Jul 10, 2023 02:52 AM
https://youtu.be/OV9MnAZLmMQ
VIDEO EXCERPTS (Matt O'Dowd): Physics is the business of figuring out the structure of the world. So are our brains. But sometimes physics comes to conclusions that are in direct conflict
[...] In the “absolute” space and time view, championed by Newton, space exists on its own, with no regard to any objects or entities, and time also exists, its passage governed by a cosmic clock.
At the time, this was a hefty proposition. Many philosophers and scientists, such as Leibniz and Descartes considered space and time as “relational”, as a network of distances between objects or succession of events.
Ultimately, we saw that Newton’s pure vision of absolute space and time couldn’t be right.
But if the dimensions don’t ultimately “look like” our impression of them, what are they? Does our mental experience of space and time resemble the world external to our subjective experience?
Newton clearly thought that there must be a very close correspondence. Leibniz on the other hand thought that we build our experience of space through distilling positional relations that are inherent to the connections between objects, rather than space being a standalone container for those objects.
Another prodigious thinker who thought similarly was Immanuel Kant. He initially took Newton’s side on the reality of space and time, but after what he calls a Copernican revolution in his thinking, he came to believe that space and time are not physically real but are constructs of the mind--inborn principles by which we organize the world.
Last time we turned to Einstein as the ultimate tie-breaker. In his essay about the problem of space, Einstein wrote that “concepts of space and time are free creations of the human intelligence, tools of thought, which are to serve the purpose of bringing experiences into relation with each other.”
Uh. OK, so we don’t just believe Einstein because he’s Einstein. But we sure don’t dismiss something Albert says without thinking very hard about it.
So, are space and time, absolute and fundamental, or relational and conceptual?
There might be new clues in the mechanisms by which brains manage space and time... [long interval that ventures into brain science follows]
[...] OK, let’s regroup. We started all of this by asking if the space and time of our minds corresponds to physically real entities. Some pretty smart people, including Einstein, thought that perception of space and time are mental constructs. Now let me be very clear; they were not saying that the external world isn’t real.
They believed that there’s something out there that has an independent existence to us. That something exhibits regularities that our brains partition into space and time. Leibnitz, Kant, and Einstein felt that those regularities only take on our familiar experience of space and time within our minds.
[...] So does the neuroscience we learned agree with them? We can’t answer that directly, but we can try to say whether our brains are capable of such a feat. And the answer to that looks to be a yes.
[...] The fundamentality and primacy of space and time may stem from the fact that we have no alternative way of partitioning our experience. Many scientists are accepting the demise of spacetime as a fundamental entity.
In future episodes in this series we’ll get back to the implications of this in physics. What fundamental structures and processes give rise to external regularities that our brain represents as spacetime?
What's your brain's role in creating space & time?
VIDEO EXCERPTS (Matt O'Dowd): Physics is the business of figuring out the structure of the world. So are our brains. But sometimes physics comes to conclusions that are in direct conflict
[...] In the “absolute” space and time view, championed by Newton, space exists on its own, with no regard to any objects or entities, and time also exists, its passage governed by a cosmic clock.
At the time, this was a hefty proposition. Many philosophers and scientists, such as Leibniz and Descartes considered space and time as “relational”, as a network of distances between objects or succession of events.
Ultimately, we saw that Newton’s pure vision of absolute space and time couldn’t be right.
But if the dimensions don’t ultimately “look like” our impression of them, what are they? Does our mental experience of space and time resemble the world external to our subjective experience?
Newton clearly thought that there must be a very close correspondence. Leibniz on the other hand thought that we build our experience of space through distilling positional relations that are inherent to the connections between objects, rather than space being a standalone container for those objects.
Another prodigious thinker who thought similarly was Immanuel Kant. He initially took Newton’s side on the reality of space and time, but after what he calls a Copernican revolution in his thinking, he came to believe that space and time are not physically real but are constructs of the mind--inborn principles by which we organize the world.
Last time we turned to Einstein as the ultimate tie-breaker. In his essay about the problem of space, Einstein wrote that “concepts of space and time are free creations of the human intelligence, tools of thought, which are to serve the purpose of bringing experiences into relation with each other.”
Uh. OK, so we don’t just believe Einstein because he’s Einstein. But we sure don’t dismiss something Albert says without thinking very hard about it.
So, are space and time, absolute and fundamental, or relational and conceptual?
There might be new clues in the mechanisms by which brains manage space and time... [long interval that ventures into brain science follows]
[...] OK, let’s regroup. We started all of this by asking if the space and time of our minds corresponds to physically real entities. Some pretty smart people, including Einstein, thought that perception of space and time are mental constructs. Now let me be very clear; they were not saying that the external world isn’t real.
They believed that there’s something out there that has an independent existence to us. That something exhibits regularities that our brains partition into space and time. Leibnitz, Kant, and Einstein felt that those regularities only take on our familiar experience of space and time within our minds.
[...] So does the neuroscience we learned agree with them? We can’t answer that directly, but we can try to say whether our brains are capable of such a feat. And the answer to that looks to be a yes.
[...] The fundamentality and primacy of space and time may stem from the fact that we have no alternative way of partitioning our experience. Many scientists are accepting the demise of spacetime as a fundamental entity.
In future episodes in this series we’ll get back to the implications of this in physics. What fundamental structures and processes give rise to external regularities that our brain represents as spacetime?
What's your brain's role in creating space & time?
