Not Just a Theory

*Iowa State Daily column by Ian Timberlake*

No, it’s not just a theory. The word “theory” is one of the most misused words in the English language. This argument stems from the religious argument about evolution, but far too many people, university students alike, throw the word “theory” out there as if it stands on the same ground as “opinion”. My recent column about warfare was not a theory, it was an opinion. I make this statement because as university students and associates of professors and scientists, “theory” must be respected.

The National Academy of Sciences defines “theory” as: “A comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature that is supported by a vast body of evidence. Many scientific theories are so well established that no new evidence is likely to alter them substantially. For example, no new evidence will demonstrate that the Earth does not orbit around the sun (heliocentric theory), or that living things are not made of cells (cell theory), that matter is not composed of atoms, or that the surface of the Earth is not divided into solid plates that have moved over geological timescales (the theory of plate tectonics) … One of the most useful properties of scientific theories is that they can be used to make predictions about natural events or phenomena that have not yet been observed.”

Merriam-Webster defines it as: “The general or abstract principles of a body of fact, a science, or an art .”

A theory is the outcome of a successful hypothesis. Saying, “It’s just a hypothesis,” is an acceptable yet cautious statement; saying, “It’s just a theory,” doesn’t even make sense. The order of process of the scientific method is as follows: ask question, do research, create hypothesis, experiment, analyze results. If the results back up the hypothesis and withstands the challenge of scientific peer evaluation, then you have theory; if not, then you must return and reconstruct your hypothesis.

Scientific Method

We have the theory of medicine, the theory of gravity and relativity, and the theory of evolution by natural selection, to name a few examples. A scientific law is not the same thing as a theory — and we certainly do not promote laws from theories. Laws are principles used to substantiate theories. An example of a law would be that of a formula, such as Bernoulli’s Principle of fluid dynamics. Both theories and laws are considered to be scientific fact. For example, Darwinian natural selection is the theory to the law of evolution. Natural selection explains through testable and replicable experimentation and scrutiny the principal fact of evolution.

This falsity of words is so prevalent that it’s even found on biology textbooks. Selman v. Cobb County School District was a 2006 court case involving warning label stickers placed on all biology textbooks. The stickers read, “This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.” The original ruling was that this violated two areas of the constitution, citing religious reasons, but also because it was logically false. The case was appealed and eventually settled out of court in favor of Selman.

As a well-established science and technology institution here at Iowa State, we must pride ourselves on upholding the fundamental underpinnings of the scientific method. Not only is it important in our future careers, but it’s important in everyday understanding of the world with which we live.

While most of the above was an argument against the falsifying of the word “theory,” I also argue that we must be careful how we use it in regular language. It is an important word as far as humanity is concerned, and using it poorly only perpetuates its misconception.

Theories literally are what we know about anything. All knowledge we have about the universe is in theory. Theory is the ultimate goal in science, it is the end game every scientist strives for. Theory is the spire of human intellect continually piercing the atmosphere of knowledge.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/theory
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/cobb/selman-v-cobb.html
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11876&page=11

What Is Time & Is Time Infinite & How Does Time Relate To The Universe

For many years I’ve tried to understand the concept of “time” and how it shapes us and the universe as a whole. Sure, time is trivial to understand when we talk about it in terms of the environment in which we live, but that doesn’t really mean anything when we are on a universal (and fundamental) scale. To put it quite simply, humans created the unit of time. Time is not something you can go out and measure quantitatively (as of yet)… this is why it’s known as the universal independent variable. In order for one human’s path in space to intersect with another human’s path in space, an order of time must be created otherwise the head of your paths are unlikely to meet together. Many years ago we used moon cycles, sun locations and stars in the sky to tell us an order of time. I won’t get into a lot of the history of the creation of time because it doesn’t correlate with my argument, and you can look it up yourself.

The Universe

Understanding time has plagued humanity almost as long as we’ve had cognizant brains. The reason lies with beginnings and with ends. Obviously, when talking about time, it is impossible to avoid the deterioration to the ultimate question… “why are we here” and “where did it all come from”. What I am going to do is attempt to give my explanation to time and the answers to the question postulated above.

Humans are action-reaction creatures. It is how we learn, how we understand, how we decide and how we act. From the moment we are born we become a sponge for information. We witness an event or an action and become of the consequences thereafter. This endless process is what shapes us and our mind. We literally are made up of our experiences. The point being, humans inherently know there are beginnings and ends to everything because it’s intrinsic in the world we are raised in. Naturally, it leads people to wonder why the universe had a beginning and what was the action that caused it. This is where we could get biblical (which is not the purpose of this article). But both sides of the spectrum use arguments of relation to “getting something from nothing”. As in, “the big bang was something from nothing”… or, “god is something from nothing”. I’ll leave the biblical portion of the article to that.

What we fail to recognize is the notion of infinity. BUT WAIT! This is not another argument for infinite time! Anyone with any form of intelligible thought process has heard somebody argue a universe that exists outside that of time, whether religious or not. I do not believe in a universe that has a time line that extends infinitely in both the early and later directions. I speculate that everything in the universe is happening at once.

That’s right, there is no timeline, or rather, it is a timeline of no length. Let me put it into perspective here. If I were to write this entire article fading from the color red to the color blue, would you be able to tell me which letter was purple? The answer is no. But that still isn’t precisely a good analogy. The events in our day are all superfluous, there is no strict beginning or end to events in our day-to-day life. Our brain perceives beginnings and ends to make sense of things because it’s the natural process as to how we learn. But every single little sub-atomic particle in the entire universe is behaving superfluously with each other at any point in “time”, removed from however you divide it, there is no literal beginning of anything, it’s all arbitrary. Which means it’s possible for everything to be happening at once. The only confusion is how we clarify which event happened after another event. Einstein showed how time and space are relative and it has been proven that the faster you go the slower time appears (look up the Hafele-Keating experiment). In fact, without relativity, our GPS satellites wouldn’t work. If time is relative, then maybe we are locked in this mentality of thinking time is an actual thing… simply on the basis we exist at speeds exasperatingly less than the speed of light.

Ultimately, I think the questions, “why are we here” and “where did it all come from”, are invalid questions to ask. It might be an extremely complicated and far out reaching version of the question, “what is the color of the number 3″. That question is a non-question. And we may not be intelligent enough of a species to understand that or see why this is the case. Again, this is just a speculation. But without the existence of “time”. Then there is no beginning and there is no end. There will definitely be an end to humanity at some point in the future, how far out we don’t know.

Ultra zoom in (this shows you where we are in the universe): Click

What existed before the known universe very might as well be another universe, in constant contraction and expansion… or dissipation. Which then begs the question, “what is beyond the “edge” of our universe?” Well, recently, there has been a lot of data coming in from research astrophysicists have been doing that leads us to believe there could be other universes butting up against ours. There are unexplained bubbles of energy all around the “edge” of our universe that come out to be exactly what we would expect if another universe (not too different from ours) were bumping into us. Knowing this, we can speculate an infinite amount of universes, all with their own laws of physics and chemistry and biology. But we would never be able to witness this or go there because time and space and physical law limit us from crossing that “edge”. In our universe, space is expanding, but we can’t go where space isn’t yet and we also can’t see where light hasn’t traveled yet. Which means we would never ever, ever, be able to witness first hand another universe whether one existed or not… only by 2nd hand witnessing would we be able to infer.

I hope this wasn’t too cloudy of an article. My roommate and I talked about this and the like for nearly 2.5 hours trying to come to an agreement of opinion and/or understanding. If you wish to ask a question about my opinion, or leave a comment, feel free to do so below.

Does Your Lack of Experience Limit Your Understanding and Knowledge?

If I were to ask you to describe the color red to somebody who only sees in black and white, how might you do that? Lets say this person, from the time they were born, only saw the world on a gray-scale and had never experienced true color. Could you say red is the color of a rose? Or could you say that red is of a such-n-such wavelength in the light spectrum? Give me something in the comment box if you can think of a method and I’ll give you some serious props. I’ll make it a little easier. What if you had a person who viewed everything as gray-scale, but, they saw anything that was blue. This would give them perception of what the possibilities of “color” are… but do you still think that you could explain to them what red is? Even if they have the perception of what color is?

Humans only learn and understand by comparing their experiences with other worldly observations. How would you explain “hot” to someone who has never felt temperature difference? It’s impossible. If you want to know where I’m going with this, trust me, it’s going somewhere. Not only do I find the above highly intriguing but it’s also meaningful in our lives to understand this.

Your understanding is limited to your experiences.

 

Now. What if I were to ask you about time… or more specifically your perception of it. To you, and everyone else in this world, everything has a beginning and an ending. Everything. Time dictates this. A pepper shaker has a beginning and an ending, a vehicle has a beginning and ending, an earthly creature has a beginning and an ending. From the time you are born, to the time you die (beginning and ending), all your experiences are based around this. Einstein has provided mathematical representations of how time can fluctuate… and it has been proven. Two atomic clocks were monitored, one on the space shuttle and one on Earth. Atomic clocks are accurate to the second in no less than 138 million years. After only a short while in space, the space clock slowed down considerably… proving Einsteins calculations of time fluctuation as you increase your speed.

If time can fluctuate, then what is to say that it can’t be infinite all together? Who says the universe has to have a beginning? The “big bang” as creationists have coined it, did in fact happen, guaranteed… what we don’t know is what was before the explosion. My theory (as well as many other physicists) is that the universe is in a timeless state of expansion and contraction, and in-fact there were many “big bangs”… infinitely many.

Why is this hard to accept? It’s because all we know is time that has a beginning and an ending. We have nothing in our lives to relate timelessness to. How do you explain timelessness? It is literally beyond understanding. You know what it entails, but you can’t explain it. This means that the theory can’t be taken as absurd because there is nothing to say it is not possible, not even improbable. I actually argue it is the most likely. The “big bang” explains the creation of our universe but it doesn’t explain what was before the beginning. It is the eternal question of humanity, one we will probably never answer. But logically, it’s impossible to have nothing before something. So when a creationist argues that the “big bang” states you must have nothing before something… they don’t know what they are arguing. Actually, the same thing could be said about creation. Who created the creator? The only feasible way for a god to exist and “create” the universe is if the universe is timeless, otherwise something had to create him (or her). This argument, in my opinion, would be perfectly valid.

 

This brings me to my next question about understanding and experience. Why in the world would a [timeless] creator wait an infinite amount of time to create a single creature of trillions, on a single planet of infinitely many, and make us so insignificant and futile among the vastness of the universe?  Seems rather dull and anti-climactic… where are the fireworks and streamers?

Like I said throughout this entire post, our knowledge is limited by our experiences. Humans have always had a tendency to fill the unknown with something supernatural that might have the ability to answer all the questions. I find the utmost beauty in the unknown because it is what leaves room for exploration and knowledge. Knowing I am actually a breathing, insignificant creature in this universe without a purpose other than one that I create for myself allows me to break free and open my mind to all possibilities of thought. I can only hope to increase the limit of my experience such that an understanding of the universe we live in is more readily grasped… even if it is only a minute increase. Everyone should strive to experience as much as possible because once it’s over, it’s probably over.

On another note, here I explain why death is vital to living a happy and successful life: http://iantimberlake.wordpress.com/2011/09/25/where-do-humans-get-their-life-value-life-and-death-i-can-tell-you/

Related articles

• Life’s a Bitch and Then You Die (the Universe, that is) (psychminder.com)
• Do we really understand gravity? Physicists think, maybe… (pakos.me)
• Infinite deja vu (blaspheromones.wordpress.com)
• About time: What is it? (tleonidas.wordpress.com)

Poem: Human Existence and Purpose

Existence.
Have you taken a second to realize who, what, where and ultimately…why we are.
Have you thought of why we go the distance?
To dress the way we dress. To act the way we act. To be who we are expected to be.
Why do we need to eat certain foods at certain times of the day?
Why do we need to wear name brand clothing everyway?
Why do we all have those friends that make random noises?
Or why do we find the need to speak with rules and with curses?
Have you looked up in the sky at night and thought…
With 400 billion stars in our single galaxy,
Why is it important to cross your t’s and dot your i’s?
Why is it important to make every single picture look like a prize?
Earth is in the middle of a cycle of ice ages,
The existence of dinosaur and man is merely in between the non-living.
The biotic world we know is only 2 millionths of a percent of earths existence.

So?
Why is it important to wear the most expensive watch?
Why is it important to live in the biggest house?
Why is it important to eat your food with a knife and fork?
Why is it we judge one another as if it mattered?
Who are we to think we have a purpose in this universe?
Next time you are walking through the hall, or talking on the phone,
Take notice in what you condone,
Take notice in what you see other people do when there is an unknown,
Take notice in why people think they are on top of a throne.
In the grand scheme of things,
Is it necessary to do what we all do?
What we all do for self preservation and others cooperation over the foundation of why we exist.
What is our purpose to live out our lives on this planet we call Earth.
Unfortunately we will never figure out what its worth.
We can only guess as to what we are meant to do and why we are meant to be.
Could there be a universal role as to why? I think not, but there is no guarantee.
But I can tell you what we must believe to disagree.
We must believe to disagree that we are not meant to be.
We are meant to be because we do have a purpose.
The purpose we must believe is not that we are keystone in this universe.
Not that we are significant, nor meant to hold a role.
But rather we exist for the soul purpose of existing.
And we persist for the soul purpose of persisting.
But we still have a purpose.
Why is it we sit for hours and watch our favorite shows?
Why is it we find obscenity humorous?
Why is it we make friends and enemies?
There comes a point in your short life where you realize what matters.
Where you realize who matters, who never did matter, and who always will matter.
Why is it we must stick with the masses?
But then why do we have social classes?
Being absolutely objective, what is really necessary and what isn’t?
Now that you have taken a minute or two to think about the real…
Who, what, where and ultimately why we are.
Now we must learn to think about how we live the life we feel is real.