A big bang waiting to happen?

The title of Eric J. Lerner's controversial book "The Big Bang Never Happened" speaks for itself. The author is a vocal critic of the Big Bang theory. His alternative is the so-called plasma cosmology, developed by Swedish Nobel laureate Hannes Alfvén. According to Lerner and Alfvén, the universe is both infinite in space and eternal in time. Lerner denies the second law of thermodynamics and instead believes that the cosmos is self-organizing, dynamic and constantly evolving.

[THE AUTHOR'S PHILOSOPHY]

The technical arguments of the book are quite frankly over my head. However, the book also deals with philosophy, politics and religion. Lerner's ideas are strikingly similar to Marxism, but perhaps less determinist. Otherwise, his main sources of inspiration seem to be Prigogine, Vernadsky and Teilhard. He particularly recommends the latter's book "The Phenomenon of Man". Lerner argues that the cosmos has an in-built tendency towards progress. Both the universe and society progresses through a series of crises, leading to more and more complex structures forming. Lerner's definition of complexity is connected to the use of energy. A structure, organism or society that can make creative use of large quantities of energy is more complex than its opposite. This may sound trivial, but it turns out to be connected to Lerner's support for fusion power. It also leads Lerner to reject the second law of thermodynamics. To Lerner, life itself is anti-entropic, and since the universe is infinite, there are no "closed systems" in which entropy can wipe out progress. Rather, humanity can learn how to use (or recycle) energy on a constantly expanding scale. Lerner claims to be a materialist or naturalist, and rejects teleology. However, his ideas can easily be given a panpsychist spin, and it's difficult to see in what sense they aren't teleological (unless teleology is taken to mean strict predestination á la Calvin). He admits that the idea of an infinite, ever-evolving universe can be squared with certain religious concepts. Teilhard does indeed come to mind! Note also the salient fact that Marxism, which is materialist, is (arguably) teleological as well. Politically, Lerner calls for the abolition of capitalism in the West, but also criticizes the Soviet system in favour of a democratically-run planned economy.

[THE BIG BANG, POLITICS AND RELIGION]

Lerner makes an explicit connection between his political and philosophical ideas, and his rejection of the Big Bang. If the universe will eventually die an entropic "heat death", no real progress is possible. Lerner points out that the idea of entropy in the distant future has been used by certain writers to attack the idea of material progress in the here and now. (Jeremy Rifkin comes to mind. Lerner, clearly, is no Green!) Big Bang cosmology implies that the universe had a perfect beginning, a kind of mathematical "Eden", and has been devolving and winding down ever since. More disturbingly still (at least from the author's perspective), the Big Bang implies that the universe actually has a beginning in time and space. Since all materialist explanations for what came before the Big Bang are pretty exotic, the theory actually makes it possible to argue for a supernatural creator-god. Lerner points out that one of the first scientists to propose a Big Bang theory, George Lemaitre, was a Catholic priest and scientific advisor to the Vatican. Alfvén believed that Lemaitre proposed a big bang scenario for explicitly theological reasons. (Today, the Intelligent Design movement uses the Big Bang theory in its favour. For a popularized example, see Lee Strobel's "The Case for a Creator".) To Lerner, the Big Bang cosmology promotes pessimism, existentialism...or supernaturalism. He seems to regard supernaturalism as the flipside of atheist pessimism. If the cosmos is fundamentally meaningless, meaning can only be sought from the outside in the form of supernatural salvation. Lerner also attacks quantum physics, whose speculations about "the collapse of the wave function", dead-or-alive cats or "baby universes" he considers to be just as bizarre as they sound. While Big Bang cosmology promotes Christian fundamentalism, the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics leads straight to occultism and other forms of irrationalism.

[THE AUTHOR'S VIEW OF HISTORY]

Lerner believes that there has been a perennial conflict throughout world history between a rationalist-elitist-deductive view of science and an empiricist-populist-inductive ditto. The former is associated with Platonism and certain authoritarian forms of Christianity, while the latter flourished in the Ionian towns in ancient Greece, and much later during the Renaissance. The high tide of the empiricist view was the 19th century. Rather than speculating about how nature "must" look like according to some abstract mathematical notions about "beauty", scientists should develop new technologies which can end material scarcity, popularize their results among the common people and base their cosmological speculations on hard, empirical facts. The deductive method is aristocratic, priestly and at bottom irrational. It's typical of societies in crisis and decay. The empirical method is democratic and expresses progress. The author believes that the pessimistic and irrational outlook of modern cosmology is a result of the political and societal crises of the 20th century, including the world wars, the rise of Nazism and the stalling of progress and prosperity from around 1970 onwards.

[SOME PROBLEMS WITH THE BOOK]

When laid out like this, Lerner's ideas sound somewhat dogmatic and exaggerated! There are contradictions in his book which might be difficult to solve. The author believes that cosmological problems should be dealt with by appealing to natural laws and processes working in the present here on Earth. This principle, known as uniformitarianism, seem to collide with the idea that the universe is unstable, open-ended and evolves through conflict and crisis. That sounds more like catastrophism! I don't think it's a co-incidence that the super-catastrophist Velikovskians are parasitical upon plasma cosmology...

Some of Alfvén's ideas don't seem to be based on current processes on Earth. What about the idea that parts of the universe might contract due to gravity and then explode in a kind of mini-Big Bang? Lerner's denial of the second law of thermodynamics is another example: this law certainly seems to be universal (even anti-entropic life is mortal), so any anti-entropic principle would have to be a complete novelty, not discovered before and not in any obvious way connected to the natural laws known to operate in "closed systems" today.

Other problems: there seem to be a tension between Lerner's populist perspective on science, and his admiration for great scientists, artists and geniuses. Sometimes, it almost sounds as if they are the ones called upon to save us! I've already mentioned the contradiction between "materialism" and panpsychism. Lerner's view of world history sound Euro-centrist and philhellenist. Didn't the Babylonians and ancient Egyptians develop astronomy and mathematics? What about the Maya culture? Why doesn't Lerner mention high cultures such as the Indus Valley Civilization? China doesn't even make a guest appearance on Lerner's maps of ancient civilizations! His interpretations of various Christian theologians also sound idiosyncratic. Were Clement of Alexandria and the Monophysites really some kind of crypto-Epicureans? Somehow, I doubt it.

[SOME POSITIVES WITH THE BOOK]

While "The Big Bang Never Happened" can be problematized in various ways, it does raise important and timely questions. Thus, it puts a finger on the philosophical consequences of various cosmological theories. Personally, I think the New Age-quantum physics connection is obvious. Sceptics might whine about it all they like, it's not going to go away as long as quantum physics sound occult and are depicted that way even in popular science magazines. The subjective idealism and implicit sollipsism of the Copenhagen interpretation are equally glaring. The Christian-Big Bang connection is perhaps less obvious.

Lerner's book also raises the issue of the role of mathematics in scientific research. Is mathematics a human construction which approximates real phenomena without ever being able to absolutely predict them? Or is there such a thing as "pure" mathematics which can be applied without empirical observations of the real world? The notorious super string theory with its 15 dimensions comes to mind in this context...

Finally, of course, "The Big Bang Never Happened" raises the question about the status of the Big Bang theory itself. Lerner regards the theory as unscientific and "saved" only by ad hoc hypotheses looking very much like Ptolemaic epicycles. Although the book was written almost 20 years ago, the author still believes that the established cosmology is all wrong. He responds to some recent criticism at his website. Regardless of whether you believe in Lerner's "conspiracy theory" about Platonist-Christians fighting Ionians and Renaissance men, he will try to persuade you that, at the very least, the Big Bang is bad science. Indeed, apart from Lerner and perhaps Alfvén, plasma cosmology in general doesn't seem to be connected to left-wing radicalism. (A Marxist group called the IMT promotes plasma cosmology, but they have no connection to Lerner, although they quote him extensively in their ultimate blockbuster "Reason in revolt", also available in Urdu and Bahasa Indonesia. But I'm digressing.)

[CLOSING REMARKS]

As for myself, I remain uncommitted to this particular theory, but I admit that I liked the author's common sense attack on quantum physics á la Copenhagen. Surely there is something rotten in *that* kingdom of Denmark? However, the book is intellctually stimulating, regardless of whether you ultimately agree with it or not. It's also refreshing to read something really heretical, for a change! For these reasons, I give Eric J. Lerner's book five stars.

Is plasma cosmology a "big bang" waiting to happen or just another whimper? I suppose only the future can tell...

PS. Please don't take my mock reviews of this book in other blog posts seriously. I'm JOKING, for crying out load!

;-)