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My favourite colour & other stories.
May. 7th, 2003 08:56 amEvery year I forget my favourite colour, and every year I remember…
This is my favourite time of year; the shade of fresh green of new growth before the chlorophyll has really filled out the leaves so it is such a pale green. Especially in late afternoon when the sun strikes the greenery at an angle giving sharp contrast between the pale green and shadow; I love it, I really do.
Albert Einstein once said that the question he was really interested in was whether or not God had any choice in the way he made the universe. Bertrand Russell once asked much the same question when he said that what he wanted to know was ‘why the flux was subservient to numbers’.
The weak anthropic principle states that the universe is the way it is because if it weren’t, then we wouldn’t be here to see it. What this means, of course, is that if any of the universal constants differed; Pi, the interactions of atoms or molecules or gravity, then the universe would be an utterly different place and we’d be different to survive in it. For example; although Pi is an infinite number, if but one of the numbers was different to what it is, then that difference would compound over time and the Earth would have spiralled into the sun long ago. Then again, the Sun wouldn’t have held it’s shape and the Earth would have been a cinder, assuming the sun had ever been there at all.
The chain of coincidence that leads to you being here is incomprehensible. Not only does the mathematical state of the universe have to be exactly as it is (leading to the question of whether or not a universe with different physical laws could exist at all, or whether it is inevitable that it turned out like this), but the chain of evolutionary chances that lead specifically to you is astonishing. There are the well-known miracles; the dinosaurs dying, a group of short apes coming down from the trees and finding that to see over the tall grass they had to stand upon their hind legs, but there are the little miracles of evolution that we forget about.
The first life on earth was made up of single celled thingies that were only just on the very cusp of what we call life. The problem is that even the simplest life is made up of more than 2000 different enzymes and proteins. Evolutionary scientists estimate that for those 2000 chemicals to interact and fall into the right pattern to be called ‘life’ on a purely random, sloshing round in the sea basis would take between 4 and 40 Billion years. The fact that life popped up on Earth within 400,000 years of it cooling enough for liquid water to form is not only unlikely, but nigh impossible. Miraculous, you might say. It appears that chemistry is so coded and the universe interacts in such a way that life wants to appear. Evolution wants to happen. But there is a problem here, too.
Most people think that evolution proceeds in jumps and starts; it doesn’t. It can’t. For humans to have a big brain, they had to lose significant body mass in other areas like muscle and gut in order to free up the blood supply that that big brain needed. However, without the big brain, we couldn’t have survived with those adaptations, meaning that the bigger brain and the lessened body mass had to evolve at the same time; not one change, but two complementary ones art the same time – if evolution proceeds through random mutations, what are the odds of that, especially repeated over time to adapt other bits like eyes – that not only need photoreceptive cells, but also a visual cortex to make sense of the data they produce?
Then there is human society. The size of the brain compared to our body mass means that our babies have to be born very early in their development. In the case of species with smaller brains, infants can be up & fending for themselves in anything from a new hours to a few weeks. In our case, it takes years. Our children are born unable to protect themselves, and without instincts that other animals have.
What this means is that we had to develop a social structure to care for the newborns and educate them in how to survive.
Evolution, and your being here, can be seen therefore to be a function not only of mutation but also of society and social development; we are selecting our breeding for the future now, even if we do not realise it – warfare is diminishing because those who enjoy fighting are killed before they breed. If they are not killed, then society locks them away and prevents their breeding. There are genetic markers indicating a predisposition to theft and violence; as we breed these things out of the species, those crime rates shall fall.
So back to my original thought – does the universe have to be the way it is for us to see it?
Probably, yes. If haemoglobin didn’t fold over Oxygen in just the way it does, we wouldn’t be breathing Oxygen because we couldn’t. If Stromatlites hasn’t popped up when they did and started to metabolise Oxygen, then there’s be no atmosphere. If the physical laws of the universe were just that tiny bit different, you wouldn’t be here.
Current thought on Einstein’s question of Gods choice is that Gods choice was very limited indeed – if there was one at all.
So remember, whilst you’re sitting at your desk this week, that you’re a little miracle. The chance of you existing is so small as to make you impossible. Since the start of the universe, all the odds say that you shouldn’t exist, but you do – and for some reason it seems almost like the universe actually wants you to.
Look at the tree out of the window for a moment. Nice colour, isn’t it?
This is my favourite time of year; the shade of fresh green of new growth before the chlorophyll has really filled out the leaves so it is such a pale green. Especially in late afternoon when the sun strikes the greenery at an angle giving sharp contrast between the pale green and shadow; I love it, I really do.
Albert Einstein once said that the question he was really interested in was whether or not God had any choice in the way he made the universe. Bertrand Russell once asked much the same question when he said that what he wanted to know was ‘why the flux was subservient to numbers’.
The weak anthropic principle states that the universe is the way it is because if it weren’t, then we wouldn’t be here to see it. What this means, of course, is that if any of the universal constants differed; Pi, the interactions of atoms or molecules or gravity, then the universe would be an utterly different place and we’d be different to survive in it. For example; although Pi is an infinite number, if but one of the numbers was different to what it is, then that difference would compound over time and the Earth would have spiralled into the sun long ago. Then again, the Sun wouldn’t have held it’s shape and the Earth would have been a cinder, assuming the sun had ever been there at all.
The chain of coincidence that leads to you being here is incomprehensible. Not only does the mathematical state of the universe have to be exactly as it is (leading to the question of whether or not a universe with different physical laws could exist at all, or whether it is inevitable that it turned out like this), but the chain of evolutionary chances that lead specifically to you is astonishing. There are the well-known miracles; the dinosaurs dying, a group of short apes coming down from the trees and finding that to see over the tall grass they had to stand upon their hind legs, but there are the little miracles of evolution that we forget about.
The first life on earth was made up of single celled thingies that were only just on the very cusp of what we call life. The problem is that even the simplest life is made up of more than 2000 different enzymes and proteins. Evolutionary scientists estimate that for those 2000 chemicals to interact and fall into the right pattern to be called ‘life’ on a purely random, sloshing round in the sea basis would take between 4 and 40 Billion years. The fact that life popped up on Earth within 400,000 years of it cooling enough for liquid water to form is not only unlikely, but nigh impossible. Miraculous, you might say. It appears that chemistry is so coded and the universe interacts in such a way that life wants to appear. Evolution wants to happen. But there is a problem here, too.
Most people think that evolution proceeds in jumps and starts; it doesn’t. It can’t. For humans to have a big brain, they had to lose significant body mass in other areas like muscle and gut in order to free up the blood supply that that big brain needed. However, without the big brain, we couldn’t have survived with those adaptations, meaning that the bigger brain and the lessened body mass had to evolve at the same time; not one change, but two complementary ones art the same time – if evolution proceeds through random mutations, what are the odds of that, especially repeated over time to adapt other bits like eyes – that not only need photoreceptive cells, but also a visual cortex to make sense of the data they produce?
Then there is human society. The size of the brain compared to our body mass means that our babies have to be born very early in their development. In the case of species with smaller brains, infants can be up & fending for themselves in anything from a new hours to a few weeks. In our case, it takes years. Our children are born unable to protect themselves, and without instincts that other animals have.
What this means is that we had to develop a social structure to care for the newborns and educate them in how to survive.
Evolution, and your being here, can be seen therefore to be a function not only of mutation but also of society and social development; we are selecting our breeding for the future now, even if we do not realise it – warfare is diminishing because those who enjoy fighting are killed before they breed. If they are not killed, then society locks them away and prevents their breeding. There are genetic markers indicating a predisposition to theft and violence; as we breed these things out of the species, those crime rates shall fall.
So back to my original thought – does the universe have to be the way it is for us to see it?
Probably, yes. If haemoglobin didn’t fold over Oxygen in just the way it does, we wouldn’t be breathing Oxygen because we couldn’t. If Stromatlites hasn’t popped up when they did and started to metabolise Oxygen, then there’s be no atmosphere. If the physical laws of the universe were just that tiny bit different, you wouldn’t be here.
Current thought on Einstein’s question of Gods choice is that Gods choice was very limited indeed – if there was one at all.
So remember, whilst you’re sitting at your desk this week, that you’re a little miracle. The chance of you existing is so small as to make you impossible. Since the start of the universe, all the odds say that you shouldn’t exist, but you do – and for some reason it seems almost like the universe actually wants you to.
Look at the tree out of the window for a moment. Nice colour, isn’t it?
