Seyed Mohammad Mousavi

Excellent questions, Seyed, but I am missing one very important component: ourselves.

Allow me to point out the human condition with this example about the wind directions on planet Earth.

North, south, east and west are not features of our planet. Rather, they are features of our spinning planet.

If Earth did not have its spin, there would not be any north, south, east or west.

So far, that should be easy to understand. But here comes the surprise:

* When standing on the north pole, the entire planet is south.

* When standing on the south pole, the entire planet is north.

That means that when investing ourselves in this information, making it have some absolute quality, we then encounter a paradox because twice we can declare planet Earth in opposite and conflicting manners. We can declare the entire planet north, and we can declare the entire planet south.

The point I am trying to make is that, next to your good questions, we should also keep in mind that we are viewing the universe with our minds. We are trying to wrap our minds around something enormous, and yet we will never be able to reach parts of the universe because we are trapped in a localized reality. We cannot have 3D views on the universe because we are witnessing it from a rather specific location only.

To bring this back to science, it too has some 2D qualities to itself because we only accept data that can be verified, and only then do we give ourselves the space to hypothesize. We are not watching everything as it naturally occurs; we are watching it from a specific system, the scientific system.

Basically, I am trying to say: Scientist, know thyself. We need to understand our own personal instrumentation just as well to inform the excellent questions you posed.

Only a materialist dialectical world-view, based on "the contradiction of the unity of the opposites" can answer these questions without any mysticism: The objective (Being) world is in a dialectical contradiction with the subjective (Knowing) consciousness of man and resolves this contradiction historically without ever coming to an end.

1. The extend, the contents and the processes of the universe: The universe is Infinite, Eternal and Ever-changing without any beginning or end; mediated by blind chance, but a dialectical necessity inherent in chance itself. Finite man and his consciousness is in a dialectical contradiction with the infinite universe. Man can potentially and progressively know the universe but for ever incompletely. His knowledge of the Infinite universe is always conditioned by and proportional to his knowledge of the finite, at any historical stage of evolution. The Muslim philosopher Jalaluddin Rumi expressed this in the following we: "You are not a drop in the ocean, you ARE the entire ocean in a drop": "The Infinite - As a Hegelian Philosophical Category and Its Implication for Modern Theoretical Natural Science": Article The Infinite - As a Hegelian Philosophical Category and Its ...

"The Philosophy of Space-Time: Whence Cometh "Matter" and "Motion"?" Article The Philosophy of Space-Time: Whence Cometh "Matter" and "Motion"?

"The Breeding Galaxies": http://redshift.vif.com/JournalFiles/V12NO2PDF/V12N2MAL.pdf

2. The universe, Life and Consciousness: “… however many millions of suns and earths may arise and pass away, however long it may last before the conditions for organic life develop, however innumerable the organic beings that have to arise and pass away before animals with a brain capable of thought are developed from their midst, and for a short span of time find conditions suitable for life, only to be exterminated later without mercy, we have the certainty that matter remains eternally the same in all its transformations, that none of its attributes can ever be lost, and therefore also, that with the same iron necessity that it will exterminate on the earth its highest creation, the thinking mind, it must somewhere else and at another time again produce it.” F. Engels, “Dialectics of Nature”.

3. The essence of Nature and Man: The most fundamental essence of humanity is to strive towards "the freedom of the will", based on real knowledge of the world and of itself– a subjectivity and the dialectical unity of the opposites of the objectivity of blind Nature (and as a part of Nature itself); in this infinite, eternal and ever-changing universe. This essence is an acquired ability that allows man to effectively change the conditions of his physical, mental and social existence based on the positive knowledge of the world and of himself (as a social being); in such a way as to progressively reduce the contradiction between subjective man and objective Nature, between humanity and the world, but never completely eliminating it.

This necessarily is a complex of historical processes of “being” and “knowing”; mediated by dialectical chance and necessity and taking place in a temporarily life-harbouring celestial body where the subjectivity of life can evolve through discrete evolutionary leaps from blind non-living matter to the highest developed product of matter, namely the thinking brain of man.

The most decisive factor in the evolution of this subjective “being” came with the bipedal (erect) stature in man, which made his hands free (a giant leap towards freedom) for further subjective acts and developments; that enhanced both his “being” and his “knowing”. The final act through which man forever separated himself from the animal kingdom and towards more freedom; was the mastery over one of the forces of Nature, namely heat (fire). The development of the dexterity and the manipulating skills of the hand necessitated the revolutionary development of the brain and with it speech. The developed brain gave man enhanced ability for abstraction, reflection, introspection and communication etc. that in a reciprocal way led to the further development of the brain and also gave the hand “the high degree of perfection required to conjure into being the pictures of a Raphael, the statues of a Thorwaldsen, the music of a Paganini”*.

But this journey towards freedom so far was not a smooth one-way process only, without any loss! On the contrary there were dialectical and historical twists and turns, ups and downs and the loss of many important specific traits (that are necessary for sustaining lower life forms); on the way to the evolution of man. Moreover new and evolving constrains on knowledge and developments imposed both by Nature and by man himself stood in his way towards freedom. The more damaging were the self-made constrains known as the alienations. The alienations are creations of man for his own need of the time, but those creations at a certain stage of their development goes out of his control as if an entity coming from outside and like a Frankenstein Monster sets itself to control its creator. Historically; Myths, Religion, Class Division, Capital, State etc., were the most potent alienations that impeded the progress towards knowledge and freedom. In modern times the most dominant alienation is Capital, in its most regressive monopoly-finance form.

By the turn of the 20th century the social development of humanity and the accumulation of positive knowledge, created the sufficient stage from where man for the first time in history can envision the tangible contour and the clear path forward towards a mighty leap to freedom. But the vestiges of the old alienations, particularly decadent monopoly finance capitalism newly reinforced by the myths of obscurantist mathematical idealism stand in his way.

The accumulated knowledge, specially of the last few thousand years has given man the potential to vastly change the conditions of his existence by changing himself and Nature; thereby diminishing the contradiction between Nature and man; but at the same time also has equally given him enough potential to destroy himself and all other life forms on this planet! A. Malek : https://www.researchgate.net/topics

* “The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man”; F. Engels, 1876

For the world, I would say that it is the one location where we can indeed have our feet stand on solid grounds. So, that makes the world special, not just for us, but also for viewing the universe, getting the perspective(s) right.

The Earth spins and we can declare that a system. If you like, one can add the Moon to this system. It changes the system into a more complex setting, but Earth and Earth/Moon have lots in common so it is fine to keep them together if so desired.

Then, one step up, we have the Solar System.

The next step up is the Milky Way system.

Interestingly, one step up more, and there is no system any further.

The (material) Universe is not a system.

Preprint On the Non-Functional Reality of the Universe

That means that we can indeed take Earth as the foundation. For certain, we cannot take the Universe as the foundation because the Universe has no foundation of its own. The Universe exists at the universal level at a non-functional level.

Naturally, we can stand with the Milky Way. We can view the Milky Way as the largest setting in which we find solid grounds. We are not connected to anything else in the Universe.

But that larger view of the Milky Way is less grounded than our own planet, so it is up to us to decide which view we like to follow.

Earth (Earth/Moon), Solar System, Milky Way.