New Scientist Asks: Is There Such A Thing As Reality?
| October 8, 2012 | Posted by News under News |
Last week, New Scientist magazine featured a special edition on reality. What particularly caught my attention is the accompanying video appearing on their website, which you can view for yourself here. The description states:
Is there such a thing as reality?
It’s easy to take reality for granted: after all, science does a reasonably good job at describing the world in an objective way. But what does science have to say about the concept of reality itself?
One approach would be to identify what is most fundamental in the universe. Using this reasoning, everything around us can be broken down into molecules, which in turn are composed of atoms, which in turn are made up of smaller and smaller components. So what would this process finally uncover? And is this mysterious precursor the ultimate basis of reality?
In this animation, we look at two ways of defining what is real and look at what lies at the heart of the universe. To find out more, read our full-length feature, “Reality: The definition“, or check out the rest of our special issue on reality.
The video maintains that what is most fundamental in the universe are math and numbers, since everything can ultimately be broken down into something simpler. Furthermore, we are told, numbers are constructed based on “a concept known as an empty set, better known as ‘nothing’.” It draws the following absurdity of a conclusion: “That means that if math really is what is most fundamental in the universe, then reality is ultimately based on nothing. Which is to say that nothing is what is real.”
This is the kind of nonsensical pseudophilosophy that one might expect to see from Stephen Hawking or Peter Atkins. Both men might be brilliant scientists in their respective fields. But neither is a philosopher — and when they attempt to weigh in on philosophy, it shows.
As Oxford’s professor John Lennox notes in God and Stephen Hawking (page 333),
What this all goes to show is that nonsense remains nonsense, even when talked by world-famous scientists. What serves to obscure the illogicality of such statements is the fact that they are made by scientists; and the general public, not surprisingly, assumes that they are statements of science and takes them on authority. That is why it is important to point out that they are not statements of science, and any statement, whether made by a scientist or not, should be open to logical analysis. Immense prestige and authority does not compensate for faulty logic.
Check out the video for yourself. I swear I’m not making this up!
20 Responses to New Scientist Asks: Is There Such A Thing As Reality?
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Is an empty set a member of the set of all empty sets?
@ 2:10 in the video:
Where did they get this from?
as to:
Actually “this mysterious precursor the ultimate basis of reality” they claim to be looking for is ‘infinite information/consciousness’:
Leading quantum physicist Anton Zeilinger, with many breakthroughs in quantum teleportation under his belt, has followed in John Archibald Wheeler’s footsteps (1911-2008) by insisting reality, at its most foundational level, is ‘information’.
Quantum Mechanics has now been extended by Anton Zeilinger, and team, to falsify local realism (reductive materialism) without even using quantum entanglement to do it:
notes of related interest:
Thus every time we see (observe) a single photon of ‘material’ reality we are actually seeing just a single bit of information that was originally created from a very specific set of infinite information that was known by the consciousness that preceded material reality. i.e. information known only by the infinite Mind of omniscient God!
Actually, when taking into consideration the scientific evidence we now have in hand, I would go one step further than John Wheeler and Anton Zeilinger have in their work and insist that the most fundamental part of reality, the part of reality that is ‘driving this information to be in a non-chaotic coherent form’, is the infinite consciousness of God:
In the following video, at the 37:00 minute mark, Anton Zeilinger, a leading researcher in quantum teleportation with many breakthroughs under his belt, humorously reflects on just how deeply determinism has been undermined by quantum mechanics by saying such a deep lack of determinism may provide some of us a loop hole when they meet God on judgment day.
Personally, I feel that such a deep undermining of determinism by quantum mechanics, far from providing a ‘loop hole’ on judgement day, actually restores free will to its rightful place in the grand scheme of things, thus making God’s final judgments on men’s souls all the more fully binding since man truly is a ‘free moral agent’ as Theism has always maintained. And to solidify this theistic claim for how reality is constructed, the following study came along a few months after I had seen Dr. Zeilinger’s video:
Now this is completely unheard of in science as far as I know. i.e. That a mathematical description of reality would advance to the point that one can actually perform a experiment showing that your current theory will not be exceeded in predictive power by another future theory is simply unprecedented in science! And just as I had suspected after watching Dr. Zeilinger’s video, it is found that a required assumption of ‘free will conscious observation’ in quantum mechanics is what is necessarily driving the completely random (non-deterministic) aspect of quantum mechanics. Moreover, it was shown in the paper that one cannot ever improve the predictive power of quantum mechanics by ever removing free will as a starting assumption in Quantum Mechanics! Simply unprecedented!
Related commentary:
also of note:
Needless to say, finding ‘free will conscious observation’ to be ‘built into’ our best description of foundational reality, quantum mechanics, as a starting assumption, ‘free will observation’ which is indeed the driving aspect of randomness in quantum mechanics, is VERY antithetical to the entire materialistic philosophy which demands that a completely unguided ‘randomness’ be the driving force of creativity in Darwinian evolution! Also of ‘random’ interest
I once asked a evolutionist, after showing him the preceding experiments, “Since you ultimately believe that the ‘god of random chance’ produced everything we see around us, what in the world is my mind doing pushing your god around?”
Of note: since our free will choices figure so prominently in how reality is actually found to be constructed in our understanding of quantum mechanics, I think a Christian perspective on just how important our free will choices are in this temporal life, in regards to our eternal destiny, is very fitting:
supplemental note:
Verse and music:
BA77,
KF indicated to me that one of my posts was possibly being held in moderation because it had too many links in it, that above some threshold the number of links in a post automatically flagged the comment up for moderation. Is that true in your experience? You frequently posts comments with lots of links so you seem like a good person to ask.
Mung:
There is only one empty set, and yes it is a member (the only member) of the set of all empty sets.
Cantor:
That’s a standard part of the foundations of mathematics.
Neil,
Let’s hope we don’t have to discuss the continuum hypothesis. Or Zorn’s lemma.
Thank God the set of all empty sets is not itself empty.
And thus, mathematics has the answer to to the age old question, why there is something rather than nothing.
Is the set of all empty sets included in the set of all sets?
Can you imagine searching the set of all sets for the one and only empty set? I wonder what the power set looks like.
Professor Lennox is truly one of God’s great gifts to mankind. We need beacons like him to shine a light through all the smoke atheists keep blowing our way.
It has an answer. I’m not so sure about the answer.
Is the set of all empty sets included in the set of all sets?
There’s no such thing as “the set of all sets”. The axioms of set theory disallow it.
Answer: The empty set
Question: What is another name for the skeptic zone regulars?
cantor (2):
Gotta love that coming from someone named cantor!!
Sounds like one of Betrand Russell’s exercises. Too bad about Godel eh?
Is there a category error being made at the outset in confusing mathematical constructs with reality ? (emphasis mine)
Mathematics and the Laws of Nature: Developing the Language of Science (The History of Mathematics) – John Tabak
BA
Fess up, what is your secret?
KF
Cantor:
The empty set is not he3 only thing but the idea is that we can construct the set of natural numbers from it, {} –> 0, { {} } –> 1, {0, 1} –> 2, {0, 1, 2} –> 3, etc.
This allows breaking out of the Russel paradoxes on set theory.
Once we have N, we then go to all other forms of numbers and structures by various well known extensions.
KF
kf:
I’ve wondered the same thing towards the depth and breadth of your knowledge of reality that is displayed in your posts, of which I consider my posts merely faint outlines of reality. ,,, If there be any ‘secret’ to these faint outlines I have traced, then to you I’m sure it is no secret, nor surprise, at all. PRAYER!
Many (most?) of BA’s links appear to be enclosed inside blockquotes. Perhaps that makes a difference.
Where did the RULES come from?
Why can there be but one empty set and why is it restricted to a single member?
Why can there be no set of all sets?
Do these two rules explain where these two rules come from?
If set theory in some way corresponds to reality, perhaps it does so in a way that points beyond itself.
Mung,
If you really want to know you need to study Set Theory. I can’t say I recommend it but I enjoyed it when I was a graduate student. Finding out there are different sizes of infinity was . . . enlightening.
I think what’s most insulting about the New Scientist article is – and hey, maybe I missed something, I’m not a subscriber – they seem to go through a variety of possibilities, including very outlandish ones (ultimate reality is math, it’s nothing, it’s consciousness, it’s a computer simulation, etc)… all metaphysical talk about ultimates.
But it seems as if theism doesn’t get any mention at all.