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 ...
Actually, no.
Earth sucks. That's why space is a vacuum.
Godel's Incompleteness Theorem demonstrated that any formal mathematical system is incapable of providing answers to all stateable problems.
>> does it matter that we don’t know and that most scientists don’t seem to know or care where they come from? <<
Of course if we do discover a source, then scientists will just have the question of where that source came from.
It’s all about defining random. Uncertainty and unpredictability do not necessarily mean there is no pattern. In fact, there is little evidence that “patternlessness” can even be.
On the other hand, everything that seems regular could cease to exist the next instant, in a purely random event.
I believe that scientists have tried to come up with random number generators based on all sorts of properties such as Brownian motion, small fluctuations in heat or electricity in some sort of filament, etc.
But when some other scientist looked at one of these contraptions, they always found some pattern that made it not completely random.
So it might be that the universe is constructed in such a way that complete pure randomness is impossible.
And the fact that the universe is still here after what we believe to be billions of years of existence, might suggest that whatever patterns guide the universe, non-existence is not included.
Pure randomness would mean that we could never exclude the possibility that everything would end in the blink of an eye.
But if every quasi-random phenomenon has to have at least a smidgeon of a pattern to it, then it might be that there is no way to completely annihilate the universe.
I’m really enjoying this thread even though I don’t understand a thing.
Didn’t someone say that when the last scientist climbed the last mountain a philosopher would be waiting and explain what he had just done? And why?
And if you consider the universe made of information, the posiition or reference of “no information” or null information is information regardless, and you could never put yourself or be in a non-informational state. Hence, all sorts of stuff.
Or as Rene Descartes might have said:
I am informed, therefore I am!
Oh, well, that makes sense....
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