Do we live in a polar Universe?

[WhiteCrowUK]

Okay first off this is not a question on physics before it gets moved or you switch off.

Newton said basically for every force there is an equal an opposite force.

Thinking about this we do seem to live in a Universe where everything is one scale or another of polar concepts.

The most obvious thing for this is the old concept of good and evil. Our actions tend to be either one or another. Okay perhaps there are "neutral" actions but they tend to either be good and evil in equal balance, or else they are actions where we do not really do anything.

Likewise things have negative and positive charge - yes they can have neutral, but this is just because their positive and negative cancel out.

I guess we also have this to some extent in politics - there is left wing and right wing - though the analogy is somewhat more complicated.

So is this idea of things either being one way or the other a universal one - or is a predominantly Western view. I know of course of the yin and yang principle which seems to follow the same ideaology.

We do seem to be obsessed with the idea of polar opposites. Add your ideas and thoughts here ...

[Edwardo_son_of_haqim]

I think our actions are more complex than to be measured in just good and evil. And that actions can have positive and negative effects. In physics maybe but in other matters its more diverse.

[WhiteCrowUK]

I think our actions are more complex than to be measured in just good and evil. And that actions can have positive and negative effects. In physics maybe but in other matters its more diverse.

Yes - but we are familiar with the ideas of good and evil - though we perhaps have different notions of what they are.

There is more in physics than just ideas of polar opposites. There is also the idea of things being there or not, a kind of Boolean view.

For instance - light is the presence of photons.

Looking at the world in a kind of "polar" way, the opposite of light is darkness.

However scientitically you might see things in a more "Boolean" way. Light is the presence of photons. Darkness is the absense of photons. Therefore darkness is not the opposite of light, its an absense of light. Therefore there is not opposite for light.

Similarly you could say the opposite of life is death.

But you could also say life is the presence of respiration. And death is just the absence of respiration. So again death is the absence of life.

[Edwardo_son_of_haqim]

But is death not the opposite of birth and if it is then can it ce the exact opposite of both

[DarkWolf]

Life and Death aren't opposites. You live your life and it ends. Death is an ending of what it is part of. Life and Death are the same, just one is and ending of a whole.

Ending isn't an opposite, it's a natural finish.

[Edwardo_son_of_haqim]

But isn't the end the other end of the spectrum to the start(or birth) and as such the opposite?

[WhiteCrowUK]

But isn't the end the other end of the spectrum to the start(or birth) and as such the opposite?

I think everything is bound up in perception which is personal to everyone. Perhaps a Christian would see death as "rebirth to eternal life" - hence not the opposite to birth, but instead a continuation of life.

[Béni_Etre]

Wouldn't the world be balanced then? Maybe way back when when man believed that we were apart of nature the world was balanced...but now we feel higher. If something happens we can top it so I think no now.

[LycanSpectre]

1) I don't think that actions are good or bad in and of themselves; it is only how we classify them that makes them one or the other.

2) Humans in general tend to classify things as good or bad, one or the other. Simply put, its easier that way. Grey areas are too confusing. The main reasons there are grey areas in the first place is beacuse people disagree, and cannot come to a resolution.

3) If 1 and 2 are true, then we are not in a polar universe, it is only our perceptoion that is shaped by our need to make things simple.

[Nightmare GenoReaper]

Is there ever an absolute truth? No, we cna bend alot of things around to make you go insane and go against your mroality of living.
There are oppisites which exist in the human brain itself

Happiness-Saddness
Knowledge and Understanding-Fear
Hope-Despair

These are opposites because of the fact that one attiribute does not equal the other. One feeling makes you powerful, the other renders you weak at the knees. It's what any opposite, just as opposite as yellow and blue. They can be swirled into a new color, but they never make up one another and they are different colors

Yes yes, i know you can contridict this, but don't you think there is a line before it just gets pointless to the meaning of life itself? (i've been ending my posts with lots of questions this evening...)

[SqueakyOnion]

Things just are. It's human perception that "makes" them polar, or anything at all. Take humans out of the picture, and things just are. Its the human mind that categorizes everything so we can understand it.

[Jisun]

I think, in the "gray areas", the opposite is just more complex... never really gave it that much thought.
But then again, everyone probably have their own idea of what the opposite of something is...
I guess, in the end it's all about energy's canceling each other out, but theses energy's appear in different shapes and forms...