BothAndBlog Forum

Physical Constants & Geometry
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussi ... ent/613077
Is there something geometric about the universe?


All physical constants are irrational numbers — TheMadFool

That strange fact does suggest something mysterious about a Real world with transcendental numbers. They do imply, not just the logical-geometric foundations of the physical world, but that abstract (metaphysical) geometry is not limited to the space-time boundaries that we take for granted. For example, the transcendental numbers, such as "Pi" and "e" are never-ending, Such fractured integers just keep on going long after our finite minds give up.

The ancient mathematicians were so baffled by the notion of infinity, that they labeled such numbers "irrational". Which they are literally, since human reason is only capable of dealing with fractions of whole numbers. But, now that we have tireless computers to calculate those amaranthine digits, the mystery goes beyond just human limitations, to suggest that even the material world, that we assume is a stable comprehensible reality, is somehow transcendental. Leading some to imagine things that never were, and cannot be . . . in reality.

Personally, I don't normally take such anomalies too seriously, since I'm not a professional mathematician. So I can usually just ignore anything that points beyond space-time. But as an amateur philosopher, I do find that inherent irrationality to be somewhat spooky. I just posted a new blog essay, which reviews a science-based book that reaches some transcendental conclusions, which seem to point beyond the limits of empirical science into the Great Transcendental Beyond. Since I remain somewhat agnostic about such ideas, I'd appreciate your comments. It's only three pages.

Information-Consciousness-Reality :
http://bothandblog7.enformationism.info/page18.html

Amaranthine : ceaseless, eternal, never-ending, . . . immortal ???

All this math stuff exists in the mind only. All math stuff has a counterpart in physical reality — GraveItty

Yes. I typically refer to Mathematics as Meta-Physical, because it is not physically real, but a logical abstraction from Reality. So, since this is a philosophical forum, you'd think Metaphysical topics would be routine. But I get a lot of negative feedback whenever my arguments veer from Empirical Physics into Non-empirical, hence debatable topics. That's why I thought the notion of Irrational and Transcendental mathematics would encounter some friction from those insecure posters with Physics Envy.

PS___Of course, I understand their uneasiness with fringe ideas and pseudoscience. But, I have learned to deal with the uncertainties of the borderlands. So, I like to discuss edgey ideas, but prefer open-minded Skepticism to encapsulated Cynicism.

Physics Envy :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_envy

Most of us don't either. — jgill

When I said I don't take irrational & infinite concepts in Mathematics "too seriously", I meant they don't bother me, as they did the ancient Greeks. But, they do intrigue me, in the sense that many scientific & mathematical discoveries have resulted from anomalies that evoked a "huh? that's strange" response.

I'm aware that Pseudo-scientists tend to cut themselves loose from Physical grounding when they explore the open-ended possibilities of ethereal Meta-physical implications. But, although my personal experience is the touchstone for my belief-system, I am painfully aware of how biased misinterpretations of observed "facts" can lead us astray. Anyway, I find the metaphor of the physical world as a manifestation of its mathematical/logical structure to be useful for my personal worldview.

Geometry seems, in a certain sense, more physical than arithmetic. I'm not as certain about this as I'd like to be. — TheMadFool

In my personal Information thesis, Geometry is indeed more "physical" than abstract math, in the sense that it measures relationships between real things, instead of relationships between abstract concepts. But, it's still the metaphysical (mental) relationship (inter-connection) that makes the meaningful difference (qualia), not the physical object (quanta) itself.

Patterns :
http://gnomon.enformationism.info/Image ... 0stars.PNG

Immanuel Kant, likely for profound reasons, associated space with geometry and time with arithmetic. — TheMadFool

Perhaps, for similar profound reasons, Einstein associated Space with physical Matter (Objects), and Time with metaphysical Energy (Change). Maybe not in so many words, but implicitly in his Relativity theory.

So one way to arrive at a constant in a dynamic world is perfect symmetry. — apokrisis

Does that relationship between Symmetry and physical Constants, imply that the Big Bang Singularity was also perfectly symmetrical and unchanging (e.g. eternal), until some perturbation (outside force) broke the symmetry, resulting in our dynamic and evolving world? I ask that strange question because I just wrote a review of a book that reaches Anthropic conclusions from the : "unique “initial conditions” and “fine-tuned constants” that seemed arbitrarily selected to produce a world with living & thinking creatures."
http://bothandblog7.enformationism.info/page10.html

I really like Wheeler as a bold and holistic thinker. The anthropic principle is also an obviously powerful argument when it comes to the cosmological problem. And I even agree - as Peirce argued - that the cosmos arose from unbound possibility as the inevitable growth of a rationalising structure. Wheeler also got that right with his geometrodynamics. — apokrisis

Wow!! I didn't expect such an expanded & erudite response to my open-ended question. Since my brain is also a "dissipative structure", it may take me a while to digest all that "Piercean vagueness". A lot of it goes right over my pointy little head. So, I'll have to get back to you. ;)


In theoretical physics, geometrodynamics is an attempt to describe spacetime and associated phenomena completely in terms of geometry. Technically, its goal is to unify the fundamental forces and reformulate general relativity as a configuration space of three-metrics, modulo three-dimensional diffeomorphisms. ___Wikipedia

PS__My own attempt to make sense of Big Bang & space-time may be labeled "geo-info-metro-dynamics". But, at the moment, I'm not sure what that means.

↪apokrisis

I thought I would have to think about your "erudite" post over the weekend. I'm only vaguely familiar with Semiology. But, I couldn't resist digging into the Piercean vagueness right away. So here goes :

First, I'll have to translate some of that apokrisean semiology into terms that I am more familiar with.

- that the cosmos arose from unbound possibility as the inevitable growth of a rationalising structure

Unbound = eternal?? . . . . rationalizing structure = Logos??

arbitrariness, or vagueness, must always exist in the system as Platonic order exists only to suppress or constrain it . . .

Arbitrary = Random Chance? . . . . Order & Constrain = Natural Selection? Natural laws?

been fully locked in at the Big Bang, and the long-run destiny is for it to become a generalised Heat Death

locked-in = natural laws? . . . .Heat Death = born to die?

this story of an eternally cooling~expanding dissipative structure

Dissipation & Entropy seem to be necessary adjuncts to Integration & Energy in the program of Evolution.

Adjunct : "a thing added to something else as a supplementary rather than an essential part."

"Dissipative structures are nonequilibrium thermodynamic systems that generate order spontaneously by exchanging energy with their external environments."
https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/ ... structures

"Dissipative systems have a tendency to become more “complicated” while dissipating energy. That is, they develop patterns, structures, or behaviors that they did not have when first formed"
https://gmwgroup.harvard.edu/dissipative-systems

Anthropically, if these higher levels of dissipative structure could happen, they had to happen.

Necessity = esssential to the design or program?

why semiotics is then itself an inevitable organising informational arrangement. . . . negentropy to be dissipated

"Semiotics" seems to imply that Meaning is inherent to the system of evolution. The question is : meaningful to whom?

"Semiotics is the study of sign processes, which are any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, where a sign is defined as anything that communicates a meaning that is not the sign itself to the sign's interpreter". Wikipedia

"Negentropy" is what Aristotle called "entelechy" and what I call "enformy" in my Enformationsim thesis.

laws only work because of the way they can gloss over the detail.

By "gloss over" you mean "allow" or "permit" such details as the temporary exceptions to thermodynamics that we call living organisms?

Local spontaneity is built into the model along with the global necessity.

That's what I call "freedom within determinism"

information as the structure of constraints that limit the arbitrary. . . . information vs entropy

That "structure" may be what I call the constructive power of EnFormAction.
Information vs Entropy = Enformy

a metaphysics of order out of chaos - an information theoretic framework. But entropy descriptions are still ones that presume an essential meaningless of reality,

But "order" is the essence of "meaning". So the fact that Reality contains creatures capable of semiotics and extraction of meaning would seem to deny the "essential meaningless of reality"

So there just is no singularity, as there is instead just a vagueness that becomes a somethingness as soon as it starts to become a structure of relations. . . . Apeiron - an unbounded and formless "sea"


The un-formed "vagueness" of the Singularity may be comparable to a seed that doesn't resemble the tree.
What you call "Apeiron" is similar to what I call "Enfernity" : the unbounded realm of Eternity and Infinity, which is an unformed ocean of Possibility. Which I also call BEING, the eternal power to be, the essence of existence. The "seed" contains a tiny bit of Potential (genes, programs) that gradually Becomes (come into being) a Real World.

is a perfect symmetry. Any and everything can be happening. It is also the definition of unchanging

Perfect Symmetry = eternal & infinite, but still, pool of Potential

"Tyger, tyger, burning bright / In the forests of the night, / What immortal hand or eye / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?" ___William Blake

something had to happen

So, that infinite Potential couldn't be bottled-up forever? Something Actual must come out of it. But what Cause triggered that phase change from Voltage to Amperage, from Ideal to Real?

where disorder learns to constrain itself.

That's what Design does : it constrains disorder into order; it organizes (pattern) that which is disorganized (randomness).

same number at there at the Big Bang as they are at the Heat Death.

The evolutionary process comes full-circle from the nothingness of Potential, to fullness of Actual, and back to zero again. From Eternity to Timelessness.

But an even more general metric looks called for.

I propose that the emptiness of Shannon's Information as container, be supplanted by []Enformation[/i] as carrier of content.

Whew! I'm exhausted from writing all those big words. I'll have to take the weekend off to recuperate.

EnFormAction :
Ententional Causation. A proposed metaphysical law of the universe that causes random interactions between forces and particles to produce novel & stable arrangements of matter & energy. It’s the creative force (aka : Divine Will) of the axiomatic eternal deity that, for unknown reasons, programmed a Singularity to suddenly burst into our reality from an infinite source of possibility. AKA : The creative power of Evolution; the power to enform; Logos; Change.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html

"Unbound = eternal?? . . . ."

It is unbound possibility. So not about an actualised duration. — apokrisis

Agreed.
Potential :
Unrealized or unmanifest creative power. For example the Voltage of an electric battery is its potential for future current flow measured in Amps. Potential is inert until actualized by some trigger. In the Enformationism metaphor, the real world was originally an idea in the Mind of G*D, with the infinite possibilities of Omniscience, that was realized by an act of Will.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page16.html

A vortex is a dissipative structure - the emergence of order in the service of disordering. — apokrisis

Yes. Ironically, in thermodynamics, far-from-equilibrium is not necessarily disorder, but can be self-organizing.

And dissipative structure is the order out of chaos story. — apokrisis

Reductionism tends to focus on the local chaos, and to ignore the stable global order.

Why invent another jargon to describe something that already has so many names? — apokrisis

In my Enformationism thesis, I was repeatedly linking Eternity & Infinity, so for brevity I simply coined a contraction to "Enfernity" to describe the opposite concept from Einstein's "Space-Time".
Enfernity, Enfernal :
A contraction of “Eternity & Infinity” to indicate the irrelevance of those dualistic terms in the holistic state prior to the emergence of space & time from the Big Bang Singularity. Eternity is not a long time, it's the absence of space-time.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html

So I would say your thinking goes in the wrong direction here. It re-embraces the mechanical model of reality that an organic conception is intent on rejecting. — apokrisis

I think your thinking is seeing only one side of a two-sided coin. My model is both Mechanical (scientific) and Organic (philosophical).

But even as a metaphor, that is quite the wrong kind of causal model for the kind of self-organising immanence I’m talking about. We diverge big time there. — apokrisis

OK. So what's your Causal Model or God Metaphor?

I'm only superficially familiar with the "vague" vocabulary of Peircean or Postmodern Semiotics or Semiology. They are like Greek to me, σας ευχαριστώ. So, my personal model is the relatively simple algorithm of Hegelian dialectic : the world progresses toward the future along a zig-zag path of positive & negative causes, which tend to sum to a Middle Way (Buddha) or Moderation (Aristotle). The evaluation of those Causes is symbolic, hence subject to subjective interpretation. But that wavering path is "self-organizing" in the sense of Synthesis (bring together) of oppositions. See images in the Maleus Scientia thread.