The Four Pillars of Fundamentality by Karl Coryat

Hi Karl,

It is no wonder that you have won other contests. Your style of writing is easy to read and the points you make are very clear. You have delineated in a very concise manner of what you expect to see in a theory of everything based on "What is Fundamental?"

It is also obvious to me that you are not a physicist and that your formal training was in another discipline. The only thing missing from your essay is...

The actual Theory of Everything! LOL!

I'm fairly certain you would recognize it if you saw it! Don't laugh - I know it is not going to be easy for physicists themselves to get past their own work or their preconceived notions of their current understanding of physics. Afterall - it is not easy to expand the mind when venturing out of Oscillatorland.

So like other comments I made on other essays that lead to this point... From which group or Who will the genius arise from to get us out of oscillatorland?

Great essay!

Karl,

Clever ... very clever. And highly entertaining.

Your Four Pillars give a good way of comparing ideas. However, you did not posit an idea.

Still a good read.

Best Regards,

Gary Simpson

Dear Karl,

I request you to use your tools and see if my proposal of Consciousness (Geometry Of Dimensions) GOD qualifies as fundamental aspect of reality.

Consciousness is general as it is universal, if we were to encounter ET consciousness is the first recognizable aspect.

Consciousness is parsimonious as it preserves itself using minimum resources

Consciousness is relative as it establishes relations with all beings conscious

Consciousness is the true source of quantum mechanics

Love,

Sridattadev.

Dear Karl,

What a great essay. It reminded me (mostly in the title but also partly in its intent) of this work, you may find interesting.

[https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-four-category-ontology-9780199229819?cc=au&lang=en&]E.J Lowe - Four-Category Ontology [/link]

Best,

Jack H James

Dear Karl,

Interesting and entertaining essay. I am particularly interested in your definition of time and space in 1D Oscillator World. You identify a universe of oscillating point particles, with a characteristic frequency and amplitude defining time and space.

In my essay, "Fundamental Waves and the Reunification of Physics", intended to describe the real 3D world, there are no point particles, but only fundamental quantum waves. Time and space are defined by the quantum frequency and Compton wavelength of the electron. If these fundamental units are modified by gravitational time dilation and length contraction, the rest of GR falls out naturally, without the need to invoke an abstract 4D spacetime. This approach also seems to be general, parsimonious, relational, and mechanism-suggestive. But it appears quite different from GR - most fundamental constants (c, m, e, and G) become variable. The only remaining universal constant is Planck's constant, which defines the scale of spin.

I would add a 5th principal of fundamentality: direct experimental verification of the fundamental properties. In my essay, I suggest experiments to test quantum superposition, entanglement, and uncertainty, which are viewed as fundamental in the orthodox theory.

Best Wishes,

Alan Kadin

Hi Alan --

Thanks for altering me to your well-written essay, and for carefully considering mine. One clarification: in my "Oscillatorworld," it's the inhabitants who define their *units* of length and duration by the point-object's oscillations. I do not intend to mean that time and space are objectively defined by these oscillations (the story is agnostic on the provenance of time and space).

With regard to my proposed four pillars, you've done an excellent job in the generality and parsimony departments. I like the idea of there being only one or two true constants. I'm not sure I see the relational aspect of your picture, though. What is the relational nature of the electron's rotating vector field, or the value of h-bar/2? They seem rather absolute to me. However, I have yet to see any picture of the world that is relational all the way to the top (or bottom)...and of course that pillar could be wrong.

I'm not sure I like your 5th pillar of fundamentality. A Newtonian could argue that the fundamental attraction between masses is trivially demonstrated by experiment, no? (In fairness, I realize that my pillars are also subject to abuse.)

Congratulations on your win last year and best of luck again this time.

KC

Karl, i like your analogy with oscillatorland. You give a good description of what is meant by the term 'fundamental' in the context of physical theories: it 'simply' means 'mechanism', although this 'simplicity' has strong restrictions on how to identify some mechanisms. They must be general, parsimonious and relational. I would agree with all of them. As to the question why 'mechanisms' should be fundamental, I would say that they 'merely' fall out of the equations, because every expression in those equations is strongly correlated with a certain part of an interpretative context the theory offers. Surely, this 'mechanism' of something meaningfully falling out of the equations is not due to some magic, but due to another mechanism we take for granted, namely logics. Therefore we conclude that nature must behave logically, as I do, too.

The only critics I would bring up is, that in my opinion something is missing in the picture of exclusively only mechanical descriptions of nature. Albeit you correctly described that the principle of 'mechanism' in multiple theories together with parsimony is, from a bird's view, more fundamental than a few - thought to be fundamental - theories with highly complex and not tracable mechanisms, your approach remains partly in the realm of operationalism.

One would like to know (at least I) how it is that this operationalism can work at all in our world. Especially why logic as the *core mechanism*, the main tool of science works - but moreover, how it came about in the first place. My viewpoint on these questions is, that there is a missing part in explaining what the term 'fundamental' means in the context of physical theories, as long as we do not tackle the quest for some possible origins for logic and mathematics. Since these two pillars seem to me to be our only sources for identifying some TRUTHS in physics and are at least equally fundamental than your four pillars, I was lead to ask in my own essay contribution what Truth in relation to these two pillars probably could mean. Despite of being acceptable or inacceptable for you what I exemplified in my essay, I think it could be important to nonetheless ask this question, since otherwise the truth of physical theories would remain unexplainable, since 'mechanisms' and the associated truths with it are only valid in a world of time and therefore questionable in the first place. My take on this is that there must be something beyond time that makes these physical truths true. But if so, then this realm of truths beyond time aren't anymore solely 'mechanisms, making something true', since the term 'mechanism' is exlusively attached to the notion of time itself.

The key question about a theory for everything is that it should show that all that exists did not 'emerge' out of literally nothing (the latter in the sense of the absolute non-existence of everything, including space, time, quantum fluctuations, imagination, and logic). The only escape out of this is to assume that a kind of eternal core existence per se is the most fundamental from which follow all the other things. The big question for me is how a theory of everything does define this core existence in an unequivocal manner without having to invoke further 'mechanisms'.

Hi Karl, thanks for your comment. I was overlooking your definition, having been fixed on the 'air conditioner' and on causal relations only. You put it very well, getting from logic to time is not easy, hopefully we can make this step without invoking to many assumptions.

Thanks again that you took the time to dive into my concern. I wish you also good look!

Dear Karl,

I read your paper and I agree with the importance of the four pillars of fundamentality that you cover in it. I would only disagree to one degree or another with the examples that you include for each of the pillars.

I agree that as much as possible a fundamental theory should be general and include an overall explanation of the structure of all things that agrees as much as possible with structures at all levels of construction. Since all things at all levels of structure emerge out of the most fundamental layer of structure, it should be expected that there will be structural similarities at all levels. As an example, in my papers on this site I present a theory that proposes that all things in what man generally calls the universe are constructed out of simple motions. Simple motions are, of course, very simple machines that exist at all levels of the structure of the universe. I merely show how they can be used at the lowest structural level to construct fields, energy photons, and matter particles. The fields are constructed of simple linear three dimensional motion entities. Another motion is added to a field entity to transform it into an energy photon, and one more motion is added to an energy photon to transform it into a matter particle. The only other thing that is needed is a spatial system in which the motions can be positioned, can move to the next position, and can interact with other motions, etc. The field entities and matter particles work together to join matter particles together to form atoms, join atoms into molecules, and to join molecules together to form the large scale structures that we mostly work directly with. General relativity gives a possible explanation of how gravity works by considering that entities that possess mass somehow in some unknown way change the shape of the space that surrounds them so that the path of objects that travel through that changed space take a different path than would otherwise be expected, but it does not tell us what causes mass in the first place or what the detailed mechanism of the interaction between mass and space is. Since it proposes that the shape of space can be changed, it implies that space is not just an expanse in which objects can be positioned and move, etc., but is an active entity that must be composed of something. It does not go into what that substance of its construction is or how it operates in interactions with mass to change its shape, etc. Most interactions between two entities that cause a change in one also cause a reciprocal change in the other entity. This brings up the question, if mass changes the shape of space, how is the mass changed by this interaction. Moreover, General relativity does not tell us much about the structure or internal and external operations of fields, energy photons, and matter particles, etc. or even about the structure and detailed operation of the spatial system. I used to think that evolution could produce all life as we know it except the first living creature, but as science has advanced and more of the great complexity of living creatures has become known, I have come to the conclusion that it would not have been possible to do so. The biggest problem that I see is that if you consider the DNA copy error rate and the positive outcome rate from natural selection from those errors to be great enough (productive errors occurring in a short enough time) to produce all of the variations that would need to have occurred to produce all of the living creatures that are alive today plus all that have previously existed, but have become extinct, we should be seeing major genetic changes all around us today because the number of changes would increase exponentially with increases in population, but we don't see such changes. There is also, of course, the problem of how the first living creature came into existence, which is even much more difficult to conceive as occurring in any natural way. I do believe that some evolution has taken place, but it appears to be of too small an amount to be responsible for the diversity of living creatures on earth. If, on the other hand, the rate has not increased by population increase, but has remained the same from the beginning to now and you pick a time between positive selections that is long enough that we would not likely have seen such a change in man's recorded history, say every ten thousand years, and if life started on earth four billion years ago, you would only get four hundred thousand positive changes, which would not be nearly enough to generate all of the different kinds of living creatures that have ever existed on earth.

The theory that I propose is also parsimonious because it requires very few entities to generate the entire universe and only minimal additions to the more fundamental entity are required to generate the next higher level entity. As an example, the most fundamental structural level of field particles only requires the existence of simple motions and a three dimensional spatial structure for them to exist in. The next level of energy photons only requires the addition of one more motion to a sub-energy (field) particle and one more dimension for it to travel in. The third level of matter particles only requires the addition of one more motion to an energy photon and one more dimension for it to travel in. All of the other levels join matter particles together with field structures composed of the field particles to form the atomic, molecular and large scale object structural levels. The result is a very small number of basic mechanisms that join together to form the overall structure of the universe. We live in this motion continuum. The conditions of all motions in the universe that existed, but do not now exist because the motions have moved out of those positions into their current positions make up the past. You can't go back to the past because the conditions that existed then have been erased by the continual flow of motions in the dimensional system. The motion conditions that exist now make up the present, which is the only place that actually exists. The motion conditions that will exist, but do not yet exist make up the future. We cannot go to the future because those motion conditions will not exist until all of the motions have moved from where they are now into those positions. Understanding this frees us from a multitude of nonsense conclusions about the universe's structure because we understand that time is just a measurement of comparison of the relationship between different motions. On the other hand, General Relativity considers time to exist as an entity in itself as a physical dimension. This added nonsense structure is not very parsimonious. Also as you mention, it doesn't cover the mechanism by which mass-energy alters space-time geometry, thus leaving a mysterious unknown mechanism much like newton's mysterious mechanism of force generation. You can always make a theory more parsimonious (containing fewer mechanisms) if you leave out many of the important details of the structure. All living creatures have variation built into their structure. The DNA that contains the instructions needed to build a living creature contains a whole spectrum of possibilities of structure from different eye color and overall body structure to internal differences all of which can give one person an advantage over another under certain external environmental circumstances. When each person is formed only a small subset of all of these possibilities are used in his construction. This is one place where natural selection can work to cause the survival of those individuals who possess the parts of the DNA structural code in them that adapts best to the existing environmental conditions. When conditions change, a different set of individuals who possess different parts of that code will be selected in the same way. This built in diversity is a great aid to the survival of a species. Although many consider the great variation in dogs that has been caused by man's artificial selection to be an example of evolution, it is in reality just a demonstration of the great diversity of construction forms built into the DNA code. From estimates that I have seen, it took man about ten thousand years to create the variations in dogs that are seen today, with no appreciable contribution from positive natural selection of DNA errors, but with intelligence controlled artificial selection of DNA code's built in structural variation capabilities. The resulting variations are still all dogs. No new species has been formed. If the explanation of this is that the changes do not occur that often, then as mentioned above you do not have enough time even in fourteen billion years to generate all of the positive natural selections of DNA errors to generate all of the different living creatures that have ever existed. At ten thousand years per positive selection you would only generate one million four hundred thousand changes. This would not be nearly enough to generate all of the variations necessary to create all of the different creatures that have existed. You could explain that by saying that the rate increases exponentially with population, but then we should now see a large number of changes happening very quickly, but we don't. As you mentioned Darwin removed abiogenesis from his theory, which means that he still left the greatest mystery of evolution and that is how the first living creature came about. As science has progressed and the tremendous complexity of the structure of living creatures, (even the simplest single cell structures) the possibility of some form of natural chance formation of the first living creature has become so small as to make that belief much less probable than the belief that it was created by God.

As this comment is getting large I will have to leave the relational and mechanism-suggestive concepts for another possible comment.

Sincerely,

Paul

Hi Karl, I like your essay very much. The quirky introduction showing different viewpoints and how they affect representation of what is happening was an intriguing way into the topic of how to compare theories on the basis of fundamentality. Returning to it at the end and analyzing their representations with the pillars of fundamentality was nice too. It showed them applied rather than just theoretical advice. I think the four pillars you have identified is well though out and useful tool. I like that each is considered in turn breaking the essay up into easily readable chunks, Well done, Kind regards Georgina

My comment on Karl H Coryat's paper's page on Jan. 5, 2018

Dear Karl,

I read your paper and I agree with the importance of the four pillars of fundamentality that you cover in it. I would only disagree to one degree or another with the examples that you include for each of the pillars.

I agree that as much as possible a fundamental theory should be general and include an overall explanation of the structure of all things that agrees as much as possible with structures at all levels of construction. Since all things at all levels of structure emerge out of the most fundamental layer of structure, it should be expected that there will be structural similarities at all levels. As an example, in my papers on this site I present a theory that proposes that all things in what man generally calls the universe are constructed out of simple motions. Simple motions are, of course, very simple machines that exist at all levels of the structure of the universe. I merely show how they can be used at the lowest structural level to construct fields, energy photons, and matter particles. The fields are constructed of simple linear three dimensional motion entities. Another motion is added to a field entity to transform it into an energy photon, and one more motion is added to an energy photon to transform it into a matter particle. The only other thing that is needed is a spatial system in which the motions can be positioned, can move to the next position, and can interact with other motions, etc. The field entities and matter particles work together to join matter particles together to form atoms, join atoms into molecules, and to join molecules together to form the large scale structures that we mostly work directly with. General relativity gives a possible explanation of how gravity works by considering that entities that possess mass somehow in some unknown way change the shape of the space that surrounds them so that the path of objects that travel through that changed space take a different path than would otherwise be expected, but it does not tell us what causes mass in the first place or what the detailed mechanism of the interaction between mass and space is. Since it proposes that the shape of space can be changed, it implies that space is not just an expanse in which objects can be positioned and move, etc., but is an active entity that must be composed of something. It does not go into what that substance of its construction is or how it operates in interactions with mass to change its shape, etc. Most interactions between two entities that cause a change in one also cause a reciprocal change in the other entity. This brings up the question, if mass changes the shape of space, how is the mass changed by this interaction. Moreover, General relativity does not tell us much about the structure or internal and external operations of fields, energy photons, and matter particles, etc. or even about the structure and detailed operation of the spatial system. I used to think that evolution could produce all life as we know it except the first living creature, but as science has advanced and more of the great complexity of living creatures has become known, I have come to the conclusion that it would not have been possible to do so. The biggest problem that I see is that if you consider the DNA copy error rate and the positive outcome rate from natural selection from those errors to be great enough (productive errors occurring in a short enough time) to produce all of the variations that would need to have occurred to produce all of the living creatures that are alive today plus all that have previously existed, but have become extinct, we should be seeing major genetic changes all around us today because the number of changes would increase exponentially with increases in population, but we don't see such changes. There is also, of course, the problem of how the first living creature came into existence, which is even much more difficult to conceive as occurring in any natural way. I do believe that some evolution has taken place, but it appears to be of too small an amount to be responsible for the diversity of living creatures on earth. If, on the other hand, the rate has not increased by population increase, but has remained the same from the beginning to now and you pick a time between positive selections that is long enough that we would not likely have seen such a change in man's recorded history, say every ten thousand years, and if life started on earth four billion years ago, you would only get four hundred thousand positive changes, which would not be nearly enough to generate all of the different kinds of living creatures that have ever existed on earth. Paul N Butler replied on Dec. 29, 2017 @ 23:31 GMT

The theory that I propose is also parsimonious because it requires very few entities to generate the entire universe and only minimal additions to the more fundamental entity are required to generate the next higher level entity. As an example, the most fundamental structural level of field particles only requires the existence of simple motions and a three dimensional spatial structure for them to exist in. The next level of energy photons only requires the addition of one more motion to a sub-energy (field) particle and one more dimension for it to travel in. The third level of matter particles only requires the addition of one more motion to an energy photon and one more dimension for it to travel in. All of the other levels join matter particles together with field structures composed of the field particles to form the atomic, molecular and large scale object structural levels. The result is a very small number of basic mechanisms that join together to form the overall structure of the universe. We live in this motion continuum. The conditions of all motions in the universe that existed, but do not now exist because the motions have moved out of those positions into their current positions make up the past. You can't go back to the past because the conditions that existed then have been erased by the continual flow of motions in the dimensional system. The motion conditions that exist now make up the present, which is the only place that actually exists. The motion conditions that will exist, but do not yet exist make up the future. We cannot go to the future because those motion conditions will not exist until all of the motions have moved from where they are now into those positions. Understanding this frees us from a multitude of nonsense conclusions about the universe's structure because we understand that time is just a measurement of comparison of the relationship between different motions. On the other hand, General Relativity considers time to exist as an entity in itself as a physical dimension. This added nonsense structure is not very parsimonious. Also as you mention, it doesn't cover the mechanism by which mass-energy alters space-time geometry, thus leaving a mysterious unknown mechanism much like newton's mysterious mechanism of force generation. You can always make a theory more parsimonious (containing fewer mechanisms) if you leave out many of the important details of the structure. All living creatures have variation built into their structure. The DNA that contains the instructions needed to build a living creature contains a whole spectrum of possibilities of structure from different eye color and overall body structure to internal differences all of which can give one person an advantage over another under certain external environmental circumstances. When each person is formed only a small subset of all of these possibilities are used in his construction. This is one place where natural selection can work to cause the survival of those individuals who possess the parts of the DNA structural code in them that adapts best to the existing environmental conditions. When conditions change, a different set of individuals who possess different parts of that code will be selected in the same way. This built in diversity is a great aid to the survival of a species. Although many consider the great variation in dogs that has been caused by man's artificial selection to be an example of evolution, it is in reality just a demonstration of the great diversity of construction forms built into the DNA code. From estimates that I have seen, it took man about ten thousand years to create the variations in dogs that are seen today, with no appreciable contribution from positive natural selection of DNA errors, but with intelligence controlled artificial selection of DNA code's built in structural variation capabilities. The resulting variations are still all dogs. No new species has been formed. If the explanation of this is that the changes do not occur that often, then as mentioned above you do not have enough time even in fourteen billion years to generate all of the positive natural selections of DNA errors to generate all of the different living creatures that have ever existed. At ten thousand years per positive selection you would only generate one million four hundred thousand changes. This would not be nearly enough to generate all of the variations necessary to create all of the different creatures that have existed. You could explain that by saying that the rate increases exponentially with population, but then we should now see a large number of changes happening very quickly, but we don't. As you mentioned Darwin removed abiogenesis from his theory, which means that he still left the greatest mystery of evolution and that is how the first living creature came about. As science has progressed and the tremendous complexity of the structure of living creatures, (even the simplest single cell structures) the possibility of some form of natural chance formation of the first living creature has become so small as to make that belief much less probable than the belief that it was created by God.

As this comment is getting large I will have to leave the relational and mechanism-suggestive concepts for another possible comment.

Sincerely,

Paul

I am not sure how, but My name and a date got inserted between the second and third paragraphs. It was not in the original document, so it had to be inserted during or after transmission to FQXI.

Paul

Dear Karl,

Sorry I had meant to post the above comment on my paper's page, so I would have a handy copy of my comments on my page, but I got it on yours by mistake.

Sincerely,

Paul