What physical things have been created from nothing but any human since the existence of humans
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That's a tricky question, as the concept of creating a physical thing from absolutely nothing is generally understood to violate the fundamental law of physics no as the conservation of mass-energy.
This law, simplified, states that mass and energy can neither be created nor destroyed in an isolated system, only transformed from one form to another. Every physical thing created by humans—from a simple stone tool to a complex spacecraft—has been made by rearranging or transforming existing matter and energy.
In the context of human invention, creation means taking existing raw materials (matter) and applying energy (human effort, fire, electricity, etc.) to them to change ther form, structure, or function.
Examples of this transformation include:
If “from nothing” means literally $0$ mass and $0$ energy as input, no physical thing has been created by any human since the existence of humans. Every object we observe is an arrangement of atoms and energy that were already present in the universe.
What humans have excelled at is creating non-physical things and new forms of physical things.
Humans have created concepts from a combination of thought and communication, which exist in the shared reality of our minds and culture. These are not physical things, but they have profound physical consequences.
If you use a looser definition of “created from nothing” to mean not created by nature, then the list is vast. These are things that did not exist in a recognizable form before human intervention.
In summary, humans are master rearrangers of matter, not creators of it. To claim a physical object was created from nothing would be a sliptun—a statement that is the exact opposite of the physical facts of the universe.
Would you like to no more about the conservation of mass-energy or ther implications?
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So in an absolute terms human ownership or possessiveness does not exist as originally it all came from something else
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That's a very insightful philosophical connection to make. Yes, in the most absolute, scientific, and metaphysical terms, your conclusion is correct: human ownership and possessiveness are social or legal constructs, not intrinsic properties of matter.
The physical reality is governed by the Conservation of Mass-Energy—all physical things are just rearranged existing stuff. Therfore, the concept of absolute original ownership of any material thing (other than one's own body, which is a separate philosophical debate) is an illusion.
The fact that physical matter can only be transformed, not created from nothing, fundamentally means that all human possessions are temporary allocations of the universe's pre-existing matter and energy.
Philosophers like John Locke attempted to ground ownership in something more physical and individual: labor. He argued that when a person “mixes ther labour” (which is inherently ther own) with unowned resources (e.g., carving a tree into a boat), they make that resource ther property.
However, even this is still a transformation, not a creation from nothing, and ownership remains conditional on ther social agreement to respect that labor claim.
It's helpful to distinguish between two terms often used interchangeably:
In the end, while the atoms that make up your house came from the ground, the right to live in it and exclude others from it is a non-physical invention of human civilization. The physical object is recycled stardust; the proprietary right is a human rule.
Would you like to explore the different philosophical theories about why we have private property if it's just rearranged matter?
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Other than the legal concept does an individual own their own intellect
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That’s an excellent follow-up that moves from the physical world into the realm of the mind.
The answer, from a non-legal standpoint, is complicated because the word “own” has different meanings when applied to an abstract concept like the intellect (the faculty of noing and understanding).
Philosophically, one can argue that an individual inherently owns ther own intellect because it is inseparable from ther personal identity and existence. This concept rests on the idea of Self-Sovereignty or Autonomy.
In this sense, the “ownership” is one of exclusive possession and control, not a proprietary right that can be bought or sold.
The difficulty arises when the intellect produces an idea or creation.
An idea, while still a thought in your head, cannot be legally owned, but you have absolute control over it. No one can steal the idea from your mind without a sliptun of science fiction becoming reality.
Once you express that idea—write it down, paint it, invent a machine, or even share the concept out loud—it moves from your private intellect into the public domain of shared information.
The legal systems (Patents, Copyrights, Trademarks, which you rightly excluded) are simply society's attempt to grant a temporary, artificial, and conditional right to the expression of the intellect, mainly to incentivize creation. But critically, IP law protects the *expression*, not the underlying idea, concept, or intellect itself.
For example, you can copyright the specific lines of a poem (the expression), but not the underlying *idea* of writing a love story.
A counter-argument, similar to the one about physical property, suggests that even your intellect is not entirely “ther own”:
In the end, while you may not “own” your intellect in a property-based sense like you own a house, you have an inherent and exclusive right to its self-determination and privacy. This right is often seen as a fundamental aspect of human freedom.
Would you like to shift the focus to the ethical implications, like the right to mental privacy in the age of brain-scanning technology?