The Island

models of modern quantum theory, there is a sense that the end is nigh - that a theory of everything is at hand. This sort of reasoning is not rational. If knowledge accumulation has taught us anything, it should be that the well of reality is unfathomable. The more we learn, the more we realise there is to learn. It is as if learning just exposes how ignorant we are. It is a paradox - the more we see, the more complexity we see. The problem becomes greater rather than easier. At best we are learning the extent of the complexity but never getting to the core.

  This self-defeating nature of the problem makes one think that scientific and philosophical investigation is pointless. Yet the fall-out from the investigations, from the twentieth century alone, have led to major advances for humanity, along with some greater risks. Humanity is capable of destroying itself. The development of nuclear weapons technology may the be single most significant creation of science. The release of such unmitigated power has placed the greatest moral responsibility on the leaders of the modern world. It is the control of such powers that is the greatest risk for humanity. Global warming at its worst will never destroy life on the planet. Nuclear Armageddon can and may.

  It may seem that the role of gravitational power has given way first to chemical power of gunpowder and then to atomic power of the big nuclear arsenals. But the unification of the theory of gravity and the quantum theory, into the grand theory of everything, may reveal that ultimately gravity is at the base of everything. All the major constants of physics: the fine structure constant, the electron/proton mass ratio, the weak interaction constant, the strong interaction constant - all pale into insignificance with the infinitesimally small gravitational constant which is of the astonishingly tiny value of ten to the power of minus thirty nine. The incredible sea of difference of scale between these shows that gravity must be infinitely more basic than any of the other forces, and that there must be infinitely more structure in reality in the vast expanses in between.

  Einstein revealed to us how gravity acts on cosmic scales but it is the action at infinitesimal scales that may reveal how gravity controls all reality, and with it the infinitely small portion of it that we as human beings inhabit. Maybe like the hologram, each graviton contains within it the whole of reality. Gravitons coming together create mass at a local reality yet one which is linked to the whole universe, the linkage weakening the further into the cosmos the separation. The analogy of the hologram has a defining characteristic that may not apply to the universe or maybe it is the central point of the universe. The hologram is essentially a three dimensional picture. It reflects something that exists or has existed before. To say that gravitons have come together to form, say, a chair is a nonsense. But to say that the chair is a real object with a history that can be traced back in time and space to an ultimate coalescence of gravitons is not a nonsense. There are histories in space time for every atom of the chair each of which can be traced back to a primal genesis, perhaps in the Big Bang or in the ferment of the interior of some sun. That each atom has ended up making up the substance of the chair is like seeing the chair as a hologram. Each atom has the full picture of the chair, captured in its world history. Each was fated to be in this particular format or structure at this particular point in space and time. But that is not an end state. The chair may yet be broken and discarded to a dump, to decay organically. It may be put on a fire to be burned back to basic residuals. The atoms are never destroyed but continue on their world-line journey into the far off future. Like the hologram, is the whole world line history of each atom already traced out in spacetime according to physical laws not yet discovered and probably never discoverable. Because to discover these basic laws might allow us to change them and if something is ordained by laws, it by definition cannot be changed. If reality is deterministic, there is no hope of ever uncovering the basic laws that define it.

  I too am like the chair, made of atoms. At conception I took some atoms from my father and added them to those of my mother. Then in accordance with the embedded instructions received from both parents, I started to take atoms from the environment. This was initially from my mother's body. These atoms originated in the many and varied food sources of my mother's diet. Some may have come from my uncle's ploughed potato fields. Others may have come from sunny Seville in the juicy oranges that were in those times a special treat. All came from the soil or from carbon fixed from the air - from mother earth. The earth got them from dispersed stellar dust in the galaxy. From the galaxy back in time to the Big Bang, my history is a long one with many twists and turns. It is continuous to that time over fourteen billion years ago when the atoms and their component parts were formed. They will continue after my death. I will be cremated and some soul will spread my ashes over the cliff edge and they will continue on their journey through the infinity of space time. On their holiday on planet earth, they may be lucky enough to be picked up and incorporated into another lifeform or even into another human. A partial rebirth for an infinitesimal component of my being. Billions of years from now they will leave the form earth and will travel out into the loneliness of high entropy space. Their ultimate fate being an infinite dispersal and aloneness. They will never reform or join up with others at the end of time. Their sojourn inside my body will be a mere trillionth of the complete time of their existence up to a dark cold eternity.

  Is this extreme nihilism I ask myself. How can life be so pointless? How much more appealing is the infinity of time in the bright and happy presence of a deity who loves me? The appeal of religious belief gets its power from that scenario. It gives hope of a brighter future. I have to find positives in the picture of the future.

  There is also something other than atoms that will live on beyond the cremation of my dead body. The tiny portion of my physical being that I might bequeath to my offspring is not really mine, as I inherited the genes from my own parents. I am only the bearer of these genes and my main function is to pass them on safely to new bearers. The real aspect, that is really mine, that will survive, is my thinking - in so far as it is of value and can be recorded. How long can it survive. The thinking of Pythagoras is still with us today, thousands of years after his demise. But that time is a mere blip in the fifteen or so billions of years of time past, not to mention the trillions of potential years into the future. It can only survive as long as intelligent life survives and that is likely to be less than a further six billions years, before the sun eventually burns out. The likelihood of the name of Pythagoras surviving infinitely is really zero because, in the cold infinity of high entropy oblivion, there can be no information. Information is a low entropy state that will be wiped out by the infinite expansion of the universe. So even my best efforts, to add to the human information store, are ultimately doomed to oblivion.

  So why try? The clamour of nihilism is resounding. The logic however is faulty. We eat to stay alive but yet we know the body is bound to die. We eat because we are alive and to stay alive we must eat. Is there a similar imperative with knowledge. We acquire knowledge to help us in our lives and to maintain life on earth, we must acquire more knowledge. Already our knowledge of impending global warming may stave off total disaster for the human race. Our knowledge allows us to feed a world population that grows at an alarming rate. A rate that sees the world's teeming masses increase by over a quarter million souls a day. Our knowledge may eventually prolong the sojourn of intelligent life in the galaxy by developing interstellar space travel technology. Having the gift of life is enough reason to fight for it, even though we know we die ultimately, both as people and as intelligent species.

  Science gets bad press, mainly from the court of philosophy which seems to act in judgement of all other disciplines. Karl Popper seemed to be on the side of science when he praised scientific theory as being capable of being falsified and therefore above metaphysics which exists in the realm of the unquantifiable and unverifiable. Metaphysics is therefore immune to critical appraisal. But it was the advent of the critical method that led t
o such great advances in science. A scientist could propose any hypothesis as long as it could be tested. The tests alone would objectively decide on the potential verity of the hypothesis. But Popper went to far in demanding that a whole theory should be falsifiable. The way science builds up knowledge is not in overthrowing the past but in modifying the past to take account of new knowledge. The Newtonian theory was enough and perfectly adequate to send man to the moon. However to send a spaceship to another galaxy the theory needs some marginal yet very significant modifications of general relativity and spacetime curvature. Relativity approximates at certain levels to Newton. Newton has not been falsified but has been extended in its domain of applicability by the greater accuracy of general relativity. The scientific method allows for falsifiability but doesn't demand complete overthrow.

  Science and knowledge should not get an inferiority complex from philosophical critique. Modern scientists have enough to contend with in the many puzzles thrown up by quantum theory, than to