CAUSAL HORIZONAL RESEARCH: A METHODOLOGY IN PHYSICS

Raphael Neelamkavil

Ph. D. (Causality in Quantum Physics), Dr. phil. (Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology)

Causal Horizonal Research is a method that works beyond empirical methods in the positive sciences and serves at existential generalizations that are an essential condition for the possibility of positive sciences. Thus, it may be seen as (1) a philosophical method, but (2) a method of recognition of the foundations of positive sciences. The foundational notions of positive sciences need not themselves be formulated as merely empirically formulable notions!

Although a short text, the arguments here are an attempt to bridge the defects of statistical applications in the sciences and avoid the same in physical ontology, philosophy of physics, philosophy of science (in general), and in the various philosophical disciplines. Implications may be drawn to the philosophy of mathematics and to the foundations mathematics and the sciences in general.

The uninterruptedly but finitely contributive past-existent causal influences point ever backward for recognition of causal pervasiveness of the past horizon. Therefore, this must be accepted as a beckoning for consideration of causal pasts in any research, for achievement of the maximum rational adequacy with respect to the perceived causes of any particular existent process.

There are both already detected and easily detectable aspects and parts of the causal pasts. But there is also the portion of the causal horizon which is not easily discovered or discoverable. At any time, some of this portion of past-existent causal players will remain unreached. But its existence cannot be said to be an impossibility, whatever this portion is. This is what I call the ontological givenness of the causal horizon of anything whatever.

The whole of the past causal influences are together never fully actually traceable back from a given point of time by human intellects and instruments. All processes are in principle and in general ever better traceable and capable of being theoretically included, in general, in physical research and in physical-ontological research. Such theoretical traceability of causes is rejected by their probabilistically ontological exclusion at any given result, if merely probabilistic calculation is considered as the only mode of scientific inquiry.

Examples are the “probabilistically causal” results in QM despite the very finite Extension-Change distances between any two QM events and between a QM event and an arbitrarily chosen experimenter. The problem here is the utter lack of admission of the existence of the totality of the causal horizon, whether detected or detectable or undetected.

Due to the principle of inner-universe conservation of matter-energy, these past causal influences – the causal horizon – as influences at any time traceable to the future, are not annihilated into non-existence in their transformed existence in the present. Therefore, they have their real and ubiquitously causal significance from the past in the present of any process.

I propose, therefore, a physical-ontologically and cosmologically tenable Causal Horizonal Research (CHR)[1]into inner-universe causalities as traceable theoretically to the indefinite past of any process at inquiry – even in case of existence of the external originative cause of all that is physical within the cosmos. This can yield at least a more than vague and sufficiently broad outlook at some problematic issues of statistically causal reach into existent unobservables / quasi-observables within micro-physics, cosmology, physical ontology, and philosophy. That is, the status and extent of causal processes in the micro- and macro-cosmos, the relation of real causality with the recognition-level or calculation-level probability, randomness, chaos, catastrophe, etc. can be further elucidated and systematized by CHR.

If individual processes in the universe have had any measure of past causality active in their parts in any manner (wholly or allegedly partially), this demonstrates by definition the fact that any causal explanation of any process hints at all the processes (causal or allegedly non-causal) that are prior to a phenomenon / event / process, relative to the spatiotemporally connected posteriority of the thing being explained and the priority of the causes being generalized upon. The measure of Extension-Change (measured as space-time in science and ordinary parlance) that has already taken place is theoretically traceable.

Suppose that a certain process’s causal roots proper (or, to please Hume-inspired theoreticians, in terms at least of what we call antecedents proper) are conceivable in principle as having been existent in the past. Then there is no reason why the experimentally and theoretically in-principle feasible extent of statistically tracing the causal horizon should obstruct us from taking at least a theoretically general look at the ontological structure of past causal antecedent roots, and then from them still farther past roots, etc.

Some of it can be traceable in future instances of statistical inclusions; and some will ever remain unreached. But science must accept the existence of the latter – which is not the case in merely statistically characterized sciences.

The causal horizon’s ontological structure is, in general, the Extension-Change antecedent-horizonal processuality as something that existed in the past. The need to tracing causal roots is in simple terms the rational basis of the principle and procedure of CHR, granting the fact that the antecedents proper of all that is today, of all that we speak of, are in fact causes. Only when one tends to claim that causes are not causes arises theoretical impasses. To make sure in the present context that these are causes, science should always wait a finite amount of time. But the pragmatic attitude of severing the relation of the theory from the past-existent but so-far not-reached parts of the causal horizon is the case only in statistics and statistically oriented positive sciences, and nowhere else.

By positing causes (1) as ever having been active in the past of any current physical process, (2) as causally relevantly dormant in the present forms of existence of the current physical processes, the proposed ontological and cosmological methodology of CHR is theoretically implementable. The physical explanation for this is the physical principle of conservation as it is active towards the future proper in all past and present processes. Science and philosophy always want to witness the extent of reachable causality. Hence, the fact of not having already attained the capture of certain causal horizonal members of the past is no justification to be overly pragmatic of the past causes. This is where CHR takes us to.

This will not take us to a meaningless infinite regress. Any infinite regress without the involvement of an abruptly theorized non-causal and non-physical Creator will still be reasonable since the search is with reference to causes within the universe, and such an infinite regress within the universe should naturally be physically meaningful.[2]The stage for CHR in micro-cosmology and macro-cosmology (by this meaning all physical sciences) will thus be set. The major result from here is that in QM causation will somehow have be discussed from various angles, along with making the need for our methodology further explicit.

CHR is treated in my books of 2014 (Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology) and 2018 (Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology):

[1] For detailed reflections, see Raphael Neelamkavil, “Causal Horizonal Research in Cosmology” (21-47), Journal of Dharma 34, 2 (April-June 2009).

[2] In order to circumvent infinite regress, we do not posit an unmoved creator as the final past end of any causal horizon. It is beset with metaphysical paradoxes. We keep the option of a continuously creating Divine open, but this is not needed for our more restricted methodology for physical research, namely, Causal Horizonal Research.