Something + Nothing = Everything

oh but thats another one!

Jedi practice the Jedi arts,
Maul knows the Jedi arts,
He was trained in the Jedi arts.


But he really wasnt, he was trained in the Sith Arts!!

Here's something to think about - something I would like to share from my perceptual development on the Force -

When talking about something as ubiquitous as this, it's a good habit to observe the nature of our own language and its limits. We describe the Force as a "thing". But then we observe that there are limits in language when we do this. We say "It can't be everything, because everything would have to include nothing". This is a paradox of language.

However, if we think about reality scientifically and spiritually (both can agree about this on their own terms), matter in the universe is just energy. And energy, as far as we've come to understand by modern knowledge, is not a "thing", but a "happening". If you realize what this means, you may discover that all matter being energy means that all things are "happenings". Alan Watts once put it like this: There are no nouns.

Why is it we use the word "be"? To "be" is an action. Existing is an actional attribute.

Looking at it like this, therefore, would suggest that the Force is the ACT of existence itself, or the source of it. Over here, the Force is "table-ing", and over there, the Force is "chair'ing". However, because of the limitations of our perception and our language, our method of organizing what is "happening" is put into the format of "things", to which we conventionally habit to extend to the idea of the Force itself.

Put in these terms, the paradox of "everything" and "nothing" does not seem to have an issue. Even where we think "nothing is happening here"... well obviously nothing is "happening" here, just fine.

Fyxe wrote: ... how can logic come from something not logical?

Quite right! Also, though, on the flip side... How can logic come from something that is itself already logical before logic had any chance to come from it?

That is of course assuming that logic is a kind of "thing" and that to speak of it as "coming from sthg" makes any sense anyway...

Kelrax Lorcken wrote: We already have something that falls into this category, and we call it "Time". Time isn't something that actually exists; it "exists" in relation to observations of life and the natural world, we can conjure up systems to quantify it, as a means to understand the flowing, constant motion of the world and universe around us, but these concepts aren't born of observations of anything unto itself. It can be quantified, but not measured; time simultaneously exists, yet does not exist, and the former because we insist that it is so, regardless of the latter.

Does that make sense?

Sort of. One immediate problem I see with it is that the same can be said of literally anything else with all of the same weight. You grab an apple and say that it exists, but does it really? In virtue of what, in virtue of you touching it? Surely something can exist even if you cannot touch it. Must everything you touch exist, though, too? And what makes touch so special? Some would say they can sense the progression of time, be it in observing sequences of events or processes, or even without. Now your bet is as good as mine as to what sort of "sense" it is they use to detect the progression of time, but you see what I'm getting at. We can be credulous or sceptical and time is no more fragile to the latter attitude than just about anything else. I, for one, find that even Descartes' argument in favour of his own (or a thinker's, as it were) existence is rather circular and unconvincing at its root. It's not that I disagree with him necessarily, but ontology wouldn't be much of a discipline of philosophy these days if questions like these could unambiguously be answered in brevity. In the end, before we can start running around with our rubber stamps marking things as "existing" and "non-existing" there is a lot of homework for us to do even defining what on earth we mean by those terms - and good luck reaching a consensus on even something this seemingly basic...

Omhu Cuspor wrote: Perhaps the universe, or multiverse, or whatever we may term the most inclusive collection of all that exists, is not inherently logical. Logic works well for us in managing our human affairs and perceiving how the world of matter, space, and time works, but it's quite possible our five dominant senses are filtering out quite a bit of what exists. Just like the rules of classical physics break down at the subatomic level, perhaps the rules of logic that we know are not universally applicable.

I doubt that for one core reason: Logic, or perhaps better called rules of inference are more of a game ruleset than they are a model of "reality". Logic is how we think as a species, not how the world broadly behaves. This is not to say that the world is not logical in the sense that it contradicts how we go about thinking our thoughts, but at most in the sense that "logical" is something an argument or a thinker can be or fail to be. Much in the sense that a chess board doesn't go up in flames if someone moves a rook backwards, neither does the universe implode back in on itself just because someone contradicted themselves. Both players just fail to play by the rules the rest of us call the "Rules of Chess" or "Rules of Inference". We can open a whole discussion as to whether the universe itself is a "player" in the game of Logic the way us thinkers are, but aside from its own agency I'm not sure we can really think of it as compliant or noncompliant with logic.
Now, the laws of physics, be it classical or quantum, are also written by us, but aside from technical jargon and notation, they are not game rules we agreed to play by between ourselves or with the universe. They are not prescriptive in this sense, but descriptive. They are modellings of observations past that we constructed in the hopes of predicting how the future will unfold. We aim to write rules that best match observations whilst allowing us to efficiently compute forecasts of events to come. It can easily turn out that a description we had at some point or thought universal back in the day might not apply in general but only in special cases we happened to be most familiar with, and then we have to construct new models to account for the widening range of observations and to make accurate predictions even for cases previously unmodelled. I don't hink much of anything can happen to force us to re-write or abandon logic, because that's an imposition we put on ourselves, not a description of nature. What would such a scientific test of logic rules even look like?

I had a terrific geometry teacher in high school. Much of geometry is founded on the work of the Greek mathematician Euclid, who taught us that parallel lines do not intersect, and that the sum of the angles in any triangle is 180 degrees, and so on. But after studying this subject for most of a year, my teacher shocked us by offhandedly saying one day "The geometry of the universe is not Euclidean. There are mathematical models where parallel lines intersect, and the other principles you know do not apply." That always stuck with me in a more fundamental way: The universe is more varied than we think. Human perception may not be the ultimate resource for determining the nature of reality.

I've never done LSD, but suspect if someone has this will all make more sense to them.

You'd be surprised how much sense it makes even to some sober folks :laugh:

And yea, Euclid's axioms are just one set of many, and they allow deriving a whole bunch of theorems that in the end of course all hinge upon those axioms, as any mathematics do nowadays. Algebraic geometry has of course long moved away from the easily pictureable - in fact, pictures, though helpful sometimes in appreciating what is being done, do not count as proofs at all anymore - and on to much more abstract formalizations and generalizing things so they can work (to what ever extent) outside of the narrow space of Euclidean geometry allows us to study all sorts of shapes and structures that would be inaccessible to us, were we to insist never to give up on those particular axioms.
And so we do, too. Your high school geometry teacher knew that spacetime is not generally Euclidean, and though it may have blown your mind at the time and possibly even challenged theirs, too, this was known for well over a century at this point. Not every one of us individually sees just how varied the universe is, to put it in your words, but there is far more that any one of us doesn't know than there is what all of us together still don't. I wouldn't say that it is so much a statement about the limits of human perception as it is about the limits of naive day-to-day intuitions. Even in philosophical circles there is often some ground called "common sense" agreed upon, "healthy human reason", as the Germans put it. I find, more often than not, it gets in the way, rather than aids understanding. Imagine how less of a shock it would have been to you to find out the universe wasn't Euclidean if you didn't intuitively assume that it has to be only because so much of what you studied in your geometry class "simply made sense" to you.

This (and I'm just using your post, again, as an opportunity, not addressing anyone individually) is essentially the core benefit of critical thinking in general. It is far too easy to take in what is being given, and then take it for granted, let it sprout roots, grow an ever stronger trunk with ever thicker rind until no wind can tear it off the earth again. It is very easy to get rigid like this (again, not like you, Omhu, I mean in general) and historically/biologically there are good reasons we evolved to generally be like that. However, once we train ourselves to doubt, far from shutting out of the "awe and wonder", and grow cynical and closed-minded as the faithful would insist the sceptical are, we can become truly flexible, and adaptable to what ever comes. When we make it our habit to doubt things, we get used to doubting ourselves, to entertaining ideas, to think them through and explore them. And while a lot we might come to reject, it is always after the thought, after considering and scrutinizing, never out of dogma alone, never prior to giving things a chance. Might we miss out on something if relativity or quantum physics never "shock" us? Maybe. But wouldn't we much rather miss out on the pain of having cherished intuitions challenged or shattered, than on the brightness and beauty we were using our precious "common sense" to shield ourselves against?

well being as an action only works if there is time though. but if we want to consider things outside of time, like I would believe the force is, then being as an action makes no sense. is it our limitation of being in time that makes us assume there are not nouns then and only actions, or are there actually nouns but we dont see that because we and those nouns are stuck in time?

I think logic is not a thing at all but a way to talk about that being in the time stream and how things behave there. like things work a certain reliable way and we can see than and we call that reliability something and that something we named logic!

Proteus wrote: Here's something to think about <followed by much more text, all fascinating>

That is an amazing post, Proteus. I’ve never been exposed to that point of view before, and it’s very expanding

Gisteron wrote: <Gisteron said a whole lot>

That looks like a helpful post too, Gisteron, but I'll have to study it later. I'm afraid my vision isn't optimal, and reading that much text in a small font on the device I am on is more than I can manage. But what I see looks helpful.

I have learned some very interesting points in this discussion , some agree the Force is something , some think all is Energy and there are some that are convinced the Force is Everything.

I dont think i am ready yet to see the Force as a Happening , that would completely shut me out as a factor in what happens in my life , but then again , the need for control is one of the things that you bump up against in personal growth...hmmm thank you all so much for your contributions !

I agree about the happening thing. I dont see the things in my life as a happening. nouns exist! lol. Im not really keen on alans ideas, he wants us to believe that all is force and I just dont buy that. I think there is more to our reality than just force as one complete thing.

I agree about the happening thing. I dont see the things in my life as a happening. nouns exist! lol. Im not really keen on alans ideas, he wants us to believe that all is force and I just dont buy that. I think there is more to our reality than just force as one complete thing.

More, or less?

I'll bite - what are the other....parts of our reality that are not encompassed by the force, as you understand it?

Fyxe wrote: I agree about the happening thing. I dont see the things in my life as a happening. nouns exist! lol. Im not really keen on alans ideas, he wants us to believe that all is force and I just dont buy that. I think there is more to our reality than just force as one complete thing.

I actually agree here in the sense that I don't believe things are just happening. OB1Shenobi had a good idea in the other thread about the Force being a web of intersecting consequences, Though the consequences are often an individual action the Force comes in as the web that binds them together making the movements connected. I like to think of it like this.

The Universe as we can observe is like a Rube Goldberg Machine, so a bunch of random crap that some how moves in a some what systematic and organized way to allow function of the physical world. So when we look for the Force I always have to ask myself this,"Does the shoe understand the purpose of the toaster? Or is the shoe's time better spent looking at the joint upon which it's motion is triggered and what that action's result is?" Either question pursued leads you further down a rabbit hole of wondering about the machine as a whole.

Another thought experiment I thought about with the basic equation Something+Nothing=Everything. Say a giant bucket of legos is spilled on the ground. Do you see patterns forming and coalescing in the pattern in which they land? Is this not something coming from nothing?To go further in the philosophical sense where did the legos come from? Who spilled them and were they in order before? All of these questions will continue to lead to paradoxes until the ability to truly observe each lego, it''s placement and the factors that led to their spilling.

Just some thoughts.

Much Love, Respect and Peace,
Kobos

My view of the Force is inspired by the act of seeing the vase in an image that most people would instead see two faces. It is a picture of both a vase, and two faces at the same time, both responsible for the shape of one-another.



Sure, there are "things", but then, what do we really think we know about "things"? There is also energy. Energy is responsible for creating "things", as we know it, and "things" also generate energy. Both arise mutually just as does our sense of light and dark, up and down, back and front, etc etc.

The thing is, try not to over-think the details. Details are what creates separation in the image as a whole. Step back and look at a larger picture. You will see it as a reflection of any particular detail, if you understand the pattern of the details over your own experience of time.