meredith perry's brain

The vast macrocosm we live in is frustratingly unknowable.  We can squeeze a lot into our three-pound brains, but trying to understand the nature of the universe is just too enormous a feat.   Logically, the universe is either infinite or finite.  If the universe is infinite, it was not created and it will not terminate.  Contrastingly, if the universe is finite, the universe began and will end with nothingness (zero).  Strangely, neither of these options can be logically worked out.  Since these are our only options, the problem must be in our understanding.  Although we can try to come to logical conclusions, our inability to comprehend the concepts of infinity, zero (as a vacuum), and time, limit our understanding of the universe.

            All knowledge is bound by a three-fold constraint: our physical position in space, the experiences we have within it, and the physical construction of our brains.  As a picture is only understood when viewed as a cohesive whole, we cannot fully understand concepts that we have not experienced.  How can we think about ideas that are foreign to us?  The ideas of infinity and zero are understatedly bizarre and unfamiliar to us.  The associations we have with these concepts are hollow.  The words we use to describe infinity and zero: “always”, “eternal”, “endless”, “∞”, and “nothingness”, “vacuum”, “0” with respect to the latter, are tautologies; they are only reiterations of the definitions of the terms.   We do not experience things arising from nothingness and since we are finite creatures, we do not experience things that exist infinitely. We only experience creation and termination as part of a perpetual sequence of redistribution of matter and energy.  Since the universe can only exist infinitely or finitely, and we cannot fully understand these concepts, we thus cannot understand the nature of the universe.

            In our understanding of the concept of ‘nothing’, “0” can never yield “1”, and “1” can never yield “0”.  If our logic is not fallacious, the universe thus cannot be finite, as it would have to arise from “0” (go from nothing to something), and end in “0” (go from something to nothing).  By deductive reasoning, if the finite is logically impossible, we are only left with the possibility that the universe is infinite.  ‘Infinity’ as a concept isn’t logically impossible as is “0 to 1”, so it must be our understanding of this concept that is crippled.  We cannot represent this idea conceptually, or grasp or exercise concepts involved in its articulation.  We can only represent this idea through mathematics, but here we run into a loop.  Infinite summations can be made without reference to time, whereas the true concept of infinity, by definition, includes time.  It appears that our understanding of ‘time’ could have enormous implications for our understanding of the universe.  Without temporality, ‘infinity’ loses its meaning, which would even further mask our understanding of the universe.  An a-temporal universe would just be in a state of existence.  It would be “1”.