The Life of the Cosmos

by Lee Smolin

Cosmologist Lee Smolin offers a startling new theory of the universe that is at once elegant, comprehensive, and radically different from anything proposed before. In The Life of the Cosmos, Smolin cuts the Gordian knot of cosmology with a simple, powerful idea: "The underlying structure of our world, " he writes, "is to be found in the logic of evolution." Today's physicists have overturned Newton's view of the universe, yet they continue to cling to an understanding of reality not unlike Newton's own - as a clock, an intricate mechanism, governed by laws which are mathematical and eternally true. Smolin argues that the laws of nature we observe may be in part the result of a process of natural selection which took place before the big bang. Smolin's ideas are based on recent developments in cosmology, quantum theory, relativity and string theory, yet they offer, at the same time, an unprecedented view of how these developments may fit together to form a new theory of cosmology. From this perspective, the lines between the simple and the complex, the fundamental and the emergent, and even between the biological and the physical are redrawn. The result is a framework that illuminates many intractable problems, from the paradoxes of quantum theory and the nature of space and time to the problem of constructing a final theory of physics. As he argues for this new view, Smolin introduces the reader to recent developments in a wide range of fields, from string theory and quantum gravity to evolutionary theory the structure of galaxies. He examines the philosophical roots of controversies in the foundations of physics, and shows how they may be transformed as science moves towardunderstanding the universe as an interrelated, self-constructed entity, within which life and complexity have a natural place, and in which "the occurrence of novelty, indeed the perpetual birth of novelty, can be understood."

Genres: Science, Physics, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Astronomy, Popular Science, Space

368 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Lee Smolin is a theoretical physicist who has made influential contributions to the search for a unification of physics. He is a founding faculty member of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. His previous books include The Trouble with Physics, The Life of the Cosmos and Three Roads to Quantum Gravity.

Reviews

[Rama Rao · Rating 5 out of 5]

Physical evolution of our universe

The theory of cosmological natural selection proposed by author Lee Smolin states that a process analogous to biological natural selection applies to the evolution of our universe. In this theory, a black hole from a previous universe creates a white whole on the other side of space-bulk to create a new universe (a white hole, an equivalent of a Big Bang), whose physical parameters such as, mass of an elementary particle, Planck constant, speed of light, electrical charge, etc. differ slightly from that of the previous universe where the black hole collapsed. A universe with "unsuccessful" physical parameters is predicted to reach heat death before being able to evolve, that is some physical parameters become more likely than others. The physical laws like the relativistic physics, and quantum physics are postulated to evolve over time and the future will evolve. Hence, the laws of physics we experience today is not fixed but evolved over time for the past 13.8 billion years. The author differs from other physicists who believe that laws of physics are immutable. Natural selection, according to this theory guide the laws of physics favoring those universes which best reproduce and give opportunities for life to be born and evolve. However, there is no direct selective pressures of biological systems in the evolution of the cosmos (and the origin of laws of physics.) The theory predicts that nature's parameters should be optimized for birth, growth, and death of a star that may result in black holes. Our universe has billions of black holes, and according to this book, it would give rise to billions of new universes.

For the author Time is an important fabric of the universe where cosmos evolved over billions of years. For many physicists like Julian Barbour, Carlo Rovelli, and others time is a human construct and therefore an illusion. If you could get outside the universe and observe the cosmos, you would see that every moment of this universe. Smolin differ from the other physicists and argues that the fabric of the universe is made of Time only.

This is an elegant, comprehensive, and radically different from anything proposed before. The author appears to be a heretic but writes with passion and a force of scientific ideas that is readable and enjoyable for professionals as well as a layperson interested in physics. Lee Smolin is one of the leading physicists of our time. He is a philosopher and a great thinker who disfavors non-testable concepts in physics and offers testable and verifiable suggestions for his idea of cosmological natural selection.

[David Rubenstein · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lee Smolin presents an interesting hypothesis that attempts to explain why the fundamental physical constants seem to be "tuned" perfectly to allow stars, planets, and life to evolve. The best aspect of his hypothesis is that it is "falsifiable". This means that Smolin proposes a number of tests that if they fail, would mean that his hypothesis is wrong. And, the tests are not incredibly difficult. He includes observational tests--like measuring the masses of additional neutron stars--and theoretical tests; calculating the consequences of changing the values of certain physical "constants". So, Smolin's hypothesis is quite engaging, and should be considered seriously.

But most of the book is not about Smolin's hypothesis at all. It is really about reconciling various quantum theories and cosmology. The book is deeply philosophical, and the book makes clear which parts are pure speculation. Smolin mentions that he met Richard Feynman a few times. Each time he described his work to Feynman, he was criticized because Smolin's ideas were not sufficiently crazy!

So, much of the book contains some crazy ideas, and it is full of philosophical speculation. The book is not easy to read--not because of heavy technical explanations, but because the philosophical viewpoints are often quite subtle.

[Shane · Rating 4 out of 5]

The importance of this book comes not from the proposed cosmological theory itself, but from its understanding of relational cosmology and the philosophical ramifications of relativity and that a natural mechanism _is_ possible to explain the complexity of the universe.

Lee Smolin proposes a thought-provoking cosmological theory of cosmic natural selection to explain the complexity of the universe. In doing so, he dives into the discussion of self-organized complex physical systems and relativity. This is where the heart of the book lies, the life of such a cosmos.

The book is very fun to read and is packed with information, both physics and philosophy, on the very basic, most abstract properties of the world. The ending is absolutely beautiful as well. The passages on relativity & relational cosmology, complex systems, and art and science places this book at the center of my thoughts as of late. I feel that this book will be very important in the future, although it is viewed as a mere popular science book right now. Highly influential. I highly recommend it.

[Neil McFarlane · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are two books that I've read in my 48 years so far on this Earth which have blown my mind and completely changed my whole way of looking at things, and this is one of them. (FYI the other is "The Selfish Gene")

First of all, Smolin has some crazy-sounding things to say, but he uses tight, scientific arguments, and he's the real deal, a professor at a Canadian University with a team of researchers working under him. So try to repress your inclination to dismiss him as a crackpot when you first start understanding what he's saying.

If you're not too physics-minded, you can just read and enjoy the part (in the first half of the book) where Smolin describes his theory that a big bang and a black hole are like reverse mirror images of each other. In conclusion, the big bang was actually a "bounce" at the centre of a black hole in a "prior" universe which created a new region of space and time - our universe.

So in effect, universes are like trees and black holes are like cherries on the trees which in turn give rise to more universes which in turn give rise to more black holes/cherries etc. etc.

It makes our previous conception of this universe seem a paltry thing.

Of course there's no way to presently know if this is all true, but it's a fascinating theory which has stood the test of time (Smolin first came up with it about 15 years ago).

It also makes the universe into a kind of organic thing.

Which brings us on to the second revolutionary idea of the book which is to link the cosmos - and the physical laws under which it operates - to Darwinian natural selection.

To find out how Smolin does that, you'll have to read the book, but for me, this is an incredibly important book, the influence of which will grow and grow over the coming years.

[Krish Sanghvi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although his theory (more of a hypothesis really), seems testable, it has too many assumptions, and the assumptions are what lie to be falsifiable, not the theory itself.
Still, this is a great book because it delves into questions rarely addressed by proper scientists like- why are the parameters of the universe the way they are and not otherwise; is there an absolute truth and does this lie beyond the reaches of the scientific method; the difference between absolute and relative etc.
This book is more philosophy of science than science, which is what differentiates it from other popular books on cosmology.
It also uses principles of biology (natural selection, niche, competition etc) to infer hypotheses about the universe, although i disagree with him and feel his case for cosmic Darwinism is very weak and doesn't test that hypothesis directly.
Physics today has reached a dead end, with all big questions still left unanswered and no new evidence being accumulated about stuff like dark energy, dark matter, multiverses, Gravity etc. We also don't understand why quantum theory is true and what it describes. Also, two distinct and equally true theories: gen rel and QM describe nature very differently. Hence, we may need a paradigm shift in physics, something which is quite taboo among physicists. Everybody is trying to unify the two, but very few actually go beyond this unification, and discuss the implications of it happening/ not. Smolin gets this discussion started through his book and points out the limitations of current physics. It also questions the scientific method and its assumptions, which science books rarely do.
Smolin emphasises why this paradigm shift is important if we wish to have a better theory that describes the universe.
On the other hand, biology has been the most progressive and complete of all sciences. This is because natural selection has stood the test of time and has immense evidence and predictive/ explanatory power. It also acts as a self referencing system, and can self organise and spontaneously occur (probably), and smolin tries to apply these principle of biology to cosmology, and gives us a new hypothesis for the universe which doesn't need any external truth, and which relies on the history of a self referencing and self forming universe.
This book also has some fantastic interpretations of general relativity and natural selection, which themselves make it worth reading. It also provides a fantastic critique of reductionism, absolutism, radical atomism and why these ideas are redundant today, in a universe where things are nothing but interactions.
I'm yet to read a good, proper science book which discusses how science itself requires some level of faith in the scientific method and in evidence and in reality, but this book is the closest I have come so far. These aren't discussed directly, but can be inferred.
I also like the book because it addresses the philosophical origins and implications of Newtonian physics (the absolute), gen rel (the relational), and QM (the observational and probabilistic), rather than merely describing what these theories are. Also, it acknowledges that there are many interpretations of QM (which physics books rarely do!). It also wonderfully illustrates quantum uncertainty and entanglement, which often seem very counterintuitive. This book has finally helped me appreciate quantum mechanics, something I didn't understand properly prior to reading it.
Is quantum mechanics the end of the road for physics? The author certainly thinks otherwise- that there exists a better theory somewhere in the future, that will explain the universe more coherently. I don't. I think the weirdness of the quantum world won't be explained by anything other than QM. Of course, I wish I'll be proved wrong.

One of the main objectives of this book is to explain why the universe is what it is. Why is there life, complexity, organisation, stars etc, when all these things seem so improbable to arose, were the laws for a universe chosen randomly.
Most people would either use the weaker anthropocentric principle to justify their answer, or succumb to the concept of a god. But neither answer seems satisfactory or testable. This book discusses these ideas and introduces another one- of cosmic natural selection to answer the question above.

The first part of the book is very descriptive and goes through the history of science and has many definitions (some of which, like the gauge principle, I couldn't understand). The second part deals with his hypothesis of cosmic natural selection (which may seem interesting at first, but then gets very speculative and repetitive). The third part, which is also the best (5/5) talks about the philosophical underpinnings of Newtonian physics, gen rel, and QM. The fourth part, which is equally interesting, tells us what the universe would have to be like, if observers were to describe it in a quantum way. It talks about how there can never be an absolute description of the universe, because that would require an observer outside our own universe. It also explains how different observers may relate to each other to describe the universe precisely, but not accurately. It also discusses what gravity, space time, and time would be like at a quantum level, and why there are so many inconsistencies in physics and in reality itself.

The take home message of the book is this- we may never know truth because the universe isn't absolute, yet, our theories can be improved so that we describe the universe as a self organising, relational, non absolute, complex, out of equilibrium system.

4.5 stars because a lot of the book gets repetitive and many parts seem redundant or too anecdotal, and because he treats a hypothesis as a theory. Also the book isn't very succinct, and ideas are scattered all over the place which makes it less coherent to read. But maybe I feel this way coz I took a really long time to finish it (7 months!!).

[John Trefry · Rating 5 out of 5]

I always knew/wished I was inside a black hole.

[Liedzeit Liedzeit · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe it is a bit silly to read a book on Cosmology that is thirty years old. But I liked his other books and I thought this might be still worth reading. And it was.

Why have the physical constants the value they have? Like the gravitational constant or the Planck constant. If they were a bit different, so we are told, life would not be possible. That they are like they are by chance is unlikely. This has made some people very happy who argue, that of course God has made them as they are. Well no, says Smolin, they developed by evolution. So there have been other universes with other constants, short-lived and lifeless before. But out of Black holes new universes are formed by Big Bangs and they not only have new physical laws, somehow the laws required for our universe slowly evolve. I am not sure, I need to understand the details. It is quite a silly idea but maybe not silly enough to be true.

The other idea that Smolin is famous for is also already to be found in this book, namely that only time is real. Space on the other hand is an emergent property. I do not know how to imagine it but this I firmly believe is true.

A book on cosmology that has just as many entries in the index on Leibniz as on Einstein must be great. The part I liked best was when he shows how Leibniz' idea of a relative space in contrast to Newton’s absolut space has the better philosophical arguments but that the Newton view has something in favour for pragmatic reasons. The math is easier.

[Gendou · Rating 4 out of 5]

Smolin starts by describing how what he calls "Radical Atomism" conflicts with unification.
His argument is that, under Radical Atomism, particles have fundamental properties, independent from their environment.
But for unification to reach it's ultimate goal, the variety of particles must emerge from one fundamental element.
This is the first of many weak, philosophical arguments in the book.

I'm interested in the formation and evolution of stars.
In this book I found a fascinating and enlightening (pun intended) survey of this complex and sensitive phenomena.
I was particularly interested to learn that Cellular Automata have been used to model galactic star formation.

The book's thesis is Smolin's own theory of Cosmological Natural Selection.
In this theory, the apparently fine-tuned parameters in physics are a result of a sort of natural selection.
This evolution of the fundamental constants occurs via black hole reproduction.
As the theory goes, formation of new black holes in a universe give rise to child universes, etc.
He concludes that we can test this theory by examination of the parameters of physics.
If a parameter can be changed to increase the rate of black hole formation, it would refute the theory.
But what if we vary several constants and all changes serve to decrease black hole formation in our universe?

This sounds a little bit like anthropic reasoning: If the constants of nature weren't fine tuned as they are, we wouldn't be here to worry about the problem of fine tuning.

Put another way: If any physical constant is changed from its observed value, OBJECT becomes less likely, therefore THEORY which predicts our universe must have OBJECT is upheld.

Replace OBJECT with "black holes" or "intelligent life", and THEORY with "Cosmological Natural Selection" or "The Anthropic Principle", respectively. Unsettling!

However, the real difference between Cosmological Natural Selection and Anthropic reasoning is that the former gives a mechanism to explain the relationship between possible configurations of the constants of nature, while the later does not.

Smolin does examine the consequences of varying a handful of constants, and their support for his pet theory is intriguing.
That's the fun part!

The not-so-fun part is Smolin's constant, painful, digressions into philosophy.
It's enough to make Feynman weep!

Philosophical Digression #1: Novelty
To be honest, I have no idea what Smolin was getting at with this one.
All I can gather from this inscrutable section is that Smolin is capable of writing shameful nonsense with impunity. For example: "...to exist something must be created by processes that act in time to create the novel out of what existed before." It's fucking nonsense! For like 10 pages!

Philosophical Digression #2: God
Smolin uses the word "god" 74 times in this book.
It really gets annoying when, you're trying to follow his arguments, only to be distracted by some the arbitrary mysticism of long-dead control freaks. For example: "There is thus a danger that the need for such a theory of initial conditions leaves the door open for a return of religion." The danger is people like YOU, Smolin, who feed the trolls! Just give me my science, leave the whining imbeciles out of it.

Philosophical Digression #3: Systems
Smolin makes a big deal about complex, self-organizing, stable, and non-equilibrium systems. This involves characterization of various objects and phenomena based on their properties and internal behavior. It's a nice way of dropping things into differently labeled buckets, but I fail to see how it ties in with the thesis of the book. It seems like so much padding, and philosophical rambling, to me. He makes some analogy between life and the cosmos, apparently in attempt to determine whether or not the cosmos is literally alive. He defines life following a sort of rip-off of What Is Life by Schrödinger. Then he uses his bullshit philosophy to define the cosmos in the same vein. He finds them both "non-equilibrium self-organized systems", but doesn't classify the cosmos as being "alive". I don't feel like I learned anything from this.

Philosophical Digression #4: Leibniz
Smolin is obsessed with Leibniz! He talks a lot about Libniz's principle of sufficient reason, which he ties (unconvincingly) with Weyl's gauge theory. He also uses this principle to justify lots of rational ideas, like relativity over a fixed background. It seems superfluous to me.

Philosophical Digression #5: Mysticism
Like the word "god", this is another red flag; and it appears 25 times...
The little Feynman in my ear yells, "Hooey!" every time I hear this word.
Smolin actually writes: "perhaps there must remain a place for mysticism"!
That little gem came in a discussion of why there is something rather than nothing. Smolin seems to have fallen victim to the siren song of infinite regress. I can empathize, but there is no excuse for resorting to poetry like this in a science book:

"Is there any reason we might not conceive of the world as made up as a network of relationships, of which our appearances are true examples, rather than as made up of some imagined absolute existing things, of which our appearances are mere shadows?"

Smolin, please tell me you aren't writing this way just to get chicks.
Not that it wouldn't work, those rhetorical questions are totally angst!

I just wish this book had stayed away from these mere shadows of intelligent thought.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm no stranger to pop-science books but this book opened my mind to some amazing possibilities. How is it that the universe we inhabit has just the right properties for us to exist? The Anthropic principle says it must because we are here to observe it. Smolin suggests that, in a nutshell, in the beginning there was random nothing, then out of that came blind iteration - universes forming and collapsing again, until finally evolution emerged by chance (it had all the time in the world after all to do so) and one (or more) universes 'stuck', ie were just stable enough to give rise to offspring (in black holes). Each child universe inherits the properties of its parent, with some random mutation, and eventually one (or more) universe formed that is stable enough to give rise to us. This is the theory of cosmological natural selection. The idea that inside every black hole is another daughter universe of our own, and ours is, in turn, the guts of a black hole in some parent universe, is deeply attractive. This book expounds on this thought experiment in an highly accessible manner.

[Nader · Rating 4 out of 5]

It gives a good overview of big picture and current fundamental problems in physics and cosmology with some emphasis on the philosophical aspects of the discussions. Then it presents some very interesting ideas on how to extend or improve the theory of relativity and quantum mechanic so they can coexist under a more logical framework based on the original ideas first presented by Leibniz. It is interesting to see how the battle between Newton and Leibniz's physics develops throughout the book, which eventually Leibniz comes out as the winner!

My only complain is about the format of book. It has very small fonts and each chapter is not divided into subsection which makes it difficult to follow and digest at times. Also the book could have used more pictures to facilitates the understanding of some of the concepts.

[majunia · Rating 3 out of 5]

just a bit of a disclaimer that I dont particularly like reading nonfiction books. although lee smolin did have some fascinating, if not slightly radical, ideas about the universe. he also explained some pretty fundamental concepts (singularities, gauge principle etc) really well. and omg I love it when scientists criticise einstein (even when they're wrong to).

[Nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

All of the different ideas are interesting and plausible enough, but they don't come together into a cohesive picture--which is a theme of the book, but for that reason the book is quite meandering and feels like little more than a bunch of questions with shallow indications of potential directions in which an answer might be found.
Too much time is spent disparaging old general philosophical problems like, "Why?," as I don't think the author succeeds in solving them or making them irrelevant to the degree that he believes he has.
The theory of cosmological natural selection doesn't answer the universe's deepest questions, it just pushes them back in time (or..."not-time," or whatever) to the abiogenesis of cosmological "life". It carries the same unresolved issue that biological natural selection does, which is that we don't actually know how or why the process began.
Why is the universe self-organizing, rather than not? Why is a process of selection and evolution fundamental, when it could hypothetically be otherwise (chaos, equilibrium, nothingness, etc)? Cosmological natural selection seems to carry with it the necessity of some kind of impetus, or "prime mover," to start the cosmological reaction.
The author makes a big deal of Leibniz's "principle of sufficient reason," which states that any question about why the world is one way rather than another must have an answer--but I don't see how the author's own theory satisfies the principle.

Also, the idea that each black hole is a new universe, which itself spawns more universes ad infinitum carries with it a problem (in my mind) that the author doesn't address. How can you create infinite universes from one universe? If a star turns into a black hole, and that black hole becomes a new universe, isn't that new universe necessarily going to have less matter than the universe in which it was created? Doesn't this process imply that--if not the starting universe--at least each successive universe is increasingly finite?
Biological natural selection depends on outside fuel, such that in order to make a human being via evolution from a single cell, you need to take materials from the environment. A cell can't create a human being using only the matter in itself.
So, where would the universe get the material to create infinite new universes from itself? Or do the universes get successively smaller and eventually run out of "fuel" causing the entire multiverse to collapse in on itself in a reversal of all existence? I have no idea if it's a good question, but would have liked if it were addressed.

[James F · Rating 4 out of 5]

While most physicists ignore philosophy, apart from an occasional pop version of Thomas Kuhn's paradigms, or even attack each other for doing "philosophy" instead of "science", Smolin in this book argues that there is a crisis in modern physics which needs to be met by explicitly considering the philosophical presuppositions of current theory. What he has in mind is the problem that modern particle theory, including string theory (which was the last word when this was written seventeen years ago), have many free parameters such as the values of the forces and masses of the particles which are not constrained by the theories, or could be different and still give rise to consistent interpretations, and which in fact have improbable values. He is unsatisfied with this situation, as with the so-called Anthropic Principle as an explanation; he proposes a theory he calls "cosmological natural selection", by analogy with biological natural selection, which postulates that the collapse of stars into black holes produces new universes, each of which differs very slightly in the values of the parameters from the parent universe in which the black holes originate, and thus that those parameters are selected for which produce the most black holes. In addition to this theory, or in justification of it, he discusses many other philosophical issues of relativity, quantum theory, and quantum gravity, and considers the origins of galaxies and other questions. I am skeptical of his theory, but it is refreshing to me as a former philosophy major that he takes seriously figures from Leibniz through Feyerabend and Popper; and I learned much from this book about the issues in modern physics and cosmogony. This is a much higher level book than I have been reading, although it is not technical or mathematical.

[Roland Allnach · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read this soon after it was released, and though I would not consider myself an expert by any means on the topics of astrophysics, I did feel comfortable to dive into Smolin's book. For those who are wary of 'science' books, I feel comfortable to say that the science curve is not daunting at all, and there are several symbolic examples, which seem to revolve around cats- so for feline fans, maybe add half a star. Nevertheless the book drifts more to the philosophical rather than the physical, and I for one enjoyed this transition, as concepts such as string theory and nitty-gritty astrophysical ruminations require a thought pattern somewhat 'alien' to what we normally encounter in everyday life. Given as well that much of these concepts are in fact theory, the trend toward the philosophical is more understandable. But what I found perhaps more interesting was the feel one gets for the way in which men such as Smolin construct their thoughts, and it gives a more humanist perspective on the theories rather than just numbers and equations. And yes, given the time that has passed since its first printing, I'm sure there are more scientific critiques that could be formulated for 'Life of the Cosmos', but it is still a very educational read, and quite enjoyable.

[Jonathan Hockey · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is an awful lot that is good in this book, with very cutting edge theoretical concepts and principles in basic physics and natural philosophy that are discussed openly and unabashedly. I also appreciate the way in which, unlike many physicists, he doesn't over play the card of what his particular scientific specialisation knows about reality and is open and admits where there are current limitations. For these factors alone, and for the novelty of the approaches and the interesting figures and ideas referred to, it is worth 4 stars.

However, there remain some criticisms. Firstly, he wavers with very ambiguous views of what natural selection is. Now, given he is arguing for a cosmology based on natural selection, you would think he would be clear on this central point. Unfortunately he is not, he does show awareness of the fact natural selection could just be a logic that underlies discourse, but then he also claims for it something like the status of a mechanism. If its the former, you are going to have to explain how such a logical/metaphysical view could be justified as being a physical explanation for our cosmology. If its the latter then you are going to have to explain what the driving mechanism is for this natural selection. Now, he claims there could be some empirical ways to test the theory, but they are often indicators, rather than verifiers, and I struggle to see how there could be a mechanism, given the mechanism even in biology of natural selection is still much disputed. Yes, we have genetics, but we also have epigenetics, and if it turns out there is interplay between these two things, then you are never going to be able to isolate a clear cut mechanism. Regardless, there is something to be said for Smolin's general approach, and for his relational views of space. (Interesting, back at the time of this book, he was still considering the possibility that time is unreal, unlike in his later work where time is "reborn".)

Another criticism is that he panders a bit too much to too many different people. So, he will say in one sentence that he is doing away with mystical and metaphysical views to pander to his positivist atheist and science fan boy readers, then in the next he will talk of the centrality of Leibniz' principle of sufficient reason, pandering to more philosophical readers, totally unaware, it would seem, that this is a metaphysical principle.

Anyway, these caveats aside, mostly Smolin attempts in this book to face the limits and frontiers of our current scientific knowledge and tries to engage in discourse with other academic disciplines and sources of knowledge to move past, what at that time had been an era of stagnation due to over specialisation and narrow mindedness. The era of youtube and other things since then has helped to spur on more efforts to move beyond that parochial era and free up discourse, not just with people defending the institution that feeds them, but with independent individuals interested in truth for its own sake.

Naturally, the last few years, we have come over a new set of problems, and the left is looking to calcify itself again and withdraw into its mono-narrative stronghold. Thankfully, still in certain areas like theoretical physics there is room for some independent individuals with good ideas to win through such as Roger Penrose. And it does feel to me we now live in a time that is ready to move away from the standard big bang cosmology dogma. Relying, as it does, on too many arbitrary factors to come together in any physically justifiable way consistent with our reason. We could always just make some metaphysical postulates, and be open about this, but of course, this would then raise debate, discussion and criticism, so the tendency seems to be to play safe, to not rise above the parapet and to try and claim a purely physical basis for ones views, as if this will give it an independent credibility that cannot be criticised. There may be a purely physical and correct cosmology to be found, and aspects of Lee Smolin's views may be part of it, but just appealing to natural selection is neither going to be sufficient nor reasonable.

[Matt Conger · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has an incredibly interesting thesis: each black hole in our universe is a window into another universe. And each new universe tweaks its fundamental properties (for example, the mass of an electron) such that more black holes are likely to develop. In other words, Darwinian natural selection but as applied to the universe. The cringe-y blurb on the cover is “Einstein meets Darwin”.

The best parts of this book were the scientific descriptions of the universe and his discussion of probability and optimizations. His analysis says that the likelihood that our universe has stars is 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. And that’s simply to get STARS, let alone intelligent life. In the face of such infinitesimal odds, he says that clearly there is some greater force that helped tweak the parameters of our universe so that we popped out. But rather than say this proves there’s a god out there, he says our universe just has several generations of ancestors that have collectively figured out the right set of parameters for our universe.

This is seriously cool stuff. I admit having been on an edible while reading Chapter 7 “Did the universe evolve?” and enjoying it immensely.

Unfortunately, there are long sections of this book that are far less entertaining. These other sections require a high level of concentration and don’t have nearly the payoff of the probability & optimization chapters. He has chapters dedicated to ecology, biology, and philosophy that were a slog. Here’s an excerpt from page 187:

“Whereas pure logic seems to have no power to create anything when viewed in the context of a static, Platonic world of oppositions that are eternally either true or false, a process which acts over time to transform structures in the world, such as natural selection, may be both completely explicable in logical terms and truly capable of the invention of novelty.”

I mean, damn that’s not an easy sentence to read.

The author’s rationale for adding so many domain-specific chapters is understandable. This whole “black holes = Big Bangs” is a lot to swallow, and he wants to proactively address objections from experts in other domains. But as a lay reader, it nearly made me DNF.

My lack of background in physics also made the end of the book not particularly enjoyable. He basically uses the last six to eight chapters as a windup to say there’s a slight chance this theory can also be a stepping stone to unifying quantum theory and gravity. I acknowledge that this is how you end a book if your audience is fellow scientists and academics. But as a general reader who LOVED the first part of the book and felt it makes for a great sci-fi premise, it was a letdown.

In the meantime, I’m left with one big question. This book came out 25 years ago, and yet this idea hasn’t become mainstream (at least according to my couple of years in r/space and r/cosmology). But interest in “what’s inside black holes” remains high. So why is it that this theory seems to have lost traction? Here’s hoping the author will stumble on this review and consider writing a follow-up!

[Ezgi · Rating 5 out of 5]

To know exactly how the creatures are distributed on the landscape we should know more about the actual topography of the landscape. It is possible to make specific hypotheses about this and study the resulting distributions. But to do this we must know more about the physics at the bounces, and the whole point of what we are doing is to see what conclusions we can draw in our present state of ignorance about physics at such extreme conditions. What is important is that in the absence of such knowledge it is still possible to draw some general conclusions about where our creatures/universes are to be found.


I suspect that the reader will agree that it is impossible to think of a reason why the universe might not have been created, in its entirety, two feet to the left. This being so, it makes no sense to talk about where the universe, as a whole, is. Moving the entire universe two feet to the left is not going to have any imaginable effect on our perceptions, or on the future behavior of the things in the universe. If it is not going to make any different whether the universe is as it is, or two feet to the left, does it still make any sense to distinguish the two? This question is exactly what separates the relational from the absolute view of space. Newton, as an absolutist said yes. Leibniz said no.


In the Peter Brook adaptation of the great Hindu saga The Mahabbarata, the wise king Yudhishthiramust, on penalty of the death of his family, answer a god who demands of him to tell what is the greatest marvel in the world. His reply is that, “Each day death strikes. And yet we live as though we were immortal. This is the greatest marvel.” And, yes, is it not possible that the greatest marvel of all is that we find ourselves in a universe in which everything around us, from the Earth, to the stars, the galaxies, and indeed the whole of what we can see, lives and is bounded by time, while at the same time revealing, through an infinite variety of relations that we are only just beginning to untangle, an order and a harmony that, while perhaps still not immortal, is far older and far richer than anything we have so far let ourselves imagine.

[Justin Covey · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best cosmology book I've ever read. Forget about tedious Elegant Universe, forget about that slapdash Brief History of Time, this is the book to read to get a an overview of our current understanding of the universe as a whole.
Obviously the main argument presented in this book, of cosmological natural selection, is nothing more than a hypothesis of truly fascinating potential and implication. But in presented the whole of his argument Smolin takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of space and time, how we know what we know about them, how we've gone about asking the questions and what that reveals about us, and the currently competing answers for the wildest questions humanity has ever dared itself to ask.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

As usual I didn't manage to follow all of it - and as usual it didn't matter to my satisfaction with the book. I learned a lot here and there and although I'm not a convert yet, I love the ideas of self-organization and natural selection. My biggest failing is maybe not understanding the guage principle but there were a lot of other brilliant ideas I did grasp a bit. Rotation forces (or the lack of them) in an otherwise empty universe, inertia and energy flows. And I've fallen in love with galaxies.... got to find out more.

[Vahid Askarpour · Rating 4 out of 5]

He gave us an alternative metaphor for the universe. Instead of Newtonian clockmaker, he compared universe to the self-building, self-organizing “city”. It is fundamentally a wrong metaphor coming from a scientist who tries to be a new utopian propagandist of progressivism! I can say with certainty, as an archaeologist, that cities have been built and are being built and will be built always by Gods and their human/meta-human representatives! This book is another example of how contemporary physics is a deeply disturbing, at the same time disturbed junk of theories/words!!

[Zahwa · Rating 4 out of 5]

one of the best science books i have read so far, it's really enlightening and influential. i have learned alot through it not only about physics and cosmology but also philosophy and even biology!, it was kind of dense so i wouldn't recommend it to a reader with no background in classical physics, relativity and quantum theory. i am really glad i picked it up and i can't wait to see what the future brings regarding the cosmological natural selection theory.

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pretty sure this is one of the most underrated physics books of all time. Now that everyone is giving Smolin some love for his progress with quantum theory, people should go back and read this thing. It's long, and it takes a little imagination, but he's really not extrapolating too much. If we want to find a theory of everything or a new kind of scientific physics this century, we need to take books like this more seriously.

[Joe Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Compelling, open, personnel by a serious physicist

Lee Smoking never fails to motivate and excite his readers. His questions are significant and his explanations are compelling and complete. Anyone interested in cosmology or the philosophy of being or time and space will be lifted up by this book and thereby have a much better view of the universe and their own place in it. Everything is relative, nothing stands alone.

[Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best physics / cosmology / popular science book I've ever read now in the five years I've been reading them. Lee Smolin is a genius and an intellectual, is struggling with the hardest problems of science in the lineage of Copernicus, Newton, Einstein and Feynman, and has cracked the underpinning of the next paradigm shift of science that has yet to have been realized.

There were many typos in this book, wondering if I got like an editor's copy or something.

[Bria]

Lee Smolin is a very smart guy, and manages to explain a lot of difficult concepts without once using an equation (but I forgive him). His approach is thorough and humble, and the ideas are very cool, although now I have a homework assignment to go look up the status of a lot of this research almost 30 years later. I just wish the book had had a proofreader go over it.

[Nadim · Rating 4 out of 5]

In my opinion, the best argument to date, against a "designed universe" wherein, if any of the physical constants were even a billionth part different, the ramifications would affect the viability of chemistry, star formation and hence, life as we know it.

[TheShrike · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a bit of a challenging read as some of the concepts are obtuse and challenging. However the basic premise is that Smolin applies the idea of Evolution to universe. Survival of the fittest Universes.
Very interesting.

[Michael Karpusas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although the basic idea presented in this book is fascinating, the writing is extremely tedious, repetitive and boring.

[Serdar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Be interesting to see Smolin revisit this book now that 25+ years have gone by but it's still fascinating reading.

[Sanjay Varma · Rating 3 out of 5]

I skimmed this book. I felt like it was a bit underwhelming. It applies the Gaia hypothesis to the Universe, pointing out that the large-scale processes forming stars, galaxies, and galaxy clusters, resemble a self-regulating lifeform. Then Smolin applies the concept of evolution to the Universe. He suggests that black holes can create new singularities that spawn more Universes. He says that the Universe may seem to have been designed, since certain parameters are finely tuned to support star formation and therefore life itself. But if the Universe were a living thing that spawned copies of itself, then eventually the copies would be selected for their ability to generate stars.

The weak point is the idea that black holes spawn new Universes because...for some reason or other. Something about how a contradiction in the way time operates in a black hole would violate the rules of our Universe and so this MUST therefore spawn a new Universe.

The other weak point is how the author applies familiar metaphors like evolution to the Universe. I mean, might as well say the Universe is a clock, or a giant computer. Fun to think about but a bit lazy to re-use a metaphor.