Can anyone speak to the Physics of the Ainulindale?

[lindil]

I now that there is a lot of research and interesting theories being studied re: Sound and the inter-relatedness of matter, can anyone in the know perhaps say what kind of light this throws on the Ainulindale, and Eru first expounding his idea to the ainur, and then the Ainur bring forth the vision in song and then Eru manifesting it as creation [albieit in potentium]?

In all fairness as to my motives [other than natural curiosity [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]], those who participate may be asked if they are willing to let all or part of their contributions be used in a commentary to an Ainlindale entry in a planned 'Tolkien/LEgendarium - Guide/Encyclopedia'

[see here and here for a few more details about the project if you wish].

thanks in advance for anyone who takes the time to share what they know.

[ March 19, 2003: Message edited by: lindil ]

[Liriodendron]

I'm not sure what you are looking for Lindl. I think the musical creation is the most interesting thing in the Silmarillion. I find it fascinating. What "interesting theories" have you heard! [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

Sound is energy that makes matter vibrate.....How or why sound was used.....I am at a loss. Are you looking for "real" scientific talk here, or fictional ideas? Seismic waves are similar to sound waves in many of their properties....There would be no sound in "The Void" because there was no matter to vibrate..... As to why sound was used instead of everyone painting a beautiful mural, or creating the world through smell( [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img] that would be interesting!) I'm not sure! They say smell is the most primal sense, but music moves people deeply.... [img]smilies/confused.gif[/img] (I saw a book about sound by a person named John Holland, that seemed VERY thorough!)

[HCIsland]

This may be a dangerous thing to admit, but my undergraduate degree was in Physics.

I'm also not sure what you are getting at or of the research to which you are refering. As was mentioned, sound is vibrations in matter, so without matter there is no sound. As such, you can't use sound to create matter.

Can sound be used to shape matter? Absolutely, though there are certainly more simple ways.

I doubt I'm helping.

Editted to add: Perhaps you are refering to quantum string theory. Here there is a definate connection between concepts surrounding vibration and periodic motion and the structure of matter. Although this has been often poetically refered to as the music of the heavens, one has to be careful in calling this sound in a real sense as the vibrations are really a mathematical model and imagining them physically can only be done through analogy.

However, if the Valar were explaining it to the Children of Iluvatar they would have to speak in the form of analogy and music would be the most appropriate one.

Arrgh! you're sucking me in. I don't have time for this. [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]

This is a cool thought though. Let me stew on it. I just read a book on this stuff last christmas.

H.C.

[ March 19, 2003: Message edited by: HCIsland ]

[lindil]

"Are you looking for "real" scientific talk here?"

yep!


"I'm also not sure what you are getting at or of the research to which you are refering."

Just things I have read none too closely over the years HC Island & Liriodendron, just fishing [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] .

Stew away!

[ March 19, 2003: Message edited by: lindil ]

[HCIsland]

Alright Lindil, here it comes.

I hope this is what you are looking for. It's six pages with a couple of diagrams, so I kept it a Word document. I'm pretty sure you can save it locally if your right click on the link.

Read it over. If there's stuff that you would like to see changed let me know, especially if you think there is too much physics or I got something Tolkienish wrong.

Music of Ainur and The Structure of Matter

H.C.

[Beren87]

We're sorry, but this page is currently unavailable for viewing.

All it says.

[Man-of-the-Wold]

Well, the key to the Universe, as Gabriel says to the school children in The Prophesy (which is persumably relevant as it has Viggo Mortensen as Lucifer) is "Mathematics".

Music and Mathematics are very much two sides of the same coin. Both are advanced most often by prodigy savants, whose best work is usual behind them well before middle age. It seems odd, but true genii arise only in those two fields.

Music of course is also Art, and arguably the highest achievement of Human Civalization. A sophisticated, post-Victorian such as JRRT would likely have been in utter awe of the sublime work by the Great Masters over the then previous 250 years, which remains perhaps the superlative flowering of creativity in all of history.

Music also reflects a continuum of themes, motifs, chordal structures and melody. So, it corresponds to Tolkien's perspective on fate. Music sets a tone and rythm. But how it changes and grows is not known until the end. One cannot know it all at once, and the Ainur were given only a glimpse of how the Music would play out, although some such as Manwe, Mandos, Olorin, Elrond and Melkor, no doubt understood more. It is through understanding the Music that one has power in Elfin terms.

And one can make music in agreement with a larger score, and yet still make one's own music. The two themes last heard in the Ainulindale, are manifestly those of Iluvatar's children. Feanor was indeed on the edge of Fate when unlocking great secrets and expanding the Music through the beautifully sad theme, and even the horror and doom that played out through Melkor's challenge was but part of the plan.

The final theme of Men is aptly described, but even in its blaring there is beauty of those that truly can make their own music, and are free creatures of the creator, and are not tied to the rythm and harmonies of the theme of Arda, for better or worse.

Yet, whether discord and disharmony arise from the vanity of men, the evil of the Melkor or the pride of Feanor, it all redounds to the greater tune, and indeed, dissonance is a critical element of many great works of music, especially in the most recent century.

Oh, yeah, this is about Physics. There I can only think about something that Tolkien as a contemporary of Einstein might have absorbed. Music must at some point involve a meter. And yet it carries its own meter, just as one's place and speed within the universe determines the relative nature of time. So, the Valar, as one example, utterly transcend time as we understand it, through there place in the music, and Gandalf did indeed wander beyond time after fighting that winged thing.

Also, of course, what is Physics, but Math?

[lindil]

Very nice MotW.

Wou;d you care to elaborate on feanor 'being on the edge of Fate'?

HC ISland, I got the same error prompt as did Beren.

I quite look forward to seeing what you have come up with.

[Liriodendron]

Why do you think the last two themes are those of the children? I thought they were hidden? I certainly would place more emphasis on music than physics. [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img] I really like what Man of the World said! [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img] Music IS the perfect medium, because it is so intricate, and allows for all the harmony and inter relationships that Iluvatar seemed to want. I'd like to understand more of the ways music can do this. And then there's the math! [img]smilies/eek.gif[/img]

[ March 23, 2003: Message edited by: Liriodendron ]

[HCIsland]

Sorry about that. I've converted to a webpage. This is just a regular link.

MUSIC OF THE AINUR AND THE STRUCTURE OF MATTER

H.C.

[Scott]

Very thorough and interesting HC.

One thing that I might add though is that the Ainulindale is almost a direct rip-off of Milton's view of creation in "Paradise Lost." I'm not sure it could be looked at in any real sort of fairness in terms of physics... just my opinion.

It's still a viable topic to me though. I'm finding myself getting pulled in more and more by the second.

[Beren87]

Not only five dimensions, but ten!

I thought it was 12..hmm. Or is that Membrane theory?

[Liriodendron]

That was very informative, and I enjoyed it! Thank you HC. [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

[Aiwendil]

I thought it was 12..hmm. Or is that Membrane theory?

Ten dimensions is where the equations for string theory work out best. Membranes are, I believe, an area of string theory dealing with "strings" that are more than one dimensional.

[HCIsland]

Yup.

Last Christmas I read The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene. It talks about all this stuff and is an excellent, layman summary as to the current state of these theories.

I don't know where Tolkien got most of his ideas from, Scott. That was interesting. I'm not much on my literary history. I found the idea and the connections kinda fun though.

H.C.

[Vardamar]

Actually, in the years following the big bang, all the matter in the universe was packed into a much smaller volume. Scientists believe that this denseness allowed sound waves to pass though. There’s your music.

[lindil]

Can you elaboraate Vardamar?

[Beren87]

Basically all the matter in the universe was smashed into something smaller than the current universe. All the galaxies, suns, and etc. were pushed into a much smaller space. This smaller space let waves (such as sound waves) be carried farther. (Like being underwater).

[Vardamar]

Matter cannot be created or destroyed, only converted. Since all the matter in the universe had to have been created during the Big Bang, and that in the universe’s early days its volume was much smaller, the density of the matter in space was much higher. Since sound needs to travel through a medium, it cannot travel though space today, but while the matter in the universe was denser, it could. Don’t forget, before gravity had started to compress certain areas of the universe, the matter was pretty evenly distributed. So the music of the Ainur could of taken place in the universe, before the matter became to thinly distributed.

Hopes this helps, and makes sense. [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]

[ March 24, 2003: Message edited by: Vardamar ]

[Vardamar]

Beren, you answered while I was typing [img]smilies/mad.gif[/img] Now I cant show off all my advanced knowledge [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]

[ March 24, 2003: Message edited by: Vardamar ]

[Beren87]

the matter was pretty evenly distributed.

According to the Second law of Thermodynamics.

Which, come to think of it, can be applied to Eru creating Aman. As the Ainur left and went into Aman it can be seen as the universe expanding. That thereby lowered the entropy of the entire system. Also, Melkor's disruption of the harmony of the music can also be seen as creating further dissaray and lowering the entropy of the closed system.

EDIT: But I went on with something in your explanation, so it helped Vardamar.

[ March 24, 2003: Message edited by: Beren87 ]

[lindil]

[img]smilies/smile.gif[/img] sweet!

[Beren87]

You could say that Relativity also applies as Earendil does not age, perhaps he's traveling the speed of light?


Edit: Sorry, just throwing any physics I can into ME. Trying to find relations.

[ March 24, 2003: Message edited by: Beren87 ]

[HCIsland]

As the Ainur left and went into Aman it can be seen as the universe expanding. That thereby lowered the entropy of the entire system.

Actually, the second law of thermodynamics says that total entropy can only increase.

H.C.

[Beren87]

Bah, that's what I meant, increase. Entropy is the level of disorganization of a system (or the quantitative measure of the amount of thermal energy not available to do work).

[ March 24, 2003: Message edited by: Beren87 ]

[Scott]

So after letting the ideas stew in my mind all night, I realised that Iluvatar being the central figure for the creation owuld explain my questions about quantum theory concerning waves. (Since quantum theory never really answers the question of a central origin for all waves with their controversial residual energies leading one to conclude otherwise.) Since continual waves always need a central origin to propagate from, Iluvatar could be that origin.

Then again, the music was made by the Ainur... or maybe channeled through them by Eru. Each song with a different task and placement, but one origin!
o- -O- -o
/ \
o o
By Jove, you're drawing me in!

[The Saucepan Man]

Ulp! [img]smilies/eek.gif[/img]

*Saucepan glances up at the discussion taking place some considerable distance above his head*

[Beren87]

Each song with a different task and placement, but one origin!

I had always imagined it like that, all the music resignating through Eru, a supreme conducter of sorts.

[lindil]

perhaps we can get Aiwendil to reply...

[Aiwendil]

I must say that, as interesting as all this is (I'm an astrophysics major myself), it is not really very relevant to Tolkien's Ainulindale, or to Tolkien's universe. Arda is not a scientifically realistic world. There's simply no way around that. Attempts to apply high-concept physics to it don't really tell us anything interesting about Arda or about physics (except that they illustrate the fact that Arda is not physically realistic).

The music of the Ainur is in no meaningful way analogous to vibrations in the medium of the early universe. As Tolkien might have said, both involved sound and the resemblance ends there. Tolkien's universe does not operate in terms of quantum mechanics or even (on the grandest scale) entropy.

[Beren87]

Attempts to apply high-concept physics to it don't really tell us anything interesting about Arda

None the less, it's bloody fun attempting to apply and make more realistic the world of Tolkien. So while this may no longer help the Aunilindale entry, it has become a viable Tolkien topic.

[lindil]

"The music of the Ainur is in no meaningful way analogous to vibrations in the medium of the early universe."

hmm why not?

Tolkien's universe does not operate in terms of quantum mechanics or even (on the grandest scale) entropy.

can you elaborate a tiny bit without it being too involved?

[Scott]

I agree Beren, post on [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

[Beren87]

Well, now I would go on the matter of time. To say that the universe was created through the music, that would surely have to be at least when the first super-strings are assumed to have been created (if they exist at all) and when sounds presumably would be able to be transmitted. So that would have to be after the Plank epoch at t=10^-43s. The first music would probably have started at the Grand Unification transition at t=10^-35s, when things such as inflation and baryogenesis were going on. Then the music would have progressed through the Electroweak phase transition at t=10^-11s as the first strong and weak nuclear forces were binding together (which would have started the beginning of the creation of Aman one would suspect). Then on to the Quark-Hadron transistion where Protons and neutrons were being created at t=10^-6s, (this seems like a long time between ages, but it's really not too long in the cosmological scale). The music would have gone on, with probably the second music coming in at Matter Domination (the onset of gravity), and the third and final music coming a little after Galaxy formation. Then ending with the creation of Aman the world at about 5-8 billion years with the time for the Valar to remake it.


EDIT: Wew, I'm too young for this stuff. I need an asprin.

[ March 24, 2003: Message edited by: Beren87 ]

[Aiwendil]

None the less, it's bloody fun attempting to apply and make more realistic the world of Tolkien. So while this may no longer help the Aunilindale entry, it has become a viable Tolkien topic.

Agreed.

"The music of the Ainur is in no meaningful way analogous to vibrations in the medium of the early universe."

hmm why not?

Well it would seem to me that the burden of proof would lie with those (completely hypothetical people) that would argue that there is a meaningful connection.

I simply don't see how the two things are related in anything other than a purely accidental fashion. They both involve vibrations or sound, yes. They both occurred relatively early in the history of their respective universes. But I see no resemblance beyond this. Certainly Tolkien did not have vibrations in the roughly uniform, ultra-dense, early universe in mind when he wrote the Ainulindale. Nor is there anything analogous to the Ainur in those early vibrations.

But most importantly, the fundamental import or meaning of the two events are completely different. The music of the Ainur was a literal song, a work of art, created by intelligent beings. It corresponds in some metaphysical (and mystical) way with the unfolding of events in the history of Ea. It existed before Ea, the "World that Is", and in fact was the plan or design for Ea. Vibrations in the early universe, on the other hand, were essentially random phenomena not created as art (and certainly not the epitome of art); they do not correspond with actual events now in anything more than a chaos-theory way, and they certainly do not correspond to our peculiar situation as rational beings; they existed inside the universe rather than before it.

can you elaborate a tiny bit without it being too involved?

Well essentially what I mean is that Tolkien, in the construction of his legendarium, did not take quantum mechanics or entropy into account (because he did not need to). He was creating a fictitious and, more importantly, mythical world. So there is no reason to expect anything in his legendarium to correspond with scientific truths in physics, except to the extent that those physical truths shape our most basic understanding of the world. So from the real, scientific world he carries over facts such as "humans are bipedal", "iron is harder than wood", etc - but not "uncertainty in position times uncertainty in momentum must be greater than or equal to planck's constant over four pi" or "the total amount of disorder must statistically increase with time for all time". Iluvatar and the Ainur are certainly not bound by real physical laws. Nor are Elves and Men (Osanwe, for example, would appear to violate special relativity - though perhaps quantum non-locality could come to its rescue!).

But I don't in any way mean to condemn the game of finding surprising similarities between Tolkien's world and the real world. I only mean that such similarities end just where they begin; they are accidental, not meaningful.

[Beren87]

"The music of the Ainur is in no meaningful way analogous to vibrations in the medium of the early universe."

hmm why not?

In other words, it's just a coinkidink.

[Tar Elenion]

Beren87 wrote:
You could say that Relativity also applies as Earendil does not age, perhaps he's traveling the speed of light?

Earendel
"who passed the Gates of Dread,
half-mortal and half-elfin,
undying and long dead."
HoME3

[Beren87]

Undying because he is now no-longer mortal. A surfer of the spaceways at the speed of light.

Already dead to the people in Aman who's time will go faster than that of Earendel's.

[Sophia the Thunder Mistress]

Completely amazing, all you people who are learned enought to contribute. But, alas, I'm a philosophy major, and I'm more than ignorant about physics. *sighs with remorse*

But I wanted to post my appreciation to HC especially, I thought that little article was fascinating, and I love being able to read these discussions...
-Sophia

[lindil]

Iluvatar and the Ainur are certainly not bound by real physical laws. Nor are Elves and Men (Osanwe, for example, would appear to violate special relativity - though perhaps quantum non-locality could come to its rescue!).

But I don't in any way mean to condemn the game of finding surprising similarities between Tolkien's world and the real world. I only mean that such similarities end just where they begin; they are accidental, not meaningful.

Well as I can not speak to the physics question directly [ and forgive me Aiwendil, when I posted this your major had completely skipped my mind, or obviously I needn't have bothered] but what in I think to be an analogous situation, there are many aspects of the Legendarium that are 'true' and it is I believent any accident.

THat of Elves and esoteric disciplines of Taoism and Eastern Christianity.

This is a whole paper I have nevre written [despite creating a discussion board to do just that [img]smilies/frown.gif[/img] ] but in short all of the mentioned 'higher attributes'[excepting physical immortality - of which even that therecould well be exceptions] of the Elves are to be found exemplified, explained and even in this present day lived out.

-Osanwe
- a higher physiology as regards endurance, sickness and self-healing
- the effect of just being around these people is explained in nearly identical ways
- their healing abilitites with others
- their ability to communicate and even travel to the land of the 'gods' whom many do not regard as gods.
- their understanding and classification of things in an 'elemental' fashion. [rings of Fire, air, water - wood elves - etc.]

I could probably expand on this list rather easily for another half hour, but my point is, in my experience, virtually all of these things re: the Elves are true [potentially] for humans and granted he was undoutedly a reader of the lives of Christian Saints wherein some of this appears [and is explained as a combination of grace and asceticism] and obviously of Mythology, where it appears, but is rarely if ever given an explanation.

So if he nailed it re: esotericism and human nature, despite a theological background that would be if not antaganistic to many of these things at least uneducated, he got details right re: the above virtually everytime.

Co-incidence? I do not think so, I think 'truth' permeates virtually every level of the legendarium to such a degree, that I see no reason why with the Ainulindale he might not have 'accidently', or more exactly 'intuited' any physics behind an Ainulindale.

Thus my original question.

and actually my question reveals to me much more clearly now his impulse to 'Transform the Myths' cosmologically.

And from one other angle, the World according to Christian [and Jewish of course, though interpreted differntly] Theology, was also created through sound by God's 'Word'.

Now if one takes this as a possibility that through divine inspiration the early writers of Genesis [or Moses if you prefer] and of the Gospel of St. John were correct in attributing Creation to sound via God's Word and 'voice' and 'speaking', then it is hardly a stretch to posit a sung version.

In short I think there must surely be grounds for linking 'truth' of currently understood physics [meaning as it is somewhat incomplete it may not yet have accurate postulates, but assuming for a moment it does] with the 'Truth' of Creation 'Myth's' both Scriptural and in the Legendarium.


That is sort of the [possibly naive] impetus behind my question.

and I in my rather quaint fashion fully expect there to be similarities that are not only parallel but even inspirationaly so.

As to whether we [or in this case others than me [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]] understand the underlying scientific and Theological postulates clearly enough to line them up correctly and to recognize 2 different languages saying possily the same thing is an altogether different question.

But in short if Physics can explain and illuminate the Ainulindale [ or Genesis] then why must it be co-incidence?

[ March 25, 2003: Message edited by: lindil ]