Essay Abstract

Changes in our understanding of the fundamental have often been associated with important scientific advances. The moment for another such paradigm shift may be upon us - but this time, we may have to change not only our ideas about what sorts of things need explaining, but also our attitudes about what counts as an explanation in the first place.

Author Bio

Emily Adlam has recently completed a PhD in quantum information and foundations at the University of Cambridge.

Download Essay PDF File

Hi Emily,

Completely agree, it may as well be an atom. And then such a fundamental Indivisible won't tell us enough about reality even if it completes all scientific knowledge. Thanks for a great essay.

Jack H James

Hi Emily,

There is a deep understanding in your essay in regards to getting at what's fundamental - This statement rings very true...

"So seems that we are in dire need of another paradigm shift. And this time, instead of simply changing our attitudes about what sorts of things require explanation, we may have to change our attitudes about what counts as an explanation in the first place."

The answer provided by the fundamental basis of physics is not easily reached - If it was, the theory of everything would have been found by now. The reason it has not is for two main reasons: 1) It cannot be derived from our current math and 2) there is no experiment that will directly reveal what is truly fundamental. With this in mind - consider reading my essay... The day after the nightmare scenario.

All the best

Scott S Gordon, MD

Hi Emily, I found your essay a real pleasure to read. Lots of well expressed argument. You write "Is it the fact that there exists an arrow of time....?" The arrow of time does not actually exist, as I see it, but is a metaphor, an abstract thinking aid, for one way change or one way passage of time. (I suppose it could be argued that it exists as a piece of theoretical argument in texts and lectures and thoughts.) I don't understand why you say "Asking why the arrow points this way rather than that is not even a meaningful question." There could, according to both classical mechanics and Relativity, be time reversals. There is nothing in those parts of physics theory that prohibits that happening. Yet it is never witnessed or experienced. Why is that so is a reasonable question. Is it not? Kind regards Georgina

    Thanks for the essay. Whichever object you consider, all of them have a common substance from which they are made. If they are real, substance gives them objective reality and positive existence. Without substance, nothing real (even atoms) can exist. Hence, substance (whatever name it may be called) should be the most fundamental of all.

    Emily, I liked your piece very much as an essay. I like the way you introduced your premise via the game and refer back to the starting idea of atoms being fundamental at the very end. However I don't think that fundamental atoms are sufficient to explain the physics of the universe. They can account for materials and objects, structures but more is needed. Electrons for chemistry and biology (electron transport vital for life), and the production of electromagnetic waves by which we can see and are warmed (for example). A host for the electromagnetic waves and fields of all kinds is also needed as waves and flux can not exist in nothingness. Various kinds of differentiation of the host under different circumstances can account for a lot of the "particle zoo", in my opinion. Kind regards Georgina

      Mr.Adlam

      I mean, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. So the result of a discussion with your mother is:

      Thus from this perspective, it may actually turn out to be correct to say that proton is most fundamental.

      Why, you can see in my essay from last year.

      Regards,

      Branko

      • [deleted]

      • Post #8

      Hi Emily,

      I'm a fan of simple, yet profound insights, and your essay starts off with one---sometimes, we just get the explanandum wrong, and it takes a Newton to turn things back onto their feet. I had never looked at it this way, so thanks for that!

      From there, your essay follows a classical dialectic: you hit us with the thesis ('fundamental means we have won'), then show that the antithesis ('fundamental means we have lost') follows with just the same cogency.

      On your way to a synthesis, you offer up Heisenberg's way of thinking about quantum chance as describing a kind of propensity of quantum objects that is realized only in experiment. Perhaps there's a kind of middle way here? Having our cake, and eating it, too?

      But you (rightly, in my opinion) reject this idea: we can't keep on going down the same old familiar routes. They might have brought us to this point, but if we just keep going, we'll never reach a destination: as atom is replaced by proton is replaced by quark as fundamental, we'll just keep trudging on towards a horizon we'll never reach. While that might ensure employment for future generations of scientists, it's not going to get us any closer---we must instead take back a step and try to find a different approach.

      Ultimately, however, I am not sure I can agree with your conclusion (although I find it very appealing): you reverse the thrust of our erstwhile inquiry, looking not down, but up, not to constituents, but to constraints. To me, this step seems like trying to explain the ground, instead of the figure---ultimately, it will likely run into the same problems. After all, just as the constraints prune the options of what goes on at the bottom, so do the constituents dictate what sort of constraints are possible---or at least, that's how it seems to me.

      Nevertheless, I think your essay is well argued, and exceptionally clear. It deserves to go far in this contest!

        Thank you for an engaging essay, Emily

        A couple-a-few questions to consider:

        1) If the ultimate goal of science is a full accounting of all actions, then this goal would mean we can predict every action of every particle, object or phenomenon. However, science works by making sure many repetitions produce the same result. How can this methodology lead to any solution that predicts individual non-reproducible actions?

        2) If physics relies so heavily on mathematics, and on logic, then changes in the foundations of mathematics should also impact physics. Would Godel's Incompleteness theorem suggest there will always be meta-systems required to explain all aspects of a physical theory (based upon mathematics)? This theory would also seem to indicate there will always be things we cannot logically 'explain' in any system. How would we know if we hit an aspect of a theory that cannot be explained within the theory (as opposed to something incorrect about the theory)?

        3) If science is about all aspects of reality, yet physics continues its reductionist trend looking at ever smaller aspects of reality, who is looking at all reality - at how all aspects and all levels fit together? It does not seem to by physicists...

        I will suggest that the concern of 3) is where science needs to go next.

        Take care,

        Don

        The essay "Fundamental?" has 31 references, but none of the references are to publications by Milgrom. Is Milgrom the Kepler of contemporary cosmology? Are the empirical successes of MOND fundamental? Google "witten milgrom", "kroupa milgrom", and "mcgaugh milgrom".

        Dear Dr Emily Christine Adlam,

        You wrote in the Abstract: "Changes in our understanding of the fundamental have often been associated with important scientific advances. The moment for another such paradigm shift may be upon us - but this time, we may have to change not only our ideas about what sorts of things need explaining, but also our attitudes about what counts as an explanation in the first place."

        I have concluded from my deep research that Nature must have devised the only permanent real structure of the Universe obtainable for the real Universe existed for millions of years before man and his finite complex informational systems ever appeared on earth. The real physical Universe consists only of one single unified VISIBLE infinite surface occurring eternally in one single infinite dimension that am always illuminated mostly by finite non-surface light.

        Joe Fisher, ORCID ID 0000-0003-3988-8687. Unaffiliated

        Dear Emily Christine Adlam,

        In qualifying the aim of the 'What is Fundamental?' essay contest, Dr. Brendan Foster, the FQXi.org Science Projects Consultant wrote: "We invite interesting and compelling explorations, from detailed worked examples through thoughtful rumination, of the different levels at which nature can be described, and the relations between them.

        Real Nature has never had any abstract finite levels.

        I have concluded from my deep research that Nature must have devised the only permanent real structure of the Universe obtainable for the real Universe existed for millions of years before man and his finite complex informational systems ever appeared on earth. The real physical Universe consists only of one single unified VISIBLE infinite surface occurring eternally in one single infinite dimension that am always illuminated mostly by finite non-surface light.

        Joe Fisher, ORCID ID 0000-0003-3988-8687. Unaffiliated

        4 days later

        I agree with almost everything you say. Just a couple of comments.

        First, when you say that it is the experimenter asking questions that causes the universe to give answers to questions that are not determined by the macroscopic constraints, this sounds close to Wheeler's participatory realism, or two QBism, i.e. the idea that our interventions determine what is. Do you intend this, or are you seeking a more straightforwardly realist account?

        Second, you say that the mathematics underlying physics has become more complicated, and it certainly is in the sense that it takes more years to learn the mathematics needed for quantum field theory than for Newtonian mechanics. But part of the point of abstraction is to be able to capture more structure in a simpler set of equations so, in some sense, we adopt more sophisticated mathematics to make things look simpler, not more complicated. You certainly could try to capture all of the empirical content using less abstract mathematics, but that would be complicated. Just look at Maxwell's notebooks where he writes down the equations of electromagnetism in a very complicated form because he did not have vector calculus for an example. So, my question is, exactly what meaning of complicated do you have in mind here?

          Thanks for your comments, Georgina!

          With regard to your question about the arrow of time, I agree it is certainly meaningful and interesting to ask why we don't see localised time reversals, like patches of the universe where time goes in a different direction to the rest of the universe. This is what I refer to as the question of why there exists an arrow of time - i.e. why does time seem to go in the same direction always and everywhere?However, I would argue that, given that there does exist an arrow of time, there is not any further meaningful question about why it points forward rather than backwards - or at least, that question is not meaningful unless there exists something outside the universe to which the two directions could be referred.

          Thanks for this comment, Georgina! I don't mean to propose a universe literally made out of atoms where nothing smaller can exist - the idea is simply that if one postulates a top-down rather than a bottom-up universe, there is a sense in which bigger things, like atoms, might be regarded as 'more fundamental' than smaller things like electrons and electromagnetic waves.

          Thanks for your comments!

          With regards to realism, it's true that some of my language does resemble the QBist talk, but I'm definitely aiming for a straightforwardly realist account. When I speak of the experimenter asking questions of the universe, I don't mean to say that the experimenter or their choices are somehow outside of the universe - the experimenter and their brain are subsystems of the universe and so the fact that they choose to perform a certain experiment is itself dictated by the macroscopic constraints governing the universe: we just have a constraint problem whose solution requires more detail in some places than in others.

          With regards to complexity, you're right to point out that the difficulty of the maths for us humans isn't necessarily a good indicator of its complexity in the sense relevant to theory-selection - I should have been more formal and less rhetorical here. What I have in mind is mainly related to my later comment about lots of different microscopic theories giving rise to the same macroscopic theory - this seems to indicate that there must be some superfluous complexity in the microscopic descriptions, and hence that there should be some measure of complexity by which our microscopic descriptions are more complex than the corresponding macroscopic theories. I'm tempted to suggest using the Kolmogorov complexity, but I suspect it would be very hard to put any actual numbers to it.

          Thank you Emily,

          Your acknowledgement that ' "fundamental" is a shifting goal-post in physics' prompts the question whether we should identify and target the subject for which we seek a fundamental concept before attempting to define what constitutes "fundamental".

          In accepting this premise the notion 'getting to grips with the fundamental is the promised land, the endgame of science' is no longer so since every structure has its own discrete foundation - its own fundamental existence.

          Hi Emily Christine Adlam

          Your discussion of arrow of time other concepts in a simple and thoughtful way of discussion about Fundamental are really excellent.....dear Emily ..... By the way have a look at my essay also and post your esteemed observations there....

          Dynamic Universe Model says that the energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation passing grazingly near any gravitating mass changes its in frequency and finally will convert into neutrinos (mass). We all know that there is no experiment or quest in this direction. Energy conversion happens from mass to energy with the famous E=mC2, the other side of this conversion was not thought off. This is a new fundamental prediction by Dynamic Universe Model, a foundational quest in the area of Astrophysics and Cosmology.

          In accordance with Dynamic Universe Model frequency shift happens on both the sides of spectrum when any electromagnetic radiation passes grazingly near gravitating mass. With this new verification, we will open a new frontier that will unlock a way for formation of the basis for continual Nucleosynthesis (continuous formation of elements) in our Universe. Amount of frequency shift will depend on relative velocity difference. All the papers of author can be downloaded from "http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.in/ "

          By the way.....................

          Main foundational points of Dynamic Universe Model :

          -No Isotropy

          -No Homogeneity

          -No Space-time continuum

          -Non-uniform density of matter, universe is lumpy

          -No singularities

          -No collisions between bodies

          -No blackholes

          -No warm holes

          -No Bigbang

          -No repulsion between distant Galaxies

          -Non-empty Universe

          -No imaginary or negative time axis

          -No imaginary X, Y, Z axes

          -No differential and Integral Equations mathematically

          -No General Relativity and Model does not reduce to GR on any condition

          -No Creation of matter like Bigbang or steady-state models

          -No many mini Bigbangs

          -No Missing Mass / Dark matter

          -No Dark energy

          -No Bigbang generated CMB detected

          -No Multi-verses

          Here:

          -Accelerating Expanding universe with 33% Blue shifted Galaxies

          -Newton's Gravitation law works everywhere in the same way

          -All bodies dynamically moving

          -All bodies move in dynamic Equilibrium

          -Closed universe model no light or bodies will go away from universe

          -Single Universe no baby universes

          -Time is linear as observed on earth, moving forward only

          -Independent x,y,z coordinate axes and Time axis no interdependencies between axes..

          -UGF (Universal Gravitational Force) calculated on every point-mass

          -Tensors (Linear) used for giving UNIQUE solutions for each time step

          -Uses everyday physics as achievable by engineering

          -21000 linear equations are used in an Excel sheet

          -Computerized calculations uses 16 decimal digit accuracy

          -Data mining and data warehousing techniques are used for data extraction from large amounts of data.

          Have a look at

          http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.in/p/blog-page_15.h

          tml

          Best Regards

          =snp

          Dear Fellow Essayists

          This will be my final plea for fair treatment.,

          FQXI is clearly seeking to find out if there is a fundamental REALITY.

          Reliable evidence exists that proves that the surface of the earth was formed millions of years before man and his utterly complex finite informational systems ever appeared on that surface. It logically follows that Nature must have permanently devised the only single physical construct of earth allowable.

          All objects, be they solid, liquid, or vaporous have always had a visible surface. This is because the real Universe must consist only of one single unified VISIBLE infinite surface occurring eternally in one single infinite dimension that am always illuminated mostly by finite non-surface light.

          Only the truth can set you free.

          Joe Fisher, Realist