A Linguistic TOE

[labelwench]

I abdicate to you worthy gentlemen. The substance of the discussion I tried to begin with will never make it past the philosophical fluff that seems to spill forth from virtually everyone (me included). We will not find the TOE because we are to busy holding congress. Wick is finished with TOEQUEST...at least for the time being.

I am truly sorry to hear that Wick, and wish that I had more to contribute that could hold your interest and enable you to develop your line of thought. You are excellent with words and your deportment and courtesy are much needed in dialogue where opinions differ, IMO.

[theunify]

I disagree, I think nothing is something and it's just bad science to say that Absolute Zero exists..

As for the Earth's Magic ability to make planets orbit...I think that is poor science as magic has been left unexplained.

Also I was going to agree that simple terms and non math explanations bring us closer to truth, but the truth can be bought and paid for. Scientists decide what is true and false, not what the truth may be.

~theunify

I would politely ask that we call it space. If we start calling the same concept two different things we have begun the babble that started with Babel. The definition of space for this thread is given in post #5. "Since space has been observed both to bend (gravity) and to oscillate (light), we will define space only as that phenomenon which bends and oscillates in the presence of matter."

Sorry to be rigid Austin, but I'm striving for clarity and clarity in this case will come from all of us using commonly defined terms.

The terms "nothing" and "nil" are also vaguely confusing. Something that is truly nothing would not be able to "try" or to "vibrate". If the noun is engaged with an active verb, then the noun must be something. The noun "nothing" by definition implies absence. For instance, I can say, "Nothing travels faster than the speed of light," which implies that there is an absence of anything that can travel faster than the velocity "c". I will agree with you that "nothing vibrates in and out of existence", but my meaning is different than yours. Your meaning is that "something" called "nothing" vibrates in and out of existence, while I mean "There is no thing that can vibrate in and out of existence."

Really would like to stick to the term space, as space is something that bends and oscillates. Even if space were perfectly flat (which has never been observed and which would only arise in a region where a temperature of absolute zero could be reached) it would still be space.

The speaker-medium-hearer relationship I'm trying to establish in this thread is dependent upon the concept of "space". Speakers and hearers are always some form of matter. Space is the medium by which the speakers and hearers communicate. That's what this thread is about. Let me give you an example:

A star in the belt of Orion speaks by shaping space and transmitting shaped space towards earth. The shaped space travels, oscillating for many years, and finally impacts upon Austin's eye--a hearer. The message was recieved and Austin's brain interpretes the language, recognizing it as light

Here is another example:

The earth speaks by shaping local space into a kind of consonance. All matter able to hear the earth's consonance, which travels a limited distance into space, hear the earth and obey her command to orbit. Austin also hears, and obediently stays upon the surface of the earth.

On last example:

Sugar molecules and phosphate molecules which form Austin's DNA speak to one another by shaping space and conversing with one another. This conversation lasts as long as Austin lives, but when Austin dies the conversation stops and Austin begins to decompose (may that day be way down the road!!).

The bottom line is this: We humans invented much of what we think we know. We invented words like photon, electron, quark, etc. But we can speak of the phenomena we describe when using these invented words, by speaking (or writing) in simpler, more visceral ways. Sometimes the visceral (which implies instinctive or crude) meaning gets us closer to the truth than well reasoned arguments and mathematical concepts.