Posted on 01/16/2014 2:25:14 PM PST by Heartlander
The new cosmologies are not shedding much light, except on the sheer power of the human imagination. Whatever they were supposed to explain has been rendered by their own rules unexplainable. What follows?
In a 2012 triumph, the Large Hadron Collider detected the previously theoretical Higgs boson (the "God particle," thought to give everything in the universe mass). But the boson did not support any radical new cosmologies. Its lightness suggests the existence of other similar particles. That's promising for research but little more than that. Indeed, the Higgs's feast of data "seems to match the standard model's predictions perfectly" and leaves "usurpers of 'standard model' [with] little to chew on, as Nature put the matter in 2012. Science writer John Horgan says, "The Higgs doesn't take us any closer to a unified theory than climbing a tree would take me to the Moon."
Meanwhile researchers are finding greater structure in the universe than they anticipated. Spiral galaxies are "pin-ups of the cosmos" and thus "something of a headache" if chaos and disorder are expected. Much of the vast array of proposed life-friendly exoplanets, that would show Earth to be just average, could mainly be gas and dust.
Britain's Guardian asks, thinking about the multiverse, "Has physics gone too far?" Perhaps a better question would be, is New Atheist cosmology failing as physics? Because, make no mistake, an admitted motive for seeking alternatives to the Big Bang and the fine-tuning of our universe is getting rid of their theistic implications.
Worse, for some, the hateful Big Bang bangs on, oblivious of its critics. Cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin, resigned to the Big Bang's reality, theorizes that it was "merely one of a series of big bangs creating an endless number of bubble universes." Another scheme to get rid of the Big Bang as a singularity involves a rainbow universe where time has no beginning, a model that, as Scientific American tells us, "is not widely accepted." No wonder because, as one critic put it, the scheme must get rid of the singularity within the Standard Model of physics. Similarly, another new cosmology accounts for the apparent acceleration of the universe -- but only if there is no Big Bang: "This universe has no beginning or end, just alternating periods of expansion and contraction." It also has no cosmic microwave background, which our universe inconveniently does have.
Still others propose that the Big Bang was a "mirage from [a] collapsing higher-dimensional star," a thesis with which the new Planck data apparently disagree. In general, experimental findings continue to support the Standard Model. As New Scientist's editors put it in a 2012 editorial titled "The Genesis problem":
Many physicists have been fighting a rearguard action against it for decades, largely because of its theological overtones. If you have an instant of creation, don't you need a creator?
Cosmologists thought they had a workaround. Over the years, they have tried on several different models of the universe that dodge the need for a beginning while still requiring a big bang. But recent research has shot them full of holes. It now seems certain that the universe did have a beginning.But does that mean evidence matters again? Not clear. Some say we now have the tools to examine the beginning of the universe scientifically; others that we may never know what it was like. And there's always the option of declaring stubborn facts off limits. Steven Weinberg reflects:
Physical science has historically progressed not only by finding precise explanations of natural phenomena, but also by discovering what sorts of things can be precisely explained. These may be fewer than we had thought.So are there any science questions the multiverse does answer? In "The Accidental Universe: Science's Crisis of Faith," Alan Lightman echoes,
According to the current thinking of many physicists, we are living in one of a vast number of universes. We are living in an accidental universe. We are living in a universe uncalculable by science.If science finds the universe "uncalculable," surely the meaning of "anti-science" changes. Isn't "anti-science" a mere unwillingness to waste valuable time and funds on matters into which no one may usefully inquire?
Here's an alternative: On the road to reality, evidence must matter again. The weight of the evidence must count. And when it does count, if our cosmos is orderly, new approaches will emerge. They may be emerging now.
Intriguingly, a recent article in Scientific American noted, "Some researchers think that the world, at root, does not consist of material things but of relations or of properties, such as mass, charge and spin." But information, not matter, is fundamentally relational.
So, is the basic substance of the universe information? In that case, the ID theorists are right.
Editor's note: Here is the "Science Fictions" series to date at your fingertips.
Thanks for the pings!
Once again, we are faced with the question. THE BIG ONE!!
I’m always delighted and energized to see these threads on FR, knowing that there are people out there pondering things much bigger than themselves!
It’s sad that I don’t have the time to read all the references and do a proper analysis/critique of all the ideas presented.
So, without further adieu, what is reality?
There are a couple answers, I will spell out a few, please add to the list if you think of one!
1) We don’t know and we will NEVER know
2) We are in the process of figuring it out but need more time
3) We are asking the wrong question
Now if you had asked a young boy who used to read every Scientific American he could get his hands on, his answer would have been number 2.
After years of frustration, his answer started leaning towards number 1.
Now, my answer is 3, and here is why.
In college, hanging out with math people, comp sci people, and stoners, it was not unheard of for us to argue about “Is space flat or curved?”
It’s a good argument. It sounds like something that can be answered. Show me the evidence one way or another and we will decide.
Much of this is based on ideas as mathematicians that even though the universe might be discontinuous, might be non-differentiable, might contain singularities, it wasn’t internally inconsistent, it didn’t somehow contradict itself.
Now about 1984 I read an essay written by a mathematician at Oxford that dealt with the issue. In the essay, with fairly simple mathematics (just as Bell’s theorem is pretty simple), he shows something:
A curved universe with straight lines is homeomorphic with a flat (Euclidean) universe with curved lines.
And it is true. As long as the one you are investigating is continuous and differentiable, there is a transform to make it into the other. Singularities in one will map to singularities in the other.
In this case, math proves superior, and shows us our question of “flat or curved” is lacking from the definitional side.
This is a pointer towards something.
If we ask a question, and there is no clear answer, it may be because the answer doesn’t exist, but it may also be that we haven’t really defined the question enough.
We know the slippery-ness of language. Complex, deep-rooted ideas are often simply put into words. Is the universe just some kind of computer code following Backus-Naur form, some kind of SNOBOL program?
We can’t say. We will never know for sure. No matter what the hypothesis are, it would seem we are stuck in THIS PARTICULAR UNIVERSE. Everything we see is part of it, everywhere we go, we are still in it. Sort of.
Let me qualify that statement.
If we thought or expected that something extra-universal had been in our experience, no one could argue against it, but neither could we prove it!
Imagine a dead universe. Stars, galaxies, planets, nebulae. But no life.
Imagine that same universe, with one exception: On one planet, on a rocky hill, there is one ordinary housefly.
No one could argue that universe B is QUALITATIVELY different from universe A.
And that difference is not explained by leptons or neutrinos or the strong force or any of the other building blocks and laws of physics. It takes a DIFFERENT KIND OF SCIENCE to explain to this poor fly why he is sitting there on a rock!
Now thinking about that, consider this: I deceived you when I said “Imagine a dead universe...”
You can’t.
As soon as you try to imagine one, you have injected yourself into it! The religious and philosophical implications of that are pretty daunting.
I may add to this later, but for now my summary is that the universe is sort of a tautology. We need to define the question better.
"Many physicists have been fighting a rearguard action against it for decades, largely because of its theological overtones. If you have an instant of creation, don't you need a creator?"
Spirited: Indeed, the rebellion against the supernatural personal God whose living Words created all things ex nihilo broke out during the Renaissance. At that time certain theologians and intellectuals had eagerly embraced a myriad of ancient occultisms (especially the ancient 'sciences' of Hermetic magic and evolutionary Kabalah) flowing into Christendom at that time.
From then till now, Westerners have been traveling a broad, smooth highway---ever seeking, never finding--in search of alternative 'theories of everything,' meaning anti-human neo-pagan evolutionary monist cosmologies bespeaking the mechanical emergence of everything from an impersonal one substance. This way of thinking (systems thinking) has given rise to "modern" scientific animism (i.e., Marx's dialectical materialism, particle theory), multiverse theories, Big Bang speculations; wave and fluctuation theories (ancient emanation-from-one-substance speculations), quantum physics (animism), evolutionary thinking and much else.
Most people do not realize the occult implications of modern 'scientific' systems-thinking.
For example, the seedbed of Big Bang speculations are ancient global cosmic events described by Eastern Advaitans and Greek nature sages as Cosmic Eggs.
The "science" and "psychology" behind the idea that mind evolved from matter can be found in the yogic science of Ayurveda and Hatha Yoga which outlines in both modern and ancient texts the glandular and neurological basis of Enlightenment.
Royal Astronomer Lord Martin Rees champions multiverse conceptions in the hope that in at least one or more of them living beings created themselves from primordial matter who are far more advanced than our own life-forms.
Rees believes that if this is the case, then super-intelligent aliens might be capable of simulating in their brains or in a super-computer the complex history of our universe, meaning the universe we inhabit is a simulation lacking real substance and existing only as a mental construction, a matrix, in the minds of highly evolved aliens who seeded our world with life and travel through time in order to control man's evolutionary progress. (Scientific Mythologies, James A. Herrick, p. 216)
The idea that the universe we inhabit exists only as a mental construction is very similar to Hinduism's Brahman. Brahman is the Great Cosmic Spirit – the Ultimate One Substance, the Void, impersonal Mind, or Essence of material phenomena (God-particles, bosons, and/or prakriti matter), meaning that the universe exists only as a mental construction in the mind of Brahman: brahma satyam jagan mithya, or "Brahman is real, the world is unreal." (swamij.com/mahavakyas)
Rees proposal is also similar to the hypothesis presented by Olaf Stapledon, a scientist who has always kept one foot firmly planted in neo-Gnostic science fiction accounts and imagines our universe to be an artifact of the Star Maker.
Building off of Stapledon's fantasy Carl Sagan suggests that we are "star folk" made of "star stuff." (Herrick, pp. 216-217)
Replace Star Maker with Brahman and "star stuff" with prakriti matter and sarvam khalvidam brahma, or "All is truly Brahman" (swamij.com) and we have ayam atma brahmam: "The Self is Brahman." (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4.4.5)
In other words, the Self is God.
In the caption of his book, "Just Six Numbers," Rees reveals the ancient occult Hermetic basis of his propositions:
"The ouraboros. There are links between the microworld of particles, nuclei and atoms and the cosmos." (Rees M., Just Six Numbers, P. 9)
Framed in the magical formula of Hermes: "as above, so below."
As a powerful occult symbol, the Ouroboros or Uroboros means the seething power, creative and/or evolutionary impulse or energy of the serpent figuratively depicted as either a serpent or dragon eating its own tail. The serpent's body is often depicted as the Great Chain of Being, Cosmic Tree of Life, or with Darwin, the Tree of Life.
The occult Tree of Life with its' multiple dimensions and life-giving energy systems not only powers the evolving and/or unfolding universe but reaches into the psyche, (meaning that psychic matter is the source of mind), stirring imagination, bringing psychic powers and even awakening pre-human memories of when the scientifically "enlightened occult elite," the modern Gnostikoi, were fish:
"Remember when you were a fish...." suggested Jean Houston, the prophet of the possible, in a workshop to awaken ancient pre-human memories. Nearly a thousand evolved life-forms (people) dropped to the floor and began moving their 'fins' as if to propel themselves through water. "Notice your perception as you roll like a fish. How does your world look, feel, sound, smell, taste?" Then you crawled up on land said Houston, so now you must, "Allow yourself to fully remember being a reptile....Then some of you flew. Others climbed trees." A zoo of beastly sounds erupted from the herd of pre-human birds, reptiles and apes. (America: The Sorcerer's New Apprentice, Hunt and McMahon, p. 218)
From the time of the ancients serpent power (evolution)has been important to religious and mythological symbolism all around the world. Within the Egyptian mysteries, serpent power was associated with,
..."the elemental forces that were in play before the creation of the world." (Carl Teichrib, Gods of Ancient Egypt, p. 182)
Elemental forces= evolving prakiti matter, bosons, fermions, particles, elements, etc.
Westerners received the Truth, but turned away from it in favor of modern "science magic," thus they ever seek reality but never find it.
Now thinking about that, consider this: I deceived you when I said “Imagine a dead universe...”................. You can’t.....
I disagree... “We” have evidence of nothing else... UNLESS..
1) the Universe is composed of MORE than visible Matter..
2) there is the “dark” matter thing to deal with..
3) also; is the “spiritual”....................... a dimension?..
After dealing with all that... overlooked is the Betty Boop factor..
A) First Reality...
B) Second Reality...
**and if you’re really “out there”...
c) Third Reality..
***
(1) We don’t know and we will NEVER know
(2)We are in the process of figuring it out but need more time
(3) We are asking the wrong question
That list looks pretty exhaustive to me, dear djf! How delightful to hear from you!
Like you, though (1) had initial appeal, I gravitate to (3) above: “We are asking the wrong question.” You credit an essay by an Oxford mathematician for insight into the issue. You mentioned his mathematics was “fairly simple.” That would be all to the good: For historically, “simplicity” is the sign of beauty and truth in mathematics….
I didn’t come to (3) by that route. I started with the question, “What Is Reality?” to see whether it is definitionally well founded. And discovered that “reality” is usually taken to mean “that which can be observed” in the debased currency of positivist, materialist thinking that so afflicts “science” nowadays.
Since obviously immaterial entities, non-observable in principle, exist “in” the world — e.g., mathematics itself and the laws of nature which science endeavors to disclose — that would not do.
Instead, I reconceived the question as: “What Is Life?” For “life” seemed a more capacious category than “reality” as dumbed down by the “New Atheist physicists” to consider such questions as the origin of the universe, of life and mind. It seems we need observables and non-observables alike — and understanding of how they dynamically interact — if we want to understand the universe of which we are parts and participants….
Positivist/materialist thinkers do not like to engage questions about origins, whether it be of the universe, life, or mind. Rather, they put up fictitious “counter-proposals” to the actual reality they tacitly perceive. These are the “multiverse theories,” hundreds in number by now, maybe over a thousand. The one feature that all such constructed “second realities” have in common is the obvious, shared passion of their authors for trying to produce an “explanation of the universe” that obviates divine action of any kind.
[Of course, if any of these nutcases actually were to pull this off “in” reality, they would obviate themselves and all of human thought and history in the process, including the foundations of science.]
Better put a sock in it for now….
Before closing, I’d just like to mention that I am particularly interested in the fitness or aptness of classical — that is, Newtonian — physics as a tool in biological theory. On questions of life and mind, it just seems so limited to me:
(1) Of the four Aristotelian causes, classical physics recognizes only two: the material and the efficient. Formal cause and final cause are banished. Yet, how is it even possible to speak of a “biological function” without necessarily invoking the idea of final cause?
(2) Newtonian mechanics is premised on abstract “particles.” These are posited as the “ultimate building blocks of all that there is.”
(3) Also it is premised on the idea that only local causes can have effects capable of being measured locally.
Moving on....
Djf, I really liked this:
…No one could argue that universe B is QUALITATIVELY different from universe A.Indeed! Then you added: “the universe is sort of a tautology”… Could that mean sort of fundamentally self-reinforcing entity of some kind?And that difference is not explained by leptons or neutrinos or the strong force or any of the other building blocks and laws of physics. It takes a DIFFERENT KIND OF SCIENCE to explain to this poor fly why he is sitting there on a rock!
As soon as you try to imagine [a “dead universe”], you have injected yourself into it! The religious and philosophical implications of that are pretty daunting.
Perhaps this is what the great mathematician/philosopher Bertrand Russell had in mind when he declared he “hated” what he called the “impredicativity.” I’m no mathematical genius; but it seems to me the hated impredicativities are simply mathematical axioms which, by definition, cannot be subdivided into lesser, analyzable parts. Which means they are difficult, if not impossible, to subsume under the rules of purely computational models.
Heaven knows, the great mathematician David Hilbert tried. He recognized that mathematics was a “language”; and thus like any other language, it was composed of two parts: syntax and semantics. Syntax — the rules that constitute the transactional grammar, or “rules of the road,” of a language — was found to be easily rendered into “computizational” terms.
Unfortunately, the semantic component of language strenuously resisted being “reduced” to “computizational” terms, even though it was Hilbert’s mission to prove that semantics could be so reduced, replicated by more sophisticated forms of syntax, thus rendering semantics to computational form.
But what is semantics? It is the irreducible meaning of life and experience of human beings as captured by human beings, expressed and carried as an irreducible “value-added” component in human language wherever that language is spoken.
And mathematics is the universal language….
Anyhoot, Hilbert’s project came up a cropper, when Kurt Gödel showed him he was “barking up the wrong tree.”… [e.g., the Incompleteness Principle]
Must leave it there for now. Thank you so much for writing, dear djf! It’s good to see you again. Like you, I appreciate threads like this one. So thanks to you — and to Heartlander, for posting “In Search of a Road to Reality.”
I think that's what's normally referred to as "changing the subject".
As one who believes life is more than the chemistry of an organism, that a soul is a real 'thing' existing in some where/when we have yet to measure, I would offer that physical life is more akin to a virtual reality world TO THE SOUL which is the origin of the animation in the body. Of course, The Creator is the source of all life, on any plane. But I am led to believe that the soul has temporal and spatial aspects, so the trick is to seek the temporal components of the physical and therein we may discover the temporal aspects of the soul which is not the body.
Instead, I re-conceived the question as: “What Is Life?”
I don’t think so.. Life, God, Reality... could be synonyms..
All three must be present.. aspects of the same thing..
Lose one of them then something is lost.. in the conversation..
What is length and width without depth?..
Even two dimensional art attempts to simulate depth..
To wit: a conversation with out all three is simulating depth..
Nice....... that you would notice that..
Not necessarily. You can be alive and still be delusional.
Seeking a rush to judgement on a question is not the action of someone confident in the outcome of careful study.
You can be alive and still be delusional.
Can you be delusional about being or not being delusional..
You’re going loopy on me Mr. T..
Thanks for the thoughtful replies!
This will sound somewhat rambling, hopefully my point will coalesce.
Mathematics is defined as being, in a way, a type of language. I can’t say whether mathematics is part of the foundational basis of the universe or not. But it has some interesting lessons imbedded in it.
In mathematics, we form hypotheses about numbers, objects, spaces, equations. We then attempt to prove the hypotheses.
The essence of a good proof is that it has two qualities, it must be both
A) necessary and
B) sufficient
The “necessary” part means that the proof provided actually addresses the fundamental issues of the problem at hand. For instance if I wanted a proof that 3X3=9, and a student supplied a paper saying “because it’s Tuesday”, then his proof does not in any way meet the “necessary” requirements.
Sufficiency means that the proof covers all formations and permutations of the problem. For instance if you were going to try to prove an equation for all real numbers, it would be NECESSARY that you prove it for negative numbers, also positive numbers, and it would be SUFFICIENT if it gets proved for all positive numbers, all negative numbers, and zero.
Imagine I invite the worlds expert in bricks for a consult. Also, the worlds expert in lumber and construction.
They wait for me in a room drinking coffee, and I walk in, say “Good evening, gentlemen. Please tell me about architecture”.
They both kind of chuckle, get a look on their face that briefly looks like Gomer Pyle, and tell me that architecture is not their discipline.
Their knowledge and expertise cannot bridge the gap that would lead them to the Taj Mahal.
An almost exactly similar situation with the materialist scientists. They know about quarks and leptons and forces and clocks, but can they tell us about sunrises? Funerals? Rainbows?
Their knowledge does not bridge the gap into the experiential world. It simply does not and can not. Ever.
I often wonder how many of the material scientists are aware of that. Every so often, you see a glimpse of it when a famous scientist or philosopher kinda sorta admits that they are painted into a corner of their own creation and don’t have the tools to get outside of it.
For any comprehensive view of the universe, a knowledge of the material aspects is a necessary part.
But it is not sufficient.
Just like with the Taj Mahal, it is necessary that we understand bricks and mortar and wood, but it is not sufficient.
I find it interesting that the things physicists study, the material things, are pre-existing.
But the new things in the universe, the emerging things, are experiential.
For me, I take that as some sort of clue.
I’ve played around quite a bit with Conway’s “Game of Life”
It is a simple procedure/algorithm/program that can and does, using simple rules and objects, generate very complex patterns.
All of it is STRICTLY deterministic.
There are no morals involved. No opinions. No free will.
Yet it is truly dazzling the intricacies, the patterns, the cycles that get generated.
At this point, I would be hesitant to call anything generated by GOL as a “behavior”. But it is getting closer all the time.
As these computational methods and simulations improve, we will gradually some to understand the richness of the world we live in compared to the relative sterility of GOL and a strictly mechanistic, deterministic universe.
And those contrasts will be the answers. The purpose. The meaning. The reason for life.
But I don’t see these insights coming from yet another billion or multi-billion electron volt collider. Physics doesn’t have the tools and the language to completely describe reality.
When in Rome.
Is it just an ego thing, this constant effort to denigrate folks?
Is it wrong to get tired of seeing every discussion of philosophy reduced to evolution vs Biblical literalism?
No (and I too suffer that fatigue factor), and I think I get the point now. Have a good afternoon ... and enjoy the Broncos’ edging out the Pats. I expect Seahags will route the Friskies.
Is it wrong to get tired of seeing every discussion of philosophy reduced to evolution vs Biblical literalism?
I see... WoW.. worshipping philosophy as a Demi-God...
What a concept.. Designer Gods are quite fashionable..
It becomes then, Not, what’s the source of everything....
but does the source of everything LOOK good while doing “IT”?..
A queer look at, Is there a God?.. and what is “it” up to?..
A kind of Philosophical-Porn.......
And everybody else had damned well better see it the same way.
Not at all dear tacticalogic! The basic issue here is the sufficiency of questions asked to account for the sufficiency of "answers" they seek logically to entail.
djf very usefully put it this way:
[W]hat is reality?… There are a couple answers, I will spell out a few, please add to the list if you think of one!It seems that both he and I opt for (3), after having flirted with (1), and finding it somehow wanting.... [If my surmise is incorrect, please djf do correct the record.]
(1) We don’t know and we will NEVER know
(2) We are in the process of figuring it out but need more time
(3) We are asking the wrong question
For as I already mentioned, the populist, post-modernist view of "reality" sees only the physical, the material. Whatever cannot be directly observed (or indirectly observed, by means of technical extension) does not exist for a positivist or a materialist. To reduce reality itself to such an impoverished view of "all that there is" in an ordered universe (physics presupposes this) leaves out all of biology altogether.
That is why the question "What is Reality?" is the wrong question. It is blind to the Great Hierarchy of Being: God–Man–World–Society. It cannot address, let alone answer, such questions as: How do life and mind arise in Nature? (Though it has been known to construct fairy stories along those lines from time to time; e.g., macroevolution, abiogenesis, panspermia theory.)
Which is why IMHO option (3) ought to be considered: The question as stated — "What Is Reality?" — asks the "wrong" question, if one wants to understand the world in which one lives.... The "right" question is: "What Is Life?"
I don't think of this as "changing the subject," rather of "clarifying the subject," thus to ask better questions....
Good to see you again, dear tacticalogic! Thanks so much for writing.
And everybody else had damned well better see it the same way.
Thats the spirit.. good doggie..
Interesting notion, dear brother in Christ. All I can say about that is Einstein did show the ultimate convertibility/convergence of energy and mass in his most famous equation: E = MC2....
Beyond that fascinating fact, I'm still not sure that "spirit/soul" can be reduced to material/mechanistic expression without introducing a colossal category error into the analysis....
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