Re: Big Bang: How widely accepted?

Alan M. Dunsmuir (Alan@moonrake.demon.co.uk)
Tue, 05 Sep 1995 06:05:53 +0100

In article: <DEE9vu.L4G@crash.cts.com> roosen@crash.cts.com (Robert
Roosen) writes:
> This is due to the limiting assumptions that the high energy
> physicists use when they promote their own world view as a "universal"
one.
> In fact, Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis is a much more popular view
> of the origin of life and is a far more satisfactory basis for a
globally
> acceptable cosmology.
> About 30 years ago, astronomer Harlow Shapley was visiting the U
> of Texas. Bill Kunkel asked him his opinion about communicating with
> extraterrestrial life. Shapley responded,
> "If anyone in this room is serious about communicating with
> extraterrestrial life, I recommend that you go out into the garden and
> practice talking to the flowers."
> With what we now know about telepathy, Shapley's advice was
right on.
> For physicists, the Big Bang may be good enough. For humans, it
> is sadly limited and crippling.
>
This is just absolute rubbish. 'Big Bang' may not be particularly
satisfying, aesthetically, but it fits the astronomical and physical
facts much better than any alternative that anybody can come up with -
and it has that disconcerting habit, common to many scientific theories
which are fundamentally 'correct', of being in agreemnt with facts
newly-uncovered since its formulation - so it is accepted by the vast
majority of those scientists who know anything about the physical
principles involved.

Lovelock's 'Gaia' theory, on the other hand is, in its 'strong' form,
accepted only by assorted spin-heads and New Agers. And in its 'weak'
form it say sonly that the Earth's ecosystem is remarkably resilient to
disturbance, which is an observation nobody could argue with.

Now, this has nothing to do with sci.archaeology, so take it away.

-- 

Alan M. Dunsmuir [@ his wits end]     (Can't even quote poetry right)



         I am his Highness' dog at Kew

         Pray tell me sir, whose dog are you?

			      [Alexander Pope]



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