(Edging further along the canyon. The indistinct glare still shown on the other side of the gorge. We still travel on hoping to find a way across. Up ahead, we see a group of sages.)
Huxley: Good-day gentlemen. This is Matt. He hails from what the natives call Myrtle Beach We are today talking about Love.
(I nod. Then I made out St. John among them. He spoke up first.)
St John: How do you know God?
Matt: I’d say you know God when you love Him.
St. John: And why is that?
Matt: Because God is love.
St. John: Very good. You can’t get to God by thought, only by love. Remember that.
Huxley: Yes. Matt wants unitive knowledge, the kind that unifies him to God.
St. John: The only way to get there is to see how much he loves!
Huxley: Right.
Matt: Why exactly?
St. John: Because the mind itself has motives, and those motives are powers that move the mind along. One of these motives is Love. Love draws you up out of your Self and sets you on high.
Huxley: Remember that love is the astrolabe for God’s mysteries.
St. John: I would give you directions to cross the gorge, but each path is different, unique to the traveler.
(Somewhat disappointed, we plodded along. Huxley and I began to talk).
Huxley: Knowing and loving are related in a certain way.
Matt: How?
Huxley: Can you love something without knowing what it is? Or, can you ever know something through and through without loving it?
Matt: What are you saying? That love has its own epistemology?
Huxley: Precisely. Love is a mode of knowledge!
Matt: So, when does Love bring union with God?
Huxley: It’s got to become disinterested and intense enough.
Matt: Why disinterested?
Huxley: If not, it’s a biased love; it’s not undiluted charity. Recall that love is a mode of knowledge. Well, if you’ve got biased love, what kind of knowledge do you have?
Matt: I suppose it’s a partial and distorted knowledge.
Huxley: Of what, though?
Matt: Of the Self, of the world, of things, lives, minds, spirits outside my Self.
Huxley: Right. What happens to someone whose diet is Lust, not Love?
Matt: Oh, this is Shakespeare! The lust-dieted man ‘slaves the ordinances of Heaven’!
Huxley: Right. And that man slaves the ordinances of Heaven because the laws of Nature and the Spirit are subordinated to his cravings.
Matt: So, the lust-dieted mind suffers an ignorance.
Huxley: A voluntary ignorance.
Matt: But he can’t see! How can a blind man help what he can’t see?
Huxley: But he will not see. He puts his hands over his eyes.
Matt: What is the reward of this blindness?
Huxley: It depends. The ambitious or the possessive or the vain or the petulant all fall into their traps. Less obviously, one can sacrifice salvation, enlightenment, or the possibility of escaping the Self, to power, prosperity, or reputation!
Matt (sigh): This spiritual ignorance is terrible.
Huxley: It is. Do you remember Cardinal Richelieu on his death-bed?
Matt: I don’t.
Huxley: His priest told him to prepare his soul before death by forgiving his enemies.
Matt: How did the Cardinal respond?
Huxley: He said simply: ‘I have never had any enemies to forgive, except the State.’ You see, a life full of avarice, ambition, and intrigue made the Cardinal spiritually ignorant. He had no charity for the State. And you now see what this does.
Matt: How sad. The Cardinal is doomed to not knowing the entirety of his soul or anything else.
(At a bend in the trail, Aquinas seemed to be strolling by.)
Aquinas: I could help but here you talking of Love, how Love and Knowledge are related but different.
Huxley: What did you have in mind?
Aquinas: To love God is better than to know Him.
Matt: Why is that to you?
Aquinas: Because to know something is to raise it to my intelligence. But if I love something, I stoop to it in order to become its servant. It’s like the relationship between the miser and his gold!
(At that point, he left us by going around the bend.)
Huxley: Very enlightening! We can know God by reading theology, and we can know God by loving Him: two very different modes of knowing.
Matt: I liked the analogy between the miser and his gold.
Huxley: I did too. It’s like the spectator at an art show. He loves the painting not for what its worth, but because of its beauty.
(We heard footsteps quickening behind us. It was Pascal. He was in a hurry to be somewhere, but we didn’t know where. He heard the last part of the sentence and quickly said something as he passed.)
Pascal: We have to be so careful not to make Truth an idol. Truth and Love can’t be put asunder. So, we can’t love or worship the Truth.
(He scurried by off the path and up the hill on the right with lots of energy and passion. We resumed our discussion.)
Huxley: Charity doesn’t remind you of Love, does it? I mean, in Myrtle Beach.
Matt: Yea, I was about to ask you about that. We use that word to mean ‘almsgiving’, mainly.
Huxley (amused): That’s got to be some kind of philological accident! Or, maybe it’s no accident. Maybe it’s a subtle expression of something.
Matt: Of what?
Huxley: Of a seed that’s very deeply planted is the heart of man: that sprouts into ignorance and blooms into darkness. But charity is really a kind of love, the highest form of love.
Matt: English does have a very inadequate vocabulary.
Huxley: Very much so! Especially with psychological or spiritual talk. I remember St. John from earlier. He is famous for saying, ‘God is Love’. And we repeat it glibly.
Matt: Or that we love our neighbor as our Self.
Huxley: Yes. In Myrtle Beach, what do you think pops in the mind of the average denizen there?
Matt: Probably all sorts of things. They could think of a sex-scene in a movie, or someone caring for someone downtrodden, because that person is a temple of the Holy Ghost.
Huxley: Or lots of other things. But when our vocabulary isn’t clear, neither is our thought. Unclear thought is what a divided human nature loves. But we don’t want division, because we don’t desire to be unregenerate in our being.
Matt: So, what is charity, the highest form of love? What are some of its characteristics?
(To be continued . . . )
Friday, March 26, 2010
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Sweet Bubblicious
I am a sucker for some radio, bubble gum pop. I always have been. Everything from Will Smith's Willenium, Britney Spears, and anything else that fits with in that context. I love it.
(Big willie style all in it, gettin jiggy wit it)
I also love the "bubblegum" in other genres. I am a sucker for Entertainment Weekly. I am interested in what is going on in the world of entertainment, who is dating who, who broke up with who etc.
In the art world I am a fan of the Rococo. Fragonard, maybe the Lady GaGa of his time, painting pictures of children on swings, sitting in the grass, so sweet in fact, you can feel the cavities forming.
Over the past year I secretly have worn out a few songs that I believe encompass some of the better of this world of radio pop.
Lady Gaga- Poker Face, Just Dance
Taylor Swift-Love Story
The three above were in high rotation with my John Coltrane, Jurassic 5 and Bob Dylan. I couldn't help myself. During this time of complete musical gluttony I continued to ask the question, "Why not". And certainly why not.
The song that has been in high rotation recently is; Ke$ha- Tik Tok.
This can be completely blamed on the new game show that I have yet to see, Minute to Win it.
The commercial for this game show makes it look like the greatest thing on TV and I am convinced that it will be.
What are your guilty pleasures? Or less abrasive title, Bubblegum Pop mainstays?
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Athletics as a story.
I by no means am an athlete. I enjoy playing basketball and there was a time when I knew my way around a soccer ball. On the other hand I have never been a sports "fan". At the risk of sounding cliche' the most engaging portion of the superbowl for me were the commercials. Occasionally, if it was close, I would be engaged. Other than that consider me uninterested. I'll hang out at the food table waxing eloquently about Plato or Lady GaGa.
Like some people can reference a particular person's RBI's for a certain season or how many National championships some one has. I could tell you when the beatles released the white album (1968), but ask me anything related to stats a glaze comes over my eyes and I think of other more interesting things, Lady GaGa for example.
As I have gotten older the narrative of Sports has interested me. Specifically, baseball. It is America's past time. Nothing sums up a classic summer day than a Hotdog, a cold Beer, and an afternoon at the BallPark. Historically, there is so much connected with it, Civil rights, Scandal, Human fortitude. All of these things make for a great novel. Ken Burns the Documentarian spent 10 volumes exploring the history of the sport and I was enamored. After watching that documentary, I sat down infront of the television to watch a complete baseball game. I waited for the something inspiring to happen. A triple play, a great outfield catch, diversity being overcome...
Nothing.
So much nothing in fact that I fell asleep in the third inning. I did not miss much considering when I woke up from the baseball induced slumber, the score was the same.
I can think of one time I was completely engaged in a baseball game. A few years ago, the Red Sox won the World Series. You may or may not have heard. It was not that big of a deal. But, it was after years of heartbreak after heartbreak. The curse of the Great Bambino was Broken.
When the Red Sox started their series, that seemed doomed. I was watching with a friend from undergrad. He was raised on the Red Sox. He had followed them for years. Given years and years of dedication to them as a fan. I happened to be at his house for the first loss. I continued to come over for the next two losses. The next game they won. I immediately smelled a story. I said things like, "They can do it, they could win!" Nate, the Boston fan, immediately communicated the the wall before them. No one in any sport in the history of athletics had ever come back from a deficit like that.
Slowly but surely, It happened.
I had nothing to base my prediction on. In my selfish desire to see a story on the field I believed it could happen. When they won, Nate, the Red Sox fan, I looked at him and he was in tears. He had been waiting his entire life for that moment. It happened in his lifetime and he was there to experience it.
Following sports as closely as Nate, or as many others do, it becomes a story. Watching these men or women perform at the highest level of sport is second to none. The olympics is a great example of this. Individuals who 50 weeks out of the year work at Home Depot and train for one event and perform on a world stage and bring home the gold. It's enough to bring the coldest person to tears.
Sports/Athletics allows people to enter into a larger Meta-narrative. A little boy playing T-ball is participating in something larger.
I'm not ready to start memorizing stats but, I am ready to give my allegiance to a team.
Los Angeles Dodgers.
I have t-shirt. Nothing says dedication like a t-shirt.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Alexander Vilenkin and The Many Worlds Theory
I'm going to take a brief detour from Huxley during my trip to see my grandparents to talk about Alexander Vilenkin, professor of physics at Tufts University, and the leading authority on what is called The Multiverse.
Vilenkin wrote a book called Many Worlds in One: The Search for Other Universes. In it, he defends the idea of a Multiverse. Imagine that our universe is a grape. On Vilenkin's model, our universe is just one grape among many on a gravevine. In fact, there may be an infinite amount of grapes on this grapevine, or even an infinite amount of grapevines!
Basically, all the evidence for the Big Bang is from within one grape. As our grape expands - like a balloon - it looks as if ALL of space/time is expanding. But it's really just one universe on a grapevine, which spawns an infinite number of other grape-universes. The Big Bang just assumes that our grape is the only grape; space/time didn't have a beginning at the beginning of our grape, since there's an infinite amount of other grapes with their own space/times. Or, space/time is something like an umbrella over the gravevine as a whole. And since the grapevine is eternal, so is space/time.
We also have to remember that each grape is causally connected to every other grape, just as every grapevine is causally connected to every other grapevine: there's an infinite amount of grapes and an infinite amount of grape vines. Each grape and grapevine has a boundary and that boundary is what is called an event-horizon.
Vilenkin also believes that our grape is always inflating, like a balloon that's inflated with more and more air, so it expands more and more. This is strange though, because even though he thinks each grape is inflated eternally, the grapevines have a finite past. Maybe he means that each grape has a finite past and now that they have spawned they'll go on inflating forever.
According to the first inflationary theory, our universe is in a true-vacuum state. There is almost no density, like a desert with a little amount of trees. But earlier, the universe was in a false-vacuum state, having lots of density, like a jungle, thick with trees, foliage, and vines. This high density makes lots of gravity. But the gravity is overwhelmed by the energy from the density in the false-vacuum state. This energy causes a VERY powerful inflation, which makes the universe grow from the size of an atom to a size bigger than the universe as we see it today. But Vilenkin needs more than this inflationary theory.
Vilenkin, remember, wants to make the inflation of the grapes eternal. This is where scalar fields come in. These scalar fields determine how much density a false-vacuum state will have, like a gardener determines how many flowers to have in a garden. But these scalar fields have a special job to do: they have to get that false-vacuum state to expand so fast that when it starts to wither into true-vacuums (creating island universes: aka 'grapes'), the false-vacuum outruns (expands faster than) the island universes. This means the island universes are further disconnected from time. New island universes will pop up as the gap between the expanding false-vacuum and the other island universes gets bigger, like an ocean between two continents getting wider and wider leaves more and more room for more islands.
Very briefly: Vilenkin does say the Multiverse is finite. And he says the false-vacuum will go on inflating forever and ever. He does NOT explain how there is no violation of the second law of thermodynamics. More on that later.
As butter gets thinner and thinner the more it is spread, the center of the island universes get more and more hallow and dark the more it expands. At the rim of every island universe we have various Big Bangs, as the false-vacuum withers into true true-vacuum. In other words, every grape is growing, even though every grape is finite, since it had a beginning in the grapevine. Each grape (or island) had its own Big Bang. But here we have to make a distinction.
There is a Multiverse time and a time relative to particular island/grape universes. From the standpoint of the Multiverse's time, the islands/grapes pop up one after the other, successively. Vilenkin then does something very tricky. From the standpoint of each and every island/grape's time, each Big Bang happened at the same time (not successively)! So, from the Multiverse's standpoint, all those infinite amount of Big Bangs that WILL happen have, from the grape/island's perspective, ALREADY HAPPENED! That's why we can say here - in our grape/island - that there is already an infinite amount of grapes/islands. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why we can say OUR island/grape is infinite. Excuse me? Am I the only one raising my eyebrows here?
Lets go further. Perched up in our island, we can only see so much: a frontier. The frontier keeps going, and if you kept traveling you'd reach the edge of the island itself. From Earth, though, we can only see so much. We'll call this our perch. Even though quantum mechanics says there's only a finite number of histories from the Big Bang to any perch (like there's only a finite number of pages that can be traced to the spine of a book), Vilenkin thinks there's an infinite number of perches IN our island! That means all the histories in our perch are echoed infinitely! What? Read that again.
Vilenkin doesn't prove that quantum mechanics can be a map of the physical world. To undercut this, we could point out the reality of free agents, people whose choices aren't random, which they'd have to be if quantum mechanics described them. I mean (per the above paragraph), think about it. Is my counterpart in another island/grape really typing this thread an infinite amount of times, in an infinite amount of ways (say, with a clown-suit on!)? Further, how does Vilenkin magically turn the infinite, TEMPORAL, FUTURE 'succession' of perches (let alone the islands/grapes) into the infinite, SPATIAL 'simultaneous' range of perches? How can you do this? I don't see it: at all.
On the one hand (from the multiverse's perspective), the islands are still popping up, as the ocean between the continents grows wider, as the false-vacuum (prodded on by these scalar fields) outruns the latest island. On the other hand (from the island's perspective), the islands are already there! Huh? I also see that Vilenkin espouses a B-theory of time, at least relative to the islands, which is strange. The only way for the infinite amount of islands to be already 'out there' is if their times are 'out there' too: hence, the B-theory. So, another way to undercut Vilenkin is to prop up an A-theory of time and give reasons why the B-theory isn't right. If it takes time for the 'wave of time' to reach a certain point in the future, the islands' times can't exist, and so neither can the islands.
Vilenkin also thinks that by putting out into the galactic ocean an infinite amount of islands, the design that our island has won't be improbable at all! If there's an infinite amount of islands, then of course an island like ours is bound to pop up sooner or later, he'd reason. All the scalar fields have to do is weather a quantum fluctuation, which will make a certain vacuum shrivel off from the false-vacuum (like a petal from a flower). Each vacuum has certain values, and these values are the constants that you hear about: the ones that are 'fine-tuned', like an instrument. But if there's an infinite amount of islands, each with there own values/constants, it's no wonder we see the fine-tuning in our own perch! We see what we want to see in Nature, since we're humans. We see intelligence because intelligence is doing the seeing.
Psychologically, it's almost as if Vilenkin is motivated by the desire to dethrone Man. Okay, perhaps the motivation for the Big Bang is to enthrone him again. Who knows? But at least, the Big Bang is consistent with the evidence we see from our perch. We don't even see any of the other perches, let alone the other islands/grapes, let alone other grapevines! So, at the very worst, you have a motive and no evidence on the one hand, and a motive and lots of evidence on the other. That's why I'll always take the Big Bang right now. It's that simple.
But let's put that aside. Remember, if the A-theory of time is true, Vilenkin's grapes/islands don't even exist yet: that means there ISN'T an infinite number of them. This down plays the probability point from the many-worlds theory. There's only as many islands as have popped up since the beginning of the first withering of the first false-vacuum: which would be the multiverse itself, the granddaddy grapevine. Is it at all probable that our universe (island/grape) with all its fine-tuning values/constants would have sprouted so soon? I mean, cosmically, 15 billion years isn't that long.
Lets go back to the eternal inflation point. Recall, Vilenkin thinks the multiverse will inflate forever. Okay, how? Well, Vilenkin thinks the scalar fields have properties that are in the driver's seat of the inflation going on forever. But guess what Vilenkin says on page 61?: "Another important question is whether or not such scalar fields really exist in nature. Unfortunately, we don't know. There is no direct evidence for their existence" Uh oh. So, we have no good reason to think the multiverse eternally inflates. That's a bit of a problem, no?
Another problem: why hasn't the multiverse died out yet? I mean, it's been around for an infinitely long time. I feel like this concept of infinity is tossed around and only certain philosophers know what it really entails. Shouldn't the multiverse have died a heat-death by now? Shouldn't there be thermodynamic equilibrium by now? If not, why not? Is our universe just an island of disequilibrium? If so, why is our island so big? I mean, it's pretty large. Shouldn't it look much smaller, shouldn't it be more probable that it be smaller if the whole grapevine was in equilibrium? Roger Penrose thinks that the odds are VERY VERY small that our island would be as big as it is. It should be about the size of our solar system, let alone our galaxy, let alone our perch, let along our grape/island!
And why don't I see strange things like a giraffe appear out of nowhere in my living room and then disappear again? The odds against that happening are a flea compared to the elephant of there being an island that has the constants/values for life, if - of course - there WAS a multiverse.
And if there WAS, did IT have a beginning? Ironically, Vilenkin - along with Arvind Borde and Alan Guth - in 2003, said that if a universe is expanding, it's got to have a beginning: it's got to have a space/time frontier. This principle pretty much applies to any model. Here it is, straight from the horses' mouth, Vilenkin: "It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape, they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning" (p. 176). Thus, the mutiverse had a beginning. So, it popped into being out of nothing. Or, quantum tunneling? If so, why can't God bring it about that way too? At least, with God we have an efficient cause. This brings us to Vilenkin's model: quantum creation!
Imagine that the first state of our universe is a basketball filled with a false-vacuum, with teeny tiny bits of matter in it. If our basketball has a small enough radius, Newton says it'll collapse; but quantum physics says it'll tunnel, which will make our basketball inflate. So, there's two states. First, there's the state before the quantum tunneling; second, there's the state after the tunneling. But Vilenkin thinks that the state BEFORE the tunneling is NOTHING. Yet that's not what Vilenkin's diagram shows in his book. It shows that every step of the tunneling is SOMETHING into SOMETHING else. Vilenkin seems to think that if you DO have a radius whose measure is zero, that's the same thing as having NO radius. But it's NOT the same thing. In one case, you have SOMETHING; in the other, you have NOTHING.
Vilenkin admits it's not UTTERLY nothing. He wants this apparition 'nothing' to be subject to quantum laws. So, Vilenkin is comfortable with saying that there was a time when there was the laws of physics and yet no universe! Hmmmm. But that's not true when we realize that by 'no universe', Vilenkin means 'the state prior to the tunneling', when the radius measured 'zero'. But guess what? That state had some properties. Nothingness is the absence of properties! Not the same thing. So, Vilenkin misunderstands 'nothingness'.
Interestingly, Vilenkin has put on his 'philosopher hat' when he starts to wonder just what these laws of physics are. Are they abstract objects? Vilenkin says, YES! They are concepts that actually exist in a Mind. Excuse me? It's on page 205. Check it out!
So, there doesn't seem to be good reason to believe in a multiverse. Vilenkin's model is flawed big time. It presupposes a B-theory of time, which I think is flawed. The Big Bang model is still the best model. The many-worlds hypothesis doesn't have an infinite amount of worlds to work with; and it's pretty unlikely that an island would pop up that would permit life so early! 15 billion years isn't a long time, cosmically. Quantum mechanics doesn't describe everything in the natural universe. There's no reason to think the scalar fields can make the multiverse expand forever. Even if the multiverse is true, we should be seeing a MUCH smaller island than we do, in fact, see from our perch. And still, the odds against the fine-tuning of our island is still HUGELY improbable. On top of all this, the multiverse had a beginning, as Vilenkin points out. But it doesn't come from nothing, since Vilenkin misunderstand 'nothingness'. It comes from the false-vacuum state prior to its quantum tunneling! Well, guess what Vilenkin: that has properties - so, it's not nothing.
Vilenkin wrote a book called Many Worlds in One: The Search for Other Universes. In it, he defends the idea of a Multiverse. Imagine that our universe is a grape. On Vilenkin's model, our universe is just one grape among many on a gravevine. In fact, there may be an infinite amount of grapes on this grapevine, or even an infinite amount of grapevines!
Basically, all the evidence for the Big Bang is from within one grape. As our grape expands - like a balloon - it looks as if ALL of space/time is expanding. But it's really just one universe on a grapevine, which spawns an infinite number of other grape-universes. The Big Bang just assumes that our grape is the only grape; space/time didn't have a beginning at the beginning of our grape, since there's an infinite amount of other grapes with their own space/times. Or, space/time is something like an umbrella over the gravevine as a whole. And since the grapevine is eternal, so is space/time.
We also have to remember that each grape is causally connected to every other grape, just as every grapevine is causally connected to every other grapevine: there's an infinite amount of grapes and an infinite amount of grape vines. Each grape and grapevine has a boundary and that boundary is what is called an event-horizon.
Vilenkin also believes that our grape is always inflating, like a balloon that's inflated with more and more air, so it expands more and more. This is strange though, because even though he thinks each grape is inflated eternally, the grapevines have a finite past. Maybe he means that each grape has a finite past and now that they have spawned they'll go on inflating forever.
According to the first inflationary theory, our universe is in a true-vacuum state. There is almost no density, like a desert with a little amount of trees. But earlier, the universe was in a false-vacuum state, having lots of density, like a jungle, thick with trees, foliage, and vines. This high density makes lots of gravity. But the gravity is overwhelmed by the energy from the density in the false-vacuum state. This energy causes a VERY powerful inflation, which makes the universe grow from the size of an atom to a size bigger than the universe as we see it today. But Vilenkin needs more than this inflationary theory.
Vilenkin, remember, wants to make the inflation of the grapes eternal. This is where scalar fields come in. These scalar fields determine how much density a false-vacuum state will have, like a gardener determines how many flowers to have in a garden. But these scalar fields have a special job to do: they have to get that false-vacuum state to expand so fast that when it starts to wither into true-vacuums (creating island universes: aka 'grapes'), the false-vacuum outruns (expands faster than) the island universes. This means the island universes are further disconnected from time. New island universes will pop up as the gap between the expanding false-vacuum and the other island universes gets bigger, like an ocean between two continents getting wider and wider leaves more and more room for more islands.
Very briefly: Vilenkin does say the Multiverse is finite. And he says the false-vacuum will go on inflating forever and ever. He does NOT explain how there is no violation of the second law of thermodynamics. More on that later.
As butter gets thinner and thinner the more it is spread, the center of the island universes get more and more hallow and dark the more it expands. At the rim of every island universe we have various Big Bangs, as the false-vacuum withers into true true-vacuum. In other words, every grape is growing, even though every grape is finite, since it had a beginning in the grapevine. Each grape (or island) had its own Big Bang. But here we have to make a distinction.
There is a Multiverse time and a time relative to particular island/grape universes. From the standpoint of the Multiverse's time, the islands/grapes pop up one after the other, successively. Vilenkin then does something very tricky. From the standpoint of each and every island/grape's time, each Big Bang happened at the same time (not successively)! So, from the Multiverse's standpoint, all those infinite amount of Big Bangs that WILL happen have, from the grape/island's perspective, ALREADY HAPPENED! That's why we can say here - in our grape/island - that there is already an infinite amount of grapes/islands. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why we can say OUR island/grape is infinite. Excuse me? Am I the only one raising my eyebrows here?
Lets go further. Perched up in our island, we can only see so much: a frontier. The frontier keeps going, and if you kept traveling you'd reach the edge of the island itself. From Earth, though, we can only see so much. We'll call this our perch. Even though quantum mechanics says there's only a finite number of histories from the Big Bang to any perch (like there's only a finite number of pages that can be traced to the spine of a book), Vilenkin thinks there's an infinite number of perches IN our island! That means all the histories in our perch are echoed infinitely! What? Read that again.
Vilenkin doesn't prove that quantum mechanics can be a map of the physical world. To undercut this, we could point out the reality of free agents, people whose choices aren't random, which they'd have to be if quantum mechanics described them. I mean (per the above paragraph), think about it. Is my counterpart in another island/grape really typing this thread an infinite amount of times, in an infinite amount of ways (say, with a clown-suit on!)? Further, how does Vilenkin magically turn the infinite, TEMPORAL, FUTURE 'succession' of perches (let alone the islands/grapes) into the infinite, SPATIAL 'simultaneous' range of perches? How can you do this? I don't see it: at all.
On the one hand (from the multiverse's perspective), the islands are still popping up, as the ocean between the continents grows wider, as the false-vacuum (prodded on by these scalar fields) outruns the latest island. On the other hand (from the island's perspective), the islands are already there! Huh? I also see that Vilenkin espouses a B-theory of time, at least relative to the islands, which is strange. The only way for the infinite amount of islands to be already 'out there' is if their times are 'out there' too: hence, the B-theory. So, another way to undercut Vilenkin is to prop up an A-theory of time and give reasons why the B-theory isn't right. If it takes time for the 'wave of time' to reach a certain point in the future, the islands' times can't exist, and so neither can the islands.
Vilenkin also thinks that by putting out into the galactic ocean an infinite amount of islands, the design that our island has won't be improbable at all! If there's an infinite amount of islands, then of course an island like ours is bound to pop up sooner or later, he'd reason. All the scalar fields have to do is weather a quantum fluctuation, which will make a certain vacuum shrivel off from the false-vacuum (like a petal from a flower). Each vacuum has certain values, and these values are the constants that you hear about: the ones that are 'fine-tuned', like an instrument. But if there's an infinite amount of islands, each with there own values/constants, it's no wonder we see the fine-tuning in our own perch! We see what we want to see in Nature, since we're humans. We see intelligence because intelligence is doing the seeing.
Psychologically, it's almost as if Vilenkin is motivated by the desire to dethrone Man. Okay, perhaps the motivation for the Big Bang is to enthrone him again. Who knows? But at least, the Big Bang is consistent with the evidence we see from our perch. We don't even see any of the other perches, let alone the other islands/grapes, let alone other grapevines! So, at the very worst, you have a motive and no evidence on the one hand, and a motive and lots of evidence on the other. That's why I'll always take the Big Bang right now. It's that simple.
But let's put that aside. Remember, if the A-theory of time is true, Vilenkin's grapes/islands don't even exist yet: that means there ISN'T an infinite number of them. This down plays the probability point from the many-worlds theory. There's only as many islands as have popped up since the beginning of the first withering of the first false-vacuum: which would be the multiverse itself, the granddaddy grapevine. Is it at all probable that our universe (island/grape) with all its fine-tuning values/constants would have sprouted so soon? I mean, cosmically, 15 billion years isn't that long.
Lets go back to the eternal inflation point. Recall, Vilenkin thinks the multiverse will inflate forever. Okay, how? Well, Vilenkin thinks the scalar fields have properties that are in the driver's seat of the inflation going on forever. But guess what Vilenkin says on page 61?: "Another important question is whether or not such scalar fields really exist in nature. Unfortunately, we don't know. There is no direct evidence for their existence" Uh oh. So, we have no good reason to think the multiverse eternally inflates. That's a bit of a problem, no?
Another problem: why hasn't the multiverse died out yet? I mean, it's been around for an infinitely long time. I feel like this concept of infinity is tossed around and only certain philosophers know what it really entails. Shouldn't the multiverse have died a heat-death by now? Shouldn't there be thermodynamic equilibrium by now? If not, why not? Is our universe just an island of disequilibrium? If so, why is our island so big? I mean, it's pretty large. Shouldn't it look much smaller, shouldn't it be more probable that it be smaller if the whole grapevine was in equilibrium? Roger Penrose thinks that the odds are VERY VERY small that our island would be as big as it is. It should be about the size of our solar system, let alone our galaxy, let alone our perch, let along our grape/island!
And why don't I see strange things like a giraffe appear out of nowhere in my living room and then disappear again? The odds against that happening are a flea compared to the elephant of there being an island that has the constants/values for life, if - of course - there WAS a multiverse.
And if there WAS, did IT have a beginning? Ironically, Vilenkin - along with Arvind Borde and Alan Guth - in 2003, said that if a universe is expanding, it's got to have a beginning: it's got to have a space/time frontier. This principle pretty much applies to any model. Here it is, straight from the horses' mouth, Vilenkin: "It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape, they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning" (p. 176). Thus, the mutiverse had a beginning. So, it popped into being out of nothing. Or, quantum tunneling? If so, why can't God bring it about that way too? At least, with God we have an efficient cause. This brings us to Vilenkin's model: quantum creation!
Imagine that the first state of our universe is a basketball filled with a false-vacuum, with teeny tiny bits of matter in it. If our basketball has a small enough radius, Newton says it'll collapse; but quantum physics says it'll tunnel, which will make our basketball inflate. So, there's two states. First, there's the state before the quantum tunneling; second, there's the state after the tunneling. But Vilenkin thinks that the state BEFORE the tunneling is NOTHING. Yet that's not what Vilenkin's diagram shows in his book. It shows that every step of the tunneling is SOMETHING into SOMETHING else. Vilenkin seems to think that if you DO have a radius whose measure is zero, that's the same thing as having NO radius. But it's NOT the same thing. In one case, you have SOMETHING; in the other, you have NOTHING.
Vilenkin admits it's not UTTERLY nothing. He wants this apparition 'nothing' to be subject to quantum laws. So, Vilenkin is comfortable with saying that there was a time when there was the laws of physics and yet no universe! Hmmmm. But that's not true when we realize that by 'no universe', Vilenkin means 'the state prior to the tunneling', when the radius measured 'zero'. But guess what? That state had some properties. Nothingness is the absence of properties! Not the same thing. So, Vilenkin misunderstands 'nothingness'.
Interestingly, Vilenkin has put on his 'philosopher hat' when he starts to wonder just what these laws of physics are. Are they abstract objects? Vilenkin says, YES! They are concepts that actually exist in a Mind. Excuse me? It's on page 205. Check it out!
So, there doesn't seem to be good reason to believe in a multiverse. Vilenkin's model is flawed big time. It presupposes a B-theory of time, which I think is flawed. The Big Bang model is still the best model. The many-worlds hypothesis doesn't have an infinite amount of worlds to work with; and it's pretty unlikely that an island would pop up that would permit life so early! 15 billion years isn't a long time, cosmically. Quantum mechanics doesn't describe everything in the natural universe. There's no reason to think the scalar fields can make the multiverse expand forever. Even if the multiverse is true, we should be seeing a MUCH smaller island than we do, in fact, see from our perch. And still, the odds against the fine-tuning of our island is still HUGELY improbable. On top of all this, the multiverse had a beginning, as Vilenkin points out. But it doesn't come from nothing, since Vilenkin misunderstand 'nothingness'. It comes from the false-vacuum state prior to its quantum tunneling! Well, guess what Vilenkin: that has properties - so, it's not nothing.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Good Vibrations
Dictionary.com defines culture as;
Because of the nature of this blog pertaining to culture I feel it is necessary to have definition to work off of.
I want to focus your attention to "that arises from a concern". I almost died today. This week is my finals week and has not only kept from communicating with you loyal followers of The Heretical Review, but also it has kept me from my sweet, sweet, bed. Sleep is something that I miss dearly, like the touch from a former lover or a piece of cake for a woman on a diet, I need it, I crave it, I'm pining. I rarely pine, I'm not proud but, never the less, It's happening.
This morning at 4 a.m. an earthquake, a whopping 4.0 on the richter scale, hit sunny Los Angeles. A friend here at Fuller said she always wondered what her response would be under these auspicious circumstances. Fight? Flight? It is a question that can only be answered when you are under the gun.
Apparently my response is sleeping. Also, it is appropriate to know that I did not realize that we even had a earthquake until, Sam my roommate, mentioned it casually. He said, "Yea, it woke me up, I thought about waking you up but then I fell back asleep." It's good to know that we are people you can depend on. And by depend, I mean just assume I am dead in a major natural disaster, it will save you time and energy in the rescue process. And If I am able to find you in the end, the surprise will be all the more special.
I think this is an appropriate time to turn the corner and discuss some films; I cannot remember a movie with the plot line that deals specifically with earthquakes. I can think of plenty of movies that have earthquakes in them. I can also think of films with the earth opening up and swallowing up people and cities. But, no earthquake films. Outside of the 1974 film called "Earthquake". This is a little explored natural disaster.
I, want to take this time now to implore Steven Speilberg, George Lucas or Michael Bay to take on the challenge. There is a whole world of heartache and man overcoming the odds to be explored here.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Postscript
I plan to pick up on my commentary on the 23rd of March. I'm going to see my grandparents for a little over a week. Before you know it, I'll be back! Things are getting hectic as I plan to go off to Basic. But I'll stay on track as best I can and be back posting whenever I can.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
The Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley, Part 7
As someone who is pushed into the ocean over a ship in the midst of sleep is shocked out of unconsciousness, I came to my senses. I noticed that the scene was different than it was a moment ago, as if the environment morphed on its own, like a butterfly from its cocoon. I frantically searched for Huxley and found him about 20 feet away looking at me, as if waiting for me. I got to my feet and strolled over to him with a heaviness in my head, not like a hangover, but more like a drug-induced high. It felt natural, as if I got there without cheating, as natural as the feeling of fulness after a healthy meal.
Huxley: “Glad to see you’re ready. You already look changed, as the sea looks different in the evening than it does in mid-afternoon. Are you ready to find out how God is in the World? Remember throughout the day that He is not in the world like a beaver is in its dam. The world is not a greenhouse that makes the divine flowers blossom.”
This must be the mystery of Immanence and Transcendence, again. Our language is like a belt that is too tight for the waist of Reality. It is a funnel and we’re only allowed to see Reality come through the narrow end. We see the sheet music with its flute, clarinet, strings, drums, tuba, cello, and violin sections; but we’re only equipped with a piano. How Reality must squeeze through the tiny door of Reality as Alice did to enter Wonderland.
Huxley: “The best road to the Divine Ground is through your Self and that which your Self perceives. If she were conscious, the best way Mona Lisa could reach Da Vinci would be through her Self and the scenery in which she is placed. She would find Da Vinci’s character in her Self and in all the elements in her environment, just as we can find the character of the Divine in our Self and Nature.”
The Mona Lisa always existed as an idea in Da Vinci, just as we have always existed as an idea in the Divine. Before we were born, He knew us. Da Vinci’s mind was the habitation of all his ideas, just as in his loins each man carries in himself the future of posterity.
God is Spirit, and so He is simple, since He has no parts, and Spirit has no parts. He is everywhere, like a voice is everywhere in a room once spoken.
Huxley: “Matt. When do you see one thing separated from another? When are you above understanding, as a man is above a beast?” I answered: When I see God in everything, I am above mere understanding, just as when a man sees the personality of his favorite author strung like a common thread throughout his works, he is above merely understanding the content of what is written.
Huxley: “Each one of us is an atom in the divine body, an element of heat in a ray from the Divine Sun. In everyone, there is an essence in which the Godhead is there. We meet the Godhead in our essence, and our essence is like the spine that holds the pages of the book of our Selves together; it is that which is at the bottom of every page. The book of humankind is a thick tome; but there is no page that is not in perpetual contact with the spine. Because of this mutual contact, the page can come to know the spine. And let’s not forget about Nature. A tree has a form that reveals to us the Divine Ground. It is a symbol showing us Reality. The tree is a fed by the roots, which soak up the water; from the trunk the branches spring out, and from the branches we have twigs that give birth to foliage, all of which is given life by the sun. Everything in the life of a tree points to the Divine and its relation to us. We are a tree; we only grow if we’re rooted and rained on and given light by the sun.”
I saw clearer now. The poet tries to capture an image of the Divine and contain it like a photograph. But we can only see the image if the mode of our being changes. We’ll like the same song if the mode of our being is similar. No matter how much the song moves us, if we share with excitement the song with a friend whose mode of being is miles away from our own, they’ll meet the song with indifference. Faith, love, and hope prepare us to ‘see God’ like a microscope prepares us to see an atom. We’ll begin to feel the heat of the ray from the Godhead like we’d begin to see the pattern of an optical illusion if we look at it just right.
If I kneel when I pray, if I feel a reverence before a shrine (my stomach flutters), my imagination, my feelings, my emotions change, thus changing my mode of being. A vortex whistles down from the storm clouds of my consciousness and the vortex becomes a psychic medium, much like a channel for spiritual water, or an instrument for spiritual music. Through this medium, I interpret the prayer or the reverence. It is this medium that stamps my experience or the image with the Divine. This aspect of the Divine is the bridge to the Divine Ground. It is always possible, though, to hear the words, but not the music. But the music will always be there, waiting, like a buried treasure in a secret chamber on an uncharted island. The psyche must be tuned to see it, just as an instrument must be tuned to play the right notes: then the music will be right.
Huxley: “The way to the Divine outside yourself is harder than the way to the Divine within. The heights without are more arduous than the heights within. Without, temptations and distractions come like constant interruptions during a good conversation. But this must happen to find God not just in the Self, but in the World. Ironically, these distractions are the stepping stones, the rungs in your ladder. You must meet every temptation and turn it into a sacrament. It was designed for you and you alone because you were made for it. We must pay attention to our life like an artist pays attention to his masterpiece. Every element must be given attention.”
I saw now why the Far East was filled with landscape painting; it was a religious duty, to find God in the World. The Heavens declare the glory of God!
I heard the story of Li-lou, who could see a soft hair at a distance of a hundred paces. But when the Emperor dropped his precious jewel in the water, Li-lou couldn’t find it, despite his extraordinary eyesight. Yet Hsiang-wang found it! When Li-lou dove in the waves roared and the deep darkened. But when Hsiang-wang dove in, the sea calmed and the jewel shined! Li-lou could see but he could not see, for he did not walk in the higher spheres.
I then heard of those who saw God in Nature, but not in their Self. Wordsworth saw it in The Prelude, as did Byron. Pleasure rushes over them as if they were tingling. Though Wordsworth saw it, he did not take it in. He admired the beauty, but didn’t marry it. It didn’t transform him into a butterfly, but affected him from the outside, like the temperature. But St. Bernard scaled the heights of the Self and received the fulness of Nature. Nature became a patient teacher. St. Bernard: “Listen to a man of experience: thou wilt learn more in the woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach thee more than thou canst acquire from the mouth of a scholar.” Nature is a stepping-stool to God. We use it as we might use a pair of spectacles to see. Philo says: “Even though a man may be incapable of making himself worthy of the creator of the cosmos, yet he ought to try to form himself from being a man into the nature of the cosmos and become, if one may say so, a little cosmos.”
Our path converged onto an impasse. I looked over the edge and had a momentary fit of vertigo. The drop over the cliff swooped down into a canyon. The base of it must have been a couple of miles down. My foot accidentally must have pushed over some pebbles as I edged to the frontier because I heard a light echoing tumbling down the curvature of the canyon wall. I wondered how we were to get across. It was much too dangerous to try to climb down: we didn’t have the tools. I did see that the path broke into two opposite directions so that it looked like a ‘T’. But were we to go left or right? The canyon stretched beyond my sight so I couldn’t see if either path lead across or not. Huxley bid me to go right, so I went right. I peered over the edge of the canyon to my left and saw a river that looked like a long, blue stringy strand of silk, curving its way in the contours of the rock like a snake. The other side of the canyon was much too bright to make out anything distinctly. I thought it was the sun setting, but the sky was still blue, and I still saw the sun off-kilter above. It couldn’t be another sun. Maybe I’ll get to see more if we progress along this path.
Huxley: “Glad to see you’re ready. You already look changed, as the sea looks different in the evening than it does in mid-afternoon. Are you ready to find out how God is in the World? Remember throughout the day that He is not in the world like a beaver is in its dam. The world is not a greenhouse that makes the divine flowers blossom.”
This must be the mystery of Immanence and Transcendence, again. Our language is like a belt that is too tight for the waist of Reality. It is a funnel and we’re only allowed to see Reality come through the narrow end. We see the sheet music with its flute, clarinet, strings, drums, tuba, cello, and violin sections; but we’re only equipped with a piano. How Reality must squeeze through the tiny door of Reality as Alice did to enter Wonderland.
Huxley: “The best road to the Divine Ground is through your Self and that which your Self perceives. If she were conscious, the best way Mona Lisa could reach Da Vinci would be through her Self and the scenery in which she is placed. She would find Da Vinci’s character in her Self and in all the elements in her environment, just as we can find the character of the Divine in our Self and Nature.”
The Mona Lisa always existed as an idea in Da Vinci, just as we have always existed as an idea in the Divine. Before we were born, He knew us. Da Vinci’s mind was the habitation of all his ideas, just as in his loins each man carries in himself the future of posterity.
God is Spirit, and so He is simple, since He has no parts, and Spirit has no parts. He is everywhere, like a voice is everywhere in a room once spoken.
Huxley: “Matt. When do you see one thing separated from another? When are you above understanding, as a man is above a beast?” I answered: When I see God in everything, I am above mere understanding, just as when a man sees the personality of his favorite author strung like a common thread throughout his works, he is above merely understanding the content of what is written.
Huxley: “Each one of us is an atom in the divine body, an element of heat in a ray from the Divine Sun. In everyone, there is an essence in which the Godhead is there. We meet the Godhead in our essence, and our essence is like the spine that holds the pages of the book of our Selves together; it is that which is at the bottom of every page. The book of humankind is a thick tome; but there is no page that is not in perpetual contact with the spine. Because of this mutual contact, the page can come to know the spine. And let’s not forget about Nature. A tree has a form that reveals to us the Divine Ground. It is a symbol showing us Reality. The tree is a fed by the roots, which soak up the water; from the trunk the branches spring out, and from the branches we have twigs that give birth to foliage, all of which is given life by the sun. Everything in the life of a tree points to the Divine and its relation to us. We are a tree; we only grow if we’re rooted and rained on and given light by the sun.”
I saw clearer now. The poet tries to capture an image of the Divine and contain it like a photograph. But we can only see the image if the mode of our being changes. We’ll like the same song if the mode of our being is similar. No matter how much the song moves us, if we share with excitement the song with a friend whose mode of being is miles away from our own, they’ll meet the song with indifference. Faith, love, and hope prepare us to ‘see God’ like a microscope prepares us to see an atom. We’ll begin to feel the heat of the ray from the Godhead like we’d begin to see the pattern of an optical illusion if we look at it just right.
If I kneel when I pray, if I feel a reverence before a shrine (my stomach flutters), my imagination, my feelings, my emotions change, thus changing my mode of being. A vortex whistles down from the storm clouds of my consciousness and the vortex becomes a psychic medium, much like a channel for spiritual water, or an instrument for spiritual music. Through this medium, I interpret the prayer or the reverence. It is this medium that stamps my experience or the image with the Divine. This aspect of the Divine is the bridge to the Divine Ground. It is always possible, though, to hear the words, but not the music. But the music will always be there, waiting, like a buried treasure in a secret chamber on an uncharted island. The psyche must be tuned to see it, just as an instrument must be tuned to play the right notes: then the music will be right.
Huxley: “The way to the Divine outside yourself is harder than the way to the Divine within. The heights without are more arduous than the heights within. Without, temptations and distractions come like constant interruptions during a good conversation. But this must happen to find God not just in the Self, but in the World. Ironically, these distractions are the stepping stones, the rungs in your ladder. You must meet every temptation and turn it into a sacrament. It was designed for you and you alone because you were made for it. We must pay attention to our life like an artist pays attention to his masterpiece. Every element must be given attention.”
I saw now why the Far East was filled with landscape painting; it was a religious duty, to find God in the World. The Heavens declare the glory of God!
I heard the story of Li-lou, who could see a soft hair at a distance of a hundred paces. But when the Emperor dropped his precious jewel in the water, Li-lou couldn’t find it, despite his extraordinary eyesight. Yet Hsiang-wang found it! When Li-lou dove in the waves roared and the deep darkened. But when Hsiang-wang dove in, the sea calmed and the jewel shined! Li-lou could see but he could not see, for he did not walk in the higher spheres.
I then heard of those who saw God in Nature, but not in their Self. Wordsworth saw it in The Prelude, as did Byron. Pleasure rushes over them as if they were tingling. Though Wordsworth saw it, he did not take it in. He admired the beauty, but didn’t marry it. It didn’t transform him into a butterfly, but affected him from the outside, like the temperature. But St. Bernard scaled the heights of the Self and received the fulness of Nature. Nature became a patient teacher. St. Bernard: “Listen to a man of experience: thou wilt learn more in the woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach thee more than thou canst acquire from the mouth of a scholar.” Nature is a stepping-stool to God. We use it as we might use a pair of spectacles to see. Philo says: “Even though a man may be incapable of making himself worthy of the creator of the cosmos, yet he ought to try to form himself from being a man into the nature of the cosmos and become, if one may say so, a little cosmos.”
Our path converged onto an impasse. I looked over the edge and had a momentary fit of vertigo. The drop over the cliff swooped down into a canyon. The base of it must have been a couple of miles down. My foot accidentally must have pushed over some pebbles as I edged to the frontier because I heard a light echoing tumbling down the curvature of the canyon wall. I wondered how we were to get across. It was much too dangerous to try to climb down: we didn’t have the tools. I did see that the path broke into two opposite directions so that it looked like a ‘T’. But were we to go left or right? The canyon stretched beyond my sight so I couldn’t see if either path lead across or not. Huxley bid me to go right, so I went right. I peered over the edge of the canyon to my left and saw a river that looked like a long, blue stringy strand of silk, curving its way in the contours of the rock like a snake. The other side of the canyon was much too bright to make out anything distinctly. I thought it was the sun setting, but the sky was still blue, and I still saw the sun off-kilter above. It couldn’t be another sun. Maybe I’ll get to see more if we progress along this path.
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