On 5/18/2014 4:23 PM, LizR wrote:
On 17 May 2014 11:05, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:
On 5/16/2014 2:41 PM, LizR wrote:
On 16 May 2014 17:14, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>>
wrote:
On 5/15/2014 10:04 PM, freqflyer07281972 wrote:
So do you think there is some merit in Kauffman's conclusions? Do you
think it
is possible to reason about "the Void"? Or meaningful? Or useful?
Sure, it's possible to reason about anything. Whether you can arrive at
something useful is an open question - one can but try. I like the
late Norm
Levitt's remark, "What is there? EVERYTHING! So what isn't there?
NOTHING!"
Or one could paraphrase Russell Standish - What is there? NOTHING! - Which
is
EVERYTHING!
I like Russell's version, which creates more of a /frisson/. Although I
assume
Levitt is claiming the existence of a multiverse (EVERYTHING implies that
of course).
I doubt that, Norm was rather a fan of Bohmian QM.
I had the chance to talk to Jim Al-Kalili at the Auckland Writers Festival and I was
surprised to find his favourite interpretation of QM is also the Bohm one, which hasn't
been coming up much in Max Tegmark's polls of physicists recently. (I believe it's the
multiverse but with one universe "more real" than all the others, or something similar).
Obviously I didn't have much to go on with Mr Levitt, just the quote you supplied, but
ISTM "What is there? EVERYTHING!" could be taken to mean that everything that can exist
exists (i.e. Everett). An alternative reading is that he is saying he thinks the
universe is infinite, which also gives us everything that can exist. I'm not sure how
else one can interpret "EVERYTHING" especially when it's emphasised like that.
You're reading to much into it. Norm wasn't involved the everythingism of Tegmark and
Marchal. He was making a tongue-in-cheek paraphrase of W. V. O. Quine's, "Nonbeing must
in some sense be, otherwise what is it that there is not?" Norm was interested in
defending the existence of a Platonic realm of mathematics, but one that "existed" in a
different way than the material world.
Brent
"The duty of abstract mathematics, as I see it, is precisely to
expand our capacity for hypothesizing possible ontologies."
--- Norm Levitt
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