[meteorite-list] OT: Reality, Perception, Finiteness of Universe

From: Jerry Flaherty <grf2_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 2009 11:52:34 -0400
Message-ID: <DD058D62D2C14B07AD0BD3D310D1EF29_at_ASUS>

Hummmm---Do I hear the faint echoes of a seventeenth century discussion
where Descartes replies, "I think, therefore, I am.

--------------------------------------------------
From: "Rob Matson" <mojave_meteorites at cox.net>
Sent: Tuesday, August 25, 2009 2:54 AM
To: "Meteorites USA" <eric at meteoritesusa.com>; "Matson, Robert D."
<ROBERT.D.MATSON at saic.com>
Cc: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Subject: [meteorite-list] OT: Reality, Perception, Finiteness of Universe

> Hi Eric,
>
>> We're not talking about certainty. You certainly exist
>> physically. Philosophy is not certainty.
>
> Much as I'd like to agree with you, there is no way for you to
> prove that I exist or you exist, or anything that you experience
> is real. That is the nature of philosophical introspection; the
> realization that you may not be able to trust your own senses.
>
> For instance, I would imagine you saw The Matrix. Suppose everything
> you see, hear, smell, taste, feel and think is simply illusion.
> Your first response might be, "That's ridiculous! I can read the
> words you've typed, I can feel the keys of my keyboard, I can hear
> the whirr of the disk drive, smell dinner cooking, etc." But if
> you're really honest with yourself, you'll come to the perhaps
> unsettling realization that you can't prove ANY of it is real.
>
> ~Intellectually~ you reason that you are made up of billions of
> cells, that these cells are themselves constructed of various
> molecules, that the molecules can be broken down into atoms, the
> atoms into subatomic particles, and so on. But what are the
> fundamental building blocks of matter? They are really nothing
> more than a set of mathematical constructs invented by humans
> that try to match the "reality" that they observe. Again, very
> suspect, and not surprisingly our macroscopic notions of reality
> do not work so well in the realm of the very small.
>
> If you really want to get a "reality check" (pun intended), read
> up on Bell's Theorem, and the various experiments that show Bell's
> inequalities are violated, quantum mechanics is correct, and
> therefore the notion of "local realism" is disproven.
>
> But I'm getting off the subject a bit...
>
> Earlier I wrote:
>
>> "...The universe is large (not to mention growing), but it is
>> nevertheless finite..."
>
> You replied:
>
>> Really? Is there proof of its limited scope?
>
> If you ascribe to the Big Bang Theory, then the Universe is finite
> by definition.
>
>> We can only see so far... Every few years we can see further.
>
> But what you may not know (don't feel bad, most people don't) is that
> the Universe is expanding at a rate considerably faster than the speed
> of light, and therefore the fraction of the total Universe that we can
> observe is getting smaller and smaller with time. There will reach a
> time in the distant future where we can only see our local cluster of
> galaxies -- the rest of the Universe will be closed off to us forever.
>
> Best,
> Rob
>
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Received on Tue 25 Aug 2009 11:52:34 AM PDT