Physics for Kicks

The history of ideas as they pertain to Physics

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  • Hello World!

     A quick note to the reader:

    This is not meant to be a physics textbook. It’s really a book about my personal struggle to make sense of reality. As such, perhaps it is nothing more than a Quixotic attempt, inspired by the momentous deeds of great thinkers, who sallied forth into the world of ideas in pursuit of some grasp of how nature works. Like Don Quixote’s quest, the path taken has been erratic and full of surprises, but full of purpose. There are surely adventures to be found along whatever road is taken. Intellectual giants appear at every turn. There were dusty battles, tumultuous struggles, that resulted in an emerging world view that continues to change and grow. That is what makes the pursuit of comprehension such an intellectual adventure.

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    We humans on the whole are an inqusitive species. Despite the struggle to survive, we still ask questions about things that have nothing to do with our survival. Like, why is the sky blue? The claim that the sky is blue because of refection from the ocean may satisfy some, while others are happier thinking that the sky is blue because a god made it that way. Both may walk away from the question satisfied they don’t have to think about it any more. It is a done deal. We cant help making up stuff to find answers. That’s who we are. We want to know, no matter what and will make up fantastic stories, anything,  rather than admit ignorance. As the number of claims grow, how do we determine which claim is the best, or if there might be something better?

     Shared experience can provide answers we all agree on, right or wrong. Some answers will sit well with one group but not with another. These can become the foundation for world views that define cultural differences. Even within cultures there can be different pardigms, different world views. Some will make up a   “god” to account for the creation of the univers, while others will credit it to a “Big Bang.”  

    The fundamental questions that seek deep meaning cross all cultural boundaries and never seem to disappear from human consciousness. There seems no end to the struggle to grasp the mystery of reality. This grasping  for answers brought forth  art, science, philosophy, and religion, all different ways of trying to understand. This struggle  for comprehension, for clues to the mystery of existence, has produced a vast tapestry of ideas woven together from human ingenuity and creativity. Although this tapestry is colored and shaped by cultural imperatives that provide  some comfort to where we humans fit in the cosmic scheme of things, there are common threads that connect us all, no matter what.

    Some claim that consciousness is the ultimate reality in the universe. Thus reality is some way revealed to us through a manifestation of this consciousness. No beginning, no moment of creation. Just an unfolding of the universal consciousness.  From this premise man does not invent, but discovers; does not create, but reveals that which is. Mathematics, physics,  ethics,   are simply imbedded in the fabric of the universe; not invented by the human mind, but drawn laboriously out of the fabric, thread by thread, by a driving passion to understand. This view has the advantage of making mute the question of how consciousness could have possibly arisen from chance movement of matter towards higher levels of complexity and organization. In this view consciousness is the ultimate reality. We struggle with the question about how well what is in our heads reflects reality, whatever that is. We cannot prove that what is in our heads, what we think is what is real. To begin to understand what emerges in our minds through our senses, we need to decide: is what happens in our heads all there is, or is there a reality outside that is independent of what we think. The choice  made in this book is that there is an external reality and what emerges in our consciousness is the result of our attempts to understand what we experience.

    It is not an easy choice because there is something comforting to think that there is a kind of universal consciousness that gives some order and meaning to nature that justifies the effort to try to comprehend it, that there is some logical sense to it all. We stand so much in awe of nature that we deify the image. We create gods somewhat in our own image, but with powers to create and run the universe. We name the nameless: Allah, Yahweh … Then we institutionalize the image, in whatever form it may take, into a belief system that provides ready answers for us. Personifying the ineffable gives the feeling that we belong to a friendly universe that has our interests in mind.

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Who Doesn’t Love a Good Story?

The tendency to mythologize in humans is a very strong one. Though the mythologies take on many forms, the underlying force behind them seems to cross all spatial, temporal, and cultural boundaries. Today we tend to attribute mythologizing to primitive minds and forget that the tendency for inventing stories to answer the big questions is still very much alive and widespread. We make stuff up – this is how we think. We work with an invented tool, languages, that are not always up to the challenge. When words fail, then we make up stories, invent metaphors. Humans ask questions and myths are invented to answer them. The risk here is that the mind can fall into the trap of clinging on to answers thought to be final, indisputable, beyond inquiry, dogmatic. It is far easier, and more instantly gratifying, to invent stories – creative stories, that fire our imaginations. Then we take on the laborious task of trying to construct, piece by piece, a comprehensive and comprehensible picture based on hard earned fragments of evidence and creative guesses. 

This brings us to an alternative view, which assumes that there is no need to invoke a universal and timeless mind that gradually reveals itself to humans through revelation. Our experiences with the world raise questions about meaning. As Einstein says, “There exists a passion for comprehension…” The search for answers stimulates a flood of impulses that leads to human inventions such as art, science, mathematics, ethics, mythologies, and religion. These products of human ingenuity distinguish homo sapiens from the rest of the animal kingdom. Humans have left more than mere traces of themselves; they have left a record of their struggle for meaning and understanding.  

Mathematics and physics, music, poetry, and art, may reflect something about an external reality. But how true is this invented picture of the world?  It is difficult for one to give a definite answer to this question which is one of the difficulties of the view that human understanding is constructed rather than revealed. In this view, there is no sense of finality, nothing to tell us that we have got it right. Our knowledge is at best provisional. It stands or falls simply on its ability to explain and make predictions that agree with experience. There is no article of faith that puts the final seal of approval on the picture. 

Yet, ironically, it is this very tenuous feature that is its strength. What if we accept that ideas, all ideas, are always open to question and reexamination in the light of new information? This keeps our minds open to possibilities. We shouldn’t worry about challenging any existing paradigm, dogma, or pet theory. If a new idea stands up to the test of verification and provides reasonable explanations, and makes testable predictions, then we run with it to see how far it can take us. At the same time we must always be willing to reject or modify any idea in the face of any new  evidence that suggests we might be wrong, that a pet theory, no matter how appealing, how attached we may be toward it, just doesn’t work in the face of some real challenge. Physics Nobel Laureate, Richard Feynman, made it clear that the history of science is learning where we were wrong.

This leads to a  methodology that keeps us intellectually honest; it is the basis for the scientific method that has proved to be immensely successful in producing good knowledge. In an attempt to trace the development of physical thought from the beginning to its present state of understanding, this second view has proven to be the most fruitful. Not because it rejects the premise of the first view outright, but rather because it is the most expeditious of the two, the most intellectually honest. Even the writers of Genesis struggled with the impact of human’s desire for comprehension. The die has been cast – we have tasted that forbidden fruit. Despite god’s threat, humans have chosen to pursue knowledge.

Whether or not our view of things has anything to do with truth is difficult to determine. We can debate endlessly about what is and isn’t true. In the end all we can really ask is; how good is our knowledge? That may be the best we can do. Science covers such a wide range of topics. There is a methodology that is common to all sciences. I have chosen to focus on physics, how it works, what it has produced, in the hope that this will reveal how science in general works.