The Life of the Cosmos
by Lee Smolin
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Book Summary Information
Author: Lee SmolinEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1999-03-04
ISBN: 0195126645
Number of pages: 368
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Book Reviews of The Life of the Cosmos
Book Review: The Stellar Mechanics of world Creation?
Summary: 5 Stars
Dr. Lee Smolin has done a great service to the cause of modern physics. He is one of those rare physicists to be met with who thinks, along with Ernest J. Sternglass, that philosophy of science is not irrelevant to the theory and practice of physics. He, along with Standard Model co-creator, Sheldon Glashaw has been insistent upon physics making contact with the empirical world, and this implies, as Glashaw relentlessly argues against string theory as a kind of pure mathematical abstraction which has no contact or provable contact with our visible sensed cosmos; in the book under review, Smolin begins to see that just as organic processes are subject to evolution, so, too, might our cosmos be so subject; consequently, Smolin reasons, that what may cause such iterations of cosmological selection is quantum Black holes; in this way of theorizing, the Black hole opens, beaneth its event horizon unto another world, and this world will have a (Born statitical?) liklihood of reproducing itself, if it has a high proportion of elements which create quantum comological Black holes; one can conceptualize this in the following way--imagine that Einstein's (1915/16) General theory of relativity, once a fundemental energy is put into the system, say that of a high intensity gamma ray photon, could provide a born-stochastic distribution of all worlds that can produce black holes; on Smolin's proposal, these worlds would be more likely to exist, because they, as it were, are gaurenteed probable offspring--more cosmological black holes, more life worlds. Einstein's theory, if thought through to its fundamental implications, implies the possibility of a distribution of all material and noetic worlds as the complete set of possible solutions to the equations of the theory, which Friedman, among others, was the first to supply. What interests me most about Smolin's prposal is that it may prove even more fruitful, if our sub-cosmos, if such we are in, was produced by the collapse of a quantum cosmological black hole; for then the stellar mechanics of black holes will be the quantum mechanics of cosmological creation. Smolin is careful not to oversell his theory in the abscence of more proof, but he is very attentive to what would constitute evidence for the theory or against it. It would remain to determine to what degree the model of cosmological natural selection is consistent with E. Sternglass' electron/positron model: For Dr. Sternglass has said that his model posits a rotating cosmos with areas of extreme Riemanian curvature, and that this is the description of a black hole--one essentially spun out of just two fundamental particles--the electron and the positron. I assert that Smolin, Sternglass, and I have produced a new understanding of what the big bang is, and thus have a chance of getting within hailing distance of the logico-emperical structure of space-time nd the fundamental parameters of the standard model; I assert, for example, that it is those suns that exceed the Chandraskar limit value which are the collapsing black holes which produce more or less stellar holes depending upon the mass or energy of the original sun; heavier suns, by implication will collapse and form more black holes because the initial mass or energy (they are equal according to Einstein's energy/mass relation)distorts space time so completely that it closes off regions of Einstein's fourfold. If Smolin and Sternglass prove to be right, there might be a Nobel prize in the offing: for surely if the Standard Model can be upgraded and now emperical parameters can be logically and emperically derived, our concept of naturewill have taken one giant, I am tempted to say quantum, leap. For these reasons, Smolin's books are a must read; if anyone is going to break ground in quantum gravity, my money (now in short supply) is on Lee Smolin.Dreams of a Final Theory: The Scientist's Search for the Ultimate Laws of NatureA Suggestion Concerning a Solution to the Riemann HypothesisBefore the Big Bang: The Origins of the Universe
Summary of The Life of the Cosmos
Lee Smolin offers a new theory of the universe that is at once elegant, comprehensive, and radically different from anything proposed before. Smolin posits that a process of self organization like that of biological evolution shapes the universe, as it develops and eventually reproduces through black holes, each of which may result in a new big bang and a new universe. Natural selection may guide the appearance of the laws of physics, favoring those universes which best reproduce. The result would be a cosmology according to which life is a natural consequence of the fundamental principles on which the universe has been built, and a science that would give us a picture of the universe in which, as the author writes, "the occurrence of novelty, indeed the perpetual birth of novelty, can be understood."Smolin is one of the leading cosmologists at work today, and he writes with an expertise and force of argument that will command attention throughout the world of physics. But it is the humanity and sharp clarity of his prose that offers access for the layperson to the mind bending space at the forefront of today's physics.
Lee Smolin is not afraid to think big--really, really big. His theory of cosmic evolution by the natural selection of black-hole universes makes what we can experience into an infinitesimal, yet crucial, part of an ever-larger whole. Smolin says, "the new view of the universe is light, in all its senses, because what Darwin has given us, and what we may aspire to generalize to the cosmos as a whole, is a way of thinking about the world which is scientific and mechanistic, but in which the occurrence of novelty--indeed, the perpetual birth of novelty--can be understood." Other scientists are, to say the least, divided on whether Smolin has much chance of being right, but they agree with Paul Davies that he is "a deep and original thinker."
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