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

        Emily,

        Quite brilliant, beautifully conceived, considered & written, and correct. Thank you. Top marks. I certainly agree; "We are in dire need of another paradigm shift". and your alternate view.;

        "quantum mechanics came along, and try as we might, we could not find satisfactory explanations for the quantum probabilities. So we stopped trying, and began applying the term 'fundamental' to cover our lack of understanding.

        Now a shock - I didn't stop trying. I'd hope you might study & try to falsify the ontological mechanism in my essay (no maths) which appears to reproduce QM classically - in just the way John Bell predicted. Yes it DOES seem a bit complex initially, but you should understand it (better than most seems able to!)

        The matching computer code and Cos2 plots are in Declan Trail's essay.

        Note this came out of trying to falsify and apparent logical solution for SR (see my prev finalist essays inc peer rated 1st & 2nd). So I think and hope, finally, you're right that;

        "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."

        Well done, and thank you again, for yours.

        Very best

        Peter

        Hi Emily,

        Definitely one of the best essays here - clear, insightful and fun to read. I especially appreciate that it's historically informed... and I think you do get to the key issue. The question of what's fundamental is closely tied to the question of what counts as an explanation, and also, of what it is that really needs to be explained about our world. As you suggest, the questions that really should be most pressing may not even be approachable within the current reductive paradigm.

        There are several points you raise that I take up in my current essay. For one, you suggest it's important to explain why there are the kinds of regularities in the world that allow us to make predications. I would add... that allow us to observe and measure things, which would hardly be possible in a less well-organized environment. Ideally we could ground our explanation of the complex forms these regularities take in some sensible notion of why they exist in the first place.

        I particularly liked your thought that maybe "most of the time there simply is no fact of the matter about how things are on a microscopic level, because the universe is efficient, and doesn't bother answering questions when it doesn't need to." I would say, it only answers in situations where the question is actually asked, and where the answer can make a meaningful difference to something, by setting up other such situations.

        And finally, your whimsical tag-line that maybe after all it's atoms that are fundamental, happens to be the main point of my argument. Not fundamental in the sense of indivisible, or independently self-sustaining, of course... but in that the possibility of measuring anything or meaningfully defining any kind of information, in our universe, depends on the remarkable combination of things that atoms can do.

        Many thanks for your excellent contribution. If you're looking for recommends, Karen Crowther, Ines Samengo and Marc Seguin are my other front-runners.

        Conrad

        Hi Emily -- Wow; that was a really great essay! A much bigger scope (and much better answer) than what I tried to do in mine, although we touched on a few of the same themes. As you probably know, I'm in essential agreement about just about everything here -- and indeed I'm still trying to sort out just how 'under-determined' the micro-reality might be.

        Right at the very end, though, I couldn't quite tell if you were describing how I think about things or rather something a bit different. You wrote:

        " If this is correct, it is no wonder that when we do quantum physics we find it difficult to say anything definite about how things are on a microscopic level: most of the time there simply is no fact of the matter about how things are on a microscopic level, because the universe is efficient, and doesn't bother answering questions when it doesn't need to. To ensure the satisfaction of the macroscopic constraints, there's usually no need to decide how things are on a microscopic level - except of course when human experimentalists start wiggling smaller and smaller things and demanding answers."

        I figured you weren't being anti-realist here, which was confirmed by your answer to Matt's question, but I'm still not quite sure what you have in mind. To Matt, you wrote:

        " we just have a constraint problem whose solution requires more detail in some places than in others."

        That sounds fine to me, but still leaves open the question of what happens when we *don't* look closely, what happens when we don't impose detailed boundary constraints on a microscopic system.

        So here's an example: an atom passes through a Stern-Gerlach device, but instead of measuring which path it takes, the two paths are recombined so one can't tell which way it went through the device, even later. I assume this is what you mean by *not* demanding answers -- but what do you mean by saying there's "no fact of the matter about how things are"? Is that just shorthand for saying that there might be some non-particle-like history, some realistic thing (say, a field) that takes *both* paths in this instance? Or are you leaning towards something even more dramatic -- say, that there's nothing corresponding to the atom at all, or that the spacetime locations of the paths aren't even well-defined? I'd be curious to know what you thought about this example.

        Thanks again for a great read!

        -Ken

          Dear Emily Christine Adlam

          Just letting you know that I am making a start on reading of your essay, and hope that you might also take a glance over mine please? I look forward to the sharing of thoughtful opinion. Congratulations on your essay rating as it stands, and best of luck for the contest conclusion.

          My essay is titled

          "Darwinian Universal Fundamental Origin". It stands as a novel test for whether a natural organisational principle can serve a rationale, for emergence of complex systems of physics and cosmology. I will be interested to have my effort judged on both the basis of prospect and of novelty.

          Thank you & kind regards

          Steven Andresen