Preamble
Why teach a basic introduction to physics in a philosophy course?
People have a natural tendency to make order out of disorder, to organize things in the midst of chaos. People seem to instinctually fight the natural law of entropy, the universes pensioned from moving from organized to disorganized. The universe will eventually cause a cup and saucer to fall on the floor, and fly apart in a thousand pieces. However, nothing in nature will naturally cause those thousand pieces to automatically reform into a coffee cup! Except humans!
What is the present day process of recycling? We recycle paper, aluminum, plastics and more. When we recycle something, we take it from its natural elements to a manufactured product, the opposite of entropy. We use the product -- read the newspaper, drink the drink from the bottle, use the shampoo in the plastic container -- and then discard the leftover remnants of the product. Those remnants are then picked up, sorted, and sent off to factories where they are remanufactured into pristine new products.
The creation of things originally, seems to be against the law of entropy.
The notion of recycling materials after use of the created product is most certainly counter to entropy.
A contrary perspective
George Carlin was a famous philosopher/comedian in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. George once had a comedy skit about a living earth. He postulated that the earth wanted plastic, so the earth, through its evolutionary processes, created man, which created plastic. Eventually, the earth had enough plastic to suit its needs, so it decided that it no longer needed people.
However, humans didn’t just die off after the invention of plastic! So the Earth said, “How can I get rid of these people that I no longer need?”
The Earth decided that one way for sure to eradicate these pesky people was to invent the disease that is universally fatal to people and passed along in the process of reproduction, which people seem to love to do. The perfect solution.
Introduction
What happens when we reached the edge of the universe? Does it just go on forever? How long is forever, and how big must something be to be infinitely wide or long or high? This is a question that even physicists argue about to this day. Do we live in the finite bounded universe? That is, a spherical universe in which we can reach the edge, but if we reached the edge, we just doubled back on ourselves like rolling around the inside of the ball. Do we live in a finite unbounded universe? As soon as we approach the edge, does the universe stretched, like a balloon being filled with air? Do we live in an infinite universe? Does the universe have no end, no wage in any direction? What’s on the other side of the edge of the universe? Is there another universe? Are there an infinite number of other universes? Was our universe created when the black hole of another universe reach some limit and exploded?
Hypothesis.
Let us take a look at the first moments of the universe. According to scientist today, everything we know started as a compact mass of plasma, in this sense, plasma means a degenerate form of matter/energy which is both incredibly small, physically, and incredibly dense. That small, dense cluster of plasma viably exploded, creating heat, light, and the progenitors of all that we see in the universe today.
As this hot, gaseous plasma expanded, it began the process of cooling. Over billions of years it began to condense around pieces of itself, ultimately forming gas clouds, galaxies, solar systems, etc. The elements we know today began to form in that first, colossal explosion. The subatomic particles such as neutrons, protons and electrons probably formed first. Hydrogen, the first element in the periodic table having only one electron and one proton was probably the first elements that form. Compressed into great gaseous clouds, it ignited the massive stars. In their churning heat and gravity, the stars would have been the initial creators, the ovens, the makers, of most other physical matter.
In the hearts of stars, hydrogen fusing into helium, crushed together by the enormous gravitation and energy of these massive firestorms in the sky. Hydrogen and helium smashed together to form heavier elements. All the matter we know today -- rocks, plants, animals, were born in the hearts of stars. Without these massive engines of creation, nothing else would exist. We, and everything we see, everything we know, are the stuff of stars.
And, the stuff of stars, as the physicists tell us, all started from that first explosion, that first expansion of them massively dense, almost infinitely small pinpoint of plasma at the beginning of the universe.
Big questions.
What no one has ever told us, what no one knows, and what few we speculate regarding, is the source of that pinpoint of plasma that started it all. There are several possibilities:
1. The hot, dense plasma was at the center of a black hole in a parallel universe. Black holes in this universe might create enough pressure and gravity to create even more universes. Of course, this begs the question, how did the first universe start.
2. Our universe is formed over and over again. The universe, instead of expanding forever, collapses back on itself. Gravitation is strong enough that the hot dense plasma, the size of a pinpoint, explodes again, going to the cycle of expansion, gravitational attraction, compression, explosion, over and over. Of course, this does not answer the question of where the initial pinpoint of super dense matter came from.
3. The universe was created by the spontaneous generation of matter, much as walking speculate below, at the event arising a black hole. Presumably, all the was needed was the space for the additional plasma to form.
Breaking the law.
According to physicist Stephen Hawking, energy and matter are created, out of appearance nothingness at the event horizon of a black hole. One can think of the event horizon as a boundary around the black hole. Up to the boundary, you can exert enough energy to escape. Cross that boundary and nothing, not even light, which travels at roughly 186,000 mi./s, can get away. Gravity is so strong that it is inescapable by anything in the known universe.
By spontaneously generating matter or energy at the event horizon, the universe apparently violates one of Einstein's most famous equations, E=mc2. This tells us that energy can be converted to matter, matter can be converted to energy, but matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Apparently, there is at least one place where that law does not holes true, and that is the boundary of the event horizon of a black hole.
Why do we study this?
Have we not all, at one time or another, felt that we were part of something bigger? It may only be and occasional, fleeting, feeling. Or, it may be a more intense believe. We feel driven to accomplish, but without understanding our sense of purpose. It may seem like you have a goal, but you don't know what it is.
Over the timeframe of evolution, we humans have survived countless numbers of species, including human like species, which were apparently intelligent, such as Neanderthal man, which scientists now tell us was alive at the same time that we were -- we, Homo sapiens.
Why have men and women such as us survived?
An equally important question is, why have other species failed? And, why, in their failure, did some become extinct, such as the dinosaurs, and yet others survived to this day, such as crocodiles, turtles, alligators, and countless other land and sea species? We are constantly hearing of scientists who find a species, long thought to be extinct, still living in some remote part of the world.
A pattern emerges when you look at the history. A pattern that started with a hot dense plasma, evolved into the elements, into pre-life matter, into various types of one celled creatures, and then into more complex creatures, ultimately culminating in mankind.
Along the way, species such as the dinosaur, small brained and large bodied carnivores and herbivores that could have become competitive, and possibly even wiped out mankind, became extinct.
It's almost as though life on earth were an experiment. Not the biggest, not the fastest, not the strongest, but the most intelligent survived. Those things that were a threat to our continued existence became extinct. Those things that caused us to flourish survived.
Note. To flourish to grow. Some animals, vegetables and minerals are harmful to our life. However, they all fit somewhere in the food chain. Also, without some adversity, some risk, stagnation ensues.
Is this intentional, or a grand accident?
Everywhere you look around you, you see the hand of intent. You see complexity growing despite the law of entropy. It becomes clear that we have a purpose. The question is, are we currently fulfilling that purpose or still evolving to fulfill a purpose in the future.
Is, in fact, our first task, our first test, to understand that purpose? Of all known living things, man alone on earth is capable of that mission.
Some will say that we mere humans cannot possibly understand. Some will say that it is a mystery and shall remain so, that we are incapable of understanding. Some will search for the answer, and piece the data together bit by bit until they do understand! We have a mission, as yet unrevealed, but we also have a duty to discover the nature of that mission. Humanity was made with an inquiring mind -- for a reason.
We must all crawl before we walk, and walk before we run. While revealing some insights, the objective of these early lessons is to build a base of knowledge in various disciplines, including science and philosophy, so that we all have an equal footing, and equal foundation
End of lesson quiz.
1. 1. Defying the entropy.
2. 2. Where was physical matter created?
3. 3. What intelligent species lived on earth with man?
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