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From: arcline@phoenix.princeton.edu (Austin Cline)
Subject: Re: Reality & Purpose
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References: <3bt42q$f70@ixnews1.ix.netcom.com> <sbrown.786571475@symcom> <3bu0u7$po1@ixnews1.ix.netcom.com>
Date: Mon, 5 Dec 1994 05:00:20 GMT
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In article <3bu0u7$po1@ixnews1.ix.netcom.com>, roose@ix.netcom.com
(Richard Roose) wrote:

> In <sbrown.786571475@symcom> sbrown@symcom.math.uiuc.edu (Scott Brown) 
> writes: 
> 
> >
> >roose@ix.netcom.com (Richard Roose) writes:
> >
> >
> >
> >> 
> >>                THE SEEDS OF MAN
> >>                       by
> >>                  R. C. Roos
> >
> >>      The black void continued in all directions for a thousand 
> >>billion light years and beyond.  Within that vast space there was not a 
> >>single atom of matter, nor a single photon of light.  At the center, the 
> >>remains of a universe collapsed upon itself.  
> >
> >   You don't understand. The idea isn't that the universe is all
> >   this stuff in a big empty space, and that it will eventually
> >   collapse into the center of that space.
> >
> >   The universe *is* the space. It is the space itself that is
> >   expanding, not "the stuff in it".
> >
> >   It was lovely prose, though. Just inaccurate from word 4.
> >
> >   Scott
> >
> Are you positive of that?  If you are then you must also know what was 
> before the universe existed.  Please share it with the rest of us.

He was right.

The creation of the universe meant the creation of space and time, as we
know it. Science, as it is presently conceived, measures things relative
to space and time. No space and time, no measurement. For science, the
ability to measure, particularly with mathematics, means to know. So, no
measurement, no knowledge. As far as science is concerned, there is
nothing measurable either outside of or before the universe because of
this lack of space and time. Even if there is/was something there, it is
unmeasurable and, hence, beyond knowledge. Science really doesn't care
about anything unprovable, unknowable and, as far as can be seen,
irrelevant to what is going on. 

Of course, there is always the possibility for some sort of mystical or
intuitive knowledge about what is outside of/was before the universe. Just
because it isn't science doesn't make it absolutely invalid. Is this what
you were talking about? Or there is the possibility of a future science
that *can* deal with these things. Since, however, that lies so far beyond
the present basis for science, it is difficult to conceive of such a
system as being 'science' and not something else.
Austin Cline, German Department
---
...it is still a *metaphysical faith* that underlies our faith in science - and we...godless ones and anti-metaphysicians, we, too, derive *our* flame from the fire ignited by a faith millennia old, the Christian faith,...that God is truth, that truth is divine. -Friedrich Nietzsche; The Gay Science, 344                                    
