[A-List] Alex Nichols -" A Critique of Grant & Wood's Cosmology" (from a.p.s.t.)

[Jim Farmelant <farmelantj@xxxxxxxx>]

In "Reason in Revolt", Ted Grant & Alan Woods (1) make some telling
criticisms of the "Big Bang" theory of Cosmology. If this is taken to
be a one-off event, which produces the material universe from
"nothing", it clearly has implications which are at variance with
materialism.

Unfortunately they weaken their arguments by denying a wealth of
experimental evidence which supports inflationary models of cosmology.
In doing so, they rely heavily on Eric Lerner's book " The Big Bang
Never Happened".

Modern experimental evidence on the Cosmic Microwave Background
radiation, the proportion of stellar light elements, the observations
from the COBE and WMAP satellites, the maximum temperature variation
in the CMB, is largely dismissed by over-reliance on Lerner's
arguments (2)

They also support the "Plasma Universe" model, first proposed by Okar
Klein and Hannes Alfven, to whom "Reason in Revolt" is dedicated, but
even Lerner eventually disowned Alfven's arguments (3)
The net result is that Grant & Wood's invoke an infinite and
ever-changing universe, but offer no explanatory mechanisms for its
evolution.  This means that they end up with an approach, which sees
the universe as essentially chaotic, rather than following definite
'laws of motion'.

"Dialectical materialism conceives of the universe as infinite, but
not static or in a permanent state of "equilibrium," as both Einstein
and Newton did. Matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed, but
are in a continual process of movement and change, which involves
periodic explosions, expansion and contraction, attraction and
repulsion, life and death. There is nothing intrinsically improbable
about the idea of one, or many, great explosions. The problem here is
a different one-a mystical interpretation of certain observed
phenomena, such as the Hubble red shift, and an attempt to smuggle the
religious idea of the creation of the universe into science by the
back door."  (G&W "Reason in Revolt")

Rather than accepting that the contradictory and seemingly paradoxical
behaviour of nature inevitably causes competing theories (like the
famous analogy of the blind men describing an elephant) Grant & Woods
suggest that modern Cosmology has been influenced by people trying to
resuscitate a Creation Myth.

" The big bang theory is really a Creation myth (just like the first
book of Genesis). It states that the universe came into being about 15
billion years ago. Before that, according to this theory, there was no
universe, no matter, no space, and, if you please, no time." (G&W
ibid)

Why this religious trend hasn't come to dominate evolutionary theory
and genetics over the same historical period remains a mystery.  After
all, one of the most influential geneticists today, Richard Dawkins is
a resolute atheist,  Stephen J Gould's "godless" theories of evolution
didn't stop him being one of the most influential writers on the
subject!

The problem seems to be that Grant & Woods model themselves too
closely on Lenin's "Materialism & Empirio Criticism", a useful, but
out of date book.  The proton and neutron hadn't been discovered when
it was written and Lenin, following the physicists of his time,
believed light travelled through the "Ether". Grant & Woods see their
struggle with University physicists and cosmologists as akin to
Lenin's struggle against the "Machians" and the "God-Builders" inside
the Bolshevik Party.

"The usefulness of such a theory (the Big-Bang) to the Catholic Church
is beyond all doubt. It leaves the door wide open to the idea of a
Creator, who, after being ignominiously expelled from the universe by
science, now prepares his triumphal comeback as the Cosmic Ju-ju Man.
" (G&W ibid)

This observation may be valid for George Le Maître's work,  but the
suggestion that it's true of all those who support a "Big-Bang" theory
is well wide of the mark. To be sure, because the notion of a
singularity leads to the breakdown of Einstein's equations for General
Relativity, it is often assumed by physicists that there can be no
meaningful explanation of anything  preceding a "Big Bang"  Such an
approach can lead to the "disappearance of matter" which Lenin
criticised Poincaré for.
Alluding to this problem Hawking once playfully remarked that "the
Complete Works of Marcel Proust bound in Morocco leather" could
conceivably emerge from a black hole.
While, his remark shouldn't be taken too seriously, Grant & Wood's
disbelief that all matter could have been concentrated into a
planck-sized nugget (if not a singularity) 13 odd billion years ago,
owes more to British "common sense" than scientific method.

Avoiding the twin errors of idealism and crude materialism requires a
more sophisticated model of the universe, but one actually based on
the experimental data, unlike Grant & Wood's critique of the Big Bang.

Recent developments in Physics, in particular the Cyclic-Ekpyrotic
model, which Wood's has recently acknowledged (4) suggest that
developing such a model may indeed be possible.
The "Big Bang" could merely be the expansionary phase of an endless
cycle, which produced the 'anthropic' universe we inhabit today.

String Theory and its off-shoots Super-Symmetry and M-Theory, provide
a means to reconcile the thorny questions of the unification of
General Relativity with Quantum Mechanics and are particularly
important for developing cosmological models which don't involve
singularities. Grant & Woods adopt an air of dismissive amusement at
Super Symmetry theories, but obviously need to study them a bit more,
since they clearly don't understand them!

"In an attempt to make sense of their own discoveries, some physicists
have got entangled in ever more weird and wonderful theories, like the
so-called "supersymmetry" theories ("SUSYs") which purport that the
universe was originally built on more than four dimensions. According
to this notion, the universe could have started with, for example, ten
dimensions, but unfortunately all but four of them collapsed during
the big bang, and are now too small to be noticed.
Apparently, these objects are the subatomic particles themselves,
which are alleged to be quanta of matter and energy that condensed out
of pure space. Thus they stagger from one metaphysical speculation to
the next in a vain attempt to explain the fundamental phenomena of the
universe. Supersymmetry postulates the universe as beginning in a
state of absolute perfection. In the words of Stephen Hawking, "the
early universe was simpler, and it was a lot more appealing, because
it was a lot simpler." Some scientists even try to justify this kind
of mystical speculation on aesthetic grounds. Absolute symmetry is
alleged to be beautiful. Thus we find ourselves back in the rarefied
atmosphere of Plato's idealism." G & W (ibid)

There is nothing "metaphysical" about String theory, upon which
Supersymmetry is based. Quite the opposite.  Strings are seen as the
irreducible  fundamental constituents of matter and the basis for the
the four fundamental forces of nature.

"..they are the atoms, "uncuttable constituents", in the truest sense
of the ancient Greeks.  As the absolute smallest constituents of
anything and everything, they represent the end of the line -the last
of the Russian matrioshka dolls - in the numerous layers of
substructure in the microscopic world"
Brian Greene - p. 141 (5)

By replacing the dimensionless point particles of Quantum theory, with
vibrating one-dimensional strings, the infinities produced when
attempting to combine Quantum theory with General relativity are
removed.  Furthermore, String theory sets a finite limit to the
minimum dimension to which matter can be compressed (the planck
length), thus avoiding singularities.
Even more tantalisingly for Cosmology, it suggests that there are
dualities between expanding and contracting topological spaces
(manifolds), that generate the same physical laws in each topology.
Rather than being based on Platonic idealism, "super-symmetry..comes
hand-in-hand with string theory's proposal for a quantum theory of
gravity, as well as with its grand claim of uniting all forces and all
matter.  If string theory is right, physicists expect that so is
supersymmetry"
Greene p.182 ibid.

Nor is string theory "contradictionless", since vibrating strings
generate the whole menagerie of "atomic" and sub-atomic particles,
their anti-particles and their posited super-symmetric partners.
Precisely the stuff of which contradictions are made!
Supersymmetry is also susceptible to experimental test, given a
powerful enough probe.
The Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva may generate sufficient
energy to produce super-symmetrical particles by 2005, or they may be
detected first at Fermilab.

Grant & Woods light-mindedly dismiss the theory of extra spatial
dimensions, without mentioning its origins.
It was first developed by the Polish mathematician Theodore Kaluza in
1919.
By introducing a 4th spatial dimension, he was able to unify Maxwell's
equations of electro-magnetism with Einstein's equations for gravity.
After long consideration, Einstein accepted that Kaluza's suggestion
might indeed be valid.

Although Kaluza's theory was later shown to have its defects, the
concept of compactified spatial dimensions was taken up by Oskar Klein
,who along with Grant & Wood's hero Hannes Alfven, proposed the
"Alfven-Klein" model of Cosmology.   It was actually Klein, in his
adaptation of Kaluza's work, who first proposed that the extra or
"fifth dimension" was curled up into a ball on the order of the Planck
length, 10^-33 cm. (6)

The theory of compactified dimensions has subsequently been developed
and refined by String theorists, with some very promising results in
solving seemingly intractable problems for mathematics and physics.
The currently favoured model being a 'Calabi-Yau' manifold of 10
spatial dimensions, plus one time dimension.
One suggestion for how this can lead to a "Big Bang" has been proposed
by Brandenberger and Vafa.  They suggest that inflation represents the
expansion of 3 of the spatial dimensions from the10-d manifold.   This
happens because certain strings occur in a winding configuration,
which encircles and constrains a compactified dimension.
At the critical density, random interactions cause the wound strings
and antistrings in 3 of the dimensions to annihilate one another,
opening the encircled dimensions to exponential expansion.  In the
remaining  compactified dimensions, the likelihood of
string-antistring collisions is severely restricted and these
dimensions remain at the planck length.  (see Greene (ibid) pps
359-60)

String theorists also suggest that "big-bang" events may occur in the
nearly vacuous conditions created after billions of years of cosmic
expansion.
Super-string theory and its offshoot "M-Theory" is a building block of
Steinhardt and Turok's "Ekpyrotic" or Cyclic theory of the universe
(7), as well as the work Gabriele Veneziano, who developed the first
string theory in 1968 (8)

In these models, vibrating strings or vibrational membranes (branes)
permeate the fabric of space. It is the collision of branes
(Steinhardt), or the formation of a trapped surface from the chaotic
interaction of strings (Veneziano), which drive the motor of universal
expansion and contraction, not "creation ex nihilo".
As Veneziano says: " String theory offers us a version of inflationary
theory on a Silver platter"
     Quoted in Greene p 362 (ibid)

The recent results from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy probe,
which spent four years one million miles from earth studying the
Cosmic Microwave Background radiation, indicate a universe that is
"flat and open" and  is predicted to expand forever, gradually
undergoing "heat death" through entropic decay.  A force known as
"dark energy" is calculated to make up some 70% of the universe and is
now causing expansion at a greater rate than previously predicted  (9)

Steinhardt suggests that this "dark-energy" is dynamic "slowly rolling
force" which has changed over time to produce the visible universe we
see today.  Steinhardt dubs this force "Quintessence" to distinguishes
it from "Dark Energy", which is based on a small positive Cosmological
Constant.   It is this force which Steinhardt suggests, flattens and
homogenises the universe and causes the accleration we detect today.
It is generated from the potential energy between two branes, which
begins to dominate the matter and energy of a universe thinly spread
out by expansion.

" The cyclic model proposes that the two branes interact with one
another through gravity and the exchange of virtual strings and
branes, resulting in a weak force that causes the branes to bounce
back to their original positions and creates matter and radiation
whose gravitation causes the branes to begin to stretch.  This
represents the bang and the subsequent expansion and cooling."

The theory also suggests that should random fluctuations "kick the
universe away from the ideal cyclic evolution, the period of dark
energy domination "red shifts" away the transient behaviour and drives
the universe back towards the regular cyclic solution"

see "What is Dark Energy?", available on Paul Steinhardt's web site

This suggests a universe which exhibits definite laws of motion and
it's noteworthy that 'Quintessence' was not ruled out when the
findings of the WMAP probe were announced by NASA earlier this month.

Alex.Nichols Feb 25th 2003

References: -

(1) "The Big Bang" from "Reason in Revolt": Marxism and Modern Science
By Alan Woods and Ted Grant
http://www.marxist.com/science/bigbang.html

(2)  "A CMB Polarization Primer "
 Wayne Hu  Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ 08540
 Martin White Enrico Fermi Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago,
IL 60637
http://background.uchicago.edu/~whu/polar/webversion/polarpage.html

(3) For a critique of the errors in Eric Lerner see: -
Ned Wright's Cosomology Pages, Errors in the "The Big Bang Never
Happened"
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/%7Ewright/lerner_errors.html

(4)  In 'An alternative to the Big Bang:  "The universe had no
beginning and will have no end."'
Alan Woods states: -

 " The picture of the universe presented here is one that is entirely
consistent with the theories of dialectical materialism, which state
that the universe is infinite, eternal, and ever changing. This does
not at all preclude the possibility of a big bang. Indeed, we have
already argued that there have probably been many big bangs. But what
it certainly does preclude is any question of matter (or energy, which
is exactly the same thing) can be created out of nothing (as the Big
Bang theory implies) or destroyed."

This is somewhat disingenous, since in "Reason in Revolt", Grant &
Woods spoke of "one, or many, great explosions", which is a different
proposition to a "Big Bang".  Furthermore, Woods overlooks the
Steinhardt-Turok model's basis in String Theory, which would mean
having to revise his earlier views on Supersymmetry!

http://www.marxist.com/scienceandtech/big_bang.html

(5)  Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe" 2000
Vintage 0 09 928992 is an excellent and very readable introduction to
String theory.

(6) For a biography of Oskar Klein see: -
http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Klein_Oskar.html

(7) Paul Steinhardt's Web Page,  Department of Physics Princeton
University
 http://feynman.princeton.edu/~steinh/

 (8) Gabriele Veneziano
"Can string cosmology face the challenge of CMB anisotropies?"
Strings 2000 Cambridge (Real audio & video and Postscript
transparencies)
http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/strings02/avt/veneziano/

(9) Microwave Anisotropy Probe web site (includes recent results)
 http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_uni/uni_101bb1.html

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