Early humans saw through the apparent chaos of nature: with a bit of imagination, order was revealed. Animals perceive relationships between events that matter to them the death of prey and the availabity of food, or worsening weather and the need for shelter. The urge to "make sense" of date by juxtaposing, and therefore accumulating them, seems to be a property of the mind, or what people loosely call "instinct."

There comes a point, however, when the "sense" we make of knowledge transcends anything in our experience, or when the intellectual pleasure it gives us exceeds material need. At that point, an idea was born.

Once evolution endowed them with sufficient memory, people could observe patchy instances of order in nature and make mental connections between them: the regularity of the heavenly bodies, the progress of the seasons, and the predictability of the life-cycle. But that was only the scaffolding upon which the idea of an orderly universe was erected.

There is a huge gap from the mind to leap, between observations of orderly relationships and the inference that order is universal. Indeed, the clam that order encompasses the whole of nature is so counterintuitive and so contrary to experience that it must have originated as an idea. At least I would like to believe this.

Order is not visible, except in a few fragments; the rest has to be inferred from the clues.

The idea of order makes the entire cosmos imaginable in a single mind and summons efforts to picture it whole. This fundamental breakthrough in the history of thought obviously happened independently in lots of different cultures, and, in every case, so long ago that we no longer remember when. The first clear evidence is embodied in the earliest cosmic diagrams - artistic or religion or magical depictions of the universe. You choose!

The oldest I am aware of is in a rock painting in Jaora in Madhya Pradesh, Indian, which, on present calculations, is maybe 8,0000 years old. It shows a world divided into seven regions, surrounded by symbols of water and air.



Another version decorate a 4,000 year old Egyptian bowl: the world resembles a pair of pyramids, surrounded by zigzags, between rising and setting suns.



The age of the concept, however, probably greatly exceeds the age of the evidence. For just about all hunter-peoples now known to anthropologists have an overall concept of the cosmos and describe it in their myths. Many of them represent it in rock painting or body art" the Caduveo of the Paraguay paint their faces with quartering’s that resemble the way they divide up the world.



Early descriptions of the world seem echoed in the "dreamtime" of Australian Aborigines, in which is inseparable tissue of all the universe was spun.



Dogon goatherds in Mali decorate rocks with diagrammatic representations of a four-quartered world.



Kongolese potters make vessels for initiation rites with depictions of the cosmos. Magic and oracular divination seems to presuppose an ordered world, bound by predictable, an even manipulable, chains of cause and effect.



So we have some who believe that the dice were thrown down and some who believe there are no dice when it comes to the creation of a universe. What is your speculation, conclusions, or even discoveries that you believe are true.



I will end this with a quote by Albert Einstein in which I think most people know who he was.

"You believe in the God who plays dice, and I in complete law and order in a world which objectively exists, and which I, in a wildly speculative way, am trying to capture..."

Albert Einstein, letter to Max Born (1944)

Very interesting question indeed John. Kudos to you for serving up such wonderful food for thought.

Based on everything that I've seen in this world thus far, from science, to religions and mythologies, to my own personal subjective experiences, and the observations of the lives and behaviors of others, my speculation is midway between that of Einstein and Max Born. Or perhaps I should say that it's a combination of the two.

I believe in the dice. I believe the dice are real and I believe the dice are orderly, but they also contain an element of freedom. I believe in an observer-affected universe. In fact, it seems strange to me that Albert Einstein didn't embrace this view. After all it fits his theory of Relativity like a glove. Even he recognized that the frame of reference of the observer affects the "objective nature" of their reality. So I'm at a bit of a loss to understand why Einstein took the view he did. I'm willing to bet that it ultimately came from social conditioning, he had been taught from early childhood to think of "god" as something external to him, and he therefore could never truly get past that view. If he could have taken the pantheistic view, or recognized the philosophy as presented by our own Jeanniebean, he would have recognized that he is the thrower of the dice, and that he can even have an active roll in creating what numbers come up.

So anyway, this is how I see reality. Yes, the universe is made of dice. But we are the 'gods' who toss those dice, and because of this, we can indeed have an affect on what comes up on the faces of the dice.

I think Einstein found the idea of a universe that's "out of control" to be unacceptable, but at the same time he wasn't psychologically prepared to accept that we might actually have the subjective ability to control the outcome of the toss. It's easy to get lost in a world of total objectivity especially when constantly conversing with other scientists.

So my speculation is that the world is a mixture of subjective-objectivity. In fact, I'm certain that this is indeed the case. We decide how we are going to react to, or interact with, any given situation. It seems to me that this should be obvious to anyone who believes in will. Those who don't believe in will must also believe that they have no responsibility for their actions. After all, if they don't have a will how could they be responsible for anything? I'm sure that Einstein had a sense of responsibility and therefore he most likely recognized his attribute of will. Why he couldn't see that his will controls how he tosses the dice is beyond me. Without the dice there could be no freedom to exercise the will. Dice are god's way of giving freedom to the will.

That's how I view the picture of reality.

Well thank you for the compliment. I knew I could hang out occassionally with you highly intelligent philosophers, scientists, and minglers

Your conclusion sounds good, but what is most important, is that it works best for you concerning the creation of a designer of our universe. I love dice, yet I can create great stories and games without using dice also.

For me I fear I will not have the answer ever. I am too honest to give a solid answer and can only say "I don't know" what created everything. I think it is beyond our knowledge to exactly know, yet I always would like to think that someone is coming really close with some solid answers for us one day. Perhaps it will be you in your last breathes of life at the age of 99!

Although it is quiet entertaining to see the different perspectives not only in this science and philosophy threads, but also from the different cultures that exist in this world. One can spend a lifetime studying the different possiblities that mankind has created for us to get lost in.


Thank you for giving this thread some attention

order is an interesting word....


if you reduce your physical being at an equal ratio of earths size to your size...... down to a level as to where you stood on the surface of the center of an atom in your keyboard..... and looked up to the electron cloud... from that point the electron cloud would look slow to move as per the heavens from earth......relativity relatively speaking

thats just one perspective


the same electron cloud that forms reality as we know it....when viewed from deep inside the atomic structure...looks amazingly similar to our heavens....hmmmmm..... i'm thinking ladder

Do you really need the answer to that question?

The only answer I find valuable is that we do indeed have control over our own lives. All the rest is superfluous ponderings.

I don't need an answer to the question.

I am enjoying the "now" in life and yes you are right it is all superfluous ponderings that many of us ponder occassionally. Some spend more time on it then others! That is for sure

yes it can lead to alot of contemplations when sit back and think about it.