How is change possible?

Taken from Dictionary.com

 

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It depends on which "change" you are referring to. I'll give a shot at "change " history. If someone were to go into the library and take a old history book out and make changes in certain historical events and reproduced that book then reinserted it back into the library then that would be one way to "change" history.

 

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Given time, space and causation, it is inevitable.

 

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Change is so much easier for some than for others. Most people don't realize it but they live in cozy ball machine environments where change occurs automatically for them—hardly ever against them.

 

Like a walk along a twisting maze, an extended pattern can consist of structural changes along its "length", while also being static overall. So one question in terms of such "block universe" scenarios would be why this apprehension of the integrated changes only as a flux of slices, rather than as the whole heterogeneous form? Attributing it to the limitations of the biological brain/body switches temporal change from an objective to a subjective context, and tries to ignore the condition of an organism's "wiring" being just as much a higher dimensionally extended worldline as everything else. Thus the groping for what else is available?, apart from that eternal structure itself, which can bring about at least the appearance of particle transitions between discrete units of space at the quantum level and the relativistically skewered "nows" taking place at the macroscopic level?

BRIAN GREENE: And this fusion of space and time would lead Einstein to perhaps the most mind-bending realization of all: the sharp difference we see between past, present and future may only be an illusion. [...]

SEAN CARROLL: If you believe the laws of physics, there's just as much reality to the future and the past as there is to the present moment.

MAX TEGMARK: The past is not gone, and the future isn't non-existent. The past, the future and the present are all existing in exactly the same way.

--THE FABRIC OF THE COSMOS: THE ILLUSION OF TIME

And if, despite the above, change did literally consist of one global "now" regularly replacing a former one (presentism as opposed to eternalism), it would apparently invite some underlying process as an explanation that also ensured that the series of distinct and "swiftly" annihilated universe configurations did hang together consistently. And these "past" stages accordingly getting subsumed under an overarching common identity, despite no longer existing (via some kind of memory or information retention?). But this simply adds another level, housing the supposedly covert process that generates the flux and maintains the lawful and logical coherence of it, that might in turn itself require an explanation.

 

generally, more so collectively than individually, change requires more pain in the current state of things than the pain of implementing change.

Attitudes to global environmental issues are a good example

 

@lightgigantic --

For once you and I see eye to eye on something.

 

Yep - there's a saying "change is the only constant".

 

Those who have made New Year's resolutions in the past can relate to this.

 

While I understand that some people do this I never have because I knew I couldn't ever keep the resolution I made so why make it. If I want to change myself, which is about the only thing anyone can do, then I will either make the change when I'm ready or just never change and be satisfied with who I am.

 

Perhaps you two should focus on discussing ecology.
You'd find that you have sooooo much in common!

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Or set SMART goals: ie. goals that are specific, measurable, realistic and time-bound.

There is quite a bit written on how come New Year's resolutions fail, and one major reason is that those resolutions are often vague, poorly-defined, or perfectionist.

People often don't put much thought into why they want to change and how, so it is no surprise that they can't live up to their plans.

On the other hand, there are also many people who make resolutions and who do keep them.

 

How is change possible?


Good question. I suppose the answer to it depends on how we answer "What exists?"

 

I'll rephrase my question. How is change possible for something to came out from nothing?

 

By Pooof!, obviously.

 

Interesting question.

We see how existing things change from one thing to another. For example, water can change into oxygen and hydrogen.

So how will you go about to describe this change?

Of course one can say that there isn't actually any change, all change is merely an illusion.

One can also say that there isn't any concrete thing that exists and that everything is changing.

You can make a logical argument for the saying there is no change as follows:

1) Something exists or it does not exist.
2) If something does not exist then it is nothing.
3) From nothing, nothing comes.
4) Water exists during one moment and this turns into hygrogen and oxygen at another moment.
5) But water cannot change to nothing and then from this nothing comes hydrogen and oxygen.
6) Therefore there is no change. Change is an illusion and water, and hydrogen and oxygen exist just at different times.


You can also make an argument for saying that there is only change and nothing else:
1) Nothing stands still.
2) In order for something to exist it has to stand still.
3) Therefore nothing exists, everything changes.

But the second option does not explain how change is possible.

So the seemingly difficult thing to do is to have an explanation of how how there can be a reality where things exist and where existing things can change from one thing to another.

There are at least two ways of explaining how change happens.

The first way is to say that there exists fundamental existing things that are necessary beings that cannot change into anything. Call them atomos (from Greek). All change is thus the arrangement and rearrangement of atomos is a void. Water on this view is a certain mixture of these atomos and upon electrolysis these atomos are just rearranged into different arrangements of these atomos e.g. oxygen and hydrogen.

The second way is to distinguish between potential being and actual being. Things that exist and are able to undergo change are composites of actuality and potentiality. Water is now actually water and potentially hydrogen and oxygen. Change on this view is the reduction of potentiality (oxygen and hydrogen of water) to actuality (actual oxygen and hydrogen) by something actual (and actually existing electric current that facilitates electrolysis).

 

What an absurd question. In order for there to be change, something must exist in the first place.

 

There are people who claim that at first there was nothing, and then out of this nothing, everything, the whole Universe and we came to be, via evolution.

So how do those who believe that first there was nothing, explain change?

Why/how did that primordial nothing (which they claim to exist), at some point become something?

 

I am not sure "they" claim nothing existed. That is a logical contradiction. Nothing or nothingness by definition has no being, no existence. It is not something that exist, it is nothing.

But it is a valid question. How do you get to something when there is nothing?

 

Sure. But anyone who makes such a claim is invariably thinking of nothing as some sort of 'state', even if they insist that it is an 'unphysical' state and could therefore be said to be nothing according to the scientific definition of such. The truth however is ridiculously simple, but strangely only becomes self-evident once you've wrestled enough with the relevant philosophical considerations. The idea of absolute nothingness is a conceptual error. There can only be something.