Dear George Gantz
Thank you for your comments on my essay I will respond on my page.
Your exceptionally well-written essay is refreshing because it grapples with questions that the sciences have practically banished from educated discourse these days. Yes science and religion do not mesh and I believe should not attempt to try to, but this leaves important questions that remain unanswered, and you have put them into a beautiful gilded Whole Hole Box for further respectful inspection and contemplation. Your WHB is a good place to turn to when multiverses, questions of what happened before the Big Bang and so forth crop up.
Some haphazard remarks generated by my reading:
- Like most educated Westerners these days the development of mathematical and scientific thought is neatly channelled into the Greeks-to-Renaissance story. This ignores the important achievements of Hindu, Arab and Muslim scientists, mathematicians and philosophers who have grappled and solved some of the conundrums before they landed in Europe.
-Another thing is that Buddhist thought ancient and modern has centered on much of the Whole-Hole idea you highlight. Zen of course is wholly focused on the idea of emptying the mind to find truth. The philosophy of Kitaro Nishida centers on the concept of Nothing. I hastily withdraw from further discussion on all of this as my mind is happily materialistic as far as physics in concerned. (While looking for a place to stay in Kyoto my wife an I met Kirtaro's widow, but the rooms offered where impossible: she kept about 60 cats roaming the grounds and the stench of fish and cat litter was overwhelming! That was Something).
- For an essay centering on the Whole-Hole in the Universe you only mention the Big Bang in passing but there is nothing about the vacuum but that is alright because the thrust of your essay is more philosophical than materialistic.
- You touch on Quantum and Relativistic mysteries and paradoxes. In my outline theory Beautiful Universe I try to show how the assumption of a Universe of simple mechanical self-assembled dielectric nodes may answer many of these questions in realistic terms.
What remains of course is to be found in the WHB.
Ommmmmmmm
Best wishes from Vladimir