Where are the Rules of the Universe Stored?

In summary: There is no contradiction, if you average out "quantum zigzagging" you get something very close to classical mechanics. :smile:Random energy fluctuations cannot, by definition, describe the rules by which, for example, a photon behaves.well that's why I am suggesting to consider these two items you called "energy fluctuations" and "the rules" as one single entity. After all, it is only our (human) analysis what splits it into separate items that are no longer self-sufficient.The question reminded me of bohms idea of 'implicate order'. This is from wikipedia:Bohm argued: "... in sufficiently broad contexts such analytic descriptions cease to be adequate ... 'the law of
  • #36
HallsofIvy said:
I keep them in a safe in my office.

SSSHHHHHHHHHH! Don't tell everybody!
 
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  • #37
PIT2 said:
The question reminded me of bohms idea of 'implicate order'. This is from wikipedia:

Perhaps the infolded implicate order are what we detect as 'particles'?
 
  • #38
  • #39
whatta said:
in few words, he suggested that the true idea of universe is so complex that no finite human concept cannot explain it fully. which means that no physical theory will ever be sufficient to answer your question. that are bad news.

good news are that, per hegel, the whole world IS the idea mentioned above, so your question "where rules are stored" gets a nice answer (rules are, obviously, wired into this idea).

hegel's world is quite similar to virtual world in a matrix movie, but without any external "real" world - only matrix itself.

Just that Marx found that this whole idea (Absolute Idea) of Hegel has to be placed upside down. Marx and Engels were convinced that the world itself, as also consciousness, is dialectical in nature.

Physical theories are only approximate correct.
 
  • #40
Hegel's dialectic:

§ 958​

Now as regards the assertion that there is no contradiction, that it does not exist, this statement need not cause us any concern; an absolute determination of essence must be present in every experience, in everything actual, as in every notion. We made the same remark above in connection with the infinite, which is the contradiction as displayed in the sphere of being. But common experience itself enunciates it when it says that at least there is a host of contradictory things, contradictory arrangements, whose contradiction exists not merely in an external reflection but in themselves. Further, it is not to be taken merely as an abnormality which occurs only here and there, but is rather the negative as determined in the sphere of essence, the principle of all self-movement, which consists solely in an exhibition of it. External, sensuous movement itself is contradiction's immediate existence. Something moves, not because at one moment it is here and at another there, but because at one and the same moment it is here and not here, because in this 'here', it at once is and is not. The ancient dialecticians must be granted the contradictions that they pointed out in motion; but it does not follow that therefore there is no motion, but on the contrary, that motion is existent contradiction itself.
(...)​

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hl/hl431.htm
 
  • #41
heusdens, you probably picked wrong place to begin with. imho, this is better quote:

Hegel in Science of Logic §807-809 said:
Since knowing has for its goal knowledge of the true,.. it does not stop at the immediate and its determinations, but penetrates it on the supposition that at the back of this being there is something else, something other than being itself, that this background constitutes the truth of being. This knowledge... has a preliminary path to tread, that of going beyond being or rather of penetrating into it... When this movement is pictured as the path of knowing, then this beginning with being, and the development... reaching essence as a mediated result, appears to be an activity of knowing external to being, and irrelevant to being's own nature. But this path is the movement of being itself.

ps:
Just that Marx found that this whole idea (Absolute Idea) of Hegel has to be placed upside down.
Just that Marx never actually bothered to explain how exactly he's going to do that. If you know otherwise, leave a link on this thread.
 
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  • #42
heusdens said:
Perhaps the infolded implicate order are what we detect as 'particles'
?

"Particles" constitute Explicate Order. Explicate Order would appear to be all that can be observed in the observable universe (including particles). Bohm posits that Explicate Order as a manifestation of Implicate Order. Everything in the universe can be seen as a manifestation of Implicate Order.
 
  • #43
A fitting quote :
" How dare we speak of the laws of chance? Is not chance the antithesis of all law? "
Bertrand Russell
 
  • #44
grahamc said:
Proposition 1. An elementary particle is incapable of possessing knowledge or information about the universe. An elementary particle by definition comprises no constituent parts. Therefore it cannot take on any character or characteristic other than its elementary form. Therefore it cannot contain or possesses information because it has no means for encoding, storing or operating on that information. It cannot modify its behaviour or even detect its presence within the universe.

I think proposition 1 is flawed because if, as you say, "[a particle] cannot take on any character or characteristic other than its elementary form." Then it would be impossible for them to move from their point of creation.

If there is no means to transfer "a characer" (energy) to a particle then there is no mechanism by which to produce an unbalanced force on that particle. Without an unbalanced force, there is no potential for motion. Energy would have no effect on them.

Proposition 4. The quantum field cannot be the fundamental level of the universe. Random energy fluctuations of the quantum field cannot consistently, frequently and reliably produce organised and persistent behaviour. I.E. random behaviour cannot consistently produce numerous instances of stable, highly characteristic, particle behaviour. Apparently random fluctuations at the quantum level must therefore be a product of an underlying order.

I think the main problem here is the base assumption that classes of particles are all the same. Particle classifications seek to discover how things are alike but in the process of defining their sameness, we lose sight of their differences.

For example: How exactly does an electron "absorb" a photon? If you explain this absorption as a superposition of the photon state and the electron state, the electron isn't the same at all. It's transformed from an electron into an electron/photon hybrid.

It's sort of like the difference between procedural and object oriented programming. Current physics models are all procedural in that there are particles (data) and there are forces (functions) which act upon them.

If particles are thought of in an object oriented way then they become patterns combining action and state. As a particle goes about its business, it may form many different hybrid particles but the particle pattern remains constant. An electron/photon superposition is an undifferentiated pool of energy but when a trigger threshold is reached for the electron and photon to part ways, the electron pattern "knows" how to extract just the right amount of energy from the pool to create an electron and how much to spit out in the form of a photon.

So in answer to the OP's original question, it may be that the rules of the universe are stored in "particle objects" and that the procedural model of particles and forces obscures what particles and forces are "under the hood."
 
  • #45
The common -I-, evolved and unevolved is all the same.
 
  • #46
grahamc said:
My question is this: how does this particle "know" that this is how it must behave and that it is behaving correctly? Either the rules of the universe are contained within the particle (unlikely) or they are imposed upon it by the fabric of the universe (more likely).
It seems to me that string theory posits that strings are the source of all the rules that run the universe. All properties of the universe are emergent from the properties of the strings and their tendency to combine and split.
 

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