🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <TORKEL.92Sep4163946@bast.sics.se> torkel@sics.se (Torkel Franzen)  
writes:
> In article <Bu22I4.AyF@unx.sas.com> sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill) 
> writes:
> 
> Of course, in most cases, scientists
> have no particular competence to pronounce on the contents of philosophical
> papers

Is a paper that claims to establish a 'first cause' in the development
of the universe a philosophy paper? That sounds like a statement 
about the physical universe to me. What makes it philosophical
a several completely unfounded assumptions about the causal structure
of space time.

To be fair to the author, we can hope the paper is a tad facetious.
This brings me to yet another thing that annoys me about philosophers:
the prefer a deft turn of phrase to a simple presentation, and seem
to prefer the clever argument over really getting to the bottom of things.


In this case, we already think that the universe traces back to 
a time when only a theory of quantum gravity could hold, the
energy densities are strong enough to tear apart spacetime itself, 
and a regime of physics never encountered in human observation
reigns. In such a situtation, only a fool would be talking about
first causes, etc, becasue the structure of spacetime itself is 
broken down, and it seem s quite possible the classical notion
of causality might not apply. We'll have to await viable theories
of quantum gravity to see what might replace it.




--
Barry Merriman
UCLA Dept. of Math
UCLA Inst. for Fusion and Plasma Research
barry@math.ucla.edu (Internet; NeXTMail is welcome)