Tasneem Zehra Husain, The Multiverse, and Plenitude

How Physicists Learned to Love the Multiverse

Tasneem Zehra Husain has an excellent article on the multiverse in this month’s Nautilus. In this age of the expert whom we must trust to give us the truth, Husain’s transparent and clear explanation of some of the underlying philosophical concerns regarding the multiverse is refreshing. I only wish that her writing was more aware of the historical plenitude traditions. Many of the philosophical concerns regarding the multiverse interact heavily with, or even are mandated by, plenitude thinking. Husain makes this quite clear, and locating this thinking in the historical matrix of plenitude traditions would further enrich and elucidate her explanation of the multiverse hypothesis.

Plenitude thinking holds that everything that can exist will exist. As Lovejoy observed, it had an obvious influence on a range of thinkers since antiquity, including Bruno’s infinity of worlds (read extra-terrestrials) and Leibniz’ view that the species are “closely united,” and “men are linked with the animals.”

Though I don’t suspect plenitude thinking had a direct influence on the initial development of the multiverse hypothesis, it doesn’t take a physicist to see a fairly obvious connection. If everything that can exist will exist, then why should there be only one universe?

But a more interesting interaction comes in how physicists evaluate and justify the multiverse hypothesis which, after all, isn’t very satisfying. With the multiverse, difficult scientific questions are answered not with clever, enlightening, solutions but with a sledgehammer. Things are the way they are because things are every possible way they could be. We are merely living in one particular universe, with one set of circumstances, so that is what we observe. But every possible set of circumstances exists out there in the multiverse. There is no profound explanation for our incredible world. No matter how complicated, no matter how unlikely, no matter how uncanny, our world is just another ho-hum universe. All outcomes exist, and all are equally likely. Nothing special here, move along.

As Princeton cosmologist Paul Steinhardt puts it, the multiverse is the “Theory of Anything,” because it allows everything but explains nothing. Given this rather unsatisfying aspect of the multiverse, how can it be defended?

Enter plenitude thinking. An important theme in plenitude thinking is that there should be no arbitrary designs in nature. If everything that can exist will exist, then no particular designs will exist where others are also possible.

This has become a powerful element in evolutionary philosophies of science. As Leibniz explained, the entire, continuous, range of designs should be manifest in nature, rather than a particular, arbitrary design. That would be capricious.

This rule holds unless there is sufficient reason for it not to (Leibniz’ PSR). If only one design can arise in the first place, due to some reason or technicality, then all is good—the design is no longer viewed as arbitrary. The problem is, we can find no such reason or technicality for our universe. It seems any old universe could just as easily arise.

Plenitude thinking mandates that the designs we find in nature should fill the space of feasible designs. We should not find particular designs where others are possible. But this seems to be precisely what we find in our universe. It is a particular design where others are possible. Theoreticians have been unable to find any reason for why this design should have occurred.

If we say the universe was designed, then it is a design that is arbitrary, and that violates the Principle of Plenitude. The solution to this conundrum is the multiverse.

This is how physicists can learn to love the multiverse. Yes it is a sledgehammer approach, but it satisfies plenitude thinking. Our universe is no longer arbitrary. Instead, the full range of universes exists out here. Husain beautifully explains this, and here is the money passage:

For decades, scientists have looked for a physical reason why the [universe’s] fundamental constants should take on the values they do, but none has thus far been found. … But to invoke design isn’t very popular either, because it entails an agency that supersedes natural law. That agency must exercise choice and judgment, which—in the absence of a rigid, perfectly balanced, and tightly constrained structure, like that of general relativity—is necessarily arbitrary. There is something distinctly unsatisfying about the idea of there being several logically possible universes, of which only one is realized. If that were the case, as cosmologist Dennis Sciama said, you would have to think “there’s [someone] who looks at this list and says ‘well we’re not going to have that one, and we won’t have that one. We’ll have that one, only that one.’ ”

Personally speaking, that scenario, with all its connotations of what could have been, makes me sad. Floating in my mind is a faint collage of images: forlorn children in an orphanage in some forgotten movie when one from the group is adopted; the faces of people who feverishly chased a dream, but didn’t make it; thoughts of first-trimester miscarriages. All these things that almost came to life, but didn’t, rankle. Unless there’s a theoretical constraint ruling out all possibilities but one, the choice seems harsh and unfair.

Clearly such an arbitrary design of the universe is unacceptable. (By the way, Husain also adds the problem of evil as an associated problem: If the universe was designed, then “how are we to explain needless suffering?”)

The multiverse solves all this. Yes, the multiverse is an unsatisfactory, sledgehammer approach. But it saves plenitude, and that is the more important consideration.

Husain’s article is a thoughtful, measured explanation of how physicists today are reckoning with the multiverse hypothesis. But make no mistake, religion does the heavy lifting. The centuries old plenitude thinking is a major theme, running all through the discourse. That, along with a sprinkling of the problem of evil, make for decisive arguments.

The multiverse is another good example of how religion drives science in ways that are far more complex than is typically understood.

Yockey and a Calculator Versus Evolutionists

Zero Probability is Not a Problem

In a 1977 paper published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology, Hubert Yockey used information theory to evaluate the likelihood of the evolution of a relatively simple protein. Yockey’s model system was cytochrome c, a protein consisting of about one hundred amino acids. Cytochrome c plays an important role in the mitochondria’s electron transport chain (ETC) which helps to convert the chemical energy in carbon-carbon and carbon-hydrogen bonds, in the food we eat, to an electrochemical potential energy in the form of hydrogen ions (or protons) stored within the mitochondria’s inner membrane. Like water pressing against a dam and turning its turbines to generate electricity, the high-concentration hydrogen ions drive the ATP synthase “turbine” to create the high-energy ATP molecule. Like the electrical outlets in your house, the ATP molecule provides a standardized form of energy that is used for a wide range of applications in your body, such as muscle contraction and nerve signals. There is no scientific explanation for how the ETC evolved. There also is no scientific explanation for how a single protein, such as cytochrome c, evolved. Yockey explained this in 1977, and since then the problem has only gotten worse.

Given 20 different amino acids to choose from, then for a protein with a sequence of 101 amino acids, such as cytochrome c, there are 20 raised to the power of 101, or 20^101, different possible amino acid sequences. That represents an astronomically (and impossible) number of sequences for evolution to search through to find a functional cytochrome c protein.

The problem is more complicated than this, however, since the different amino acids are not equally likely and there are many different sequences that will form a functional cytochrome c protein.

Yockey accounts for these factors to determine the effective number of sequences evolution would have to search through to find cytochrome c. For instance, Yockey uses the known cytochrome c proteins at the time, from many different species, to get an idea of the different amino acids that are possible at each position, within the sequence of 101 residues. Some residues allow for quite a few different amino acids while others seem to be more stringent.

This approach is reasonable, but by no means the only way of estimating the number of different amino acid sequences that could work. One way or another, the bottom line is this: while the number of different sequences that could form a successful type of protein, such as cytochrome c, is a pretty big number, it doesn’t solve the problem.

Yockey found that the probability of evolution finding the cytochrome c protein sequence is about one in 10^64. That is a one followed by 64 zeros—an astronomically large number. He concluded in the peer-reviewed paper that the belief that proteins appeared spontaneously “is based on faith.”

Indeed, Yockey’s early findings are in line with, though a bit more conservative than, later findings. A 1990 study of a small, simple protein found that 10^63 attempts would be required for evolution to find the protein.

A 2004 study found that 10^64 to 10^77 attempts are required, and a 2006 study concluded that 10^70 attempts would be required.

These requirements dwarf the resources evolution has at its disposal. Even evolutionists have had to admit that evolution could only have a maximum of 10^43 such experiments. It is important to understand how tiny this number is compared to 10^70. 10^43 is not more than half of 10^70. It is not even close to half. 10^43 is an astronomically tiny sliver of 10^70.

Furthermore, the estimate of 10^43 is, itself, entirely unrealistic. For instance, it assumes the entire history of the Earth is available, rather than the limited time window that evolution actually would have had. And it assumes the pre existence of bacteria and, yes, proteins. In fact, the evolutionists assumed the earth was covered with bacteria, and each bacteria was full of proteins. That of course is not an appropriate assumption for the question of how proteins could have evolved in the first place. In fact, it is circular.

Of course the evolution of a single protein is only one of many problems for evolution. Consider, for example, the cellular apparatus that constructs proteins—the protein synthesis machinery. One paper used a back-of-the-envelope, simple and conservative calculation to show that the probability of such an apparatus evolving by chance is one in 10^1018. That’s a one followed by 1,018 zeros. Normally in science this would be considered far beyond impossible, so therefore evolutionists are considering an infinite universe, or multiverse, to solve the problem. In such a universe, it does not matter how improbable any event is, it will eventually occur:

Origin of life is a chicken and egg problem: for biological evolution that is governed, primarily, by natural selection, to take off, efficient systems for replication and translation are required, but even barebones cores of these systems appear to be products of extensive selection. The currently favored (partial) solution is an RNA world without proteins in which replication is catalyzed by ribozymes and which serves as the cradle for the translation system. However, the RNA world faces its own hard problems as ribozyme-catalyzed RNA replication remains a hypothesis and the selective pressures behind the origin of translation remain mysterious. Eternal inflation offers a viable alternative that is untenable in a finite universe … In an infinite universe (multiverse), emergence of highly complex systems by chance is inevitable. Therefore, under this cosmology, an entity as complex as a coupled translation-replication system should be considered a viable breakthrough stage for the onset of biological evolution.

There you have it. Probabilities don’t matter. You can point out how unlikely evolution is, and evolution remains a fact. Science is done by people, and people seek certain answers, regardless of the data.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

Worshipping the Creature Rather Than the Creator

Alan Lightman’s recent piece in Harpers on the multiverse has all the usual goodies: The problem that the universe is finely tuned, science devolving into speculation, scientific explanation devolving from law-driven necessity to contingency-driven chance, and more. As Alan Guth, explains, “the multiple-universe idea severely limits our hopes to understand the world from fundamental principles.” But no story about the multiverse would be complete without the all-important, so-called, anthropic principle and Lightman does not disappoint. The multiverse is the cosomologist’s role in the evolutionary creation story, and just as evolutionists center their myth in the thing that was created, so too the cosmologist’s point of reference is, yes, us.

When you ask an evolutionist how profoundly complex biological designs, that even today confound our best scientists and engineers, evolved, they will explain that the organic wonder increased the fitness of the organism in which it evolved. In other words, the new design fulfilled a need. They will explain this in great detail, as though that suffices as an explanation to the question. The brain evolved because it was needed.

Likewise, when you ask a cosomologist how the universe was finely tuned, they will explain that it must be finely tuned because, as British physicist Brandon Carter explained, we are here to observe it. If it weren’t finely tuned, it wouldn’t be observed because life would be impossible. Simply put, our universe is what it is because we are here.

It would be like hitting a thousand jackpots in a row in Las Vegas and explaining it by referring to the money you collected. True, if you hadn’t hit those jackpots you couldn’t have collected the money, but that doesn’t explain the astronomically unlikely event.

It’s all about worshipping the creature rather than the creator.