August 2024
In a mind-opening conversation about the universe and consciousness with show host Robert Lawrence Kuhn, physicist Brian Josephson observes that the universe seems to be curiously fine-tuned for life. If the constants of physics were not within very tight boundaries, neither we nor any other life form be here. But the constants happen to be exactly right. This observation has inescapable implications.
“Does this mean that the universe has a goal of consciousness? Is there a directedness of the universe toward consciousness? Is consciousness entirely contingent or is it something special, even an ultimate object of universal development?” Josephson asks in the conversation, which is recounted by Denyse O’Leary in Mind Matters magazine.
The Welsh physics professor proposes that something happening beyond the universe and on a larger and possibly infinite time scale “is doing things like bringing a universe into being and setting up its laws and so on, and perhaps partly directing its evolution”.
Josephson seems to have struggled with accepting the Western idea that consciousness could accidentally arise in a purely physical universe. An underlying consciousness that creates and organizes “makes more sense”, he thinks.
“In conventional physics, you’re putting all your bets on one particular, rather complicated, piece of mathematics. … And people like it just because it’s the version which at least is not in disagreement with what we know, but one is assuming lots of things that we don’t know. So that’s just as theological [as a religious view], in fact”, Josephson says.
Their conversation is all the more significant because it happened between two people with very mainstream, visible and successful careers. Josephson is a professor emeritus of physics at Cambridge. He won the Nobel prize in 1973 for predicting what is now known as the Josephson effect in electronics. And Kuhn, who explores deep questions about life and the universe through his “Closer to Truth” video show, is an intellectual, international corporate strategist and investment banker, plus a politics and economics commentator on China. He has published more than 30 books.
Anders Bolling
