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To: Alamo-Girl; RadioAstronomer
Realism in philosophical thinking is the belief that properties, usually called Universals, exist independently of the things that manifest them. Thus a realist would hold that even if one were to destroy all of the manifestations of the color red the universal red would still exist.

I assert that the color red cannot be destroyed, regardless of whether all manifestations of "red" are destroyed.

"Red" refers to a range of frequencies of light. Light is composed of photons. Although it is not always (or, in a finite universe, ever) possible to talk of THE frequency of a photon, nevertheless I can confine its spread of frequencies so that they are contained within the red band, thus, a "red" photon.

Now assume a universe where, in your frame of reference, all "red" photons cease to exist. Does "red" exist? Of course it does: any given photon can become, for you, a "red" photon, if only you move in the right direction at the right velocity. You simply Doppler shift the photon to the proper band.

So in order to destroy "red", we must first destroy all photons. Unfortunately, this is also impossible, because the vacuum itself is, in a deep sense, composed of virtual photons. As long as there are charged particles around in the universe, it is inevitable that some of the virtual photons will become realized, sprayed from the vacuum like a wake on the Dirac Sea. Every charged particle will have to go too, in order to destroy "red".

But if there are no charged particles, the weak force must go, too, because the W bosons are charged. Even the neutrinos must go, now, because in principle, they can radiate W's.

The strong force, I'm afraid, must also be lost, because in order to be finite, the gluons must pry quark loops from the vacuum, and quarks, being charged, must be forbidden, lest "red" exist.

So what's left? Gravitons. That's pretty much it. But if the Grand Unification Theories are correct, they too will couple to electromagnetism, so they may have to be eliminated to destroy "red". At that point, I submit that it is tantamount to a nonexistent universe.

39 posted on 04/05/2005 2:30:30 PM PDT by Physicist
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To: Physicist; betty boop; Ronzo; cornelis; marron; r9etb
What a magnificient post, Physicist! It makes the point clear as a bell! Thank you.
60 posted on 04/05/2005 9:06:17 PM PDT by Alamo-Girl (Please donate monthly to Free Republic!)
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To: Physicist

What an outstanding post, Physicist! Magnificent! Thank you so much for writing.


108 posted on 04/06/2005 6:21:07 AM PDT by betty boop (If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking. -- Gen. George S. Patton)
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To: Physicist
"Red" refers to a range of frequencies of light. Light is composed of photons. Although it is not always (or, in a finite universe, ever) possible to talk of THE frequency of a photon, nevertheless I can confine its spread of frequencies so that they are contained within the red band, thus, a "red" photon.

Well, yes and no.

First there's the matter of definition -- why not call it "aardvark" instead of "red?" In some sense "red" is a matter of how we define it.

Beyond that, although we can say with fairly high certainty that when a person perceives photons in that frequency range they'll call it "red," at the same time we have no way of knowing whether red "looks" the same to me as it does to you.

Which raises the question: what is red, exactly? Is it "the same" for all observers, even if we grant that they're all observing the same phenomenon? Might not the "observer" part of quantum mechanics play some role in how your specific class of photons becomes "red" to each observer -- is it necessarily the same for everybody?

115 posted on 04/06/2005 8:50:20 AM PDT by r9etb
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To: Physicist

Just what the heck do you think you are doing injecting reality into philosophy? Trying to confuse us further?


122 posted on 04/06/2005 11:08:10 AM PDT by b_sharp (Science adjusts theories to fit evidence, creationism distorts evidence to fit the Bible.)
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