--- Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> So, _why_ does space-time "curve" near massy
> objects?
> _Why_ does extent of "curvature" correlate with
> quantity of mass? _Why_ do objects follow the
> shortest
> distance between two points? Remodeled geometrical
> fiat?
We might be able to fully answer these questions if we had GUT, the Grand Unified Theory. But here we run into a regress problem noted by Hegel. The explanation will depend on further generalizations or reference to further facts that themselves seem to call out for explanation, etc. Hegel, and you too, sought "intelligibility," some kind of closure, a way of explaining everything without bad infinities (regresses), vicious circles, or question-begging.
It seem to me, though, that at some point we have to accept that things just are the way they are, that there may be no further explanations, that we have to be content with answers to how rather than why. Intelligibility, in the sense of a universe or a theory thereof that answers all our questions, is almost certainly not to be had. Not in science, anyway.
Lacking GUT, we are not there with GTR. But we may arrive there at some point, and if not, we may be stuck in the bad infinity. This doesn't mean positing occult powers. It mans Newton's other response to the question he couldn't answer about action at a distance, Hypotheses non fingo, I do not make hypotheses.
>
> (I am aware that gravitation is not a force in the
> strict sense of the term BTW.)
Sorry I misunderstood your remarks about evolution, and I apologize for getting cranky.
jks
>
> --- andie nachgeborenen
> <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Yes, approximately; the point is, very roughly,
> that
> > objects follow the shortest distance between two
> > points, and spacetime curves near massy objects,
> so
> > the shortest distance takes them into the gravity
> > well. Obviously there's is a lot more to it even
> in
> > GTR. And it is also true that we don't have a
> grand
> > unified field theory that unified theory that
> > integrates quantum and GTR. But since GTR the
> > mechanism of gravitation is not a mystery.
>
> >
> >
>
> Nu, zayats, pogodi!
>
>
>
>
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