1998 Bonestell Lecture presented by Dr. Kai Woehler

EINSTEIN'S UNIVERSE
About the Big Bang and Black Holes
THE DEEP STRUCTURE OF MATTER AND FORCES
About Elementary Particles and Forces
SYMMETRIES - PRINCIPLES OF DESIGN
About the Search for the Holy Grail--The Theory of Everything
STRINGS AND STRINGY SPACE
About Hidden Dimensions
OUR UNIVERSE--A VERY SPECIAL PLACE
About Worlds Hospitable to Life
THE MULTIVERSE
About the Origin by Natural Selection
CONCLUSION

Whether the picture that Smolin has given will survive in time remains to be seen. It all depends on a successful construction of a satisfactory STRING-QUANTUM GRAVITY THEORY. Many scientists in that field are optimistic that we might not be too far away from that. On epistomological grounds we are certain that science will never be finished. We know that all these models are constructs of the human mind and that just like life itself is in continuous evolution adapting itself to the given realities of our world, so our collective human mind will continue to forge ever more elaborate models of the world in which we live, continuously checking the models against the observed facts, trying to make ever better adapted models to describe the reality.

What is so intriguing about this model is: for the first time there is a rational for how the particular set of parameters that makes our universe so hospitable to life may be explained in natural terms, based on physics that, while not quite in hand yet, at least is fathomable, making a story that does not depend on supernatural intervention.

It is also very intriguing that the fundamental mechanism which Darwin discovered and that allowed to explain the seeming mystery of the evolution of living species could be at work at a much more fundamental level at the birth of our universe. Therein lie perhaps the seeds for a GRAND UNIFICATION OF WORLDVIEW, a CONVERGENCE of human understandings at all levels of the observed world which could help to overcome superstitions and pseudoscience. With this hopeful vision I close with this poetic summary of the ORIGINS OF UNIVERSES:

CREATION
Infinite void,
Hidden potential
Unssen horizons,
Silently drifting apart.

Sudden awak'ning,
Blinding event,
Tumbling transition
Releasing itself
Into the chaos
of awesome creation.

Expanding, evolving,
Condensing, transforming
Void keeps on weaving
A magnificant carpet
of brilliant complexion.

Universe upon Universe
An eternal canon
Sent radiantly sailing
Like bubbles
On the rivers of time.

K. Woehler

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