01.16.06
Review of Cosmic Landscape
Susskind’s The Cosmic Landscape reviewed in the Times Book Review.
The worry over the connection with intelligent design seems misplaced. I would bet that Kant’s simple, and by no means airtight, disproof of the design argument, is reflected in the strange equivocations of string theory.
And Susskind’s attempt to put Darwin’s ‘laws of evolution’ in a short list with the classic sequence of physical laws is surely incorrect. Darwin’s selectionism is simply not science in the sense of physics.
Maybe string theory also reflects the Kantian antinomies of space, time and substance. Particles beyond atoms, strings beyond particles, when will it never end?
What troubles Susskind is an intelligent design argument considerably more vexing than the anti-evolution grumblings recently on trial in Dover, Pa. Biologists can point to unambiguous evidence that evolution truly does happen and that it can account for many otherwise inexplicable aspects of how organisms function. For those who take a more cosmic perspective, however, the appearance of design is not so simply refuted. If gravity were slightly stronger than it is, for instance, stars would burn out quickly and collapse into black holes; if gravity were a touch weaker, stars would never have formed in the first place. The same holds true for pretty much every fundamental property of the forces and particles that make up the universe. Change any one of them and life would not be possible. To the creationist, this cosmic comity is evidence of the glory of God. To the scientist, it is an embarrassing reminder of our ignorance about the origin of physical law.