Is the universe a giant mind?

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Is it possible that the universe is a giant mind actually? Is there a physical reason that there are so many laws and symmetries in nature?

If so, what do you think is the cause of all of this?

I don't know, but that's really interesting. I could see it being an anime or something.

Maybe the universe is actually a conscious entity at some level and is purposely creating new lives so that it realize itself. Maybe the universe is actually dreaming itself up.

This is the point of John A. Gowan:

http://www.johnagowan.org/immortal.html

If this is really true then this means I will be reborn again and again in a new body.

Not an iota of evidence for this nonsense.

ruveyn

Duplicate thread is Duplicated.

There is no evidence or physical principle to support the fantasy that the universe is one giant mind.

I've thought that too, that if it's true it means reincarnation! Can't think well enough at the moment to explain it but it's due to the all-is-one idea and that separate consciousnesses are all that separates everyone from experiencing the universe as its one and on;y single self... so I believe I was the cow from the hamburger I ate yesterday, and every other cow, and every other person is too, and everything is everything else and time is an illusion. Anyway, like I said, not thinking well at the moment, so I know this made not much sense.

if there was nothing before the "big bang", then how could the laws of all physics ever have erupted from non existence fully replete and irrefutable? how could have that infinitesimally small conduit in the veil between never and forever been able to transmit the sum total of the entire manifestation of our universe from nothing to everything in only a single infinitely small amount of time. (i am not talking about volumetric capacity, but i am talking about universal mass)

if everything can be packed into a singularity with no width or height or length like it was back in the instants before the "bang", then everything must not exist, because it can fit into zero volume.


i think that the universe is at the mercy of the laws that govern it's excursion into the future. there is no deviation from destiny for the universe by the lateral accelerations of "decision". if the universe of matter was not totally obedient to the laws of physics and therefore bound by destiny, the universe of matter would evaporate into a buggers muddle of confused initiatives that cancel themselves out exceptionally rapidly.

anyway i am tired and i am going to bed after i type this word.

The laws of the Universe always existed. There was no time before t = 0. I'm not sure if Scientists are certain that the Big Bang came from an absolute singularity; I've heard talk that space is quantised into minimum distances (Kaku said that IIRC). How the Big Bang happened, I have no idea. The answer is undoubtable far stranger and more wonderful than "Big Sky God".

A fair number of the theories that have been receiving a lot of attention lately actually reject the thought that time started at the big bang.

Incidentally I happen to agree with this approach not because I think that time has always existed but because it is my intuition that time is really a construct of the human mind than of anything concrete; that is to say that we have an experience of there being change that we can place on a scale as being relative to other physical states of our external reality by aligning them with periodic cycles that occur naturally as a result of the configuration of our solar system. (as an example: what we call a "day", that is to say a 24 hour cycle, ceases to have any real significant meaning in space because there is no longer the rise and fall of the sun to distinguish night and day naturally).

To me, time does not actually exist except as a convenience.

Anyway, in response to the actual topic, one might as well ask whether or not the universe is actually a gigantic pudding. The question/theory itself is not falsifiable and, therefore, not a scientifically valid question.

Don't know about mind but I have this notion that it's a life form

What if something is so big that it can't be perceived by us? What if the galaxy is a cell amongst billions of cells in the universe and the universe is a life form and we're just as imperceptible to it as we are to it.

I got to thinking that what if something could be so big that one swipe of an arm or something could traverse the galaxy or galaxies in mere seconds as if we were to swing a bat. What if the bat was so massive that the end point of it was moving a billion times the speed of light?

you say "the laws of the universe always existed", but if there was no time before t=0, then time is finite and therefore you contradict yourself.


yes i agree. the absence of time however does make it more possible to pack things into a given "space". can entirity be contained within a volume-less "point" ? what is volume?

i mean really? what is it? it is "space" obviously, but how does one explain "space"?
"space" i know can be seen (by almost anyone who thinks about it) as a "manifestation", and therefore people have considered space as a relatively easily influenced medium that is acted upon by the material realm that occupies it.

"space" (yes empty space) in my mind is the most miraculous thing in the universe. the fact that there is any room for anything to happen in is truly awesome. space is completely separate from matter i believe. i do not think the 2 can influence each other. there has to be a new model of understanding. i am not bothered to think it through.

Always means "at all times". It implies nothing about time being infinite. I see nothing wrong with my statement; the Universe existed for as long as existence and time existed, and as such there was nothing before the Universe.



There is no common sense, "wordy" definition that I can give. However, math allows us to describe the Universe where words fail.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minkowski_space

There is a difference between a description, and the thing itself. The only complete model for an object is the object. But there''s no need to digress into aesthetics.



My working definition of our space is that it is a set of points in which subjective experience can be had. It might seem like a strange definition, but think about it; the defining difference between a mathematical space and our space is that experience is had in ours, that we sense it directly. You are wrong about mass not influencing space though; that is demonstrable empirically. General Relativity shows that mass warps the curvature of space.

I believe this was disproved via Star Trek 5.

Do you know anything about Star Trek?

My apologies. I meant to say "Star Trek V"..

Better?

In the movie they found/went to the center of the universe. Only to find it was in fact an evil entity who needed their ship to travel away from the planet it was stuck on.

Now I'll say spoiler alert (after the fact).

I think of the universe as a computer simulation run by a supercomputer trillions of times more powerful than the ones today. Since computers can replicate the real world using equations, then obviously the real universe is just one big bunch of code that we live in where every particle is calculated in 11 dimensions. In a way, studying physics is kind of the exact opposite as creating a physics engine for a video game. This is why I believe alternate universes could have totally different laws of physics.