Accepting that the idea of the expansion of the universe is a phenomenon considered relatively well-understood and axiomatic by the scientific community, and perhaps in general, let’s assume Wikipedia to be a credible citation for summarizing expansion:
“The expansion of the universe is the increase of the distance between two distant parts of the universe with time. It is an intrinsic expansion whereby the scale of space itself changes. The universe does not expand “into” anything and does not require space to exist “outside” it. Technically neither space nor objects in space move. Instead it is the metric governing the size and geometry of spacetime itself that changes in scale.”
Focus for a moment on this section: “…it is the metric governing the size and geometry of spacetime itself…”
How does Wikipedia define “metric”?
”In general relativity, the metric tensor…may be thought of as a generalization of the gravitational potential of Newtonian gravitation.”
“And if we look up the word “tensor” we are told that this is a:
”…mathematical object anologous to but more general than a vector, represented by an array of components that are functions of the coordinates of space.”
In other words, what science, particularly physics, is telling us is that the only thing which is active, and thus existing (where existence to be efficacious must be active, not passive…for existence which does not “do” is not actually existing) is the mathematical coordinate system. All else then, is passive. All else except the metric tensor does not do; does not move; does not act. Thus, existentially speaking, it is purely illusory. Reality is, in true essence, a set of infinite abstract placeholders which somehow the mathematically-inclined observer may apprehend and define, even though he, himself, is not actually there.
This may seem like quite a large leap of logic. How does one arrive at such a philosophical conclusion from a purely academic monograph on tensors, vectors, geometry, and spacetime?
I’ll explain.
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I was somewhat surprised to see the Wikipedia article on the expansion of the universe admit that the universe cannot and does not actually expand into anything. I was further surprised to see it admitted that neither space nor objects in space actually move. Accepting the logic of the relativity of movement in a vacuum, the conclusion that there is no movement qua movement (non-relative movement) would seem quite self-evident, yet I’ve never seen it admitted by science. Perhaps I’ve just not been hanging around the right circles and source material.
At any rate, both the claim that the universe does not actually expand (expansion qua expansion) and that space and objects in space do not actually move (movement qua movement) are of course completely true. Perhaps the reason for my surprise at seeing them admitted in a science article is that such claims are more a metaphysical acknowledgment than a physical one. They require a certain meta analysis of the universe qua the universe, rather than the universe as experienced relative to the observer. The former is falls more within the scope of philosophy, the latter, physics. This of course is fine, there is nothing wrong with anyone citing a fact, it’s just that I’ve grown more accustomed to science hijacking philosophy and then promptly mangling it like a toddler on a jelly sandwich instead of actually accepting its distinct truth.
Unfortunately, no sooner does the article make the (albeit implied) important and complex distinction between physics and metaphysics, when this distinction is almost immediately obliterated, with science once again hijacking philosophy and handling it like a monkey handles a clarinet.
What this article implies is that all of reality is boiled down to a mathematical artifice…a McGuffin, you could call it. You see, to bridge the gap between metaphysics and physics, a bridge which is recognized by the declaration that the universe doesn’t actually expand (that is, it doesn’t expand into anything…and by this we can extrapolate the logical assertion thus that the universe doesn’t actually expand at all) and that space nor objects in space actually move, science submits a purely abstract, purely cognitively manifested contrivance of an infinite set of specifically structured numerical and symbolic placeholders. It replaces the whole of efficacious (active, and thus, existent) reality with this set, which of course has the effect, intended or unintended (it doesn’t matter), of punting the entire real field of metaphysics and all of philosophy with it into the endless abyss of mysticism.
And even more egregious is the fact that the irony is completely lost on those atheists who appeal to science as proof of the rationality of dismissing God and the notion of God altogether. Because only fools believe in the fairy tale of the “magic man in the sky”, whilst the rational objectivists and sane empiricists can see that clearly all things are created and controlled instead by an invisible, yet omnipotent, omniscient, and ominipresent mathematical coordinate system summing all things to infinity on infinity.
If that’s not psychological projection then I don’t know what is.
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Movement, you see, doesn’t exist…that is, the article tells us that the universe does not expand, and that space and objects in space do not move, but instead it is the “metric” which changes in scale”.
Except of course, that there is movement. The concept of movement is not irrational; actual movement does happen…the idea is efficacious; action occurs. It only needs to be qualified that movement is relative. An observer needs to be part of the equation in order to provide a reference for the relationship between two or more objects in a vacuum…because the observer—the Awareness of Self (the “I” of Self)—provides the (only rational) constant for object relationship in a vacuum. Once the observer is present to declare that, for example, “X shall revolve around Y” or “Y shall revolve around X”, then movement can be objectively defined, said to exist, and this efficaciously and actually so, and then mathematically measured. Mathematics are a conclusion, or an effect, not a cause, you see.
But science doesn’t accept the rationality and actuality of the observer. Because it has long ago confused and conflated mathematical truth with philosophical truth, it has relegated the observer to at best an undefinable and ultimately irrelvant epiphenomenon, inconsistent and incompatible with reality, because reality is to be wholly defined scientifically, which is to say mathematically.
Movement, even relative movement, is jettisoned and replaced with a metric which “changes in scale”, which is not movement at all, really , but merely the predetermined “evolution” of an infinite numerical and symbolic mathematical data set. And thus, since nothing actually moves, up to and including the universe, the existence of such is entirely passive, which means that its “existence” doesn’t actually exist. Because if existence doesn’t mean existing, then there is no such thing as existence in the first place. The universe, and all in it, and thus you and me of course, aren’t actually there. There is no observer. And thus there is no constant for movement. All is just an infinite data set which reveals a particular sum at a particular predetermined rate at a particular predetermined time…and all of these particulars are merely illusory, too, for the data set is, again, infinite. Thus, all units of data are merely units of infinity, which renders them ultimately impossible to define. So the grand answer to the cosmic question of life and existence and reality and truth and everything can be summed up by science as merely the conclusion that “infinity equals infinity”. And, I mean, I don’t even know what you’d call this. It’s some kind of grand atrocity of nihilistic intellectual error, to be sure, but if there is a name for it which illustrates appropriately its level of debasement of all morality and meaning, I don’t know what it is. I couldn’t begin to conjure one up, it’s that bad.
END part ONE