Prabhupada, December 18, 1973, Los Angeles: […] But how all of a sudden there can be explosion (big bang)? What is this nonsense proposition? As soon as there is question of explosion (big bang), before the explosion takes place, there must be some arrangement. The time bomb explosion. So the bomb is prepared by something, some bomb is kept by somebody, and after some time it explodes. So how all of a sudden? Where does he get this idea? Just like if there is bomb explosion here, a child may think, “All of a sudden there is a bomb explosion,” but a sane man will not think that. Full Conversation
CERN, the Large Hadron Collider, the world's most expensive physics experiment
“We Are Crossing the Boundary Between Knowledge and Belief”
May 17 2011, Geneva, Switzerland —Rolf-Dieter Heuer is the director of the European Organization for Nuclear Research and oversees the vast CERN laboratories in Switzerland. He sat down with Martin Eiermann to talk about the search for the Higgs Boson, the limits of human knowledge and the distinction between science and religion.
The European: […] The Higgs Boson has been described as the “God particle”. Many scientists dislike the name. Why?
Heuer: It is too flamboyant and misleading. Why should it be a “God particle”? It is one of the building blocks of the Standard Model, the cornerstone without which the model would not be valid. But there is nothing divine to it. I think the name primarily serves as a publicity tool to attract the attention of publishers.
The European: Let us talk about the idea of the divine. For much of human history, religion and science were deeply intertwined. Galileo was expelled from the church for questioning those links. How would you separate the two realms?
Heuer: We separate knowledge from belief. Particle physics is asking the question of how did things develop? Religion or philosophy ask about why things develop. But the boundary between the two is very interesting. I call it the interface of knowledge. People start asking questions like “if there was a Big Bang, why was it there?” For us physicists, time begins with the Big Bang. But the question remains whether anything existed before that moment. And was there something even before the thing that was before the Big Bang? Those are questions where knowledge becomes exhausted and belief starts to become important.
The European: What is the difference between justified opinion and belief?
Heuer: Justified opinion or knowledge is something that you can at least partially prove. Belief or philosophical thought cannot be examined through experiments.
The European: For Aristotle, physics was the primary science that could tell us almost anything about the cosmos. But he also thought that all things had an innate capacity – the telos – to develop to their full potential.
And so it fell to philosophy to investigate the nature of things.
Heuer: At the edge of physics, it becomes linked to philosophy. But in the case of particle physics, it is really not a question of “believing” but of deducing something from a larger theoretical framework or from experimental data. Once you can prove something, it is no longer a question of philosophy.
The European: Scientific theories are postulated and then either supported or falsified by experiments. Isn’t there one component of theory that is always ahead of the realm of confirmation, that requires a Kierkegaardian leap of faith precisely because it seeks to expand the scope of our understanding?
Heuer: Not always. But the interplay between theory and experiment is very interesting. Sometimes the theory is indeed ahead of the experiment and we must later try to find proof for the validity of the theory through data analysis. But when the analysis yields results that could not be expected from the theory, then it must follow the experiment and devise new formulas to explain our observations. In the history of particle physics, we have discovered several unexpected particles that were only later explained by theories. They were like the missing pieces of the puzzle, except that we did not know they were missing.
The European: What still puzzles me is the following problem: A theory can only be falsified; it can never be proven. You can tweak the theory, you can establish an experimental record that supports it. But you will never have an ultimate confirmation of its validity.
Heuer: It is a question what you define as full proof. If all experimental evidence points to a given fact, that you can say that within certain boundary conditions the theory is correct. Take Newton’s law of gravity: Within our velocity regime, it is correct. But when you apply the logic of relativity theory, it loses its validity. This means Newton’s laws are a low velocity approximation of the more embedding theory of relativity.
The European: Do you think it is conceivable that we will eventually learn something about before the Big Bang?
Heuer: I doubt it.
The European: How do you make sense of that paradox? You want to expand the realm of knowledge but at some point, there is a definite boundary that you cannot cross. Do you simply have to accept the fact that nothing was prior to the Big Bang?
Heuer: I wasn’t saying there was nothing, I am saying that we don’t know anything about what was before – if there was a before. But here we are crossing the boundary between knowledge and belief. I think many famous scientists have struggled with this question and people today also struggle with it.
The European: So at the very borders of human knowledge, science and belief tend to converge?
Heuer: In the scientific community we don’t tend to discuss such things too often. But the more we investigate the early universe, the more people are trying to connect science to philosophy. That is a good thing. Since we are struggling with the limits of knowledge, maybe philosophy or theology struggle also with our research. I think it is important that we open a constructive dialogue. We are currently planning seminars and workshops to do exactly that. My hope is that we can reach a common understanding of what we are talking about.
The European: Do you think that your arguments – scientific arguments – have been dismissed by the humanities?
Heuer: Science is not much talked about in society today. It is largely separated despite the fact that society depends on science and its results and developments. This was very different at the beginning of the 20th century when science was a discussion topic in private households. Maybe the amount of information is becoming so overwhelming that people are submerged.
The European: Einstein was basically a rock star of modern science…
Heuer: Exactly, that’s a dynamic that we are missing today. But I think the public interest in the work at CERN might give us an opportunity to discuss science in a societal context. Questions about the boundaries of human knowledge give us an opportunity to open a dialogue with the general public, to bring science back into society. If scientists satisfy the public interest, then the interest can keep growing. It’s a circle that we have to perpetuate. Full Article
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