Fundamental? by Emily Christine Adlam

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

Dear Emily,

many thanks for one of the best essay I have read (and I have read many indeed). It is clearly writte, well argued, and it provides a number of insights that go directly to the point of what fundamental means. It was a real pleasure to ascertain that our views are very close about most of the things you state in your essay. I particularly appreciated the sentence in which you rightly notice that "something that was once regarded as fundamental became explainable in the context of a new theory".

Moreover, your critique of the naive reductionist program is very agreeable, and it is based on the same arguments I have used in my essay, namely that " It seems likely that part of the problem is the reductionism that still dominates the thinking of most of those who consider themselves realists about science.

Congratulations again for this beautiful essay, I top rate it!

Best of luck,

Flavio

Dear Emily,

congratulations for your essay, it's one of the best I've read, very clear, well written and full of intriguing ideas. Moreover your idea has some points in common with mine, since I propose the relativity of fundamentality.

> 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.

I very agree, the answers change with the questions. This is a statement that you make stronger with:

> the notion of the Fundamental, writ large, is not supposed to be about our practical interests

Finally, just a curiosity:

> The present explains the future, and not vice versa

I propose a logical model where it could be also vice versa, redefining "explains".

All the best!

Francesco D'Isa

Emily,

The quandary about what is fundamental can be solved by cherry-picking your definition: mine is "that which is fundamental is necessary for existence," and pointing out that fundamental evolves with discovery. Physics starts with that which we know and build theories on that and as discoveries come smack our foreheads and say "this is the new truth." To determine fundamental we must have sentient beings to observe and set the theories and nature as the source of our queries. We now have LIGO which scientists theorize can be fine-tuned to recording the BB. We have LHC ramping up to the first seconds of the BB, that is if it is the BB and not the inverted BB or whatever. As you say, we must start with big pieces maybe the atom which our best microscopes can detect, and not define fundamental as the smallest and most basic. Certainly "changes in our understanding of the fundamental have often been associated with important scientific advances -- the concept does evolve.

Enjoyed your monologue. Hope you get a chance to look at mine.

Jim Hoover

Dear Emily,

Thank you for a wonderful essay.

While others have questioned if there are fundamentals, you have questioned if fundamentals are a positive thing. Interesting!

Your analysis of probability is brilliant. Thank you.

I hope you have a chance to look at my essay.

All the best,

Noson

Hi Emily:

I agree with your statement- "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 would like to draw your attention to the paradigm shift of the missing fundamental physics governing - "What causes a photon to accelerate to the speed of light?" I would like to invite you to look into my paper - "What is Fundamental - Is C the Speed of Light". that describes the fundamental physics of antigravity missing from the widely-accepted mainstream physics and cosmology theories resolving their current inconsistencies and paradoxes. The missing physics depicts a spontaneous relativistic mass creation/dilation photon model that explains the yet unknown dark energy, inner workings of quantum mechanics, and bridges the gaps among relativity and Maxwell's theories. The model also provides field equations governing the spontaneous wave-particle complimentarity or mass-energy equivalence. The key significance or contribution of the proposed work is to enhance fundamental understanding of C, commonly known as the speed of light, and Cosmological Constant, commonly known as the dark energy.

The manuscript not only provides comparisons against existing empirical observations but also forwards testable predictions for future falsification of the proposed model.

I would like to invite you to read my paper and appreciate any feedback comments.

Best Regards

Avtar Singh

Emily,

As time grows short, I recheck those that I have commented on to see if I've rated them. I find that I have not rated yours and am correcting that now.

Hope you can get a chance to look at mine.

Jim Hoover

Emily,

A logical explanation for the "arrow of time."

We experience reality as flashes of cognition and so think this arrow, or "flow," from past to future, is a fundamental fact of nature, but have difficulty explaining it. Physics has determined it must be a dimension, experienced as duration and so distills it down to measures of duration, which are correlated to measures of distance, resulting in Spacetime. Though cannot explain why it only seems to go past to future, other than the effect of entropy.

A simpler explanation is that it is change turning future to past, as in tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns. Duration is simply the state of the present, as events coalesce and dissolve.

Energy is 'conserved," because it is always and only present. Past and future are other configurations of the same medium. Given this, causality is redundant. It is the dynamic of this energy which creates these configurations.

As such, energy and the forms it manifests go opposite directions of time. Energy going past to future, as events go future to past. Think of the frames of a movie, versus the projector light shining through them.

Consider a factory, as an example of this relationship between entity and process. As the product goes start to finish, being in the future to in the past, the process points the other direction, consuming material and expelling product. Onto the new, shedding the old.

Life is the same, as individuals go birth to death, while the species moves onto the next generation, shedding the old. As consciousness goes from one thought to the next, these mental forms go future to past.

So time is like temperature, an effect of action. One is the individual frequency, while the other is masses of frequency and amplitude.

Simultaneity was dismissed by observing that different events are observed in different order, from different locations, but this is no more consequential that seeing the moon, simultaneous with seeing stars as they were years ago. It is the energy which is conserved, not the information it carries.

So the reason time is asymmetric is because it is a measure of action and action is inertial. The earth turns one direction, not both.

Regards,

John B. Merryman

Emily - I think you're leaning in the right direction here. I don't think it's "anti-realist" to assume there's no absolute fact in situations where the facts make no difference to anything.

But as to "when the universe is required to make up its mind" - in other words, when there's a physical context in which something about a quantum system becomes measurable - I don't think there's really any mystery about this. In these dual-path experiments, we have no problem understanding when "which path" information is available and when it isn't. We know what kinds of contexts are needed to measure any particular information. The problem is that measurement contexts are hard to conceptualize, since different kinds of information need different contexts, and every measurement relies on other kinds of measurements. So it's not clear how to fit them into any fundamental theory... which is the question addressed in my essay.

Thanks again - Conrad

Dear Emily,

What a wonderful essay! I liked it on multiple levels, the ideas, the explanations, the style.

In particular I fully agree with your statement "Fundamental means we have lost. Fundamental is an admission of defeat" when saying that "we stopped trying, and began applying the term 'fundamental' to cover our lack of understanding". While maybe we can't assign quantum probabilities in the usual way as in statistical mechanics, this doesn't mean there are no other ways.

Also this was really a good one "Even Leibniz ultimately needed a God to complete his vision - 'God,' of course, being the same sort of sticking-plaster concept as 'fundamental.'" Yes, you're right, and you're right also that there is more beyond the place where we proclaim the final stop. Maybe the most interesting things are beyond.

Best wishes,

Cristi Stoica

Dear Emily,

Yours is one of the most elegant essays in this contest, and it broaches a number of interesting points in an engaging manner.

A few comments:

1. It seems to me that the consequence to draw from the realization that "our ancestors who came up with concept of objective chance cannot ever had anz actual experience of what we now understand to be objective chance" is not that this was "nothing short of miracle", but rather that sometimes the wrong idea can nevertheless lead to the right conclusion. Is that miraculous?

2. I really liked the contrast in conceptualizations of fundamentality as something desirable because it gets rid of unnecessary or superfluous conceptual baggage, but then by the same token as something undesirable because what is being thrown out could actually be precisely that for which there is a value in finding deeper explanations. To me, this reinforces the notion that fundamentality is a purely epistemic notion.

3. On page 5 you ask "Why is it that objective chances seem to be the only thing we have in our arsenal when it comes to explaining regularities without explaining their specific form?" I would like to suggest an answer which you are unlikely to hear anywhere else: I believe that our understanding of the fundamental workings of nature has advanced so much that we cannot go further without integrating some physics-based understanding of being into it.

Questions of existence suffuse the background of any of the contemporary approaches to trying to understand this and related questions, but because existence is currently considered a purely philosophical concept, this aspect is generally simply overlooked by physicists. For instance, the reductionist answer you mention first, which "tells us that global regularities like quantum statistics must be explained in terms of fundamental properties of individual properties" glosses over the fact that our intuitive notions of existence always presuppose having definite properties, but this is already violated (under the textbook interpretations) in quantum mechanics. Sometimes (as in Heisenberg's "Physics and Philosophy") this is vaguely acknowledged, but, as far as I can tell, only within the context of some philosophical verbiage the meaning of which seems hard to apply mathematically to the equations.

4. I agree with you that as we go to ever smaller scales "most of the time there simply is no fact of the matter about how things are on a microscopic level", but I draw from that a completely different lesson than you seem to, namely, that this is an indication that our current conceptual, and to the extent that novel concepts drive the definition of novel mathematical objects, mathematical framework is simply inadequate to represent what is going on at those scales. I really wished I had already completed the second part of the 2-part series of which the first part is my contest entry, because it gives concrete examples of this claim, but regrettably this will still have to wait. Even the antireductionist conclusion of your essay involves considerations of existence in the background: I find it hard to conceive of atoms as more fundamental than quarks unless this was supported by some argument which elevates the ontic status of the latter relative to the former.

5. In my view we do not have to build ever bigger particle accelerators to gain a more fundamental understanding. Rather, I believe there is still ample space to reinterpret some of our current concepts in a different way which reveals connections or insights which were simply not obvious under the prior interpretations. In my entry I attempt to show this with the concrete example of length contraction.

That was my post.

Armin

Dear Emily,

Leibniz' PSR appears in the direct neighborhood of another principle, and I think that they cannot be meaningfully separated, particularly since they are coupled by an AND.

§30. Our reasonings are based on two great principles, that of contradiction, in virtue of which we judge that which involves a contradiction to be false, and that which is opposed or contradictory to the false to be true.

§31. And that of sufficient reason, by virtue of which we consider that we can find no true or existent fact, no true assertion, without there being a sufficient reason why it is thus and not otherwise, although most of the time these reasons cannot be known to us. (from Stanford Encycl. of Phil., para. numbers corrected acc. to original)

Based on §30 and the truism that contradiction does not exist, Leibniz says that that which is opposed or contradictory to the false (the non-existent) is true, and hence existent. So, existence is the opposite (complement?) of contradiction, which is basically what Spinoza had said. But then in §31 Leibniz goes on to speculate about the existent, namely, that there is a reason why it is thus and not otherwise, and he concludes the sentence by saying that the reason for this being so in most cases cannot be known to us. Hence what the PSR says is that there always IS a reason which, in general cannot be known, however. Then the question is why that? And the answer is in §30, because the existent is defined by non-contradiction and not positively! Does Leibniz suggest that the reason (cause) is virtual? Don't forget that for Leibniz necessary truths are a priori (true). That is, for him there are assertions that are a priori true, because they are non-contradictory. Pulled together, §30 and 31§ mean: every non-contradictory assertion is a priori true. Since, however, the positive proof of such a priori truth is not for us to know, it becomes clear why already Aristotle believed contradiction to be the most powerful logical argument there is.

So, I'm not sure whether PSR effectively supports your ideas.

Heinrich

Dear Emily

If you are looking for another essay to read and rate in the final days of the contest, will you consider mine please?

A couple of days in and semblance of my essay taking form, however the house bound inactivity was wearing me. I had just the remedy, so took off for a solo sail across the bay. In the lea of cove, I had underestimated the open water wind strengths. My sail area overpowered. Ordinarily I would have reduced sail, but this day I felt differently. My contemplations were on the forces of nature, and I was ventured seaward increasingly amongst them. As the wind and the waves rose, my boat came under strain, but I was exhilarated. All the while I considered, how might I communicate the role of natural forces in understanding of the world around us. For they are surely it's central theme.

Beyond my essay's introduction, I place a microscope on the subjects of universal complexity and natural forces. I do so within context that clock operation is driven by Quantum Mechanical forces (atomic and photonic), while clocks also serve measure of General Relativity's effects (spacetime, time dilation). In this respect clocks can be said to possess a split personality, giving them the distinction that they are simultaneously a study in QM, while GR is a study of clocks. The situation stands whereby we have two fundamental theories of the world, but just one world. And we have a singular device which serves study of both those fundamental theories. Two fundamental theories, but one device? Please join me in questioning this circumstance?

My essay goes on to identify natural forces in their universal roles, how they motivate the building of and maintaining complex universal structures and processes. When we look at how star fusion processes sit within a "narrow range of sensitivity" that stars are neither led to explode nor collapse under gravity. We think how lucky we are that the universe is just so. We can also count our lucky stars that the fusion process that marks the birth of a star, also leads to an eruption of photons from its surface. for if they didn't then nebula gas accumulation wouldn't be halted and the star would again be led to collapse.

Could a natural organisation principle have been responsible for fine tuning universal systems? Faced with how lucky we appear to have been, shouldn't we consider this possibility?

For our luck surely didnt run out there, for these photons stream down on earth, liquifying oceans which drive geochemical processes that we "life" are reliant upon. The Earth is made up of elements that possess the chemical potentials that life is entirely dependent upon. Those chemical potentials are not expressed in the absence of water solvency. So again, how amazingly fortunate we are that these chemical potentials exist in the first instance, and additionally within an environment of abundant water solvency such as Earth, able to express these potentials.

My essay is an attempt at something audacious. It questions the fundamental nature of the interaction between space and matter Guv = Tuv, and hypothesizes the equality between space curvature and atomic forces is due to common process. Space gives up an energy potential in exchange for atomic forces in a conversion process, which drives atomic activity. And furthermore, that Baryons only exist because this energy potential of space exists, and is available for exploitation. Baryon characteristics and behaviours, complexity of structure and process might then be explained in terms of being evolved and optimised for this purpose and existence. Removing need for so many layers of extraordinary luck to eventuate our own existence. It attempts an interpretation of the above mentioned stellar processes within these terms, but also extends much further. It shines a light on molecular structure that binds matter together, as potentially being an evolved agency that enhances rigidity and therefor persistence of universal system. We then turn a questioning mind towards Earths unlikely geochemical processes, (for which we living things owe so much) and look at its central theme and propensity for molecular rock forming processes. The existence of chemical potentials and their diverse range of molecular bond forming activities? The abundance of water solvent on Earth, for which many geochemical rock forming processes could not be expressed without? The question of a watery Earth? is then implicated as being part of an evolved system that arose for purpose and reason, alongside the same reason and purpose that molecular bonds and chemical process arose.

By identifying process whereby atomic forces draw a potential from space, we have identified means for their perpetual action, and their ability to deliver perpetual work. Forces drive clocks and clock activity is shown by GR to dilate. My essay details the principle of force dilation and applies it to a universal mystery. My essay raises the possibility, that nature in possession of a natural energy potential, will spontaneously generate a circumstance of Darwinian emergence. It did so on Earth, and perhaps it did so within a wider scope. We learnt how biology generates intricate structure and complexity, and now we learn how it might apply for intricate structure and complexity within universal physical systems.

To steal a phrase from my essay "A world product of evolved optimization".

Best of luck for the conclusion of the contest

Kind regards

Steven Andresen

Darwinian Universal Fundamental Origin

Dear Emily,

So many essays, so little time... Just a short post to let you know your essay was one of the best I read in this contest. Well written, witty, with many provocative ideas! Some of the highlights for me:

"What do we suppose will be left over when all reasonable questions have been answered? The simplest answer is also the most ambitious: nothing." (Have you read Amanda Gefter's book, "Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn"? I highly recommend it!)

"We are deeply uncomfortable with the idea that the universe must, on some level, be arbitrary." (Personally, as I argue in my essay, I think that non-arbitrariness must characterize the deepest, most fundamental level of reality.)

"Perhaps we should take it as a sign that we have been swimming against the current all this time: the messiness deep down is a sign that the universe works not 'bottom-up' but rather 'top-down,' with the laws of nature governing the whole of history at once, akin to the Lagrangian formulation of classical physics." (I too find Ken Wharton's ideas very interesting.)

"[...] as we build bigger and bigger particle accelerators to probe ever more deeply, the universe will be forced to invent deeper and deeper levels of reality that exist only to answer our questions." Whoa! ;) I hinted at a similar possibility in the essay I wrote in the previous FQXi contest; in figure 4 of the essay I submitted for this contest, this is the reason why my "top-down" chain of monkeys fades into something indefinite at the bottom end...

Congratulations! I am glad your essay is doing well in the community ratings, and I hope it gets the recognition it deserves.

Best wishes,

Marc

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