Science in general [not just ToE] provides both opportunity and costs. Science works via methodological naturalism. That is, it is free of any metaphysics. The opportunity for society to discard metaphysical baggage would seem to be a plus. For example, all religions [deistic or not] have metaphysical baggage. Ideologies have metaphysical baggage too. Socialists believe that society is more important than the individual. In protecting the state, the individual is protected. Thus is a socialist state, the law may require an accused to prove his innocence, rather than the state having to prove his guilt. The notion here is that most people accused of breaking the law did in fact break the law. In contrast, states that have a metaphysic that the individual is the most important, believe that just society can be built up if the rights of the individual are paramount. Thus, in law, the presumption of innocence and the state is burdened with proof of guilt.

In economic theory, [at least historically] there was Keynesian metaphysics and free-trader metaphysics.
The "downside" of a position free of metaphysics is the same as the upside. By lacking a metaphysical position, science is seen as sterile and hostile to community, because all communities have a metaphysical position.

A religion is only cohesive within the in-group. But obviously, more than one religion exists. Many do. And they all differ in their metaphysics. [eg religion that have god or gods, and religions that lack gods]. Religions only cooperate when their shared interests are threatened. For example, the threat from atheism can bring competing religions together. [At least to some degree, or for a period of perceived mutual threat].

So, within a religion, the game is seen as non-zero. In other words, the individual can recognize that being cooperative or compliant brings about a greater good, because the whole is deemed greater than the sum of the parts. [Shared goals, etc]. Competition between religions is often seen as a zero-sum game, because different religions have different ideologies or metaphysical views. The presence of atheism [and I would argue science also, as it is based on methodological naturalism which is free of any metaphysics] changes the zero-sum game [for the religions] to a non-zero sum game in the battle of religions vs atheism.

So from this perspective, science and religion is a zero sum game. If religion conquers, it must be only ONE religion. Science and atheism, being open non-zero sum games, could then be seen to be superior. The criterion for superiority here, is a lack of a metaphysics. Any metaphysics.

Sorry for the derail, but I hope it was interesting.

None of these direct benefits come close to the big indirect benefit: Darwin propsed a theory that required a stochastic rather than deterministic universe and quite a few physicists did oppose it for that reason. Bolzman made advances in statistical mechanics based on the idea that physics might have that wrong (According to Bolzman Darwin was the most important man in 19th century physics!) and following him, stochastic theories emerged in various areas, in particular QM. We wouldn´t have computers or cell phones without that...

That's interesting. But the ToE is only stochastic because there's so many variables, I would have thought. It still follows the same laws of the universe as everything else. That those laws are stochastic in a QM frame is not really evidence that the stochastic nature of ToE (due to it's complexity) leads to the stochastic theory of QM. What am I missing?

rEvolutionist wrote:That's interesting. But the ToE is only stochastic because there's so many variables, I would have thought.

Nope. There are fundamental problems with a deterministic theory of evolution - such a version would only allow a finite number of organismal fitness values and because in the long run the mean fitness of a population is 1 there´d be quite a limited number of possible trajectories. For a less involved reason read Paley. His watchmaker argument is very solid, but it rests on the assumption of determinism. Darwin got around this argument by assuming stochasticity, with the corresponding response by physicists.

rEvolutionist wrote:It still follows the same laws of the universe as everything else. That those laws are stochastic in a QM frame is not really evidence that the stochastic nature of ToE (due to it's complexity) leads to the stochastic theory of QM. What am I missing?

Well, you don´t get a stochastic system within a deterministic system. If the universe was deterministic, then anything within it would follow deterministic rules. Evolution does absolutely require stochasticity to work and this in turn means that it can only work in a stocahstic universe.
Complexity - i.e. non-linearity and multi-dimensionality - is an additional thing and leads to chaos rather than stochasticity. Deterministic chaos studies such systems if they are deterministic.

rEvolutionist wrote:That's interesting. But the ToE is only stochastic because there's so many variables, I would have thought. It still follows the same laws of the universe as everything else. That those laws are stochastic in a QM frame is not really evidence that the stochastic nature of ToE (due to it's complexity) leads to the stochastic theory of QM. What am I missing?

It seems to me that, if the assertion is true, that the ToE didn't "lead to" QM but rather broke the stochastic suit. That is, maybe it caused people to think, "hey, maybe this stochastic stuff isn't so bad after all."

I don't know if the assertion is true, however. It would probably take a very good research historian with an understanding of science to make a cogent case.

As for your other comment about how the ToE explores who we are and from what we come, I am much of the same mind. I think that's true of all of science and art. However, the desire to explore these questions seems to me very deep in humanity but not very broad. That it, the majority of people really couldn't give a rat's arse about it, at least compared to other questions like "how much are my consumer yummies going to cost."

epepke wrote:It seems to me that, if the assertion is true, that the ToE didn't "lead to" QM but rather broke the stochastic suit. That is, maybe it caused people to think, "hey, maybe this stochastic stuff isn't so bad after all."

I don't know if the assertion is true, however. It would probably take a very good research historian with an understanding of science to make a cogent case.

Helmut Pulte (2008)"Darwin’s Relevance for Ninteenth-Century Physics and Physicists: A Comparative Study" In: The Reception of Charles Darwin in Europe. Vol. 1. hrsg. v. Eve-Marie Engels and Thomas F. Glick. London: Continuum 2008, S. 116-134.

Helmut Pulte (2009) "Darwin und die exakten Wissenschaften. Eine vergleichende wissenschaftstheoretische Untersuchung zur Physik mit einem Ausblick auf die Mathematik" in Eva Marie Engels "Charles Darwin und seine Wirkung", Suhrkamp, Frankfurt.

Holds a position on the history of science, has a master both in mathematics and physics along with a PhD in Philosophy. While Darwin did not make any explicit statements on the nature of a physical theory of chance, he did require stochasticity and Bolzman in particular made it very explicit that his work on statistical mechanics (which also assume stochasticity) was directly influenced by the sucess of evolutionary biology, similar claims were made by Maxwell, the other granddaddy of that discipline. Statistical mechanics and evolutionary biology pushed the boundaries in terms of the mathematics - Statistical Mechanics could operate with large sample sizes and did thorough work on those, population genetics caused interest in small populations. A lot of the maths developed there is used in QM (and vice versa).

as a minor physicist, I can tell you, that we do have great respect for charles darwin. It did come up in discussions with my friends. Comparable to achievements in physics.