Essay Abstract
ABSTRACT Garriga and Vilenkin have argued that under certain cosmological assumptions "the number of distinct histories in an [observable universe] is finite." Consequently, each of us exists in infinitely many widely scattered copies. This essay explores some implications of an alternative cosmological hypothesis, which states that a full description of the universe doesn't privilege any point or direction in space. The implications of this hypothesis include a proposed solution to the measurement problem of quantum mechanics and a new physical interpretation of Gibbs's ensembles (collections of imaginary copies of a macroscopic physical system). An account of cosmic evolution that comports with the hypothesis makes randomness an objective property of the physical world and assigns a much wider role to chance than conventional pictures; but is not inconsistent with the possibility that we exist in multiple copies. At the end of the essay I speculate that creative biological processes, from evolution to cultural evolution to individual human lives, create qualitatively unique and unrepeatable varieties of biological order.
Author Bio
David Layzer is Donald H. Menzel Professor of Astrophysics emeritus at Harvard University. His publications include two books, Constructing the Universe (Scientific American Library) and Cosmogenesis (Oxford) and paper on theoretical physics, astrophysics, atmospheric physics, and theoretical biology.