Essay Abstract

Commonly accepted views on foundations of science, either based on bottom-up construction or top-down reduction of fundamental entities are here rejected. We show how the current scientific methodology entails a certain kind of research for foundations of science, which are here regarded as insurmountable limitations. At the same time, this methodology allows to surpass the bounds classically accepted as fundamental, yet often based on mere "philosophical prejudices". Practical examples are provided from quantum mechanics and biophysics.

Author Bio

Flavio Del Santo is a graduate student in physics at the University of Vienna and member of the international association for the foundations of physics BRCP. His main interests are foundations of quantum mechanics and quantum information theory (besides history and philosophy of physics). He has been promoter of several activities (conferences, lectures, groups of discussion) connecting foundations of physics, philosophy of science and societal problems of science. Chiara Cardelli is a PhD student in computational physics at the University of Vienna. She is interested in soft matter, science communication and sustainable development.

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Flavio Del Santo,

thank you, that is something explained to me. It turns out that I'm on my way of reductionism and physicalism has made significant progress, as explained by the formula of equivalence of mass and energy and the existence pressure of the Universe, which determines the quantum properties of space. Next, I found the connection of the Lorentz factor with a probability of States of the electron and determined the mass of the particles through the stream of the acceleration vector through a closed surface (a generalized Gauss law). Using the principle of the identity of space and matter Descartes I'm ready to go further and explain that you called the unexplained.

Do not look at my essay New Cartesian philosophy. I do physics but not philosophy. In philosophy I was looking for an answer to the question: "What is matter?" an not found. When philosophers argued that matter exists in space and in time, I said, "No, this is wrong, matter does not exist, and it creates space and time". When there is no matter, no space and time.

Your philosophical work is very deep and requires a great deal of recognition. I hope that you will not pass by the assertion of Descartes, that the notion of physical space and matter are identical.

I wish you success!

    Dear Ms. Cardelli and Mr. Del Santo,

    Your essay makes important points regarding philosophical prejudices in the foundations of physics.

    You might be interested in my own essay, "Fundamental Waves and the Reunification of Physics". I argue that current orthodoxy reflects such prejudices that became established due in part to earlier misconceptions or inappropriate mathematical constructions. I present an analogy with earlier scientific controversies, namely the orbital epicycles in Ptolemaic cosmology. Epicycles were quite accurate for calculational purposes, even though they had absolutely no physical basis. I argue, for example, that quantum entanglement is a mathematical artifact of Pauli's formulation of the exclusion principle, and this mathematical formulation has no physical basis. With the advent of the field of quantum computing, entanglement now has major technological implications. I suggest that quantum computing will fail completely, and this will lead to a major reassessment of the foundations of quantum mechanics within about 5 years.

    Best Wishes,

    Alan Kadin

      Dear Mr. Semyonovich,

      thank you for your comment. If I understand correctly, you are much in favour of a reductionist picture. However, my concern is deeper than that. If if read carefully I do not embrace any particular argument against reductionism, but is seems only too narrow to me. To stay on the safe side, I surely agree with Bohm, who states that "the notion that everything is, in principle, reducible to physics [is] an unproved assumption, which is capable of limiting our thinking in such a way that we are blinded to the possibility of whole new classes of fact and law" [see my essay for the reference].

      All good wishes,

      Flavio Del Santo

      Flavio Del Santo,

      You are doing it right. However, your philosophical analysis concerns the current state of science. I'm trying with the help of the principle of identity of space and matter Descartes to turn the page in its history and then require other philosophical reflections. But I am far from the philosophy and leave it to others. I only focus on the principle of identity of space and matter Descartes and think only about how to use it to improve the physics.

      All the best to you!

      Boris Semyonovich Dizhechko.

      Thank you Ms. Cardelli and Mr. Del Santo for an interesting and incisive read,

      Since you build upon the concept of 'philosophical prejudices' and appear to at least question reductionism, might you consider the larger picture of what science is attempting to be about - rather than the very reductionist perspective of physicists?

      Science is supposed to be about describing all of reality - yet physics appears to limit itself to smaller and smaller levels, although also jumping to the very large (astrophysical) level. What about all the levels in between?

      You do include a discussion about proteins, however this is still 'just another level'. Can it be that scientists are so taken by this or that level that they only study one or only a couple closely aligned levels?

      Physics cannot describe what occurs inside a human body nor the weather patterns two weeks in the future. These are events which involve actions at multiple levels of scale and multiple interconnected phenomena.

      This is where a larger philosophical prejudice exists - that reality is not an interconnected whole and can be explained by looking at its parts. While you admit, with Bohm, that this is an unproven assumption, it still drives most of science today.

      And this is in the face of increasing evidence that levels are connected and that emergent phenomena exist that cannot be explained simply by looking at their parts.

      Since you pose the discussion in terms of falsification - what experiments are being devised and run that test the reductionist philosophical position? And why is the evidence for emergent phenomena at many levels seldom included?

      As a last item, might it be that we have an unappreciated (current) fundamental limitation in the tools we are so devoted to - those of mathematics - that limits our reach across levels of scale and hence our ability to devise appropriate experiments that either test, in a positive sense of predicting, or test, in a negative sense of falsification, whether reality really does interact across all these levels?

      This might be a possible direction of investigation, since a fundamental change in mathematics could provide a large shift in what science can measure and calculate.

      Thank you for an involved essay,

      Don

        Dear Flavio Del Santo and Chiara Cardelli,

        Hmmm... Do I sound as arrogant when I make statements in my essay as you do in yours? The premise of your essay needs a serious challenge and you should consider yourselves honored in the fact that I am putting your essay in my memoirs, to be recalled as an example of why physicists failed to find the theory of everything. (Maybe I am that arrogant! :) )

        You state,

        "Accordingly, reduction is sometimes thought to be equivalent to the action of digging into the foundations of science. Despite this generally accepted view, we show that the reductionist approach to "foundations", which seems prima facie legitimate and very productive, is absolutely unnecessary to answer the posed question on what is fundamental."

        You go on to say...

        "In this view, the entities are the "building blocks" of Nature, and their interactions fully account for all the possible natural phenomena. This is however a typical primitive approach to subtle questions because it is a philosophical prejudice, and it requires the higher order philosophical pre-assumption of realism."

        Primitive? Really? Does this mean that the answer that leads to solving everything (a theory of everything) must be complex and sophisticated? Isn't that a bit short-sighted since a theory of everything MUST, by definition, start with the fewest simplest number of ingredients or as you put it, primitive?

        In actuality, it will eventually be shown that a philosophical pre-assumption of realism is the ONLY way to solve the theory of everything. "Philosophical" reasoning is the only way to find the building block entities that fully account for all the possible natural phenomena. It is not possible to find the building block entities of physics in an experiment because the very laws of physics do not allow these building block entities to be experimentally found. (See the hierarchy of energy)

        One of the interesting aspects of the theory of everything is that while it must be found through "philosophical" reduction, the theory of everything is also emergent. Now would be a good time for you to read my essay submitted to this contest "The Day after the Nightmare Scenario" as an introduction to the component building block entity and the theory of everything. To learn the entire theory requires studying the contents of a 350 page textbook which shows how the fundamental entity building blocks create everything in the universe.

        I find it ironic that the title of your essay is "Demolishing prejudices to get to the foundations" because history will show that you demolished the wrong prejudices! A few of the correct prejudices can be found in this paper...

        https://www.academia.edu/17289258/The_Theory_of_Everything..._What_Took_So_Long

        You have beautifully summed up why physicists failed to find the theory of everything. It goes along with this "Think Big" video presentation:

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yw88utUCx9M

        Of course you disagree but I am making a serious challenge to your entire premise. Do you stand by your claim? If so, you would need to prove my component building block entity wrong... This goes for ANY physicist... Good Luck with that!

        I am writing this response for the historical records. I give you a 10 for your essay and I hope you win this essay contest for reasons that should be obvious... Good Luck again!

          I commend you on a cleverly done essay, but you did not get to the MOST foundational constructions. It is commendable how it is organized, but it looks like a top ten list of proposed linkages without a fundamental organizing principle.

          Prove me wrong with a clear statement as to the most foundational PHYSICAL, versus presumed 'logical' premise.

          Thanks

          I did enjoy the essay. I am merely looking for something more and am here to learn

          Andrew

            Hi Andrew, although not being the author of this essay's site, by skimming over the newly posted comments, i stumbled over your statement

            "Prove me wrong with a clear statement as to the most foundational PHYSICAL, versus presumed 'logical' premise."

            However, to answer your demand, one has at first to precicely define what one understands as "PHYSICAL". Are physical laws, mathematics and logics PHYSICAL?

            If yes, then Gödel's results must hold for the physical realm.

            If Gödel's results hold for the physical realm, then there exist questions about the physical realm that are not decidable by experimentally asking nature. As outlined in my essay, this is a logical consequence of logics being itself subject to Gödel's results. Hence, if we assume nature to behave strictly logically (and consistently!), physical undedicability follows - since nature itself incorporates all logical rules to at all being able to obey consistency (and logics!).

            If physical laws, mathematics and logics are NOT PHYSICAL, then this implies that there have to exist -two- distinct realms, a physical and a non-physical one, the latter harbouring at least logics, some subset of maths and the physical laws.

            If there exists a physical as well as a non-physical realm of existence, then the question arises which of both realms is more fundamental - or whether or not both realms are equally fundamental.

            For all these possible cases, absolute provability for some fundamental axioms (to determine what kinds of entities and or ontologies are really fundamental) must fail. Only more or less reasonable inductive inferences can be made on the basis of some METAPHYSICS.

            Best wishes for you - Stefan.

            Dear authors,

            I looked almost in vain for the role of causality and non-arbitrariness for reliability in your essay.

            As a layman in QM I am nonetheless aware of Bruckner's interpretation of Bell's inequality. There were many discussions devoted to this topic. I feel sad that Robert McEachern decided not to take part in this contest this time, perhaps because he is deeply disappointed that just his MATLAB simulation was ignored rather than refuted. In what was he wrong?

            Regards,

            Eckard Blumschein

              Dear Mr. Palmer,

              thank you for your very interesting and valuable comments.

              Indeed, we do agree with most of them. We have tried to show in our essay - within the quite strict limit of length - that there are today several examples from the literature about genuine emergent phenomena (i.e. not reducible to elementary interactions between single parts) or holistic approaches. We obviously do not have a proposal on how to revolutionize science, but we have tried to show that sticking to such narrow pre-assumptions as reductionism (that in our opinion pre-assumes a certain form of ontological realism) or strict determinism are unnecessary prejucdice that limit the scope of science.

              Very interesting is also your last comment on the role of mathematics. Indeed, this is a serious concern to which it is difficult to answer. In principle, you are totally right, maths could well be a limiting tool for our science and prevent us to develop entirely new scientific fields. However, science is also a matter of surviving of "less fit" theories, and until there is not a concrete proposal that goes beyond a mathematical description, it would be very though to speculate on it.

              Thank you once more, and we wish you the best,

              Flavio & Chiara

              Dear Mr. Gordon,

              thank you for your comments.

              I am very sorry if our assay sound arrogant, I didn't mean this. It is more of a reaction against the typical arrogant physicists that approach problems as it was given that at the end everything must be simple, or elegant, or at least complex behaviour are merely a result of interactions of very many simple objects. it ain't necessarily so.

              Let me then clarify a semantic misunderstanding. When I say "primitive", this is an abjective referred to "approach" and not to the theories as you have interpreted it. A theory of everything, if by any means possible, should (as conventionally all the theories) have a minimal number of elements. However, minimal in this context could be arbitrarily large, and the theory arbitrarily complex. There is nothing in principle that prevents a theory from being complex.

              I would like to point out that you maybe take me too much as an enemy of reductionism. As states in a previous post, I do not stand on any particular anti-reductionist position. I only show that this maybe the case that reductionism is a nice starting point, but a limiting one, an approach that prevent us to explore entirely new theoretical directions. My essay is not a treatise against reductionism, it only takes a step back and look for higher form of philosophical approach to fundamental problems.

              Thank you once more.

              All good wishes,

              Flavio

              Dear Mr. Blumschein,

              thank you for your contribution.

              I am not sure if I am familiar with what you point out, what do you mean by "Bruckner's interpretation of Bell's inequality"?.

              As for causality is actually a major concern in my essay; I state: " Since falsificationism requires

              some "cause-effect" relations to meaningfully test

              theories, then instantaneous signaling would break

              this possibility, and any meaning of the current

              methodology along with it"

              If you then follow the endnote 8, you will find a shoert comment on causality in Brukner's theory.

              Thank you for your time.

              All the best,

              Flavio

              Hi Eckhard,

              my personal answer to your question is, that for the case of a simulation concerning quantum microscopic behaviour, be it in a computer or a human mind, one has at first to discriminate such a simulation from what nature really does.

              The reason for this is grounded in correcting a huge misunderstanding. Because independent from what John Bell said or thought or not said and not thought, for coming to a conclusive result that could be valid for the whole scientific community, one has to present a fully fledged theory of ones underlying assumptions which have gone into the mathematics and therefore also into the simulation.

              1) If such a fully fledged alternative theory cannot predict something different and testable against the established theory, no infinity of wordings can decide who is wrong or right.

              2) If such a fully fledged theory CAN predict something different and testable against the established theory, BUT those experiments have not yet been conducted, THEN they should be conducted, of course.

              3) Until these experiments have been actually performed, one should not use wordings that suggest that the proposed theory MUST and IS inevitably true. Nonetheless doing so merely MIRRORS some bad habits even professional theorists have when talking about their hypothesis, right?

              4) When the mentioned experiments deliver a negative result for the new theory, this does not mean that other possible theories must necessarily also deliver negative results. We simply cannot know in advance, right?

              Since the proponents of locally realistic hidden-variable theories usually not only hope that somedays their own or another such theory can deliver a positive experimental result, but heavily claim it as if it were an already established truth, I think it is perfectly fair that I am allowed to claim that not one of those possibly formulizable theories will ever yield the desired positive result. In a reply above to Andrew Beckwith I gave a description for the reasons why I believe that this must be the case. In my own essay as well as in my subsequent comments on it on my essay page and on other essay pages, I argue for the possibility that nature isn't fully formalizable by mathematics - in opposition to the philosophical prejudice that it nonetheless should. If my claim would be true, it would explain why a mathlab simulation is totally non-conclusive to decide whether or not a violation of Bell's inequalities necessarily indicates non-locality and the like. Because if nature is indeed not totally formalizable (especially regarding nature's behaviour at the quatum level), then no software program that tries to mathematically catch nature's behaviour has to fail - since this behaviour would not be mathematically formalizable. Hence, the underlying maths of such a simulation has nothing to do with what is going on in nature. As I outlined to Andrew Beckwith above, one cannot have one's cake and at the same time eat it. If one labels oneself to be a Realist, one has to accept logic, and hence Gödel's results, and hence physically realized undecidability - and face the possibility that nature may not fully follow the philosophical prejudice of determinism and complete formalizability.

              I think the huge misunderstanding I spoke of lies in the fact that it is possible to formulate locally realistic hidden-variable theories - what means nothing but that one can simulate such a theory - either in a computer or in a human mind, but does in no way a priori necessitate that nature has to behave according to the formulated theories. In this sense the fact that it is possible to formulate such theories which may or may not disprove some of Bell's *logical* assumptions, does not suffice to establish any truth of the new theory without an experimental test. Because Bell's assumptions may well be non-conclusive - concerning what nature really does.

              Even being able to conclusively identify such false assumptions, be it in Bell's work or in others, this would be totally non-conclusive regarding the question who is wrong or right about nature's real behaviour.

              You and me, we are both longstanding essay authors here on fqxi. We both - at least I for myself - know very well that these contests aren't at all exclusively only about TRUTH, but extensively often also about opinions, camouflaged as already established facts. Therefore there is no need for anyone here to argue that one is a Realist and therefore one's own statements about nature's behaviour must inevitably be necessarily true - when one isn't willing to correctly communicate the own approach *realistically*, namely as a possible truth instead of a necessary truth.

              Of course, even the realist has emotions. And therefore he illogically values his approach higher than all others. But mixing the logical with the illogical regularily results in an inconsistency, the OPPOSITE OF REALISM, and hence the "Realist" confuses this paraconsistent logics to self-confirm the absolute priority of his own approach. Don't misunderstand me, my words here aren't adressed only to 'hidden-variable' proponents, but also to professional scientists working in the departments of theoretical physics. I know what will be the consequences of this comment here. It will not be a logical answer, but an emotionally answer - expressed in scoring points. But I am a Realist and consider it as necessary and worth to comment the way I did it here. Therefore there is also really no reason for Robert to be disappointed since we know what these contests are all about, they are in much cases not primarily about stringent logical arguments, but rather about personal emotional musings, the latter not even loosely related to the contest's genuine theme. Therefore most of them can be considered 'not even wrong', to cite Pauli.

              Best wishes to you - Stefan.

              I truly appreciate your kind response. I hope I did not sound too arrogant or forthright in my comment. It is nice to see we have one thing in common. We do think that there is an air of arrogance among some physicists in academia. I don't blame them, they did everything right - so where did they go do wrong! LOL! Smashing particles together will never reveal the answer (the fundamental ingredients)

              https://www.academia.edu/27987699/_Why_Cant_the_LHC_Find_New_Math_

              I understand your position where you think that the solution to the theory of everything will not be likely through reductionism but please consider this...

              It is not necessary that "complex behaviour are merely a result of interactions of very many simple objects". The complexity of interactions stem from the complexity of complex particles. Physicists still do not realize the complexity of a particle's internal energy structure, even the most simple elementary particles such as an electron and an up quark. (A down quark is NOT an elementary particle, it is a combinant particle of an up quark with an electron - Don't worry, all the math still works out and correlates to the experimental data). The manner in which complex particles interact is complex considering how they are put together with other elementary particles and how they exist among all other particles and within spacetime.

              The theory of everything is represented by a model that mathematically supports a linear course of events first creating our 3 spatial dimension spacetime, then primordial photons, then particles that contains mass and everything else that arises from there. It explains what happened to create the big bang, inflation and expansion, actually... everything. Everything can be derived from a humongous number of a component building block entity and the energy associated with their initial alignment. I was impressed that you used the word "entity" and not particle. Particles co-exist with spacetime and the building block entities exist "as" spacetime.

              I am not saying this because I "feel" this is so... I am saying this because I found the model and the math that shows that this is the way to go. The key is getting through the Ruby Slipper Conundrum and the hierarchy of energy - I am not asking that you believe a word I say here. I expect to be called a lot of names before this is all over... But I had to respond to your essay because you were so elegant in stating your position, a position that goes against what I consider the actual theory of everything. Reductionism did end up being the solution but the only way to reach it was through the philosophical approach.

              Again - Thanks for your response. You are gentlemen and I hope you win!

              Dear Ms. Cardelli and Mr. Del Santo & Alan,

              May I suggest this failure and reassessment of QM has already begun!?

              Please read my essay titled "A Fundamental Misunderstanding" where I show that the correlation found in the EPR experiment (currently attributed to QM entanglement) can be fully explained by Classical Physics. My results even include the latest so called 'loophole-free' experiments that use a Steering Inequality rather than the conventional Bell or CHSH tests.

              Best Regards,

              Declan Traill

              Flavio, Chiara,

              I largely agree with what you say about the removal* of philosophical prejudices except your concept of falsification, which I think is not reflecting Popper's. For "...it must be possible for an empirical scientific system to be refuted by experience" to make any sense, 'experience' must be of a 'higher' generality/potency than 'empirical scientific system'. For example: the production of plastic bags was a chemically and economically viable, empirical theory. 'Experience', however, could have told us that it is not a clever idea. W. v. O. Quine knew that any theory can be made 'true' by sufficiently distorting the rest of the world.

              *Hegel's aufheben (to sublate) may be a more refined term, which in German means to preserve, to disperse and to elevate.

              Heinrich

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                Dear Flavio and Chiara,

                Excellent work, content and expression. We agree on most. We argue diametric views on reductionism but I agree your grounds and think you'll agree mine, particularly as it proves productive. I think your top place is well deserved.

                More importantly I need your help. You identify that QM's (CHSH >2) limit has never been experimentally violated. My essay, completely unbelievably I know, reports on what may be the first(and repeatable) experiment to do so (building on my last few finalist essays) for >2. Photographs and protocol (see end notes) are included along with assumptions and rationale.

                What's more, Declan Trail's short essay (referencing those papers) provides a computer code matching the ontology and also confirmes violation of the so called 'Steering inequality' (closing the measurement loophole).

                The analog experiment is absolute simplicity! Yet as few really understand the problem and QM's assumptions it needs someone who does but isn't prejudiced by docrine to study and help falsify it. I hope you may qualify! I start by effectively replacing spin up/down with Maxwell's orthogonal state pairs.

                I look forward to your comments questions.

                Very well done for yours. Top marks.

                Very best

                Peter

                  Dear Mr. Luediger,

                  thank you for your comment. I am not sure that you are using the word "experience" with the same meaning I am using it, namely in the usual meaning of the philosophy of science. What I mean by experience is, to be based on the empirical basis, that is, knowledge resulting from an interaction with the world, with nature, the possibility of gaining new information from cleverly disgned experiments. In your post, you seem to use "experience" as "life experience", some realization based on events that one suffers and thus acquires some awareness afterwards. This is not what I meant, and surely not what Popper meant. In this regard, it is curious that you accuse me of not reflecting Popper's intention using the sentence "...it must be possible for an empirical scientific system to be refuted by experience" that is a quotation from Popper's most famous Logik der Forschung (Logic of Scientific Descovery).

                  In conclusion: we have bold ideas (in the form of falsifiable statements), and we go out there to interact with the "world" (experience) and we have a way to discriminate the "truth" from imagination. This is actually Popper's legacy.

                  I hope the misunderstand is now clarified.

                  I wish you the best of luck with your essay (which I enjoyed reading),

                  Flavio

                  Dear Peter (you forgot to login, but there is only one author with your name),

                  thank you for the very kind words.

                  Just an oversight from your message: CHSH inequalities has been violated since 1981 (Aspect's experiments) on a regular basis, finding a maxima value of correlations of 2*sqrt(2) (called Tsirelson's boound). Maximally entanglement bipartite states (Bell's states) can indeed reach that value. It is this latter bound that discriminate between sets the limit of QM, and if experimentally violated it would falsify QM as we know it. In principle this is totally feasible, since there are proposal for more-than-quantum- correlations that still lie within the no-signalling region. I discuss this (the so-called PR box, in particular) in my endnote 21. However, there is so far no actual proposal on how to implement this, in practice. How to prepare a phisical state in a scenario that can implement a PR-box experiment.

                  Thank you again.

                  Best wishes,

                  Flavio