The scope of the word everything is usually understood in everyday conversation. If you order “a pizza with everything” you have a pretty good idea of what to expect. Taken more literally, everything might result in a pretty strange pie. Taken most literally, your pie is the entire Universe including you.
There’s that other word, Universe. For me, that is the name for everything that exists. That is, if it is not in the Universe, it does not exist in any sense. I might also use Nature as a synonym since, for me, there is nothing supernatural.
However, if we were to talk about things supernatural existing, what would be the word for everything then? Is it still universe and my earlier scope becomes just the Physical Universe? Is there a clearer word that names everything? If there is a creator of the Universe, what’s a label for everything including the creator?
(Though I’m looking more for wordsmiths than philosophers, I suspect philosophizing will be unavoidable. MPSIMS or GD? <coin toss> GD wins.)
I offer “Combined Whole” - both the physical and metaphysical. Then, one can go about suggesting ways in which what was previously considered metaphysical might actually be physical after all. Once acheived, we can translate “Combined Whole” into Greek.
The Universe is generally taken to mean the set of all existent things, including anything supernatural if it does in fact exist – at which point that part of the Universe accessible (actually or potentially) to the senses and instruments becomes “the Physical Universe.”
In discussing metaphysical or cosmological theories that postulate a sheaf of universes differing slightly or grossly as a result of quantum indeterminacy being resolved in both directions, each in a different universe, the term “Multiverse” has been coined to name the multiplicity of universes so postulated.
The only place I could see this being used in the plural is in essays examining the pros and cons of various “multiple world” theories, or someone doing literary criticism of science fiction that postulates the potential of transitioning between them. (“Heinlein’s ‘Number of the Beast’ multiverse is significantly more complex and disparate than Piper’s Crosstime and Barnes’ Time Wars multiverses.”)
It’s a strangely unexplored concept when more than physical existence is considered. I wonder why that is - why a simple unambiguous term never developed.
So “creator of the universe” is inexact and we should say “creator of the phyisical universe”? I can see where that prevents some sticky debates. I was hoping to come up with a term that didn’t suffer from ambiguity in everyday use. Such a word may not be in the Universe. (yet)
I’ve got a copy of a medieval book of riddles – The exeter Book of Riddles. They’re those rhyming kind, like in The Hobbit. The poem gives you clues about some object, usually in a punning and misleading way, and you’ve got to guess what it is. Some of them are obscene, sort of like that “Turtles” test. (And this book was written by monks!)
Several of the riddles seem to describe things that have so many characteristics that no one thing seems to have them all. You flip to the back of the book, where the answers (known or conjectured) are, and in each of these omnibus cases the answer is:
Creation!
That’s the medieval answer you’re looking for.
I have this mental picture of some really annoyed King, having gotten this as the answer one time too many, ordering his guards to drag off the jester and shorten him by a head.
Surely the simple “all” needs to be considered. It lacks punch and pizzazz but it does the trick in the same sense that “none” and “some” take care of things less than “all.”
I know there have been other threads, even if they didn’t really go anywhere, where the notion of supplying something (anything) with a name brings it into existence at least as far as being able to discuss it goes. I suppose the term being sought would have to include those things that have yet to be named. Whether they exist after they have been named is yet another matter.
FWIW, I regard the term “Universe” as relating to the physical realm and things material. Non-material things somehow occupy another realm that’s not connected to the Universe. I don’t have a name for that other place, but I do think about it.
On a lighter note than the serious comments made so far (which are fascinating), I have to steal Spider Robinson’s joke about the Buddhist Hot Dog Stand, where they’ll gladly make you one with everything.
I could go along with that if it weren’t for the wide variety of baggage associated with the word God. Oneness might work better. Maybe a philosophically neutral term isn’t possible.
I agree. Once you begin to speculate on the existence on non-material things, the philosophical talk must appear. Lacking evidence for such things being part of The Universe splits the conversation’s advocates into the “believers” vs. the “non-believers” and then all Hell breaks loose.
BTW, Hell itself would need to be included, wouldn’t it?
