I would not, since I think meaning is something the scientists can and mostly will leave to the philosophers. What the mathematical laws discovered by science do is provide a means of knowing what will happen under certain sets of conditions. This comes from the scientific methodology of testing hypotheses with measurements and giving procedures which give the same result no matter what you want or believe. The scientist calls this understanding these phenomenon, though often non-scientists may not see this as understanding them. To be sure, like most activities, scientist will have their own language giving their own meaning to words according to what works for what they do. But since that is not meaning in any absolute sense I don’t think this is what you meant.
Indeed, I would argue that it is the other way around, that physical object are what they are by the operation of these laws of nature. Though I do not think the is the sum total of reality.
Which is not saying it is a property of matter as you did. And NO it does not mean it is exclusively a property of matter and radiation alone since this is clearly not the case since I gave examples to the contrary.
Doesn’t mean the energy of space-time curvature is a property of matter. Virtual particles are not matter and this certainly doesn’t make energy of the vacuum a property of matter.
I knew physicists who strongly disagree with that. They see virtual particles as an artifact of perturbation theory and they think that the solution to quantum gravity is to be found in a non-perturbative theory.
You are correct. From a scientific, and biblical, standpoint the entire universe is composed of two objectively distinct entities; Space and Matter. Matter consists of two components; Mass and Energy, that are related by Einstein’s famous equation E=Mc^2. There is confusion caused by the notion that Matter and Mass are identical and Energy is something that is not Matter. All this other discussion about quantum particles and such are just trees in the forest of Matter.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
84
We knew by rationality in 1911 and by empiricism in 1919.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
85
Genesis 1:1-2a “In the beginning God created space and matter. And the matter was without form and void”. This is an epistemic rendering of the ancient Hebrew. The ancients would have understood ‘the heavens’ and ‘the earth’ as what we now know to be ‘space’ and ‘matter’.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
88
I love it Fred. Very clever. Knowledge based eh? There’s something niggling there though. Multiple somethings.
And what evidence is there that anyone created space and matter? That it needed to be created?
Forgive me for my incredulity, but just wondering what you mean. As in, who are the ancients, how do you know what they thought of “the heavens” or “the earth?” Particular ancient documents? Other ancient near eastern sources? Or just a bad case of reading modern scientific concepts into the text?
I am just providing a plausible translation of a few lines in an ancient text based on valid reasoning. You are free to accept it or not. What I can say is that words are created by man but not the universe. The information expressed by words is limited to the contemporaneous vocabulary. Where did the universe come from? Why is there something rather than nothing? What evidence is there that the universe was not created or that it had no beginning? Life is full of niggling questions that may only be tamed by our imagination and faith.
How does anyone know what the ancients thought? In this case let’s just limit it to the Hebrew writer of Genesis. All we have are the words he wrote down. Words are created by man and limited to the vocabulary of the day. We will never know exactly what the word ‘Nephilim’ was referring to. In any case, Genesis begins by telling us that God created two distinct entities, one of which had no form or character. It then tells us what was formed from those entities. The information is expressed in a grammatical sequence of Hebrew words. If we are to understand what those words mean in a different language they must be translated. While a ‘literal’ translation is a good starting point and baseline, who decided that it is the only way to understand it? Were there specific words in the ancient Hebrew vocabulary that the writer could have used to mean ‘Space’ or ‘Matter’, without changing the grammar, other than the words that were used? If the information in Genesis was inspired by God, then limiting the understanding of it to a literal translation is placing human limitations on God. That would be anathema.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
92
But it wasn’t. So it it isn’t. And matter was without form and void was it? And what information?
The plausibility is literary. There is no ontological reasoning beyond that, which I freely accept. I am not free to accept it as any other form of reasoning. The universe came from a quantum perturbation in absolutely null or perhaps a collision between 11D M-branes in bulk. Rationally. There is something because there is nothing. Nothing about it requires an unnatural creator and there is nothing but evidence that it had a beginning although at the quantum level things like beginnings, time are a bit fuzzy. The questions will always remain and imagination and faith distract from them. I prefer football, plants, work, reading, FEBs.
My point was only that Genesis supports the idea that the entire universe consists of two basic components; Space and Matter. All Matter can be identified by having the properties of Mass and/or Energy. The original question was about where our energy goes when we die, from a scientific perspective. I did not intend to bring ‘God’ into it or make an ontological argument. You are correct that my reasoning about Genesis is purely literary with regard to words and translation.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
94
Sure. One can use a literary text as one will according to the beholder’s share.