Stephen Hawking once wrote that if science ever comes up with a unified field theory (i.e., the grand unification of relativistic gravity concepts with quantum particle mechanics), humankind will then “know the mind of God“. Now Hawking has a new book coming out (“The Grand Design“) that in effect says, “scratch that; there’s no God with a mind to be known”.

Back in the late 19th Century, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche got a lot of press by proclaiming God to be dead (in a book that he titled “The Gay Science”; the future irony was not apparent at the time, obviously). Now, more than a century later, Hawking is back with a science book even more “gay” (in the sense of being joyously self-confident), which buries philosophy as well as God! (Yep, philosophy is dead, per Hawking).

“Grand Design” will be released this Tuesday, and it will probably be many more months until I get around to reading it. But I have read some articles and excerpts and book reviews out in advance of the book, and I believe that I catch the general drift of Hawking’s argument. What he appears to be saying is that physics and cosmology can now answer so many questions about the universe that God is redundant, not needed, a casualty of Occam’s Razor.

Physics is now so good that we can explain how something came from nothing (although recall that “nothing” is not what it used to be; even the deepest vacuum of space has bubbling “vacuum energy“). Through M-Theory (string theory on steroids), we can take a very good guess at what came before the “Big Bang”, i.e. before the start-up of our own universe 13 billion years ago (give or take a few hundred million). There was always and is forevermore a quantum process called “the multiverse” which keeps on popping out new universes, countless numbers of universes. The characteristics of these universes vary. Once in every trillion or so pops, a universe like ours pops up and conscious life emerges, as a side-show of sorts. The multiverse itself is quantum in the classic Copenhagen sense; it just keep popping out new universes without any rhyme or reason, without any feeling or intention or grand scheme. There is no abstract theme to it, no further laws behind it; what you see is what you get (i.e., M-Theory at work).

So that’s it; that’s the end of the road, as far as epistemology goes. No need for philosophers to work late on the problem of the meaning of existence anymore. Even the universes with life eventually self-destruct (though a big crunch, or through eternal expansion and “heat death”), taking down everything that any conscious civilizations might have accomplished during the few billion years when conditions supported conscious life. They don’t make a dent in the grand scheme of things, which is mostly no scheme. They are pretty much irrelevant, incredibly tiny, at best a one-line footnote in a 100 volume encyclopedia. It may take a few hundred years, but once this all becomes known to the entire human race, all talk of God will cease. It will seem silly and unnecessary.

This is obviously going to keep the theologians and philosophers busy for the next few years. They ain’t going down without a fight (even if they will be fighting individually, not necessarily trying to help each other despite having a common foe). The Hawking rationale is not without a few weak points that can be latched onto. First off: M-Theory is still unproven, and some scientists doubt that it can be truly proven or disproven, given just how broad and mutable it is. And even if it were proven, we still have no idea on how to measure or observe anything about the “multiverse”; we are in the bubble of our own universe, unable to see any others. All we have are some guesses regarding “fingerprints”, i.e. the nature of the quantum process. We are like a tiny worm born and living in the middle of some kind of vegetable; we don’t know whether our home is growing up in the air (like broccoli), or an a vine on the ground, or under the ground within the roots of a plant. We know not whether other fruits or veggies like the one we feed on are out there, what they would be like, what supports them.

OK, suppose that the smart little worm is able to make some observations about his home; he detects that heat is coming in from beyond the boundaries of his home vegetable, along with water and nutrients. So, it concludes quite reasonably there must be something more than this wonderful veggie that it keep gnawing at to stay alive. But what would be the nature of that “something more”? Well, all the worm would know were the dynamics found inside of its veggie. I.e., how water and sugars come in from somewhere and go thru some chemical changes to form fiber and pulp structures within it. Obviously, that’s what it would use to imagine a “multi-veggie world”; similar fibers emanating radially from some sort of linear stem. It might be a bit shocked if it could see the earth as a ball, with a wide variety of different trees and plants and vines emanating from its curved surface. I.e., our worm would not get many clues about the structure of the outside world, despite its search for deep fingerprints within its own realm.

Next: even if there is a multiverse that explains where our little “veggie” universe comes from, why should our curiosity stop there? If our worm could see the earth and its surface where plants like it grow, should it assume that there is no more than it? Just because the worm is so tiny relative to the planet? Should the worm in effect say “this is my God, there is no more”? Even though there are yet solar systems and galaxies and clusters and even multi-universes much bigger than the blue and brown orb supporting the veggie universe?

Perhaps the worm could reasonably conclude “I am a worm; I’ve pushed my limits and have discovered a lot about a reality so much bigger and more complex than I am. That’s pretty darn good, I think. But I really don’t think I can go any farther than knowing about the big, wet circular rock that supports the plants which pump out the veggies that I know so well. Everything I need to know has been explained. I can’t imagine there would be anything more.”

So, Hawking’s analysis perhaps is a bit wormy. As huge and incredible as his story is, it could yet be too small.

Finally, let’s move from worms and vegetables to chickens and eggs. The human experience can be summarized on a “chicken and egg” basis, for the sake of philosophy. I.e., we believe there to be an objective world where things happen according to set, predictable laws (for the most part, subject to random seeding needed to inspire structures and meaningful differences). This objective world can be observed by any one to the same effect. Certain atoms mixed with other types of atoms at a certain heat level will cause the same reaction and product every time. That’s the world of the objective, the world that science describes.

Science describes this world in a variety of ways, starting with simple propositions (e.g.,magnetized iron atoms in a solid crystal arrangement arrange themselves according to magnetic polarity, and the “north” side of those crystals will attract to the south side of other crystals). They move up through abstract math (a simple example would be E=MC squared), into extremely complex systems of math and proposition (e.g. M-Theory).

But then there is the subjective side of experience, the mental world, the world of consciousness and thought. We know that subjective experience depends upon physical interactions that are described by objective science, interactions occurring largely within our brain tissue (but not exclusively). And yet, without that subjective reality, the objective world would not be known. Every scientific proposition is based on observations occurring subjectively. Ultimately, M-Theory and all other scientific knowledge can be said to “exist in the mind”, in the realm of the mental. As with the worm in the veggie, we are not able to get a fully reliable objective theory regarding the subjective, as we can’t observe any other subjective worlds for comparison (i.e., you can’t get into my head and feel everything I’m feeling, in precisely the way I’m feeling it).

The worm inside a carrot might have gotten a clue that things were more complex than he thought, had he been able to get inside of a tomato or a potato or a stalk of celery. This worm might get some “vibes” from worms in other kinds of fruit, just as we can talk with other people. But it could never know for sure if the other worms were seeing things as he was seeing them; could he really appreciate the liquid realm that the tomato worm described and the solid, unchanging world of the potato worm, given that he had no direct experience of them? And even if he did get some clues about a soil and water world where all these other “mental veggies” grew from, could he then imagine the “mental Milky Way” and the “subjective Big Bang / Big Inflation”?

The idea of God is grounded in the subjective. The idea of science and M-Theory is grounded in the objective. Which is primary? Which came first? Perhaps there would be an objective world without the subjective. But how would we know? We understand that the subjective world would not exist without some version of the objective. But the objective world that we know must be seen through the subjective; despite reproducability, we can’t guarantee that it isn’t twinged by the ways of the mental. M-Theory is ultimately a mental, subjective product; it is the universe that our subjective mentality creates, based on what seems to work in supporting the objective needs of keeping the subjective fire going. There’s no guarantee that it is the final reality, however.

If that is the case, then is it so unreasonable to postulate that at a higher, more “real” level, a “bigger” subjective entity has created a more real “M-theory”, a more real “theory of everything” which actually does lie at the core of . . . well, everything. If we are carrot worms, we are going to image a world something like what we see in our carrot. If we can talk to other worms in other veggies and can begin to imagine what their immediate veggie-worlds are like, we might be able to imagine something bigger, like a farm. But can we then jump to multiverses and multi-dimensional strings in M-theory driven colliding branes? Even when Hawking talks of great things like M-theory and multiverses and branes floating in a trans-dimensional soup, he’s still down on the farm. If he can think big on the objective side of reality, there’s no reason why others can’t think big on the subjective side. The philosopher will allow it; the theologian will actually start having those big thoughts, based on “fingerprints in the subjective”.

(But let the theologian remain humble too, like that little worm in the carrot should; there are way too many churches that are way too certain that they know exactly what the bigger subjective realm, i.e. God, is like.)