A few words about philosophy in general would be in order first, I suppose...
The universe has one basic issue that philosophers have addressed for 3000 years...is it made of one substance, and is it thus monistic? Can there be different basic substances; that is can there be a true pluralism, and is that even logical?
If there were two absolutely different substances, or unified fields in modern terms of physics, would it require different universes for each to be in, of, as?
God as three persons in the Christian's trinity recognizes the implicit oneness and pluralism that is paralleled in the essential requirements for the existence of objects in this universe that are simultaneously just one substance in many forms. Non-Christians have trouble historically digressing into worship of the forms and not God for-himself through his designated agent of salvation Jesus Christ.
It is notable that three objects are required if one is tow describe relative motion of any sort of objects at all.
Physics postulates just one unified field, perhaps all the stars and galaxies of the Universe and possible adjacent universes are various temporal forms of it that one could call 'objects' comprising a contingent in-protocol, hierarchical pluralism. Everything that exists in this universe follows from the creation or source as well as the ongoing unified physical field that supports it.
Some physicists would delete any mention or investigation of a purposeful creation of the Universe from their thought. They would deny that there could be any way to examine the veracity of their notions, and allow an intrinsic and cultivated bias to grow into economic and political realms of support for atheist ascendancy on earth. They would limit cosmological though to somewhat contiguous observable events and eliminate virtually any references from physics that could lead into questions or considerations with the criterion of an intelligent designer of this Universe that has given actual guidelines and rules for the users of it.
Ratiocination and rationality implicitly occur within an existential criterion of being. Individuals think and make categorical judgments within that criterion. Positive rewards or feedback regarding correspondence of hypothesis, observational testing and conclusion guide trust in the veracity of the rational paradigm. One must provide a metaphysical leap of faith without sound empirical basis in order to give anything other than a temporary and conditional, subjective value to the results of whatever belief one has tested and found a conclusion for. It is not possible to give some sort of absolute or transcendent truth value to subjective, empirical beliefs. Testable hypothesis simply provide answers to problems in such a way that one can say that the results are functional or effective in the present criterion empirically or existentially.
One should be aware that paleontologists speculated that life began on Earth 2600 million years before present, while the time of the age of the Biblical patriarchs from Adam to Noah after the flood, multiplied by Peter's value of one day to God being equal to a thousand years is about 2500 million years before present. Adamas in Semitic languages such as Arabic meant 'brown dirt' initially.
One can review the pre-Socratic philosophers set the agenda for much of the next 2700 years of speculation about the cosmos. Incidentally recently I wrote a book named 'Creation and Cosmos; The Literal Values of Genesis'.
The page just went down today for a while; I got a warning from the physics forum yesterday about mentioning the word 'intelligent design'...some may have an unwonted bias for dumb design or natural gift universe with mankind at the top of the evolutionary rung in the Universe unchallenged by the existence anyone smarter, more powerful and good.
Aristotle invented classical logic, yet it wasn't until the 19th century that Frege invented symbolic logic. That allowed linguistic philosophy to develop including some researches about language and the nature of language use in science; thus in and out are subjective terms and not absolute values (one is always simultaneously in one thing and out of something else I suppose.
God in the Bible has indicated that the supreme value for human beings seems to be one of relationships and especially with Him rather than in the mass or energy of the universe. There was a philosopher named C.D. Broad that wrote a book titled 'The Mind and It's Place in Nature', yet that was nearly a hundred years ago and much advances in learning has occurred. Mind is a co evolutionary product of mass energy with the ability to transcend aspects of being for-itself with creative thought. It's realm of existence is the brain and environment proximally adjacent, yet the entire universe is cut of one cloth and mind/brain is influenced by things from gravity to temperature, cosmic travel speed and etc. A soul is the entire phenomena of a human life being alive. God has the coordinates to reassemble it should be choose to someday.
Some questions hit the beach of many topics that require years to learn more about, just mentioning Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason as well as P.F. Strawson's 'Individuals'. You might read the neo-Platonist writer Plotinus for an idea about the similarity between mystic experiences of Greeks of the 7th century in order to compare it to the priestly notions from the Vedas regarding the nature of God. I recommend always keeping a little Gideon’s Bible with you for life.
Now to these other topic...
Philosophical Criteria of Cosmology and Mass Acceleration
... regarding the nature of the cosmos. One might simply leave off Universal speculations of ultimate causes with a Brahman style attribution of an ultimate Being of which temporal phenomena are pluralistic and contingent, yet that would be un- (knowledge)scientific and unnecessary.
I’d like to address the question of the nature of God as developed in various faiths on the subject of monotheism briefly. The object of thought about one universal God obviously would tend to elicit similar conceptual development regarding His nature. One may discern in the forerunner of the Hindu religion and the Vedas a development of the notion of Brahman that isn’t entirely dissimilar from the Christian/Jewish ideas about the nature of God. There is one God in each, yet the Christians have three persona or protocol facts of God that are the way human beings incarnate in-the-world relate to the Creator.
The transcendent God of the Hindu belief was originally though of as a transcendent being that is the ground of everything for-himself. He is a Universal deity that allows various temporal forms to exist. He created the universe and world, yet it is contingent being dependent upon His absolute reality. That isn’t too different from the metatheological Christian ideas about God. In fact the Muslim idea of God isn’t very dissimilar either in the monotheistic conception, yet Hinduism over time has added a lot of ‘clutter’ or complicating ancillary elements to the original simple faith as one might expect. Christians have Jesus Christ as the one simple way to relate directly to God and surpass the temporal ‘Maya’ or contingent being of the temporal experience that is fraught with evil pervasively in the form of original sin (a missing the mark of perfection). In the temporal world all must be imperfect and decay with life and death built upon the changes. In an eventual heaven in a perfected realm eternity and perfection will prevail under the guidance of Jesus Christ directly.
In the world theories of knowledge are used in various criteria situations. Some scientists may be dependent upon economic allegiance to atheism form promotions and a priori close out metaphysical and epistemological speculations. That inherent bias is paradoxically similar to some of the middle age sectarian biases against some modernizations of cosmology.
Kant's idea of noumenality may have recognized implicitly the limits that chemical reactions transforming photons and field data into images have; that is vision and perhaps even ratiocination is probably delimited by the criterion of human experience within the Universe...what does a forest look like for-itself when no one is there.
I would not here over-emphasize and stress the points about conjecture that reach into synthetic selection by extra-universal beings of universes that comprise aspects of the unified field of potential and actual universes should they exist...it would be far in advance of present science perhaps to conjecture about what displacement effect the creation of new universes would have on existing universes.
Especially if extra dimension of super-string theory are still theoretical, though there are tests for gravity in extra dimensions pending I recollect, it would be difficult to place ideas about extra-universes and dimensions into testable contexts. Even so...From a philosophical point of view the reversibility of time's order as a physical possibility that recognizes the isotropy of time. The second law of thermodynamics that makes an initial low order of entropy and highest ordered state of a theoretical singularity at a big bang the most probable origin for the flow of mass and time apparently does not require that time flow in a forward direction. Many or most quantum mechanical processes would work equally well mirrored the opposite way. Anti-matter may be isotropically spinning particles (thee was a recent article in Scientific American on that subject).
Pre-big bang conjecture's regarding various infinities as methods to avoid the implausible conundrum of an absolute non-Deistic first cause are aspects of the present ground of speculation available for ordinary social consideration.
The limits to mass acceleration toward light speed with the associated conversion and relations of mass and energy are implicit aspects of the criterion that ordinary people want to consider in order to learn of the nature of the Unified Field that comprises the cosmos. It’s been speculated that the hyper-inflating universe expanded faster than light for a fraction of a second and that allows for the size and age characteristics to be reconciled doesn't it? The Higgs Field allowed light and gravity to exist later when it slowed down to sub-light speed.
Of course I haven't written that well, I was remembering some of the recent popular works such as 'The Fabric of the Cosmos' that have made some interesting points on the area, and hoped to clarify the reason why I wondered about the associated characteristics of mass accelerating with gravity, extra-dimensions and energy.
Gravity rather than being a thing for-itself seems to be a description of the effects that various forms of energy have and how they react or relate in various speed/time configurations? Time, speed of energy and mass of this universe probably have a different nature for-themselves than for-human perceptions and experience within the unified field.
As mass is accelerated toward light speed it may be assumed that relativistic effects give mass toward it perhaps from some field. Yet mass moved toward light speed isn't generally considered from a super-string or M-Theory paradigm is it? It would seem to me, just logically (I enjoy symbolic logic yet that isn't very useful here) that one might infer that mass could force itself into micro-dimensions with the extra speed in part, and that the energy required to accelerate the mass isn't solely the cause of extra mass being added to it to move it toward an infinite value.
The nature of infinities in physical cosmology seems quite interesting and a benefit rather than a detriment to thought experimentation regarding the convertibility of matter and energy within dimensions of time and space.
URL=http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?id=oai:arXiv.org:hep-th/9612089#cocited Intersecting p-brane Solutions in Multidimensional Gravity and M-Theory/URL
Matter or mass seems to have the least speed and the most time. Planets, neutron stars and black holes lead a way toward infinities as they develop infinite qualities for-themselves in increasing mass and ability to apparently affect or curve space-dimensions and time.
I suppose one would like to get an A on a report card if Elijah every returns in a cosmic chariot and asks what one has learned or speculated about macro-cosmology (the universal field, like the Kingdom of God lies within it is written).
Just the few, the pre-destined, and the determined get through all of the physics instruction need for that, but that isn't an excuse for slackers to summarily dismiss interest in cosmology.
It isn't known, so far as I'm aware, if the changing forms of the cosmos within the dimension of time comprises an absolute or necessary characteristic of beingness, yet it is required for the form of life that gives rise to intelligence in the context known on Earth.
URL=http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0312327 Three Dimensional Gravity and M-Theory/URL
I didn't want to go too far out in speculating about wormholes (Paul Davies wrote a book on 'How to Build A Time Machine') and or other forms of life, I enjoy writing science fiction and need to build up enough intellectual capital to create some synthetic approaches of potential interest while simultaneously writing some speculative philosophical cosmology.
With intelligent design such a primary aspect of human life on Earth, it would seem against the probabilities to preclude the search or consideration of intelligent design from analytical criteria developed to research or just search the philosophical nature of the Universe. If intelligent life ever existed in any potential universe, and if it did not destroy itself, the learning of physics and cosmology would probably advance it to the stage of intelligently designing universes for-themselves, and of course, I believe that Jesus Christ created this particular one, though that’s an apparent non sequiter for atheists.
The anthropic principle has been treated by some rather well in recent years, yet shouldn't it be a criteria for examining uncertainty at the cosmic scale, as well as a criteria of forming paradigmata for quantum mechanics and unknown macro-cosmic 'borders' that escape definition such as do black holes? What if Shakespeare was correct in writing in Hamlet that all the world's a stage...and in this universe instance it was designed by intelligent beings for some unknown purpose...it would be silly to just rule out the possibility that the magnificent universe could not possibly be artificially designed and constructed.
URL=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_p
rinciple The Anthropic Principle
