George F.R. Ellis, On the Nature of Cosmology Today (2012 Copernicus Center Lecture)

Cosmology is today a precision science with masses of high quality data every increasing our understanding of the physical universe, but paradoxically theoretical cosmology is simultaneously increasingly proposing theories based on ever more hypothetical physics, or concepts that are untestable even in principle (such as the multiverse). We are also seeing ever more dogmatic claims about how scientific cosmology can solve philosophical problems that have been with us for millenia. This talk comments in these trends, carefully distinguishing what is and what is not testable in scientific cosmology, and relating this solid scientific background to some of the recent philosophical claims made about how scientific cosmology relates to issues of meaning.

The fourth Copernicus Center Lecture - "On the Nature of Cosmology Today" - was delivered by Professor George Ellis, a famous cosmologist, mathematician, philosopher of science as well as researcher of the relationship between science and religion, currently Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Complex Systems in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. The 2012 Copernicus Center Lecture was part of the 16th Kraków Methodological Conference - "The Causal Universe", which was co-organized by the Copenicus Center for Interdisciplinary Studies.

Organizers' comment:
To date, the natural sciences provide extremely detailed description of how Universe functions by providing a set of scientific laws. These laws reflect regularities in nature and allow for the explanation and prediction of the observed phenomena. What seems to escape the power of contemporary science entirely, however, is the answer to the question of why the Universe is. Such an inquiry demands the use of a fundamental philosophical category of causality. Inasmuch as the "how" causality is associated with the determinism of scientific laws, the "why" causality reaches beyond the scientific discourse. In other words, one wishes to know why the Universe is and why it is as it is. The conference offers a unique opportunity to broaden our understanding of how to combine our vast knowledge of the laws governing the Universe in the quest for the ultimate explanation of its existence and specificity.

As George Ellis states in his famous article On the Nature of Causation in Complex Systems, the problem of causality may be found not only in the field of philosophy but also in physics and other empirical sciences:

The nature of causation is a core issue for science, which can be regarded as the move from a demon-centered world to a world based on reliable cause and effect, tested by experimental verification.

(...) Physics is the basic science, characterized by mathematical descriptions that allow predictions of physical behavior to astonishing accuracy and underlies the other sciences. The key question is whether other forms of causation such as those investigated in biology, psychology, and the social sciences are genuinely effective, or are they rather all epiphenomena grounded in purely physical causation?

(...) I will claim here that there are indeed other types of causation at work in the real world, described quite well by Aristotle's four types of causes. There are of course many contexts in which different kinds of causality are experienced: in physics and chemistry, where particles and forces interact in a way described by variational principles and symmetries; in biochemistry and cell biology, where information is important and adaptation takes place; in zoology, where purpose, planning, and anticipation are important; and in psychology and sociology, where analytic reflection, symbolic understanding, values and meaning all are causally effective.

[brucehayman]

I watch a lot of videos on cosmology, physics and astronomy, and this is an excellent presentation.

[Youdamana]

Simply wonderful. We are so fortunate to have such a thinker among us.

[Daniel-tspo]

One of the best lectures I've seen. Very enlightening.

[KipIngram]

Absolutely fantastic talk, Dr. Ellis. I'm not particularly "involved" with religion in my personal life, but I have long found the manner in which Dawkins and Krauss go about their campaign against it distasteful and lacking integrity - you perfectly put into words the feelings that had been nagging at me on that front. I find it rather sad that they've seemingly left "real science" behind them to focus on what they're doing these days. Honestly, I think it's completely fair for scientists to respond to attacks upon science from the religious sector, but I think they should leave it at that - going "on the offensive" seems inappropriate to me. And I totally agree with your point that they exaggerate the "certainty" about some of the science that they use in said offensive. At least I can look to the past and regard Dr. Dawkins as someone who has made truly major contributions to scientific progress. Sadly, I can't say the same about Krauss.

[TristanDeCunha]

Really fascinating lecture. Definitely adheres to many of the intuitions I've had about deficiencies in the claims by people like Kraus regarding the pre-big bang universe.

[alachabre]

He made it clear that he was speaking philosophically about logic spaces that may pre-exist the universe. His objection is to untestable propositions being presented as scientific theory.

[MrStathies]

Thanks. I am a layman, never took advanced science class but I've listened to Krauss and Dawkins and they always made it very clear that any theory will be discarded if proved wrong. They aren't claiming this is Scripture

[chrisponsano]

Where can one turn to in order to discuss these concepts?

[lsbrother]

Ellis starts at 8:00 - well worthy skipping the first 8 mins!

[PierreLewin]

You wrote exactly what I was thinking. :)

[furious]

I've been doing some reading and watching... trying to understand Dr. Ellis' proposals. If anyone can chime in on these topics, add to this smattering of prose, shed light on these questions I have, ... I'd gladly appreciate it!

1. Nucleosynthesis in the early universe -- simply because of the strong or weak nuclear force? I forget which, but the one responsible for holding protons, neutrons, and electrons together in the nucleus and composing atoms in the periodic table. I think the going theory about the fundamental forces early on is that the line between the observed manifestation is blurred: e.g. electricity was first observed to be distinct from magnetism. Maxwell discovered that they are manifestations of a single force, electromagnetism. Also goes for electroweak force, and the attempts of string theory and others to also unify gravitation with the others. So I'm not following Ellis' point about NS.

2. I don't see why one must take a philosophical stance of 'anything that can happen does happen'. No one familiar with the scientific method ought to be believing an unproven theory just because it's all we got. Sounds eerily close to believers resorting to a god for the original cause. Note that causality is inextricably bound to our concept of time, thus I would say causality is applicable only to our universe and things in it (because of space-time), but not necessarily to whatever might be outside of this universe in which it is expanding into. Thus, I would posit that the concept of causality is meaningless outside of our universe and, if a multiverse exists, meaningless outside of those universes also. It occurs to me that it would be useful to define new, more precise words for these things (universe used to mean *everything*... right? Now multiverse means "everything"... right?)

3. Yeah, sucks that some aspects of these theories is impossible to test today. As Ellis mentions, I'm glad there are ongoing experiments hoping to detect a dark matter particle. So far nothing -- you know, dark matter interacts very, very weakly with vanilla matter, if at all. Reminds me of the transience of neutrinos from the sun passing through us all the time. Perhaps future technology and discoveries yet to be made may allow a test for the multiverse [it's totally fiction, but I can't help but think of that TV series Sliders ;-) ].

4. Multiverse - my understanding was that we're talking about other universes like the one we inhabit: an expanse of space-time rapidly expanding into something else, presumably not our vanilla space-time. When Vilenkin's quote refers to our "clones" scattered among the cosmos, I feel it is misleading to use the word "cosmos". Typically, cosmos refers to our single universe, where there are galaxies, energies, space-time, and all that other fun stuff (plus us).

5. The nature of the universe prior to 10^-24 sec -- I figured Hawking and others think it might've been a singularity of infinitely small size and (nearly) infinite energy -- "nearly" because it looks like the universe has a huge amount, but not infinite, energy/matter/stuff and conservation of energy is supposed to still hold. I guess that means that black holes are essentially smaller versions in that they are a singularity? They do evaporate though... but so slowly it would take many orders of magnitude longer to completely evaporate than the universe has thus far existed.

6. Fine tuning -- the anthropic principle makes a lot of sense to me, despite how unsatisfying (and lacking of science) it is. But it IS based upon the observation that we are here talking about it. It sounds plausible to me that IF a multiverse were extant, perhaps an infinite number of universes have been created, and will continue to be created for eternity, by virtue of being an infinite number of universes. Unfortunately, that's a lot of "if's", which is never a good sign...

7. Infinity is to be restricted to mathematics, but not part of the physical world? Well, what about our universe? Evidence and observations reveal that our universe is likely to be flat, so doesn't that mean that the universe will continue to expand forever, continually reducing energy density, dying a cold, dark death?

Finally, it seems to me unequivocally true (and Ellis repeatedly says so) that observation and experiments are required for something to be science, for that is the scientific method, by definition. If a theory cannot be tested then it forever remains merely speculation and conjecture.

that's enough rambling for now

[drbonesshow]

As George Ellis postulates, philosophical concepts such as "good and evil" are "built-in" to the universe as possible outcomes. This does not seem unreasonable.

[jeffreycliff]

Who's the old guy in the corner who keeps asking questions?

[rhYT]

Some light can be shed on discussions like these by the lamp of Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason", in which Kant claimed that reason only operates really well when considering the attributes of things and assuming cause & effect. Scaling up and down in size and everything else is part of Reasoning, and can be empirically investigated, but at the same time inadvertantly assumes infinity in both directions of investigation, even though infinity is impossible to prove. Infinity is a concept used by Reason in it's empirical investigations. Kant then claimed that concepts can't be investigated by Reason, as they are the ground of ruler can't measure itself. Kant observed that some people are inclined to attempt to apply Reason to concepts, but in doing so end up making fantastical, unprovable claims. So when trying to explain the ultimate beginnings (or end) of a universe it is likely the case that we just can't do it....which is not to say there is or isn''t a beginning or end, but we're not equipped to comprehend or explain it. .

[litoboy]

please
can someone explain me what is a theory?

[chrimony]

I get a kick out of how he takes his questions, gives an answer, and then sits down authoritatively, like he's a member of Parliament or something. All that's missing is the cheers and jeers from the body politic.

[ekul]

George is as entitled to his opinions as anyone else.  his point was how he is worried that alot of scientists are going a bit too far  with their constructed models that have not or can not be tested.

[Vigyananand]

49:00, 49:32 'Where do laws of physics physically exist / 'reside'? is not a question at all.
Laws which physical bodies obey are not physical entities like particles even in quantum physics.
It is like asking "where does 'multiplication' exist in mathematics"?!

[kjustkses]

I still cannot believe that this video got down votes.

[lifangu]

I really appreciate Professor George Ellis said that multiverse is not testable.

The problems are: is discrete or finite physics testable? Is the theory of finite brain states testable? There are more channels than synapses on neurons to be studied or even to be discovered. Not to mention quantum entanglement, the assumptions of quanta emerging from nothing, and the world beyond Planck measurement, etc.

It is difficult to study infinite directly, so analytic mathematics introduced and studied potential infinite, instead of studying infinite directly. However, this does not mean infinite does not exist.

I do not say infinite DOES or DOES NOT exist in physics. Sciences only can falsify certain things. To prove positively, we need better logic. In my logic theory, falsification is equal to positive proof only at some specific critical points in logic.

Argument is valid only if presented directly to the opposite side to allow them to refute. So I post my questions here.