Cosmogonic mythology
Published by admin January 15th, 2007 in cosmologyDear Bee and Stefan,
I read your response carefully and I made every effort to understand what you wrote. I still don’t believe that you offer a scientific justification for extrapolating from known to unknown.
I thank both for helping and I look forward to your comments. Sorry if I appear to take this too seriously. I believe this is serious and as soon I have evidence of scientific misconduct that can be proven in a court of law I will take legal action against NASA for perpetuating cosmogonic mythologies as science.
Here is what I wrote regarding this exchange on Backreaction:
First here is a list of item we all agree and disagree:
Points on which all parties agree upon:
- There is a known region and there is an unknown region.
- The known region is known and the unknown region is unknown.
- The unknown is greater than the known
- CMB is radiation
- CMB does not come from the unknown region
- By 5, CMB does not contain any information about the unknown region
Points on which we disagree:
- I say that since CMB does not contain any information about the unknown region therefore CMB does not contain any information about the unknown region.
- Bee and Stefan along with cosmologists argue that even though CMB does not contain information about the unknown region it does contain information about the unknown region.
I disagree with the view of the cosmologists. To me this makes no sense. Apparently it makes sense to cosmologists, though.
First let me clarify that Bee and Stefan are not professional cosmologists. I am not either. So we are discussing cosmology as honest amateurs not as professionals. We are on equal footing. I am not holding against them the fact that they have PhDs in a subsection of particle physics. Their degree has no relevance in this topic.
Bee wrote: CMB dates back into the history of the universe.
What does the word universe in this sentence mean?
As far as I understand Bee is using the universe to mean “everything there is.” This is a hidden assumption.
Bee objects to my definition that cosmologists defined the word universe as
cosmos = universe = known = unknown
but in her sentence uses the word universe to include the unknown.
Stefan: CMB is radiation and its source is not a local source.
I agree. I meant that this radiation is observed locally not that it was produced locally. Both Stefan and Bee agree that CMB is observed locally.
They agree that no information reaches from the unknown. Therefore, we agree that CMB did not come from the unknown.
So we agree on many important points.
I am not clear if they agree on my definition of the universe.
Cosmos = Universe = K + U
By agreement 5 everyone agrees that CMB does not come from the unknown region. Therefore I am saying that CMB is not cosmic.
They don’t agree with this. Their position leads me to modify my definition of cosmos. Then, the following expression is the definition of the cosmologists:
Cosmos = Universe = (K + G) + U
Cosmologists created an imaginary region called G, for Gray Area, beyond galaxies (as Stefan writes “and that’s why it is called ‘cosmic:’ the source is much further than any galaxies.”)
We can remove the parentheses:
Cosmos = K + G + U
Cosmologists game the gray area G and make it part of the K or U depending on the context. To me this is sophistry.
What about Stefan’s point that the discussion is about semantics and not much about “physical content?”
This is true. By inventing a definitional gray area cosmologists do not use semantics but sophistry.
The database (CMB) is entirely independent of the speculations about its origin.
CMB contains no information about the unknown region. This means that CMB contains no information about the unknown region.
Everyone agrees that CMB contains no information about the unknown region. Then how can cosmologists extract information from CMB about the unknown region? Do they do that by magic? No by gaming the G.
So therefore, the physical content of CMB is irrelevant. All we have to know is that the database which is called CMB does not contain information about the unknown part.
Can you extract from a database information which is not contained in that database? Sure. If you are a cosmologist you make a definition and claim that your definition is in the database. This is called fraud in science.
So Stefan explains the meaning of the word cosmic as used by cosmologists. Cosmic (=G) is the opposite of local.
Cosmologists call “a very tiny spot in the observable universe” local and “everything much much farther away is then called cosmic.”
So you see how cosmologists create this Gray Area I called G.
Cosmologists reduced the universe to human scale. As I wrote above they created this gray area between known and unknown and they call this area “cosmic” and by this definitional confusion of their own creation they use the word cosmic to include the unknown part. This proves my claim that cosmology is based on this sophistical definition
cosmos = universe = known = unknown
Stefan also agrees that “one cannot measure (by definition) anything outside the region labeled as “local = known.”
I agree that we know only the known part.
To repeat: I say that cosmologists define
cosmos = universe = known = unknown
And depending on the context they game the word cosmos to mean what they want.
Both Bee and Stefan disagree with this.
Bee makes this definition:
multiverse = everything there is
This seems like a superfluous definition. This definition just creates two more synonyms for the word “whole.” It has no other purpose.
So cosmologists use the definitional gray area they created as a stepping stone to step into the unknown. What a clever gimmick.
I believe that in science the separation of data and doctrine must be as sacred as separation of church and state is in politics.
Another agreement: that extrapolation from observation can be made only to the observed parts.
Bee or Stefan do not answer my question of how they extrapolate from white to black.
Again: Now I see how cosmology works. Cosmologists observe in the white space, they extrapolate to the gray space, they call gray space “cosmos” and then implicitly assume that cosmos includes the black area as well. This is not such a good idea as far as scientific reasoning is concerned.
How do cosmologists know what they agree that they do not know?
From what I understand there is a big difference between what cosmologists openly state to the world and what they practice. They practice fraud and claim to practice science.
Confusion:
I attribute the following definition to cosmologists:
universe = observable universe = everything that exists
Let’s look what Stefan wrote regarding the above definition:
“Most cosmologists would agree that you grossly misrepresent their concepts if you equate
universe = observable universe = everything that exists
Then Stefan writes that “the common usage of words and concepts in cosmology […] implies that:
universe = everything that exists = observable universe
Stefan just changed the order of what I wrote. This does not change the meaning of the definition. So I am confused.
Then, Stefan promises to tackle my core question: “How do cosmologists make any “scientifically justifiable way anything about potentially unobservable parts of the universe.” Then he proposes two answers.
His first answer does not appear to be relevant to this topic. We already agreed that unknown is greater than known. We don’t need to use any theories such as general relativity to figure this out. This is a basic principle we agree upon implicitly: The whole is greater than its parts.
Stefan’s makes the valid point that observations made on earth are not representative everywhere else. Agreed.
Since we can now observe in space and in solar system this principle is not just tied to earth. We can generalize this principle as “observations made in our neighborhood do not extrapolate to the whole.” It is pre-scientific to think that observations made here is valid everywhere.
Then, how come Stefan refuses to recognize that cosmologists are guilty of this pre-scientific method when they extrapolate observations they made here to everywhere?
I think either Stefan is confused or I am misunderstanding what he is saying. On the next paragraph he claims that “without the assumption that properties and laws of the unobservable are approachable by what we know from the observed, sensible science would not be possible.”
To assume that what is unknown is like the known is the pre-scientific method Stefan just rejected in the previous paragraph as being unscientific. Now he is claiming that he knows that what he does not know is like what he knows.
This is pre-scientific scholasticism. This is why cosmology is fraud.
Stefan’s point of view has been the wishful thinking of human beings for as long as humans existed.
To say that unknown is unknown is the scientific view.
To use a scholastic principle such as cosmological principle to bridge the gap between the known and unknown in order to claim that you know what you do not know is the scholastic anti-scientific view. This is so sad. It is sad for humanity that there are humans who still believe that they claim to know what they agree they do not know.
Regarding my picture showing a sequence of numbers on the white part Stefan writes “it is perfectly reasonable to assume that the sequence goes on beyond the horizon of the observable universe…”
I agree. That’s why I drew the numbers cut off partially to imply that numbers continue.
There is a big difference between the claim that numbers continue into the unknown and to claim to know the sequence of the numbers in the unknown.
So it is not reasonable and it is unscientific to assume that “statistical properties […] of the sequence beyond the horizon are the same as in the observed part,” as Stefan claims. This is plain wrong. And that it is wrong can be proved by experiment. If Stefan believes that the statistical sequence continues as the visible sequence I would like to ask him to tell me where this number stops. Where in the black region does the number stop? What is the last digit if any?
Stefan cannot tell me this information. Stefan cannot prove in any way that numbers continue with the same statistical pattern. I believe that Stefan repeats the standard mythology of cosmology and makes an arbitrary assumption about the unknown and then asserts that his arbitrary assumption is true. This is unscientific. Not only unscientific, it is fraud. To claim to know what you don’t know is fraud.
Bee repeats that cosmologists observe the observable and then make claims only about the observable. But Bee does not explain how cosmologists know what they do not know when they claim that universe in the unknown region was once concentrated in a point? There is just no evidence for this religious cosmogonic mythology.
So I am disappointed that Bee claims cosmologists only make claims about the observed universe. The world is full of papers and books where cosmologists make claims to know what they do not know.
Conclusion
I read your comments carefully and I made every effort possible to understand what you wrote. You are not offering a scientific explanation about how you know what you do not know. The best you can do is to use a scholastic principle and *assume* that you know what you do not know. Then since you assumed that you know what you don’t know then you claim that the unknown must be exactly like what you know.
This is the old pre-scientific anthropocentric view. I just can believe that you are sincerely subscribing to this old anthropocentric cosmogony.
Thanks for your comments.
Re: Stefan’s mention of FRW universe.
20 Responses to “Cosmogonic mythology”
- 1 Pingback on Nov 4th, 2007 at 11:35 am
- 2 Pingback on Nov 4th, 2007 at 11:36 am
Search
Freedom of Science continues at its new address
Hi Pioneer,
I’ve no idea why you are making things more complicated as they are. You write
Bee and Stefan along with cosmologists argue that even though CMB does not contain information about the unknown region it does contain information about the unknown region.
Look, this is exactly the opposite from what I’ve said all the time. The CMB, by definition, does not contain information about the unobservable part, otherwise it wouldn’t be unobservable. I must have repeated this sentence at least 10 times. Nobody claims, or has ever claimed, it contains information about the unknown region. You are producing a problem that isn’t there.
As far as I understand Bee is using the universe to mean “everything there is.” This is a hidden assumption.
I am not. You are. That is your problem. As I’ve pointed out repeatedly, you are fighting for the meaning of a word, or rather two words: cosmos and universe. That’s semantics, not physics, and I don’t want to argue about it, coz you are wasting my time.
Bee objects to my definition that cosmologists defined the word universe as
cosmos = universe = known = unknown
of course they don’t. Give me any evidence for your claim.
And depending on the context they game the word cosmos to mean what they want.
This might actually be true, the reason is that there is no law that allows a cosmologist to use the word ‘cosmos’ in one context and not in the other. Whether or not the WORD ‘cosmos’ refers to the observable part only, or includes your unknown part, should become clear from the context of whatever scientific paper you read. This is quite similar to the discussion of whether Pluto is a planet or isn’t. It doesn’t matter for what you know or measure, it’s just a question of WORDS.
By agreement 5 everyone agrees that CMB does not come from the unknown region. Therefore I am saying that CMB is not cosmic.
Because you define ‘cosmic’ to include the unknown region. If you do this, then your statement is correct.
The rest of your writing is so confused that I can’t make sense out of it. E.g. you apparently have no idea what an extrapolation is. And what Stefan meant to say is that the CMB dates back to far earlier times than the formation of the first galaxies. Between the freeze-out of photons that we measure today in the CMB and the formation of the first galaxies, there’s quite a long period of time about which we don’t have data (yet), because there isn’t much emitted.
Best,
B.
I believe this is serious and as soon I have evidence of scientific misconduct that can be proven in a court of law I will take legal action against NASA for perpetuating cosmogonic mythologies as science.
Whoa… somebody get the net.
Hi island
Yeah, I don’t know why I’m answering that - I’d really like to see someone sue NASA for misusing the word ‘cosmic’ in a way that he doesn’t like. Now that I think about it - that might make a good new media hype, eh? Maybe not the worst idea to distract people from the unfortunate ’string wars’ issue.
Hi Pioneer,
I just found that Wikipedia has a pretty good article on the issue, which you might find useful:
Wiki on the Observable Universe
Best,
B.
Hi Bee
Hi,
Thanks for your comments. This is very helpful to me.
I appreciate what NASA is doing in astronomy. I have written here that “new discoveries made by NASA in just one year is more than [entire humanity] made in 2000 years.” This is quite an achievement.
But I don’t think that mixing astronomy with cosmology is a good idea.
Bee;
Thanks for the link. That clarifies some things. But I have to read it more carefully later.
island;
I started this blog to bring what I believe to be unscientific elements in modern physics into the legal arena. I would appreciate any comments and help in this regard.
Thank you
Just testing live preview!! It works!!!
I also created this wiki which makes it real easy to comment. Take a look.
It seems that you can even rate the comments!
Well, I’m certainly in no position to knock a guy for tilting at windmills, as long as it’s for a *real* cause, so can you start with Lenny Susskind, since he says that ID theory is going to get a big boost if the multiverse fails. Now, how can that be science?… Is the multiverse science? He’s also got Richard Dawkins saying that the universe “appears designed”, too, so somebody needs to put these quacks out of the business quickly.
And while you’re at it, can you please retroactively sue every scientist or their family who ever said that the universe is infinite?
Oh yeah… there’s this guy at Harvard, Lubmos Monstrosity, or something like that… well, PLEASE send the science police right away, and don’t even make bail an option…
… lol
Hello Bee,
Thanks for the Pluto example. It may not be important what you name the object Pluto but it is important how you classify it. If astronomers used the definition
Pluto = planet = comet = star
this would cause confusion.
Regarding CMB and its relation to the unobservable part: I believe that what is called Big Bang belongs to the dark area in my black and white picture. Is this true?
CMB belongs to the white area.
Also I believe that cosmologists extract information about BB from CMB. This may be the source of my misunderstanding.
Can you help clarify this? It appears very simple but my assumptions may be wrong.
If BB is in the unknown region how does CMB contain info about BB?
Thanks
Hello island:
Part of the problem is that there is no independent entity which regulates the academic physics industry. For instance, there is no precise definition of what an experiment is. The license of a lawyer can be revoked if his practice fails to give the quality of service he is supposed to supply to his constituency.
In academic physics there is no standard of evidence. The license of an academic physicist is given for life. Therefore, physicists claim that physics is an experimental science and every experiment is duplicated and verified by hostile parties before being filed as a proper experiment. But they never do that. They make some measurements and call it experiment by the authority of the authors.
Your comment shows how difficult and import it is to choose the right parties. I don’t know who the parties should be. I believe that instead of individuals a corporate entity should be chosen as the defendant.
I am not sure about the subject either. It must be at the fundamental level and it must be a case that will hold in court.
Thanks for your comment.
I was actually only joking, but I’ve often said that there should be a rule that keeps speculative and potentially crackpot papers out of the arXiv archive until and unless they can be backed up. The argument that usually get back is that this would stifle the creative process, which is also a valid point, so I really don’t know what the answer is, although I can certainly sympathize.
The term, “string cosmology”, comes to mind, especially since Lenny and Richard’s observations make clear that the universe is observed to be strongly anthropically constrained until somebody proves DEFINITIVELY otherwise with a valid ToE, or at the very least, a proven tested theory of quantum gravity.
Yet, who besides John Wheeler, me, and Paul Davies would ever admit this… FACT?
I agree. Why stifle creativity.
My issue is with claiming that physics is an exact science where experiments are duplicated and verified before entering the literature and then in practice not enforcing this rule. This would be considered fraud in regulated industries.
Thanks for your other comments as well. I don’t know enough on those subjects to comment. My focus seems to be more on Newton since most of the ills of modern physics can be traced to the unquestioning belief in Newton’s ancient authority.
Hi Pioneer,
Regarding CMB and its relation to the unobservable part: I believe that what is called Big Bang belongs to the dark area in my black and white picture. Is this true?
You should read what you’ve written. How can we know? I don’t care very much what you believe or don’t, that’s not how science is done.
In academic physics there is no standard of evidence. The license of an academic physicist is given for life. Therefore, physicists claim that physics is an experimental science and every experiment is duplicated and verified by hostile parties before being filed as a proper experiment. But they never do that. They make some measurements and call it experiment by the authority of the authors.
I repeat what I’ve said before, you are making completely unjustified accusations. Copy and paste is a great thing, so here’s what I’ve written before
“In fact, most physical societies have an ethical codex. E.g. the German Physical Society (DPG) calls it ‘Verhaltenskodex’ and it contains points like experiments have to be reproducible, that publications have to properly state experimental and theoretical methods used, it addresses things like conflicts of interest, authorship of publications, etc. I am not sure whether the APS has a similar codex, but at least they have some statements including Guidelines for Professional Conduct, about the question What is science, or the Policy on Equal Professional Opportunity.”
Best,
B.
Bee wrote: You should read what you’ve written. How can we know? I don’t care very much what you believe or don’t, that’s not how science is done.
Hi Bee,
Thanks for your comment and warning. I agree that the word “believe” must be removed from scientific discourse.
So I searched my blog and removed all instances of the word “believe.” This increased scientific content of my blog in one part per million. I don’t know how much that is, but it is interesting to realize that you can actually increase science content by removing stuff. Like if physicists removed the decorative symbols they write in order to cancel to save some dead physicist’s authority the scientific content of physics would increase million fold.
While at it, I also searched arxiv.org — that great depository of physics papers — for the word “believe.” This is the message I got written in bold red letters:
“Your query resulted in too many hits, only 1000 hits are being displayed. These are not necessarily the 1000 most recent papers. We recommend that you try a more specific search.”
Since I agree with you that science is not done by belief, I believe, (oops, strike that word!) most of my confidence in arxiv.org as a scientific depository of scientific papers written by great theoretical physicists have diminished a lot.
So many believers among physicists!
But as I was browsing arxiv.org I found some interesting papers and I read them. So I thank you for that. In fact, there is no reason for alarm. People mostly use “believe” as I have used it, that is, they mean, “we did some research, and here it is, we are writing about it, and we believe it is true, what do you think?”
Thus, like this author, I don’t think she meant to degrade science by using the word “believe.”
By the way I also saw this paper of yours where you write about symmetry.
Previously I wrote that symmetry is a design concept. Physicists appropriated this concept from designers and superimposed a higher level language on top of it in order to study symmetry.
Why do you think symmetry is a physics concept and not a design concept?
Why do I need to study 25 years of physics in order to study nature by using the concept of symmetry? I can do that now without knowing any physics.
For instance you write:
“The role of symmetries in nature has marked the progress of physics during the last centuries. The use of symmetries has proven to be powerful tool like no other, underlying General Relativity (GR), leading to the discovery of anti-particles and the establishment of the quark model.”
I am sure this is true. But using symmetry in its most fundamental form without the additional high level language of physics would have led to this same discoveries faster.
I would appreciate if you have any comments on this. I put the same question here as well if it is easier to comment.
Thanks again. I find your comments helpful and inspirational and I learn a lot from them.
Why do you think symmetry is a physics concept and not a design concept?
I think symmetry has its place in art and design as well as in physics. See also The beauty of it all
Previously I wrote that symmetry is a design concept. Physicists appropriated this concept from designers and superimposed a higher level language on top of it in order to study symmetry.
Why do I need to study 25 years of physics in order to study nature by using the concept of symmetry? I can do that now without knowing any physics.
Im not sure I’d agree on physicists appropriated this concept from designers. Symmetry has been a principle in science for longer than there has been a profession called ‘designers’. Of course you can study nature without having an education in physics. The question is, will you be able to make quantitative statements. How do you compute the Lambshift without knowing any physics by using symmetry as a ‘design concept’. I’m not saying maths is inevitable, but it’s just proven to be a very useful tool, and so it’s the language in which theoretical physicists speak. Physics is a hard science. It makes predictions, it measures, it computes, it models the way the universe works. Of course there are the philosophical questions that are part of the job, but that’s not it. The task begins at the point where you try to formulate your thoughts such that they are quantitatively accessible, testable, verifiable.
Also, I’m not saying symmetry is necessarily THE right way to go, but it’s worked on many occasions to help us understand nature, so imo it’s a useful concept.
Seems to me that symmetry is what it’s ALL about, alfie…
Bee wrote:
This is wishful thinking. This is propaganda. Academic physics is polemical philosophy. The word physics itself is undefined. “Hard science” is a meaningless word. Since when “reading the mind of god” has been hard science? Since when computing to extreme precision the density of the universe before the universe existed is considered hard science? These are the kinds of computations and predictions (scenarios) that physicists make.
Island wrote:
I don’t understand what this means. Too general to make sense. But what physicists call symmetry is proportionality. See for instance here