Just made a connection … between the comment about Gould’s attitude to evolution and his theistic beliefs, according to Dennet, and the point Deutsch made about mainstream science that doesn’t become common-sense world view even of practicioners using that science.
(an insignificant stain of “scum? on an insignificant planet of an average sun nowhere special in an insignicant galaxy amongst countless others in this universe) – which is itself statistically highly unlikely given the multiverse of universes that exsist in reality – even if that were true – the future of the multiverse depends on the action of our life. Life is the most powerful force determining the future.”
I remember you positing this view when the big debate went on at Enlightened Caveman. I personally like the “stain of scum” view, so much less responsibility involved.
I looked up multiverse and only found multiversity “a university with several campuses”. I think this misses the point, please explain your definition.
interesting that while science is taking away meaning, it is simultaneously trying to give it back.
we just can’t live without it
Multiversity is clearly something else 🙂
I was using Multiverse in the Everett / Wheeler sense, as best explained for me in Deutsch. In my own words … the idea the the “whole” of reality consists of a (potentially) infinite number of universes.
(Where a “universe” is the cosmological thing we’d probably characterise as expanding from the big-bang – the thing with all the matter and laws of physics in it that we would normally think of as the whole world.)
The multiplicity of these universes is an explanation of how simultaneous quantum chance “decisions” are resolved – one outcome in this world, one in a parallel universe, and we don’t “know” which of these world we’re in until the “collapse” of that quantum event, so both must exist. There are as many universes as there are quantum events !
As I said a most un-common-sense thing to believe in, but full of explanatory power. (See Deutsch – Fabric of Reality)
John Gribbin’s Cartoon History of Time has a great visual image of the Multiverse as a river of foam flowing through time, where each bubble is a universe.
“First it giveth, then it taketh away.” Spooky. That’s a quote from Queens of the Stone Age, who I saw last Wednesday, and the quote was used by Gavin in his paper at the MoQ Conference last month. (But he was talking about drugs, not science 😉