stevo247

Graviphoton, Thanks for your comprehensive response. It was very helpful and much appreciated.

Originally Posted by stevo247 What is the conventional understanding? Did space, time, and energy exist, and then matter? So the energy got cold and that is what caused matter to form? When it was just space, time and energy; is the energy throughout space assumed to be hot?

A couple had two little boys ages 8 and 10, who were excessively mischievous. They were always getting into trouble and their parents knew that if any mischief occurred in their town, their sons would get the blame. The boys' mother heard that a clergyman in town had been successful in disciplining children, so she asked if he would speak with her boys. The clergyman agreed, and asked to see them individually. So, the mother sent her 8-year-old first, in the morning, with the older boy to see the clergyman in the afternoon. The clergyman, a huge man with a booming voice, sat the younger boy down and asked him sternly, "Where is God?" They boy's mouth dropped open, but he made no response, sitting there with his mouth hanging open. The clergyman repeated the question. "Where is God?" Again, the boy made no attempt to answer. So the clergyman raised his voice some more and shook his finger in the boy's face and bellowed, "Where is God!?" The boy screamed and bolted from the room. He ran directly home and dove into his closet, slamming the door behind him. When his older brother found him in the closet, he asked, "What happened?" The younger brother, gasping for breath, replied, "We are in big trouble this time! God is missing and they think we did it!"

What is the conventional understanding? Did space, time, and energy exist, and then matter?

I’ve had a few driving experiences of similar intensity. One night, when I was young and very stupid (I had been drinking), I had taken my eyes off of the road to look for something in the car, and when I looked back, I saw a mailbox tumbling in slow motion towards the windshield, and then a tremendous explosion. Thinking that I had simply hit a mailbox, I couldn’t figure out why my car had stopped and wouldn’t start. I got out of the car to survey the damage and to my complete and utter shock, I discovered a gigantic, deep, U-shaped dent in the middle of the front of my car. I had gone clear thru a telephone pole. The mailbox was about 4 feet before the pole. I had been travelling about 40mph when I hit that mailbox. So the time frame of when I saw that mailbox tumbling in slow motion, was the time it would take for my car to travel 4ft. at 40mph. That mailbox looked like a slow tumbling satellite travelling towards the windshield. It wasn’t going to hit the windshield, however. I was pretty sure of that. I had instantaneously calculated its trajectory, and it was going to clear the windshield. No need to duck. BOOM! What’s also kind of interesting, is when I explore the vivid memory of the tumbling mailbox, I can see the pole. I’ve had similar experiences while being a passenger in a car during an accident and while avoiding potential serious crashes. It seems to me, that these sudden crisis situations cause every available sensory apparatus to be on full alert, all centers awake. This state of hightened awareness has a peculiar timelessness quality to it. Since split second responses are required for survival, an incredible amount of data from every available source, needs to be assimilated. This slowing down of time, seems to make it almost easy to calculate your next response. I’ve had situations where another driver has done something unexpected and very stupid. The maneuvers I had to put my car through to avoid a catastrophy were complicated and needed to be impeccable. It was like threading 10 needles in 2 seconds. But it was almost easy because of the time slowdown, the automatic focus and integration of all useful relevent data, and the spontaneous co-ordination of my response. After one of these phenomenal maneuverings, with fishtails missing cars by inches etc., I remember looking in my rearview mirror. I saw a guy on the sidewalk jumping up and down, pumping his fist in the air, and smiling like he had just seen the most unbelievable thing ever. I felt the same way.

It appears to me, that living things have a very particular “way of moving”. If I was to reduce that manner of movement into its simplest form, it would have to be expansion and contraction, or pulsation. I don’t think non-living things pulsate. I think I was considering the nature of a reponse in terms of the whole organism. After giving it some thought, I can see how the stimulation of a sensory receptor could be considered a response. There could be a stimulus without activating a sensory receptor, i.e. no response. I now agree that the response mechanism is initiated when the action potential is achieved and then transmitted. Of course, I think its transmitted in a pulsatory manner, but I don’t know if thats ever been determined. Doesn’t the action potential eventually connect to something and do something? If it doesn’t, what’s the point? Input/output. Sense/respond. I would say that it was alive by its ability to sense stimuli and respond accordingly. I’m not sure yet how to consider something like a pancreas cell. Its a single cell, but its part of an organ, that’s part of a larger functioning body, compared to an amoeba that exists as an independent functioning unit. However, I find it hard to believe that a pancreas cell functions without moving. Does it expand and contract? It looks like we may agree more than it would appear.

Perhaps the nature of the movement we are talking about is different than say a hammer hitting a nail (i.e. a mechanical reaction). The nature of “a response” implies some sort of functional, co-ordinated, organized, and puposeful manner of movement, relating to the integrity of the organism. I would say that the movement of an action potential, in and of itself, does not constitute “a response”. It appears to me, to be part of the “stimulus package”, until a functional response is initiated, which would involve an organized, co-ordinated, purposeful movement. I would think that the amoeba’s ability to sense the environment, detect stimulus, and respond accordingly, is considered to be, at least, a primitive representation of a nervous system. How that is done without neurons, I have no idea. But however it is done, I would say that it is laying the groundwork for the development of a nervous system. There appears to be a significant qualitative difference between the movement associated with a mechanical reaction and an organized, functional, co-ordinated, purposeful response.

Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity By Rebecca Goldstein This was a great book! Every friend I gave it to was equally impressed. The author has written an engaging, personal reflection on Spinoza's thinking, life, and historical context. “Spinoza’s ambitions on behalf of reason are staggering; he aims to give us a rigorously proved view of reality, which will yield us, if only we will assimilate it, a life worth living. It will transform our emotional substance, our very selves. The truth shall set us free. His methodology for exposing the nature of reality was inspired by one of the strands that the seventeeth century’s men of science were weaving into what we now refer to as the scientific method, that magnificently subtle, supple, and successful blend of mathematical deduction and empirical induction. Spinoza was keenly interested and involved in the intellectual innovations that we now look back on as constituting the birth of modern science. His inspiration came from the mathematical component of modern science, not it’s empiricism. The methodology he believed could reveal it all was strictly deductive” “Logic alone, he argues, is sufficient to reveal the fabric of reality.” “Spinoza himself puts it this way in The Ethics: It is in the nature of reason to perceive things sub quadam aeternitatis specie, that is, under the guise of a certain form of eternity.” “For nature is nothing like what we experience. Nature consists in the whole infinite system of necessary connections that exist between things, which necessary connections are revealed only to pure reason. The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.” “To become rational, believing only what we have good grounds for believing, is to transform the self so substantially as to change it’s very identity. His astounding conclusion: to the extent that we are rational, we, all of us, partake in the same identity.” “Nothing outside of the world, no transendent God, in other words, explains the world. It’s explanation is immanent within itself. To conceive of the world in terms of its explanatory immanence is to conceive of God. God, he will therefore say, is immanent in nature, not transcendent.” After reading “Betraying Spinoza” I immediately went out and purchased Spinoza’s “The Ethics”. It is one of the most ambitious philosophical systems in the history of Western Philosophy. It is structured in the form of axioms, propositions, corollaries and proofs. His deductions regarding the nature of God, the mind, the emotions, bondage, and freedom are a remarkable achievement. “Betraying Spinoza” serves as an excellent introduction to the man and his work, and makes it all more approachable.

The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience By Eugene d’Aquili and Andrew B. Newberg This book explores the biological mechanisms and neurological basis of mystical and religious experience. Many of the concepts pertaining to the mind/brain are based on existing research in neurology, psychology, and psychiatry. It provides a conceptual framework for understanding states of altered consciousness, and how a wide variety of states (spanning a continuum towards the experience of “absolute unitary being”) are involved in the development of various religious beliefs and myth formation. Curiously, science and religion are explored in a complementary manner, where the two come together; rather than in their historic mutually exclusive duality. I found the book to be unique and very interesting.

These comments were especially helpful. Thanks to all posters for hanging in there with me!

When the 3 dimensions of space and the 1 dimension of time are arranged in the coordinate system for the space-time grid, what is the nature of the space upon which the foundational grid is set up? If the gravitational field and space are considered to be the same, and gravity is intimately involved with matter, does that imply that the original space-time grid is arranged on a space that possess relative states of matter, in motion?

So space then, is a geometric construction based on the nature of the gravitational field. Einstein states that “the ten functions representing the gravitational field at the same time define the metric properties of the space measured”. These “functions”, I would have assumed, would be rooted in the properties of matter. Since Einstein used “field equations of gravitation in the absence of matter”, what exactly are the “ten functions of the gravitational field” based on?

Thanks for the examples. I appreciate the simplicity. So, in an absolutely empty space, with no energy or substance, would the time dimension still exist? Or does the time dimension, and the ability to plot co-ordinates, become real with the manifestation of substance or motion?

Originally Posted by stevo247 And I think that spontaneous movement is an essential feature of the stimulus-response activity. How can there be a response without something moving? When something responds, doesn't something move? I was actually thinking about an amoeba when I wrote what I did. That's why I said "some sort of" nervous system. As far as I know, an amoeba does not have an organized nervous system, yet it clearly responds to stimuli, with movement. Do you have a good link for learning about protocells. Interesting!

Could you explain what the dimension of time is, in a simplified manner for a layman? I could google it, but I tend to get lost in superfluous information.

Thanks for the clear explanation on how the atomic clock works. I was beginning to think that I may never understand how it operates. The definition of time that I have always used (and it may be more philosophical than scientific) is that time is the way that we measure “change”. It looks like the atomic clock is expressive of a regular movement of energy and I assume that the movement is measured. Does that mean then that time has energetic properties rather than physical properties, or does time have energetic and physical properties? Is time itself something other than a measurement of physical or energetic “change” or motion? I am having a hard time even getting a sense of what that could be. Unless time is “change” itself, without being measured.

Does space exist without a gravitational field? XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Einstein says that: "There can be no space nor any part of space without gravitational potentials; for these confer upon space its metrical qualities, without which it cannot be imagined at all. The existence of the gravitational field is inseparably bound up with the existence of space." http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Extras/Einstein_ether.html Does the nature of space create the gravitational field?

The point, or zero-dimension, is a curious idea. Would that be a dimension that possessed infinite possibilities? Is that the origin of mathmatics? Does time exist in zero-dimension?

Maybe I should just stay away from that concept until I get a handle on “space”. Is space the gravitational field?

In Relativity: The Special and General Theory page 155, Einstein expressed this quality of spacetime as follows, "Spacetime does not claim existence on its own but only as a structural quality of the [gravitational] field" Am I correct to assume that empty space or a vacuum is essentially the qualities of the gravitational field? I have trouble understanding the concept of time, without the idea of movement. Is there a motion that is associated with the gravitational field itself?

I agree. And I think that spontaneous movement is an essential feature of the stimulus-response activity. But I wonder if this now implies the need for some sort of nervous system to detect external conditions. What is a stimulus in relation to a response? Is it a sensation?

For some reason, I had been under the mistaken impression that the Michelson-Morley experiment had determined that the general concept of an ether was no longer viable and warranted no further consideration what-so-ever. I’ve recently found out though, that the Michelson-Morley experiment had only determined that a specific form of the ether-concept could not be true. Namely, that the ether was a stationary matter that the earth passed through. I was surprised to learn that Einstein, in 1920, continued to comment on the ether after the Michelson-Morley experiment. “It may be added that the whole change in the conception of the ether which the special theory of relativity brought about, consisted in taking away from the ether its last mechanical quality, namely, its immobility.” “The ether of the general theory of relativity is a medium which is itself devoid of all mechanical and kinematical qualities, but helps to determine mechanical (and electromagnetic) events.” http://www.mountainman.com.au/aether_0.html Since the concept of an ether is not inconsistent with SR and GR, I was wondering if any research had been done, from the accepted school of SR and GR, on the nature of a possible ether? Please remember, that I know almost nothing about SR and GR.

I was thinking about the difference between a corpse and a living body. The most notable difference, before putrefaction, is the absence of motion. I wonder if spontaneous motion is a fundamental quality of being alive?

So the Michelson-Morley experiment tested for the existence of an ether-concept, whereby the ether was characterized as being matter, stationary, and that the earth passed through it. Is that accurate?