Science topics: Physics
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The theme of the diffraction typically refers to a small aperture or obstacle. Here I would like to share a video that I took a few days ago that shows diffraction can be produced by the macroscopic items similarly:
I hope you can explain this phenomenon with wave-particle duality or quantum mechanics. However, I can simply interpret it with my own idea of Inhomogeneously refracted space at:
ESSENTIAL LOGIC, EPISTEMOLOGY, AND ONTOLOGY BEHIND PHYSICS, COSMOLOGY AND SCIENCES OF ALL DESCRIPTIONS
Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph.D., Dr. phil.
1. The Logic behind Physics
Physics students begin with meso-world experiments and theories. Naturally, at the young age, they get convinced that the logic thinking and research as applied to the meso-world level of physical phenomena that they follow is identical with the ideal of scientific method and hence there is nothing more general and advanced. Common social convictions on scientific temper may further confirm them in this belief. It then becomes a faith for them.
This has far-reaching consequences in the formation of the concept of science and of the logic of science, because the majority such students do not advance far forward, they fail to get the meaning of the foundations of the sciences, and thus remain spreading the elementary concept of science belonging to the meso-world logical applications. And as they get surprised at the quantum revolution, they tend to think or write books on topics like: “the whole universe is within the quanta in an atom”, because they think that the foundations of science are all questioned and set topsy-turvy by quantum physics!
But unquestionably, it is not very difficult to realize that even the quantum-physically upset sense of the logic behind the application of the scientific method is almost the same old manner of realizing (1) the ideal of scientific method and (2) the more general ideal of reason, namely, observe, hypothesize, verify, theorize, attempt to falsify for experimental and theoretical advancements, etc. upon meso-world realities, phenomena, data, etc.
Do teachers and professors of physics or of other sciences (1) instruct their students early enough on the advantages of thinking and experimenting in accordance with the above-mentioned fundamental fact of all scientific practice being founded on ever-better definable foundations of physics that are clearly based on the existence of physical objects as processes, or (2) make them capable of realizing the significance of this in the course of time? I think that they do not.
This shows that physicists (and for that matter other scientists) fail to a great extent at empowering themselves and their students in favour of the growth of science, thought, and life. The logic being followed in the above-said elementary mode of practice of scientific method at earlier stages of instruction, naturally, becomes for the students the genuine form of logic, instead of being an instantiation of the ideal of logic as reason.
This seems to be the case in most of the practices and instruction of all sciences till today. A change of the origin, justification, and significance of the use of logic in physics from the very start of instruction in the sciences is the solution for this problem. The change must be in the foundations and in the instructions on the foundations. Even at elementary stages of instruction this can be done, just like the SI units are being taught effectively very early in the school.
All humans equate (1) the physical-ontologically grounded and non-grounded forms of logic of each science, and even logic as such, with (2) reason as such. Reason as such, in fact, is more generic of all kinds of logic, and must be taken as that which must be realized in logic. But this attitude is not being followed in any science as of now. This has been my observation so far.
Practically none of the professors (of physics as well as of other sciences) terms the version of logic of their science as an instantiation of reason, which may be accessed ever better as the science eventually grows into something more elaborate and complex. Hence, a foretaste of the same given in form of the simple foundations of all sciences at the very start may go a long way to enhance the growth of science and human life. Physicist gets more and more skilled at reasoning only as and when she/he wants to grow continuously into a genuine physicist. The number of such persons is small. Increasing this number is one of the aims of the above-said kind of instruction in the sciences.
As the same students enter the study of recent developments in physics like quantum physics, relativity, nano-physics (Greek nanos, “dwarf”; in physics, @ 10-9), atto-physics (@ 10-18), cosmology, etc., they forget to make place for the strong mathematical effects that are due by reason of the conceptual and processual paradoxes which in turn are due to epistemological and physical-ontological differences between the object-sizes and the sizes of ourselves / our instruments. Some of the best examples of physicists forgetting the foundations of physics in existence are the Uncertainty Principle, the statistical interpretation of QM, cosmic singularity, quantum-cosmological multiverse from quantum vacua, counterfactual multiverse, etc.
They tend to believe that some of these and similar physics may defy our (meso-physical) manner of using logic and its source, namely, reason – but by this they mistakenly intend that all or many forms of logic and reason would have to fail if such instances of advanced physics are accepted in all of physics. As a result, again, their logic tends to continue to be that of the same meso-world level as has been taken while they did elementary levels of physics.
Does this not mean that the ad hoc make-believe interpretations of the logic of the foundations of QM, quantum cosmology, etc. are the culprits that naturally make the logic of traditional physics inadequate as the best representative of the logic of nature? In short, in order to find a common platform, the logic of traditional and recent branches of physics must improve so to adequate itself to nature’s logic. Nature’s logic is more than logic and its source, reason. Nature’s logic is the source of reason and thus of logic.
Why do I not suggest that the hitherto logic of physics be substituted by quantum logic, relativity logic, thermodynamic logic, nano-logic, atto-logic, or whatever other logic of any recent branch of physics that may be imagined? One would substitute logic in this manner only if one is overwhelmed by what purportedly is the logic of the new branches of physics.
But, in the first place, I wonder why logic should be equated directly with reason. The attempt should always be to bring the logic of physics in as much correspondence with the logic of nature as possible, so that reason in general can get closer to the latter. This must be the case not merely with physicists, but also with scientists from other disciplines and even from philosophy, mathematics, and logic itself.
Therefore, my questions are: What is the foundational reason that physicists should follow and should not lose at any occasion? Does this, how does this, and should this get transformed into forms of logic founded on a more general sort of physical reason? Wherein does such reason consist, and where does such reason exist? Can there be a form of logic in which the logical laws depend not merely on the micro- or mega- or meso-size of objects or the epistemological level available at the given object sizes, but instead, on the universal characteristics of all that exist? Or, should various logics be used at various occasions, like in the case of the suggested quantum logic, counterfactual logic, etc.?
Just like logic is not to be taken as a bad guide by citing the examples of the many logicians, scientists, and “logical” human beings doing logic non-ideally, I believe that there is a kernel of reason behind physics, justified solely on the most basic and universal characteristics of physical existents. These universals cannot belong solely to physics, but instead, to all the sciences, because they belong to all existents.
This kernel of reason in physics is to be insisted upon at every act of physics, even if many physicists (and other scientists and philosophers) may naturally not ensure that kernel in their work. I suggest that ensuring this involves not merely the constant attempt to formulation of nature’s logic in our reason and its instantiations in logic. It involves what can lead to the said results – and that is to formulate the very foundational logic of physics based on the generalities of all that exist and on the generalities of knowing all that exist.
I shall discuss these possibly highest universals and connect them to logic meant as reason, when I elaborate on: 3. The Ontology behind Physics (ALSO a discussion in RG).
The matter on which physicists do logical work is existent matter-energy in its fundamental implications and the derivative implications from the fundamental ones. It cannot be the all sorts of posited unobservables which cannot at all exist as physical processes but only as ad hoc necessities of some theoretical procedures in physics that are considered as theoretical existents.
This fact is to be kept in mind while doing any logically acceptable work physics, because existent matter-energy corpora in processuality delineate all possible forms of use of logic in physics, which logic is properly to be termed nature’s reason. Physics (and other sciences) needs to create a mode of presentation of logic where impossible theoretical entities can naturally be ostracized from the scenario of physics. This is possible only if the necessary, most general, Categorial demands of physical existence are inducted in all forms of logic of physics.
Moreover, theoretical and experimental conclusions are not drawn merely by one subject (person) in physics for use by the same subject alone. Hence, we have the following two basic requirements to note in the use of logic in physics and the sciences: (1) the intersubjectively awaited necessity of human reason in its delineation in logical methods should be upheld at least by a well-informed community, and (2) the need for such reason behind approved physics should then be spread universally with an open mind that permits and requires further scientific advancements.
These will make future generations and generations to further question the genuineness of the logic of specific realization of reason, and constantly encourage attempts to falsify theories or their parts, so that physics can bring up more genuine instantiations of human reason. But is such human reason based on the reason active in nature? How to make it base itself on the reason in nature?
Although the above arguments and the following definition of the logic being followed in mainstream and traditional physics might look queer or at least new and unclear for many physicists, for many other scientists, for many mathematicians, and even for many logicians, I attempt here to define logic for use in physics as the fundamental aspect of reason that physics should uphold constantly in every argument and conclusion due from it:
The logic behind physics is (1) the methodological science (2) of approaching the best intersubjectively rational and structural consequences (3) in what may be termed thought (not in emotions) (4) in clear terms of ever higher truth-probability achievable in statements and conclusions (5) in languages of all kinds (ordinary language, mathematics, computer algorithms, etc.) (6) based on the probabilistically methodological use, (7) namely, of the rules of all sensible logics that exemplify the Laws of Identity, Non-contradiction, and Excluded Middle, (8) which in turn must pertain to the direct and exhaustive physical implications of “to exist”.
Here I have not defined logic in physics very simply as “the discipline of the laws and rules of thought”, “the methodic discipline of attaining truths”, etc., for obvious reasons clarified by the history of the various definitions of logic during the past centuries.
But here comes up another set of questions: Is the reason pertaining to physical nature the same as the most ideal form of human reason? From within the business of physics, how to connect the reason of physical nature with that of humans? I may suggest some answers from the epistemological and ontological aspects. But, before that, I would appreciate your responses in this regard too.
2. The Epistemology behind Physics
The whole of logic, epistemology, ontology, etc. are not the exclusive property of physics, or of any other particular science, or of all the sciences together. Each of them may apply the various general logical, epistemological, and ontological principles in ways suitable to their disciplines, but cannot claim that theirs is the genuine or the possibly best logic, epistemology, ontology, etc.
There is yet another manner, beyond the sciences, wherein (1) the object range and viewpoint range become the broadest possible in epistemology, and (2) the epistemological manner in which the two are connected becomes satisfactory enough to explain both the aspects and the procedures involved between them. This is a philosophical version of epistemology. Even this manner is not complete without including the various logics, epistemologies, and ontologies of the particular sciences.
Before pointing out the special manner in which physics could use the more general aspects of epistemology in itself, let me mention a general trend in science, especially physics. I have seen many students of physics and mathematics mistaking the logical ways in which they do experiments and theories as the same as the conceptual foundations of physics and mathematics.
They do not even think of the epistemology of physics. The clear reason for this is that their epistemology is a crude correspondence theory of truth, and this is outdated. Take any of the best physicists, and we can see in their works the underlying undefined epistemology being closer to the correspondence theory of truth than anything else. I would like to suggest in the following a clear spine of epistemological rudiments for physics.
The pragmatism and scientism at the foundations of practical physics does not accept anything other than the correspondence theory as prescriptive of all the truths of science. Of course, the amount of finality achieved in truths will be the measure of tenability of their truth-probability. But this is to be reserved to the most general truths derivable from any science or philosophy. Low-level truths are much beyond the purview of correspondence between the objectual and the theoretical. Unaware of these facts, most physicists take the difference lightly.
It is a pity that the students of the sciences and also philosophy students with scientistic orientations even think of their ways of permitting truth correspondence to all their truths as the sole possession of scientists, which they suppose are being usurped from philosophy in the course of the past centuries in such a way that philosophy will have ever less reason to exist, or no more reason to exist. Imaginably, in this pride they are encouraged by their presumption of possession of the scientific temper in an exceptional manner.
More evidently, there were and there are physicists holding that their use of logic, epistemology, ontology, etc. is final and that all other details being done by other sciences, especially by philosophy, are a mere waste of time. If you want me to give an example, I suggest that you watch some of the YouTube interviews with Stephen Hawking, where he declares philosophy as a waste of time, or as an unscientific affair. The same sort of claim is to be seen being made by many mathematicians: that logic is a by-product of mathematics, and that philosophers are falsely proud of having logic as their methodology.
The reason why the whole of logic does not belong to the sciences is that the viewpoint from which sensation, thought, and feeling may be exercised in the broadest possible manner is not exhausted even by totaling all the object ranges of all the sciences. Each of them does logic in a manner limited by its object range. How then can their logic be the best possible? There is one and only one general science of which the viewpoint is the broadest. It is that science in which the viewpoint is that of the direct implications of the To Be of Reality-in-total.
Against this backdrop, although the following definition might seem queer for many physicists, mathematicians, and other scientists, there are reasons why I define here epistemology for use in physics. The following definition itself will clarify the reasons:
The epistemology behind physics is (1) the science of justifications (2) for the systemic fact, the systemic manner of achieving, the enhancement of the systemic manner of achieving, and the foundations of systems (3) of rationally derivable and explicable theoretical consequences of human efforts (4) to grasp the connection between physically existent reality and their pertinent realities of all sorts (5) in an asymptotic approach of truth-correspondence from the procedures of knowing (in terms of the pertinent realities of existent realities) onto the physically existent processes of reality, (6) in a spirally broadening and deepening manner of truth probability, (7) which serves to achieve ever better approximations of the epistemological ideal of knowing, namely, Reality-in-general, (8) starting from reality-in-particular, and (9) by use of the highest theoretical generalities pertaining to Reality-in-total and its parts, namely, reality-in-particular.
The epistemology of physics does not take the viewpoint of the To Be of Reality-in-total. But it must obey the primary implications of To Be and the viewpoint of the To Be of Reality-in-total. What these implications are, will be treated below, under “3. The Ontology of Physics”. Epistemology in philosophy may be slightly more general than the epistemology of physics, in the sense that philosophy takes the viewpoint of all physical processes that exist and attempt to view every reality from that viewpoint alone. If not, philosophy has no justification for existence.
Naturally, the epistemology of the sciences will not be so general as that of philosophy. But obedience to it is better for the epistemology of physics; and the advantages of such obedience will be seen in the results of such physics and such sciences.
The epistemology of physics, therefore, will attempt to theorize, know, and predict all that exist, but from the viewpoint exclusively of experimentally / empirically verifiable methods based on what is directly or indirectly before us, namely, the physical processes at our reach. The epistemology of systematically and systemically (i.e., systematically of systems of systems … ad libitum) moving in the use of logic from the given existent physical processes to the details of the not immediately given but ever more minute or ever more distant physical existents is the epistemology of physics. The above definition would, in my opinion, be sufficient to cover as broad and minute procedures as possible in physics. Time has come to appropriate it in physics, lest much advantage be lost for too long.
Not that philosophy does not trust this approach of physics. But philosophy looks for the Categorial presuppositions of existence behind all that is verifiable or verified empirically and empirical-theoretically. These presuppositions are the starting points and guiding principles of philosophy. There is a stark difference between a methodology of this kind and the methodology of basing everything on the truths derived from empirical and empirical-theoretical research. Now from this viewpoint you may judge the following suggestions and determine whether the epistemology of doing physical science is as broad as that of philosophizing.
Every moment, our body-brain nexus is continuously but finitely in contact with itself and with a finite extent of the environment, more or less simultaneously, but in differing intensities, no matter however elementary. The primary mode of this is through sensation, using all available and necessary aspects of it as the case may be. Thought and feeling are possible only in continuity with sensation, and never without it.
But one special characteristic of the human brain differentiating it from others is that sensation, feeling, and thought can very consciously induct into, and consequently deduce from the presuppositions of, all that exist – no matter whether they are a finite environment or infinite – and all these solely from the finite experience from the finite environment at hand. This seems to be absent in less human living beings.
Moreover, the second, but more forgotten, characteristic of the human brain differentiating it from others is that sensation, thought, and feeling are affective, tending to itself and to others, in the broadest sense of the term ‘affective’. It is the manner in which every human being tends in his/her sensation, feeling, and thought. Hence, all processes of knowing will be coloured by affection.
The manner and then the so-constructed broader background in which sensation, feeling, and thought take place is affection, which we term also love in a very general sense. Sensation, feeling, and thought are the three interconnected modes of tending of the body-brain to itself and to the environment, tend always to connect itself with the environment.
But here too the important differentiating characteristic in human body-brains is their capacity to tend to the environment beyond the immediate environments, and further beyond them, etc. ad libitum. There is nothing wrong in theoretically considering that there is the tendency in humans to converting this sort of ad libitum to ad infinitum, irrespective of whether these environments can really go ever broader at infinity in the content of matter-energy within Reality-in-total. Infinity is another term here for generalizing.
Reality consists of existent reality and realities that pertain to existent realities in their groups. Existent realities are clear enough to understand. Realities pertinent to existent realities are never to be taken as belonging to just one existent reality. They are always those generalities that belong to many existent realities in their respective natural kind. These generalities are what I call ontological universals.
All generalizations tend beyond onto the infinite perfection of the essential aspects of the concepts pertaining to the object-range. Not that the object-range must be infinite. Instead, the tending presumes an infinitization due to the idealization involved in generalizations. This is a kind of infinitization that does not need an infinite Reality-in-total in existence. All the concepts that a human being can use are based in the infinitization of the essential aspects of the concepts in their ideality. But behind these mental ideals there are the ideals, namely, the ontological universals pertaining to the groups (natural kinds) of processual entities in the environment. These are the ideals in the things and are not in us. These too are idealizations at the realm of the natural kinds that form part of Reality-in-total.
Without loving in the sense of tending to, as human do, to the inner and outer environments in their generalities there is no sensation, feeling, and thought. The tending to need not be due to the love of the objects but due to the love of something that pertains to them or to the ontologically universal ideals pertaining to the objects. From this it is clear that the relation between the processual objects and the sensing-feeling-knowing mind is set by the ontological universals in the natural kinds of existent physical processes.
At the part of the mind there should be idealized universals of conceptual quality, because the ontological universals in natural kinds cannot directly enter and form concepts. This shows that the conceptual universals (called connotative universals) are the mental reflections of ontological universals that are in the natural kinds. In short, behind the epistemology of sensation, feeling, and thought there are the ontology and epistemology of loving in the sense of tending to, due to the otherness implied between oneself and the environment.
There may be philosophers and scientists who do not like the idea of love. I say, this is due to the many psychology-related prejudices prevalent in their minds. We need to ask ourselves what the major mode of exercitation of any activity in human beings, and none can doubt the role of love in epistemology. The physical foundations of love too are commonly to be shared with the foundations of other aspects of physical existence.
Such tending by the person is mediated within the person by the connotative universals. Their expression is always in terms of symbols in various languages. These are called denotative universals. Connotative universals get concatenated in the mind in relation to their respective brain elements and form thoughts and feelings. Their expression in language is by the concatenation of denotative universals and get formulated in languages as theories and their parts.
To put in gist the latter part of “2. The Epistemology of Physics”, I suggest that the ontological, connotative, and denotative universals and the love of human agents to these and the very existent processual entities are what facilitate knowledge. The psychological question as to what happens when one has no love does not have any consequence here, because psychology differentiates between love and non-love in terms of certain presumed expressions of love and non-love.
In the case of the natural course of life of humans, the choice is not between love and non-love, but instead, between increasing or decreasing love. We do not speak here of loving other human beings as a matter of ethical action. Instead, the point is that of the natural love that humans have for everything including for sensing, feeling, knowing, etc.
One might wonder here why I did not discuss mathematics as an epistemologically valid tool of physics and other sciences. I have already dealt with this aspect in many other discussion texts in ResearchGate, and hence do not expatiate on it here.
3. The Ontology behind Physics
3.1. Traditional Physical Categories
There have arisen various schools of theories, mainly from within the physics community, theorizing elaborately concerning the ontological foundations of physics. Not till the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century have these notions been clear enough. Two major and common ways of approaching the foundations have been the following:
(1) Physical experiments and theories based on the notions of space, time, matter-energy, and causality. (2) Physical experiments and theories based on the four laws of conservation, namely, those of matter, energy, momentum, and charge. There may be other variations of the foundations, e.g., some include mass in the list. I believe that all such variations are based mostly on the two sets above.
The first set does not seem to be based on anything else from the viewpoints available in the long tradition of classification and the epistemic categories of space and time. The question of deriving one from the others or a few from the others within the list has not occurred. This is the foremost disadvantage of these categories.
But the second list integrates within each category the measuremental aspect of physical (scientific) activity. Interestingly, hence, the second set used to be reduced to symmetries (Hermann Weyl and others). But note that symmetries are measuremental and hence epistemic in nature. A symmetry is not a physical-ontological affair but instead the result of some epistemic operations upon already existent natural processes.
But here the existence of processes is taken for granted, and not included in the categories. That is, the nature of physical processes is not sufficiently taken notice of. This does not mean that the nature of physical processes is left aside from physics. Instead, it is not included in the categories.
Measurements are based on the epistemic concepts of space and time. A symmetry is never the result of merely one epistemic operation. A few measurements together constitute and result in any one sort of symmetry. Hence, the compositional nature of concepts assigned the categorial character in the four conservational categories renders conservational categories into less essential and less grounded for physics.
Moreover, in the above systems, causality is considered (1) either as an addition to the categories behind physical processes and the study of physical processes, (2) or as a notion being brought up in terms of the measuremental concepts of space and time, because until today a universally acceptable manner of defining causality in terms of any other primitive notions has not existed.
Hence, causality as an additional category not based on any other categories and symmetries based merely on composed measurements and not on any other fundamental categories cannot be the foundation for the study of the physical nature of existent processes. The latter needs physical-ontological Categories and these Categories should give rise to the basic notions of physics without reference to ad hoc positing of various basic notions as the foundations of physics.
Moreover, measurement systems like MKS, CGS, and SI are ipso facto mere epistemic systems. They are conventions of measurements, on which the nature of physical processes is based; and conventions of measurements are not based on the most general nature of existence of physical processes. This necessitates finding what underlies both measuremental systems and the resultant symmetries.
In the case of physics and the natural sciences as the general case, the epistemically oriented operations are for the most part measuremental. In the case of many other sciences – say, (1) some applied sciences like medicine, engineering, architecture, etc., (2) some of the human sciences, and (3) especially the fine arts, music, literature, etc. – the status of measurements is different. Exact measurements increasingly take a back seat in these three general types of sciences, although measurements exist in all of them in a more or less evident fashion.
But in the fine arts, music, literature, etc. we have sensation, experiential quality, feelings, etc. taking prominence over measurements. These procedures too are epistemically oriented procedures in such sciences, which scientists (and of course, all of us) often look down upon as sciences that obtain values calculated as less than those that the humanities obtain. Despite this fact, they too are sciences in some sense, since measurement is ubiquitously present in them at least as a minor procedure in comparison with the physical sciences and mathematics. I would hold even that the applied sciences, although active more often with procedural measurements, indulge also a lot of sensation, experiential quality, feelings, etc. in the manner of epistemic qualities.
3.2. Critique of Traditional Physical Categories
Some important details to be noticed in the above-mentioned two major traditional school systems of physical categories are the following:
(1) Firstly, space and time are not existents or ontological attributes of existents. As is clear from above, they are the measurementally epistemic and cognitive aspects of physical existents.
(2) Secondly, matter-energy can be taken as existents provided one does not tend to take the abstract Aristotelian-Thomistic meaning of matter (as the abstract raw material which, when exemplified, is always a material object, although such a raw material is never to be found anywhere) and energy (as an abstract action-at-a-distance with no material counterpart) in order to explain material objects.
(3) Thirdly, it is a false procedure in physics, cosmology and derived physical sciences to accept the measuremental notion of energy and material objects as just the number respectively of the energy emissions and material chunks measured based on measurement conventions (e.g., quanta). Instead, the notion of energy as existent propagation from existent matter, measurable in various conventional ways, is much more tenable.
(4) On the other hand, fourthly, the laws of conservation are not simple attributes of any existent. A detailed meaning-analysis of physicists’ claims may show that many of them have taken the conservation laws as the most fundamental attributes / qualities of theories. But they are principles formulated sententially out of a few notions and verbs, and hence rendered as principles composed of many other simple attributes which then are concatenated using verbal connective notions. I call as universals the simple attributes constituting the sentential principles of symmetries.
Even the verbal notions may be set in the qualitative language and rendered universal attributes. This is because both names and verbs belong to the processes that existents are and define existents as ongoing processes. Universals are the basic contents of all basic principles, definitions, etc. But what we need as most basic sources of physics are physical-ontological Categories that work as the fundamental notions of all universals.
Merely any one or some universals cannot suffice at the foundations of physics. They need to be the direct implications of the most fundamental of all notions, namely, To Be / To Exist. But why should physics follow this manner of thinking? None insists upon this on the physical praxis of a physicist. But the suggestion is that the physicist too deals with existing physical processes, and also the philosopher of physics deals with existent stuff, and not non-existent stuff. Why then should physicists follow those Categories that physical-ontologically justify their work? For the above reasons, I follow the way of searching for the universals of all existents in their equally nominal and verbal aspect, namely, the To Be of Reality-in-total.
Physics cannot be done in a well-justified manner without possibly best-grounded universals that go beyond the above-mentioned two groups of physical-ontologically insufficiently grounded, arbitrarily introduced, and haphazardly variegated categories which are not derivable from the most fundamental ones.
The most basic grounding should always be from the To Be of Reality-in-total, and such Categories are absolutely lacking in physics even today – a fact that I have become more and more aware of while discussing matters physical and cosmological on ResearchGate as I attempted to suggest what I found to be the possibly most basic Categories of all science and philosophy.
Some may suggest that the surest possible physical (not physical-ontological) grounding that has been provided by some in the past in terms of defining time, space, mass, and energy measurementally are sufficient for physics, and perhaps it is good to add causality, but we are not sure whether everything is fully causal – and that none needs to intrude into the foundations of physics from other disciplines.
I argue that all such grounds are insufficient due to their classificational and measuremental nature, as mentioned above. Secondly, they are insufficient for physics because they are exclusively and merely from within the ambit of physics. This does not ground physics. Moreover, I shall show that Universal Causality is ubiquitous if a physical existent should exist at all, i.e., from the concept of existence is Universal Causality to be derived in a pre-scientifically ontological manner, and that the instruments of such derivation are themselves the primary Categories of physics.
The two sets of physical categories mentioned above, due to their classificational and measuremental nature, are not derivable from the To Be of all existents. To put the argument in gist, the definitions of all the said merely physical categories use simple universals as ingredients; these ingredients are not final enough; there are two most final ontological universals; and hence, the highest ontological universals should also be at the foundations of physics along with existent matter-energy, so that the classifications and measurements of existent matter-energy within physics be conceptually possible; and further, these two Categories are the very essence of Universal Causality too.
3.3. Grounded Physical-Ontological Categories behind Physics
Grounding can be of various levels and grades. I speak of grounding all sorts of concepts, procedure principles, procedure methods, and theories in any system of thought and science. It is unnecessary in this context to discuss the grounding of highly derivative concepts that occur much later in theories than those that appear while founding them with best-grounded foundations. I go directly to the case of what should be called the most Categorial concepts behind physics, on which physics is grounded.
These Categorial concepts cannot be merely from within physics but should be directly related to and facilitating physics in as many of its aspects as possible. The success of foundational Categories consists in that they serve to ground as many aspects as possible of the particular science or system. Concepts strictly and exclusively physical or generally scientific cannot be as useful as notions from beyond in order to serve as Categories. Evidently, this is because no scientific discipline or system can be grounded on itself and hence on its own concepts. This is clearly also part of the epistemological and ontological implications of the work of Godel.
Grounded ontological Categories are such that they are inevitably and exhaustively grounded in the To Be of Reality-in-total as the only exhaustive implications of To Be. All other Categories, as far as possible, must be derivative of the most primary Categories. The more the number of Categories within the Categorial system that do not derive from the primary Categories the worse for the self-evidence of the science or system within it.
Grounding is exhaustive in the sense that the Categories that ground all physics need nothing else to be a concept than the To Be of Reality-in-total. To Be is the source of the Categories. It happens to be that there are two such Categories that are inevitably and exhaustively grounded. I call them Extension and Change. Clarifications of their meaning, ontological significance, and epistemological and physical implications and follow.
As I said, preferably grounding must be on the surest notion of all, which is existence. I prefer to term it To Be. As far as thought, feeling, and sensation are concerned, To Be is a notion in al of them. But principally To Be must belong to the whole of Reality, and not to a few things. If anything and/or all processes of Reality are existent, then what exist are the parts of existent Reality. The first minimum guarantee hereof should be that existence should be non-vacuous. Non-vacuous signifies that each possesses or contains whatever is possible within its existence in the given measurementally spatio-temporal context (which, as shall soon be clear, belong ontologically to the Extension-Change-wise existence of things).
3.4. Definitions of Universals, Extension-Change, Causality, and Unit Process
Even the minimum realism in thought, feeling, and sensation has for its principal conditions (1) the ontological primacy of universal qualities / natures that belong to groups of entities (processes), where the groups are also called natural kinds in the analytic tradition, and then (2) the ultimate simplicity and indivisibility of the universal characteristics that pertain to all existents. Contrary to the infinite divisibility of existent matter-energy, universals as the characteristics of existent matter-energy conglomerations (of togethernesses of unit Processes) are ontologically ideal universals, and hence indivisible. These universals are ideal not because of our idealisation of the characteristics, but instead because they are the general characteristics of the natural kinds to which each existent belongs. Thus, it is important to keep in mind that ontological universals are not our idealizations.
The properties of things are built out of these simple ontological universals in the natural kinds. The vague reflections of simple ontological universals within our minds are conceptually connotative universals, which are conceptual ideals. And their linguistic reflections in minds and all kinds of symbolic instruments are denotative universals.
Connotative and denotative universals are epistemological universals, formed epistemically from the little contact that minds have with the phenomena (“showings-themselves”) from some layers of processual objects from out there. The properties of existent processual things (matter-energy particulars) are vaguely reflected in minds and languages through the connotative and denotative instrumentalization of concepts in order to reflect the things via phenomena in terms of the data created by minds out of them. Any theory that permits ontological primacy to epistemological universals is one of a range of theories yielding primacy to the perceiving mind over the perceived objects. This is anathema in any scientific or philosophical science, because things are not vacua.
Non-vacuous existence implies that existents are extended. This is one of the most important characteristics of existents. Extension implies having parts, compositionality. Any extended existent’s parts impart impact to some others. This is Change. Only extended existents can exert impacts on any other. As a result, the object that exerts impact gets in itself some impact within, which is nothing but the proof that an impact by one extended part implies movements and impact formation by its parts too, as a result of the overall impact formation in question which contains the inner parts’ impact formation within. The latter need not always have its effects merely within the parts but instead also outwards.
Extension and Change are the highest, deepest, and most general characteristics of all existents. Interestingly, existence in Extension-Change is itself the process that we have so far named causation. Hence, anything non-vacuously existent has Extension and Change not separately but together. This is the meaning of Universal Causality. Physics cannot dispense with this pre-scientific universal Law. No more shall quantum physicists or scientists from other disciplines tell us that quantum physics has some sort of non-causality within! Any causal unit of existents in which the causal part and the effect part may be termed a process. Processuality is yet another important characteristic of existents, but we formulate it as Process, which represents the matter-energy units that there can be.
By this have clearly been set up three physical-ontological Categories of physics: Extension, Change, Causality, and Process. Space and time are merely epistemic categories. They cannot characterize existent processes. Ontological universals, as the characteristics of existent matter-energy conglomerations, are of togethernesses of unit Processes. Ontological universals are therefore ontologically ideal universals belonging (pertaining) to some natural kinds. The Categories as ontological universals belong to Reality-in-total, and not merely some natural kinds.
3.5. Definition of the Ontology behind Physics
In the definition of the ontology of physics, therefore, I shall posit the necessity of the highest possible grounds that I find as fundamental for physics and philosophy alike. The reason for these Categories’ being meant more or less also for philosophy is that both philosophy and physics have physical existents in common as their object range; and philosophy additionally has the pure universals of physics within the ambit of study. Hence, well-grounded physical foundations cannot do without the most suitable among these universals as its fundamental Categories, selected from among the universals forming part of the objects of philosophy.
Although many physicists and mathematicians may find the following definition queer due to their pragmatic and near-sighted concept of physics (where physical objects, and not their universals / qualities, are part of their object range) in a non-grounded manner, I define here ontology for use in physics with the purpose of elaboration of the various aspects brought forward in the definition.
The Ontology behind physics is (1) the rationally consequent science of the totality of physical existents, their parts, and their sine qua nons, namely, the pure universals as pertinents of existents and their parts, (2) prioritized as objects in terms of the To Be (Greek, Einai) of Reality-in-total and only thereafter in terms of the to be (einai) of its parts (reality-in-particular), (3) serving to achieve ever better measuremental approximations of the cosmos and its part-systems (4) in terms of the epistemological ideal of Reality-in-total, namely, the theoretically highest possible notion of Reality-in-general, (5) grounded in the unique and exhaustive implications of To Be, namely, Extension and Change, (6) in properly physical activities that let Reality and realities be measured in term of measuremental and classificational categories that facilitate both experiments and theories equally well.
I have introduced here the highest Ideals of philosophical and scientific thinking, namely, To Be, Reality-in-total, and Reality-in-general. These are not explained here well enough. I have treated them with detailed justifications in my books: Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, Frankfurt, 2015, and Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 2018, Berlin.
3.6. The Curse of Mathematical / Theoretical Physics
The Background: The ultimate physical and cosmological significance of the Categories of Extension (“being extended / having parts” while in existence) and Change (“extended existents causing impacts on others and also on themselves”) must be seen in the context of warding off quantum-physical, cosmological, statistical, and other sorts of inexplicable and bizarre existence-related aberrations resulting from theories like those of (1) parallel universes, (2) extra dimensions, (3) vacuous universes, (4) total mutual disconnection of universes, (5) infinite number of positive-content physical universes taking origin like extra-fitted balloons from “technically / mathematically zero-valued” quantum vacua or quantum-vacuum universes without any iota of causal agency (because quantum vacua are merely of near-zero zero statistical expectations), (6) the presumed existence of space, time, and spacetime like physical things in mathematical fields, (7) the theoretical writing-off of time alone as unreal and unnecessary, etc.
This sort of aberrations renders some theories and their related concepts into theories about absolutely non-existent objects (in some analytic-logical philosophies, called also as “counterfactual possible worlds”) and into substitute theoretical entities that serve only to explain procedures and not to explain existent processes. These serve for physicists and cosmologists to temporarily save their face by use of irrational adherence to methods of maintenance of mere uncertainties in mathematical physics.
The Curse of Theoretical Physics: I mentioned these above in order to speak of the curse of advanced mathematical physics. This curse is the confusion between (1) physical existents, (2) non-existent theoretical constructs, (3) theories representing small or large theoretical processes required only for theory, and (4) the lack of criteria of creating theories for describing existent processes with recourse to vacuous, non-existent, virtual objects and processes, but without turning these objects and processes into existent objects lacking the criteria of existence.
Positing ad hoc explanatory theories to clarify certain theoretical inaptitudes of notions or deviations in arguments is assuredly necessary for the progress of science. But these are sooner to be overwhelmed (not to be substituted) by more adequate and existentially non-aberrational unobservables and/or theoretical terms. As of now, physics, astrophysics, and cosmology are full of theoretical entities that cannot ever be proved to be existent unobservables. This is the curse of physics today – a graver problem today than previously.
3.7. Implications of Pragmatism and Idealism in Physics
For argument’s sake, if an observer is in absolute inertia / standstill with respect to everything else in the universe, he could possess high truth-probability concerning truths about spatiotemporally closest processes. But the fact is that ourselves, our senses, our instruments, and our environments are in motion, which is one of the ingredients of instances of actualization of Change. Hence, our experimental and consequently our theoretical visualization of physical processes in our environment is comparable to our direct vision from a running train.
What should be most closely real to us is our own motion as such and not the motions and changes within or outside. Nearby objects will then be most difficult to observe because their direction of motion will always be directly comparable to our own merely as different from ours. In fact, their immediacy to us and our motion as such would only be momentary. This is a fact that pragmatism, scientism, empiricism, experimentalism, etc. forget.
Distant objects will be relatively clearer due to the part played by the low proportionality between the distances and our own motion as such. This state of affairs may be conceived as follows. If the generalities of the objects at theoretical and empirical vision are clearly in view in terms of their general foundations, our vision will be more truth-probable than when (as in the case of close vision) the comparative differences of motions is high due to (1) the momentariness of exposure obtained between ourselves and the nearest objects, and (2) the lack of general vision between the two, that should normally have been facilitated by the general Categories that apply in cases of both near vision and distant vision.
To render the Categories applicable to processes both distant and near in spacetime, the only direct feasible manner of approach is to first discover the Categories that apply to near and distant visions and objects equally well, and then put them to use at least both epistemologically and ontologically and of course in other ways.
3.8. General Theories of the Evolutionary Stuff of Reality-in-total
In order to make possible a clear discussion of the necessity of physical-ontological Categories in physical and other sciences, I name some general forms of theories of the evolutionary stuff of Reality-in-total.
(1) There is a range of theories assigning existence only to minds or to the Divine as mind, the latter categorized as the fully mental being and the former partaking in the mentality of the latter.
(2) Yet another group of theories permits existence only to concepts / the conceptual, in contradistinction from minds and the Divine. This group, I believe, is a direction that existed all through the millennia and tried again and again to present themselves in various forms, at times very much mixed up with the first group so that the distinctions have become extremely difficult to understand.
(3) The third type permits in existence only physical entities as we normally conceptualize. Theories of this group are various, including physicalism, scientism, reductionism, etc. couched in their various theoretical shades.
The confusion between the first two types attests to the false identification of consciousness / mind with the conceptual / mental and the misidentification of all or any of existents with the Divine. This sort of ontological identification of the physical with the mental / spiritual and this with the divine is called pantheism. The identification may even be evolutionary. But in this case it becomes a system that accepts also the material world, but as an initial phase.
Theories which, however, find that at least a good portion of what are sensed is the physical world, permit the existence of matter-energy as part of Reality-in-total. Those that take only matter-energy as existent hold either the one or the other of the following:
(1) They reduce consciousness into matter-energy, do not grant any divine nature to consciousness, and do not find these two as originating from the Divine.
(2) They find matter-energy as the physical existent, take consciousness as emergent out of matter-energy without losing their basic physical status, and permit the origin of matter-energy and/or consciousness as unique in themselves but as created or emergent products originating from the agency of the Divine. These are mentioned here with the purpose only of a clear differentiation serving not to dismiss the existence of matter-energy.
Without entering upon a theoretical discernment over the above theoretical varieties of ontology, I attempt to concentrate on the existence conditions necessitated by ordinary science and advanced mathematical physics and cosmology, which deal primarily with physical existents. I shall show in the rudiments of a physical ontology here below the relevance of (1) the most universal Categories for all existents – i.e., physical processes, consciousnesses of all grades, and, if there is, also the Divine, which then should be an infinitely active and infinitely extended bodiliness – and (2) the reflections, of the pertinent ontological universals of existents within minds and through symbolic languages. (Please note here that I did not insist on the existence of the Divine, but only suggested how it would be if it existed.)
It is also possible to show certain cases of the ontology of Reality-in-total if minds and the Divine are absolutely distinct cases. See my discussions:
(1)https://www.researchgate.net/post/Infinite-Eternal_Multiverse_Implications_to_Physics_and_Cosmology
3.9. The Mode of Action of Existence and of Knowledge
Under the section “2. The Epistemology of Physics”, I have brought into discussion the natural tendency of humans to love not merely what is present in the immediate vicinity but also the distant natural kinds (groups of gross processual entities that are not directly available for experiments due to their distances), the less evident natural kinds (existing unobservables and unobservables that are not yet proved to exist), and the abstract / pertinent kinds (universals) of all that exist. Among these objects of love are to be found also the totality of all existents and the most general pertinents of Reality-in-total.
It is unacceptable that someone here tells me that none loves such objects. I agree that all sorts of psychologically direct perception of love are almost absent herein. But the tending to them intellectually, through feelings, and through sensations, wherever whichever is possible, is already present in all of us. It IS love, too.
Any existent can tend to existents, their pertinents, and to some extent also to the mental and linguistic reflections of both these. The tending and love for the reflections of both the first two can only transpire through the tending to and love for the first two. The tending in physical processes is not love. But at least in human beings it takes the shape of love. I think this aspect must gain momentum in epistemology. In other philosophical disciplines it should be acceptable in a slightly different manner.
This is due to the primacy of the ontological (in respect of existence, existents, and their pertinents in existent systems) as against the epistemic (which is a vague and veiled conscious reflection of the former in their existent systems). The epistemic is merely the description of how knowledge takes place and should take place with the help of finite amounts of data input derived from a few layers of the phenomena issuing from a few layers of the reality in question.
Epistemology is the study of truth-occurrences, and not directly of truth derivation methods nor directly of their existence. But it presupposes these. This is also why I hold that physical ontology is the existential foundation of epistemology. But physical ontology must itself be grounded upon the very notion of the To Be of Reality-in-total.
If primacy of existence can be accorded to the ontological, then whatever exists in this world may primarily be termed physical in existence (not physical in the sense of being the object of the science of physics, because primacy is to existence, not to any discipline.
I have a curiosity about the different perspectives on emergence. In biology, we usually assume that there are diverse biological entities, such as cells, tissues, organs, systems, organisms, populations, and communities. We can study each entity from a reductionist perspective to describe how we can understand its properties based on its smaller components. We also study these entities from a holistic perspective because we assume that each entity has emergent properties that cannot be reduced to their smaller parts. Both approaches are necessary because there is dualism in emergence (i.e., we can identidy two different units), but they are not independent (i.e., tissues depend on cells to exist).
What exactly causes emergence? Is it the interaction between the components of the system (in a specific way)? And what are the limits to describe something as a new level of organization that cannot be reduced to its smaller parts? In summary, how can we recognize and classify something as presenting emergent properties in practice? I think these discussions are at the heart of many misinterpretations of scientific discoveries that are usually interpreted from either a reductionist or a holistic view, but not both.
For physics, is mathematics more of a tool or a language?
I have defined matter and energy as follows (elsewhere), but is it possible to define them independent of each other?
Meanings of ‘Matter’ and ‘Energy’ Contrasted: By ‘matter’ I mean whatever exists as the venue of finite activities of existents and itself finitely active in all parts. Matter is whatever is interconvertible with existent energy.
Existent ‘energy’ is conceived as those propagative wavicles which, in a given world of existents, function as the fastest existent media of communication of someeffects between any two or more chunks of matter or of energy (i.e., of motions / changes).
Existent matter and existent energy are inter-convertible, and hence both should finally be amenable to a common definition: whatever exists with, in all parts, finite activity and stability.
By reason of the application of the Lorentz Factor [(1 - (v squared / c squared)) raised to the power of 1/2] in the denominator of equations, luminal and other comparable energy propagations take on one and the same velocity. This is the relativity-effect (better, comparative effect) between v of objects, compared to c of the speed of light. That is, it is presupposed here that c is the object of comparison for determining the speed effect of velocity difference across a duration.
It is against the criterion-velocity itself c that c becomes unsurpassable! Hence, I am of the opinion that the supposed source-independence is nothing but an effect of OUR APPARATUS-WISE OBSERVATION LIMIT AND OUR FIXING OF THE CRITERION OF OBSERVATION AS THE OBSERVED VELOCITY OF LIGHT.
In this circumstance, it is useless to claim that (1) luminal and some other energy propagations with velocity c are source-independent, and (2) these wavicles have zero rest mass, since the supposed source-independence have not been proved theoretically or experimentally without using c cas the criterion velocity. The supposed source-independence is merely an effect of c-based comparison.
Against this background, it is possible to be assured that photons and other similar c-wavicles are extended particles -- varying their size throughout the course of motion in the spiral manner. Hence the acceptability of the term 'wavicle'. Moreover, each mathematical point of the spiral motion is to be conceived not as two-, but as three-dimensional, and any point of motion added to it justifies its fourth dimension. Let us call motion as change.
These four dimensions are measuremental, hence the terms 'space' (three-dimensional) and 'time' (one-dimensional). This is also an argument countering the opinion that in physics and cosmology (and other sciences) time is not attested!
The measurements of the 3-space and measurements of the 1-time are not in the wavicles and in the things being measured. The measurements are the cognitive characteristics of the measurements.
IN FACT, THE EXTENSION OF THE WAVICLE OR OTHER OBJECTS IS BEING MEASURED AND TERMED 'SPACE', AND THE CHANGE OF THE WAVICLE OR OTHER OBJECTS IS BEING MEASURED AND TERMED 'TIME'. Hence, the physically out-there-to-find characteristics of the wavicles and objects are EXTENSION AND CHANGE.
Extension is the quality of all existing objects by which they have parts. This is not space. Change is the quality by which they have motion, i.e., impact generation on other similar wavicles and/or objects. This is not time. Nothing has space and time; nothing is in space and time. Everything is in Extension-Change.
Any wavicle or other object existing in Extension-Change is nothing but impact generation by physically existent parts. This is what we term CAUSATION. CAUSALITY is the relation of parts of physical existents by which some are termed cause/s and the others are termed effect/s. IN FACT, THE FIRST ASPECT OF THE PHYSICALLY ACTIVE PARTS, WHICH BEGINS THE IMPACT, IS THE CAUSE; AND THE SECOND ASPECT IS THE CAUSE. Cause and effect are, together, one unit of continuous process.
Since energy wavicles are extended, they have parts. Hence, there can be other, more minute, parts of physical objects, which can define superluminal velocities. Here, the criterion of measurement of velocity cannot be c. That is all...! Hence, superluminal velocities are a must by reason of the very meaning of physical existence.
THE NOTION OF PHYSICAL EXISTENCE ('TO BE') IS COMPLELTEY EXHAUSTED BY THE NOTIONS OF EXTENSION AND CHANGE. Hence, I call Extension and Change as the highest physical-ontological Categories. A metaphysics (physical ontology) of the cosmos is thus feasible. I have been constructing one such. My book-length publications have been efforts in this direction.
I invite your contributions by way of critiques and comments -- not ferocious, but friendly, because I do not claim that I am the last word in any science, including philosophy of physics.
Bibliography
(1) Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 647 pp., Berlin, 2018.
(2) Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 386 pp., Frankfurt, 2015.
(3) Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: A Superluminal and Local-Causal Physical Ontology, 361 pp., Frankfurt, 2014.
(4) Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All: Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology, 92 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 2nd Edition.
(5) Essenzielle Kosmologie und Philosophie für alle: Gravitational-Koaleszenz-Kosmologie, 104 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 1st Edition.
In relativity (GTR, STR) we hear of masslessness. What is the meaning of it with respect to really (not merely measurementally) existent particles / waves?
I am of the opinion that, while propagating, naturally, wavicles have mass, and there is no situation where they are absolutely at rest or at rest mass. But we know that there are zero rest masses in physics. These are in my opinion masses obtained when the moving wavicle is relatively at rest. Thus, the energy here is supposed to be at a relative zero.
But such a relative rest is obtainable only with respect to a few movements (under consideration at a given relativistic situation); and always there will be some other physical processes around and within, with respect to which the zero rest mass wavicle already contextually taken as in zero rest mass is not at zero rest mass and zero energy.
If the relatively achieved zero rest mass and/or non-zero mass may always be conceived as the real mass, then nothing has a constant and permanent "own mass". In that case, any specific contextual mass must be fixed for contexts only, and the only thing that may be spoken of its mass is "finite", "non-zero and non-infinite".
This is a thing I have been thinking of giving as a realistic example for a method that I had developed in my 2018 book, in order to characterize the various, most general, accessible values attributable to processes. This is what I have called the maximal-medial-minimal (MMM) method of determining cosmological, physical, and other forms of access values of existent processes.
But I forgot to write down the said example. Recently I wrote it down as an example for discussing it in another book. But I realize that I can write a detailed section of a chapter about it.
The MMM method is based on determining the space, time, matter-energy content, etc. of anything, including the whole cosmos, as being of infinite or finite or zero value of any quantity. I have shown in the said book that this can be developed not only into a method in the philosophy of physics but also in the most general foundational notions and principles of all sciences.
COMPLEXITY IN SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY, AND CONSCIOUSNESS:
DIFFERENCES AND IMPORTANCE
Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph.D., Dr. phil.
1. Introduction
With an introductory apology for repeating a few definitions in various arguments here below and justifying the same as necessary for clarity, I begin to differentiate between the foundations of the concept of complexity in the physical sciences and in philosophy. I reach the conclusion as to what in the concept of complexity is problematic, because the complexity in physical and biological processes may not be differentiable in terms of complexity alone.
Thereafter I build a concept much different from complexity for application in the development of brains, minds, consciousness etc. I find it a fine way of saving causation, freedom, the development of the mental, and perhaps even the essential aspects of the human and religious dimension in minds.
Concepts of complexity considered in the sciences are usually taken in general as a matter of our inability to achieve measuremental differentiation between certain layers of measurementally integrated events within a process or set of processes and the same sort of measurementally integrated activities within another process or set of processes.
But here there is an epistemological defect: We do not get every physical event and every aspect of one physical event to measure. We have just a layer of the object’s total events for us to attempt to measure. This is almost always forgotten by any scientist doing complexity science. One tends to generalize the results for the case of the whole object! Complexity in the sciences is not at all a concept exactly of measurement of complexity in one whole physically existent process within itself or a set of processes within themselves.
First, what is termed as complexity in an entity is only the measure of our inability to achieve measurements of that part of a layer of process which has been measured or attempted to be measured. Secondly, always there is a measuremental comparison in the sciences in order to fix the measure of complexity in the aspects that are measured or attempted to measure. This is evidently a wrong sort of concept.
The essential difference here must be sharpened further. As a result of what is said above, the following seems more appropriate. Instead of being a measure of the complexities of one or a set of processes, complexity in science is a concept of the difference between (1) our achieved abilities and inabilities to achieve the measurement of actual complexity of certain levels of one physical process or a set of processes and (2) other types of levels of the extent of our ability and inability to measurement within another process or set of processes. This is strange with respect to the claims being made of complexity of whichever physical process a science considers to measure the complexity.
If a scientist had a genuine measurement of complexity, one would not have called it complexity. We have no knowledge of a higher or highest complexity to compare a less intense complexity with. In all cases of complexity science, what we have are just comparisons with either more or less intense complexities. This makes the concept of complexity very complex to deal with.
2. Is Complexity Really Irreducible?
On a neutral note, each existent physical process should possess great complexity. How much? We do not know exactly; but we know exactly that it is neither infinite nor zero. This truth is the Wisdom of complexity. Let us call it complexity philosophy. This philosophical concept of complexity within the thing itself (CI) is different from the methodologically measurement-based concept of complexity (CM) in the sciences. In CM, only the measured and measurable parts of complexity are taken into consideration and the rest of the aspects and parts of the existent physical process under consideration are forgotten.
If this were not true, the one who proposes this is bound to prove that all the aspects and parts of the physical process or at least of the little layer of it under measurement are already under any one or more or all measurementally empirical procedures with respect to or in terms of that layer of the process.
To explain the same differently, the grade of complexity in the sciences is the name of the difference (i.e., in terms of ‘more’ or ‘less’) between the grades of difficulty and ease of measuring a specific layer of causal activity within one process and a comparable or non-comparable layer of causal activity in another.
Both must be measured in terms of the phenomena received from them and the data created of them. Naturally, these have been found to be too complex to measure well enough, because we do not directly measure, but instead measure in terms of scales based on other more basic scales, phenomena, and data. But the measure-elements titled infinite-finite-zero are slightly more liberated of the directly empirically bound notions. I anticipate some arguing that even these are empirically bound. I am fully agreed. The standpoint from which I called the former as formed out of directly empirically bound notions is different, that is all.
Both the above (the grades of difficulty and ease of measuring a specific layer of causal activity within one process and a comparable or non-comparable layer of causal activity in another) must be measured in terms of certain modes of physical phenomena and certain scales set for these purposes. But this is not the case about the scale of infinity-finitude-zero, out of which we can eternally choose finitude for the measure of ease and difficulty of measuring a specific layer of causal activity without reference to any other.
The measure-difference between the causal activities is not the complexity, nor is it available to be termed so. Instead, complexity is the difference between (1) the ease and difficulty of measuring the one from within the phenomena issuing from certain layers of the physical process and the data created by us out of the phenomena, and (2) the ease and difficulties of measuring the same in the other.
In any case, this measure-difference of ease and difficulty with respect to the respective layers of the processes can naturally be only of certain layers of activity within the processes, and not of all the layers and kinds of activity in them both. Evidently, in the absence of scale-based comparison, their complexity cannot be termed a high or a low complexity considered within itself. Each such must be compared with at least another such measurementally determined layer/s of process in another system.
3. Extent of Complexity outside and within Complexity
The question arises now as to whether any process under complexity inquiry has other layers of activity arising from within themselves and from within the layers themselves from which directly the phenomena have issued and have generated the data within the bodily, conscious, and cognitive system of the subjects and their instruments.
Here the only possible answer is that there is an infinite number of such layers in any finite-content physical processual entity, and within any layer of a process we can find infinite other sub-layers, and between the layers and sub-layers there are finite causal connections, because every existent has parts that are in Extension and Change.
The infinite number of such complexity layers are each arrangeable in a scale of decremental content-strength in such a way that no finite-content process computes up to infinite content-strength. This does not mean that there are no actual differences between any two processes in the complexity of their layers of activity, or in the total activity in each of them.
Again, what I attempt to suggest here is that the measured complexity of anything or of any layer of anything is just a scale-based comparison of the extent of our capacity to discover all the complexity within one process or layer of process, as compared to the same in another process or layer of process.
4. Possible Generalizations of Complexity
Any generalization of processes in themselves concerning their complexity proper (i.e., the extent of our capacity to discover all the complexity within one process or one layer of activities of a process) must now be concluded to be in possession of only the quantitative qualities that never consist of a specific or fixed scale-based number, because the comparison is on a range-scale of ‘more than’ and ‘less than’.
This generalization is what we may at the most be able to identify regarding the complexity within any specific process without any measuremental comparison with another or many others. Non-measuremental comparison is therefore easier and truer in the general sense; and measuremental comparison is more applicable in cases of technical and technological achievements.
The latter need not be truer than the former, if we accept that what is truer must be more general than specific. Even what is said merely of one processual object must somehow be applicable to anything that is of the same nature as the specific processual object. Otherwise, it cannot be a generalizable truth. For this reason, the former seems to be truer than the latter.
Now there are only three possibilities for the said sort of more general truth on comparative complexity: accepting the infinite-finite-zero values as the only well-decidable values. I have called them the Maximal-Medial-Minimal (MMM) values in my work of 2018, namely, Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology.
Seen from this viewpoint, everything physically existent has great processual-structural complexity, and this is neither infinite nor zero, but merely finite – and impossible to calculate exactly or even at any satisfactory exactitude within a pre-set scale, because (1) the layers of a process that we attempt to compute is but a mere portion of the process as such, (2) each part of each layer has an infinite number of near-infinitesimal parts, and (3) we are not in a position to get at much depths and breadths into all of these at any time.
Hence, the two rationally insufficient conclusions are:
(1) The narrowly empirical-phenomenologically measuremental, thus empirically partially objective, and simultaneously empirically sufficiently subjective amount of complexity (i.e., the extent of our capacity and incapacity to discover all the complexity) in any process by use of a scale-level comparison of two or more processes.
(2) The complexity of entities without having to speak about their existence in every part in Extension-Change and the consequently evident Universal Causality.
These are the empirically highly insulated, physical-ontologically insufficiently realistic sort of concept of complexity that the sciences entertain and can entertain. Note that this does not contradict or decry technological successes by use of scientific truths. But claiming them to be higher truths on complexity than philosophical truths is unjustifiable.
Now the following question is clearly answerable. What is meant by the amount of complexity that any existent physical process can have in itself? The only possible answer would be that of MMM, i.e., that the complexity within any specific thing is not a comparative affair within the world, but only determinable by comparing the complexity in physical processes with that in the infinitely active and infinitely stable Entity (if it exists) and the lack of complexity in the zero-activity and zero-stability sort of pure vacuum. It can also be made based on a pre-set or conventionalized arithmetic scale, but such cannot give the highest possible truth probability, even if it is called “scientific”.
MMM is the most realistic generalization beyond the various limit possibilities of scale-controlled quantities of our incapacity to determine the amount of complexity in any layer of processes, and without incurring exact numbers, qualifications, etc. The moment a clear measuremental comparison and pinning up the quantity is settled for, it becomes a mere scientific statement without the generality that the MMM realism offers.
Nonetheless, measuremental studies have their relevance in respect of their effects in specific technological and technical circumstances. But it must be remembered that the application of such notions is not directly onto the whole reality of the object set/s or to Reality-in-total, but instead, only to certain layers of the object set/s. Truths at that level do not have long life, as is clear from the history of the sciences and the philosophies that have constantly attempted to limit philosophy with the methods of the sciences.
5. Defining Complexity Closely
Consider any existent process in the cosmos. It is in a state of finite activity. Every part of a finite-content process has activity in every one of its near-infinitesimal parts. This state of having activity within is complexity. In general, this is the concept of complexity. It is not merely the extent of our inability to measure the complexity in anything in an empirical manner.
Every process taken in itself has a finite number of smaller, finite, parts. The parts spoken of here are completely processual. Nothing remains in existence if a part of it is without Extension or without Change. An existent part with finite Extension and Change together is a unit process when the cause part and the effect part are considered as the aspects or parts of the part in question.
Every part of a part has parts making every part capable of being a unit process and in possession of inner movements of extended parts, all of which are in process. This is what I term complexity. Everything in the cosmos is complex. We cannot determine the level of complexity beyond the generalized claim that complexity is normally limited within infinite or finite or zero, and that physical and biological processes in the cosmos come within the finitude-limit.
Hereby is suggested also the necessity of combining the philosophical truth about complexity and the scientific concept of the same for augmentation of theoretical and empirical-scientific achievements in the future. While determining scientifically the various natures and qualities of complexity, chaos, threshold states, etc. in a manner not connected to the philosophical concept of it based on the MMM method of commitment access to values of content and their major pertinents, then, scientific research will remain at an elementary level – although the present theoretical, experimental, and technological successes may have been unimaginably grand. Empirical advancement must be based on the theoretical.
Constant effort to differentiate anything from anything else strongly, by making differentiations between two or more processes and the procedures around them, is very much part of scientific research. In the procedural thrust and stress related to these, the science of complexity (and all other sciences, sub-sciences, etc.) suffer from the lack of ontological commitment to the existence of the processes in Extension-Change and Universal Causality.
The merely scientific attitude is due to a stark deficit of the most general and deepest possible Categories that can pertain to them, especially to Extension-Change and Universal Causality. Without these, the scientist will tend to work with isolated and specifically determined causal processes and identify the rest as non-causal, statistically causal, or a-causal!
6. Complexity in Consciousness
The above discussion shows that the common concept of complexity is not the foundation on which biological evolution, growth of consciousness, etc. can directly be based. I have plans to suggest a new concept.
Bibliography
(1) Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 647 pp., Berlin, 2018.
(2) Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 386 pp., Frankfurt, 2015.
(3) Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: A Superluminal and Local-Causal Physical Ontology, 361 pp., Frankfurt, 2014.
(4) Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All: Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology, 92 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 2nd Edition.
(5) Essenzielle Kosmologie und Philosophie für alle: Gravitational-Koaleszenz-Kosmologie, 104 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 1st Edition.
HOW TO GROUND SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY TOGETHER AXIOMATICALLY?
Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph.D., Dr. phil.
We see many theories in physics, mathematics, etc. becoming extremely axiomatic and rigorous. They call themselves or attempt to be as quantitative as possible. But are adequate comparisons between mathematics, physical sciences, biological sciences, human sciences, and philosophy, and adequate adaptation of the axiomatic method possible by creating a system of all exact, physical, and human sciences that depend only on the quantitively qualitative proportionalities and call them invariables?
They cannot do well enough to explain Reality-in-total, because Reality-in-total primarily involves all sorts of ontological universals that are purely qualitative, and some of them are the most fundamental, proportionality-type, quantitative invariables of all physical existents in their specificity and totality in their natural kinds. But as the inquiry comes to Reality-in-total, ontological qualitative universals must come into the picture. Hence, merely quantitative (mathematical) explanations do not exhaust the explanation of Reality-in-total.
Existence as individuals and existence in groups are not differentiable and systematizable in terms of quantitatively qualitative universals alone. Both qualitative and quantitatively qualitative universals are necessary for this. Both together are general qualities pertaining to existents in their processual aspect, not merely in their separation from each other. Therefore, the primitive notions (called traditionally as Categories) of Reality-in-total must be ontological qualitative universals involving both the qualitative and quantitative aspects. The most basic of universals that pertain properly to Reality-in-total are now to be found.
Can the primitive notions (Categories) and axioms of the said sciences converge so that the axioms of a system of Reality take shape from a set of the highest possible ontological Categories as simple sentential formulations of the Categories which directly imply existents? This must be deemed necessary for philosophy, natural sciences, and human sciences, because these deal with existents, unlike the formal sciences that deal only with the qualitatively quantitative form of arguments.
Thus, in the case of mathematics and logic there can be various sorts of quantitative and qualitative primitive notions (categories) and then axioms that use the primitive notions in a manner that adds some essential, pre-defined, operations. But the sciences and philosophy need also the existence of their object-processes. For this reason, the primitive axioms can be simple sentential formulations involving the Categories and nothing else. This is in order to avoid indirect existence statements and to involve existence in terms exclusively of the Categories.
Further, the sciences together could possess just one set of sufficiently common primitive notions of all knowledge, from which also the respective primitive notions and axioms of mathematics, logic, physical and human sciences, and philosophy may be derived. I support this view because the physical-ontological Categories involving the existence of Reality and realities, in my opinion, must be most general and fully exhaustive of the notion of To Be (existence) in a qualitatively universal manner that is applicable to all existents in their individual processual and total processual senses.
Today the nexus or the interface of the sciences and philosophies is in a crisis of dichotomy between truth versus reality. Most scientists, philosophers, and common people rush after “truths”. But who, in scientific and philosophical practice, wants to draw unto the possible limits the consequences of the fact that we can at the most have ever better truths, and not final truths as such?
Finalized truths as such may be concluded to in cases where there is natural and inevitable availability of an absolute right to use the logical Laws of Identity, Contradiction, and Excluded Middle, especially in order to decide between concepts related to the existence and non-existence of anything out there.
Practically very few may be seen generalizing upon and extrapolating from this metaphysical and logical state of affairs beyond its epistemological consequences. In the name of practicality, ever less academicians want today to connect ever broader truths compatible to Reality-in-total by drawing from the available and imaginable commonalities of both.
The only thinkable way to accentuate the process of access to ever broader truths compatible to Reality-in-total is to look for the truest possible of all truths with foundations on existence (nominal) / existing (gerund) / To Be (verbal). The truest are those propositions where the Laws of Identity, Contradiction, and Excluded Middle can be applied best. The truest are not generalizable and extendable merely epistemologically, but also metaphysically, physical-ontologically, mathematically, biologically, human-scientifically, etc.
The agents that permit generalization and extrapolation are the axioms that are the tautologically sentential formulations of the most fundamental of all notions (Categories) and imply nothing but the Categories of all that exist – that too with respect to the existence of Realit-in-total. These purely physical-ontological implications of existence are what I analyze further in the present work. One may wonder how these purely metaphysical, physical-ontological axioms and their Categories can be applicable to sciences other than physics and philosophy.
My justification is as follows: Take for example the case of the commonality of foundations of mathematics, logic, the sciences, philosophy, and language. The notions that may be taken as the primitive notions of mathematics were born not from a non-existent virtual world but instead from the human capacity of spatial, temporal, quantitatively qualitative, and purely qualitative imagination.
I have already been working so as to show qualitative (having to do with the ontological universals of existents, expressed in terms of adjectives) quantitativeness (notions based on spatial and temporal imagination, where, it should be kept in mind, that space-time are epistemically measuremental) may be seen to be present in their elements in mathematics, logic, the sciences, philosophy, and language.
The agents I use for this are: ‘ontological universals’, ‘connotative universals’, and ‘denotative universals’. In my opinion, the physical-ontological basis of these must and can be established in terms merely of the Categories of Extension-Change, which you find being discussed briefly here.
Pitiably, most scientists and philosophers forget that following the exhaustively physical-ontological implications of To Be in the foundations of science and philosophy is the best way to approach Reality well enough in order to derive the best possible of truths and their probable derivatives. Most of them forget that we need to rush after Reality, not merely after truths and truths about specific processes.
Bibliography
(1) Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 647 pp., Berlin, 2018.
(2) Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 386 pp., Frankfurt, 2015.
(3) Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: A Superluminal and Local-Causal Physical Ontology, 361 pp., Frankfurt, 2014.
(4) Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All: Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology, 92 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 2nd Edition.
(5) Essenzielle Kosmologie und Philosophie für alle: Gravitational-Koaleszenz-Kosmologie, 104 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 1st Edition.
SYMMETRY: A SUBSET OF UNIVERSAL CAUSALITY
What is the Difference between Cause and Reason?
Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph.D., Dr. phil.
1. Symmetry and Symmetry Breaking of Choice
2. Defining Causality
3. Defining Symmetry Causally
I discuss here the concept of symmetry and relate it to Universal Causality. I do not bring in the concept of Conservation here. Nor do we mention or discuss the mathematicians and physicists who deal with this concept, because such a short document cannot study their work or critique them in order to related them to Universal Causality.
1. Symmetry and Symmetry Breaking of Choice
Suppose that, by use of a conventionally decided unit of physically causal action α (of whatever, say, a photon) from A, the choice is met by the unit of action between two given electrons B and C. We consider B and C to be the immediate candidates for direct causal action by α, but the said causal action does not take place in B or C by an external causal action α from A. Then we tend to claim that there exists a PERFECT SYMMETRY OF CHOICE between B and C, for the unit of action α from A.
Whether α is from A or anything else does not matter here. What matters is that in nature such a perfect symmetry is never the case. Suppose there is no choice for α other than that between B and C, that is, there exist only A, B, and C in the world. In that case, at some point of time in the future of occurrence of the physically real mutual (causal, if A were to interact with B or C through the exertion of the causal action α) approach between (1) the unit of action α issuing from A and (2) any one or B and C, then there occurs the causal choice between the two.
If it is possible to stipulate that A, B, and C are in motion at various directions, then there exist some other D, E, etc. in the universe and A, B, and C have had causal interaction with many others. In that case, the decision of α for interaction with either B or C at a stipulated point of time lies in the acquisition of the knowledge as to how much A, B, and C have been causally affected by others, and to what extent of time.
This is not determinable given the fact that we are unable to causally contact all the agents of causal action upon A, B, and C. The final choice by us will be considering at least in a percentage-wise manner how much, how many other As, Bs, and Cs have causally influenced A, B, and C, beginning from a certain past relative point of time. But our decision is a speculation based on a few nearby-lying causal influences upon them. But this is not as much true as when we had the whole information.
We tend to term the action that follows with the so-called “choice” for B or C by the action potential α of A as symmetry breaking. Symmetry breaking here is nothing but the ability of any action potential α of A to affect B or C (or any other) processual entity causally – but this ability is presumed and calculated without taking, and without being able to take, into consideration all the causal antecedents of the action potential α of A and the processual entities B, C, etc.
These causal antecedents are such that, if known fully well, the action route of the action potential α of A can be predicted without access to the notion of symmetry or symmetry breaking. Such symmetry breaking may then even be cited by some physicists as the reason for the choice. Note also that this or any other concept of symmetry and symmetry breaking is not such that all the causal antecedents in A, B, C, etc. are already summed up in it. Recall to mind here also the Bohmian notion of hidden variables. Hidden variables are not actual variables, but instead, a device to merely represent unknown and non-represented variable values.
One may argue that symmetry too is causal. The direct cause of the choice is the action α by A on B or C. But even within the notion of the direct or immediate cause, cannot be included the notion of other external and remote causes of the event of the action potential α of A choosing B or C causally. That is, immediate causes do not contain within themselves all the remote past causal routes that have contributed to the choice by the action potential α of A to choose B or C causally at a moment to interact with.
This shows that the notions of symmetry and symmetry breaking are the results of conceptually ostracizing (or of our inability to reach and include) the past causal horizon of the causal event at discussion. Hence, these are instruments to do physics in our given context. This does not mean that science and philosophy should not recognize the universal nature of causality or that physics and philosophy should ostracize Universal Causality.
The action is physically processed in the form of a conglomeration of existent processes, whichever be the participating causal forces from within them and from outside – the latter of which normally are not being taken into consideration by the experiment and the symmetric-mathematical description, because there are limits to experimental setups and mathematical tools. But theoretically generalizing inquiry has no limits. This is why we need a theoretically generalizing notion of Universal Causality based solely on the notion of existence. The generalities in the natural kinds of physically existent processes are called ontological universals. These are not merely and exclusively in individual token entities.
In nature there are only causes, not reasons. Reasons are in human minds, and are active in two ways:
(1) In a connotative manner (i.e., consciousness notes together the generalities in processes. and then concatenates the connotative universals achieved / formed within consciousness in order to facilitates concepts and their expression in statements).
(2) In a denotative manner (i.e., connotative universals are mixed with brain elements and then expressed in symbols and language, and thereafter denotative universals are concatenated in various ways in symbolically formulated statements in language, mathematics, automated intelligence, and other symbolic instruments).
Both these are aspects of the constitution of reason in their own ways as and when they have to do with reasons in consciousnesses and expressions via symbols and languages. Causes in physical processes are existent as such outside our connotative universals, connotative concatenations of connotative universals, denotative universals, and denotative concatenation of denotative universals. Reasons occur in the concatenations of connotative and denotative universals, respectively in the pure conceptual aspect of consciousness and in its symbolizing aspect in various natural and artificial languages.
The symmetry or symmetry breaking in any given case is such an explanation, a reason. It is not a cause or the cause of anything. Many a time physicists tend to get confused between reasons and causes. Symmetry is just an example for instances where this universal phenomenon of confusion occurs.
2. Defining Causality
Anything existent is in Extension, i.e., is composite and thus has a finite number of parts, none of the parts of which can be taken as an infinitesimal in any exercise of division and counting. Anything in existence is in Change, i.e., all existent processes and parts thereof make new impact-generation on other such and as a result also within itself – this is the only other aspect of composition of existents. The latter part of Change, namely, the inner and inward action as a result of the previous action, is to be recognized as an additional action.
The combined action of Extension-Change-wise existence is nothing but causation. Everything existent is in causality – hence Universal Causality. Causes are always in the Extension-Change-wise mode of being of existents. Extension and Change together are the exhaustive meaning of existence (To Be) of Reality-in-total. All Extension-Change-wise instances of existence are instances of causation.
In short, everything existent has parts (Extension), every part has parts because it is in Extension, and all of them are in their own proper action of impact-formation (Change) inwards and outwards. Extension and Change are the only two exhaustive modes of the meaning of existing non-vacuously. Every existent is thus in causal action.
Such causation is everywhere, in all existents, as the very implication of existence. Hence, Universal Causality is the principle of nature that is instantiated when the choice by a unit of processual action (α of any A) between two electrons (B, C) breaks the principle of symmetry. Symmetry breaking with respect to a preferred or prescribed sort of action should always be causal, because this event has a past causal horizon, however long. (The question as to whether the past causal horizon is physically past eternal or past finitely eternal is the cosmogenetic question. We do not treat it here.)
Symmetry and the symmetry breaking are names for what may be called reasons in any case that may be discussed. But reasons must be explained always in terms of the causal actions within the given contexts. If physics is unable to do that in any instance, it is not entitled to call it non-causality or a-causality. Nor should the situation be filled up with an indescribable something called vacuum energy, ubiquitous ether, etc., and make vacuum energy and ether do the creation of the universe/s.
If the various laws of Conservation are considered as instances of symmetry, such symmetry is not merely of a choice of interaction, but much more, as a symmetry that may be defined as not being otherwise than what the processes involved (and thus all that exist as processes) are.
Existent processes are fundamentally in existence, which is the same as being in Extension-Change, i.e., in Causal existence, and only derivatively (i.e., by preferring to involve only a few causes) from the continuously Causal existence are they in the states of symmetry or symmetry breaking – whatever be the states or choice of states considered. This is done in terms of reasons, in terms of conceptual explanation, all this is in fact based on causal processes that guide everything being considered for investigation in the cosmos.
3. Defining Symmetry Causally
To be clearer in terms of what physics does, symmetry is a mode of perception and explanation of causal physical action quantitively within a given limited context of causes, where the totally causal nature of all existents does not get considered as playing a direct role in the formation of the immediate causes that are being considered.
Universal Causality is equivalent to non-vacuous existence, because Universal Causality, composed of Extension and Change, is the very exhaustive meaning of existence. Hence, Universal Causality is physical-ontologically more a priori than the symmetry and symmetry breaking of some select states, where the state of having two sides, aspects, choices, possibilities of actions, etc. are based on the Extension-Change-wise modes of existent processes in being in finite measures of activity and in stability in the same finite measures of activity.
The finite measures of causal action may be quantified. But this quantification in terms of any conventional mode of measurement does not represent all that the physical processes involved are in themselves, in terms of all that have causally happened in them.
Symmetry is not a matter of absolutely virtual knowledge. It is naturally based on the causal action of parts in parts of the universe and their comparability with respect to certain criteria of comparison. Various mathematical tools have come to be used to make comparisons effective and productive.
But this is not the case concerning Universal Causality, which I have defined here, because mathematical applications in physics, astrophysics, cosmology, etc. tend to forget the basic fact of the universality of Causality, which should have been dealt with in every little part of these sciences. This is the sad part of the story of Universal Causality.
Bibliography
(1) Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 647 pp., Berlin, 2018.
(2) Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 386 pp., Frankfurt, 2015.
(3) Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: A Superluminal and Local-Causal Physical Ontology, 361 pp., Frankfurt, 2014.
(4) Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All: Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology, 92 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 2nd Edition.
(5) Essenzielle Kosmologie und Philosophie für alle: Gravitational-Koaleszenz-Kosmologie, 104 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 1st Edition.
PHYSICAL AND EXACT SCIENCES AND AXIOMATIC PHILOSOPHY:
INTODUCING GROUNDING
Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph.D., Dr. phil.
1. WHY SHOULD PHYSICS AND COSMOLOGY BE GROUNDED?
I get surprised each time when some physicists tell me that either the electromagnetic (EM) or the gravitational (G) or both the forms of energy do not exist – that EM and G are, are "existent" neither like nor unlike material bodies – but that EM and G are to be treated or expressed as mathematical waves or particles propagated from material objects that of course exist for all sciences.
Some of them put in all their energies to show that both EM and G are mere mathematical objects, fields, etc., and not physically existent objects or fields of energy emissions that then become propagations from material bodies. If propagation from material bodies, then their nature too would have to be similar to that of material bodies!!! This is something that the mathematical realists of theoretical physics and cosmology cannot bear!!!
This is similar in effect to Newton and his followers thinking honestly and religiously that at least gravitation and perhaps also other energies are just miraculously non-bodily actions at a distance without any propagation particles / wavicles. But I admit that I explained certain things in the first paragraph above as if I myself were a Newtonian. This has been on purpose.
Even in the 21st century, we must be sharply aware that from the past more than 120 years the General Theory of Relativity with its various versions and especially its merely mathematical interpretations have succeeded in casting and maintaining the power of a terrifying veil of mathematical miracles on the minds of many scientists – miracles such as the mere spacetime curvature being the meaning of gravitation and all other sorts of fields. The mathematics did not need existence, and hence gravitation did not exist! But the same persons did not create a theory whereby the mathematics does not need the existence of the material world and hence the material world does not exist!!
A similar veil has been installed by quantum physics on the minds of many physicists and their audience too. We do not discuss it here. Hence, I have constructed in four published books a systemic manner of understanding these problems in cosmology and quantum physics. I do not claim perfection in any of my attempts. Hence, I keep perfecting my efforts in the course of time, and hope to achieve some improvement. The following is a very short attempt to summarize in this effort one important point in physics, cosmology, and the philosophy of physics and of cosmology.
There exists the tradition of lapping up whatever physicists may say about their observable and unobservable constructs, based on their own manner of using mathematics. The mathematics used are never transparent. Hence, the reader or the audience may not have the ability to makes judgements based on the minimum physical ontology expected of physicists. I believe that this should stop forever at least in the minds of physicists. Moreover, physicists are not to behave like magicians. Their readers and audience should not practice religious faithfulness to them. Nor should physicists expect it from them.
2. ONTOLOGICALLY QUALITATIVE NATURE OF INVARIANTS
When the search is for the foundations of any science, it is in fact for the invariant aspects of all the realities of that science, and not merely for the invariant aspects of some parts of the realities (object-set/s), methods, conclusions, etc. This does not suffice for science for maximizing success. This is because, any exclusive search for the foundations of the specific object-set or of the discourse of the specific object-set will further require foundations upon the totality of all specific object-sets and their discourse.
We find ourselves in a tradition that believes that proportionality quantities are to be taken as the invariables in physics. But I used to reduce into universal qualities the quantitative-structural aspect of all sciences, that are represented in mathematics as the ontological quantities dealt with in science. The real invariants of physics are not the ontological quantities or proportionalities of certain quantities being treated in physics.
The latter, being only the constant quantities, are one kind of ontological qualities, namely, (1) the quantitatively expressible qualities of processes, e.g., ‘quantity’, ‘one’, ‘addition’, etc. are explicable, respectively, as the qualities: ‘being a specific quantity’, ‘being a unity’, ‘togetherness of two or more units’, etc. The other kind is (2) the ontological qualities of processes in general (say, malleability, toughness, colour, redness, etc.) which cannot directly be expressed as ontological quantities of processes. This shows that pure ontological qualities are a more general notion than ontological quantities and includes the latter.
Explaining ontological qualities in terms of physical quantities cannot be done directly by fundamental physical quantities, but by physical properties that involve fundamental physical quantities. Properties are a mix mainly of ontological qualities and of course includes ontological quantities, of which some are the fundamental physical quantities. Hence, the invariants must be qualities that are generative of and apply to both quantities and non-quantities. These invariants then are fully qualitative.
If the invariants apply to all physical processes, these invariants are qualities ontologically universal to all of them in the specified group. Out of them are constructed properties by mixing many qualitative and quantitatively qualitative universals. Clearly, universals applying to all existents are the real invariants of all Reality – which is a matter to be discussed later.
Since universals are all qualitative and some of them are quantitative as qualities, ontological qualities are broader than mathematical in scope, because, the moment mathematics uses quantities, the use is not of quantities devoid of qualities, but instead, of the quantitative variety of general / universal qualities.
Qualities can also behave as some of the primitive notions that underlie all of physics and other sciences – but this will not exhaust the most necessary foundations of physics and other sciences, because these sciences require the general qualities of all existents, and not merely those of mathematics. These are the axiomatically formulable Categorial notions of philosophy, which latter is thus a general science.
In short, quantitative proportionalities as invariants are very partial with respect to existent processes and their totality. Naturally, philosophy too needs general qualities and not merely quantitative qualities to base the discipline.
3. DIFFERENCES IN FOUNDATIONS: EXACT AND NATURAL SCIENCES AND PHILOSOPHY
We see many theories in physics, mathematics, etc. becoming extremely axiomatic and rigorous. They call themselves or attempt to be as quantitative as possible. But are adequate comparisons between mathematics, physical sciences, biological sciences, human sciences, and philosophy, and adequate adaptation of the axiomatic method possible by creating a system of all exact, physical, and human sciences that depend only on the quantitively qualitative proportionalities and call them invariables?
They cannot do well enough to explain Reality-in-total, because Reality-in-total primarily involves all sorts of ontological universals that are purely qualitative, and some of them are the most fundamental, proportionality-type, quantitative invariables of all physical existents in their specificity and totality in their natural kinds. But as the inquiry comes to Reality-in-total, ontological qualitative universals must come into the picture. Hence, merely quantitative (mathematical) explanations do not exhaust the explanation of Reality-in-total.
Existence as individuals and existence in groups are not differentiable and systematizable in terms of quantitatively qualitative universals alone. Both qualitative and quantitatively qualitative universals are necessary for this. Both together are general qualities pertaining to existents in their processual aspect, not merely in their separation from each other. Therefore, the primitive notions (called traditionally as Categories) of Reality-in-total must be ontological qualitative universals involving both the qualitative and quantitative aspects. The most basic of universals that pertain properly to Reality-in-total are now to be found.
Can the primitive notions (Categories) and axioms of the said sciences converge so that the axioms of a system of Reality take shape from a set of the highest possible ontological Categories as simple sentential formulations of the Categories which directly imply existents? This must be deemed necessary for philosophy, natural sciences, and human sciences, because these deal with existents, unlike the formal sciences that deal only with the qualitatively quantitative form of arguments.
Thus, in the case of mathematics and logic there can be various sorts of quantitative and qualitative primitive notions (categories) and then axioms that use the primitive notions in a manner that adds some essential, pre-defined, operations. But the sciences and philosophy need also the existence of their object-processes. For this reason, the primitive axioms can be simple sentential formulations involving the Categories and nothing else. This is in order to avoid indirect existence statements and to involve existence in terms exclusively of the Categories.
Further, the sciences together could possess just one set of sufficiently common primitive notions of all knowledge, from which also the respective primitive notions and axioms of mathematics, logic, physical and human sciences, and philosophy may be derived. I support this view because the physical-ontological Categories involving the existence of Reality and realities, in my opinion, must be most general and fully exhaustive of the notion of To Be (existence) in a qualitatively universal manner that is applicable to all existents in their individual processual and total processual senses.
Today the nexus or the interface of the sciences and philosophies is in a crisis of dichotomy between truth versus reality. Most scientists, philosophers, and common people rush after “truths”. But who, in scientific and philosophical practice, wants to draw unto the possible limits the consequences of the fact that we can at the most have ever better truths, and not final truths as such?
Finalized truths as such may be concluded to in cases where there is natural and inevitable availability of an absolute right to use the logical Laws of Identity, Contradiction, and Excluded Middle, especially in order to decide between concepts related to the existence and non-existence of anything out there.
Practically very few may be seen generalizing upon and extrapolating from this metaphysical and logical state of affairs beyond its epistemological consequences. In the name of practicality, ever less academicians want today to connect ever broader truths compatible to Reality-in-total by drawing from the available and imaginable commonalities of both.
The only thinkable way to accentuate the process of access to ever broader truths compatible to Reality-in-total is to look for the truest possible of all truths with foundations on existence (nominal) / existing (gerund) / To Be (verbal). The truest are those propositions where the Laws of Identity, Contradiction, and Excluded Middle can be applied best. The truest are not generalizable and extendable merely epistemologically, but also metaphysically, physical-ontologically, mathematically, biologically, human-scientifically, etc.
The agents that permit generalization and extrapolation are the axioms that are the tautologically sentential formulations of the most fundamental of all notions (Categories) and imply nothing but the Categories of all that exist – that too with respect to the existence of Reality-in-total. These purely physical-ontological implications of existence are what I analyze further in the present work. One may wonder how these purely metaphysical, physical-ontological axioms and their Categories can be applicable to sciences other than physics and philosophy.
My justification is as follows: Take for example the case of the commonality of foundations of mathematics, logic, the sciences, philosophy, and language. The notions that may be taken as the primitive notions of mathematics were born not from a non-existent virtual world but instead from the human capacity of spatial, temporal, quantitatively qualitative, and purely qualitative imagination.
I have already been working so as to show qualitative (having to do with the ontological universals of existents, expressed in terms of adjectives) quantitativeness (notions based on spatial and temporal imagination, where, it should be kept in mind, that space-time are epistemically measuremental) may be seen to be present in their elements in mathematics, logic, the sciences, philosophy, and language.
The agents I use for this are: ‘ontological universals’, ‘connotative universals’, and ‘denotative universals’. In my opinion, the physical-ontological basis of these must and can be established in terms merely of the Categories of Extension-Change, which you find being discussed briefly here.
Pitiably, most scientists and philosophers forget that following the exhaustively physical-ontological implications of To Be in the foundations of science and philosophy is the best way to approach Reality well enough in order to derive the best possible of truths and their probable derivatives. Most of them forget that we need to rush after Reality, not merely after truths and truths about specific processes.
4. SYSTEMIC FOUNDATIONS VS. EXISTENCE/TS, NON-EXISTENCE/TS
4.1. Basis of Axiomatizing Science and Philosophy
The problem of axiomatizing philosophy, and/or philosophy of science, and/or all the sciences together is that we need to somehow bring in the elemental aspects of existence and existents, and absorb the elemental aspects of non-existence and non-existent objects that pertain to existents. Here it should be mentioned that axiomatizing mathematics and logic does not serve the axiomatization of philosophy, and/or philosophy of science, and/or all the sciences together. So far in the history of philosophy and science we have done just this, plus attempts to axiomatize the sciences separately or together by ignoring the elemental aspects of non-existence and non-existent objects that pertain to existents.
Existence (To Be) is not a condition for the possibility of existence of Reality-in-total or specific processual objects, but instead, To Be is the primary condition for all thought, feeling, sensation, dreaming, etc. All other conditions are secondary to this. If To Be is necessary as the condition for the possibility of any philosophy and science as discourse, we need to be axiomatic in philosophy and science about (1) existence (To Be, which is of all that exist) and/or (2) the direct and exhaustive implications of existence.
It is impossible to define existence without using words that involve existence. But it is possible to discover the exhaustive implications of To Be in order to use them in all discourse. Therefore, towards the end of this short document, I shall name what could be the inevitable primitive notions that are exhaustive of To Be and that may be used to create axioms for both philosophy and science together.
To put it differently, I attempt here to base all philosophy and science on the concept of existence of Reality-in-total as whatever it is, by deriving from the concept of the existence of all that exist the only possible (i.e., the exhaustive) implications of To Be.
Of course, the basic logical notions of identity and contradiction will have to be used here without as much danger as when we use them in statements on other less fundamental notions. I would justify their use here as the rational inevitabilities in the foundations – not as inevitabilities in the details that issue later. The inevitabilities in the later details need never to be realized as inevitabilities, because To Be implies some fundamental notions which will take case of this.
That is, the various ways in which the principles of identity and contradiction should be seen as inexact and inappropriate may be discovered in the in fields of derivation beyond the provinces of the fundamental Categorial implications of To Be. This latter part of the claims is not to be discussed here, because it involves much more than logic – in fact, a new conception of logic, which I would term as systemic logic.
Let me come to the matter that I promise in the name of the foundations of ‘Axiomatic Philosophy and Science’. First of all, to exist is not to be merely nothing. In this statement I have taken access to the Laws of Identity, Non-Contradiction, and Excluded Middle at one go in that whatever is, must be whatever it is, and not its opposite which is nothing but nothing, nor a middle point between the two extremes.
Therefore, existence must always be non-vacuous. That is, the primary logical implication of To Be is the non-non-being of whatever exists. But such a logical implication is insufficient for the sciences and philosophy, because we deal there with existents. Hence, let us ignore the logical implication as a truism. The existential implications of To Be are what we need.
I have so far not found any philosopher or scientist who derived these implications. But let us try, even if the result that obtained may be claimed by many ancients and others as theirs. In fact, theirs were not metaphysical / physical-ontological versions. Their epistemic versions of the same have been very useful, but have served a lot to misguide both philosophy and science into give “truth/s” undue importance in place of “Reality”. My claim about the exhaustive physical(-ontological) implications of To Be that I derive here is that they do not incur this fallacy.
To Be is not a thing. It is, as agreed at the start, the very condition for the possibility of discourse: philosophy, science, literature, art … and, in general, of experience. The To Be of existents is thus not a pre-condition for To Be – instead, it is itself the source of all conditions of discourse, not of existence.
4.2. Extension, Change, Universal Causality
If To Be is non-vacuous, it means that all existents are something non-vacuously real. Something-s need not be what we stipulate them to be, both by name and qualifications. But the purely general implication is that existents are something-s. This is already part of philosophical activity, but not of the sciences. We need to concretize this implication at the first tire of concrete implications. Only thereafter are sciences possible.
To be something is to be non-vacuous, i.e., to be in non-vacuous extendedness. However much you may attempt to show that Extension does not follow from the notions of To Be, something, etc., the more will be extent of your failure. You will go on using the Laws of Identity, Contradiction, and Excluded Middle, and never reach any conclusion useful for the sciences. Then you will have to keep your mouth and mind shut. I prefer for myself meaningful discourse in science and philosophy – when I meditate I shall attempt to keep my mind and lips as “shut” as possible.
As said above, Extension is one of the primary physical-ontological implications of To Be. Nothing exists without being extended, without being in Extension. Extended something-s are not just there in Extension. If in Extension, everything has parts. Thus, having parts is one of the primary implications of being something in existence. I term it alternatively also as Compositionality.
It is the very implication of being something that something-s are in Change. The deepest and most inevitable form of implication of Change is this: nothing that is in existence with parts can have the status of being something existent without the parts impacting at least a few others. This is the meaning of Change: impact-formation by extended parts. Any existent has parts existing in the state of impact formation in other parts and in themselves.
Hence, Change is the only other implication of To Be, not second to but equally important as Extension. I call it differently also as Impact-Formation. The notion of motion or mobility does not carry the full weight of the meaning of Change.
There cannot be any other implication equally directly derivable from To Be as Extension and Change can be. In other words, all other implications can be found to be sub-implications of Extension-Change, i.e., involving only Extension-Change. Showing them as involving only Extension-Change would suffice to show their sub-implications status with respect to Extension-Change.
Existence in Extension-Change belongs to anything existent, hence ubiquitous – to be met with in any existent. This is nothing but existence in the ubiquitously (to be met with in any existent) extended form of continuance in ubiquitous (to be met with in any existent) impact formation. What else is this but Universal Causality?
If you say that causation is a mere principle of science – as most philosophers and scientists have so far thought – I reject this view. From the above paragraphs I conclude that Causation is metaphysically (physical-ontologically) secondary only to existence. Everybody admits today that we and the universe exist. But we all admit that every part of our body-mind and every existent in the world must be causal because we are non-vacuously existent in Extension-Change.
This means that something has been fundamentally wrong about Causality in philosophy and science. We need to begin doing philosophy and science based fully on To Be and its implications, namely, Extension-Change-wise continuance, which is nothing but being in Universal Causation. It is universal because everything is existent. Universal Causality is the combined shape of Extension-Change. Causation the process of happening of Extension-Change-wise continuance in existence. Causality is the state of being in Extension-Change-wise continuance in existence.
4.3. Now, What Are Space and Time?
Note that what we measurementally and thus epistemically call as space is metaphysically to be termed as Extension. Space is the measuremental aspect of the primary quality of all existents, namely, of Extension. That is, space is the quantity of measurement of Extension, of measurements of the extended nature of existents. In this sense, space is an epistemic quality.
Further, note also that what we call time is the measuremental aspect of the primary quality of all existents, namely, of Change. If there is no impact-formation by parts of existents, there is no measurement called time. Hence, time is the epistemic quality of measurements of Change, which is the impact-formation tendency of all existents.
Immanuel Kant termed space as the condition for the possibility of sensibility, and Edmund Husserl called it as one of the fundamental essences of thought. Space and time in Kant are epistemic since they are just epistemic conditions of possibility; and essences in Husserl are epistemic, clearly as they are based on the continuous act of epochḗ.
Nothing can exist in epistemic space-time. That is, language and mind tend to falsely convert space and time into something that together condition existents. Thus, humans tend to believe that our measuremental concepts and derivative results are all really and exactly very essential to existent something-s, and not merely to our manner of knowing, feeling, sensing, etc.
This is the source of scientific and philosophical misconceptions that have resulted in the reification of the conclusions and concepts of thought and feeling. Thus, this is also the source of conceptual insufficiencies in philosophical and scientific theories. Scientism and scientific and mathematical instrumentalism justify these human tendencies in the name of pragmatism about science and thought.
Reification of certain statistical conclusions as probabilities and the metaphysicization of probable events as the only possible events are not merely due to the above sort of reification. It is also by reason of the equivocation of probability with possibility and the reification of our scientific and statistical conclusions of probabilities as real possibilities. Humans tend to forget that a certain amount of probability is exactly and properly the measure of the extent of human capacity (and by implication, of human incapacity), at a given instance and at a given measuremental moment of history, to use instruments to get at all the existents that are the causes of a given process.
As we know, To Be is not a Category / Quality. It is the very condition that is the same as the existence of something-s as whatever they are. This is a tautology: To Be is To Be. If To Be is a metaphysical notion, the physical-ontologically and scientifically relevant metaphysical implications of To Be are Extension-Change. These are the highest and only highest Categories of all philosophy and science. Universal Causality is the notion of combination of Extension-Change. It is not an indirectly derived notion.
If scientists tend to relegate such notions as philosophical, they are trying to be practical in a silly manner. Even scientific results need the hand of proper and best possible formulations of notions and theoretical principles. Theoretical principles (say, of causation, conservation, gravitation, matter, mass, energy, etc., which may clearly be formulated in terms of Extension-Change-wise existence and existents) must be formulated in the most systemic manner possible.
I would call Extension, Change, and the combination-term Universal Causality not merely as the highest metaphysical Categories. They are the very primitive terms in addition to terms like ‘existent’, ‘matter-energy’, etc., which are necessary for an axiomatic formulation of the foundations of the sciences. Hence, we need to formulate axiomatically both philosophy and science.
Universal Causality may hereafter also be taken as an axiom in philosophy and the sciences. An axiom is a formulated basic principle. In that case, why not formulate also the primitive notions (Categories) of Extension and Change as axioms? In short, the difference between mathematical-logical axiomatic foundations and physical-philosophical axiomatic foundations is that in the former set primitive notions are not axioms, and in the latter primitive notions may be formulated as axioms.
In the light of the above discussion, it becomes clear that Einstein’s postulation of gravitation and matter-energy as space-time curvatures is at the most a formulation of these notions in terms of the mathematical necessity to use space-time (epistemic) measurements and theorize based on them in theoretical physics.
Einstein was immersed in the neo-positivism and logical positivism of his time. Hence, he could not reason beyond the use, by mathematics, of quantitative notions as concrete measurements. Scientists and philosophers who still follow Einstein on this sort of a misguided reification of epistemic space and time are taking refuge not on Einstein but on his theoretical frailties. Even today most scientists and philosophers are unaware that quantities are in fact quantitatively characterized pure qualities – and not properties that are combinations of qualitative and quantitatively qualitative notions.
Minkowski formulated the mathematics of space-time and thus reduced space-time into a sort of ether in which physical processes take place gravitationally. Einstein put gravitation into this language and mistook this language (the language of mathematical space-time) to be the very matter-energy processes that curve according to gravitational processes. For the mathematics this is no too great error, because it worked. This is why some physicists even today consider gravitation and/or all energy forms as ether, as if without this stuff in the background material bodies would not be able to move around in the cosmos! A part of the cosmos is thus being converted into a background conditioner!
Only formal functioning has so far been found necessary in mathematics. Derivation from the metaphysical sources of existents and non-existents has not so far been found necessary in mathematics. But, note here also this: for more than 100 years physicists and philosophers of physics lapped up this substitution of the language of mathematics for the actual, physically existent, processes, which otherwise should have been treated also metaphysically, and if possible, in a manner that is systemically comprehensive of the sources of all sciences.
The implications of existence, non-existence, existents, and non-existents too can help to make the mathematical adaptations work pragmatically. Hence, clearly it does not suffice that only the mathematical formalism attained so far be used in physics and the sciences. The project of science, philosophy, mathematics, and logic must grow out of their limits and become parts of a systemic science with foundations in the implications of existence, non-existence, existents, and non-existents.
I have been attempting to explain in these pages a limited realm of what I otherwise have been attempting to realize. I show only that there are two physical-ontological Categories and some derived axioms (out of these many axioms, only one is discussed here, i.e., Universal Causality), using which we need to formulate not merely philosophy but also physics and other sciences.
But I suggest also that the existence-related and non-existents-related mathematical objects too must be formulated using some primitive terms and axioms that are compatible with the philosophical and physical primitive terms and axioms that may facilitate a systemic approach to all sciences.
4.4. Why Then Is Science Successful?
The awarding of the Nobel Prize 2023 for quantum informatics to Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser, and Anton Zeilinger does not, therefore, mean that all of quantum physics and their assumptions and results are ‘the realities’ behind the ‘truths’ formulated. Instead, it means only that the truths they have formulated are relatively more technology-productive within the context of the other truths and technologies that surround them in physics. Quantum informatics works at a level of effects where we involve only those movements and processes that result in the resulting discoveries, general truths, and the derivative technology.
Similarly, the successes of engineering, informatics, medical processing technology, and the medical science that (as of today) are based on these need not be a proof for the alleged “absolute truth status” of the theories based on Newtonian physics, of molecular and atomic level chemistry and biology, etc. These sciences use only certain contextual levels of interaction in the physical world.
Recollect here the ways in which occidental philosophers dating at least from Parmenides and Heraclitus and extending up until today have been mistaking space and time as (1) two metaphysical categories, or (2) as mere existents, or (3) as illusions.
Oriental philosophies, especially Hindu and Buddhist, have been the best examples of rejecting space-time as metaphysical and as equivalent to permanent substances in a manner that made some Occidental thinkers to look down on them or to reject all of them. In the course of conceptualization that is typical of humans, having to create further theoretical impasses is necessarily to be avoided as best as we can. Such an ideal requires the help of Extension, Change, and Universal Causality.
In the foregoing paragraphs I have only hinted at the necessity of axiomatic philosophy and science. I have only suggested some basic notions in this systemic science. I do also use these notions and some axioms developed from them to formulate a new philosophy of mathematics. I have already published some books based on these and have been developing other such works. I hope to get feedbacks from earnest minds that do not avoid directly facing the questions and the risk of attempting a reply to the questions themselves.
Bibliography
(1) Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 647 pp., Berlin, 2018.
(2) Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 386 pp., Frankfurt, 2015.
(3) Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: A Superluminal and Local-Causal Physical Ontology, 361 pp., Frankfurt, 2014.
(4) Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All: Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology, 92 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 2nd Edition.
(5) Essenzielle Kosmologie und Philosophie für alle: Gravitational-Koaleszenz-Kosmologie, 104 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 1st Edition.
THE FATE OF “SOURCE-INDEPENDENCE” IN ELECTROMAGNETISM, GRAVITATION, AND MONOPOLES
Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph.D., Dr. phil.
With the introductory claim that I make here suggestions that seem rationally acceptable in physics and the philosophy of physics, I attempt here to connect reasons beyond the concepts of magnetic monopoles, electromagnetic propagation, and gravitation.
A magnetic or other monopole is conceptually built to be such only insofar as the basic consideration with respect to it is that of the high speed and the direction of movement of propagation of the so-called monopole. Let me attempt to substantiate this claim accommodating also the theories in which the so-called magnetic monopole’s velocity could be sub-luminal.
If its velocity is sub-luminal, its source-dependence may be demonstrated, without difficulty, directly from the fact that the velocity of the gross source affects the velocity of the sub-luminal material propagations from it. This is clear from the fact that some causal change in the gross source is what has initiated the emission of the sub-luminal matter propagation, and hence the emission is affected by the velocity of the source’s part which has initiated the emission.
But the same is the case also with energy emissions and the subsequent propagation of luminal-velocity wavicles, because (1) some change in exactly one physical sub-state of the gross source (i.e., exactly the sub-state part of the gross source in which the emission takes place) has initiated the emission of the energy wavicle, (2) the change within the sub-state part in the gross source must surely have been affected also by the velocity of the gross source and the specific velocity of the sub-state part, and (3) there will surely be involved in the sub-state part at least some external agitations, however minute, which are not taken into consideration, not possible to consider, and are pragmatically not necessary to be taken into consideration.
Some might claim (1) that even electromagnetic and gravitational propagations are just mathematical waves without corporeality (because they are mathematically considered as absolute, infinitesimally thin waves and/or infinitesimal particles) or (2) that they are mere existent monopole objects conducted in luminal velocity but without an opposite pole and with nothing specifically existent between the two poles. How can an object have only a single part, which they term mathematically as the only pole?
The mathematical necessity to name it a monopole shows that the level of velocity of the wavicle is such that (1) its conventionally accepted criterial nature to measure all other motions makes it only conceptually insuperable and hence comparable in theoretical effects to the infinity-/zero-limit of the amount of matter, energy, etc. in the universe, and that (2) this should help terming the wavicle (a) as infinitesimally elongated or concentrated and hence as a physically non-existent wave-shaped or particle-shaped carrier of energy or (b) as an existent monopole with nothing except the one mathematically described pole in existence.
If a wavicle or a monopole is existent, it should have parts in all the three spatial directions, however great and seemingly insuperable its velocity may be when mathematically tested in terms of its own velocity as initiated by STR and GTR and later accepted by all physical sciences. If anyone prefers to call the above arguments as a nonsensical commonsense, I should accept it with a smile. In any case, I would continue to insist that physicists want to describe only existent objects / processes, and not non-existent stuff.
The part A at the initial moment of issue of the wavicle represents the phase of emission of the energy wavicle, and it surely has an effect on the source, because at least a quantum of energy is lost from the source and hence, as a result of the emission of the quantum, (1) certain changes have taken place in the source and (2) certain changes have taken place also in the emitted quantum. This fact is also the foundation of the Uncertainty Principle of Heisenberg. How then can the energy propagation be source-independent?
Source-independence with respect to the sub-luminal level of velocity of the source is defined with respect to the speed of energy propagation merely in a conventional manner. And then how can we demand that, since our definition of sub-luminal motions is with respect to our observation with respect to the luminal speed, all material objects should move sub-luminally?
This is the conventionally chosen effect that allegedly frees the wavicle from the effect of the velocity of the source. If physics must not respect this convention as a necessary postulate in STR and GTR and hence also in QM, energy emission must necessarily be source-dependent, because at least a quantum of energy is lost from the source and hence (1) certain changes have taken place in the source, and (2) certain changes have taken place also in the emitted quantum.
(I invite critical evaluations from earnest scientists and thinkers.)
ESSENTIAL REASON IN PHYSICISTS’ USE OF LOGIC:
IN OTHER SCIENCES TOO!
Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph.D., Dr. phil.
1. The Logic of PhysicsPhysics students begin with meso-world experiments and theories. Naturally, at the young age, they get convinced that the logic they follow at that level is identical with the ideal of scientific method. Convictions on scientific temper may further confirm them in this. This has far-reaching consequences in the concept of science and of the logic of science.
But, unquestionably, the logic behind such an application of the scientific method is only one manner of realizing (1) the ideal of scientific method, namely, observe, hypothesize, verify, theorize, attempt to falsify for experimental and theoretical advancements, etc., and (2) the more general ideal of reason.
But does any teacher or professor of physics (or of other sciences) instruct their students on the advantages of thinking and experimenting in accordance with the above-mentioned fundamental fact of all scientific practice in mind, or make them capable of realizing the significance of this in the course of time? I think, no.
This is why physicists (and for that matter all scientists) fail at empowering their students and themselves in favour of the growth of science, thought, and life. The logic being followed in the above-said mode of practice of scientific method, naturally, becomes for the students the genuine form of logic, instead of being an instantiation of the ideal of logic as reason. This seems to be the case in most of the practices and instruction of all sciences till today. A change of the origin, justification, and significance of the use of logic in physics from the very start of instruction in the sciences is the solution for this problem. The change must be in the foundations.
All humans equate (1) this sort of logic of each science, and even logic as such, with (2) reason as such. Reason as such, in fact, is more generic of all kinds of logic. Practically none of the professors (of physics as well as of other sciences) terms the version of logic of their science as an instantiation of reason, which may be accessed ever better as the science eventually grows into something more elaborate and complex. Physicist gets more and more skilled at reasoning only as and when she/he wants to grow continuously into a genuine physicist.
As the same students enter the study of recent developments in physics like quantum physics, relativity, nano-physics (Greek nanos, “dwarf”; but in physics, @ 10-9), atto-physics (@ 10-18), etc., they forget to make place for the strong mathematical effects that are due by reason of the conceptual and processual paradoxes due to epistemological and physical-ontological difference between the object-sizes and the sizes of ourselves / our instruments. The best examples are the Uncertainty Principle, the Statistical Interpretation of QM, Quantum Cosmology, etc.
They tend to believe that some of these and similar physics may defy our (meso-physical) logic – but by this mistakenly intending that all forms of reasoning would have to fail if such instances of advanced physics are accepted in all of physics. As a result, again, their logic tends to continue to be of the same level as has been taken while they did elementary levels of physics.
Does this not mean that the ad hoc make-believe interpretations of the logic of the foundations of QM, Quantum Cosmology, etc. are the culprits that naturally make the logic of traditional physics inadequate as the best representative of the logic of nature? In short, in order to find a common platform, the logic of traditional and recent branches of physics must improve so to adequate itself to nature’s logic.
Why do I not suggest that the hitherto logic of physics be substituted by quantum logic, relativity logic, thermodynamic logic, nano-logic, atto-logic, or whatever other logic of any recent branch of physics that may be imagined? One would substitute logic in this manner only if one is overwhelmed by what purportedly is the logic of the new branches of physics. But, in the first place, I wonder why logic should be equated directly with reason. The attempt should always be to bring the logic of physics in as much correspondence with the logic of nature, so that reason in general can get closer to the latter. This must be the case not merely with physicists, but also with scientists from other disciplines and even from philosophy, mathematics, and logic itself.
Therefore, my questions are: What is the foundational reason that physicists should follow and should not lose at any occasion? Does this, how does this, and should this get transformed into forms of logic founded on a more general sort of physical reason? Wherein does such reason consist and where does it exist? Can there be a form of logic in which the logical laws depend not merely on the size of objects or the epistemological level available at the given object sizes, but instead, on the universal characteristics of all that exist? Or, should various logics be used at various occasions, like in the case of the suggested quantum logic, counterfactual logic, etc.?
Just like logic is not to be taken as a bad guide by citing the examples of the many logicians, scientists, and “logical” human beings doing logic non-ideally, I believe that there is a kernel of reason behind physics, justified solely on the most basic and universal characteristics of physical existents. These universals cannot belong solely to physics, but instead, to all the sciences, because they belong to all existents.
This kernel of reason in physics is to be insisted upon at every act of physics, even if many physicists (and other scientists and philosophers) may not ensure that kernel in their work. I shall discuss these possibly highest universals and connect them to logic meant as reason, when I elaborate on: 3. The Ontology of Physics (in a forthcoming discussion in RG)
The matter on which physicists do logical work is existent matter-energy in its fundamental implications and the derivative implications from the fundamental ones. This is to be kept in mind while doing any logically acceptable work physics, because existent matter-energy corpora in processuality delineate all possible forms of use of logic in physics, which logic is properly to be termed nature’s reason.
Moreover, conclusions are not drawn up by one subject (person) in physics for use by the same subject alone. Hence, we have the following two points to note in the use of logic in physics and the sciences: (1) the intersubjectively awaited necessity of human reason in its delineation in logical methods should be upheld at least by a well-informed community, and (2) the need for such reason behind approved physics should then be spread universally with an open mind that permits and requires further scientific advancements.
These will make future generations further question the genuineness of such logic / specific realization of reason, and constantly encourage attempts to falsify theories or their parts so that physics can bring up more genuine instantiations of human reason. But is such human reason based on the reason active in nature?
Although the above arguments and the following definition of logic in physics might look queer or at least new and unclear for many physicists, for many other scientists, for many mathematicians, and even for many logicians, I define here logic for use in physics as the fundamental aspect of reason that physics should uphold constantly in every argument and conclusion due from it:
Logic in physics is (1) the methodological science (2) of approaching the best intersubjectively rational and structural consequences (3) in what may be termed thought (not in emotions) (4) in clear terms of ever higher truth-probability achievable in statements and conclusions (5) in languages of all kinds (ordinary language, mathematics, computer algorithms, etc.) (6) based on the probabilistically methodological use, (7) namely, of the rules of all sensible logics that exemplify the Laws of Identity, Non-contradiction, and Excluded Middle, (8) which in turn must pertain to the direct and exhaustive physical implications of “to exist”.
Here I have not defined logic in physics very simply as “the discipline of the rules of thought”, “the discipline of the methodological approach to truths”, etc., for obvious reasons clarified by the history of the various definitions of logic.
But here comes up another question: Is the reason pertaining to physical nature the same as the most ideal form of human reason? From within the business of physics, how to connect the reason of physical nature with that of humans? I may suggest some answers from the epistemological and ontological aspects. But I would appreciate your responses in this regard too.
2. The Epistemology of Physics (in a forthcoming discussion in RG)
3. The Ontology of Physics (in a forthcoming discussion in RG)
THE EPISTEMOLOGY PRESUPPOSED BY PHYSICS AND OTHER SCIENCES
Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph.D., Dr. phil.
((This is the second part of the series in THE LOGIC, EPISTEMOLOGY, AND ONTOLOGY OF PHYSICS AND OTHER SCIENCES.))
1. The Logic of Physics (See the previous discussion's lead-text)
2. The Epistemology behind Physics
The whole of logic, epistemology, ontology, etc. are not the exclusive property of physics, or of any other particular science, or of all the sciences together. Each of them may apply the various general logical, epistemological, and ontological principles in ways suitable to their disciplines, but cannot claim that theirs is the genuine or the possibly best logic, epistemology, ontology, etc.
There is yet another manner, beyond the sciences, wherein (1) the object range and viewpoint range become the broadest possible in epistemology, and (2) the epistemological manner in which the two are connected becomes satisfactory enough to explain both the aspects and the procedures involved between them. This is a philosophical version of epistemology. Even this manner is not complete without including the various logics, epistemologies, and ontologies of the particular sciences.
Before pointing out the special manner in which physics could use the more general aspects of epistemology in itself, let me mention a general trend in science, especially physics. I have seen many students of physics and mathematics mistaking the logical ways in which they do experiments and theories as the same as the conceptual foundations of physics and mathematics.
They do not even think of the epistemology of physics. The clear reason for this is that their epistemology is a crude correspondence theory of truth, and this is outdated. Take any of the best physicists, and we can see in their works the underlying undefined epistemology being closer to the correspondence theory of truth than anything else. I would like to suggest in the following a clear spine of epistemological rudiments for physics.
The pragmatism and scientism at the foundations of practical physics does not accept anything other than the correspondence theory as prescriptive of all the truths of science. Of course, the amount of finality achieved in truths will be the measure of tenability of their truth-probability. But this is to be reserved to the most general truths derivable from any science or philosophy. Low-level truths are much beyond the purview of correspondence between the objectual and the theoretical. Unaware of these facts, most physicists take the difference lightly.
It is a pity that the students of the sciences and also philosophy students with scientistic orientations even think of their ways of permitting truth correspondence to all their truths as the sole possession of scientists, which they suppose are being usurped from philosophy in the course of the past centuries in such a way that philosophy will have ever less reason to exist, or no more reason to exist. Imaginably, in this pride they are encouraged by their presumption of possession of the scientific temper in an exceptional manner.
More evidently, there were and there are physicists holding that their use of logic, epistemology, ontology, etc. is final and that all other details being done by other sciences, especially by philosophy, are a mere waste of time. If you want me to give an example, I suggest that you watch some of the YouTube interviews with Stephen Hawking, where he declares philosophy as a waste of time, or as an unscientific affair. The same sort of claim is to be seen being made by many mathematicians: that logic is a by-product of mathematics, and that philosophers are falsely proud of having logic as their methodology.
The reason why the whole of logic does not belong to the sciences is that the viewpoint from which sensation, thought, and feeling may be exercised in the broadest possible manner is not exhausted even by totaling all the object ranges of all the sciences. Each of them does logic in a manner limited by its object range. How then can their logic be the best possible? There is one and only one general science of which the viewpoint is the broadest. It is that science in which the viewpoint is that of the direct implications of the To Be of Reality-in-total.
Against this backdrop, although the following definition might seem queer for many physicists, mathematicians, and other scientists, there are reasons why I define here epistemology for use in physics. The following definition itself will clarify the reasons:
The epistemology behind physics is (1) the science of justifications (2) for the systemic fact, the systemic manner of achieving, the enhancement of the systemic manner of achieving, and the foundations of systems (3) of rationally derivable and explicable theoretical consequences of human efforts (4) to grasp the connection between physically existent reality and their pertinent realities of all sorts (5) in an asymptotic approach of truth-correspondence from the procedures of knowing (in terms of the pertinent realities of existent realities) onto the physically existent processes of reality, (6) in a spirally broadening and deepening manner of truth probability, (7) which serves to achieve ever better approximations of the epistemological ideal of knowing, namely, Reality-in-general, (8) starting from reality-in-particular, and (9) by use of the highest theoretical generalities pertaining to Reality-in-total and its parts, namely, reality-in-particular.
The epistemology of physics does not take the viewpoint of the To Be of Reality-in-total. But it must obey the primary implications of To Be and the viewpoint of the To Be of Reality-in-total. What these implications are, will be treated below, under “3. The Ontology of Physics”. Epistemology in philosophy may be slightly more general than the epistemology of physics, in the sense that philosophy takes the viewpoint of all physical processes that exist and attempt to view every reality from that viewpoint alone. If not, philosophy has no justification for existence.
Naturally, the epistemology of the sciences will not be so general as that of philosophy. But obedience to it is better for the epistemology of physics; and the advantages of such obedience will be seen in the results of such physics and such sciences.
The epistemology of physics, therefore, will attempt to theorize, know, and predict all that exist, but from the viewpoint exclusively of experimentally / empirically verifiable methods based on what is directly or indirectly before us, namely, the physical processes at our reach. The epistemology of systematically and systemically (i.e., systematically of systems of systems … ad libitum) moving in the use of logic from the given existent physical processes to the details of the not immediately given but ever more minute or ever more distant physical existents is the epistemology of physics. The above definition would, in my opinion, be sufficient to cover as broad and minute procedures as possible in physics. Time has come to appropriate it in physics, lest much advantage be lost for too long.
Not that philosophy does not trust this approach of physics. But philosophy looks for the Categorial presuppositions of existence behind all that is verifiable or verified empirically and empirical-theoretically. These presuppositions are the starting points and guiding principles of philosophy. There is a stark difference between a methodology of this kind and the methodology of basing everything on the truths derived from empirical and empirical-theoretical research. Now from this viewpoint you may judge the following suggestions and determine whether the epistemology of doing physical science is as broad as that of philosophizing.
Every moment, our body-brain nexus is continuously but finitely in contact with itself and with a finite extent of the environment, more or less simultaneously, but in differing intensities, no matter however elementary. The primary mode of this is through sensation, using all available and necessary aspects of it as the case may be. Thought and feeling are possible only in continuity with sensation, and never without it.
But one special characteristic of the human brain differentiating it from others is that sensation, feeling, and thought can very consciously induct into, and consequently deduce from the presuppositions of, all that exist – no matter whether they are a finite environment or infinite – and all these solely from the finite experience from the finite environment at hand. This seems to be absent in less human living beings.
Moreover, the second, but more forgotten, characteristic of the human brain differentiating it from others is that sensation, thought, and feeling are affective, tending to itself and to others, in the broadest sense of the term ‘affective’. It is the manner in which every human being tends in his/her sensation, feeling, and thought. Hence, all processes of knowing will be coloured by affection.
The manner and then the so-constructed broader background in which sensation, feeling, and thought take place is affection, which we term also love in a very general sense. Sensation, feeling, and thought are the three interconnected modes of tending of the body-brain to itself and to the environment, tend always to connect itself with the environment.
But here too the important differentiating characteristic in human body-brains is their capacity to tend to the environment beyond the immediate environments, and further beyond them, etc. ad libitum. There is nothing wrong in theoretically considering that there is the tendency in humans to converting this sort of ad libitum to ad infinitum, irrespective of whether these environments can really go ever broader at infinity in the content of matter-energy within Reality-in-total. Infinity is another term here for generalizing.
Reality consists of existent reality and realities that pertain to existent realities in their groups. Existent realities are clear enough to understand. Realities pertinent to existent realities are never to be taken as belonging to just one existent reality. They are always those generalities that belong to many existent realities in their respective natural kind. These generalities are what I call ontological universals.
All generalizations tend beyond onto the infinite perfection of the essential aspects of the concepts pertaining to the object-range. Not that the object-range must be infinite. Instead, the tending presumes an infinitization due to the idealization involved in generalizations. This is a kind of infinitization that does not need an infinite Reality-in-total in existence. All the concepts that a human being can use are based in the infinitization of the essential aspects of the concepts in their ideality. But behind these mental ideals there are the ideals, namely, the ontological universals pertaining to the groups (natural kinds) of processual entities in the environment. These are the ideals in the things and are not in us. These too are idealizations at the realm of the natural kinds that form part of Reality-in-total.
Without loving in the sense of tending to, as human do, to the inner and outer environments in their generalities there is no sensation, feeling, and thought. The tending to need not be due to the love of the objects but due to the love of something that pertains to them or to the ontologically universal ideals pertaining to the objects. From this it is clear that the relation between the processual objects and the sensing-feeling-knowing mind is set by the ontological universals in the natural kinds of existent physical processes.
At the part of the mind there should be idealized universals of conceptual quality, because the ontological universals in natural kinds cannot directly enter and form concepts. This shows that the conceptual universals (called connotative universals) are the mental reflections of ontological universals that are in the natural kinds. In short, behind the epistemology of sensation, feeling, and thought there are the ontology and epistemology of loving in the sense of tending to, due to the otherness implied between oneself and the environment.
There may be philosophers and scientists who do not like the idea of love. I say, this is due to the many psychology-related prejudices prevalent in their minds. We need to ask ourselves what the major mode of exercitation of any activity in human beings, and none can doubt the role of love in epistemology. The physical foundations of love too are commonly to be shared with the foundations of other aspects of physical existence.
Such tending by the person is mediated within the person by the connotative universals. Their expression is always in terms of symbols in various languages. These are called denotative universals. Connotative universals get concatenated in the mind in relation to their respective brain elements and form thoughts and feelings. Their expression in language is by the concatenation of denotative universals and get formulated in languages as theories and their parts.
To put in gist the latter part of “2. The Epistemology of Physics”, I suggest that the ontological, connotative, and denotative universals and the love of human agents to these and the very existent processual entities are what facilitate knowledge. The psychological question as to what happens when one has no love does not have any consequence here, because psychology differentiates between love and non-love in terms of certain presumed expressions of love and non-love.
In the case of the natural course of life of humans, the choice is not between love and non-love, but instead, between increasing or decreasing love. We do not speak here of loving other human beings as a matter of ethical action. Instead, the point is that of the natural love that humans have for everything including for sensing, feeling, knowing, etc.
One might wonder here why I did not discuss mathematics as an epistemologically valid tool of physics and other sciences. I have already dealt with this aspect in many other discussion texts in ResearchGate, and hence do not expatiate on it here.
3. The Ontology behind Physics (soon to be given as a separate RG discussion session)
1. Grounded Physical-Ontological Categories behind Physics
Grounding can be of various levels and grades. I speak of grounding all sorts of concepts, procedure principles, procedure methods, and theories in any system of thought and science. It is unnecessary in this context to discuss the grounding of highly derivative concepts that occur much later in theories than those that appear while founding them with best-grounded foundations. I go directly to the case of what should be called the most Categorial concepts behind physics, on which physics is grounded.
These Categorial concepts cannot be merely from within physics but should be directly related to and facilitating physics in as many of its aspects as possible. The success of foundational Categories consists in that they serve to ground as many aspects as possible of the particular science or system. Concepts strictly and exclusively physical or generally scientific cannot be as useful as notions from beyond in order to serve as Categories. Evidently, this is because no scientific discipline or system can be grounded on itself and hence on its own concepts. This is clearly also part of the epistemological and ontological implications of the work of Godel.
Grounded ontological Categories are such that they are inevitably and exhaustively grounded in the To Be of Reality-in-total as the only exhaustive implications of To Be. All other Categories, as far as possible, must be derivative of the most primary Categories. The more the number of Categories within the Categorial system that do not derive from the primary Categories the worse for the self-evidence of the science or system within it.
Grounding is exhaustive in the sense that the Categories that ground all physics need nothing else to be a concept than the To Be of Reality-in-total. To Be is the source of the Categories. It happens to be that there are two such Categories that are inevitably and exhaustively grounded. I call them Extension and Change. Clarifications of their meaning, ontological significance, and epistemological and physical implications and follow.
As I said, preferably grounding must be on the surest notion of all, which is existence. I prefer to term it To Be. As far as thought, feeling, and sensation are concerned, To Be is a notion in al of them. But principally To Be must belong to the whole of Reality, and not to a few things. If anything and/or all processes of Reality are existent, then what exist are the parts of existent Reality. The first minimum guarantee hereof should be that existence should be non-vacuous. Non-vacuous signifies that each possesses or contains whatever is possible within its existence in the given measurementally spatio-temporal context (which, as shall soon be clear, belong ontologically to the Extension-Change-wise existence of things).
3. Definitions of Universals, Extension-Change, Causality, and Unit Process
Even the minimum realism in thought, feeling, and sensation has for its principal conditions (1) the ontological primacy of universal qualities / natures that belong to groups of entities (processes), where the groups are also called natural kinds in the analytic tradition, and then (2) the ultimate simplicity and indivisibility of the universal characteristics that pertain to all existents. Contrary to the infinite divisibility of existent matter-energy, universals as the characteristics of existent matter-energy conglomerations (of togethernesses of unit Processes) are ontologically ideal universals, and hence indivisible. These universals are ideal not because of our idealisation of the characteristics, but instead because they are the general characteristics of the natural kinds to which each existent belongs. Thus, it is important to keep in mind that ontological universals are not our idealizations.
The properties of things are built out of these simple ontological universals in the natural kinds. The vague reflections of simple ontological universals within our minds are conceptually connotative universals, which are conceptual ideals. And their linguistic reflections in minds and all kinds of symbolic instruments are denotative universals.
Connotative and denotative universals are epistemological universals, formed epistemically from the little contact that minds have with the phenomena (“showings-themselves”) from some layers of processual objects from out there. The properties of existent processual things (matter-energy particulars) are vaguely reflected in minds and languages through the connotative and denotative instrumentalization of concepts in order to reflect the things via phenomena in terms of the data created by minds out of them. Any theory that permits ontological primacy to epistemological universals is one of a range of theories yielding primacy to the perceiving mind over the perceived objects. This is anathema in any scientific or philosophical science, because things are not vacua.
Non-vacuous existence implies that existents are extended. This is one of the most important characteristics of existents. Extension implies having parts, compositionality. Any extended existent’s parts impart impact to some others. This is Change. Only extended existents can exert impacts on any other. As a result, the object that exerts impact gets in itself some impact within, which is nothing but the proof that an impact by one extended part implies movements and impact formation by its parts too, as a result of the overall impact formation in question which contains the inner parts’ impact formation within. The latter need not always have its effects merely within the parts but instead also outwards.
Extension and Change are the highest, deepest, and most general characteristics of all existents. Interestingly, existence in Extension-Change is itself the process that we have so far named causation. Hence, anything non-vacuously existent has Extension and Change not separately but together. This is the meaning of Universal Causality. Physics cannot dispense with this pre-scientific universal Law. No more shall quantum physicists or scientists from other disciplines tell us that quantum physics has some sort of non-causality within! Any causal unit of existents in which the causal part and the effect part may be termed a process. Processuality is yet another important characteristic of existents, but we formulate it as Process, which represents the matter-energy units that there can be.
By this have clearly been set up three physical-ontological Categories of physics: Extension, Change, Causality, and Process. Space and time are merely epistemic categories. They cannot characterize existent processes. Ontological universals, as the characteristics of existent matter-energy conglomerations, are of togethernesses of unit Processes. Ontological universals are therefore ontologically ideal universals belonging (pertaining) to some natural kinds. The Categories as ontological universals belong to Reality-in-total, and not merely some natural kinds.
DEFINING THE ONTOLOGY BEHIND PHYSICS (5 Paragraphs, meant for the theoretical approach in physics)
Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph.D., Dr. phil.
In the definition of the ontology of physics (generally as the study of the cosmos), I shall posit the necessity of the highest possible grounds that I find as fundamental for physics and philosophy alike. The reason for these Categories’ (a few universals that apply to all existents, and not merely to all discourses) being meant also for philosophy (especially for the philosophy of science) is that both philosophy and physics have physical existents in common as their object range.
Philosophy additionally has the pure universals of physics within the ambit of study, and both physics and philosophy have different manners of treating their object range. Hence, well-grounded physical foundations cannot do without the most suitable among these universals as its fundamental Categories, selected from among the universals forming part of the objects of philosophy.
Although many physicists and mathematicians may find the following definition of the ontology behind physics queer due to their pragmatic and near-sighted concept of physics (where physical objects are part of their object range, and not their universals / qualities / forms) in a non-grounded manner, I define here ontology for use in physics with the purpose of later elaboration of the various aspects brought forward in the definition.
The Ontology behind physics is (1) the rationally consequent science of the totality of physical existents, their parts, and their sine qua nons, namely, the pure universals (whereas “properties” are the conglomerations of universal qualities) as pertinents of existents and their parts, (2) prioritized as objects in terms of the To Be (Greek, Einai) of Reality-in-total and only thereafter in terms of the to be (einai) of its parts (reality-in-particular), (3) serving to achieve ever better measuremental approximations of the cosmos and its part-systems (4) in terms of the epistemological ideal of Reality-in-total, namely, the theoretically highest possible notion of Reality-in-general, (5) grounded in the unique and exhaustive implications of To Be, namely, Extension and Change, that are the absolutely necessary touchstones of observables and unobservables which exhaust the object range of physics, (6) in properly physical activities that let Reality and realities be measured in term of measuremental and classificational categories that facilitate both experiments and theories equally well.
I have merely used here the highest Ideals of philosophical and scientific thinking, namely, To Be, Reality-in-total, and Reality-in-general. These are not explained here well enough. I have treated them with detailed justifications in my books: Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, Frankfurt, 2015, and Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 2018, Berlin.
We are using Shimadzu SPM-9700HT AFM in the lab. It uses a 650nm laser for cantilever detection. I want to replace the laser to a longer wavelength to avoid excitation of fluorescent samples. If you have experience of replacing the laser unit, would you please be able to share the experience here?
Paradox Etymology can be traced back to at least Plato's Parmenides [1]. Paradox comes from para ("contrary to") and doxa ("opinion"). The word appeared in Latin "paradoxum" which means "contrary to expectation," or "incredible. We propose, in this discussion thread, to debate philosophical or scientific paradoxes: their geneses, formulations, solutions, or propositions of solutions... All contributions on "Paradoxes", including paradoxical ones, are welcome.
Dear all,
I am working on a formula to assist farmers to have a better irrigation and water management, to help save water. We want them to know when and how much to irrigate their farming fields, we have developed a sensor to assist with soil knowledge but we also need to account for external factors. The external factors are quite a lot (around 8), and I was wondering if anyone has any experience in setting up formulas for these kind of things. If it is not possible to account for all factors, it is possible to let some out of the formula.
First of we have our sensor data, at the moment we only want soil humidity to be in the formula.
Second we want to account for climate data, wind/sun/rain/temperature (maybe air humidity). I think it is possible to not account for all of these, maybe only use rain and temperature.
Third we want to account for: type of plant/ growth phase of the plant and what soil it is grown in. This is data we need to have figured out before, external factors will not influence the value of these so we can set a vast value for this. Because the irrigation needs for an x plant in an x growth phase will always be the same. We need to connect transevaporation rate to it as well.
In my opinion the formule needs to exist out of the first and second information for sure and maybe calculate the outcome of that with the 3rd. But to be honest I do not have the experience or knowledge to figure this out. Is anyone the person or know a person to assist with this. If anyone is able to help us make this formula completely functional, we want to reward as well.
Thank you for taking the time to read this, and hopefully there is anyone with the knowledge and experience.
My sincerely, Morris la Crois
Heat is transferred from low Temp. to high Temp. without consuming external energy. Compared to nuclear fusion, it is simple and easier to gain energy.
I am currently seeking guidance and insights on the process of composing a comprehensive review article focused on the topic of "Photocatalysis of Cobalt Oxide Nanoparticles." While I have a keen interest in the subject matter, I am uncertain about the proper structure, content organization, and key points that should be covered in a review article.
Specifically, I am seeking advice on the following points:
- Structuring the review article: How should I organize the content to ensure a coherent flow of information?
- Key elements to include: What are the essential components that must be addressed within the review to provide a comprehensive understanding of the subject?
- Literature synthesis: How do I effectively synthesize existing research and findings on the photocatalytic applications of cobalt oxide nanoparticles?
- Analyzing research gaps: What strategies can I employ to identify and analyze gaps in the current understanding or areas that require further research?
- Citing and referencing: What is the best approach to citing and referencing relevant sources in a review article of this nature?
Furthermore, I am open to suggestions for an appropriate title for the review article. Your expertise and insights would be greatly appreciated in helping me embark on this endeavor effectively and professionally.
NON-FOUNDATIONS OF ‘WAVICLES’ IN EINSTEIN-PODOLSKY-ROSEN PARADOX: Bases for Quantum Physics to Evolve
(Maybe a physical-ontological Breakthrough in EPR)
Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph.D., Dr. phil.
1. INTRODUCTION TO THE FOUNDATIONS AGAIN (3 paragraphs)
In the first few short paragraphs we occupy ourselves with something already discussed before. If anything must exist, it must be something non-vacuous. Think of energy waves, termed variously as particles, waves, and their mixture namely wavicles. I use the theoretically more comprehensive ‘wavicles’. Are they only a pure mathematical stuff without any physical stuff within? I hope No!
In that case, even energy wavicles possess (1) some non-vacuity, i.e., Extension, which means possessing parts, and (2) some ability to cause impact, i.e., Change, from within their non-vacuous extended nature. Non-vacuity, it partially indicates existence, is not anything that mathematics can directly represent in the wavicles – for this, it needs primarily the notions of space (and time) and measurement. Nor can mathematics directly represent impact-formation as the only other universal nature of existents – for this, it needs the notion of time (and space) and measurement. Space and time are the quantity (measure) of Extension and Change respectively.
We can understand Extension as a direct ontological notion derivative from existence, but why Change, and not motion? Why is motion only derivative from Change? Section 2 responds to this question, and then Section 3 applies the result from Section 2 in the case of the EPR paradox.
2. SPECIFIC MOTION AND INNER MOTIONS IN ENTANGLED EPR WAVICLES? Let us keep the mind open!
A unit Change consists of the transition within a unit Process from the antecedent existent and the consequent existent. So, a unit Change is not merely a certain kind of motion. A transition is not merely a motion. Again, a unit Change is not a unit Process but consists of the transition within a unit Process, in which the antecedent part (cause) causes an effect on the consequent part (effect). A unit Process already involves many types and units of motion.
Causality consists in the relation between the cause and the effect. A unit causation is the minimum act of realization of a unit Process. That is, a causal unit is both the cause and effect together. The involvement of a transition, not merely of a motion, is why it is difficult to quantify a unit of Causal Process using mathematics. This will be clearer towards the end of this section.
Space is the epistemic aspect of Extension. Motion is the quantitative aspect of physical existents that is representable and, in each case, processed as the measure of a certain sort of motion, by using mathematics epistemically in terms of a certain spatially tripartite kind of displacement at the level of the kind of motion considered. All other, projected, more than three, superstring dimensions should be taken as curled in within the three, because the extra dimensions are all certain manipulation results of the original three. Time is not being multiplied in this manner, and it is just the unique epistemic, quantitative, aspect of Change.
The motion of any specific kind is merely an aspect of Change. Change involves transitions, using which we cannot mathematically manipulate existent wavicles in their constant inner happenings. The inner happenings too are motions, but are not representable as such within a given treatment of motion. One may use momentum, mass, etc., but these too do not represent the unit transition that a unit Causal Process yields.
We cannot generalize and say that everything is motion. This does not serve physics, because in physics all sorts of inner motions of a moving wavicle cannot mathematically be considered simultaneously. Moreover, a unit of Change is not equal to a unit motion of any kind, but instead, a causal unit Process involving an ontologically defined state transition. Change alone does not define a unit Process. Extension-Change together define a unit Process as a Causal unit. This is to be noted well here.
That is, in the case of quasi-unobservable but proved-to-be existent wavicles (termed unobservables in order to distinguish them from direct observables), Change involves existent wavicles with some motion and the ability to cause some motion, each of which has further parts, these parts too are in motion, and they too possess the ability to cause motion, etc. ad libitum.
[But if any physicist now prefers to take a wavicle (say, a photon, a neutrino, a graviton) as indivisible, or merely as energy quantity without physical extension, or as a vacuous stuff, I shall keep a distance from him/her, because I should fear being heckled! Moreover, I do not prefer to entertain questions like: Why to bother so much with conceptual complications, man? Do you not know that doing physics does not mean this sort of “philosophical” talk?]
The difference between motion and Change is as follows. One (kind of) motion is just one instance of motion irrespective of the fact that its inner parts also undergo and at the same time effect other motions outwards. But Change is that state of existents in which every existent involves not merely one sort of motion but ever more minute (inner and inwards) or broader (from outside and outwards) sort of motions with respect to any one existent with whatever overall size, motion, mass, momentum, energy, etc., and involves a transition in each unit Change.
Size, motion, mass, momentum, energy, etc. are all bound by conventional scales and comparison with other similar quantities from within a physical context, engendering an epistemic context which too is based on an epistemic context of physical processes which in turn are based on these same quantities. Hence, these quantities cannot involve the whole transition of an entity that the concept of Change can represent. Hence, Change, as one of the two highest implications of To Be and hence as one of the physical-ontological Categories along with Extension, cannot be substituted by the concept of motion or any other quantity.
Now the following question may be addressed and answered with sufficient rational justification: If the above is the inevitable case with respect to existents, why should energy-transmitting wavicles like photons, neutrinos, and gravitons yield (1) an infinity of mass at any specific state of motion as in the case of the velocity of any emission, when this velocity is compared in its motion with the velocity of light as the former approaches the latter in value, (2) any kind of comparative lack of motion as in the case of relative inertia, which is based on a quantitative comparison determined by imperfect and contextual measurements, or (3) create non-locality of influence (or lack of influence) in the EPR experiment, when two previously entangled wavicles with energy-content are made to move from each other at a comparative mutual total of the velocity of light or more, in such a way that the luminal-velocity-based reasoning shatters mutual causal influence and creates absolute miracles everywhere in the cosmos?
It is known that such infinities (and the connected zeros) at comparisons of two motions are not actual cases, because any existent has inner motions ad libitum and outer motions ad libitum, and none of these yields an infinity or zero because the infinite number of motions within any given unit Process or within parts thereof can only have the involvement of the infinite number of ever smaller, near-infinitesimal, transitions available in Change. These can never reach infinity but a finitude in total value. I think this explanation should justify the fact that we do not find any infinite or zero velocity, mass, energy, etc. in any existent observable or unobservable.
To explain further, the most important matter to be kept in mind here is that the inner motions of any wavicle, resulting from within and from outside, are not infinite in cumulative measure at any given time – but we should insist here that the sort of addition to be considered is not that of “infinite times finite quantities” as wrongly thought in the case of Zeno’s paradox, but instead, a finite totality of “infinite number of ever smaller near-infinitesimal quantities”. This is what characterizes physical existents and their parts in the cosmos, both of those that are termed matter and of those that are called energy.
In that case, there should be in physics a different manner of comparing motion, absolute inertia, and relative inertia of two bodies with each other, wherever physics uses a specific criterial velocity in order to compare itself with a smaller velocity under inquiry / under experiment. This is where physics could de-absolute the velocity of light with respect to its applicability to all the parts of the cosmos (which may even be an infinite-content ordering of infinite number of finite-content universes).
There are all the possibilities of infinities and zeros only in the mutual comparison of motion / velocities, and not when physical processes are considered in themselves. Hence, a spectrum of values of criterial velocities may be mooted for the various parts of the cosmos, where the velocities being compared with the criterial velocity can still be less than the criterial velocity used for comparison. This is all that physics can at the most possess in order to broaden the concept of quantity in physics and make it better adapted to deal with the physical-ontological concept of Change. In themselves physical existents have Change, which inevitably involves the totality of the many inner, inward, and outward motions.
A naive question in this context: Is anything in itself in motion, relative inertia, or absolute inertia? Naturally, anything is in finite motion of some kind within itself and at comparison with others. It is in a specific relative motion or inertia only in comparison with another motion or other motions. But there is no absolute inertia.
Any specific measurable or measured motion is not the exact (or only) thing that happens in an existent being. It has Change, i.e., all its parts are completely in motion – but in finite motion – which, as I said earlier, does not add up to an infinity of motion. Firstly, no instrument can measure anything exactly as it is, because at any given moment there are so many inner causal influences of causation within each entity and hence the exactness of the quantity does not have any justification with respect to any fixed point of time however minute. Secondly, by the time a measurement is performed, other minute influences have altered the quantity. Hence, no measured quantity can be exact.
Change is not any specific motion, but instead, a transition of many minute motions, and hence cannot be used in and by physics measurementally. It is a physical-ontological quality of all existents. This is why physics has been ignoring the physical-ontological status of Change. Change is in fact the ontological fact of all existents in that each element of existents has an infinite number of ever more minute causal influences acting upon it from within and without. This is the transitioning that Change is.
Motion and inertia are only two measurementally integral aspects of Change, wherein motion is a notion that needs mensuration and measurability, and hence can only be considered at one quantity of motion at a time. For this, the epistemic notions of space and time are necessary in physics. But this does not mean that this suffices for physics, because physics studies existent material beings in their motion; and existence, material, energy, etc. are not strictly and primarily physical but physical-ontological notions. Integrally taken, Change is whatever in fact happens in existents in all their parts, including in energy particles / wavicles.
Now one may attempt (1) to substitute Change with the notion of transition, i.e., motions within motions within… or (2) to substitute it with notions like momentum, mass, etc. The first is possible, but it is better to use the term ‘Change’ rather than an involving stretch of words. But none of the notions in (2) can substitute Change, because, as you may observe, they can augment the understanding of each other, and only augment the understanding of the concepts of motion, Change, etc., and not substitute the notion of Change.
The self-evident reason for this claim is that even momentum, mass, etc. are just quantitative notions composed of many (i.e., conglomerations of) quantitatively qualitative universals. Change is not a quantity, but a pure, qualitative, ontological universal not directly meaning epistemically determined quantities. I purposely call notions mentioned above, other than Change, as measuremental. This is in order to avoid the sense that quantity is some sort of a substitute for existent physical processes.
Quantity is an epistemic notion, and hence based on connotative universals and expressed in denotative universals. Change is a purely ontological universal. (For a simple clarification on ontological, connotative, and denotative universals, see: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Physical-Processual_Representation_of_Irrational_Numbers; for more information, see: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Physical_and_Exact_Sciences_and_Axiomatic_Philosophy_Introducing_Grounding_long_text)
Mathematical objects as quantitative qualities too are connotatively epistemic objects represented by denotative universals, and do not exist in terms of the belongingness of ontological universals to existents. (For more clarity on this, see the following discussions: (1) https://www.researchgate.net/post/Source_of_Major_Flaws_in_Cosmological_Theories_Mathematics-to-Physics_Application_Discrepency, (2) https://www.researchgate.net/post/Mathematics_and_Causality_A_Systemic_Reconciliation, and (3) https://www.researchgate.net/post/Why_Are_Numbers_and_Shapes_and_Their_Structures_Considered_by_Many_as_Exact)
If motion is a matter of spatial and temporal measurements, then it can be treated in terms of epistemic procedures in physics. Space-time measurements are the only way for this. But Change, as the concept of motions within motions within motions…, is the precondition behind all motion. These are not generalizable again under the notion of motion-in-general, because this would only be represented mathematically by one type of motion at a time, and not a conglomeration of motions within motions within….
Change does not remain alone. Change is always co-implied by Extension, and of the latter too we have only epistemic measurements in physics, not ontological “quantities”. Clearly, Change is not motion; instead, it denotes an extended object, all the parts of which are in motion by way of impact-formation. Hence, Extension and Change are the fundamental, physical-ontological, universals of all physical existents.
This, in my opinion, is a better way to make the cosmos and eventually Reality-in-total dynamic – rather than creating directly a holistic philosophy for the sake of the attractiveness of holism, where notions like dynamism, interdependence, relationality, coherence, etc. are brought up without the necessary foundational justification.
Let us, therefore, agree that Change is the inevitable ontological precondition behind all motion and that Extension and Change are the fundamental, mutually requiring, physical-ontological, universals of all existents in Reality-in-total and is exhaustive of the notion of the To Be of Reality-in-total.
Think of the various neo-Vedāntic, neo-Buddhistic, and nature-religion type, new age religions and their philosophies like those of Rudolf Steiner, Osho, Dalai Lama, etc. For neo-Vedānta, quantum physics is close to their heart because it “proves” Vedāntic non-dualism! Their meditation practices and their wisdom are wonderful, but not their physico-philosophical holisms, because they are oriented to good feelings, metaphysical or anti-metaphysical conclusions based on good feelings, and are not based on equally physically and cosmologically acceptable philosophical detail.
On the other hand, we have philosophers and philosopher-scientists like Henri Bergson (and the many neo-Nietzschean thinkers), Fritjof Kapra (and his kind of physicists turning quantum physics into a quick-fix-solutions philosophy), etc., who generate a good-feeling integralism without metaphysical tenability with respect to Reality-in-total.
3. WHAT DEBILITATES THEORY IN THE EPR PARADOX? How can quantum physics change?
I do not discuss here the details of the EPR problem. I shall take for granted in the reader some previous knowledge of it. For a state-of-the-art discussion and details of critical points, see: (https://www.researchgate.net/post/Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen_Paradox_and_Non-Locality_Was_Einstein_a_Monist_long_text)
The EPR problem points to a paradox (locality and non-locality) and consequent sub-paradoxes (say, of stuck-up concepts of symmetry, standstill in the universality of causality, closure of the causal cone, luminal velocity-based artificial limits to physical research, etc.). All these are based only on the procedures in physics as to how the Changes in the processes are being functionalized only with respect to a certain sort of motion with its settled velocity (i.e., c). The velocity of light has been determined from our world, and Relativity takes it up as the ultimate criterion of measurement for the whole cosmos without considering the status of origin of the notion. Hence, the EPR thought experiment and its experimental realizations have tended to create the said paradoxes.
Finally, the technical aspects of non-locality have been instrumentalized by technology-oriented physicists. John Clauser, Alain Aspect, and Anton Zeilinger won the 2022 Nobel Prize for physics. Now many think that, due to the instrumentation success of quantum optics, the cosmos should obey non-locality. But then, should the successes of Newtonian engineering-physics in the instrumentation of astrophysical experiments prove such physics to be the physics of the cosmos?
This state of affairs continues in quantum physics while the physicists do not consider the basic physical-ontological qualities / universals of all existent observables and unobservables together for legitimacy in concepts, hypotheses, truth-claims, laws, theories, etc.: namely, (1) the first most general nature of every existent, i.e., Extension (compositeness), and (2) the only other most general nature of every non-vacuous existent, i.e., Change (impaction / mode of actualization of compositeness).
The second point above demonstrates that even for the energy wavicles concerned, say, the electromagnetic or gravitational emission units, there are inner motions within themselves and influences of motions from beyond themselves into the inner constitution and motions, both the types of which sub-determine every one of such emissions throughout the past, present, and future.
This realization in quantum physicists, astrophysicists, and cosmologists should be coupled with the need to posit a spectrum of criterial velocities for use at various regions of the cosmos. Out of the spectrum of criterial velocities’ values, some should be valid in ever greater conglomerations of universes within the cosmos. This could give impetus to the evolution of modes of conceiving the fundamental principles of aspects of physics in a cosmology-compatible manner. (For further deepening on this issue: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Gravitational_Coalescence_Paradox_GCP_Introduction_to_Gravitational_Coalescence_Cosmology_GCC, and https://www.researchgate.net/post/Infinite-Eternal_Multiverse_Implications_to_Physics_and_Cosmology)
We know that there is no real absolute inertia as Newton thought. If not in absolute inertia, then both observables and unobservables may be considered only in the state of comparative inertia. But what is ontologically more real and irreducible, they are in themselves in Change – i.e., sub-motions within and external sub-influences upon the motion at issue of the wavicle. Hence, wavicles in the cosmos possess not merely a finite amount of motion (and are not in absolute inertia). They possess also constant continuity in finite Change, namely, motions within motions within … ad libitum.
THE PHYSICAL-ONTOLOGICAL FALLACIES OF SPACE, TIME, AND SPACETIME IN PHYSICS
Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph.D., Dr. phil.
1. Basis of Axiomatizing Science and Philosophy
The problem of axiomatizing philosophy, and/or philosophy of science, and/or all the sciences together is that we need to somehow bring in the elemental aspects of existence and existents, and also absorb the elemental aspects of non-existence and non-existent objects that pertain to existents. Here it should be mentioned that axiomatizing mathematics and logic does not serve the axiomatization of philosophy, and/or philosophy of science, and/or all the sciences together. So far in the history of philosophy and science we have done just this, plus attempts to axiomatize the sciences separately or together by ignoring the elemental aspects of non-existence and non-existent objects that pertain to existents.
Existence (To Be) is not a condition for the possibility of existence of Reality-in-total or specific processual objects, but instead, To Be is the primary condition for all thought, feeling, sensation, dreaming, etc. All other conditions are secondary to this. If To Be is necessary as the condition for the possibility of any philosophy and science as discourse, we need to be axiomatic in philosophy and science about (1) existence (To Be, which is of all that exist) and/or (2) the direct and exhaustive implications of existence.
It is impossible to define existence without using words that involve existence. But it is possible to discover the exhaustive implications of To Be in order to use them in all discourse. Therefore, towards the end of this short document, I shall name what could be the inevitable primitive notions that are exhaustive of To Be and that may be used to create axioms for both philosophy and science together.
To put it differently, I attempt here to base all philosophy and science on the concept of existence of Reality-in-total as whatever it is, by deriving from the concept of the existence of all that exist the only possible (i.e., the exhaustive) implications of To Be.
Of course, the basic logical notions of identity and contradiction will have to be used here without as much danger as when we use them in statements on other less fundamental notions. I would justify their use here as the rational inevitabilities in the foundations – not as inevitabilities in the details that issue later. The inevitabilities in the later details need never to be realized as inevitabilities, because To Be implies some fundamental notions which will take case of this.
That is, the various ways in which the principles of identity and contradiction should be seen as inexact and inappropriate may be discovered in the in fields of derivation beyond the provinces of the fundamental Categorial implications of To Be. This latter part of the claims is not to be discussed here, because it involves much more than logic – in fact, a new conception of logic, which I would term as systemic logic.
Let me come to the matter that I promise in the name of the foundations of ‘Axiomatic Philosophy and Science’. First of all, to exist is not to be merely nothing. In this statement I have taken access to the Laws of Identity, Non-Contradiction, and Excluded Middle at one go in that whatever is, must be whatever it is, and not its opposite which is nothing but nothing, nor a middle point between the two extremes.
Therefore, existence must always be non-vacuous. That is, the primary logical implication of To Be is the non-non-being of whatever exists. But such a logical implication is insufficient for the sciences and philosophy, because we deal there with existents. Hence, let us ignore the logical implication as a truism. The existential implications of To Be are what we need.
I have so far not found any philosopher or scientist who derived these implications. But let us try, even if the result that obtained may be claimed by many ancients and others as theirs. In fact, theirs were not metaphysical / physical-ontological versions. Their epistemic versions of the same have been very useful, but have served a lot to misguide both philosophy and science into give “truth/s” undue importance in place of “Reality”. My claim about the exhaustive physical(-ontological) implications of To Be that I derive here is that they do not incur this fallacy.
To Be is not a thing. It is, as agreed at the start, the very condition for the possibility of discourse: philosophy, science, literature, art … and, in general, of experience. The To Be of existents is thus not a pre-condition for To Be – instead, it is itself the source of all conditions of discourse, not of existence.
2. Extension, Change, Universal Causality
If To Be is non-vacuous, it means that all existents are something non-vacuously real. Something-s need not be what we stipulate them to be, both by name and qualifications. But the purely general implication is that existents are something-s. This is already part of philosophical activity, but not of the sciences. We need to concretize this implication at the first tire of concrete implications. Only thereafter are sciences possible.
To be something is to be non-vacuous, i.e., to be in non-vacuous extendedness. However much you may attempt to show that Extension does not follow from the notions of To Be, something, etc., the more will be extent of your failure. You will go on using the Laws of Identity, Contradiction, and Excluded Middle, and never reach any conclusion useful for the sciences. Then you will have to keep your mouth and mind shut. I prefer for myself meaningful discourse in science and philosophy – when I meditate I shall attempt to keep my mind and lips as “shut” as possible.
As said above, Extension is one of the primary physical-ontological implications of To Be. Nothing exists without being extended, without being in Extension. Extended something-s are not just there in Extension. If in Extension, everything has parts. Thus, having parts is one of the primary implications of being something in existence. I term it alternatively also as Compositionality.
It is the very implication of being something that something-s are in Change. The deepest and most inevitable form of implication of Change is this: nothing that is in existence with parts can have the status of being something existent without the parts impacting at least a few others. This is the meaning of Change: impact-formation by extended parts. Any existent has parts existing in the state of impact formation in other parts and in themselves.
Hence, Change is the only other implication of To Be, not second to but equally important as Extension. I call it differently also as Impact-Formation. The notion of motion or mobility does not carry the full weight of the meaning of Change.
There cannot be any other implication equally directly derivable from To Be as Extension and Change can be. In other words, all other implications can be found to be sub-implications of Extension-Change, i.e., involving only Extension-Change. Showing them as involving only Extension-Change would suffice to show their sub-implications status with respect to Extension-Change.
Existence in Extension-Change belongs to anything existent, hence ubiquitous – to be met with in any existent. This is nothing but existence in the ubiquitously (to be met with in any existent) extended form of continuance in ubiquitous (to be met with in any existent) impact formation. What else is this but Universal Causality?
If you say that causation is a mere principle of science – as most philosophers and scientists have so far thought – I reject this view. From the above paragraphs I conclude that Causation is metaphysically (physical-ontologically) secondary only to existence. Everybody admits today that we and the universe exist. But we all admit that every part of our body-mind and every existent in the world must be causal because we are non-vacuously existent in Extension-Change.
This means that something has been fundamentally wrong about Causality in philosophy and science. We need to begin doing philosophy and science based fully on To Be and its implications, namely, Extension-Change-wise continuance, which is nothing but being in Universal Causation. It is universal because everything is existent. Universal Causality is the combined shape of Extension-Change. Causation the process of happening of Extension-Change-wise continuance in existence. Causality is the state of being in Extension-Change-wise continuance in existence.
3. Now, What Are Space and Time?
Note that what we measurementally and thus epistemically call as space is metaphysically to be termed as Extension. Space is the measuremental aspect of the primary quality of all existents, namely, of Extension. That is, space is the quantity of measurement of Extension, of measurements of the extended nature of existents. In this sense, space is an epistemic quality.
Further, note also that what we call time is the measuremental aspect of the primary quality of all existents, namely, of Change. If there is no impact-formation by parts of existents, there is no measurement called time. Hence, time is the epistemic quality of measurements of Change, which is the impact-formation tendency of all existents.
Immanuel Kant termed space as the condition for the possibility of sensibility, and Edmund Husserl called it as one of the fundamental essences of thought. Space and time in Kant are epistemic since they are just epistemic conditions of possibility; and essences in Husserl are epistemic, clearly as they are based on the continuous act of epochḗ.
Nothing can exist in epistemic space-time. That is, language and mind tend to falsely convert space and time into something that together condition existents. Thus, humans tend to believe that our measuremental concepts and derivative results are all really and exactly very essential to existent something-s, and not merely to our manner of knowing, feeling, sensing, etc.
This is the source of scientific and philosophical misconceptions that have resulted in the reification of the conclusions and concepts of thought and feeling. Thus, this is also the source of conceptual insufficiencies in philosophical and scientific theories. Scientism and scientific and mathematical instrumentalism justify these human tendencies in the name of pragmatism about science and thought.
Reification of certain statistical conclusions as probabilities and the metaphysicization of probable events as the only possible events are not merely due to the above sort of reification. It is also by reason of the equivocation of probability with possibility and the reification of our scientific and statistical conclusions of probabilities as real possibilities. Humans tend to forget that a certain amount of probability is exactly and properly the measure of the extent of human capacity (and by implication, of human incapacity), at a given instance and at a given measuremental moment of history, to use instruments to get at all the existents that are the causes of a given process.
As we know, To Be is not a Category / Quality. It is the very condition that is the same as the existence of something-s as whatever they are. This is a tautology: To Be is To Be. If To Be is a metaphysical notion, the physical-ontologically and scientifically relevant metaphysical implications of To Be are Extension-Change. These are the highest and only highest Categories of all philosophy and science. Universal Causality is the notion of combination of Extension-Change. It is not an indirectly derived notion.
If scientists tend to relegate such notions as philosophical, they are trying to be practical in a silly manner. Even scientific results need the hand of proper and best possible formulations of notions and theoretical principles. Theoretical principles (say, of causation, conservation, gravitation, matter, mass, energy, etc., which may clearly be formulated in terms of Extension-Change-wise existence and existents) must be formulated in the most systemic manner possible.
I would call Extension, Change, and the combination-term Universal Causality not merely as the highest metaphysical Categories. They are the very primitive terms in addition to terms like ‘existent’, ‘matter-energy’, etc., which are necessary for an axiomatic formulation of the foundations of the sciences. Hence, we need to formulate axiomatically both philosophy and science.
Universal Causality may hereafter also be taken as an axiom in philosophy and the sciences. An axiom is a formulated basic principle. In that case, why not formulate also the primitive notions (Categories) of Extension and Change as axioms? In short, the difference between mathematical-logical axiomatic foundations and physical-philosophical axiomatic foundations is that in the former set primitive notions are not axioms, and in the latter primitive notions may be formulated as axioms.
In the light of the above discussion, it becomes clear that Einstein’s postulation of gravitation and matter-energy as space-time curvatures is at the most a formulation of these notions in terms of the mathematical necessity to use space-time (epistemic) measurements and theorize based on them in theoretical physics.
Einstein was immersed in the neo-positivism and logical positivism of his time. Hence, he could not reason beyond the use, by mathematics, of quantitative notions as concrete measurements. Scientists and philosophers who still follow Einstein on this sort of a misguided reification of epistemic space and time are taking refuge not on Einstein but on his theoretical frailties. Even today most scientists and philosophers are unaware that quantities are in fact quantitatively characterized pure qualities – and not properties that are combinations of qualitative and quantitatively qualitative notions.
Minkowski formulated the mathematics of space-time and thus reduced space-time into a sort of ether in which physical processes take place gravitationally. Einstein put gravitation into this language and mistook this language (the language of mathematical space-time) to be the very matter-energy processes that curve according to gravitational processes. For the mathematics this is no too great error, because it worked. This is why some physicists even today consider gravitation and/or all energy forms as ether, as if without this stuff in the background material bodies would not be able to move around in the cosmos! A part of the cosmos is thus being converted into a background conditioner!
Only formal functioning has so far been found necessary in mathematics. Derivation from the metaphysical sources of existents and non-existents has not so far been found necessary in mathematics. But, note here also this: for more than 100 years physicists and philosophers of physics lapped up this substitution of the language of mathematics for the actual, physically existent, processes, which otherwise should have been treated also metaphysically, and if possible, in a manner that is systemically comprehensive of the sources of all sciences.
The implications of existence, non-existence, existents, and non-existents too can help to make the mathematical adaptations work pragmatically. Hence, clearly it does not suffice that only the mathematical formalism attained so far be used in physics and the sciences. The project of science, philosophy, mathematics, and logic must grow out of their limits and become parts of a systemic science with foundations in the implications of existence, non-existence, existents, and non-existents.
I have been attempting to explain in these pages a limited realm of what I otherwise have been attempting to realize. I show only that there are two physical-ontological Categories and some derived axioms (out of these many axioms, only one is discussed here, i.e., Universal Causality), using which we need to formulate not merely philosophy but also physics and other sciences.
But I suggest also that the existence-related and non-existents-related mathematical objects too must be formulated using some primitive terms and axioms that are compatible with the philosophical and physical primitive terms and axioms that may facilitate a systemic approach to all sciences.
4. Why Then Is Science Successful?
The awarding of the Nobel Prize 2023 for quantum informatics to Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser, and Anton Zeilinger does not, therefore, mean that all of quantum physics and their assumptions and results are ‘the realities’ behind the ‘truths’ formulated. Instead, it means only that the truths they have formulated are relatively more technology-productive within the context of the other truths and technologies that surround them in physics. Quantum informatics works at a level of effects where we involve only those movements and processes that result in the resulting discoveries, general truths, and the derivative technology.
Similarly, the successes of engineering, informatics, medical processing technology, and the medical science that (as of today) are based on these need not be a proof for the alleged “absolute truth status” of the theories based on Newtonian physics, of molecular and atomic level chemistry and biology, etc. These sciences use only certain contextual levels of interaction in the physical world.
Recollect here the ways in which occidental philosophers dating at least from Parmenides and Heraclitus and extending up until today have been mistaking space and time as (1) two metaphysical categories, or (2) as mere existents, or (3) as illusions.
Oriental philosophies, especially Hindu and Buddhist, have been the best examples of rejecting space-time as metaphysical and as equivalent to permanent substances in a manner that made some Occidental thinkers to look down on them or to reject all of them. In the course of conceptualization that is typical of humans, having to create further theoretical impasses is necessarily to be avoided as best as we can. Such an ideal requires the help of Extension, Change, and Universal Causality.
In the foregoing paragraphs I have only hinted at the necessity of axiomatic philosophy and science. I have only suggested some basic notions in this systemic science. I do also use these notions and some axioms developed from them to formulate a new philosophy of mathematics. I have already published some books based on these and have been developing other such works. I hope to get feedbacks from earnest minds that do not avoid directly facing the questions and the risk of attempting a reply to the questions themselves.
Bibliography
(1) Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 647 pp., Berlin, 2018.
(2) Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 386 pp., Frankfurt, 2015.
(3) Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: A Superluminal and Local-Causal Physical Ontology, 361 pp., Frankfurt, 2014.
(4) Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All: Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology, 92 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 2nd Edition.
(5) Essenzielle Kosmologie und Philosophie für alle: Gravitational-Koaleszenz-Kosmologie, 104 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 1st Edition.
My research thesis submitted but I have experimental data so I want to publish that data before viva examination.
Please suggest me any reputed journal and fast response journal name also free publication.
I'm trying to calculate the Tafel slope of HER and OER, I got these values and I'm not sure if is it true, any one can help me?
THE ANOMALY IN MATHEMATICAL / THEORETICAL PHYSICS
Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph.D., Dr. phil.
The Background: The ultimate physical and cosmological significance of the Categories of Extension (“being extended / having parts” while in existence) and Change (“extended existents causing impacts on others and also on themselves”) must be seen in the context of warding off quantum-physical, cosmological, statistical, and other sorts of inexplicable and bizarre existence-related aberrations resulting from theories like those of (1) parallel universes, (2) extra dimensions, (3) vacuous universes, (4) total mutual disconnection of universes, (5) infinite number of positive-content physical universes taking origin like extra-fitted balloons from “technically / mathematically zero-valued” quantum vacua or quantum-vacuum universes without any iota of causal agency (because quantum vacua are merely of near-zero zero statistical expectations), (6) the presumed existence of space, time, and spacetime like physical things in mathematical fields, (7) the theoretical writing-off of time alone as unreal and unnecessary, etc.
This sort of aberrations renders some theories and their related concepts into theories about absolutely non-existent objects (in some analytic-logical philosophies, called also as “counterfactual possible worlds”) and into substitute theoretical entities that serve only to explain procedures and not to explain existent processes. These serve for physicists and cosmologists to temporarily save their face by use of irrational adherence to methods of maintenance of mere uncertainties in mathematical physics.
The Anomany in Theoretical Physics: I mentioned these above in order to speak of the anomaly in advanced mathematical physics. This curse is the confusion between (1) physical existents, (2) non-existent theoretical constructs, (3) theories representing small or large theoretical processes required only for theory, and (4) the lack of criteria of creating theories for describing existent processes with recourse to vacuous, non-existent, virtual objects and processes, but without turning these objects and processes into existent objects lacking the criteria of existence.
Positing ad hoc explanatory theories to clarify certain theoretical inaptitudes of notions or deviations in arguments is assuredly necessary for the progress of science. But these are sooner to be overwhelmed (not to be substituted) by more adequate and existentially non-aberrational unobservables and/or theoretical terms. As of now, physics, astrophysics, and cosmology are full of theoretical entities that cannot ever be proved to be existent unobservables. This is the curse of physics today – a graver problem today than previously.
A GAME-CHANGER CAUSALITY FOR PHYSICS
Beyond the Two Millennia
Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph. D., Dr. phil.
IS CAUSALITY A SCIENTIFIC OR PRE-SCIENTIFIC LAW?
§§-- Without beings in existence (To Be), there is no science “on them”. Existence is not vacuous. Non-vacuous existents are in Extension (Existence-Category 1), i.e., they have parts, they are composed.
§§-- Both parts and wholes can interact. They cause impacts on a finite number of other existents and on themselves: Change (Existence-Category 2). Change involves motion, but is not motion. Parallel to these two physical-ontological Categories, no other characteristic is thinkable. Hence, Extension and Change ꞊ Exhaustive implications of To Be of Reality-in-total the highest natural kind.
§§-- If Extended+Changing (with parts and with impact formation) entities exist, this is causal existence. Every existent is such. Hence: Universal Causality...! Extension, Change, and Causality are pre-scientific Laws. Now, no Quantum Physicist can tell us that some (observable) processes are causal and the others (partial observables [unobservables] and non-observables) are merely statistically causal or non-causal…!
§§-- Smaller natural kinds (ordered and/or organized parts of Reality-in-total) also have characteristics. These are ontological universals (modes of being of processes). They are primarily in the natural kinds, and only thus in the token enities in the natural kind.
§§-- Space ꞊ measure of extension. Time ꞊ measure of change. These are epistemic concepts. Epistemic space-time cannot curve as physicists make us believe. Extension-Change-wise existent matter-energy conglomerations curve.
Centuries of violent and extremist discussions have taken place as to a Yes or No or Yes-and-No to causality in existent beings, namely, Reality-in-total. In the fray have been mainly philosophy, and only then physics. This state has changed after the genesis of quantum physics. In the above, I have “proved” in a very simple manner that Universal Causality is a pre-scientific Law.
The purely epistemic version of causality can only be a sort of concept and not be that of what happens in the world. It gets formulated due to the sense-related, conceptual, and logical conclusion towards a correlation of some sort between two or more events, but without recourse to the events’ existence.
Any further justification of the epistemological conclusion of causality without involving the purely physical-ontological aspect of existence of the event at question in total and its antecedent and consequent part-events may even be taken as an explanation of the experience of correlation. Historical examples abound, and Hume’s is the most famous example.
But this is not the case if the purely physical-ontological aspect of existence of the event at question in total and its antecedent and consequent part-events may be accepted as the conditio sine qua non of the sensation, conceptualization, and logical argument. Hence the fully physical-ontological status of causality.
Traditionally, causality is the relation between the antecedent and the consequent part-events of the one event at issue. And causation is the act of a cause-event in effecting an effect-event. This is the age-old manner of conceiving the ontology of causality. The former, the epistemic and the explanatory, have been the trend during most of the 20thcentury history of philosophical and physical-philosophical inquiry on causality.
But what I have proposed in the various parts of my five published books is a whole new manner of theorizing Universal Causality. I hope to finally suggest that this is also a game-changer in the history of the concept of causality.
Hello everybody
I want to simulate MXene by means of molecular dynamics method. But it seems that I need the Mxene atomic structure as a file in .cif, .pdb, or .mol format.
Is it possible for anyone to tell me how I can get the files or how I can build the atomic structure of MXene?
Thank you so much
Up to this point, I thought that when doing a dimensional analysis using the Buckingham-Pi theorem the exponents are generally quite "simple". For example 0.5, 1 or 2 and so on.
However, I now have found a paper where the exponents of the dimensionless numbers that are formulated by a data-driven approach have "strange" exponents like 0.07 or 0.304. This seems a bit odd to me and brings me to the questions: are such exponents (still) physically meaningful? If so, in which cases does such a type of exponents occur (and why)?
Thank you very much!
I would like to ask a general question: Any other physicists of any kind, what do YOU see as the fundamental flaws currently existing in mathematics-to-physics (or vice versa) calculations in a general sense? Is it differences in tensors, unknown values, inconsistent unreliable outputs with known methods, no reliable well-known methods ect? Or is the problem to you seen as more of a problem with scientific attitudes and viewpoints being limiting in their current state? And the bigger overall question: Which of these options is limiting science to a higher degree? I'd love to hear other's comments on this.
I am trying to learn modern physics and frequently encounter the phrase "gauge theory". I look up the definition and find that it is a theory in which a Lagrangian is invariant under a certain class of transformations. That sounds to me like we are using Noether's theorem to find constants of motion. I learned enough math to know several ways of finding constants of motion. One way is Noether's theorem. Another way is to find operators that commute with a Hamiltonian. A third way is to derive implications directly from the given governing equations. Which, if any of these methods, are called "gauge theory"? And why?
The unexploited unification of general relativity and quantum physics is a painstaking issue. Is it feasible to build a nonempty set, with a binary operation defined on it, that encompasses both the theories as subsets, making it possible to join together two of their most dissimilar marks, i.e., the commutativity detectable in our macroscopic relativistic world and the non-commutativity detectable in the quantum, microscopic world? Could the gravitational field be the physical counterpart able to throw a bridge between relativity and quantum mechanics? It is feasible that gravity stands for an operator able to reduce the countless orthonormal bases required by quantum mechanics to just one, i.e., the relativistic basis of an observer located in a single cosmic area?
What do you think?
First part of the question is: what are the absolute essential ingredients behind computation? You need (i) switches, (ii) interconnects, (iii) input energy source, (iv) memory, (v) feedback, (iv) correct timing delays. Are these the basic magic ingredients? Is there anything I have forgotten?
Second part of the question: what are the minimum essential ingredients I need to add to a computer to make it life, ie. self-reproducing?
In other words, when we compare the computational characteristics of a living cell to that of a standard computer, what are the essential differences? It is something to do with the instruction set itself, how it comes into being, gets processed, and replicated...but I can't quite put my finger on it and express the idea succinctly. And if I can't express it, it means I don't really understand something. Any ideas how to describe the essential ingredients rigorously?
To the surprise of many, there is existing so-called emergent computation. There are published on RG several Python softwares--GoL-N24, r-GoL, and GoL, on my research profile that demonstrate the following properties: (i) emergent information processing, which arises through self-organization, (ii) error-resilient properties of some special cases of emergents, (iii) automatic creation of multi-level emergent systems.
This research is capable to reproduce into a certain extent by-the-life- utilized computing and information processing.
See some of many shared animations in my RG data section, software section, and discussion dealing with animations of complex systems, which are available here. The last paper from 2022 and the next one are dealing exactly with those issues. I recommend reading the review "Complexity in medicine ...", which serves as the introduction.
Just one animation to curb your appetite, it is in APNG format which is after its downloading easy to view in any modern web browser as a file (write at the window instead of web page '//' and chose the option to see files).
The really important breakthrough in theoretical physics is that the Schrödinger Time Dependent Equation (STDE) is wrong, that it is well understood why is it wrong, and that it should be replaced by the correct Deterministic Time Dependent Equation (DTDE). Unitary theory and its descendants, be they based on unitary representations or on probabilistic electrodynamics, will have to go away. This of course runs against the claims about string and similar theories made in the video. But our claims are a dense, constructive criticism with many consequences. Taken into account if you are concerned about the present and the near future of Theoretical Physics.
Wave mechanics with a fully deterministic behavior of waves is the much needed and sought --sometimes purposely but more often unconsciously-- replacement of Quantism that will allow the reconstruction of atomic and particle physics. A rewind back to 1926 is the unavoidable starting point to participate in the refreshing new future of Physics. Many graphical tools currently exists that allow the direct visualization of three dimensional waves, in particular of orbitals. The same tools will clearly render the precise movement and processes of the waves under the truthful deterministic physical laws. Seeing is believing. Unfortunately there is a large, well financed and well entrenched quantum establishment that stubbornly resists these new developments and possibilities.
When confronted with the news they do not celebrate, nor try to renew themselves overcoming their quantum prejudices. Instead the minds of the quantum establishment refuse to think. They negate themselves the privilege of reasoning and blindly assume denial, or simply panic. The net result is that they block any attempt to spread the results. Accessing funds to recruit and direct fresh talents in the new direction is even harder than spreading information and publishing.
Painfully, this resistance is understandable. For these Quantists are intelligent scientists (yes, they are very intelligent persons) that instinctively perceive as a menace the news that debunk the Wave-Particle duality, the Uncertainty Principle, the Probabilistic Interpretation of wave functions and the other quantum paraphernalia. Their misguided lifelong labor, dedication and efforts --of themselves and of their quantum elders, tutors, and guides-- instantly becomes senseless. I feel sorry for such painful human situation but truth must always prevail. For details on the DTDE see our article
Hopefully young physicists will soon take the lead and a rational wave mechanics will send the dubious and troublesome Quantism to its crate, since long waiting in the warehouse of the history of science.
With cordial regards,
Daniel Crespin
The recent (1) “observation” by LIGO of a neutron star merger and (2) what is considered as different from it, namely, the arrival of the visible light from the merger at our location, used to be perceived as an indication that gravitational waves may have the same velocity as electromagnetic waves.
But it need not exactly be so, because even in this case we speak of our observation of the neutron star merger using the luminal velocity. Then make independent conclusions on gravitational waves. This is to be granted as a reconcilable manner of looking at gravitation in terms of luminal velocity.
In fact, the gravitational waves are themselves not being observed here directly in terms of gravitational waves or anything known previously to be of that kind in velocity. Instead, we are using the light and other electromagnetic radiation from those astronomical objects and saying that they present us with some real information about the gravitational waves.
From this it is clear that, even today, experimentally we are not sure of the velocity of gravitational propagation.
We assume it to be c because of our observation of electromagnetic propagations that carry to us news of gravitational propagation from the said objects. Hence, it need not show their velocity to be equal.
Here arises the question: At the level of the large-scale processes of the cosmos, is gravitation or electromagnetism (or any other non-gravitational or contrary-to-gravitation propagation) more influential in determining the general evolution of the structure of the cosmos?
I hold it has to be gravitation that has the final say. My arguments are indirect. I shall put them forth in the course of development of arguments in the discussion.
What I want to accentuate is this: If there are other (may be infinite number of) worlds of different content, density, etc., the velocity of what may be termed gravitation proper in each of them might also be different.
This may be the case also for non-gravitational propagations in each such worlds.
FOR MORE, CONSULT THE DISCUSSION:
Have been wondering how they differ and whether or not they're the same thing?
CHALLENGING THE UNIVERSALITY OF
THE SPEED OF LIGHT AS A CONSTANT
Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph.D., Dr. phil.
We know that neither time nor space is an existent entity like physical existents. It is a measuremental reality (not an existent) behind all existent physical processes and experiences of existent physical processes simultaneously. The space and time behind all existent physical processes are in fact Extension and Change. their measurements are always by conventional scales and hence epistemic realities.
Can photonal velocity measured spatiotemporally as a constant like the constants of proportionality in physics? Can light be of constant velocity if no spatiotemporal constant of proportionality exists that makes it constant in all physical circumstances? Even the Planck constant is not genuine a proportionality in the strictest sense due to the insufficiency in universality of the units of mass, energy etc. in relation to quanta.
The reader will now surely ask what the meaning and implications of such a questioning would be! The constancy of the velocity of light is bound to experiments within this universe, that too within the phase of the universe where we live. Its universalization is merely a matter of experiments in our part and phase of the universe, and not of all parts and phases of the whole cosmos.
If the amount of matter-energy in the big bang (or even at the bang of a certain amount of matter-energy within a region of the universe) is, let us say, A, then the highest transportation speed would be fixed by the first propagations that arise from the big bang at issue.
That region of the cosmos or of our big bang universe as such has produced a maximal velocity at the start of its phase of expansion, and this limit cannot be overcome by any other propagation within that region of the cosmos or that universe. This is a very pragmatic fact, and not a theoretical limit of all propagations in the universe!
There can be another region of our big bang universe or another phase (say, another phase of expansion, or its contraction phase), where the amount of matter-energy directly available for work is less. The amount of energy here is, say, B – for causal reasons determined by the amount of matter-energy available for work, due to its exteriorizing some energy during the previous phases of evolution.
This can naturally result in the causal determination of the maximal photonal (or any other) velocity being limited to another amount. This is simply because of the difference of density due to the difference in the amount of matter-energy available within that universe or part-universe of the multiverse cosmos.
If not, we may admit at least that there will be speed values A, B, C, etc. in a finite number of times, and then there will be another level, determined by, say, speed values alpha, beta, gamma, etc., where the propagation velocity would be lower or higher.
This, in my opinion, is a solid argument to keep our minds open to accept the facts that (1) the speed of light need not be a constant for all regions of the universe or for all universes, (2) in this case some universes may have superluminal velocities, (3) these propagations will surely enter some universes other than the one/s in which they were produced, and (4) it is extremely difficult to detect them in our universe. But this need not mean non-existence of superluminal velocities.
Can we now say that there will be a general constant of proportionality between possible forms of source-independent (source-independent with respect to objects in their own universes) propagations? If this is imaginable, it can really be called a constant. But if there is a constant of proportionality between the various highest speed limits in each universe, this would have to mean that there are units of difference between the limits speeds of every two universes. But the existence of this sort of a proportionality constant is a matter merely of speculation.
How then can the this-worldly luminal velocity be a constant beyond our universe or our cluster of universes, where its velocity of propagation was determined fully causally by the available amount of density of matter-energy at the bang or start of whatever expansion there is in the local universe?
I have discussed this in two of my books (2014, 2018), the latter being a more generalized work than the earlier. I have also questioned the universality of the Lorentz Factor in the Special Theory of Relativity. The initial background of reasoning behind these arguments is the number of insights achieve from reading various books on the velocity of light during my school days, and developed in the course of decades.
I would be pleased to get open-minded reactions on this question.
Bibliography
(1) Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 647 pp., Berlin, 2018.
(2) Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 386 pp., Frankfurt, 2015.
(3) Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: A Superluminal and Local-Causal Physical Ontology, 361 pp., Frankfurt, 2014.
(4) Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All: Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology, 92 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 2nd Edition.
(5) Essenzielle Kosmologie und Philosophie für alle: Gravitational-Koaleszenz-Kosmologie, 104 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 1st Edition.
This question is dedicated only to sharing important research of OTHER RESEARCHERS (not our own) about complex systems, self-organization, emergence, self-repair, self-assembly, and other exiting phenomena observed in Complex Systems.
Please keep in own mind that each research has to promote complex systems and help others to understand them in the context of any scientific filed. We can educate each other in this way.
Experiments, simulations, and theoretical results are equally important.
Links to videos and animations will help everyone to understand the given phenomenon under study quickly and efficiently.
In a hypothetical situation where I have two wires, ones cross section is a cylinder, and the others a star. Both have the same cross section area, both have the same length. What are the differences in electrical properties ?
Are there any experiments done looking into this ?
Also what would happen if a wire had a conical shape, by length ?
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I know that δ(f(x))=∑δ(x−xi)/f′(xi). What will be the expression if "f" is a function of two variables, i.e. δ(f(x,y))=?
This question discusses the YES answer. We don't need the √-1.
The complex numbers, using rational numbers (i.e., the Gauss set G) or mathematical real-numbers (the set R), are artificial. Can they be avoided?
Math cannot be in ones head, as explains [1].
To realize the YES answer, one must advance over current knowledge, and may sound strange. But, every path in a complex space must begin and end in a rational number -- anything that can be measured, or produced, must be a rational number. Complex numbers are not needed, physically, as a number. But, in algebra, they are useful.
The YES answer can improve the efficiency in using numbers in calculations, although it is less advantageous in algebra calculations, like in the well-known Gauss identity.
For example, in the FFT [2], there is no need to compute complex functions, or trigonometric functions.
This may lead to further improvement in computation time over the FFT, already providing orders of magnitude improvement in computation time over FT with mathematical real-numbers. Both the FT and the FFT are revealed to be equivalent -- see [2].
I detail this in [3] for comments. Maybe one can build a faster FFT (or, FFFT)?
The answer may also consider further advances into quantum computing?
[2]
Preprint FT = FFT
[2]
Preprint The quantum set Q*
Hello, What physical value do you think is interesting to compare my car static torsional stiffness (kN·m/degree) values with? The volume of the car? the mass ? its length? or something else ? looking for correlations. If you have any interesting graphic suggestions and tell me why. Thank you.
A project I am working on is the evaluation of stigma temperature in outdoor conditions (solar radiation up to 800-900 W/m2 and air temperature varying between 10-30 degrees).
I am utilizing three different instruments,
1. Thermal Camera that can be attached to a cell phone (thermal expert Q1)
2. Type T thermocouples 32 AWG (0.008 inches in diameter or 0.3255 mm2)
3. IR thermometer
The instruments were calibrated with a certified digital thermometer.
When all three methods are pooled together, we notice that IR camera and thermocouples have near consistent results while the IR thermometer is nearly systematically cooler than the two other methods (of about 1.5 degrees Celsius). This is odd and difficult to explain. Also, these values for the IR thermometer always make stigma cooler than air, which would not make much physical sense as the stigmas don't have any cooling mechanisms to our knowledge. Consequently, I am wondering if anybody has had any experience with any of these three instruments in order to help me get a better understanding of what could be the issue, but most importantly which instrument is actually the best to measure temperature.
Thank you for your time,
The Nobel Prize Summit 2023: Truth, Trust and Hope has started today, 24 May 2023. The summit encourages participation. Thus, I have sent an open letter and eagerly anticipate their response. Please comment if the points I have made is adequate enough.
Open Letter to The Nobel Committee for Physics
Is There a Nobel Prize for Metaphysics?
Dear Nobel Committee for Physics,
Among the differences between an established religion, such as Roman Catholicism, and science, is the presence of a hierarchical organization in the former for defending its creed and conducting its affairs. The head of the religious institution ultimately bears responsibility for the veracity of its claims and strategic policies. This accountability was evident in historical figures like John Wycliffe, Jan Hus, and Martin Luther, who held the papacy responsible for wrong doctrines, such as the indulgence scandal during the late Middle Ages. In that context, challenging such doctrines, albeit with the anticipated risk of being burned at the stake, involved posting opposing theses on the doors of churches.
In contrast, the scientific endeavour lacks a tangible temple, and no definitive organization exists to be held accountable for possible misconducts. Science is a collective effort by scientists and scientific institutes to discover new facts within and beyond our current understanding. While scientists may occasionally flirt with science fiction, they ultimately make significant leaps in understanding the universe. However, problems arise when a branch of science is held and defended as a sacred dogma, disregarding principles such as falsifiability. This mentality can lead to a rule of pseudo-scientific oppression, similar to historical instances like the Galileo or Lysenko affairs. Within this realm, there is little chance of liberating science from science fiction. Any criticism is met with ridicule, damnation, and exclusion, reminiscent of the attitudes displayed by arrogant religious establishments during the medieval period. Unfortunately, it seems that the scientific establishment has not learned from these lessons and has failed to provide a process for dealing with these unfortunate and embarrassing scenarios. On the contrary, it is preoccupied with praising and celebrating its achievements while stubbornly closing its ears to sincere critical voices.
Allow me to illustrate my concerns through the lens of relativistic physics, a subject that has captured my interest. Initially, I was filled with excitement, recognizing the great challenges and intellectual richness that lay before me. However, as I delved deeper, I encountered several perplexing issues with no satisfactory answers provided by physicists. While the majority accepts relativity as it stands, what if one does not accept the various inherent paradoxes and seeks a deeper insight?
Gradually, I discovered that certain scientific steps are not taken correctly in this branch of science. For example, we place our trust in scientists to conduct proper analyses of experiments. Yet, I stumbled upon evidence suggesting that this trust may have been misplaced in the case of a renowned experiment that played a pivotal role in heralding relativistic physics. If this claim is indeed valid, it represents a grave concern and a significant scandal for the scientific community. To clarify my points, I wrote reports and raised my concerns. Fortunately, there are still venues outside established institutions where critical perspectives are not yet suppressed. However, the reactions I received ranged from silence to condescending remarks infused with irritation. I was met with statements like "everything has been proven many times over, what are you talking about?" or "go and find your mistake yourself." Instead of responding to my pointed questions and concerns, a professor even suggested that I should broaden my knowledge by studying various other subjects.
While we may excuse the inability of poor, uneducated peasants in the Middle Ages to scrutinize the veracity of the Church's doctrine against the Latin Bible, there is no excuse for professors of physics and mathematics to be unwilling to revaluate the analysis of an experiment and either refute the criticism or acknowledge an error. It raises suspicions about the reliability of science itself if, for over 125 years, the famous Michelson-Morley experiment has not been subjected to rigorous and accurate analysis.
Furthermore, I am deeply concerned that the problem has been exacerbated by certain physicists rediscovering the power and benefits of metaphysics. They have proudly replaced real experiments with thought experiments conducted with thought-equipment. Consequently, theoretical physicists find themselves compelled to shut the door on genuine scientific criticism of their enigmatic activities. Simply put, the acceptance of experiment-free science has been the root cause of all these wrongdoings.
To demonstrate the consequences of this damaging trend, I will briefly mention two more complications among many others:
1. Scientists commonly represent time with the letter 't', assuming it has dimension T, and confidently perform mathematical calculations based on this assumption. However, when it comes to relativistic physics, time is represented as 'ct' with dimension L, and any brave individual questioning this inconsistency is shunned from scientific circles and excluded from canonical publications.
2. Even after approximately 120 years, eminent physicist and Nobel Prize laureate Richard Feynman, along with various pro