UNTENABLE REIFICATION OF CONCEPTS IN PHYSICS: With Examples

Raphael Neelamkavil,

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

This document consists of some reflections in the conceptual practices in physics, and starts with some questions at physicists. It is conceived as a sequel to the text of the following discussion: [[https://www.researchgate.net/post/WHY_EXACTLY_WAVE-PARTICLE_DUALITY_Phenomenal_Ontological_Commitment_POC_as_the_Solution]]. Thereafter follow some arguments with examples, showing reification in physics.

Questions on Reification of Concepts in Physics: The best of physicists and philosophers of physics even today do not seem to be decided on any concrete but all-encompassing solution by reason of the rational strength of arguments given in favour of the one or another solution here below. The questions not answered here are these:

(1) Why do physicists not let their reification of mathematical concepts rest for some time, think from the side of POC, and question the epistemic processes of identification of energy propagations as a geometrical wave at some occasions, as a geometrical particle at other occasions, at times paradoxically even as their alternation, or even as their superposition as if this would solve the problem? What are the reasons for such misplaced identification of concreteness of the mathematical entities as if they both existed physically out there?

(2) Then, when they feel confronted from outside or in themselves as to the gravity of paradoxes involved in their own ad hoc explanatory creation, why do they tend to declare that all these solutions rationally and realistically (doubtlessly by way of reification of the mathematical objects used, but, as they seem to suggest, mathematically), (a) demonstrate that quantum reality is just virtual, or (b) need to be accepted merely by reason of a statistical causality in the existent world – and not by reason of the statistical measurements of causal events upon the experimental history of extent of access of causal events via measurements and identification of causes, or (c) show that these reified mathematical objects (waves and particles separately, alternately, or superpositionally) should be paradoxically the external reality because the mathematics says so?

(3) Are these traditional quantum solutions not also the modes of reification of what is made out in concepts in our brains, of which the only possible basis is the continued tendency to indirectly hold on to substance metaphysics and/or to oppose such a metaphysics absolutely, as if it were unnecessary to accept that in the cosmos there would be existents at all, behind the phenomena and the data that are being spoken of in fundamental physics.

(4) When one, for example, says that the wavefunction collapses in the physical calculations, does one, in quantum physics, tend to insist that the existent carrier of propagative energy is just collapsing into nothing or into something else that is either existent or mysteriously absolutely virtual? Does any of this sort of solutions solve anything explanatorily and realistically? Or, does it mean only and merely that the wave function collapses in the written paper, because thefunction exists in the mathematical expression, and not in the wavicles out there? In the name of the collapse of the wavefunction, are not quantum physicists reifying the mathematical entity into something existent?

(5) Are all these not the results of the reification of our concept of collapse of a mathematical function so as to naming it as an external physical process, wrongly suggesting that the function has an exact existential correspondence with our imaginative and mathematically driven conceptualization? One might argue that it is not the function but the functioning that collapses. But can the functioning be represented by a mathematical function in such a manner that the collapsing of the functioning of the physically existent wavicle would then mean a dysfunction of some sort? Would such dysfunction mean that the wavicle disappears into nothingness or becomes transformed? If it disappears into nothingness, physical matter-energy would not be conserved; and if there is only a transformation, it is not a collapse of the mathematical function. If the mathematical function alone has the collapse at observation, then the superposition causes reduction to classical concepts.

(6) In the above scenario, why do some physicists not have enough ability to recognize the need to further establish that the physical equations must first be proved to have an existent process out there at least somewhat as mentioned in the equations, in order for them to equate the mathematical function and the existent process out-there? But why are they unable to spell out the ontological and epistemological reasons for the human inability to identify the collapse in the equations in a better-than statistical manner, with its supposed correspondent event in the external world identified (as we do when we say that the pen exists)?

(7) Can they not rationally imagine at least that any epistemic identification via any version of logic and mathematics does not ipso facto produce a correspondence between the notion and the physical reality or events outside? In case of absence of sufficiency in this ability in physicists, is not fundamental quantum physics again becoming prey to the same age-old correspondence theory of truth that they tendentially denounce and accuse many philosophers of the past as having already been prey to?

A typical manner of countering the above arguments is to allege these same arguments as originating from classical physics and notions. But such a counter-allegation is feasible only if the epistemology of concept formation that I have presented can be shown to be reifying in any manner. My viewpoint may be summarized as follows: Except that whatever exists, exists in processuality of every near-infinitesimal part, I have not suggested an ontology that holds either (1) that every existent is in infinite flux, or (2) that everything existent is existent as such without flux. The epistemology of concept formation in the system I have suggested consists in (1) the connotative and denotative abstractions and concatenations of the ontological universals and the respective conglomerations that pertain to finitely fluent processual existents. Finite fluency of every near-infinitesimal part of existents is physical process; and hence finitely existent finitely fluent consciousnesses can never obtain any static manner of conceptualization of any existent process.

The classical origin of some reified notions is exactly what I attempt to demonstrate as present in quantum physics and other related sciences – using notions of concept formation, of their foundation in existent physical processes, and of the ultimate and undeniable Categories of all existence – because quantum physics is still at the realm of believing that what the physicist “sees” are mathematical waves and points. That is, more than the physical existents, they find mathematical entities as existent in physical entities, for which they give statistical and other mathematical reasons of correspondence of the two mathematical objects with the experimentally perceived reality.

Arguments with Examples, Showing Reification: I add here a few clarifications to what I said above, based on some examples from physics, beginning from a traditional concept and ending with some recent ones. There exists in physics reification of notions and quantities beyond limits permissible. By reification is meant here not merely the crude ideational substitution of a concept with a denotable thing or process. Even a quantity, when used beyond its permissible realms of application, can be taken as a reification of the significance or applicability of the quantity in a different context or in the form of a generalization. Especially (2) and (3) below are of consequence to the present work.

(1) Take the case of potential energy. It is a form of energy termed after a certain difference of states, positions, or arrangements of parts. It arises due to the difference created by the storing of any kind of energy, which will be active at release of the state or arrangement by a suitable action. This energy is not carried by any one sort of wavicle. It is the difference of states of any sort of energy expressed in any one sort of action. Thus, gravitation is one sort of potential energy; and potential energy is not gravitation. Just because of this, the sub-types of potential energy must each be carried by a specific sort of wavicle. The difference between any two stages of such special propagations is termed potential energy from the viewpoint of the earlier stage. After release to the next stage, it is spent and is no more the potential energy within those two stages exhibiting a difference. We may discover its effects quantitatively everywhere. But the discovery is as the energy obtained due to a difference of calculated or calculable energy values, not directly as of an energy carrier so identified or identifiable as in the case of photons.

But the case with photons, neutrinos, gravitons, etc. is different. These wavicles are experimentally identifiable as the carriers of one kind of energy, whatever quantity of energy they may carry, and the carrier is an existent with the basic Extension-Change Categorial characteristics (ontological universals). The energy carried is measured in terms inevitably of criteria dependent on conventions. Whatever energy they contain is of a finite amount, of course not necessarily the exact amount of energy that we tend to calculate them to contain at any time and context. Science must insist on its exactness. For the purpose of generalized discussions on such quantities, it suffices to use what pertains to it from the Maximal-Medial-Minimal (infinite, finite, zero) values. The finite quantity of energy is carried by energy wavicles, and hence the energy wavicles are identifiable with the energy carried. This is not the case with potential energy.

No specific measurement result can be exact, also in the case of values concerning photons, neutrinos, gravitons, etc., because humans cannot get at absolute accuracy. As an absolutizable general truth about these quantities, it is tenable that we can only determine whether they are zero or finite in quantity as long as the measurements are of existents. This is clear enough from the fact that within a finite quantity a sudden evolutionary or other sort of annihilation of the energy into zero and augmentation into infinity are only mathematically imaginable, but physically these are unimaginable. Zero and infinity can only work here as limiting but unrealizable evolutionary values of some existent finite-content energy or matter. Any quantity of measurement of matter-energy beyond finitude is merely by mathematics.

Absolute ontological commitment in mathematical conclusions in physical theory is impossible, and cannot be borne out via experimental verification and augmentation of theoretical and experimental results by use of any future theories and experimental expansions, even if it happens in the future that humanity can experiment with universes or phases of a universe in their totality. Here too the main reason is that here too there cannot exist a phenomenal ontological commitment (POC) to the effect of evolution of the finite into non-entity or infinitude. Hence, it is clear that finite Extension and Change are the foundational criteria upon which such measurements and the proofs of existence of both observable and unobservable energy and matter should be based. This fact becomes sacrosanct also in the case of the merely mathematically possible infinite density in black holes.

Thus, the speculations of existence of an infinite number of finite universes merely topologically from the “infinite volume in the null and negative curvature” case of the Friedman-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker cosmological models and their large-scale homogeneity and isotropy of the distribution of matter-energy: e.g., speculations like “the existence of an infinite number of models, which are based on these same metrics, but have compact, finite volume, multiply connected spatial sections” [Fagundes 2012], are physical nonsenses. Similar is the truth-value of the popping up of infinite number of universes from the quantum vacua within a universe or between its expansion and contraction phases can only be nonsensical and an eyewash dependent only on the mathematics. The constant experience of finite phenomenal ontological commitment (POC) behind true statements and theories permits us to pronounce a corollary: No POC is possible concerning any evolutionary disappearance of matter-energy into zero or augmentation into infinite content at any point or stage of evolution of any universe or parts thereof.

In the case of potential energy, the verification is of the difference, and not of the necessary correspondence with a wavicle as the carrier of potential energy. The latter should have been seen as a must for us to suppose that potential energy does not exist as an energy carrier propagation. Here exists no chance of obtaining POC of anything existent in a finite quantity termed potential energy, because there is no existent energy carrier here. One thing becomes clear here: Genuine (existent) energy propagations are theoretically to be posited as energy carriers. Of course, the energy as such is not a thing. Instead, it is the quantity of some finite capacity of any so-identifiable “energy carrier” to cause an amount of work, always involving movement.

As a result of such movement, some Change takes place in the stuff of the energy carrier, however minute the Change is. This Change is not the same as motion, but instead, it is the ontological aspect of motion anywhere. Moreover, the Change is in stuff in Extension. The stuff of the energy carrier is not in the epistemic space that the millennia have spoken of. The quantity of some work / action being transferred by an energy carrier is not the same as the difference between two states of quantity of work / action, the difference being what we call potential energy. The energy carrier has the Categories of Extension and Change as its internal ultimate qualities. That is, the movement is within it not merely as an additional capacity but as the very quality. Every part of an energy-carrier is in Extension-Change. But potential energy is not in Extension-Change. Thus, it is clear that the concept of potential energy has been reified by a couple of centuries of practice in physics.

(2) If the electron is taken as the same sort of energy carrier as photons, gravitons, etc., there is a conceptual difficulty. At least from today’s perspective in physics, an electron is a matter wave, i.e., at the most a carrier of many energy carriers. It is not a relatively well finalizable carrier wavicle of energy of the type that photons are, with respect to the phase of the universe or parts of it or groups of universes wherein photons are relatively more unified as energy carriers than perhaps in other phases of this world or in other worlds. Electrons are matter-wavicles containing many smaller quanta of photon energy.

There is nothing wrong in saying this, even if these energy-carrying quanta are processually resident in electrons i.e., under some constant processual transformation, but not in the very form in which they produce the sort of work or as when they are freed of the higher condensation of electromagnetic wavicles in electrons and are transmitted at the luminal speed or transformed processually into something else. Hence, electrons are essentially matter particles moving in the wave form. If an electron is termed as energy carrier and conceptualized on par with photons and other electromagnetic energy, we may have to term also a stone as energy wavicles themselves, and not as a set of energy wavicles in condensation. That would miss the mark set as the purpose in general of scientific activity and thought. But this is a fact.

As already discussed, wavefunction collapse cannot be identified as an existent process out there in a manner similar to that in which we can adduce quanta of energy to any pure wave or pure point particle. Wavefunction collapse is a collapse of measurements into one of the states. The states are purely mathematical cases, surmised by reason of some statistical values. The existent energy-carrier wavicle in propagation alone is the real case. This is because the wavefunction collapse is not a collapse of some existent waves and/or existent particles out-there, but the collapse of a certain quantitative symmetry between the mathematically fixed states, a certain expected behaviour of the quantities yielded by theory, implied within the relationship between the mathematical wave and mathematical point-particle.

This is not the same as what happens when we create a notion to correspond to a process and identify the latter with a supposed external correspondent of the notion. Hence, a wave function collapse is not to have an exactly corresponding change definable as what the word ‘collapse’ can mean, in any existent energy-quanta carrier wavicle. We witness many physicists taking for granted, or omitting to differentiate between, the technical and the ordinary meanings of ‘collapse’; and thus, their audience gets convinced into believing in their new physics under the same lack of clarity and belief in the superiority of quantum mathematics.

Is it not necessary to condone such matters in the sciences on the count that human cognition has limits? True. But if this is admitted, the same limitedness must be admitted also at the theoretically notional sources of any system of thought and science. It must especially be infused at the experimental methods and interpretations of experimental and theoretical results of the system of thought and science at question. This aggravates the need to avoid reification of purely mathematical concepts of waves and points in microphysics.

To conclude, the successes of quantum physics consist in that at least many of the measurementally determined mathematical explanations of phenomena (phenomenon: the showing-themselves of existent processes from some layers of the processes) are such that, within the system of mathematically discussing these explanations, (1) further calculations and approximations fall in place, and (2) further theoretical constructions are made possible.

This demonstrates a certain extent of consistency in the theoretical apparatus wherein the initial mathematical definitions and experimentally approximate quantifications permit the acceptance of many further results as true to the foundations of the theoretical apparatuses. But if very evident paradoxes arise, then evidently their source most probably should bee seen to lie in the foundational notions of the system, their definitional specificities, etc.

Fundamental quantum physics has many unclarified notions that play into its interpretations as miraculous mystifications of physical events, which may directly be attributed to the custom of misplaced identification of concreteness in quantum physics. The test case will be that of entanglement. Even on a day when the instrumentation evolves to high capability to observe or calculate what is behind the statistical causalities in quantum physics, teleportation via entanglement may be developed as a technological advancement as whatever teleportation is in reality, even when the concept of entanglement may be found to continue to be true beyond the maximal level of the speed of light.

This is similar to when water continuously – presumed here ad hoc – falls on two adjacent leaves of a tree, where the leaves send an algorithmic signal as and when they come into contact with a drop of water stipulated as heavy enough for the signal during the flow of water over the leaves. The water that continuously flows does not make the leaves to send signals so continuously. Heavier drops within the flow send signals. This is an intermittent process and can be used to formulate an algorithm. In the EPR experiment a mesoscopic device is made to work on some selective micro-, nano-, or more minute effects without asking about the apriority or not of the causal/non-causal continuity of the totality of micro-effects on the discrete quanta of any level existent thereby. [Neelamkavil 2018: 195-196]

The processes in the objects of inquiry create some processes and their phenomena in the apparatuses. The apparatus-related phenomena and data behind the experiments related to the existent object processes within the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen thought experiment, which is meant to bring out a theory of the physical processes behind two wavicles in prior entanglement, can continue to be the same even after our explanation of the EPR goes clearer than today and the explanation clarifies that the processes in both the wavicles are fully caused by each other – in this case, superluminally-locally. [Neelamkavil 2018: 191 ff; 2014: Chapters 9 and 10]

These phenomena and data can be utilized further to create technological devices. This is like using the continuous falling of drops on two leaves can be used to give algorithmic signals, which may be used to create a system of harnessing the phenomena and data for service to humanity. Even today Newtonain phenomena and data are being used in engineering, medical, and other sciences profitably. But these do not mean that these successes render these branches of physics as representing reality best. The technological successes do not justify accepting in a literal manner all that is intended by the “even-now substance-philosophically” dominated or “radically virtual-philosophically” dominated minds of many physicists. Quantum cosmology is no exception to what is said above. [Neelamkavil 2018: Chapter 6]

(3) Another example is the case of reification of a quantity in the special theory of relativity. It defines in a scientistically tacit manner in the velocity-dependent Lorentz factor (γ = 1 / √(1 – [v2/c2])) that, since all our physical observations are based on the speed of electromagnetic propagations, the said system of theory “proves” the velocity of light as ultimate and, even more mysteriously, that this fact does not permit superluminal velocities. This is nothing but begging the question. For more than a century, practically none questioned this assumption that does a self-defeating of the foundations of all reason and physical ontology. Almost everyone today is blissful about the technical tool this stipulation offers for science and technology: if sonar velocity is taken as the speed limit in nature, and if all other velocities are measured in terms of this value, all higher velocities will involve zeros and infinities. Even at the level of sonar velocity as the highest limit, much technological success is thinkable, and that does not preclude higher velocities. This is an example for reification of experimental quantities. Under a similar attitude are also many AI specialists who do not inquire what the stuff of information is, but can manipulate it for much technological success, even to create BI. This will be discussed much later I detail.