Dear William,

Inasmuch as the universe consists of matter-energy in space-time, which are recognized by consciousness, only these can be the ultimate constituents, no matter how abstruse a theory looks. But at the most fundamental level there may be only two players, the universal subject and the universal object. These two, in my view are the ultimate constituents.

Regards,

Rajat

Dear William and Rajat,

I agree with "...at the most fundamental level there may be only two players, the universal subject and the universal object. These two, in my view are the ultimate constituents." Probably it can be seen as a truth that there is consciousness (universal subject) and that there is 'the world' (universal object). However, the more evident truth is that there is consciousness, since, we know that our consciousness is able to create worlds, which we think exist outside of our consciousness, but in fact only exist within ourself (dreams). I strongly believe that there is an outside world (probably because solipsism is such an extremely boring world-view), but I know that there is consciousness. Considering dreams and our interpretation of them as being 'true', while we are dreaming, I believe that consciousness is the more fundamental constituent of the universe. I think it is consensus that to a certain degree, consciousness determines how 'the world' appears to us. I think everyone agrees on the notion that there is consciousness, but I'm afraid we cannot know whether there is a world, which is capable of existing without consciousness inside of it.

Kind regards,

Jonte

Good post Jonte .

You have very good understanding of things.

Regards,

Rajat

"The Ultimate Components" is an elegant, detailed theory that successfully explains everything we currently know. What it needs, to become noteworthy, is to predict something we don't already know.

While this scheme attempts to identify the gaps in our understanding and suggest alternative ways to view the world, the result seems to be merely a renaming and re-framing our understanding of the physical world, which lacks any useful suggestion for further application.

The primary value to me, of this story, was as an agitator of my current conceptions that might shake loose some mental block of my own and allow me to move past firmly held notions that are in fact may be wrong.

Dear William,

I found the Ultimate Components interesting but hard to get a grasp of. May I make a suggestion? I think we should consider the ultimate components of the universe something like Moves or Goes, as in chess, not things or particles.

Physics as we know it came about largely through the insight of Leibniz, who took Descartes's attempts at drawing up laws and subjected them to analysis in terms of their a priori workability. Although we think of old physics as Newtonian, I suspect that the solid foundation really rests on Leibniz's understanding of what conservation laws had to look like, and suchlike.

Leibniz was quite sure that the universe was not made of material objects - your argument about the impossibility of a rotating rigid body seems very close the basis of his 'New System'. He pointed out that to make any sense it must be made of **dynamic** units, hence his term 'dynamism'. A dynamic unit is not an object or structure or something that is a certain way. It is the operation of a relational disposition or entelechy. The relation of this dynamic mode is between a viewpoint on the universe and the universe from that viewpoint, so it entails subjectivity. This may seem strange and many people have assumed that in his metaphysical writings Leibniz had drifted out of physics altogether into some sort of bizarre dreamworld. However, my feeling is that if one considers seriously the logical arguments he uses to come to this position what he is describing is essentially the only plausible interpretation of modern fundamental physics based on field theory.

In this view, as seems to be confirmed by the statistics of QFT, there are no individual items that behave in particular ways, there are just particular ways of behaving. So the amount of energy in a go or move is a bit like the number you get when you throw the dice. You are allowed a move of 3 or 5 spaces. There is no energy stuff or mass stuff, just an amount of possibility, of 'what is allowed by the rules'. If you are playing snakes and ladders then a 3 may trigger going up a ladder or down a snake, depending on the field of potentials nearby. The mode of moving (mode of excitation in physics terms) relates to the state of the field in its domain. This will determine whether you can 'spend your 3 or 5' a 'mass way' or an 'energy way' or a mixture. If you are playing chess the rules allow lots of possible moves for some pieces, but only one move ever occurs. We know that our sense of things in space is merely a set of signs that our brains conjure up to help us get along in the world and that there is no fact of the matter 'what the world really looks like', so all we have to explain are the rules of moves. We may want to feel that those moves are the moves of things but quantum theory tells us that this is wrong; if two moves cannot be discriminated they behave as if they belonged to the same thing and self-interfere. At least that is how I understand it.

This may be at a tangent to your own proposals but it seems to be a sticking point for a lot of theories of what the world is really comprised of. In relation to Frank's point, the advantage I see of Leibniz's approach is that it points to how we should try to predict where subjectivity fits into fundamental units. It may allow us to predict something we do not already know - about our own subjectivity.

Dear All,

Thanks for your responses.

After reading responses, it appears that my presentation allows two diverse interpretations of ultimate components: 1. The most sophisticated entities as represented by consciousness that is dependent on a substructure of components, and 2. The entities beyond or below which there is no substructure, i.e. the building blocks of the Universe.

My argument is for an arena of inquiry that possesses at least four centers for the assessment of knowledge:

1. Observations. This process is the recording of changes in the distribution of matter relative to our platform reference frame. (An endeavor that extends back to antiquity with a progression of ever increasing sophistication.)

2. First level assessment. Analyses of observations to discover laws and propose theories. The measurement and quantification of the gravitational force of attraction between bodies of matter constitutes a law; whereas the proposals that distortion of space or the exchanges of gravitons create the attraction constitute theories. (In some cases the distinction between 1 and 2 becomes blurred. An example is the twin slit experiment at reduced levels of radiation where excited points on the detection screen appear one at a time and the response is considered to be the counting of single photons.)

3. Extrapolation. Examine and dissect the knowledge of 1 and 2 to identify ultimate components. (Does the photon phenomenon have a substructure?)

4. Compatibility analyses. If there are incompatibles among 1-3 something is wrong or incomplete. There should be agreement among the perceived components of the Universe, observations, theories, and laws. (Contemporary science searches for a Grand Unified Theory.)

Example of an analysis: When two particles are in relative motion, what accounts for their relative motion? When they collide in an elastic collision, do they swap their differences? If so, what do they swap? Doesn’t the exchange indicate that matter and energy are different entities? Does an indivisible particle exist? How could massless particles collide?

Could the amalgamations: matter-energy and space-time represent conceptual blunders?

Frank makes the point that it is desirable that a developing theory predicts something that we don’t already know. While I agree, what about the things we think we know but are wrong?

I am having trouble understanding Jonathan suggestion that Moves or Goes be utilized as ultimate components. What moves and what causes relative movement?

Presented at < http://www.pivotalconceptsinscience.com > is a proposal for the connections of the proposed ultimate components with observations associated with the photon (PC Blog 1-light) and charges (PC Blog 2-charges). Also click on PC Blog 4-Time for a proposal about Understanding Time in the Pursuit of Science.

William

Dear William,

If you are having trouble understanding my suggestion that the world is made of moves or goes, then, with respect, I would suggest considering whether you are trying to break into a run before doing a bit of walking. The suggestion I am making, in perhaps raher metaphoric language, is merely the view of one of the two men who gave us the basic physics we know. It is Leibniz's dynamism. It is also a mainstream view in philosophy of physics, typified by John Worrall and James Ladyman's Structural Realism. I suspect people like David Wallace and Simon Saunders would go for something similar. It is also a fairly transparent interpretation of the shift from 'particle' to 'mode of excitation' in modern field theory.

You ask what it is that moves, but Leibniz and, I suspect, all contemporary physicists would agree that this is an empty question. We can only know about the causal relational, or dispositional, properties of elements of the world because only these can cause us to know about themselves. Philosophers like to think that we could consider the 'intrinsic nature' of 'what it is that moves' but nobody has ever come across such a thing and nobody ever will. Mass is not an intrinsic feature. It is merely a power to resist acceleration (which, probably for the reason in GR also yields a weak 'attraction'). In chess it does not matter what does a knight's move, the move makes it a knight. It could be a beer can ringpull. What makes an electron an electron is the sort of move it is, not some electronstuffness. Our intuition of stuffness is based on arbitrary signs our nerve cells throw up to help us think - like the pain of 'hardness' Dr Johnson had when had kicked the stone.

In a sense I think you have asked the key question - is matter-energy a conceptual blunder? I think in the form you seem to be considering, obviously yes. You worry that particles with no mass could not collide but mass has absolutely nothing to do with collidability. Collidability is what used to be called antitypy or exclusion of other entities from a location, which we now know is based (rather indirectly) on Pauli exclusion in Fermions. Note that although electrons have mass a p orbital electron will in theory sometimes be found inside the nuclear hadrons, which it will 'go straight through' except that it simply isn't like that anyway. Collision has nothing whatever to do with mass. Mass is not 'matter', but merely one of several dispositional relational properties that in aggregates gives us the appearance of matter. Leibniz goes into this in detail, despite the fact that Pauli exclusion had not yet been discovered!

As I said originally, your hypothesis looks very interesting and may have some really powerful detail to it. But unless you take on board what I would take to be fairly standard considerations of indirect realism and dynamism I think you are going to be stuck at first base.

As Ladyman and Ross say in their book title - and I would thoroughly recommend the book - EveryTHING Must Go. There are no things, only causal relational connections - moves or goes. No THING does the moving. This is standard stuff.

This may seem too simplistic, but in simplicity there is truth.

The ultimate components of the totality of existence which is more than just the material universe studied by physicists, are first the entity cause of everything else that is not the cause entity itself; then second everything else that we know to exist including ourselves or we are not in contact with at all but can only suspect to exist, they all are the effects of the cause entity of them (the effects of the cause entity). That entity is what I call the first cause, God.

You see, physicists do not go into the first cause of everything that is the effect of the first cause, physicists only want to find the ultimate parts whatsoever that make up the universe which they are studying, this universe is just a part of the totality of existence which, as I said above, is larger than just the universe studied by physicists.

So, physicists are looking for or trying to formulate a theory of everything, how?

Okay, tell me how they are looking for or trying to formulate a theory of everything. is it not by searching for another component within the universe itself which is the thing in charge of everything else?

So, my question to physicists and everyone else here and everywhere who happen to visit this webpage and come to my post here, is this component to be found and to be a part of the theory of everything, is this the cause of everything that is an effect, or it is itself still in need of a cause.

Please think about the need for man to think of a first cause, instead of evading all the time i.e. among some today's celebrity physicists and atheist thinkers, evading i.e. avoiding this first cause when they do not have any reason at all to avoid it, except for their taboo or phobia of this first cause concept and also entity.

Let me read your reactions.