To Stathis, Brent, and List:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Brent Meeker" <meekerdb.domain.name.hidden> (not really!)
To: <everything-list.domain.name.hidden>
Sent: Monday, August 14, 2006 3:22 AM
Subject: Re: Can we ever know truth?
>
> Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > John M writes:
> >
> >
> >>When did you last learn that the tenets of ongoing
> >>physics are only "provisionally" accepted as 'real'?
> >>(I just wanted to tease members of this list.
> >>Of course on THIS list 'thinking' people gathered and
> >>such thoughts are not unusual. We are the exception.)
> >>
> >>An example is the Big Bang. Many scientists almost put
> >>it into their evening prayer. Doubting is heresy.
> >>This is why I scrutinize what we 'believe in' and try
> >>alternate narratives: do they hold water? Are the new
> >>(alternate) ideas palatable to what (we think) we
> >>experience?
> >
> >
> > I'm sure all the Big Bang theorists would say that they would
> > change their views if new evidence came to light. Of course,
> > there are thousands of ideas out there and most of them are
> > pretty crazy, pushed by people who don't understand even
> > the basics of what they are criticizing, so it is understandable
> > that these ideas would sometimes be dismissed out of hand by
> > people working in the field. It is also understandable that
> > scientists are only human and get quite attached to the theories
> > on which they base their careers, so they may not change as
> > quickly as they ought to in the light of new evidence.
> >
> > Stathis Papaioannou
>
> In fact there are serious theories of the universe in which there is no
> originating big bang. For example Paul Steinhardt has published papers on
a
> model in which the universe we see is one of two 3-branes in a
> 10-dimensional space.
>
> http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0403020
>
> The origin of particles and energy and their flying apart as we see them
is
> due to collision of our 3-brane with the other 3-brane. He shows that
this
> can be a cyclic process in which the universe empties out due to expansion
> and then another collision can occur. While a few individual scientists
may
> consider the big bang origin of the universe dogma, every scientist
working
> in a field like cosmogony wants to make his name by showing that current
> theories are wrong.
>
> Brent Meeker
>
Of course the "Big Bang" caught the attention. What I asked about
considering our 'visualization' of "a" reality-percept as provisional - to
work with, until a better one shows up :
> >>When did you last learn that the tenets of ongoing
> >>physics are only "provisionally" accepted as 'real'?
and mentioned the BB as a (side?) example.
BTW - speaking about 'the' Big Bang: Hubble (1922) detected a redshift in
the spectra of distant (and greater in even more distant) heavenly bodies
and was ingenious enough to connotate this with the Doppler effect,
concluding, that this shift into lower frequencies of distant bodies MAY
HAVE BEEN the result of a receding movement of the light-source, similar
to the 'lowering voice' in a Doppler - type auditive phenomenon.
Consequently: the universe MAY expand, producing those (alleged) receding
movements from us.
This is the 'provisionally(!)' accepted reality-percept as of the early
1920s:
The idea was logical. - "IF" - this is a fact, we may apply a retrograde
line
backwards and arrive to the zero-point, when the universe was started -
gradually
collapsing into an extensionless point - from which it erose "in a big
bang".
Then came the first (and biggest) mistake: "scientists" took our present
physical science circumstances and applied them (equationally) to all those
changing systems of concentration with incomparably higher density of
everything (energy? temperature? gravity? if someone ha an idea what these
are). They assigned the fractions of the hypothetical 1st sec (^-40 etc.) to
storytelling of features just "freezing out". It still did not make sense
with our equations derived in the present 'cool' and dilated physical
system, so an inflation was invented to correct 'some' of the compressed
state which made the equations fully paradoxical.
IF the Hubble proposal is right (and I give credit to assume it) the
calculations and their conclusions must be false - e.g. the age of the
universe. A linear retro-math
for a chaotic development cannot match, unknown intermittent events are all
neglected, the relationships of THIS system are applied for a totally
different one.
No experimental proof, not even asymptotically: those many orders of magn.
make speculation into science fiction. (This is why I composed my
narrative).
After that - sorry, Brent - not those, who wanted to deny the theory, rather
those, who wanted to show 'experimental' simulations assignable to the
'truth'
of the theory - designed and performed thousands and thousands of
experiments all slanted towards 'evidencing' the idea (E.g. Wilson's
background radiation,
presented as the 'remnant' of the Big Bang energy-level - earning him a
Nobel).
So the 'proving' became the way to grants, tenure, acceptance into the
science
establishment. Finding evidence against it? In who's acceptance? Disproving
it?
Dare swim against the flood? Become a scientific leper?
The shift in light-frequency can be altered in several other ways, but
attempts to
even mentioning such (e.g. compartmentalized universe, gravitational fields
changes) were rejected before any serious consideration as 'hoax' (sic).
(I have a personal experience to that by a prestigious New England
professor).
Expanding Universe with Big Bang Startup is the bible in conventional
science.
"Not one experiment to counter-evidence it!" also: "Not one penny to spend".
...And of course there is Fred Hoyle's harmonic theory with no beginning,
etc.
So the (provisional?) reality-percept stays and generation after generation
it
gains more and more 'belief' as a real-reality-view.
*
This is a recent example, with a knowledge-base close to our present level
of the cognitive inventory in our epistemological enrichment. I did not go
further back into eras with much less information about the world and much
more speculation
"how it COULD be", like e.g. 2500 years ago and way before that.
That old ape must have been a genius to start thinking!
John Mikes
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Received on Mon Aug 14 2006 - 15:36:50 PDT