Wallace F. Smith 2006-05-28
1 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
This book does not explain the origin of the universe; it doesn't claim to. Science in the person of Professor John Barrow follows the deductive-inductive mantra; either a lab experiment replicates the physical result of specfied causes or flawless reasoning shows there is no room for doubt. Both approaches collapse. If science loses, does God win?
GOD'S NANOSECOND
Max Planck showed God could not have created the universe. First there was nothing and in a billionth of a second - the big bang - there was everything and everything that will be. Forget "seven days" and lab experiments. Science does not make something from nothing.
ZENO - DEDUCTION IS FUTILE
A man walks each day half the remaining distance to his destination; he will never arrive. Infinity doesn't end; there is no ultimate particlde so we cannot find the building block of the universe.
DESCARTES - THE COSMOS IS ONLY IMAGINATION
The real world is only what your senses encounter; it's just a dream - a mental trick. Descartes failed to break out of the "egocentric predicament."
NEWTON - FORCES IN BALANCE
An apple fell to earth and observer Newton "explained" the mutual attraction. He assumed attraction is an attribute of "mass." Masses will orbit. Later Einstein and Planck described described gavity as mysterious "energy" which comes in discrete "quanta." A quantum is "the energy of an atom at rest;" let it go at that. However Newton seriously underestimated the number of objects that whizz about in balanced orbits. National Geographic put the number at a "gazillion." That's very hard math.
EINSTEIN'S SPEED
Einstein persuaded his peers that the speed of light is both the minimum velocity of energy and the maximum. Mental scanning certainly exceeds the speed of light. One problem is the "curvature" of space; algebra is irrational but space insists on transcendental parameters - pi, "e" and sines, for example. These do not exist in nature.
EVOLUTION
Our senses all evolved and are incomplete; so science is literally groping in the dark. Cats hear better, eagles see better and dogs apparently take the prize for ESP. Human brains compute distance from data received by two eyes or two ears; the brain is a sense organ, but pretty primitive. Science concedes that birds evolved from dinosaurs. The proof is in the feet and the eggs. Feathers and chirping just came along; Darwin missed the whole chapter. Forget the universe; explain hummingbirds!
