I'd define space as that which everything moves through. — Gregory

Except that this inert absolute space of Newton's got the boot from Einstein, whose gravitational field essentially is space-time at the macro level. At the micro level, the quantum field would serve as 'space', although it is really just simple continuous stuff. One could still say that an elementary particle as a field quantum is in the field.

Does Space actually exists? I mean out of human experience that we understand it, does it actually exist "on its own"? Or it's only an a priori human non empirical thing which allows us to form all of our experiences as Kant suggested? — dimosthenis9

This could be if our brains spatialize time into ‘space’ so that we can better navigate through the series of discrete nows. The brain’s re-presentation of the successives would add spatial dimension to the past nows, this spatializing showing up as a distance for what is really just back in time

Atoms or Bosons — Gnomon

I will explain quarks and bosom energy tomorrow, along with the some old sexist problems caused by the quark names.

Is not the only thing conceivable as physically existing something that is spatial? — Gregory

The quantum vacuum with its overall quantum field is the One and Only, as the simplest state. Its field waves provide for extension into dimension, and it is everywhere because 'Nothing' cannot be. There's no non acting and unresponsive space background as a place, as Newton had it, whose only quantity is volume.

Matter is composed of field.

Space — Gregory

There is no space as a place; the quantum fields exhaust reality.

crap — Gnomon

My Space Vacation:

all those "nothings" — Gnomon

…added up to a heck of a lot of crap!

Yet quarks are supposed to be the constituent parts of massive objects. Where does all that mass actually come from? — Metaphysician Undercover

Most of the mass=energy of a proton is from the gluons.

Photons have no charge, no resting mass, and travel at the speed of light.
That's about as close to nothing as you can imagine. But modern physicists have become grudgingly resigned to treating nothingness as-if it is a physical (material) object. Photons, Fields, & Quarks would have been dismissed by Aristotle as Platonic Ideals — Gnomon

Indeed, they are all close to nothing, as expected, being so minuscule, but 'close' is not nothing and so there is no "nothingness" to treat…

Besides, a Potential photon is barely physical, and it only becomes Actual when it slows down to "macro" speeds at which its potential condenses into Matter. So, the "source of Information" (meaning) is always a differentiating Mind of some kind. — Gnomon

It is thought that two photons colliding can produce an electron and a positron, if this is what you mean by them slowing down, and this is under study. Photons don't decay on their own, which is why they will be left at the end of the universe. Also, "barely physical" is still physical.

I see that you have Mind's information operating a photon.

Materialism began to die on the vine, in the early 20th century, at the advent of Quantum Theory and Information Theory. Yet, those powerful new ideas were at first resisted, even by such wise philosophers as Einstein. — Gnomon

Photons are a good source of information in our macro world; light peels information off of an object for us to receive.

Of course, the elementary particles are called matter but they are not fundamental; Einstein suggested rather that all is field, and in QFT we take this elementary matter as being spread out quantum lumps in a fluctuating quantum vacuum field. Their information is such as the wave frequency telling of their energy, the wave length providing for volume and extension into dimension, the positive and negative amplitudes providing for matter and antimatter and its charge polarity.

That there are are just a few handfuls of particles tells us that there are only those number of ways to make them, especially the more stable particles that are just a few. The information that makes the physical particles would be just as physical since the physical particles are directly the quanta of the fields, not something new and different in substance. The information for making a particle is described by the math that matches quantum field waverings as sums of harmonic oscillators, for this is how the quantum fields operate.

We can still out of awe portray nature in a kind of mystical fashion, too. Here are two of my videos that do that, just for the fun of romanticism to show that way:

So what, then, is change in itself? — Bartricks

What is not still, changes. Thus, change is movement/motion. There is no overall Stillness, else naught would go on; therefore, something is ever changing.

Black Hole — Gnomon

Happy Black Hole Friday!

Hellholes hurl infernal light-year jets of fear,
In Centaurus, cross the galactic sphere.
Supermassive darkling beasts devour all;
Abandon hope all ye who enter here.

it explains why things fall apart (Entropy), but not why they assemble into whole systems. — Gnomon

Maybe you watched my 'Energy' video… Let me know if the answer is in there.

QT does not account for "spooky" Gravity. — Gnomon

Quantum gravity hasn't been figured out yet, but isn't it then a wonder then how QM works so well?

Sometimes we get lucky; apparently the weak effect of gravity is neglible at the miniscule QM level!

Roger Penrose thinks that at the point where the micro meets the macro, the gravity is enough there to swing the state, but we don't know where that point is. I predict it is about the size of a piece of dust since that's the mid-point between the largest and the smallest. Roger needs some money from to perform an experiment in space to find out. Send $$$ right away because he is very old and can't wait around too long.

Why not? — Arthur1947

All That Lies Between

This description of the hypothetical First Cause of the Big Bang sounds like something I might write. It accurately outlines what I call : BEING ; Enformer ; LOGOS ; G*D ; etc. But we seem to differ in our opinions of exactly what that "Something" is, essentially. — Gnomon

It is the simplest, so there's really no more to go with it to keep it Fundamental. Its math may be messy, though.

I can see how the “intricacies and complexities” of QFT would arise in its complete math description nightmare, given that the 25 quantum fields overlap and can interact with one another (we can’t even solve the three-body problem), but any individual field would seem to be of the ultimate simplicity. That QFT works so well is a huge plus for it being ontological, too.

I see that the following is the crux of the matter of much wondering about existence:

“I cannot rid myself of the conviction that Nothing would have obtained had not something special somehow superseded or counteracted it. Yes, I know that seems circular— …”

— Robert Lawrence Kuhn

(Answering him in an email):

Not really circular, but undeniably showing a feat accomplished such that we can claim necessity for sure as a Truth without a Proof, which is about all that philosophy alone can do, which is why it’s more satisfying to the find the physical analog of the logic through physics.

The Proof is not always necessary or possible, but we do have the quantum vacuum and its overall quantum field staring us in the face as able to make all the constituents of the universe. Carlo Rovelli likes to say that the quantum fields exhaust reality, which one could also take as a joke that all this research can be really tiring, although I find it to be invigorating.

‘Necessity’ is of course still as a brute fact, but that’s the best point for the buck to stop, at the causeless, in order to avoid the infinite regress that ever ensues if we get taken in by the template of wanting a lesser stage to ever have to come from a greater stage.

I can only offer that since ‘Nothing’ couldn’t cut the mustard that ‘it’ couldn’t, and it is thus again impossible or that ‘it’ cannot be an it, and so The One Existent has no alternative and thus it must be, as the least state that gives rise to the composite and then to the greater complexity, just as we see as what happened in the universe.

I’ll perhaps have to think more about why the One Existent has to be what it is, given that with no beginning it couldn’t have any specific design or direction going into it. At first, I thought that it not being anything in particular somehow meant that it could be everything, either linearly or all at once (we don’t yet know the mode of time), but lately I’m sticking with that it defaults to be being the simplest state with no parts in order to satisfy the fundamental arts, which state still seems to be able to do anything and everything.

In the class of universes that have life, our universe is not among the worst, nor close to perfect, as it is mathematically elegant, for there are superfluous entities in it, along with a lot of waste. Protons and neutrons require only up and down quarks, and not the other four quarks. Of course, the extravagant waste may have increased the chances of Earth having the right conditions for life and the other quarks and stuff may play some role.

Our universe then is generic, as mediocre, even, somewhere within the range of universes that can achieve life. Our universe took an extremely long time to evolve cosmically, as well as for life to develop biologically. It perhaps wasn’t the quickest or the slowest to do so. It kind of limped along through the deuterium bottleneck at first.

We on Earth had to wait for a metal rich third generation star, and then early life had to suffer through five extinctions, nearly wiping out all of the species, the last near extinction, the Permian, opening up a space for mammals to evolve. I doubt if Intelligent Design consists of throwing a huge rock at the Earth.

That our universe is somewhere in between perfect and the worst shows that there has to be a multiverse. Also, if there can be one universe then there can be more.

Why not? — Arthur1947

Because there can't be a 'not'.

I was born in 1947, too.

Perhaps, and contrary to all our intuitions, something can come out of nothing, given enough "time", which didn't exist prior to the big bang, supposedly. — Manuel

We can't even hope for 'Nothing' to be or do something because 'it' isn't. You're right that humans might have trouble pondering anExistent that has no alternative or opposite, given that we can think of alternatives for other 'thing's, plus, Nothing is indeed a word, albeit that it means: not anything.

Now, how can the Permanent Existent be something definite, like continuous points with this as a continuous 3D wave field, given that it has no beginning and thus no direction or design to it? It's likely that there isn't anything simpler, given that it has to be partless to be fundamental.

Since the Permant Existent ever remains, it could make another temporary universe… unto a multiverse.

gravity is an illusion. In part, it is associated with a quantity called “curvature” — Gnomon

GRAVITY EXPLAINED

The Strength of Gravity, the Feeble Apparent

Gravity is a universal force—for any body:
The force felt by a body is mass proportional;
Yet, the acceleration that’s felt is the inverse!
This coincidence removes all mass dependence.

(Einstein transcended this amazing “coincidental” race
By bodies going straight through curved space.)

Gravity might be derived from the fundamentals,
The byproduct of a small residual after cancelations
Of opposite electric or color charges, and more.
Why then is gravity universal, for its sources are not?

Perhaps the appearance of feebleness is deceptive
Since protons and neutrons are but lightweights.
But why are they so light? Their mass is a compromise
Between a disturbance energy and its cancellation.

The quarks’ color charge
Disturbs gluons around them,
Small at first,
But larger growing farther from the quark.

These disturbances cost energy,
But, how to cancel them?
With an anti-quark
Or two complementarily colored quarks.

But, the qualifying quarks
Can’t sit atop the originals,
For quarks have no definite position,
Just a wave function,
And they can’t be localized
To a small spread of position,
For this requires a larger energy;
So, forget nullification.

The compromise is that
Some residual energy amounts
From the not-completely-canceled
Gluon field disturbances
And from the not-completely-canceled
Quark positionings;

Thus, the proton mass from m=E/cc,
With this tricky element
Of how the gluon disturbance field
Grows with distance.

The residual strong energy
From color charge also binds
The protons and neutrons
In the atomic nucleus;

The electromagnetic electron/nuclei
Charge residuals
Bind atoms into molecules,
And molecules into materials.

Asymptotic freedom
Is a subtle feedback effect
From virtual particles
Antiscreening the color charge.

This antiscreening builds up gradually,
Especially at first,
Then proceeds more quickly,
Building upon each building.

Whereas, screening happens
For electrically charged particles,
Being such as a positive charge
Attracts a negative virtual cloud.

Thus, at first,
Since it’s so slow to build,
The pressure to localize the nullifying quarks
Is quite mild as well;

Thus, there’s no need
To very strictly localize and
So the energies are small;
So then is the proton mass.

This is the lightness of being.

(Ideas herein were gathered from readings, esp. Frank Wilczek)

Is it a material Thing — Gnomon

Yes, as all is constituted of it as what we call 'things' for convenience, but the temporaries are not identical to themselves over time; perhaps call 'things' events or processes.

Saying 'Chi' and 'Oz' as woo in the same discussion doesn't make it unreal.

he was the one who applied the scare-word "spooky" to "diminish" another concept that defies common sense. — Gnomon

That was about quantum entanglement, and if you look it up you will see that it has been found. Also, spacetime is essentially the gravitational field. We've also found gravitational waves. "Occult" doesn't apply.

In the minds of many religious folks, the notion of a first cause is tied in with their religious beliefs. — EricH

The religious first cause is too complex to be Fundamental, plus it also leads to a regress of the lesser having to ever come from the greater if they continue that template.

There is a Mandatory Permanent Continuous Simplest Non-Composite Fundamental Existent, X, as all there is, because it has no alternative or opposite to its being, for ‘Nonexistence’ can’t even be meant as something, much less be productive.

Why does X have to produce the temporary forms?

X cannot be still or naught would have become as the temporaries, thus, X is not still and so X is energetic and X ever moves.

How does X produce the temporary forms?

X has only itself available to constitute the temporary forms and so these have to be formed via arrangements of itself that can have some persistence as elementary units that have mobility.

What mobility?

X is everywhere and so the elementary units can travel about.

Why elementary?

X is the ultimate lightweight and so the first temporary forms as the elementaries must also be lightweights. The elementary units may then combine or interact to form composite elements, and we know the rest of that story from Science.

But how do we know the first part of the story from Science, as confirmation of the philosophical logic?

X would be the quanta vacuum with its overall quantum field as partless and continuous, as the simplest, mandatory, permanent existent.

A field is merely what has a value at every point, they having to fluctuate, given that there cannot be stillness. The points must tug on one another and so the field at large wavers, this wave nature leading to the necessity of the quantum aspect of stable excitation levels happening.

A model that proves to be correct in representing a field is one that has sums of the harmonic oscillations of the field points. The rather persistent elementaries occur at the stable rungs of energy excitation quanta and they are those quanta.

Wanna-be ‘elementaries’ that do not reach the right excitation level are the still real virtuals that come and go very quickly. We know these from the Casmir effect.

Sounds like "spooky action at a distance". — Gnomon

Sorry, one cannot diminish the Casmir effect by saying ""Spooky".

So, they're not even real enough to be virtual??? :joke: — Gnomon

The joke needs more work; they are real enough, as the quantum fluctuations.

There are multiple "kinds" of monists from idealists, to physicalists to materialists, to God knows what else. I think they're all the same, despite sparking such heated discussion (the first 2 especially). — khaled

Indeed, there has to be a Fundamental Existent, X, because nonexistence cannot be. Thus it is mandatory and it is all there is, as the simplest partless and continuous state, for it cannot be composite and still be Fundamental. it can't make anything different than itself, but it can rearrange itself into rather persistent but temporary forms such as the elementary 'particles' that are excitations of it at stable rungs of field energy quanta; thus it as X is the quantum vacuum with its overall quantum field.

So, we have the logic in accord with science. Can't beat that! It is proved! It made a temporary universe and it is ever there to make another.

That should have been "there is something and so a lack of anything could not be the case". Introducing the past tense confuses the issue by introducing time.

It's not legitimate to jump from "there is something now" to "there has always been something". — Banno

Actually, it was already sufficient to state that existence has no alternative, given that nonexistence cannot have being, so I didn't need to reify 'Nothing' as a 'case', for a case is a fact. Consider it gone. There is Something because it is mandatory as it has no opposite.

What I'm trying to do is to imagine getting rid of everything in the universe and then trying to extrapolate what would be there if we could also get rid of the mind. — Roger

Only the temporary forms can be gotten rid of, as forms, such as the universe that Banged out, but the Permanent has to remain, as the source of the Bang, and of course the temporaries here are ever the Permanent's rearrangements, not anything else different, but it would be those rearrangements that one imagines getting rid of.

Note -- In QT, some external "excitation" or "perturbation", such as a Measurement or Choice triggers the transformation from Virtual to Actual, or Potential (hidden ; implicit) to Explicit. — Gnomon

No, the virtuals can't become particles; they don't have the full quanta. Measurement is about determining the location of a spread out elementary particle smear as best one can do, given that it's approximate, and so a probability of its whereabouts comes forth. Best not to think of 'particles' as particles, like pinpoints, because they aren't; they are ever lumps in fields.

An aside, as a speculation, would be that if there is inflation then perhaps it will separate virtual particles faster than they can recombine.

If we say the laws of math, logic and physics exist always in some sort of Platonic realm, where is this realm and why is it there instead of nothing. — Roger

This is what Max Tegmark goes for, but it's hard to fathom. The laws would have to be concurrent in the Mandatory Existent.

This "nothing" would be it; it would be the all. It would be the entirety, or whole amount, of all that is present. Is there anything else besides that "absolute nothing"? — Roger

Can't really have 'it'; the closest one might put 'it' is that 'it' is a nonexistent absolute, perhaps to employ it as a bound that cannot be gotten to, which one might also do for chock full, in which there could be no movement, this being another boundary to the forbidden, as another nonexistent absolute. Like Parmenides, I'm ruling out 'Nothing' completely.

"Virtual" particles. In calculations, they are treated as-if real, even though they are only potential : not yet realized. — Gnomon

They as real although brief make for the Casmir effect.

The mathematical "points" in the field are described euphemistically as "Virtual" particles. — Gnomon

The virtual particles are not points but are the fractional quanta that aren't at a stable energy quanta rung and so they quickly go away (as per being 'particles'), unable to form elementary particles.

Yes, I think this is undeniable. — Philosophim

I started a thread: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/12164/why-there-is-something-and-further-extensions

The First Cause has to be the the simplest partless state. If it has parts, then the parts were there before it.

A ‘particle’ goes through both slits because it is a field quantum, and the ‘particle’ is ever the quantum field. The ‘particle’ or ‘wavicle’ is spread out and vibrating in the quantum field; so, as it isn’t a pinpoint it’s best to just refer to it as a a field quantum.

Many wanna-be ‘particles’ don’t reach the stable quantum energy level and so they come and go rather quickly, arising and returning back into the zero-point energy that isn’t zero, at the rest energy of the field or near to, they being known as the virtual ‘particles’. They do not come from ‘Nothing’ nor do they return to ‘Nothing’; so they can only be said to pop in and out of ‘existence’ in their ‘particle’ type nature as a so-called ‘particle’.

The entire universe is temporary, presumably because everything leaks, probably because infinite precision cannot be; however the Permanent quantum vacuum with its overall quantum field ever remains to someday make another universe of temporaries.

Time, space, distance, speed, direction, size, are all relative, . — Miller

Yes, and as an aside Rovelli uses this 'relativeness' as trying to show relationism…

and the play of the one eternal infinite substance — Miller

It writes the story of our universe on the bookshelf of the Library of Babel as well as all the books.

Causation is eternal. It never began. — Miller

Yes, although I would phrase it as that there has to be a Base Existent as a Single Simple Permanent Eternal Existent with no beginning as the basis of all the temporaries come forth because 'Nothing' cannot be in place of it as an alternative, or have given birth to it, that is, the Base Existent is mandatory, having. no option not to be, with no opposite state having being.

Indeed there is something, which is the same as saying that a lack of anything could not be the case; so, the something that we have about us had to have a basis, which basis as the Base Existent could not have an infinite regress beneath it nor have come from the impossible 'Nothing',not able to become from parts that would be more fundamental than it, and so there we have identified the Base Existent as having to be so.

The Base Existent must then be partless and continuous, and thus the simplest state, unmakeable and unbreakable, and thus eternal, as Permanent, it only means of forming temporaries being rearrangements of itself that must occur because it could not have been still or else it just would have sat there, inert and unable to form anything.

So, our universe is temporary, and the Permanent Existent has to be there before our universe, still here now during our universe, and still there after the universe and all its temporaries have gone away.

The simple partlesss, continuous, energetic quantum vacuum with its overall quantum field matches the criteria above, it giving rise to all of physics, which works beyond our wildest dreams.

But a wave in water is still composed of molecules, and emptyness between those molecules. For fields, we have electron fields. Yet they are still composed of individual electrons, and "nothingness" between them. — Philosophim

Then they would be adjacent, without anything in-between, with 'Nothing' still not there as existent. Electron virtual particles are the fractional excitations that didn't reach a quantum of energy. They and the field at rest that yet ever moves still fill it all up completely as field, as ever. There's no existent of 'emptiness' as a nonexistent something; Parmenides came up with this shock.

I have no doubt at a larger scale, it functions like a field. But, this does not mean its proven that there is nothing more granular if you examine that field at a closer level. — Philosophim

I wouldn't think there's anything more basic than a field point. Fields are the ultimate lightweights from which the lightweight elementaries are the rather stable energy quanta. Yet, everything leaks and so our universe is temporary, although long lasting, but the Permanent ever remains.

QFT is the most successful and firm theory in the history of science, from which we build all kinds of devices. Good to follow up on the actual universe. Other supposed Absolutes from now ancient science have fallen by the wayside, such as Absolute Time and Absolute Space, along with the elementaries themselves being Fundamental and making fields. Quantum fields are all that's left to consider.

I still don't understand how 'Nothing' could be something. At any rate, a lack of anything isn't the case. There is, though, a curious near zero sum of the universe, but for the quantum fluctuations, and it could be that the potential energy of gravity matches and even feeds the kinetic energy of stuff but that is a physical process and not 'Nothing' doing anything either.

Logically, why could there not be "nothing"? — Philosophim

Because 'it' has no properties. 'Nothing' is as nonexistence; 'it' isn't there; 'it' has no what, etc.

Doesn't nothing exist now? The fact that something can appear while nothing remains around it is not far fetched at all, considering we have many things that exist with mostly nothing around it. — Philosophim

No, it appears from the successful QFT that all is field. The quantum 'vacuum' is the best candidate for the First Cause, its energetic points having a value at every point, which is all that's meant by a field. Its behavior matches the math model based on harmonic oscillators. The elementaries come forth directly as the quanta of field excitations, as field arrangements, not as any new substance different from field. So, here we have something to go on to confirm the philosophy of the one First Cause that cannot not be.

There ain't no nothing no way nohow!