THE ISLAND OF KNOWLEDGE
ALSO BY MARCELO GLEISER A Tear at the Edge of Creation The Prophet and the Astronomer The Dancing Universe
Copyright © 2014 by Marcelo Gleiser Published by Basic Books, A Member of the Perseus Books Group All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address Basic Books, 250 West 57th Street, 15th Floor, New York, NY 10107. Books published by Basic Books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 810-4145, ext. 5000, or e-mail
[email protected] Book design by Cynthia Young Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gleiser, Marcelo, author. The island of knowledge : the limits of science and the search for meaning / Marcelo Gleiser. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-465-08073-1 (e-book) 1. Science—Philosophy. 2. Meaning (Philosophy) I. Title. Q175.32.M43G57 2014 501—dc23 2013046890 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
TO ANDREW, ERIC, TALI, LUCIAN, AND GABRIEL; the lights that brighten my path
Contents Prologue: The Island of Knowledge
PART I The Origin of the World and the Nature of the Heavens 1 THE WILL TO BELIEVE (Wherein we explore the role of belief and extrapolation in religion and in scientific creativity) 2 BEYOND SPACE AND TIME (Wherein we explore how different religions have faced the question of the origin of all things) 3 TO BE, OR TO BECOME? THAT IS THE QUESTION (Wherein we encounter the first philosophers of ancient Greece and delve into their remarkable notions about the meaning of reality) 4 LESSONS FROM PLATO’S DREAM (Wherein we explore how Plato and Aristotle dealt with the question of the First Cause and with the limits of knowledge) 5 THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF A NEW OBSERVATIONAL TOOL (Wherein we describe how three remarkable gentlemen, with access to new observational tools and endowed with remarkable creativity, transformed our worldview)
6 CRACKING OPEN THE DOME OF HEAVEN (Wherein we explore the genius of Isaac Newton and why his physics became a beacon of the human intellect) 7 SCIENCE AS NATURE’S GRAND NARRATIVE (Wherein we argue that science is a human construction powerful in its range and its openness to change) 8 THE PLASTICITY OF SPACE (Wherein we explore Einstein’s special and general theories of relativity and their implication for our understanding of space and time) 9 THE RESTLESS UNIVERSE (Wherein we explore the expansion of the Universe and the appearance of a singularity at the origin of time) 10 THERE IS NO NOW (Wherein we argue that the notion of “now” is a cognitive fabrication) 11 COSMIC BLINDNESS (Wherein we explore the concept of cosmic horizons and how it limits what we can know of the Universe) 12 SPLITTING INFINITIES (Wherein we begin to explore the notion of the infinite, and how it translates into cosmology) 13 ROLLING DOWNHILL (Wherein we explain the notion of false vacuum energy, how it relates to the famous Higgs boson, and how it may fuel an accelerated cosmic expansion) 14 COUNTING UNIVERSES (Wherein the concept of the multiverse is introduced and its physical and
metaphysical implications explored) 15 INTERLUDE: A PROMENADE ALONG THE STRING LANDSCAPE (Wherein the notion of the string