Oxymoron

I'm about to talk bollocks. Yeah, yeah, "oh not again Oxy" (etc) [pauses for chorus of sarcy humour to settle]. I'm not even sure where this is going, so just let me type and I'll sort it out. Then feel free to laugh / deride / applaud.

I was reading (yet) another thread on the Cosmological Argument, and the phrase "something from nothing" made a little light-bulb flash above my balding head - now that's quite a reflection.

The issue was this: we talk of space and time being created in the big bang, and I'm cool with that. Loosely speaking, space is that which can be measured with a ruler; time is that which can be measured by a clock. Of course, there is nothing ruling out other time and / or space coordinates [a coordinate being a gradation of a dimensional measurement] not connected with our own (ie a multiverse); or indeed some recursive structure (that our universe is a bubble within a "larger" bubble [etc]. It makes no sense to talk of time before the big bang in our own local spacetime - it might in others, should they exist.

Measurement and existence are therefore intimately connected. As far as universes are concerned "I can be measured therefore I am". Now, measurement is an inherently mathematical process. In quantum mechanics, measurement is a mathematical operator that acts upon state vectors and their relationships determine everything we can fundamentally say about a physical system. In fact, can we abstract this further, and suggest that every interaction of anything with anything can be seen as a "measurement"? So (say) an electron "measures" the energy of a photon by absorbing it and announces the result by re-emitting another photon of some energy and / or changing its orbital. Thus, our physical reality of hard objects that hit us is nothing more than a gazillion "measurements" and their results.

Why is this abstraction important (if indeed it is)? Well let's consider what is surely an invariant of the universe: 2+2=4. It is impossible - under any meaningful definition of "2", "+", "=", "4" and "integer" for this to be otherwise (if 2+2=5, what would 2+3 be?). This appears to be independent of space and / or time - it will be as true 15 billion years ago as it is now. In other words, it's impossible that there can ever be nothing - there is an abstract scaffold to build concrete universes upon. Regularity is built into the substrate of existence because there will always be things that are true and things that are false. Of course, in the Transcendental Argument, theists insist that god lies behind these regularities. But clearly no god is necessary - unless god is that set of things that are true and false independent of space and time (which doesn't account for Jebus, omnimaxitude or alleged objective morality amongst other things).

Mathematics is our symbolic language for expressing relationships between abstract entities. It is limited by our ability to conceive of things (it is, in a sense, exploratory), and by limitations of logic (so Godel tells us there is a limit to what we can meaningfully say about systems, in much the same was as QM tells us there are fundamental limitations with respect to measurement).

So: when theists argue "something can't come from nothing", they may not just have a flawed concept of nothing - they may have an erroneous idea of "something" too. 2+2=4 always existed, regularity always existed, measurement always existed, our "universe" always existed.

Maybe Plato was right after all: the multi/universe is a pure mathematical construct that has, and always will exist, almost by definition.

I'll shut up now. And take my tablets.

teemu

Clocks do not measure time, time is defined to be what clocks measure.

http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jun/in-no-time/

Make sure to have plenty available..

Oxymoron

Fair enough: time has been an enigma, and it seems will continue to be for some, er, time. I guess until we can categorically understand this very fundamental quantity then any pronouncements made upon it are a bit meaningless; on the other hand, SR, GR and a large bulk of QM still "work" given t-as-a-parameter-which-just-happens-to-be-unidirectional. So I would suggest my discussion remains as valid as most other discussions.

StarryNight

So simple maths is always true, therefore the universe is eternal? And not created!


Let's say that the known universe is 15 billion y old. Can we say that simple maths were true 16 bya? Before the dawn of known time? Is 16bya even a coherent physical concept?

Oxymoron

Is "simple maths" (for some suitable definition of 'simple') a coherent physical concept?

Bobinius

"Regularity is always built into the substrate of existence" you say.

This means that regularity cannot make sense independent of existence. Somethings cannot be true while nothing exists, since they have absolutely no meaning at all. So I don't see the inconsistencies.

adren@line

"nothing" cannot exist, as there is always "something".

If you define "something" as matter, that makes up around 1-3% of the known universe, so it hardly holds-up.

DBT

Isn't time a measurement of the the rate of change? The rate of change being relative to velocity, gravity, entropy....?

premjan

Possibly something bears a statistical relation to nothing (e.g. the vacuum) so in a sense something is determined by nothing.

punkforchrist

Would you define, "universe," as entailing not only physical space, time, and matter, but also those things which transcend it, like mathematical and logical formulae?