Martin Rees - Can We Explain Cosmos and Consciousness?

Martin if there's any question that has formed my inner private being its how to explain the cosmos and as a cosmologists as someone who has looked at the cosmos and thought deeply about this how do you feel in your private time at night when you think to yourself how do I real what do I really think it's all about well I think even though I am professionally concerned with these huge domains of space and time I still worry just as much about the everyday as anyone else but also people somehow feel that the most difficult problems in science are in cosmology but there are three frontiers of science the very large and the very small which we're trying to link together I'm trying to understand the Big Bang but also the very complex and I think the greatest challenge in science is perhaps not in cosmology but in understanding a complexity of life here on earth and I often would say that to understand that insect is the greater challenge to understand a star because an insect has layer upon layer of structure whereas a star because it's so big is squeezed and heated so all internal structure is destroyed so stars are much easier to understand than the simplest living organism and of course the most complicated things to understand we ourselves but to see ourselves in a cosmic context is indeed important because one understands that we are the way we are because of the way atoms behave the way they stick together to make molecules etc and we also know that we need to understand the Stars to understand ourselves because it is the Stars which made the atoms we are the ashes of those long dead stars and so there is this sort of unity between the very large and very small and the very complex and we need to understand this all and see it in the context of a cosmos which we can trace back to its dense amorphous beginnings and understand its future so I think it's amazing we have made so much progress and understanding but your question really triggers thoughts about how far we will get with our further understanding and whether there are some problems that we just would be from expire forever and it may well be that there are some limits which are set by simply our brains some things it may be the fundamental laws of nature in the micro world it may be what's going on in our brains may be so complicated that we won't be able to understand them now of course our understanding is being augmented by computers etc but that may help some extent but not enough and so I think we have to bear in mind that when we talk about limits of science there are limits set by the fact that we haven't thought long and hard enough we don't have enough technology but the may also be limits set by the way our brains are constructed and that of course is a limit for us as human scientists but in the cosmic perspective we've got to be aware that there may be in the far future or indeed perhaps already somewhere else in the universe intelligences with a greater grasp than ours or with a different perspective on reality from us your perspective of these three categories that need explanation and work together is marvelous the very small on the atomic and subatomic level the massive cosmological universe level and then complexity in between and that's where we are and so we are the complexity all life forms especially us in between able to be formed from the Stardust of the large and and and composed of the atoms of the small and the complexity we're in between so so in order to answer the question how do you explain the color you have to explain all three that's right we need to explain the complex but also the other challenge of course physicist is to unify the very large and very small the two great pillars of 20th century physics are on the one hand the quantum theory of the micro world and on the other in Stein's theory of gravity and the cosmos now those two theories haven't been linked together but it doesn't matter for most of science because if you're doing atomic physics or chemistry you don't need to worry about the gravitational force between the individual atoms it's too small on the other hand if you're thinking about planets or stars in their orbits you don't need to worry about the quantum fuzziness in those orbits because they're so large so science hasn't been held up by the fact that we don't have this unification of the cosmos on a micro world but it is a challenge and we need to Samantha that challenge if we are to understand the beginning of our universe because when the universe was very very small and dense then quantum fluctuations as it were could shake the entire universe and so to understand what banged and white banged we will need to have that theory so that is one challenge to unify the very large and very small but the other equal challenge as you implied is to understand the very complex of which we are part and some have assumed that when you've unified the very big and the very small you've solved the theory of everything and you can explain the cosmos but even if you do that you still have to deal with all the complexity in the middle Oh indeed the challenge of complexity is quite is completely separate I mean 99% of scientists aren't held up in the slightest by the lack of the unified cosmos of micro world so that's why the phrase theory of everything is in my view hubris tick and misleading because it is in a sense a theory of everything in that it would explain the fundamental laws it would be the end of a quest that started with Newton who told us that the force that holds us to the ground and makes the atoms fall is the same as a force that holds the moving and planets in their orbits and then Faraday unified electricity magnetism etc so at the end of a certain style of science if we could unify all the forces it would not be relevant even to the study of complexity here on earth so that's a greater and quite separate challenge to science how do you see the problem of consciousness in this picture is it a fundamental part of the problem or is it just accept one of many problems that would be nice to solve undoubtedly understanding the brain is one of the greatest challenges in biology and in the whole of science and consciousness is part of that the extent to which consciousness is something special which affects the way we relate to the external world I don't know about some philosophers have speculated about that but I don't know but certainly understanding the brain is going to be one of the greatest challenges and also of course if we think ahead we have to ask whether the developments in intelligence and understanding will come from unaided brains or organic material or where there can be computers which already of course can surpass human capacities in some respects as you look upon these three great categories of explanation they're very small the very large and the complexity in the middle do you see a contribution from philosophers or even theologians in helping us to understand the explanation of it all I think philosophers can clarify some of the concepts but I think it's very important that we should be prepared to accept uncertainty one of the reasons why I'm very skeptical of any dogmatic religion is that if czars teach should be anything it teaches me that even a single atom is fairly hard for most us to understand and that makes me very skeptical of anyone who claims to have more than a very incomplete or metaphorical understanding of any deep aspect of reality and so I'm very skeptical of people who claim to have easy answers that come from non scientific methods I think we have to share the mystery and wonder of the universe with people who think of the universe scientific way but I don't believe that non-scientific modes of thought can actually add to our understanding

Channel: Closer To Truth

Views: 25,347

Keywords: Martin Rees, Closer to Truth, cosmos, consciousness, philosophy, Cambridge

Id: TXbk-b1zCyc

Length: 8min 58sec (538 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 26 2019