(Dec 23, 2022 05:28 PM)C C Wrote: https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/...s-nothing/
KEY TAKEAWAYS: Most of us, when we talk about nothing, refer to a state where the thing we're referring to doesn't yet exist.
Yes, that's true. When I open a box and say "there's nothing in there", I mean no physical contents of the expected sort. It doesn't mean that air isn't in the box, let alone something more abstract like spatial extension.
Quote:But absolute nothingness, where space, time, and/or the laws of physics don't exist, is only a philosophical construct, without physical meaning.
"Matter", "mass", "force", let alone more abstract things like "truth" or "logical implication" are all "philosophical constructs" when we get down to it. Whether or not they have "physical meaning" seems to depend on what the phrase 'physical meaning' means. (Let alone what "meaning" means.)
As much as an astrophysics PhD might feel that he's above all that, he isn't. Physicists are still natural philosophers, even if they don't like to admit it. It's impossible to avoid if we hope to speak intelligently about anything.
He does have a point though, that when physicists talk about nothing, oftentimes they aren't talking about the nothing that philosophers are talking about when they talk about the metaphysical question of reality appearing
ex nihilo, out of nothing -- the question of why reality exists in the first place. The physicists are just talking about a more complex or emergent state arising from a more fundamental state of the sort that they believe in and recognize. They fail to even address the more profound question of why the most fundamental realities that they accept exist at all.
Which raises the inevitable complaint, why do so many physicists (it's always physicists) speak (to laypeople primarily) as if they are addressing the traditional metaphysical question? Why do they pretend that the age old question has been solved, and they are the ones who have solved it? That's something very close to intellectual dishonesty in my opinion.
Quote:Does the Universe truly create something from nothing? That depends on what your definition of nothing is, and which of the four definitions you're using. (MORE - details)
COVERED:
1.) A condition where the raw ingredients to create your “something” didn’t exist.
What if your "something" is
anything, anything that can truthfully be said to exist? That would seem to exclude the possibility of
any kind of raw materials for anything, since the raw materials would be included in the "something".
Quote:2.) Nothingness is the void of empty space.
Then why not call it 'vacuum'? Why call it 'nothing'?
Quote:3.) Nothingness as the ideal lowest-energy state possible for spacetime.
Which certainly implies that vacuum is
not nothing, if spacetime metrics can be applied to it, if it possesses energy states, and if there's something that governs what energy states it can possibly have. It sounds to me like there's a lot of rather complex something there, just that it's more abstract than the matter or particles of a cruder sort of materialism.
Quote:4.) Nothingness only occurs when you remove the entire Universe and the laws that govern it.
Yes,
that's nothing in the most profound sense.
If physicists want to talk about something else, fine. But they should be careful to explain when they are doing so. They mustn't try to mislead the public.