{"id":577,"date":"2012-10-20T12:37:35","date_gmt":"2012-10-20T17:37:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/?p=577"},"modified":"2012-10-20T12:37:35","modified_gmt":"2012-10-20T17:37:35","slug":"i-dont-know-why-there-is-something-rather-than-nothing-and-neither-does-stephen-hawking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/2012\/10\/20\/i-dont-know-why-there-is-something-rather-than-nothing-and-neither-does-stephen-hawking\/","title":{"rendered":"I don’t know why there is something rather than nothing, and neither does Stephen Hawking"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over on his excellent blog, In the Dark<\/a>, Peter Coles quotes Stephen Hawking<\/a> saying,<\/p>\n

Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He then asks<\/p>\n

Huh? I can\u2019t make sense of it at all. Is it just me that finds it entirely devoid of either logic or \u00a0meaning?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He has a poll where you can vote on whether the statement is meaningful.<\/p>\n

I voted, and then I wrote a comment explaining my vote. Having written it, I figured I might as well throw it up here, so that two or three more people might see it:<\/p>\n

I find the intended meaning of the statement tolerably clear: given that there are certain laws of nature, including gravity (among other things such as quantum mechanics), a vacuum state (\u201cnothing\u201d) can and will evolve into a state containing a universe like ours.<\/p>\n

That strikes me as meaningful and quite possibly even true. As a piece of science communication to the general public, though, it\u2019s counterproductive. In context, it\u2019s clear that Hawking means to claim this as an answer to hoary old questions of the \u201cwhy is there something rather than nothing\u201d variety, and it doesn\u2019t do that. If you\u2019re the sort of person who\u2019s inclined to be bothered by questions of that sort, you\u2019ll be just as bothered after understanding this claim as you were before. You\u2019ll just want to know why there was a vacuum state lying around obeying these particular laws of physics.<\/p>\n

Similarly, this argument certainly doesn\u2019t prove the non-existence of God, as Hawking seems to be claiming.<\/p>\n

Scientists harm our brand when we make overly broad claims about what science can \u201cprove.\u201d Hawking should know better.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Scientists who try to explain things to the general public are on the side of the (secular) angels, but it drives me crazy when they make overly grandiose claims, either about the science itself<\/a> or about its philosophical interpretation<\/a>. Every time a scientist does this, it erodes the credibility of the entire profession.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over on his excellent blog, In the Dark, Peter Coles quotes Stephen Hawking saying, Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. He then asks Huh? I can\u2019t make sense of it at all. Is it just me that finds it entirely devoid of either logic … Continue reading I don’t know why there is something rather than nothing, and neither does Stephen Hawking<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}