Jochen Fromm
Aug12-04, 08:30 AM
<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>\nThis long posting contains some ideas and suggestions\nabout the connection between evolution and fundamental\nparticle physics. It is no theory, only a collection of\nsome (hopefully) interesting ideas. Is nature subject\nto eternal laws, or do laws evolve like everything else ?\nCan we use in this case the theory of evolution to gain\nmore insight into fundamental processes ?\n\n**** Are Laws immutable ?\n\nIn the time of Leibniz and Newton scientists thought that the\nworld is a great machine going on without the interposition\nof God, like a clock which continues to go without a clockmaker.\nBut they still believed that God has made the eternal\n(mathematical) laws, like a clockmaker determines the\ncomposition and the laws of his clocks (see [1]).\n\nMany physicists today still think physical laws are immutable.\nSome even think there is a fundamental, universal theory. Yet\nthe search for a TOE "Theory of Everything" is maybe misleading,\nbecause there is probably no such eternal law except evolution.\nThe very concept of a physical law is maybe an emergent property.\nThis has proposed for example by John A. Wheeler. In his book\n"Frontiers of Time" Wheeler writes about "Law without law" [2]:\n\n"It is preposterous to think of the laws of physics as installed\nby a Swiss watchmaker to endure from everlasting to everlasting\nwhen we know that the universe began with a big bang. The laws\nmust have come into being."\n\nPaul Davies summarizes Wheeler\'s point of view about the\nlaws of physics in the following way [2]\n\n"Perhaps there are no ultimate laws of physics, only chaos.\n[...] Lawlike behavior might emerge stepwise from the ferment\nof the Big Bang at the cosmic origin, instead of being\nmysteriously and immutably imprinted on the universe\nat the instant of its birth. [With this considerations] Wheeler\nwas breaking a 400-year-old scientific tradition of regarding\nnature as subject to eternal laws."\n\nSudden and unpredictable emergence of structures is an\nimportant concept in the evolution of complex systems [4].\nEven the Big Bang itself can be considered as the "emergence"\nof space-time. What is more likely, that particles and\nlaws have co-evolved together gradually, or that with the\nBig Bang suddenly a 11-dimensional String Theory (or M-Theory)\nappeared which governs the behavior of the universe for all\ntimes ?\n\nAre physical laws, as Wheeler doubts, really "engraved on a\ntablet of stone for all eternity", or do they evolve in\na process of cosmic evolution together with the rest of the\nuniverse ? The latter possibility is more probable.\nIf elementary particles really emerged and appeared in\nthe course of evolution, which is a generally accepted\nfact, there is no need to assume that immutable laws which\ndescribed their behavior have been valid earlier. The laws\nfor certain particles or phenomena make no sense if there\nare no such particles or phenomena.\n\n\n**** Evolution is important\n\nMost of the fundamental physical laws are conservation\nlaws based on symmetries. Energy conservation is a direct\nconsequence of the fact that the laws of nature do not\nchange with time, and momentum conservation derives\nfrom the simple fact that the laws of physics do not\nchange as you move from one place to another [3].\nConservation of something is related to invariance\nunder a certain transformation:\n\n* Energy (and Mass) - Invariance under Time Transformations\n* Linear Momentum - Invariance under Tanslation\n* Angular Momentum - Invariance under Rotation\n* Electric Charge - Invariance under Gauge Transformations\n(Invariance of "electric" potentials, a global "voltage" shift )\n\nSymmetries, while mathematically elegant, do not\nextend scientific understanding of the underlying\nnature of matter.\n\nThe basic physical laws do not change with time in the\nregion we can observe now. But in the early universe or\nnear the planck scale, it is possible that the laws of\nphysics are changing from one place to another, or from\none moment to another. Since conservation laws, invariance\nand symmetries are closely connected, it is possible, that\nconservation laws emerge on a larger scale, if symmetries\nappear on a larger scale and vice versa.\n\nIt is possible that the fundamental laws of physics\nemerge from such a spacetime foam, where particles and laws\nare changing from one place to another, or from one moment\nto another ? If yes, is there a consistent formulation of\nprocesses in the spacetime foam near the Planck scale which\nis able to topple (or to underpin) the twin pillars of 20th\ncentury physics, the theory of relativity and quantum\nmechanics ? Can particles *and* laws emerge from nothing\nexcept spacetime foam ?\n\nTo answer this question, it is useful to try to look\nfor a connection between the basic physical theories - Quantum\nTheory and the theory of relativity - and evolution.\nIf all the physical, chemical and biological particles with\ntheir corresponding scientific laws emerged bit by bit during the\ncourse of evolution, the theory of evolution is the only\nimportant and fundamental theory left, because the only thing\nthat has not changed in the last 14.6 billion years since the\nuniverse exists is evolution itself. If you want to know why\nthe world is as complex as it is, the theory of evolution is\nthe right choice.\n\n\n**** Evolution and Quantum Theory\n\nCan you apply notations and principles of Quantum Mechanics to\nexplain the evolution of complex systems ? George Simpson had a\nsimilar idea already 1944. He formulated the idea of a "quantum\nevolution" in his book "Tempo and Mode in Evolution" (Columbia Press,\n1944), where rapid "all or nothing" changes are possible.\n\nJohnjoe McFadden has written a book about "Quantum Evolution" in\n2000. McFadden is or was a microbiologist at Surrey (UK) University.\nBut there are doubts if you can apply wavefunctions to macroscopic\nobjects like an entire cell. Matthew J. Donald has argued in\nhttp://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/?0101019 that McFadden\'s use of\nquantum theory is deeply flawed. McFadden clearly has the benefit\nof understanding the biology much more than most physicists, but\nmany physicists doubt that his understanding of QM is sufficient\nto give his theories any weight. It is certainly easier to understand\nevolution for a physicist than to understand Quantum Mechanics for\na biologist. Even physicists themselves do not understand Quantum\nMechanics well, a theory which relies on many strange principles:\nQuantization, Wave-particle duality, Spin, Complex amplitudes,\nProbabilism, Amplitude and State Superposition, Uncertainty\nPrinciple,.. As Wolfram says in his NKS book on page 1058,\nit is not clear which are really fundamental. McFadden seems\nto have concentrated himself on the wrong ones.\n\nYet there is evidence [5] that certain principles of Quantum Mechanics\ncan be used to explain complex phenomena in evolutionary systems\non a different level, for example tunneling processes related to\nthe borrowing of energy and the uncertainty principle, or the energy\nband levels and gaps known from semiconductors. The former correspond\nto tunneling processes through fitness barries due to borrowing of\ncomplexity, the latter correspond to certain band levels in complex\nevolutionary systems.\n\nProf. Eric J. Chaisson says about evolution in his article\n"Complexity: An Energetics Agenda", Complexity Vol.9 No.3 (2004) 14-21\nhttp://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/jtoc/38804/\n"Evolution knows no disciplinary boundaries. As such, the\nmost familiar kind of evolution-biological evolution, or\nneo-Darwinism-is just one, albeit important, subset of a\nmuch broader evolutionary scheme encompassing more than\nmere life on Earth."\n\nIf evolution is so fundamental, can you apply the principles of\nevolution to construct a fundamental description of physical reality\nnear the Planck scale as well ? Here are some basic ideas\nand suggestions:\n\n-----------------------------------\n1) If everything is subject to evolution, then why should laws and\ntheories be constant ? There is no constant TOE "Theory of Everything",\nbecause if new complex structures evolve, new laws will evolve, too,\nwhich describe new symmetries and emergent properties.\nBecause there was no particle at the beginning, there were probably\nnot many laws, either. The question who was first, the particles, strings\nand elements or the corresponding rules, forces and laws, is simple.\nParticles and laws co-evolved together. Matter constituents and Force\ncarriers, Fermions and Bosons probably evolved together, too.\n\n-----------------------------------\n2) For evolution we need basically only multiplication (replication\nor reproduction), heredity (inheritance) and variation (mutation\nor recombination). Maybe the most fundamental structure of space-time\ninvolves some process of multiplication or replication, and this\nprocess is either related to a fundamental time step itself, or to\nthe continuous expansion of the universe.\n\nOf course an expansion with each time step would result in\nexponential growth. This is the scenario of the inflation\noriginally proposed by Alan H. Guth. Yet once inflation starts,\nit never stops completely. Thus it must be balanced by opposite\ngravitational forces.\n\nIt is possible, that all particles emerge as whirls or disturbance\nin the spacetime foam due to constant interaction of expansion\n(visible in extreme, pure form during inflation) and gravitation\n(visible in extreme, pure form in black holes) ? Usually "emergence"\nprocesses and self-organization take place in open systems with a\nconstant inflow, throughput and outflow of energy or information.\n\n-----------------------------------\n3) A biological species is composed of related organisms that share\ncommon characteristics and can interbreed. Is a particle tpye\n(or "species") similarly composed of related particle that share\ncommon characteristics and can interact (instead of interbreed)\nwith each other ?\n\n-----------------------------------\n4) Bifurcations in evolutionary lineage trees or phylogenies\nhave certain similarities with vertices in Feynman diagrams.\nIn evolution bifurcation of species and lineages are possible\nbecause a species has an internal structure of a certain\ncomplexity or diversity. This internal complexity is based on\nconstant genetic or memetic recombination within the common\ngenetic or memetic pool. The bifurcation or branching point is\nonly a transfer of internal complexity within a species to\nexternal complexity between species. Complexity within a species\nis reduced, and complexity between species is increased in such\na transfer. Therefore the ability to absorb and emit particles\nis a signal or sign for an internal structure, if the evolutionary\nanalogy has any significance.\n\nIf this is true for vertices in QFT and string theory, too, then\neverything that interacts strongly through emission and absorption\nof particles is probably not elementary: the electrons, the quarks\nand the gluons. Particles like the electron and the quark should have\nan internal structure based on constant recombination of space-time\nstructures at the Planck-Scale. If a species (or lineage) splits\ninto two branches, the new emerging species have a common ancestor.\nOf course the electron is not composed of photons, and the quark is\nnot composed of gluons. But it is possible, that they have like\nspecies a common "ancestor" ?\n\n-----------------------------------\n5) There is an important lesson to learn from the evolution\nof complex systems: the most abundant, primitive and\ntiniest elements are often the oldest and most fundamental\nones. For example bacteria are countless, tiny and primitive,\nbut they belong to the most ancient life-forms on earth.\nThus the smallest particles, the insignificant neutrinos\nwith their strange inclination to oscillate, are perhaps\nmore important than we think, exactly because they\ninteract only very weakly with normal matter.\n\n\n-----------------------------------\n6) Pauli\'s Exclusion Principle for fermions (electrons and quarks)\nis very similar to the concept of an evolutionary niche, which can\nonly be filled by a single species at a time. Is there any\nconnection between these completely different concepts ?\n\n\n\n[1]\nThe Book of the Cosmos\nImagining the Universe from Heraclitus to Hawking\nDennis Richard Danielson, Perseus Books Group, 2000\n\n[2]\nScience and Ultimate Reality\nQuantum Theory, Cosmology and Complexity\nEdited by John D. Barrow, Paul C.W. Davies, Charles L. Harper Jr.\nCambridge University Press, 2004\n\n[3]\naccording to Noether\'s theorem, see\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noether\'s_theorem\n\n[4]\nThe Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex\nHarold J. Morowitz\nOxford University Press, 2002\n\nThe Major Transitions Evolution\nJohn Maynard Smith, Eors Szathmary\nOxford University Press, 1997\n\n[5]\nThe Emergence of Complexity\nJochen Fromm\nKassel University Press, 2004\n\n\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form"> View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>This long posting contains some ideas and suggestions
about the connection between evolution and fundamental
particle physics. It is no theory, only a collection of
some (hopefully) interesting ideas. Is nature subject
to eternal laws, or do laws evolve like everything else ?
Can we use in this case the theory of evolution to gain
more insight into fundamental processes ?
**** Are Laws immutable ?
In the time of Leibniz and Newton scientists thought that the
world is a great machine going on without the interposition
of God, like a clock which continues to go without a clockmaker.
But they still believed that God has made the eternal
(mathematical) laws, like a clockmaker determines the
composition and the laws of his clocks (see [1]).
Many physicists today still think physical laws are immutable.
Some even think there is a fundamental, universal theory. Yet
the search for a TOE "Theory of Everything" is maybe misleading,
because there is probably no such eternal law except evolution.
The very concept of a physical law is maybe an emergent property.
This has proposed for example by John A. Wheeler. In his book
"Frontiers of Time" Wheeler writes about "Law without law" [2]:
"It is preposterous to think of the laws of physics as installed
by a Swiss watchmaker to endure from everlasting to everlasting
when we know that the universe began with a big bang. The laws
must have come into being."
Paul Davies summarizes Wheeler's point of view about the
laws of physics in the following way [2]
"Perhaps there are no ultimate laws of physics, only chaos.
[...] Lawlike behavior might emerge stepwise from the ferment
of the Big Bang at the cosmic origin, instead of being
mysteriously and immutably imprinted on the universe
at the instant of its birth. [With this considerations] Wheeler
was breaking a 400-year-old scientific tradition of regarding
nature as subject to eternal laws."
Sudden and unpredictable emergence of structures is an
important concept in the evolution of complex systems [4].
Even the Big Bang itself can be considered as the "emergence"
of space-time. What is more likely, that particles and
laws have co-evolved together gradually, or that with the
Big Bang suddenly a 11-dimensional String Theory (or M-Theory)
appeared which governs the behavior of the universe for all
times ?
Are physical laws, as Wheeler doubts, really "engraved on a
tablet of stone for all eternity", or do they evolve in
a process of cosmic evolution together with the rest of the
universe ? The latter possibility is more probable.
If elementary particles really emerged and appeared in
the course of evolution, which is a generally accepted
fact, there is no need to assume that immutable laws which
described their behavior have been valid earlier. The laws
for certain particles or phenomena make no sense if there
are no such particles or phenomena.
**** Evolution is important
Most of the fundamental physical laws are conservation
laws based on symmetries. Energy conservation is a direct
consequence of the fact that the laws of nature do not
change with time, and momentum conservation derives
from the simple fact that the laws of physics do not
change as you move from one place to another [3].
Conservation of something is related to invariance
under a certain transformation:
* Energy (and Mass) - Invariance under Time Transformations
* Linear Momentum - Invariance under Tanslation
* Angular Momentum - Invariance under Rotation
* Electric Charge - Invariance under Gauge Transformations
(Invariance of "electric" potentials, a global "voltage" shift )
Symmetries, while mathematically elegant, do not
extend scientific understanding of the underlying
nature of matter.
The basic physical laws do not change with time in the
region we can observe now. But in the early universe or
near the planck scale, it is possible that the laws of
physics are changing from one place to another, or from
one moment to another. Since conservation laws, invariance
and symmetries are closely connected, it is possible, that
conservation laws emerge on a larger scale, if symmetries
appear on a larger scale and vice versa.
It is possible that the fundamental laws of physics
emerge from such a spacetime foam, where particles and laws
are changing from one place to another, or from one moment
to another ? If yes, is there a consistent formulation of
processes in the spacetime foam near the Planck scale which
is able to topple (or to underpin) the twin pillars of 20th
century physics, the theory of relativity and quantum
mechanics ? Can particles *and* laws emerge from nothing
except spacetime foam ?
To answer this question, it is useful to try to look
for a connection between the basic physical theories - Quantum
Theory and the theory of relativity - and evolution.
If all the physical, chemical and biological particles with
their corresponding scientific laws emerged bit by bit during the
course of evolution, the theory of evolution is the only
important and fundamental theory left, because the only thing
that has not changed in the last 14.6 billion years since the
universe exists is evolution itself. If you want to know why
the world is as complex as it is, the theory of evolution is
the right choice.
**** Evolution and Quantum Theory
Can you apply notations and principles of Quantum Mechanics to
explain the evolution of complex systems ? George Simpson had a
similar idea already 1944. He formulated the idea of a "quantum
evolution" in his book "Tempo and Mode in Evolution" (Columbia Press,
1944), where rapid "all or nothing" changes are possible.
Johnjoe McFadden has written a book about "Quantum Evolution" in
2000. McFadden is or was a microbiologist at Surrey (UK) University.
But there are doubts if you can apply wavefunctions to macroscopic
objects like an entire cell. Matthew J. Donald has argued in
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/?0101019 that McFadden's use of
quantum theory is deeply flawed. McFadden clearly has the benefit
of understanding the biology much more than most physicists, but
many physicists doubt that his understanding of QM is sufficient
to give his theories any weight. It is certainly easier to understand
evolution for a physicist than to understand Quantum Mechanics for
a biologist. Even physicists themselves do not understand Quantum
Mechanics well, a theory which relies on many strange principles:
Quantization, Wave-particle duality, Spin, Complex amplitudes,
Probabilism, Amplitude and State Superposition, Uncertainty
Principle,.. As Wolfram says in his NKS book on page 1058,
it is not clear which are really fundamental. McFadden seems
to have concentrated himself on the wrong ones.
Yet there is evidence [5] that certain principles of Quantum Mechanics
can be used to explain complex phenomena in evolutionary systems
on a different level, for example tunneling processes related to
the borrowing of energy and the uncertainty principle, or the energy
band levels and gaps known from semiconductors. The former correspond
to tunneling processes through fitness barries due to borrowing of
complexity, the latter correspond to certain band levels in complex
evolutionary systems.
Prof. Eric J. Chaisson says about evolution in his article
"Complexity: An Energetics Agenda", Complexity Vol.9 No.3 (2004) 14-21
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/jtoc/38804/
"Evolution knows no disciplinary boundaries. As such, the
most familiar kind of evolution-biological evolution, or
neo-Darwinism-is just one, albeit important, subset of a
much broader evolutionary scheme encompassing more than
mere life on Earth."
If evolution is so fundamental, can you apply the principles of
evolution to construct a fundamental description of physical reality
near the Planck scale as well ? Here are some basic ideas
and suggestions:
-----------------------------------
1) If everything is subject to evolution, then why should laws and
theories be constant ? There is no constant TOE "Theory of Everything",
because if new complex structures evolve, new laws will evolve, too,
which describe new symmetries and emergent properties.
Because there was no particle at the beginning, there were probably
not many laws, either. The question who was first, the particles, strings
and elements or the corresponding rules, forces and laws, is simple.
Particles and laws co-evolved together. Matter constituents and Force
carriers, Fermions and Bosons probably evolved together, too.
-----------------------------------
2) For evolution we need basically only multiplication (replication
or reproduction), heredity (inheritance) and variation (mutation
or recombination). Maybe the most fundamental structure of space-time
involves some process of multiplication or replication, and this
process is either related to a fundamental time step itself, or to
the continuous expansion of the universe.
Of course an expansion with each time step would result in
exponential growth. This is the scenario of the inflation
originally proposed by Alan H. Guth. Yet once inflation starts,
it never stops completely. Thus it must be balanced by opposite
gravitational forces.
It is possible, that all particles emerge as whirls or disturbance
in the spacetime foam due to constant interaction of expansion
(visible in extreme, pure form during inflation) and gravitation
(visible in extreme, pure form in black holes) ? Usually "emergence"
processes and self-organization take place in open systems with a
constant inflow, throughput and outflow of energy or information.
-----------------------------------
3) A biological species is composed of related organisms that share
common characteristics and can interbreed. Is a particle tpye
(or "species") similarly composed of related particle that share
common characteristics and can interact (instead of interbreed)
with each other ?
-----------------------------------
4) Bifurcations in evolutionary lineage trees or phylogenies
have certain similarities with vertices in Feynman diagrams.
In evolution bifurcation of species and lineages are possible
because a species has an internal structure of a certain
complexity or diversity. This internal complexity is based on
constant genetic or memetic recombination within the common
genetic or memetic pool. The bifurcation or branching point is
only a transfer of internal complexity within a species to
external complexity between species. Complexity within a species
is reduced, and complexity between species is increased in such
a transfer. Therefore the ability to absorb and emit particles
is a signal or sign for an internal structure, if the evolutionary
analogy has any significance.
If this is true for vertices in QFT and string theory, too, then
everything that interacts strongly through emission and absorption
of particles is probably not elementary: the electrons, the quarks
and the gluons. Particles like the electron and the quark should have
an internal structure based on constant recombination of space-time
structures at the Planck-Scale. If a species (or lineage) splits
into two branches, the new emerging species have a common ancestor.
Of course the electron is not composed of photons, and the quark is
not composed of gluons. But it is possible, that they have like
species a common "ancestor" ?
-----------------------------------
5) There is an important lesson to learn from the evolution
of complex systems: the most abundant, primitive and
tiniest elements are often the oldest and most fundamental
ones. For example bacteria are countless, tiny and primitive,
but they belong to the most ancient life-forms on earth.
Thus the smallest particles, the insignificant neutrinos
with their strange inclination to oscillate, are perhaps
more important than we think, exactly because they
interact only very weakly with normal matter.
-----------------------------------
6) Pauli's Exclusion Principle for fermions (electrons and quarks)
is very similar to the concept of an evolutionary niche, which can
only be filled by a single species at a time. Is there any
connection between these completely different concepts ?
[1]
The Book of the Cosmos
Imagining the Universe from Heraclitus to Hawking
Dennis Richard Danielson, Perseus Books Group, 2000
[2]
Science and Ultimate Reality
Quantum Theory, Cosmology and Complexity
Edited by John D. Barrow, Paul C.W. Davies, Charles L. Harper Jr.
Cambridge University Press, 2004
[3]
according to Noether's theorem, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noether's_{theorem}
[4]
The Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex
Harold J. Morowitz
Oxford University Press, 2002
The Major Transitions Evolution
John Maynard Smith, Eors Szathmary
Oxford University Press, 1997
[5]
The Emergence of Complexity
Jochen Fromm
Kassel University Press, 2004
about the connection between evolution and fundamental
particle physics. It is no theory, only a collection of
some (hopefully) interesting ideas. Is nature subject
to eternal laws, or do laws evolve like everything else ?
Can we use in this case the theory of evolution to gain
more insight into fundamental processes ?
**** Are Laws immutable ?
In the time of Leibniz and Newton scientists thought that the
world is a great machine going on without the interposition
of God, like a clock which continues to go without a clockmaker.
But they still believed that God has made the eternal
(mathematical) laws, like a clockmaker determines the
composition and the laws of his clocks (see [1]).
Many physicists today still think physical laws are immutable.
Some even think there is a fundamental, universal theory. Yet
the search for a TOE "Theory of Everything" is maybe misleading,
because there is probably no such eternal law except evolution.
The very concept of a physical law is maybe an emergent property.
This has proposed for example by John A. Wheeler. In his book
"Frontiers of Time" Wheeler writes about "Law without law" [2]:
"It is preposterous to think of the laws of physics as installed
by a Swiss watchmaker to endure from everlasting to everlasting
when we know that the universe began with a big bang. The laws
must have come into being."
Paul Davies summarizes Wheeler's point of view about the
laws of physics in the following way [2]
"Perhaps there are no ultimate laws of physics, only chaos.
[...] Lawlike behavior might emerge stepwise from the ferment
of the Big Bang at the cosmic origin, instead of being
mysteriously and immutably imprinted on the universe
at the instant of its birth. [With this considerations] Wheeler
was breaking a 400-year-old scientific tradition of regarding
nature as subject to eternal laws."
Sudden and unpredictable emergence of structures is an
important concept in the evolution of complex systems [4].
Even the Big Bang itself can be considered as the "emergence"
of space-time. What is more likely, that particles and
laws have co-evolved together gradually, or that with the
Big Bang suddenly a 11-dimensional String Theory (or M-Theory)
appeared which governs the behavior of the universe for all
times ?
Are physical laws, as Wheeler doubts, really "engraved on a
tablet of stone for all eternity", or do they evolve in
a process of cosmic evolution together with the rest of the
universe ? The latter possibility is more probable.
If elementary particles really emerged and appeared in
the course of evolution, which is a generally accepted
fact, there is no need to assume that immutable laws which
described their behavior have been valid earlier. The laws
for certain particles or phenomena make no sense if there
are no such particles or phenomena.
**** Evolution is important
Most of the fundamental physical laws are conservation
laws based on symmetries. Energy conservation is a direct
consequence of the fact that the laws of nature do not
change with time, and momentum conservation derives
from the simple fact that the laws of physics do not
change as you move from one place to another [3].
Conservation of something is related to invariance
under a certain transformation:
* Energy (and Mass) - Invariance under Time Transformations
* Linear Momentum - Invariance under Tanslation
* Angular Momentum - Invariance under Rotation
* Electric Charge - Invariance under Gauge Transformations
(Invariance of "electric" potentials, a global "voltage" shift )
Symmetries, while mathematically elegant, do not
extend scientific understanding of the underlying
nature of matter.
The basic physical laws do not change with time in the
region we can observe now. But in the early universe or
near the planck scale, it is possible that the laws of
physics are changing from one place to another, or from
one moment to another. Since conservation laws, invariance
and symmetries are closely connected, it is possible, that
conservation laws emerge on a larger scale, if symmetries
appear on a larger scale and vice versa.
It is possible that the fundamental laws of physics
emerge from such a spacetime foam, where particles and laws
are changing from one place to another, or from one moment
to another ? If yes, is there a consistent formulation of
processes in the spacetime foam near the Planck scale which
is able to topple (or to underpin) the twin pillars of 20th
century physics, the theory of relativity and quantum
mechanics ? Can particles *and* laws emerge from nothing
except spacetime foam ?
To answer this question, it is useful to try to look
for a connection between the basic physical theories - Quantum
Theory and the theory of relativity - and evolution.
If all the physical, chemical and biological particles with
their corresponding scientific laws emerged bit by bit during the
course of evolution, the theory of evolution is the only
important and fundamental theory left, because the only thing
that has not changed in the last 14.6 billion years since the
universe exists is evolution itself. If you want to know why
the world is as complex as it is, the theory of evolution is
the right choice.
**** Evolution and Quantum Theory
Can you apply notations and principles of Quantum Mechanics to
explain the evolution of complex systems ? George Simpson had a
similar idea already 1944. He formulated the idea of a "quantum
evolution" in his book "Tempo and Mode in Evolution" (Columbia Press,
1944), where rapid "all or nothing" changes are possible.
Johnjoe McFadden has written a book about "Quantum Evolution" in
2000. McFadden is or was a microbiologist at Surrey (UK) University.
But there are doubts if you can apply wavefunctions to macroscopic
objects like an entire cell. Matthew J. Donald has argued in
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/?0101019 that McFadden's use of
quantum theory is deeply flawed. McFadden clearly has the benefit
of understanding the biology much more than most physicists, but
many physicists doubt that his understanding of QM is sufficient
to give his theories any weight. It is certainly easier to understand
evolution for a physicist than to understand Quantum Mechanics for
a biologist. Even physicists themselves do not understand Quantum
Mechanics well, a theory which relies on many strange principles:
Quantization, Wave-particle duality, Spin, Complex amplitudes,
Probabilism, Amplitude and State Superposition, Uncertainty
Principle,.. As Wolfram says in his NKS book on page 1058,
it is not clear which are really fundamental. McFadden seems
to have concentrated himself on the wrong ones.
Yet there is evidence [5] that certain principles of Quantum Mechanics
can be used to explain complex phenomena in evolutionary systems
on a different level, for example tunneling processes related to
the borrowing of energy and the uncertainty principle, or the energy
band levels and gaps known from semiconductors. The former correspond
to tunneling processes through fitness barries due to borrowing of
complexity, the latter correspond to certain band levels in complex
evolutionary systems.
Prof. Eric J. Chaisson says about evolution in his article
"Complexity: An Energetics Agenda", Complexity Vol.9 No.3 (2004) 14-21
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/jtoc/38804/
"Evolution knows no disciplinary boundaries. As such, the
most familiar kind of evolution-biological evolution, or
neo-Darwinism-is just one, albeit important, subset of a
much broader evolutionary scheme encompassing more than
mere life on Earth."
If evolution is so fundamental, can you apply the principles of
evolution to construct a fundamental description of physical reality
near the Planck scale as well ? Here are some basic ideas
and suggestions:
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1) If everything is subject to evolution, then why should laws and
theories be constant ? There is no constant TOE "Theory of Everything",
because if new complex structures evolve, new laws will evolve, too,
which describe new symmetries and emergent properties.
Because there was no particle at the beginning, there were probably
not many laws, either. The question who was first, the particles, strings
and elements or the corresponding rules, forces and laws, is simple.
Particles and laws co-evolved together. Matter constituents and Force
carriers, Fermions and Bosons probably evolved together, too.
-----------------------------------
2) For evolution we need basically only multiplication (replication
or reproduction), heredity (inheritance) and variation (mutation
or recombination). Maybe the most fundamental structure of space-time
involves some process of multiplication or replication, and this
process is either related to a fundamental time step itself, or to
the continuous expansion of the universe.
Of course an expansion with each time step would result in
exponential growth. This is the scenario of the inflation
originally proposed by Alan H. Guth. Yet once inflation starts,
it never stops completely. Thus it must be balanced by opposite
gravitational forces.
It is possible, that all particles emerge as whirls or disturbance
in the spacetime foam due to constant interaction of expansion
(visible in extreme, pure form during inflation) and gravitation
(visible in extreme, pure form in black holes) ? Usually "emergence"
processes and self-organization take place in open systems with a
constant inflow, throughput and outflow of energy or information.
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3) A biological species is composed of related organisms that share
common characteristics and can interbreed. Is a particle tpye
(or "species") similarly composed of related particle that share
common characteristics and can interact (instead of interbreed)
with each other ?
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4) Bifurcations in evolutionary lineage trees or phylogenies
have certain similarities with vertices in Feynman diagrams.
In evolution bifurcation of species and lineages are possible
because a species has an internal structure of a certain
complexity or diversity. This internal complexity is based on
constant genetic or memetic recombination within the common
genetic or memetic pool. The bifurcation or branching point is
only a transfer of internal complexity within a species to
external complexity between species. Complexity within a species
is reduced, and complexity between species is increased in such
a transfer. Therefore the ability to absorb and emit particles
is a signal or sign for an internal structure, if the evolutionary
analogy has any significance.
If this is true for vertices in QFT and string theory, too, then
everything that interacts strongly through emission and absorption
of particles is probably not elementary: the electrons, the quarks
and the gluons. Particles like the electron and the quark should have
an internal structure based on constant recombination of space-time
structures at the Planck-Scale. If a species (or lineage) splits
into two branches, the new emerging species have a common ancestor.
Of course the electron is not composed of photons, and the quark is
not composed of gluons. But it is possible, that they have like
species a common "ancestor" ?
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5) There is an important lesson to learn from the evolution
of complex systems: the most abundant, primitive and
tiniest elements are often the oldest and most fundamental
ones. For example bacteria are countless, tiny and primitive,
but they belong to the most ancient life-forms on earth.
Thus the smallest particles, the insignificant neutrinos
with their strange inclination to oscillate, are perhaps
more important than we think, exactly because they
interact only very weakly with normal matter.
-----------------------------------
6) Pauli's Exclusion Principle for fermions (electrons and quarks)
is very similar to the concept of an evolutionary niche, which can
only be filled by a single species at a time. Is there any
connection between these completely different concepts ?
[1]
The Book of the Cosmos
Imagining the Universe from Heraclitus to Hawking
Dennis Richard Danielson, Perseus Books Group, 2000
[2]
Science and Ultimate Reality
Quantum Theory, Cosmology and Complexity
Edited by John D. Barrow, Paul C.W. Davies, Charles L. Harper Jr.
Cambridge University Press, 2004
[3]
according to Noether's theorem, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noether's_{theorem}
[4]
The Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex
Harold J. Morowitz
Oxford University Press, 2002
The Major Transitions Evolution
John Maynard Smith, Eors Szathmary
Oxford University Press, 1997
[5]
The Emergence of Complexity
Jochen Fromm
Kassel University Press, 2004