Tag: dogmatism

On the philosophical dogmas that support humans’ belief in Death

Relative publication sites: PhilPapers

Contents

1. Agonies that did not exist (Prelude)

Once upon a time thinkers in ancient Greece laid the foundations of philosophy before philosophy even existed. Back then, Parmenides and Heraclitus tried to explain what being is in an era where no philosophical dogmas existed. Raw thinking was our tool back then to examine the mysteries of the cosmos. Mysteries that we accepted and tried to transcend, mysteries we saw as our own self.

Death back then was not part of the agonies of man, no more than life itself was.

And then came Aristotle.

And the world learnt of right and wrong.

From that point onwards every opinion tried to be justified so that people believed it.

And we broke the cosmos into pieces.

With ourselves being one of them.

Death became the biggest agony of humans.

Just because we started believing in life for no reason at all.

(Only because we were told…)

And we started fearing death.

(Only because we started fearing life as well…)

2. Philosophy and Death

Death dictates our life in ways we do not even realize.

But things weren’t always like this.

Philosophers and common people alike have been contemplating death for millennia and we are destined to do so for as much as we exist in this world. For the living, dying is the one thing that can cause terror and destroy our temporary happiness. For those who exist, death is the one thing that makes them realize that they will not exist for ever and, thus, makes them aware of their ephemeral nature.

Regardless of the philosophical ideas for death that each one of us may have, regardless of whether the ephemeral may be more eternal than the eternal itself, one thing we all share: Our BELIEF IN DEATH.

No matter what we think about it, we never question its existence!

Harmonia Philosophica philosophy program already contains multiple articles that show how dogmatism can hinder our vision even when things are clear, let alone when things are obscure as in the case of death. This paper is an attempt to re-examine the case of the dogmatism in favor of death that transcends our civilization and give the final blow to the dogma of death.

“I do not wish to judge how far my efforts coincide with those of other philosophers.
Indeed, what I have written here makes no claim to novelty in detail,
and the reason why I give no sources is that it is a matter of indifference to me
whether the thoughts that I have had have been anticipated by someone else”
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

3. An introduction to Truth Puzzles

Philosophers have pondered on the answers to the great metaphysical questions of humankind for aeons.

And they have failed miserably to find definitive answers.

Every philosopher has his or her own views, which usually are in complete opposition to the views of other philosophers.

There is currently no way to decide who is right and who is wrong.

Perhaps there will never be.

Truth puzzles were created as part of the Harmonia Philosophica philosophy program to help find the answer to the great metaphysical questions of humankind via linking the major elements of philosophy in multiple ways.

Simply put, Truth Puzzles are brain maps that were created as a way to easily and quickly draft your thoughts on how the great elements of philosophy and life connect to each other.

Major elements of a Truth Puzzle

The elements of the puzzle are the major elements that trouble philosophers for centuries: God, existence, Being, self, others, life, death, phenomena, reality, One, faith, nothingness, knowledge, senses, thought, consciousness. One can of course add more as he or she pleases, but these are the major ones.

The goal of a truth puzzle is to draw the connections between these elements.

How to fill in the puzzles?

It is very easy: Just take all the elements, draw them on a paper and then connect them! The connections could be lines with arrows (indicating e.g. cause and effect, for example an arrow drawn from God to Existence could indicate that God is the source of existence) or with bi-directional arrows as well. The connections could also be without arrows or even lines with explanations detailing the nature of the connections.

I have created Truth Puzzles on paper while sitting for coffee, or with any of the various mind mapping applications available. For example, the below image was created with the miMind Android application. Any brain map application will do the trick.

Truth Puzzle 2021-07-24 by me

Now the important part of the instructions: Don’t think too much!

As said already, the solution to the problem is not evident and perhaps will never be! So don’t bother with thinking! Just like in automatic writing, let yourself go and just randomly draw lines and connections between the elements of the puzzle!

Given the complex nature of the problem and our almost total ignorance of what life and existence truly are, there is really no point in trying to think how to draw a Truth Puzzle.

Truth Puzzle 2021-07-25 by Karpouzi

And to be honest, randomly drawing without the arbitrarily created obstacles by human-defined logic, could be the best shot we ever had at the problem in the first place.

If logical and analytical thinking have not helped us in progressing towards the solution of the problems at hand, irrational thinking could be the way forward. Because after all, only irrational thinking is truly free from any dogmas that can hinder our efforts to navigate ourselves through the unknown forest of being.

Anyway, the cosmos also seems not to follow the logical way.

The connections in the brain maps are filled in randomly as the writer of the brain map sees fit! There are no principles! No thinking!

But could such a random process produce any meaningful result? one might ask…

Sure it can! Why shouldn’t it?

We know so little about life, death, existence and all the other elements of philosophy, that thinking has not managed to bring us any inch closer to the truth if such thing ever exists. Our best shot in finding the ‘solution’ to the great philosophical problems of humankind is to just start drawing lines in random based on our instinct or just based on… nothing! Who knows? One of those Truth Puzzles could hold the answer we have been searching for since Plato. And if non-thinking sounds weird to you, read related articles in Harmonia Philosophica about non-thinking (with the tag ‘against thinking’ or ‘non-thinking’) and you will understand what we are talking about here. In short, structured thinking is as good as the principles on which it is based upon. And our thinking about the abovementioned elements of philosophy is based on pure ignorance.

A randomly filled in Truth Puzzle might be the solution we have been looking for.

But what do Truth Puzzles have to do with the problem of Death?

Well, it all started with a Truth Puzzle…

4. There is no Death! (A child, a brain map and a coincidence?)

The ‘Truth Puzzles’ brain maps have been used on numerous occasions in Harmonia Philosophica. Randomly filled in with all the major elements of philosophy (life, death, existence, being, God, truth, phenomena, faith, self, others, knowledge, thinking, consciousness, nothingness, One), these Truth Puzzles have been documented as a way to generate innovative ideas to solve what existence, life and being is.

But in a specific case these brain maps provided a valuable lesson.

An important insight into the matter at hand.

From the only place such a lesson could be coming from.

(A kid who has not learnt how to think…)

One day, I asked a child to fill in a brain map. I had already written all the elements of the Truth Puzzle on a piece of paper and just asked the child to fill in the relationships between ALL these elements in whatever way it saw fit.

The child liked the “game” and started filling in the brain map relationships.

When it finished, it gave the brain map back to me.

To my amazement, this is what it had handed over…

‘No death’ brain map (Truth Puzzle)

The child had put relationships (arrowless relationships to be exact – but having arrows was never a requirement as mentioned above) between all elements of the Truth Puzzle.

Except for one.

The element of ‘Death’ was omitted from the relationships!

After discussing we found out that this was done because the left hand of the child was on top of the ‘Death’ word while filling in the puzzle, something that by itself does not reduce the importance of what had happened or the amazement element of the coincidence; I would rather say that it increases it, if we see this as a more fundamental way in which the ‘Death’ element was hidden completely from the eyesight of the child. A coincidence that it could alone be the topic of a separate dedicated article. I am sure Jung would be very much interested in such a coincidence had he come upon such. (And as an additional note I should say that the kid at that point in time could not read English, so doing this on purpose is completely ruled out)

Yet, I am not talking about the coincidence of omitting only the ‘Death’ element from the Truth Puzzle. What I am talking about is something much more fundamental: The child did not use all the elements in the brain map even though it was told to do so!

This might sound mundane, but it is not.

We constantly make assumptions in our thoughts and based on these assumptions we produce more thoughts. We deduce conclusions, we derive theorems, we build science and cultivate philosophy. However, we keep on forgetting that our assumptions are here only to be questioned and replaced by new ones based on our own free will!

In the Truth Puzzles I created I assumed that all these great words (Truth, Death, Life, Existence, …) should all somehow be connected with each other.

A random (and beautiful) coincidence reminded me of the need to be more vigilant of my own dogmatism. I should never take for granted rules that I myself invented.

This applies to me, to you, to all philosophers, to all scientists, to all thinkers, to all humans. We should constantly question the obvious and make irrational thoughts! Only the irrational is free enough to produce valid results without the need for unfounded assumptions.

At the end, I am not certain whether Death does not exist.

But from that point onwards…

I will keep in mind that I do not know whether Death exists either.

5. What is wrong with our way of thought?

We think based on things we consider obvious.

And we tend to never question what we consider obvious.

(Isn’t that obvious?)

As the Truth Puzzle with the missing ‘Death’ showed, assumptions are dangerous. When one makes the same assumptions over and over again, he or she seems to start believing that these assumptions are something more than what they truly are; he/ she seems to start believing that the assumptions are ‘true’.

But philosophy is not even sure if truth is something meaningful and existent in the first place.

The problem is that since our thought progresses gradually over time and since one must base his/ her thoughts on what the ones before him have already said, from one point in time and onwards it becomes very costly to question the assumption that helped us start thinking in the first place. Because if we do question them, we would need to start building again from scratch the castle we have now built on the sand.

Few people, if any, have the courage to start such a journey, when there is so vast knowledge readily available at hand.

Yet, killing our own self is the only way philosophers can progress and move forward when everything seems at a dead end.

So here we are.

Thinking about life and death.

Failing to answer.

Let’s take a breath and look back.

To where it all started.

When death was nothing but a word we invented.

And let us see clearly.

What are the dogmas that make us believe in life?

What are the dogmas that makes us believe in death?

And perhaps by doing so, we may find our way.

(Inside the forest of Being that was never meant to be unless we forget it died…)

6. What does it take to believe in death?

Many philosophical dogmas are lingering silently under out (common) belief in “death”.

A belief that in its turn dictates our philosophy and way of living.

Many people talk about “immortality” and try to show why the human soul is not destroyed after the end of the physical body. Many people try to articulate arguments in favor of the idea that an “immortal” spirit exists, that continues to “be” even after the physical brain stops functioning. However, these discussions and efforts are based on the wrong presumption that “immortality” is what must be proved, and not “death” per se.

Many people today take many things for granted. And the problem is that many of these things are assumptions and not something proven[1]. Our time is characterized by an arrogant belief in a materialistic point of view for everything, according to which only what modern physics and chemistry claims to be true is true. The opinions of philosophers – and especially of those who lived many years ago – are not considered by many.

And so, assumptions of the past turn into hard beliefs.

And soon, these beliefs turn into dogmas that govern our being.

We must destroy what we think we know in order to think.

For to believe in “death”, many things must we believe. To believe in the complete extinction of the human spirit after the physical body stops functioning, one must believe in a series of dogmas that are still under debate between philosophers and perhaps will forever be. To believe in “death”, you must for example believe in the existence of differences between objects, something with which Parmenides would disagree. You must believe in the existence of the notion of “change”, something that could be a good topic to discuss with Zenon, or you must believe in the existence of the notion of “time”, something with which many modern scientists like Einstein would have a problem with.

And the catalogue goes on.

The following sections examine these dogmas underlying the belief in death.

So that we know what we should forget.

6.1 The concept of Many

To believe that everything stops with death, one must not believe in One, but in the existence of the Many. If one believes in One (pun intended), then there is no point in discussing about Death per se.

Parmenides would find the idea of something that can cease to exist ridiculous, as he found wrong the idea of the Many to exist. His thought was based on the notion of the One.

And if we are all part of the One, there is nothing that can exist on its own, let alone to have an end.

6.2 The concept of Change

What does it mean for something or someone to “change”? How can something change? If it changes, doesn’t it become a different “something”? How can we change every second, but still remain the same?

The simplest questions are the hardest ones.

We believe things can change. This may sound weird since we obviously see things changing, yet Parmenides would argue fiercely against this naive belief. How can an object change and still stay the same? If an apple changes to something else, is it still an apple? Believe it or not (pun intended) the notion of Change is something under discussion in philosophy.

What is evident seems to hold the key to the most serious underlying dogmas that define our thought. If death is also a change we undergo, why do we think that change results in something so drastic as complete extinction? As I said in the “The Extinct Fish that Reappeared” Philosophy Wire, everything is a matter of definition. And we should re-examine our definitions if we want to mature spiritually. If we cannot really tell how something can actually “change”, then maybe the simplest childish answer that comes to our mind is the correct one: things do not change!

And guess what: Without Change, there is no death…

6.3 The concept of Identity

Besides the belief in the notion of Change, believing in the notion of death (in a way that means the complete extinction of my body and spirit from the world) also requires someone to believe in the notion of “Identity” as well.

What is an apple? How do we know it is still that apple after it has decayed? Who am I? Who are you? How do we still know it is you even after you have changed way of thinking, way of walking, or even something as simple as your haircut? How can I still be me if all my human body cells get replaced?

To believe that someone is dead means that you believe you can actually tell when this someone is himself and when he has seized being himself, i.e. when he has “died”. When someone dies, we understand he has changed and he is not who we knew he was: he does not talk, he does play, he does not interact the way he did (the false belief in the notion of Time will be analyzed below, so we can still use past and present tense here). When we think we “know” someone we attribute to him certain characteristics. We know a friend of us is who he is because he talks in a specific way, walks in a specific way, interacts with us in a specific way. But what if he changes the way he talks? Will he not be the same? We know he is the same because he thinks in a certain way – in “his” way. But what if he changes his way of thinking? Will he not be the same? We know he is the same because he has a specific birth mark on his arm. But that if he removes that mark? Will he become someone else? We know the is the same because he has specific hair. But what if he changes them? Will he not be the same? We know he is the same because he has a specific set of cells in his organism as all individuals do. But human cells are continuously replaced (even the cells in our brain), about six (6) times during our whole lifetime. Are we not the same after the changes in our cells? We know someone is the same because he lives. But what if he stops living? Is he not the same anymore? Dying is part of who we are and “knowing” someone means knowing his death as well. The point is that we do not have a specific way to know when someone is someone and not someone else! We cannot tell the identity of someone (or something) and we certainly do not have specific ways to tell when someone has stopped being!

The limits we set with respect to the “identity” of a person are not based on something solid. The simple phrase “he has died” implies that we know those limits, while in reality those limits do not exist but in our mind…

And yes, your guess correctly: Without a way to identify a person (i.e. to identify who that person is, let alone to also identify that this person has seized to exist), there is no death…

6.4 The concept of Time

But what about Time itself? Our belief for death is based on our belief in the existence of time per se. There can be no death, i.e. discontinuation of existence from a point in time onwards, without time itself existing and transcending our world.

But time is a very elusive notion, that is even questioned by scientists, let alone philosophers, who have the tendency to question everything.

There is a huge debate about Time and whether it exists or not. Is it part of reality or just an arbitrary notion we invented based on our limited perception of the world? Einstein was famous is saying “People like us who believe in physics know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion”. His theories anyway portrayed time as just another dimension. Meaning that as we can easily get from Athens to Paris (3 spatial dimensions) we can easily (well, not now but perhaps in the future) go from Time point A to Time point B by taking our personal time machine. If that is the case, then Death is essentially not we have been fearing about. We can always visit our great-great-great-grandfather when needed and get his advice. And perhaps we do go back in time to when humans did not believe so much in this stubborn illusion we call “time”, but in immortality…

Time could be one of our biggest illusions.

And death can only exist in a world where people still believe in this stubborn illusion…

6.5 The concept of Matter (Materialism)

Humans to-day believe in Materialism. Of all the dogmas, this is the one that is most persistent and critical for our well-being. A well-being that does not take into account what makes us unique.

The dogma of Materialism underlies almost all humans do to-day. And it is a crucial belief that supports our belief in Death. Materialism dictates that everything in the world is made of matter (hence the name). Thus, it is easy to conclude that when the matter that makes a human body seizes to function then we have seized to Be. Yet, there are many things that are left unanswered by such a worldview. Materialism is a dogmatic philosophical belief and a rather old one to be honest. Harmonia Philosophica has multiple articles against materialism – all trying to expose the same thing: Any scientific or philosophical model based only on matter in the way modern post-18th century science has defined it[2], is largely incapacitated to address any of the basic elements of our being.

Our consciousness, for example, is something that is left to die if we think we are nothing more than lifeless beings. Non-living particles cannot ever become alive, no matter how much we choose to ignore this simple but fundamental problem. There is no point in believing we have free will if we believe we are nothing more than a set of particles wandering around without purpose simply because something happened in the past before we were even breathing on the scene.

In a materialistic world everything that makes us humans is simply not there at all. They are not left unanswered or temporarily unexplained, they are just intentionally left out of the picture. And one cannot discover anything related to the sea if he chooses not to see his wet feet.

In summary, materialism has many gaps or inherent antinomies that disprove it. Belief in that dogma is more a matter of blind faith than a matter of scientific knowledge. And once more, the implications for our belief in death are devastating: Without our belief in Materialism our belief in Death would be null of any meaning.

Only if we believe that our life is governed by the rules of matter can we accept that everything ends because matter ends as well. Human consciousness reduced into interactions between material objects is of course limited and has an expiry date. Humans consisted only of matter have of course an end date they cannot surpass. Because matter is not eternal. Everything material is a dead end and is gone when it can no longer sustain itself.

It sounds tautological, but one of the main preconditions for death to exist is our belief that life does not exist as well…

6.6 The concept of consciousness

Believing in death presupposes that we understand consciousness as something so special that it can end. The modern materialistic philosophy sees consciousness as something complex that stems from material interactions in the brain. Thus, as something that cannot survive death, i.e. the stopping of the function of the brain.

Nothing so simple as a set of interactions between beings that can go on forever can be part of a worldview that holds death as something true. We need to believe our sense of existence is something unique, so that it can stop being when we do.

Only in a world where being conscious means everything regarding life, can the end of life have meaning, as a state where we are not conscious of anything.

Once again, our deep belief in life seems interconnected with our deep belief in death as well…

6.7 The concept of the Living and the Dead

In the past, primitive people buried their dead and put food with their bodies. They “knew” that life did not end with death. In the past, alchemists “knew” that everything had a living force in it. It is important to know and understand that the distinction between “living organisms” and “things” was made on the years of Kepler by the “new” science of the days: mathematics could be applied for the first time so as to predict the movement of planets, but in order to do that, a great new assumption should be made.

An assumption so great and so fundamental, that changed the way we think forever. The assumption was “simple”: there must exist “living things” and “non-living things”, with mathematics being applied only to the latter. This defined almost everything from thereon. Ask a modern physicist to find “human” in the Universe and he will have a hard time. Because the “Universe” is a complex set of things – there is no room for humans with consciousness in it.  Ask a modern biologist to explain to you the difference between particles organized into living matter and particles forming a “non-living” object. He will have a hard time explaining, because a model which is defined as void of consciousness, cannot suddenly “discover” consciousness. Bohr characterized Pauli’s theory for the fourth quantum number as “crazy” and by that he meant “correct”[3].

Believing in things outside our being is part of the foundations of our belief in death.

We used to stand in awe in front of the cosmos.

But afterwards we ‘learnt’ that we live.

And we gave birth to our death.

For without such a belief, no one would be possible to meet its end.

6.8 The concept of our Self (Metaphysical ignorance and arrogance)

Our personal ignorance and arrogance are a largely ignored facet of the debate when we discuss about death. Our ignorance of basic metaphysical matters is so profound that it makes our dogmatic belief in death and its meaning almost comical. We claim to know what death is and yet we do not know what life is, we do not know what existence is, we do not know what Being is.

To be honest, we do not even know everything about flu.

Yet, we are arrogant enough to claim that we know what Death is!

We believe so much into our self and the knowledge we have acquired up to know, that we are stupid enough to claim things regarding death without even knowing the basics. We should at least follow the example of Socrates who boldly admitted that we did not know anything and surely did not know what death is if we want to be honest to our self.

It may sound weird but our belief in our self and our capabilities to understand the cosmos has also led (literally) to our death!

6.9 The concept of Nothingness

It goes without saying that death is a synonym for nothingness when it comes to us, when it comes to life. Yet the very notion of nothingness is something debatable, at least in the world of philosophers. How can “nothing” actually be? From Parmenides onwards, many thinkers questioned that very simple thing. How can we think of something that does not exist?

There is no big surprise here.

In order to believe that everything dies, you must believe in Nothing that will come at the end.

7. A way forward

All antinomies that mathematics or modern science discover are based on things we take for granted but we should not. After exploring the things we must have as axioms in order to believe in death, the most basic being the notion of “Change” and the notion of “Time”, we must now move on.

And we can do that only by denying all “truths” that we now think we know, only by being irrational. Because “rationality” is based on axioms and only by discarding all axioms can someone reach the truth (if such a notion even exists and this word is not another “axiom” we believe in). Truth is related to “Being” and anything like “being based on axioms” is far away from its real essence. We must base our conclusions on what we know and not on what we understand[4].

And what we know is that we “are”.

Where did the idea that we will sometime “stop being” come from? Because certainly no-one “not being” could come up with such a notion. And certainly, no-one had any experience of “not being” so as to formulate and spread the idea. Where did we learn of things that “are not”? Because certainly no person could have experienced non-existence. And certainly, no-one can think of something that is “not” (Parmenides).

So where did the notion of “death” come from?

To answer that all we have to do is take a look in the mirror.

The best way out of a dead-end is to stop thinking logically and start tearing the world down, as a crazy person would do. As William James said, “what we want to think is what is”. And what we have hard time explaining may have a simple solution: maybe the distinction we cannot explain does not even exist…

Is it a coincidence that everything related to “not being” cannot be explained easily?

Time, change, the problem of identity, the problem of life…

All these elements are hard to explain. All these are hard to define.

But yet, our very being is dependent on those ideas. Pythagoras talked about harmonia and yet one cannot find harmonia if he or she believes in things that entail the “end of being”. What “is” cannot suddenly “stop being” and vice versa.

But humans are weird beings. They used to live in the paradise of Being and yet they chose to understand what they felt. And they divided the cosmos into pieces. And as philosophy was replaced by exact science, humans turned into objects. Objects that have a start and an end. We must stop believing we are mere objects if we are to fulfill our destiny as humans. When in a Universe void of consciousness, consciousness appears as a candle in the dark, one can stick to the fact that this light will someday fade out. But this is a very shortsighted view. Someone else might stick to the fact that this candle came from somewhere, produced its flame from an energy that surrounds the cosmos and shed its light everywhere. How can such a candle die out?

We must try to just listen and dance with the music of the cosmos, rather than try to “understand” everything while standing still…

And in the horror of our dasein, a weird different cosmos might arise.

A cosmos where all those things we take for granted are not there…

7.1 A world of One

What if we are all part of One and no one is something unique as we want to believe? What if we are all an inherent part of a cosmos that exists as a whole and only so? In that case any question about death is moot, we cannot even exist separately as individuals. There is no “me” and “you”. And yet, we live forever, in the Being of One that includes our self.

7.2 A world without Change

What if change is something that is inherently impossible for things? What if nothing can change and things can only be? In that case what we see and experience as death could be just an illusion based on our persistence in seeing things. Ripples on the surface of the calm lake of Being by random rocks of existence thrown at it. In a world without change, nothing can be dead, nor born as well…

7.3 A world without Identity

What if there was no way to distinguish you and me? What if we were all the same things? In that case, there would be no point in claiming anyone is dead, for you couldn’t be able to also claim that someone is less alive than someone else. In such a case, what we hold as our most precious part, our own self, does not exist. Yet, immortality would be part of us in the form of being part of a whole that never ends.

7.4 A world without Time

What if time is just something we invented? What if time is just something that we see? What if there is no difference between now, before and after? What if I will always Be? Indifferent of any changes between yesterday, now and a decade from now? In that case, there is nothing to discuss about death since everyone that is now here will forever be here. The past has not passed yet. I will always be here writing this; you will always be here reading it…

7.5 A world without Matter

What if the matter that we see around us is nothing more than a manifestation of our spirit? What if we, as observers, create the cosmos every moment we breathe? What if matter is just another form of energy, an energy that will never be dead no matter what we say or feel? An energy that manifests itself only through us. In that case, death is just the agony of matter, not something that matters to us.

7.6 A world without death or life

What if we decide not to make a distinction between things that breathe and things that are no longer there? What if the cosmos we see was just full of… Being?

All these ideas might sound weird, crazy, or even just… wrong.

And yet, why would we feel that the opposite of those ideas feels anything different?

If anything of the above feels wrong, it is about us feeling that the opposite is right.

In a world where we are still looking for the light…

How can we know the difference between right and wrong if we are the ones shedding the light? Imagine a world where there is no living nor dead, but only beings. Would you feel less important in this world? Less alive than what you now feel?

7.7 A world without consciousness

What if consciousness is nothing special? What if what we believe makes us alive is nothing more than a simple brain function that lies everywhere? What if humans are something special not because we feel ourselves, but because we can do the opposite as well?

In that case “I think therefore I am” could be replaced with some more illogical, yet potentially more correct, motto. “I think therefore I can be dead” is something that sounds tragic, yet it could be the basis for being immortal if “thinking” is something tedious like drinking a bottle of wine…

7.8 A world without Me

What if I am not so important? So as to have an opinion that makes a difference on the living or the dead? What if I stop thinking about anything I might understand regarding death and decide to only live? In that case, simply sitting under a tree and saying nothing could be more important than thinking too much about life or its end.

The key to being immortal could be in us feeling already dead…

The key to the existence of death could be stemming from life itself…

What if we can never die? What if we never lived?

(What if only the cosmos can be dead?)

7.9 A world full of everything

What if there is more to life than Me?

What if Nothing does not exist?

In that case death is nothing since it can never be.

And so do we.

In a world where Nothing does not exist, there is no point in debating Death.

Because Everything is all there is.

(Nothing is just created by me when trying to think…)

8. Question Everything!

Philosophy is all about questioning everything.

Science is also all about questioning everything.

And yet, when it comes to one of the most important facets of our life – death – we forget that simple truth. And we blindly accept multiple dogmas in our urge to claim that we know more than we do. Be irrational and what you see could be a whole new world altogether. Full of new truths completely different that the ones you now believe.

Question your dogmas!

Surprise the universe!

You may not be brave enough to believe in your immortality…

But hey, do yourself a favor.

At least be coward enough not to believe in death!

9. Do you believe in Life?

A few days after Harmonia Philosophica posted the article about the child omitting Death from a Truth Puzzle, thus indicating how we should re-examine our axioms in philosophy (check the “There is no Death! (A child, a brain map and a coincidence?)” section above), a new twist was added to the plot.

Some days after that event, the same child struck again.

During a discussion about life and what life means, the child simply asked the obvious…

‘How do you know you are alive?’

…

(silence)

…

‘But I can eat!’ I answered back.

‘So? You are not alive!” said the child and giggled.

…

(laughter)

…

To cut a long story short, to whatever I said the child continued to answer back that there is no proof I am alive. And this discussion brought into my mind the previous Truth Puzzle instance and the lessons learned from that. For the same lesson should be learned from this story as well.

Of course, the child was playing. Yet, within that funny game of denying the obvious (that I am alive), it showed something very serious and important: Why should we take for granted anything? Our knowledge about metaphysical questions regarding existence and being is (close to) zero. We do not know what the cosmos is, we do not know what our consciousness is, we do not know where we go. The greatest philosophers and scientists have tried to answer such questions regarding the nature of our life and failed miserably.

So, who are we to claim that we are alive?

Is it because we feel something? But what does that mean and how can we interpret it with zero knowledge about the meaning of all this ‘something’ that we feel? How can we even know what we see, and sense is real without any objective definition of the infamous ‘Reality’ to begin with? How can we say that someone ‘is’ alive if we have not even reached a consensus on what ‘Is’ is?

It reminds me of the story with the captive Vietnam general who once told his American interrogator that the Vietnamese did not believe they would win the war. The Americans were so much pleased with the answer that did not even bother to check out the rest of the interrogation transcript. Because if they did, they would see that the same general, when asked if he thought the Americans could win the war, he also answered No…

At the depth of our anxiety about death, lies our anxiety about life per se.

Opposites locked together. In an eternal dance around our own self.

It is interesting to note that the use of the word “life” is closely correlated with the use of the word “death” in English-language texts dating from 1500 up to 2019, according to the related Google Books Ngram Viewer analysis results that are shown below.

Because at the end it seems that the greatest and most important dogma that underlies our belief in death, is our belief in life.

Question the obvious we must.

And the most obvious thing is our self.

Are we alive?

Are we dead?

(Does it matter?)

All I can hear…

Is laughter…

REFERENCES

[1] Truth Puzzles: Solving the mysteries of the world…, Harmonia Philosophica, 2021/07/25, retrieve from https://harmoniaphilosophica.com/2021/07/25/truth-puzzles-solving-the-mysteries-of-the-world/ on 2023-12-24.

[2] There is no Death! (A child, a brain map and a coincidence?), Harmonia Philosophica, 2021/11/18, retrieved from https://harmoniaphilosophica.com/2021/11/18/there-is-no-death-a-child-a-brain-map-and-a-coincidence/ on 2023-12-24.

[3] There is no Death! There is no Life either! (A child, a brain map and a coincidence? – Part II), Harmonia Philosophica, 2021/11/20, retrieved from https://harmoniaphilosophica.com/2021/11/20/there-is-no-death-there-is-no-life-either-a-child-a-brain-map-and-a-coincidence-part-ii/ on 2023-12-24.

[4] What does it take to believe in death?, Harmonia Philosophica, 2011/05/08, retrieved from https://harmoniaphilosophica.com/2011/05/08/what-does-it-take-to-believe-in-death-2jszrulazj6wq-103/ on 2023-12-24.

[5] Against Death (On the dogmatism that death exists), Harmonia Philosophica, 2022/03/06, retrieved from https://harmoniaphilosophica.com/2022/03/06/against-death-on-the-dogmatism-that-death-exists/ on 2023-12-24.

APPENDIX – Resurrection – Illogical, thus True.

Crucifixus est Dei filius,

non pudet, quia pudentum est.

Et mortuus est Dei filius,

prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est.

Et sepultus ressurrexit,

certum est, quia impossibile est

Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus

The son of God is crucified,

this does not bring shame because it is disgraceful.

And the son of God is dead,

this is worthy of faith because it is illogical.

Kai after his burial he rose,

this is certain because it is impossible.

It is the resurrection of Christ a real event?

The answer may come from an unexpected place …

Long ago when I was reading “The Birth of Tragedy” by Nietzsche, I realized that what some people think they know about “Nietzsche the atheist” is not valid. Nietzsche in this document refers to things that easily could be part of a… theological text. He talks about this primary One, and how the man in his Dionysian ecstasy comes in harmony with it. He analyzes his opposition to the religion of his days, which contrast is based on the fact that religion has become a religion of scholars (while Logic cannot explain the world!). He talks against science and reason that try to explain the world while seeming simply adhering to its surface.

Maybe analyzing something logically is not the solution. Maybe you should stand “irrational” in front of the problem to find a solution. Isn’t that what scientists we admire as “geniuses” do?

He rose.

Do you believe it? No.

The resurrection of a man who has died is a deeply illogical fact. It cannot happen based on what we know. But it is for this very reason that Shestov motivates us to believe it! Why should we believe the “reasonable” things? Not many true things are reasonable. Is it logical that we live for no reason at all and then we become fertilizer without any reason? Why immortality is irrational and accidental existence is logical? Who has instilled such ideas in us?

He rose.

Do you believe it? No.

Many say they saw him resurrected. But you do not believe them. They tell you so. You refuse to listen. You deny your own existence. An existence which cries out that you are more than a set of meat and bones. And yet you’re rational. You believe that you will die. But life itself is irrational. You cannot logically find its meaning. Because it is hidden where you are not looking. Stop thinking. See with your eyes closed. They tell you. You do not hear them. You want to see. But even if you saw you would not have believed it. Because you are logical. You would try to find the “trick” behind what you see. You live a life in logic. How can you become irrational now? How can you start living now?

He rose.

Do you believe it? No.

He lived and he died while being innocent. You think he did a trick. A stunt. Or even worse: you think that it was a common liar. A common liar who just got a crisis of conscience and sacrificed himself… for fun! They tell you he resurrected. Others also wrote down their testimony to satisfy your need for modern “written sources”. As you did not believe Homer, you do not believe them either. You are what you have told you to be. You hear what they have told you to listen. You are a ridiculous little man (or woman) who cannot think on his own without the prior consent of his “spiritual leaders”. You would never defend with your own life something absurd that you saw happening, you would never defend your beliefs. You do not have the guts to do so. You simply follow. If “reliable sources” do not tell you so, you do not believe so. But if your “sources” tell you so, then you are ready to believe anything, no matter how absurd, without protest.

Are there parallel universes? Yes.

He rose.

Do you believe it? No.

Be unreasonable and see what eyes cannot see: Resurrection means victory over death. Don’t you see? You’re not just blood and bones. You’re an enlightened being. And you have no need of sources (you have) or evidence or empirical data (which you also have) to believe. You’re a deeply irrational creature dropped in the world, and you every day feel anxious about who you are and where you go. You know nothing but know that there is meaning in all this.

We must be irrational! As irrational life is! Logic could never solve important problems (after all, Gödel has proved that logic cannot answer everything, and cannot even help us answer simple questions like “can you demonstrate that this proposal cannot be proved?”) while insight and intuition have provided solutions to many mysteries. Scientific riddles of ages have been solved with irrational thinking – not by “logic. Your logic makes you believe in “infinite”. And yet you have never seen it… Are you being irrational? Your logic makes you think that there are problems without a solution (“This proposal cannot be proved”) and yet you “know” that such problems do not exist. Is that irrational?

We live. We are basically irrational.

Perhaps the question should be put differently.

As Rilke says, the purpose of life is to be defeated by greater things.

He died.

Do you believe it?

No.

APPENDIX – ARTICLE PDF

You can download the article PDF from here.

On-the-philosophical-dogmas-that-support-humans-belief-in-Death-v1.02Download

Readers can also find the related article in Academia or PhilPapers.

[1] Anyway, science cannot prove anything, in the sense that for any argument a set of arbitrarily axioms is used. Rf. to “The limits of science”, Harmonia Philosophica.

[2] Discussions about the notion of matter can lead to non-materialistic views, if we are to consider the fact that in modern physics matter is more of a type of energy that manifests itself into existence with the help of the observer (rf. to modern quantum mechanics and the observer problem).

[3] Rf. To Yung, Pauli – The phsychoanalyzer, the physicist and number 137.

[4] Rf. To “Harmonia Philosophica”, Harmonia Philosophica [English] for the difference between those and how all antinomies can be merged philosophically into One Reality

Chairs into tables…

Photo by Spiros Kakos from Pexels

Turning a chair into a table, or vice versa, might sound like somewhat of a magic trick. In this case, zero magic is involved, just plenty of complex geometry and machine learning.

Called LOGAN, the deep neural network, i.e., a machine of sorts, can learn to transform the shapes of two different objects, for example, a chair and a table, in a natural way, without seeing any paired transforms between the shapes. All the machine had seen was a bunch of tables and a bunch of chairs, and it could automatically translate shapes between the two unpaired domains. LOGAN can also automatically perform both content and style transfers between two different types of shapes without any changes to its network architecture. (1)

Chair… Table… Human… Cosmos…

Look at any shape.

Imagine any shape.

There are ways to go from one to the other. But there is nothing natural about it. All changes are abrupt. Raw. Untamed. Whenever something becomes something else, the first one dies. Completely and utterly. There is no gradual change. No “natural” way of dying. No “natural” way of changing. This is the secret we have chosen to ignore. And we keep on believing in the ability to change. This is the essence of our civilization. The cornerstone of our existence. That we can “change”. That things “change”.

Imagine a cosmos where everything is stable.

A perfect cosmos.

We hate this cosmos. For it nullifies existence.

Free beings we are.

And if we choose, we can choose to be!

And die…

So have we done.

So shall it be…

Against Death (On the dogmatism that death exists)

Photo by Spiros Kakos from Pexels

RELATED ARTICLE: What does it take to believe in death?

Death is one of the biggest agonies of humans.

And as such, it dictates our life in ways we do not even realize.

Philosophers and common people alike have been contemplating death for millennia and we are destined to do so for as much as we exist in this world. For living, DYING is the one thing that can cause terror and destroy our temporary happiness. For those who exist, DEATH is the one thing that makes them realize that they will not exist for ever and, thus, makes them aware of their ephemeral nature. Regardless of the philosophical ideas for death that each one of us have, one thing we all share in common: Our BELIEF IN DEATH.

No matter what we think about it though, we never question its existence!

Harmonia Philosophica has already mentioned in multiple articles how dogmatism can hinder our vision even when things are clear, let alone when things are obscure as in the case of death. The main article related to Death and its non-existence has the elaborate title “What does it take to believe in death?” and it summarizes the main beliefs that are the foundation for the existence of death itself. This article is an attempt to re-examine the case of the dogmatism in favor of death that transcends our civilization and give the final blow to the dogma of death. Note that this article will be constantly updated with new ideas.

The foundations of our belief in Death

Without further delay, let us examine the major dogmas that lie at the foundation of our belief in death:

Notion of Change: We believe things can change. This may sound weird since we obviously see things changing, yet Parmenides would argue fiercely against this naive belief. How can an object change and still stay the same? If an apple changes to something else, is it still an apple? Believe it or not (pun intended) the notion of Change is something under discussion in philosophy. And guess what: Without Change, there is no death…

Notion of Identity: What is an apple? How do we know it is still *that apple* after it has decayed? Who am I? Who are you? How do we still know it is *you* even after you have changed way of thinking, way of walking, or even something as simple as your haircut? How can I still be *me* if all my human body cells get replaced about six times during my lifetime? And yes, your guess correctly: Without a way to identify a person (i.e. to also identify that this person has seized to exist), there is no death…

Notion of Time: There is a huge debate about Time and whether it exists or not. Is it part of reality or just an arbitrary notion we invented based on our limited perception of the world? Einstein was famous is saying “People like us who believe in physics know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion”. His theories anyway portrayed time as just another dimension. Meaning that as we can easily get from Athens to Paris (3 spatial dimensions) we can easily (well, not now but perhaps in the future) go from Time point A to Time point B by taking our personal time machine. If that is the case, then Death is essentially not we have been fearing about. We can always visit our great-great-great-grandfather when needed and get his advise… And perhaps we do go back in time to when humans did not believed so much in this stubborn illusion we call “time”, but in immortality…

Notion of Nothingness: This is weird, but still one of the foundations of our belief in Death. We firmly believe that there are things that exist and things that do not exist. This belief is so fundamentally hardcoded into our thinking that we barely think about it. Parmenides though thought a lot about it. How can we even speak about something that does not exist?, he asked. And there is not an easy answer to that simple question. The implications of the above should be clear enough by now. What is death without the possibility of not-being?

Dogma of Materialism: This is another big dogma that underlies almost all humans to-day. And it is a crucial belief that supports our belief in Death. Materialism dictates that everything in the world is made of matter (hence the name). Thus, it is easy to conclude that when the matter that makes a human body seizes to function then we have seized to Be. Yet, there are many things that are left unanswered by such a worldview. Materialism is a dogmatic philosophical belief and a rather old one to be honest. Harmonia Philosophica has multiple articles against materialism – feel free to search for them. In summary, materialism has many gaps that disprove it. Belief in that dogma is more a matter of blind faith than a matter of scientific knowledge. And once more, the implications for our belief in death are devastating: Without our belief in Materialism our belief in Death is purely a matter of… choice.

Belief in our self (Metaphysical ignorance and arrogance): This is a largely ignored fact when we discuss about death. Our ignorance of basic metaphysical matters is so profound that it makes our dogmatic belief in death and its meaning almost comical. We claim to know what death is and yet we do not now what life is, we do not know what existence is, we do not know what Being is. Yet, we are arrogant enough to claim that we know what Death is! We believe so much into our self and the knowledge we have acquired up to know, that we are stupid enough to claim things regarding death without even knowing the basics for life. We should at least follow the example of Socrates who boldly admitted that we does not know what death is, if we want to be honest to our self. It may sound weird but our belief in our self and our capabilities to understand the cosmos has also lead (literally) to our death!

Philosophy is all about questioning everything.

Science is also all about questioning everything.

And yet, when it comes to one of the most important facets of our life – death – we forget that. And we blindly accept multiple dogmas in our urge to claim that we “know”. But we do not know.

Question your dogmas!

You may not be brave enough to believe in your immortality…

At least be coward enough not to believe in death…

Philosophical dogmatism inhibiting the anti-Copernican interpretation of the Michelson Morley experiment

Photo by Spiros Kakos from Pexels

Author: Spyridon Kakos, phD, National Technical University of Athens

Goal of the paper

The goal of this paper is to investigate scientific assumptions and dogmas related to the mainstream interpretation of the Michelson Morley experiment. The current interpretation denies the possibility of a motionless Earth or the existence of ether, in the context of relativity that cannot accept the abovementioned notions without collapsing. Yet, even though in the most recent years mainstream science postulates that there is no absolute time or motion, the debate is far than settled. One would be surprised to find out that the main assumptions that support the relativistic view are not science-related but have deep philosophical roots related to specific dogmatic beliefs prevailing in the scientific world from the time of Copernicus. At the end, the need for some people to deny the existence of absolute rest and time is nothing more than a need to deny the importance of human existence in the vast space of the cosmos. This need, deeply rooted in our science via cosmology’s principles, seems to drive all scientific efforts to investigate observed phenomena, from the nature of light’s speed in relation to the way Earth moves, only because we are afraid to ask the most obvious of questions: Does it?

Related articles

Overview

From the beginning of time, humans believed they were the center of the universe. Such important beings could be nowhere else than at the very epicenter of existence, with all the other things revolving around them. Was this an arrogant position? Only time will tell. What is certain is that as some people were so certain of their significance, aeons later some other people became too confident in their unimportance. In such a context, the Earth quickly lost its privileged position at the center of the universe and along with this, the ideas of absolute motion and time became unbearable for the modern intellect, which saw nothing but relativeness in everything. After years of accepting the ideas of relativity at face value without doubting them, scientists are now mature enough to start questioning everything as any true scientist would do, including their own basic assumptions. And one would be surprised to see that the basic assumptions of today’s science in physics (and cosmology alike) are based on philosophically dogmatic beliefs that humans are nothing more than insignificant specks of dust. These specks cannot be in any privileged position in the cosmos, nor can their frames of reference. These specks cannot be living on a planet that is not moving while everything else is. There can be no hint of our importance whatsoever. Hence, the Copernican principle that has poisoned scientific thinking for aeons now. When one analyzes the evidence provided by science to support the idea of relativity though, he would see that the same evidence can more easily and simply fit into a model where the Earth stands still. Yet, scientists preferred to revamp all physics by introducing the totally unintuitive ides of relativity – including the absolute limit of the speed of light – than even admitting the possibility of humans having any notion of central position in the cosmos. True scientists though should examine all possible explanations, including those that do not fit their beliefs. To the dismay of so many modern scientists who blindly believe the validity of the theory of relativity at face value, the movement towards a true and honest post-modern science where all assumptions are questioned, necessarily passes through a place where the Earth we live in stands still. Non-relativistic explanations of the Michelson Morley experiment, related to a motionless Earth or to ether, are viable alternatives that deserve their place in modern scientific thought.

Method of research

The problem of trying to understand the philosophical assumptions behind the relativistic and non-relativistic interpretations of the Michelson Morley experiment will be analyzed with the help of three tools: Science, science history and philosophy. Science history will first provide the context of the theories and will give an explanation on how theories related to ether were discarded vis-à-vis the theory of relativity. The reasons for which specific assumptions were used instead of others will be analyzed and explained with the help of philosophy. Last but not least, science itself will help to explain – in simple terms – why and how the data many people see as proof for the theory of relativity can also be portrayed as evidence for theories which are supported by the exact opposite assumptions that theory uses.

1. The Michelson-Morley problem

The details of the nature of ether were for years a matter of research. Scientists tried to understand the properties ether must have to allow the propagation of waves or the effect ether had on objects travelling in it.

A very famous experiment took place in 1887 to investigate the speed of light in ether – the Michelson-Morley experiment (referred to as the “M-M experiment” from here on). The results of that experiment are widely known. Essentially the researchers tried to detect variations in the speed of light depending on the way Earth was moving towards or away from the Sun.

And they failed to do so.

The results were amazing and hard to manage. Based on the science of the time, these results indicated that the Earth was motionless, since no variation was detected in the speed of light. But this option could not be easily accepted, as we will see later on.

But before we can speak of this, a short description of the context is needed.

1.1 On the nature of Ether

One of the main questions of science is about the nature of space and time. Long before Einstein, great philosophers and scientists alike tried to answer this question with little or more success.

Despite the different opinions posed, what all scientists and philosophers agree on is that there must be ‘something’ that penetrates all existence. From Descartes to Kant and from Maxwell and Newton to Lorentz and Einstein, all people debating the subject inherently accept that space cannot be empty as in ‘nothing is there’.

Regardless of differences between theories, its role is important in numerous ways. If not filled with particles coming in and out of existence (quantum fluctuations) or with a field impacting everything inside it (gravity), space is filled with the potential of a field (e.g. curvature of spacetime) or it serves as the context of things we measure, providing the substrate of our observations.

Only to remind us what Parmenides said from the beginning…

Nothing cannot exist!

Nothing does not make sense.

Accepting the existence of ‘nothing’ in space led to a series of paradoxes that science could not accept. Thus, scientists of the time accepted what seemed logical: that things travel into a medium. That included matter as well as waves. That was the basic premise of science long before Einstein. And to answer this, scientists thought of the most obvious answer: a medium (tautology was always the best way to progress in science).

They named this medium “ether” (or aether, derived from the Greek word αιθέρας). And for years that followed, they accepted its existence as a fact. Everything that was travelling, from the planets to the light of the stars, was travelling inside ether.

But if ether is there and everything moves inside it, what is its nature?

There are many potential answers, everyone different than the other.

One of the attempts to dwell on the intricate details of ether was the event that initiated an avalanche of changes in modern physics.

1.2 Michelson & Morley measure the speed of light

At some point in time, Michelson and Morley tried to measure the speed of light in ether in the infamous homonymous Michelson-Morley experiment. Since scientists believed that the light traveled in ether and since Earth was moving in relation to ether, everyone believed that a measurable variance of light’s speed would be detected as our planet moved towards or away from the Sun.

Yes, the experiment did not detect any variance whatsoever. Michelson and Morley failed to measure any difference in that speed depending on how Earth is moving in space in relation to the Sun.

Because of that, Relativity was born to explain things: The speed of light is constant! And many paradoxes where created by that. And many more paradoxes where introduced to support and explain those paradoxes. And science, as Wittgenstein once said, took people to sleep…

But one day they will wake up they will see that a much simpler explanation is possible, as illustrated from the purposefully simplistic depiction of the problem above.

As I was already mentioned…

“Michelson and Morley failed to measure any difference in that speed depending on how Earth is moving in space in relation to the Sun”

Can you detect the problem?

If you read Aristotle, you would.

You see Aristotle was very intuitive in saying that the answers we seek are sometimes hidden in the questions we ask. Because depending on our beliefs, we formulate these questions by already accepting things that are not proved, things that we then take for granted without even noticing. Look carefully at the sentence above. Surely the experiment failed to measure any variation of the speed of light in relation to the moving Earth.

But…

Who said that the Earth is indeed “moving” in the first place?

Remember, a true scientist is never afraid to ask stupid and obvious questions. It is in these simple questions that the most obscure monsters of the intellect are hiding in plain sight…

Let us explore the monster while it is still breathing.

1.3 Possible interpretations

The Michelson Morley experiment results posed a serious problem to physicists of the day. The way the problem was solved however reflected specific philosophical beliefs and not based on purely scientific criteria. These beliefs we ought to acknowledge, since only by knowing the underlying assumptions of a theory can you truly judge it properly.

But else can we explain the negative result of the experiment?

Let us list the main three solutions here:

  1. Motionless Earth solution: There was no variance detected in the speed of light while Earth was moving, because the Earth is not moving.
  2. Ether-based solutions: The Earth is moving in ether and dragging it as it moves. That is why no variance in the speed of light in relation to ether was not detected. Or, in another alternative proposed by Lorentz, the ether exists and the M-M negative result is explained by the fact that the length contraction caused by the movement also applies to the measuring devices.
  3. The relativity solution: The Earth moves but there is no ether. The speed of light is absolute!

Out of these three options, all equally valid (at least based on the evidence available – we will see later on how this does not play a major role in the argument made by this paper), Einstein and mainstream science chose the third one.

1.4 Criteria to select the best solution

Is the option selected by Einstein (and later on by mainstream science) a correct solution?

Well, in science that question does not make much sense.

Every theory that adheres to the available data must be accepted at least as scientifically valid. And if all these three options are capable of generating theories which do that, then as far as science is concerned, they are all acceptable.

Yet, there are additional criteria that can help us analyze whether the option we have opted for is the optimal one. A list of such criteria includes:

  • The simplicity criterion: Is the option selected the most simple one? Does it require the less assumptions possible than the alternatives?
  • The practicality criterion: How much rework of all existing theories does the new theory require? Do we need to rewrite everything or small adjustments will just do the trick?
  • The philosophical dogma criterion: Does the theory adhere to my philosophical dogmas? If all are equivalent, why not select the one that

The first criterion is related to the common intuition we all have that the simplest of the solutions must be the one closest to the truth. Leaving aside the fact that philosophy does not even agree whether ‘truth’ per se exists, it is a type of common sense criterion. Not purely scientific in nature, but yet again, perhaps because of that the most scientific of them all.

The other two criteria are not scientific.

Guess which criteria were used to select the three option.

2. Earth standing still as a solution

The motionless Earth solution/ interpretation of the M-M experiment results is by far the most elegant one. After all, when you fail to detect any effect of the motion of something, the first thing that should come to the rational mind is to question the initial assumption that this something is indeed moving. The simplicity criterion is surely favoring this option.

Regarding the other two criteria mentioned in Chapter 1.4, we must note that by accepting that solution, we would nevertheless have to discard the Copernican Principle. On the other hand, it is equally (or even more) important to note that all our physics regarding movement, electromagnetism and waves would remain intact. Transformations with regards to coordinate systems which move in relation to each other would still work in the intuitive way they were working. Philosophically speaking, the option is the most philosophically-neutral one: There are no hidden philosophical dogmas guiding our selection.

As Lincoln Barnett said: The Michelson-Morley experiment confronted scientists with an embarrassing alternative. On the one hand they could scrap the ether theory which had explained so many things about electricity, magnetism, and light. Or if they insisted on retaining the ether they had to abandon the still more venerable Copernican theory that the earth is in motion. To many physicists it seemed almost easier to believe that the earth stood still than that waves – light waves, electromagnetic waves – could exist without a medium to sustain them. It was a serious dilemma and one that split scientific thought for a quarter century [1, p. 3]. In a book endorsed by Einstein, theoretical physicist James Coleman admitted: “The easiest explanation was that the earth was fixed in the ether and that everything else in the universe moved with respect to the earth and the ether….Such an idea was not considered seriously, since it would mean in effect that our earth occupied the omnipotent position in the universe, with all the other heavenly bodies paying homage by moving around it” [1, p. 3]

Do all the above ring a bell? They certainly do. Hubble was following the same line of thinking when selecting his cosmological model. Again, the infamous Copernican Principle came forward and forced science to choose one path instead of the other.

As explained already in the relative paper I published for Hubble and the Copernican Principle [2], the fact that Earth rotates around the Sun is not a fact at all. It is now known that a physicist can easily choose any point as the center of the system he examines, without that having any effect on the validity of the physical description of that system. The selection of the heliocentric over the geocentric system was made upon the philosophical dogma that we are insignificant; that is the main premise of the Copernican Principle. Not something ‘proved’ (anyway such a thing does not exist in the context of science), but a purely dogmatic stance dictated by religious (or rather, anti-religious) beliefs. Even though the available data showed that the Earth is at the center of the universe (literally) [3], Hubble chose to ignore them and opt for another option to explain the phenomena observed. Based on the Copernican Principle which holds that we cannot have a privileged position in the universe (Why? Just because! No, there is no justification for this principle that we use as an axiom), Hubble chose one cosmological model over the other.

In the same way and on the same grounds, the first solution to the M-M problem was discarded. The same line of thinking was followed by Einstein as well, when selecting the solution to the problem posed by the M-M experiment. The easiest potential solution was discarded from the beginning, simply because the Copernican Principle said so. Regarding physics, scientists made their selection loud and clear once more based on the principle that there can be no privileged position, that there can be no possibility of Earth standing still. Or for anything else actually, like ether (for that we will talk later on). All motion must be relative, there can be nothing at absolute rest.

As Ronald W. Clark describes it, the renouncing of the whole Copernican theory was “unthinkable”.[1]. In the same way Hubble thought it was unthinkable to accept the Earth at the center of the cosmos, Einstein thought it was unacceptable to speak about an immobile Earth. The common denominator for both being one: The Copernican Principle. We can have an in-depth analysis of why that principle is so pervasive and persuasive. Yet, this is not the scope of this paper. The goal of this paper is to show that the mainstream way of thinking is based on legs of clay. And that if we select different assumptions (simply by… choosing them), then we result in a whole different cosmos.

Of course, by rejecting the motionless Earth solution, a price had to be paid. And that was the total revamp of physics that resulted after the acceptance of the theory of relativity on the premise of the absolute light speed. (Remember, we always speak about the acceptance of the initial unproven premises here, not about the inherent internal consistency of the theory, which is taken for granted) And yet, scientists were accepting this cost in order to keep their precious unprivileged position in the cosmos.

The rest, as they say, is history.

What is our duty though, is to acknowledge that history.

And to be ready to change it.

To recognize the abovementioned process and to always remember that there are more than one ways to interpret the same evidence. That is and that has been the process followed by the scientific method. Theories formulated based on data and then new theories formulated to explain the same data[1] in a different way. In a cynical turn of events, the moment we accepted that everything is moving, was the moment science stopped in its tracks.

Note that the actual solution to the problem is not important here. What is important is to understand that the Earth standing still is one viable solution to the problem at hand. And that the alternative solutions to the M-M experiment were not only discarded without providing justification whatsoever, but they were deliberately buried under the veil of the history of science as irrelevant.

We must always keep in mind that it is very dangerous though to believe in facts. True scientists need to keep an open find for all possibilities.

3. Ether-based potential solutions

As already mentioned, the immobile Earth is not the only way to interpret the M-M experiment. There exist also other two alternatives based on ether:

  • The Earth moves and drags the ether along as it moves through space. That is why we cannot detect any change in the speed of light in ether as Earth moves.
  • The ether exists and the M-M negative result is explained by the fact that the length contraction caused by the movement also applies to the measuring devices.

For the relativistic solution (i.e. the Earth moves but there is no ether – the speed of light is an absolute number not related to the movement of the frames of reference) we will speak in the next chapter.

The ether-based solutions, were (and still are) equally acceptable solutions like any of the other two. And to be honest, even if they were not, adding more elements that would make them be compatible with the data would do the trick; this is what scientists have been doing with the relativity theory anyway (see below). The ether option was discarded based not on scientific criteria but based on philosophical grounds similar to the ones that led to the discarding of the motionless Earth option.

In a cosmos where motion is relative, ether could not stay as-is. Accepting its existence would imply the possibility of absolute rest. Even though ether dragged along Earth was moving, the ether per se would refer to something standing still in absolute terms. And the existence of absolute rest was incompatible with the (special) theory of relativity.

Einstein explained by means of his famous K and K’ models what led him, initially, to dispense with ether: “… if K be a system of coordinates relative to which the Lorentzian ether is at rest, the Maxwell-Lorentz equations are valid primarily with reference to K. But by the special theory of relativity the same equations without any change of meaning also hold in relation to any new system of coordinates K’ which is moving in uniform translation relative to K. Now comes the anxious question: Why must I in the theory distinguish the K system above all K’ systems, which are physically equivalent to it in all respects, by assuming that the ether is at rest relative to the K system? For the theoretician such an asymmetry in the theoretical structure, with no corresponding asymmetry in the system of experience, is intolerable. If we assume the ether to be at rest relative to K, but in motion relative to K’, the physical equivalence of K and K’ seems to me from the logical standpoint, not indeed downright incorrect, but nevertheless unacceptable.” [1, p. 635 – 648]

Again, the grand old debate of whether a ‘privileged’ position exists. Again the same grandiose expressions of ‘intolerable’ positions, erringly similar to the expressions used afterwards by Hubble. The aeons old debate of whether we are important or not, coming back at a different form, yet all the same whatsoever. Surely, the privileged position of the Earth is not at stake here, yet the existence of any privileged position is. You see the Copernican principle is nothing else than a special case of more general principles, namely the Cosmological and the Mediocrity principles.

The mediocrity principle is the philosophical notion that “if an item is drawn at random from one of several sets or categories, it’s likelier to come from the most numerous categories, than from any one of the less numerous ones”. The principle has been taken to suggest that there is nothing very unusual about the evolution of the Solar System, Earth’s history, the evolution of biological complexity, human evolution, or any one nation. It is a philosophical statement about the place of humanity. The idea is to assume mediocrity, rather than starting with the assumption that a phenomenon is special, privileged, exceptional, or even superior than others [16]. The Cosmological Principle on the other hand supports the idea that “on a large scale the universe is pretty much the same everywhere” [17]. Both of these principles essentially say the same thing as the Copernican principle but on a different level. Overall, all three state that there can be nothing ‘special’ about anything in the cosmos. There can be no God, sorry I mean there can be no ether standing still, no Earth standing still, no nothing in a more superior position than anything else [18].

If we are to judge the selection of the dragged-ether solution by our criteria laid down in Chapter 1.4, we would say that it seems like a viable yet not optimal option. Surely it is not as simple as the motionless Earth option, since it introduces the ether dragging phenomenon as well. Regarding the practicality aspect, the same as in the previous solution apply: we would keep the physics we have and we would have to revamp the cosmology. Last but not least, regarding the philosophical criterion, there are not many hidden assumptions here, except obviously from the fact the ether’s existence is assumed.

4. The relativity solution

The relativity solution was the solution finally selected and it is easy to find many books regarding the subject [4] that analyze it in great extent. The detailed analysis of this option is not in scope for this paper. The goal is mainly to show that alternative solutions to the M-M results exist.

A short description of how the relativity solution would stand up to the criteria we mentioned in Chapter 1.4 is crucial though into our analysis.

Regarding the simplicity criterion, the relativity fails big time. In order to explain the results of Michelson and Morley, it introduces an unintuitive absolute limit in the speed of light and then, based on that and other premises it creates a chaotic complex of paradoxes that still baffle physicists around the world[2]. Paradoxes that are still confused as ‘reality’ in the context of the general tendency of people to forget that science deals with theories and not with what is real [5]. Length contraction, time dilation, curvature of space-time are some of the components that are now necessary to explain the cosmos around us. Things which would be completely useless have we opted for the simplest of the solutions. But it seems we are too unimportant for that option.

Regarding the practicality criterion, again this option seems to not have a high score. Choosing to accept the relativity premises, science needs to revamp all the physics related to light and movement. Of course, cosmology would stay unaffected on the other hand. Accepting that two twins on a relative motion to each other age differently (check the “Against the realistic interpretation of the Theory of Relativity” paper [5] on an explanation on how the twins paradox is misinterpreted as ‘real’) at least makes us keep the most precious position of being nothing in the cosmos.

Last and most importantly, the relativity solution fails the philosophical criterion in an astounding scale. In order to accept that option we adhere to specific philosophical dogmas relating to our importance in the world. Such opinions are widely known to be related to anti-religious materialistic philosophies that have been in fashion for the last centuries. Humans who take a stand against religion tend to adhere to such philosophies with zeal. And although we cannot say anything regarding the actual connection of these philosophies with the people who made this specific choice and still support it, we cannot but admire the almost obvious connection of the Copernican Principle and all Copernican Principle-compatible premises with such ways of thinking. The selection of the relativity option is not a casual selection of one option over the other. Opting for that solution is full of philosophical dogmas charged with aeons of tension; hence the unusually and unscientifically super-charged language (‘intolerable’) used by scientists supporting this option over the others.

How astonishing beings humans are.

Capable for the most astounding of feats.

And for the most amazing of mistakes.

Einstein could not accept what would kill his theory.

And thus, as simple as that, ether died.

And thus, ‘space-time’ was born.

Along with complexities, paradoxes and unintuitive science based on contracting lengths, slowing clocks and twins who seem to age differently based on relative motions that we cannot define properly. All because we could not accept the much simpler solution of an immobile Earth.

But was this really the end of ether?

A more detailed look implies no.

4.1 Ether with a new name

Even though many people today believe that Einstein discarded ether altogether, Einstein actually replaced ether with something else that essentially had similar properties: “something” that penetrates all the cosmos, being the context for all the phenomena we observe. It must be evident by now that the change was not much of a change to speak of.

Essentially, Hermann Minkowski’s idea of four-dimensional spacetime is the conceptual substitute for the ether. [6] The metric tensor of Einstein [7] is essentially replaced ether that penetrates all space and provides the background substrate for gravity to manifest itself. Like ether provided the substrate for science back in the days of Lorenz.

Philipp Lenard, one of Einstein’s most vocal opponents at the time, in a 1917 speech titled “Relativity Principle, Ether, Gravitation” remarked that Einstein merely renamed ether as “space,” and concluded that General Relativity theory could not exist without ether. As Einstein himself describes it: “No space and no portion of space [can be conceived of] without gravitational potentials; for these give it its metrical properties without which it is not thinkable at all….According to the general theory of relativity, space without ether is unthinkable; for in such space, not only would there be no propagation of light, but also no possibility of existence for standards of space and time (measuring rods and clocks), nor therefore any space-time intervals in the physical sense.” [1, p. 635 – 648]

And now we do not have ether. But the metrical tensor field and space-time. An ether nonetheless, but without its most important characteristic: absolute rest. [1, p. 635 – 648]

4.2 Einstein on Ether

The best place to begin in discovering what constitutes that ether for relativity (or ‘space’ as we now know it) is to investigate the way Albert Einstein himself is theorizing on the subject.

In 1916, Einstein wrote: “in 1905 I was of the opinion that it was no longer allowed to speak about the ether in physics. This opinion, however, was too radical, as we will see later when we discuss the general theory of relativity. It does remain allowed, as always, to introduce a medium filling all space and to assume that the electromagnetic fields (and matter as well) are its states…once again “empty” space appears as endowed with physical properties, i.e., no longer as physically empty, as seemed to be the case according to special relativity. One can thus say that the ether is resurrected in the general theory of relativity… Since in the new theory, metric facts can no longer be separated from “true” physical facts, the concepts of “space” and “ether” merge together. It would have been more correct if I had limited myself, in my earlier publications, to emphasizing only the non-existence of an ether velocity, instead of arguing the total non-existence of the ether, for I can see that with the word ether we say nothing else than that space has to be viewed as a carrier of physical qualities” [1, p. 635 – 648].

What Einstein says here is the essence of his stance towards ether. Initially, the ether could not exist because if it did, it would imply that absolute rest is possible, thus nullifying the validity of the theory of relativity per se. But at the advent of the general theory of relativity, ether was needed to provide the substrate that would essentially explain the existence of gravity and action at a distance: the curvature of ‘something’ (now known as ‘space-time’) was required to explain the movement of planets on the sky.

In simple words, Einstein did not renounce ether. He renounced ether with physical properties as accepted by others at the time with the only goal not to leave an opening for the possibility of absolute rest. He did however use the notion of ether (albeit with a new name to avoid any misunderstandings or unwanted connotations) with specific physical qualities to support his action-at-a-distance explanation.

The ether of General Relativity only had to incorporate gravity, thus Einstein had to develop another type of ether in order to unify gravity with electromagnetism, which led to embellishing Riemann’s geometry with what was known as “tele-parallelism” and six more tensor fields in addition to the ten already being used by General Relativity. [1, p. 635 – 648].

4.3 Evidence for Ether

Even though the null result of the Michelson Morley interferometer experiment in 1887 has been widely regarded as proof that the ether does not exist, there are still evidence proposed by science that ether might actually do.

Poincaré continued to insist upon the existence of ether for three main reasons: (1) stellar aberration (check related studies of the Arago and Airy experiments); (2) “action-at-a-distance” whereby gravity and electromagnetism could be transmitted over vast distances; (3) rotational motions (of which we saw an example in Sagnac’s 1913 experiment). Although Einstein felt that he had answered the phenomenon of stellar aberration (but in reality he had not), he did not have a quick answer for rotation and action-at-a-distance. [1, p. 635 – 648].

To-day, ether keeps on coming back with various shapes and forms. Many scientists call for the need of ‘something’ that would act as an absolute frame of reference for our view of the cosmos [8] [9]. This was something already tackled in my previous papers [5]. When the theory of relativity speaks for ‘speed’ what speed does it refer to anyway? The hypothesis provided by ether gives a solution to that simple yet complex problem. There must be something relative to which we measure things, otherwise there is no meaning whatsoever in talking about speeds in the first place.

A number of experiments have detected anisotropy in the speed of light by exploiting the effect known as Fresnel Dragging to reveal the different travel times by light in each direction between two points [10].

Astrophysicist Toivo Jaakkola claims that “The ether hypothesis was thought to be buried by the Michelson-Morley experiment, but today it is more alive than ever, in the form of the CBR [Cosmic Background Radiation]” [1, p. 635 – 648].

That evidence call for a need to re-evaluate the premises we have placed our faith upon. And perhaps be ready to choose a different path than the current one.

4.4 Ether-based theories equivalence

One very important thing to understand when discussing alternative solutions to the M-M problem, is the equivalence of the possible solutions. There is no privileged solution based on the data available. The ether-based theories trying to explain the M-M experiment (e.g. the one postulated by Lorentz), are essentially identical with the theory of relativity proposed by Einstein. There is no way to distinguish one from the other based on the evidence available, which all fit both. (Note that in the theory that Lorentz postulated, the M-M experiment was explained by the length contraction also affecting the measuring devices, thus leading to a null result.)

Some believe that the difference between the two theories is mainly related to the way they formulate their assumptions. Both try to explain the cosmos and they are simply doing so in a different way.

Equivalence of Lorenz and Einstein’s theories [11]

Differences between the different theories obviously do exist. Choosing one over the other is at the end a matter of choice, if such a choice is valid when one of the them (the Lorentzian one) uses clearly less assumptions than the other (refer to the analysis made above based on the Chapter 1.4 criteria). Despite those differences though, they are both at the end empirically equivalent [11].

Special relativity and Lorentz’s theory are completely identical in both sense as physical theories and as theories of physical space-time. All statements of special relativity about those features of reality that correspond to the traditional meaning of terms ‘space’ and ‘time’ are identical with the statements of Lorentz’s theory. On the other hand, all statements of Lorentz’s theory about those features of reality that are called ‘space’ and ‘time’ by special relativity are identical with the statements of special relativity. The only difference between the two theories is terminological [12].

Of course there are points where there are differences. The theories themselves are too broad to even be possible for someone to claim complete equivalence in every single aspect. For example, there are scientists who claim that the Lorentz theory can explain more phenomena than the theory of relativity. For example, Lorentz invariant cosmology holds promise of being able to account for the ratio of gravitational mass of galaxies to their baryonic masses (though this requires a tedious computation yet to be accomplished); i.e., it conceivably could account for the existence of so-called “dark matter”. General relativity does not [13]. On the other hand, other writers explain the the Lorentz theory needs more assumptions that Einstein’s [14].

Again, the details of this debate are mute.

What is important is the possibility of alternative explanations [15].

And that they are largely compatible with the data.

True science is not about selecting a path.

It is about acknowledging the existence of other paths as well.

Conclusion

What is obvious is most of the times the hardest thing to grasp. For aeons now, humans thought of themselves as the center of everything. Did they hold that belief because they made an in-depth analysis of all possible explanations of the cosmos and after careful consideration they came up to this justified example? No. They did so because – out of their instinct – this sounded logical and true. It felt true. And perhaps especially for those reasons, this view was more scientific than it could ever be. Now we look at the Sun revolving around Earth at the sky. And we admire how Earth rotates around the Sun instead. We see evidence for us not moving. And yet we formulate theories on the premise that we do. We are so much convinced of our insignificance that any other solution is simply “intolerable”.  Instead of scientists we have become cowards. Look at our selves again we must. And honestly ask: Why can’t we catch that light?

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES

  1. Robert A. Sungenis, Robert J. Bennett, Ph.D., Galileo Was Wrong, The Church Was Right – The Evidence from Modern Science, Catholic Apologetics International Publishing, Inc., 2017.
  2. Spyridon Kakos, (2018), From Galileo to Hubble: Copernican principle as a philosophical dogma defining modern astronomy, International Journal of Theology, Philosophy and Science.
  3. Spyridon Kakos, 2010, “Earth at the center of the universe?”, Harmonia Philosophica.
  4. Philip Harris, Special Relativity, University of Sussex, retrieved from here on 2019-06-03.
  5. Spyridon Kakos, (2020), Against the realistic interpretation of the Theory of Relativity, Harmonia Philosophica.
  6. Scott Walter. Ether and electrons in relativity theory (1900-1911). Jaume Navarro. Ether and Modernity: The Recalcitrance of an Epistemic Object in the Early Twentieth Century, Oxford University Press, 2018, 9780198797258. ffhal-01879022f
  7. Metric tensor, Wikipedia article, retrieved from here on 2020-08-11.
  8. G. Builder, (1957), Ether and Relativity, Australian Journal of Physics, vol. 11, p.279, retrieved from here on 2020-08-11.
  9. Roger Ellman, The Einstein – Lorentz Dispute Revisited, retrieved from here on 2020-08-11.
  10. Declan Traill, (2019), Proof that the Ether exists and that the speed of light is anisotropic.
  11. László E. Szabó, Lorentzian theories vs. Einsteinian special relativity – a logico-empiricist reconstruction, Vienna Circle and Hungary – Veröffentlichungen des Instituts Wiener Kreis. Berlin and New York: Springer, retrieved from here on 2020-08-11.
  12. László E. Szabó, Lorentz’s theory and special relativity are completely identical, retrieved from here on 2020-08-11.
  13. Wasley S. Krogdahl, Α Critique of General Relativity, retrieved from here on 2020-08-11.
  14. Michael Heinrich Paul Janssen, (1995), A comparison between Lorentz’s ether theory and special relativity in the light of the experiments of Trouton and Noble, retrieved from here on 2020-08-11.
  15. Szabó L.E. (2011) Lorentzian Theories vs. Einsteinian Special Relativity — A Logico-empiricist Reconstruction. In: Máté A., Rédei M., Stadler F. (eds) Der Wiener Kreis in Ungarn/ The Vienna Circle in Hungary, Veröffentlichungen des Instituts Wiener Kreis, vol 16. Springer, Vienna, retrieved from here on 2020-08-11.
  16. Mediocrity principle, Wikipedia article, retrieved from here on 2018-09-05.
  17. Cosmological principle, Wikipedia article, retrieved from here on 2018-09-20.
  18. Spyridon Kakos, (2018), From Galileo to Hubble: The Copernican principle as a philosophical dogma defining modern astronomy, International Journal of Theology, Philosophy and Science.

[1] Surely this usually – but not always – happens with the advent of new data. However, the new theories do interpret the ‘old’ (existing) data as well. In that sense, the initial data are then seen in a completely different context of the new theory.

[2] For an analysis of how the Theory of Relativity should not be interpreted literally, check the related article “Against the realistic interpretation of the Theory of Relativity” by Spyridon Kakos here.

APPENDIX – Re-tweeting the Article

After I have posted the article some people decided to re-tweet it. To my astonishment, as shown below, these tweets of my article were tagged as “Media with sensitive content”, whatever that means.

The re-tweeted article marked as “sensitive” and, thus, hidden from general view!

Of course when you decided to click on the item and expand it (despite the… warning) you could still view the article. This is at least weird. I have been publishing articles for years now and I do not recall something like that again. Unless the tagging was about the picture of the article, which I doubt since it was a simple photo I myself have taken from cape Sounio.

You expand the “sensitive article” and then you can view it… At least for now…

It seems that the Copernican Principle is so powerful that not even Tweeter can freely allow publication of anti-Copernican articles without some warning ?!

If that happens with a simple article, just imagine the difficulty of publishing a paper on the matter, especially in one of the prestigious journals. Unfortunately we live in an era where censorship still exists, but only with a different name.

We now know it as… “facts”.

Happiness. Meaning of life. Genes.

For the first time, locations on the human genome have been identified that can explain differences in meaning in life between individuals. This is the result of research conducted in over 220,000 individuals. The researchers identified two genetic variants for meaning in life and six genetic variants for happiness. (1)

We want to be unhappy.

So we choose to see our happiness in nothingness.

Once upon a time we were truly happy.

Only because we were blind.

Seek the meaning of life in the void of being.

You will find it full of everything…

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