NomDePlume:
Quote:
Michael- I believe (but if I put words in people's mouths, correct me) that the main argument people have raised with your ontology is that they believe one of the consequences of your ontology is that the speed of light will not be constant. IF this is true, you can see why its a problem, right?
|
Right. They misunderstand me. My beef is with "bent space" not with the bent path of light or its constant speed, which is very well established by SR. Light responds to mass/gravity *as if* it had mass. (We know that no mass can achieve lightspeed.) This is demonstrated in the "recoil" which Modest says that laser guns have and in the "box of mirrors" experiments in which captured light gives the box added inertia *as if* the photons bouncing off the walls had mass.
Quote:
Further, there are two possibilities for our universe. We can extrapolate from our everyday intuition that "every effect has a cause," and extrapolate back infinitely far. Either the chain of effects eventually breaks and there is a "first cause," or there isn't and the universe is infinitely old, and always has been.
The problem with the latter is entropy. Now, I have only a vague conception of entropy, but I know that it always increases, which gives the universe a one way type character. This implies that something very special happened to give the universe a very low entropy sometime in the past. This pushes me toward first cause.
|
Seems to me that "first cause" is misconception of the limits of linear thinking. It always begs the question.... "So what before that?" Also, "something out of nothing" is exactly like belief in magic.
What was the supposed "first cause" that created cosmos out of "nothing yet existing?" It creates a logical absurdity, just like the religious creation myth.
Quote:
But how do we know there is ever an absence of stuff? What if what we perceive as void is actually a material entity, Aristotle's quintessence or Aether. Your objection that "void" cannot have properties can be dealt with by saying that quintessence CAN have properties. It is my understanding that the Higgs field is this sort of quintessence or Aether that fills all space.
Hence, the universe may have "matter stuff" and "void stuff" but is nowhere empty.
|
What would you call the relative lack of 'stuff' we call "space" in both micro (within matter... see my "black-hole-earth' contrast) and macro... as in common usage... the space between objects on cosmic scale? Of course "stuff" exists between the major objects... dust here, a stray atom there... but where there is no such 'stuff' is emptiness... No? ... Oh yes, and the forces, electromagnetic and gravitational...
Is this what you mean that space is totally filled with stuff?
I don't define these forces as 'stuff', but maybe this is simply semantics. I say that these forces propagate through empty space.
I contrast the
lack of manifest stuff/objects (
space) with the "occupied space" wherever any manifest object exists.
Anyway... those who say that space curves, has shape, expands, contracts are making "space itself" into an entity with properties.
My ontology for this thread denies that reification.
Michael
