Darwinism and Physics

"And why should it determine that we come to the right conclusions from the evidence? Might it not equally well determine that we draw the wrong conclusion.? Or no conclusion at all?
The only answer that I can give to this problem is based on Darwin’s principle of natural selection. The idea is that in any population of self-reproducing organisms, there will be variations in the genetic material and upbringing that different individuals have. These differences will mean that some individuals are better able than others to draw the right conclusions about the world around them and to act accordingly. These individuals will be more likely to survive and reproduce and so their pattern of behavior and thought will come to dominate. It has certainly been true in the past that what we call intelligence and scientific discovery have conveyed a survival advantage. It is not so clear that this is still the case: our scientific discoveries may well destroy us all, and even if they don’t, a complete unified theory may not make much difference to our chances of survival. However, provided the universe has evolved in a regular way, we might expect that the reasoning abilities that natural selection has given us would be valid also in our search for a complete unified theory, and so would not lead us to the wrong conclusions."

Hawking, S. (1988)

Numa das suas mais emblemáticas obras Gell-Mann (1995) escreveu que quando encontrava um erro num livro ficava tão irritado que tinha logo vontade de po-lo de lado. Ao longo das minhas leituras de algumas obras de Hawking fico exactamente com essa mesma vontade.
Para quem tem a ideia de que Hawking apenas faz livros de grande divulgação aconselho-o vivamente a entrar no mundo das equações do livro que citei no post anterior. Hawking sabe de Física, mas sofre do mesmo problema que a maioria dos físicos: fechados numa torre de babel da alta ciência, pouco ou nada sabem de outras disciplinas para além do comum. Trata-se do grande edifício científico construído em prestações. O modelo Oxford-Cambridge, onde os génios produzem conhecimento nos seus quartos (leia-se departamentos) e por vezes socializam na sala onde, acompanhados por um copo de Xerez, contam o essencial das suas descobertas.
A lei de Darwin justifica para Hawkings a validade dos paradigmas vigentes (Dawrwin meets Popper).
A história que Hawking conta neste livro é simples e dá-nos uma aproximação genérica ao pensamento ocidental, mas tem partes em que dá mesmo vontade de mandar o livro às urtigas. Senão vejam esta outra pérola:

"One argument for such a beginning was the feeling that it was necessary to have “First Cause” to explain the existence of the universe. (Within the universe, you always explained one event as being caused by some earlier event, but the existence of the universe itself could be explained in this way only if it had some beginning.) Another argument was put forward by St. Augustine in his book The City of God. He pointed out that civilization is progressing and we remember who performed this deed or developed that technique. Thus man, and so also perhaps the universe, could not have been around all that long. St. Augustine accepted a date of about 5000 BC for the Creation of the universe according to the book of Genesis. (It is interesting that this is not so far from the end of the last Ice Age, about 10,000 BC, which is when archaeologists tell us that civilization really began.)"

Hawking (1988)

É fabuloso o que os arqueólogos contam a Hawking sobre o alvor da civilização.
As palavras de Gell-Mann ecoam no meu pensamento ainda com mais força. Se este homem parte de príncipios tão grosseiros dentro daquilo que eu sei, nem quero imaginar o que dirá do que eu não sei. Tenho saudades do Santa Fe Institute.


GELL_MANN, Murrey (1995) The Quark and the Jaguar: Adventures in the Simple and the Complex. Owl Books

HAWKING, Stephen (1988) A Brief History of Time. Bantam Books.