Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: Mad Mark on 01/08/2006 19:30:36
-
Does our universe contain effect without any apparent cause.
I ask this in one of my mad moments, because I was thinking about how the Universe started with an effect without any known cause and we still today have dark matter and dark energy effects that still elude us as to their cause.Is the cause locked up in its own time and only allows the effect to show.
Is reality playing tricks with us.
Tomorrow lies outside our universe without it there would be no tomorrow.
-
The issue of cause and effect is fundamentally about the ability to predict the future. Science is not about proving absolute truths, it is about finding patterns in the past that allow us to accurately predict the future based upon our knowledge of the present. To the extent that we can predict the future, we must presume and show cause. To the extent that cause is absent, we cannot see patterns that will allow prediction of the future.
Since quantum mechanics deals with uncertainty, it inevitable demands that there be a limit to out ability to predict the future, and thus a limit to causality.
George
-
I love these kind of questions....Hmm..perhaps I would not love them if I could actually understand them though !!
Is there any way (perhaps in the quantum world) that an effect could be witnessed first before the cause ?
Men are the same as women, just inside out !
-
quote:
Originally posted by neilep
Is there any way (perhaps in the quantum world) that an effect could be witnessed first before the cause ?
Then how would you define cause and effect?
Is not the nature of cause and effect that cause is a precursor of effect, and if it happens after the effect, how can it be a precursor?
The nature of cause and effect is bound up with our view of time. If we could see all of time at once, and would not have to wait to see an effect after a cause, then we could not tell cause from effect, we could only tell that two things were linked. It is only because we see one half of the linked events before the other half, that we say the first half caused the second half.
George
-
I thought you would say such a thing as I was thinking to myself then would that then make the effect...the cause !
How about if the event we were looking at was in fact moving back wards in time whereas we were observing it, in our normal time ?
Men are the same as women, just inside out !
-
quote:
Originally posted by neilep
How about if the event we were looking at was in fact moving back wards in time whereas we were observing it, in our normal time ?
But cause and effect must always be with respect to our own perception of time, not in the perception of time of the subject.
Ofcourse, more interesting is how would you judge that something was moving backwards in time?
One can ofcourse derive equations that reverse the sense of time, and so infer that the mathematical model of that object assumes it is moving backwards in time (I'm sure there was speculation on here not so long ago if anti-matter might be mathematically modelled as ordinary matter but moving backwards in time).
Nonetheless, mathematics aside, what is time, and what is the direction of time. Time is that which we remember, that which we experience now, and that which we are not yet aware of. This is the past, the present, and the future. Cause and effect is to look at our memories, and out experiences, and from that to predict into the unknown.
Ofcourse, a consequence of this is that if one knew everything, and nothing was unknown, then there could be no future. Equally, if one knew nothing, then everything is the future, and nothing is the past or the present.
Thus, what matters in an object, in terms of the direction of time, is what is it that one knows about that object, and what is yet unknown (unknown is not the same as unpredictable, only that it is not part of one's experience of events, and can only be predicted by modelling using other known events).
George
-
Rules of Causality are:
Local, Sequential, Repeatable, Negated Alternatives, Correlation
and Correlation is the Probability of Causation
(c) B_Sharp
... chew on that fat! [:)]