Talk:Physical cosmology/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions about Physical cosmology. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Old talk from physical cosmology

This page was patent nonsense, so I have made it a redirect to cosmology. Original text here (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Physical_cosmology&oldid=6871589). -- ALoan (Talk) 09:31, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Older discussions

Any notion that cosmology is limited to the branch of physics called 'cosmology' belies an ignorance of the millennia-long traditions of cosmology in religion and philosophy which in turn belies a lack of grounding in the liberal arts.

Please see these web pages:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04413a.htm

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04405c.htm

Probably, we will want separate articles, "cosmology (physics)" (if 'cosmology' is indeed the usual, most technical, hip, and up-to-date term for the study of the origins of the universe) and "cosmology (religion and philosophy)."

--Larry

Does someone have one of those dictionaries where the date of the first use of a word is recorded? If the first one to use that word was an astronomer or physicist, I would consider it licit to reserve that word for that purpose...another word should exist that applies to the millenia of thinking. If, on the other hand, cosmology is an old word, probably brought long ago from latin and used in other contexts, I'll agree with Larry.

Checking Webster - the first recorded date in English is 1656, coming over from New Latin (i.e. Late Medieval or Early Modern), so it is somewhat difficult to call. It conveniently enough lists both definitions (osmogony refers to a theory of creation rather than of creation and development, so I was very wrong there). A quick search shows that scientists tend to restrict the term to scientific stuff (although still including things like Neptunism) while people dealing with religion and mythology don't mind using the term either way. What a mess.

The origins of such words as "cosmology" should not be dated from its first appearance in English but from its first appearance by educated people (whose jargon and names for theories and such are often variants of the same basic, usually Latin or Greek, words). Anyway, though, today, the word is just used differently by different people; nothing unusual about that. I'd just emphasize that the fact that the physicists use the term in one particular way gives us no reason whatever to suppose that their usage is the "correct" one. There is no single correct usage, it seems. --LMS

Maybe there should be headings: "physical cosmology", "philosophical cosmology", etc.? Right now "dark matter" is next to "creationism"... -- S. Winitzki

does cosmology define theory of matter? is theory of matter = foundation ontology? if so, how can "fire", a process, fit into foundation ontologies? if not, can we clearly separate the scientific theory of matter from the more general cultural concept of foundation ontology?

Some complexity is going to creep either into this article or into foundation ontology or perhaps theory of matter. Personally I think there are *four* fields, I would separate "Religious" from "Theological" studies of cosmology because the methods diverge based on the motives of the investigator. For instance I would refer to the Gaian view as Theological but not Religious, and most pre-Englightenment Catholic views as Religious but not Theological. A few outright theological gurus like Pope John Paul II have managed to transcend the differences - but one must share their moral-centric point of view to consider that an advantage.

I suggest that anyone interested review particle physics, particle physics foundation ontology and foundation ontology and think hard about how to frame things like "dark matter" and "fecund universes" which have implications both for theory of matter and cosmology in all senses...

I believe cosmology is half of ontology (the foundation ontology only) and half of metaphysics (the physics half ;-)). However, I don't think this is stable - I think that physics lays claim to it as an exclusive domain only because physics is currently providing the most widely accepted foundation ontology. In other words, we might look to chemists or biologists to provide it in future, as they have in the past, e.g. "Heat Death of the Universe" and such thermodynamics-centric views of the 19th century... If we decided at some point in the future that our cosmology as a civilization ought to center on constraints on intermediate reactions of picosecond duration in chemistry, then cosmology would swap physics for chemistry and we would be talking about "metachemistry" not "metaphysics".

The other half of ontology seems to be that part of ethics that is concerned with making new categorizations: who makes them, in whose interests, and how heavily serviced are objections that the categorizations are "unfair" or "morally wrong". However, back to the point:

I am concerned that any bridging statement that tries to claim that there are obvious commonalities between the Philosophical, Physical, Religious and Theological views, and that they have all chosen and continued to use the term "cosmology" not to try to dispute but unify its meaning, is potentially quite controversial, so before a bunch of actions and reactions, let's "talk".

Those diverse fields do all use the word for roughly the same meaning: a theory of the large-scale structure and origin of the universe. Of course, their particular cosmologies are completely different, and no one is claiming otherwise. The article here is very simple, very accurate, and very good. If you want to go into further details about the content of various cosmologies, then write articles on "Christian cosmology", "Big Bang cosmology", etc. --LDC

no, there are many people claiming that "their particular cosmologies" are far from "completely different" but in fact revealing the same underlying foundation structure. Your "no one" is excluding for instance Pope John Paul II, which is a lot of believers to exclude for an NPOV. The article by lumping together all theological views as simply (or naively) "religious" is overly simple, not accurate, and not good. Also the relationship between particle physics, theory of matter and foundation ontology (which 213* seems to think are interchangeable concepts) needs to be elaborated somewhere.. the linkage 213 makes between the three intuitively suggests that this is in fact some kind of larger cosmology.

so, I agree that the different articles need to be written, but they will be using *some* underlying terms in common, and we need to know what those are, and make some small reference to the major questions they addres here.

---

213 has moved on to imposing his or her own personal cosmology on the wiki. For instance, "Standard Model" by definition is the particle physics standard model, "Scientific method" is defined only in terms of reproducibility, "particle physics foundation ontology" does not exist despite our hard-worked attempt to define it - wherein no one denied that it was in fact in use *as* a foundation ontology and we found no more neutral term, "philosophy of science" can be mentioned but not linked in particle physics, foundation ontology itself is equivalent to theory of matter, and God only knows what other stuff s/he believes.

All of this will be undone, and I have removed "particle physics" itself so that s/he will get the message.

We need a truce on this matter, or at least a cease-fire. I doubt that any other serious player here would agree with *all* of 213's renaming gaming... particularly not those who worked hard to keep these concepts separate and neutral.

It's called the Standard Model because that's what the physicists call it. It's jargon. It's the standard model, not becuase they have any philsophical drive to make it true, but just becuase it is the current working hypothesis, repeatedly resisting efforts to falsify it. And lots of physicists would love to do just that!

all right, fine, but physicists do not define the cosmology of the wiki. Almost all sciences have or have had a "standard model" of something or other over the years, they come and go all the time, and I hope that you cna see that the process of w:particle physics investigation by humans via accelerator can by no means claim a monopoly on any kind of larger truth in the universe. The objections are covered well in the article, but they blur the distinction rather badly between issues of whether the "particle physics standard model" (a better title than any of the ones we have used so far) is *COMPLETE*, *USEFUL*, *DESIRABLE* or *UNIVERSAL* i.e. a foundation ontology in itself. We very carefully separated the issues raised by continued accelerator use to the *stability* or *completeness* of the model (presumbly we do not have infinite resources to invest in falsifying it), the objections of anti-reductionist physicists to it on grounds of non-usefulness, and the issues raised in philosophy of science and philosophy of mathematics regarding the applicability of the scientific method to such basic and barely-explorable stuff that requires lots of math to unravel... and ended up with *two* articles. Now you jam them together into one, without that structure implied by having two carefully separate articles (one for people who care about physics, another for those who care about the cultural implications of physics) - jamming them together creates volatility all over again... people adding doubt about various claims of the model or experiments ongoing, people mixing and matching claims to objections to cost questions from the larger culture, etc., and we just do not have the kind of clean separation we had to fight for over the last week. Read the talk files associated... there were *lots* of issues raised and settled there, *most* but not *all* of them agreed, and now we are going to go through it again? Please. For now I would just like you to see that there are other views that are as valid as yours, and good reasons to keep things separated.

I'm not suggesting that it is actually true, or valid (or, for that matter, untrue, or invalid) -- only that, when you say "Standard Model" in physics, it is that particle physics model that is being talked about.

I will believe it is not changing when they shut the accelerators down. Fair enough? Until then it is only *the current* Standard Model, and part of a particular "paradigm" which some people (like Axel) use as a foundation ontology to describe everything else in the universe. That is not a universally shared or neutral point of view. It is the view of mathematical physicists or physics-fetishist mathematicians, not much more.

"in physics" and "in academic use" and "in wikipedia" and "in general English language usage" are several separate things. Scientific method has more than reproducibility and falsifiability constraints, it has ethical and moral constraints on it, and 1 billion plus Catholics in the world trust one man to sort this stuff out for them... a far more neutral point of view than any of ours, and more carefully scholarly too. So we can't become some kind of medium for propagating physicists' assumptions as if they were "reality" - history has many many examples of foundation ontology turned on its head, and if we build one into the naming conventions of wikipedia and don't stay neutral between them, we lose big.

all right, fine, but physicists do not define the cosmology of the wiki.

But they do define the current practice of physics, which is what this article and the particle physics articles attempt to describe, with a place for sketch discussion of philosophical or political critiques, which can be dealt with in full in technical articles about philosophy or politics of science.

no, *this* (cosmology) article is *NOT* here to "define the current practice of physics" and especially not particle physics - if you will please note there are many types of cosmology that have nothing to do with that practice, physics being only one of several *ways* to explore cosmology, and particle physics being only a specialized way within physics.

Until then it is only *the current* Standard Model, and part of a particular "paradigm" which some people (like Axel) use as a w:foundation ontology to describe everything else in the universe. That is not a universally shared or neutral point of view. It is the view of mathematical physicists or physics-fetishist mathematicians, not much more.

Great. Then write about that in foundation ontology, which is the right place for it.

no, the idea of a "foundation ontology" is very general and broad and crosses many civilizations and time periods, and is proliferating now in computer science and law circles. Those are more general and important concerns than any raised in physics since they impact such important human actions as oh say suicide bomber tactics and religious training. Much as we might deplore the waste of money on particle physics, we should deplore the bodily risk of ignoring those issues more. At least in my cosmology... which is more like that of the body philosophers than the physicists.

thus, the particle physics foundation ontology is only one of many that have prevailed in the human species "civilizations" over its recorded history, and needs to be discussed, as Axel and LDC and I and the anti-reductionist advocate (was that you?) agreed, giving rise to one article. The more general foundation ontology concerns that Axel *deleted* from that article may belong in or foundations of science or foundations of cognition or something, but not (as LDC said) in particle physics nor (as I keep showing) in foundation ontology. The physics debate is far from significant compared to similar debates in law and ethics.

Cosmology vs Mythology???Hyacinth 21:22, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Appeal for help at Modern geocentrism

Could someone with a knowledge of these matters check out User:Truth seeker's edits to modern geocentrism. This user is, regrettably, a geocentrist, and his edits are beyond POV. I'm not qualified to judge if the arguments he gives are grounded in fact or not... Cheers, Evercat 21:09, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Alternative Cosmologies

User:Joshuaschroeder has twice removed the example links under Alternative and Religious Cosmology. While the focus of this page is, and should be, standard physical cosmology, I think it is useful to give some examples of the more popular alternative views. What do people think about this?

Dragons flight 03:18, Jan 30, 2005 (UTC)

Is anybody out there? It would be nice to get a comment on this. Dragons flight 17:16, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)

Since no one has replied on this issue, I am figuring that most people don't care either way and so I went ahead and readded the examples of alternative cosmolgies. Dragons flight 18:31, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps it should be mentioned that there is one alternative theory of some merit, "The Black Hole at The Center of The Universe", from Peter Lamont.

This theory states that Gravity alone is responsible for the evolution of the Cosmos since its birth. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.39.252.217 (talk) 19:05, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Note: While the above comment refers to Peter Lamont in the third person, it is likely that it was written by Mr. Lamont himself. The same IP made an edit identifying himself as Lamont on Talk:Black hole. -- Coneslayer (talk) 19:58, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Is this a list

Should this be moved to "List of cosmology related articles"? Or is it completely irrelevant bow due to the categories? Or should it be re-expanded to an article? --17:01, 2005 Jan 31 (UTC)

It is an unwritten article, mostly. Or the pre-cursor of Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Cosmology, compare Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Astronomy. --Pjacobi 20:37, 2005 Mar 3 (UTC)

I've tried to start improving this article, and hope to continue over the next few days. I thought physical cosmology ought to be a seperate article, to obviate the problem differentiate between it and the philisophical/religious studies (see Cosmology for my reasons). I stole some of the history section from the big bang article -- it's really difficult to keep the two seperate, but there really are a lot of things cosmologists study that, although they presuppose the big bang, can be discussed more thoroughly in an article less narrowly focused on this one thing. At least this article should have a distinct point of view. --Joke137 05:00, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Update

I've drafted what I think is certainly an improved version of the article, ridding it of the cumbersome list of links. It could certainly use more explanation, an expanded history section, and phrasing that makes it sound less like a brouchure and more like an encyclopedia article. Are there any comments about the format? --Joke137 00:08, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

"Physical cosmology" or "Cosmology (physics)"

Should this page be moved to Cosmology (physics)? I have no strong opinions, but my (weak) opinion is that it should be kept here, as there seems to be substantial historical use of the adjective physical to describe cosmology as a branch of physics. Of course, it is usually dropped now... –Joke 01:34, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Cosmology (astrophysics) might be more appropriate if we are to change the name of the page. --ScienceApologist 01:56, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Hm. I think that too is a long standing debate. Some universities put their cosmologists with the astrophysicists, some put them with the physicists. That seems to provide further evidence for keeping the page title as it is! –Joke 02:02, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, astrophysics is a branch of physics. And most ambiguous subject names have page titles "Subjectname (parentsubject)" Infinity0 ^talk 19:32, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Or is astrophysics a branch of astronomy? Is astronomy a branch of physics? If so, is, say earth science? It seems pretty fraught to me. –Joke 19:37, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Physics is the simplest and the top-level subject. And that's enough for a disambiguation word in brackets, if the page is to be moved (which I support) Infinity0 ^talk 22:41, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Noncompliant

Wikipedia content policy

Articles should contain only material that has been published by reputable sources.
Editors adding new material to an article should cite a reputable source, or it may be challenged or removed by any editor.
The obligation to provide a reputable source lies with the editors wishing to include the material, not on those seeking to remove it.

Information on Wikipedia must be reliable and verifiable. Facts, viewpoints, theories, and arguments may only be included in articles if they have already been published by reliable and reputable sources. Articles should cite these sources whenever possible. Any unsourced material may be challenged and removed.

The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. "Verifiable" in this context means that any reader must be able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, because Wikipedia does not publish original thought or original research.

For further information, visit Wikipedia:Verifiability, Wikipedia:No Original Research and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. Thank you for helping make Wikipedia the most reliable encyclopedia on earth! —Preceding unsigned comment added by ClairSamoht (talk • contribs)

Please list specific objections, not boilerplate text. I notice that you have recently added the same notice to several science-related articles; since this is obviously a matter of great concern to you, a more detailed explanation of your issues would help everyone. Anville 22:17, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

It's pretty simple. Wikipedia has quality standards, and this article doesn;t meet them. Which part of "any reader must be able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source" is so difficult to understand? There's a haystack of further reading at the bottom of the page, but nothing that indicates where you would go to find, for instance, "The relationship between distance and speed, however, was accurately ascertained only relatively recently: Hubble was off by a factor of ten." Tell me, because I want to know in which direction it is off? Is c now roughly 3,000,000 meters per second, or is it now 30,000 meters per second? ClairSamoht - Help make Wikipedia the most authoritative source of information in the world 00:14, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

The above question reflects such a total and basic lack of understanding that you are clearly not qualified to judge science articles like this. Also,^[1] don't you see^[2] that an abundance^[3] of references^[4] like happened^[5] for example to^[6] the article Pennsylvania^[7] makes for an unreadable article?^[8] --Lambiam ^Talk 01:03, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

The total and basic lack of understanding, sir, is yours. This isn't GeoCities. Users have the right to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source. What's more, any editor has the right to remove material for which no source is shown. Why do you oppose Wikipedia quality standards? ClairSamoht - Help make Wikipedia the most authoritative source of information in the world 02:35, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Clair's activities are bordering on trolling. An RfC may be in order. --ScienceApologist 03:59, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not going to be a more "authoritative" source than the sources it cites, or something is wrong with the world. I am all in favour of reasonable quality standards. The requirements are becoming unreasonable, or, rather, the self-appointed verifiability police is getting out of hand. It is downright silly if the rules for Wikipedia articles are more stringent than the rules that are applied to articles published in top-notch physics magazines. --Lambiam ^Talk 07:25, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Clair's demands are completely absurd, and would a far greater citation density than even highly authoritative reference works in physics, such as the Review of Particle Physics. This is not going to happen - if it is required, or if editors are continually harassed about it by editors who are trying to make a point, they will just leave. An attitude like this toward scientific articles will just lend support to forks of Wikipedia. --Philosophus ^T 09:22, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Everybody is allowed to contribute to Wikipedia, but not everybody can contribute to every Wikipedia article. Contributing to the content of articles of science needs (a varying) degree of expertise. Without that, you never will be able to check whether the sources really back up the content of the article, let alone whether the selection of sources is acceptable. --Pjacobi 08:26, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I must note my agreement with Pjacobi on this matter. Even with an epidemic of footnotes pointing to all sorts of books, papers and webpages, the material in a science article cannot be "verified" unless the reader has a basic competence in the field. To pick a trivial example, what if the original source gave a distance in parsecs while the Wikipedia article uses light-years? Unless you know how to convert one to the other, that statement is "unverifiable", yet only a fanatic would call that situation unreasonable.

That example is, as I said, almost painfully trivial. However, the same logic applies at higher levels of sophistication: the more advanced the Wikipedia article, the more background knowledge the reader must be expected to have before the reader can verify the article's content. (I raise this point in connection with science articles, but the same holds true for pieces written in any other specialised field, such as music theory.) Anville 14:58, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Aspden physical cosmology

I have introduced the latest Physical cosmology book recently published in the UK by the British physicist and electrical engineer Harold Aspden: Creation: The Physical Truth (Oct 26, 2006). I am aware that it is a very polemic book for the physicists and cosmologists community worldwide (at least here in Europe) since IF his coherent explantations of the universe and of our physical world are found to be correct, as they were in the past — he predicted, derived from the same theory presented in the mentioned book, the value of 'proton-electron' mass-ratio, the value of the 'fine structure constant', the existence of 'electrostatic rotation-spin' and several other measurements and interactions related to quantum particles, publishing them in peer-review journals (eg. 9 papers in @Physics Letters A since 1972; 24 papers in Europhysics Letters, former Lettere al Nuovo Cimento since 1975; etc.) several years before they were experimentally measured or discovered — all the others books publications in this same section, and the majority of the mainstream physics publications, became nothing more than mere fantasies far away from the reality that surround us; that is, a new Physics and Cosmology, with its subsequent influence on the other branches of Science, emerges from this pioneer gem of Work. --Utad3 17:51, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Not a reliable source. Sorry. --ScienceApologist 23:55, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

(after edit conflict) Earlier I have reverted the addition of the very same book under "Popular reading".[1] I still think it inappropriate (and particularly so in a provocative first position – but that's a side issue). I haven't seen or read the book, but doubt it can be taken seriously – is anyone who is in a position to judge this familiar with the book? The claims concerning the accuracy of various predictions in the article on Harold Aspden seem grossly overblown, based on his actual predictions and current present best estimates; I'd like to know what the best experimental estimates were at the time he made the predictions. By the end of his life (1944), Eddington came to believe that 1/α was exactly 137, so the estimated value then can't have been very far off. Is it really surprising then that in 1972 someone produces a numerological value for 1/α of

108\pi {\sqrt[{6}]{\frac {8}{1846}}}=136.99877+

? This is off by more than 1 in 4000 from the current value 137.03599911(46), and thus not "with part-per-million precision". I could not follow the derivation of the proton magnetic moment being 2.792847367 in nuclear magnetons as presented in the references, but it seemed to me to be a prediction "after the fact". --Lambiam ^Talk 00:22, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Clarification: Aspden, H., Eagles, D. M., Aether Theory and the Fine Structure Constant, Physics Letters, v. 41A, pp. 423-424 (1972): 108π(8/1843)(l/6) or 137.035915 predicted in 1972; in 2002 CODATA presents the measurement value of 137.03599911(46). !?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Utad3 (talk • contribs) 01:17, 2 January 2007 (UTC).

This same user Utad3 has spammed Wikipedia many times - please see its User talk page for details. -- Jeff G. 18:19, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Multi-level Cosmology

I deleted the paragraph on multi-level cosmology. Recently, a standalone article on multi-level cosmology was deleted, and was even considered as a scientific notability test case. After a unanimous vote for deletion, it was speedily deleted. Given the strong consensus about deletion, and for the reasons cited in this test case, I feel it's justified to delete the information from this article. Kevinwiatrowski 04:33, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Kevin your systematic deletion and suppression of the multi level cosmology stinks of inquisition. Either you are too limited to open up your mind to other non-standard cosmologies, which, by the way, explain the universe much better than the "classic" cosmologies, or your behavior is motivated by extremist religious beliefs. This is cosmology, this is not religion, you should go publish your beliefs in the section on religion and you should stop vandalizing Wikipedia. It seems that you have nothing better to do than day and night look for any mention of the multi-level cosmology in Wikipedia and systematically deleting it. Yes, some time ago the entire article on multi-level cosmology was deleted, but I think the deletion was premature and was the result of the unorthodox explanations of the theory. So even though the full article has been deleted, there is no reason, in the interest of science, not to mention the multi-level cosmology in other sections, and let others decide whether or not it is valid. Censorship, inquisition and suppression of science is counterproductive and harms science. If you are so obsessed with censorship of Wikipedia, do you also censor the articles in Tampa Tribune? Is your motivation religious? Kevin please stop your personal obsession with deletion and suppression of the multi level cosmology and do something more productive.Posxt

Does Physical Cosmology address the question of the origin of "Existence" in general?

There is something related to the origin of the universe which I find very confusing, and I wonder if it is addressed as part of Physical Cosmology. That item is the origin of "existence" itself. It seems to me that there are two possibilities as to the origin of "existence", and each possibility seems to contradict itself. One possibility is that there has always been existence, and the other is that existence began at some point. Now if there has always been existence, what CAUSED it to be there? Surely there can't be a phenomenon without a cause! On the other hand, if existence began at some point, then the cause which caused existence to exist must itself have existed first! So that WASN'T really the beginning of existence, was it?! Logically, then, it seems existence cannot have had a beginning, and it cannot have had no beginning! If logic itself cannot find any possible answer to a phenomenon which clearly exists, i.e. existence, then might logic itself be flawed? Might it be necessary to use a kind of logic for which the human mind is not equipped, or perhaps which has not yet been discovered? Am I missing something here? Am I making an error in thinking of time in a linear manner, or in assuming that all events are time-related? Do physical cosmologists address this issue at all? If they don't, shouldn't they? Do they consider the basic origin of existence to be unimportant, or unaddressable? Is it outside their field? Do they consider the possibility that existence might originate outside the physical universe, in a realm where logic might be completely different? 4.239.0.222 05:18, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Cosmology deals with the history and nature of the universe, whereas the field of thought which more specifically deals with the origin of existence itself is called Cosmogony, although in common usage the division between Cosmology and Cosmogony can be somewhat ambiguous. Physical Cosmology, in the modern sense, depends on scientific theory, and deals strictly with the physical universe. Cosmology in general can address issues beyond the scientific realm, and can be more philosophically, spiritually and/or religiously oriented. Natushabi 13:08, 25 April 2007 (UTC)