Is the universe governed by simple law?.

In summary, John Archibald Wheeler believes that behind all scientific ideas is a simple and beautiful concept that will eventually be grasped by humanity and make us wonder how we could have been so ignorant for so long. He also believes that the pace of understanding and grasping these concepts is rapidly evolving thanks to advancements in technology and the ability to think and visualize in new ways. Wheeler's ideas are still relevant today, and his work continues to inspire and motivate scientists.
  • #1
qsa
353
1
Behind it all is surely an idea so simple, so beautiful, that when we grasp it - in a decade, a century, or a millennium - we will all say to each other, how could it have been otherwise? How could we have been so stupid for so long? - John Archibald Wheeler


Is Wheeler being stupid or smart for saying such a thing, and WHY?
 
Space news on Phys.org
  • #2
qsa said:
Behind it all is surely an idea so simple, so beautiful, that when we grasp it - in a decade, a century, or a millennium - we will all say to each other, how could it have been otherwise? How could we have been so stupid for so long? - John Archibald Wheeler


Is Wheeler being stupid or smart for saying such a thing, and WHY?
Genius. Except I'd change the word 'when' to 'if', event though optimistically I like the word 'when". The Elegant Universe is grandly designed.
 
  • #3
PhanthomJay said:
Genius. Except I'd change the word 'when' to 'if', event though optimistically I like the word 'when". The Elegant Universe is grandly designed.


I have followed the works of many of the great physicists. Only he tried to do real original work in an inventive spirit, besides he was at the right time when the field was not cluttered with lots of rehash like arxiv of today. So he felt it strongly more than any other. And I feel he was 100% correct.
 
  • #4
qsa said:
I have followed the works of many of the great physicists. Only he tried to do real original work in an inventive spirit, besides he was at the right time when the field was not cluttered with lots of rehash like arxiv of today. So he felt it strongly more than any other. And I feel he was 100% correct.

Yes Wheeler was great, and original ideas he had are still alive and motivating people.
Also he was Richard Feynman's PhD thesis advisor. Again someone who did real original work in an inventive spirit.

...so simple, so beautiful, that when we grasp it - in a decade, a century, or a millennium - we will all say to each other, how could it have been otherwise?...

Notice that grasping is not the same as seeing for the first time.

When you see an idea presented for the first time it may seem complicated and bizarre, but the commonplace concepts that we think with EVOLVE over time so that future decades or generations can have more evolved mental imagery and be comfortable with mathematical constructs that may be awkward/unintuitive now.

An example could be the principle of relative locality. The historically first publication of this idea was yesterday:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1101.0931
If you look at the paper and see it expressed for the first time you might think it is overly technical and unintuitive and confusing.
But if it is a lucky insight and gains acceptance, it will sink into our consciousness until we grasp it. And then our minds will have developed the mental imagery and the right words to talk about it, and we will think the idea is simple and obvious (as Wheeler described.) Anyway that's my take on it.
 
Last edited:
  • #5
marcus said:
Notice that grasping is not the same as seeing for the first time.

When you see an idea presented for the first time it may seem complicated and bizarre, but the commonplace concepts that we think with EVOLVE over time so that future decades or generations can have more evolved mental imagery and be comfortable with mathematical constructs that may be awkward/unintuitive now.

Of course, there is much truth in this. And no doubt, whatever the truth we find in 100 years or 200 years, this will seem to be fuzzy times when scientists were clouded over with half-truths and misconceptions, as every age seems to the ones that follow it, or as we look back upon the late 1800s perhaps.

Certainly, for example, in about 25 hours, a relatively educated layman can watch Susskind's lectures on GR and grasp it at a level that would have been unimaginable only 20 years ago, let alone during the 20s. Computer animation also let's us visualize ideas that would have been indescribably difficult with only a flat piece of paper. So the reach of our potential to grasp is indeed much higher.

Other technologies help, even ones you wouldn't imagine. Skydiving, for example. A few years back I learned to skydive in the San Francisco Bay area. The weather was bad so we waited inside for the winds to die down so beginners could jump. I got to watch some videos of people flying around in very non-traditional maneuvers in what is known as freeflying. Skydivers fly upside down, in a sitting position, in a sort of 3D dance. I eventually learned how to do this. And after about 165 jumps and 40 hours inside a vertical wind tunnel, I found that I could fly around upside down and move my body around in ways that I could not have conceived of when I started. I stopped thinking in 2D and started thinking in 3D.

The unexpected benefit is that I think this really helped my ability to visualize complex geometry. I can imagine in my head much more complex relationships and fly around looking at the various different pieces and how they might fit together in my head. I don't know if I was draw to freeflying because of this aspect of it, or if it was just a side benefit, but it definitely helped my thinking. For Ender's Game fans, it was in many ways like an "enemy's gate is down" experience.

I imagine in the future, there will be many more ways for people to interact in this sort of way with technology. Perhaps we'll be able to use virtual reality to walk or fly around inside hyperspaces, who knows, but the new abilities to reason in different ways we develop through play and the possibilities made available through new technology may help us find important keys to the larger reality. And we'll be able to use those tools to communicate the ideas that we come up with using this new heightened conceptual basis.


Still, I imagine that Wheeler meant something more.

John A. Wheeler said:
Behind it all is surely an idea so simple, so beautiful, that when we grasp it - in a decade, a century, or a millennium - we will all say to each other, how could it have been otherwise? How could we have been so stupid for so long?

Consider physics from Galileo up to the period before general relativity. It was mostly synthesis and reduction in complexity that marked the great breakthroughs. Keppler's replacement of epicycles with ellipses, Newton's gravity and motion laws, Faraday's Observations and Maxwell's equations. The equations were simple and easy to understand.

Biology became particular arrangements of cells and molecules with emergent system level behavior not possible to predict when looking at the individual components. Entities were composed of complex arrangements of smaller more fundamental and fewer in kind entities.

Matter became molecules consisting of less than 100 elements with emergent properties. Again, entities were composed of complex arrangements of smaller more fundamental and fewer in kind entities.

Elements became atoms consisting of only three different elements with emergent properties. Again, entities were composed of complex arrangements of smaller more fundamental and fewer in kind entities.

And then the clear direction towards the simpler fundamental entity with complexity emergent reversed itself.

Instead we had an exponential increase in the complexity of physics starting with quantum physics in the 20s or so. The nice clean proton, neutron and electron begat the particle soup which begat the standard model. The nice clean determinism of the 1800s begat the fuzziness of probabilistic quantum mechanics. So now we have a very complex set of theories governing most of experimental data but no real understanding of how it all fits together, or why our constants take on the values they do.

So I believe that what Wheeler was alluding to is the idea that we still await at least one major simplification. One that will be obvious once we have seen it because it will replace a lot of complexity and difficult math with simplicity and much easier-to-understand mathematics.

No doubt, much of our current work will offer clear hints of that simplification once we eventuallly find it. Perhaps it will be an arrangement of string theory that makes everything much simpler. Perhaps it will be a quantum gravity idea that makes everything much simpler. Who knows?

I share Wheeler's optimism in this regard specifically because of the trend towards simplicity that has accompanied our most famous laws and advancements. It just doesn't seem right that everything would get so complicated just at the very edge of our ability to probe.

I'm sure everyone has their own sense of what assumptions physics is making that might be wrong or misleading. My hunch is that we have not taken the dualities seriously enough. The wave-particle duality, the discrete-continuous duality, and probably others like them.

Another hunch is that we haven't really thought deeply enough about what it means to probe using high energies and the possibility that we pump so much energy into our probes of the tiniest matter that we are creating "particles" out of parts that are not fundamental at all.
 
  • #6
marcus said:
An example could be the principle of relative locality. The historically first publication of this idea was yesterday:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1101.0931
If you look at the paper and see it expressed for the first time you might think it is overly technical and unintuitive and confusing.
But if it is a lucky insight and gains acceptance, it will sink into our consciousness until we grasp it. And then our minds will have developed the mental imagery and the right words to talk about it, and we will think the idea is simple and obvious (as Wheeler described.) Anyway that's my take on it.
There is nothing new about this principle of relative locality; similar ideas have been proposed long time ago by amongst others Finkelstein.
 
  • #7
Careful said:
There is nothing new about this principle of relative locality; similar ideas have been proposed long time ago by amongst others Finkelstein.

It could be interesting to see the Finkelstein papers you are referring to. Please give us some links, if you can!

I would like to see some earlier work that substantially parallels what is done in the paper of Freidel et al. http://arxiv.org/abs/1101.0931
 
  • #8
inflector said:
Still, I imagine that Wheeler meant something more.



Consider physics from Galileo up to the period before general relativity. It was mostly synthesis and reduction in complexity that marked the great breakthroughs. Keppler's replacement of epicycles with ellipses, Newton's gravity and motion laws, Faraday's Observations and Maxwell's equations. The equations were simple and easy to understand.

Biology became particular arrangements of cells and molecules with emergent system level behavior not possible to predict when looking at the individual components. Entities were composed of complex arrangements of smaller more fundamental and fewer in kind entities.

Matter became molecules consisting of less than 100 elements with emergent properties. Again, entities were composed of complex arrangements of smaller more fundamental and fewer in kind entities.

Elements became atoms consisting of only three different elements with emergent properties. Again, entities were composed of complex arrangements of smaller more fundamental and fewer in kind entities.

And then the clear direction towards the simpler fundamental entity with complexity emergent reversed itself.

Instead we had an exponential increase in the complexity of physics starting with quantum physics in the 20s or so. The nice clean proton, neutron and electron begat the particle soup which begat the standard model. The nice clean determinism of the 1800s begat the fuzziness of probabilistic quantum mechanics. So now we have a very complex set of theories governing most of experimental data but no real understanding of how it all fits together, or why our constants take on the values they do.

So I believe that what Wheeler was alluding to is the idea that we still await at least one major simplification. One that will be obvious once we have seen it because it will replace a lot of complexity and difficult math with simplicity and much easier-to-understand mathematics.

No doubt, much of our current work will offer clear hints of that simplification once we eventuallly find it. Perhaps it will be an arrangement of string theory that makes everything much simpler. Perhaps it will be a quantum gravity idea that makes everything much simpler. Who knows?

I share Wheeler's optimism in this regard specifically because of the trend towards simplicity that has accompanied our most famous laws and advancements. It just doesn't seem right that everything would get so complicated just at the very edge of our ability to probe.

I'm sure everyone has their own sense of what assumptions physics is making that might be wrong or misleading. My hunch is that we have not taken the dualities seriously enough. The wave-particle duality, the discrete-continuous duality, and probably others like them.

Another hunch is that we haven't really thought deeply enough about what it means to probe using high energies and the possibility that we pump so much energy into our probes of the tiniest matter that we are creating "particles" out of parts that are not fundamental at all.


elegantly spoken, clear and simple.:approve:

If you look at the probability distribution for a particle in a 2D box, nature is telling us I am so simple, but if you want to complicate it, just forget it.
 
  • #9
marcus said:
It could be interesting to see the Finkelstein papers you are referring to. Please give us some links, if you can!

I would like to see some earlier work that substantially parallels what is done in the paper of Freidel et al. http://arxiv.org/abs/1101.0931
No problem, see https://www.physics.gatech.edu/files/u9/Public/spin_notes.pdf [Broken], for some weaker correspondence see https://www.physics.gatech.edu/files/u9/Public/paper3.pdf [Broken]; I know of some unknown people who have elevated such ideas to a much higher maturity already 10 years ago. :wink: It just shows you the relativity of being well known versus being intelligent in the physics community.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #10
qsa said:
Behind it all is surely an idea so simple, so beautiful, that when we grasp it - in a decade, a century, or a millennium - we will all say to each other, how could it have been otherwise? How could we have been so stupid for so long? - John Archibald Wheeler


Is Wheeler being stupid or smart for saying such a thing, and WHY?

I think he's articulating the hope that it's not turtles all the way down and that when we get to final turtle there will something simple and beautiful there.

I must very respectfully disagree with him. It is quite possible (I think likely) that the underlying principle of physical existence (not the theory which will necessarily be mathematically complicated) but the principle will be exceedingly complex.

For example, the equations of quantum theory are complicated but the principle is simple- linear fields evolve in a known way with an an unexplained superposition mechanism to yield probabilities of experimental outcomes." Sure it's a mouthful but it's simple.

I don't think the underlying principle of physical existence will be nearly that simple and is likely to be too complicated for a single human mind to comprehend.
 
  • #11
Antiphon said:
I don't think the underlying principle of physical existence will be nearly that simple and is likely to be too complicated for a single human mind to comprehend.
I tend to agree with that, for example mathematical complexity will only exponentially increase.
 
  • #12
qsa said:
Behind it all is surely an idea so simple, so beautiful, that when we grasp it - in a decade, a century, or a millennium - we will all say to each other, how could it have been otherwise? How could we have been so stupid for so long? - John Archibald Wheeler

"How could it be otherwise"? It seems to me that the only way some premise, theory, or statement cannot be denied is if it is a logical deduction. How can one deny a tautology? Is this what John Wheeler means to say? Afterall, one can always question why nature prefers some field or particle or symmetry. So perhaps he means that somehow physics will eventually be derived from logic. Is this the "simplicity" that he refers to?
 
  • #13
Hate to say it but it would appear that after the introduction of new rules, the philosophical threads that "don't belong" in that section any more are spreading to other areas...

I know this isn't strictly there right now, but it could certainly drift that way.
 
  • #14
Actually, the OP for this thread seems like it would meet the new rules for philosophy since it begins with the perspective of a well-known scientist (albeit, not a philosopher).
 
  • #15
Careful said:
I tend to agree with that, for example mathematical complexity will only exponentially increase.

Mathematical complexity handles the details. Behind the details are simple ideas which may be intuitive or counterintuitive yet they are simple. The law(s) which governs the universe will not be that simple but the main idea behind it will be.

We just can't grasp that idea so easily and it takes centuries or milleniums because our human brain interacts with the universe in a special way, and all our thinking is affected by this special interaction (for example we view time as a totally different thing than the other 3 spatial dimensions. Also the fact that we think in 3 dimensions has to do with they way our brain is coupled to our senses and this way make us think that theories like string theory and M-theory that speak of 10 or more dimensions are at least unnatural). Somehow we first have to liberate our thinking from this interaction in order to grasp the main underlying idea of the universe laws.
 
  • #16
Delta² said:
Mathematical complexity handles the details. Behind the details are simple ideas which may be intuitive or counterintuitive yet they are simple. The law(s) which governs the universe will not be that simple but the main idea behind it will be.
I even reject that. It depends upon what you mean with ''simple'', to make my statement more precise, I would even say that the truly fundamental laws cannot be defined.

Delta² said:
Somehow we first have to liberate our thinking from this interaction in order to grasp the main underlying idea of the universe laws.
Like I said, the fundamental laws resist definition; however we could approximate reality better by liberating ourselves from our senses indeed ! I agree that this would be a necessary step to improve upon our ''approximation'', however the ultimate question is how. I don't think string theory deals wisely with how it regards the extra dimensions... there are better ways of doing so.
 
  • #17
I stand apart from the natural yearning of most of us that the final result will be simple. I disagree with careful's strong statement that the truly fundamental laws cannot be defined but will meet him halfway- there will at the end probably be a set of alternative principles with no way of knowing which are the true ones. I expect a situation similar to the one in physics now but with no hope of building that final machine to test the various alternatives.
 
  • #18
Antiphon said:
I stand apart from the natural yearning of most of us that the final result will be simple. I disagree with careful's strong statement that the truly fundamental laws cannot be defined but will meet him halfway- there will at the end probably be a set of alternative principles with no way of knowing which are the true ones. I expect a situation similar to the one in physics now but with no hope of building that final machine to test the various alternatives.
But it is not so strong at all if you think about it. I don't know if you read my comments about the impact of Godel's theorem on a TOE; something like human creativity shall never ever be captured by any law since it requires the absolute ingredient of meaning/understanding while the language of mathematics is inherently relational.

Careful
 

1. What evidence supports the idea that the universe is governed by simple laws?

One of the main pieces of evidence is the uniformity and predictability of the laws of physics across the universe. This suggests that there is a universal set of laws that govern all physical phenomena.

2. Are there any exceptions or anomalies to these simple laws?

While there are still some mysteries and unexplained phenomena in the universe, such as dark matter and dark energy, these do not necessarily contradict the idea of simple laws governing the universe. They may just require further understanding and explanation.

3. How do scientists determine what these simple laws are?

Scientists use a combination of observations, experiments, and mathematical models to understand and uncover the laws that govern the universe. These laws are continuously tested and refined as new evidence and technology become available.

4. Can these simple laws change or evolve over time?

While our understanding and interpretation of the laws may evolve, it is generally believed that the fundamental laws of the universe remain constant. However, there are theories, such as the multiverse theory, that suggest there may be variations in the laws in different universes.

5. How does the concept of simple laws in the universe relate to the search for a theory of everything?

The search for a theory of everything, or a unified theory that can explain all fundamental forces and particles in the universe, is based on the belief that there is a simple and elegant set of laws that govern the universe. The discovery of such a theory would provide a deeper understanding of the universe and its workings.

Similar threads

Replies
4
Views
1K
Replies
1
Views
1K
Replies
5
Views
1K
  • Cosmology
Replies
1
Views
2K
Replies
3
Views
3K
Replies
3
Views
1K
Replies
5
Views
1K
Replies
3
Views
972
  • Cosmology
Replies
11
Views
1K
Replies
4
Views
931
Back
Top