Cosmologist Marcelo Gleiser:
Despite what physicists like Stephen Hawking and Lawrence Krauss say, we are far from understanding the physics of the Big Bang. In fact, it isn’t even clear that we can provide a complete scientific explanation of the origin of the universe.
Because such an understanding should account for the origin of laws of nature.
Even the multiverse won’t help in this case, because such a theory would “still use a conceptual structure derivative of present-day physics.”
What seems to be needed is a new way of depicting the laws of nature not as static truths about the world but as emerging behaviors that unfold and take hold as time elapses. Physicist Lee Smolin and philosopher Mangabeira Unger hint at this in their book, but don’t offer a working approach. (Who can blame them?) More.
No blame, except to say: When we try to derive intelligence from matter rather than matter from intelligence, to help explain why there is something rather than nothing, we find ourselves in these conundrums.
Doubtless, Smolin and co. will end up with laws of nature which aren’t really laws because they “evolve.”
Much as if the number 23 changed its quantity over time.
Here’s Hugh Ross on that weasel word “nothing” in science and philosophy—it comes in nine varieties at least.
See also cosmic Darwinism
In search of a road to reality
and
What great physicists have said about immateriality and consciousness
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