Atoms as little galaxies, galaxies as large atoms

This is pure “hand waving”, but what if the galaxies in our universe are but atoms in a larger scale parallel universe? What if each galaxy in our universe was a gas atom in a cloud of gas on a larger scale, which would explain why the universe is expanding and galaxies are growing farther apart? In turn, what we see as atoms are merely smaller scale galaxies, where the nucleus is a super massive black hole (at least to the scale of any inhabitants in this atomic galaxy), the “atomic bonding forces” is the small scale equivalent of our gravity, and the electrons are the equivalent of our stars. Quantum mechanics is not the popping in and out of existence of unpredictable random electrons but the readable supernovae or solar flares of little stars. Parallel universes and planes of existence would be described as the “scale” of that existence (one below ours, one above ours, etc). Our atoms are infinitely divisible into smaller and smaller universes, and our universe is but a puff of smoke wafting through the air of a larger scale universe.

This has just as much scientific grounding as the so called “scientific” imaginings of theoretical physics today. Maybe someone has already proposed this in some book I haven’t read.

I think Theodore Geisel wrote something anong those lines. #-o

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cc6NLgcRjrk[/youtube]

No it doesn’t.

I think your metaphysical ruminations are excellent. The poetry of it is “in line” with whatever wisdom science awakens in us. You only get in trouble with your last paragraph - it’s not sensibe to mistake metaphysics for science.

Lol.
Imagination doing its thing.

Occams razor tiiiiiimeeee…
=P

Something like that probably seemed more plausible when electrons were depicted as little spheres orbiting the nucleus. But what correlates with a probability cloud on the galactic scale? The laws of physics that dominate on a large scale are different then those on the quatum scale. Finally you can’t concentrate matter smaller than the Planck length, so the smaller and smaller idea is out.

Felix:

The probability cloud would represent stars that exhibited energy traceable by our current technology, such as gamma ray bursts or supernovae. Under this model, quantum mechanics and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle only represent what we’re capable of seeing in an atom under our current technology, not what actually is going on all the time. Just as the galaxy has a cloud of billions of stars, so too an atom’s nucleus is surrounded by a cloud of electron stars that have visibility in fleeting nanoseconds to our technology.

Now as far as Planck’s length, that can still be true under this model relative to our universe, just like time is relative within our universe. We in our universe can only observe (through the aid of instruments) Planck’s length as the smallest. Or if Planck’s length is the true minimum, then we are at a level 2 plane of existence and atoms are at an absolute level 1. That still leaves room for inifinite progression outwards of planes of existence.

However, I expect that just like in philosophy, physics will prove to have fewer and fewer true absolutes the more we study it
It would appear so far that the study of theoretical physics is about defining absolutes only in terms of “absolute enough in ordinary experience”. Time is the most famous example, light is not either particle or wave but something else, and there are more.

So there’s a pile of speculation on top of a pile of speculation. Some might want to substitute the word “speculation” with a name for human excrement, but there it is.

Okay, my last paragraph in my OP was poorly crafted because it was an off-handed comment, and I was righfully called on it. Here’s some more clarification.

The “scientific grounding” is not meant to refer to the classic “observation and experiment” of the scientific method, but rather the construction of a model that tries to provide an overarching explanation based on known or generally accepted scientific facts. This is what theoretical physicists do all the time. Einstein’s theory of relativity was promulgated and admired before it was proven in and of itself. It was a model that reconciled several different accepted theories that seemed irreconcilable before, much like theoretical physicists are trying to reconcile the randomness of quantum mecahnics with a universe based on laws through models.

Now my feeble, deliberately half-hearted, somewhat tongue-in-cheek effort surely has scientific holes so big you can fly a Constitution Class starship through it (there’s a reference for all you Trekkies), but the message I see to be gained from this is that within all the little demonstrated hypotheses and facts amassed by science, they still need to be interpreted in a model. And you can take the same scientific facts and build two plausible but completely distinct models from them that, until more can be learned, acn be equally regarded. I think philosophers, grounded in the scientific facts, are better suited for such modelling than many researchers, and I think theoretical physics is the place where philosophy meets science and shakes hands rather than finding themselves talking past eachother or in conflict.

I think there is a lot more settled than we generally appreciate. Reading ILP I get the feeling that a lot of people think that in science today everything is relative and pretty much up for grabs. Scientists themselves often don’t improve our impression because they are always pushing the boundaries of what is known and their discourse usually reflects that perspective. They don’t get paid for sitting around basking in the huge body of science that is pretty much settled for most intents and purposes. Most of the rest of us haven’t integrated the data base of what is scientifically known into a world view that remotely approaches coherence.

I think you’re right to distinguish between relative truths and absolute truths in discussing limit-concepts or boundary-concepts such as Planck’s length. I also think you’re right that the scientific disciplines tend to undermine any notion of absolute truth. There will be and can be no end to what science can explore, at least in principle. That some scientists might hang on to relative truths like Planck’s Length as some sort of absolute truth doesn’t mean that this confusion is a scientific one. I think it is merely a subtle philosophical mistake.

I do think they way you talk is more poetic than scientific as I said earlier. But I think it is poetry that is inspired by what science actually teaches us. I like it.

The Planck length is as small as matter can go. Any smaller and a black hole is created. As far as an absolute, space-time is an absolute. As a result of so many revolutionary advances in science, people expect everything we know now to be blown away as well. But that I don’t think that’s the case. For the first time in history a scientific view of the entire cosmos is becoming possible.

I think we’re using the word “absolute” differently. There’s nothing absolute about something that might happen to be always true relative to the universe we find ourselves in. As wiki says, “Current theory suggests that one Planck length is the smallest distance or size about which anything can be known.” I can’t see without the presence of light either, which also says nothing about what “truly exists”. At the same time, speculation about what “truly exists” strikes me as a waste of time. But rasava’s freethinking doesn’t strike as that kind of speculation.

As to whether the way we understand the universe will be radically modified by future scientific advances - I guess I wouldn’t know one way or another. I consider myself solidly pro-science for what it’s worth - i.e. I’m not generally skeptical of what are claimed to be scientific truths.

Your statement is a self defeating tautology. For if there is absolutely “nothing absolute about something”, than relativity itself is an absolute.

Newton thought space and time were absolute. Einstein proved him wrong by showing that neither time nor space but rather space-time is absolute.

I guess we are all in that boat. However, telescopes have begun to provide a the first reliable information about the early universe and the most distant galaxies. For the first time in history, there is is reliable data about the universe as a whole. Astronmers can now observe every bright galaxy in the universe back to the cosmic dark ages before galaxies formed. So we have reason to believe that science is finding out how the universe really works.

Felix:

You have no argument from me that we have amassed a wealth of knowledge and practical benefit from the natural sciences. But individual identification of equations describing cause-effect relationships need to be synthesized into a model to advance such knowledge. Some models are rock solid and proven time and again over many years, some contain known anomalies. Sometimes the anomalies finally fit into the model. And sometimes the anomalies become the cause for the model’s destruction in favor of a new model that synthesize the facts better. And when this re-modeling happens, it may not be due to new facts. It can simply be due to new insights, or even be influenced by social causes. Science aims to be the “view from nowhere” but even it can’t escape at least a smidgeon of social influence. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because it’s often our experience which helps us model facts better.

When explaining changes in the biomass, the traditional notion was that such changes are “slow and steady”. The culture of scientific interpretation at one time was that evolution was very slow and gradual. Then comes the notion that the dinosaurs were wiped out by a single event that drastically altered the evolutionary course. Now there are tons of theories to explain change that focus on a single event. There are now so many “mass extinction” events identified, nd the latest theory on the moon’s creation was that it was formed by a single collision of the Earth and another planet that coalesced in less than a year! It’s clear that there’s a certain degree of social influence at work here in the way we’re interpreting things. Singular event theories are “in fashion”. And in a few years, someone will point out that we’re going nuts with “singular event” explanations, prove that some of the latest singular event theories are bogus, and the trend for future explanations will balance out.

There are really two different activities here in the sciences. The first is the classic “observation and experiment”, the “proving the hypothesis” of the scientific method. That’s principally to determine causal relationships. You can design experiments to study the behavior of light, and come up with all kinds of equations to describe relationships.

But then you’re left with the second piece - what do these relationships really tell us? Is light a particle or a wave? What is a photon? Here the relationships need to be amassed to form an explanation that accounts for all the pieces gained from testing hypotheses. This is the modeling piece. It is interpretation. And interpretations often change while the underlying facts do not. And where in the sciences does the hypothesis itself come from? It is based on previous knowledge to be sure, but it takes a human, creative act to generate it. A hypothesis is in essence a model. So you have a positive feedback loop where model begets demonstrated relationships which begets more models and so on.

But even the underlying facts can change. What may be interpreted in an experiment as a relationship, and the three occasions where the relationship didn’t match in tests, can be discarded as an anomaly, but could later be found to refute the relationship because of inaccuracies in the test or false assumptions.

Philosophical activity is essentially a modeling activity, although in classical metaphysics it may do so by using reason alone and attempt to grasp what is deemed not observable. Hegel’s metaphysics was a model based on certain implications Hegel saw in Kantian idealism. Kant’s metaphysics was a model based on the reconciliation of empiricism and rationalism. Empiricism and rationalism were both ways of modeling how knowledge is obtained based on what were deeemd to be facts about the act of perception. Today, philosophers have the wealth of facts at their disposal that you so correctly point out in order to contrive models for explaining what science does. It can draw on facts from the social sciences to determine the basis of human phenomena like ethics. And it can leap to good old fashioned metaphysics as long as it doesn’t refute entirely what is already deemed to be known in the sciences.

rasava: well said!

Felix:

I’m not sure this discussion belongs in this thread. But would you also claim that “the only constant is change itself” is asserting that there is something constant? I’d say no - which frankly seems obvious. But even if one said yes, it could only mean that the nature of that constant is change, not constancy. So if I’m claiming an absolute, the nature of that absolute is utter and complete relativity. You may disagree, and not unreasonably I’m sure, but I don’t see how my statement is “a self defeating tautology”. It’s not.

Your second argument is false but it’s different from the first. In your argument regarding change there is one item in the set of constants i.e. change. But I have to ask, does the set of constants itself change?

In your argument regarding “absolute” the set of absolute things is empty, making the statement self-contradictory because it would have to be absolute itself to be true. What are we to make of a universe in which everything is absolutely relative?

The combined speed of an object’s motion through space and its motion through time is always exactly equal to the speed of light. That’s absolutely true in the universe we happen to live in.

You’re using absolute as a synonym for always (in a loose sense - i.e. is light necessarily a property of any possible universe?), or for certainty. I’m not. Like I said in the beginning, you’re using a different definition than I am. Everything that exists exists in relationship. All knowledge depends on a frame of reference. It is impossible to provide an example that contradicts this. Absolute means non-relative. An absolute is something that doesn’t stand in relationship, and has no context.

“That’s absolutely true in the universe we happen to live in” means always true relative to a context and to a way of knowing, not absolutely true. It doesn’t follow for instance that the universe we happen to live in is the only necessary universe - that it had to be.

If you see what I’m saying, great. If you disagree, fine. But I’ve seen endless discussion about this recently on another site and I’m not too interested in having an identical discussion here.

I don’t know. Einstein thought space-time was absolute. As far as I know his theory hasn’t been falsified. If there isn’t any relationship with anything that changes that does it fit your definition of absolute? I mean 2=2+4 is absolute right? It can be in relation to apples or oranges or apple and oranges or widgets or digits but it still applies, and is the same regardless. It’s unconditional whereas things relative are conditional. They are modified by relationship or perhaps only come into being through a relationship like the self being a composite of the five skandas according to the Buddha.

It would be foolish of me to pretend I have any clue what Einstein’s “spacetime” is. But according to Wiki:

That doesn’t sound absolute to me.

I assume you mistyped the equation? How is mathematics unconditional? Even those who don’t consider themselves nominalists about numbers would say that they are real relative to the universe we inhabit. So the loose ends for them with respect to “absolutism” would be are numbers necessary to all possible universes? Or, assuming there only is or can be one universe - the one we inhabit - must the universe be exactly the way it is? Or could it have been different? If we think it must be exactly the way it is, then we are considering the possibility of first cause, necessary effects, and pure (pre)determinism. Yet if there is a first cause, it must stand in relation to its effect. Is it different from its effect? Is it identical to its effect? Both? Neither? Necessary causation (or any other variation on non-relative existence) can’t cohere as truthful.

I agree with your distinction between conditional and unconditional. Yes, a “self” can be analyzed into traditional categories such as “the five skandhas”. But the loose ends remain, is the self the sum total of the five skandhas? Something different than the five skandhas? And are the skandhas themselves unconditional? They can also be analysed into internal parts and external relationships. They are impermanent, and therefore don’t abide in time, and they are interdependent, and therefore don’t abide in space (in an “absolute”, i.e. non-relative sense).

That there is no “absolute existence” is not a refutation of relative existence. We tend to think of things as permanent and individual, more or less, with a variety of “external” factors gnawing away at that being. Yet those supposedly “external” factors are the very factors that bring any kind of existence into existence in the first place. We exist by virtue of impermanence and interdependence, not despite impermanence and interdependence. Impermanent and interdependent existence is the only kind of existence there could possibly be.

That’s my argument anyway. :blush:

I don’t agree with you about mathematics, but I understand that is a debatable issue. It does seem that you are correct that space-time is not absolute in the sense of a philosophical absolute because space-time is contingent upon the exitence of a universe that, as you said, happens to be the way it is. But what does Absolute mean in the context of natural science? Newton thought that, within this universe, time and space were absolute in the sense of being immutable entities that give the universe its shape and structure. Einstein proved that space and time were relative, but complementary, thus establishing that space-time is absolute. The universe requires a constant against which everything changes. The name “relativity theory” is misleading in that not all is relative in it.

To get back to the OP. I was awestruck by the idea that the internal structure of the atom was a repetition of the large scale universe when I was a child. Now I understand that would mean the universe is fractal. Nevertheless, evidence rolling in from astronomy, astrophysics etc. suggests that our universe is vast but not infinite. So where does that leave the vision of a fractal universe? Could string theory save it somehow?