Five scientists make up stuff about cosmic meaning

Because they can’t help themselves, apparently

NGC 7714, a spiral galaxy located about 100 million light-years from Earth (Wikimedia Commons | CC BY 4.0)

Before we get started: much of what you’ll read below is an example of what Francis Bacon in his Novum Organum (1620) called pars destruens, which we can loosely translate as flushing down the crap. But if you make it to the end (no cheating!), I promise you will be treated to a small taste of pars construens, the positive replacement for the crap one just flushed down.

So here we go again, talking about meaning, or lack thereof, in the universe. You may reasonably begin to think that I’ve developed an obsession about this. But, truly, it isn’t me; it’s them! By “them,” in this case, I mean a number of cosmologists interviewed for one of the most irritating pieces I’ve ever seen published by Big Think, an outlet I follow and generally admire.

Some time ago, contributor Shai Tubali wrote an article entitled “5 scientists on finding meaning in our Universe’s 13.8-billion-year story,” which is so full of equivocation, deepities, and sheer nonsense that I wondered who he was. A simple web search revealed that he traffics, among other things, in guides to expand your consciousness (in just seven days!). His page says that he makes “use of ancient mystical knowledge to enlighten our human experience.” He also offers a one-year…