Wait, you're saddened by the fact that the lore is indepth???

Proweler's statements don't negate that "the world within oblivion was its own universe", it just adds in the necessary metaphysical backdrop...

I think you inappropriatly took offense to a misunderstanding to my post. Its never wrong for lore to be indepth. I was just disappointed by the direction it took. As far as the astronomical/cosmology of the universe, atleast. Nothing you can do about it, and certainly you can't expect it to be something everyone will like... Still like the game though, just will look at the stars differently now when playing....

At any rate, i think we can let this thread die now.

Then how would you ever know Nirn was a sphere?


Think of a finite space stacked with sheets of paper.


Who says infinity can't rotate?


Exactly. Except that, should it be the firmament that is turning with Nirn as its nexus, then Nirn would have to be stationary or, at any rate, rotating at a different velocity, since matched rotational velocities would equal non-motion to an observer.


Because of the whole "plane" as opposed to "planet" thing, it's hard to determine if something like seasons occur on Nirn. "Planes", as a rule, are not spherical. However, light traveling through a distorting medium can cause something flat to appear spherical, but it's just an optical illusion.

Seasons require a "planet" (or an act of the gods). They're caused by a combination of a planet's central axis being tilted in relation to the plane of the ecliptic and its orbital path around its sun. The dictionary defines the "ecliptic" as being "the great circle formed by the intersection of the plane of the earth's orbit with the celestial sphere; the apparent annual path of the sun in the heavens." One thing I found interesting was that another name for the "celestial sphere" is "welkin", it seems the Oblivion designers did some homework.

I've read the info from that link before, it sounds like common medieval reasoning.

Be well - Pax
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Well it's not science fiction if that is what you mean but you can still look at it logically. You won't find the story I gave you anywhere in lore with those words. I presented you with a collection of the most frequently recurring themes and put them together in a logical order.

So say if you were researching the world of the Elderscrolls with the scientific method, and were using the assumption that all religions are different interpretations of the same event, then you'd come to the same conclusion. If you were a Moth Priest or Marakhuti you could then use this knowledge to more effectively create your divinations. Just as a better understanding of electricity eventually lead to half-conductors.

I think this is what happens when your properly integrate magic into the world rather then just tack it on as some external force that inherently can't be understood in any other way then being magic.

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SFWhite:

That's why they're called plane(t)s.

The whole of this post wasnt really to discuss the nature of magic or the gods, but to get a grasp of the cosmology and astronomy of the realm of Oblivion. You've made it clear this universe does not have the structure of anything we know to be true, and that pretty much throws my interpretaitons and speculations out of the window. And thats all there was to the post. The gods just got brought in as a speculation as to the way the universe is percieved, but you've, again, made it clear that irregardless, this universe has no true physical form as is possible in known science.

And its not rare to try and bring science into fantasies, though some are too fargone or out there, i thought oblivion might be one that might have scientific explanations. It does not, and can not (atleast as conventional terran science goes, everything described goes against all that we know). I thought it was making paralells to Roman and Greek mythologies as a backdrop to inaccuracies in cosmological understanding,but it is not. Its just like Lord of the Rings in its lack of grounding in any form of reality other than some of the more basic, mundane aspects of day to day life in Tamriel. Oh well.

I think we can let this post rest, my questions have been answered.

If you go "extra-universal" then a link between current scientific thinking and the universe of Oblivion can be made. The current views held concerning the individual universes floating within The Multiverse could correlate nicely. It's just that the Oblivion universe is more a cluster of smaller universes within a larger universal bubble. The definition of "universe" has undergone some radical changes in modern times, now it means more "all of our physical plane of existence as separated from every other plane of existence." That directly relates to the views held by the inhabitants of Oblivion.

Be well - Pax
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I see, you didn't expect things to be turned around and have them actually be true. It's one of the aspects I like because there still is a fundamental system underneath it.

You're approaching it from the metaphysical and insisting there's no need for anything further, refusing to see his need for the practical. There's somewhere in between where both can be acknowledged and incorporated, that's what makes for a completely fleshed-out world.

Be well - Pax
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That wasn't my intent.

What I'm trying to get at is that the metaphysics are the physics of the Aurbis. While you might not be able to apply the concepts of the real world physics you are familiar with, you can apply other concepts in a similar structured frame work as the real world physics. Quite appropriately for a fantasy world you'll find that these concepts often come from real world religions.

I wrote http://www.imperial-library.info/fsg/prowelerarticle1.shtml with the intent to extract certain physical relations from the lore about magicka and void. It's not very throughput but I reckon you'll at least be entertained by the idea of building a realm in Oblivion by applying magicka to create a sphere of possible existence. Now don't be confused by the technobabble, it's anologous to the way people brought material from earth into space to create a habitable environment.

Or the suggestion that because the combination of Magicka and Void creates possibility in Mundus, there should be an entire world on the border of Oblivion and Aetherius. It's this ability to predict and test based on observations made that makes something science.

I think your definition of "scientific" is very close-minded, and you've clearly already made up your mind, so there is no real way to convince you thatTES or LoTR or any of the other metaphysically aware mythos of our time are grounded in science even though they clearly are.

TES is much more scientific then Star Trek for instance, and to say that pseudo-scientific garbage like positron ray guns, transporter chambers, to-the-mark parallel evolution of sentient bipedalism are scientific while metaphysical principals of mortality, kalpas and dualistic realities are not is just so very sad. I mean, even Star Trek presents things like the Q-continuum. The whole concept of the Qs is grounded in scientific (though completely unproven) theoretical metaphysics. And then there's Star Wars with the whole concept of the Force, which is also quite logical though not necessarily "scientific" using your standards.

Atoms were discovered my Greek metaphysicists before they had an "conclusive" evidence about them, and they were proven right thousands of years alter. Einstein's theory of relativity went unproven for decades until humans gained space travel capacity, and even things like White Holes and Dark Matter remain unproven. However, all of the ideas were reached through logical thought, the scientific method and other such methods. If that isn't scientific, then I don't know what is, beacuse THAT is what science is all about. Its not about math formulas or religiously clinging to the most commonly accepted theories, its about thinking logically and answering questions about the universe in the most sensible way possible.

So to answer your question, TES IS science-fiction. I really suggest you open your mind if you want to be a true scientific thinker, beacuse right now your comment reflect to me someone that doesn't know the first thing about true science.

EDIT: let me also just add, things like magic CAN be explained scientifically. My favorite explanation of magic is the Discworld explanation, being that magic is "localized absence of reality".

"Fire the photon torpedos!"

"WTF? SIr, why would we fire light torpedo's?"

If you climb into the deep heart of physics, you'll find the metaphysical. Einstein said, "We are all light beings." On the most basic level, nothing is more substantial than light, and science backs that up. Even fermions will lose their individuality and flow into the same space, just like bosons, at temperatures approaching Absolute Zero. What does that mean? Everything "solid" is comprised of fermions, including us. And what are all particles, the building blocks of "Reality"? Waves, nothing more. ("Waves of what?" Besides "force", who knows? ) Fermions are "solid" because of their "spins" (antisymmetric wave functions), waves swirling in such a way that they control an exclusive space.

"Magic" is a relative term, things we consider mundane would be considered "magical" to people from the Dark Ages. Discovering what's behind the curtain is comforting for some and deflating for others. Personally, I prefer my fantasy to stay that way.

While I love science, especially Theoretical Physics, I would never want science to replace wonder. However, it seems there's no danger of that happening since, at least where Physics is concerned, the trend is more-and-more toward the fantastical. Perhaps that's because the Reality that comprises the reality we take for granted is more unbelieveably strange than many of the wildest fantasies.

In a Multi-verse, why is there no room for a "little" universal bubble that has fragmented into smaller universes, such as those fleshed-out in Oblivion? When you're talking scientific theories, like Multi-verses, that are completely unproveable... (at least at our stage of scientific development)... where's the dividing line between science and fantasy?

**EDIT**
I must add that your treatise, On Places Not Here, is very esoteric! One would need to be so deep into the world of Oblivion they can't see out to really understand what you wrote.

Be well - Pax
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