The Nature of Matter—II

S. Flügge, Ladislaus Marton

Robert W. Boyer

Like many terms in modern science, ‘laws of nature’ are used as if the meaning is clear. After hundreds of years of objective research, however, whether the laws exist on their own or are just ideas such as equations, and whether they are universal and guide change or are just empirically identified patterns, seem to be not yet known. Also, there is little certainty about their whereabouts if they really do exist. Scientific progress from concrete matter to energy to abstract information, and to the interdependence of objective and subjective, brought these issues to prominence again. In Part I, perspectives of a selection of well-known theorists including Paul Davies, Roger Penrose, Henry Stapp, Max Tegmark, David Bohm, and Albert Einstein are reviewed. In Part II, the ancient holistic Vedic account as re-clarified by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is then shown to offer a more comprehensive meaning of ‘laws of nature.’

Mark A. Cunningham

A. Truman Schwartz

Mikołaj Sienicki, Krzysztof Sienicki

A recent paper by Aziz and Howl (Nature 2025) argues that, once quantum matter is described at the level of quantum field theory and coupled to a classical gravitational field, higher order processes can generate entanglement between two spatially separated masses. A contemporaneous critical note (Marletto, Oppenheim, Vedral, Wilson, arXiv:2511.07348v1) shows that, in the actual nonrelativistic limit employed there, the interaction becomes ultra local, the total unitary factorizes, and no entanglement is generated from a product input. In this comment we (i) restate the core point of that critique, (ii) give a channel theoretic reformulation that makes the conclusion model independent, and (iii) clarify the distinction between activation of entanglement in already quantum matter and genuine mediation of entanglement by a classical field. Once these clarifications are in place, the standard BMV inference that observation of gravity mediated entanglement strongly indicates nonclassical gravitational degrees of freedom remains intact.

Michele Caponigro

We argue about the following concepts:(i)introduction of endo and exo-observer of a physical system (ii) possible relation between endo, exo-observer and continuum/discrete nature of the same system (iii)the distinction about two categories of observers do not help to solve the basic nature (continuum/discrete) of the system considered. We argue that discrete math tool utilized to describe behavior of a physical system is to ascribe to the exo-observer description. In other words, discreteness nature of a system is due at the presence of an external observer description, the observation act. Vice versa, we retain, that endo-observer description give us a continuum nature of the system but only in a Platonic realm. Finally, we retain that a real theory of the state of matter could to build a real independence from the observer. These brief considerations open a discussion on the foundations of discrete math tools and their relation with the observation act, included the possible extension to foundations of the quantum mechanics.