matter - an introduction
How does dichotomistic logic apply to the realm of matter? To bare
nature? To particle physics and cosmology?
In a nutshell, I would say that conventional reductionist science has
done an excellent job at breaking the universe apart. Now the holistic
or organic approach can show how the parts fit back together.
For example, one of the major problems in physics is how to connect
quantum theory to relativity. It becomes axiomatic under organic logic
that they are never broken apart. They are the asymmetric (and thus
utterly different looking) limits of a local~global process of symmetry
breaking.
Well how can that be? One way to think about it is in terms of curved
spacetime. Relativity is the global story. It describes a smoothly and
continuously connected spacetime – the universe. Now if this
spacetime has a geometry, on the largest scale it is most likely to be
hyperspheric. It will bend in a way so it is self-closing. At least
that is how relativity models spacetime.
Then quantum theory describes a spacetime that bends in exactly the
opposite fashion – hyperbolically. In loop quantum gravity
(LQG) approaches especially, spacetime is seen as broken up into a
Planck-scale foam or roil of fluctuations. Every point of the universe
is flexing in every direction. There is no coherent direction and so
all locations in spacetime are diverging from each other, making for a
maximally open geometry.
You see the neat dichotomy here. Quantum~relativity equals
hyperbolic~hyperspheric, or open~closed, or roil~cohesive. And
quantum~relativity clearly stand for the two extremes of physical
spatiotemporal scale – the local~global. Or atom~void,
particle~universe.
Now comes the next step of the argument. Quantum theory and relativity
are models that successfully break reality apart. How do we knit them
back together?
Organic logic says axiomatically, that where there is a separation,
there is also a mixing. There is the emergence of a
(shrinking~expanding) middle ground with a “flat”
scale symmetry. And the result is the triad of a hierarchy.
So if you take the two extremes of hyperbolic and hyperspheric
– broken, open curvature and smoothly closed curvature
– then they average to a flat zero-curvature. Emerging
automatically out of a mixing of “quantum locality”
and “relativistic globality” is the renormalised or
scale symmetric middle ground that is classical, Euclidean and
Newtonian, spacetime.
Except with a difference. Organic logic says axiomatically such a
system is continually dynamic. And so the flat middle ground must
always be expanding (and contracting) in some fashion). The universe of
course does expand. And it also contracts in the sense of quantum
collapses. There is a continual decohering of events to make the
smallest possible grain of localised events.
So another two things that are a problem for conventional physics,
because of the axioms of mechanical causality, become part of the way
things must be under organic causality. A universe must expand with a
Hubble flow. And its small scale existence needs to be constantly
remade as smallness is not a static property but an equilibrium result.
Reductionist physics broke the world apart into three kinds
of mechanics – quantum mechanics, classical
mechanics and relativistic mechanics. Organic physics can knit them
back together as a dichotomy that produces a hierarchical triad
– the “local~middle~global” of
quantum~classical~relativistic.
This is just one example of how organic logic can reframe an old
problem. Of course once you start looking, you find latent dichotomies
everywhere. String theory depends on its asymmetric dualities.
Thermodynamics dichotomises with its first and second laws. All of
fundamental physics is built on the idea of symmetries. So it will be
no surprise if a logic based on asymmetry casts a whole new light on
many causal problems, like how universes get started in a Big Bang. Or
if your interests are more pure maths, you might wonder what it all
means for the dichotomies of category theory.
where to now?
To navigate these matter pages, a place to start might be my
tale of
the Big Bang. I give a pop science level sketch of what
cosmologists
actually know along with a discussion of the metaphysical question of
“why anything?”. Why was there any kind of creation
event when nothing happening at all would have been so much simpler.
Then – as this is the new stuff – I will be adding
more scholarly sections over time.