God's word has the power of creation. — baker

Sure. But in a more realistic way, we can ask how it is that language, "the word", constructs meaning that makes it possible at all to conceive of anything at all. The tree in the Eden was a knowledge tree, so what is knowledge? It is the power of language and logic. We were kicked out of Eden because we developed that supreme violation of comfort and familiarity: the ability to inquire. Nothing but trouble from there.
Language "creates" the world. Prior to this, there is no world; there is what cannot be said, but talking like this raises Wittgenstein's, and the Buddhist's, ire. But once acquired, language is the backdrop of understanding that constitutes a person, who can then drop the explicit, move back into the primordial through the regressive (call it) method of yoga, and let the world speak as it once did.

Language "creates" the world. Prior to this, there is no world; there is what cannot be said, but talking like this raises Wittgenstein's, and the Buddhist's, ire. But once acquired, language is the backdrop of understanding that constitutes a person, who can then drop the explicit, move back into the primordial through the regressive (call it) method of yoga, and let the world speak as it once did. — Constance

Language is the technology for negation and absence. It's allows us to say what the world isn't, and that allows us to say what it is.

It makes the world that way.

So, the NT King James version uses the word "word" as the definition of "logos" in the opening line of John in the sentence "In the beginning was the logos" From that,
you guys are creating this whole Wittgenstein like theory about how everything derives from words.

I'd think the way to interpret that line should probably come from a Biblical literary analysis. Otherwise, you guys could be very wrong here.

Lexi is Greek for "word" by the way.

I thought we were talking about how in Genesis it goes

And God said "Let there be light"
And there was light.

It seems to be saying that speech is magic.

You're right, though. The logos in John 1:1 isn't about language. it's more about logic, specifically a rational principle pervading the universe. One of the proponents was Philo, an Egyptian Jew. He was awesome.

and can be taken to refer to language and logic, — Constance

λόγος? Or as a can of tomato soup. But actually, neither. The rest pure nonsense, at least wrt λόγος.

seems to be saying that speech is magic. — frank

The significance of speech in Judaic thought is a thing (tracht gut vet zein gut, and lashon hara), but I'm having trouble correlating that to contemporary linguistic theory.

But the ideas, the imagination is what truly counts. Math hides this. — Prishon

Surely maths is what converts the intuitions into actual counting? It reveals the degree to which an idea works …. in terms of numbers to be read off instruments and dials.

I see irony here. Kant says we can’t access the noumenal. The pragmatist nods a head and says, yes, that is why we have to turn our descriptions of reality into a mathematical theory that takes as its evidence … tallies of marks that some meaning can be read into.

The constraints of phenomenology can’t be broken. But they can be better organised by a shift from everyday language to a rational structure that accepts, in the end, we are only assigning interpretations to numbers on a dial we claim to have accurately read.

I enjoy the confounding fact that science arrives at its realism by way of stringent Copenhagenism. In the end - to speak of the thing in itself - we just have to convince each other in our little circles of rational enquiry that we shared the exact same idea (some equation), and we observed the exact same numerals appear on a dial just as we were led to expect.

Talk about humble bragging!

No one can give a satisfactory account of mass creation (in the sense of saying what actually the math describes; — Prishon

But folk are always trying to provide those kinds of intuitive stories. Like a famous celebrity, a particle would cross a crowded room at light speed if it could. But it’s celebrity causes it to become entangled by the cloud of interactions with these well-wishers. It has a mass and so it’s progress is proportionately slowed.

Goldstone bosons eaten up by the gauge field fir the weak interaction? Nono. I donot buy that. They could be wrong you know. — Prishon

But how else to explain why the weak force is massive and yet the EM photon flies free … at a massless speed of light?

It could be wrong, as indeed any conception of the noumenal could be wrong. But again, that is another advantage of numbers over words. With the logical structure of mathematical claims, the restriction of all claimed evidence to numbers publicly displayed on the dials of instruments, the mathematically-expressed proposition can just be flatly wrong. Everyone present can point at the dial and laugh at the great embarrassment of the failure of a prediction.

But let folk mess around with words and they can come up with any number of confusions that claim to be “theories”, yet fall short of the dignity of even being able to be wrong.

Words are of course very good at telling truths, or falsehoods, at an everyday social level. As theory and evidence, that is the language game they were designed for.

But science is mathematically-definite claims married to numerically-precise acts of measurement. Agreeing that the appearance of a number on a dial proves a theory and ain’t just a lucky fluke requires another level of statistical super-structure. However that supports the general contention here.

So if you think the Higgs mechanism could be wrong - that there was something shonky about the dial reading at CERN - your doubt doesn’t mean much until it is elevated to a level that is itself framed with a technical precision.

You think I have collegues? I only studied there. Particle physicist is not my daily work. And luckily so! Im not bound and fixed to the standard model. — Prishon

You can’t both want to go public with your private theories and reject the rationale for that public approach.

Again, science is about making rash counterfactual claims in a completely public fashion - one framed with mathematical definiteness and so as little as possible wiggle room. Then the evidence is also public. We can all read off the numbers for ourselves.

Obviously you keep mentioning your pet theory that speaks of the Cosmos as a 4D torus in a 5D space that spits out 3D rishons. It sounds a bit mathematical. But is one a Euclidean manifold, the next a material field, the final step a spray of particles? What kind of “not even wrong” confusion of words are you throwing together here - even if it is very easy to see the labelled diagram of three kinds of shapes you likely have “in mind”.

Sure, I can visualise a drawing of a flat manifold with a hovering torus and jets of “rishons” and “anti-rishons” spurting out from both sides of its Janus-arse. Your word picture is constructible. But that ain’t sufficient proof it is true, let alone that it has the necessary logical structure to be making any grand claim about the Universe.

Is it related to Jewish mysticism?

I think Constance is connecting it to existentialism. She's wanting to make the same kind of point Sartre was making, and opposing that to Wittgenstein, maybe.

These merge, or tend to, in simplicity. Try some. — tim wood

Well then, the proof is in the pudding. Clarity simpliciter is not the issue here. It is clarity at the sacrifice of substance. The substance I have in mind is the final confrontation of philosophy whereby the world reveals it own inner militation against any thesis that would possess it. The simplicity here is the final simplicity, whereby one acknowledges that all along it is not the pursuit of conceptualization and its endless inventiveness that is sought by philosophy, but value, and here, not the endless valorization of novel amusements, but existential simplicity: the eternal present. Herein lies God.

In the beginning there was the word, and the word was god. This is very much the same as all beginnings, in the sense that they are a relation of one thing to another. We see this at the base of all theories: energy and it's information ( frequency and amplitude ) create a wavicle, a field and its excitation, a string and it's vibration, order and entropy, 1+1. These are the limits of logic / metaphysics. — Pop

Odd that you make that left turn into "energy and its information" for it is a move away from where you might have headed, which is the analysis of meaning and difference (and deference). Or: diffusion of meaning in the positive assertion. One cannot say what a thing is and have the meaning fixed and singular, as if the saying definitively grasped what it was. More basic than logic, for it goes to the very possibility of a positive assertion.

To construct anything one has to begin by relating one thing to another. Here begins our relational understanding. The construction of a relation is necessary to create a distinction, such that in relation to each other two things become distinct. The distinction creates information. This is the beginning of consciousness "as we know it". Of course, assuming a systems understanding, this relational beginning would have it's counterpart in the real world. So the "real" world starts in exactly the same way. :smile: — Pop

Sounds like you're close to something, but then ...information?? Counterpart in the real world? At any rate, the construction of relation as constituting meaning is close to a good point, I think. The distinction: can you elaborate? say more about this "counterpart" if you would.

Still, you havent talked physics with that guy proshin.

Actually, it's not the Higgs mechanism discovered at CERN. It's the particle that goes along with the field.

I didn’t say it was discovered there.

But looking forward to your book! Good luck.

My book?

My book?

So if you think the Higgs mechanism could be wrong - that there was something shonky about the dial reading at CERN - — apokrisis

What do you mean by this?

If God contains of the good of (1) he has no more casual power than the universe. If he is a necessary being he can only have (1) and not (2) because he doesn't change and can't be tested or do wrong. The conclusion is God has no casual power unless he is contingent — Gregory

But go back to the beginning: the good? What do you mean by this word? Why do you take this God idea seriously? I mean, if you're going to talk about God, why not put aside traditional metaphysical notions God being a necessary being or a changeless being? What does this term 'God" mean; address this question, then move on to implications of His being.

What, exactly, was there in the beginning such that to utter the words makes beginnings possible at all — Constance

God! Or a joint effort of more of them. The usual meaning of a beginning doesnt apply to his act of creation. His word must not be taken litterally. He usher the words "let it be", and the universe, in its eternity, came to be. It's the eternal and infinite universe we see today. Describable by physics (and math describing the physics) as far its material an spatiotemporal structure is concerned. God(s) stands on the outside of it (again, not an outside applicable litterally, as outside the house) and on the inside as well, as he created the universe from within himself.

So when you curse, God(s) curse(s) himself (themself). Comit suicide and you kill a part of God(s). Not that he (they) would mind, after all, that would be to confess his (their) own fallibility.

Sounds like you're close to something, but then ...information?? Counterpart in the real world? At any rate, the construction of relation as constituting meaning is close to a good point, I think. The distinction: can you elaborate? say more about this "counterpart" if you would. — Constance

You touched upon it with your quote from Wit. Dig a little deeper and you find that the relationship of two things, is the metaphysical base of logic. It turns out that this relation, or interaction is information. A bit much to unload here, but If you skim this short thread, you'll get the idea. :smile:

There seems to be a link between infinity and time, perhaps it's better to describe it as infinity is, paradoxically, constrained by time.

Infinity, forwards in time, into the future, is not a problem; in a sense, we have all the time in the world.

Infinity backwards into the past, however, boggles the mind; how can the universe have experienced infinity, that's what's implied, to get to this point (the here and now)?

Thus, for that reason, we're always thinking about beginnings. In short, all this talk of beginnings are symptomatic of our inability to comprehend infinity with respect to the past. Can the past be infinite? This is the question that "in the beginning..." actually seeks an answer to. So, can the past be infinite? Yes/No, Why?

Infinity, forwards in time, into the future, is not a problem — TheMadFool

Then why there is a problem backwards, in the past?

Then why there is a problem backwards, in the past? — DeScheleSchilder

I wish I knew but I did say,

Infinity backwards into the past, however, boggles the mind; how can the universe have experienced infinity, that's what's implied, to get to this point (the here and now)? — TheMadFool

What do you think?

What do you think? — TheMadFool

"how can the universe have experienced infinity, that's what's implied, to get to this point (the here and now)"

I get your point. If you roll time backwards (which is the same as reversing all velocities of the particles in it though you might counter that this doesnt reverse expansion) it all comes together again. In the future it all matter ends up accelerating away from each other to infinity. Cant there be processes like this following up one another? BB- to infinity-BB-to infinity, etc. No bound in time or space.

"how can the universe have experienced infinity, that's what's implied, to get to this point (the here and now)"

I get your point. If you roll time backwards (which is the same as reversing all velocities of the particles in it though you might counter that this doesnt reverse expansion) it all comes together again. In the future it all matter ends up accelerating away from each other to infinity. Cant there be processes like this following up one another? BB- to infinity-BB-to infinity, etc. No bound in time or space. — DeScheleSchilder

If you really think about it, when we consider the notion of cyclical time, what we're actually saying/claiming is that matter & energy, their innumerable configurations that create the universe, is cyclical. The cyclical model is a model of matter-energy and not of time. Think of it like a wheel rolling on a flat surface - the flat surface is linear time but matter-energy is the wheel, cycling through all the various permutations possible, that being finite, the process ultimately repeating.

What, exactly, was there in the beginning such that to utter the words makes beginnings possible at all? In the beginning there was the word? Take this quite literally: How are such things that are "begun" to be conceived prior to their beginning; or, what is presupposed by a beginning? An absolute beginning makes no sense at all, for to begin would have to be ex nihilo and this is a violation of a foundation level intuition, a causeless cause, spontaneously erupting into existence simply is impossible, just as space cannot be conceived to "end". — Constance

Beginning only makes sense, if the beginning had been recorded, faithfully archived, witnessed and experienced. Begin is a word that the subject of beginning utters, and declares when the process of the beginning actually begins. Or later recalled by other minds when given the detail of the beginnings with the faithfully archived data and information.

When these elements are missing, beginning becomes just a meaningless conjecture, imagination and fiction, therefore an empty word, no fault of philosophy or language.

Another thing about beginning is that, it is a psychological judgement on something. There is no such an object called beginning in the real world. The universe does not have anything called "begin". What we call as "begin" might be the end of something in the universe, but actually the universe might not even care what we think, call, judge about it at all.

So we might be looking at something projecting from our mind that actually doesn't exist in the universe. Therefore there is nothing strange or absurd about the origin of the universe is not knowable to us immediately.

Kant didn't deny the dark place where words cannot go, but he simply drew the line where meaningful perception can be made and where it is not possible.

BB is a hypothesis that you have the universe but the beginning is missing. When the moment of beginning is missing, the only thing possible is again just speculation, imagination, conjecture and guess. The creation of the universe stories in the religion have the full elaborations of the creations in the archive, but we don't know who even wrote them, and again no one was present when the alleged creation was taking place. Hence the mystery of the universe's origin remains and continues.

We still have no firm and clear definition of the universe either. Is the universe one and single entity? Or are there multiple different entities of the universe littered all around in space? Do we even have a clear objective definition of what the world is?

There is no prior. God created the whole if infinity of time. No time involved. The word was spoken and BANG. The eternal universe was there. His wird is revealed. I heard him speak. The is the holy trinity. His own image. Thats from what he created. From himself. The contemplation of the holy trinity is the contemplation of god. But Rishin no care about god. God can go to hell says Rishon. As far as I'm cincerned god is dead. I care about his creation though... — Prishon

Not quite along the lines I had in mind. Don't think about temporal priority, rather think about logical priority as in something presupposing another and the other then is logically prior to it, meaning you cannot conceive of the one without the other. So, what is prior to this whole enterprise of talking about big bangs and creation is the process of thought itself that is presupposed. Thought is not a mirror to nature, but is extremely opaque, with its logic, vocabularies, semiotics, and its signifiers and signifieds, and on and on.
As for God, it is not a vacuous concept, but begs to be put under the microscope of inquiry: what does it mean? Its meaning is laid bare by examining what is present in the world to find what it is that the concept does, what it is a response to, why it was ever conceived, and so on. So before one talks about God, one needs bring out this essential meaning.

I agree with your post. As Kant said about the series of past causes, it's indeterminate. We can speculate if it's eternal or not but time itself is either material or mystical. Both options seem as absurd as a finite or infinite past seemed to Kant. So we have a casual series which science makes rational sense of. Where it starts is beyond us which is why religion talks about a "beginning" so much. It becomes a religious question because science can't know the whole of reality — Gregory

But then, it is this Kantian prohibition I want to put to rest. Take a qualified Hegelian look at Kant: What lies before your eyes is a microcosm of God, unfinished, but in it there is the noumenal presence, and there is no sharp line that sets noumena off from phenomena. Beyond Hegel, I invite one practice the infamous phenomenological reduction (Husserl) in order to witness a world reduced to presence.
Of course, there is a world of argument here, through Derrida and beyond (see the French theological turn in Michel Henry, Jean luc Marion, et al). But basically i agree with working to divest theory of its metaphysical encumbrances as well as its scientific encumbrances, and I actually believe this can lead to something revelatory, call it Husserl's yoga.

Unless we are elite physicists we have no idea how to even conceive of these matters. Any wonder that literature/religion/myth/philosophy are so attractive. For my money any discussion of this subject is exceptionally speculative and the best we can do is read the distilled ideas of experts and pretend we understand.

'Big Bang' is a term used by Fred Hoyle in 1949 to gently mock the event, so don't get bogged down in the wording. Physicists do not believe there was explosion but an expansion. Personally I couldn't care less.

The idea of beginnings and endings seem to me to be human conceptions and preoccupations and, while such frames certainly match lived experience on earth, they can hardly be expected to describe all which is the case. — Tom Storm

Sure. Which experts do you have in mind? How about Heidegger?

One might call this the ‘metaphysics of presence’, after Heidegger and Derrida. Indeed, if one begins with presence , then one finds oneself ‘before’ language , becuase presence, as self-presence, auto-affection, self-identity, must be before language since it precedes relation. The trick is to think before presence Then language reappears , not as that which takes place between presences , but as prior to presence. — Joshs

But Kierkegaard (and I am in the middle of Paul Ricoeur Time and Narrative. see how he handles it) will "leap" upon this: that past is always already (not his language, of course) the present, for every moment of cognition that can call the past the past, is not executed in the past, but the present, and the past "adumbration" (Husserl) is really a subsuming present.
For me, there is no way out of this, though Heidegger would say I am with Husserl, walking on water, I respond, the world is walking on water: not turtles all the way down, but intimations, foggy but profound, that reveal something extraordinary, occluded by everydayness and the presumptions of science. The trick for me is to follow the reduction to its end: the more reduction, the more givenness, is Michel Henry's way of putting it. He ignores Derrida....of does he? Caputo thinks Derrida is the very height of apophatic theology. His discussion confuses me.

The simplicity here is the final simplicity, whereby one acknowledges that all along it is not the pursuit of conceptualization and its endless inventiveness that is sought by philosophy, but value, and here, not the endless valorization of novel amusements, but existential simplicity: the eternal present. Herein lies God. — Constance

Swimming, then, as noted above. And if you want to call that God, that seems enthusiastic, but no law against. Of course a hazard with getting caught up with God is all "the pursuit of conceptualization and its endless inventiveness" that inevitably entails, along with the endless complexities and complications in thinking about simplicity itself.

A Zen story comes to mind, well enough told here.
https://tricycle.org/magazine/attention-means-attention/

“Please write for me something of great wisdom.” Master Ichu picked up his brush and wrote one word: “Attention.” The student said, “Is that all?” The master wrote, “Attention. Attention.” The student became irritable. “That doesn’t seem profound or subtle to me.” In response, Master Ichu wrote simply, “Attention. Attention. Attention.” In frustration, the student demanded, “What does this word ‘attention’ mean?” Master Ichu replied, “Attention means attention.”

Not explicit is the idea of the need to do, in this case pay, attention. Or with simplicity, the need to be, simply, simple.