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FQXi BLOGS
CATEGORY: Blog
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TOPIC: Why This Universe?
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There's an excellent -- really -- article available for free download from Skeptic.com called "Why This Universe?" by Robert Kuhn. The title, disarmingly broad as it is (one thinks of "Love and Death," Woody Allen's send-up of overly grandiose Russian novels) is nevertheless too narrow. The article is a synopsis, with a good amount of detail, of each of the major cosmological and philosophical issues surrounding the existence, and perceived characteristics, of the universe.
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Included in this multiverse of issues are "Meaningless Question‚" (nature and its parameters are a "brute fact," as philosopher Robert Nozick called it); "Necessary/Only Way‚" (the universe is the way it is as the result of "deep essence" of physical law); "Almost Necessary"; "Temporal Selection"; "Self-Explaining" ("the universe is self-created and self-explaining"); "Multiverse by Disconnected Regions"; "Multiverse by Cycles"; "Multiverse by Sequential Selection‚" "Multiverse by Quantum Branching," and so on, and on.
It's really a nicely comprehensive primer on the mind-bending fecundity of mind-bending possibilities, and excellent summer reading for folks interested in Foundational issues.
It's also good news this week -- or bad, if you were hoping for Relativity to take it on the chin -- for the question of whether fundamental constants have changed across time. The ratio of electron-to-proton masses has been carefully tested by an Australian lab comparing light from a quasar to the same type of light produced in a lab, in the thought that, one of these signals being a few billion years old, fluctuations across cosmic timescales would be observed. Physicsweb has the article, wryly titled "Fundamental constant is pretty much constant." The short version: plus ca change . . .
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Question: Einstein was smart enough to realize that if the clock is slowing down by the same amount as the yardstick is shrinking, the inertial observer won't be able to tell that anything has changed. Is it possible that the fundamental constants could be fluctuating in sync with the parameters required for measuring them, so that they always appear to be inviolate?
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Before I read the article link, I ask of the "way it is", ..why is it that some people ask certain questions, and other people ask other questions?
Why does the Universe display its reasons in such a varied way, why not create all questions and questioners as a default function, ie..say all questions by all persons exactly alike?
The next question of course is:In other many Universe's, what type of questions are asked, of other "possible" Universe's?
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This is an interesting article :Why not Nothing?
The article author gives a vast and varied collection of quotes from all disciplines. But I have to admit I have a problem with the definition of "Nothing", so as the author and a number of scientists interviewed. So as an example I will quote form the article:
1 “Wouldn’t it have been easier
if there were not even one thing, in the
sense that there is no causal activity,
whereas things require causes to bring
them into existence? Wouldn’t it have
been simpler in the sense that there are
zero things if there are no things, and
that as a number zero is simpler than
one, two, three or any other number?
Wouldn’t it have been more logical in the
sense that the laws of logic do not imply
there are things and if there are things,
that fact is inexplicable in terms of the
laws of logic?” (For euphony, as well as
simplicity, I will continue to use
“Nothing”—Quentin, my apologies.)"
The problem here is "nothing" in the context of, order/simplicity is actually completely the opposite of what it represents, I have had this arguement some years ago so before I continue let me quote from the article again:
While recognizingthat the empty world is vastly, even
infinitely, easer to describe, van Inwagenreasons that this should not increase itsrelative probability unless “one is covertlythinking that there is something that is outside the ‘Reality’, and “the simplicity of the empty world provides us with no reason to regard it as more probable than any other possibleworld.” .
To create complete order, such as reducing any system to a uniformed unity, is actually the most complexed process one can imagine. The definition of "simple-order" would mean a process of complete and absolute control, control over every particle, halting all trajectories to ensure that no further collisions occur. Reducing a system to absolute order is far more complex than allowing a system to have a finite gentle movement!
In the article there is a quote by omongst others Roger Penrose:Penrose’s analysis of the “extraordinary ‘specialness’ of the Big Bang” is based on the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the
“absurdly low entropy” [i.e., highly organized]
state of the very early universe.
My argument is that the "absurdly low entropy" here, is actually the most comlex function to ever have occured!..in mathematical terms, the nothing is represented by the zero, who can deny this number as being the most complex number in existence, far more complex than infinite?
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Isn't "zero" in that sense different from Nothingness at least because it contains within it the potentiality of Somethingness? Doesn't the existence of the universe demonstrate that there is no such thing as Nothingness except in the weak sense of a nothingness that contains the potential for existence?
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Hey Paul and Bob,
It is possible to fully understand zero in terms of complexity and potential, but you have to let go of your assumptions that zero exists in the past. Zero exists in the future of an expanding universe, not the past. Physicists have projected zero into the past in order to theorize that the universe naturally arose out of nothing rather than a God. In reacting to the bias of religion physicists build a case for the other side of the argument, expressing their own bias, with a no less ugly result. There is no nothing in the past, just increasing density and heat. But there is very distinctly a zero in the future. We all know the universe has been following a gradient of decreasing density, mass, and temperature since time began. The universe is presently even accelerating at zero. The acceleration of cosmological expansion began nearly six billion years ago.
So what is zero doing in our future you ask?
Simply imagine that all states or all universes physically exist timelessly, because all are merely fragments of a physically real zero. The void is timeless, eternal, there is no potential in the void, only actuality. The void is full. Zero is like a whole pie, it can be sliced up infinitely many ways, but it is always still a single whole. Everything we know is less than zero, not more than nothing. The void exists now, it has always existed, it will always exist. It is the native state of the universe. It is what David Bohm called implicate order. In the same way positive and negative numbers sum to zero, all the moments of time are like all the possible slices of the pie, they all exist and even construct the greater balanced whole we call zero. With little effort you can even appreciate how such fractions and the whole are naturally interdependent, always conserved, and their laws self-contained. Zero is the most ordered state, it just isn’t found in the past. It exists in the future.
“Why not nothing?” Who said nothing doesn’t exist? Nothing is just the whole world painted white, so that everything looks the same, the ultimate singularity. It is all worlds overlapping. Zero is a physically real nothing and everything simultaneously. What zero is not, is nonexistence. As Parmenides said, nonexistence cannot be. There is no state more extreme than the perfect void. Zero has always been. So nothing, the void, zero, is simple and complex at the same time. You can’t have the inner complexity of zero without the outer simplicity of balance, and you can’t have the balance without all the slices of the pie, without all the inner complexity of all the universes within zero.
What then is the (Alpha) singularity in our past. Just think in terms of the mathematical plane. Zero has a positive and a negative side. The positive is half of zero and the negative is the other half. Slice zero in half and you have a pure positive and a pure negative. The singularity in our past is the whole of the positive side, it is the perfect positive state. It is like all the white checkers divided apart from all of the black checkers, waiting for the game to begin. Since all positive (infinitely dense) is absolutely the most imbalanced state possible within existence (besides it’s inverse negative side which exists on the other side of zero) in terms of probability, it is the absolute most improbable state in all of reality. Zero on the other hand is perfect balance, so it is the most probable state in all of nature. Thus the arrows of time for all universes naturally point away from imbalance and toward balance. What we call time, which is really a direction in space, eternally branches away from the positive Alpha singularity out into the diversity of possibilities that exist between Alpha and zero (Omega), and because time has a goal, a destination, then time doesn’t get lost in chaos or disorder. Rather all the various paths of time all have one destination, the perfect order of zero, the ultimate singularity.
For more info you can visit my website or read my book. I am also currently working on a documentary.
Sincerely,
Gevin Giorbran
http://everythingforever.com
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I love these questions-- or, rather, this question, which surely is the most Foundational of all. It may also be the most important philosophical question: Why is there something? The best modern treatment of the question, already noted, is Robert Nozick's essay "Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?" from the book *Philosophical Explanations*. Nozick, who died much too young, honored the profession, and I highly recommend his work.
He points out that the natural-enough seeming question Why Is There Something? already presupposes a host of issues, none of which we know for certain how to treat. One, for example, is the assumption that Nothingness would be more "natural" than Somethingness, and would not itself be in need of an explanation. Imagine nothing (can we do that?) ever having existed. Though no one would exist to pose it, in some sense the question would still be valid: Why Is There Nothing Rather Than Something?
My sense is that a Newtonian perspective helps here. We used to think that motion required explanation but rest was more natural. This still is the default sense of things children fall into: why would an object being at rest need an explanation? Nothing is happening! But of course motion and rest are equally natural. If it's conceivable that an object can have been sitting still (in the Newtonian sense) forever, then it's just as conceivable for it to have been in motion forever, however oddly that strikes us.
Isn't it then likely that "not existing" is the equivalent of being at rest -- it just seems to the human mind to be more "natural" because it feels like the ultimate rest state? Probably because we make an effort to cause events, lifting objects and whatnot, it seems intuitive to us that objects themselves must "make an effort" to exist, and if that effort ceased the object would disappear. (Catholic theologians, among others, overtly make this claim. God not only *starts* the universe but keeps it existing with every moment, suggesting, again, that someone has to exert an effort in opposition to the natural tendency of things not to exist.)
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More probable, it seems to me, is a kind of Newtonian Ontology: existence should be regarded as a base state, not in need of further explanation. This is not the same as ignoring causality; the question of how a certain arrangement of matter and energy came about would remain after we had removed the pseudo-question of why it exists in general. But how could these ideas ever get out of the wooly woods of philosophy and into testable science?
I can't think of any real way, though it's worth noting that the conservation of matter/energy suggests a Newtonian Ontology pretty strongly. No matter how we try to remove an object from existence, it can't be done -- matter/energy doesn't disappear under any circumstances. (We can leave aside virtual particle pairs and the like, which probably have more to do with the limits of knowledge than with ontology.) And besides, the burden of proof should be on those who suggest that some hidden force is required to explain Being in general. What evidence is there for such a claim? Doesn't the principle of parsimony require that we begin with the fact of existence, simply taking it as a given?
At the moment the question of Nothingness (if it's really an idea at all, rather than a term with no referent, like "round square") will probably best be addressed by quantum mechanics or cosmology, or what Hawking and Hertog recently coined "quantum cosmology." There are certainly cosmological models that seem to include Nothing as part of their design -- but we have to be careful here. I had a conversation with Brian Greene once about the possibility of new universes emerging spontaneously from the vacuum. This is probably as close as modern science gets to the old philosophical difficulty of Something from Nothing -- but the physicist's vacuum is not Nothing. It's already embedded in spacetime; it's quantum foam; it has positive and negative energy potentials; it's subject to random fluctuation. These are not the characteristics of philosopher's Nothingness (which, of course, has no qualities). Is it time, I wonder, to dismiss the whole difficulty of Nothingness as naive, and replace it with more naturalistic questions of vacuum?
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Imagine standing at the very precipice of the birth of the multiverse. Imagine a cliff and out beyond the edge of the cliff there is nothing at all. So you put your hand out to the surface and touch the originating moment. Now push through it. Reach beyond. What is it like? Any words come to mind? Is it frightening, or menacing? Is it vibrant with all the potential of being? Is it thick or dark, warm or cold? Is it as simple as simple can be. Of course if you describe something, or feel anything, you haven’t gone enough beyond the origin of existing things. So try one more time. Let your mind drift beyond the edge of time, beyond all descriptions, beyond all senses. And yes there it isn’t, just beyond the edge of rational thought itself, hidden there in a blackness darker than black, a quiet beyond silence, a stillness beyond rest. Oh my, there “isn’t” the absolute void.
Are you still here! You didn't disappear? And you didn't get sucked in? But did you feel it? Did you at least sense it? “NO!” What do you mean “NO”! We were right there! How could that be? I wonder what went wrong. You must not have a very good imagination! No wait, maybe you do, maybe that is the problem. Maybe your imagination is getting in the way because what we are trying to imagine isn't cold or dark, or a void or an abyss, it isn’t quiet or simple, and it’s hardly anything to be afraid of, because it doesn't exist. Maybe this nothing is unimaginable because there is nothing to imagine. Indeed if you came up with any sense of what is beyond the cliff, then you sort of missed the point.
This thought exercise reveals a sort of anomaly in how we see the world. We cannot imagine nothingness, that is, if we are referring to a nothing prior to existence. We can describe the type of nothing that is common in our lives, the nothing that we encounter everyday. There is nothing here or there. There is nothing to talk about. There is nothing in the refrigerator. That type of nothing is something empty, something lacking substance, something uniform or plain or simple. But the other nothing that is prior to existence is a special case in terms of semantics and meaning. By definition, words simply can’t describe it, so it is different than everything else that we define with words and everything else imaginable.
In truth there are two very different nothings, and presently the two are entangled together when they don’t belong together. In other words, there is actually something wrong with the word nothing as we use it today. If we carefully study the definition of the word nothing we can discover two very different definitions of nothing. One definition of nothing is a physically real condition that has no discernable form or substance, such as a white canvas, or a uniform void in empty space. This type of nothing is real and exists, and is actually quite ordinary. An empty refrigerator has nothing in it. A white artist canvas has nothing painted on it. The real nothing is always a place or a space that is uniformly undefined, where there are no distinct things. There is just one thing, like one color, or just space alone, so we call it nothing. But the other definition of ‘nothing’, the one we were just a moment ago trying to touch and describe is nonexistence, which is a very difficult concept to understand when defined separately from the real nothing, which is the very reason we confuse the two. We confuse the two out of need, because one we can describe, the other we cannot.
The dictionary defines nothing as ‘something that does not exist’. How can ‘nothing’ be a something which does not exist? In fact simply using any word in an attempt to mean non-existence creates a sort of riddle. How do we make a word refer to something that doesn’t exist? What word can represent a form that isn't a form; a thing that isn't a thing? What language can define a concept that has no reality or meaning?
Of course we cannot solve the great old riddle of how something came from nonexistence. It’s the ultimate oxymoron, and the ultimate contradiction in terms. We cannot even refer to a state of nonexistence when there is no such state, and no such form, to refer to. Any attempt to describe it isn’t describing it. Any word representing it, isn’t representing it. Non-existence can only really be defined as something that cannot be defined with a word. It can only refer to something that cannot be referred to. Obviously there is a vexing fundamental problem here. Any attempt to define a nonexistence using any meaningful idea or thought, by using the meaning that otherwise defines all language, that defines our reality, is predestined to fail.
Nonexistence cannot be. It cannot exist. It cannot even be meant. And that predicament, that total paradox, is very different from the real nothing that exists and can be talked about. And the fact that we confuse these two concepts is the very reason we don't yet clearly understand why we exist. We exist because there is no alternative. There never was a non-existence in the past and there never will be a non-existence. Existence is the default setting of reality. Existence belongs here. It has always been.
The Real Nothing
Imagine you are standing in a white world, like the commercials or movies portraying heaven. In this world there is nothing but white everywhere. The oneness of white extends away from you in every direction. You try to look out into the distance, but because there is just the one color you can’t tell if the space of this world extends out forever or if its edge remains just out of reach. As you reach out your hand, you realize that your physical body provides the only sense of distance here. Your body is all that exists in a giant field of nothingness. There is no length or width beyond your body. There is no distance to anywhere else, because there isn’t anything else to measure a distance to. So if your body happens also to turn white, then suddenly all sense of dimension is erased. The very meaning of place and distance is lost. Soon even the one color of white will disappear from your experience. You will soon become blind to white, because you don’t have any other color to judge the meaning of this one color against. Soon, for you, this endless white world becomes nothing at all.
If you were born into this one color dimension you wouldn’t ever be able to see it, you would not even know it was right there in front of you. Someone who is blind, for example, doesn’t see black or darkness, because even if they did temporarily upon initially going blind, the black quickly loses meaning for them because it is just one color, and without differentiation the mind interprets such a world as a perceptual nothing. And in fact the mind is correct, because this is the real nothing that exists in physical reality. The real nothing is just singular form. A real nothing is a singularity, and a singularity is all a real nothing can ever be.
Within a singularity, all distances and locations lose meaning because once there is a perfect unity, a oneness, then every object, every distance, every place, is the same as any other. Singularities are commonplace. Any single color is a singularity. A perfect blue sky is a singularity. The most common everyday example of a singularity is the ordinary empty space we travel through, which is why we typically refer to it as nothing. Never the less, singularities can have content. Most everyone has heard the idea of a polar bear in a snow storm. Singularities can even be full instead of empty.
Suppose we take everything from a household refrigerator, put it all in a big stove pot, add some water, and begin stirring. After we cook all this awhile all the distinct parts begin to break down and blend together evenly into a soup. If we keep heating and stirring this stew for five or six hours, or two or three days, eventually all the many ingredients will unify into a single paste-like substance. Many have become one. All the ingredients of the refrigerator are still in there, within the one, they have just transformed into a singularity.
There are extreme cosmological singularities in our distant past and our distant future. Singularities are an interesting novelty of reality because, in the same way all the fruits and vegetables, the condiments, the juices and milk, in the refrigerator all vanish in creating the paste, all the physical properties of our universe suddenly vanish into thin air at the stage of becoming a singularity. If we imagine the infinity of all possible universes unified into a singularity, it would still have no size or properties. In fact if all possible worlds are at some ultimate level unified into a whole, the totality becomes something we perceive as nothing at all. The whole is the white world. It can be imagined the size of a pin head small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, or an endless space stretching out forever. It can be said to exist in any point of space, as well as every place in space, here, there, and everywhere.
Learning To See the Timeless Multiverse
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why should we wonder about the exitence of the universe while in the meanwhile we destroy it as much as we can ?
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