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FQXi Essay Contest - Spring, 2017
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Fundamental? by Emily Christine Adlam
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Author Emily Christine Adlam wrote on Jan. 11, 2018 @ 21:07 GMT
Essay AbstractChanges in our understanding of the fundamental have often been associated with important scientific advances. The moment for another such paradigm shift may be upon us - but this time, we may have to change not only our ideas about what sorts of things need explaining, but also our attitudes about what counts as an explanation in the first place.
Author BioEmily Adlam has recently completed a PhD in quantum information and foundations at the University of Cambridge.
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Jack Hamilton James wrote on Jan. 12, 2018 @ 01:15 GMT
Hi Emily,
Completely agree, it may as well be an atom. And then such a fundamental Indivisible won't tell us enough about reality even if it completes all scientific knowledge. Thanks for a great essay.
Jack H James
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Scott S Gordon wrote on Jan. 12, 2018 @ 03:52 GMT
Hi Emily,
There is a deep understanding in your essay in regards to getting at what's fundamental - This statement rings very true...
"So seems that we are in dire need of another paradigm shift. And this time, instead of simply changing our attitudes about what sorts of things require explanation, we may have to change our attitudes about what counts as an explanation in the first place."
The answer provided by the fundamental basis of physics is not easily reached - If it was, the theory of everything would have been found by now. The reason it has not is for two main reasons: 1) It cannot be derived from our current math and 2) there is no experiment that will directly reveal what is truly fundamental. With this in mind - consider reading my essay... The day after the nightmare scenario.
All the best
Scott S Gordon, MD
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Georgina Woodward wrote on Jan. 12, 2018 @ 04:57 GMT
Hi Emily, I found your essay a real pleasure to read. Lots of well expressed argument. You write "Is it the fact that there
exists an arrow of time....?" The arrow of time does not actually
exist, as I see it, but is a metaphor, an abstract thinking aid, for one way change or one way passage of time. (I suppose it could be argued that it exists as a piece of theoretical argument in texts and lectures and thoughts.) I don't understand why you say "Asking why the arrow points this way rather than that is not even a meaningful question." There could, according to both classical mechanics and Relativity, be time reversals. There is nothing in those parts of physics theory that prohibits that happening. Yet it is never witnessed or experienced. Why is that so is a reasonable question. Is it not? Kind regards Georgina
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Author Emily Christine Adlam replied on Jan. 24, 2018 @ 22:48 GMT
Thanks for your comments, Georgina!
With regard to your question about the arrow of time, I agree it is certainly meaningful and interesting to ask why we don't see localised time reversals, like patches of the universe where time goes in a different direction to the rest of the universe. This is what I refer to as the question of why there exists an arrow of time - i.e. why does time seem to go in the same direction always and everywhere?However, I would argue that, given that there does exist an arrow of time, there is not any further meaningful question about why it points forward rather than backwards - or at least, that question is not meaningful unless there exists something outside the universe to which the two directions could be referred.
Nainan K. Varghese wrote on Jan. 12, 2018 @ 05:31 GMT
Thanks for the essay. Whichever object you consider, all of them have a common substance from which they are made. If they are real, substance gives them objective reality and positive existence. Without substance, nothing real (even atoms) can exist. Hence, substance (whatever name it may be called) should be the most fundamental of all.
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Georgina Woodward wrote on Jan. 12, 2018 @ 05:35 GMT
Emily, I liked your piece very much as an essay. I like the way you introduced your premise via the game and refer back to the starting idea of atoms being fundamental at the very end. However I don't think that fundamental atoms are sufficient to explain the physics of the universe. They can account for materials and objects, structures but more is needed. Electrons for chemistry and biology (electron transport vital for life), and the production of electromagnetic waves by which we can see and are warmed (for example). A host for the electromagnetic waves and fields of all kinds is also needed as waves and flux can not exist in nothingness. Various kinds of differentiation of the host under different circumstances can account for a lot of the "particle zoo", in my opinion. Kind regards Georgina
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Author Emily Christine Adlam replied on Jan. 24, 2018 @ 22:51 GMT
Thanks for this comment, Georgina! I don't mean to propose a universe literally made out of atoms where nothing smaller can exist - the idea is simply that if one postulates a top-down rather than a bottom-up universe, there is a sense in which bigger things, like atoms, might be regarded as 'more fundamental' than smaller things like electrons and electromagnetic waves.
Branko L Zivlak wrote on Jan. 12, 2018 @ 10:19 GMT
Mr.Adlam
I mean, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. So the result of a discussion with your mother is:
Thus from this perspective, it may actually turn out to be correct to say that proton is most fundamental.
Why, you can see in my essay from last year.
Regards,
Branko
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Anonymous wrote on Jan. 12, 2018 @ 17:36 GMT
Hi Emily,
I'm a fan of simple, yet profound insights, and your essay starts off with one---sometimes, we just get the explanandum wrong, and it takes a Newton to turn things back onto their feet. I had never looked at it this way, so thanks for that!
From there, your essay follows a classical dialectic: you hit us with the thesis ('fundamental means we have won'), then show that the antithesis ('fundamental means we have lost') follows with just the same cogency.
On your way to a synthesis, you offer up Heisenberg's way of thinking about quantum chance as describing a kind of propensity of quantum objects that is realized only in experiment. Perhaps there's a kind of middle way here? Having our cake, and eating it, too?
But you (rightly, in my opinion) reject this idea: we can't keep on going down the same old familiar routes. They might have brought us to this point, but if we just keep going, we'll never reach a destination: as atom is replaced by proton is replaced by quark as fundamental, we'll just keep trudging on towards a horizon we'll never reach. While that might ensure employment for future generations of scientists, it's not going to get us any closer---we must instead take back a step and try to find a different approach.
Ultimately, however, I am not sure I can agree with your conclusion (although I find it very appealing): you reverse the thrust of our erstwhile inquiry, looking not down, but up, not to constituents, but to constraints. To me, this step seems like trying to explain the ground, instead of the figure---ultimately, it will likely run into the same problems. After all, just as the constraints prune the options of what goes on at the bottom, so do the constituents dictate what sort of constraints are possible---or at least, that's how it seems to me.
Nevertheless, I think your essay is well argued, and exceptionally clear. It deserves to go far in this contest!
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Jochen Szangolies replied on Jan. 12, 2018 @ 19:41 GMT
Sorry, the above was me---not sure why I wasn't logged in...
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Donald G Palmer replied on Jan. 13, 2018 @ 22:00 GMT
Thank you for an engaging essay, Emily
A couple-a-few questions to consider:
1) If the ultimate goal of science is a full accounting of all actions, then this goal would mean we can predict every action of every particle, object or phenomenon. However, science works by making sure many repetitions produce the same result. How can this methodology lead to any solution that predicts individual non-reproducible actions?
2) If physics relies so heavily on mathematics, and on logic, then changes in the foundations of mathematics should also impact physics. Would Godel's Incompleteness theorem suggest there will always be meta-systems required to explain all aspects of a physical theory (based upon mathematics)? This theory would also seem to indicate there will always be things we cannot logically 'explain' in any system. How would we know if we hit an aspect of a theory that cannot be explained within the theory (as opposed to something incorrect about the theory)?
3) If science is about all aspects of reality, yet physics continues its reductionist trend looking at ever smaller aspects of reality, who is looking at all reality - at how all aspects and all levels fit together? It does not seem to by physicists...
I will suggest that the concern of 3) is where science needs to go next.
Take care,
Don
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David Brown wrote on Jan. 16, 2018 @ 12:14 GMT
The essay "Fundamental?" has 31 references, but none of the references are to publications by Milgrom. Is Milgrom the Kepler of contemporary cosmology? Are the empirical successes of MOND fundamental? Google "witten milgrom", "kroupa milgrom", and "mcgaugh milgrom".
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Joe Fisher wrote on Jan. 17, 2018 @ 16:26 GMT
Dear Dr Emily Christine Adlam,
You wrote in the Abstract: “Changes in our understanding of the fundamental have often been associated with important scientific advances. The moment for another such paradigm shift may be upon us - but this time, we may have to change not only our ideas about what sorts of things need explaining, but also our attitudes about what counts as an explanation in the first place.”
I have concluded from my deep research that Nature must have devised the only permanent real structure of the Universe obtainable for the real Universe existed for millions of years before man and his finite complex informational systems ever appeared on earth. The real physical Universe consists only of one single unified VISIBLE infinite surface occurring eternally in one single infinite dimension that am always illuminated mostly by finite non-surface light.
Joe Fisher, ORCID ID 0000-0003-3988-8687. Unaffiliated
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Joe Fisher wrote on Jan. 19, 2018 @ 16:22 GMT
Dear Emily Christine Adlam,
In qualifying the aim of the ‘What is Fundamental?’ essay contest, Dr. Brendan Foster, the FQXi.org Science Projects Consultant wrote: “We invite interesting and compelling explorations, from detailed worked examples through thoughtful rumination, of the different levels at which nature can be described, and the relations between them.
Real Nature has never had any abstract finite levels.
I have concluded from my deep research that Nature must have devised the only permanent real structure of the Universe obtainable for the real Universe existed for millions of years before man and his finite complex informational systems ever appeared on earth. The real physical Universe consists only of one single unified VISIBLE infinite surface occurring eternally in one single infinite dimension that am always illuminated mostly by finite non-surface light.
Joe Fisher, ORCID ID 0000-0003-3988-8687. Unaffiliated
post approved
Member Matthew Saul Leifer wrote on Jan. 24, 2018 @ 00:28 GMT
I agree with almost everything you say. Just a couple of comments.
First, when you say that it is the experimenter asking questions that causes the universe to give answers to questions that are not determined by the macroscopic constraints, this sounds close to Wheeler's participatory realism, or two QBism, i.e. the idea that our interventions determine what is. Do you intend this, or are you seeking a more straightforwardly realist account?
Second, you say that the mathematics underlying physics has become more complicated, and it certainly is in the sense that it takes more years to learn the mathematics needed for quantum field theory than for Newtonian mechanics. But part of the point of abstraction is to be able to capture more structure in a simpler set of equations so, in some sense, we adopt more sophisticated mathematics to make things look simpler, not more complicated. You certainly could try to capture all of the empirical content using less abstract mathematics, but that would be complicated. Just look at Maxwell's notebooks where he writes down the equations of electromagnetism in a very complicated form because he did not have vector calculus for an example. So, my question is, exactly what meaning of complicated do you have in mind here?
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Author Emily Christine Adlam replied on Jan. 25, 2018 @ 00:03 GMT
Thanks for your comments!
With regards to realism, it's true that some of my language does resemble the QBist talk, but I'm definitely aiming for a straightforwardly realist account. When I speak of the experimenter asking questions of the universe, I don't mean to say that the experimenter or their choices are somehow outside of the universe - the experimenter and their brain are subsystems of the universe and so the fact that they choose to perform a certain experiment is itself dictated by the macroscopic constraints governing the universe: we just have a constraint problem whose solution requires more detail in some places than in others.
With regards to complexity, you're right to point out that the difficulty of the maths for us humans isn't necessarily a good indicator of its complexity in the sense relevant to theory-selection - I should have been more formal and less rhetorical here. What I have in mind is mainly related to my later comment about lots of different microscopic theories giving rise to the same macroscopic theory - this seems to indicate that there must be some superfluous complexity in the microscopic descriptions, and hence that there should be some measure of complexity by which our microscopic descriptions are more complex than the corresponding macroscopic theories. I'm tempted to suggest using the Kolmogorov complexity, but I suspect it would be very hard to put any actual numbers to it.
Gary Valentine Hansen wrote on Jan. 25, 2018 @ 05:33 GMT
Thank you Emily,
Your acknowledgement that ‘ “fundamental” is a shifting goal-post in physics’ prompts the question whether we should identify and target the subject for which we seek a fundamental concept before attempting to define what constitutes “fundamental”.
In accepting this premise the notion ‘getting to grips with the fundamental is the promised land, the endgame of science’ is no longer so since every structure has its own discrete foundation – its own fundamental existence.
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Satyavarapu Naga Parameswara Gupta wrote on Jan. 27, 2018 @ 02:15 GMT
Hi Emily Christine Adlam
Your discussion of arrow of time other concepts in a simple and thoughtful way of discussion about Fundamental are really excellent…..dear Emily ….. By the way have a look at my essay also and post your esteemed observations there….
Dynamic Universe Model says that the energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation passing grazingly near any...
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Hi Emily Christine Adlam
Your discussion of arrow of time other concepts in a simple and thoughtful way of discussion about Fundamental are really excellent…..dear Emily ….. By the way have a look at my essay also and post your esteemed observations there….
Dynamic Universe Model says that the energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation passing grazingly near any gravitating mass changes its in frequency and finally will convert into neutrinos (mass). We all know that there is no experiment or quest in this direction. Energy conversion happens from mass to energy with the famous E=mC2, the other side of this conversion was not thought off. This is a new fundamental prediction by Dynamic Universe Model, a foundational quest in the area of Astrophysics and Cosmology.
In accordance with Dynamic Universe Model frequency shift happens on both the sides of spectrum when any electromagnetic radiation passes grazingly near gravitating mass. With this new verification, we will open a new frontier that will unlock a way for formation of the basis for continual Nucleosynthesis (continuous formation of elements) in our Universe. Amount of frequency shift will depend on relative velocity difference. All the papers of author can be downloaded from “http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.in/ ”
By the way…………………
Main foundational points of Dynamic Universe Model :
-No Isotropy
-No Homogeneity
-No Space-time continuum
-Non-uniform density of matter, universe is lumpy
-No singularities
-No collisions between bodies
-No blackholes
-No warm holes
-No Bigbang
-No repulsion between distant Galaxies
-Non-empty Universe
-No imaginary or negative time axis
-No imaginary X, Y, Z axes
-No differential and Integral Equations mathematically
-No General Relativity and Model does not reduce to GR on any condition
-No Creation of matter like Bigbang or steady-state models
-No many mini Bigbangs
-No Missing Mass / Dark matter
-No Dark energy
-No Bigbang generated CMB detected
-No Multi-verses
Here:
-Accelerating Expanding universe with 33% Blue shifted Galaxies
-Newton’s Gravitation law works everywhere in the same way
-All bodies dynamically moving
-All bodies move in dynamic Equilibrium
-Closed universe model no light or bodies will go away from universe
-Single Universe no baby universes
-Time is linear as observed on earth, moving forward only
-Independent x,y,z coordinate axes and Time axis no interdependencies between axes..
-UGF (Universal Gravitational Force) calculated on every point-mass
-Tensors (Linear) used for giving UNIQUE solutions for each time step
-Uses everyday physics as achievable by engineering
-21000 linear equations are used in an Excel sheet
-Computerized calculations uses 16 decimal digit accuracy
-Data mining and data warehousing techniques are used for data extraction from large amounts of data.
Have a look at
http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.in/p/blog-page_15.h
tml
Best Regards
=snp
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Joe Fisher wrote on Jan. 30, 2018 @ 20:26 GMT
Dear Fellow Essayists
This will be my final plea for fair treatment.,
FQXI is clearly seeking to find out if there is a fundamental REALITY.
Reliable evidence exists that proves that the surface of the earth was formed millions of years before man and his utterly complex finite informational systems ever appeared on that surface. It logically follows that Nature must have permanently devised the only single physical construct of earth allowable.
All objects, be they solid, liquid, or vaporous have always had a visible surface. This is because the real Universe must consist only of one single unified VISIBLE infinite surface occurring eternally in one single infinite dimension that am always illuminated mostly by finite non-surface light.
Only the truth can set you free.
Joe Fisher, Realist
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Peter Jackson wrote on Feb. 2, 2018 @ 20:31 GMT
Emily,
Quite brilliant, beautifully conceived, considered & written, and correct. Thank you. Top marks. I certainly agree;
"We are in dire need of another paradigm shift". and your alternate view.;
"quantum mechanics came along, and try as we might, we could not find satisfactory explanations for the quantum probabilities. So we stopped trying, and began applying the term ‘fundamental’ to cover our lack of understanding.Now a shock - I didn't stop trying. I'd hope you might study & try to falsify the ontological mechanism in my essay (no maths) which appears to reproduce QM classically - in just the way John Bell predicted. Yes it DOES seem a bit complex initially, but you should understand it (better than most seems able to!)
The matching computer code and Cos
2 plots are in Declan Trail's essay.
Note this came out of trying to falsify and apparent logical solution for SR (see my prev finalist essays inc peer rated 1st & 2nd). So I think and hope, finally, you're right that;
"
another such paradigm shift may be upon us - but this time, we may have to change not only our ideas about what sorts of things need explaining, but also our attitudes about what counts as an explanation."
Well done, and thank you again, for yours.
Very best
Peter
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Conrad Dale Johnson wrote on Feb. 5, 2018 @ 17:37 GMT
Hi Emily,
Definitely one of the best essays here – clear, insightful and fun to read. I especially appreciate that it’s historically informed… and I think you do get to the key issue. The question of what’s fundamental is closely tied to the question of what counts as an explanation, and also, of what it is that really needs to be explained about our world. As you suggest, the...
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Hi Emily,
Definitely one of the best essays here – clear, insightful and fun to read. I especially appreciate that it’s historically informed… and I think you do get to the key issue. The question of what’s fundamental is closely tied to the question of what counts as an explanation, and also, of what it is that really needs to be explained about our world. As you suggest, the questions that really should be most pressing may not even be approachable within the current reductive paradigm.
There are several points you raise that I take up in
my current essay. For one, you suggest it’s important to explain why there are the kinds of regularities in the world that allow us to make predications. I would add… that allow us to observe and measure things, which would hardly be possible in a less well-organized environment. Ideally we could ground our explanation of the complex forms these regularities take in some sensible notion of why they exist in the first place.
I particularly liked your thought that maybe “most of the time there simply is no fact of the matter about how things are on a microscopic level, because the universe is efficient, and doesn’t bother answering questions when it doesn’t need to.” I would say, it only answers in situations where the question is actually asked, and where the answer can make a meaningful difference to something, by setting up other such situations.
And finally, your whimsical tag-line that maybe after all it’s atoms that are fundamental, happens to be the main point of my argument. Not fundamental in the sense of indivisible, or independently self-sustaining, of course… but in that the possibility of measuring anything or meaningfully defining any kind of information, in our universe, depends on the remarkable combination of things that atoms can do.
Many thanks for your excellent contribution. If you’re looking for recommends, Karen Crowther, Ines Samengo and Marc Seguin are my other front-runners.
Conrad
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Member Ken Wharton wrote on Feb. 5, 2018 @ 19:28 GMT
Hi Emily -- Wow; that was a really great essay! A much bigger scope (and much better answer) than what I tried to do in mine, although we touched on a few of the same themes. As you probably know, I'm in essential agreement about just about everything here -- and indeed I'm still trying to sort out just how 'under-determined' the micro-reality might be.
Right at the very end, though, I...
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Hi Emily -- Wow; that was a really great essay! A much bigger scope (and much better answer) than what I tried to do in mine, although we touched on a few of the same themes. As you probably know, I'm in essential agreement about just about everything here -- and indeed I'm still trying to sort out just how 'under-determined' the micro-reality might be.
Right at the very end, though, I couldn't quite tell if you were describing how I think about things or rather something a bit different. You wrote:
" If this is correct, it is no wonder that when we do quantum physics we find it difficult to say anything definite about how things are on a microscopic level: most of the time there simply is no fact of the matter about how things are on a microscopic level, because the universe is efficient, and doesn’t bother answering questions when it doesn’t need to. To ensure the satisfaction of the macroscopic constraints, there’s usually no need to decide how things are on a microscopic level - except of course when human experimentalists start wiggling smaller and smaller things and demanding answers."
I figured you weren't being anti-realist here, which was confirmed by your answer to Matt's question, but I'm still not quite sure what you have in mind. To Matt, you wrote:
" we just have a constraint problem whose solution requires more detail in some places than in others."
That sounds fine to me, but still leaves open the question of what happens when we *don't* look closely, what happens when we don't impose detailed boundary constraints on a microscopic system.
So here's an example: an atom passes through a Stern-Gerlach device, but instead of measuring which path it takes, the two paths are recombined so one can't tell which way it went through the device, even later. I assume this is what you mean by *not* demanding answers -- but what do you mean by saying there's "no fact of the matter about how things are"? Is that just shorthand for saying that there might be some non-particle-like history, some realistic thing (say, a field) that takes *both* paths in this instance? Or are you leaning towards something even more dramatic -- say, that there's nothing corresponding to the atom at all, or that the spacetime locations of the paths aren't even well-defined? I'd be curious to know what you thought about this example.
Thanks again for a great read!
-Ken
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Author Emily Christine Adlam replied on Feb. 8, 2018 @ 23:24 GMT
Thank you very much for reading and for your comments! I very much enjoyed your essay and was glad to see that I would not be alone in my scepticism about randomness.
You are indeed correct that I do not intend my comments to have an anti-realist flavour - I should probably have been clearer about that in the essay.
With regards to your question, I think I am indeed leaning towards the more 'dramatic' possibility. That is, I am tempted to say that in every scenario that we would typically describe as a superposition, the universe simply does not decide between two possibilities, and in fact nothing is actually physically present between the preparation and the measurement, because the question of which possibility holds is simply not relevant to the satisfaction of whatever the universal constraints are.
This is still not precise enough, however, because it doesn't say much about when the universe is required to make up its mind so the superposition ceases to be a superposition, meaning that we're still left with something that looks like the measurement problem. In particular, although I would be tempted to take a Stern-Gerlach device as a paradigmatic example of the type of case where nothing is really present between preparation and measurement, a more definite answer to your question would have to wait upon the formulation of a theory (or at least toy theory) describing how the universal constraints determine which events do `actually happen.'
Conrad Dale Johnson replied on Feb. 19, 2018 @ 15:09 GMT
Emily – I think you’re leaning in the right direction here. I don’t think it’s “anti-realist” to assume there’s no absolute fact in situations where the facts make no difference to anything.
But as to “when the universe is required to make up its mind” – in other words, when there’s a physical context in which something about a quantum system becomes measurable – I don’t think there’s really any mystery about this. In these dual-path experiments, we have no problem understanding when “which path” information is available and when it isn’t. We know what kinds of contexts are needed to measure any particular information. The problem is that measurement contexts are hard to conceptualize, since different kinds of information need different contexts, and every measurement relies on other kinds of measurements. So it’s not clear how to fit them into any fundamental theory... which is the question addressed in my essay.
Thanks again – Conrad
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Steven Andresen wrote on Feb. 6, 2018 @ 04:58 GMT
Dear Emily Christine Adlam
Just letting you know that I am making a start on reading of your essay, and hope that you might also take a glance over mine please? I look forward to the sharing of thoughtful opinion. Congratulations on your essay rating as it stands, and best of luck for the contest conclusion.
My essay is titled
“Darwinian Universal Fundamental Origin”. It stands as a novel test for whether a natural organisational principle can serve a rationale, for emergence of complex systems of physics and cosmology. I will be interested to have my effort judged on both the basis of prospect and of novelty.
Thank you & kind regards
Steven Andresen
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Flavio Del Santo wrote on Feb. 6, 2018 @ 10:17 GMT
Dear Emily,
many thanks for one of the best essay I have read (and I have read many indeed). It is clearly writte, well argued, and it provides a number of insights that go directly to the point of what fundamental means. It was a real pleasure to ascertain that our views are very close about most of the things you state in your essay. I particularly appreciated the sentence in which you rightly notice that "something that was once regarded as fundamental became explainable in the context of a new theory".
Moreover, your critique of the naive reductionist program is very agreeable, and it is based on the same arguments I have used in my essay, namely that " It seems likely that part of the problem is the reductionism that still dominates the thinking of most of those who consider themselves realists about science.
Congratulations again for this beautiful essay, I top rate it!
Best of luck,
Flavio
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Francesco D'Isa wrote on Feb. 8, 2018 @ 11:53 GMT
Dear Emily,
congratulations for your essay, it's one of the best I've read, very clear, well written and full of intriguing ideas. Moreover your idea has some points in common with mine, since I propose the relativity of fundamentality.
> So seems that we are in dire need of another paradigm shift. And this time, instead of simply changing our attitudes about what sorts of things require explanation, we may have to change our attitudes about what counts as an explanation in the first place.
I very agree, the answers change with the questions. This is a statement that you make stronger with:
> the notion of the Fundamental, writ large, is not supposed to be about our practical interests
Finally, just a curiosity:
> The present explains the future, and not vice versa
I propose a logical model where it could be also vice versa, redefining "explains".
All the best!
Francesco D'Isa
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James Lee Hoover wrote on Feb. 9, 2018 @ 22:34 GMT
Emily,
The quandary about what is fundamental can be solved by cherry-picking your definition: mine is "that which is fundamental is necessary for existence," and pointing out that fundamental evolves with discovery. Physics starts with that which we know and build theories on that and as discoveries come smack our foreheads and say "this is the new truth." To determine fundamental we must have sentient beings to observe and set the theories and nature as the source of our queries. We now have LIGO which scientists theorize can be fine-tuned to recording the BB. We have LHC ramping up to the first seconds of the BB, that is if it is the BB and not the inverted BB or whatever. As you say, we must start with big pieces maybe the atom which our best microscopes can detect, and not define fundamental as the smallest and most basic. Certainly "changes in our understanding of the fundamental have often been associated with important scientific advances -- the concept does evolve.
Enjoyed your monologue. Hope you get a chance to look at mine.
Jim Hoover
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Member Noson S. Yanofsky wrote on Feb. 12, 2018 @ 17:20 GMT
Dear Emily,
Thank you for a wonderful essay.
While others have questioned if there are fundamentals, you have questioned if fundamentals are a positive thing. Interesting!
Your analysis of probability is brilliant. Thank you.
I hope you have a chance to look at my essay.
All the best,
Noson
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Avtar Singh wrote on Feb. 12, 2018 @ 17:22 GMT
Hi Emily:
I agree with your statement- "The moment for another such paradigm shift may be upon us - but this time, we may have to change not only our ideas about what sorts of things need explaining, but also our attitudes about what counts as an explanation in the first place."
I would like to draw your attention to the paradigm shift of the missing fundamental physics governing - “What causes a photon to accelerate to the speed of light?” I would like to invite you to look into my paper – “
What is Fundamental – Is C the Speed of Light”. that describes the fundamental physics of antigravity missing from the widely-accepted mainstream physics and cosmology theories resolving their current inconsistencies and paradoxes. The missing physics depicts a spontaneous relativistic mass creation/dilation photon model that explains the yet unknown dark energy, inner workings of quantum mechanics, and bridges the gaps among relativity and Maxwell’s theories. The model also provides field equations governing the spontaneous wave-particle complimentarity or mass-energy equivalence. The key significance or contribution of the proposed work is to enhance fundamental understanding of C, commonly known as the speed of light, and Cosmological Constant, commonly known as the dark energy.
The manuscript not only provides comparisons against existing empirical observations but also forwards testable predictions for future falsification of the proposed model.
I would like to invite you to read my paper and appreciate any feedback comments.
Best Regards
Avtar Singh
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James Lee Hoover wrote on Feb. 15, 2018 @ 23:31 GMT
Emily,
As time grows short, I recheck those that I have commented on to see if I've rated them. I find that I have not rated yours and am correcting that now.
Hope you can get a chance to look at mine.
Jim Hoover
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John Brodix Merryman wrote on Feb. 16, 2018 @ 04:30 GMT
Emily,
A logical explanation for the "arrow of time."
We experience reality as flashes of cognition and so think this arrow, or "flow," from past to future, is a fundamental fact of nature, but have difficulty explaining it. Physics has determined it must be a dimension, experienced as duration and so distills it down to measures of duration, which are correlated to measures of...
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Emily,
A logical explanation for the "arrow of time."
We experience reality as flashes of cognition and so think this arrow, or "flow," from past to future, is a fundamental fact of nature, but have difficulty explaining it. Physics has determined it must be a dimension, experienced as duration and so distills it down to measures of duration, which are correlated to measures of distance, resulting in Spacetime. Though cannot explain why it only seems to go past to future, other than the effect of entropy.
A simpler explanation is that it is change turning future to past, as in tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns. Duration is simply the state of the present, as events coalesce and dissolve.
Energy is 'conserved," because it is always and only present. Past and future are other configurations of the same medium. Given this, causality is redundant. It is the dynamic of this energy which creates these configurations.
As such, energy and the forms it manifests go opposite directions of time. Energy going past to future, as events go future to past. Think of the frames of a movie, versus the projector light shining through them.
Consider a factory, as an example of this relationship between entity and process. As the product goes start to finish, being in the future to in the past, the process points the other direction, consuming material and expelling product. Onto the new, shedding the old.
Life is the same, as individuals go birth to death, while the species moves onto the next generation, shedding the old. As consciousness goes from one thought to the next, these mental forms go future to past.
So time is like temperature, an effect of action. One is the individual frequency, while the other is masses of frequency and amplitude.
Simultaneity was dismissed by observing that different events are observed in different order, from different locations, but this is no more consequential that seeing the moon, simultaneous with seeing stars as they were years ago. It is the energy which is conserved, not the information it carries.
So the reason time is asymmetric is because it is a measure of action and action is inertial. The earth turns one direction, not both.
Regards,
John B. Merryman
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Cristinel Stoica wrote on Feb. 19, 2018 @ 16:05 GMT
Dear Emily,
What a wonderful essay! I liked it on multiple levels, the ideas, the explanations, the style.
In particular I fully agree with your statement "Fundamental means we have lost. Fundamental is an admission of defeat" when saying that "we stopped trying, and began applying the term 'fundamental' to cover our lack of understanding". While maybe we can't assign quantum probabilities in the usual way as in statistical mechanics, this doesn't mean there are no other ways.
Also this was really a good one "Even Leibniz ultimately needed a God to complete his vision - 'God,' of course, being the same sort of sticking-plaster concept as 'fundamental.'" Yes, you're right, and you're right also that there is more beyond the place where we proclaim the final stop. Maybe the most interesting things are beyond.
Best wishes,
Cristi Stoica
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Anonymous wrote on Feb. 19, 2018 @ 20:22 GMT
Dear Emily,
Yours is one of the most elegant essays in this contest, and it broaches a number of interesting points in an engaging manner.
A few comments:
1. It seems to me that the consequence to draw from the realization that "our ancestors who came up with concept of objective chance cannot ever had anz actual experience of what we now understand to be objective chance" is...
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Dear Emily,
Yours is one of the most elegant essays in this contest, and it broaches a number of interesting points in an engaging manner.
A few comments:
1. It seems to me that the consequence to draw from the realization that "our ancestors who came up with concept of objective chance cannot ever had anz actual experience of what we now understand to be objective chance" is not that this was "nothing short of miracle", but rather that sometimes the wrong idea can nevertheless lead to the right conclusion. Is that miraculous?
2. I really liked the contrast in conceptualizations of fundamentality as something desirable because it gets rid of unnecessary or superfluous conceptual baggage, but then by the same token as something undesirable because what is being thrown out could actually be precisely that for which there is a value in finding deeper explanations. To me, this reinforces the notion that fundamentality is a purely epistemic notion.
3. On page 5 you ask "Why is it that objective chances seem to be the only thing we have in our arsenal when it comes to explaining regularities without explaining their specific form?" I would like to suggest an answer which you are unlikely to hear anywhere else: I believe that our understanding of the fundamental workings of nature has advanced so much that we cannot go further without integrating some physics-based understanding of being into it.
Questions of existence suffuse the background of any of the contemporary approaches to trying to understand this and related questions, but because existence is currently considered a purely philosophical concept, this aspect is generally simply overlooked by physicists. For instance, the reductionist answer you mention first, which "tells us that global regularities like quantum statistics must be explained in terms of fundamental properties of individual properties" glosses over the fact that our intuitive notions of existence always presuppose having definite properties, but this is already violated (under the textbook interpretations) in quantum mechanics. Sometimes (as in Heisenberg's "Physics and Philosophy") this is vaguely acknowledged, but, as far as I can tell, only within the context of some philosophical verbiage the meaning of which seems hard to apply mathematically to the equations.
4. I agree with you that as we go to ever smaller scales "most of the time there simply is no fact of the matter about how things are on a microscopic level", but I draw from that a completely different lesson than you seem to, namely, that this is an indication that our current conceptual, and to the extent that novel concepts drive the definition of novel mathematical objects, mathematical framework is simply inadequate to represent what is going on at those scales. I really wished I had already completed the second part of the 2-part series of which the first part is my contest entry, because it gives concrete examples of this claim, but regrettably this will still have to wait. Even the antireductionist conclusion of your essay involves considerations of existence in the background: I find it hard to conceive of atoms as more fundamental than quarks unless this was supported by some argument which elevates the ontic status of the latter relative to the former.
5. In my view we do not have to build ever bigger particle accelerators to gain a more fundamental understanding. Rather, I believe there is still ample space to reinterpret some of our current concepts in a different way which reveals connections or insights which were simply not obvious under the prior interpretations. In my entry I attempt to show this with the concrete example of length contraction.
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Armin Nikkhah Shirazi replied on Feb. 19, 2018 @ 20:24 GMT
Author Emily Christine Adlam replied on Feb. 21, 2018 @ 23:24 GMT
Hi Armin, thank you for your comments!
In response to your queries:
1) There are certain theories of meaning (e.g. the causal theory of meaning) which would suggest that it is literally impossible for the wrong idea to lead to the right conclusion in this manner. However, I wouldn't go this far. My argument is simply that, if our ancestors were indeed right about objective chance, that is an extraordinary coincidence - it seems far more plausible to me that they weren't right and that we only believe in objective chance now because a confusion in the foundations of probability has been unreflectively carried over to a confusion in the foundations of quantum mechanics.
2) Agreed - I'm not sure I would want to go so far as to say that fundamentality is wholly epistemic, with no objective basis whatsoever, but certainly there is a significant sociological component built into what we mean by `fundamental.'
3) I agree that `being/existence' is a key concept. Indeed, as I tried to suggest later, I think that we should probably have a much less rich ontology - a lot of the particles, fields and so on that feature in our current best theories probability shouldn't be considered to `exist,' at least not all of the time.
4) I don't have any specific model in mind in which atoms are more fundamental than quarks, so that comment is more rhetorical than technical at the moment. However, I think one might reasonably say such a thing if, for instance, it turns out that atoms exist all of the time and quarks only exist when we do certain specific types of experiments.
5) I certainly agree with this - I think building bigger particle accelerators to look at smaller and smaller things is going in entirely the wrong direction. As you say, some careful conceptual analysis might serve us much better!
Heinrich Luediger wrote on Feb. 20, 2018 @ 16:32 GMT
Dear Emily,
Leibniz’ PSR appears in the direct neighborhood of another principle, and I think that they cannot be meaningfully separated, particularly since they are coupled by an AND.
§30. Our reasonings are based on two great principles, that of contradiction, in virtue of which we judge that which involves a contradiction to be false, and that which is opposed or contradictory...
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Dear Emily,
Leibniz’ PSR appears in the direct neighborhood of another principle, and I think that they cannot be meaningfully separated, particularly since they are coupled by an AND.
§30. Our reasonings are based on two great principles, that of contradiction, in virtue of which we judge that which involves a contradiction to be false, and that which is opposed or contradictory to the false to be true.
§31. And that of sufficient reason, by virtue of which we consider that we can find no true or existent fact, no true assertion, without there being a sufficient reason why it is thus and not otherwise, although most of the time these reasons cannot be known to us. (from Stanford Encycl. of Phil., para. numbers corrected acc. to original)
Based on §30 and the truism that contradiction does not exist, Leibniz says that that which is opposed or contradictory to the false (the non-existent) is true, and hence existent. So, existence is the opposite (complement?) of contradiction, which is basically what Spinoza had said. But then in §31 Leibniz goes on to speculate about the existent, namely, that there is a reason why it is thus and not otherwise, and he concludes the sentence by saying that the reason for this being so in most cases cannot be known to us. Hence what the PSR says is that there always IS a reason which, in general cannot be known, however. Then the question is why that? And the answer is in §30, because the existent is defined by non-contradiction and not positively! Does Leibniz suggest that the reason (cause) is virtual? Don’t forget that for Leibniz necessary truths are a priori (true). That is, for him there are assertions that are a priori true, because they are non-contradictory. Pulled together, §30 and 31§ mean: every non-contradictory assertion is a priori true. Since, however, the positive proof of such a priori truth is not for us to know, it becomes clear why already Aristotle believed contradiction to be the most powerful logical argument there is.
So, I’m not sure whether PSR effectively supports your ideas.
Heinrich
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Steven Andresen wrote on Feb. 23, 2018 @ 14:00 GMT
Dear Emily
If you are looking for another essay to read and rate in the final days of the contest, will you consider mine please?
A couple of days in and semblance of my essay taking form, however the house bound inactivity was wearing me. I had just the remedy, so took off for a solo sail across the bay. In the lea of cove, I had underestimated the open water wind strengths. My...
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Dear Emily
If you are looking for another essay to read and rate in the final days of the contest, will you consider mine please?
A couple of days in and semblance of my essay taking form, however the house bound inactivity was wearing me. I had just the remedy, so took off for a solo sail across the bay. In the lea of cove, I had underestimated the open water wind strengths. My sail area overpowered. Ordinarily I would have reduced sail, but this day I felt differently. My contemplations were on the forces of nature, and I was ventured seaward increasingly amongst them. As the wind and the waves rose, my boat came under strain, but I was exhilarated. All the while I considered, how might I communicate the role of natural forces in understanding of the world around us. For they are surely it’s central theme.
Beyond my essay’s introduction, I place a microscope on the subjects of universal complexity and natural forces. I do so within context that clock operation is driven by Quantum Mechanical forces (atomic and photonic), while clocks also serve measure of General Relativity’s effects (spacetime, time dilation). In this respect clocks can be said to possess a split personality, giving them the distinction that they are simultaneously a study in QM, while GR is a study of clocks. The situation stands whereby we have two fundamental theories of the world, but just one world. And we have a singular device which serves study of both those fundamental theories. Two fundamental theories, but one device? Please join me in questioning this circumstance?
My essay goes on to identify natural forces in their universal roles, how they motivate the building of and maintaining complex universal structures and processes. When we look at how star fusion processes sit within a “narrow range of sensitivity” that stars are neither led to explode nor collapse under gravity. We think how lucky we are that the universe is just so. We can also count our lucky stars that the fusion process that marks the birth of a star, also leads to an eruption of photons from its surface. for if they didn’t then nebula gas accumulation wouldn’t be halted and the star would again be led to collapse.
Could a natural organisation principle have been responsible for fine tuning universal systems? Faced with how lucky we appear to have been, shouldn’t we consider this possibility?
For our luck surely didnt run out there, for these photons stream down on earth, liquifying oceans which drive geochemical processes that we “life” are reliant upon. The Earth is made up of elements that possess the chemical potentials that life is entirely dependent upon. Those chemical potentials are not expressed in the absence of water solvency. So again, how amazingly fortunate we are that these chemical potentials exist in the first instance, and additionally within an environment of abundant water solvency such as Earth, able to express these potentials.
My essay is an attempt at something audacious. It questions the fundamental nature of the interaction between space and matter Guv = Tuv, and hypothesizes the equality between space curvature and atomic forces is due to common process. Space gives up an energy potential in exchange for atomic forces in a conversion process, which drives atomic activity. And furthermore, that Baryons only exist because this energy potential of space exists, and is available for exploitation. Baryon characteristics and behaviours, complexity of structure and process might then be explained in terms of being evolved and optimised for this purpose and existence. Removing need for so many layers of extraordinary luck to eventuate our own existence. It attempts an interpretation of the above mentioned stellar processes within these terms, but also extends much further. It shines a light on molecular structure that binds matter together, as potentially being an evolved agency that enhances rigidity and therefor persistence of universal system. We then turn a questioning mind towards Earths unlikely geochemical processes, (for which we living things owe so much) and look at its central theme and propensity for molecular rock forming processes. The existence of chemical potentials and their diverse range of molecular bond forming activities? The abundance of water solvent on Earth, for which many geochemical rock forming processes could not be expressed without? The question of a watery Earth? is then implicated as being part of an evolved system that arose for purpose and reason, alongside the same reason and purpose that molecular bonds and chemical process arose.
By identifying process whereby atomic forces draw a potential from space, we have identified means for their perpetual action, and their ability to deliver perpetual work. Forces drive clocks and clock activity is shown by GR to dilate. My essay details the principle of force dilation and applies it to a universal mystery. My essay raises the possibility, that nature in possession of a natural energy potential, will spontaneously generate a circumstance of Darwinian emergence. It did so on Earth, and perhaps it did so within a wider scope. We learnt how biology generates intricate structure and complexity, and now we learn how it might apply for intricate structure and complexity within universal physical systems.
To steal a phrase from my essay “A world product of evolved optimization”.
Best of luck for the conclusion of the contest
Kind regards
Steven Andresen
Darwinian Universal Fundamental Origin
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Member Marc Séguin wrote on Feb. 24, 2018 @ 03:50 GMT
Dear Emily,
So many essays, so little time... Just a short post to let you know your essay was one of the best I read in this contest. Well written, witty, with many provocative ideas! Some of the highlights for me:
“What do we suppose will be left over when all reasonable questions have been answered? The simplest answer is also the most ambitious: nothing.” (Have you read Amanda Gefter’s book, “Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn”? I highly recommend it!)
“We are deeply uncomfortable with the idea that the universe must, on some level, be arbitrary.” (Personally, as I argue in my essay, I think that non-arbitrariness must characterize the deepest, most fundamental level of reality.)
“Perhaps we should take it as a sign that we have been swimming against the current all this time: the messiness deep down is a sign that the universe works not ‘bottom-up’ but rather ‘top-down,’ with the laws of nature governing the whole of history at once, akin to the Lagrangian formulation of classical physics.” (I too find Ken Wharton’s ideas very interesting.)
“[…] as we build bigger and bigger particle accelerators to probe ever more deeply, the universe will be forced to invent deeper and deeper levels of reality that exist only to answer our questions.” Whoa! ;) I hinted at a similar possibility in the essay I wrote in the previous FQXi contest; in figure 4 of the essay I submitted for this contest, this is the reason why my “top-down” chain of monkeys fades into something indefinite at the bottom end…
Congratulations! I am glad your essay is doing well in the community ratings, and I hope it gets the recognition it deserves.
Best wishes,
Marc
fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3132
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Don Limuti wrote on Feb. 25, 2018 @ 01:00 GMT
Hello Emile,
Thanks for the clarity in your essay. I have been aware of top down causation since the first FQXi.org contests. I have not understood why this should be considered serious until your essay.
1. So, your mother had it right with the pout that encapsulated "why does everybody make things so complex!"
2. The machine of the universe should have a warning sign. "This machine works on the simple laws of nature. Be warned that if you take off the cover to see how it works you may be disappointed, unless you are the type of person who likes to know how sausage is really made!!!"
You entry is doing very well in this contest and does not need my support... so I will support it anyway.
Thanks,
Don Limuti
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Jeffrey Michael Schmitz wrote on Feb. 26, 2018 @ 06:19 GMT
There are many essays and little time! I like this stream of thought style that starts an internal debate and opens up ideas. One of the best essays. I like to get to the point a little faster than you, but that is just a style choice.
All the best,
Jeff Schmtiz
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Dizhechko Boris Semyonovich wrote on Feb. 26, 2018 @ 08:54 GMT
Dear Emily Adlam, I'd appreciate it if you write in your wonderful reasoning the principle of identity of space and matter Descartes, on which is based the New Cartesian Physics. For a long time believed that the Foundation for fundamental theories is matter, an attribute which was mass. Once there was a formula of mass – energy equivalence, and mass lost the status of a value characterizing the amount of matter, about it rarely began to remember and physics has lost the Foundation. Any theory of everything is created in such circumstances would not be fundamental. The principle of identity of space and matter Descartes, according to which physical space is matter and matter is space that moves, gives us the Foundation for fundamental theories. Look at my essay,
FQXi Fundamental in New Cartesian Physics by Dizhechko Boris Semyonovich Where I showed how radically the physics can change if it follows the principle of identity of space and matter of Descartes. This Physics needs your support to develop further. Visit my page and give your assessment there. I hope your highly appreciate it.
I wish you success! Sincerely, Boris Dizhechko
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richard kingsley nixey wrote on Feb. 26, 2018 @ 21:41 GMT
Emily,
Sorry that was me gave you that little bunk up. Nice job. Must rush
Rich.
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Roger Granet wrote on May. 15, 2018 @ 03:22 GMT
Dr. Adlam
Hi. I agree with your statement:
"...and try as we might,we could not find satisfactory explanations for the quantum probabilities. So we stopped trying, and began applying the term ‘fundamental’ to cover our lack of understanding.The word ‘fundamental’ become a disguise for our confusion."
but then you seem to say that really it's okay to stop trying and...
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Dr. Adlam
Hi. I agree with your statement:
"...and try as we might,we could not find satisfactory explanations for the quantum probabilities. So we stopped trying, and began applying the term ‘fundamental’ to cover our lack of understanding.The word ‘fundamental’ become a disguise for our confusion."
but then you seem to say that really it's okay to stop trying and to give up on the idea of their being a reason, or a "why" for things in nature because at the smallest level, it's all just chance:
"...we will see that the universe simply could not have been otherwise. It is an immensely attractive prospect, but also, surely, an impossible one..but there is no similarly pressing need to explain why these regularities take some particular form rather than another."
This is certainly possible, but it seems to suggest that we "stop trying". We say that fundamentally, there is no answer why things are at the smallest levels. It's just chance. For me, I can't accept this. I think there is a definite mechanism for how things happen at small levels, and these lead to the appearance of chance. I like to think about the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" and all the time run up against people saying: It's insoluble; it's just a brute fact; the question makes no sense, etc. It's frustrating, and I disagree but think this attitude comes about because it is a hard question and people give up trying after awhile.
In regard to the appearance of chance at the smaller levels, it seems possible that some very small existent entities are the atoms of not only space but of location. Before these entities were there, there was no space, no volume and no location. We can't say ahead of time where these entities will be formed because before they form, there is no location and no "where". Once they form and cause locations to come into existence, we can look back after the fact, and say they could have been formed in any of an infinite range of locations. We're applying a coordinate system of locations to a situation where there were no locations. So, we think it's just chance why some formed in those locations and that there is no underlying mechanism. Instead, I agree that it was chance but that there is a mechanism for what causes those entities and those locations to form. Once we can figure out the mechanism, we can figure out why it seems like it's all random.
I think Bohm and DeBroglie were advocates of this type of thinking. Anyways, while I'm just an amateur, I'm going to keep trying to figure things out. Thanks for making me think. Sorry for the shameless plug for my website below. Although, the site has many things from previous FQXi essay contests.
Roger
https://sites.google.com/site/ralphthewebsite/filecabinet/wh
y-is-there-something-rather-than-nothing
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