Why is there something rather than nothing?

Welcome to existence trying to figure itself out, decons.

 

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Decons,

Hi. Thanks for the feedback! I'd respond by

As you mentioned, a complete definition would definitely help the things to exist. If their existence depends on the stability of the defined boundaries, then they definitely depend on the stability of what is outside of it. Something is there because of nothing.

Response: For me, I'd vote to change the second sentence to say that their existence is the defined boundaries. Stability isn't a question, I don't think. As long as that alleged lack-of-all completely describes or defines the entirety of what is present, then that is the boundary defining what is there. The



Here is another existential problem. Dark matter and dark energy are not completely defined, yet they exist. Because, the scientific discourse, i.e. physics and math, calculates that the universe as we know it cannot exist without them.

Response: If dark matter and dark energy do exist, even if we can't define them, whatever they are must be defined. It's important, I think, to distinguish between our definition (or lack thereof) of something and whether that thing itself is completely defined.


Therefore, I say, something is there with nothing, not rather than.

Response: I agree in that I'm saying that something and nothing are really one and the same thing (ie, the alleged "lack-of-all), just seen from different perspectives, and that we've been incorrect in making a distinction between them in the past.

I know this topic is under "physics and math", but the question "why?" attracts all sorts of people.[/QUOTE]

Response: I wasn't sure where to put this topic, under "Physics and math" or the philosophy area, but I had to choose someplace and didn't want to flood the site with my crazy ideas in all the different categories. Plus, I've got some ideas on infinite sets at my website so thought this was a good place. That "why?" question is pretty interesting!

 

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We agree on the difficulty of claiming a something/nothing binary opposition. I wanted to stress the role human knowledge and discursive practices play in "why there is". Definitions are always problematic when it comes to describing social and cultural beings, and it is impossible to make a definition without being intentionally or unintentionally ignorant.

But when it comes to positive sciences such as physics, maths, chemistry and biology, it is possible to make definitions. The new knowledge can only strengthen an already calculated fact.

I think this is why I found the status of dark matter and dark energy interesting. Their existence is mathematically proven while we try to prove our own existence, yet they constitute 95% of what we thought we knew.

They have a rare in-between quality within scientific discourse. They are there without a definition. They might even have new names once they are fully known. I think the prefix "dark" stands for "unknown". "Dark" is their foot on the land of "nothingness", while being "matter" or "energy" is their passport to the land of "something".

Same cannot be said for Higgs Boson. It will keep its name even if it is not there.

You put it on the right place. I was just explaining my non-scientific reply.

Thanks Roger.

 

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I ran out of nothing stuff, temporarily, so I'll post on dark matter to keep the thread alive, as well as introducing some scientific romanticism beyond just 'awe', any opinions admitted to be as such, being suggestions for investigations…

THE MEADOWS OF HEAVEN

We, of the highest consciousness ever known
And of the most versatile form that’s been shown,
Reside as consequent beings in this Earthly realm,
Possibly the most fortuitous creatures
That the universe has ever wrought.

In fact,
We are this universe come to life—
Necessarily from a long line
Of fortunate incidents.

It had to be this way, for any universe
In which we could emerge
Would have to be appropriate for us
Or we wouldn’t be here to discuss it.

Looking back,
We already know, ahead of time,
That we will discover
The many ‘happenings’
That made us possible.

All this we know and expect
Because we are here.

Perhaps, in some other ‘wheres’,
Junkyard universes litter the omniscape,
For they flunked, failed, and miscarried—
A quadrillion trillion universes broken down
For every one that worked to any extent at all.

In some of these forlorn universes,
Perhaps the material was inert
And so it just sat there, doing nothing, forever.

In others, maybe gravity was insufficient
Or had no natural place to collect particles,
And so it thinned out endlessly,
Spreading coldly toward infinity.

In yet others, again,
Even those in the same ballpark as ours,
Perhaps the portions weren’t quite right;
Although they may have formed a few elements,
They went no further than that for a zillion years.

In our universe, the dark chest of wonders
Of Possibility and Probability opened up
In just the just right way:

Naked quarks spewed forth,
Among other things,
And boiled and brewed
In one of the steamiest broths
Ever cooked up.

They somehow simmered and combined
Into the ordinary matter
Of protons and neutrons.

Then, quite independently,
By some unknown means,
Dark matter/energy arose, as well,
In just the right mix, and, luckily, too,
Some very long filaments,
Called cosmic strings,
Formed and survived long enough
To be useful as collection agents,
Which were merely imperfections,
As in an unevenly freezing pond—
A kind of a cooling flaw.
None of these happenings were connected,
Except by possibility’s destiny,
So, ‘fortunately’,
The cosmic strings attracted,
By their gravity,
Both dark and ordinary matter,
Which, in turn,
Attracted even more of the same.

These pearls of embryonic galaxies arose and
Were strung along these cosmic necklaces,
As can still be noted today.

So it was
That some almost incidental irregularities,
Frozen out as cosmic anchors,
Were latched onto by matter, both light and dark,
The proportionate portions of which were favorable,
The dark matter dwarfing our ordinary matter
For some reason of a happy ‘circumstance’.

Fortuitously, as well,
Anti-matter, if there ever was any,
Did not fully cancel out the uncle-matter.

The universe could not foresee any of this
In and of itself’s fundamental substance(s),
For, if it could have,
Then we’d only have the larger problem
Of how the foreseer could have been foreseen,
Ad infinitum…

So, it could have been like the ‘trying out’
Of all possibilities in superposition…
A brute force happening
Of every path gone down.

We know much of the rest of the story
Of how the stars and their supernovae
Created the light and heavy elements
Which combined into molecules,
Which, auspiciously,
Became able to replicate themselves, as DNA,
And progress to make cells, tissues, and life.

And then there was the luck of oxygen,
A mere waste product of photosynthesis
By bacteria, and later, plants,
That could fill the lungs,
As well as build an ozone layer of protection
From the harmful rays of outer space.

Luck on top of luck, good fortune,
And then prosperity…
‘Stumbled along’ the right path.

Of course, all this took many billions of years—
And it is, of course, this long ‘yardstick’
That baffles the mind and sticks in the throat;
But it demonstrates the long time lag needed
To produce even the tiniest of advances,
As it bears all the hallmarks
Of ‘randomness’ at work,
Although quite probable
If possibility had it all ‘worked out’.

Dinosaurs roamed the Earth
For over two hundred million years—
Imagine the length of that time!

They were supreme and invincible—
The kings of all the Earth ‘forever’,
On land, sea, and even in the air—
Heading towards forevermore and beyond,
But…
Dame Fortune once again intervened
When the asteroids, or some such catastrophe,
Finished off the dinosaurs,
As well as 90% of the existing species.

This random event left a vacuum
In which newer species could thrive.

Proto-man gave way to near-man
And thence to us, eventually,
When two ‘monkey’ chromosomes fused together,
Making ‘us’ incompatible with the other chimps

And so our ancestors, then,
Truly descended from the trees!
We came to need no specialized niches,
Since we could adapt to any terrain,
Having brains that could learn much more
After birth than instinct could bestow before.

Our higher consciousness
Was the crowning glory—
We had won the human race—
The be all and end all; the grand prize
Of the universal lottery.

So, there is nothing more,
Aside from our own progress
To be and learn.
This is it!
That’s all there is here.

DNA remembers every step of our evolution—
And you can see this in ‘fast’ motion
When embryos form in the liquid womb,
Replicate, and then grow cells
That diversify into a human being
After going through the nonhuman stages.

Thus, four billion years compresses into
The nine months of pregnancy.

So, then, hail, and good fortune,
Fine fellows and ladies,
And welcome all of you
To the Meadows of Heaven—
The highest point of all being,
Although we are surely
Still in our infancy.

So, there were perhaps many pockets of universes,
And is was this very one that could sing our verses.

The further design
And the role of mankind
Is now in our hands.

We were borne here upon the shoulders
Of so many who have long since come and gone,
All of them advancing the cause,
Over eons of wiles—so here we are.

Fare thee always well, fine friends,
For we are some of
The luckiest sons and daughters of being
In a rare universe well done.

Celebrate; live; be,
For everyone dies,
But not everyone lives.​

 

SHADES OF THE OTHERWORLD

Could there be more to this world—
Those of the undrawn shades unfurled?

Is there a universe alongside this bright zone,
A parallel, twilight world overlapping our own?

Are there shadow beings all about us,
That we can only perceive as blankness?

They’d be made of but the dark matter,
Yet lively with their own kind of chatter,
These shades flowing right on through us—
We the lighted ‘plus’ to their dark ‘minus’.

These pale shadows of our attendants,
Are not as us—of light’s extent,
But are as black clouds of a coal sack;
Nay, they’re not even dark or black,
But are of an invisible bivouac.

Dark matter and its shadows traverse
The bulk of the missing-mass universe.

The shades of evening draw us on—
We must look to the past, upon the first eon.

Two distinct families of matter
Were created in the Big Freeze batter,
Just those two that did then so accrue
When they were frozen out of the primordial stew
As the fetal universe was cooling
And the hearty gruel was unfulfilling.

The normal universe and the shadow universe
Can interpenetrate, neither averse
(Or even “adverse” to rhyme the verse)
Nor of coerce; they just cannot interact,
As they have no contract.

If the shadow universe was richly sown
It could have evolved along with our own.

Shadow planets could form
Around shadow stars as norms
And become populated with swarms
Of those shadow beings lukewarm.

They would be invisible specters, unseen phantoms,
Unobserved presences, indiscernible apparitions,
Imperceptible wraiths, unnoticed spirits, magic places,
Inconspicuous spooks, and hidden traces…

But first we must ask what makes a universe,
Such as ours, the one in which we immerse.

It is the forces that count for everything,
Matter being but a secondary singing,
For atoms exert forces through space,
Especially of the electromagnetic race;
So, then, it is forces that disburse
The currency of a rich universe.

This is why we don’t fall through a chair—
That mostly empty space of “thin air”
When we decide to sit down there.

Space is a kind of a large-scale limitation
Of an underlying discrete network of connections.

Atoms would not even know at all
That their companions existed, with no call,
Without the push or pull of the forces’ thrall,
As then they themselves would be as pall
As some ghosts passing through a wall.

The four forces hold our world together
In its diversity of shape, structure, form, and color.

Some forms of our matter don’t feel
All of the four forces as real:
Neutrons have no electric charge
And so they don’t “care”, Marge,
About that e/m force at large.

Suppose some form of matter didn’t feel
Any of the four forces that became real?

Dark Matter doesn’t appear to discourse,
Not having the resource of its own special forces
To bind it together; no packhorses.

All it can feel is the ‘force’ of gravity,
And perhaps the weak force’s changeability—
Which is for decay, and not stability;
In fact, both forces are weak, a pravity.

You cannot hold a person-size lump
Of matter together with just gravity’s slump;
So, then, no interesting lumps can form
In the dark universe, not even unicorns,
Nor even the making of a star or a planet

It’s difficult with just gravity alone working on it,
For the electromagnetic force is crucial
To slowing any of the material
Down enough to hold it in one place;
So, then, there can be no shadow race…

…No veiled hints, obscured suggestions,
Unknown impressions, out of sight suspicions,
Nor any supposed tinges, shimmering glimmers,
Resembling semblances, or ghostly whispers.

What has no light is but a dark shade,
With no creatures therein made.
So, dark matter is not a source for being;
‘Tis but a very large matter to us unseeing.

And, yet, is it we who are the outsiders,
Our luminous bubbles of foam the riders—
The stars, planets, and us the striders—
On the vast ocean of dark matters much wider.

We were an afterthought,
With no forethought,
Although perhaps made possible, nonetheless,
By the dark matter—since it was oblivious
To much of the great primeval blast,
It forming filaments that could last,
Attracting our regular matter
That was everywhere splattered,
Into the pearls of the galaxies
Strung along like cosmic necklaces.​

 

Nothing leads to nothing only. We cannot create a thing/antithing in truly empty infinite volume (this is the nothing). For example, we cannot create a mountain and antimountain, i.e. hole, in truly empty infinite volume. We need space i.e. some continuous physical volume. When such space fills the whole nothing then motions/energy cannot be in existence. To create cosmos we need moving pieces of space. There is possible that in tremendous piece of space is a hole in which are very small pieces of space. Speed of pieces of space should depend on their volumes. We can call the hole in space the cosmos. Such cosmos, i.e. the moving small pieces of space in the big hole in the big piece of space, can evolve and the mean inertial mass density of the space gas inside the cosmos cannot change. What initial conditions of the space gas are needed the creation of our Universe in the cosmos was possible? Answer to that question you can find on my website in my book titled “The Everlasting Theory and Special Number Theory”.
Recapitulation
We are in existence because:
1.
There is infinite truly empty volume.
2.
There are the moving pieces of space i.e. the moving continuous-physical-volumes. They are the moving inertial masses.
3.
There are the stable holes in big pieces of space.
4.
The space is eternal.
5.
The motions/energies of pieces of space are eternal.

Over time, volumes of the colliding pieces of space can change only due a division or merger. Energy/motions cannot transform into pieces/volumes and vice versa. The Einstein formula E=mc^2 acts on higher level of nature. Gravitational constant G is obligatory for lengths greater than the Planck critical length.

 

A fresh input of woo.
Exactly what was needed at this time.

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Something and/or Nothing

Nothing forever cannot be, obviously. Something forever has no source, for it was never made, so this cannot be; yet, there is something, and it has certain properties, so, something is made of nothing, which can only be distributed as ‘sum-things’; so, we look for a symmetric balance, and there it is: pairs, opposite in charge and matter state. There is both something and nothing at the same time. That is the unity and the TOE.

 

The best case for a philosophy of existence is to have it actually correspond to the observation of it in actual existence… for example:

Something and/or Nothing

We can conceive of ‘nothing’ as the lack of anything, but we know this is not the case since there is something, and so a lack of anything was not possible. This information indicates that there has to be something, that there must be something, but we don’t yet know exactly why.

Yet if the basic something(s) had been around forever, they never would have been made, there both being no source and no no time or place for the creation, yet something has definition and properties without any defining point; so, the something had to be created at some point for some reason, and it can’t be eternal as non makable and unbreakable. Nor is the something completely full, totally filling up all possible space to absolute solidity, as then we would be packed in like sardines.

This is all philosophy so far, but for the known of something, and we further philosophize that since things can’t forever be made of lessor things since not only would this cascade never end but also have no definition point for the things that nothing is the only possible source.

None of this would seem to go anywhere by itself but for the fortunate correspondence of observation that there is a curious zero balance of symmetry of the basics, this being that pairs of substance pop in an out of existence that have opposite polarity of charge and matter state, such as an electron(-) and a positron(+), as well as that the negative potential energy of gravity matches the positive kinetic energy of substance. There is also the symmetry of there being only two stable matter particles, these being charged, the electron(-) and the proton(+), and their antiparticles, with only one stable neutral energy ‘particle’, the photon, which seems to have both a positive and a negative lobe.

So, the positive metaphysical position of stuff forever fails, it being absurd for having no source, while the position of a total lack of anything also fails, it being absurd since there is and must be something.

Evidently, nothing forever and something forever are true and always present at the same time, which is a kind of neutral metaphysical position, for something always becomes of nothing, the something ever happening, yet these ‘sum-things’ ever summing to nothing overall. Existence has to be made of partial nonexistence in balance.

Electrons, beings, and Beings are somethings, a range of the simple to the more complex, but none of them can be fundamental and eternal. What is eternal and boundless would be the ever in-between of completely full or totally empty—a finite realm ever jitter-bugging with ‘sum-things’, and this Totality fits the bill of being the prime mover, requiring nothing but itself, as well as being eternal in duration and boundless in extent.

There can be no stable uncharged (neutral) matter particle with no antiparticle in free space (neutrons decay) because there would be no way to nullify the existence of the substance in the overview by the halves of polarity, and there can be no charged energy particle with a different antiparticle in free space because that would then have to be substance and because energy already embodies Totality at large rather than half of it.
Things are the way they are since there is no other way for them to be.

Even if one retreats to “can’t know”, just in case, there is still the freedom to be (within our form) because “can’t know”.

Scheme:
1. The universe is reasonable
2. All positive metaphyscal positions are logically indefensible
3. A neutral metaphyscial posotion is logically defensible
4. Either the universe is a unity (as opposed to 'one'), or it is paradoxical (there are true contradictions)

The first is an axiom, the second a fact, the third a reasoned proposal (I would call it a fact), and the fourth a logical conclusion. (petej on another forum)

 

More examples…

Some alcoholic drinking can be tempered by knowing its effect via science, but internal feelings may overwhelm the information, which may be akin to those going only by internal feelings and sensations of 'God' as a metaphysical position without being informed by the science externals of the neurology beneath feelings and sensations. A unity of internals/externals beckons as the middle way.

In a general way, the left side of the brain operates in serial mostly concerning details, the right side in parallel mostly realizing the whole without a focus on the detail. A unity forms, a balance of the yin and yang ever revolving into a more rounded life. As we are the universe come to life, it could be that the two views are mirrored therein as well.

Consciousness floating around, as like a ‘soul’ alone would have nothing to witness, a kind of unperceptive immortality, so it requires the content of experience, but experience without consciousness would just be as a zombie, it going nowhere really. Perhaps the capability for consciousness is a fundamental thing, like mass is, but it certainly requires a brain and a brain process.

Things moving and happening can grant time, but the overall essence behind this could be rather timeless at the level of Totality where nothing really changes overall.

Existence has no source that is of other existence, yet non-existence—a lack of anything—wouldn’t seem to be able to go anywhere.

A neutral unity has become necessary to account for what is, the opposites somehow living in peace with each other, each there because of the other.

So, there is, must be, a neutral unity of extreme positions, given that the universe must be reasonable, as even what is thought to be unreasonable must still have reason, even if it is something weird to us as 'reason' like a basis of a law of no laws or random (which still needs some regulation to keep it random).

We have then have that there is no pure materialism, nor no pure world of ideals, etc., but some mixture, or both at the same time.