Alan Guth - Does Cosmology Provide Meaning?

We know the age of the universe, how stars were born, how galaxies were formed. But does the cosmos have meaning? Not make-believe, feel-good meaning, but real meaning with transcendent value? Can we discern 'meaning' using the hard data of science to go beyond science?

[bernzeppi]

Wonderful chat with a humble but supremely intelligent scientist about a huge subject bringing us back to the importance of meaning being the domain of the individual.
I think the answer
I think the short answer is yes.

[ingenuity]

I appreciate the work of all scientists and cosmologists etc of the same ilk. Thank you all a million!

[richross]

How have so few watched his.
Alan Guth is a genius.

[dj_OVI_J_TIMIS]

Amazing man, amazing ideas, amazing mind.

[theophilus]

Scale somewhat overwhelms us as we contemplate it for sure but size is not an absolute. The cosmos is big _to us_ but so what? Why should scale determine the presence or absence of either meaning or significance? That there is a cosmos that is intelligible at all should give us pause for thought.

[groki]

Maybe the question of any deep meaning to be found concerning cosmology should not be asked on what is discovers, but on its very existence. We are basically sums of atoms, part of a whole that we call the Universe, asking questions about this whole. If we are to find meaning in ourselves, not in what hard physics can teach us about the universe... the question is, in which part of ourselves?

[charlesmann]

I kept hearing the word “amazing”, “remarkable”, and “incredible” in describing all that has been learned about the creation and the size of the Universe, but I heard nothing about why there is something instead of nothing. That to me is truly amazing, incredible, and remarkable.

[PicturesJester]

Omg. when Alan Guth says that's right that's right in answer to que question about the "amazing unification", he doesn't believe it, and he knows it's a ridiculous thing to believe in, and that many other people know too but don't want to say it because of the implications it would have regarding the scientific community, NOT science 7:25 Look at him, he doesn't even know what to do with his hands. He knows something about this doesn't make sense, the idea of a single interaction which is responsible for the interactions we see, and which we could verify the truth of if only we could reach high enough energies, is idealism in disguise