Science Questions

Consciousness controls the universe?
Thanks for the youtube and question. You should not feel bad about being confused. The video is confusing, it draws from many disparate sources (theories of information, chaos, string, holographic, standard QM model, etc.) and lumps them together in an attempt to proselytize for the "consciousness is all" program. For the most part, these theories are science based; but remember, if they are science based then they must be open to falsification. The video makes no mention of that side of science. It may be that on some level, in order to derive a scientific explanation of the physical universe, science will eventually include some measure of consciousness/information in the explanation. I include myself in the group which believes consciousness is/will be a necessary factor that must be included before any coherent explanation of the physical universe becomes possible. Understanding consciousness on that level, however, will not collapse science into the "consciousness is all" receptacle,-- on the contrary, it will expand and inform the science that we count on to explain how our world functions.

What is your definition of science?
Science has produced and continues to produce huge benefits for humankind (but technology has its downside--end of world downside, global warming, nuclear annihilation, gene pool uncertainties etc.) so I believe it is extremely important to evaluate science with a critical eye--an eye to where science came from and how it fits into the overall scheme of what benefits humankind; that said I offer the following:

In his book, The Nature of Physical Reality, Margenau elaborates on what the theoretic component of our experience entails when he says, “…that we come to knowledge of our experience in two ways—through the mental states of prepositional attitudes and sensation.” He then lumps these attitudes and sensation together in what he calls our P-plane experience—a combination of immediate experience with its significance (science is only part of what this significance entails). In this way we come to "know" the same thing in two different ways, through sensed qualia and through the significance that we attach to this sensed qualia. For Margenau, there are four levels of P-plane significance. Language, with its lexical, syntactical, and contextual designations represents the first level. The second level, science, raises P-plane significance by connecting P-plane experience with the propositional aspects of our cognitive experience via what Margenau calls rules of correspondence—the sensed aspect of what may be inferred or deduced from theoretical postulates. On the third and fourth level of P-plane experience, significance deals with ethical behavior and existential meaning. Here the cognitive connection to P-plane experience does not entail the rigor of analysis that describes the scientific method. But, according to Margenau, this lack of rigor does not impose a lesser degree of significance.


Can the String Theory detect God?
Thanks for the video. I have read The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene. It is a very good introduction to string theory. Just to let you know though, the theory deals with spaces to small to detect even with our most powerful accelerators (some of the consequences of the theory, however, may be detected indirectly). To my knowledge nobody has ever detected a graviton let alone detected its absence. I only point this out because even Greene suggests in his book that we may never be able to discover a "theory of everything." We take that expectation on faith, but faith, unlike nature, is not quantifiable. The mind will never stop explaining things, and mathematics (present and not yet invented) will explore all imagined possibilities for as long as there is a consciousness alive to do the arithmetic (in this way God has made sure we stay interested).

I, like you, am committed to the spiritual aspect of "why we are here." In that respect, however, I have invested my time more in the interpretations of non theistic religion. With that thought in mind I offer this quote from Greens book. "Already, through studies in M-theory, we have seen glimpses of a strange new domain of the universe lurking beneath the Planck length, possibly one in which there is no notion of time or space." Where there is no notion of time or space there is only "emptiness." (p.387)The Buddhist notion of "form/emptiness, emptiness/form" applies in this region of unknowablity. Thanks again for the video.