Replies

Since the issues of physical cosmology and geometric physics have been raised, I offer that space/time is more fundamental than any quantum field contained within its finite boundary. The issue goes to physical causality. Without space and time, there is no physical causality, no fields at all.

In the absence of space, things cannot exist.

In the absence of time, events cannot occur.

For that same reason, no physical cosmology obviates the beginning. They all (multi-verse, multi-world, cyclic, ekpyrotic, imaginary time, etc.) rely on pre-existing space/time for physical causality.

Indeed, the only cosmology which is “closed” is Max Tegmark’s Level IV Parallel Universe. And it is closed precisely because it is radical Platonism, it is not physical. In effect, it posits that everything observed “in” space/time is actually a manifestation of mathematical structures which really exist outside of space and time.

Mathematically, the dimension of a space is the minimum number of coordinates (axes) necessary to identify a point within the space. A space of zero dimensions is a point; one dimension, a line, two dimensions, a plane; three, a cube, etc. That is the geometry of it. In zero dimensions, the mathematical point is indivisible.

It is not nothing. It is a spatial point. A singularity is not nothing.

In ex nihilo Creation (beginning of space/time) - the dimensions are not merely zero, they are null, dimensions do not exist at all. There is no space and no time. Period.

There is no mathematical point, no volume, no content, no scalar quantities. Ex nihilo doesn’t exist in relationship to anything else; there is no thing.

In an existing physical space, each point (e.g. particle) can be parameterized by a quantity such as mass. The parameter (e.g. a specific quantity within the range of possible quantities) is in effect another descriptor or quasi-dimension that uniquely identifies the point within the space.

Moreover, if the quantity of the parameter changes for a point, then a time dimension is invoked. For example, at one moment the point value is “0” and the next it is “1”.

Wave propagation (e.g. big bang, inflation) cannot occur in null dimensions nor can it occur in zero spatial dimensions, a mathematical point; a dimension of time is required for any fluctuation in a parameter value at a point.

Moreover, wave propagation must also have a spatial/temporal relation from cause point to effect point, i.e. physical causation.

For instance “0” at point n^t causes “1” at point n+1^t+1 which causes "0" at point n+1^t+2 etc..

Obviously, physical wave propagation (e.g. big bang/inflationary model) cannot precede space/time and physical causality. Again,

In the absence of space, things cannot exist.

In the absence of time, events cannot occur.

Both space and time are required for physical causation.

God's Name is I AM

... the only cosmology which is “closed” is Max Tegmark’s Level IV Parallel Universe. And it is closed precisely because it is radical Platonism, it is not physical. In effect, it posits that everything observed “in” space/time is actually a manifestation of mathematical structures which really exist outside of space and time.

It is a great and delightful wonderment to me, dearest sister in Christ, to find that Plato's insights of roughly two-and-a-half millennia ago as to the fundamental order of the Cosmos, the Universe, really of Being, has been so wonderfully explicated by a mathematical physicist of our own time. That is, Max Tegmark's Level IV cosmology, explicated in "Parallel Universes" (Scientific American, 2004.)

Also, I am highly intrigued by P.S. Wesson's , which proposes that spacetime is to be defined as (at least) three of space, and two (at least) of time.

Recently, I have read David Bohm's extraordinary Wholeness and the Implicate Order (2002). The interesting thing here is that Bohm's thinking seems to draw on the great pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus at least as much as Plato's thought did.

Is "classical philosophy" enjoying some kind of a "come-back" of intellectual respectability here, in so-called post-modern times?"

I certainly hope so!!! It seems to me the classical philosophers were awesomely good at tracking intellectual problems right down to the ground....

Yet evidently, there are people out there who want to "kill" God and human history because of the inconveniences such "old" frameworks pose to their own "enlightened" projects. But it seems such folk never see that they saw off the same branch on which they logically sit by doing this....

'Nuff said. Thank you so much dearest sister for your wonderfully illuminating essay-post!!!

Please accept this as the compliment that it is meant to be: I love nerd/ geek speak. So many debates/ discussions digress into "Says you" or "Up Yours!"

I do have two questions though:1) If Aristotle is correct and the universe is eternal, doesn't that obviate the need for a god?2) what is "ekpyrotic,"? I believe I have a pretty good vocabulary, but I am unfamiliar with that term.

Thank you for your interesting insight and the book suggestion.