Ponderings
Jan. 30th, 2002 11:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
novapsycheI'm in the middle of reading a piece of philosophy, a sort of cosmology based on speculative physics. I'm stuck because I ran out of pages in my freehand journal, and I have no other journal available to start. I want to respond to some of these ideas. (Normally, I'd do at least an initial revision before I post things to this journal.)
http://www.san.beck.org/Life2-Nature.html
Life as a Whole: Nature and Evolution
The cosmology of modern physics indicates a relativistic universe in which space, time, matter, and energy are all interrelated in a unified field. None of these concepts can be clearly defined without reference to the other three. The big bang created all of them at the same time-space-energy-matter event. How this "creation from nothing" occurred is a great mystery and seems to point to a divine Spirit or Creator.
I do not agree with the bold parts. I reject that claim, because my own ideas about the universe do not suppose a Creator. The Big Bang is the theory I put my faith in, and that creation scenario does not require a third-party God figure at all.
During the past week, I had some thoughts about the Big Bang, and some thoughts about our solar system. These ideas were, for me, "blown away" moments, what I call in my spiritual practice Moments of Truth.
1/26/02: "I believe the Big Bang is analogous to the dawn of life on our meager planet--existence ex nihilo--from nothing. Just as life is an emergent condition of cell genesis, so the beginnings of our own universe; our universe is an emergent condition of the nothing that is the kernel of the Big Bang itself.
"What if the Big Bang hasn't happened? What if, rather, it is still happening? Outside a linear chronological structure, this could be a possibility.
"If time is merely one dimension in a host of many, why is it so hard to conceive of the genesis of our universe as yet occurring? Always regenerating and reverberating in the now."
What I mean to say is, what if the Big Bang is the epiphenomenon of the Void? This could mean that the universe as we know it is the cosmological mirror image of Nothingness, and not necessarily material.
Perhaps life is just a dream. Perhaps I'm just pretending to be here.
Also at any given time after the big bang, the space-time dimensions of the universe theoretically could be mathematically calculated if we know the rate of expansion caused by the original explosion and the amount of mass exerting its contractual force of gravity. Although this is possible by mental mathematics, the limitations of physical perception caused by the constant speed of light make the observation of space and time relative to each other. The light that gives us an image of distant galaxies left them so long ago that we are actually looking back into the distant past as well as into a distant place. Thus in the physical universe, time and space are combined together as events, which are then relative to other events in space-time.
My first big "enlightenment" moment came when I realized that what I call the color red, and what someone else verifies as red, is merely a code of correspondence, that we agree that the light signature we register on our retinas agree. This is a means of transmuting our divergent experiences into a system of relative correspondence. I'm digressing into verbalization. I'll try again. I realized that what we code as "red" actually relates to something in the light spectrum, and then I related that spectrum to light as a physical entity. My understanding of societal constructions (and the fictions that such constructions give life to, such as "race" and "class"--and I say this as a poor Black woman!) gave rise to a click! moment. What we think of light might not be light at all, but simply a relationship between myself and another observer of the same time-space event. (It was then that I felt I understood E=mc^2. YMMV.)
This moment has helped me conceive of the universe as a cubed object, expanding infinitely. This description, woeful and brief as it is, is a mechanism by which I can slip right into a meditative mindset. I think of the universe as a field, expanding into something. Does it displace the Nothing, or does it simply fill up where the Nothing is not?
Does this make any sense?
The entire universe is a unified whole that maintains its proper balance. Every bit of energy-matter exerts its influence on the whole, and no one can predict precisely what each little part will do. Yet there are universal laws and principles that maintain the overall balance of creation. Physicists have discovered twelve laws of conservation that maintain this balance. They are the following: energy-mass, momentum, angular momentum, charge, electron-family number, muon-family number, baryon-family number, time reversal, combined space inversion and charge conjugation, space inversion by itself, charge conjugation by itself, strangeness, and isotopic spin. The strong interactions of the nucleus are restrained by all twelve of these conservation laws, electromagnetic interactions by all except isotopic spin, weak interactions by eight of them, and gravitational interactions have not yet been analyzed fully. Bell's theorem and quantum theory indicate that paired particles "know" how to follow these conservation laws even when farther apart on the time-space continuum than light can travel in the time-distance available. Thus physicists are discovering that these laws of conservation somehow transcend the supposed limits of the physical universe. My explanation is that these laws are established by the Creator of the universe and that there are realms beyond the physical plane that are aware and able to transcend physical limitations, such as the speed of light.
While I put my stock in a physical universe, created and governed by physical forces, I do place significance in some numbers. Call it what you will, superstition, rationalization, whatever. Some numbers mean something; some are so intrinsic to the operations of our day-to-day lives that we would cease to be without them. Or, at the least, our understanding of the world around us would collapse. Improvements in math result in improved observation and calculation of the universe around us. (And in my cosmology, this is very important for me, as I equate the Universe, the physical universe, with the All, the One, the ulitmate reality.)
I do feel that the Bible, particularly the Old Testament (with its borrowings from Babylonian culture and its precursors [e.g., the Sumerians]), holds certain numbers to be of cosmic significance, and I am examining my own faith in their numbers. They hold much stock in 4, 7, and 12. 12 seems to hold some inherent significance: the 12 tribes of Israel, the 12 disciples of Christ. I find it an interesting coincidence that there are 12 universal laws of conservation.
Again: Bell's theorem and quantum theory indicate that paired particles "know" how to follow these conservation laws even when farther apart on the time-space continuum than light can travel in the time-distance available. Thus physicists are discovering that these laws of conservation somehow transcend the supposed limits of the physical universe.
I would say, in language I'd describe as scientific Taoist, that the Universe follows a Way. All in the Universe follows that Way. The limit of light is irrelevant here. Light is a part of the physical universe. Thus, it is subject to the Way, but is not the whole of the Way. All parts/particles of the Universe follow these universal laws, whether or not in the presence of light, and despite their distances from other parts/particles of the universe.
This also means that items that appear to transcend the limits of the physical universe might not do so at all. Transcendence over this "material realm" might not be what we think of transcendence at all. Perhaps transcendence, like good and evil, is merely and purely conceptual, and not possible to be fully beheld (by an external perspective, or a witness).
This doesn't make any sense, probably.
I also wanted to note that this may mean that there are fundamental reasons to believe that the speed of light is not the "universal speed limit", that it is merely one of many players in the universal game, that it too is subject to laws we have no or little perception of. We are locked in symbiosis with the light; our circadian rhythms are ruled by it, and our health is tied to the regularity of that rhythm. But ultimately that light is governed by something higher, and thus so are we.
(Hmm, I just reread the above. Paired particles. That somehow makes a difference. I'll think on that one later.)
Now, I admit that I am speaking ahead of myself, because this is the first time I've been introduced to the specific terms of these universal laws; so I haven't had the chance to research each on its own. I'll do that soon, probably tonight (I have nothing better to do).
http://www.san.beck.org/Life2-Nature.html
Life as a Whole: Nature and Evolution
The cosmology of modern physics indicates a relativistic universe in which space, time, matter, and energy are all interrelated in a unified field. None of these concepts can be clearly defined without reference to the other three. The big bang created all of them at the same time-space-energy-matter event. How this "creation from nothing" occurred is a great mystery and seems to point to a divine Spirit or Creator.
I do not agree with the bold parts. I reject that claim, because my own ideas about the universe do not suppose a Creator. The Big Bang is the theory I put my faith in, and that creation scenario does not require a third-party God figure at all.
During the past week, I had some thoughts about the Big Bang, and some thoughts about our solar system. These ideas were, for me, "blown away" moments, what I call in my spiritual practice Moments of Truth.
1/26/02: "I believe the Big Bang is analogous to the dawn of life on our meager planet--existence ex nihilo--from nothing. Just as life is an emergent condition of cell genesis, so the beginnings of our own universe; our universe is an emergent condition of the nothing that is the kernel of the Big Bang itself.
"What if the Big Bang hasn't happened? What if, rather, it is still happening? Outside a linear chronological structure, this could be a possibility.
"If time is merely one dimension in a host of many, why is it so hard to conceive of the genesis of our universe as yet occurring? Always regenerating and reverberating in the now."
What I mean to say is, what if the Big Bang is the epiphenomenon of the Void? This could mean that the universe as we know it is the cosmological mirror image of Nothingness, and not necessarily material.
Perhaps life is just a dream. Perhaps I'm just pretending to be here.
Also at any given time after the big bang, the space-time dimensions of the universe theoretically could be mathematically calculated if we know the rate of expansion caused by the original explosion and the amount of mass exerting its contractual force of gravity. Although this is possible by mental mathematics, the limitations of physical perception caused by the constant speed of light make the observation of space and time relative to each other. The light that gives us an image of distant galaxies left them so long ago that we are actually looking back into the distant past as well as into a distant place. Thus in the physical universe, time and space are combined together as events, which are then relative to other events in space-time.
My first big "enlightenment" moment came when I realized that what I call the color red, and what someone else verifies as red, is merely a code of correspondence, that we agree that the light signature we register on our retinas agree. This is a means of transmuting our divergent experiences into a system of relative correspondence. I'm digressing into verbalization. I'll try again. I realized that what we code as "red" actually relates to something in the light spectrum, and then I related that spectrum to light as a physical entity. My understanding of societal constructions (and the fictions that such constructions give life to, such as "race" and "class"--and I say this as a poor Black woman!) gave rise to a click! moment. What we think of light might not be light at all, but simply a relationship between myself and another observer of the same time-space event. (It was then that I felt I understood E=mc^2. YMMV.)
This moment has helped me conceive of the universe as a cubed object, expanding infinitely. This description, woeful and brief as it is, is a mechanism by which I can slip right into a meditative mindset. I think of the universe as a field, expanding into something. Does it displace the Nothing, or does it simply fill up where the Nothing is not?
Does this make any sense?
The entire universe is a unified whole that maintains its proper balance. Every bit of energy-matter exerts its influence on the whole, and no one can predict precisely what each little part will do. Yet there are universal laws and principles that maintain the overall balance of creation. Physicists have discovered twelve laws of conservation that maintain this balance. They are the following: energy-mass, momentum, angular momentum, charge, electron-family number, muon-family number, baryon-family number, time reversal, combined space inversion and charge conjugation, space inversion by itself, charge conjugation by itself, strangeness, and isotopic spin. The strong interactions of the nucleus are restrained by all twelve of these conservation laws, electromagnetic interactions by all except isotopic spin, weak interactions by eight of them, and gravitational interactions have not yet been analyzed fully. Bell's theorem and quantum theory indicate that paired particles "know" how to follow these conservation laws even when farther apart on the time-space continuum than light can travel in the time-distance available. Thus physicists are discovering that these laws of conservation somehow transcend the supposed limits of the physical universe. My explanation is that these laws are established by the Creator of the universe and that there are realms beyond the physical plane that are aware and able to transcend physical limitations, such as the speed of light.
While I put my stock in a physical universe, created and governed by physical forces, I do place significance in some numbers. Call it what you will, superstition, rationalization, whatever. Some numbers mean something; some are so intrinsic to the operations of our day-to-day lives that we would cease to be without them. Or, at the least, our understanding of the world around us would collapse. Improvements in math result in improved observation and calculation of the universe around us. (And in my cosmology, this is very important for me, as I equate the Universe, the physical universe, with the All, the One, the ulitmate reality.)
I do feel that the Bible, particularly the Old Testament (with its borrowings from Babylonian culture and its precursors [e.g., the Sumerians]), holds certain numbers to be of cosmic significance, and I am examining my own faith in their numbers. They hold much stock in 4, 7, and 12. 12 seems to hold some inherent significance: the 12 tribes of Israel, the 12 disciples of Christ. I find it an interesting coincidence that there are 12 universal laws of conservation.
Again: Bell's theorem and quantum theory indicate that paired particles "know" how to follow these conservation laws even when farther apart on the time-space continuum than light can travel in the time-distance available. Thus physicists are discovering that these laws of conservation somehow transcend the supposed limits of the physical universe.
I would say, in language I'd describe as scientific Taoist, that the Universe follows a Way. All in the Universe follows that Way. The limit of light is irrelevant here. Light is a part of the physical universe. Thus, it is subject to the Way, but is not the whole of the Way. All parts/particles of the Universe follow these universal laws, whether or not in the presence of light, and despite their distances from other parts/particles of the universe.
This also means that items that appear to transcend the limits of the physical universe might not do so at all. Transcendence over this "material realm" might not be what we think of transcendence at all. Perhaps transcendence, like good and evil, is merely and purely conceptual, and not possible to be fully beheld (by an external perspective, or a witness).
This doesn't make any sense, probably.
I also wanted to note that this may mean that there are fundamental reasons to believe that the speed of light is not the "universal speed limit", that it is merely one of many players in the universal game, that it too is subject to laws we have no or little perception of. We are locked in symbiosis with the light; our circadian rhythms are ruled by it, and our health is tied to the regularity of that rhythm. But ultimately that light is governed by something higher, and thus so are we.
(Hmm, I just reread the above. Paired particles. That somehow makes a difference. I'll think on that one later.)
Now, I admit that I am speaking ahead of myself, because this is the first time I've been introduced to the specific terms of these universal laws; so I haven't had the chance to research each on its own. I'll do that soon, probably tonight (I have nothing better to do).
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(no subject)
Date: 2002-01-31 04:50 am (UTC)sorry. i dont know why i didnt think of this before, but the best comments that actually address the post are sometimes right under our very noses.
you said that realizing 'red' is not actually a word that functions in strictly descriptive terms was your first enlightenment. i agree, this is a big break from the norms of thinking. 'red' operates only in a certain kind of social context.
but take this a step further. words like 'car' and 'sit' are also words whose meaning operates purely in a certain kind of social context. likewise, as does 'reality' and 'life' and 'death'.
given this, can anyone truly understand what the word 'real' really means? and what lays beyond it? if what is a dream is only distinguished from what is real purely by social convention, then what is it youre talking about?