Ah, but there's the point. There wasn't any stuff, or non-stuff, surrounding the not yet point.
What didn't exist was the surrounding. It's not that there wasn't anything there. It's that there wasn't any there to have nothing in it.
MB
No need to argue. The universe will go on the same regardless of how we define it.
It does not prevent to be rational.
I don't think you are more rational than all those philosophers of the middle ages trying to demonstrate the existence of God by pure logic*. Logic, just like mathematics, is entirely inside the mind of the man. Whatever theory that is only demonstrated only "mathematically" or "logically" is just self-sustaining interesting reasoning but no science.
I'm still with Galileo. No empirical demonstration, no science. The cimento (test, trial) gives the demonstration that the theory was good. Never the theory itself.
The idea, for instance, that before the big bang there was no space to be there is just a negation in words of the problem the mind has (and cannot solve). If the big bang is an explosion of matter, that matter will explode into some space which has to have been there to receive that matter. Besides, big-bang theories normally as far as I know talk about a pulsating universe, with infinitely repeated big-bang-expansion-contraction-big-bang cycles!
Saying that it is energy, or mass, (or energy-mass if you prefer) that creates space contravenes what our mind thinks when we think of mass, energy, or space. This negation is as far as I know performed either as pure imagined concept or, in the case of some other theories, with advanced mathematical "demonstrations". But yet again, no cimento, no science. Only theory with maybe a very intelligent and elegant layout.
According to the imperfect infinitesimal calculus of the ancient Greeks Achilles would "never" reach the turtle. The logic mistake in the reasoning is easily shown, first of all, by noticing in real life that Achilles does reach the turtle. If the reasoning could be performed by some creatures in a world where there is no Achilles and no turtle, so to say, to prove it wrong, the brilliant mathematical construction might go on being right in the mathematical mind of the mathematical theorizers. Mathematics is not empirical evidence. Human brain can fail. Mathematics is a creation of the mind. Pushing it to its boundaries might give incorrect results.
In the beautiful work Life of Galileo Bertolt Brecht shows us Galileo while trying to convince two Dominican friars to look inside his telescope, to see the "Medicean planets". The Dominican, I go by memory, answer that they are not interested in looking inside the telescope until they don't have an acceptable theory first that may justify them looking into it. The instrument might have defects but the human mind when properly used cannot fail, that is. Such is the presumptuousness of the human mind.
* Failing miserably but often becoming "saints" in the process.
I don't think you are more rational than all those philosophers of the middle ages trying to demonstrate the existence of God by pure logic*. Logic, just like mathematics, is entirely inside the mind of the man. Whatever theory that is only demonstrated only "mathematically" or "logically" is just self-sustaining interesting reasoning but no science.
After reading you guys, I think I'm just going to go out tonight and drink the thread title.
... Logic, just like mathematics, is entirely inside the mind of the man. Whatever theory that is only demonstrated only "mathematically" or "logically" is just self-sustaining interesting reasoning but no science.
"If you gave a monkey infinite shots would he eventually write 'Fairytale in New York'."
Perhaps this will become the Infinite Thread.
After reading you guys, I think I'm just going to go out tonight and drink the thread title.
...If the big bang is an explosion of matter, that matter will explode into some space which has to have been there to receive that matter.
[...]
If the reasoning could be performed by some creatures in a world where there is no Achilles and no turtle, so to say, to prove it wrong, the brilliant mathematical construction might go on being right in the mathematical mind of the mathematical theorizers...
I have Woodchuck. It makes forum reading SO much better.
This has been debated endlessly,and certainly there are many people who share your opinion. I do not entirely agree with you: I think the discrete and arithmetical part of mathematics reflects the discrete nature of reality. In as much as the universe consists of separate and differentiated parts, there are truths contained in the natural numbers that reflect truths about reality.
Anyway, reading this made me want to quote something humorous from a book I happen to be reading ( fiction ):
"Mathematics is the only valid portrait of reality. Everything else is delusional."
"Philosophers are people who know less and less about more and more, until they know nothing about everything. Scientists are people who know more and more about less and less, until they know everything about nothing
Konrad Lorenz
What didn't exist was the surrounding. It's not that there wasn't anything there. It's that there wasn't any there to have nothing in it.
Honestly, think whatever you want, I don't care.
When someone mistakes infinity with "no limit" (different wording = different meaning, isn't it?), it says it all.
Now about experiment. I am sure you know what gravity is. Show me gravity! You can't. The only thing you can do is to experiment that a stone falls on the ground each time you drop it. that's all you can conclude from your experiment; when I drop a stone, it falls on the ground. And then you will build a theory to explain why and how the stone falls each time you drop it.
It is exactly (at a different scale) what happens with the universe. Observations and then theoriy to try to explain the observation. You don't buy it? Fine, but don't tell us than mathematicians and astrophysicists are intellectually dishonest and not men of science because they work on theories. Rant over!
Is time infinite? If it is then why are we not there already?
Something I tried to do as a child was to imagine nothing existing... not even a space for the nothingness to be in. I don't think our minds are capable of doing it.
I have Woodchuck. It makes forum reading SO much better.
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