The Theory Of Almost Everything
Science deals with the reality "out there", the stuff we can see, touch or smell, or that which we can deduce from what we can see, touch or smell.
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Everything - source: Wikimedia Commons
As such, scientists don't deal with spirits, ghosts, God or any other deities, past life experiences or anything else that can't be verified by observation or (mathematical) proof. A hypothesis that cannot be be tested to be either true or false is just useless to science. This is a good thing as far as I'm concerned, as this method has proven to be the best method we have to learn about the reality we all share. And as "truth" is defined as "that which conforms to reality", science is the best method to learn the truth.
This way of looking at reality is called methodological naturalism:
Methodological naturalism is a strategy for studying the world, by which scientists choose not to consider supernatural causes - even as a remote possibility. There are two main reasons for pursuing this strategy. First, some scientists believe that there is no supernatural: they begin with the assumption that God does not exist (see atheism) and that there is no life after death (see also Atheism and life after death). Second, some scientists believe it is possible that supernatural causes (such as God and angels) may exist, but they assume that any supernatural action would be arbitrary or haphazard and therefore impossible to study systematically.
This is basic, isn't it? Of course science won't deal with the supernatural. However, this has also ingrained in scientists the tendency to shun away from questions about consciousness. Now every scientist is him- or herself conscious, so they know that consciousness exists; it's their consciousness that allows them to practice logic and science in the first place. But they don't know what it is exactly. This is the Wikipedia short:
Consciousness is the state or quality of awareness, or, of being aware of an external object or something within oneself.
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Bacteria: conscious or not?
Image by PublicDomainPictures - source: Pixabay
To be conscious is to be aware, in some way, of the reality out there, however small or big that reality may be. And when you're more aware of that reality, you're better equipped to make decisions about navigating and surviving in that reality; consciousness thus seems to have something to do with "smartness". WE say that a jellyfish is less conscious than a rat, which is less conscious than a dog, which is less conscious than a human. But since we don't know what consciousness is, we don't know for sure where consciousness starts. Even a single celled creature shows behavior like hunting for food, reproducing and avoiding harm, so even that has some way of being aware of it's microscopic universe. And the same goes for plants.
So do we draw the line at the point of being alive and say that all living things are conscious? Well, that poses a problem too because we don't exactly know what "being alive" means either. That is to say that we seem to be pretty sure that a rock isn't alive, but opinions differ when it comes to a virus; many scientists believe a virus doesn't belong in the "living" column of the universal consciousness-divide, even if it carries genetic information in the form of RNA and some of them can literally revitalize dead cells.
What has this scientific method of methodological naturalism shown us to be true about the reality out there? Well, it has come up with two equally valid, but irreconcilable theories about the nature of reality: one for the universe on large scales and one for the very small scales, Einstein's theory of general relativity and quantum mechanics respectively.
Virtually everything we know about the laws of physics falls into one of two piles. In one, there's quantum mechanics, from which we've developed the "Standard Model," including all of the fundamental particles we've yet detected, and three of the four interactions: electromagnetism, and the weak and strong nuclear forces.
In the other pile, there's Einstein's theory of General Relativity, which describes the fourth force, gravity, and gives us black holes, the expansion of the universe, and the potential for time travel.
source: Gizmodo
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Is everything consciousness is everything?
source: Republica
Scientists have been working hard to unify the two theories into one "Grand Unified Theory" or "Theory of Everything", which is considered to be the "Holy Grail of Science." This has led to the scientific field of quantum cosmology:
Quantum cosmology is the attempt in theoretical physics to develop a quantum theory of the Universe. This approach attempts to answer open questions of classical physical cosmology, particularly those related to the first phases of the universe.
source: Wikipedia
The first phases of the universe refers to the very first moment of the Big Bang, where large gravitational forces were active in the quantum-sized singularity. The reconciliation between the theories is needed to understand what happened at the start of everything, that's why this unification is the holy grail of science.
Quantum physics says that every elemental particle is governed by a wave-function and states that the exact location and speed of such particles cannot be known; the wave-function only gives a certain probability that a particle will be seen at a certain position after it has been observed. Quantum field theory says that for every elemental particle there exists a quantum field represented by a wave-function that contains every possible position and speed of every instance of that particle in the entire universe, a system with an infinite number of degrees of freedom. What we see or observe is just the "collapsed" state of that field of infinite possible positions.
This is where science and scientists are forced to again consider consciousness as part of their equation. If observation is a prerequisite for the universe to become real, consciousness seems to be the best candidate. But... couldn't God be that observer? Well, he or she could be, but as long as there's consciousness which we know to be real, there's still no need for that hypothesis.
On larger scales we've learned another marvelous fact about our expanding universe. And that is that the sum total of all the energy in the known universe is equal to nothing. Zero. Nada. General relativity gave us E=MC2; energy is mass and mass is energy. When we add all the positive energy contained in matter and all the negative energy generated by the accompanying gravity, the total energy in the universe is zero. Everything we know to be real and true is literally nothing. Let that sink in.
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Albert Einstein - Caricature
Image by DonkeyHotey - source: Flickr
In their attempts at unification of the two major theories in physics scientists said: why not write a Schrödinger equation for the wave function for the entire universe, for everything? A wave function in quantum mechanics is an object which, if you take the square of it, gives you the probability to find something in a given state. The time derivative of the wave function, which describes how the wave function will evolve over time, is proportional to the energy that's associated with the wave function.
But... We've just established that the total energy of the universe is zero! So on one side of the Schrödinger equation we have zero when applied to the whole universe, which implies that there's no change and, even worse, no time! That would mean that nothing would have changed since you started wasting your time reading this ;-) This doesn't make any sense at all... Or does it? The time wasting is almost over because here comes the kicker.
The collapse of the wave function does not depend on time; it depends on the observer. So whenever I observe "what's out there" it is me that does the observing, and I observe the rest of the universe. So, all the energy represented by the matter that makes me, is approximately 70 kilogram times light-speed squared (E=MC2). And since everything is equal to zero, that means the universe has energy equal to a mass of -70 kilogram times light-speed squared. And that's why I see a moving, living, expanding, evolving and living universe. And if I remove myself from the equation, the universe stops.
However New Agey this may sound, it is methodological naturalism that's brought us here. Now there's some scientists that say that a camera, or a measuring device of some sort, can do the observing and that there's no need for a conscious observer or any kind of consciousness at all, but others like Andrei Linde, theoretical physicist and the Harald Trap Friis Professor of Physics at Stanford University, are more inclined to keep an open mind about this. Now don't think anyone believes they're so important that all existence ends when they die, but the existence of some sort of collective or even universal consciousness cannot be dismissed a priori.
Andrei Linde - Why Explore Cosmos and Consciousness?
I'll leave you with the short interview of Andrei Linde above, where he talks about the real possibility that consciousness can exist without matter. I've said it many times before, we live in mighty interesting times and the more we learn about reality, the more we learn that our very existence is a miracle: take your time and be amazed by it! ;-)
Thanks so much, dear reader, for taking the time to visit and read my blog; I really appreciate that. I'll be back here tomorrow and hope you will be too. Until then, be aware of your thoughts, don't be too sure that rocks and plants aren't conscious and keep steeming!
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Hey @zyx066, thank you for taking into the world of science, it is very controversial world between scientists there are some who have different theories about the existence and reality and when they explain everything sounds sensible. That is why I love science, I love those people who live their subject who are teacher in their hearts who have their theories and really happy to explain and not to change your mind and make you think differently. It is difficult subject the human life, cosmos and of course many explainable things around us that makes me even more interested in science to see and to find what is it. I believe we just need to help each other to understand and probably to solve the problems together but not every on his own. But on other side I want that some of the things still remain unexplained :)
Cheers, from Art-supporting blog,@art-venture
Thanks so much for your response @art-venture, I appreciate that and am glad to have an artist's point of view :-)
Exactly! That's why I love science; it's the art of not knowing or "to be constantly bewildered", because every "answer" poses a thousand new questions. And this is good; what would live be like, knowing the ultimate truth about everything? Would be pretty boring I guess...
Hi @zyx066!
What's your name?
As I'm writing this comment, my 8 year old nephew is beside me. I ask him, "What is science?" He answered, "Science is experiment." I said, "What else can you say about science?" He again said, "That's all I can say!"
What's your idea when someone says that science is experiment?
I guess science is more than experiment. And its so crucial and important to know it because it help us see reality more clearly
There are things that science can't explain. Even in our day to day living, there are those experiences we don't understand even science can't. It shows that there is something paranormal or mystery that's happening that science and we people could not understand. Those are obviously beyond our imagination and beyond science, which now we call a supernatural, thus, the deities, souls, ghosts, spirits, gods and God come into place because science cannot understand them. So therefore, there is truth behind those deities, souls, ghosts, spirits, gods and God.
Thanks for this wonderful comment @ronel. My name is Winston, and I'm glad to meet you :-) And I'm so glad to read about your child: we are such an inquisitive and curious species, but too many of us manage to lose so much of that child-like inquisitiveness when we grow up... And most of us seem to feel uncomfortable with "not knowing", so we gradually fill in our own truths about reality, because without some measure of certainties in our lives, well, live would become chaotic and we would never decide to do anything if we endlessly keep asking "but what if..."
And one of the most used certainties about things we truly don't know, is a god or gods. This phenomenon even has a name and is called "the god of the gaps", which simply means that if we don't understand why things happen, we invent a supernatural being to fill the gaps in our knowledge. Through our extensive history the need to invoke a god for explanation has become less and less. You describe this yourself:
But ultimately, both religion and science are ways we've devised to give us more certainties in live, they're both ways to search for some sort of "truth". Insurance companies have mastered the art of exploiting that need we have for certainties in our lives ;-) This is generalizing of course, as is anything I said in my article about scientists. Just read the response by @yvesoler, watch the interview in this article or read the water-studies by Masaru Emoto, who studies the effect consciousness has on water and if water itself has some kind of consciousness.
For me personally it's simple: I don't know a lot :-) I suspect, I think, and I assume, but "truth" is much more a journey (and a glorious one) than an end-station ;-)
I view things base on my faith/belief/principle/disposition, knowledge and experience. It means that I have my own stand and explanation.
You know something or many, you just want to be in your safe and comfort zone of not making mistakes. You're still on a neutral state as I could see it. You can agree or disagree on my statements. And I love feedback.
In our lives there is a decision making we can't just refuse and ignore. I can't suspect, assume or think about when a huge snake is coming to my child 3 meters away. I have to decide immediately and act.
How about death as certain that certainly our body will decompose when the right and perfect time comes? Can I still suspect, assume or think? Can I say, "I don't know about that."?
As does everyone, including me. Like I said: it's impossible for us to live without a certain amount of certainties, so we act and kill, or otherwise stop the snake ;-)
In this article though I tried to explain sciences latest possible answers to life's largest and oldest questions; there's no certainties there. There's no certainties in science at all even. If we don't even have a good definition of life, how can we presume to know what it means to die? And even the snake and your kid: who says the life of your kid is worth more than that of the snake? We both know the answers and we both choose the child, but that doesn't take away from the question what is moral and what is not, and there's no definite answers there.
And that's why I choose to not believe in a God: religion introduces some absolute truth, a sort of truth I cannot have about almost anything. But I don't begrudge or dislike people who do believe in God :-)
Thanks for the response @zyx066!
By the way what's your name if you don't mind?
I respect all people as well, even criminals, prostitutes, addicts and all kinds of people of any sort.
And I don't judge any person at all, even how bad that person is, because I know that I don't know what that person is going through. I can't even judge myself, much more to other people.
So you believe on morality?
I do believe all the nature are alive and conscious. It just that they alive in different form then human "alive". When you talk to a plant every day, they would grew greener and prettier. A car also has feeling and consciousness. I experienced before, the car suddenly broke down when i told my husband I gonna sell it inside the car. So, i do believe everything surrounded us are "alive" and "conscious" in their own form. Science is great, scientist discovered that Light faster than sound. Gravity does exits etc. I sometime even asked myself a question, who am I, why I am who I am now and not someone else.I know it sound silly, but i always have this question in my head.
Are you major in science? You wrote a very good article. This would be a great research and thank you for sharing.
Hi @oliviackl, thanks so much for this sweet response :-) I really appreciate it!
No! Not silly! I think we all have these feelings from time to time, so why not all the time? ;-) This is exactly the conclusion of my article: don't be too sure that a rock is not conscious. The important thing is to not be too sure and keep asking questions.
No, I'm not a major of anything... I'm just an old man who's had a big interest in science his whole life and has read too many articles and books and seen too many lectures and documentaries ;-) But thanks so much for the compliment!
Knowledge is irregardless of age i must say. I actually enjoyed reading your article, it very interesting and answered some of my question as well. I guessed you must be read over hundred of book related to science. I can visualize you sit in front of TV watching documentaries while hand holding a book :)
This is totally beautiful, well researched and well written, I love your starting point truth is science hardly deals with stuff that's beyond the mind's reckoning or anything they can't prove and that's why we have records of some scientist being atheists.
However let me say, I'm agreeing with you that consciousness is the feeling of being alive, living mentally sharp and communicating with one's environment as well however I don't think man's fully conscious the universe is made up of some things that will never be proven by science, even Einstein said it himself that he believes in God because some things are unexplainable
Thanks so much for reading and responding @josediccus; I'm glad you liked it :-) I think you're right, and that there will always remain more questions to be answered, and I actually think that's a good thing. But I also learned to never say never. Or at least limit that to a bare minimum ;-) We've done so many things that were literally unimaginable just a century ago.
An excellent summary of detailed concepts, perhaps we could do a bit of a discussion some time :)
Thanks so much for the compliment @digitalpnut, I'm honored and really glad you liked the article :-) Are you active in one of the steemit-related Discord channels? I'm regularly in the @helpie Discord: read the bit at the end to see how you can apply there. And vote their Witness! ;-) I do have to say I do this as a hobby only and as such have limited time, but I love to exchange thoughts about these subjects!
what a great post @zyx066 if you took a very good point science is an experiment most scientists with atheist but science does not study the paranormal is something inexplicable Proverbs 12: 1
Who loves correction, loves science; but the one who hates reproofs is a fool. I have not studied science very well, but I have studied the Bible a bit.
is a great post that you did @ zyx066 a great work or each type of studio the video very beautiful I am left but you played an excellent point I will follow you because I liked this point the one you played @neymarth10 I hope you post more interesting points
You really do know how to make an old man blush @neymarth10 ;-) Thanks for the compliments!
for that we are to support, blush, correct everything a little friend @zyx066 thank you for sharing a good point peace and love
There is more to reality than science can ever explain. The more you analyze, the more questions arise, and you are never satisfied (speaking of scientists, and I also came from this background). I agree with the whole post and am aware of the theories in physics - they just confirm what we don't know. According to yoga, conscience or the observer is in all of us, and you may experience this in deep meditation. The whole universe is a 'dance of Shiva and Shakti', Shiva representing consciousness, and Shakti representing creation. One cannot exist without the other.
Thanks for this response @iloveyoga, I really like it and I'm glad you liked the article :-) I'm not well versed in all things Buddhism or Yoga, but more and more modern science seems to point in the direction that this is right:
Because some scientists don't stop here and hypothesize that truth lies even deeper; this is the basis of "simulation theory", or the assumption that the basic building blocks aren't "things", but mere "information". Once you submit that information lies at the root of all creation, you admit the necessity of a consciousness, because information needs consciousness to be interpreted. I am going to write about this hypothesis that basically says that the universe is a self-creating consciousness. I hope you'll be back then too.
While I agree with the majority of your posts, I see fundamental errors in your definition of some terms. For example,
As a scientist and engineer that also lives in a spiritual community and works with many universities and independent research entities, I can tell you that this is not the case. If science did not study these things, we would have no chemistry or physics, because their origins in alchemy were once considered "magic".
Arthur C. Clarke stated, "Magic's just science that we don't understand yet.", which is why it is important to study it with a scientific eye. Past lives, to take one example, can be observed and tested with a scientific protocol, allowing us to take the "myth" part out of experiences that have been recorded by millions of people around the world and can be scientifically verified. Here is a small sample of studies done on this topic by the University of Virginia School of Medicine, tho name just one. We should continue these types of investigations to show that there is no gap between science and spirituality except the yet-to-be discovered threads that tie them together.
The more I dive into Alchemy, the more I see the origins of the universe rooted in physics. The more I study plant intelligence, the better I understand the threads of human consciousness. As Nikola Tesla said:
Thanks for yet another well thought out response @yvesoler :-)
There's no error in definitions as far as I can see, but I did generalize a lot; you represent a strong a minority in "mainstream" science. I also did several articles on these past-life experiences and know of the studies you mention. But they also are a strong minority. The works of Emoto and all the experiments done on plant consciousness are niche at best. That's not to say I agree with that, on the contrary, but it is the reality as far as I'm able to assess. Heck, some of the more hardcore naturalists even go as far as to say philosophy is useless (Hawkins, Krauss)... I'm just glad there's also some like you @yvesoler, and yes, since the discovery of quantum mechanics more and more scientists are beginning to feel the weight of their sheer inability to deal with the immaterial, the "magic".
Great response!
I wonder just how minority some of these topics are? I am constantly in awe at the number of PhD students that are doing their research in more alternative views of science. Just the other day I got a message from a university professor in Switzerland that works in computational modeling, and she was hoping to have her PhD student work crunching data we had available about plant music and human interaction, i.e. entanglement. I have had lots of different types of scientists contact me, but a person that works specifically in statistics and hard numbers was a first!
I spent some time reading through the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy a while back, and was amazed at all the information in there that was once considered "magic". Even Plant Signaling & Behavior, a science that was non-existent only 15 years back, has found ways to explain phenomena that were outside the understanding of traditional science. Personally, I find all these border sciences super interesting, as I find the use of more traditional forms of biology in new areas of development, such as #biomimicry and other types of nature-inspired solutions, inspiring. Science has spent lifetimes trying to break apart the natural world into tiny little components. But I find the richness of Life in the interconnections.
You are right science deals with reality facts findinngs
Thanks for reading and responding @junaidkhawaja! :-) And yes, it does ;-)
i am always curious about such things ,learning and researching about new things
I wonder how soon there will come a time when science can detect and measure spiritual beings? Of course this question implies that such beings must exist... Could we pretend for a second that they really exist. What leaps our current science must make in order to be able to detect them?
Thanks so much @organduo, I really appreciate your response :-) And I don't know the answer to your question. When Greek philosophers thought of the idea that everything is made up of tiny, indivisible particles they didn't know it would take several centuries before the atom was discovered in real life. On the other hand, developments withing science do seem to accelerate a lot since the 20th century. So, maybe next year, maybe next century, or maybe in our next life... who's to say? ;-)