The limits of science

In the first of his two-part annual Sidney Awards column for 2011, David Brooks calls attention to an essay Alan Lightman wrote for Harper’s, in which Lightman, himself an MIT physicist (and, religiously, an unbeliever) said that physics and cosmology appears to have reach an insurmountable challenge. The universe is so incredibly fine-tuned for the emergence of life that the only plausible ways to explain this fact is 1) the existence of a Creator, or 2) the existence of the multiverse — that is, the existence of an infinite number of universes, which renders our life-creating one a statistical inevitability.

The problem with this is it is unprovable. Lightman:

That same uncertainty disturbs many physicists who are adjusting to the idea of the multiverse. Not only must we accept that basic properties of our universe are accidental and uncalculable. In addition, we must believe in the existence of many other universes. But we have no conceivable way of observing these other universes and cannot prove their existence. Thus, to explain what we see in the world and in our mental deductions, we must believe in what we cannot prove.

Sound familiar? Theologians are accustomed to taking some beliefs on faith. Scientists are not. All we can do is hope that the same theories that predict the multiverse also produce many other predictions that we can test here in our own universe. But the other universes themselves will almost certainly remain a conjecture.

One way or another, you have to have faith.