Philosophy of Cosmology

[dennislmay]

What George is saying is precisely why cosmology is in such a mess. Trying to merge theories which differ on such basics as the existence of identity and causality and only match observation by introducing numerous fixes no different in kind than Ptolemy's epicycles. Basic scientific approaches are thrown out the window - incoherent philosophies and contradictions lie at the root. Not a good way to build a logical structure.

But could the so-called "mess" in cosmology not just show that, like all theories, cosmological theories are subject to continous modification and change, with elements being discarded that do not reflect the current state of knowledge anymore?

Theories improving over time is the norm but avoiding the error of introducing the equivalent of Ptolemy's Epicycles is basic to the scientific method. Cosmology should know better than anyone since that was where Ptolemy's Epicycles started. The "mess" in cosmology is compounded by philosophical elements and an almost religious proselytizing of the Big Bang Theory into classrooms even at the grade school level. It is a form of state created educational religion. I have no doubt the Big Bang Theory is junk science but a new version with new Ptolemy elements emerges almost every year or two - always with the full support of some orthodoxy. It will be difficult to replace this moving target full of internal contradictions and contradiction with observation. Don't underestimate the power of the orthodoxy to maintain their nest.

Dennis

[Xray]

Cosmology is a wierd subject. It is only semi-testable.

That was the reason why I (before you posted this) replaced "testing" by "modification" in my # 96 post as I was editing it.

Of late the latest observations indicate the cosmos is expanding and what is more is accelerating in its expansion. Two independent teams of astronomers and astro-physicists have used supernovas as standard candles and found they are running away at an increasing rate. In addition the classic Big Bang won't work since it cannot address the Horizon Problem properly. What we may have is an indication that Einstein's theory is not right. No surprise. If one waits long enough and develops better and better technology for measuring and observing just about every theory near and dear will be falsified. That is how we make progress in science. Theorize, falsify, go back to the drawing board and theorize again.

Fascinating thought, isn't it, that future generations will probably regard the theories of our current cosmology as we regard the (fasified) cosmological theories of long bygone times ...

Of late the latest observations indicate the cosmos is expanding and what is more is accelerating in its expansion. Two independent teams of astronomers and astro-physicists have used supernovas as standard candles and found they are running away at an increasing rate.

Yesterday I watched a TV special which mentioned Saul Perlmutter's research in that field:

http://en.wikipedia....Saul_Perlmutter

[BaalChatzaf]

Fascinating thought, isn't it, that future generations will probably regard the theories of our current cosmology as we regard the (fasified) cosmological theories of long bygone times ...

Up until the invention of the telescope as an astronomical tool (1609 c.e.) observation of the sky at night was a naked eye affair. Our generation extends to Tycho Brahe deserved admiration. Tycho did as will as anyone could have done with unaided vision. There is a qualitative difference between the theories developed since the time of Galileo and the time before. Galileo initiated the era of mathematically based physics. So future generations will see our current science in that light, that is science pursued with the best technology available and pursued in a rational mathematical manner. In prior eras, science was intermixed with religion and mythology and the technology supporting it was of the most primitive sort. I think future folks will regard our efforts as the best that could have been done given the technological limitations in place in our time. In modern times we have invested much more of our treasure in scientific investigations than in past eras.

Given the sophistication of the mathematics we use, which will stand for all time (just as the work of Archimedes stands even in our day), the future folk will not think that we were silly. They will know we were wrong because we did not know enough.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Peter]

Dennis May wrote:

I have no doubt the Big Bang Theory is junk science but a new version with new Ptolemy elements emerges almost every year or two - always with the full support of some orthodoxy.

end quote

I have wondered about the claims for *universal* expansion from one point, at an accelerating rate, which eventually exceeds the speed of light, without an eventual gravitational contraction. We see contraction occurring billions of times in the universe at the location of every black hole, yet why are the edges of the universe different? The matter the farthest from the hypothetical big bang also began in the same place and should obey the same rules. Why aren’t black holes exerting enough gravity on each other to eventually draw themselves together into bigger black holes. Their gravitational attraction should lead to another infinitely dense point of matter continuing an infinite series of big bangs.

Re-reading my first paragraph I see I am open to Feynman’s criticism of philosophically seeking a “meaning” for the Universe. Still, “that’s just the way it is,” ignores the human element which is also part of the universe. I prefer a *fact* of a renewing universe instead of a universe of entropy, which is dead to gravitational, electrical, or chemical reactions - and has no life. Is that *existence*?

Semper cogitans fidele,

Peter Taylor

[BaalChatzaf]

Re-reading my first paragraph I see I am open to Feynman’s criticism of philosophically seeking a “meaning” for the Universe. Still, “that’s just the way it is,” ignores the human element which is also part of the universe. I prefer a *fact* of a renewing universe instead of a universe of entropy, which is dead to gravitational, electrical, or chemical reactions - and has no life. Is that *existence*?

Semper cogitans fidele,

Peter Taylor

There are people who are revisiting the idea of eternal re-creation of the Kosmos, not necessarily cyclic but eternal both past and present. The problem is we cannot extend our observations back far enough. My guess is that the origin of the current era or epoch of the cosmos will be hidden from our view. We will just have to fiddle our guesses to get the best fit to known facts. In the old days, they used to call that strategy: preserving the appearances.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[dennislmay]

Dennis May wrote:

I have no doubt the Big Bang Theory is junk science but a new version with new Ptolemy elements emerges almost every year or two - always with the full support of some orthodoxy.

end quote

I have wondered about the claims for *universal* expansion from one point, at an accelerating rate, which eventually exceeds the speed of light, without an eventual gravitational contraction. We see contraction occurring billions of times in the universe at the location of every black hole, yet why are the edges of the universe different? The matter the farthest from the hypothetical big bang also began in the same place and should obey the same rules. Why aren’t black holes exerting enough gravity on each other to eventually draw themselves together into bigger black holes. Their gravitational attraction should lead to another infinitely dense point of matter continuing an infinite series of big bangs.

Re-reading my first paragraph I see I am open to Feynman’s criticism of philosophically seeking a “meaning” for the Universe. Still, “that’s just the way it is,” ignores the human element which is also part of the universe. I prefer a *fact* of a renewing universe instead of a universe of entropy, which is dead to gravitational, electrical, or chemical reactions - and has no life. Is that *existence*?

Semper cogitans fidele,

Peter Taylor

You will drive yourself crazy if you try to put the square peg of observations into the round hole of Big Bang Theory. That is part of the reason it continues to survive. It is a con game where at every challenge the con-man doubles down with an even more improbable set of reasoning and larger set and scope of confusing premises to explain where things are going. The lie has to get bigger and bigger until it entirely unravels.

Dennis

[Brant Gaede]

Since the universe seems to be flying apart at greater and greater speed, it makes me wonder if there is a stronger force than gravity--say gravity from a super universe--pulling it apart. I read a speculation that the reason gravity seems so weak is that it leaked into this universe from a place where it was much stronger. Such thinking is near worthless, it seems, except for sci-fi writers, if it cannot be investigated. I wonder what real data will reveal in the coming centuries.

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

Since the universe seems to be flying apart at greater and greater speed, it makes me wonder if there is a stronger force than gravity--say gravity from a super universe--pulling it apart. I read a speculation that the reason gravity seems so weak is that it leaked into this universe from a place where it was much stronger. Such thinking is near worthless, it seems, except for sci-fi writers, if it cannot be investigated. I wonder what real data will reveal in the coming centuries.

--Brant

The is some speculation that a "fifth force" is at work ripping the cosmos apart. Right now a rather ad hoc hypothetical "dark energy" is being postulated, but no one knows what it is exactly and how it is produced. This is a very wide open speculative area in cosmology. It may also indicate a serious defect in current theories of gravitation, in particular Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. I am sure more and more will come out as it is studied. Each year better technology is deployed to study the cosmos in the large. By and large, once can say this is a mystery (or a problem). The last word has yet to be uttered on the matter.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Xray]

I stepped in here only to deal with my own stepped-on toes, with regard to the vacuous and pretentious question "Why is there something rather than nothing?"

Here is the standard O'ist reply to this question -- a reply that has also been given by atheists since the 18th century, in response the the First Cause Argument for the existence of God:

Why is there something rather than nothing? The why, in this context, asks for a causal explanation of existence, i.e.: What caused existence to exist? But a cause -- the what -- must first exist itself before it can cause anything.

The question is therefore nonsensical. It commits what O'ists call "the fallacy of the stolen concept." In other words, the concept cause presupposes the concept existence, so to ask for a cause of existence is to put the cart before the horse.

I would like to find that jerk or jerks who fucked me up but good at five, then, George, because I have been cursed by the vacuous and pretentious questions since.

Seriously, let me take this slowly so that I understand the grave epistemological blunder I may have made at age five and which may have impeded my understanding since.

Think of that five year old, George, and see if you can find the words to get him back on track with his inquiries.

Question to George:

Could it be that the epistemological blunder lies elsewhere?

Think about it: Objectivism rests on causality as a fundamental principle.

But isn't this phlosophical principle perfectly in sync with thinking about causality being at the origin of all existence?

I think the epistemoliogical blunder lies in dismissing causality by declaring the question to be nonsensical on the grounds that cause cannot be known.

In addition - going by the premise that matter 'always was' (which one can assume to be the principle of every atheistic philosophy), one would get non-causality as the origin of a philosophy resting on causality. Quite a contradiction, isn't it?

The question to ask is: How does this mesh with a philosophy based on the law of non-contradiction?

[Ellen Stuttle]

Regarding academic barriers against doing research on the Bell inequalities, here are some indicative excerpts from a book called The Age of Entanglement.

Dennis, you might be interested by the full section, which I posted earlier here.

(I'd intended to get back to that thread, but life intervened, as it has a habit of doing.)

The Age of Entanglement

Louisa Gilder

2008

Alfred A. Knopf

31: In Which the Settings Are Changed 1975-1982

pp. 282-85

[italics in original; other emphases added]

[....]

It was early in 1975, and Aspect had just returned to Europe from a three-year stint of French "national service," teaching in Cameroon. Soon after his return, he had suffered what he described as a coup de foudre. "In October 1974," he remembered, "I read John Bell's famous paper 'On the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox,' and it was love at first sight. This was the most exciting subject I could dream of." Immediately he decided to make Bell's theorem the subject of his Ph.D. thesis at his alma mater, the University of Paris-South, in Orsay.

Meanwhile, Clauser was trying to get a job. "I must have applied to at least a dozen different places, and at all of them I was totally rejected." Universities were uneasy about hiring a professor who would encourage the next generation to question the foundations of quantum theory. Finally Clauser found an opening at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in the hills east of Oakland, researching plasmas (David Bohm's first love).

[....]

"Back in the sixties and seventies, reputable physicists did not ask questions about quantum mechanics," explained Fry in 2000. "I think that Clauser took the brunt of this attitude--in part, I believe, because he was actually doing the experiment, not just talking about the theory."

Fry himself had better luck with academia. In the midst of performing his experiment, he was granted tenure. Thirty years later, by then the head of the physics department at Texas A&M, he learned that this open-minded institutional decision was thanks to an intervention from Frank Pipkin, Holt's adviser at Harvard. Realizing that the tenure committee was about to reject the Bell experimenter, one of Fry's friends asked Pipkin to come to College Station, Texas.

"If you had sent me just Ed's file to look at, I would have rejected him very quickly," Pipkin told the committee. "However, after spending a day in his lab I can tell you that this guy is a winner and I would bet on his success." Pipkin's renown in atomic physics won over the skeptical committee.

Bell himself was acutely aware of the stigma attached to the experiments his work had inspired, but thus far Aspect was not. Before heading to West Africa in 1972, Aspect remembered, "I had a quite good education in classical physics, and I knew my education in quantum physics was extremely bad." The classes he had taken on the subject comprised equation-solving with little discussion of physical meaning, let alone inculcation of any stigmas.

So for his three equatorial years in Cameroon, Aspect taught himself quantum mechanics, using a recent textbook by the great French physicist Claude Cohen-Tannoudji. this book had two strengths: "First, it is real physics," said Aspect. "Second, it is neutral with respect to foundation. No brainwashing, no 'Bohr solved all of that.'" As a result, "I was able to solve the equations but nobody had washed my brain.

"I was totally convinced by Einstein and Bell," he said. But what experiment to do? In rereading Bell's 1964 paper, Aspect realized that its last lines told him "there was still an important test to be done."

He raced to Geneva to tell Bell his idea.

[....]

When Aspect finished his eager presentation, he stood silently awaiting a reply. Bell asked his first question with a trace of irony: "Have you a permanent position?" Aspect was only a graduate student, but--because of the uniqueness of the French system, and in drastic contrast to his counterparts in America--his position at the École normale supérieure was actually permanent. Even with this advantage, it was not easy.

[....]

[dennislmay]

Regarding academic barriers against doing research on the Bell inequalities, here are some indicative excerpts from a book called The Age of Entanglement.

Dennis, you might be interested by the full section, which I posted earlier here.

(I'd intended to get back to that thread, but life intervened, as it has a habit of doing.)

The Age of Entanglement

Louisa Gilder

2008

Alfred A. Knopf

31: In Which the Settings Are Changed 1975-1982

pp. 282-85

[italics in original; other emphases added]

[....]

It was early in 1975, and Aspect had just returned to Europe from a three-year stint of French "national service," teaching in Cameroon. Soon after his return, he had suffered what he described as a coup de foudre. "In October 1974," he remembered, "I read John Bell's famous paper 'On the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox,' and it was love at first sight. This was the most exciting subject I could dream of." Immediately he decided to make Bell's theorem the subject of his Ph.D. thesis at his alma mater, the University of Paris-South, in Orsay.

Meanwhile, Clauser was trying to get a job. "I must have applied to at least a dozen different places, and at all of them I was totally rejected." Universities were uneasy about hiring a professor who would encourage the next generation to question the foundations of quantum theory. Finally Clauser found an opening at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in the hills east of Oakland, researching plasmas (David Bohm's first love).

[....]

"Back in the sixties and seventies, reputable physicists did not ask questions about quantum mechanics," explained Fry in 2000. "I think that Clauser took the brunt of this attitude--in part, I believe, because he was actually doing the experiment, not just talking about the theory."

Fry himself had better luck with academia. In the midst of performing his experiment, he was granted tenure. Thirty years later, by then the head of the physics department at Texas A&M, he learned that this open-minded institutional decision was thanks to an intervention from Frank Pipkin, Holt's adviser at Harvard. Realizing that the tenure committee was about to reject the Bell experimenter, one of Fry's friends asked Pipkin to come to College Station, Texas.

"If you had sent me just Ed's file to look at, I would have rejected him very quickly," Pipkin told the committee. "However, after spending a day in his lab I can tell you that this guy is a winner and I would bet on his success." Pipkin's renown in atomic physics won over the skeptical committee.

Bell himself was acutely aware of the stigma attached to the experiments his work had inspired, but thus far Aspect was not. Before heading to West Africa in 1972, Aspect remembered, "I had a quite good education in classical physics, and I knew my education in quantum physics was extremely bad." The classes he had taken on the subject comprised equation-solving with little discussion of physical meaning, let alone inculcation of any stigmas.

So for his three equatorial years in Cameroon, Aspect taught himself quantum mechanics, using a recent textbook by the great French physicist Claude Cohen-Tannoudji. this book had two strengths: "First, it is real physics," said Aspect. "Second, it is neutral with respect to foundation. No brainwashing, no 'Bohr solved all of that.'" As a result, "I was able to solve the equations but nobody had washed my brain.

"I was totally convinced by Einstein and Bell," he said. But what experiment to do? In rereading Bell's 1964 paper, Aspect realized that its last lines told him "there was still an important test to be done."

He raced to Geneva to tell Bell his idea.

[....]

When Aspect finished his eager presentation, he stood silently awaiting a reply. Bell asked his first question with a trace of irony: "Have you a permanent position?" Aspect was only a graduate student, but--because of the uniqueness of the French system, and in drastic contrast to his counterparts in America--his position at the École normale supérieure was actually permanent. Even with this advantage, it was not easy.

[....]

Good stuff - I had not heard that Bell had warned them. It is not surprising though based on Bell's awareness of intellectual sabotage going on generally.

Dennis

[BaalChatzaf]

Good stuff - I had not heard that Bell had warned them. It is not surprising though based on Bell's awareness of intellectual sabotage going on generally.

Dennis

Sabotage or disagreement?

Ba'al Chatzaf

[George H. Smith]

George H. Smith wrote: If this was Feynman's position, then he was an ignorant fool outside his narrow area of expertise. I have said this before, but I will say it again: Knowledge of physics does not confer upon a person the privilege to speak nonsense. To receive a degree in physics is not to be anointed into an elite priesthood whose members can utter metaphysical mumbo-jumbo -- e.g., that subatomic particles have no identity -- and then demand that laypersons accept their bullshit on faith. When a physicist moves beyond the highly abstract realm of mathematics and chooses to express himself in the same verbal language that everyone else uses, then the physicist is bound to observe the same principles of coherence and intelligibility that apply to everyone else. end quote I watched the videos that Ba’al provided. I highly recommend that you watch them. I would say Feynman would not disagree with you. He was against religious belief that has no scientific basis. I think he would be all for your rational philosophy, George. Feynman is against “dopey” philosophical questions like, “When you are looking at something do you see only light or do you see the object?” He is against dopey philosophical questions like, ”Why are we here?” He said, “It is not meaningful to ask why we are here . . . but I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened by not knowing a thing, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell . . . . Let’s look at the facts. There is no God The universe operates according to the laws of energy and entropy. A moving human is a 26 element animated molecule. Molecules “exist”, in certain windows of time, owing to stability. The “purpose” of a molecule will depend upon its reactions. Relationships are chemical reactions between people. The naturalness of a reaction is determined by free energy change. All reactions are coupled to each other and the universe. end quote Feynman would be a contextual Objectivist. Semper cogitans fidele, Peter Taylor

I've watched many videos with Feynman, and, with one exception, I never had a serious problem with what he said. That's why I specified that if Feyyman took the dumbass position that was attributed to him, then.....

I had my doubts about whether Feynman really dismissed philosophy in the manner attributed to him, but it wasn't worth my time to track it down. I cannot imagine that Feynman would have objected to what I have been arguing all along, namely, that physicists, like everyone else, have the cognitive responsibility to formulate their concepts and theories as clearly as possibile and to present them in a coherent manner. No one except a second-rate thinker with pretensions of grandeur would claim that physicists are somehow exempt from the basic laws of logic, e.g., that they can make contradictory statements with impunity because they have access to a mysterious subatomic world. I have had too much experience with theologians who have argued the same thing, while substituting "supernatural" for "subatomic," to fall for that kind of BS -- and no one else should, either.

If a scientist encounters what appears to be a contradiction, then this indicates that more work needs to be done until the contradiction is resolved. This is how science (and all) knowledge progresses. For anyone to attribute the contradiction to nature itself, instead of to an incomplete or inadequate state of knowledge, while claiming that the law of identity does not apply to nature, is arrant nonsense -- literal nonsense.

Ghs

[dennislmay]

George H. Smith wrote: If this was Feynman's position, then he was an ignorant fool outside his narrow area of expertise. I have said this before, but I will say it again: Knowledge of physics does not confer upon a person the privilege to speak nonsense. To receive a degree in physics is not to be anointed into an elite priesthood whose members can utter metaphysical mumbo-jumbo -- e.g., that subatomic particles have no identity -- and then demand that laypersons accept their bullshit on faith. When a physicist moves beyond the highly abstract realm of mathematics and chooses to express himself in the same verbal language that everyone else uses, then the physicist is bound to observe the same principles of coherence and intelligibility that apply to everyone else. end quote I watched the videos that Ba’al provided. I highly recommend that you watch them. I would say Feynman would not disagree with you. He was against religious belief that has no scientific basis. I think he would be all for your rational philosophy, George. Feynman is against “dopey” philosophical questions like, “When you are looking at something do you see only light or do you see the object?” He is against dopey philosophical questions like, ”Why are we here?” He said, “It is not meaningful to ask why we are here . . . but I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened by not knowing a thing, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell . . . . Let’s look at the facts. There is no God The universe operates according to the laws of energy and entropy. A moving human is a 26 element animated molecule. Molecules “exist”, in certain windows of time, owing to stability. The “purpose” of a molecule will depend upon its reactions. Relationships are chemical reactions between people. The naturalness of a reaction is determined by free energy change. All reactions are coupled to each other and the universe. end quote Feynman would be a contextual Objectivist. Semper cogitans fidele, Peter Taylor

I've watched many videos with Feynman, and, with one exception, I never had a serious problem with what he said. That's why I specified that if Feyyman took the dumbass position that was attributed to him, then.....

I had my doubts about whether Feynman really dismissed philosophy in the manner attributed to him, but it wasn't worth my time to track it down. I cannot imagine that Feynman would have objected to what I have been arguing all along, namely, that physicists, like everyone else, have the cognitive responsibility to formulate their concepts and theories as clearly as possibile and to present them in a coherent manner. No one except a second-rate thinker with pretensions of grandeur would claim that physicists are somehow exempt from the basic laws of logic, e.g., that they can make contradictory statements with impunity because they have access to a mysterious subatomic world. I have had too much experience with theologians who have argued the same thing, while substituting "supernatural" for "subatomic," to fall for that kind of BS -- and no one else should, either.

If a scientist encounters what appears to be a contradiction, then this indicates that more work needs to be done until the contradiction is resolved. This is how science (and all) knowledge progresses. For anyone to attribute the contradiction to nature itself, instead of to an incomplete or inadequate state of knowledge, while claiming that the law of identity does not apply to nature, is arrant nonsense -- literal nonsense.

Ghs

And thus in the 1920's the new religion took root....

[dennislmay]

Good stuff - I had not heard that Bell had warned them. It is not surprising though based on Bell's awareness of intellectual sabotage going on generally.

Dennis

Sabotage or disagreement?

Ba'al Chatzaf

Sabotage

[George H. Smith]

I stepped in here only to deal with my own stepped-on toes, with regard to the vacuous and pretentious question "Why is there something rather than nothing?"

Here is the standard O'ist reply to this question -- a reply that has also been given by atheists since the 18th century, in response the the First Cause Argument for the existence of God:

Why is there something rather than nothing? The why, in this context, asks for a causal explanation of existence, i.e.: What caused existence to exist? But a cause -- the what -- must first exist itself before it can cause anything.

The question is therefore nonsensical. It commits what O'ists call "the fallacy of the stolen concept." In other words, the concept cause presupposes the concept existence, so to ask for a cause of existence is to put the cart before the horse.

I would like to find that jerk or jerks who fucked me up but good at five, then, George, because I have been cursed by the vacuous and pretentious questions since.

Seriously, let me take this slowly so that I understand the grave epistemological blunder I may have made at age five and which may have impeded my understanding since.

Think of that five year old, George, and see if you can find the words to get him back on track with his inquiries.

Question to George:

Could it be that the epistemological blunder lies elsewhere?

Think about it: Objectivism rests on causality as a fundamental principle.

But isn't this phlosophical principle perfectly in sync with thinking about causality being at the origin of all existence?

I think the epistemoliogical blunder lies in dismissing causality by declaring the question to be nonsensical on the grounds that cause cannot be known.

In addition - going by the premise that matter 'always was' (which one can assume to be the principle of every atheistic philosophy), one would get non-causality as the origin of a philosophy resting on causality. Quite a contradiction, isn't it?

The question to ask is: How does this mesh with a philosophy based on the law of non-contradiction?

I frankly don't understand your point. O'ists don't dimiss causality in any sense. They simply point out that there must exist something that acts as a cause.

Suppose you say X caused Y -- and I ask, What is X? You reply, X is nothing -- literally nothing. It doesn't exist.

Well, if your cause X doesn't or didn't exist, then it could not have caused anything. Moreover, if X doesn't or didn't exist, then there would be no possible way to identify it. What would you say? -- Oh, I mean that "nothing" over there, not that "nothing" over here? Any such discussion immediately lapses into gibberish.

Ghs

[Peter]

George wrote:

For anyone to attribute the contradiction to nature itself, instead of to an incomplete or inadequate state of knowledge, while claiming that the law of identity does not apply to nature, is arrant nonsense -- literal nonsense.

end quote

I agree, though I quibble about it. The law of identity applies to QM and QM is deterministic, only not in a way we are used to seeing in the bigger, molecular world.

In the lectures I saw, Feynman was mostly joshing Jewish theology. He did speak as if his sentences were experimentally provable, that his personal “philosophy of science” was provable and that the problem he had accepting philosophical discourse from the “experts” was, it was not precisely built like a scientific hypothesis. He also detested, “. . . calling the Social Sciences, *Science*. “Not yet,” he said: “Maybe someday.”

Dennis wrote:

Synchronization: Two clocks on the same wall - if they are nearly identical slight vibrations carried along the wall can cause them to track in time exactly. A phenomenon known for a very long time and often discussed in chaos theory.

Hyperchaotic Synchronization - two sets of many clocks become synchronized by the same method as synchronization.

end quote

Menstrual Synchronization also occurs in all girl dorms. If a multi-generational space ship’s inhabitants wanted children to be born to specific fathers with special abilities, from a sperm bank for diversity, they might want to keep the women’s pheromones apart so all the kids won’t be born in the same week. That would be a problem too, if you had a harem. I would volunteer to be a crewman.

So, a subatomic particle *somehow* has a synchronized twin that reacts if the twin particle is *touched* or even just observed, which is somehow also akin to a *touch*. Something wondrous happens. The reaction is wondrous because it was even magical to Einstein and Feynman, just as advanced technology is magical to primitive people. But like all magic, the slight of hand will be revealed by a slow motion camera – the mind of Man.

I recently bought an inscribed, dark granite headstone with my name and birth date and a plot but the world is too fascinating to hasten my demise. To show a good representation of the finished product, the funeral home lady wanted a hypothetical date of death. I chose one hundred years from the date of my birth. I want to be here when the next big discovery occurs.

Peter

[Xray]

Why is there something rather than nothing? The why, in this context, asks for a causal explanation of existence, i.e.: What caused existence to exist? But a cause -- the what -- must first exist itself before it can cause anything.

But from the premise that everything that exists has a cause, it follows that there must also be something that caused existence to exist. Agreed?

I frankly don't understand your point. O'ists don't dimiss causality in any sense. They simply point out that there must exist something that acts as a cause.

So it is implied that there must exist an X that caused existence to exist. The fact that X is not known does not attack the principle of causality.

Suppose you say X caused Y -- and I ask, What is X? You reply, X is nothing -- literally nothing. It doesn't exist.

The analogy (referring to the cosmos) would be: Y (the cosmos) exists, and since everything that exists has a cause, there must also exist X that caused the cosmos to exist.

The correct reply to "What is X? is therefore not, "X is nothing", but: "X is not known to any of us, but going by the causality principle, X must exist."

[BaalChatzaf]

The analogy (referring to the cosmos) would be: Y (the cosmos) exists, and since everythig that exists has a cause, there must also exist X that caused the cosmos to exist.

The correct reply to "What is X? is therefore not, "X is nothing", but: "X is not known to any of us, but going by the causality principle, X must exist."

The current epoch of existence may have followed a preceding epoch that was nothing like the current epoch. Think of a radical phase change. See liquid water (with no crystalline stricture become ice which does have structure). A discontinuity in properties. Our current cosmos could have emerge from a prior cosmos which had a very different nature (perhaps completely different laws) than the current cosmos. There is no guarantee of similarity or continuity between cause and effect which means we might not be able to infer what the before was like by studying the after.

I am inclined toward some version of quasi-cyclic eternity. Something or other always has existed but what existed before may be little or nothing like what exists now and what will exist after. That way we can scratch the itch of causality and still have a puzzle.

Unfortunately our scientific methodology and technology can only take us back so far. And our current theories break down at the instant of phase change --- the so-called singularity whatever that is.

Investigation in Origins is a very sticky business. The other big problem of Origins is how life came to be on this planet. No one knows. Most people who think about it are pretty well convinced that life emerged from non-life but no one really knows how. The closest thing in recent years if Craig Venter synthesizing a living cell from non-living matter. There is no guarantee that what he did in any way resembles what happened on this planet billions of years ago.

Aside from curiosity, I see very little useful coming knowing what the Cosmo was like over 13 billion years ago (or even before) since we cannot really reproduce the conditions. Knowing what the laws of physics are in the current epoch after things settled down somewhat from the Big Phase Change is much more useful to know.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

The analogy (referring to the cosmos) would be: Y (the cosmos) exists, and since everythig that exists has a cause, there must also exist X that caused the cosmos to exist.

The correct reply to "What is X? is therefore not, "X is nothing", but: "X is not known to any of us, but going by the causality principle, X must exist."

The current epoch of existence may have followed a preceding epoch that was nothing like the current epoch. Think of a radical phase change. See liquid water (with no crystalline stricture become ice which does have structure). A discontinuity in properties. Our current cosmos could have emerge from a prior cosmos which had a very different nature (perhaps completely different laws) than the current cosmos. There is no guarantee of similarity or continuity between cause and effect which means we might not be able to infer what the before was like by studying the after.

I am inclined toward some version of quasi-cyclic eternity. Something or other always has existed but what existed before may be little or nothing like what exists now and what will exist after. That way we can scratch the itch of causality and still have a puzzle.

Unfortunately our scientific methodology and technology can only take us back so far. And our current theories break down at the instant of phase change --- the so-called singularity whatever that is.

Investigation in Origins is a very sticky business. The other big problem of Origins is how life came to be on this planet. No one knows. Most people who think about it are pretty well convinced that life emerged from non-life but no one really knows how. The closest thing in recent years if Craig Venter synthesizing a living cell from non-living matter. There is no guarantee that what he did in any way resembles what happened on this planet billions of years ago.

Aside from curiosity, I see very little useful coming knowing what the Cosmo was like over 13 billion years ago (or even before) since we cannot really reproduce the conditions. Knowing what the laws of physics are in the current epoch after things settled down somewhat from the Big Phase Change is much more useful to know.

Ba'al Chatzaf

If we knew all the answers and knew we did it would be a serious mental death characteristic of religions.

--Brant

[dennislmay]

The analogy (referring to the cosmos) would be: Y (the cosmos) exists, and since everythig that exists has a cause, there must also exist X that caused the cosmos to exist.

The correct reply to "What is X? is therefore not, "X is nothing", but: "X is not known to any of us, but going by the causality principle, X must exist."

The current epoch of existence may have followed a preceding epoch that was nothing like the current epoch. Think of a radical phase change. See liquid water (with no crystalline stricture become ice which does have structure). A discontinuity in properties. Our current cosmos could have emerge from a prior cosmos which had a very different nature (perhaps completely different laws) than the current cosmos. There is no guarantee of similarity or continuity between cause and effect which means we might not be able to infer what the before was like by studying the after.

I am inclined toward some version of quasi-cyclic eternity. Something or other always has existed but what existed before may be little or nothing like what exists now and what will exist after. That way we can scratch the itch of causality and still have a puzzle.

Unfortunately our scientific methodology and technology can only take us back so far. And our current theories break down at the instant of phase change --- the so-called singularity whatever that is.

Investigation in Origins is a very sticky business. The other big problem of Origins is how life came to be on this planet. No one knows. Most people who think about it are pretty well convinced that life emerged from non-life but no one really knows how. The closest thing in recent years if Craig Venter synthesizing a living cell from non-living matter. There is no guarantee that what he did in any way resembles what happened on this planet billions of years ago.

Aside from curiosity, I see very little useful coming knowing what the Cosmo was like over 13 billion years ago (or even before) since we cannot really reproduce the conditions. Knowing what the laws of physics are in the current epoch after things settled down somewhat from the Big Phase Change is much more useful to know.

Ba'al Chatzaf

For those of us who do not buy The Big Bang Theory or similar incarnations there is no first cause issue. The universe has always existed and will always continue to exist. As George H. Smith said causation presupposes existence.

Dennis

[BaalChatzaf]

For those of us who do not buy The Big Bang Theory or similar incarnations there is no first cause issue. The universe has always existed and will always continue to exist. As George H. Smith said causation presupposes existence.

Dennis

A tautology which tells us nothing of how it was -before- now.

The cosmos (or some version of it) has always existed. What was it like? Can we find out? An existential assertion devoid of properties is not much use.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[dennislmay]

For those of us who do not buy The Big Bang Theory or similar incarnations there is no first cause issue. The universe has always existed and will always continue to exist. As George H. Smith said causation presupposes existence.

Dennis

A tautology which tells us nothing of how it was -before- now.

The cosmos (or some version of it) has always existed. What was it like? Can we find out? An existential assertion devoid of properties is not much use.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Not all of us even buy the concept "how it was -before- now". I am one of those who see the current universe as a form of steady-state. The red-shift is a slowly increasing speed of time but that can extend infinitely into the past and future. It is non-linear QM which allows a series of solutions towards a form of steady-state

universe [different than previous attempts].

Dennis

[George H. Smith]

For those of us who do not buy The Big Bang Theory or similar incarnations there is no first cause issue. The universe has always existed and will always continue to exist. As George H. Smith said causation presupposes existence. Dennis

A tautology which tells us nothing of how it was -before- now. The cosmos (or some version of it) has always existed. What was it like? Can we find out? An existential assertion devoid of properties is not much use. Ba'al Chatzaf

If there is anything worse than using a tautology as a guide to science, it is contradicting a tautology in the name of science.

In fact, however, my point about causation is not a tautology at all.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

Why is there something rather than nothing? The why, in this context, asks for a causal explanation of existence, i.e.: What caused existence to exist? But a cause -- the what -- must first exist itself before it can cause anything.

But from the premise that everything that exists has a cause, it follows that there must also be something that caused existence to exist. Agreed?

No. O'ists (and atheists generally) do not accept that premise that everything that exists (or has ever existed) had a cause.

I frankly don't understand your point. O'ists don't dimiss causality in any sense. They simply point out that there must exist something that acts as a cause.

So it is implied that there must exist an X that caused existence to exist. The fact that X is not known does not attack the principle of causality.

No. To say that something must first exist before it can function as a cause is not to say that everything that exists must have a cause.

Suppose you say X caused Y -- and I ask, What is X? You reply, X is nothing -- literally nothing. It doesn't exist.

The analogy (referring to the cosmos) would be: Y (the cosmos) exists, and since everythig that exists has a cause, there must also exist X that caused the cosmos to exist.

This wasn't my point at all. If the totality of existence, past and present, had a cause, then that cause either exists or does not exist. If the cause exists (or existed), then it is part of the totality of existence and cannot explain the totality of existence. If the cause does not (or did not) exist, then it could not have been the cause of anything.

Ghs