There are people who enjoy chasing mysteries, and there are people who defend the mysteries. The two categories are not disjoint: you may want to defend a mystery because you like to explore it. When we read a joke, or a detective novel, we keep ourselves away for reading the last line before reading the whole story.

I enjoyed reading this essay, because it was well written and the arguments were as good as they can be. The essay attacks the idea of a theory of everything along three lines: 1) that searching a TOE is based on an unjustified faith, and not on science, 2) that this research was sterile for physics, 3) that the objective should not be the TOE, but the fairness principle.

I will try to explain now why I think that the main idea of the essay is not very correct, and not entirely healthy for science.

I am forced to split my comment, because of its length.

Claim 1: Searching a TOE is based on an unjustified faith, and not on science

The "faith" behind the idea of unification is that:

a) nature obeys a set of laws

b) these laws are consistent one another

Clearly, any attempt of doing science is based on the idea that there are laws to be discovered. And when we test the candidate laws, we opposed them to the experiments, we develop logical consequences and test them, or compare them against well established results. So, every attempt of doing science is based on a) and b). But a) and b) also lead to the idea that there must be a set of consistent laws which rules "everything".

Not, the "faith" part, in my opinion, would be if one will believe that having these laws may endow us with omniscience or something like this. I exclude this possibility from our discussion (although great minds may believe this). What remains when the majority discuss about TOE is a complete set of rules satisfying a) and b).

If somebody want to reject the idea that there is (in a mathematical sense) a complete and consistent set of laws for the universe, then he either reject the possibility of science in principle, or our capability of finding them. The present essay seems to propose that there is a set of laws, but there is an infinite way, continuously progressing, but never reaching them all. While I consider this idea very plausible, I don't think there are compelling reasons to adopt it.

"A key problem here is that the only claim that can be verified (or falsified) scientifically is the claim that a given theory is consistent with all presently available experimental data. The claim that a certain theory will also be consistent with the outcome of all future measurements that the human race will perform is a possible choice of faith but could never be described [3] as an established scientific fact."

But isn't any theory proposing that it is, and it will ever be confirmed by experiments? Do we know a theory which is totally confirmed, such that it is impossible for future falsifications of it to occur? For example, the theory relativity, after a century of confirmation, is sometimes considered wrong by one physicist or another. So, it is always a matter of faith that a theory will last. The ones who are searching for a TOE know this very well. But this should not stop them: they try to find the Theory of "Everything we know so far". It is an unfair criticism to say that their research is based on faith, as opposed to the research of more incomplete theories. It is an incomplete theory (aka "of not so everything" more likely to be true than a complete one? No, of course. But it is indeed difficult to find the complete theory, it is more likely to discover incomplete pieces of the puzzle.

I agree with the discussion of free parameters. Indeed, there is no compelling reason to rule them out of a TOE, and there is always possible to formulate a theory so that some of the parameters appear to be free. Perhaps it is more appropriate to search for a theory with a minimum set of free parameters.

Yes, the complete set of physical laws is independent from man, but this is not a reason that we should not search it, or that we will never find it. The same can be said about every progress we made in physics. All the discoveries we made were independent from man, and we still were able to make them. This argument works as well against science, if it works against TOE.

Claim 2: the research of TOE was sterile for physics

Let's say that there are two problems under research, a simple one, and a complicated one. In general, simpler problem are solved easily, with less resources, in less time, than the difficult ones. The difficult problems may remain unsolved for years, for generations, and even forever. Should we try to solve only the simple problems? Clearly no. I think that the great progresses were made when complicated, apparently impossible problems were attacked, although a lot of important progress (probably the majority) was made from solving simple problems. Maybe the progress arising from solving difficult problems was more spectacular, and maybe we tend for this reason to underrate the importance of the progress caused by solving small problems. I think that they both are important. Finding a TOE is clearly one of the most difficult problems. But ruling it out on the basis that little progress was contributed by this research to the TOE itself, or to other branches of physics, is unfair. One expect that difficult problems consume lot of resources, and that the result is not guaranteed.

"it is legitimate to suspect that at least part of the responsibility for the many decades of failures of quantum-gravity research should be attributed to the enormous influence of the theory-of-everything fashion."

There is a lot of research on quantum gravity not based on TOE. I remember Rovelli saying that LQG is not a TOE, it just tries to unite quantum mechanics and general relativity. Clearly string theory has more aspirations as a TOE, but this is because some particles emerged in this theory, which is hoped that correspond to the particles in the real world. I mean, string theorists believe that they can obtain the standard model and gravity with the same stone. Maybe they are wrong, and maybe they spend a lot of time without making progress in physics. If they are right, then many of their results will turn to be of great value. If they are wrong, then many of their results will turn out to be trash, or at most to be interesting math, but even in this worst case, it would be unfair to blame this for the lack of progress in Physics.

"The quantum-gravity problem can be naturally described as a combination of many different challenges [7] for the present formulation of the laws of fundamental physics, but according to the theory-of-everything mindset the only acceptable efforts of development of formalisms to be used in the investigation of the quantum-gravity problem are efforts directed toward a theory that simultaneously solves all of these aspects of the problem."

There are many articles trying to solve particular problems, and there are many articles trying to sole many such particular problems at once. This has little to do with the mindset, rather is a strategy. A physicist may have a vision of how a particular phenomenon or even the entire physical world is, and may try to formulate it rigorously. There are simply different strategies. You may believe that it is a better strategy to solve one piece of the puzzle at a time, but there are many situations in which solving several problems at once is the best approach.

"Clearly the pioneers of the wonderfully ugly \old quantum theory" were not concerned with the "noteverthing" nature of their results. It is fortunate that the theory-of-everything epidemic was evidently still under control at the time, since there could not be a fully developed quantum mechanics without first going through the old quantum theory."

I agree with this passage, because indeed many important results can be obtained when we try to solve apparently small, or at least "noteverything" problems. But the quest for universal principles also led to important breakthrough. Newton called gravity "the universal attraction". Galileo's principle of relativity was supposed to be universal, and it was the idea of making it universal that led to special relativity. And the idea of making it even more universal led to general relativity. Of course, searching for universal principles may lead to dead ends, and I will refer here to Pythagora's school, and to Kepler's idea of the planetary orbits as expression of the fundamental beauty of regular polyhedra. Generalizing too much is not good. When the adepts of TOE do this, they are, of course, mistaken, and they transform physics in numerology. But generalizing against TOE is equally wrong.

Claim 3: the objective should not be the TOE, but the fairness principle.

Who, if would find the TOE, would keep it secret, to let the other the pleasure of discovery? Who, when will see an article describing the true TOE, will avoid reading it, to have the pleasure of solving himself the puzzle?

"A theory of everything would endow us with God-like powers, masters of the laws of the Universe."

This is unrealistic and unreasonable faith, indeed. So let us not discuss as all, or the majority, or at least many of the TOE searchers believe this.

"The idea of getting a theory of everything is the idea of the end of fundamental physics. Who could possibly want that?"

This is an exaggeration, again. It is like saying that knowing the axioms of geometry is the end of geometry. Yes, it may be the end of trying to find the complete set of axioms, but not the end of geometry. Moreover, even if Euclid stated the axioms long time ago, researching these axioms led to great progress, like non-Euclidean geometries, Erlangen program (which led to the great idea of the role of symmetry in geometry and physics), Hilbert's program, and of course, the related results on the difficulties of the axiomatization of the set theory and the number theory.

"How would our condition be bearable without the intrigue of possibly discovering still new phenomena?"

This danger, even if TOE will be find, is absent. You may say that there is the danger that, if Perelman proved Poincare's conjecture, you can no longer be the first one to do this, but you still can make contributions, and you can still have other areas where you may research. If somebody believe this, and if he will have an epiphany and discover and understand the TOE, would he keep it secret, just to allow the rest of us the hope to find it, or parts of it?

"This provides the basis for my "fairness principle", which I do not know how to describe sharply, but basically assumes that every generation of humans will have roughly the same opportunity of being challenged and intrigued by fundamental physics."

This really is faith, and I will not argue against it. I just don't know what the future generations will face, I am sure that they will have their challenges, but this cannot rule out the possibility of finding the TOE. Possibly, they will at least have the possibility to devise more sophisticated experiments to find some new decimals of some constants, but I cannot know.

"Of course this "fairness principle" is neither better nor worse than any other choice of faith, but I encourage especially my youngest readers to embrace it, since I find that it puts us in the best mindset for research in fundamental physics."

This may be true, and helpful. My own recommendation for putting us in the best mindset for research in fundamental physics is: "work on a problem until you are sure you can understand it completely and that you can explain it to others". I do not imply that there are researchers who don't adhere to it, I just say that I would like to apply it myself more often.

Conclusion

I tried to explain that the essay above fails to show that

1) searching a TOE is more "faith-based" than doing physics in general

2) searching universal laws is more sterile than solving easier problems

Yet, I agree that the third claim

3) all generations will have an equal share of doing fundamental physics research

may be useful, although there is no evidence for its validity. The point I consider good in this essay is that it prepares the researchers for the possibility that they will not find the TOE. I see the main point of the essay that:

i) each researcher should be aware that he or she may not find the TOE or contribute to its discovery, but still can do important research

In my opinion, there is a second one, although the author of the essay will not agree with me:

ii) each researcher should be aware that it is possible that other research team will find the TOE, but he or she still can make important discoveries

I would add:

iii) even if TOE will be discovered and you did not had the chance to contribute to the discovery, you still have the challenge and pleasure of understanding and mastering the theory, and to develop and test it

iv) if someone is discouraged by the possibility that a TOE will appear and steal from us the joy of discovery, then he or she can use the mindset of the principle of fairness. But some others may be motivated by the perspective to contribute to the discovery of the TOE.

I believe that fundamental research has, as an important component, the quest for a unified theory* of fundamental physics.

_______________________

*The term "TOE" is misleading, because it claims too much, but I used it in this review because it is customary.

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  • Post #46

i see that the author has attempted the essay text to be factual and has expressed that the end of Physics is far away. He is right when we examine the way Physics ahs developed over the years. lately it finds itself devoid of new ideas/concepts and that is why it is presently limited mostly to new mathematical corallories of earlier research and experiments are becoming increasingly dependent on technological developments that are becoming increasingly costly. What is lacking is the novelty or innovative aspects by way of fresh ideas/ concepts. Only the later aspect requires a freshness of approach. tejindre's essay provide one such ray of hope by way of mesomorphic regionn of physics taht lies in between classical and quantum mechanical. thus providig smoothness to the two extremes of appraoch made like classical and quantum. There are difficulties in looking at problems that may require such an approach where neither h can be taken as zero or what its value is. The early universe in my view provides such a scenario because of the extreme conditions prevailing then. The stars were emerging from cosmic dust which itself took a long time to generate from the nucleons, nuclei and atome/molecules. One ne3eds massive single structures that are in between atoms and macroscopic matter. may be large nanostructured crystals of heavier elements than carbon may be attempted. It is the technique of preparation that is needed to evolve such structures and the today's experimentalists have a challenge before them, where Physicists and chemists need to work in close collaboration with life scientists to plsn innovative approaches towards such an objective. i wish i could be more specific but i hope some intelligent and imaginative young scientist w2ill come with freshness and free approach for such innovativeness.

dear all

I have just found out that there are already some comments to my essay. Perhaps it is best if I start by just making a few remarks that appear to be relevant for common features of several comments.

A general observation is that it seems that some of the aspects of the essay which I considered more marginal actually end up being of particular interest for several readers, which surprises me but of course is not necessarily a bad thing. But just for clarity I want to organize my comments with the structure of two parts: a first post (this one) on the issues that I considered central for the essay, and a second post (later) on other parts of my essay

With respect to "what is ultimately possible in physics" each one of us of course is fascinated by different perspectives. The "possibility issue" that carries most significance for me is the idea, nowadays very popular, that it might be possible to reach in a not-so-distant future the end point of fundamental-physics research (of course still leaving us with several challenges at the level of the phenomena that "emerge" from the fundamental laws, but that is another issue)

Both the fact that we did not have any major discoveries for a while, and the content of a large part of the recent fundamental-physics literature appear to make a strong case that this possibility is real. But I believe (and tried to argue) that this is just an illusion, and intended to center my essay on two observations

(1) the realm of the TOE concept is outside science because it aspires to a characterization that lies beyond the reach of the scientific method, but in spite of this the myth of TOE is affecting in very profound way the strategies we have recently followed. We must be open to the possibility that this might have been at least in part responsible for the lack of discoveries in fundamental physics of the last few decades

(2) the variety of scientific discoveries that science has produced were achieved following a large variety of intuitions and strategies... several were accidental... very many of them were of my preferred type (the type I illustrate with the contributions of Bohr-Somerfeld, de Broglie, Fermi...)... some perhaps were achieved by scientists driven by a certain intuition of formal/conceptual nature (many authors would claim that General Relativity was discovered in this way).... But in the recent/modern literature it seems that the deBroglie-Fermi(-Glashow)-type methodology is "out of fashion" and I argue that this is a horrible mistake, probably responsible at least in part for the recent standstill of fundamental physics

In relation to other comments I should perhaps stress that, while I evidently find reasons for concern with respect to this myth of the TOE, I am instead not at all uncomfortable with research programmes that are driven by "conceptual intuition", rather than experimental/phenomenology input, as long as these research programmes use this for attempts to establish genuine scientific facts. The arrival point of course must be experimental, but en route I am guessing it is legitimate to adopt any personally-preferred balance of "conceptual intuition" and "experiments/phenomenology"

I do feel that "conceptual intuition", which perhaps we might also describe as "elegance-driven strategies", has been a bit overrated in recent decades. Intuitions aiming for example for "unification" or "mathematical rigor/elegance" have contributed to some successes of physics and are certainly worth pursuing further hoping that they may lead to other discoveries. But to think that this was and should be the main strategy for science amounts to neglecting the way in which most discoveries were made

Because of my research interests I am often told that I "put the cart in front of the horse" because I look for ways to test experimentally theory proposals whose logico-mathematical consistency has not yet been fully established, and I take these characterizations as compliments, but probably they are not intended as such. The image most modern physicists have of theory work is that you first find a perfect theory (even most of those who don't fall for TOE still essentially look for "perfect theories") check that it is formulated according to rigorous mathematics, and that it answers all the known puzzles, and then, only if all this is successful, it would be legitimate to attempt experimental tests. It seems that only a minority of colleagues is aware of the fact that most key discoveries were not made following this strategy.

PART 2: I would say that it is only a marginal aspect of the perspective I propose the one that concerns trying to characterize how our human nature ends up so frequently leading us to the assumption that

- Nature is "elegant" (and by the way we of course have a very good sense of what is elegant)

- what we have seen is all there is

I do believe strongly that when a discovery fits well with our perception of "elegance", then it means the discovery is not that big after all. I much prefer discoveries that force us to rethink our entire worldview and forcefully (better yet, unpleasantly) impose upon us the need to acquire a new "sense of elegance". And we have had some. Fortunately our views concerning "elegance" have evolved quite a bit from the times of Aristotle's Earth-surrounding crystalline spheres....and I am ready to bet they will keep evolving, mostly following (rather than driving) the experimental discoveries

From the posts I also see that, as a result of the clumsy wording I found, readers end up attaching more meaning than intended to my brief remarks on a mathematical toy model with structure resembling the one of nesting dolls. The essay emphasizes that I fortunately have no idea what is ahead of us, not even behind the next corner, so with the nesting dolls I was definitely not trying to propose some sort of actual model. It was the best way I found for giving some structure to my amusement with the idea of a toy model that could be used to illustrate the concept of "fundamentally noteverything". In a certain sense my essay is about "de facto noteverything" and all I care about is the "de facto level" ( in an appropriate sense, I would reserve the label "exists" only to the "de facto level") but it was amusing to contemplate the possibility of finding a formalization of "fundamentally noteverything"

many thanks to all readers, and particularly those who choose to offer criticism or encouragement. Hopefully using this feedback and getting myself more educated on some relevant subjects I might at some point be in a position to strengthen my "case for noteverything". After finishing the essay I find myself subtracting time from my "number-crunching day job" to really study (rather than glance at) the works of some of those who have thought most carefully about the scientific method and the "demarcation problem"....I am starting to get the impression that these challenges are not easier than quantum gravity...and it appears hard (though, intriguingly, perhaps not absolutely impossible) to develop a "phenomenological approach" or even just a "perturbative approach" to these subjects...

cheers

Giovanni

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  • Post #50

Dear Giovanni,

Your response is long enough to satisfy the commentators on your post. You are correct when you say that the limitation of language and expression cause misunderstandings, specially in website discussions. Face to face meetings are the best to reduce such distractions, as we have in workshops/conferences,etc. In fact my own essay on this forum puts similar emphasis, being myself an experimentalist. You are already on top in the competition and certainly wish you to continue your outstanding achievement till the end of this healthy competition.

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  • Post #51

Dear Giovani ,

Happy to see your answers .It was time hihihi

I try to encircle your aim in physics ,

I d like say one thing very important .When a theory is fundamental ,it hasn't any strategy .Like in our Universe ,any strategy is real .

A fundamental theory and its equations evolves,it is a process of rationality .

Any words or laguages are necessary to encircle the music of our Universe and its laws .

I agree what many theories are ironics but don't confound .

The imaginaries and reals ,all is there ,pragmatism or ...

All fundamentasl equations and theories are in complemenatrity because they superimpose themselves very simply .

Like a beautiful puzzle .It exists virtual puzzles and real puzzles .The most important is to make the correct balance ,pragmatically and with rationality .

Our physicality is our physicality ,some models thus are on the good road if the border is created .

Regards

Steve

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  • Post #52

Dear Giovanni,

Admittedly I feel unable to learn anything from your musing. I explain the high ranking of your essay to very appealing words in your abstract: " I ... place the concept of ``theory of everything" firmly in the faith category."

While I vote for a return to science instead of faith-based rigorous science fiction, you did not tackle what I consider a possible reason why science putatively made a jump in the early 20th century but seems to make not much fundamental progress now. Those who intend applying for a patent have to criticize the belonging state of the art first. New ideas arise from analysis of deficits. Why not look for possibly overlooked or ignored fundamental mistakes first? Was Hermann Weyl the last one who admitted: "We are less certain about the ultimate foundations of mathematics"?

Regards,

Eckard

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  • Post #53

Hello Dear Eckard,

I have some difficulties to encircle why people confound all in fact .

I admit wht the actual sciences are like sciences fictions but not all .I don't like in fact the generalization .Always in all extrapolations of the mind ,a pragmatic balance is necessary .

It's the same when you say about the faith .What is the faith ,it's not a play ,a dream .No it's personnal .There where that becomes relevant ,it's about the universality .Let's admit dear Eckard that we aren't fate .The supranatural doesn't exist .But there is a reality which we can't ignorate.

Personally I think what our Universe is a fantastic equation in evolution towards the perfect harmony between mass systems(spheres) and their creations .

We can't ignorate our evolutive past which shows us the evolution and the improvement .When a mind is open to the universe ,it's faith is universal ,it's totaly different than a human invention .

The sciences show us the musics of properties ,the fact to be catalyzers if we want is a proof of the equation like a cause of this Universe .The things are well organized .How do the elemenatry particles know how they must become in fact ,the fact to have a code in a space in evolution and in a constant of time is too a proof of this ultim equation of building .We are a results dear Eckard ,and all results have a cause .I d like have your point of vue about that .Can we consider the sciences without any universality ,I think no .

I am sometimes desesperated to see so many confusions about sciences ,it's simple in fact ,I beleive too much confusions exist at this moment .

Reals or imaginaries ....

Regards

Steve

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  • Post #54

Dr. Amelino-Camelia,

Very interesting paper. You haven't achieved your community ranking for nothing.

Out of curiosity, would you characterize superdeterminism as faith-based?

dear Nick

thanks for the encouragement and for a stimulating question.

It seems to me that there are many versions of superdeterminism in the literature, but let me focus on the term "superdeterminism" as used to describe certain attempts to reformulate quantum mechanics with a local hidden-variable theory.

In this respect I can comment that according to my ultra-old-fashioned ultra-narrow definition of science two theories with the same set of observable predictions are strictly equivalent scientifically.

So the academic study of the strutural differences between two theories with the same observable predictions would be a study of "not science" (which a provocatively like to call "faith")

But let me stress that finding equivalent reformulations of a known theory can be a key resource for science if used as part of a strategy to describe new phenomena. The fact that two theories are scientifically equivalent does not imply that they are equally powerful from the perspective of looking for deformations or generalizations of the (single) theory in question.

Let me take the liberty to illustrate this also making some publicity to the work of Antony Valentiny, a friend who has also benefited from FQXi support. A particularly interesting part of Antony's research takes off from the de Broglie-Bohm pilot-wave equivalent reformulation of quantum theory. But Antony's path led him to investigate a modification of the pilot-wave formulation of quantum mechanics (involving nonequilibrium distributions in Antony's framework) which are outside the domain of standard quantum physics. Antony has a new scientific theory, which in principle (and hopefully also in practice) is falsifiable.

cheers

Giovanni

Dear Giovanni,

Your key argument seems to be that "a theory of everything" is a drawback and a hindrance to the honest pursuit of physics, and also offends your sense of "how things should be". But as I indicated in a previous comment, many physicists are inspired to understand the universe, not merely to collect data endlessly.

You say that the only thing that can be verified scientifically is that a given theory is consistent with all presently available experimental data.

Giovanni, I am mystified why you claim "it is far too easy to end up being convinced that our reasoning is really unbiased objective conclusions, when really we are not doing anything else but describe the world view that is most appealing to us."

Why do you exclude the fact that a theory of everything should also make predictions?

In fact, now -- before the LHC comes back online -- is the perfect time for new predictions.

My essay predicts no Higgs will be found, but the theory goes beyond that to predict that no new particles at all will be detected, with the possible exception of resonances of currently existing particles: No Higgs, no axion, no SUSY, no new particles! And this includes "gravitons", that is, no gravity waves will be discovered (outside of LHC).

Certain predictions of my theory have already been discovered, such as the "perfect fluid" seen at RHIC when QCD was predicting a "weak quark gas". Also, the negative core of the neutron, when all QCD theories predict a positive core. In addition, I predict that the b to d quark decay produces two gammas, rather than the one now seen. Only one is seen because two gammas are filtered out, interpreted as pi-zero decays. I also predict a possible five gamma decay of tau-taubar, just as my theory predicts the recently seen J/psi three gamma decay.

Unless I am mistaken, these predictions are more solid and more detailed than any other essay in this contest. I hope these comments will be saved and remain accessible on the FQXi site, as it should be only a year or so until LHC will prove my predictions true (or false).

If prediction still means anything in physics, then I hope all FQXi participants take note of the above.

Finally, you say that "the urge for a theory of everything (whatever that could mean) is so overwhelming that the obvious mismatch..."

What is could mean is, as you stated above, compatibility with all known experimental data, and it should make sense of current mysteries of physics, of which there are many. And it should make predictions, as I have above. Of all of these, the predictions may be the most significant, so hold on to these for the next year. When you find them to be true, you can come back and study my theory.

If I have missed anyone else's predictions, I wish someone would point them out to me.

Thanks for your consideration,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

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  • Post #57

Cristinel,

You are right that searching for a Theory of Everything is no more based on faith than doing physics in general. The thing that is often not realized is that all science is based on faith. Man's current scientific method generally begins with the creation of a hypothesis, which is nothing more than a belief of how you think something works in reality when the way that it actually works is still unknown. This is faith, pure and simple. It may be just based on wishful thinking, which would be a case of blind faith, or it may be based on information provided by previous observations of the world, which would be faith guided by observation. All faith whether scientific or not (religion, etc.) can be of either type. The next step in the scientific method is to design experiments to test the hypothesis for its degree of validity (or in today's negative way of looking at everything, to try to falsify it). The fact that such experiments are necessary demonstrates that there is inadequate evidence to consider the hypothesis more than a matter of faith until more information is acquired to justify it to be a valid theory. Even if the results of the experiments are all favorable, so it is then considered a valid theory, it is still not considered to be the inerrant truth, but is only properly considered to be the closest to the truth that is currently known, if no other theories of equal or greater validity exist. A true scientist would always keep his mind open to the possibility that a better theory may still be out there somewhere because he understands that all theories are just approximations of reality (except the one that is just a full accounting of reality in that area) and it is generally not possible to know if the current favored theory is that one because some new observation may show it to be lacking in some area. Science necessarily starts with faith and works toward knowledge of absolute truth, but always falls short of its goal, so faith is still a part of all of science at all levels and will remain so unless man were to someday truly obtain absolute truth in all areas or otherwise gain a complete knowledge and understanding of all of reality. I consider that to be very unlikely in this world, but then that is just a matter of faith based on my observations of man's science.

There are two possible types of theories of everything and the approach that will be best to identify it in entirety depends on which type truly represents reality. The type that is usually sought after is one in which there is a single simple base of structure and everything else is built up upon that base. This is usually considered the best case scenario because one could hope that some relatively simple equation or small set of equations could be the source of all more advanced structures such that the understanding of more advance structures could be extrapolated if one could understand the base equation(s). This is the type most often sought after and there is much basis in observation to believe that it may be the type that conforms to reality. It is also the type that best fits the concept of intelligent design of the world. The second type and the one that would be most likely to come from a world based on chance happenings is one based on many separate basic systems that came about randomly probably at different times with no common base so that getting a complete understanding of any one base (its basic equation(s)) would only allow you to extrapolate those understandings that result from that base. In such a world, you would need to get an understanding of all of the bases and their equations to be able to extrapolate all more advanced structures. The Theory of Everything in that case would be the complete set of all of the bases' equations plus all interactions between bases and their extrapolated structures. This type of world would be much more complex and, therefore, difficult to understand. The approach of searching for the Theory of Everything would be more successful if the world conforms to the first type of structure, while the approach of searching more generally for new knowledge would likely work better if reality conforms more closely to the second type of structure. The main problem with current searches for the Theory of Everything is that one must have a sufficient base of observational data to allow such a theory to be reasonably determined and at this time there still is a lack of adequate observational information and adequate interpretations of currently available information to allow man to adequately resolve the base structure to the degree necessary to find the base equations. At this time man still considers energy photons and matter particles to be the base structures instead of resolving to the level of the motions that make them up, so inadequate information is being considered to get any true understanding of the properties and interactions of those motions and their relationships with the dimensional system in which they exist. Current theories, therefore, do not take the various interactions of these motions with each other in the structure of the dimensional system into consideration and are thus incomplete and inaccurate.

A fairness principle only makes sense in a world that was made by a being intelligent enough to be able to conceive of and believe in the concept of fairness and to see the benefit of including it in his creation. There would be no likelihood that such a principle would be incorporated into the design of a world governed by chance happening because concepts like fairness are the result of higher intellectual processes.

Congratulations. I think that you may now hold the record for the longest multiple post here. I was worried that I held that distinction, so now I feel much better knowing that I am not alone.

Giovanni,

You are right that there are yet many places and things in the world that man is not currently aware of. Man's understanding is currently greatly limited by a lack of ability to observe and work outside of a very narrow scale range in many areas, such as size and motion amplitude, etc. Other limitations are the result of not extrapolating and understanding the basic structure beneath the level of energy photons and matter particles, etc. that would allow man to understand what generates them and to explain how they can be changed from one to the other and what causes the rest mass structure of matter particles and the dynamic mass, frequency, and wavelength structure of energy photons and matter particles, etc.

It is true that advancement in science is tied to observational experimentation, but there is another element that has been primarily overlooked in recent years and that is instruction in the area of pattern recognition in the experimental data. Man should have long ago recognized from observation of experimental data that both matter particles and energy photons are composed of motion. From that basic observation it is not extremely difficult to get a general idea of how that motion must be contained in these entities to generate their observed properties, but while in the past some recognized such patterns through being gifted with such abilities or acquiring them through life experiences, this type of structural pattern recognition ability has actually been trained out of today's scientists.

You are right that first there must be observations. Then there must be the recognition of overall patterns in the observed data. Then a hypothesis can be generated to explain the patterns. Next experiments must be designed to test the validity of the hypothesis and if it passes the tests, it can be considered a valid theory. So-called theories that began as math models rather than from observations of reality and have not been experimentally tested against observed reality are little more than conjectures or beliefs lacking evidence. They are in essence the cart without the horse.

When we look at the world we do see that it is structured with many small subassemblies combined together to generate larger more complicated subassemblies, which are in turn combined together with other subassemblies to create still more complex larger assemblies, etc. in much the same way that man designs a complex structure such as a car, except they generate an overall system that is much more complex than a car. All of these structures combine and work together often in very complex ways according to complex rules or laws. It is this organized structure that allows man to use science to gain an understanding of the world by observing and learning the rules by which it functions and their interactions that occur in the various hierarchical structures of which the world is composed. A world based completely on random happenings could not be understood by science. It is a reasonable possibility that a world that is composed in the manner that we observe this world to be, may very well have at its base a simplest structure that is built on a simplest concept (rule or law). The problem is that to get to that most basic law you must start from a level of observation that is at least somewhat close to it and man is not that close yet. It is like trying to fully understand how a tree works when all you have seen so far is the bud at the end of a small branch and a few smaller offshoot branches with leaves on them. You may think that you have a good understanding of the tree, but you still don't even know that such things as a trunk and roots exist. Man is currently in that position in his endeavor to understand the world around him. It doesn't mean that there is no theory of everything (the most basic law upon which all others are built). It is just that man is nowhere near close enough in his current level of understanding of the world to be able to extrapolate it out because there are still too many other layers of structure to uncover before it becomes visible. Because of this, you are right that the most effective approach is to work on all fronts to overcome scale problems and work through the levels until arrival at the most basic law. It will then be obvious.

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  • Post #58

The curser came to clear the format written by me, beware!

The competition is soon to end. This essay emphasized the singificance of experimental approach. Let us hope some innovative ideas get implemented to raise the level of Physics soon, e.g. the reported attempt of a Vienna group to test the varaitionalness of Planck's constant in between 0 and h, say for nanostructured heavy samples involving the mesomorphic region of Physics proposed by Tejinder in this forum. Experimentalists have not been keen on FQXI forum. May be the Organisation of FQXI has theoretical dominance. Such biases may not result in upgrading the broader picture of Physics involving all the aspects like, conceptual, empirical, experimental and theoretical. Dominance of mathematics in Physics may not help Physics grow, but it does help

in formating the conceptaul ideas.

dear Edwin and Paul

your posts appear to adopt perspectives that are very significantly different from mine, but my essay is not really about priority/supremacy among perspectives. It is perhaps about the survival of one of the possible perspectives. I felt compelled to write an essay because I find that the type of narrow view of science I could discuss is gradually disappearing from the fundamental-physics community. But I would not go as far as claiming that the narrow perspective I advocate and adopt is the only fruitful perspective. What I do feel is that if this narrow characterization of science (and the strategy for doing science that it leads to) are somehow eradicated completely, it would be a terrible loss. Other, broader, perspectives can be effective and have been effective, but it would be objectively incorrect to deny the effectiveness of the type of mindset that I describe in my essay. I actually would venture saying (and do suggest in the essay) that among the many perspectives that have proven valuable for the development of science the one I describe has the best proven record of achievements. Some would argue that I am describing an "old way of doing science" and that the modern times require us to "replace it with new ways". I would rather argue that it is natural that with science reaching new levels of maturity we discover new types of fruitful perspectives and mindsets, and of course exploring Nature from a multitude of perspectives can only be a positive, but nothing of what we have learned renders in any way obsolete the mindset I describe in the essay.

Some of the specific observations you make in your posts can be discussed in relation to these points:

Edwin writes "many physicists are inspired to understand the universe, not merely to collect data endlessly". I am honestly unable to imagine what the expression "understand the universe" could actually mean. Please be certain that here I am not "playing dumb" (or "playing smart"). I realize I am in a minority because the use of the expression "understand the Universe" is objectively very common. But I never figured out a way to give meaning to this expression. The mindset I describe in the essay is of course at least in part inspired by this. But even those who found a way to give meaning to "understanding the Universe" should not then consider my case for a certain mindset for doing science obsolete. We all need to "collect data endlessly"! My narrow characterization of science is centered on the collection of data. Some of us will use them to understand the Universe, others will stop at the level of describing aspects of the Universe. I am characterizing debates on this distinction between "describe some" and "understand all" as very interesting debates that however lie outside of science, since they concern something that cannot be established experimentally. I would argue that we can be certain that the "anomalies" of the orbit of Mercury were not due to a new planet (Vulcan), but we can instead debate endlessly about the demarcation between "describe some" and "understand all". In a certain sense it does seem to me then that science stops at the level of "describe some", leaving the prospect of "understanding all" beyond the reach of science. But this is not some sort of "philosophical supremacy", but rather just a result of the fact that "describe some" is less than "understand all" (even assuming "understand all" has any meaning).

From a similar perspective I can also offer some comments to Paul's remark that in doing science we do have at least one type of faith which is at the very start of any research program when we formulate "a hypothesis, which is nothing more than a belief of how you think something works in reality when the way that it actually works is still unknown", using Paul's words. I would say that there is indeed a danger to end up having faith in a hypothesis, thereby introducing possibly some bias in its investigation, but this danger can be avoided. According to the mindset I advocate it is perfectly legitimate to formulate appealing hypotheses, but only intended as candidate tools for our exploration of Nature. We test them experimentally to establish their effectiveness (or lack thereof), but without imagining that a successful hypothesis is taking us any closer to "the truth". This puts us in the healthy mindset of going ahead using/adopting the hypothesis as long as it works, but well prepared to abandon the hypothesis at the first robust indications that it is running out of effectiveness.

Cheers

Giovanni

Dear Paul, dear Giovanni,

Paul, you developed and explained well my affirmation that "searching a TOE is no more "faith-based" than doing physics in general", and you provided in the mean time your own interesting view.

You said:

"The main problem with current searches for the Theory of Everything is that one must have a sufficient base of observational data to allow such a theory to be reasonably determined and at this time there still is a lack of adequate observational information and adequate interpretations of currently available information to allow man to adequately resolve the base structure to the degree necessary to find the base equations."

Let us say, for simplification, that we are trying to induce general laws from particular measurements of a system, for example to find how a quantity y depends on another quantity x. We draw some dots, representing (x1, y1), (x2, y2),..., (xn, yn) and then try to find a function f which connects them, so that yi=f(xi). Let's consider that our measurements are precise, and that the dependence of y on x is exact. In this case, there is a large set of possible functions f which fits through all the data, and each new data helps us eliminating them. But new data doesn't necessarily help us too much coming with an equation y=f(x).

What I mean is that we have too much data, not too little, and it is difficult, if not impossible for us to handle it in order to induce the fundamental laws. In time, we may try many sets of laws which fit this data. Any new observation will help us filtering the theories we proposed until that date. So, I see two stages (I am simplifying much the problem, to emphasize the idea):

1. find all possible functions f which fits all the data, let's say {f1, f2, ...fk}

2. conduct new experiments covering as much x data as possible, to eliminate some of the functions f, hopefully all but one.

The first point is difficult for us because of the complexity of the data. When we will have the first possible f, we can say we have a candidate unified theory. But it is impossible to have all. After that, if we have two or more such candidates, we go to the step 2, but we cannot cover all possible x data. We will make our choice by considering the predictions of the possible candidates so far: we conduct experiments for some x for which fi(x) and fj(x) are not equal. So I would replace 1 and 2 with

1'. find some possible functions f which fits all the data, let's say {f1, f2, ...fk}

2'. conduct new experiments covering some x data which can differentiate between the candidates proposed at 1'

with the mention that it is possible that the new data inspire us to add new candidates, so perhaps we will cycle between 1' and 2'.

I think that, if we don't have all the data available, we should, in principle, be able to create more unified theories. Our present data clearly is fitted by f0, the true set of laws. So, an intellect powerful enough (infinitely powerful?) should be able to find at least one candidate, f0, to which we may add some other possible candidates which fit the present data, but which can be invalidated in the future. It is even possible to have more than one f0 which fits our universe, but there is at least one.

Well, if we believe that the word is mathematical, we can find instead of f1, f2, ..., some classes F1, F2, ... containing all the f1, f2, .... On example is the class of all mathematical structures (Tegmark). Another one, more fitted to the physical theories, is defined in my World Theory. But these classes are too generic, they contain both structures which fit all the data we have, and structures which don't fit it, and we have no way of picking among the infinite number of such structures the good ones. Having such a way, will help us to realize at least the step 1, if not 1'.

Best regards,

Cristi

Dear Giovanni,

You note that "understand the universe" is a very general term, yet agree that it's in common use. I don't subscribe to the belief that a theory of everything will confer "God-like" powers, or that we'll ever have a theory compatible with all known data but not subject to future revision.

But clearly a correct theory of physics aids "understanding the universe". For example, I received my 16 Oct 2009 issue of Physical Review Letters in the mail yesterday and noted a paper (162001) concerning a "hadron molecule" interpretation of X(3872). The idea is that the X(3872) particle is a hadron molecule formed from the D-zero and anti-D-zero particles. The problem is that the binding is so weak, approximately 0.25 MeV, that no one can understand how the X can appear so promptly in the high energy collision environment. The data is there, we just don't understand it.

Think of a snowflake in a welding torch flame.

The Standard Model assumes the D-zeros, produced in a 1.76 TeV proton-anti-proton collision, are created separately, then must somehow bind weakly into a "molecule", almost immediately.

My theory's particle creation model, based on the C-field vortex has the X(3872) being created in the weakly coupled state in an intuitively simple fashion.

Phys Rev Letters often reports results that don't make sense in the Standard Model but that are easily interpreted in my model, at least qualitatively. I can't calculate the X(3872) cross section, but the PRL paper only uses SM Monte Carlo programs "tuned" to match the data.

There are many particle physics, cosmological, and biological mysteries that I believe are due to our current theories. A "theory of everything" should resolve these mysteries. This is the type of understanding I aspire to, and the broader the theory and the farther its reach, the happier I am. But there will always be mystery.

Congratulations on your top ranking.

Edwin Eugene Klingman