Newton Vs. The Clockwork Universe

Wolfhart Pannenberg "Toward a Theoelogy of Nature" | July 19, 2004 | Jean F. Drew

[Doctor Stochastic]

There are lots of types of broken symmetry. Example.

[unspun]

Philosophies about God are interesting. Maybe he is 51% good and 49% bad.

Yes, and there are in infinite number of ways of being wrong. But if one seeks whether God may be a distinct person who does love us and chose to communicate to us just what we need, just how we need it, one may have criteria by which to search for validity -- not by philosophy, but by looking for His communication. I supppose even if He engaged in daily skywriting, it wouldn't necessarily draw unwilling hearts into agreement and acceptance, though.

Pardon if this is too much; I just like to cut to the chase. ;-`

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your post!

There seem to be a few who comment on these threads who insist that even though something is not known, it is understandable. I have thought about this for a great many years, and it was with great reluctance I finally admitted that there are things I could never understand. There are things which are not known and are not understandable. Certainly you both agree that there is at least one thing that is known but is not understandable: Faith.

Indeed. Moreover, God Himself cannot be fully known or fully understood. On this point I agree with the Eastern Orthodox folk around here that He is infinitely incomprehensible and incomprehensibly infinite. Nevertheless, He has revealed some of Himself – in the Scriptures, in Jesus Christ, in the indwelling Spirit and in the creation itself.

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. – Psalms 19:1

But the language of the universe is not English or Latin or Greek, but mathematics. Betty boop used this quote from Galileo in his book II saggiatore (“The Assayer”) to make that very point:

Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these one is wandering in a dark labyrinth.

So, as you described in your example at post 909 on this other thread - the meaning of the creation declaration by God is in the “eye of the beholder” – or more specifically, in the language one understands and his willingness to receive the message.

The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavour in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that there is.

Einstein's speech 'My Credo' to the German League of Human Rights, Berlin, autumn 1932, Einstein: A Life in Science, Michael White and John Gribbin, page 262

[Diamond]

IMO, all metaphysical statements ought to be colored purple in order to be in harmony with their immanence. :^)

Cordially,

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for the ping to your replies!

If something is not connected by "communication" (what a word that is!) to the "other" upon which it depends, it is not alive. And ultimately, the whole stuff of life as we know it -- the whole complexity of voracious dancing Russian dolls of "self" things depending upon "other" things for life -- the cosmos itself is not exempt from this rule.

Indeed, unspun. Well said!

On another thread we put ourselves through a thought experiment to make this very point in biological terms.

Put a live skin cell alongside a dead skin cell and describe the difference.

The difference goes to the heart of the question, "what is life?" - strangely, a question which does not interest biologists but which is vital to physicists.

Physicists in the specialty of "information theory and molecular biology" describe the difference as successful communication which is a paraphrase of the technical definition of "information" according to Shannon. The dead skin cell has ceased to communicate, both internally and externally.

Moreover, as betty boop has brought to our attention in this article, such "successful communication" permeates and sustains “all that there is”. As she notes, Newton actually saw this so very long ago:

Yet by what means could God be “present with his creatures?” Newton gave his answer in the Scholium Generale, an addendum to the second edition of Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, his chief work on the mathematical principles of the philosophy of nature. The addendum endeavors to clarify the relationship of his doctrines of physics and his religious and philosophical views. Here Newton states that “God constitutes space and time through his eternity and omnipresence: ‘existendo semper et ubique, durationem et spatium constituit.’” For Newton, God as immensitas constitutes absolute space – infinite and “empty” – and this absolute space is the sensorium Dei

The possibility of the zero point field being the carrier of “successful communication” in this four dimension universe and inter-dimensionally is quite engaging to me because at bottom, the zero point field is the least common denominator of resonance!

And those of us who are Christian or Jewish recall what God has said:

By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. - Psalms 33:6

Therefore it makes sense to me that there would be a medium (of firmament, in a much broader definition) - between the natural and supernatural whereby God sustains our physical sense of "reality". So far, the zpf is the best candidate medium from the viewpoint of the natural realm.

[js1138]

This is a variation of Last Thursdayism. God is immanent in all of nature, and any change initiated will change the past along with the present, making the universe appear to obey consistent natural laws.

[headsonpikes]

Cordially,

Don't give me 'cordially'!!!

My assertion is obviously a meta-statement about metaphysical statements, and therefore not to be colored purple!

To reify an epiphany is but to immanentize the eschaton! Beware!

;^)

[Diamond]

...It is called vacuum genesis and it suggests that the universe began as a single particle arising from an absolute vacuum. Curious as it may seem, this idea violates none of the known laws of physics.

It violates the principle that whatever begins to exist has a cause. Even a quantum vacuum is not nothing. Nothing comes from nothing.

Cordially,

[D-fendr]

Nothing comes from nothing

If you mean nothing as in "not from pre-existing energy/matter, then I think that statement is not true. Virtual particles (cassini effect) come into existence from "nothing," i.e. not from pre-existing matter/energy.

It violates the principle that whatever begins to exist has a cause.

Well, if you'd like to be scientific, the physical laws/forces of the universe are the cause.

Even a quantum vacuum is not nothing.

The laws of the universe exist everywhere in the universe - even where matter does not, so even where there is no energy or matter, the "rules" are still present.

You're right in that in a quantum vacuum consists of particles and antiparticles that briefly appear and then disappear just as quickly – from nothing (no matter).

thanks for your reply..

[RightWhale]

Newton's work inspired Kant.

[betty boop]

If you and IN are in the right (and you are) that would mean that God's communication with man is consistently one of specificity and not just some nebulous, conveniently pluralistic, make-of-it-what-you-will kind of otherness to usness.

Exactly, Brother A -- which I gather is why Newton insisted that God is "with his creatures" as Creator and Lord of Life, not as some nebulous "world soul." There is transcendent initiative, collaboration, and communication that affects "immanent" living beings, which the pantheist model -- in its haste to make God wholly immanent -- is simply blind to.

The Lord of Life is quintessentially so eternally alive -- and eternally with us -- as to be the foundation of all life, always -- from alpha to omega. There is nothing in the natural world, the world of immanent reality, that even comes close to such universal majesty and power.

I know of no pantheist who would tell you that the world had a beginning, that it was created in the first place. The pantheist world view almost always involves an "eternal universe" model, with the universe waxing and waning over the aeons, seemingly completely under its own autonomous power. Yet absent a beginning, there is really no way to explain this "autonomous power." To say that powers and laws are simply the natural culmination of random chance -- which is the only alternative to a created (i.e., designed) universe I can think of -- is to explain exactly nothing.

For how can an endless series of accidents ever produce one single natural law? If all there is to the evolution of the world is an infinite chain of accidents, then by what defense would any "law" once having emerged protect itself from being wiped out in the next accident?

Thanks for a great post, Brother A!

[betty boop]

Nothing comes from nothing.

Hello Diamond! Certainly this is true for us denizens of the natural world.

God, however, is not subject to this restriction. For He created the world "out of nothing."

Of course, He added a whole lot of "value-added" to that nothing.... :^) Thanks so much for writing!

[Diamond]

...the physical laws/forces of the universe are the cause... The laws of the universe exist everywhere in the universe - even where matter does not, so even where there is no energy or matter, the "rules" are still present.

How can you have physical laws/forces where there is no universe, i.e. nothing?

Virtual particles (cassini effect) come into existence from "nothing," i.e. not from pre-existing matter/energy.

Even virtual particles do not literally come into existence spontaneously out of nothing. They are the product, however briefly, of energy fluctuations in the quantum vacuum, and so they show nothing about the causality or acausality of absolute beginnings, of beginnings of the existence of particles, and so do not constitute an exception to the principle that whatever begins to exist has a cause.

Cordially,

[Diamond]

Hi, betty!

God, however, is not subject to this restriction. For He created the world "out of nothing."

Yes, of course, for God is not nothing.

Cordially,

[Doctor Stochastic]

Nothing comes from nothing.

You need to demonstrate this. It is not obvious and some physics theories disagree.

[D-fendr]

How can you have physical laws/forces where there is no universe, i.e. nothing?

Why can't you? Although it would be moot in practice with nothing for the laws to act upon.

But, imagine this: Assume you create a perfect vacuum in a container. Into this container you then put oxygen, heat and fuel. A fire results.

You did not put the physical laws into the container. The choices we have are that the laws are contained in the atoms – a problematic reiterative problem I think – or that the laws exist everywhere in the universe even where matter doesn't.

[D-fendr]

do not constitute an exception to the principle that whatever begins to exist has a cause.

I didn't say there wasn't a cause. We can discuss differing definitions and names for that cause. I suggested the laws of the universe. I also like "the creative process of the universe" as general and specific enough.

[Heartlander]

‘Nothing’ can only equal ‘nothing’. What physical law(s) applies to nothingness - particularly as a first cause for the physical?

Honestly, I’m more curious as to the point you are making…

[cornelis]

You need to demonstrate this

The Greeks already did that. And still those theorists make off with nothing to stuff away in their pockets!

[Heartlander]

You should always carry thin air in your pocket just in case you need to vanish into something.