|
|
What Are We Willing To Take For Granted?
Newton's laws of motion take inertia for granted. "Corpus omne persevere in statu suo quiescendi vel movendi uniformiter in directum nisi quatenus ilud a viribus impresis cogitur statum suum mutare." (Bodies all persevere in their states of quiescence or of motion uniform in direction unless by forces impressed upon them they are compelled to change their states.) Newton's laws of motion take inertia for granted. General relativity takes gravity for granted. "Matter tells space-time how to bend; space-time tells matter how to move." But gravity is taken for granted. Quantum electrodynamics takes electricity for granted. Mathematicians usually take space and time for granted. Their problem is whether space and time are continuous or discrete. Most
physicists and cosmologists seem to take non-existence for granted.
The Big Bang cosmologists want us to believe that nothing made everything
o , of nothing. I am not wining to take all this for granted. With the mystics, on
observational grounds, I take existence for granted. I see it. Suppose
we take existence for granted but leave out space and time, can we,
from what remains, get a Universe of gravity, electricity and inertia?
That is the problem. First, what remains when we leave out space and time? What can we
not have in the absence of space and time? We cannot have change without
time. We cannot have division without space. And we cannot have the
finite without another to limit it. So we are left with the changeless,
the infinite, the undivided. Can we, from that, get a Universe of
change, made of minuscule particles, and divided into atoms? How
can we get from the changeless to the changing without changing the
changeless? How can we get from the infinite to the finite without
fencing it, without limiting it? And how can we get from the anditided
to the divided without dividing it? That is easy. We simply mistake the one for the other
|
