Can philosophy and theology help cosmology in its crisis?

By nidhal guessoum

During the last century, scientists made very great advances in understanding our incredible universe. Because, although the old geocentric cosmology has been swept away for several centuries, the mind -boggling and the content of the universe were far from being fully understood by science.

At the beginning of the 20th century, we estimated that the cosmic distances were billions of times larger than on earth, and we knew that the solar system was “old”, but it was not until the 1920s to realize that the Univers was to be measured in billions of light years (a light year equaling 10,000 billion km), that its observable part alone contained at least 100 billion galaxies, and that a galaxy like ours, the Milky Way , consisted of hundreds of billions of stars. And if this magnitude was not enough, we discovered that our universe was expanding, in other words that its size had continued to increase since its birth, in a “big bang” from which all the material, Energy, space and time emerged.

It took a while for our minds and our culture to absorb this new vision of the universe. The “Big Bang” has become a cultural expression, even if few people really understand what it denotes: a description of the physical processes which have gradually led to the formation of atoms, gas, then stars and galaxies , from the first moment to the millions and billions of years of physical and cosmic evolution.

We had to adapt to this new cosmos, where the earth was reduced to a simple grain of dust in the unimaginable immensity of this constantly evolving universe, where we, humans, only appeared in the last “Hour” of this giant cosmic film.

No sooner did we digest this new cosmology than things have started to complicate. First of all, a “dark matter” came to impose itself in cosmological models, a substance completely different from all the material we know on earth (from hydrogen to uranium) and completely unknown to date, But which largely seems to dominate the content of the universe.

Then, an astonishing discovery made the minds in 1998: during the last 5 billion years, the expansion of the universe began to accelerate. Scientists had to conclude that “black energy”, of completely unknown origin and nature, fueling this acceleration.

On the other hand, and on a more or less disturbing level (according to everyone’s philosophy), scientists have discovered that the universe is “finely settled” to the appearance and existence of life, of the complexity, intelligence and consciousness. If the laws of physics and the parameters of the universe (the mass of the electron, the speed of light, the force of gravity, the number of dimensions of space and time, and a crowd of others fundamental quantities) had been slightly different from their real values, our universe would have been completely sterile and devoid of everything interesting: no stars, no planets, no cells, no brain …

How can we explain this? Can we say “God did it perfectly”? Or can we find a “more scientific” explanation? For many cosmologists, we perhaps evolve in a universe among countless other universes, which constitute a “multiverse”; Is this a satisfactory scientific explanation, if we postulate countless universes to explain the properties of one of them?

And as long as we are there with these “big questions”, what about the very moment of the “big bang”? What do we mean by the fact that the whole universe comes from a “singular” point? Can we explore the cosmology of this point and this moment? Can we talk about what was there Before The “Big Bang”? Does our universe come from something else, or will this question of “origin” always remain beyond our scientific field of investigation?

These questions, and many others, have led to a cosmology crisis, which has gradually seen a time rich in speculation. A century ago, Ernest Rutherford (the discoverer of the atomic nucleus and winner of the Nobel Prize in physics) exclaimed: “That I do not attract someone to talk about the universe in my laboratory!” ». Indeed, cosmology was then too hypothetical, not scientific enough, lacking in solid data and theories. The 20th century changed all this. But the cosmology of the 21st century, it seems, began to let go of too many conjectures …

One of the main reasons for this crisis is, as Helge Kragh, a historian of science and technology last year wrote, that scientists have forgotten the fact that “cosmology is a science, but not Only a science … Philosophical questions, and sometimes even religious, are an integral part of what cosmology deals with … “. And Kragh to add: these (non -scientific) aspects of cosmology “should be duly taken into account (…) in educational contexts”.

A few years ago, Joël Primack (a cosmologist) and Nancy Abrams (his wife, writer and artist) had severely reminded scientists that “if science has nothing to say about human beings, it will have to say to most human beings… ”. In their excellent book “Cosmic Destin”, they draw the attention of men of science and culture on “separationist attitude”, “social schizophrenia” that today’s science seems to have established between the world of the nature and the world of values ​​and the meaning that humanity is trying to develop slowly.

But it seems that scientists and thinkers have finally understood the need to establish a full -fledged dialogue and collaboration between cosmologists, philosophers, theologians and men and women of culture of all society. Indeed, several conferences in this direction have been organized in recent months.

In April 2012, I was invited to a seminar on “Cosmology, Creation and Islam” at the Iowa University, and in October 2012, I participated, in Philadelphia, in a conference of Two days entitled “Nouvelles borders in astronomy and cosmology”, dealing with “new developments”, new planets (“the other lands”), multiverse and “pre-bang-bang” cosmologies. A few days later, a workshop brought together scientists, philosophers and theologians for two days, to discuss the “big bang and knowledge interfaces”, in search of a “common language” . This workshop was co-organized by CERN and the Wilton Park (an almost official British institution).

It quickly turned out that defining a “common language” is far from obvious. Because, not to mention the various opinions that scientists have on religion (most of them tolerate it as long as it “does not interfere” with science), the vocabulary of theologians, on the one hand, and The Modus Operandi of scientists, on the other hand, could complicate the situation.

Indeed, for theologians, words as “creation”, “truth” and “goal” are completely acceptable, even central concepts in their discourse. For scientists, these are however loaded terms. For scientists, “naturalism” (the scientific approach based exclusively on causes and physical mechanisms) is an intangible principle of their general methodology, and any reference, even indirect, to the divine will or the divine objectives that ‘We could detect, even the meaning that one could extract from cosmology or science, all this must be carefully dissociated from science, at the very least.

So, scientists, philosophers, theologians, educators, artists and social commentators can work together to answer the major cosmological questions that arise, and more generally tackle subjects whose consequences are important for human life and thought? I think so.

First of all, the history of modern science has shown how precious philosophical thought can be for science. Einstein has revolutionized physics when he thought deeply and seriously that “simultaneity” must mean and involve (relativity), to which gravity must be due (the curvature of space), etc. And quantum mechanics was developed by physicists who decided to apply “oriental” concepts, such as “duality” and “complementarity”, particles and waves, with all kinds of extraordinary consequences.

Centuries before that, Johannes Kepler had made a great conceptual jump to replace the planetary orbits (and their epicycles) circular with ellipses, thus erasing two millennia of erroneous astronomy. Kepler was a fervent believer in God and lived the universe as a divine creation, necessarily elegant. It is therefore completely legitimate that the NASA satellite, which is discovering “other lands”, thus producing another revolution for humans and their place in the cosmos, bears the name of Kepler.

Last month, the Philadelphia conference identified four “big questions” at the borders of astronomy and cosmology:

1) How did the universe start? ;

2) Is there a multiverse?

3) What is the origin of complexity in the universe?

4) Are there life and intelligence beyond the solar system?

Some of these questions must be addressed almost entirely by science. But philosophy and other areas of culture can help supervise discourse and clarify concepts. As a participant stressed, at the Geneva conference: “Religion cannot be added to scientific facts, but it can certainly shape our world vision”.