This is only regarded as a true statement in physics and not in ANY of the other sciences. Newton's methodology is purely reductionist but in no other science is this methodology used. Biology, for instance, relies on the fundamental truth that casuality in the natural world is both a bottom-up and a top-down phenomenon but this is just as true for physics as it is for any other science. It is quite true to say that the behaviour of atoms within a molecule will cause the molecule to behave in a particular way. However it is equally true to say that the molecule has physical properties which its constituent atoms don't have and that these EMERGENT properties cause reciprocal changes in the behaviour of the constituent atoms. In this way it is more intuitively correct to think of the relationship between atoms and molecules as a dynamic process rather than as simple "building blocks" of matter.Greta wrote: Science can't possibly be used for macro explanations because it works from the bottom up. To depart from that approach is generally criticised as "unscientific",
Exactly the same argument applies to the atom and its constituent sub-atomic particles so we shouldn't be thinking of the atom as an object at all because the atom is an EVENT. Furthermore because some changes occur within the atom at the speed of light we should be thinking of the atom as an event which is occurring at the speed of light. This is the ancient Ship of Theseus story which completely demolishes our traditional understanding of the "object". Since an atom is changing itself into a different atom at the speed of light it simply makes no sense to think of it as an "object" or a "building block". An atom is simply an emergent hierarchy of informational complexity embedded within a non-linear dynamic system.
Newton's wholly reductionist methodology is completely incapable of modelling this more intuitively coherent narrative of a reality which is continuously being made.
I prefer to think of energy as an emergent form of information in much the same way that matter is but there is ABSOLUTELY something else in the mix. This process modelling allows for gravity to manifest itself and gravity is the elephant in the room of physics because GR tells us that gravity and time are simply two different expressions of the same thing. They bear a precise mathematical relationship to each other which is inversely logarithmic in its nature and which obtains all the way down to the Planck scale. This inverse relationship provides the fundamental asymmetry needed for a self-causal informational universe because it applies from the Planck scale all the way up to the cosmological scale. It is the only meta-law needed to account for every observable phenomenon in the entire universe and it is a truth bigger than god because it even accounts for us. Self-causal systems evolve from the simple to the complex purely because they cannot do otherwise and the most obvious example of this in nature is our own planetary biosphere.Greta wrote: if we have a infinite sequence of moments, it begs the question as to whether it's only an infinite sequence of information and energy or if there's something else in the mix
This bit might take a bit to get your head around but it is absolutely true. The reason why you are bound to the surface of the earth is because time passes more quickly at your head than it does at your feet. I'll concede that this takes a bit of thinking through but it doesn't take an awful lot of physics to see why this should be so. It also explains why falling bodies accelerate.
It also explains why the universe appears to be expanding, as well as why this expansion appears to be accelerating. It also explains why the less massive galaxies, like ours, are flying apart but this is a major digression into a totally new cosmology which I better avoid in this topic. However it does relate to the OP because it does answer the question "where is here". The truth of relativity is that there is no here. There is only a Now and our moments Now pass at a truly astonishing speed. Literally trillions of trillions of trillions of Planck intervals pass every single second of our lives and each of these intervals exists solely in its own temporal referential frame. We ride the crest of a continuously emerging wave of time which is carrying us into the future at the speed of light. We observe only its wake and it is this wake which spacetime physics is modelling.
Descartes and Newton assumed the Aristotelian space as a background within which the events of the universe could occur but a process reality needs no stage on which to perform its eternal magic. The stage is only what we observe and what we observe is a holographic representation of events which exist no longer.
It is evolving, that's all, and it will continue to evolve until it can evolve no further. When that happens it will undergo a phase shift somewhat analogous to flipping over on a Moebius ribbon. Spacetime physics hints at a rather similar idea with its bang/crunch paradigm where the entire universe collapses into a black hole and starts all over again. Alan Turing modelled this exquisitely in the Universal Turing Machine, the eternal reality maker which programmes its own input and never repeats the same reality twice.Greta wrote: It appears to be growing, developing and, presumably, dying
This is a very confronting mental image which I'd ask you to elaborate on. Is it a girlie thing?Greta wrote:a cosmic equivalent blastula invaginating?
This model is of a universe sufficient to its own existence and makes no statement about other universes for the simple reason that any such statement is unverifiable by definition. it makes no statement about god for the same reason but both the multiverse hypothesis and the god hypothesis can be discarded in this paradigm on the grounds of insufficient reason. The philosophy of the bloody obvious proceeds from the assumption that Simplicity is Truth and that that which is unnecessary cannot be.