The Constants

SMZ

SMZ

Have you ever paused and went in depth with the things surrounding us? if so, surely you realized the creativity and beauty, and probably wondered how all this amazing system 'works'.

Throughout time, men and women have been in pursuit for knowledge; to understand our surroundings, so the scientists take basic information, or constants and build on them, and go deeper. So deep that we've gotten into sub-atomic levels.

Now, my question is, have any of you guys ever wondered about the basic of the basics (AKA the constants that we rely on)? for example, we deal with number in our every day life; we add, subtract, multiply, divide, power up...etc, but what are 'numbers'. Some might say it's a method that we use in order to do something in our lives, just like how we use cm, kg, ton for amounts, but what comes through my mind, is what is that thing itself. Another example that might clear this up is energy, we all know energy. Ask a little kid, an ignorant man, a dying man..etc and they all know the concept of it, and when taking a scientific definition energy is "the amount of work that can be performed by a force", but what is that thing that makes something, well do something(or nothing, in the case of a none moving object)? Also, we label charges as negative and positive to differentiate their act of attractiveness, but then again what are 'charges', and why do they 'attract'?

Some might find that these are basic physical questions, but I'm asking about the root basics, the stuff we rely on to explain other stuff, and how they work.

Sorry if I sounded a little weird while typing, but my point is kinda hard to deliver.
 
Depends on whether you view certain areas of knowledge as invented or discovered. Obviously your answer will be dependent on that.
 
I have often thought and wondered about the basics of basics, about what quarks are made of, or something similar. The basic principles everything around. I belive a charge is defined as a generator of any continuous symmetri of the physical system under study
 
I could try to give you a scientific explanation of charges behavior based on the exchange of virtual photons. I can get into the various interactions to explain why objects move (or don't move) as you asked and the like; but I think this thread is trying to ask about the fundamental limitations of knowledge more than anything. I believe that as physics progress the amount of knowledge available to us that we have yet to discover will continually decrease (I obviously can't prove that, it's just a belief!); but there will always be the fundamental limitations imposed to us by reductionist reasoning of continually trying to explain "why." I liken it to Godel's Incompleteness Theorems, while we are not talking about axiomatic systems so it doesn't apply directly, it expresses my generalized belief that there are true facts that are unknowable due to the reductionist nature of inquiry that I alluded too.
 
According to Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, mentioned above, any formal system of symbolic manipulation representing mathematics cannot include every true mathematical statement. To prove some statements requires jumping outside the system and looking at the statements as having actual meaning rather than just as symbols on a page. This is proof that mathematics is not just some system that is made by humans but instead has some higher truth.
 
but there will always be the fundamental limitations imposed to us by reductionist reasoning of continually trying to explain "why." I liken it to Godel's Incompleteness Theorems, while we are not talking about axiomatic systems so it doesn't apply directly, it expresses my generalized belief that there are true facts that are unknowable due to the reductionist nature of inquiry that I alluded too.
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Yeah, that's exactly my point, and I wasn't asking in particular about objects moving/charge, those were mere examples about basic things we rely on.

This is proof that mathematics is not just some system that is made by humans but instead has some higher truth.
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That's a point of mine too; the higher truth of things, how they're founded and connected by God.
 
Staraptor Call said:
This is proof that mathematics is not just some system that is made by humans but instead has some higher truth.
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The Incompleteness Theorem proves no such thing. You can come up with several internally consistent sets of mathematical principals that are mutually exclusive (and thus can't all have "higher truth" because they can't be correct simultaneously), but Godel's Incompleteness Theorem applies to them all equally.

Metal Force said:
That's a point of mine too; the higher truth of things, how they're founded and connected by God.
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As soon as I read your second sentence I was waiting for you to claim this is because of God. Fundamental constants do not prove the existence of any god.

"Numbers" in general are abstract things, not physical things. You can have three sheep, and three is just an abstract concept to describe the concrete concept of sheep. I'm really not sure exactly what you're asking here because of how vague your question is.

As for your thing about energy, what makes energy work? The laws of physics. There is no further purpose to it. You don't need external purposes for things.
 
Any reference to god automatically nullifies any legitimacy to the statement you just made.

Sorry, MF, but keep religion to yourself.
 
Xia, the Omega Point is a theistic theory. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a jesuit, it says so right in the article. Burying your head in the sand and saying God did it is not a theory itself.

The Omega Point theory connotes creationism, and goes further to hypothesize that there is a limit or zenith to "God's creative ability."

But wait... isn't god omnipotent? Nothing is impossible for him!

Pierre shot himslef in the foot, so another guy called Frank Tipler wrote his own version. On the surface, it looks good. The comsological Omega Point is "what he maintains is the ultimate fate of the universe required by the laws of physics."

Frank says that in the future, a quantum computer (god) will be present during the big crunch, and when the universe implodes into nothingness, the computer will successfully recreate the universe as a perfectly accurate simulation. This time/event is the Omega Point.

A.K.A. God will make a new universe after this one. It'll be exactly the same!

Note that Frank is a christian.

This theory is bullshit. Religious scientists try to prove christianity with science by creating "theories" like this. It's nothing more than mincing words and etymologic facades of scientific basis. It contributes nothing to discussion.


But to stay on topic, laws can be used to answer metal force's question. Laws state what something is and is not. What something can and can not do.

Laws identify a phenomenon. "This is how that works." As for breaking stuff down, The basis of the universe is space, matter and their interaction manifested as the four fundamental interactions; gravity, magnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces.
 
As far as I understand it (and I have a degree in Physics), all of the "Laws" of physics are not definite laws, but just good approximations of what actually happens (ie Newton's Laws of motion, they work perfectly well, until you start moving at close to the speed of light, or using really small things). One of lecturers, who seemed like one of an extremely rare breed- a physicist with common sense- explained this to us, and he believes that as science advances, more "Laws" will have to be revised or even scrapped completely, for new ones which in the future may well have to have the same done to them, as they are just a mathematical approximation of observable reality, and the observable is always increasing.

Science is the proccess of destroying the pillars of certainty of religion, and replacing them with nothing....
 
Newton's laws of motion were an incomplete theory. They were eventually replaced by einsteins equtions of relativity, which happen to describe gravity with, as far as science has been able to test, 100% accuracy.

Certainty, PikaPete? I beg to differ. You have a book, which religious doctrine states is correct, so, by theistic logic, it must be. This somehow is more certain than hundreds of years of trial and error testing, retesting, observation, theory, etc.

Really, think before you post...
 
Well, I think he is talking about the basics like If I ask you why magnets attract. You give me an answer and I ask why does it work like that and you give me an answer and I keep asking why over and over for every answer you give me. Eventually you will have to say it just does or I don't know. Science then might be able to find out the answer for that "it just does" thing but then i would ask why does it do that or why it works like that and then you are back to "it just does". I personally believe it all goes back to God.
 
I think I may have not come across quite how I meant to there, judging by Nerdling's response. Maybe I should have put "certainty" in quotations. I'm personally not religious, and I think it is better to be uncertain but maybe right than certain and definitely wrong.

Also, Einstein's relativity doesn't really hold up perfectly, as it gives the problem of singularities, which common sense tells us can't exist (how can stuff exist but take up no space doing so?)
 
I apologize for the rather sharp response, I misunderstood you.

I am content to continue arguing about physics though! : )

Bring it on!
 
Alpha/Omega said:
This theory is bullshit. Religious scientists try to prove christianity with science by creating "theories" like this. It's nothing more than mincing words and etymologic facades of scientific basis. It contributes nothing to discussion.
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Aren't the atheist scientists basically doing the same but in an opposite manner? "Trying to prove that no "god" exists".
 
No, it's not the same thing. Religion and science are opposites in some ways. More specifically, the Creationism Vs. Darwinism argument.

A creationist will say that he has no idea how the universe began. He just knows that god did it. Every one will say the same thing. Scientists believe that it came about naturally. They try to find out how, and some will disagree. There are a few different theories.

Science doesn't try to prove that religion is false. It has no relation whatsoever. Science is asking "why?" and finding out.

Religion however, believes that the bible is true. Scientific discoveries are made, something gets proven untrue, faith wavers....

So what do they do? They say "I'm a scientist, and I'm going to write a paper. I'll use big words so you can't understand them, make the point very foggy, and mention god halfway through as the logical answer for these confusingly worded reasons. You MUST believe it! I'm an expert!"

When some kid in preschool asks his religious studies teacher "how do we know god exists?" The teacher will either avert the question or tell him to have faith. Religion teaches us that asking why is a bad thing.

To answer your question directly grammaa, Science doesn't try to disprove religion. It gives us an understanding of the world around us. Religion has no evidence that god exists, so any scientific discovery that contradicts the bible has no solid rebuttal.
 
Scientists don't attempt to disprove the existence of, they simply attempt to explain the universe without using the "god" argument to fill inconvenient holes in their understanding of the universe, unlike "christian scientists."
 
Atheism is not trying to "prove" everything. Science forms theories around solid, verifiable evidence. Religion forms evidence around theories. there's the difference.
 
Altmer, I agree and disagree.

Although most atheists would like to believe differently, atheism is a religion- believing there isn't a god or "higher being" cannot be proven any easier than proving they exist. Neither stand on the same grounds of science.

Science doesn't form theories around solid evidence, either- it makes them around replicable tests. If you can do the same thing over and over without ever getting an outlier, it becomes a scientific law, but never a fact.

Newton's Laws aren't even complete truths, after all. It just took a few centuries to prove his laws only work at human scale (as opposed to .
 
I believe a fairly well known quote from our favorite greek philosopher Epicurus is in order...

"Is god willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him god?"

@Xia...

More often then not, science is done by creating a theory, and then experimentally testing it. If the theory is disproven, find a new one. Basic scientific method.

We already covered the topic of Newton's laws, Xia...
 
Xia said:
Altmer, I agree and disagree.
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Let's see what we got here then.

Although most atheists would like to believe differently, atheism is a religion- believing there isn't a god or "higher being" cannot be proven any easier than proving they exist. Neither stand on the same grounds of science.
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Atheists don't necessarily believe "God does not exist". They merely have to lack a belief in God to be termed an atheist. Besides, how is something religion when there is a complete lack of a deity? That kind of contradicts your point anyway. Atheism is a default position. Atheism is not trying to "prove" that God does not exist, because you can't (the notion of God is not falsifiable). So I fail to see how it is anything close to a religion; atheism has always merely described the lack of belief in a deity.


Science doesn't form theories around solid evidence, either- it makes them around replicable tests. If you can do the same thing over and over without ever getting an outlier, it becomes a scientific law, but never a fact.
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Nothing is ever fact. Everything is just fact within a certain statistical replicable limit, yes. The point is to have a cutoff line where you can say "well this is solid evidence enough to be assumed true for the given context." I know the gravitational constant equals 9,81 where I live, but it's probably actually 9,812 or 9,809 or whatever. It doesn't matter because it's not significant and doesn't really affect anything pragmatically whatsoever. In any case, what science has over religion in this case is that scientific laws are always falsifiable. God is not. Therefore, by extension, any theory based on something non-falsifiable is always bound to be non-falsifiable in the end. That is the point. I can always do an experiment and check whether any scientific law is true. I can't do this for God.

Newton's Laws aren't even complete truths, after all. It just took a few centuries to prove his laws only work at human scale (as opposed to .
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Nothing is a complete truth, but who needs a complete truth? All you need to live is a functional truth, not necessarily a complete one.
 
Altmer said:
Atheists don't necessarily believe "God does not exist". They merely have to lack a belief in God to be termed an atheist. Besides, how is something religion when there is a complete lack of a deity? That kind of contradicts your point anyway. Atheism is a default position. Atheism is not trying to "prove" that God does not exist, because you can't (the notion of God is not falsifiable). So I fail to see how it is anything close to a religion; atheism has always merely described the lack of belief in a deity.
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Buddhism doesn't have a deity, nor does Jainism iirc. Religion is primarily based around moral precepts, deities are common but not obligatory.

Nothing is a complete truth, but who needs a complete truth? All you need to live is a functional truth, not necessarily a complete one.
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Religion is supposed to provide a functional moral truth that informs and complements a scientific functional physical proof. Science and religion are only at loggerheads with people who don't like moral limits placed on their research, experimentation, or goals.
 
Deck Knight said:
Religion is supposed to provide a functional moral truth that informs and complements a scientific functional physical proof. Science and religion are only at loggerheads with people who don't like moral limits placed on their research, experimentation, or goals.
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What does a disbelief in evolution, or the belief that a supreme diety created the universe with a wave of his hand have to do with morality?

Your statement makes no sense.
 
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