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Title: Biocosm: The New Scientific Theory of Evolution: Intelligent Life Is the Architect of the Universe by Seth Shostak, James N. Gardner ISBN: 1-930722-22-2 Publisher: Inner Ocean Publishing Pub. Date: August, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.17 (6 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Cosmic Biocomics
Comment: This collage of theoretical explorations is as fascinating as it is (apparently) incoherent and gives a progress report on the current state of evolutionary speculation, driven by the unadmitted breakdown of the Darwinian viewpoint, a reality that can't be acknowledged in public. And that's the problem here. You can't have it both ways. It seems the ID people have Darwinists spooked and on the run, and while the elements of a new approach to evolution are certainly appearing over the horizon noone can summon up the presence of mind to ditch natural selection. Contradictory hybrids come into existence in a sort of frolic of wild notions. Now we have cosmic selection theories and Dawkins' selfish gene projected onto cosmology. Far be it from me to throw cold water on all these shenigans, especially since I find it all luridly fascinating and the book entertaining. One thing the author has done is to place the pieces of the puzzle, au courant, onto the table. Perhaps one can somehow fit them together, Darwin, selectionism, ID, anthropics, baby universes, exobilogical exhuberance, and finally a bit of Kant. I was alarmed to see the author confused by Robert Wright's directionality thesis from Non Zero with its total confusion and cooptation of Kant's essay on history. For, whatever we make of the cosmological foundations of biological theory the question of history remains inscrutable as far as current Darwinism is concerned, and Kant's essay points the way to the right question, and provides elements of the right methodology.(Cf. the reviewer's material on this issue of Kant) Current science simply cannot handle any of that,it seems. You can't hybridize Kant and Darwin. As long as the delusion persists that the descent of man was the result of natural selection the basic incoherence will persist. In fact, human history is completely beyond the reach of current science. It's not even in the right ball park and has degenerated from the insights of the Enlightenment. The result is a lot of confused physicists who are too smart to realize they are acting stupidly.
All this said, I enjoyed the somewhat disordered collation of theoretical ideas. The bits and pieces keep flying out of nowhere and I couldn't quite keep track of it all, and the standard appearance of the nonsense about sociobiological ethics mars the result. The overall picture however is highly intriguing, as an idea for the revision of current views around a theme/theory of cosmic life processes. But it is difficult to proceed without a theory of the evolution of consciousness, and there current science hasn't a clue.
Guess what! Modern science doesn't have a coherent theory of evolution. The author unwittingly lets the cat out of the bag. No wonder they have peer review.
Rating: 2
Summary: Ockham's Razor cuts this book off my list.
Comment: Recognizing that an intelligent designer of our universe is needed to plausibly account for the fine-tuning required for it's existence, this books author tries to avoid using anything like the omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent God of Christianity as that designer. Instead he relies on a very powerful being that's more like a super-mom or super-scientist of a prior universe to do the birthing. Our infant universe--as it's mother before--has a built-in purpose to develop more "complexity" and eventually evolve to the point when it can give birth to another similar infant universe just like it's mother did to it before. This is repeated over and over again, hopefully without going astray, producing "kid universes" that provide enough "complexity" so the chain is never permanently broken. Here no prior universe exists in eternal quiescence.
But how did all this start? Whatever _begins_ to exist has a cause, how did that beginning arise? One way to avoid the regress, which then brings back what _some_ atheists want to avoid, is an eternal, uncaused intelligent designer that is timeless before creation and omnitemporal at once with creation. The author doesn't want any of that. A closed causal chain that's not self-defeating makes the "future" cause the "past" in one big loop so there never is any real beginning to time and this big cycle just always is.
One still wonders whether this infinitely birthing cycle of universes cause even more problems than a universe with a beginning. Most don't think that an infinite number of things is real because this leads to all sorts of self-contradictions and seems to provide no basis for rational thought. Consider that subtracting all odd numbers from all natural numbers gives an infinite number. So infinity minus infinity is infinity. However, subtracting all numbers greater than 2 leaves 3. So infinity minus infinity is 3! If actual infinites cannot exist in reality, an actual infinite temporal regress of events is an actual infinite and therefore an actual infinite temporal regress of events cannot exist. Another way of looking at it is through successions of events. Since an actual infinite cannot be reached by successive addition, and a temporal series of events is a collection formed by successive addition, then the series of temporal events cannot be infinite. It seems that time and the universe must have had a beginning a finite time ago.
Besides this book being pure speculation and propaganda, it has many specious arguments and one may want to look at other works on these topics. This may also help in deciding if the authors theory is really "falsifiable." Actually, the whole notion of "falsifiability" deserves study.
Anyway, one suggestion is to have a look at the book "GOD? A Debate Between A Christian And An Atheist" by William Lane Craig and Walter Sinnot Armstrong for better arguments.
I side with the "atheist" that believes in an intelligent designer that was atemporal and maybe "supernatural" but not one that has all the characteristics of the Christian God. This is mainly because the defense given by theists to the "problem of evil" just doesn't cut it for me, but these defenses may for others.
Rating: 5
Summary: Interlinking life itself and universal architecture
Comment: Biocosm: The New Scientific Theory Of Evolution - Intelligent Life Is The Architect Of The Universe by accomplished science essayist James N. Gardner presents a fascinating hypothesis of how our seemingly "bio-friendly" universe began and what is perceived to be its ultimate destiny. Gardner's "Selfish Biocosm" theory suggests that life and intelligence did not emerge from random Darwinian selection and environmentally deterministic chance, but from a cycle of cosmic creation, evolution, death, and rebirth. Interlinking life itself and universal architecture, fusing biology and cosmology, and more, Biocosm is an absorbing, iconoclastic, and inspirationally presented theory that is recommended as being both thoughtful and thought-provoking.
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Title: Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order by Steven Strogatz ISBN: 0786868449 Publisher: Hyperion Press Pub. Date: 05 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex by Harold J. Morowitz ISBN: 019513513X Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: September, 2002 List Price(USD): $28.00 |
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Title: The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality by Brian Greene ISBN: 0375412883 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 10 February, 2004 List Price(USD): $28.95 |
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Title: The New Quantum Universe by Tony Hey, Patrick Walters ISBN: 0521564573 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 23 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: How the Universe Got Its Spots : Diary of a Finite Time in a Finite Space by JANNA LEVIN ISBN: 1400032725 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 12 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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