Is it possible we are not equiped to understand the universe

[andyx1205]

There are billions and billions of stars in a galaxy, and there are hundreds of billions of galaxies.

It would take 100 000 years to travel across the Milky Way, if you were to travel at the speed of light.

And there are hundreds of billions of galaxies.

On top of that, there are possibly an infinite amount of Universes and an infinite amount of Big Bangs.

So yes, fuck, it is quite impossible for humans to "understand the Universe." We may be able to "understand more," but I doubt we can understand everything.
-snipped-

While it is pretty certain we will never go to every corner of the universe, and therefore not 'understand' it directly of course, in terms of having seen all there is to see, I was referring much more to the actual make-up and nature of the universe - or more specifically the nature of the stuff we inhabit and what it 'looks like'. My point when I think about it again, is that our senses and mental equipment are probably not equipped to hold even a model of its true nature in our heads, even if perhaps we one day actually arrive at some sort of mathematical description.

The problem with this is that we are only looking at the model of one Universe, which is our specific universe. We have no idea if other Universes, if there are many, function similar to ours, which perhaps have different laws than our universe. We don't have much of a working field.

But sure, perhaps we are able to understand our specific Universe, that's still not everything though. Of course, I'm simply assuming that our Universe is not the only Universe. I am making the assumption that our Universe is part of a Multi-Verse, but how would we know whether it is or not? That's the beauty of science, there's always a mystery to be solved.

The more we learn about the Universe, the more questions are raised about the Universe.

But again, there is the possibility that our Universe is governed by a simple law that can be written in one line.

I don't think that our brains are simply capable of understanding everything. Perhaps in the future we'll be able to modify our brains through technology, increasing their capacity and efficiency just as how we've been able to increase the efficiency of computers.

As interesting as the Universe is, I honestly think that we should confine our resources towards improving the average human through technology. Of course, the improvement of technology may have an indirect relationship with space exploration. After all, what's the point of figuring out how the Universe works when our survival is currently under threat on this very small Earth?

[Rum]

It would seem that the universe turns out to be really very weird and my question is this. Given that it may be totally bizarre from a human perspective, is it possible that we will never be able to do more than imagine what it 'looks' like, even if we get some mathematical grasp of it? Perhaps we do not have the capability to apprehend the universe as it truly is.

An argument or idea that i often put forward in the case of such things is that we have eveoled essentially to function o this planet and are tied in with it and its ecosystem and conditions. therefore our abilities are limited byt the fact that we evolved on this one tiny planet on the arse end of a galaxy

I agree. One might even postulate that we evolved in a Newtonian way!

[Trinoc]

I don't think that our brains are simply capable of understanding everything. Perhaps in the future we'll be able to modify our brains through technology, increasing their capacity and efficiency just as how we've been able to increase the efficiency of computers.

We have already modified our brains with technology. In fact we modified our brains even before technology existed when we first started communicating so that we could apply more than one brain to a particular problem. But when we started writing our thoughts down we started on the technological road of making what we could think about essentially limitless, if a bit slow.

The question, I think, is not so much whether there is any limit to how much we can enhance our brains with technology, so much as how far we need to go before the technology no longer needs our brains to complete the process. At that point we will have evolved into our descendants, and our descendants will be machines which can explore the universe, leaving us and other organic life behind like jellyfish who wondered how they would ever be able to cross the desert.

A side effect of this is that, if we ever meet intelligent beings from elsewhere in the universe, they will probably be machines.

[Dr. Kwaltz]

Well, understanding that the observable universe is only a small part of the actual universe is a good place to start. Once you accept this fact, it's immediately obvious we will never be able to know the whole universe.

With a universe stretching 93 billion light years across and only 13.7 billion years old, our "subverse" (the part of the universe we can actually observe) only stretches 27.4 billion light years across. Truly a bubble in a bubble.

This also makes another issue interesting. Looking at the Andromeda galaxy, you are looking at the place where the galaxy was two million years ago and not where it actually is located physically today. So, looking at the universe, you are not looking at how it actually looks today, but how various parts looked and were located at the time the light left them. Thus giving us an incorrect view of what the universe in reality looks like today.

[Trinoc]

Well, understanding that the observable universe is only a small part of the actual universe is a good place to start. Once you accept this fact, it's immediately obvious we will never be able to know the whole universe.

There's an important difference between knowing every fact about every object in the universe -- which we obviously will never do -- and knowing the principles on which the universe operates. While we might never know all of that, I know of no theoretical limit to our being able to understand as much as we have time to work out.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Well, understanding that the observable universe is only a small part of the actual universe is a good place to start. Once you accept this fact, it's immediately obvious we will never be able to know the whole universe.

With a universe stretching 93 billion light years across and only 13.7 billion years old, our "subverse" (the part of the universe we can actually observe) only stretches 27.4 billion light years across. Truly a bubble in a bubble.

This also makes another issue interesting. Looking at the Andromeda galaxy, you are looking at the place where the galaxy was two million years ago and not where it actually is located physically today. So, looking at the universe, you are not looking at how it actually looks today, but how various parts looked and were located at the time the light left them. Thus giving us an incorrect view of what the universe in reality looks like today.

The observable flower is only a small part of the flower.

But we developed: -
Microscopes to examine its finer details.
Ultra-violet film to see the hidden honey-guides.
Advanced techniques to investigate the biochemical processes that occur within it.
Genetic theory to comprehend its heredity.
Etc.

As we learn more, we develop tools to push the limits of knowledge still further. Who is to say what tools we may invent in the future? We haven't learnt all that is to be learnt about the flower yet, but we learn more every year. The same is true of the universe. The limits of our powers to investigate are anything but 'immediately obvious'. We may never know all of the fundamental facts about the universe but, providing we avoid self-destruction or a permanent reversion to a more primitive technological state, we will continue to expand our knowledge of it. Who can say what, if anything, is beyond our capacity to know?

Never say never.

[lpetrich]

There's something even worse -- the mathematics necessary to understand it. Even the math of Newtonian mechanics goes way over the heads of many people.

So we are not directly adapted to understand mathematics.

Strictly speaking, we haven't needed to. When we move, we don't solve the equations of motion and work out the best solutions. Instead, we use lots of unconscious rules of thumb.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

There's something even worse -- the mathematics necessary to understand it. Even the math of Newtonian mechanics goes way over the heads of many people.

So we are not directly adapted to understand mathematics.

Strictly speaking, we haven't needed to. When we move, we don't solve the equations of motion and work out the best solutions. Instead, we use lots of unconscious rules of thumb.

The mathematics necessary to calculate the change you should expect at the supermarket exceeds the capacity of many people! However, provided that the right buttons are pressed, the till can be relied upon to give us the right answer. I can assure you that it would soon become apparent if the till were not doing!

When the 4-colour map problem was solved, a computer was used to mass-process a huge number of probable scenarios and eliminate them. No human has ever worked through these scenarios (nor could they in any reasonable length of time) but they are confirmed by other, improved, computer algorithms giving the same result independently.

I also take exception to your claim that 'we are not directly adapted to understand mathematics' - mainly because I am not sure exactly what you are saying, nor how you extrapolate that statement from what goes on in 'the heads of many people'. I can understand most Newtonian mechanics quite comfortably. In the case of 'most people', what is lacking is not the capacity but either the intelligence, or else the training, the will and the practice required to grasp the concepts.

[andyx1205]

There's something even worse -- the mathematics necessary to understand it. Even the math of Newtonian mechanics goes way over the heads of many people.

So we are not directly adapted to understand mathematics.

Strictly speaking, we haven't needed to. When we move, we don't solve the equations of motion and work out the best solutions. Instead, we use lots of unconscious rules of thumb.

That reminds me of the famous quote, I forgot who said it but:

"If you think you understand Quantum Mechanics, you do not understand Quantum Mechanics."

Btw once again, I highly recommend all of you Science nerds out there to check out the video I posted earlier. Even after watching it, a lot of the concepts just blew right over my head.

[llanitedave]

I can't find it anywhere on the internet, but I seem to remember Ned Flanders summing this whole idea succinctly:

"There are some things man wasn't intended to know. Important things."

[lpetrich]

The mathematics necessary to calculate the change you should expect at the supermarket exceeds the capacity of many people! However, provided that the right buttons are pressed, the till can be relied upon to give us the right answer. I can assure you that it would soon become apparent if the till were not doing!

If the numbers were far off or fit some easily-recognized pattern, yes, but not otherwise.

I also take exception to your claim that 'we are not directly adapted to understand mathematics' - mainly because I am not sure exactly what you are saying, nor how you extrapolate that statement from what goes on in 'the heads of many people'.

Mathematics takes a lot of learning, and it's very difficult for many people. Especially math beyond simple arithmetic. Furthermore, such math was only developed over the last few millennia, suggesting that we had had no experience of the concepts before then.

Consider how many people stumble over the ideas of zero and negative numbers. "How can nothing be a number?" "How can anything be *less* than zero?" Even Greco-Roman mathematicians did not accept zero and negative numbers as legitimate numbers.

I can understand most Newtonian mechanics quite comfortably.

Do you understand its mathematics? Or do you understand some nonmathematical description of it? Because you need the math to put it to work.

See if you can derive some famous results without its mathematics, like how an inverse-square central force produces Kepler's Three Laws of planetary motion.

In the case of 'most people', what is lacking is not the capacity but either the intelligence, or else the training, the will and the practice required to grasp the concepts.

Maybe. Try seeing how well your friends and relatives and colleagues understand zero and negative numbers some time, and try getting them to understand those concepts if they don't.

[Feck]

My brain stops with wave particle duality ,shapes with more than 3 dimensions etc . Just the basic concepts will do me fine .

[lpetrich]

That reminds me of the famous quote, I forgot who said it but:

"If you think you understand Quantum Mechanics, you do not understand Quantum Mechanics."

Attributed to Richard Feynman, though I can't find the original.

Richard Feynman - Wikiquote has "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.", from The Character of Physical Law (1965).

[Xamonas Chegwé]

The mathematics necessary to calculate the change you should expect at the supermarket exceeds the capacity of many people! However, provided that the right buttons are pressed, the till can be relied upon to give us the right answer. I can assure you that it would soon become apparent if the till were not doing!

If the numbers were far off or fit some easily-recognized pattern, yes, but not otherwise.

I also take exception to your claim that 'we are not directly adapted to understand mathematics' - mainly because I am not sure exactly what you are saying, nor how you extrapolate that statement from what goes on in 'the heads of many people'.

Mathematics takes a lot of learning, and it's very difficult for many people. Especially math beyond simple arithmetic. Furthermore, such math was only developed over the last few millennia, suggesting that we had had no experience of the concepts before then.

Consider how many people stumble over the ideas of zero and negative numbers. "How can nothing be a number?" "How can anything be *less* than zero?" Even Greco-Roman mathematicians did not accept zero and negative numbers as legitimate numbers.

I can understand most Newtonian mechanics quite comfortably.

Do you understand its mathematics? Or do you understand some nonmathematical description of it? Because you need the math to put it to work.

See if you can derive some famous results without its mathematics, like how an inverse-square central force produces Kepler's Three Laws of planetary motion.

In the case of 'most people', what is lacking is not the capacity but either the intelligence, or else the training, the will and the practice required to grasp the concepts.

Maybe. Try seeing how well your friends and relatives and colleagues understand zero and negative numbers some time, and try getting them to understand those concepts if they don't.

So you're saying, "Maths is hard."

That is a completely different thing from 'we are not directly adapted to understand mathematics' which I still don't agree with, or completely understand.

As a species, we are extremely good at observing patterns and extrapolating from them - that is what maths is when you strip away the esoteric notation and language. Some of us are better at it than others - what does that prove? Most people are not professional sportsmen, that doesn't mean that 'we are not directly adapted to be sportsmen', only that some of us stand out in that sphere.

[susu.exp]

I've always wondered, in my completely clueless way, whether applying classical chaos theory to the probability functions of quantum particles could account for the quantum uncertainty in the particles themselves that we can observe. In other words, is there a continuum of uncertainty between chaos on the large scale as we see in weather etc., caused by infinitesimal errors in measuring initial conditions, and quantum uncertainty on the small scale, or are they in some sense fundamentally different from each other?

They are fundamentally different. Chaos theory usually means deterministic Chaos, i.e. we´ve got systems of ordinary differential equations which simly diverge for small differences in innitial states. In QM we´ve got actual stochasticity, the limitation in predictions is not reducible to the measurement error we make in figuring out the innitial condition. In a deterministic system, the same innitial state always leads to the same final state. In chaotic systems similar innitial states do not produce similar final states. In stochastic systems the same innitial state leads to different final states with different probabilities. And in stochastic chaotic systems similar innitial states do not produce similar probability distributions for the final state.

There are some ideas of modeling quantum uncertainty as deterministic chaos. I´m rather sceptical of those, because these are hidden variables theories and those run into problems with the Bell inequality. Those in favour note that this might open possibilities to reconcile QM with relativity. But until they actually produce a model and it works (and somehow circumvents the Bell problem) I´m rather skeptical. It appears that QM really is stochastic.

Consider how many people stumble over the ideas of zero and negative numbers. "How can nothing be a number?" "How can anything be *less* than zero?" Even Greco-Roman mathematicians did not accept zero and negative numbers as legitimate numbers.

IIRC they weren´t so much not accepting them as unaware of them. Zero was used in the far east at the time, but didn´t make it to europe until the Reconquistadora when Islamic scholars who had taken over concepts from India introduced it. I´ve recently re-read "Zero: The biography of a dangerous idea" by Charles Seife. Not the worst book to read on the history of at least that particular part of mathematics.