V

Valerie Burks

Vladimir Rogozhin Thank you for your discerning read and rousing questions. A full examination of the matters you raise would require a full essay (or, more likely, several essays). It is your first query, though, that most intrigues and will occupy these comments: “Is there an ‘absolute rest’ of matter?”

As a concept, “absolute rest” represents a state of pure being, of unchanging existence: time is stopped, change has ceased. Absolute rest is the complete absence of emergence. Historically, there is a certain “self-evidence” to the idea of pure or perfect being. In fact, the idea of pure being (or absolute rest) is the origin of the mono-ontological urge—namely, of God. Could such a state exist in our Universe? No—it is a “pure” idea as opposed to a “practical” idea in the Kantian sense. Our Universe is a dynamic system where existence is balanced and matched by emergence, held in equilibrium. Absolute rest would imbalance the system towards being; it therefore cannot be.

Now, this is where things get difficult. What is the concept of perfect or pure emergence? Alas, here is a concept with no self-evidence. We understand change—the most jabbering babe instinctively knows this preceptive effect—yet we assume that once difference comes-to-be it will acquire a certain stillness, a certain temporal permanence, or at least exist for two consecutive and linked “moments” we might say. The very possibility of constant change (of non-momentous matter) boggles and dizzies the mind.

Approaching physics from the standpoint of an outsider, this is what appears at-once so miraculous and noteworthy about the Standard Model: it presents an unassailable material explication of emergence—it explains how objects come-to-be; it explains change in form. That which has so entangled every modern philosopher is managed and administered with insouciance by the physicist. How can those of us who tiptoe in the realm of ideas not marvel at their sure-footedness?

But this success has become a trap, of sorts, for it has enticed physics to regard all principles as subsumable under the Standard Model. For instance, the attempt to shoehorn gravity into the model is a futile endeavor, for gravity is a force of existence and not emergence. Gravity measures and regulates the temporal stability (i.e., the being) of objects; it apportions existence in object-specific terms: this object has more gravity (and hence, more stability of being) than that object. Gravity cannot be understood in a model that frames becoming. And I humbly assert that unless and until the duality and equilibrium of existence and emergence are properly accounted for in a material theory of the Universe, true progress will flag.

Apologies must be offered, as the fertile ground you prepared was harrowed and sowed in a rather haphazard manner.

Erickson Tjoa—Thank you for your thoughtful read. Your comment about “free quarks” is certainly worth dwelling on. From a philosophical standpoint, we are schooled to think of existence in time frames that do not make sense from the standpoint of science. Philosophy tends to speak of “being” as a concept that more or less reaches towards the eternal—trans-generational, trans-historical, trans-epochal. However, it is more helpful (and better reconciled with observation) if we think of “being” as temporally quantifiable: things may exist for a very short amount of time, or they may exist for a very long period of time. But the fact that an object may exist only for a short period of time does not mean that it does not exist. For instance, the most stable isotopes of the heaviest known elements (e.g., Tennessine or Oganesson) have an incredibly short half-life; this does not equate, though, to “non-existence”—at least science recognizes the short-duration existence of objects.

Thus, the idea that “we do not see ‘free quarks’ in everyday life” is probably better understood as “we do not see ‘free quarks’ with any temporal stability within the system.” This much is quite true. Yet, it can be suggested that there are in fact “free quarks” which are characterized by a quite fleeting existence. This is from Ethan Siegel, “There are no free quarks”: “Every once in a while, we’ll see a huge “jet” of particles (usually two, sometimes three or four) that fly off from the high-energy collision point. How do you get so many baryons, antibaryons and mesons together in one place? Because for a very brief moment, you created a quark (or antiquark) that was ‘too free.’”

Using the idea of boundary energy to interpret this moment, we may speculate that a free quark (which has no ontological stability) educes considerable energy from the system in an isolated or unbound state. In essence, interacting forces work in an attempt to generate spatial stability for the autonomous quark which, given the nature of the strong force, is temporally fleeting. Still, for that “moment” there was a free quark. Thus, the larger question becomes one of how we measure existence against the backdrop of time.

As to your other comment—"how would this picture explain phase transition (e.g., melting ice) or synchronizations in non-linear dynamics (chaos), since it is part of a bigger story of emergence in physics?”—two comments are offered, certainly without the intention of being glib, though that may be the seeming effect. First, not all change is emergence; second, not all spatial distance is differentiation. That is really more of a preface to a complete answer, which will be (for now) kept in abeyance in the interest of brevity.