
Medieval Scholars Believed in the Possibility of Parallel Universes - Petiver
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/medieval-multiverse-theory
======
gautamdivgi
Not just medieval - Hindu philosophy has definitely had that concept for the
few thousand years it's been in existence. The concept of "koti koti
brahmanda" literally millions of universes is a pretty central concept.

~~~
babyrainbow
Another central concept that says "Everything is Maya", hints at the idea that
there is no absolute reality, and is very close to the simulation hypothesis..

Another one is the concept of 'Omkaaram' which is supposed to be a primordal
"sound" or sensation from which all the universe was created, which can be
thought of as saying that all reality emerges from consciousness..[1]

The stuff in Vedas and how it got written are really really intriguing.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0ztlIAYTCU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0ztlIAYTCU)

~~~
agumonkey
I often wonder if reality is defined as shared partial interpretation of our
limited brains.

~~~
nurettin
What exactly does "shared partial interpretation" mean?

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agumonkey
shared because we have very similar neural structures and communicate with
each others, partial because our knowledge isn't innate, so each has a
restricted view of the universe; is it clearer now ?

~~~
nurettin
So you mean "does reality depend on the viewers?"?

That our social constructs somehow have a bearing on what is actually real?

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agumonkey
not only social constructs, everything is only "true" to our poor brain notion
of truth.

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fnovd
Of course they did. It was heretical to imply that something conceivable by
man would be impossible for God to create. If we can imagine it, he can do it.
A rather roundabout way of arriving at a theory of parallel universes, but
fascinating nonetheless.

~~~
pranavsinghca
But the fact that we can conceive of it, and that God _can_ create it, does
not mean that he did, does it?

I could conceive of another God that is able to destroy God. And since I _can_
conceive of this, then God can create it - but it does not mean that he did.

I could conceive of God just doing nothing, and never creating anything in
history eternal. But surely he has created something.

I guess I wonder about _can_ vs _did_

~~~
evv555
>But the fact that we can conceive of it, and that God can create it, does not
mean that he did, does it?

There was an implicit belief in pre-modern thought that this is the case. That
reality is a permutation of all possible forms. It's arguable that
evolutionary models are a temporalized version of these beliefs.[1]

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_plenitude](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_plenitude)

~~~
comstock
Thanks for the link, it looks like interesting reading.

But, how are evolutionary models a version of enumerating all possible forms.
The forms accessible to evolution, are not all possible forms but only
evolutionary peaks that can be climbed in the fitness landscape.

~~~
evv555
The worldview gave explanation for why there is gradation between nature's
forms. The search for "missing links" predates evolutionary theory. There was
an understanding that there are intermediate forms between any two species.
Evolution adds a temporal dimension to this worldview where intermediate forms
unfold from one another.

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danidiaz
The counterintuitive moral of the story seems to be that ideological
censorship has the potential to spur philosophical and scientific progress,
even if this is an unintended and not very frequent outcome.

It is strange, but for a good chunk of time religious thinkers were "more
right" about subjects like the eternity of the universe than the prevailing
aristotelian philosophers, sometimes deploying surprisingly modern-sounding
ideas in the process. I'm thinking of authors like Philoponus
[https://historyofphilosophy.net/philoponus](https://historyofphilosophy.net/philoponus)
and Crescas
[https://historyofphilosophy.net/crescas](https://historyofphilosophy.net/crescas)

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has an entry on the condemnation of
1277:
[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/condemnation/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/condemnation/)

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dredmorbius
There are some broader lessons from this than who believed what and when (or
what other philosophical or religious traditions had similar or "better"
beliefs).

Belief based _solely_ on faith has a pronounced tendency to go off in the
weeds. That's the distinction which the scientific method makes, particularly
in the tradition of the bacons -- Roger Bacon (13th c.) and Francis Bacon
(16th c.), no relation. Each emphasised the value of observation or
experimentation.

Second: if you find your premises, or traditional authorities, at odds with
observed reality, you might care to strongly favour dismissing your premises
or authorities, rather than your observations -- so long as the latter seem to
be independently verifiable. An interesting case of this developed most
especially in the 19th century, within the field of geology, where the record
of the stones was found in marked difference to the record of the scripts,
particularly the biblical record. Noted geologists spent not inconsiderable
time attempting reconciliation of these records. There was no reconciliation
possible, of course, one of those records was simply wrong.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Dwight_Dana#Publicatio...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Dwight_Dana#Publications)

Third: if you've found a persistent discord between observation and theory,
then it's quite likely you've illuminated a lacuna in your knowledge or
understanding. Again to geology: it was clear from the geologic record that
the Earth was _at least_ some hundreds of millions of years old, but no known
force or energy could explain the observed temperature of the Earth's
interior. The answer to this turned out to be previously unknown form of
energy potential and release: radioactivity. That also happened to provide the
clock by which the Earth's age could be determined, as well as the mechanism
by which geology is ultimatley founded: plate tectonics. Not fully accepted,
it turns out, until 1965, though it's now considered the fundamental
organising principle of geology. Which gives us a fourth lesson:

Fourth: You can study a thing for a long, long, long time before you come to a
proper understanding of it.

Fifth: Study of ancient authorities isn't wholly useless. I advise people to
look to philosophy, especially, if not for truth _then as a record in how the
truth, and error, are arrived at, over time_.

And finally: it's not enough to come to the correct answer, but to come to the
correct answer through the right chain of reasoning. Science is _structured
knowledge_. It's not a dry recitation of facts, but rather, the structure,
through which, those facts become evident. If not self-evident, then building
on observation and mechanism. Precursors of current understanding, absent the
underlying structural foundation, are interesting, but are not science as it's
properly considered.

~~~
simonh
Good stuff, but that last point is what a lot of critics of science don't get.
We don't believe scientific discoveries, such as that the speed of light in a
vacuum is a universal limit, because a famous scientist proved it years ago
and now we take it on faith. We believe is because every physics student that
goes through university and studies this stuff proves it themselves from first
principles. We believe it because we have followed through the chain of
reasoning, studied the experimental equipment and done the experiment
ourselves. Many of us anyway. These experiments and the principles they are
based on haven't been proven a few times, in many cases they've been proven
hundreds of thousands of times.

~~~
dredmorbius
Right.

I don't know if you caught wind of any of the "decolonising science" movement,
one adherent of whom claims that science is based on _who says a thing is so_.
The truth is the exact inverse. The motto of the Royal Academy is particularly
instructive: In nullis verba. By the word of no one.

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NobodyRalph
Some of our best science fiction come from Mormon or Mormon-raised authors
(e.g. Dan Simmons).

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shmerl
That's not news really.

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lngnmn
Nothing to see here. It is a naive or rather primitive concept based on
assumption that there are more than one "future" (while actually there is
none).

The traditional example is that if I cross the street everything will be
different. Parallel universes is related to this nonsensical multiple-
parallel-futures assumption.

For those who are interesting in seeing things as they are instead of piling
up nonsense upon nonsense, consider a process of evolution. There is no
multiple versions of the same species because they might turn the other way.
Everything happen as it happen (everything is the way it is because it got
that way). It is an _unfolding of a single process_.

There is no future(s). It is an "organic" growth (like growing of a tree).
Future is a concept of the mind. A meme. So are parallel universes. There is
nothing parallel to what is. At least outside of one's head.

~~~
smt88
You seem very certain about things that are kiterally unknowable.

~~~
lngnmn
I am standing on the shoulders of giants (Eastern philosophy since
Upanishads).

The notion that the nature of reality (of what is) is hidden from one by the
veil of ignorance (one's own and socially constructed bullshit in the first
place) is an ancient one and goes back to the early Upanishadic seers and the
historical Buddha.

Removing an observer (and all products of his mind which constitute the veil
that obscures what is) is an ancient hack of early Buddhists, I am only re-
emphasizing it.

Man is just a by-product of the Universe - a mere sub-process of nothing
permanent or substantial (leave alone divine). Mental concepts are not
required for the Universe (or what they call Brahman) to be and most of these
concepts does not exit outside one's conditioned and conceptually infested
mind.

Wrong concepts is the veil which obscures the view of what is. This is at
least two millennia old philosophy of the nature of mind. _Before knowing what
lies outside know what lies within_. There is the same facility and related
social dynamics which produced gods, daemons, chakras, tantras, mantras,
kundalini, mandalas, accelerating time, higher dimensions, multiple futures,
parallel universes and other popular bullshit in which we are drowning.

Read some old tantras, then read some modern probabilistic modeling bullshit
which they call modern science - it is all the same kind of piles of
untestable socially constructed nonsense. Untestability and socially accepted
dogmatism is precisely what makes it (and tantras and other religious crap)
stand.

~~~
xaedes
"Upanishads"?

Interesting! Thank you for mentioning. I am currently reading Gilgamesh and
there is "Uta-napišti" meaning "the far away".

The Sanskrit term Upaniṣad (upa = by, ni = nether, shat =sitting) translates
to "sitting down near".

In Gilgamesh epos, he (Gilgamesh) travels to seek wisdom from Uta-napišti.

Now I am curious if there may be a relation of the two.. I wouldn't be
surprised.

~~~
lngnmn
> "Upanishads"?

Beware, it is a "rabbit hole".

~~~
xaedes
Yea.. Too late. From there I also discovered Rig Veda and its siblings. I
guess I have to quit my full time job to get through all of this^^

------
meric
There's a reason religious philosophy took precedence over "scientific"
thought in those times. And it wasn't because people were dumb.

~~~
laser
Was it because they had a philosophy of hierarchical power that ensured the
ruling class maintained rule by the utmost power, divine right, over the
populace? One in which all suitable ideas would be approved and any unsuitable
ones taught would cause their professor to be excommunicated or worse?

~~~
dredmorbius
That's a fairly standard tactic.

 _[T]he universities were given the task of providing an unceasing supply of
ideologically correct candidates for vital positions in government, church and
business. The state was able to make the faculties of the "'venerable
institutions'" of higher education, or rather indoctrination, assume this duty
because it controlled appointments and held the purse from which "emoluments"
flowed into the coffers of academics. Hence the members of the university
"hierarchy" made it their "business, the business for which they . .. [were]
paid," to "uphold certain political as well as religious opinions," namely
those of the "ruling powers of the state" (Mill 1981: 429: and 1988b: 350).
Thus the universities pursued with vigor their assignment to inculcate in
their students those political and ideological views that were cherished by
the power elite. The graduates of the ancient universities were, therefore,
well prepared for employment in, and by, those institutions that were
instrumental in perpetuating the existing maldistribution of income. All of
this might come to naught, however, if the masses of the underclass should
achieve anything approaching success in potential attempts at throwing off
their fetters._

Hans E. Jensen, "John Stuart Mill's Theories of Wealth and Income
Distribution". Review of Social Economy, Pages 491-507 | Published online: 05
Nov 2010

DOI: 10.1080/00346760110081599

[http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00346760110081599](http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00346760110081599)

Refs:

Mill, J. S. (1981) Autobiography and Literary Essays.

Mill, J. S. (1988b) Journals and Debating Speeches.

