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.
>> “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.” <<
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Seems they were fibbin.
If the particle they found didn’t match the characteristics that they proffered, then they really didn’t find it.
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IF (and yes it is a big if) the speed limit of a realm of reality we have yet to sense is always above C, however, the medium of energy sensing (light and light speed) is no longer bound by the Einstein equation.
C2 is not a real rate for anything in our universe, much less a reality in a continuum where things sensed must have a past-to-present orientation to be sensed. But Jesus stepped from our universe into another realm, with His body, and stepped back from thence with His body. So, there must be some spatio-temporal basis for that other realm.
Every 'thing' (as in any matter) in the physical universe of our sensing is but a pinch of energy, a twist of space, and a moment of time. The ether is the volume of time. Orientation in that volume determines ... well, I should stop there. No sense giving negative nay-bobs more to derail the thread. Re orienting can allow one to 'be' in a 'higher' continuum yet interact with our 'lower' continuum. Only Jesus has done that so far as I can discern from Biblical references.
Famous last words.
I don't think of this as "changing the subject," rather of "clarifying the subject," thus to ask better questions....
Why is that a better question? Life is part of reality. How will limiting your investigation get you more comprehensive results?
From my point of view, I'm not "limiting" my investigation. You say "Life is part of Reality." I say Life is prior to Reality, more basic than Reality; and totally comprehends it.
No one who is not alive can observe Reality. Thus one presumes life and consciousness are more basic and more general.
In his fascinating work, Life Itself: A Comprehensive Inquiry into the Nature, Origin, and Fabrication of Life (1991), Robert Rosen puts some of modern-day science's most cherished presuppositions under intense scrutiny.
[Rosen [RIP] is a mathematician, systems theorist, and theoretical biologist.]
Once such cherished presupposition is that physics is the preeminent science, for it addresses the "general case" with respect to reality in all its parts, including the biological parts, which are just so many "special cases," and comparatively rare.
...[T]he phenomena of biology have played essentially no role in the development of physical thought.... Why? Mainly, I think, because theoretical physics has long beguiled itself with a quest for what is universal and general. As far as theoretical physics is concerned, biological organisms are very special, indeed, inordinately special systems. The physicist perceives that most things in the universe are not organisms, not alive in any conventional sense. Therefore, the physicist reasons, organisms are negligible; they are to be ignored in the quest for universality. For surely, biology can add nothing fundamental, nothing new to physics; rather, organisms are to be understood entirely as specializations of the physical universals, once these have been adequately developed, and once the innumerable constraints and boundary conditions that make organisms special have been elucidated. These last, the physicist says, are not my task. So it happens that the wonderful edifice of physical science, so articulate elsewhere, stands today utterly mute on the fundamental question: What is Life?After mulling over the implications of this situation for a bit, Rosen asks a striking question: "Why could it not be that the 'universals' of physics are only so on a small and special (if inordinately prominent) class of material systems, a class to which organisms are too general to belong? What if physics is the particular, and biology the general, instead of the other way around?"
Thus in effect, dear tacticalogic, I invoke Robert Rosen in hoping to explain why I regard the question "What Is Life?" as more "general" than the question "What Is Reality?" — which I imagine is closely related to physicalist (not to mention atheist) views so popular among so many scientists and students of science these days. This question represents the "particular case," not the general one.
It has been said that the great "art" of science is asking the right questions....
Rosen also has a field-day with the absolute wrongness of the "machine metaphor" or model of Newtonian, or classical, physics, viewed mainly under the aspect of mechanics, as applied to living systems in nature. A quip comes to mind: That answer is so bad, it isn't even wrong. But space does not permit elaboration here.
Thank you so very much for writing, dear tacticalogic!
Doesn't that lead to a conclusion that nothing exists unless and until it's been observed?
Indeed, dear brother in Christ! The problem is compounded by some skepticism I've come across in physics articles recently, that C is perhaps not the "speed limit of the universe."
It is beyond my competence to evaluate such matters. Just as it is beyond my competence to "prove" or "certify," by the scientific method, your observation:
But Jesus stepped from our universe into another realm, with His body, and stepped back from thence with His body. So, there must be some spatio-temporal basis for that other realm.Because I cannot "test" this by means of the scientific method, does this fact make your statement "ipso facto" false? I STRONGLY DOUBT that.
However, I'm not driven by any need to establish the physical continuity of this realm and the next in terms of, say, an "ether," or universal quantum field, whatever. I figure there must be a Limit to how much Heaven and Earth, Spirit and Matter, can be "normalized" together.... [Which was where I got the idea of possible "category problem."]
Anyhoot, that's just to say: I don't know. Maybe I'm just dull-witted....
Please stay in touch, dear brother MHGinTN — please do keep me up with what you're working on!
Thank you so very much for your thought-provoking, penetrating essay/post !
Not necessarily. This is the old "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to observe it, does the tree make a sound?" problem.
Two great friends — Einstein and Bohr — are on record as having quibbled over this problem.
Einstein twitted Bohr in so many words: "Niels would deny that the moon rises in the sky, unless he could see it for himself."
That is to say, the "existence of the moon" depends on Niels having observed the moon. That is, the moon is ontologically dependent on Niels' observation of it, which is an epistemological exercise.
Of course, Bohr denied all this. His answer was that the moon's existence did not depend on his observation of it; He doesn't "create" anything by "seeing" it. Rather, he acknowledges that any description that he could give of the moon surely did depend on his observation of the moon.
Vive la différence!
So what did Tegmark just say when he said “Consciousness is a state of matter”? He just said, “Consciousness is something people are consciously conscious of.”
- From an interesting review by Rob Sheldon - On consciousness…
So what will knowing exactly what “life” is tell you about everything that is not alive?
Depends on how one defines reality...
It's possible "your reality" is only a facet of Reality..
i.e. Second Reality..
Meaning.. all humans have versions of second reality.. -OR-
humans discussing reality is like;
Chimps inspecting a Rolex Watch... intrigued but inadequate to grasp "the Thing"... except that it's "shiney"..
If everyone has their own definition, then you're never really sure what the other person is talking about. That would arguably have some entertainment potential but it doesn't seem particularly useful.
‘There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract quantum physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature…’‘…We must be clear that when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images and establishing mental connections.’
- Niels Bohr
We agree... "Life" on this planet seems to be very entertaining..
True some entertainment is more boring than others..
What is...... "IS".... and What ain't...... Ain't...
Discussing what "Ain't" as if it "IS" is a privilege for Humans..
Discussing what "Is" as if it "Isn't" is a privilege for Scientists..
I would rather be no place else..
As long as you only aspire to be entertained you’re in good shape, then.
As long as you only aspire to be entertained you’re in good shape, then.
Your act is interesting.. comedy with a wry twist...
You’re funniest when you’re the most serious..
Serious business, this Kabuki.
The genius of Haiku is yet to be discovered by many..
Well, I don't know anything about that "knowing exactly" business. But I am fairly well persuaded by now that organic — living — systems in Nature are physically based in inorganic ones.
But that is not the same thing as saying that inorganic entities "caused" the organic ones. I note that, on the materialist speculation, "matter" — whatever that is — is the ultimate cause of biogenesis. Material "evolution" does the rest, just as Darwin describes it, in eminently crabby, Malthusian, and rather blood-thirsty terms.... :^)
If your ultimate presupposition, or initial premise, is that the material precedes Life and is its cause — that everything in Nature, or Reality if you prefer, "supervenes on the physical" — then I'd say such a premise is not only logically flawed, but has resisted all demonstration so far....
At the same time, any argument, insight, explanation, hypothesis, theory, whatever, is only as good as the initial premise on which it depends. If that premise is faulty, eventually anything built on it will fail.
So, where has the materialist presupposition gotten us? Among others things, I find the following of note:
(1) The materialist presupposition elevates physics to the sine qua non of the natural sciences. By physics, we mean the classical physics of Sir Isaac Newton, which is premised on the dynamics of discrete bodies (abstracted as "particles"), causally interacting lawfully with one another in discrete local relations. The beauty of Newton's Laws is that they apply "at all scales," whether atomic, planetary, solar systemic, galactic, whatever. Thus Newton's Laws "unite" all the scales within the 4D spacetime realm, and as such are universal within that domain — i.e., so long as transactional velocities do not approach the speed of light, and the "particle" in question is not vanishingly small in "size."Anyhoot, it seems to me that the "materialist presupposition" has only led to such nonsense as abiogenesis theory (which presumes to say in effect that "smart chemicals" just keep on getting "smarter" in an "evolutionary process," such that once one obtains amino acids, one gets fairly quickly to proteins; and from there soon enough to RNA/DNA....(2) One perhaps unintended side effect of Newton's splendid work was the idea that what he had described was some kind of cosmic machine; as Laplace put it, a Mécanique Céleste. If physics is the primary science, then this sort of idea is very likely to be transferred over to biology. And arguably, that is exactly what has occurred in recent times.
Robert Rosen speaks eloquently of these matters [in Life Itself, 1991]:
The Machine MetaphorIf I might butt in here: A fundamental premise of modern physics (and biology) is that, as "systems" — organic or inorganic —are composed of "parts," then the best way to study any particular "whole" system is to fractionate it into all its lesser parts; investigate the parts, taking the details; and then "add up" all the details — thinking that a process of simple summing could ever explain the complexity of the world we see around us, or give us complete information about the Whole which "parts" individually and collectively constitute.
...[O]ne of the reasons biology is hard is that no one can say what an organism is. It is, however, all too easy to say what an organism is like. In itself, this is not a bad thing to do; trouble arises when one substitutes the latter for the former.
The earliest and most mischievous instance of this kind of substitution goes back to René Descartes. Apparently, Descartes in his youth had encountered some realistic hydraulic automata, and these had made a great impression on him; he never forgot them. Much later, under the exigencies of the philosophic system he was developing, he proceeded to turn the relation between these automata, and the organisms they were simulating, upside down. What he had observed was simply that automata, under appropriate conditions, can sometimes appear lifelike. What he concluded was, rather, that life itself was automaton-like. Thus was born the machine metaphor, perhaps the major conceptual force in biology, even today.
Descartes took this fateful step with only the haziest notion of what a mechanism or automaton was (Newton was still a generation away), and an even dimmer notion of what an organism was. But Descartes was nothing if not audacious. Descartes' conception was in fact perfectly timed; the triumphant footsteps of Newtonian mechanism were right behind it; the apparently unlimited capabilities of machines were already on their way toward a complete transformation of human society and human life. Why indeed should the organism not be a machine? There is no denyng the many powerful allures encapsulated in the Cartesian metaphor; it hath indeed a pleasing shape.
Aside from its purely scientific and methodological implications, the psychological appeal alone of the machine metaphor to biologists over the years has been immense. We have already noted the profound isolation of biology from the dramatic developments in physical science since the time of Newton. The idea of the organism as machine permitted at least a vicarious contact with all this; it was plausible, easy to grasp, and above all, scientific....
...[T]he machine metaphor (supported, of course, by the corpus of modern physics) is what ultimately drives, and justifies, the reductionism so characteristic of modern biology. For whatever else a machine may be, it is a composite entity; it is made up of parts....
Continuing with Rosen:
The belief in reductionism, buttressed precisely by the machine metaphor, extrapolates ... facts back to the entire universe; there is always a set of parts, into which any material system (and in particular, any organism) can be resolved, without loss of information....
Taking a hammer to a watch, for example, will give us a spectrum of parts all right; these may be separated and characterized to our heart's content, but only by a miracle will they tell us either how a watch works or how to make one. This is because two things have happened: application of the hammer has lost information about the original articulated watch, and at the same time, it has added irrelevant information about the hammer. What the hammer has given us, then, is not so much a set of parts as a set of artifacts.
Regarding the seamless progression of proteins to RNA/DNA: Francis Crick, Hubert Yockey, Kahre et al., declare such a thing impossible in principle, on mathematical, informational grounds.
So why should we not start out with a new, more liberating premise, which is an "old" premise — that only Life begets Life? Which is the very inversion of the materialist premise....
And then we could see how all that turns out!
Jeepers, dear tacticalogic, it might even turn out to be an exhilarating experience!!!
Thanks so much for writing, dear friend!
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