Alright. I have given in to the temptation to provide a substantive contribution to this thread. You can thank Carl and his argument
for psi piece. Please comment freely.
Forgive me for this, but, I have a certain possesiveness for what follows.
What follows is a copyrighted work. Permission to excerpt for comment or other "fair use" as defined by US Copyright law is hereby
granted so long as said excerpt is attributed to the author. Use for any other purpose, commercial or otherwise without express
written permission of the author is prohibited.
(C) Copyright 1997 by Edwin L. Smith
===========================
Absolutely nothing is absolute.
Now for me is later for him and sooner for her. Here is there to someone else. My up, your down. His left, her right.
What you are used to seeing of the world you view through a window, your senses. But this window is located in the middle of the
room. When one steps back and looks at the universe from the outside, one does not see a box, measurable with a fixed yardstick,
timed with an absolute cosmic clock, floating in stationary fluid. Instead, one sees an ethereal blob, stretching, contorting,
moving, not relative to an external frame of reference, but relative to itself.
When one looks in the window again, normalcy returns, at least in appearance. Items appear to be solid, distances constant,
measurements absolute.
Motions are governed by simple laws in this inside world — laws that become more complex the more carefully they are studied. The
simplicity with which one can describe two billiard balls in a gravityless, frictionless mental laboratory is close enough to what
we see in the gravity-filled, felt-covered world upon which real balls interact that we can convince ourselves of its absolute
truth. It’s simplicity is it own proof.
Reduce the balls to the size of atoms, and increase the speed of their collision to nine tenths the speed of light and the laws are
quite different. Of course, our window into this microworld is quite different as well. We cannot see the subjects of our scrutiny,
but can find out where they were by spraying them with other such balls and seeing where they go and how fast. The rules that
predicted so nicely how our macroworld balls behave cannot even tell us where our atomic-sized balls are now. Or when, for them, now
is.
Return to the macroworld of billiard balls, earth, wind and fire, and we find that even this more predictable world is not so
predictable. When we add back our gravity and felt, we must also account for the dust, the unevenness of the table, the minuscule
eddies in the air currents and the jumping up and down of the anxious instigators of the collisions of our study as they further
attempt to influence the final outcome of their experiment and sink the 8 ball. Each force, itself describable and perfectly modeled
by simple vector arithmetic, when combined becomes a symphony of effects that happen with such complexity and speed that the
greatest supercomputer ever built could spend until the end of the universe and be unable to calculate, to complete precision, the
exact result of this simple experiment. This is no fault of the computer or its programmer. It is the nature of the nature it
attempts to simulate to be unsimulatable.
The world we see is a grammar. It produces, from a very few simple rules of syntax, an infinite variety of sentences. You can add to
the vocabulary, and even enhance the grammar itself, but you cannot grasp the meaning of its sentences. For, the semantics of the
universe is unknown. The grammar is self-relative, and its absolute underpinnings defy us. Indeed, they may not exist.
To attempt to garner the semantics by studying the syntax is equivalent to proffering, as fact, the Rusellian paradox: “This
statement is false.” In fact, it is easier to settle the truth of such a statement than to seek absolute truth from our
understanding, now or ever, of the universe we see.
————–
The most concrete substance is nothing but an abstraction.
The heaviest, densest rock ever found on earth is almost entirely empty space.
What we feel when we touch it is a force exerted by the electrons of this mostly-empty-space rock on the electrons of our
mostly-empty-space fingers. This force is carried by particles that have never been seen in a laboratory but exist in the
imaginations of particle physicists attempting to build a “theory of everything.”
What we see when we look at it is a minuscule fraction of electromagnetic energy released by the electrons when they get temporarily
excited by energy from the almost-empty-space sun. This energy then excites electrons in your almost-empty-space retina, which
starts a chain of excited electrons into your almost-empty-space brain, your window in the middle of the room.
What we notice when we drop it on our toe is not, as we suspect, because of the rock’s absolute acceleration to the earth, simply
because heavy rocks fall. If we were to look at this from outside the room, we would be surprised to see that the hand holding our
rock is accelerating it away from its preferred, constant speed path towards the earth along a track curved through space-time by
the existence of high-mass protons and neutrons scattered throughout the almost-empty-space earth.
Our universe is an ethereal blob because of the impact highly dense almost-empty-space objects like the earth have on space-time.
But it seems neither ethereal or blobby from inside the room, because the more proletarian vocabulary of the grammar that is our
universe describes it more concretely. The more arcane vocabulary of the theory of general relativity connotes a much different
“real” universe than what we normally see. Yet, the true meaning, if there is one, still eludes us.
The electrons in the rock, which impose upon us an electromagnetic repulsive force, do not float around in space along some neatly
defined orbits, as most people imagine them to. In fact, as suggested before, they do not actually even exist in the sense that we
are used to. We cannot know, at any given moment, exactly where that electron is and what it is doing. It is not simply that we have
no small enough ruler, or even, as quantum mechanics and the uncertainty principle claim, that no small enough ruler could ever,
even in principle, be developed. No, our claim on understanding the nature of the universe is more tenuous than even that. Being
unable, even in principle, to know the answer to a question, suggests that there is no answer. Of several possible answers, no one
is right, no one is wrong. They are simultaneously right, even as they are mutually exclusive. None of them is right, even as one
must be.
As irrational as it sounds, at the quantum level, an object does not occupy one state at the exclusion of others. It occupies a
range of states, indeed an infinite range of states within finite bounds. It is neither here, nor there, nor halfway between, nor
halfway before that. It exists in all these places, and infinitely more, in different degrees, corresponding to probabilities
calculated via complex expressions. Ironically, we can look back in time, and retrospectively determine where the electron was, but
until we did so, it did not exist there. Or more properly, it did exist there, but only partially, as it also existed in those other
places we expected it to be, back when then was now. This is not some mystical, paranormal phenomenon. It is scientific theory,
verified by experiment.
We assume that our world is concrete, because it is our nature to grasp for the concrete. But the only evidence we have that it
exists at all is our perception of it. We know now that that perception is very biased and even incorrect. What we know, as Socrates
noted thousands of years ago, is that we know almost nothing. What we view to be concrete might as well be nothing beyond a figment
of our imagination.
————
Only abstractions are concrete.
If we can doubt that the world around is real, if we start to believe that the real is abstract, can anything be real? When
desCartes said “cogito ergo sum,” he was declaring that his own ability to ponder reality gave him reality enough. Does that really
solve the problem or does it merely evade it? In effect, the cogito accidentally redefines reality. All it proves is that existence
means something. It grants that it is a valid question to ask if something exists, but it does not answer the more fundamental
question of what existence means.
I can invent a number. I could write it down on this paper. The number might have 78 digits. Whichever 78 digit number I choose, it
is almost certainly the first time that that number has ever been written down, expressed or even conceived by any being anywhere in
the universe. The likelihood of the identical number having previously been used is so remarkable that if every intelligent creature
in the universe, however many of them their might be, were to begin writing down random 78-digit numbers, the odds of anyone of them
hitting that number before all of the stars in the universe go super nova is still virtually zero.
So if I write down my number, a curious thing happens. I put into a certain concrete existence something that has always had a
theoretical existence. That this 78-digit number existed before it was expressed is sort of intuitive. It was inevitable in an
infinite time line that this, and every other number would have been eventually expressed. The rules for eventually discovering it
are well established. Start at one, and count until you get there. So we argue that it existed because we could think about how to
generate it, even if we would never, ever have really generated it in the real world.
There are other such truths that we deem to exist even though we have never, as yet, imagined them. The entire field of mathematics
is about discovering, a little at a time, an entire universe of truths that have absolutely nothing to do with the real world. They
are true entirely for the sake of the integrity of the field in which they were discovered. And we know, we absolutely take for
granted, that there are an infinite number of these truths waiting to be discovered that are as concretely true as anything we can
imagine.
In essence, we ascribe a more certain sense of existence to something that does not exist than those things we feel do exist. Things
that we can conceive of must exist, where as those things that we perceive might not. Thomas Aquinas first proved that God exists by
ascribing to him this mental, theoretical existence. Since he was able to conceive of Him, then he has a theoretical existence the
way a random 78-digit number has a theoretical existence even if never expressed. Since Aquinas’ concept of God was one of a being
perfect in every aspect, and since concrete, if you will, real existence was deemed to be more perfect than mere theoretical
existence, God must concretely and really exist. Curious, though, how one might use the upside-down world described herein to draw
the exact opposite conclusion – that a most perfect god would be one that exists only in concept and not in reality, because only
abstract reality is concrete.
————-
The concept of good and evil is a myth.
Well if the abstract is real and the real is abstract, then the boundary between the physical and theoretical worlds takes on a new
life. Religion and philosophy have often argued about which world begot which. Yet, to some lesser or greater degree, the common
wisdom places the physical world as the stage for a set of physical players acting out some sort of cosmic script. Unlike the
behavior of billiard balls, or the derivability of trigonometric identities, the rules of behavior of the world’s less predictable
occupants had to be invented instead of discovered.
Rules of law, rather than predicting behavior are designed to regulate it. Of course, in fact, they do neither very well. The fact
that human behavior is unpredictable does not imply that it is unguided. Just because there might be rules governing that behavior
does not mean those rules can be discovered by us.
Nonetheless, we try to avoid the anarchy that we view would erupt from letting that behavior take its normal, unpredictable turns.
We develop grand systems of ideology, and bestow to them the status of absolute truth, the way we bestow that title to trigonometric
identities. And when certain individuals deviate from this ordained truth, we deem that they have sinned. Then human behavior, being
inherently unregulatable by such dogmatic regimes, we find that almost every individual sometimes sins. So we develop vastly
complicated structures in which we rate the relative severity of these sins, forgiving some, correcting others, harshly punishing
for the greatest.
The cloak in which we wrap our ideological framework is the artificial field of morals. Lacking any real foundation in either
empirical or theoretical study, we justify them through utilitarian and anthropic arguments. A world with law is more orderly and
more just than a world without law, therefore some set of morals is necessary. Since certain sets of morals better fit our intuitive
notion of what works than others, we pick one that seems to better server the purpose to which it will be assigned.
Of course, most moral frameworks claim a religious or spiritual basis. A set of rules passed down on a tablet from on high has not
only the benefit of practicality but the authority of some entity more knowledgeable than the mere mortals to which they will apply.
Yet, despite this pretense of religious basis, it is more likely that the ten commandments were devised by mankind as a way of
battling ancient, genetic aggressive instincts, than handed down by an otherwise very rarely heard deity.
If a grand deity exists, it seems likely, in light of our newly inverted view of the universe, that the true purposes of the world
are much more abstract than simply, “Thou shalt not kill.” The physical world we know is too full of natural violence to make one
believe that artificial violence defies some grand master plan. The idea of a straight-and-narrow path towards a concept we call
“good” in defiance of a force that pushes us to stray that we call “evil” seems very simplistic, and, as one-dimensional in
intuition as it is in model.
If there is to be a purpose served, then, whatever that purpose might be, it is best served by allowing those individuals the freest
rein to explore their personal boundaries between the abstract and the concrete. There is most certainly, for each a right behavior
and a wrong behavior. Occasionally when the right behavior of one individual abridges the potential right behavior of another, a
compromise must be reached, and a set of rules agreed to by which this compromise is accomplished is a noble, if not implicitly
necessary goal.
What can not be right behavior, though, is the forced abridgment of someone else’s sphere of right behavior. In other words, a
person’s own search for his grand purpose is not served by having some other person’s idea about his grand person imposed upon him.
In a world where my here is your there and your left is my right, and my window in the middle of the room has a slightly different
view than yours, how can you feel justified in being so sure that the understanding you think you have attained in your search for
your grand purpose will be even remotely similar to the understanding I will build? How can you feel so certain, not just that an
absolute right and wrong exist, but that you are so better able to discern them than I?
In a universe where the abstract is concrete and the concrete is abstract, there can be no confidence that the concrete laws of
concrete human beings in a concrete world can even remotely resemble the more real laws of abstract ideas and expressions that so
assuredly are beyond our comprehension. In fact, if we can draw any conclusion at all, it is that each person must explore her own
connection with the absolute truths of the abstract world and how they relate to her behavior in the more relative instantiation of
those truths in the real world. The only “real” evil would be to keep her from doing just that.
——–
Truth is found, not in answers to questions, but in the questions themselves.
If Socrates was right, that we know only that we know nothing, then can we ever really know truth? We believe in the truth of the
abstract, and we question the absolute truth of the real. But what good is Fermat’s last theorem to my decision about which wine to
serve with dinner?
If each of us is to discover our own spiritual self, our own connection with the abstract world, and in so doing, or own sense of
right and wrong in the real world, we seem at first doomed. We could not know a truth if it hit us in the face. How are we to search
for something we can not possibly know?
The universe is a giant web of ideas, some of which are true, some of which are false, and some of which are simply paradoxical.
These ideas interact with a fluid, erratic, relative physical world that is the place in which we actually live. We can not hope to
know the truths of the universe anymore than a Christian can hope to be free from sin. So, like the Christian, we must forgive
ourselves the indiscretion of our ignorance. We must be content to search for the truth, as best we can, and delight in the bits of
wisdom we discover along the way. In so doing, we grow, and we build an identity for ourselves and a relationship with our universe.
Of course, we must be careful along the way to avoid the arrogance that personal wisdom sometimes brings. Sharing discoveries and
insights is acceptable. Ordaining them as absolute truth and insisting that others see them as you do is not.
In the end, if you are to judge yourself against this grand scheme that you can not begin to fully know, how would you proceed? What
standard might you use. What conclusion can we draw that will help us guide our lives in this upside-down, inside-out
abstract-is-real and real-is-abstract universe. Perhaps only the following can be known for certain:
If absolute truth exists, it can not be fully understood by us mere mortals.
We may be able to determine the relative truth of certain ideas in our real world (just as we can measure the relative speed of two
billiard balls, even if we can’t measure their absolute speed relative to some unknown fixed point).
Insightful questions are often a display of relative truth, as they ask, if this is true than might that as well?
In the end, these questions may, by their self-relative nature, offer the only truth we may ever actually know.