What the discovery of the Higgs boson demonstrates about the nature of the universe

I’ve been intending to post this on the main page since I read it in the New York Times on July 4, but hadn’t gotten around to it. This is the opening paragraph of the Times’ front-page article on the discovery of the Higgs boson, by its science editor, Dennis Overbye:

ASPEN, Colo.—Signaling a likely end to one of the longest, most expensive searches in the history of science, physicists said Wednesday that they had discovered a new subatomic particle that looks for all the world like the Higgs boson, a key to understanding why there is diversity and life in the universe.

So the first and main meaning of the Higgs boson is that it explains, not why matter and the universe exist, but why there is “diversity” in the universe, i.e., why there are women, nonwhites, homosexuals, people who have had sex change operations, terror-supporting jihadist U.S. Army officers, and sub-competent black-Hispanic lesbian Yale physicists. For liberals, diversity supercedes existence. For liberals, nothing—not even a sub-atomic particle—can be meaningful or important unless it is expresses the liberal paradigm and tells us how wonderful we are in our diversity. Liberals do not think. They are incapable of impartial, conceptual thought about the nature of the world. All they do is fit things mechanically into the liberal paradigm, as either good according to that paradigm, or bad.

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Andrew G. writes:

I’m no physicist, but in that July 4 NY Times piece, diversity clearly does not mean ethnic/racial/sexual orientation, etc. Rather, diversity means why according to physics there’s something rather than nothing, why the universe and all it contains is possible. As he writes later “The particle is predicted to imbue elementary particles with mass … The finding affirms a grand view of a universe described by simple and elegant and symmetrical laws—but one in which everything interesting, like ourselves, results from flaws or breaks in that symmetry.” That’s diversity we can live with.

LA replies:

Even if Overbye means the diversity of life, rather than cultural/racial/”gender” diversity, what he’s saying is still ridiculous. He’s skipping over the creation of matter and the universe to something that comes much, much later: the creation of diverse living things. If the Higgs boson did what the scientists claim it did, then it created matter and the universe. But instead of saying that it created matter and the universe, he’s saying that it created life and its diversity, which is far, far removed from the creation of matter and the universe. Why is he doing that? To make the subject be about us. He’s making us paramount over the universe.

To establish my idea further, even with his qualified definition of diversity, what kind of diversity is he actually talking about? About the creation of “everything interesting, like ourselves.” So it’s still about us. About our wonderfulness. Which means, in liberalspeak, about our diversity.

Thus your disagreement with my point ends up supporting it.

LA continues:

To grasp the immaturity, and the liberal narcissism, of Overbye’s approach, imagine that when Ernest Rutherford discovered the solar system-like structure of the atom in 1911, and he was asked what was the significance of this, he said: “It explains diversity; it shows how everything interesting, like us, exists.”

Or imagine that when James Chadwick discovered the neutron in 1932, and he was asked the significance of this, he said, “The discovery of the neutron explains how the diversity of life came into being.” Instead of talking about the neutron and the atom, the actual subject of his discovery, he’s talking about something many stages removed from that. Many things besides the neutron are needed for life to exist. But that’s the way today’s scientists and science journalists speak, because to the liberal narcissist, things are only meaningful if they are about us and our wonderfulness.

I repeat: liberals, including liberal scientists, are incapable of discussing any subject seriously and properly, including sub-atomic particles and the creation of matter, because for liberals the liberal cult of the self takes precedence over everything.

Brandon F. writes:

Wow. Homerun, LA. Right out of the park.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 14, 2012 05:02 PM | Send