PatrickHenry wishes you all a Merry Christmas
betty boop, I certainly agree with you that much of our scientific observations must be made by indirect observation. This is particularly apparent in astronomy and quantum mechanics where size and force prohibits. For example, black holes and dark energy are predicted by theory and inferred from other observations.
Phaedrus, I’m so glad you brought all of the Barr quotes to the thread. He is one of my favorites because of his focus on dimensionality. His publications along with Cumrun Vafa’s are often used as references in new publications on the subject!
His research has spanned many areas of theoretical particle physics, but with special emphasis on grand unified theories, theories of CP violation, the problem of the origin of quark and lepton masses, theories with extra space-time dimensions (such as Kaluza-Klein and superstring theories), and the interface between particle physics and cosmology. He has made significant contributions in all these areas, perhaps the most notable being the development of classes of models that solve the important "strong CP problem" (the problem of why the strong interactions unlike the weak are symmetric under CP), the development of the idea that the pattern of quark and lepton masses is due to effects at the unification scale, the co-discovery of the important "flipped SU(5)" grand unification scheme, work on theories of baryogenesis (the origin of matter at the time of the big bang), the discovery of large contributions to the electric and magnetic dipole moments of elementary particles in theories with an extended Higgs structure, contributions to the development of realistic SO(10) grand unified models, and a mechanism for explaining the large mixing observed in atmospheric data between muon and tau neutrinos.
2. I have twice felt the spirit of a loved one lapsing into a coma before death going through me with a clear communication of good will, joy, reassurance and peace – once with my mother and again with my sister. After having experienced it with my mother, I could have predicted it with my sister. And should another loved one pass this way, I predict it will happen once again.
3. When in deep worship and meditation on the person of Christ and the Father I am uplifted spiritually and am able to move, view and experience beyond time and proportion. I call these “night travels” though I can now also experience them in the daylight. This is a highly predictable result for me and others. Such experiences are the subject of scientific research.
4. I have not personally had a near death experience (though I wonder sometimes if that is the essence of the night travels). However, NDEs occur with sufficient regularity and predictability that they too are the subject of scientific research.
And one might consider this Voegelin thought experiment on the moving soul. Or the meaning of language, thought and consciousness.
Just some food for thought in response to your challenge, js1138!
djf, thank you so much for the lego example. As betty boop said, ”What is such scaffolding for??? What purpose does it serve?” I understand why you believe it is not a valid question but I disagree. You said:
The Plato/Aristotle debate will never be won, but it is helpful for Freepers and Lurkers to know what the debate is all about so that we can appreciate one another’s views.
According to the Aristotelian paradigm, physical reality is fundamental and mathematical language is merely a useful approximation. According to the Platonic paradigm, the mathematical structure is the true reality and observers perceive it imperfectly. In other words, the two paradigms disagree on which is more basic, the frog perspective of the observer or the bird perspective of the physical laws. The Aristotelian paradigm prefers the frog perspective, whereas the Platonic paradigm prefers the bird perspective....
A mathematical structure is an abstract, immutable entity existing outside of space and time. If history were a movie, the structure would correspond not to a single frame of it but to the entire videotape. Consider, for example, a world made up of pointlike particles moving around in three-dimensional space. In four-dimensional spacetime--the bird perspective--these particle trajectories resemble a tangle of spaghetti. If the frog sees a particle moving with constant velocity, the bird sees a straight strand of uncooked spaghetti. If the frog sees a pair of orbiting particles, the bird sees two spaghetti strands intertwined like a double helix. To the frog, the world is described by Newton's laws of motion and gravitation. To the bird, it is described by the geometry of the pasta--a mathematical structure. The frog itself is merely a thick bundle of pasta, whose highly complex intertwining corresponds to a cluster of particles that store and process information. Our universe is far more complicated than this example, and scientists do not yet know to what, if any, mathematical structure it corresponds.
The Platonic paradigm raises the question of why the universe is the way it is. To an Aristotelian, this is a meaningless question: the universe just is. But a Platonist cannot help but wonder why it could not have been different. If the universe is inherently mathematical, then why was only one of the many mathematical structures singled out to describe a universe? A fundamental asymmetry appears to be built into the very heart of reality.
As a way out of this conundrum, I have suggested that complete mathematical symmetry holds: that all mathematical structures exist physically as well. Every mathematical structure corresponds to a parallel universe. The elements of this multiverse do not reside in the same space but exist outside of space and time. Most of them are probably devoid of observers. This hypothesis can be viewed as a form of radical Platonism, asserting that the mathematical structures in Plato's realm of ideas or the "mindscape" of mathematician Rudy Rucker of San Jose State University exist in a physical sense. It is akin to what cosmologist John D. Barrow of the University of Cambridge refers to as "pi in the sky," what the late Harvard University philosopher Robert Nozick called the principle of fecundity and what the late Princeton philosopher David K. Lewis called modal realism. Level IV brings closure to the hierarchy of multiverses, because any self-consistent fundamental physical theory can be phrased as some kind of mathematical structure.
The view [Platonism] as pointed out earlier is this: Mathematics exists. It transcends the human creative process, and is out there to be discovered. Pi as the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter is just as true and real here on Earth as it is on the other side of the galaxy. Hence the book's title Pi in the Sky. This is why it is thought that mathematics is the universal language of intelligent creatures everywhere....
Barrow goes on to discuss Platonic views in detail. The most interesting idea is what Platonist mathematics has to say about Artificial Intelligence (it does not think it is really possible). The final conclusion of Platonism is one of near mysticism. Barrow writes:
Do there exist mathematical theorems that our brains could never comprehend? If so, then Platonic mathematical realms may exist, if not then math is a human invention. We may as well ask, "Is there a God?" The answer for or against does not change our relationship to mathematics. Mathematics is something that we as humans can understand as far as we need.