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Forums - General - How something can come from nothing

Roma on 24 November 2012
Jay520 said:
Roma said:
so because the rule itself did not exist it allowed itself to create itself in order to create the rule that nothing can come out of nothing?

It makes perfect Sense!!

well done I'm an athiest now!


no need for your sarcasm. I'm not trying to convert anyone or push my beliefs on anyone. I didn't even say I believe this. I just said it seemed plausible and asked what others thought. If you disagree, then you can express yourself maturely.

sorry I could not help but post that as it sounded funny in my head.

what I think now about Atheists is that they will believe anything even if it is illogical or impossible as long as it is not a creator.



    R.I.P Mr Iwata :'(

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GameOver22 on 24 November 2012
Jay520 said:
GameOver22 said:
Well, the argument in the OP is flawed, particularly because we don't talk of laws having existence. Abstract laws and rules, by definition, do not exist, even now. Point being, someone cannot point to law, and say, "There it is. It resides under my dining room table." In other words, a law is not a thing.


An entity doesn't have to be concrete, tangible, or an object for it to exist. It still exists, just not physically. And we do talk about laws in terms of existence. For example, there's a law in the U.S. making murder illegal. However, there is no law stating that breathing is illegal. That law does not exist. There are laws that exist that govern our universe. For example: water freezes when under 32 degrees. This fact or law exists, even if we cannot touch it. Laws/facts describe our universe. And before the universe ever existed, if such a time is possible, then its safe to say there were no laws.

We do not empirically verify laws. We empirically verify the implications of laws, and we use this to infer whether a law is viable. Talking of laws as if they exist is misleading, particularly in conjunction with your argument that something cannot come from nothing. This argument is talking about physical things. I think you would admit there is a fundamental difference between a tree and a law, hence, when we talk of a law existing, we mean something fundamentally different from when we say a phsyical object exists. Your argument is treating both the existence of laws and the existence of things as if they are the same, which they are not. That is my criticism.

In other words, the fact that an object cannot exist in nothingness does not mean that a law cannot exist in nothingness.



Immortal on 24 November 2012

I don't believe in nothing.
You know, cause we're talking about nothing and how we don't use double negatives. Huh? Geddit?
...
Anyway, for the sake of being relevant, I'll say that I don't see why you assume that laws and facts don't exist in the state of nothing. What if the only thing that existed in the nothing period was the concept of these laws? I mean, I don't see why not since we assume laws to be eternal. Sure, you say that this means that there was something in this time and that destroys the premise, but it actually doesn't. The problem we're having is that it's difficult for a physical something to come out of a physical nothing. Unless you want to argue that physical objects can come out of mere ideas, which is actually a really awesome hypothesis (but doesn't exactly suit a scientific worldview), I don't think this idea has got you much farther.



 

“These are my principles; if you don’t like them, I have others.” – Groucho Marx

Soleron on 24 November 2012
GameOver22 said:
...

We do not empirically verify laws. We empirically verify the implications of laws, and we use this to infer whether a law is viable. Talking of laws as if they exist is misleading, particularly in conjunction with your argument that something cannot come from nothing. This argument is talking about physical things. I think you would admit there is a fundamental difference between a tree and a law, hence, when we talk of a law existing, we mean something fundamentally different from when we say a phsyical object exists. Your argument is treating both the existence of laws and the existence of things as if they are the same, which they are not. That is my criticism.

In other words, the fact that an object cannot exist in nothingness does not mean that a law cannot exist in nothingness.

I'm taking this subject right now. Philosophy of Physics. If you're interested look up the work of Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn as to what science is, and what we are doing when we do an experiment.

There is a lot of debate on this and unlike physics itself there isn't a right answer. Tomorrow I have to turn in an assignment on "Are laws merely patterns?", arguing for and against all these kinds of things.



SvennoJ on 24 November 2012

There is also the multiverse theory.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14372387

Another problem with the single universe theory springing into existence is, how come all the parameters (laws of physics) are so well tuned in favor of life evolving as we know it.
There may well be an infinite amount of universes starting and ending all the time with only a subset being suitable for stable star systems let alone life evolving.



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Jay520 on 24 November 2012
GameOver22 said:
Jay520 said:
GameOver22 said:
Well, the argument in the OP is flawed, particularly because we don't talk of laws having existence. Abstract laws and rules, by definition, do not exist, even now. Point being, someone cannot point to law, and say, "There it is. It resides under my dining room table." In other words, a law is not a thing.


An entity doesn't have to be concrete, tangible, or an object for it to exist. It still exists, just not physically. And we do talk about laws in terms of existence. For example, there's a law in the U.S. making murder illegal. However, there is no law stating that breathing is illegal. That law does not exist. There are laws that exist that govern our universe. For example: water freezes when under 32 degrees. This fact or law exists, even if we cannot touch it. Laws/facts describe our universe. And before the universe ever existed, if such a time is possible, then its safe to say there were no laws.

We do not empirically verify laws. We empirically verify the implications of laws, and we use this to infer whether a law is viable. Talking of laws as if they exist is misleading, particularly in conjunction with your argument that something cannot come from nothing. This argument is talking about physical things. I think you would admit there is a fundamental difference between a tree and a law, hence, when we talk of a law existing, we mean something fundamentally different from when we say a phsyical object exists. Your argument is treating both the existence of laws and the existence of things as if they are the same, which they are not. That is my criticism.

In other words, the fact that an object cannot exist in nothingness does not mean that a law cannot exist in nothingness.



True, laws are not physical entities. But would you agree that laws describe physical entities? If so, then you shouldn't you also agree that if there are no physical entities (nothing), then there are also no laws.

Jay520 on 24 November 2012
brendude13 said:
Jay520 said:
GameOver22 said:
Well, the argument in the OP is flawed, particularly because we don't talk of laws having existence. Abstract laws and rules, by definition, do not exist, even now. Point being, someone cannot point to law, and say, "There it is. It resides under my dining room table." In other words, a law is not a thing.


An entity doesn't have to be concrete, tangible, or an object for it to exist. It still exists, just not physically. And we do talk about laws in terms of existence. For example, there's a law in the U.S. making murder illegal. However, there is no law stating that breathing is illegal. That law does not exist. There are laws that exist that govern our universe. For example: water freezes when under 32 degrees. This fact or law exists, even if we cannot touch it. Laws/facts describe our universe. And before the universe ever existed, if such a time is possible, then its safe to say there were no laws.

That's not entirely true.

Also, I'm definitely dropping Physics next year.



I do not understand. Do you have different water in the UK?

Soleron on 24 November 2012
Jay520 said:
brendude13 said:
...

That's not entirely true.

Also, I'm definitely dropping Physics next year.


I do not understand. Do you have different water in the UK?

At atmospheric pressure that is true, but not otherwise.



GameOver22 on 24 November 2012
Soleron said:
GameOver22 said:
...

We do not empirically verify laws. We empirically verify the implications of laws, and we use this to infer whether a law is viable. Talking of laws as if they exist is misleading, particularly in conjunction with your argument that something cannot come from nothing. This argument is talking about physical things. I think you would admit there is a fundamental difference between a tree and a law, hence, when we talk of a law existing, we mean something fundamentally different from when we say a phsyical object exists. Your argument is treating both the existence of laws and the existence of things as if they are the same, which they are not. That is my criticism.

In other words, the fact that an object cannot exist in nothingness does not mean that a law cannot exist in nothingness.

I'm taking this subject right now. Philosophy of Physics. If you're interested look up the work of Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn as to what science is, and what we are doing when we do an experiment.

There is a lot of debate on this and unlike physics itself there isn't a right answer. Tomorrow I have to turn in an assignment on "Are laws merely patterns?", arguing for and against all these kinds of things.

I've read both....and more : )

Personally, I think its complicated. I don't think either Popper or Kuhn got it entirely right, but they both hit on some important points, especially in regards to the role of falsification in science. I never read him in depth, but I actually like Lakatos more than Kuhn. I think he was one of Kuhn's students.



Soleron on 24 November 2012
GameOver22 said:
Soleron said:
...

I've read both....and more : )

Personally, I think its complicated. I don't think either Popper or Kuhn got it entirely right, but they both hit on some important points, especially in regards to the role of falsification in science. I never read him in depth, but I actually like Lakatos more than Kuhn. I think he was one of Kuhn's students.

Yeah. I'm studying at my university's Department of History and Philosophy of Science which is exactly about this.

I really dislike Lakatos's attempts to throw a bunch of words at the problem. I don't think science can be described with a written definition or method. Scientists themselves tend not to read about it, so sometimes I feel all their work is wasted. Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos and Feyerabend are the four main people we study to start with, and of course all of their arguments have flaws or counter-examples.