universe/laws?

@JLNobody,

JLNobody wrote:

Interesting. You are saying that in an expansive universe, some galaxies will be passing toward us on their way (away) from their present location?

yes

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JLNobody

to elaborate a bit on my last post , imagine this

you are 1 million light yrs from us

and expanding

would you not be expanding towards us , as we are towards you ?

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@JLNobody,

Yes, his theory was no doubt supported by research for it to become widely accepted. But the questions that were posed and that contemporary scientists felt had to be answered were devised based on the human experience of existence. In those days it was much more common to think in naive realistic terms, which urged people to ask the question of an origin of the universe in the first place, thinking that something that is now has to have begun at some point.
Why do we think that? It's because that is how it is in the physical world we perceive, and that same logic is extended to something that is so vast that we can hardly be sure it applies. I am not saying that I think the big bang theory is false. It's just a story of how it could have happened based on the facts we have uncovered, same as the genesis is a story of what might have happened based on some concepts that were familiar to people in the days when the story first originated. Neither is more true than the other, they are just stories. The reason that big bang theory is perhaps easier to swallow for the rational minds of our time is that the story is told in a language that we are familiar with.

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@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

Yes, his theory was no doubt supported by research for it to become widely accepted. But the questions that were posed and that contemporary scientists felt had to be answered were devised based on the human experience of existence. In those days it was much more common to think in naive realistic terms, which urged people to ask the question of an origin of the universe in the first place, thinking that something that is now has to have begun at some point.
Why do we think that? It's because that is how it is in the physical world we perceive, and that same logic is extended to something that is so vast that we can hardly be sure it applies. I am not saying that I think the big bang theory is false. It's just a story of how it could have happened based on the facts we have uncovered, same as the genesis is a story of what might have happened based on some concepts that were familiar to people in the days when the story first
originated. Neither is more true than the other, they are just stories. The reason that big bang theory is perhaps easier to swallow for the rational minds of our time is that the story is told in a language that we are familiar with.

hence why reasoning with imagination is more important than logic

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@north,

Well, logic is priceless, but we make many assumptions that may not be justifiable simply because we need a foundation on which to base our logic. We could not have reached the understanding we have today without going through what was done in previous centuries, at least not following the path we have chosen...

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@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

Well, logic is priceless, but we make many assumptions that may not be justifiable simply because we need a foundation on which to base our logic. We could not have reached the understanding we have today without going through what was done in previous centuries, at least not following the path we have chosen...

what logic is based on is knowledge gained and the resultant reasoning

logic is in the last stage of thought

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@north,

As I understand it INDUCTIVE logic reveals implications of observations ; DEDUCTIVE logic reveals entailments from assumptions.

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@dpmartin,

Quote:

G H thanks for the reply Sorry dude, it seems to me that science doesn’t a agree with that, in general science now a days in agrees that the universe had a start (calling it the Big Bang)

Hi, dpmartin. The Big Bang does not concern the start, origin, genesis, etc., of the universe:

P. J. E. Peebles: "That the universe is expanding and cooling is the essence of the big bang theory. You will notice I have said nothing about an 'explosion' - the big bang theory describes how our universe is evolving, NOT HOW IT BEGAN." January 2001 edition of Scientific American, p. 44

Bjorn Feuerbacher and Ryan Scranton: "The Big Bang Theory is not about the origin of the universe. Rather, its primary focus is the development of the universe over time. BBT does not imply that the universe was ever point-like. The origin of the universe was not an explosion of matter into already existing space." --Common Misconceptions of the Big Bang, The TalkOrigins Archive

Wikipedia article on Big Bang: "As there is LITTLE CONSENSUS among physicists about the origins of the universe, the Big Bang theory explains only that such a rapid expansion caused the young universe to cool and resulted in its present continuously expanding state."

Quote:

what you speak of sounds like what used to be considered, the universe was forever there, therefore its own cause.

There have been a horde of theories and models suggested over the last 20 years (like the one below) that assimilate the Big Bang into the prior history of a recycling universe or some mega-reality that preceded it, and so-forth. Science is ceaseless change and revision. The current fare celebrated by cosmology and physics will likely be as bygone in a future era as some of the 19th century versions are now.

Anil Ananthaswamy: "Is our universe a recycled version of an earlier cosmos? The idea, which replaces the big bang with a 'big bounce', has received a boost: this vision of the birth of the universe can explain why a subsequent process, called inflation, occurred.[...] Enter loop quantum gravity, devised by Abhay Ashtekar of Pennsylvannia State University (PSU) in University Park and colleagues to reconcile general relativity with quantum mechanics. When Ashtekar's team created cosmological models inspired by LQG in 2006, these suggested the universe emerged from the remnants of an earlier universe that was crunched down to a tiny volume by gravity, not from the big bang. [...] That offers an explanation for why inflation might have occurred, and strengthens the idea that our origins lie in a big bounce, Ashtekar and Sloan conclude." --Big bounce cosmos makes inflation a sure thing, New Scientist Magazine, issue 2782, October 2010

Immanuel Kant predicted an endless process of new discoveries and formulations in mathematics and physics, as well as defining methodological naturalism at the end here: "In mathematics and in natural philosophy [science] human reason admits of limits but not of bounds, viz., that something indeed lies without it, at which it can never arrive, but not that it will at any point find completion in its internal progress. The enlarging of our views in mathematics, and the possibility of new discoveries, are infinite; and the same is the case with the discovery of new properties of nature, of new powers and laws, by continued experience and its rational combination. But limits cannot be mistaken here, for mathematics refers to appearances only, and what cannot be an object of sensuous contemplation, such as the concepts of metaphysics and of morals, lies entirely without its sphere, and it can never lead to them; neither does it require them. It is therefore not a continual progress and an approximation towards these sciences, and there is not, as it were, any point or line of contact. Natural science will never reveal to us the internal constitution of things, which though not appearance, yet can serve as the ultimate ground of explaining appearance. Nor does that science require this for its physical explanations. Nay even if such grounds should be offered from other sources (for instance, the influence of immaterial beings), they must be rejected and not used in the progress of its explanations. For these explanations must only be grounded upon that which as an object of sense can belong to experience, and be brought into connection with our actual perceptions and empirical laws." --Section 57, Prolegomena To Any Future Metaphysics

Quote:

If the universe had a start, then what caused that? Of which, the universe is not its own cause, if it had a start. But that’s not what I was asking about.

You won't get a consensus from cosmologists and physicists about what laws are. As an example of their own brand of confusion, read this article about the subject -- all three pages of it, not just the first. Laws of Nature, Source Unknown: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/science/18law.html

short extraction: ". . . Yes, it’s a lawful universe. But what kind of laws are these, anyway [...] Are they merely fancy bookkeeping, a way of organizing facts about the world? Do they govern nature or just describe it? And does it matter that we don’t know and that most scientists don’t seem to know or care where they come from?

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@dpmartin,

dpmartin wrote:

rosborne979 wrote:

The "laws" of nature are actually just observations of its structure. Nature doesn't obey the laws, it is the laws.

rosborne, thanks for the reply

Not so sure about that, the universe conforms, in a manner that one can learn and express the knowledge of therefore the laws are expressible, and knowable, which makes the difference. How is it that the universe knows something that without a living thing to express it, can’t express it? But yet a living, can express the knowledge of.

It sounds like you're trying to construct the "nothing exists without an observer" argument, but all you do with that argument is to move the definition of "universe" from what we can collectively deduce to be outside of our minds, to our mind itself; A philosophically entertaining but ultimately banal transformation.

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@JLNobody,

JLNobody wrote:

As I understand it INDUCTIVE logic reveals implications of observations ; DEDUCTIVE logic reveals entailments from assumptions.

which are all based on reason

observations accumulate knowledge , then reason thinks upon , dwells , then comes to a conclusion and then logic gives the implications

assumptions , are based on the knowledge gained , reasoned out , then the logical entailments

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@north,

...although you can reason upon them, observations are already the product of reason, and they all are inductive generalizations from your personnel point of view...in turn deductive knowledge can only by applied formally and says nothing on the ultimate state of affairs of reality itself.

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Fil Albuquerque, this is your best post so far--as I see it. I agree that most of our perceptions are preshaped by years of conditioning. I work very hard to see things in the raw, as it were (in my meditation and abstract painting), and I can affirm that it is not what I do normally. Empirical research is in that sense a combination of deduction and induction, a combination of prejudicial and inferential observation. And, of course, deduction in a purely intellectual framework is strictly formal in nature, saying little about our actual experience of reality.

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Fil Albuquerque, this is your best post so far--as I see it. I agree that most of our perceptions are preshaped by years of conditioning. I work very hard to see things in the raw, as it were (in my meditation and abstract painting), and I can affirm that it is not what I do normally. Empirical research is in that sense a combination of deduction and induction, a combination of prejudicial and inferential observation. And, of course, deduction in a purely intellectual framework is strictly formal in nature, saying little about our actual experience of reality.

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@JLNobody,

...this is a good occasion for people to witness that even when I have my share of disagreements here and there, and so many of them go around definitions, I nevertheless don´t forget the potential good rebuttals the other side has to offer, and its not meant like a Christian monologue in which I am talking with Jesus all mighty...I just think sometimes we should make an effort to be more strict, more focused on what we all are trying to communicate to one another...

...in most debates around the forum I suffer the middle ground "no man´s land effect" on not being in neither side when things get hot...often both party´s judge me to be in the opposite stance all to soon...not beneficial to form alliances, and I often end up arguing with everybody just because I don´t easily endorse a clear stance...thankfully I am not here to play politics but to learn something with my fellow colleagues so no worries about that...anyway have a nice day JL ! Wink

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...another issue, that in so far no one has brought up front, is on the opinion you guys may have regarding the possibility of an entire different set of laws in another Multiverse being possible or even plausible...what do you think ? on what would you bet your necks on ?
I personally have the feeling, and is just an intuition, that no other set of laws is really possible mainly based on the idea that laws are n´t just rules but that they are reality itself in all its encompassing fulfilment...I have trouble in taking or accepting the idea of unlinked reality´s wastefully existing de-attached from each other without mutually giving rise to a further greater system of order to bind them all...and necessarily truly new rules would imply this detachment in place, otherwise they would be explained away by an higher degree set of compatible rules who would render them not true rules after all...so, what do you say on that regard ? what is your metaphysical intuition buzzing on your ears ?

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@Fil Albuquerque,

MY intuition, and that's all it is, no more than a strong hunch that there is only ONE unitary Reality. The notion of hermetically sealed off or alternative universes doesn't feel right. That doesn't mean, of course, that they can't exist because they don't feel right for me. Much of my life has been counter-intuitive.
And, as I've said before, the rules or laws of Nature are not statutes; they are its regularities, or as you said "they are reality itself...."

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@JLNobody,

Your question about "temporality" is the crux of the matter. You correctly identify "prediction and control" as the modus operandi of cognitive beings and that, by definition, requires a "time dimension". (Indeed Heidegger pointed out that temporality was essential to Existenz, which he claimed only Daseins (humans) had). In other words the construction we call "the universe" is not some external manifestation of reality subject to independent laws, but is an extension of our own cognitive mode with its pragmatic requirement for establishing "regularities".

(Apologies if these points have already been made....igm, for example, in his "time as human nature" comment).

Those looking for a resolution of "scientific" and "philosophical" aspects of this question might be interested in googling "embodied consciousness" topics.

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@fresco,

Dogs, octopus and even cows are also able of prediction and control into some extent Fresco...not to mention dolphins or our close cousins chimps...

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@Fil Albuquerque,

...but not in the sense of "contemplative thought" without "action". It is "we" who interpret their regularities of behaviour anthropomorphically. They require no "thoughts of an extant world" in order for us to make our interpretation.

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

...but not in the sense of "contemplative thought" without "action". It is "we" who interpret their regularities of behaviour anthropomorphically. They require no "thoughts of an extant world" in order for us to make our interpretation.

...well I don´t know maybe dolphins have a dolphomorphical interpretation of the world... and yet prediction and control for hunting for instance require special attention to regularity´s and patterns of behaviour, otherwise by by lunch...and just in case you come up with the typical instinct reply think upon the example of killer whales who inclusively have at least two complete different types of culture going on, those who are fishers and those who are hunters...as for the sense of the "I", the self, several animals can identify themselves on a mirror...aside some increase in complexity I don´t see any particular evidence that makes humans such a special case...

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