Can Everything be Reduced to Pure Physics?

Doctordick

And you think that is a good reason for not thinking about the problem?

Well have a ball not thinking about it -- Dick

Canute

Please explain what you mean. Who has said that it is possible to "comprehend that you could be wrong about something and not know it". I'm not even sure what the sentence might mean.

I'm sorry you feel that we are beyond your intellectual reach. It may be because you are so quick to attempt to patronise anyone who disagrees with you that don't give yourself time to understand what they are saying.

Aurino

Canute,

I've known this Doctordick for years and I can tell you he's not trying to patronize anyone; it's actually much worse than that.

What I gathered, after exchaning countless forum posts and about 100 emails with him, is that he has some sort of cognitive impairment. This causes him a great deal of frustration, yet the same impairment that makes it impossible for anyone to understand what he's talking about, also prevents him from understanding a single word anyone else says.

It's useless to scream at deaf people, and it's silly to blame them for not being able to hear. God knows why some people are born that way, but then there's nothing we can do about it, other than hope one day they'll clearly see what is second-nature to most people.

In his case, he appears to be able to communicate, for he writes a lot, but on a closer look it becomes obvious that he cannot say much that is intelligible, other than insults, and cannot understand most things he is told.

By the way, I don't post here but I like to follow some of the discussions. I find it really bad that Doctordick joined this forum, after being kicked out of the physics section, for he tends to dominate the debate. I hope my interference prevents this interesting forum from going the way other forums have gone, when he used to be a member of them.

(I also find it ironic that he seems to go wherever I go, or the other way around. I certainly don't look for him, yet I find him in the most unexpected places; must be a small world after all)

Doctordick

That is exactly the issue I have been trying to communicate: "it is possible to be wrong about something and not know it". I do not know what part of that sentence you do not understand. I am at a total loss as to how to make it any clearer.

I think it is a serious issue, not to be ignored -- Dick

medium

On considering whether "everything can be reduced to pure physics", I have a question. Question: What if I had the power to create something from nothing. Well first there would be nothing, but say in further considering my options, I decided to use what was available to me in the physical world. So then what I would in essence be creating, is time and space. Seems to me though that this is what engineers do all the time. With the constant threat of deadlines and limited resources(smile). It occurs to me that if I were to believe in the question, it would be the one not yet asked. The one that would be worthy of making me stop and think. Does this make any sense?, Please comment>..............MEDIUM.............................>

moving finger

Here is your problem :

You are assuming that the starting point is "nothing" and yet you still exist to create from nothing. Hence the starting point is not nothing. This problem underlies the common misconceptions of dualism and 3rd person objective science.

MF

Canute

There is nothing wrong with this sentence, and it is quite obviously true. However it is not the same sentence as the one you originally posted.

Canute

Online somewhere is an essay by Stephen Hawkings called "The End of Physics". In it Hawkings argues that one consequence of the incompleteness theorem is that physics cannot be completed. That is, a complete and consistent description of the universe cannot be constructed by physicists (or indeed by anyone). Heisenberg argued the same, for related reasons (problems of self-reference). This is also the view of Buddhists and their like. It also seems true to me that any explanations of the universe must have at least one explanatory gap in it. If so then the question becomes one of whether this really is a gap or whether there is something in it. In other words, whether it is an epistemilogical or an ontological problem. In my view it is both.

Aurino - thanks. It takes all sorts, as they say.

metacristi

It is conceivable that 'gaps' will ever exist (though I'd argue that we do not have yet sufficient reasons to think that a TOE cannot be complete-irrespective whether we will ever be able to prove this). After all we do not even have the definitive answers to such simple, common sense at first sight, questions like 'what is matter?' (the 'quantum field' approach is only the best existing model so far, having a fallible epistemological privilege, provisionally accepted as scientific knowledge).

But the first task of scientific quest is not to prove that our best existing theories are complete, as Popper put it well a scientist does not need to answer all questions in order to make sense of the observed facts (see his famous example with the 'dune').

There is no need for that as much as the theories prove to be very coherent and very successful and do not lead to internal contradictions. We begin with some basic assumptions, provisionally accepted, and together with empirical observations and other principles we build a net of statements having a high coherence, the so called scientific knowledge. Thus if we ever could achieve the same degree of coherence (and stability on long term) in the neurological field as that in physics we could say that science is overall on a good road. Using a too high standard (as those who are always complaining of the existence of 'gaps' do) would be at least non rational.

Moreover if we will ever find a very successful TOE (physical theory) + a very successful, stable and broad, theory of mind I would argue that we are even rationally entitled to say, provisionally, that this 'compund' theory is approximatively true. There might be further 'gaps' no one deny this (for example it is unlikely that we could ever prove clearly that all biology 'reduces' to that physical TOE), yet we would need much more reasons to think that the existing scientific knoweldge is not at least approximativley true.

Canute

Yes I agree that we may as well continue to develop our theories. But those theories, and all current theories, inevitably have at least one gap in them. This is for reasons Hawkings gives, but also because in the last analysis all scientific theories rest on metaphysical assumptions. It is impossible to do science without doing metaphysics. This is not a criticism of science, just an observation as to its limits. Precisely the same limit applies to theological theories which use God or a divine miracle to fill the gap, or to those that use the 'Tao', 'Emptiness', 'Allah' or whatever to fill the gap. Mathematically speaking every formal system of terms and theorems must contain at least one undefined term, for the same reason that every dictionary must contain at least one.

loseyourname

Could you find a link to either Hawking's or Heisenberg's argument on this point? Incompleteness theorem refers to formal systems. The axioms of the system cannot be proved from within the system and so the system is incomplete. In the case of physics, its axioms are the laws of physics (conservation of energy, E=mc^2, all that good stuff). These cannot be proven by the laws of physics, but they are proven by experiment. They are not really a formal system - they are a description of the way physical entities in the universe behave, confirmed through empirical investigation. They are not something to be 'proven' in any formal sense in the first place. It's hard to see how the incompleteness theorem could possibly apply here. Heck, it doesn't even apply to natural numbers or certain forms of geometry.

Canute

Sure. Here are a few quotes supporting my post. I can't find the specific Heisenberg comment but have posted a quote from Max Planck instead which expresses the same view.

I've posted a few extracts that seem relevant to the topic since I had to search out the Hawking's reference and passed these on the way to it. They should all relate to the points you raise above.

*"…since every word in a dictionary is defined in terms of another word… The only way to avoid circular reasoning in a finite language would be to include some undefined terms in the dictionary. Today we must realise that mathematical systems too, must include undefined terms, and seek to include the minimum number necessary for the system to make sense."

Leonard Mlodinow
‘Euclid’s Window’

"Up to now, most people have implicitly assumed that there is an ultimate theory, that we will eventually discover. Indeed, I myself have suggested we might find it quite soon. However, M-theory has made me wonder if this is true. Maybe it is not possible to formulate the theory of the universe in a finite number of statements. This is very reminiscent of Goedel's theorem. This says that any finite system of axioms is not sufficient to prove every result in mathematics.

Stephen Hawking
'Goedel and The End of Physics'
Online

"Gödel, after all, proved that mathematics itself has its limits. In his famous incompleteness theorem, he showed that no logical system can be used to prove its own consistency. To do so, one has to step out of the system, pop up a level, and study it from a higher vantage point… But proving the consistency of that system requires popping up another level, and so on, ad infinitum… there is no highest vanyage point, no ultimate abstraction."

George Johnson
'Fire in the Mind'

"…as I explained in the first lecture, the way we have to describe Nature is generally incomprehensible to us."

Richard Feynman
QED - The Strange Theory of Light and Matter

"I do not think I am prejudiced against the importance that science has from the purely human point of view. But with all that, I cannot believe (and this is my first objection) - I cannot believe that [for example] the deep philosophical enquiry into the relation between subject and object and into the true meaning of the distinction between them depends on the quantative results of physical and chemical measurements with weighing scales, spectroscopes, microscopes, telescopes, with Geiger-Müller-counters, Wilson-chambers, photographic plates, arrangements for measuring the radioactive decay, and whatnot. It is not very easy to say why I do not believe it. I feel a certain incongruity between the applied means and the problem to be solved."

Erwin Schrödinger
'Why Not Talk Physics'

"… It is sometimes urged that the basal stuff of the world should be called "neutral stuff" rather than "mind-stuff," since it is to be such that both mind and matter originate from it. If this is intended to emphasise that only limited islands of it constitute actual minds, and that even in these islands that which is known mentally is not equivalent to a complete inventory of all that may be there, I agree. In fact, I should suppose that the self-knowledge of consciousness is mainly or wholly a knowledge which eludes the inventory method of description. The term "mind-stuff" might well be amended, but neutral stuff seems to be the wrong kind of amendment. It implies that we have two avenues of approach to an understanding of its nature. We have only one approach, namely, through our direct knowledge of mind. The supposed approach through the physical world leads only into the cycle of physics, where we run round and round like a kitten chasing its tail and never reach the world-stuff at all.

Sir Arthur Eddington
In Ken Wilbur - Quantum Questions

"It is difficult to decide where science ends and mysticism begins. As soon as we begin to make even the most elementary theories we are open to the charge of indulging in metaphysics. Yet theories, however provisional, are the very lifeblood of scientific progress. We simply cannot escape metaphysics, though we can perhaps over-indulge, as well as have too little."

Banesh Hoffmann
'The Strange Story of the Quantum'

"The elements of consciousness are particular thoughts and feelings; th eelements of the brain cell are atoms and electrons. But the two analyses do not run parallel to one another. Whilst, therefore, I contemplate a spiritual domain underlying the physical world as a whole, I do not think of it as distributed so that to each element of time and space there is a corresponding portion of the spiritual background. My conclusion is that, although for the most part our enquiry into the problem of experience ends in a veil of symbols, there is an immediate knowledge in the minds of conscious beings which lifts the veil in places; what we discern through these openings is of mental and spiritual nature. Elsewhere we see no more than the veil."

Sir Arthur Eddington
'Beyond the Veil of Physics'

"Many would hold that, from the broad philosophical standpoint, the outstanding achievement of twentieth-century physics is not the theory of relativity with its welding together of space and time, or the theory of quanta with its present apparent negation of the laws of causation, or the dissection of the atom with the resultant discovery that things are not what they seem; it is the general recognition that we are not yet in contact with ultimate reality. We are still imprisoned in our cave, with our backs to the light, and can only watch the shadows on the wall."

Sir James Jeans
The Mysterious Universe

"The symbolic nature of physics is generally recognised, and the scheme of physics is now formulated in such a way as to make it almost self-evident that it is a partial aspect of something wider."

Sir Arthur Eddington
Science and the Unseen World

"Formal self-reference in Goedel’s theorems has various features in common with self-reference in minds and computers. The theorems do not imply that there can be no formal computational models of the mind, but on the contrary, suggest the existence of such models within a conception of mind as subject to similar limitations as formal systems."

Damjan Bojadziez
Mind versus Goedel
In ‘Mind Versus Computer’,

What is the relation between Gödels theorem and whether we can formulate the theory of the universe in terms of a finite number of principles? One connection is obvious. According to the positivist philosophy of science a physical theory is a mathematical model. So if there are mathematical results that can not be proved, there are physical problems that can not be predicted….

Stephen Hawking – Goedel and The End of Physics – net article (http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/strtst/dirac/hawking/)

"Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery in nature. And it is because in the last analysis we ourselves are part of the mystery we try to solve."

Max Planck
?

"It is important to realise that what we know as the ‘scientific worldview’ is an image of the universe that rests on a host of daring metaphyical assumptions. (!! -ed) These are often presented and seen as facts that have been proven beyond any reasonable doubt, while in reality they stand on very shaky ground, are controversial, or are inadequately supported by the evidence."

Stanislav Grof
The Cosmic Game

metacristi

It might be mentioned here that the necessity of an infinity of axioms does not imply that such a system is necesarily incomplete. As a matter of fact a student of Godel (Gentzen if I remember well) proved that for infinite systems (infinite number of axioms) it is possible to avoid incompleteness. Our incapacity to propose such a system, to list the axioms in other words, does not prove that we cannot tend toward it, or that it is incomplete. We can never reach it of course so in this sense we could say that our theories (limited parts of that infinite system) are incomplete yet there is no reason to say that there is impossible to exist a (complete) infinite system describing Reality. But currently, in my view of course, there is no good reason to think that the universe is infinite and moreover that we need an infinity of axioms/postulates/laws to describe it. The problem, in my view, is still wide open, our incapacity to prove that a complete system is possible and to find it does not amount to say that such a system in an impossibility, the problem of consciousness included ('complete' imply here also the approximative truth of the system; otherwise if there exist false predictions the system cannot be complete, some axioms are false and have to be changed). Even for infinite systems.

moving finger

a couple more that I like :
Do not keep saying to yourself “But how can it be like that?” because you will go down the drain into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped
Feynman

Man is not born to solve the problems of the universe, but to find out where the problems begin, and then to take his stand within the limits of the intelligible
Goethe

The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books---a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects.
Einstein

It’s up to us to make sense of Nature; it’s not Nature’s obligation to behave as we would like.
David Lindley/Where Does the Weirdness Go?

MF

Doctordick

The only difference between the first and the second that I can see is that, in the first I say that if you cannot comprehend the truth of the statement you are beyond my intellectual reach and in the second, I merely restate the statement. If you cannot understand the first and find the second obvious, I am at a complete loss to understand your mode of thinking.

However, laying that aside, if I have your agreement that, "it is possible to be wrong about something and not know it", I will step off to the next thing I think has to be recognized as a truth of similar clarity: "it is possible that you are not wrong about everything". If you will also accept that as a true statement, then it is my assertion is that these are important facts and they should be recognized as important issues in any chain of logical thought. I contend that the things that you are wrong about obey different rules than the things you are not wrong about and that the subtle difference yields astonishing consequences.

You should be well aware that, at times, extremely simple differences can yield far reaching consequences. For example look at the difference between asymmetric wave functions and symmetric wave function (nothing more than a simple difference in character of two possible solutions to exactly the same differential equation). One set of solutions yield collections of entities obeying Fermi statistics while the others obey Bose Einstein statistics; results which lead to far reaching differences in behavior of macroscopic entities.

If you are willing to listen, I will show you the consequences of the very simple difference between the rules obeyed by "what you are right about" and the rules obeyed by "what you are wrong about". And prove that consequences of these differences exist even when there is no way to discriminate between "what you are right about" and "what you are wrong about".

As to the rest of you, you sure seem to be able to come up with a lot of reasons not to think about things. I guess you are pretty well convinced there are no new intellectual breakthroughs to be made. I personally think that it is good that there are a few crackpots like me who doubt the absolute certainty of such proclamations.

Have fun -- Dick

Canute

I think in general people are not saying that they don't want to think about things, but rather that they don't agree with the way you think about things.

About that sentence. Yes. you're right. There are two ways of reading it and I read it the way you didn't mean it. My apologies.

Of course I would be willing to listen to your ideas on things we know and things we don't, but only after you've shown that we cannot tell the difference between them, which is your more basic claim. I find it confusing that you say we cannot know anything and then offer to explain to me what you know. To do this would entail that you can tell the difference between what you know and what you don't.

loseyourname

Okay, it doesn't seem like any of those were arguments, just suggestions that physics might be inherently incomplete, with an analogy to Goedel. Thankfully, they aren't saying that their conjecture has anything to do with Goedel, because it doesn't.

By the way, I've always thought the same thing about languages, at least with regards to defining every term formally. Again, though, you escape the seeming circularity by defining certain terms empirically, by simple reference and sense to what they represent in the world. This gives you at least a semantic, if not a syntactic understanding, without circularity.

Edit: Let me be perfectly clear here before another argument starts. Physics may very well prove to be an incomplete system. I have absolutely no idea. I've already stated many times in this thread that I don't think it has full explanatory power. It, however, will never be incomplete in the sense that Canute seems to be intending, which is the incompleteness of certain formal mathematical systems according to Goedel's theorem. This theorem does not even apply to all formal mathematical systems, much less to empirical theories and laws.