Deny the Kalam’s Causal Principle, Embrace Absurdity

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-255
Author(s):  
Rad Miksa ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Causal Principle ◽  
Sensory Inputs ◽  
Reductio Ad Absurdum ◽  
Cognitive Faculties ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Universe

One objection against the kalam is that while the standard arguments for its causal premise (everything that begins to exist has a cause) apply to things in the universe, they do not apply to the universe itself. Thus, universes could come into existence uncaused from nothing. This objection, however, creates a situation where an absurd universe is as likely to come into existence uncaused as a normal universe is. This then generates serious skepticism about the reliability of our cognitive faculties, the truth of our sensory inputs, and our past knowledge, thus creating a reductio ad absurdum against the objection.

scholarly journals What are the wild waves saying? Yet another meditation on the predictions, searches for, and detections of gravitational waves

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (14) ◽  
pp. 1830009
Author(s):  
Virginia Trimble
Keyword(s):  
General Relativity ◽  
Gravitational Waves ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Large Majority ◽  
Laboratory Apparatus ◽  
New Information ◽  
Theory Of Gravity ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Universe

A large majority of the physics and astronomy communities are now sure that gravitational waves exist, can be looked for, and can be studied via their effects on laboratory apparatus as well as on astronomical objects. So far, everything found out has agreed with the predictions of general relativity, but hopes are high for new information about the universe and its contents and perhaps for hints of a better theory of gravity than general relativity (which even Einstein expected to come eventually). This is one version of the story, from 1905 to the present, told from an unusual point of view, because the author was, for 28.5 years, married to Joseph Weber, who built the first detectors starting in the early 1960s and operated one or more until his death on 30 September 2000.

Interlude V

2021 ◽  
pp. 143-148
Author(s):  
Trevor Davis Lipscombe
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Legal Case ◽  
Wild Ass ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Intelligent Life

I’m sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It’s just been too intelligent to come here. ARTHUR C. CLARKE (reproduced from an interview http://www.scifi.com/transcripts/aclarke.txt) The Vietnam War, during which American casualties ran extremely high, remains controversial in the United States. During the conflict, US forces estimated the strength of enemy forces based on the “SWAG” principle. At the war’s end, in a legal case, Colonel John Stewart took the stand. Lawyers grilled him, asking what, exactly, SWAG stood for. His reply, generating much amusement in the courtroom, was “Scientific Wild-Ass Guess.”...

A Science So-Called

2021 ◽  
pp. 21-55
Author(s):  
Megan Faragher
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Group Dynamics ◽  
Film Adaptation ◽  
Inherent Difficulty ◽  
Group Psychology ◽  
The World ◽  
To Come ◽  
The University ◽  
The Universe

H.G. Wells’s life extends the radical evolution of psychographics outlined in the Introduction, but his oeuvre also proves the inherent difficulty in aestheticizing the emergent age of social psychology—a point evinced when producer Alexander Korda demanded Wells revise the script version of his 1933 novel The Shape of Things to Come three times to make it “filmable.” While Wells’s novel imagines a peaceable future wherein social psychology becomes the “whole literature, philosophy, and general thought of the world,” the film adaptation instead symbolizes this philosophical transformation by starring a sole philosopher-king who, against the people’s will, seeks to control and colonize the universe. This chapter argues that the conflict between these two Wellsian visions is prefigured by his intimate and conflicted relationship to sociology and group psychology. As early as 1906, Wells sought out the position as the first British chair of sociology at the University of London. But Wells was immediately to become a gadfly in academia: he engaged in scathing critiques of sociology for denying its utopian impulses and refuted theories of group dynamics put forward by Gustave Le Bon and Wilfred Trotter. Incorporating readings across Wells’s literary career—including Anticipations, An Englishman Looks at the World, and In the Days of the Comet—this chapter contends that Wells’s writing captures a life-long effort to reprise the scope of sociology from outside academia, and captures the writer’s foundering efforts to aestheticize the institutional promise of social psychology—efforts that inevitably succumb to Wells’s fetishization of pseudo-authoritarian technocracy.

A New Quarrel

On Universals ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 96-120
Author(s):  
Étienne Balibar
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Philosophical Anthropology ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Unity ◽  
The World ◽  
The Common ◽  
To Come ◽  
Question Today ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Universe

This chapter assesses the new “quarrel of universals” that now occupies philosophy and other overlapping disciplines. In this new quarrel, the question today is not only whether one is for or against the universal; the question is also how one defines the universal—a term whose surprising equivocity has become increasingly clear. Still more fundamentally, the question is how one should articulate the relationship between three related but heterogeneous terms whose widespread use has prompted conflicting claims: the universal, universality, and universalisms. The chapter begins by situating the question of the universal and its variations within the field that seems to constitute the strategic site of intersecting domains: philosophical anthropology, understood as the analysis of the historical differences of the human and of the problem that those differences pose to their bearers. It then outlines the difficulties which can be identified in every philosophical and political usage of the universal and its “doubles” according to three aporias. The first is the aporia of the multiplicity of the “world,” or of the universe as multiversum; the second is that of Allgemeinheit or All(en)gemeinheit, in other words, the irreducible gap between the universal and the common (or community); and, finally, that of co-citizenship, the form of belonging to a political unity to come, a unity whose law of belonging (membership) would be the heterogeneity within equality or the political participation of those foreign to the community.

scholarly journals THE FACT OF CREATION AND THE LIMITS OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-101
Author(s):  
Ion Marian CROITORU ◽  
Keyword(s):  
New Physics ◽  
The Body ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Science And Theology ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Times ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Universe

Although scientific research is in full bloom regarding, for instance, the environment, the fact of creation cannot be ignored either, even if some scientists deny it, while others ascertain it, albeit from perspectives, however, foreign to the patristic vision specific of the Orthodoxy. Consequently, the limits of cosmology are structured as well by Christian theology, which shows that the study of the world, guided by laws of physics in a limited framework, is carried out inside the creation affected by the consequences of the primordial sin, so that the reality of the world before sin is known only to those who reach spiritual perfection and holiness, therefore, from an eschatological perspective, since they, too, go through the moment of separation of the soul from the body, waiting for the general resurrection. Therefore, a new way of being is affirmed in the Orthodox Church, by the personal experience of each believer, which is a transformation on the personal and cosmic level, according to Jesus Christ’s resurrected body, which means the reality of a new physics, which concerns both the beginning of the universe, but also its new dimension, at the Lord’s Second Coming, when heaven and earth will be renewed by transfiguration. Regarding the existence of the universe, the differences are given by the perceptions of two cosmologies. Thus, the theonomous cosmology highlights man’s purpose on earth, the necessity of moral and spiritual life, and the transfiguration of creation, explaining God’s presence in His creation, but also His work in it, namely the transcendence and the immanence in relation to the creation. The autonomous cosmology engenders the evolutionist theory, which leads to secularism and, consequently, to the gap between the contemporary man’s technological progress, and his spiritual and moral regress. Today, more scientists are turning their attention also to the data of the divine Revelation, the way it makes itself known by its organs, the Holy Scripture and the Holy Tradition, in the one Church, which will mean a deepening of the dialogue between science and theology in favour of the man from everywhere and from the times to come.

scholarly journals Hestia: The Indo-European Goddess of the Cosmic Central Fire

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-19
Author(s):  
Marcello De Martino
Keyword(s):  
The Moon ◽  
European Language ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Unique Model ◽  
Celestial Bodies ◽  
Astronomical Theory ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
To Come ◽  
Atmospheric Phenomena ◽  
The Universe

The Pythagorean Philolaus of Croton (470-390 BCE) created a unique model of the Universe and he placed at its centre a ‘fire’, around which the spheres of the Earth, the Counter-Earth, the five planets, the Sun, the Moon and the outermost sphere of fixed stars, also viewed as fire but of an ‘aethereal’ kind, were revolving. This system has been considered as a step towards the heliocentric model of Aristarchus of Samos (310-230 BCE), the astronomical theory opposed to the geocentric system, which already was the communis opinio at that time and would be so for many centuries to come: but is that really so? In fact, comparing the Greek data with those of other ancient peoples of Indo-European language, it can be assumed that the ‘pyrocentric’ system is the last embodiment of a theological tradition going back to ancient times: Hestia, the central fire, was the descendant of an Indo-European goddess of Hearth placed at the centre of the religious and mythological view of a deified Cosmos where the gods were essentially personifications of atmospheric phenomena and of celestial bodies.

scholarly journals TUIMP: The Universe In My Pocket. Free astronomy booklets in all languages

2019 ◽  
pp. 66-69
Author(s):  
G. Stasinska
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Phone ◽  
International Project ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Simple Language ◽  
On Line ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Universe

TUIMP (www.tuimp.org) is an international project to produce little astronomy booklets. These booklets, folded from just one sheet of paper, can be used in classrooms, at open public conferences, or during visits of observatories and planetariums. They are free to download from the internet, the only thing which is needed is a color printer (in absence of a printer, the booklets can also be directly consulted on line, even with just a mobile phone). The booklets are intended for children from nine years old and for anyone curious of astronomy. They are written in a simple language, amply illustrated, revised and translated by professional astronomers. So far, they are being published in six languages, others languages are to come. Everyone is invited to download the booklets and use them in their outreach activities.

scholarly journals PROPORTIONS IN ARCHITECTURE

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 126-133
Author(s):  
Minakshi Rajput Singh
Keyword(s):  
Complex Geometry ◽  
Golden Section ◽  
Golden Ratio ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
Big Bang ◽  
Celestial Bodies ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Big Bang ◽  
The Universe

The uniqueness of His creation is reflected in different fields of life by the great masters throughout the ages that have born with the formation of the universe, from the big bang, till times still to come. Special ratio that can be used to describe the proportions of everything from nature’s smallest building blocks, such as atoms, to the most advanced patterns in the universe, such as unimaginably large celestial bodies. One of the key evidences presented for creation is the recurring appearance of the Divine proportion, or golden section, throughout the design of the human body and other life forms. An attempt has been made to relate Sri yantra and golden ratio and the various forms that seem to exemplify in the plan and elevation of the Indian temple. The yantra which is a complex geometry has been perfected to be used for the development of temple forms of different eras. The following paper will be a tool for the researchers to use the yantra in deriving the spaces of Indian temples.

Does the Universe Suggest Design, Purpose, Goodness, or Concern?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Steane
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Creative Process ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Random Fluctuation ◽  
Design Purpose ◽  
The World ◽  
Scientific Claim ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Universe

This chapter tackles the question of whether or not the natural world presents us with a picture empty of purpose or good or evil or concern. No empirical evidence can entirely refute the claim that random fluctuation is the complete truth about the origin of all things, but it follows that this is not a scientific claim. Therefore it is a question of forming a reasonable judgement. It appears that the natural world has a depth and richness that exceeds what would be necessary for thinking brains to come to be realized in it. Also, notwithstanding the pain of the world, it is a project that merits our engagement and commitment, and occasionally the transcendent breaks in. We are not competent to make an overall judgement, but we can join in with the creative process of the world and find our role.

Heraclitus (c.540–c.480 BC)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.A. Long
Keyword(s):  
Dynamic Equilibrium ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Basic Operation ◽  
Value Judgments ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Heating And Cooling ◽  
Beliefs And Values ◽  
To Come ◽  
The One ◽  
The Universe

No Greek philosopher born before Socrates was more creative and influential than Heraclitus of Ephesus. Around the beginning of the fifth century bc, in a prose that made him proverbial for obscurity, he criticized conventional opinions about the way things are and attacked the authority of poets and others reputed to be wise. His surviving work consists of more than 100 epigrammatic sentences, complete in themselves and often comparable to the proverbs characteristic of ‘wisdom’ literature. Notwithstanding their sporadic presentation and transmission, Heraclitus’ sentences comprise a philosophy that is clearly focused upon a determinate set of interlocking ideas. As interpreted by the later Greek philosophical tradition, Heraclitus stands primarily for the radical thesis that ‘Everything is in flux’, like the constant flow of a river. Although it is likely that he took this thesis to be true, universal flux is too simple a phrase to identify his philosophy. His focus shifts continually between two perspectives – the objective and everlasting processes of nature on the one hand and ordinary human beliefs and values on the other. He challenges people to come to terms, theoretically and practically, with the fact that they are living in a world ‘that no god or human has made’, a world he describes as ‘an ever-living fire kindling in measures and going out in measures’ (fr. 30). His great truth is that ‘All things are one’, but this unity, far from excluding difference, opposition and change, actually depends on them, since the universe is in a continuous state of dynamic equilibrium. Day and night, up and down, living and dying, heating and cooling – such pairings of apparent opposites all conform to the everlastingly rational formula (logos) that unity consists of opposites; remove day, and night goes too, just as a river will lose its identity if it ceases to flow. Heraclitus requires his audience to try to think away their purely personal concerns and view the world from this more detached perspective. By the use of telling examples he highlights the relativity of value judgments. The implication is that unless people reflect on their experience and examine themselves, they are condemned to live a dream-like existence and to remain out of touch with the formula that governs and explains the nature of things. This formula is connected (symbolically and literally) with ‘ever-living fire’, whose incessant ‘transformations’ are not only the basic operation of the universe but also essential to the cycle of life and death. Fire constitutes and symbolizes both the processes of nature in general and also the light of intelligence. As the source of life and thought, a ‘fiery’ soul equips people to look into themselves, to discover the formula of nature and to live accordingly. The influence of Heraclitus’ ideas on other philosophers was extensive. His reputed ‘flux’ doctrine, as disseminated by his follower Cratylus, helped to shape Plato’s cosmology and its changeless metaphysical foundations. The Stoics looked back to Heraclitus as the inspiration for their own conception of divine fire, identifying this with the logos that he specifies as the world’s explanatory principle. Later still, the neo-Pyhrronist Aenesidemus invoked Heraclitus as a partial precursor of scepticism.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document