Immortal Curiosity

During part of my time at St. John’s I did a lot of thinking on determinism, causal necessity, things of that nature. This became most conscious when reading what I found to be an awe-inspiring observation by Laplace:

We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.

—Pierre Simon Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (Wikipedia entry)

I was stopped in my tracks upon reading this, for it resonated with a strong sense of things I’ve been possessed with for some time. From a variety of studies I had come to think that, with the enormous and perhaps insurmountable hurdle of “sufficiently advanced” technology, humanity might gain the ability to understand all past and future states of the universe. I won’t delve into why I was attracted to this, or what I feel now; suffice it to say I was plenty interested.  Read more... (579 words, estimated 2:19 mins reading time)

11 /26/2005
Notes and thoughts from Stephen Hawking’s The Universe in a Nutshell, chapter 6, Star Trek or Not.

The world’s population plotted through time is a measure of our technological ability to preserve life. During recorded history, this measure has only increased. Of course, there are certain exceptions: the Black death etc. within the last 200 years, population growth has become exponential. Currently, the world population doubles every 40 years. Other measures of technological growth include power consumption and the number of scientific articles published. All three of these measures cannot continue to grow at the same rate that they are now. So what are the possibilities?

Putting self-destruction aside, one major consideration in considering how future development will be shaped would be whether faster than light travel is possible. Since we do not yet possess a complete theory of physics, we cannot rule such a possibility out. However, we do know laws of physics which apply to almost all “normal” situations.  Read more... (779 words, estimated 3:07 mins reading time)

Notes on Henri Poincaré, Science and Hypothesis.

Chapter 9: Hypotheses in Physics

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Citation: Henri Poincaré. “Hypotheses in Physics”. Chapter 9 in Science and Hypothesis . London: Walter Scott Publishing (1905): 140-159.

The Role of Experiment and Generalisation. — Experiment is the sole source of truth. It alone can teach us something new; it alone can give us certainty. These are two points that cannot be questioned. But then, if experiment is everything, what place is left for mathematical physics? What can experimental physics do with such an auxiliary — an auxiliary, moreover, which seems useless, and even may be dangerous?
However, mathematical physics exists. It has rendered undeniable service, and that is a fact which has to be explained. It is not sufficient merely to observe; we must use our observations, and for that purpose we must generalise. This is what has always been done, only as the recollection of past errors has made man more and more circumspect, he has observed more and more and generalised less and less. Every age has scoffed at its predecessor, accusing it of having generalised

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