The best-known conservation law involves energy.
Nothing Ever EndsĪ more subtle source of consolation is what Richard Feynman, in The Character of Physical Law, calls “the great conservation principles.” According to these laws, certain features of nature remain constant, no matter how much nature changes. I critique these we-were-meant-to-be-here propositions here and here. Your individual consciousness might not endure, but consciousness of some kind will last for as long as the universe does. Physicists, notably Eugene Wigner and John Wheeler, have speculated that consciousness, far from being a mere epiphenomenon of matter, is an essential component of reality. Look at an electron this way, it behaves like a particle that way, it resembles a wave. Quantum mechanics has inspired lots of we-were-meant-to-be-here proposals because it suggests that what we observe depends on how we observe it. If you buy multiverses (to which I will return below), the anthropic principle can help explain why we find ourselves in this particular universe with these particular laws. A major reason for the endurance of the anthropic principle is the proliferation of multiverse theories, which hold that our universe is just one of many. Stephen Hawking took it seriously, as did Weinberg.
The anthropic principle is a tautology masquerading as a truth, but it has proved remarkably resilient. The anthropic principle suggests that the laws of nature must take the form that we observe because otherwise we would not be here to observe them. One example is the anthropic principle, which dates back to the 1960s. Without us, the universe might not exist. They imply that we are not an accidental, incidental part of nature our existence is somehow necessary. Call them we-were-meant-to-be-here theories. There is a whole class of conjectures that, like religion, give us a privileged position in the cosmic scheme of things. Other physicists, I suspect, cling to certain hypotheses precisely because they make mortality more bearable. In Dreams of a Final Theory, Weinberg said science cannot replace “the consolations that have been offered by religion in facing death.” Weinberg, who died in July, was unusually resistant to wishful thinking (except for his thinking about a final theory). Steven Weinberg, arguably the greatest physicist of the last half-century, urged us to accept the soul-crushing implications of physics, and he rejected attempts to turn it into a substitute for religion. From this chilly perspective, the entirety of human existence, let alone an individual life, can seem terrifyingly ephemeral and pointless. There is no place for love, friendship, beauty, justice-the things that make life worth living. Moreover, physicists’ equations describe particles pushed and pulled by impersonal forces. Their investigations force them to confront infinity and eternity in their day jobs, not just in the dead of night. Physicists pride themselves on their rationality, yet they are as prone to existential dread as the rest of us, if not more so. Recently I have begun to wonder whether terror-management theory can explain trends in physics, too. Last year I invoked the theory to explain why Donald Trump’s popularity surged at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Terror-management theory can account for puzzling political trends, such as our attraction to outlandish conspiracies and authoritarian leaders. We cling to our beliefs more tightly when reminded of our mortality, especially if those beliefs connect us to something transcending our puny mortal selves. It holds that fear of death underpins many of our actions and convictions. But terror-management theory has held up quite well since three psychologists proposed it more than 30 years ago. Our quirky minds thwart psychologists’ efforts to find durable theories.
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