Letters to the Editor
Rob Seaman
Published Letters: 44 Editor's Choice: 4
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pseudoscience
[Read the article: We are meant to be here]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'll likely regret this. After issuing my tepid little reference to the rare Earth hypothesis and happening to mention Richard Dawkins, I clicked through to evolutionarydesign-dot-blogspot and realized that this combination made me seem a fellow traveler of this claptrap. Hence another reading recommendation: pick up a copy of the Skeptical Inquirer.
Let's contrast a passage from evolutionarydesign with one from a random physics textbook, say, Weinberg's "Gravitation and Cosmology". See if you can tell the difference, randomly shuffled:
A) The field equations for gravitation are inevitably going to be more complicated than those for electromagnetism. Maxwell's equations are linear because the electromagnetic field does not itself carry charge, whereas gravitational fields do carry energy and momentum (see Section 5.3) and must therefore contribute to their own source. That is, the gravitational field equations will have to be nonlinear partial differential equations, the nonlinearity representing the effect of gravitation on itself.
B) Instead of being “designed”, think of the anthropic constraint on the forces of the universe as an *inherent* energy conservation law that enables the universe to periodically “leap/bang” to higher orders of the same basic structure without violating the second law of thermodynamics.
Ok - well, I didn't try very hard, but then it isn't worth much effort. These are both topic paragraphs from the start of an essay (in the kindest use of the word) and a chapter. I think the prose from the GR book is exemplary and completely understandable to a lay person. That the chapter then immediately dives into really hairy tensor mathematics makes the clarity of its opening paragraph even more charming.
On the other hand, the prose from the wacky weblog doesn't describe a facet of the world, but rather insists on telling us what to think. Why would we have been thinking that the anthropic constraints were designed in the first place? What is the meaning of emphasizing the word inherent? Note the conflating of force and energy. Where Davies emphasizes the meaninglessness of considering temporal issues outside of time, here we are leaping and banging (I can only picture a broomstick to the ceiling to shut up noisy neighbors) periodically, i.e., in time to some cosmic music. I don't even know where to start to comprehend what is meant by "higher orders of the same basic structure".
And for some reason, pseudoscience is fascinated by entropy above all else. We orbit a star that is halfway through a 10 billion year run of squandering vast stores of hydrogen every millisecond - entropy really ain't that confining a constraint. But perhaps I just picked a bad paragraph, after all, Weinberg had an editor. So let's look at:
B, cont.) Then you have a perpetually evolving structure, where all of the so-called "anthropic problems" are resolved without need for apparent absurdities, like inflation or a singularity, when a causally connected universe with volume has a big bang, which also resolves all of the “anthropic problems”
...anybody have a clue what this is supposed to mean?
But I thought the Davies interview was actually pretty reasonable. And I'll go along with the thought that all (human) design is really evolutionary.
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A year in the life
[Read the article: Goodbye, Harry Potter]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Funny how the letter writers most irate about spoilers are the ones to include the most spoilers in their letters. No spoilers here. As others have indicated, I read the first half of the review and only read the second half after finishing the book earlier today.
The folks who wonder why the review even exists (or presumably why the book exists) in a world in which the American President out-umbridges Umbridge and the Vice President is Voldemort - are like the folks who wondered about going to the Moon when cancer stalks the world.
Life is more than our limitations. Without revealing if Harry lives, it is safe to reveal that Voldemort fails to triumph. Rowling is one more in a long line of artists to instill hope for a better day. Her story will be turning impressionable minds away from inward-looking evil for generations to come. Don't surround yourself with yourself.
Book seven is a good read, worthy of the rest of the series. I might suggest that books 5-7 should be regarded as one continuous Dumas (père) length novel. It's not too hard to draw parallels between D'Artagnan and Harry. Evil seeks the reins of government - how will it be defeated?