"Odysseus" wrote...
in message ...

Painius wrote:

At first, this looked to me like the question as to whether space
is a void with sub-Planck energy flowing through it, or is space
itself comprised of energy, IOW is space itself a field. Then
almost immediately i latched onto two thoughts...

1) What exactly did the Universe "erupt" into as a result of the
Big Bang, for whatever that is, it is what space would be flowing
into and through,

Not necessarily, I don't think. I can just as easily picture our
spacetime as self-contained; whatever (if anything) the surrounding
'hypospace' may consist of could just as well be excluded from the
universe as pervade it. I should think that anything outside the
universe is unknowable, pretty much by definition, so the only
possible answers to the question of what surrounds it would be better
classified as metaphysical speculation than as science. Therefore it
might be more productive to focus on questions that are decidable, at
least in principle.

Yes, my wording was too... arrogant?... "It is what space *might*
be flowing into and/or through." And perhaps the road to the large
answers is paved with questions that are decidable.

Do you think that the questions of gravity and the understanding
of it using both relativity *and* quantum physics are decidable?

2) maybe the whole question of void space vs. space as field is
unnecessary. Take water, for example, as it flows downriver.
We can see the river as the medium, or we can see the water as
millions of water molecules being rushed through "space" from
their source to their ultimate destination.

We can see what the water flows into and through, however i
am fairly certain that we may never know the answer to your
question. It could be a void, or it could be a gel-like substance
that space-as-field expands outwardly against. Whatever it is,
we only "know" that it must be something that would allow our
Universe to come into being and to grow very large and exist
for a long time by our standards.

I do think that much of the problem has to do with the inadequacy of
our senses for dealing with the aspects of the world whose scale is
much greater or smaller than ours. Marvellous though they may be, our
faculties evolved in an environment wherein cosmological and quantum
considerations are irrelevant, and it's only in the most recent 0.01%
of our existence as a species that we -- actually a pretty small
fraction of the population -- have developed a material and
intellectual culture sufficient to begin exploring these realms. Our
intuition balks at absorbing the implications of what abstract models
and indirect observations tell us, whether the seeming unreality
concerns wave-particle duality on the smallest scales, or a finite
but boundless, multidimensional manifold on the largest. It's all too
easy to seize on analogies from direct experience without recognizing
that they're only suggestive 'props' to understanding, and that they
can't be stretched very far without leading to false inferences.

And yet it is never easy to step out from our direct experiences
and to use our imaginations. All too often, whether something is
true or not, if it be the result of our imaginings then it is sluffed off
as metaphysical speculation. Intuition, a "nose for news," our
feelings and our speculations are trustworthy only to the extent
that they have been successful in the past.

Although this may all sound rather pessimistic, I treasure the sense
of awe that contemplating these questions can evoke, and the strange
beauty of the mathematical language that has been so successful at
describing them (if not at satisfactorily 'bringing them home'). I
like to think that with such inspiration it's possible for anyone to
gain some insight into what really goes on, glimpsed "through a glass
darkly" though it may be. And I believe that exchanges of ideas with
others -- at whatever level -- can help any of us develop a better
understanding, as long as we recognize that those who have struggled
with the issues will have found different routes through them; as in
the story of the blind men and the elephant, each of us can benefit
from trying to take in others' perspectives.

--
Odysseus

I share your sense of awe, and i did not take anything you said
as pessimistic, but realistic. I sometimes like to see a mind soar,
but sooner or later comes the time for landing and for facing
reality. That which we bring back with us from our soarings and
which stands the tests of reality, serves to raise our levels of
consciousness. It seems truly... magical!

Paine