I received this interesting book as a gift. The person who gave it to me had an ulterior motive: she wanted me to explain it to her so that she could discuss it at embassy balls and other such social events. I thought I might as well pass along the result. It may give you a start if you find yourself in a similar situation.
"Our mind is the cosmic mind...we are how the universe thinks about itself...this is a life-transforming revelation, the substance of this book."
I appreciate it when an author tells me what the substance of his book is, saving me from having to guess and get it wrong. If you just wanted to know what the substance of this book is you can probably stop reading here. But we're only up to page six.
Disregard the sub-title, "A radical new vision for life in an imperfect universe." This sub-title is just Marcelo Gleiser's publisher trying to sell some books. Hey, business is business. I am sorry to disappoint anyone who actually is looking for a radical new vision for life in an imperfect universe. For that you might try LSD. For its greater part this book is a discussion of some ideas in science, sprinkled with philosophy.
The science in question is cosmology, although Dr. Gleiser also makes forays into biology and organic chemistry.
During working hours cosmologists ask "Where did the universe come from, and what is its nature?" Gleiser deals with these questions in an autobiographical fashion, recalling his changing states of mind from childhood up to the publication of this book. His various states of mind might be said to constitute the theme (not to be confused with the substance) of the book.
The central fact in cosmology is Edwin Hubble's observation that the light coming to us from most galaxies is shifted to longer wavelengths, toward the red end of the spectrum. This observation led to the conclusion that the galaxies are moving away from us, the universe is expanding, it is the movement in the "away" direction that stretches the wavelengths of light toward the red.
This conclusion makes the universe look like an explosion in progress, every part flying away from every other part. Playing this mental movie backwards, it seems logical to speculate that at some time in the past all the matter and energy in the universe was at one place, and then blew up in the famous Big Bang.
Getting this big bang to bang is tricky. Elementary physics suggests that if all the matter and energy in the universe was gathered together it would stay that way, held together by its own gravity. For several decades cosmologists have been trying to find some plausible non-elementary physics that would account for the expansion that itself seems an inescapable conclusion given the observed "red shift" of the light of the galaxies.
There is a serious stumbling block. Under the supposed conditions of the early universe two reliable mainstays of 20th century physics - the mathematics of general relativity and the mathematics of quantum mechanics - are incompatible. Calculations that combine the two maths give meaningless results.
Physicists are all mathematicians and many of them think very highly of math, to the extent that they are sometimes overwhelmed by the need to quote Pythagoras, "All is number," or Sir James Jeans, "God is a mathematician" (if anyone says either of these things to you at an embassy ball it would probably be best to be diplomatic and reply "Very perceptive, very profound," rather than being overly direct and replying "So, you're some sort of math dweeb, then?"). For people who think God is a mathematician it is a serious matter when math does not work.
Attempts to create a unified calculation method, one that would allow calculations in general relativity, quantum mechanics and any combination of the two, are referred to as the search for a unified theory, the Theory of Everything (an odd name since a unified theory, by definition, would be only a theory of one thing; it would not, for example, tell you how to get a date for Saturday night).
One attempt at a unified theory, one that has received a good deal of attention, is string theory. First proposed in the 1960s and rejected as non-functional, string theory was brought back from the grave in a less plausible, but putatively more functional, multi-dimensional form. Current string theory requires quite a few dimensions to work at all. Unfortunately there is no physical evidence for the existence of the additional dimensions, and none of the entities of string theory - strings, branes, etc. - are observable, and string theory has produced no unique statements that can be unequivocally checked against physical fact, giving rise to the seemingly reasonable criticism that string "theory" is not science at all, but simply a mathematical pastime like Sudoku, and string "theorist" are in fact just string gamers.
In the absence of a really impressive candidate for a unified theory, Gleiser has come to a conclusion that should be no surprise to students of Aesop: unification is not just unattainable, it is undesirable (Bad, unification, bad!). Gleiser argues that a search for unification is "monotheistic" and "fundamentally misguided," a harsh judgment on the efforts of mathematicians who have simply been trying to get the math to work. Is it misguided monotheism that drives a mechanic to want an automobile to run well? Should this mechanic instead glory in bangs, rattles and stalls? It appears that Gleiser, in his present state of mind, would answer "Yes!"
Gleiser explains that Mother Nature is imperfect (recall the book's subtitle). She has been known to disregard the standards of symmetry, beauty and parity that various mathematicians thought up for her right in their own heads.
Turning to biology, Gleiser discusses nature's asymmetry as revealed in the molecules that make up living things.
In the 20th century biology achieved a unification of its own, one that resulted from observation rather than computation. Biologist learned that all living things, from the bird high in the air to the bacterium deep down in the boiling thermal vent, use the same DNA, the same RNA, the same amino acids and most surprisingly the same genetic code (no Tower of Babel here), and this just begins the list of things that all living cells have in common. It appears that there is just one life on Earth, and oak trees, sperm whales, honey bees, mushrooms and our own clamorous selves are all members of the same family, all descended from the same primordial, pre-protoplasmic globule. Biologists didn't go looking for this unification. It, like the cell theory of life, the germ theory of disease and the theory of evolution, was something nature imposed on them when they went looking to see what was what.
Gleiser argues that while the appearance of life (at the single cell level, at least) here and there in the universe may be a common, rather than a miraculous or statistically unlikely event, the appearance of intelligence may be far more rare, perhaps so rare that we here on Earth are unique, the only thinking part of the universe and thus the "cosmic mind." Gleiser admits that there are those who think it equally likely that other, similar environments will host processes not greatly different from the processes that occurred here on Earth (my own view), and the inanimate universe may be as pregnant with thought as it is with life (Skeptics may wish to examine the work of Toshiyuki Nakagaki, who has looked for and found evidence of intelligence in slime molds, before coming to any conclusion. The elements of intelligence seem to be lying around, waiting to be put together, just like the elements of stars and bacteria). Gleiser considers such a view to be fraught with peril, as it may cause us to think of ourselves as nothing special, which in turn would lead to us being careless and destroying ourselves. This would be bad, even if we are not the only thinkers in all the endless starry heavens.
Gleiser feels that we would benefit from a "humancentric" view of existence. "The fact that we exist at all...is nothing short of wondrous...we are special for being alive and conscious of it." With this in mind, we should not let our one and only home, and ourselves, be finished off by the enormous destructive forces at work today. "Wake up and save life with all that you have...this is our supreme mission as the minds of the cosmos."
That last bit sounds like good advice. Will the author's thoughts turn out to have any more real-world relevance than string theory? In the interest of developing a reliable picture of the cosmos, to say nothing of a workable plan, it will probably be necessary to spend some time thinking about some of the things Dr. Gleiser did not include in his calculations.
In California there is the General Sherman tree, the largest of all trees presently on Earth. Not so long ago there was a larger tree. This tree lived for thousands of years among the Indians, who may have visited and contemplated this manifestation of the Great Spirit that dwells in all things. When American settlers arrived and encountered this largest and oldest of all living things, their response was immediate. They killed it and had a party on top of its stump, which was about the size of a tennis court.
The settlers were humancentric: "A tree is nothing, while we are the very image of God, the center and purpose of Creation, even if we, in terms of biology and behavior, are not much different from a cabbage or athlete's foot."
(The tree could be taken as a symbol of all life in the world, or the world itself. That might be the substance of the above parable.
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