From: Lawrence Johnston (johnston@uidaho.edu)
Date: Thu Aug 21 2003 - 11:08:48 EDT
Ian - Thanks for that recital of how genius seems to manifest
itself. Roger Penrose's book Emperor's New Mind also has
fascinated me over the years since its publication. In spite of
the peeks he gets into "God's Notebooks", as he puts it, he seems
to cling to a Naturalistic worldview. He ends up with his best
hopeful explanation of self-consciousness as some as-yet
undiscovered laws of physics. In his work he exhausts for us,
explanations in terms of known basic science. It doesn't seem to
occur to him that other miracles may have happened, besides the
Big Bang.
In talks I often show Penrose's marvelous picture (cartoon,
really) of God the Creator using a pinpoint to choose the precise
point in phase space at which to start the Big Bang. [Page 343 of
_The Emperor's New Mind_.] He says in the title lines of the
picture that this point is improbable as one part in ten to the
ten to the 123 power; The point is chosen as the one to start the
Universe with a minimum entropy, and hence a Universe with all
this "Free Energy" we enjoy. (so why do we get electric bills in
the mail? An answer: shipping and handling charges)
All God's Best, Larry Johnston
-----------------------------------
"He has made everything beautiful in its time.
He has also set eternity in the hearts of men"
- - Ecclesiastes 3:11, NIV trans
=======================================================
Lawrence H. Johnston home: 917 E. 8th st.
professor of physics, emeritus Moscow, Id 83843
University of Idaho (208) 882-2765
Fellow of the American Physical Society
http://www.uidaho.edu/~johnston/homepage.html =========
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