I wonder if the simple answer to your final question is, perhaps surprisingly, the past. The past is thus and so and therefore 'classical'. The dynamic present is always 'quantum', indeterminate, 'in flagrante delicto' one might say. I do not claim to understand this fully but if we take Whitehead's account of the world as 'actual occasions' then a quantum dynamic event or unit or perhaps 'system' (and I think we can say that all **dynamic units** are quantised) is an occasion that 'takes up' the past. So the wave function is described in terms of its own differentials - its inherent dynamic dispositions - plus a field of potentials that are thus and so and hence for the occasion, past. The wave function has values in space and time but until the final observation is made there is no fact of the matter what these are. On the other hand it seems that the potentials that guide the progression of this dynamic unit, while being in both space and time, are the values they are at those times in those places. (Perhaps they are made determinate by this dynamic event in hand.) I would be interested to know if this solution founders but to me it makes sense of the fact that quantum theory has within it this strange dichotomy all the time. Some values are 'quantum' and others 'classical'. It gives a meaning to 'now' which Einstein could not fathom, because now is different from the past in this fundamental respect. What I cannot work out is how this impacts on the worries about GR and QFT being compatible. I also note that you imply that parameters other than spacetime are classical, which seems right for spin or charge which might make things more complicated.

Jonathan, you have mentioned "spin". Indeed. Mathematically we the group SU(2) the symmetry group responsible for spin. The group manifold is essentially the perfectly Euclidean 3-dimensional sphere. The group itself is not "fluctuating". We do not have "quantum fluctuations of the symmetry group". Therefore the symmetry behind the spin is indeed "classica". Not everything, as it seems undergoes "quantum fluctuations".

Your mention of "the past" seems to be also quite relevant. I did not think of it, at least not while formulating my question, so thanks for bringing it forward! Joining Whitehead's "process" is probably also relevant.

I agree that "everything is quantum", on the following basis: Physical theories usually have a range of applicability, set by the window of scale parameters of observations explained by the theory in question. There is though one exception to this rule: quantum theory. Despite of intense efforts it find its limitts it proved to be correct towards the microscopic direction, the lates triumph being the Higgs particle. There are rather encouraging results to believe that classical physics, wieved with its usual macroscopic resolution, can can be derived from quantum field theory. My understanding of this exeption is that it simply supports the idea that quantum mechanics is a systematic and opimised way of handling partial informations. In other words, it is epistemology and not ontology. As such, it can never fail. Terminal for physics?

Janos, I understand your position. But: if quantum theory is so universal, so "epistemological", should it not be applied to itself? With, for instance, the following conclusion (using complementarity): if we try to find the exact limits of quantum theory, then we destroy it! Should not quantum theory, as Niels Bohr wanted it, be considered not as object under observation, but rather using the wholeness of the theory itself and the limits of the being that have constructed it?

This is an interesting proposition, Arkadiusz. I understand complementarity, the uncertainty principle, not only as the manifestation of the disturbance of the system by observation. Since the results of Aspen and c.o. we may say that the result of certain observations are uncertain because they do not exist before the observation. Now, returning this to your suggestion, it seems that we create the limits as soon as we ask question about it. Do you remember Wheeler's quantum bar-kokhba game? People send one person out of the room and agree not to fix any subject. The person returns, poses the first question, the answer is an arbitrary yes or no. But the person, responding to each subsequent asnwer must imagine a subject which is consistent with all previoius answer and respond accordingly. The game progresses, there is lot of thinking, establishing correlations, without a unique, well defined subject. Where is the limit? May the unity you mention is this limitless feature?

Janos, if we look at the interesting game that you rightly mentioned here, we can also look at it from a meta-level. Indeed something is emerging "spontaneously" here, but someone has "organized" the game in a specific way.

In mathematics we do not like such a mixing of levels. We are trying always to work within a specific system of axioms (except of meta-mathematicians like Russell and Goedel who dared to go into uncharted territories to probe the limits of the axiomatic approach). But in physics we do not stick to "system axioms", we have much more freedom, we use analogies, mix levels of abstraction. This makes physics more difficult than mathematics, but it also makes it more interesting IMO.

There are domains in physics that are well paved and do not offer much freedom in interpretation. But quantum theory brought us to a new territory, where we touch philosophy, psychology, meaning of probability, meaning of consciousness, life etc. I think one should be open-minded at this point and do not stick to this or that axiomatic formalism or some attempt of "organizing the subject". Instead we should look for new applications of different aspects of quantum theory (what inddeed happens more and more). It is by applications that we may, at the end, get a better understanding of what it is about.

Quoting from J. A. Wheeler's "Geons, Black Holes & Quantum Foam":

"Id like to know

what this whole show

is all about

before it's out":

:

There is an assumption in the original question that may need some consideration. That is - everything results from actions at the smallest level (the quantum level). This has been an assumption of science for quite some time, however where is the evidence for it? And is there evidence against it?

Quantum theory does not present evidence of this, it is an assumption - otherwise we would be able to describe (via quantum calculations) the actions of a billiard ball from the quantum equations. Physicists might 'believe' we can accomplish this in the future with appropriate mathematical workings (the assumption noted), however it is not something that can be done today.

On the other side - there are discussions that suggest not all actions can be defined as extending from the small scale to the large scale.

Consider the second prize of the FQXi 2012 contest:

http://fqxi.org/community/essay/winners/2012.1

This paper gives thought to influences from the larger scale to the smaller (even quantum) scale.

Note that providing many instances of the smaller world defining actions on the larger is insufficient to 'prove' this is always the case, while providing even a single instance of a larger scale impacting the smaller is sufficient to disprove the assumption.

Given that there are papers presenting effects of the larger on the smaller, I believe it is time physics (physicists) present the case that everything can be determined by actions on the small scale - which includes nullifying the presentations of actions on the larger to the smaller.

I will suggest that the problem of gravity (a large scale phenomena) and the expanding universe might be indications that this assumption is incorrect. What about all the actions and objects in between the very large and very small scales?

What if when two billiard balls hit, they do so at many levels of scale - not just the quantum? Where is the evidence against this and for only the quantum level 'hitting? It certainly doesn't come from our direct experience of billiard balls.

If billiard balls hit at a range of scale, then they hit along a 'surface' not accounted for by current thinking.

What if 'scale'' is an actual characteristic of the universe, required for locating an object in the universe, and a 'surface' along which actions can occur? This does not seem to be accounted for via our current human centered 3-dimensional physical space paradigm. Maybe our paradigm needs an upgrade?

I think this assumption that all things stem from the quantum is about to come under heavy scrutiny and will not survive the test.

Donald, thanks for your comment. Concerning gravitation, perhaps I will add the abstract from one of the papers of S. Carlip:

http://arxiv.org/abs/0803.3456

Is Quantum Gravity Necessary?

S. Carlip

Abstract

In view of the enormous difficulties we seem to face in quantizing general

relativity, we should perhaps consider the possibility that gravity is a

fundamentally classical interaction. Theoretical arguments against such

mixed classical-quantum models are strong, but not conclusive, and the

question is ultimately one for experiment. I review some work in progress

on the possibility of experimental tests, exploiting the nonlinearity of the

classical-quantum coupling, that could help settle this question.

In this respect Carlip is open-minded. While he is working on different ways of exploring "quantum gravity", he seems to keep his eyes wide open toward other possibilities.

Concerning the large and the small, it may be so that there is a whole world of "information" that needs for its description going beyond space and time. While "quantum information" is an interesting and quickly developing domain of research, the very concept of information and of organization may lead us somewhere else, towards the realms where "large" and "small" even cease to make sense.

Well, these are just some thoughts ....

@Arkadiusz

Thank you for the article reference. However this still makes the assumption that everything occurs on the quantum level. The change in thinking that is needed to address these problems is much larger than tying gravity to quantum actions.

To continue with the question of this thread - 'Is everything quantum?' - if this is true, then all that occurs on our level, that our eyes see, has to be fiction. Our eyes are completely deceived when two billiard balls hit, since the entire (current scientific) explanation of what occurs, all movement, is on the quantum level.

Yes - there are all sorts of actions occurring on the quantum level. But action also occurs on our level and on the levels in between. It is not an either/or answer - it is an 'all the above' answer. The problem is that 'all the above' cannot be adequately captured by a 3-dimensional model of space. 'All the above' means that actions are happening at multiple levels of scale at once. This is not in accord with the presumption that everything stems from the smallest scale.

This also means that scale is part of space. We might think this statement is obvious, except that a 3-dimensional model does not include scale. Our models are of individual levels of scale, with each level using a (separate) 3-dimensional space We are still stuck in a 2500+ year old paradigm of space (which comes from how we visualize space from our human perspective). Our model needs to be expanded, which will impact our interpretations of what is going on in our equations (it doesn't have to alter these, just the interpretation of them).

There is a much larger change in paradigm needed here. The explanation that everything occurs (only) on the small scale belies all the evidence of our senses - our eyes, ears, touch, smell, taste. How can an explanation 'of reality' that excludes our direct experiences be correct? It cannot be correct. However that does not mean our current theories are all false: 'All the above', what our senses tell us and what we have discovered at the cellular, molecular, atomic, and sub-atomic levels all occur together. However this will not fit in a model of space that does not account for scale.

Thank you, Arkadiusz for the next step, let us make it.

I believe that the difficulty of leaving the "axiomatic" level lies in the unreasonable success of mathematics (Wigner), more precisely the unexpected usefulness of numbers. Numbers were invented in India, as far as I know, to count object and animals. We have gone quite far since that time with more or less a linear generalizations. Why is such an unimaginable success and how to go beyond? Are numbers really as important as they seem or we simply got stuck with them and ask only questions which are answered by them?

Maybe the appearance of probability, not as an indication of existing but for us missing informations (classical statistical physics) but rather as an objective property of Nature (quantum mechanics) is a hint to follow. Probability is not measurable, at least in finite amount of time, it captures some informations from an infinite series but we are at loss about its meaning.

I think that there is no conflict between quantum and classical physics, the former is simply an illusion, following from observations of rough resolution. A phase transition like mechanism may replace the irreversible collapse of the wave function, the speed of the collaps being pushed up by the number of particles, participating in the collapse. QFT can handle such problems, at least in a baby version.

The generalization you mention might be possible to approach by renormalization group. Its main lesson is that theobserved phenomena depend on the scale of observations and it suggests ideas to follow such a dependence in a systematic manner.

But I am convinced that a real step forward can be made by a common understanding of quantum mechanics and neurology and psychology. After all, probaility reflects the laws of Nature as well as of our brain. I agree, that we should be more open minded. Even life seems to be a manifestation of quantum order at macroscopic scale. I am lacking discussions of such issues not only with the representatives of life sciences but with physicists, too. The path is narrow among shallow, big words and the miriads of technical details.

Thank you for the nice quotation from Wheeler. I did not know this book, shall get it.

I am reading in "Process, System, Causality, and Quantum Mechanics, A Psychoanalysis of Animal Faith" by

H. Pierre Noyes, Tom Etter

http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9808011

"Quantum and classical now stand revealed as two \shapes" made of the same stu®, so there is nothing more mysterious about their both being parts of the same process than there is about round wheels and square windows both being parts of the same car."

...

"But then comes the big question: What about the other shapes? The ones other

than quantum or classical that we have never before imagined, and therefore never thought to look for in nature? We'll brie°y touch on the big question, but it calls for a much bigger answer than we can give here, or now."

That sounds intriguing.

In our cognitive behaviors to the universe, we human created words, quantities, patterns,…, try to have a good cognition to the universe. The cognitive results are just like pictures by painters. Quantum is just one of the tools for us in our cognitive behavior, so if quantum is everything, what to do with words, patterns,…?

Arkady!

On the day of your name-I wish you much health and well-being

Jurek

Hi Arkady!

Let me start from quotation: "Some physicists say”everything is quantum”? ".  In other words: The universe is made up of quantum. Tthis is an example of statement, about whom it is difficult to say whether it is true or false. We should rather talk about better or worse description of the world:-)?

Jurek

Hello Arkadiusz,

There is a nice paper by Laughlin and Pines in PNAS 97, 28-31 (2000) where the difference is pointed out between a "theory of everything" and a "theory of every thing". The former is the reductionistic idea that there is an ultimate theory that explains all phenomena ranging from elementary particle physics to e.g. mental disease. I agree with the authors that this idea is complete nonsens. The latter (a theory of every thing) has nothing to do with that.

Now to the physicists. Those who claim "everything is quantum" are in my honest opinion, just like those who claim "string theory is a candidate for a theory of everything", completely out of touch with the basics of science, up to the point of being delusional. E.g. mental disease is not quantum, nor will quantum theory or string theory ever give an explanation for why a frog is green. Also the right to freedom of speech is not quantum, and so on and so on. In other words: this statement fails because of the meaning of the word "everything".

The statement "every thing is a quantum" (or "every thing is made up of quanta"), on the other hand, is the fundamental belief in the disciplinary matrix determined by quantum theory. Of course the space and time parameters are not quanta, but space and time parameters are not 'things', that is, are not substances that exist. So I think this second statement is correct, at least in the disciplinary matrix of quantum theory.

Another question is whether that second statement "every thing is a quantum" is an absolute truth. I don't think so, because I do not believe that quantum theory is the final answer to the foundational questions. But that's just me talking.

Regards, Marcoen

That is a nice story, Marcoen. I am reasonably happy that quantum theory is the final answer to at least some of the fundamental questions. One might query whether 'thing' is the right word, since it brings to  mind 'objects', which are very dubious entities. James Ladyman said Every Thing Must Go and I tend to agree. 

Maybe all there is is dynamic connections, and experiences. And maybe dynamic connections are experiences and experiences are dynamic connections, depending on the point of view or choice of protagonist. If so, I suspect they are all quantised. And maybe this is even an analytic truth if to be A connection is to be something discrete and therefore in some way discontinuous from the rest - quantised?

Quantum is the soul of mathematics, no mathematics without quantum. So, everything can be quantum for mathematics, in mathematics.

@Jonathan: quantum physics certainly provides an answer to foundational questions, but it still remains an uncertainty whether this answer is the final answer. For example, if gravitational repulsion were to to be detected experimentally, then it is a certainty that modern quantum physics is false.

@Geng Ouyang: I'm puzzled by your post. Could you explain what your motivation is to make the statement "no mathematics without quantum" ? I could agree that some developments in mathematics have been spurred by developments in quantum physics, but e.g. axiomatic set theory (ZF), the most widely accepted foundation for mathematics, has nothing to do with quantum theory: the constants (sets) and the axioms of the theory are without any fundament in physical reality - in addition, set theory was developed before quantum theory. Isn't this then 'mathematics without quantum'?

Why would gravitational repulsion be a specific problem Marcoen? Quantum theory clearly has a lot more potential in terms of being fleshed out with all sorts of unrecognised Bose modes and probably some tidying up of interpretation of the role of gravity and spacetime in general but the central idea of energy always belonging to discrete quantised entities while relating according to continuous laws looks to me to be something that will hold good. Just making sense of chemical valency seems to me to be enough to put money on quantisation being here to stay.

What would be specially troublesome about gravitational repulsion?

Dear Marcoen,

Quantum has very close relationship with quantitative, quantitation and quantity. It is said that numbers are languages of mathematics?

@Jonathan: if quantum theory is extended with the assumption that the gravitational interaction between matter and antimatter is repulsive, then quantum theory makes a certain prediction that can easily be verified experimentally. That has been done, and it turns out that the prediction is false. Usually this is taken as a theoretical argument against the existence of repulsive gravity, but if the latter were to be detected experimentally then it means of course that quantum physics (QED & QCD) is false. For details see my paper Astrophys. Space Sci. 350, 777-780 (2014) accessible from my page.

I did develop a theory that (only) holds in the case of repulsive gravity. It corresponds with the view that the universe is best seen in terms of processes, rather than in terms of interactions; the observed process of evolution then exists of discrete individual processes that take place at supersmall scale. In that framework, "nothing is quantum" if we take 'quantum' to mean the quantum of contemporary physics. However, my theory is still speculative and needs to be supplemented with additional results (not the least of which is an experimental detection of repulsive gravity) before it can be  taken serious by the community at large. So for the moment, I think that "every thing is quantum" is still the best approach for the (fundamental) study of physical reality.

@Geng Ouyang: the language of mathematics is the language of axiomatic set theory. A number is just a notation for a certain set.

How many kinds of numbers do we have in mathematics?

What would be remained in mathematics without all kinds of numbers------a half or one third or …?

Marcoen:

Axiomatic set theory is not the only way to build out mathematics.  It also may not be the 'best way' - something hotly debated in some foundational mathematics circles (check out some Foundations of Mathematics conversations).  As well, it has some significant deficiencies, which Russell and others have come up against (esp. recursive sets - the set of all sets, does it contain itself?).  One runs into paradoxes if recursive sets are allowed (similar to 'This statement is a lie.').

So (current) mathematics is not the firm foundation many people (including physicists) seem to think it is.

As well, quantum theory uses probability mathematics, which also has it's limitations.  And any limitations of the underlying mathematics should be, at a minimum, accounted for in the use of it - something I have not seen much with physics (an exception is the late Thomas Brody's 'The Philosophy Behind Physics').

Note that probability assumes that 'randomness' exists - something that cannot be 'proven'.  Maybe we should only be using Bayesian Probabilities?  In a similar vein, Statistics assumes that actions on a smaller scale can produce 'group' actions on a higher scale (eg. statistical theory of gases) - at the expense of excluding individual actions on the smaller scale.  This use of mathematics explicitly leaves out information from the 'averaged' results.

We usually look at how mathematics is useful in describing nature (the supposed 'Unreasonableness' of the connection), however we have not seriously considered how the limitations of the underlying mathematics impacts the physical theories using them.

We might be able to tidy a few things up (and cause some new issues) if we considered the limitations of that 'Unreasonable' connection.

To the point of this thread, every thing might have a quantum level to it, but there exist many other levels of reality (macro, astronomic, etc.), each of which appear to have actions, causes and effects at their own level.  The impacts of those other levels on the quantum level has not been seriously considered (esp. of how human thought has impacted the quantum world), which would strongly suggest that we have not begun to understand the situation adequately.  And one reason for this might be that our mathematical tools cannot traverse levels of scale adequately (try adding 3.14 X 10^23 with 1.99 x 10^-19 - now consider the error terms for any such measurements).

The 'Unreasonable' connection of mathematics and nature, esp. quantum physics, has swept far too many issues under the rug to consider 'Everything is quantum' a reasonable situation (or as you, Marcoen, stated 'complete nonsense').

Don

Dear Donald,

I think it may be a mistake to consider 'macro' or even astonomic distinct from the quantum level. Quantum level events are not 'small'. In theory they involve values throughout the universe. In practical terms they are very often 'large'. The valency electrons in a metal spoon are 'as large as' the spoon if they are any size at all. The quantised phononic modes in a bell are the size of the bell. Quantised seismic modes traverse the globe. Photonic modes traverse the universe. My impression is that serious thought HAS been given to the top down relations between macro and cosmic scale dynamics and quantum theory in the last thirty years. That is the whole point of applying Goldstone theorem to asymmetries of order in space as I understand it. References to non-quantum levels of dynamic 'reality' are usually intellectual chunking mechanisms for practical application rather than anything outside the rules of quantum theory itself. Top down is part of quantum field theory now and when it is claimed to exist otherwise my impression is that it is usually bogus.

Donald,

Axiomatic set theory is, of course, the best foundation for mathematics currently in existence. Apart from intuitionism (which doesn't use standard first-order logic), the only two alternatives that I know of are that there is a category of categories that may serve as a foundation, and on the other hand one can formulate a foundational theory in terms of matrices (see my paper in Log. Anal.). But to my knowledge, these alternative foundations are not stronger than axiomatic set theory.

Russel hasn't discovered any deficiencies in axiomatic set theory: one has to distuinguish axiomatic set theory from the old naive set theory - it is in the latter that Russel found a paradox. Apart from Gödel's incompleteness theorems, the main issue in set theory is that the continuum hypothesis isn't decidable in ZF: you cannot prove with the axioms of ZF whether or not there is a set with a cardinality larger than that of the natural numbers, but smaller than that of the powerset of the naturals. So the research is towards a more complete set of axioms (so in fact there are several versions of axiomatic set theory like ZF, ZFC, ZFCH etc).

The universe of mathematics is so vast that physics only uses a tiny fraction of it. The limitations of set theory have, to my knowledge, no consequences whatsoever for the math that is applied in physics. Mathematically one can easily add the numbers 3.14*1023 and 1.99*10-19: it is as straightforward as adding 1 and 1. But physically measuring any quantity as large as the former number with a margin of error smaller than the latter number is impossible. However, one should not confuse the limits of technology with the limits of mathematics.

On top-down: Henry Stapp has developed a theory of how thoughts influence the quantum world.

Marcoen

Dear Friends

If the planetary models in quantum mechanics are an example of the top-down causation, can we conclude that "quantum" is everything:-)?

Another work relating to number is challenging us.

When we study ”the meaning of zero" and the location of zero in “number spectrum” in our mathematics, an unbalanced defect can be easily discovered: “zero" appears on one side of the “number spectrum” as a kind of mathematical language telling people a situation of “ nothing, not-being,…”; but on the other side of the “number spectrum” we lack of another kind of mathematical language telling people an opposite situation to “zero”------“ something, being,…”.

We need a new number symbol (“yan”) with opposite meaning to zero locating at the opposite side of zero in the “number spectrum” to make up the structural incompleteness of “number spectrum” and to complete the existence of “zero”.

Dear Quyang

1,2,3 and so on are not  opposite to "zero"?

Dear Mr. Jerzy Hanckowiak,

According to my studies, those number forms with “big” or “small” value of quantity meaning such as 1, 2, 3 and so on are between two endpoints of "zero" and “yan” in “number spectrum” but not opposite to "zero" and “yan”.

Sincerely yours,

Geng

If we consider relativity, then a 'zero' position is not different than a '1' position.  However, our mathematics calls out 'zero' as being significantly different than '1' (eg. we can divide any number by any other number - except 'zero').

So, as Geng points out, 'zero' does operate differently tan any other number.

@Marcoen:  The discussions I am seeing on the Foundations of Mathematics do not put ZF or ZFC in the central position you seem to place it.  There are other alternatives, including to set theory itself, vying for this central place today.  ZF and ZFC do seem to dominate, however they do not appear to be sufficient (eg. the Continuum Hypothesis).  So what I read does not agree that set theory is able to handle Mathematical Foundations adequately.

I would like to see your specific result of adding these two values (3.14*10^23 and 1.99*10^-19:) and then I could consider if it is such a simple operation.

@Jonathan:  I quite agree with you that the macro, micro, particle, and astronomic scales should be considered as a connected reality.  I would challenge you to present how these are all connected using only a 3-D model of space.  My contention is that the scale of an object is a critical aspect that cannot be measured using only our traditional 3 degrees of freedom.  A fourth degree of physical space is required to account for scale - with entire 3-D spaces existing at each level of scale.

It is only via a 4-D model of space, that includes scale, that we can understand how "The valency electrons in a metal spoon are 'as large as' the spoon".

Donald

Thank you, dear Donald,

ZERO as a member of “mathematic language”, it does exist in our science when we have a positional numeric system and it served as a place order.”------we created and defined something in universe for our science.

Now the exactly same thing happens to “a new number symbol with opposite meaning to zero locating at the opposite side of zero in the “number spectrum” to make up the structural incompleteness of “number spectrum” and to complete the meaning of “zero”.

Sincerely yours,

Geng

Dear Donald,

I think you are muddling propositions in mathematics about structural types with propositions in physics about dynamic tokens, which involve comparisons to metric standards, so scale is included in the three spatial dimensions. If measuring (comparing one thing to another) does not involve scale I am not sure what it involves. 

From the cognition point of view:

As a kind of mathematical language, the roles zero plays are decided both mathematically and linguistically.

As a basic numerical (number) element, zero locates at the right position in the Table of the Numerical Elements (Number Spectrum) such as Table of the Chemical Elements in chemistry and Light Spectrum in physics.

Jonathan

I believe scale is implicitly included in measurements, however it needs to be explicitly presented.  The exponents used in our 3-D measurements implicitly indicate the scale of our measurements - so we have to 'interpret' the scale of our measurements from the exponents of measurement.

I can put two 3-D measurements next to each other (say 23 x 10^2 and 15 x 10^12).  Just looking at the numbers does not provide the scale of the quantities.  Without knowing the scale of the units of measure, I will not know if they are of the same scale. I will have to 'normalize' the units of measure in order to compare the scale of the two measurements (say they are in meters and pico-meters respectively - so normalizing makes them 23 x 10^2 meters and 15 x 10^3 meters).  This means that scale is implicit and not explicit in the measurements (it is not directly derived from the quantity itself).

Consider that in 3-D space, we should be able to measure the distance between any two objects in this space.  How can we measure the distance between two objects of very different scale - say the distance from the sun to a cell in your body?  If we explicitly identified the scale of these objects, we would know this would be a difficult measurement.  Explicitly identifying the scale means we now have 4 measurements to locate an object in space.  I suggest that this is precisely the reality we have before us, one in which we need to identify the scale of objects in space - a 4-D spatial reality.

Sorry, Donald, but I think you are inventing a non-problem. The numbers used in measurements are arbitrary. Measurements are comparisons of lengths and durations (etc) with standard units 0 which are scales - so measurement is scaled by definition. If there is someone else on RG who agrees with you that there really is a problem I would be interested, but if it is only you with this idea I am tempted to assume that you have got it muddled.

Jonathan

How would you measure the distance between the sun and a cell in a human body? This is a distance measurement that should be a no-brainer in a strictly 3-D spatial universe.  However, the location of an object does require us to identify it's scale (a non-traditional 4-D spacial measurement). 

Time will tell, which I will trust over your opinion.