The switch from finity to infinity

PSI Blog 20210726 The switch from finity to infinity

 

Two questions from George Coyne win the prize for this week:

 

“Glenn,

 

Do you recall when you discovered that there was no finite universe?

 

In my own case, I do not remember what age I was. I am just glad I came up with the realization that there is a notfinity process of matter-in-motion— which led to the title of my book, Notfinity Process— in place of a concept of the universe as an object.”

 

[GB: Thanks George. I have been asked that many times. I keep half-way decent notes, so it seems to have occurred before May 29, 1978. Before that, I was a “Big Banger” like almost all scientists were at the time. Of course, I got a “C” in Physics 1a in 1962 when I had so much difficulty in believing there were 4 dimensions as taught by our regressive physics prof at UW. Madison. Summer semester I took Physics 1b from an 83-yr old prof who taught us the last half of Sears and Zemansky, which was mostly Newtonian. I got an A. The lesson for me was: It is extremely difficult to learn much of anything if you don’t agree with the basic assumptions being espoused.

 

Later, in a soil science course taught by my Quaker prof, I was assigned to read Whitehead’s “Science and the Modern World.” This I pretty much could not make heads or tails of, thinking I was too dumb to understand philosophy. Much later, my reread showed how much of a mess it was, being an adoration of regressive physics and its religious assumptions.

 

I never could get the hang of the universe exploding out of nothing. In early 1978 I remember my reformist attempt to imagine photons leaving the edge of the universe to combine to form matter once again—anything to handle the supposed universal expansion into the perfectly empty space that surrounded the supposed finite universe. That attempt used my belief in Euclidean dimensions even though it also used Einstein’s magical massless photon concept I was yet to examine.

 

To see more about my conversion be sure to read the details, particularly about the discovery of univironmental determinism, in:

 

PSI Blog 20190501 The Discovery of Infinity ]

   

“What effect do you think this way of viewing reality will have on scientific progress once it is adopted by the majority of scientists?”

 

[GB: The neat thing about science is that it is univironmental: Whatever we think about the universe continually must be adjusted by our experiences with it. Collectively, these experiences only can increase in number and intensity. That is why science is progressive. Sure, there are regressive periods like the one engendered by relativity, but that was only one century—nothing like the 10 centuries comprising the Dark Ages.

 

True, most scientists, like most folks, get to experiment with and observe only tiny bits of the universe. To consider all of the observable portion is a hugh task, as I reiterated in "The Scientific Worldview." Undergoing the Last Cosmological Revolution will be a momentous turning point for humanity. Imagine: No Big Bang, no beginning, no ending, no heaven, no hell. The contradictions resulting from the philosophy underlying those dreams and imaginings continue to pileup. But, as always, the truth will prevail. The removal of contradictions is as inexorable as their production.]