Tuesday, 10 September 2019

Is Philosophy Really Dead? - Hawking Tells Us So!

The Grand Design | Stephen Hawking

When we think about the universe, the galaxies, the stars, the planets, the solar system, the asteroids, the comets et al, we always subscribe to the myriad stories and theories galore that baffle and boggle our minds on these innumerable scientific discoveries, revolutions, and inventions that are part of a particular social milieu! Ain't we? ‘Paradigm shifts’ as Thomas Kuhn would call it!

One such book of our times that analyses and examines these paradigm shifts in the history of scientific revolutions down the ages right from the times of the Ionian Greeks, is the wonderful 2010 book titled, The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking!


If to Nietzsche the philosopher, God is dead, to Stephen Hawking the physicist, philosophy itself is dead! ;-)

In the very first chapter titled, ‘The Mystery of Being’, he vouches hard to this viewpoint when he says,

We each exist for but a short time, and in that time explore but a small part of the whole universe. But humans are a curious species. We wonder, we seek answers. Living in this vast world that is by turns kind and cruel, and gazing at the immense heavens above, people have always asked a multitude of questions: How can we understand the world in which we find ourselves? How does the universe behave? What is the nature of reality?

Where did all this come from? Did the universe need a creator? Most of us do not spend most of our time worrying about these questions, but almost all of us worry about them some of the time.

Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.

Moreover, to Stephen Hawking, it was not god who created man, but man, who created god! And as James Frazer traces this evolution of humankind from 'the black thread of magic to the red thread of religion to the white thread of science', so does Stephen Dedalus! oops Stephen Hawking!!!

Says Stephen –

Ignorance of nature’s ways led people in ancient times to invent gods to lord it over every aspect of human life. There were gods of love and war; of the sun, earth, and sky; of the oceans and rivers; of rain and thunderstorms; even of earthquakes and volcanoes. When the gods were pleased, mankind was treated to good weather, peace, and freedom from natural disaster and disease. When they were displeased, there came drought, war, pestilence, and epidemics. Since the connection of cause and effect in nature was invisible to their eyes, these gods appeared inscrutable, and people at their mercy.

But with Thales of Miletus about 2,600 years ago, that began to change. The idea arose that nature follows consistent principles that could be deciphered. And so began the long process of replacing the notion of the reign of gods with the concept of a universe that is governed by laws of nature, and created according to a blueprint we could someday learn to read.

His chapter 3 might enthuse ardent and avid devotees to Theory!

Reality, to the phenomenologists, the structuralists and all of their ilk has always been based on the premise that reality consists of objects and events as they are perceived or understood in the human consciousness, and not of anything independent of human consciousness (albeit with degrees of differences to their subjective quotients!!!) But that’s not the point here!



The point here is that, Stephen Hawking also tows this philosophical stance when he advocates a model-dependent realism, which ‘provides a framework with which to interpret modern science.’

Now therein-after lies a little contradiction of sorts, as I would garner or glean from his hypos!

Well, having said that philosophy is dead, he perpetually resurrects the great philosophers from their graves time and again, to cite and validate as authentic props for his conjectures and inferences! Why so? If philosophy is dead, why resurrect them again and again to augment one's hypos?

Says Stephen –

‘Philosophers from Plato onward have argued over the years about the nature of reality…!’

Then he adds,

For example, according to the principles of quantum physics, which is an accurate description of nature, a particle has neither a definite position nor a definite velocity unless and until those quantities are measured by an observer. It is therefore not correct to say that a measurement gives a certain result because the quantity being measured had that value at the time of the measurement. In fact, in some cases individual objects don’t even have an independent existence but rather exist only as part of an ensemble of many!

A different kind of alternative reality occurs in the science fiction film The Matrix, in which the human race is unknowingly living in a simulated virtual reality created by intelligent computers to keep them pacified and content while the computers suck their bioelectrical energy (whatever that is). Maybe this is not so far-fetched, because many people prefer to spend their time in the simulated reality of websites such as Second Life.

How do we know we are not just characters in a computer-generated soap opera? If we lived in a synthetic imaginary world, events would not necessarily have any logic or consistency or obey any laws. The aliens in control might find it more interesting or amusing to see our reactions, for example, if the full moon split in half, or everyone in the world on a diet developed an uncontrollable craving for banana cream pie. But if the aliens did enforce consistent laws, there is no way we could tell there was another reality behind the simulated one.

It would be easy to call the world the aliens live in the “real” one and the synthetic world a “false” one. But if—like us—the beings in the simulated world could not gaze into their universe from the outside, there would be no reason for them to doubt their own pictures of reality. This is a modern version of the idea that we are all figments of someone else’s dream.

These examples bring us to a conclusion that will be important in this book: There is no picture- or theory-independent concept of reality.

And hence, says Stephen, he adopts a view that he’d prefer to call the model-dependent realism!!!

According to model-dependent realism, it is pointless to ask whether a model is real, only whether it agrees with observation. If there are two models that both agree with observation, like the goldfish’s picture and ours, then one cannot say that one is more real than another.

One can use whichever model is more convenient in the situation under consideration. For example, if one were inside the bowl, the goldfish’s picture would be useful, but for those outside, it would be very awkward to describe events from a distant galaxy in the frame of a bowl on earth, especially because the bowl would be moving as the earth orbits the sun and spins on its axis.

Why-o-why do those immortal lines from the Beatles ping me hard this sudden?

I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together!

And there ladies and gentlemen, lies, [I guess,] some authentic specks to reality!

To be continued…

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