Readers may remember Stephen Wolfram’s new theory of everything, about which leveller heads said, “It is absolutely possible that Wolfram has stumbled upon a deeper truth about the universe. But at the moment, he’s just another physicist with an idea. This idea should be taken as skeptically as any other that claims to explain the entire universe, meaning outside experts should check that it doesn’t contain glaring errors. Any strong hypothesis should be able to tell us something new and testable about the universe.”
Now, Ethan Siegel weighs in at Forbes:
When we use the word “theory” in a conventional sense, we talk about it the same way we’d talk about the word “idea” or “hypothesis.” We mean that sure, we have our conventional way of thinking about things that we generally accept, but maybe things are actually this other way instead.
To a scientist, though, a theory is a far more powerful thing than that. It’s a self-consistent framework that has the quantitative power to predict the outcomes (or sets of probable outcomes) of a large set of systems under a wide variety of conditions.
A successful, established theory goes even farther. It contains a large suite of predictions that agree with established experiments and/or observations. It’s been tested in a large number of independent ways, and has passed every test thus far. It has a range of validity that’s well-understood, and it’s also understood that the theory may not be valid outside of that particular range.
Ethan Siegel, “3 Simple Reasons Why Wolfram’s New ‘Fundamental Theory’ Is Not Yet Science” at Forbes
We can tell what’s wrong with science today when we try to take Siegel’s dead-serious explanation of what he thinks a theory in science is and apply it to: Darwinian evolution theory
Of course, Wolfram’s ideas are not the new Einstein or Schrodinger. But court-enforced rubbish like Darwinism has corrupted the very idea of theory as Siegel tries to explain it.
While I agree with Ethan Siegel’s “3 Simple Reasons Why Wolfram’s New ‘Fundamental Theory’ Is Not Yet Science”, I do have a minor quibble with one of Siegel’s auxiliary claims.
First, Siegel’s 3 reasons why Wolfram’s fails as a new fundamental theory are as such,
Prior to laying out his 3 reasons, Siegel claims,
And again, right after he lists his 3 reasons, Siegal again claims,
While it is certainly true that General Relativity succeeded everywhere that Newton’s theory did, and also succeeded where Newton’s theory failed to make accurate predictions, it simply is not accurate to claim that “the quantum field theory-based Standard Model superseded the early-20th century version of our quantum Universe” in the same way that Einstein’s General Relativity superseded Newton’s theory.
First and foremost, and as Nobel Laureate Sheldon Lee Glashow stated, “Although quantum field theory is fully compatible with the special theory of relativity, a relativistic treatment of quantum measurement has yet to be formulated.”
Thus, although they unified special relativity and quantum mechanics together in “the quantum field theory-based Standard Model”, this unification between special relativity and quantum mechanics into “the quantum field theory-based Standard Model” came at the unacceptable cost of leaving the entire enigma of Quantum Measurement on the cutting room floor.
Yet, Quantum measurement is precisely where conscious observation makes its presence fully known in quantum mechanics.
As the following researcher stated, “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it.”
The following video goes into more detail showing that there is indeed a extremely tight correlation between quantum mechanics and defining attributes of the immaterial mind.
Thus, to brush the entire enigma of quantum measurement, and therefore consciousness itself, under the rug in the formulation of the Standard Model is simply unacceptable for any theory that hopes to be the correct step towards the ‘theory of everything’. Moreover, for Siegal to imply that “the quantum field theory-based Standard Model superseded the early-20th century version of our quantum Universe” in the same way that Einstein’s General Relativity superseded Newton’s theory is simply disingenuous to the facts at hand.
Again, “the quantum field theory-based Standard Model’ has left the entire enigma of quantum measurement on the cutting room floor, and thus fails Siegal’s own criteria of,,,
Now, I’m not saying that the standard model does not make extremely accurate predictions in its own right, I’m simply saying that the standard model most certainly has NOT succeeded in “all the places where the prior one (quantum theory) succeeds.” And thus, by Siegal’s own criteria that he himself laid out, the standard model is not truly a successful theory in terms of supposedly completely superseding quantum theory in all its predictions as Siegal had implied it had done in his article.
Now that I got my gripe out of the way, and while I am on this subject, it is interesting to note that Richard Feynman (and others) were only able to unify special relativity and quantum mechanics into Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) by quote unquote “brushing infinity under the rug” with a technique called Renormalization.
This “brushing infinity under the rug” with QED never set right with Feynman.
In the following video, Richard Feynman expresses his unease with “brushing infinity under the rug” in Quantum-Electrodynamics:
Now, while Feynman may have been upset about it “Taking ‘an infinite amount of logic to figure out what one stinky tiny bit of space-time is going to do’, personally I found great comfort in that fact in that “Taking ‘an infinite amount of logic to figure out what one stinky tiny bit of space-time is going to do’ because that, (i.e an infinite amount of logic describing space-time no matter how small that chunk of space-time is), happens to be fully compatible with Christian presuppositions
Moreover, and as mentioned previously, my critique that the standard model is NOT a true superseding theory of quantum theory does not mean that the standard model has not been extremely successful in making accurate predictions in its own right.
In fact, the standard model has reached, what I term to be, ‘platonic perfection’.
Ever since modern science was born in medieval Christian Europe, science has had a history of looking for ‘platonic perfection’, and assuming the Mind of God to be behind that ‘platonic perfection’. That is to say, that science has a history of reaching for perfect agreement between the immaterial mathematics that might describe a facet of this universe and the experimental results that measure those mathematical predictions (within the limits of what we are able to accurately measure with our scientific instruments).
Copernicus, (who was heavily influenced by Platonic thinking), imagined (incorrectly) that the planets move in perfect circles (rather than ellipses). Later, Newton, for allowing God could adjust the orbits of the planets, was chastised by Leibniz, (and even by Laplace) for having a “very narrow ideas about the wisdom and the power of God.”.. i.e. For having a narrow view of the perfection of God.
For most of the history of modern science in the Christian west, finding ‘platonic perfection’ for mathematical descriptions of the universe has been a very elusive goal. This all changed with the discoveries of Special Relativity, General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics (and with the Standard Model). That is to say, (as far as experimental testing will allow), there is no discrepancy to be found between what the mathematical descriptions of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics predict and what our most advanced scientific testing of those predictions are able to measure.
As well, quantum electrodynamics (QED), which, to repeat, is a combination of special relativity and quantum mechanics, also now joins the list of perfect mathematical descriptions of the universe in which we can find no deviation from what the mathematics predict and what our best experimental testing can discern (again, at least to within the measurement uncertainty).
In other words, as far as we can tell from what measurement accuracy will allow, ‘platonic perfection’ has, for all practical purposes, been reached for QED as well as for Quantum Mechanics and both theories of Relativity.
But what is the correct explanation for the “platonic perfection” that is found in these theories?
As Nima Arkani-Hamed himself, the discoverer of the amplituhedron, stated “It seems inconceivable that this intricate web of perfect mathematical descriptions is random or happenstance. This mystery must have an explanation.”,,,
Well, to the consternation of Atheists, the correct explanation for such ‘platonic perfection’ is that the mathematics that describe our universe are the product of he Mind of God.
But hey, don’t take my word for it, Both Einstein and Wigner are on record as to regarding it as a ‘miracle’ that mathematics should so accurately describe the universe. Shoot, Einstein went so far as to chastise ‘professional atheists’ in the process of calling it a ‘miracle’:
One final note, when we allow the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics, as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned,,,, (Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and Max Planck, to name a few of the Christian founders),,, and as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands (with the closing of the free will loophole by Anton Zeilinger and company), rightly allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics provides us with a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead provides an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between quantum mechanics and general relativity into the much sought after ‘Theory of Everything”.
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/physicists-need-courage-to-confront-the-collider-dilemma-says-boson-pioneer/#comment-682050
Moreover, the overturning of the Copernican principle by both General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics adds considerable weight to my claim that Jesus’s resurrection from the dead is the correct ‘theory of everything’
Verse