Physics and the contemplation of nothing

_{Denyse O'Leary

March 10, 2017

Culture, Intelligent Design, Naturalism, News, Physics}

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In a review of Void: The Strange Physics of Nothing by James Owen Weatherall, Steven Poole writes at Spectator (UK):

In an action-packed epilogue, the author describes how the contested field of string theory posits a bogglingly large number of possible kinds of nothingness, and impresses upon the reader how much of physics still depends on intuition and battling ‘interpretations’. The book is not an exhaustive typology of scientific nothings: not directly addressed, for example, is the nothingness that supposedly obtained before the Big Bang. But to regret this is just to emphasise the success of this stylishly written and admirably concise book, at the end of which you will be inclined to agree, along with the author and Freddie Mercury both, that ‘Nothing really matters.’More.

String theory leads physics down the bramble patch of unacknowledged metaphysics.

See also: Multiverse explains why progress in fundamental physics is slow?

and

Must we understand “nothing” to understand physics?

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Comments

DS, Hoyle did not originate the steady state view. The core idea is an undetectably low spontaneous creation of fresh matter, leading to a "very long term" steady state; as I was taught back in the 70's. Hence, the name. It failed the prediction test by the 1960's and was gradually abandoned in the face of the cosmic microwave background, where oscillatory models also failed. The issue of a cosmos with no beginning is that, again, it faces an infinite descent from the past, stage by causally connected stage -- and I am not talking about any beginning point without earlier stages, just that there has to be a descent "forever" from earlier and earlier stages. Real time only holds in a context of each stage having once been the present, leading dynamically to the next then the next etc to now. This wets up the problem of a stage at transfinite remove, if the past was actually of infinite prior duration. And this is not about mathematical transforms. KF PS: durations are between particular, present or once present stages of the world, Unless you can get beyond finitely remote ones, you are not going beyond the potentially infinite but only actually finite. Infinite is not a synonym for too long ago for us to count up, it has to address the beginning-less and endlessly remote beyond any conceivable specific finite value. That is where descending a transfinite chain of succeeding stages comes into the picture, and not by dismiss-able definition.kairosfocus_{March 17, 2017
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KF,
I’m asking about Hoyle’s (and other theories which posit a beginningless universe) because while they are described as involving an infinite past or infinitely old universe, most if not all do not include any infinitely remote times in the past.
I'm going to withdraw the above, based on the following quote from WLC in his essay on the Kalam Argument:
In stating that the initial conditions "have to be set in an acausal way (in the infinite past)," Ellis puts his finger on a nettlesome philosophical issue in cosmological models featuring an infinite past, namely, they often seem to treat the infinite past as though it featured an infinitely distant beginning point. Several of these models are discussed in this essay. But, as we have already seen in our discussion of philosophical kalam arguments, such a supposition is illicit, since such an infinitely distant point is merely an ideal limit characteristic of the potential infinite, not a moment that actually once was present. If we are allowed to speak of the condition of the universe at past infinity, then Zenonian paradoxes (see p. 119) are unavoidable.
and this:
It is always possible to find a conformal transformation which will convert an infinite universe to a finite one and vise-versa. One can always find a time coordinate in which a universe that exists for a finite proper time . . . exists for an infinite time in the new time coordinate, and a time coordinate in which a universe that exists for an infinite proper time . . . exists for only a finite time. The most appropriate physical time may or may not be the proper time coordinate. (Barrow & Tipler 1986, p. 636)
I don't know what this means in terms of "stages" in a causal chain, however. Edit: Perhaps nothing?daveS_{March 17, 2017
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KF, I'm asking about Hoyle's (and other theories which posit a beginningless universe) because while they are described as involving an infinite past or infinitely old universe, most if not all do not include any infinitely remote times in the past. That would indicate that these cosmologists would disagree with your contention. Edit: Does the "eternal material cosmos view" involve an infinite past?
In short, if we can only ever come up with finitely remote past points I*, then NONE of them can be transfinitely remote from the present stage, P. Thus, we cannot get to a transfinite duration.
This is actually saying something about definition, because:
extending beyond, lying beyond, or being greater than any preassigned finite value however large
says nothing about a transfinite duration requiring transfinitely remote points. Rather, it only requires that there be arbitrarily remote, finitely remote points.daveS_{March 17, 2017
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Hoyle tried to resurrect the old eternal material cosmos view. That one can conceive of a world in which by dint of continuous spontaneous creation there is an ongoing counter to entropic decay and suggest it is eternal. This of course first failed the empirical evidence test as at the 1960's. The fact that it was on the table suggests the recognition that a world that now is requires something that always was, and put up a materialistic candidate. This does not escape the issue I am speaking to as the issue is one of the logic of structure and quantity. Just because seady state, oscillating, budding and the like cosmologies have been put forward does not answer to the need to span the transfinite to get here. KF PS: I am not saying anything by definition, I am pointing to the peculiar nature of temporal succession and what the past is as a result, then I am putting on the table what happens when we try to stretch the temporal quasi-physical world beyond the big bang and onward to the suggested transfinite past. In short, if we can only ever come up with finitely remote past points I*, then NONE of them can be transfinitely remote from the present stage, P. Thus, we cannot get to a transfinite duration. If we then insist on imposing some past stage I that is transfinitely remote, we see the challenge of stepwise, finite stage succession facing a transfinite span. The claim of an infinite material past of our world runs into a nest of incoherences. This is because a temporal ordering in succession of stages is not like an abstract set, times take their reality from being actualised, which then leads to the causally connected next stage. Then, the next, and soon the number of onward stages starts to rack up. But such a process inherently cannot span the transfinite. And indeed we impose W as order type of the endless count of the natural counting numbers without ever completing the count. That is why we see that the ellipsis in the usual presentations does a LOT of heavy-lifting.kairosfocus_{March 17, 2017
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KF, Do you consider the past in Hoyle's Steady State theory of cosmology to be finite? Also, s/assuming/assumed in my #59daveS_{March 16, 2017
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KF,
DS, not by definition, that’s a neat loaded projection.
Projection? It was just an honest question. To be clear, I was speaking in the context of an assuming infinite past.
That means that we can conceive of an infinitely remote past and this will require that some I will have had transfinitely many intervening stages to P. If not, we will only be able to identify finite past spans, i.e. a finite past.
Ok, let me try again. You are definitely saying here that by definition, an infinite past must include infinitely remote stages, correct?daveS_{March 16, 2017
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DS, not by definition, that's a neat loaded projection. Time as past comprises formerly present stages, now succeeded. That is crucial. The span of the past to any stage S can be evaluated by count of intervening ones to P the current "now," if we are lucky in even stages such as years or nanoseconds. That means that we can conceive of an infinitely remote past and this will require that some I will have had transfinitely many intervening stages to P. If not, we will only be able to identify finite past spans, i.e. a finite past. This is where the step by step succession comes in, and shows us such a transfinite traverse cannot be done in finite stage steps, as at every stage we meet, we have only ever completed a finite number. We can contemplate a potential infinite where such may continue endlessly but we cannot actually complete it. Now is a terminus and a transfinite past to now will require that some past stage would have had to traverse such a span in steps to reach now. Notice, W is defined on the endlessness of the counting numbers in succession, not the completion of the traverse. No prizes for guessing why. KFkairosfocus_{March 16, 2017
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KF,
I have simply pointed out what that would require, given the patent nature of temporal succession. For that succession to amount to an infinite actual past, that would require that some once present stage I is now transfinitely removed in successive steps, or there would not be an infinite actual past. In short, the issue is what an infinite past means, given the well-known nature of temporal succession as I illustrated earlier today, which left traces in the thread but is now receding ever further into the past already.
If you're saying that these infinitely removed stages must exist by definition, no, that's not the case. The definition you posted makes no mention of them. If you can find a definition which does mention them, I'd like to see it.
As in, the once now receding into the past as further stages succeed is a commonplace fact; if your view of the past leads you to doubt something like this, then that does not speak well of the theory.
No, I do not doubt this.daveS_{March 16, 2017
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DS, Perhaps it has escaped your notice that it is you and others who have championed or argued to support the notion of an infinite past. I have simply pointed out what that would require, given the patent nature of temporal succession. For that succession to amount to an infinite actual past, that would require that some once present stage I is now transfinitely removed in successive steps, or there would not be an infinite actual past. In short, the issue is what an infinite past means, given the well-known nature of temporal succession as I illustrated earlier today, which left traces in the thread but is now receding ever further into the past already. As in, the once now receding into the past as further stages succeed is a commonplace fact; if your view of the past leads you to doubt something like this, then that does not speak well of the theory. The problem is, a transfinite succession cannot be traversed in finite stage successive cumulative steps, and this implies there was no infinite temporal past in our world. KFkairosfocus_{March 16, 2017
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KF,
DS, no. Did you not see the leading ellipsis in the series . . . I, I+1, I+2, . . . P –> That indicates prior states, and does not commit to any first. What is being counted is from state I in the sequence forward, I being taken as already described. That is I is on the hyp of a transfinite past, ONE stage that now happens to be supposedly transfinitely remote, there being no requirement that it be the first.
Ok, I see. The primary problem in that case is that you haven't shown such any such I, infinitely remote from the present, exists. It appears you also are starting a count at I, but let's set that aside for the moment.
The issue then is that the genuine past can only contain stages that were once the present but which have been succeeded by a chain of onward, causally connected stages. All of this should be readily apparent on a moment’s reflection.
This much is obvious. At least we both agree on it.
PS: I come back over half hour later, and the past is receding, but it is there as the once present.
Of course.
In this context to claim an infinitely remote past requires that there were stages that were once the present but are now transfinitely remote behind a chain of onward, causally connected finite step stages.
Where is the argument/proof that shows these stages must exist? This is literally the only question I'm asking at this point.daveS_{March 16, 2017
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PS: I come back over half hour later, and the past is receding, but it is there as the once present.kairosfocus_{March 16, 2017
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DS, no. Did you not see the leading ellipsis in the series . . . I, I+1, I+2, . . . P --> That indicates prior states, and does not commit to any first. What is being counted is from state I in the sequence forward, I being taken as already described. That is I is on the hyp of a transfinite past, ONE stage that now happens to be supposedly transfinitely remote, there being no requirement that it be the first. The counts are onward from I as a relevant but not unique start-point. And in effect pink is aligned from I and blue from I+k, k a large but finite-steps-removed from I stage. The point being, starting over from k has the same problem of traversing endlessness to P. I think the matter is long since clear enough. Temporal succession has each moment ever being replaced by a causally linked successor, like a song being played note by note. (A happy birthday song on ZJB just now.) The present moment is marching on like a play head so to speak, though the notion of a fixed determined future is dubious, choice and chance are credibly real. More relevantly, once a given moment occurs it is already fading into the past, even as is happening as I type this string. BBC News is coming up now, birthday songs are past. Already. And that now past reality fades ever further into the past as successive stages play out one by one in succession. The issue then is that the genuine past can only contain stages that were once the present but which have been succeeded by a chain of onward, causally connected stages. All of this should be readily apparent on a moment's reflection. (I take it, you see why I am reluctant to try to project beyond, say, the big bang by using seconds or a similar unit as means of evaluating span of time.) In this context to claim an infinitely remote past requires that there were stages that were once the present but are now transfinitely remote behind a chain of onward, causally connected finite step stages. The challenge then is that this requires spanning that transfinite gulf in finite stage steps and by aligning pink with I, counting forward k steps and aligning blue, we see a conundrum. No finite sequence of steps, no matter how large, can even begin to exhaust or traverse or span the onward endlessness. The only I's that can credibly succeed to P in steps are finitely removed ones, I* for reference. The real past was finite. KFkairosfocus_{March 16, 2017
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KF,
DS, pink and blue tapes only show that a transfinite span cannot be traversed in finite stage steps, as at any high but finite k on the first you can in effect start over again, as though k were 0 and will still face endlessness; in effect subtracting a finite segment from 0 to k from an endless sequence of successive steps does not change the onward endlessness.
Well, you're counting "upward", starting at the first cell of the tape. This is the equivalent of counting backward in time, which is the wrong direction. If we use the tape as a model of the past, you must always be moving toward the end of the tape, not away from it. Any discussion of traversing the tape in the opposite direction is irrelevant, as far as I can see.
I have yet to see how any claimed infinite past does not therefore imply that there are points such as I that were once the present but have now been succeeded to the point that they are transfinitely remote.
Can you explain in simple, clear language how this implication works? If the pink and blue tapes illustration doesn't prove the existence of these transfinitely remote points, what does?daveS_{March 15, 2017
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DS, pink and blue tapes only show that a transfinite span cannot be traversed in finite stage steps, as at any high but finite k on the first you can in effect start over again, as though k were 0 and will still face endlessness; in effect subtracting a finite segment from 0 to k from an endless sequence of successive steps does not change the onward endlessness. As for the discussion of what the past is, I summarised what we could call a common-sense observation. I think this is the general sense of actual past that is commonly used, and it brings out key issues on the nature of temporal succession. I have yet to see how any claimed infinite past does not therefore imply that there are points such as I that were once the present but have now been succeeded to the point that they are transfinitely remote. The problem I posed then follows, trying to effect a stepwise finite stage traversal of the transfinite. Which is manifestly futile. That is why I conclude such a claimed past cannot be the real temporal past of our world. KFkairosfocus_{March 15, 2017
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KF,
DS, it seems to me rather that it is you who needs to explain how a real world past stage is such that it was not once the present but has been succeeded by causally linked subsequent stages to the current present.
Eh? I'm pretty sure that's not my position. Is there a typo in there somewhere? I just don't see any justification or "proof" that there must have existed infinitely remote stages in an infinite past. The correspondence between pink and blue tapes argument seems to me to be a non-sequitur. If anyone following along can explain it to me step-by-step, I'm happy to be corrected.daveS_{March 15, 2017
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DS, it seems to me rather that it is you who needs to explain how a real world past stage is such that it was not once the present but has been succeeded by causally linked subsequent stages to the current present. I think this is what is generally understood to be the actual past. It is this which then poses the issue of transfinitely many intervening stages to our present. I suggest that your non-answer on this point is pivotal. KFkairosfocus_{March 15, 2017
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KF, Do you have any response to my questions in #41 and #45?daveS_{March 15, 2017
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DS, kindly explain to me what time is, in such a way that the actual world's timeline is not at all as I described. KFkairosfocus_{March 15, 2017
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OT: A digital clock in Conway's game of life. What the clock looks like while running.daveS_{March 15, 2017
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KF,
DS, you overlook the peculiar nature of time: a present, ever receding into the past, while being succeeded by the next, causally connected present. So, the proposition that there was an infinitely remote past implies a once present that is now transfinitely removed in finite-step stages from us.
Is it conceivable to you that you are wrong on this point?daveS_{March 15, 2017
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DS, you overlook the peculiar nature of time: a present, ever receding into the past, while being succeeded by the next, causally connected present. So, the proposition that there was an infinitely remote past implies a once present that is now transfinitely removed in finite-step stages from us. Time is not a mere abstract set that one can set up and play the clever game of members endlessly beyond any that we care to identify. No real stage of our world that is now past can be so unless it was once the actual present. That is pivotal. KFkairosfocus_{March 14, 2017
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Non-being, by definition, has no spatial location.kairosfocus_{March 14, 2017
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KF: I will rephrase.... What would absolutely nothing be surrounded by? If it were surrounded by "more" nothing, (if that even makes sense) then what would THAT be surrounded by?Fair Witness_{March 14, 2017
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KF,
DS, I put it to you that a claimed infinite past that does not have in it stages that were once the present but now are transfinitely many stages in the past is meaningless. KF
Well, it would satisfy the definition of infinite you posted:
extending beyond, lying beyond, or being greater than any preassigned finite value however large
Furthermore, virtually everyone who has published on the subject finds the notion meaningful. Can you at least understand why some of us think the way we do? Notice that Latemarch immediately understood that in your tape example, all cells have finite distance from one another. It's "obvious". All cells must be reachable (in a finite number of steps) from the end. If not, the unreachable cells could not be connected to the reachable portion, since no unreachable cell can be adjacent to a reachable cell. So your tape would consist of two parts that cannot touch. That's not how tapes (even infinite thought-experiment tapes) behave.daveS_{March 14, 2017
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DS, I put it to you that a claimed infinite past that does not have in it stages that were once the present but now are transfinitely many stages in the past is meaningless. KFkairosfocus_{March 14, 2017
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FW, a spot is not nothing, it is not non-being. KFkairosfocus_{March 14, 2017
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If you could point to a spot where there was absolutely nothing, what would it be surrounded by ?Fair Witness_{March 14, 2017
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KF,
DS, nope, I am being fully consistent with my earlier argument. The issue remains that an infinite actual past requires that there were actual past times that are now infinitely remote.
Yes, I'm definitely not saying you are being inconsistent with what you have said before. As far as I can tell, it's almost the exact same argument, based around the claim (which I consider to be dubious), that there must be particular past times/stages that are infinitely remote. In other words, that the revised version of P' is true. On the other hand, if the past is infinite, but all time intervals between particular points in time are finite (in terms of seconds), then the only way causal chains with property P' could occur is if we have infinitely many stages occurring in some particular finite (in seconds) time interval, i.e., something like Zeno's paradox. But this would have to have happened in some finite subset of the past, hence this would actually be a problem for finite-past proponents as well.
PS: We are now very much on a tangent, and I see no-one has been willing to address the implications of trying to pull a cosmos out of a true utter nothing.
Well I don't see how it would be possible for a cosmos to emerge out of "nothingness". Even attempting to reason about such a thing ties one up in knots.daveS_{March 14, 2017
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DS, nope, I am being fully consistent with my earlier argument. The issue remains that an infinite actual past requires that there were actual past times that are now infinitely remote. Given the nature of temporal-causal succession by FINITE stages, this then poses the challenge of traversing a transfinite span with endlessness in it, by finite stage steps. Note, my emphasis on finite stage, causal-temporal succession. This traversal of the transfinite in finite stage steps is an impossibility, as described and explained in brief above. So, any past stage I* -- let us distinguish for clarity -- that can actually reach the present P through such stepwise stages is finitely remote. This is what I am arguing, and it pivots on the issue of temporal-causal, finite stage succession. Until I see how your proposed propositions above address that explicitly, I decline to engage them as being dangerously ambiguous. Your P fails to address it at all, and someone else has pointed out that once you pin down two specific points you imply a finite interval given temporal succession, which is consistent with my point. Again, I highlight that the pivot is the meaning of what an infinite actual past means. I contend, it means that there would have been past stages I as I have described, which then leads to an impossibility. So, there were no real quasi-physical world stages I that are now actually infinitely removed in finite stage successive steps as described. KF PS: We are now very much on a tangent, and I see no-one has been willing to address the implications of trying to pull a cosmos out of a true utter nothing.kairosfocus_{March 13, 2017
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KF,
An infinite actual past entails that there was some I, once present but now past through causally linked succession to I+1, I+2 etc, until it reaches the present, P. Where, for the past stage I to be infinitely remote, the I in question has to be transfinitely many stages antecedent to P. This is an issue of the meaning of claiming an infinite actual temporal past.
That's contrary to the definition you posted in the other thread:
extending beyond, lying beyond, or being greater than any preassigned finite value however large
A causal chain is infinite iff for any positive integer n, there exists a stage more than n steps before the present. Now we are back to my post #23, only we're talking about stages rather than seconds/years, etc:
P: Given any positive integer n, there exist two stages in the causal chain separated by more than n steps. P’: There exists a particular stage in the causal chain that is infinitely many steps from the present.
I believe you maintain (at least) that if a causal chain is infinite, then it satisfies property P' If you still trust that dictionary definition, then that would mean if a causal chain satisfies P, it satisfies P'. Is this correct?daveS_{March 13, 2017
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