In the first lecture we established 5 presuppositions on which science is built. In considering this philosophical framework, we established that science by its nature is reductionistic, in that it operates by taking complex systems and reducing them to their more fundamental component parts.
In this lecture, we begin to see this process in practice by taking a journey through some of the major scientific disciplines; starting at the level of the immune system and reducing it into more fundamental component parts which will take us through the disciplines of biochemistry, chemistry and physics. It will become obvious as we consider the details of each subject, that our universe is both rationally ordered and immensely complex. For example, the molecular machinery that enables a cell to function is far more sophisticated than any nano-technology we have currently developed. If we observed such technology outside of the context of life itself, we would conclude that it was a product of an intelligence.
Yet if we start with the hypothesis that the universe self-actualised without any input from an external intelligence, then it becomes necessary to develop a theory which explains where the rationality and apparent design (Richard Dawkins coined the word “designoid” for this phenomenon) comes from.
While biologists have attempted to address this challenge by extending the explanatory scope of Darwinian evolution to include the the nano-technology of life itself, physicists are also faced with a similar challenge in explaining why our universe is so finely tuned to allow life to exist in the first place. In the final part of the lecture, we shall examine how physicists have attempted to explain the fine tuning challenge of the universe and why design and order do not naturally arise given the second law of thermodynamics.