There is a good possibility for interesting science in the field of astrophysics and the closely related field of physical cosmology. It seems that something exists that couldn’t possibly exist under current theories: a structure of quasars that extends to distances which seem far greater than possible under current understandings of the expansion of this … [Read more…]
In, Bangs, Crunches, Whimpers, and Shrieks: Singularities and Acausalities in Relativistic Spacetimes, John Earman, a philosopher of science, warns believers of some errors in efforts to localize God in spacetime. The first warning has to do with causation: So for Craig [W.L. Craig, a theistic philosopher apparently attempting to use the Big Bang to prove … [Read more…]
Cosmologists study the universe at a level where records vanish, as we learn in this article: Best Time to Study the Cosmos Was More Than 13 Billion Years Ago. The physical world, with its stars and galaxies and background radiation fields, doesn’t leave us some sort of permanent record to study at our leisure. Information … [Read more…]
In The Meaning of Truth, William James makes the claim: The pragmatist view … of the truth-relation is that it has a definite content and that everything in it is experienceable. Its whole nature can be told in positive terms. The `workableness’ which ideas must have, in order to be true means particular workings, physical … [Read more…]
In reading Richard Gregory’s Mind in Science, I find that he raises a seemingly plausible objection to those thinkers who `regress’ to seeing abstractions, including knowledge, in the objective world. He states his objection in a short and loaded way: [The psychologist Kenneth] Craik is suggesting that human inference has its validity and logical power … [Read more…]
Love is probably undefinable but we can at least understand some aspects of that love and can probably come to a substantial narrative understanding of some loves in their specific contexts. We can maybe even understand some of the ways in which a truer and incorruptible love will make the world of the resurrected, heaven, … [Read more…]
[The original version of this essay was published on the as The Christian in the Universe of Einstein: 4. The Cosmos of Thinkers Prior to Einstein. It was finished and uploaded on 2007/02/06. This is a slightly corrected version which will be included in a collection of weblog entries I’ll be making available before many … [Read more…]
In two earlier entries, The Christian in the Universe of Einstein: 2. God as the Creator of Truths and The Christian in the Universe of Einstein: 2. What is Mathematics?, I argued that God creates truths, though not in the sense that He could have created contradictions or the ‘truth’ of “1 + 1 = … [Read more…]
I’ve just finished reading Roberto Torretti’s Relativity and Geometry, a somewhat demanding philosophical discussion of the foundational ideas of Einstein’s two theories of relativity. Over the course of the book, as he discussed those foundational ideas of relativity, he builds up to a conclusion which is true enough, but does beg some questions. He points … [Read more…]
In order to move on in my work, I’m studying advanced physics and mathematics, concentrating for now on general relativity — broadly speaking since I have to take various diversions to refresh my old knowledge or to acquire new knowledge in basic physics and matrix algebra and differential geometry and so forth. One of the … [Read more…]