plunging near the sun, protected by coolers and radiation screens;
swinging around;
applying maximum blast;
adding gravitational potential energy to the jets;
saving reaction mass;
accelerating longer than usual;
turning the eventual orbit into a flatter and swifter hyperbola.
"As always, he found engineer thoughts soothing. Forces and matrices were so much easier to deal with than people."
-Poul Anderson, Three Worlds To Conquer (London, 1966), Chapter 1, p. 8.
Indeed they are but we are people and have to deal with each other! - sometimes in political revolutions.
In the universe described by science and assumed by hard science fiction, forces and matrices preexisted consciousness and persons whereas, in the universe described by mythology and assumed by fantasy, conscious persons came first. James Blish's black magician, Theron Ware explains:
"'...the sciences don't accept that some of the forces of nature are Persons. Well, but some of them are. And without dealing with those Persons I shall never know any of the things I want to know.'"
-James Blish, Black Easter (New York, 1977), VIII, p. 78.
A Catholic astronomer, speaking of the universe, said that most of his colleagues "...do not know that Someone made it." I infer that it is appropriate to capitalize "Someone." I recently quoted this astronomer as claiming that time dilation would work in reverse on a return journey (see here) and have just found his obituary here.
12 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I really am sick of revolutions! So many many times the only result has been far more worse regimes than the ones originally overthrown. I'm far more inclined to be sympathetic to COUNTER revolutions, such as the ones which overthrew the Marxist tyrannies in Eastern Europe. Too bad post Soviet Russia has become a non ideological despotism of the old fashioned kind.
I think of sciences such as biology, chemistry, astronomy, etc., as analyzing WHAT makes things work. Hence, they can't really say anything about ultimate questions, of the WHY of things. I believe God caused the Big Bang, creating the cosmos. Cosmology/astronomy can't go beyond the Big Bang, it seems logical to think.
And I will look up the obit of the gentleman who misunderstood or denied the common view of how relativistic time dilation works.
Sean
Sean,
I was pleased by the overthrow of the "Marxist" tyrannies.
Paul.
Sean,
But why should there be a WHY? It seems that being and nothing interact. There are many potential particles and some become actual. Thus, from nothing, being.
What caused God? If He can exist without a cause, then why can't the Big Bang? Science has explained a lot that was thought inexplicable. Scientists have explained the Big Bang as coming after and resulting from a random quantum fluctuation.
You sometimes say that, for God to be God, He must be un- or self-caused but that is a tautology. For a time traveler to be a time traveler, he must be able to travel into the past but that does not establish that a time traveler exists.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Thanks for your two notes! Unfortunately, Marxism still has a noxious grip on too many countries: such as mainland China, N Korea, Cuba, Vietnam. And there are still sympathizers of Marxism who approve of its evolution into despotism. And would like to brig it back.
I'm reminded of how Robert Mugabe, the aged dictator who ruined a once flourishing Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, was finally overthrown in a military coup. Frankly, I don't expect who ever emerges as dictator there will be much better.
Why should there be a WHY? I would argue that is because human beings seems to be MADE to be fascinated by ultimate questions. And I would argue, even so, that there was a "time" when potential particles did not "exist," could not become actual particles, before a First Cause created them. And I'm not entirely sure that quantum mechanics explains everything.
Even if my belief that for God to BE God He has to be unselfcaused is tautological, it seems to be a logical way to think of Him.
Sean
Sean,
Yes but it doesn't establish that He exists!
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Not ABSOLUTELY, I grant. But I think Plato, Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, etc., at least proposed reasonable arguments for God existing.
Sean
Sean,
We were taught Aquinas' First Cause argument at school. I can pick a lot of holes in it.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And St. Thomas would have listened patiently to you and with great interest. And then he would have made rebuttal arguments.
Sean
Kaor, Paul and Sean!
The point has also been raised that, even if the Big Bang arose from a random quantum fluctuation, what or Who created the laws of quantum mechanics?
Best Regards,
Nicholas D. Rosen
Nicholas,
To explain an event is to demonstrate that it is an instance of a law. To explain a law is to demonstrate that it is an instance of a more general law. The most general laws are inexplicable.
Paul.
Kaor, Nicholas!
Exactly! I simply don't think the "material" sciences can explain EVERYTHING.
Sean
Sean,
What the sciences can't explain we don't know about.
Paul.
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