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The universe

PoetPhilosopher

Veteran Member
Is the universe chaotic or orderly?

.....


My own answer: The universe is chaos in an orderly system, perhaps. The universe is mathematical and somewhat precise, but allows for some randomness and variety. I don't truly believe it allows for religious miracles which completely alter the laws of the universe, like walking on water without any technological help, but upon careful understanding of miracles, they can still happen within the laws of the universe - the tricky part is that what is a miracle, and what's not, is open to human interpretation.
 

ChristineM

"Be strong", I whispered to my coffee.
Premium Member
As i understand it the universe is chaotic on a universal scale.

In the human scale the universe we see seems steady and constant, yet asteroids collide or crash into moons and planets. Longer term Galaxies collide

Why? Gravity

Although gravity diminishes with distance from a body it is infinite so every body in the universe imparts gravitational pull on every other body.

NASA had serious problems with the 3 body problem, imagine trillions of moving bodies moving in every possible direction as the universe expands pulling on every other body.

On top of that dark energy (it is assumed) is also doing its thing.

Phew
 

Eddi

Agnostic
Premium Member
I'd say it is both orderly and chaotic

If you look beyond the physical world and into human affairs then it's plain to see that humanity on both the social and individual level can be characterised as being both ordered or chaotic
 

paarsurrey

Veteran Member
Is the universe chaotic or orderly?

.....


My own answer: The universe is chaos in an orderly system, perhaps. The universe is mathematical and somewhat precise, but allows for some randomness and variety. I don't truly believe it allows for religious miracles which completely alter the laws of the universe, like walking on water without any technological help, but upon careful understanding of miracles, they can still happen within the laws of the universe - the tricky part is that what is a miracle, and what's not, is open to human interpretation.

"The universe is mathematical"

The Mathematics is a human tool for understanding the Universe, more correctly. Right, please?

Regards
 

Howard Is

Lucky Mud
"The universe is mathematical"

The Mathematics is a human tool for understanding the Universe, more correctly. Right, please?

Regards

You could equally say that poetry is a human tool for understanding the Universe, therefore the universe is poetic.
 

amorphous_constellation

Well-Known Member
Perhaps the qualities of the universe are proportional to that of an organism, perhaps even an intelligent one like a human. So we are the microcosm of the macrocosm. So then, the universe has a beginning and an end, it is born again with new ideas after becoming dead stiff.

A human has a mind, which is a globe that can shine many ways. Some people know what they are doing, and what to do. Many others are confused and anxious. Goals are decided on within a person's mind, in picking something, they may often be unsure at first. So perhaps the universe has this same kind of telos, it has goals that ultimately include a leap of faith on some level. At times it may not actually know what it wants. Evolution, if we are at the cutting edge of it, is interesting because at the end of all the teeth and claws it produced, there is mind, capable of indecision. So then, is the universe capable of error like we are
 

Geoff-Allen

Resident megalomaniac
Quotation-John-Muir-When-we-contemplate-the-whole-globe-as-one-great-dewdrop-44-27-19.jpg


Hope that is read-able font ...

Comes from this page -

TOP 25 UNIVERSE QUOTES (of 1000) | A-Z Quotes

Enjoy your day!
 

Thief

Rogue Theologian
Is the universe chaotic or orderly?

.....


My own answer: The universe is chaos in an orderly system, perhaps. The universe is mathematical and somewhat precise, but allows for some randomness and variety. I don't truly believe it allows for religious miracles which completely alter the laws of the universe, like walking on water without any technological help, but upon careful understanding of miracles, they can still happen within the laws of the universe - the tricky part is that what is a miracle, and what's not, is open to human interpretation.
not sure if I can find it.....a documentary called Chaos

in the program several demonstrations are dealt
and some precise forms develop for cause of repeated action

Chaos has risen to a science
 

LegionOnomaMoi

Veteran Member
Premium Member
As i understand it the universe is chaotic on a universal scale.

In the human scale the universe we see seems steady and constant, yet asteroids collide or crash into moons and planets. Longer term Galaxies collide
On a human scale, every time you boil water you cause such a large number of collisions among bodies (molecules of liquid and air) that on a universal scale it would be like all the planetary bodies in several galaxies smashing into one another over and over again. Collisions in space are not nearly as chaotic as the water in a child's swimming pool. It only seems so perhaps because of the size scale. But for that very reason, we can't very well experience such collisions on Earth.

NASA had serious problems with the 3 body problem
Newton has a serious problem with the 3-body problem. By the time Poincaré was awarded the prize for not solving it, it was already what we would now refer to as the n-body problem. In general, there are no analytical solutions for all but special cases of the n-body problem for n>2, but the three body problem isn't an issue as solutions are readily available and easy to achieve thanks to computers (and 300 years of work on solutions and approximation methods).
 

LegionOnomaMoi

Veteran Member
Premium Member
The universe is mathematical and somewhat precise
Whenever anyone asserts that the universe is in some sense mathematical (especially if they are regurgitating or supporting Tegmark's extreme view) I am reminded of what one of the founders of QED said of his own theory, which is touted not only as the foundations upon which modern particle physics and the standard model is built but as the most accurate theory ever devised:
"I must say that I am very dissatisfied with the situation [in quantum electrodynamics], because this so-called "good theory" does involve neglecting infinities which appear in its equations, neglecting them in an aribtrary way. This is just not sensible mathematics. Sensible mathematics involves neglecting a quantity when it turns out to be small- not neglecting it just because it is infinitely great and you do not want it!"
We formulate physical laws in mathematical language. We postulate that such laws exist or that principles such as least action exist. In fact, much of modern physics is formulated on the principle of least action which was originally based on the idea that physical laws should reflect the nature of the perfection of the God who created them and the universe (Maupertuis' put forth the idea, but it was Euler who first set what became the action principle into rigorous mathematical form). Much of the time it works, or at least when it fails we are able to say why quite clearly (e.g., because most differential equations don't have analytical solutions and nonlinearities are difficult to work with even when the number of equations governing the system dynamics is small).
But currently our best theory of the fundamental constituents of all reality yields are powerful predictive tool in which things we call "particles" that make up everything are really just linguistic devices used as organizing principles that we then have to correct in the manner that so bothered Dirac (quoted above) :
"it is illegitimate to say that the world is made of molecules, atoms, electrons or quarks. Rather, a description based on such theoretical concepts may, in a particular context, be useful or even the best possible one. Matter, as described by the first principles of quantum theory, resembles matter in the Aristotelian sense: It is not a substance, but the capacity to form patterns"
p. 92 of
H. Primas (2017). Knowledge and Time. Springer.
I am not, in other words, entirely convinved that we have sufficient evidence to assert that our successes in the natural sciences (and our perceived successes too) combined with a rather dismal failure in biology and other sciences with respect to a formal mathematical framework constitute actual realization of the structures of reality more than they do our ability to render much of the physical realm sensible through such formalisms.
 

ChristineM

"Be strong", I whispered to my coffee.
Premium Member
On a human scale, every time you boil water you cause such a large number of collisions among bodies (molecules of liquid and air) that on a universal scale it would be like all the planetary bodies in several galaxies smashing into one another over and over again. Collisions in space are not nearly as chaotic as the water in a child's swimming pool. It only seems so perhaps because of the size scale. But for that very reason, we can't very well experience such collisions on Earth.


Newton has a serious problem with the 3-body problem. By the time Poincaré was awarded the prize for not solving it, it was already what we would now refer to as the n-body problem. In general, there are no analytical solutions for all but special cases of the n-body problem for n>2, but the three body problem isn't an issue as solutions are readily available and easy to achieve thanks to computers (and 300 years of work on solutions and approximation methods).

Scale that kettle and its contents up to a 93 billion light year(ish) diameter volume and the space between atoms becomes light years? Even at universe speeds very few of those (now correspondingly large) atoms would collide in a human timescale

Now consider the average temperature if the universe is about 2.75k, not much scope for exciting atoms at temperatures like that so the boiling water analogy fails now. But at the time of the early universe as atoms were first forming conditions were no doubt similar.

Have you seen the simulations of Andromeda colliding with the Milky way?
What is not chaotic about that?

There are thousands of solutions to the n body problem, 3,4,5... n. Every new body added requires a new solution.
 

halbhh

The wonder and awe of "all things".
Is the universe chaotic or orderly?

.....


My own answer: The universe is chaos in an orderly system, perhaps. The universe is mathematical and somewhat precise, but allows for some randomness and variety. I don't truly believe it allows for religious miracles which completely alter the laws of the universe, like walking on water without any technological help, but upon careful understanding of miracles, they can still happen within the laws of the universe - the tricky part is that what is a miracle, and what's not, is open to human interpretation.
Both, as you intimated. Chaos leads to order is one theme that was popular in books especially 20-30 years back, as people were first realizing that. One thing to observe about physics -- the work to discover the laws of nature (the order of nature), and also used to refer to the laws themselves -- is that physics is only partly found so far. Of course, what we've found seems quite impressively complete in some ways. But we've also found we don't know at all the nature of what we think is about 95% of matter and energy, currently labeled 'dark matter' and 'dark energy' since we cannot observe them yet in any way we know. So...one could not, see, reach conclusions, at all, about what is 'possible', from the point of view of physics. One could only say what is possible by the already-found physics, but not of course what is possible in the yet-to-be-found physics. All that considered, it's not hard at all for me to believe Christ walked on water and such. I have learned people are able to reach places few others have been. There is much more to the world than most people ever explore, even in the area immediately around us.
 

halbhh

The wonder and awe of "all things".
Scale that kettle and its contents up to a 93 billion light year(ish) diameter volume and the space between atoms becomes light years? Even at universe speeds very few of those (now correspondingly large) atoms would collide in a human timescale

Now consider the average temperature if the universe is about 2.75k, not much scope for exciting atoms at temperatures like that so the boiling water analogy fails now. But at the time of the early universe as atoms were first forming conditions were no doubt similar.

Have you seen the simulations of Andromeda colliding with the Milky way?
What is not chaotic about that?

There are thousands of solutions to the n body problem, 3,4,5... n. Every new body added requires a new solution.
Those simulations are always fun to watch. The galaxies are like liquid. Of course a time scale like 5 bn years is one where the Earth would be toast (unless moved!), if nature continues unaltered on her natural course.

(As an interesting aside, part of the nature of intelligence is that it allows to alter the natural course of events of course. Even a million years is quite a very long time. Even a thousand years is quite long, though it's like 'only as if a day to the Lord' :))
 

ChristineM

"Be strong", I whispered to my coffee.
Premium Member
Space and the population of life are limited while time is not created nor destroyed.

So did time exist before the universe existed?

And the first law of thermodynamics says energy cannot be created or destroyed in an isolated system, only changed [into mass and vice versa]
So space (which is not empty) and the atoms that form population (if not life) stay as long as the universe is a closed system
 

MonkeyFire

Well-Known Member
So did time exist before the universe existed?

And the first law of thermodynamics says energy cannot be created or destroyed in an isolated system, only changed [into mass and vice versa]
So space (which is not empty) and the atoms that form population (if not life) stay as long as the universe is a closed system

Time is eternal, while space is only so big, and living things are capacitated.
 
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