In order to avoid misunderstandings, let me be precise as to what I mean when I write “Science”. The term “science” is a very broad term. When we try to discuss subjects such as “birth of science”, we can easily get directed to ancient Greece, Mesopotamia, India or China. What I mean by Science here is “science after the scientific revolution”. As I am not a historian, I will cite here the opinion of an eminent professional historian, professor emeritus at the Department of Humanities of Illinois Institute of Technology,
WilburApplebaum. In his book “The Scientific Evolution and theFoundations of Modern Science”
Applebaum states:
Just as the nature of scientific thinking has changed, so has thinking about the creation of modern science. One viewpoint is that the foundations of modern science evolved from ideas developed during the late Middle Ages, and that therefore it makes better sense to speak of scientific evolution than of a scientific revolution. The position taken in this work is that while ideas about the natural world were indeed evolving during the Middle Ages, scholars continued to assume that certain fundamental principles inherited from the ancient world were correct. It was only during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that these principles were challenged and overturned in favor of new ones that constitute a basis for many ideas and approaches held today. Although the science of the seventeenth century is not the science of today, it laid the foundations for the study of the cosmos, matter, motion, life processes, and the means of acquiring knowledge of them that are fundamental to modern science.
Wilbur Applebaum is also the editor of the scholarly volume “Encyclopediaof the Scientific Revolution from Copernicus to Newton”. In the “introduction and user guide” to this almost 1300 pages long encyclopedia containing over 400 articles, Applebaum brings more details on the same subject:
At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the universe was thought to be spherical, finite, geocentric, and completely filled with matter. By the end of the seventeenth century, the universe had come to be thought of as infinite, heliocentric, and possessed of vacuous spaces large and small. In the course of those two centuries, the belief that the heavens obeyed different laws from those on earth was abandoned. Analogies to mechanical action largely replaced explanations of natural events in terms of purpose, values, inherent qualities, and occult powers. Although the universe increasingly came to be seen as operating on principles similar to those determining the workings of a clock, the seventeenth century also gave birth to the immensely fruitful, yet decidedly non-mechanistic concept of universal gravitation; it also provided room for the operation of other nonmechanical principles.
Thus, in what follows, when I use the term “Science”, I will mean science after the scientific revolution that Applebaum is talking about above.
In the following, I will examine the interaction between Science and religion in some detail.
P.S.1. 19-03-23 20:13 Started reading McGilchrist - "The Matter With Things"
"Reductionism envisages a universe of things – and simply material things at that. How these things are related is viewed as a secondary matter. However, I suggest that relationships are primary, more foundational than the things related: that the relationships don’t just ‘connect’ pre-existing things, but modify what we mean by the ‘things’, which in turn modify everything else they are in relationship with. That is because what we are dealing with are, ultimately, relations, events, processes; ‘things’ is a useful shorthand for those elements, congealed in the flow of experience, that emerge secondarily from, and attract our attention in, a primary web of interconnexions. I have nothing against things, provided we don’t see them as primary."
I know about processes and events, but "relations" are still terra incognita for me - to much extent. How I am going to build physics of relations? Relations between what kind of objects? Something to think about. Jung's "acausal connecting principle" comes to mind. How do I get/deduce probabilities from relations? Can a relation at one level be an event at another level?
Coming next: Wrong use of Science
That relations/acausal probabilities sounds like an Andrew Gray idea. From https://www.valdostamuseum.com/hamsmith/ManyWorlds.html#GrayHistories
ReplyDeleteIn the Many-Worlds Quantum Theory of Andrew Gray, in quant-ph/9804008 and quant-ph/9712037, entire Cosmic Histories are Selected over all space and time, with a probability for selection assigned to each possible history. As this probability depends on the whole history, and is not merely composed of the product of probabilities for each step in the history, the theory is not a causal theory. Gray shows that this violation of causality is usually completely unobservable and confined to the microscopic world.
Each entire Cosmic History is selected by calculating both the product of probabilities for each step in that history and the product of the interference factors, which measure interference with other possible histories, at each time. It is the interference factor which makes the theory intrinsically non-causal at the microscopic level.
For example, a particle, when deciding which branch to take if faced with a choice of going in two directions, which are apparently equally probable from a local perspective, will always choose one route if the other results in a definite destructive interference with another particle at some stage in the future. It is as if the particle knows what will happen to it in the future if it goes one way or the other. From the perspective of the History Selection formulation of Many-Worlds Quantum Theory, there is nothing mysterious about this, the probability of a history in which the particle goes one way is zero, the probability of a history in which it goes the other way is non-zero, so at the branching point it always goes one way. However, though this may not be mysterious from the point of view of a Massless Lightcone life form that perceives the whole of its space-time world line, it might seem very mysterious from the local perspective of Material life forms such as humans, from whose perspective the probabilities for its various actions now are influenced by what could happen in the future.
It's time. It's time to develop the physics of acausal connections. Full speed. No wasting time. It's time.
DeleteAnd, BTW, one of the papers quoted in the paper I am reviewing now is:
DeleteMarco Cavaglia, Saurya Das and Roy Maartens
Class. Quantum Grav. 20 (2003) L205–L212
Abstract
The generalized uncertainty principle, motivated by string theory and non-commutative quantum mechanics, suggests significant modifications to the Hawking temperature and evaporation process of black holes. For extra-dimensional gravity with Planck scale O(TeV), this leads to important changes in the formation and detection of black holes at the large hadron collider. The number of particles produced in Hawking evaporation decreases substantially. The evaporation ends when the black-hole mass is Planck scale, leaving a remnant and a consequent missing energy of order TeV. Furthermore, the minimum energy for black-hole formation in collisions is increased, and could even be increased to such an extent that no black holes are formed at LHC energies.
If we do not do something about it, shooting black holes at each other will become a standard for the evil world powers.
Re: Acausal connections:
DeleteFoundations of Physics (2023) 53:4
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10701-022-00645-y
The Open Past in an Indeterministic Physics
Flavio Del Santo · Nicolas Gisin
Received: 7 July 2022 / Accepted: 2 November 2022 / Published online: 26 November 2022
© The Author(s) 2022
Abstract
Discussions on indeterminism in physics focus on the possibility of an open future, i.e. the possibility of having potential alternative future events, the realisation of one of which is not fully determined by the present state of affairs. Yet, can indeterminism affect also the past, making it open as well? We show that by upholding principles of finiteness of information one can entail such a possibility. We provide a toy model that shows how the past could be fundamentally indeterminate, while also explaining the intuitive (and observed) asymmetry between the past—which can be remembered, at least partially—and the future—which is impossible to fully predict.
Keywords Indeterminism · Open past · Probabilistic causality · Propensities · Philosophy of time