Did Carl Sagan Think the Universe Shows No Design?
It’s a complicated story. At one time, a religious skeptic like astronomer Carl Sagan (1934–1996) could write: The universe was made on purpose, the circle said. In whatever galaxy you happen to find...
View ArticleCan the Future Reach Back and Affect the Past?
If the future influenced the past, that would be retrocausality. As Victor Bhaura puts it, Retrocausality means that, when an experimenter chooses the measurement setting with which to measure a...
View ArticleWhy Free Will Is Philosophically and Scientifically Sound
In “Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor: Humans Have Free Will” a recent podcast at ID the Future, geoscientist Casey Luskin discussed science-based arguments against free will with neurosurgeon Michael Egnor...
View ArticleDartmouth Physicist Slams Matrix Idea That Life Is an Aliens’ Sim
Matrix fans, take heed: Dartmouth College physicist Marcelo Gleiser is not a fan of the idea that we are all living in a giant simulation created by intelligent aliens. He takes issue with it for...
View ArticleSci-Fi Predictions for the Future That Really Happened
Last week, we looked at a 1964 prediction of life in the 2020s that definitely did not happen: chimpanzees driving cars and doing housework. Back then, people who recognized that chimpanzees were...
View ArticleSchrödinger Believed That There Was Only One Mind in the Universe
Consciousness researcher Robert Prentner and cognitive psychologist will tell a prestigious music and philosophy festival in London next month that great physicist Donald Hoffman, quantum physicist...
View ArticleDid Physicists Open a Portal to Extra Time Dimension, As Claimed?
At Scientific American, we were told last month: “Physicists have devised a mind-bending error-correction technique that could dramatically boost the performance of quantum computers”: “It is very...
View ArticleJames Webb Space Telescope Shows Big Bang Didn’t Happen? Wait…
Physicist Eric J. Lerner comes to the point: To everyone who sees them, the new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) images of the cosmos are beautifully awe-inspiring. But to most professional...
View ArticleHas a Superintellect Monkeyed With Our Universe’s Physics?
In this second portion of a talk at the Dallas Conference on Science and Faith (2021), philosopher Steve Meyer discusses the ways in which groundbreaking astronomer Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) dealt with...
View ArticleTheoretical Physicist: Can’t Avoid a Beginning for Our Universe
The recent flutter over whether the James Webb Space Telescope’s data stream is a plus or a minus for the Big Bang and the Standard Model of the universe touched on some interesting cosmological...
View ArticleHow Fine Tuned Was Our Universe’s Debut? The Mind Boggles.
In this third portion of a talk at the Dallas Conference on Science and Faith (2021), philosopher Stephen C. Meyer discusses the fact that our universe is fine tuned for life in smaller as well as...
View ArticleAstrophysicist: Webb Finds May Bring “Revolutionary Changes”
Recently, the James Webb Space Telescope started sending back observations about our universe that started quite the tizzy. Did the Big Bang even happen? More focused: If it happened, did it happen...
View ArticleIs Ours One of a Few Working Universes Among Countless Flops?
In this fourth and final portion of a talk at the Dallas Conference on Science and Faith (2021), philosopher Stephen C. Meyer takes on the claim that the fine-tuning of our universe for life can be...
View ArticlePhilosophy: Can Red Have “Redness” If No Self Perceives It?
Yesterday, we looked at philosopher Julian Baggini’s argument that the unified self is an illusion. He spoke about this in the context of a discussion with Closer to Truth’s Robert Lawrence Kuhn. Kuhn,...
View ArticleWhy Philosopher Quentin Smith Saw Belief in God as Unscientific
In the first part of the discussion between Robert Lawrence Kuhn and Western Michigan University philosopher Quentin Persifor Smith (1952–2020) at Closer to Truth, “What Does a Fine-Tuned Universe...
View ArticleA Recent Big Bang Debate: Sheer Politeness Underscores Shakeup
Scientific American told readers recently that the James Webb Space Telescope is “breaking the Big Bang paradigm” so we can be fairly sure that astrophysicists have a lot of questions. The October 1...
View ArticleWhy It’s Difficult for Science to Answer Some Basic Questions
Science answers many questions but some questions test us because they are difficult by nature. They take us to the margins. Let’s look at some — why they test us: At Big Think, theoretical...
View ArticleNews From the Search for Extraterrestrial Life 10
Around our universe: Here are the Pillars of Creation, a star workshop 6500 light years away in the Eagle Nebula, as seen recently by the James Webb Space Telescope: The millions of stars seen by...
View ArticleCan Physics Account for Our Whole Reality?
If only we could reduce the world to an equation, many think — preferably one that is solvable (unlike what happened in what happened in Restaurant at the End of the Universe), we would understand life...
View ArticleAI, It Turns Out, Is Not Currently a Very Good Physicist
Physicist Tom Hartsfield, commenting on a new paper, takes issue with its claim that “Without any prior knowledge of the underlying physics, our algorithm discovers the intrinsic dimension of the...
View ArticleNews From the Search for Extraterrestrial Life 12
In our universe: Researchers are finding more evidence that colliding neutron stars forge not only gold but strontium, lanthanum, and cerium. They expect to discover more rare elements in the debris as...
View ArticleAs Conscious Observers, Do We Help Create Our World?
Elizabeth Fernandez asks whether there is “something unique” about the fact that we are conscious observers of our world. Interesting question. Inanimate objects don’t “observe” anything. If the...
View ArticleQuantum Physics Axed Materialism. Many Hope the World Won’t Know
Quantum mechanics, which developed in the early twentieth century, has been a serious blow to materialism. There is no way to make sense of it if immaterial entities like information, observation, or...
View ArticleSabine Hossenfelder, Taking on Consciousness, Tackles Panpsychism
Recently, I’ve been looking ( here and here) at theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder’s argument that quantum mechanics does not show that consciousness is essential for understanding the universe....
View ArticleWhy Many Researchers Now See the Brain as a Quantum System
Astrophysicist and science writer Elizabeth Fernandez asks us to consider whether quantum processes might help us understand better how the brain works and shed light on consciousness: Some scientists...
View ArticleSchrödinger Believed That There Was Only One Mind in the Universe
This story was #9 in 2022 at Mind Matters News in terms of reader numbers. As we approach the New Year, we are rerunning the top ten Mind Matters News stories of 2022, based on reader interest. Here’s...
View ArticleDid Physicists Open a Portal to Extra Time Dimension, as Claimed?
This story was #8 in 2022 at Mind Matters News in terms of reader numbers. As we approach the New Year, we are rerunning the top ten Mind Matters News stories of 2022, based on reader interest. Here’s...
View ArticleAre Extra Dimensions of the Universe Real or Imaginary?
In a classic 2018 essay, republished recently at Aeon, science writer and artist Margaret Wertheim, author of a number of books, including Physics on the Fringe (Walker Books, 2011), asks us to think...
View ArticleHas a Superintellect Monkeyed With Our Universe’s Physics?
This story was #2 in 2022 at Mind Matters News in terms of reader numbers. As we approach the New Year, we are rerunning the top ten stories of 2022, based on reader interest. In “Has a superintellect...
View ArticleJames Webb Space Telescope Shows Big Bang Didn’t Happen? Wait…
This story was #1 in 2022 at Mind Matters News in terms of reader numbers. As we approach the New Year, we are rerunning the top ten stories of 2022, based on reader interest. In “James Webb Space...
View ArticleThe Search for Extraterrestrial Life 17
In our universe: We’re always learning new things now. The universe “has 2−3× more light than expected from the integrated light from galaxies” “According to new measurements by New Horizons, the light...
View ArticleA Physicist Rejects the Idea That We Live in a Sim Universe
Dartmouth College physicist Marcelo Gleiser insists that the reality in which we live is not a simulation by advanced aliens or other intelligences — and that the fact that it isn’t is important. As...
View ArticleNobelist Roger Penrose Talks About His Impossible Triangle
Last month, Robert Lawrence Kuhn interviewed eminent British mathematical physicist Sir Roger Penrose on the relationship between mathematics, the mind, and the physical universe (December 9,...
View ArticleHow Surreal Artist MC Escher Influenced Physicist Roger Penrose
Last month, Robert Lawrence Kuhn interviewed eminent British mathematical physicist Sir Roger Penrose on a number of topics, including the influence of surrealist artist M. C. Escher (December 9,...
View ArticlePhysicist: Life After Death Is Incompatible With Physics
Back in 2011, particle physicist Sean M. Carroll wrote a guest blog at Scientific American, dismissing the idea of life after death or the immortality of the soul. He began by responding to...
View ArticleThe Search for Extraterrestrial Life 19
In our universe: “Billions of celestial objects revealed in gargantuan survey of the Milky Way”: “The new dataset contains a staggering 3.32 billion celestial objects—arguably the largest such catalog...
View ArticleBlinded by a Defunct Theory
Materialism. What a weird word. It sounds like a ghost, materializing in front of me. And it is sort of like a ghost, one that has mysteriously taken over the minds of many intelligent people. Because...
View ArticleThe Big Bang: Last Summer, Doubt Suddenly Exploded. Why?
Earlier this month, we learned from the National Academy of Sciences that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is prompting a rethink of how galaxies form. Experimental physicist Rob Sheldon wrote to...
View ArticleThe Universe and its Mathematical Structure
This past June, we published an article featuring a conversation between physicist Lawrence Krauss and novelist Cormac McCarthy, where they discussed whether mathematics was “discovered or invented.”...
View ArticleDoes the Evidence for Our Universe’s Fine-Tuning Mean Anything?
Fermilab senior scientist Don Lincoln offers some thoughts at Big Think on why the universe appears fine-tuned for life. He begins by offering evidence: Suppose that the mass of the electron is twice...
View ArticleCan Roger Penrose Explain Consciousness Through Physics?
Nobel Physics Laureate Roger Penrose was featured recently in Forbes on a topic of lifelong interest for him, consciousness. He is convinced that a solution to the famously hard problem of...
View ArticleWhy are eccentric theories of consciousness tolerated?
A couple of days ago, we looked at Andréa Morris’s profile in Forbes of prominent physicist Roger Penrose who struggles to align a theory of consciousness with physics. In the article, she contrasts...
View ArticleThe Multiverse: Better in Fiction Than in Real Life?
Along with time travel, the multiverse is a frequent plot device in science fiction. TV Tropes explains how it works like this: A collection of distinct universes exists, said universes often being...
View ArticleIf Science Were Just Bookkeeping, Fine-Tuning Wouldn’t Matter
Both science and science fiction are better off in a fine-tuned universe where the laws really govern and make sense. That is, they can be discovered by minds because they are the product of a Mind,...
View ArticleA Biochemist Begins To Sense the Limits of Materialism
Irish biochemist William Reville, has been the first Officer for the Public Awareness and Understanding of Science at University College, Cork — the sort of post Richard Dawkins has at Oxford. Reville,...
View ArticleWill the Driving Force for Space Exploration Be a Religious Cult?
Physicist Jay Olson, academic visitor in the Department of Physics at Boise State University, offers an interesting take on the future of exploring the universe: Some time late this century, someone...
View ArticleThe Theory That Consciousness Is a Quantum System Gains Support
At New Scientist last week, science writer and editor George Musser talked about the way a theory of consciousness that sees the brain as a quantum system is now under reluctant consideration. Musser,...
View ArticleHow Quantum Theory Relates To Consciousness
Yesterday, we ran a piece, “The theory that consciousness is a quantum system gains support,” which details a new interest in testing Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose’s quantum theory of consciousness...
View ArticleA Physicist Tries to Avoid the Fact of Design in Our Universe…
In his discussion with Robert Lawrence Kuhn at Closer to Truth, Tufts physicist and cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin addresses the question, “Is the Universe Fine-Tuned for Life and Mind?”: If the deep...
View ArticleConsciousness Observes Different Laws From Physics
Only in the intellectual world are concepts like correct vs. incorrect (or right vs. wrong) meaningful. It’s a different world from the one created by physics. Source
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