Chapter 7 – a universe
You should probably know, this might make your brain hurt and it should, especially if you prescribe to the “no pain, no gain” motto, then it would make perfect sense! You can also add a benefit that working out a typical brain also burns up those caloric energy stores, it could even help you shed those few extra pounds (probably not).
On with ‘a universe’, an examination that there isn’t actually something “out there”.
While it’s important to note, science is at odds with stuff like gravity, spooky action at a distance (quantum entanglement) and what actually makes up the universe (dark matter/energy, etc.), it would be strange to have to admit that reality is most assuredly made of nothing. It’s also important to point out that this concept(s) isn’t anything new either. Nihilism (there is no meaning to or potential of anything, especially human stuff) and philosophies of it’s inverse where all interactions are just consciousness at play and all things are intrinsically meaningful and are potential to become (?), have been tossed about over millennia of philosophical thought. So, when it’s mentioned that only the relative exists, that would be akin to the prospect that no-thing actually exists except it’s inherent and it’s relative existence to other stuff. Of course the ultimate retort, only god exists and “he” lives in the sky, watching over our misdeeds and punishing us ever so appropriately troupe. In all seriousness though, it made more sense to worship stuff like a volcano, rain, the sun and so on, but yanno, here we are.
It should be explicitly expressed that nothing really only describes the absence of a specific thing, even if that thing is extremely general (like a universe), we still need point to that, in which we are saying is mostly nothing, and call it out as such. Much in the same way we say, there is nothing in our hand when we expose that in fact our hands are empty and so on.
There is also a very likely problem with the structure of nature as a study, one in which you are very much required to have an observer and that of which is being observed, to intuit the the grand design of reality. One must see it unfold, experience it’s “true” nature in order to understand. A sort of outside view if you will, all the while being quite certain that everything that makes up the observer itself, is that in which it is studying. Again not anything new here, either.
To slither along our parabol, we also must intuit that the foundation on which science bases all rational thought is also flawed. It assumes that there are in fact specific things on which to count (i.e. math). That basis simply isn’t really justified in any particular special way without the observer to dissect something like humans have 10 fingers, but only across 2 hands and really only under these circumstances (i.e. you haven’t lost one to explosives or some such thing).
On that same trajectory, we also (using scientific methods) assume that things like foundational objects are, a) only small, and b) always equal. For example, the atom, we quite factually assume that atom, is the atom, is the atom, no matter which atom you’re talking about, in any given space, during any measured moment. As a general basis, if we want to talk about the makings of everything and it’s stuff to account for it, we very well must need to be certain those expressions are absolute truths. We undoubtedly don’t however know this in any absolute certainty, as we measure stuff with other stuff that may also never actually be equal either. Funny that.
As we move along with flaws, we also need to observe and figure out, where these things started and theorize them in a sort of soup of stuff (i.e. a moment before everything compressed and exploded into a big bang, i.e. expansion theory), that became more stuff, that organized into more complex stuff and so on. This is actually quite troublesome as we mostly rely on the observation of something like a snowball (starting small) and grabbing more stuff to make it bigger and more complex, as it flows through time, using gravity and amidst even more stuff we still can’t actually account for. This progressive process permeates quite literally everything, even the language you are using to read this, is in fact, considered complex, has gathered more things to explain more stuff, over time.
I know that was a lot of yammering, but this site and all of it’s muckety-muck extols that all things, even the things that examine the things are quite rightly so, a dichotomy. There are no other things. Philosophically, Tao.