Megacosmos - Microcosmos
Megacosmos
Looking back at the great figures of Ancient Greek literature, who three thousand years ago analyzed the nature and structures of the Earth, our solar system, and the entire world, we can gather extremely useful information today, which scientists in laboratories are processing with great interest. The Whole World, according to Plato, is ultimately a creation of the Mind and Goodness, as the primary causes of the Idea of Good.
Plato’s philosophy of the universe is entirely teleological. This world that human eyes see unfolding at night with billions of stars and galaxies is the most beautiful, the most perfect, the most eternal thing that the Creator-Mind has created. And because the Mind can only dwell within a living soul, the Whole of the World is “Animate.” The Platonic World, which operated outside the senses and was based on the ideologies of the “World of Ideas,” constituted for Aristotle’s student a “World of Scientific Research and Supervision” in order to support his own cosmological views.
Today’s science knows that the Universe, as it is currently studied and observed, is described by Euclidean geometry and that the forms and shapes perceived by our senses are false representations of other, perhaps real, events but imperceptible, which are faintly reflected in small parts of space. It should be remembered that the physical reality described by Plato had been described in earlier years by Heraclitus, Democritus, and Parmenides, who taught their students in the schools of antiquity that “what our senses perceive as real are false images created by the human mind and that knowledge derived from the senses is false, while only intellectual knowledge corresponds to universal truth.”
In this case, we can now claim that the pre-Socratic Greek philosophers had grasped in their studies the basic principles governing the legal regulations of today’s positive sciences. However, in order to understand contemporary physics and astrophysics, especially in the interpretation of the Megacosmos, we must classify certain basic data on a scientific basis. Common human logic dictates an in-depth study of the sciences of space, always in conjunction with contemporary scientists and pre-Socratic researchers, in order to arrive at a clearer interpretation of the functioning of cosmic space.
The concept of “Matter,” as perceived by our senses, has already been overturned by modern physics, resulting in the abandonment of Newton’s Study of the Universe and its replacement by Quantum Physics and Particle Physics. In the ancient Greek world, Being refers to the totality of the Cosmic Creation, the Infinite Universe, which, when hermetically sealed in its Totality, constitutes the God of All.
Parmenides of Elea, teacher of Zeno and close friend of important Pythagoreans, asserts that there is much evidence to show us that Being is Unborn and Immortal. Parmenides’ Being is Totality, it is Immobile, it has no Beginning and no End. It never was and never will be, because now, in every present moment, it is “all together” and has continuity within itself. Parmenides was asked how it is possible for Being to be Unborn.
The pre-Socratic cosmologist replied: “For what reason would Being be born? And by what means would it grow? If we accept that it is Not, then we must claim that it does not exist! But from non-Being, nothing can be born, because nothing comes from nothing! For the same reason, the Being that we perceive as inexplicable and inconceivable can never be lost! For what kind of Being would it be if it had loss within it?”
Everything Parmenides asserts is subject to a profound interpretation of the Megakosmos (Macrocosm) and the Mikrokosmos (Microcosm), which, in its deepest meaning, declares Creation to be the Absolute work of a Creator. The theocratic interpretation of the natural world and, at the same time, of the Microcosm and the Macrocosm, as conceived by Parmenides, unfolds an inexhaustible variety of cosmic speculation for today’s interpreters of Universal Nature.
Parmenides says: “Being is indivisible, because it consists of a substance that has continuity within itself and is identical only with itself. The Law of Necessity always imposes it as Fixed and Immobile, while the Principle of Motion exists only in its internal processes. Being, in its infinite dimensions, is defined within certain limits, a certain shape… and this shape must be Perfect, within the world of bodies. And this Perfect Shape is the Sphere. Result: Being is a Perfect Sphere. Immobile, without Beginning, without End, Indistinguishable, Unchanging, Constant, and identical only to itself.
Despite the fact that Parmenides perceives Being as a body, this does not mean that he contradicts the Immaterial reality, because such a form of perception did not exist in his time. The material and intellectual worlds had not yet appeared on the stage of the physical world of Ancient Greek literature in Parmenides’ time. Windelband argues that “it would be unfair and misguided to characterize Parmenides as a positivist or an ideocrat. He is neither one nor the other.”
However, what is considered certain today is that he opened the door to metaphysical interpretation, a characteristic of the Megakosmos, and that the messages of this leading thinker are heard not only at the end of the Classical period, not only at the close of Neoplatonism and Plotinus, but also in the days of modern science, which seeks to interpret the universe through the writings of the thinkers of Ancient Greek literature. Examining the data we receive from Newton’s classical physics, scientists consider it self-evident that the universe is described by Euclidean geometry. Until a few years ago, it was believed that human senses could only perceive shapes and forms that existed within Euclidean space, in the three known dimensions of length, width, and height.
However, Einstein’s theory of relativity proved that our belief in Euclidean geometry was wrong, demonstrating in mathematical terms that the space of the universe is not interpretable in terms of Euclidean geometry, but is described by a newer geometry, “Riemannian geometry,” which has absolutely no relation to Euclidean geometry. It is clear that, for today’s science, every shape and form that exists in a Riemannian space of unlimited dimensions cannot be perceived by human senses.
Our senses perceive forms that are not real. They also perceive shapes that are not real. In the scientific approach, forms and shapes are projections, i.e., shadows, which, within the cosmic space, due to their size, behave like Euclidean space, which can be perceived visually by human senses. Is the truth hidden in mathematical relationships? And the question that arises with the interpretation of the Universe is Interpretation “Mathematical substance?”
Could it be that the indescribable size of the Infinite, at the depths of scientific approach, hides secrets whose complexity will always keep science bound to endless research? Or have we come to realize that the study of the macrocosm, which concerns the universe, can no longer be an object of research and study for us humans, with evidence derived from our senses for the benefit of science, but a work of our own thinking, of our mind, which in the coming years humans will have to use as a “sixth sense,” more advanced, more sensitive, and perhaps more conclusive than our five senses?
Microcosmos
In the pre-Socratic period, the question that preoccupied the philosophical currents of the time was the following: “Does the infinite exist or not within matter?” In short, does matter have infinite distinctness? Infinite divisions? Those who would agree with the “infinite division” of matter would have to deny its “atomicity,” which states that an atom cannot be divided into more than it is. For a clearer position, when the Ancient Atomic theory refers to “atoms,” it means small parts of mass, i.e., “molecules of matter,” and not atoms, i.e., indivisible, as the word clearly reveals.
The most important representatives of the Ancient Atomic Philosophy of the 5th century BC were Leucippus and Democritus, while in later years, Epicurus. In the 18th century, Atomic Science, based on the theoretical principles of Ancient Greek literature, made its appearance, strongly believing that the microcosm, under the crystals of microscopes, is a world of constantly moving particles that have their own motion and interact with each other.
In the 19th century, atomic theory laid the foundations for the newly established science of chemistry, while kinetic theory laid the foundations for a new field of physics, thermodynamics, with energy as its protagonist. The idea that the macrocosm and the microcosm are two worlds made of the same material and interact with each other created a fascinating interest for scientists and researchers, who sought conceptual proof that “one world fits inside another!”
The microcosm of matter, fragmented in a state-of-the-art particle accelerator, attracts researchers who literally immerse themselves in the ocean of their smallness, trying to decipher the principles and secrets of Creation. New rules are being discovered, where every important piece is nothing more than a set of particles that possess the Principle of Motion and Interaction. Each of these infinitesimal particles, invisible to the human eye, has speed, mass, kinetic energy, while its dynamic energy proves its interaction with other particles. By carefully examining the Microcosm, we find that energy is only kinetic and dynamic.
The concepts that summarize the characteristics of the Microcosm are related to the density of a material, the pressure of a gas, the temperature of a body, and the internal energy of a body or system, which can be considered thermal or chemical. It is considered necessary to correlate the values of these quantitative concepts with the resulting images of the Microcosm. The density of a material element is determined by the number of particles in each unit of volume and is not of measurable interest in terms of how fast they move. Theoretical scientists of the 19th century, after many years of painstaking research, came to the conclusion: “The temperature of a body is determined by the speed of movement of the particles and not by the volume formed in each cubic centimeter.”
More vividly, temperature is proportional to the average kinetic energy of the particles. To find the desired “average,” we divide the sum of the kinetic energies by the number of particles. In the 19th century, scientists discovered that the particle-atom is compact and indivisible. Chemists call the particle a “molecule” and believe that this “molecule” is held together by stable, indivisible atoms. The variety of these indivisible atoms was reduced to 92 different atoms, starting with the hydrogen atom, which is the lightest, to its counterpart, the uranium atom, which is the heaviest.
Researchers in the 19th century found that the atom represents the basic unit of matter and consists of a microscopic nucleus of protons and neutrons surrounded by electrons. This atom is maintained as a perfectly compact sphere, like a seed in the center of a natural fruit. Aristotle, in his own words, analyzed the “essence” of atoms as matter and form, both of which are eternal. At the end of the 19th century, European laboratories studying the structure of the atom discovered the electron, an incredibly small particle with a negative electric charge that moves steadily around the nucleus of the atom.
Science has now entered a new era of managing the elementary form of particles. The electron was discovered in 1897 in Cambridge, England, during an experiment with a 27-centimeter tube. Its name comes from the Greek word “electron.” The electron was the first elementary particle, meaning that it cannot be broken down into smaller particles. Today, the electrons in the outer layer of the nucleus are of particular interest to the science of chemistry, while the science of electricity deals with electrons that, for some reason, have escaped from the nucleus, are not included in its layer, and are characterized as free.
It should be noted that light has been the subject of research into its causes, which ultimately emerged as a highly dynamic field of study in the creation of physics, opening up new horizons at the turn of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. The strong nuclear force, i.e. the strong interaction, which is the strongest of the four fundamental forces, with the shortest range of action, attracts the interest of scientists who have found that this force holds quarks together in the formation of protons and neutrons, while the protons and neutrons, always through the strong nuclear force, combine to form nuclei.
We live in a real “world of wonders” when the physical sciences, cosmology, and astrophysics provide us with an incomparable wealth of information every day, so that the common human mind can gradually interpret the ever-revealing laws of physics and “stand in awe before the panorama of Divine Creation.” And perhaps, through the revelatory codes offered to us by the science of nanotechnology and microcosmic research, we will be able to hear the voices and messages of the past that lie safely hidden in the pockets of a potential microcosm which, from the depths of matter, instead of observing us, observes us.