BBC News,
Victoria Gill, 19 october 2012
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The
discovery of the Higgs boson is so fresh that the exhibit in Cern's museum has
not yet been updated.
In the
exhibit - a short film that projects images of the birth of the Universe onto a
huge screen - the narrator poses the question: "Will we find the Higgs
boson"?
Now that
the Higgs has finally been spotted - a scientific discovery that takes us
closer than ever to the first moments after the Big Bang - Cern has opened its
doors to scholars that take a very different approach to the question of how
the Universe came to exist.
On 15
October, a group of theologians, philosophers and physicists came together for
two days in Geneva to talk about the Big Bang.
So what
happened when people of such different - very different - views of the Universe
came together to discuss how it all began?
"I
realised there was a need to discuss this," says Rolf Heuer, Cern's
director general.
"There's
a need for us, as naive scientists, to discuss with philosophers of theologians
the time before or around the Big Bang."
Cern's
co-organiser of this unusual meeting of minds was Wilton Park - a global forum
set up by Winston Churchill.
It is an
organisation usually associated with high level discussions about global policy
and even confidential exchanges on matters of international security, which
perhaps emphasises how seriously Cern is taking this exchange.
But even
the idea of a "time before the Big Bang" is impossible territory for
physicists.
It is a
zone of pure speculation - before time and space as scientists understand it
came to exist, and where the laws of physics completely break down.
So does
that make it a realm where science and religion can come to an understanding?
One of the
meeting's most outspoken participants, Lawrence Krauss, a theoretical physicist
and director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University, says
definitely not.
"One
gets the impression from a meeting like this that scientists care about God;
they don't," he says.
"You
can't disprove the theory of God.
 |
| The discovery of a "Higgs-like particle" preceded this religious and scientific meeting
Science and faith
The first person to propose the Big Bang
theory was a catholic priest. Georges Lemaitre was also professor of physics at the Catholic University of Louvain when, in 1931, he proposed in an academic paper that the expanding universe must have originated at a finite point in time. His religious interests were as important to him as his science, and he served as president of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences from 1960 until his death in 1966.
Charles Darwin, who could be said to have
sparked the religion vs science debate, struggled with his own faith. Darwin trained as an Anglican parson and, in his diaries from explorations on his ship, the Beagle, even referred to himself as "quite orthodox". In his autobiography, Darwin wrote: "The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble to us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic." |
"That's
why science makes progress and religion doesn't."
But the
suggestion that science and religion are fundamentally incompatible was a point
of contention during the meeting.
John
Lennox, professor of mathematics at the University of Oxford, is also a self-declared
Christian. He thinks the very fact that human beings can do science is evidence
for God.
"If
the atheists are right the mind that does science... is the end product of a
mindless unguided process.
"Now,
if you knew your computer was the product of a mindless unguided process, you
wouldn't trust it.
"So,
to me atheism undermines the rationality I need to do science."
But this
seemingly intractable God vs science debate was only a part of the meeting.
Prof Heuer
said he wanted the participants to "develop a common understanding"
of one another's' viewpoints.
But even
exchanging ideas was, at times, tricky; scientists and philosophers often speak
a very different language.
Andrew
Pinsent is research director at the University of Oxford's Ian Ramsey Centre
for Science and Religion. He is also a trained physicist who once worked at
Cern.
"We
have to educate one another in the terms that we use," he says.
For
example, he explains, "philosophers have been discussing the meaning of
[the word] truth for centuries.
"It's
defined as a justified true belief."
But for
many physicists, it is uncomfortable territory to use that word when talking
about what we know about the Universe and the Big Bang.
Prof Krauss
says that the word is at the heart of "one of the fundamental differences
between science and religion".
"People
who are religious believe they know the truth," he says.
"And
they know the answer before even asking the question. Whereas, with scientists,
it's the exact opposite.
"In
science, although we use the word truth, what really matters is if it
works."
"That's
why it's a sensitive issue, because if you know the truth, there's no need to
deal with this little question of whether something works or not."
 |
The Big Bang
|
"There
has been no new conceptual breakthrough in physics in a quarter of a
century," he says.
He says
this is partly because, science in isolation "is very good for producing
stuff" but not so good for producing ideas.
He invokes
Einstein as an example of a truly philosophical scientist.
"[He]
began by asking the sorts of questions a child would ask," says Dr
Pinsent, "like what would it be like to ride on a beam of light."
And Rolf
Heuer is open to the idea of bringing philosophy into Cern itself.
"I
wouldn't go so far as to let them run experiments here," he jokes,
"but I wouldn't see any problem to have a philosopher in residence. "
Too
specialised?
The main
conclusion of the event has been simple: keep talking.
"We
face a problem in our culture of hyperspecialisation," says Dr Pinsent.
"This
ignorance of other fields can cause problems, like a lack of social cohesion.
And
although Prof Krauss said the meeting felt at times like "people who can't
communicate trying to communicate," even he sees some value in this
somewhat esoteric exchange.
"Many
people of faith view science as a threat," he said.
"I
don't think science is a threat, so it is useful for scientists to show that
they don't necessarily view it that way."
As one
contributor put it during the meeting: "Religion doesn't add to scientific
facts, but it does shape our view of the world."
And since
Cern is searching for clues about how that world came to exist in the first
place, it wants to see how its discoveries might fit into any world view.
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