Philosophy Discussion Forums

The easiest and simplest way to think about space is to forget about it altogether as something "out there" but to regard it instead as something "in here". It is something that exists entirely in your own head. This is what every philosopher throughout the ages has said and they are dead right.

Imagine looking through a fancy telescope at a distant galaxy, a billion light years from earth. Let's call it the Obama galaxy. You will have no way of telling how "far away" this galaxy is without reference to a cosmological survey chart. These charts are compiled using very sophisticated instrumentation which can calculate how much time the light has taken to get to reach the earth from various points in the universe. This chart tells you that the light from the Obama galaxy has taken a billion years to reach us and it them performs a simple calculation to turn this temporal interval into a spatial distance. This calculation will reveal to you that the Obama galaxy is 9,460,730,472,580,800,000,000 kilometers "away" from earth.

Does that make you any the wiser? If this number had a zero more on it, it would mean it was ten times further away and if it had a zero less it would be ten times closer. Does this give you a clearer mental picture of the universe? Of course it doesn't, which is why cosmologists don't express it this way. Not only does this silly calculation give you a number so large as to be meaningless, it also tells you nothing about the object you're looking at. The simple truth is that you can say nothing about the Obama galaxy which isn't a billion years out of date so to say it's "out there" at all is nonsense. It WAS "out there" a billion years ago and nobody will ever be able to tell you where the bloody thing is right now.

Why not just say the Obama galaxy lies a billion years in your past and leave it at that?

Regards Leo

There is that which exists and that which doesn't exist. That which exists is called "something" and that which does not exist is called " nothing". The mind can only perceive that which exists, with the five senses. The mind cannot perceive that which does not exist, since it is not there. Non-existence or nothing, is Infine, thereby allowing that which is there, or something, to expand into it, indefinitely.

In the same way that darkness, is the absence of light, nothing is the absence of something. They are not two, just different degrees of the same thing.

Bohm2,

The "Compton scattering" is basically similar to the phenomenen illustrated by the sailers ditty. Red sky at night, sailers delight, red sky in the morning, sailers take warning. Of course this is only frequently true but it is an observation as to the scattering of light due to collisions wiith dust or water vapor in the atmosphere.

It's just one of many factors causing light to lose energy (red shift"). It also would tend to be greater with distance. More debris in the way. Not hard to understand.

My point (I think) is that there are many factors that cause visible light to lose energies and few to make it gain "blue shift".

I have described some of them but my math is insufficient to make a satisfactory proof speaking in the language of mathematics. My mechanical skills are fairly decent though and if we can describe the Universe as an electro- mechanical device then it may make sense.

I don't think that one can use the "red shift" (Hubble Constant) as a proof that the Universe is expanding without taking all the factors into consideration and correcting for them. This is past my abilities and probably always will be, So far I have not found anybody that has published a "correction table" which would be needed to determine if any expansion is actually taking place.

Since the Big Bang theory of Creation requires a subsequent expansion we should know if it is actually happening, and is not just an "optical illusion" reflecting on the nature of light subject to gravity. This is similar to a rainbow being simply dependent on the nature of light subjected to water droplets.

There is another theory that God made the rainbow to show humans that Noah's services would never again be required. That theory is dependent upon there being a God. The Expansion theory depends on a singularity or creation event.

Thanks, M.

-- Updated August 11th, 2014, 10:00 am to add the following --

It's obvious Leo,

There are many people who wonder "Why are we here". These are often the same people who run things here on Earth and in their honest quest for an answer they have come up with many theories, some of which impacted me personally.

Why are we here is unanswerable without recourse to an intelligence, but their is still a considerable number of people trying to answer that question.

How we got here is answerable. The oftener that we can come up with a 'How" the less often that "why" will be asked. To answer "why" we have invented and abused the idea of God something fierce. That is why it's necessary to count the zeroes. Every zero tends to reduce the powers of the questioners who ask why, usually with disastrous results from a humans point of view. That is the big reason that those who ask "why"are not big fans of those who ask "how".

Best,M.

Mechsmith. The red-shift and blue-shift have nothing to do with intervening matter but merely refer to whether the galaxies appear to be moving away from the observer (red) or towards the observer (blue). The "Correction Table" you refer to is unnecessary if we think this observed expansion through correctly. Just think of the universe as AGING instead of expanding and then add gravity. Problem solved with no mystery and no cosmological constant. And, of course, NO SPACE.

Mechsmith wrote:Why are we here is unanswerable without recourse to an intelligence

Speak for yourself, mate. I know exactly why I'm here. I'm here because I was caused to be here but nobody intended me to be here. That would be to put desCartes before desHorace.

Regards Leo

"What is the universe expanding inside of?"

The answer should now be clear... inside Obvious Leo's head. (Just razzing you, bro)

Yes, to me it's obvious, Leo.

That the universe is aging, not expanding that is. But for all those popular writers that are supposed to be explaining things to the rest of us should not be multipling entities unecessarily. If they do it's probably too much for them to admit that they are writing novels, not explanatory tomes.

I expect it from my preachers and politicians, not my physicists.

I will admit though, if they had thought it through before publishing we probably wouldn't be here talking. But it's an ill wind indeed that blows no man good. And if they had thought it through they should have realized that a correction table would be necessary and after making it the whole bunch of BB-EU theories could be used to heat their houses.

Best, M.

I understand "HOW" you were caused to be here. There needs to be no "WHY"

Felix wrote:"What is the universe expanding inside of?"

The answer should now be clear... inside Obvious Leo's head. (Just razzing you, bro)

I have a perfectly well-adjusted sense of humour, Felix, and to me the piss-take is an honourable part of the human dialogue. However nobody in the history of humanity has ever been able to explain a spatial universe to anybody else's satisfaction. The physicists have managed to twist their own brains into mathematical pretzels in the attempt, but they have an unenviable track record when it comes to making sense. They can't even explain it to each other, let alone to dumb schmucks like us.

I'll try a little thought experiment to test the thinkers. Just to make it clear what I'm saying. I say that we don't "observe" space but rather we "construct" it in our heads. Space is an artefact of consciousness only and not a physical property of the universe. This is not a controversial proposition in philosophy, which has never said otherwise.

Imagine you hear a plane flying overhead outside and you go outside to look at it. How high up is it?

What is the answer to this question? You can't answer it unless you know what sort of plane it is and you know something about aviation. A bloke that's never seen a plane before wouldn't know where to start because he has insufficient information on which to base his estimate. We don't observe the space between us and the plane but rather we CALCULATE it on the basis of our prior knowledge. For instance in my own case if I see a commercial airliner it will be a Boeing 767 on the Adelaide-Melbourne route and I know that these planes fly at about 35,000 ft. If it's a single-engine Cessna it will probably be a hobby pilot flying somewhere between 2000 and 6000 ft. Then I need to make a further slight adjustment depending on the size of the plane in my visual field and refine my estimate accordingly. If it's a helicopter it'll be the fuzz looking for my marijuana crop and may only be a hundred feet or so above the treetops. If it's a mosquito it'll be only inches above my head.

Absolutely none of the spaces we observe in our everyday lives are observations. Every single one of them is a calculation based on our assumptions about the object under observation and our knowledge of the relative distances of other objects in our visual field. This is orthodox and mainstream science in the psychology of perception and neuroscience has got a pretty good idea of which brain structures are involved in this process. It is estimated that the sense of sight has evolved in living organisms by at least 20 distinctly different mechanisms along the evolutionary journey and yet no cyclops. If one eye was all we needed then one is all we would have got because nature is not renowned for endowing her creations with frivolous luxuries. If humans had only one eye they would only have the neural architecture to process information from this one eye and thus would never be able to calculate 3D space but 3D space is not what what we're observing. We are actually observing an interval of time and converting it into a distance in space by calculation, just as the astronomers do when they formulate their cosmological charts. We are spatialising time, in other words.

A metaphysically-challenged jackass by the name of Hermann Minkowski did the same thing to Einstein's theory of Special Relativity. He simply turned time into a spatial dimension and nothing the dopey pricks have said ever since has made the slightest lick of sense.

Regards Leo

Q. How do you work out how far away the moon is. A. You look it up in a book

Philosophy Explorer wrote:Atreyu,

I regard the universe as finite and therefore bounded and limited in extent. Do you regard the universe as infinite in extent?

PhilX

No, I regard it as finite and bounded as well, that is, when considering three dimensions of space.

But when considering higher dimensions of space, which I believe the Universe contains, I don't consider it either finite or infinite. It could be either.

BTW, "space" is how we cognize and perceive the world. It's an inherent part of our intellect. So is "matter" and "energy". We cognize the world as a world of "matter in space" and "matter being acted on by energy/force". There is nothing wrong with this, it is simply the tools of our intellect as nature gave them to us. You can just as easily say that matter doesn't really exist, or energy doesn't really exist. But that won't help make anything more clear. Thinking in terms of "here and there" is an integral part of our intellect and discarding it is very counterproductive. Of course we can hypothesize that everything is really "here", and that a "here and there" is only a product of our subjective cognition. But what kind of cosmological model does that leave us with? Our model must comport with our intellect.

Space does not have dimensions, because it isn't there. How is it possible for something which does not exist, to have dimensions?

The problem with a finite universe, is the question of what lies beyond the boundary, once you reach it? If you travel in a straight line, and the universe is finite, you will come to an end, so what lies beyond that end?

All of the matter, that we are able to observe in our section of empty space, which we call the universe, may be finite, as it expands into the nothingness of empty space. We tend to think of this matter as the entire universe, simply because it falls within the limits of what we may observe. However, given the infinite nature of space in the universe, there may be another pocket of matter well beyond our scope of observation, perhaps a 100 billion light years away, or 1000 billion light years away.

The human mind cannot comprehend these distances. We look at things from our own perspective, in terms of bigger then us or smaller then us, and yet there are no limits on how big or how small we may go. Infinitely goes in both directions.

Present awareness wrote:Space does not have dimensions, because it isn't there. How is it possible for something which does not exist, to have dimensions?

I didn't understand this part. Are you arguing against space-time substantivalism?

Present awareness wrote:If you travel in a straight line, and the universe is finite, you will come to an end, so what lies beyond that end?

Did you know that if Special Relativity were true it would be physically possible for you to traverse the entire universe in a single lifetime? Unfortunately on your return the entire Milky Way galaxy would have long ago died of old age, along with your twin if you should happen to have one. Equations can do strange things to people.

Regards Leo

Figures don't lie, but liars can figure. Old quote possibly from Mark Twain.

And some of us can lie very well and not even realize it

Bohm2 wrote:

Present awareness wrote:Space does not have dimensions, because it isn't there. How is it possible for something which does not exist, to have dimensions?

I didn't understand this part. Are you arguing against space-time substantivalism?

Humans cannot perceive that which does not exist, and so we call it " nothing" or "space" or "void". However, the " isn't there-ness" of empty space allows room for that which is there.

My view on time is that it is a useful concept to measure changes or movement thru space, but does not exist outside of a concept. I believe this to be true, because it is the present moment everywhere in space at the same time. You may move thru space but not thru time, because it is always now, always the present moment.

In your dreams where is time? Where is distance? Where is space? Now imagine a force that focuses on these moments, hemming them in, slowing them down and down to a single point which materialises, then releasing it creating energy, matter, distance, space and time within a bubble that is governed by that same force. At the edges of this bubble everything speeds beyond the speed of light and is recycled back into the centre of the ripple effect, each ripple another time over the same, each one a factor of reality which can only matter within the speed of light. The reality is that without this presence there would be nothing to make sense of, yet of it that which we try to make greater sense of does not matter anymore. This although simplified is how I view expansion; it is the product of a force which maintains it for a moment, a moment in which we have time and time to bring our new found dreams together within it to matter. I guess.

Mechsmith wrote:Figures don't lie, but liars can figure. Old quote possibly from Mark Twain.

And some of us can lie very well and not even realize it

I think lying might be putting the case too harshly, mate. In these enlightened times of political correctness I think "logically-challenged" might accord better with our yearning for ideological purity.

Mark Twain also said this: "One should never let one's education interfere with one's learning"

Present awareness wrote: You may move thru space but not thru time, because it is always now, always the present moment.

The space can be illusory, as you say, but the time cannot. We don't move "through" time but rather "within" time.

Regards Leo