Dear Francesco,

I read your essay with great interest. I believe that this conclusion is extremely important: "Nothing is fundamental." This is a fundamental step towards her Majesty Dialectics, which modern "Fundamental science" ignores at all. Your essay is dialectic, but for some reason the essay lacks the dialectic of "The Beginning of the Universe".

I have questions and explanations for our discussion.

1. You marked on my forum, considering my understanding of "matter": "... it looks like that that matter is close to the paradoxical status of" nothing "."

No, in my dialectical conception "matter" is the triunity "nothing" "being" "becoming" (Hegel's triad).

2. Modern "Fundamental science" imposes such a vision of the "beginning" of the Universe: "In the Beginning was the Big Bang." But this, I consider naive "home philosophy". Why? There is no answer to the question: What is the nature of the "laws of nature"? With the Big bang hypothesis, many researchers disagree. And what is your model of "The Beginning of the Universe"?

3. Alexander Zenkin argues in the article SCIENTIFIC COUNTER-REVOLUTION IN MATHEMATICS: "The truth should be drawn ... "

Do you agree with this statement? Could you draw your picture of Truth as the foundation of Knowledge?

Yours faithfully,

Vladimir

    Dear Vladimir,

    thank you very much for reading my essay and for your answers and comments. Your reference to the Hegelian dialectics make your position clearer to my eyes.

    1. Thank you, now I understood what you mean - sadly "matter" is quite a misunderstandable term.

    2. I agree with you, as many scientists admits the Big Bang is a sort of "fake beginning", since it tells nothing about instant zero. In my view, time itself is just one of the relative parameter of reality. Yours of course is a difficult question, that would require many pages. In short, giving just the results of my thoughts, I believe that the very idea of "beginning" is an hard-to-remove human bias; I propend more for what we could call a static version of the universe (intended as a whole).

    3. I will read the linked essay soon, then I'll answer. Thank you for sharing!

    bests,

    Francesco

    Dear Valdimir,

    3. I read the essay you linked me. It's interesting for sure, but I don't agree with many points, first of all the critic to the Cantor's theorem. To ridiculize it because "it's short" is pretty naive, and the liar's correlation seems wrong, since real numbers and natural numbers are different sets. Anyway, I'm not a mathematician.

    The part you pointed me,

    > "the truth should be drawn with the help of the cognitive computer visualization technology and should be presented to "an unlimited circle" of spectators in the form of color-musical cognitive images of its immanent essence. If it is really the Truth, and if my neighbor is not a colour-blind person, we (and all other people around) shall see the same. And nobody, at all desire, will be ever able, using as a cover a "bourbakism" camouflage, to pose a falsehood as a truth, and an empty place as an outstanding scientific achievement.".

    It's obviously an impossibile task, due the "unlimited circle" and the uncertain status of "color-musical cognitive images of its immanent essence". Even if it were possibile, we would have just the truth relative to the whole human set. I would partly agree if we could persuade every possible identity in the whole universe, but since some relative truths are mutually excluding, it's an impossible task. Moreover, that truth is a persuasion is (as I intend it in my essay) a sort of epistemic limit, it does not say anything about "truth itself". Lastly, being truth a relative concept (like all the others) there's no "truth itself".

    Thank you again!

    Francesco

    Dear Francesco,

    Very enjoyable essay! While the relativism of fundamental, as argued by you, is convincing; is it not true that there is an absolute [not relative] sense in which reductionism is fundamental? Like, everything is made of atoms, atoms are made of nucleons and electrons, and so on.

    Best wishes,

    Tejinder

      Dear Tejinder,

      thank you very much for reading and appreciating my essay, I'm very glad of it.

      I truly can't find an absolute [not relative] sense in which reductionism is fundamental, since everything we can deal with, "is what it is" due a complex net of relations. Laptops, chairs, atoms, nucleons, electrons... they are always defined by relations with other things. When we talk about stuff like chairs and tables, we have a perceptive bias that since we can "feel", "use", "see" them etc, they are somewhat more concrete. But, as you write in your essay (a quote which I loved):

      > if we investigate into deeper and deeper reductionist layers of physical reality [the vertical fundamental], laws come 'closer and closer' to things, until there comes the lowermost layer, where laws are not distinguishable from things at all.

      When we investigate these real but intangible relations it seems that we are just playing with abstractions - but then these relations (laws) "works" with chairs and tables as well, and concreteness comes back to us. But, again, they are always relations, just more tangible in our phenomenal world; I would say, "at our level of reality".That's why I enjoyed your conclusion that,

      > the mathematical world and the physical world are one and the same.

      Because mathematic looks like a discipline that traces the most common relations of our world - maybe the only relations that we can ever perceive or imagine.

      Thank you again and all the best,

      Francesco

      Thank you, Francesco, for your good questions and answers. I give high rating to your ideas.

      Good luck!

      Yours faithfully,

      Vladimir

      Thanks to you Vladimir, for your availability and ideas! Good luck as well!

      Dear Francesco,

      I love your title: 'Nothing is fundamental'. The challenge then is to explain, how it is possible, that we can describe nature by theories, that really seem fundamental.

      In my essay (The quantum sheep - in defence of a positivist view on physics) - that is not online yet - I also take relative view in doubled sense: first under symmetry constraints only relative values are observable. This is somehow trivial. But under symmetric specific symmetries, there are always observables, that are independent of the relative frame (Casimir invariants). For instance, mass and spin are such invariants of the Lorenz symmetry. They are the same independent of the reference frame. So these seem to be quantities that are fundamental and in fact are used to describe the fundamental particles in our physical theories. So are they not relative?

      The second relativism, that I introduce in my essay is that: the laws of physics are only Lorenz invariant if the environment (the universe) is Lorenz invariant. Only under this condition the fundamental quantities are fundamental.

      So in the context of your essay, could one conditionalize the relative truth in order to get an absolute truth?

      "If the environment is Lorenz invariant, then particles have masses, that are independent of the state of the observer." Which is a mathematical truth, hence tautological, hence does not say anything about the world.

      I also would like to comment on your: "... my water needs my (future) partaking of the boiled meal, ...in short all the present, past and future relationship which define that exact phenomenon and are necessary to it."

      It was not clear to me, how the future can partake to the definition (?) or present truth. I think it is very difficult to unthink the concept of causality. However thinking about that helped me to come to a solution to the delayed choice experiment, which has been a problem in my interpretation of quantum mechanics I gave in my essay. The delayed chosen settings of the measurement does not only define the actual state relative to the measurement setting, but the being of the whole causal past. Sadly this came to me only after I have submitted my essay.

      Best regards and thanks for your well written essay

      Luca

        Dear Luca,

        thank you very much for your comment.

        > So in the context of your essay, could one conditionalize the relative truth in order to get an absolute truth?

        I think I will be better able to answer you when your essay will be online. Please notify me!

        > I also would like to comment on your: "... my water needs my (future) partaking of the boiled meal, ...in short all the present, past and future relationship which define that exact phenomenon and are necessary to it." It was not clear to me, how the future can partake to the definition (?) or present truth. I think it is very difficult to unthink the concept of causality.

        As you say this is highly counter-intuitive. I mean that to consider something due its relationship in the present and past is quite partial, because the relations in the future are just unknown, not absent. This is quite easier if consider it from a logic point of view.

        i.e: I boil some water (event A), with which later I cook some pasta (event B).

        now let's think about another "possible world" where I boil some water (event A), with which later I make a tea (event C).

        When the event A happens, you ("we", let's suppose I chose randomly) can't know if the event B or C will follow. But it's out of doubt that the concatenation A >B and A > C are different, and thence that the two A are different as well. ("The water with which i bolied pasta" VS "the water with which I made some tea").

        Even the paradoxical hypothesis that time will end before event B or C leads to a difference with A, because the end of the time is the event C.

        All the best, looking forward to read your paper!

        Francesco

        Dear Francesco D'Isa,

        Your essay implies almost the same thing as mine. But do you feel the that basic entities like spacetime cannot exist without an observer? What will happen if their is no observer?

        I wish you luck!

        Priyanka

          Dear Priyanka,

          thank you very much, I bookmarked your essay and I will read it soon. I would substitute the term "observer" with "related". Without any relations with it, I think that also the space-time would not exists, because it would be not differentiated from anything. So how could it be something, like a space-time?

          Bests, I wish you luck!

          Francesco

          Dear Francesco,

          thank you for a very clear, and well-written, exposition of Nagarjuna's philosophy---to me, Nagarjuna has always been one of the most subtle Buddhist thinkers (although that may reflect no more than my lack of knowledge of most Buddhist thinkers), and the concept of dependent arising, while challenging to one educated with the idea of independent substances, was a great influence on my own thoughts. In fact, an earlier version of my essay contained some discussion of this influence that was cut due to length constraints. But I couldn't have done Nagarjuna's thought justice, so I'm happy to see that you've undertaken this task.

          Your treatment of the paradox of relativism is intriguing. I have to spend some time thinking about it, before I can really address it. In some ways, it harkens back to the logic of Catuskoti, it seems to me.

          I have to dash out now, but I hope your essay will do well in the competition, it certainly deserves to!

            Dear Jochen,

            thank you very much for reading my essay and for your kind words about it! I also found Nagarjuna's philosophy (but he's not the only one, even if he's maybe the first) very challenging and stimulating to one educated with the idea of independent substances.

            Thank you again, I wish you all the best for your work as well!

            Francesco

            Dear Francesco,

            Thank you for comments on my essay. They are much appreciated. I shall not discuss them here, because this is the place to consider your essay.

            One question I have is the connection between the statement "Everything is relational" and the statement "Nothing is fundamental." It seems that the former does not necessarily imply the latter. Let us assume for purposes of argument that natural laws cannot exist without entities to which those laws apply, and that, similarly, entities cannot exist without laws that govern them. Then the reality of the laws would be relative to the existence of the entities, and the existence of the entities would be relative to reality of the laws. Nonetheless, it might still be true that the laws are more fundamental than the entities, because the laws apply systematically to everything, but each entity has only a limited and local significance. A single entity, or a group of entities, might disappear, while yet the general order of nature remains the same. On the other hand, if somehow the laws were abolished, the system of nature would collapse into chaos.

            Here is another way to make this point. If one thing is more fundamental than a second, the first is related to the second, and perhaps the first thing requires that relationship for its very existence. However, the relationship is non-symmetrical. So long as both things exist, and each does require the other for its existence, the first thing accounts for or explains the second, although the second does not account for or explain the first. An essential relationship need not be symmetrical. At least, this possibility might be worth considering.

            On another point, it was good to see a thinker like Nagarjuna brought into the sort of discussion where he might ordinarily not be mentioned.

            Laurence Hitterdale

              Congratulations Francesco,

              Your essay is the most persuasive of any I have read to date, enhanced as it is by compliance with FQXi's evaluation criterion that essays should be 'accessible to a diverse, well-educated but non-specialist audience.'

              Perhaps you should have qualified your title with the prefix 'As far as I know ...' We simply don't know what we don't know - and that is one of many absolute truths, contrary to the notion that 'every truth is a belief.'.

              While you use the terms 'exist' or 'existence' more than once, you have not elaborated upon the idea of existence. If you hold to the view that 'existence' is 'nothing' in the absence of 'something' or some 'things', and therefore does not warrant consideration, then yes, your title still holds. You can still maintain that 'existence' depends upon one or more relations but that does not deny 'existence' from qualifying as being fundamental to consideration of any and every other 'thing', including ideas.

              Thanks for the ride.

                Dear Laurence,

                thank you very much for reading my essay and for your comment, you touched a really important point.

                This essay is and adapted excerpt from the first part of a longer text I'm still working on, where I try to manage the consequences of these starting point. To properly answer to your important question I should publish here much more from this text, but sadly it's still a draft in Italian. I hope I will have the chance to finish and traslate it, and to share it with the FQXi community as well, if interested.

                Anyway, I will try to answer you through an example, to make things simpler.

                Let's follow your case with a bouncing ball and the needed natural laws. As you said, we could consider more fundamental these laws, since the bouncing ball needs them to exists, and not vice versa.

                Considering 3 bouncing balls the situation will be analogous, but considering all the physical object it would be not: laws and objects could be likewise fundamental. But in this hierarchy of fundamentality, it seems that relation itself it's still in the top, since without it there would be no laws nor object, but not vice versa, since we could still put in relation, for example, imaginary things (yes, we need a mind in order to do it, but it's not logically impossible).

                To state it from another angle, bouncing balls, objects and laws are such just in relation with some (human) observer: but what they are related to something else? This is a question that we can't answer by definition, but it has sense anyway. Relations are so intertwined that even their hierarchy of fundamentality can change depending on the point of view from where we analyze it.

                Thank you again for your comment, and good luck with your essay!

                Francesco D'Isa

                Dear Gary,

                thank you very much for your comment and appreciation!

                Yes, you are right about the title, but I suppose as tacit that everything I say it's "as far as I know"... but this is, alas, still a belief. Anyway, as you stated later, the title is still quite ambiguous - I've to admit that I surrendered a little to the catch title.

                Thank you again, I'll check soon your essay as well.

                Francesco

                4 days later

                Dear Francesco,

                It is a pleasure meeting you here in this FQXi Essay Contest. In fact, I live in Prato, near your beautiful Florence.

                I find your Essay very interesting and a bit provocative. I did not know Nagarjuna's theory, thanks for raising it to my attention. In fact, I am not a philosopher and, despite I am a physicist of gravitation, I am not involved in LQG.

                I have a bit provocative question on your statement that "every entity's intrinsically relational nature". In that case, can we claim that such a intrinsically relational nature is fundamental? OK, you can reply with your final statement that "we do not consider "fundamental" absolute relativism itself". This sounds good from a philosophical point of view. But, from the physical point of view, your statement that "every entity's intrinsically relational nature" recalls me on one hand, the physical concept of general covariance, and, on the other hand, the quest for a unified field theory. In both of the cases, such concepts seem fundamental, at least from the physical point of view.

                In any case, your Essay is a very entertaining work which deserves the highest score that I am going to give you.

                Maybe you could be interested in my Essay, where I discuss an approach to the fundamental issues in physics ... with Albert Einstein! In addition, as I see that you are a prolific writer, I signal you my first popularizing book titled "Onde gravitazionali. La scoperta del secolo". Maybe we could collaborate in the future.

                Good luck in the Contest.

                Cheers, Ch.

                Dear Christian,

                thank you very much, I'm glad that you enjoyed my essay and it's nice to find here someone so close home!

                To answer to your question, the paradox that you state is a very important point, and is handled somehow in the final paragraph of my text (number 6). The similarities that you find with general covariance and unified field are coherent without doubt, but following the style of this text it would result that even the vey mathematics used for these laws is relative...

                I bookmarked your essay and I will read it for sure. Let's keep in touch, I'm interested in your book as well - let's talk about Fqxi unrelated issues by email. (You find my contacts at www.gizart.com)

                All the best,

                Francesco D'Isa

                  Dear Francesco,

                  Thanks for your kind reply. I substantially agree with your answer that the mathematics used for these laws is relative. I have been often criticized by some colleague for this thinking, but it is my opinion that there are no exact sciences in Nature.

                  It will be my pleasure talking with you about Fqxi unrelated issues. I will contact you soon.

                  Cheers, Ch.