We CAN Understand Some Modern Physics, and Compare It to the Old !

April 2, 2023 ~ GregWW ~ Leave a comment

(**The new view of gravity:** space and time have become melded together into a single field with massive objects bending its contours. Gravity is a force but it is now delivered by particles called “gravitons” that are wave lines. Gravitons are a particle with no mass–it seems–and can travel at the speed of light. See physics.aps.org)

I should not feel slighted by my inability to ‘get’ modern physics. Hell, Newtonian physics (“classical mechanics”) was not a strength of mine. I believe we should feel compelled to give quantum mechanics a shot. We should try to have some handle on it, just to feel vaguely up to date and competent. Below is an initial attempt to do that, and should not be taken as ‘the Gospel Truth’ on these important issues.

The newest physics is “particle ” or “quantum physics” and it is quite exotic. A physicist recently wrote, “we understand the equations for quantum physics but we don’t understand what quantum physics is.” He explains that maybe we should be happy with that, just the equations, and not be concerned with a ‘picture’ of what they are about in terms of objects, causes, and sequences of events.

To be satisfied with only the equations is to be what is called “an instrumentalist” philosophically. The equations—and all the ideas, measurements, and experiments—are tools we use to manipulate reality. In that sense. our physicist refers to this view with some disapproval: it’s “antirealism.” He thinks it has given up on the belief in finding what is really there.

The scientist above is Sean Carroll from Cal Tech. He is an award-winner and writer of many books including The Big Picture (2016) an effort to popularly explain modern physics and its philosophical implications. It is very good, so let me summarize some parts of it as engagingly as possible.

A Strange and Quarky Universe

This modern quantum physics has broken down the old picture of the atom into tinier parts and additional forces. One of its most interesting aspects, to me, is that forces are now also thought of in terms of particles. It seemed that traditionally forces were just ‘powers’ and ‘abilities’ between things—acting on things—and not composed of little things themselves. One of the dissatisfying aspect of Newton’s gravity was its character as “an action that took place over distance,” but what did the work through that distance of space between between attracted objects? The new theory answers that question; it is force particles and the fields that do the work. More on fields, soon.

Two Lists of Strange Beasts

Carroll provides us with two lists of the particles that populate this new physics. Just their names are worth the fun of knowing. Note that these particles are also the field around them; they are one and the same. So, there are two basic kinds of quantum fields and two basic kinds of particles: they are Fermions and Bosons.

Fermions are particles of matter: “they take up space and help explain the solidity” of all solid things, “including the ground beneath our feet,” writes Carroll. Fermion kinds are the —

Electron, muon, tau (-I)
Electron neutrino, muon neutrino, tau neutrino (neutral)
Up quark, charm quark, top quark (+2/3)
Down quark, strange quark, bottom quark (-1/3)

Bosons are not particles of matter; they are “force-carrying particles” that “pile up” to create forces (force fields) like gravity and electromagnetism. Boson particles are the—

Graviton (for gravity, spacetime curvature)
Photon (for electromagnetism)
Eight gluons (for the strong nuclear force)
W and Z bosons (for the weak nuclear force)
Higgs boson

It’s a far more complicated cast of characters than the former drama of the proton, neutron, and electron and their actions under the influence of gravity, electrical charge, velocity and inertia.

(**The old picture of an atom,** in this case Lithium–3 protons, 3 electrons. Importantly, Carroll argues that **this theory is *not* wrong;** it is now *supplemented* by a “deeper understanding.” In its own parameters, this picture is **an “effective theory”** that still forms the basis of chemistry.)

Fields

(“One can model a gravitational field by a vector field where a vector indicates the acceleration a mass would experience at each point in space.” Quote and diagram from Wikipedia)

“Modern physics says that the particles and the forces that make up atoms all arise out of fields…[and] that is called quantum field theory,” writes Carroll. Particles are fields. Forces are fields. It was Einstein who first started moving in this direction when in the early 1900s he unified space and time into a single field—spacetime. The force of gravity was now the curvature or warping of this field, and soon the very objects in the field were not independent of the field.

Traditionally, Newton thought of space as if a flat and uniform grid stretching in all direction. It could be full of objects or empty of them, that did not basically matter to space itself. Time, too, was like an arrow moving forward; it also did not depend on objects in time or objects moving through space and time. Time was still there in each case and just the same. None of this holds anymore for the new physics. Space, time, objects, forces are all mixed together and interdependent within field theories.

There are four kinds of fields and each has their associated particle.

The Gravitational Field is the weakest of the forces, but also the most universal. All the different kinds of particles exert gravitational attraction on each other. The graviton is the particular particle that conveys this force of attraction. Gravity is most significant over large distances and larger objects, at least relative to the other forces and their distances and objects. In this way it is a force very familiar to us and our ordinary life. This field is depicted in the image that leads this post.
The Electromagnetic Field is most significant in binding electrons to nuclei in and between atoms. In many ways it is also very familiar to us, as ordinary humans, as commonly known events (or ‘things’) like magnetism, electricity, and light. Each of these common things are basically about electrons and their relations to a nucleus or various nuclei. The photon is the particle that interacts in this field and carries the associated force—electromagnetism.

(**The electromagnetic force and field: an electron** has and is an electrical charge. It therefore interacts with its field. When “shaken” says Carroll, by heating up or just moving, it emits an electromagnetic wave through the field. This is the source of the **light** we see and other important waves. )

(**An invisible thing, a magnetic field, becomes visible** with the use of iron filings. Many kids enjoyed this activity when I taught 7th grade science.)

The Strong Nuclear Force or Field holds between Up and Down Quarks to compose a proton or a neutron. It is “carried” by gluon particles. A form of this force also holds protons to neutrons to form nuclei.
The Weak Nuclear Force or Field holds between a nucleus and a particle I (we) know little about, the neutrino. It is like an electron but with no electrical charge and little to no mass. It was discovered in 1955, but theoretically postulated prior to that in order to preserve conservation principles in several situations. A neutrino hardly ever interacts with matter. “A low-energy neutrino will travel through many light-years of normal matter before interacting with anything,” according to Scientific American magazine!

Yet, Carroll tells us that “a field is kind of opposite of a particle; while a particle has a specific location in space, a field is something that stretches all throughout space” and it “takes on some particular value at every point.” Carroll illustrates this relation by describing the concept of “spin” as applied to electrons and gravitons. “We can think of the particle almost like little spinning tops, except…[they] don’t have size.” There is not a body (the top) that is “revolving around an axis.” “Their spin is an intrinsic property,” he explains. In other words, they are not like the planet Earth where we can think of it as a thing not spinning, and then also think of it as a thing but now spinning. Field theories blur the line between “a thing” and “the stuff around that thing.” An electron is only its spin of -1/2 and a graviton is spin -2 within their respective fields.

(We use this same thinking–somewhat– in identifying **a hurricane.** There is no absolute outer boundary to it, and there is no ‘thing’ [no body] at the middle of it that is doing the spinning. Curiously, for a hurricane, its middle is ’empty;’ it is calm with no spin.)

But in an Important Way, It Does Not Matter!

I will continue the above exposition in the next post because there are several more important areas to cover, but now it is important to get to Dr. Carroll’s general and philosophical implications of this new physics.

The structure of his book, The Big Picture, suggests to us the answer. All the above takes up very little of this 441 page book. The implications of the new physics are limited, he contends, and for a very important reason: Reality is in layers or has “levels,” and at each level there is a significant degree of autonomy. Changes in how we understand levels below any particular level do not need to necessarily change our understanding of the level of our interest. Most of Carroll’s book is about these other “useful” vocabularies and the conditions that allow for their legitimate use.

Chemistry works perfectly fine using a model of atoms in terms of protons, neutrons, and electrons and their bonds in terms of electrical charges. It does not now need to talk of quarks and boson particles. Only in very high energy situations does the old vocabulary break down.

Newtonian physics is also accurate for most uses. Quantum physics is not necessary, nor used, to understand the orbit of the moon or other planets nor plot a course to land astronauts on them. Classical Physics has its legitimate domain or “regime” says Carroll. Only in areas of extreme gravity, like a black hole or near the sun, do we need to use the new physics for many purposes.

(For a craft in flight through the air around it is best to think of air as a fluid. *Atmospheric scientists* and *aeronautical engineers* would use this kind of thinking and this equation to calculate “drag” or “air resistance” to a vehicle’s movement: Fd=−21ρv2ACdv^. Thanks to Khan Academy for diagram and equation)

Carroll’s “classic example of emergence,” or of the variety of “effective vocabularies,” is air. We can think of ‘air’ in two ways. We know air as a fluid when we think of it as having a “temperature,” a “pressure,” and providing “resistance.” This is a more macroscopic, “coarse-grained,” approach. Air, as a fluid, is continuous; it forms an unbroken field for which at every point there is a value for its temperature and pressure.

(**Air as a fluid,** again. **The Venturi Effect:** ‘The static pressure in the first measuring tube (1) is higher than at the second (2), and the fluid speed at “1” is lower than at “2”, because the cross-sectional area at “1” is greater than at “2”.’ Thanks to Wikipedia for diagram and quote.)

But to understand air “in a deeper way,” our physicist says we can think of it as a collection of molecules with energy. This is what Carroll calls “fine-graining,” and it allows us to “zoom in” and think of temperature and pressure as the movement of molecules and their collisions with each other and their container. I will add a third possibility, air as sub-atomic particles and fields. Of these last two possibilities—molecules and sub-atomic fields—each are “legitimate” but “incredibly cumbersome” ways to deal with air, says Carroll and therefore for practical purposes, “nobody ever talks that way.”

(**Air as particles.** Air Pressure is then “the amount of force applied perpendicular to the surface of an object per unit area.” Thanks to Wikipedia for diagram and quote.)

Yet, air is all three things, and in a way, each is legitimate, useful, and functions independently of the other two vocabularies. Historically, our understanding of air as a fluid preceded our understanding of it as molecules, and the latter does not undermine the earlier. This is the case—in general—with our most modern quantum physics and its historically preceding vocabulary, Newtonian physics.

(**“Fine-graining”: Yes we can *see* atoms.** “This device, held together with hardware-store fiberboard and eyebolts and connected to a breadboard, is taking pictures of actual atomic structures.” “The device brings a needle atomically close to the object to be measured (by hand), applying a small voltage (+-15V), and stopping when it starts to conduct. Depending on the distance between the tip and the target, the voltage varies and does so precisely enough to identify whether an atom is underneath or not, and by how much.” Thanks to hackaday.com for picture and quote.)

So, hang on to your top quarks, strange quarks and muons, and may the gravitons continue to keep your feet firmly planted on the ground! In the following post, I will consider several more ‘charming’ aspects of the new Quantum Physics.

(**Particles colliding in the Large Haldon Collider** in Switzerland–i.e. equipment not available at your hardware store. Recent experiments have “found that so-called beauty quarks (or bottom quarks) are not behaving the way that they should.” Quote and photo from Live science.)

**Zooming in on pollen grains through the use of a Scanning Electron Microscope.** Here at the ***naturereligionconnection.org***)

HAVE A GOOD DAY AND STAY HEALTHY!

The “Secretly Profound” Idea of Emergence

March 6, 2022 ~ GregWW ~ 3 Comments

cropped-img_34702-e1565808476815-2 — (**Complex Forms with Numerous Qualities Have *Emerged* From Microscopic Structures with Limited Qualities.** Drawing by Marty)

So, what is “Emergence”, anyway? This is the second passage on it and it’s time to say — more explicitly — what it is. After all, we all kind of know what the term refers to, or do we?

Many chemists and physicists do not like the term. “What is its point?” For example, if you take the CHNOPS chemicals and mix them just right, Life “results” or “occurs” or “is caused”. Why say life “emerges”? What is added? It sounds unscientific, spooky-like.

wright — (*The Alchemist in Search of the Philosophers’ Stone*, painting by J. Wright of Derby , 1773)

Yet, noted physicist, Sean Carroll has written an entire book (The Big Picture) pretty much dedicated to this concept. “There are many ways of talking about the world, each of which captures a different aspect of the underlying whole”, he writes.(1) This vision of reality is “innocuous-seeming but secretly profound” and he calls it “Poetic Naturalism.” What is vital is that all these “stories” must fit together. “Higher level” ways of talking must be consistent with those ‘below’ it. He then declares, “One pivotal word enables that reconciliation between the different stories: emergence.”(his italics, 2)

Emergence is as much a logical concept as it is a physical one. Carroll cites 19th century French philosopher Auguste Comte as the first to explicitly delineate a “hierarchy of sciences”.(3) We all tacitly acknowledge this hierarchy, with not much dissent. Physics is “the most microscopic and comprehensive level; out of that emerges chemistry, and then biology, and then psychology, and finally sociology”, Carroll summarizes Comte’s view. But here is the controversial part, each layer does not ‘collapse’ into those below it because each “way of talking” or each “effective theory” — as Carroll also calls them — is valuable and logically autonomous in itself.

media2f1752f1752381f-767e-4b41-9220-8a2794e5d26b2fphpuzodjm — (**Not quite the idea of a Hierarchy of Sciences**, *but* the general idea of **a hierarchy of existence** has been around for a long time. It has been called The Great Chain of Being. The above is Thomas Acquinas’ fourth argument for the existence of God, **the argument from degree**: there must be a lowest and highest degree of Mindfulness, Spirit, or forms of existence.. Thanks to *Chegg Study* for diagram.)

For example, the chemistry and neurology of the brain will someday “explain” all the ‘truths’ of psychology we might want to say, but Carroll disagrees. “The emergent theory (in this case, psychology, gww) describes true features of the system that might be completely hidden from the microscopic point of view”, he argues.(4) He contends emergent theories are additional knowledge of the system; more precisely, they are knowledge of “useful ways of talking” about it.(5) The microscopic theories do not say, or explain, all that is worth saying about the system.

What is this “usefulness”? It seems to be a shift in, a build up of, perspective. In fact, Carroll cites Ludwig Boltzmann’s explanation of entropy: Entropy is “a way of counting how many possible microscopic arrangements of the stuff in a system would look indistinguishable from a macroscopic point of view.”(6)

For example, what we refer to as “the sky” is a physical situation with high entropy ; many different atomic and sub-atomic layouts (descriptions) of any particular view of the sky could be possible and accurate. They would all “look the same” to us; each could be (as far as we are concerned) whatever the actual atomic configuration was. “The sky” is not a highly organized “thing;” but for what we would call “more complex or more highly organized phenomena”—like a living thing or a human society—far fewer atomic descriptions of it could be accurate, fewer would be, or look, the same to us. They have low physical entropy, and therefore a much more exact and limited range of atomic description.

In that sense, a point of view has now become integral to this vital scientific principle; microscopic occurrences can be taken, or have significance, in different ways!

When we describe the world from the point of view of physics — with its objects and laws — it is, as if, persons don’t exist. Physics is not a ‘human’ perspective. It is universal and, therefore, almost totally abstract. Physics “ignores” all the many layers of complexity that we humans deal with constantly. No macroscopic ‘solids’ or ‘fluids’ stand out to it; no color or sound, no feelings or meanings, no living things, no perceivers, are conceptually present in its vocabulary. For physics, these ‘things’ do not exist except as crude, initial, data that is in need of analysis. They are “subjective phenomena” for which their ‘true nature’—their microscopic sub-structure—can be discovered. This is just what Carroll is arguing against with his advocacy of “Emergence” and the different “Levels of Effective Theory.” There is more to our world than its atomic structure. Gee, that seems rather obvious!

6727193557_2f591a9113_o-min — (“Where is Waldo?” as the popular book series asks. He is not in **this portrayal of the movement of the basic particles of the universe as obtained following a high speed collision in a super collider.** “Waldo” is an idea from a vocabulary far different than particle physics. Image thanks to *pixabay*.)

“Physics is the simplest of all the sciences,” Carroll says, “not ‘simple’ in the sense that the homework problems are easy, but simple in the sense of Galileo’s trick of ignoring…”(7) He says, some make of this that “if we completely understand the microscopic level,…we know everything there is to know…Whatever (macroscopic, gww) questions you might have can be translated into the microscopic language and answered there.”(8)

Carroll agrees, in one sense; all the ways we talk about ourselves (if it is legitimate talk) must be compatible. So, ‘our’ behavior, as a system of atoms, is predictable and determined by the laws of physics and chemistry. The idea of “You” is “not a part of our best theory of atoms” or any other microscopic object. Carroll continues, “you are an emergent phenomena, meaning that you are an element in a higher-level ontology that describes the world at a macroscopic level.” As “You”, it is “perfectly appropriate to talk about wants and feelings and desires” and also choices. “Those are all real phenomena in our best understanding of human beings”, he concludes.(9)

So, atoms don’t have wants and feelings, nor do waves in a quantum field. Even though ‘you’ are made of such things, and understanding ‘you’ as a particular collection of them, can predict, “in principle”, all the movements of ‘you’. We can still legitimately say ‘you’ have wants and feelings.

Nor are wants and feelings caused by atoms. That is a mistaken way to talk, says Carroll. It is incoherent; it is mixing two vocabularies. Wants and feelings are caused by other elements at the vocabulary level of ‘you’ (10), things like ‘need’, ‘instinct’, ‘ambition’, ‘expectation’, ‘socialization’, ‘desire;’ these cause wants and feelings. Atoms (or quantum fields, or whatever) only interact with other things of their kind. Each way of talking is at its own emergent level.

db868d36b8a14cf0af47cf58d95c31d3_500_500 — (**The movement of these collections of particles** can be *predicted* and described by physics, but the terms “predator and prey”, “cheetah and gazelle” would not appear in that vocabulary, nor any emotion or need these creatures might be feeling.)

This is Emergence, I believe: it is an ‘unfolding’ of potential, not a necessary sequence of caused objects. It is our good fortune that from a microscopic world of quantum waves or sub-atomic particles more complex unities appeared. It did not need to happen and it is a somewhat rare occurrence in the universe, apparently. But, on our special planet, it did happen, and from our point of view, as rational humans, many emergent properties and abilities needed to emerge for us to get to our current situation. We can trace ‘our’ origin to the Big Bang, but there is a huge gap from there to humans going to the moon and sending robotic explorers into deep space. Also, humans have a reasonable understanding of the entire universe at a microscopic level, and we live to write about all this and consider the significance of these accomplishments.

So, the connection between the Microscopic World and the various Macroscopic Worlds (“ways of talking” about the micro) is not causation, but “usefulness”and “emergence” according to Carroll. It is how the microscopic order is ‘taken’, ‘used,’ that matters to Poetic Naturalism. There are some patterns among these microscopic structures that stand out to us—in addition to abiding by all physical laws—as if they were our ‘shadow,’ a trail of more complex patterns that are us, ourselves Emerging through all the levels.

Life, consciousness, animal societies, human language is what can possibly evolve from the simplified nature revealed in the hard sciences. Useful ways of talking about the microscopic add new properties, new abilities and new objects that are “autonomous” and meaningful on their own, because they are a set of interrelated structures, functions, and qualities. “The emergent theory is autonomous (it works by itself, without reference to other theories)”, and “truly new”, contends Carroll. (11)

That is a nice thought! It is real and legitimate to understand the universe as useful to us as persons. Emergence allows us, literally, to see this, and the concept of “emergence” allows us to understand that we do fit in this universe as a qualitatively rich and complex place. We can look out and see it, hear, smell and feel these developments. We can also try to understand these emergent wonders.

jan-bruegel-the-elder-and-peter-paul-rubens-allegory-of-the-sense-of-smell — **(OUR WORLD OF NUMEROUS QUALITIES AND COMPLEX OBJECTS.** *Allegory of the Sense of Smell*, painting by Peter Bruegel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens, 1617.)

A Puzzle To Be Solved?

I am not sure Sean Carroll has solved the problem of the relationship of one level to another. As a physicist, he speaks out strongly for the a dominant role of that version of reality. But physicists are persons too, and perhaps primarily. Maybe the social and historical level of “Effective Theories” will in the end be just as significant as the hard core physical? After all, physics has itself changed its view of “ultimate reality” often. The self-reflective process of human history maybe the most reliable understanding of our human condition, but a very open-ended one.

(THE WORLD EMERGING IN MY BACKYARD, photo by GWW.)

So, there is more to the universe than atoms in motion. The next post will provide Carroll’s basic examples of how the universe “emerges” from these atoms. The universe becomes more than its basic stuff, and is “for our purposes”, “useful” and ‘significant’ to us! Two important mechanisms or structures for emergence will be described: coarse-graining and fractal organization.

69.1894_ph_web-1 — (**Prades, the Village** (1917) Painting by Joan Miro. “Intense color, light, space and form are used to express the artist’s emotional state,” guggenheim.org. Or is it **another “useful” description of the world.)**

Notes: From Carroll’s The Big Picture: 1. page 93 2) 94 3) 104 4) 108 5) 108 6) 227 7) 25 8). 108 9).113 10) 113 11) 106-7

12) Compatibilism is the idea that higher qualities and abilities are compatible with a Deterministic Universe. Just because physics knows a lot about the movement of the basic particles and quantum waves of the universe, does not mean that there are not still more interesting and significant things to be said about those microscopic realities. 13. page 17

cropped-img_34702-e1565808476815-10 — *naturereligionconnection*.org

Emergence and a Strange Thing called Human Choice

February 27, 2022April 4, 2022 ~ GregWW ~ Leave a comment

More complex things “Emerge” from a background of simpler things, argues the diversely talented physicist, Sean Carroll, in his book The Big Picture. It is a “secretly profound idea that there are many ways of talking about the world, each of which captures a different aspect of the underlying whole,” he writes. (1) (This is a follow-up post, see Things Emerge for initial ground work.)

(**The Caltech Physicist, Sean Carroll.** Photo from Physics Forum.)

Let us now consider an application of this idea of Emergence to a real-life situation.

In no way does a single atom choose, and it seems hard to imagine how a collection of atoms could do much better, we can state rhetorically. But Choice does exist, argues Carroll, and “it would be difficult indeed to describe human beings without it.”(3) A basic tenant of Carroll’s Poetic Naturalism is that each “way of talking”, each emergent and “effective theory,” has its own vocabulary, its own ontology of objects, that it describes with consistent and orderly relations. I am confused by the contentions of radical reductionists and eliminativists. They want to think about “persons” and undoubtedly use the idea in their everyday life, yet make theoretical contentions that exclude central parts of what seems to be “personhood.” You cannot eat your cake (pizza) and have it too.

1371589622878 — (If all we do is determined by causal forces far different than *the qualities of good pizza*, then arguing about ‘best pizza’ is an empty charade, as would be debating free will.)

Carroll contends that they make a category mistake.(4) They illegitimately mix two ways to talking. Physics-talk or person-talk, “either vocabulary is perfectly legitimate, but mixing them leads to nonsense”, he contends.

It is confused to say, different electromagnetic wave lengths cause us to see different colors. It is no help to say different patterns of neural activity causes us to see them; at least we should say, color is associated with these physical events.

Another example of this confused way of thinking, I believe, occurred recently on the WEIT blog. A light-hearted debate arose over which is better pizza, Chicago style deep dish or NY style thin. Coyne—the defender of a form of “determinism”—jumped in to advocate for deep dish; being from Chicago, it’s his favorite. But I commented, raining on this light-hearted parade, that “Who cares?” “If humans have no free choice in the matter and are not responsible for their likes and dislikes (as Coyne believes), then what is the point of debating; other than the fact that the debaters can do no other than what they do—debate. It is a debate whose outcome is already determined and whose terms are ungrounded. So what is the point?” I concluded.

So at the Level of “person-talk”—at which this pizza debate took place— there must also be talk of some things or qualities more or less like what we call “texture,” “spiciness,” “aroma,” “flavor” (sensation terms) More essentially, “person-talk” seems to need ideas something similar to “responsibility,” some talk and reality of “social roles,” a concept of “us” or “our people,” “choice and decision,” “antecedents and consequences,” and then of course a variety of “things that are not persons.” All these are the concepts that make talking of “persons” important and coherent: all these are ideas and qualities at that level. This will be a topic returned to, here in The Connection: What is person-talk?

Carroll’s contention is, being a no-free-willer, no-true-chooser AND debating what is the best pizza, is nonsense, pointless, vacuously circular. How can physics explain your preference of pizza? The two sets of terms just don’t match up.

Humans Do Choose

Choice is a deeply human characteristic, Carroll says. I think it would be best to say “person,” because humans in comas, or with extreme mental deficiencies, do not make choices. Persons are deeply characterized as “choice-makers.”

Carroll gives us a simple example. In the morning, you walk to our closet to choose a shirt for the day. Should I choose this blue one or that yellow one, you wonder. “That is a decision you have to make,” he says, “you can’t just say, ‘I’ll do whatever the atoms of my body were going to do.” (5)

chongqing_highway_070617 — (**Choosing is not just a mental act,** it is built into the way we live.)

Two points about this. First, I would like to emphasize that your choosing is not just an issue in your head —as if it were only a mental state and possibly an illusion. If you are standing in front of your “closet,” you ought to be thinking about “choosing.” That situation is built into the physical design of your house:.it is built into the way we live. Our mental perspectives is necessarily connected to the physical arrangement of the environment.

Your wardrobe hanging in front of you is equally a physical thing that is all about choosing from among it. Driving down the road, every intersection is a choice-opportunity. At a grocery store, aisle after aisle of choice-opportunities, and on and on. It is deeply confused to think you could take human beings and our ways of life and just pluck out the idea of “choice” (switch this mental state) and still have something nearly the same.

This issue goes deeper still, The rudiments of choice go back into biology, into single-celled organisms and plants in general. They and their environment—from Our point of view—are Structurally Organized to create optimal ‘choices,’ rudimentary ‘decisions.’ To us, their environment to them would seem limited, and their responses often predictable. That is ‘proto-choice.’ A creature far more sophisticated than we might think the same of our decisions, but our decisions do not seem that way to us! There is a very “deep” and complex relationship between living things and Their Environment, the two are very much designed for each other. That environment (as it seems to the organism) and that living creature are not part of the vocabulary of physics—physic’s talk is at least several “levels” down the scale of complexity. It is far more abstract.

1280px-cognitive_bias_codex_en.svg_ — **Person’s “choose” because they have incomplete knowledge. That is our condition.** Wikipedia diagram.

Secondly, and the point Carroll emphasizes, no matter what a physicist might know will happen next, You Don’t. As you stand in front of that closet, Choice is real for you because you are limited in your ability to know. Carroll says it is a matter of “epistemic access”. It is “the unavoidable reality of our incomplete knowledge (that) is responsible for why we find it useful to talk about the future using the language of choice…” “None of us knows the exact state of the universe, or has the calculational power to predict the future even if we did”, he writes; “we know about the rough configuration of our bodies and we have some idea of our mental states…given that incomplete information…” we choose and “it’s completely conceivable that we could have acted differently.” (6)

The Conclusive Point

This is the conclusive point, to my way of thinking. We have strong evidence, as Carroll argues, that the course of our world is (in some sense) predetermined. Its course is physically necessary, but we do not have practical access to that knowledge. From our limited and inclusive participation in that world we have been rightly designed to act as if the future is open and that our choices are significant there in.

I think that the wide-ranging physicist, Sean Carroll, has brought us a long way in our consideration of Emergence. Whether I will agree with his final conclusions, I am not yet sure. I have a suspicion that he may be too physics-oriented. Physics is vital, but so are many other ways we talk and act.

Notes— A few page references: 1) 93 2–4) page 379 5) 380, 6) pages 380-1

cropped-img_34702-e1565808476815-11 — When we are Particularly Impressed with the Beauty, Coordination and Good Fortune of Our World. Logo by Marty.

New Things “Emerge”

February 20, 2022February 27, 2022 ~ GregWW ~ Leave a comment

“Huston, We have a problem,” was astronaut Jim Lovell’s famous call to Earth. Let’s put in a similar call. Somehow we humans get colors, joy, death and freedom from a washed out bunch of subatomic particle. That is getting a lot of Qualities out of much less substance. (See the preceding posts for the ground work on this theme.) I know it takes a bunch of math, to get from there to here, but is it ever really enough? Here is someone who can help.

Sean Carroll is a noted physicist from Cal Tech. Known for his wide ranging interests and knowledge, he also has a desire and ability to share his expertise with a broader audience—me and you. He has written The Big Picture, a book from 2016 that exemplifies his versatility and desire to communicate. Its subtitle is “On the Origins of Life, Meaning and the Universe Itself.” Yes, wide ranging.

So, in the very broadest sense, Where do all the different things around us come from? Dr. Carroll will help us answer that question.

Physics and the ‘hard’ sciences are not my forte, so I needed to tackle this book — some 450 pages of it — to solidify (or refute) the claim that interesting and more complex objects “emerge” from the quantum fields and sub-atomic particles that are now known to be “the basis” of our world and the universe (“itself”). We all know that all things are matter and energy, but we sure have a lot more to say about “things” than just that!

Carroll is a “Compatiblist”, a philosophical position that argues that both the objects of physics are real and significant, and so are the objects of our ordinary world that we call ‘people’, ‘zinnias’ and ‘the Atlantic Ocean’, to name but a few. The microscopic and the macroscopic largely fit together without too much tension, he believes (1). In The Nature Religion Connection, this is also our belief, but how does it happen? How are we both “persons” and swarming masses of sub-atomic particles, for example? Carroll believes we can be these two seemingly different kinds of things without too much confusion.

free-will-big-cover — (Note each letter suspended from a puppeteer’s string.)

Others do not believe the world around us does has so many different and wonderful kinds of things and abilities! Radical Reductionists believe that since the objects and laws

of physics underlay everything, macroscopic objects lose their status (in some important sense) as real, or legitimately significant (2). Too much of the way we think of these macroscopic objects does not fit with our ‘scientific vision’, they claim. Neuroscientist and famous atheist, Sam Harris contends that ‘free will’ is an illusion and the choices we make are caused by mechanical forces outside us and in. There is no free will, no freely choosing, therefore, we should eliminate such talk.

Biologist Jerry Coyne, University of Chicago,, believes we do not freely choose and, therefore, talk of ‘responsibility’ and ‘morality’ is also unfounded (see his popular blog, Why Evolution Is True, or WEIT). These folks are called by Carroll not only reductionists — macro objects are really micro objects — but also “eliminativists.”

(**A double-petalled Zinnia** from the garden of Greg and Sheri. **Is a flower still a “flower”** if we speak of it only in atomic terms? Photo by GregWW.)

Their position has undeniable cogency; why talk about ‘the same thing’ in two very different ways? For example, a Zinnia is a collection of sub-atomic particles and also a biological object with needs, satisfactions and efforts. Which way of talking is more important, which way is true? Should we talk in both ways? If so, how do they fit together? After all, atoms in themselves do not have needs; they do not even have a color, yet the above zinnia seems beautifully orange and has a need for sunshine.

The flavor and attitude of this eliminativist claim might be captured in this famous quote by Ernest Rutherford, the experimental physicist who in 1909 was crucial in discovering the structure of the atom. He not only diminished the significance of macro objects but also the less fundamental sciences; he said “all of science is either physics or stamp collecting.” (3) If you want to really know how things are, study physics, that was his rather arrogant contention.

gold-foil-experiment-diagram-rutherford-jj-atom-substance-1909 — (Rutherford’s famous gold foil experiment. **“All science is either physics or stamp collecting,” he said.**)

I must admit that I feel a significant degree of confusion about this connection of the microscopic to the macroscopic world. How much can we eliminate from a particular discourse, or change the discourse entirely, and still be talking about the same thing? To me, a flower exhibits some distinct qualities different from inanimate objects, and this is the historically recognized belief. People make “choices” and are “responsible” for their actions, we also believe, but such talk has no place when considering atoms.

And aren’t these empirical claims; don’t we just see it? A flower has color; it grows, blooms, makes seeds that then reproduces “itself” in a very similar flower—its offspring. We can manipulate its breeding and encourage the enhancement of some traits by contrast to others in the offspring. We know there are “laws,” “rules,” by which this happens. It is called the science of biology. So, is a “flower” still a flower if we decide to speak of it only in atomic terms?

The Power of Physics

Some day, our knowledge of physics may expand to the point that the behavior of all things may be predictable in advance. Crazy to think, but Carroll says that, “in principle,” that day is already here! Physicists now possess accurate and detailed knowledge of the workings of the universe but also “an effective theory of the everyday world.”(4) He calls it “the Core Theory” and it is “the specific set of fields and interactions that govern our local environment.” He continues, “Everything we want to think about human beings has to be compatible with the nature and behavior of the pieces of which we are made” and then adds an interesting proviso, “even if those pieces don’t tell the whole story.”(5)

That is the crux of the entire debate. What sense can be made of that proviso? How can the particles and forces that compose us at the most basic level behave as physically predicted, yet, not be all that is worth saying? What more can be added that does not fall into silliness and superstition?

Here is the equation that puts ‘the nail in the coffin’; it is the physics that is the basis for the prediction of all that happens around us, and with us, in our macroscopic world. Its called “the path-integral formulation of quantum mechanics”.(6) It was pioneered by Erwin Schrodinger but this is the “compact and elegant” formulation of contemporary physicist Richard Feynman, reports Carroll.

Carroll has added to the equation the solid lines and descriptions that distinguish the different sections of this formulation: “quantum mechanic”, “spacetime”, “gravity” etc. In general, the equation describes “the quantum amplitude for undergoing a transition from one specified field configuration to another, expressed as a sum over all the paths that could possibly connect them.”(7) That is what W is, it is the amplitude of a wave expressed as an integral that is “summing up an infinite number of infinitely small things”: “the possible things the field can do in between the starting and ending, which we call a “path” the field configuration can take”, says Carroll.

I can assure you, the above equation is not the style in which his book is written. If it was, I would not have gotten beyond page one! The above equation is the only one to appear and it does so in an appendix as an effort to give the reader a taste of the unvarnished work of contemporary physics. It is amazingly impressive stuff, and Carroll contends that its accuracy and specificity is such that even if in the future scientists come to think of its components in very different ways, this formulation will still be true in its own terms and for the domain to which it applies forever! (8) Vive la physique!

Some Things Emerge

Interestingly, Compatiblists are themselves Eliminativists concerning some issues. Carroll argues that our most basic framework for understanding what is real is physics with its Core Theory, exemplified by the above equation. This eliminates any good reason for talk of gods, souls, ghosts, or mind (as something beyond the physical) and even what he calls the “strong emergentist” position (which will be discussed later). They all are incompatible with physics and the evidence that supports it.

800px-proton_quark_structure.svg_ — **(Protons and Neutrons establish a new set of standards by which to consider the world. A level up from the world as quarks and gluons.** “A proton is composed of two up quarks, one down quark, and the gluons that mediate the forces “binding” them together.” Wikipedia)

He does offers us a list of objects that do legitimately “emerge” from the more basic and simpler underlying pieces of the Core Theory. This is where we start to return to the Core Theory as not telling “the whole story.” This “whole story,” he says, includes (9): protons and neutrons, stars and light, life, multicellular organisms, consciousness, language and abstract human thought. These are an ascending hierarchy of abilities and complex objects (we might say) that spell out what is possible from the simplified world of physics.

But, there are more mundane examples of emergence. An automobile is composed of atoms, but they are seldom mentioned. To design a car, its atomic substructure is not referenced. To build a car or repair one, only its functioning parts at the macroscopic level are referenced. Things like “pistons,” “bumpers,” “drive shaft,” “chassis,” “brake,” “accelerator” are used because these terms are most useful and are obvious to us. To drive a car, we never consider its subatomic structure! This is a dramatic example of emergence, and thanks to biologist Richard Dawkins for it.

f1.medium — (**Our first Eukaryotic Ancestor.** Diagram of the merger of free-living Spiochette and an Archaebacteria. **Out of Two came One.** Thanks to PNAS, 2006)

How do these higher level objects form valuable additions (beyond physics) to our understanding? This is “that crux of the problem” mentioned earlier. It is a “secretly profound idea that there are many ways of talking about the world, each of which captures a different aspect of the underlying whole,” he writes (10). Carroll is, philosophically, a Naturalist; this is his basic commitment to science as the doorway to what is real “at the deepest level.” Then, when he adds the “other ways of talking”, “emergent theories” and capturing “the whole story”, he admits he has now become what he calls “a poetic naturalist”. (11)

“Poetic naturalism is a philosophy of freedom and responsibility,” he very pointedly declares (12). Though physics captures the universe fundamentally, there are other “useful ways of talking about certain subsets of the basic stuff”. They are useful to us for various reasons. First, “it would be horrendously inconvenient if ” to explain anything “we were to list a huge set of atoms and how they were arranged.”(13) Second, and most importantly, “we really do learn something new by studying emergent theories for their own sake, even if all the theories are utterly compatible” (with physic’s theories). (14)

So we are Both vast conglomerations of particles and scientific forces, And persons who ‘eat, love and pray,’ to borrow the current phrase. In the next passage, let’s apply the Idea of Emergence to these two different kinds of “Us” and see how that works out!

Notes— Since this post is a review of aspects of this book, I thought a few page references would be appropriate. I did attempt a close read of this material and it is a respected work. 1) page 379 2) page 19 3) 105 4) 177-9 5) 6-7) 437 8) 179 9) 102 10) 93 11) 15-19 12) 21 13) 108 14) 108

A Strange and Quarky Universe

Two Lists of Strange Beasts

Fields

But in an Important Way, It Does Not Matter!

HAVE A GOOD DAY AND STAY HEALTHY!

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The Conclusive Point

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Some Things Emerge

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