We call it "high noon" because of the high star formation rates, but there's still plenty of quenching especially at the "nearer" z (but that's the point, I end up making a lot of figures splitting into four redshift bins of equal comoving space against different metrics so you can kind of "watch" galaxies march towards quiescence under different definitions and with different metrics: sersic n vs. z, axial ratio vs. z, sersic n vs. axial ratio, UVJ in different redshift bins, SFR vs. compactness). I only wish it were possible to more easily cognize a higher dimensional plot so put more of them together in a single plot lol.

I actually haven't had the pleasure to use ANY JWT data even for fun, I've been so busy with CANDELS. :( (They are lovely to look at, though!)

Pleasure to meet you — Astro Cat

I think I remember CANDELS survey going from 1 to 8 z, right? Man, must be daunting trying to consolidate data from the different metrics. So many galaxies in that survey to sift through as well, like hundreds of thousands?

Always great to hear from a physicist that's actively interested in Philosophy, pleasure ins mine!

Are you folks in astro? I'm graduating with an MS in astro in a matter of weeks (though starting PhD bridge... probably in the fall, I'm taking spring off). Right now I'm researching galaxy quiescence at 0.6 < z < 2.5 and hopefully publishing morphological metrics from CANDELS soon. Happy to see others at least with a cosmo background here — Astro Cat

I'm an old electrical engineer, but modern Physics foundations and astrophysics and cosmology have been a hobby since I was a kid, just scratching the surface. Very cool work you're doing there, I would have thought galaxies were anything but quiescent in the early universe (the z range on your research)... I imagine you've been all over those new deep field images.

I'm well aware of comoving and proper distance metrics. Using a commoving metric to argue that the speed of light is not constant, again, is misleading. It's like having an ant walk down a rubber band, and as you stretch the rubber band you argue that the velocity of the ant is slowing, and even reversing, because its distance to the end of the rubber band is increasing.

The fact is that the speed of light, measured from ANY inertial frame of reference (any velocity), is constant. That is the context of this thread. Your presentation is adding levels of complexity and concepts which are beyond the reach of most non-cosmologists, and are completely unnecessary to answer to the question posed by the OP.

I'm still curious about this. If we measure interstellar distances in km and not light years, and our clock is ticking a bit slower as we advance to our destination explain how that actual distance may diminish from our perspective beyond that calculated by D=RT, thus having us arrive early? Is my question even valid in the context of relativity? — jgill

The concept of the traveler arriving early assumes a universal clock and a universal metric. In first order, ditch the universal clock: To an observer, any moving object will run on a slower clock and measure a shorter length in the direction of motion than if the object was at rest in relation to the observer. At slow speeds the effect is negligible, but as the object approaches the speed of light the effect becomes dramatic.

You have to add the following factor to your distance equation:

Relative to Paris, it takes light less time to go to the moon and back than the distance involved. It's really close, but light travels faster than c relative to Paris, at least along this path. This is due to spacetime not being Minkowskian between here and the moon, and not so much due to the how Paris moves during that experiment.
In the frame of Paris (the coordinate system in which Paris stays stationary), eastbound light goes slower than westbound light, so signals sent via say 20 mirrors around the world will get back to Paris quicker in one direction than the other. This is the well known Sagnac effect. — noAxioms

This is due to the rotary motion of the moon around the earth and has nothing to do with the speed of light changing. The Sagnac effect was conceptualized before the theory of General Relativity was created.

In the frame of Paris, a light pulse in just the right place somewhere around the orbit of Neptune will coast to a halt, then reverse and go back the way it came — noAxioms

Again, this has nothing to do with light moving at any other velocity than c.
The two examples are within local space where Minkowskian space coordinates and cosmological coordinates are undifferentiable.

Oh yea: In cosmological coordinates with distance measured as comoving distance, light speed (comoving distance per second) in a vacuum slows over time, approaching but never reaching a halt. But there's a distance (about 16 BLY from where it gets emitted today) beyond which it will never reach even in infinite time, so if it doesn't slow to a halt, it will surpass this limit. That's the current comoving distance to the event horizon, and if light emitted now from there can never reach us, then light from here can't reach them either.
I have a graph of such coordinates if you don't know what I'm talking about. — noAxioms

It is obvious that in a large enough expanding universe, to any observer there is a horizon beyond which the expansion happens faster than the speed of light, and that a photon emitted from his flashlight will never reach this horizon. But to use jargon such as "commoving distances" in the context of this thread to imply light slows down as it approaches this horizon is misleading. A photon can only, and will always, travel at the speed of light.

In QFT, the universe contains 'interacting' fields. Every field permeates the entire universe, yes?
So does a 'photon'/field excitation really 'travel' at all?
Like a water wave or a mexican wave in a crowd of people. Each person just undulates in sequence order. Each person just stands up and sits down at the correct time. This gives the appearance of a moving wave. If a photon can appear at any point in space or time then perhaps it does not have to travel as it is already there and has been there since the big bang singularity. The speed of light would then be an observed constant of propagation through a universal field, but the 'photon' can arrive at any point in the universe instantly as a 'photon' has always existed at every point in the universe. — universeness

As you know, QFT, as QM and QP, are mere mathematical abstractions that predict with extreme accuracy how a quantum system behaves, but offer very, very little in creating a picture of what is actually happening. I usually try to keep clear from the "shut up and calculate" mentality when trying to form a picture of reality.

The phenomenon I was describing has very little to do with quantum theory and almost everything with Special Relativity, which describes how time and distance measurements in different inertial frames of reference (aka objects moving at a different speed from the observer) change and relate to each other. At the velocities we are used to, these changes negligible, but as an object approaches the speed of light, the changes become dramatic. On the other hand, SR offers very little on the nature or reality of the photon.

..and which can explain the hypothesis of the big bang and the universe as we know it being a "bubble" in a pure energy field. Like, if infinite and there are infinite quantum possibilities that can occur in that infinite energy, it would eventually lead to the possibility of a bubble where energy fades out and then deflates back into pure energy. Since that pure energy "locally" fades and that energy is between singularities within its "bubble" (like black holes), it appears as matter, like gas crystalizing in the air. — Christoffer

That sounds very poetic and has a nice ring to it. The issue arises when mixing poetry with jargon, so within the context of your interpretation, I'm unsure of what to make of it.

Well, there seems to be a consensus among the posters regarding what happens to time at lightspeed and perhaps beyond via simple extrapolation. There are attempts to describe this state but I feel we could improve upon them if only those who have the relevant info tried ... a little harder. — Agent Smith

I could tell you there is a vein of gold 1 mile under your feet, but if you want to see that gold with your own eyes, you've got to dig.

This cannot work. For one thing, as stated above, there is no valid 'perspective of the photon'. Secondly, if unobstructed, no photon reaches an edge of the universe. For instance, light currently emitted from a star 16 billion light years away will never reach here period after any amount of time as measured by anything. This of course cannot be true in Minkowskian flat spacetime, but spacetime isn't flat in reality.
Relative to a cosmological coordinate system (a coordinate system in which the size of the universe is not bounded), light fades to zero energy (proper distance method) or coasts to a halt (comoving distance method). Both of those are the same coordinate system with different methods of specifying distance between objects. — noAxioms

Clearly a photon does not have a perspective, just trying to get the point across that to a photon there is no such thing as time. From a Minkowskian perspective it is easy to graph an object traveling at the speed of light and realizing that as a light-like object, it will experience no time and arrive at its destination, whatever it is, instantly. Of course, the real universe is expanding so the locality simplifications of minkowskian space do not apply in reality. In an expanding universe, an unobstructed photon would become redshifted until its wavelength approaches infinity and its energy approaches zero, dimming out to nothing. However this is besides the point... the point is that although to any observer, that photon would be traveling at the speed of light and take up and ungodly amount of time to fade into nothingness, to the photon this happens instantly and in zero time.
By the way, no photon will ever "coast to a halt". Any photon, regardless of energy or frame of reference will always travel exactly at the speed of light.

From the perspective of any observer in any frame of reference, all photons travel at the speed of light, it is a universal constant. If you accelerated to nearly the speed of light to catch up with photons emitted from your flashlight, you will find that no matter how close to the speed of light you get, those photons will still be traveling at exactly the speed of light regardless of your velocity.

But from the perspective of the photon, there is no distance and no time. If unobstructed, it will reach the "edge of the universe" (if there was such a thing) in zero time. It's not something you can think of intuitively because we exist in a realm where relativistic effects are not part of our experience, but the Lorentz factor that is applied to distance, time, and mass calculations, is a well proven part of the theory of relativity.

Say your friend is traveling to Alpha Centauri, about 4 light-years away.
As his spaceship approaches the speed of light, it flattens in the direction of travel as seen by you, the stationary observer. From your friend's perspective, you, the earth, and the distance to Alpha Centauri flattens as well.
He would arrive quickly (depending on how close to "c" he's traveling) because of this shortening of the distance, which also translates into the time shortening effect experienced by your friend in the fast moving rocket. From your perspective however, your friend is moving at almost "c", so it takes him 4 years to arrive at A.C.
Since the rocket has mass, theoretically it could get close to the speed of light but never reach it, since it takes an infinite amount of energy to accelerate any mass to "c"

For a photon, which has no mass and always travels at the speed of light, distance and time only exist from the perspective of the observer: to a photon there is no such thing as distance and time, once it's emitted, it reaches its destination instantly in zero time.


The other question about an object traveling in all directions at the same time: by definition, velocity is a vector, which can only have one direction.
Instead of saying an object, you could speak about an expanding gas, but that is really not an object but a collection of very small objects (atoms).
You could also say our expanding universe, the accepted theory is that space is growing at a rate of about 50 miles a second for every megaparsec (3.3 million light years), which means the farthest parts of the observable universe are receding away faster than light, but space, being different than an object, does not follow the rules of relativity the same way matter does, and there is no flattening.

Hope this helps.

Racism, sexism, classism, exploitation by the elite, etc... have been traits of most societies since long, long before the earth was overpopulated by humans.

I don't know. Discover a new source of energy so efficient people can't ignore it? — khaled

Even if a new source of energy is discovered, the economic barriers against it are daunting:

1. Special interests: The powerful elite that profits from burning fossil fuels has no interest in easing their grip and sacrificing financial empires in favor of the planet's environmental health.

2. Infrastructure: Switching to alternate power sources comes at a huge financial cost, and all who enjoy the conveniences of burning fossil fuels have to be willing to open their wallets and pay big now to build an infrastructure that makes fossil fuels obsolete.

In the end it will play out as it needs to play out: Most environmentalists see humans almost as a foreign plague that arrived to destroy nature, but in reality we are nothing but a product of nature. We evolved in this planet and by this planet. Time will tell whether humans are able to evolve past their child-like selfishness and acquire a global conscience... or whether the cycle of life on the planet naturally ends with humans.

Whatever it is, life will persist and adapt. A couple million years after man has wiped itself off of the face of the earth (a mere blip in cosmic time), there will be no trace of the fact that we once existed.
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I think the 2nd is much more likely, leading to the conclusion that most or all such universes support life; a conclusion that fatally undermines the so called strong anthropic principle — Devans99

I don't see why it would be so.

the Many-Worlds Interpretation of QFT, especially with respect to QG (quantum cosmology) entails that the Planck Era universe c13.8 billion years ago in superposition (so-called) BB consisted in a countless universes each constituted by every possible physical value (i.e. ratios we designate "constants"), with this, our current "anthropic" universe just one of many possible universe; thus, the plausibility of which alone debunks the "need for" "intelligent" "fine tuning" — 180 Proof

Multiverse is a speculative aspect of eternal inflation, inflation itself being just a postulate for explaining isotropism and homogeneity in the observable universe. Not sure how this can be offered as an argument to debunk anything.

I suggested it is scientists who we must rely on to solve the situation and we must not rely on finding and segregating a group to be the target of our anger because that will lead to no solution — god must be atheist

Your suggestion is well intended. It is also true that scientists are the ones to find the solution.
Unfortunately it is politics that create the gretas and anti-gretras of the world.

Why are you fighting that, and why are you trying to distort the truth, denouncing scientific work and denouncing the importance of it? — god must be atheist

Denouncing scientific work? I'm a scientist.

You didn't pick up the fact that my argument was against people, not science. Regardless of the fact that scientists discovered global warming, half the world's population doesn't believe in it. Why do you think that is?

So... Greta is a politician?
It is not only the politician that makes people vote one way or another. it is the scientists who have given us the facts about global warming / climate change. It is not the politicians who've given us that insight. — god must be atheist

I applaud you for being a person who gets his information from scientific journals, but I'm pretty sure most people become acquainted with current events through television and the internet. For the most part, news TV is heavily slanted with political agenda, and people typically search the internet for what they want to find. They don't have time to work on their insight and prefer to be handed all the "necessary" information on a platter neatly wrapped by their favorite political platform. That way they don't have to take time from their busy schedules to think for themselves.

If all the politicians were employed in political ways to reverse or stop the global warming effects, but all scientists were forbidden to work on it, (as a hypothetical situation), how far would we get to solving the problem? — god must be atheist

The work of scientists only becomes accessible and relevant to the vast majority of people through the work of politicians who are maneuvered by special interests. Funding for scientific research is secured by either tax appropriation (political) or corporate interests. Scientific work and research for the sake of knowledge alone is fringe work, and most people really are too uninterested and time-limited to care about the value of pure knowledge.

It is only technology and science that can solve that problem, not votes. — god must be atheist

That is rather naïve. Science will lay down the facts, but sadly it is the politicians who influence people to vote, not the facts.

You are missing the point, Staticphotn. We are all keep on burning, no matter which side of the sticker line we are on. It does not matter whether one gives a shit or not. If you give a shit, you keep burning the fossil fuels. If you don't give a shit you keep on burning the fossil fuels. You are blind to this?? . — god must be atheist

I'm not sure what I'm being blind to. What you state is painfully obvious and besides the point, one can behave a certain way due to limited options and either care or not care.

Fuck you Greta has nothing to do with whether her activism is valid or not.

We are pouring billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and there is consensus among the scientific community that there will be consequences. Exactly what the consequences are is a mixed bag of scientific observations, modeling, and extrapolations. But the fact is that regardless of the severity, there will be consequences.

So reaction to the sticker is nothing but a line separating those who give a shit and those who don't. Between those who are inclined to heed the warning and those who prefer to keep burning fuel and ignore the possibilities.

I have no idea why that would seem to be an explanation to them. — Terrapin Station

That is ok, you are under no obligation to understand why people believe everything they believe.

What would be the merit of that? It just seems like an arbitrary fantasy notion. — Terrapin Station

Well its not completely arbitrary, again I'm not a religious person although I can quote what John wrote in the opening of his gospel "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" so there is merit in the sense that it offers an explanation for believers of the gospel, that the idea of the world came before the world.

Hard--and maybe impossible--for me to relate to thinking that everything is an idea or that it would seem to someone like it has been created from a thought. — Terrapin Station

Although I also think that the apple tree came from the seed instead of from a thought, the concept that first there was an idea and then there was a universe is not without merit.
Of course I'm not referring to human thought, which is too limited to create universes.

It is the very fact that our universe is not computable, i.e. that it is a model of the ToE which contains true facts but that are unprovable from the ToE, that determines the very nature of our universe. It is rather a multi-world system that very much looks like the religious take on heaven and hell. — alcontali

I'm not sure how this perspective influences the premise that we have evolved to inquire about our origins, but I will definitely give it some thought and get back with you.

Now that you have spoken of thepossible origins of the universe, how does the idea of God come into play? — sydell

I think God very much comes into play.
To the deeply religious individual, asking "why" is not necessary, since the purpose of existence is defined in scriptures.
The resolved atheist tends to downplay "why", as it stinks of purpose.

It is the most important question I have ever pondered and therefore find it impossible to prescribe to religion or atheism.
But I also find it impossible not to conceive, in the process of asking "why", that the answer points towards a primordial originator, a first cause for the universe, with of course the cascade of possible implications.

But, I wrestle with not knowng who or what that creator is,or if I am to learn something that would lead me to believe there is none. — sydell

Well, you're not alone. Being part of the unloved middle ground that refuses dogmatic structure from either side makes you an easy target to well established camps. Keeping an open perspective is a struggle because we naturally seek the comfort of a foundation. But here we are.

A human is like:

A worm, it wiggles, eats, and reproduces.

A rock, it takes up space and reacts when kicked.

A chunk of Uranium, after its reaches half life it isn't as hot as it used to be.

A paperback novel, racy covers typically mean shallow content.

A philosophical discussion, just when you think you got as good thing going, some wise guy shows up and runs his mouth.

Everything I have said about justifying evil, has not been said in context of the bad that you have spoken of, and that I have found acceptable. It has been spoken of in context of the cosmic forces of good and evil that vie for dominance in the mind. And that is an important difference to understand.

I have said that if the world gave no place for cosmic evil in the mind, then all that remains is good, and there is still ample creativity in that setting. Further to that, I said that (cosmic) good is the only reason creativity exists, and that (cosmic) evil is only a destructive force. — Serving Zion

If you think that evil minds, evil spirits, or even the devil himself, are devoid of creativity... you need to look again.

When a man is confronted with a fork in the road he makes a decision based on many things such as desires, capacity to evaluate consequences, tolerance to risk, moral adherence, etc.
I don't believe that cosmic evil and good forces are wrestling for control of the joystick of his mind, I believe that man is fully responsible for his actions. Anything that could be interpreted as good or evil comes from within.
I seriously doubt that "...But the evil spirit made me do it..." will be a valid excuse on judgment day.

I do appreciate your post, as it is well intentioned.
But you must admit, its dogmatic content forces it into the realm of preaching and not discussion.

I say that in absence of evil, all people being individuals with individual strengths, interests and experiences, together are no less able to create than if evil is to exist. I say this because creativity itself is an expression of love, which is antithetical to evil. IOW, evil is, in truth, the force that destroys. In absence of evil, therefore, is potential for everlasting life - and it's interesting when you dig into the meaning of the text in Genesis 3:24, to find out what it means to have Cherubim and a sword of fire guarding the way to the tree of life. Only because Adam had guilt, could the flaming sword sear his conscience, and only because he had fallen, could he not stand in judgement of the one who would rob him of his access to life. — Serving Zion

I cannot pretend to convince you to believe otherwise, as your faith has to be uncompromising to function.
But the meaning of goodness is acquired in the "movement" from bad to good. Good is what happens when men rise above adversity in times of difficulty... "the worse of times bring the best in men" was not stated without precedent. Creativity is what happens when men strive to overcome hardship, difficulty and need are the engine that moves ideas and imagination.

And although it is true that justice has seen fluctuations through time, the trend from the beginning to now has moved towards improvement. You reject that but that is how I see it.

I'm going to step down from the discussion at this point, as neither of us is ready to concede, but I wish you my best.

Yes, that is my life, precisely! — Serving Zion

That being, I understand your perspective.

My real complaint is that the bad keeps getting in the way of the good, and there is no power against it because justice is woefully absent. — Serving Zion

Justice is a worthy ideal to fight for, yet my point only being that although an epoch of justice for all might lay in a far future, I cannot think of a time in history when (in proportion with the number of humans living on the planet) the justice situation was better. As you step back in time it progressively diminishes, all the way to the point where it completely disappears with the early homo sapiens.

Good and bad are relative terms... after all the bad is gone, the meaning of good would only last as long as our memories of the bad that once was.
This "battle between good and evil", the light that emanates from a star to fill the darkness around it, the forces that attract from one place to another... that is what sets the universe in motion, and without that motion reality would not exist.

Not necessarily. Culture is constantly fluid. One thing we can know for sure, is that vacuum cleaners and chemical technology have (potentially) contributed the greatest advances in environmental health, by reducing presence of toxic dusts and molds in homes. On the other hand, the pollutants from vehicular transport exposes us to harmful dusts and fumes that probably life would suffer less if the clock was rolled back. And that's besides mentioning the more obvious sufferings that polution has brought to the world, the extinctions from humans pillaging the environment, mass murders, riots, man-made diseases, nuclear fallouts, indoctrinations, forced medications, politicians disregard for justice, judges revelling in their wickedness, social disdain for holiness, beggars lying for drugs, cities imprisoning homeless to prepare for sports events, radicals chopping heads off in the name of God, laws making pregnancy an alternative to working and marriage, etc.

No, the world is in a bad way, like never before, and on a global scale, and in the whole world, with the whole world aware of these things, nobody has stopped it, and the ones who would stop it if they had power, are not drawing interest from those who have the power.. in fact to the contrary they are seen as enemies because of the natural indignation that the truth is, the powers are afraid of standing in proximity to them, for fear of how they might measure up to the stature of their name in light of the truth.. — Serving Zion

Ah we have to disagree then.
If you feel that living today is worse than in an epoch when it is commonplace for an enemy to march into your home and kill your family or take them into slavery, when it was normal for disease or famine to kill a significant portion of your offspring and neighbors. To constantly fear the unknown, or worse yet, the complete lack of empathy from those who ruled and exploited the land you lived on.

I think you overestimate the "goodness" and "decency" of folks of them old days.

But worse yet, you underestimate the goodness of the common man of today. Although it is the scandalously wicked and the atrocious acts that make the headlines, most of us are hard working, we educate and nourish our children, and we look forward to a better day. We have faith in the new generations to negotiate through the flaws of past generations.
Your characterization is unfair and does NOT represent an accurate picture of today's humanity.

If you're scrounging the bottom of the barrel, that is exactly what you will find. There is PLENTY of good also to be found if that was what you were looking for.

I see Evil spreading in our world. We are more and more divided. We destroy one another, other species, the environment. We see love as a weakness, suffering as a strength, unsustainable growth that leads to destruction as desirable, profiting at the expense of others as a success. If that Evil keeps spreading that world will turn into a desolate wasteland, almost devoid of love, beauty, life, happiness. — leo

When you are a child you are nourished and protected, existence is centered around you. From that point it is a process adapting to your environment and the perspective shifts from you to your surroundings. As you age your ability to adapt can't keep up with the changing world, and you become fearful of the future as your environment appears to become less and less survivable. "The world is going to hell" attitude is a perspective as ancient as man.

Lets face it, the farther you look back in human history the lesser quality of life and the greater suffering you find.

Good and evil can't be absolutes, they will always be a matter of perspective. You can make a valid point by sayin good is that which benefits you and those within your circle, and that evil is that which disrupts you and those within your circle. Or that good and evil are measures, not entities: We call the absence of light "darkness" and give it an entity, but darkness is nothing but the absence of light in the same sense that evil is the absence of good.

Animals act by programmed instinct, as humans we perceive ourselves able to raise above our animal impulses and are expected to exercise our humanity through free will, and do that which benefits the group in the long term as opposed to what benefits us individually and immediately. We call that good. When we fail to raise above our basic animal instincts, we call that evil.

The acts of a "evil" human, such as a psychopath opening fire on a crowd or a dictator exploiting his people, you can't remove the responsibility of the individual's act by blaming it on evil.

So, we don't know whether we are "capable of producing a model that rigorously replicates the behavior of the universe"; how could we ever know such a thing? It might seem to us that we have a model that does, but how could we know that what seems to us is real in any "absolute sense", or even what that question could mean? — Janus

Granted that the premise oversimplifies what it might even mean to accurately model the universe, and that even if we are able to craft a model that appeared to fit the bill, there would always be limitations to "prove" its reach.

But I think that only furthers the case in favor of the limitations of reason to construct an accurate portrayal of reality, which (at risk of sounding anthropomorphic) to me seems to boil down to the universe's structure and its relationship with who/what we are.

And although I have no reason to think evolution of the brain's cognitive powers has peaked, I also suspect no amount of cognitive evolution would be sufficient in order to deduce or hold such knowledge.

On the other hand, here we are in this precarious foraging for existential knowledge since becoming homo sapiens. One could be tempted to wonder why would decaying star matter want to do that.

Thank you for taking the time to comment.

Something that is thought of as being necessary is something which is simply thought of as necessarily being. So, the laws of nature might be thought of as necessary if they are either eternal or ordained by God — Janus

Ah I thought you were referring to the scientific method, but yes, even the laws of nature (or for that matter anything else), cannot be deductively or empirically verified to be mandated by God. Also, the universe is thought to have had a beginning and it is not unconceivable that it might have an end, so yes, not eternal either.

Sure, but in the context you seem to be considering- a "theory of everything" which is usually understood to be a theory which would unify the so-called "four fundamental forces"- the question could be asked as to whether those forces are everlasting. — Janus

Present attempts to merge gravity with the other three fundamental forces are going to need some breakthroughs, but still then, there would be many questions unanswered. It would be another step up a ladder and not implausibly another step into a dead end.

I mean if we could ever explain everything, then that would entail that what we are explaining would be everlasting, no? Otherwise we would not have explained everything. — Janus

"Everything" is a big word, I was thinking more in terms of understanding what we provincially call "natural law", to conceive a model that faithfully replicates the behavior of the universe. And we are in agreement that such natural law cannot be proven to be necessary or eternal.

What other method could there be for understanding the universe? We can reason about human behavior and understand it in ways which are not usually thought of as being part of the scientific method, to be sure, but that kind of understanding is not usually thought of as "understanding the universe" but rather " understanding ourselves". — Janus

I cannot tell you what other method can be conceived for deriving a model that replicates the behavior of the universe in the same sense that a differential equation can replicate the behavior of an orbiting planet, for instance. As of now the scientific method is the best method we have to understand the universe, however such a method seems to skirt some very important things that nature is capable of doing. As one example, how is it that the matter that originated at the big bang can arrange itself into complex molecules that evolve to the point of recognizing and becoming aware of the universe that produced them.
As Wayfarer quoted "...that of which we cannot speak, of that we should remain silent..", is a mindset that remains alive and well in the scientific community.

I would say that metaphysics does not consist in understanding the universe, but in understanding the ways in which we are able to think about things. Only the empirical method can test whether our ways of thinking can plausibly be thought to be accurately modeling the physical universe. But maybe I've misunderstood what you were aiming at? — Janus

Analyzing our tools, like evaluating the merits of metaphysics vs the empirical method in explaining reality, is fine, but the argument is whether these, or any other methods we can come up with, are capable of producing a model that rigorously replicates the behavior of the universe.

On the original post the choices were:
#1: Yes, we can do it, and even if we could not do it on our own, if God opened the blueprints of the universe in front of us, we would have the ability to say "Ah! I get it now" and be able to hold the knowledge in our heads.
#2: No. And even if God opened the blueprints of the universe in front of us, it would be like giving a calculus book to a chimp.

It's conjecture either way, but who knows, maybe someone has a clever reason to lean towards one more than the other.

As Popper convincingly showed, scientific theories, including those concerning "laws of nature" can never be deductively or empirically verified as either necessary or everlasting. — Janus

I think that if you label something as necessary (or not), you should also clarify what it is necessary for, that way we can be on the same page.

Everlasting... considering the only thing constant about scientific theories is that they keep evolving, everlasting is not something that particularly comes to mind when describing scientific theories. So I'm with you on that one.

In my opinion the scientific method is not a particularly exclusive choice for understanding the universe (mainly due to its self imposed limitations), and I don't for a minute believe the boundaries of reason are fenced by the scientific method.

So I think we kind of agree.

— Wayfarer

Man, that post was really enjoyable to read.

Then how about answering both questions as separate items? — Harry Hindu

Not sure what you mean by answering questions, I just posted two possible scenarios.

sp. in other words could we hold all the ideas involved in an all encompassing model? I doubt it, but I think it's speculative either way — Coben

I also think it is speculative and I also doubt we have the ability, although when you state "all" the ideas in an "all encompassing model" one might get the impression that the problem with grasping the knowledge might be due to the sheer quantity and size of it. I'm inclined to believe the actual model might even consist of fewer elements than the multiple discorded present day models that only apply to specific scale ranges of the universe, just that the elements themselves are beyond our grasp in the same sense that complex abstract concepts, like for instance a metric tensor, would be beyond the grasp of a chimpanzee's mind.

My line of thinking leans on two premises, that the brain's cognitive evolution has not reached its potential summit (i.e. assumes the sapiens of a 1,000,000 year future will posses greater cognitive power), and that a system (in this case the universe) can't produce something more complex than itself.
If I define humans as a product of the universe, then in order to obtain knowledge of how the universe works, (and this is where I go way out on a limb) humans would have to be the most cognitive-potent entity the universe is capable of producing.

How would we ever know that we have simulated all natural phenomema?

It's a different question than asking if we could understand the model, isn't it? — Harry Hindu

Agreed.

If the premise had been, “can reason and logic explain that which is present to human observation or mere thought” I wouldn’t have been so quick to jump. The human cognitive system, re: reason, is a relational system, re: logical, therefore it is by means of a methodology based on reason and logic a human should ever claim to know anything at all.

I see no reason to suspect you do not accept that physical science is grounded by pure reason, at least in its theoretical domain, which all science must be at some point. Whether the laws which justify our understanding of the world inhere in the world and are merely discovered, or are rationally determined a priori in response to the affect of the world on our sensibility, is sufficient to demonstrate the absolute necessity for pure reason with respect to the human’s ultimate seeking after knowledge.

Nevertheless, in a certain sense, you are correct, insofar as nothing whatsoever a consciously interactive human ever does, excepting pure reflex or sheer accident, is not immediately preceded by the thought of it, which is the epitome of reason and logic, however rational/irrational, logical/illogical it may be. — Mww

If I could put things in such an eloquent manner I would probably get better results...

1) So, deduction first, testing later?
2) So, we have the issue of what the mind can reason and deduce itself to in terms of conclusions. But then we also must have access to whatever we need to test direclty, physically. And we would need the technology, presumably necessary to do those tests. And we would need to know what technology to create that would aid us in those tests.

There seem to be a lot of contingent factors. And anyone saying they are sure, seems to be speculating wildly. — Coben

You're thinking too much like a scientist lol. I'm not considering any contingencies or potential unsurpassable technological barriers... just posing the question of whether the human mind has the potential to grasp an all-encompassing model.
Whether we can actually put our noses to the grindstone and actually make it happen, that would be another thread :)