What's it all made of?
I would like to hear some ideas about what you think matter is made of. As the question seems to have faded since Einstein came up with E=mc². So I'm really asking what your definition of energy is.
Also, if you think it's a fluctuation or wave of or on or in a field. Then please give me your idea of what the field is made of. And the same goes for spacetime.
Also, if you think it's a fluctuation or wave of or on or in a field. Then please give me your idea of what the field is made of. And the same goes for spacetime.
Comments (135)
'm' is for mass, but it approximates matter. 'e' is a heck of a lot of energy.
'Energy' was originally about how much work could be done; we aren't getting too far here as to what energy is, at heart. I would have to go with Rovelli's covariant quantum fields as being the All of what's fundamental, but what are fields?
An image of waves comes to mind, but what are waves, other than a field?
Meanwhile, note that spacetime is exactly Einstein's gravitational field.
Waves? They must seemingly the the simplest form, which preserves the fundamental arts, that of it having no further parts. Looks like the composite and the complex must always be 'above'/beyond.
This didn't say what waves really are yet. Further, waves are ubiquitous in nature, which adds to our guess about them being so.
The waves are something; that doesn't tell us much new about wha they're made of.
Some think that there are waves of something and an anti-something, as like matter versus anti-matter. Their frequency would give rise to what we think of as their energy. Their amplitude would be positive and negative charge. Their extension would give rise to dimension.
Some go further, that they can make a 'Big Bang', if there are so many that they have to explode due to infinite density not being able to be, like any infinity can't, if they get compressed du to their weight or if they swirl inward until there's no inward left. Of course, /I am somewhat presuming through all this.
The explosion, eventually, spews out "centers of oscillation", protons being more or less the waves and the electrons being the wave envelopes.
There are only three main stable particles in free space (and their anti-particles), this suggesting that there are only these limited number of ways to make them. Note that neutron's decay in free space within 12 minutes, leaving us only the proton, the electron and the photon, this also bolstering the wave symmetry idea, as we will see.
It appears, then, that there can be only two positively charged matter particles, the proton(+) and the electron(-), and only one energy particle, which must have a neutral charge, it being its own anti-particles, it possible being the electron and the positron (that it can be broken into) somehow living in peace because of something like that they are 180 degrees out of phase for some reason.
This curious symmetry about the three stable particles calls out to us very Loudly!
But what are waves made of? I have to wave good-bye now.
Atoms were thought to be primary and indivisible but that was confounded by the discovery of quarks.
Idealism posits that everything is simply mind which is a solution that seems to satisfy Ockham's razor in my opinion but then you have the primary question of what is mind.
I think there is always going to be the problem of infinite regress about the constituents of reality.
Religion has offered some kind of solace by claiming that the gods know and when you meet them they will reveal the answer. This is what I believed as a child. Maybe the problem is the limitations of our intelligence?
Matter is made of stuff.
I am not kidding. This is the latest (of what I have heard) theory in physics. Matter is stuff.
To answer that question I usually ask myself,
I think if one finds the characteristics that are ever-present in reality/existence then one gets a much better definition of what that reality/existence is. So far I have - identity, activity, force/influence, form/space, time.
So far, this seems to tick all my boxes.
This is the point of view I hit upon. And I couldn't accept the most common answer of it just being made of stuff. Nor will I ever intertain the idea that the universe cares about our consciousness and therefore has nothing to do with mind or the awareness of it. So my reasoning is that it's nothing. Not in the nihilistic sense but in the sense that the building blocks of reality are made of empty space. Light is a wave of empty space. Matter is closed pockets or knots of empty space, within a bubbling sea of fluctuating empty space. I know it sounds ridiculous but the more I think about it, the more realistic it becomes. After all, no matter how small you divide something, each half can always be divided again. I see the only logical solution must be nothing, because nothing else works.
This is the quantum foam, ever jittering, for some reason like that QM can never be definite, as mostly noise, items coming and going in a kind of sub-time/pre-time, sub-space/pre-space, sub-stuff/pre-stuff mode since they don't endure; but then, somehow, something lasts for more than an instant, even for a bit, and some chain reaction occurs, and then there are more happenings unto some more…
It isn't enough for me to accept it on its influence in reality. To me, it seems the same as saying energy.
How about NOTHINGness, just empty space. Interacting with other empty space, until SOMETHING is happening out of nothing. I believe you really can make something out of nothing.
It's all the same no matter the name we call it. Even in your analogy, the empty space is interacting and out of that a configuration called "something" arises. In the end, the narrative is all the same despite the different names and only the characteristics or qualities we assign to that fundamental state of reality/existence really determines what we're referring to. The rest is just perspective to help us understand where everything diverges from and converges to.
I get what you mean but there is a truth to all things and regardless of whether that thing is this or that, it still matters to me that it be defined. Deeper understanding is only possible when you know enough about what's come before to bridge the next gap. Just settling for characteristics or qualities won't give enough insight to see around the next corner, even if at first it's just an assumption, what it leads to could be more than the sum of its parts. I think a label on what energy is, is the key to understanding how the universe works, and what it's made of. You have to admit, accepting energy for it's qualities hasn't brought much to the table.
I think a definition is just an organisation of characteristics and qualities and their significance.
Quoting Razorback kitten
On the contrary, it has given science a perspective that is relative to everything. Also, it allows us to build on an idea that is more fixed than others, that way we don't have to undo the previous structure just to cope with new information, for example, with the realisation of the strangeness of quantum mechanics.
A label without a proper definition is meaningless. And we can't have a proper definition without the right perspective of its characteristics and qualities.
You have Newton's absolute space, whose only quantity would seem to be volume. Einstein replaced this notion with the gravitational field, that is, space-time.
Note that 'Nothing' has no existence, no properties; 'it' doesn't even have an 'it' (a what), an arena (a where), a time (a when), etc., so it is not.
Energy is matter in motion.
Motion or change is also what time is. However, with energy, we're concerned more with the relative strength of motion--"the ability to do work," whereas with time we're concerned with relative motion--and in particular, seemingly regular relative motion.
Space is the extension of matter and the extensional relations of matter.
Space is made of nothing. Lots and lots of waves of nothing. So many bands of empty space at different frequencies, coming from all directions, creating a fabric of nothingness. The absurd part is believing that empty space, however non existent, must build up in some way to create a something. I can't see any other alternative.
1. there's a basic building material which is not made up of anything else.
2. infinite regression you can reduce matter to other constituents and also these to other constituents etc ad infinitum.
It depends on your belief of a universe which is finite or infinite.
I believe in an infinite universe so I'll take the second option.
You sure have a lot of not nothingness here.
I don't see how an effect could ever surface.
Thus leaving no independent 'space' that is additional beside the span of the relations.
Correct. It doesn't exist as "something in itself."
You are facing a paradox about the base Existence, like we all do; yet, we can be assured that there are no true paradoxes, since there is existence, even with humongous and near unimaginable amounts of stuff/energy seemingly so easy to come by.
On the one hand, there doesn't seem to be anything to make existence out of; hence your conclusion of from 'Nothing', but really your 'Nothing' so far is but a near 'Nothing', for you introduce a capability and possibility (as something) to make our existence of stuff.
If truly there was/is a lack of anything, then how could anything make itself?
On the other hand, which is only that there is an eternal something, then it would be that it is here without it ever having been made!
Time to go mad? Don't go yet, for, right here, we have the answer to All, as either from Nothing or as eternal. Astounding! We have surrounded the TOE and have caged it in! Good progress!
More later.
Yes, good video. Lincoln posts on the science and philosophy chat forum sometimes.
I hope so because what you said was really beautiful. It sums it up really well. I have decided empty space can do things it shouldn't be able to.
However I'm completely convinced that space and energy can only be made of emptiness.
In a field of something, like a cloud or fabric, an area of nothing has a presence. If you walk along a path and the path is replaced with nothing. The opposite of nothing happens and you fall.
I know 'nothing' wouldn't have any effect on something real but what if the things we consider real, are also made of nothing. I find it hard to explain. I'll just keep on believe in nothing, until something comes along.
Well, something has come along and it exists, so, then, there has to be a way for it to be.
Not that 'Nothing' can have an existence, but if there could be a lack of anything as an absolute 'Nothing' then 'it' would have no properties and 'it' would then still be the case, but 'it' ain't, and I am quite wrong to even refer to it herein, for 'it' cannot even be meant.
Still, we need to eventually account for the apparent zero-sum balance of opposites in nature. For example, the potential negative energy of gravity matches that of the positive kinetic energy of 'stuff', which is very curious.
Also, the net electric charge of the universe appears to be zero. Matter and anti-matter annihilate, but photons are the result, not 'Nothing'. Some propose that photons are a plus and a minus peacefully amounting somehow to a neutral charge without blowing up.
QM has virtual particles fluctuating in and out of existence.
There is also the finding from QM by Anton Zeilinger to several sigma that "randomness is the bedrock of reality", meaning perhaps that there can be outputs with inputs,
A 'null physics' theory has it that the Totality is a 'Nothing' nonexistence externally, while, internally, it still also sums to nothing. Since our three dimensions must be additive, then it can only be the fourth that accomplishes the full nullification, which, in the theory, if I remember, is electric charge.
So, we are ever looking into existence to get more clues like the above, which favor your case, somewhat, but ever add to it some kind of potential/way, making the 'Nothing' no longer a 'Nothing', as if the something-like potential/way is mandatory, and thus some timeless eternal, which state we ever seem to get forced back to.
What else does the known existence suggest or tell us? Anybody?
For the timeless eternal notion, there is that: due to the impossibility of a total 'Nothing' that existence has no alternative and so there can be no opposite to being, leaving something basic as what has to be, plus that this then necessarily must be everything, not just some, since eternal stuff doesn't arrive, but just already 'IS', and everywhere, since there couldn't even be little spacers of 'nothingness' in the fabric of the All. Sounds like covariant quantum fields.
Let's go have a drink at the Madhouse Tavern in the middle of no-where, us being now-here to do so.
Joking
Beautifully said again though.
I want to hear your idea of what could possibly be at the centre of stuff?
If nothing isn't good enough for you...
'Stuff' would mostly be energy/interactions going 'round, although I lean toward calling 'stuff' to be happenings/events, with apparently stable 'stuff' being just long events.
Quoting Razorback kitten
We are so temporary that we are changing zillions of times a second, since the All, whether eternal or of 'Nothing', is continuously transitioning and so thus is never anything in particular, but leaving the events/happenings to be to us what is, with things not.
Both Everything, as a Library of Babel, and Nothing, as an empty hut, tell us zip, neither of them having any information content. The only benefit of existence would seem to be experience; so, drink of it..
The Eternal Return?
Behind the Veil, being that which e’er thrives,
The Eternal IS has ever been alive,
For that which hath no onset cannot die,
Nor a point from which to design its Why.
Some time it needed to learn Everything for,
And now well knows how these bubbles to pour,
Of existence, in some like universe,
As those that wrote your poem and mine, every verse.
So, as thus, thou lives on yester’s credit line
In nowhere’s midst, now in this life of thine,
As of its bowl your cup of brew was mixed
Into the state of being that’s called “mine”.
Yet worry you that this Cosmos is the last,
That the likes of us will become the past,
Space wondering whither whence we went
After the last of us her life has spent?
The Eternal Saki has thus formed
Trillions of baubles like ours, and will form,
Forevermore—the comings and passings
Of which it ever emits to immerse
Of those universal bubbles blown and burst.
So fear not that a debit close your
Account and mine, knowing the like no more;
The Eternal Cycle from its pot has pour’d
Zillions of bubbles like ours, and will pour.
When You and I behind the cloak are past
But the long while the next universe shall last,
Which of one’s approach and departure the All grasps
As might the sea’s self heed a pebble cast.
Oh, a particle is a long event happening.
I should of known.
Especially protons.
[i]it might decay with a half-life of about 10**32 years[/I] — Gooooooggle
And matter is the extension of interaction.
I have no idea what that would amount to. It sounds incoherent to me, but maybe you could explain it so that I wouldn't think that.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Matter is comprised of interaction: particles in dynamic relationship with each other. As @tim wood‘s video showed, what we see as matter, mass, is mostly the energy of these relationships, and only a very small percentage is the particles themselves.
So, the way I see it, interaction is at the heart of all matter, more so than the elementary particles. What we know as matter, therefore, is the extension of this interaction.
Does that make more sense or less?
You can't just focus on the relations or interactions, because there needs to be something relating or having interactions.
QM describes quarks as fast-moving points of energy - I’d like to see you try to focus on something else...
Energy sans something to have energy is incoherent. And there are no real "points."
So you were thinking that I'm probably just not familiar with this?
Given that we don’t really know what energy IS (only what it does), I would suggest that it’s only incoherent because our language structure makes it so. I agree that there are no real ‘points’ - there doesn’t need to be.
No research went into the process of thinking up my post.
My pleasure to meet with a completely honest person, but the thought came from your brain and so there was perhaps some kind of inadvertent 'research' prompting the post.
Quoting god must be atheist
Matter appears to be mostly made of energy, as some have indicated here. Energy is equivalent to mass, and mass is approximately matter, I guess. Some answer 'information', having it to be equivalent to energy.
Quoting god must be atheist
They could still say that 'God did it', this not being an answer, really, but rather an even larger question to ponder.
The upper layer things are "life", "love", thought, social and societal concepts, language, etc.
I proposed in this concurrent thread that the layering may be finite or infinite in both regress and progress.
Nothing works.
ToE? Terms of Endearment?
Perhaps, it's about the relation of energy to each other that gives the properties and characteristics we think are distinctive and constant while, in fact, outside the particular relations/interactions, those same energies display other quite varied properties and characteristics.
I think matter is an interaction between different energy levels and directions, spins and size. But again, it still doesn't help. What's any energy, regardless of perspective, made of?
It's made of Mass, Length squared, and Time negative squared.
That’s how scientists measure it. It doesn’t explain what it is.
Best answer so far. Painfully.
New question. Is empty space the same as nothing?
Empty is the same as nothing in most senses but space implies a size, a dimension. Or maybe the question is wrong.
Yep. I'm still smarting.
I find I can best describe it as the interaction of potentiality.
Empty space cannot be truly empty, just as nothing is not a complete lack of existence, if we’re talking about what IS if no ‘thing’ can be said to exist without it.
The way I see it, what exists is potentiality, because without it, nothing CAN exist. Does that make sense?
I very much like this response, perhaps because it appeals to me intellectually.
Are there any authors that you would recommend that have put meat on the bones of this? I'm talking about something accessible to a non-researcher.
All the current gaps and contradictions in our understanding - the origin of the universe, quantum mechanics, abiogenesis, consciousness, the question of ‘God’ - all seem to dissolve for me in light of the interaction of potentiality as the underlying ‘substance’ of the universe, the fundamental ground of all being. But that’s a lot of ground to cover.
I get the sense that we’re all teetering on the edge of a colossal paradigm shift. This is why I’m here: to find ways to support the theory and familiarise myself with the most suitable discourse, without sounding crazy. In my own research on this, I’ve realised that there are far too many more intelligent and knowledgeable people and teams out there who are a hair’s breadth away from discovering this in their own fields of research for me think my philosophical ramblings can achieve anything except perhaps to nudge them over the lip, or point out connections or collaborations they maybe hadn’t considered yet.
Well put; I'll third that notion.
Beyond Local Reality
Time, space, stuff, change, and form are real-ized from
Fundamental Possibility,
Becoming the penultimate reality,
One possible from the probabilities.
Quantum Superposition is Real
Our reality comes not from nothing,
But exists always as possibility,
One that amounts to something workable,
Among all in superposition.
The First Impossibility
No form of a penultimate realness
Could exist alone before the rest, since
Everything is quantum-known-all-at-once;
For what could make the choice among many?
The Second Impossibility
Nor comes it from an absolute nothing,
Since there can be no such ‘thing’ at all,
So, since either way is impossible,
Fundamental Possibility IS.
The Unbelievable Truth
This ultimate basis of reality,
Though not much like our local reality,
Is hinted at by quantum physics—
It forms reality real as can be!
The Verifiable Truth
So how else could it be, for particles
Do appear and disappear from nowhere,
Going from here to there, with no between,
Manifesting from no-where to now-here.
I think that's the one thing we can't reconcile. Perspective is an ever-present factor in everything we know and when we try to escape it, we can't seem to come up with anything definitive. Even conceptual stuff are tied in with perspective. So, I think the best we can have is a concept that kind of connects or represents as many factors as possible but, even then, whether someone can see that inter-connectivity or not depends on their perspective.
Thank you for this perspective. I have not read Rovelli. I will look him up.
Yes but what difference does it make? It's just a more complicated way of pushing the buck. I could say space is the only thing which exists because without it, nothing could. Or energy, time...
I understand potentiality to be ‘the capacity to develop, achieve and succeed that is not yet realised’. This is what we access whenever we interact with the universe, and that it is only when we are aware of potential that we can realise it.
So it’s not quite the same as saying that nothing could exist without space, for instance.
What influence would considering matter as potential have on the future?
You said this way of thinking allows the gaps in our understanding to dissolve away (for you). So how?
I will clarify, first of all, that I’m talking about matter as energy, which is a manifestation of the interaction of potentiality. When we say ‘matter as potential’, the tendency is to still see potentiality as a physical ‘object’ or event, which it isn’t. Personally, I find it easier to think of potentiality as a concept. I hope that makes sense, for now.
As for dissolving gaps, I’ll try to explain the first big paradigm shift for me, because it relates closely to what I mean by concept: the question of ‘God’. This was a big one for me because I was raised Catholic. And I apologise to anyone who feels this derails the thread.
I realised that Aristotle’s (and later Aquinas’) understanding of God as ‘pure actuality’ was not based solely on reason, but on a bias towards substance: that something is more valuable than nothing. He saw matter as a passive receptacle, a receptive substratum of form - effectively nothing in itself. But this ‘nothing’ is what the universe must have started with, if we recognise what physics is now telling us.
Rovelli: “For a long time, we have tried to understand the world in terms of some primary substance. Perhaps physics, more than any other discipline, has pursued this primary substance. But the more we have studied it, the less the world seems comprehensible in terms of something that is. It seems to be a lot more intelligible in terms of relations between events.”
So it seemed to me that Aristotle has effectively convinced us to overlook the possibility that the concept we call ‘God’ IS potentiality. This shift in thinking turns much of religion on its head, but what I saw was what I understood about ‘God’ more than anything else I was taught: that God is love. And if you’ve ever genuinely understood what it is to love someone, then you’d understand that love in action IS realising potential. It became very clear to me that ‘God’ was not some supreme being with all power, influence and control, but was instead this concept we call potentiality, the underlying source of all being, which (following David Bentley Hart’s properties of God):
- is not temporal;
- is not composite or ‘dissoluble into parts on which it is dependent’;
- is not ‘a being among beings’ or ‘dependent upon some larger sphere of actuality’;
- is omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient;
- is logically necessary; and
- is personal: ‘knows, loves and relates’ to us all.
I don’t subscribe to spiritualism, and I’m not sure where you read that here. Perhaps it was the G-word that prompted you to close your mind all of a sudden? You won’t see much of anything that way, let alone any paradigm shift. Too bad.
The concept of energy is problematic when we say that it causes things, or that it is what matter is made of.
If I launch a ball upwards and it decelerates, why do I have to say that it decelerates because its kinetic energy is converted into potential energy, why can't I simply say that I observe it decelerates and I model that through the concept of gravitational acceleration, or through the mathematical concepts of kinetic and potential energy? Energy there appears simply as a concept, a tool of thought, a model of motion or of change, not a cause of motion or of change.
Then if we say that energy is what matter is made of, and we can't say what energy is, then what does it mean to say that matter is made of energy? If we say that energy is the ability to do work, what does it mean to say that matter is made of an ability?
In my view it's only confusing to say that energy causes anything or that it constitutes matter, it gives an illusion of explanation while committing the fallacy of reification.
People like to mention E=mc² as evidence that matter and energy are interchangeable, or that matter is made of energy, or that matter and energy are the same thing, but before making such claims one ought to understand precisely what that equation means and in what context it was formulated, I'm gonna try to explain as succinctly as possible.
First of all the concept of mass m, mass is not defined in isolation, it is a relative property, if we say that some thing has a mass 10 times greater than some other thing, it means that in some experiments the first thing accelerates 10 times less than the other thing, so mass is a measure of how hard it is to accelerate a thing.
E refers to the energy of a photon. They say a photon has energy because it has the ability to cause change, to accelerate electrons, but there again energy is not the cause of that ability, it is a model of that ability, it doesn't say anything more to say that a photon has energy than to say it has the ability to move some other things. The energy of a photon is a measure of its ability to accelerate things.
The easier it is to accelerate a thing, the less that thing has the ability to accelerate other things, and reciprocally (that observation is what allows to define the concept of mass in the first place). So when some object emits a photon, that object loses a tiny bit of its ability to accelerate things, so it becomes a tiny bit easier to accelerate it. That's what E=mc² boils down to, that's even more or less how Einstein put it in his original paper: radiation conveys inertia between the emitting and absorbing bodies (radiation refers to photons).
There is no need to reify energy as some substance that matter is made of, we can simply say that matter is made of things that have abilities, including at least the ability to move other things. When a photon is emitted by a body and absorbed by another, the first body loses some ability that the other gains, but the two emit and absorb photons constantly so it's more like they are constantly interacting. Also we don't have to interpret 'absorption' literally as if the body was absorbing a substance, if we want we can think that the photon is still moving inside the new body in some way.
But the idea that matter is things that interact with one another through their abilities, seems a lot like what you are saying when you say that matter is the interactions of potentiality. I guess we could say that the universe is made of things, things that have abilities, or a potential, that gets actualized through their interaction.
However I'm not sure it makes sense to say that what exists deep down is potentiality or ability, because those are concepts that we ascribe to things. But at the same time if the things we see are already the result of an interaction, then we're not seeing things with a potential, we're already seeing actualized potential, but that has to be the actualized potential of something else, which I guess you could call God or the cosmic consciousness or something.
The philosophical definition of spiritualism; the doctrine that the spirit exists as distinct from matter, or that spirit is the only reality.
All you are doing is swapping spirit for potential so it sounds more scientific and less like woo woo. Sorry if I offend.
Not quite.
As one who subscribes to spirituality (without religion), I sincerely beg to differ on account that your over-simplification of spiritualism has excluded a key aspect of its identity. Spiritualism can define spirit as distinct from matter but, it always insists that matter and spirit are two sides of the same coin. And just as the heads and tails of a coin co-exist though are distinctly different, so are spirit and matter.
Even in the domain of spiritual knowledge, spirit and matter are more complex in their interactions than a mere distinction in their definitions. In fact, they meet the same difficulties as consciousness and perception. For example:
And, from Emanuel Swedenborg's books, one also gathers that, residents of the various realms of the spirit world are as tangible and material to each other and their environment as human beings are with regard to physical stuff.
As a hypothetical example, we could put it as, it is possible that what are ghosts to us may not be such to each other or to a different sphere of vibration (and I'm not saying that ghosts exist).
I give up.
This one is troublesome for one who "knows, loves, and relates", for a system of mind and an emotional system would have parts (that would have to be more fundamental).
I would rather turn the direction of looking for higher being completely around to the opposite: look to the future rather than to the past.
I had a feeling I would lose people here. As I said, I’m still finding ways to explain how everything is connected in my head. The idea of ‘love’ (agape) in relation to potentiality has nothing to do with emotion, and we cannot claim sufficient understanding of consciousness to be sure that a ‘system of mind’ that ‘knows’ (is aware of anything) from outside of time would even have parts, given that potentiality has no discernible form in spacetime.
Potentiality relating to itself is the essence of this idea of ‘interaction of potentiality’. This capacity of inter-relatability is absolute but far from fully actualised - actuality requiring interaction occurring in spacetime, which necessitates all the ‘parts’ to be aware, connected and collaborating. As Rovelli says: “A physical system manifests itself only by interaction with another.”
So I agree that in our search for a higher being we must look to the future, rather than the past. With no discernible form in spacetime, I don’t see potentiality as being at all.
There's no reason to believe that it's something other than the "doing" you're referring to. But the incoherence of doing sans something doing isn't linguistic, it's ontological.
I agree with you on the problem of causation, and I haven’t mentioned casuality at this stage for that reason. It certainly doesn’t help to say that energy causes things.
As for what matter is made of, I agree that this is also problematic, and I did attempt to express that with my reply “I find I can best describe it as...” - but I see now that was way too subtle.
Quoting leo
This is one part I’m still trying to find a way to explain: how this concept of energy, as ‘the capacity to do work’, shifts to and from potentially and actually doing work. But I don’t have the physics or math background to conceive or critique any formula for the connection.
The concept of ‘potential energy’, to me, refers to a connection between dimensions, which I see as closely related to awareness - to the yes/no questions of integrating information. Because all inanimate matter is fixed in terms of how it can or can’t receive information or interact, the relationship between potential and active energy states is largely predictable. In relation to energy events (eg. Chemical reactions, movement, etc), the yes/no answers have the potential to change relative to time. I see this ‘awareness’ of time occurring within an energy event as a connection to this fourth dimension.
In relation to living matter, the answers can be different relative to the perceived value of information changes from interacting events over time. This I see as a connection to a fifth dimension, one in which creatures are aware of experiences in relation to events, and it’s here that an awareness of potential energy originates. Potential energy points to our capacity to experience energy - to be aware of it and seek to quantify it - even when it isn’t actually doing work. We can’t measure it until it acts, but we can value it, recognise its potential and ‘set up’ inanimate matter predisposed to interact in a way that enables the doing of work.
I think I get what you’re saying, but the way I see it, any state of being is finite in time. The doing refers to an event that loses its status as an entity once it’s measured. Energy measured is a difference in relational 3D information states over time, just as a photon measured becomes a moving particle. Even a life measured becomes a series of relational 3D information states over time. So yes, a doing or being that can’t be measured in relation to time doesn’t cohere.
When I talk about potentiality, I’m talking about what we experience or value without any evidence of it being. Like the potential we value when we interact with a young child, or when we experience love at first sight. When we value it, we are motivated to make arrangements which will enable that potential to be realised in time.
Don't worry about the physics or maths, they don't explain that either.
Basically the concept of energy stems from assuming that there are laws that dictate change and that these laws are constant through time.
As a basic example, assume there is the law that objects accelerate towards the Earth at the rate of 9.8 m/s² (for instance if you drop something from the top of a cliff, its velocity would increase by 9.8 m/s every second, neglecting air friction).
So if you drop the object at time t=0, its velocity as a function of time is v = 9.8*t (until it crashes on the ground).
If we call H the height of the cliff and h the height at which the object is during the fall (h decreases during the fall), we can infer that :
v²/2 = 9.8*(H-h) (I can detail if you want)
So during the whole fall, the quantity v²/2 + 9.8*h remains constant. So when the quantity 9.8*h decreases, the quantity v²/2 increases by the same amount. At the top of the cliff, v²/2 is 0 while the quantity 9.8*h is maximal, and at the bottom of the cliff v²/2 is maximal (right before the crash) while the quantity 9.8*h is 0.
So if you define v²/2 as kinetic energy and 9.8*h as potential energy, you can say as a figure of speech that during the fall, the potential energy of the object is converted into kinetic energy, but there is no substance we see that gets actually converted, it's just a mathematical wordplay.
Why did the object accelerate during the fall? Well we don't know, that's just what we observe, and we model that through a law, talking about energy doesn't explain anything, saying that there was a potential stored in the object that got released during the fall and made the object accelerate is just one abstract way of looking at it, but if you choose to reify that potential as something concrete that really got converted or actualized during the fall, maths and physics won't tell you anything about that (so don't spend years studying maths and physics in the hope that you will find such an explanation in there).
That's not to say that you can't create a coherent view of the world by assuming that everything is "interaction of potentiality" (I have a vague intuition of what that might be but I think it's worth exploring), but don't believe that you will find in physics how the potential to do work gets actualized into doing work, just because physicists talk misleadingly of potential energy being converted into motion doesn't mean they are doing anything more than describing how things move, otherwise you will spend years chasing a chimera.
??
The idea is much simpler than that. We can't have motion, and we can't have forces transferred, etc., without having SOMETHING that is moving, something that is applying and receiving forces, etc.
First of all, potential cannot be something concrete - I’m confident of that much, at least. It’s a concept: a 5D experience that has no evidence or location in spacetime, and yet has value in that it interacts with objects that are open or receptive to the experience in such a way as to effect a spacetime event. I’m not so much looking for an existing explanation in maths and physics anymore as gaining an understanding of the discourse so that I can explain this theory in a way that invites consideration rather than laughter or quizzical expressions.
Rovelli’s acknowledgement that physics currently makes more sense as a study of relations between 4D events rather than 3D things, and that time is not only finite and relative but possibly also granular is encouraging. It’s another step towards considering the concept of a five dimensional universe in which we interact with spacetime events in relation to value.
So, when you say ‘SOMETHING’ here, do you mean it must always be a physical, tangible something applying or receiving forces, or could it be a conceptual, abstract or subjective experience of ‘something’ that interacts with a physical something and in doing so effects an applied force?
I'm a physicalist, so on my view, concepts, subjective experience, etc. are physical processes.
So you would find it sufficient to explain concepts such as potential energy - a physical process, in your view - with an equation, as @leo has done above?
No. Concepts aren't potential anything, and they're not just energy. Nothing is just energy.
Concepts are particular brain states, in particular individuals.
Matter/energy is real and very tangible. The idea that any effect on it can come from something that's neither is ridiculous. Do you really believe concepts or experiences have a physical weight to them somehow? Please expand.
Not a physical weight. But our awareness of the existence of concepts and experiences (as relations between events and objects in time) nevertheless impacts on how we perceive and interact with these real events and tangible objects.
And when we recognise that these tangible objects are basically relations between energy events, and that we are basically an interrelated system of relations between energy events, then the idea that any effect can come from a relation between relations between relations between energy events isn’t so ridiculous after all...
So how do you explain a photon? Is it a concept or a physical process?
I’m just trying to get a sense of where you’re coming from, to see where I still have work to do.
I’m not too clear on what you mean by ‘brain states’ either, so you might need to explain that one to me as well. As I understand it, the theory of brain states (as patterns of synchronous neural firings on the electrical face of the brain?) is not entirely incompatible with this theory of potentiality. I don’t know enough about it to be sure, though.
.
I agree. The bedrock of what it's all made of would be the random quantum fluctuations.
In my personal worldview thesis, I have concluded that everything in reality, both matter and mind, is made of various forms of shape-shifting Information. And ultimately all information boils down to relationships. In abstract mathematics, we call those interrelations "Ratios". Energy/Matter is what we call "physical" and Mind/Math is called "metaphysical", but it's all on the same continuum, from Ideal to Real. This notion may sound like spooky Panpsychism, but it's actually derived from scientific Quantum Theory. And elemental Information is not necessarily conscious, though human self-consciousness is presumed to be a product of Information processing.
I'd be interested to know where you got the idea that "these tangible objects are basically relations between energy events", I may want to use it in my further exploration of the Enformationism thesis.
Enformationism : http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html
I understand where you’re coming from. I’ve noticed that our understanding of potential energy, consciousness, information and relationships are able to connect now in ways we perhaps haven’t been open to previously, thanks to quantum theory.
Quoting Gnomon
Alfred North Whitehead’s early approach to process philosophy aimed to develop a process cosmology where ‘events’ (not things) and ‘relations’ (not separate objects) are fundamental, and to account for the ontological relationship between process and substance, between subjectivity and objectivity. I don’t think he quite got there, but I think his work forms a useful base to develop this idea, if you can follow his neologisms. Here’s an interesting discussion.
But Carlo Rovelli’s approach from modern physics brings this idea of ‘relations between events’ into the quantum loop gravity side of current attempts at a ToE - I think you’ll find his books ‘The Order of Time’ and ‘Reality Is Not What You Think’ to be useful, particularly in relation to your thesis. I like the way he describes how Shannon’s Information Theory relates to Quantum Theory.
I think the relationships between the concepts of potentiality, potential energy, energy and matter are key to understanding what everything is made of in relation to what we experience of reality. If we can’t explain the structures of these relationships - whether it be conceptually with words, through diagrams or mathematical formulae - then we don’t have a scientifically useful answer.
For me, it’s not so much about events or substance, but about interaction with multi-dimensional relationships of information. But to demonstrate how we nevertheless experience a universe that is grounded in substance and time is a lesson for me in navigating discourse - because mapping six-dimensional relationships requires mathematical ability I don’t have.
Everything that we considere to exist is limited by some shape or pattern; to exist is to have a limit. Then, I'd say that matter results from the actualization of some kind of limit, and that matter is that which is affected by the limitation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/16/opinion/consciousness-isnt-a-mystery-its-matter.html
I found it difficult to follow ANW's neologisms. That's why I have a glossary for my own made-up terms, such as Enformationism as a 21st century update to Materialism.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html
Quoting Possibility
I read a book by Tam Hunt, the interviewer : Eco Ego Eros. He discusses ANW among other Information related topics. These new ideas are making Idealism seems plausible again, after centuries of dominance by Materialism. In keeping with my BothAnd principle though, I think our world is both Ideal and Real, both immaterial and material, but Information is at the root of everything. The bottom line for me is that it's all made of Enformation, in the form of Math, Energy, Ideas, and Matter. Yet, even more basic is BEING : the power to be, and to become.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page10.html
Quoting Possibility
I have put all those phenomena together in a concept I call EnFormAction.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html
At our level, the useful message is of stuff in time, as that is what works around here, even as not basic but as emergent from no space or time way down at Rovelli's base level of covariant quantum fields pervading.
There are other messages where we exist. Various oppositional or transitional pairs appear everywhere. Past to Future is one-way transitional, while electric to magnetic to electric, etc. is either way transitional, and better known as a self-generating or self-continuing electromagnetic wave.
And, while fields may seems to have a lot of sameness, lumps in these fields, as matter particles, stand out from the flatter portions of the fields, making matter as to be taken as oppositional to space.
Some other are more as balanced opposites, such as stuff versus gravity or the weak nuclear force, being good for dispersion/changeability, versus the strong nuclear force, as good for stability.
Metaphysics, though, is more about the messenger (the implementation) than the message.
That's only approximately true.
Here's the QFT view of things.
Matter is composed of particles. The set of known particles comprise the standard model of particle physics.
Particles are not anything like free floating ball bearings (as the imagination might lead us to think). Rather, they are disturbances in quantum fields. There is a quantum fields associated with each elementary particle (e.g. there is an up-quark field, a Higgs-field, etc). There is exactly one of each type of field, and each exists throughout space. These quantum fields are considered the fundamental components of existence.
Obviously, particles interact with one another. But since particles are actually quantized disturbances in fields, these can be considered interactions between quantum fields. But quantum fields also interact with one another in non-quantized ways. Such interactions are treated mathematically as "virtual particles."
So when it is said that virtual particles pop in and out of existence, it's actually just referring to interactions between fields that occur because the fields are waves and therefore fluctuate.
Matt Strassler has a great article describing virtual particles here.
Yes, that’s what I said: HOW a six dimensional universe manifests in our experience as ‘stuff in time’.
Quoting Possibility
From a quick and cursory read through this (and in my humble and developing opinion), three things: I don’t think the Enformer, G*d, is necessary to define separately (ANW’s boat anchor, too, IMO). I also suggest you take a more detailed look at entropy and its relevance to information: Rovelli refers to entropy as ‘missing information’, and sees it as more vital to the universe than energy. Thirdly, perhaps look at exploring multi-dimensional relations in information processing (although I’m not sure where you would find literature on this). If I’m not mistaken, ratios are only one-dimensional relationships of information - computers, as far as I understand, are unable to fully integrate information beyond ratios. But the way I see it, integrated information processing in chemistry appears to be two-dimensional, in biochemistry three-dimensional, and in the brain it seems to be 4D at least, 5D correlation and integration of information allowing for the development of self-consciousness...
Quoting Gnomon
Personally, I refer to this as potentiality: the capacity to develop, achieve and succeed; the ‘nothing’ from which something (everything) emerges. This links conceptually to Aristotle’s misunderstood dunamis, to potential energy in classical physics, as well as to potentiality in QM.
Some of your own neologisms gave me a chuckle, though...:grin:
Separately from what? That neologism, like most of the others, is a play on the concept of Information as the universal cause in the world. My G*D concept is similar to Spinoza's PanTheism, but goes beyond the space-time world into Enfernity (eternity/infinity). The name for that all-encompassing non-materialist theology is PanEnDeism. Other functional descriptions of G*D are "ALL", "BEING", etc. In other words, not a humanoid king, but the unlimited power of creation. I don't know anything about G*D, other than the logical necessity for everything in this world to come from something outside this finite-temporary universe.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page16.html
Quoting Possibility
Take a look at the glossary entry for "Enformy", which is my name for what scientists call "neg-entropy". Since Entropy is negative from the human perspective, I think of Enformy as a positive creative force.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html
Quoting Possibility
Mathematical ratios are not simply two-dimensional. They can be multi-dimensional, as in the 3D ratios of space, and the 4D ratios of space-time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory
Quoting Possibility
Yes, BEING is infinite potential. But it would take Intention to make something Actual. I assume that G*D is intentional, but I don't know how that would work in the absence of space-time. Maybe G*D must always be embodied in a physical universe. Hey, I'm just guessing here. :wink:
Quoting Possibility
I'm glad you saw the humor in my little wordplay. I'm serious about the project, but I don't take myself too seriously. :smile:
PS__Enformationism is not a religious doctrine. It's intended to be a philosophical precursor to a scientific worldview.
‘Possibility’ is what’s fundamental,
For all that is be must first be possible.
This ‘Potential’ for All is the default,
Since a Not can’t be, nor even be meant.
The necessity of no One and no None
Makes for no absolutes, which means
That time, space, matter, and motion
Have no intrinsic, indivisible qualities.
Something ever is and must be, for nothing cannot.
Energy restrained by time paces the way a lot,
This lot neither frozen nor totally reactive to be,
Forming all and any that is possible, eventually.
It's not a wave. We can just perform Physics experiments by identifying light as waves. The field is the ideterminable potentiality. It's not really a field either. We can just conceptualize potentiality as there being a field. Everything is just stardust. It's all interconnected energy and the energy is just fire. Everything is made of fire and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states that you have free will.
Edit: Spinoza was right and there is only one substance which is energy. There is only energy and the void. Mostly everything is the void, but it's like the void doesn't exist at all because all of the energy effects all of the rest of all of the energy indefinitely. What is energy? I don't really know. Calling it "fire" was the best that I could come up with on the spot. It's sort of like What the **** Do We Know?, but ultimately much more scientific.
Edit 2: Energy is too complex for human beings to understand in their lifetime. Calling it all fire is like calling it all rocks. Energy is a way of describing what is existent. In a sense, there is no such thing as empty space, there is only what is existent, or rather that what is existent creates what we understand as "space" which only seems to exist.
Edit 3: There is no void. Epicurus was only half-right. There is only the 'endless' 'field' of energy.
Edit 4: The void seems to exist enough to speak of it as existent. It can still be meaningful to discuss the void in spite of that it ultimately does not exist.
Edit 5: Particles that approach 'true' Absolute Zero phase out of existence and become what is like the void. A particle can only approach 'true' Absolute Zero.
Edit 6: There is an actual 'true' Absolute Zero, but to discover this is impossible. We can only understand existent energy. The void is unknowable.
Edit 7: The Void does not exist. Because it does not exist, there is no reason to attempt to study it. Energy is what exists. The purpose of Science should then become to study energy.
Postcript: Like, there is only the pure presence of energy and space only seems to exist. Time also only seems to exist. Every pure presence is an eternity. The eternal return is a physical reality. There is only that the potentiality of the energy is made manifest in every single moment.
Postrcript cont.: There is only one universe. We just can't conceptualize the infinite modality of of our own universe. String theory, however, is really onto something by replacing point-like particles with one-dimensional objects called strings. Everything exists as a singularity.
Final edit: That's all that I have to say about this if anyone was just waiting for me to quit rambling.
[i]Energy is a beauty and a brilliance,
Flashing up in its destructance,
For everything isn’t here to stay its “best”;
It’s merely here to die in its sublimeness.
Like slow fires making their brands, it breeds,
Yet ever consumes and moves on, as more it feeds,
Then spreads forth anew, this unpurposed dispersion,
An inexorable emergence with little reversion,
Ever becoming of its glorious excursions,
Bearing the change that patient time restrains,
While feasting upon the glorious decayed remains
In its progressive march through losses for gains.[/I]
This is egg salad.
Heaven’s Great Wheel e’er whirls its energy,
It having to turn and return, to be,
Transforming, as ne’er still—eternally,
Into life’s temporary pattern trees.
Eterne’s transitions doom forms’ permanence;
But the time required for their constructance
Restrains for a while the shapes’ destructance;
Thus they can slowly traverse life’s distance.
Is that written in iambic pentameter?
All of my quatrain verses have the same number of syllables, usually ten, but they don't aim to be iambic.
Interesting. Do you make these videos?
Yes, I make them all. Used iclone for the last one.
I suspect that the Eternal Energy can never be still, for we note that our reality never remains as anything particular even for an instant (little did we know that it changes a 'zillion' times a second). In other words, the Eternal is continuously transitioning, as if, it, too, cannot be anything particular, which goes along with that an Eternal would have no point for a design to be put into it in the first place which it never had.
Yet, the Eternal needs to remain the same, somehow, in some basic sense, such as topologically, or the 'same' is to not be anything particular—and thus everything, either all at once or act by act.
Cool.
I feel like you're right, but that the sum total of energy always is manifest as something particular. Each and every moment is a different singularity.
Yes, as conserved, although it isn't conserved in Relativity in an expanding universe; however, quantum gravity hasn't had its say about that yet.
It would be troublesome, though, as you say, if all the energy there were was here in the universe as a specific amount, there having been no point to specify it; so, perhaps there is more energy from the greater Cosmos in which our Bang occurred, our amount being circumstantial.
Or else zero overall. Or not. We don't know.
I’m the All and the One, present-Omni,
For I’m eternal and can neither be
Created nor destroyed, having not a cause,
As the Ground of All—I am Energy.
The universe weighs nothing at all: zero,
Plus, it is electrically neutral.
The positive kinetic energy of ‘stuff’
Cancels the negative potential energy of gravity.
At Cosmos’ birth, positive energy
Became matter, countered by gravity,
Whose attractive embrace was negative;
Strangely, their sum adds to nullity.
Quoting thewonder
As in Presentism, that the universe is wholly born anew at every 'now'?
Yes, each and every moment is like a different universe, however, there only exists what exists now.
This is indeed presentism, which I like because it is the message of the universe to us, but it has some problems that I can't currently resolve. Also, this 'message' might just be an emergence or even not true but helps us function meaningfully and/or usefully (which I realize seems paradoxical).
Lee Smolin likes it, too, calling it 'temporal naturalism', calling eternalism to be 'timeless naturalism'. He notes that qualia are ever only about the 'now' and that Einstein's GR can be interpreted differently and still work, via 'shape dynamics'.
Truth is that we're not sure about the mode of time, and that holds us up in some areas.
I may be a Presentist. I've honestly only really given this this speculative thought.
What do you think of my theory that space doesn't exist? I just cooked that up, but now I think that I might be onto something.
I like it, and I have it somewhat written, in part here:
I asked my djinni, “Show me another, more fundamental, version of time, in which the past and the future don’t exist.”
“It’s difficult,” she said, “for the prospects are grim; presentism does not just amount to the assertion that only present events or entities exist, but also that the present undergoes a dynamical ‘updating’, or exhibits a quality as of a fleeting swoosh, and this additional dynamical aspect is what threatens the substance of the debate between the presentist and an eternalist opponent.”
“In other words, what is going to exist or was existent, as the presentist must refer to as to be or has been is indicated as coming or going and is thus inherent in the totality of What IS, and so it has no true ‘nonexistence’, for this as Nothing cannot be.”
“Yes, as you’re saying that there is no contrast between a real future and an unreal future, for what is real or exists can have no opposite to form a contrast class.”
“Still, what if our perceived persistence of a selfsame world is an illusion?”
“We’ll still need a respite for presentism from the Einstein’s seemingly unavoidable besieging relativity of simultaneity.”
“What if we even went past the emergence quality of space as a degree of realness nevertheless, unto the complete elimination of space, leaving only time as the implicate order, an illusion of timelessness then only referring to the emergent but now totally explicate geometric time of spacetime, but not to a microscopic fundamental time where there would be no geometry, so that fundamental time exists but space and geometry do not?”
…
All of it here, although more of a brief, amongst a discussion of time's mode:
I'm glad that you like it, but I'm not quite sure how I feel about it now. I had just thought that nothing can't exist.
Presentism is difficult to understand because we conceptualize things through differentiation from past modalities. One exists only in the present, but understands only what has passed.
You mean that everything possible, including space, has to exist? Could be, for the Eternal Basis has no point for any input to come into it, making it to probably be everything, given no design particulars.
Still, what we think of as space might not have an independent existence, with 'stuff' providing its own extension. Or, since we only ever 'see' our own mind and never anything else directly, it could be that we spatialize what works for us as 'space' without any extensions being so at all.
Quoting thewonder
Yes, and so to live well, 'Remember the Future'!
How can you remember the future? This is like when I decided to get into Zen Buddhism.
All that is present are the particles. There is nothing between them. Nothing does not exist. There is nothing there that is present in space. I, therefore, concluded that space does not exist. I think that it could, perhaps, be useful to conceptualize things along such lines. I just thought that I was taking it too far.
Yes, particles are important, as useful field disturbances/perturbances, a kind of an alphabet that leads to words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, in a kind of a literary prosaic and poetic uni-verse. Probably the universe is no chock full of particles all adjacent to one another, but separated by flatter fields.
There would be no 'in space', per say. 'Nothing', having no being, just as we define it, is impossible.
OK, for the now and then and the zen of when, 'Predict the Future'. What's the weather going to be next month?
Partially overcast.
And lighter toward dawn.
We need to return to First Principles and First Philosophy with a probably good direction that The Theory of Everything is likely something simple, and boring, even, or a least a minimal system of scattered basic stuff or energy.
In presentism, complexity arises way later on, and the same with externalism's block universe, with its fake time that also starts with simplicity, at least as we see it traversed. Higher beings would be in our future, not the past, so forget about that angle. Simple is in. Even a proton, small as it is, can't be fundamental, for it has parts, of quarks, that have to be more fundamental, this according to our fundamental arts.
An infinite regress of ever smaller and smaller part is out, too, for the effect would never surface, as the infinite never completes. The buck stops somewhere.
As you have it, 'Nothing' cannot be, and so existence is mandatory, with no option, unable to arise from 'Nothing', and if it could, then there wasn't really a 'Nothing', for the capability of something 'arising' would be a something. Goodbye to 'From Nothing'.
This isn't to say that a near nothing couldn't lead to a large balance of opposites that cancel out or mostly cancel out, such as with inflation's negative/positive energy balancing act, as proposed. It's more evident that there are many real balances in the universe.
So, the Everything-Possible-Existence ever all being here, in principle, is a brute fact (barring another Bang in our universe or spontaneous arisings) but is greatly bolstered by there being not anything else forthcoming, due to none from Nothing, this Totality all here, either potentially, bit by bit, in time, as in presentism, or all at once, as in eternalism.
Even though we are thus having Everything, with its eternal basis already here without ever being made, this apparent paradox need not concern us, for existence has no opposite that can be (real). Existence has to be, and, besides, there is indeed something.
Quoting PoeticUniverse
These poems express some ideas that I address (prosaically) in my blog. If you don't mind, I may use them in a future post.
That's fine for any poems I put out.
THUS, THAT IS THE SUPER TOE!
Our train of thought has driven us to the answer,
Of all that borne from near ‘nothing’ into eternity,
Of the origin of the original disorder,
The lone dawn of our trackless radix,
Via the rails and tunnels that ever ran out:
There cannot be ever more and more
Causes beneath even more extended causes;
Therefore, intuitive or not, the causeless is,
Being such as what we observe it in the quantum.
Thus, cause is only of our higher realm,
As downward thence to its root emergence—
‘Possibility’ needed no mother but itself;
An egg burst open, born without a chicken.
The causeless bottom is the potential
Of possibility that is/was ever there,
An eternal basis forced because something is
And because this existence can’t have an opposite.
Since it’s ‘defined’ as an undefined chaos,
There’s no problem of no initial definition had,
Since it can’t have one and so it needs not any,
Making it nothing in particular as everything.
Things themselves become and go of ‘virtual’ potential,
Some things remaining as the rather-enduring real.
The potential is as near to simple as it gets,
Second only to the nonexistent Nothing, of course.
So, then, the potential is of no mind or ‘seeing’,
For a thought system can never be constituted,
As there are no more fundamentals upon more;
For, the Potential is already the ultimate basis.
Simple things ever combine, and further up,
And/or go must through phase changes,
Leading to more complex composites/forms,
Inclined to neither be frozen nor unsticking.
Stillness, not existing at all, and not even being able to,
But, perhaps threatening to, is the simplest state of all,
So, it must ever jiggle about, manifesting as loose ‘change’,
The fluctuations of the quantum foam..
You might say, then, that, that is exactly why
There had to be the potential for things;
Otherwise… A lack of anything, forever.
We have now reached the unexpected TOE,
One that even satisfies the ongoing trend,
For, looking down, we’ve always observed
The ever descending simplicity of Nature.
Now, as such, we can’t really expect to find
An Ultimate Complexity sitting
Around there at the simplest point.
We didn’t find Mind there;
Thus, we are ever free to be,
Yet, this is more of the will able to operate
Than it ever able to be a first cause itself.
This causeless bottom ‘fate’…
Was/is, too, a ‘magical’ state,
For anything could become of it,
And so probably everything will.
‘Possibility’ is what’s fundamental,
For all that can be must first be possible.
This ‘Potential’ for All is necessity,
Since a Not can’t be, or even be meant.
In my previous response I provided a link to the glossary entry for "EnFormAction". Unfortunately, the links to further discussion were broken. So, I have now fixed it.
I am intrigued by the relationship between your screename, and the modern concept of Information as statistical Potential , Probability , or Possibility.
Information is Possibility : "A measure of uncertainly and information for possibility theory is introduced in this paper The measure is called the U-uncertainty or, alternatively, the U-information." https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03081078208960799
In Post 33 : "Information is Generic in the sense of generating all forms from a formless pool of possibility : the Platonic Forms." http://bothandblog2.enformationism.info/page29.html
In Post 60 : "From the universal Quantum Field of statistical possibilities, "virtual particles" or "wavicles" mysteriously appear from nowhere as almost real particles of matter, such as Bosons & Leptons." http://bothandblog3.enformationism.info/page23.html
I think the problem is the notion that things are “made of” something, and are not themselves something.
The Eternal Basis would be unmakeable and unbreakable, as ungenerated and deathless.
Thanks
Bill