Beauty?

Scultpure by Henry Moore - its beauty is nothing to do with symmetry or formal perfection

As an artist (I am primarily a sculptor) as well as both a professional scientist, and a philosopher, I always justifiably jib at sweeping definitions of Beauty, from one or another supposedly fundamental stance! So, when today I was assaulted on YouTube by a series of such declarations, I was impelled to pen this essay.

The most glaringly false declarations, as you might have guessed, were inevitably about Mathematics!

Wilczek swoons at its towering and breath-taking "Beauty", while another is staggered by the importance of Number in the Universe.

But, it is also clear, that neither of these 'prophets' were in any way aware of the fundamental weakness at the very heart of that Mathematics, which makes it totally incapable of dealing with any qualitative developments whatsoever. For, its power resides solely in its artificial simplification of all things to reveal only their superficial Forms or Patterns.

Mathematics is the study of forever-fixed Pure Forms, and as such was, and is, a truly remarkable advance, but certainly NOT the Revealer of all, or even any, Causative Essence. The invention of this formal approach, by the Ancient Greeks, was indeed a major Revolution in intellectual studies: but it wasn't carried out by an omnipotent, all-knowing and all-seeing God - but by mere human beings.

Darwinian Evolution selects for Survival and effective Reproduction only - so our Hominid-Line knapped pieces of flint for literally millions of years, without any significant intellectual development occurring at all. For this 'intelligence' was not congenital, but certainly had-to-be both a solely socially-acquired, and passed-on ability.

Indeed, the undoubted proof is clearly evident, from the revealing studies of Palaeontologists, who also immediately recognised the tremendous significance of the Neolithic Revolution, when Mankind successively changed-over to staying-in-one-place with others of their kind to productively both Farm-the-Land, Domesticate Animals. and discuss with one another. Only then could increasing-social-interactions begin to develop in both the regular Exchanges of things, and revealing Discussions, delivering a consequent development of productive activities and crucially also both Language and indeed Thought itself!

Now, the above short diversion into Human Evolution was absolutely essential, as without it, the inevitably inaccurate initial misconceptions about the Nature of Mathematics would inevitably intervene to prevent any understanding of its accompanying significant weaknesses. So, unavoidably demolishing any promotion of it to a universally fundamental role in the Consciousness of Mankind!

The Ancient Greeks had achieved a remarkable thing conceptually, in their Intellectual Revolution - they invented a wholly new kind of Abstraction - with regard to Forms, that enabled the valid construction of the very first Intellectual Discipline in their History - namely Mathematics!

I call them "Simplifying Relatable Abstractions", and they were a remarkably empowering original invention! They stripped down certain formal conceptions to an absolute minimum content - indeed, so tiny were they, that they were useless in isolation - BUT, as connecting-enablers, they alone legitimately linked certain things together, delivering a sound means that could be legitimately repeated into delivering a substantial complex and coherent spatial Discipline.

But, there was a flaw!

All so-produced-things must be permanently fixed.

They could never change qualitatively into something else!

So, what had actually been inadvertently and unavoidably subscribed-to was the Principle of Plurality, and, most certainly, not everything was legitimately so permanently limited. But, abstract Form most certainly was!

Now, here beginneth the inevitable drift into significant Error, from this initial success. For, immediately, The Greeks, delighted with what they had been able to do with Form, exported the same sort of qualities into both Reasoning and a nascent Science, where they were wholly illegitimate as universal premises!

But, the disaster was, by no means immediately evident, particularly if those so-produced Disciplines were to be only used within naturally Stable and Unchanging Situations.

And also, crucially, in Science, investigators quickly learned how to both achieve-and-maintain such situations, for both relation extractions and also subsequent effective use of extracted eternal Natural Laws. While in Formal Logic, the Reasoning was limited to fixed concepts, which could suffice in most stable situations!

NOTE: But, almost immediately, Zeno of Elea had revealed the unavoidable falsities that emerged from Contradictory Fixed Concepts in his Paradoxes.

Now, as both a competant mathematician and a well-informed philosopher, I have developed these ideas, particularly with respect to the damaging Role of Pluralist Mathematics in Science, wherein I have established it as unavoidably both pluralistic and idealistic, and hence totally inadequate as any sort of assumed General Ground of Concrete Reality, i.e. in Science.

Indeed, all of its many extensions no longer exist within Concrete Reality at all, but are situated solely within Ideality - the realm of Pure Form alone.

Jim Schofield's Theory of Abstraction

So, when Wilczek and his like wax lyrical over the Beauty of Mathematics, he is actually describing situations in Form-Only Ideality!

The breath-taking intricacies and "beauties" of these investigators, are NOT about The Real at all, but, instead, only about the extensions of formal definitions into the infinite, but not concretely existing, features of Pure Form Alone within Ideality.

[It applauds the infinite extendibility and intricacy of Symmetry with Fixed Forms, and totally excludes the Real World Beauty of Creative Development entirely]

It just cannot be Science any longer: for it is, at best, a form of Art, based upon the Real, but artificially extended to extreme limits, outside of Reality, to display their Formal Beauty!

[Remember: Reality also contains properties, qualities and causalities, while Ideality contains only Form!]

But, why then is this unreal World indulged-in so extensively by scientists?

Having shot themselves in the foot via the Universal extension of Plurality to literally everything, they walled themselves off, permanently, from Developing Reality, and the Holistic and Dialectical means of dealing with it, so were forced to permanently give-up Understanding, for mere Prediction, and hence had to look elsewhere, NOT, it must be emphasized for Explanations, but instead, to seek only Descriptions-of-Forms that might possibly then be used as Disembodied Forms, enabling Prediction, without-Explanation or increased Understanding.

It is actually a retreat to an older pragmatism, disguised within sophisticated Abstraction!

Special Issue 65: Towards the New Physics

Substrate Theory Part 2: 

Towards the New Physics

by Jim Schofield

Part 2 of our special anniversary series on Substrate Theory is finally here!

This selection of papers constitute more recent additions to this burgeoning new Physics and many of these have never been published before.

Increasingly, I no longer feel like a lone voice in this. Other physicists are starting to move in this direction - Lee Smolin and Frank Wilczek are joining a growing group of dissenters in mainstream Physics, unhappy with its infinite descent into the Idealist wormhole, away from materialism and realism.

This series is a significant celebration of both the Journal’s (and its principle theorist’s) 10 years spent in theoretically addressing the current ever-deepening crisis in Modern Physics. This is represented by the now consensus position embodied in the premises of this subject as they are brought together in The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, which has steadfastly taken Physics away from physical Explanation of reality, and instead towards a wholly idealist stance, that assigns full causality only to the set of formal equations, primarily derived from High Speed Accelerator Experiments, primarily conducted at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

My hypothesis is that Copenhagen was almost universally instituted throughout Sub Atomic Physics, as a set of formal tricks for dealing with a missing / hidden Substrate - papering over the cracks of the waves in nothing.

Elsewhere, in my book The Real Philosophy of Science, these philosophical problems have been tackled, but here we must also tackle physically the very real possibility of an undetectable Universal Substrate - look at why it might have escaped detection and how we might finally prove its existence.

Copenhagen is Wrong!

The house of cards that is Quantum Theory is really starting to fall...

And now Lee Smolin is on-side.

In a recent Perimeter Institute Lecture, Smolin delivered the trenchant view that the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory is in fact wrong, and I agree with him!

However, while his Realist arguments were indeed correct, and Copenhagen Theory is totally Idealist: that, I'm afraid that will never be enough.

For, in spite of Hegel's profound and transforming criticisms of the Plurality of both Formal Logic and its use in Science, almost 200 years later his improvements have still rarely been applied to either. The Copenhagenists will never relinquish their theory, for they don't even know why it arose, due to profound errors in its premises, and also because in all the circumstances in which they use it - it certainly does work - pragmatically! But, even then, it also never explains why.

For Explanation, as the primary purpose of Physics, has now been totally abandoned. Instead, this so-called Theory gives the right quantitative answers, in highly-constrained circumstances only. And, in doing that, it is entirely consistent with what Modern Physics has now become - an extension of Mathematics.

For, henceforth, it can never explain why things happen the way that they do, but can only "match" how it works purely pragmatically. It is content to be only technologically-useful, amd hence explains absolutely nothing!

Now, of course, its supporters would all totally disagree with this, because of the pseudo-philosophical inventions that the originators inserted, in order to make it look like an "Explanatory Theory" - namely, via their cobbled together Equation, which imports illegitimate probabilities into a basic Wave Equation. And then replaces all Particles, at what they term "The Quantum Level", with Wave/Particle Duality - delivering the alternatives of using the wave-like Equation, until the entity suddenly became, once more, a descrete Particle, and they could term the transition "The Collapse of the Wave Equation", when it resumed its Particle Form.

It is, of course, NO kind of Legitimate Scientific Theory: it is a clever fix to get around contradictory behaviours, that their prior premises just could not cope with. And, that was indeed the case: the prior theories just didn't work at these levels: they were inadequate, it is true!

But, literally all the theories in the past were also inadequate, but were re-investigated to review the premises assumed, and usually, they, in the end, would finally arrive at something better! By the early 20th Century, however, a whole series of dramatic and debilitating results had begun to be revealed that undermined the prior assumptions.

The Michelson/Morley Experiment had dismissed the existence of the Aether as filling all of Empty Space with a Universal Substrate.

And, Henri Poincaré and Ernst Mach, finding ever more physical premises that seemed to be wrong, proposed Empirio Criticism, a form of Positivism, as an Amalgam of Explanations and Mathematical Equations, which together, they believed, could deliver what was needed.

The Piste was set: and it was all downhill from there to finally dumping Explanations altogether!

For, nobody demurred at the conclusions from the Michelson/Morley Experiment, so Wave-like phenomena, at the Sub Atomic Level, could no longer be ascribed to that now dispensed-with medium: instead, somehow, such effects had to be embedded into what Particles actually were themselves!

The key experiments were those involving Double Slits, which became the touchstones for many of the new discoveries. But, the Wave/Particle tricks which were instituted to explain the many anomalies, are very easily removed by assuming an undetectable Universal Substrate in those experiments, and Substrate Theory immediately dispensed-with every single one of them.

Now, though obviously insufficient by itself, this theoretical exercize could not be ignored! For, it demonstrated that classical Waves were somehow involved: the Wave/Particle Duality invention was a frig! And distinct Waves and Particles were, somehow, still intrinsically involved.

Two parallel lines of theoretical research were undertaken.

The First was to investigate the possibility of such an Undetectable Universal Substrate - composed entirely of pairs of mutually-orbiting Leptons of diametrically opposite properties - thus delivering the required passive-undetectability, while at the same time allowing that Substrate to be affected-by those interlopers, while also delivering the subsequent affecting-of those very same entities, in differing, later circumstances.

It must be stressed that the objective here was a theory-first investigation: just as James Clerk Maxwell had used in his Analogistic Model of the Aether, which was the Basis for his still universally renowned Electromagnetic Equations!

[Indeed, there is the very sound point also, that theory-first investigations actually avoid the inevitable pluralistic aberrations of all data-first investigations, using the now Standard Scientific Experimental Method of directly constrained and maintained contexts]

And, as Frank Wilczec has recently insisted upon with "The Materiality of the Vacuum", the above theoretical Analogistic Model is not without foundation, even if his composition of that "undetectable Universal Substrate" differs from that used here.

James Clerk Maxwell's Analogistic Model, has long gone, BUT its use was justified by its delivery of the Electromagnetic Equations!

Now, the Second line of theoretical research was somewhat akin to Maxwell's - by assuming such a substrate with the New Model's composition, could all the anomalies that precipitated Copenhagen be physically explained instead?

Now to achieve this objective, the initial simple definition in terms of Electron/Positron, mutually orbiting pairs, had to be extended to also involving Units composed of Taus and Muons, and even Neutrinos, but a rich and successful Substrate of Leptons was devised, and the inventions of Copenhagen physically replaced!

BUT, of course, this is just like Maxwell's Aether Model, the detailed content of the Analogistic Model of the Universal Substrate will, indeed, be wholly replaced too!

This researcher, like Maxwell, knows very well that all our theories are never the Absolute Truth, but at best, contain sufficient Objective Content to deliver more than what they replace.

Criticisms of the New Model are not only legitimate, but absolutely necessary. Yet, criticisms that exist only in order to re-establish Copenhagen are most certainly NOT! Copenhagen is a dead-end, and new ideas and models are now required to replace it and push Physics into new territory.

Implicit in the new approach was a root and branch critique of the premises, and even basic amalgamated philosophical stances, underlying modern physics. Succintly, Copenhagen is Pluralist, while Reality is Holist!

And Science should be materialist, while Copenhagen is certainly idealist!

By all means improve upon the New Physics, but leave Copenhagen where it derserves to be - Dead and Buried!

 

For more on burying the Copenhagen Interpretation, please read the Special Issues of SHAPE Journal above, and look out for our forthcoming 10 Year Anniversary Issues on Substrate Theory.

Frank Wilczek and the Universal Substrate

Coming May and June - two new Special Issues of SHAPE Journal
a definitive guide to Jim Schofield's Substrate Theory of Physics

In an Origins Project lecture, at Arizona State University, Frank Wilczek gave a contribution upon the Materiality of Space (see below for video).

What was remarkable was that much of what he had to say resonated, very markedly indeed, with my own ideas based upon the concept of an undetectable Universal Substrate (the hidden materiality of the vacuum) but, nevertheless, coming from a very different place; namely the more usually accepted consensus positions of today's Sub Atomic Physics.

Indeed, the last paper I wrote was also concerning Wilczek's work, and his supportive ambitions for the Large Hadron Collider in 2010, which I'm afraid I dismissed as a total myth.

However, this lecture has dramatically altered my assessment of him, as both a scientist and indeed, a philosopher. By alternate, indeed diametrically different means, he has arrived at very similar conclusions, to those I postulate, and this delivers a very different slant upon valid pathways towards the Truth that we, as physicists, always seek!

Indeed, the situation delivered far more than that: for he was introduced-by, and afterwards disagreed-with Lawrence Krause, who seemingly from the same theoretical stance as Wilczek, also demonstrated how that seemingly identical basis, was indeed diametrically opposite in various extremely important premises.

For Wilczek is a physicist: while Krause is, at heart, a mathematician!

And, as it became clear, Wilczek and myself, though arriving at very similar positions on Empty Space (he even mentions the word "substrate"), were nevertheless getting there, on the one hand, due to conforming to the same basic premises, still managed to do it, in spite of using very different means and sources for our theories. And, the subsequent presence and disagreements of Krause, also confirmed that his differences, in spite of working in the very same areas as Wilczek, put him in a very different position indeed.

Krauss is an idealist, whereas Wilczek is actually a materialist.

Now, by far the more important revelation for me was the possibility of arriving at similar conclusions from very different experimental evidence and theoretical bases. It clearly confirmed both for myself, and for him, that we, as scientists, did not either seek or expect to find Absolute Truth, but, on the contrary, what I term Objective Content - that is aspects or parts of that never-to-be-reached Absolute Truth, but which supply the best view of Reality we currently have: and which would always be open to improvement by new Objective Content, if it proved to be closer to that unobtainable objective.

In addition, Wilczek made absolutely clear what were legitimate theories in such Objective Content, citing, as I often do, James Clerk Maxwell's Aether - a fictional Analogistic Model composed of Vortices and Electrical Particles, from which he directly derived his Electromagnetic Equations - forms with enough Object Content that we still successfully use them today.

And, this also says something quite profound, and generally not understood, about how equations are derived.

For, most equations are what I term Pluralistic Equations, derived initially from intensely pluralistically-farmed experiments, and thereafter wedded to Pure Equations from Mathematics by adjusting the Equation's constants to make them fit. And, that is very different indeed from Maxwell's Holistic derivation of an equation direct from a Physical Explanatory Theory.

Indeed, elsewhere, and at another time, working with the mathematician Jagan Gomatam, I was able to use equations he had developed directly from theory to do with the beating of the Human Heart, which in contrast to equations as a consequence of experimental data, actually were able to demonstrate both Fibrillations and Heart Attacks.

But, how many modern day physicists do things that way round, and thereby actually knowing why it gets closer to the Truth?

Now, Wilczek certainly doesn't define Empty Space as I do - filled with an undetectable Universal Substrate of Leptons. But, he does insist that Empty Space is filled with something material.

His current model uses Quantum Fluctuations, but both theories are identical functionally in how they explain both Pair Productions and Pair Annihilations: and crucially Wilczek clearly admits to having the same stance upon the necessity of such currently-valid Analogistic Models!

Now, as to where Wilczek and this theorist differ, it is certainly in exactly what materiality, which actually fills the vacuum, and is both affected-by what is happening to it, and consequently what those effects upon it do to things contained within it. With literally only directly undetectable Quantum Fluctuations, we can commend any attempt for The Theory to directly determine any subsequently arrived at formulae, but at the same time, it is almost impossible to theorise as to what that form is likely to be.

While, in contrast, with this theorist's known Universal Substrate Units, both aspects can be adequately and correctly carried through to completion - that is for the full-detail, Analogistic Model (á la Maxwell) from which to generate the necessary Equations, as Maxwell did from his Model of the Aether.

There is much more in Wilczek's lecture than I have dealt with here. Some of his philosophical points are particularly powerful...

Clearly, the replacement of Quantum Fluctuations, and, of course, my Analogistic Model of the Universal Substrate, has yet to be achieved.

But the stance is right!