In this week’s New Scientist, there is an article about gravity that deals with a string theorist’s reformulation of gravity as an entropic force. This reformulation describes gravity as an emergent property of space, time and matter, and NOT as a physical force itself.
Here’s a quote from the actual article:
Of course, Einstein’s geometric description of gravity is beatiful, and in a certain way compelling. Geometry appeals to the visual part of our minds, and is amazingly powerful in summarizing many aspects of a physical problem. Presumably this explains why we, as a community, have been so reluctant to give up the geometric formulation of gravity as being fundamental. But it is inevitable we do so. If gravity is emergent, so is space time geometry. Einstein tied these two concepts together, and both have to be given up if we want to understand one or the other at a more fundamental level.
The results of this paper suggest gravity arises as an entropic force, once space and time themselves have emerged.
I will simply add that my own musings on space-time, and on Einsteinian relativistic presuppositions, tells me that Verlinde is correct, and that he is only one step away (it is a rather giant step, however) from a great leap forward in our understanding of space, time and matter.
I don’t need to bring out all the implications of this for the Darwinian-ID debate. This theoretical finding throws gravity, as a fundamental force of nature, into question. So, if gravity is now to be understood as a phenomena, and not a “fact”, then what about Darwinian extravagence?