Total Knowledge
Posted on: May 18, 2007 - 8:31am
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Total Knowledge
First let me apologize if this topic turns out to already exist in a thread. I am new and there is just so many threads I gave up looking.
I am curious to know your opinion on whether or not humanity can ever know everything about the universe.
If, given an unlimited and uninterupted amount of time, could humanity's collective knowledge come to encompass the totality of the universe, on every level, micro and macro?
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If you mean knowing everything what's going on in the universe, like what's every creature on every planet doing at the moment, then no. You'd have to be omnipresent, but we all know that omnipresence is impossible.
But if you mean 100% understanding of physics, and other such sciences explaining how our universe works, I say yes.
I put "our" in bold, because if the multiverse theory is right, and there is an infinite number of universes, then I'm not sure we'd have enough time to check them all out.
Love-Rich,I think so as well. Lets talk about knowing the totality of something else, now. An apple, for instance. If one were to know the totality of an apple, every aspect of the apple to its literal core, and one had access to the necessary ingredients. the right number of electrons, elements, and all the other scientific 'stuff,' do you think one could recreate an apple? Not grow a new one, or clone one that already exists, but take base materials and organize their structure in such a way that an apple is formed?
I have to agree with love-rich for the most part. However, I think it'll take an extremely long time to be able to gather all the information. And even then, this universe will always be changing, so I'm not sure if it'll ever be 100% but I imagine we could get it pretty close.
If god takes life he's an indian giver
As of now we cannot do that yet. You have to remember that the way cells replicate and organize themselves in multicellular organisms....is due to many processes that go on within each of those cells..such as cell signaling especially during development. Each cell send specific signals at various times to tell other cells what to do, in short that is how organization into multicellular organisms happen. we couldn't just gather all the elements of an apple put them together and make an apple. It would require biological processes...not just a simple putting together of elements.
But we can clone, take a stem cell of an apple and turn that into an apple, that is possible. But the prepackaged DNA is what gives the signals to form that single stem cell into an apple.
Now could we develop artificial cells with predetermined DNA sequences...I don't know....I'm sure people may be working on something along those lines.
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Larry,
Currently, what I propse is not possible, but under the assumption of unlimited and uninterupted time I would argue that to piece together an apple at its most base levels would not be a complex task.
I would go so far as to say that given unlimited and uninterupted time and an availablity of resources it would not be a difficult task to piece together an entire universe. At least, one within a managable sphere of space.
Jane,Since we are just talking hypotheticals anyways, would you say that if you were willing to concede that we could get pretty close to a complete understanding now, at our current level of scientific understanding the known universe, then say, after a million years of uninterupted scientific research into a complete understanding of the universe et al, a person in that time may say that 'at this rate it would be entirely possible to gather a total knowledge of the universe if we continue on with an unlimited amount of uninterupted time to continue our research.'?
Okay, so that is way out there in the realm of, "so whaddya think about that?" nevertheless, what do you think about that?
LeftofLarry covered one possibilty. Here's another... You probably ment something more like what LeftofLarry wrote about and not this, but still, what you talk about sounds a lot like TELEPORTATION from Star Trek to me, just without destroying the original once the copy is reconstructed.
Scientists are already working on teleportation, so who knows... Science fiction often comes true, maybe with nanotechnology, quantum computers and other future technologies it will be possible to copy/paste apples.
But once you make a copy machine like that, you probably won't need to know everything about the apple, the copy machine would just look at the apple and recreate it as it is, atom for atom....... (?)
Hey, maybe there will be a way to predict the changes in the universe, too... Add those parametres to the eqations, and voilá, the changing universe is not a problem anymore!
Yes, I'm an optimist, I know.
Rich,
Assuming you had the raw materials available.All I am really getting at here is if one can concede that it is possible to recreate a universe then one must also necessaily concede the possability that this universe was created as well.
I think we're all here aware of the possibility that it was created, but it being created by a superintelligent, omnipotent, all-knowing ghost makes muuuuccchhh less sense then any explanation that science can offer today.
Maybe we'll be able to create real new universes in a laboratory in the future (not so near future, since it would require huuuge amounts of energy), and let's say we create life in one of them and let's say we make these creatures in our own image... Would it make sense to threaten these creatures with eternal suffering in a lake of fire if they don't believe in us? Maybe a psycho scientist in the far future does that... - would it be fair to call this creator "all-loving"? Also, would it make sense to claim he's eternal?
Anyway, if there really is a creator, the gods of the different scriptures we have on Earth, still can't be possible. Someone should either fix the scriptures and stop claiming that our creator is superintelligent, all-loving, all-knowing, omnipresent, eternal,... or totally abandon these irrationalities.
Well, since sicence can say absolutely nothing on who or what happened at any time before the big bang, making any conclusions on the subject requires a leap of faith. And one leap of faith is no different than any other.
The atheist war is not with religion or God, its with corrupt men who twist sound ideas to their own ends.
Yikes, that sounds preachy even to me.
What I am trying to say, is that religion has played a vastly positive and important role in the formation of human society and I have seen no evidence of any religion being harmful to society until MEN, corrupt little powerhungry bitches (for lack of a better term) take religion, dogmatize, codify, canonize and sanctify their interpretations of it. But its not the religion or even these presumable gods faults, all blame lies squarely in the hearts of man.
I like the debates on this site, but trying to rid man's mind of god is a futile task. The belief in supernatural ghosts is not the problem, its the loyalty to religion that should be your main target.
Kill the church and keep the gods, what does it matter anyway, its not like the gods are gonna get pissed and battle you. Why make war on your enemies impotent allies, just kill the enemy. the church.
Why is having a conclusion on it necessary? If we find out eventually, so be it. I see no need to fabricate or default to an answer I'm uncertain of.
Politically, it has only to do with the influence of religious people. But I would argue that there are only religious people to account for religion; only an idea passed between people, as opposed to something that exists in its own right.
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There are benevolent and malevolent expressions of the widely varying concepts of religion, but I see little justification to distinguish between the corrupt influence of a few people, and the essence of the religion itself, when that essence was described only by more people still.
I disagree based on personal experience.
[...]
Total knowledge isn't a concept I've thought of much. When you consider the limitations of human perception alone with regard to, say, the electromagnetic spectrum, or to frequencies of sound, you realize our biology has developed favoring priorities like survival, not answering existential questions.
I don't think it's any coincidence religion speaks to the "big questions" about life, but it doesn't offer real answers. I think holding out for real answers (which are gotten through research and testing, and in spite of human limitations) means getting used to having fewer of them than religions glibly afford.
What you are proposing is that infinite regress provides evidence that there is a God, that conclusion is only accepting a stopping point in the philosophical debate. Carried out if everything must come from something (infinite regress) than God itself must too come from something. I would not go down that road because I contend that given infinite time humans will not be able to comprehend the construct of time and the universe. We are biological creatures not that different than the common house pet. If my dog is given infinite time he will never comprehend the functioning of a DVD player because it is beyond his mental capacity. We humans have our limits of comprehension too. The idea of God is a way to limit our view of the universe in order to comprehend it. That does not make the perception that there is a God correct. Nor does that disprove a God, but leads us back to infinite regress and if there is a God it too must have a God. Perhaps a few million years of evolution will lead to a human like being capable of understanding time and the universe, but for the current animal named human it is beyond our abilities.