Theologians and both Christian and Muslim apologists have unfortunately since picked up on the ill-conceived claims of that review to argue that physics can therefore never really address the most profound ‘theological’ questions regarding our existence. (To be fair, I regret sometimes lumping all philosophers in with theologians because theology, aside from those parts that involve true historical or linguistic scholarship, is not credible field of modern scholarship.) It may be true that we can never fully resolved the infinite regression of ‘why questions’ that result whenever one assumes, a priori, that our universe must have some pre-ordained purpose. Or, to frame things in a more theological fashion: ‘Why is our Universe necessary rather than contingent?’.
One answer to this latter question can come from physics. If all possibilities—all universes with all laws—can arise dynamically, and if anything that is not forbidden must arise, then this implies that both nothing and something must both exist, and we will of necessity find ourselves amidst something. A universe like ours is, in this context, guaranteed to arise dynamically, and we are here because we could not ask the question if our universe weren’t here. It is in this sense that I argued that the seemingly profound question of why there is something rather than nothing might be actually no more profound than asking why some flowers are red or some are blue. I was surprised that this very claim was turned around by the reviewer as if it somehow invalidated this possible physical resolution of the something versus nothing conundrum.
Instead, sticking firm to the classical ontological definition of nothing as “the absence of anything”—whatever this means—so essential to theological, and some subset of philosophical intransigence, strikes me as essentially sterile, backward, useless and annoying. If “something” is a physical quantity, to be determined by experiment, then so is ‘nothing’. It may be that even an eternal multiverse in which all universes and laws of nature arise dynamically will still leave open some ‘why’ questions, and therefore never fully satisfy theologians and some philosophers. But focusing on that issue and ignoring the remarkable progress we can make toward answering perhaps the most miraculous aspect of the something from nothing question—understanding why there is ‘stuff’ and not empty space, why there is space at all, and how both stuff and space and even the forces we measure could arise from no stuff and no space—is, in my opinion, impotent, and useless. It was in that sense—the classical ontological claim about the nature of some abstract nothing, compared to the physical insights about this subject that have developed—that I made the provocative, and perhaps inappropriately broad statement that this sort of philosophical speculation has not led to any progress over the centuries.
What I tried to do in my writing on this subject is carefully attempt to define precisely what scientists operationally mean by nothing, and to differentiate between what we know, and what is merely plausible, and what we might be able to probe in the future, and what we cannot. The rest is, to me, just noise.
So, to those philosophers I may have unjustly offended by seemingly blanket statements about the field, I apologize. I value your intelligent conversation and the insights of anyone who thinks carefully about our universe and who is willing to guide their thinking based on the evidence of reality. To those who wish to impose their definition of reality abstractly, independent of emerging empirical knowledge and the changing questions that go with it, and call that either philosophy or theology, I would say this: Please go on talking to each other, and let the rest of us get on with the goal of learning more about nature.
See what we're tweeting about
246 Comments
Add CommentThere seems to be a confusion here between a word (or idea) and a thing. There are some concepts, like infinity, that exist in the mind, in mathematics, but not in the physical world. "Nothing," to state the obvious, is not a thing in the physical world. It is a concept. Since the universe consists of physical things, it could not have emerged from nothing, a concept. Something, i.e. some physical thing, must always have existed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJim, you clearly missed the point the author made regarding the fact that if you acknowledge that "something" is a measurable state, then "nothing" is as well. The state of "nothingness" may limit opportunities, but to conclude that it is a sterile, null state from which nothing may arise is, arguably, short sighted. Philosophers may declare that the nature of "nothingness" implies only perpetual "nothingness", but physicists may discover otherwise.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm not sure that Krauss understood Albert's criticism. According to Krauss, Albert is saying "that the laws of physics can never dynamically determine which particles and fields exist and whether space itself exists..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut this isn't Albert's criticism. Albert recognizes that we can dynamically explain why, starting with almost any type of quantum field (including the null field) we can explain why we have our current field (the one with space and people and planets). But, says Albert, that's not an explanation of everything from nothing; that's an explanation of fields from fields.
Why do we have any field? And why was it a relativistic quantum field (one governed by the general laws we have)? Those are the questions Albert thinks Krauss can't answer.
There are no objects or things in the classical sense. This mostly arises from neural association and categorization; another words information compression. If information itself can be created and destroyed, then something can arise out of nothing; since information is, all that really exists anyway.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLawrence Krauss is astonishingly disingenuous. He knows perfectly well (or it would be even more astonishing if he doesn't know) that David Albert, the philosopher who reviewed his book in the NYTimes, is also a physicist who has co-authored many important papers on the foundations of quantum mechanics with Yakir Aharonov, one of the physicists who Krauss positively mentions as someone who has had useful progress on the measurement problem. As Albert points out here
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://philocosmology.wordpress.com/2012/04/07/an-explanation-from-nothing/#comments
a paper written by Aharonov and Bohm sets right one of the errors Krauss makes in his book.
you are missing the point here.. dynamics can determine whether and which quantum fields exist....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAncient writings refer to it as Maya, That which appears to be but isn't. That is, anything we might percieve with our senses is in a constant state of flux on every level. What appears to exist one instant is transformed the next, even our thoughts and feelings. Waves of energy move through the ocean, rise and take form then fall back into the ocean. It is all one thing from which the myriad forms are created and go back to.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe true miracle is that out of dirt a concious being takes form. Is conciousness something or nothing? Obviously it is something or we wouldn't be having this discussion, but where is it and can it be measured? Perhaps rational analysis has its limits.
When all is said
And all is done
All that's left is
All is One.
The problem with discussing nothing is that it can be used in so many different contexts and mean different things in each context that it's easy to talk past each other. Unfortunately it's in the same category as being. It's an ontological category. Anyhow, I think one of the more interesting philosophical interpretations of nothing is that it is not-a-thing where thing means stuff. For example, space and time are not things or at least not things in the same way as this seat I'm sitting upon. How are space and time different from these other things? Obviously you can simply reduce them to manifolds but I'm not sure that exhausts there meaning. For example, you don't measure space or time you measure the size of one thing in terms of another or the duration of one thing in terms of another. Obviously this relativity is most conspicuous in the special theory of relativity. Let's leave aside the general theory because where as the special theory is perfectly compatible with quantum mechanics the general theory, obviously, is not. So, then, are time and space merely the relations between things? Possibly but that doesn't feel quite right. So, how does the (dare I say it?) being of space and time differ from the being of things? How does each's being differ from the other? If they are not-a-thing or nothing, what is nothing? BTW, this line of questioning is inspired by Heidegger but of course all errors are mine (i.e. if you think what I'm suggesting is stupid don't blame him).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAre you not operating in a field of philosophy? You work with electrons everyday - but has anyone ever even seen one?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisprofitsgood: I haven't seen "one" but I have seen many. So have you every time you have looked at a TV (based on a CRT tube.) Every point of light on the screen is caused by a tiny stream of electrons striking that screen at that point.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou, and everyone else "work(s) with electrons every day", because if you didn't you wouldn't work at all.
We 'see' electrons by their effect as electric current and many other phenomena, just as we 'see' the sun by its many effects including light.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRe "I, and most of the colleagues with whom I have discussed this matter, have found that philosophical speculations about physics and the nature of science are not particularly useful", this is exactly my own experience. Dare one posit that a necessary but not sufficient condition is a detailed knowledge of the field under study, requiring many years of study? A few stand in both fields - however, this does not imply a monopoly on wisdom. I enjoyed the book very much, it's a pity some philosophers take exception to other people's understanding of the concept of 'nothing' rather than argue cogently with it
Krauss's demonstration as to the plausibility of particles of matter and anti-matter emerging in empty space and of multiverses I accept as I do Darwinian evolution without going through all the research, observation, and testing that these scientists did. I think it would be most exciting to resolve the "something from nothing" quandary without an appeal to supernatural entities.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, I don't think that undermines the profession of theologian and philosopher. Maybe that of bishop and ayatollah (I hope!).
Religion I think will always be with us as long as our species does not self-destruct or morph into some higher one. It is simply the way we work. Numerous studies in neuroscience have shown our capacity for building and interacting with our environment through ideas within belief systems. One of the belief systems that expresses transcending experiences in many of our symbolic activities is religion. The most we can hope and work for are religions that are self-critical and so not an obstacle to passing beyond or transcending our beliefs towards greater understanding and more worthwhile action.
And that is where good philosophers and theologians come in. They raise questions about our belief systems. They probe the concepts by which we are expressing our latest interactions with each other, our social order, our world, and our universe for elegance, consistency, and meaning. They create a community of inquirers and let us all in. That's why they often get in trouble with those who are trying to maintain the organization, i.e. the ayatollahs and bishops.
The approach to the origin of stuff instead of an empty looks as difficult to solve with wordings such as "Spontaneous simmetry breaking". The nil just can't be subject for or of breaking nothing, you call it as you like. The question of stuff existing instead of an empty may finally prove purposeless as we aren't in the condition of creating anything, (creativity just deals with new combinations of previously existing things) or of sending things back to nil, we will never be in the position of understanding the rationale of existence, we exist, the material world exists, and it's only the One who made the world who can give us the answers for this doubt, thinking in existence as a gift we got is a good approach. The subject of mixing Theology and Astrophysics is a complex one, some say Theology is a science that has an unexistant object, and as God can be experienced but cannot be the subject of an experiment, the usual experimental sciences approach to gaining knowledge about something are useless in the Theology field, the degree of knowledge about the object of Theology as science depends absolutely in the reality this science studies, and not at all on our ability to gather data about. Philosophy remains an specialized type of literary production, it has its followers, authors and customers just as romantic novels have, and although many philosophers had intuitions of things that experimental sciences proved right later, and they set rules for improving our way of thinking and about the value of our thoughts, many philosophers fell into the trap of becoming normative, and you can see such peculiar statements as the one by Auguste Compte, a precursor of positivism having many followers in the american countries, who wrote: "It's evident that the Solar System is badly designed". The production of philosophers is great, you get pleasure and stimulate your mind by reading them, but statements like the previous one from Compte will destroy the confidence on philosophers of many, at least mine. The life of some of them, think in Rene Descartes having a thing going on with a married woman member of the swedish royalty, or F Nietzsche and V I Lenin suffering general paralysis as a consequence of "an army service time acquired disease", put also in doubt the morale value of some works, as its authors were not very much ethical or just sane, but the possibility of regretting your sins, getting pardon and behaving again in a proper way exists for us. Philosophy is beautiful, astrophysics is a marvelous science, and that's all.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120418134847.htm
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAn electron as been observed to split into its separate components; a spinon carrying its spin and an orbiton carrying its orbital momentum. Hope this helps.
Dear utidjian, you miss the point. You haven't seen many electrons either. You have seen a TV, and you accept the theoretical explanation for how it works. Don't confuse your perceptions with your theoretical knowledge. In addition I think Krauss' article here was rather poorly thought out, and unhistorical. He obviously does not know the old thinkers as well as he believes. Let him keep to his metier, popularizing modern physics. The ancient philosophers were grappling with real problems, much the same as Krauss believes he has solved just now.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSomeone should teach this scientism preachers the difference between doing science and doing philosophy. If there were no philosophy they will not even know how to think and frame a problem.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMind works in a different realm where the physical laws, forces, etc., have nothing to do. It's beyond its reach.
By the way, as it seems to be so easy that a universe arises, I would like to have one of my own!
"In science, there are no authorities.." So true. As a geologist, I find it's hard concept for the public to grasp but it is at the very essence of science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRe philosophers...no need to appease them. Ignorance no matter how it is dressed up is still ignorance. Whether Plato, Catholic theologians or whoever...they are wrong. A big 'F' on their report card.
The quantum world, multiuniverse, etc. are buzz words philosophy uses without really having any grasp of what they are.
I'm not 'down' on the concept of philosophy but most philosophy is a few stages removed from reality. Studying Aristotle is the equivalent of a geologist studying Genesis...historic weight doesn't give scientific weight.
I think Krauss misunderstands what philosophy of science is all about. Philosophy of science is not at all about contributing to empirical science, because if did, it would be called science. Philosophy in this sense is a general label for critical thinking and the resolving of puzzlements regarding scientific practices.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow, an age old insight of philosophers is the conceptual failure of what has been called 'the cosmological argument' for the existence of a prime cause (or, of a creating God).
The trick of this argument is to ask us to apply functions (like causality or statistics) that are known to us from applying them to concrete objects and events in a context of spacio-temporal environment of other objects and events, to a very special kind of object or event - EVERYTHING!
In the usual case, an explanation of a specific event, would require an empirical observation and could give us predictions about other observations (e.g. supplying us with a physical law under which the event took place, or predicting the finding of remnants from the causing event). The situation is very different with the 'cosmological argument' in which we are asked to explain EVERYTHING.
So we are asked about the cause of EVERYTHING (the whole universe), or the prime-mover of all movements, or the statistical chance that we find EVERYTHING just as we find it.
But already by definition, there can be no observation of anything other than EVERYTHING, and there is no background to determine the chance of us finding EVERYTHING just as we find it, and for a similar reason, the "unmoved-mover" is also untractable.
If by the term 'science' we mean any discipline that's capable of giving us information of any sort, than the explanation demanded by the 'cosmological argument' is outside the realm of empirical science proper.
It's the occupation of some general kind of critical thinking to show us how we've been tricked by this cunning argument. and this discipline is called 'philosophy'.
Now, the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" sounds very "deep" to the uncritical mind, but further examination would reveal it as just another formulation of that old cosmological argument.
We use the phrase "Why is there x rather than nothing?" to get information about the appearance of specific objects, like the milk in the fridge, or the planets in our solar system. But when this question is applied to EVERYTHING, we are just emptying this phrase from its meaningful use it originally had.
Agreed. Thanks for the link.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOups, forgot:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"David Albert’s review of the Krauss book is charitably reserved, considering the broad reach of the claims that appear to be made in the book. The critique makes it evident that a universe with fields but no particles may be very different from ours, but still is clearly not “nothing”."
It seems that to answer the question of nothingness, we need a good definition of what things are. Here’s my definition…
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe universe seems to be an eternal (no time) block of space-time. This means than all objects you can define are not only defined by a set of particles, but by the space-time block that they “inhabit”. This object specific space-time block is just as important (if not more so) to the existence of an object as the particles, and is integral to the existence of any object we can define. All objects are therefore eternal, and the universe, no matter how you categorize it, is really made of a continuum of objects.
When we speak of "nothing" we never really mean something like a mathematical nul (at least I don’t). We always equivocate on this, and redefine our “nothingnesses” to suite the context. The reality is that there is always something wherever you look. Arbitrary blocks of space-time may not be glamorous, but they are things.
I hope this opinion helps.
The author claims ignorance on the subject of "serious philosophy" - a subject that helps people in all disciplines think - but does not seem to be truly aware of his ignorant situation, at least not sufficiently enough to ask for philosophical clarification from his learned adversary who is well versed both in serious philosophy and serious physics.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLawrence,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've read your book. I've read most of the references cited above. I've read most of your SciAm articles published in the recent past. I've also read and comprehend huge numbers of philosophers and theologians including Heidegger, Derrida and most notably Deleuze. I must bring to your attention an error. You linked Aristotle and Leibniz to authority. I, like you, find this unpersuasive. But not from Leibniz, but Newton. Newton was the Aristotelian, NOT Leibniz. The other great debate bewteen Newton and Leibniz -- bracketing the 'Who Invented the Calculus?' constroversy -- was Newton's total authority of G-d arguments against Leibniz's proto-relativity arguments. Let's face it, Leibniz paved the way for Einstein's greatness. That's a serious error. You should correct this.
In post-Leibnizian, Darwinian, Einsteinian, Feynmanian world, creatio ex-nihilo or profundis clearly and spectacularly have been rendered anachronistic nonsequiturs. In an Einsteinian spacetime there are no such 'THING's as 'time' or 'gravity.' That emphatically does not mean they don't exist or have impact. It means we must work harder to understand them on their terms. Things only have thingness -- and no-thing only have no-thingness -- in the spacetime of this universe in which we live. Whatever went before the Hot Big Bang it is impossible to characterize it as 'something' or 'nothing.' That's the important concept to grok. I am indebted to Krauss for opening doors in this adventure. It takes courage to do that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLets all just calm down, breathe, and remember that energy can never be created nor destroyed. So how can something come out of nothing with that in mind? Time has no relevance in this universe, merely to societies and the games that men play.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow do all the comments posted regarding the MEANING of Krauss' statements NOT make this a purely philosophical, or semantical, or logical question?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this(You ask - Why is there ‘stuff’, instead of empty space? Why is there space at all? There may be other ontological questions one can imagine but I think these are the ‘miracles’ of creation that are so non-intuitive and remarkable.)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this--------------------------------------------
There is no such thing as empty space! Universal(absolute) space is the 2nd dimension of the universe. It contains ALL the laws of nature. Michelson and Morely, two of the greatest scientists of the 19th century discovered this with their empiricle experiments. Nothing moves relative to absolute space. Yet their discovery (one of the greatest discoveries of that century) was totally ignored by the science philosophers and still is. All matter and energy move relative to each other BUT not to absolute space.
As for the 1st dimension - this is the creative power dimension that designed the laws of nature and brought them into existence. The size of the universe is limited to the extent of these laws - where they end the universe ends. The universe cannot exist one inch beyond these laws.
http://novan.com/mind.htm
(Searching for reality with imagination!)
You all are missing the point. The point is not how the possibility of having blue or red flowers exists, but if the question takes us somewhere. And if it doesn´t, is it worth asking the question? (..and, why pfilosophy haven´t arrived at least at one agrement in 2,600 years.)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"There have been people who one can classify as philosophers who have contributed usefully to this discussion, such as Abner Shimony, but when they have, they have been essentially doing physics"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell, there you have it. If someone is contributing something "useful", he's doing physics, but if it isn't "useful", then he's doing philosophy. Hence, philosophy contributes little useful to physics. Q.E.D.
Mr Krauss says:If “something” is a physical quantity, to be determined by experiment, then so is ‘nothing’. This seems to be a non-sequitur. The question: Why is there something rather than nothing launches us on the kind of wild-goose cause-and-effect chase that led to the idea of God. Scientists, of all people, should be able to see this.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRivers, Krauss was not giving a definition, he was making an observation. Your snark is a little misplaced.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDivisionByZero, I like your comment as it is making perfect sense to me. Simply put, let's not talk about 'nothing' but let's talk about 'nothing of what'. So in the beginning of our universe there was 'nothing of' the physical stuff we have today, but there was 'something of' nonphysical stuff that obviously somehow transformed into the physical stuff (including ourselves) we have today. Since Einstein introduced us to the connection between 'mass' and 'energy', E = Δmc², the idea of 'singularity' being transformed into a 'multiplicity of states' is proving more and more plausible. In physics, 'nothing' does not refer to the 'absence of all' but it refers to just one of a plethora of the states of the universe.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIs a typical example of arrogance and lack of reverence, both from philosophy and physics.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSource of misunderstanding is that physics and philosophy are placed in two different epistemological perspectives.
Epistemological problem in physics is „what we know?”.
Epistemological problem in philosophy is „how do we know?”.
Knowledge in physics is positive.
Knowledge in philosophy is apophatic (ie critical, as Kant might say).
Physician, usually, thinks he knows something.
Philosopher says: What physicist „knows” is just what he „imagines there is”, judging by the impressions he receives in the experience. And this situation will always remain unchanged, as many devices will interpose between himself and the measured objects. Physical reality (thing itself, such as Kant said) will always remain hidden from physicist. That is, if you will, epistemological paradox of scientific knowledge.
Knowledge in physics is just a hermeneutics of empirical experience. That is what the philosopher known with certainty.
When Bohr says „It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out about nature. Physics concerns what we can say about nature” he is a philosopher, in more authentic sense of the word, not a physicist.
To be understood, I do not conceive this „epistemological conflict” as a conflict between two professions, but between two perspectives of thought, which, as Kant showed, can be reconciled when viewed in a critical perspective.
I marvel that they can discuss today epistemology without mention no word about Kant – the philosopher who received the ultimate confirmation just by the appearance of quantum mechanics and relativity theory.
Perhaps these distinctions are not useful for a «physicist» today, but I'm sure will soon be very useful for «physics».
This is my theory in my book:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/17474184/Marcel-Chelba-Kantian-tetralogy-Vol-I-Critical-Introduction-About-the-possibility-of-Metaphysics-as-Science-in-the-critical-philosophy-of-Kant
http://www.scribd.com/doc/10039681/Marcel-Chelba-Tetralogia-kantian-Vol-I-Introducere-Critic-Despre-posibilitatea-Metafizicii-ca-tiin-in-perspectiva-filosofiei-critice-kant
Looking for a translator from Romanian into English.
Marcel Chelba
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI first came across the question "Why is there something,
rather than nothing?" in writings by the great theorist John
A. Wheeler, though the question probably well predates his
musings. It continues to be a valid and provocative question
for me. I do suspect that some of the motivation for
objections from some theologians and philosophers, regarding
the limits of "mere" physics (not to mention any other
actual science) to explore reality, may stem not from
reasoned analysis, including at least occasional humble self-
critiques, but from an underlying need to locate and preserve
a domain which is by definition untouchable.. forever in-
accessible to science.
Were such a realm to be shown to exist, presumably through clear
and unanswerable logical argument, it would be tantamount to
finally establishing an unassailable place for the existence of
a god or spirit or at least Something underlying the foundations
of all physical reality, yet forever outside of it. The permanent
and fatal problem with this, however, is that while the theology/
philosophy surrounding this complaint is fortified, indeed
garrisoned, with (arguably) rational instruments of reason, at
the deeper core of it is an overarching desire to defend and
exalt a preexisting idea of an ultimate reality, which must be
True, in some sense entirely immune and safe from the 'dep-
redations' of what in earlier centuries was loudly scorned as
base human thought, doubt and hubris (shades of 'original sin'?).
But creaky and eclectic as it may be, the scientific method
and independent untrammeled curiosity of men and women who
are actual doers of science, are the best candle bearers
we have in "the demon haunted world" (see Sagan's book of
that title).
As scientists and educators and writers have noted wryly
from time to time (Twain comes to mind… "I am well prepared
to speak at length upon this very important subject, since
I know absolutely nothing at all about it!!") that when
certain charged concepts, ideas and cause-&-effects are
not well defined, perhaps fuzzily vague to even the most
ardent practitioners, there is a certain inevitable rush
to arms, banners flying, with certainties flying overhead
like so much shrapnel, especially in heady regions of mind
where dogma, cant and idealism need feeding. This is
always especially likely when one's theological or philo-
sophical ox is gored. It's because much more is, or seems
to be, at stake here than meets the eye.
It is my understanding that for some philosophers nothing per si is something. So that indeed an idea. And so that nothing being always an existence. This point of view then might not bring anything to science rather than a contrafactual position to scientists who are looking for anything within nothing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell put, Lawrence.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFirst of all, Krauss is like many who don't appreciate that all reasoning and critique is in effect an application of "philosophy" in the broad operational sense (which matters most). His response to critics and misunderstanding of the scope and role of philosophy just shows that those who disdain "philosophy" tend to do a poor job of reasoning about such overarching matters (which reasoning really is "philosophy" whether such people admit it or not.)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs for the direct question of "something instead of nothing", the best thinkers know not to treat "nothing" as a sort of other kind of "stuff" in logical role. Instead, it is just a placeholder for the negation of "there being something." The correct formulation is, "why is there something instead of not something," where "not" takes its proper role as logical negation rather than a pretense of just another "thing" to take the place of the "something." (Note c.f. "Santa Claus does not exist" is not meant to be a property of "Santa Claus" but rather a negation of such a being (not to be confused with representations, notionality etc) existing.
However, the issue of "existing" is itself suspect, as modal realists and proponents of MUH have shown. They cogently argue, there is no logical way to even distinguish or explain why some "possible worlds" (which can be imagined, as Platonic descriptions, and/or as the math which describes a world) exist and others "don't exist" as actual "stuff" instead of just that bare math. Some say, "the world is literally made of math". Those who don't agree are saying, there is some specific "incarnation" of some worlds, that ours for example is "really real" and not just a mathematical abstraction like all other descriptions. That would include for example worlds with 129 space dimensions and no relation whatsoever to the laws pertaining to ours.
Krauss apparently isn't one of those, and doesn't even (AFAICT) truly address those issues. So he is saying our world is "really stuff" and not just an abstraction. So then, the question is "why is our world real in some greater sense than the MR/MUH thinkers wrongly think *all* worlds are, why is it not just an abstraction of pure math"? That is the real question that people mean by, "WISTION", and it is a not answerable by dynamic issues. Our or even other universes "coming from" anything at all (once the fallacious and misleading use of "nothing" as part of the grammar of a list of "things" is exposed and disposed) is just like rain, snow, etc coming from clouds: not a true or ultimate explanation.
Furthermore, he complains about the uselessness sterility etc. of the perfectly apt original question, of why there is any existence. (That phrasing is perhaps even betting than having to add, "instead of there not being any such" - just *leave out* the confusing pseudo-referent "nothing" completely! Or you can say, "instead of just the Platonic mathematical truths and forms, as such and without any examples of substantiation.") Well, that question is indeed "sterile" because it just shows that is a question science probably can't answer. How could it? The logical tools just don't exist in principle to do so, since math and set theory etc. can't point beyond themselves to some extra "esse" or sparkle ("what puts fire into the equations"?) Indeed, the supreme irony is that those who are not modal realists (and anyone even pretending to discuss or understand these issues *must* make themselves conversant with the critique they present) and believe in the special incarnation or substantiation of some possible model words/descriptions are "mystic" who believe in a special, trans-rational thing like a "soul" that some of these universes have. Even if they say "all of them really exist" that is still saying, there is more to them than the math constructs that describe them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBTW also note that there has to be some framework of laws already assumed, to be analyzed and make the predictions of what the changes in other laws etc would be. How will you calculate, for example, what is the chance of making or having a universe with a fine structure constant between 0.005 and 0.01?
Also there is no experimental evidence for either virtual particle processes producing residual matter/energy instead of reabsorbing it (and the whole pretense could be just a figure of speech, an abstraction), or for producing other effective laws of physics. Since "spaces" (misleadingly called "vacua" in theory as if the same "nothing" of the badly-worded ultimate ontological question) produce a given set of fundamental particles, that means that the laws and the associated particles "go with" that space-time manifold. It's like getting rain and snow from water vapor clouds, so what? It's not like we can get new laws by e.g. smashing protons together at 10⁵⁰ eV - or can we? So it's a matter of getting a given "space-time" to be there, in the first place. How can we find others or justify the ST manifolds themselves, to change or be made different by some process? Now, scientists have nothing solid to go on.
I always enjoy reading Lawrence Krauss, but I have to take objection to one comment, in a way that I am sure he would agree with however - the statement that theology 'is not credible field of modern scholarship'.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTheology is not a credible field of modern /secular/ scholarship. It of course remains as valid a field of endeavor within its own context as it has ever been.
The phylogenetic relationship between science and theology is quite plain, historically speaking. In Christian, Jewish and Muslim contexts, theology as we know it arose from the interaction of Greek philosophy - which also gave rise to science - with scriptural and ecclesiastic authority. Theology is thus sort of a hybrid discipline, in all of the Abrahamic faiths, but aside from its hybrid nature would simply rate as a sibling of Western science, whether ancient or modern. Theology legitimately has no authority within the context of secular inquiry because of its self-professed requirement of faith as an initial starting point.
As far as the controversies over ontology and 'nihilology' are concerned, I would have to raise the question of whether a law of any kind can be said to arise from nothing, or to be coexistent with it prior to the coming into being of anything. This strikes me as a question that is relevant not only to modern theoretical physics (Mach and Einstein and so forth), but whose pattern really very much falls into what some philosophers and commentators on philosophy call 'the ontotheological tradition' - before there was anything, there was the Word, or the Principle. I don't feel that making this observation resolves anything in the argument; but within the context of one schema of understanding or another, it is an argument that has been going on for a very long time.
Arguments from authority are technically no more valid in philosophy than they are in science; actually existing human practice being what it is, I suspect that they are actually about equally common in both.
Thank you.
Although it is by no means a dogmatic conviction, I strongly suspect that conversations about such matters will ultimately lead down the road of {Derridean} deconstruction, much to the chagrin of physicists and philosophers alike.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this{a more-or-less Derridean} deconstruction
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisin other words, I think that Derrida probably anticipated the frustrations of such lines of inquiry more than anyone else - quite possibly in a way that is even relevant to theoretical physics
Ayer's "Language, Truth, and Logic" suggests that many, if not all, discussions on such subjects as 'nothing', 'infinite', etc are truly linguistic arguments which may or may not be disprovable. If not disprovable, (God, etc) then it is non-science=nonsense from a scientific though not a philosophical viewpoint. I believe the real contribution of philosophers to the work of scientists is to keep us honest in our use of language.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs a Physician, I wonder if there is an 'ethics' locus in the cortex which could be manipulated in an asocial patient. Do I have the right to do this? I haven't a clue. 'Right' and 'wrong' are where Physicians need the most help from our philosopher bretheren.
Edmund Doering MD
Jupiter, Fl
When I was in graduate school, a professor said that no one would ever see an atom. At my university we now have an electron microscope, and guess what.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisProfessor Krauss, if you're reading this, please contact. I have so much more to so, as this has driven me off onto some entirely new realms of speculation. I believe we've corresponded briefly before.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thispkesel-- From my perspective "nothing" is not stuff and neither is "something" stuff. There are physical things, apples, oranges, say. I can draw a 3"/4"/5" right triangle, but the concept of a triangle, which includes all possible triangles, exists only as a concept in the mind. It is not stuff. Time and space may be categories of the mind, but if everything is illusion there can be no philosophy or physics. There seems to be a problem reconciling what we think we know about particle physics and what we think we know about the galaxy. Some concepts, such as infinity, nothing, maybe causality, etc, lead to paradoxes/contradictions, it would seem. Any mathematicians out there? There are degrees of infinity; are there degrees of "nothing"?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour article fails to credit Descartes. Was he not a great philosopher? He had much to offer mathematics and science. Even if he believed we were ghosts in the machine.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this“Why is there something rather than nothing?” may be or not a valid philosophical question, but it is second rate compared to: “what is really matter, energy, space or time?” As far as I can tell, science has not answered it. Maybe it cannot answer it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe confusion here comes from the fact that we think that philosophy is a discipline. Philosophy means the will to uncover the truth and to gain wisdom through that same process. It's an attitude and a desire to know through the use of reason, not a specific discipline. Physicists are philosophers in their desire to unify the laws of the universe(which presuppose that we accept the very speculative idea that the universe may be lead by one unified system of laws). Physicists such as S. Hawkins are philosophers but all philosophers are not physicists. Sincerely, I've never seen why we should build so much opposition between science and philosophy, since both have the same goal : to uncover the truth through reason. Unfortunately people tend to assimilate philosophy and religion, while actually philosophy is, unlike religion, about looking for rational demonstration and proof of one idea against any belief, while religion deals with faith and belief.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisModern physics since Galileo (at this time we used to call this works "philosophy of nature") brought us the sharpness, precision of mathematics into the field of natural science, and this is good for everyone. I don't see why we should oppose philosophy and physics, since it's been one of the very goals of the first Greek philosophers to reach such a goal. It does not mean, though, that it was the only goal. Ethics, of course, is another one and comportment studies brought a lot to this goal to. But this does not mean that this is the only way to deal with questions about the mind. Philosophy is not about finding answers, by the way, that would kill any other field of thinking, but it is precisely about knowing what is still to be uncovered. Therefore every step that any physicist takes to ask questions about what we still have to discover is a philosophical step and every time a scientist says he has the answer to a question that remains actually purely speculative by a lack of actual data, he is a sophist or a liar. If being a scientist means to talk only about what we can surely accept until further discovery, then being a scientist is being a philosopher. I think that Stephen Hawkins remains in a very philosophical behavior, which consist in saying what really brings him with actual new horizon for new research. There is absolutely no reason to oppose philosophy and science, except when some sophists call themselves philosophers.
jgrosay....... If you cannot take the time to properly utilize good writing skills and form complete sentences in your discussions or at least proof read what you enter here, then you should remain quiet. When I try to read what you have written I soon realize I'm wasting my time because of all the errors in composition and grammar, etc. so that whenever your name comes up in the future I will (as I'm sure many others will as well)just bypass what is written.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisProfessor Krauss, in rejecting philosophy, fails to acknowledge that he is promoting his own brand philosophy, known as scientific materialism. So what he really seems to be saying is that scientific materialism is the final truth, and we should not bother considering any other alternative.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut scientific materialism – the view that a real world of matter exists independently of consciousness – has a number of fatal flaws. Two of them are (1) several great thinkers, such as Bishop George Berkeley, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant showed that we can never prove that such a real world of matter actually exists outside of the mind; rather, as Hume said, this is a belief humankind takes on faith; and (2) in the scientific realm, quantum theory shows that consciousness plays an unmistakable role in forming the world of experience. (F. Kuttner & B. Rosenblum, The Quantum Enigma). Quantum theory teaches that an objective world of particles does not exist. (D. Lindley, The End of Physics.) The fact that quantum theory gives a role to consciousness in experience may be taken as a sign of a growing convergence between science and other fields of thought, and as evidence that the philosophical idealists were on the right track after all.
It is time for the scientific thought leaders to open their minds to the real possibility that there may very well be a fundamental synergy between mind and the physical world, and that this fact will not destroy science but perpetually energize it. Science deals only with models, and the evidence, from quantum theory to the placebo effect to the unavoidable fine-tuning of the universe, shows we are due for a change-over in model lines.
With science unable to bring themselves to accept mind or intelligence in the make-up of the physical world, it is forced to fall back to the multiverse and string theory to explain such things as the physical constants and the conflict between gravity and quantum theory. But neither of these two theories can be proven or falsified, so their role as “scientific” theories is doubtful. (See George Ellis, Does the Multiverse Really Exist?, Scientific American (Aug. 2011); L. Smolin, The Trouble with Physics). So why is all of this important? Because if consciousness in fact plays a role in the formation of the world, then it is time we take more responsibility for the world we live in, rather than pass off the task to some external force, and fanciful notions of multiple universes and hidden dimensions.
wtf? How does an electron microscope let you see the structure of an atom? Please provide some sources on this, because nothing that I've researched about electron microscopes says that. Atoms are a THEORY, they allow for predictions (very accurate ones), but it's impossible in principle to actually look at an atom and its "electrons".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere is a direct quotation from "Six Easy Pieces" which is a transcript of lectures that Richard Feynman gave at CalTech, and which refutes what you said:
"How do we know that there are atoms? By one of the tricks mentioned earlier: we make the hypothesis that there are atoms, and one after the other results come out the way we predict, as they ought to if things are made of atoms. There is also somewhat more direct evidence, a good example of which is the following: The atoms are so small that you cannot see them with a light microscope—in fact, not even with an electron microscope."
wtf? How does an electron microscope let you see the structure of an atom? Please provide some sources on this, because nothing that I've researched about electron microscopes says that. Atoms are a THEORY, they allow for predictions (very accurate ones), but it's impossible in principle to actually look at an atom and its "electrons".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere is a direct quotation from "Six Easy Pieces" which is a transcript of lectures that Richard Feynman gave at CalTech, and which refutes what you said:
"How do we know that there are atoms? By one of the tricks mentioned earlier: we make the hypothesis that there are atoms, and one after the other results come out the way we predict, as they ought to if things are made of atoms. There is also somewhat more direct evidence, a good example of which is the following: The atoms are so small that you cannot see them with a light microscopein fact, not even with an electron microscope."
To clarify, I know that an electron microscope can be used to image the outline of atoms, but the original point was that you can never see electrons, and that is 100% true.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPhilosophy, if considered anything more than fiction, is detrimental to advancement of science, and will eventually turn itself into faith and beliefs. However, I am not undermining the importance of fiction in advancement of science and technology. For example, people had thought/dreamt of going to moon & Mars years before even rocket propulsion was discovered. Fiction and imagination has always been one of the driving forces behind scientific endeavours. However, we need to be careful in keeping fiction separate from science, and to identify & appreciate its actual role. Same goes for philosophy. Philosophy lets imagination flow in variety of orthogonal directions, helps in exploration of possibilities, and thus boosts lateral thinking in science. However, every time we come up with a philosophical idea, we must also take a step back and remember that philosophy is NOT science, just as science fiction is not.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you cant have an up if you don't have a down .. then we cant have a something"(mater)" with nothing .. then nothing and something are constants and they are necessary for existence .. so they have always existed .. isn't much help is it ..
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's only one possible guess. But perhaps what is most centrally at question here is what the relationship is between mathematics and the world of physical things.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is has been a very long time since very many people took Pythagoras seriously; but we nevertheless all still seem to assume that mathematics is in some way timeless or eternal, in a way that even laws of physics are no longer presumed to be.
Did mathematics in some way preexist the material universe? Physicists today are exploring ideas which might explain the physical universe we live in as only one contingent ramification of a larger multiverse (or probability space of possible universes?) In a way, this only resets the same fundamental question to a larger context. Without mathematics, there can be no physical laws in the modern sense.
If mathematics did not preexist the physical universe, then it must have come into being with it.
The evidence that mathematics is somehow inherent in the physical universe is all around us, all the time. I have fifteen organic cigarettes left in this pack, and they are not magically going to turn into 16 or 14.
From a physics perspective, can time even be said to have preexisted mathematics? If it cannot, and if mathematics did not preexist the physical universe, then the physical universe cannot be said to have come into existence at any particular time at all.
Parenthetically - while it may seem like nonsense from some points of view to talk about 'nothing' at all, 'nothing' is ironically the foundation of all mathematics, from the perspective of modern set theory - all numbers are constructed from the empty set. Whether this is a 'concept' of nothingness or not, it is a reference to it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn my personal opinion western philopsophers might not be the best ones to read if one wants to know about what some clever people have analyzed about things like experience. While eastern philosophers are quite unknown to many and for some "voodoo", I respect some of their writings as "experimental science on subjective areas" like consciousness/human experience. If one accepts the possibility that we do not have equipment for measuring everything in universe, that just might be the direction to look for at least ideas of the aspects of universe we do not have equipment to measure - at least not yet.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEven when Krauss "apologizes", his arrogance and contemptuousness are breathtaking. Does he really have the right to be so surprised when others repay him in the same coin?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"I value your intelligent conversation and the insights of anyone who thinks carefully about our universe and who is willing to guide their thinking based on the evidence of reality."
Indeed, such as multiple dimensions, multiverses, and other empirically verifiable, testable, and falsifiable concepts. By all means, physicists, keep your thinking "reality" based, and be sure to keep pouring your scorn upon those whose standards of reality differ from yours.
It's quite funny, by the way, that Krauss was goaded to apologize and backpedal only when Daniel Dennett got after him. How dignified it must be to take marching orders, even from a member of the New Atheist triumvirate, itself. A real man of backbone and principle, is our redoubtable Krauss!
I think Kant and Hume are far from holding the views you are attributing to them. Actually, Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason, dedicated a whole chapter called "The Refutation of Idealism" to undermine the presumptions that enable such "no objective world" scenarios, and this approach only gets clearer in 20th century philosophy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA common contemporary approach to this issue of mind and world is what's sometimes called 'non-reductive naturalism', or 'non-reductive physicalism'.
Kant has come up a great deal in this discussion and since a powerhouse post-modern philosopher of religion has not been brought to bear to content with Krauss might I suggest one? Clayton Crockett of UCA is doing the most imaginative and solidly competent academic work today with Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud and Deleuze. I would highly recommend 2 volumes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this'A Theology of Sublime' A Critical engagement with Kant.
http://www.amazon.com/A-Theology-Sublime-Clayton-Crockett/dp/0415240948#reader_0415240948
'Interstices of the Sublime: Theology and Psychoanalytic Theory -- Perspectives in Continental Philosophy'
http://www.amazon.com/Interstices-Sublime-Psychoanalytic-Perspectives-Continental/dp/0823227227/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_5
I think this conversation needs some heft in engagement with theology and philosophy from sources that competently represent. Just a thought.
Peng8, there is a book coming soon that suggests what we need is a New Materialism that takes the earth and universe seriously. I think that would be of interest to Krauss.
I enjoyed reading this article. I think you miss a very important point in the study of physics that is fundamental to philosophy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI recently studied college level introductory physics. What I learned is that this universe is full of many, many different forces. Physics attempts to identify, measure and understand these forces.
What is apparent to me is that our level of understanding of these forces is very limited. Gravity, magnetism, fields, motion, time, energy, electron flow, light...these are all forces we interact with.
Additionally, I am a Force. I have a physical presence and I have thought energy.
What I think is interesting and pertinent to philosophy is this question: How can I use MY force to navigate through this universe of external forces to get what I want?
"To clarify, I know that an electron microscope can be used to image the outline of atoms, but the original point was that you can never see electrons, and that is 100% true."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAtomic force microscopes also, and "to see" means a lot of things, not sure if one definition supercedes the others.
And we're back to semantics :)
"NOTHING"...in the most absolute concrete/abstract definition, would equal, 'the alpha'... and since some truths are relative, (half-truths of the second type) relative to time and space, 'the omega'...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat physicists want? (1/2)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey want to find the root of the world – the primordial clay – the absolute zero from which emerge all, the universe, galaxies, stars, planets, up to this mirror of the world, which seems to be the man and his conscience. Why? Because, in that primordial vacuum, the man still thinks he will find something, namely, the inflection point of Creation, the magic switch by which he could manipulate the world – through which he could reconfigure or rebuild the world on other foundations possible – because, basically, once arrived there, man would be able to replace God as Creator.
Founding myth of physics is the usurper disciple – the son who tries to usurp his own father – the man who dreams to go back to the roots of his ontogeny, with a sort of time machine, to become his own father and choose his own genetic characteristics. But always is a mother, who we can not choose.
But, on their way toward the atom (as the Greeks called generic the original brick of the world), physicists will always find, not the Nothing itself (the One, as Parmenides said, or the pure Undeterminate, as Kant says), but a contingent something, that is made in turn from something else – any elementar brick will always discovered to be made from other two or more elementar bricks, which will be linked by a mortar, which, in it's turn, they will find that is made from other elementar bricks, which again will be welded with another mortar.
Then physicists will discover that this material scaffold of the world has an antisymmetric counter candidate, which, again, can aposteriori be empirically proved. Then physicists will discover that these two systems of elementary particles must be connected through a third system of particles – which, again, may be proved empirically. And so on.
In short, physicists, seeking primordial brick of the world, only reiterate on an empirical level the algorithm of becoming surprised by Hegel in his Phenomenology of spirit and Logic. But which physicist read Hegel? But Kant? Without some illustrious exceptions, neither mathematics can not say that they know too much. They know just to make some measurements and calculations. Let alone about philosophy.
Marcel Chelba
What physicists want? (2/2)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPhilosophers are explorers of thought and knowledge bases. Physicists do nothing but to rediscover them implicitly from some special cases. But because their results are marketable, and not those of philosophers, they have the luxury to ignore the philosophical tradition and qualify it as unnecessary.
But, say again, this is not a conflict between two professions, but between two perspectives of thought – who sometimes meet and are in perfect harmony, in the mind of a single man. You can not truly be a researcher in physics, if you do not have some philosophical skills, abstract (speculative) thinking, and some creative imagination.
The real scientist is driven by metaphysical curiosity – the desire to see what is beyond the current paradigms of knowledge. Mediocre researchers are motivated only by immediate practical interest – they never risk to contradict existing doctrines – they are just users who benefit from the true pioneers of knowledge. These pragmatic researchers, from behind the front of scientific knowledge always confuse the concept of value with the concept of price. In the laboratory, they make more economic policy than genuine scientific research.
If physicists (and others) would have a thorough philosophical education, the speed of our scientific and technological progress would increase exponentially. But their philosophical readings usually stop to a few pages of Aristotle and Descartes. They often rely on intermediaries – on some commentators who do not understand to much, either in philosophy or physics.
That happened with Kant, for example, that after a century when he received the ultimate confirmation even in the realm of science, he is still considered to be exceeded.
Marcel Chelba
Dear Lawrence,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen I saw you give a public lecture with Richard Dawkins about your book, you brought up the issue of science being in a position to challenge some of our dearest commonsense beliefs and logical syllogisms. You mentioned that someone once offered to you the following as an example of something that science could never undermine:
All men are mortal
Sam is a man
Therefore Sam is mortal
I take it that the point this person was making is that science could never undermine the validity of this inference. No discovery about the world, or new technological advance could make the conclusion false, while the premises are true. Nevertheless, you did not hesitate to offer the following response: perhaps one day science will make us live forever; if so then it will not necessarily be the case that Sam is mortal even though he is a man. I'm sure you're aware that this does not undermine the validity of the syllogism. All such an advance in science would show is that the first premise would no longer be true. But obviously validity does not require that the conclusion is guaranteed to be true even from false premises. Your cheap shot at philosophy--and this was not the only one you made--inspired in me a great mistrust of your academic conduct.
In 1915 Einstein wrote "Your exposition is also quite right that positivism suggested rel. theory, without requiring it. Also you have correctly seen that this line of thought was of great influence on my efforts and indeed E. Mach and still much more Hume, whose treatise on understanding I studied with eagerness and admiration shortly before finding relativity theory." (See
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/HumeMach.pdf )
Ernst Mach was a physicist (hence the use of "Mach number" to quantify supersonic speeds) but also a philosopher, and David Hume was a philosopher, by anyone's definition. Einstein and others acknowledged the debt owed by physics to metaphysics and epistemology, branches of thought that are indeed as much a part of the mathematical foundation of our understanding the world around us as are, say, calculus and group theory. There seems to be no good reason to assume a priori that there are no further contributions that can be made to physics by branches of philosophy that so far have remained part of a Platonic ideal with no connection to the "real" world.
I found that text appeared with some punctuation mistakes. You can find my comments on Scribd:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.scribd.com/doc/91632125/Marcel-Chelba-The-Consolation-of-Physics-Comment-on-an-article-by-Lawrence-M-Krauss-The-Consolation-of-Philosophy
I found that text appeared with some punctuation mistakes. You can find my comments on Scribd:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.scribd.com/doc/91632125/Marcel-Chelba-The-Consolation-of-Physics-Comment-on-an-article-by-Lawrence-M-Krauss-The-Consolation-of-Philosophy
You can find my comments on Scribd:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.scribd.com/doc/91632125/Marcel-Chelba-The-Consolation-of-Physics-Comment-on-an-article-by-Lawrence-M-Krauss-The-Consolation-of-Philosophy
From the sidelines, without any letters after my name, I still claim the right to try to understand what is being proposed as a new scientific approach or discovery. Intellectual property has no court of claims in the rhelm of ideas or theory, and trying to differentiate between philosophy and science seems to me, to be a frivolous endeavor. Both work near the capacity limits of our language, be it mathematical or lingual.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScience and scientific endeavors are well defined by the processes thay follow. Philosophy has have lost a clear definition as it splintered by giving birth to mathematics,chemistry, physics, astronomy and many other disciplines.
Both my education and my many worldly experiences have made me, at least a careful observer, and possibly a philosopher and I see an overlap with science in the extreem extrapolations of some explanitory formulae. In philosophy as in science we are limited by the limits of our language and the concepts it is capable of containing.
A new definition of philosophy may help calm the contentious nature created by any future accidental oversteps
Philosophy is the ART of creating USEFUL insights and perspectives.
The primary job of a philosopher is to explain the obvious, no matter how long it has been overlooked.
My lates book; "Darwin's Paw", illustrates the point in as a fictional narrative. My soon to be released book; "The Other Half of Evolution", illustrates the point in a non fictional account of the impact of natural selection on the evolution of awareness.
Without any impressive credentials, I still claim the right to play the game, to hope that my insights prove useful, and then lay claim to the title; Philosopher
I am now just reading Newton's "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy." Newton himself believed he was practicing a type of philosophy, as well he was a monotheist, and spent a lot of time writing on occult and religious topics. It is possible that part of Newton's genius rests in his non-dogmatic approach to knowledge, as well as his able use of mathematics.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisKrauss's book ought to be titled, given his definition of nothing: "A Universe as we see now from a Universe that looked a lot different" or "A Geometrical Material Universe from A pre-Geometrical Field". Anyway, something like that, but as the Atlantic interview brought out, Krauss was trying to be seductive to sell books.
The fact that he is now arguing with philosophers is perhaps evidence that he has become a philosopher.
My vocabulary is very simple, way below most comments here. OTOH, English not being my first language, I often consider this an advantage since I have to chose very carefully from what little words I know.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOT: I love to think about things. Many thoughts that do not stand up to reality I discard and the rest I try to prove. Those thoughts I can prove are philosophy turning into science. To me only of course as you may completely disagree. (It's a simpleton's wordplay really: the love of thought leading to knowledge, but I stand by the play since it works for me. I feel comforted in this by someone or the other having said that all great theories are in essence simple.)
Or in a slightly more sophisticated language: the best of philosophy generally leads to great science.
From that unwashed point of view of mine comes my vague feeling that many modern philosophers seem to lack disciplined thought and many modern scientists seem to lack creative thinking. Which is why I've come to prefer simple thoughts leading to simple insights which I then scale up rather than complicated mindwobblers leaving me stranded in nothingness.
But then, what do I know?
(Posted as a working man's contribution to the 1st of May celebrations which I also consider to be about celebrating the proper mind worker <s>)
Is that you, Luke Skywalker?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe crucial problems here seem to be that Krauss (1) does not seem to know what analytic philosophy is, and (2) does not distinguish between the discipline and its professional community. Both problems seem to arise from his lack of conceptual rigor. Analytic philosophy is, roughly, the study of the fundamental assumptions (foundations, if you like) and methodology of the formal and natural sciences in particular and of inquiry in general. Analytic philosophy does not consist in reading Aristotle, as one commenter has suggested. Aristotle is studied by historians of philosophy, who are indeed employed as professional philosophers, but this does not entail that history of philosophy is philosophy. This suggestion is as absurd as the suggestion that the history of science is the very same thing as science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisKrauss' criticism of various philosophers seemed to serve as the purported justification for his main criticism of philosophy in general. But this is absurd. It would be as absurd as claiming that, because some scientists were bad at science, the entire edifice of natural science was epistemically perverse. Some philosophers are wrong, and some are bad at philosophy, and some are both. Maybe even most, or all, are both. This is to say absolutely nothing about philosophy.
It should also be noted that making claims about the rigor of the methodology of any academic discipline (philosophy, science, or whatever) is doing philosophy. When someone makes a claim about the reliance of scientists on empirical inquiry, she is talking ABOUT science and hence doing (however basic) philosophy of science. Those who want to deny this because they dislike the word "philosophy" suffer from the same problem as that suffered by Krauss; viz., ignorance of what philosophy is.
Finally, it is to be expected that Krauss would learn more about quotidian employment of scientific methodology from scientists than from philosophers of science. Popper and Kuhn were not attempting to provide instruction manuals to scientists. Their theories were of the epistemological structure of scientific inquiry. Since scientists study the natural world, what they do NOT study is the epistemological structure of scientific inquiry, except in so far as they are also philosophers of science.
hmmm...nothing becomes something when it's conceived plain & simple...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Information is all that `really' exists." If so, you have merely stipulated that information exists as an ultimate reality, and are engaged in metaphysics --- which may or may not be unavoidable, but is not necessary
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisfor the useful and enlightening pursuit of science.
Of course --- this is a kind of "battle of theoretical models' where all sides claim that their models make the
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thismost sense and have the most explanatory power. But it is very, very easy to forget basic truths such as the one you point out here: an `electron' and all the other particles are inferred from mathematical data and what makes sense to our ordinary waking consciousness.
At least we can avoid postulating supernatural entities, whether hypothetically benevolent or evil, however, unlike many theologians.
No; this can't be right. no one is required to subscribe to any given model within theoretical physics, however elegant, merely to suffer through a television program!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo one `sees electrons,' at least, not currently existing instantiations of Homo sapiens sapiens --- an `electron' is a hypothetical construct out of sense data.
Not sure I am ready to reject Cartesian Geometry due to some alleged amour of Rene Descartes nearly five hundred years ago, mais `chacun a son gout' mon ami!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisArguably it makes it BOTH empirical science (to supply the key terms and topics to discuss/debate/investigate)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAND some kind of `philosophy.'
But not `theology,' not without a whole set of non-tendentious definitions being persuasively set forth and
subjected to relentless rational scrutiny. Which rarely
makes the theologians happy!
Arguably it makes it BOTH empirical science (to supply the key terms and topics to discuss/debate/investigate)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAND some kind of `philosophy.'
But not `theology,' not without a whole set of non-tendentious definitions being persuasively set forth and
subjected to relentless rational scrutiny. Which rarely
makes the theologians happy!
Arguably it makes it BOTH empirical science (to supply the key terms and topics to discuss/debate/investigate)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAND some kind of `philosophy.'
But not `theology,' not without a whole set of non-tendentious definitions being persuasively set forth and
subjected to relentless rational scrutiny. Which rarely
makes the theologians happy!
When the philosophers have "arrived at agreement" over the course of the last several thousand years, one result has frequently been ENTIRE BRANCHES OF SCIENCE and/or MATHEMATICS. And in any event, place the terms "history
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisof logic" in your favorite search engine to view the results of at least some "agreement" or "progress" in philosophy.
--- (Signed) biased former philosophy major
Kant's *Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals* is still relevant also, but many of us seem to
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thislack the time for such pursuits...good luck on finding a
translator!
At your university, you now have an electron microscope, and "guess what?" --- you see ever smaller patches of color you and I might be pleased to call `atoms'?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCool!
Walter Kaufmann (late philosopher who taught at Princeton U. for many years) is fairly accessible on Hegel and in particular on the Preface to the Phenomenology.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome of you guys really missed the point Dr. Krauss was trying to make. I wish I had the time and patience to clarify some points for you, but I don't. Why don't you guys try... reading again? :D
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswhat pseudo-science is this? You seem to be mis-quoting physicists on quantum mechanics. There is no science involving anything called "consciousness". Quantum mechanics, you see, is a science that is based on mathematical models and empirical observations - not on speculations and imaginations.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRe:"physics can therefore never really address the most profound ‘theological’ questions regarding our existence." Of course, this is true. Theology is different than philosophy; the approaches used by adherents are founded on entirely contradictory suppositions, the former being founded on ideology, faith, and mere belief, and the other on the process of having an open mind, critical thinking, and scientific methods. Philosophy is a love of wisdom and thinking about thinking. So, a philosopher can understand why you criticize theology but not philosophy, itself.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPhilosophy has many branches, ranging from aesthetics to logic, the latter providing a framework within which to structuralize ideas, including observations. Without the power of observation and hypothesis testing, physics would be dead in the water, for all one would have is mere observation, not unlike the cave person of yore; there may be wonderment but little thought processing in the manner of scientists, who depend, willingly or not, on at least some philosophy.
Speculation, logic, and imagination, themselves play a vital role of making sense of those observations, of which philosophy plays a major role. Indeed, a branch of philosophy IS the philosophy of science, and many physicists claim competence both in their "pure" field and that of philosophy. Too, one should not forget that science and philosophy were one from Greek classical times through the period of the natural philosophers. We "neatly" compartmentalize disciplines, forgetting that it is cross and multidisciplinary approaches to learning that are critical to understanding. We need to converse across boundaries, lest we become trapped within the narrow confines of world that often are of our making and may be mere illusions.
Having just taken up reading again...after a very long
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisand utterly inexplicable absence;
I bought two books right off the bat -- to celebrate.
One was 'A Universe From Nothing', have always loved Dr. Krauss's thinking and exposition. He makes sense to me on that cosmologic basis.
The other was - and similarly reviewed in Scientific American 'How the Hippies Saved Physics' by Dr. Kaiser.
I bought this because quantum mechanics for so many of us makes no sense whatever. And I thought this sort of
almost 'tongue-in-cheek' review and history might bring me some insights..and it has.
I'm loving both books.
But the latter actually hinges on that philosophical
bent which eventually actually rescued American Physics, at least, from the calculator mire in which the Cold War embedded that discipline.
Kaiser examines Bohr who has said "When it come to atoms, 'language' can only be used as in poetry"
and Bohm who was also much of the philosopher
in his thinking and writing. Those'hidden variables'..the deeper truth, the existential core.
It may be that philosophy has real application only/mostly in the physics of the quantic and much less in the cosmic Universe although it does seem each has informed and instructed the other.
But for me to get any sort of quasi-intellectual grip on non-locality or superposition, collapse and decoherence or Einstein's 'spooky action at a distance' requires a lot of mental analogy & image and a certain guidance from these 'Natural Philosphers' (which of course is the title to which the early astronomers became entitled.)
I was interested that I bought both these volumes simultaneously entire. And am sure to be be thoroughly enlightened by both..with kudos to the authors.
Krauss seems to think that philosophers want to assert their authority over the English word "nothing", when nothing could be farther from the truth. The word already has a meaning and all proficient English speakers know it. Albert simply pointed out that Krauss used the word to mean something different than what English speakers mean. Insofar as Krauss was trying to speak English, he misused the word. There may be a concept in physics that is somewhat close to the English "nothing", and Krauss would have avoided misunderstanding if he made clear he's talking about this pnothing (a concept from Physicsese) rather than nothing (a concept from English). He's defending the view that we have a universe from pnothing - which is not nothing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is not just an academic way to end a discussion. I would still like to know your view on the article by Dr. Krauss and on the other views that were expressed here.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMarcel Chelba
jgrosay's post does not read as if it were written by a native English speaker, so I cut him/her some slack there. What content I can make out does not incline me to read more her/his posts, however.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisShelley Berman could have been describing a metaphysician when he said, ‘If you give him a glass of water, he says, "THIS is a glass of water. But IS it a glass of water? And IF it is a glass of water, WHY is it a glass of water?" And eventually he dies of thirst.'
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA lot of the philosophical statements here (and elsewhere) make as much sense as “Why is it a glass of water?” It might sound at first like a deep question, but it probably isn’t really a question at all. It has the grammatical structure of a question, but it misuses the word “why.” The question “Why is the sky blue?” can ask for a physical explanation and could be answered with an explanation about light scattering. The question “Why did you eat my apple?” probably asks for an account of my action and could be answered with, “Because I was hungry,” or “Because no one else wanted it,” or “Because the other people’s apples were wormy,” or “Because I mistook it for my apple,” or “Well, you said to help myself to the fruit, but I don’t like pears,” etc. The question “Why is it a glass of water?” however only makes sense as a question about language - perhaps answered by explaining to a non-native speaker that “glass of water” means a glass containing water, not a glass made of water.
Like “why,” the words “something” and “nothing” when used in some ways allow us to communicate usefully - and when used in other ways do not.
Wittgenstein said, “Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.” Based on the comments here, I fear the battle isn’t going well.
Whoops! Posting removed most of the quotation marks and all of the apostrophes in my last comment. Sorry about that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'll have to be more cautious about judging others' punctuation here.
Dead Radin, at the Center for Consciousness Studies, was a skeptic of more, let's say, what is assumed to be so-called unscientific metaphysical matters... He then investigated in depth, philosophically, scientifically, and otherwise. He now writes about what he has uncovered after years of experiments, research, observation, experience, and rational contemplation on such matters, of which he has written about scientifically in his untimely work 'The Conscious Universe...' What I have found is that, on average, many scientists and philosophers ignore his research outright without ever genuinely looking into the matter. If you want to know about what is next in the field of physics, as well as what kinds of ideas seem to frighten many philosophers, his work is where to look, if you dare...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Philosophy has no value" is an interesting sort of self-negating statement, because you really need to use philosophy to establish or evaluate it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisKrauss actually makes philosophical statements all the time, as for instance any time he equates usefulness with value (which is more or less constantly) or makes any other value-laden statement. Based on the examples he cites of the philosophers he does respect, it seems clear that he would escape the paradox in my first paragraph by reframing it: "The only philosophy that has value is the philosophy of value." OK, so now at least we don't have to view him as incoherent.
But then he wants to go on to insist that science doesn't need the philosophy of value -- that it is a purely ontological endeavor and has no reliance on axiology. Krauss's problem isn't incoherence so much as blindness to the fact that science, at least as it is practiced these days, is anything but purely ontological. It's rife with axiological judgments.
As others have observed, the conflict between Krauss and Albert is that they have two different definitions of "nothing." Krauss wants to define it as the absence of something (with "something" variously defined). Albert, on the other hand, wants to define it more strongly, as the state from which nothing can arise. Krauss wants to insist that Albert's definition isn't relevant, or is nonsensical, or something -- which in itself is a values statement. He needs a philosopher to help him make that case.
Mr Krauss, I have nothing but respect for you and your clear intelligible writings. However I feel that you are missing a very important area of thought when you write,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"and who is willing to guide their thinking based on the evidence of reality."
Because we have to establish just whose reality. If we wish to look at microscopic worlds then we need to use the same lens to examine 'reality'.
As we all know everybodies reality is different, it is therefore important to expand on these differences rather that reduce their significance.
This way may lead to a better understanding of consciousness and therefore the world.
In experimental physics, you need particle accelerators costing billions of dollars to do research. In theoretical physics, you only need pen and paper. In philosophy, you don't even need a trash can.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a good philosophy book. At least it's funny.
Excellent point that I have been saying to people ad nauseam, but they have no ears to hear...unfortunately, mass marketing takes over from truth.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA universe NOT from nothing seems a deeper philosophical problem than one which came from nothing. At a practical level, Stephen Hawking has pointed out that the universe can have zero total energy if material energy and gravitational potential (negative) energy cancel each other. But there is a deeper essentially philosophical issue. If there is an ultimate 'something', how could it be described or measured, since everything has to be measured relative something else? We may have to take existence as axiomatic.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDefine 'Nothing"and"Something".its relative depending on the scale one is considering the definition.just like one cannot see the waves in the ocean from a great height and but only a smooth ocean sans waves or disturbance,so also with nothingness and something-ness.we can visualize scales at which both the states are relevant.as per quantum science , even vacuum is not empty but seething with vibrating energy.So there is no nothingness. Ontological consideration may arrive at a conclusion that every entity is the creation of the mind and therefore entities are emergent phenomena and NOT fundamental ones.So,there is only nothingness out of which things pop out created by the mind weaving inter-relational patterns, in the mind which our mind starts visualizing as "objects". In other words without mind, there are no objects or events , not even quantum vacuum states,too. In the absence of even a "mind",What is left could be defined as "nothing".The science of "Physics" exists if there are material things and measurable events ,otherwise what exists could be defined as Philosophy ,or Mathematics which are but qualities and not quantifiables although for quantification these qualities come in handy .Nothingness and something-ness are like two sides of the same coin.One alone cannot exist without the other, both being "concepts" only. Just like infinities and zeros coexist without contradicting each other one within the other and both existing everywhere too,just as the concepts of continuities and discontinuities co-exist without contradictions one within and surrounding the other , mutually.These universal concepts are defined for certain scales and within certain limits only and when we trespass these limits we come across unmanageable infinities popping out of unmanageable zeros.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDefine 'Nothing"and"Something".its relative depending on the scale one is considering the definition.just like one cannot see the waves in the ocean from a great height and but only a smooth ocean sans waves or disturbance,so also with nothingness and something-ness.we can visualize scales at which both the states are relevant.as per quantum science , even vacuum is not empty but seething with vibrating energy.So there is no nothingness. Ontological consideration may arrive at a conclusion that every entity is the creation of the mind and therefore entities are emergent phenomena and NOT fundamental ones.So,there is only nothingness out of which things pop out created by the mind weaving inter-relational patterns, in the mind which our mind starts visualizing as "objects". In other words without mind, there are no objects or events , not even quantum vacuum states,too. In the absence of even a "mind",What is left could be defined as "nothing".The science of "Physics" exists if there are material things and measurable events ,otherwise what exists could be defined as Philosophy ,or Mathematics which are but qualities and not quantifiables although for quantification these qualities come in handy .Nothingness and something-ness are like two sides of the same coin.One alone cannot exist without the other, both being "concepts" only. Just like infinities and zeros coexist without contradicting each other one within the other and both existing everywhere too,just as the concepts of continuities and discontinuities co-exist without contradictions one within and surrounding the other , mutually.These universal concepts are defined for certain scales and within certain limits only and when we trespass these limits we come across unmanageable infinities popping out of unmanageable zeros.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNotwithstanding the current debate, the physicists will continue to advance our knowledge of reality and the philosophers will continue to argue. It's better to think and do, than think and talk.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWHY questions are very different from WHAT, WHERE, WHEN and HOW (WWWH) questions. Scientific method has proven to be the only successful approach to answering WWWH even if the answers are given in terms of probabilities as in QM. But like Laplace's answer to Napoleon's question of "why" there was no mention of a god in his cosmology, perhaps science ultimately has no need of any hypothesis having to do with "why anything"!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt seems to me that all "why" questions are ultimately distilled by science into WWWH. For example "Why does water boil?" leads to: examining the molecular structure of water, a statement of the laws of thermodynamics, the law of averages for numerous particles in motion, the different phases of matter and so on, eventually even to the Standard Model of Quantum Mechanics. In fact, all why-questions eventually lead to mathematical models that are informed by experiment. Why is the sky blue? Why does the sun rise and set? Why did life arise on planet Earth?
But none of the models developed answer the original question exactly. Water boils because once you grasp, as best a human being can grasp, the fundamental laws of nature - water at some point has to boil. Why? Because that's what water does when you heat it to 100 degrees Celsius.
And as long as we are on the subject - what is water anyway? So we go back to the model(s) and see that water is a particular arrangement of particles and electrical fields essentially. So is it meaningful to ask why is there water and not not-water? It is meaningful of course in a purely operational way. And the answer is that there are both. Right? There is water (H2O) - hydrogen and oxygen chemically bound in a stable molecular state. That is the operational definition of water. And then there is all-that-which-is-not-water.
But is there an ontological or philosophical answer to the question of what is water that goes beyond the chemistry? Do we need a further definition?
I would say no. Water has been defined by the methods of science which lead to a logically self-consistent and unique definition. Though the philosophers might want to get into the nature of "wetness" or "wetism", I believe that such conceptualizings are anachronistic. As Forrest Gump might have said, "Water is as water does."
To finish my thought....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe ontological philosopher is like a child who first leans the word "why" and doesn't know when to stop asking it. Trapped for a time in the infinite recession of causality eventually the child learns to stop asking why and to settle on an answer otherwise she realizes she can never learn anything. And so must we stop asking why at some point. A philosopher asked, "Why ask why?". Or was it a comedian or an advertisement? Either way they got it right. Why is the wrong question! Or better - why is an incomplete question!
RE: Physico-reductionism at its Best: When in a miraculous shebang Nothing became Everything in our Dynamic Universe! -- Or, could physico-reductionists (including evolutionary sophists and neo-Darwinists alike) be able to self-examine and heal themselves of their socio-reductionist-bias (or hubris) syndrome!?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy short answer is Very Unlikely! As socio-philosophically, reductionism will never complement nor dictate holism; and here is my socio-intellectual analysis of the physico-cosmologist turned socio-reductionist Lawrence Krauss case, exemplified below:
Being an ideologically-committed socio-reductionist, Krauss' above apology to his contemporary science-philosophy critics was not at all necessary; whereas in and by his own honesty -- if he could self-examine on himself as Socrates would have advised us -- I thought Krauss should have had thanked his critics for puncturing holes in his new book: a book of pure physics and hubris proclamation that is aptly boasted in its title as "A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something rather than Nothing"!?
Such a hubris claim of epistemology in nature certainly demands a holistic answer; especially it is customarily required of in our complementary science and philosophy literature today and beyond. Whereas in his seminal vacuous book, the aspiring physico-turned-socio-reductionist, provocateur Krauss, has in fact offered Nothing: ie, substantiating nothing of any existential sense at all, philosophical, scientific, nor intellectual!.
Meanwhile unintentionally, "A Universe from Nothing" might have had helped open up a proverbial Can of Worms: "A Universe full of Wormholes" that is; the many speculative, antisocial, and existential issues (neither scientific nor philosophical) that simply could not have had been satisfied nor denied nor resolved by Krauss' ineptitude alone in his concurrent physico-reductionist-bias or hubris-driven theories of the Quantum Physics, in our Universe above and beyond; be it in specifics, or in general, an origin of our subsequent emergence and sustained existence thereof, on this unique planet Earth!
In stead of critically self-examining the philosophical and scientific inadequacies in his own provocations in these universal scientific and socio-philosophical and existential issues -- issues that I had also observed and commented in the SA blogs before here: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2011/06/24/defending-stephen-jay-goulds-crusade-against-biological-determinism/#comment-2052 (To be continued below)
RE: Physico-reductionism at its Best! (Continued from above)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Defending Stephen Jay Gould's Crusade against Biological Determinism -- RE: How a universal philosophy could help understand global reality of today and beyond!?" (ScientificAmericanUSA; July 5, 2011) and here: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=ghosts-aliens-quantum-gravity#comment-15 "Ghosts, Aliens, Quantum Gravity, Extra Dimensions, Sci Fi--and the Rules of Science -- RE: How Quantum or Particle Physics could help illuminate the Mechanisms of our Creativity, Consciousness, etc -- or "Memophorescenicity" to be exact -- as one that is warped in our brain-mind active and interactive processes; that gives rise to our evermore dynamic Memories of reality (including knowledge, intelligence, etc) that only we (each alone) can learn, access, create, and communicate in our both science and philosophy epistemologies, complementally and evolutionarily into the 21st century and beyond on Earth!?" (ScientificAmericanUSA; October 5, 2011), etc -- Krauss in the essay above has again -- as that can be derived from his book -- reaffirmed his acute socio-reductionist-bias syndrome; his intellectual and philosophical ineptitude; and his previous trainings in physics in general, and in physico-cosmology in particular!
As such, Krauss was unable to fully comprehend nor satisfy his readers and critics -- especially one critic David Albert's -- fundamentally existential question of our primordial Universe -- and thus of our life and mind and query of Krauss' foundationally vacuous physico-cosmology -- "that the laws of physics can never dynamically [or spontaneously, ex nihilo] determine [or create] which particles and fields exist and whether space itself exists, or more generally what the nature of existence might be." Or, more specifically, What has had created the Big Bang!? It could not have had been caused by Nothing, as Krauss has so determinedly argued -- while without substantiating nor differentiating his own "scientifically-determined" cosmology nor his "philosophically-derived" phenomenology -- and that is the penultimate burning question of our Universe today and beyond!?
Instead Krauss has un-empathetically hurled the burden of proof to his cosmological origin argument -- whether of scientific or of philosophical in nature -- back to his more competent, holistic, and deep-thinking (including spiritual thinking) critics, with his unequivocally pseudoscientific hubris proclamation: (To be continued below)
RE: Physico-reductionism at its Best! (Continued from above)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"To those who wish to impose their definition of reality abstractly, independent of emerging empirical knowledge and the changing questions that go with it, and call that either philosophy or theology, I would say this: Please go on talking to each other, and let the rest of us get on with the goal of learning more about nature." -- As if only the physico-reductionists like Krauss are fit to decipher (or fantasize) the mystery (or origin) of our Universe above and beyond!?
Unfortunately and uncharacteristically of being a well-(self)-disciplined physicist; nor of a holistically-accountable philosopher: By aligning himself -- hyper-ideologically or super-egotistically; hubristically and unrealistically; antisocio-culturally and antisocio-spiritually or antisocio-religiously -- with the rank of Scientism: as One that has had been pursued recklessly and irrationally by the world-renowned or the proudly self-proclaimed "4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse" -- the Nihilist pseudoscience Atheism -- as one New Atheism (NA) that has had been uncritically nor scientifically pursued by the 20th-century neo-Darwinists, socio-reductionists, and sophists alike, past; and as one NA that has since 2006 been frivolously reenacted and propagated by the 4 Horsemen: namely Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and the late literary polemicist Christopher Hitchens -- Krauss, who is supposed to be a (well)-trained theoretical (not theological) physico-cosmologist, has since been attempting to rejoin the anti-theism rogue-chorus of the 4 Horsemen; and so, he seems to be equally at risk of wasting and losing -- irrevocably and degenerately -- his lifelong trainings and inquiries in science and philosophy issues, and ethics; his inquisitory objectivity, integrity, rationality, imagination, and credibility: all those quality and identity issues, that are pertinent to the STEM pedagogy purposes, in general; and to the millennia-old epistemology of our life, mind, consciousness, and physico-cosmology (not theology or socio-cosmology) in particular, on Earth!
Best wishes, Mong 5/5/12usct11:20a; practical science-philosophy critic; author "Decoding Scientism" and "Consciousness & the Subconscious" (works in progress since July 2007), "Gods, Genes, Conscience" (iUniverse; 2006 http://bookstore.iuniverse.com/Products/SKU-000034974/GODS-GENES-CONSCIENCE.aspx ) and "Gods, Genes, Conscience: Global Dialogues Now" (blogging avidly since 2006 http://www2.blogger.com/profile/18303146609950569778 ).
As a matter of etiquette, I think it is one thing to make rebarbative or polemical claims or even ad hominem attacks in a BOOK, or in an essay. It is a very different sort of thing to use such modes of expression in commenting on an authors book, or essay. We live in the Information Age, and maybe these distinctions are being lost; to me it seems that a book or an essay is still a very different thing from a bulletin board, mailing list, newsgroup or blog.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe thing about philosophy or deep thinking of every sort, is that everyone is hungry to get involved. It's a shame we can't corner the advanced thinkers of various sorts and engage them one on one, in the manner that worked in ancient Athens, whose population was many orders of magnitude smaller than that of a present day nation, or the world. But we can't really do that for the most part, and so such arguments have to be conducted with each other. Which is absolutely fine, and this is as good a place to do it as any. But in the interests of perhaps attracting the fly to the honey, it seems to me that contributors ought to avoid overly personalizing or polemical arguments. I don't have anyone specifically in mind. I was just thinking over the matter.
There was a time when expertise meant the pretense of always being right. I think that knowledge has become so vast in the present day, that those days historically and culturally speaking must be pretty much over. Nobody can be the master of everything, even in a subspecialty of a subdiscipline of a discipline. But we still need to recognize pre-eminence, because we are all really here basically to learn.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWHAT IS SO IMPORTANT HERE is not that Krauss is truly devoid of philosophical talent...that's evident immediately...its that his bias doesnt allow him to see even the most basic of concepts.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo smugly say --let me get on with the business of learning about Nature--as if he holds the mantle of superior human thought is just a symptom of a larger disease.
How do you proceed when you have already demonstrated such illogical thinking?
How does the atheists, who flock to the fields of Origins, fight against the obvious answer to Finetuning, in which no one in past history even knew the numbers but reasoned the universe was designed in all of 3 seconds of contemplation?
By thinking up an infinte world maker? News flash..an infinite world maker is infinitely more complex than the universe they are trying to explain. It makes worlds with gods in them, unkillable people, beings that are so smart and advanced they not only understand the infinite world maker mechanism but they can easily find a way into our universe.
How lazy do you have to be to not see that *our complex world, that you're trying explain, is superseded by realities in which Space itself is conscious. By atheist' definition--a particle planet can believe its conscious. Space's freewill may be illusory but none the less..it would make perceived choices. How the multiverse believers cant see where this leads is IMO the most profound evidence to date of a paralyzing bias.
A mechanism exists, with agent causality, that pops everything that Can Be into existence and this solves the problem of why we exist? Any non partisan people reading this please read that sentence again--contemplate that for no more 3 seconds--and tell me you will continue to consider the atheists in the fields of Cosmology unbiased.
You see this is the problem-- Bias. As long as you kick the can one step down the street so you dont have face the real question...you allow yourself to become so intellectually lazy. It shows this is psychological. Its desperation. Its embarrassing. Just say you dont know and be done with it.
I have a degree in science myself and I looked up to many of the men and women who exposed the wonders of nature but its been hijacked by people with an agenda to alleviate their own personal fear of God. These are the leaders of truth? People only make such blatant mistakes in reason when they need for their worldview to right. Yes, many religious people do this---but Krauss and his little band are worse because its the very thing they preach against.
The more the astrophysicists, particle physicists and scientists in general discover, the more difficult it becomes to explain the findings with conventional concepts, so maybe it is time to throw away the box instead of just trying to think outside of it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMissing mass , black holes, dark energy believe it or not, can be addressed by the introduction of a dynamic energy field, as can other illusions such as space and time.
The basic surmise can be simply stated by:-
The physical universe is a disturbed field of pure energy seeking equilibrium.
Nothing (to us) is the undisturbed field of energy, and the something is the universe.
If and when equilibrium is achieved our material universe will be gone.--- until the next disturbance/universe?
The question of what caused the disturbance could be answered by the interception of another undisturbed field of energy.
To get theological about such a concept let me point out that all in such a universe including us are generated by a flow and counter flow of energy, however not being aware of this could be the price of living an ordinary normal life.
This barrier of knowledge may have been penetrated from time to time by people of great mental dimensions, usually at a time of extreme stress, verging on a nervous breakdown. This event repeats historically on the world stage.
The few who remain sane after the event can find no words to describe the revelation, but then came a singular few, who were able to transpose this feeling into everyday local habits with stories designed to make people aware of this other marvelous realm which they were part of.
In the proper sense, and in the human way of things God became the personification of this field of energy, and heaven maybe is where the human energy hopefully rejoins the balanced area of the field, after death.
A subconscious knowledge can be giving credence to stories such as the fall of angels, with Satan as the disturbance etc. Christianity, Jewish Faith, Islamic Faith and maybe the Mormon congregations are examples of interpretations of the energy systems into local habits, customs and languages, but all geared to the same end, albeit by different means.
A forthcoming publication addresses the above in greater detail and goes on to encompass more seeming enigmas, generally unexplainable without introducing a dynamic energy thesis to do so.
the more comments I read here the better I understand what's wrong with contemporary philosophy
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think it's more a matter of what's wrong with, or more accurately, what one should and should not expect from the internet.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisProfessor Krauss' book is called Something From Nothing. The internet sort of gives you discourse from nothing. It's not always the most professional level of discourse.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think a lot of people tend to see physics as a sort of oppressor. Apparently some people seem to see philosophy as a sort of oppressor. I guess it's all matter of one's frame of reference.
(I believe that) The internet shows me a cross-section of what has reached the masses. Now it's fine to say that modern philosophy is great, it's what makes it into public conscience, that which becomes public knowledge, that counts. Which shapes public future.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf this is then the cross-section of what the public has made of modern philosophy it leaves me somewhat nervous.
For example when considering the 2012 Club of Rome report and wonder where the philosophy is that should guide us through that looming mess.
Philosophy is not always very engaged.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJean-Paul Sartre, Bertrand Russell, and even Jacques Derrida, are wonderful examples of engaged philosophers. But philosophy itself, as a discipline, fails to see engagement as essential to its practice - alas. This makes it radically different from the philosophy of the time of Socrates until, I would gather, the decline of philosophy with the Christianization of the Roman Empire. When in modern times philosophy ressurected itself as a discipline independent from religion, it did so in a way that focused more exclusively on abstract knowledge. The examples of Sartre, Russell, Derrida, and the like, still seem way too radical to be embraced by most professional philosophers as part of their discipline.
As far as communicating well with the public through popularizations [a word that I would rather elevate than use in a putting down kind of way] - philosophy for the most part just doesn't do it. When there is some attempt to communicate what philosophy is about, it is more likely to draw from Socrates than from, for example, Kant.
In part, I think, it is a matter of the abstruseness of the discipline. Philosophy in contrast to science has always been more predominately a matter of asking questions than of finding answers. Scientists who write popularizations may tell the public of their results, and give them some idea what the process is like that led to them; but they seldom discuss their instruments in great technical detail. In philosophy, it's mostly the technical details. So really there is whole lot less that can be conveyed easily to outsiders; which isn't to say that nothing is going on.
The history of Western philosophy is strange. Philosophy flourished for many centuries in ancient times, incorporating teachers and schools whose focus was largely on teaching a way of life; it then disappeared as an independent discipline, and continued to be studied and sometimes developed only with the Church, as a somewhat suspect junior partner to theology. Only in the last few centuries has philosophy emerged as an independent tradition again. So it shouldn't be surprising that philosophy itself is somewhat confused on these matters.
It also has to be pointed out that there is rarely any such thing as consensus among philosophers. There is no equivalent within philosophy, or so far as I know even within any 'school' or trend of philosophy, of the 'standard model'. With science, you can popularize the consensus theories, and maybe mention some of the other contenders. In philosophy, you can't do anything of the sort. Ultimately, to bring philosophy to the masses, what you would have to popularize (unless you are only teaching elementary things that everyone does agree on, like the basics of logic) would be the way in which philosophers dialogue and argue with one another. A person can sort of get that in a critical thinking class, if he or she can find one - probably much more readily than through a popularization of philosophy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBeautifully said. A question if I may: what level philosophy are we talking? The purely creative intended to open new ways but not necessarily meant for the average person or real life? Or the practical philosophy that wants to be a guiding light to a group or a society? Do I see the philosopher as someone who never dirties his hands with manual work or should a modern philosopher know how real life works?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm interested in philosophies that achieve something, that trickle down to shape whatever they are concerned with. The value of a philosophy is then for me defined by its trickle-down quality. When all is said and done, does it improve, lead to something?
Sartre without Beauvais? Already a philosophical subject in itself. Both individually and together triggered very important social processes. De Gaulle, advised to jail Sartre for vehemently opposing the Algerian war, is rumoured to have replied: "On n'arrête pas Voltaire!" ("One does not arrest Voltaire".) A social leader's understanding of freedom of expression shaped by a philosopher, in turn influencing public awareness of the importance of good philosophy. Philosophy that works.
So philosophy need not be engaged, it only need to be good. And that I think is a matter of going by the right criteria. I'm all in favour of playing freely with one's mind but when things get real I expect good philosophy to be "real" = passing the efficiency/performance test.
In short, I look at a philosophy and I ask: does it work?
In times of plenty a society can afford philosophies that do not work. In these times I would prefer philosophies that work. Standard Model, climate concepts, economic politics, wars over religion or water, and they all look to me as if what they really needed was a new philosophy, one that works.
<rarely any such thing as consensus among philosophers>
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would not find that necessary as such but I believe there should be an elementary set of criteria, something like the quality control in science and production.
<There is no equivalent within philosophy, or so far as I know even within any 'school' or trend of philosophy, of the 'standard model'.>
Maybe we've reached a time where we need one? One that sets objective criteria? Scientific rigour transposed into philosophy?
<With science, you can popularize the consensus theories, and maybe mention some of the other contenders. In philosophy, you can't do anything of the sort.>
Why not? If Einstein could explain his theories so that the public understood the gist of it, why can't philosophers do that? I believe that if they can't, their theory is not good enough.
<Ultimately, to bring philosophy to the masses, what you would have to popularize ... would be the way in which philosophers dialogue and argue with one another.>
Or maybe philosophers could learn a thing or two from how the masses, let's say trade- and craftsmen dialogue and argue with one another? Or should I accept that the guy who builds my house must make sense but that the philosopher who tries to shape my culture can say whatever he wants as long as it sounds good?
Rich times can afford philosophical waste. I wonder if we are heading towards rich times and if we don't need a proper philosophy that fits our times.
Those are some very cogent questions and observations. Would you like to continue this conversation by e-mail? There might be others would be interested, but it's a little off topic - and all I can really offer are personal opinions anyway.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm not a professional philosopher myself. I've just tried to approach philosophy in a professional way, as an amateur.
read "Sartre without Beauvoir" of course
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI believe it's really on topic as we talk about the cooperation, the mutual enrichment between philosophy and science. Which may possibly interest a few others. Where does science go without philosophy (guiding it)? I think ethics. Does a science need a guiding/supporting/accompanying philosophy at all? How does one know if a certain philosophy is good value? What is the philosophical equivalent of the search for the Higgs? Or does the Higgs suffer from a science philosophical dead-end? Would Higgs research even pass a philosophical test?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf this topic turns out to bore the other readers we could consider continuing this conversation privately. A bit difficult maybe because I comment "on the road" wherever I can connect a stick to a hotspot.
What's really needed is a forum devoted to the topic. I think Professor Krauss' article is a little more specific.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut, if I had to boil it down to a single sentence, I would just say - I recommend Camus.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWasn't Camus looking for a philosophical reason to believe? Looking for a rational explanation of the spiritual? I believe that every philosophical work needs a few markers to establish within which space it wants to work else it easily drifts out of bounds. Where scientific philosophy would use scientific markers Camus could have used psychological or social markers. Maybe it would have simplified his work if he had considered religion as one of the main forces in society even if it seems opposite of logic, which must bother someone believing in logic (?)and that because of its mass appeal religion and related irrational states will always be a counterweight to pure reason. (Pure hope seems absurd to an intellectual, Marxism owes more to belief than reason, that sort of thing.) Accepting religion as a force could have made it easier for him to understand why belief is not as absurd as it seems to the reasoning man.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't know but I like guessing. And to guess efficiently I always start by laying down a few cornerstones else I get easily lost in the vastness of unlimited = undisciplined reverie.
Nicely put!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWith regard to the "multi-verse" idea, I would also like to know if science can really describe, measure,or test things that are "outside" of our space-time.
Also with regard to the "multi-verse" I wish science would come up with a better term for these individual space-time bubbles - make "universe" plural ("universes" is just wrong. Maybe philosophy can make a contribution here...
The problem of making the claim that philosophers and theologians (yes, an insult to compare to the two) create noise, because they are not acquiring information empirical, is that most modern science involve some sort of labeling, translating and interpret the material into facts/information.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are certainly no intuitive or obvious claims of modern science, perhaps especially within complicated and difficult mathematics, which few can truly comprehend, but is regarded as true, or real. In fact many philosophers (including those of Plato and Descartes, which you mentioned), was two important factors of science and mathematics. You might be compelled to say that these give us no insight into modern problems. But how ever such philosophers as Plato remain a figure in modern mathematics. But my point is not to merely point out the history of science and philosophy.
But how ever your claims seems also to rest upon the very fact that what we know now, or knowledge we have this very minute can tell us the entire picture of the scopes of knowledge in several fields. Science will always be forward approaching, so it is clear that the latest theories will have the most influence of the presence. This very fact seems to lead you to the conclusion that philosophy somehow represents noise. But there are also different consequences that might not be fruitful or tasteful, in that the most of ancient or abandoned theories also represent noise, but is only the fact that theories didn’t find enough support empirical, this very fact might implicate that many of our modern theories might not hold the test of time, which ultimately leads us to conclude that most of the findings of modern science is indeed noise, as there is a great possibility that they might be abandoned.
And the final statement of mine is that philosophy of science might not discover important theories, does not have to either, but could be able to tell what the difference between bad science and good science truly is, or on a “theory level”. For example, if one is building a theory of a faulty premise or making incomplete definitions or conditions for the theory.
An analogy to this might be that, even though there are laws governing society, this should not rule out the possibility to speak intelligent and meaningful of ethics, and not make noise. Politicians and judges, and lawyers should not be the only group to debate the question of what is “to do well”. In the same respect, scientists should not be the only group to debate the question of what the truth really is.
What is the targeted audience of this book? Is it the knowledgeable physicist or the physics enthusiast?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf one looks at the cover, the answer is obvious: Wormhole/NY Times Besteller!/ Dawkins & McEwan in the margins.
This book clearly is for the armchair physics enthusiast and casual philosopher. Is there any wonder that some are mystified by the polemic nature of certain sections of the book?
Certainly, the concepts Dr. Krauss addresses are worthy scientific questions. And to enliven the debate with a semi-scientific grenade about the nature of nothing has motivated many readers (including me) to brush up on the Standard Model, calculus and, perhaps, research current thinking on other ontological approaches.
I don't really see the need for an apology other than the possibly hypocrisy of taking our money with one hand and then attempting to back away from rational criticism from intelligent readers who feel the conclusions reached in this "novel" are speculative, at best.
Well, you see, what you need to do is to try to get Lawrence Krauss on live chat, so you can put questions to him directly. Or I hear he is giving a book tour - you could try to catch him in the question and answer.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSimple-minded as ever I still don't get it:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy is this article titled "the consolation of philosophy"? Is it consoling to love to think when physics fails? That's "Ersatz" thinking?
"I, and most of the colleagues with whom I have discussed this matter, have found that philosophical speculations about physics and the nature of science are not particularly useful, and have had little or no impact upon progress in my field."
Why then turn to philosophy at all? Or maybe modern philosophy is in the same dead-end as modern physics? Which is maybe why both get nowhere? Is it even possible that the WHOLE (physics, philo, economy, climate, politics etc = the big picture) has reached a dead-end all together? Maybe we are in the middle of one of these funny times when everything is in a mess and the whole world needs an answer but nobody knows the real question? I admit that I believe there are no wrong answers, there are only wrong questions as the answers result from... but I digress.
A physicist frustrated that his field doesn't get anywhere, then looking for an answer in philosophy, but admitting that this can't possibly lead anywhere. That's a catch22 if I ever seen one. Better not look for consolation in philo, it's not what it's for.
Or from a tangent: I believe that physicists get nowhere when trying philosophy because everybody forgot what philosophy is about. If physicists were philosophers they'd have the courage to take a year off to ponder why that bleepin boson is nowhere to be found. A philosopher could possibly say that they maybe don't do that because they are afraid that if they ponder that problem too long they come to the conclusion that they might have fooled themselves for too long and don't have the courage to admit it to themselves. It's the fear that this philosophical insight would reduce (most of) their life to "nothing". (That would be a psychologically minded philosopher. But then every good philosopher must understand the psychology of whatever he ponders or he'll get stuck in physics. There, I digress again.)
But, and here's the funny bit, another philosopher could then possibly say that from this "nothing" might spring an idea.
Let's be honest, this article is the equivalent of Hugh Laurie playing the blues.
"... It's the fear that this philosophical insight would reduce (most of) their life to "nothing".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"But, and here's the funny bit, another philosopher could then possibly say that from this "nothing" might spring an idea."
Quantum physics philosopher's humour obviously, but then, everybody noticed this of course.
There are 140 comments as I'm posting this, so I may have missed someone else saying this. If so, I apologize. The relationship between science and philosophy is not one that will see one evolve as the other becomes extinct. In fact, the two disciplines should have a symbiotic connection.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs there are more and more awesome, shocking, or sobering scientific discoveries about the nature of our world, philosophy will need to be there to help us understand the impact of those discoveries and communicate what they really "mean" to humanity. There is knowledge (science) and then there is deciding what to do with and how to react to knowledge (philosophy).
The universe comes from "nothing". Okay, but what does that mean in terms of our existence? Our purpose? Sam Harris says that neurologically speaking there is no free will. What does that mean for the future of human decision-making? What impact could a scientific "proof" have on future generations? These are questions for the philosopher.
Science will always answer the how, but philosophy will always be needed to try and address the why; the ramifications; the sociological/philosophical impact of scientific discoveries.
Whether it is to help weigh the ethics of a certain line of research or to determine the larger implications of discoveries about the universe, Philosophy has always played -- and should continue to do so -- a major role in the development of the human condition.
Let scientists do their jobs empirically deconstructing the source of our existence, the rules of nature, the laws that govern the universe. And then let philosophers help humanity understand what to do with that information and how to best move forward with our new knowledge.
fully agree (and copied for later quoting) - although for completeness sake, I'd add that philosophy can test terrain before science goes there or guide research when science does not know which way to turn. Examples being the old Greeks whose philosophers raised the questions that their scientists tried to answer (although in their case the one was often the other, the advantage of simplicity back then) or modern scientists who often look for ethic guidance where modern philosophers just play mindless games.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPhilosophy is often associated with consolation. That was considered one of its "uses" in the ancient world, once schools of philosophy had become systematized. So to say 'the consolations of philosophy' is to evoke this kind of traditional meaning, at the same time that professor Krauss seems to be using it ironically to say something like - philosophy can't actually do anything to produce knowledge, physics is better at finding the answers - or that's what I more or less think is he is arguing, although I suspect the argument is at least partly rhetorical, and he certainly makes exceptions for philosophers who he sees eye to eye with.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Consolation" in the traditional sense associated with philosophy meant a consolation for the woes of life, not a consolation for the lack of knowledge.
Marcel Chelba: The third comment (1/2)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree with you, Gecko, and others who have posted here.
Now to return to the topic of this article, I would add only that: the concept of "Nothing" is a synthetic a priori concept (in Kant's terms), so, a pure construction of our productive imagination, which ever can not be connected to some empirical intuition (an object of our empirical experience).
But suppose there is such an object: "Nothing". Which are its predicates?
1. If we try to empirically determine the predicates of "Nothing", we will fall into the vicious circle of the physicists, who, after each determination of “Nothing's particle" will find that this "Nothing" is "Something", that can be further divided into other particles.
2. If we try to theoreticaly (a priori) define the predicates of "Nothing", we will fall back into the dilemma of Parmenides, in his attempt to define the One.
What are doing modern physicists: start with some theoretical goals, of mathematical or philosophical origins, and then they try to prove them empirically (experimentally). However, this is exactly Kant's epistemological scheme, in which our faculty of representation and our faculty of judgment, amplified by our productive imagination, prevail over sensitivity and empirical experience.
Theoretical knowledge (transcendental knowledge) is a priori knowledge.
Empirical knowledge is a posteriori knowledge.
But, says Kant most clearly, this is not a dispute between these two perspectives of knowledge, because no one is infallible and may not function properly without the other. All is to know which are the "ontological skills" and "heuristical responsibilities" of each. To bet only on empirical experience or philosophical reflection is a proof of ignorance as much.
In fact, all in physics is "equal with zero". Any physical law is reducible to a mathematical equation who says that "something" is equal with "nothing". By this, any physical law is in essence a conservation law.
When physicists raise the demand that the universe must have been born, somehow, out of nothing, they merely put forward a philosophical goal, namely that "something" objectively given (independent of our consciousness) must subsist in itself and for himself, must be eternal, must not be able to experience the change in a part thereof without other changes in another part of it, so that the total amount of changes to be zero.
Marcel Chelba: The third comment (2/2)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe physical universe must be eternal (of inertia) and equal with zero (by virtue of a conservation law) – becouse there is no outer world and no external forces who disturb it.
Epistemological paradox of physics is that, just as far as physicists approach the shape of a perfectly consistent model of the universe, they lose the dimension of movement (of change), and then have to postulate again a DEUS EX MACHINA to give the original flick, the spark to trigger the primordial Bang.
Nature walk ALTERNAM PATEM, I like to say.
These are the two steps of knowledge: we first impose some goals of consistency and symmetry to our ontological models (not only to our physical models), then, to justify the change, movement, accidents, approximations and errors of interpretation, we impose some goals of paraconsistency, quasi-absurd, irrational or paradoxical, to meet the completeness requirement of our ontological models.
So-called scientific knowledge (of which only those who do not understand make a kind of religion) is just the ash that remains after the game of our productive imagination and empirical experience.
I have discussed these ideas in my book – „Critical Introduction. About the possibility of Metaphysics as a Science, in light of Kantian critical philosophy” (Crates, 2004) – but unfortunately can not give more than a few pages in English.
I am looking further a translator and money to do this.
I do not know if relevant: but I would like to mention that I am licensed in physics, in Romania, to the University of Timşoara, and I a doctorate in philosophy (still unfinished), on a subject of Metaphysics.
You can see all my comments on this topic at:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/91632125/Marcel-Chelba-The-Consolation-of-Physics-Comment-on-an-article-by-Lawrence-M-Krauss-The-Consolation-of-Philosophy
See also:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/17474184/Marcel-Chelba-Kantian-tetralogy-Vol-I-Critical-Introduction-About-the-possibility-of-Metaphysics-as-Science-in-the-critical-philosophy-of-Kant
and:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/16640613/Marcel-Chelba-The-Antinomy-of-Pure-Reason-and-Logical-Paradoxes-Kantinomus
afrotheria:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"That was considered one of its "uses" in the ancient world, once schools of philosophy had become systematized."
Yes, and (in my unwashed opinion) that was the beginning of the end of the creative/productive phase in Greek philosophy. Philosophy moved away from being a motor of progress (when Greece was a world power) to become a tool of consolation for those who messed up (when Greece turned into a bunch of softies).
In modern times thinking has specialized and the consolation branch of modern mental work is now known as psychotherapy. Maybe Krauss is really looking for a psy to deal with his frustration with physics? Philosophy is then the wrong approach. If Krauss wants serious philosophy he should expect ugly questions, not hugging.
<the concept of "Nothing" is a synthetic a priori concept (in Kant's terms)>
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this?
Maybe I misunderstand you, simply that from my point of view:
No thing (humans' "Nothing") is a concept. Absolute Nothing is not even that.
Or from a different angle: every thing is energy = energy is *thing, but nothing is not because it's no energy, hence no thing.
Simply put: (Absolute) Nothing is nothing. <g>
Which I admit is a concept completely ununderstandable by anyone who is.
Kantinomus - I am not a Kantian, not just in the sense that I'm not committed to Kant's ideas, but also in the sense that am only sort of lightly conversant with them. But I have to agree with you completely in your general orientation on this. Kantianism doesn't rule academia anymore like it once did, but I don't think that the development of modern physics has much to do with this. It still seems to me like his explorations are probably the likeliest starting point for a dialogue between modern physics and modern philosophy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhich leads me to reflect further - one of the problems from the point of view of physics I think must be the fact that whenever one is starting to do physics, like anything else, one is starting out with concepts - not with observables or the ironclad laws of logic. Philosophy maybe is as specialized for the handling of concepts in the sort of way that physics is specialized for the handling of the invisibly microscopic entities that show up in physics experiments. So if physics can't get away from the handling of concepts being its starting point, it can't really ultimately get away from philosophy, and all of its headaches, either.
Two cents.
Jd - you were looking for Standard Models. If any modern philosopher other than Descartes himself has ever approached being a kind of Standard Model, it would probably be Kant. Kant is such a pivotal figure in the history of philosophy in all the traditions that have developed since then, that he really can't be ignored. While some of Kant's specific positions may be a little easier to critique now than they were in his time, his overall approach and the problems he raised are still very difficult to defeat. For anyone who wants to approach more recent philosophers in a deep way, Kant is still a very good starting point.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor a time, Hegel, who was deeply indebted to Kant, was not only the Official Philosopher of Prussia, but also the director of its entire educational system - a remarkable position that no other philosopher has been in since, thank goodness.
For a good thousand years ago, Aristotle was considered The Philosopher within the Christian Church, in sort of the way that the English once thought of Shakespeare as The Bard - so you could say that Aristotle was the Church's Standard Model. In the specifically Thomist interpretation, for the Catholic Church, he still is.
Going back to ancient times however, I would be tempted to say that Socrates was pretty close to being the Standard Model - not so much however in the sense that his theories (which can't be decisively untangled from those of Plato, anyway - and many of which were borrowed from or inspired by Pythagoras and Parmenides) were adhered to as definitive, as in the example of his approach to life - which was a large part of what "philosophy" meant in ancient times. He was still taken to be the cardinal example of the philosophical life for many centuries later, indeed by a great many philosophers for the duration of ancient philosophy itself.
There isn't any single starting place for approaching Western philosophy, because all of its thinkers are intricately related to one another in a complex web. But Kant, Socrates, and Aristotle are all pretty good places to start.
I recommended Camus because he was a non-academic philosopher, and because it seems to me that he got to the heart of what the spirit of philosophy is all about. But then, any philosopher has to do that, in one way or another, to become a relevant philosopher.
I meant to address that to jctyler - excuse me.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAncient philosophy is a little more complicated than that. It went through several phases. It is true that most of the major theoretical positions and practical approaches were staked out during its phenomenal period of early creativity. Then Alexander the Great both unified Greece and spread Greek culture over a huge swath of the world, and philosophy became a little more systematized into schools. These schools however had a huge practical impact on ancient culture and society. They drew huge numbers of people from all walks of life who wanted to learn to live their lives better, and more virtuously. So the institutionalization of ancient philosophy into well defined schools, which were able institutionally replicate themselves, was a resounding success.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThen the Romans conquered Greece and the Greek speaking world, and there was another mutation. For one thing, the Romans recognized easily that they were no match for the Greeks at high culture. They raided Greece for its scholars and thinker and set them to educating their youth - often by enslaving them, but that wasn't a Roman cultural habit that did not reflect any lack of admiration! The Hellenistic schools of philosophy became well established in the Latin speaking half of the empire, and one of the most famous emperors himself lived his life in a very disciplined way as a devoted Stoic. So yet again, that was really a great triumph of philosophy. The institutionalization of philosophy did not in and of itself reduce its creativity, as these were schools committed to specific doctrines, but that continued to produce prominent original thinkers for many centuries.
My ancient history is a little sketchy, but I think that the Romanization of ancient philosophy may have contributed to making it a little stale. There are massive problems with the translation of Greek thinkers into Latin, and of course the Latin translations were all that was subsequently available to European (although not to Islamic!) culture from the decline of Rome until the Renaissance. Even major recent thinkers such as Heidegger are still trying to reverse this sort of historical sea change, in order to get back to an understanding of the Greek philosophers that isn't prejudiced by the subsequent Latin interpretations.
(cont'd)
In any case, all of the cultural institutions of the Roman Empire tended to get a little stale or ossified as time went on. But (although I have to point out again that my knowledge of the particulars of history is a little sketchy) I think that the great schools of philosophy had pretty much vanished before the fall of Rome, due to its Christianization.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Roman period of ancient philosophy still produced remarkable developments and remarkable thinkers - it is really a little awe-inspiring to read about the life of Plotinus.
A book that I would recommend very highly, and not just for the sake of curiosity, is Martha Nussbaum's The Therapy of Desire - a very good archeology of the Hellenistic schools of thought, and particularly of Stoicism, which was the largest and most influential one.
"Nothing", "nothing", or "nothing"? -
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is sometimes difficult to know whether one is talking about the concept of nothing, or "nothing itself".
The influential linguist Saussure created some useful distinctions. He wrote of signifier, signified, and object. The signifier is just a word - "nothing", "nuh - thing". The signified is a concept, however roughly formed, of what that signifier refers to. If you tell me to look for a chair, before even engaging mentally with my sensory perceptions, I have to refer to some sort of internal concept, even if I have not thought it out rigorously, of what "a chair" is. The signifier and signified are like the two sides of a coin - a word isn't useful unless it refers to something, some concept, and a concept can't be articulated without a word or words. Once you have got both sides of the coin, then you can look for the object itself - the particular chair, for instance, that you want me to observe.
afrotheria:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"you were looking for Standard Models"
Yes. I see Einstein's special theory of relativity as the big divide. Philosophy before/after. Kant was the last guide leading up to it, Einstein concluded, planted the flag, and at the same time opened a completely new mental universe. But we don't have the philosophical model for that new mental space yet. The Standard Model is a valid attempt from the physics' side but it seems not good enough to pass the full test which means passing philosophically AND physically. Which is maybe why Krauss is so frustrated?
IOW we may not yet have the philosophy that goes with/is the twin of Einstein's theory. And that drives physicists crazy. "Where's the light?"
p.s. two more cents
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisElectrons can't be "seen" - that is sort of true
however, the traces that even a single electron leaves can be clearly seen under some circumstances, in a cloud chamber or in one of the famous quantum mechanics slit experiments
and, you can "handle" them, even though you can't handle them with your hands. I think that to physicists and to other scientists and engineers who work with them, they have the feel of something that can be handled
and, if you have ever endured an electrical shock...
Electrons "can't be seen", but they "can't be seen" in a very different way from the way in which ghosts "can't be seen". Whether you believe in ghosts, or not.
I do not think it would be fair to say that a ghost is a theoretical construct. So the fact that something can't be seen, doesn't necessarily mean that it isn't - or that it "is", but only as a theoretical abstraction in the mind.
There is, or there seems, to me, some further point at which the abstractions of physics seem every bit as metaphysical to me as the abstractions of Plotinus. But an electron, itself - you can sort of feel.
Incidentally, it turns out, if what I have read is true, the human eye can perceive a single photon of light in a completely darkened environment. Does anybody know whether that claim is true or not?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf it is, you can see a photon. So that's a pretty remarkable thing to think about.
You can't see a mind, either - but pretty much all of us are pretty much sure that we have one.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Standard Model anyway is only one of the many models that physicists work with. They cannot get away from having to work with a pluricity of models, and that is what troubles them so greatly on a theoretical level, even though they have become very accustomed to it in practice. The Standard Model if I understand correctly integrates quantum mechanics with Special Relativity, but not with General Relativity. And special relativity is only a special case, in the way that Newtonian mechanics is really a special case of special relativity; special relativity completely subsumes it as a limit condition. So general relativity is the one that physicists are most anxious about. The assumption at least from a mathematician's point of view would be that the general theory is more real, that the special theory is only a working approximation. General relativity and quantum mechanics collide irreconcilably, and then they have developed so many other theories to try to begin to work around their differences. "String theory" alone doesn't even exist, only string theories - and they have actually theoretically proven that there have to be at least a zillion bajillion equally plausible actual specific ones. If that isn't as crazy as any of the wildest notions Plotinus ever dreamed up, I don't know what is.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisString theory is really string theory theory, I guess, and if that doesn't sound as absurdly abstruse as any of the catchphrases that literary critics have dreamed up over the years, then I don't know what does.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou see how the world is all coming together? Maybe only on our ultimate incomprehension of everything. Or our incomprehension of everything ultimate. Or something like that.
At some point you just have to get bored with really thinking, and get back to real life, and that's one of the other problems of philosophy. Or with philosophy. Or something like that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Ancient philosophy is a little more complicated than that."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSure, but which complications are really important? I believe for example that Socrates wife's influence on his thinking may be vastly underrated. How can one then understand Socrates if one does not understand his wife's influence? Does it help understand Socrates if you know a very good midwife very well?
Kant believed that every system was different but that every system could be understood by reason.
Whereas I, being post-Einsteinian, believe that there is a "standard model" that applies to everything including reason.
It is therefore very important to understand complications and the influence of mid-wifes because to me the art of the philosopher is to see and understand the complications so I can strip them off to get at the pure, undistorted, uncomplicated truth. From which I keep learning that nothing is as hard to achieve as simplicity.
Or as the other nutter said, learn to see (through the complications if you want to see the truth).
<At some point you just have to get bored with really thinking, and get back to real life>
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI never get bored when I am really thinking. But that may be because I try very hard to keep my thinking real (connected to real life). When it's not I call it dreaming. But dreaming often inspires my thinking. Which often gets me curious about what inspired my dreaming. Quite often that was something real...
Which then often turns out to be the key to a proper insight. Often even a very simple key even.
But very complicated to get there. It's unbelievable how many doors I sometimes had to open before I got to the key.
I once put the Standard Model and a sheet of paper with Einstein's main formula side by side.
What I mean about electrons is - before scientists knew that there were electrons, they knew that there was electric current. That, you can put your hand on, and feel. Then the early experiments related to quantum mechanics proved that it's not all an undifferentiated flow, but that it's quantized. Unless anybody can split the quantum of electrical charge, it become pretty plain then that there are electrons. It isn't as abstruse as saying that there are ten dimensions of space all wrapped around each other, however much sense that may make from some points of view. It's something pretty directly related to things that we can directly experience, without even needing a laboratory.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPhilosophy was sort of the Ancient Prozac. There were several well known brands.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen people felt a malaise, they turned to philosophy. That was what they really meant by consolation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this<When people felt a malaise, they turned to philosophy.>
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOr watched the sun set or went for a walk. The sun sets whether that makes people feel good or not, going for a walk soothes the soul but that's not the purpose of a forest, a good philosopher will love his thinking whether that helps the sun set, the tree grow or the scientist feel better. But if it does that too, perfect.
<That was what they really meant by consolation.>
Did a philosopher ever say that he philosophizes because he wants to console people? Or is it people who turned to philosophy and then said that it helped them and so philosophy became the "mater afflictorum" of the Latinists and we just took that over?
Philosophy, and I still cling to the original meaning, is what people do who love to try to figure out what wisdom is and how it works and if there is an underlying principle to it all. Racing drivers of the mind. And if you like to watch them race, fine, but they will race anyway. Even better if it makes you feel good.
It is a logical consequence of good philosophy that a proper wisdom will help live a better life. But when people don't find that help in philosophy it does not mean that philosophy is not working. It only means they asked the wrong person the wrong question. But maybe I'm wrong?
I do like the Prozac thing though. Philosophy as Ersatzreligion for intellectuals, opium for mass-scientists. Philosophy as Prozac... I'm sure to quote that one of these days. Good summary of top-level kitchen philosophy, lots of nice angles.
The difference being that Prozac was developped for that purpose whereas philosophy was not. After all, relativity was not discovered because Einstein needed a DVD player even if I like the side-effect.
Also, no one into serious philosophy can take Prozac and not feel stupid.
I agree, but would add that Krauss is arrogant besides being disingenuous.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe contribution that philosophers might make to this external debate with one physicist, if that physicist would let them get a word in edgewise among his evasions and circumlocutions would be, as it has been in many internal debates, better definition of "thing" and "nothing." Krauss is fatally cavalier about that little matter, pardon the pun.
Could we please stop beating up on the author? It is still his forum, even some of us beg to differ.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think it should probably be recognized that scientists and philosophers - or various kinds of philosophers, if you prefer to think of it that way - have been having this argument for hundreds, if not for thousands, of years. You could compare the theories of Democritus - who lived about contemporaneously with them - with those of Socrates or Plato, for instance, to get the idea. Democritus didn't have the experimental approach to knowledge that was pioneered by Galileo, or the ability to mathematize his theories, but in every other respect he is teaching scientific materialism. Plato and Socrates and many others are clearly doing something very different from that. In the later schools of philosophy that taught complete approaches to life, Epicureanism advocated the atomic view of matter, while Stoicism rejected in favor of still other theories. The argument itself though you could almost say has been going on for two and half thousand years. It has certainly been going on pretty intensely for several hundred. I think one should accept that some of the statements made by thinkers on whatever side of a divide like that are going to make a lot of statements that are really rhetorical in nature. Attempting to think originally is something that engages the heart as well as the head, and sometimes polemical modes of expression are a perfectly legitimate, maybe unavoidable way of developing new lines of thought. Polemics can be thought of as a mode of literary expression, rather than really being an attempt to shut everybody else up.
In any case, it's a published article in a peer journal, and there has got to be some automatic respect.
'Did a philosopher ever say that he philosophizes because he wants to console people? Or is it people who turned to philosophy and then said that it helped them and so philosophy became the "mater afflictorum" of the Latinists and we just took that over?'
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think that if you really get into Plato, you find that his ideas and the life of Socrates are permeated with a kind of sadness, that has to do with their belief or perception or understanding of the imperfections of the world that we are living in, which seem to be everywhere. We can see a kind of perfection though, in a mental way, and though we may never realize it in this world, we can always strive to come at least a little bit closer to that perfection. So there's simultaneously a kind of sadness, and a kind of consolation for that sadness. Neither Socrates nor Plato nor the Stoic thinkers, etc., ever promised a way of life that could lead to complete happiness or liberation or joy; they never claimed to have that secret. Except perhaps insofar as Socrates claimed that the truly happy man is the virtuous man, which is a daring statement which it is very difficult to agree with in actual practice. What they wanted to show us is that we are living within imperfection, but within sight of a true perfection which we can never actually reach. The consolation was that one could actually do something about this. But it's preceded by a kind of disappointment or sadness which has to do I think with the acceptance that this world we're actually living in now is one in which perfection of any kind is never actually going to be reached. It's kind of like one hand giving, the other hand taking away at the same time, and that may be one of the many reasons why Plato can be so frustrating to read.
'Philosophy, and I still cling to the original meaning, is what people do who love to try to figure out what wisdom is and how it works and if there is an underlying principle to it all.'
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think that is precisely what philosophy meant in its origin.
The point of calling it 'philosophy' instead of, I don't know, 'sophology', is that one did not claim to _have_ wisdom. Even Socrates, who was arguably the greatest philosopher ever, made a point of letting everyone know that he did feel he had wisdom. If the grasp of wisdom was beyond everyone, even Socrates himself, or Pythagoras {the Pythagoreans apparently also used the word to describe themselves}, then all that even the best of us could do would be to love wisdom, and to try to live in a way that reflects. One could court wisdom, but never own her. That sort of put everybody in the same relationship to wisdom, 'master' and 'disciple', and that may be one reason why no Greek philosophers (with the possible exception of Empedocles), in contrast to Chinese or Indian ones, were ever actually deified or beatified by their followers or by subsequent generations.
'Wisdom' in the ancient sense of the word probably included what in our sense is 'knowledge', so philosophy did not exclude science - quite to the contrary, the schools of Pythagoras and Plato may have been the first fixed institutions for the practice of the sciences and mathematics.
The specifically Socratic approach to philosophy originated, I think, from more or less the same sort of awareness that produced Buddhism - both originated as responses to weltschmerz.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut Socrates himself wasn't much interested in scientific epistemologies at all, or in the scientific materialist thinkers he was familiar with. He apparently concluded fairly early on in his life that he was headed in a different direction than those lines of thought. Plato included scientific education in the curriculum of his Academy, but he was not trying to be Socrates. He was trying instead to realize in some way the dream of the Republic, and education in the sciences was to be recommended.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI guess there is philosophy, and philosophy, and philosophy. Philosophers themselves, tragically enough (even if one is talking about Western philosophy only) can't even agree on any one definition of what philosophy is, if they can define it at all. How can a discipline that can't even define what it is, 'encounter' any other discipline? It's like asking someone to hit a brick with a swimming pool.
Personally, I think that the ultimate expression of epistemology may be in the philosophy of Douglas Adams.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this<I think that if you really get into Plato, you find that his ideas and the life of Socrates are permeated with a kind of sadness>
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAh, seen from that angle... The philosopher looking for consolation in wisdom to find a way out of his sadness? And consoling those who turn to him because of the wisdom he acquired in the process? I can only agree with you.
Hard times have definitely produced a lot of great wisdom but have also driven at least as many people to drink. So the talent and the inclination must still be there as not every sad person becomes a good philosopher.
Maybe we need to split the philosophers into two main groups, those who like to think because it's their natural inclination and those who must think to understand why they are unhappy? What is the difference between the two and how does it manifest itself? Maybe these are the real and fundamental two main schools?
How important is motivation then? How must I see Rousseau now? He was motivated by money and a quite dishonest character who made up most of his stuff without believing it but a lot of it was quite influential and is still valid. Or Marx? A good thinker driven I suspect by quite a lot of social jealousy but without whom modern capitalism, which would not have been possible without workers' rights, would have misfired worse, more often and far earlier.
Philosophy may need more than ever the same thing that science is looking for, a proper standard model.
(Where incidentally I believe that philosophy will come up with the next step.)
<... Socrates, who was arguably the greatest philosopher ever, made a point of letting everyone know that he did feel he had wisdom...>
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLetting your appreciation of the man doing the (not) typing? <g>
so we have a few pointers:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this- Philosophy is the expression of an inclination towards trying to understand wisdom and ultimately to find out if wisdom is based on a universal principle;
- there are two main schools, thought driven by a talent for reasoning and thought driven by adversity;
- A lot of things are driven by "Weltschmerz" but not all become philosophies, some also become religions; one could then tentatively ask how philosophy and religion are related;
- Initially, there was no distinction between philosophy and science; there was another distinction though, that people who understood and discussed science were not applying it physically as physical application was considered manual labor which was done by the slaves where one could ask at what level philosophy was then if it accepted slavery; later philosophy and science split and became fields of their own; a bit as in physics, the more you understand the tinier the stuff gets the more you find the same structures;
If I try to picture the evolution of philoscience over time it vaguely looks like a slowly spinning fractal moving through time.
What I mean by that is this: we have an initial field (philoscience) made of two main groups (the enclined thinkers and the sad thinkers), like a couple made of two people, which parented two new fields (philosophy and science) or children who have their parents' DNA but developped their own personalities and which over time together have shaped the modern world.
---
As for Douglas Adams, the computer's answer was BELIEVED. But is it true? Simply because a computer SAID it? Methinks this says nothing about the answer of life but a lot about people who believe computers.
Such as physicists.
Which is why they urgently need a few good philosophers more than ever.
After all the trust they put into their computers and look at the misery...
But who knows what good will come from this sadness?
<g>
That's what I've shown in my book: this standard theory of modern physics we already have, is Kant's transcendental aesthetic - rather than the doctrine of Maya in Eastern philosophy, as Fritjof Capra tried to demonstrate in THE TAO OF PHYSICS, for example.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMarcel Chelba
<this standard theory of modern physics we already have, is Kant's transcendental aesthetic>
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat in my opinion would be a bit too one-sided.
Indeed I believe that same as philosophy needs both the cold reasoners and the sad thinkers or physics needs m and c, Kant's transcendental aesthetic can only be one side of the coin. In other words Kant can only be seen as the precursor of a modern standard model if one sees transcendental aesthetics AND transcendental logic together (as the two sides of Kant's coin).
Which by the way is what I believe the true expression of Kant's genius, that he climbed the mountain from both sides with equal success. Same with Albert E. who mastered the physic-al as well as the philosophical route, although he's quite underrated on the second I'd say.
I think there are a lot of different ways to conceptualize the history of philosophy. There is a lot more continuity and even inheritance between Pythagoras, Parmenides, Socrates, and Plato, than you will likely learn from a standard history, where Pythagoras is typically not treated as a philosopher at all. But even Aristotle pointed out that many of Socrates' ideas came from Pythagoras - and it's remarkable that the Pythagoreans did call themselves philosophers. On the other hand, the (generally Ionian) cosmologists, usually kind of lumped together with Parmenides et al. as 'pre-Socratic', strike me as really in effect conducting scientific investigations with a scientific worldview, though without many of the tools that would have been necessary to make it empirically grounded. There is a continuity between them and Democritus, etc. It is remarkable that Democritus not only hit on the idea of fundamental particles interacting causually with one another in space, but even anticipated the Heisenberg uncertainty principle with the concept of 'swerve' (unless that was Epicurus or someone else elaborating on his ideas, I can't quite remember). In any case, a rational materialist approach to knowledge was certainly a common part of the intellectual milieu of Greece in the time of Socrates, and although he isn't participating that development, he is clearly at least in part responding to it (if only by choosing to focus on something else).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCalling the whole melange of things 'philoscience' makes a good deal of sense.
I would have to do a lot of sweaty, dusty scholarship to answer some of the questions that I have about the ways in which the words 'philosophy' and 'science' were actually used in particular places and times. I am curious as to whether the early materialist thinkers were even called philosophers, by themselves or anyone else, in their own time. In any case the collaboration between philosophy and science seems to have been well established institutionally by Plato and, even earlier, by Pythagoras. But at the same time the 'cosmologists' were clearly thinking along very different lines from the beginning from any of the more metaphysical thinkers. They seem to have been distinct currents, whether they did or did not have distinct labels attached to them; 'science' of course had a very different range of meanings in ancient Greek, too. In any case, science and philosophy seem to have been close bedfellows, but still rather distinct, right from the beginning.
Check out John Burnet's Greek Philosophy.
I think that the way I would want to personally define things would be to say that by calling oneself a philosopher, one is positioning oneself as someone who loves wisdom and actively pursues wisdom. To call oneself a scientist would be to say that one loves and pursues knowledge - particularly knowledge of the physical world.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisQuite a lot of people would probably be inclined to say there is no such thing as 'wisdom' as such, or that it can't be identified, defined, or pursued. But then Socrates would ask them practical questions, like - do you really know what justice is, as you are stepping into the courtroom? Are you capable of governing others? Are you capable of governing yourself? By what faculty is it that you know what the right things to do within your own faculty or profession are? In other words, he would ground the concept of 'wisdom' in real life, rather than presenting it as an abstraction. Then he would encourage people to pursue it.
Aporia seems to be an essential part of Socrates' method of pursuing wisdom, whereas aporia may often be seen as a failure if one is pursuing knowledge. The pursuit of wisdom is not always as likely to lead to communicable results, at least not to results that are communicable in the same sorts of ways.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Socratic definition of philosophy of course is only one of many contending possible definitions. It is just a fact that professional philosophers can't define what philosophy is to any degree of mutual satisfaction.
Lawrence: If philosophers haven't helped as much as physicists with physics, well that's no surprise. But maybe you should read "The Book" by Alan Watts. The subtitle is: "on the taboo against knowing who you are". Before you can significantly advance human knowledge, you must find out who humans are.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt'll rip your head open, man! ;-)
Philosophy then and philosophy today are two very different things in my opinion. I do have a lot in common with my forebears but what little difference there is in our DNA makes that we don't really resemble each other anymore, not to mention how we differ in knowledge. Back then you could master philosophy and science. But today?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMaybe we got the poorer for letting them drift too far apart. Maybe science and philosophy should again be more interwoven. It could do both fields only a lot of good.
This said, "wisdom" to me is closely related to "common sense". Which I consider a blue-collar anticipation of "swarm intelligence". To me wisdom is common sense at the highest level. So when judging modern philosophy I admit to heavily rely on my "common sense" which I believe to be a mixture of lessons learned from my education and my experience, intuition refined by hard work and an incessantly updated grain of intelligence.
And this "common sense" tells me that a lot of modern philosophy is garbage, the very reason why scientists feel abandoned. Contemporary philosophy lacks its equivalent of scientific testing. This allows all that garbage to be published, be that scientific, economic, climate philosophy. There is no standard that sifts the good from the bad. And the bad has taken over. Intelligent solutions drowned by too much mental pollution.
Actually quite symptomatic for the general state of global affairs I would say.
We are in fact forced to find a global standard that works for all or we will soon be caught between a huge rock and an extremely hard place.
We're living very interesting times.
The Socratic approach to wisdom is above all a realistic approach to wisdom.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think that if it's not a realistic approach, then it's probably not Socratic.
I hope they're going to give me my Ph.D. for this.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have to correct myself. I think that Aristotle said that some of Socrates thought was borrowed from Parmenides. But Parmenides himself was either a Pythagorean in all but name - maybe a sort of radical Pythagorean - or he was reacting directly against them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is just an example of my shoddy scholarship. I have to dig things like that up, because I get too confused on the details. Maybe it's a sort of scholarly dyslexia.
The fact is I'm in too much pain to look it up.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisif you keep it simple and real your committee can only disqualify itself. <g>
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFirst Part.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree with you, but I did not want to dwell here with too many details. I have analyzed this topic in my book (Critical Introduction. About the possibility of Metaphysics as a Science in the perspective of Kant's critical philosophy). It give here only the content, to convince yourself of the importance I have given this subject. If you are interested on my book please find a publisher to handle the translation and publication, because here in Romania, no one seems interested in this subject.
Thanks for the reply.
Marcel Chelba
Critical Introduction.
About the possibility of Metaphysics, as a Science, in the perspective of Kant's critical philosophy.
Crates Publishing, Reşiţa, Romania, 2004.
Contents:
Foreword
Argument
Appendix
Critical Introduction:
I. A strategic step back
I.1. Antithetic of pure reason − the incandescent coreof the Critique of Pure Reason. A strategic retreat behind the sensitive experience (within the
transcendental). The need for discovery of a
transcendental topic and a discipline of pure reason.
I.2. The cardinal concepts of pure reason and their possible ontological significance.
II.For the sake of peace
II.1. A conflict of interests and a compromise solution. The substitution of transcendent censorship
with a transcendental self-censorship. Formation of a
critical system of Pure Reason as a reconciliation system of perspectives of thought.
II.2.Transcendental idealism instead of empirical idealism. Totality argument instead of the majority argument. Practical success instead of pragmatic success. “Titanic-waltz”.
II.3. Metaphysical certainty rather than empirical certainty. Metaphysical approval instead of public approval. Consistency truth − the prototype of the
correspondence truth.
II.4. Pragmatic truth, moral competence and judicial competence. Metaphysics in the service of peace.
II.5. Redefining the metaphysics as a science of its own possibility.
II.6. Ethical reconstruction of nature. Kant's meeting with Socrates.
II.7. A system of wariness − a bridge of reconciliation between being and beings. Technology and moral − two orthogonal perspectives of beings.
The second part
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIII. Towards a new paradigm of science.
III:1. From the tree of the predicates to the theory of ramified types: same problem − same solution.
III.2. Empirical confirmation of Kantian transcendental idealism: non-Euclidean geometry,quantum mechanics and relativity.
§ 1. Copernican revolution of Lobacevski, Bolyaiand Gauss.
§ 2. Short intermezzo on a similar theme in thephilosophy of culture (Lucian Blaga).
§ 3. The dilemma of classical geometry andtranscendental solution of modern geometry.
§ 4. Einstein's Copernican Revolution
§ 5. Copernican revolution of quantum mechanics
III.3. Constitutive relativity of experience and unfinished project of Kant.
IV. In search of a better ensured certainty
IV.1. How is it possible to know from our inwardwhat's out there? How is it possible the Transcendent?
IV.2. Our transcendental myopia and overcome it by recognizing and rational integration of its constituent uncertainty in a antinomic system of possible world (experience). Escape from illusion by illusion recognition.
IV.3. Ontological surprise − the essence of any possible object (as Gegenstand).
V. Blind paradigm.
V.1. Kant's man − Cheselden's blind.
V.2. Empirical disappointment. Impossibility of evidency. Paraconsistent awakening of metaphysics after
consistent (dogmatically) sleep of reason. Rational bases of faith and morals.
VI. Dilemma and the method of metaphysics.
VI.1. The dilemma of metaphysics − Gödel's dilemma. Transcendental logic − an applied logic of paraconsistency. Paradigmatic unit of Critique
and modern fundational research.
VI.2. Mole's dilemma. Metaphysics − a priori
model of a possible reunited theory of nature. Ontological antinomy.
VI.3 Perspective of the divine intellect − the ideal model of an possible absolute certainty.
VI.4. Recognition of transcendental illusion and overcoming them by overturning the historical and psychological perspective on knowledge. Transcendental logic − the last opportunity to save metaphysics.
VI.5. Towards a future system of metaphysics within the bounds of science. Transcendental methodology, science of uncertainty and geometrization of thought.
End of Introduction
Notes
Bibliography
Lawrence Krauss is undoubtedly a brilliant physicist and cosmologist. And he is championed by the likes of Richard Dawkins--equally brilliant in the area of biology--who today combats supernaturalism. Theologians--most of whom I suppose are champions of the the supernatural--define "nothing" as the "absence of anything", but how many of them would claim that this tautology would explain much of anything? Faced with nothing in quantum relativistic terms Krauss seems to find it distasteful and says that the possibility of a quantum relativistic field in which nothing exists is unstable. We are back to the idea that nature abhors a vacuum--a quantum relativistic one. Having read this article http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books/review/a-universe-from-nothing-by-lawrence-m-krauss.html I wonder if Krauss shouldn't go back and read a little more philosophy. I do appreciate his work as a physicist.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGood one
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy pov: even if the impression from my comments might not be clear on this I like him and the reason is that he goes where physicists should go and even accepts the risk of talking about it. Quite a difficult task when there is no proper philosophy out there to help him find his way. But he's looking for the right questions. Physics would be better off with a few more like him. I believe that he is positively influencing the subject.
All said and done, time to move on.
<If you are interested on my book please find a publisher to handle the translation and publication>
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlthough I feel that you have an interesting approach I would be way out of my depth here.
<because here in Romania, no one seems interested in this subject>
It is quite a specialized subject you're handling and it would interest only a very small group in a larger country so hang in there. When living in a cultural vacuum, wait long enough and a spark might come alive from nowhere.
Keep up the good work.
Thanks for the encouragement, jctyler.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEight years have already passed. And I am prepared to wait another eight thousand years. But keep looking and hope to find in my lifetime, that "someone" that resonates.
All the best,
Marcel Chelba
I think that physics is a philosophy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think that Derrida was right. Ultimately, decentering things is much more interesting form of intellectual mischief than polemics.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow could physics not be a philosophy? It contains philosophy, and it cannot avoid philosophy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is a specific approach to 'doing philosophy' that is intimately related to a specific kind of techne.
I would have to emphasize again that 'doing philosophy' has never entirely boiled down to being a purely intellectual undertaking. From some points of view, it is an overall discipline and approach to life.
And physics is to. By interacting with the universe in a specific kind of way, and submitting its theorizations to the judgement of that specific form of interaction.
I suspect even Heidegger could almost kind of sort of agree with that.
Even saying something like that - the above sentence - is a pretty daring undertaking, if you have ever dealt with some modern day philosophers and critics. You have to sweat almost every time you mention someone's name.
Kantinomous - you should contact the good folks at the College International de Philosophie in Paris. That is kind of what they are all about.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA.) Physics I would argue contains philosophy and cannot avoid philosophy. There are many different ways in which that thought might be expressed. But to me it seems pretty certain.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisB.) But physics cannot subsume all of philosophy, or claim to have disproven all alternative philosophical approaches and points of view.
C.) Therefore, physics is a philosophy.
Then there are those three letters that everyone loves or hates.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm rereading Steven Burik's mind wrenching book, The End of Comparative Philosophy and the Task of Comparative Thinking: Heidegger, Derrida and Daoism.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt may be apropos of nothing.
But if physics is _a philosophy_, then the right way to make dialogue "between physics and philosophy", would the in the same way that one would make dialogue between, or among, any two, or more, other philosophies. In other words, physics would be on an equal par with any other philosophical tendencies. I am still trying to use a meaning of the word "philosophy" to mean "Western philosophy", in its own more-or-less strictly defined sense.
You see, approaching things in that way would in the end result in a complete novelty {something that I mean of course only the mode of grad-student hyperbole} - physics education.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA dialogue between physics and the two different traditions in philosophy known as phenomenalism and phenomenology, for instance, might very well equate to physics education plain and simple. At least, on one side of the debate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't mean in the dogmatic sense, at all. I mean a real, deep approach to physics education, of the sort that Richard Feynman was famous for.
If people aren't convinced, you bring them back to their senses, and show them why it's true.
Physics would go a lot slower, but it would reach further and more deeply.
Let me put it this way.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThink, for a moment, of physics a movement. You can think of it as being a movement in philosophy, a philosophical movement, or you can think of it as something else; it doesn't matter for the sake of this argument, so long as you are willing to think of it as a movement.
From one point of view, the purpose is to find ever more and newer and deeper physical truths. Preferably, as fast as possible.
From another point of view, the purpose of that movement might be to spread a knowledge and understanding of the principles, methods, and conclusions of physics as widely as possible, through the general population, or general populations.
It seems to me that both of those purposes are really purposes of the physics community. But that the second purpose often very much plays second fiddle to the first.
The broader purpose of the broader spread of the physics movement would be not so much to spread understanding of the facts of physics, as to spread an understanding of the structures of thought, and of the manner of interacting with the world, through which such findings are achieved. Ultimately, only the latter is a deep understanding of physics.
It's the techne that produces the facts. The facts would be useless if the techne were forgotten.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's the techne - the means of inquiry, the structure of that inquiry - that most of all has to be taught, beginning with its most fundamental principles.
You could think of it as a peripatetic approach to physics.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOr maybe as a Montessori approach.
By the techne of physics, I mean its manner of engaging with the world, in general, in its most general terms.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA rather 'modern' or 'postmodern' way of thinking about things would be to speak of techne, on the one hand, and discourse, on the other.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA more ancient formulation of a similar concept would be to speak of techne and theory or theoria. They might not be quite the same thing.
Or, I meant to say praxis and theory, really.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI maybe should have said, with an ironic humanities grad student's sense of hyperbole, when I made my little joke. Maybe science grad students aren't quite as cynical.
Now, the next time that American cops try to ruin my life, I hope that somebody will understand that their motivation was to punish me for spreading enlightenment.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is difficult and dangerous to be a freethinker in a society this devoted to what it calls "freedom".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt seems odd to me that Americans have chosen to define "freedom" so as to mean something that can be inflicted on others abroad, while being fearfully restricted at home.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't know what sort of thinking is involved in that, but I doubt that it is any sort of philosophical thinking at all.
In America, there are two major castes of persons.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the upper caste of persons are the corporations, Who Are our ruling elite.
In the lower caste of persons are the servants, serfs, and slaves of the corporations, depending on one's order of prestige.
And there are the unemployed, who are Untouchables.
The Philosophy of the Nine Wise Beings of the Supreme Court has bestowed upon us this system. Can any lesser being explain it?
That, I would consider a true philosophical challenge.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt doesn't strike me as being exactly what Plato had in mind. So I wonder what sources they are drawing on.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMaybe it's all the reasoning of little green pieces of paper.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll persons are equal persons under the law - but some persons are more equal than others.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe thing is that they thought of it before Orwell.
It's really on that level that we should really all be very worried about the spread of irrationalism in society.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf saying that a corporation is a person isn't some form of mystification, I don't know what could be.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAre there some points that all philosophers could agree on?
If they were persons of the sort walking around on two legs, they would all have to be locked. They would be persons with an ineradicably sociopathic brain structure, because they are required by the very laws that govern them to devote themselves entirely to avarice. So if turning them into persons, as if they had started out as Pinocchio, was questionable to begin with, making them privileged persons and putting them in power was even more so.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCould a system based upon such principles be considered a 'rational' economic system? If so, how so? If not, then what sort of system is it?
The floor is open.
And here is a further point. Really, a counterargument to a possible objection. If corporations 'being' persons is a 'fiction' - why, by what principle, under what principle of sanity or sound reasoning or common sense - ought it to be desirable to systematically entertain 'fictions' in our courts of law? Are courts of law supposed to be about rather the opposite of fiction, make believe, or wild flights of the imagination?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf the basic structures of the societies we are living in are based on fundamentally irrational principles, isn't it a waste of time for anybody who believes in rationality in whatever way to be battering each other over the heads about whose version of rationality is better, while the city around us burns, or the edifice we are arguing in is being eaten out by termites?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is some sort of consilience between the scientific method, and the proper method of proceedings that ought to be followed in a court of law. They are sort of different outcomes of the same or similar principles.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's perhaps somewhat like the relationship between music and mathematics - which is of course better understood now from a scientific perspective than it was at one time. If one can be brought to appreciate the one, understanding of the other should come more readily.
That's another reason to worry about the dearth of scientific education.
To continue the analogy - isn't telling all the lower courts that they must from thence on - sometime in the early 19th century, if I remember correctly - "pretend" that corporations are persons - more or less like publishing make-believe on a regular basis in a scientific journal?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo continue the analogy further - would not confusing fundamental principles so badly in courts of law on a systematic basis, in the end undermine a populace's chances of understanding scientific principles, as well?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGod doesn't cut fast deals in smoke filled back rooms with the universe, so to speak.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere has got to be an epistemology involved in justice, or it is not justice at all but mere opinion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf people don't understand what epistemology is, then they won't understand what justice is, either.
Isn't that EXACTLY what was happening in the Athenian courts in the 4th century B.C.E.?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA society devoid of any principles of reasoning in its justice process will in the end dissolve into a disorganized collection of mobs out to punish one another.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey haven't quite pushed me to the point yet of holding a courtroom in contempt. But if they do, they will be sorry for it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Invisible Hand will heal all wounds, I suppose.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf only I could remember which Church or Temple I am supposed to go to to pray to It.
And it's interesting, when you think about it, that Microeconomics sort of defines actual human beings as non-persons - or at least, as persons of a not terribly compelling sort.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPeople are sort of depersonalized, at the same time that corporations are personalized. Is that a recipe for a rational society?
Reason has truly fallen into disrepair, but we have failed to notice it in the most obvious places where it is happening.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat would happen if somebody tried to design an economic system starting from an actual, thorough, phenomenological or empirical investigation of human needs, capacities, propensities, and desires - rather than by attempting to shoehorn the vast diversity and complexity of human nature so offensively into such an absurd theoretical construct? What sort of different would that make?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt may be a little off topic, but this is 2012, look at the sort of movements that have been going on all over th world.
Imagine if the science of physics were like the 'science' of economics...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"First of all, let us begin by assuming that all matter is made of little bitty curly-cue shaped pieces of styrofoam, and the moon is made of Swiss cheese."
Isn't a whole lot of that "basic economics" stuff really a kind of shallow superstition?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is obviously a component of empirical observation. But the component of theory seems oddly mystical. In a kind of weird Swiftian way.
QUESTION A: Should or should not scientists of the natural sciences type be ashamed of seeing economic theorists use the word "science" to describe their discipline?
Maybe they thought it made sense a couple of hundred years ago to assume for theoretical purposes that people (excluding corporations) are cogs in a machine, or atoms in a mass. I don't see how it could possibly make sense in the present day.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf the evidences of the actually existing physical world (excluding the glorious hypothetical future, in which all ills will be cured by the system that has caused them or allowed them to flourish) in which we - rationally efficient personal profit maximizers or not - live is to be considered - then there may be some things that even capitalism and its economic "theory" cannot do.
Can anyone show me an equation for the Invisible Hand? and prove that it really does cure all ills in the long run, with or without government subsidies to corporations, provided that we are willing to suffer for its sake, as some gas molecules must inevitably suffer?
If not, then I hold it to be a particularly jejune and self-serving form of theology.
What would physics be if it made all sorts of metaphysical assertions, without being able to write the Schrodinger equation?
It would be absurd to call economics Platonic, but it does seem to be the pristine beauty of its abstractions that are believed in, regardless of the degree to which they may seem to be sullied by the messiness of the actual world.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCan irrationality produce or foster reason?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNice article - clever and honest. However, the last sentence reveals the bias. Philosophy has taught us that naive realism is a position that is difficult to defend - as are all possible presuppositions that define the nature of our presumed access to "nature" or "realty".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, how big is the gap, the difference of views between this article and Boethius's "De Consolatione Philosophiae"!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMarcel Chelba
Thank you for that...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisClearly I'm not ready for the entrance exam yet!... the truth is that my lack of a Ph.D. is not just an instutitional matter, but due to the fact that I just haven't read widely enough... It's not so easy trying to pursue more than one profession at once...
The good news is that I'm on my way to a Mohawk reservation in Quebec - where among other things, I should have a chance to work on my French. So maybe there's hope for me yet... (France is where I probably want to study)
All good things take time...
“One answer to this latter question can come from physics. If all possibilities—all universes with all laws—can arise dynamically, and if anything that is not forbidden must arise, then this implies that both nothing and something must both exist, and we will of necessity find ourselves amidst something. A universe like ours is, in this context, guaranteed to arise dynamically, and we are here because we could not ask the question if our universe weren’t here. It is in this sense that I argued that the seemingly profound question of why there is something rather than nothing might be actually no more profound than asking why some flowers are red or some are blue. I was surprised that this very claim was turned around by the reviewer as if it somehow invalidated this possible physical resolution of the something versus nothing conundrum.”
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this- that seems as evidently logically false statement – there must be answer on the question - Why do “all possibilities can arise?” The “Theologians” have an answer, the author – have no ones.
Though the answer (outside religions and the author’s position) exists, and is something as “the nothing doesn’t exist principally”. Because of everything that exist in our Universe and outside is/are some informational structures – elements of the fundamental absolutely infinite Set “Information” (when there is nowhere nothing besides the information of the Set) – what can be rigorously proven:
See http://arxiv.org/abs/1004.3712 “The Information as Absolute”
The physical model – see http://arxiv.org/abs/0707.4657 “
The Informational Conception and Basic Physics ”
And http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.0003 “Space and Time”
The Set’s element “nothing” or the statement “there is nothing” (as well as any other element) in reality contains all Set totally, implicitly, but totally; as, e.g., any system of axioms contains implicitly, but totally all theory. More – see the links above.
Cheers
Ignorance coupled with arrogance isn't pretty. There is much that cosmologists can learn from some of the better contemporary philosophers--even from some who, like Krauss, lack an appropriate measure of modesty.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisKrauss has his pants down in public!! Now that I have your attention, let's take a closer look at his whining on the Atlantic rebuttal to David Albert's review...and here too. Basically, Krauss has little use for philosophy of science or for philosophers in general (the descriptor he uses in the Atlantic article, I believe, is "morons").
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is of interest because of how it colors his responses to his critics in philosophy (or theology). Unfortunately for Krauss, this dismissal comes back to haunt him when he wanders outside his own field of expertise...again and again. First, by the tenor of his comments, it seems Krauss is rather unfamiliar with David Albert's background and work (is he even aware he is constantly condescending to another PhD in theoretical physics here, and an expert in Bohmian mechanics to boot? Probably not). Always a good idea to become familiar with your opponents, eh Krauss? LOL
Second, Krauss routinely rants against "philosophers" but his own lack of familiarity with this discipline makes him look rather silly at times. Krauss spends a good deal of time trying to push empiricism into areas it simply cannot go, fruitlessly attempting to argue with metaphysics positions...only to be shot down by professional critics (like Albert) who instantly see through the ruse. If he had more training in this area, he'd begin to grasp what philosophers call a "category mistake" :-).
In essence, Krauss and his "New Atheist" ilk (Victor Stenger, Dawkins, Harris et al.) are playing what I term "word-game-cons"- i.e., it's a bogus effort to elevate purely *physical* terms (unstable "quantum fields", anyone?) as material to argue with- against metaphysical or vaguely-defined ontological concepts, such as "nothing". Which of course purely-physical concepts have no business trying to "refute". So we enter comedy scenarios very quickly: Krauss and his militant atheist buddies desperately want you to buy his "nothing" (aka unstable physical fields) renders philosophy and theology explorations in metaphysics obsolete. He wishes. But alas, it's a con-game using physics buzzwords inappropriately, folks. Sorry Krauss. Back to the drawing board. What metaphysics will you be trying to shoot down in your next book? Funny stuff.
Professor Krauss, no need to apologize from anybody! Philosophers have been running around in circles since the time of Aristotle! All they did is make their language more complicated, so it seems profound. I remember reading about Richard Feynman's son wanting to study philosophy, so they started reading Spinoza together, until they came to a passage which looked so complicated, but it was in fact something plain and simple...so they burst out laughing and Feynman's son quit the study of philosophy! Philosophers didn't help advance human knowledge by one inch...Had there been only philosophers and no scientists, we would be still believing in the Ptolemaic system of the Universe and in the Four Elements. Thanks to all the scientists who taught us what we know!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI disagree with Jim Lacey. If "something" is defined as a state that is measurable, it does not logically follow that "nothing" is also a state that is measurable. Rather, the opposite of something, i.e., nothing, would represent a state that is not measurable. Krauss's theory implies that measurable states can emerge from non-measurable states. This is equivalent to the same problem that Albert presented him...and which Krauss seems to think it beneath his dignity to address. Instead, we get this general essay about his respect for philosophy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRivers (29) Smart, but wrong, he's just saying that so far that's how it is, he's not ruling out the possibility that what is "essentially" philosophy MIGHT contribute. I.e. it's a matter of contingency, not necessity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn my opinion all this controversy is about (especially on the philosophers' side) is canine territory marking, and ego-ache. It is only natural that one growls and barks when its territory is being threatened.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is only one way to human knowlege. It should be a synchronized endeavour.
Solution: all philosophers and thinkers of any kind should be allocated to modern scientific branches - each according to his/her own affinity, inclination, etc. Setting ideas against ideas is the best way to go, not just putting them down in books which, due to its' discipline's mystical aura, gain an almost
sacrosanct form of inviolability.
Are you that sensitive that you read the comments - and comment on them? You may want to rethink that practice.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEquating 'empty space' with 'nothing' is illogical. 'Nothing' does not exist. There has never been a 'nothing' and there will never be a 'nothing'. If there were a 'nothing', then it would be a 'something'.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this'Nothing' is completely absent of anything measurable. The concept of smallness is inapplicable to it. Any idea of size doesn't fit with the idea of 'nothing'. 'Nothing' has no ruler, and no stopwatch either. No constant will ever spring from 'nothing'. Emptiness doesn't qualify as 'nothing', since an empty area is still an area, which is something.
The physicists who discuss 'nothing' as if it were 'something' are confused. When they say that the Universe started from nothing and is currently expanding relative to that nothing, either they are confusing the idea of smallness with the idea of 'nothing', or else they are reverse-expressing the idea that the Universe is not expanding at all, since expansion relative to nothing is the same as no expansion at all.