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All together, now....
Descartes'
Joke: cogito ergo sum
The First Rule of Quantum
Physics
according to John A. Wheeler, American physicist:
No reality without a perception of reality.
"Physical
objects are not in space,
but these objects are spatially extended.
In this way the concept of 'empty space' loses its meaning."
"In gravitational fields there are no such things
as rigid bodies
with Euclidean properties;
thus the fictitious rigid body
is of no avail in
the general theory of relativity."
- A. Einstein, as quoted in
Relativity: The Special and General Theory,
15th ed., 1961, pp. vi and 98. (Emphasis Einstein's.)
Occam's Razor
and consciousness?
To
every man is given a key to the gates of Heaven.
The same key opens the gates of Hell.
- Buddhist proverb
"...it is daring to give this
conclusion
the simple wording that it requires.
In Christian terminology to say:
'Hence I am God Almighty'
sounds both blasphemous and lunatic."
- Erwin Schrödinger,
Austrian physicist and co-discover of quantum theory,
in his essay "What is Life?" as quoted in Infinity and the
Mind by Rudy Rucker.
Blasphemous indeed, Mr. Schrödinger, so eliminate the word "Almighty."
Incidentally, Schrödinger was hinting at the implications of complementarity,
the principle that the dual particle/wave characteristics of both
matter and light are determined by the manner in which they are
observed and that neither particle nor wave would exist without an observation.
If Einstein was correct about physical objects being merely spatially
extended, then it stands to reason that there would be neither matter
nor space without an observation.
Now, the Pentateuch doesn't use the word "God." It tells
the reader in Ex. 3:14 that "I AM" is the name of who sent
Moses to the people of Israel. I AM is a translation of YHWH (Yodh -
Heh - Waw - Heh), originally a Canaanite god among others in their pantheon.
"I AM who AM" and "I will be what I will be" are
common renderings for the Hebrew phrase Ehiyeh Asher Ehiyeh in
Ex. 3:13-14. Jesus, a rabble-rousing Jew from birth to death, got himself
into a heap of trouble for arguing the same thing, to wit, "I am God."
The Roman administrators of Palestine weren't too eager to keep him
around, either, for he would have upset their cushy routine.
Luke 17:20-21, a la Yoda:
"Observed the coming of the Force cannot be,
and announce no one will, 'Look, here it is,' or 'There it is.'
For behold, within you is the Force."
In many Bibles, especially Catholic ones, the Greek preposition for
within is translated as among. A similar license is taken
when 1 John 2:8 is translated. It should read, "And yet I do write
a new commandment to you, a thing that holds true in him [sic]
and in you." In English translations, the word among
is often substituted for in. Yoda adds, "Superior to the
teacher no disciple is; but when fully trained, like his teacher every
disciple will be." (Luke 6:40)
Just how strange is reality? Cosmologists must
reconcile the following:
- Time began with the big bang, an event that happened everywhere
not as a bomb-like explosion of matter in space, but as the
explosion of space. (The big bang is inferred from general
relativity, but strictly speaking, the big bang model describes only
what happened after the big bang. The galactic recession we
observe is not an inertial effect but a relativistic one, a sort of
length dilation in contrast to the familiar length contraction of
special relativity. It tells us that the so-called big bang is, in
a sense, still underway. Also recall Einstein's words above: "Physical
objects are not in space...")
- Time ends in a black hole such as in Sagittarius A* more than 10,000
light-years away at the core of the Milky Way. Hence...
- Time both begins and ends in what we conventionally refer
to as our temporal past.
- We can observe the effects of multiple black holes and therefore
conclude that time ends in multiple places throughout the cosmos.
- The universe need have no beginning
in what is known as imaginary time, i.e. time as measured with imaginary
numbers (where i2=-1).
- The past, present and future exist statically. Time does not really
pass.
- The principle of determinism has been slain. It is impossible, even
in principle, to know the positions and velocities of all the particles
in the universe and determine their behavior at any other time past,
"present," or future.
- Quantum theory and general relativity. In other words, we need a
quantum theory of gravity, or rather a quantum theory of spacetime.
(General relativity is a classical theory describing how spacetime
curves in the presence of matter.)
- An infinity of different parallel universes, some of which have
another "you." Some of these other you's might be a lot
different than the you reading this page, so different, in fact, that
the other you might not be at all like you but rather like your brother,
the twin you never had, the guy next door,...
What is this, Star Wars?! Read about the big bang
according to Stephen Hawking.
Fiction:
Rescue Party, by Arthur C. Clarke
Mere suffering exists, no sufferer
is found;
The deed is, but no doer of the deed is there.
Nibbaana is, but not the man that enters it.
The path is, but no traveller on it is seen.
Visuddhi Magga XVI
Vanity of vanities, says Qoheleth,
vanity of vanities! All things are vanity!
...for all is vanity and a chase after wind.
Ecclesiastes 1:2, 2:17
Freude!
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