Author's Introduction; see "Tegmark (Max) - The Mathematical Universe"), these books hint at an underlying, secret world waiting to be unravelled by physicists – a domain beyond our sensory perception that remains their special purview.
Over its history, physics has delivered elegant and accurate descriptions of the physical Universe. Today, however, the reality physicists work to uncover appears increasingly removed from the one they inhabit. Despite its experimental successes, physics has repeatedly failed to live up to the expectation of delivering a deeper, ‘final’ physics – a reality to unify all others. As such, physicists appear forced to entertain increasingly speculative propositions.
Yet, with no obvious avenues to verify such speculations, physicists are left with little option but to repeat similar approaches and experiments – only bigger and at greater cost – in the hope that something new may be found. Seemingly beset with a sense of anxiety that nothing new will be found or that future experiments will reveal only further ignorance, the field of fundamental physics is incentivised to pursue ever more fanciful ideas.
I argue that the pursuit of unity and dominance of a more fundamental reality presents itself not as physicists’ unique prerogative, but instead as an impossible burden placed on their shoulders by the modern world. I suggest that we should embrace a more pluralist and nuanced understanding of what comprises the cosmos, an understanding that not only accepts but invites criticism from other practices, disciplines and realities into its current predicament.
My time spent in physics, both as an aspiring theoretical physicist and later as a sociologist studying the practices of fundamental physics, has left me to wonder to what extent narratives of unity and finality continue to serve the communities that proliferate them. And, further, to what extent does achieving greater fidelity towards what comprises existence, to what reality is, and to the constituents of the cosmos require that physics give up the mantle as reality’s primary purveyor?
Author's Conclusion
- I suggest that we must take seriously the possibility of other worlds. By this I do not mean the familiar speculations of the multiverse, or the Many-Worlds hypothesis, introduced by physics to come to terms with the Universe’s ongoing indeterminacy. Rather, it is to take seriously those worlds that physics and modern realism have otherwise dismissed. That is, worlds in which, for instance, the Earth beings of Indigenous peoples are real, the ghosts of Japanese family members are cared for, and where God talks back to evangelical believers who speak with him.
- This is also to suggest a return to openly questioning the claims of physics. Where once large public debates took place between physicists and philosophers on the nature of time and the extent to which physics can be said to speak for reality, today, public debates between physics and philosophy are seldom serious. Instead, when similar questions are debated in philosophy journals, they are largely settled in deference to the claims of physics.
- Now, there is no doubting the immense achievements of fundamental physics. Further, its speculative wagers may yet be rewarded with time. However, such wagers have left the field unclear where to look for alternatives should it fall short of its own high expectations, and its practitioners, who are believed to be closest to reality, the furthest away from it.
- In response, we need a humbler physics that is no less radical in its speculative ambitions but invites contradictory visions into its propositions, not only visions that are subservient to physics’ claims. In this, we would have a more adventurous physics, one that accepts and invites criticism from other practices and disciplines into its current predicament.
- More pragmatically, it would allow for the possibility of engaging physics with other practices. Biophysics and climate physics are good examples of this. Unlike cosmology and fundamental physics, they are not premised on the supremacy of one field over the other but understand their limitations, and respective and restricted areas of application.
- But we might go even more radical than this, departing from a purely physicalist approach to embrace modes dismissed as mere fantasy, story or ‘immaterial’, to re-engage physics with alternative debates, visions and configurations of reality. This may require that we abandon physics’ privileged place as science’s standard bearer, like we did the philosophers and high priests of old, as the practice with unique access to a deeper reality more fundamental than others.
- It may even require that we abandon doing physics altogether, in the attainment of an expanded reality that not only accepts but encourages the possibility of difference and more. Or, as the speculative fiction writer Ursula Le Guin once put it, what we require are ‘the realists of a larger reality’.
Author Narrative
- Adrien De Sutter completed his PhD in sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and is a visiting fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Germany. An interdisciplinary researcher specialising in science and technology studies and the history and philosophy of science, he focuses on the philosophical, sociological and political implications of fundamental physics research.
Notes
- This is a silly paper, but incited by some silly claims put about by some theoretical physicists in some popular science books.
- Our world is fundamentally physical, so fundamental physics is basic to its understanding and constrains whatever else we might like to believe about it. Other disciplines (starting with chemistry and biology) build on physical foundations.
- However, it has become increasingly difficult - and expensive - to make further progress in the physics of the very large and very small. This has little to do with reality in itself but with our limitations. It may be that it's not worth pursuing these ultimate questions because the energies, distances and timescales are beyond us. But that doesn't mean that we can get just as satisfactory answers by retreating to our armchairs and scratching our heads. Nor does it mean that any answer will do. Some things we will never know, not because of our cognitive limitations but because we can't get our hands on the data.
- The author's conclusion is just so much sociological blather.
- There are no Aeon Comments.
- This relates to my Note on Naturalism.
Comment:
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