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Author | Topic: A Proposed Proof That The Origin of The Universe Cannot Be Scientifically Explained | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
nano Member (Idle past 1321 days) Posts: 110 Joined: |
Son Goku writes: Not so. Imagine a universe where an object lives for one second before dying and creating the next object.... I think you are ignoring how your proposed sets (universes) populate. Surely, logically, there must be a "first thing" or "something that has always been there" in your sets. Also, there may be quantum mechanical predications that make no use of cause and effect, but I'm sure they make use of quantum mechanical laws. It's really just semantics, isn't it?. Lets use "scientific processes" in place of "scientific method".
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jar Member (Idle past 423 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Fortunately logic has nothing to do with reality.
Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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cavediver Member (Idle past 3672 days) Posts: 4129 From: UK Joined: |
It's hard to picture only "laws" existing. I don't really believe in the duality of "laws" and "material something": I only see the laws, and "material" being a facet. This goes back to when I first learnt string theory, coming at it from the GR/QG perspective. The classic particle physics (Green Schwarz Witten) approach is to embed the strings in the pre-existing target space (our space-time.) But the more fundemental way to picture this is to dismiss any notion of target-space and simply look at the 2d string world-sheet. The fields on the world sheet can be interpretted as coordinates on some "pseudo"space, and the coupling constants between the fields magically seem to form a metric on this pseudo-space. Push this far enough and you see that in low energy this pseudo-space seems to be the entire world of d=10 Supergravity. So if the "real world" doesn't really exist, only the 2d world-sheet, perhaps we push back another layer and the world-sheet isn't "real", and on we go. At this point, I lost all faith in there being anything material or "real" about the "real world" Edited by cavediver, : No reason given.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 313 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
It's a complete cliche, but simply saying that there must be a first cause that solves your logical paradox simply introduces another - what caused the 'first' cause?' But surely that's his point: that eventually we must run up against something inexplicable --- either by virtue of being a first cause, or by virtue of not having a first cause.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 313 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
And as with the last time this came up, I would suggest that "nothing" is ill-defined ... "For all x, there does not exist y such that y = x." That seems to meet the case.
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nano Member (Idle past 1321 days) Posts: 110 Joined: |
Dr Adequate writes: But surely that's his point: that eventually we must run up against something inexplicable --- either by virtue of being a first cause, or by virtue of not having a first cause. Exactly.
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Coragyps Member (Idle past 763 days) Posts: 5553 From: Snyder, Texas, USA Joined: |
I quit paying attention to that logic stuff when I was about 15 and saw the logical statement, "All A's are not C's."
Godwin's law, anticipated by decades!! (read it aloud)
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cavediver Member (Idle past 3672 days) Posts: 4129 From: UK Joined:
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"For all x, there does not exist y such that y = x." That seems to meet the case. In the context of mathematics, certainly. My empty universes are merely advanced versions of the empty set. But do we have the luxury of mathematcs to describe this "absolute nothing", in the absence of this "something" that enables the existence of the mathematics?
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 313 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
Exactly. Except, as I said, it's invidious to say that there's no scientific explanation. It's like saying: "Black people tell lies". So they do, but why single them out? So far as your reasoning goes, it's not just that there can be no scientific explanation, it's that there can be no explanation.
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Tangle Member Posts: 9514 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.8
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Dr A writes:
But surely that's his point: that eventually we must run up against something inexplicable --- either by virtue of being a first cause, or by virtue of not having a first cause. Given that a cause without a cause AND a first cause are both logical paradoxes you've run out of logic. There's nowhere else to go - which is the clue that logic is not going to help you with this problem.Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 313 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
In the context of mathematics, certainly. My empty universes are merely advanced versions of the empty set. But do we have the luxury of mathematcs to describe this "absolute nothing", in the absence of this "something" that enables the existence of the mathematics? It's true that if nothing existed, then we couldn't say that nothing existed, but then if things existed but we didn't then we couldn't say that either --- but it would still be a logically consistent state of affairs.
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cavediver Member (Idle past 3672 days) Posts: 4129 From: UK Joined: |
...but it would still be a logically consistent state of affairs. Your example of demonstrating this is to suggest a mathematical definition of the empty set. And I completely agree that this is logically consistent. And I would go as far as to say that this is pretty much as close to nothing as we can get. But i still see this as "something", and not "nothing". From the empty set we can build the whole vast structure of number. Such a building block hardly deserves the term "nothing".
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Percy Member Posts: 22504 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
nano writes: Perhaps I should specify "scientific processes" instead of "scientific method"? It would not change my argument. Yes, that's true, it would not change your argument and it would still be wrong, because scientific processes were used to discover effects that have no apparent cause. --Percy
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 313 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
Your example of demonstrating this is to suggest a mathematical definition of the empty set. No, that's not the definition of the empty set, that's an assertion that nothing exists.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 313 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
Yes, that's true, it would not change your argument and it would still be wrong, because scientific processes were used to discover effects that have no apparent cause. This seems to me to be a non sequitur.
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