Dark Matters Loom

Anish Kapoor, Cloud Gate (2006) made of light-absorbing Vantablack

In a recent New Scientist (3206) article on Dark Matter, we are presented with what passes for Sub Atomic Physics today, namely:-

Particles crossing to our world could open a portal to the dark-matter realm
We've identified particles that could secretly cross from the regular world to the shadowy realm of dark matter.

No, you are not reading a treatment for the latest far-fetched Science Fiction blockbuster, but the introduction to the musings of several leading modern physicists worldwide.

WE KNOW it is out there. It makes up the bulk of matter in the universe and sculpts its grandest features with a hidden gravitational hand.
And yet, despite a long campaign to expose it, the mysterious cosmic architect known as dark matter continues to evade detection.

New Scientist (3206) - this publication is really starting to read like a comic 

So.... How did they get to this point, and what is it that is determining their problems? Well, it is a very long story, which is far too voluminous to include in a short review such as this (as I have discovered to my cost).

But, it IS a major crisis, and if it isn't remedied immediately, it will join the current Economic and Political Crises in danger of somersaulting our World into oblivion! And, these increasingly desperate Crises are not as unconnected as they seem.

We forget just how recently Mankind began to construct their modern intellectual disciplines, and how certain it would be that many wrong-turnings would definitely be unavoidable, in that endeavour, and their correcting would never be easy, or even fully achievable. For, Mankind was not designed, beforehand, for any particular purpose (certainly not for understanding the universe), but actually evolved within circumstances that were wholly independent of Mankind's existence. Any actual development was not a matter of decisions made by anyone, but the Natural Selection of that organism within the conditions it encountered.

But, NOW, with all these crises happening together, especially when Money and Power are steering the ship, it means that vested interests will oppose vital solutions, if they can be found at all, for such changes will inevitably be to their total detriment.

In past intellectual crises in Science, they were still painful and difficult to resolve, but progress was usually made eventually, unless, of course, they were also bound up with political power, as with the Church in certain historical cases. 

Galileo made crucial scientific discoveries that upturned the entire discipline and upset the powerful Catholic Church.
He was charged with heresy and spent the rest of his life in prison.

So though, as a scientist and philosopher, I will be attempting to deal with the total mess that currently confronts Science today, I may not be listened to, as other cataclysms may dominate, and the path I indicate may be made impossible to pursue in the ensuing circumstances!

Two different contributions have determined this current crisis in Cosmology.

First, there is the relative inaccessibility of the Cosmos we attempt to study: we cannot experiment upon it, as we can with many other more accessible parts of Physics.

And second, the primary tool for Cosmology - Physics, has now finally abandoned Explanation for the supposed Essentialities of Formal Mathematics.

It has, therefore, switched from Materialism back to Idealism (did God write this Math!?) - and switched from investigating concrete Reality, to studying abstract Ideality- the study of Pure Forms alone, presumably as the sole determinators of Everything in the Universe!

And, if that wasn't bad enough, the key intellectual disciplines of Mathematics, Formal Logic and Science are all wrongly-based upon the Principle of Plurality, which deals only with qualitatively-fixed components, and their quantitative variation. So that Science, for example, is supposed to be determined only by eternal Natural Laws. And, therefore, Real Development is replaced by a mere Complexity of pre-existing Laws.

And, Contradiction always and only ever spells Falsity!

But, the achievement of Plurality, for it surely was a step forward 2,500 years ago, is now becoming a major liability, and actually prohibits any real Understanding of Qualitative Emergences, such as those of Life, and then much later, that of Consciousness.

And, in the current topic of Cosmology, with its extremely slow tempo, and yet its breathtaking temporal scope, we cannot avoid the noticing of clear qualitative developments: they are everywhere. Indeed, remarkably, laid out, surrounding us out in Space, is a veritable History of the Universe, caused by the finite Speed of Light, as the further we look into the distance, the further we can look back in time. 

In addition to which, occasional Cosmic cataclysms, like Supernovae, and different stages in the evolution of Stars, are also available from various times in the past (but seen now).

But, and this is important, only snapshots of instances in the past are available, so as with the fossil record and the genetic record, all the involved actual processes of change are NOT directly available, so the interpreting trajectories are always, to some extent at least, purely speculative (leading to the sorts of quotes we saw earlier). 

The actual material determinators happened both somewhere else, and at a time no longer available.

The other source of data which skews our understanding is the modern, massive experiment machines like the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), where high speed collisions of "Elementary" Particles can be arranged-for and then observed and analysed.

Now, unsurprisingly, this latter evidence is considered to be "exactly" what may have been the case in the early moments of the Universe. So, overall, astronomical observations, plus accelerator experiments on Earth, as well as Mankind's discovery of how to cause Nuclear Fission and Fusion, were all used (along with Pure Speculation!), to construct the supposed Early History of the Universe - in particular commencing with The Big Bang.

But, totally unavoidably, too many premise-errors would necessarily scupper the possibility of those speculations being at all well-founded:

First, Plurality decreed that the Natural Laws would be the same throughout that whole period of Development, which is certainly NOT true. Second, all the components used in relating those developments are always the exact-same, or closely-related to those we know now. Third, the strictly pluralist view would also be unable to reveal, at the right key times, the creation of the wholly new, via Emergences, without which no real understanding of the trajectory involved could ever be possible. Fourth, the full richness of a true holist mix of simultaneous factors would not be even contemplated, nor are their consequent productions of Stabilities, Crises and even Total Collapses, not-to-mention the concluding crucial creative-constructive-phase producing the entirely new.

With such a constipated premise as Plurality, the true glory of the actual trajectory of Change could never ever even be approached.

Now, as a "review" of this New Scientist article, you might have expected a comprehensive account of all the current positions upon this "area of study". But, if I did that, I would only be perpetuating this pointless discourse. For, as those involved have already shot themselves firmly in the foot, and are hobbling away in a doomed-to-fail direction, I have, unavoidably, had to address two key things only.

First, the mistaken premises and methods of all current Physics, and second, the possible Nature of Dark Matter! So, having briefly dealt with the former, there remains only to establish an alternative explanation for the Nature of Dark Matter.

The answer may well lie in Substrate Theory.

I have spent some considerable time demolishing the Copenhagen idea of Wave/Particle Duality, by explaining-away all of its consequent anomalies with a simple idea. Wave/Particle duality is clever workaround for the fact that we can't detect the Substrate - merely by the re-introduction of a material Particle moving within an undetectable Universal Substrate, with the disturbances caused by that Particle, delivering the wave-like aspects via actual real Waves in the Substrate, and changing the whole set of phenomena into both initially direct and later recursive interactions between the two.

The main problem, in delivering this Substrate, was to define joint particles that would be so undetectable, yet entirely capable of delivering the full set of observed effects: and this was ultimately achieved using mutually-orbiting pairs from the full set of Leptons.

Now, without also delivering the full results of that extensive research here, we can still, at least, consider what impact that research has upon the possible Nature of Dark (which means undetectable) Matter!

For the Substrate could, itself, BE the fabled Dark Matter, or alternatively, if that doesn't work physically, the same sort of research that was applied to defining the Units of the Universal Substrate could instead be directed to other possible mutually-orbiting pairs of Elementary Particles, similarly undetectable. 

Dark Matter needs investigating properly!

Finally, it must be made absolutely clear what "modern"  Sub Atomic Physics has done to this once superb discipline.

In their reductionist commitment to the bottommost units of Matter as the basis for explaining everything else, Physics was committed entirely to the study of literally invisible so-called Elementary Particles, and studying them almost exclusively via Accelerators and Colliders. 

And this had deleterious effects. The abandonment of Physical Explanation, and its inadequate replacement by Mathematics, which because of its pluralist, simplifying and idealist nature, could only act as a means of revealing the Nature of Ideality, and NOT of concrete Reality - or its seemingly hidden matter.

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Time

“Time is invention and nothing else.” Henri Bergson

Time is not a ticking clock. It is the measure of qualitative change. 

The Time Machine (1960)

A recent BBC Horizon programme, which purports to be a serious, if popularising regular Science event, took an odd and askance view of Time, even including Time Machines and the possibility of building one. But, in the part of the programme I was able to catch, only one scientist, Lee Smolin, addressed Real Time.

For, Time is what separates incremental, quantitative science, from developing, indeed, evolutionary science: The Science of Qualitative and Revolutionary-Creative Changes. The rest talked at length about "Time" as it occurs in Formal Equations, in other words, NOT time in the Real Concrete World, but "Time" as it exists in Ideality, (along with the "Dimensions of Space", which in Ideality can be as many as you like) within the world of Pure Forms alone- the realm of Mathematics, a totally pluralist world, which can only be made to approximate to Reality in very carefully filtered-and-constrained Stabilities. For, Reality-as-is is most definitely holistic and NOT pluralistic.

Now, one of the features of the Pluralist Stance, apart from its tenet of a World composed only of eternal Natural Laws, and hence wholly excluding any possibility of Qualitative Change, or any means of explaining real development, has therefore, to be the surprising inclusion of Time at all (apart, that is, as relegated to a purely quanitative variable - as with everything else in that realm). Indeed, even when Time is included in Equations, it is only as just such a variable: "Time simply passes, proceeds incrementally, as do all other variables along with it!".

Hence, such time doesn't change qualitatively, into something else: it is more like an alternative "ruler" of merely quantitative changes in something else! Like the dimensions of Space, that of Time is similar, merely an overall context - an independant stage upon which everything happens.

Yet, Qualitative Changes do indeed happen to other variables, and the precise times when they occur are important. Indeed, using a particular quantitative variable to signal exactly when a qualitative change is due to happen (from prior experience), became a regular totally non-causal pragmatic frig within all scientific reasoning.

Absolutely NO explanation would be involved, just a pragmatic if-then insertion to a wholly new situation where the change was already ready and waiting to be involved. Indeed, sometimes a whole set of techniques can be recorded exclusively using such flips and no explanations whatsoever, in producing a required result: it is termed Technology! And, as one of my disciplines is Computing, (particularly Computers-in-Control), I am well aware of its value in Computer Programming too.

But, Time has, in all of these situations, been totally dredged of all its qualities, which are necessarily-intrinsic to literally all Qualitative Changes, but never revealed. We see Time as merely an accumulating number - an abstraction - much more easily handled, than its necessary role in many qualitative changes.

Let us take a crucial one - Birth!

In every single second, literally millions of new living entities are born.

The time since their conception is, for each type of entity relatively fixed, but it cannot be wholly embodied in a ticking clock. Indeed, what must be going on, has to be a complex, multi-interacting set of processes of development that can only deliver its result, when all of those finally deliver-together a viable entity, which is then born!

What results is an integrated and persisting, self-maintaining system, in which vast numbers of contributing components, are now integrated and co-operating parts.

With human beings, we may give the period of pregnancy a quantitative-length of 9 months, with the Birth happening at the end of such a period, but what has had to actually occur, in turning a single fertilised egg into a new human being, is the caused development of an amazing system: that 9 months is only an overall measure in time of that miraculous, time-involved, real process!

Time is not just a significant quantitative measure of time-elapsed, but what is involved in every contributing process, and affecting inter-relationship in allowing all of that system to deliver appropriately. And, the final Time will be intimately determined by the conditions involved: the overall time will vary dependant upon different conditions. And sometimes those conditions are not fulfilled, and the whole process is aborted automatically.

The arguments involved here may seem somewhat laboured, but the intention is to bury the myth that Time is a mere incremental measure, and consider it as intrinsic in all holistic systems of processes delivering qualitative change.

The above ideas can only mean something significantly new within a Holist stance, rather than the usual pluralist stance, and the clearest example of the differences are delivered in the events involved in major significant qualitative changes - that is within Emergent Episodes, when systems of interacting processes actively and causally precipitate the final flip into a new mode.

And, widening the study drastically over longer time periods, and significantly different Levels of Reality bring both the Origin of Life, and its subsequent Evolution, and even Social Revolutions into consideration too. At such scales Qualitative Changes are the only significant ones, and alone enable Real Explanations for what is going on.

Perhaps the most revealing and crucial System of such processes, is that revealed by this theorist, in his description of what he termed Truly Natural Selection, as it pertained to the evolution of non-living processes in the necessary precursor developments to the amazing Origin of Life itself.

Indeed, it was only in addressing this essential Phase that he, himself, finally realised the only way that usually separate-and-transitory chemical processes could finally become both continuing and integrating factors, and, without which, Life could never have emerged!

NOTE: Inspect any diagram of Metabolic Pathways to see just how amazing that chemical system had to become before Life could become possible.

All the metabolic pathways which happen inside every living cell

The Substrate

A material explanation for Einstein's space-time?

Properties Outwith and Within

A Matter of Context?

One of the arguments in Einstein's Theory of General Relativity concerns situations in which some system is wholly and uniformly contained within a higher and vastly larger system - like Jupiter and its Moons existing within the Sun-dominated Solar System. For, such a sub-system, as that of Jupiter, then behaves, to some extent, as if no overall super-system were present.

Einstein addressed such situations by talking of elevators and the effects, upon what may be contained within such, by the external contexts. He even considers the situation where the elevator is falling, compared with one with no context at all. His arguments turned me to thinking about my proposed undetectable, yet-definitely-material universal Substrate, for this might be considered in a similar way?

But, as distinct from Einstein's elevators - and their "contexts", my considered case would actually be full of its own composing Substrate Units, so any such local sub-system would be acting within them too. Clearly, this might well not be analogous to Einstein's Thought Experiment!

For, though my suggested Substrate could contain, within all the adjacent units of any contained sub-system, an overall "Gravity Field" - literally equal for all the elements of that sub system, it too would, presumably, also continue to act internally as if NO external field were present.

But, Einstein's Gravity Field was quite definitely continuous!

NOTE: So, in doing the above, am I perhaps just repeating that ancient error revealed by Zeno of Elea in his famous Paradoxes? For, that revealed the possible impasses produced by the two different assumptions of Continuity and Descreteness. So, are we here assuming that same Continuity, as of a "Space-Time Continuum" with its associated infinities, as in the Achilles and the Tortoise Paradox?And, even assuming the presence of the basic function of Propagation in a Substrate, which is entirely without either moving-carrying-units OR elastic interconnections between such units. And, explaining which turned out to be the most difficult problem to solve for that proposed Substrate...

So, returning to my original considerations, from that important diversion, the question seemed to be, "Is that because the very same forces act upon all local elements equally and hence, internally, at least, have no differentiating effects?"

For, the problem is complicated by whether energy is used from real, affected substrate units, OR whether the Substrate is more like Einstein's Space-Time continuum, with its distortion just directing movements in accordance with the "continuum slopes" - in other words involving NO distributed, stored-and-then-driving gravitational energy at all?

As the reader will no doubt have guessed, this theorist is not enamoured of idealist abstractions to explain concrete effects in Reality!

What seems much more likely is that a Universal Substrate of undetectable, but definitely material elements, itself performs the physical effects that Einstein abstractly attributes to his abstract Space-Time Continuum!

BUT, at the same time, such a stance, as I am proposing, does not throw away the clarity often achieved by formal representations of physically existing entities and phenomena, as we use them across, mostly effectively, ALL phenomena. However, it clearly also does not equate them as being identical!

For, such things are merely formal reflections of the real concrete World, but contain only pure mathematical, and hence unchanging, forms, and in order to work, the conditions pertaining MUST be appropriately unchanging. In both experiments and production, such necessary conditions are ensured by the scientists or producers involved, but on a cosmological scale such stability is quite naturally almost exactly delivered!

So, as with all Science and Technology over the last millennia, such formal relations will hold as long as the assumed, and usually such man-made, contexts are maintained.

Now, the Theory of the Universal Substrate, as suggested by this theorist, has already discounted the Copenhagen Interpretations of the confusing phenomena produced by the Double Slit Experiments, and has also even purely physically explained Quantized electron orbits in atoms too - both achieved by the assumption of this particular Universal Substrate. So, clearly, the next major task, looming large, must be the tackling of Einstein's General Relativity, physically, as has already been recently completed for Quantum Theory, and the mapping of the purely formal equations in both areas onto truly physical explanations!

New Special Issue: The Philosophy of Physics

Special Issue 56 - The Philosophy of Physics

Read it here

I’ll get the first controversial statement out of the way: There is no Philosophy of Physics!

At least, not any longer.

Having committed myself to the study of Physics some 60 years ago, I chose it as my specialism at University entirely because, historically, the discipline had always tried to both understand and fully explain reality - I was then presented with a worldwide major retreat from such essential objectives, established mainly by the triumph of Bohr and Heisenberg at Solvay some years before, and the gradual acceptance of their Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, literally everywhere.

It was, of course inevitable, though I couldn’t see it at the time.

The seeds had been set long ago, with our generally pragmatic approach to investigating the physical world, which was only further complicated by the inclusion of Idealism from Mathematics, and of a Plurality underlying all attempts at explaining phenomena.

From its very outset Physics was actually a strange amalgam of Materialism, Idealism and Pragmatism, a distorted reflection of the world which could only prosper while its discoveries could be profitably used. And, the methods of carefully cultivating experimental situations (to make them easier to study), and idealistically mapping pure ideal forms onto studied situations, began to wrest the subject from its explanatory role, from ‘Natural Philosophy’, and into that of mere technological implementation.

In the end, the old explanations began to fail, and were abandoned for the seeking of equations. Attempts to truly understand reality were jettisoned, and what had been Physics greatest asset was lost.

I am convinced that quantum mechanics is not a final theory. I believe this because I have never encountered an interpretation of the present formulation of quantum mechanics that makes sense to me. I have studied most of them in depth and thought hard about them, and in the end I still can’t make real sense of quantum theory as it stands

Lee Smolin, 2005

Time Reborn by Lee Smolin

A very interesting look at the crisis in physics by Smolin

I've been reading a great book by Lee Smolin entitled Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe. In it Smolin seems to reject the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, and contemporary physics generally, for very similar philosophical reasons to myself.

This quote from a book review by The Guardian seems to sum his position up rather neatly:

the reason physicists have come to reject the reality of time is that they have been bewitched by the beauty and success of the mathematical models they use into mistaking those models for reality. For timelessness, though not really a feature of our world, is a feature of mathematics...

and

To think like this, Smolin claims, is to forget, or to deny, that the objects of mathematics – numbers, curves etc – do not exist, whereas physics concerns itself with what does exist, and, in reality, in the domain of things that do exist, time is inescapable.

Very interesting stuff. More to follow on this soon...

Art: The Articulation of Form

Bodies against time by Étienne-Jules Marey

With the wide acceptance of Form as the sole determinator of Content, on the one hand, contrasting with the alternative view, which makes all Causes as only due to Content-and-context, and, in addition, as the determinator of Form, on the other - we clearly have contradictory premises as to what is primary in determining the Nature of Reality.

The two positions boil down, in philosophical terms, to opposite stances, namely -

Form-first delivers to us Idealism, while
Content-first constitutes Materialism.

But, what Forms do we deal in, and under what system of rules do we use them? Rigorously, we have only the set of Perfect Forms - that is those initially observationally and pragmatically-established, and, thereafter, those rationally-developed via a Purely Formal System of Manipulations that we term Mathematics. But, is that, really, a viable means of revealing all of Reality?

It was, of course, the very-first coherent and consistent attempt, by the Ancient Greeks (circa 500 BC), but it was also a truly revolutionary move, for though literally NO Perfect Forms exist as such in Reality-as-is, the development was extremely significant for another key aspect of what was necessarily involved.

Let us, first, be crystal clear as to what these crucial Forms were.

The more obvious Forms were Squares, Circles and Triangles - but even more non-real entities were, what they, in turn, were composed of - namely "Lines of zero thickness" and "Dots of zero extension". What on earth was going on?

Josef Albers, 'Formulation Articulation I & II', 1972,

It came from, in fact, the already common practice of Simplification - employed in order to make things easier to consider, manipulate and construct into ever more comprehendable, complex systems. BUT, and this is very important, these "modifications" were of a very special type: they attempted to extract only the "truly key features" from real situations, and into pure embodiments of a kind of assumed to be driving-or-causing essence.

They were in fact Abstractions.

Now, Abstractions were not, even then, wholly new: they had been used for millennia to describe animals of the same species - characterised by common, easily-identified visual appearances, and attached-to each uniquely-named variety. But, what the Greeks did was significantly different! Their extractions were Perfect-Forms, not merely a commonly-applicable description. For, such were each individually considered as the unchanging essence of all things possessing that form, for though it NEVER occurred in Reality, as such, it could be used, effectively, for all occurring versions of that shape: it was indeed an Idealisation, as well as a simplification of what was being dealt with.

NOTE: Before going any further, we really must note both the advantages and disadvantages of all such Idealisations. For, as they were never enough to completely define any particular, real-world-thing, they, therefore, would definitely, at some point, fail in being "appropriate descriptions", once crucial aspects - omitted from any idealisation, came into determining prominance for some uninconsidered reason. But, on the other hand, such idealisations would be extremely useful, and could deliver reasonably accurate predictions, and even guide successful productions, whilever the idealised description remained "apt"!

So, in a particular sense, it was a very real advance, for though it was always an approximation of concretely-existing versions of this form, the general relations, extracted from manipulations with this Perfect Form, were indeed "just-as-true" of all such other concrete versions of it too! But, though all this was pragmatically validated, as was then usual, by, "If it works, it is right!", we have to ask what did actually determine that Form? Was it built-in from the outset by an all powerful creator? Or, were they the only possible shapes that things could take?

Clearly, Idealism is a construct and NOT a revelation of natural essence! So, if this is the case, the Materialist alternative must always be employed to attempt to answer the question "Why?". concerning the reasons for the particular Forms of entities. Yet, in addition, it also must be fully explained why the idealist route, nevertheless, still enabled effective predictions and productions to be achieved.

Now, all this has been fully addressed elsewhere in writings by this philosopher. So, those, requiring that, are directed to SHAPE Journal on the Internet, and its many issues concerned with The Philosophy of Mathematics.

But here, the priority, as the title of this post asserts, is the consideration of "Art is the Articulation of Form" as claimed by the Italian painter and sculptor, Amedeo Modigliani!

Head by Modigliani

If Art was fully-delivered just by Form as such, it would mean something very different to what Modigliani suggested, and as a sculptor, myself, I was immediately sure that he had got-it-right in his "definition". For, basic Perfect Forms, as found in Mathematics, simply cannot say much more than is conveyed within the particular shape's formal definition.

But, just how one form transforms into another can display a rich variety of varying alternative causes: while in music a particular rhythmic pattern and tonal sequence transforming into something different can contain the subtlest of emotional or even causal content.

Perhaps surprisingly, while Form as such was never capable of explaining anything, the articulations between different forms could remarkably reflect the transformation of causes delivering that transition.

That may not seem much, but, to arrive at such a conclusion, would be incorrect! For, Art is not an indulgence or a mere entertainment (as in "Strictly Come Dancing" for example)! For, many millennia it has been an alternative means of communication of things not adequately dealt with by other means.

In a sense it is the oldest-holist-attempt to deliver aspects of a changing Reality - indeed, the very opposite of pluralist forms and even explanations!

It can, at its best, capture Reality-in-transit, and perhaps this is because it subordinates Form to "Time"?

Forms are fixed patterns, often extractable only by stopping the flow of Time and taking a "snapshot" of the revealed (if momentary) pattern!

From Ghost Moments by Michael C Coldwell

NOTE: My son, Michael Conflux Coldwell, is a photographer and musician, and he addresses the seeming limitations of "the photograph" by choosing as subjects situations wherein significant, over-time changes are there in the frozen-yet-haunting content. And, in a recent exhibition delivered many such photographs, as well as a movie, accompanied by his own music and sounds, which dramatically converted photographs into suggestions or even repositories of change.

AM by Conflux Coldwell

Now, Art attempts to remedy any simplifications by building "time-perceptions" into the art-work: it is why Music is so transcendental, because it directly uses Time, itself, to express what it is attempting to communicate. But, even static, unchanging Works-of-Art, nevertheless attempt to enforce a trajectory of perception, as the observer is led-through the work over time.

As a sculptor myself, I, like Modigliani, attempt to deliver two time-based perceptions for my audiences: I deliver changes via the varying positions of observers as they move around the piece! But, I also communicate change, precisely as Amedeo describes it - as the articulation (or changing) of one form into another - via various sorts of micro trajectory across the surfaces of the piece.

As a young convert to Sculpture as an artform, it isn't surprising that my first serious piece was a re-creation of a Head by Modigliani, and my favourite sculptor very quickly became Henry Moore!

Oval with Points by Henry Moore