What is the nature of the universe??

Who?

42

and the question?

I've read all the HitcherHJkers guide books, mostly to find out what the uqestion was. It got a bit wierd at the end though, and I got confused. Wiki, I think, is needed

The hitchhikers books are shite - I read the first one and thought "this is supposed to be funny?". Nerds.

Multiverse theories sound kinda interesting but it all just gets a bit mad to be honest.

universe infinite - currently unknown, maybe it is and maybe it ain't

multiple universes - currently unknown maybe there are and maybe there ain't

intelligent life elsewhere - current estimate of number of galaxies: 125,000,000,000 +.

each may have 1,000,000,000 solar type systems - each with possibly habitable planets.

basic constituents of life as we know it are common throughout galaxies.

however conditions allowing the evolution of life forms to a stage that one might call intelligent seem to preclude a great many planets with highly developed life forms, unless some have managed interstellar exploration and colonisation.

another problem - given the age of the universe it is quite possible that intelligent life forms have evolved and then become extinct and all trace has been lost on some planets, and we'll never know anything about them.

That it's not infinitely large or has infinite mass. Obviously I'm no expert and can't evaluate the data myself that's the general impression I've got from popular science reading the past few years. It would also make sense from the point of view that if there was a big bang in which the universe was all in one small spot, then it expanded at a finite rate over a finite period of time, you'd think it'd be finite.

If you mean are there an infinite number of other universes in a multiverse, well I don't know. Obviously there's no evidence for it, maybe there never could be.

Er, I don't think that's quite what the theory says...

Re: life, see malfunction - also of course another issue is that all galaxies are flying away from each other so fast that in all likelihood we'll never meet any even if they did exist. Though you'd think that if teleportation could be made to work on a large scale (it can work on a tiny scale now) that some other intelligent lifeform would've developed it and put markers about the place for to let their existence be known at least. And as none have been seen then maybe either we just haven't seen them, large scale teleportation is impossible (or is into places without constructed "receivers" or whatever), or there is no super-advanced intelligent life. But none of them really bother me.

No reason, we just happen to be by chance, permitted due to certain properies the universe has.

BTW a woman's already paid and been in space, an Iranian.

By universe, do you mean everything that can possibly exist? Some people do, iirc.

you could ask what the nature of Being is - what grounds the existence of all particular things. Apparently the Flesh is a prototype of this, although its basically undefinable.

Is Being (assuming that it only one indivisible process) matter, or mind, or neither (e.g. Spinoza)?

A problem with Marx's materialism as I see it, is that the mind is thought to be a mirror of matter. But a mirror is totrally passive, it does not interact with the object it reflects. I find it strange that Marx was a practical philosophy but thought that the mind was not active and *involved* with objects.

The universe is a concept and although it is so large as to be in practise infinite because it is expanding it is therefore limited in size.

This requires the empty space into which the universe expand to be defined as not part of the universe.

Er, that doesn't really make sense. It can't be both infinite and limited.

Well no, it means it's not empty space.

all of which is basically impossible to comprehend, infinity, nothingness and the like.

Thats a very crude understanding of Marx, I mean i'm not saying he never implied such a shit theory in some of his work e.g. The German Ideology, but at the same time his other writings deconstruct such reductionism.

how about rephrasing the thread title in line with vaneigem with explicit reference to everyday life? like "What is the nature of the universe??, cos i was wasted last night, the boss is a prick and i really fancy that girl on the bus"

Wait until you get Orwell'ed over there on that island of yours. The prophecy was written long ago.

I haven't read much Marx, I admit that that was from a philosophy encyclopedia.

Well, I've read *a bit*. Capital, a couple of introductions, CM and GI (-maybe. I'm not prepared to admit that I haven't, but not sure that I have). But I don't remenber him deconstructing materialist ontology at any point. I haven't read anything "radical" in months.

well his whole problem with Feuerbach is that it lacks a dynamism.

Anyway here's a good quote,

Yeah. I guess I just didn't/couldn't systematize it.

almost cartesian that one really

Yeah, the entry is written by Allen Wood. I liked his book.

Hi

Jealous of their perception. Whatever visited them came from within themselves, it wasn’t induced by studying the physics of the universe but their perception. The perspective they obtained may be the one you held all along.

The meaning of existence can’t be supplied by information about the nature of the universe, religion or ideology. It can only be defined by living.

As to the nature of the universe, this or that model has only as much value as the goals it achieves. Given they predict actual behaviour equally well, two contradictory models are simultaneously correct.

Love

LR

This thread has literally nothing to do with Marx. Or philosophy.

Sorry.

There is no Unified Field Theory yet, LW- it is something that physicists have been yearning for for a long time, but as yet there is no real candidate. I have no idea what you mean by

I suspect you are using concepts that don't belong in the discussion, if you know what I mean. Like asking whether a flower can love..

Lazy Riser,

1/ which models are you talking about
2/ what predictions do they make? The statement above is only true in a non-trivial way if the models make testable predictions about the same events.

Ha ha don't apologise, it's true, they don't. Especially fucking Marx, I mean what did he know?

LW:

Er, well no it can't actually. That as a concept makes no sense, as pingtiao outlined ("Like asking whether a flower can love").

So let me get this straight, talking about something in a way which is sensible, rational and connected to reality is "onanistic" - wanking - but talking about things in way that make no sense, and are just meaningless like ascribing human characteristics to non-human theoretical things like a form or energy is, what I guess non-wanking?

*Cough*

I remember some people recommendimng his book a while ago.

Clearly the word "Being" scares you. Now I'm sorry.