Thinking Outside The Bubble
Readers who prefer a larger typeface with more whitespace between lines may like to read this article at Greenteeth Multi Media The link opens the page in a new window, a close window button is provided to return you here.
If you have not read Before Big Bang Part 1 yet, find it by following the link
Nothing that was said in Part 1 of this article precludes the possibility of there having been some kind of cosmic event that began our time / space continuum (I love that phrase, it's so Doctor Whoish,) It is quite feasible, even likely that the matter now expanded into our galaxy or even a cluster of galaxies was compressed into a unit the size of a small planet that existed at the bottom of a black hole. This depends on how we define what it is to exist. Science holds only that which is within time exists, but science by its nature requires this view.
Our concept of time comes from guesses and assumptions about the nature of "the beginning." Scientists measure the Universe in terms of the shock wave travelling outwards from the big bang and space as that area contained within an imaginary sphere surrounded by that shockwave. So going back to the mouse turd, what the scientists are saying is only that which is within time and space, inside the imaginary bubble in other words, exists. They tell us to think outside the box and yet they cannot think outside the bubble.
Were we able to surf that shockwave still spreading outwards from the big bang, in front of us would be an infinite ocean of nothingness occasionally punctuated by who knows what.
What is suggested next though is quite scary if you think about it too deeply. Imagine that truly infinite universe in which time and space have no meaning. Eternity, time without beginning or end; infinity, an endless void; and somewhere in all that, in a bubble of space and time, a small planet orbiting a small star. Us.
Infinity and eternity are so big it is impossible to get the human mind round them, hardly surprising then that some people cling to the idea of a supernatural being looking after it all.
Consider our perception of the nature of time and it is clearly very subjective. Sometimes time rushes past, others it seems to stand still. If you don't believe me try watching a dodgy episode of Columbo after being trapped in a hospital bed for a few weeks. I have, and every second of the show lasts for several years.
We really have three distinct types of time, scientific time which Stephen Hawking wrote about and the Big bang theorists rely on, Calendar time, the type we use for knowing when its our birthday etc.; and personal time, that great variable that flows like tar if we are doing something we have to do when we'd rather be doing something else, but is gone as quickly as lightning when we are having fun.
The Death of Time
An interesting idea about how we may experience eternal life is based on our experience of dreams coupled with perceptions of time.
Close to death the organs fail and the senses shut down, this is the end of consciousness. Researchers are sure that brain activity continues for several seconds, but as in dreams we do not have those sensual references that make us aware of the passing of time. A dream experience may be remembered as having lasted for hours or days but in reality is over in seconds. Dreams are experienced in a state in which though senses are shut down, we are still breathing and have a pulse. That mysterious natural clock which wakes up at a required time when something important must be done is still functioning and the emergency systems that have saved so many people by somehow cutting through sleep to warn of danger are still present.
What may happen in those few dying seconds when all the reference points are gone?
I've been close enough to know its a very weird but in no way frightening experience. And for the record, there was no white clad figure at the end of a long corridor, no loved one from my past to tell me to return as it was not my time and, the biggest disappointment, Elvis didn't show either. I vaguely remember some very weird experiences that could not have happened in reality though.
Is this how Eastern mystics experience Nirvana, oneness with all things, do they somehow cut themselves off from all sensual references to that time temporarily ceases for them?
Time used for administrative purposes then is measured by the mechanics of the solar system, our real experience of it is more subjective.
Outside Our Perception
What may be going on beyond our beyond our solar system where our measures are meaningless? How can we hope to make sense of our observations of what we assume to be distant galaxies by applying mathematics meaningful only in our solar system. If the truth is out there then that truth includes a realisation that time as we know it has no meaning. Without time does anything have meaning.
One of my favourite philosophical quotations is from Immanuel Kant:
"objects that exist in the world are real, but the human mind is needed to give them order and form and to see the relationships between them. Only the mind can surround them with space and time."
That is a very insightful statement for somebody who died in 1804, before modern physics had started to unravel the mysteries of The Universe. It also puts into perspective the cod philosophy of modern writers who have suggested that nothing is real and we all live in a world of our own creation.
Where are we? Oh yes, floating on a fragment of a cosmic mouse turd in infinite, timeless space. The question is: what goes on in that space if we leap beyond the boundary of our scientific universe. Were there other universes that as ours expands are collapsing to make room for it? Are there even now younger, more aggressively energetic Universes closing in on us, eager to push us back into a tiny pellet of matter and occupy our space for themselves? Are there an infinite number of overlapping universes existing in their own dimensions and not interfering with each other. The winners of last year's Nobel Prize for Physics, for their work on giantmagneto resistance, the technology that enables hundreds of gigabytes storage capacities on hard drives that ten years ago would only hold tens of megabytes might suggest the latter is feasible, if it works on your hard drive why not on a cosmic scale?
An Endless Cycle
Was our Big Bang the latest stage in an endless cycle of similar expansions and contractions?
Is the recorded " background radiation" alleged to be echoes of the big bang really just a trick of infinity and eternity, the radiation given off by stars in an earlier Universe and echoing forever around infinite space perhaps?
The answers to all these and millions more questions is, "We don't know," which is the same answer as an honest scientist would give to the question, "Was there really a Big Bang, a cosmic event that signalled the beginning of everything or was it just a regular bang, part of an endless cycle of bangs?"
The line the scientists take is that time and space began with the Big Bang and nothing can exist outside time and space. As I have tried to show through Immanuel Kant's words and some of my own tongue in cheek analysis, time and space are not part of reality but tools used by the human mind to measure our relationships with the things within reality.
So before big bang, in that endless timeless space outside the mouse turd, things were going on, probably very similar things to those going on in our universe now. The things that happen in our Universe only happen because there are humans to measure them. That other things happened or are happening or will happen outside our experience of time and space does not mean those things does not alter their reality, what's missing is the human mind to surround them with time and space. What we learn from all this is the place we humans occupy in the great scheme of things is not nearly as important as we like to think.
It is totally insignificant in fact.
Deconstruction of Big Bang however should not be taken as proof of any other theory about the beginning of everything, especially not those favoured by religions. Unless God is a mouse turd of course.
Big Bang Theory - Conventional View
Big Bang or Damp Squib - An Alternative Cosmology
Wikipedia - redshift
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift
A more down to earth example of why we need to think outside the bubble
rate
email
print
link to this page
Comments: 68
On the other hand, if we knew all the answers, maybe it would be boring.
I'm pretty sure not knowing (and I'm pretty sure I'll never "know") will have 0% impact on me nor do I feel I'm missing out on not knowing.
I believe there is a great deal more to existence than what we can currently detect. That neither threatens nor thrills me. I've got plenty on my plate today.
And, Ian, I was looking at my comments on Part 1 and I can see stuff I said that inadvertently foreshadowed Part 2. Either we are in frightening sync or you probably want to have me shot.
It's all fun to think about. I once wrote a story based on the "multi-dimension" concept where we stumbled into a different dimension and found that time moved not only at a different pace, but in a different direction.
The cool thing about not "knowing" everything is all the possibilities out there for those of us who like to use our imaginations without actually "violating" science.
My intention was to show that there is little point speculating about what we can never know, unless we are doing it for fun (or science fictions writing)
One of the problems the Abrahamic religions cause is in presenting a creation myth as literal history they challenge rationalists to come up with a feasible alyternative. The Biblical creation myth however is comparitavely recent, the original version from the Zoroastrian Avesta is much clearer. The Universe was always here, the world was created by humans when we developed higher consciousness.
We'll get round to covering that, but maybe not at gather. I think I will just be posting teasers here in future, the site gets worse.
I think we probably read the same books and watched the same films and TV shows :-)
My ideas on the topic have are not particularly original.
But there are hundreds of ways of presenting ideas in an original way. Which is a good thing, otherwise fiction writing would be a waste of time.
When we get down to the bottom line, we know nothing of the nature of time, the universe, the nature of being and all the rest.
For all we know the answer might well be 42 as Douglas Adams says in Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy.
I agree, Ian (and I also agree with all Stephanie said). I do enjoy discussing my experiences, beliefs, and speculations with others who are have open minds and are willing to do the same. What I don't enjoy are people who want to force feed me information that others have written or passed down for years and/or insist that my experiences are irrelevant or non-existent because they haven't experienced the same.
the bottom of a black hole
I didn't think black holes in space had a bottom ;-p
Everything is fed into it on one end and shoots out the other. Reminds me of a lot of people. Others I consider anal retentive.
I don't think that's true. Time and space may be very different from how our brains evolved to perceive them (it?) on the surface of this planet, but that doesn't mean that they're not part of reality. Do you think they will disappear if we die out and there are no more human minds around? (I should probably change that to "when".) Did they not exist before our minds evolved? On the contrary, whatever they are was what set the conditions of our appearance in this universe. The fact that we're not smart enough to understand them as they really are rather than as an animal moving on the surface of this planet needed to understand them doesn't mean they're not part of reality....
Another question: Why is it just about "our relationships with things"? Would "relationships" not exist between other things if there were no human minds to measure them? (If a tree falls in the forest, etc....)
Does a dog know how old it is? Or celebrate its birthday? Does a butterfly know it only lives for a few days. Would cats waste so much time sleeping if they knew they only live for about fifteen years on average?
Other life forms do not have relationships with things because they do not have the consciousness of their own consciousness that defines us as Homo Sapiens Sapiens rather than dimwitted old Homo Sapiens.
Migratory birds have a wonderfully sophisticated navigation system that according to some studys may use an ability to sense the magnetic fields of certain stars. There are other possibilities of course. Nobody truly knows how birds find their way and neither do the birds, they just do what they have to do. Does the swallow think "its winter so I must be in Africa."
Does the Cheetah know it is the fastest land mammal or does it just run as fast as is needed to catch prey.
Were it not for our special consciousness that makes us human, we would just exist as animals do. That's why we relate to objects while animals just deal with them. That's why this pointless but entertaing discussion thread only includes human and no bears, lions, dolphins or elephants are likely to join in any time soon.
There is a lot of argument about black holes, its not even certain they exist. The theory I took for this article is that they are funnel shaped and, like the gulper eel that lives at a depth of 20,000 feet in the ocean abyss, they dont have a hole in their bottom. In a Black Hole things just get compressed by the enormous gravity, in a Ulper Eel, things come out the way they went in. It doesn't matter though, there is no light at that depth so nothing can see what disgusting creatures they are.
I think its worm holes that in theory you enter one end today and come out the other a few million years in the past or future.
As it happens Greenteeth is MY website, I post the same articles there in a larger typeface with more whitespace because I think gather pages are horrible for people rewading long articles.
You will find this is clearly explained in the blurb to this article at gather. I don't bother to explain at Greenteeth as it is my site and my content.
Thank you, Ian.
Thanks for helping me with the gather irregulat militia.
There is a lot more to our world than we understand, so what is beyond it has to be a mystery. The greatest mystery of all of course is the human mind. Starting from what is the mind because it is not the same as the brain.
Then we get onto the weird and whacky like ghosts. People often ask (probably because of some of the fiction I write) do I believe in ghosts. The honest answer is i believe that many people who talk of paranormal experiences (allowing for a certain percentage of dope heads and attention seekers) have actually expereienced something strange. What that may be I have no idea, a quirk of quantum mechanics, a neurological malfunction.
I once spent an unquantifiable period of time in conversation with a metal pigeon. This is accounted for by my perception being distorted by haemorrhaged blood in my brain cavity. But though I was armed with that knowledge, the memory was very vivid for several years.
You're talking about The Craic, this Irish concept is the magical thing that happens when a conversation takes on its own life. I should do an article on it really as it needs a bit of attention.
Regarding the time and space question (I've enjoyed the conversation and different views), I think time and space are absolute but our perceptions of them are not. There are circumstances where I have differing perceptions of the same incident, sometimes simultaneously. For example, when I remember some of the people I've loved and lost, it can feel as though I haven't seen them in forever yet the pain of the loss might feel as current as yesterday.
I read you comment and thought "what would Sandy know about craic". You have a fine old Irish name, so ye have, Knauer. Would ye be from the Galway Knauers or the Connemara Knauers. OK, I know it was yer man gave you that name, right so. I'll get to the article and if any culchie little bollocks says I plaigiarised it when it turns up on my other sites, I'll banjax 'em so I will.
The philosophical view I prefer is that nothing actually exists unless something is aware of it. Awareness gives a thing its place in reality. Things were before humans gave them names, but nothing recognised the fact that they were.
Its a very interesting concept. I think the Zoroastrian creation myth deals with it very well so I'll do my next long article on that topic as is also throws a lot of light on the allegories of creation myths.
I don't agree with that philosophical view, though you're welcome to it if you want. I think human beings have enough arrogance now without thinking that nothing exists unless we're here to observe i
I actually like the thought that there's unnumbered things going on I'm missing than thinking there's only what I can observe.
You got it. Consciousness created time and space; animals, having a different kind of consciousness handle time differently. Hibernating animals don't know its late August but even though the weather may still be hot they know to eat like its going out of fashion (which it is for a while) before the weather goes cold and they bed down for the winter.
Coming into the discussion late......I agree with Sandy. If you can accept the premise of order, in which one thing actually follows another..underlying all notions of cause and effect..then you cannot question some kind of notion of progressive time. Our construction of time, based on our limited intellectual capacity and physical experience, is simply a way of looking at that unmistakable progression.
Life and death....there is no question that one is born, lives and dies in some kind of orderly fashion. If there was no progression, no movement ("forward" is a human construct, also), then there would be no need to understand time.
I, like Stephanie and Sandy, don't think too much about it on a macro level. It's hard enough fitting everything into a day on the micro level right now. I prefer to look at the progression of time through the lens of "quality", not "quantity", asking myself how much and what I have done with the day/month/year/whatever period allotted to me, rather than looking at its simple passing within a larger framework.
I don't think anyone can come to a final conclusion, its one of those things we can change our view on every day. But as you say, the ideas are great fun to play around with.
Thanks for the comment, as you are a sci fi fan I should introduce you to Stephanie B a couple of comments down from your first, who is a science fiction writer. I'm sure you will enjoy Steph's work.
You require the Everest response. I know Mount Everest exists but have no desire to climb it so it does not affect my life in any way.
But we must ask ourselves "what is Mount Everest?" or Chomolungma (I think that means the Great Mother Mountain)
To an Ancient Briton or Native American 5000 years ago it did not exist, to a Nepalese it was a goddess and to the Yeti it was home. Now we know how high it is, where in relation to London or New York, we know what kinds of rock it is composed of, the tupe of vegitation that grows at different levels on the lower slopes and lots about the climate. But the material reality has changed little in 5000 years.
So while we modern humans have enough evidence to convince us witness testimony about this huge lump of rock is true, only humans are aware of its significance. 5000 years ago it was there but it did not exist, it just was.
I think this is what Immanuel Kant was getting at.
Chaos theory, quantum entanglement... :-)
Order is convenient for us but is there really any order? How does the galaxy meaure the millions of years it takes to complete one rotation. How does the planet Neptune know that it has 165 years to complete an orbit of the sun.
Outside the human sphere time is meaningless. If, as is very likely, there are other civilised lifeforms somewhere in the universe you can bet your life savings they do not measure the duration of events by the mechanics of our Earth's orbit.
Neither the Universe, the Sun, the Earth nor ants measure time, only us.
I would argue that there is order, Ian. It is evident in cause and effect, at the macro level and at the micro level. We may all perceive time differently, and quibble about measurement of it on many levels based on perception, but I would argue that progressive order is not based on perception per se, but that it truly does exist. I would argue that although non-human living things do not perceive time, or care about time as we do, there is a progressive order for everything. Even non-living things can be seen to progress from one state to another in order. You see some non-living items erode, some build up, some change structure based on the interference of other forces (perhaps chemical, perhaps kinetic, etc.). You could say that aging of living things is simply the work of forces upon matter.....and no matter what we try to do, we can only slow those forces down or interrupt them for a period of time.
Again, I'm not speaking of duration as much as progression, cause and effect. Or do you think that is simply a human construct, too?
I perfectly agree, Stephanie.
Outside the human sphere, time is meaningless. The human sphere would not exist (and by that I mean the same as would not be) had it not evolved in time. The fact that no one at the time understood it or thought about it doesn't change this fact. And if the human sphere disappears, after some time another species might evolve the necessary levels of consciousness to be aware of time. (Some species are that not far behind us, you know. They may actually have a rudimentary concept of time.)
Aniko, would this be like the pet that knows I usually sit on the couch at nine, so he plants himself there and whines when I don't show up? I realize this is a very simple example of a learned behavior, but assume he has the same ability to assign a time measurement to differences between night and day, seasons, etc. without human influence. If this is what you are addressing, I think all living things have the same ability.
Humans may be more concerned with time than other species. Then maybe not. Certainly self-awareness brings knowledge of death and its distance from the present.
I'm not interested in "origins" except as a matter of curiosity. That's a personal preference thing, of course.
I guess I would agree with Aniko that the Universe has existed for a very long time before man appeared on the scene. Other animals appeared first, and I do not know that some or all of them do not have 'awareness' on some level. We may be unable to detect that awareness, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
I guess I differ with you, Ian, on the idea that nothing exists unless something is aware of it. To me, existence is independent of that...the rock is here whether we are aware of it or not. It's REAL properties may be different from the ones we perceive with our limited senses, but it's still there.
You are certainly right that nobody else with measure time with the same units humans do. Animals may not count the seconds and minutes, but they are obviously (to me) aware of the changing seasons which are defined by our solar system mechanics. They know the difference between 'summer' and 'winter' and their behavior changes, as you say. Different 'people' on different planets may have a different metric, but time is an integral part of our environment. Even the earth has changed over time, mountains rise and fall, rivers erode canyons, etc.
So, for me at least, matter exists, time exists, gravitation exists, etc. regardless of whether the human race is here or not.
But I admit that is just my simplistic take on things, and not a bit better than anyone else's.
Nothing is more humbling than to look with a strong magnifying glass at an insect so tiny that the naked eye sees only the barest speck and to discover that nevertheless it is sculpted and articulated and striped with the same care and imagination as a zebra. Apparently it does not occur to nature whether or not a creature is within our range of vision, and the suspicion arises that even the zebra was not designed for our benefit.
-Rudolf Arnheim, psychologist and author (1904-2007)
That is a great point to bring to the thread and it illustrates the point that though an organism may only live for a few days in our terms, within its own parameters it lives out its whole lifespan.
Andy's dog may know that she heads for her favourite chair at a ceretain time every evening but I'm sure it is not watching the clock or thinking to itself "OK, that's the closing theme to the soap opera, must be 9p.m; rather it is picking up clues from its owner and not clues we would ever recognise. Maybe a subtle scent change says OK, I'm getting ready to relax.
Arnheim was certainly right about Zebras, though closely related to horses they have proved impossible to tame and train as beasts of burden. But then I've known horses like that, ouch! :-)
On the rock issue, for millions of years (not sure how many - the Himalayas are quite young as mountains go) for a long time a promentory of graadulally increasing height developed in a huge upland area created by the clashing together of two tectonic plates. Nothing was aware of it, it just was.
Then a new species of ape developed. These creatures did not just live by instinctand senses, reacting to needs and to their environment. They questioned and sought to explain. Looking at the great promentory they decided it must be something, the great mother mountain as the rivers that ran off it fed the streams from which they drank. They gave it a name and it started its present existance. Prior to that it had just been part of the upland formed when two continental plates pushed together.
Things do exist but not in the sense that we mean by existing.
This is what I was getting at in the article, the big bang, if it happened, happened so far away from us in our terms that it cannot possibly have any meaning to us.
I'm aware of my lawn, it needs cutting but is too wet today. I know my lawn is made of blades of grass and I more or less know the life cycle of grass. But I cannot be aware of the lawn as anything other than a whole. The argument hinges on the limits of our consciousness.
If it is possible to reproduce animal and plant behaviour with light then surely that proves animals and plants react to changing light levels, not to time measured in any meaningful way. Animals exist in their own time dimension as do human communities that have not developed along Indo-European lines, the dream time (anything beyond living memory) of the Australian aboriginies being an example - real time for them goies back four generations at the most. Aborigines also have an interesting way of counting, there are only three quantities, one,two and many.
The study of societies living near stone age lifestyles gives us a lot of insight into the development of our civilisation and culture.
Thus we come to the realisation that our ideas of time and space, origins etc. are very new and superficial.
Cause and effect is real enough, human inability to understand what really is responsible for causing a certain effect is deeply suspect.
A good example is the MMR vaccine / Autism controversy. I attracted a lot of criticism from "people of science" last year when I blogged on the re-emergence of this story in the British press. What was really interesting and what I had been aiming to show was how, while the boy-scientists scream that allegations of a link between the vaccine and onset of autism are unscientific, the defences of the vaccine offered by scientists are equally emotive and unscientific.
I was accused of "not understanding science" to which I had to respond "there is no such thing as science, only "the sciences." I was accused of supporting Andrew Wakefield's "discredited research." I had not even mentioned Dr. Wakefield but the current hearing on his alleged breaches of ethics show that far from being discredited he was the victim of a witch hunt orchestrated by Big Pharma. Unfotunately it was necessary to get quite rough and ruin a couple of careers, but in the case of one boy scientist who had, in a national newspaper, accused parents whose childrens autism symptoms appeared shortly after they received the vaccine of being nothing but compensation seekers (it later emerged the scientist had received money directly from the vaccine manufacturers) it was a good result.
I don't know if there is a link, all I was saying is that in the UK at least, where it is known the medical profession are far too cosy with Big Pharma, the concerns of parents are dismissed in a way that amounts to official bullying. The case is that in the vast majority of cases there is no problem with the multiple vaccine but in a small number there is cause for concern. That the susceptible individuals cannot be identified in advance to my mind suggest parents should be free to choose all-in-one or separate vaccines for their children.
The point I am leading up to is that autism, which has reached epidemic proportions, is an unscientific disease, there is no know cause, no identifiable combination of environmental and genetic conditions that act as a trigger.
While I was doing my research on autism I came acoss a great line on the web page of a support group for parents of children with ADHD. This parent had had trouble convincing the family doctor there was something wrong with the child, it was not just a case of bad behaviour. The memorable line was "the problem with ADHD, like M.S. Lupus, Autism and other diseases of modern life is they are so unscientific.
Life has this terrible habit of being unscientific. So no, there is no order in life, only likelyhood. We may be able to impose order on inanimate objects to and extent, but with no degree of certainty unless we build into the design very wide safety margins.
If the world
Back to square one ;=) Does time exist without a clock?
You're just trying to lead me towards doing quantum entanglement or morphic resonance aren't you? I'm just not ready for that yet. When it comes to writing I'm a quantum physics virgin, be gentle with me. :-)
Back to time. Last week an announcement from Swedish environmentalists revealed a new oldest tree (or clump of trees) in the world had been discovered. A stand of Norwegian Spruce dated from root samples at 8000 years old had been discovered in a sheltered valley in western Sweden.
Two questions arise, (1) as no humans lived in the area until about 4500 years ago, while the trees were obviously there, did they exist as Spruce Trees (2) Over the millennia the trunks have died and decayed many times, the root stock throwing up a new trunk as the old one died. Are they then the same tree or should we consider them new trees, like the shrubs in my garden that I replenish from cuttings?
Do people who don't have clocks simply handle life differently.
But yes, back to square one. Big Bang or Little Bang or Whatever happened and according to the theiries had necessarily to happen long before our Earth or its Sun existed. So how can it be meaningful to measure the age of the Universe by the orbiting of this planet around its Sun?
I'm not trying to challenge the Big Bang theorists here, but to dig the ground from under their feet :-)
Quite simple. The trees in the question put out new sheeots from old rootstock. Are these then 8000 year old trees or new trees? A cell divides into two, the two cells divide again, then the four divide but the first cell atophies and dies. Are the new cells actually new creatures or simply continuations of the original. Are things really progressing or just going round in circles?
We define the age of rocks by their last melted state, so that's relatively clear cut, although I'm not a geologist and someone could readily pound me on the definition for metamorphic rocks. But,clearly, they existed before they solidified for the material came from somewhere.
A progression in time exists, I think, regardless of whether we're here or capable of appreciating it. Quantum weirdness doesn't really work for me.
You mean something different by "existing", Ian, not all of us--that's where this conversation started. :-) You have a point about whether what happened before the Big Bang could mean anything to us, but that's a different question.
The question about your children for purposes of this thread is what are they really. What are we. An interesting argument my Indian friend Dr. Viki puts forward is that awareness is all that makes us human, in scientific terms we are in fact comprised af trillions of cells, cells of various kinds that work both individually and in colonies for mutual benefit. The liver processes food into a form calls can use, the heart pumps that food along with oxygen both suspended in liquid, around the body the muscles protect the liver and heart band give them mobility.
All the cells in our body are replaced regularly and we have completely renewed in seven years it is said. So in your concept of time and events, we are a new person, yet we have the same memories, we are emotionally the same and our relationships survive. So what's going on? If there is a progression of events surely we would be new people and have to learn everything again.
Think of that joke about the old guy digging in his garden with an old spade and his neighbour says, "isn't it time you got a new spade? The old guy replies "son. this spade has been in my family a hundred years and in that time it has only had two new blades and three new handles.
Events happen in reality, time progresses in our minds because we are conditioned to be aware of it. We all experience the same reality slightly differently, we all use the same imaginary clock to reference events in reality. Life would be chaotic is we used different clocks. But just because we use the same clock, that does not make the clock have any meaning in reality.
Yes it is esoteric, that the price some of us pay for getting cosy with high caste Hindus.
For a thing to be said to exist it must occupy a place within human consciousness. This is what the scientific supporters of big bang say. All I am doing is extrapolating their argument to show how lacking in substance it is.
Before humans developed consciouness and became aware, the creatures that lived around Everest walked on it, few over it, slept in its hollows and valleys but were not aware of it.
I can't remember if it was you or someone else who commented about the microscopic but exquisitely formed insects. There are such insects in my garden. They will live their whole life within a few square feet in my garden. Not far away from my house is an old railway yard now reclaimed by nature. Even with my limited walking ability its a short stroll but those microscopic insects will never be aware of it. I on the other hand am aware of the foxes and squirrels that live on the waste ground because I have human curiosity. The squirrels are not aware of the foxes, only of a threat, the foxes are not aware of the squirrels, only of a potential lunch.
If we accept that things exist outside human consciousness, then a Universe with things in it existed before the big bang / little bang / whatever.
On the other hand the human perception of our environment both individually and collectively is very subjective.
The atoms and probably even the molecules or bigger particles that make up rock clearly existed, matter cannot be dematerialised. But did the rocks exist?
Not far from here is a quarry where the layers of sandstone can clearly be seen. There is proably such a quarry or gorge not too far from everybody, not on the scale of the Grahnd Canyon but fit for purpose. So thogh these rocks are about 1000 feet above sea level once they were mud on the floor of a flood plain, lake or sea bed. And before that were something else. Where does their life as rock strata in Whinney Hill begin? When erosion washed the particles into a river, when they were dumped in the mud flat or when the pressure of land or water above compacted and solidified them?
Pursue anything far enough and the answer is "we don't know." And then we are back to Noam Chomsky.
I understand our cells dying off and being replaced, but why then do we retain scars & freckles? They are essentially damaged surface cells - why are they not replaced with new, unscarred cells from underneath? Just wondering.
Good to meet you Sheryl, I have read many of your comments; my name is Viki Visnaweth, I think Ian has mentioned me. I am using his login as I don't want to register. This terrible man has a way of involving me in things I do not have time for. Well done for keeping my favourite bloke on his toes though.
You wondered about scar tissue.
The body is genetically programmed to attempt to heal itself when damaged. All damage to skin or internal organs results in a degree of scarring but only scars on the dermis are visible. I assume these are what you are referring to so I will concentrate on those, although scars on internal organs such as the scarring on the heart muscle following a myocardial infarction have a greater and longer lasting impact. (ask Ian for his definition of infraction, you will scream with laughter.)
Minor lesions on the dermis, the outer layer of skin, heal without leaving visible traces although there is some degree of permanent or long term damage but where the wound is more severe the skin cannot close itself under the scab. The body then cannot create new skin so it forms a protective barrier of fibrous tissue which is thicker, paler and less flexible than the original tissue it has a limited blood supply and is less functional than the destroyed tissue. The result is not pretty but forms an efficient protective barrier which is a lot better than retaining an open wound.
Hair follicles and sweat glands do not grow back. Sometimes scar tissue will be thin and papery, sometimes a layer of thickened tissue will be formed resulting in a raised scar.
When the cells in scar tissue die they are replaced by scar tissue cells rather than normal skin cells. This is how they remain visible. That is very brief but I think it covers your question.
Dr. V. K. (Viki) Visnaweth.
This is me. Viki just texted that she replied - she's in Stockholm, poor lass has a month of meetings, seminars and team building as a new project kicks off.
A question answered by a doctor and no bill. How's that for service?
So, unfortunately, even though we replace ourselves with whole new selves periodically, as Ian suggested, we still retain the "mistakes" of the past, in a way. Very interesting.
I don't think Viki (corruption of V. K. not short for Victoria BTW) is saying changes are reflected in the progression of time but that one thing (good skin) is lost and replaced by scar tissue ... I think ... erm, I'd best ask her.