Personal Test for a First Principle
- First principles are unproven, elementary ideas
about matter and change.
- They are so elementary that they are the
foundation for almost everything a disciple of that principle - thinks
about the physical
world - especially earth
history.
- Once a first principle becomes accepted, a
structured science is constructed upon it.
The science rests on a single, unsupported, fundamental assumption.
Since everyone accepts
the science, the first principle is no longer discoursed about - it is
accepted as self-evident.
You can test for a first
principle by examining our epistemic history.
You will not find an
analysis of science's first principle in modern history books,
because it is now authoritative and
unquestioned. Yet it is in the writings of those who laid
the foundation for science.
Twenty-six hundred years ago, when the pagan Greeks first tried to
invent
science, they encountered
an immense problem. How could they invent science if matter itself
changes? The early philosophers accepted that everything is in flux.
They tried to explain the universe in terms of changing matter. A
couple of
centuries later, Parmenides
showed that if matter really changes, they could never invent science.
What "is" would
eventually become "what is not" - and all scientific theories would
eventually
fail. Some of the philosophers suggested that atoms were stable.
However, they did not believe that
this constituted
changelessness. Lucretius, the atomist, wrote that everything decays
and wears out. The tiny indivisible parts (which they called atoms)
were constantly rearranging themselves.
Even matter wears out by old age because the indivisible parts
were always rearranging themselves producing continuous degeneration.
After three hundred years of debates, Aristotle argued that we must
just assume
that the properties of matter are fixed and build all knowledge on
changelessness - even though
none is observed. Aristotle's assumption did not become the basis for
science during the classical
age. Four hundred
and fifty years after Aristotle,
the last of the great pagan astronomers, Ptolemy, wrote the Almagest. "It is an
attribute
of all existing things without exception, both mortal and immortal: for
those things which are
perceptually changing in their inseparable form, it (mathematics)
changes with them, . . ."
"physics (is guesswork) because of the unstable and unclear nature of
matter; hence there is no
hope that philosophers will ever be agreed about them." Mathematics, he
believed, is unshakable,
because when matter itself changes, mathematics changes with it.
(Almagest Book One - G. J.
Toomer translation)
For more than
a millennium
educated Christians followed Plato's version of science. Plato, a
pagan, admitted that matter corrupts (genesis
ka phthora). He claimed that what was changeless existed in an
invisible world of Ideas.
About 700 years ago, some Catholic
monks discovered Aristotle's metaphysics. One of
them, the mendicant friar Thomas Aquinas, wrote
extensively interpreting Aristotle in Latin. He
convinced the popes, who at that time were in
charge of all Western universities, to authorize
the teaching of Aristotle's system. Over
the
centuries, many Western scientists kept on building and
adjusting their science to fit Aristotle's elementary idea that the properties of matter are not
emergent. Even Aristotle's physics changed - but not his elementary
assumption, which was by then the
foundation for Western science. Historically, science was
built on the idea that matter
is not changing itself, not continually changing relationally with
age.
There is a second way you
can test for a first principle. If you are
a disciple of a first
principle, you will find it difficult to think without it. This
inability to think except one way, is evidence that you are under the
control of a first principle.
The scientific way of measuring depends on Aristotle's fundamental
assumption that the
properties of matter are not emergent. For example, scientists
operationally define time. An
operational definition is not concerned with the actuality
of real-time. Time is
assumed to exist as a linear flow because clocks are presumed to be
made
of unchanging matter.
Yet no clock ever isolated any time. Clocks can only compare the rate
of complex, irreducible,
present processes. No local clock ever compared the rate of past
seconds with current ones. If matter is changing relationally, clocks
would change along with the inertial and space properties of matter.
The
entire structure of scientific reasoning, scientific mathematics,
scientific methods, laws and
constants rests on the one assumption - that matter does not change
relationally as it ages.
We can
actually see the past back to the
beginning of the universe. Not a single ancient atomic clock, anywhere,
clocks the frequencies of
modern atoms. Do you find it difficult to accept what is visible - that
all clocks in the universe
always accelerate as atoms age? Is it easier for you to believe in
mythical things like vacuous
processes and invisible matter than to question a single elementary
assumption? Do you find it
more comfortable to believe that the frequencies of all ancient clocks
are being adjusted by the
vacuum of space? Then perhaps you do have a first principle?
Plato told a
story of prisoners in a dark cave who only saw shadows projected on a
wall.
In their
minds, the shadows were reality, since they never saw the world of
sunlight. Then a prisoner escaped, saw the light
of the sun and the world
of real objects. What would happen if he returned to the cave to free
those who only saw
shadows? Plato wrote, "Wouldn't it be said of him that he went up and
came back with
his eyes corrupted, and
that it's not even worth trying to go up? And if they were somehow able
to get their hands on and
kill the man who attempts to release and lead up, wouldn't they kill
him?" Do you prefer the
shadow word of mathematical reality - rather than the visible history
of the universe?
Look at the long ago universe. Observe
how the galaxies formed in
defiance of every law,
definition, mathematical formula and constant of physics. Hundreds of
billions of galaxies cannot
grow into huge growth spirals unless the properties of matter are
always changing. Are you so
used to the shadow world of mathematical symbols and operationally
defined assumptions -
that the real world of visible change is too much for you to bear?
The Bible predicted the
idea "that panta outos diamenei - all things remain the same in being"
would be the arche ktiseos
(the first law) of the last-day false teachers. If you are unable to
accept the visible history of the
universe - and instead prefer the shadow world of symbols - then a
first principle controls your mind.
Try as hard as you can to free
yourself from the creed of science. Look
at the universe and accept
what is visible as truth. What we see with sight is biblical cosmic
history. What we see with sight
is evidence for biblical statements about time and matter (biblical
physics). How utterly and
completely the literal words of the Bible will vanquish science - the
way of measuring and
mathematicating founded upon the assumption of a pagan Greek.
Return to godsriddle main page
This document is under a Creative Commons License by Victor McAllister.
What does that mean?
Last modified on February 15, 2009