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The Mystery of the Millionaire Metaphysician (2001)

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Re: The Mystery of the Millionaire Metaphysician (2001)

#11

Post by GW150914 »

ythn wrote: post #9
Animats wrote: post #6

Oh, that A. M. Monius thing again. "Does reality have a purpose? Why are things intelligible at all?" Those questions run into the usual problem when looking for a First Cause: "God created the world." "Then who created God?" "Shut up, kid." Some philosophers get into this mess by starting from the assumption that there must be something more than the physical universe, so that it somehow "makes sense". With that bia…

You have that problem with any theory, not just religious ones. You could argue that God was created the same way we were - by another God. Which eventually leads to "Gods have always existed", which is similar to Big Bang's problem of "matter has always existed". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_why_there_is_anythi...

It’s similar only if you misunderstand the questions physics seeks to answer. “If we rewind time according to present observations and theories, what do we see?” The answer is a Big Bang event, but that is just the answer to the question posed, not the deeper one posed by the wiki article. If you ask “why is there something rather than nothing?” physics has no single clear answer. Science takes very limited questions and seeks to answer them in a limited fashion with a high degree of confidence. Metaphysics plays word games with philosophy because hey, who can really gainsay you? Maybe it’s D-Branes, maybe it’s eternal inflation, maybe it’s the Great Green Arkleseizure.

The problem is that popular science and people who don’t know better misunderstand the nature of what physics actually does and tries to shoehorn theories into the questions they want answered.

Re: The Mystery of the Millionaire Metaphysician (2001)

#12

Post by d0lph »

GW150914 wrote: post #11
ythn wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have that problem with any theory, not just religious ones. You could argue that God was created the same way we were - by another God. Which eventually leads to "Gods have always existed", which is similar to Big Bang's problem of "matter has always existed". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_why_there_is_anythi...

It’s similar only if you misunderstand the questions physics seeks to answer. “If we rewind time according to present observations and theories, what do we see?” The answer is a Big Bang event, but that is just the answer to the question posed, not the deeper one posed by the wiki article. If you ask “why is there something rather than nothing?” physics has no single clear answer. Science takes very limited questions…

I think the question in that case is what existed before the Big Bang, has a vacuum always existed before? Or are we on a constant loop of universes forming and disintegrating.

Re: The Mystery of the Millionaire Metaphysician (2001)

#13

Post by oh_sigh »

joshuaheard wrote: post #7

The link in the article to the institute was broken. Here is an updated link: https://www.comingtounderstanding.com/ Interesting the institute calls itself "Ammonius", not A.M. Monius. And the author of "Coming to Understanding" is clearly identified as Marc Sanders.

If you look at archive.org, you can see even in 2012(after Marc Sanders had passed), the website did not out the author: https://web.archive.org/web/20120213033702/https://www.comin...

Re: The Mystery of the Millionaire Metaphysician (2001)

#14

Post by state_less »

d0lph wrote: post #12
GW150914 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s similar only if you misunderstand the questions physics seeks to answer. “If we rewind time according to present observations and theories, what do we see?” The answer is a Big Bang event, but that is just the answer to the question posed, not the deeper one posed by the wiki article. If you ask “why is there something rather than nothing?” physics has no single clear answer. Science takes very limited questions…

I think the question in that case is what existed before the Big Bang, has a vacuum always existed before? Or are we on a constant loop of universes forming and disintegrating.

Might not be looping through the same events but rather through every variation. Which could explain how we finally get here. It feels like we are way out in the countryside of what's possible in the universe.

And it's hard to say where we are and what time it is.

Re: The Mystery of the Millionaire Metaphysician (2001)

#15

Post by GW150914 »

d0lph wrote: post #12
GW150914 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s similar only if you misunderstand the questions physics seeks to answer. “If we rewind time according to present observations and theories, what do we see?” The answer is a Big Bang event, but that is just the answer to the question posed, not the deeper one posed by the wiki article. If you ask “why is there something rather than nothing?” physics has no single clear answer. Science takes very limited questions…

I think the question in that case is what existed before the Big Bang, has a vacuum always existed before? Or are we on a constant loop of universes forming and disintegrating.

That’s a question which may or may not be meaningful in the first place. In the classic formulation it’s a meaningless question, because time and space expanded from a singularity in the BB event, so there is no “before” just as there is nothing into which space expanded. The vacuum exists within the context of spacetime and the universe after all.

Maybe it was part of a cyclical series of events as you suggests, Big Bang followed by Crunch, and then Bang again. Maybe the String Theorists are eight and it’s cyclic and ekpyrotic, and our universe is just a burst of energy release by interacting Branes. Maybe none of that is right and some other model which better fits observations and predictions will turn out to be better.

One thing to keep in mind is just how tricky it can be to ask seemingly good and simple questions about these things. People come into this with a lot of assumptions and intuition that tends to fail at thes scales. Classic questions that don’t actually mean anything in the formalism are, “What is space expanding into? What came before the Big Bang?” There are other models which accommodate these questions such as eternal inflation in the context of a multiverse, but not in the formalism.

Re: The Mystery of the Millionaire Metaphysician (2001)

#19

Post by newsbinator »

jackcarter wrote: post #4
wje wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A person who studies metaphysics. Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy dealing with questions like 'What is there?'.

Odd, I'd have expected the term to be "metaphysicist."

You're thinking of a person who studies physicists.

Re: The Mystery of the Millionaire Metaphysician (2001)

#20

Post by schoen »

Koshkin wrote: post #16
wnmurphy wrote: post #2

What's a metaphysician? A doctor who doctors doctors?

Incidentally, 'doctor' is Latin for 'teacher'.

We could also sort of say that "physician" is Greek for "naturalist".

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CF%86%CF%85%CF%83%CE%B9%CE%B...

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/naturalis#Etymology

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