Dear Earle,
Thank you for providing this alternative viewpoint. It is always needed when searching for truth. Very good rating from me. My view is from a different angle. Perhaps, God or Nature is using space discretely to carry out His works.
Best regards,
Akinbo
Dear Earle,
In addition to what I said above, I saw on Eugene Klingman's blog where you said, "I now see space, not as a container in which "things" reside, but as a mental and perceptual coordinate system by which we keep track of where and when we are". This is the relationist view as opposed to the substantivalist view. Now let me ask:
Is it being implied by the relational view of space and as suggested by Mach's principle that what decides whether a centrifugal force would act between two bodies in *constant relation*, would not be the bodies themselves, since they are at fixed distance to each other, nor the space in which they are located since it is a nothing, but by a distant sub-atomic particle light-years away in one of the fixed stars in whose reference frame the *constantly related* bodies are in circular motion?
NOTE THAT in no other frame can circular motion between the bodies be described in this circumstance except in the 'observing' sub-atomic particle.
I will come back here for answer or if you have not read my essay you can visit my blog.
Regards,
Akinbo
Dear Earle,
I have down loaded your essay and soon post my comments on it. Meanwhile, please, go through my essay and post your comments.
Regards and good luck in the contest,
Sreenath BN.
http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1827
Dear Fernan,
You look for a unifying principle and find a mind-like God. I say that that concept is just a projection of our own minds onto the Cosmos. Our linguistic consciousness is actually a late product of Cosmic evolution--we must look to the Cosmos for our answers. When we look for a cause of light's fixed velocity, of inertia, and of gravity we find that "space" itself must be the cause, it must be a substance. We have no theory of this substance precisely because Berkeley said Science should only count, measure, and predict because there is no cause except God. Indeed, the ether idea has been taboo precisely because is the natural philosophical alternative to God-spiritualism. It is time for our species to again begin using our minds to understand and explain the Cosmos, as did the pre-Socratics and Aristotle. Philosophy has been suppressed since the ascendance of Christianity, recall Justinian's destruction of the schools in Athens.
I wonder if you seriously believe in Berkeley's theory that all Cosmic phenomena are apparitions fed to our minds by God--that God is running a spiritual Matrix just like the computer Matrix run by the machines in the movie. If you believe this, then you can actually say that God is the cause of everything. If you don't believe it, then you need to have a theory of why light moves at c, relative to what, what causes inertia, etc.
The Cosmos has indeed evolved--from subatomic particles, to atoms, to molecules, to complex molecular machines we call life, to living things with nervous systems, to living creatures with language. This is not really debatable, is it? You may say that mind-God caused this evolution. I say that we need not posit any cause except that which is evident. The Cosmos does exist and it is a self-evolving being. If you want to call Cosmos "God", it's OK with me.
All the evidence points to space as the source of all fundamental physical phenomena, and therefore of the evolution of this complexity. How and why this space exists and has the capacity to support this evolution towards linguistic creatures is the most profound question. It is a mystery, but at least it is a real mystery and not an anthropocentric fantasy that replaces the mystery with a name, "God". We can create a theory of space--it only needs to be sufficiently complex to support the fundamental phenomena. Once it produces subatomic particles, then they go on to produce atoms, and atoms molecules, and molecules bacteria, etc.
Henry
Earle,
Thank you for that very well written and argued grounding in reason to counter the excesses of Wheelers provocative but crazy idea. I couldn't agree more with your fundamental and undeniable truth "Contemporary science has no secure theory of causality which has led to a questioning of science itself."
I also champion causality in my essay, but not just Einstein's causality, I show that mathematics cannot describe all of nature by reducing it to just numbers and computation. A causal but not precisely computable resolution of the EPR paradox emerges without demanding 'spookyness'.
I have derived a cyclic universe, discussed elsewhere, but even then an origin is equally required. It's just a case of 'when' which becomes a meaningless question.
It was a pleasure to encounter your essay. Thank you. I hope you'll read mine, and if you feel it worth endowing with points so it may be more noticed then I'd be most grateful. I'd also be very interested in your views as I had virtually no concious thought of biblical matters in writing it.
Thank you, and bless you.
Peter
Dear Edwin Klingman - Aug 2
(I wrote a lengthy post yesterday, Aug 1, which seems to have disappeared. I have saved this response offline to be safe. Maybe the other one will turn up. This response will apply to many others who have written on my blog....)
Reading your essay, I totally agree with your notion that the "beauty" of the math does little to prove that a theory is true. There are two ways to show the truth of a theory: Either it is logically necessary, or it corresponds to some observable facts. The beautiful simplicity of a theory might recommend it over a more complicated theory which proves the same thing, but it does not show the truth of it.
The whole point of empirical science is to provide a way of finding the truth of non-logically-necessary statements, statements about the contingent, experiential world of daily routine, the world of personal relationships. A Scottish philosopher at about the end of the 19th century, John Macmurray) remarked that all thought is for the sake of action, and all action is for the sake of relationship.
I am not sure that is 100% correct, but largely on target. It is far more our personal relationships than it is philosophy by itself which compels us to truth-speaking (at least for ordinary folks, which most of the time is all of us). When we become inconsistent in relationships we often pay a high price - relatives and friends get mad. Philosophy, to be helpful, must filter down (or up) to ordinary life, family, job, religion, etc. That means it must conform to observable fact as well as abstract logic.
As you quote Smolin, "There is a cheapness at the core of any claim that our universe is ultimately explained by another, more perfect world standing apart from everything we perceive." Exactly. It renders "the boundary between science and mysticism porous."
I begin to question your paper when you say things like, "...we can assume that only one real field existed initially. If so, it could evolve only through self-interaction."
That, I think, is the real challenge for your view - showing in what sense "fields" can have a personal identity (which is what you seem to imply). The cosmological argument for God is workable, I think. I have my doubts that a similar argument can work from within the cosmos. On the cosmological argument, we would not evolve only through self-interaction. Our evolving first would be caused by our intelligent designer existing outside the cosmos of contingent existence (natural law) and then would be in freewill partnership and cooperation with our intelligent designer (moral law). The goal of it all would be a community: the kingdom of heaven, a community based on love (the two great commandments - to love God and neighbor). The natural world functions primarily as the stage upon which the community is to happen.
You are, of course, taking the non-theological approach, or, at least as you say, trying as far as possible, to work out things with only what a secular view can work with. (Would you say that the word 'secular' fits your paper?) My essay was written to challenge precisely that assumption, that we can logically or empirically justify and explain the existence of science without the God-assumption.
There is no solely logical argument that God exists. The ontological argument fails, I think. The cosmological argument proves only that it is not apriori irrational to believe in God. The case from then on depends on the empirical evidence, personal experience, the testimony of others, and revelation (God making himself known).
So, metaphysics, in my view, tries to answer the question, "What must we assume to be true in order for the project of empirical science (i.e., a rational cosmos) to make sense?" I do not take the Greek approach, which is typical of the pagan world, asking, "What is the nature of pure Being?" That, I suspect, is an impossible question to answer, leading nowhere.
The case for gravity, or any other aspect of the cosmos, such as space itself (as other contestants are trying to develop), being a cause, especially a cause with freewill, intelligence, and purpose, seems to me a bit daunting, much more so than the case for God acting from outside the contingent cosmos. I will try to address that later.
Blessings, Earle
Dear Earle,
I'm glad you come back to the forum! I'm waiting for you on my forum. Your opinion is very valuable to me.
With best wishes and regards,
Vladimir
Greetings, All,
I have been incommunicado on vacation for several days, and out of the FQXi loop. But will try to respond to the many ideas and queries noted above, with the following being a start.
My viewpoint is different from probably most other posts, namely, defending the Biblical point of view that only a personal God who creates the cosmos ex-nihilo can give substance to the empirical sciences. It was not an accident that the empirical sciences were first produced in the mostly Christian culture of the late middle ages. Christian faith and practice had already begun to petrify in a hyper-masculine theology in which the Biblical doctrine of creation was taking second place to an atonement-oriented theology with focus on guilt rather than on the goodness of creation. The human race has always provided plenty of guilt to be dealt with, but the Fall did not overwhelm the goodness of God's creation -- as some Christian theologians seem to imply.
In any event, enough of creation theology remained to become the undergirding for understanding God as the cause of the cosmos, who declared it to be good, to be reasonable, and to be improvable. The empirical attitude was natural to the Biblical framework which saw the world as an ongoing historical relationship between God and His creatures. History, particularity, persons, time, and space, etc., were fundamentally important, not the viewpoint of paganism anywhere that I am aware of. Such thoughts were uniquely or (or nearly so) given in world philosophy via the Biblical worldview, and were combined with the Hellenic gift for abstract thinking -- leading to the natural sciences.
It appears to me that all attempts at finding the foundations of the natural sciences *within* the cosmos itself, as per the secular view, necessitate the reinvention of God within the cosmos in order to explain the cosmos. But that creates problems which I think are insoluble. Hence my interest in the FQXi question for this year.
More coming shortly.
Blessings to all, Earle Fox
Dear Edwin,
This is late in coming, but here it is.
You wrote above:
"I assume that you do not think the universe is 6000 years old, or whatever, and I further assume you must feel that things fit together intelligently, if they are the product of Intelligent Design. Of course you may think that everything exists as 'pieces', but I find it much more intelligent to design a universe as the unfolding of ONE in the beginning."
I am waiting to see how the evidence sorts itself out on the age of the cosmos, but am not really up to date on the subject. I tend to favor the "old" cosmos. And, yes, I think intelligent design means things fitting together as an intentional unity.
I do not think that things emerged in a random chance fashion, which seems more to imply the idea of "pieces" than does intelligent design. The unity of such pieces would be that given by the Creator being the ultimate "intender" of all of them. "Intelligent design" implies a freewill activity, not a progression from either random chance or material necessity. Design leaves open the possibility of a series of decisions, as an artist painting a picture. It comes from a primal unified "vision", but it can have many steps as it grows to existing completion.
in such a situation, each free act of adding to the creation would, in a sense, be a "singularity", neither logically nor physically caused and thus neither logically nor physically necessary. It could have been otherwise. Being possibly "otherwise" is just what we mean by a contingent world, which thus needs an "explanation", an accounting for why it is the way it is, or why it is at all. Could God have created it all at once? No doubt, but the historical evidence suggests otherwise.
The question of the universe being the "unfolding of ONE in the beginning" raises four (or more) possibilities: 1. Intelligent design; 2. random chance; 3. materialist determinism; or 4. logical determinism. Each would have its own kind of original "unity". I am not sure which sort of unity your case would indicate, but my understanding is that you favor a freewill notion of causality which seems to me to suggest intelligent design. I do not see how #s 2, 3, or 4 could lead to a rational cosmos, which requires freewill and thus intelligent design.
The typical pagan sense of primal unity (Plato, NeoPlatonism, Eastern religion, etc....) reduces the beginning to an abstraction (pure being, or even worse, non-being) having power to bring existence out of pure possibility.
The only way I can see to have a rational unity without God would be to invest physical reality with intentions and thus with some kind of personality, as you do with gravity, if I understand your case. Since I do not understand your math, I might not understand your conclusions.
Investing gravity (or any part of the cosmos) with God-like qualities would have to produce the same results that God from outside the cosmos is supposed to accomplish. If so, how could the two not begin to look like the same thing?
The question to be answered would seem to be whether God *inside* the cosmos would be a reasonable notion leading to a rational cosmos.
NOTE: for "inside the cosmos" and "outside the cosmos", see worldview library at http://www.theroadtoemmaus.org/RdLb/11Phl/WrldV/00Wvw.htm
Dear Edwin Klingman,
This is late in coming, but here it is. I first wrote it above directly after the quote from you below, but that post got hidden behind a "Show All Replies" notice, so I brought out here in the open.
You wrote above:
"I assume that you do not think the universe is 6000 years old, or whatever, and I further assume you must feel that things fit together intelligently, if they are the product of Intelligent Design. Of course you may think that everything exists as 'pieces', but I find it much more intelligent to design a universe as the unfolding of ONE in the beginning."
I am waiting to see how the evidence sorts itself out on the age of the cosmos, but am not really up to date on the subject. I tend to favor the "old" cosmos. And, yes, I think intelligent design means things fitting together as an intentional unity.
I do not think that things emerged in a random chance fashion, which seems more to imply the idea of disconnected "pieces" than does intelligent design. The unity of such pieces on the Biblical view would be that given by the Creator being the ultimate "intender" of all of them. "Intelligent design" implies a freewill activity, not a progression from either random chance or material necessity. Design leaves open the possibility of a series of decisions, as an artist painting a picture. It comes from a primal unified "vision", but it can have many steps as it grows to existing completion.
in such a situation, each free act of adding to the creation would, in a sense, be a "singularity", neither logically nor physically caused and thus neither logically nor physically necessary (a "piece" as you say). It could have been otherwise. Being possibly "otherwise" is just what we mean by a contingent world, which thus needs an "explanation", an accounting for why it is the way it is, or why it is at all. Could God have created it all at once? No doubt, but the historical evidence suggests otherwise.
The question of the universe being the "unfolding of ONE in the beginning" raises four (or more) possibilities: 1. Intelligent design; 2. random chance; 3. materialist determinism; or 4. logical determinism. Each would have its own kind of original "unity". I am not sure which sort of unity your case would indicate, but my understanding is that you favor a freewill notion of causality which seems to me to suggest intelligent design. I do not see how #s 2, 3, or 4 could lead to a rational cosmos, which requires freewill and thus intelligent design.
The typical pagan sense of primal unity (Plato, NeoPlatonism, Eastern religion, etc....) reduces the beginning to an abstraction (pure being, or even worse, non-being) having power to bring existence out of pure possibility. I see no sense in which possibility or abstractions could have causal power by themselves.
The only way I can see to have a rational unity without God would be to invest physical reality with intentions and thus with some kind of personality, as you do with gravity, if I understand your case. Since I do not understand your math, I might not understand your conclusions.
Investing gravity (or any part of the cosmos) with God-like qualities would have to produce the same results that God from outside the cosmos is supposed to accomplish. If so, how could the two not begin to look like the same thing?
The question to be answered then would be whether God *inside* the cosmos would be a reasonable notion leading to a rational cosmos.
NOTE: for "inside the cosmos" and "outside the cosmos", see worldview library at http://www.theroadtoemmaus.org/RdLb/11Phl/WrldV/00Wvw.htm
Having read so many insightful essays, I am probably not the only one to find that my views have crystallized, and that I can now move forward with growing confidence. I cannot exactly say who in the course of the competition was most inspiring - probably it was the continuous back and forth between so many of us. In this case, we should all be grateful to each other.
If I may, I'd like to express some of my newer conclusions - by themselves, so to speak, and independently of the logic that justifies them; the logic is, of course, outlined in my essay.
I now see the Cosmos as founded upon positive-negative charges: It is a binary structure and process that acquires its most elemental dimensional definition with the appearance of Hydrogen - one proton, one electron.
There is no other interaction so fundamental and all-pervasive as this binary phenomenon: Its continuance produces our elements - which are the array of all possible inorganic variants.
Once there exists a great enough correlation between protons and electrons - that is, once there are a great many Hydrogen atoms, and a great many other types of atoms as well - the continuing Cosmic binary process arranges them all into a new platform: Life.
This phenomenon is quite simply inherent to a Cosmos that has reached a certain volume of particles; and like the Cosmos from which it evolves, life behaves as a binary process.
Life therefore evolves not only by the chance events of natural selection, but also by the chance interactions of its underlying binary elements.
This means that ultimately, DNA behaves as does the atom - each is a particle defined by, and interacting within, its distinct Vortex - or 'platform'.
However, as the cosmic system expands, simple sensory activity is transformed into a third platform, one that is correlated with the Organic and Inorganic phenomena already in existence: This is the Sensory-Cognitive platform.
Most significantly, the development of Sensory-Cognition into a distinct platform, or Vortex, is the event that is responsible for creating (on Earth) the Human Species - in whom the mind has acquired the dexterity to focus upon itself.
Humans affect, and are affected by, the binary field of Sensory-Cognition: We can ask specific questions and enunciate specific answers - and we can also step back and contextualize our conclusions: That is to say, we can move beyond the specific, and create what might be termed 'Unified Binary Fields' - in the same way that the forces acting upon the Cosmos, and holding the whole structure together, simultaneously act upon its individual particles, giving them their motion and structure.
The mind mimics the Cosmos - or more exactly, it is correlated with it.
Thus, it transpires that the role of chance decreases with evolution, because this dual activity (by which we 'particularize' binary elements, while also unifying them into fields) clearly increases our control over the foundational binary process itself.
This in turn signifies that we are evolving, as life in general has always done, towards a new interaction with the Cosmos.
Clearly, the Cosmos is participatory to a far greater degree than Wheeler imagined - with the evolution of the observer continuously re-defining the system.
You might recall the logic by which these conclusions were originally reached in my essay, and the more detailed structure that I also outline there. These elements still hold; the details stated here simply put the paradigm into a sharper focus, I believe.
With many thanks and best wishes,
John
jselye@gmail.com
Dear F Earle,
We are at the end of this essay contest.
In conclusion, at the question to know if Information is more fundamental than Matter, there is a good reason to answer that Matter is made of an amazing mixture of eInfo and eEnergy, at the same time.
Matter is thus eInfo made with eEnergy rather than answer it is made with eEnergy and eInfo ; because eInfo is eEnergy, and the one does not go without the other one.
eEnergy and eInfo are the two basic Principles of the eUniverse. Nothing can exist if it is not eEnergy, and any object is eInfo, and therefore eEnergy.
And consequently our eReality is eInfo made with eEnergy. And the final verdict is : eReality is virtual, and virtuality is our fundamental eReality.
Good luck to the winners,
And see you soon, with good news on this topic, and the Theory of Everything.
Amazigh H.
I rated your essay.
Please visit My essay.
Dear Fernen,
I have now finished reviewing all 180 essays for the contest and appreciate your contribution to this competition.
I have been thoroughly impressed at the breadth, depth and quality of the ideas represented in this contest. In true academic spirit, if you have not yet reviewed my essay, I invite you to do so and leave your comments.
You can find the latest version of my essay here:
http://fqxi.org/data/forum-attachments/Borrill-TimeOne-V1.1a.pdf
(sorry if the fqxi web site splits this url up, I haven't figured out a way to not make it do that).
May the best essays win!
Kind regards,
Paul Borrill
paul at borrill dot com
