• Joshs
    5.7k


    I believe Leibniz was the first to conceive the universe as a computing machineJackson

    yes indeed
  • Jackson
    1.8k


    Also, if not the first, a substantial criticism of mechanism and Newton's concept of absolute time and space.
  • 180 Proof
    15.3k
    Like a neighborhood bar, it's a joint full of those who know what they don't know and suckers who don't know that they don't know. I find it's the suckers who tend to whinge and whine the most. This forum must suit your masochist tendencies though, 'cause you're still
    here ... :razz:
  • Jackson
    1.8k
    Like a neighborhood bar, it's a joint full of those who know what they don't know and suckers who don't know that they don't know. I find it's the suckers who tend to whinge and whine the most. This forum must suit your masochist tendencies though, 'cause you're still here ... :razz:180 Proof

    You chase me around with insults. Have at it.
  • universeness
    6.3k
    What is CCC?Jackson

    From the OP of my thread link I posted above:

    The conformal cyclic cosmology ( CCC) is a cosmological model in the framework of general relativity, advanced by the theoretical physicist Roger Penrose.

    Basically, it posits a cyclical universe. Our big bang was caused by the deathroes of a previous manifestation of a Universe. The interesting part is that Penrose and his team recently published his evidence that it really happened. He has called his evidence 'Hawking points,' and suggests his team has currently found 6 of them in our Universe and that their existence is direct proof of a previous Universe. He also claims that the current cosmological community has not adequately addressed his evidence yet. I think that means they must still be considering it. Exciting stuff imo!
  • Jackson
    1.8k
    Basically, it posits a cyclical universe. Our big bang was caused by the deathroes of a previous manifestation of a Universe.universeness

    Makes sense to me.
  • universeness
    6.3k
    Makes sense to me.Jackson
    Well, we certainly seem to be moving at the largest scale from low to high entropy so It seems plausible that when all matter turns back to energy, then, as Penrose suggests, 'scale' becomes meaningless and we will eventually have the conditions required for a singularity inflation/expansion/big bang happening again. Another cycle. The universe would be eternal in that sense.
    I await the 'adequate response' Penrose is calling for from the cosmological community!
  • Jackson
    1.8k
    Well, we certainly seem to be moving at the largest scale from low to high entropy so It seems plausible that when all matter turns back to energy, that as Penrose suggests, 'scale' becomes meaningless and we will eventually have the conditions required for a singularity inflation/expansion/big bang happening again. Another cycle. The universe would be eternal in that sense.
    I await the 'adequate response' Penrose is calling for from the cosmological community!
    universeness

    Your representation of Penrose makes sense to me. There is nothing about the BigBang that logically prevents multiple big bangs.
  • universeness
    6.3k
    Your representation of Penrose makes sense to me. There is nothing about the BigBang that logically prevents multiple big bangs.Jackson

    I wish I had the physics/maths expertise required to understand the details in his papers.
    I have listened to some of those who don't fully support CCC such as Sean Carroll, who I know is more attracted to the many-worlds interpretation but Penrose has stated in Youtube interviews that the evidence that these Hawking points came from a previous universe is very strong.
    You can download a PDF of the paper he and his team published regarding the evidence here:

    https://arxiv.org/abs/1808.01740

    I downloaded the pdf and tried to research each word I did not understand but I haven't gotten very far in my understanding yet and have paused my efforts. I am hoping the current cosmological heirarchy will summarise the main points for me in lay terms I can grasp easier.
  • Jackson
    1.8k
    I wish I had the physics/maths expertise required to understand the details in his papers.
    I have listened to some of those who don't fully support CCC such as Sean Carroll,
    universeness

    I like Sean Carroll and buy into the idea of a multiverse.
  • universeness
    6.3k
    I like Sean Carroll and buy into the idea of a multiverse.Jackson

    I am also a Sean Carroll fan but I am a fan of all cosmologists even when they have different theories from Carlo Rovelli to Mark Tegmark.
  • universeness
    6.3k

    I have always favoured string theory and Mtheory.
  • Jackson
    1.8k
    I am also a Sean Carroll fan but I am a fan of all cosmologists even when they have different theories from Carlo Rovelli to Mark Tegmark.universeness

    Good folk as well. I use these ideas as a philosopher (and artist).
  • universeness
    6.3k

    Yep, I find such people very inspirational. As a teenager, I decided to become academic and aim for Uni because of Carl Sagan. No single human has influenced me as much as he did and he continues to, even now when I am 58 and retired. I also oil paint so we have some common ground there.
  • 180 Proof
    15.3k
    You make it sound like philosophy constructs grammars and clarifications after the fact , by looking at the explanations of physicists and then making explicit what the physicists have already created.Joshs
    You misread me (deliberately or not).

    Science explains nature (i.e. transformations of phenomena, facts-of-the-matter, states-of-affairs) with testable models and philosophy interprets – describes, infers – the conceptual ramifications (i.e. presuppositions, implications, extrapolations) of science, no? My point is that I understand that 'science is primarily an object-discourse and philosophy a meta-discourse' (à la Tarski). Also, that this 'meta-discourse' consists of an implicit conciliance, or convergence (à la Peirce), of Sellarian "manifest" and "scientific" images of human existence (pace Heiddeger, and other anti-moderns).

    But the leading edge of philosophy always beats physics to the punch. It is physics that ‘fills in the details’ years after a philosophical approach produces a new architecture of thought, and then has to reconfigure anew all those details when philosophy ( or a philosophically argues physicist) subverts the old architecture.
    I think your philosopher's physics-envy is showing, Joshs.

    I see no evidence of this in any substantive 'history of ideas'. Philosophy and science are complementaries – interpretive speculations and testable explanatory models, respectively. Just because one can draw connections between disparate domains as I've pointed out
    ... democritean Atomism seems to emphasize voids that allow for combinatorial dynamics (i.e. nonequilibria, asymmetries) of atoms (molecular/micro), which is 'intuitively analogous' to field theories; whereas, however, subsequent lucretian Materialism emphasize atoms (molar/macro) and their purported swerves, 'anticipating' statistical mechanics (i.e. compatibilist uncertainty, or "freedom").
    — 180 Proof

    Planck units – fundamental relationships – seem to correspond more to what ancient Greeks (& Indian Cārvāka) had in mind than to what early modern chemists, then physicists, anachronistically (mis)labeled "atoms". The only thing that was "discovered" with regard to "atoms" was that John Dalton et al were wildly premature and mistaken.
    — 180 Proof
    180 Proof
    does not entail a "causal priority" of one to the other – of res cogitans to res extensa – which just confuses cause with correlation, a category mistake.

    Newtonian physics is compatible with Descartes but not with Kant, Hegel or Wittgenstein. A 19th physicist who had read and understood Kant would likely recognize inadequacies in Newtonian physics that would be invisible to Newton.Joshs
    On the contrary, sir. Kant's so-called"Copernican Revolution" aims at "reconciling" Descartes and Hume as a "critical" foundation for "Newtonian physics" that also attempts to "make room for faith". That Einsteinian physics is an extension (and culmination) of "Newtonian physics" – still the prevailing engineeriing paradigm – demonstrates that the alleged "inadequacies in Newtonian physics" are nothing but hyperbolic, p0m0 / New Age urban legends. :sweat:

    Similarly, a 21st century physicist who understands Hegelian and post-Hegelian concepts will find it necessary to reconfigure the axes around which central ideas in physics revolve.
    :rofl:

    (I've read Žižek's Less Than Nothing too.)
  • Joshs
    5.7k
    Science explains nature (i.e. transformations of phenomena, facts-of-the-matter, states-of-affairs) with testable models and philosophy interprets – describes, infers – the conceptual ramifications (i.e. presuppositions, implications, extrapolations) of science, no? My point is that I understand that 'science is primarily an object-discourse and philosophy a meta-discourse' (à la Tarski). Also, that this 'meta-discourse' consists of an implicit conciliance, or convergence (à la Peirce), of Sellarian "manifest" and "scientific" images of human existence (pace Heiddeger, and other anti-moderns).180 Proof

    Joseph Rouse attempts to move the Sellarsian relation between manifest and scientific image in the direction of Heidegger, Kuhn and Rorty , as well as toward newer biological accounts of niche construction, by
    showing them to be reciprocally determinative. Facts of the matter, states of affairs, objects of discourse ( the scientific image) respond to our inquiries ( space of reasons) in the same way an organism’s niche is shaped by its behavior in relation to that environment. The continual discursive back and forth between space of reasons and objects of scientific discourse reciprocally modifies both via a dance of mutual coherence and fit, just as the organism’s goal-oriented behavior defines , adjusts and is reciprocally shaped by its environment.
    This back and forth between hypothesis and test describes philosophical as faithfully as it does empirical inquiry. Differences between philosophical and empirical approaches lie in the conventionality of the terms employed rather than in any fixed distinction in method of inquiry.

    I agree that a philosophical meta-discourse addresses
    both the manifest and scientific images, but not by restricting itself to the conceptual space of reasons (which would be impossible). Rather , its investigations enact the reciprocal dance I described above between the concept and the object, just as does empirical inquiry, and that makes it impossible to categorically separate science and philosophy on any basis.



    “ In contrast to traditional efforts to establish the epistemic objectivity of articulated judgments, Davidson, Brandom, McDowell, Haugeland, and others rightly give priority to the objectivity of conceptual content and reasoning. They nevertheless mis­takenly attempt to understand conceptual objectivity as accountability to objects understood as external to discursive practice. A more expan­sive conception of discursive practice, as organismic interaction within our discursively articulated environment, shows how conceptual nor­mativity involves a temporally extended accountability to what is at issue and at stake in that ongoing interaction.”(Rouse, Articulating the World)
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    2.7k


    You don't need to jettison the standard model to have different cosmologies. You need the Big Bang to understand the directionality of time and explain why the universe had lower entropy in the past.

    The standard model is reversible, so without the Big Bang you'd just have a block universe where any "slice" representing a given moment is arbitrary.

    THE-BLOCK-UNIVERSE-SOURCE-PROFESSOR-JIM-AL-KHALILIS-OFFICIAL-WEBSITE-21.png



    This is a possibility that has been floated. Particularly as part of the myriad variations of string/M theory. These parallel universes would have different laws of physics.

    In the case of this thread, I think "before" the Big Bang should be interpreted as "causaly prior to." Interestingly, there are models that limit themselves to just our universe that propose that the future (as we see it) may be casually prior to our present. The future "crystallizes" into the past, and the present is what this crystallization looks like. This is the crystallizing block universe.

    There is also the idea that the Big Bang is the result of a supermassive black hole. We are on the inside of that black hole. Black holes in our universe would represent "baby universes" of our own universe. Pretty neat.

    Unfortunately, like competing interpretations of quantum mechanics, while the theory fits observations, there is, as of yet, no predictions we could explore to differentiate between the Big Bang being our inside view of the formation of a massive black hole or it being unique.
  • 180 Proof
    15.3k
    Time' is a metric of asymmetric change (i.e. physical transformations). In the absence of any asymmetry (i.e. no orientation whatsoever) such as at / below the planck threshold, which is also prior to the BB, 'time' is not measurable [meaningful].180 Proof
    In other words ...
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/586447
  • an-salad
    24
    There’s only one universe.
  • Jackson
    1.8k
    There’s only one universe.an-salad

    Good to know, thank you.
  • jgill
    3.8k
    Science explains nature (i.e. transformations of phenomena, facts-of-the-matter, states-of-affairs) with testable models and philosophy interprets – describes, infers – the conceptual ramifications (i.e. presuppositions, implications, extrapolations) of science, no?180 Proof

    I would say that rather than explain nature, science develops models, mathematical or otherwise, that predict happenings in nature. Philosophy might attempt to explain phenomena in more day-to-day, less technical ways. Both are most successful if done by scientists, themselves. Carl Sagan, for instance.
  • 180 Proof
    15.3k
    ... rather than explain nature,  science develops models ...jgill
    Predictions are deduced from models and models consist in explanations of how physical transformations can happen (vide K. Popper, D. Deutsch). Without explaining nature, from what are predictions of "happenings in nature" deduced?

    Philosophy might attempt to explain phenomena ...
    Do you have an example of "a philosophical explanation of phenomena" in mind? :chin:
  • jgill
    3.8k
    Without explaining nature, from what are predictions of "happenings in nature" deduced?

    Philosophy might attempt to explain phenomena ...

    Do you have an example of "a philosophical explain of phenomena" in mind? :chin:
    180 Proof

    The obvious one, quantum mechanics. Predictions are highly if not entirely mathematical, many stemming from Schrödinger's equation, given here in stripped down form to demonstrate how it's solutions are wavelike (phasor). This concerns "particles" that are not little bowing balls:



    This is not a physical wave. Very little explaining from nature there. That's left to (mostly) physicists who try to humanize what's happening with philosophical speculations:

    Interpretations of QM

    Yes, ontological vs epistemological and all is a subject for philosophers of physics.
  • 180 Proof
    15.3k
    No, sir, I don't think so. QM is science. "Interpretations of QM" are philosophy (of science). The latter only describes the presuppositions and implications (i.e. interpretations) of the former – does not explain the phenomena which the science models (i.e. explains) – and therefore does not entail experimental predictions.
  • jgill
    3.8k
    As you are far more a philosopher than me, I cannot argue the issue. :cool:
  • Tate
    1.4k

    Do you understand the theory that we might be in a black hole?
  • Agent Smith
    9.5k
    The OP's query boils down to the metaphysics of time.

    The conservation laws of matter-energy claim that neither matter nor energy can either be created or destroyed. Does that mean matter & energy are (@Cuthbert) eternal (beginningless & endless). If so the OP's question can't be dismissed with statements like "north of the north pole" (@180 Proof).

    :smile:
  • 180 Proof
    15.3k
    Conservation laws, like spacetime, apply within – immanent to – the (this) universe. Mass-energy belongs to the (this) universe which is not "eternal" (except in Einstein's time-reversible equations). IMO, the only 'physical' candidates which might be "eternal" are the true vacuum or the bulk encompassing (our) spacetime.
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