind had this to say about him: "I'm not sure why Smolin's idea didn't attract much attention. I actually think it deserved far more than it got." Please be aware that Susskind is no fan of Lee Smolin; in fact, Smolin is heavily critical of string theory (see his 2007 book The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next). I very much appreciate Smolin's insistence on falsifiability - I completely agree with him in his reasoning that any scientific proposal that seeks validity must be able to be proven empirically - otherwise, what is the point?

As I stated above, there are many concepts that Smolin works through (there is essentially no math involved) in physics, philosophy and religion. The net effect is to build a very compelling argument that the entire Universe "may" be designed for the sole purpose of propagating itself (this is also called the fecund universe theory) - all through the power of natural selection - where Information is what is being reproduced. In essence, Planck units are the galactic equivalent to DNA (Genius!). A few key terms are emergence, self-organizing non-equilibrium systems, and critical systems. Throughout the book Smolin continuously doubts the Eternal-ness, Absolute-ness, or Foundational-ness of, well, of `Everything'. Indeed, if I understand Smolin correctly, many of the things which we take for granted (space, time, mathematics, or what is generally meant by Platonic Forms) are mere illusions that are created through the process of cosmic natural selection and therefore have no meaning other than what exists in "this world" as well as what we humans ascribe to them. There is no need in talking about anything (such as a Divine Observer) that exists outside of time, or outside of this one reality because it isn't necessary, possible or falsifiable. It is a very bold conclusion which Smolin brings forth from his intellectual forebears - Leibniz, Einstein and Darwin!

In conclusion, I strongly recommend this book for anyone interested in philosophy, physics or biology. Furthermore, it is fairly easy to follow, Smolin does take for granted a basic knowledge of the history of science, but this is not essential to understanding his arguments. When you read this book, you might just find yourself believing, like I do, that Smolin's book is right on time.

This is a wonderful book. Smolin proposes many original ideas and, while elaborating on them, clearly explains a wide variety of scientific concepts and their implications, including aspects of galactic evolution and structure, biology, particle physics and quantum mechanics. (I found his explanations clearer than those in Hyperspace by Michio Kaku. And, despite the diversity of subjects which Smolin addresses, he remains focussed throughout on his central ideas, thus distinguishing his book from the fascinating, but more diffuse, book about consciousness, The Emperor's New Mind by Roger Penrose, which covers a similarly broad range of topics.) Smolin's central ideas are: that our universe sprang from a black hole embedded in another universe; that universes whose physical constants permit the abundant creation of black holes are more likely to spawn other universes; and that the physical constants which characterize our universe therefore can be thought of as resulting from Darwinian competition. Smolin also points out that, wonderfully, these same physical constants yield the most interesting and complex worlds, filled with stars, galaxies, atoms, complex molecules, life and, best of all, seemingly endless novelty. Another bold idea (an elaboration on a theme by Leibniz) is that the world is relational (i.e., everything can be explained solely in terms of everything else) and therefore any attempt to "step out" and view the world from an absolute, objective, external perspective - and to derive natural laws based on that perspective - must fail. Equally thought provoking are Smolin's extensive discussions of life and living systems. His arguments suggest (but never expressly state) that life is more widespread than most people currently imagine. Although Smolin is a physicist, not a philosopher, his book raises many deep epistemological and metaphysical questions. Plus, to top it off, it's beautifully written - clear and straightforward from start to finish.

I must not understand black holes. One of Smolin's most interesting conjectures in this book is that the Big Bang of our universe is just the rebound from the collapse of a black hole within some larger universe, and that within all black holes in our universe, the rebounds from the collapse of those black holes are themselves Big Bangs forming new universes in their own right. Thus we have universes within universes within universes, and the universe of universes always was and always will be, something like the Christian God.

That in itself isn't such an original idea. After all, the dopers in the movie, Animal House, imagined a universe in the atoms of their fingernails, and universes within the...well, you get the idea. Smolin's innovation is to imagine that as the black hole collapses towards the Singularity, when the size of the collapsing matter reaches Planck dimensions (ten to the minus thirty-third centimeters), currently unknown quantum effects take over and the singularity never actually gets a chance to form. Instead, all the matter rebounds in a Big Bang forming another universe as explained above, but with this little wrinkle: the basic constants of nature (the masses of the elementary particles and the strengths of the basic forces) change ever so slightly. In this way, Smolin imagines a form of "natural selection" for the basic constants, in which universes that produce the maximum number of black holes are selected for (since they produce the greatest number of "offspring"). Hence the laws of nature evolve towards a universe like ours, which produces a lot of black holes. As a corollary, Smolin shows that when the basic constants are adjusted to maximize the number of black holes, the universes so produced contain the necessary complexity to produce biological life as a natural by-product. So we're not so special: we "belong" here due to the particular values of the fundamental constants chosen by a process of natural selection.

Smolin was led to propose his theory of the evolution of the basic constants of nature because of the failure of physics (so far) to come up with a Grand Theory of Everything that predicts from basic principles the exact values of the basic constants. He spends some time analyzing the failure of string theory to do this, for example. Thus, Smolin's great innovation is to view the basic constants of nature as the result of statistical processes rather than through some supreme cosmic design.

Smolin spends a lot of time answering objections to his theory, principally trying to show that if you change any of the basic constants of nature ever so slightly from what we observe in our universe, fewer black holes would be formed. This assumes that this evolution of the natural laws has been going on for unimaginable ages and our universe is highly evolved, highly refined, and highly tuned, as a tiger or a human being presumably is on the planet Earth after billions of years of biological evolution.

Unfortunately Smolin never addresses the objections to his theory that most bothered ME. This must be because I have misunderstood all the popular books I've read on black holes (I'm not a physicist, just a dilettante), and maybe readers of this review can straighten me out. It's my understanding that because of time dilation caused by intense gravitational fields, from the standpoint outside of a black hole, the singularity will never actually form (except after an infinite "number" of years), and because of Hawking radiation, the black hole will evaporate completely before the matter within the black hole actually rebounds to form a new universe.

Okay. So let's say I misunderstand that point about how black holes work and the singularity actually does form within the timeframe of our universe (would someone please explain this to me). Smolin's conjecture is that the basic constants of nature only change SLIGHTLY at the rebound. This means that protons and neutrons still have essentially the same mass as they did before the rebound, that the force of gravity has only changed slightly, etc. Well, we know from current Big Bang theory that the universe goes through an inflationary period in which the total mass of the universe increased by a factor of ten to the hundredth power. So how come when we observe a black hole from outside we don't see its mass increasing by a like amount? Presumably if this actually happened all of the galaxies near the black hole would be gradually sucked into it. So where is my thinking going wrong here? These objections are so obvious to me that my understanding of black holes must be fundamentally incorrect. Otherwise Smolin and all the other physicists that have thrown up objections to his theories would have dealt with these problems

More importantly than any of the "natural selection through the reproduction of black holes", Smolin takes on the topic of why and how the forces of nature (eg. gravity) and the sizes of nature (eg. infinite space compared to the miniscule electron) are the way they we find them. He searches for a 'natural process' that explains these facts, instead of just searching for more facts. For any one who loves to watch the Discovery channel or nature shows or read Scientific American, etc. (and yet isn't involved in hard science) this book is PERFECT. I am a philosophy major that works in management and I loved this book. Dr Smolin's book is challenging, gives a good mental work out, it is intensly interesting and very informative for anyone.