Is anything permanent?

Question

Buddhism teaches the doctorine of impermanence - that suffering is caused by a failure to recognise the impermanent nature of reality, grasping at permanence while it is an impossibility. So from a physics point of view, is anything actually permanent?

It can neither be proved nor disproved that death is permanent, so we'll close that avenue, if you will.

Answer 1

Change is permanent.

In physics we learn that we live in a universe of positive entropy. All these fancy words mean is that, overall, everything is running down. From the first instance of the big bang, the universe has been running down...its level of useful energy has been getting lower.

While there are pockets of useful energy being created all over the universe, when all energy everywhere is summed up, useless energy, entropy, is getting more and useful energy, enthalpy, is getting less. In the end, many astrophysicists predict, the universe will go out with a wimper. It will, many billions of years from now, simply go out like a burned out candle.

And, what, you may ask, does all this have to do with permanency? Well, if everything will eventually run down, everything has to change en route to that running down. Living things have to die and wither away. Solids have to crumble because it takes useful energy to bind them. Stars have to flicker out and atoms have to disintegrate and on and on...everything, everywhere has to change because of the increase in entropy.

Answer 2

Death

Answer 3

Death

Answer 4

You have put this question is the physics directory. In physics, there are many constants - the speed of light in a given medium is constant. The total amount of matter energy is also constant.

But as to permanance, well, no nothing is completely permanent. All matter could become energy for example - the "hot death" scenario - everything is swallowed by black holes.

Time is not permanent, it started at the big bang, although most physicists would laugh at the idea of there being a time "before" the big bang.Similarly, there is no guarantee that the universe would last forever, and as time is a property of the universe, this means that time is not permanent either,

Answer 5

To some extent, it is up to the human race what becomes permanent. A law could become permanent as long as nobody changes it in the future (unlikely in most cases). Things in the past are arguably permanent because nothing else will ever occupy that particular point in space and time except whatever objects occupied it then. However, the objects themselves are not permanent as they can disintegrate, be demolished, or die.

Birth is not necessarily a permanency- every creature in the world could decide never to have sex again- extremely unlikely though. Death is not necessarily a permanency- if a cure is found or if there is nothing left to die.

Mathematics could be permanent but philosophy shows you can doubt anything.

Answer 6

My views seem to be at odds with Buddhism - of which I know nothing - because I see everything - every single event in this, other, previous and future universes - everything, as permanent.

Once something has happened it cannot 'unhappen'.
If something is to be, it will be. And once it has been, it cannot be 'unbeen'.

Forgive my inelegant phrasing, but I like to think that there is a 'place' where everything that has and will happen can be 'seen'.

Our inability to traverse space and time in any direction other than the obvious does not, in my mind, preclude the option from existing.

Thinking like this should instill a sense of great and permanent responsibility in our actions and conduct. Because once performed, they can and may be judged.

Answer 7

I'm not sure I would term the constant flux of energy and change as 'permanent' but this seems to be the only ongoing state...as such it proves impermanence I guess.
Boundless possibilities...and I have to say that all the Buddhist teachings that I have encountered made resolute sense to me.

Answer 8

Death is permanent.

I would probably say destruction as well. For instance, if the earth was blown into a million pieces from colliding with a massive asteroid, I don't believe those pieces will ever gather from the far corners of the galaxy to reassemble and form the same Earth we know today.

Answer 9

I thought matter was permanent regardless of it's state. As for the Buddhist theory about impermanence it is a real mind blower! I felt that it was more about how we are the creators of our own universe and that nothing here is real but only a creation of our minds, therefore how perceive things would be different from how you perceive them so which one would be real?

Answer 10

Once you are born you are permanent. Death means separation of soul from body and it is not the end but its entereing into the real of the Spirit. Spirit does not follow the rules of material of physics.
We cannot tie the rules of physics to all frames of reference as being permant in the material Universe.
So the laws of physics do not apply the same way in the frame of reference of the
spiritual realm.Relativity Physics cannot be generalizesd in this sense.

There is Philosophy and there is reality. One cannot see reality till he comes to grips with his Creator.
Philosphy is philosophy , Reality is Reality.
If One sticks his head in the sand like an ostrerich , is that permanent?