Defined narrowly, epistemology is the study of knowledge and justified belief. As the study of knowledge, epistemology is concerned with the following questions: What are the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge? What are its sources? What is its structure, and what are its limits? As the study of justified belief, epistemology aims to answer questions such as: How we are to understand the concept of justification? What makes justified beliefs justified? Is justification internal or external to one’s own mind? Understood more broadly, epistemology is about issues having to do with the creation and dissemination of knowledge in particular areas of inquiry. This article will provide a systematic overview of the problems that the questions above raise and focus in some depth on issues relating to the structure and the limits of knowledge and justification.
This question is more one of rumor substantiation and a desire for more information about one individual’s thought processes.
“What did God do before he created the universe? He was preparing Hell for people who asked such questions.” In 1929 Edwin Hubble made the observation that distant galaxies are moving rapidly from us; in other words, the universe is expanding. This discovery brought the question of the beginning of the universe, the famous Big Bang. Here we have very clear demonstration of the philosophical void of our times. As it had been demonstrated in the Rational Cosmology and by other objectivists, the notion of the beginning of the universe is contradiction in terms. For example, if time didn’t exist before Big Bang and nothing was changing, then how did this alleged explosion take place? Time is a measure of the change, and an explosion is a very rapid change of matter by definition. Philosophically, the Big Bang theory belongs to the category of concepts known as Primary or First-Cause-like primary mover, intelligent design, God, etc. The First Cause allegedly causes everything of its kind or everything altogether. However, this concept has intrinsic contradiction. If the Primary Cause is the cause of everything, then it has to be the cause of itself, and that leads to infinite regression. If the Big Bang is the cause of Universe, then what would be the cause of Big Bang? Evidently, it has to be another Big Bang, and so on ad infinitum. Since infinite regression is a logical fallacy, the concept of Big Bang is not valid.
I hear rumors that Piekoff doesn’t buy the Big Bang:
Start by learning the correct spelling: Peikoff. You could investigate his physics lectures; the main question I would have for you is what claim you think the “Big Bang” is. At the very minimum, it cannot possibly be some jackass misunderstanding of an actual scientific claim at the hands of sci-fi writers or the popular press.For example, the scientific content of “Big Bang” is not that the universe was created by such-and-such event.
What Dr. Peikoff is against is the idea that the universe started ex nihilo – that it came from nothing. And a lot of scientists have fallen for the idea that before there was our current universe there could not have been anything. They arrive at this notion rationalistically. In other words, for any given explosion, if one adds up all of the momentums of the pieces flying off, their total sum would be zero – just as it was before the explosion. For something like the Big Bang, as presented at least on popular science shows, they assert that there could not have been anything because everything was created during the Big Bang (or at least all the hydrogen was created, which would then create stars from which everything else could be created).
Also, if one thinks of the universe as being everything, then how could it come into being? The implication is that it all came from non-being, something that did not exist as something specific before all of that hydrogen came flying out. Obviously, philosophically, if the Big Bang did happen, then something had to be there before the Big Bang. But the popularization of the Big Bang claims there wasn’t anything there or that it can never be known what it was. In other words, like a lot of quantum mechanics, it is not logically presented and is self-contradictory.
As to the cosmological red shift observed with light coming from far away sources, this does not necessarily indicate that those far away sources are moving away from us in all directions (or that the universe is expanding). There are other theories out there that try to explain it as some sort of nature shifting of light after traveling across great distances. For one thing, there is a high correlation between distance and the red shift, but scientists are kind of trapped into the idea rationalistically that light never changes once leaving the source. In other words, light is treated as an immutable aspect of existence, which probably isn’t true given what we know about everything else.
So, none of the evidence we have right now necessarily indicates that the Big Bang happened even on strictly scientific grounds. And philosophically, that idea that the universe as such was created is stating that everything was created from nothing, which is illogical.
Besides all of that, it gets rather annoying hearing some people be against Dr. Peikoff or Miss Rand because they were not upon the latest scientific findings. You know, it would be like saying Dr. Peikoff cannot be a good philosopher because he doesn’t own an ipod and doesn’t know how to use one. It is the wrong standard for assessing whether or not he is rational.
Thomas Plasma Cosmologist have pointed out the fact that the electric nature of plasma causes redshift as well. Optical techs use Induced Electric Dipole Redshift to bend light in the lab every day! The fact that the universe is 99. something percent plasma taken in to account we need to wonder why the redshift= distance thing is still around! Halton Arp has shown much wrong with the correlation. See SEEING RED.
Thomas Plasma Cosmologist have pointed out the fact that the electric nature of plasma causes redshift as well.
I’m not well read up on plasma cosmology, but I do understand that they have an alternative explanation for many of the effects one observes in cosmology, including what happens around a black hole and whether or not a black holes is primarily caused by gravity alone. Basically, they claim that plasma – electrified gas – can account for many of the observations, but most cosmologists claim only gravity is involved. It’s an interesting debate, and it has probably been too long since I’ve done physics (I have a BA in physics from twenty years ago) for me to really make an informed judgment about whether it is gravity or electrically charged gasses that account for the observations.
The overall point is, however, that the Big Bang and other theories do have legitimate competition; and I think one would have to be a competent physicist to decide which one is correct.