Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the purest of them all?
Mathematics isn't what people think it is.
Even its greatest exponents have little idea what their discipline is and where it came from.
In again watching Leonard Susskind's continuing Lecture Series from Stanford University on Quantum Mechanics; he spends most of a particularly intensive Lecture upon Pure Mathematics, establishing Complex Numbers as "Descriptors of Reality".
But what they really are, as he effectively demonstrates, (though that is most certainly NOT his intention!) are pure Abstractions from Reality. And most certainly NOT a "full & comprehensive reflection (with nothing omitted & nothing added) of Reality", but instead a:-
Mirror-like reflection
- losing most of what is intrinsically involved, in order to deliver a dramatically simplified version, which both merely and exclusively deliver a virtuality, totally without its actual determining causal content, and as such conforming ONLY to a set of Rules (as in a Game), which make what it does deliver mutually consistent with one another , BUT NOT for any intrinsic causality, but instead due to that set of Rules, independent of the Reality that was the real Causal Origin.
Now as a highly competent Mathematician, myself, I, long ago switched my allegiances to Physics, for its very different Basis as a Science of Reality-as-is! It (historically, at least) always attempted to explain things as well as describing them; and in so doing was regularly forced to correct and even extend its concrete premises, in order to remain subject to its key purposes.
But what is it about Mathematics that makes it inadequate in actually explaining Reality fully? And how does it' universal utilisation in the Sciences, distort our view of the Universe?
It was discovered in the Greek Intellectual Revolution of the 5th century BC by assuming all relations between Forms to be permanently FIXED (as they must be to enable a Formal Mathematical Rationality possible) - and this was much later embodied in the Principle of Plurality in which all such concepts are necessarily permanently fixed, for, by doing so, a fairly easily achieved self-consistent Logic as its main means could be guaranteed.
And this very first Intellectual Discipline of Mankind was so successful within Mathematics, that it was also illegitimately exported, wholesale, to both General Reasoning and all the emerging Sciences, crippling both of their attempted applications to a Clearly Evolving Reality.
Susskind constantly confirms my definition of mathematical Rationality both regularly and clearly throughout this lecture, as he extends the idea of Complex Numbers, entirely, exclusively and openly in this very way. But mentions NO actual Physics whatsoever.
Having seen many of his other Youtube Lectures, it is clear that Susskind's unifying basis for Everything he is concerned with is Mathematics: it alone Drives the World! And, he regularly sails well beyond the Three Dimensional Limits of Reality, legitimately with Time, but thereafter totally illegitimately with everything else. As long as the Determining Integrity of the reasoning is maintained, in the mathematical way, all can be stuffed into this same model!
And, of course, once everything becomes symbols on the page, related solely via Mathematical Logic, the concrete aspects fade into insignificance, enabling all sorts of Physically illegitimate reasons to justify wholly Pluralist so-called "Theories"!
Now this transformation of Physics is absolutely crucial, because the essential policemen of that Science, The Theorists, had always been absolutely essential to keep the pragmatic Technologists in their midst, in check via the physical Causality of their Theories. But, with the increasing triumph of the Mathematicians within those theorists, the whole approach in Theory was converted to wholly Pluralistic Mathematical Formulae.
Physics is being totally castrated by these changes!
And in a career-long struggle to reverse this tendency, this committed theorist had to spend the rest of his career, fighting these major inadequacies via extensive diversions into Philosophy, both of Mathematics itself, and of Physics, Chemistry and Biology, in order to find the answers, which only finally came to fruition in 2019 after many different research projects:
The Processes and Productions of Abstraction,
The Philosophy of Mathematics,
Truly Natural Selection,
The Theory of Emergences,
Substrate Theory
and finally the Critique of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, which took a considerable amount of time, and which have all been published in SHAPE Journal over the last 10 years, and are available for anyone to read for free.
But when will other Scientists have this same realisation about Mathematics?
The many inaccessible fissures-and-cracks, inherent in the basic philosophical stance of an underlying Idealism, seem to be readily maintained, even though the more obviously wrong aspects of this, may be soon dispensed with.
And, it occurs for the very same reasons as why "The God of the Gaps" still survives, despite the many unstoppable successful onslaughts of a seemingly all-conquering Materialism and Science.
For, such extreme and difficult areas always seem to be the last refuges for Idealist Prejudices.
Let us briefly list the more obvious exemplars of these suvivors!
First-and-foremost were the many as yet unexplained areas of Reality, particularly to do with those diverse origins of things or situations: for in this context religious "explanations" have always abounded, and were also even strongly touted as of general possible influence "Elicted by Prayer" - and encouraged by how more numerous were the participants, or even coming from a previously established "Chosen Few", for then much more likely, would there be a favourable intervention to implement the request!
But, these were removed, one-by-one, by the march of ever-increasing Human Understanding, and the constant recurrence of failures for the divine to respond!
So the "Yes, but!" exceptions had to be made to retreat, ever more deeply, into the most difficult to investigate, extreme limits of Human Explanation. Indeed, one where those areas of "explanation" could so easily trail off into infinite Elipsis ...................!
The most obvious concept eliciting such obscurantism was, of course, Infinity!
Cut, equally, it could also reside at the other totally opposite extreme regions, of the infinitesimal.
We certainly see a lot of Idealism in Quantum Physics.
By far the most effective means of dispensing with problem areas, was achieved when the Ancient Greeks arrived at the solution of Mathematical Logic - a system which contained only Fixed Etneral Laws. This was extended to all the other Disciplines of Thought, which then existed, which were found to only be revealed by effectively suppressing all-except-one, in a straight-jacketed experimental approach, which we now term as Pluralist: and which were also and totally incorrectly, assumed that all natural situations were merely unaffecting additions of many such Fixed Laws.
This Sledge-Hammer approach, effectively made all real mutually-affecting sets of Factors impossible to reveal individually.
And, with such debilitating methods, the search for such hiding-places, for as yet unexplained repositories, was NOT thrown out, as it should have been. In fact, ever more such places are constantly being suggested, via Mathematical Idealism, from Multiverses beyond Infinity, to the impossibly too small to detect, at the opposite extreme.
PALLASITIC METEORITE FASHIONED INTO PERFECT SPHERE
Idealising Shape to Deal with Reality
An important question when attempting to effectively bend aspects of Reality to our own needs, occurs in how we effectively deal with a real entity's Form or Shape.
In the Natural World almost nothing is of a simple shape (even things that appear to be perfect spheres, such as moons and planets are only approximately of that form upon closer inspection).
Nevertheless, we do notice that their relations to the vertical and horizontal are clearly significant - so a rectangular brick sits stably upon horizontal ground on Earth, while a falling raindrop, having NO prevailing contact with anything else, appears naturally spherical in shape.
So, we are indeed aware of certain Ideal Shapes, and attempt to, wherever possible, consider natural things as somehow "made-up" of such Forms, primarily to make them easier to deal with - particularly in estimating numbers or amounts of certain components. Indeed, a field may be assumed to be approximately circular or rectangular, or even made up of a series of triangles.
And various properties of certain shapes can also be applied to things that relate to those shapes.
We even suppose that messy Reality, given perfect conditions, would naturally BE in those Shapes: they are considered to be the basic ideal, and component Forms of Everything!
Now, the detailed-and-relational study of those Ideal Forms was indeed comprehensively undertaken, but required a very different kind of simplifying-basal-abstraction to then be applicable to ALL Forms, and their inter-relationships.
For example, to deal with precise Positions (essential for all forms), a Point of zero extension was necessary - delivering a disembodied, but useful, Position. And, linear connections between such Points were also considered as being of Lines of zero thickness - disembodied Lines!
And, out of this wholly new Method of Simplifying-basal-Abstraction, a whole set of consistent inter-relationships proved to be possible. A New and powerful Discipline had been invented based upon this special form of abstraction. It didn't exist, as such, in concrete Reality, but delivered, nevertheless, both an idealised-and-relateable Reflection of Reality: and that greatly empowered Mankind, in using the things-involved to some intended purpose.
BUT, it did have a very grave flaw!
Unlike the concrete Reality these forms reflected, all its necessary-elements, and their inter-relationships were eternally fixed.
For they constituted Mathematics, which was a coherent-and-consistent, manipulative Discipline, about permanently qualitatively unchanging things: it conformed to the Principle of Plurality, which set all of these things and their properties in stone forever.
Now, it also could relate to Reality - BUT only if, reality itself was held perfectly still! In other words, it was a reasonable approximation to natural or artificially-achieved Stabilities, and nothing else.
But, totally-unconstrained and natural, concrete Reality obeyed a very different regime - that defined by the opposing Principle of Holism! And, that not only fully allowed qualitative change: it was indeed its motive force - the reason for its Natural Development and the unpredictable appearances of the Wholly New.
The Formal Logic implied by Plurality, was crucially different to the Dialectical Logic implied by Holism. And, here's the rub: the formal, pluralist Logic of Mathematics was immediately transferred, wholesale, and exactly-as-is, to Reasoning in general, so the lauded Formal Logic could NEVER deal with Qualitative Change: real Evolutionary Development was totally beyond it.
And, perhaps even more important, Pluralist Formal Logic, and its source, Mathematics, were both uncritically applied to Science too, as it also had emerged from the same Greek Intellectual Revolution Interlude. Indeed, a very particular Experimental Method just had to be invented, to take account of the Flaws imposed by the now established approach - for unfettered Reality would NEVER behave in conformity to the underlying premises of that approach.
But, Mankind already knew "what-to-do": they had been making things work pragmatically for many millennia, and the Neolithic Revolution had also taught them a new lesson - to rigorously control or farm a given situation, to make it perform better. So, they simplified, filtered and held still the Experimental situation, until their targeted relation became clearly displayed, and which they then extracted via a series of measurements over a given range.
And, as long as future use was limited to exactly those very same conditions, their extracted relation would hold, and a required outcome could be achieved.
But, applied in any other conditions it would always totally FAIL!
Clearly, an Artificial Stability had been constructed, in order to make the situation pluralistic, so that the pluralistically-acquired Law could be used. But, it was never the General Law that they assumed it was. For, they had assumed Plurality was natural. and was the same everywhere: and that it was just the confusing presence of other Laws that had caused the failures.
They were wrong!
It was, in fact, the modifying presence of other factors, which actually changed the Law being used -giving NOT a mere sum, over all the laws present, but a qualitative change in the said law, inflicted upon it by the other laws.
Laws are NOT eternal, but always determined by Context.
And, that isn't all that is involved, in the usual Pluralist methods in Science!
We also have the further distortion of even that flawed relation, when considered a supposedly General Relation from Mathematics, is fitted-up to the measured Data. For, this final processing into an Equation, also unavoidably imports Idealisation into that final version too.
Science is completely comprised of these idealisations and formalisations of reality - how does this skew our view?
In a couple of series of Lectures by Leonard Susskind of Stanford University, he totally defines both Sub Atomic Physics and Cosmology solely via his beloved Lingua Franca - Mathematics. "The Math" in question is wholly Pluralist, as defined in the Greek Intellectual Revolution of the 5th century BC, and is only actaully applicable to Pure Forms - that is Forms that are forever qualitatively FIXED.
It was the necessary FIXITY of ALL the relations involved that made possible the totally New devising of Simplified Relating Abstractions. For, it was these, and these alone, that enabled its intrinsic properties. But they are only true about such forms and literally nothing else.
So in promoting Mathematics to being this Lingua Franca (wholly illegitimately) of both General Reasoning and all of The Sciences, the Greeks were using that language where it could NEVER be used, unless all the features in those disciplines were somehow completely qualitatively unchanging: and that is impossible! So, in their both arriving at the defining of all Natural Laws as eternal, and, and thereafter, using ONLY a Pluralist Rationality in both Science and Reasoning to illegitimately manipulate those significantly distorted bases to deliver all the rational consequences generatable from those bases.
And the Forms of Mathematics are not only pluralistic, but also totally idealistic too: for they represent only the simplest, purest Forms, which only very rarely apply in the situations that are addressed. And take this incorrect stance even further, as the Pure Forms of Mathematics are fitted-up to an adjusted Reality, by using Pluralistically arranged-for experimental data to complete the felony!
Now our Stanford Lecturer covers his Physics and Cosmology entirely by means of Mathematical Rationality, which is of course wholly illegitimate in both areas.
His auditors ask him questions that require Physical answers, but he allows absolutely NO deviation to his own steadfast purpose: he admits of no possible deviations from his own super confident techniques. At best he arrives at echoes of conclusions aquired elsewhere, but NONE outside of the premise that Formal Equations encapsulate the whole truth, and all deviations from such Truths are the aberrations. The Essences are embodied in his maths-based manipulations. He is a competant mathematician, but a poor Physicist and Cosmologist!
Different "realities" made possible by the ideality of Mathematics...
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!
This edition deals with the various limitations of Mathematics from a variety of different scientific and philosophic angles, and features a fantastic guest paper by Abdul Malek, a Theoretical Physicist and Dialectician from Montreal, Canada.
It has taken me many decades to realise quite how limited Mathematics really is. I have the advantage of having been a gifted mathematician long before I switched to Physics. I made that significant change because Mathematics is a purely descriptive abstract discipline, of a very special type, and I wanted to really understand things rather than merely describe them in abstract form.
Unfortunately, as we shall see, Physics has become little more than an extension of Idealist Mathematics. Physics was converted into a Pluralist Science of Stabilities: and one driven idealistically by Purely Formal Laws.
No wonder it is in an untranscendable terminal impass as a Science! Indeed, we can legitimately go a great deal further, and insist that it no longer investigates Reality-as-is, but instead can only deliver a distorted formal reflection of that World: it is an investigation of Ideality - the infinite World of Pure Forms alone: the Abstract Realm of Mathematics.
In short, Physics can only be saved via a wholesale rethinking of Mathematics and how we use it.
Throughout the history of science, the attempts at explaining things correctly have been unavoidably stymied by who, and indeed what, we, the human interpreters, actually have access to, and how we interpret that knowledge.
For example, there isn't, nor could there be, any intrinsic human capability for addressing such questions - for Mankind was, initially at least, merely a clever ape, which for over 97% of its existence, as Homo sapiens, never got beyond the purely pragmatic tenet of "If it works, it is right!", as their only "intellectual" tool. Indeed, all of Mankind's congenital capabilities were selected-for only by Evolution, and, therefore, determined solely by Darwinian Natural Selection, involving just those capabilities enabling the species' overall survival and effective reproduction. Everything else has been only very recently attained - entirely socially - which only began within that last 3% of Mankind's total existence, and which could never be based upon the Full and Real determining Truth of the situation, as it wasn't then, and still isn't now available!
How on earth could this species of ape actually access such things? They only, and very-slowly, invented just a subset of the necessary words, and even that only over the last 1% of their existence, and as the History of Human Thinking, since then, has shown, every single gain has been, at its very best, approximate, and certainly never wholly sufficient. Nevertheless, though the bulk of their socially-created-language has always been exclusively descriptive, attempts at Explanation have been gradually improving, especially since the advent of Science.
But, the engine of Explanation has, unavoidably, always been Description. They could only start with Analogy!
For, though it does NOT deliver why things behave the way that they do: it does deliver how things behave, and in very different contexts that can at least begin to move the task towards common or similar causes.
Even thereafter, they could only proceed with natural and evidently-connected sequences of events. But, the actual reasons, or causes, for those connections were not usually evident.
So, in the early stages, such conceived-of causes were initially invented! And, it was only with the advent of a scientific search for actual, physical causes, that the process could be improved beyond the supernatural and the purely speculative.
Now, this contribution is evidently NOT an adequate treatise upon such questions, though they have been, and will continue to be, addressed fully elsewhere.
But, the above few points were clearly going to be indispensable here, if only to demolish the myth, that we already have all we need to Understand Reality: we are still a long, long way from that!
After all, it took almost 2,300 years for the more significant of the errors initiated by the Ancient Greeks, to at last be addressed by the German Philosopher Hegel. And, we still have, a further 200 years later, to comprehensively extend those crucial contributions to materialist Science - for they were in Hegel's hands entirely idealist!
So, in this paper, I will limit my objectives to a celebration, as well as a critique, of a certain PBS Space Time release on YouTube, which, I believe, shows where we are at in Modern Sub Atomic Physics at the present time!
Its topic is Virtual Particles.
And, it is remarkable how both that idea, and the alternative one that I have been pursuing (an undetectable Universal Substrate), perhaps surprisingly, actually appear to resonate-analogistically with each other, as attempted explanations of Reality at The Quantum Level!
First, the presenter tells of phantom particles appearing and disappearing in Space "literally in-and-out of nowhere"- the famous cases of Pair Productions and Pair Annihilations, involving one Electron and one Positron, present, perhaps, the best examples.
Now, elsewhere, similar virtual matter and antimatter pairs are also said to be created out of nothing, by "cheating the Universe", achieved by borrowing sufficient energy to do this, and paying it back by their almost immediate annihilation! And the Source for the energy required?
"It is the invisible Quantum Field!"
And also, near Black Holes, virtual matter and antimatter pairs of units are said to be split by the surrounding Event Horizon, to leave one IN, and the other OUT, consequently, overtime, delivering appreciable Hawking Radiation.
But, my own alternative explanation, for the former case, assuming an undetectable Universal Substrate, is achieved by involving, as crucial part of that Substrate, an undetectable joint-Unit, produced by the mutual-orbiting of the very same two sub-particles as are considered above. And, though these can absorb energy by the promotion of their inner orbit, too much energy will dissociate the union to deliver the two particles - free once again. Yet also, as part of that same stance, an appropriate encounter between two such free-moving, potential partners - of those same kinds - could cause their joint-capturing into a mutually-orbiting pair, and, therefore, become undetectable, apart, of course, from their effect as an energy-supplying Photon.
Indeed, all the Units of the undetectable Universal Substrate are conceived-of in that same, mutually-orbiting-pairs form, so energy can be internally held, and so will be generally available throughout the Substrate, from the promoted orbits of all such Units.
With such ideas, many problems consequently vanish!
And, with regard to the latter case, the suggested undetectable Universal Substrate will be absolutely Everywhere, and will both be affected by, and itself-affect the situations it encounters, including majorly transforming ones, where Substrate perturbations will cause all sorts of very different structural Phases, along with their differing consequent Effects.
E C Stoner Building reflected by Michael C Coldwell
Now, the main purpose of this paper is to compare Virtual Particles (particularly as described in the video above) with the Units of a suggested undetectable Universal Substrate.
For, the video's presenter describes Virtual Particles as - not being physical, but, instead, being our simplified and idealised mathematical representation of the quantum mechanical behaviour of Fields.
This is clearly the crux!
For, as physicists, we always have to explain things physically. The clue is in the name!
And, the Universal Substrate as defined by this theoretical physicist is entirely physical. The natures of its Units are such as to actually physically supply Fields as useable energy, both held-within and delivered-from, various structural re-organisations of the Substrate's mutually-orbiting-pair type units. Though, these Units, all of which being such mutually orbiting pairs of exactly opposite matter and antimatter Lepton sub-units, deliver either individually or over-local-populations, no obvious means of passive detection, they, nevertheless, are both effecting-of and being affected-by, conducive interlopers within their various different physical Phases or "Fields"
Problems
Now, the problem for consensus physicists has always been the clear existence of Wave-like effects when no Substrate capable of producing them is considered to be present.
The infamous Double Slit phenomena caused by, say, moving particles seems to be totally inexplicable.
So, particles were given Wave/Particle Duality to explain such phenomena.
But clearly, another alternative could be to re-instate a Substrate, like the Aether, but for it to be wholly undetectable due to its unique, though still entirely material, composition.
And, such a Thought Experiment was conducted, and surprisingly solved all the various anomalies of the full set of Double Slit Experiments. Undetectable or not, it would still both affect situations, and itself be affected by occurring phenomena within it.
But, physicists rather liked Totally Empty Space! It greatly simplified, and also made possible, all kinds of experiments - for attaining a vacuum, which was eminently possible, also "delivered" Totally Empty Space too. The presence of such a Substrate, especially as it wasn't detectable, would greatly complicate ALL experiments! For, all the usual perturbations as of other detectable substrates would occur here too.
And, in addition, the initial assumption of Plurality, at the very beginning of Mankind's intellectual concepts, had forced the absolutely essential, pragmatic farming of experimental situations, to greatly simplify, as well as select-for a particular targeted context with a single dominant factor, that would both clearly display, and then allow-the-extraction of that sought-for relation. And this was best achieved by pragmatists, who had learned how to do it effectively over a couple of millenna.
The theoretical physicists thus left it to their experimental colleagues to achieve the appropriate conditions, and, sometimes, to even extract the necessary data! Only then, did the theoreticians move in, armed increasingly with their "solve-all" discipline - Mathematics, to then find-a-form which they could fit-up to the acquired data.
So, with generations of such processes of simplification and idealisation, no-one wanted to reverse direction, and have to holistically juggle with multiple simultaneous varying factors, which had prevented development so completely in the distant past.
And finally, this technique had been justified by the assumption of the Principle of Plurality. which made the so-extracted relation into an eternal Natural Law-which isn't ever true!
Plurality may hold in Ideality, but never in unfettered Reality.
There are also many fundamental areas of Reality, which are still totally unexplained, particularly to do with Charge, Direction and Energy in Fields!
Now, the ever-present, yet never-explained properties of Attraction and Repulsion (usually linked to Charge) are clearly the major problem, for both my alternative explanations, and those based upon Virtual Particles.
They must attempt to provide the bases for a substitute to those non-physical, entirely-formal descriptions, at the very heart of the whole Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory.
For, that is a very old trick, indeed, and uses not a single causal explanation, but, instead, a whole range of probabilities, including counter-intuitive cases, to smuggle-in outcomes as selections from that range.
NOTE:A related argument is often proffered to counter supposed direction in the Evolution of Living Things, by purely random damage to Genes, certain cases of which, counter-intuitively and by-chance lead to development.
NOTE 2: To counter such "fixes" requires a philosophical discourse upon the opposing Principles of Plurality and Holism, which has been exhaustively pursued elsewhere, but would deflect us here from a more reachable and understandable, yet important objective for this paper.
Now, I will not pretend to be able to fully explain Attraction and Repulsion, but, once given an evident Force and its clear Direction, obviously evident by its affecting of a given entity, but I will deliver a full detailed Field, composed of of physical particles, with every single one containing, both the exactly correct amount of energy along-with-its-direction, sufficient to power the Field Effect at that point onto the affected interloper. and absolutely nothing will be taken from either the usually-supposed cause, or from the affected recipient: for they will both be totally unaffected in their prior-properties, by the actions of the Field! So, the active agent in establishing the Field, and supplying all the requisite energy, and its necessary direction, will be entirely due to the Units of the Universal Substrate alone.
Now, we must compare this with the Quantum Mechanical "explanation" supplied here as the consensus alternative, by this video.
Let us also attempt to deliver that alternative.
It is very different!
It involves an infinite number of possible amounts and directions, which are involved literally everywhere in the assumed Field, and are even simultaneously-present in every single, individual position, but this set includes every single possible option, including both Directions, but unlike this alternative Substrate version, the Copenhagen versions all have no physical container, nor are they specific: they instead are an immaterial infinite set - present everywhere!
And this appears to be an underlying vibrational(?) set of possibilities throughout the Quantum Field.
BUT, a real Physical Explanation can never really be even attempted: the best that can be delivered is a description of a kind of parallel universe, in purely mathematical forms!
In abandoning Explanation, these theoreticians are also abandoning Reality, for a parallel, merely-reflected world of Ideality- the realm of Pure Forms and absolutely nothing else.
Reflected World of Pure Forms by Michael C Coldwell
They can use their Mathematics, along with pragmatism - based upon experience - to deliver usable predictions, without any idea of what is actually going on, and why!
This is termed Technology! Science must attempt to actaully explain phenomena.
In working with Mathematics, they are exploring the truly infinite world of Forms available in Ideality, hoping to find appropriate patterns for everything that occurs in Concrete Reality. But, of course, that is impossible, as Reality is holist and consists of many sets of simultaneous factors all acting together, and influencing one another, in many different situations.
But, Physical investigations of these can be, at least partially, uncovered - that is what real investigative experiments are for!
In Ideality, you can't possibly know which of them: so you substitute, mathematically, all possibilities and hope, by a very different kind of experiment, to get enough multi-possible sets to pragmatically confirm, in each case, a particular probabilistic formal model.
But it will deliver useable Predictions ONLY.
It is, of course, an admission of Defeat for their chosen version of "Physics", and will only be ousted by the Creation of a Holist Physics to replace the dead-theoretical-end of current Pluralist Physics.
This article has now been published in SHAPE Journal, Special Issue 64
It is in fact a movie based upon a Fractal Form resolutely chased, level-below-level, as far as you might want, which, in this delivered world, can be repeated literally forever. Can we draw any conclusions from this demonstration? Does it make us think differently about our World?
Yet, it is certainly NOT about our real World!
It is, instead, an exploration of another physically-non-existing and, indeed, a wholly non-exist-able World, which we can artificially construct, and even display dynamically, entirely from formal elements selectively extracted from our World, but, absolutely-crucially, under a set of majorly affecting constraints, and extensively carried through a range of formal changes (totally unobtainable in our world, but achievable here) to deliver this video.
It is possible in that World, allowed by such a construction - the World that we term Ideality- the World of Pure Forms alone, which is, of course, the realm of all of Mathematics!
Now, the viewer may well be wondering why I am delivering this piece: what on earth is my purpose? Surely no-one would consider that the above clip, in any way reflects Reality-as-is: it is clearly an entertaining infinite construct - a journey into a constructed world!
But, it is, nevertheless, based upon a formal equation.
And, in our world we depend, all the time, upon such formal equations as the valid embodiments of eternal Natural Laws, extracted from our world in highly constrained and controlled situations.
There can be no doubt that these too exist-as-such only in that World of Ideality. And, Reality and Ideality are very different Worlds! Though Ideality contains Forms, and Forms alone, Reality also contains Everything Else, including all the physically existing Causes for how things behave within it. So, can formal equations from Ideality alone be sufficient to predict real world developments?
The answer surely has to be a resounding ,"NO!" Yet technologists, using such equations, can make it happen!
Do they just go into the real world, get the required stuff, and apply their equations to it? Of course not - for it would always fail!
Embedded in any production process is a great deal more than a formal equation - everything else, in a series of separate processes all with the correct substances, conditions, processes and their requisite equations, must be involved in each tightly controlled stage, to finally produce something like the proginal intension.
YET, what do theorists use to extend their theories? They stand at their blackboards, or scribble on paper, using Formal Equations alone!
Benoit Mandelbrot at the blackboard
To explain it to you, they just give you their equations - as the Laws-determining-what-will-happen! They manipulate their Laws to predict new possible outcomes, which they could never achieve without the technicians discovering all the concrete requirements absolutely essential to RESTRICT the real world outcome to that "required theoretical objective".
But, and here is the crucial difficulty, in Sub Atomic Physics and Cosmology, the theorists have abandoned physical explanations as self-kid, and now rely solely upon their Formal Equations alone.
So, what has this done to their "Science"?
Now, these words are not those of some uninformed outsider, indulging in his profound ignorance of what the fully qualified experts can do. On the contrary. I am, primarily, a qualified physicist and mathematician. I can do all this stuff, and have been doing so for many decades.
But, my many involvements extend greatly wider than these currently severely-restricted areas, and, crucially, include significant work, in many other disciplines, where I contributed expert understanding and skills in Computer Science and Systems Analysis - finally ending up as an expert in Computers-in-Control.
To pull all this together I have spent the last decade studying and contributing to Philosophy, so rather than an uninformed outsider, I am a very well-informed insider. And, have also been involved in a trenchant, philosophical evaluation, and, indeed, criticism of my professionally qualified areas of Physics and Mathematics. And, to cap all of this I spent a very profitable time assisting the excellent mathematician Jagan Gomatam with his investigations of iterative forms of specially adapted versions of Van der Pol's Equations applied to the beating of the Human Heart, and involving the Mathematical Chaos - closely related to the Fractals at the beginning of this essay.
Van der Pol style oscillator
So, my purpose is to accurately-position scientific investigations, AND their claimed-to-be eternal Natural Laws, in their true relation to actual Reality-as-is, and how we get them to both deliver our objectives, and allow us to interpret what they deliver.
Surprisingly, we neither investigate Reality-as-is,
nor use our extracted Laws in Reality-as-is!
For, our objective is to somehow extract, from a Complex and Real World, individual, separated-out and entirely formal (i.e. quantitative) relations, and then apply them to some desired end.
And, neither of these are possible in Reality-as-is!
The relation only actually exists, as such, in Ideality- the World of Pure Form alone! So, it is clear that a location in Reality will have to be significantly transformed to become as close as possible to Ideality.
And, this is achieved by:-
the isolation of that location,
and the removal of as many factors as possible,
along with the holding of certain others constant,
while leaving only the relevant variable savailable,
for the variation of one, and the measurement of the other.
This approximates that purposely-farmed-locationto what normally only occurs in Ideality, which we term - a forced conformity to the Principle of Plurality.
And, in such a situation, the relation, between the two remaining variables, is usually immediately evident, and can have a purely formal ideal relation, acquired from Mathematics, fitted-up to the obtained data set, to deliver a formal equation, designated as an eternal Natural Law!
But, there is a problem. It will never work in Reality-as-is! It can be made to work, but only if the exact conditions of its extraction are replicated for its use.
So, Fractals, and all that jazz, do not, as such, extend our reach in Reality, but only in Ideality: what they do is extend what we have in Mathematics, and are therefore merely extensions to that discipline alone. They have nothing to tell us about reality.
Since the necessary establishment of a Pluralist Conception of Reality by the Ancient Greeks, what has appeared to be the ever-expanding Understanding of Reality, has, in fact, been only an exploration of a very different, though-related, "world" called Ideality - involving only Pure Forms alone as its sole content - indeed, The Lauded Realm of Mathematics. And, in taking such a blinkered-course, Mankind has embarked upon such a flawed-and-contradictory path, as to both achieve sound technological gains, but, unavoidingly, along with them, a more-often-than-not totally unsound attempt at Understanding that Reality.
The problems reside in the confusion arising from the purely formal Reflections of Reality, delivered via Mathematics - occurring only-as-such in what we call Ideality, and seeing it as the supposed Determining Essence of Reality itself. For, while the real objective, concrete Reality outside includes everything that there is, along with its continuing necessary development: Ideality contains only Pure Forms alone - it is like a purely, formal mirror of Reality, reflecting only its current Forms, moment-by-moment, but absolutely none of its determining Causality.
Clearly, all the displayed patterns are delivered directly by observation and measurement, but none of the reasons for them are even implicitly resident in that data - only purely formal relations!
And, Form can never be a determining cause of anything: it us always only one of the consequences (effects) of such a cause.
For, Causality come from the properties of things, and the transforming processes they produce in given contexts. The student of Pure Forms alone can see patterns in viewed (reflected) space, and can even record sequences of them over time, but the seductive possibilities of the purely formal patterns extracted, and their valuable use in prediction, can, and indeed often do, take precedence over the much more difficult to extract causal relations.
And, significantly, such extracted formal patterns, having now been separated from their physical causes, can now only deliver a disembodied pattern, and hence always conform only to the Principle of Plurality - in which all relations are forever fixed, and, therefore, the only relations immediately evident are the quantitative ones of Mathematics, which can only relate the perfect versions of such forms to one another.
Indeed, it took Mankind thousands of years to even begin to do that!
For, it was necessary, usually, to initially study totally unchanging things - like the Heavens, and then, for literally everywhere else, to isolate situations, then significantly simplify and control them sufficiently, until some pure formalism was clearly evident - and to then extract and study that.
But, to even do that, required absolutely NO qualitative developments or changes to be allowed to occur, for any such extracted relation to be useable. Moreover, if Reality were Holistic (which it is), such extracted relations could never be counted upon outside of their artificially achieved, maintained and necessarily-stable contexts!
So, Mankind had to do two things to get-around the problem:-
1. They always replicated exactly the same conditions as had been achieved in extraction, as essential in any use!
2. They devised the Principle of Plurality to make such ideas "legitimate" theoretically!
So, though the farming of locations enabled great technological success: the pluralistic assumptions in Theory were bound to lead to contradiction, as Hegel had long ago demonstrated in classical Formal Logic.
NOTE: Surprisingly, Neil Turok, of the Perimeter Institute, placed Formal Logic ahead of Mathematics, when in fact it was the achievements of Mathematics that established the pluralistic basis for Formal Logic, and preceded it historically too!
Physicist & Director of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Neil Turok
Indeed, though we rightly laud the vital contributions of the Greeks, we rarely criticise the amalgam of contradictory stances that they thereafter bequeathed to Mankind. For, they certainly added to the prior Pragmatism of early Man, by bringing in both Idealism (from Mathematics) and Materialism (from observational Science). And, when, Plurality was also added to these, the overall stance was unavoidably piecemeal - consisting of many contradictory parts, with their laws only useable in particular contexts!
So, the sequence of Crises in Physics, culminating in the abandonment of Physical Explanation - with the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, was the direct and unavoidable consequence of the major flaws in the underlying Philosophy of Physics, and the backwards step to purely pragmatic, predictive objectives, on the one hand, and idealistic speculations on the other, which can, and indeed will, solve nothing!
“What is Reality? Who is interpreting it? And how are they managing that?”
This series of papers by philosopher Jim Schofield takes a fresh epistemological look at modern science and offers a strong critique of contemporary theory and practice, from a staunchly materialist standing.
It does so both through a dialectical examination of the discipline’s assumed premises and their historical origins in early philosophy, and through close criticism of a series of lectures by prominent theoretical physicist Nima Arkani-Hamed.
Surveying current Cosmology takes us by a well trodden route into a strangely unreal world!
But, it isn’t new to most physicists, either now, or in the past, because they always very easily slipped-sideways out of Reality, and into the much more conducive Parallel World of Pure Form, in their sincere attempts to formulate eternal, Natural Laws of Reality.
It was an alluring and thrilling move, for, on the very first step inside the portal to the new World, everything which had taken them there reappeared, but here with a veritably scintillating beauty! And, it appeared both understandable, yet also literally infinite: It was truly the Promised Land.
And, the reason for this was the settled-upon-ground that clearly promised answers to all the innumerable questions about The Nature of Reality. This assumed ground was that Everything-in-Reality was due entirely to a set of fixed Natural Laws, which added together in various amounts to deliver absolutely everything possible. This was initially just assumed, but later was encapsulted into The Principle of Plurality.
It hadn’t been found immediately, historically, for studying Reality-as-is had long proved both perplexing and difficult, but things gradually changed with Man’s ever increasing control over investigative situations, until finally the state was reached when Reality’s variabilities were finally under such control that the studied situations suddenly focussed remarkably into extractable relations, and this was the Key!
Beyond this door spread the whole world of Pure Form alone - Ideality, and our explorers crossed the threshold into the World of their dreams! Remarkably, this world had been glimpsed long before that point was reached: for it had occurred in Ancient Greece, when simple shapes were idealised, via drawing them, into perfect forms, which, thereafter, proved to be much more amenable to further study, yet close enough to the real versions to be very useful! Indeed Mathematics, as it came to be called, was the first intellectual discipline for Mankind, and set things up for the much later breakthrough into Experimental Science.
So, when the time came, to peer-through that open door, they already knew what they could do there, and didn’t hesitate to enter.
Yet Reality and Ideality are not the same thing at all!
Indeed, the forms that occur in Reality are caused by real physical and other properties and effects: they are consequences of real concrete causes. And to make things even more difficult, many such causes are always acting simultaneously, and holistically - everything can affect everything else, things can evolve - you cannot assume eternal Natural Laws at all.
So, in Reality, causes must be primary, and Form secondary - a symptom.
Also, each Form can be caused by various different confluxes of many possible causes - so finding-a-Form can never explain a phenomenon, it can only describe its observed ‘Shape’! And, crucially, Forms in Reality are variable: it is a holistic realm. While, all the Forms in Ideality are fixed: it is a pluralistic realm. Things in Reality are real, while those in Ideality are Pure Forms and nothing else.
Purely Formal models, such as Equations, do not reliably pertain in Reality: they are distorted simplistically, idealistically and pluralistically, and each one can relate to many different situations. Forms may be universal, but they are never causal.
So, their use in the real world is limited to stable situations and modified, rigidly-maintained artificial domains (technology): while their use in further theory is doomed to eventually deliver multiple impasses.
In watching a lecture at Oxford University by Nima Arkani Hamed upon “Why the Universe is so Big?”, where he seamlessly slipped from considering Sub Atomic Particles to the Universe as a whole, it was clear that he considered that he was using a basis common to that entire range, despite its unfathomable vastness.
And as he went on to discuss the sizes of major constants in his equations, it was clear that to him, they were not arbitrary fixers to bring purely formal equations into line with a tailored part of Reality, but were Universal Constants of Reality itself.
He is, of course a mathematician, and very much an idealist, rather than a pragmatic one. And, his profound reasoning was NOT about Reality, but a deep, deep journey into Ideality as an uncoordinated whole.
And sadly, there is no reason why Ideality should deliver a consistant-and-comprehensive pattern for everything within it. For, as a competant mathematician myself, I am well aware of its formal extensions - into negative numbers, graphical representations, operators, complex numbers and even Quantum Loop Gravity, String Theory and the Multiverse!
So, whilever the investigator can continue to pick out of his bottomless bag of formulae, the right one for a given situation, the lack of unity in the scheme as a whole can be ignored, But, it clearly isn’t, as inferred, the sole basis of everything. How can it be: it is only abstracted Form?
So, Cosmology is not what it purports to be: based upon formal Mathematics, it deals only in concretely- unsubstantiated Form, and cannot be corrected by experiment. And, with a steadfast Pluralist Stance, and fixed-for-ever Natural Laws, it can never address the true holistic richness of Reality.
Indeed, the whole approach is totally ill-equipped to ever address Qualitative Change and Creative Development: it worships Stability, for that is all it can possibly see - the rest falls outside its domains of applicability. As all truly significant developments only occur in relatively brief Emergent Interludes, the engines of change are completely unobservable within each and every prevailing Stability.
Stability is taken as the only reliable situation we can study - things must be still, or we must hold them still. The approach views Reality via a series of ‘stills’, like photographs, any variation is via purely quantitative change only, and delivering no hint of anything other than a mere continuation of the same.
It is locked into a pre-Hegelian, idealistic mode, philosophically, and convinces itself of innovation due to its sophisticated, ever-developing Mathematics and increasingly complex technological applications.
But, from an explanatory view, it is as dead as a duck! We are at a dead end scientifically.
This paper has just been published in the latest Special Issue of SHAPE Journal on The Philosophy of Physics:
