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Title: Philosophy/Philosophy of Science/Physics - The Mind of God A review of Paul Davies' exposition of foundational philosophical issues. (December 10, 2001)

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The Mind of God

Paul Davies

Simon & Schuster 1992A book review by Danny Yee © 1993 http://dannyreviews.com/The Mind of God is one of the recent offerings from physicspopulariser Paul Davies. Unlike his other books it contains very littlein the way of actual physics, being instead about foundationalmetaphysical and epistemological issues. While it is written for apopular audience and makes no assumptions of prior knowledge, the readerwithout any maths/physics/computer science background is likely to findthe barrage of new ideas heavy going. The philosophically naive readeris also likely to end up confused by the plethora of different ideasbeing thrown at them. However they should not be put off, as the ideasand issues covered are arguably intrinsically perplexing. (Perhaps theonly reason they don't confuse practicing philosophers is because thelatter are already extremely confused :-). The Mind of God begins with physics, looking at different theories ofthe creation of the universe, the nature of physical laws and thepossibility of a theory of everything. This leads on naturally to adiscussion of mathematics and its philosophical foundations, and then onto computer science, and in particular the nature of computation and itsrelationship to physical processes. Then it's back to mathematics andits relationship with physics. After this things get more philosophical,with a look at various arguments for a "God" or at least something"outside" the universe. The final chapter is a look at mysticism andcontains a suggestion that non-rational (religious and mystical)approaches to understanding may be able to go beyond the limits ofphysics. The bulk of the material is expository, but Davies does come to twobroad conclusions. The first is that there is something special aboutthe universe, the second is that there is something special about us."We are truly meant to be here." is the closing sentence of the book. Ido not find the arguments for either of these at all convincing. I amtempted to play the positivist and argue that neither of his claimsmeans anything (because I do not understand how anything can be"special" except to or for an observer, and hence cannot see how one canargue that the universe is special without first assuming the existenceof a God), but there are other problems with these claims.The argument that there is something mysterious about the universe isbased on our ability to understand the universe at all and on itsapparent operation according mathematical rules. The former is anatural consequence of our existence as intelligent animals, and theexplanation of this is the task of evolutionary biology. (See below,and consult any work on the evolution of consciousness and cognition.)The latter is only significant if there is an alternative, and I wouldargue that anything with structure can have that structure representedmathematically, and anything that "exists" must connect to other things(perhaps there are invisible, intangible, non-interacting pink elephantsout there, but they don't concern me) and hence must exhibit some kindof structure.The laws of physics are indeed such as to allow life to exist, but itis not clear that we can deduce anything about our own significancefrom that. Even given the right laws of physics it seems that theexistence of Homo sapiens (or indeed multicellular life) on this planetis a contingent fact of natural history and by no means inevitable.(See Stephen Jay Gould's Wonderful Life, for example.) Also, giventhat we do not even know what Omega (the average mass density of theuniverse) is to within an order of magnitude, it seems hard to arguefor the sensitivity of the existence of life to the "initialconditions" of the universe!The long progression through the arguments for the existence of God -the good old ontological argument, the cosmological argument and theargument from design all making their appearance - is a little odd.Davies provides more than adequate explanations for the failure of eachof the different arguments as he proceeds, yet at the end has somehowgiven the impression that all the arguments put together, despite havingbeen individually refuted, give some kind of support to there being a"God".Davies' restriction of his view to the physical and mathematical sciencesand his complete neglect of the historical sciences is also worrying.To me his ideas seem a strange mixture of Cartesian reductionism onthe one hand and mystical idealism on the other. He attempts to reduceepistemology to physics, mathematics and computer science, and then, whenthese don't seem to be able to explain everything, resorts to appeals tomysticism and religion. There is more to the universe (and epistemology)than physics and mathematics deal with. Instead of looking to mysticismor religion for information about this or about our place in the universe,however, I would suggest trying anthropology and evolutionary biology.These qualms about Davies' broader conclusions aside, The Mind ofGod is a brilliant exposition of foundational philosophical issues inmathematics, physics and computer science. It is recommended readingfor anyone interested in the big philosophical questions.December 1993External links:- buy from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.ukRelated reviews:- books about philosophy- more popular science- books about religion- books published by Simon & Schuster%T The Mind of God%A Davies, Paul%I Simon & Schuster%D 1992%O hardcover%G ISBN 0671710699%P 254ppSubjects |Titles |Authors |Best Books |Search |LatestBook Reviews by Danny Yee

A	review	of	Paul
Davies'	exposition	of	foundational	philosophical
issues.	(December	10,	2001)

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