From David Albert's review of Krauss;'s universe from nothin

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From David Albert's review of Krauss;'s universe from nothin

Post by Metacrock » Sat Mar 10, 2018 2:24 am

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books ... rauss.html
It happens that ever since the scientific revolution of the 17th century, what physics has given us in the way of candidates for the fundamental laws of nature have as a general rule simply taken it for granted that there is, at the bottom of everything, some basic, elementary, eternally persisting, concrete, physical stuff. Newton, for example, took that elementary stuff to consist of material particles. And physicists at the end of the 19th century took that elementary stuff to consist of both material particles and electro­magnetic fields. And so on. And what the fundamental laws of nature are about, and all the fundamental laws of nature are about, and all there is for the fundamental laws of nature to be about, insofar as physics has ever been able to imagine, is how that elementary stuff is arranged. The fundamental laws of nature generally take the form of rules concerning which arrangements of that stuff are physically possible and which aren’t, or rules connecting the arrangements of that elementary stuff at later times to its arrangement at earlier times, or something like that. But the laws have no bearing whatsoever on questions of where the elementary stuff came from, or of why the world should have consisted of the particular elementary stuff it does, as opposed to something else, or to nothing at all.

The fundamental physical laws that Krauss is talking about in “A Universe From Nothing” — the laws of relativistic quantum field theories — are no exception to this. The particular, eternally persisting, elementary physical stuff of the world, according to the standard presentations of relativistic quantum field theories, consists (unsurprisingly) of relativistic quantum fields. And the fundamental laws of this theory take the form of rules concerning which arrangements of those fields are physically possible and which aren’t, and rules connecting the arrangements of those fields at later times to their arrangements at earlier times, and so on — and they have nothing whatsoever to say on the subject of where those fields came from, or of why the world should have consisted of the particular kinds of fields it does, or of why it should have consisted of fields at all, or of why there should have been a world in the first place. Period. Case closed. End of story.
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Re: From David Albert's review of Krauss;'s universe from nothin

Post by QuantumTroll » Sat Mar 24, 2018 3:58 pm

Don't you know why this is?

It's turtles all the way down.

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Re: From David Albert's review of Krauss;'s universe from nothin

Post by Metacrock » Mon Mar 26, 2018 1:16 pm

QuantumTroll wrote:
Sat Mar 24, 2018 3:58 pm
Don't you know why this is?

It's turtles all the way down.
:mrgreen: :D :D :D :D 8-) :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

great to see you again man
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Re: From David Albert's review of Krauss;'s universe from nothin

Post by foresthome » Fri Apr 20, 2018 2:56 pm

I kind of like the downhome sound of "universe from nothin". Could be a good but nerdy country song.

I don't see why physicists like Krauss don't discuss Kant on space and causality and so on; clearly there is
a long tradition of understanding the laws of physics (and everyday phenomenology) as something that's
ADDED to the world as it really is, so that you when start with the vacuum AND the laws of physics,
boundary conditions and all, you really have something rather nothing.

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Re: From David Albert's review of Krauss;'s universe from nothin

Post by Metacrock » Sat Apr 21, 2018 11:51 am

foresthome wrote:
Fri Apr 20, 2018 2:56 pm
I kind of like the downhome sound of "universe from nothin". Could be a good but nerdy country song.

I don't see why physicists like Krauss don't discuss Kant on space and causality and so on; clearly there is
a long tradition of understanding the laws of physics (and everyday phenomenology) as something that's
ADDED to the world as it really is, so that you when start with the vacuum AND the laws of physics,
boundary conditions and all, you really have something rather nothing.
exactly, then they have to explain and they can't.
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Re: From David Albert's review of Krauss;'s universe from nothin

Post by Jim B. » Sat Apr 21, 2018 3:28 pm

But then some of them say that the laws and such are not anyTHING, but only mathematical abstractions. (IMSkeptical has said that to me.) But isn't everything analyzed at a small enough scale that way?

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Re: From David Albert's review of Krauss;'s universe from nothin

Post by Metacrock » Sun Apr 22, 2018 4:01 am

Jim B. wrote:
Sat Apr 21, 2018 3:28 pm
But then some of them say that the laws and such are not anyTHING, but only mathematical abstractions. (IMSkeptical has said that to me.) But isn't everything analyzed at a small enough scale that way?
That goes in line with saying that physical laws are descriptive rather than prescriptive. my essay on that dichotomy shows how problematic that is.


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Re: From David Albert's review of Krauss;'s universe from nothin

Post by foresthome » Mon Apr 23, 2018 9:49 am

jb, by "small scale" do you mean that elementary particles etc. analyzed with mathematics?

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Re: From David Albert's review of Krauss;'s universe from nothin

Post by Jim B. » Mon Apr 23, 2018 2:45 pm

Yeah, that sort of thing. ;)

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