[meteorite-list] OT: Reality, Perception, Finiteness of Universe

From: Rob Matson <mojave_meteorites_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 24 Aug 2009 23:54:45 -0700
Message-ID: <GOEDJOCBMMEHLEFDHGMMMEEEDOAA.mojave_meteorites_at_cox.net>

Hi Eric,

> We're not talking about certainty. You certainly exist
> physically. Philosophy is not certainty.

Much as I'd like to agree with you, there is no way for you to
prove that I exist or you exist, or anything that you experience
is real. That is the nature of philosophical introspection; the
realization that you may not be able to trust your own senses.

For instance, I would imagine you saw The Matrix. Suppose everything
you see, hear, smell, taste, feel and think is simply illusion.
Your first response might be, "That's ridiculous! I can read the
words you've typed, I can feel the keys of my keyboard, I can hear
the whirr of the disk drive, smell dinner cooking, etc." But if
you're really honest with yourself, you'll come to the perhaps
unsettling realization that you can't prove ANY of it is real.

~Intellectually~ you reason that you are made up of billions of
cells, that these cells are themselves constructed of various
molecules, that the molecules can be broken down into atoms, the
atoms into subatomic particles, and so on. But what are the
fundamental building blocks of matter? They are really nothing
more than a set of mathematical constructs invented by humans
that try to match the "reality" that they observe. Again, very
suspect, and not surprisingly our macroscopic notions of reality
do not work so well in the realm of the very small.

If you really want to get a "reality check" (pun intended), read
up on Bell's Theorem, and the various experiments that show Bell's
inequalities are violated, quantum mechanics is correct, and
therefore the notion of "local realism" is disproven.

But I'm getting off the subject a bit...

Earlier I wrote:

> "...The universe is large (not to mention growing), but it is
> nevertheless finite..."

You replied:

> Really? Is there proof of its limited scope?

If you ascribe to the Big Bang Theory, then the Universe is finite
by definition.

> We can only see so far... Every few years we can see further.

But what you may not know (don't feel bad, most people don't) is that
the Universe is expanding at a rate considerably faster than the speed
of light, and therefore the fraction of the total Universe that we can
observe is getting smaller and smaller with time. There will reach a
time in the distant future where we can only see our local cluster of
galaxies -- the rest of the Universe will be closed off to us forever.

Best,
Rob
Received on Tue 25 Aug 2009 02:54:45 AM PDT