When an explosion occurs, myriad particles disperse from the locus of detonation and remain in motion by virtue of momentum. Thereafter, they may collide and comingle such that they grow in size, disintegrate further such that where there was one there are now many particles, or slow down because of the resistance they encounter. Generally, they will exhibit a swell of patterns we would more often than not recognise as geometric. According to Newton’s First Law of Motion, momentum is thought to be the tendency of an object set in motion to stay in motion (and incidentally, of an object at rest to stay at rest). This process of dispersal can take ages, say, billions of years, to peter out, given a powerful enough explosion. Also, the particles sent flying this way and that are not limited to stone or any other particular form, transformations through collision, mixture, and redisintegration owing to new collisions (which are in fact new explosions and new dispersals) being the norm, or speed, often appearing to the human eye – like any other eye, a positioned or biased sensory device – very slow indeed. This is to say that dispersal, and the momentum defining it, are in fact everywhere. For where did the mass of our universe come from, and the energy behind its velocity? And if any particular object is not exhibiting momentum, how did it break free of the great dispersal, and into what did it escape? I would argue nowhere, and that it did not, and that it’s all part of the greater momentum.
If there is a beginning of our universe, as from a explosion, as some scientists argue, what’s the foundation of that beginning? Is nothing something? Water was believed to content nothing because we could not see the micro specious living in it; air was described as nothing because we was not able to detect all the gases within it; outer space was thought to be of definite darkness because we could not see through it. Our ability to learn and to imagine is chained, if not trapped, by our capacity to see and to concept. No where is some where, as soon as we can detect it, or at least can calculate it by mathematical models.
Is there a beginning and an ending, or everything is just part of the circle? I would argue there might not be such things as the first or the last in the momentum world.
Beginning and ending are artificial concept created by human, and there is no absolute define line in natural occurrence. “Beginning of a day” or “a year” is completely secondary human concept. “Creation of a new continent” or “a lake” is also artificial because the “continent” or “lake” was there before but just of different format. Energy and materials circulated in a definite and infinite fashion, and every beginning and ending, if put at a larger scale, just part of the circulation.
You might argue that birth and death are definite beginning and ending, but it’s only at individual level. First of all, the materials of which the body was consist do not disappear, but change its form of existence in the universe. Furthermore, at a larger level than individual creatures, in other words, at the level of a whole species, or even at the level of “life” in general, there is no a distinguished line. The first “human” or the last “dinosaur” are all based on artificial definition given by scientist, while countless specious with essentially similar features were running all around.
We are used to the concept of to begin and to end, to create and to destroy because human brains learn from things we can sense with direct experience. thus things out of our sense might be unimaginable to us.
According to the String Theory, there are 11 dimensions, of which we are only aware of 4: 3 spatial dimensions and time, implying there are very likely to be more “momentum worlds” out there which we are not able to detect yet. We should free our philosophy, even before we untie our physics. So, maybe before we ask the question about where things go, we should think about whether things are moving at all.
By: Holly on September 4, 2007
at 8:48 pm
Indeed. Where is motion happening? “Things” implies separateness (a useful human construct), but if there is only one thing, then where does the sea become the fish? If the answer to that seems clear, where does it become the microorganism? A little less clear. Is the sea h2o? If so, what of the nutrients in solution within it? Is salt part of the sea? Why is salt part of the sea, but not iron, or mercury? Where does one draw the line? Draw it somewhere “up there,” but on the subatomic level, where then?
And once we’re there, amongst the quarks, is everything everywhere at once, or is everything separate, little subatomic bits of atom that never touch one another? I don’t know. I just like playing with concepts:
Everything is connected: Impossible (internally inconsistent), since for things to be connected they must be separate.
Everything is one: What constitutes an absence of connection?
Everything is separate: If so, when?
By: joshuaforgotson on September 4, 2007
at 11:32 pm
The relationship between connection and separateness is like the relationship between chicken and egg: which comes first? Well, does it matter?
Chicken and egg are just a hook on the food chain, a footprint along evolution path, a friction of the material cycle, and a dust in the momentum, all of which go on regardless chicken or egg comes first.
If the universe is infinite, which I believe in, in time and size, the only dimensions known to us, maybe more, everything is just part of it. The combining and dividing is just a form of energy movement, which has NO purpose.
We can study the forms, which can be limited and well defined, and motion can be the formula or feature or appearance of the forms, but if you look at things from different scale, you will have distinctive versions, as you describe as the example of the sea, and that’s why we draw different lines when we see from different perspectives.
Just as biologist, Christians, cooks, and chicken will you different answers to the question of whether chicken or egg comes first.
By: Holly on September 6, 2007
at 4:16 pm