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• Tuesday, June 24, 2008 05:01 PM

  Causality....often a dead end pursuit

  jazztao wrote:

  The trouble is it doesn't explain why or how the "early (photon-radiation) era cosmos" exists in the first place. I find the theory elegant, powerful and beautiful, but it doesn't speak to Ultimate Cause in any way.

  No, it doesn't, because it provides a positivist solution not a causal one. As Mario Bunge (Causality and Modern Science, Dover) has observed:

  "Giving reasons is no longer regarded as assigning causes. In Science, it means to combine particular propositions about facts with hypotheses, laws, axioms and definitions. In general, there is no correspondence between sufficient reason and causation."

  Bunge and others recommend instead the elucidation of necessary and sufficient conditions. A necessary condition is one without which the event cannot occur. A sufficient condition is one which - if present- the event must occur.

  For example, consider a hydrogen emission nebula. A necessary condition is a hydrogen gas cloud. If there is no hydrogen cloud there can be no emission nebula. A sufficient condition is a proximate source of radiation, e.g. star, which can excite the electrons in many of the clouds hydrogen atoms to higher energy levels. On returning to lower energy levels there will then be the emission of photons and voila! The H-emission nebula.

  What is essential for the non-positivists to do, is not to pursue the hollow "ultimate cause" but rather try to specify the necessary and sufficient conditions for what THEY believe is essential to the origin of the cosmos.

  Again, this is not a problem for the modern Materialist-positivist. Asking for the "ultimate cause" of the original quantum fluctuation is for us tantamount to asking "What is north of the north pole?"

  —droogoy Read droogoy's other letters
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