Friday, June 24, 2011

Can we ever understand our queer universe?

Richard Dawkins asks:
If the universe is queerer than we can suppose, is it just because we've been naturally selected to suppose only what we needed to suppose in order to survive in the Pleistocene of Africa? Or are our brains so versatile and expandable that we can train ourselves to break out of the box of our evolution? Or, finally, are there some things in the universe so queer that no philosophy of beings, however godlike, could dream them?
What a tragedy if it turns out that we cannot ever figure this out! The latest issue of the Scientific American raises a question on its cover: "Can we get any smarter?"  I really, really, hope we do, though the article itself argues that we may be limited by the physics of the brain.  Even if there are such severe limitations related to mass, miniaturization within the brain, and energy, I hope the collective intelligence of humans will one day crack the mystery of it all.  When after my life ends might this happen? A few hundred years?  A geologic era?



BTW, the "queer" in Dawkins' talk has nothing to do with homosexuality.  Dawkins is working off a JBS Haldane quote:
[My] own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy.

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