Reading Peter Atkins (and Other Ways to Waste an Afternoon)

A few years back, renowned chemist Peter Atkins wrote a couple of rather silly books, in which he tried to give an account of how the universe could arise from absolutely nothing. The essence of his proposal is that "the incipience of the universe was an event in which absolutely nothing (not even spacetime) turned into a more interesting form of nothing, where opposites became distinguished." He explains as follows:

Take electric charge. There are obviously positive and negative electric charge (for instance, of protons and electrons, respectively), but the total charge of the universe is zero. [...] More contentiously, I think it possible to argue that there is no energy in the universe (with mass being another manifestation of energy, through  E = mc2). Yes, there are positive and negative contributions to the total energy, but I suspect that the total is zero, just like the total charge.

The argument, then, is that there was once a state of absolute nothingness, an "absence of being" (Conjuring the Universe, p. 18), which then "split" or "separated" into opposites (i.e. positive and negative charge, energy, and so on).

By my lights, there are at least four serious problems with this proposal.

Firstly, there seem to be some aspects of the physical universe which cannot, even in principle, be explained on Atkins' model. To take one example, the existence of spacetime itself makes little sense if we view creation as a separation of opposites. After all, we don't have "space and anti-space," or "time and anti-time"; there is just spacetime, existing without an opposite. And there are other explanatory failures here; for instance, with regards to the fundamental physical constants, Atkins admits that "No one yet has a clue about why they have their current, and for us serendipitous, values" (CTU, p. 154). Certainly his own muddled proposal does nothing whatsoever the illuminate the matter.

Secondly, Atkins seems to be misunderstanding the fundamental question here, which is primarily ontological in nature. An illustration will help to make this point: in his book On Being, Atkins argues that if the total energy in the universe (TEU) sums to zero (which he thinks it probably does), then this would mean that "What we see around us is actually nothing" (p. 17). But even if Atkins is correct about the TEU (which is by-no-means certain; see here and here), his metaphysical claim is obviously false. To understand why, think of two particles, one of dark matter, and one of common matter. 

These particles are, Atkins says, manifestations of negative and positive energy, respectively; one is the "cancellation" (his word) of the other. But of course, dark matter and common matter both exist; they both have a positive ontological status, that is to say, being. When you have these two particles side-by-side, you do not suddenly have zero particles; you have two particles, one positive, and one negative. A particle of dark matter and a particle of common matter may well "cancel each other out" in some sense, but surely they do not add up to non-being; rather, we know that dark matter and common matter exist alongside one another, even entering into causal relations via gravitation. And of course, such things as particles, positive or negative, would not have been present in "Nothing." As such, Atkins' account is utterly worthless when it comes to addressing (or even simplifying) the foundational question of how being can emerge from non-being.

Thirdly, Atkins seems to equivocate on the nature of "Nothing." For instance, when he speaks of "Nothing" as having been "split," one is immediately urged to ask whether or not "Nothing" is splitable; that is, whether it has the potential to be split. If so, then it has properties, in which case it is not nothing, but rather a very nebulously-defined something. If, instead, we agree that "Nothing" really is devoid of properties, then we must ask how it can be "split" or "separated." We see this confusion throughout Atkins' books; for instance, in On Being he writes that "Nothing has no properties" (p. 12), while in Conjuring the Universe he states that "Our current something has simply inherited the properties of its parent Nothing" (p. 38).

Fourthly, I suspect Atkins' account may simply be incoherent. For take the central idea of his proposal: that Nothing, the "absence of being" (CTU, p. 18), was somehow "separated" into distinct forms of being. When stripped of its pseudo-scientific veneer, it seems rather obvious that this is just a bad conjuring trick. It is not a serious hypothesis about the origins of the universe; it is a category error, of the sort which loses points on a freshman philosophy paper, being dressed up and sold as science, and deriving its credibility solely from the fact that it is the work of an author who once produced worthwhile textbooks on physical chemistry.

It is always depressing when a formerly productive mind turns its attention to the production of vacuous drivel; even still, perhaps the rest of us can derive some amusement from their folly.

Dore on Rowe on the Cosmological Argument

I recently came across an old paper by Clement Dore, entitled "Rowe on the Cosmological Argument" (1983). In it, Dore objects attempts to uphold Hume's objection to the PSR, by critiquing Rowe's defense of the principle. He writes:

[In] order to support the cosmological argument, PSR must be interpreted this way: "For any infinite set, S, each of whose members can be explained by another member, the question 'Why are there any members of S?.' can (only) be truly answered by referring to a cause which is not itself a member of S." But how much credibility has PSR, thus interpreted? Consider the question, "Why are there any things which are at least as large as a quark?" Rowe's claim that PSR (as presently interpreted) may be plausible appears to commit him to the thesis that the following may be plausible: "If there is a finite number of members of the set of things which are at least as large as a quark (call it S'), then S' is like my philosophy of religion class, in that we do not need to infer an irreducibly distinct cause of its having members. However, if S' has an infinite number of members, then it is subject to a causal explanation which does not reduce to the individual explanations of the individual members, namely, the following one: The individual members of S' exist because there is something smaller than a quark which is their ultimate cause." 

But of course, Dore argues, it is absurd to suppose that there must be something smaller than a quark which is the ultimate cause of the set S'. And since PSR (allegedly) commits one to such a claim, it seems that PSR must be rejected.

I found this line of argument noteworthy, if only because of how absurdly weak it seems. Firstly, because the cosmological argument doesn't require one to assume any infinite set of objects; the argument from contingency (for example) works identically well whether the totality of all contingent things is finite or infinite.

But there's another issue with Dore's line of reasoning. For assuming that S' has infinitely many members, it seems that we may still avoid his claim of absurdity with relative ease. Example: suppose that the universe had a beginning in time, with an initial state and physical laws that were/are metaphysically necessary (this is the view taken by, among others, Graham Oppy). In that case, S' would be explained by the initial state of the universe, in tandem with the laws of nature that necessarily follow from it. This claim hardly seems absurd, and it is hard to believe that it should lead one to abandon PSR.

Alternatively, suppose that the universe has existed for eternity, and that its existence is metaphysically necessary. In that case, we have a number of options. For instance, S' might be metaphysically necessary (e.g. if the universe is necessary and past eternal, and S' includes everything in the universe, it follows that S' is metaphysically necessary). Alternatively, S' might be explained by the laws of nature in tandem with the most fundamental physical entities, and these things might be metaphysically necessary. Or else, if nothing in the physical universe is necessary, then S' would need to be explained by something outside of the universe, in which case the cosmological argument is sound. None of these options seem so absurd as the merit the rejection of PSR.

[Note: Dore might consider the last result (i.e. the cosmological argument being sound) to be absurd; however, this would hardly constitute a genuine reply to that argument. For then Dore would be arguing as follows: "The PSR as required by the cosmological argument is absurd, because if it were true, it would entail the success of the cosmological argument." This might be sufficient grounds for rejecting PSR, but it will certainly not convince anyone who regards the cosmological argument as sound.]

Procrastination and the Sorites Paradox

There is something about the logic of procrastination which puts me in mind of the sorites paradox. Just as it seems absurd to suppose that one dollar could make the difference between rich and not-rich, so too does it seem absurd to think that "five more minutes" could make-or-break one's ability to complete a given task. And yet, just as certainly in the one case as in the other, it seems intuitively obvious that there must be some dividing line between rich and not-rich, plenty of time and none-to-spare. I wonder if the obviously fallacious nature of procrastinatory reasoning might have something to teach us about the sorites paradoxes more generally.