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На этой странице будут собраны важнейшие, по мнению автора, идеи и мысли высказанные по проблеме существования внеземного разума

On this page I will present the most important (on my opinion) idea on Intellegence Life in the Universe

От составителя

Новые статьи по этой теме в "Русском переплете"

Игорь Гуревич О возможности сохранения Разума при космических и планетных катаклизмах Наука и культура, 24.IV.2006

Виктор Николаевич Тростников Научна ли "Научная картина мира"? Искания и размышления, 05.XII.2005

Игорь Гуревич О позноваемости сложных систем: Познаваема ли Вселенная? Наука и культура, 06.VII.2004

Александр Тутуков ЗВЕЗДЫ - ПЛАНЕТЫ - ЖИЗНЬ - ЦИВИЛИЗАЦИЯ Наука и культура 12.II.2004

Юрий Ефремов Пределы научного знания Наука и культура, 27.XI.2003

Вячеслав Шевченко О сигналах космоса Наука и культура, 27.V.2002

Алексей Старобинский Наука и религия - соперники или союзники? 22.III.2001

ВАЖНЫЕ РАБОТЫ ПО ТЕМЕ

Блаженный Августин, "Град Божий"

" Августин указал на то, что цивилизация прогрессирует, а мы помним, кто совершил то или иное деяние и кто что изобрел. Поэтому человечество, а значит, вероятно, и Вселенная, вряд ли очень долго существуют. Блаженный Августин считал приемлемой дату сотворения Вселенной, соответствующую книге "Бытия": приблизительно 5000-й год до нашей эры"

Дж.Бруно, "О множественности миров"

К.Э.Циолковский "Теория космических эр"

Циолковский удивительно глубоко чувствовал гигантскую пропасть между временем жизни Вселенной и возрастом нашей цивилизации. По его мнению за бесконечное время разум неизбежно захватывает каждый атом Вселенной.

Альберт Эйнштейн Из письма к Соловину

О чуде познаваемости мира

И.С.Шкловский "Уникальность..."

Пытаясь избежать парадокса отсутсвия "космических чудес" Шкловский выдвигает идею единственности разумной жизни.

А. и═Б. Стругацкие "За миллиард лет до конца света"

Имеется фундаментальный закон природы препятствующий познанию. Эта повесть вдохновила И.С.Шкловского на идею о "Тупиковой ветви".

И.С.Шкловский "Тупиковая ветвь"

В этой работе Шкловский отказывается от гипотезы единственности и выдвигает идею тупиковой ветви. Цивилизации очень быстро проходят экспонентциальную технологическую стадию, погибают и не успевают увидеть друг друга. Причина гибели не формулируется.

В.М.Хлумов "Кулповский меморандум"

Выдвигается идея, что причиной гибели технологических цивлизаций является простота Вселенной. Разум в короткие (порядка 1000 лет)по астрономическим масштабам сроки познает Вселенную и лишенный "пищи ума" погибает. Достоинством этой идеи является ее универсальность.

В.Ф.Шварцман, "Поиск внеземных цивилизаций -- проблема астрофизики или культуры в целом?"

По мнению В.Ф.Шварцмана, контакт давно установлен - просто мы его не замечаем. Будущее цивилизации он видит в области игр и гуманитарной деятельности.

В.М.Липунов, "Научно-открываемый бог"

А.А.Старобинский, " Наука и религия - соперники или союзники?"

Один из лучших современных космологов, размышляя над соотношением науки и веры, выдвигает несколько важных соображений о множественности Вселенных и возможности воспроизведения их разумом


Статьи по теме - Papers

1

В.М.Липунов "НАУЧНО═ОТКРЫВАЕМЫЙ═БОГ"("Земля и Вселенная", N1, стр.37, 1995г.)

"On the problem of the Super Ratio in astrophysics"

V.M.Lipunov

Astroph. and Sp.Sci.,252, 73-81,1997

Доклад на конференции посвященной памяти И.С.Шкловского , С.А.Каплана и С.Б.Пикельнера

"К проблеме сверхразума в астрофизике"

2

GOD BEING SCIENTIFICALLY DISCOVERED

(Published in Russian Journal "Zemlya i Vselennaya", N1,p.37, 1995)

V.M. Lipunov

The Giant Silence of the Universe or the absence of "Space Miracles" is in an obvious contradiction with the fast evolution of our civilization. The most striking is the fact that both these phenomena, if taking separately, are in crying contradiction with "materialistic common sense" and are to be considered as real Space Miracle themselves. As a matter of fact, this is the main problem of the modern natural science. This crisis may be overcomed if we recognize Superintelligence, that is God which is discovered scientifically.


Introduction

Here I shall try to speak about the most important problem of the modern natural science, the problem which is undoubtedly, of more importance than discovery of Blacks Holes, creation of Grand Unification Theory or Artificial Intelligence. Moreover, this problem seems to be not only more profound and complicated but also much more urgent. In fact, if urgency implys the presence of any unexplained phenomenon being in contradiction with overwhelming scientific views, then solution of the enumerated above superfashionable problems is not nowadays of rigid experimental necessity (and will not in the nearest future). Now, at least in physics (from the physics of low temperatures to the high energy physics), there is no any experimental fact which needs Grand Unification Theory (GUT). There is no such experiment analogous to that of Michelson-Morley which created the new ideas on space and time. Moreover, such an experiment seems to be impossible in the nearest future (really, for testifying GUT an acceleration is required with an energy 10^27 eV., it is hardly may be expected in the next century).

Our Universe is still the unique experimental material, and the new branch of physics, Cosmomicrophysics, appeared mainly due to this fact (basically owing to efforts of Ya.B. Zel'dovich and his school). And here, for the first time during the history of natural science, we encounter an irreproducible experiment. A number of known universes equals to 1.

So, I want to say that in modern natural science there is an experimental fact quite inunderstood and paradoxical, being in crying contradiction with every modern orthodox picture of the world., this is the fact of absence of Supercivilizations, or "Silence of the Universe". Naturally, this fact has been discovered and realized previously. With the most acuteness it was realized in a post-mortal paper by I.S. Shklovskii [1] which, actually, appeared to be "the voice crying in a desert" (and seems to be still unknown at West at all). Generally speaking, the Shklovskii's interest to the problem of extraterrestrial intelligence and, especially, evolution of his views on this problem is rather instructive (from an optimistic search of "a needle in a haystack" to a problem about "awl in a sack"). And also instructive was the lack of comments from the side of scientific community to these ideas (one more paradox : "Silence of scientific community"). And this was in times when the paper advanced with a terrible creak and came out only owing to mortal illness of the author., and when there was a great interest for all forbidden and half-forbidden items. It is not surprising, after additional reflection. Indeed, humanity lived quiet normally for two thousand years in spite of the obvious discrepancy between visible motion of planets and theory of epicycles and deferents. And also, there is always a risk of "soiling" one's hands in so beaten by numerous UFOlogists and simply unprofessional persons field as Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

Fermi's Paradox

As for me, a paper by I.S. Shklovskii published in 1985 was of great impression. In this paper written, as always, in clear and witty language, Shklovskii formulated the problem of Extraterrestrial Intelligence. He was engaged in this problem almost all his life. But the most surprising is the fact that having passed the way from the early romanticism of 60's (the artificial creation of Fobos and Deimos) through the more realistic conception of uniqueness of life in the Universe (an absence of space miracles [2]), which engages the west scientists up to now [3,4], he came to the conclusion which could be obtained still before the space age and the programs of searches of extraterrestrial life!

Being impressed by this paper I wrote the note in the Soviet Astronomy Journal [5]. I obtained a simple estimate of contact probability and tried to formulate a strict scientific problem. As a matter of fact, the problem is reduced to the so called Fermi's paradox [6] which in modern language looks as follows:

there are two observational or, if you like, experimental facts: 1) the age of the Universe is T = 10^10 year, 2) a specific time t of exponential development for our civilization is of the order of some tens of years. For the sake of simplicity it san be adopted t = 100 years which is obviously overestimated. A gigantic dimensionless number arises characterizing the growth of a technological civilization over the time of existence of the Universe:

K = exp(T/t) ~ 10^43,000,000 (!)

It is enough to say that the theoretical physics never dealed with so great dimensionless numbers. For example, the full number of elementary particles in the Universe looks ridiculously small --- 10^80. Speaking nothing more, any theoretician having common sense must prick up his ears when hear such a number. On the contrary, from the experience of personal contacts I know this is not the case., theoreticians seem to lose their common sense abroad some line. Fermi himself exclaimed: "If there are anywhere space civilizations, their spaceships have been in the solar system long since" (I don't guarantee the exactness of the quotation). Naturally, this number is so gigantic that any unknown intermediate factors are unimportant. Really, it can be confirmed that probability of absence of "space miracles" in our Universe is 10^(-43,000,000), i.e. is equal to zero! Nevertheless, nobody has discovered them even after 20 years of searches. On the contrary, a Giant Silence of the Universe has been revealed. The world without miracles is incredible but it exists --- that is a paradox.

From Iosiph Shklovskii to Jordano Bruno, and backwards

How can Fermi's paradox be resolved in terms of modern scientific approach? In the middle of 70's Shklovskii formulated a conception of "Space Miracle" as a result of activity of Supercivilizations and proposed an idea of uniqueness of our civilization in the whole huge Universe [2]. If there are no "Space miracles" and "the Universe keeps silence" so there is no any Extraterrestrial Intelligence. That was an awful thought, especially for a man who was looking for artificial roots inside Mars' satellites. Neither for humanity the matters were much better. One of the most optimistic human ideas crashed down, the idea of multitude of the worlds. As was said by Ya.B. Zel'dovich in other connection, "What Jordano Bruno was burnt for?"

Is a hypothesis of uniqueness of Terrestrial Civilization so natural? Certainly, not. This hypothesis is in a crying contradiction with the observable uniformity and isotropy of the Universe consequent from the discovery of cosmic background radiation. A rise of only one civilization in the uniform and isotropic (on the whole) Universe, in a galaxy which is not distinguishes from others, near an ordinary yellow star, seems rather incredible. There are billions of such stars in our Galaxy. And the galaxies themselves, even more. Nevertheless, the probability that terrestrial life is unique, is not so small and cannot be compared to Fermi's paradox., so the question arises about the number of planetary systems, the Drake's formula appears, and so on. However the uniqueness hypothesis resets us at the anthropological point of view from which the physicists always try to keep further. Moreover, as will be shown below, this idea and connected calculations on the probability of appearance of life lose their actuality in the light of Tsiolkovskii's paradox.

Shklovskii himself, in his last paper rejected the idea of uniqueness and put forward even less consoling hypothesis of "deadlock branch". Let us see once more at the formula given above., the only possibility to get rid of this gigantic number is to suppose the time of exponential stage of the development of civilization much less than the time of existence of the Universe. In other words, Giant Silence of the Universe can be explained in assumption that technological supercivilizations don't arise at all. Why? At least, two answers may be proposed: because of loss of interest for the technological development or because of their destruction. Shklovskii chose the second variant, and he had his reasons for that (we don't notice yet any limit for technological development). Saying by words of Shklovskii, the Earth represents "a cemetery of species": biological estimates argue that about one billion species have evolved at the Earth from the beginning of life appearance, and now there are only two million. May be, an intellect is also some "hypertrophic" function (as a mass of a dinosaur's body) leading to an inevitable destruction? Thus an intellect may be only an unsuccessful invention of the nature, "a deadlock branch". What is a direct reason for destruction? An atomic war, an ecological catastrophe? It doesn't seem so. It is clear that in spite of all possible variety of specific "local conditions" the destruction of different civilizations must be due to the same, universal reason. What reason? An interesting possibility is discussed by V.Khlumov {7}. A common reason for destruction of an intelligence in the Universe can be connected with a loss of its main function, a function of cognition. His arguments look as follows.

Simple Universe

"The world is arranged in a simple manner,
it has been created by God.
Why to create a complicated thing
if a simple one can be made."
V.Khlumov, "Master of Smoke Rings"

What is intelligence or intelligent life? What is the purpose of its appearance among other creatures of nature? We shall not discuss in detail these questions. We shall restrict ourselves with the following simple thesis: an intelligent life try to understand and explain phenomena which happen around. It is important that interest and curiosly arising in this process are highly unstable. An interest to the phenomenon which has been understood vanishes practically instantly.When we discover a new law of nature we began at once to look for some new phenomena which are not subjected to this low. There are no such practical applications of old laws which would be more interesting than searching new ones. Various particular cases. new regimes, original approaches etc. being attractive as they could, all this is a pale shade of a real process of cognition. An intelligence is stunted without principally new, unexplained phenomena.

It is possible to perish from an atomic or biological bomb. But all this are childish toys compared with what could be invented by a civilization outstripping us, say, by some 200 years. Even nowadays in limits of natural laws discovered by us, one can imagine so powerful weapon which, once applied, could evoke consequences noticeable in a whole Galaxy. Such a "brother-murdering" war would be quite a space miracle. But miracles do not exist!

Forces which prevent to development of intelligence must be of quite other nature. And they, certainly, must be of universal character which doesn't depend on any specific conditions.

Earlier than we shall begin to describe a possible reason leading to destruction of an intelligence (its natural destruction), let us consider the following problem: why a human being, during the shortest time intervals (on a cosmological time-scale), has become successful in understanding the laws of nature acting in a whole observable Universe? Some two or three thousand years was enough to reach quantum mechanics and General Theory of relativity. How has a man whose every-day experience is limited by commonplace scales measured by metres, by velocities of some tens of million times smaller then the velocity of light, and by insignificantly small gravitational field, --- how has this weak being penetrated, without leaving a house, into huge space of the Universe and into the deepness of infinitely small elementary particles?

The ancient philosophers described the cognition process in the following manner. Let us imagine an infinite plane. A circle on the plane symbolizes the knowledge we have already attained. In the cognition process the circle increases and absorbs the previous knowledge., but also a boundary with unknown increases. Cognition yields more and more questions. The process is infinite.

This point of view is old as the world. Is not this too primitive generalization of our quickly passing experience? May an infinitely complicated object be indeed so simple? Rather no then yes. "A complexity" is, first of all, a qualitative characteristic, not quantitative one. An infinitely complicated object must consist of infinitely complicated, qualitatively different parts which are not under an obligation to be compatible. The world or, more correctly, a system of knowledge about the world is not a "matrioshka". If we have understood a part of this non-simple object we cannot be sure our knowledge will be entered into the next system of knowledge like a small "matrioshka" enters into a big one.

A process of cognition rather must be a strongly nonlinear one. An extreme, but not particular, case could be so strong non linearity that a comprehension of any part would be impossible without realization of a full picture. In other words, an infinitely complicated object cannot be comprehended in principle. An intelligence could not arise in an infinitely complicated universe!

A negative thesis expressed above as to incompatibility of subsequently comprehensible parts is in a crying contradiction with all our experience. All our experience cries that our world is something like "matrioshka". For example, the Newton's mechanics became a part of the special theory of relativity by Einstein which, in turn, became a part of the General Theory of Relativity. This is Bohr's compatibility principle.

How can we take away the obvious contradiction. There are two possibilities: whether our imagination of infinitely complicated object is incorrect or the surrounding world is not infinitely complicated. One can choose a correct answer only if he is based on observational facts...

Let us recollect: an intelligence without food perishes. And everything proves to be in its place. An experimentally proved absence of supercivilizations argues for the fact that our Universe is too simple for intelligence. Quickly (in some thousand years) an intelligent life comprehends all natural laws, exhausts all possibilities of its applications and perishes. This is a paradox but this is a fact: intelligence arises and perishes due to the same reason, that is, a simple structure of our world.

A Million Years of Stagnation or the End of the Golden Age

Certainly, an idea of world's simplicity although intrinsically consistent and quite corresponding to experience, is only a possibility. And is it really so necessary, the hypothesis of "a deadlock branch"?

We are living now (I mean the last hundred years) in a unique time --- a sort of "Golden Age". For the first time during the whole history of humanity a specific time of economical development became comparable with a duration of a human life. Every man, independently of his education and comprehension of surrounding reality, "feels" a progress almost by his skin. Being borne in the time of first airplanes and steamers he grows looking through TV blue screens and gets his pension with the use of computer bank network. A life of a man of 20th century passes on a quickly changing every-day background and gives birth to a quite new sensation of world, and consequently, to a displacement of human values. Eternal questions retreat, a tourist impetus to change places and times becomes more important. This change of decorations is, anyhow, a result of ingenuity and intellectual efforts. so, tax-payers continue to give money in order that a part of population can satisfy their curiosity. Nowadays every government (I mean advanced countries) understands that fundamental investigations must be fed ud: they will be compensated, they are, after all, economically profitable. But the astrophysics shows that such a state cannot last eternally, it cannot last more than some hundred of years. Otherwise, we would discovered small space miracles long ago. And what follows after that? Dark "middle ages"? Destruction? "A deadlock branch"?

Are human beings indeed like dinosaurs? Naturally, a simple and attractive way out of Fermi's paradox is a suggestion about shortness of technological phase but without destruction. Alternative to "western" variant (so an exponential technological phase can be called), an "eastern" variant comes to mind at once: immersion of a civilization into self-contemplation, so called development in "deep". But how can be imagined such future life on our planet with everything that has been created on it? I don't mean an ordinary space filled with super-rapid trains, sky-scrapers with brilliant glasses, and united computer network running through. I mean a space of human activity. Where will be thousands of curious minds looking for paradoxes? Instead of them --- repairing teams, to sustain things invented thousands and thousands years ago.

The most interesting possibility was proposed by the remarkable soviet astrophysicist V.F. Shvartsman [8]. His central idea is not to take the problem of "Giant Silence of the Universe" out of the scope of science but try to change the conception of science itself. Here the paragraph from his paper (1986) is given completely:

"The science is only a part, an element of the human culture, and comparatively young element. Scientific methods of investigation, verification ideas and a system of values of a modern science were "crystallized" inside the culture only about 400 years ago. Only in the 18th century an experimental growth of scientific factors began, i.e. its development became of unreversable character. And only in 20th century science has become a productive force of the society. Results of scientific investigations defined in many aspects an appearance of humanity and even called in question its future. It is generally accepted that change of science in 20th century proceeds on a planetary scale and has an unprecedented character., it seems to continue henceforth (for example, under the influence of other forms of spiritual activity of man, or spreading supercomputers, or contact with an Extraterrestrial Civilization...). It is most probable that by 30th century the sense of the conception "science" will changed in the same radical manner as during the last ten centuries."

As Shvartsman believes, this considerations being transferred to any other civilization, show that we "receive signals" long since but do not realize their artificial nature. In other words, "Giant Silence", Fermi's paradox mean, actually, not only the crisis of any phyisical theory (as GTR, or GUT) but the crisis of scientific method itself in its modern comprehension. By the way, this is confirmed also by a forthcoming crisis of the modern physics encountered for the first time with irreproducible experimental data.

Tsiolkovskii's Paradox

I shall not discuss in detail other (less interesting) possibilities, for example, connected with the invention of an artificial mind and self-producing machines (this is often told by the western futurologists [3,4]). They bring nothing new in the problem under consideration as they encounter the same Fermi's paradox. On the contrary, I want to show that in reality the Fermi's paradox is only a pale shadow of that actual problem which stands before the modern natural science. As a matter of fact, it stands already for several centuries.

Let us return to our formula. What has it from the modern science? First, an exponent. Second, an observable rate of development of our civilization and, third, an age of the Universe. Imagine now you were living in the last century and trying to write a formula of such kind. What would change? An exponential development had been already observed. It was known already a characteristic time, t, of civilization development. In those days it was somewhat more than nowadays but in our calculations it was taken as from the last century. As concerns the age of the Universe, the matters were quite different. In the last century, I had to substitute in the formula T=infinity. Indeed, the expansion of the Universe was not yet discovered, and, the Universe was believed to be eternal! And it would be no matter for me how quick were the development of a civilization: in a thousand, million or billion years. Before eternity, everything is equal.

Then, in the answer we would obtain not anomaly great number but infinite one. This is not only a paradox, this is a real "deadlock". It is astonishing, how could the best minds of the last century pass by such a crying fact? The nature having a possibility to give birth to a life during an infinitely long time sooner or later had to give rise to SUPERINTELLIGENCE. Not saying of the last century, even in our century A. Enstein, and F. Hoyle after him, tried to argue for eternally living Universe. They didn't know what they created, did they?

For a long time I have tried to find a physicist or a philosopher who discussed, though in passing, this fact appealing for comprehension. And such a man has been found, although not in the last but in our century. As a matter of fact, he reasoned as a representative of the last century because he didn't suspect about the expansion of the Universe, or didn't believed in that (the matter is that the first estimates of the age of the Universe were extremely low and contradicted to geological data). It was K.E. Tsiolkovskii, technician of genius, dreamer and evident philosopher. Unfortunately, his most consecutive ideas were stated orally when he was speaking to Chizhevskii and the latter wrote down their talk later [9]. But the results of reflections were published from time to time. Yes, Tsiolkovsky understood, from his pure materialistic point of view, that infinite development of the nature sooner or later (it is an expression almost out of place) must come to complete expansion of intelligence. And so he derived the idea of "an intelligent atom", "perfect creatures", and Intelligent Universe. These ideas, of course, may be conceived by a modern natural scientist with an irony, nevertheless a reason of their appearance is quite natural for a scientific method. If the Universe has lived for an infinitely long time then the Tsiolkovskii's paradox can be solved only with this key, the key of "Superintelligence".

You may say, thank God, there was the astronomer Hubble who discovered expansion if the Universe, and we understood that our Universe had not been eternal. "Only" something about ten billion years and afterwards we could close the eyes to this "ten" with 43 million of "0"s, and refer to the uniqueness, "deadlock branch" or "an eastern variant".

First of all, as we saw, this is not so simple at all because of the remoteness of years "lived out" by the nature. And besides, is not indeed this world eternal, is it?

Eternal Universe, or whether there was a Time when there wasn't any Time

The current state of matters in cosmology has been formed in the beginning of 80ths when the inflation idea saw the light [10]. I have not special knowledge on the early Universe, I can only follow the basic ideas appearing in this advanced field of the modern astrophysics and psychics. I shall try to describe than below within my scope.

Even before the appearance of the Guth's work it became clear that the standard Friedmann's model of the Universe encounters three unexplained or unnatural facts. First, why parts of the observable Universe which were not causally connected in the early time turned out to be so similar (isotropy and uniformity discovered by relict radiation). Second, why the mean density of the Universe turned out to be so close to the critical value under which the Universe must be closed (having in mind all the possible variety of its numerical quantities)., and third, why the Universe is expanded? As a matter of fact, these problems, taken isolated, have been solved in a number of works (L.E. Gurevich, A.A. Starobinskii) but Guth was the first who clearly associated then with the existence of the so called "fifth force", or the scalar field. Just for the same moment it became clear that, besides gravitational, electrical, nuclear and weak interactions, there must exists in the nature an additional type of interactions described by a scalar potential. Actually, the scalar field in some conditions has antigravitational properties and specifically at the early stages, in some Planck's time intervals after the birth of the Universe, it has a negative pressure and "blows up" the inflation of the Universe. This is so called an inflation phase of the expansion of the Universe. Subsequently common fields and particles arise due to phase transition and the expansion decelerates. The Universe becomes of Friedmann's type. The initial size of the Universe turns to be so small that different parts have sufficient time for exchanging information, the energy of a scalar field exactly providing for the critical density of the Universe. Sorry for these details, they are required here only to make clear that the birth of the Universe is considered now as some casual quantum-mechanical process of vacuum "blowing" accompanied by the very strong fanning. In reality, as A.D. Linde and A.A. Starobinskii show in their models of stochastic birth, our Universe is only a part in some quasistationary process of permanent arising and fanning universes. In other words, the old dream of humanity about other universes is now considered from a quite scientific point of view although in semi-qualitative manner, in limits (more precisely, at frontiers) of the Grand Unification Theory which is not yet constructed. There are two important items here: 1) our Universe is not alone, 2) there exists a "pre-Planck's" life time for every such universe when, generally speaking, the classical conception of time loses its sense (due to, for example, purely quantum indeterminacy of causal-consequent cohesions). Briefly speaking, in spite of the rescue discovery of E. Hubble a question about the time infinity of our Universe has floated once more, as in the 19th century. And we are to consider once again the stationary variant by Einstein or that proposed subsequently by Bondi and Hoyle. Of course, now we deal with quite different conception of time. The significant point is that the nature has had an infinite number of possibilities to create the worlds of our type, consequently, for the life appearance. And so, we must solve the Tsiolkovskii's paradox once more.

Science and Religion

"You find surprising that I talk
of cognizability of the world
(to a certain degree as we have
a right to talk about it) as of
miracle or eternal enigma"
A. Einstein

Let us return to the post-mortal paper by I.S. Shklovskii, to its ending so noticeable for the characteristic of our time and of the discussed problem. Shklovskii writes: "An alternative to the conception, sketched above, rather non-optimistic, is the idea that intelligence is a manifestation of some super-material, transcendental principle. This is an old conception of God and the godlike nature of human mind. For the persons standing far apart (and not always far) from the science this conception seems much more optimistic and even moral. However, it is rather difficult nowadays to stand for the position having nothing in common with the science. Oblivion of that basic fact that we are a part of an objectively existing and recognizable material world, doesn't promise anything to anybody although creates false optimistic illusions" (ending of the quotation). As to me, after having read that now, I want simply to keep silent and to think.

This fragment comprises our latest ten years, speaks for the author himself and the problem itself. And it is not difficult now to stand for this position., moreover, now, to the contrary, a person who hasn't God in his heart is considered to be indecent. Nevertheless, the striking intuition of this man has revealed itself in the finality. It is clear, after all, that the conception of a "deadlock branch" can hardly survive, and only in a small universe with a finite age. And what to think having in mind the Tsiolkovskii's paradox? Really, we have consequently conducted a materialistic, atheistic, scientific point of view and have discovered God, the scientifically supported God.

It is worth here to finish the quotation from the letter by A. Einstein to Moris Solovin on 1952, 30 March [11] set in the epigraph: "Well, a priori a chaotic world is to be anticipated which cannot be cognized with the use of mentality. This world only might (or must) be anticipated to subject the law to a measure in which we can arrange it with our mind. This would be an arrangement like an alphabetical arrangement of the words of some language. On the contrary, the arrangement being brought in, for example, by Newtonian theory of gravitation, is of quite different character. Although the axioms of this theory were created by a man, a success of this enterprise suggests a significant arrangement of the objective word which we haven't any foundations anticipate a priori. And this is "a miracle", and the further our knowledge is developed the more magic it becomes.

The positivists and professional atheists see in that a vulnerable spot as they feel themselves happy of the consciousness of succeeding not only in banishing God from this world but in "depriving this world of miracles". It is curious, we must be satisfied with the admission of "a miracle" because we have no legal ways to get out from the position. (Italics is mine,-V.L.) I have specially to underline this in order you don't think that I, growing to the old age, became a victim of priests". (translated from Russian)

This is also a very specific saying having mainly two points. First, a real "space miracle" is admitted to exist and, second, there is an obvious realization of the fact that this leads at once to the admission of the God existence., but one cannot do so if he doesn't want to become "a priests' victim". Equally, we cannot admit an infinite complication of the world and its successful cognizability (i.e. the existence of a mind in an infinitely complicated world) without admission of Superintelligence --- the scientifically discovered God. If Einstein would only suspect of the Tsialkovskii's paradox he had not to do anything more natural than this.

Endlessly Complicated World

What does it mean, God being discovered scientifically, or Superintelligence? And what is future science dealing with an endlessly complicated world? Can a human intellect create any model, theory, conception, even primitive, for an endlessly complicated object, uncognizable in its parts? It is hardly to do so in terms of the contemporary science. In fact, all the science originally is constructed on an "atomic", "matrioshka"logic, acting in a linear world, and suggests the existence of independent and countable elements. And the mathematics supporting the contemporary physics is based on a pastoral experience with numbers --- a herd of sheep can be divided to separate ones and counted. (This is also surprising: how the science with this slight luggage in hand succeeded to penetrate into the deepest mysteries of the Universe and of the atoms?) This classical scientific method has operated in terms of the approach that suggests transition from simple to more complicated objects. Thus the sense of the modern science is "to explain". But a human lexicon has also so important words as "to understand" and "to believe". One of them rather belongs to the art, and especially to the literature (which, as the science, uses the language of words), the other --- to the religion. But how all this can be joined together, how can formal mathematical expressions be ethically coloured? And how the scientifically discovered God which has been inevitably reached by the modern simple science correlates with the religious God?

When I asked Maxim Solokhin how does the Bible correlate with the modern estimate of the age of the Universe, he answered: "Ten thousand years ago, during one week, God created the world which was ten billion years old". This sounds not only witty.

Yes, V.F. Scvartsman seems to be right here believing that in future the science will be in synthesis with all other parts of the culture. But how this future Metalanguage will look like, we can only guess now (There is an excellent book by E.L. Feinberg [12] who wrote about an interesting alliance between the science and the art). The future advance seems to be possible only if one try to answer the extraordinary questions such as, for example: how do the categories of good and evil correlate with the causality principle? And with the time presence or absence? If a hidden sense, ambiguities in scientific sayings, and probability interpretations can be spoken about?

Certainly, the search of an extraterrestrial intelligence must be one of the most important directions in natural-scientific investigations. Although it must be clearly realized that the discover of habitable planetary systems, being interesting in itself, hardly can provide any significant advance. Such a discovery resembles the discovery of indians by Columbus. It is important, of course, if we are aware of a new biological species., but what is much more important those are their impressions of God, of Good and Evil.

Moscow, 1994


References

  1. I.S.Shklovskii, Zemlia i Vselennaya (the Earth and the Universe), 1985, No 3,76 (in Russian)
  2. I.S.Shklovskii, Voprosy philosofii (Philosophical questions), 1975, No 9 (in Russian)
  3. F.J.Tipler, Q.J.R.Astron.Soc., 1981, v.22, 279
  4. G.D.Brin, Q.J.R.Astron.Soc., 1983, v.24, 283
  5. V.M.Lipunov, Sov.Astron., 1988, v.32, p.221
  6. C.Sagan, Planet Space Sci., 1963, v.11, p.485
  7. Vl.Khlumov, Zemlia i Vselennaya, 1987, No 1, 95
  8. V.F.Shvartsman, "Problema poiska zhizni vo Vselennoi" (Problem of the life search in the Universe), Moscow, Nauka, 1986, p.230 (in Russian)
  9. K.E.Tsiolkovskii, "Monizm Vselennoi"(Monism of the Universe), in "Griozy o Zemle i Nebe" (Dreams about the Earth and the Heavens), Tula, Prioksk Publ., 1986, p.276, 419 (A.L. Chizhevckii, "Teoria kosmicheskikh er" (The theory of the space eras)) (in Russian)
  10. A.H.Guth, Phys. Rev., 1981, v.D23, p.347
  11. A.Einstein, "Sobranie nauchnyh trudov" (Collection of scientific works), Moscow, Nauka, 1967, v.4, 567
  12. E.L.Feinberg, "Kibernetika, logika, iskustvo" (Cybernetics, logic, art), Moscow, Radio and Sviaz Publ., 1981


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