Multiverse Theory and the Death of Philosophy

Stephen Hawking is that rare creature, a famous physicist. With the runaway success of his popular level treatise on cosmology, A Brief History of Time (1989), Hawking was thrust into the public sphere in a way that eludes most scientists, and, indeed, in a way that most scientists would probably not desire. While never clearly espousing belief in a deity, he included an ambiguous statement in A Brief History that caused speculation on his metaphysical beliefs: “If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason--for then we should know the mind of God.” Though the connotation of this statement makes it clear that he is referring to God only in a metaphorical sense, the door seemed left open for belief that Hawking entertained the idea of a God who perhaps had some part in the creation of the universe.

Last year, though, Hawking came out with another popular level book that seemed aimed at forever silencing the notion that belief in a creator God has an explanatory power for the state of the universe or is, in any way, necessary for the cosmos as it exists. Entitled The Grand Design and coauthored with Leonard Mlodinow, Hawking details and attempts to popularize a theory in theoretical physics called M-theory. Basically, what this theory postulates is that there are, in fact, an infinite number of universes. The idea here is to refute the argument for the existence of God based on the fine tuning of our universe, a view held by Isaac Newton who referred to our “strangely habitable solar system.” Given enough universes, anything is possible, and the factor of coincidence decreases sharply so that our distinctly life-allowing “planetary conditions” are “far less remarkable and far less compelling as evidence that the Earth was carefully designed just to please us as human beings.” To quote in some length:

According to M-theory, ours is not the only universe. Instead M-theory predicts that a great many universes were created out of nothing. Their creation does not require the intervention of some supernatural being or god. Rather these multiple universes arise naturally from physical law. They are a prediction of science. Each universe has many possible histories and many possible states at later times, that is, at times like the present, long after their creation. Most of these states will be quite unlike the Universe we observe and quite unsuitable for the existence of any form of life. Only a few would allow creatures like us to exist.

What binds this theory together, for Hawking, is the law of gravity. In an interview with the British daily The Telegraph, Hawking stated that “because there is such a law as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing.”

Let me just say, and this will probably not come as a surprise to anyone, my knowledge of theoretical physics is pretty sparse. My house church co-leader just received his PhD. in Theoretical Physics, so if you can learn through osmosis I have the subject down, but if not I am awash in ignorance. However, Mlodinow and Hawking make another bold statement in their treatise on M-theory and the unnecessary nature of God, and it concerns a subject where I have a little more experience: “Philosophy is dead.” Because the discipline has not kept pace with scientific discovery, “scientists have now become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.” How heroic. The problem with this triumphalism is that M-theory falls squarely in the realm of philosophical science. This is like a poet condemning Shakespearian verse in Shakespearian meter. You cannot claim philosophy is dead and then write a book of scientific philosophical speculation.

This is the case because the concept of multiple universes is by very definition beyond the bounds of empirical proof. As John Haldane explains in his review of The Grand Design, “There can be no empirical evidence in support of the hypothesis, nor could it be derived as a necessary condition of the possible existence and character of the only universe of which we have scientific knowledge.”  We can only ever know what is observable to us, according to the scientific method. Everything else has to be taken on some other basis, call it philosophy or faith. Scientific speculation that makes claims beyond proof, whatever it does accomplish, does not make science.