[Red Badger]

Gravity, a force without source, other than, “I exist.”............

[Rick.Donaldson]

Gravity sucks.

[keithtoo]

Random chance of course. Random chance and time is all powerful.

[jim_trent]

Hey! Gravity is just a theory. There should be competing theories allowed to be taught.

[JmyBryan]

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?

[Constitutionalist Conservative]

Dr. Tegmark maintains that we are part of a mathematical structure

A Matrix, perhaps?

[Constitutionalist Conservative]

Such a deep subject, and yet the phrase "higgledy-piggledy" appeared twice in the article.

[Excellence]

Imagine a mathematical construct so sophisticated it’s actually sentient.

[RightWhale]

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.

[Phlap]

Einstein also said reality is just a perception but a persistent one. One thing we do know is that 2000 years is no measuring stick against a multi billion year existence.

[djf]

bump for later comments

[dr_lew]

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;”

[IronJack]

"Law" is just a description of the reality. The law doesn't make it happen, it just describes what DOES happen.

Time to revisit the concept of causality, gents.

[who_would_fardels_bear]

If everything is based on mathematics, as one scientist quoted in the article states, then there will eventually be some problems.

Godel's Incompleteness Theorem demonstrated that any formal mathematical system is incapable of providing answers to all stateable problems.

[dan1123]

>> 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.

[Oklahoma]

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?