RE: Why is there something rather than nothing? From quantum theory to dialectics?

Wed, 07 Jan 2015 18:56:43 -0800 

 

 

From: [email protected] 
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of John Clark
Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2015 4:49 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Why is there something rather than nothing? From quantum theory to 
dialectics?

 

 

 

On Wed, Jan 7, 2015  'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List 
<[email protected]> wrote:

 

>>  Ultimate reality? What would make one reality more real than another? To a 
>> physicist pressure is a perfectly real concept, and the idea that pressure 
>> makes a balloon expand is true. And the concept that a million billion 
>> trillion gas molecules are pushing on the inside of a balloon making it 
>> expand is also true. Both ideas exist and both are true, so why is one idea 
>> more real than another?

 

> But isn't it also true that in this case "pressure" is actually an emergent 
> phenomenon


Sure, but why are emergent phenomenon less real than non-emergent phenomenon? 
Is chemistry less real than physics? Is biology less real than chemistry? Is 
consciousness less real than biology? 

 

Not all emergence is equal… Isn’t pressure just another way of measuring the 
sum of the force the enclosed volume of gas molecules exert on the enclosing 
surface; whereas for example many emergent qualities of say water for example 
cannot be described or even predicted in terms of the physical properties of 
hydrogen or oxygen.

In the latter case the emergent phenomena is something qualitatively new and 
different than it’s reduced fundamental parts.

Pressure instead can be predicted and understood in terms of individual 
molecules – it is  a vast aggregate of a huge number of elements true, but it 
is not qualitatively non-linear.

 

> resulting form the accumulated effect of the trillions upon trillions of gas 
> molecules careening into each other and into the atoms comprising the inner 
> surface of the balloon... and that the force of these countless interactions 
> is what emerges as the phenomenon we measure as pressure?

 

Two different ways of saying the same thing and both are true. The one that is 
the most useful depends on the thing you're trying to do, if you're studying 
Brownian Motion you use one, if you're studying hurricanes you use the other. 

 

 

Not arguing with that at all. Use the most appropriate tool. There is nothing 
especially sacred about any of the tools we use, including the mental tools of 
reason and language. Useful… right? But not equally well, for every problem we 
ever face. When people elevate tools, they become the tools they have elevated 
and – IMO – lose a lot in the bargain.

-Chris

 

  John K Clark
 

- 

 

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