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Our deep need to delve into how things began is the inspiration for a new academic initiative. Scientific American columnist (Critical Mass, which begins with the September 2009 issue) and theoretical astrophysicist Lawrence M. Krauss, head of the Origins Initiative at Arizona State University, organized the first Origins Symposium, held in April 2009. The event drew 80 scientists from a variety of disciplines, many of them Nobel Prizewinners. We asked Krauss to describe the results of the symposium. You can also read Scientific American’s reports about panels held during that event in stories about the origin of the universe and the origin of humankind. Check out the ASU Origins Symposium video archive of all the talks, too.—The Editors
Questions about origins directly confront the mysteries associated with our existence, our past and our future. Consider:
* How did the universe begin?
* Is our universe unique?
* How did the laws of physics arise?
* How did life arise?
* What are the dynamical processes that govern evolution?
* What is the origin of modern humans?
* What is the origin of human uniqueness?
* What is the origin of disease?
* How does consciousness arise?
* How do human institutions arise and develop?
* What will be the technologies of the future?
Such questions provoke fascination and heated debate whenever they arise and are, at the same time, central to forefront research at the edge of human knowledge. For those reasons, they resonate across all academic disciplines and among the general public.
The Origins Initiative at Arizona State University builds on a tradition of transdisciplinary activity, and an unusually strong existing research emphasis on origins issues—from evolutionary biology to nanotechnology and from human institutions to the universe. Our mission has a two-pronged thrust. By bringing together scholars from different disciplines, we will explore how a broader and more inclusive perspective may arise in addressing these fundamental questions. At the same time, progress in addressing key fundamental disciplinary questions can occur by also having a critical mass of experts from within a given field.
Conference Highlights
We decided to inaugurate our initiative with an experimental BANG, by gathering 80 of the world's most eminent scholars from fields ranging from physics to psychology, planetary science to philosophy to the Origins Symposium in and around Tempe, Arizona, in April 2009. We put them together for three days of panels to focus on key questions. The idea was to encourage out-of-the-box discussion about forefront puzzles, removed from the standard presentations most of these people were used to giving, and to force the conversations to be both broad and intelligible to a wide audience of scientists and scholars.
We didn't know whether such a novel program would succeed, and it took a while for everyone to get used to this format. But the results exceeded our wildest expectations. Not only was it inspiring to learn about the remarkable developments in fields remote from one's own area of expertise, it became clear that various questions are amenable to broad-based attack. The symbiosis between fields was also evident. Questions of human uniqueness are relevant, for example, to the search for extraterrestrial intelligent life. Knowing that the earliest modern humans probably resided in a very small colony on a beach in Africa poses interesting new challenges to understand concepts of group selection and various genetic predispositions to disease, nutrition, and so on. And the debates among cosmologists about multiverses and anthropics made it clear to many of the other scientists attending the meeting that this field is ripe for new useful new ideas.
In addition to the scholarly panels, two other highlights should provide solace to those worried about the public’s interest in science. Fully 3,000 paying members of the public filled an auditorium for 12 hours to listen to the world's most well-known scientists, and 1,000 inner-city high-school students stayed, of their own volition, for two hours at an after-school event with three of the Nobel Laureates who were also attending the symposium. Both prove that, with exciting science, as with the baseball stadium in the movie “Field of Dreams,” if you provide it, they (the public) will come.
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13 Comments
Add CommentToo bad there's no study on the origin of denial.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI thought the origin of denial was Lake Victoria.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually,there are two sources of denial, Lake Victoria for the White denial and Lake Tana for the Blue denial,they join to form denial. ie two negatives make another negative.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually,there are two sources of denial, Lake Victoria for the White denial and Lake Tana for the Blue denial,they join to form denial. ie two negatives make another negative.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe search for origins is fine and must and will go on. But whatever was the origin the the universe, the universe is just there, there's no explaining of that; whatever the origin of mind, mind is there and it is what defines our humanity; whatever the origin of life, life is more valuable to us than anything inanimate. Let us search for origins, but don't let our preoccupation with origins blind us to the primacy of value. That is the domain of philosophy which nowadays is squeezed out by the clash of science on the one hand and theology on the other.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe first comment was right on the money; typically, the "discussion" soon deteriorated into the kind of smart-ass irrelevance that inhibits serious exchange of ideas.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile I agree with Krauss about religion, I see little hope our species will be able to get past its fear-based need to believe, which is well protected by several mechanisms, two of which are our penchants for trivialization and denial.
I think the first question ("How did the Universe begin?") is in fact stated incorrectly, since it already supposes there was some form of "begin"to begin with. Which to my mind is an impossibility (there would have to be a cause for that begin, but then that cause had to already exists before there was a universe, etc.). So, the question then reads: "Was there a begin to the universe?", to which I would respond, certainly not!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCreation ex nihilo?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Nothing" is an extrapolation by us to get our minds around notions about what existed before creation. But "nothingness" is derived from our experiences with everything else. One principle of logic is "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". In the case of nothingness, we try to infer the existence of absence (i.e. nothing) from the absence of existence (i.e. our imagination of what that would be like). Such thinking is problematic.
For example, the big bang theory suggests that at the moment of creation of the universe, everything exploded onto the scene, including matter, energy, time and space itself. It does not suggest that space was "empty", waiting in "time" for something to happen, then creation began. The idea is that space and time also sprang into existence with matter and energy and together they unfolded to form the universe as we know it. As a result, we can have no idea whatsoever into what medium our universe was placed. I think of it as the "womb of the world", but by definition, it is completely out of this world.
Given that perspective, I offer the following as examples of how nothing may be real for us.
Consider the number zero: division by zero is undefined in the finite number system. Yet in the "transfinite" number system, zero is no longer a difficult exception, but rather the key to an even larger way of understanding numbers.
Consider a perfect vacuum. Such is practically and theoretically impossible. Yet, that emptiness is not thought to be inert nor barren. In the environment between the nucleus and electron of an atom, electromagnetic fields are so strong as to make the void itself unstable with respect to the spontaneous creation/annihilation of particle/antiparticle pairs. The perfect vacuum is pregnant with unlimited potential.
Consider absolute zero, the coldest temperature, which in theory can never be achieved. Yet, contrary to the popular notions, all motion does not stop at absolute zero, but rather all motion is at its minimum possible energy and there is perfect order. This perfect order is infinitely fragile such that even an infinitesimal amount of thermal energy will utterly destroy it.
Nothing is a created existence, beyond which we cannot imagine and upon which our reality is built.
For me, nothing is an article of faith, and in that context, nothing is where the immanence and transcendence of the Creator intersect.
Excellent comment Kashaba
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf that is the case, and there is a Creator, did he create evolution?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you are correct, and there is a Creator- did he create evolution?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDid this Creator create evolution?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisdid this Creator create evolution?
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