Both of these are true - There is no god. There is a god. - And both are false.

[pinto]

Was reading a Scientific American article this morning on new takes in quantum physics. One of those pieces where you read three paragraphs at a time. Then sit back and go, "Do I get this?" Then re-read or wade on to the next three.

The thinking goes like this, in this decidedly layman's take - physics has evolved from the Newtonian standard that there are fixed points, items, particles. Quantum theory built on that to expand the view that there are those definite points, particles but they move around in fields while remaining independent, discrete pieces of reality. So their locations are a variable. But not their uniqueness. Their singularity.

It's the billiard ball concept meets Einstein's inclusion of light as a constant, i.e. e=mc squared. Einstein had some doubts about that being the end all, be all and was working on an expanded picture at the end of his career.

A group of physicists are suggesting a different take. Toss out the particle aspect completely. You can't define them, locate them or move beyond parsing more and more particles as the big picture.

There is no there, there. So, they support starting from perception as a basic standard of "reality". Here's their example -

Say I stand facing you. I'm to focus on your eye in the right side of my visual field. You are to focus on my eye in the right side of your visual field. Both are on the right in our perception. And both are on the left in our perception. We are both looking at the other's left eye in one take. Yet we see it to the right in another.

Both are true and both are false. One does not negate the other. The whole includes both perceptions, is both perceptions.

Rambling here, probably missed some of the scientific nuance - had to look up some of the terminology - but it got me to thinking.

[cbayer]

1. A Scientific American article on quantum physics? I am genuinely impressed.

Physics was the one subject I could never wrap my brain around. I tried.

And I'm so bad at it that I can't even comment on your hypothesis.

[pinto]

5. The article was impenetrable at times. There was stuff like this -

Instead of saying the temperature in Des Moines is 40 degrees, one theory proposes a relativistic approach as a square root of....

took a break at that point.

I liked the overall gist of it, though, as much as I could get. Actually wanted to be a physicist at one time in my career ramblings.

[cbayer]

6. I took 4 years of calculus - no problem, but physics kicked my butt.

My visual-spatial capabilities are very limited. It seemed like it was tapping on my right brain, which is just an atrophied acorn, I think.

Anyway, I think it's great that you read it, attempted to understand and developed your own theory after doing so.

And I really hope that some other members can engage with you about it.

But that won't be me.

[AlbertCat]

28. I could never wrap my brain around.

Surely you can find "other ways of knowing" it.

Physics....it's only how the universe works!

Try:"Fear Of Physics: A Guide For The Perplexed" by Lawrence Krauss.

http://www.amazon.com/Fear-Physics-Perplexed-Lawrence-Krauss/dp/0465057454/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375291388&sr=1-1&keywords=fear+of+physics


Of course he wrote it in 1993.... but it still might help.

[rug]

2. I'll ask this guy.

?1

[pinto]

3. LOL. Is his head to the right or the left? Is water wet?

A man a plan a canal Panama !

[rug]

4. Looks like refraction in a pool.

But it is an infinity pool.

[longship]

9. Thread winner, rug!

Too bad the DUzys are gone.

[Warren Stupidity]

7. application of concepts from quantum physics to other areas are almost always nonsense.

[pinto]

12. I don't get what you mean.

[Warren Stupidity]

14. Quantum physics describes the nature of physical reality at the micro level.

Attempts to apply the concepts of quantum physics to other domains, for example applying the dual nature of a photon as both a particle and a wave, to the concept of the existence/non-existence of gods, is just nonsense. See for example Deepak Chopra.

[edhopper]

15. Thanks Warren

couldn't have said it better.

So tired of people who don't understand QP using it to make outlandish statements about metaphysics.

[trotsky]

17. Relevant:

http://xkcd.com/1240/

[pinto]

21. I read an article. Got some ideas from it. Posted. Probably a mistake to use a religious analogy.

That usually tends to sidetrack the point. My bad. Here's what's up on the Scientific American website for now -

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=physicists-debate-whether-world-made-of-particles-fields-or-something-else

[edhopper]

22. s'okay

many have done the same thing. It's just better to keep QM within it's own magister and not as an analogy yo anything.

For those who question whether atheist have a sense of awe and wonder because they dismiss the celestial. Contemplating Relativity and QM has plenty of grandeur and in way more profound than anything from a religion.

[Warren Stupidity]

24. Mostly what I get from delving into modern physics is an appreciation

of just what a dim bulb I am compared to the geeks who actually grok this stuff.

[edhopper]

25. I know what you mean

When you spend time just to get a grasp of QM or relativity or astrophysics, and then realize that that is just a starting point for those who work in the field is mind boggling.

[pinto]

20. Here's the lead of the piece I read -

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=physicists-debate-whether-world-made-of-particles-fields-or-something-else

Published in the August issue as "What is Real?"

Got me to thinking, posted some thoughts from a point of view relating to religion. Or more precisely the either/or mindset that is predominant in religious discussions. The piece suggested to me a different point of view.

Musings, no more nor less. Wasn't trying to make sense. Just talking out loud.

[RevStPatrick]

8. Yeah, three paragraphs and I'm done.

I've tried to wrap my brain around the quantum, and it just doesn't happen for me.
I leave it at this - We live in a strange, quantum universe, and everything is infinitely more weird and wonderful than the explanations the bronze-age sheep herders came up with.

Here's a non-quantum thought I had recently about the nature of the universe.
Sort of expanding on those "profound revelations" we all had as 14 year-olds:

Our universe is a single cell in a larger organism, in a larger universe.
Every cell in our bodies is a universe, and each of our bodies is a single multiverse.
Every organism in the universe is a self-contained multiverse.
Universes are born when new organisms are conceived, so each time we have sex that leads to pregnancy, a new uni (multi) verse is born. Talk about the Big Bang!

So basically, our entire universe is just a single cell in a larger organism.
Probably a cell in some 14 year-old boy, who has just learned how to smoke pot and masturbate.

[longship]

10. Quantum is just the way the universe is.

The current theories in physics are all field theory which indeed ignores the particle nature in favor of the field. At least according to Sean Carroll who I am beginning to like more and more these days. At least he stays as far away from woo woo land as he can, something that some physicists can't seem to do.

Cough! Michio Kaku! Achoo!!
Sorry about that. Something caught in my throat there.

Carroll's latest book comes out in trade paperback next month. It's at the top of my list. The Particle at the End of the Universe.

And anybody using the word "god" in the same sentence as quantum is peddling something other than physics. IMHO.

[pinto]

11. Thanks for the lead, I'll check it out. (aside) I'm peddling nothing here. Honestly.

Read an interesting article. Applied my take away from it to a religious context. Posted that in DU's Religion group. Seemed the right place to share my thoughts. No more nor less.

If I'm peddling anything, guess that it would be we can look beyond static positions to more comprehensive points of view.

Thanks.

(on edit) From what I read, the theoretical physicists are looking to move beyond both particle and field theory. Seems they see field theory as an adjunct to particle theory. Look to find another framework.

[longship]

13. Yup! But field theory is still the real deal, for now.

Strings are basically dead, as many could have predicted decades ago. Us mathematical modelers have been saying as much for a long time. There's always some damned set of equations that model reality. But it's a great leap from the model to a statement that the mathematical model describes reality.

I know this gets into the perilous demarcation argument of whether the universe is governed by mathematics. However, when an equation has a certain beauty, an elegance, a simplicity that goes beyond description and makes predictions because that's the only fucking way that it works then you've possibly found something new about the universe.

We've seen this happen time and time again, from Archimedes to Einstein and beyond.

The universe is discoverable using mathematics because both are organized principles of logic. The universe, whatever it is, obeys the same universal rules. It is what it is. But mathematics is a logical way to approach a modeling of such a universe if that modeling is driven by the evidence and is predictive.

Unfortunately, those doing Strings have not yet made a testable prediction and field theory is still doing all the heavy lifting.

Interesting stuff, eh?

[edhopper]

16. Interesting

I haven't been keeping up on current theory.

And yes, it's also because mathematics is a much more precise descriptive ability than our limited language.

[Jim__]

18. Is the article "What is Real" by Meinard Kuhlman?

I read that article in Scientific American after reading your post. It reads similar to your description - if it's not the same they must be part of a series. Kuhlman called the new idea Ontic Structural Realism. Massimei Pigliucci has written a couple of columns on this (as a book review of Every Thing Must Go ) part 1 and part 2

An excerpt from one of Pigliucci's columns:

...

And we now get to ontic structural realism, the position endorsed by Ladyman and Ross, and which is beginning to convince me (with some reservations here and there). This is how they themselves put it:

Ontic Structual Realism (OSR) is the view that the world has an objective modal structure that is ontologically fundamental ... According to OSR, even the identity and individuality of objects depends on the relational structure of the world. ... There are no things. Structure is all there is.

Hence the title of the book: Every Thing Must Go! Now, before you go all New Agey or Buddhist on me, please note that Ladyman and Ross derive their metaphysics from the best physics available. The details are fascinating, and in themselves make the book a must read, but essentially their claim is that all currently viable theories in fundamental physics — including quantum mechanics, string theory, M-theory and their rivals — have in common principles like non-locality, entanglement and such, which point toward the surprising conclusion that “at bottom” there are no “things,” only structure.

...

Causality has been a troubled concept since Hume’s famous deflating analysis of it, but quantum mechanics — and, again, all the other currently viable candidate physical theories — simply tell us that at the lowest level of analysis the concept breaks down, it doesn’t do any work for the physicist. Philosophers have noted for a while now that fundamental physicists talk about laws and mathematical descriptions, but they don’t talk about causes very much, if at all. And modern physics explains why: at bottom, there are no causes.

But wait a minute! Are Ladyman and Ross telling us that causes and objects are illusory? Is this yet another instance of people claiming that things that we think exist and play a crucial role in our understanding of the world do not actually exist? Are we to do away with tables and people, just like some pundits these days want to argue that free will, consciousness, morality and so on, are illusions, because none of them have a place in fundamental physics? Are Harris, Rosenberg and other modern nihilists right after all??

Nope, they are not. (Here begins the payoff of all the hard work we’ve done so far.) Let’s take causality first. According to Ladyman and Ross it is a concept that is eliminated in fundamental physics, but needs to be retained by the special sciences (from biology to economics). That’s because causality makes sense only in systems for which there is temporal asymmetry (a before and an after), and that — while not being the case for physics — is very much the case for the special sciences. L&R do not treat the concept of causality as an “illusion” to be dispelled once the special sciences are reduced to physics, because no such reduction is in the cards.

...

[pinto]

19. Yeah. They ran it with the "What is Real?" title. Here's what is currently up on the SA website -

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=physicists-debate-whether-world-made-of-particles-fields-or-something-else

Physicists Debate Whether the World Is Made of Particles or Fields--or Something Else Entirely [Preview]

Physicists speak of the world as being made of particles and force fields, but it is not at all clear what particles and force fields actually are in the quantum realm. The world may instead consist of bundles of properties, such as color and shape

By Meinard Kuhlmann

Physicists routinely describe the universe as being made of tiny subatomic particles that push and pull on one another by means of force fields. They call their subject “particle physics” and their instruments “particle accelerators.” They hew to a Lego-like model of the world. But this view sweeps a little-known fact under the rug: the particle interpretation of quantum physics, as well as the field interpretation, stretches our conventional notions of “particle” and “field” to such an extent that ever more people think the world might be made of something else entirely.

The problem is not that physicists lack a valid theory of the subatomic realm. They do have one: it is called quantum field theory. Theorists developed it between the late 1920s and early 1950s by merging the earlier theory of quantum mechanics with Einstein's special theory of relativity. Quantum field theory provides the conceptual underpinnings of the Standard Model of particle physics, which describes the fundamental building blocks of matter and their interactions in one common framework. In terms of empirical precision, it is the most successful theory in the history of science. Physicists use it every day to calculate the aftermath of particle collisions, the synthesis of matter in the big bang, the extreme conditions inside atomic nuclei, and much besides.

This article was originally published with the title What Is Real?.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=physicists-debate-whether-world-made-of-particles-fields-or-something-else

[MissMarple]

23. God? I thought all that was about a cat.

But, then, I know nothing about any kind of physics.

[exboyfil]

26. Looking forward to reading the August issue

I have been saving it to read while my daughters compete. I have been reading Scientific American cover to cover for a few years. I love it. I have to right with my 15 year old daughter for it sometimes (she likes the life science articles - she plans to be a doctor). I can't my daughter studying engineering interested in it though.

I do find the quantum mechanics articles to be some of the least accessible, but the articles do a good job so that even a Mechanical Engineer can enjoy it. My particular favorites are cosmology and paleontology

Except for the faith of the believer their is no evidence for the existence of God. I will still worship weekly with my grandmother in the nursing home though.

[DetlefK]

27. Hogwash. Particles are neither unique nor immortal.

It's not only the newtonian concept of infinite accuracy of parameters you loose in quantum mechanics, particles also can no longer be told apart: You can't give them names. If A and B have identical attributes then you can't tell them apart and attempting to tell them apart will only mislead.

You can't base a system on perception, because perception depends on the perciever. If merely tilting your head renders your laws of nature void then something's seriously wrong with your theory.

[Jim__]

29. I understood the article to say structural relations are important and not perspective.

I didn't see (or don't remember seeing) the exact example that's mentioned in the OP. But the article does briefly talk about symmetries, relations and perspective. I understand the article to be saying that structural relations are important and not really affected by perception.

From the article (my bolding):

...

A growing number of people think that what really matters are not things but the relations in which those things stand. Such a view breaks with traditional atomist or pointillist conceptions of the material world in a more radical way than even the severest modifications of particle and field ontologies could do.

Initially this position known as structural realism, came in a fairly moderate version known as epistemic structural realism. It runs as follows: We may never know the real nature of things but only how they are related to one another. Take the example of mass. Do you ever see mass itself? No. You see only what it means for other entities or, concretely, how one massive body is related to another massive body through the local gravitational field. The structure of the world, reflecting how things are interrelated, is the most enduring part of physics theories. New theories may overturn our conception of the basic building blocks of the world, but they tend to preserve the structures. That is how scientists can make progress.

Now the following question arises: What is the reason that we can know only the relations among things and not the things themselves? The straightforward answer is that the realtions are all there is. This leap makes structural realism a more radical proposition call ontic structural realism.

The myriad symmetries of modern physics lend support to ontic structural realism. In quantum mechanics as well as in Einstein's theory of gravitation, certain changes in the configuration of the world - known as symmetry transformations - have no empirical consequences. These transformations exchange the individual things that make up the world but leave their relations the same. By analogy, consider a mirror-symmetric face. A mirror swaps the left eye for the right eye, the left nostril for the right, and so on. Yet all the relative positions of facial features remain. Those relations are what truly define a face, whereas labels such as "left" and "right" depend on your vantage point. The things we have been calling "particles" and "fields" possess more abstract symmetries, but the idea is the same.

...