Disconnects between philosophy, cosmology and evolutionary biology

 I’ve read remarks by physicists that biologists are scientists who can’t handle the    math. Hmm. Try dealing with the complexities of the human genome guys.

Anyway, as a biologist who’s the first to admit that my math could be better, I have been trying to further educate myself in my senior years by reading books on astrophysics and cosmology, and the philosophy that flows from these sciences. I have become a big fan of astrophysicist Carl Sagan and his ‘successor’ Neil deGrasse Tyson, the nuclear physicists Richard Feynman and Steven Weinberg; and the science philosopher Daniel Dennett to name just a few. But writings by some other astrophysicists and philosophers have me thinking that there’s some disconnect between these two disciplines, and then between both of them and modern evolutionary science.

I’ve just finished reading an interesting book by Jim Holt, who writes on scientific subjects for The New Yorker, entitled Why does the world exist? (2012). It explores the question: Why is there something rather than nothing? – a rather profound question. Of course if you’re religious then the answer is because God made the ‘something’. There’s a lot that could be discussed around that, but that’s not what I’m about in this blog essay. My concern, as I said, is the apparent disconnect between some intellectuals in these spheres of knowledge which to my mind muddies the pool.

A philosopher (I won’t say at which university) is quoted in Holt’s book saying that the universe is constructed the way it is in order to allow conscious observers to evolve, because without conscious observers the universe would be logically inconsistent. As a biologist I find this quite absurd. The universe is 13.8 billion years old. Our planet earth is 4.5 billion years old. Life on this planet, all based on one and the same construct of nucleic acid, began about 3.8 billion years ago. Homo sapiens evolved about 200,000 years ago – a real Johnny-cum-lately compared with the millions of other species on our planet. Are we seriously suggesting that the universe was ‘logically inconsistent’ before we came along to think about it in our little corner of this vast universe?

The universe that we can see is composed of about two hundred billion galaxies, and each galaxy is composed of a hundred or more billion stars, many of them with planets going around them. The numbers are so large – about 30 billion, trillion stars - that there almost has to be life on other planets going around some of those stars. But whether there’s intelligent life out there amongst the life forms on these other planets is another issue. For that matter are we intelligent?!

Furthermore, according to Holt’s book some philosophers of science, and even  some astrophysicists, conclude that the whole universe is specially constructed to produce us humans.  This is not only laughably self-centered but shows great ignorance of the workings of evolution. Assumptions are made that if you have the right physical and chemical conditions on a planet that you will inevitably end up with intelligent beings such as humans. No way. Go back just 7 million years and ‘play the tape again’ and you would likely not end up with Homo sapiens. Yes, there were apes 7 million years ago. But in every minute since then there were chance happenings – who some ape met and had sex with, whether it turned right down a path or left and therefore met it’s end with a leopard, or not; etc. etc. etc. down through the millennia – happenstance choices made by individual creatures, free from the control of any god or computer chip, that could and did have major consequences on the future.  To give a stark example from recent history – Hitler’s mother had six children, four of whom died in childhood from diseases caught from someone else. Unfortunately for tens of millions of us Adolf survived.  So very easily history could have been different. And the same story could be told about a person who has done great good for humanity which we could have missed out on but for some minor happenstance.

Because of the great similarity of DNA amongst humans of all ethnic types, compared with other species, and supported by certain paleontological evidence, it is believed that humans nearly became extinct at one point early in our development. If that had happened the world would still be here and most of the other 20 million species on our planet would be in a happier state. This planet and solar system was not constructed for our benefit – we just happen to be here; and that’s only until we blow ourselves up or make the environment unlivable. And about 4 billion years from now the sun will explode and blow earth to bits ending all life here any rate.  And other forms of life on other planets in other solar systems will go merrily on their way, whether ‘intelligent’ or not, blissfully unaware that little planet ‘Earth’ ever existed.

Happy Halloween !