A Proof Of God Using Quantum Physics

[MindOverMatter2]

Virtual particles come into existence for a brief time and then disappear - their “existence” comes from random fluctuations in the vacuum. The way I think about them (which may or may not be precisely correct - I have not studied QED) is that they have no real reality, but that the uncertainty in being able to say this permits particles to exist for a short amount of time. The more energetic they are the less time they can exist for, because their energy should be 0 and the more uncertainty we have in their energy (the more deviated their energy turns out to be from the norm) the more precisely we have to know their position (including their position in time). They’re a consequence of the uncertainty principle. There’s nothing “potential” about them, but we can’t exactly call them “real”. The distinction between “real” and “nothing” just stops working here. It’s a generally useful pre-quantum distinction, but it assumes everything is perfectly knowable in all its respects.

There is to major problems with your position.

1. Whether something is knowable or not is irrelevant. The distinction between real and unreal is a logical absolute. When about that which is real or unreal, you are either, in a purely abstract manner, talking about something in its potentiality, its possibility of existence (in which case it isn’t yet real), or you are talking about some things actual reality. There is no “real” in-between. Possibilities are an expression of reality; not nothing. Something is either real or it isn’t. To say that nothing actually exists, is a contradiction in terms. In your interpretation nothing is no different from something; which is ridiculous. If that were true, logic itself would become objectively meaningless; which is impossible. A square triangle cannot exist. We know this for a fact. Something is either true or it isn’t; we know this for a fact it is the very foundation science itself. It cannot both be true that I exist and at the same not exist, since that which does not exist is not identical to that which is actual. This is self evident. Thus the vacuum is either a purely abstract notion, a verbal mathematical tool we use in order to give an intelligible foundation to the evidence of fluctuating electromagnetic energy from nowhere, or the vacuum is a real space containing fluctuating energy. I suspect that a mathematical ideology has taken the place of a genuine ontology, confusing some aspects of mathematical theory with reality.
**
2.** There is also a conflict between the principle of empirical science and your interpretation. “Nothing”, as a** word**, describes the absence of some possible or impossible reality. Reality describes an actual being, which is either physical or non-physical. If it is physical then it can in principle be measured. If it is not real, then it is not “physical”, since there is no physicality in nothing, nothing doesn’t exist. Physical things exist. If the Quantum vacuum doesn’t exist, then it is impossible that it can be measured empirical, and thus it would not truly be a scientific entity. It can no more be measure than a square triangle. Thus your definition of a quantum vacuum has to be false at least in a literal sense. Thus far from being a real scientific interpretation Quantum theory; it is a faulty philosophy that has thrown ontological distinctions out of the window along with the very principle of rational thought itself; in effect, rendering reality as something that is fundamentally and completely irrational and self contradictory, since it can be both true that there is in fact a vacuum and there isn’t such a thing as a vacuum at the same time. God is both real and not real. Therefore the very concept of truth evaporates into meaninglessness

The problem is there is no scientific justification for this interpretation. It is purely philosophical. Science as an empirical art cannot prove or disprove logic, since it does not judge reality on that level. That something may appear apparently illogical is not empirical scientific evidence of an irrational universe. Hegelian dialectics.

 

[Cecilianus]

There is to major problems with your position.

1. Whether something is knowable or not is irrelevant. The distinction between real and unreal is a logical absolute. When about that which is real or unreal, you are either, in a purely abstract manner, talking about something in its potentiality, its possibility of existence (in which case it isn’t yet real), or you are talking about some things actual reality. There is no “real” in-between. Possibilities are an expression of reality; not nothing. Something is either real or it isn’t.

I was using the terms “nothing” and “something”, not “real” vs. “non-real”. As with all philosophy, the distinction is purely semantic. I would point out that reality is more complicated than a simplistic dualism between “real” vs. “non-real”. Take hallucinations, for example. What you see isn’t real. But the hallucination is really there.

To say that nothing actually exists

Who said the universe was irrational?

And who are you to say what science is? I for one - being a student and an active professional researcher as well - wouldn’t characterize science as being purely empirical. (I’m a theorist, so the work I do is more mathematical and more removed from the laboratory. It depends on observations that have been published, but I do all my work at a blackboard and a computer monitor.)

Science judges physical reality. Period. We don’t stop to ask what would Aristotle say. Reality never consulted him.

 

[JohnDamian]

Virtual particles come into existence for a brief time and then disappear - their “existence” comes from random fluctuations in the vacuum. The way I think about them (which may or may not be precisely correct - I have not studied QED) is that they have no real reality, but that the uncertainty in being able to say this permits particles to exist for a short amount of time. The more energetic they are the less time they can exist for, because their energy should be 0 and the more uncertainty we have in their energy (the more deviated their energy turns out to be from the norm) the more precisely we have to know their position (including their position in time). They’re a consequence of the uncertainty principle. There’s nothing “potential” about them, but we can’t exactly call them “real”. The distinction between “real” and “nothing” just stops working here. It’s a generally useful pre-quantum distinction, but it assumes everything is perfectly knowable in all its respects.

The appearence of Virtual particles implies a causality; the apparrence of a “random” number is merely a nominological descriptor applied to the object (in this case the particle). It is both misleading and incorrect to describe them as virtual particles; as this is clearly not the case.

Virtual and Particle elicits a contradiction; thus it cannot be the case. Firstly; A particle exists has a really distinct existence from nihil; but it is also the case that a particle has a qualified really distinct existence from a vacuum; insomuch as the particle’s existence is contingent upon that necessary for it to actualise it’s existence (dimensionality).

Furthermore; it is implicit in a finite being that a contingency is inhered; thus it is implicit in the case of a particle (virtual or otherwise) that this particle is contingent. The act of appearing and disappearing demonstrates it’s contingent existence (logically; not causally). Next; we can identify it’s causal origin. The apparrence of a random occurrence is tantamount to a comparrison of a medieval ignoramus claiming that disease is random – the perception of a cause does not create nor generate the cause; but merely acts to recognise the cause. Even if the occurrence of the cause can be identified in a manner of speaking, such as when Rhazes the physician identified that the probability of infection near infected people is higher; does not mean that the causal potency comes from this observation; or indeed this correlation - but some underlying cause. Likewise with virtual particles; we like Rhazes have identified where they occur; but we have not identified the means for their production – nonetheless; we can presuppose that they are produced; but we cannot presuppose that this production lies in fact in the probabalistic identification. That would be equivalent to Rhazes making the error that being near an ill person causes one to be ill; mistaking a correlative element or a causal element.

MindOverMatter2 has spoken well on the matter of logic and how these are universal things; it is through this; and through an understanding of the causal nature of contingent objects that we can see statements such as

Cecilianus:

but we can’t exactly call them “real”. The distinction between “real” and “nothing” just stops working here.

as the nonsense they are.

The distinction between real and unreal never breaks down. When we dream; we percieve and often percive in a manner that allows us to conceive that what we are percieving is real; yet these perceptions do not contract the reality; - thus the reality is inhered in individuals. There is no subsequent or plausible reason to accept that this universal truth is somehow impugned by an arbitrary observation at smaller scales. For; our perception is recognative not generative.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

I was using the terms “nothing” and “something”, not “real” vs. “non-real”.

They mean the same thing.

 

[JohnDamian]

I was using the terms “nothing” and “something”, not “real” vs. “non-real”. As with all philosophy, the distinction is purely semantic. I would point out that reality is more complicated than a simplistic dualism between “real” vs. “non-real”. Take hallucinations, for example. What you see isn’t real. But the hallucination is really there.

The hallucination is real. But it is a real hallucination; not a real object.

This is not complicated.

It makes perfect sense to me, so it can’t be contradictory. Think about the reality rather than about the words.

How does it make sense? The law of noncontradiction? Nothing is nothing per se; not even dimensionality; vacuum; etc. it is simply nothing, it has no existence. The essence of nothing is that it does not exist; thus we cannot attribute existence to the essence of nothing. This would be contradictory.

Saying that “something is either true or it isn’t” is also simplistic - it doesn’t completely work for either science or philosophy. Science is full of approximations that generally work but can be improved upon. Is classical physics “true”? Yes, insofar as it works - but it gives very incorrect answers to problems with black body radiation, not to mention the fact that you need QM to explain how an electron can preserve its energy state within an atom.

All statements are either true or not true.

Is classial physics universally true? No. Is classical physics true in regards to X? Yes.

Is this ball red? Yes. Is the universe red? No.

A statement must be qualified or contextualised for the truth to have any meaning at all.

The vacuum is any space where we don’t have a particle. That’s not just a “verbal mathematical tool”. You seem to have a problem with me referring to empty space as “nothing”. It is nothing.

Empty space is not nothing. It is space with no particle. Space is something; thus empty space is not nothing.

Also, mathematical theory IS reality. Like it or not, the physical world is quantitative.

No. There is a real less than numerical unity. See Scotus Ordinatio II. D. 3. Part 1, QQ 1, 11-28.

Here is one of seven arguments for this;

If every real unity is numerical unity, therefore every real diversity is numerical diversity. The consequent is false; for every numerical diversity, insofar as it is numerical, is equal. And so all things would be equally distinct – from this it follows that Socrates is as Distinct from Plato as he is from a Line. This is absurd.

Reality is just the state of how the universe is. The vacuum is part of reality. Nothingness is part of reality. Reality is more than just a collection of substances.

You definition of nothingness is wrong.

Incidentally, Aristotelian logical antimonies - especially the principle of excluded middle - dissolve in Oriental mysticism, in which ultimate reality neither exists nor does not exist (I am thinking especially of Nagarjuna’s treatment of nirvana). You can’t apply simplistic logic to ineffable realities, so it’s perfectly reasonable that these logical constructs might break down in other areas as well. They’re usually good, but you need to be able to throw away the ladder where it isn’t useful.

Nagarjuna is incorrect. Give me one example of something that is neither has reality; and has reality. Without equivocation.

Science judges physical reality. Period. We don’t stop to ask what would Aristotle say. Reality never consulted him.

Philosophy created Science; you will have covered this when you studied Alhazen and Roger Bacon in your history of Science class.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

I was using the terms “nothing” and “something”, not “real” vs. “non-real”. As with all philosophy, the distinction is purely semantic. I would point out that reality is more complicated than a simplistic dualism between “real” vs. “non-real”.

Take hallucinations, for example. What you see isn’t real.

When you think about your mother or father or brother, or even a friend, you are not thinking about nothing, but rather your mind is forming a mental representation of them, much like a picture, from the store of your memory of objective events.
Thus an image of them exists in your mind; and is real. What one hallucinates certainly does not exist outside of one imagining it, or rather the projection of ones mind; but it is real nonetheless. You cannot imagine absolutely nothing. The mind is real; ideas are real, dreams are real; but ideas and dreams don’t exist outside of the mind. There is a difference. You wouldn’t say that a photo of your friend is an image of nothing, or something that is not real.

 

[Cecilianus]

The appearence of Virtual particles implies a causality; the apparrence of a “random” number is merely a nominological descriptor applied to the object (in this case the particle). It is both misleading and incorrect to describe them as virtual particles; as this is clearly not the case.

You are simply wrong here. Virtual particles have no efficient cause.

Virtual and Particle elicits a contradiction; thus it cannot be the case. Firstly; A particle exists has a really distinct existence from nihil; but it is also the case that a particle has a qualified really distinct existence from a vacuum; insomuch as the particle’s existence is contingent upon that necessary for it to actualise it’s existence (dimensionality).

It’s a word. That’s what they’re called. You can’t argue with the dictionary. Most scientists haven’t wasted years of their lives studying scholastic philosophy, and we don’t care what terms meant back in the middle ages. This is what the word means now.

Furthermore; it is implicit in a finite being that a contingency is inhered; thus it is implicit in the case of a particle (virtual or otherwise) that this particle is contingent. The act of appearing and disappearing demonstrates it’s contingent existence (logically; not causally). Next; we can identify it’s causal origin. The apparrence of a random occurrence is tantamount to a comparrison of a medieval ignoramus claiming that disease is random – the perception of a cause does not create nor generate the cause; but merely acts to recognise the cause. Even if the occurrence of the cause can be identified in a manner of speaking, such as when Rhazes the physician identified that the probability of infection near infected people is higher; does not mean that the causal potency comes from this observation; or indeed this correlation - but some underlying cause. Likewise with virtual particles; we like Rhazes have identified where they occur; but we have not identified the means for their production – nonetheless; we can presuppose that they are produced; but we cannot presuppose that this production lies in fact in the probabalistic identification.
That would be equivalent to Rhazes making the error that being near an ill person causes one to be ill; mistaking a correlative element or a causal element.

Again, you are simply wrong; the non-existence of hidden variables has been definitively proven by Bell’s Theorem. It isn’t the case that we simply don’t see a cause and assume that there isn’t one; we KNOW that there isn’t one.

 

[Cecilianus]

They mean the same thing.

I’m not using them to mean the same thing.

Again, we are arguing about semantics.

 

[Cecilianus]

The hallucination is real. But it is a real hallucination; not a real object.

This is not complicated.

This was the point I am trying to make. You cannot use the term “real” without qualifying it. Is a hallucination real? My first question would be “real what?”. I learned this from the Thomists.

How does it make sense? The law of noncontradiction? Nothing is nothing per se; not even dimensionality; vacuum; etc. it is simply nothing, it has no existence. The essence of nothing is that it does not exist; thus we cannot attribute existence to the essence of nothing. This would be contradictory.

Again, I already made the distinction between the verbal and ontological senses of “Nothing”.

All statements are either true or not true.

Is classial physics universally true? No. Is classical physics true in regards to X? Yes.

Is this ball red? Yes. Is the universe red? No.

A statement must be qualified or contextualised for the truth to have any meaning at all.

No. Physics gives numerical calculations for quantitative observables. They are better if they are more precisely correct, worse if they are less accurate. Classical physics gives answers that are downright wrong at fast speeds and small scales. Classical physics is the limit for quantum mechanical systems at infinite temperature, and of relativity at zero velocity (as paradoxical as that sounds - infinite temperature and zero velocity). In other words, it gives answers that aren’t completely correct unless your velocity is zero and your temperature infinite. But the difference is far too subtle for us to detect, so it works. We can in fact say that it’s true as long as you’re not moving too fast that momentum is mass times velocity, even though somewhere in perhaps the tenth decimal place your actual momentum is going to be different.

Almost all physics is approximated. We often need to Taylor expand functions in order to get numerical answers, and it’s usually good enough to just take the linear term.

Empty space is not nothing. It is space with no particle. Space is something; thus empty space is not nothing.

Space is just a measurement of distance between two points. You are thinking of a Newtonian sort of absolute ether-like substance permeating everything as being “space”. It isn’t. It’s just a coordinate relative to a point of origin. It isn’t a thing. It’s literally nothing.

No. There is a real less than numerical unity. See Scotus Ordinatio II. D. 3. Part 1, QQ 1, 11-28.

Here is one of seven arguments for this;

If every real unity is numerical unity, therefore every real diversity is numerical diversity. The consequent is false; for every numerical diversity, insofar as it is numerical, is equal. And so all things would be equally distinct – from this it follows that Socrates is as Distinct from Plato as he is from a Line. This is absurd.

This made absolutely no sense to me. Socrates, Plato, and a line are three different things. I don’t see what’s so “absurd” about that. And, as Aquinas pointed out, “There is nothing to prevent a thing which in one way is divided, from being another way undivided; as what is divided in number, may be undivided in species; thus it may be that a thing is in one way one, and in other way many.” (ST Pt 1 Q. 11 Art. 1 ad 2)

I am both myself - the individual Cecilianus - and a complex system of organs, which are multiple parts. And I am a collection of so many cells, and so many atoms. The example works better for non-living matter which has no soul. A proton has a numerical unity - it’s one proton - and it’s also three quarks. A car has numerical unity - it’s one car - but you could also look at the engine as a single unit, or the pistons as a single unit, or the metal lattice as a single unit, or the iron atoms as single units, or the nucleus or a proton or a quark. Words take chunks of reality and give unity to them. Unless Wittgenstein’s private language argument is true, there’s no reason why you couldn’t take any arbitrary chunk of reality you wanted to and give it a name. Anything you want can have numerical reality.

You definition of nothingness is wrong.

It’s how I’m using a word. There’s no real argument here.

Nagarjuna is incorrect. Give me one example of something that is neither has reality; and has reality. Without equivocation.

Advaita.

Philosophy created Science; you will have covered this when you studied Alhazen and Roger Bacon in your history of Science class.

What you mean is that the foundations of the scientific method were created by philosophers (nominalist philosophers, in fact). Once we got on the right track with science medieval philosophy looked absolutely silly. I’m not interested in history - history of science or otherwise. I’m interested in reality. Scientists don’t need to know the history of science; it really doesn’t help us do our work any, and our school has a history of science class it wouldn’t be offered to physics majors. I’m familiar with both Alhazen and Fr. Bacon, but whether you want to call them philosophers or scientists (an arbitrary distinction anyway) really makes no difference.

 

[JohnDamian]

You are simply wrong here. Virtual particles have no efficient cause.

Then why do they appear?

And how they appear is not an answer to that question.

Again, you are simply wrong; the non-existence of hidden variables has been definitively proven by Bell’s Theorem. It isn’t the case that we simply don’t see a cause and assume that there isn’t one; we KNOW that there isn’t one.

It is clear that it only demonstrates the flaws of the principle of locality; nothing more. It does not prove with certainty anything beyond that.

his was the point I am trying to make. You cannot use the term “real” without qualifying it. Is a hallucination real? My first question would be “real what?”. I learned this from the Thomists.

The way we would approach that is through any of the following essential qualifications; in quale substantiale (By order of predicated properties); in quale accidentale (By order of accidents); in haec subsistentis (By order of the haecceity; and predicates thereof); per modum subsistentis (Ie; predicated as a noun); per modum denominantis (By order predicating as a modifier); In quale (By order of further essential qualification) or In Quid / In Haec by the quiddity or haecceity respectivelly.

We would identify something as real that was useable in any of these general manners; or for that matter any other sensible manner.

No. Physics gives numerical calculations for quantitative observables. They are better if they are more precisely correct, worse if they are less accurate. Classical physics gives answers that are downright wrong at fast speeds and small scales. Classical physics is the limit for quantum mechanical systems at infinite temperature, and of relativity at zero velocity (as paradoxical as that sounds - infinite temperature and zero velocity).

Yes. Infinite temperature and zero velocity are both impossible and irrelevant.

Space is just a measurement of distance between two points. You are thinking of a Newtonian sort of absolute ether-like substance permeating everything as being “space”. It isn’t. It’s just a coordinate relative to a point of origin. It isn’t a thing. It’s literally nothing.

Distance is the measurement between two points. Space is the area in between. If there was nothing inbetween there would be no distance. If there is a distance between two points then something must be inbetween - by definition. To say space=distance is equivocating.

This made absolutely no sense to me. Socrates, Plato, and a line are three different things. I don’t see what’s so “absurd” about that. …

Scotus clearly demonstrates that things are diverse by a means other than numerical; because all unity is not numerical. Thus; we cannot have quantatative data as a universal measurement.

Advaita.

Advaita has existence as a concept; thus Advaita is real. The material manifestation is irrelevant to it’s existence. We should not make any distinction between whether a thing exists and what it is, for we never know whether something exists, unless we have some concept of what we know to exist.

I’m interested in reality.

Science only measures physical reality; unless you arbitrarily wish to value this as the only reality; you entail a contrarity; as the method for such a contraction necessarily entails accepting a premise (empiricism) that is not verified by physical means. Thus; you must accept there is more to reality than the purely physical if you are to have any knowlege at all.

 

[Cecilianus]

Then why do they appear?

And how they appear is not an answer to that question.

No reason, if you’re looking for an efficient cause. I’m not sure how else to answer that question within the “four causes” mental construct, since final causes don’t exist in the purely physical world and I don’t accept the matter/form distinction (unless I were to take the more Franciscan approach - which you might be okay with since you’re a Scotist - of looking at “materia actualis” and regarding form as something predicated of matter, rather than regarding form as the principle of actuality and matter that of potentiality, as Aristotle did).

They exist because we can’t give the particle’s energy (zero, if it doesn’t exist) with perfect precision and give its location (in space or time) with perfect precision simultaneously. We can’t say with perfect precision that the particle isn’t there, so one might pop into existence out of nothing, and provided that it disappears quickly no physical laws are broken.

Virtual particles sometimes are caused, when they are the exchange bosons for an interaction (for example, when a photon is exchanged between particles interacting via the EM force), but I was talking about the cloud of virtual particles surrounding any particle making it impossible to theoretically predict the charge or mass of an electron. Again, though, my knowledge of QED is a bit less technical than my knowledge of astrophysics (it’s not usually taught to undergrads, and usually not to grad students any more since there isn’t a way to solve the renormalization problem within the theory and not a whole lot of other work left to be done on it).

The way we would approach that is through any of the following essential qualifications; in quale substantiale (By order of predicated properties); in quale accidentale (By order of accidents); in haec subsistentis (By order of the haecceity; and predicates thereof); per modum subsistentis (Ie; predicated as a noun); per modum denominantis (By order predicating as a modifier); In quale (By order of further essential qualification) or In Quid / In Haec by the quiddity or haecceity respectivelly.
…]
Yes. Infinite temperature and zero velocity are both impossible and irrelevant.

The two conditions work surprisingly well as assumptions - classical mechanics and thermodynamics work under these assumptions. So I wouldn’t describe them as irrelevant.

Distance is the measurement between two points. Space is the area in between. If there was nothing inbetween there would be no distance. If there is a distance between two points then something must be inbetween - by definition. To say space=distance is equivocating.

All right - and spacetime is absolute, so I guess I could think of it in a somewhat reified way for that reason, but the area is still empty. There isn’t any “thing” inside of empty space. It’s what I and ordinary people who don’t think in technical scholastic jargon would call “nothing”.

 

[Cecilianus]

Scotus clearly demonstrates that things are diverse by a means other than numerical; because all unity is not numerical. Thus; we cannot have quantatative data as a universal measurement.

Can you please explain?

When you say “all unity is not numerical”, I assume you mean that there is a manner of unity which is not numerical - e.g., all men share in a common essence (which I understand as just an elliptical way of saying that we all have properties in common), and so we can saw we are all one in some poetic sense. And therefore we can say that things are diverse by being different in kind as well as simply being different things. Is that what you mean? I don’t see how the conclusion “all reality is quantitative” follows, though. It still is true that all reality is quantitative even though you can make qualitative remarks about them. I picture a physical situation qualitatively in order to figure out how to write an equation describing it quantitatively. But qualitative descriptions are only vague imaginations of quantitative situations. All real knowledge about physical situations is quantitative.

Advaita has existence as a concept; thus Advaita is real. The material manifestation is irrelevant to it’s existence.

When I said “advaita” I meant it in the first intention, not the second (advaita itself, not the concept of advaita). And not being an advaitin I have no business telling those that are that they are wrong when they say that it neither exists nor not-exists. I don’t think people should presume to make judgements about things they know nothing about, even if they think that doing such is called “philosophy”.

Same goes with nirvana, which in Nagarjuna’s case is arguably the same thing as Vedantic advaita.

We should not make any distinction between whether a thing exists and what it is, for we never know whether something exists, unless we have some concept of what we know to exist.

Some concept, to be sure, but we don’t need to know it perfectly. For example, we know that God exists, but we do not know His essence. I strongly dislike the attitude of my professor in medieval philosophy who insisted that nobody has any business making judgments about the world until we have a perfect and deep understanding of scholastic philosophy. I don’t need to know it perfectly to know that I vehemently disagree with and dislike it. I don’t need to hear an argument to the conclusion if I know that the premise is wrong, and I don’t understand why Catholics feel the need to be so attached to scholasticism when it’s so incompatible with science (with all due respect to Geremia, whom I’m more than happy to debate the question with).

Science only measures physical reality; unless you arbitrarily wish to value this as the only reality; you entail a contrarity; as the method for such a contraction necessarily entails accepting a premise (empiricism) that is not verified by physical means. Thus; you must accept there is more to reality than the purely physical if you are to have any knowlege at all.

Empiricism is a methodological premise about the nature of knowledge, not a statement about substances or things. I don’t see any inconsistency in materialism, which asserts that only physical things exist, though I don’t have any compelling evidence for it either.

 

[JohnDamian]

since final causes don’t exist in the purely physical world and I don’t accept the matter/form distinction

That’s a good thing!

so one might pop into existence out of nothing, and provided that it disappears quickly no physical laws are broken.

I don’t understand how the duration of a thing impinges or permits it’s restriction to laws of physics; either these laws are untrue (at least universally) or these particles cannot exist.

Virtual particles sometimes are caused, when they are the exchange bosons for an interaction (for example, when a photon is exchanged between particles interacting via the EM force), but I was talking about the cloud of virtual particles surrounding any particle making it impossible to theoretically predict the charge or mass of an electron. Again, though, my knowledge of QED is a bit less technical than my knowledge of astrophysics (it’s not usually taught to undergrads, and usually not to grad students any more since there isn’t a way to solve the renormalization problem within the theory and not a whole lot of other work left to be done on it).

At the very least it might cast doubt upon the principle of locality rather than upon the efficient nature of causality. Although I haven’t studied science; so I’m no expert.

The two conditions work surprisingly well as assumptions - classical mechanics and thermodynamics work under these assumptions. So I wouldn’t describe them as irrelevant.

Granted; they might not be irrelevant; but they are still impossible; and an impractical thing to speculate on per se.

All right - and spacetime is absolute, so I guess I could think of it in a somewhat reified way for that reason, but the area is still empty. There isn’t any “thing” inside of empty space. It’s what I and ordinary people who don’t think in technical scholastic jargon would call “nothing”.

In a lay sense nothing would suffice; but it is hardly accurate or practical when the description “empty” is much more concise; accurate and even a shorter word.

When you say “all unity is not numerical”, I assume you mean that there is a manner of unity which is not numerical - e.g., all men share in a common essence (which I understand as just an elliptical way of saying that we all have properties in common),

Yes; it shows we have (non numerical) properties in common; ie; we do not inhere properties quantitatively.

I don’t see how the conclusion “all reality is quantitative” follows, though. It still is true that all reality is quantitative even though you can make qualitative remarks about them. I picture a physical situation qualitatively in order to figure out how to write an equation describing it quantitatively. But qualitative descriptions are only vague imaginations of quantitative situations.

Quantities are objects of the intellect; qualities are not. A thing has per se existence and it’s quantitity an accident; wheras it’s qualities can be essential. Nothing is essentially quantitative.

I strongly dislike the attitude of my professor in medieval philosophy who insisted that nobody has any business making judgments about the world until we have a perfect and deep understanding of scholastic philosophy. I don’t need to know it perfectly to know that I vehemently disagree with and dislike it.

I agree that that attitude of the proffessor is very odd. If we have a perfect and deep understanding od Scholastic philosophy who’s is the most perfect; the works of Aquinas or Scotus; the works of Ockham or Mayron? It is clear that we cannot have a perfect knowlege of scholasticism; because to do so would be to understand and agree with contrary positions (Scotism & Thomism); we can only have an imperfect conception of Scholasticism; knowing but not accepting at least one; and possibly both of these (examples).

 

[Alan79]

It was actually reading a book on quarks that gave me faith in God. I do not see intelligent design in the animals and trees, I see it in the beauty, complexity and symmetry of the mathematics found in nature. One cannot deny at the very least the possibility of intelligent design in this field. In this context, I read that even Richard Dawkins admitted the possibility of a creator.

 

[Geremia]

I don’t understand why Catholics feel the need to be so attached to scholasticism when it’s so incompatible with science

On what do you base this? I assume you mean Thomism, the “perennial philosophy,” right? “Catholics feel the need to be so attached to” it because it is commonsense, in that it obtains intellectual knowledge from the world through the senses, and true, in that it seeks an absolute truth defined as the adaequatio rei et intellectus (equation of thing and intellect). And what do you mean by science? Science as in modern physics? Where exactly is Thomism incompatible with modern science?

 

[Geremia]

I don’t understand why Catholics feel the need to be so attached to scholasticism when it’s so incompatible with science

It seems you want a philosophical pluralism or eclecticism? Read at least Article One of this.

 

[JohnDamian]

Where exactly is Thomism incompatible with modern science?

The esse-essence distinction.

 

[Cecilianus]

I don’t understand how the duration of a thing impinges or permits it’s restriction to laws of physics; either these laws are untrue (at least universally) or these particles cannot exist.

The time and energy operators don’t commute, which means that you can’t measure the duration of a particle and its energy at the same time. So if you posit a particle with zero energy (a non-existent particle) in the middle of the vacuum, you can’t talk about its spacio-temporal coordinates with perfect precision and still know its energy. The more precise a window you put on the measurement of its position and duration, the more variation in energy it could have - which means it could have positive energy, in which case we would say a particle popped out of nowhere for no reason.

Much of the reason I’m skeptical of MindOverMatter2’s “real” vs. “non-real” distinction is that zero is simply one number among others (a number with special properties, to be sure), and I don’t buy my philosophy professor’s argument that 0, 1, irrationals and non-reals aren’t numbers. As far as mathematicians are concerned, they are.

At the very least it might cast doubt upon the principle of locality rather than upon the efficient nature of causality. Although I haven’t studied science; so I’m no expert.

I don’t think - and my apologies if I gave this impression earlier - that it destroys efficient causality altogether. It just gives an exception. And, as I said before, whether you want to view virtual particles as real or not depends on choice. They’re kind of in-between. No particle would be able to interact with any other without them - virtual photons are exchanged in the electromagnetic interaction, which is what holds atoms together, for example - so they’re pretty important and they themselves have a pretty strong impact on the world, but they’re not quite “real” in the same way other particles are. They used to be called “imaginary particles”, but this name was scrapped because (a) imaginary numbers have nothing to do with them, so far as I know, and (b) a lot of people (including the Thomists at my college) can’t understand that words have technical meanings that don’t necessarily have the same connotations they do in ordinary speech. They’re certainly not “imaginary” in the same way unicorns are, but we don’t want to have to explain that every time we use the word.

In a lay sense nothing would suffice; but it is hardly accurate or practical when the description “empty” is much more concise; accurate and even a shorter word.

Agreed.

Yes; it shows we have (non numerical) properties in common; ie; we do not inhere properties quantitatively.

Quantities are objects of the intellect; qualities are not. A thing has per se existence and it’s quantitity an accident; wheras it’s qualities can be essential. Nothing is essentially quantitative.

I would disagree with your last statement. The world is fundamentally and essentially measurable. As a physicist I would say that this is the essence of the physical world - what makes it physical as opposed to consciousness or aesthetics or spiritual realities. This was originally why the Hindus call the world “maya”, a word which comes from the same root as our “measure”, even though we might take issue with their conclusion that it is therefore illusory (the word “magic” comes from the same root). Things in the world are fundamentally systems of measurable quantities (charge, momentum, color charge, etc.). The only non-quantitative aspect of particles at the fundamental level is their being or esse (what makes a virtual particle in outer space different than my concept of a virtual particle running through my head). Qualities and forms are epiphenomena of large systems of particles making up the macroscopic world. Chemical properties in particular are the consequence of the physics of the valence electron, and most other “qualities” follow from chemistry or physics. The heat of the sun is a consequence of the measurable energy that is being produced by fusion. The greenness of a tree is caused by the measurable differences in energy levels within the chlorophyll molecules that permit them to emit photons with a measurable wavelength in the region that our brains interpret as “green”. Etc.

 

[Cecilianus]

I agree that that attitude of the proffessor is very odd. If we have a perfect and deep understanding od Scholastic philosophy who’s is the most perfect; the works of Aquinas or Scotus; the works of Ockham or Mayron? It is clear that we cannot have a perfect knowlege of scholasticism; because to do so would be to understand and agree with contrary positions (Scotism & Thomism); we can only have an imperfect conception of Scholasticism; knowing but not accepting at least one; and possibly both of these (examples).

That’s easy - Scotus! Scotus! Scotus! (I like him when I’m not on my anti-scholastic rants.) My own preference in philosophy falls with Heidegger (who, incidentally, wrote his habilitationschrift on Scotus - my professor managed to get a copy of an English translation of it, which you can’t even get through interlibrary loan if you’re a student), but nobody is willing to even mention him except to make a passing remark in ridicule.

It would seem best to get a general approach of all the schools and then study in depth the ones that seem to you to come closest to approaching the individual problems correctly. The professor in question actually specializes in Avicenna and Averroes, who have all the flaws of medieval Catholic scholasticism without any of the corrections that Aquinas and Scotus gave it. I understand that it’s good to have a base system and set of terminology under our belts with which to work from, but I would much rather have it be phenomenology (a la Sartre and Wojtyla), and then explain both Heidegger (whose work explores the most enjoyable and the most profound areas of philosophy in my opinion) and scholasticism in terms of phenomenology. Science (modern physical science) is a phenomenology of measurement.

 

[Cecilianus]

On what do you base this? I assume you mean Thomism, the “perennial philosophy,” right? “Catholics feel the need to be so attached to” it because it is commonsense, in that it obtains intellectual knowledge from the world through the senses, and true, in that it seeks an absolute truth defined as the adaequatio rei et intellectus (equation of thing and intellect). And what do you mean by science? Science as in modern physics? Where exactly is Thomism incompatible with modern science?

I meant the whole scholastic set of terminology coming out of Aristotle’s metaphysics, of which Thomism is the prime example; when I say “science” I mean modern science.

There are two respects in which I find Thomism incompatible with modern science:

1. The idea that motion (rather than acceleration) requires a force. This is a denial of both the principle of inertia and Galilean relativity, and it follows from Aristotle’s understanding of being in motion as potency (the act-potency distinction is something I really don’t see anyway). Thanks to calculus we can now describe instantaneous motion, so we know that something really can be in a place (in act) and having an instantaneous motion. I had a conversation with Fr. Benedict Ashley, who has written a number of books that I haven’t read on physics and scholasticism, and our disagreement boiled down to this one point.
2. Aristotle and Aquinas both explain a thing in terms of its macroscopic form - which is “actual” - and regard matter and/or the parts going into a thing as purely potential. Science by contrast explains a thing’s essence and properties in terms of its parts - it behaves like this because of its molecular structure which depends on valence electron chemistry which ultimately depends on the nature of electrons and the EM interaction. So in the view of science matter is actual and form an epiphenomenon of matter (which does harmonize well with the Franciscan and Scotist idea of materia actualis, but not with Thomism). I think it’s generally less useful to talk about “form” and “matter” because these terms assume a macroscopic, “moderate realist” way of explaining the world. While other scholastics like Occam used the same terminology and set of vocabulary as Aquinas, Aquinas is more graceful because the whole vocabulary was designed for a realist, macroscopic view of a thing’s nature - one which I think incorrect.