"Writer Graham Phillips takes aim at many universes theory, the lazy materialist’s dodge for getting away from the reality of the fine-tuning of the universe for life: There are countless universes out there with different variables and ours just happens to be one that enables life.
In “The Mind at the End of the Universe,” Phillips responds,
"If you restrict yourself to materialist theories, well, maybe. But is it taking materialism too far if it forces you to invent hordes of other unobservable universes to solve a problem in ours? I wonder if, like
solipsism, the multiverse theory is a tad distasteful for the same reason—it can’t be empirically verified or falsified.
Alternatively, could dropping the unassailable fidelity to materialism—the belief that the universe consists of nothing other than physical fields, energy, and particles—lead to a more intellectually satisfying solution to the finetuning problem?"
He contrasts Susskind’s approach with that of Princeton’s John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008). Wheeler saw that quantum mechanics (QM), the science of the behavior of subatomic particles, challenged the materialist universe:
"Wheeler came to this conclusion after wrestling with the discoveries of quantum physics. In particular, it was one of the theory’s most brain-bending revelations that forced his hand: that the world out there doesn’t seem to fully exist until it’s observed. Or until it’s measured, to use the term physicists prefer. For instance, particles, which are the building blocks of everything, don’t have a position until they’re pinned down by observation. They are neither here nor there.
The before-measurement world is only kind of there, partially existing, as a vast array of possibilities, but not an actuality. As after it’s observed, the potentialities crystallize into the reality we know."
What all this points to is the way quantum mechanics has destroyed classical materialism. It has left thinkers, who could once celebrate the certainty of science, searching in many new directions for ways to unite our various understandings of the universe. Materialism isn’t so much dying out these days as breaking up."
Denyse O’Leary
