Toe must include ourselves

scott_sieger

I know we have discussed that a theory for everything needs to include our spirituality. This is true but also it must include our skin cells, our hearts, our brains for these too are a part of our "Physical" universe. A theory of everything must include our ability to imagine and think, our ability to articulate and our ability to express our selves with free will.

These are all physical manifestations and certainly not delusional.

Mankind continously endeavours to create and recreate it self and this too has many physical implications.

WE are very good at thinking that a theory of everything is only about stars and planets and phantom particles, The nature of thought it-self is missing from any theories so far. WE tend to think that we may be close to a TOE but I have to suggest that we are so far away from it that we have no hope of even getting close. For if one wants to quantify some thing like the human brain (a physical reality) into a theory that can be valued and determined by a formula then I am sorry they must be very deluded.

Even Einstiens theories espouse that the perception of the observer is to be considered.
Could this not be also a theory of subjectivity. A simple truth that we have always known.

I think if science forgets the human or life element it is badly mistaken and I am not even talking about religion or spirituality or souls or life after death or anything.

So are we taking on an impossible challenge as surely the closer one gets to this Holy grail of the theory for everything the more complex the mathematics must get, the harder it is to quantify and prove, and the less constancy there is.

selfAdjoint

The skin cells and all the construction of our bodies is referred to molecular chemistry, where it is being better and better understood. Changeing from the present theories to a TOE won't change that, and the genome and proteomic revolutions now ongoing are going to show us everything about our own biology before 2050.

Consciousness is the last refuge of the "more than chemistry" faith. However much people like Dennet insist there is nothing there, the believers will insist that qualia, or free will, or something must transcend the dance of the molecules.

scott_sieger

so,
From a mathematical perpsective how can you write a mathematical equation that not only includes black hole and gravity etc but also a single skin cell?

Mentat

Yes, well, the "believers" (as you put it) always insisted that we were the center of the Universe, and that the Earth was created in 7 days of 24 hours each, and that the Universe was static, and that God doesn't play dice... I hope that the belief that consciousness should remain mysterious is destroyed as these others were. Dennett has taken a powerful first step, and I hope he and his fellow materialists are not ignored.

Mentat

You shouldn't have to. As selfAdjoint pointed out, molecular biology will continue to be the field that deals with skin cells, long after the TOE is discovered. The term "Theory of Everything" is often misleading, since it implies that this theory will actually explain all phenomena in one equation. This is not the case. The TOE equation will be one that explains what the nature of spacetime and particles are. That's pretty much it. From this equation, we will be able to derive explanations of such phenomena as blackholes and the big bang, and so on, but we will never have every answer - and the ToE is not looking for every answer.

Poorichard2

I see your point,which is well taken.

I for one understand the need for the human brain/mind to
search out new knowledge and go where we have not
yet been.

Thank you for sharing it.

deaddevilsdisguise

if spirituality b a part of this...it must b "Flawless" i.e, it must not have any mistakes in it!
it is not. because of a few things, such as:
1) it is made by humans.
2) it is like a pair of hand-cuffs holdin u back from a lot of things(remember the wars against the churches in Europe, which led to the industrial revolution).
3) it must b common 2 all races,species etc. living on the earth at-least... else there will b difference of opinion(and we all know what tht cud lead to)

therefore we can conclude tht "SPIRITUALITY" can not b a part of ToE [;)]

freemind

Call me a materialist, but I agree with anyone who says that spirituality, free will, and things of the sort are nothing but illusions\delusions.

The bottom line is that the concept of the thinking mind is a consequence of chemical\sub-atomic interactions in that lumpy mass of grey matter known as the human brain. There is no free will. The concept is a consequence of vibrating strings.

I realize that my login name is a misnomer, and that I should be more like "free brain".

Jeebus

Who says ToE has to be only one equation though? Maybe the simplest answer is the most complex system to understand.

Mentat

Well, Michio Kaku and the like have often expressed a desire for their ToE to be expressable in one small equation.

notwithstanding

What part of the word 'everything' do some posters here not understand?

It also has to define itself. Therefore it must be the most simple equation.

There can be no more fundamental than itself.

And... the search is for a law of everything, not a theory. A theory is
a way to 'get there'.

cajones

True, a law of everything would be the ultimate achievement of science, but, if you ask me, that is impossible. Why? Because in order to have a law of everything, the writer would then have to know everything, be able to have absolute knowledge at one time, and would then most likely (Pardon the sound) become one with existence and thus have ascended beyond this realm to at least have absolute contact with what is higher. Such a person would cease to be human, and probably wouldn't see anything positive in giving us the law of everything, for then everything would change and the law would have to be rewritten.

A theory of everything is much more beneficial, because we will be able to understand all that there is to understand without absolutely knowing from observation. We could predict everything, most likely, and any inconsistencies could be plugged in and used to modify the theory for accuracy. If it was a law, we'd have to know everything, and thus everything would be different. Those that know everything would probably not have any desire to share it with us. That may be difficult for some to grasp... but think about it. A law is proven by nature. A theory is supported by observations and calculations. We could quite possibly come up with a theory of everything, but a law of everything, though desirable, is beyond our grasp. To know everything is similar to becoming all powerful.

Russ

My favorite misperception of relativity (and QM). Both have nothing to do with perception, and by observer, all that is meant is point of reference (in QM, it's particle interaction). Neither theory in any way cares about a conscious observer. You sound like lifegazer...

paglren

The term "spirituality" could generate confusion.
I prefer to say that TOE must explain how is it possible from inside the universe to perceive the rules that govern the universe itself (i.e. TOE).
It seems that TOE is to be a tautology. Or merely it cannot be stated.
My think is that TOE should bring us to a possible new dimensionless situation, in which the observer is outside space-time frame and therefore at an actually infinite distance from any experiment.
To achieve this result, TOE should start with an antinomic statement that would grant a precise initial formula for a bootstrap of Universe and would grant freedom as well. Like this:

[tex] \Rightarrow \emptyset [/tex]

That reads: Nothingness (i.e. the missing term on the left of implication symbol) implicates the "Empty Set" (i.e. a concept that is something else than Nothingness).
Since Nothingness itself is an antinomic concept, the statement is stated by Nothingness itself in an originary situation of no-space, no-time. From this situation an endless oscillation is generated without any external agent in each possible point of Nothingness.
Imagine that the "modes" of implication leads to "space" and the "occurrencies" of implication leads to "time".
If the series of infinite ratios modes/occurrencies converges to a finite value (say c) and the modes present some symmetry, we could build some set of points that synchronically could interact among themselves and self-define a space-time frame.
This could be the seed of any knowable universe (included our's).