The road on the foundations of science in general consists in (a) making precise what the assumptions are one makes resulting from our measurements (b) holding a “good” balance between theoretical assumptions and genericity of predictions (c) saying as precisely as possible what you mean. Unfortunately, recent work where these three criteria are met is scarce and I often encounter situations where physicists talk about different things in the same words or the other way around, identify distinct concepts (even without being aware of it), or introduce unnecessary hypothesis based upon a too stringent mathematical interpretation of some observation. In this work, I will be as critical as possible and give away those objections against modern theories of physics which have become clear in my mind and therefore transcend mere intuition. All these objections result from the use of unclear language or too stringent assumptions on the nature of reality. Next, we weaken the assumptions and discuss what I call process physics; it will turn out that Bell’s concerns do find a natural solution within this framework.
The road on the foundations of science in general consists in (a) making precise what the assumptions are one makes resulting from our measurements (b) holding a “good” balance between theoretical assumptions and genericity of predictions (c) saying as precisely as possible what you mean. Unfortunately, recent work where these three criteria are met is scarce and I often encounter situations where physicists talk about different things in the same words or the other way around, identify distinct concepts (even without being aware of it), or introduce unnecessary hypothesis based upon a too stringent mathematical interpretation of some observation. In this work, I will be as critical as possible and give away those objections against modern theories of physics which have become clear in my mind and therefore transcend mere intuition. All these objections result from the use of unclear language or too stringent assumptions on the nature of reality. Next, we weaken the assumptions and discuss what I call process physics; it will turn out that Bell’s concerns do find a natural solution within this framework.
Along with weaving together observations, experiments, and theoretical constructs into a coherent mesh of understanding of the world around us, physics over its past five centuries has continuously refined the base concepts on which the whole framework is built. In quantum physics, first in non-relativistic mechanics and later in quantum field theories, even familiar concepts of position, momentum, wave or particle, are derived constructs from the classical limit in which we live but not intrinsic to the underlying physics. Most crucially, the very idea of the individual, whether an object or an event, distinguished only in a mere label of identity from others identical to it in all the physics, exists only as an approximation, not an element of underlying reality. Failure to recognize this and seeking alternative explanations in many worlds or multiverses leads only to incoherent logic and incorrect physics. As an example, in a physical system such as an atom in a particular state, physics deals with the universal system of all such atoms but makes no meaningful prediction of the position of an electron or the time of decay of any specific atom. Those are incidental, entirely random among all possible positions and times, even while physics makes very precise predictions for the distribution of the outcomes in measurements on atoms in that state. Physics deals with the universal, not the individual.
Reviewed by: Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context by Timothy Eastman Dan Dombrowski EASTMAN, Timothy. Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context. New York: Lexington Books, 2020. 344 pp. Cloth, $120.00; eBook, $45.00 The title of this book reminds one of David Ray Griffin’s 1998 study, Unsnarling the World Knot: Consciousness, Freedom, and the Mind-Body Problem. Both books rely on process philosophy to respond to seemingly insoluble problems (called the “world-knot” by Arthur Schopenhauer) created in the wake of early modern dualism, which led to late modern mechanism once the ghost in the machine was exorcised. One significant difference is that Eastman is a prominent physicist who tries to untie the knots created by deterministic views of the natural world, in contrast to Griffin’s more philosophical and theological approach. The knots in question can be untied only by thinking creatively in new ways, Eastman thinks. Eastman calls his approach the “Logoi framework,” which rejects Niels Bohr’s Copenhagen Interpretation and the assumption that indeterminacy effects are mostly assigned to epistemic limitations while fundamental reality is set aside. Eastman also spends a good deal of time challenging the assumption that the real is nothing but the actual in that reality includes, he thinks, both actualizations and possibilities. That is, Eastman argues against mechanism, determinism, and “actualism.” This last sort of opposition, in turn, leads Eastman to defend not merely Boolean logic but also a non-Boolean order of potentials. Eastman criticizes various “theories of everything” and conceptions of “multiverses” that ironically continue nominalism and metaphysically parsimonious, reductionist, deflationary ontologies. In some ways he is continuing where Henri Bergson left off in his debates with Albert Einstein in 1922. By focusing exclusively on objective measurement, Bergson thought that Einstein had neglected important contextual issues. In contrast to Einstein’s deterministic outlook, Bergson (along with Eastman) argues that the future is open and indeterminate. There is no warrant for “scientism” to overrule experience. That is, it is a mistake, Eastman thinks, to hold that there are preexistent laws that result in strict entailments from causes to effects and to hold that effects are, for all practical purposes, contained in their causes. Physicists themselves undermine the metaphysical claim that the real is merely the actual in that their research presupposes as well the region of the potential; this “hardcore actualism” is bad physics by ignoring [End Page 144] altogether the reality of potentiae. The “scientism” that Eastman opposes is thus problematic because of its actualism, its assumption that reality is fully captured by quantitative laws of entailment, its reliance on dyadic relations alone (in contrast to the Peircian triadic scheme favored by Eastman), its commitment to the causal closure of the physical, and its mechanism. Eastman’s own positive process alternative involves the claim that all reality is characterized by res extensa, res qualia, and potentiae. This positive alternative makes us realize that classical mechanics is not a neutral designator in that it tends to carry with it metaphysical assumptions, including a type of substantialism in tension with a processual approach. Many or most practicing scientists do not pay much attention to the fact that nominalism and realism imply metaphysical claims, as do actualism and determinism. Although Werner Heisenberg argued several decades ago for the importance of potentiae, he was only minimally influential in the community of physicists, who unwittingly had metaphysical commitments that they were not willing to abandon. Although Eastman’s own approach is encyclopedic in the sense that he seemingly cites every author who deals with the topics he is interested in, his own distinctive approach is clear in the midst of the citations. Most notably, Eastman takes Alfred North Whitehead’s diachronic approach very seriously in his own interpretation of the results that physicists have offered. One of the reasons for Eastman’s skepticism regarding what are often called “possible worlds” is that defenders of these often offer nothing other than acutalized possibles, rather than ontic possibiliae. Eastman’s own area of expertise is plasma physics, which puts him in an enviable position to defend the common process argument against the concept of absolute nothingness. There is no such thing as...
Along with weaving together observations, experiments, and theoretical constructs into a coherent mesh of understanding of the world around us, physics over its past five centuries has continuously refined the base concepts on which the whole framework is built. In quantum physics, first in nonrelativistic mechanics and later in quantum field theories, even familiar concepts of position, momentum, wave, or particle, are derived constructs from the classical limit in which we live but not intrinsic to the underlying physics. Most crucially, the very idea of the individual, whether an object or an event, distinguished only in a mere label of identity from others identical to it in all the physics, exists only as an approximation, not an element of underlying reality. It is not an element of physics. Failure to recognize this and seeking alternative explanations in many worlds or multiverses leads only to incoherent logic and incorrect physics. As an example, for an atom in a particular state, physics deals with the universal system of all such atoms but makes no meaningful prediction of the position of an electron or the time of decay of any specific atom. Those are incidental, entirely random among all possible positions and times, even while physics makes very precise predictions for the distribution of the outcomes in measurements on atoms in that state. Physics deals with the universal, not the individual.
THE GREAT CHAIN OF QUANTUM BEING: WHAT THE PHYSICISTS ARE TELLING US / Louis Gallo listen: there's a hell of a good universe next door; let's go —cummings Max Planck's announcement in 1900 that energy flows in discrete bundles rather than uniformly, as energy "should," did not instantly destroy the foundations of a classical world view that had prevailed since Newton's day. It took physicists nearly a quarter of a century to grasp the full significance of quantum theory. But 1900 is too convenient a date to ignore, and without distorting the history of ideas unduly we can refer to it as the point in time when science launched its relentless assault upon reason and common sense, an assault that continues to this day. This is nothing new, of course. Everyone knows how weird quantum theory is, how it toppled the Newtonian clockwork and so on. The purpose of this essay is to explain in ordinary language, if such a thing can be done, why physicists are saying some of the outrageous things we read about in the popular media. Because new particles, along with new theories to account for them, are being created at such a prodigious rate today, it has become extraordinarily difficult for non-scientists to keep up with the latest breakthroughs. The deluge of popular books on black holes and particle physics, outmoded before they go to press, reflects this information gap. I can hardly expect to beat the popularizers at their own game, but my intention is nevertheless to present a non-technical overview of the great chain of quantum being according to current theory. It can be suggested by way of preliminary assessment that the Theater of the Absurd did not die at some point in the early 1970s; its greatest production is and may always have been our meditations on the cosmos itself. We begin, however, with some thoughts on common sense rather than absurdity. Physicists have traditionally linked common sense with the twin doctrines of causality and determinism. Given thorough enough information about prior conditions, causality guarantees the predictability of all events and states ofbeing. French mathematician Pierre Laplace actually believed that such knowledge could be used to chart the entire history of the universe. Causality, then, is a way of thinking about individual events; determinism, a way of thinking about events 264 · The Missouri Review cumulatively. Both doctrines presume the existence of an objective, quantifiable external world populated by observers (ourselves). One cannot overemphasize the importance of the term "objective." It haunts modern physics at every turn. Indeed, the crucial difference between classical and quantum physics lies in their respective acceptance or rejection of objective reality. The early giants of quantum physics had a hard time accepting the implications of their own mathematics. Max Planck and Einstein—who is not, strictly speaking, a quantum physicist but who contributed much to the theory—refused to accept them. Yet the fate of objectivity may be traced by moving from Planck's position on the subject to that of Erwin Schrödinger, whose work culminated in the late 1920s. This chronology roughly reflects the order in which quantum theory emerged. Here is what Planck had to say in his book The New Science: "A science that starts off by predicating the denial of objectivity has already passed sentence on itself"; and "the quantum hypothesis will eventually find its exact expression in certain equations which will be a more exact formulation of the law of causality." Einstein spent most of his life searching for that "exact expression" and failed. Werner Heisenberg offered a similar but highly qualified version of Planck's statement. In Across the Frontiers Heisenberg says that quantum measurements do in fact measure objective states but also intrude upon those states. "It is," he writes, "no longer the objective states but rather the probabilities for the occurrence of certain events that can be stated in mathematical formulae." Schrödinger, in Mind and Matter, comes right out with it: "Mind has erected the objective outside world of the natural philosophers out of its own stuff." He means this literally, and the equations he contributed to quantum theory imply as much. Bohr...