Since ostensibly the visible portion of the universe is such a very small percentage of the whole and so much of what's visible results from light that began its journey millions of years ago, it's difficult to regard such claims as more than mere possibilities or speculations. Similar claims of potential fundamental change were not-so-long-ago made for string theory, which has become bogged down in multidimensional epicycles. Who at present can authoritatively say what's "beyond the beyond"? Fundamental change would require a complete paradigm shift and that doesn't seem to be just over the horizon.

"The nearest large galaxy to us, Andromeda, is 2.5 million light-years away. So, we see Andromeda as it was 2.5 million years in the past. The universe is filled with billions of galaxies, all farther away than this." — https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/light-year/en/

Accepted, Karl, but whether the actions of the past cannot supply or can material for the present is another matter. Leading on to why cause and effect have to be fixed, and why they are not just human perception. Surely Quantum Physics determines that there are several possible effects and causes in one event?

Quantum mechanics (and indeed also higher-level theories such as Shannon-Weaver physical information theories) allows for nondeterministic causality — no predetermined or predictable effect, but a random effect from within a constrained range of possibilities that have various probabilities. Causation is not just a human perception according to physics itself, because quantum mechanical and other physical processes that got us to where we are today were underway billions of years before the existence of perceivers.

Karl recent research has determined that while it is believed that events cannot unhappen the effects of such events can be reversed. An event has probabilities of events, although its claimed the original event once in the past cannot change or be subject to probabilities. The probable events from the past event are called present. These processes are originally time-asymmetric but move towards time symmetric. Now while this does not invalidate your position it indicates that the consequent event is not predetermined but subject to limited probability. The reversal of effects that preclude the next event can occur within the asymmetric time state.

Article New Concept of Physics Energy Behaviour and Its Application ...

Before considering other contributions here it is worth looking further at cause and effect.

Physics determination, see above, that the effects of events produce probabilities is constructed at the level of particles colliding. There is as always a relational aspect to these events. The work of Marina Cortes/Smolin (The Universe as a Process of Unique Events, Physical Review 2014) determines that time (very rightly) is not a by-product but is essential to cause and effect. But as there is a probabilistic side to particle events within relational positions then it is possible, given the sheer numbers of such events, that seepage occurs arising to new probabilistic relational events. Those probabilistic events can determine future events.

The charting of cause and effect results in a large number of future possible events, certainly in the directly observable world.

So, for example, if I had left my office drawer open, then got up and knocked my leg against it, this would be one of many possible or probable events because of the number of possible events in the past. This combines the insights of Judea Pearl and Dana Mackenzie (The Book of Why, the new science of cause and effect: Basic Books, 2018) that claims that association is more important to scientific understanding than cause and effect based largely on probability. What looks like cause and effect may be a more complex model after all. The same model of gravity might, just might, not be sustainable throughout the cosmos.

Sure. The only question is, when. For "fundamental changes" to the theory, we need experiments to be explained. Problems like "nonlocality" and "quantum measurement" do not count. QM correctly predicts experimental results, the rest is our trouble.

On the other hand, if we think about the development of classical mechanics from Newton's fluxions to Lagrangians and manifolds, a similar development of mathematics of QM should also be expected. However, I would rather not call this "fundamental change".

Thanks all.

"Is physics about to undergo fundamental change?"

The "fundamental change" was due many centuries ago! Newton's extra-terrestrial theory of universal gravitational attraction was based on false/wrong foundation that has in time given rise to dark/black cosmic entities; fueled by Albert Einstein's mathematical idealism and the scholasticism fed by Kantian subjective idealism in modern theoretical "physics" - or is it metaphysics as Hegel quipped?

“Newton gave physics an express warning to beware of metaphysics, it is true; but to his own honor, be it said, he did not obey his own warning”. G.W.F. Hegel, “Logic”, Trans. William Wallace, The Claredon Press, Oxford, (2014), §98

Article KEPLER -NEWTON -LEIBNIZ -HEGEL Portentous and Conflicting Le...

Article THE CONCEPTUAL DEFECT OF THE LAW OF UNIVERSAL GRAVITATION OR...

Abdul, I am in admiration of those who buck the trend. And alive to well-argued alternatives to received wisdom. Information and knowledge are not fixed and have at all times cultural energy.

Recent work in New Science has explored the lack of balance in the universe. The distribution of matter is not the same in each direction. Viewed on large scales, it should, in the standard model of cosmology, lambda-CDM, be smooth and regular. Although there appears disagreement here, this may indicate an error in the model.

Stanley Wilkin Dear Stanley, thanks for your bold RG question and also for responding to my post in such a profound way! I can only expect and in reality get; the exact opposite reaction in RG forums!

Please see my following article that uses mathematical equations to show why and how Newton’s adoption of an idealistic (Ptolemaic) perfect circle leads to the elimination of the “centrifugal force” from the planetary systems and to which Leibniz forcefully objected and proposed his own equation conforming to centrifugal force and the elliptical orbit of Kepler. The elliptical orbit shows the reality of the dialectical nature of gravity and a tendency of the orbiting cosmic bodies to a natural outflow. Please see the diagram in the enclosed file, that dramatically demonstrate this difference in outflow between a circular and elliptical orbits of various eccentricities.

I have used Hegel’s dialectical idea of gravity (as a contradiction of attraction and repulsion) and Leibniz’s centrifugal force in an equation of gravity as shown below, which eliminates the need of hypothetical “dark matter” and “dark energy”.

Ep = ma/r^3 – GMm/r – mCr^2; the symbols are explained in the main article.

Article KEPLER -NEWTON -LEIBNIZ -HEGEL Portentous and Conflicting Le...

In my other works, I tried to show that contrary to Minkowsky-Einstein abstract and esoteric “spacetime” geometrical manifold, Hegel’s philosophy of space and time very dimly and in an obscured way anticipated the quantum phenomena through his ontological contradiction, ‘Being-Nothing-Becoming”, that leads to a dialectical evolution of the galaxies and other cosmic formations, and an universe without any beginning or an end! Please see:

Article The Philosophy of Space-Time: Whence Cometh "Matter" and "Motion"?

Best regards, Abdul

I am not an expert in these matters by any means but do understand the arguments. Certainly, I have come across recently a greater interest in Leibniz. Have you read his Monadology?

Yes, Stanley; I have "Leibniz Selection", Edited by P. Wiener, 1951. His "Monads" inexorably led him to infinitesimal calculus - the first time dialectics is consciously used/introduced in mathematics. I also read a lot about Leibniz's long dispute with Newton, over who discovered infinitesimal calculus. Newton, unfortunately, had a very (nasty) dominating personality, he had similar dispute with his countryman Robert Hooke about the quantitative (inverse square) formulation of the "Law of Universal Gravitation"!

Stanley Wilkin

Very Dear Friend !

the sea change should have occurred many many years ago. i don't think the present authoritative autocratic way of running academies shall allow this overly due necessitated revolution. i feel pessimistic. i am director to the Eurasian- polymaths- for -change- Association. "peer-reviewizm" doed not let us publish our articles in journals. my best friend was ostracized from Canada for simply criticizing aspects of Relativity. Physix is in total mess , , , .. , . , . ,.;; ; ; ; ..,

Reza,

Yes, I have been slightly dismayed by the authoritative and firm belief that they know and that is all that needs to be said. I suspect we are at a beginning, not an end of discovery. This seems more like the declaration or orthodoxies.

Digital Capitalism is choking NOT ONLY us , but her own proponents !!

In the story of the digital revolution, and how the early utopian prospects of the web darkened into “a rogue mutation of capitalism marked by concentrations of wealth, knowledge and power unprecedented in human history”. Gmail was launched in 2004; Google subsequently admitted that it has scanned private correspondence for personal information. In the same year, Facebook was founded, its business model also based on the capture of and access to personal information."

Life will not be better for most individuals if current trends expand, extend.............

Who’s really in charge here ?? !!

Digital experiences threaten authentic human interaction /.';/.';/.;/;'/.;'.;'/

A researcher and teacher of digital literacies and technical communication at a state university based in the U.S. Midwest responded, “In the future I expect to have network interactions embedded or subcutaneous on humans. We will have more interactions that are done in networked environments rather than in person. We may not even have to speak to a person for several days.”

WE HAVE TO , ONCE AGAIN , CRY OUT : "GET UNITED ! ALL YOU THE SUPPRESSED NON-CONVENTIONALISTS !! "

Reza, another argument for another question, but pertinent all the same. There are dangers to electronic interaction that need to be adequately explored. Electronic storage does not have the capacity to critique information and therefore cannot discern one source of information from another.

Very Dear Stanley

Algorithmic manners of producing knowledge & science are quite different from heuristic methods.

Fundamental changes generally (( not always )) come from heuristic ones.

Modern+ post_modern physics are badly dependant upon Mathesis , the prevalent Episteme : Which is overwhelmingly algorithmic . . .. . . . . . . ..; ' '';.''';

Reza, A1 is increasing in the USA, especially in social and medical matters, and therefore will provide horrendous problems for future generations. It's a way of ossifying knowledge.

Hello Karl Pfeifer ,

Re "Causation is not just a human perception according to physics itself, because quantum mechanical and other physical processes that got us to where we are today were underway billions of years before the existence of perceivers." I am not sure, but isn't the aforementioned statement somewhat circular? I mean, "Causation is not just a human perception" even though the processes occurred before we perceivers existed. But perceivers are not just unbiased observers: they observe and infer, don't they? Although, I remember you answering a RG question about the definiton of intelligence by stating - and here I am paraphrasing - intelligence is observing without judgement. According to the previous defintion, if we exhibited intelligence, then we would refrain from the crutch of causality about those processes; I really liked your "multidimensional epicycles" critique of string theory. Aren't these "quantum mechanical and other physical processes" just judgements about what supposedly happened in the past, i.e., epicycles - or turtles - all the way down? Well, all the way down to the uncaused cause, which is surely circular.

Regards,

Tom Cuff

Hello Sydney Ernest Grimm

Since no one else seemed to have commented on your statement "Nearly everything is already known.", let me attempt to do so. You nicely hedged your bet by employing the wonderful weasel word 'nearly'. 'Nearly' certainly quantifies the amount of known unknowns and unknown unknowns as being an amount best described as indescribable, as James Burke would say. Of course, there is still the matter of exactly what you mean by word 'everything' in the aforementioned quote. It would seem to me that among those macroscopic everythings there is an enormous amount we still do not know. For instance, people seem to keep discovering new high-temperature superconductors that no one imagined were possible; heck, some of them aren't even metals. And the COVID-19 pandemic accents how little we know about the immune system. Given how wide the spectrum is of the illnesses associated with this disease (asymptomatic, mild illness, hospitalization required, ICU intervention, long haul symptoms, death), it is interesting that there is no test to the tell potential victims where they would fall on the spectrum of symptoms. Things, as they might say, are stubborn things. Or as Sam Cooke put it in his song "Wonderful World": Don't know much about history/Don't know much biology/ ...

Regards,

Tom Cuff

Tom,

I have been reading physics books over the past few months and no one seems there to believe we are at an endpoint. Their enthusiasm is infectious as they realise there is so much to explore and the very nature of physics is up for grabs. Too often on here, statements are made that freeze debate, at least where this subject is concerned.

Stanley Wilkin > “Too often on here, statements are made that freeze debate, at least where this subject is concerned”

Very well said, Stanley! It seems that modern official physics has forgotten the scepticism and questions of David Hume about knowledge and his firm demand that all books on metaphysics be “committed to the flame”! One of the mightiest thinkers of history Immanuel Kant could pacify Hume only by declaring that the objective reality is an “unknowable thing-in-itself”! He warned philosophy to abate any claim to knowledge of the world. Man can only know his thought, his logical categories that he must use to organize his sense perception - the phenomena and deal with them as best as he could.

But physics became increasing more confident with some successes in classical mechanics in terrestrial Nature, to the extent that Lord Kelvin is reported to have claimed the “end of physics”, but soon after; the discovery of the evil quanta followed, the same way 9/11 came by soon after Francis Fukuyama declared “the end of history”! Are we much wiser now?

But you are right! It seems both hilarious and pathetic that official physics seems to be in a rush to nail a board across any future knowledge; with the claim of a “theory of everything”!

Thomas Cuff RE: «Re "Causation is not just a human perception according to physics itself, because quantum mechanical and other physical processes that got us to where we are today were underway billions of years before the existence of perceivers." I am not sure, but isn't the aforementioned statement somewhat circular?»

How is it circular? I am pointing out that, on pain of inconsistency, physicists can't have it both ways; they can't have a causal story in one area and also deny that causality exists. And in fact they don't really deny causality exists, they just have a more nuanced view of causation now than the old Laplacian view, they just deny that all causality is deterministic but express that in misleading ways.

Yes, perceivers observe and make inferences about what they observe but unless Malebranchian occasionalism is true, observation is a still a causal relationship with features of the world. If you like, you can go Humean on the nature of causal connections (but that would be have to be cherrypicking; if you also went Humean on various other things, major problems would arise). Anyway, physicists would be hardpressed to explain what they are up to when they conduct experiments and make predictions without some notion of causal influence in the works.

BTW, an uncaused cause is not circular (nor inconsistent), just mysterious.

Hello Sydney Ernest Grimm

To 'know' something is a cataloging process, to 'understand' something is an inferential process. I never used the verb 'understand'. Re Planck's constant, it is inferred from something that is known, i.e., the known thing is the spectrum from a specially constructed oven. Which came first, the oven's spectrum or Planck's constant? I would say the oven came first. Planck's constant may be called a fundamental constant, but it is most certainly not a primary fact. The spectrum of the oven is the primary fact that is being catalogued.

Regards,

Tom Cuff

Hi Sydney Ernest Grimm

"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages." All of this reminds me of something funny I read in a book by Lee Smolin, [1]. As Smolin relates it, he much admired the philosopher Paul Feyerabend, and arranged to meet Feyerabend at the school where Feyerabend taught, UC Berkeley. During one of these meetings, Feyerabend relayed the story of his life.

He started out as a physics prodigy, but WWII saw him conscripted to fight at the Eastern Front where he was wounded. Upon returning to Berlin, he became an actor in the theater. Later, he tried to restart his physics career in Vienna where he joined a philosophy club and discovered that his acting skills helped him win philosophy debates. While in Vienna, Feyerabend once heard Wittgenstein speak, and he decided to study philosophy.

[1] Lee Smolin; The Trouble with Physics; Houghton Mifflin Company; 2006; p. 293.

So, regardless of whether I'm a so-called 'bad actor', in the modern sense of the term, or simply an actor, in sense of the Bard's quote, all of us - even you - are playing our parts whether we are aware of it or not, on this too, too unsolid earth that is RG.

Regards,

Tom Cuff

Trouble is, there is competition here. The use of language changes and stops somehow expressing uncertainty, building walls against real or imagined attacks. I have been reading Smolin's work recently and he seems to constantly reference his limitations and those of physics, while at the same time testing all possibilities.

Hi Stanley Wilkin ,

Competition is like pornography in that many times it is in the eye of the beholder. No matter how you use language, there is always a very good chance you be will misunderstood. On the other hand, playing the dipomat can lead people to accuse you of being wishy-washy.

I've only looked at one of Smolin's books, but I agree that he is trying to get out of a box. I was struck by how desperate he wanted to get out of the box by something he said at the end of Chapter 17 - What is Science? in [1]; this is the same chapter where he talks about Paul Feyerabend. He ended the chapter embracing Richard Feynman's definition of science: "Science is the organized skepticism in the reliability of expert opinion." Such are the vagaries of language that Feynman's definition would surely fit the QANON movement; or the January 6th, 2021 assault on the US Capitol; or the Pizzagate shooter; or people who believe that COVID-19 is a hoax; or people who believe in the Big Lie that Trump, in fact, won the 2020 election. Of course, both Feynamn's definition and Smolin's book, endorsing Feynman's definition, came out many years before 2020-2021.

[1] Lee Smolin; The Trouble with Physics; Houghton Mifflin Company; 2006; p. 307.

For an utterly engrossing look into the mind and demeanor of someone who totally questions expert opinion and has to see for himself, watch "Rocketman: Mad Mike's Mission to Prove the Flat Earth" on Amazon Prime. "Mad" Mike Hughes was trying to crowd-fund a rocketship so that he could see for himself whether or not the Earth was flat. I won't tell you any more, in case you decide to watch this very informative and absolutely edge-of-your-seat documentary. I've given up reading novels because real life is stranger than anything anyone can imagine.

Regards,

Tom Cuff

Tom,

Yes, I know of the gentleman.

Although you say your conversations here and elsewhere are not competitive and that seeing this as so is in the eyes, mind, sensibility, of the holder, there are a large number who think so. When competition is the rationale for discourse, the arguments cease to matter and the goal is not knowledge.

https://www.growkudos.com/projects/take-nothing-for-granted-revisiting-principles-of-modern-physics

The Modification of Newton's Gravitational Law and its Application in the Study of Dark Matter and Black Hole: https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-373969/v1

The Physical Cause of Planetary Perihelion: Precession:https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-536456/v1

Stanley Wilkin

Dear Stanley, with respect to your question, "Is physics about to undergo fundamental change"? ; I have a new contribution; just published yesterday. Hopefully, this article can throw some more light on this issue. It may have the potential to dampen the rampant scholasticism raging in modern theoretical physics and cosmology; for more than hundred years; without any tangible benefit!

Article The Mystery of the Lorentz Transform: A Reconstruction and I...

Abdul,

Thanks. I will read it in the next few days and get back to you.

All the best!

Article The Modification of Special Relativity

Abdul,

I have been reading Smolin on the realist and non-realist understanding of physics and yes it does concern me that so much seems to be framed around human experience and the possible uncertainty of our reality. Berkeley and all.

Stanley.

I am not sure what your take on my article, is. But I think in any judgement you have to choose between the primacy of “Matter” or the primacy of “Thought” as a criteria; also, Hegel’s distinction between a) “the view of understanding or metaphysics” (popularly known as causality and formal (Aristotelian) logic and b) “the view of reason” (or dialectics). A contradiction between these two modes of epistemology from the time of the early Greeks (up to now) has led to the evolution of history.

I think that the development of natural science, from the discovery of making fire by man and subsequent social/historical practice so far; specially after the recognition of the quantum phenomena; has settled the question in favour of the primacy of Matter in eternal, spontaneous change (motion, development, evolution etc.); without any beginning or termination; as is represented by materialist dialectics. For materialist dialectics, there can be no matter without motion and no motion without matter.

It is true, as you suggest that everything is uncertain and nothing else is more true for dialectics, because “change” is its principal premise. But according to the laws of dialectics, this “change” has its negative side too, it recognizes temporary stages (conditioned by a particular thing or a process) of “change”. By the same law, uncertainty cannot be without certainty. A contradiction between these two leads to the development of history – history of Nature and of Man, which is certain as long as the thinking mind of man exists. I will clarify this with the following quote from Engels, “… however many millions of suns and earths may arise and pass away, however long it may last before the conditions for organic life develop, however innumerable the organic beings that have to arise and pass away before animals with a brain capable of thought are developed from their midst, and for a short span of time find conditions suitable for life, only to be exterminated later without mercy, we have the certainty that matter remains eternally the same in all its transformations, that none of its attributes can ever be lost, and therefore also, that with the same iron necessity that it will exterminate on the earth its highest creation, the thinking mind, it must somewhere else and at another time again produce it.” F. Engels, “Dialectics of Nature”.

Bishop Berkeley’s primacy of Thought, or his philosophic principles esse est percipi, (or to be is to be perceived); is discredited from the fact that it is “Matter” can have “Thought”; Thought on the contrary has only itself to deal with! Also, the skepticism of David Hume and Kant’s “unknowable thing-in-itself” was similarly discredited by his disciples, more so by Hegel and the by the development of natural science. On the contrary Kant’s evolutionary (dialectical) “nebular hypothesis” has gained conformation from modern astronomy.

The recognition of the quantum uncertainty (The Evil Quanta) perturbed Einstein so much that he abandoned the materialist tradition of natural science and led physics to the cozy and “certain” ideal world of Kant and the early Greeks; to develop his general relativity. For Einstein, “Since the theory of general relativity (GR) implies the representation of physical reality by a continuous field, the concept of particles and material points cannot play a fundamental part and neither can the concept of motion. The particle can only appear as a limited region in space in which the field strength or energy density is particularly high”. Einstein, A. On the General Theory of Relativity, in David Levy (Ed.). The Scientific American Book of the Cosmos, N.Y., 2000, pp. 13.

I have tried to show in my works, particularly the paper I referred to above, that this idealist premises of Einstein’s theories of relativity have led to nonphysical objects and phenomena in cosmology in particular and to the crisis in modern physics, in general. Following the lead of Engels, I am trying to demonstrate, in contrast to Einstein (and causality based physics) that materialist dialectics is a better tool for gaining positive knowledge of objective reality.

My apologies as I am merely attempting to understand, but quite what do you mean by materialist dialectics?

Abdul, I do not know enough about this subject and I need to keep on reading. I will go through your propositions the best I can.

Stanley, I responded to your question, “Is physics about to undergo fundamental change?” by suggesting possible ways this change might come about, namely through a revolutionary change (a paradigm shift) in the scientific method itself; which is based primarily on a combination of formal (Aristotelian) logic, British empiricism and good old common-sense of everyday life experience. Hegel (later on) collectively termed this combination as the “view of understanding” or “metaphysics”; as opposed to his “View of reason” or dialectics. Materialist dialectics is nothing but Karl Marx’s materialist inversion of Hegel’s idealist dialectics in the following way, "It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being; but their social being that determines their consciousness".

Following Frederick Engels, I am suggesting a rethink of the philosophical basis (the epistemology) of modern physics in particular and natural science in general, substituting the present approach "metaphysical" (according to Hegel) with a dialectical approach. My two articles (linked in my comments above), one on Newton’s theory of universal gravitational attraction and the other on Einstein’s theories of relativity, exposes the inherent ("metaphysical") conceptual defects in these theories and suggests how these defects can possibly be corrected; using a materialist dialectical approach. In my other publications, I tried to extend Hegel’s dialectics to the quantum phenomena and similarly suggested a dialectical approach to quantum mechanics.

Dialectics, like the quantum phenomena is un-intuitive (and relatively unknown) to formal logic, causality and good old common-sense that we are traditionally and historically; used with. Dialectics is perceived as a violence against formal logic and causality; the reason most people would feel hostility to it and also the reason why even a great mind like Einstein rejected the evil quanta!

Most people would probably ignore or dismiss my suggestion for a dialectical approach to physics and cosmology. But perhaps to honor my suggestions, you took me seriously and now find difficulty in making sense of my suggestions and put yourself in this predicament! I very much appreciate the fact that your high intellect could sense some merit in my suggestion, but feel sorry that it put you in such a conundrum!

My understanding of both materialist dialectics and physics has led me to the conclusion that dialectics in the only epistemology that can lead to positive knowledge (not myths or mysticism) of objective reality. The old epistemology is somewhat useful and satisfactory "understanding" of macroscopic level experience in terrestrial Nature, but beyond this narrow range towards both the macrocosm and the microcosm, this epistemology fails miserably; as the crisis in modern cosmology and quantum physics clearly shows.

For even an idealist Hegel, "Truth in philosophy means that concepts and external reality corresponds". Causality (and formal logic) on the contrary, and in an iterative way leads to a "first cause". i.e., the "effect" of a "cause" that is unknown or unknowable and hence a mystery - for examples: God in theology, "Big Bang" in physics!