[malakhi]

Briefly, that there is always a beginning of real space and real time regardless of cosmology.

The only way to avoid the void is to prove up an infinite past.

There was a beginning to this real spacetime. But what evidence is there that it came from a void with "no space, no time, no energy, no matter, no mathematical structures, no logic, no physical laws, no physical constants"? What evidence is there that it came from a "void" at all? What if our universe began as a bubble off of a different universe?

Perhaps at some point science will be able to investigate what is beyond our universe. But at this time, such conversation is purely speculative. And so saying our spacetime came from a void lacking the list of things you mentioned is likewise purely speculative.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for your posts, but, er, I seem to be having some difficulty in communicating with you.

On one post you assert that cosmology is speculative and on a previous post that I should not accept cosmology as speculative. In actuality, my post 237 explores the host of physical cosmologies and how the notion of an infinite past has been debunked by observations in astronomy and in math.

Mathematics is all about logic. The most sure statements we can make about physical reality are mathematical. The universe is intelligible because it is mathematical. The point raised by Eugene Wigner (and affirmed by Cumrun Vafa) is there is no reason why mathematics should be so effective wrt physics.

For Lurkers: A good meditation on the unreasonable effectiveness of math includes Mandelbrot sets, mirror images and dualities which suggest that two different physical systems with completely different looking properties can nevertheless be isomorphic if one considers quantum geometry on either side. Other examples include mirror symmetries (Calabi-Yau manifolds) and S-dualities.

Max Tegmark suggests that the symmetry holds so completely that this physical reality actually consists of mathematical structures which exist beyond space and time. Another way to look at it is this: from the view within 4D space/time a particle may appear to be on a fixed trajectory which is actually a line with a beginning and an end from the view beyond space/time. Likewise two particles orbiting would appear to be two lines in a double helix. You and I and every physical existent would correspond to just such a mathematical structure.

And concerning my analysis of the objections to evolution theory, please notice that my objection is to unnecessary presuppositions (the second point) not to the quantization of continuums (the first point). Indeed, without such quantizations we would not have telecommunications, computers and such – because they all rely on analog to digital conversion (quantizations). Those who consider quantizations of continuums to be a logical fallacy are on the “evolution” side of the debate on this forum.

For evidence of biology seeing itself as autonomous, please refer to Ernst Mayr’s discussion of “what is science?” and this by H.H. Pattee: The physics of symbols: Bridging the epistemic cut

I do find physics and mathematics to be epistemologically pure. All presuppositions made in those two disciplines are stated as axioms and postulates related to the investigation at hand.

In those disciplines, no theory is treated as Holy writ. If the Higgs field/boson is not found or created, the standard model will be replaced without a whimper because the absence of evidence is evidence of absence. If the answer is undecideable – then undecideability is the answer – as in wave/particle duality.