Archive for the ‘Science’ Category

« Older Entries

All the senses we do not have

December 12, 2025

This started as an Appendix to an essay I am writing. However it has grown to stand as a post in its own right. It will now be a citation rather than an Appendix in the essay which I hope to complete soon. “Gods are a matter of epistemology rather than theology”. Cognition, including human cognition, emerges from the interactions between a brain, the senses it has access to and the body they are all housed in. A cognition’s view of the world is as much enabled by its available senses as it is blinkered by the same senses. Senses available to any species are unique to that species’ physiology and the brain which interprests the signals generated. The signals from a spider’s eyes or from a dog’s nose are meaningles and cannot be interpreted by a human brain. Furthermore even within a species each individual cognition has unique features. The experiences of a cognition may be similar to that of another individual of the same species but cannot be truly shared. We have no examples of telepathy in any species. My qualia of experiencing red or pain cannot be shared by any other human – but may be similar to the experiences of others. However a spider’s qualia of experiencing the same red with its eight eyes is something else again.

Introduction

Evolution has no aims, plans, or intended outcomes. It is simply the cumulative result of differential survival and reproduction. Traits persist when organisms carrying them leave more descendants than those without them. Sometimes that happens because a trait spares its bearer from an early death; sometimes it happens because the trait leads to more mating opportunities, or because it helps relatives survive, or simply because there is no better alternative available in the genetic lottery.

The popular idea that evolution “selects” for superior or well-designed features is mostly rhetoric. Natural selection does not favour excellence; it favours whatever works well enough under the conditions at hand. What results in any organism, including humans, is not an optimal design but a set of compromises shaped by history, constraint, and chance. When people speak of evolutionary perfection or elegant fit, they are mistaking local adequacy for intentional design. These traits succeeded because, in a given environment, they did not lose in the competition to leave offspring.

The senses that living organisms possess are no different. Each sensory system that exists today is not the best possible way to perceive the world, but merely one that proved sufficient, in a particular lineage and habitat, to avoid being outcompeted. Evolution leaves us only what has survived, with those traits that were good enough for the conditions of the moment. It contains no foresight, no preparation for what comes next, and any sense of direction we read into it is something we impose after the fact.

Senses Animals Have That Humans Do Not

While humans rely primarily on the five traditional senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch), plus others like balance (equilibrioception), pain (nociception), and body awareness (proprioception), the living things on earth have evolved many “extra” senses that we do not possess.

  • Magnetoception (Magnetic Field Sense): The ability to detect the Earth’s magnetic field and use it for orientation and navigation. This is found in a wide variety of animals, including migratory birds, sea turtles, sharks, and even honey bees. They use this as an internal compass for long-distance travel.
  • Electroreception (Electric Field Sense): The capacity to sense weak electrical fields generated by other living creatures’ muscle contractions and heartbeats. Sharks and rays use specialized organs called the ampullae of Lorenzini for hunting in murky water, and the platypus uses electroreception in its bill.
  • Infrared (IR) Sensing/Vision (Thermoreception): The ability to sense heat radiation, allowing an animal to “see” the body heat of warm-blooded prey, even in complete darkness. Pit vipers (like rattlesnakes) and pythons have specialized pit organs that detect infrared radiation.
  • Echolocation: A biological sonar system used by bats, dolphins, and toothed whales to navigate and hunt. They emit high-frequency sound pulses and listen to the echoes to create a detailed mental map of their environment.
  • Ultraviolet (UV) Vision: The ability to see light in the ultraviolet spectrum, which is invisible to most humans. Many insects (like bees), birds, and fish use UV vision for finding nectar, recognizing mates, or spotting prey.
  • Polarized Light Detection: The ability to perceive the polarization patterns of light. This is used by many insects (for navigation using the sky) and mantis shrimp (which have the most complex eyes known, seeing forms of polarized light we cannot comprehend) for navigation and communication.
  • Seismic/Vibrational Sensitivity: The ability to detect subtle vibrations traveling through the ground or water over great distances. Elephants use their feet to sense ground tremors, and many snakes and insects use this to detect predators or prey.
  • Ultrasonic and Infrasonic Hearing: Many animals can hear frequencies far outside the human range of 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz. Bats and moths use ultrasound (above 20,000 Hz), while elephants and some whales communicate using infrasound (below 20 Hz).

Senses: Could there be more?

Our current understanding of sensory biology is itself limited by our own human perception. We tend to define a sense based on some physical parameter that can be and is converted into a signal that can then be interpreted by a specialised brain which has evolved together with the sensory organs. If there is some parameter or subtle information in our surroundings that no living thing known to us has evolved to be able to detect, or one that is so subtle and complex that it doesn’t clearly map to a known physical stimulus, we would not even recognize it as a “sense” at all.

  • Subtle Chemical Gradients: While we have smell, some organisms (like bacteria or fungi) may sense complex, long-range chemical fields in ways that defy our simple notions of “smell” or “taste.”
  • Quantum Senses: Some research suggests that the magnetic sense in birds may rely on quantum entanglement within specific proteins. If true, this hints at perception mechanisms on a quantum scale that are difficult for us to even conceptualize fully.
  • Predictive or Internal Senses: Plants, which react to light, gravity, touch, and chemical signals, display complex “behavior” without a nervous system. While we classify these as existing senses, their internal “awareness” of time, nutrient deficiency, or potential nearby threats might constitute forms of interoception or time-perception that function in a fundamentally different way than any human feeling.

Our “awareness” of a sense is often based on the technology we invent to imitate it (like a magnetic compass for magnetoception). It is highly likely that life on Earth has evolved to be able to detect some environmental information in ways that remain outside the scope of our imagination or our measurement tools. We can speculate on senses that could exist in principle but which have no value on earth and therefore have never evolved. Let us take a “sense” to be a structured mapping from external regularities into neural states. Many regularities exist which life-forms on Earth have apparently had no motive or incentive to detect or track.

  • Neutrino detection. Neutrinos pass through a light-year of lead without stopping. Biological tissue could never detect them reliably. Could it be of value to some alien cognition. What would such detection change in a world view?
  • Sense of gravitational gradients at fine spatial scales. Gravity is too weak at the biological scale. A living creature would need to be built of very dense matter to reliably distinguish micro-variations in gravitational fields. But we cannot see any value of this to any conceivable form of life.
  • Hyperspectral gamma-ray “vision”. Gamma rays obliterate earthly biological tissue. A system to detect them without dying would require materials and chemistry alien to Earth. The energy levels are simply incompatible with organic molecules.
  • Direct dark-matter detection. Dark matter barely interacts with baryonic matter. Evolution cannot select traits for a signal that never reaches biology. But could there be alien biology and alien cognition which made use of such detection. Who knows?
  • Time-structure sensing at quantum-coherence timescales. A species that can detect changes occurring over femtoseconds or attoseconds is conceptually possible, but organic molecules are far too slow and thermally noisy. Evolution selects for what biochemistry can sustainbut we cannot know what we cannot know.
  • Sensing vacuum fluctuations (zero-point energy). We are almost entering into nonsense territory but then my nonsense may be basic knowledge to an unimaginable alien.
  • Direct perception of spacetime curvature (not gravity but curvature gradients). Living tissue cannot detect curvature directly. Only masses and accelerations reveal it.

Our reality is that as our knowledge grows so does the perimeter to the unknown grow. We can never know all the senses we do not have.

Tags:, ,
Posted in Behaviour, Evolution, Science | Leave a Comment »

Abortion as a Significant Demographic Parameter (2025 Update)

September 3, 2025

Previous (2019): Abortion now a significant demographic parameter

This update is not just a refresher – it has become much more urgent. The world has shifted from fearing too many people to fearing too few. What once was theoretical is now deeply real: population implosion is emerging not in distant projections, but in towns, schools, and economies collapsing due to fewer births.

Countries across the globe, from Greece to China, are deploying tax incentives, baby bonuses, and housing subsidies to shore up birth rates. Take China where cities like Hangzhou and Changsha now offer families 3,000–10,000 yuan annually per child, yet young people remain largely uninterested in having more kids (The Times of India). In Hungary, mothers with three or more children enjoy lifetime income tax exemptions, while even those with two or three benefit from deeply reduced housing loan rates (Wikipedia, Reddit). Still, experts caution these incentives seldom deliver lasting change (The Times, The Washington Post, Business Insider).

This trend is not just an outlier. In Greece, falling birth rates have forced the closure of over 750 schools (more than 5% of the total) rooted in a 19% drop in primary student numbers since 2018. Today, annual births sit below 80,000, while deaths continue to climb (Financial Times). Meanwhile, England and Wales have recorded record-low fertility rates (1.41 children per woman), and Scotland isn’t far behind at 1.25 and nowhere near the replacement rate of 2.1 (Financial Times).

In rural Japan, demographic erosion is already a visible reality. In Nanmoku, Gunma Prefecture, the population has collapsed from approximately 11,000 in 1955 to just 1,500 today. Now, 67.5% of residents are aged 65 or older, making it arguably Japan’s “grayest village” (Wikipedia, Kompas). More broadly, rural areas in Japan see abandoned farmland, empty homes, and aging populations. It is a national warning sign that the demographic collapse is not abstract but present (Kompas).

Immigration is often touted as the fix, but it’s a short-term patch. Studies show immigrant fertility tends to converge with the host nation’s average over just a few generations. In the UK, descendants, as quickly as the second generation start with elevated fertility but display significant variation depending on origin and assimilation dynamics (PMC, Demographic Research). In Sweden, similar patterns emerge: while birth timing may adapt, eventual completed fertility aligns closely with native norms (PubMed).

Against this backdrop, the demographic weight of abortion looks starkly more consequential than it did in 2019.

Then and Now: The Numbers

Parameter (annual) 2018–19 Estimates 2025 Updated Estimates
Global births ~140 million ~134 million
Global deaths ~60 million ~67 million
Abortions ~41 – 50 million ~73 million
World population ~7.7 billion ~8.1 billion
Leading medical “cause of death” Coronary disease (~10 million) Still ~10 million
Abortions vs. leading cause 4 – 5× higher ~7× higher

What Holds True

  • Abortions still dwarf every medical cause of death in raw numbers, and are as impactful demographically as before.
  • They continue to reduce births by roughly one-third, reinforcing their role as a key demographic parameter.
  • Population stabilization and eventual decline remain on track, with or without abortion, but there is no doubt that abortion accelerates the timeline.

What Has Changed

  • The sense of demographic crisis is now palpable, not just theoretical.
  • Governments race for solutions, but incentives alone, no matter how generous, rarely reverse collapsing fertility (The Times, The Washington Post, The Times of India, Business Insider, Wikipedia).
  • Visible examples of demographic collapse: Greece’s school closures, Japan’s vanishing villages.
  • Immigration doesn’t restore declining birth rates indefinitely, thanks to fertility convergence across generations (PMC, Demographic Research, PubMed).

Conclusion

My 2019 thesis, that abortion is a significant demographic parameter,  is still valid. If anything, it is more crucial today. With the world shifting from too many to too few, abortion stands as one of the clearest accelerants of demographic change and perhaps even of societal collapse. There are more fetuses terminated by abortions (73 million) than people die every year (67 million).

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Demographics, History, Humans, Science | Comments Off on Abortion as a Significant Demographic Parameter (2025 Update)

Is the Principle of Least Resistance the Zeroth Law of Being?

June 22, 2025

The underlying compulsion

Is thrift, parsimony, a sort of minimalism, part of the fabric of the universe?

Occam’s razor (known also as the principle of parsimony) is the principle that when presented with alternative explanations for the same phenomenon, the explanation that requires the fewest assumptions should be selected. While Occam’s razor is about how to think and describe phenomena, I am suggesting that parsimony of action, the path of least resistance is deeply embedded in causality and in all of existence.

Why is there something rather than nothing? Why does the universe exist? The answer is all around us. Because it is easier to be than not to be. Because at some level, in some dimension, in some domain of action and for some determining parameter, there is a greater resistance or opposition to not being than to being. Why does an apple fall from a tree? Because there is, in the prevailing circumstances, more resistance to it not falling than in falling. At one level this seems – and is – trivial. It is self-evident. It is what our common-sense tells us. It is what our reason tells us. And it is true.

It also tells us something else. If we are to investigate the root causes of any event, any happening, we must investigate the path by which it happened and what was the resistance or cost that was minimised. I am, in fact, suggesting that causality requires that the path of sequential actions is – in some domain and in some dimension – a thrifty path.

A plant grows in my garden. It buds in the spring and by winter it is dead. It has no progeny to appear next year. Why, in this vast universe, did it appear only to vanish, without having any noticeable impact on any other creature, god, or atheist? Some might say it was chance, others that it was the silent hand of a larger purpose. But I suspect the answer is simpler but more fundamental. The plant grew because it was “easier”, by some definition for the universe, that it grow than that it not grow. If it had any other option, then that must have been, by some measure, more expensive, more difficult.

In our search for final explanations – why the stars shine, why matter clumps, why life breathes – we often overlook a red thread running through them all. Wherever we look, things tend to happen by the easiest possible route available to them. Rivers meander following easier paths and they always flow downhill, not uphill. Heat flows from warm to cold because flowing the other way needs effort and work (refrigerator). When complexity happens it must be that in some measure, in some domain, staying simple faces more resistance than becoming complex. How else would physics become chemistry and form atoms and molecules? Why else would chemistry become biochemistry with long complex molecules? Something must have been easier for biology and life to be created than to not come into being. The bottom line is that if it was easier for us not to be, then we would not be here. Even quantum particles, we are told, “explore” every possible path but interfere in such a way that the most probable path is the one of least “action”. This underlying parsimony – this preference for least resistance – might well deserve to be raised to a status older than any law of thermodynamics or relativity. It might be our first clue as to how “being” itself unfurls. But is this parsimony really a universal doctrine or just a mirage of our imperfect perception? And if so, how far does it reach?

We can only elucidate with examples. And, of course, our examples are limited to just that slice of the universe that we can imperfectly perceive with all our limitations. Water finds the lowest point (where lowest means closest to the dominant gravitational object in the vicinity). Light bends when it moves from air into glass or water, following the path that takes the least time. Time itself flows because it is easier that it does than it does not. A cat, given the choice between a patch of bare floor and a soft cushion, unfailingly selects the softer path. It may seem far-fetched, but it could be that the behaviour of the cat and the ray of light are not just related, they are constrained to be what they are. Both are obeying the same hidden directive to do what costs the least effort, to follow a path of actions presenting the least resistance; where the minimisation of effort could be time, or energy, or discomfort, or hunger, or something else.

In physics, this underlying compulsion has been proposed from time to time. The Principle of Least Action, in physics, states that a system’s trajectory between two points in spacetime is the one that minimizes a quantity called the “action”. Action, in this context, is a quantity that combines energy, momentum, distance, and time. Essentially, the universe tends towards the path of least resistance and least change. Newton hinted at it; Lagrange and Hamilton built it into the bones of mechanics. Feynman has a lecture on it. The principle suggests that nature tends to favor paths that are somehow “efficient” or require minimal effort, given the constraints of the system. A falling apple, a planet orbiting the Sun, a thrown stone: each follows the path which, when summed over time, minimizes an abstract quantity called “action”. In a sense, nature does not just roll downhill; it picks its way to roll “most economically”, even if the actual route curves and loops under competing forces. Why should such a principle apply? Perhaps the universe has no effort to waste – however it may define “effort” – and perhaps it is required to be thrifty.

The path to life can be no exception

Generally the path of least resistance fits with our sense of what is reasonable (heat flow, fluid flow, electric current, …) but one glaring example is counter-intuitive. The chain from simple atoms to molecules to complex molecules to living cells to consciousness seems to be one of increasing complexity and increasing difficulty of being. One might think that while water and light behave so obligingly, living things defy the common-sensical notion that simple is cheap and complex is expensive. Does a rainforest  – with its exuberant tangle of vines, insects, poisons, and parasites  – look like a low-cost arrangement? Isn’t life an extremely expensive way just to define and find a path to death and decay?

Living systems, after all, locally do reduce entropy, they do build up order. A cell constructs a complicated molecule, seemingly climbing uphill against the universal tendency for things to spread out and decay. But it does so at the expense of free energy in its environment. The total “cost”, when you add up the cell plus its surroundings, still moves towards a cheaper arrangement overall and is manifested as a more uniform distribution of energy, more heat deposited at its lowest temperature possible. Life is the achieving of local order paid for by a cost reckoned as global dissipation. Fine, but one might still question as to why atoms should clump into molecules and molecules into a cell. Could it ever be “cheaper” than leaving them separate and loose? Shouldn’t complex order be a more costly state than simple disorder? In a purely static sense, yes. But real molecules collide, bounce, and react. Some combinations, under certain conditions, lock together because once formed they are stable, meaning it costs “more” to break them apart than to keep them together. Add some external driver – say a source of energy, or a catalyst mineral surface, or a ray of sunlight – and what might have stayed separate instead finds an easier path to forming chains, membranes, and eventually a primitive cell. Over time, any accessible path that is easier than another will inevitably be traversed.

Chemistry drifts into biochemistry not by defying ease, but by riding the easiest local, available pathway. It is compulsion rather than choice. Action is triggered by the availability of the pathway and that is always local. Evolution then – by trial and error – makes the rough first arrangement into a working organism. Not a perfectly efficient or excellent organism in some cosmic sense, but always that which is good enough and the easiest achievable in that existential niche, at that time. One must not expect “least resistance” to provide a  perfection which is not being sought. A panda’s thumb is famously clumsy – but given the panda’s available ancestral parts, it was easier to improvise a thumb out of a wrist bone than to grow an entirely new digit. Nature cuts corners when it is cheaper than starting over.

Perhaps the reason why the spark of life and the twitch of consciousness evade explanation is that we have not yet found – if at all we are cognitively capable of finding – the effort that is being minimised and in which domain it exists. We don’t know what currency the universe uses and how this effort is measured. Perhaps this is a clue as to how we should do science or philosophy at the very edges of knowledge. Look for what the surroundings would see as parsimony, look for the path that was followed and what was minimised. Look for the questions to which the subject being investigated is the answer. To understand what life is, or time or space, or any of the great mysteries we need to look for the questions which they are the answers to.

Quantum Strangeness: The Many Paths at Once

Even where physics seems most counter-intuitive, the pattern peeks through. In quantum mechanics, Richard Feynman’s path integral picture shows a particle “trying out” every possible trajectory. In the end, the most likely path is not a single shortest route but the one where constructive interference reinforces paths close to the classical least-action line. It also seems to me – and I am no quantum physicist – that a particle may similarly tunnel through a barrier, apparently ignoring the classical impossibility. Yet this too follows from the same probability wave. The path of “least resistance” here is not some forbidden motion but an amplitude that does not drop entirely to zero. What is classically impossible becomes possible at a cost which is a low but finite probability. Quantum theory does not invalidate or deny the principle. It generalizes it to allow for multiple pathways, weighting each by its cost in whatever language of probability amplitudes that the universe deals with.

It is tempting to try and stretch the principle to explain everything, including why there is something rather than nothing. Some cosmologists claim the universe arose from “quantum nothingness”, with positive energy in matter perfectly balanced by negative energy in gravity. On paper, the sum is zero and therefore, so it is claimed, no law was broken by conjuring a universe from an empty hat. But this is cheating. The arithmetic works only within an existing framework. After all quantum fields, spacetime, and conservation laws are all “something”. To define negative gravitational energy, you need a gravitational field and a geometry on which to write your equations. Subtracting something from itself leaves a defined absence, not true nothingness.

In considering true nothingness – the ultimate, absolute void (uav) – we must begin by asserting that removing something from itself cannot create this void. Subtracting a thing from itself creates an absence of that thing alone. Subtracting everything from itself may work but our finite minds can never encompass everything. In any case the least resistance principle means that from a void the mathematical trick of creating something here and a negative something there and claiming that zero has not been violated is false (as some have suggested with positive energy and negative gravity energy). That is very close to chicanery. To create something from nothing demands a path of least resistance be available compared to continuing as nothing. To conjure something from nothing needs not only a path to the something, but also a path to the not-something. Thrift must apply to the summation of these paths otherwise the net initial zero would prevail and continue.

The absolute void, the utter absence of anything, no space, no time, no law, is incomprehensible. From here we cannot observe any path, let alone one of lower resistance, to existence. Perhaps the principle of least resistance reaches even into the absolute zero of the non-being of everything. But that is beyond human cognition to grasp.

Bottom up not top down

Does nature always find the easiest, global path? Perhaps no, if excellence is being sought. But yes, if good enough is good enough. And thrift demands that nature go no further than good enough. Perfect fits come about by elimination of the bad fits not by a search for excellence. Local constraints can trap a system in a “good enough” state. Diamonds are a textbook example. They are not the lowest-energy form of carbon at the Earth’s surface, graphite is. Graphite has a higher entropy than diamond. But turning diamond into graphite needs an improbable, expensive chain of atomic rearrangements. So diamonds persist for eons because staying diamond is the path of least immediate, local resistance. But diamonds will have found a pathway to graphite before the death of the universe. The universe – and humans – act locally. What is global follows as a consequence of the aggregation, the integral, of the local good enough paths.

Similarly, evolution does not look for, and does not find, the perfect creature but only the one that survives well enough. A bird might have a crooked beak or inefficient wings, but if the cost of evolving a perfect version is too high or requires impossible mutations, the imperfect design holds. A local stability and a local expense to disturb that stability removes a more distant economy from sight.

Thus, the principle is best to be stated humbly. Nature slides to the lowest, stable, accessible valley in the landscape it can actually access, not necessarily the deepest valley available.

A Zeroth Law or just a cognitive mirage

What I have tried to articulate here is an intuition. I intuit that nature, when presented with alternatives is required to be thrifty, to not waste what it cannot spare. This applies for whatever the universe takes to be the appropriate currency – whether energy, time, entropy, or information. In every domain where humans have been able to peek behind the curtain, the same shadow of a bias shimmers. The possible happens, the costliest is avoided, and the impossible stays impossible because the resistance is infinite. In fact the shadow even looks back at us if we pretend to observe from outside and try and lift the curtain of why the universe is. It must apply to every creation story. Because it was cheaper to create the universe than to continue with nothingness.

It may not qualify as a law. It is not a single equation but a principle of principles. It does not guarantee simplicity or beauty or excellence. Nature is perfectly happy with messy compromises provided they are good enough and the process the cheapest available. It cannot take us meaningfully to where human cognition cannot go, but within the realm of what we perceive as being, it might well be the ground from which more specific laws sprout. Newtons Laws of motion, Einstein’s relativity, Maxwell’s equations and even the Schrödinger equation, I postulate, are all expressions of the universe being parsimonious.

We can, at least, try to define it: Any natural process in our universe proceeds along an accessible path that, given its constraints, offers the least resistance compared to other possible paths that are accessible.

Is it a law governing existence? Maybe. Just as the little plant in my garden sprouted because the circumstances made it the easiest, quietest, cheapest path for the peculiar combination of seeds, soil, sunlight, and moisture that came together by chance. And in that small answer, perhaps, lies a hint for all the rest. That chance was without apparent cause. But, that particular chance occurred because it was easier for the universe – not for me or the plant – that it did so than that it did not. But it it is one of those things human cognition can never know.

Tags:, , , , , , , ,
Posted in Philosophy, Science | Comments Off on Is the Principle of Least Resistance the Zeroth Law of Being?

The Great Mysteries: Known, Knowable, and Unknowable Foundations of Philosophy

April 16, 2025

The Great Mysteries: Known, Knowable, and Unknowable Foundations of Philosophy

Humanity’s pursuit of understanding is shaped by enduring questions – the Great Mysteries of existence, time, space, causality, life, consciousness, matter, energy, fields, infinity, purpose, nothingness, and free will. These enigmas, debated from ancient myths to modern laboratories, persist because of the inescapable limits of our cognition and perception. Our brains, with their finite 86 billion neurons, grapple with a universe of unfathomable complexity. Our senses – sight, hearing, touch – perceive only a sliver of reality, blind to ultraviolet light, infrasound, or phenomena beyond our evolutionary design. We cannot know what senses we lack, what dimensions or forces remain invisible to our biology. The universe, spanning an observable 93 billion light-years and 13.8 billion years, appears boundless, hiding truths beyond our reach. Together, these constraints – finite brain, limited senses, unknown missing senses, and an apparently boundless universe – render the unknowable a fundamental fact, not a mere obstacle but a cornerstone of philosophical inquiry.

Knowing itself is subjective, an attribute of consciousness, not a separate mystery. To know – the sky is blue, 2+2=4 – requires a conscious mind to perceive, interpret, and understand. How we know we know is contentious, as reflection on knowledge (am I certain?) loops back to consciousness’s mystery, fraught with doubt and debate. This ties knowing to the unknowable: if consciousness limits what and how we know, some truths remain beyond us. Philosophy’s task is to acknowledge this, setting initial and boundary conditions – assumptions – for endeavors like science or ethics. The unknowable is the philosophy of philosophy, preventing us from chasing mirages or clutching at straws. The mysteries intertwine – existence needs time’s flow, space grounds physical being, causality falters at its first cause, consciousness shapes knowing – luring us with connections that reveal little. We classify knowledge as known (grasped), knowable (graspable), and unknowable (ungraspable), rooted in consciousness’s limits. Ignoring this, philosophers and physicists pursue futile absolutes, misled by the mysteries’ web. This essay explores these enigmas, their links, and the necessity of grounding philosophy in the unknowable.

I. The Tripartite Classification of Knowledge

Knowledge, an expression of consciousness, divides into known, knowable, and unknowable, a framework that reveals the Great Mysteries’ nature. The known includes verified truths – facts like gravity’s pull or DNA’s structure – established through observation and reason. These are humanity’s achievements, from Euclid’s axioms to quantum theory. The knowable encompasses questions within potential reach, given new tools or paradigms. The origin of life or dark energy’s nature may yield to inquiry, though they challenge us now. The unknowable marks where our finite nature – biological, sensory, existential – sets impassable limits.

The unknowable stems from our constraints. Our brains struggle with infinite regress or absolute absence, bound by their finite capacity. Our senses capture visible light, not gamma rays; audible sound, not cosmic vibrations. We lack senses for extra dimensions or unseen forces, ignorant of what we miss. The universe, vast and expanding, hides realms beyond our cosmic horizon or before the Big Bang’s earliest moments (~10^-43 seconds). This reality – finite cognition, limited perception, unknown sensory gaps, boundless cosmos – makes it inevitable that some truths are inaccessible to us. We are embedded in time, space, and existence, unable to view them externally. Philosophy’s task is to recognize these limits, setting assumptions that ground endeavors. Ignoring the unknowable risks mirages – false promises of answers where none exist – leaving us clutching at straws instead of building knowledge.

II. The Great Mysteries: A Catalog of the Unknowable

The Great Mysteries resist resolution, their unknowability shaping the assumptions we must make. Below, I outline each, situating them in the tripartite framework, then explore their interconnected web, which lures yet confounds us.

Existence: Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?

Existence’s origin, from Leibniz to Heidegger, remains a foundational enigma. The known includes observable reality – stars, particles, laws – but why anything exists is unclear. Reason tells us that existence must be because it is compelled to be so, but what those compulsions might be defies our comprehension. There must have been some prior condition which made it “easier” for there to be existence than not. The knowable might include quantum fluctuations sparking the Big Bang, yet these assume causality and time. The unknowable is the ultimate “why,” demanding a perspective outside existence, impossible for us. Metaphysicians chasing a final cause risk mirages, assuming an answer lies within reach, when philosophy must set existence as an unprovable starting point.

Time: What Is Its True Nature?

Time governs not only life, but the existence of anything. Yet its essence eludes us. We observe some of its effects – clocks, seasons – and the knowable includes relativity’s spacetime or quantum time’s emergence. But is time linear, cyclic, or illusory? Its subjective “flow” defies capture. To know time, we’d need to transcend it, beyond temporal beings. Ancient eternal gods and block-time models falter, pursuing clarity where philosophy must assume time’s presence, not its essence. The unidirectional arrow of time just is. Brute fact which neither allows nor permits any further penetration.

Space: What Is Its Fundamental Reality?

Space, reality’s stage, seems familiar but confounds. We know its measures – distances, volumes – and the knowable includes curved spacetime or extra dimensions. But what space is – substance, relation, emergent – remains unknowable. Why three dimensions, enabling physical existence (stars, bodies), not two or four? We cannot exit space to see its nature, and Planck-scale probes (~10^-35 meters) elude us. Cosmologies from Aristotle to multiverses assume space’s knowability, risking straw-clutching when philosophy must posit space as a given.

Causality: Does Every Effect Have a Cause?

Causality drives science, yet its scope is unproven. We know cause-effect patterns – stones fall, reactions occur – and the knowable might clarify quantum indeterminacy. But is causality universal or constructed? The first cause – what sparked existence – remains sidestepped, with science starting a little after the Big Bang and philosophy offering untestable gods or regresses. To know causality’s reach, we’d need to observe all events, which is impossible. Thinkers like Hume assume its solvability, ignoring that philosophy must treat causality as an assumption, not a truth.

Life: What Sparks Its Emergence?

Life’s mechanisms – DNA, evolution – are known, and abiogenesis may be knowable via synthetic biology. We search for where the spark of life may have first struck but we don’t know what the spark consists of. Why matter becomes “alive,” or life’s purpose, is unknowable. And as long as we don’t know, those who wish to can speculate about souls. Animists saw spirits, biologists study chemistry, yet both chase a threshold beyond perception. Assuming life’s knowability risks mirages; philosophy grounds biology by positing life as an empirical phenomenon, not explaining its essence.

Consciousness: Why Do We Experience?

Consciousness, where knowing resides, is our core mystery. We know neural correlates; the knowable includes mapping them. But why processes yield experience – the hard problem – is unknowable, as consciousness cannot access others’ qualia or exit itself. How we know we know – certainty, doubt – is contentious, from Plato’s beliefs to Gettier’s challenges, tying knowing’s subjectivity to consciousness’s limits. Seeking universal theories risks mirages; philosophy assumes consciousness as given.

Matter, Energy, Fields: What Are They Fundamentally?

Matter, energy, and fields are known via models—atoms, quanta, waves. Every model uses initial and boundary conditions which, themselves, can not be addressed. The knowable includes quantum gravity. But their essence—what they are—may be unknowable. What is the stuff of the fundamental particles. Are fields real or fictions? Atomists to string theorists chase answers, but Planck-scale realities defy us. Assuming a final ontology risks mirages; philosophy sets these as frameworks, not truths.

Infinity: Can We Grasp the Boundless?

Infinity, the uncountable, defies intuition. It is a placeholder for the incomprehensible. We know mathematical infinities (Cantor’s sets) and use them; the knowable might clarify physical infinity (space’s extent). But infinity’s reality or role is unknowable—our finite minds falter at boundlessness, paradoxes (Zeno’s) persist. Mathematicians seeking proofs assume too much; philosophy posits infinity as a tool, not a fact.

Purpose: Does Existence Have Meaning?

Purpose shapes ethics and religion, yet is unproven. We know human meanings (values); the knowable might include evolutionary drives. But cosmic purpose – existence’s “for” – is unknowable, needing intent we cannot access. Existentialists and theologians project meaning, risking straws; philosophy assumes purpose as human, not universal. What compelled the Big Bang? or the existence of the universe? Was that some deeper Law of Nature? A Law of the Super-Nature?

Nothingness: What Is Absolute Absence?

Nothingness probes “nothing.” We know quantum vacuums fluctuate; the knowable might explore pre-Big Bang states. But true nothingness – absence of all – is unknowable, as we exist in “something.” To have something the framework of existence must be present and if then something is removed do we get to nothingness or are we left with the space of existence? With numbers we cannot derive zero except by subtracting one from one. But without something how do we even conceptualise nothing? Can nothingness only be defined by first having something? Parmenides and physicists assume answers, but philosophy must posit somethingness as our starting point.

Free Will: Are We Truly Free?

Free will grounds morality, yet is unclear. We know brain processes; the knowable includes mapping agency. But freedom versus determinism is unknowable – we cannot isolate uncaused acts or escape causality. Augustine to Dennett chase clarity, but philosophy assumes will as a practical condition, not a truth.

Perplexing Connections: A Web of Mirages

The mysteries intertwine, with knowing, as consciousness’s attribute, weaving through their links luring us toward insight yet leading nowhere. Existence and time are inseparable – being requires change which in turn needs time to flow. But what is the time and what does it flow through? Physical existence demands three-dimensional space – real things (quarks, trees) occupy it, unlike abstractions – yet why three dimensions, not two or four, baffles us. Causality binds these, an empirical fact – events follow causes – but the first cause, existence’s spark, is dodged, leaving a void.

  • Existence and Time: Existence implies dynamism; a timeless “something” feels unreal. Heraclitus tied being to flux, physics links time to entropy. But why existence exists loops to when it began, and time’s flow loops to existence’s cause. Our finite brains grasp sequences, not sources; senses see motion, not time’s essence; the boundless universe hides time’s start, if any. Philosophers like Kant (time as intuition) chase answers, but the link reveals only our limits, demanding we assume both as givens.
  • Space and Existence: Physical things require 3D space – a stone needs place, a star volume. Two dimensions lack depth for matter, four defy perception (a 4D “shadow” needs unimaginable light). Why 3D? Our embeddedness in space blocks an external view, senses miss other dimensions, and the cosmos may conceal alternatives. Descartes (space as extension) assumes knowability, but philosophy must posit 3D space as a condition, not explain it.
  • Causality’s Role: Causality stitches existence, time, space—events unfold in spacetime, caused by priors. Yet, the first cause – what began it? – is sidestepped. Science can only go back to a little after the Big Bang, philosophy offers gods or regresses, neither testable. Our observations halt at Planck scales, logic breaks at uncaused causes. Russell (“universe just is”) assumes closure, but causality’s origin remains an assumption, not a truth. Referring to a brute fact is the sure sign of having reached the unknowable.
  • Consciousness and Knowing: Knowing is consciousness’s act – perceiving, understanding, reflecting. How we know we know – certainty’s test – is debated, as consciousness doubts itself (Gettier, skeptics). This links all mysteries: existence’s why, time’s flow, space’s form depend on conscious knowing, subjective and limited, making their truths elusive.

These connections form a circular web – knowing needs consciousness, existence needs time, time needs space, space needs causality, causality needs existence – each leaning on others without a base we can reach. They tantalize, suggesting unity, but lead to mirages, as our finite minds cannot break the loop, our senses see only 3D, temporal projections, and the universe hides broader contexts. Ignoring this, thinkers pursue the web’s threads, clutching at straws when philosophy’s role is to set boundaries, not chase illusions.

III. The Futility of Overreaching

The Great Mysteries, interwoven, persist as unknowable, yet many refuse to see this. Philosophers debate existence or space’s nature, assuming logic captures them, blind to unprovable foundations. Neuroscientists claim consciousness will yield to scans, ignoring qualia’s gap. Physicists seek a Theory of Everything, presuming space, causality, matter have final forms, despite unreachable scales. The mysteries’ web fuels this folly—links like existence-time or causality-space suggest a solvable puzzle. But chasing these leads to mirages, as circularity traps us—time explains existence, space grounds causality, none stand alone.

This stems from assuming all is knowable. Science’s successes—vaccines, satellites—imply every question yields. Yet, the unknowable is philosophy’s guardrail. Without it, endeavors falter, like metaphysicians seeking existence’s cause or physicists probing causality’s origin, grasping at straws. Ancient skeptics like Pyrrho saw uncertainty’s value, grounding thought in limits, while modern thinkers often reject it, misled by the web’s false promise.

IV. Grounding Philosophy in the Unknowable

Acknowledging the unknowable is philosophy’s practical task, setting assumptions for science, ethics, art. It prevents chasing mirages, ensuring endeavors rest on firm ground:

  • Science: Assume space’s 3D frame, time’s flow, causality’s patterns, pursuing testable models (spacetime’s curve, life’s origin), not essences (space’s being, first causes).
  • Philosophy: Posit consciousness, free will as conditions for ethics, not truths to prove, avoiding loops to existence or causality.
  • Culture: Embrace mysteries in art, myth, as ancients did, using their web – time’s flow, space’s stage –  to inspire, not solve.

For example, DNA’s structure (known) and abiogenesis (knowable) advance biology, while life’s purpose is assumed, not chased. Space’s measures aid cosmology, its 3D necessity a starting point, not an answer.

V. Conclusion

The Great Mysteries – existence, time, space, causality, life, consciousness, matter, energy, fields, infinity, purpose, nothingness, free will – endure because our finite brains, limited senses, unknown missing senses, and boundless universe make the unknowable a fact. Their web – existence flowing with time, space enabling reality, causality faltering at its origin – lures but leads to mirages, circular and unresolvable. Ignoring this, philosophers and physicists chase straws, misled by false clarity. The unknowable is philosophy’s foundation, setting assumptions that ground endeavors. By embracing it, we avoid futile quests, building on the known and knowable while marveling at the mysteries’ depth, our place within their vast, unanswerable weave.

Related:

Knowledge is not finite and some of it is unknowable

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2016/01/17/physicists-must-accept-that-some-things-are-unknowable/#6d2c5834ae1a

https://ktwop.com/2018/08/21/when-the-waves-of-determinism-break-against-the-rocks-of-the-unknowable/

https://ktwop.com/2017/10/17/the-liar-paradox-can-be-resolved-by-the-unknowable/

Physics cannot deal with nothingness

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Philosophy, Science | Comments Off on The Great Mysteries: Known, Knowable, and Unknowable Foundations of Philosophy

“Dark oxygen” discovery probably more junk science

January 19, 2025

Well! Well!

Another scientific myth bites the dust. But never believe anything which feels compelled to use the word “dark”.

BBC

Scientists who recently discovered that metal lumps on the dark seabed make oxygen, have announced plans to study the deepest parts of Earth’s oceans in order to understand the strange phenomenon. Their mission could “change the way we look at the possibility of life on other planets too,” the researchers say. The initial discovery confounded marine scientists. It was previously accepted that oxygen could only be produced in sunlight by plants – in a process called photosynthesis.

But I am extremely sceptical of all “dark” things. Dark energy and dark matter are fudge factors and were never even claimed to be real things. Now, even the need for the fudge factor is vanishing. I suspect dark oxygen may also turn out to be just another example of junk science.

Evidence of dark oxygen production at the abyssal seafloor

Abstract
Deep-seafloor organisms consume oxygen, which can be measured by in situ benthic chamber experiments. Here we report such experiments at the polymetallic nodule-covered abyssal seafloor in the Pacific Ocean in which oxygen increased over two days to more than three times the background concentration, which from ex situ incubations we attribute to the polymetallic nodules. Given high voltage potentials (up to 0.95 V) on nodule surfaces, we hypothesize that seawater electrolysis may contribute to this dark oxygen production.

Of course there are many who claim this is a nonsense discovery. If photosynthesis is not the only way of producing oxygen and it can actually be produced in the depths of the ocean, then microbial life is not just possible but likely on the deep ocean floor. That could allow fanatic environmentalists (like the ones who caused the LA fires) to disturb the potential mining of metals (rare metals especially).

BBC

The initial discovery triggered a global scientific row – there was criticism of the findings from some scientists and from deep sea mining companies that plan to harvest the precious metals in the seabed nodules. If oxygen is produced at these extreme depths, in total darkness, that calls into question what life could survive and thrive on the seafloor, and what impact mining activities could have on that marine life. That means that seabed mining companies and environmental organisations – some of which claimed that the findings provided evidence that seafloor mining plans should be halted – will be watching this new investigation closely.

I find the criticisms of dark oxygen much more credible than the discovery paper by Sweetman.

Critical Review of the Article: “Evidence of Dark Oxygen Production at the Abyssal Seafloor” by Sweetman et al. in Nat. Geosci. 1–3 (2024)

This review examines the findings and methodologies presented in Sweetman et al. (2024) (hereafter referred to as ‘the paper’). The paper presents findings contrasting those of all previous comparable work and has stirred international debate pertaining to deep-sea minerals. We identify significant issues in data collection, validation, and interpretation including unvalidated data collection methods, the omission of crucial observations relevant for electrolysis processes, and unsupported voltage measurements which undermine the study’s conclusions. These issues, coupled with unfounded hypotheses about early Earth oxygen production, call into question the authors’ interpretation of the observations and warrant re-examining the validity of this work. 

Dark oxygen sounds more like junk science and funding hype than any real discovery.

Tags:, , , , , ,
Posted in Science | Comments Off on “Dark oxygen” discovery probably more junk science

Science ultimately needs magic to build upon

January 3, 2025

The purpose of the scientific method is to generate knowledge. “Science” describes the application of the method and the knowledge gained. The knowledge generated is always subjective and the process builds upon fundamental assumptions which make up the boundary conditions for the scientific method. These  assumptions can neither be explained or proved.

I find it useful to take knowledge as coming in 3 parts.

  1. known: This encompasses everything that we currently understand and can explain through observation, experimentation, and established theories. This is the realm of established scientific knowledge, historical facts, and everyday experiences.
  2. unknown but knowable: This is the domain of scientific inquiry. It includes phenomena that we don’t currently understand but that we believe can be investigated and explained through scientific methods. This is where scientific research operates, pushing the boundaries of our knowledge through observation, experimentation, and the development of new theories.
  3. unknown and unknowable: This is the realm that I associate with metaphysics, religion and theology. It encompasses questions about ultimate origins, the meaning of existence, the nature of consciousness, and other metaphysical questions that may not be amenable to scientific investigation.

Philosophy then plays the crucial role of exploring the boundaries between these domains, challenging the assumptions, and developing new ways of thinking about knowledge and reality.

I like this categorization of knowledge because

  • it provides a clear framework for distinguishing between different types of questions and approaches to understanding.
  • it acknowledges the limits of scientific inquiry and recognizes that there may be questions that science cannot answer, and
  • it allows for the coexistence of science, philosophy, religion, and other ways of knowing, each addressing different types of questions.

To claim any knowledge about the unknown or the unknowable leads inevitably to self-contradiction. Which is why the often used form “I don’t know what, but I know it isn’t that” is always self contradictory. It implies a constraint on the unknown, which is a contradiction in terms. If something is truly unknown, we surely cannot even say what it is not.

Given that the human brain is finite and that we cannot observe any bounds to our universe – in space or in time – it follows that there must be areas beyond the comprehension of human cognition. We invent labels to represent the “unknowable” (boundless, endless, infinite, timeless, supernatural, magic, countless, ….). These labels are attempts to conceptualize what is inherently beyond our conceptualization. They serve as placeholders for our lack of understanding. But it is the human condition that having confirmed that there are things we cannot know, we then proceed anyway to try and define what we cannot. We are pattern-seeking beings who strive to make sense of the world around us. Even when faced with the limits of our understanding, we try to create mental models, however inadequate they may be.

Human cognitive capability is limited not only by the brain’s physical size but also by the senses available to us. We know about some of the senses we lack (e.g., the ability to detect magnetic fields like some birds or to perceive ultraviolet light directly like some insects), but cannot know what we don’t know. We cannot even conceive of what other senses we might be missing. These are the “unknown unknowns,” and they represent a fundamental limit to our understanding of reality. Even our use of instruments to detect parameters we cannot sense directly must be interpreted by the senses we do have. We convert X-rays into images in the visible spectrum, or we represent radio waves as audible sounds. This conversion necessarily involves interpretation and introduces subjectivity. We also know that the signals generated by an animal’s eye probably cannot be understood by a human brain. The brain’s software needs to be tuned for the senses the brain has access to. The inherent limitations of human perception makes the subjective nature of our experience of reality unavoidable. The objectivity of all human observations is thus a mirage. Empiricism is necessarily subjective.

Scientific inquiry remains the most powerful tool humans have developed for understanding the world around us. With sophisticated instruments to extend our limited senses and by using conceptual tools such as mathematics and logic and reason we gain insights into aspects of reality that would otherwise be inaccessible to us. Never mind that logic and reason are not understood in themselves. But our experience of reality is always filtered through the lens of our limited and species-specific senses. We cannot therefore eliminate the inherent subjectivity of our observations and the limitations of our understanding. We cannot know what we cannot know.

I do not need to invoke gods when I say that “magic” exists, when I define “magic” as those things beyond human comprehension. This definition avoids superpower connotations and focuses on the limits of our current knowledge. In this sense, “magic” is a placeholder for the unknown. I observe that the process of science requires fundamental assumptions which are the boundary conditions within which science functions. These assumptions include:

  • Existence of an External Reality: Science assumes that there is an objective reality independent of our minds.
  • Existence of Matter, Energy, Space, and Time: These are the fundamental constituents of the physical universe as we understand it.
  • Causality: Science assumes that events have causes and that these causes can be investigated.
  • Uniformity of Natural Laws: Science assumes that the laws of nature are the same everywhere in the universe and throughout time.
  • The possibility of Observation and Measurement: Science depends on the assumption that we can observe and measure aspects of reality.
  • The biological and medical sciences observe and accept but cannot explain life and consciousness.

Science operates within a framework given by these fundamental assumptions which cannot be  explained. These incomprehensibilities are the “magic” that science builds upon. Science can address them obliquely but cannot question them directly without creating contradictions. If we were to question the existence of an external reality, for example, the entire scientific enterprise would become meaningless. Science can investigate their consequences and refine our understanding of what they are not, but cannot directly prove or disprove them. These assumptions are – at least currently – beyond human comprehension and explanation. Science builds upon this “magic” but cannot explain the “magic”.

Magic is often ridiculed because it is perceived as invoking beings with supernatural powers which in turn is taken to mean the intentional violation of some of the laws of nature. The core issue lies in the definitions of “magic” and  “supernatural.” I take supernatural to be “that which is beyond the laws of nature as we know them.” But we tend to dismiss the supernatural rather too glibly. If something is beyond comprehension it must mean that we cannot bring that event/happening to be within the laws of nature as we know them. And that must then allow the possibility of being due to the “supernatural”. If we do not know what compels existence or causality then we cannot either exclude a supernatural cause (outside the laws of nature as we know them). In fact the Big Bang theory and even quantum probabilities each need such “outside the laws of nature” elements. A black hole is supernatural. Singularities in black holes and the Big Bang represent points where our current understanding of physics breaks down. The laws of general relativity, which describe gravity, become undefined at singularities. In this sense, they are “beyond” our current laws of nature. A singularity where the laws of nature do not apply is “supernatural”. Dark energy and dark matter are essentially fudge factors and lie outside the laws of nature as we know them. We infer their existence from their gravitational effects on visible matter and the expansion of the universe, but we haven’t directly detected them. Collapsing quantum wave functions which function outside space and time are just as fantastical as Superman. All these represent holes in our understanding of the universe’s composition and dynamics. That understanding may or may not come in the future. And thus, in the now, they are supernatural.

Supernatural today may not be supernatural tomorrow. It is the old story of my technology is magic to someone else. Magic is always beyond the laws of nature as we know them. But what is magic today may remain magic tomorrow. We cannot set qualifications on what we do not know. What we do not know may or may not violate the known laws of nature. While we have a very successful theory of gravity (general relativity) that accurately predicts the motion of planets, we don’t fully understand the fundamental nature of gravity. We don’t know how it is mediated. In this sense, there is still an element of “magic” or mystery surrounding gravity. We can describe how it works, but not ultimately why. The bottom line is that we still do not know why the earth orbits the sun. We cannot guarantee that everything currently unexplained will eventually be explained by science. There might be phenomena that remain permanently beyond our comprehension, or there might be aspects of reality that are fundamentally inaccessible to scientific investigation. By definition, we cannot fully understand or categorize what we do not know. Trying to impose strict boundaries on the unknown is inherently problematic. We cannot assume that everything we currently don’t understand will necessarily conform to the laws of nature as we currently understand them. New discoveries might require us to revise or even abandon some of our current laws.

The pursuit of scientific knowledge is a journey into the unknown, and we will encounter phenomena that challenge our existing understanding. But we cannot question the foundational assumptions of science without invalidating the inquiry.

Science depends upon – and builds upon – magic.

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Philosophy, Science | Comments Off on Science ultimately needs magic to build upon

Science cannot reach the places where gods are conceived

November 19, 2024

This post is as an addendum to an earlier post:

Atheism (old or new) lacks “oomph”

The domain of science

There are many questions that science cannot even address, let alone, answer. The process we call “science” starts with many fundamental assumptions (existence and causality for example). Clearly the needs of what we take to be logic require that any field of thought (science in this case) can not penetrate or address its own founding assumptions. It would seem that space, time, matter, energy, life and consciousness are also such assumptions. The scientific method, while incredibly powerful, is inherently limited by its foundational assumptions. Questions like the existence of reality itself, the nature of consciousness, or the ultimate origin of the universe are beyond the scope of scientific inquiry. There are other areas that science cannot directly address:

  • The laws of logic: While science relies on logic to draw conclusions, it cannot prove the validity of logic itself.
  • The uniformity of nature: The assumption that natural laws are consistent across space and time is fundamental to scientific investigation, but it cannot be proven.
  • The objectivity of observation: Science assumes that observations can be made objectively, but human perception and interpretation can introduce biases. All human observations are ultimately subjective.
  • The existence of an external world: While we experience the world as real, the nature of reality itself is a philosophical question that science cannot definitively answer.

Mysteries and unanswerable questions lead to the invention of gods and supernatural beings by humans.  Initially they are just labels for the answers to the unanswerable questions. (Of course they are later imbued with human characteristics, supernatural powers, families and expanded regions of influence).  The process we call science, though, does not (can not) address the unanswerable questions. Setting science and the gods in opposition is incorrect in logic and in reason. Claiming that “science denies gods” or that “gods are unscientific” are statements that are invalid. Science seeks to explain the natural world through empirical evidence and falsifiable hypotheses. Science simply operates within its own framework, and it doesn’t have the tools to prove or disprove the existence of supernatural beings. Religion addresses questions of meaning, purpose, and the supernatural, which often lie beyond the domain of scientific inquiry.  

Gods can only be imagined, conceived of and invented in those domains where science cannot reach.

The invention of gods

It is my contention that while philosophers (thinkers) may have formulated the mysteries which then could only be “solved” by the invention of a god, that it was politically motivated groups (possibly the earliest priests) who used such gods to create religions as a social control tool. So it seems probable that the invention of gods preceded the invention of religions (though gods are not always needed by religions). The invention of gods likely stemmed from a combination of factors:

  1. Humans abhor the unknown: Humans, ever since they became human, have sought explanations for all they couldn’t understand. Gods were labels for the answers to the unanswerable. They provided answers to the impossible questions like “Why does the sun rise?”, “Why does it rain?” or “Where do we go after death?”
  2. Social Control: Gods and their supernatural powers were used to justify and establish social norms and laws. Disobeying divine rules could lead to just punishment, both in this life and the afterlife.
  3. Creating a social “we”: Shared beliefs in gods fostered a sense of unity and belonging within communities. Rituals and ceremonies centered around gods strengthened social bonds.
  4. As a means of explaining and withstanding loss and suffering: Gods or purported sins against the gods could justify and explain misfortune and suffering as divine tests or punishments.  They provided a sense of purpose and meaning.
  5. As a crutch giving hope and comfort: Gods were used as a vehicle of hope for a better future, both in this life and the afterlife. They provided comfort and solace in times of hardship.

In essence, gods served as a powerful tool for explaining the unexplainable, maintaining social order, creating communities and providing psychological comfort.

It is not implausible that it was early thinkers, or shamans, who pondered existential questions and proposed supernatural explanations. However, it is likely that creating religious institutions, was a political exercise with political objectives. The leaders probably acquired status as priests, and they structured beliefs and narratives into formal or organized religions and used them primarily for social control.

While some might argue that the spiritual benefits of religion are merely a byproduct or a marketing strategy, there is no doubt that many religions offer genuine solace, meaning, and purpose. Religion may have originated as a tool for social control, but it has evolved into something much more complex over time. The origin and evolution of gods and religions requires much more space than I have here. But the key point for this post is that gods were invented because explanations for the great mysteries were sought and could not be found.

Different domains

Ultimately science and gods operate in separate domains. Science operates in the constrained world of what can be observed empirically and where foundational assumptions apply. The invention of gods is always in response to some question or mystery that science cannot address.  Of course, imbuing gods – who are merely labels for the unanswerable – with human or superhuman characteristics is nothing but literary (fictional) license. The problem often arises in that such fictions are taken literally. Others interpret scientific findings as weapons to challenge or deny certain religious beliefs. But strictly they live on different planes in different worlds. The bottom line is that science cannot tread in the places where its unanswerable questions led to the invention of the gods. And the gods cannot exist in the domains where science is constrained to hold sway.

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Philosophy, Religion, Science | 2 Comments »

String theory and loop quantum gravity are a load of bulls**t

October 6, 2024

Sabine Hossenfelder is always worth listening to and she is more often right than wrong.

I suspect there are many more areas of current “research” which are utter rubbish but continue because the authorities are duped into providing funding.

There is nothing wrong with a good healthy rant from time to time. Especially if one is right! This is a wonderful rant about two research areas which are utter nonsense but have been fooling the funders for 40 years.

Related:

Science needs its Gods and religion is just politics 

Click to access science-needs-its-gods.pdf

Physics theories are remarkably similar to God theories

Physics theories are remarkably similar to God theories

Tags:,
Posted in Ethics, Fraud, Physics, Science | Comments Off on String theory and loop quantum gravity are a load of bulls**t

Home truths 1: Science & Philosophy

July 26, 2024

I find it ridiculous that the general assumption is that we know all about gravity. The reality is that we have no idea about why it exists or how the force of gravitation works. We can calculate the effects of gravity essentially still using Newton’s laws together with Einstein’s tweaks. But we have not the faintest idea about how one mass attracts another or why it should. How does the sun communicate with the planets and tell them what force applies  – if it does. A fundamental particle called the graviton is the proposed solution but we have never found one and it lives in the land of the Jumblies. We do not even have any idea what mass is. Physics even has massless particles (the gluon, the photon and the imaginary graviton) but only the God of Physics knows what massless, matter-less stuff such particles may contain. The reality is that science is strictly limited. It is limited by its fundamental assumptions and its boundary conditions. It cannot address matters outside of these conditions.

We put down motion at a distance to forces such as gravitational or electromagnetic. But we really have no idea how these forces are mediated. Probably by Mysterious Quantum Wave Functions which collapse conveniently when needed. But who knows why they exist? And let us be clear. Particles do not exist in two places at the same time. Never. And any physics which says so lives in the land of the Jumblies.

I am just trying to clear my mind by writing down my (current) home truths. I have chosen to arrange my “core beliefs” in three categories as 3 separate posts.

  1. Science & Philosophy
  2. Behaviour
  3. Society & Politics

I start with Science and Philosophy. The list below could have been much longer but I stopped when I started getting bored.

Home truths 1: Science & Philosophy

  1. We have no clue as to the question which existence is the answer to.
  2. We only have circular definitions for truth but what does exist (we assume) is true.
  3. The human mind is finite. There are things that are known, things that are knowable but unknown and there are things that cannot be known (the unknowable).
  4. Infinity, by definition, is a label – in language – for that which cannot be comprehended.
  5. Boundless, endless, timeless and infinite, just like before the beginning and after the end, are labels for the incomprehensible, no matter what the pretense.
  6. The human capability for language is genetic and unmatched by any other species on earth.
  7. The capability for language is discovered but all languages are invented.
  8. Once the concept of oneness – identity / one(1) – is defined, all other numbers of every kind are fixed. Once one (1) exists every other number of every kind automatically follows. Note that zero comes after 1 and derives from 1 – 1.
  9. One and all the numbers derived therefrom are concepts and do not exist explicitly in nature.
  10. All numbers are unreal and abstract.
  11. The process of counting and all of what is now called number theory are also derived from, and fixed by, the concept of one.
  12. Mathematics describes abstract relationships and abstract patterns connecting abstract concepts and does this using a number of invented languages. It is not a science.
  13. The practice of mathematics is art rather than science.
  14. Language is what gives humans the ability to describe the unreal, the past, the future and to lie.
  15. All languages are silent about the truth value of what is being described by language.
  16. Nonsense language is the perfectly correct use of language but where the content is nonsense.
  17. To create nonsense language or nonsense mathematics (in the manner of Edward Lear or Srinivasa Ramanujam) needs very great skill and great proficiency in the language.
  18. Mathematical equations are just propositions, as any sentence in any language, and are silent about the truth value of the content.
  19. Writing a mathematical equation provides no proof of that equation.
  20. Time is unidirectional and a brute fact of our universe. Negative time is not possible in our universe.
  21. The flow of time and existence emerge together.
  22. Mathematical equations for theories having negative time are merely nonsense mathematics (correct by the rules of mathematics but having nonsense as content).
  23. Physics and other scientific theories which do not explicitly exclude the possibility of negative time are incomplete or false.
  24. Scientific theories which are silent or are unable to exclude the possibility of negative time do not imply any support for the possibility of negative time.
  25. No logic system (or science) can ever prove the fundamental assumptions it is itself based upon.
  26. Science assumes that existence, the flow of time, causality, life and consciousness are all self-evident. Therefore science cannot address, let alone explain, any of them.
  27. Anything truly random (without cause) is inexplicable. Random is part of what we cannot know (or else it is Divine).
  28. Every scientific discipline assumes that cause precedes effect but ignores the unavoidable first cause problem.
  29. The Cosmic Big Bang theory cannot explain why there had to be a Big Bang.
  30. Matter forever or matter from nothing are equally inexplicable and unsatisfactory.
  31. Mass “is the amount of matter in matter” which means we have no clue as to what mass is.
  32. We do not know why there are as many “fundamental” particles as there are (or seem to be).
  33. We do not know why the fine structure constant is exactly the number that it is (or why the speed of light is what it is).
  34. Something from nothing cannot be explained by any Science nor by any theology or belief in a God.
  35. Time without beginning cannot be explained by any Science nor by any theology or belief in a God.
  36. A global zero made up of an arbitrary  local “+ dark energy” and balanced by a local “- gravitation energy” proves nothing.
  37. The concept of nothingness is beyond the finite human mind. (Zero derives from 1 and is not a description of nothingness).
  38. Why the universe (including its dimensions, matter, energy and all other properties) is compelled to exist is unknown. (This is an alternative formulation of home truth 1.1)
  39. There is no known explanation for the spark of life.
  40. Consciousness is a mystery without explanation.
  41. Though we can calculate its effects, nobody has the faintest inkling of how gravity is mediated or how it works.
  42. Nobody has a clue as to how large the universe (and not just the observable universe) is (or how big the Big Bang was).

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Language, Philosophy, Science | Comments Off on Home truths 1: Science & Philosophy

Most of science is about discarding what is wrong and “following the science” leads to many false trails and cul-de-sacs

December 31, 2021

I see that the CDC is under fire – again – for producing confusing and contradictory recommendations. The CDC defends itself by claiming that they are “just following the science”. The scientific method is a long process from observation to theory and – as I take it to be – goes as follows:

Observation > correlation/ analysis > hypothesis

hypothesis > experiment/falsification/analysis > hindcasts/forecasts/nowcasts > verification > theory

Probably less than one in a 1,000 hypotheses get to being considered a theory of any significance. Probably less than one in a 100 “sound” theories stand the test of time. Anybody who thinks any science is settled is just an idiot. Science is not a thing but a process. True science is – and needs to be – permanently skeptical. Most of the work of science actually consists of discarding what is wrong. It is inevitable that “following the science” will lead you down more false paths than correct ones. Yet “following the science” is claimed as justification for actions. Following false trails is imbued with a sanctity and a virtue it does not have. It is also a way of avoiding blame.

Backtracking from previous advice, giving conflicting advice and following false trails has been evident more often than not over the last two years as authorities have tried to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic. The medical response to the pandemic can be classed into 3 areas.

  1. Public health measures
  2. Vaccination
  3. clinical treatment (including drugs for clinical use)

Public health measures across the globe have been confusing, contradictory and blatantly political. Of course, epidemiology is no science even if it tries to cloak itself in scientific methods. What is certain with the spread of the Delta and the Omicron variants is that public health advice today is much the same as it was 700 years ago with the Black Death in Europe. “Avoid the infected, wear a mask and burn your dead”. Pharmaceuticals are doing very well as programs of mass vaccination are rolled out across the globe every 3 months. It is a business which has a bright future ahead of it. Certainly the speed with which testing methods and vaccines are being produced and rolled out is impressive. Both the testing and the vaccination production industries are proving to be wonderfully remunerative. There have been great advances in the clinical treatment of those infected and in the identification of drugs (many taken from other uses) for effective treatment. But there have also been a very large number of false starts with “promising” drugs which have later been found to be not very effective. Health services and health care personnel have been rushed of their feet and have done a remarkable job. They have also gone down many cul-de-sacs. In spite of the advances in treatment many of those infected are still losing their lives.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) backtracked on a few more facets of COVID-19-related guidance this week, leaving the agency open to more social media mockery.

This week the CDC admitted its initial estimates about the prevalence of the omicron variant were way off. A few days earlier, the agency also revealed it was shortening the length of quarantine for COVID patients from 10 days to five if they were asymptomatic at that time. Those walk backs followed a series of other confusing announcements from the CDC, including fluctuating guidance on masks. The agency initially said only unvaccinated individuals should wear face coverings, until July, when the CDC changed course to say vaccinated individuals should resume wearing masks in certain situations.

NBC’s Peter Alexander confronted CDC Director Rochelle Walensky Wednesday, wondering why Americans should “trust” her and her agency in light of all the “mixed messaging.” She said they are simply following the science.

I am afraid the CDC is just going through a CYA exercise.

It has been 2 years now. We have followed the recommendations of the medical and public health fraternity. We have had 3 vaccinations so far. I expect we shall have to have a fourth in April or May.  And a fifth and a sixth before this pandemic is over.

It is almost time to rename the Omicron variant as the Covid-21 virus.

Tags:
Posted in Health, Science | Comments Off on Most of science is about discarding what is wrong and “following the science” leads to many false trails and cul-de-sacs

« Older Entries