Book Review

The wonder of perfect patterns

God’s Universe

It is hardly surprising that an astronomer should want to write about religion. To study the heavens without being overwhelmed by their beauty, their vastness and the unimaginable forces deployed in them, one would need to be extraordinarily insensitive to normal religious feeling. Owen Gingerich, Emeritus Professor of Astronomy and of the History of Science at Harvard, has given us a wise little book, displaying the humility and insight one might expect of someone whose life has been spent in the study of awe-inspiring mysteries. Brought up as a Mennonite, he was urged by his mathematics professor to pursue astronomy because "we can't let the atheists take over any field". This book consists of three open lectures delivered to student audiences. They are personal, anecdotal and meditative, and are a welcome reminder that not all American Protestants are Creationists or advocates of Intelligent Design.

The first lecture, quaintly entitled "Is Mediocrity a Good Idea?", centres on what is usually known as the Copernican Principle. This gives iconic status to the so-called Copernican Revolution, whereby Earth was displaced from its former position at the centre of the universe, and relegated to a less prestigious role as one among a group of planets, circling one star among millions of others, all within a universe of unimaginable vastness. Our demotion has continued as the idea has developed that even our universe may not be unique, but just one variant among billions of other possibilities. In consequence it is almost a point of honour nowadays among scientists not to assume that our world, or anything in it, occupies a privileged position among innumerable other possible worlds and universes. And as a further illustration of our mediocrity, there is no reason either to assume that life is unique to this planet.

It would seem that we have a choice. We can either assume that life is so special that it is extremely rare, perhaps even unique to our world, or so common that we ought to be looking for it everywhere. The intensity of the search for extraterrestrial life suggests the latter. In fact, if we take the Copernican Principle seriously we are almost bound to see ourselves as part of a cosmos teeming with life and intelligence. But in doing so it also carries the implication that the whole cosmos, and not just that little bit of it we ourselves inhabit, must be understood as being somehow rigged in favour of complexity, and ultimately in favour of life and mind.

If this is so, other consequences follow. The idea that the cosmos has a purpose somehow connected with living beings can no longer be disposed of as easily as some sceptics seem to imagine. If there is no good reason to see ourselves as unique, the result of extraordinary and improbable contingencies, the only alternative is to acknowledge that life is everywhere, the natural fruit of a universe, as it were, designed for it. Gingerich puts it like this: "Without quite knowing what the purpose of the universe is, we can at least conjecture that somehow we are part of that purpose, and that perhaps understanding the universe is part of the purpose. In that case, the universe might just be comprehensible because it is part of its purpose to be so."

But dare a scientist believe in design? The question provides the title of the second lecture. Bearing in mind the publicity devoted nowadays to so-called Intelligent Design, it is important to distinguish this use of the word "design" from the belief, just expressed, that the universe looks as though there has been some careful planning in the fundamental structure of things. There is a striking example of what such planning might entail in current theories about the conditions seen to be necessary for the construction of universes themselves. If a universe is to grow from tiny beginnings, such controlled growth is possible if only there is an incredibly fine balance between the forces of expansion, and the gravitational forces that hold the growing universe together. Gingerich quotes a figure of one part in 1059, a figure of unimaginable magnitude, as a measure of the accuracy needed. That such accuracy should be achieved by chance stretches credibility. As the story unfolds further, the number of coincidences and lucky breaks builds up, until it is easy to see why the creation of a habitable world no longer looks like an accident.

It is important to stress, though, the difference between seeing evidences of careful planning in the fundamental structure of things, and the occasional interferences in the evolutionary process envisaged by the advocates of Intelligent Design. The latter is a

watered-down version of earlier attempts by fundamentalist Christians to disprove the theory of evolution, and is dismissed by Gingerich as a failure in scientific methodology. The strategy of science is to go on looking for comprehensible causes within the basic structures, even if no answer seems to be acccessible. Intelligent Design abandons this search, driven by what are essentially political reasons, as part of the attempt to undermine Darwinism. In this task, says Gingerich, it is aided by Richard Dawkins who uses evolutionary theory as "a bully point for atheism".

It is essential to draw distinctions between what can be established scientifically, and personal metaphysical stances that make use of science to legitimate themselves. The fine tuning of the processes which enabled there to be a universe at all, is such as to make cosmic design seem a reasonable proposition. This implies a level of planning necessary to give rise to inhabitable worlds, but it need not involve numerous divine interventions. Nor need belief in such cosmic design clash with whatever scientists may subsequently discover about it. Science, as Gingerich describes it, "remains a neutral way of explaining things, not anti-God or atheistic ... this does not mean that the universe is actually godless, just that science has no other way of working".

A final lecture on "Questions without Answers" takes us back to Copernicus and the difficulty of actually proving that his model of the solar system was true in a sense in which Ptolemy's geocentric model was not. Both models were mathematically and logically defensible. Both could explain all the observations then available. The clinching proof that Copernicus was right came not from further observations but from Newtonian theory. The theory of gravity made sense of the solar system by providing an account of how and why it actually worked. It is this overall comprehensibility and consistency that gives scientific explanations their power.

Facts alone may not be able to prove or disprove a particular hypothesis. Individual facts are always part of a much larger picture, and it is the "comprehensive coherence" of the picture that is finally persuasive. But whether there are things going on, unnoticed but not excluded by science, is not something that can be decided within science itself. It is clear that there are ranges of human experience, and hints of purpose in the universe, and unpredictable events, which lend themselves to interpretations beyond science.

Not all questions have answers. Nor can this book claim to provide them. But it is an excellent mind-opener.

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