Megaphysics

Metaphysics & Modern Physics

Exploring the fabric of the universe & future of Science.

Problems in Physics

Anyone who studies modern physics likely knows of the "weirdness" of quantum mechanics and relative space-time continuum. Although such models are counter to common sense (or "Naive Physics") it is a big enough challenge to unite Quantum Mechanics (QM) and General Relativity (GR) into a consistent mathematics. "Strings" and "Quantum Bits" may hold solutions to unify "modern" physics (QM & GR) of the 20th Century but these (post modern?) ideas pose their own challenges. 

Megaphysics explores these mathematical issues relating to the search for a Theory of Everything (TOE) or Grand United Theory (GUT) that can unite micro-universe models such as QM with macro models such as GR, in such a way that they address philosophical issues as well as mathematical problems.

Mysteries of Metaphysics

Anyone who has a child play the "why?" game, knows it does not take long to find questions which have no easy answers.

Mystics have long been mystified by questions like:

What is the world made of?
Can Physics model the universe or is the world just crazy?
Who made God?
Why are we here?
What is Life, Does it have purpose?
Is the world real or a dream?
Fate or Free-will?

Descartes' "I think so I am" and Plato's"Our senses only show shadows of true reality" are still pertinent today. The mind-body dualism problem is still unresolved and the projected nature of reality is seen in superstring and holographic and other multi-dimensional models of the universe.

Finding a model that addresses such issues as well as more mundane mathematical problems is a tall task.

There is also the problem of whether a GUT or TOE is possible.

Problems of Ultimate Causation & Ultimate Foundation and Godel's Incompleteness Theorem may suggest the universe is ultimately illogical and/or incomplete. If we live in an Impossible Universe we may have to conclude we are living in a dream or simulation rather than a true physical reality.

Before we address these issues we might first look closer at the problems: starting with Quantum Weirdness.

Quantum Weirdness

There are many things strange about Quantum Mechanics. The most obvious is the digital nature of QM. The only digital worlds most people encounter are computer simulations.

QM also allows things to be in two places at once, spread out in a wave of possibilities.  If Mixed States are truly undecided rather than unknown, future observations can influence aspects of the past, or the universe may be an unfinished work in progress.

Even without this, rewinding of time and Reverse Causation are integral to Quantum Histories. Also digital rounding errors seen in Quantum Tunnelling and Black Hole Evaporation, might allow objects to jump into Einstein's Tachyon Universe where time flows backwards and every point in our space equidistant.

Relative & Reverse Time

Human experience of time is like a flowing stream pulling us along in one direction. The chaos of the Quantum Vacuum has ebbs and flows or ripples of time with overall flow moving on. Multi-dimensional space-time models such as General Relativity and Supergravity models (like Smolin's Loop Gravity or Witten's M-Theory) have time and space mixed together in a continuum where past and future up and down are all mixed together in different ways to different perspectives. Some models (such as "Quantum Histories" and aspects of Quantum Teleportation) even allows reverse causation where actions related to observations seem to influence past events.    

This may all be well and good for mathematicians but our experienced common sense world has past events happening before future ones in causal chains of cause then effect moving from past to future. In our common sense world the past is fully set and not open to revision as suggested by QM. Neither is is relative as seen in GR.

Although models like QM & GR are consistent with observed reality they may not adequately address our experiences of perceived time, or even why we experience anything at all.

Experience

Physics talks as if there is a separate universe that can be experienced separate from the way things seem to be. E.g. Pink Elephants we experience after a night at the PUB are different from a real elephant we may encounter at a Zoo.

On the other hand Physics and other sciences are only concerned with measurable (observable) events and objects. Unless something influences our perceived world it is not a part of our universe. Invisible intangible real objects are essentially unreal to us as they are beyond our experience and therefore irrelevant to Science.

Experience is also at the core of the mind-body problem. Our experience of ourselves is as a living mind free to think whatever we wish, but physical models of the brain are of a mechanism that merely moves objects in the physical world. Any links between the two are arbitrary or coincidental. Essentially we only know we have a mind. We just assume our brain, body and physical universe exists. It is at least theoretically possible that it is all a dream but it is not possible that we aren't a thinking entity or entities.

One way of minimizing mind-body disjunction is to start from experience and work towards physics. If we had only a phenomenal or physical universe we would not have a mind-body problem. Since the world that we experience is the one physics is concerned with if we had to choose between an experienced phenomenal or physical universe we may need to adopt idealistic models over ones about a real universe separate from experience; and leave the existence of a real physical world as irrelevant. It may not solve ultimate philosophical problems but will remove the issue of separating dream and physical worlds.