29 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
Man, Universe-Builder and Maker of Over-Beliefs
Every man is a "Universe-Builder"; he is, likewise, a maker of "Over-beliefs".
Man's inner and outer necessities, real or imagined, have made him both a Scientist and a Philosopher. Neither Science nor Philosophy alone has been adequate. The material facts of the science of his universe have not satisfied; an "overbelief" or a "philosophy" in terms of which an interpretation of his life as a whole may be attempted has been a necessity. He has been in search not only of facts but of meaning ... 1 
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notesIntroduction to a 1930's science book. The language is very interesting. The passage is very insightful in places, naive in others, but poetic throughout.
04 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Big Bang Does Not Preclude a Creator
Hubble's observations suggested that there was a time, called the big bang, when the universe was infinitesimally small and infinitely dense. Under such conditions all the laws of science, and therefore all ability to predict the future, would break down. If there were events earlier than this time, then they could not affect what happens at the present time. Their existence can be ignored because it would have no observational consequences. One may say that time had a beginning at the big ba... 1 notes
notesBut sets limits on when it did the creating.
04 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Why Does the Universe Exist?
Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing? Folksonomies: origins existential
Folksonomies: origins existential
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notesThe most profound question for Stephen Hawking.
13 APR 2012 by ideonexus
St. Augustine on Christian Explanations for Origins
It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, t... 1 notes
notesRemarkably insightful statement from 426 AD about how Christians look foolish when they try to apply the literal interpretation of Genesis to the natural world.
12 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
The Origin of Life is Speculative
The question of the origin of life is essentially speculative. We have to construct, by straightforward thinking on the basis of very few factual observations, a plausible and self-consistent picture of a process which must have occurred before any of the forms which are known to us in the fossil record could have existed. 1 notes
notesWe have no fossil record of the origin of life, we are left only to attempt to recreate it in the lab, but we won't know if we got the process right.
02 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Why "Origin of Species" was So Devastating
Yet with the growing public knowledge of geology and astronomy, and the recognition of ‘deep space’ and ‘deep time’, fewer and fewer men or women of education can have believed in a literal, Biblical six days of creation. However, science itself had yet to produce its own theory (or myth) of creation, and there was no alternative Newtonian Book of Genesis — as yet. That is why Darwin’s On the Origin of Species appeared so devastating when it was finally published in 1859. It was n... 1 notes
notesBefore it's publication, science had no story of our origins to compete with the Bible.
13 DEC 2011 by ideonexus
M-Theory Describes a Universe That Creates Itself
If the total energy of the universe must always remain zero, and it costs energy to create a body, how can a whole universe be created from nothing. That is why there must be a law like gravity. Because gravity is attractive, gravitational energy is negative: One has to do work to separate a gravitationally bound system. such as the earth and moon. This negative energy can balance the positive energy needed to create matter, but it's not quite that simple. The negative gravitational energy of... 1 notes
notesHow it does this, I don't fully understand from this passage.
13 DEC 2011 by ideonexus
The Strong Anthropic Principle
The weak anthropic principle is not very controversial. But there is a stronger form that we will argue for here, although it is regarded with disdain among some physicists. The strong anthropic principle suggests that the fact that we exist imposes constraints not just on our environment but on the possible form and content of the laws of nature themselves. The idea arose because it is not only the peculiar characteristics of our solar system that seem oddly conducive to the development of h... 1 notes
notesOur existence puts constraints on the very laws of nature.
13 DEC 2011 by ideonexus
The Weak Anthropic Principle
Our very existence imposes rules determining from where and at what time it is possible for us to observe the universe. That is, the fact of our being restricts the characteristics of the kind of environment in which we find ourselves. That principle is called the weak anthropic principle. (We'll see shortly why the adjective weak" is attached.) A better term than "anthropic principle" would have been "selection principle," because the principle refers to how our own knowledge of our existenc... 1 notes
notesA quick definition and explanation of this theory of why we live in a universe where we could emerge.
13 DEC 2011 by ideonexus
Origins of the Big Bang Theory and Evidence For It
That the universe is expanding was news to Einstein. But the possibility that the galaxies are moving away from each other had been proposed a few years before Hubble's papers on theoretical grounds arising from Einstein's own equations. In 1922, Russian physicist and mathematician Alexander Friedmann investigated what would happen in a model universe based upon two assumptions that greatly simplified the mathematics: that the universe looks identical in every direction, and that it looks tha... 1 notes
notesThe logical conclusion drawn by a Catholic Priest and the Cosmic Background Radiation (CMBR) we see left over from the event.
