Posted on 12/18/2007 1:01:57 PM PST by LibWhacker
“Gravity,” goes the slogan on posters and bumper stickers. “It isn’t just a good idea. It’s the law.”
And what a law. Unlike, say, traffic or drug laws, you don’t have a choice about obeying gravity or any of the other laws of physics. Jump and you will come back down. Faith or good intentions have nothing to do with it.
Existence didn’t have to be that way, as Einstein reminded us when he said, “The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.” Against all the odds, we can send e-mail to Sri Lanka, thread spacecraft through the rings of Saturn, take a pill to chase the inky tendrils of depression, bake a turkey or a soufflé and bury a jump shot from the corner.
Yes, it’s a lawful universe. But what kind of laws are these, anyway, that might be inscribed on a T-shirt but apparently not on any stone tablet that we have ever been able to find?
Are they merely fancy bookkeeping, a way of organizing facts about the world? Do they govern nature or just describe it? And does it matter that we don’t know and that most scientists don’t seem to know or care where they come from?
Apparently it does matter, judging from the reaction to a recent article by Paul Davies, a cosmologist at Arizona State University and author of popular science books, on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Gravity, a force without source, other than, “I exist.”............
Gravity sucks.
Random chance of course. Random chance and time is all powerful.
Hey! Gravity is just a theory. There should be competing theories allowed to be taught.
Don’t blame me. I voted for Velcro.
Randomness is a purely Platonic concept and may not even exist in the natural world.
I lean toward the Universe as one big glop of information. What else could come from the mind of God?
A Matrix, perhaps?
Imagine a mathematical construct so sophisticated it’s actually sentient.
It doesn’t matter. Most will argue all day long but nobody can prove their own point by attempting to disprove the opposition. Everybody points at the other and says ‘you’re wrong!’. Which entertains the few who see the illusions.
Relativity was another term stolen by Einstein along with that persistence thing.
Face piles and piles of trouble with smiles.
It riles them to believe you perceive the web that they weave.
“A Matrix, perhaps?”
Actually, it’s just a big ball of string.
bump for later comments
The comment attributed to Feynman, that philosophy of science is as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds, reminded me of this passage from Plato’s Timaeus:
“But the race of birds was created out of innocent light-minded men, who, although their minds were directed toward heaven, imagined, in their simplicity, that the clearest demonstration of the things above was to be obtained by sight;”
ping for later read...
umm... Randomness is at the heart of quantum mechanics which, describes the material world to very high accuracy.
Suggested reading that is not mathematically painful: “The Quantum World,” by K. W. Ford.
The great problem of physics today, is the quantum mechanics and the general theory of relativity (gravity) are fundamentaly incompatible yet both are experimentally very accurate.
Your comment on the universe as one big blob of information is spot-on compatible with some descriptions of quantum mechanics which are, still fundamentally about random processes at their core.
C.W.
Time to revisit the concept of causality, gents.
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