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Hi Steve,
Sorry to be out of touch; I missed your post so I'm glad you
brought it up again.
I took a look at the article on John
Wheeler at http://home.pacbell.net/claydale/wheelerdisc.htm.
There was one line in it that really screamed! It was the perfect summation of
so many of the discussions we have had on this list and also the
conclusion of my father's scientific analysis of contemporary
science: "The outcome of the experiment depends on what the physicists try
to measure..." And, since they're still chasing "the particles" they will miss
the answers to their questions unless the questions are directly about the
particles, themselves. Even then, they may not learn anything general about
particles, but only limited information pertaining to those particular particles
(... and how many pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick?) Further; how
will they know what is general and what is not?
My father didn't subscribe to the "Big Bang" theory. He thought
that was pretty stupid. It's such a linear, human view to think of beginnings,
endings, inside of, outside of, before, after, etc. But the question you are
asking is "Why?" not "How?" right? My father tended to answer questions like
"Why does the universe exist?" with "How should I know?" You had to get specific
and say, "Why do YOU think the universe exists?" He would then
say, "Ah, well that's a completely different question. And my answer to that may
not have anything relevant to teach you about the universe. As long as you
understand that, I'll tell you." Once he got reassurance, he'd nod and say, "OK,
then. Well... I don't know why the universe exists," and break out into
a grin as I was swatting at him with my magazine.
It's the sort of question that cannot be evaluated scientifically
at the current time. The best answer that doesn't rely on religious,
philosophical, or otherwise unsupported belief structures would probably be
"The universe exists because it is entailed." But to try and establish
what the entailments might be would be impossible to do in any kind of
scientific manner; we don't even know what "the universe" IS,
y'know what I mean? We can make educated guesses about some of the "ingredients"
like space and time, but whatever we are perceiving in the universe is going to
be the way it is because of the way the universe is organized. So it goes back
to chlorine and sodium, again. If the universe were a salt molecule, how would
we know what various aspects of the universe would be like if they were
separated from all other aspects? How could we guess the nature of chlorine
if our experience of the universe was salt? So, what would "time" be like, say,
if we could experience it detached from everything else? It might be
unrecognizable.
It's also not likely to be useful to have that information, really.
If the universe were a salt molecule, the nature of chlorine by itself is not
relevant. We're better off concentrating on learning how the universe works and
why. This we can find out. One of the basic laws of this universe is apparently
that everything is entailed and the entailments are consistent. We know this
from studying causality. My father also believed that interactive relational
causality is the entailed nature of this universe. We can do a lot with that,
science-wise, combined with the power of our minds. But, one thing he was able
to conclude from his study of complex systems and complexity in general is that
no matter how much we learn about how the universe works, it will never explain
why or how the universe came to exist. You can't derive either of those
categories of information from the other category.
Judith
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