Old school science goodness on the comeback?

In the 1990s, there was a dearth of good science and natural philosophy books. A number of reprints of older as well as entirely new publications authored by Paul Davies hit the shelves along with two interview series with Phillip Adams. A series of enjoyable books by John Gribbin (Schrodinger’s Kittens was my favourite book by Gribbin) seemingly sprung from an inexhaustible source, earlier editions of the ubiquitous A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking nestled away in every science section of a Dymocks store and of course, there were several books on evolutionary biology by Richard Dawkins.

If you wanted something really weird, you could usually find a copy of Shadows of the Mind, by Roger Penrose (which upon reflection, I’m not sure I wish I’d bought it) which with its air of mystery, usually lured some store attendant to stock books equating quantum mechanics (albeit a misunderstood caricature thereof) with Zen, in the wrong section (I’m sure a similar thing happens when UFOlogy and astrology books wind up in the science section of newsagents).

A lot of natural philosophy of late has been directed at conflicts with religion, which to be honest, has been a bit boring. Sure it’s important and I don’t want the issue to go away as there is a lot to be said and learned on the topic by all sides in the debate and the consequences of ignorance aren’t particularly attractive.

Maybe it’s a symptom of 9/11? People have pulled their heads in and become less inquiring about the rest of nature, and become overly obsessed with addressing their neighbour’s belief in fairies at the bottom of the garden, pink unicorns and so forth. Overly afraid that the imaginary pink unicorn will tell their neighbour to go kill something or someone.

Perhaps things will change. People seem less happy to give away their freedoms in return from protection from exaggerated risk, so perhaps the time of those inclined towards natural philosophy will be given unto more enjoyable pursuits again.

Maybe a recent development will help speed things up.

Stephen Hawking is back at it again. Two years ago, Hawking and Hertog put forward an alternate model to explain the big bang. Put simply, one were all possible beginnings occurred, the beginnings conducive to producing a Universe, doing so and producing what we see today.

As Roger Highfield points out (with loaded language) in the The Telegraph, there were of course problems;

“But, like any new idea, there were problems. The professors found that they could not explain the rapid expansion – inflation – of the universe, evidence of which is left behind all around us in what is called the cosmic microwave background, in effect the echo of the big bang, a relic of creation that can be measured with experiments on balloons and on space probes.”

(Roger Highfield, 2008 )

The perhaps unintentionally loaded reference to “creation” aside (which reminds me of a passage in A Brief History of Time where Hawking criticised the Vatican for not understanding his then model by praising him for not over-reaching his authority and talking about “before” the big bang*), the model, as Highfield says, would have to be in step with the observed expansion of the Universe. This however, has been solved with recent amendments to the model.

This now-improved model is consistent with current observations, as well as being consistent with string theory, which at least in my view isn’t yet a science. String theory, while elegant and explanatory, doesn’t make observable predictions. Not that being consistent with string theory (or M-theory or whatever version/name you want to assign) is a flaw in Hawking and Hertog’s model of course.

Highfield finishes by saying that the next step will involve the generation of specific, observable predictions so that the model can be tested.

I look forward to it.

~ Bruce

* Not very science friendly this idea of verboten topics. “Fertile humus” indeed.