Given its subtitle, you
might not expect too much from John Hands' 2015 tome entitled Cosmo
Sapiens: Human Evolution From the Origin of the Universe. In my
mind the subtitle suggests the idea that humans have been around from
the time of the origin of the universe, which is not at all an idea
that Hands actually advances. But despite its unfortunate subtitle,
and despite a few analytic missteps here and there, this large volume
is overall a first-rate work offering an astounding breadth of
learning, combined with some penetrating insights that puncture the
explanatory pretensions of quite a few contemporary scientists.
The task that Hands takes
upon himself in writing this book is an enormous one: that of
considering all of the great origin questions (such as the origin of
the universe, cosmic structure, life, and the human mind), without
taking any stock assertions for granted, trying to accept nothing on
the basis of authority. Hands basically tries to take an approach
like this: don't trust any of the generalizations of scientists, but
always attempt to probe into the evidence claimed to support such
generalizations, and attempt to see whether this evidence justifies
such claims. Hands also seems to take an approach like this: always
thoroughly examine alternative explanations besides the explanations
generally recommended by scientific orthodoxy. This is a very
refreshing approach, much better than the standard science-writer
approach of trustingly regurgitating whatever “official party line”
is fashionable among a particular group of scientists.
Hands first looks at the
question of the universe's origin. He looks critically at the Big
Bang theory and the supplementary "cosmic inflation theory" created later mainly to try to
explain enormous fine-tuning of the universe's expansion rate at the
very beginning of time. Quite rightly, Hands punctures the case for
this cosmic inflation theory, pointing out that there is no adequate
evidence for it. Hands seems to suggest that various problems with
the Big Bang mean that it is not a solid theory of the universe's
origin. But I think as long as we are willing to accept fine-tuning
at the very beginning, and keep things as theoretically simple as
possible, without cluttering things up with ornate speculations like
the cosmic inflation theory, then the Big Bang idea works pretty well as a
basic description of the universe's beginning – just a description,
not an explanation. Hands is correct, however, when he says this on
page 102: “Neither science nor reasoning offers a convincing
explanation of the origin and form of the universe, and hence of the
origin of the matter and energy of which we consist.”
Hands then has a chapter
entitled “The Evolution of Matter on a Large Scale.” Hands
punctures some holes in claims that modern cosmology can explain the
large scale structure of the universe. He notes that while
cosmologists claim that gravitation caused density inhomogeneities to
grow into galaxies, the cosmic background radiation indicates that
300,000 years after the Big Bang, matter was uniform to one part in
100,000, “which is far too little density variation for
gravitational instability to cause any structures to form,”
says Hands (page 117). Hands concludes on page 126 that “neither
cosmology's orthodox...model nor any alternative model currently
provides a scientifically robust explanation of the evolution of
matter on a large scale.”
How did we go from the Big Bang to something this ordered?
On page 156 Hands makes
this complaint:
Cosmologists often make
assertions that have little scientific
justification. Their language frequently reflects that of a belief
system rather than that of a science, and the response of
institutional cosmology to reputable scientists who have different
interpretations of data or who advance alternative conjectures is too
often reminiscent of a Church dealing with dissenters.
Hands
later notes, “The way in which the biology establishment treats
dissenters from within and questioners from without is all too
reminiscent of that shown by the cosmology establishment.”
Turning
to the origin of life, Hands shows how weak are all current
conjectures as to how life first appeared. He concludes on page 245,
“It is very probably beyond the ability of science to explain the
origin of life.” On page 411 he notes, “No scientific hypothesis
explains why proteins..form from combinations of up to only 20
different amino acids out of some 500 known amino acids.” He also
notes, “Biochemistry's orthodox account of how life emerged from a
primordial soup of such chemicals lacks experimental support and is
invalid because, among other reasons, there is an overwhelming
statistical improbability that random reactions in an aqueous
solution could have produced self-replicating RNA molecules.”
On
pages 344 to 349, Hands discusses a rather long list of things that
NeoDarwinism orthodoxy fails to explain. The items listed by Hands
include these (among others):
- Stasis and rapid speciation (the fact that species tend to appear quite suddenly in the fossil record, and then often show no signs of evolution for very many millions of years).
- Speciation (Hands says “No studies of living species show the evolution of new species according to the NeoDarwinian mechanism.”)
- Organismal enbryology and development. Hands notes that the orthodox model does not explain the mystery of morphogenesis, how a very tiny fertilized ovum at the moment of conception is able to progress into a human embryo and then into a human baby.
- Progressive complexification. Hands notes that NeoDarwinists often find themselves claiming that there is no arrow of progress in evolution, despite dramatic evidence of exactly such a thing, most notably in the origin of humans.
This phrase “progressive
complexification” is one that we might actually use as a two-word
summary of the history of the universe. But our scientists have no
unifying principle to explain such a thing. They have a unifying
principle to explain how a universe might gradually fall apart (the
idea of entropy), but no unifying principle to explain how the
universe could go from super-dense particle soup to civilized beings. Isn't it
time they started to suspect that the same thing driving the
complexification of lifeless matter may be driving the
complexification of biological organisms?
Hands draws little in the
way of original new conclusions, but that's no problem. His main job
seems to be to show that our scientists know much less than they
often claim to know, and that the great origins questions are mainly
unanswered and still deeply mysterious. At this job he has succeeded
admirably.
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