How can the Universe exist without Logos?

reply to post by neoholographic

Like I said, try jumping up in the air and you will repeatedly come back to the ground because of gravity. This has nothing to do with anyones imagination.

There are a few observations I can find in this statement. If I jump in the air I will come back to the ground. Yes this is a fact. But is this because of "gravity"? If you're so certain, show me gravity. Draw me a picture of gravity. Point out this gravity, and tell me how it is the cause of me jumping and falling without using your imagination.

reply to post by neoholographic

Like I said, you mixed up a debate about whether mathematics is real or discovered and for some reason you came to the conclusion that the laws of physics are imaginary. That makes no sense. These laws aren't imaginary or anyone could imagine up a theory that becomes a law through repetition and observation.

I could see your platonism and idealism a mile away. My video was a pre-emptive strike against your metaphysical foundations. I didn't mix anything up. It seems I've read you like a book.

reply to post by Aphorism


Can you draw us a picture of air?

reply to post by AfterInfinity

Can you draw us a picture of air?

Have you ever seen a bubble?

reply to post by Aphorism


Again, gravity has nothing to do with imagination. The only thing that's not fully understood is things like quantum gravity or is gravity an emergent property of entropy. Nobody has claimed that gravity is imaginary. Gravity has been well understood since Newton and then Einstein with General Relativity.

Again, show me one scientist or one peer reviewed paper that calls the laws of physics imaginary. That's just silly.

These things are observed and replicated over time and there's nothing imaginary about observation and replication. It's called Science.

The fact is you did mix things up.

Being a Platonist or not being a Platonist has nothing to do with imaginary laws of physics.

That debate is about whether mathematics is discovered or invented.

reply to post by neoholographic

Again, show me one scientist or one peer reviewed paper that calls the laws of physics imaginary. That's just silly.

Show me one peer reviewed paper that says the laws of physics weren't created in the minds of scientists.

I can accept that a particular law may be seen as imaginary - say Newtonian gravitation or General Relativistic gravitation - but that gravity behaves according to rules is not imaginary. As humans we home in on that rule as best we can, only ever seeing slices of reality, but those fundamental rules are absolutes.

About mathematics versus laws of physics: I see little difference for it is the pure logic of mathematics that determines the physics. Plus, as apes we have little hope of ever understanding all this but with mathematics we have a tool, our only tool, to glimpse reality. Maybe mathematics too is just an approximation to something deeper.

I've lost the plot on this thread and have no idea what the argument is even about now so I'll leave it at that.

reply to post by Aphorism


Again, you sound silly. Look at your own definition.

HOW CAN SOMETHING REPLICATED AND OBSERVED BE IMAGINARY?

That is just laughable.

HOW CAN A SCIENTIST IMAGINATION CREATE LAWS OF PHYSICS THAT ARE REPEATED AND OBSERVED?

Again, you watched Wolfram talking about Mathematics and you didn't fully understand it. Tell Wolfram that the laws of physics are imaginary and he might call the funny farm and have you committed.

Buziblu
I can accept that a particular law may be seen as imaginary - say Newtonian gravitation or General Relativistic gravitation - but that gravity behaves according to rules is not imaginary. As humans we home in on that rule as best we can, only ever seeing slices of reality, but those fundamental rules are absolutes.

About mathematics versus laws of physics: I see little difference for it is the pure logic of mathematics that determines the physics. Plus, as apes we have little hope of ever understanding all this but with mathematics we have a tool, our only tool, to glimpse reality. Maybe mathematics too is just an approximation to something deeper.

I've lost the plot on this thread and have no idea what the argument is even about now so I'll leave it at that.

Great points!

This happens from time to time on ATS.

A thread gets lost because a poster that doesn't understand the thread will try to debate an issue that has nothing to do with the thread.

There has been a debate since Plato about mathematics being discovered or invented but it's asinine to suggest this extends to the laws of physics being imaginary. That makes no sense.

Here's more on the debate:

Plato is the standard-bearer for the believers in discovery. The Platonic notion is that mathematics is the imperturbable structure that underlies the very architecture of the universe. By following the internal logic of mathematics, a mathematician discovers timeless truths independent of human observation and free of the transient nature of physical reality. “The abstract realm in which a mathematician works is by dint of prolonged intimacy more concrete to him than the chair he happens to sit on,” says Ulf Persson of Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, a self-described Platonist.

The Platonic perspective fits well with an aspect of the experience of doing mathematics, says Barry Mazur, a mathematician at Harvard University, though he doesn’t go so far as to describe himself as a Platonist. The sensation of working on a theorem, he says, can be like being “a hunter and gatherer of mathematical concepts.”

Again, this is a different debate that's about mathematics. This has nothing to do with the laws of physics being imaginary. That's just an absurd notion.

reply to post by neoholographic

Again, you sound silly. Look at your own definition.

HOW CAN SOMETHING REPLICATED AND OBSERVED BE IMAGINARY?

That is just laughable.

HOW CAN A SCIENTIST IMAGINATION CREATE LAWS OF PHYSICS THAT ARE REPEATED AND OBSERVED?

Again, you watched Wolfram talking about Mathematics and you didn't fully understand it. Tell Wolfram that the laws of physics are imaginary and he might call the funny farm and have you committed.

Cannot formulate an argument? Appealing to authority? Ad hominem? These are all signs that you cannot grasp what you are talking about. I figured.

Would you say the same to this guy?

reply to post by neoholographic

HOW CAN A SCIENTIST IMAGINATION CREATE LAWS OF PHYSICS THAT ARE REPEATED AND OBSERVED?

To be fair, the "laws of physics" are not actual laws but more of an observation that helps us to predict the interaction of physical objects in our world. We predict that objects will attract each other but we have no understanding of why this is. The best we can do is theorize that it due to the stretching of space and space is stretched when it becomes occupied by matter. There is no actual law that enforces this based on our current understanding. Same with any other physical law, they are merely predictions.

reply to post by Aphorism


That guy didnt really say anything relevant or pertinent, but I have seen some other things of him speaking and hes after a noble cause.

I didnt read this whole thread but I just saw some of the last posts, what is it that you are arguing, that there is not a stable substance based universe that works a specific way? From what I have seen unless you can explain your argument better to me, the general gist, I think you are wrong.

reply to post by Aphorism


LOL,

I asked you a simple question.

HOW CAN THE THE LAWS OF PHYSICS BE IMAGINARY IF THEY ARE OBSERVED AND REPLICATED?

It's a simple question.

Also, you should have watched the video you posted and also I pointed this out in an earlier thread when I talked about quantum gravity or some who say GRAVITY IS AN EMERGENT PROPERTY OF THERMODYNAMICS.

LISTEN TO WHAT HE SAYS IN THE VIDEO IN THE FIRST 20 SECONDS OF THE VIDEO.

He says exactly what I said here.

Again, gravity has nothing to do with imagination. The only thing that's not fully understood is things like quantum gravity or is gravity an emergent property of entropy. Nobody has claimed that gravity is imaginary. Gravity has been well understood since Newton and then Einstein with General Relativity.

In the video, he clearly says that he's not saying Gravity doesn't exist. He says this in the 1st 20 seconds of the video.

What he's saying is gravity emerges from a more fundamental law of physics which is thermodynamics. You need to watch the video before you post it. There's also observational problems with this theory but it's a theory based on the fundamental laws of physics and he just sees gravity as an emerging property. He isn't saying Gravity is imaginary.

reply to post by usertwelve


This isn't the case.

These are laws of physics. A scientific law is called this when it has been replicated and observed over and over again throughout the years.

Now these laws are always theories in principle because new information could emerge that changes things.

For instance, the speed of light. There could be a discovery of a particle that travels faster than the speed of light. Some have theorized a tachyon particle.

This is just a theory though until this particle is observed and replication occurs. A tachyon is imaginary. The speed of light isn't imaginary. Planck's constant isn't imaginary. Bohr's radius isn't imaginary. The Strong Nuclear force isn't imaginary.

So both Planck's constant and the theories about a tachyon are theories in principle but Planck's constant has been observed and replicated over and over again.

Here's more:

To test whether Planck’s constant is really constant, Makan Mohageg and graduate student James Kentosh of California State University in Northridge turned to the same GPS systems that help drivers find their way home. GPS relies on the most accurate timing devices we currently possess: atomic clocks. These count the passage of time according to frequency of the radiation that atoms emit when their electrons jump between different energy levels.

Why go to all this bother? The point is that the researchers did not just pick on a random constant. Planck’s constant is in effect the number that launched the field of quantum physics. In 1900 the German scientist Max Planck proposed h as a measure of the size of energy “packets”, or quanta, into which light is divided. Planck said that a light quantum has an amount of energy equal to the frequency of the light multiplied by h. Planck introduced this “quantum” hypothesis of light as a mathematical trick to get his equations to work out. But Albert Einstein argued five years later that the trick must be taken literally: light really is chopped up into these discrete packets of energy.

Kentosh and Mohageg fixed on h, and specifically on whether h depends on where (not when) you measure it. If h changes from place to place, so do the frequencies, and thus the “ticking rate”, of atomic clocks. And any dependence of h on location would translate as a tiny timing discrepancy between different GPS clocks.

So, what did they discover? Well, if there is any difference in h it would have to be really tiny. After careful analysis of the data from seven highly stable GPS satellites, Kentosh and Mohageg conclude that h is identical at different locations to an accuracy of seven parts in a thousand. In other words, if h were a one-metre measuring stick, two sticks in different places anywhere in the world do not differ by more than seven millimetres.

Spotting this variation of less than 1% in measuring sticks might be easy, spotting this in an exceedingly tiny number like Planck’s constant, which is 0.000000000000000000000000000000000662606957 joule seconds, demands the type of extreme accuracy of measurement that is most likely beyond the capabilities of our most accurate atomic clocks. At this point, however, we can feel reassured that there is no reason to suspect that this particular aspect of physics shifts between, say, London and Beijing – or indeed, between our galaxy and the next one.

www.bbc.com...

See the difference?

To say these things are imaginary is absurd. Look at the accuracy of Planck's Constant. You don't have this observation and replication for a tachyon or even for extra dimensions.

So when people talk about the laws of physics, they're not saying these things can never change or new theories emerge, what they're saying is when the theory is replicated over and over again you get the same results no matter who is carrying out the test.

reply to post by neoholographic

So when people talk about the laws of physics, they're not saying these things can never change or new theories emerge, what they're saying is when the theory is replicated over and over again you get the same results no matter who is carrying out the test.

No argument here. But we should be clear that what we've defined as laws are mere observations. They have been categorized as laws when the prediction of the physical behavior is near 100%. That however does not mean it won't behave differently. So to call these "laws" might well be imaginary in the sense that there is no law, only behavior. Certainly an interesting thread.

As for the OP, I do believe that there is an order to things. We observe this order and the more predictable the behavior the more capable the environment is for sustaining the world around us.

reply to post by Aphorism


Taking gravity theory as an example; the reason it is called a theory is because there is no way to test the population.

In the case of gravity the population would be the Universe as we generally refer to (13.7 billion years old 40 billion light years wide).

However in so far as what has been discovered to date in relation to Astronomy nothing so far has been observed that does not support the theory.

reply to post by usertwelve



i do agree about the order we see but there's nothing imaginary about calling them laws.

Science is just saying these are theories that has been observed and replicated over time. When he says these laws are imaginary, he saying they don't exist. There just functions of the human mind and this is just silly.

Again, it's reading about the current debate within mathematics and trying to extend that to the laws of physics for some reason.

When science says they're laws, it's with the understanding that these are theories that have been replicated and observed over the years and there's nothing imaginary about that.

reply to post by neoholographic

Do laws by definition require a governing body? Something to enforce them?

reply to post by neoholographic


First of all, I would like to apologize for my confrontation. I think we can discuss this rationally and without the declarations of insanity.

HOW CAN THE THE LAWS OF PHYSICS BE IMAGINARY IF THEY ARE OBSERVED AND REPLICATED?

In the case of gravity, what is actually being observed and replicated is the facts of the matter: bodies with mass in some way attract each other. When we jump, we come back to earth. This is a proven fact and can be confirmed by jumping. You can call jumping, the orbits of heavenly bodies, objects falling to earth, bodies attracting each other, "gravity" if you wish—I'm fine with that—but what we are still looking at and replicating is people jumping, objects falling, and planetary orbits—these are the actual phenomenon and facts. What other phenomenon are we calling gravity? If one knew, one would point it out to me. But all one can ever point to is an equation.

So then how do we observe something falling, like Newton's apple, and somehow arrive at a conclusion called "gravity"? We do not deduce towards something called gravity, we induce, we derive by inductive reasoning, meaning we reach a general conclusion or principle from observations. We create and imagine the principle, and see if evidence supports it. This is the nature of scientific theory—a materialist method by the way—where the general conclusion stands until it is refined or corrected or outright disproved. It's called "Bayesian inference", and this is why some theories (I stress the word "theory") often do not stand the test of time: because better explanations take over (See phlogiston, Aristotelian physics, Luminiferous aether, caloric theory, the geocentric universe, the heliocentric universe etc. etc. etc.—all of them once laws of physics superseded by better laws of physics—all of which were and are man-made).

Here is Newton's law of gravitation: F = G \frac[m_1 m_2][r^2]\ . That is gravity in all its glory, a series of numbers.

Here's Plank's constant: 6.62606957 × 10-34 m2 kg / s

These are the laws of physics sitting on my computer screen—math.

Now I don't doubt the truth value of these propositions, but they are still propositions and nothing more. There is nothing absolute about them, and they are created within a cosmically small frame of reference, from which 99.9999999% of the observable phenomena in the universe is out of our reach. Knowing this, I cannot see how anyone has the arrogance to postulate these mathematical models as irrefutable truth, and to reduce the universe to an equation is the epitome of foolhardy. In my opinion at least.

reply to post by usertwelve


I think you're thinking of a political law and mixing it with a scientific law. The two are not the same.

A political law does spring forth from human invention. For instance one state might say Marijuana is legal and another state might say Marijuana is illegal. There's nothing fundamental when it comes to the legality or illegality of Marijuana. So yes, you will need a governing body to enforce those laws. You will need Logos in order to create those laws and give the sequential arrangement of information meaning.

With scientific laws, there's nothing imaginary about them. You can't just imagine you want a tachyon to be observed and replicated and then the next week it's observed and replicated. There's nothing imaginary about scientific theories that have been replicated and observed over the years. Again, this all comes back to Logos.

You don't need to enforce scientific laws the same way you would enforce a law that says Marijuana is illegal. You don't need to enforce the physics that gives us a blue sky to look at. You don't need to enforce gravity in the same way you try to enforce the law that says running a red light is illegal.

Logos gives us the sequential arrangements that gives us fundamental laws of physics and gives us the universe that we see and experience. Logos also gives us the sequential arrangements of information that gives us the laws that Politicians come up with. Everything comes back to Logos.