Monday 1 September 2008

NOTHING COMES FROM NOTHING - A Post In Which Selena Explains To Stephen Hawking That There Can Never Be A Theory Of Everything Because...


‘...it would have to be something that was neither subject nor object, neither force nor matter, neither spirit nor soul: but shall I not be told that such a thing will resemble nothing so much as a phantasmagoria? ...Of course, it must resemble that and everything else which exists or could exist, and not only a phantasmagoria! It must have that dominant family likeness by virtue of which all that is recognizes itself as related to it.’

Here before us, in the unsuspecting tones of the nineteenth century philosopher, is the entire Theory of Everything. There is a consummate completeness about it. In fact, Nietzsche may have expressed the inexpressible better than the physicist. For whatever the physicist may have to say of it, everyone knows that once he sets himself to construct by pure mathematics, and without appeal to any empiricism, a theory which aims to be the only complete and essential form of knowledge, that it ‘must have that dominant family likeness by virtue of which all that is, recognizes itself as related to it.’

And to this extent, the significance of an eternal law of nature as
something divorced from man, is in fact identical with the idea of a completely
consistent and unified theory of the differential equations that would unite all
possible co-ordinates. And yet, it can hardly be a simple matter to show that
one single theory may explain the baffling complexity of infinitely divergent or
even opposite phenomena. Certainly, various attempts have been made to explain
the idea of unity as a pre-existing norm in terms of a logically consistent,
self-explanatory physical principle, this depending mainly on the mutual
conversion of electromagnetic and gravitational forces, but so far without
success. Efforts have also been made to combine general relativity and quantum
mechanics into a coherent hyper-dimensional theory, but inevitably, the
mathematical analysis that permits the physicist to use a terms like self-explanatory with any measure of precision is still incomplete, and we can only grasp it by grasping that it is causa sui, which is to say that it cannot have been caused by anything other than itself.

On the edge of large events in the evolution of the human mind, we have expanded the frontiers of knowledge beyond all intellectual grasp to include even ourselves. In this sense modern scientific enquiry is profoundly inclusive. Indeed, no one can have failed to notice that one of the greatest difficulties in the whole unification of physics is to arrive at any kind of objective measure of an isotropic law of nature as something which is divorced from man. Something whose attributes are therefore self-evident and not contingent.

Self-evidently therefore, and not contingently, it should be born in mind that
it must be deducible from its own essential nature as well as providing the
ground for every possible contingent deduction. For if it were not, it would in
some measure be limited to being a necessary consequence of our own essential
nature, rather than this unique all-inclusive totality which Spinoza called “God
or Nature” (Deus sive Nature), and which Kant referred to as “the thing in
itself” (das Ding an sich). Nor can we ever assign a higher degree of continuity
to such a theory than continuation in our thoughts - ex nihilo nihil fit... (nothing comes from nothing)!


Dreamy

14 comments:

Richard Havers said...

Bloody Nora Dreamy, you are clever. It tool a while negotiating my way through the first paragraph; by the time I got to the second I had to have a lie down.

I do think Geoff Hurst had a really good game. That third goal – magnificent!

Jonathan said...

'everyone knows that once he sets himself to construct by pure mathematics, and without appeal to any empiricism, a theory which aims to be the only complete and essential form of knowledge, that it ‘must have that dominant family likeness by virtue of which all that is, recognizes itself as related to it.’

Really, I dont think many intellectuals actually expect knowledge to have such a generous all-inclusiveness, such as to include the corroboration or support of all perceivers. If it did, where would that leave the all-important consolations of intellectual snobbery, after all?

I think these theorisers of everything actually far rather want to just subject the universe to, and squeeze it down into, the human mind; and not just any mind, mind you, but their particular type of mind. Nothing wrong with the endeavour in-itself I suppose, but it is what it is, not more than what it is.

The delicious picture you include almost trumps the leotard, but not quite.

Are you saying in your last two paragraphs that either we are the measure of all things or that we are not; but that if we are not, science should then be able to find a theory to support that. But that it can't, nor will it ever be able to find such a theory.

But does it follow from that, if this be what you say, that we are then at the centre? We may be at the centre of our knowledge, I grant, but why should we then suppose that either we or our knowledge are at the centre of the universe, or reality, or the everything?
It's just one small blue planet. Why are we so arrogant?

We need syntheses I believe. It is not either/or.

Selena Dreamy said...

“But does it follow from that, if this be what you say, that we are then at the centre? We may be at the centre of our knowledge, I grant, but why should we then suppose that either we or our knowledge are at the centre of the universe, or reality, or the everything?”

We are the Dreamers of the Dream!

We can no more devise a Theory of Everything then we can step outside of our own dream, or take over the direction of it...

Selena Dreamy said...

It's just one small blue planet.

It’s not the size of the planet - it’s the nature of the principle!


Why are we so arrogant?

You’re asking questions, Jonathan, I’ve already given the answer to:
THE ANTHROPIC UNIVERSE

Selena Dreamy said...

“Bloody Nora Dreamy...I had to have a lie down.”


Gosh Richard, and I thought it was so obvious. Like 2 + 2 = 4!

But seriously, when Kipling said, “what does he know of England, who only England knows”, he meant exactly that! You have to step outside of yourself in order to know yourself. Physics can’t do that. Indeed, I believe all the indications are that Stephen Hawking is about to concede...

Let’s face it, unlike Geoff Hurst, he scored an enormous own goal....!!

Richard Havers said...

Great riposte....

Peter Ackroyd's 'Albion' rather than Hawking is a bit more my cup of Darjeeling.

Jonathan said...

We are the Dreamers of the Dream!

But are we the only dreamers of the dream that involves us? We may shape the dream into relevance for us but does that mean the dream and us as the dreamers of it is all that is?

Its the same ground we've covered before, i grant (apologies), about if there's any other reality existing independently of our minds. That's the kind of thing science presumes, but then observes and maps and charts in inadequately insufficient ways, ways which in fact show the influence of the minds innate structures in the very designing of the maps, thus letting in the non-objective unintentionally.

Yet the formal objectivity of science can provoke in reaction an antithesis which in the name of personability and a restoration of the integrity of the subjective can result in an anti-realistic metaphysic, which is the converse image, and which fails in the opposite way.

Anyway, what do I know..thats just how I see the dialectic working in this epistemological domain and why I think there should be fusion in the question of what is knowledge...as opposed to what normally happens in history, which is the dialectic working mechanically and unconsciously through struggle.

Jonathan said...

Anyway, on a different note, even if we are the sole dreamers of our exclusive dream..shouldn't we bloody well wake up? And what are we going to find when we do?

Hope your week is going fine. We had rain for one day only, which has been nice.

xx

percy stilton said...

This is your best lesson yet Miss Dreamy. I paticulary like the pictures. Can I be excused to go to the toilet...nature calls.

Selena Dreamy said...

Please do, Percy.

And may I remind you that raising the lavatory seat is rather more mannerly and considerate than omitting to do so...

Selena Dreamy said...

“if we are the sole dreamers of our exclusive dream..shouldn't we bloody well wake up? And what are we going to find when we do?”

NOTHING! - a concept which alone grasps that imperfection, doubt and complexity are the truly reliable impediments to spiritual insight - and perfection as a whole...


“Hope your week is going fine. We had rain for one day only, which has been nice.”

Been picking blueberries, Jonathan. Stung by nettles and scratched by thorns - nothing worthwhile comes easy!

Jonathan said...

Im not sure I understand (though I do know what a blueberry is, though I don't remember when I last ate one)...could you mercifully rephrase?

In any case, nothing is an ambiguous concept. Does nothing mean no- thing, as in no particular thing and therefore rather potentially everything, or the 'all' (plenitude as the hidden face of void), or does nothing literally mean absence (of both subject and object, and anything else for that matter)?

Well, I hope, and think, it means the former! The protal to, nay the substance of, the oceanic. What the Gnostics, it might be said, call the Pleroma (ther fullness).

Stung by nettles, scratched by thorns..that sounds, or should I say feels, most invigorating. Trust you had some dock leaves to hand? My Mum assures me this is what they are called.

Somethime I find I achieve rather alot by doing not very much by way of effort, as it happens. Though I grant this is an utterly unwise principle by which to orintate your life generally.

But do you know how sometimes one understand things better, and achieve better effects in ones actions, by yielding and being passive...in the way of the tao de ching, I suppose. I guess it's a question of choosing the right moment for such a yieldingness, and not being a hippy all the time, but only sometimes.

a 'movement and a repose' as the heretical Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas might put it, perchance.

Jonathan said...

Im not sure I understand (though I do know what a blueberry is, though I don't remember when I last ate one)...could you mercifully rephrase?

In any case, nothing is an ambiguous concept. Does nothing mean no- thing, as in no particular thing and therefore rather potentially everything, or the 'all' (plenitude as the hidden face of void), or does nothing literally mean absence (of both subject and object, and anything else for that matter)?

Well, I hope, and think, it means the former! The protal to, nay the substance of, the oceanic. What the Gnostics, it might be said, call the Pleroma (ther fullness).

Stung by nettles, scratched by thorns..that sounds, or should I say feels, most invigorating. Trust you had some dock leaves to hand? My Mum assures me this is what they are called.

Somethime I find I achieve rather alot by doing not very much by way of effort, as it happens. Though I grant this is an utterly unwise principle by which to orintate your life generally.

But do you know how sometimes one understand things better, and achieve better effects in ones actions, by yielding and being passive...in the way of the tao de ching, I suppose. I guess it's a question of choosing the right moment for such a yieldingness, and not being a hippy all the time, but only sometimes.

a 'movement and a repose' as the heretical Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas might put it, perchance.

Selena Dreamy said...

Ooops, did I say "blueberries"? Of course, I meant blackberries - delicious,still making jam!