THE WORLD QUESTION CENTER 2006 — P6

LEONARD SUSSKIND
Physicist, Stanford University; Author, The Cosmic Landscape

The "Landscape"

I have been accused of advocating an extremely dangerous idea.

According to some people, the "Landscape" idea will eventually ensure that the forces of intelligent design (and other unscientific religious ideas) will triumph over true science. From one of my most distinguished colleagues:

From a political, cultural point of view, it's not that these arguments are religious but that they denude us from our historical strength in opposing religion.

As                       you may have guessed the idea in question is the Anthropic                       Principle: a principle that seeks to explain the laws of                       physics, and the constants of nature, by saying, "If                       they (the laws of physics) were different, intelligent                       life would not exist to ask why laws of nature are what                       they are."

But the                       A.P. is really shorthand for a rich set of ideas that are                       beginning to influence and even dominate the thinking of                       almost all serious theoretical physicists and cosmologists.

The universe is vastly bigger than the portion that we                       can see; and, on a very large scale it is as varied as                       possible.

Meanwhile                       string theorists, much to the regret of many of them, are                       discovering that the number of possible environments described                       by their equations is far beyond millions or billions.                       This enormous space of possibilities, whose multiplicity                       may exceed ten to the 500 power, is called the Landscape.                       If these things prove to be true, then some features of                       the laws of physics (maybe most) will be local environmental                       facts rather than written-in-stone laws: laws that could                       not be otherwise. The explanation of some numerical coincidences                       will necessarily be that most of the multiverse is uninhabitable,                       but in some very tiny fraction conditions are fine-tuned                       enough for intelligent life to form.

Why                       is it that so many physicists find these ideas alarming?                       Well, they do threaten physicists' fondest hope,                       the hope that some extraordinarily beautiful mathematical                       principle will be discovered: a principle that would completely                       and uniquely explain every detail of the laws of particle                       physics (and therefore nuclear, atomic, and chemical physics).                       The enormous Landscape of Possibilities inherent in our                       best theory seems to dash that hope.

What                       further worries many physicists is that the Landscape may                       be so rich that almost anything can be found: any combination                       of physical constants, particle masses, etc. This, they                       fear, would eliminate the predictive power of physics.                       Environmental facts are nothing more than environmental                       facts. They worry that if everything is possible, there                       will be no way to falsify the theory — or, more to                       the point, no way to confirm it.

STEWART BRAND
Founder, Whole Earth Catalog, cofounder; The Well; cofounder, Global Business Network; Author, How Buildings Learn

What if public policy makers have an obligation to engage historians, and historians have an obligation to try to help?

All historians understand that they must never, ever talk about the future. Their discipline requires that they deal in facts, and the future doesn't have any yet. A solid theory of history might be able to embrace the future, but all such theories have been discredited. Thus historians do not offer, and are seldom invited, to take part in shaping public policy. They leave that to economists.

A dangerous thought: What if public policy makers have an obligation to engage historians, and historians have an obligation to try to help?

And instead of just retailing advice, go generic. Historians could set about developing a rigorous sub-discipline called "Applied History."

There is only one significant book on the subject, published in 1988. Thinking In Time: The Uses of Hustory for Decision Makers was written by the late Richard Neustadt and Ernest May, who long taught a course on the subject at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. (A course called "Reasoning from History" is currently taught there by Alexander Keyssar.)

These                     few stories show the importance of the interplay of minds                     and hormonal signals, of brains and bodies. This idea has                     been taken to a profound level in the well-known studies                     of Anthony Damasio, who finds that emotional or "gut feelings" are                     essential to making decisions. "We don't separate emotion                     from cognition like layers in a cake," says Damasio, "Emotion                     is in the loop of reason all the time."

It's OK not to know everything, it doesn't make science weaker. >                  Only more human. >

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