Hawking wrong about the Earth and wrong about God, says outgoing head of the Royal Society, Martin Rees
As President of the Royal Society, Rees has become the figurehead of British science and he has learnt that his pronouncements carry more political weight than when he was mere Sir Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal and part-time science author. He agreed to a final interview before he retires with this in mind, saying that he would have to be careful with his choice of words if he was not actually in charge of writing them.
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On the need to confront the big environmental problems facing us in the 21st century, he parts company with his friend and colleague Stephen Hawking, who famously once said that humans will have to colonise distant planets if they are to survive. “I think that’s an an ill-thought through statement and we have to bear in mind that there is nowhere we know about in our own Solar System that is even as hospitable as the top of Everest or the South Pole. The problems of the Earth must be solved here on the Earth and we must not divert attention from that necessity,” Lord Rees said. He is equally scathing about Hawking’s more recent comments about there being no need for God in order to explain creation. “Stephen Hawking is a remarkable person whom I’ve know for 40 years and for that reason any oracular statement he makes gets exaggerated publicity. I know Stephen Hawking well enough to know that he has read very little philosophy and even less theology, so I don’t think we should attach any weight to his views on this topic,” he said.
Full interview: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/martin-rees-we-shouldnt-attach-any-weight-to-what-hawking-says-about-god-2090421.html
A quote from the article: “he believes that our Universe may be just one of many, and that even the one that we know about could actually be a computer simulation devised by a race of super-intelligent aliens”.
When I saw his TV series “What we still don’t know”, and he came up with these ideas, as well as dark matter and dark energy, not to mention the anthropic principle, I dubbed him “The Fantasist Royal”.
It does seem to me that many scientists writing today about theories at the forefront of science, particularly cosmology, are far too willing to put forward fanciful speculations, rather than stating clearly what we do know with reasonable certainty, and leaving the speculation to the science fiction writers.
I see Prof. Penrose has a book coming out proposing “cycles of time”.
Time to get out Dr Ockham’s Razor methinks.
I disagree. There is a difference between solid science (what we know with reasonable certainty) and speculative science (areas where there is too little information to make any definite statements), but the boundary between them is not fixed, and shifting all the time.
Look at the science of cosmology in the 1930s & 1940s, before we knew what we do now. The theory of the Big Bang was considered speculative. It took work on the speculations of the time to come up with a respectable theory, and provided platforms on which other studies on stars and the universe could be built on. Now, the boundaries have moved and what was once speculative science is solid science.
If we left speculation just to science fiction writers, we’d still be in the Stone Age.
There is nothing to stop a scientist being also a science fiction writer. Fred Hoyle is a good example. He wrote or co-authored some cracking yarns that extrapolate on genuine science, though he also was guilty in his later years of blurring the line between the two (I’m thinking of ‘panspermia’).
The point I am criticising is the failure to make clear where the line is between what science can confirm with some degree of certainty and what is pure speculation. On the one hand we have the postmodernists who maintain that absolutely nothing can be known with any certainty, and on the other people like Martin Rees and Roger Penrose who, speaking from positions of considerable authority, are able to give undue weight to their own fanciful speculations.
Even the big bang theory still has its difficulties. The important thing is not to lose sight of exactly what evidence we have and the steps of reasoning by which we have reached our current position.