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Soulewolf
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actually i believe hes christian. dont quote me on that.
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GEddie
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Assuming the universe to be the “skin” of a hyper-sphere, the center will in fact be outside of the universe we know; just as the center of a sphere is not on the surface.
ICXC NIKA
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GEddie
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By all means, do so. But I would hope that in recognition of his hideous bodily suffering, he will at least get Purgatory. His understanding of the physical laws of being will lead him to God, if he is open-minded enough, even if it takes until the last failing breath.
ICXC NIKA.
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Soulewolf
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er not quite in my understanding. Its just the way the dimensions are woven together that causes this effect. not necessarily the shape of the universe (which i believe most physicists believe to be flat)
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buffalo
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They do not know how. They are told what to believe and do not have the philosophical training to discern.
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Soulewolf
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Vico
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Most are aware of three dimensions plus time (but some people seem to be unaware of time so it slips away quickly!). Due to gravity, there is a problem in all the theories. It is an issue that weighs heavily on the theoretical physicists, they are racking their brains to determine what is wrong with D-branes of 10D. The 11 dimensions are of the M-theory (supersymetric string theory) utilizing concepts of supergravity and dimensional membranes. They know of no ways to verify these theories yet.
About the remark of philosophy being dead, Hawking said it was because philosophy has not kept up with developments in modern science, particularly physics. I thought he would find pantheism attractive (that God is the laws of nature).
Carl Sagan wrote in Pale Blue Dot (1994) that “A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge.”
I suppose Psalm 103 does not come to mind:
Athanasian Grail Psalter - Psalm 104(103) Benedic, anima mea
1 Bless the Lord, my soul!
Lord God, how great you are,
clothed in majesty and glory,
2 wrapped in light as in a robe!
You stretch out the heavens like a tent.
3 Above the rains you build your dwelling.
You make the clouds your chariot,
you walk on the wings of the wind,
4 you make the winds your messengers
and flashing fire your servants.
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The_Exodus
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I find this simply incredible. Someone throws out a couple words like “11 dimensional nature” or “Red and Blue shift” and thats supposed to mean something? What in the world could someone mean when they talk of 11 dimensions? I also don’t see how this shows science or physics “answering” anything. If this is not “we don’t know” or “it is a mystery” in glammored up language I don’t know what is.
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MindOverMatter2
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:yawn:Same old straw-man.:yawn:
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Touchstone
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Science overthrows the intuition, over and over. That aspect doesn’t begin to capture the spooky counterintuitive nature of other, stranger parts of QM. After all, reducing things a bit for pedagogy, you can take a basketball, and trace a line from one starting point and continue along the surface in a straight line (great circle style) and come right back to where you started. We aren’t wired to visualize 3D curved space, but the surface of a basketball conveys the basic idea.
A soft drink straw, by they way, may be helpful in understanding some of the other spatial dimensions posited by M-Theory. I won’t try to do in a short post what Brian Greene struggled to due in Elegant Universe, but if you imagine an ant crawling on the surface of a straw, you could measure the ants position on the “length” of the straw (that would be one dimension) and also the ant’s “circular position” on the straw, where it is on the circumference of the circle. If you make that “straw” extremely small in circumference, you can imagine an additional dimension, “two for one” where before you just had a single dimension.
What’s interesting is not just the novelty of the idea, but that the maths that produce this structure cohere so well, not just as abstract math, but as a physical model.
-TS
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The_Exodus
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Touchstone,
Although I think it is our fate to disagree on these most very basic principles, I cannot help but admire the sense of wonder you have regarding the universe.
I think there is nothing wrong with the statement - which seems to be your mantra - that “science overthrows intuition.” Indeed, if I did not believe this, I would think discovery would be impossible, since it would follow that we all already know all that we can know intuitively. I very much value a posteriori and empirical methods of gaining knowledge. That is why I am a Thomist (a traditional Aristotlean Thomist), actually. Since he rejected all sorts of a priori ontology and Anselmian theology, and since he separated so fittingly faith and reason, and, also, since he placed such high value on sense perception and the critical realism of Aristotle, I think he is the greatest thinker of the Catholic Church.
But the conclusion which often follows from this sentiment is an absurdity, if one goes on to conclude that something can come from metaphysical nothingness. Science overthrows intuition indeed, but it cannot overthrow thought - that is, logical and philosophical thought - because it would be overthrowing itself. If our thinking about the world is invalid form the get go, science couldn’t go on to show us anything at all. To konw that there is a law of gravity one must presuppose that we can actually and really know the world using our senses and intellect. If that presupposition is taken, no amount of evidence after the fact can ever show us that things happen for no reason. As far as we could get - operating out of our presupposition that observation of the world through sense perception leads to truth - would be that such a cause is either unknowable or unknown to us. We could never conclude, however, that the cause is unknowable in itself. Otherwise, we would be claiming that things happen for no reason, and we would undermine the scientific enterprise altogether. This is a point you and I have discussed before however, in the “sweetness” thread, so I will not belabor it here.
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Touchstone
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Well, he’s definitely on the “A” team, no matter what your view of him. I’m partial to Wittgenstein, as Catholic philosophers go.
Hold on. You’re a Catholic, right? Isn’t it Catholic belief that God created the world ex nihilo??? If Yahweh can do it, as you suppose, than it must not be an absurd concept! Er, or you are making an elementary mistake in thinking about your own views (which I doubt). I realize you are like to respond that God as agent makes it work, and maybe so, but it is still creation out of metaphysical nothingness, by your own terms. If it really is absurd, then aren’t you embracing absurdity even now???
I can’t begin to fathom how something could come from nothing, and the more careful I try to think about a “pure nothing” as a starting point, the more difficult that becomes. But no sooner do I get there, then I understand I don’t have reason to think that if that were the case, I’d find it any more intuitive or approachable.
That’s right. But it’s not an all or nothing proposition. Science is just a stab into the darkness to see what, if anything can be discovered, to see what light, if any, might be shed on our surroundings. One corollary to our increasing physical knowledge is the deeper understanding of our epistemic limitations. One of the things we learn are aspects of nature that are beyond our reach, or perhaps just intractable for now, but either way, constraints on our knowledge.
Yes, and it’s gratifying to have this crucial point played back to me, thank you. But remember that this is not an “all or nothing” proposition. We are not guaranteed to run the table if we happen to sink a ball or two.
Science is ever ambitious, epistemically. Even “sure things” like our conclusions about the unknowability of a particle’s position and momentum (simultaneously, and to arbitrary depth) are by principle tentative, subject to revision, and “hopeful” of new discovery.
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The_Exodus
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Good question. There are a few points to be made in response.
a) God creating the world ex nihilo is not a matter of demonstrable reason - as Aquinas said, “by no means can it be proven and by faith alone do we hold”. Therefore, to say that God created the world out of nothing is not presented scientifically at all. We who hold it claim that we could never show how this could happen.
b) God’s existence is proved by St. Thomas in an entirely different way. It is not assumed first that the world came into being ex nihilo, and then, from this proven that it therefore had to be God. His existence is proven to be the “reason for being” of any and all changing things, and this presupposes things which have been changing for an infinite amount of time.
c) Something cannot come from metaphysical nothingness by itself. Perhaps I should have made this more clear, but it is merely an extention of the law of causality, which is that every effect has a cause. Now, something coming from metaphysical space/time nothingness is indeed possible, if an agent outside space/time were to cause it to do so.
I simply take the step which you are hesistant to admit: that it is *impossible * for something to come into being of itself. This is evident based on the law of contradiction: a thing x is x only if it has all the properties proper to itself, i.e. it must have all the properties which make it not not-x. One of these properties is,obviously, existence. Therefore, a thing cannot both be and not be simultaneously. Niether can a thing be prior to itself. Thus, whatever is as an effect - i.e. whatever is undergoing change - must appeal to some causally prior agent.
I realize your point: perhaps the universe really did pop into being out of nothing, and, even though we could never know how or why, or even if in fact we thought it was impossible, nevertheless, our ignorance does not negate this fact.
There is no argument with this line of thought. But notice, it is not itself an argument. It is rather an inkling, which ultimately gives rise in to Kantian/Nietzschean/Sartean absurdity. Perhaps, indeed, the law of cause/effect and contradiction are just constructs by our minds in order for us to deal with phenomenal “reality.” Perhaps there is an unbridgable gap between “us” and “it.” It may indeed be true that, practically speaking, we cannot live one second without assuming they are true. Yet this assumption does not make itself true or false.
I realize the full weight of this point, and it is, as it were, the “dark side” of thought. Either it is the case that we are entraped in our own being, unable to “get at” the world outside of how our mind alone conceives it, and universal skepticism is true; or St. Thomas and Aristotle and all the Realists are right, and we can really and truly know reality with our intellect.
First principles can never be proven. It is impossible to prove our senses are accurate, or that the law of contradiction is valid, since all proofs rest on the validity of them in the first place. If what skepticism is wanting is proof of these, it is an unjust demand. This, I admit, does not do away with the Nietzschean difficulty for some: “there are no facts, only interpretations.” But what can I do at this point but merely reject perspectivism axiomatically? Indeed, if I am right, it really is the case that I cannot prove first principles. “Ah,” but Nietzsche would say, “the ‘if’ is all I need to make my point.” To which I would respond, “what point?”
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sidbrown
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I don’t see why gravity would cause a problem with Maxwell’s laws of electricity and magnetism.
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sidbrown
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I don;t see what this has to do with 11 dimensions. The surface of a sphere in 3 dimensional space has the same property. And I don;t see why nature has to be 11 dimensional instead of say 10 or 13 dimensional. Is there an experiment out there which has shown conclusively that there are exactly 11 dimensions and no more and no less. After Einstein, everyone was speaking of 4 dimensions. Then after Kaluza Klein it turned out that there were supposed to be 5 dimensions. Then with the first version of string theory there were 10 dimensions. Now, with the latest versions there are 11 dimensions. How do we know that 50 years from now there will not be 15 dimensions? And how do we know that the number of dimensions won’t keep on increasing as more and more theories are developed?
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Hubriss
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How can philosophy be used to identify truth?
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sidbrown
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Yes. It looks to me like philosophy of science is an interesting gloss on the history of science and may help to understand or clarify some of the teachings of science and how they developed, but I don’t see it giving us any new knowledge. Perhaps this is what Hawking means when he says philosophy is dead. We generally look to physicists to give us new or deeper explanations of the Big Bang and beyond, and not to philosophers who do not seem to be adding much to the current sum of knowledge about the beginning of the universe and how it all started.
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KyivAndrew
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Hmm. I recall that one of the greatest threats to human civilization in the 20th Century were the totalizing ideologies of Nazism (which could be linked back to social darwinism, “supermen ideologies”, and German Fascism) and Communism (Marx-Engels) which latter totalitarianism believed in monistic fashion that we are all economic beings and that there is a scientific socialism - a deterministic historic progress - which will explain the final historic synthesis when classes no longer exist and paradise has been created on earth without regard to the individual but only the collective. There were Nazi philosophers, and there were Communist philosophers. These two ideologies together were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions of humans, whether by Nazis, Fascists, Soviets, Mao, Pol Pot, etc. These totalitarianisms were an existential threat to the Western way of life. Never before in human history had there been so much human violence and mass killing that went up into the hundred of millions. Yes, science advanced in the 20th century. So did the capacity of men to kill on mass scale, never seen before: industrialized killing.
The study of science, physics, chemistry, etc., apart from finding new world changing medical cures, also gave us the A-Bomb, biological weapons, chemical warfare, and the ability to destroy humanity many times over. Yes, science advanced, but it could say nothing on the morality of using these weapons and by whom and when or for what. This is the question that can only be answered by philosophy, ethics, not the laws of physics.
There was a great Battle of Ideas in the 20th Century. The Marxist philosophers lost. Western philosophy on the dignity of the individual won. Have you never heard of philosopher Karl Popper’s Poverty of Historicism, Frierdrich Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty, or Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski’s magisterial Main currents of Marxism books.google.ca/books?id=qUCxpznbkaoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Leszek+Ko%C5%82akowski&hl=en&ei=aqGRTKWUCcP78Aah2rH5BQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
which philosophers’ ideas and theses all in their way came out victorious in the great Battle of Ideas between totalitarian philosophers and Western philosohpers in the 20th Century. Against those who justified their coerced totalizing ideologies on the supposed perfectibility of human nature, many Western philosophers, religious, moral, ethical, won the battle of ideas . This was a philosophical victory for the right philosophers which saved the world.
So I chalk up this as one victory for philosophy over the last 100 years in banishing Communist/Nazi totalitarianism to the philosophical deathbin.
And what of the philosophy of science: has Karl Popper not made some very good arguments on what is “scientific truth” so to speak and what constitutes scientific knowledge and verification.
Science, physics, can bring the world medicine, cures, but also unimaginable weapons with which we fallen humans can kill ourselves. How these things are used, and in what way best, is ultimately a question that cannot be answered by science, no matter how much it advances. Philosophy and Ethics and Religion come in here.
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Touchstone
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I understand. But I don’t think that distinguishes you from someone else who says “the universe popped out of nothing”. For they, like you, would grant that they could never show how this could happen (at least in the strict sense of empirical testing – M-Theory does encroach on that in terms of a purely theoretical answer, and with the caveat that the “nothing” implicated in physics is not a “perfect nothing”, at a minimum being ‘that-which-is-unstable-unto-spontaneous-events’).
This is parity. Neither can demonstrate it. But if it’s absurd – and I think that was you r claim, it remains just as absurd, even so.
Also understand. I don’t identify that to be an argument Aquinas made.
Well, there you go, then. Here is the allowance for a un-caused universe/metaverse. Coming-to-be from metaphysical nothing is now not absurd in principle.
I hesitate for the best of reasons, I think: I’ve got no warrant to make that step. To take that step commits me to one lemma over another that I’ve got no basis for, and runs the distinct risk of embracing a falsehood as a low-level, fundamental belief. I don’t have a reason to suppose something than come into being of itself, either, and “stepping” that direction would be just as unwarranted. Discipline commends withholding judgment, for I am not in a position to judge.
This is not a contradiction. X would be temporally coherent: not-exist a t=A, exist ant t=B. There is no point where it would both non-existent and existent, any more than if it were a ‘thing-cause-to-be-by-another’.
Yes, tautologically. But that is not a problem here, either. Just as X as ‘caused-by-another’ is not prior to itself before its causation, neither is X as ‘uncaused’. One hang up here is purely linguistic; to say “caused by self” is to beg the question terminologically, or more severely, just to self-contradict (insofar as we understand ‘cause’ to imply a causer, this would trigger a vicious loop). The question it hand is causality and its… transitivity. But in any case, temporally, this represents no contradiction.
I think this is a point for JDaniel’s “First Way” thread, but I can’t find a reason to accept that as a rule. Think of an asteroid “at rest” in terms of acceleration and angular momentum, but humming along at high speed through space, for billions of years. This is just Newtonian mechanics, a body in motion tends to stay in motion, etc. As soon as we get there, an eternal motion defeats this principle. There would be no casually prior agent in that case.
Same idea holds existentially; if X is eternal, it need not appeal to a causally prior agent. And yet, it would/could be perfectly indistinguishable from “having effect”. If the universe is eternal, and X is uncaused and eternally moving from infinitely-far-behind to infinitely-far-ahead, it remains in motion in a Newtonian mechanical model, giving every appearance of “being moved”, but yet, having no “mover”.
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Touchstone
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The Exodus:
As far as absurdity, that applies our intuitive commitments to intelligible too far, to extremes. Indeed, it would be absurd if objects at our scale, and in our locale just appeared/disappeared without cause or continuity at all. If that was “the rule”, there’d be no ‘persistence of objects’ to hang our mental hat on, so to speak. That’s an existential crisis, intellectually.
But the absurdity disappears if macrophysics holds as it does, and is uniform and intelligible at our scales, and “gets wonky” at quantum scales (which it does, for all we can tell). It’s counter-intuitive, but “remotely absurd”, practically not-absurd. So to, with cosmogony. This is so far from our time, scale and reference frame as to be beyond the reach of absurdity, to be beyond any context for which absurdity represents a problem for our reasoning.
Even if we grant that “there are no facts” per Nietzsche, it changes perfectly nothing. We are biological machines that are hardwired to interpret sense-data as fact. We can’t do otherwise.
-TS
Yes.
It’s not an argument, and can’t be. It’s recognition of ignorance. It’s the apprehension that one has no way to select one of the symbols from a phase space over another.
As far as absurdity, that applies our intuitive commitments to intelligible too far, to extremes. Indeed, it would be absurd if objects at our scale, and in our locale just appeared/disappeared without cause or continuity at all. If that was “the rule”, there’d be no ‘persistence of objects’ to hang our mental hat on, so to speak. That’s an existential crisis, intellectually.
But the absurdity disappears if macrophysics holds as it does, and is uniform and intelligible at our scales, and “gets wonky” at quantum scales (which it does, for all we can tell). It’s counter-intuitive, but “remotely absurd”, practically not-absurd. So to, with cosmogony. This is so far from our time, scale and reference frame as to be beyond the reach of absurdity, to be beyond any context for which absurdity represents a problem for our reasoning.
Yes. bow.
Hmmm, don’t this strike you as a false dichotomy, though? I don’t think your “either” nearly exhausts all the options. While we are “trapped” by our senses, that does not deny real knowledge or the intelligibility of the extra-mental world, mediated as it may be. More importantly though, it’s not an “all or nothing” proposition of necessity; we may push our knowledge frontiers far in some areas, and struggle for millions of years with little to know progress in others. Reality may be “clockwork intelligible” on some levels and scales, and spooky-weird-can’t-be-this-weird at others. This actually is not a bad representation of our current apprehension of the universe around us.
Yes. bows again. And we cannot proceed otherwise, in any case. We are physiological wired to accept our sense-data and to integrate it as (reflective of the) real.
Nietzsche, for all his original, brave thinking, was just not cognizant of humans as animals, as biologically-based minds. It’s odd, looking back at him, as he was well aware of Darwin’s ideas and all, but was spectacularly ignorant of the biological imperatives that obtain in humans (Ayn Rand was similarly defective, btw). Humans are not “brains in a vat”, or “cognitive abstractions”, but you wouldn’t know it from reading many of the most famous philosophers.
Even if we grant that “there are no facts” per Nietzsche, it changes perfectly nothing. We are biological machines that are hardwired to interpret sense-data as fact. We can’t do otherwise.
I think we are close to agreement on this point. But I think my response to Nietzsche is far stronger – humans are wired for those first principles, QED. It’s a non-issue, and it’s demonstrably a non-issue (here is where I take Nietzsche’s wrist and show him how he can refute his own ideas with a cigarette lighter. Even an ubermensch has a brainstem that will involuntarily recoil from an open flame upon the skin. Nietzsche’s “if” is only an abstract if, and not a real if.
-TS
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