Wars in Physics

[RArvay]

Over the past few weeks I have become aware of a sort of battle that is raging in the scientific community, and even a bit beyond. It is doubly interesting, because it is not only about the science itself, the theories and formulas—it is also about how science is actually conducted.

This second part is as fascinating, and as vital, as the first, because science is as much a social phenomenon as it is an intellectual endeavor.

Some months ago I posted online (at the old forum) a brief article in which I said that physics is not just a body of knowledge, it is the cumulative biographies of physicists themselves. We can go back at least as far as Isaac Newton to see that this is the case. Physicists are humans, complete with both talents and foibles. Some may be paragons of virtue, while others may be rascals and horse thieves, despite their greatness in science.

Most great scientists are probably in between, but their personalities and circumstances were essential ingredients in producing their scientific advances.

One must speculate on where physics would be today but for a small number of the greatest men of science. Imagine: had Newton never been born, or Einstein or Heisenberg, would their theories have even yet been discovered?

Not even the invention of the wheel was inevitable, witness the great masters of megalithic architecture in central America. The steam engine languished for centuries between its first recorded prototype in Egypt, and its development which catapulted the Industrial Revolution into a world changing period of time. Nikola Tesla’s electric motor underpins almost all of our technology, yet he invented it in his mind without schematics, a feat that might not have been accomplished even until today.

It cannot, then, be considered inevitable that the theory of gravity would have been formulated without Newton, nor would his calculus. Had Einstein not formulated his Theory of Relativity, had Heisenberg been more certain (a joke), would relativity and quantum mechanics rule physics today?

And this indeed is the great battle of physics, the battle between local-causation on one side, and nonlocal-randomness on the other. The fate of the universe hangs in the balance, at least the scientific conception of it.

If you and I disagree on politics, it might be no surprise if we hurl epithets at each other and cease to be the good friends that we surely are. But when men of science do the same concerning a disagreement about physics, it is a bit more than astonishing.

Wallace Stanley Sayre (1905–1972 is credited with having said that, "The politics of the university are so [bitterly] intense [precisely] because the stakes are so low."

I cannot say that the stakes in the intellectual conflict between physicists is small, but they are certainly intense and bitter, complete with accusations of plagiarism, incompetence, and even intellectual fraud. I expect charges of horse thievery to be brought any day now.

The origins of this conflict can be traced at least as far back as the informal debates between Albert Einstein and Neils Bohr. Einstein was a champion of local causality. Bohr championed quantum mechanics, complete with its principle of true randomness at the foundations of physical nature. Although the dispute seems to have been civil and respectful between them, the core of the dispute is so fundamental that one might perhaps understand some of the rancor today.

The debate boils down to this: Is the universe deterministic or random? While that may be an oversimplification, it encapsulates the great divide. The consequences of each position, if one of them is correct, define the universe as either a script that has already been written and is now being acted out, or else, a series of dice rolls, most of which have not yet come to rest.

It is a question between absolute certainty, or statistical uncertainty. It is a question of one universe or many. It is a question of who gets tenure and who doesn’t, who gets to say I told you so, and who must cringe and admit defeat. Yes, the stakes are that small.

While Relativity Theory has survived every challenge put to it (experimentally and mathematically), so has quantum theory. Indeed, science is faced with a paradox: both theories must be true, but one of them must be false. The only way out of the paradox is to find a third theory, a unifying principle that joins both relativity and quantum mechanics into a single, coherent framework.

Not so fast.

There is at least one major question which is entirely unaddressed in both relativity and quantum theories. What is consciousness? More precisely, what explains our inward experience of consciousness?

That is not a small question. Thus far, consciousness has defied every attempt to formulate it into any physical framework of reality. Think of it this way: How would you explain your perception of the color, red, to a friend who has been blind from birth? Such a person would have no experience by which to relate to that color. Physics explains red in terms of photons and wavelength and mathematical relationships, but none of these transmits to our blind friend what we experience as color.

Furthermore, a physical theory must do more than merely explain a phenomenon, it must make reliable predictions. Nothing whatsoever in physics predicts anything like what we experience as consciousness.

There is more. Each of us has the sensation that we can think our own thoughts, choose our own actions, and make our own decisions, at least in certain respects. This is the sensation of something we call, volition, or free will.

Physics not only has no explanation for free will, it denies that free will can even exist. The only two causative factors allowed in physics are determinism and randomness. Free will is neither of these, but a third thing altogether, neither forced nor arbitrary.

While I have encountered many people who deny free will, I have yet to meet one who claims not to be conscious. Of those who deny free will, I have yet to meet one who says that he lives his life as if he were a robot, devoid of any responsibility for his actions, actions which he insists are forced upon him by a cold, uncaring universe.

What is needed, then, is a paradigm shift. Physics must escape its unreasonable, self-imposed restraints, and consider that its most basic premise, the philosophy of natural-materialism, is necessarily wrong.

It must recognize that consciousness is an ineffable phenomenon that can never be explained by any physical theory. It must recognize that without free will, there is no independent inquiry into science, but only the acting out of a script in which the scientist’s thinking is either predetermined or random, but not consciously chosen reasoning.

This paradigm shift involves the most forbidden hypothesis in all of science, the hypothesis that the universe appears to be designed because it is designed. There must be a creator who formed nature, who guides nature, and who does so with a plan, a purpose, and a meaning—all of which may be forever beyond our final grasp.

This God Paradigm cannot be explained in a word, but it has several propositions that science must actively investigate if ever it is to achieve a unified theory.

Here are some:

The basis of physical reality is not physical.
That would defy logic.

Nature cannot have been created by natural means until there was a nature to provide those means.

Until science explains consciousness, it has explained nothing.

Life, consciousness and free will are not mere by-products of physical reality, they are at its very core.

Science has faith in an ordered universe. It has no idea what is the basis of that order.
How then, can any scientist doubt God?

The question should not be, does God Exist? God is bigger than existence.

To be sure, the God Paradigm cannot be tested in a laboratory. Much of it is metaphysical. But then, so is the philosophy of natural-materialism.

The object of the God Paradigm is not to erase science, but to give it a foundation.

More details of this are available at

http://thegodparadigm.blogspot.com/
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[Q-reeus]

...While Relativity Theory has survived every challenge put to it (experimentally and mathematically)

Have no wish to discuss the rest of that fascinating philosophical discourse, but you evidently have dismissed my own thread disputing the above!

[RArvay]

I have not dismissed anything.
I referred to the dispute (allegorically) as a "war."
The dispute rages on.

To say that a theory has survived a challenge is not to say that the theory is necessarily
correct, but only to say that the broader community of physicists
has not dismissed the conventional theory -- at least not yet.

Thus, to date, both relativity and quantum mechanics survive as the standard theories,
despite challenges to each.

In my view, neither is the final word.
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[Q-reeus]

...To say that a theory has survived a challenge is not to say that the theory is necessarily
correct, but only to say that the broader community of physicists
has not dismissed the conventional theory -- at least not yet...

That much is agreed upon.