metonymy4u

The classical problem of knowledge is this: if I presume that the evidence of my senses corresponds to something that would exist independently of my senses, then I must assume some sort of continuity of that something. I must assume that my observation is representative of a larger universal set of events. Modern science enshrines this principle in two words: homogeneity (the idea that my observations are a fair sample of observations that could be made from anywhere else in the universe) and isotropy (the idea that the laws of physics are universal). Following these principles has, unfortunately led us to several contradictions. For example, the speed of light is observed to be universal for all observers, regardless of their state of motion. Given that the speed of light is constant for all observers, it represents the maximum attainable speed of any existing phenomenon. (This is because if you could exceed the speed of light, it would no longer be constant for the person exceeding it—if your car accelerates past another car the other car’s speed appears to decrease).

Given that nothing can exceed the speed of light, there are now portions of the known universe which are so far apart that it is not possible for an event in one part of the universe to be known in another part of the universe, because the light could not have traveled that far in the amount of time that the universe has existed (about 14 billion years). Thus, the principles of homogeneity and isotropy cannot be affirmed for all parts of the universe, since it is possible that the laws of physics may have changed in certain parts of the universe but that these changes would remain unknown in other parts of the universe.

Modern cosmologists try to deal with this paradox through the “inflationary principle,” which states that at some point in the past the universe was small enough to be in complete causal contact (since it was small enough to allow light to traverse the entire known universe in the time that it had existed). At that time the laws of the universe would have been constant throughout and, as the universe expanded, it maintained this homogeneity, since once it expanded past the size that would allow light to traverse the entire universe, there was no longer any way for any event to change this pre-established homogeneity.

The original problem is still present, however, in concealed format. Because inflationary theory posits a finite point in the past at which time the universe went from complete causal contact to incomplete causal contact. And this represents a change in the laws of the universe (a transition point in the behavior of everything). Presumably, we should be in a position to observe those changes, since as we gaze up at the night sky we are actually looking into the “past,” since the light reaching our eyes has been traveling towards us for a long time. It therefore follows that we in fact cannot assume that all observations of the known universe are homogeneous and universal, since we can in fact observe the finite period in time in which the universe’s laws became “uncoupled” in time.

Once again we discover that, contrary to Plato’s myth of the cave, there is no absolute truth. Once again we discover that the statement “there is no absolute truth” is itself a lie and a paradox. Once again we discover the contingency of words, models, ideas, conjectures, hypotheses, sense data. Once again we are reduced to a confounding mass of information that causes us to throw up our hands and utter that ultimate epithet of ignorance: “God.”