Mezes Hall, photograph by Larry D. Moore - Wikimedia Commons
Recently I found a college philosophy paper I thought I had lost in the Harvey flood in Houston. It had been wet but now is perfectly dry and is certainly readable. Here is a link to an online copy.
Link to Wikimedia Commons picture. I thank Larry D. Moore for use of his picture.
It was for a course in history of philosophy. My assignment was to develop an idea in one of Plato's dialogues. I chose one from The Sophist, to define a thing as real when it can act and be acted upon. In the Loeb Classical Library edition this proposition is presented on p. 381 by the Stranger from Elea who is visiting a discussion by some followers of Socrates.
The grade I got was B+ and there was a note written by the professor: "Interesting speculation, but not much Plato. What about ‘knowing a form’ as acting on it & so changing it?" He was Dr. Albert P. Brogan and this was at The University of Texas, in Austin. The year was 1961.
I was certainly interested in applying this idea in modern physics and cosmology. I was skeptical that Plato measured up to standards of modern science, but I had to produce a paper.
At the end of the paper I argued that my thinking about cosmology had room for a limited God but not an omnipotent one. I made reference to 2 Indian metaphysical systems (Yoga and Vaisesika). In the margin the professor wrote "Aristotle?" One peeve I had with this philosophy department was the lack of interest in Indian and Chinese philosophy, which I had started surveying on my own my senior year in high school. Yes, Will Durant said that the British like Aristotle because his God “reigns but does not rule.”
I had spent my freshman year at Stephen F. Austin College at Nacogdoches, where I decided to be a philosophy major, although there was there just one philosophy professor and perhaps no philosophy majors. The next year I transferred to The University of Texas (Austin campus, of course). In registration week I saw a philosophy department advisor. He asked me why I would major in philosophy. I think I said I had an interest in sciences and other fields and wanted to integrate them. It must not have been a good answer; he said he would discourage my choice. He said "The supply of philosophers always exceeds the demand. We grade our majors hard, encourage only the best to stay."
In the spring of 1961 I took a course on ethics from John Silber, later president of Boston University. Different books for this course illustrated different varieties of ethical theory. No theory of karma, however. Silber had a reputation as a very inspiring teacher, but this was not one of his best classes. I had a problem of my own; I was in a phase where I had great difficulty in getting anything written.
By the end of 1961 I was getting better grades in mathematics and made it my major. My father suggested chemistry as my minor; I had a precocious interest in chemistry, starting at age 7. I took the second half of history of philosophy, then no more philosophy courses.
For many years I have not kept up with this philosophy department; I do not know whether its home is still Mezes Hall.
When I rediscovered this paper it occurred to me I should reread The Sophist before writing about this paper. I bought a copy of the bilingual Loeb Classical Library edition, which volume includes Theaitetos also.
After I wrote the paper I would pursue further my notion of alternate universes. I would consider a further question: what happened before the Big Bang? I noted that particle interactions, such as beta decay, seem to be time-symmetric. My answer is that there was an anti-universe with a reversed time-sense. Consider a pair of cones with a common vertex, a 2-dimonsional surface. The universe/anti-universe pair would be an analogous pair, but in 4 dimensions (space-time) instead of 2, with the Big Bang as the common vertex.
Does this contradict the account of creation in Genesis? You better believe it does. The ancients had little reason to think creation could be time-symmetric.
In the anti-universe there could have been a city like Dallas, Texas. A bullet was ejected from a man’s body and went into the barrel of a gun pointed out a window of a warehouse. The man came to life and his car started going backward. This sounds like a mirror-image universe. An exact mirror-image would really be the same universe. A near mirror-image would be highly improbable.
Note how a conic surface is made up of lines that radiate away from the vertex. I would explain the direction of time as a direction of maximum radiation away from a vertex in space-time, i. e. the Big Bang.
In our universe there seems to be a great imbalance of particles as opposed to anti-particles. Perhaps the Big Bang amounts to a convergence of many, many particles from the anti-universe and their divergence into our universe, in analogy to beta decay as a crossing of 2 particles to produce 2 new particles, with an exchange of some attributes. The net number of particles in our universe could be the number that passed through the point that was the Big Bang, a constant of our universe. Perhaps this number is related to some very large mathematical structure such as a sporadic simple group. Sir Arthur Eddington investigated the possibility of such a constant. He died in 1944; most sporadic simple groups were not discovered until after 1960.
Is an alternate universe real? The Stranger of Elea would say no; interaction between objects in our universe and an alternate one is not possible. Is the anti-universe real? There is only one interaction, the Big Bang, a dimensionless point. Just barely real?
In modern physics there is an uncertainty principle. Perhaps the identity of the anti-universe is indefinite. In other words it could be any universe that balances our number of particles, and possibly other features. A strange theory, but is not quantum theory strange?
Indefinite identity? A supposition that the identity of individual electrons is indefinite leads to the Pauli exclusion principle, which plays a major part in explaining the periodic table of chemical elements.
After 56 years, do I still like this paper? Copying to a webpage was a good way for me to read it. I liked the parts that are still clear to me, mainly my cosmological speculations. It was years ago that I read much Plato and some of my references to him are not clear to me. Did I understand Plato well at the time? That is one reason I am rereading The Sophist. Do I expect you readers will like my paper? I suspect it will seem dry; I have more confidence in my present commentary.
