Reply To: Proliferation?

[MARK LOFTS]

Dear Pluto,

In answer to your first query about the star/dust ratio i.e. that BBNH is one long argument for keeping this ratio high, I justify it as follows. ‘Dark matter’ is merely a term describing non-luminous matter and while usually taken to refer to modern cosmology’s inferred masses of material revealed only by their supposed gravitational effects, it can also refer to non-luminous matter of ordinary kinds e.g. planets, brown dwarfs, asteroids or ‘dust’ in a more ordinary sense. As Lerner points out, most of a galaxy’s mass can be accounted for by the luminous matter, i.e. a galaxy’s shape and rotation is explainable by electromagnetism rather than modern cosmology’s GR-tainted gravity.

In your later query “what do you mean?” I presume you refer to my comment in the last posting on the “cyclic universe” directed specifically at your mention of this. As you are aware, our universe and our personal lives are full of cycles of all sorts – astronomical, physical, chemical, biological etc. Whether the phases of the moon or the succession of human generations, the seasons on our planet and others or even the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction. These are all very real – but have no particular philosophical implications as each of them only involves a small part of the universe.

As this whole thread however is dealing with the Big Bang and what is to replace it, the question of a “cyclic universe” also includes the notion of the whole universe somehow cycling. The idea of Big Bang and Big Crunch is the best known of these “universal cyclings”, repeated cycles of this being termed the ‘Oscillating Universe Theory.’ Modern cosmologists have naively accepted and developed such models – even though we now know that galactic recession shows signs of ‘accelerating’ at large distances, giving no hint of any ‘Big Crunch’ at all. How many people could Paul Davies convince about the reality of the Big Crunch by running around in a chicken suit yelling “the sky is falling?” Not many… but he won more by writing a book called “The Last Three Minutes” even though both notions amount to the same thing!

The idea of the whole universe undergoing some sort of cycling is a common subject of ancient philosophy but such cycling of the universe, apart from implying its finitude, also implies that the universe will repeat its structure precisely and absolutely after a long period of time and/or repeated cyclings. This is the Stoic doctrine of the Eternal Recurrence, a teaching highlighted more recently by Nietzsche who realized that it was a notion that could not be scientifically disproven – or, more correctly, not disprovable by modern science (i.e. modernity) – hence the coming of Einstein’s teachings in the 20th century which have engendered useless scientific speculation along this line. Nietzsche’s English language commentator Walter Kaufmann thought he could disprove Eternal Recurrence easily by imagining three wheels spinning at a rate of 1, 2 and pi units respectively. Since pi is irrational, whenever 1 & 2 met up in their original position, the pi wheel would always be “out of sync” – disproving Eternal Recurrence. However, this cannot disprove eternal recurrence in nature because this idealized situation cannot be proven in nature to the infinite degree required by the mathematical infinitude of this abstract number. In other words, a scientist who believes in the Eternal Recurrence would claim that our real world – like its trillions of wheels and vortices – is ‘clunky’ so that after a certain number of trillions of Big Bangs the universal situation would repeat absolutely exactly one of the previous cycles of Bang’n’Crunch.

What most scientists have NOT grasped – in contrast to Lerner – is the difference between causality and determinism (BBNH p. 368). Notions of Eternal Recurrence embody a most peculiar sort of determinism in which everything is somehow precisely connected – a preestablished harmony underneath it all even though it may appear disharmonious. Most philosophical systems try to deny any fundamental disharmony in the universe, saying that it is merely a ‘bad thing’ or, along with Plato, the result of recalcitrant or imperfect matter. Einstein too denies any fundamental disharmony, claiming that his predetermined universe is to be preferred to one with entropy i.e. a finite universe subject to decay being the only alternative Einstein will even permit!

Descended from Lutheran pastors on both sides of his family Nietzsche was an intellectually honest atheist and did not create a philosophical system as had most earlier philosophers. Rather, he tried to develop his atheism along consistent philosophical lines. This actually leads to Nietzsche’s thought evolving into two separate philosophical investigations – one of these leading to the Eternal Recurrence. The Eternal Recurrence embodies the notion of determinism. In contrast Nietzsche’s other line of investigation embodies causality. That the universe is infinite means it cannot eternally recur – evolution is ongoing and unrepeatable precisely. The infinite divisibility of matter, implicit in the Aspect Experiment, the demonstrated divisiblity of photons (Bose’s Principle) and the very nature of plasma, has however other social implications (relevant to BBNH pp. 405-425) – though, as even atoms were not proven to exist in his day, Nietzsche did not specifically address their connection to matter’s infinite divisibility.

Yours faithfully

Mark