Isn't it wonderful how these speakers listen to each other, wait, talk one at and time and are civil? A behaviour to remind us all of how to debate and treat each other.
i very much enjoyed this discussion, particularly Turok's open minded and thus non dogmatic approach to physics. People getting upset about 'nothing' dont seem to understand what the term means to convey. Take a 1hz positive wave and overlay it with a 1hz negative wave (opposite polarity) and you have no wave, i.e. nothing. There is no amplitude, no crest no trough, but where those two waves interfere you have the POTENTIAL for both waves. If you then subtract one of those waves from the state of potential, you get an actual wave. In this case you dont get something from nothing by addition, but by subtraction. 0 - (-1) = 1 or 0 - 1 = -1 where 0 is the potential. "but that is not nothing" If it isnt something it is no-thing Noise cancellation technology works by this principle if you wish to delve into this a bit. Keep in mind I am using sound waves as an analogy
All i know is that today I have life,I have health i have family,friends and tons of love,the rest of everything means nothing because my brain is not smart enough to understand the origin and purpose of the earth and humanity, All i do is live day by day thanking whoever created all of this and being nice to those who share this with me,I cannot understand the origin of anything, therefore I'd love to avoid the headache and i try no to think about this so much because im am just never going to understand it.
What a delightful panel! No one is screaming or shouting. Almost every statement is based on evidence. When it's based on conjecture, the speaker says it's just conjecture. No one is making wild claims that they can't back up. This is how science should be done. this is how panels should sound. If the world was like this we would get along much better and we would learn a lot more. Can you believe they actually went an entire hour without once mentioning the word God? This is amazing when talking about cosmology and how the universe began. It is very refreshing. When you get three atheists together and a good moderator, things tend to be more logical and rational. All of these guys checked their egos at the door. BRAVO!
The phenomenal Universe is a dream, a nightmare of separation from our true state of being. But just like in a dream, the figures and scenery seem real. Only when we awaken will we realize that "Oh! It was all a dream!" And the hyper aliveness, exquisite consciousness, and overwhelming awareness of love by those who have had a near death experience would corroborate my theory of what I'll call "life" here in a body.
The more books I read and the more videos I watch on this subject,the more I am convinced that scientists and philosophers are of quite average intelligence. None of them have the honesty to admit that they really have no idea how or why the universe came into existence. They are great at inventing theories or regurgitating the theories of others and are,generally,overwhelmed by their own hubris.
Just love listening to intelligent inquiring minds debating stuff like this. Gives some perspective for the 'common man' on stuff that is not really of any great importance in how it affects his day to day existence but is absolutely fascinating all the same.
Logic and reasoning may help us develop a theory about the origin of the universe but one must acknowledge that logic and reasoning may not be adequate tools to discover the truth.
I happen to be atheist, but let's just admit here that this theory ultimately goes back to everything magically exploding into existence from nothing. Can't we just admit this is something we not only don't know, but may have to admit we will NEVER know for certain?
+Matt C Maybe, but not just yet. We have miles to go before we sleep. And since it is the hunt for understanding how things work that is the fun part, why be in a hurry to throw in the towel? What else are we going to do with our time except keep ourselves distracted. Seems awfully banal to me.
There was NO "everything magically exploding into existence..." this is a misconception and misunderstanding of the Big Bang Theory that religions use all the time.
This is so much more satisfying than videos with a narrator and animations and the like. Also, I LOVE the way Davis Albert expresses himself, such a wonderful way with words.
The first reason to think that existence might consist of a multiverse-and that universes are partitioned from each other in ways more profound than walls or distances, but rather by infinities of time and/or insurmountable barriers of potential energy-is simply that having a reality composed of one universe, _this_ universe, which we already know had a beginning a finite amount of time ago, violates the Copernican principle. Every idea that makes us special or our position privileged is suspicious. Favoritism isn't disproof, of course. We might possibly, some day, run into a question whose true answer is that we are somehow special and privileged. But a violation of the Copernican principle should be grounds for assuming that answers that have such violations are probably wrong. The linkage between the Everett many-worlds multiverse concept and the concept in which universes appear as virtual particles above the Planck mass that tunnel their way into isolation and then inflate into universes is the result of the fact that both concepts account for all possible universes. They just do so differently. Everett has each universe, including ours, splinter-spawning into daughters at each event that might have had more than one outcome; e.g. at each coin-toss. The other concept has universes boiling out of spacetime with every possible combination of events in their aggregate. Of the two, I like the latter concept best. The physicist fellows who regard them as equivalent probably base their thinking on the idea that if there's no difference in what results, then there must be no reason to find distinctions in the mechanism that produced the results. As long as the nature of that mechanism can't be determined experimentally, that opinion is probably as good as any. The idea of a multiverse isn't really a _theory._ Theories make predictions that can be checked by observation. The multiverse idea is really only a speculation that grew naturally as quantum physics, in combination with the Copernican principle, was extended to just beyond where anybody is actually able to observe. I think philosophy is sort of the conscience of physics: not in the moral sense, but rather in the sense of _"Be sure you're right!"_
Having watched enough youtube videos I am familiar with every idea and person mentioned here. This is a progression from my couch potato handbook attainment as TV viewmaster. As my children watch cat videos on cell phones, I can feel their enlightenment growing. Falsify that, Karl Popper.
Bernard Fitzpatrick he's a true champion of knowledge and education he makes what are quixotic and non intuitive ideas and concepts understandable to the layman.
Because he's a real scientist. My guess is that most "scientist" are just modern versions of religious priests, they repeat dogmatically the holy scientific texts with no thinking involved. Neil thinks.
***** I have to disagree, falsifiability is the cornerstone of evidentiary based science. Just because you have a theory that sounds plausible does not make it so, it has to be testable and in this case the multiverse can not be tested (at least that I am aware of). Its the same (as I noted previously) as the belief in God, saying God created the universe is just as falsifiable as saying 'branes smushed together and had a baby universe' theory.
First off I'm not religious, but I find that I sometimes feel sympathy for those who are when they are dismissed by the confident assertions of science.The virtue of science is that it amends itself far more regularly than religion does (sic).That religion can amend itself is proven by the Catholic Church's belated (MUCH) acknowledgement that Galileo was right, and it's official stance that Darwinian theories are NOT anathema to Catholicism.But, if science acknowledges that it must amend itself often and is proud of this virtue, then how can every new theory (or denial) be so confidently presented (at least for a time) as THE TRUTH.Whereas once ears would prick-up when someone asserted atheism in a crowd, it is religious assertions that get such a reaction now, atleast in western cultures, despite that "God(s)" is not falsifiable. Physicists seem to fight dirty sometimes when denying the existence of deities: when the religious are open minded enough to say "Okay the universe is 13.5 billion years old and life did evolve, but God was the first cause", physicists flippantly ask "What the heck did God do before he made the universe a finite time ago, wasn't he bored? An eternal timeless being, oh come on!". But, physicists seem to have no problem conceiving of an eternal universe, or a universe from "nothing"( which isn't actually NO-thing as it is explained, but just matter and energy in a different state ), or a multi-verse which conveniently pushes the question of primary origin (if there is such) almost to vanishing-point...just ALMOST, I must say. So...why SOMEthing instead of NOthing...this discussion pretty much danced around that question.
+Garrison Fork "Physicists seem to fight dirty sometimes when denying the existence of deities" Agree as Krauss and Hawking have done lately in trying to explain that everything came into existence uncaused out of nothing. Lawrence M. Krauss, a well-known cosmologist and prolific popular-science writer, apparently means to announce to the world, in this new book, that the laws of quantum mechanics have in them the makings of a thoroughly scientific and adamantly secular explanation of why there is something rather than nothing. Period. Case closed. End of story. I kid you not. Look at the subtitle. Look at how Richard Dawkins sums it up in his afterword: “Even the last remaining trump card of the theologian, ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?,’ shrivels up before your eyes as you read these pages. If ‘On the Origin of Species’ was biology’s deadliest blow to supernaturalism, we may come to see ‘A Universe From Nothing’ as the equivalent from cosmology. The title means exactly what it says. And what it says is devastating.” Well, let’s see. There are lots of different sorts of conversations one might want to have about a claim like that: conversations, say, about what it is to explain something, and about what it is to be a law of nature, and about what it is to be a physical thing. But since the space I have is limited, let me put those niceties aside and try to be quick, and crude, and concrete. Where, for starters, are the laws of quantum mechanics themselves supposed to have come from? Krauss is more or less upfront, as it turns out, about not having a clue about that. He acknowledges (albeit in a parenthesis, and just a few pages before the end of the book) that everything he has been talking about simply takes the basic principles of quantum mechanics for granted. “I have no idea if this notion can be usefully dispensed with,” he writes, “or at least I don’t know of any productive work in this regard.” And what if he did know of some productive work in that regard? What if he were in a position to announce, for instance, that the truth of the quantum-mechanical laws can be traced back to the fact that the world has some other, deeper property X? Wouldn’t we still be in a position to ask why X rather than Y? And is there a last such question? Is there some point at which the possibility of asking any further such questions somehow definitively comes to an end? How would that work? What would that be like? Never mind. Forget where the laws came from. Have a look instead at what they say. 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.
Imagine if u built a pond in ur back yard,u put fish in it.20 years later the fish started to wonder why they were there,where did they come from.thats us on a bigger scale.
> Discoveries made in any field of knowledge always takes me back to my Creator as the One who made it happen. Nothing is happening except that He wills for it to happen, including our free will to choose between right and wrong. Any discovery in the universe is something that was already intended by The One who created it - the subject of discovery existing according to how it was intended to be, as a sign, reminding us of The One who willed for it to happen. Prior to the existence of the universe was not 'nothingness'. Something with an ability is necessary to be present to make something happen, such as bringing the universe from non-existence into existence. If the state prior to the existence of the universe was one lacking any ability, the universe which is apparent now would never exist because there would be nothing to make it happen. The thing that was there prior to the existence of the universe had an ability and has always been there. It necessitates 'something with an ability' to have always existed. Let us not say its nothing. Let us consider it 'Unseen' but it has ability. This understanding of every discovery linking back to The One who made it happen resonates with me when I read in the Quran that we were not created except to worship our Creator. No discovery we make will ever surpass the knowledge of our Creator. If we are living in pursuit of finding the Greatest thing in existence, we can only arrive at our Creator being the Greatest.
This is a charming and brilliant discussion. I wanted someone to mention that philosophy primarily deals with conceptual problems, and science with empirical and mathematical problems, as do Peter Hacker and Max Bennett in their brilliant critique of neuroscientists who misunderstand how the two domains operate when describing the possibilities of their research for understanding mind: see BENNETT, M. & HACKER, P. (2003) Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, Oxford, Blackwell. Hacker is a Wittgensteinian philosopher
if you watch an ice berg melt and use the big bang theory then the ice berg would of perhaps been a bit bigger than when you first saw it and you watch it melt away suggesting a one way event when in reality the ice berg was water before it was an ice berg so why assume the expansion of the universe started from a big bang .perhaps the universe only started from a different point and continually expands and contracts
For those who don't want to watch this long presentation, which is wide-ranging and only spends about 30 seconds answering the question posed in the title. Short answer: the question is meaningless. (All three panelists agreed on that.)
Not meaningless at all... but not answerable scientifically... unless one suscribes to the notion that anything that cannot be answered scientifically becomes thus meaningless which is obviously false as everyone seems desperate for meaning which is presumably why we watched this presentation in the first place in spite of the fact that we all knew full well that science can only answer "how" and not "why" questions. While meaning can only be provided by consciousness, we notice how that the question was carefully avoided throughout, as it is most of the time, even though consciousness allowed for such conversation to occur and perhaps also for the entire universe and/or multiverses to arise in the first place.
"meaningless"? - "All three panelists agreed on that" And therein is just one of the serious problems. “Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.“There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.”--Michael Crichton
Max McByte I agree with all of that, but I was just trying to help the viewer who might want to know what *their* answers were. They did a lot of rambling around to get to their very brief answer.
Why wasn't Lee Smolin part of this panel? This subject is right up his ally with his theories of cosmological natural selection and the reality of time.
The universe appears from the ignorance of the self and disappears with the knowledge of the self just as the snake appears from the non cognition of the rope and disappears with its recognition.
‘Something out of nothing’, ‘to be or not to be’. Is there A way of getting rid of this mistery? Possibly divine intervention to put the question to rest. I spent my whole life, 80 years, without getting an answer. Well at the end of this earthly life I will get an answer, I hope.
The mere point that self consciousness exist is the final underlying answer to the secret of how it all began the very notion of from nothing to something. The human brain has the power to create beyond limitation.
So, from nothing comes something, or my mother never met my dad, yet I'm born from them. They never talk about what was before the big bang, yet we see galaxies existed 15 billions years ago and again we never received any radio signal from any intelligent civilization. Were the priest right in the middle ages when they said that the earth is the center of the universe,not physically but spirituality?. If my body is build of all none living matter, how come I think, I have a conscience, what's the difference between now, and 1 minutes after I'm dead, I still have the same matter, all of it just as when I was alive, so what made that matter to be alive?
The question WHY are we here is presuming that there is a consciousness that has a REASON for creating us. The question "why" deals with purpose in relation to a particular mind or function (which in turn is given by a mind). HOW on the other hand is the more useful question which allows us to discover the processes of nature. You only ask sentient beings WHY did they do things. So first you must find the being that you believe is responsible for us being here then you can ask the question why.
+ozskipper I'D SAY THEY NEED TO SAY " I DON'T KNOW" WAY MORE OFTEN RATHER THAN ANNOUNCE THAT THE NET ENERGY OF THE UNIVERSE IS ZERO. ESPCLY WHEN THEY DON'T KNOW THE QUANTITIES TO BEGIN WITH. BTW, GOD OT GAPS WAS COINED BY ATHIESTS , NOT REALISTS.
+ozskipper Ever heard of the science of the gaps, ozzie? That's when atheist scientists like Krauss and hawking want u to believe "b/c of laws like gravity the universe can and will create itself from nothing". So which is it, nothing or gravity? And how do abstract laws even exist in a purely materialistic worldview, let alone 'cause' anything? The a priori assertion everything came from nothing is the sort of deification of science that atheism is coming to. I always thought to pull a rabbit out of a hat u actually needed a hat and a rabbit, not least a magician? “Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe-a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.” -Albert Einstein “God is a mathematician of a very high order and He used advanced mathematics in constructing the universe.” -Nobel Prize winning physicist Paul A. M. Dirac, who made crucial early contributions to both quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics.For a litany of the most eminent scientists see "if you think science leads to atheism." by Scott Youngren
+Gerry De naro I received your letter of June 10th. I have never talked to a Jesuit priest in my life and I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies about me. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist. - Albert Einstein, letter to Guy H. Raner Jr, July 2, 1945, responding to a rumor that a Jesuit priest had caused Einstein to convert from atheism; quoted by Michael R. Gilmore in Skeptic, Vol. 5, No. 2 I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being. - Albert Einstein, letter to Guy H. Raner Jr., Sept. 28, 1949, quoted by Michael R. Gilmore in Skeptic, Vol. 5, No. 2 You do not quote a source for Dirac, but I believe it is a quote mine from Scientific America, 1963. if physical laws are such that to start off life involves an excessively small chance, so that it will not be reasonable to suppose that life would have started just by blind chance, then there must be a god, and such a god would probably be showing his influence in the quantum jumps which are taking place later on. On the other hand, if life can start very easily and does not need any divine influence, then I will say that there is no god. Dirac did not commend himself to any definite view, but he described the possibilities for answering the question of God in a scientific manner.[41] I cannot understand why we idle discussing religion. If we are honest-and scientists have to be-we must admit that religion is a jumble of false assertions, with no basis in reality. The very idea of God is a product of the human imagination. Paul Dirac, Solvay, 1927.
gamesbok I JUST CAN'T FOR THE LIFE OF ME FIGURE OUT HOW anybody CAN'T GRASP WHAT ACTUALLY had to HAPPEN IN ORDER TO GET FROM NOTHING TO WHAT YOU SEE AND KNOW NOW. YOU'R TALKING BEYOND ASTRONOMICAL CHANCES FOR AAAALLLLLL THAT TO ORGANIZE BLINDLY N HAP HAZARDLY FROM MUONIC PARTICALS TO THE ATOM , WHAT THAT DOES, AND THEN NEXT INTO MOLECULES N ON UP. FORGET IT MAN .
Steve Paulson has the best philosophical grasp of how to approach this question shown by his referring to Augustine. Causality, the way we understand it, is not going to give us any answers to how the universe began because causation is a spatio/temporal term. It only has any use if spoken of WITHIN the universe. Outside of it we have absolutely no barring whatsoever as to how to even approach it. The laws of nature can't be responsible for the laws of nature themselves coming into existence.
First statement Leibnitz said, is "it is necessary that something exists". Why? Because if nothing exists, there is no one to ask the question and no one to answer. There is nothing. Obviously, this is not the case. The second question is where that all come from, science tells us it all came from the Big Bang, a miraculous event. Truly wonderful. And finally how does the univers works. Hawking only adresses the last question.
It is ridiculous to speak of "our particular universe" or "parallel universes". Universe is a word that is self-defining. The self-definition of the word is everything that exists. Consequently, there can only be one universe. The known universe is naturally smaller than the actual universe. If our known universe turns out to be some unit of which there are others, that means we need to find a new name for the unit, say a unipart or whatever name we might want to give it. The actual universe is always defined as everything there is, so if multiple uniparts exists, then the universe is the total sum of all uniparts, it is not a multiverse.
trijezdci but a parallel universe isnt just another universe. It is the same universe but with a different outcome. Same atoms same molecules yet they converge and mix differently. Basically everything could be in the same space but in a different reality such as time. Maybe time is what seperates parallel universes. Every X amount of X mesurements of time we transfer universes or transfer realities.
It's not self-defining because we're the ones doing the defining. But otherwise I agree completely. Universe is all that exists, and the word should be used in this broadest sense even in physics. Instead of "parallel universe" I prefer the word "timeline". It's not even parallel in the geometric sense anyway.. ;-)
Don't like the word "produce" in the second hard question mentioned at the beginning: The physical stuff and in the brain and conscious experience are definitely related, but we cannot be certain the former produces the latter, it could very well be a more complex relation.
I am a bit of a reductionist and like the idea that the universe emerges from some sort of fundamental field at the quantum level. But down at that level, there is no need for time and space, time and space are emergent properties of something else. So what we perceive to be reality is just what we see at this scale but fundamentally, reality is very different.
Causation is not a spatio/temporal concept AtomicKinetic 12, but an ontological one. If there is First Cause, it existed ontologically prior to and is the ultimate cause of time and space.
The concepts of human languages evolved to deal with human scale experience. When we attempt to extend them beyond their area of utility we run into trouble. For instance, the concept of "nothing" evolved to stand for the absence of certain things or classes of things. Example: All the apples in the sack were dumped out. Now the bag contains "nothing". "Nothing" here simply means no more apples, or we could say no more things which are relevant to our present concerns. When we "inflate" the concept of "nothing" to mean some supposed ultimate metaphysical "nothingness" we have indulged in the misuse of language. We have pushed the concept beyond its utility, and into absurdity.
There is no answer to this question. Something and nothing are both concepts in the human mind. There are inevitable limits to our understanding and to this question there are either none or infinitely many solutions
+Hamid Mat Sain MD,FRCS The finitude of the past and the finite universe we live is prima facie evidence for ex nihilo Creation. Question is what is the more plausible explanation "because of laws like gravity the universe can and will create itself from nothing" (Hawking) OR that there is a non-contingent, immaterial, atemporal creative mind that brought being into existence from non-being? (theism) the finitude of the past as proven by the impossibility of an infinite regress of past physical events is all the proof I need to justify ex nihilo Creation. If u have any more doubts google "if you think science leads to atheism" for a litany of the most eminent scientists who will shatter your illusions. When u admit to Creation I can detail how the Christian religion best articulates the true nature of God. The essence of our humanity is to love and be loved. Nothing gives life a deep sense of joy with meaning hope and destiny than the shared experience of a loving supportive community of believers.
+Gerry De naro The concept of a finite existence doesn't necessitate a state of nothingness. You were conceived at a certain time, and so your life had a finite beginning. The materials that physically make you up were not "nothing" prior to that. They were simply in another physical form. Where are you getting this concept of "nothingness" from? We certainly have no examples of any such nothing. You're making it up because it suits your beliefs.
I don't get why the events of being of something rather than nothing has to "take place" in a certain moment in time. Why? If Being is the most foundamental level (Being as what makes being things be) and Time IS, Being comes "before" (not in a temporal sense) Time, so 1) things exists since always (before big bang there is still something etc.) 2) things are instead of nothing being for a reason that isn't placed in the timeline nor it is temporal - things are "because" of a always-already-present reason.
For me, Neil Turok laughs a lot because he has a more understanding of the simplicity of the Universe and how obscured everything appears in our small homo sapien brains. Scale out to the perception of a fourth dimension and the third dimension becomes elementary.
Interesting that Asimov proposed his "four leaf clover" short in a 50's anthology - and explains how the net entropy is zero and explains why it happened.
Guys this isn't a discussion that tries to answer the question, it's a meta-discussion about the tackling of the question. Nobody comes up with the answers to big questions on a stage. The fact that they did not get any closer to an answer is irrelevant. That's not what they were trying to do.
The statement in the Bible of *the earth* being "formless and void" occurred *after* the Creation of the heavens and the earth. It was a way of saying there was nothing to distinguish (no land) and there was no life until those things were made.
There's actually a lot of these ideas floating around the scientific community - they definitely deserve more interest. Here is one of many alternative-model papers from Cornell on the issue. arxiv.org/abs/1007.1750 "There are four conspicuous features of these models: 1) the speed of light and the gravitational constant are not constant, but vary with the evolution of the universe, 2) time has no beginning and no end; i.e., there is neither a big bang nor a big crunch singularity, 3) the spatial section of the universe is a 3-sphere, and 4) in the process of evolution, the universe experiences phases of both acceleration and deceleration. One of these models is selected and tested against current cosmological observations, and is found to fit the redshift- luminosity distance data quite well."
Circuit7Active guth's idea has serious problems associated with it. yes, the theory was influential and revolutionary. yes it holds part of the truth, but Newton's theories held part of the truth as well and relativity has ultimately shown Newton's insight as brilliant, but fundamentally flawed. guth's theory will prove the same. the theory can be correct, and virtually useless, all at the same time. a minority of those actually educated on the topic believe guth's theory is the last word, and explicitly true. it happens to be Mathematics true, but that's all.
Gravitational waves "Prof Neil Turok, director the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics at Waterloo in Canada, and a former research colleague of Prof Stephen Hawking, called the discovery “the real deal, one of those breakthrough moments in science”.
Dirac wouldn't have to account for 'random big bangs' if he realized that big bangs are just the opposite end of supermassive black holes forming in other 'larger' universes. He already is halfway there when he say; there's no absolute scale. Energy too, has no Scale Neil!
Well now, if there were nothing, then no one would be around to ask the question in the first place. The question, "why is there nothing, rather than something" is a logical impossibility. So of *_course_* the question is phrased that way, it couldn't ever be phrased otherwise. I am reminded of the creationist argument that there must be intelligent design, because the parameters that allow life to exist on Earth are so exact, that any deviation from them and there would be no life. Well OBVIOUSLY, that's why life developed here in the first place, the conditions were right.
By the use of logic to resolve any problem of understanding the possible role of paradox is automatically rejected as a cause. Does paradox have a possible role in the creation of the Universe? Following on this thought, a "nothing" state is different from what is a "null" state. As pointed out in other posts, a "nothing" state still has a form. However a "null" state has no preexisting form. A conjecture on this is that if "two parts" are balanced as paradoxical, then the larger state that contains both parts is "null" - has no form. This concept leads to the idea that there is no such thing as the Universe in its largest form. Rather, as a minimum, two paradoxical forms exist. In one of them, arises the region we call the "Universe" and it is balanced to a form that is paradoxical. This might seem contrived except that paradox is mirrored in our Universe everywhere - in the relationship between elements that are "fundamental dualisms" - for example the relationship between quantum and classical mechanics, and the very basis of the form of quantum mechanics, which is the sq root of minus 1. This final thought brings in the possible role of self-organization as a force of "direction" out of a "null" condition. Rules do not preexist, they are generated successively.
The very fact that we exist, forces the answer that something pre-existed us. The questions you ask and how you asked them determine the answer and outcome. Does love, virtue, purpose, responsibility exist? Yes. Can we measure it by physical means? No. I'm more worried by the missuse of things than by their existence, because it can kill us. Here a philosophical answer: We exist because love exists. Love needs an object wo is able to respond to the giver of love. I hope this makes sense.
+joe shmo what did you expect? It's a period of time that was before our timeline, and we are currently limited in the very branch of physics that could likely explain it
Ludvig Burman WOW ! REFRESHING TO HEAR YOU ADMIT TO THAT ! I'M ALL FOR THEORETICAL IDEAS AND RESEARCH, JUST GET ALITTLE WONKED WHEN IT STARTS GETTING PRINTED AND TAUGHT AS FACT. ESPCLY WHEN NO FOREWORD THAT IT IS JUST EXACTLY THAT.
Ludvig Burman SERIOUSLY ? HS N COLLEGE TEXTBOOKS do not HAVE A PREAMBLE STATING : " THE FOLLOWING IS NOT CONCLUSIVE, IS SPECULATION, JUST THE BEST WE HAVE SO FAR, AND not ACCEPTED BY ALL SCIENTISTS ". NOT IN MINE FROM THE LATE 80'S OR MY SON'S FROM JUST 8 YRS AGO.
A great 100% philosophical 0% scientific question that even Dr Turok agreed to be, yet he found the courage to rise over and destroy the philosopher in the room while dismissing string theory as conjectures to get 'papers' published.
It's weird. Some people just don't grasp the question, and so they dismiss it as word play. It IS a good question, although obviously --like physics-- it's not for everybody.
I like these discussion among top notch intelligent people. In the Middle Ages philosophers were discussing how many angels fit on the tip of a needle (I would have liked to hear they point of view).
Is it weird that, even though most lose their "faith" due to science, to me quantum mechanics has restored mine. I'm no longer a christian i now believe that every religion has some truth to it. But my religion is "quantum physics". It has restored my faith that we all have a soul or conscience and the energy that "is" our soul cannot be destroyed. In other words there is some sort of afterlife that we with our human brain and eyes that only see light, Not what is actually in front of us, could not possibly understand. i use to believe maybe the universe is alive in a different aspect other than biologically. Maybe it is god. But now i believe that we all including the entire omniverse came from a source of origin. We are all god and the energy that makes us is what pushes us forward. We including every planet sun and galaxy are God. We are like a fungus. We all have a conscience made of this energy that is all connected into one big entity. We create our own reality and it is we who create our afterlife. We are God!!
Albert is great to listen to. Also good to see Turok critical of science, there are a lot of problems in science. In biology, the field I work in, a large number of studies in the top journal have shown to be un-reproducible (something around half). Unfortunately, confident assertion and the kind of piecemeal advancement Neil described are a problem. Yes, science has made great practical additions to our lives but does this mean they are close to answering metaphysical questions like the beginning of the universe?
The answer is: Everythingness is there, rather than nothing because the meaning of nothingness can't exist without the existing things. The video: CspacSn2XUM
A SAID WEE MAN quantum fluctuations of space time ... eternal inflation ... again, the universe will never rebound ... all the evidence is showing us that it is expanding and will never stop ...
I feel that space/time and causation could be emergent properties of some deeper layer of reality. Maybe space/time and causation are not fundamental. So, at this deeper lever, space/time and causation have no meaning. Whatever reality really is, is eternal
It's so funny I asked my 11 daughter can something come from nothing? She looked at me like I was crazy 😂.. she asked me, Daddy are you serious? He who is intelligent should become ignorant in order to become wiser. The inner eye of men need to be open in order to see beyond. The evidence of a powerful, grand architect and designer of the universe are overwhelming.
The question is wrong. The error of the question is that it assumes that Being ( 'something') and Nothing are seperable from each other (as like there is some Universe A which contains Being and some other Universe B which contains Nothing, so why do we live in Universe A instead of B). That however is not the case as Being and Nothing are inseperable and are part of a union called Becoming. In Becoming it is already understood that Being turns into Nothing and Nothing turns into Being. Outside of Becoming, neither Being nor Nothing has any meaning. That is why such a question - which assumes one term without the other - is incomprehensible and can not be answered. Hegel for one saw that quite correctly. See: www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hl/hlbegin.htm
My last comment is that these guys are simply eloquent materialists. They cannot understand that the origin itself begs the question and concludes with Infinity and therefore not just multi-verse but infinite multi-verse.
maybe we are limited too understanding the universe because of our eyes, we trust them but if they are limited in function then we might not ever see the truth, if you couldn't see the color blue how would you go about truly understanding the color blue
This talk, or at least its video title, only addresses one side of the problem, the smaller side. My difficulty is in understanding why there isn't humongous amounts more of Something Rather than the Something that there is. I'm talking super-humongous amounts more , I don't think I'm managing to express just how more humongous an amounts more I think there should be. Someone should do a science talk on that.
Came here from a metaphysics philosophy discussion. I have to say something is missing. There is no 'feeling' in this debate. A lot of words, no conclusions. Nothing agreeable. The only thing that seems conclusive 24 minutes in is 'background radiation on your TV screen from the big bang'. It's interesting because the company I intern for actually projects white noise into the office. It seems to keep people calm, quiet and focused with almost a sense that it is a library setting.
The basis for any scientific, philosophical or religious claim is what evidence should we expect to see if the premise is true, and what evidence would we be likely to see if it's false? If for example, one is to argue for creation ex nihilo, then the finitude of the past and the impossibility of a infinite regress of past physical events or states are compelling evidence in favour. Next question is what is the more plausible explanation , mindless matter creating itself or some non-contingent, a temporal, un caused cause. If the effect is a rationally intelligible, abstract law-abiding universe then it's cause has to be an immaterial, rationally intelligent mind.
Isn't it wonderful how these speakers listen to each other, wait, talk one at and time and are civil? A behaviour to remind us all of how to debate and treat each other.
i very much enjoyed this discussion, particularly Turok's open minded and thus non dogmatic approach to physics.
People getting upset about 'nothing' dont seem to understand what the term means to convey.
Take a 1hz positive wave and overlay it with a 1hz negative wave (opposite polarity) and you have no wave, i.e. nothing. There is no amplitude, no crest no trough, but where those two waves interfere you have the POTENTIAL for both waves. If you then subtract one of those waves from the state of potential, you get an actual wave. In this case you dont get something from nothing by addition, but by subtraction. 0 - (-1) = 1 or 0 - 1 = -1 where 0 is the potential.
"but that is not nothing"
If it isnt something it is no-thing
Noise cancellation technology works by this principle if you wish to delve into this a bit.
Keep in mind I am using sound waves as an analogy
It's nice to see finally physicists and philosophers who are actually talking about their work as opposed to the populisms of Krauss and Dennett.
All i know is that today I have life,I have health i have family,friends and tons of love,the rest of everything means nothing because my brain is not smart enough to understand the origin and purpose of the earth and humanity, All i do is live day by day thanking whoever created all of this and being nice to those who share this with me,I cannot understand the origin of anything, therefore I'd love to avoid the headache and i try no to think about this so much because im am just never going to understand it.
but since nothing is labeled doesn't that make it something?
What a delightful panel! No one is screaming or shouting. Almost every statement is based on evidence. When it's based on conjecture, the speaker says it's just conjecture. No one is making wild claims that they can't back up. This is how science should be done. this is how panels should sound. If the world was like this we would get along much better and we would learn a lot more.
Can you believe they actually went an entire hour without once mentioning the word God? This is amazing when talking about cosmology and how the universe began. It is very refreshing. When you get three atheists together and a good moderator, things tend to be more logical and rational.
All of these guys checked their egos at the door.
BRAVO!
The phenomenal Universe is a dream, a nightmare of separation from our true state of being. But just like in a dream, the figures and scenery seem real. Only when we awaken will we realize that "Oh! It was all a dream!" And the hyper aliveness, exquisite consciousness, and overwhelming awareness of love by those who have had a near death experience would corroborate my theory of what I'll call "life" here in a body.
The more books I read and the more videos I watch on this subject,the more I am convinced that scientists and philosophers are of quite average intelligence.
None of them have the honesty to admit that they really have no idea how or why the universe came into existence.
They are great at inventing theories or regurgitating the theories of others and are,generally,overwhelmed by their own hubris.
Just love listening to intelligent inquiring minds debating stuff like this. Gives some perspective for the 'common man' on stuff that is not really of any great importance in how it affects his day to day existence but is absolutely fascinating all the same.
You can't have something without nothing, nothing is more fertile than empty. -Alan Watts
David is such an eloquent speaker
Logic and reasoning may help us develop a theory about the origin of the universe but one must acknowledge that logic and reasoning may not be adequate tools to discover the truth.
I happen to be atheist, but let's just admit here that this theory ultimately goes back to everything magically exploding into existence from nothing. Can't we just admit this is something we not only don't know, but may have to admit we will NEVER know for certain?
+Matt C most scientist do admit that it's still weird though
+Matt C Maybe, but not just yet. We have miles to go before we sleep. And since it is the hunt for understanding how things work that is the fun part, why be in a hurry to throw in the towel? What else are we going to do with our time except keep ourselves distracted. Seems awfully banal to me.
There was NO "everything magically exploding into existence..." this is a misconception and misunderstanding of the Big Bang Theory that religions use all the time.
I'd like to see these men brought back together in 2019 and see how/if their thinking has changed.
This is so much more satisfying than videos with a narrator and animations and the like. Also, I LOVE the way Davis Albert expresses himself, such a wonderful way with words.
The first reason to think that existence might consist of a multiverse-and that universes are partitioned from each other in ways more profound than walls or distances, but rather by infinities of time and/or insurmountable barriers of potential energy-is simply that having a reality composed of one universe, _this_ universe, which we already know had a beginning a finite amount of time ago, violates the Copernican principle.
Every idea that makes us special or our position privileged is suspicious.
Favoritism isn't disproof, of course. We might possibly, some day, run into a question whose true answer is that we are somehow special and privileged. But a violation of the Copernican principle should be grounds for assuming that answers that have such violations are probably wrong.
The linkage between the Everett many-worlds multiverse concept and the concept in which universes appear as virtual particles above the Planck mass that tunnel their way into isolation and then inflate into universes is the result of the fact that both concepts account for all possible universes. They just do so differently. Everett has each universe, including ours, splinter-spawning into daughters at each event that might have had more than one outcome; e.g. at each coin-toss. The other concept has universes boiling out of spacetime with every possible combination of events in their aggregate.
Of the two, I like the latter concept best. The physicist fellows who regard them as equivalent probably base their thinking on the idea that if there's no difference in what results, then there must be no reason to find distinctions in the mechanism that produced the results. As long as the nature of that mechanism can't be determined experimentally, that opinion is probably as good as any.
The idea of a multiverse isn't really a _theory._ Theories make predictions that can be checked by observation. The multiverse idea is really only a speculation that grew naturally as quantum physics, in combination with the Copernican principle, was extended to just beyond where anybody is actually able to observe.
I think philosophy is sort of the conscience of physics: not in the moral sense, but rather in the sense of _"Be sure you're right!"_
I've always enjoyed sci-fi as a way to speculate about concepts which cannot, or cannot yet, be tested as a hypothesis.
Having watched enough youtube videos I am familiar with every idea and person mentioned here. This is a progression from my couch potato handbook attainment as TV viewmaster. As my children watch cat videos on cell phones, I can feel their enlightenment growing. Falsify that, Karl Popper.
Dr. Neil Turok is the most fun person to listen to, the other guy is impossible to comprehend, Dr. Turok I would travel miles to hear him talk.
I like this guy Turok.....his clarity of thought is exemplary, everything he states is based on evidence.
+A SAID WEE MAN Also just love him. Done so much for advancement of mathematics at postgrad level in Africa.
Bernard Fitzpatrick he's a true champion of knowledge and education he makes what are quixotic and non intuitive ideas and concepts understandable to the layman.
Because he's a real scientist. My guess is that most "scientist" are just modern versions of religious priests, they repeat dogmatically the holy scientific texts with no thinking involved. Neil thinks.
***** I have to disagree, falsifiability is the cornerstone of evidentiary based science. Just because you have a theory that sounds plausible does not make it so, it has to be testable and in this case the multiverse can not be tested (at least that I am aware of). Its the same (as I noted previously) as the belief in God, saying God created the universe is just as falsifiable as saying 'branes smushed together and had a baby universe' theory.
Me too.
First off I'm not religious, but I find that I sometimes feel sympathy for those who are when they are dismissed by the confident assertions of science.The virtue of science is that it amends itself far more regularly than religion does (sic).That religion can amend itself is proven by the Catholic Church's belated (MUCH) acknowledgement that Galileo was right, and it's official stance that Darwinian theories are NOT anathema to Catholicism.But, if science acknowledges that it must amend itself often and is proud of this virtue, then how can every new theory (or denial) be so confidently presented (at least for a time) as THE TRUTH.Whereas once ears would prick-up when someone asserted atheism in a crowd, it is religious assertions that get such a reaction now, atleast in western cultures, despite that "God(s)" is not falsifiable. Physicists seem to fight dirty sometimes when denying the existence of deities: when the religious are open minded enough to say "Okay the universe is 13.5 billion years old and life did evolve, but God was the first cause", physicists flippantly ask "What the heck did God do before he made the universe a finite time ago, wasn't he bored? An eternal timeless being, oh come on!". But, physicists seem to have no problem conceiving of an eternal universe, or a universe from "nothing"( which isn't actually NO-thing as it is explained, but just matter and energy in a different state ), or a multi-verse which conveniently pushes the question of primary origin (if there is such) almost to vanishing-point...just ALMOST, I must say. So...why SOMEthing instead of NOthing...this discussion pretty much danced around that question.
+Garrison Fork "Physicists seem to fight dirty sometimes when denying the existence of deities" Agree as Krauss and Hawking have done lately in trying to explain that everything came into existence uncaused out of nothing.
Lawrence M. Krauss, a well-known cosmologist and prolific popular-science writer, apparently means to announce to the world, in this new book, that the laws of quantum mechanics have in them the makings of a thoroughly scientific and adamantly secular explanation of why there is something rather than nothing. Period. Case closed. End of story. I kid you not. Look at the subtitle. Look at how Richard Dawkins
sums it up in his afterword: “Even the last remaining trump card of the
theologian, ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?,’ shrivels up before your eyes as you read these pages. If ‘On the Origin of Species’ was biology’s deadliest blow to supernaturalism, we may come to see ‘A Universe From Nothing’ as the equivalent from cosmology. The title means exactly what it says. And what it says is devastating.”
Well, let’s see. There are lots of different sorts of conversations one might want to have about a claim like that: conversations, say, about what it is to explain something, and about what it is to be a law of nature, and about what it
is to be a physical thing. But since the space I have is limited, let me
put those niceties aside and try to be quick, and crude, and concrete.
Where, for starters, are the laws of
quantum mechanics themselves supposed to have come from? Krauss is more or less
upfront, as it turns out, about not having a clue about that. He acknowledges
(albeit in a parenthesis, and just a few pages before the end of the book) that
everything he has been talking about simply takes the basic principles of
quantum mechanics for granted. “I have no idea if this notion can be usefully
dispensed with,” he writes, “or at least I don’t know of any productive work in
this regard.” And what if he did know of some productive work in that regard?
What if he were in a position to announce, for instance, that the truth of the
quantum-mechanical laws can be traced back to the fact that the world has some
other, deeper property X? Wouldn’t we still be in a position to ask why X
rather than Y? And is there a last such question? Is there some point at
which the possibility of asking any further such questions somehow definitively
comes to an end? How would that work? What would that be like?
Never mind. Forget where the laws
came from. Have a look instead at what they say. 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.
100% what I have been thinking. Thank you for writing it!
I like Jim's sense of humor. I've watched this several times and still laugh at his jokes.
Imagine if u built a pond in ur back yard,u put fish in it.20 years later the fish started to wonder why they were there,where did they come from.thats us on a bigger scale.
Turok is the only member on this panel with any real ideas.
> Discoveries made in any field of knowledge always takes me back to my Creator as the One who made it happen. Nothing is happening except that He wills for it to happen, including our free will to choose between right and wrong. Any discovery in the universe is something that was already intended by The One who created it - the subject of discovery existing according to how it was intended to be, as a sign, reminding us of The One who willed for it to happen.
Prior to the existence of the universe was not 'nothingness'. Something with an ability is necessary to be present to make something happen, such as bringing the universe from non-existence into existence. If the state prior to the existence of the universe was one lacking any ability, the universe which is apparent now would never exist because there would be nothing to make it happen. The thing that was there prior to the existence of the universe had an ability and has always been there. It necessitates 'something with an ability' to have always existed. Let us not say its nothing. Let us consider it 'Unseen' but it has ability. This understanding of every discovery linking back to The One who made it happen resonates with me when I read in the Quran that we were not created except to worship our Creator. No discovery we make will ever surpass the knowledge of our Creator. If we are living in pursuit of finding the Greatest thing in existence, we can only arrive at our Creator being the Greatest.
This is a charming and brilliant discussion. I wanted someone to mention that philosophy primarily deals with conceptual problems, and science with empirical and mathematical problems, as do Peter Hacker and Max Bennett in their brilliant critique of neuroscientists who misunderstand how the two domains operate when describing the possibilities of their research for understanding mind: see BENNETT, M. & HACKER, P. (2003) Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, Oxford, Blackwell.
Hacker is a Wittgensteinian philosopher
Neil Turok is quality, he says it as he see's it and walks his own path
if you watch an ice berg melt and use the big bang theory then the ice berg would of perhaps been a bit bigger than when you first saw it and you watch it melt away suggesting a one way event when in reality the ice berg was water before it was an ice berg so why assume the expansion of the universe started from a big bang .perhaps the universe only started from a different point and continually expands and contracts
For those who don't want to watch this long presentation, which is wide-ranging and only spends about 30 seconds answering the question posed in the title. Short answer: the question is meaningless. (All three panelists agreed on that.)
Not meaningless at all... but not answerable scientifically... unless one suscribes to the notion that anything that cannot be answered scientifically becomes thus meaningless which is obviously false as everyone seems desperate for meaning which is presumably why we watched this presentation in the first place in spite of the fact that we all knew full well that science can only answer "how" and not "why" questions. While meaning can only be provided by consciousness, we notice how that the question was carefully avoided throughout, as it is most of the time, even though consciousness allowed for such conversation to occur and perhaps also for the entire universe and/or multiverses to arise in the first place.
"meaningless"? - "All three panelists agreed on that"
And therein is just one of the serious problems.
“Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to
do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on
the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right,
which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference
to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant
is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great
precisely because they broke with the consensus.“There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.”--Michael Crichton
Max McByte I agree with all of that, but I was just trying to help the viewer who might want to know what *their* answers were. They did a lot of rambling around to get to their very brief answer.
33:45 "Consensus means nothing, of course, in science."
Why wasn't Lee Smolin part of this panel? This subject is right up his ally with his theories of cosmological natural selection and the reality of time.
Like Neil, he is great to listen to.
The universe appears from the ignorance of the self and disappears with the knowledge of the self just as the snake appears from the non cognition of the rope and disappears with its recognition.
‘Something out of nothing’, ‘to be or not to be’. Is there A way of getting rid of this mistery? Possibly divine intervention to put the question to rest. I spent my whole life, 80 years, without getting an answer. Well at the end of this earthly life I will get an answer, I hope.
how are you?
Such a pleasure to listen David Albert and Neil Turok
The mere point that self consciousness exist is the final underlying answer to the secret of how it all began the very notion of from nothing to something. The human brain has the power to create beyond limitation.
So, from nothing comes something, or my mother never met my dad, yet I'm born from them.
They never talk about what was before the big bang, yet we see galaxies existed 15 billions years ago and again we never received any radio signal from any intelligent civilization.
Were the priest right in the middle ages when they said that the earth is the center of the universe,not physically but spirituality?.
If my body is build of all none living matter, how come I think, I have a conscience, what's the difference between now, and 1 minutes after I'm dead, I still have the same matter, all of it just as when I was alive, so what made that matter to be alive?
You can't say anything about nothing. By necessity there has to be something. Everything that is not impossible to exist exists.
The question WHY are we here is presuming that there is a consciousness that has a REASON for creating us. The question "why" deals with purpose in relation to a particular mind or function (which in turn is given by a mind). HOW on the other hand is the more useful question which allows us to discover the processes of nature. You only ask sentient beings WHY did they do things. So first you must find the being that you believe is responsible for us being here then you can ask the question why.
You know what I love about scientists? Theyare humble enough to say "I dont know". They are smart enough to never accept the God of the Gaps.
+ozskipper I'D SAY THEY NEED TO SAY " I DON'T KNOW" WAY MORE OFTEN RATHER THAN ANNOUNCE THAT THE NET ENERGY OF THE UNIVERSE IS ZERO. ESPCLY WHEN THEY DON'T KNOW THE QUANTITIES TO BEGIN WITH. BTW, GOD OT GAPS WAS COINED BY ATHIESTS , NOT REALISTS.
+ozskipper Ever heard of the science of the gaps, ozzie? That's when atheist scientists like Krauss and hawking want u to believe "b/c of laws like gravity the universe can and will create itself from nothing". So which is it, nothing or gravity? And how do abstract laws even exist in a purely materialistic worldview, let alone 'cause' anything? The a priori assertion everything came from nothing is the sort of deification of science that atheism is coming to. I always thought to pull a rabbit out of a hat u actually needed a hat and a rabbit, not least a magician? “Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe-a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.” -Albert Einstein “God is a mathematician of a very high order and He used advanced mathematics in constructing the universe.” -Nobel Prize winning physicist Paul A. M. Dirac, who made crucial early contributions to both quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics.For a litany of the most eminent scientists see "if you think science leads to atheism." by Scott Youngren
+Gerry De naro I received your letter of June 10th. I have never talked to a Jesuit priest in my life and I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies about me. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist.
- Albert Einstein, letter to Guy H. Raner Jr, July 2, 1945, responding to a rumor that a Jesuit priest had caused Einstein to convert from atheism; quoted by Michael R. Gilmore in Skeptic, Vol. 5, No. 2
I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.
- Albert Einstein, letter to Guy H. Raner Jr., Sept. 28, 1949, quoted by Michael R. Gilmore in Skeptic, Vol. 5, No. 2
You do not quote a source for Dirac, but I believe it is a quote mine from Scientific America, 1963.
if physical laws are such that to start off life involves an excessively small chance, so that it will not be reasonable to suppose that life would have started just by blind chance, then there must be a god, and such a god would probably be showing his influence in the quantum jumps which are taking place later on. On the other hand, if life can start very easily and does not need any divine influence, then I will say that there is no god.
Dirac did not commend himself to any definite view, but he described the possibilities for answering the question of God in a scientific manner.[41]
I cannot understand why we idle discussing religion. If we are honest-and scientists have to be-we must admit that religion is a jumble of false assertions, with no basis in reality. The very idea of God is a product of the human imagination.
Paul Dirac, Solvay, 1927.
gamesbok I JUST CAN'T FOR THE LIFE OF ME FIGURE OUT HOW anybody CAN'T GRASP WHAT ACTUALLY had to HAPPEN IN ORDER TO GET FROM NOTHING TO WHAT YOU SEE AND KNOW NOW. YOU'R TALKING BEYOND ASTRONOMICAL CHANCES FOR AAAALLLLLL THAT TO ORGANIZE BLINDLY N HAP HAZARDLY FROM MUONIC PARTICALS TO THE ATOM , WHAT THAT DOES, AND THEN NEXT INTO MOLECULES N ON UP. FORGET IT MAN .
Steve Paulson has the best philosophical grasp of how to approach this question shown by his referring to Augustine. Causality, the way we understand it, is not going to give us any answers to how the universe began because causation is a spatio/temporal term. It only has any use if spoken of WITHIN the universe. Outside of it we have absolutely no barring whatsoever as to how to even approach it. The laws of nature can't be responsible for the laws of nature themselves coming into existence.
First statement Leibnitz said, is "it is necessary that something exists". Why? Because if nothing exists, there is no one to ask the question and no one to answer. There is nothing. Obviously, this is not the case. The second question is where that all come from, science tells us it all came from the Big Bang, a miraculous event. Truly wonderful. And finally how does the univers works. Hawking only adresses the last question.
It is ridiculous to speak of "our particular universe" or "parallel universes". Universe is a word that is self-defining. The self-definition of the word is everything that exists. Consequently, there can only be one universe. The known universe is naturally smaller than the actual universe. If our known universe turns out to be some unit of which there are others, that means we need to find a new name for the unit, say a unipart or whatever name we might want to give it. The actual universe is always defined as everything there is, so if multiple uniparts exists, then the universe is the total sum of all uniparts, it is not a multiverse.
trijezdci .......try multiverse, as well as parallel universes.
trijezdci but a parallel universe isnt just another universe. It is the same universe but with a different outcome. Same atoms same molecules yet they converge and mix differently. Basically everything could be in the same space but in a different reality such as time. Maybe time is what seperates parallel universes. Every X amount of X mesurements of time we transfer universes or transfer realities.
It's not self-defining because we're the ones doing the defining. But otherwise I agree completely. Universe is all that exists, and the word should be used in this broadest sense even in physics. Instead of "parallel universe" I prefer the word "timeline". It's not even parallel in the geometric sense anyway.. ;-)
what happens when you reach the end of the known universe, do you enter into the unknown universe, study it and it becomes known;
My take is " we really don't have a clue"
Funny how the physicist has a far better answer about why the pursuit of answering this question is important than the philosophers.
So I basically just wasted 90 minutes to find out we haven't got a clue
Don't like the word "produce" in the second hard question mentioned at the beginning:
The physical stuff and in the brain and conscious experience are definitely related,
but we cannot be certain the former produces the latter, it could very well be a more complex relation.
I am a bit of a reductionist and like the idea that the universe emerges from some sort of fundamental field at the quantum level. But down at that level, there is no need for time and space, time and space are emergent properties of something else. So what we perceive to be reality is just what we see at this scale but fundamentally, reality is very different.
Causation is not a spatio/temporal concept AtomicKinetic 12, but an ontological one. If there is First Cause, it existed ontologically prior to and is the ultimate cause of time and space.
The concepts of human languages evolved to deal with human scale experience. When we attempt to extend them beyond their area of utility we run into trouble. For instance, the concept of "nothing" evolved to stand for the absence of certain things or classes of things. Example: All the apples in the sack were dumped out. Now the bag contains "nothing". "Nothing" here simply means no more apples, or we could say no more things which are relevant to our present concerns. When we "inflate" the concept of "nothing" to mean some supposed ultimate metaphysical "nothingness" we have indulged in the misuse of language. We have pushed the concept beyond its utility, and into absurdity.
Bob Aldo Want the solution for the problem? I did it!
Very solid panel :]
Loved it
1:02:19 example of renormalization to deal with infinity in quantum field theory
This was a high quality panel!
There is no answer to this question. Something and nothing are both concepts in the human mind. There are inevitable limits to our understanding and to this question there are either none or infinitely many solutions
if we are hoping for Philosophers and Scientists, the question of origin of everything remains unanswered forever.....
+Hamid Mat Sain MD,FRCS The finitude of the past and the finite universe we live is prima facie evidence for ex nihilo Creation. Question is what is the more plausible explanation "because of laws like gravity the universe can and will create itself from nothing" (Hawking) OR that there is a non-contingent, immaterial, atemporal creative mind that brought being into existence from non-being? (theism) the finitude of the past as proven by the
impossibility of an infinite regress of past physical events is all the proof I
need to justify ex nihilo Creation. If u have any more doubts google "if
you think science leads to atheism" for a litany of the most eminent
scientists who will shatter your illusions. When u admit to Creation I can
detail how the Christian religion best articulates the true nature of God. The
essence of our humanity is to love and be loved. Nothing gives life a deep sense of joy with meaning hope and destiny than the shared experience of a loving supportive community of believers.
+Hamid Mat Sain MD,FRCS Who do you rely on then? Aren't these people the most reliable?
+Hamid Mat Sain MD, FRCS As J Krishnamurti implied with his book, "The Impossible Question".
+Gerry De naro The concept of a finite existence doesn't necessitate a state of nothingness. You were conceived at a certain time, and so your life had a finite beginning. The materials that physically make you up were not "nothing" prior to that. They were simply in another physical form.
Where are you getting this concept of "nothingness" from? We certainly have no examples of any such nothing. You're making it up because it suits your beliefs.
+Gerry De naro What a pile of crap. The god hypothesis does not make predictions and cannot be tested. It can form no part of knowledge.
I don't get why the events of being of something rather than nothing has to "take place" in a certain moment in time. Why? If Being is the most foundamental level (Being as what makes being things be) and Time IS, Being comes "before" (not in a temporal sense) Time, so 1) things exists since always (before big bang there is still something etc.) 2) things are instead of nothing being for a reason that isn't placed in the timeline nor it is temporal - things are "because" of a always-already-present reason.
Love David Albert...shame he got stitched up on "What The Bleep!"
For me, Neil Turok laughs a lot because he has a more understanding of the simplicity of the Universe and how obscured everything appears in our small homo sapien brains. Scale out to the perception of a fourth dimension and the third dimension becomes elementary.
That was an interesting and enjoyable discussion on the topic 👍
Interesting that Asimov proposed his "four leaf clover" short in a 50's anthology - and explains how the net entropy is zero and explains why it happened.
Guys this isn't a discussion that tries to answer the question, it's a meta-discussion about the tackling of the question. Nobody comes up with the answers to big questions on a stage. The fact that they did not get any closer to an answer is irrelevant. That's not what they were trying to do.
But their video can still be useful to promote my solution because I actually did it.
Surely nothing is not an option, since no intelligent entity can ever be in a position to say: ‘Why is there not some thing?’
The statement in the Bible of *the earth* being "formless and void" occurred *after* the Creation of the heavens and the earth. It was a way of saying there was nothing to distinguish (no land) and there was no life until those things were made.
+Seekmosttoprophesy In this day and age, quoting from the Bible only proves you are stuck in the past with the primitive people who wrote the Bible.
Never seen anything like this. Guy totally rips into Guth and his inflationary theory, but what he says seems reasonable.
There's actually a lot of these ideas floating around the scientific community - they definitely deserve more interest.
Here is one of many alternative-model papers from Cornell on the issue. arxiv.org/abs/1007.1750
"There are four conspicuous features of these models: 1) the speed of light and the gravitational constant are not constant, but vary with the evolution of the universe, 2) time has no beginning and no end; i.e., there is neither a big bang nor a big crunch singularity, 3) the spatial section of the universe is a 3-sphere, and 4) in the process of evolution, the universe experiences phases of both acceleration and deceleration. One of these models is selected and tested against current cosmological observations, and is found to fit the redshift- luminosity distance data quite well."
Circuit7Active guth's idea has serious problems associated with it. yes, the theory was influential and revolutionary. yes it holds part of the truth, but Newton's theories held part of the truth as well and relativity has ultimately shown Newton's insight as brilliant, but fundamentally flawed.
guth's theory will prove the same. the theory can be correct, and virtually useless, all at the same time.
a minority of those actually educated on the topic believe guth's theory is the last word, and explicitly true. it happens to be Mathematics true, but that's all.
The one guy can't stop name dropping to let us know he is friends with Steven Hawking.
Gravitational waves "Prof Neil Turok, director the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics at Waterloo in Canada, and a former research colleague of Prof Stephen Hawking, called the discovery “the real deal, one of those breakthrough moments in science”.
It is interesting to hear people who believe in an eternal universe but they can't accept an eternal GOD?
The universe exist....
Dirac wouldn't have to account for 'random big bangs' if he realized that big bangs are just the opposite end of supermassive black holes forming in other 'larger' universes. He already is halfway there when he say; there's no absolute scale. Energy too, has no Scale Neil!
Well now, if there were nothing, then no one would be around to ask the question in the first place. The question, "why is there nothing, rather than something" is a logical impossibility. So of *_course_* the question is phrased that way, it couldn't ever be phrased otherwise.
I am reminded of the creationist argument that there must be intelligent design, because the parameters that allow life to exist on Earth are so exact, that any deviation from them and there would be no life.
Well OBVIOUSLY, that's why life developed here in the first place, the conditions were right.
Cheers to Turok! Good luck!
By the use of logic to resolve any problem of understanding the possible role of paradox is automatically rejected as a cause. Does paradox have a possible role in the creation of the Universe? Following on this thought, a "nothing" state is different from what is a "null" state. As pointed out in other posts, a "nothing" state still has a form. However a "null" state has no preexisting form. A conjecture on this is that if "two parts" are balanced as paradoxical, then the larger state that contains both parts is "null" - has no form. This concept leads to the idea that there is no such thing as the Universe in its largest form. Rather, as a minimum, two paradoxical forms exist. In one of them, arises the region we call the "Universe" and it is balanced to a form that is paradoxical. This might seem contrived except that paradox is mirrored in our Universe everywhere - in the relationship between elements that are "fundamental dualisms" - for example the relationship between quantum and classical mechanics, and the very basis of the form of quantum mechanics, which is the sq root of minus 1. This final thought brings in the possible role of self-organization as a force of "direction" out of a "null" condition. Rules do not preexist, they are generated successively.
The very fact that we exist, forces the answer that something pre-existed us. The questions you ask and how you asked them determine the answer and outcome. Does love, virtue, purpose, responsibility exist? Yes. Can we measure it by physical means? No. I'm more worried by the missuse of things than by their existence, because it can kill us.
Here a philosophical answer: We exist because love exists. Love needs an object wo is able to respond to the giver of love. I hope this makes sense.
FUNNY, OVER AN HOUR OF DISCUSSION AND NOT A BIT CLOSER TO ANY EXPLANATION.
+joe shmo what did you expect? It's a period of time that was before our timeline, and we are currently limited in the very branch of physics that could likely explain it
Ludvig Burman WOW ! REFRESHING TO HEAR YOU ADMIT TO THAT ! I'M ALL FOR THEORETICAL IDEAS AND RESEARCH, JUST GET ALITTLE WONKED WHEN IT STARTS GETTING PRINTED AND TAUGHT AS FACT. ESPCLY WHEN NO FOREWORD THAT IT IS JUST EXACTLY THAT.
joe shmo where is it taught as fact?
Ludvig Burman SERIOUSLY ? HS N COLLEGE TEXTBOOKS do not HAVE A PREAMBLE STATING : " THE FOLLOWING IS NOT CONCLUSIVE, IS SPECULATION, JUST THE BEST WE HAVE SO FAR, AND not ACCEPTED BY ALL SCIENTISTS ". NOT IN MINE FROM THE LATE 80'S OR MY SON'S FROM JUST 8 YRS AGO.
If understanding why, helps us in how to be, then fair enough; if it is a search for a definitive answer then that is a fools errand.
Consciousness is a distant third to "the origin of organic matter.."
A great 100% philosophical 0% scientific question that even Dr Turok agreed to be, yet he found the courage to rise over and destroy the philosopher in the room while dismissing string theory as conjectures to get 'papers' published.
physicist should keep it simple don't over stretch themselves? but we need those type of people..... but i agree with Neil on most of the issues
It's weird. Some people just don't grasp the question, and so they dismiss it as word play. It IS a good question, although obviously --like physics-- it's not for everybody.
I like these discussion among top notch intelligent people. In the Middle Ages philosophers were discussing how many angels fit on the tip of a needle (I would have liked to hear they point of view).
Is it weird that, even though most lose their "faith" due to science, to me quantum mechanics has restored mine. I'm no longer a christian i now believe that every religion has some truth to it. But my religion is "quantum physics". It has restored my faith that we all have a soul or conscience and the energy that "is" our soul cannot be destroyed. In other words there is some sort of afterlife that we with our human brain and eyes that only see light, Not what is actually in front of us, could not possibly understand. i use to believe maybe the universe is alive in a different aspect other than biologically. Maybe it is god. But now i believe that we all including the entire omniverse came from a source of origin. We are all god and the energy that makes us is what pushes us forward. We including every planet sun and galaxy are God. We are like a fungus. We all have a conscience made of this energy that is all connected into one big entity. We create our own reality and it is we who create our afterlife. We are God!!
Albert is great to listen to. Also good to see Turok critical of science, there are a lot of problems in science. In biology, the field I work in, a large number of studies in the top journal have shown to be un-reproducible (something around half). Unfortunately, confident assertion and the kind of piecemeal advancement Neil described are a problem. Yes, science has made great practical additions to our lives but does this mean they are close to answering metaphysical questions like the beginning of the universe?
"I'm shocked by his philistine utilitarianism. Useful, indeed?"
That's not Steve Paulson though, that's David Albert.
The answer is: Everythingness is there, rather than nothing because the meaning of nothingness can't exist without the existing things.
The video: CspacSn2XUM
The Universe reaches a certain point in it's evolution and rebounds in on itself and another big bang ensues ad infinitum.
Provide evidence and I promise I will believe you.
there is no rebound ... the universe is expanding and it will never stop expanding ...
Not according to all available evidence.
It's logical what else could be the mechanism that got the Universe started? It's a very elegant solution and Turok is saying as much.
A SAID WEE MAN
quantum fluctuations of space time ... eternal inflation ...
again, the universe will never rebound ... all the evidence is showing us that it is expanding and will never stop ...
Can anyone explain to me what Turok means at 1.12.20 when he says that the "simplicity is not necessary for our existence"?
This was just amazing.
Questioning creation narrative implicitly presents an existential challenge to (biblical) religion itself.
I feel that space/time and causation could be emergent properties of some deeper layer of reality. Maybe space/time and causation are not fundamental. So, at this deeper lever, space/time and causation have no meaning. Whatever reality really is, is eternal
It's so funny I asked my 11 daughter can something come from nothing? She looked at me like I was crazy 😂.. she asked me, Daddy are you serious? He who is intelligent should become ignorant in order to become wiser. The inner eye of men need to be open in order to see beyond. The evidence of a powerful, grand architect and designer of the universe are overwhelming.
Your daughter said all that? She must be possessed.
When you say universe, what exactly are you refering to ?
The question is wrong. The error of the question is that it assumes that Being ( 'something') and Nothing are seperable from each other (as like there is some Universe A which contains Being and some other Universe B which contains Nothing, so why do we live in Universe A instead of B). That however is not the case as Being and Nothing are inseperable and are part of a union called Becoming. In Becoming it is already understood that Being turns into Nothing and Nothing turns into Being. Outside of Becoming, neither Being nor Nothing has any meaning.
That is why such a question - which assumes one term without the other - is incomprehensible and can not be answered.
Hegel for one saw that quite correctly. See: www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hl/hlbegin.htm
My last comment is that these guys are simply eloquent materialists. They cannot understand that the origin itself begs the question and concludes with Infinity and therefore not just multi-verse but infinite multi-verse.
maybe we are limited too understanding the universe because of our eyes, we trust them but if they are limited in function then we might not ever see the truth, if you couldn't see the color blue how would you go about truly understanding the color blue
solofox Qq
Instead of Big Bang we should think on the relationship between noomenon phenomena
we dont 'understand' the universe with our eyes......zzzzz...
Raven Reda advance beyond the physical body...and what makes you so sure youre in a physical body right now?
*noumenon
This talk, or at least its video title, only addresses one side of the problem, the smaller side. My difficulty is in understanding why there isn't humongous amounts more of Something Rather than the Something that there is. I'm talking super-humongous amounts more , I don't think I'm managing to express just how more humongous an amounts more I think there should be. Someone should do a science talk on that.
the meaning is to invent a better programmed simulation than we're in
Came here from a metaphysics philosophy discussion. I have to say something is missing. There is no 'feeling' in this debate. A lot of words, no conclusions. Nothing agreeable. The only thing that seems conclusive 24 minutes in is 'background radiation on your TV screen from the big bang'. It's interesting because the company I intern for actually projects white noise into the office. It seems to keep people calm, quiet and focused with almost a sense that it is a library setting.
*Because there is no such thing as "nothing." "Nothing" is not possible.*
You say that, but have you met any flat earthers? There's certainly a strong case for true nothing between their ears.
71:00 funny moment LoL
does lawrence krauss know you guys stole the title of his book? and how could you name it something like that and not have him on?
The basis for any scientific, philosophical or religious claim is what evidence should we expect to see if the premise is true, and what evidence would we be likely to see if it's false? If for example, one is to argue for creation ex nihilo, then the finitude of the past and the impossibility of a infinite regress of past physical events or states are compelling evidence in favour. Next question is what is the more plausible explanation , mindless matter creating itself or some non-contingent, a temporal, un caused cause. If the effect is a rationally intelligible, abstract law-abiding universe then it's cause has to be an immaterial, rationally intelligent mind.