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I believe that we should always lend a helping hand whenever we have the time and strength. Whatever our goals, we will always have an opportunity to help others and to be helped.
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Earl of Kent
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Earl of Kent's Top (3) Replies by other users' votes
- (3 votes) is space infinite?
J–two terms must be defined first–”space” and “infinite”. Finally, “Is” needs some explanation as well.
Space seems easy–it can be defined as the ultimate extent of the reality that is reachable from here without jumping through a discontinuity. Infinite is more difficult–I think that what you are getting at is “does it go on forever?” or “is there always a more distant point to be located in the nothingness?” However, there are some problems with this idea of infinity.
Since space appears to be “curved” how do you know whether you are still going “away” or simply going in a circle? An endless circle of empty curved space or any other moebius strip-type shape would resemble infinity. Also, you will learn that there isn’t just “infinite” or “not-infinite”–in fact, there are “levels” of infinity (like levels of Hell, actually). For example, there are an infinite number of integers, right? It turns out that if we count by tenths (instead of ones, like integers) the result is also a similar level of infinity. However, there is a higher level of infinity that counts irrational numbers. What I am saying is that the universe being “infinite” is a bit tough to define without some fancy mathematical ideas.
However, I am more interested in the idea that size, like distance, is relative. Thus, how could one prove that everything in the universe, including ourselves, isn’t shrinking or growing (proportionately)? Like Einstein’s elevator, we cannot actually prove that we are growing or shrinking, so long as the computer, the house, the yard, our daughter, the dog, and the dog’s fleas are also growing or shrinking proportionately. In this sense, infinity has no meaning, because our absolute size and that of the universe is only an illusion. For example–are there more possible points on the head of a pin, or in the rest of the entire universe? Truly, this is a problem, because with infinitely small points, there are actually an equal number of points on the head of a pin as in the whole rest of the universe–infinity is, well, infinite!
I suggest that infinity goes in both directions–small as well as large. In fact, I don’t think that small and large are the only two choices.
Thus, avoiding the really cool and interesting digression about “is”, I maintain that not only is space infinite, ANY space is infinite.
- written 10 months, 1 week ago – voted for by verge, MarlinTheFish, lairm - (2 votes) Closed.
FIrst of all, Feuerbach was cool for various reasons. Your philosophy professor assigned him for the same reason that high school English teachers assign obscure works by famous authors–it’s hard to cheat because there are no good cliff notes.
At any rate, the early 1800’s in Germany was the heyday of philosophy, when any randomly chosen university student knew more about philosophy than the philosophy professors of today and could equally quote Kant, Descartes, or Spinoza while drinking a pint.
You really must begin with Hegel (or even Kant) to understand Feuerbach. Hegel did not agree with the materialists (who thought that the world perceived by our senses is the one and only important real world. Hegel sympathized with the idealists, who believed that the “actual” world acted upon by our five senses is not in fact, the important or “real” world, but just gives us clues to the true, eternal, world, that of concepts, or ideals. Some philosophers keep this going and use it to reach God and justify everything, and some, disagreeing with them, keep going back to materialism and use this logic to prove that God does not exist, starting “existentialism.” However, Hegel is important because he DID believe in that the “material” world, or the “Phenomenal” world mattered–but he evolved the idea that the world of ideals cannot exist without the material world. Thus, Hegel took both sides, the material and the ideal, and combined them into a one reality by saying that the material world GENERATES the ideal world (as opposed to shadowing it, like Plato said in his “Cave” metaphor).
So, Hegel gives us a “world” where there are three parts of existence–a thing (a stick), an essence (the essence of stick) , and a concept (the concept “stick”) that exists only by realizing that the many examples of real-world stick-ness result in a definition of a stick (the essence) which leads us to the most real thing of all, the timeless concept–stick! This tripartite reality was similar to Kant’s, but easier to understand. Hegel’s understanding of reality as being DERIVED by both specific things and essences, leading to real logical categories of reality (concepts) helped him to his big contribution–a contribution that wasn’t really HEGEL’s at all–the logical dialectic and then the historical dialectic. As so often happens, people coming along later read Hegel and, interpreting what they thought he said, refined and extended his idea so that everyone says HEGEL thought up the thesis/antithesis/synthesis version of the dialectic, but in reality it was others who came afterwards. It is so ironic that his most famous contribution wasn’t actually his, and he would would have blamed it on Kant.
(see my next post for Feuerbach)
- written 1 year ago – voted for by P~~~~~~~~~~~, Araz - (1 vote) Does this sentence make sense?
We really need to know where he is
- written 8 months, 2 weeks ago – voted for by casie