[Buddha-l] buddha-l Digest, Vol 41, Issue 4

[Erik Hoogcarspel]

Curt Steinmetz schreef:
> Bernie Simon wrote:
>   
>> On Jul 3, 2008, at 9:32 AM, buddha-l-request at mailman.swcp.com wrote:
>>
>>   
>>     
>>> Isn't energy the "ultimate stuff of the physical universe" that is  
>>> "not
>>> subject to destruction" or creation?
>>>     
>>>       
>> Energy is not a substance. It's a property of physical systems. And  
>> energy is created and destroyed all the time, or rather, transformed.  
>> The chemical energy of wood is transformed into the light of fire,  
>> which is transformed into heat. These are qualitatively different  
>> things. The quantity of energy in a system is conserved, not energy  
>> itself.
>> _______________________________________________
>>   
>>     
> Matter is obviously "a substance" - and matter and energy are 
> interchangeable, as has been known since 1905. Therefore at the very 
> least energy has the potential to become "a substance" (which makes it 
> "potentially substantial") - and in fact we know that energy does do 
> this all the time. Also the distinction between "energy itself" and the 
> "quantity" of energy doesn't apply when we are talking about 
> "conservation". "Conservation" refers precisely to the "quantity" of 
> energy - that has always been the meaning of what physicists call 
> "conservation laws".
>
> The bottom line is: mass-energy (they must be treated together) can be 
> neither created nor destroyed. All you can do with it is rearrange it 
> (rearrangement includes conversion from matter to energy and vice 
> versa). All apparent change in the physical universe is just the 
> rearranging of mass-energy - nothing ever "arises" out of nothing - nor 
> does anything ever simply "cease" and become nothing. Therefore any 
> posited "dhammas" that arise out of nothing and/or cease and simply 
> disappear into nothing must either be conceptual constructs or they 
> appear to be inconsistent with what we know about the physical world.
>
> That is unless the "dhammas" themselves are not physical (ie, are 
> neither matter nor energy). Then the conservation laws of physics don't 
> apply. But that implies that the physical universe is "ultimately" "made 
> up" of non-physical stuff.
>
>
>   
The laws of conservation of energy are not so much laws of the universe 
per se, but definitions that structure the way Western physics looks at 
the universe. All science is however underdetermined, that means that 
there are always alternative ways possible to look at the universe and 
explain events and they cannot be proven wrong. Western physics has been 
very succesfull of course, but that doesn't necessarily prove that it's 
laws are necessarily and exclusively true. Even if one takes an 
instrumental standard for truth there is room for alternatives. Dhammas 
are not elements of Western physics, so they're incommensurable and 
cannot expect to obey laws of Western physics more then say the elements 
of Empedocles.


-- 


Erik

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