Language, Meaning and the TOE

[Wick]

We humans take special relish in naming things.

But naming things can be a perilous responsibility...especially if we name a thing before understanding what we have named.

There are times I have thought that we should not name our children until long after they are born. How can we name a thing whose nature we don't yet understand?
My wife reminds me that this would make it difficult to call the children (the ones who are slow to the table) to dinner...but still.

Perhaps naming is less perilous in people than it is in things.

Take for example the luminiferous ether of the 19th century. We named it without understanding what it was, then after having named it we tried to identify its nature which was odd to say the least. The ether was said to be a fluid that filled the immensity of space, but which was millions of times more rigid than steel. At the same time, the ether was said to be massless, having no viscosity, completely transparent, non-dispersive, incompressible, and continuous at a very small scale.
In the end we came to the conclusion (though some dispute it) that the ether was not real. We had named something and had given a hundred-year-long ontological existence to something that was (ostensibly) not even real.

Many centuries before we did the same thing when we named the Dome of Fixed Stars. After much time, and centuries of confusion, we would unname the Dome of Fixed Stars through the titanic efforts of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton. Naming the Dome of Fixed Stars was easy. But once named, the Dome of Fixed Stars acquired an all-to-great authority over our minds. We came to think of the Dome as sacrosanct...as true...and were loath to let it go. And thanks to this little knot of language and meaning (a name), science was impeded for centuries.

Unnaming the Dome was most difficult, indeed.

Take the atom, as an example. The meaning of the word atom implies an indivisable particle. But our name for the atom was, perhaps, premature. Do we not believe that the atom divides into electrons, quarks, gluons and a vast soup of virtual particles? Yes we do. Clearly, we named the atom before we understood what it was. And in so naming the atom, we confused future of science, perhaps slowing down what might have been progress had we been more careful with the language we employed.

Today we have named many things that we fail to understand...and while we admit that we don't understand the named objects, we proceed to name them nonetheless. Things like photons, quarks, electrons, neutrinos, dark matter, dark energy, and this is just a short list.

Even things we may pretend we understand hands down remain mysterious to us. The thing we call "space," for instance, hold more mystery than almost anything in nature.

Is space real? Does it exist? If it exists than we must not think of "space" as "nothing". And if it bends (as Einstein purported, and as many have since proven) then space must be something. But what is it.

There was a time when we made strict distinctions between space and matter. But since Rutherford showed us that all matter is mostly space, we have been forced to reconsider our position. That collection of molecules we call a Granny Smith Apple is infact an alloy of space and matter (with a great deal more space than matter). The matter exists as a "suspension" of sorts. And the configuration of the space and matter is what makes the Granny Smith a Granny Smith. There is very little difference between say a Granny Smith and a Golden Delicious. Its all in the configuration. Configuration is everything.

Some say that space is unmoving, that it is merely a reference work against which all matter moves. But if space bends on the large scale (and it does), might it not also bend or oscillate on the small scale? In other words, if I were to watch a Granny Smith apple floating through space, should I imagine it as a collection of fundamental particles passing through fixed points in space? Or should I think of the apple as carrying its own bit of space around with it? If the apple is an alloy of space and matter, isn't the latter more true? Don't the ways that space undulate inside the apple lead to things like color, taste, texture, and smell?

Yet there are many (perhaps a vast majority of scientists) who would tell us that space does not move. It may bend...we might permit that point (since Einstein suggested it and numberless experiments confirm it)...but to say that space moves--well that is something entirely different.

Electrons move. Photons move. Gluons move. These things we accept as instruments of motion. But space must not move. Space is a fixed thing that bends (on a massive scale) obediently under the influence of matter. Or is it?

What is an electron? A photon? A gluon? We have given these mysterious objects names, but truth be told, we don't even know what they are. Might they not be space in motion. Isn't it possible that we have subdivided a simple and basic element--space--into elements so small that we are thus led to misunderstand space as a whole? Perhaps we are straining at a gnat while swallowing a camel...or in other words, we might be so focused on the spray, that we fail to hear the ocean roaring all around us.

I guess what I'm saying is that the thing that keeps us from finding a TOE is a linguistic problem. We come to believe that the things we name (based upon mathematical formalities) are real and that we understand them. This may not be true. It is likely NOT true. If history can teach us anything, it is this: We once believed in the Dome of Fixed Stars, which is now defunct. We then believed in a luminiferous ether, which is now defunct. After that we believed in absolute space and time, which are now defunct. Today we believe in the conflicting tenants of general relativity and quantum mechanics. What have we named that has led to this confusion? What in our language is keeping us from the next leap in science?

Wick

[Graybeard]

Hi Wick ..... I have often thought what you have written.

Perhaps we perceive things in 'Linneaus' type relationships when in fact they are related thru 'Clades' ... ??

Things that look the same to us we tend to group .... when mostly the opposite is the truth. A good example of this in evolutionary terms is 'convergent evolution' ??

Such as when two separate species battle for the same resource they end up looking like each other because the resource can only be accessed by a certain 'key' and both species race for the 'key'. Dogs and Tasmanian Tigers ?

Good post Wick.

cool bananas ... greg

[labelwench]

Juliet:
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."
Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet meet and fall in love in Shakespeare's lyrical tale of "star-cross'd" lovers. They are doomed from the start as members of two warring families. Here Juliet tells Romeo that a name is an artificial and meaningless convention, and that she loves the person who is called "Montague", not the Montague name and not the Montague family. Romeo, out of his passion for Juliet, rejects his family name and vows, as Juliet asks, to "deny (his) father" and instead be "new baptized" as Juliet's lover. This one short line encapsulates the central struggle and tragedy of the play.

As you point out, our species quite delights in discovery and the naming of those discoveries, and it is interesting to wonder at why this may be so.

Perhaps we utilize these 'names' as reference points, a means of co-ordinating the multiple dimensions and data obtained through our senses which comprise our individual experiencing of life?

For the individual, renaming any important 'co-ordinate' requires an update of all the sequential data accumulated and cross-referenced to that designation, or name.

In the case of names which have been acknowledged for a significant interval and agreed to be known as same by a large population, any renaming, even for the best of reasons, is going to require a much larger investment of energy to reset at least the majority of cross-references that have accumulated.

Certainly, it can be done, as demonstrated by the former 'flat earth' theory, yet such was an easy exercise by comparison, as we were able to 'ground truth' and test this theory by physical means.

Where we are dealing with conceptual theory, presently unresolvable by current means of testing, the naming remains ever fuzzy. Even when we establish a new 'certainty', the renaming becomes an even greater matter for concern, as we are also a species which desires to recognize the contributions of both individuals and culture when we assign an important new designation by re-naming it.

Naming is one of our most important ways of showing respect and preserving tradition, encapsulating our back-trail, and often a compass to our shared future direction as a species. Like an Inukshuk, names both mark and point direction, and cross-reference the past to the present, hinting at the future.

http://www.inukshukgallery.com/inukshuk.html

What's in a name, indeed?

The famous line from Shakespeare, which is spoken by Juliet, is known to many, as an historical and also a tangible reference, even though they may never have studied this famous work.

An interesting thread start, Wick.

[labelwench]

An afterthought:

If motion IS the model, any impression of stillness would arise from the relationship between the co-ordinates and/or the observer?

[Lloyd Gillespie]

Even the co-ordinates move through space, Lorrina...

No-thing sits still...

[labelwench]

Even the co-ordinates move through space, Lorrina...

No-thing sits still...

Agreed.

It would be my thought that the very entity that we refer to as 'space' is also in motion.

Motions within motion itself, rather like an ocean, without any boundaries that we are capable of comprehending.

An inadequate metaphor, yet an ocean is the largest personal experiencing of my 'outer world', unless one considers gazing into the night sky and attempting to extrapolate the number of visible stars.

[SteveA]

Something to consider though is that there does exist an absolute reference for time though. For example, in Relativity, not all motions can be considered relative because accelerations don't affect time symmetrically. In the case of the "Twin's Paradox", though the two could be considered accelerating relative to each other, there still exists an absolute reference in which one is experiencing more acceleration than the other and this implies an absolute frame of time which does not treat acceleration identically.

Also, phenomenon witnessed throughout the universe occur over time in common units that can be compared. This is also necessarily synchronized with observations.

I believe the reason why such a diversity of phenomenon are witnessed is because there doesn't a specific limit to complexity. In many ways, the fact that there does exist such a complexity of physical phenomenon as well as complexities of logical structures in mathematics and number theory is because they are related (though I'd assume physical phenomenon represent a particularly detailed set) and similar to events occuring with comparable units or time, they share the same "1" or number line as in mathematics.

[Lloyd Gillespie]

Agreed.

It would be my thought that the very entity that we refer to as 'space' is also in motion.

Motions within motion itself, rather like an ocean, without any boundaries that we are capable of comprehending.

An inadequate metaphor, yet an ocean is the largest personal experiencing of my 'outer world', unless one considers gazing into the night sky and attempting to extrapolate the number of visible stars.

Agreed, as FS EM-Space is matter/energy in motion__Itself...

The metaphor is the all in the all, for my lack of a better one...

Time is just the measure of all co-ordinates, of all systems' motions, and the Universe and Nature have no paradoxes__and generally, complexity is limited...

Of course, if one chooses to make more personal complexity than exists__What sense...?

[Wick]

Something to consider though is that there does exist an absolute reference for time though.

The language of science often engages that term “time” with abandon. But what does it mean? What is time?

Einstein believed time to be ontologically real, or in other words, the past and the present exist in a physical way in the space-time structure. For Einstein, all configurations of space-time are a part of that thing we call the universe. In such a universe, if time were to reverse, the present would move into the past. Bean plants on a trellis, for instance, would rise up from the decayed vines and become green. The beans would then shrink, become blossoms, then buds, then green leaves would fold up into stems which vanish into the ground to become a bean seed. In time the gardener would walk (backwards) into the garden, dig up the beans, and seal them into an envelope, which he would then package and ship off to the garden supply company.

For Einstein, Napoleon is at Waterloo, and Washington is crossing the Potomac, and Saddam Hussein is holed up in a Baghdad bunker, and the next president of the United States is inaugurated, and the next World War is being fought, and the TOE is being discovered. All of these events exist in space-time. They are unchanging and fixed. These events are determinate. They are part of the universal structure. Each person has to decide whether such a picture of the universe makes sense. If it does, then the present moment is not special and the sense of human liberty is, indeed, a persistent illusion.

Variations of Einstein's vision include indeterminate structures--like the many worlds theory. But even such structures impede on liberty. The structure is complete. We just haven't become conscious of all the many branches.

My concern about this approach is that when we start to think about time in this way we are pushing language and meaning to radical extremes. This thread is about language and meaning and the TOE. If by time we mean a component of space-time, and if that –time means all time past and all time future…we need to agree that this is what we mean. If we don’t agree with that assumption, we need to be careful about what time is before we start using it as a word…otherwise we are going to become confused fast, because we will use the same word with many different meanings.

Many disagree with Einstein’s perspective of time. For such persons the past and future are not ontologically real—on the contrary, time is merely the process of change that occurs in the present. Some may delineate between changes of position and changes of state…but the bottom line is that for such persons, time equals change, not dimension. Time is a relationship between the way things were configured and the way they are currently configured. Most people who agree with this way of looking at time are not scientists. Yet, this particular way of looking at time would probably be the most widely accepted by people at large. Most humans take the present at face value. Most scientists do not.

Strangely, while scientists tend to consider all time references—past, present and future—on equal footing, giving no special treatment to the present, there is no compelling evidence that Napoleon is still at Waterloo, or that Washington is still crossing the Potomac, or that the next President of the United States, or the next World War are already configured and determined in the future. There is quite simply no evidence that the past and the future have an ontological existence outside of the remnants they display in the present. There may be records of past events in the present (i.e. Washington’s bones may be in the present), but that is not evidence that he is crossing the Potomac. Similarly, the appearance of a star going supernova tomorrow morning is not evidence of anything more than that the present configuration of space and matter holds a record (a light signal) that a star went supernova at some point in the past. The appearance of the supernova now is a cosmic watermark in the fabric of space that tells me about some distant past event, but the symbol (the cosmic watermark, in this case) is not the thing. I’m only seeing the remnant of a star now dead.

There is ample evidence that space bends along a 4th axis, but there is precious little evidence that this 4th axis is time. I will grant that changes may occur more rapidly or more slowly based upon the local shape of space, but variance in the process of change is not evidence that an underlying temporal structure is woven into the fabric of the universe. It may simply be that a 4th dimension of space exists and that the present oscillates, bends or moves along that 4th spatial axis.

It all depends on what we mean when we say the word “time”.

[Wick]

It would be my thought that the very entity that we refer to as 'space' is also in motion.

Motions within motion itself, rather like an ocean, without any boundaries that we are capable of comprehending.

An inadequate metaphor, yet an ocean is the largest personal experiencing of my 'outer world', unless one considers gazing into the night sky and attempting to extrapolate the number of visible stars.

Yes. This is how I see it as well. The ocean serves as a fine metaphor, albeit dimensionally limited.