Last week’s Blog highlighted an interview with “renowned cosmologist,” Lawrence Krauss, a professor at Arizona State, concerning his recent Big Bang book. My only comment was in the title of the Blog, where I suggested that it was a good example of mainstream confusion. Turns out that I am not the only critic disgusted with the media’s pandering to such claptrap. Here is an adamant man-in-the-street response from the leader of the Rock and Roll band, “Tricks,” from Michigan. I couldn’t have written it better myself:
This is a blog that takes the name of my magnum opus on scientific philosophy called "The Scientific Worldview." Reviewers have called it “revolutionary,” “exhilarating,” “magnificent,” “fascinating,” and even “a breathtaking synthesis of all understanding.” There is very little math in it, no religion, no politics, no psycho-babble, and no BS. It provides the first outline of the philosophical perspective that will develop during the last half of the Industrial-Social Revolution.
20120620
Dutkiewicz Blasts Krauss Interview on “A Universe from Nothing”
Last week’s Blog highlighted an interview with “renowned cosmologist,” Lawrence Krauss, a professor at Arizona State, concerning his recent Big Bang book. My only comment was in the title of the Blog, where I suggested that it was a good example of mainstream confusion. Turns out that I am not the only critic disgusted with the media’s pandering to such claptrap. Here is an adamant man-in-the-street response from the leader of the Rock and Roll band, “Tricks,” from Michigan. I couldn’t have written it better myself:
6 comments:
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The trouble with astrophysics summaries that has been dumbed down for non-expert consumption is that the average reader is too ignorant of the subject matter to understand the complexities. Whatever makes the author believe that musicians have what it takes?
ReplyDeleteThe underlying problem is that the common meaning of "nothing" is not consistent with the scientific version of "nothing". This is further complicated by the fact that many scientists will assert that there is actually no such thing as "nothing". An infinitely small singularity could probably be defined as "infinitely small space/time/energy/potential particle". The average person is no closer to understanding this than they have of understanding the concept of double figure dimensions.
Thanks so much Rosemary. I will have a response on next Wednesday's blog.
ReplyDeleteJust an update on this whole theory of something from nothing. Coyne had a bit on it in his blog:
ReplyDeletehttp://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/neil-degrasse-tyson-blows-it-big-time/#comment-402286
My comment to him was:
This snafu just shows how absurd creationism is. The Big Bang Theory (BBT) is no exception. It is amazing that in 2013 grown men still talk of the universe exploding out of nothing. How could the universe not be infinite and eternal? How could it have an end? As I have said before, the opposite of the indeterministic assumption of creation is The Fifth Assumption of Science, conservation (Matter and the motion of matter can be neither created nor destroyed). Otherwise known in its energy form as the First Law of Thermodynamics, there are no known exceptions to this assumption, just as there are no known exceptions to the determinist’s assumption that there are causes for all effects. What we are seeing here is the breakdown of a paradigm destined for the dustbin that includes the “Flat Earth Theory.” The BBT is the last gasp of creationism.
Here is Albert's NYT critique of Krauss:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books/review/a-universe-from-nothing-by-lawrence-m-krauss.html?_r=5&
It is not that bad, except for his even-sillier than Krauss conclusion:
"And I guess it ought to be mentioned, quite apart from the question of whether anything Krauss says turns out to be true or false, that the whole business of approaching the struggle with religion as if it were a card game, or a horse race, or some kind of battle of wits, just feels all wrong — or it does, at any rate, to me. When I was growing up, where I was growing up, there was a critique of religion according to which religion was cruel, and a lie, and a mechanism of enslavement, and something full of loathing and contempt for everything essentially human. Maybe that was true and maybe it wasn’t, but it had to do with important things — it had to do, that is, with history, and with suffering, and with the hope of a better world — and it seems like a pity, and more than a pity, and worse than a pity, with all that in the back of one’s head, to think that all that gets offered to us now, by guys like these, in books like this, is the pale, small, silly, nerdy accusation that religion is, I don’t know, dumb."
All just angels and pins, but it is ever-interesting to see how it all shakes out.
Angels, pins, and ad hominems.
ReplyDeleteThe average person cannot hope to grasp the concept of nothing? The pope would say that same thing about the angels and pins problem. And I don't buy his spiel either.
For one thing, Rosemary's "infinitely small" is not a measurement that means anything, unless you make no distinction between fantasy and reality.
When your concept of reality is full of illogical paradoxes, you are mistaking the menu for the meal.
You're a funny old crank. Krauss a religious thinker? Oh wow.
ReplyDelete