Robert,

Thanks for commenting on my essay.

When I wrote that we cannot observe the particle itself, I was not hinting at Kant's famous distinction between a noumenon, a thing as it is in itself apart from how it is observed, and a phenomenon, the manifestation of a noumenon in human experience. What I meant is that an elementary particle, so also a Higgs boson, is simply too small for direct observation. E.g. things like tables, bears, needles, or any other macroscopic object subjectable to contact forces can be observed directly. However, for the experimental study of elementary particles one has to rely on measurement equipment that detects properties of microsystems: you can then observe those properties, but not the substance that is the carrier of those properties. So I was hinting at the distiction between substance and property.

Particles get their mass - at least according to the Standard Model - by interaction with the Higgs field. The Higgs boson is a wave in the Higgs field.

Best regards,

Marcoen

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  • Post #50

Marcoen,

You wrote: "The point of the essay is that the CMS experiment at the LHC has found the Standard Model to be "correct", but it hasn't found the Standard Model to be "complete". The difference is not trivial."

Actually, the LHC results did not prove the Standard Model is *incorrect*. *Complete* is an unachievable ideal since our intellectual capabilities are limited. These differences are not trivial, but are sensible enough that all physicists should know them and appreciate them, especially when they make judgments on theories outside their own belief systems.

Rick

Rick,

Thanks for commenting on my essay.

I wrote that the CMS experiment at the LHC has found the Standard Model to be "correct" - not "incorrect". So I agree with you that the LHC results did not prove the Standard Model is *incorrect*.

By "complete" I meant the predicate that can be said of a given theory, as defined in the EPR paper: a theory is complete if every element of reality has a counterpart in the theory, and if element of reality, predicted with certainty by the theory, indeed exists. For a fundamental particle theory completeness is then indeed very difficult, if not impossible, to prove experimentally, because existential statements about fundamental constituents (e.g. "the Higgs boson exists") are impossible to prove.

Best regards,

Marcoen

Marcoen,

I suppose this puts you in the class of the "most curmudgeonly." :-)

As you yourself say, though, we never have observed any elementary particle "itself." We know -- even particle physcists know -- that elementary particles may not even exist. The general public? -- most don't know a boson from a boombox. That isn't the fault of scientists or a failure of science.

What we do know exists -- like the tracks of a unicorn -- is the product of physically real events. If one were speaking of cows rather than unicorns, one would be able to compare the hoof of a real cow with an imprint, which need happen only once; cow tracks thereafter imply cows.

Particle physicists, constructing the classes of tracks that make up the standard model, calculated those identities in advance of looking for them. So even even though experimentalists don't "see" the "thing" that leaves a track, nor even if there is a thing, they know when the tracks predicted by theory correspond to the evidence of physically real events.

Neverthless, your point is well taken and well argued.

Tom

    Thomas,

    Thank you for commenting on my essay.

    If we talk about cows, then we talk about something of which we already know that it exists. I'm not a biologist, but let us suppose that the imprint of a cow's hoof is a unique pattern that doesn't occur with any other animal. If you then observe such an imprint, you may say: I know that there is/exists a cow somewhere around. This is an application of the following logical scheme:

    P Q, Q / P

    It is a correct inference.

    However, the case of the Higgs boson is different. You don't know that it exists: that is what has to be proven. You only know that IF it exists, THEN you will observe certain traces. But then you cannot say: I have observed these traces, thus the Higgs boson exists. It's a well known fallacy, which uses the logical scheme

    P => Q, Q / P

    And it doesn't matter how you pimp up the wording of the premises 'P => Q' and 'Q': it remains a fallacy.

    Best regards,

    Marcoen

    The first scheme in my previos post is not displayed correctly. It should be

    [math]\rm P \Leftrightarrow Q, Q / P[/math]

    Marcoen

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    • Post #55

    Hi Marcoen,

    I think that the case of the Higgs boson hiding in the upper range of the energy field is analogous to a unicorn hiding in a nearly impenetrable thicket. If one doubts the existence of a unicorn, one cannot doubt that the tracks we observe leading from the thicket when we set it afire differ from any tracks we have detected from any creature known before. It really doesn't matter whether we call the result a Higgs boson or a unicorn, the theoretical prediction is that a hot enough blaze will produce the signature of a creature that might exist but has never before been seen.

    I disagree with Rick that the LHC result is of the logical form modus tollens, rather than the positive modus ponens form you cite above. For this reason: If the LHC experiment failed, one could always say that the fire was not hot enough. The prediction wouldn't change, just the experimental parameters. The same is true of proton decay -- Georgi-Glashow originally predicted proton half life on the order 1 X 10^31 years and it now stands at least four orders of magnitude longer.

    Don't misunderstand me -- I'm a theorist and have nothing to do with the experimental culture and I don't really care much for the particle zoo that the standard model has birthed. I just know that formal logic has nothing to do with that culture, either. What you see is what you get, and one only sees evidence of existence, not anything real in the sense of, say -- a hammer that one can put to use, or a physically existing unicorn that can be harnessed and saddled.

    All best,

    Tom

    Hi there Tom,

    I'm a theorist too, although I'm in the "God-doesn't-play-dice" team. I also hold the traditional view that scientific discourse is only possible within a framework of professional ethics, and has to be centered around reason and logic, not around authority and blind faith.

    I agree with you that, at least in the present case, the top brass in experimental physics didn't care much for the principles of logic, and I would like to add that they didn't care much for professional ethics either.

    I get the impression that what we are witnessing is a transition, by which "physics" as a branch of science ceases to exist, and is replaced by "quantum politics".

    I wish you all the best,

    Marcoen

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    • Post #57

    Tom,

    My issue with Marcoen's statement was the lack of scope applied to the word "correct" in its application to the theory. So it is a premise issue and not an application of logic issue. I think there is more agreement here than you claim bringing LC in also, and it is imprecision of language applied rather than fundamental difference.

    The premise "if a theory predicts an outcome, and the outcome is found through experimentation, then the theory is correct" is false by such imprecision of language. The theory may have been only able to predict the single outcome experimentally verified yet produce a host of other predictions invalidated by other experiments, making it an incorrect theory. The lack of appreciation for this is the virus creating the pervasive mental defect in many theoretical physicists, a bit of a double edged sword though since it provides necessary motivation. In the Higgs/LHC experiment, there was an opportunity to invalidate the theory which did not come to be, so the true assertion is the theory was not negated, not that it was found to be correct without qualification or narrow scoping like correctly stating the expected collision energy produced the expected decay products and nothing more. As Marceon correctly states, it is difficult to assume the Higgs particle was found if high energy physics is not your thing and you have not taken the leap of faith that the production of the correct byproducts imply the existence of the whole no matter how short lived the whole is in the experimental setting even though the whole is never directly detected.

    As for Higgs theory validation, be careful with what you assume, for there is not necessarily group think between theorists and experimentalists even at CERN. I attended the last Robert Hofstadter Memorial Lecture at Stanford this April. I had the good fortune to have Dr. Hofstadter as my Mechanics professor at Stanford, but I digress. The invited speaker was the charming Dr. Fabiola Gianotti. If you are unfamiliar with her, she is a Senior Research Physicist at CERN, and the ATLAS experiment's spokesperson. She is an experimentalist deeply involved with the Higgs search, and made it completely clear in her talk the results found were not a validation of the Higgs theory in its totality even though she is quite certain they found what they set out to look for. This impressive woman is well grounded in reality.

    Rick

    Rick,

    Nice post, thanks. I intend to agree with you.

    It is true that experimentally one can only disprove a theory, but not prove it - at least in fundamental physics; e.g. a theory about a murder case is something else. When one has failed to disprove the theory - this is when the prediction is confirmed experimentally - and one wants to make a positive statement, then one has to use the word "correct" as defined in the EPR paper. But I agree that such requires an additional specification. That is why I wrote in the essay that the only substantial conclusion is that the Standard Model has been found to be correct by the CMS experiment at the LHC: the addition "by the CMS experiment at the LHC" refers to the fact that only the prediction involving the decay products of the Higgs boson has been confirmed.

    When I submitted an earlier version of the present essay as a letter to Physics Letters B, the referee - who obviously was a member of the CMS collaboration - said that the criticism was essentially correct, but that the phrase "observation of a new boson" didn't mean that actually a new boson had been observed, but only its decay products. According to him/her, physicists need no reminder of that fact, so (s)he recommended a rejection. The editor subsequently rejected the paper, although he deemed it appropriate for a forum or a popular-scientific journal. After incorporating the referee's comment in the essay I then posted it here at the FQXi forum, so that at least one critical noise can be heard in the cheering crowd. I agree with you that there is this "mental defect" (as you call it) in the heads of many physicists: they fail to see, or just don't know, the nuances involved in establishing the correspondence between theory and reality. The essay then confronts them with these nuances - at least, if they would read it. But I also agree with you that, at least among the top physicists (you mentioned Dr. Gianotti), there are some who are quite down to earth.

    Best regards,

    Marcoen

    Hi Rick,

    I'll second Marcoen's opinion. Well said. Any disagreement we have ever had is over detail, not principle.

    My own worldview, including my view of science and its role in objective knowledge, has taken quite a turn in the last few years -- though I find it as true as ever that no science is objective without strict correspondence between theoretical prediction and physical result, my opinion is softening in favor of that which you and Marcoen share, with a caveat:

    You speak often of reality; the implied assumption is that something is "really" there. I don't think experimentalists start with such an assumption. They are working within theoretical limits -- parameters that are adjusted according to experimental evidence -- as the saying goes, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Hence, my comments on adjusting the "unification energy" upward.

    You're right, though, this doesn't indicate what "reality" is -- only where certain limits lie. The reality of the question is impossible for any experiment to answer: what happens when an absolutely hot body meets an absolutely cold surface? That's why I'm more comfortable with the degrees of freedom that theory affords to bound those limits.

    Where I differ with you and Marcoen, though, is that I don't call that "reality," either. I still maintain that reality has nothing to do with objective knowledge.

    All best,

    Tom

    Tom,

    You wrote: "I still maintain that reality has nothing to do with objective knowledge."

    Interesting. What is your rationale for that statement? Do you have the Kantian inaccessibility of the noumenal world in mind? Could you give a concise description of your view?

    Best regards,

    Marcoen

    Sure, Marcoen. Just to recapitulate and expand the points I made in the post that started this thread:

    None of us are sure that fundamental particles exist as physically independent, real things (" ... having a physical effect ... not affected by physical conditions.")

    The products of physically real things -- what we measure following an event -- only tell us that the event was made of smaller though more energetic things that we cannot say existed "before" we observed the event; i.e., we don't know that those elements whose tracks we record are causal. If we knew that they were, we could say that the unicorn was responsible for creating everything, and the tracks that he left are his signature.

    OTOH, if the field is real and causal, the unicorn and his tracks are from one and the same continuous source. Field theoretical predictions apart from the standard model of particle physics, are invested in general relativity, quantum field theory and string theory. If the field is irreducible -- where, how? Our measured values are not good enough to tell us that that they existed before we made a measurement; the objective knowledge that we glean from a measurement, therefore, is independent of the source. Does the wavefunction collapse to a unicorn and the tracks he left, which implies an observer quantum entangled with the unicorn -- or does the wavefunction never collapse, which implies that the observer is continuous with the unicorn's creation?

    My bet is on door number two. Wheeler's participatory universe.

    Tom

    Tom,

    I see that your view is similar to that of Kant. In his view, we cannot possibly know the thing-in-itself that is the source of a perceived phenomenon.

    I agree that if we rely on perception as the source of knowledge, then it is not possible to attain true knowledge about the fundamental workings of the universe. In my PhD thesis I have mentioned a transition from modern physics to a postmodernism in physics: this is the situation that at any time you have several rival theories explaining the facts, but no instrument to decide between these rival theories at that time. But that's another topic.

    Best regards,

    Marcoen

    Marcoen,

    You're right. Kant does influence my view -- I imagine a thinkng machine: is it self aware? Consider the android character that Sean Young portrayed in the movie Blade Runner -- (the movie is based on Philip K. Dick's story, *Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?*) -- she doesn't know that the source of her consciousness is a program.

    In Dick's future world, authorities have devised elaborate interrogation methods and technology to detect distinctly human emotional reactions, reminiscent of the Turing Test for intelligent machines -- I think it is significant, though, that the "Replicant test" is for emotional response, not knowledge or logic. My guess is that Dick's message is that the human tribe will not forbear persecuting the android tribe even if the two are shown equal in every rational respect. Kant being a major figure of the Enlightenment, I would like to think that he would support the equality of sentients of the same species, no matter their origin.

    However, while androids may possibly be shown to dream of electric sheep as a result of their programming -- the human mind is capable of dreaming of androids dreaming of electric sheep. Though we may be born with noumenal qualities, they are not transferable to the objects of our creation. I am convinced thereby, that we are not programmed creatures -- programs are replicable; consciousness is transcendant.

    All best,

    Tom

    Hi Tom,

    I agree with you that we are not programmed creatures. My PhD thesis contains a chapter on free will. I have written a paper based on that chapter; if you are interested you can access a preprint by this link:

    my paper on free will

    It contains an (incomplete) overview of ideas in that area.

    But we are going off topic here. I see that we agree on most parts.

    Best regards,

    Marcoen

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    • Post #65

    Marcoen,

    Thanks for sharing your free will paper. I appreciate the high level of thinking that went into it, though my own view of free will is simpler and absolute; i.e., when you say, " ... since motion in a wavelike state is universal in the framework of the EPT, it also applies to tangible objects such as stones: it can thus also be said that a stone has a body and a spirit ..." and then argue that a stone does not have body/spirit, I would say that the stone exists in an absolute continuum of body and spirit. Thus, as a human being is a corporation of cooperating cells, a stone is a corporation of cooperating quantum mechanical events. Gell-Mann has a similar view. It is a rationalist perspective; as a matter of measured outcomes, there is no way in principle to determine random motion from pseudo-random. One may as well accept the free will of every particle and system of particles; start with infinite degrees of freedom, and variables become bounded by evolution of events. (Qua Quine, "To be is to be the value of a bound variable.")

    All best,

    Tom

    Dear Marcoen,

    You defended your point very well, using the artillery of critical thinking, and I agree that we can be certain about very little. I can't name one thing about we can have absolute certainty. The Higgs boson is not singular in this respect. One can't be sure that the sun will rise tomorrow, or that it even raised this morning. Or even that there is a sun! When we look on the window, we assume that the world will be there, but what makes us so sure? We can never have absolute certainty. So I must say that I agree with you, and not only in the case of the Higgs boson. How people deal with this uncertainty? They had to learn to deal with it, because there are not few the situations when a fast decision, even wrong, is better than indecision. While we were living in the wilderness, often running or attacking were better options than carefully analyzing what to do. People learned to justify their choices, so that they can run or attack without hesitating. Very often people feel very certain about their opinions in politics, religion, science, UFOs, etc., and maybe the explanation is that we can't do anything if we doubt of each of our steps, so we learned to believe in our choices. Toddlers can't learn to walk if they wait to gain certainty that at the next step they will not fall, so believing is doing.

    So people learned to make bets, and justify them, for the peace of their souls. Anything is a bet, and the explanations around it are justifications of the choices made while betting. We bet that the Sun will rise tomorrow. We even bet that the universe will still exist. We bet, so that we find a reason to earn our food for tomorrow, to send the children to school, to have health insurance etc. And if we will see the sun rising, as you pointed out, we merely observe the photons. Or are we even sure that we observe photons?

    Science is full of bets too, and it is in the spirit of science to acknowledge that and never forget it.

    The existence of the Higgs boson is just a bet, and the odds that a particle with properties that can be assigned to Higgs was find are given by the 5 sigma. The odds are probably much greater, if we remember that the Standard Model, which needs the Higgs boson, explains so many phenomena, and makes prediction with so big accuracy. But, there is no absolute certainty.

    Best regards,

    Cristi Stoica

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      • Post #67

      Marcoen,

      "things like tables, bears, needles, or any other macroscopic object subjectable to contact forces can be observed directly."

      My point was that even direct observation is circumscribed by the limitation of the 5 senses themselves. If we claim to know anything in itself, then we cannot discover anything more about it....since we allegedly know it intrinsically.

      "Particles get their mass - at least according to the Standard Model - by interaction with the Higgs field. The Higgs boson is a wave in the Higgs field.'

      - The Higgs boson or Higgs particle is an elementary particle - not a wave - of mass ~125 Gev.

      - How can particles be particles when they move through a Higgs field before acquiring mass... that is, how can they be particles without mass?

      - What experiment has observed the acquisition of mass by a massless particle moving in an Higgs field?

      - How does Higgs mass creation differ from pair creation by convergent gamma rays?

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        • Post #68

        Cristi

        Be careful to differentiate between the practical and the metaphysical when considering the difficulties of knowing. Contrary to Tom's view, objective knowledge is the equivalent of reality, for us. And that has nothing to do with perception/thinking, which has no affect on the physical circumstance.

        Something exists independently of the mechanisms whereby we are aware of it. But we can only have knowledge of it, and by virtue of a physical process. So, while we must assume that there is the possibility of an alternative, this is irrelevant, because we cannot know it. We can know what it is possible for us to know, ie there is some definitive body of knowledge, but there are a number of practical difficulties in doing this. We will know, in any given situation, that we have 'got it right' by default, that is, after a sufficient duration, no new knowledge arises, despite efforts to discover such. At which point we can then deem that knowledge to be the equivalent of our reality.

        Paul