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Articles Section Article 3 Understanding The Nature Of Existence
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There is no god - of that there is no doubt whatsoever. Neither are there any singularities (a god by any other name) etc. Nevertheless there has to be an answer, or explanation, to the question of existence. There must be some way of achieving a deeper understanding of the nature of existence, other than childish make-believe. We may never, and most likely will never, fully understand existence in its totality and vastness but the fact is we are here - WE EXIST - and although we are only a tiny speck in the vastness of the universe, and can only experience a fraction of all that exists - the 'reality' of our existence is the same as that anywhere else in the universe. Existence IS and so it must actually 'make sense' - it must have a rational explanation. So rather than expecting existence to conform to our level of understanding we must search for and find an explanation which actually fits the reality. We must come up with a more reasonable and logical explanation - or at least (at last) dismiss all the tribal, illogical and conforting childish presumptions (wishful thinking) - to feebly grasp an understanding of something which is truly amazing. Please excuse my terrible phrasing and 'mis'use of words. Mea culpernicus maxplankimus! Magic? They say that god is dead and that it was the scientists who killed HER! Those who maintain that viewpoint haven't listened to the scientific explanations regarding existence and the big bang etc. The scientists may have killed the notion of god; the idea of elephants on the back of turtles; even perhaps the wicked witch from the north; but they are still human (believe it or not) and they like to have their little stories, with their comforting make-believe and 'scientific' deities; with all their anomalies, singularities, peculiarities, things-that-go-bump-in-the-night, transmogrifications (to misquote a Christian belief) and all the other collective magical explanations of the universe which can be collectively termed 'wishful thinking'. The term singularity is used by scientists when describing the big-bang - when suddenly, out of nothing, existence came into being. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that this is pure mumbo-jumbo. THERE IS NO LOGIC TO THAT. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever. One may as well give up investigating and say that god exists. Then they even think in terms of existence coming from nothing when matter and anti-matter 'split' into matter and anti-matter and - listen to just how pathetic this explanation is - there just HAPPENED to be more matter particles than anti-matter particles around after they had annihilated each other! - WOW! . . . . . . . THAT'S science! Scientists in general, and physicists, in particular, have found themselves being imperceptibly driven back towards philosophy on account of the fact that the closer they get to the very basic constituents of existence the more they realise they are looking into the void. There is a very good reason for this as will be seen shortly. Welcome to my explanation of the nature of existence.
To Be Or Not To Be - The Simple Question LOGIC dictates that basically there are only 2 choices as regards existence: a) Everything always existed - was, is and will always be. b) Nothing always existed - never was, isn't and will never be. Any other choice would by implication have to make allowances for some type of mysterious happening 'out of the blue' and should not be considered if one is truly seeking any kind of realistic understanding. To some people the above 2 choices appear to be mutually contradictory but in fact they turn out, in the long run, to be strangly similar - even equivalent.
E=MC2 (Matter IS Energy) Existence, as it is becoming more and more scientifically 'understood', has become so abstract that analogies are the only method left to attempt to explain 'reality'. It is only in the past few years that I came upon the most ideal comparison, or analogy, for the 'energy and existence' explanation. It has turned out to be powerful and strong in logic and yet fairly simple to understand and convey.
Experiment
Question: Did the music exist?
Question: So where is the music now?
Question: How can something which existed a few seconds ago not exist now? Did it really exist? The fact is that the music was only experienced as a series of changes (vibrations) in the air. When the changes (air vibrations) stopped the music stopped (existing). To a certain extent the music never really existed at all!
Explanation If one considers the universe as consisting of physical matter there is no possibility of understanding the nature of existence - there could be no sense to it at all - creation (singularity) of some sort would seem to be the only 'logical' explanation. But if one realises that the universe, and all existence, is energy (force and counter-force ie vibrations, or waves) then we can perceive a system whereby something can give the appearance of existing while not actually being made of anything. It is merely the sequence of changes - over a period of time - which give the appearance of existence of our 'physical' world. If you took a simple sound waveform and examined a small fraction of it, for example, a millionth of a second and studied it you would perceive no music at all for the very fact that the music does not exist as a one-millionth-of-a-second entity. In fact it cannot exist as a one-millionth-of-a-second entity. There ARE changes in that one-millionth-of-a-second section of the sound wave (I presume) but they would be so imperceptable to us that we could not experience them as music. To us - there would be no process (change) - thus there would be no existence - therefore there would be no music. We can go further and say that just as music is made from many apparently different entities, or elements (notes and instruments) with their differing attack, delay, sustain, decay, harmonics, volume etc 'matter' is made from various types of force (wave energy) - they are still only made from the same basic 'element' - a series of changes. A collection of differing waveforms make up a note, a collection of notes make up a chord, a series of notes make up a phrase/melody, a collection of notes and chords and melodies make up a song, or symphony etc. And then you listen to it and enjoy it without realising that it is not made from anything. The total sum of energies was . . . . nothing. You sat through a concert listening to . . . . NOTHING. But it seemed real! . . . It WAS real! - as real as anything else in the universe. Click Wave Example Page which will open a new window which shows the idea of waves and its implications
If I put an old time wind up clock in the freezer and the low temperature happens to slow down the clock because the spring loses some of its tension, because of the cold, I would be a fool to say that time itself slowed down - it was merely the changes in the clock which slowed. There is no such thing as the passage of time (absolute time) - just the sequences of changes. Sticking with the music: if you put on an LP (vinyl) record - the round flat black shiny object with grooves on the surface (for all those who are just too young to have experienced them) and change the speed from 33rpm to 45rpm, or 78rpm or vice versa the song will play faster or slower than the 'normal' speed. I hope all the readers will understand that it is the changes which are faster or slower and not time itself. It is the changes which give us the notion of the passage of time and so any alterations in the speed of changes gives an impression that time itself has either slowed down or speeded up.
Lets go back to the music and for example examine the energy from a snippet of a guitar note - similar to a section within the first half of a sine wave. The snippet, by its very nature, would have to be within a certain subjective arbitrary 'time period' or length. If the snippet happened to be within the first 'positive' section of the wave it would give the appearance of a positive amount of energy in the universe ie it would not have been 'cancelled' (yet) by the negative section of the wave. In other words 'SOMETHING' would actually seem to exist - it would seem as if there is an excess of positive energy in the universe. BUT. Existence is a sequence of changes and COLLECTIVELY they will total zero over the 'fullness of time'. So calculating the energy of the universe NOW can never equal zero. How can we perceive or measure the energy waves at 1 cycle per hundred years? Or 1 cycle per hundred billion years? How can we take into account all the energies in between? I can only presume that ALL 'frequencies' exist (there is no reason to suppose otherwise - SEE NOTE BELOW) - many, if not most, of which cannot be experienced or measured by us humans. At any particular 'point' in time there actually should be an imbalance of energy in the universe. In fact there MUST be an imbalance. Existence is not the 'now' but the PROCESS (over time). When you think about it, the energies that we can actually measure must be a small fraction of the total energies existing in the universe. In a lot of cases we will never be able to measure most of the energies directly but can only come to the conclusion that they exist because of their effect. For example the expanding and accelerating universe demonstrates to me the idea that it is merely a part of a bigger picture (as in the wave page above - a never-ending cycle of existence). We could never measure the wave itself because we are actually in it! - a part of it! So, just as a tiny section of a sound wave would never be able to measure or witness the whole sound wave, all we may manage to do is to understand it in general terms. I must add that this does not necessarily explain ALL the problems with Dark Energy and Dark Matter but it points the way to the fundamental understanding that merely dealing with the 'now' as if it was totally separate from the past and future cannot answer these problems (for example the speed at which the outer stars revolve around galaxies seems to need more matter than what can acutally be measured or guessed at). To a certain extent the Dark Matter problem of a galaxy may only be understood when the full cycle of a galaxy can be fully understood.
Though it may appear that I am now making fun of the man I do not. I can certainly acknowledge and respect the dedication of the man and his search for answers and understanding but loudly proclaim the sad futility of it all. To him it was a logical and 'simple' way to arrive at the very beginning. He needed to have a 'beginning'. The niggling thought which comes to me when I hear of the expanding universe and thus the seemingly logical 'regression' back to a big bang and singularity (not that again!) is summed up by the simple childish drawing consisting of railway lines from the bottom of the page to the centre and the telephone poles with their telephone lines alongside the tracks all converging into a single dot in the middle of the page - if one could only walk far enough into the drawing one would come to the very very start! The big bang may have happened, but only as a part of a cycle of existence. The talk of 'starts' and 'ends' should be left to those who need those comforting thoughts - simple children. To begin to understand existence automatically precludes wishful thinking. There can be no magic, no positive amount of energy, nothing more than the simple equation that all adds up to nothing. . . or everything! In simple terms scientists use the term 'cosmological constant' to describe the fundamental 'force' of the universe. The only logical universal 'constant' would have to be a variable. So, although at present the universe may be expanding, and even accelerating, ultimately it will reverse and all go back to zero and the never-ending cycle of existence. That is the only explanation which seems logical to me.
Take the old example of exploring what exists by banging the table with your fist and saying - "are you telling me that this table doesn't exist?". Strangly this experiment actually agrees with how I see existence. The table which seems so solid and enduring in fact has a very very short existence (life span) in terms of the age of the universe. It is a mere tiny micro-blip in the stream of time. The table only exists as part of a process within the stream of existence. It appears to us to be stable and independent - it seems to us that it IS. We have that viewpoint only because we are confined within our time frame but in the real stream of time it is just part of the process of existence - just as one cycle of a short note in a symphony exists within the symphony. Even think of yourself. You can say - "I am". But maybe you said that 20 years ago, 40 years ago, and will say it in another 10 years from now. Who is the real you? The answer is the you is a process from the day (night) you were concieved to the day you die. Even then you could also include the whole period of the universe before you were conceived (you are made from atoms made from energy which has been part of the universe from the 'start') and to the 'end' of the universe (the energy making up your body now will always exist long after you are dead). So when you say "I am" you should add "temporarily" - AND that goes for the table also. So, if you use either yourself or the table as proof of reality you are actually demonstarating that reality is very very temporary! What kind of reality is that?
Also even though we talk of the NOW if you consider that we are changing all the time it is really a case of two sections to existence - the past and the future - the now doesn't exist at all. It's just the meeting point between the past and the future. What time period is the now? Is it 1,000th of a second? Is it 1,000,000th of a second? It could even be 1,000,000,000,000,000th of a second. In fact the now should only be defined as the smallest time period (cycle) of the fastest frequency that can exist in the universe. I don't know what it is but my guess is that it isn't much!! To all entents and purposes the NOW does NOT exist! Finally, when I first came across a mention of the string theory I said to myself, where have I HEARD that tune before? ....very interesting and so ....so .....strangely familiar!!
Imagine an atom with the nucleus at the centre and electrons orbiting it at some distance from the nucleus. The 'space' between the electrons and the nucleus is made from 'nothing' - it doesn't exist. So imagine the parts of the atom 'floating' in this nothingness. So the edge of the universe is literally the outermost atoms floating in this nothingness - or, to be more exact, the edge of the path of the outermost electron. The 'nothingness' isn't just 'out there' beyond the universe it is also within and between each atom. Every atom - everything that exists - is floating in the nothingness. There is an edge to what exists - there is no edge to the nothingness.
If it were the case that there was an infinite number of changes possible within a wave going from its peak to its trough (and back again) then it seems rational and logical that the wave would actually NEVER get to the trough because an infinite number of changes would take....infinity! So the fact that energy waves CAN get from the peak to the trough confirms these changes must be by discrete and exact amounts. No doubt this page will alter over time but in most cases it will only be to re-phrase some things, with possibly the addition of more ideas as they come to me, but overall the explanation will stay the same.
If you want to contact me to discuss, or to get me to clarify, a specific point, please only do so AFTER reading this carefully. Thank you.
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Last Update : 3rd October 2009
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