| In praise of … God | Editorial The universe just ramped itself up. Simple. And yet doubts remain - spontaneous creation is, for most folk, just a contradiction in terms"Dear Sir: Your astonishment's odd; / I am always about in the quad." This was the divine response, as imagined by Ronald Knox, to the inquisitive undergraduate who, following Bishop Berkeley's line of thought, wondered whether a tree in the college quadrangle would still exist if God was not there to sustain it. Now someone rather higher in the academic hierarchy has raised the question in a different form. Professor Stephen Hawking says in his new book that there is no place for God in theories about how the universe got started: "Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something." Anyone who has ever watched in amazement as a piece of domestic equipment, say a washing machine, suddenly swings into action, even though no human hand has touched any buttons, will be able to grasp something of what Hawking is hinting at here. The universe just ramped itself up. Simple. And yet doubts remain. One accepts that if God were to choose one day to explain the universe to Hawking, the professor would be one of the few people on the planet with any serious chance of understanding the conversation. But spontaneous creation is, for most folk, just a contradiction in terms. God may or may not find all this amusing. The thing is – how to put this gently to Professor Hawking? – that God does not necessarily follow the ins and outs of our many arguments about His existence. Who could blame Him if, after all this time, He has become tired of them? Meanwhile, there is still a tree in the quad.ReligionStephen Hawkingguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Coal Challenge Looms in China and India Fast-forward to 2050, and the biggest problem with coal-fired emissions involves the emerging economies of today. feeds.nytimes.com |
Stephen Hawking has not yet disproved God's role in creation The existence of the universe cannot be explained by science aloneAccording to your report, Stephen Hawking claims that God is redundant in explaining the origins of the universe, stating that "the big bang, rather than occurring following the intervention of a divine being, was inevitable due to the law of gravity" (Stephen Hawking says universe not created by God, 2 September). The article publishes an extract from Hawking's new book: "Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist ... It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe alight." It seems Hawking believes that a law of nature (ie the law of gravity), rather than an immaterial deity, explains the existence of the natural order.But what is a law of nature? Some philosophers hold that the laws of nature are grounded in the causal capacities of physical objects: the capacity of water to boil at 100C, and the capacity of salt to dissolve in water (to take two very simple examples). Other philosophers claim that laws of nature are simply brute regularities in the natural world, which have no ultimate explanation. On either conception, it is difficult to see how laws could explain the natural order, as they seem to depend for their own existence upon that natural order.Hawking has never told us what he thinks a law of nature is, and until he does so it is impossible to assess his claim that laws of nature can explain the existence of the natural order in a way that renders traditional arguments for the existence of God unsound.I don't imagine that Hawking is in a hurry to answer this philosophical challenge. The opening page of his book proclaims that "philosophy is dead", due to the fact that philosophers have failed to keep up with mathematical developments in physics. This doesn't stop him, and his co-writer Leonard Mlodinow, indulging in some very crude philosophical discussions of free will and metaphysical realism in later chapters. Hawking is right to say that most philosophers don't understand cutting-edge physics. But it cuts both ways: most physicists don't understand cutting-edge philosophy.The report also claims, as has been much reported in the media, that "Hawking had previously appeared to accept the role of God in the creation of the universe". However, it is not clear that the quotation from his 1988 bestseller, A Brief History of Time, which is produced as evidence of this alleged theological U-turn, was intended by Hawking in anything other than a metaphorical sense. "If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God." Reports of Hawking's dramatic conversion to atheism are somewhat exaggerated.The skills that make one good at physics are not necessarily the skills that make one good at philosophy. What is required in philosophy is a certain capacity for thinking about everyday concepts in abstraction from their everyday context, an ability distinct from the mathematical skill essential for being a good physicist. Hawking is a great physicist. But he has so far shown no signs of being a good philosopher. At any rate, he has certainly not provided us with a good response to the cosmological argument for the existence of God, the argument that begins from the demand for an ultimate cause or explanation of the natural order.Stephen HawkingPhilosophyPhilip Goffguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Psychoanalysis: The Unconscious in Everyday Life at the Science Museum | Maev Kennedy Ancient statuettes and images once owned by Sigmund Freud and contemporary art by Grayson Perry feature in the first exhibition of psychoanalysis at London's Science MuseumA necklace by the artist Mona Hatoum, woven from human hair and eerie enough to trouble anyone's unconscious mind, is among the contemporary and ancient objects in the first exhibition devoted to psychoanalysis at the Science Museum in London, which opened this week.The exhibition includes contemporary installations by artists including Grayson Perry, whose ceramics often deal with dark subjects under seductively beautiful glaze, and Webster and Noble whose art literally deals with shadows, cast by banal objects to create startlingly different images. Their work will be displayed alongside body casts of feet, eyes and phalluses normally hidden in the Science Museum stores.Ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman statuettes and images are on loan from the Freud Museum London – objects once owned by Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, who was also intensly interested in archaeology and kept a small museum's worth on his desk in his consulting rooms.One of his pieces was a fragment of a Roman wall painting showing Leda – the nymph seduced by Zeus in the form of a swan – and a Greek image of the sphinx, who revealed to Oedipus that his fate was to marry his own mother, giving his name forever to the most famous complex in psychoanalysis.Also on display for the first time will be drawings by children, including scenes of ships being sunk by German submarines, who came through the second world war. The drawings helped them express their fears to Melanie Klein, the Austrian-born British psychoanalyst who was the first to apply the therapy to troubled children.Pysychoanalysis: The Unconscious in Everyday Life is at the Science Museum in London from 13 October to 2 AprilPsychologyMental healthHealthExhibitionsGrayson PerryMaev Kennedyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
The International Space Station: a giant science laboratory The experiments that can only be conducted in spaceThe International Space Station arose when the US, Russia and other countries merged plans for independent space projects in 1993. The Russian Zarya (Star) module was the first to be lofted into orbit in November 1998.The station was designed as an orbiting science laboratory and researchers have already carried out more than 400 experiments on board.Science on the space station follows broad themes, including human research, biology, physics and materials science, technology, earth and space research and education.Humans are affected by weightlessness and cosmic radiation in space, so many projects look at bone and muscle wastage, heart function, the behaviour of genes, and how the nervous and immune systems react to life in orbit.The outside of the European Columbus module is used to expose organisms to the harsh environment of space. Experiments with lichen have found they survive well, despite the vacuum and constant bombardment of cosmic rays and UV light from the sun. Other experiments are investigating how plants and other organisms use gravity to decide which direction to lay down roots.The space station is a major base for Earth observation. Cameras on board monitor crop growth, atmospheric greenhouse gases and lightning strikes.In February next year, the space shuttle is set to deliver a piece of equipment called the alpha magnetic spectrometer. The giant drum-shaped device will survey the skies to answer questions such as: where do cosmic rays come from? Are there far away galaxies made of antimatter? And what is dark matter made of?International space stationSpaceNasaEuropean Space AgencySpace technologyIan Sampleguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |