Re: Stephen Hawking is wrong

[Jack Park <***>]

This paper is found at
http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/stephenhawkingwrong112201.htm
Jack

On 11/27/05, Rodrigo Peláez <***> wrote:
>
>
>
> With regard to the thoughts recently brought by Judith, I consider it
> pertinent to copy an article written by Hilary Lawson. I don't know how to
> attach an archive to the list, so excuse me the length of the post.
>
> On Sun, 21 Mar 2004 Tim Gwinn writes about a "…book entitled Closure: A
> Story of Everything by Hilary Lawson (Routledge, 2001). After reading this,
> I find the ideas presented therein to be very enlightening and persuasive. I
> also find that they are consonant with Rosennean complexity in a very deep
> way, such that I feel it has opened up and broadened my understanding of
> complexity and its pervasiveness greatly."
>
>
>
> Stephen Hawking is wrong. By Hilary Lawson
>
> The notion that we might uncover the nature of the world through a
> combination of careful observation and logic goes back to the inception of
> the scientific project. It was the dream of the Enlightenment and it could
> even be said that this vision has defined modern western culture. A
> motivating and liberating force, it has given us a sense of progress, a
> sense that unlike previous cultures and other societies we are on the road
> to truth. Nevertheless, it is profoundly mistaken.
>
> In the closing pages of A Brief History of Time Stephen Hawking took a
> sideswipe at contemporary philosophy, arguing that it has been reduced to an
> analysis of language. In his haste to dismiss philosophy he allowed himself
> to misunderstand not only language but the nature of the world. Hawking
> makes the simple error of assuming that the world and our descriptions of it
> might be one and the same. In our descriptions of the world we divide it
> into things: trees and houses, people and events, stars and planets, atoms
> and molecules. But the world is not a thing or a combination of things, for
> these categories-these closures, as I call them-are the outcome of our
> descriptions. Instead, the world is open and it is we who close it. Through
> our closures we grasp the openness of the world as things, and out of these
> things we build stories and models through which we are able to intervene.
> But these stories and models are not the world, nor could they in principle
> come close to being the world.
>
> The world does not come pre-packaged and divided into its parts. We are not
> in a cosmic supermarket identifying cling-wrapped items of reality. Instead
> we find ourselves in openness, and in order to make sense of it, to have
> some means of intervening to certain effect, we realise closure. We do not
> form our closures in a vacuum. We find ourselves in a network of linguistic
> closures already realised and handed down by our culture from generation to
> generation. As biological organisms, we are already set up, through
> evolution, to generate certain types of sensory closure. These biological
> and cultural systems of closure have been adopted because they prove useful,
> not because they are true.
>
> Current theories of astrophysics, with tales of the big bang, black holes
> and antimatter, have the feel of science fiction. And in a sense that is
> what they are: the stories of contemporary science. These stories are not
> unconstrained; they do not allow anything to be said. For the stories of
> science have an internal logic which drives them forward. They are often
> useful. We live by our closures. But we should not imagine that we have
> thereby captured the secrets of the universe. Nor should we suppose that
> there are not countless alternatives, offering other ways of holding the
> world that may be equally valid.
>
> The closures of contemporary science appear to be unavoidable because they
> take their place in a system of closures that has been built and defended
> over centuries. When Hawking describes the universe as a vast array of
> galaxies exploding into the emptiness of space propelled by the energy from
> the original big bang, it is the outcome of a history of preceding closures
> which combine to make it look as if Hawkins's closure is the only available
> option. Yet there are other options, at every level of the account, from the
> tiniest detail to the most general theory; options that would grasp openness
> differently in some respect, that would draw attention to different patterns
> and different connections, and which would as a consequence offer different
> ways of intervening and to different purposes.
>
> In his new book, The Universe in a Nutshell, Hawking regards Newton's
> account of motion and his theory of gravity as the starting point for the
> contemporary scientific account of the universe. Instead, we should regard
> Newton as the initiator of a complex and elegant system of closures.
> Newton's centrality to science and to our culture obscures the limitations
> of his theory. We are dazzled by his importance and his influence and so
> overlook the mechanism of his closures.
>
> Since Newton every schoolchild has known that the apple falls from the tree
> because of gravity. Yet gravity cannot be detected or identified. We see
> only its consequences. Newton replaced one mystery, the falling apple, with
> a more profound one, the existence of something that cannot be seen or
> touched, and which causes change instantly across any distance. Newton's
> explanation was no less mysterious than the explanation that the apple falls
> to the ground because God made it do so. We have become so used to the
> notion of force that it seems to us now to be almost mundane in character.
> Yet Newton's theory, which proposed that the world is awash with
> undetectable and mysterious forces, is bizarre. There is evidence that
> Newton himself was concerned about the essentially mystical core to his
> theory (as Einstein would later be about his).
>
> There is also, throughout Newton's theory, a circularity: for the most part,
> the apple does not fall at all but remains on the tree. Newton has therefore
> to propose that another force is acting to keep the apple on the tree, a
> force precisely equal and opposite to that of gravity. And like gravity,
> this force is also undetectable. Force is Newton's explanation for change,
> but to any counter-example we choose to offer, Newton simply proposes a new
> force that is equally unidentifiable or provable. This circularity might
> appear a weakness, but the great strength of his theory was precisely that
> it could not be disproved. It is a circularity which ensures a solid core
> from which to build a system of closures. Where the theory proved useful, it
> could be applied. And where it was not, a complex amalgam of other forces
> could be envisaged to explain its failure. So gradually the web of
> explanation and closure grew. Over time, Newton's framework enabled others
> to extend and develop the system of closure until today we have the vast
> network of closures that make up the contemporary scientific account of the
> universe. Yet at its heart, the Newtonian system and its framework of forces
> remains as mysterious as when it was first proposed, and its seeming
> explanations are the circular outcome of a series of responses to previous
> failures of the system.
>
> Prior to Newton and Copernicus, the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic system
> proposed that the behaviour of the stars and planets was to be explained by
> the movements of vast celestial spheres. This system in the context of
> Newton's framework and our current perspective is wholely preposterous. Yet
> for centuries it was capable of predicting the movements of the stars and
> planets to a remarkable level of precision. It was used by sailors to
> navigate across oceans and was even able to predict irregular events such as
> eclipses. The success of a system of closure is not due therefore to its
> having accurately described the world. Its success is due instead to its
> ability to enable to us to intervene in what we take to be reality. Closures
> are not powerful because they are true. We hold closures as true because we
> believe them to be powerful.
>
> Thirteen years on from A Brief History of Time, Hawking has to admit, in The
> Universe in a Nutshell, that the goal of a theory of everything is no closer
> to being achieved. In fact, the structure of the new book is itself
> illustration of the failure of the grand project. For instead of a single
> unified account which gradually unfolds throughout the book, we have a
> series of piecemeal glimpses at aspects of contemporary physics. No doubt
> this structure was selected partly because of the demands of popular
> science, to make the book both different and accessible. But there is a
> deeper reason too. The attempt to describe contemporary physics as a single
> story makes the gaps and weaknesses more apparent. Piecemeal glimpses allow
> failures of the closure to be covered up and questions to be left
> unanswered. Moreover, there are signs that Hawking himself is beginning to
> become aware of the limitations of his own account. He now describes himself
> as a positivist, in the sense that we can only have evidence for choosing
> one model over another, rather than evidence for the model being reality. If
> Hawking took a further step and recognised that different models are not
> simply different accounts of the same reality but provide themselves
> different realities, he would have come closer to understanding the nature
> of the human predicament and the nature of the scientific closure that he is
> himself propounding.
>
> If we are to make progress in understanding the nature of ourselves and the
> world we need a theory of closure. Without such a theory we are at risk of
> mistaking the mechanisms of closure for the mechanisms of reality. Such a
> theory will need to provide a detailed explanation of how it is that even
> though closure has nothing in common with openness it is still capable of
> enabling precise and effective intervention. It will also have to address
> the question of how it is that a theory of closure is itself possible.
>
> A century ago Lord Kelvin declared, "There is nothing new to be discovered
> in physics now. All that remains is more and more measurement." Those like
> Stephen Hawking today who suppose that we are on the verge of finding the
> ultimate theory will be similarly embarrassed. If instead science gave up
> its metaphysical pretentions and stopped supposing that it was uncovering
> the essential character of the world, it would be stronger not weaker. It
> would be in a better position to entertain new theories, and new closures,
> which might enable more effective intervention in what we take to be
> reality. Just as science demonstrated the limitations of the closures of the
> church, so now we must come to terms with the limitations of the closures of
> science. We must see them for what they are: ways of holding the openness
> that is the world.
>
>